Yes, the Future Is As Grim as It Seems and We Should Fix That

Step back for a second and address the state of the industry in which you find yourself working. The cars have never been harder to diagnose and repair. The hours are long. The pay is not bad—not great, but not bad—, but we all know how hard you must work to earn it. Despite the fact we have loads of education across lots of disciplines, “mechanic” isn’t a job held in great esteem in this country. And if you’re old enough to remember life before cell phones, your body is half-shot by now.

Perhaps predictably, mechanics are exiting the industry and positions aren’t being backfilled. A friend and fellow shop owner and I were discussing this the other day, and he sent me this video:

I won’t belabor the point; the narration in the video highlights the confluence of factors that are changing the landscape in ways that render this business nearly unrecognizable some days.

I don’t disagree with most of what’s been said in this video and doubt you do, either, but what strikes me as maybe the most concerning outcome is the rapidly rising cost of everything—including auto repair and maintenance—at the exact same time the long hours, hard work, and not-always-worth-it pay are combining to cause nothing short of an exodus from this industry.

Yet if anything, customers aren’t aware of how bad things are getting. They want great service at a low price on tight timelines, which is nothing new. But those demands all seem to be heightened specifically because the industry has techs retiring like crazy, all while average miles traveled continues to creep up. An honest service writer who explains that all of those objectives can’t be met is highly likely to be met with anger and impatience, which just serve to make the workday that much more stressful.

This video is probably a simple conversation starter for those of us in the industry more than anything else. I’d love to read some of your thoughts, and I’d encourage you to take a moment to peruse the comments in the video. There are others out there hoeing this exceptionally tough row with us, and I found the camaraderie and solidarity a welcome mood booster.

If your shop has a succession plan in place, good for you. If not, this might be too spicy to use as a catalyst to broach the topic, but it might be worth raising the issue in the future to see if a survival plan is something you and your colleagues can cook up.

And, as always, it might be worth lengthening your fuse and helping that C-tech build his diagnostic and mechanical muscles. You won’t be around the shop forever, and once you’re gone, all he has left is whatever you left him between his ears.