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Great story you never know what you will run into in this business. Tuesday we replaced a blend door actuator motor on a Mercury Mountaineer and it was back in Thursday because it still didn't work right. We found the problem to be that mice had stuffed the passage from the blower motor with shredded tissue. We removed the tissue and fixed the problem.

My first reaction would be a disgruntled former employee, relative, or competitor.

Gross, parts and labor. This month we will turn about $13,000 per bay which is our best month ever.

Lucky dog! Have fun! You deserve it!

Wow that is a scary story. What do you think prompted this scenario? What if you were like me and just bought a load of inventory from a shop that closed. There is no paperwork on those converters.

Have you calculated what all of your fixed costs are: taxes, insurance, telephone, utilities, rent, etc. How much are wages, employment taxes, any health insurance, etc. What is the bare minium you need to have monthly to survive? As a rule of thumb you should be able to generate $10,000-$12,000 per bay per month with proper staffing.

Joe, we never used the $2.00 environmental until the last year and it seems to work o.k. for us. We have had no complaints. The idea of selling the coupon book is a good one. What kind of deal do you give them if they buy the coupon book?

I dislike cheap oil changes because of the type of customer it usually attracks. There are some good ones but if it is cheap enough you will attrack a lot of bottom feeders. I never want to offer the cheapest oil change in town. What we now offer is an oil change with a free tire rotation. That has attracked a better quality customer for us. If you offer a cheap oil change you need to have cheap filter, oil, etc. We use to offer a basic oil change and also had a full service oil change at different price points. The problem with the basic was people wamted their air filters blown out and wanted windhsield wiper fluid, etc. We only offer one oil change now and we add a $2.00 environmental fee onto our oil changes.

No problem. I posted it because I thought it could be useful to someone. We get them printed 2,500-5,000 at a time for about 5 cents each. We probably used 15-20 per day.

Joe, Attached is a flyer we used for our seminar. It doesn't quite fit the border with the changes in my program but it has the information we used. CARE CARE AWARENESS SEMINAR.doc

Here is a form that we developed and used. We have used preprinted forms and more complex ones but did not find them effective for us. Service Sheet.doc

We operate much the same as Joe does. Two things that I would mention is that we have found useful is first we use color coded plastic pouches for our customer information/repair orders. We have red and black ones that can be hung on the vehicle mirrors or on lift posts. The red ones are for waiters and the black one are for drop offs. We have green ones with no strap that the RO's are transfered to once the customers are notified. We also have a cash drawer (not register). Our is a very nice drawer mounted under our counter. It was picked up used off of Ebay on the cheap. We keep $300 cash on hand to make change with. The highest percentage of our sales are also by credit card.

Cool! It is a good idea and it will work well.

My son-in-law is a minister so they don't have a lot of money. They come to dear old dad for almost everything that will wait until they get to Indiana but I should hook them up with you. There names are Craig and Janna Jones. Craig works for Norvel Hayes Ministries. Craig and Janna even have their own web site. They are both tremedous singers and musicians. They met at Lee University in Voices of Lee Craig Jones Ministries Worship

This happened about five years ago and that lift was only 6 years old. As far as we could tell it was simply a manufacturers defect. If there had been a significant lose I think we could have easily won a settlement with an attorney who litigated that product liability cases. Maybe I should have done something anyway just on principle. The biggest problem with the two posts are 3/4-1 ton pickups with longer wheel bases. This was a 3/4 ton.

We ask vendors for door prizes to give away. We had stuff like hats, T-shirts, flashlights, jumper cables, road side emergency kits, etc. We registered all of the women and drew names through the evening plus we had give aways for everyone who came. My wife made hot spiced apple cider and we served cider, cookies, and coffee. We had four people speak during the event: myself, my service manager, a technician, and the main vendor who donated. We talked about basic stuff, needed maintenance, and how to keep from getting ripped off. We also took them out in the shop and showed them how to check the oil and fluids, how to check tire pressures, and how to changing a tire. We used an SUV that had to have a tired lowered down and told them hey needed to find the location of these on their vehciles. It was all very basic stuff but presented in a friendly entertaining manner. There was no selling. We had a great evening and everyone loved it and we picked up business from it. We intended to do 3-4 per year but we dropped the ball and haven't done one since. I don't really have an outline or anything.

I do not know if it was cracked and we could have picked it up before hand or not. I really doubt it. The really hilarious part was this happend in the afternoon of a day they were were going to have our first and to this point only women's seminar at our shop. About 45 minutes after we got this truck down and got things under control we hosted 37 women at our shop for refreshments and a one and one-half hour seminar on how to care for their vehicles and not to be taken advantage of.

These are the asymetrical 9,000 lb or so two posts. The part pictured broke while the vehicle was up in the air and stationary. My guy had just gotten out from under it. It was definitely a part failure. Rotary was very interested and I sent pictures and a local guy came out but they never said or did anything. The truck was barely damaged and my total cost was only about $2,000 so it wasn't worth pursuing further from a legal stand point. All my lifts are Rotary.

Here is what caused it.

Ever had anything like this happen?

Here is a challening situation. Last week we did an intake gasket job on a Chervolet Malibu along with other work around $1,000 total. The customer was told to watch for any fluid leaks or so forth and to bring it back in 500 miles to double check everything (that is standard practice for us). Yesterday the woman's 17 year old son called to say the car was smoking. My service manager told him to have it towed in and gave him the number of the towing company. He did not tell his mother this but instead chose to drive it in. It completely overheated and quit about 2 blockes form the shop. When he walked in to tell me what was going on I asked him why he did not have it towed and he said "I had to be somewhere". Anyway it looks like that the problem was that after we got the system back up to operating pressure by replacing the intake the water pump had failed. We did not replace the water pump and it was not leaking when the car was in the shop. Now it looks like we could have a car with a blown engine or best case scenario a crack head. What would you do?.

The problem is as I see it is that once it becomes common the tire dealers will give it away like they do a lot of things to sell the tires. I personally think that nitrogen is like TPMS mostly just a big headache for everybody. It may become something we HAVE to invest in to stay competitive but I personally don't think there will be that much demand for it by consumers or money to be made by the shops. I could be wrong but I don't think I am.

At a class that one of our tech attended recently we were told that on certain late models of the Infinitis and Nissans that the throttle body needs to be removed from the car prior to cleaning. The spray used on the throttle body could get down into the throttle body motor and damage it if the cleaning is done on the vehicle.

I found this news interesting. Any opinions as to how successful this will be? Does this mean Sears is launching into full-fledged franchising? From a business stand point this may be a good move on Sears part.

Then maybe I could be a NASCAR fan too. Wait a minute I forgot what a tight wad I am.