Patrick Walton can work on anything that rolls into the 26-bay Texas dealership where he’s worked for 24 years. The senior master technician has picked up plenty of certifications over his 30-year career, including school buses, electric vehicles, and CNG engines. He also picked up plenty of bad habits.
In his younger, more carefree days, it wasn’t unusual to wrench on cars and trucks for 12 or more hours then head to the bar and close it down, then come back at 6:30 a.m. and do it again.
“My Lord, those were some very unhealthy years,” the 48-year-old recalled with a laugh.
Even as he scaled back on the late nights, he’d still fill his mornings with empty calories, something to which many other shop technicians can relate. “We’re doing two or three Monsters or other energy drinks during the day, and candy bars, chips, and cookies out of the snack machine,” he said. “Instead of packing your lunch, you’re off to the pizza buffet.”
Like an engine, a technician needs fuel to keep up in the fast-paced environment and the sugar-rich fuel often put in their tanks can provide a quick burst of energy.
“It’s always about getting that job completed, getting it returned to the customer, making that money, and moving on to the next,” Walton noted.
That productivity comes at a cost. Using junk food as fuel and working so long you have little time and energy to maintain your body is like constantly running an engine with contaminated oil and clogged filters. After a while, this strategy has a catastrophic impact on the engine. For humans, at worst this means death, and at best, it leads to a serious decline in quality of life.
“I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m spent by Saturday afternoon—I’d really prefer not to move a whole lot,” Walton noted.
The husband and father already missed a lot of his kids’ growing up due to all those long hours to support them, so this was untenable. A few years ago, he took a step back and decided to make some changes. Walton starts his day with a quarter-mile walk on the treadmill. (He can’t run due to a titanium femur he got after a car crash as a teenager.)
Instead of energy drinks he drinks water and Gatorade. For breakfast, he now eats fresh-made kolaches, essentially sausage pastries, but at least not “soaked in sugar” like fast food options, Walton reasoned. He also packs his lunch instead of heading to the pizza buffet. These small changes might not seem like much, but Walton said he likes how he feels more and that helps at work and home.
“Making that commitment to having a balance really has made a difference in how I handle my day,” said Walton, who noted the dealership’s owner “is a healthy person” who provides the crew and customers with bottled water and nutritious snacks in the break area, in addition to the sugary soft drinks and junk food.
A technician’s health, both physical and mental, ultimately comes down to their personal choices and actions. You can lead a man to kale, but you can’t make him eat it. But middle and upper management have just as much responsibility to provide technicians with the tools they need to maintain a healthy body and mind as they do to boost shop productivity and efficiency.
“While I think each person is responsible for their own mental health and personal boundaries, there is research that says managers who care about their employees, provide work-life balance, and create an environment where employees can be themselves create a more productive workforce,” noted Ali John, sr. manager of culture, wellness, and community engagement for Werner Enterprises. “If employees feel respected and cared for, they are more productive and they want to perform high-quality work.”
That research included a 2021 study published in The Journal of Cardiovascular Research that found policies to improve work-life balance and employee well-being led to improved focus, creativity, motivation, retention of top talent, and better mental and physical health.
The responses from the technicians, managers, and health experts working closely with the industry we spoke to indicate that’s not happening as much as it should be. Paradoxically, they say leaders who chase cost savings and uptime at the expense of techs’ health likely reduce productivity and increase expenses and downtime. Conversely, helping techs achieve their health and wellness goals could be the panacea for several shop challenges, such as retention and high worker’s compensation claims. So let’s talk about how to make the shop a healthier place overall.
Shop work till you drop
With fleet sizes growing and technology advancing, while too few new techs are joining the trade and too many leaving due to retirement or burnout, the skeleton crews left behind are worked to the bone, with work-life balance an afterthought.
“As a service technician, it’s really hard to get the permission to step away, for [management] to understand you need to step away, or that you need a day to recuperate or a mental break,” offered Walton, who said his dealership does have enough people.
Ingrained in him, though, is a desire to put the shop before his own well-being. Last year, the master tech lost a fingertip in a driveshaft U-joint when the component slipped. After the gruesome accident, he got patched up at the hospital and came back to finish his shift.
No one told him he had to, Walton noted. They didn’t have to. So many managers previously made clear he was “lucky to have a job” and there was a “folder full of people just fighting to get in here.” That leaves an impression. And to earn a raise, he was told to just work faster and bill more hours. To bill more, you have to work more, which means working through injuries, illness, and exhaustion.
As a senior employee, Walton does get personal time off but often sells those days back to make some extra cash. For many, sacrificing days off—and putting in more overtime—are done to triage the current economic crisis. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, the dollar went 23% further in June 2019 than in June 2024.
“They could be working hard to have more skills and still be making less money,” noted Joshua Taylor, an Ontario, Canada-based-mechanics coach and host of the Wrench Turners podcast.
A former flat rate tech throughout the 2000s who went on to become a service advisor and collision shop general manager before getting into consulting and writing, Taylor has seen several facets of the vehicle repair industry, and the one constant is technicians’ drive for money, regardless of the economy.
When he was starting out, Taylor would leave his job at a dealership to moonlight four nights a week in the shop owned by his friend’s dad. And now as a career coach for technicians, he said “99% of the time, people were not really asking for coaching, they were asking how to make more money.”
For the first few years of their career, Taylor noted techs “have to carry an innumerable amount of debt,” which includes up to $15,000 in student debt from vocational school and whatever tools they need to buy. If they start a family, there will never be enough money coming in.
Meanwhile, Taylor noted the fast food chain near his house is offering $18/hr (USD) on its marquee, while a nearby dealership’s marquee advertises a $13/hr starting wage. “I'm sorry, you're not going to get a 19-year-old in the building to start being a mechanic,” Taylor asserted.
He’s also seen shop employment listings offering a great work/life balance, the definition of which is 55 hours per week. “You can't spend time with your family, live life, and work 55 hours a week—you just can’t,” Taylor said.
On the plus side, a Wrench Turner wellness survey found while starting auto dealer techs make around $40,000/year, within three years they could jump to Level 3 and make nearly $90,000. And with good bay mates, supportive leadership, and the ability to receive OEM training, “it is possibly the most rewarding career you can have,” Taylor said.
In Part 2, we'll tackle the costs associated with not maintaining your technicians' physical and metal health.
