Our editorial mission is to help as many fleets and shops as possible improve uptime, work more safely, and run more efficiently. In our latest issue, we focused solely on technician concerns. This was to help leaders understand that while uptime and keeping customers happy are the mission, success will always hinge on the human element. You can have top-of-the-line trucks and vans, premium shop equipment and tools, and the most highly sophisticated data collection methods, yet without focused, well-trained, and well-treated people to maintain and repair the vehicles and operate the tools, you won’t last long.
Unlike a lift or wheel balancer made to work for years without rest, those humans do need to rest now and again. Techs are taught to be tough and suck it up, so managers might forget—or willfully ignore—this fact. It’s hard not to see how technicians will work hard from the crack of dawn to the height of twilight, sweating, bleeding, and sacrificing their bodies for you. For what, though?
Yes, they get paid, sometimes quite well, but the question leaders should ask is: Are you earning their respect?
The answer for many is a resounding “no.” According to WrenchWay polls, only 21% would recommend the vehicle repair industry to a friend, and around 40% don’t feel valued and respected by their managers.
Something needs to change.
So, ask yourself what you’re doing to earn your techs’ respect. Do you put as much effort into maintaining technician health and quality of life as you do your Class 8 fleet’s total cost of ownership? Can you predict when a young technician needs better mentorship? Or deduce when an older one is fighting through a severe back strain and needs a hand?
And do you find yourself always bending over backwards for the customer but constantly inflexible when it comes to simple requests from your technicians?
A good place to start gaining respect is by acknowledging your workers are not pieces of equipment or only worth as much as how many trucks they can move through the bay per day. Like a diesel particulate filter, sometimes they need a forced regen. Despite how badly a customer or the fleet needs a truck back on the road, or how much the shop wants to hit a revenue goal, management needs to know when to pull someone for a breather, even if they are the superstar with the most certifications and experience.
For example, a senior master technician we feature in our cover story, Patrick Walton, lost a fingertip and returned to work after getting the wound cleaned and covered. No one told him to, but he inferred it was an unspoken rule that you don’t miss time. With inflation up and billed hours not always consistent, the flat rater also sells his personal days back to supplement his income.
Read more: The Uptime Paradox: The cost of ignoring technician health
He has made personal choices to improve his health and is your classic rugged Texan, so maybe he can grit out long hours and work through pain more than most. A good leader should still monitor situations like Walton’s as closely as they would a truck spitting out intermittent (but not critical) fault codes.
“When you work in an environment that is detrimental to your health, it’s [management’s] responsibility to protect [workers] from themselves,” noted Bob Perry, a trucker-turned-health advocate for the industry who helps drivers qualify for their DOT medical cards.
Perry comes from a trucking family in Northeast Ohio, and said his father died early due to “the health issues that he accumulated from driving.” This inspired him to dedicate the last several decades pushing for more health awareness in the industry.
He likened it to a coach taking a concussed football player out of the game to prevent Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Whether it’s an athlete, trucker, or technician, they all want to stay in because “it’s how they make their living.”
Young people generally see how this way of making a living—working until you fall apart to sustain a mediocre middle-class existence—plays out with their parents. And young techs see it in the shop. How long will they stay in the trade, and what new people will even consider the profession, if techs, on the whole, are riddled with physical and mental health problems and zero work-life balance?
Shops rich with poor leadership
Joshua Taylor, a technician coach and host of the Wrench Turners podcast, who’s run the gamut of shop jobs up from technician to collision center general manager, says he knows the root cause: poor leadership.
He estimates that 80% of the 200,000 or so repair shops in the U.S. are poorly run, with many service managers and foremen worried more about selling and the customer versus protecting the team.
“As scarce as technicians are, they’re still scared for their jobs, because they don’t have a process in place or enough trust in place with the person they’re working for,” Taylor said.
He explained these poor leaders consider 55-hour weeks adequate for a good work-life balance. They may also demand you get new training but don’t pay what you’d earn that day turning wrenches. When you get the latest training and certifications to work on the advanced technology no one else can, these leaders also won’t pay you for your new worth.
Through Wrench Turner wellness surveys Taylor conducted, he found that techs who had a low life satisfaction score made $15,000 less annually than those with neutral or high scores. He interpreted that to mean a happy tech is more productive.
And the more productive the technician, the more productive the shop.
Two things stand in the way. One is that supervisors don’t talk enough to techs to determine their wants, needs, and goals, which will improve the situation and make techs feel more secure and satisfied.
The other big thing is to empower service managers to make changes based on what they see and hear in the shop. Taylor’s research and experience lead him to believe that far too often, service managers “have zero authority and zero autonomy” to make change. “Those kinds of things completely destroy a shop because now the technician sees that the service manager can’t make any decisions, which also means that all those promises that service manager made during that hiring interview and onboarding process is completely out the door,” Taylor added.
I take this to mean if you’re not talking to your direct reporters enough, and not giving them agency to fix what’s broken operationally, you have some troubleshooting ahead of you. And that starts with understanding the value your techs bring and making sure to provide them equal value as a leader.
