Number of mechanics in a shop

I work in a shop at a construction company that does grading and paving. We have 43 class 4 thru 8 trucks all high mileage and 40 pickups and 75 pieces of equipment. We do 90% or more of the work in house with two mechanics I was wondering how many people other shops have

Key word being "mechanics" here. Ive seen shops with as much equipment or more and there are 8 People in the shop...…….one or 2 being an actual mechanic. Hell, a lot of the equipment dealers have this exact scenario. There really is no average mechanic to equipment ratio that I know of. The efficiency of what you have there is what counts (if you have the skill level, tooling , equipment, time, etc....) If you are running that much equipment/trucks and your keeping up without outside help then your dam sure doing the job! The one thing you may think of often is how underpaid you are in that scenario......LOL

With that much equipment normally three mechanics. Big point is how many hours a week are you working to keep up?

When I was in construction with 300 pieces of equipment. There were four mechanics and 2 pm trucks. I got burned out because no one would make repairs and it was left up to me to do all the troubleshooting and major repairs. Which lead to a lot of late nights. In construction everything but what you were working on was needed right now. I did that for ten years. Eventually I had enough and got out of construction because there are no real mechanics just parts changers and they were shaking down near or the same wage as me. It will be a cold day in hell before I would go back.

Fuel inj. shop STARTED WITH 8-10.. down to 2 now..
Engine shop, the same..
Sounds/looks like to me> somebody doesn't know how to run a business.??
BUT HEY.. everybody's doing a GREAT JOB.. {if asked}

That's an old question probably going back to the beginning of the industrial revolution. Rather than how many people shops have the question should be how many people in a shop are needed. If all the equipment is new and only needed recommended maintenance then two are likely to be enough. On the other hand if the fleet is of mixed age and make up and the mechanics are constantly doing overtime to keep up and equipment is not available to complete billable work, then the maintenance and repair staff would need to increase.

When I was in the trash truck world they figured one mechanic for 7 trucks. That was on fairly new well kept trucks.

that sounds like a ridiculously high work load, almost 160 pieces for two people?, if all you did was services that seems hard to keep up. Owners need to face reality

Several years ago when our company was in the process of being merged with an English company a gentleman by the name of Lord Digby, or at least that's what we were told his name was, was touring several of the plant locations in the US.

He stopped by the shop at our quarry and chatted with Norm and I for a bit one question he asked was how many mechanics this plant had. We said you are looking at all them right now. To that he replied that in the company he worked for a plant of our size would typically have twice that many.

Well a couple years latter after the merger Norm took a transfer to another quarry a bit closer to his home. There were a few rumors about the company replacing him at our location, but after about ten years I retired and they still did not feel the need to have him replaced and even the guy who somewhat replaced me still only works part time in the shop.

Seems like someone in upper management has a reading comprehension problem! See when they see the term "Preventive Maintenance" they read it as "Preventing Maintenance" and do everything they can to support that idea!

I think the issue is one of perception. Management perceives that operators operating machines are making money for the plant. Mechanics are not tied to operational profits so must be a line item of expense. A machine going down shows a loss on production which usually equates to a loss of profit. Since the mechanic is never tied to profit, there is no way to recoup his expense. Looking at this from the back hand side, say a mechanic does everything proper and the machine never goes down. Again he is not tied to the profit side of the business so now they have to lay him off until a machine goes down.

Another Catch 22!

I know of a trucking company with 4 drivers and 2 mechanics...

Sounds like you guys are really moving.

A local place I know of has 5 semi tractors, 6 tandem dump trucks, 2 shooter trucks, 2 small dump trucks, 2 small hoes, a small crusher plant, and 3 loaders. They have a full time "mechanic" and a part time PM guy. Their "mechanic" is good at changing tires, that's about it. They could easily get by with one part time mechanic who actually knew what he was doing. It sounds like a lot of equipment, but there's only 7 or 8 guys working there, so not many hours/miles being put on the equipment.

Truth is if the trucks and excavators don't run then everyone can stay home. I have told the office on many occasion when they get to beating their chest about how
important they are that if the trucks don't roll you don't have anything to dispatch and the secretaries have no paper work and the driver has nothing to tear up.
Companies hinge on equipment moving even if they don't own any equipment.

We run 60 tractors and 96 trailers and three in the shop

Truck Shop

The local public utility has 2 full time wrenches and a couple guys for stationary gen sets and such. The fleet is around 200 articles from small power equipment/light trucks/heavy trucks/ and machines up to 210 ex size. About 40 of those are trailers. This is all newish stuff and they farm out hydraulic work and major overhauls. The genset guys look after 16? engines and do other things in those facilities. I'm not sure who looks after the giant diesels in the powerhouse?

When contracted at the quarries they generally had two or three service techs, lube and grease men and ALWAYS busy, they hired two of us to share across three quarries for heavier work on some ancient crap machines where in short order they were at six contractors. As the numbers went up of aged machines and quarries either opened or added the mechanic numbers also swelled where at one time were a dozen, three with their own heavy trucks.

Fleet work, less than 30 power units, less than 50 trailers and refrigeration equipment fairly late model two lube techs and two mechanics is enough. Do not want to be paying top end wages for oil changes.

I know every place is different, be it the age of equipment, hours of use of equipment and the amount of work done in house or farmed out. One thing at the quarry where I worked I preferred to be the guy who checked tires and greased the equipment and right on up to doing the major out of frame engine and transmission work.

It may have been mostly because too many of the operators did not like to get their hands dirty and if a fitting would not take grease or just leaked around the zerk they would just ignore it and move on. Then instead of me needing to replace a 25 cent zerk I would end up a few weeks latter spending a day or more removing a worn out pin and bushing.

And if the operators were asked to check tire pressures, if they even tried to do it they could not be bothered to open eyes enough to see the mud was worn away from the loose lug nuts or frame bolts.

If you have the luxury of working somewhere where management is such that they can attract good workers. Those who feel they are working for a company that has opportunities for advancement. And you can find someone who is willing to start out at the lower levels doing work like greasing and oil changes knowing that if they do a good job they stand a good chance of working up in the shop that would be a different story!