march2023 - 32

MANAGEMENT
their own pay and produce higher earnings
than hourly wages. Dale Bowman noted flat
pay gets a bad rap because techs don't always
understand their earning potential. A technician
getting paid hourly may say they are
making $42.50/hour working at a dealership, so
why would they leave for a flat rate, he posited.
" You have to explain to them that working
commission, when you're working in a customer's
parking lot or in their shops, the work is
abundant, " Dale Bowman said. " You can do as
much as you want to, and it's never-ending . "
He theorized his technicians would say they
need an offer rate of $145 per hour to be tempted
away from AM PM Diesel Services and the
money they make there.
Of course, the flat-pay math doesn't always
work out if the work isn't abundant.
" If you don't have the workload, like when
191216046 | Welcomia | Dreamstime
Managing technician
pay and quality work
Shop management experts shared insights on
how to keep uptime strong and labor happy.
By Alex Keenan
Whenever there's a discussion about the
technician shortage, compensation for technicians
often comes up. Automotive technician
advocate WrenchWay found that 43%
of technicians considered compensation as
the biggest factor in staying at their current
workplace. Given this, it seems all too easy to
assume that publicly increasing technician pay
would solve the industry's labor problems. But
unfortunately, it's not that simple.
Even among various shop owners and
dealers, methods to finance their technicians'
success and compensation can vary
depending on the shop's size and geographical
area. To help find answers, in January
shop management software provider Fullbay
sat down with AM PM Diesel Services CEO
Dale Bowman and operations manager Chase
Bowman to discuss how the business funds
its technicians. AM PM provides mobile truck
and trailer service, repairs, and parts. Fullbay's
CEO Patrick McKittrick and COO Chris O'Brien
led the discussion, in which the AM PM leaders
explained how they handle funding their
technicians while growing from a single mobile
fleet truck to 18 shop locations nationwide.
" Our slogan for a long time [has been]: 'If
you're not turning, you're not earning,' " said
32 Fleet Maintenance | March 2023
Dale Bowman, adding that the main goal is to
" keep the trucks running on the road. "
To ensure this plays out on the shop floor,
AM PM has thought long and hard about pay
structure, technician hiring and expectations,
and training, and shared their insights during
the discussion.
Pay structure
Productivity and uptime begin at the ground
level with the technicians, and AM PM keeps
that foundation strong with a solid pay structure
in place.
" Generally speaking, all of our mechanics
are paid off the flat time, " Chase Bowman
explained. " For instance, a brake job is about
six to eight hours. We should get that done in
about two hours so he gets paid the six hours,
and then you can move on to the next job. "
By this reasoning, a highly skilled technician
can boost their pay to $150,000 a year, he
continued, with the addition of bonus packages
and weekly stipends for added productivity,
thus rewarding them for their efficiency
and quality.
Both Bowmans touted the flat-pay method
because it allows technicians to determine
we first open up a shop in a different location,
what we will do is we'll give our technician a
guarantee, " Dale Bowman explained. " Basically,
we'll say, 'Hey, we're kicking this off. It's a new
location. For the next two months, we're gonna
give you X amount of money, guaranteed. If
you don't make that, we're going to offset it to
make you make that. But we will see in three
months, and you will see, that the profit margins
are there [and] the guarantee will go away. Then
you start working completely on commission.' "
As soon as a technician has been set up in
a shop, maintaining a proper balance in the
workload-to-technician ratio is crucial to the
Bowmans, including technician distribution
between shops and between fleets. For shops,
that means increasing the number of hours a
technician can work, possibly by moving two
employees from one shop to another to increase
every worker's paycheck.
Meanwhile, managing their remote operations
with a fleet takes just as much planning.
" You've got to have a headcount on [the
client's] equipment, " Dale Bowman asserted.
" The basic rule of thumb that you've got to have
is for every 23 pieces of [Class 8] equipment,
you've got to have one technician. If a customer
has 230 pieces of equipment, that tells us we
need 10 technicians. [Those] 10 technicians can
handle that fleet completely from start to finish
all the way from tires, brakes, oil changes, road
calls, [and] welding fabrication. "
Ensuring repair quality
With such an emphasis on productivity, the
flat-pay rate could lead to rush jobs and a
serious drop in quality. But the Bowmans
discussed how they have a system in place
that emphasizes output and accuracy.
" We have lead techs at all our shops and also
a service manager overseeing the work, " Chase
Bowman said. " But we'll handpick certain jobs
and go out there and verify it was to the compliance
standpoint we needed to be at, and we
have very little warranty comeback work going
through that process. "
To ensure quality work, AM PM Diesel
Services also uses an additional incentive
within their pay structure.
march2023

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