MOVING UP - Congratulations to our Nissan SCOPE & Infiniti KEI Masters

Phillip Brown pulled his first engine when he was 11 years old. “My uncle was gonna swap an engine,” he says. “My cousin and I, we let him know we were interested in doing it. And he let us, pretty much do everything except jack it up.” For Phillip, that clinched it. He’s been turning wrenches ever since. “All the time,” he says. “My stuff, friends and family.”

But, even with all that experience, there were things to learn in Master training. It’s had a great impact on his daily work life. “Especially the electrical,” he says. “That’s the area where I’ve seen the most growth in myself. That was pretty new to me.” Nowadays, Phillip is happy to take on any repair. “As long as it’s a good-paying job,” he laughs.

Still, when pressed, Phillip admits a long- standing preference for the physical side of tech work. “Anything involving an engine,” Phillip says. “I guess, at the end of the day, I’m not as into the small, easy stuff. I like the larger, more timeconsuming jobs.”

Hasan Alvi is a Nissan loyalist. For real. In fact, the brand has motivated the technician’s career. “I’ve always been into Nissan,” he says. “My whole family drives Nissan. I own Nissan sports cars. I like the way they’re designed, their engines.” Fresh out of high school, the Minnesota native packed up and moved to Florida—home of the nearest Universal Technical Institute (UTI) with a Nissan program.

Master status has been a goal ever since. He graduated from UTI just a couple years ago—and, already, here he is. You can tell he’s roud of the accomplishment. His dealership cuts him loose on comebacks—when they want it fixed right, and fixed for good, he’s Mr. Wolf with a wrench.

Hasan sees Master training very much as an active process. “They’re not showing you everything,” he says. “Just the concept. Two people could pass the same class and come away with totally different levels of knowledge. How much you learn is up to you. The more focused you are, the more you get out of it.”

Some guys pursue Nissan Master training. Other guys, the training pursues them. “The dealership needed a Master to keep up with all the new stuff,” Allen says. “And if they need to send you, ya gotta go!”

And so, Allen Monzyk found himself out of state four or five days at a time. “That was the biggest challenge, just being away from my family for so long. But the training was very worthwhile. The new training center in Chicago is real nice, very up-to-date.”

Allen’s interest in cars is a fundamental part of who he is. “My dad was a mechanic, so out of high school I just started working on ‘em. Not really the performance end of stuff. I just really like fixing ‘em.” To aspiring techs, Allen says, “Be patient. Don’t expect big, major money right off the bat. But stick with it, and it’ll all work out.” He thinks for a minute, then chuckles, “And keep up with your training, because it can get pretty backlogged!”

“It’s been a long road,” says recently-certified Master Tech Ellis Currie. “It’s been a lot of years of hard work and I feel like I deserve it.” Ellis started wrenching at a Bug shop in the 70s. Master status has been a long-standing ambition, thwarted for many years by apathetic management.

“A lot of places, they’re not interested in sending you to school,” Ellis says. All that changed four years ago, when he came to East Charlotte Nissan. “Finally, I got lucky and found a place that wants to train their people, so they can do the job on the new cars the way it should be done.”

His work schedule is intense, but when possible Ellis blows off steam with RC trucks. He picked up the hobby from his stepson. They stage informal RC races and events with their friends. Patient tenacity is the hallmark of Ellis’ philosophy. “Take your time,” he says. “Try not to rush through things. The more you learn at the beginning, the better off you’ll be at the end.”

Derek Fredericks grew up on a farm in McLean, Illinois. “Town of about 400 people,” he says. To pass the time, Derek watched relatives work on various vehicles and pieces of machinery. “It’s pretty cool to watch someone figure out a mechanical problem,” he says. “You see the satisfaction that comes when you fix something yourself. Then you get your own car, and you’re always wanting to make it better, cooler, faster.”

Eventually, Derek wanted to work on something a little more complicated. Infiniti had a certain appeal. “Where I grew up, you didn’t see Infiniti every day,” he says. “Nobody knew too much about them.”

Derek’s got a few different hobbies. For fun he bought an Infiniti from one of his customers, fixed the broken cam shaft, then passed it on to his mother as a gift. He rides motorcycles and 4-wheelers with his buddies and keeps an ’89 Chevy 1500 with a turbocharged 383 as a project car. “Work or play, it usually involves wheels or an engine,” he laughs.

Work changed the day Rafael Cordero became a Master Tech. Suddenly, the job required his brain more than his body. “You go from the gravy, you know, the brake jobs and the tune-ups, and more into the mind puzzles of broken wires,” he says. “Figuring out why a system is doing what it’s doing.”

Does he recommend this change to other techs? “Absolutely,” he says. “If you love a challenge, and you don’t want to get stuck doing the same repairs over and over, I would say, do it. Challenge yourself!”

Lately, Rafael’s focus has been his kids, supporting his family and putting his wife through school. “I can’t come home tired,” he laughs. “I walk in, and the kids need to play, you know? I get to be a kid with them, and that’s great. But I can’t come home tired!” His wife recently completed her doctorate, though, which bodes well for a return to recreational wrenching. “Now that she’s done, oh,” he chuckles. “I will have a GT-R, let’s put it that way!”

Jeff Schneider was in no hurry to become a Master Tech. He’d been with Nissan for 12 years. “I put it off,” he says. “I was like, why do it need it? Why take all the time to go out and do that?” Then the LEAF and GT-R training became available—and suddenly, Jeff was interested. “With LEAF, you have to get certain ASEs, and with GT-R you have to be a Master.” Master training was the next logical step.

Schneider allows that Master training itself perhaps didn’t radically overturn his perspective on tech work. But he also feels that, if Master is just a title, the title alone is worth something.

“I mean, yeah, it’s just a piece of paper,” he says. “But it’s nice when they can introduce me to a customer and say, ‘This is one of our Master Techs.’ It shows I’ll go the extra mile. I put in the extra work to get that certification. And customers recognize, okay, he’ll do the same thing for my car.”

“I was always into cars,” says Traviss Moore. “I read all the car magazines.” By the time he got a license, Traviss was trying to soup-up his daily driver. He hit the ground running clean out of high school, and landed a job as a tech at the local Dodge dealership. High school auto shop was his only formal training at that point.

When his Dodge manager crossed the street to Infiniti, Traviss followed. Now that he’s a Master, he appreciates the feeling “that you’re needed, that you’re not easily replaced,” he says. “[Becoming a Master] has helped me out a lot.”

Years of professional wrenching have done nothing to diminish the old hobbyist enthusiasm. For fun, when there’s time, Traviss likes to apply everything he’s learned to his own cars, especially his GTO. To Traviss, thoroughness is the key to being a great technician. “You have to be meticulous,” he chuckles. “Take the extra steps to make sure you’re doing a good repair and an accurate diagnosis.” All the rest, for Traviss Moore, is pure enjoyment.

Mike Berman’s been with Coon Rapids Nissan since they opened. In the early days, they couldn’t afford to have techs off training. Then an edict came down from corporate; train more Masters. Mike had been there the longest, and quickly found himself on his way to Chicago.

With full dealership support, Mike blasted through in under a year. Impressive, but Mike takes it in stride—with some help from his co-workers. “When they sent me the patches I put ‘em on,” he says. “We all chuckle, and the guys give me heck. But truth is, customers believe you more when they see those patches.”

Prior to training, Mike had asked for years if there was a CONSULT-III Plus training program. He’d been told it wasn’t available, only to find a Master class on that very topic! “By then, I knew how to use it, after years of struggling through,” he says. “But, man, I would’ve killed for that my first years here. They should send everyone to that, because it really teaches you Nissan’s computer programs.”

Many technicians trace their love of cars to some definitive “Eureka!” moment. That, or it’s just always been in their DNA—they grew up in a wrenching family, surrounded by professionals or hobbyists, and a career in the field was a foregone conclusion.

Not so for Cody Bruton. Mounting tires and changing batteries was just what he did for work. But little by little, he learned on the job and found himself “moving up and up”. “The longer you do it, the easier it gets,” Cody says. “More rewarding. Less stressful. I always felt comfortable doing it. It’s hard to explain. You’re doing what you’re doing and it just feels like the right thing.”

Cody’s quick to point out, one should pursue Master status for the right reasons. “I wouldn’t do it just for the money,” he says. “But if you love what you do, you know, it’s the top of the ladder. I love what I do, and I like helping people, and that’s what being a Master is all about.”

Master training can be a chance to get out of town for a few days—a “paid vacation” to advance skills and career. But Ross Yamada lives on Owahu, 30 minutes from the beach. He’s already in the ultimate vacation spot. “And for me, it’s just normal,” he laughs. “I was born and raised here. It’s not a vacation.”

His location made Master training tricky. “It was always on my to-do list,” he says. “But they have to fly us to the mainland, and when the economy got bad they couldn’t do that all the time.” Eventually, the stars lined up. Now Ross enjoys better pay and the pleasure that comes with realizing a goal.

Ross is an affable guy. He cites good attitude as the single most important quality a technician can have. “Don’t get angry,” he says. “It can ruin your whole day. Take things step by step and don’t get ahead of yourself.” And if things do get stressful? “Smoke a cigarette,” he laughs. “Calm down. It’s easier if you’re relaxed!”

Jeremy Lambert has a long-standing fascination with all things mechanical. “I fiddled with bicycles,” Jeremy says. “Any chance I’d get, I’d fiddle with cars.” He took a few automotive classes in college, but it was expensive so he went into the military. He was assigned Diesel Tech at Fort Knox. “I worked on everything from Humvees to troop carriers. Did some recovery. I cross-trained on diesel generators.” It was right up his alley.

Back in civilian life, Jeremy’s father-in-law pointed him toward the Nissan dealership. He applied, despite having no auto experience. “Brakes are brakes,” he says. “The engines are different, but electronic manuals are very much what the military does, so I already knew some shortcuts.”

Jeremy juggled work, Master training, college and family. Two years later, he’s a Master and a mentor. He salvages motorcycles for fun, and plays the occasional video game with his children. “I’m pretty busy,” he says. As for Master status, he says, “It’s a patch on your shoulder. You know. Keep up the good work. It’s its own reward.”

Mike Nocito never forgets what he’s working on. “Any time I get upset, I think, it is just a car,” Mike says. “One of the Masters who trained me, any time I struggled with a repair, he’d be like, ‘Are you going to let this car beat you? This pile of nuts and bolts?’ So now, any time I’m about to throw my wrench, I have to laugh.”

Mike’s dealership was supportive of his training—after he paid some dues. “They don’t want to invest in you until you’ve proven you’re worth their time,” he says. “You show them they can rely on you, and then they’ll want to send you.”

Colorado offers plenty of non-tech recreational options but, for Mike, cars always come first. “When it comes to being outdoors with family, you know, I’ll make the time. But I really put a lot of pride and energy into tech work,” he says. “Customer cars, hobby cars, project cars. I just really like what I do!”

To Carmin Fuscellaro, Master training is only essential if you want to survive and stay in this business. “The way things are going and the way computer systems are, you have to be trained or you won’t know what the computers are thinking,” he says. He understands the product better now that he’s a Master.

Carmin cut his teeth working on quads and dirt bikes long before he even had his driver’s license. He wound up getting his ASEs through the local college. He came to Infiniti three years ago with extensive computer training on other car lines. “Some of my previous training counted through the Virtual Academy,” he says. “That kind of gave me a good head start.”

On the weekend, when family commitments allow, Carmin builds Jeeps and 4-wheel drive trucks. “Everything from what you drive to the mall to what you want to go beat the hell out of over the weekend,” he says. “I see this as a job and a hobby at the same time.”

The GTS at Corona Nissan hounded Raul Vega to get his Master Certification. It wasn’t happening but not for lack of trying. “I kept taking the ASEs and I couldn’t pass them,” he says. Then, his sister was diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis prompted major improvement in her college performance.

“I thought, okay, well, maybe that’s my problem,” Raul says. “School had always been very hard for me.” Sure enough, Raul saw a doctor. His hunch was correct. He immediately took corrective action.

Suddenly, everything fell into place. “I can study now,” he says. “My twin brother also works at the dealership, and we’d come in an hour and a half early just to study and work for the tests.” Each test Raul passed, the GTS cheered him on to tackle the next one. Raul studied day and night—and got the results he’d been after. Raul’s Master Tech patches are a proud testament to determination, optimism and commitment. “It’s been super cool,” he says.

Congratulations to our Nissan SCOPE & Infiniti KEI Senior Specialists

Luke Senior

Infiniti KEI Senior Specialist

Competition Infiniti

Saint James, NY

Christopher Ritaldato

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

O’neil Nissan Inc.

Warminster, PA

Aaron Lopez

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Jenkins Nissan, Inc.

Lakeland, FL

Luis Verduzco

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Mossy Nissan National City

National City, CA

James Van Wyk

Infiniti KEI Senior Specialist

Infiniti of Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids, MI

Michael Manorothkul

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Universal City Nissan Inc.

Los Angeles, CA

Jason Duren

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Kayser Nissan

Madison, WI

Richard Rodriguez

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Edison Nissan

Edison, NJ

Oscar Diaz

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Costa Mesa Nissan

Costa Mesa, CA

Sam Funtanilla

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Ken Garff Nissan Riverdale

Riverdale, UT

Nicholas Lifrieri

Infiniti KEI Senior Specialist

Pepe Infiniti, Inc.

White Plains, NY

Mike Raihala

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Krenzen Nissan

Duluth, MN

Miguel Angel

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Team Nissan

Oxnard, CA

Juan Sifuentes

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Twin City Nissan

Port Arthur, TX

Charles Ruyle

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Auffenberg Nissan

O Fallon, IL

Christopher Gleixner

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Tri-State Nissan

Winchester, VA

Kenneth Hodge

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Team Nissan, Inc.

Manchester, NH

Adan Robeson

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Autonation Nissan Tempe

Tempe, AZ

Tullier Lucas

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Giles Nissan

Lafayette, LA

Kenny Huynh

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Mossy Nissan Chula Vista

Chula Vista, CA

Kris Kunetka

Infiniti KEI Senior Specialist

Austin Infiniti, Inc.

Austin, TX

Mark Hartfield

Infiniti KEI Senior Specialist

Infiniti of Tucson

Tucson, AZ

Charles Mccullough

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Hall Nissan Virginia Beach

Virginia Beach, VA

Rafael Perea

Nissan SCOPE Senior Specialist

Mossy Nissan Kearny Mesa

San Diego, CA