Thanks to our Partner – Tri Tool Technologies
A message from Chris Belle, CEO, Tri Tool Technologies:
Tri Tool was honored to begin partnering with Workshops for Warriors in 2021. When we learned about the opportunity to support service members that were about to enter the workforce, we jumped at the chance to collaborate. In my personal life as well as professional life, I’ve seen the challenges faced by service members who must transition into the private sector. It can be intimidating to leave the military family. Tri Tool admires and values the skillsets learned in the course of service and takes pride in helping people learn new skills, use our equipment, or even become a member of our team! The portable machining and welding industry is a perfect place to earn a high income without the need for a college degree. Many people who use the equipment we build professionally can earn well into six figures while having the opportunity to travel the world and work on really unique projects.
We’ve had great success to date with our Workshops for Warriors graduates and are always looking for more to join our team. WFW graduates have a natural curiosity, have the ambition to take on more challenges, and are able to continue to learn from our experienced team of machinists. One of our WFW hires was instrumental in the purchase and configuration of a Cobot (a robot partnered with a CNC machine) to help us achieve additional throughput. This included programming, testing, and verifying that the Cobot would perform as planned. She has since gone back to school for an engineering degree, and we were proud to be part of her career journey. Our second hire was critical in helping us fill a role to support a vertical mill that had been understaffed. His involvement enabled us to bring work back in-house and save us transportation time. None of this would have been possible without the training he received at Workshops! The appeal to them to move up to the Sacramento area was largely because they wanted to stay in California and wanted to live in a more affordable area.
The last topic to mention about our partnership largely goes unspoken – but we have a lot of fun with the WFW team. The owner of Tri Tool, Joe Wernette, takes great pride in being able to teach the entire weld process. From prepping the pipe, to completing the perfect weld, Joe is able to introduce a critical skillset to a fortunate few. He has a lifetime of knowledge that he gets to impart on people. As a business owner, he knows the value this knowledge can bring to their personal lives. We are fortunate to have Joe as an owner giving back to the community in such a meaningful way and having more fun than he should doing so!