sokrispy69

anyone know how much a MB tech makes ... im thinking about going to uti for the mercedes program and wanted to know if the career is worth it before i invest time and money into it ...any techs in here let me know thanks!

Gullwing

Oh as a Mercedes tech you can make anywhere over 70K after a year or two... Oh wait you don't want the bullsh8t the school tells you.
If they still ram through 300 Elite students each year you will be lucky to get $15 an hour to start. Many dealers (6 years ago) would start techs out at $13, oh and if you want a raise forget it. Why give you more when they can get someone else for less? Or even why pay $7K for elite when they can train someone else for $10 an hour?
UTI prices have gone way up over the past 7 years, I think it went up double right after I graduated. So you are looking at $40K+ for UTI and another $7k+ for elite if you don't get picked up by a dealer. So you might make $30K your first year, but dealers are still not seeing increases right now, higher labor rates are still pushing people to indy shops.
Working at a dealer 250 miles away from another MB dealer and I sat around making no money for over 400 hours in six months. So I sat around 10 weeks out of 26. This happend twice in two years. But if you are lazy and don't need money it is a great job.

If you really want to work at a dealer, just apply to one as an apprentice and see how that goes, you wont start out as high but you wont have to pay back student loans.

sokrispy69

thanks

nick 55

The MB Elite program has been suspended for about 6 months now as the needs of the dealers have been fulfilled.

Nick

sokrispy69

yea they opened a new program called STARt

ESPoff

i graduated from the elite program in march. went through the last class in orlando. im pretty sure elite is gone for good. they told us that there were problems between uti and mercedes and they ended the program. it took me 6 months to find a dealer that was hiring. I just started in birmingham. Im only making 13 an hour right now. When I go flat rate in a month or so they said anywhere between 20-25 an hour.

sokrispy69

u like it ? or would u do something diff now ?

ESPoff

I def like it. Im not sure it was worth the 30k I spent to go thru Wyotech. The dealer is paying my 7k from ELITE. I get around 50 hours a week. the dealer here is pretty busy. ive worked on a few sl63's and sl65's. I also worked on a maybach 57, such a nice car. If you like working on cars and thats what you wanna do then go for it. I love working on cars and knew that if I went to a dealer I wanted to work on one of the best cars on the road. these cars come in clean and leave clean. The shop I work in is state of the art with equipment. If its what you wanna do, go for it.

sokrispy69

i like workin on cars and all but im tryin to make good money especially if im goin to go to school for something you know what i mean

Gullwing

Good luck with getting the raise when going flat rate. At my first dealer when I went flat rate I lost minimum $1 per hour, but 95% of the time I lost $4 an hour.
It is good Elite is gone, there were just too many techs going through the program, flooded the market.

Hope it stays busy for you, the only real time the dealers I worked at were busy was when I was hourly, once I went flat rate work dropped off.