alfredauto

Yankee candle Christmas candles are 70% off. I'm burning a green one this week, smells like pine trees and vanilla.

Bad news update, his slow but acceptable work progressed into very, very slow sloppy work. Showed up late a couple times. I can't afford 10% productivity. Back to square 1. I feel bad like its my fault somehow, but I wouldn't apply for a job I couldn't do. I'm to blame for not performing a proper interview. I'd like to assume all applicants are truthful, but its not the case. This guy wanted a paycheck, not a career.

My issue is reality interferes with my business plan. I would love to do hub bearings and brakes all day, or put on 100 tires a day. No matter how much I advertise we still have to do low profit jobs to fill in the blanks. I've often thought about switching gears and installing jasper engines and transmissions. While the volume is much less big jobs keep the techs productive. A customer that wants a new $5000 engine to get another 5 years out of his car is probably a keeper.

I think the problem lies in the potential profit per working hour. A person who wants their oil changed right now and has to pick up their kids in 40 minutes isn't looking too hopeful for profit today. But why not squeeze them in, change the oil and make them an appt. for any needed services? The customer is happy they got their errands done, you get to do some real work at a more convenient time. If its 2pm and there's 5 cars still on the schedule then I have to say no, but it hurts. Disgusting cars are a separate issue, I hate to judge. If you looked in my truck today you would think I'm mentally challenged. I hauled cars all week so there's parts, wrappers, coffee cups, ratchet straps, dirty clothes, animal feed bags, muddy jackets, muddy boots, paperwork completely filling all available space. Crew cab truck now seats one person.

I don't have a good answer for you Joe, when its busy we "make hay when the sun shines" and try to prepare for the worse. This year has been a roller coaster ride. January found us sweeping the floor while we had the highest grossing February on record. Last week we worked overtime every day, but today I'm looking at three cars on the schedule for next week. March is a high expense month for us too, we opened in march so insurance and everything renews and tax deadline is close. Being in a rural college town feast or famine is a way of life. All our money is made September through May, excluding the winter and spring breaks. You can play hockey in the street in July, its a ghost town. I plan my budget and discretionary spending based on a 8 month year, if we have a good summer I squirrel it away. If 2 weeks off is breaking you I would take a close look at payroll, maybe run a leaner crew if your customers will accept longer wait times. Maybe branch into used cars, detailing work or wrecker service to keep the cash flowing during slow times. Maximizing profits is good, reducing expenses is easier to control.

I bought a magazine rack from auction that came from a school library. I use clip boards, key goes on the clip board with the RO, it goes back when completed. Its 5 tier rack, cars that are done move to the bottom slot, news arrivals go on the top. They move down as they progress. It works for about 20-25 clip boards. Cheap and easy, no tags to buy. Keys have to stay with the clip board, piles of keys is bad.

Not to be a downer, but if i was a consumer and someone else was paying the bill for my BMW I'd take it to the BMW dealer too unless my regular mechanic could do it. There are too many indy shops that say they work on euro cars but really have no idea what there doing. Thank the jack of all trades for that. Maybe send a follow up letter thanking them for the opportunity and invite them in to service them in the future. Its hard to get a new customer comfortable when they are stressed. Don't take it personal. I Just bought a clean E39 540i m sport that an Indy goofed on. Someone did a water pump and jammed the coolant pipes so hard it broke the rear coolant manifold. They thought it blew the head gasket because water was pouring from the back of the engine. Doh!

When I signed up as a NAPA center they gave me some great business tips, the most important is keeping track of income and expenses measured in percentages. If there are say 20 categories and your shop is making 5% net profit, saving 1% in 10 areas and increasing price 1% in 10 areas will net you 20% more profit. One percent is easy to accomplish, nobody will notice brake pads costs $1 more. Call your supplier and save 2% on oil, easy. Raise your labor rate 20% and people will notice! This website is basically a 20 group, we don't have to suffer in silence. Businesses helping businesses in a non competitive way is good. Try talking with the shop next door about pricing and problems and it might not be so easy.

I don't allow side work. My lead tech can use the shop after hours for his cars and his family as a perk. He has a key. It has worked out well, he pays for the parts and I'm not involved in any way. He uses the shop so infrequently after hours its a non issue. I wouldn't charge his wife labor for an oil change anyway. His aunts and uncles come in and get treated like any other customer. Stealing customers is bad bad bad in every way, if I had to compete on price with my tech being the competitor he'd be sent down the road instantly. Its too lucrative a proposition to allow a tech to make $75/hr profit using your resources. He can sell parts at cost and still make a profit because there's no overhead (out of his pocket). I suppose if your not paying the guy enough its a way to keep him but even still its a bad road to be on. Let your guy go so he can open his own place if he wants to be the boss.

We do give customers a best/good/cheap choice on tires, brakes, suspension, pretty much any commodity service. I just don't advertise it. A customer that comes in for brakes gets a complete inspection and a quote for OE equivalent brakes. If they balk at it I offer the cheaper aftermarket choices, maybe I'll discount the whole job a little bit using the better parts or give away the brake flush or something. We never put garbage on cars, I can't afford the comebacks.

Believe it or not the Duralast Gold pads have really been a non issue for us. No comebacks due to noise or performance. Easy to source, priced decent, easy. Example, on my hd3500 duramax I use OE pads because I use OE everything on my cars, they are $160 a set. They stop good and last forever. The golds are $40, stop about the same. They wear out quicker but not 4x quicker. They fit pretty good. No doubt the OE parts are the best fit, but I can't send every customer with a tight budget away if they can't afford the best.

I'm an ase master tech L1 certified, I own the shop, and I rotate for free. My tech gets paid to make customers happy. I'm not giving away our time, I'm not shopping the car, I'm simply caring about my customers tire investment. Customers appreciate it and come back. A free rotation costs me $2 in coffee, $1 in candy, 15 minutes of lift time. Add another 15 minutes of visiting. The average tire lasts 40k miles, so I give away an hour of lift time an hour of therapy and $12 in refreshments if I do it every 8-10k miles. The final free rotate gets me another 4 tire sale. They almost always ask me to check something during the free rotate, I check it and they call me when they want it fixed. Rarely do we repair anything without an appointment. If a customer wants to bitch about tire wear and they never had a free rotation done, what argument do they have? The most successful tire dealers in the country give free rotates, free flat repairs, and do it regardless of where the tires were bought with a smile. For the record I don't rotate other guys tires for free, just the ones we install. I haven't overcome that obstacle yet, my ego prevents me from rotating my competitors tires for nothing.

I guess the underlying problem is some people are simply complainers. I sold stuff on eBay for 10 years for a living, vintage motorcycle parts to be exact. Stuff from the 60's. Cheap prices on impossible to find cores like 1966 trumph carburetors for $20. 1 in 50 would have a complaint that could be resolved simply with dialog, 1 in 250 would really be mean but could be satisfied in the end, 1 in 1000 could not be happy no matter what. They would complain about their item, so I would let them keep the item and refund all their money plus shipping, and I would send them another item. So they got something for free, an apology from me, all their money back, and they would still leave a negative feedback and threaten to sue or kill me or something over a $20 part. No different at the garage, after 1000 invoices get prepared for the inevitable, you can't please everyone.

I gave out free pizzas last month to all tire buyers, it was a surprise bonus. Thanks for your business, I appreciate the referrals, I appreciate your patience, here's a gift certificate - take your friend out for lunch. They really like it, it means a lot more than taking $15-$20 off the bill.

Today I had one with a broken control arm. No amount of pushing was going to move it. I called my rollback guy in and he put it in the bay gracefully. I'll add $60 to the bill if they charge me. Only in NY, 10 year old car with the control arms rotted off.

Being in a college town I work on these things daily. All they want is to get it patched up enough to bring it to their regular mechanic back home. I don't understand why parents put their kids in junk, wouldn't it be better to give them the more reliable car to take to college?

"Its real easy, I'd do it myself but..." I'll let you guys fill in the blanks. Lol

Theres a good writeup in motor trend about the self driving Audi, it can lap a racetrack better than most professional drivers. Perfect lines, no fatigue, no mistakes. Looks to make auto racing about as exciting as watching golf in the next few years.

Is there any hope for frozen batteries? Lately we have been dealing with fairly new units in college kids cars that got discharged over a couple weeks and froze. I'm tempted to defrost them in the shop and see if they'll take a charge, my tech says forget about it they are garbage. Apparently -26 degrees will freeze a battery with 12.2v. Did I mention I'm done with winter?

What do you guys use to push cars into the shop that are dead? Whenever possible I have the tow truck drop the car in a bay, but if it's busy that's not always an option. We currently push them in the old fashioned way - by hand or I use my truck. Risk of damage is high if I use my truck, we've been lucky so far using old tires as a cushion but there has to be a better way. I was thinking about rigging up a push bar to my farm tractor bucket and using that, I tried using a garden tractor (20hp craftsman mower actually) but that didn't work out so well, it is useless on the ice. Pictures would be nice, with the cold we have been pushing in 10 cars a week and it's stressful.

I had one 10 years ago, it was air powered and simply too noisy to want to use. Its a good idea I just never took to it.

I third the motion. Next guy that comes in looking for a job I gotta do something better.

Pay based on parts/labor will result in techs replacing rather than fixing, its in their best interest for a higher RO. That might not be best for customer retention. I pay my best guy hourly plus bonus based on gross monthly reciepts, it works because my tech acts as manager, tire salesman, and car salesman sometimes and its the only fair plan I could come up with.

Straight flat rate is best for the owner, techs become COGS. A better system for a tech goes something like this: flat salary $10/hr for the first 30(failsafe), 30-40 hours billed $15/hr, 45 hours $17, 50 hours $20, 55 $23, 60 $27.50. 60+ make him a partner. So a tech that comes early stays late bills 60 hours makes $1650 that week. A guy who smokes and txts all day makes $300. Overtime is still required in some states for flat raters so ask your payroll guy first, the guy making $27.50 @ 60 hrs might also get a bonus of 20 more hours OT which is amounts to a lot of money for a tech.

That's why I insist on ASE certification. In my opinion the company lacks severely in marketing us but if a guy can't pass the tests I don't want him working on my car. The tests are easy for anyone who knows what they are doing. I hire people that are ase certified and can pass a drug test, that last one seems to be the most difficult for some. Lately I've put new hires on a 2-4 week trial, their work ethic and attitude shows itself quickly. Everyone starts like I did, at the bottom. Some guys are too good to sweep or fix flats, they would prefer to watch the guy who signs their checks do the bs work. Lol I like the idea of the skills test, but do you pay the applicant while he's proving himself?