Christopher Otts

The ability to turn work faster is the entire source of money in this job.

But even with a lot of experience and like doing the same job

a bajillion times and getting good at it, the cars change, the jobs change, they need to adjust to new products and the changes that the factories make.

So even a mechanic with 10 years of experience has to sort of start from zero.

And just as you get good at it, the physical toll starts to really affect your ability to be productive.

There are even people whose whole profession is to audit the work that the dealerships do to find efficiencies and make sure that the number of hours that such and such job pays is, you know, not out of line with how many hours it actually takes to do that job.

One technician told me that technicians are even reluctant to share in forums, online forums that they're on, tips and tricks because they think that the factories might be in those forums as well and might catch on when they've got a job that pays three or four hours that they can do in 30 minutes.

And it's like money in the bank if they get this kind of work.

It absolutely is.

And so the trick is to stay ahead of that.

In some shops, they are not as good at bringing work in the door.

Or there are issues about divvying up the work in the most efficient way or giving people jobs that they will succeed in and be able to turn a lot of hours.

The mechanics are the ones who bear the risk of the variability in work.

You see some deviation from the flat rate system, but not many because that's just the way the world works in this industry.

I think if the shortage continues and if it really matches the rhetoric that we hear about it, it would be natural to expect that there would be

more attempts to have a different kind of pay model or at least some guarantees.

But so the common things that are done are apprentice programs, like the one at the dealership, certain scholarships, you know, to get started, but they're not uniform.

You know, none of these initiatives are particularly...

You know, I asked Ted that question because we were talking, like, he's a great teacher.

It's clear his apprentices love him.