Resources / Diesel technician shortage
The diesel technician shortage, by the numbers
The diesel technician shortage is mostly a replacement problem, not a growth problem. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 319,900 diesel service technicians and mechanics employed in 2024, projects about 26,500 openings a year through 2034, and says most of those openings come from workers leaving the occupation or retiring. This page reads those figures and what they mean for a fleet shop.
What the BLS actually says about diesel technicians
Every figure below is from one page, the Occupational Outlook Handbook entry for diesel service technicians and mechanics, in its 2024 edition (BLS, 2024). The quotes are verbatim so you can check them against the source.
| Measure | Figure | BLS wording |
|---|---|---|
| Employment, 2024 | 319,900 | Number of jobs, 2024 |
| Projected growth, 2024 to 2034 | 2 percent | "slower than the average for all occupations" |
| Openings per year, on average | About 26,500 | "projected each year, on average, over the decade" |
| Where the openings come from | Replacement | "Most of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire." |
| Median pay, 2024 | $60,640 per year | Median annual wage |
| Typical entry education | High school diploma or equivalent | Typical entry level education |
| Training | Long term on the job training | On the job training needed to attain competency |
One thing the BLS page does not say is the word shortage. It reports employment, growth, and openings. Whether those add up to a shortage depends on how many people enter the trade each year, and that figure is not on the page. So read the rest of this article as an interpretation of published numbers, not as a BLS finding.
Why 2 percent growth and 26,500 openings are both true
The two numbers look contradictory at first. Two percent growth over ten years on 319,900 jobs is a small number of new positions. Yet the openings figure is 26,500 a year. The gap between them is the replacement rate. Almost every opening is a chair someone left, not a chair someone added.
That changes what the shortage feels like on the shop floor. A growth shortage would mean you cannot find a fourth tech for a fourth bay. A replacement shortage means the person who leaves has been there for years and the person who arrives has not. The seat gets filled. The experience does not. BLS lists the training as long term on the job, which is its own way of saying the gap between the two takes years to close.
So the shortage most fleet shops feel is not a headcount shortage. It is an experience shortage that arrives on a schedule set by other people's retirements. That is a harder problem than hiring, and it is the one this site is mostly about. What leaves when a veteran fleet mechanic retires lists exactly what walks out in a replacement opening.
A note on the pay figure. A median of $60,640 is a national midpoint across every employer type, from dealerships to municipal yards. It is on the table because it is on the BLS page. It does not tell you what your region pays or what it takes to keep someone. Use it as a reference, not a target.
What a replacement shortage does to a six technician shop
Scale the national figure down and it stops being abstract. If openings run at roughly 26,500 a year against 319,900 jobs, that is about one opening for every twelve positions each year. Apply that ratio to a shop of six and you are looking at a departure every other year on average. Some shops go five years without one and then lose two in a season. The average is not a forecast. It is a reminder that the next notice is coming.
The cost of each one is uneven. Losing a two year tech costs a hiring cycle. Losing the twenty year tech costs the fault code memory, the local overrides, the supplier relationships, and often the brake inspector qualification the shop keeps on file under 49 CFR 396.25. The tribal knowledge in fleet maintenance page lists the six places that knowledge hides so you can see how much sits with one person.
The replacement arrives with a diploma and, per BLS, needs long term training on the job to reach competency. Where that training used to come from was the person who just left. That is the loop a replacement shortage closes on a shop: the trainer leaves in the same opening the trainee fills.
What a fleet shop can do about the diesel technician shortage
You cannot change the national numbers. You can change three things inside your own yard, and they are the only three that matter at that scale.
Keep the people you have longer. A departure delayed by two years is 26,500 becoming your problem later, with more time to prepare.
The senior stops being the only one who can answer, so the job stops being the one nobody can take leave from. The stronger shop team page is about this.
Shorten the ramp for the person who arrives. Long term on the job training is the BLS baseline. It is not a law.
The new hire finds the answer instead of asking for it. How to train a new fleet technician covers the sequence and the section on cutting onboarding time.
Capture before the exit, not after. NASA found its own capture was "retroactive after identifying the individual who is departing." Fleet shops are no different.
Short recorded clips, tagged to the unit, approved, and searchable. The pillar guide on preserving institutional fleet knowledge is the starting point.
The third lever is the one that makes the other two cheaper. Once the senior's knowledge is captured and findable, the new hire ramps against it instead of against his patience, and the senior can take a week off without the shop stalling. That is the dividend of doing the capture early, and the reason NASA's 2021 review argued for "knowledge capture throughout the career, not after someone has given notice" (NASA, 2021).
Making the opening cost a chair, not twenty years
YardWise holds the knowledge a shop uses to do the work and serves it back with a citation. Four levels: manufacturer manuals and bulletins, the fleet's standing practice, what individual technicians know with their name attached, and knowledge tied to a specific unit. A technician asks by push to talk voice in shop talk and the answer comes back in under five seconds with the manual page and the name of the person who set the local practice.
Against a replacement shortage that does two things. The departing senior's clips stay after he goes, so the opening takes the person and leaves the pattern memory. And the new hire has the shop's collective knowledge from day one, which is what the ramp new techs product page is about. Getting knowledge in is plain work: PDFs and scans of manuals, a photo of an annotated page, voice clips tagged and approved by a supervisor, and the equipment roster as a CSV.
It does not hire anyone, and it does not replace the maintenance system that schedules PM and holds records. It makes each departure cheaper, which at one opening per twelve positions a year is the lever a shop can actually pull.
Diesel technician shortage questions, answered short
Is there really a diesel technician shortage?
The BLS does not use the word. It reports 319,900 diesel service technicians and mechanics employed in 2024, 2 percent growth to 2034, and about 26,500 openings a year, most from workers leaving the occupation or retiring. Whether that is a shortage depends on entrants, which the page does not count. What the figures do show is a large, steady replacement need.
How many diesel technician openings are there each year?
About 26,500 a year on average over 2024 to 2034, per the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024 edition. Most are replacement openings rather than new positions.
What does a diesel technician earn?
The BLS median annual wage for diesel service technicians and mechanics was $60,640 in 2024. That is a national midpoint across all employer types and regions, not a figure for any one fleet or area.
Why does the shortage hurt fleet shops more than the numbers suggest?
Because the openings are replacement openings. The person leaving is experienced and the person arriving is not, and BLS lists the training as long term on the job. The seat is filled. The experience, including local overrides and diagnostic memory, is not.
What can one shop do about it?
Three things at shop scale: keep people longer by spreading the knowledge so no one is irreplaceable, shorten the ramp for new hires by making answers findable, and capture what senior technicians know before they give notice rather than after. The pillar guide on preserving institutional fleet knowledge covers the third.
See what a shop looks like when the knowledge stays after the technician leaves
Bring the fault your last departing tech was the only one who could read. We will show you what a cited answer to it looks like in the bay.
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