alfredauto

We get it all the time "how much for a coolant flush? How much for a tune up?, how much for an alignment?" Very few customers actually need the service they are asking for. We always try to get the customer in and have a conversation about what's going on, once they are in the door they realize it's the same as going to the doctor - describe the symptoms and let the experts deal with them.

I agree that quoting a job like that over the phone is a lose-lose situation. I think you did the right thing, I would have handled it the same. If the customer can't commit to a tow and has his own parts then no way is he going to be happy with the real price to fix it.

Thats with 2 guys working together. One guy sets the car on the lift and pulls the wheels the 2nd guy mounts and balances. We have 4 lifts and a jack but only 2 mechanics so while the tires are getting mounted another car is getting pulled on a lift. Now if we're bead blasting every 35" tire it takes longer obviously. Now to be honest there are holdups because "oh yea real quick can you change the oil, check the rattle, fix the headlight, inspect it, check my brakes..." So we end up working late most days. Tire giants who normally set up in highly populated areas don't do any repairs except tires for that reason, we don't have that luxury. We do tires heavily Oct-Dec and again in May so when nobody's buying tires the other 8 months we go back to being a normal general repair shop.

I think of it this way; the employees get their check and that's it. I get my check plus the growing equity in my business and the real estate. So I make more (that's the goal anyway). If a paycheck was the only goal I would work for someone else and make more assuming they paid unlimited overtime.

Seems really high to me. I guess it all boils down to how much does he earn for you? Overpaying and then compensating by working faster seems like a bad plan. Maybe put him on flat rate or bonus plan then its a win for both of you. I pay hourly plus bonus. I also pay more than my competitors.

I won't get started on the plug/patch/combo debate. Even the biggest players can't agree. In my experience I have seen exactly zero properly plugged tires fail. The issue is plugging a tire that's garbage (run flat). For the record We use the plug/patch method because we can inspect the inside of the tire. If there's any loose rubber inside they get a new tire prorated of course.

We sell a ton of tires and our formula is a little different. We mark up each tire $30 over our cost and give the mounting/balancing/rotations/flat repairs/roadhazard/bead sealing/disposal and rim grinding away free. No upselling. 4 tires takes 20 minutes on average, maybe an hour if were grinding all 4 wheels and balancing with stick on weights. So $360/hr average profit and happy customers. Plus 3% gets added for wheel weights/valve stems but that's a break even deal. Customer pays the tax. Any problems we fix. Customers like that real mechanics are changing their tires, no minimum wage kids like at some places. It has been working good for us but try doing 50 tires a day and see how your body feels at the end of the day. I'll guess that 99℅ of our tire customers return for regular service. I based my pricing on tire rack's price + shipping + mount and balance and we come in within a couple bucks one way or the other. The idea is volume plus the tire companies offer free trips and stuff with enough volume. If I had my way we would do just tires all day every day - no wrong parts, no rusted bolts, etc 20 minutes and the car goes from junk to jewel with no surprises. Problem is tires are expensive and people only buy them every other year or so. There's just not that many people in my area.

I can vouch for this scanner, I was able to set up the airmatic on a 04 Mercedes e500 easily after a strut replacement, my OTC couldn't touch it.

For the guys on the fence I have an energylogic 200h and while it works great providing almost free heat the unit is loud. I would strongly recommend a waste oil boiler rather than a furnace. The extra expense of plumbing is worth it IMO.

Some processors send a bill for their 1% or whatever plus the $40 bs fees, so it looks pretty cheap. Compare your bank statement to your receipts and you'll see what I mean by hidden fees , the interchange rate comes off immediately with some of these companies. Example - do 100k a month in visa sales you get a bill for $1000. Good. However, Your bank statement shows 95k actually deposited. It cost 6% not 1%. They took the interchange rate plus markup off immediately. It's usually the companies with glossy sales materials and fast talking salespeople, I use flagship it's easy everything I swipe goes into my account and they send me a statement clearly showing the charges which amount to about 2% depending on the market. Napas program is pretty good too it's probably flagship.

Good reminder, too often the techs get an incomplete work order or spend their time doing customer service work Instead of repair jobs. When it gets busy it's easy to lose focus and spin your wheels all day. I'm going to review my plan it's been too long.

I hired 2 brothers on a referral from my parts store manager. These guys lasted one day, they worked together on wiring a trailer and after 6 hours the result was they sliced open all 24' of heavy duty trailer harness to figure out the wires. Thanks but no thanks. If your guy can actually do work he might speed up or start paying him flat rate. My lead tech now has days where I scratch my head and wonder what the problem is but who knows maybe he's having personal problems. Overall he does 10x more work than me so I can't complain.

We just had a BMW 5 series in with similar issue. No start out of the blue. I accepted the job because it's a good customer and I figured the fuel pump was bad. After about 5 or 6 hours of tracking down each code I came to the conclusion that the Theft Module wasn't sending the drive authorization to the computer. Of course the module is dealer only and needs to be programmed so I sent the car back out on the hook to the dealer because I wasn't 100% sure if the module was bad or there was another issue I was ignorant about. The customer was OK with it and the dealer did replace the module and the car was back on the road. Even though my diagnosis was correct I didn't charge the guy anything except the standard one hour fee.

Long story short I was allowing people to display cars for sale on my lot as a courtesy and occasionally I would sell one of my own that I had owned for years (so they were a loss no matter what), the combination of cars displayed put me solidly in "Retail Dealer" territory so I became one at the suggestion of my DMV guy. So now that I'm a legitimate car dealer with dealer plates, insurance, paperwork, and auction access I'm not having too good luck making money off that segment of my business. I could use some help in this department otherwise I'm going to cease selling cars after my licence expires. Here's the problems I'm encountering: 1. Cars at the auction sell for more than I anticipated and cost me at least 1 day of work. 2. Craigslist buying takes up infinite time on the weekend. 3. All the cars have some kind of hidden problem. 4. Customers want to get a perfect 4 year old lease car with 40,000 miles for $5,000, and ironically 5. Customers want a 200k mile $500 car with no problems 6. Reconditioning used cars to a safe and reliable condition without any used car sleaziness removes all the profit plus some of my own money if I want to sell it the way I would want to put my wife and kids in it. 7. "Green light", "Front-line ready", and "Just Serviced" are all lies at the auction. 8. Selling a vehicle and actually getting the money takes way longer and is much more difficult than I anticipated. . I know there's a learning curve I just need some help with it. Here are a few questions: What cars sell the best on your lot? (miles, price, condition, age?) What is a reasonable time frame to sell a vehicle? What is a reasonable net profit to make on a vehicle? How long do you wait before wholesaling a dud or taking a loss? How do you determine the price of a car you are buying and expect to sell it for? How many cars a month do you need to sell to remain profitable? How do you advertise a constantly changing inventory like cars on the lot? I'm in NY so all cars must be inspected. Thanks for the help. At the rate I'm going I might as well go to the casino, I might have better results. The only benefit so far is it keeps the mechanics busy during down time and I get lucky occasionally with a car that needs very little and sells quickly. Luck is not a viable business plan. Note: the irony is I can't let people sell their beaters on my lot anymore because I have to "consign" them as a dealer. ugh. I have been using Manheims MMR as a buying guide and KBB clean retail as a selling guide.

I have an alignment rack and don't utilize it fully, but I know what it takes to do so. You need a newer alignment machine that can give an alignment reading on any car in one minute, and offer that service for free. The Hawkeye Elite is $24k for the machine plus $20k for the rack. A "free alignment check" can alert a customer to a tire wearing issue and after that it's an easy $69.99 sell or whatever your market standard is. It's easier to sell the "free" check after they just bought 4 new tires so sell tires or set up next to a Big Tire store that doesn't offer alignments. You will need a full time skilled alignment guy to do the actual alignment. A good guy can do 10 alignments a day if all goes smooth so if you can survive off of $699.99 a day gross revenue you got it made. Personally I don't think that's enough to pay the bills but your results may vary. Another factor to consider is if any steering component is worn the alignment can't be done, so you'll need a mechanic to change the parts while the alignment guy is doing the next one or send them to the local mechanic to have the repairs done. We do alignments to save the time of farming out the job after we do front end work, that's about it. We do them with tire installs too but there's only so many hours in the day and our machine is from the 90's.

we store customers summer/winter tires for free, it takes up space but we have extra space so it's not an issue. I like it because if we store 500 tires for customers that's a pretty much guaranteed $15000 in the bank ($15/tire mount and balance spring and fall) and a repeat customer. They aren't going to Walmart when their old tires are at my place. If you plan on storing more than a few hundred tires you will need a good system - we are at the limit (or beyond) of crudely stacking them in the corner with a name tag on duct tape stuck to their stack of tires.

Keep the big picture in sight and don't worry about the short term. I used to get stressed about the ebbs and flows now I have a fleet of my own used cars that need to be reconditioned so if it's slow "GREAT" we get a car retail ready if it's busy "GREAT" we are busy and once we get everything fixed the garage needs to be painted. It sucks when it costs $1000 a week to go to work but it happens to everyone at some point. Typically when property taxes are due it's tight and the same thing when people get their Xmas credit card bills in the mail. This summer has been good so far but when people are on vacation they aren't in your service bay. If it's slow all the time for you park some cars out front and in a bay so it looks busy, people tend to go where everyone else does and if they see an empty parking lot they keep going.

I use a waste oil heater. Saves about $5000 a year in natural gas. Initial $8000 purchase was a tax writeoff as well. Should last 10 years. You do the math. Only complaint is it takes up garage space and is louder than the gas heater, and I'm out the revenue from selling the oil which varied so much I couldn't depend on it. Some places require a permit for oil storage that would be an important consideration as you will need at least 1000 gallons storage to get you through the summer collection period. In the winter we burn it faster than we can collect it.

I use common sense when it applies to my pricing matrix. I discount the parts for commonly used items that people see on the front page of the Orilleys flyer and add a little to the more obscure parts. If I charged $8 per quart of oil I wouldn't do so well.

Frustrating call at best. We do occasionally install customer's supplied parts with "NO WARRANTY" clearly stated every step of the way. I explain it is a bad investment. It's dumb for me to do it but sometimes I feel for people. If I'm not making money I'm working for free, so I might as well play with my puppy dog at home and make the same profit. 80% of the time these losers can turn into real customers so I hate saying no, but if it turns out they are taking advantage of me I'm not opposed to firing them as a customer.

I change my password all the time on Identifix and keep it saved on the shop computer only, Identifix only allows one person to use it at a time. So if my mechanics give the password to a trusted friend and they do the same I pay for the service and can't use it when a buddy's buddy is using it for free to circumvent paying. Not saying they are all bad people but I want to be able to use what I pay for. On another note I had Mitchell call me to verify my email address change. ??!! A salesguy tried remotely installing his MORE parts info on my system to overwrite the existing dealership we use for parts ordering (without my knowledge of it). He must have tried changing my Email to his to gain access. Needless to say we won't be doing any business with that dealership. Thankfully Mitchell recognized the red flag and called me at the shop.

Luckily the aftermarket has stepped up for the common problems with older cars, example a new PCM for a Ford escape is about $1500 plus programming but there are companies that I can send the old computer to and they fix it and return it for less than $500 ready to go. Same with many European car modules. BBE reman is one company (no affiliation) we use to repair parts that normally would render the car junk if the customer had to buy a new part from a dealer. Still not cheap but the only alternative. In NY the recent catalytic converter law junks more cars (or makes more criminals) than anything else. It's pretty sad actually, I live in an economically depressed area (one of the poorest counties in the state) and I see families reverting to a one car household or driving with expired inspection stickers due to simple economics.

I run 3 Rotary lifts and I won't buy another one. Next lift will be Mohawk. Mohawk lifts are twice as thick and made in NY, also more $$$$. Rotary is made in China now as is the same with virtually all the other lifts. Listen to the salesman all you want but check out the new Rotary and see where the materials come from. I dislike the wear sliders and the cables on my Rotary lifts - its a big job to replace them and they are designed to wear out but besides that the lifts work. There's too much at stake to risk being under a lift with cheap steel that can buckle. I've seen lifts fail and there's not a lot of time between the car being up in the air and the car being on the ground, definitely less than enough time to react. I feel the same way about cheap motorcycle helmets.

We're in the vehicle Hospice care business

"hi can I speak with Alfred please?" (The Alfred Auto name is based on our location near Alfred, NY, not my name) I usually say "the initial consultation with the owner is $150 how will you be paying? Visa/MC or Amex?" they always hang up. Not to say I don't get frustrated if I'm answering the phone and I stop a job and run to get it for one of these save money on my electricity jokers.