Who Is Going To Fix Your Car?

I love Automotive. I love walking into a shop, hearing the sounds of impact guns going and engines roaring. I love the smell of tire rubber and gasoline. Most importantly, I love watching a technician at work, diving into the problem that brought the vehicle into the service bay. It is an honorable trade, a life changing skill that will always provide a roof over your head and food on the table.

So why is there a lack of skilled Automotive Technicians in the job market? Even more worrisome, why is there a lack of apprentices looking to enter the field of Automotive? If you were to stand before a high-school graduating class and ask them by show of hands, "How many of you want to work on cars as a career?" you would be lucky to get 5% of that audience to raise their hands.

A once sought after skill that stood as a solid "Plan B" if college was not an option now barely attracts interest. With vehicles becoming more and more sophisticated, it is scary to know that the workforce that will service them is getting leaner and leaner as years go by. Especially now that GM announced that by 2035 their fleet of vehicles will be Zero-Emissions only. Goodbye Gas and Diesel vehicles!

With that said, electric vehicles are not easy to diagnose and service. There is a level of skill and experience needed to cultivate in order to work on these vehicles properly and safely. Problem now happens to be that where is the next generation of skilled technicians going to come from? Young kids coming out of school are more attracted to web based careers (coding, social media, web SEO, YouTubers, etc.) rather than the physical labor of wrenching on cars.

Auto Makers like Ford, Toyota, & Honda are grabbing students graduating from Automotive Tech Schools with promises of free tools and bonuses, but the amount of students graduating are getting smaller. Even worse, the amount of new hires at dealerships exiting the industry after they see how the pay works and how much effort on their part is needed to make a decent paycheck is getting increasingly high.

Retail Automotive Service Centers (Tire Kingdom, Pep Boys, Tires Plus, ETC.) are also feeling the squeeze. Finding experienced ASE Certified Technicians to work on the more complicated issues is getting far more difficult, causing these entities to stop taking in vehicles with more serious repair issues and forwarding them to the dealers.

The current group of skilled technicians nationwide have a large number of those over 50 years of age still turning wrenches. These technicians are expected to either retire or just become a "shade tree mechanic" where they work on vehicles for family and friends at the time of their own choosing. The experience they take with them is not being passed on to the generation that will follow. To make their money, technicians need to work more, and mentor less nowadays. Thus making the future of the mechanic...cloudy. There will be a shortage in this field, there is no doubt about that.

So what does that mean for consumers?

Well, you can argue that there are plenty of videos on YouTube that can show you how to fix your problem. Only issue with that is there may be more involved in the repair than what the video shows. When you finally realize that, your vehicle is in pieces, and you stepped into a realm in which you are not properly trained to walk within. Now you have to hope that there will be a shop out there to where you can tow your vehicle and pray to god it will not cost an arm and a leg to fix.

Guess what.....it will.

In order to attract new blood into this industry, the pay programs for technicians will have to increase significantly higher on all levels. From the entry level techs working on oil changes and tire service, to those swapping out engines and transmissions. That increase will be passed on to the consumer by way of higher labor rates per hour, and menu priced services like alignments or tire repairs. It will also mean buying a vehicle with a warranty plan will become more expensive as well.

Some can debate that vehicle onboard management systems will be easy to diagnose with a scan tool computer because of all the sensors installed on a car or truck. Anyone with knowledge of this will tell you that the scan tool will give you a code or codes pointing to the affected areas. They will also tell you that it is only a roadmap, not the exact cause of the problem which means someone with experience is going to have to open the hood, or raise the vehicle on a lift to see what is going on. You cannot replace the human value here with technology. A serious effort in the Automotive community will have to be made to avoid a shortage of skilled technicians able to service vehicles....and soon.

Or one day you will have to wait a month just to get your car fixed. Now imagine that with only one car, kids, and no budget to rent a car for that long.