tyrguy

We used to be opened on Saturday 8-5 for all services. We rotated our 3 techs and 2 service advisers so that 1 of each was always off on Sat. I didn't care which tech or adviser it was, I left that up to them. Eventually we cut it back to 8-2, then 8 to noon. Finally 20 years are so ago I made my techs/advisers a deal. We would not do service on Sat, only tires. The techs and service advisers would get Sat off, but they would all stay 4 hours later one night a week. So on Wed night we would have a full crew till 9. It stayed that way until last year when we split the extra 4 hours into 2 hours extra each on Tues and Wed. Back to Sat. So since 1994 we are open 8-noon for tire work only and it's usually just myself and a tire tech unless I have something going on and then 1 of my 2 advisers fills in. We sell a few tires and do some rotations and tire repairs. Obviously we also have customers make appointments, pickup and drop off vehicles. There are some Sats when we don't pull a vehicle in the bays. However that all changes in late October thru the end of the year during tire season. Then we have both tire techs work as well as myself and 1 of the advisers. Most of the independents in our town are closed on Sat.

Obviously you did the right thing by making the customer aware of everything you found upfront rather than sell the wheel bearing and tell him about the rest after the fact. My question is, if after being informed of all the issues he had asked you to do only the wheel bearing would you have done that? I believe we would have.

For God's sake, raise your rates man. A lot, like 10 or 20 an hour. 3 things will happen. #1 You'll lose some customers. Not necessarily a bad thing as the one's you lose will be the bottom feeders #2 Losing those customers means you'll have less of a backlog which will make the remaining customers happy. I'd love to be back to a week or two backlog. #3 You're going to make a lot more money. BTW, I haven't hired a tech in 23 years. He's still here as well as one I hired in 1983. Had one retire last year that was with me since 1979. I pay a base for 44 hours of $966 whether a customer walks in the door or not, or $35/ hour per billed hour whichever is higher. Also uniforms, 3 weeks paid vacation and 10k a year to offset their health insurance costs. The only problem on the horizon is that they will probably retire in the next 10 years.

When you say you've grown 30+% I'm assuming you mean in sales and not car count, hours billed or some other metric. It's logical that you would have a big increase in sales if you raised your labor rate 42+%. So your car count and hours billed might not actually change, you're just making more for the same work. And that ain't a bad thing.

We don't prevent it, we allow it. I have never had an insurance company mention restricting customers in the bays in 38 years.

Hide supplies charges by incorporating it into some other charges? Hell let's just hide everything. Supplies? Hide it. Parts? Hide it. Labor? Hide it. Sales tax? Hide it. Lets just have one big fat total at the bottom of the invoice. No itemization whatsoever. Yeh, that will go over big. I read a lot of repair shop reviews and although I've seen reviews that say so and so shop has too high a labor rate or is marking their parts up too much, I've never seen a review that mentions supply charges at all. We charge 5% of labor capped at $40.

It's a perfect example. As long as you put a tire that has at least the load rating of the OEM tire you're good to go. It doesn't matter how much they overload the truck. But put a undersized tire on that doesn't meet the OEM load rating and you've created a big liability for yourself.

Well it depends on what you're having them sign a waiver for. If the frame is rusting in two and you're working on the brakes you could have them sign a waiver that they know there is something unsafe about the vehicle apart from what you worked on. Or you could have them sign a waiver about a non safety item part that is failing but they are declining repairs. But when it comes to safety items, you are indeed the professional and you will be held responsible. Example: A customer brings tires in that have a lower load rating than is required for the vehicle and wants you to install them. Waiver or not, you will be held responsible if a tire fails due to overloading. And as I said before, the customer cannot sign a waiver protecting you from the liability of the other guy he hits.

Jay, You do realize [or maybe you don't] that having those customers sign a waiver won't do you any good in court. The court will state that as the professional, you knew it was an unsafe situation and you will still be responsible. I always laugh when a customer says that they will sign a waiver relieving me of any liability. I then ask them if they can relieve me of the liability of the other person that they hit when they have an accident.

If your 1st service adviser has some tenure and you think he has some managerial skills, make him the "service manager" and have the new "service adviser" report to him. Let them figure out the work load. That's how it works in my shop. If that isn't that isn't the case you could split it up into two "teams" of 1 SA and 2 techs.

IMHO, If you are selling a substantial amount of tires you should keep the numbers separate. Our mix is 55/45 service to tires in sales dollars. But our GP is 75/25 service to tires. Our GP in service is 78% vs 30% in tires. Remember though as I've stated on other threads, we state our GP the traditional accounting way which is sales minus the cost of the product, not including labor. No matter how you define GP though, you can see that including tire sales in your total GP calculation kills the numbers. Our total GP including both service and tires is 56%.

What we have seen is that someone with a high mileage trans that is already having issues will come in and request a fluid change to try to correct the problem. The service will be done and the trans will fail shortly thereafter. The service didn't kill it. It was already on it's way out.

We used to be at 30K on the trans fluids but felt that with many of the OEMs having no recommendations on that service we would increase it to 60K. We use 60K on the CVTs as well. If you used a modern trans flush machine it will totally swap out the old fluid with new. I don't believe that "90K leave it alone" theory. Maybe that was valid in the past [I personally don't believe it was] but on today's vehicles, a flush can never hurt. At least that's what the trans shop that sells us all our rebuilt units says.

Over the years we have developed some generic maintenance intervals to use on most vehicles. We have revised them as time goes by to reflect changes such as extending oil changes or extended coolant. Here's what we are presently recommending. Our POS system, Winworks Autoshop allows us to set up these intervals so that as a vehicle hits these mileages it automatically recommends them and when we do the service it automatically resets the recommendation in the future. Thoughts? Oil changes: semi syn 4K, full syn 8K Alignments: 12K Tire rotations 5K Brake flush 30K Auto trans svce 60K Man trans svce 60K Coolant flush 60K [older type coolant] 30K Cabin air filters 30K Fuel filter 30K Fuel injection cleaning 30K Spark plugs copper 30K, plat, irid 60K Drive belts 80K Coolant hoses 90K Timing belts 90K

You'll read that on a lot of the threads here that deal with parts pricing. Most of the successful guys on this forum are using a matrix that is set up to earn 50% GP [100% markup] average on their parts sales. Using our matrix a part that cost $100.00 would retail for $204.08. We rarely get any push back on parts pricing.

We use the curly cue stretchable type plastic/nylon hoses that hang from the ceiling. They just reach the floor, are very light and last forever.

Read an article about fully autonomous vehicles yesterday. It basically says that for them to work, Lidar technology will be necessary. The current cost per unit is $75k. They say that the price of these will drop 90% to $7500 per unit. However the vehicle manufacturers need the price to be at $100 per unit. That's a ways off. Other articles have stated that for fully autonomous vehicle to work, ALL vehicles need to be full autonomous so they are all talking to each other. Now, semi autonomous vehicles for freeway driving is probably doable in the near future. Fully autonomous no steering wheel and pedals, not so much. BTW, on the bright side, I'll bet you the more autonomous they become, the more they will build safety features into the system that won't let a poorly maintained vehicle operate. Your vehicle will tell you brakes are needed and at some point, it won't operate until those are fixed.

One of my all time favorites was when we did an alignment and the customer came back the next day complaining that her radio didn't work any more. Well, she had it turned up so loud my tech had turned it off. That's what the problem was but she had never turned it off before and didn't know how to turn it back on.

26 car loaner fleet!! Wow!! That has to be a major expense. When looking into doing a few loaners it seemed like the insurance would be at least a $100 a month a car. That plus upkeep seems like it would add at least $4k a month in expenses. BTW, i am really considering doing this and am thinking about leasing a few econoboxs to do it. I like the idea of a new vehicle for dependability and low upkeep. Lastly, where do you keep that many cars. I have 50 parking places which is a lot, but that would take up half of them.

There are times when I would love to send someone home but I have resisted the temptation. I can honestly say that in 38 years I have never laid someone off for any amount of time. Now, have I let someone who wanted to take the rest of the day off go home....you bet.

I pay my guys an hourly rate + overtime on a 44 hour week OR a flat rate whichever is higher.

Slow here in the Akron/ Cleveland area. Overall, 1st quarter was down 12-13 % from last year. But most of that is in tire sales. Service GP is only down about 5%. But by not hiring a tech last May when my long time [37 year] tech retired we are saving close to a grand a week in wages. That helps.

A bit confused here. In a previous post you said you don't pull in 50 new customers a month but then in this post you said you pulled in nearly 50% more than that. An anomaly? Secondly, how do you define loosing a customer. Not having been in for a certain amount of time?

More than likely we hit on the difference before. Being identified as a tire store we get lots of tire only customers. They have another repair shop that does their service work but they come to us for tires and alignments. Plus we get a lot of trailer, mower, race car, etc tire customers that you would probably not see. Here are our "new customer" numbers from my POS system for the last 4 years. 2013 682/ 2014 637/ 2015 621/ 2016 521. The drop last year started in the 2nd quarter and coincides with when we lost a tech we didn't rehire.

Appreciate the replies and advice. It used to be so easy, we just opened the doors, treated people right and the numbers were always there. It's just not easy anymore. I am doing so much more to attract business than I used to digital and otherwise and it seems to no avail. But, to be honest I'm not overly concerned. As long as I can keep the doors open and pay my guys enough to keep them happy. Before i built the new building I had no debt at all and I'm rapidly approaching that situation again. I have a nice nest egg and 80 acres more of the old family farm to sell on this site. I've thought about retiring but have no idea what the hell I'd do everyday. My only regret is that the business slowdown has caused me to give up my sport of 40+ years..auto racing.