Dancing With Wood
Track Teams
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If you have ever watched a NASCAR race, you've seen the precision of the finely tuned pit crews armed with hydraulic jacks, pneumatic wrenches and racing tires that swarm over the car before it comes to a complete stop.
"It's teamwork at its very best," says Tom DeLoach, ChE 69, co-founder of Pit Instruction and Training LLC, a training facility in Mooresville, N.C., for would-be tire changers and jack men.
DeLoach, retired CFO of Mobil Corp. and a consultant for Roger Penske's racing team, and Jeff Hammond, a former NASCAR pit crew chief now a Fox Sports racing analyst, teamed up in 2002 to create Pit Crew U, a motor sports boot camp devoted to training and producing pit crewmen for NASCAR racing. And there's no shortage of recruits.
"They're chasing a dream," Deloach says. "They all want to get into NASCAR racing, so for about $2,400, we offer an eight-week session at our facilities and teach them everything it takes to work in a Nextel Cup pit crew."
"Pit Crew U is just one part of PIT," DeLoach says. "We also offer the Performance Training Institute that addresses the athletic development of pit crews and the 5 Off, 5 On Race Team, which provides advanced coaching and placement."
After the first year, DeLoach and Hammond realized the demand for pit crews was somewhat limited. They were pondering their options when United Airlines called.
"United said, 'We're coming out of bankruptcy, we have no cash flow and we can't buy new airplanes,'" DeLoach says. "They said they needed to find a way to get more seat miles — that's the time the plane is in the air. They figured if they could shave four or five minutes off their ground time, they could add more than 100 flights daily without having to buy new planes.
"That sounded very familiar to me. The skill set needed for a pit stop — organization, flexibility and speed — is the same skill set needed to service an airplane. We just developed scenarios on pit road that mimic the same situations found in airports."
To date, more than 1,200 United employees have participated in three-day workshops. Their on-time performance is already establishing new company records, DeLoach says.
Word of United's success spread quickly and other companies, including Best Buy, Cisco Systems, Comcast and Ford, signed on.
"They leave the work world behind for a couple of days and instead of climbing a rope course or rafting down the Colorado, they get to work in a program that uses the same techniques that are applied on pit road," DeLoach says. "It's a unique experience and they take those team-building skills back to their corporation. If you are looking for ultimate teamwork and efficiency, this is what you want."
Dancing With Wood
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Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and longtime deal maker in the local business scene, needed a new challenge.
It wasn't enough that Williams, EE 68, had been a partner with architect and developer John Portman for 21 years or head of Central Atlanta Progress during the downtown revitalization prior to the 1996 Summer Olympics. He also had earned an MBA from Harvard, worked for Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen and helped raise two daughters, Stephanie and Lindsay.
Williams needed something new to put his mind to, a niche to carve out for himself in his mid-50s. And so the Obion, Tenn., native returned to an earlier passion, but with a twist — and a few turns.
"I'd learned carpentry from my father and about six years ago I became intensely interested in bowl turning," says Williams, who took classes at Highland Hardware in Atlanta. The hobby has since grown on him so much that he converted his garage into a studio adorned with a sign that reads Sam's Studio: Dances With Wood.
Craftsmen who practice wood turning may use as many as 20 different kinds of chisels and various lathes to fashion not only bowls but platters, plates and even thimble-size Christmas ornaments.
Williams says his fascination with bowl turning came from his instinctive interest in the mechanics of the process. Then his interest broadened into concern over style.
"It starts out being sort of an engineering, craftsman sort of thing," Williams says. "You spend three or four years learning that and then you start pursuing a style and an art and form.
When Williams became concerned that his bowls were boring, he found a mentor, famed wood turner Nick Cook of Marietta, Ga., to help him improve his technique.
Williams particularly likes the wood of a box elder, he says, but he also enjoys working with maple, oak and cherry. He has created hundreds of bowls and other pieces of wood art, including one piece that fetched $1,300 at auction for the Olmstead Park Association.
Finding the perfect piece of wood is key. "If you drive around, you won't believe what you see in people's yards after a storm," he says.
©2006 Georgia Tech Alumni Association
