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I’m a diesel tech, and one nice advantage is that you can get into fleets and not deal with the day to day issues of customers or flat rate shops.
One nice thing of doing the lighter duty diesels is you are going to be in high demand. There are a lot of these out there and they get used hard. People who buy them are using them for work trucks and have the money to pay to fix them more often that your average time waster with a junk car does.
Getting good with Powerstrokes, Duramax or Cummins will make you a go-to guy and one that is a great bargaining position when you look to move on. The shop you are at will be more willing to offer you more to keep you, and other shops will be willing to pay up to get you there. You would be investing a bit more on the tool truck for certain tools that either you have to have or at least the ones that save skin on your hands and shave time off the work. If you go into heavy duty you will be expected to add on to bigger tools. I personally have sockets through 2″ and wrenches to match along with various tools specifically for working on class 8 trucks. Some tools I fabricated myself as I didn’t see what I was looking for on the market or the cost was real high for something I was able to build myself.
Also bear in mind if you intend to work on class 8 trucks you should have some real good welding skills. You find that to be more needed than it is on cars. If you need to get some more skill in that area you might find a night course in the summer at a local tech school that would be helpful. Can also check out weldingtipsandtricks.com for good welding vids. You do need to be in pretty good physical shape to work on these trucks. Consider the brake drums weigh in over 100 pounds, you will be swinging a 10 pound maul with a lot of force on many jobs, and a twin disc clutch weighs a solid 150 all day, its something you have to have some muscle to do effectively without killing yourself trying.
If you can get a place to pay for you to get good training, do it. That’s some expensive stuff to try to front out of pocket. I’ve had all sorts of certifications over the years in various jobs. Have some that don’t help me now but never had one that hurt me. Does my current job care that I was a certified in hazardous waste handling, respirator use or ship-based firefighting? No. But its not hurting me to have the cert. Might end up opening a door to getting into a better place down the road.
If you get to be diesel certified, the shop will likely have you doing nothing but that unless there just aren’t any to do that day. That’s what happens when you carve out a niche for yourself. Last shop I was at sent all of their real critical welds and fab along with the more complex engine and trans repairs exclusively to my bay. When they bought 8 new Peterbilts with CNG fuel systems, those also became my babies and everyone else was hands off. Ditto when they bought 140 Ford trucks that had been converted to run on propane. Was kinda nice to be the go-to guy, but as far as doing an oil change on a fleet car, basics like brake jobs or fixing forklifts it was very rare. That work was sent to the other guys who didn’t have the experience I did.
Being a big rig tech you need to have muscle mass if you don’t best start hitting the gym. A starter weighs like 40 lbs min for heavy duty. Tooling is a bit expensive for the larger sizes. I spent 500 bucks for like 15 sockets. Also 3/4″ impact is like $700 bucks for a good one. Everything you buy needs to be strong. It is very physically demanding not to mention having to balance on things for 15-20 mins while working on engines.
There are some annoyances like piss covered floors and dealing with idiot drivers but, it pays enough to make a difference normally. The other thing you have to realize is generally there is more space to get to fasteners and stuff. So if you are already a bigger guy you won’t be getting your forearms stuck and what not as easy. Also there is normally a different mentality to repairs. Also wanting it repaired right trumps speed more so then the automotive field. The other thing is everything costs a lot more to replace, repair, etc. So if you mess up stuff a lot you normally do not last longer then like 4-6 months at most.
The downsides are that well it is very very physically demanding. You need to be a lot more observant as it is far more dangerous then automotive. You have systems running 30,000 to 40,000 PSI or more. A pinhole leak will cause injection wounds and kill you. Screwing up brakes in a car the person maybe crashes and kills there family. A screw up on a school bus crashes and kills 30-40 kids even if it is not your fault odds are one of the parents will not care. You have to deal with vehicles with hazmat, garbage, human waste, etc. An engine in a normal car is 3-5k an engine in a truck is 8-30k. Everything you work on can kill you. Mistakes often lead to crushed bones and severe lacerations as opposed to cuts and broken bones. Over the road highway haulers are approx $150k-$250k for the cheap ones. So keep that in mind where the average car is like $20-$40k.
With all that being said normally people will look out for one another safety wise a lot more simply because of the everything and anything can kill you aspect of it. This also tends to lead to a stronger brotherhood which means when you are new you get ridden a lot harder.
Thanks for the info guys. How do I go about finding a position somewhere? The nearest technical school for Diesel is 3 hours away, and that’s not an option for me.
Do I find work as a tech at a dealership and tell them I want to work on diesels?
My dealership brought on a complete idiot and as far as i am aware 8 months later he is still there. To give you an example the kid put gasoline in a diesel truck. This would make more sense if it wasn’t for the fact that he says he drives a diesel truck. I constantly hear of him screwing up. In one aspect I feel sorry for him in another I find it quite scary.
While schooling helps if you have automotive schooling it will correlate a lot. Most dealerships actually need young techs. There are very very few of us in the Big Rig field. I would print out all your training under your current dealership. Bring copies of all your stuff and literally take a day or 2 during the week Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be the slowest and go dealership to dealership. Whatever you do be honest with them let them know you are applying to other dealerships as well.
As for auto + diesel tell them you want to learn both. Working Saturdays or weekends in a big rig shop can’t hurt either and because they are vastly different markets there is normally no problem with moonlighting one way or another. To be honest its come to the point where i think I may be doing that soon myself. You can always ask your boss to make sure.
As far as the engine goes in autos replace spark plugs with glow plugs. Realize there is a lot higher compression. They use direct injection so the fuel pressure in the fuel rail is 20k-40k psi. Diesels are built like race engines. Those are the main differences. That and you can diesel a motor because it will run off pretty much anything if you have a seal fail on any place where you have oil that can get into the intake air it will run on that and go perpetually faster. Since once a diesel is warm it combusts using compression and heat it will run till it seizes or till there is no oxygen to burn. So fire extinguisher or a thick metal plate.
As far as actuators go in the auto world its a mix of a vacuum pump / venturi off intake air and pressure from boost. In big rigs almost everything is done off air pressure cause we have this huge compressor that can put out 145-135 avg max psi before the weak link goes they are normally governed at 125-135psi though.
Things you need to understand to understand diesels that are different from gas: hydraulics/pnuematics (they correlate a lot and the diagrams can be transcribed to electrical as they all use the same kind of flow mechanisms. ie diode = one way check valve. ) , turbos and boost pressures, direct injection, oil cooling jets, unsynchronized transmissions, diesel combustion vs gas combustion, dpf filters, scr systems, jake brakes, drum brakes ( in depth aka leading and trailing surfaces ), roller and wedge style brakes, s-cam brake systems, air suspensions, on older systems hi pressure oil systems, high pressure common rail, soot and other deposits and how they effect oil differently, coolant packages and SCAs aka why normal coolant destroys diesel engines, what diesel regeneration is and how it works aka fuel + soot = fire wich = ash = blown clear by exhaust back pressure, other then that just think bigger, stronger, more reliable and that is how 85-90% of it is engineered.
I’m in school to be a diesel tech, the best advise I can give you is if you have a Mercedes dealer near you see if they have a sprinter program. I have some Volvo/Mack training through school as well, it wasn’t hard to come by so that is an option as well.
That was my first dealership job, i learned a lot and Mercedes training is extremely good. The work just wasn’t there as my dealership had lost a big contract and it was about an hour and a half away so the trip didn’t justify the pay I was making. If they hadn’t lost it I would still be a Mercedes tech, it was a great small team.
So far at Toyota I’ve worked one some Hino’s and some Brazilian diesel models but nothing real heavy. I’ve wanted to leave and go work for ford but I have heard horror stories of the dealerships around here from diesel techs. I’m hoping to get a job with the county when I finish seeing as how my dad worked for them 40+ years and he’s doing great, retired and traveling in Europe etc..
Best shot is to try one of the big 3 or Mercedes.
Yeah, I’m fixing to post my 2 cents, look out, lol
Lot of good info given here. I never personally worked on class 8 rigs professionally, but I did drive OTR for 2 years with a major fleet. I can attest to what has been said on all manners of the heavy stuff. Drivers can be down right nasty, and forget they are civilized people, pissing in bottles in their trucks and leaving them inside till they bust open and spill everywhere. Some even defecate in plastic shopping bags, and if you’re lucky they pitch them out the window instead of leaving them inside. Even stories of guys rigging hoses to the driver seat and cutting a hole in the floor and using it to urinate while driving down the road. Guess where all the pee wee is going? Some genius should devise a way to recycle it for urea fluid, lol. Lots heavier stuff, lot more pressure, lot easier to get hurt, and hurt bad. Diesel guys are in high demand, as high or higher than true L1 master techs in the auto field. Question is, do you go heavy diesel, or light duty?If you go light duty, there is a lot to be said there. Generally you want to know regular automotive stuff well, as some of it carries over, and when you aren’t making the man his money on diesels, you can be working on gas powered cars. Shop owners light up when you tell them,” yeah I work on powerstrokes, etc too”. I don’t do a lot of diesel work where I am, but we do some. Most of what needs repaired is powerstrokes. One, because there are so many of them out there, and two, they seem to be more failure prone. Got one sitting at work, waiting on an ok to pull valve covers as we speak, on a 6.Ohno!. Duramaxes do pretty well, with only a few real issues on them. Cummins, maybe a crank sensor, TPS, and the #4 fuel injector line. The foreign diesels, I don’t get involved with normally. We have a mentally ill guy that likes euro stuff, lol. It is kind of nice to have work coming in that you’re the only one able to do it, and getting hours while the other guys are polishing tool boxes. Like what was said, generally people with the diesels have money to fix them, especially businesses. They need them running, and a lot of times they need it yesterday. The more versatile you are, the more you make. At the least, I would work on expanding on your knowledge, and decide, light duty with automotive, or straight heavy. Both have their pros and cons.
[quote=”streetglideok” post=138303]Yeah, I’m fixing to post my 2 cents, look out, lol
Some genius should devise a way to recycle it for urea fluid, lol.Most of what needs repaired is powerstrokes. One, because there are so many of them out there, and two, they seem to be more failure prone. Got one sitting at work, waiting on an ok to pull valve covers as we speak, on a 6.Ohno![/quote]
Love that urea line lol.
Yeah, the powerstrokes aka powerjokes are actually International VT 365 and VT 375 with a few things changed here and there. International actually stopped making them and their updated version because of all the issues they have had. Best combination out there is Cummins and Eaton or Cummins and Allison. Everything else made by everyone else just breaks more often.
I can attest to the demand of working on light duty diesels, learn those and you can have a job anywhere.
The truth is that diesels aren’t that much different than gas. It’s a standard piston based 4 cycle / 2 stroke internal combustion engine. It’s not like a turbine or a wankle (rotary) engine for that matter. Thanks for even gas cars going Direct Injection, they have even more in common. The biggest difference is that diesel fuel burns, gasoline combusts/explodes. From there, it takes more heat and pressure than gas. What i am getting to is that if you can master one, you can master the other. In some ways, they are even more simple than gas. However, if you are just learning to be a technician, better focus on one or the other. Master one, then apply that knowlege to the other.
I’m starting to really study diesel. Got ASE A9 and I’ve done some trucks but not fluent on them. At Nissan, we are getting a Nissan Titan with a 5.0 Cummins V8 TD. That will be my big gateway and get some factory training. That and focusing on learning how to use an Oscilloscope, that’s what really separates the men from the boys. It’s not turning wrenches as much as it is backprobing terminals.
Aftertreatment aka emissions on diesels is a whole ‘nother animal when compared to gasoline engines. Also the way the engine reacts when external components go bad is different. The air brake system is different, There are coolers (and sometimes heaters) for all the fluids this makes diag harder and longer. There are a lot more grease points. The vehicles are insanely dirtier then an auto. There are a lot more little things here and there such as SCA’s in coolant.
Yes the engine operates off the same basic principals. But, diagnostics are very different. Simple example is if you have oil in your coolant in a every day NA gas engine it is pretty much going to be a head, gasket, block issue, or (once in a blue moon) egr. In a diesel it can be turbo, air compressor, oil cooler, head, block, sleeve, egr cooler, trans cooler, power steering cooler, power take off cooler, auxillary power unit cooler, reefer unit, etc.
I am not saying if you do one you can’t do the other but, do not think they are the same. There is a lot more to diesel mechanics then just the engine. As i explained before.
also fyi gas does not explode. It burns much quicker and contains less energy when it burns and has a much lower ignition point.
Totally understand that. The more I learn from diesels the more I see that, however what I am saying is it’s the same science. If you have the aptitude to do one, you can do the other. Being able to do diesel, even if it’s only for the things can make you very valuable especially in a smaller shop.
I can confirm that cars and trucks are two quite different worlds in the shop!
I completed diesel tech school last June after a three-week training in a school bus fleet repair shop and I was able to get a summer job at the transport ministry so I had the opportunity to work on quite a nice variety of vehicles before getting back to school for a specialization in diesel engines.
There’s indeed a lot more going on in a commercial truck. As it’s been mentioned the aftertreatment system alone is almost an order of magnitude more complex. It goes much further with exhaust particulates filtering and selective catalyst reduction (SCR).
I didn’t have any specific reason to choose big rigs over cars, but the amount of troubleshooting involved is what made me decide to stay in this field, despite all the potential disadvantages.
I appreciate the input from the actual diesel techs. Real diesel work is really good pay but you have to be very smart. I think I’ll stick with easy stuff like Honda and Toyota. All the diesel shops around here want people who already have schooling and experience and quite often over pay, plus high bonuses to get techs.
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