Alex

Have a great Independence Day everyone!

It's nice to see things starting to come back to some level of normal life! I went to Home Depot and it was busy as usual for this time of year, which was good to see.

Happy Father's Day! 

Cuomo's last daily briefing...

Coronavirus has helped streamline video messaging, video conferencing, and just overall the act of watching video on various platforms. Large companies are creating weekly videos to message their employees and customers these days. Some of you may even be doing the something similar, and if not recording and sharing video, maybe at least communicating more through video. I was on linkedin and thought this video posted by @ncautoshop from L&N Performance Auto Repair was worth a share. 😁

Thank you to @CAR_AutoReports for starting a new topic on resource links. Please check it out:

Just saw this online and wanted to share. With the COVID-19 down time some have now, might be of interest. CARQUEST Technical Institute and Worldpac Training Institute are offering free 1 hour online training Monday - Friday, complimentary. See:

https://ctionline.com/index.php/live-training-online/

Breaking News: The CTI+WTI teams have worked hard over the past two weeks in creating two new opportunities that will allow you to access live training from the comfort of your home. Click the link below for our announcement that highlights the new CTI+WTI Virtual Classroom and World Professional Automotive Community. The World Professional Automotive Community will deliver business and technical topics every night in one-hour segments starting at 8PM EST. The Community is designed to bring our industry together to learn about timely topics that are affecting everyone during this crisis. The Virtual Classroom will deliver technical topics in one-hour segments, at various times starting this week. The Virtual Classroom has been in the works for a year and will become a regular part of how we deliver our Career Pathway content. More to come on this soon.

Click here to see the full announcement

To see what is scheduled for both the Community and Virtual Classroom, simply search the ‘Classes Near You’ tile on this home page and search for Virtual Classroom or VC and World Professional or WPAC and you will see a schedule for each event with a registration link to each. Oh, and these events are available at NO CHARGE.

Join our new CTI+WTI Members group on Facebook  

Finally, due to the extended Shelter in Place orders across the country, we have postponed all classroom events through May 1^st. We will be converting many of these events to Virtual Classroom events to enable you to continue your training.

On 4/5/2020 at 11:42 AM, JustTheBest said:

With all due respect, I think we'll be lucky if this only goes on for two more weeks. From what I'm hearing from various sources is that it could easily go on until the end of June.

We should hopefully see over the next 2-3 weeks if it peaks out or not. There needs to be a vaccine or "official" treatment for things to really calm down. 

They say two more weeks until we see a peak....we can only hope.

Great message @Joe Marconi !

Was this recorded for future viewing? If so, can you post a link?

Nice updates @CAR_AutoReports !

22 hours ago, bantar said:

SBA Training Powerpoint Released on April 3 2020

https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/articles/EIDL_and_P3_4.3.2020_COB.pdf

NOTE:  On slide 15, it says this about the EIDL quick advance / forgivable payment:  Up to $10K depending on # of employees

Great info @bantar 

PDF attached for record.

EIDL_and_P3_4.3.2020_COB.pdf

Unemployment has surged:

Unemployment has surged:

I've spoken with Mark this week and if anyone is looking for assistance with the application process, you can give Mark a call and have him go through how he can help. 

15 hours ago, xrac said:

Everything went crazy on Friday. Schools are closed, all meetings of any size canceled. I am sure we will see a decline this week due to the craziness. My wife and I are staying in. She is high risk due to age, past chemo, and a weakened heart. Fortunately so far Indiana only has 12 confirmed cases and nothing close to our area. 

Smart decision to stay in, some people think they are invisible and it won't affect them. Better be safe than sorry in my opinion. I think this week we may see cases spike all over the country adding to the craziness as testing ramps up.  

25 minutes ago, Joe Marconi said:

Alex, we have seen a 40% drop in business the last three weeks. The worst drop in business in my 40 years. I made a post, by the way, under Joe's Tip.

Here's is our plan:

• We have daily meetings with emoloyees to maintain our aim to keep oursleves clean and our customer's car clean
• We wipe down customer's cars before we get into them. The areas we are in contact with.
• We launched more radio spots to let people know that we are taking precautions, we will santize your car before and after we work on it. 
• We are also promoting that we will pick up and deliver your car if you wish not to come out of your house
• We are offering a Deep Cleaning of the HVAC system at cost, $39.95...Usingb BG Kits.
• We purchased cases of small hand sanitizer and are gvivng them out to our customers
• No overtime and we may need to cut hours.
• No non-essential spending
• I have advised my employees to also not to spend any money now, unless necessary
• I have some employees take vacations now, We need them when business returns
• Don't panic
• Stay postive
• PRAY!

Let's share our ideas and beat this thing!!!

Thanks for sharing @Joe Marconi, good plan! If anyone is looking for Joe's topic, please click here

9 minutes ago, xrac said:

Business here has not been affected but I suspect we will start to see things change starting this week.  

@xrac glad to hear things are still normal by you! Seems that last week things really shot up in terms of closings, panic, and especially in states where there are a large number of reported cases. Here in lower NY, schools are closed next week and the rumor is that they might be closed into April. This coming week may be even more active as numbers start rolling in from more and faster testing, due to the private sector getting in on it; quest, lab corp, etc. 

Has the Coronavirus (COVID-19) impacted your auto shop business? If it hasn't yet, it has the potential to do so soon. Please share what you are currently doing, how your business is impacted, what plans you have in place, etc.

Some things to consider:

• Do you have a plan in place should you or one of your employees become ill?
• With school, event, and business closures, how will this affect your shop?
• Are you sending anything to your customers in terms of sharing your plans around keeping your customer and employees healthy and doing your part in your community? Many small and large businesses have been sending email communications to their customers.
• Are you marketing to your customers in terms of not delaying car repair, should there be a need to temporarily close?
• Are your parts suppliers sharing their plans, should the pandemic affect supply chains? 
• Are you stocking up on business and shop necessities?

Please share your experience in this topic and stay healthy!

In the media:

The coronavirus and its growing tally of sick and dead victims around the world have been roiling financial markets, prompting countless hand-washing reminders and ruining more than a few vacations, and that’s before anyone knows exactly how widespread the effect will be on the automotive industry, including your local repair shop. Source

“By mid-March, the shortage of supplies will be felt and members are projecting they’ll experience disruption through May or June,” even if operations in China soon get back to normal, said Stacey Miller, senior director of communications at the Auto Care Association, a trade group representing 150,000 auto aftermarket and service businesses. Source

@Ollie G Its driven only by what members enter, so it would really depend heavily on that data. Its meant so you can see where others are, here in the community. So here's what we see for south Florida (only members that have entered their rates)

For metro areas, there's always Lyft and/or Uber. There's a topic on this here:

Google search rolled out an update that now shows a website's favicon next to the search results on desktop, which started on mobile in May. 

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9290858?hl=en

Interesting read: https://www.androidcentral.com/google-search-results-desktop-now-include-favicons

What you need to know

• Google is making some changes to the way search results are shown on the desktop.
• Starting this week, search results will be displayed alongside icons for the websites they link to.
• The redesign was propagated to mobile devices last year.

Our shop labor rate map has been updated and has over 600 1000 entries currently. The averages below expand as you scroll into the map.

On 1/7/2020 at 12:05 AM, dfrisby said:

Can get longer storage, but it's quite costly. 5 days has worked ok so far, but I can see where that could be a problem in some cases. 

Yes, it can get costly with more nest cams, even with the 50% off for additional cameras. Ring does something interesting which I think will carry over to more brands, they offer one fee for all cams at one address for around $100 with 30 days. Right now with Nest it would be $300 per year for the first and $150 for each additional.  It can get expensive for more storage. 

@Corral Auto Service are you looking for information on moving to a new or different SMS? Check out some of the member feedback in this topi😄