tyrguy

Guess it doesn't rotate the pics on Google +. The reason that other pic went away is I deleted it. I have one of the exterior pics chosen as my cover pic but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I read somewhere today that the pic it sticks out there is the first one you put on the site. Guess the only way to get it the way you want it is to delete all pics and start over.

BTW, if you know an easy way to change that interior picture to one of my exterior pictures on my google plus page, fill me in. Looks like there is no good way unless you delete all photos and start all over. Scratch that. Looks like it rotates thru the pics on it's own. I don't think you can pick just one and have it stay that way.

I respectively disagree. You can't more than double the bays in small town and not have an impact. And it's not just me that has seen this decline. All the small independents that are still in business in town aren't doing what they did prior to 8 years ago. And remember, the car dealerships pull from a larger area than us independents so they don't need to depend on the town population like we do but they do impact this small market. However, I do appreciate your input and might use a few of your ideas.

Your right, I've considered changing the name over the years. Something to reconsider. You hit on something about the tire customers. There are a lot of tires customers that have other shops that do most of their work. But for some reason these shops prefer not to do tires or alignments. We see that a lot.

The only wage separate on my P&L is my own salary. But if I look at QBs payroll summary report I know how much I'm paying each employee at a glance. Yes I keep my tire dept and my sales dept separate. At the end of the day I know how many hours each tech booked versus worked, GP [my way] per hour, tire units, GP per tire, etc. My POS software plus other records I keep tell me all the other metrics you mention. I keep a lot of spreadsheets by hand in pencil. Been doing it this way too long.... old dog doesn't want to learn new accounting trick.

Yes we are behind the Walmart on a dead end street. Our old shop was in front of where Walmart sits on a 30k+/day car count main highway. We sold the 50 acres that the development with Walmart sits on. We have 80 acres left and when it eventually gets developed, we will be exactly in the center of it all. Now that being said being back here hasn't hurt our new customer count. Before we moved we were putting 50+ new customers a month in the computer. Right after the move that spiked to over 75 per month. Over the last 8 years it has settled back to were it was prior to the move. BTW, being next door to Walmart has it's advantages. We fixed their error and they send us other service work they don't do. Plus our customers love going to shop while their car is worked on. As for hours, we used to work the service department full hours 6 days a week but to keep my guys happy about 24 years ago we went to tires only on Sat giving the service dept the weekend off. Instead we made Wed a late night till 9pm. Recently I asked my guys how it was going and they said fine except for the late night on Wed. So we changed the hours again from 9pm on wed to 630pm on Tues and Wed. It might not be customer friendly but the average tenure of my employees is over 20 years. Plus as I've said before, I'm getting old and tired.

Although I'm a tire dealer, we are 70% service/ 30% tires so I really consider myself a repair shop that sells a good deal of tires. Yes I pay my service techs flat rate with a safety net hourly minimum. The tire service guys are strictly hourly. I keep track of the same metrics you do just in a different way. You make it sound like lumping some of the wages in COGS is THE industry standard. I assure you it is not. There are plenty of shops that do it either way. And plenty of the industry publications print articles about metric percentages with wages not included in COGS.

I've detailed on posts before about declining hours billed over the years. Brief summary: From 1979 to 2008 every year was a record year. From the late 80s thru 2008 we always billed around 97% of our 3 techs hours [avg 6150/6350 hrs/yr]. Didn't matter recessions or whatever we were never more than 50 hrs off those numbers. The recession hit and our numbers started to decline around 3% a year. We did have a few up years, but also a year or 2 when the hours took a 8-10% hit. From 2008, our last "good year" to 2015 we saw our hours billed drop 25% to 4610/6348 or 73% productivity. So for 8 years I've been looking at the numbers from every angle and kept coming back to my theory that it was all due to the recession and slow recovery, consumer confidence, etc. But I think I have been ignoring the elephant in the room. For the first 25 years or so in business, I always had the biggest shop in our little town. Started with 3 bays in 79 and grew it to 12 bays in my old shop. In 2006 we sold the land the old shop was on and built a new shop again with 12 bays. Prior to 2006 our town of about 15k population had by my estimate 40-45 bays in town so I accounted for 25% of that. Then there was a change that I have been ignoring when analyzing my business. Prior to that time we had no car dealers in town. We now have 5. Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Honda and VW all within a 1/2 mile of my shop. So in our little town we have gone from 40-45 bays to easily double that. Being "old school" I just never considered them my competition. I now think I was in error. So what to do? Last year my very first employee retired to run a non automotive home business. Wished him well, told him to keep his key in case he ever needs to use the shop. I mean after 37 years he's like a brother. So now I'm trying to see if we can make it with the remaining 2 full service techs, 2 tire techs, 2 service advisers and myself. Because I pay my techs minimums no matter how slow we get, I've had a big savings in wages. I've been able to cut expenses in other places as well. Plus we upped out labor rate from $95 to $100 per hour. We're still making money, not as much as before but it just feels better without techs standing around. Maybe I'm getting lazy in my old age. Anyway, I just think we have over capacity in our town at this point that will hopefully get better as town grows, which it is. Thoughts?.

Traditional accounting practices would define GP as total sales [less tax] minus COGS [what your parts, tires cost]. Wages would be deducted as expenses. I've seen it done both ways. I personally have always used the traditional accounting method.

We charge 5% of labor for shop supplies with no cap. I asked my guys today if they ever remember a customer complaint and they replied no. As far as sublet, we divide by .75 for a 25% GP. Sublet would include mobile reflashing, towing, wheel repairs, windshields, and machine shop labor.

Either counter with them for a number somewhere in the middle, say $400 [20 days x $20]. Or take their $250 and say thank you very much. No reason to make a big deal out of it if you didn't have any diagnostic or inspection time involved.

The silence in response is deafening.

That's a great unit, we have one. It's kind of a road force light. Don't feel bad about it not being a full road force, they are a bit overkill. Great for finding ride issues but they don't balance a tire any different than most balancers.

Each state is different. I use a service that will do all the paper work for you and get a title. You pay them a fee of course but you can recoup that by scraping the vehicle out. Another option if they don't owe you much is to have the vehicle towed to their residence.

Service advisers $400 to $700. Techs $600. Tire service personal $400.

You make it sound like a wage law. Obviously 30% is not a bad benchmark but it can definitely vary. I probably pay my techs closer to 40% loaded of my labor rate due to other factors such as tenure and experience. Before one of my three techs retired in May, the average tenure of my techs was 31 years. It's now 29 years with the remaining two. Is 40% too high? Maybe, but I haven;t had to hire a tech since 1994 and I can probably count on 1 hand how many days a year the three of them have called off sick in a year. When I hear stories from you guys about the problems finding techs I just smile.

You do know that the MC MC440S are imports as well don't you? Mexico. However the reason I'd go with them over the Westlakes, Ironman, or whatever is that the MCs are backed by Cooper. We sell the Fuzion line which is back by Bridgestone and are at about the same price as the MCs.

You have nothing to worry about except losing the customer which in this case might be a plus. Your warranty was explicit in that they had to return to you for warranty work. It only makes common sense that they would be required to do that unless they were out of town and couldn't get to your shop. Your $40 goodwill offer was a correct response.

We never give alignments away for free. With the purchase of 2 or more tires we do give away a free alignment check. My records show that 70-75% of the vehicles will need the alignment touched up. Very few people opt to not have it adjusted after putting new tires on. The Hunter printout helps with the closing of the sale.

We used to be open a full day on Sat with a full crew. 2 service advisers, 2 out of 3 techs and our tire changers. 1 tech was always off on Sat [i left it up to them to choose who was off]. Eventually cut back to closing at 2, then noon. About 20+ years ago we I decided to give the service advisers and techs the weekends off but in return, we went to staying open till 9 on Wed with all 3 techs on board. So for the last 20+ years Sat has been myself and 1 or 2 tire changers [depending on the season] from 8 till noon. We do a lot of free tire changes and rotations, and probably average 8 tires sold retail except like now in season when that will jump to 16 to 20 or more. There have been Sat where we do less than than $100 retail. However, we also deliver tires to our local car dealers, make service appointments for the following week, and have customers pick up vehicles that have been finished during the week so there are intangibles that don't show up in $$s. It's probably a break even proposition but I just haven't pulled the trigger on closing on Sat yet. Except when I was a tire salesman for the Mohawk Rubber Co on the road during the late 70s, I've never had Sat off so I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't working. Final note: About 3 months ago I asked my techs how things were going and they replied okay except that staying till nine on Wed night was getting old. In response to that we decided to stay till 6:30 on Tue and Wed instead. We get the same tech hours but but it eliminates me buying them dinner and we all get home at 7 instead of 9:30 which is a big difference. I like it more myself.

LMCCA'S comments don't bother me. It's all good. I just like having this forum as a place to go and vent a little to guys that know what I'm going thru every day. Yes, I go home and tell the little lady, or talk to my brother the school teacher. But NO ONE understands what we go thru better than our compadres on a forum such as this. Whether it's seeking advice, or just venting, I feel like I'm in an auditorium with all of you where I can stand up take the floor and speak my mind. And because of who you all are and what you do, I respect your opinion more than anybody else.

Absolutely my fault, and I readily accept that fact. And I didn't mind making it right by giving the service away at no charge. And if the customer had said it's an old car, or I can't afford it I wouldn't have thought anything of it. It was just the fact that he admitted he would have had given the authorization that got under my skin.

Sorry, too old school for the acronyms. OP? LMCCA?

Richard, of course that makes sense and I try to do that when I remember to. In this case it was dropped off with no appointment for a tire repair that led to a tire sale. When I sold the tires over the phone I said we would do a free alignment check if we could fit it in. Just one of those busy times when you don't think about it and figure you'll call the guy if it's out. Most times that I think to get a pre-authorization the customer either says to go ahead or to check it and call them if it's out. In the rare instance a customer would decline the alignment before it's even checked, the question would be to the customer why do you want to check it if you're not going to fix it? After this situation I indeed had a talk with my guys about pre-authorizing to keep this from happening again. I can tell you though, I've had similar situations in the past where we didn't go ahead with the repair and the customer was not happy because it wasn't done. The only reason I started this thread was it was frustrating and who better to unload on than your peers who understand.

Learning experience? Bad choice? I don't feel we made a bad call at all. If it happened again next week, I'd do the same thing. Because the fact is, most reasonable people would say i'm sorry you couldn't get a hold of me and thank you for proceeding with the alignment. My tech gets paid .5 hours to do a free alignment check so all it cost me was an extra .3 hours to have him make the adjustments. I wasn't looking for sympathy, I was just venting about having to deal with characters like this guy that we all encounter way too much. If the question bothered the guy it's because he knows he was wrong. Fact is I don't think the question bothered him at all and that's the problem. He's oblivious to how he came across.