Professional Auto Mechanics

[Passport1]

I was a VW mechanic back in the ‘70s.

Enjoyed:
Learning how things worked; sharpened my analytical skills
Satisfaction from fixing things; job was consequential
Getting to drive lots of different cars
Working around other ‘car guys'
Getting to use a rack to work on my own car after work
Working for ‘old school' German mechanics that taught me important mechanical skills

Things I disliked:
Crappy pay
Cold in the winter, hot in the summer shop
Noisy environment, sometimes high CO concentrations
Having to buy more and more expensive tools to keep up with the job
Being dirty most of the time
Low status
Working for very demanding German mechanics


What do you think of your occupation?

 

[Huie83]

I work in IT Infrastructure at a small/midsized company.

Likes:
-Always learning something new
- Flexible schedule and work from home days
- The pay is really good
- All the different directions I can go with my career. IT has TONS of different career paths

Dislikes:
- Its really stressful sometimes, the busnesses IT infrastructure up time rests on my shoulders
- Working for a SMB and wearing many hats can lead to long hours. I'm salary so doesn't matter if I work 30 or 80 hours a week, same pay
- The work can become repetitive and boring if I don't search out things to do or teach myself something.

All in all a good career to have, could be worse! My real interest is in aviation electronics, however its hard to beat the pay and flexibility of my current role.

 

[jkhawaii]

I got out of automotive about 6 years ago, I now work on transit buses. Much better over all. I should have taken everyone's advice from the beginning and went into trucking or diesels

 

[Audios]

Its a great profession, makes you use your head and think outside the box, teaches you to use your hands and not fear tearing things apart. Being mechanically inclined reaches other fields too, HVAC, electrical, etc so once youre proficient at it it really gives you a lot of options and ways to save money on your home, plus making money on side work. Trades will always be in demand, so as long as youre willing to work and learn, youll have a job. Theres nothing like the feeling of bringing a car back from the dead, or fixing something that multiple shops werent able to.
The cons are the expense of tools and equipment in a rapidly changing work environment. Every year there are insane new work instructions, labor times, special tools. Valve cover gaskets 13 hours?!?! Dealer only 120$ syringe and sealant kit thats needed for front crank seals, cant start the car for 3 hours after? Oh nice 700$ scanner update so I can reset oil service lights, yay. Which of course always equals "Why are you so expensive"

 

[ddrumman2004]

I work part time in transportation at a nearby rehab facility. I transport residents back and forth to their doctor appointments etc...
The best part of the job is meeting new people as they come into the facility and interacting with them. There are no cons to my job.

 

[maxdustington]

Originally Posted by Passport1
Things I disliked:
Cold in the winter, hot in the summer shop
Working inside? Please.

 

[cb_13]

Originally Posted by maxdustington
Originally Posted by Passport1
Things I disliked:
Cold in the winter, hot in the summer shop
Working inside? Please.

Yes, for sure. Work under the dash of a vehicle that's been sitting outside with the windows up all day in shop with no ac. A fan can only do so much. The winter was never too bad for me in a shop. It would cool down quick in a place with doors on the north and south if both were open at the same time but not nearly as bad as summer time.

 

[DB_Cooper]

I too was a tech back in the 70s and 80s. Porsche factory trained, back when VW/Audi imported the cars. My experience was great. The best job of my life. Learning about the latest technologies and driving the finest cars was wonderful.

What I hated was the "flat rate system" and working in a 1930s sweat-shop business model. Went back to school and left the business. I now do business development with a company that sells population analytics based on cell phone activity.

I still look fondly on my Porsche tech days..

To the OP..did you know Jim Sartwell up at VW in DC?

 

[Passport1]

I met a few of the corporate poobahs once when I was at the training facility in Deerfield, Il. They were all Germans from the Wolfsburg headquarters. The entire VW enterprise from top to bottom was a well oiled machine. I doubt it is that today. I'm glad I worked for them, they were all about hard work and discipline. Traits that carry over in life.

For a young person, I think next to the military being an auto mechanic is a great way to learn valuable skills.

 

[Silk]

In a few weeks it will be 50 years I've been in this trade, I've had an awful lot of jobs, but only as a mechanic, working on all sorts of things. It's all I've ever wanted to do, I would hate having to sit at a desk inside all day. From a 16 year old apprentice to running workshops and owning my own to back to just a mechanic on the floor - money has never interested me, it's not why I go to work every day, but working on something interesting and learning new things is my reward for turning up everyday, even when I should be retired.

I am not enjoying working on the modern motor vehicle, we seem to be going backwards...just so much complication for such little advantage. I hate, hate, hate the hard brittle plastic everywhere in the modern car, so many failures are directly related to this horrible stuff. And lack of cohesion in design, it's not a whole vehicle, just a set of different parts put together to make a car. To remove one component, six more need to be removed to get at it...surely, back at the design stage, a little communication between departments and I wouldn't have to charge the customer an excessive labour charge for a simple job. And young guys in the job - don't get me started....

 

[Saabist]

I've been working in "IT" since it was called "Electronic Data Processing." The job ceased to be fun a long time ago but it beats a kick in the teeth.

 

[69Torino]

Honestly I thought I'd be a dealership tech my whole life. Got all the plaques and certificates and king-dingaling paperwork through the years with Chrysler, Jeep, Fiat, Mitsubishi, and Kia. Really enjoyed my time in the dealership until about the final three years or so when they really started leveraging and abusing me. They kept throwing money at me and I stayed and took it. At my wife's encouragement, I took an hourly fleet job at a municipal school system. (The same one I attended as a child) I work on school buses, police cars, straight trucks, forklifts, a lot of welding and fab, and have really gotten to stretch my legs as a technician/mechanic/welder/fabricator. We perform PM, repair and recover buses on the road, clear accidents, pull them out of ditches, drive buses on routes as substitute drivers, push snow, and many more things. The pay rate was a basically lateral move, actually slightly more initially, but a fleet job is much less stressful, which translates into a better home life.

If you want to work at the dealer, just don't die there. Cut your teeth, get good, be accurate, and then go to an hourly fleet gig to retire on. Good techs and mechanics are better suited to fleet jobs, especially municipal.

 

[Railrust]

I'm no longer an automotive technician, I left the trade 15 years ago to go into teaching automotive. I make over $100k a year, have summers off, 15 sick days a year, 3 personal days, a pension, automatic raises and my day ends at 2:00...half hour lunch, 2 prep periods, I have a teacher's aid. It's been great, but it is a different kind of stress. It can be exhausting. You are always on display, you never can be off your game. If you're sick you can't kind of coast through the day. You can't come in not ready to go because as soon as that bell rings you'll have 20 kids standing right in front of you and if you can't keep them engaged and working? You'll be in a world of suffering like you've never seen before. And you had better never lose your cool, because if you do, and you say the wrong thing?? You might be looking for a job, or worse, find yourself on the ten o'clock news.

But automotive is a tough trade. I see what they're doing to techs. The labor times, the tools they need to buy, the working conditions have always been awful. The benefits have always lagged behind other industries and trades. But you will always have a job, you can make some decent money if you're good at it and there are many different job avenues for someone in the industry (sales, service advisory, management).

But working in vocational education I do see what some of these other trades are paying. Electricians and plumbers are making some great money, so are the HVAC trades. It's cleaner work, it's easier to open your own business than automotive and your tools won't cost you thousands on top of thousands...you'll never have to worry about the Snapon truck or buying the "latest and greatest". And I think the work is easier. But at the same time I know guys in automotive that own their own place and they're making a good living, they love it - you have to hustle - but you can make it work. You have to love cars. There's a lot of state and federal jobs for mechanics available too.

 

[Railrust]

Originally Posted by 69Torino
Honestly I thought I'd be a dealership tech my whole life. Got all the plaques and certificates and king-dingaling paperwork through the years with Chrysler, Jeep, Fiat, Mitsubishi, and Kia. Really enjoyed my time in the dealership until about the final three years or so when they really started leveraging and abusing me. They kept throwing money at me and I stayed and took it. At my wife's encouragement, I took an hourly fleet job at a municipal school system. (The same one I attended as a child) I work on school buses, police cars, straight trucks, forklifts, a lot of welding and fab, and have really gotten to stretch my legs as a technician/mechanic/welder/fabricator. We perform PM, repair and recover buses on the road, clear accidents, pull them out of ditches, drive buses on routes as substitute drivers, push snow, and many more things. The pay rate was a basically lateral move, actually slightly more initially, but a fleet job is much less stressful, which translates into a better home life.

If you want to work at the dealer, just don't die there. Cut your teeth, get good, be accurate, and then go to an hourly fleet gig to retire on. Good techs and mechanics are better suited to fleet jobs, especially municipal.

I agree 100%. I went from a dealer to a federal fleet and it was like dying and going to heaven. My first month on the job the guys I worked with told me to slow down...that this was a different way of life. I couldn't believe it. I'm looking around like...fast, I need to go fast, where's the next job? I need to hustle, I need to run around like my head is chopped off...go go go. I need to make hours. I need to cut corners and beat the labor time by at least half. And here it was like...there is no "next job", we're going to get coffee and watch TV for an hour or so, then we're going to go home and come back tomorrow and take four hours to remove that intake, maybe five days, we have the car for two weeks. We might have to do a few oil changes in the mean time, then again maybe not. Try to relax. And don't worry you're still going to make your 60k, 70k, 80k...or wherever you are on the salary scale.

 

[mattd]

Originally Posted by 69Torino
Honestly I thought I'd be a dealership tech my whole life. Got all the plaques and certificates and king-dingaling paperwork through the years with Chrysler, Jeep, Fiat, Mitsubishi, and Kia. Really enjoyed my time in the dealership until about the final three years or so when they really started leveraging and abusing me. They kept throwing money at me and I stayed and took it. At my wife's encouragement, I took an hourly fleet job at a municipal school system. (The same one I attended as a child) I work on school buses, police cars, straight trucks, forklifts, a lot of welding and fab, and have really gotten to stretch my legs as a technician/mechanic/welder/fabricator. We perform PM, repair and recover buses on the road, clear accidents, pull them out of ditches, drive buses on routes as substitute drivers, push snow, and many more things. The pay rate was a basically lateral move, actually slightly more initially, but a fleet job is much less stressful, which translates into a better home life.

If you want to work at the dealer, just don't die there. Cut your teeth, get good, be accurate, and then go to an hourly fleet gig to retire on. Good techs and mechanics are better suited to fleet jobs, especially municipal.


This is the route I took and for the very same reasons.

 

[Ws6]

Originally Posted by Passport1
I was a VW mechanic back in the ‘70s.

Enjoyed:
Learning how things worked; sharpened my analytical skills
Satisfaction from fixing things; job was consequential
Getting to drive lots of different cars
Working around other ‘car guys'
Getting to use a rack to work on my own car after work
Working for ‘old school' German mechanics that taught me important mechanical skills

Things I disliked:
Crappy pay
Cold in the winter, hot in the summer shop
Noisy environment, sometimes high CO concentrations
Having to buy more and more expensive tools to keep up with the job
Being dirty most of the time
Low status
Working for very demanding German mechanics


What do you think of your occupation?

I think my occupation has the potential to be amazing and rewarding. Instead it just sucks most of the time, with a few moments that are rewarding sprinkled into it. I find myself wishing I had joined the military as the GWOT really got under way, and leveraged it for all it was worth. I feel this would have been better for me in many ways.

 

[Mr Nice]

Ws6,

What is your current profession ?
You still have time for a career change.


Passport1,
Trades will always be in demand cause technology will never replace these jobs. I worked a trade for over 30 years and I own an LLC that is also in the same field (equipment repair).

 

[GoldDot40]

I spent about 15 years in automotive. I got burned out on it and took the route of trucking. I kept it simple and stayed with regional and short haul trucking so I could come home every day. Been driving for 12 years now. I could easily retire doing what I do. If you look around at the terminal where we load, you'll see a LOT of guys who are past their retirement age, but keep doing it because it's easy and pays well.

I still repair and maintain on my own and extended family's vehicles.

 

[ls1mike]

I have been in and around Submarines since I was 19. For awhile after I got out the Navy I fixed them. It pays pretty good. Now I am a tech guy/SME for certain systems on submarines. It is a great job and they pay me well. I could go be a teacher but I make more fixing submarines and I am not tied to a desk or classroom.

 

[mightymousetech]

Originally Posted by Passport1
I was a VW mechanic back in the ‘70s.

Enjoyed:
Learning how things worked; sharpened my analytical skills
Satisfaction from fixing things; job was consequential
Getting to drive lots of different cars
Working around other ‘car guys'
Getting to use a rack to work on my own car after work
Working for ‘old school' German mechanics that taught me important mechanical skills

Things I disliked:
Crappy pay
Cold in the winter, hot in the summer shop
Noisy environment, sometimes high CO concentrations
Having to buy more and more expensive tools to keep up with the job
Being dirty most of the time
Low status
Working for very demanding German mechanics


What do you think of your occupation?


Been a dealer tech for 20 years. Beautiful new shop, with A/C, CO, NOx detectors and ventilators. We are highly regarded, we are the ones that pay the bills in the dealership, and get rewarded well. If you want a challenge, try working on the latest G series cars at BMW. EXTREMELY demanding job, but it pays very well.