Austin Lutz was not your classic gearhead. \u201cI didn\u2019t know I wanted to work on cars at all,\u201d he would later say, looking back on his teenage years. \u201cI didn\u2019t grow up tearing cars apart or anything like that.\u201d Even when he landed his first job at the age of fifteen at an Amoco gas station in Hopkins, he worked in the front of the store as a cashier rather than in the garage, where grease tended to get under fingernails. Then, one day a manager asked if he wanted to become an oil changer. Lutz asked if the job paid better than what he was earning at the cash register. The manager told him it paid a dollar an hour more. \u201cI said, \u2018All right!\u2019\u201d Lutz recalled. \u201c\u2018Sign me up!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus started Austin Lutz\u2019s career in the field of what he called \u201cturning wrenches.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lutz\u2019s garage work at the Amoco station allowed him to gain valuable car repair skills, but he knew he would need more training if he was going to make progress on what looked to be a viable career path. While still a student at Hopkins High School, he took several automotive courses at Hennepin Technical College. Then, after a brief postsecondary enrollment at Penn State University (\u201cI did not like it at all\u201d), he returned home and asked the owner of another Hopkins auto shop for career advice. \u201cWhat he told me,\u201d Lutz later recalled, \u201cwas if I was serious about automotive, I had to go to Dunwoody.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lutz enrolled in Dunwoody\u2019s Automotive Service Technology program in 2000, attending classes during the day while working night shifts at a Goodyear station in Champlin. But when he graduated two years later, he still wasn\u2019t completely sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life turning wrenches. \u201cI\u2019m not saying I didn\u2019t enjoy it,\u201d he later said of the work. \u201cI just knew I didn\u2019t want to be in the back of the shop, full-time, forever.\u201d He continued on as a student, taking general education courses at Normandale Community College, and earning a four-year degree in agricultural and food business management at the University of Minnesota. But after working for less than a year in the agricultural sector, he realized it wasn\u2019t the right fit for him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n