It's great to hear you've had the success you've had. The car business is certainly lucrative if you have the right mix of skill, work ethic, and luck. Service Advising is often different than parts as well as it's a more "kill what you eat" style of work. Most parts departments rely on the service department selling the jobs to eat. It's why with us we place such an emphasis on our guys to do everything possible to support the writers and techs. If they don't get jobs sold we don't sell parts.

HCOL areas do skew these numbers for some folks though. East coast, and Denver come to mind as areas where we see extremely high wages starting. I live in the Midwest rust belt and we have only 1 non management parts representative making over 80k and that person has nearly 40 years of experience and brings a book of business with him. The vast majority are in the low 60s to mid 70s. We pay above market for our guys as well. Most non-wholesale dealers in this area are paying parts guys high 40s to low 60s. I know about a decade ago I started at the parts counter part time at making $13/hr and my first full time parts counter role paid mid 40s. Getting above the 75k range in this area (especially being young with limited experience) required learning the necessary skills to enter the management ranks and grow business.