With much of the Midwestern United States experiencing winter weather conditions from October or November through February or March, the Mercury Customer Service department takes advantage of the “off season” to attend product knowledge training at the Mercury Service School in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.

Through a partnership with a technical college in Beaver Dam (which is about 30 miles south of Mercury Marine headquarters in Fond du Lac, WI), the Mercury Service School offers training courses for Mercury technicians and dealers nationwide. There are a handful of Mercury Service Schools in the U.S., but the Beaver Dam location primarily hosts students from throughout the upper Midwest.

I recently enrolled in and completed a FourStroke course. The course curriculum consisted of Mercury’s carbureted models, EFI models, and the new naturally-aspirated FourStroke modeled after the Verado. Twelve people attended the class, including me and a colleague from our Customer Service department. The rest of the attendees were dealer technicians from Nebraska, Michigan, Illinois and northern Wisconsin.

At the start of the course, we were given Tech Guides prepared by Mercury University that combined information from the engine service manuals with worksheets specific to each engine model. While the classroom setting was interesting, I much preferred to learn with “hands–on” activities. These courses do not disappoint when it comes to that. Not only did we take apart a carburetor and a cylinder head, we also ran the engines in test tanks with computers attached to track engine conditions.

I think Mercury’s training courses are unique in that agents in our department get to participate in the same classes as our dealers and technicians. Sometimes training geared specifically toward office personnel can be a little too light on the technical aspect and too heavy on the classroom stuff. Getting customer service agents in a marine shop alongside dealers who are familiar with engines and get to work on them daily really gives us an opportunity to learn how our engines work. We get certified Mercury training in subjects like Two-Stroke, OptiMax, FourStroke, Outboard Systems, Gearcase, and Verado. Some of our agents even go so far as to take a test to become certified technicians!

All of this training, of course, helps us better serve you and answer your questions about our engines and how they operate. We take pride in having confidence when answering the wide array of questions we face on a daily basis. What better way to help engine owners than by using and working on the engines ourselves?