@John Hitch is the editor in chief over there. He called about why shops are losing techs. The article's awesome and I've linked to it at the bottom of the post. This is the rest of it. THE MOMENT HE LEAVES A tech tells you the lift is acting up. Nothing happens. He tells you again. Nothing happens. The third time, he doesn't tell you. That's the moment he left. The notice shows up months later. Friday afternoon, with a reason you can't do anything with. When I talk to techs who are job shopping, the word that keeps coming up is disgust. Not with you. With themselves, for putting up with it as long as they did. Anger is loud. Disgust is quiet. That's why you never see it coming. Culture isn't a feeling. It's a response time. YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIX IT You don't answer because you can't solve it. The bay's too tight. The lift is real money. The schedule won't allow it. So you say nothing and hope it stops coming up. It does stop coming up. That's the problem. He wasn't asking to be fixed. He was asking to be answered. "I can't do that this year. Here's why. Ask me again in March" closes the loop. Costs you nothing. And he's standing in a shop that heard him. Silence is the only response that reads as contempt. ASK YOUR TOOL GUY. DON'T ASK YOUR TECHS. You want to know whether you've got a problem, so you ask your guys how things are going. Your guys are the exact people who stopped telling you things. Your tool guy hits a dozen shops a week. Nobody pays him to tell you what you want to hear. He knows what your shop sounds like when you're not standing in it. Don't ask him about your shop. He'll tell you it's fine. He sells to you. Ask him about everybody else. - Which shops around here are guys trying to get into? - Anybody been asking you about openings? - If you were 28 and turning wrenches, where would you want to be? What he praises in other shops is what you're missing. And the fact that he won't burn them to you is how you know he isn't burning you to them.

You're writing another job ad for an A-tech. The guy who could be that A-tech is twenty feet away, elbow-deep in a brake job. He does clean work. He does everything you ask. He has never once walked into your office and said he wants more. So you filed it away. He's comfortable. He's fine where he is. If you want an A-tech, you'll go find one. He is not unambitious. He's uninvited. What if, what he does for you now is all he's been invited to do. But It's not all he can do. You can see a skill gap. It shows up in a comeback, a misdiagnosis, a job that runs long. A permission gap never shows up anywhere. That is what makes it expensive. You never see the thing costing you the most. So you go outside. You post the ad. You pay the job board. You interview strangers. You hand market rate to someone new for a seat you could have grown yourself. And the tech you grow comes with the one thing the outside hire never will. Loyalty you didn't have to buy. Both of you are waiting. You're waiting for him to raise his hand. He's waiting for you to open a door. He doesn't raise his hand because in most shops, asking for more gets you nothing. Or it paints a target on your back. Staying quiet is the safe play for him. So the standoff never breaks on its own. You hold the door. He can't open it from his side. You move first, or nobody moves. The fix is a two-minute conversation. You start it. Not a pep talk. Four moves. Name the specific thing you watch him do well. Specific. Not "you're a good worker." Name the seat out loud, with a real timeline. Ask him if he wants it. Then stop talking and let him answer. Then tell him you'll build the path. That conversation opens the door. It doesn't walk him through it. A promise with no roadmap is a wish. It feels good on Tuesday and it's gone by Friday. A real roadmap is four things. The skills he needs to close, in order. The milestones that mark real progress. A timeline, so it doesn't drift forever. And what each one unlocks. More pay. A real title. More responsibility.

"I can't pay what the dealer pays." You've said it. I've heard it a hundred times. It's one of the most expensive sentences in this business — and not for the reason you think. WrenchWay and ASE just surveyed more than 5,500 people in this trade. One number in there should stop you cold. They asked techs at dealerships if they feel valued and respected by management. 39% said yes. They asked techs at independent shops the same thing. 61% said yes. Then they asked if they'd recommend their shop to a friend. Dealership: 36%. Independent: 63%. Almost two to one. On the exact thing a raise can't buy. So why do you keep losing techs to them? Because you've been guarding the wrong door. Pay is how a tech walks in. It's almost never why he walks out. Think about the last good one who walked. Was it really about a couple of bucks an hour? Or did he stop seeing a reason to stay? Here's what they actually leave for. Not money. A map. Techs don't quit jobs. They quit dead ends. A raise answers one question: "What do I make?" That's not the question keeping your best guy up at night. His question is, "Where am I going?" And in most shops, the honest answer is: nowhere. Same bay, same work, same ceiling, five years from now. You don't fix that with a few more dollars per hour. You fix it with a future he can see. Here's the part that stung when I sat with the data. They asked owners and techs the same question: is this trade getting better? 40% of owners said yes. Only 23% of techs agreed. That's not an industry statistic. It's personal. It's the exact distance between how good you think your shop feels — and how it actually feels standing under a lift at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Every "I never saw it coming" resignation lives in that gap. And the owners it happens to aren't bad owners. They're good ones. With a blind spot. You're not losing. You're winning the hard part. The part that takes years — culture, respect, a crew that actually likes working for you — you've already built. The data proves it.

Can $5K in pizza outwork $60K in turnover? A $5K weekly lunch habit beats a $60K bad hire — if you ask the right question and shut up after. In this post: - The question that turns "fine" into a fix. - Why monthly meetings fail where weekly ones win. - The ten-second discipline that makes or breaks the meeting (and it's not the lunch). - The math: $29,500 per bay × 50% gross profit, and why $5K starts looking cheap. - The six-step Monday version — including the week most owners quit before it works. 4 min read. Short on time? Watch or listen to the video walkthrough below while you're on the go. ___ Five thousand dollars a year. That's what a shop in the Midwest spends on Thursday lunch for the team. They've been doing it for ten years. They've fired exactly two people in that time. Most of the team has been there since the day they were hired. It's not the lunch. Same day, every week. That's the cadence. One question with a specific shape: "If we tweaked one process around here, what would you tweak?" Then the owners shut up. Three things, working together. None of them work alone. WHY WEEKLY Most shops run feedback as an event. Annual reviews. Quarterly check-ins. Maybe a monthly meeting if the owner is ambitious. Each one fails for a different reason. Annual reviews show up too late. By the time you hear about the broken process, the tech has either worked around it or left. Quarterly check-ins turn into HR theater. Everyone shows up with rehearsed answers because they've had three months to forget what was actually irritating them in March. Monthly meetings get closer. But the average tech has already swallowed three or four small complaints by the time the meeting comes around. Most won't bother resurfacing them. Weekly is different. The irritation is fresh. The tech remembers the exact thing that broke yesterday. The fix is still cheap. Frequency is what converts feedback into a culture. Without it, feedback decays into compliance — and compliance is what techs do right before they update their resume.

I was asked recently by a podcast host what technicians should look for when searching for a shop. I answered off the cuff with what I've seen over the years that separates the shops that really take care of their employees from those who don't. I thought it was a pretty good answer in the moment but the question nagged at me long after the interview. So I teamed up with my buddy ChatGPT and ran some prompts to find out what the common threads are between the shops we've worked with that hire faster and retain longer. Then I compiled them together into a checklist for technicians (see below). How does your shop stak up with my list? Am I on the mark or totally off-base? Would love to get your feedback. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Technician's Checklist for Identifying a Good Auto Repair Shop to Work For: 1. Company Culture & Values - Prioritizes culture-fit when hiring. - Demonstrates clear mission and core values emphasizing integrity, communication, and teamwork. - Environment encourages positive attitude, open communication, and mutual support. 2. Leadership & Management - Owner or management has direct industry experience as technicians. - Management maintains an open-door policy for employees. - Regular, structured feedback meetings between management and employees (e.g., quarterly goals meetings, daily huddles and 1-on-1's). 3. Work Environment - Well-equipped, Modern facilities with necessary diagnostic tools and equipment. - Access to comprehensive resources, including tools, laptops/tablets, diagnostic software, and digital inspection processes. - Shop promotes efficiency and organized workflow to minimize downtime and maximize earning potential. 4. Training & Development - Strong emphasis on ongoing training and professional development (ASE certifications encouraged and incentivized). - Clearly defined apprenticeship or mentorship programs. - Opportunities to attend industry-specific training courses and certifications, often employer-paid.