Labor rates, technician demand on the rise, latest Fullbay heavy-duty shop report finds

NASHVILLE—While challenges and uncertainty persist in the commercial repair industry, there are reasons to be optimistic, according to Fullbay CEO Patrick McKittrick, who based his reasoning on the results of the shop management platform provider’s fifth State of Heavy-Duty Repair Report.

The report was derived from more than 950 validated industry professionals surveyed last fall and data from 3,500 Fullbay customers (who used the platform for more than one year).

At a roundtable held at the 2025 Technology & Maintenance Council Annual Meeting at the Music City Convention Center, McKittrick revealed that 56% of those surveyed said that business in 2024 was either “significantly better” or “slightly better” than 2023; 17% said it was “a little worse,” with a scant 3% saying things were “a lot worse.”

“And that was encouraging to me, especially considering the timing and leading up to an election where there was a lot of uncertainty,” McKittrick explained to Fleet Maintenance’s editor-in-chief, John Hitch, who moderated the press event. “We saw people actually pleased with the way their businesses were performing.”

Timing, though, is everything, and in the past month that optimism ignited by a new anti-regulatory administration has been marred by tariff uncertainty, which could drive up the costs of assets, parts, and tools and shop equipment.

“The tariffs have sort of thrown a curve ball to everybody,” cautioned Jack Poster, VMRS services manager at TMC, who joined McKittrick on the panel. He’s heard from parts professionals that parts will go up, but for now everyone is in “wait-and-see” mode.

That may be true for tariffs, but Poster noted the free 96-page report, which included “really granular information that's validated,” can still help fleet maintenance operations and shop owners put themselves in a position to succeed in 2025—or at least better help your team prepare for the barrage of curveballs shops routinely see.

The report itself includes pages of shop data and several insights from experts to provide context, though the topics covered at the press event focused on the usual vital industry stats on labor rates and technicians, as well as emerging areas such as artificial intelligence and fraud. Let’s look at the highlights.

Labor rates

Labor rates continued to climb, Fullbay reported, with the current median labor rate of $134/hour. This indicated consistent growth, as last year the median was $130/hour, and $125/hour in 2023.

However, while labor rates continue to steadily increase to adjust for inflation, 45% of shops are assessing them just once per year, which McKittrick says may be a missed opportunity.

“While the industry has done a nice job of actually adjusting their rates, I think they have left money on the table,” he said. “Evaluating your labor rate once a year is not enough. Interest rates don't change once per year. Tariffs don't come and go once per year. And if you're not keeping up with real time information, you're going to miss out.”

“Inflation has been a big deal, and [shops are] having to pay the technicians more, which means they have every right to charge more for those technicians’ time,” McKittrick said.

Tech pay and benefits

On the note of technician pay, the numbers show that growth has continued from 2023-2024, though at a slightly slower rate. On average, tech pay has gone from $29 per hour to $30, a 3.4% YOY growth rate compared to the 7.4% that occurred over the previous reporting period.

It’s also important to remember that this is a median, and when it comes to finding and retaining quality technicians, offering competitive pay is essential. 

“If the average is 30 bucks, the guy paying on the low end of that average is struggling to find and hire people,” McKittrick emphasized.

“It was actually surprising that technician pay didn't rise a little bit faster through the year,” McKittrick said, noting that on the supply side, the number of new technicians coming into the workforce, is “troubling.”

Hitch had noted TechForce Foundation readjusted the supply and demand projections up 20% this year. Because of this, shops will likely have to expect tech pay to go up in the nearterm.

“We still aren't bringing enough young people into the trade schools and into the trade overall,” McKittrick said. “And when you can't meet the demand, the only way for people to hire and to compete for that scarce resource is going to be to pay more.”

Shops always want to get what they pay for, and in the Southeast, that’s what appears to happen. Techs in this region posted a technician efficiency rate of 117%. McKittrick said this may be due to the prevalence of flat rate in the area.

Poster agreed.

“I ran shops mainly on flat rate, and when the mechanic came in on Monday, he didn't have a nickel to his name, but if he really worked hard and could beat the time, by Friday he could say, ‘I don’t think I’m gonna come in today.’”

But in his experience in hourly shops, Poster said a tech may take half a day for a brake job, or stop off at McDonald’s while road testing a vehicle, because there was “no incentive” to work harder.

Incentives and bonuses are a growing part of shop benefits, and Fullbay found two-thirds offer health insurance as an incentive.

“This is an alarming statistic that may show why so many shops are having a hard time hiring techs,” noted Peter Cooper, CEO of Ascend Consulting, in the report.

Use of AI and VMRS

The use of Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards (VMRS) developed by TMC increases at a slow but steady rate, with 65% of shops still not using the code system. While not surprising, Poster says that the system was originally developed for fleets and has made its way to shops over the years.

“The benefits of a shop using it is that it gives you a communication with the fleet; your customer,” he explained. “If a small shop wants to grow, maybe they can implement VMRS and go around and tell the fleets, “Hey, if you want to work with us, we'll work with you”.

Read more: How VMRS works in modern fleet maintenance | Fleet Maintenance

Similarly, the adoption of AI has been slow despite its many shop applications, with 75% of independent shops reporting that they currently aren’t using AI to manage shop inventory in specific.

Fullbay reported that some shops have shown interest in AI technology, with 12% currently using some form of predictive maintenance technology.

Shop fraud

Many fleet managers are more than familiar with the various forms of fuel fraud, but Fullbay also reported on fraudulent activity within the shop, with one in three shops saying that they have been defrauded.

As McKittrick explained, this tends to occur in a few ways, one of the most common being what is known as ‘friendly fraud’, “people who were real customers, who did real transactions, who then disputed charges under somewhat questionable circumstances.”

While this is often worked out and resolved, the ordeal still eats up time that the shop would be spending repairing vehicles and making money. Fraud involving stolen credit cards is also a possibility. 

“People with bad intentions that want to take money will look anywhere they can, and some of them have started to look at commercial repair shops as places where there are high dollar items that you can purchase on a credit card,” the Fullbay CEO continued, “and once you're out the door with them, it's someone else's problem.”

He noted most of this fraud is getting detected, “but it's just a reminder the shops have to stay vigilant.” And he said that it essentially what the report as whole is meant to do.

“We want the shops to be aware what's going on so they can take the right actions,” he concluded.