Episode
What Your Technician Pay Plan Is Really Telling You [E210]
- Podcast
- Business By The Numbers
- Published
- Feb 19, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1888
- Processing state
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Summary
Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File What if the pay plan you've been debating isn't actually the problem? In this solo episode, Hunt Demarest tackles one of the most argued topics in the auto repair industry: how to pay your technicians. After seeing it debated online once too often, Hunt pulls from hundreds of real shop benchmarks to cut through the noise — and his answer might surprise you. Hunt breaks down the three main structures — flat rate, hourly/salary, and hybrid — explaining what each one actually incentivizes, where each one breaks down, and why half of his top-performing shops use flat rate while the other half don't. The takeaway: no pay plan alone will fix a production problem. From the classic flat rate with no minimums to California flat rate, tiered hourly structures, and spiff-based systems, Hunt walks through the real-world mechanics of each — including the overtime trap that catches shop owners off guard when non-discretionary bonuses are in play. This episode also covers team-based vs. individual pay plans, with a detailed real-world example of a six-tech shop that saw production climb for six months after switching to a team bonus structure — then slide consistently for the next 18. Hunt explains exactly why it happened and what the senior tech said that made it all make sense. The bottom line: if you change the pay plan without changing how you manage, communicate, and operate, you're just changing the numbers on a piece of paper. Hunt also previews next week's episode on manager and advisor pay plans, and announces that Reed Melis of Paar Melis & Associates will be teaching a class on shop pay plans at Vision in Kansas City. What you'll learn… (00:08) Why Hunt dedicated a full episode to tech pay plans (01:30) Why half of top b…