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Coming up in March in Kansas City is the March 6-9, 2025 VISION Hi-Tech Training & Expo. All of these training conferences I note below are great resources in addition to the R&W conference. Make sure that you sign up as soon as early registration begins as the classes fill up fast. Be ready to act to get the classes you want. I'm sending my GM and one of my techs to Vision. These conferences generally have Management / Service Advisor classes and Technical Training Classes. You should be attending the Management track. You'll learn more than you can digest and you'll be able to network with other shops as well.

About 6 years ago, someone drove to my store in a minivan filled with filters from a closed store. Gave me an inventory list and said "Let's make a deal". I bought the whole lot for about $300, knowing that about 25% of them were not likely saleable. In this case, I was already selling that brand of filters. If you approached me with the Champions, I'd need to see an inventory along with an application guide (e.g. CAP80?? - Air Filter for 2015 CRV's). Would make it really easy for me to see if I could use these.

I've got a brother laser printer HL-2340 that looks terrible, but has been a faithful workhorse in the shop for about 6 years, not lots of use but continuous use. I use the same 6 year old printer at my desk, which gets even more work. I also have 2 LaserJet Pro M404 laser printers just as dusty that have been in daily use for 3+ years. One just started feeding extra pages and needs some TLC. They each go thru 1-2 reams of paper monthly. I use Brother Laser HL-6200 at the counter and it goes thru about a case or more of paper monthly. I've tried just about every brand printer. Brother has been very reliable. These 2 LaserJets are not far behind. The HP InkJet on my Hunter machine has always been a dog (unreliable / ornery). When these printers start acting up, I just replace them. The one up front is replaced about every 2 years. The best part is that you can repurpose a failed printer into an emotional support printer. Next time you are having a bad day, take it up to the roof and throw your troubles to the ground!!! 🤬 -> 😬 -> 😁

Thanks! This is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT. This filing is due by Dec 31, 2024. Penalties start on Jan 1, 2025 at $591 / day for not filing. By Jan 17, you will have hit the maximum penalty of $10,000.

and part 2:

Yes, but it depends. If you set the expectation that it will be a T&M's job, then you just add in the time. Otherwise, you have to ask for more time, add it into the part estimate or eat it. I struggle with getting paid for all of my time and we're doing our best to not let this happen. As someone said last week, in another forum, don't let their problems become your problems. Offer to solve their problems for this many $'s or move on. A lot of shops refuse to work on anything older than 20 years for this reason alone. Heck, we're working on a < 20 yr old, 07 4Runner, and were having a hard tracking down a suspension bolt. I had to make a 20 mile drive for another purpose and decided to do that today to pick up a bolt at a dealer along the route. I get there an it was not in stock. Now, it showed in stock there by my normal Toyota dealer, so we went for it. Shame on me for not calling ahead. Finally found one at a Lexus dealer. I didn't charge for this trip, but we doubled his bill due after finding multiple cross threaded bolts such as this one. Even still, we should have billed more. But, we have a beautiful '70 Chevelle SS that we're working on and for this one, we're charging Time and Materials, but also at $30/hr more. We have a higher labor rate for Classic cars. I also have a 68 Chevelle here too. Sigh. Love them and hate them. If we work on these, we "try" to limit them to 1 at a time. For these types of cars, you have to charge more because they nibble minutes daily until their gone.

The business owns full responsibility for tech errors. At best, you dismiss the employee if the errors are too much or egregious. I've had people offer to pay for their own mistakes, but I refuse this. Council them and move on. CEL on after repair: I want my techs to dig in and at least get a head-start on the fault. If there is something new, we need to bill for "peeling the onion" and finding a new problem. If it's our fault, back to previous statement above. I pay hourly + flag bonus. I don't dock flag hours for them taking more time. We hope for more wins than losses in the shop as a whole and per tech. If the tech is not a consistent winner, well now.... (I just let a non-winner go 2 weeks ago). If we have a new problem, we go back for more time. Accurately billing customers for time has been the hardest problem for me to solve. I have one tech that always wants to "know" what is happening, regardless of whether we're getting paid. Just this morning, I was thinking that I'll adjust his flag bonus up (to give him a COL raise) and remind him that he gets paid more when we get paid more! We'll see if it helps.

In an attempt to understand this junk fee ridden business, I did quite a bit of analysis. In the end, I found that the Interchange fees are the biggest factor. They will eat, let's say about 1.5% and rising. Can't duck or hide from these fees. The CC Processor will then tack on an addon to pay for their services. This can range from a low of about .20% to 1% or more. This is the fee that you want to manage. Now, just like us, if you have a provider that is giving you good service, it might be worth a few more pennies. To further add to the Interchange fees, I found that my fees went up and down with the mix of Debit to Credit cards. Debit cards are practically free and CC's are costly. Usage depends on your customer mix. This can't be controlled. It's builtin to our labor rate. Charging the customer for using their CC leaves a sour taste, so most people don't do this. It doesn't make for good repeat business. Once I grasped this, I've ceased the detailed tracking and analysis of my CC's. I'm lightly tracking now.... For the past 11 months, I've had a low of 1.32% and a high of 2.08%. The average for the last 11 months has been 1.83%. What is interesting is that the low was on a big month. Must have had many debit card transactions that month. My current processor 360 Payments, does not show debit vs credit transaction counts, so this is just a guess.

Make a very conservative forecast and cut that to 1/4. You are going to burn thru cash heavily on the 1st year. Your goal is pure survival. Later, you will focus on profits that go in your pocket. Your initial goal is enough profits to pay your techs and carry your fixed expenses and operating costs. This is often a big hurdle. It was about 3 years before I transferred from managing for survival to managing for success. When hiring techs, make sure that they are good and paid fairly. Do not put the lack of car count on their backs (aka Flat Rate). Why would I work for you if you cannot feed me? I know you are new and I know you won't have cars for quite some time. It is your job to get cars in the door and your pocket that suffers if you don't. Not theirs!!! How will people know that you exist? You'll likely grow faster with a marketing budget than without. Remember, technicians are "free". I learned this at a R&W class. The 1st 15 hours pays for the technician, so anything beyond that becomes revenue. As Larry mentioned, production tops waitlists. Have enough techs for keep production up. You want to sell every hour that you can. However, too many techs will burn cash. You need to get the car count up high enough to feed these techs to keep them "free". It's your job to get cars in the door. There's no real way to forecast this, but I'd say your first goal is 1 or 2 cars / day consistently. That should be 4-6 hours of work per day, assuming the cars are repair related vs oil change. So, 20 hours / week pays for a tech, but not much else. If you have high visibility and the place is clean / freshly painted, you may take off faster. If the place you are buying has a TERRIBLE reputation, it may take you way longer to build traffic. If your current business can send you work, it'll help you get moving faster. So many unknowns. Using your favorite podcast player, find the "Changing the Industry Podcast" and start listening from the beginning. It starts a bit rough, but quickly gets better. Also, locate Hunt Demarest's "Business by the Numbers" podcast (accounting) and start listening. Trust me, he's more interesting than the subject! The next big training event is Vision in KC. Make sure that you sign up for this, close the shop if you have to and attend every Service Advisor and Management training course you can. I cant stress this enough! There are industry coaches out there that can help you, but you may not be ready to afford them. They will all be at Vision and give you big tastes of their offerings and allow you to meet them in person.

Great catch. I'm going to bet that you weren't their first call, yet you were the one with the biggest cojones to get them caught! Congratulations and Thank you for making it happen!

$300 service call to show up plus 1 hour labor. And I'd tell them that once we figure out what it wrong or find it needs tools still at the shop (e.g. a lift) to continue, it'll likely need to be towed to the shop for the repair. This should net you $500 for a simple diag call. Or you talk sense into them to tow it to you. Or, they looked on Craigslist and saw great rates, but would rather have you work for such "great" rates because you have a shop and would be a better value. Now, I've done this for free as well. We recently put a new ACDelco fuel pump in good customers work truck and it wouldn't start. We drove to his house, got it to start and brought it back to the shop and installed a 2nd new fuel pump. And we drove it back to his house when done. I do have a $85 very-local emergency assist fee. This is a try to jump-start fee. If it won't jump, it's a tow. I do give them $25 credit towards a new battery if purchased same day. I use GS techs for this. However, I get frustrated when my guys do repairs in the parking lot. There's no need for them to work outside in the weather. They will eventually need multiple trips back inside for random tools, thus wasting time. Mobile techs have a leg up on you doing this as they already have all of the tools in the truck. And the best mobile techs tow this gem to the job site.

The AST detects hydrogen. For this, you are using the detector in the Robinaire LD9TG. These are similar units - they both detect combustible gasses. The Stratus detects 134a and 1234yf. So, you use forming gas during service, but if it does return, use a regular refrigerant leak detector to check for leaks if needed. I learned of the Stratus from Tom Lech's youtube page. He says the top dog of sniffers is the Bacharach H-10 Pro Refrigerant Leak Detector. However, he also says that the D-TEK Stratus is almost on par with the H-10. He uses the Stratus for leak detection on Auto AC. Tom's page: https://www.youtube.com/@coldfinger459sub0 He is a great learning resource and makes no money on his channel. He does this to help the community.

When I first acquired my tank, they were up in arms over the Hydrogen. It seems that 5% Hydrogen is not flammable and is an industry norm. Maybe press them on this. But they did make me put an oxygen valve instead of a nitrogen valve and I had to install a Nitrogen adapter. My battle was over the valve. No mention of a fee, but then again, I'm in Texas, not Florida. I purchased from AirGas.

It's good to hear your results and process. I too have this setup. I purchased the Inficon AST100FG Forming Gas Leak Detector. The N2H2 mixed gas is also called Forming Gas. Those squirrelly little hydrogen molecules are great escape artists and thus are good for leak detection. I also upped my game and bought the Inficon D-TEK Stratus Refrigerant Leak Detector up from my previous D-TEK 3 for refrigerant leak detection. It can find very small leaks in an already charged system, but not the same as the N2H2.

Oil changes using repair technicians is a losing battle. Oil changes using highly trained GS techs is profitable. It's all about overhead. My QL is very profitable and we run it straight. No gimmicks. No unneeded sales. Of course, I could be making more if I wasn't honest.

Hi David, Just saw this today. Feel free to reach out to me. I operate a QL in addition to my repair shop. Email: [email protected] and phone: 972-836-3481. --brian

I've read comments in other groups that this is not a good clientele. First they arrive mad that it must be done and are complainers. Secondly, are you able to bill out your regular rate or not? However, I've also read that some are ok with it. Those that liked it were able to charge market rates for the installs. One guy said that it brought in $30K of revenue annually, but he didn't like how the complaining brought his shop morale down. On the flip side, I've made good money repairing a few of these hack job installs.

When disposing of Gas in waste oil, you must let your carrier know about it. The oil is not hazardous materials, but the gasoline is. They can carry a limited amount of gas and not care. At some point, it matters. I was told that they could take 5 gal from me on any given trip as long as the driver was informed and no one else has gas already in the truck. If you live in the south and have fire ant mounds, it's an alternative spot for gas. Soak, then match. This seems less cruel if you've ever had both of your legs covered with fire ants and then an ant general blows a whistle and they all start biting at the same time. You'll strip naked where you stand, or while running in circles screaming. From then on, these guys are forever evil-incarnate. 🤬

Usually, Indeed calls me shortly after making a job ad to see if they can help improve things, but this is random. When they are on the phone, they are helpful. Please post details of your experience with ZipRecruiter afterwards. I've never spoken with anyone that used this service. For instance, I heard that they had multiple tiers, and posting on Indeed was a higher paid tier. Is it a flat fee or a pay-for-clicks model? Good luck on the search!!!

Sent. I recommend reading the other postings on Indeed. Go on as a job applicant searching for a job and see what others are posting in your area. They are your competition for talent. Good Luck!!

I've never used zip, but heard that they post to many boards.... except Monster and Indeed. This costs extra. You might want to check into their current practices. We've been using Indeed for recruiting. It works and it's pricey. I've spent just over $2K with them this year (on both techs and GS's). We're not actively looking at the moment, but we hired 2 Techs in January and replaced 1 apprentice tech that couldn't tighten bolts or run them in straight and his replacement is an A+ student from school, but D- at work. That big boy could hide behind a skinny pole when there's hard work to do. About to replace him too. Sigh. At least, this time, we are chasing a private lead that might pan out. I've not tried Monster as an employer. They were the OG #1, but Indeed took over that spot. And never tried Craigslist. On pay, I've taken the approach that I'm paying above market rates. As they say in the Management class, after 18? billed hours, the tech is free of charge. Don't remember the exact number, but the point is that there is a low hurdle to covering their costs. This was from a discussion on 2 techs with 1 bay each vs 1 tech with 2 bays. Personally, we write our ads to be attract people to want to work for us, rather than the typical I need, you must. Our needs are in there too, but we're fishing with the best bait possible without overselling. I wish you Good Luck!

You aren't kidding. A minor rear bumper tap turned into a $42K repair bill. This is a great read:

I'm sorry to hear that you feel that I'm arguing. It is not my intention. I have nothing to gain in this discussion. My only goal is to provide some comfort to others that they can safely use cloud solutions. Clearly, I recognize that cloud is not your cup-o-tea. Only because you asked "how do you "ask", is the rest of this response below presented. It's a very deep topic. TLDR: Request-Response messaging design limits what can be done. You want access to the filesystem to create the real carnage. SMS cloud designs don't expose their filesystems. Most shops don't store data worth stealing (e.g. CC). There are numerous types of software applications that utilize cloud resources of varying types. You can't lump them all in the same bucket. Some software architectures will have more exposure to hacks than others. Regardless, all network-connected systems are vulnerable to an attack. Disconnect from the network to reduce your attack profile. This is even true for on-prem software solutions. If it is connected to the internet, it can be attacked. So, we agree on this point. Security is not a singular item, but rather a layered set of protection strategies. One of which is a rock-solid data backup strategy which includes off-site and offline storage of backups. When you are attacked, assuming a worst case scenario, how quickly can you erase everything, then restore backups and lose as little data as possible. On a redundant system, service restoration can be measured in milliseconds, a few hours on run-of-the-mill systems and on terribly managed system, this can take weeks or even be unrecoverable (data loss). There's a billion combinations of system designs. However, we can take any given architecture and analyze it for security weaknesses and then build a plan around it's vulnerabilities in order to reduce our risk. Risk is never eliminated, only mitigated. I can tell you that my background in Software Development was with redundant systems. Our downtime was measured in seconds per year. I do have a rudimentary knowledge of security and protocol design. SMS Cloud Applications generally will have these properties Request-Response Protocol It exposes limited operations. You don't have free reign to do what you will. This is the ask the server to do something. For instance, Store this text blob which contains my labor ops description for WO #112233. Give me the data I need to prepare a report of my daily sales (client retrieves raw data and presents it to the user in various formats) Requests and Commands to the server are primitives (raw data) that are processed locally by the client And every other operation that a SMS does You must understand the protocol and build well formed messages, or it will not process the operation API Access Keys are required You will not access the system without using an encrypted API key that allows you to send messages API Access Key only allows you to communicate. It does not mean that you are authenticated. Passwords are also required. So, I can either attack the protocol to wreck the system or steal data, or instead, I attack the operating systems to get at the filesystem. It would be easier to hack my shop than a cloud based system that inherently has many more layers of protection. If I were to give you my API key and my password, you could read, modify and delete all of my data. You won't get the next guys data without another API key and password. The best attack of my system would be to attack my network and get access to my computers to grab my data. If you were to attack my system, you'd get names, addresses, invoices, sales data - pretty boring stuff. I don't store any credit card data or customer passwords. The value of my data is nil and IMO, not worth pursuing. This is where we likely disagree... on the value of the data being protected. I simply desire to be a good steward of my customers' data / information. Personally, my biggest financial risks are having online access to my bank accounts. I reduce my risk by having unique passwords for every online account and 2 factor security... my passwords are 20+ characters of gibberish each. My next biggest risk are my credit cards on file at all of the local dealers and Amazon, etc. This bit me once by an independent dealer 300 miles away. How did he get my CC info???? We resolved it though.

The good news is that there are SMSs with on-prem solutions that meet your data privacy requirements. You'd want to ask them if they are planning to switch to cloud, so that you don't get one that wants to force you to upgrade later. It's an expensive transition to rewrite their software for cloud, so some companies may choose to never go cloud. I see value in both models and only tried to lay out a pros/cons list. I've previously written a large detailed description of why targeting a production data server is not as easy as it seems. A modern cloud compute engine and it's database are isolated. The malware and ransomware attacks generally hit those systems that must be "open by design". For example, I must access this shared filesystem to be able to share my spreadsheet / document with other employees. These open systems are where the attacks occur. I'll just say that the cloud systems have a much lower risk of attack. The cloud computers in our shops don't ACCESS the cloud server, but rather ask it to perform tasks. The cloud server is a closed/isolated system. It's safe to consider. I contend that it is much safer than my local and secured network.

Apparently not... in Texas. The most common failures for the Texas Safety inspections are tires, followed by light bulbs and wipers. It's a pretty mild inspection overall. Your car must be really bad to fail. It is a no-lift / no-disassembly visual inspection. Most people don't look at their tires and thus don't know of impending danger. Quite a few would not change their tires, even if bald. Heck, we see quite a few MayPops too. Texas has a 2 pronged inspection program: Safety and Emissions. Safety may go away, but emissions will not go away. Safety Inspections cost $7.00. When this program ceases to exist, your car registration fees will increase by $7.50. You will pay more and not have to do a Safety Inspection. The police can selectively enforce light bulbs because they are obvious. They will not stop anyone for tires, I'm guessing. Maybe they'll make note of the tires at the scene of an accident. Emissions testing is required in: DFW, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso metro areas and not required in Austin (not an EPA zone), but Austin requires them anyway. Rural areas only performed Safety Inspections. Emissions testing is $18.50. Failures are ANY Check Engine Light... even transmission codes that have nothing to do with emissions. ODB2 monitors are examined for Pass / Fail. You must have N-1 Emissions monitors passed to pass the Emissions test. And this one, drives us crazy, we must test the gas cap for leaks. Modern cars check for evap leaks, so this 60 second test is a wasteful part of the process. Emissions tests are only required on cars 25 years or younger. Once you car ages out of emissions, you can pollute away to your hearts content.