Danella Rental Systems offers an unrivaled selection of trucks, vehicles, and equipment to railroads, transit authorities, utilities, and construction companies throughout North America. A team of capable technicians keeps the fleet up and running – and few are more time-proven than Chip Tornetta.
Okay, Chip, let’s get right to it: When you started with Danella, Beetlejuice was playing in theaters and the Pontiac Grand Prix was the Motor Trend Car of the Year. In other words, you’ve been with the company a long time! How did you land at Danella?
CT: In 1988 I was working as a mechanic at a shop that did a lot of fabrication and welding. I had been there for five or six years, mostly repairing frames on dump trucks. I had a young family and heard that Danella was hiring so I figured, “Let me go over and see what they’ve got.”
Right away, I liked the garage – it was newer, only two or three years old. I also liked the idea of working for a growing and local company. The boss at the time was looking for someone who knew how to weld. He offered me the job and, as they say, the rest is history! I was 32 years old when I started and now I’m about to turn 70. I grew up with this company and have seen Danella grow up, too. That original garage has been replaced; now our team works in a shop located behind the main headquarters building that went up in 2001. When I started in 1988, Danella Rentals Systems was only two years old. It’s been exciting to see the rentals division become a bigger part of Danella business.
In simplest terms, how do you spend your days at Danella Companies?
Every day, I repair, maintain, and upfit Danella rental equipment, making sure it meets the company’s standards for quality as well as customer expectations, and making sure it will pass necessary inspections. Maintenance includes both repair orders and routine maintenance. As assistant shop supervisor, I also handle related scheduling.
As parts manager I keep the Plymouth Meeting parts room stocked with supplies that might be needed at any time by teams here at the company’s southeastern Pennsylvania headquarters or at any of Danella’s U.S. or Canada locations. If another Danella employee calls from, say, North Carolina looking for anything from a vehicle part to a “Danella” decal, I do what’s needed to get it to them.
Danella’s fleet of rental vehicles and equipment is really vast and varied. There are pickup and utility trucks, railroad gear, welding trucks, bucket trucks, even passenger buses. That’s not even a complete list. And dozens of manufacturers are represented, so no two days are the same.
You mentioned upfitting. What is that exactly?
Uplifting is an industry term for customizing or fabricating specialized aspects of a rental vehicle or related equipment, outfitting it the way a customer wants and needs it to be.
Say there’s a rental vehicle with a bare frame and the vendor wants a big flatbed on the back, or something that can pull a trailer. If there’s no out-of-house option that meets our standards, I can fabricate a hitch. If a vendor wants something on the truck bed to hold gas bottles, I can build a rack, and maybe a lift gate on the back so they can load the bed. Sometimes we mount cranes onto vehicles and have to reinforce a truck bed to hold it. We also repair and extend truck frame rails to accommodate the equipment we’re adding. From there, we wire everything.
Danella has very high standards for our vehicles – it’s why companies want to rent from us, because they know they’re getting quality. We take our time and do things right. When we choose to upfit in-house it’s usually to make sure that that quality is there, or because what the customer’s looking for just isn’t available anywhere else. It happens most often on railroad vehicles and equipment.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
I love fabricating and welding and am glad that I get to do a lot of it. Like I said, it’s what I did before coming to Danella. Repairs are great, but when I get to create something, it’s an extra great feeling. In general, my favorite parts of my job are the parts that let me stand and move around. I like that I’m always busy and get to do what I enjoy.
I also really appreciate our team. We’re all good mechanics but everyone in here is especially good at one or two things. Combined, we have the whole fleet covered. If I’m working on something that’s a little outside of my element I can go to another team member whose specialty it is. Currently there are four of us in the garage who’ve been here more than twenty years. And the younger technicians – they bring so much know-how to the table, such as diagnostic know-how that’s really attuned to today’s vehicles.
I also appreciate that Danella is a business where everyone’s respectful, everyone says hello. It filters down from the top and starts with Mr. Danella.
What advice would you give a young person considering a role like yours?
Being a mechanic at Danella is a lot different than getting a mechanic job at, say, a car dealership. We work on a really diverse range of vehicles, including specialty vehicles, across a wide range of manufacturers. We have five or six different brands of pickup trucks alone. You have to be versatile and you have to be willing and able to work on everything, which means staying current – with vehicle technology and industry changes but also the differences from one manufacturer to the next. A few times a year a manufacturer will come to our shop, spend a week or so with us, and bring us up to speed on updates to their products. But you also have to take initiative to do things on your own, like go to a manufacturer’s website and use their guidelines to troubleshoot an issue.
Is there anything you’d like to share about your life outside of Danella, or how you spend your free time?
My wife Debbie and I just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. She is my best friend. She just retired and we’re pretty active for older folks! We like going to car shows, and when the weather is nice we go to our house down at the Jersey shore – we make it down there as many weekends as we can. We have three grown sons and four grandsons who we’re proud of. For years I coached our township’s football and she coached cheerleading at the high school but now we’re on the bleachers watching our grandkids compete instead!