June 7, 2019—Icahn Automotive Group LLC, an Icahn Enterprises L.P. company, which owns and operates leading auto repair and maintenance providers Pep Boys, AAMCO and Precision Tune Auto Care, is celebrating the opening of five remodeled classrooms at Lincoln Technical Institute’s (Lincoln Tech) Mahwah and Union, New Jersey, campuses with designs that incorporate images of the well-known service brands and feature inspiring messages and wall graphics such as “Find the tools you need,” “Find your own path” and “Find out how far you can go.”
These classrooms are a critical part of the larger, national “Race to 2026” program that was designed to invest in and support promising future automotive technicians. The initiative encourages more men and women to pursue viable careers in the skilled trades by partnering with technical training schools and offering scholarships, tuition reimbursement, apprenticeship and internship programs, job placement and continuing education opportunities. To celebrate the partnerships, Lincoln Tech automotive technology students Jeremy Pedersen (Union campus), Sebestian Tassey (Union), Frank Van Althuis (Mahwah campus) and Joseph Chin (Mahwah) were each presented with a $2,500 scholarship from Icahn Automotive.
“We’re bringing the ‘Race to 2026’ program to Metro New York where the demand is strong for automotive service and good technicians,” said Icahn Automotive President of Service Brian Kaner. “Our partnership with Lincoln Tech goes back many years, and we’ve put hundreds of skilled graduates to work in our shops. We look forward to continuing to partner with them to encourage students to become auto techs and provide them with a promising career path.”
Icahn Automotive has nearly 100 Pep Boys and AAMCO locations in Metro New York and immediate openings for automotive service technicians of all levels. The need is reflective of the skills gap that exists in the automotive industry nationally. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the automotive repair industry will need nearly 46,000 more technicians by 2026 to meet anticipated demand. Additionally, in any given year, there are as many as 75,000 job openings, due in large part to the retirement of the last generation of technicians who benefitted from broadly available vocational education programs. While this demand is on par with other fields, technical training and related career assistance for those interested in the skilled trades has not kept pace, nor were students encouraged to enter the trades.
