How have time, technology, and pricing impacted your career?
Professional Tool & Equipment News recently surveyed a sample of its readers to get an update on the reality of shop owners and technicians servicing and repairing vehicles today. Most respondents in this survey (just over half) were shop owners. More than 50 percent worked at general automotive repair shops and still, others labored at specialty repair shops. The vast majority have worked in this industry for 16 years or more.
This survey focused on salary and hours worked, and most of these technicians (85 percent) were independent shop owners.
Of this group, the highest percentage of respondents (33 percent) earned $25,000 to $50,000 last year, and the next highest group (25 percent) earned $50,000 to $75,000 annually.
When these professionals were asked to rate “How satisfied are you with your overall compensation?” on a scale of 1 to 10, the average figure given was a 7.
So, a “7” is not terrible ... but it’s not the best score, either. Of course, a person’s satisfaction with their compensation on the job depends on a lot of things. That “comfort zone” is not always an easy thing to come by while riding the road to job security and a profitable shop.
The reality is, for many technicians and technicians-turned-shop owners, those years of training, learning, doing, and managing are often fraught with up-front costs and investments, staffing hurdles, and market uncertainties.
“I work very hard and cars are getting more complicated to fix,” one technician says.
“Underpriced services to customers have left this shop struggling … and opportunities for efficiency and improvement have been ignored,” says another.
Every profession has its growing pains. For independent shop owners, it can be difficult to reconcile customer-friendly service rates with the reality (time, tools, expertise) of a modern repair. But lots of shops are forging ahead, taking stock of their market, maybe adding services like TPMS and ADAS, and investing in new training and tooling. For some ideas on ways freshen up your shop’s offerings for the new year, see Gonzo’s column on p. 46.
Even with so many uncertainties at play, more than one shop owner/technician survey-taker responded to the effect of: “I love what I do!”
It’s an interesting and even exciting time for the automotive aftermarket. New technology is helping technicians diagnose vehicles more thoroughly and quickly than ever. There are even ways to train – and learn – that ten years ago would have been unheard of in a professional shop (hello remote diagnostics, YouTube videos, professional groups on social media).
There’s a lot to be gained from rolling with the changes, including (hopefully) a healthy paycheck. When service pricing and technician skill begin to move forward in tandem and align, consumers, shop owners, and technicians all have much to gain.
