We Did it Again - Division Tech of the Year Award Winner

When we say we believe we have the most talented service team - we really do! It was hard once again to only select just one of our amazing technicians for this year's John Deere Tech of the Year Award Program as several are deserving of the nomination. After Jake Kerbo of Elkhart was named one of last year's inaugural divisional winners, American Implement was once again proud to bring home our Divisional Tech of the Year Award which spans across Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado.

This year, 11-year Syracuse technician Ben Stultz received the top honors recognizing his dedication to his career, customers, leadership among his fellow peer technicians and his community. To even qualify for the nomination, Ben had to meet rigorous training requirements and be a proven performer. The next phase of the competition was a blind peer-dealership and John Deere review group. Of the hundreds of nominations across North America, 64 Territory Champions were named and 11 of those technicians rose to the top and were named Divisional Champions.

Motivated, adaptive, dedicated, determined, helpful and positive were just some of the different ways Ben's peers, manager and customers described him. Some of his accomplishments include starting out his career being 'self-taught' as he didn't go to a tech school, being self-managed as a solo field technician for a couple of years, one of American Implement's top contributors to our internal Technical Communicator team, and one of American Implement's first technicians to complete his Engine Capstone and John Deere Certified Technician Training.

Ben stated in his portion of the submission that, “The bigger the challenge - the bigger the feeling of satisfaction is when it's fixed… I am passionate about always becoming a better technician to better suit customers' needs.” Outside of his career as a technician, Ben's helping nature can be found lending a hand to producers in his area in his 'free-time' by running a tractor, combine or truck during harvest. Besides being harvest help, Ben is an active member of the county volunteer firefighter/ems response team. But probably where Ben has the most fun, is in the demolition derby arena, where he is quite accomplished as well. Ben remarked, “I get to break stuff and hit people and not get in trouble for it.”

While this program is only recognizing the individual technicians and their accomplishments and contributions to the industry, we feel this is also a great honor and recognizes American Implement's Service Department as a collective. The standards our technicians and service support/management team hold themselves to in order to best serve our customers is world-class. Congratulations Ben and all our other internal nominees!

Want to join a high-performing group with team members like Ben? Check out American Implement's current open positions.