What are typical pay levels for automotive technicians?

Some of the best technicians can earn a solid six figures, Patel said...Top flat-rate and master technicians routinely clear $100,000, and the fastest specialists earn as much as $160,000.

How does Tekmetric help shops increase their Average Repair Order (ARO)?

The [digital vehicle inspection is where most ARO is won or lost](https://www.tekmetric.com/post/digital-vehicle-inspection-software-increase-sales-aro). A location that completes thorough inspections on nearly every car — with photos and clear findings — surfaces more legitimate work and gives customers a reason to say yes.

How Shop Culture Solves the Technician Shortage | Tekmetric

Tekmetric CEO Sunil Patel emphasizes that addressing the automotive technician shortage fundamentally requires cultivating a strong, positive shop culture to attract and retain skilled technicians.

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See how Metro Motor grew their average repair order to $800 across 19 shops with Tekmetric

Under the Lift: Stories from the Automotive Frontier (New Episode)

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Tekmetric CEO Sunil Patel Says Solving the Technician Shortage Starts With Culture

Kris Turner

July 9, 2026

Read time: 11 min

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Creating a great culture at an auto repair shop is the key to keeping and growing technicians

Cars are lasting longer than ever, but the technicians who fix them are becoming harder to find. The average vehicle on U.S. roads is about 13 years old, and there are not enough skilled technicians to go around.

The auto repair sector needs about 71,000 new technicians a year, and the training pipeline delivers only about 50,000. That is more than 20,000 unfilled positions every year, and the shortfall continues to grow.

That gap is stark.

For auto repair shops, the shortage is not a statistic. It is a daily question: who is going to fix the cars?

Sunil Patel, Tekmetric founder and CEO, said this crisis can be solved with auto repair shop improvements. Those solutions, however, often are not the ones most shop owners typically expect.

Before he founded Tekmetric, Patel owned Motorwerks, an independent repair shop in Houston, Texas, where he learned about the technician shortage from inside the bay. After years of seeing the problem as a shop owner and now as an automotive repair technology leader, Patel says the shortage will not be solved with better software alone.

It starts with creating a great culture and valuing people. Patel speaks from firsthand experience, and his conviction on where to start is clear.

"I would spend a lot more time on the culture side of it," he said. "I would make sure I'm building an amazing culture that attracts amazing technicians."

The First Hire

Patel started Motorwerks as a one-man operation. He turned wrenches at night and took vehicles in during the day. There was no hiring strategy because there was no one to hire but himself.

Then the work outgrew him.

"Eventually I started getting busier and busier, and I needed a technician," Patel said.

He reached out to a contact at a local dealership and asked if he knew anyone looking for work. The technician that was recommended had just been let go from the dealership. He had made a mistake, but he was genuinely skilled. Patel took the chance and hired him.

It paid off.

"He would crank out hours, and he was really good at his job," Patel recalled.

The technician struggled with diagnostics, but that happened to be the part Patel enjoyed most. The two skillsets fit together. The shop kept moving.

That early hire taught Patel something he tells shop owners to this day: a great technician is rarely great at everything, and the shops that win are the ones that build a team around complementary strengths and skills.

Why Hiring Became Harder

The work itself is part of the challenge. Repairing cars has always been demanding, but it keeps getting harder, and nowhere more than at an auto repair shop.

Consider the difference between a dealership and a shop. A dealership technician works on a narrow set of vehicles from a single manufacturer, where the engineering stays largely consistent from one model to the next.

"If I take the most compact car versus the most expensive car, the underlying technology is going to be very similar at a dealership," Patel explained.

A technician who has never touched a particular model can usually still work on it because the platform underneath is familiar.

An independent auto repair shop has no such predictability. It can take all makes and all models.

"You don't know what's going to come through that door," Patel said.

Shops can see a Honda one morning, a Toyota that afternoon, and a European luxury car the next day. Every job can push a technician past what they know best. And the steepest part of that climb is no longer mechanical — it is electronic.

"The hard part of this is not the mechanical side," Patel said. "It's the electronic side where technicians usually get stuck."

Modern vehicles run on layered software, networked sensors, and advanced driver-assistance systems. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that technicians increasingly work on these complex electronic and computerized systems, and diagnosing them well is a specialized skill. Those specialized skills are exactly what the labor market is short on.

No shop can send its team to factory training for every brand. There are more than 50 vehicle manufacturers on the market. The best shops specialize the way Patel did at Motorwerks: for instance, one technician strong on European vehicles, another on Japanese, another on domestic. That mix lets a shop triage almost anything that rolls in, and it turns a hiring problem into a team-building one.

The Myths Keeping Young People Out

Ask most people to picture a technician, and the image is dated. Greasy hands. A hot bay. Hard, dirty work.

Patel said that picture is a mischaracterization of how technicians work today.

"A lot of that is changing," he said.

Some independent shops today are fully air-conditioned. Part of the work is no longer mechanical — it is electronic, diagnostic, coding, and programming.

"You've got to be able to use a laptop," Patel said.

The old image does real damage. It steers young people away from a career that has quietly modernized. Correcting it, in Patel's view, is one of the industry's most important recruiting jobs.

Culture Is the Real Reason Technicians Leave

Patel said one pattern separates the businesses that attract and keep great technicians from the ones that cannot. It is culture. And many shops have room for improvement.

"When a technician leaves a repair shop, it's not because of the money," Patel said. "It's mainly because of the culture and environment, or lack thereof, that causes them to leave to another shop."

There is a structural reason culture gets neglected. Many independent shops are founded by technicians.

"They're not trained in the fundamentals of running a business, attracting top talent, and building an amazing culture," Patel said.

Most learn it through trial and error.

His prescription is uncomfortable for a lot of owners. Ask your technicians how they actually feel about working for you. What do they like? What do they not like?

"These are things shop owners sometimes don't even want to ask because it's out of their comfort zone," Patel said.

But the question itself sends a message.

"I want to make sure I'm doing everything in my power to build an amazing environment for you to thrive in, to grow," Patel said. "This is an emotional thing.”

The cost of getting it wrong is measurable. Collision shops alone see 30 to 40 percent annual technician turnover, according to a 2024 industry study from I-CAR and the Society of Collision Repair Specialists. Replacing skilled workers runs an estimated one-half to two times their annual pay when recruiting, lost production, and training are totaled, per Gallup.

In a trade this short on talent, a culture that keeps people is not a soft benefit. It is a bottom-line advantage.

The Small Things Add Up

Building culture does not require a consultant or a budget line. At Motorwerks, it was lunch.

Every Friday, Patel bought the team lunch and let the technicians pick the food. Eventually, he started barbecuing in the back of the shop, then rotated the grilling duty across the crew. He also experimented with better health care and benefits.

None of it was flashy. All of it pointed the same direction.

"Making them feel like we care is what it boils down to," Patel said.

Real Pay and a Real Career Ladder

Technician compensation is misunderstood. Many people assume a shop career is a financial dead end. It is not.

"Some of the best technicians can earn a solid six figures," Patel said.

The range is wide, and that is the part young people rarely hear. The median automotive technician earns about $49,670 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the ceiling is far higher. Top flat-rate and master technicians routinely clear $100,000, and the fastest specialists earn as much as $160,000. The career rewards skill and speed, and its best earners are paid like it.

But money alone does not keep a technician on the job because the work is physically taxing. Technicians spend hours in awkward positions, lifting heavy parts, and holding components in place. Cuts, bruises, and back strain add up. Long days take their toll.

That is why Patel believes shops need a ladder, not just a wage. Owners should create a pathway for young technicians to grow into team leads, roles where their experience lifts the next generation rather than only their own billable hours. A career with a visible next step keeps good people in the industry.

Where Technology Fits

Patel is candid about the role Tekmetric plays in all of this. Technology did not create the shortage, but fragmented software makes technicians' jobs harder than they need to be.

For years, the shop technology stack was disconnected: one system for the front counter and a separate one for the technicians in the bay.

"Nobody's ever created an end-to-end solution from the time a vehicle is taken into a repair shop to the time it's fixed," Patel said.

Building that single, unified platform is the problem he set out to solve.

Tekmetric built tools specifically for technicians. The Tekmetric mobile app lets technicians move faster and target the exact friction that makes technicians skip digital vehicle inspections (DVIs).

Ask a technician why they do not run a DVI on every vehicle, and the answer is speed. It takes too long to photograph the issue, edit the images, and write it up. Tekmetric collapses that into something as simple as taking a video.

The payoff shows up in the numbers shops care about. The average repair order across Tekmetric shops is $612. With DVIs active, it climbs to $741. Add MotoVisuals video, and it reaches roughly $800. Faster, easier inspections do not just help the technician. They help the customer make an informed decision, and they help the shop grow.

The technicians are now the ones pushing owners to modernize.

Patel has watched technicians go to new shops and refuse to work on anything else other than Tekmetric. The platform's ease of use is what keeps them hooked.

"They tell the new shop, 'I'm not using whatever you have. You have to switch to Tekmetric,'" he said.

Building the Next Generation

Closing the shortage means reaching young people before they ever pick a trade. Patel is betting on the classroom.

Tekmetric is leading the effort by working directly with trade schools to understand what it can do to help, and what it found was a gap. Many training programs still run on pen and paper, or carry a cost for software and repair guides that creates a financial barrier to invest in other places.

"A young person comes in who's stuck on their iPhone, and they think, 'This is how this industry operates,'" Patel said.

The disconnect between the technology in a student's pocket and the technology in the classroom is its own recruiting problem.

To combat this, Tekmetric gives its platform to these schools for free. The goal is to let the next generation see, from day one, that a modern shop runs on modern tools.

Patel's pitch to any high school guidance counselor is straightforward. A student can leave high school, work as a technician for five to 10 years, and open a shop of their own.

"That is something exciting, and it's meaningful income," he said. “It is a path to ownership, not just a job.”

Why It Matters to Him

Patel has been in this industry long enough to feel its history personally, back to the muscle cars of the 1980s.

"It's part of the fabric of America, and it's what makes this country great," he said.

He knows the pains that shop owners, service advisors, and technicians carry, because he has carried them himself.

He is hopeful the shortage reverses, and clear-eyed about what will and will not get it there. Better tools help. Better training helps. Better culture helps most.

The shortage, in the end, is a people problem. Patel's whole argument is that shops should start treating it like one.

"AI is not going to solve fixing cars," Patel said. "That's something a human being is going to have to do for a while."

👉 Ready to grow your automotive business? [Book a personalized Tekmetric Demo Here]

FAQ

Your auto parts inventory management system should match the operational pace of your shop, and the system shouldn’t be so complex or time-consuming that it takes time away from hours better spent repairing cars.

Running a more efficient shop will lead to a better experience for customers, more clarity in the repair process, and ultimately more approved repairs. That means more money for your shop!

Still using pen and paper to keep track of your shop's parts inventory? Let's help you find a better way with a modern, cloud-based shop management system.

Shop Management

Modernize Your Auto Repair Parts Management Process With the Right Tools

December 5, 2023

Read time: 1 min

“Receipts.” We all know the literal meaning of this term—those pieces of paper or emails/texts a retailer sends you as proof of purchase, in case you want to exchange or return an item down the road.

In a casual sense, “receipts” also mean “proof” in the event of a dispute. For example, if your dog could talk and claimed he definitely did not steal the pizza from the picnic table, you could show him “receipts,” which could be a photo your astonished friend snapped of him while he was dragging the pizza away. Busted!

Ok, but in all seriousness, as a business owner, you interact with receipts in two ways:

1.You give receipts to your customers once their repair work is finished
2.You get receipts when you purchase items for your shop (like parts)

Even though receipts exist in practically every industry, there’s a huge difference between the receipts customers get from an auto repair shop versus the receipts they’d get from a restaurant or clothing store.

Look at it this way: you don’t go to a restaurant and get an estimate for how much your food will cost. You see the prices on the menu, order, and then pay at the end. But in the auto repair world, we have to scope out the work with an inspection and estimate. That’s where the shop and the customer come to an understanding of the repair work that will occur, and get a preview of the cost, before any work gets done.

Without a solid inspection and estimate process, there can be a higher risk of misunderstandings and miscommunications, which can diminish customer loyalty and lead to credit card chargebacks. For example, a customer could misunderstand the severity of the need for a repair and decline it when they get their estimate, and leave a negative online review that their car still has issues. Or, a customer could say they don’t want a particular repair, but a service advisor misunderstands them. The repair happens, and the customer is upset when they get the final bill because they’d communicated that they didn’t want the repair.

That’s why estimates and receipts are extra important in our industry—they protect shops and customers. They give your customers peace of mind; they have a record of what repair work they got done on which day, and how much they paid. And in the event of a customer claiming a certain repair didn’t happen on a particular day, you could pull up your copy of the estimate and the receipt and set the record straight. You won’t have to deal with a frustrating back-and-forth process that can stretch out for days.

But beyond literal receipts, there are other elements of safeguarding your business. After all, protecting your business isn’t just about protecting it from financial and legal standpoints, although those are two important areas. You also have to think about things like your team’s productivity, employee management, healthy margins, and more. Auto shop management software is a great core tool that can help you safeguard your shop from multiple angles.

Thought Leadership

How Auto Shop Management Software Can Help You Safeguard Your Business

July 2, 2023

Read time: 3 min

Your locations don't have an ARO problem. They have a consistency issue.

If you run more than one shop, you have a number you probably don't look at often enough: the distance between your highest-ARO location and your lowest. That spread isn't a meaningless number. It's a diagnosis — and it's usually pointing at something you can fix this quarter.

Seeing one shop consistently post a higher average repair order (ARO) — the average dollar amount per repair order — while another lags behind, month after month, tells you something useful and fixable — that the two shops aren't actually running the same playbook.

When identified, an ARO gap points directly at where revenue is leaking and which location can improve its bottom line. Here's how to read it, and how to close that gap.

What ARO by location actually measures

ARO is your total sales divided by your car count. On its own, a single shop's ARO tells you how much revenue you capture per vehicle. Compared across locations, ARO becomes a relative measure. It shows you which shops are upselling the customers they already have, and which ones are letting opportunities walk out the door.

That distinction matters because car count and ARO are different levers. A location can be busy and still underperform on ARO. When two of your shops see roughly the same number of vehicles but post meaningfully different ARO, the busier-but-lower shop isn't short on demand — it's short on execution somewhere between check-in and checkout.

Why the same brand produces different numbers

When you standardize on one brand, one sign, and one set of prices, you'd expect performance to converge. It usually doesn't, and the reasons tend to fall into three buckets.

1. Inspections aren't consistent

The digital vehicle inspection is where most ARO is won or lost. A location that completes thorough inspections on nearly every car — with photos and clear findings — surfaces more legitimate work and gives customers a reason to say yes. A location that treats the DVI as optional, or rushes it, never puts that work in front of the customer in the first place. Shops that consistently attach more photos and findings to their inspections tend to post a higher ARO than shops that don't, because customers can see the work rather than just hear about it.

2. Estimating and pricing drift shop to shop

If one location prices a job from an up-to-date matrix and another builds estimates by memory or old habits, you'll see the difference in ARO. The same brake job, quoted two ways, produces two different repair orders. Multiply that across every ticket, every day, at every location, and small pricing inconsistencies become a large revenue gap.

3. Workflow and presentation vary by advisor

How work gets presented — whether declined jobs are captured for follow-up, if good/better/best options are offered, and the customer sees the inspection before the phone call — all of it moves ARO. When those steps live in one advisor's head instead of in a standard workflow, they leave when that advisor does.

How to compare ARO across multiple locations

A useful ARO comparison starts with removing the excuses you can measure. Before you conclude a location is simply in a weaker market, line the shops up on the metrics that feed ARO. When you compare ARO across multiple locations, look at five things:

What to compare across locations

Inspection completion rate: what percentage of cars get a full digital vehicle inspection (DVI) at each location.
Photos and findings per inspection: whether the shop shows customers the work or just describes it to them.
Close ratio: of the work presented, how much the customer approves.
Declined jobs recovered: whether declined work is followed up over time or lost.
Real-time reporting: whether you can see all of the above per location, side by side, without building a spreadsheet.

Those five inputs are what separate a high-ARO location from a low-ARO one. Walk them in order, per shop:

Inspection completion rate — what percentage of cars actually get a full DVI at each location?
Photos and findings per inspection — is the low-ARO shop showing customers the work, or just telling them about it?
Close ratio — of the work presented, how much gets approved? A low close ratio points at presentation, not demand.
Declined jobs — is the shop recovering declined work over time, or letting it disappear?

When you put those side by side, the ARO gap almost always resolves into a specific, coachable behavior at a specific location — not a vague "that store just isn't as good." The lowest-ARO shop with the weakest inspection numbers is usually your single, fastest opportunity because you're not trying to create demand — you're converting cars you already have.

You can't coach a gap you can't see

The hard part for most multi-shop operators isn't knowing that consistency matters — it's seeing the gap in the first place. When each location's numbers live in a separate system, a spreadsheet, or a manager's weekly recap, the comparison is always late and never quite apples-to-apples. By the time you notice a location has slipped, you've lost a quarter.

This is where running every shop on one platform changes the math. Tekmetric gives multi-shop operators multi-location control and real-time visibility: a portfolio-wide dashboard and shop-level reporting that track revenue, ARO, car count, and technician productivity across multiple locations at once. Instead of assembling the picture after the fact, you can see which location is drifting while there's still time to coach it.

"Now I can look at everybody at a glance. I can be in a different state, different city and know exactly what's going on in each location all the time. That's not something I had before."

— Leroy Ingram, Ooroo Auto Care (MSO)

Visibility is only half of it. The same platform lets you standardize the inputs that drive ARO — DVIs, canned and Smart Jobs, pricing matrices, and discounts — across every shop, so your best location's playbook becomes every location's default rather than a secret one store happens to know.

"Seeing [a newly acquired shop] take the shift from what they've always used to Tekmetric and then grow profitability in the same four walls has been phenomenal. Some of them are just exponential."

— Matt Schwab, Clutch Automotive (MSO)

Turning the gap into a plan

Once you can see the gap and its causes, closing it is a matter of focus. A few takeaways:

Start with your lowest-ARO, lowest-inspection location. It's the biggest lever to pull and the fastest move to make because the demand is already there.
Fix one input at a time. Get DVI completion up first; inconsistent inspections are the most common root cause of a lagging ARO.
Make your best shop the template. Standardize its workflows, pricing, and inspection process, then apply them everywhere instead of hoping each store reinvents them.
Watch the gap, not just the average. A rising portfolio average can hide one location sliding backward. The spread between best and worst is the number that tells you whether your standards are actually holding.

The gaps among your best and worst shops isn't a verdict on your locations. It's a map. It shows you exactly where the next dollar of ARO is hiding.

See the gap across every location

Tekmetric gives multi-shop operators multi-location control and real-time visibility into ARO, car count, and productivity across every store — plus the standardized workflows to close the gap.

Want to see where your shops stand first? The free Tekmetric Shop Index benchmarks your ARO, car count, parts margin, and effective labor rate against thousands of shops nationwide — no account required.