Starting the day
Auto body repair technicians typically start their day around 7 a.m. They need to get to the auto body shop by about that time because some people need to drop off their vehicles early in the morning before they go to work. The technician will get to work and help open the garage. This entails checking messages, emails and the overnight drop box to see if there are any keys that have been left in there for vehicles that were parked at the shop during the previous evening or before the shop opened that morning.
Once all of the vehicles have been brought in for the morning, the work begins. The technician will look at the list of cars that has been logged and figure out which ones need to be looked at first. Once he has put together his workload for the day, he will begin work. Sometimes this consists of finishing projects on vehicles from the previous day. Those almost always get worked on first, before a new vehicle is started on. An exception to this may be when a vehicle is in need of parts that haven't been delivered yet.
The real work begins
The technician must be able to bang out dents in a vehicle's body. In addition, he must also know paint vehicles and use tools such as rubber hammers, primer, paint guns, Bondo and various other tools used in the vehicle repair industry. The technician must also be able to follow directions, because often he will have to do that when installing new parts such as bumpers, grilles, headlights, mirrors and a plethora of other automotive parts that have been damaged during an auto collision. The technician will spend his morning repairing damaged vehicles and will usually take a break around noon.
Wrapping it up
After the technician returns from lunch, he is faced with yet more repair work. Again, this can range anywhere from repairing a dented fender to completely repainting a vehicle or simply touching up scratches. When the technician gets a new vehicle in the shop, he will assess the damage to the vehicle and let the shop manager know which parts will be needed to fix the damage. The shop manager will then order the parts for the vehicle, and the technician will let the manager know approximately how long the job will take so that the manager can relay the information to the vehicle owner.
After the repairs of the day have been done and the shop is ready to close, the technician will take inventory of how many vehicles on his list for that day still need work and their current stages of repair. This will determine his priorities for the next day. After that is done, he begins to clean up his work area, which includes cleaning all of the tools and putting them away for the next workday. In addition, he will take the vehicles that are still being repaired and drive them around the back of the shop so that he can continue working on them the next day. After all tools are put away and the cars are parked, the technician will check any messages and return any calls that he may need to return.
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