how Covid is affecting Car counts

[alfredauto]

Not much to do here so I've been studying last years numbers. January and February 2020 were on the level with 2019. Car counts around 195-210. March 2020 - 45. April 2020 - 31. The rest of last year followed the pattern. No activity.  It went up some in the fall but we are down 70% as far as car counts go last year.  A bonus if you want to call it that was the cars we did see needed a lot of help. The average RO was up almost 35%.  Overall we will survive but we aren't swimming in gravy. Over the past 11 years our sales charts looked like a right triangle. Up every year. Very linear. Then came 2020 that sent us back to 2014 sales levels. This year so far is looking positive but we are still way off our goals. Car counts are at an all time low. And that's with a lot of our competition closed down permanently. Get ready folks it's going to be another tough year.  

[HarrytheCarGeek]

Yes. Don't expect lots of replies, the large majority of business owners I have spoken to are not willing to discuss this particular issue.

 

[rpllib]

I relay this out of appreciation for our good fortune. I would also not want their to be a false impression that the industry was down everywhere. We were up again in 2020 after several years of increases, with only one blip in 2017. Of the 1200 or so stores that I can see increase/decrease numbers for, over 50% were flat or up in 2020. 

We were down in January 2021 by 20%, over 2020, but only down in Jan 2021 3% over 2018/2019. Things definitely felt tighter this last 30 days. 

 

[alfredauto]

On 1/31/2021 at 12:21 PM, HarrytheCarGeek said:

Yes. Don't expect lots of replies, the large majority of business owners I have spoken to are not willing to discuss this particular issue.

 

It's no secret when shops are advertising $17.99 oil changes they are hurting for customers bad. 

[Gary Childs]

We see the opposite. We were up only 5% over 2019 but 2019 was a rocking year and 2020 was even better. We did 1.7 mil with only 5 techs. Car count around 400 per month. This year we are 15% bottom line to date over last year. I see a bright future this year too as long as our government does not screw us all.