The Loyalty Tax: Why Dealerships Who Forget Their Veteran Technicians Will Pay More to Replace Them
If you run a service department, you already know the number that keeps you up at night. It's not your CSI score. It's not even your effective labor rate. It's the statement you hear when a 15 year master tech walks in and says, "I've got an offer down the street." We have spent decades in this industry, on the shop floor, behind the service counter, and now on the recruiting side, placing the very people dealerships are scrambling to keep. And we want to say something that isn't going to be popular in every corporate meeting: the technician pay crisis dealerships are bracing for isn't really a pay problem. It's a relationship problem that's about to send you a bill. The Technicians Who Stayed Think about your top earners. Not the ones who just walked through the door. The ones who have been there eight, ten, fifteen years. The ones who were in the building during the slow years, when sales volume dropped and hours got tight. The ones wh...