Tires Too

It's just beginning. AAA has partnered with Driver's Side. I got this from another shop owner. "AAA makes a CRM deal with Driverside.com. Driverside.com is owned by Advanced Auto Parts. AAA wants to collect all member and NON-Member information from your management system. AAA wants to build brick and mortar locations to compete in the automotive service space. Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture??" I don't think we can stop the trend of customer's looking for information online. The question becomes, How do we use the technology to help our business?

"One of the simpleset, most powerful ways we accomplish this is by injecting the following into the conversation: "Mr. Smith, I understand why you're calling, and believe me...no one knows better how costly some repairs can be than we do, but I can tell you what the single most expensive part is that you'll EVER put on your car, and I'll always be correct. Since he apparently wants to talk about prices, I inform him that the most expensive part you'll ever put on your car is the part that you absolutely don't NEED." That's awesome! I'm pretty sure I'm going to be using that line. Thanks I'm OK with quoting menu type services over the phone, although that rarely works out well. Customers don't know what they don't know. Some can be educated, some don't care to be educated. I'm going to try to help those that want to be helped.

AVI has some training videos from George Witt that are good. Elite has some inexpensive training on their website. World Pac offer some training classes for SA. RLO'Connor recently did a 2 day SA class in our area.

I joined a BNI group about 6 months ago. It has been another way to connect with other business owners and I would recomend others to consider BNI membership.

The model that I am familiar with is a 60% gross profit on loaded tech wages. Loaded would include all taxes, workers comp insurance, benefits like health insurance, dental insurance, vacation pay, holiday pay, training costs, retirement contributions etc.

NAPA has availability of many Hyundai parts. Your local store may or may not stock much. Worldpac has good availability on Hyundai parts.

You need to have a conversation with your vendor. There are plenty of good aftermarket brake pads, but your gonna have to pay the price for them. Like Imcca said, if I was your customer and you wanted to charge me for a parts failure within whatever your warranty period is, I would be looking for a new shop to take care of my vehicles. We are a NAPA AutoCare shop and we use mostly NAPA premium parts. We see an occasional part failure(mostly rotating electrical or steering racks) that we will submit labor claims on, but no brake issues. We do use the Adaptive One brake pads on almost all our brake jobs. We do a 3 year, 36,000 mile warranty on all repairs and have almost zero warranty issues.

Tires are a small, but important part of our business. We sell about 30 tires a week - 1500 a year. We are a Michelin, BFG dealer so many of our sales are Michelin brand tires. We sell very little of the cheap Chinese import tires and almost all of our sales are 16, 17 and 18" tires.

Our average tire sale is $160 per tire, our average cost is $105. We make $55 per tire with mounting and balancing included. Road hazard can be a very significant profit center. The national average is under 5% payout rate on road hazard coverage. We do not do a good job of selling road hazard coverage because I am not someone who buys that type of insurance coverage. Make up an in house warranty pamphlet for road hazard coverage. We normally charge 10% of the tire price for road hazard coverage.

I will second Diane's comments. We have been using Corrosion Free for a year now. It's been a great product and a new revenue stream. Once we started using Auto Vitals for our electronic inspections, our customers began seeing pictures of the underside of their cars and asking us what could be done to help prevent the rust. It's a very easy sell once the customer has seen the extent of the rust under the car. Frogfinder, yes more frequent under car washing also helps to slow down the rusting process. In NH in the middle of the winter, when it's 0 degrees, washing the vehicle is not ideal.

I believe you are opening yourself up to potential litigation by ignoring both the "Tire Industry" and Tire Manufacturers written policy of putting new tires on the rear. What can you point to when trying to justify putting new tires on the front? I was against this policy when it first came out, but seeing the videos and hearing the reasons from "industry experts" has changed my thinking on this subject. Having Cali BAR come out with this in writing leads me to feel that our chances of losing a suit by putting tires on the rear is very slim. Our chances of losing a suit by putting new tires on the front are very high. You choose the devil you want to dance with. On a similar thought, Who installs just 2 snow tires? Russ

I think this year will be a good one for the aftermarket. New car dealers have definitely been doing a better job of keeping the service business over the last 5 to 8 years with "free" maintenance coverage, but new car sales have been rebounding from a low of 10.5 million vehicles in 2009 to about 16.5 million vehicles in 2014. As many of the "free" maintenance coverages expire, I don't see the dealerships having enough bays to service these older vehicles. We saw a significant hole in the age of vehicles coming into our shop as a result (I believe) of the Cash for Clunkers program. We are starting to see an increase in the 2009 through 2012 model year vehicles coming into our shop which should continue for the next 2 - 3 years.

We have had a Pro Cut lathe for 20 years. The main reason for an on the car lathe is for those instances when there is run out in a hub which causes a brake pulsation. Pro Cut has been suggesting that we cut new rotors to match them to the hub (much like match mounting tires and rims), but we have not done that in the past. I do see about 10% of our brake jobs developing a "pulsation" after about 3 to 5 thousand miles. We will then resurface the rotors (at no charge to the customer) to take care of the pulsation. My fear is that I may have some customers that become unhappy when/if they develop a pulsation and they just don't return to our shop. I am struggling with the cost involved in "match machining" rotors when we do a brake job versus the cost of potentially unhappy customers. Anyone out there machining new rotors? How are you charging for that service?

Sorry, I push submit several times.

I guess that was what I was thinking, customers seldom have all the facts correct when pricing out the job. When I've had someone come in with I price I will often bring up the Repair Pal estimator and make sure all the components are included with the estimate. Many customers have a price for a timing belt, but they fail to include the water pump, tensioner, idler pulleys etc in the estimate. Once you include everything my prices have tended to be right in their range. If you include the price for the brake pads sensor on the Repair Pals estimate, your price is right in line.

I guess that was what I was thinking, customers seldom have all the facts correct when pricing out the job. When I've had someone come in with I price I will often bring up the Repair Pal estimator and make sure all the components are included with the estimate. Many customers have a price for a timing belt, but they fail to include the water pump, tensioner, idler pulleys etc in the estimate. Once you include everything my prices have tended to be right in their range. If you include the price for the brake pads sensor on the Repair Pals estimate, your price is right in line.

I guess that was what I was thinking, customers seldom have all the facts correct when pricing out the job. When I've had someone come in with I price I will often bring up the Repair Pal estimator and make sure all the components are included with the estimate. Many customers have a price for a timing belt, but they fail to include the water pump, tensioner, idler pulleys etc in the estimate. Once you include everything my prices have tended to be right in their range. If you include the price for the brake pads sensor on the Repair Pals estimate, your price is right in line.

What was the vehicle and the job to be performed? I'm curious to see what Repair Pals estimate would come in at.

M-spec, like ncauto said, I've found Repair Pals pricing to be pretty accurate for real world pricing. Did you actual see prices on Repair Pals site? Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending all of the issues that Repair Pals site raises, but I've always found my prices are within the ranges that Repair Pals site give.

We use Auto Vitals to manage the workflow through the shop.

Craig, If you product is good for the industry, it should be good for my shop. In your example above, why would you want to link an already fearful consumer with a shop that charged $500 for a $10 repair? Is that good for anyone except the shady shop? The consumer's belief that shops "Rip people off" has now been confirmed by your product. You will want to have reputable shops using your platform or it will not be sustainable. In the second example, how would Repairlync help to prevent that type of a misdiagnosis?

Craig, I'm very willing to try new things to enhance our business and stay a leader in our local market. I'm not sure what you have here is anything new. Repair Pal has invested a lot of money in their program. They have ties with many insurance companies for towing cars, they have a tie in with AARP for their shops to be the first referral for AARP members and still there is very little ROI for shops in their program. Your product needs to enhance the relationship between car owners and shop owners to be successful. Just giving these car owners a place to get a price which may or may not be accurate does not enhance trust and relationship building between the parties. Russ

Bob, We usually have someone from either the local High School or Vo-tech working here. I just plan on them moving on after they finish the program. They don't know what they don't know, and the lure of 60 to 80 flat rate hours a week is very strong at that point in their life. Once they have experienced the reality of flat rate they are often looking to move to another shop. We see many of these National and Regional chains churning and burning these young techs. You did what you could by going over his production with him. If you would be willing to have him back, let him know that the door is open to return when he sees the grass is not greener over there.

Craig, I wish that all our diagnostic issues were that straight forward. The type of customers I've seen from Repair Pal and Open Bay have not been good about maintaining their vehicles. They are looking for a silver bullet to fix their vehicles. Many have multiple issues with their vehicles, which complicates the diagnostic process. These people already have little trust in the automotive profession, so when we give them a price for one thing (because that's the code for an O2 sensor) and tell them they have an intake manifold that's leaking and it's going to be 2 to 3 times as much, they do not react well. My previous statement about delivering good quality customers to good quality shops still stands. You platform needs to inform customers about the realities of car repair, not continue the myth that we can just plug in an know 100% what is wrong with the vehicle. When your willing to work towards that goal, I will be more willing to support your platform. As far as your ability to improve my on line reputation and or visibility, I don't know how you would do that. If you take a second to see our on line reviews you will see that we have worked hard to earn our reputation and will continue to do so every day we are in business. Russ

Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack the thread. Good points mspec.