Apprentice of the Month, September 2022: Melissa Smith

Melissa Smith is the MTA Institute Apprentice of the Month for September 2022.

The 35-year-old is in the third year of her auto-electrical apprenticeship and works at Crank Auto Electrics and Air Conditioning at Deception Bay, north of Brisbane.

While Melissa is, according to her MTA Institute trainer Roger West, ‘one of the most dedicated and professional apprentices I have ever trained’ possessing an ‘attention to detail is second to none’ there is much more to Melissa’s involvement with Crank than being an apprentice toiling to earn her trade certificate.

Melissa is, in fact, a co-owner of the business with her husband Cameron, and as well as helping out in the workshop and keeping up with her studies, she does the administration and bookwork for the business too. On top of that, the couple, who run Crank on their own, are bringing up three young children. A harder working, more dedicated duo would be hard to find.

Taking on an auto electrical apprenticeship was not something that Melissa considered as a career when she was younger, but when Cameron, who also did his training with the MTA Institute, left his job with a small auto-electrical business in 2016, the couple decided to go it alone, starting Crank as a mobile business. It was a brave call and the start of a couple of long years establishing the business.

“We’d just had our twins, we had $500 in the bank, and we bought a $600 Kia hatchback for Cameron to get around in with his tools in the back!” said Melissa. “Our daughter arrived a year later, so Cameron was doing just about everything for a while.”

As things began to settle, Melissa was able to help out.

“Once I was back on my feet after our daughter arrived, I started getting into the administration and accounting side of things,” she said. “In 2018, we moved into a shop, but we had a few difficulties and moved to where we are at the moment. That was at the end of 2019.”

Taking on the apprenticeship can be attributed to Melissa’s single-minded character and partly to the fact she bumped regularly into the prejudices of those who didn’t believe she knew enough about the business in which she was working.

“Once we had kids, I did all the paperwork of the business and it was more that people would have a dig at me that I didn’t understand the industry,” she said. “And I was thinking, ‘I’ll get into it then!’. I like knowing everything, so if I couldn’t explain something 100 per cent, it irritated me. As soon as someone says I can’t do something it makes we want to do it even more!”

Cue taking on the auto-electrical apprenticeship and the training that Cameron was adamant she complete with the MTA Institute.

Today, Melissa is well-skilled and able to work on complex and tricky tasks. She does, she said, like a challenge, and as Crank offers a wide variety of services, Melissa gets to enjoy plenty of them.

“We do performance builds, body and engine swaps, 4WDs, accessories like winches, full kit outs, air conditioning – anything to do with auto-electric work, we can do it,” she said.

“I enjoy doing the full builds – top-to-tail rewires – and troubleshooting the computer side of things. That is one of Cameron’s strengths and watching him troubleshoot and diagnose is quite something. It is astounding how he works it all out.”

As small business owners, Melissa and Cameron can work epically long hours, but the couple are, Melissa said, content with the progress they are making, and determined to grow it into something truly substantial.

“We work hard and long hours, but get the satisfaction of seeing the business develop,” she said. “If you want to keep going and get somewhere in life, you have to put the work in.

“Our plan is to eventually be a one-stop shop for cars to come to and go through a start-to-finish process. We’d love to take on a mechanic and a fabricator and offer everything required for a car build to be completely custom.

“That’s our absolute dream,” she said. “I am a realist and that might take time, but we are hoping the business will be generational and be a little empire for kids to take on. We have big dreams, and I don’t think we can stop!”

The MTA Institute Apprentice of the Month is proudly sponsored by Spirit Super.

Source: Motor Trader e-Magazine (October 2022)

12 October 2022