Fields Land Rover had a Casino Event Celebration for the the Service Department for successfully breaking the service record!!! The top 3 employees each received a $200 gift card.
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Our Auto Tech students earned a total of 58 entry level ASE certs this school year!
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Basic Class Lesson of the Day: Tire Inspection
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We are finishing up are Spring semester and have successfully completed out first full year for out EV/Hybrid Courses.
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Whether you're a mom or just bring those mom vibes to work, which “mom move” have you caught yourself doing in the shop?
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Jr certified technician working on a intake manifold on a Jetta.
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Happy Birthday to our Gold Meister Tech Dan!
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💐 Happy Mother’s Day from all of us at Tom Wood Subaru! 💐
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Detail Spotlight: Zach + This Toyota Supra = Perfection!
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We're Hiring – All Departments, All Levels!
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Big shoutout to our Nissan Service and Parts team for clinching the win in Nissan’s Steak & Beans competition against other dealers!
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Community Support in Action – Thank You, SafeHaven!
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Have you ever considered leaving the industry? Explain why or why not in the comments below.
Technician
I could write a book. 1. Being required to work for free. I didn't join your business to be a charity for your customers. If you want to offer free filters, free wipers, free inspections, that's your business, but don't expect me to do all this work for free. "We can't charge the customer 6 hours for that" (after chasing down an entire LS network trying to find an intermittent short to ground). That's your business, but I spent 6 hours gutting a car to chase wires, I expect to be paid for the work. 2. Expected to work 45-60 hours a week without being paid overtime. 3. No benefits unless I pay for the entirety out of my pocket. 4. Hard to budget and harder still to buy a house because my income is inconsistent. 5. Incompetent leadership. 13 shops, 3 decent leaders. So, yes, as of July 12 I no longer work for a dealership and the longer I'm out the more sure I am that I never want to go back to that life.
Technician
Very true. I've been doing this for 38 years. Vehicles are even more complex than they've been yet the aftermarket training has went almost extinct. Very rare classes become available and when they do we get paid nothing to take them, so you work a 10.hoir shift and then are expected to sit in a classroom another 3 hours, getting home at midnight, only to have to get up again at 5am for work. And what did that training pay? A bag of chips, a pop and a slice of pizza.
Technician
35 years in and it’s been a nightmare! Gave it my all, ASE master 6 time recertified and many other certifications that no one ever cared about. I can count on 2 hands the times someone said thanks for fixing their car. I have just scratched out a living while management made a killing. Met some good people but mostly angry vile abusive selfish sojourners in a shop of fools. I’m 5 years from retirement if that will even be there. I don’t have a pot to piss in at this point. My only consolation is knowing I fought the good fight and helped people keep their cars running. Maybe someday that will be appreciated. (edited)
All my buddies are in other trades. They make more with less stress and all the other BS we have to deal with from multiple angles. They get paid well to take their time and do a good job. They get overtime, three day weekends, and their bodies are not entirely beat to hell either. Most of all they only need to know one trade for the most part. Auto techs need to know all the trades- hvac, electrical, mechanical, computers, networking, high voltage...etc. All this with a time clock gun pointed at their head. Auto techs could go into any trade and succeed with limited learning curves. Not the other way around. Yet we make less than most any trade. It's asinine.
Technician
Personally, it's paid the bills for decades but after 35 plus years of doing it, I'm burnt out on the stresses that come with it and the lack of pay check security when you get a family, bills etc as you get older. Vehicles are a PITA to be honest working on in today's world and all it takes is one thing to go wrong and it runs your whole week. Got burned last week, had been a while but screwed myself out of a paycheck because nothing went right. No other career can you clock in 50 hours and yet only get paid for 10 of those hours. A person starting a family wants to know what cash he'll.have to support his family. It changing week to week isn't something most people want. I would tell someone going into this career to think it over and go into engineering. Same skill level, maybe less from the knowledge this career requires. Easy on the body, no need to freeze or sweat from working in a shop, better benefits, time off work, hours worked and top pay into the 6 digits. (edited)
Technician
Yes, it is a daily internal and external debate with co-workers. It boils down to being under appreciated (constantly beraded about working longer hours and more days and doing more free inspections or videos), under paid (greedy dealership groups taking 80% or more of labor money produced), under mined (asked for professional technical information, then told that an untrained non-technical manager knows better how to fix a technical/ or mechanical problem) So yeah, are we suprised that most techs don’t even last 5 years and those of us that do get treated bad enough to leave on any day?
Technician
Haven't ever considered leaving our industry, for better or for worse I love what I do everyday. The industry has its share of problems see every other comment on this thread. What the industry has done for me is given me a stable job, allowed me to buy at house at 23, allow my wife to stay home with my kid, and allowed me an excuse to buy a ton of tools lol. I want to be part of the change in our industry wether that happens in my time or not.
Technician
It's crossed my mind. I've got friends that work at Boeing and in warehouse maintenance. All have suggested I go those routes and it's tempting. Far as Boeing, all jobs I'd easily transition to are more than an hours commute. Warehouse maintenance? Potentially better pay to start, but I've got a solid position and with the economy as it is not sure I want to jump around.
Technician
The industry isn’t changing in a way that supports technicians and it is very difficult to make a decent wage in a lot of places. In some instances, technicians are under appreciated to the point that their value seems to be lowered. I’ve had experiences like this at some shops a time or two. Personally, I believe the mindset and value that is given to technicians should be reconsidered carefully. There aren’t many of us coming into the industry and there are more and more of us considering leaving if not acting upon those considerations for reasons such as these and many more reasons I’m sure.
Shop Management/Owner
As a tenured Service Manager, it saddens me to hear the comments of so many technicians that hate their job or feel undervalued. I saw the importance of taking care of my technicians early on in my career. They are flat rate, it's my job to keep them paid and keep them happy. I can't make every minute or even every day pure bliss, but I have a lot of control to take care of my guys. I recognize difficult diagnosis and repairs. I have never met a tech who gets excited when they have to diagnose an electrical concern or a random water leak. They are typically not excited because they know that a majority of times, they will get hammered on time. In these situations, I have my techs punch straight time. I get what I can from the customers and pay the rest out of my department, because it's the right thing to do. I chalk it up to training pay. Speaking off training; I always pay for training time. I pay for travel time. I pay for hotels. I pay for food while traveling for training. Let's talk tools. My tech pay for their own tools however, there are certain tools that I buy as "shop tools" because we don't need 10 of them in the shop. Examples are bumper stands, scan tools, NoCo jump packs, articulating saws, chassis ears, etc... The old school of thinking is that this is a lot of money. I beg to differ. It is far more costly to try to find new talent. It is far more expensive to pay to train another person all over again. It is far more expensive to lose business because we are short techs. It is far more expensive to build another trusting relationship. Technicians make huge investments for us every day. We have to be ready and willing to make some investments in our staff. And their right, sometimes it is expensive, but it is worth every single penny invested.
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