How deep is your triage bench?

It stands to reason that most shops want their most skilled diagnostics technician assigned to triage. In a perfect world, that technician will work out of a dedicated triage bay and be available all the time. But in the real world, that isn’t always possible since every shop is different in terms of size, staffing, and repair volume.

In the case of Love’s Truck Care, for instance, a couple dozen of their shops employ what amounts to a shop foreman. That’s the person in charge of triage. But what about the other 375-plus shops that don’t have a foreman? Chuck Ralston, director of Truck Care Academy and mechanical services, said whichever technician is available will jump into a triage situation.

“This is why a good, structured triage procedure must be in place for a shop to follow,” Ralston said.

That’s also why technician training and development is crucial. Ralston said Love’s stresses the importance of effective triage in its core technician training classes, as well as its training academies and mobile labs. The more technicians who know at least the basics of good triage, the better.

Hough agrees, adding that the actual repair can often be handed off to a less experienced technician once the triage tech makes the diagnosis. This creates the dynamics for not only a more efficiently run shop, but also an excellent training opportunity.

“Our triage technicians are typically mentoring someone else in the shop,” Hough pointed out. “When they triage a vehicle and hand that repair off, they explain what they found and how they went about making their determination. That helps develop other technicians.”

That’s important because, according to Hough, not having a backup plan is the biggest potential gap in a shop’s triage operation.

“What happens when your primary triage technician is unavailable?” Hough asked. “Do you have someone who can step in with confidence and continue making sound repair decisions? That’s why developing talent is so important. A strong triage process doesn’t depend on one person; it depends on building the knowledge and capability of the entire team.”

Gathering enough information upfront

A strong triage process also requires effective information gathering. This is where the proper diagnostic software comes into play, whether that involves OEM platforms or an all-makes solution.

“A truck is going to tell you what’s wrong with it 60 or 70% of the time, or at least point you in the right direction,” Ralston said.

But what about the other 30 or 40%? This is where communication with the driver can make or break a triage effort.

Jim Moore, senior manager of technical maintenance support at Ryder, said it’s important to ensure that call center staff and service writers are trained on how to ask the right questions when fielding driver complaints. But even then, vital information can get miscommunicated or lost in transmission altogether, which underscores the importance of maintaining a communications lifeline between the technician and driver.

“The worst thing in the world is not having the driver right there,” Moore said. “The first step in triage is to verify the complaint. If you don’t verify, you could wind up going down a rabbit hole in search of the wrong thing. When you can get the technician talking to the driver, you can get to the root cause a lot quicker.”

“I had a truck a few weeks ago that had a reported brake issue, but that’s all I was told,” shared Kyle Walton, the 2025 Ryder Top Tech Champion who works out of the Bristol, Pennsylvania, location. “I asked if we had a phone number for the driver. Fortunately, we did. After talking with the driver, I found out it was more of a noise complaint which we were then able to pinpoint and resolve. If I hadn’t found that out, we would have lost a lot of time. You could spend all day looking for a random brake issue.”

Talking with drivers is especially important when triaging intermittent issues. Maybe the complaint is an ABS lamp, which could be attributed to a multitude of causes. By asking the driver questions about when it happens and under what conditions, pinpointing the actual cause becomes much more practical. For instance, maybe the driver says the ABS lamp sometimes comes on when it’s raining. That could suggest that moisture may be infiltrating wiring or a connection, or maybe a wheel sensor. That at least gives the triage technician a clue as to where to get started.

Moore said good triage technicians will also look at log files to further pinpoint the root cause.

“When you can’t seem to replicate an intermittent issue, you can talk to the driver to try and find out a time it happened,” Moore said. “Then you can look back at the diagnostic code history to see what was going on. Then you can start chasing the right problem.”

“Those code histories can put everything on a timeline to better explain the series of events leading up to a failure,” said Michael Lewis, customer support and technical assistance at Cojali USA, a developer of advanced diagnostics solutions. “You can group fault codes by system and time stamp to see which code logged first, and then use the information to trace back to an initial root cause.”

He added that this data can also help establish statistical probabilities, allowing techs to home in on the most likely source of the problem.

Forgetting to look at past repairs

One mistake triage technicians can make is neglecting to look at a vehicle’s repair history. Doing so can help identify poor-quality parts that continue failing. Recurring issues could also suggest that a different root cause needs to be diagnosed.

“Maybe you think it’s a NOx sensor, but it’s actually a wiring issue,” Moore shared as an example. “When you look at the repair history and see that the NOx sensor has been changed before, that’s a clue. Sure, you could always get a bad part. But it usually points to something else.”

“Sometimes you need to be careful about slipping into that parts-changing mentality,” Walton added. “This can be tough sometimes because some loads are time-sensitive and you can really feel the pressure.”

But as mentioned earlier, the goal of triage isn’t just to diagnose something quickly. The goal is to diagnose it correctly so the truck can be fixed right the first time.