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Fleming places importance on the mentoring of young operators, and says contractors need to take the lead in drawing young people to the business. "I think the industry will have to make working in asphalt more attractive to entice younger workers into the business," says Fleming. "There needs to be a career path for those who want it and are sufficiently intelligent to take it. Young people don't want to think they will be shoveling asphalt for the rest of their lives. If they can see there are career paths and that maybe one day they can become a foreman, supervisor, superintendent, or even a company owner, it may attract them to the industry."

For young people already interested in working in asphalt, Fleming says contractors should gauge what sector of the trade their younger workers are interested in pursuing. "Give them every chance to experience all aspects of paving and compaction and let them take the lead in deciding what they would like to concentrate on," says Fleming. "A great way to begin is to hold a training day and lay asphalt or just sand somewhere on the company premises. Let your younger workers experience as much of the real job as they can, under supervision of course."

In any industry, younger workers will feel nothing but frustration if they haven't been adequately trained for the job they are expected to perform. Fleming says contractors should not hesitate to send their younger workers to the Ingersoll Rand Road Institute. "The Road Institute can provide an excellent base for the right person, male or female, to start his or her career with solid instruction, quality hands-on experiences, and an exchange of information from more experienced students," he says.

When younger paver or compactor operators attends a course at the Ingersoll Rand Road Institute, the training staff gauges the students' level of knowledge and experience with the equipment. "With new operators, we use ice breakers at the beginning of the course to see what their experience is," says Fleming. "If there are experienced operators attending the course, our staff will act as facilitators during discussions and have the seasoned operators share their experiences so that the younger operators can learn from their peers as well as from the instructors.

These discussion times are also beneficial to the seasoned operators, because our staff can polish up what the older operators already know. Sometimes those older operators do things but don't know exactly why they do them. This is an opportunity to kill off some misunderstandings and bad habits that the older students may have picked up along the way."