Learn the trade on real cars.
Every bay is a classroom and every filmed repair is coursework. The plan is a 36-week path built on the ASE master-technician curriculum, worked next to an owner-operator who was taught the same way.
The Apex Ladder
From first oil change to running a bay
A path, not a promise of a paycheck. Each rung is earned on the floor and shows up on film.
Apprentice
Start in Bay 2 (oil, lube and fluids) or Bay 13 (detailing and upholstery), the lower-barrier trades. Learn the transparency routine on low-risk jobs. Work beside an owner-operator on real cars from week one.
ASE-ready technician
Rotate through the trades: brakes, suspension, A/C, electrical, EV, drivetrain, structural, glass. Earn trade certifications one at a time. Sit for ASE tests with the filmed record of your work behind you.
ASE-certified technician
ASE certifies a technician once the tests are passed and the required hands-on work experience is logged. Paid shop hours at G.A.G. are how you log it.
Owner-operator
Run your own bay shift with an apprentice beside you, teaching what you were taught. The most-certified people staff the diagnostic hub.
Turn around and teach
The long-term path leads to running a G.A.G. shop at a future Fullway campus. The structure for that comes only with legal counsel and, if it's ever a franchise, a Franchise Disclosure Document first.
The real credential
The ASE board
ASE (the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence) runs the industry's standard tests. Pass A1 through A8 and you hold Master Automobile Technician status. Tap the tests to light them up.
Straight talk: passing a test isn't the same as being certified. ASE certifies after the tests and the required work experience, and certifications are renewed every five years. That's why we say a 36-week graduate is ASE-ready, not ASE-certified. Sources: ASE A1–A9 tests · ASE work experience
Why this trade, why these people
The numbers that built the plan
Public data only. G.A.G. has no results of its own yet, and we won't pretend it does.
openings for automotive technicians projected each year in the U.S., 2025 to 2035.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticsof adults released from Indiana prisons in 2021 were back within three years.
Indiana Department of Correctionlower odds of returning to prison for people who took part in correctional education, across the strongest studies.
RAND, 2013higher odds of getting a job after release for people in vocational training.
RAND, 2013The country needs technicians. Indiana keeps sending people home with nothing in their hands. A shop that trains on real cars, in daylight, on camera, answers both at once.
The Fullway Certification standard
One curriculum, every campus
The training plan carries the Fullway Certification standard, so a technician trained at one campus is trained the same way at the next. G.A.G.'s flagship is planned as the auto lab of a Fullway campus.