is that the tech at 60 or the shop rate?

That was hourly, and as I said I had only been with the shop for like 2 years and I m fairly young, guys who have been around for a while can make $40 or so. I have never met a tech that made $60 an hour as an hourly rate. I know plenty of people incuding myself that could make that much working flat rate though.

what i meant was are there any amount of hours garanteed or are you only getting paid if there are boats to work on,right now i have 40 hrs garanteed but that's not the way it usually goes in the automotive side

It wasn't the normal situation but we had an unwritten 40 hour garauntee. The boss was a great guy and took care of us well. Full payed benefits, not a penny out of pocket from us and 3 weeks a year vacation in only my second year at the shop as well as about 3 weeks of Merc tech education in the location of our choosing, I went to Florida. He was one of those guys that never really took much money out of the buissnes it all went back in. On the rare ocasison that we were slow we would always find something to do like making engine stands or a welding bench or building drives out of pieces from the scrap pile. We were rearely slow though, ussually if I wanted to work 80 hours in a week they were there to be worked and I did it on more then one ocasion. Do you work at a dealer or something ?

i used to,but all this talk is making me want to switch to the marine side.

Yeah, I'd be interested in a little more info on this topic too. I am auto/ford dealer cert,ase,27 yrs in current dealer. My wife is looking to relocate her office to the N.C. coastal area. I'm considering marine instead of auto when I start looking.

You had better be able to turn yourself into a pretzel, if you want to do marine work!!!

thats the truth. gotta love the port engine starter on a non staggerd twin application.

just fiished doing oil change(the right way)and it was a pain in the azz.

Come on Turboed there are always boats to work on you know that, Hell all the mechanics in the solarsystem can work 20 years straight and there will be still broken boats out there. Mainly mine every 5 hrs.