tyrguy

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.

Guess it doesn't rotate the pics on Google +. The reason that other pic went away is I deleted it. I have one of the exterior pics chosen as my cover pic but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I read somewhere today that the pic it sticks out there is the first one you put on the site. Guess the only way to get it the way you want it is to delete all pics and start over.

BTW, if you know an easy way to change that interior picture to one of my exterior pictures on my google plus page, fill me in. Looks like there is no good way unless you delete all photos and start all over. Scratch that. Looks like it rotates thru the pics on it's own. I don't think you can pick just one and have it stay that way.

I respectively disagree. You can't more than double the bays in small town and not have an impact. And it's not just me that has seen this decline. All the small independents that are still in business in town aren't doing what they did prior to 8 years ago. And remember, the car dealerships pull from a larger area than us independents so they don't need to depend on the town population like we do but they do impact this small market. However, I do appreciate your input and might use a few of your ideas.

Your right, I've considered changing the name over the years. Something to reconsider. You hit on something about the tire customers. There are a lot of tires customers that have other shops that do most of their work. But for some reason these shops prefer not to do tires or alignments. We see that a lot.

The only wage separate on my P&L is my own salary. But if I look at QBs payroll summary report I know how much I'm paying each employee at a glance. Yes I keep my tire dept and my sales dept separate. At the end of the day I know how many hours each tech booked versus worked, GP [my way] per hour, tire units, GP per tire, etc. My POS software plus other records I keep tell me all the other metrics you mention. I keep a lot of spreadsheets by hand in pencil. Been doing it this way too long.... old dog doesn't want to learn new accounting trick.

Yes we are behind the Walmart on a dead end street. Our old shop was in front of where Walmart sits on a 30k+/day car count main highway. We sold the 50 acres that the development with Walmart sits on. We have 80 acres left and when it eventually gets developed, we will be exactly in the center of it all. Now that being said being back here hasn't hurt our new customer count. Before we moved we were putting 50+ new customers a month in the computer. Right after the move that spiked to over 75 per month. Over the last 8 years it has settled back to were it was prior to the move. BTW, being next door to Walmart has it's advantages. We fixed their error and they send us other service work they don't do. Plus our customers love going to shop while their car is worked on. As for hours, we used to work the service department full hours 6 days a week but to keep my guys happy about 24 years ago we went to tires only on Sat giving the service dept the weekend off. Instead we made Wed a late night till 9pm. Recently I asked my guys how it was going and they said fine except for the late night on Wed. So we changed the hours again from 9pm on wed to 630pm on Tues and Wed. It might not be customer friendly but the average tenure of my employees is over 20 years. Plus as I've said before, I'm getting old and tired.

Although I'm a tire dealer, we are 70% service/ 30% tires so I really consider myself a repair shop that sells a good deal of tires. Yes I pay my service techs flat rate with a safety net hourly minimum. The tire service guys are strictly hourly. I keep track of the same metrics you do just in a different way. You make it sound like lumping some of the wages in COGS is THE industry standard. I assure you it is not. There are plenty of shops that do it either way. And plenty of the industry publications print articles about metric percentages with wages not included in COGS.

I've detailed on posts before about declining hours billed over the years. Brief summary: From 1979 to 2008 every year was a record year. From the late 80s thru 2008 we always billed around 97% of our 3 techs hours [avg 6150/6350 hrs/yr]. Didn't matter recessions or whatever we were never more than 50 hrs off those numbers. The recession hit and our numbers started to decline around 3% a year. We did have a few up years, but also a year or 2 when the hours took a 8-10% hit. From 2008, our last "good year" to 2015 we saw our hours billed drop 25% to 4610/6348 or 73% productivity. So for 8 years I've been looking at the numbers from every angle and kept coming back to my theory that it was all due to the recession and slow recovery, consumer confidence, etc. But I think I have been ignoring the elephant in the room. For the first 25 years or so in business, I always had the biggest shop in our little town. Started with 3 bays in 79 and grew it to 12 bays in my old shop. In 2006 we sold the land the old shop was on and built a new shop again with 12 bays. Prior to 2006 our town of about 15k population had by my estimate 40-45 bays in town so I accounted for 25% of that. Then there was a change that I have been ignoring when analyzing my business. Prior to that time we had no car dealers in town. We now have 5. Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Honda and VW all within a 1/2 mile of my shop. So in our little town we have gone from 40-45 bays to easily double that. Being "old school" I just never considered them my competition. I now think I was in error. So what to do? Last year my very first employee retired to run a non automotive home business. Wished him well, told him to keep his key in case he ever needs to use the shop. I mean after 37 years he's like a brother. So now I'm trying to see if we can make it with the remaining 2 full service techs, 2 tire techs, 2 service advisers and myself. Because I pay my techs minimums no matter how slow we get, I've had a big savings in wages. I've been able to cut expenses in other places as well. Plus we upped out labor rate from $95 to $100 per hour. We're still making money, not as much as before but it just feels better without techs standing around. Maybe I'm getting lazy in my old age. Anyway, I just think we have over capacity in our town at this point that will hopefully get better as town grows, which it is. Thoughts?.

Traditional accounting practices would define GP as total sales [less tax] minus COGS [what your parts, tires cost]. Wages would be deducted as expenses. I've seen it done both ways. I personally have always used the traditional accounting method.

We charge 5% of labor for shop supplies with no cap. I asked my guys today if they ever remember a customer complaint and they replied no. As far as sublet, we divide by .75 for a 25% GP. Sublet would include mobile reflashing, towing, wheel repairs, windshields, and machine shop labor.

Either counter with them for a number somewhere in the middle, say $400 [20 days x $20]. Or take their $250 and say thank you very much. No reason to make a big deal out of it if you didn't have any diagnostic or inspection time involved.

The silence in response is deafening.

That's a great unit, we have one. It's kind of a road force light. Don't feel bad about it not being a full road force, they are a bit overkill. Great for finding ride issues but they don't balance a tire any different than most balancers.

Each state is different. I use a service that will do all the paper work for you and get a title. You pay them a fee of course but you can recoup that by scraping the vehicle out. Another option if they don't owe you much is to have the vehicle towed to their residence.

Service advisers $400 to $700. Techs $600. Tire service personal $400.

You make it sound like a wage law. Obviously 30% is not a bad benchmark but it can definitely vary. I probably pay my techs closer to 40% loaded of my labor rate due to other factors such as tenure and experience. Before one of my three techs retired in May, the average tenure of my techs was 31 years. It's now 29 years with the remaining two. Is 40% too high? Maybe, but I haven;t had to hire a tech since 1994 and I can probably count on 1 hand how many days a year the three of them have called off sick in a year. When I hear stories from you guys about the problems finding techs I just smile.