Shops and stealerships

Exactly, I worked in a small independent shop that paid well, hired good guys, and has a great reputation for solid work. The problem is the shop runs at 110% all the time because everyone knows they can be trusted so I'd you are on the road and go down you have to wait until someone can get to you. We worked on a first come first serve so when I would get there at 5an to unlock there would be a line of trucks waiting to get in lol. Someone on here said they talked to a lube/tire guy at a TA and he made like $10/hr. I think the wrench industry is suffering the same problems as the drivers. You don't pay anything and you get crappy help. At $10/hr that poor kid will never be able to afford to start buying tools to be ready to learn and move up to a job fixing trucks. My first job was lube/tire guy in a car shop in 1998 and I made like $14/hr just to put it in perspective. It's a really bad situation, you can't get into the guys that you want to work on your truck but you also don't want most of the guys that have the time to touch your truck. I would recommend everyone that owns a truck to learn the basics. Do your own pm services, slack adjusters, seals, etc if you have the room. It will save you a bunch of headaches from having some knucklehead mess your truck up doing something simple. When you walk into a shop look at the tool boxes. If it's all Craftsman and harbor freight tool carts they probably aren't making the best of money. That doesn't mean that everyone that has a big 3 bank snap on top and bottom like I do is good but they are getting the pay to afford that. You get what you pay for so you have a better chance in a higher paying shop.

 

I live in a small town, approximately 9,000 people is all, yet we have two truck shops for people to go to, not any dealerships at all except for Ford, but no truck dealers. Still people have two excellent choices for their truck maintenance and repairs, because both shops do great work. So it shocks me that people have so many problems with their shops, because we are two for two on excellence! And I hear nothing but great feedback on the three nearest Mack dealerships shops. But don't get me started on Kenworth dealerships, I don't think we have one in the entire province that doesn't suck!

 

Yeah, the "service writer" has no mechanical experience and whatever you tell them gets "lost in translation". Whatever the mechanics read about the problem is usually quite different from what you mentioned to the service writer...

 

I tried the service writer bit for a few months, couldn't do it lol. Sitting around on my fat ### instead of working got boring and hearing the other service writers who knew nothing ##### about everyone else got old fast. I am convinced from being a tech and dealing with them and then trying to be one that they are pretty much all ####### lol.