As a child, Chase Snyder was fascinated with construction equipment.
He would watch the “There Goes a Truck” series over and over on the VCR, especially the episodes that focused on heavy equipment.
That love of equipment has stuck with Snyder. Now, he’s 26 and each day he’s working on big diesel machines as senior fleet technician for the Manatee County, Florida landfill. The bigger, the dirtier, the more challenging the job – the better.
“I prefer the landfill stuff,” Snyder says, when asked about his favorite equipment to work on. “A lot of people think that’s weird when I say that, because it's typically the dirtiest, the nastiest. When you've got to go and clean them and crawl up in the belly pans, you never know what you're going to encounter.
“But it doesn't deter me. I just find it interesting what the machines are able to do.”
That attitude, his professionalism, his ability to save money by handling repairs in-house and his commitment to training have earned Snyder the top honor in his profession – the 2021 Technician of the Year Award by the Association of Equipment Management Professionals’ Education Foundation.
