Professional Mechanics

[RUNINAGT]

I loved my job for a long time. Gas prices have gone up, and simply put, people arn't getting thier cars fixed. How that is, I do not know, but it is so slow right now. Employers arn't hiring for jack right now, or at least they don't want to pay. I never had a problem finding a job, now I am an assistant again for a GM dealership, making $11/hr. I'm doing work for all these guys, and they are getting paid for it. More and more, quicklubes and such are doing transmission flushes, and other maintence related repairs, which they don't pay them much, so guess who's making all the profit. I am seriously thinking of getting out of the buisness. All the investment I have, and then the low pay all of a sudden. Last year I was making good money, but now the buisness just stopped.

It seems to be a cycle in the buisness. When buisness gets slow, the employers rip thier techs off, and many leave the buisness. Then it gets swamped again and they burn their techs out and by the time they get a decent amount of people working again, it dies.

Your right the business goes up and down. We on the other hand are very busy. We slowed for a short period of time I guess a month or 2 then slam back to business. Never slow enough to let people go. It's hard to find good people in this field. We are independently owned, and our competion is all the Rick Hendrick dealers less than a mile down the road. We beat them on car count easly. We avg about 65-75 cars daily. Iv'e been here for over 11 yrs. I'm a service writer here. Started changing tires and lube tech, moved my way up. Im now making a good salary 50++ . No plans on leaving.
So not all places are slow, if ya wanna move to Charleston let me know.

 

[5.0's 4 ever]

Im a tech at lincoln mercury dealership and i don't like my job either. I am 24 and have been doing this for 5 years now.
Do i like the guys I work with, yes.
Do I keep getting raises and make more money every year, yes.

The whole thing for me is I have already got burned out on the job. At first I was just going to do this as a stepping stone until I jump to a mustang shop. But now I just don't want to work on vehicles period for a job anymore.

 

[vikingpower]

Umby-
I agree completely with what you're saying.

I spent 2yrs working on a degree in Automotive Design (more of an engineer rather than a tech program).

As I approached the end of the program, I took a trip to Detroit with a race team and realized how these guys live.

I completely lost all interest.

When I got back to Washington I stumbled into Materials Testing for Boeing.
I absolutely love all aspects of this job.


If I had gone into Automotive as a career, I would have quickly burned out.
Also, I would have little patience for personal automotive projects at home.

Just my point of view on finding a career.

jason

is it true you need an 'in' to get hired at Boeing? I'm considering applying there after I graduate next summer; they had a booth at the job fair on campus recently but all the lady said was go online, didn't find much of anything usefull in my opinion except for being able to submit a resume...