REAL PEOPLE. STIHL PEOPLE.

A visit to a STIHL dealership is a visit to the experts. As a service to our customers and employees, STIHL offers an extensive training program for Dealer service technicians. Eddie Anderson serves as the technical training supervisor for this program at our Virginia Beach, VA facility.

"My job is to prepare and deliver training curriculum to train the service technicians who work at the Dealers we have across the United States."

Eddie started out as a STIHL Dealer in the 1980's in Oklahoma. He had been working with STIHL products for years when he finally got an opportunity to work at the US headquarters.

"It was just really kind of a dream come true and it's really turned out to be that ever since. I've been here over 10 years now and I really enjoy working here, working with the people, working with a good, high-quality, name-brand product."

The program Eddie works with offers three different levels of qualification: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. The Gold Level training builds on STIHL's Silver and Bronze courses, and is the highest certification a dealer service technician can receive. Eddie remembers the day the one-thousandth student graduated from the STIHL Gold Master Wrench program.

"When we had the thousandth technician come through the gold, that was just a neat moment, because that told me there was a need as well as the desire for the technicians to go through the training."

It's been a few years since that landmark graduation, and the program continues to grow. Over 2,000 technicians have now graduated with Gold Level training. Eddie takes pride in the fact that so many dealers have benefitted from a program he helped put together.

*Disclaimer: A majority of STIHL gasoline-powered units sold in the United States are built in the United States from domestic and foreign parts and components.