High school mechanics students thrilled with equipment donation

Mechanics students at the Foothills Composite high school have some new machinery to play with.

Having recently bought upgrades, Okotoks Ford recently donated two of their used tire machines to the school.

According to the Comp's mechanics teacher Mr. Sagoo, even secondhand, they don't come cheap.

"So new, in excess of $40,000. They're well-used, but if I'd go and buy them, we probably would have paid close to half of that."

The school's program covers all three grades and lays out the foundations before giving students hands-on experience.

"We start off with the basics, first introducing them to how vehicles are put together and stuff like that, and then by grade 12 they're tearing engines out, stripping them out, rebuilding them, putting them back together, sticking them in, and making sure they run," says Sagoo.

With these new machines, they'll have a pretty good idea of what a real shop is like.

"It's funny how sometimes when you're in school, you don't visualize where you can go with this and the opportunities that are there. This is great because the students have a firsthand perspective, this is an amazing opportunity for them to see what a real shop is like and how the equipment is used in a real shop."

Okotoks Ford's General Manager Justin Swinton says a few Comp grads have gone on to work at Okotoks Ford, so this is their way of giving back.

"It's something we've utilized here and trained lots of great techs on, but we want to hand it down to train the next generation of technicians and support a great program in the community... We have a couple techs, I think it's three of them right now, that came from Foothills Composite, so it's exciting to give back to what's given to us as well."