What’s the State of Heavy-Duty? 5 Insights From Our Brand-New Report!

Friends, Romans, gearheads—lend us your ears!

The 2021-2022 State of Heavy-Duty Repair is here, and we’re thrilled to share it with you.

Those of you who have been hanging out with us for a while may recall its predecessor, a first-of-its-kind report that gave the world an in-depth view of the diesel industry at that moment in time. For its 2022 incarnation, we decided bigger was better: over 900 people took the survey we sent out, and we consulted data from 500+ shops that have been using Fullbay for at least a year.

The report is absolutely packed with interesting information about the diesel industry. Yes, far too much to cram into a single blog. With that said, here are five stats we pulled that we’re still talking about in the office!

THE IMPACT OF THE PARTS SHORTAGE

We talked a lot about the parts shortage in 2021, but seeing the actual numbers was still surprising. Eighty-four percent of the shops we surveyed dealt with increased delays of varying length. Only 4% of shops reported no disruption at all.

TECHNICIAN EFFICIENCY IS THE NAME OF THE GAME

We also talk a lot about technician efficiency and how critical it is to a well-run shop. The good news is, 69% of shops knew how efficient their techs were. That left 18% who did not, and 13% who weren’t sure.

But that was for shops overall. When we turned to the techs themselves, we found that just under 60% of them knew their efficiency, while 28% did not. We believe a well-informed tech is a tech that a) knows their worth and b) can improve on it—we hope these numbers increase next year!

WAGES ARE IMPORTANT

We recently ran a two-part series about the importance of raising your labor rate—in part so you can pay your techs what they’re worth. Repair shops all over North America reported that they provided a wage increase for their technicians in 2021—73% of our respondents in total.

This is a great number, but as Aaron Picozzi of American Diesel Training Centers points out, that means ¼ of the shops surveyed didn’t provide any kind of wage increase, and may have faced difficulties in hiring and retaining techs.

SHOP DEMOGRAPHICS ARE CHANGING

We’re edging further into the twenty-first century. What does that mean for the commercial repair industry? Well…things are starting to shift. Women, for example, are still a minority in the shop, but they made up 17% of our respondents.

That’s not all, though. The industry, while well-represented by all ages, is starting to skew younger: 56% of our respondents were between the ages of 18 and 44. The old guard is still holding its ground, though, with 7% checking in at over 65.

IT’S REGIONAL

What region has the most commercial repair shops? The Midwest, with 28%! Next in line was…well, all of Canada, which boasted 19%. Next up were the West (15%), Southeast (16%), and Northeast (12%).

Intrigued? We hope so. We’ve worked hard with our partners at TMC and MOTOR to build a report that will be useful and pretty darn interesting to just about everyone in the industry or even outside the industry. The five takeaways we just shared are just the tip of the diesel iceberg; the new State of Heavy-Duty Report covers everything from what technologies shops use in the bay and in the office to labor rates by region and how different operations handle parts margins and markups.

Oh, and did we mention it’s absolutely free?

Yes, it’s free! You can download it right here and page through it at your leisure.

Enjoy the ride!