Independent garages juggle mechanic shortage and computerized autos

The cost of getting your car fixed has increased by 50% since the start of the pandemic. That is at least in part due to a shortage of auto technicians and mechanics — every year, techs who either retire or leave the profession outnumber the newcomers by about 37,000, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

On top of this shortage, even the day-to-day work of auto techs is beginning to look more than a little different: wrench-wielding mechanics sometimes have to act like they’re from the IT department to get a car working.

Charlie Salino sees these changes firsthand. After his father bought a shop in the 1980s, the young Salino learned automotive mechanics. After a year of college, he entered the workforce, and today runs his father’s independent Brooklyn auto repair garage.

Depending on how you look at it, Salino is an anomaly these days: He’s 35 years old, and relatively young for an automotive technician. Finding others like him — newer, eager techs new to the workforce — has been a challenge.

The Brooklyn mechanic gave a few reasons for this. Chief among them is career development. Early on in their careers, techs are limited to grunt work.

“They don't really feel like they've grown in their skills because they're stuck doing the same things over and over again: balancing tires, doing brakes, oil changes,” Salino said. “They're not doing the heavy burden stuff.”

There is a way to secure those exciting, “heavy burden” jobs though — better tools. Many times, auto techs bring their own tools to the shop, but those tools can get very expensive. The price of toolboxes, for example, can easily cruise into five-figure territory. When a young tech goes into debt to buy tools, they may spend the majority of their earnings paying off the purchase, and as Salino said, “it usually takes up to 10 years of experience to make a top salary.”

And another issue? Modern cars in general.

Shanti Mathew is a longtime customer of Salino’s; she considers him her local neighborhood mechanic. And one day, she encountered a problem with her 2021 Mazda.

“My car was having a persistent problem of not starting,” she said. “I learned the name of my local AAA guy because he kept coming out and jump-starting my car.”

Mathew took her car to Salino, who “unplugged everything that could be unplugged,” trying to find the issue. Eventually, the mechanic realized the fix was out of his purview. Literally: he did not have the license or tools to fix the problem. So he told her to take her car to the service center at a Mazda dealership.

Mathew says the fix was straightforward: “The solve was in resetting the software system in some way.”

A reboot for the car.

Repairs like these require certain software tools. Dealerships have those, but for independent techs, they pose problems. Some car manufacturers won’t sell them at all. And if they do qualify for the purchase, they’re often very expensive.

“If I spend $15,000 to $20,000 on, let's say, a piece of Audi software, the repair that you're gonna charge a customer may be only $500 to $1,000,” says Salino. “So who knows when you'll see the rest of that? That could take weeks. That could take months.”

In fact, apart from service on brakes, tires, suspension, and other routine maintenance, he passes on working on newer European cars like BMWs or Volvos. Software services for airbags, key and ignition, and detailed wiring are all limited access. Salino said some manufacturers won’t even sell him seatbelts.

And over a year, that work he passed on adds up. Salino estimated it's in the range of $50,000 to $100,000.

“I  think cars that can't be fixed by qualified people that work on cars, shouldn't be sold to the public,” Salino said. “I think it's kind of crazy that things like software issues cause batteries to drain, and I can't do anything about it.”

Still, Salino knows persistence in this adjusting industry is increasingly a rarity. But as he put it, “sometimes you're just good at something. And you like doing it. So you just go with it.”