Bus and Truck Mechanics and Diesel Engine Specialists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Bus and Truck Mechanics and Diesel Engine Specialists offer sit among all 287,230 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 287,230 jobs nationally, Bus and Truck Mechanics and Diesel Engine Specialists make up 0.19% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 29,730 of those jobs, the top three states hold 22.9%, and the deepest concentration sits in Wyoming (location quotient 1.98, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $44,310 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($85,980) is 2.1 times the 10th percentile ($41,670), a gap of $44,310 a year. The mean of $62,480 sitting above the median of $60,640 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 51 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Hawaii at $79,010; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Bus and Truck Mechanics and Diesel Engine Specialists stands number 126 by employment and number 398 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations, the group median wage is $59,300 across 51 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 2% more than its group median, and it supplies 4.8% of the group's 6,045,030 jobs. In 23 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $60,640, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 13,240 jobs, 4.6% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $34,620 a year, against $82,260 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $60,640 a year is $5,053 a month gross, $2,332 every two weeks, $1,166 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($49,240) to the 75th ($73,690) is worth $24,450 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $5,053 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $66,704 would sit between the median ($60,640) and the 75th percentile ($73,690), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $49,240, is $11,400 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations

Sibling occupations in Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations: Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics, First-Line Supervisors of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers, Industrial Machinery Mechanics, Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers, Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Workers, All Other, Mobile Heavy Equipment Mechanics, Except Engines. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.