HarrytheCarGeek

When I finally understood "buy low, sell high,"; "margin never exceeds 99%", and you always mark up cost.

I think you are running par for the course. With the economy being so tight in our area, all kind of creeps are coming out of the woodwork. We give our customers the benefit of the doubt, but right now the stuff that is coming through the door as walk ins is really scary. For example, 2013 Audi Q5 2.0T comes in on the back of the tow truck, customer states that he tried to flush trans fluid, but could not fill it back up. Can you say RED FLAG! S.A. tells them that we can refill system, but we don't know the condition of the transmission and cannot guarantee it will work. Customer signs off on all waivers, we refill and vehicle seems to work fine. Following week, vehicle comes on the back of the tow truck leaking oil, customer is furious that vehicle is leaking oil and states we messed up. We push vehicle onto the lift for inspection, find engine oil leaking from loose drain plug, we tell customer it's not transmission fluid that is leaking, but motor oil. He says we must have loosened the plug last time it was here, meanwhile the master mechanic points out there is a 5qt jug of oil in the passenger seat floor! Customer then admits he did change the oil, but he says he didn't touch drain plug!!! Ugh! He signs waivers, we do an oil service, and tell him we cannot service his car anymore.

See, this is the crucial point, what is a respectable margin to you? It may be a simple answer if you already know what kind of return you are looking for your money and time, otherwise it way may not be. The low interest rates the Fed has set after their 2008 fiasco has really distorted the business environment, a lot of businesses that should have closed are still crawling along, this makes it much more difficult to know where to invest. Yes, there is lot of opportunity, specially because many successful shops have older management that is ready to retire but cannot sell. Best of luck with your endeavour.

Alan, Welcome. I have a lot of experience in this area of the business. The questions you may want to ask yourself is what do you want to accomplish and what is your exit strategy. Owning shops just for the sake of ownership does not seem a viable strategy to me.

This is brilliant, thank you.

Hi, UTS! How are you and your application doing? It's good to see you around these parts! I sent Eric from Partstech an email and asked him to join us here to see if we can give him some useful feedback. My interest is to do away will all the tabs the guys have to keep open to shop all the different sites like World Pac, IMC, Nexpart etc. I would like to have something like Car-part.com except for new part vendors.

We use these, I bought 3 of them last summer, and they held well through the winter. https://www.interstatebatteries.com/p/jump-starter/12-24v-rescue-prtble-pwr-pack-2100/12-24v-rescue-prtble-pwr-pack-2100-604063-001-604063?dsNav=N~2147384881-2147384903

Just like at the doctor, we have a welcome and sign in sheet.

I aim to please!

I had to go to my account profile and set up my distributors, worldpac, imc, federated, etc.

These guys are coming online with a single portal for the various distributors. Give them your feedback to help them help you find the best parts at the best prices. https://www.partstech.com/ -Harry

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/31/hanjin-shipping-vessel-unable-to-dock-at-south-korea-port-yonhap.html ... Get ready for tires and parts to go up in price.

That's the right attitude! It does not matter if the bankers have over leverage themselves and extremely over inflated real property prices, what the hell, our customers will have the money to pay for our services, right?! Awesome./s

Banks are preparing for an ‘economic nuclear winter' https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/banks-preparing-economic-nuclear-winter-052654347.html Prepare, prepare, prepare! We are going in for really tough times, be ready, keep your people network in contact, we are not going to like this phase of the coming economy.

welcome

We Are All Screwed in a World Where Only Dealers Can Service New Cars -https://www.yahoo.com/news/screwed-world-where-only-dealers-164629566.html

"So I ask you does the building really matter on your customer base? I'm starting to get to the point I believe it." Yes it does, but not in the way you think. The shop should be clean, neat, and well organized. The greatest value I have generated was by taking old neglected buildings and giving them a facelift. But it is more than that, I have no artistic ability, so I hired qualified professionals to do the re-designs and color schemes. You would be surprised what fresh paint can do with the right color scheme. Next, it is the vocabulary your people use when dealing with customers. This takes discipline and practice,practice, practice. For example, get them to stop saying "no problem" when they do something for the customer. Always have them say "my pleasure", "glad to", "happy to" etc., you get the idea.

You got lucky. I agree with you, but you went out on a very perilous limb. I would just have him sign a waiver/release, and recommended to have the vehicle pick up by a tow truck. Moral obligations don't do too well in court when the other side knows their rights to property, so I am very weary of getting in their way.

AAA was running two locations near me, one in Union and the other in Edison. They have closed now, and they seem to be only running the travel/insurance locations now. Our business does not command the double digit margins they expect to survive in a corporate environment.

Tire Rack has given me a great number of very high value customers. I think you are overreacting.

Base, plus incentive.

Your tech's should have vehicle inspections as a second nature. If you have been in this business long enough, you know what a car with xxx,xxx number of miles looks like underneath when on the lift. Does the car look well maintained? Or does it look like all original parts are still on there? Worse, does it look like it has been patched more times than a soccer ball that has been bouncing off a porcupine? You get the idea?

1. No. 2. Shopped around, new dealers service departments are running 2 to 6 weeks wait times, several of my competitors have gone out of business, and after a careful study, we knew we could pull it off.

Labor rate from $115 to $150 car count down 1/3 revenue up 6%. Going on the third month that we raised our rates. Our best customers have stayed, trouble nickle and dime customers seem to have disappeared. ARO from 380 to 628.

http://ericpetersautos.com/2016/07/29/car-bubble-cash-clunkers-ii/ ericpetersautos.com/2016/07/29/car-bubble-cash-clunkers-ii/ A guy who smokes meth can pull a week of 15 hour days. But come next week… . That’s how artifical “incentives” work on the economy. On the macro level, it is the Boom – and Bust – business cycle, whose unnatural peaks and valleys are caused by manipulation of money and credit, which causes excessive and unwarranted “investment” that – inevitably – leads to a downturn (or even a crash) when the artificially induced supply is disproportionate to demand. The housing bubble of the early 2000s is an obvious example of this. Cash for Clunkers (same era) is another – and its unfortunate effects are just now beginning to become obvious. As with housing in the early 2000s, the federal government decided it would be a good idea to “stimulate” new car sales by enacting a program that paid people to throw away perfectly good used cars. The idea being that they would then buy new cars to replace the ones thrown away. Many (but not all, bear with) did so. This created a boom in new cars sales. Not only because there were fewer good used cars available, but also because the ones that remained had gone up considerably in price due to (wait for it) limited supply. This artificial scarcity in turn became the artificial incentive to buy a new car. Actually, to take out a loan on a new car. The remaining used cars that survived Cash for Clunkers were still less expensive than a new car. But they were now expensive enough that few people could afford to plunk down cash for one. That meant financing – and the interest rates on a loan for a used car tend to be much higher while interest rates on a new car loan were (and still are) much lower. Another artificial incentive to “stimulate” the sale of the new over the used. But even with low interest financing, the cost of a new car is higher than ever. So high, in fact, that most people have to take out a six or even seven year loan – the new normal – in order to make the monthly payments manageable. The cost of new cars is high – the average new car sold for more than $30k last year – because of two factors, and they are in a very real way additional artificial “incentives” that have distorted the car market to the point of absurdity. One, government keeps piling on mandates – safety and emissions – which add parts or require new designs, none of which comes free and often comes very expensive. The VW Diesel Debacle is a case in point. We know now that the cost per car to make the “cheating” diesels meet Uncle’s mandates amounts to several thousand dollar per car – an amount so high that the cars are not worth “fixing” and so will be thrown away instead. And because the cost to make Uncle-compliant diesels is so high, VW has decided to make them no longer (see here). Two, buyers want gadgets. Even “economy” cars now come with or offer LCD touchscreens and power pretty much everything. Which is fine – except people can’t really afford this. Or the mandated-by-Uncle equipment. Debt is necessary to make it all feasible… temporarily. Very much like early 2000s McMansions with granite countertops, faux stone exteriors and vaulted ceilings. Most people cannot really afford a $300,000 McMansion. And most people can’t really afford a $30,000 car. Debt makes it seem like they can. For awhile. And even those who see the scam – and don’t want anything to do with the faux prosperity it (temporarily) creates – are nonetheless carried along by the rip tide. In the early 2000s, bubble-ized 4,000 square-foot McMansions at $300k drove out reasonably sized (and reasonably priced) housing. It was the McMansion – and the debt load that came with it – or forget it. It’s the same with cars. Because most people – or at least, a sufficiency of them – are dumb enough to buy a car they can’t really afford, cars in general become increasingly unaffordable for everyone. And the chickens are now coming home to roost, just as they did with houses – for exactly the same reasons. Ford – which had been booming as recently as six months ago – just revealed a second quarter downturn approaching ten percent and ruefully issued a statement accompanying this disclosure that it expects the rest of the year to be “much weaker than normal.” This is a canary in the coal mine. Ford CFO Bob Shanks tacitly admitted this in language that’s easy enough to parse if you understand the code words. “We’re starting to see a maturation of the economic cycle,” he said. Italics added. Indeed we are. Mazda just posted a 42 percent quarterly profit free-fall. Part of this has been attributed to foreign exchange losses but it’s part of a general trend reflecting a slumping of sales across the board. Nissan and Toyota are having a hard time, too. GM’s sales are down 18 percent. Overall, sales are down about six percent, industry-wide. This after a record high (in terms of total sales) 2015, when almost 18 million new cars and trucks found buyers. Well, found debtors. But now the proverbial boner is wilting just like a real one after a long Vegas weekend on Viagra. For the reasons described above and also because there is now a decent supply of good used cars available again. In particular, the supply of ex-leased cars is now very large. These are relatively new, relatively low-mileage vehicles that have depreciated by a third to 50 percent or more. Which gives people who don’t want the six-to-seven-year debt load of a new car the option to buy a good used car that they can pay cash for. Maybe you can see what’s coming. Grab one, while you still can… The economic backwash of too-expensive new cars – “incentivized” by easy credit and excessive but spread out, to make it seem affordable, debt – and the reappearance in the marketplace of affordable alternatives (good used cars) is causing sales of new cars to wilt, probably precipitously, as invariably happens in a Boom Bust cycle. The car industry will squeal for help from Uncle – just like back in the early 2000s. And Uncle will be happy to oblige, as he always is. But Uncle’s “help” always comes at a cost. The last time he “helped,” good used cars became artificially scarce and unnaturally expensive. Expect something similar to happen again, in order to “stimulate” new cars sales and re-set the cycle. The public will be swooned by a PR campaign describing anything not new as “dirty” and “unsafe,” lacking all the latest equipment mandated by Uncle.New “incentives” will be put on the table to get people out of them and into a new car (and a new loan). The government may even issue fatwas formally outlawing these – ahem – “dirty” and “unsafe” cars. Especially if Hillary wins. Does anyone doubt she and hers are capable of such a thing? If so, I recommend pulling away from the crack pipe for 24 hours and reconsidering the question. That plus the general conditioning of the public to be obssessed with electronics, with gadgets, the automotive equivalent of Huxley’s centrifugal bumble puppy and elctromagnetic golf, will assure a strong – but hugely artificial – demand for new cars. And the merry-go-‘round will continue. The ten-year new car loan is just around the corner. Wait and see. EPautos.com depends on you to keep the wheels turning! The control freaks (Clovers) hate us. Goo-guhl blackballed us. Will you help us? EPautos stickers – new design, larger and magnetic! – are free to those who send in $10 or more to support the site. Our donate button is here. If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is: EPautos 721 Hummingbird Lane SE Copper Hill, VA 24079