I don't know what things are like these days, but I started my apprenticeship back in 1989 at a Holden dealer.
Money & conditions were **** as mentioned above, even as a tradesman. Once qualified, I branched out to smaller, independant workshops where the money was better and the hours were longer. There was good and bad parts of the job. But after 10 years in the trade, I gave it up & looked for a job with better money & conditions. I still love cars, working as a mechanic didn't kill the passion at all. I'm not as enthusiastic about getting greasy under cars anymore, but hey I'm nearly 40 years old now
And if it's my own car, then I'll still drag myself under the car when required.
You are unlikely to ever get rich working for someone else as a car mechanic, but you learn a lot doing it, and learn to appreciate what hard work is. A lot of kids these days won't take a job unless it pays at least 50K a year and they can sit in an airconditioned office. But most of them end up being useless at anything else and have to pay everyone else to fix their car, their mower etc, because they haven't learnt a trade. So a lot of their money wasted on that sort of thing. I reckon it's a good way to start a career, having a trade qualification does open doors to other careers down the track if you want to branch out to something else. If you want a long term career as a mechanic, you've got to work on heavy machinery ie diesel mechanic/fitter. Mate used to work for Caterpillar, and made a fortune, he was on around 100K, nearly 10 years ago, Part of the deal was they paid for all of his tools as well - he walked away with over $20,000 worth of tools.
