Pitfall in the Shop

Confused, that’s me. It’s a condition that usually only crops up… well, pretty much every morning. Or, more seriously, when I read that the future job prospects for diesel mechanics — call them ‘technicians’ if you like — are only “fair”. Not good, not excellent. Just fair.
What?

This just doesn’t ring true, goes against everything I know about the situation, yet that’s what I found in a review of web-sites devoted to the trades in both Canada and the United States.

Now, the fact is, we start with a problem here. At the Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) web-site devoted to the trades in general — www.jobfutures.ca — truck-specific technicians aren’t a separate category. They’re lumped in with the automotive crowd. And when I move to the ‘Heavy-Duty Equipment Mechanics’ definition, things are no different — prospects are just fair. And the trouble there is the same in that transportation jobs are lumped in with construction, forestry, mining, etc.

So, while I’m convinced that prospects for mechanics within trucking are a long way better than ‘fair’ — a very long way — I sure wouldn’t get that impression if I were a young person hunting around for an occupation to pursue.

We need to do this differently. And we’ve all known this for ages. More than a quarter century ago, the main theme of my very first Canadian Fleet Maintenance Seminar was the shortage of mechanics. It was a crisis, people said. I talk to dealer principals or fleet supervisors today and they always tell me that the shop is as difficult to populate with skilled people as the truck cab. It hasn’t changed in more than 25 years.

Yet all we ever hear about is the shortage of drivers.

There’s another problem in that HRDC website. The average hourly wage listed under Automotive Service Technician ranges from $11.45 to $18.07 depending on age and years on the job. For Heavy-Duty Equipment Mechanics these rates rise a bit to $13.84 and $19.90.

Yet the first actual advertised job I found in a web search — Road Service Mechanic — listed a starting pay rate of $26.52, rising to $29.15 after 80 days. Better yet, it was day shifts only. Granted, that’s in Alberta, where skills are in especially short supply and money appears to be abundant. But that starting rate is a heck of a lot more attractive than 18 or 19 lousy bucks.

So let’s look at an advertised southern Ontario job: truck and trailer mechanic with a low rate of $16.00 an hour and a maximum of $24.00, with full benefits and shift premiums paid. Looks better than the $11.45 listed on the government web-site as the average for a 20-year-old starter or the $18.07 for a 55-year-old veteran, doesn’t it?

And then there’s this nice one, in pay terms anyway, again in Ontario — $23.00 to $28.00 an hour, licence preferred but not required, with full benefits paid after an unspecified probationary period.

So clearly the government web-site is, if not entirely out to lunch, at least delivering a pretty darned inaccurate message. And if that undecided young person or the older guy looking for a career change doesn’t look too far, what impression will he get? A bad one.

The one existing body that could do something on this front is the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council (CTHRC) but it concentrates its efforts almost entirely on drivers. I might dispute the notion that drivers are the bigger problem to quite this extent, but the truth is, the CTHRC runs on a slim budget and there’s a limit to what they can do.

So I think what we need, amongst about a zillion other things, is to target the mechanic shortage ourselves — on the web and elsewhere. And for a change I’d like to see a joint effort, not between “government and industry” as we so often see such things go, but one involving fleets and dealers and independent service shops directly, along with colleges and maybe even high schools. Finding someone to quarterback this won’t be easy, but let’s start by deciding to leave governments out of this. In other words, let’s create and fund this ourselves.

We need to do some research, some promotion, some very basic groundwork. Given that demographic realities are working against us — in a way that they weren’t 25 years ago — there’s really no time to waste. We’ve been sitting on our hands all that time, it seems to me, and we reap what we sow. If you think things are tough now, just wait.