vbtoytech

$41 increase in labor rate got a $0 increase in tech pay. They are hiring all tech school kids, we are training them for free, and making less money while the dealership is billing more. See how long we stay.

We have 1 advisor who actually checks tread depth, wipers, and warning lights on the walk around. He makes the highest sales at our dealership and it is nice to have tires and wipers sold or declined before beginning service.

Individual computer and 2 lifts for your masters.

I have an offer for $6 more an hour at an independent with no air conditioning. No thanks. I didn't get a degree and master certified to be miserable all day. That said, heat affects some more than others.

The dealerships I have worked for have 3 standards for rehire: was proper notice given when they resigned, do we want them back, and can they still pass all of the screening -drug, motor vehicle, background. I agree a no rehire policy is a bad policy. You at least know what you are getting with a rehire - this is a pretty key element. That person may have not been popular around the shop however, so among the techs it may not be popular - but you sign the checks as the owner.

Indeed it does.

My dealership has been doing a lot of re-hiring as they are desperate for technicians. It sours the atmosphere, as these guys were gone for a reason.

The dealership removed all of our productivity bonuses and made it more attractive for a lot of the techs to take jobs at dealerships closer to home. We are on an individual pay plan and have no "diagnostic specialist" or anyone to help us in a bind. Tech line wants you to fix the car before you call them. Binds happen a lot, under warranty, and especially with new technologies - voice command, wi-fi, etc.

Beyond specializing on makes and models, I find it difficult to work on pre OBDII cars in general. I wasn't around back then.

We had the older style BG machine that had to be looped into the radiator hose. It was a better flush but more time consuming. We have this now.

At the dealership, our pay plan is based solely on our certification. Unfortunately, there is nothing past master. So, no matter how good you are or how long you have been working, the pay rate is set. Half the techs have left and I am on my way.

I am concerned about the liability when a car comes in for calibration. We are using a printed paper target at the dealership. Would like to have something like the Bosch setup, but they will never buy it.

I started out as a technician in Virginia and I was a VSP licensed Safety Inspector for 3 years. The program has a lot of problems as you mentioned. Some places will put a sticker on anything. When you reject a sticker the customer is mad. When you require a repair for a sticker, that is almost always your best sales tool ever. I always felt good about making the roads safer. The price for an inspection is below what it costs to pay most technicians, but that was generally gained back in repairs to pass. I took issue with the dealership method of inspections. There was only 1 inspector on a team, who wrote stickers for everyone on the team, for cars he never looked at. That was a job requirement if you were an inspector, despite it being completely against the law. I left that job and later found out there are entire dealerships with only 1 or 2 inspectors writing stickers for more than 50 inspections in a day. The state police support varies by location. In Virginia Beach, our station assigned trooper was trying to bust us and shut us down. In Newport News, our trooper was actually trying to improve vehicle safety and would back us. Now working as a technician in Tennessee, I see a large loss of sales for legitimate safety related repairs due to there being no safety inspection requirement. I see many vehicles that would fail the Virginia inspection and I am horrified when I can do nothing about it. Whether or not the safety inspection has an impact on safety involves statistics I do not have, but I can say with certainty that while i was a Virginia Safety Inspector I rejected and repaired many unsafe vehicles and felt good about it.

Lexus dealership - Robinair machine is required equipment. We didn't use it for over a year. FWIW - I don't have first hand experience, but I was told that the evac/recharge procedure takes substantially longer than a 134 machine.

In my automotive education program, I learned how to take an excessive number of daily breaks - that was about it. I was in a Toyota accredited program at a community college. ASE exams are so easy to pass (under 70% correct is passing) and the dealerships will hire anyone who knows how to change oil - the industry as a whole has low standards of qualification.

Shop supplied uniforms would be a nice perk. At the Toyota dealership I was deducted ~$15 a month for Cintas uniform service. At the Lexus dealership the deduction was over $20 a month for Cintas uniform service. That was over the line for me, so I bought my own uniforms and got the payroll deduction stopped. I prefer to wash at home anyway, due to sensitive skin.

Motivating the lowest paid techs to do the fastest services without making mistakes is certainly an obstacle. I have seen a quick lube bonus of $1 per car, in addition to hourly pay, increase speed in the quick lane. Also, spiffs on filters, wipers, etc can motivate a more thorough inspection, even if the spiff is a small amount - 50 cents to a dollar per item - all items that your hourly tech can install. As far as your example on a percentage on up-sell for other work...At my shop we don't have a quick service tech. A thorough check-over by an experienced tech doesn't take long and is a gold mine for up-sell. The car is already in the shop - isn't that the hardest part? Not saying there isn't a place for quick service - low mileage, known no-buyers, and customers who think you are a drive thru are great candidates. These are not our target market.

Limited audience here it seems. In order to do a Virginia State Safety Inspection to legal standards, 30 minutes would be a minimum. Generally, a lot of shortcuts are taken. The maximum allowable charge is currently $16. Where I work, the hourly rate is $135, the inspection fee is $15, and the technician gets .4 ($6.40 or more). It WOULD be a major loss for the shop EXCEPT that most customers want to do everything required to pass. We do a multi-point inspection on every car that is pretty much a state inspection - as all of our technicians are state inspectors. Very few rejections are issued (but I love writing ghost buster stickers if you are being a jackass driving an unsafe car). Ultimately, Virginia State Safety Inspections are profitable for the shop, despite the fact that the inspection fee does not come close to the posted labor rate for the shop. That said, it should cost a lot more to the customer for the inspection, and a more through inspection should be the norm. If other states charge upwards of $50 just to plug in to the OBD port and check codes, it would be reasonable for VA to charge at least a half an hour of average labor rate for their Virginia inspection.

I am a tech and I have to split my shop-topping hours with these no-mobile-phobia people. It would be nice if management required phones to be left in cars or lockers. We also have no internet controls, so ESPN and YouTube erode my paycheck on a daily basis. If it wasn't work they wouldn't call it 'work', they'd call it 'super-happy-fun-time' or 'skippidy-doo'.

Your radio policy and practice of requiring daily feedback from your employees are great; clearly, you cannot correct a concern that you are unaware of and it is better to fix any concern sooner, rather than later. Aside from the annoyance of the stereo mismatch, I am diagnosed with ADHD and also have moderate hearing loss in my right ear; the last thing I need is more distractions and more noise. I am consistently turning 10 hours + per day and we are desperate for another technician, so I don't understand how radio privilege is more valuable than a highly productive tech. My options presented by management were to move my box where I can hear even more radios (2 techs, detail department, and train traffic control - yes, really) or to the front and center of the observation window, where I can still hear the same radios I hear in my current bay, with the added benefit of glaring customers. Maybe I need to buy everyone headphones - it would be worth it to keep my job.

I worked for a large dealership group that went so far as to ban radios company-wide. In the 25 bay shop at Toyota we would have about 10 radios on - mixed stations/playlists. Unfortunately, there was no enforcement after the memo was issued. The guy next to me was really into metal - what a nightmare. I agree that it is a management issue. While I absolutely love my manager, she is hands-off when it comes to the shop. What is the best way to approach management when things are awry? The radios are not the only issue.

Older topic, but shop radios have been an ongoing issue for me as a technician. I am ALL FOR listening to music. My objection is that there are usually at least 3 radios on in our small (10 bay) shop, each playing something different. It's like I have all the worst song mash-ups in my ears all day and I can't even think sometimes - not to mention it can interfere with noticing or diagnosing an abnormal noise. The other techs insist on playing radios (these are the same guys with their phones glued to their hand) and management is either totally unconcerned or unwilling to fight the battle. I wear ear plugs most of the time, but this only reduces the annoyance. So to you owners out there, you may actually be making some technicians happier by limiting radios. At least make everyone listen to the same thing so it doesn't add to the noise - there is enough of that in an auto shop as it is.