RYAN B

Joe, In our area the dealers are now charging by the 1/2 hour and they are also charging the fees as well! most dealers around here are 180 dollars and hour!

Joe. I thought the exact same way, our credit card processing fees were over 45000 a year! We charge and now we are getting more checks and cash, but I am able to not charge the fees at my discretion! I hate to say but people are getting educated on paying the fee. It's hard, I did a cylinder head on a Jeep last week the bill was over 4000, the fees would have been over 120.00, customer was told and they wrote a check, it's getting harder to hide and eat those costs.

That's the problem! I don't buy any under car equiptment other than Hunter, it's more expensive, but service is AWESOME!

Joe, when I first started working with my father over 30 years ago, I wanted to hire a guy who was an ex Matco Tool man, he wanted 650 a week plus full paid benefits and 2 weeks a year vacation. My father told me it was too much, but if I thought the guy was good hire him and it was up to me to pull the difference. At the end of the first week my dad told me to give Karl an extra 100 cause he was worth it. Not only did he pull his weight, but he was one of those guys that made everyone in shop better and helped me get better help.

I call every customer and try to sell each job that comes through the door and I find that if your honest and explain everything to the people you will sell the work, more than half of the time I don't even have to price the jobs. Most of the time I find that customers don't understand what is being sold to them and when they understand and it's explained to them it's much easier to sell. It's all about them trusting you.

We do the same on every car. Plus it let's us evaluate the customer, oil changes are not profitable, but services are. If I have a customer that brings there car in and just wants oil changes, I tend to make it very inconvenient for them, they are going to the dealer for free inspections and to costco for tires and they we get the car for oil changes, I don't want that customer!

I made out great, the new shop was a stone's throw from our old shop, a half a block away. 100% customer retention plus new customers from the other shop, at the old shop I had 2 techs plus myself now I have 4 techs plus myself and a receptionist. The new shop was over twice the size plus a bigger parking lot and more storage are for vehicles. The shop was a lease purchase, a good start, but in the first 6 months I put a new roof on it and new heaters, new lighting 3 new lifts! The second year was new windows, a good way to spend 45,000. I had to excavate and stone my rear parking lot! Then the 3rd year we had to pour new concrete pads in the front of the doors in front of the building and the rear of the building and repair part of the parking lot, another 50,000. Every year it seems as though I spend about 50,000 on the building, it was in worse shape than I intialy thought. I don't mind it except the ceiling height is like 10 to 12 feet, and that is a little to low. My landlord that I am doing the lease purchase with is great and I am fortunate to have him, I wanted to fix the place up and establish my place before I went to the bank to get a mortgage, and now it's just a matter of timing, I don't want to pay ridiculous interest, so hopefully within the next year I will own this property and will secure my future.

The last 2 I had were above ground, and we moved the last one from the gas station we were at forever to the shop we are presently in, and it wasn't expensive or a big deal.

For Us it did, My father put our first machine in in 1989, and it was a top of the line Hunter and it was total about 40,000. As soon as we did we were doing 10 alignments a day it was totally crazy, 2 dealerships paid off our first machine in the first year. After about 6 to 7 years of that we just stopped doing alignments for outside shops, because 75% of the time they didn't check the cars properly and parts were always bad and we were always doing double work. Now we only do our own customer cars, but people who come in see the machine and it does sell itself. If you send out 2 to 3 a week, and you have a machine I would see you doing 4 to 5 a week at 110.00 each you would be looking at like 2000 a month 24000 a year and its not hard to push that up. Our rack does generate extra income. I will always have one.

No, now we do them at normal height, and the rack lifts them no problem. I get 149.95 to align them. We use the rack for everything, Right now I have a utility body chevy truck we are rebuilding the differential in, it will be off the rack by 3 and I think we have 2 alignments to do after that so far.

The Aligner and the rack total is probably close to 90,000. But we use the rack as a lift, we do a fleet of ambulances that get the brakes changed every 10,000 miles and several other fleets that the rack now allows us more headroom and service ability on these fleets. The ceiling height in my shop isn't great so the flush mount rack gives you a few more feet of height plus its 16,000lbs.

We just installed a new Hunter flush mount rack, alignment Machine I replaced a year ago with a new Hunter. I don't buy any under car equipment that isn't Hunter. This Is my third Aligner and Rack, they last between 12 to 15 years and we now average about 7 to 10 alignments a week costing about 119.95. Over the years an alignment use to be about 45 minutes, now with the technology most cars are out in 20 to 25 minutes! When it comes to service, Hunter is the best! It definately costs more, but it is worth it. I just sold my old 12,000lb Rack for 7,000 dollars.

True, But once you charge the customer, and something happens such as a fire, you will be attached t the lawsuit. In our market now nobody wants to plow snow because the liability is way too high! insurance companies look for every loop hole and you get involved in that and something bad happens your done!

In our neck of the woods, Master Electricians make anywhere from 40 to 60 an hour plus benefits. most companies charge 150 an hour with a 3 hour minimum plus travel. EV hook ups around here average around 1500 to 2500. There is a ton of liability in that as well.

The Tesla EV's use a foam lined SCT tire, that is very expensive. I have replaced many tires on these cars and have been told by customers several times that they specifically wanted these same tires. The reason is that the cars are so quiet that any other tire is extremely loud on the car, and customers say they can't drive the cars with other tires on them. Crazy!

On the Teslas we have been seeing tires wearing out around 18000 to 20000 and they are special compounds, $$$. We have seen third brake lights go bad when they are in the spoilers. Most people who buy these cars think they are Never going to need repairs. I had a customer bring me in a 22 Lucid to inspect it the other day, I asked them where are you going to take if something breaks? They told me "What's going to break"? There are no service facilities on the East Coast, People just don't think this stuff out. I had a customer broke down up the street, with her new Tesla, she kept calling us wondering why we couldn't help her, Tesla left her up there for like 4 1/2 hours and people with means don't like to wait!

I don't know, we have about 30+ customers that have EV cars. The vast majority are the complainers that don't want to spend money on there cars. The Teslas have been a good source of income, everything for them is SUPER expensive the eat tires up, we have seen third brake lights go bad, and some of those repairs are over $2000, and I am talking about cars that have less than 30000 miles. One other piece of Information, most of these people say they would not buy another one! EV is coming, But the infastructure will not support it!

I don't know how many of you know any blacksmiths, but the ones out there are in high demand and they write there own tickets!

I had a 2016 Tesla X model with 26,000 miles in for inspection this week. It needed 2 front tires and a third brake light which was mounted in the spoiler. I choose not to get involved with the third brake light because it was glued into the spoiler and the Tesla parts guy told me I would have to replace the spoiler cap and repaint it, which didn't scare me but I was scared that when it was done it may set a code or a warning from disconnecting the brake light that I would not be able to clear. But my customer spent 860.00 to inspect and put 2 tires on and they were on there way to drop their car off at the Tesla dealer for 2 weeks and over 2000.00 to fix the light. They were regretting purchasing this car! When these Electric cars hit mainstream there will be as many or more problems as the cars we are dealing with now!

Have not looked at one yet, but I will. The way we use to do 134a is not going to work.

Believe it or not, we recharge and dye the systems and drive them if its going to leak you see it pretty quickly. For 134a we always charged them up and dyed the systems and sent them out the door til the ac stopped working and looked for the dye. honestly the only leaks we had so far are Honda and GM condensors, the GM's are hard to see, but we pull the grilles and charge them and you see the leak pretty quick with dye! Honestly I have not had any come back yet with leaks, but I am sure that's coming, and I don't know how we will handle that cause it's so expensive.

We have had a R1234YF machine for at least 3 to 4 years, we average using 2 or 4 times a month, mostly for body shops or other shops that can't do the service. We charge 150 to preform the service and 9 to 11 dollars an ounce for the refrigerant. We have done at least 10 to 12 AC condensors in GM trucks this year! We have a Snap On Machine, The service is a little more hands on than an R134a service, it just requires freon to be added and removed for the leak check. The R1234YF is about 550 to 580 for 10lbs, knowing your not yielding 100% out of the tank, I figure we are getting about 1450 for each tank.