New Year, Old Tech Shortage

The chronic shortage of auto technicians continues at car and truck dealerships throughout the U.S. But savvy service directors aren’t standing by.

Instead, they use creative ways to find, hire and keep qualified mechanics. That’s evidenced by our coverage of the issue in 2024.

About 39,000 new service technicians annually graduate from U.S. career training programs, according to the National Automobile Dealers Assn.

Yet the trade group says the industry needs to replace nearly 76,000 techs each year due to retirements and new-job demand.

What to do?

As post-holiday service heats up, here are some of the best strategies WardsAuto found to ease the crunch.  

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

No job interviewee wants to hear empty promises, says technician Steve Buna, from the eight-store, Wisconsin-based Kayser Automotive Group.

“You don’t want someone saying, ‘We send technicians back to school all the time,’ and then later talk to a technician (at the dealership) who says, ‘I haven’t done that in six years,’” says Buna in this story.

Techs Get Respect They Deserve – Finally

In this story, dealership fixed-operations experts say overall perceptions of mechanics are changing for the better.

Salespeople traditionally stand out as the stars of the show at dealerships. Now, they share the spotlight with technicians.

“In the past, the focus of a dealership has always been on the front end,” says Stephen Hill, service director at I-10 Toyota in Indio, CA.

“The viewpoint of what a technician is has changed dramatically.”

Because of their growing skill levels and ability to fix today’s complicated cars, auto technicians now enjoy more respect, especially as store moneymakers.

Grow Your Own Talent

Too often, dealers poach technicians from other dealerships to deal with the lack of enough qualified mechanics, says Matthew Phillips, CEO of Car Pros, a nine-store West Coast dealership group headquartered in Washington state.

“It takes some time, but the best thing dealers can do is build that pipeline yourself,” he tells WardsAuto in an interview for a story on how he and two other industry veterans approach the issue.

To many people – especially parents of youths considering a career path – there is a sense that working as an auto technician is not something to aspire to, Mark Schienberg, president of the Greater New York Auto Dealers Assn., says in the same story.

“They don’t get the message that these are great career jobs that pay well, better than a lot of people think,” he says. (Many master technicians earn more than $100,000 a year.)

It’s important for parents to know that today’s auto mechanics aren’t “grease monkeys” earning low wages, but rather skilled and valued professionals, he says.

Make ’em Happy, Says Ex-tech

Wise dealers strive to keep their mechanics well-compensated and appreciated, says Paul Williamsen, a former auto technician who now works for an automaker, says in this story.

“You can’t keep all of your people happy all of the time, but you can keep most of them happy most of the time,” says the product-education manager at Lexus College, a learning center run by Toyota.