ADP

that's what I've always done. Just wanted to hear from others

Thanks guys, that's kind of what I was thinking. More or less that's what we've done in the past.

Are you guys charging your techs for parts they break? In the past we have never made our techs pay for something they broke, the shop did and talked to the tech about what they need to do to prevent this in the future. It's getting old though. 2 weeks ago one young tech back a mirror into a pole so we bought a new mirror. This week, a different tech while removing a fuel tank, didn't discount the fuel lines on top first and ended up dropping the tank too fast and broke the fuel sending unit. On this truck that is a $300+ part that we are now eating on a $500 ticket. I want to tell the tech he is responsible, and will have to pay the shop back for the part. What say you?

This is exactly what I would do.

What are you using for digital inspections?

We charge a flat fee of $15 shop supplies fee to every ticket that has a part on it. Now the nature of a Diesel Shop differes though. Our Average RO is $1,250 so I don't think we have ever been questioned about the shop supplies. On tickets under say $50 (very rare for us) I would wave the shop supplies. We also flash update controllers. Again it's just a flat fee of $100 to update a controller. I don't see the need in breaking it down to a data fee and a flash fee. Leaves room for customer to question why he's being charged X dollars for a data fee. When at the end of the day he doesn't mind paying the $100 it's just a matter of wording.

We charge a standard mark up on towing or any other sublet work. The way I see it not to sound rude, but I don't do anything for free (of course we do free inspections and some diag time is free, but you get what i'm saying). If I have to put my money out there (sometimes 30-60 days with some company's) and wait for you to pay me back then I'm going to add a fee to this. If I'm not making a profit on it I don't see any reason in waisting my time messing with it.

I have run into this situation as well. Always hard to charge the customer for the hours you have into this type of job.

I know this is slightly old topic, but I don't get much time to check things out here. Very good topic, and something I didn't think about. How are you billing these additional hours? Are you simply just adding time to the part change, or are you adding a totally new line for test drive and verify? At my shop we do a ton of motors, and all the testing and driving after the repair cost a lot of time.

So far my insurance company says they will take care of them. They are sending out an adjuster next week. So far I have contacted all the customers involved and all but 1 seems ok with it. The one guy is all upset, thought his truck was going to be in the shop getting worked on. Told him when we talked the week before that once it got dropped off at the shop it would probably be a few days before we could get to it. He had just dropped it off the day before. I'm sure after it's all said and done he will be ok with the situation.

I simply tell them if you don't want to pay me to do a proper diag then I will change the parts you want but will not stand behind/refund any work that didn't fix there problem. Most of the time they will pay for the diag. Those that don't I look at it as easy money. I don't have spend any time testing anything just throw on a part and push/drive it out. And those DIY'ers that attempted to do there own work and it didn't work out, I typically charge them extra for anything brought in half tore down. There's nothing more irritating than to put back on parts that didn't need to come off, or were broken while removing. Not to mention all the missing parts that weren't in that cardboard box or coke can. I biggest problem is customers that want you to do a diag over the phone that they will not bring to you. Just want you to spend time (sometimes over 30 mins) telling them what to check so they can run down to AZ and buy a part and fix there self. These guys really get to me. I'm trying to adopt the idea of telling them they just need to bring it in so I can fully check everything out. Not trying to be mean but I don't like spending all my time on the phone especially with customers that will never bring there truck to me.

My shop is Abilene Diesel Performance I can agree with everyone here. It's very hard to stay up and running with the internet these days. In my area there is 3 diesel performance shops that started after I opened mine. One of them was started by my pervious employee after he quit and opened his own shop. With the internet and all the shops around us it's hard to make a profit. Good to hear from other diesel shops.

That's kind of the way I think of it. There was no neglect on our behalf. Nothing really we could have done about it. I'm still contacting my insurance this morning to make sure we don't have coverage for this type of thing, but I'm thinking the customers insurance is going to be responsible for their own vehicle.

We just had a really bad hail storm blow through the shop. To make a long story short every truck facing north (9 of them) got windows busted out, and extensive hail damage. We had what we could in the shop, but there was a lot of them outside. Should we be responsible for the damage done to the trucks? I'm not really sure how to handle this. I don't want a bunch of angry customers when we tell them to file it under there insurance. Just not real sure what to do right now. I will be getting in touch with my insurance guy tomorrow and see what he says.