Roadrunners Auto has right women for the job
Roadrunners Auto in Ashern currently has three female autobody technicians working in the shop, an uncommon site in most shops across Canada.
According to the federal government, women make up just five per cent of all autobody technicians in the country. This is in comparison to most occupations, which see an almost even split of men and women at 52 per cent and 48 per cent, respectively.
The women at Roadrunners Auto, though, don’t think about the statistics — the numbers never even occurred to them.
Dayna Kohut grew up around the shop, her parents owning it, but she didn’t spend much time there.
After high school, Kohut got her culinary red seal, but when she moved back home after school, she decided to work at the shop instead of in a kitchen.
For the next three or four years, Kohut worked in the autobody shop’s office, doing paperwork and paying bills. She would see cars leave the shop looking significantly better than when they arrived, and soon enough, Kohut wanted to be the one making the cars look better.
“I’m a very hands-on person,” said the 27-year-old. “I like seeing things come in and leave looking so good. It’s satisfying.”
Last spring, Kohut completed her level one autobody technician and she’s registered to take her level two this fall. Until then, she’ll be working on a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner, her project car and the shop’s new mascot.
Kohut and her dad, Jeff Dyck, had been looking for a Road Runner to be the shop’s mascot for a while when they came across one in B.C. being auctioned off by the Rust Valley Restorers.
Rust Valley Restorers is a TV show that follows Mike Hall, Avery Shoaf and Connor Charman-Hall as they go through Tappen, B.C., also known as the Rust Valley, looking for and restoring old cars.
Kohut and Dyck bid on the car instantly without seeing it or knowing anything about what kind of work they’d need to do. When they won the bid, they set off to the Rust Valley to pick it up.
That car is what Kohut has been working on for a year now. She’s spent countless hours sandblasting the body, welding panels and aligning everything.
Right now, the 1970 Plymouth Road Runner is on a rotisserie in the shop with the doors, trunk and hood removed so Kohut can paint and seam-seal the vehicle.
Her next moves is to take it off the rotisserie, put the rear end in, install the suspension, get the wheels on and replace the automatic transmission with manual.
“Working in a small shop, every day really is an opportunity to do something different,” said Kohut, noting that when she’s not working on the new mascot, she’s doing everything from taking apart bumpers and door panels to putting in windshields and door glass.
“It’s kind of like putting a puzzle together,” she said. “It’ll come in and it looks so bad, then you take it apart and put it back together. When it’s all done, and it looks good — that’s what I like. Putting it back together and it looks even better.”
That’s Leah McDonald’s favourite part of the job, too — she calls it the best feeling in the world.
McDonald has been working at Roadrunners Auto since 2016 when she was a high school apprentice. She just completed her level three in the trade and is hoping to pass her fourth level this year.
“I’ve always been interested in cars,” the 25-year-old said. “I had the opportunity to do the high school apprenticeship program and get work experience here and I’ve been here ever since.”
When she’s at school getting her levels, McDonald notices she’s the only woman in the room, but at Roadrunners Auto, she’s just one of the techs. Like Kohut, she does a bit of everything at work; her favourite tasks include bodywork and switching over parts.
She loves learning new things, and — like Kohut — enjoys how every day at the shop is different.
Last year, Kaydence Tindall shadowed McDonald for two weeks. Tindall, 18, is slated to get her level one as an autobody technician this spring and is getting her work experience at Roadrunners Auto.
Tindall likes that every day is different, too. She started at the shop last summer after her dad took her in to see if she’d be interested in the field. Growing up around cars and her dad being a mechanic, the job made sense.
Tindall’s main interest is in glass. Her grandpa was a glass man, she said, so it runs in her blood.
Whether it’s a windshield, door glass or rear window, Tindall can do it. She’ll take off the towel, cut the glass out by hand, pull it out, prep it and get the new one installed with no questions asked.
She likes knowing about her own vehicle, too, now that she works at the shop. Chances are she’ll know what’s wrong with it, and if she doesn’t, she has plenty of coworkers who will, she said.
“We all work really well together,” she said. “We get along with the guys really well. Being a woman just isn’t something we think about.”
Tindall said one of the most common things she and her female counterparts deal with is surprise when people ask what she does for a living.
Every time she tells someone she’s an autobody technician, they look at her like she’s crazy, but Tindall doesn’t mind. She likes telling people about what she does and talking about her love for it, she said.
Roadrunners Auto has three women working in the shop and two men. Kohut, McDonald and Tindall all agree gender has never been an issue at work, and Dyck’s beyond impressed with their work, each tech digging deep to ensure they don’t miss a thing on the vehicles they see.
