GeeZ

Stowintegrity, we have leaking pistons. Yes, we are flexible also. Thanks guys.

How often does your shop do this? Also, two of my lifts have leaking pumps does $250 each sound right for repair of each pump (4 pumps each). The repair guy says that it needs a new seal.

I agree.

You have grown but still not making any money. Otherwise your bank account at the end of the month should be growing. OR you have taking too much home. It's real simple. The difficult part is determining why.

Is the question about the insurance company? We had an incidence where a local shop built a driveshaft for a '66 Chevy Nova Wagon with a LS3 motor, etc. We spec'ed it out with the driveshaft company that the car will put approx. 600 hp to the wheels. Well, they built it incorrectly with a smaller wall tube than they should have. We placed the car on the dyno for tuning. On the first hard pull the engine twisted the driveshaft in half, taking out the motor, transmission and the entire floor pan. It was a rough day. I was sure I would pay for this out of pocket until I thought to call the insurance company. The insurance company, Atain Insurance through SEMA, paid for the whole thing. The new engine, transmission, new driveshaft (not from the old driveshaft company), floor pan and installation. They even paid us to put everything back together. Didn't quibble about anything. How's that for service.

Absolutely. Thanks for the history lesson.

Family is one thing but this situation is another. Don't do it. Kids are sick at home, one or both may not come in. They have a fight at home then the business will suffer for it. The worst scenario is the conspire to steal from you. Please don't do it.

Just wondering why did you chose a business that you know nothing about?

What! You want less net so you don't have to pay taxes! If your personal tax rate is 35% then you still keep 65%. You are mixing up business and personal taxes. A business that is Sub-S, LLC or a Sole Proprietor puts all profit to the owner's 1040. When you buy all the stuff you need, what do you do then. Cut your prices? I must not understand your reasoning.

This is a joke, right? If not then I'm sure the cops will appreciate the hell out of that. If you have to do this, you really need to access your hiring criterias.

In a previous life, I used the template by Jian for general employee policies and added ones that was particular to my industry (health care). Works well. My problem has been policies pertinent to this industry. I have been just writing them as I see problems. Don't get caught up in the format. Just put it on paper and make sure everyone signs a copy and they get a copy. The hardest problem is sticking with the policy and not make a bunch of exceptions. http://www.jian.com/

In Texas, you don't need a reason to fire someone. But, these issues you were having was well beyound the threshhold to terminate an employee. Never easy.

Tell him to save his money and pay cash. It does amaze me that some people don't have any common sense about managing money. Years ago, I was at my banker and he told me a story that an owner of a shop complained that he was discriminated on a loan. Turns out that his last 3 years 1040 returns indicated he only grossed $2500 per year. Also because he did a lot of cash business he did not report. What goes around, comes around.

Try the proprietary schools like UTI and such. Also community colleges. It doesn't cost you anything but a telephone call.

Don't finance unless you build bad debt into your pricing.

Aren't all of the extended "warranty" companies the same.

The salesman (customer) is a moron if he can't see the difference between your services and selling widgets.

I found that the best and cheapest insurance is thru your professional associations. We're with SEMA and I got better insurance with both liability (2 mil. limit) and garage owners as well as speciality installer insurance for the price of the garage owners insurance alone from my independent agent. In a different life, I found insurance that was $10,000 per year that my previous company( again thru my independent agent) that was charging $50,000/year. This was thru a different professional association. Never had any claims with the previous insurance and one with the new insurance. What are the professional shop owner associations? Try SEMA.

This thread is still alive? You guys will have to excuse me but I come from a different industry where we didn't have route salesmen. My only point is that they come by once a week and the entire tech crew (sometimes) goes out to the truck. Four techs (now, thank you) x 30 minutes (not always, but worse case) is 2 hours of down time that you can't get back. However, I do understand the usefulness of the tool guys, I hope they understand and mitigate the down time.

It would be less expensive to just pay for each Carfax as you needed it. If you integrated the carfax, would you need to get customer authorization to release any info? What is the advantage for a customer to release any info? What does the shop get out of this arrangement? It seems to be that all the advantage is to Carfax to sell your info.

After recent ads from Carfax, I searched and found this thread. My question is: How can a shop release this information to anyone without authorization from the customer? I also found that auto dealers have software (ADP) that mines this information and sends it to Carfax. Apparently, there were lawsuits from this action as the dealers had no knowledge of the release of information.

Also agree with Xrac.

Hey guy and girls. Be careful about discussing pricing strategies on an open forum. The FTC takes a very dim view about this. I has been construed a price fixing in other industries.

What does >25% overhead mean? You want your overhead to be greater than 25%? You mean less than 25%.

I have seen in the past that some general repair shops charge for diagnosis if the customer does not have the repair done but waives the diagnosis charge if the repair is done. No one do this anymore?