The benefits of being an automotive technician

This is the tail end of a major transmission job I performed on my Harley. I spent more on the special tools needed than the job would have cost me, but I wanted to make sure it was done right – so I did it.

I enjoyed school and was doing well there, but I was becoming increasingly discouraged with the process, continuously asking myself if this was something I was sure I wanted to do. Unable to answer affirmatively at the time, I dropped out after my first year, deciding instead to go to work with my father with the idea of someday taking over the “family business.” 

Some of you may remember an article I wrote some time ago about my dad. He was (and is still) a master carpenter and I learned a lot about the craft from him, as well as a whole lot more. One piece of advice I remember to this day was, “A man that can work with his hands will always be able to take care of his family.” That may be true but I hated carpentry! 

I did, however, like working on my bike – performing the needed maintenance and the occasional modifications. In my mind, being able to do THAT for a living would be awesome! So off to motorcycle mechanics school I went, returning four months later to a local Honda dealership. I enjoyed the work very much. The only drawback was the seasonality of the work. After all, not too many people were riding their motorcycles in the winter time. The solution? Make the move to four wheels. And, for the most part, I’ve been in the auto repair business ever since.

The advantages of the move

There are some readily apparent benefits to the decisions I made way back then. First, I was working and earning a decent living with no student debt hanging over my head. Second, just as my father had promised, I have never been unemployed and have always been able to provide for my family. And there have been some turbulent economic times since the mid-70s! But there are more, maybe not so apparent, benefits on being an automotive professional.

For years, I was doing my own work in a cramped single car garage or worse, in the dirt driveway. At least now I can do my own repairs and maintenance in relative comfort.

For example, how many of you take care of your own vehicles? And it’s not just the family car, right? If something breaks on the boat, the motorcycle, the lawn mower or the chain saw – you take care of it. After all, they all run on gasoline and they all have to function more or less the same. Hydraulic brakes on the bike are not that much different than the ones on the front of my wife’s Scion and what systems may be unique to the job at hand, we’ve all learned how to research what we don’t know and apply what we learn to the problem in front of us.

And we take that for granted, I think. I can’t help but think of the commercial (for a national insurance company) depicting a grateful mom and her son. She’s grateful because her car insurance has a road side assistance option that helped her son with that unfortunate flat in the middle of the night. The scene cuts back to a not-so-fortunate youngster and his partner, who are trying to attempt the change on their own. The first holds up a tool, not a lug wrench, and asks his buddy if it is a lug wrench – and the second young man looks at him, and replies after a short delay, “Maaayybee..?”

You know what you charge to perform even minor repairs. And you know how many of your current customers couldn’t check their own oil level, let alone change a tire. Think of all the money you’re saving because you can!

It's amazing how fast the “man cave” fills up, especially when one half of it is reserved for my wife and her car.

A lifetime gift

There’s a story I’ve shared when doing presentations in person that fits here. A young man is traveling across the Texas plains, and there is not another living human being around for miles. Suddenly, a strange noise begins to make itself known and it appears to be coming from under the hood. The young man is increasingly worried he may not make it to his final destination and may even be stranded, far from civilization. 

But soon, on the horizon, he sees a shape of a building. He prays that the car will hold together long enough for him to make it to what he hopes is a garage. As he approaches, he sees an old man sitting on a rocker on the front porch of the establishment, enjoying what seems to be a nice, cold lemonade taking a break from the desert sun.

The young man stops in front of the old mechanic and asks if he can help with the strange noise. The mechanic nods his head and rises from the chair, opens the car’s hood and listens for a few minutes before retiring into the darkness of the open garage. He returns with a tiny ball peen hammer in hand.

Leaning over the engine, he locates a precise spot and taps once with the tiny hammer. 

The noise instantly stops.

The young man stares in disbelief. “Is that it?” he asks. “Is it fixed?”

“Yes,” the old man assures him. “You’re all set.”

“How much do I owe you?” the young man asks.

“That’ll be $89.99.”

“What?!” the youngster exclaims. “All you did was tap it with a hammer!”

“That’s right, son. I’m charging you 99 cents for the hammer tap – and $89 for knowing where to tap it.”

The moral of the story is this — we have all developed unique skill sets on our road to becoming competent technicians. We’ve had to learn new systems and technologies and that has, in the process, taught us how to learn. We’ve had to develop our critical thinking skills, the ability to apply what we’ve learned, so that we could take that knowledge and use it to overcome situations and circumstances the even the engineers haven’t thought of yet! These are all skills that are hard won, and worth what we charge for them.

But we don’t just apply these skills on the job, do we? We apply these skills to every aspect of our lives, automatically, because they are now an inherent part of who we are. That makes us better parents, better spouses, better people. 

And that’s a benefit that overshadows any negatives that I can think of!