Excerpt from:
Train ’em in a Truck!

by George W. Green, Dearborn, Michigan

Problem: What is the best way for a manufacturer to train its employees, distributors, and dealers when it produces mechanical or technical products requiring sales demonstrations, installation, maintenance and service, and involved applications; frequent need to update skills; and trainees dispersed geographically in far-flung locations?

Solution: Train 'em in a truck

When production of the normal range of civilian goods and services resumed after the end of WWII it quickly became apparent that mobile field sales and service training was a very practical technique for achieving training objectives.  Putting wheels to learning became an exciting concept worldwide, and mobile programs expanded rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, peaked in the early 1970s. After that it began giving way to technological innovations like distance learning on the internet, teleconferencing, and web conferencing, which save time and money. Today only a very few isolated remnants remain of mobile training efforts.

In the late 1940s one of the earliest programs was launched by Texaco Canada Limited for its service stations. Following suit in 1952, Champion Spark Plug conducted over 30,000 successful field clinics with its fleet of vans for more than 1,000,000 technicians.

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