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Most customers will get their wheels aligned where they buy tires or where they are made aware of the need for an alignment. If you do alignments only what will you do about all of the cars that need front suspensions parts replaced before you can do an alignment? The suspension work is more profitable for us than the alignment.

Ratchet+Wrench (http://www.ratchetandwrench.com/)and ShopOwner ( http://www.shopownermag.com/ )are the best magazines that I know of for your purpose. However, here is a list of other free trade publications. http://www.freetrademagazines.com/automotive-magazines/

I stored some tires once for a customer for free. It was just a nuisance. I wouldn't do that again and it would be out of the question for us due to a lack of space.

Benefin, welcome to the forum. You ask a question that is hard for any of us to answer because we do not know anything about the local market, customs, pricing, etc. Here is the U.S. I would say that it would be difficult to do what you are talking about.

Happy Independence Day to all. I am very proud to state that my great, great, great, great grandfather Abraham May in 1779 at the age of 17 enlisted in the Virginia Militia and served our country during the Revolutionary War.

The shops at $45 are about 50% of where shops are here.

It took us about three years to start making any money and then it has been up and down.

Gonzo, this is so true. This winter we had a 95 New Yorker with no wipers and no blower operation. This was a high end car with all the electronics available at the time. After three hours of testing. The conclusion was a bad BCM. Just to be sure we had an electrical shop check it and they confirmed the same. It was not practical to wire the wipers or blower otherwise. The diag was an $800 BCM plus labor. Used was not an option because this car was too old and no BCM could be found to match. The bottom line was $1200 or junk the car.

Joe, you have the right idea and direction.

The used car dealers are the worse. They promise you all of this work and then they disappear and you never see them again or they want to charge everything and then never pay the bill and close up shop.

People think they save money with the intenet but sometimes wind up biting off way more than they can chew. Case in point. One of our customers bought a Flowmaster custom exhaust system including cats for a Mustang GT. Six months later the car is in our shop with a exhaust noise. Low and behold we have bad cats rattling. He calls the internet seller and they tell him sorry, 30 days are up and he has to contact Flowmaster. Flowmaster says to find a retailer who will warranty it. No one locally will because they didn't sell it and make no money warranting it. He has to pull it off and ship it back to Flowmaster. What does he do with the car without exhaust on it while he waits? Nice little mess isn't it. If we would have sold him the system we would have warrantied the whole thing parts and labor. Now how much headache would that have saved?

If you are turning that kind of dollars with that crew why do you need a franchise. You sound very successful. Just make sure you have systems and software in place and grow your business. It would be cheaper to pay for some consulting to help you to do that then it would be to pay royalties to a franchise.

About a year ago we raised to $87 per hour and no one batted an eye. I believe it is a mistake to price yourself too cheap.

We went through a period where we were getting the same pricing as walk in retail from one national parts vendor. I complained to the outside salesman, to the store manager, and to the regional sales manager with promises but no results. Finally I talked to the head honcho for our national account at company headquarters about the issue. Guess what, now the pricing is in line again. It is just the old saying, "the squeaky wheels gets the grease."

Paying bonuses on gross sales can get you into trouble. We did that for a while and we were losing money.

This week we had a Toyota Tundra in that the ABS brakes would engage on when it was turning right. Another shop had installed two new hub bearings and now told the customer that he had a bad ABS module. Rather than spend $1200 on a module he brought it to us. Guess what? The other shop had messed up the bearing job on the right side. Anyone who has ever did one of those knows that it is easy to mess up the pressing job and/or the wheel speed sensor. The other shop didn't "go the distance". This should not have been hard to figure out. If the ABS was not engaging before the hub job but it did afterwards there is the first clue. The second clue and to me the most important was it only acted up when turning right. That should have told them the problem was at that wheel. Well, they have got it back now and we will see what they do about it.

Joe, I always enjoy reading your piece on your father. You were lucky to have such a father. My father had some type of personality disorder that was never treated so he was always something of a Jekyll and Hyde. Consequently my memories are both wonderful and very painful all at the same time but I always loved him even now that he is gone.

I personally own a 2006 Subaru Baha Turbo. Over a year ago we installed a used transmission purchased from LKQ. The original transmission was making noise and it was cheaper to replace it rather than have it rebuilt (we do not rebuild). However, I have now developed a hard shift. It is really hard if the vehicle is under acceleration but normal if it is not given gas. I have found nothing on Alldata or Indentifix. Any thoughts on what to look at?????

Here is an explanation: http://www.bbb.org/blog/2013/06/your-neighbors-tree-is-on-your-house-who-is-responsible/

I do not believe that you are responsible for any act of nature. When I was in environmental cleanup work we had a strong wind blow through our work site and blew our onsite office trailer into one of our employee's cars totalling it. He only had liability and tried to file against our insurance but was denied because insurance companies are not responsible for acts of nature except for their own insured. However, with some insurance policies a shop can elected to be responsible (I forget what that is called). My understanding is that if a car is on our property and properly locked that we are not responsible if they are broken into.

How dependable is the procut. Our old bench lathe is very durable.

Some fleets are well maintained and some fleets poorly. My experience is that the construction trades do not maintain vehicles very well. The fleets that interest me are engineering firms, cell phone companies. sales organizations, and nonprofits.

I like that!

On dealer parts I try to tack on a few dollars above list price plus I bump the labor to make up for the lost parts markup. Our worst parts pricing is on the BMW, Mercedes, and VW lines. The dealer only gives us 10% discount off list. Our best dealer pricing is from Ford where we get a 40% discount on most stuff. Everyone else is about 20% off. We have to watch Toyota because they sometimes inflate list price to make you feel better about the discount.