HarrytheCarGeek

Notes from the UNDERGROUND: FREEDOM begins with BREAKING the MENTAL CHAINS! http://daviddegraw.org/notes-from-the-underground/ At this point, if you spend much time researching power politics or the distribution of wealth, resources and basic necessities, it seems evident and undeniable, dare I say, “common sense,” that we, in fact, live in a neo-feudal society built on debt and mental slavery. That may sound like over-the-top rhetoric, and it obviously sounds extreme to propagandized and conditioned minds, and yes, it is extreme. However, it is the unfortunate reality of the present situation. The facts are there for the rational and unbiased mind to absorb and comprehend. If you take a few minutes of your time and read this through, it will easily be proven. We will look at how the system works, and then, hopefully, we will begin the process of evolving society together, as grandiose as that may sound. Let’s start by giving some context and perspective on present circumstances by breaking down some economic data. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” - See more at: http://daviddegraw.org/notes-from-the-underground/#sthash.gJm7EYom.dpuf

You may also want to paint shop tools a florescent orange, they are made easy to spot when under the hood or inside the vehicle. That has help a lot. If you don't want them stolen, paint them florescent pink.

Make your shop foreman responsible for the shop tools, if they go missing, he is responsible for replacing them. Otherwise, mechanics will never care for the shop tools as their own. Been there, done that. It only takes one time to dip into the foreman's pocket for tools to ever get lost without a good reason.

Very well said! We tend to worry about alienating customers, but if they cannot afford your service, they were never customers. That is why I always quote the job. I know people that come to the shop with the sole purpose of trying to nickle and dime me, I will not have it. I will give them a very expensive price and have them out the door so they will not waste my time. The customer dealing scars run deep with me, as I when I began in the business people took advantage of my knowledge and skill because I was a noobie tech. I did many favors that came back to bite me in the butt, which I soon learned that it was better to charge full price and then if they had a problem, I would gladly honor my warranty. If everything went well and no issues, I was happily taken care of. I have seen excellent mechanics go out of business, just because they really did not know the true expense of running a successful business.

Sacred Economics Read Online Welcome to the HTML version of Sacred Economics. The full version is here in English, along with full and partial translations into other languages. More translated material comes on-line all the time, so check back often. In keeping with one of the main themes of the book, the full text of the book is available online as a gift. http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/

Gather as much information about your Landlord as you can, and see if you can appeal to his self interest into letting you go from the place. Have a third party make it as if would be a good idea for your LL to have a different tenant occupy the place. Keep in mind that as a landlord, you are always in need of good reliable tenants, and if you are on the other side of the coin what would be a reason to let a tenant break a lease? Also keep in mind that all actions have consequences, so think it well through, even taking into account that not all people are horonable and by revealing your hand they may tend a trap for you. Be careful with your reputation, that's why you must know well your landlord's reputation so you may know how to approach the negotiations with him.

I am a veteran of the Desert Storm action. The best way you can honor our service is by becoming active in your civic duties and exercising your rights! The battle for our country is not only with foreign enemies, but those also here at home that try to overstep their delegated authority. I thank all of you for any and all participation in jury service!

i do most of the part pricing online, nexpart.com is pretty good, also, napa, autopart international, worldpac, and northernparts have online order systems. I also aggressively negotiate my parts discount from the brand dealers to at least a margin of 33% to 35%.

WOW! I guess you did not do the install on the remote start! Installations like that give me the chills, that is why I tell my techs never to assume anything with a car. No wonder people get killed all the time by people that do not recognize the importance of safety. I am happy you nor anyone got hurt.

I have attended a few seminars on emerging technologies, we have to realize that the current technologies and several emerging ones are being obsolete even before they become commercialized. As it stands, our current technologies have exceeded our current socio-political system. The next shift you will see is the re-engineering of our property rights infrastructure to allow things as driverless cars to become a reality.

I have been toying with the idea of creating a PAC and an association. I am now doing the exploratory and defining work to see if I can achieve world domination with it. But seriously, it is not until we define what we want out of this industry that we will see fundamental changes.

Ah, just another day in AutoShopOwner's Purgatory. People that do not respect and value knowledge will not pay for it. Simple as that, you did right by my book.

We do the same as Joe has said above, in the main office the invoices are stored by Vendor, each vendor has a folder and inside that folder the invoices are separated by month, and in sequence by invoice number.

i had to face this question head on after my 3rd year as a mechanic. I thought at the time I was making a pretty decent salary, but after all the time I was spending in certification and training, I knew that I was not making enough for all my efforts. Believe it or not, you do need to become an economist to be a successful merchant/business man/entrepreneur. I have more to share but have to close up the day.

Genius! hahahaha

I charge whatever I can charge regarding any particular job, that includes the time to diagnose the vehicle. As much as I can, I do not bill by the hour but by the job. I had customers tell me if the job took less than the specified time if I would cut the bill, that's why I do not quote hours but flat rates for the particular jobs. Yes, there are drawbacks if there are hidden/occult damages but you must leave yourself room for that eventuality by advising the customer that it may happen. Do not be afraid to charge for your work, if you do good work at a fair price your customer will keep coming back to you. Also, keep in mind the socio-economic level of your customer, and do not worry catering to those that drive Lexuses that don't even have a budget to maintain a bicycle.

From my perspective do your numbers. It seems to me you are looking at this issue too rigidly, loosen your language a bit. This is the guideline, -charge what the market will bear. Having said that, you have to find a way to compete, and at the end of the day the score is kept in dollars made. So, if you can detail your bill as to specify a diagnostic charge, then do that. If you sell the job as a whole without itemizing then do that. As long as you make a profit and get to stay in business, more power to you. It is your customers that decide if you are taking care of them by coming back time and again.

This is one of my greatest pet peeves. The biggest gripe I hear is that there is no money in troubleshooting. I disagree. It is how you sell the job and how you train your techs that determine how you present and sell diagnostic work. I have two types of diagnostics specials one for $45.00 and the other for $125.00 I purchased and trained my diagnostics techs to use the Picoscope for fast and efficient troubleshooting. http://www.picotech.com/ With the scope and experience and access to Mitchell schematics your techs can find issues within an hour. If it is an intermittent problem that you are going to have to chase send it away to someone that likes to spend their time doing that kind of work, since you will not be making any money if that is not your specialty. As much as you can, always tack on an additional 1/2 hour to every ticket that you can sell. This will cover for your customer service hours that you can't bill for. So if the service guide tells you 1 hour, sell the job for 1.5 hours. From experience, 95% of diagnostic problems we face in my shop are cabling related, either the wires are corroded, cut or chaffing somewhere. As regarding my diag specials, we read the codes for free, if they want a basic written report is $45, if they want a complete diagnostic report is $125. I sell a lot of $45 reports.

I have a bunch of notes I have jotted down for you, but have not had the time to log in and post them in a coherent script that would be of much help to you. One thing I can tell you from this process though, a lot of the things I have been writing down to post have caused me to go back and re-examine my own business experience, and what I could do to innovate and improve my present business. Myself, I have a very difficult choice to make, sell the business, stay at the present size or grow to more locations. More locations doesn't necessarily mean bigger profits as a percentage of sales, and I am not sure if my wife is willing to spend more time with me growing the business. One thing I can tell you though, I am an odd bird in regards to this business. I really like the smell of the shop when I come in early in the morning to open up, and look forward to help my customers get their car problems solved. With this in mind, no doubt anyone with a passion for something can find success in anything they do, the kicker is, I find it a bonus for getting paid for what I do. So, don't be scared, take some business classes, learn to listen to your customers and solve their car problems and you can find success in this industry. More to share soon, Divine Providence willing, Harry

THE NON-CUSTOMER FROM HELL I call it the non-customer from Hell because he is a poser, someone that looks and acts like a customer, but underneath the facade of being a potential customer lurks the most despicable toxic individual you will come across in your business experience. I had a brush with this type of character a few days ago and I am still shook up from the bizarre experience. I have changed the name to protect the guilty in order to share with you my hellish experience. Let's call him Sean, he and his wife came into the shop just about an hour before we closed the shop for the day. In this particular day, I had the waiting area full with some customers waiting to pick up their cars when Sean and wife walked up to the sales counter. Sean tells me his car is making a squeaking noise from the front of the engine, the vehicle is a 7 year old model Merdeces Benz ML350, then proceeds to tell me that his buddy at the MB dealer could not squeeze him in to change the idler pulley, even though it only takes 5 minutes to do he says out loud. He and his wife are well dressed and over-courteous, yet loud and flamboyant. He goes on to tell me how he is a "big" entertainer and that I should recognize him, I didn't. I tell him that it is late in the day and I will not be able to help him. He turns and yells at me that I have not even looked at his car and that I am already denying him service. His wife suddenly begins to echo everything Sean is saying. He tell me the pulley only costs $26.00 and that it is a very simple repair to make and I should not have any problem getting the part even at such late time in the day. He makes a scene and a scandal as how I am denying him service he yells. I ask him to leave and he tells me to call the cops, I say, ok and call the police. I call the police department and they tell me they will send out a patrol car. Sean keeps yelling as to how he is being singled out and his wife acting as a chorus keep making a scene, then just as fast as they walked in they walked out and drove off. About 10 minutes later the police come in and the officer laughs it off. I am still wondering if this was some hidden camera show attempt to get a rise out of us....

Yes, they have. It is just taking a little long to implement. It is called Carbon Credits. Don't worry, soon you will know all about your "Carbon Footprint." And how expensive it will be to breathe, no joke. Read up on how they are doing it in Australia http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/19/report-australian-carbon-tax-contributes-to-record-number-of-businesses-insolvencies/

I signed up a couple of days ago. Like any new software that you have to learn, it will take you time to learn the quirks of it. But it looks promising, I can"t wait to get enough data to see how the reporting works out. I had some issues in having to use multiple email addresses to be setup as a owner and then a manager, but once Scott cleared that up I was able to get going. The next thing I am dealing with is one of my tech's told me that you can only save an inspection my marking it complete. This brings up an issue for us as the service writer is the one that inputs pricing into the recommendation worksheet. On another note, I was expecting the VIN to be decoded automatically, the shop software that we use Bay-masteR does it for us, this is really a very valuable feature. This application does not do it yet, you have to manually input the VIN details yourself for the first time. But like I said, I am beginning to learn the software, once we get it going I can tell the information gathered will be very valuable.

What an excellent post! Thanks Joe.

Great stuff Scott, I will give it a go. It looks very promising and your reporting capabilities looks phenomenal. As they say though the proof is in the pudding, so I will have to prepare my senior techs to use this new technology. Thanks!

Joe thank you for this lead, any chance these guys are going to be giving out trial coupons? I would like to sign up and try it, but always love to get a discount when I can.