Shortage Of Auto Mechanics In The US | The Harsh Truth They Don't Want You To Know About
Shortage Of Auto Mechanics In The US | The Harsh Truth They Don't Want You To Know About
Car dealers and repair shops have been struggling with a shortage of service technicians for years, however they fail to tackle this ongoing problem and offer the solution head on. We review it here.
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The shops I worked at had occasional meetings with techs. They’d ask "What can we do to make you guys happy?" We’d tell them:
Stop shorting our pay, cancel the condescending attitude, stop telling us how ‘lucky’ we are to have a job, cut the ‘playful name-calling’ you f*ckers do to us, keep your noses out of our personal lives, quit giving the brown-nosers all the gravy and get us some decent equipment for the shop.
They would wrinkle their nose at us and nothing would be done about what we told them. Instead, they’d design some elaborate system of bonuses and monthly giveaways that were a joke. Some genius in the office would act so proud of the program they’d put together and expect us to be super happy about it.
The problem is simple to address, but no one wants to do any of it. They think techs are too stupid to know what’s going on, and it’s beyond insulting.
The current average gross profit margin on any skilled trade or professional service is 38.67% ranging from 29-45% and almost all are in the 30-40% range.There is a 36% average across all industries and healthcare and finance are at 45%""Maybe surprising was the higher gross margins in financials and healthcare, with the average sitting around 45% across the entire market."The National Automobile Dealers Association is a colluding criminal cartel and has guidelines pushing the margins on service labor over 72% to float their fucking sales boats.The short answer is that they are heathen fucking crooks!The margins on labor should be about the same as on parts.LOOK AT THIS FUCKING CRIMINAL SHIT!
"If service and parts could generate sufficient gross
to cover all dealership expenses, every vehicle sale
would produce pure profit. NADA 20 Group guidelines, which include used-vehicle gross in the formula
below, recommend 100% absorption.If your absorption is low, examine your grossing patterns. Service should be holding 72% of gross; parts
should be holding 38%, and body shop should be
holding 65% on labor, 30% on parts"
Here’s the fucking problem this is why nobody wants to get back into this industry. It’s also the reason I’m trying to get out of it. Vehicles are getting more complex by the day and harder to work on and diagnos but it seems as though technicians are starting to make less money because labor rates are going down. The whole system is fucked up. That’s why no one wants to do it anymore. I advise any young person reading this to find another career if you were thinking of getting into automotive.
You cannot cry shortages of employees as an industry,organization or association of two or more businesses or you are making a direct agreement to reduce or eliminate competition for them which is criminal wage fixing.A shortage of workers can ONLY be an individual business issue and it is obviously because you are not paying enough."The Department of Justice Antitrust Division revealed on Jan. 28 the criminal prosecution of a conspiracy that allegedly suppressed wages and limited job mobility for essential health care workers. A federal grand jury in Portland, Maine, returned a criminal indictment charging four managers of home health care agencies with participating in a conspiracy at the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic to eliminate competition for Personal Support Specialist (PSS) workers."
My workplace (dealership) charges 179.98/hour. We have unusual pay: $25 regular hourly.
And we have a terrible shortage of techs.
I agree the hourly rate is high but there is still weeks worth of work piled up.
Hard to find a Fool that will line your pockets in Today’s World. And you won’t.
We are skilled people, we can adapt in any other types of industries and adapt very quickly.
Dog walking pays more than repairing vehicles
if ur a large chain dealership pay 80k to ur line techs. and 40k to ur lube techs. don’t like it? then have ur 200k a year + bonus service manager deal with the cars.
These news and media that do these videos are such crap. If you notice they never talk to the Techs. Always managers and owners. They know if they talk to Techs the real stories of why not to be a Tech will come out and dealerships will hate that.
I was dating a female service manager that attended these 20 group meetings where they discussed and agreed to these wage fixing and no-poach rules.HARDCORE CARTEL CONDUCT!
"Workers are entitled to the benefits of a competitive market for their services. They are harmed if companies that would ordinarily compete against each other to recruit and retain employees agree to fix wages or other terms of employment or enter into so-called "no-poaching" agreements by agreeing not to recruit each other’s employees.
Going forward, the Justice Department intends to criminally investigate naked no-poaching or wage-fixing agreements that are unrelated or unnecessary to a larger legitimate collaboration between the employers. These types of agreements eliminate competition in the same irredeemable way as agreements to fix the prices of goods or allocate customers, which have traditionally been criminally investigated and prosecuted as hardcore cartel conduct."
There’s so many problems in this industry, but it all boils down to pay and benefits. Pay your people well and appreciate them and you won’t have any problems keeping techs. When the shop charges $150 an hour and the tech doesn’t even see a 1/4 of that were does all the profit go?
I personally do not believe flat rate is the issue, I’ve noticed most techs wanting hourly are usually low producers. Think about it your salary potential would be limited or even lower if you became hourly.
I’d be happy if shops offered between 50-65/flat rate hour with benefits, sufficient work is there, and providing internal time for your technicians or give them a guarantee of 80 hours if they fall below it. And stop making the technicians waste their time going through loops and explanations as to why they think they should be provided internal time for a specific car repair or diag.
Overall, just stop giving techs a hard time, the dealers profit margin is already high as is, what is a couple dollars to the tech going to harm.
Many shops and dealerships don’t value skilled technicians. No matter how much training or experience you have you’re just viewed as a replaceable grease monkey. They routinely jack up the labor rates but never increase your pay proportionately. FLAT RATE is a scam that tries to get you to work for free, take the loss for inferior products, and avoid paying you overtime. It was once a lucrative trade but wages have stagnated to the point where you can often make the same working in a warehouse throwing boxes or delivering food.
U may have to higher up your volume when u talk. The videos r good but when u talk its really low n i got my volume all the way up.
Maybe if manufactures don’t kill us on warranty time, there wouldn’t be a shortage. If service managers weren’t greedy, there wouldn’t be a shortage. Us technicians are the bread winners for dealerships. We’re are the ones who make the money for them. That’s why they stay afloat.
Something to think about too is, who is buying the tools and equipment used on a daily basis. I’ve been a technician 23 years and 90% of the tools and equipment I use I purchased myself. So really who should benefit the most? The dealership I work at is getting a hell of a deal for what I have to offer. The repairs are getting more ridiculous and adding the parts shortage with all the bureaucratic paperwork involved to make sure warranty claims aren’t kicked by the manufacturer. It’s tough to make a living on flat rate. Also we get about 90-95% warranty work where I’m at. Someone is making money. Just not the right ones