What do you do for a living? I am currently a mechanic at a car dealership. Although I’ve also worked at independently owned and chain-store automotive centers.

How would you describe what you do? I spend most of my time diagnosing problems or complaints people have about their cars. Then come the actual repairs. Maintenance is rare nowadays.

What does your work entail? Why is the car is here and what you have to do to it? After figuring out whats wrong, get parts price quotes, quote labor and bring it to the service writer. He/she then suggests(sells) the repair to the customer. You have about a 50/50 chance of getting to the next step which would be the actual repair. Confirm whatever you did actually fixed the car, bring it outside and start all over again with the next car in line.

What does a typical work week look like? You show up everyday not knowing what’s ahead of you. You have no idea if you are going to make any money, if its going to be an easy, pain free day or stress-filled leaving you in some epic bad mood. You’ll eventually learn what cars you don’t want to work on, what jobs are more of a hassle than others. Experience is your education in this field. School, books, company training is just background information and won’t give you the confidence to go elbows deep into something. At a dealership you deal with warranty jobs that don’t pay you fairly. Each car gets its own little book report, writing down what you did why. Stress builds easily. Independent shops are more laid back, most techs probably will probably feel less “rushed”. Not as many ‘i’ dotting & ‘t’ crossing as a dealership. Chain-stores fit in some where in between.

How did you get started? Peer pressure from my friends in high school. Somehow my interest grew and eventually surpassed theirs. I pursued it as a career, they went off and did other things. I should also credit car forums and message boards. Reading online about how people built, modified and customized their own cars scratched the itch because, at the time, I didn’t have the money, knowledge, or resources to do that kind of thing.

What do you like about what you do? Little. See the “what’s most rewarding” question below.

What do you dislike? It’s a disrespected, misunderstood job. I don’t eagerly tell people what I do for a living. A lot of stereotypes still exist. It’s expensive, not that many people realize how much tools cost, $5-10,000 for just the box, you can open a small drawer and they’ll be $1k worth of tools in there. Very high level of stress on a daily basis. Too easy to break something expensive, damage, or injury yourself/others. Although I feel I’m paid fairly at the moment, there are no rich mechanics, definitely not a lucrative rewarding career. I also take issue with flat rate, the system of how we are actually paid.

How do you make money/how are you compensated as an auto mechanic? Majority of mechanics are flat rate. You are given an hourly rate, but not paid 8-5. Each specific repair has a time associated with it dictating how long it ‘should’ take you to complete that job. A brake job might have a labor quote of 2.0 hours. If you finish that brake job in 1 hour, you just made double your hourly rate (for that one hour). The idea being, if you can be efficient and productive you’ll benefit. Glamorous isn’t it? Now into account you wait for approval to do the brake job, so that 1 hour that it really takes you to complete turned into 1.5, half an hour waiting for the customer to call back. But you also have to test drive before and after.. now add 10mins… go get parts.. close out the paper work.. all the small things add up. There also isn’t an abundance of work, some magical never ending line of cars that need to be fixed. There are plenty of slow days you show up to work, only touch 1 car and make less than 1hr even though you were there all day. Warranty jobs not only have a ridiculous and unfair flat rate time, they also take time out of your day where you could have been working on something that is actually going to make you money. Also worth mentioning the other ways mechanics can get paid: Regular hourly, clock in and out, no matter what you do during the day you going to get a paycheck. These obviously aren’t going to offer anywhere near a competitive pay compared to a flat rate tech. Smaller, independently owned shops are probably the only places that still pay guys this way. A combination of a flat rate with a base hourly pay. You make near minimum wage hourly but every job you do is worth a different amount (4 tires pays $1.00 an oil change .50 cents for example) on top of the hourly pay. This is done mostly at chain-stores. Some do a base hourly pay plus a small % of the total bill. Few but some flat rate shops give an hourly guarantee. Either 35/40hrs of guaranteed pay if you had a slow week.

How much money do you make as a auto mechanic? Difficult to compare one to another. Where you live and what type of place dictates what you will actually make. Currently aged 25 $18/hr flat rate at a dealership where the range for flatrate techs are from $16-25/hr. Higher than the average for the area, I’d say. Also depends on the brand of cars you work on, luxury brands will tend to pay more. Dealerships usually more than most independents. Some places rate you A,B,C tech. ‘A’ would be a master technician does everything, B probably can do everything just lacks the experience, C is entry level. There’s no standard so the letters can mean different things at different workplaces. I don’t think they’re used much anymore to be honest.