What does an automotive technician do on a daily basis?

I began work as a "tire buster" at a local Sears. This was putting the car on the rack, removing the wheels, pulling and replacing tires and driving the car back to the lot. We'd get the cars assigned from the dispatcher, who was the person who admitted the cars and chose the racks available. We would work in teams of two, and generally stayed at the particular bay.

Later I became a porter. Our job was simply to move the cars back and forth from the service desk area. The dealership I worked at was pretty large and advanced. After some time, I took over what we called the "Tower" or the "Control Tower", which was the central raised portion of the garage overlooking all the mechanics' bays. Again, those bays tended to be assigned to a particular technician or team of technicians. The "Tower" was actually the person who dispatched the jobs, monitored progress, checked status of each job, problems, supplies including anything from the parts department. I'd be in charge of contacting customers with status and working with the parts department to procure any parts that we didn't have in stock and would work with other dealerships for trades and exchanges. Occasionally I'd have to contact external auto parts dealers or even the corporation, which in this case was GM.

I also filled in on the lube rack and body undercoating, which was a big thing in those days. Exposure to all the technicians in this dealership was quite a great learning experience. I worked in tune-up, transmission, brakes and, of course, "tire busting".

I followed one of my bosses to another dealership in downtown Detroit. There I worked in several areas. In those days, it was rare to get a certification for working a particular skill. The training was provided by the main corporation, which was, as before in this case, GM. Each model year, we'd have company rep come by the garage with cases of the new manuals and who'd give us training in some new technology or feature.

Basically, the agenda was similar. We'd go to the "Tower" (or in this latter case, it was just the dispatcher office and not a tower at all, but just a glass-enclosed area. The service advisors were, as before, in a separate area, and they'd write up descriptions and the probable repairs needed. The service orders they wrote up would be taken by either the advisor or a porter to the "Tower". The tower would usually have small tags or sticks on which the vehicle and tech currently working on it were written. As the "Tower", I'd rearrange these on a large board showing where the vehicles were and what their status was.

As a technician, I'd pick up the work order from the tower after getting a call or having a porter come by. I'd generally discuss the job with the Tower and we'd decide together what to be done and in what order, what it might entail, any recommendations, etc..

After that, we'd work on the vehicle until done and to be delivered to the front of the dealership or if it needed to be transferred to another technician. Porters would usually move the vehicles.

Other than that, technicians would occasionally interact with the customer, provide details, recommendations, etc.. But usually the service advisor would do that. We'd put the order on the windshield and have the vehicle moved out and replaced with the next job. WE'd have service meetings where the owner and managers would bring us up to speed on new models, new technology, business conditions. We'd sometimes go off-site for training. In this case it was in Detroit, and GM had a technology center and proving ground north of the city.

What I would recommend is to simply visit a dealership that looks interesting and ask what the current procedure is. Given that technology on cars is so advanced and varied, you'd want to get specific information from the "horse's mouth", so to speak. I'm sure the training is much more specialized and varies much more from make to make. There was a time I could look at most cars and simply go to work. Working on my own car today requires a lot more research on my part. I get tech info and advice from dozens of sources prior to starting on some repair that's new to me. Given that most folks in Detroit at the time were "gear heads", just about everyone I knew could tear down a car and rebuild it. Today, I doubt it. But whatever you do, it will be fascinating. Now that we're seeing self-driving cars, I'd imagine the next step would be robots to do the repairs. Fortunately for you, that will probably be awhile :-) But don't think you won't be expected to be familiar with some robotics pretty soon :-)