In this interview we chat with Dillon Eades, a 19-year old second year apprentice training at WesTrac South Guildford.
I was a trade assistant tree lopper. I've always gravitated to jobs that involve knuckling down and working with my hands.
Plant machinery has always been an interest of mine. I was exposed to machinery working in the tree lopping industry and knew I wanted to work closely with machines in the future - the bigger, the better - and the best place to do that is WesTrac.
I like the program's variety in terms of what you learn each day and where you work - every day is different! Every A job at WesTrac that involves working on machines means you may get sent across the state, or country, to visit customer sites; like a mine site in the Pilbara or a construction site in Sydney.
Part of the program involves learning about every machine manufactured by Caterpillar. I recently learned that the giant Cat 793F Mining Truck has a max payload capacity of roughly 250 tonnes - that's a mammoth 250,000 kilograms!
In a word - Humble. WesTrac is a large company and, if you've never worked in that kind of environment before, it's easy to assume you'll end up being a small cog in a huge machine. In reality, it's the complete opposite. The culture here is like a big family and I've felt both welcome and comfortable since day dot.
Be sure to study hard and put in the extra work, even when you don't have to. It never hurts to be over-prepared for a situation. Also don't be afraid to speak up and ask questions.
