Transmission Repair

It will the battery to crap out first. EVs are very dependable.

I wanted to give updated numbers and a chart to the number of chip fabs being constructed in the U.S. as well as their proposed cost. First, their combined cost will be north of $234 billion dollars in 11 different fabs. The chart below will better show the context these fabs are in. Notice the TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is building a fab here near Phoenix. They produce 53% of the global chip industry. It's great they are coming to the U.S. The earliest any of the fabs will be completed is Intel's fab in Rio Rancho, NM is 2023. The latest is Samsung's Austin, TX fab in 2042. Like I said in my previous post, it takes years and billions of dollars to get a fab up and running. I hope the above spreadsheet will help you get a context of all the chip plants that are about to be built and are being built.

The formal definition of a recession is when we have 3 consecutive quarters of the GDP in negative numbers. For those that may not know, GDP stands for Gross Domestic Products. In a healthy economy, that number should be positive, or at worst case zero%. The end of this quarter (today, Sept. 30, 2022) will meet the formal definition of a recession. Here's a news story from yesterday's Fox Business Report. Watch it and be aware. 2:17

I understand your position on politics. There's always debate on certain topics and politics top the list followed by religion and what's the best motor oil. 🙂 I also agree that the average Joe American needs to move from a mentality of entitlement to a mindset of accountability. Me, personally, have never had a dollar I didn't work for. To me, that's my bailout money if you want to call it that way. Accountability is the best word for that. There's good Democrats and bad Democrats and the same can be said of all other parties as well. Our country wasn't founded on bailouts. It was founded on accountability and freedom. I hope to do my small part to keep it that way.

Our Democrats, both inside and outside the White House, always look for a government bailout. Did you hear President Biden just promise Florida and Florida residents that the Federal Government will cover the costs of Hurricane Ian?!?!? Oh, brother...

They got into that situation because nobody has thought that far ahead to think of it, Joe. Biden promising a $10K bailout just compounded the problem. I was never good at paying bills with HOPE. Assuming 2 different $10K of student loans are paid 2 different ways. One is loan forgiveness and one other way is the old fashioned way of simply paying your bills. In both cases, you're going owe the tax due on $10K either way. You're going to owe taxes on $10K to pay toward the loan you took out. And in the other scenario of $10K of loan forgiveness, you're going to owe taxes on $10K to pay toward the loan on your student debt because it's a taxable event. Further assume both parties are in the 23% tax bracket. That ends up costing either party $2,300 in taxes on the $10K. So... the student loan pay off is really just $7,700 worth of effect debt paid. If it's still unclear, post me a response.

Speaking of taxes... There has been a lot of controversy over the student loan bailout program. Whether a person is for it, or against it, it's costing tax payers money. Here's a tidbit of tax information few, if any, think about. I'll start off with a hypothetical scenario. Let's say a person gets $10,000 in loan forgiveness. That's a taxable event. The person that gets a $10K in loan forgiveness still owes the tax that would be due on the $10K. Yes, they owe state and federal income tax on $10K because loan forgiveness is viewed in the same light as if it were income. IMHO, if a person can't afford to pay off their student loan, they would be hard pressed to have the money for the taxes due on $10K worth of loan forgiveness. Think about it...

It takes years and billions of dollars to get a chip manufacturing facility (fabs) up and running. Intel is currently spending 40 billion on new chip facilities. (fabs) Currently, there 11 chip fabs in the works. That's the good part. The bad part is they won't be up and running any time soon. What's really crazy is a Taiwan-based company, TSMC, is coming to the U.S. to build a fab to help shortening the lead time from order, to delivery. I don't want to make this a long post, but here's a link to the story behind the story of U.S. chip fabs... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-us-fabs-everything-we-know

I saw a local news story where it said the people are eating out more because it's cheaper than going to the grocery store. Why is that? Here's what I believe. The majority of restaurants and eateries in general are Mom & Pop businesses. Covid killed a lot of them off but the survivors are coming around to re-establish what they once had. Like transmission shops, they are afraid to raise their prices for fear of losing business. So, they absorb their increased food cost. Sound familiar? This is the point I'm trying to get across. Example: My wife and I went out to a new restaurant in our neighborhood. They opened up recently, since the Covid scare. I was shocked to see they charge 25 or 50 cents for condiments, depending on what it is. I chose Bar-B-Que sauce and $1.00 was a line item on the receipt. (I had 2 at 50 cents each) BTW, this new restaurant was NOT cheaper than buying the same at the grocery store. Nearly $40 for a table of 2. I can easily fix multiple lunches and dinners at home for the same $40 bucks. MORAL TO THE STORY: Price your services based off your costs, not some preconceived notion on what you think customers will pay. Good customers will stick with you and will pay whatever you ask.

Great reminder! Because my wife is an accountant, she handles all accounting functions. She has a 2-year degree in accounting and a Bachelors in Economics. Lucky me, huh? We met online and married in 2006. Even with all that, she impressed upon me that we still need a CPA to double-check the tax liability amount. So, we hired a CPA with whom we became great friends. He told me the most common bookkeeping error he sees in small business is misclassifying employees. Businesses will hire someone and claim they are a subcontractor and no withholding in their paychecks. At the end of the year, the employee is shocked to get a 1099. Often times that would trigger a tax audit. As our CPA was telling the story, I felt like he knew my history because that's EXACTLY happened to me in 1986-87. I was audited by the Texas Tax Commission only to discover I owed $50K in payroll taxes to the IRS. It took me 5 years to pay that off. Even as I write, a cold chill comes over me just thinking and writing about it. My tip: There's no such thing as a 1099 employee.

For many years, I handled all payroll duties in my home state of Texas. After moving to Utah, there was also state income tax to contend with. Texas doesn't have any state income tax. As the business grew, it was becoming progressively difficult to work payroll duties into my weekly routine. I switched to QuickBooks Pro around 2001 and was happy to learn they (Intuit) had a payroll service for $30/mo. They handled all the compliance issues, did direct deposit to all of my employees, and filed the quarterly 941 tax return. They were a Godsend. I was able to concentrate on running the business, not handling payroll. They would draw money out of my account, pay the employees, as well as withhold the tax liability. Fast forward to today, that same service is now $50/mo. +$5/per employee which I feel is cheap at twice the price because they handle it all. They now offer a 50% off price for the first 3 months to see if works for you. You DON'T have to be using QuickBooks to use Intuit's payroll services. To see which plan works best for your situation, go to https://quickbooks.intuit.com/payroll/pricing/ if you're using QuickBooks and https://quickbooks.intuit.com/payroll/pricing/bundle/ if you're not using QuickBooks.

As if supply chain issues aren't bad enough. We narrowly saved a railroad strike, but this is too much.

Being located in SLC, UT it makes me sad to see BYU losing by so much. They are getting routed. We did something similar to take phone calls at home. We had a VPN between the shop and home as well as a mirror copy of the front counter machine. We picked up quite a few jobs on weekends and after hours. We didn't have loaners; we used Enterprise. Due to the affluent nature of our area, we didn't have to provide substitute transportation very often, thank goodness. I would pause our Google AdWords campaigns on Sundays. We spent about $1K/wk. with Google. I couldn't spend more money if I tried because on any given week, there were only 1,500-1,600 clicks to be had and our ad showed for every click. I learned how to maintain the #1 position in the SERP. It was great using call tracking. Ah, the good old days...

OK, I get it. It's not that Uber and/or Lyft aren't in your area, it's the wait time. Although I didn't think of that, it all makes perfect sense to me now. Wow, your former shop must not be located near any metropolitan area. We are located in Draper, Utah which is a suburb of Salt Lake City. SLC is only 20 miles/30 minutes away. I guess I should count my blessings. I'm going to go off a tangent, but let me tell you about Draper and why we moved here. I originally moved our shop to Draper in 2008 because of the more affluent area. People had money, drove nice cars, and had good credit. The average household income was double of our previous location. Demographics | Draper City, UT - Official Website The problem I have is that I take a lot of what we have for granted. I tend to think everybody's area is like ours. I also tend to think everybody thinks like me. Sad, but true. All of that is not true; I need to be more humble and appreciate everyone's differences. At 67, I'm still learning.)

Just as a test, try loading Uber and/or Lyft app on your phone. Try ordering a ride. I bet you can. You never know unless you try. Let me know how it turns out.

I considered other transmission shop owners as colleagues, not competition. I got along with most all of them and a few of them I would take to lunch occasionally. It was more of an atmosphere of cooperation, not an adversarial one. We wouldn't tow a job out of each others shop. However, there was one shop that was so Neanderthal that I simply couldn't get through to. Talking to him was like doing battle. The only good thing was the few times he towed jobs out of our shop, it was a customer with no money. I didn't mind losing jobs like those. He towed one dead job that had been sitting in our back parking lot for 2 months. What I did mind is when he would tell the customer we didn't give him all the nuts/bolts/parts to the vehicle. For the most part, the time I spent with other shop owners was definitely worth it.

I've had 5 different SMSs in my career. A common thread was I always had to tailor the way the business ran to how the software ran. I didn't like that much. However, in about 2000-2001 I found I could tailor QuickBooks to the way our business ran, not the other way around. I could create and design ROs, estimates, reports, etc. I could also create fields in vendor and customers. I could go on, but I won't. Admittedly, it takes a little programming experience but over the course of a couple of years, I finally had QB running just the way our business ran. On the accounting side, we used QB for online banking, all taxes including 941 payments, A/R, payroll, and all accounting. There was a token monthly fee for all of that, but was still my way of doing business.

Waiters in the transmission repair business rarely happens. If it does, it's usually for a transmission fluid & filter change or transmission flush. I consider it a non-issue for us. However, a lot has changed since I retired. The biggest thing I see is that loaners aren't really needed. Lyft and Uber have created commercial accounts where a customer can order a ride(s) and it gets billed to the business. We used to use Enterprise, but their prices have really gone up a lot. Ride share (Uber & Lyft) is the way to go today.

Transmission parts are getting worse.

What Is Lease-to-Own Financing? A lease-to-own option is not credit or a loan. Instead, a lease-to-own finance company purchases the merchandise from the merchant, and then leases the merchandise to the customer. The customer takes the merchandise home and makes lease payments over time until they have made enough payments to obtain ownership. How Lease-to-Own Financing Can Boost Your Bottom Line

If you Google it, there's tons of time tracking apps for your phone. Admittedly it won't keep employees from loafing, but that's handled by matching working hours to billed hours.

Buxton helped me choose a great location. Expensive rent is the cheapest advertising you'll ever buy.

Both Uber and Lyft have corporate account features for pickup & delivery and/or customers. Vehicles are too complex today to offer mobile repairs. Light maintenance is the only thing that is technically feasible for mobile service; beyond that is a no-go. We were a transmission and drivetrain repair only type of shop that offered free towing. 90% of the time customers would come in to pickup their vehicle and pay. 10% of the time we would take 2 employees and deliver it because Uber and Lyft weren't even dreamed of back then.

Ever buy advertising and not quite sure it's working? Here's a way to MEASURE how effective any marketing media is working. Use call tracking. I don't care if it's TV, radio, print, online (PPC) or even specialty advertising like calendars, pens, etc. All forms of advertising can benefit from call tracking. I even put a call tracking number on my business cards. I used Convirza dot com.