Why do most diesel techs work hourly and most auto techs work flat rate?

New to the auto repair field and curious as to why this seems to be the case generally.

Arlan Van Eeckhout said:

New to the auto repair field and curious as to why this seems to be the case generally.

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Do auto techs have the option to not work flat rate ?

I thought it has always been that way. Not sure why

digger doug said:

Do auto techs have the option to not work flat rate ?

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Yes they do have a choice of employers

Jonas302 said:

Yes they do have a choice of employers

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If they work at an auto dealership do they have the options of flat rate or hour ?

I'd say its because cars are all pretty similar across the lineup and rarely change much, if at all, between model years (unless its getting a major refresh). Repetition builds speed.

Heavy equipment is an entirely different bag of snakes. The shear size of an equipment manufacturer's lineup dwarfs an automakers. There's just so many different possible repairs, machine arrangements within a single machine model as well as customer installed equipment that can add difficulty. Its hard to build up speed on repairs if you don't do them often.

Arlan Van Eeckhout said:

New to the auto repair field and curious as to why this seems to be the case generally.

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Because all 2015 Honda Pilots (for instance) are built about the same so it will take the same time to change a water pump or whatever.

Diesel, you may have to move and unbolt 4 customer attached contraptions before you reach what you are after, and besides that no two trucks seem to be built to the same specs.

Equipment are built more to the same standard like the Honda above, but they last a lot longer than said Honda so you might be working on a D7 built in 2015 one day, and a D7 built in 1975 the next day, and nobody is going to bother to make a flat rate book for that, plus they don't make millions of the same like the Honda either.

digger doug said:

Do auto techs have the option to not work flat rate ?

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only if they hire on at an hourly shop


Heavy equipment has book hours for repairs even if we are paid hourly.

You can miss me with that flat rate bullshit. You get screwed on complex diag or if something goes wrong. For example the undercarriage I did last week took many, many hours of rosebud heating to break corrosion and lots of extracting broken bolts. The time the book says I should have done it in and would have been paid accordingly flat rate was a pittance compared to reality.

JD955SC said:

only if they hire on at an hourly shop


Heavy equipment has book hours for repairs even if we are paid hourly.

You can miss me with that flat rate bullshit. You get screwed on complex diag or if something goes wrong. For example the undercarriage I did last week took many, many hours of rosebud heating to break corrosion and lots of extracting broken bolts. The time the book says I should have done it in and would have been paid accordingly flat rate was a pittance compared to reality.

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The book times are BS too. Based off brand new machines, in a shop, not yet dirty, smacked up/damaged or full of seized parts. Also doesn't account for being in the middle of a pit, freezing your bag off during winter either.

I think some auto repairs are by the hour too. A mechanic friend is mostly a diesel tech. at a Ford dealership. I went to see him 1 day and he was changing out a V10 in a superduty truck. What seriously complicated things was the truck was for railroad maintainence and had the drop down train wheels in the way. The whole front end of the truck had to be removed and the train wheels were just in the way. It looked like a huge job and I think he banged his shins on the railroad wheel attachment a few times. I can't see there being a flat rate for that. Friend does piece work though and is really good so can often complete jobs quicker than the book rate so can can bill for more than 8 hours a day. That might be why good mechanics prefer the book rate and piece work. They can can do more than 8 hours work in an 8 hour day. Sometimes if he finishes early he can go home early. This is nice on Friday's before a long weekend.

I was reading where Henry Ford adopted flat rate as early as 1918 and pushed it hard into the dealership network all the way to WWII. It caught on, industry-wide. I’m trying to remember the name of the book.

I’ll look it up later. Finishing up a pork chop dinner in the cafeteria and $hit posting on the HEF. Thursday is hot yoga night in the oil patch. Don’t want to be late.

HE mechanics never go anywhere quickly, every day goes into the night it seems and there is one more "machine down" call on the phone.

Flat rate creates give a crap mechanics, and parts and fasteners left out of the puzzle or improperly torqued etc. Corners are cut all the time. I would take a bet that when they do a job like HVAC with dash removal, that many difficult screws and bolts are left behind. Flat rate means fast and careless work. And that is why heavy equipment mechanics are not flat rate, the stuff is just too expensive to wam bam it.
And by the way, diesel tech is a misnomer. They should call it a truck mechanic or equipment mechanic. Very few jobs are true diesel engine techs, meaning that is all they do and no air brakes and unrelated garbage.

Welcome to HEF Arian!

I found this in a general Google search. It is just an excerpt, but I thought it was interesting.

I liked flat rate, back in the 90s. I made mad money on rolling stock at the dealer. Yes, you learn short-cuts, no you don't sacrifice quality. My labor was tied to that job for 90 days. If I had a "come-back" the labor paid to another tech to correct it came from my gains and losses, if it was a legitimate workmanship issue. If a DT466 paid 30 hours for an in-frame, you better believe I beat that book. Seized fasteners, damaged holes, those were what we called "T-ops" time and material operations beyond the normal scope of "remove and replace or remove and install.
M11 and N14 help me provide for my family in the early years. Flat rate ain't all bad.
Troubleshooting and diagnostic service just aren't there with hydraulics and heavy powertrain like in automotive. Electronics mask so much with compensating software. You gotta know the base engine before you can get to know the masked symptoms. Emissions is a whole other ball of yarn.

I've made a hell of a living off beating flat rate times.

At there green deere dealer they rolled out a flat rate based bonus. You'd give a quoted time and if you beat it you'd get payed for the amount of time you got payed your hourly rate for the extra quoted hours. No one ever got anything from it ...... About a year ago the local bobcat dealer called me up and told me the pay and that they where on a similar system. Told me 22ish bucks a hour and with the bonus and 40 hour weeks most made 50000 a year. I told them figure it up for 65000 a year and 40 hour weeks and no bonus. Never heard from them again. They'd probably be like the deere dealer and yell at me monthly for pulling wrenches at home. Two points there thats how/where I learned and continue to do so. And most importantly when I'm not on your time clock what I'm doing is not your business. Call it moon lightning or thievery or whatever I don't care.
In short pay what a man or lady is worth and if there that bad of a employee get rid of them.

Me--I'm just slower than sh!t. I grew up on a dairy, milk them titties.

Truck Shop said:

Me--I'm just slower than sh!t. I grew up on a dairy, milk them titties.

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Dicke Titten translates to big tits

There is a lot of stuff on the web telling how it works but not how it came about. I can only relate what I saw in the late sixties and early seventies when there was a strike by the Automotive Machinist Union against some car shops. In those days all the dealers had the same contract with the union so if there was a problem, the union would post pickets on all the other shops and generally shut down all of them. The tactic worked until all the dealers got together and funded a suit that went to the US Supreme Court who said each dealer had to have separate contracts and the union could no longer shutdown all the dealers for one contract. The leverage was taken away and the shops generally got together on flat rating jobs.

What I have seen around here now is when you take a car in for a problem, there is an initial charge for checkout and then a service writer calls you up with a conclusion and a price to fix it. When they call you saying it is done and you get there to pick up the car, they hit you with all kinds of extra parts charges, freight, environmental and miscellaneous hardware charges. There are lots of family owned auto dealers here as it is very seldom that someone is stupid enough to ruin that kind of gold mine.