With all do respect to you, painters always have book time in there side . Body time is always best guess. An yes painters I’ve known make well above the body time . 160k or just over 100k .

@robertwelker562 that's true. There are also a lot of favorites on the body side. I've known a lot of good body men starving in slow times over some butcher's over favoritism, not only that all the tools body men and mechanics have to consistently buy

Find another shop

@@oscarperez5539 claims have slowed down and big mso's have more shops than they can handle. There's a shortage of good shops not good techs.

Same thing is happening to me. It sucks :/

@gaming_bro1577 just got a job as a dissasmbler at a bodyshop. But I worked at an other body shop back in April when it first was starting to get slow. But honestly idk if I'll make a solid career out of this, it's a lot different than when I first thought. Also school for it was a lot different than what I thought and not in a good way lol

I’ve been in the industry for about 10 years fresh out high school I became an apprentice a few years ago I started doing so much side work I basically started a business out of it and after about 2 years I decided I wanted to go back to a shop this whole last year has been hell trying to find a job lol I found a couple but they are shops that were on the verge of closing and were missing half the employees etc it’s honestly kinda crazy

@FATALSHOXX yea man, what you think of the career over all though? Do you see yourself doing it long term

@@oscarperez5539 I’ve always been into cars ever since I was a lil kid, I was 17 when I started learning body and paint, I’m 27 now, I went to trade school and learned, started as an apprentice learned from honestly one of the best body guys I’ve ever met, and jumped from shop to shop tried different things like mobile stuff like sameday (a mobile small body repairs and paint company), dealership work, most recently I worked for Tesla which is a great company, great pay, benefits, etc, it was just a distance thing the drive killed me lol anyways I’d say if you can find a well run shop to stay there and get in good if you truly like the work you do.. Most new techs I’ve met don’t end up lasting that’s why most shops you’ll goto you’ll see all the techs are above the age of 30 or so, it’s honestly a dying trade.. I’m most likely going to go into automotive locksmithing and starting my own business doing that, the money in it as of rn is pretty good and it’s low labor intensive. Quick work for higher pay. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Why is the collision industry so bad this year? I just graduated collisiom program and no one is hiring cause it's so slow all year.. they all said this has never happened before

@@oscarperez5539 Election years are usually slower, also doesn't help the economy is in the toilet so customers dont want to spend the 500-1k for deductibles to get repairs.

​@@punchinello6537im sure thats part of it but ive hesrd from many shops that this has never happened before where its abysmally slow. Would you recommend me to contine in this trade? After doing it for 4 months i honestly just wanna do the simple studf like disassembling cars reassembling and fixing minor dents.. do you think shops will hire me just for thay?

Why is the collision industry so bad this year? I just graduated collisiom program and no one is hiring cause it's so slow all year.. they all said this has never happened before

@@oscarperez5539 It’s up and down, it’s always been that way, no rhyme or reason. It might have something to do with salvage values being so high. The demand for cheap cars is high, so hacks buy totaled cars and slap them together and resell them. That drives the salvage value up and makes cars total easer. Cars are getting more complicated and expensive to repair, so we fix less cars, that means we have to charge more to fix them and that makes them total easier. It’s a vicious cycle, but it actually makes my job easier, I fix less cars for more money.

​@@Everythingisgoingtobealright​​im sure thats part of it but ive hesrd from many shops that this has never happened before where its abysmally slow. Would you recommend me to contine in this trade? After doing it for 4 months i honestly just wanna do the simple studf like disassembling cars reassembling and fixing minor dents.. do you think shops will hire me just for thay?

@@oscarperez5539 It only makes sense if you like it. I started in 1985 it was just a job for me, but I ended up being good at it and really started to enjoy it. I never went to any trade school but I took any training I could find. I’ve taken a couple hundred ICAR classes, chief automotive training, BeeLiner training, ASE testing, factory training from BMW, Audi, Mercedes and Porsche. The more training you have the better. We don’t do many difficult repairs anymore, it’s mostly easy work, but you need to be ready for the disaster job when it comes. If you don’t enjoy it don’t do it. I made about $120k last year working four days 36 hours a week, I haven’t worked more than a couple hours of overtime in 10 years.

​@@Everythingisgoingtobealrightdo you think AI/self driving cars will tank tje collisiom industry due to very few wrecks happening/current workers retiring by then and no one replacing them? Or even having AI fix the cars

Yep its great piece of kit for sure, space and packout become a bit of an issue, continuing to fine tune and will probably shoot an update at some point

Its a shame the industry lost you but I completely understand and agree with you, if its to survive it needs a serious overhaul

Why is the collision industry so bad this year? I just graduated collisiom program and no one is hiring cause it's so slow all year.. they all said this has never happened before

True

Ya what happens when we all retire, the whole thing goes belly up. What then? We throw away cars because no one wants to fix?

I’m 34 and I’m already thinking about moving on. Been doing it for 3-4 years and I’m about over this. Just did a quarter panel replacement and door replacement on a Honda Odyssey and it only paid 45 hours. I spent about 70 on that vehicle, getting the stupid sliding door to fit took a whole morning; and transferring the guts is a PITA.

Same

Can you give me any suggestions?

I'm decent but with bad management and lack of hours from insurance companies. It's very hard to justify continuing it at the time. I might have to go back to non college degree work and probably make more money. With less stress and all that.

@@driftsmoke877what were you thinking about reconsidering?

@@efrainortiz5915 estimating, welding, warehouse or painting. Anything to get me into a house. Auto body is fine if you're smart and willing to grind it out. Can take up to 10 years to really be worth it.

Why is the collision industry so bad this year? I just graduated collisiom program and no one is hiring cause it's so slow all year.. they all said this has never happened before

True!

Work salary for a shop that doesn’t have DRPs. Hard to find, but they’re out there. I work 4 days, 36 hours a week and make about $120k. The key is training, lots of training. ICar, any manufacturer training you can get, every welding certification you can find and take the ASE tests, collision and automotive.

I've been off for close to a year. My spine got to the point I just couldn't do it anymore. I went to the er in November to find stomach cancer. Once that was treated they replaced the discs from L4-S1with spacers, removed parts of vertebrae and put rods and screws in to hold it together. It looks like my days being a tech are over. I need to look into being a writer once I'm healed. I love doing the work but the surgeon said I shouldn't and there's no way I want to go through all this again. The pain is unbelievable.

As a tech what state do you work in because where I’m at if geico is a DRP if you did something like that they’d just leave the program leaving the shop damn near dead

​@talkinhogspodcast6545 that's why I will never again work at a pdr shop

Is working for caliber collision that bad?

@@ojpayneproduction yes

Yes I agree. Might leave the industry for a bit and come back.

You think AI will take over the collision repair technicians jobs? Either through self driving cars (very few wrecks) or humanoid robots that do the job, especially with such a shortage of techs they might as well create robots to do the job

Why is the collision industry so bad this year? I just graduated collisiom program and no one is hiring cause it's so slow all year.. they all said this has never happened before

Why is the collision industry so bad this year? I just graduated collisiom program and no one is hiring cause it's so slow all year.. they all said this has never happened before

where? us or au dollars? even au dollars who is paying 150 per hour to panel beaters?

@@andypandy2848 A Normal Mechanic is $120-$140/hour in VIC (Tho more than $80 of that goes directly to Insurance for Mechanics.)

From what I understand, Australia tends to list cars with minor damage as " statuary write off " meaning, they can never be on the road again. I tend to think this was left over from the days of domestic car production as a way to protecting a shaky auto industry.

You're dumb😂

Do you think AI will take over thr collision industry as in self driving cars greatly reducing wrecks and/or actual AI fixing the cars?

@oscarperez5539 AI is a continuously improving sentient being driven entirely by logic and not limited by emotions. Low-level artificial intelligences like what we have today are already capable of designing a automotive that surpasses our standards today as is. It's already done it. Artificial general intelligence, like what open AI is attempting to create, is several multitudes more intelligent than what we have today and is capable of improving itself. With that trail of logic, after a few iterations, it is far more likely that an AGI, benevolent or otherwise, will be able to create modes of transportation far more efficient and safer than anything we humans could imagine. Something designed by AGI is as foreign to us as something made in Andromeda would be. Artificial general intelligence will be capable of utterly replacing humanity.

@@kylelinder4623 ok, so you think the collision industry will take a massive hit within the next decade cause AGI is coming out in 5 years

@oscarperez5539 Not true. I believe every industry that doesn't involve human emotion will take a huge decline when we achieve AGI. However, barring some huge unforseen leap in progress, AGI is not 5 years away. We are just figuring out how to make LLMs or Large Language Models effective in everyday life. All LLMs are is an algorithm that is extremely effective at predicting what the next sequence of words based off a body of text. That is all. We also have AI that is capable of taking sample imagery and video and creating something that looks extremely similar based on a command. AGI takes that to the next level. AGI is borderline or actually sentient. We need to have a better understanding of the human synapse or what sentience actually is in order to be able to create a single program that is intelligent enough to be able to understand and learn everything similar to the way a human would. Just several thousand times faster. It will then be able to learn based on its own findings and discoveries. We aren't even to an AI level comparable to JARVIS from Iron Man. AGI is Vision from Avengers Age of Ultron. We are decades away from developing AGI. We may have AI in the next five years, depending on how society decides to define that, and that will still have a massive impact on all industries.