The automotive industry has a serious problem – and more mechanics are starting to talk about it

More mechanics are starting to say out loud what the automotive industry has tried to live around for years: the work is still important, the skills are still valuable, but the structure of the job is pushing good technicians out. In a candid video on Herron’s Performance Garage, technician Andrew Herron said he is leaving the trade himself, and his explanation sounded less like one man’s frustration than a summary of a much wider problem.

Herron’s argument was not that mechanics are lazy, underpaid in every case, or unwilling to work hard. In fact, he made almost the opposite case. He said many technicians can earn respectable money, sometimes even strong money, but the way that money is earned, the pressure tied to it, and the lack of real long-term growth are wearing people down.

That is what makes his message land. This is not a complaint about turning wrenches. It is a complaint about an industry that often asks people to give everything they have physically and mentally, then acts surprised when they decide they cannot do it for another 20 years.

The Pay Can Look Good – Until It Suddenly Doesn’t

Herron opened with a line that probably explains a lot of the anger in this business: have you ever been at work for 50 hours and gotten paid for 10. He said mechanics know exactly what that feels like, and that it is one of the clearest reasons technicians are leaving.

That point goes to the heart of the flat-rate pay system, which Herron called the main reason many mechanics walk away. On paper, the earnings can sound solid. He said many of these jobs can pay $70,000 to $80,000 a year, with some technicians reaching $100,000 or even $110,000 depending on performance.

But the problem, as he described it, is that this money is not built on a stable foundation. Under flat rate, a technician is paid by labor hours assigned to the job, not by the actual time spent at work. If a brake job pays one hour, then one hour is all the technician gets, whether the work takes 30 minutes, three hours, or the better part of a day because something goes wrong.

That creates a strange and punishing setup. When the work is quick, clean, and repetitive, a skilled technician can beat the clock and do well. When the work gets ugly, especially in places with rust, seized bolts, wiring issues, or major engine problems, the technician can spend a week grinding through a difficult repair and end up with a check that barely makes sense.

Herron put it bluntly: when something goes wrong, it is not the dealership or the shop that takes the hit. It is the mechanic.

That may be the most important sentence in the whole discussion, because it explains the resentment so many technicians feel. The person carrying the most physical and technical burden is often the same person absorbing the financial damage when the repair becomes complicated.

Upward Mobility Runs Out Faster Than People Think

Another major point Herron raised was the lack of meaningful career growth once a mechanic reaches the top of the technician ladder. He said many people picture the trade as a climb: get trained, gain experience, earn certifications, become a master technician, and then keep moving upward.

But in his telling, that upward path largely disappears once you get there.

Herron explained that mechanics are generally viewed as master technicians after reaching top-level certifications, including state credentials and ASE certifications. Yet he also noted a weakness in that system: a person can become certified on paper without really learning how to survive in a real shop. In the industry, he said, that matters. Shops and working mechanics know the difference between someone who has credentials and someone who has actually lived the job.

For those who do work their way up the hard way, the reward is often less than expected. Herron said once a technician reaches that high level, develops a strong diagnostic process, and has seen most of the jobs that come through a shop, there is not much else to move toward. You have essentially maxed out the trade without really escaping it.

Some move into running a shop, some take a foreman or dispatch role, and some shift into service writing, but Herron did not describe those as true upward steps so much as side moves or entirely different jobs. In his view, a mechanic often becomes a master technician and then simply stays there until retirement, assuming the job does not physically or mentally burn him out first.

That is a bigger problem than it might sound. A profession can survive a lot if people believe there is a future inside it. Once workers start feeling there is no next level worth reaching, the job stops looking like a career and starts looking like a trap with decent wages.

The Flat-Rate System Creates Pressure That Can Warp the Work

Herron’s deepest frustration was not just that flat rate can produce bad weeks. It was that the entire system creates pressure that can quietly reward speed over care.

He said shops sometimes offer versions of flat rate with guarantees, such as promising 40 hours of pay even if a technician does not hit that number. On the surface, that sounds like a fix. But Herron argued that if a worker keeps relying on that guarantee, management will often decide he is not productive enough and replace him with someone faster.

That is where the system turns corrosive.

According to Herron, there is often an unspoken pressure in the industry to get work out no matter the cost, because if you do not, you do not get paid the way you need to. He was careful not to say every technician puts out bad work, but he clearly believed the structure nudges people toward rushed repairs and lower standards in ways the industry does not like to discuss openly.

That may be one of the most damaging parts of the model. When a pay system punishes thoroughness and rewards rapid output, it does more than create unhappy workers. It risks creating bad repairs, shaky ethics, and a culture where doing the job correctly can feel like a financial mistake.

Herron said this was the biggest reason he left. That is easy to understand. People can tolerate hard work for a long time. What they struggle with is a system that makes them choose between their paycheck and the standards they believe in.

The Job Takes a Toll on the Body and the Mind

Herron also spent a good deal of time talking about the physical and emotional damage the work can do. He said plainly that being a mechanic is hard on the body, and if a technician is not extremely disciplined about food, exercise, recovery, and mental health, the work will eat him alive.

Even then, he suggested discipline only goes so far. He described the reality of coming home after a 12-hour day sore, drained, and with nothing left in the tank. At that point, stretching, recovery work, and self-care become one more task piled onto a person who already feels used up.

He also made a more personal observation that felt especially telling. Think of the mechanics you know, he said, and they are probably angry or frustrated most of the time. In his view, that is not because mechanics are naturally bitter people. It is because the job takes so much out of them that by the time they get home, there is very little left to give.

That is a hard thing to hear, but it rings true in a lot of trades where the worker’s body is the first machine being worn down. What makes Herron’s point stronger is that he did not separate the physical damage from the mental pressure. He said either one alone might be manageable. Put them together, and the job can become overwhelming.

That combination may explain why the industry’s retention problem feels so stubborn. This is not just about wages, or just about management, or just about the physical grind. It is about all of them stacking on top of one another until technicians decide the trade is not worth the cost.

More Mechanics Are Finding a Way Out

Herron said the exodus is already happening. In his view, mechanics are not just threatening to leave. They are leaving at an all-time high, and many are not coming back.

He pointed to several routes technicians are taking once they step away from dealership life. Some move into industrial maintenance, where the work is cleaner, less chaotic, and more focused on preventative upkeep. Others go into fleet maintenance, where they can work hourly, focus on one group of vehicles, and avoid the brutal uncertainty of flat rate. Still others move into heavy-duty work or field service.

What is striking there is that some of those jobs are physically harder in a strict sense, yet Herron still described them as easier overall because they are mentally less punishing. That says a lot. People will choose tougher labor if it comes with more fairness, more predictability, and less constant pressure.

He also said younger mechanics are not entering the trade fast enough, and that many workers in the 25-to-35 age range are giving the industry five to ten years and then walking away. Part of that, he said, is tool debt. Part of it is the broader reality that once technicians build a serious skill set, they also build the ability to leave.

That may be the industry’s biggest long-term threat. Automotive shops are not just losing inexperienced workers. They are losing the very people who have already paid their dues, bought the tools, learned the systems, and proven they can handle complex work. Once those people decide the trade is not treating them fairly, they have enough value to go somewhere else.

This Sounds Less Like a Rant Than a Warning

What makes Herron’s video worth paying attention to is that it does not sound like a lazy complaint from someone who simply wanted easier work. It sounds like a warning from someone who knows the trade, respects the craft, and no longer believes the structure around it is sustainable.

He said outright that the automotive world is full of talented technicians and passionate people who care deeply about what they do. His criticism was aimed at the system, not at the craft itself. That distinction matters, because it shows why the problem may be harder to fix than a simple hiring shortage.

The issue is not that nobody wants to work on cars. The issue is that too many people who know how to work on cars no longer want to do it under these rules.

If Herron is right, and plenty of comments on his video suggest many mechanics think he is, then the industry’s real problem is not just finding new technicians. It is rebuilding a version of the job that skilled people would actually want to stay in. 

Until that happens, more mechanics are going to keep doing exactly what Andrew Herron did: look at the trade they trained for, look at what it has become, and decide they would rather take their skills somewhere else.