Tell me about independent shops

[Rick]

I was just offered a job at Firestone. I’m not sure about the job. It seems like dealerships in my area are really really slow, and shops like,Firestone are busting at the seems.

Anyone have any info on how the place works or other details?

Topic

[Mike]

The kid that works next to me has a friend that works at a Firestone in Florida, who is always posting pictures of his pay sheets showing 80-100 hours a week @ $20/hour. I hear it’s pretty repetitive line work, for the most part.

The main reasons I never really considered working a place like that is that I hate working on domestics and like the really tough diagnostic work I get as a go-to guy in a dealer. I’ve always worked in foreign car dealerships to shield myself as best as possible from working on domestics.

[zero]

To put it simply, if you never want to know what you’re going to be doing in a day. Then you’ll enjoy it. If you want to go to work and look at the same 5 models everyday, doing the exact same thing everyday. Then stay at a dealer.

Doing monkey work is going to be a grind anywhere, but tires generally pay pretty well in flat rate systems.

If you’re given the opportunity to properly learn diagnosis you’ll learn more at an independent shop because you literally see everything and have to solve it. I miss the mystery solving aspect of it and the half ton truck front end work gravy. Not so much lifting the heavy tires on them.

[Rick]

How does training work? Do they do team pay?

[Author]

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