ACTAUTOSTAFFING.COM
HOME JOB SEARCH JOB SEEKERS EMPLOYERS CONTACT       Espanol

Auto and Collision Techs, Death by a Thousand Cuts?

"You will never make flat-rate doing it that way." My dad in the 1970s had a BHPH dealership needing my recon jobs done. He said he was mentoring me. I called it a line between boundary-pushing and a dumpster fire. While I was trying to beat book time, the summer heat made me sweat my sockets off, and in the winter I got chill and anger bumps.

Have things changed since then? A hard NO. Let's explore today's great challenges of a Mechanic/Technician or Collision Tech.

How many of you had to do $20k to $50k of commerce with tool companies, just so you could apply for your present job? (Must have own tools) How many of you have NO base pay and your weekly take-home is influenced by: how many vehicles come in the door, how lame or strong the Service Consultant or Estimator is, having limited workspace, parts inventory, or the type of work given to you like warranty/CP/internal/DPR?

Unless you are a small minority of Techs on hourly or a guarantee, your pay-weeks are roller-coasters. Simply put, Techs' pay is unmoored. Some weeks are like a punch in the face.

Here is another issue, have too much fun on the weekend and get a D.U.I.? You will most likely be terminated.

Let's distill down further: Focused on the Technician shortage is a study by Carlisle and Co.'s Chad Walker. The survey draws a net promoter score (NPS) for the industry if Technicians are recommending the profession to friends and family. Based on respondents' answers, Walker called it "Dire". "Not only are Techs not promoting the career, most of them are actively telling people NOT to come into this," Walker said.

That should make all of us in the industry shake with fear like a Tech working on an EV with no gloves. And it doesn't take Woodward and Bernstein to figure out why George Arrants, VP of ASE Education Foundation, says, "Once the students graduate and get into the industry, they face another challenge. More than 40% leave in the first two years. We're eating our young," he says. "We throw these young people to the wolves and expect them to be successful."

Now some of you are thinking I am spilling a lot of ink here taking shots below the waterline and being ex parte against this field of work. Many of you will retort with: "Hey, 100K!" and punch back with good Techs make $100K+'. That is true. As a Fixed Ops Manager in a dealership, I had some Techs, mechanical and collision, make an extraordinary amount of money. However, there is some "truthiness" that needs to be applied to that statement. It's Kabuki theater.

Here is the strong medicine:

  • So depending on which survey you use, the common Fixed-Ops producer (Techs), on your floor makes $36K to $47k a year. Yes, then there are the laser focused Techs that are "needle, meet haystack" that make $75K to $100+. But the $36K to $47K averages do include the Mac Daddy producers in the average. So it is 80/20. 80 percent of your crew is $36K to $44K and 20% or less are the bigger earners.
  • The primary complaint among "our young" as Mr. Arrants calls them, is low or unfair pay. And that my fellow Fixed Ops Comrades, this is our "canary in the coal mine". And I bet mostly why Carlisle and Co's NPS survey is so abysmal.
  • This is a self-contained environment that is screaming "HELP!" So let's fix it! But It will take a community effort, and I am not in denial of its complexity. My suggestions are:
  • If you are not in a 20 Group, get into one
  • Huddle your 20 Group members to confront your DRP insurers to stop the low collision repair rates so it will allow you to pay a livable hourly to your slower and newer producers on your floor
  • Huddle your 20 Group members to confront the factories that warranty time must change to CP times and easier to submit supplements
  • Start paying a livable hourly to your mechanical lower-level Techs, have them flag their times and incentivize them with production bonuses over 40 hours
  • Start an hourly based retention/longevity bonus program
  • Talk with your Techs on a regular basis; you can't slay all of their dragons but they need to vent
  • That is just a start. There are more suggestions like giving each Tech enough room to work on multi vehicles, have porters fetch cars and parts, consider the effect on the paychecks of your producers each time a consultant pushes a higher gross program.
In summation, if we keep ignoring the problems, we will see more of this type of post in the Tech Blogs: "If you are smart enough to be a competent Tech on today's vehicles, you are smart enough to do something else. Do something, anything else"-25 year Audi Master Tech



*Son of a former Mercedes and Studebaker dealer as well as an independent shop owner and fixed ops dealership manager, Joe Henry has had many successful years in the automotive, truck, tire and collision industries before founding ACT Auto/Truck/Tire Staffing in 1998. He can be reached at 727-733-5600 or visit www.ACTautostaffing.com
Joe Henry - Owner
ACT Auto/Truck/Tire/Collision Staffing


Links to other great articles: Why You Should be ALWAYS be Recruting | The Proper Use of $ign-On Bonus | If you think the workforce is unstable..