Northern Tool + Equipment Launches Third Installment of its Build Series to Promote Careers in the Skilled Trades
Key Highlights
- The Build Series involves students working on real projects, such as converting motorcycles into race bikes, to promote skilled trades careers
- Racing legends like Chris Carr and Kyle Petty mentor students, sharing expertise and inspiring confidence in young tradespeople
- Northern Tool + Equipment partners with vendors and schools to donate tools and support hands-on learning experiences
Northern Tool + Equipment—a retailer, manufacturer and distributor with more than 120 locations across 20 states—is once more promoting the skilled trades through its Build Series, an educational program that gets young people hands-on with tools and equipment while providing them expert guidance.
This year the Build Series had 15 students from Laverne High School in Oklahoma convert a 2025 Harley-Davidson Nightster motorcycle into a flat-track racing bike. The project demanded modification to the tires, breaks, controls and suspension.
Racing legend Chris Carr, seven-time winner of the A.M.A. Grand National Championship, rode the converted bike in a celebratory lap on June 6th as part of the opening ceremonies of the American Flat Track Sons of Speed National Short Track race in Hohenwald, TN.
The Build Series
This is the third installment of the Build Series. The first one in 2024 involved a group of students from Minnesota who built rat rod go-karts. The second was held in Texas, where students built a one-third-scale Monster Jam truck.
“We created the Build Series platform with a very intentional goal of getting more young people excited about future careers in the skilled trades,” Frank Crowson, Chief Commercial Officer at Northern Tool + Equipment said. “Our customers are tradespeople, so it’s important for us to help build and grow the future community of professional tradespeople.”
Over the course of the program, Northern Tool + Equipment works to develop the concept, partners with vendors to donate tools, and lends support to the schools themselves. “We structure the event, bring partners together, coordinate the donations, and help see the project through from beginning to end,” Crowson added.
High-Profile Help
To drive interest and help promote the program, Northern Tool + Equipment enlisted some big names from the racing world.
“I was approached by Northern Tool to come on as a mentor,” Chris Carr said. “I don't really like calling myself a legend—I'm just a guy who grew up racing motorcycles. I brought my experience from more than 50 years in motorcycle racing to help the students on the details of flat track motorcycles.”
Some of those details involved ergonomics, including where to place hand controls, foot controls, and the seat. Since the Harley-Davidson Nightster has a large engine, there were other challenges adapting the bike for riders of different sizes.
Petty emphasized that the skills the students were learning were skills that would always be in demand. “In racing, people talk all the time about technology and artificial intelligence,” Petty said, “but race cars are still built by hand. You still use tools. You still get underneath them and work on them. That's what this class has taught these students and what Northern Tool has given them the opportunity to learn—a trade they can work with their hands.”
Making an Impact
One of the students this round of the Build Series is sophomore Tally Barber. Barber learned to weld over one summer specifically so she could enter the State Fair welding competition. Working on the Build Series has only deepened her interest in the trades. “I like having creative freedom and being able to learn how to weld in a way that makes sense to me,” Barber said.
Thanks to donations from Northern Tool + Equipment, Barber has since learned how to use an English wheel and a tube bender, while becoming more familiar with welding and all the “fun stuff” that comes with it. “It's really broadened my perspective,” Barber said. “This experience has definitely opened my mind to the trades.”
The third Build Series project will be the subject of a television series airing on Racer Network this fall, bringing the story to millions of people around the nation.
To learn more about the Build Series, visit www.northerntool.com/tools-for-the-trades.
Also from CONTRACTOR:
Northern Tool Brings High School Trades Training to Prime-Time Television
Northern Tool + Equipment and Richard Petty Partner to Donate Tools to School
About the Author
Steve Spaulding
Editor-in-Chief - CONTRACTOR
Steve Spaulding is Editor-in-Chief for CONTRACTOR Magazine. He has been with the magazine since 1996, and has contributed to Radiant Living, NATE Magazine, and other Endeavor Media properties. You can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/stevespaulding.