I Am A Now Stihl MasterWrench Certified Technician!

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
My point in making that post was to give some advice and tell him to know what he’s talking about rather than diving in headfirst without a clue
 
Took 2 years of 1/2 day Vo Tech for auto mechanics while in high school. All I heard from rich relatives was "why do you want to be a grease monkey?" One night, was out with a bunch of 4 year degreed friends who were 30k plus k in the whole. They couldn't find a job in "their field". I'm thinking that I'm making how much $$$$ working on cars, changing oil, and these guys are unemployed? With the lack of quality back then, everyone needed a mechanic.
Went to work at an Oldsmobile dealership for 27 years. Taught myself engines, diesels, carburetors etc., and rode the electronics wave of the 80's until I retired comfortably at 57. I must have done something right.

To this day, I wish I had gone to college. Not necessarily for a different field, just the quest for knowledge.
A person should never stop learning...
The ole gray matter upstairs needs to be constantly used or it dies
I just started learning french yesterday
I will turn 61 earth years this summer and have no plans of retirement
After years of just fixing things that need fixing i got my Red Seal Mechanics license last March
 
A person should never stop learning...
The ole gray matter upstairs needs to be constantly used or it dies
I just started learning french yesterday
I will turn 61 earth years this summer and have no plans of retirement
After years of just fixing things that need fixing i got my Red Seal Mechanics license last March
I have to get enrolled in some classes for Spring. I keep putting it off.
 
My Dad had a lot to do with my education course. He was a Custodian at my school.
We fixed everything. We repaired the house, car, bought the toys (minibike) and repaired it. Want to mow lawns and shovel snow? Lots of free and cheap lawnmowers around for the fixing.
When I made the choice to go to tech school, he supported it.
Bought me a $300 65 Ford Custom and said "You want to be a mechanic, fix this". I did and ran it for 4 years. Three on the tree linkage screwed up the first day. Fixed it.
I also was expected to clean the school in the summer. My senior summer he ot me a job as apprentice at the school bus garage.
All in all, I think it was a pretty good path to get me ready for my future.
 
I ain't going to college buddy.

My peers will be building up deep debt for 4 years while I'm out with my one-man mowing business getting RICH!
As time passes, you will learn that the secret to getting very much money without an advanced degree is to have others work for you, under you, and then there are the headaches of being a manager, as you have to supply some incentive for them to stay under you, like benefits, so they don’t just head out on their own like you propose. Alternatively, you get some specialty training which qualifies you to charge more for your truly trained expertise, and that can be in any number of fields. Steve Jobs (creator of Apple computers) didn’t finish college: he attended for 6 months. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard after 3 semesters to start Microsoft. But they stand out as amazing examples of having the right skill set and enthusiasm and being in the right place at the right time. I haven’t heard of multi-millionaires who got there with a single-person lawn mowing business, but I will tell you this: an electrician I know who is currently retired at age 84 is holding onto a great deal more wealth than I am at age 66, and I retired from a career in family medicine after 33.5 years of being employed as a family physician. Long, long ago I went to college with the blessing of parents who skimped to send me there. I entered medical school debt-free due to their generosity. When I attended the University of Illinois College of Medicine from 1982-86 I left with $20,000 in debt, half of which was a brand new Honda Civic that I needed to replace a dead car. Currently, tuition at medical schools is far more than the $2,500 a year I encountered. Here in Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University has a tuition per year of roughly $120,000. So I totally understand not building up a ton of debt. Getting an MD degree for half a million dollars is possibly close to a normal thing now.
 
As time passes, you will learn that the secret to getting very much money without an advanced degree is to have others work for you, under you, and then there are the headaches of being a manager, as you have to supply some incentive for them to stay under you, like benefits, so they don’t just head out on their own like you propose. Alternatively, you get some specialty training which qualifies you to charge more for your truly trained expertise, and that can be in any number of fields. Steve Jobs (creator of Apple computers) didn’t finish college: he attended for 6 months. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard after 3 semesters to start Microsoft. But they stand out as amazing examples of having the right skill set and enthusiasm and being in the right place at the right time. I haven’t heard of multi-millionaires who got there with a single-person lawn mowing business, but I will tell you this: an electrician I know who is currently retired at age 84 is holding onto a great deal more wealth than I am at age 66, and I retired from a career in family medicine after 33.5 years of being employed as a family physician. Long, long ago I went to college with the blessing of parents who skimped to send me there. I entered medical school debt-free due to their generosity. When I attended the University of Illinois College of Medicine from 1982-86 I left with $20,000 in debt, half of which was a brand new Honda Civic that I needed to replace a dead car. Currently, tuition at medical schools is far more than the $2,500 a year I encountered. Here in Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University has a tuition per year of roughly $120,000. So I totally understand not building up a ton of debt. Getting an MD degree for half a million dollars is possibly close to a normal thing now.
And right then, when you finish all your education, and have half of $1 million worth of debt, it’s about the time when you want to settle down and maybe consider starting a family and getting a house, and it’s really hard to be saddled with that much debt. Maybe if I had settled with more simple jobs from age 18 and done some good investing, I’d be as well off as I am now, but I really wanted to go into medicine and I’m very glad that I did. All I’m saying is if you find something that you really want to do and it would require some training, go for it. You’ll never regret that you went for it. I’m still board certified now in family medicine, and I still have a vasectomy practice on Friday evenings. It would be hard to think of anything that I could do that could bring in the money that I can make with four surgeries on a Friday evening at age 66 if I hadn’t had that training. And I really like what I do and I really enjoyed my 33 1/2 years of general family medicine. But I had a patient who was trained as an electrical engineer, and he worked on windmill generators. He was the guy who climbed up the ladder in those things to service them. He had tremendously less training than I and he was making the same type of income that I was. So explore your options! You are a go-getter, and you will do well in life.
 
Yep... and even before that, I have always wanted to work for Stihl. I just don't know if I should do that or go to the trades.
If you want to make money, learn to be an Electrician, Plumber, or Auto Technician. There aren't enough people that have that skill set around. All the guys I know doing that are real busy and always working.
 
If you want to make money, learn to be an Electrician, Plumber, or Auto Technician. There aren't enough people that have that skill set around. All the guys I know doing that are real busy and always working.
I agree with all that but I will add one of the most lucrative careers out there that requires some of the least debt and least time in school is electrical lineman. In 15 months after graduating high school you can be working and earning a helluva wage. In the last 29 years I have had countless numbers of my Industrial Arts students do it. Most started practicing climbing in high school but it is not required. What is required is a strong work ethic and common sense. I have only had two students not complete the program. One was good at climbing under ideal conditions and excellent with the the bookwork. The problem was he was a bit timid. The old guys at the school got him up on poles and started messing with him shaking the poles and such. It was done to simulate real life conditions. He got spooked and switched to sub-station electrician and is excelling 12 years later. Another was able to handle the climbing but could not do the math. The 4 years I had him in class I kept stressing the math. He went to school but dropped out. He came back to me and said "Damn Mr G you were right about the math, I wished I would have paid attention to you". All others were successful and are earning an excellent living. One of which is my nephew in-law.

https://nwicc.edu/academics/programs-of-study/powerline/
 

Latest posts

Back
Top