There are some trends in the industry that have tilted the supply/demand balance against technicians and shops.
1) As Eric points out, there is a lot more warranty work and a lot less service work. The reason for this is, to a large extent these two things are opposite sides of the same coin. If 7 year, 100k, bumper-to-bumper warranties are the norm, and they seem to be, then that is 7 byears and 100k miles of service work out the window. Warranty work is allotted fewer billable hours, hence the technician spending more time on warrany work sees his paycheck go down.
2) The internet. The internet has educated millions of car owners that there are many things beyond the basic oil change that the owner can do for himself. An owner can spend $750 at a shop getting a radiator replaced, or he can spend an hour on the internet, at places like ETCG.com, and learn to do it by himself. He can then buy a $250.00 radiator and spend a couple hours in my garage replacing it himself.
The impact here goes beyond saving the $500.00 savings. The fact that a DIYer, say, successfully replaces his radiator makes him realize there are a lot of other things he can do on his own car. No more $500 brake jobs, he can do his own, using a myriad of quality internet resources, often for a little over $100. Ball joints? The most a DIYer has to have a shop do now is maybe press the old ball joints out of the knuckle and press new ones in. The rest an average DIYer can do himself. Then of course he does need the shop to do the alignment.
The point here is the internet has really changed the landscape of car repair. There are millions of billable hours now being done by DIYers at home.
With these two megatrends in mind, what is the shop owner or technician to do?
First, I belileve he has to think of himself more fo a consultant to the large and increasing segment of the marketplace that does their own car repair. AS a DIYer, I started out 30 years ago just doing oil changes, then progressed all the way to swapping out motors and transmissions. But I still need my independent mechanic and his shop. There are some things I can’t do, like alignments, and some things I just don’t want to do (like most exhaust work), compressing strut springs, pressing ball joints, etc. I am also thankful that my mechanic is willing to sit down with me and give me advice on my own projects, something I am glad to pay him his hourly rate for. 15 minutes of his advice, or even paying his rate plus travel to come out to my place to help me get un-stuck on a project is well worth it to me, and to him. Then there are times when I am in a time crunch and I hire him to do projects here and there that I could do but don’t have time to do. Many technicians don’t like to work with people like us, but the problem with that posture is we DIYers are here to stay, and we are a large segment of the marketplace. We look to you shops and technicians to be more of a partner on our efforts, and we will gladly pay you your rate for doing the things that we can’t do but you can.
Also, with respect to the internet, I think that shop owners and technicians should consider using the web to become more transparent to their customer. Maybe it makes sense to make videos and digital pictures of the diagnosis of the customer’s mechanical problem that they bring their car into the shop for; and top provide those videos to the customer to help them decide whether to accept or decline the work.
I really think the internet can be used to make the technician/customer relationship a more interactive one; one in which trust can develop better and faster.