Auto Body Repair Techs Resurrect, Restore, and Rejuvenate

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Americans have a love affair with their automobiles. As such, dents and scratches must be repaired without delay. That's why attending an auto body repair school can place you in a well-paid position restoring autos to their original state.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there were 136.6 million registered automobiles in 2005. Add to that almost $51 million in property damage from collisions in the same year, and you can see how lucrative a career in auto body repair can be. Graduates of auto motive technician schools are finding a welcoming job market across the country. A competitive base salary plus commissions and overtime has auto body repair schools seeing a spike in attendance.

Auto Body Repair Schools

Here's what to expect from auto body repair school:

Equipment. Training on repair equipment includes mallets, torches, sanders, spray painters, and hydraulic lifting apparatus.
Concepts. Courses cover painting and refinishing, structural and non-structural analysis and repair, mechanical and electrical components, and damage analysis and estimating.

Auto Body Repair Career Profile

The Occupational Outlook Handbook reports a solid employment forecast for professionals with auto body repair school training. ASE certified technicians should see the best opportunities for employment and advancement.

Experienced body repairers are rarely laid off during a general slowdown in the economy as the automotive repair business is not very sensitive to changes in economic conditions. Auto body repair techs held about 223,000 jobs in 2004, with most working for repair and maintenance shops or automobile dealers.

What Can I Earn Doing Auto Body Repair?

Median hourly wage-and-salary earnings of automotive body and related repairers, including incentive pay, were $16.92 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $13.00 and $22.33 an hour. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $10.10, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $28.71 an hour. Employment is expected to grow as fast as average for all occupations through the year 2014. Excellent job opportunities are projected because of the large number of older workers who are expected to retire in the next 10 to 15 years.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the auto body repair industry is the potential for self-employment. Whether you want to work on consumer-driven cars or NASCAR automobiles, the formula for entrepreneurial success is the same: training, experience, and motivation.

Sources

Occupational Outlook Handbook

U.S. Department of Transportation

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