HarrytheCarGeek

I have to really make a decision, if I want to grow and take it to the next level or stay where I am in terms of size of business. Your comment has made me think about seriously developing a brand identity for marketing purposes.

This is a great question! 1. If you had the free time to think about other things besides running your business, what do you think those running government think about doing to those of us in private industry? 2. If you were running government, would you welcome people in private industry telling you what to do? 3. Do you think those running government really care about the true individual welfare of each of us to the extent that it does not benefit them? 4. Who is really behind the drafting of government policies, and for whose benefit? It is really scary to want to peek behind the curtain and seeing what truly goes behind the scenes.

Pick up the phone and call Hotels, contractors, cable installers, delivery companies, etc. The hard part will be the first calls and the nasty people that will hang up on you and tell you that they don't need your service. Once you have introduced yourself to enough people and made enough appointments you may start to see some business trickle into the door. This is a very slow process, but effective in getting new business through the door. Keep in mind most fleet managers will not switch shops overnight, it is a slow and tedious process of developing a relationship with the fleet managers. They will try you out and see if you can deliver solutions to them, and at the beginning they will watch your pricing and delivery like hawks!

Did you take a ride with the customer and ask to see how they operate the parking brake? Are they fully releasing the parking brake after use? It sounds to me that the customer's initial failure could have been cause by driving with the parking brake engaged. I never assume or think anything is obvious since your experience is different from mine and what is obvious to you may not be to me. Having said that, make sure none of the brake hardware kit springs, retainers or levers are fatigued.

Check your parking brake cables. Some dry up and cause the shoes to drag.

Yes Joe, same wishes from I and my team. I have a son that loves to run, and this attack struck terror in my heart, as G-d forbid my son could be injured or killed in such attacks.

I wanted to add to the above comments how I had my service writer and bookkeeper reclassified as office personnel. I wrote an affidavit of support stating the fact those individuals are not mechanics and do not work on vehicles. I serve notice on my worker's comp provider of that fact and attached my affidavit of support. Those workers were reclassified, and the premiums adjusted accordingly.

I did not know anything about how these insurance companies worked, they kept telling me about the law this, the law that. They always told me to talk to a lawyer, the lawyers charged me but I did not get answers that would satisfy my questions. My mentor told me that I should learn about the law, and here, check this place out. http://www.HowToWinInCourt.com?refercode=CH0002 I took the course with the purpose of what the law was about, and came away with a complete understanding of how the law is manipulated to benefit those that know how to use the law against those that do not know the law. Very good course that may answer many questions on how the insurance companies do business.

Don't worry about making mistakes and don't feel intimidated by the whole thing, it is a lot of fun running your own business, but it also has its challenges. Keep an open mind, don't be afraid to ask questions. The most successful people I know do not mind sharing their secrets to success.

The reason you may feel scared is what I call the many "unknonws", since you lack the experience and have not had the opportunity of dealing with the many issues of running a business, you feel that anxiety that comes when going into a new adventure. Don't be scared, think logically and many things will come to you. There are certain fundamentals that should be obvious, yet they are not if you have not given them any thought, for example: 1. ) There are only 24 hours in the day, of those hours, how many hours will your shop be open? That means someone that is qualified will have to staff the shop for the hours it will be open. 2.) If your billable rate is $100.00 per hour and your mechanic bills 7 hours per shift that will bring in $700.00 in revenue into the shop. 3. If you pay your mechanic $15 per hour and the state taxes and benefits cost you another 30%, mark up your labor cost by 30% for example: $15 mechanic pay x 1.3 = $19.50 effective cost per hour. That means that mechanic is costing you $156 per 8 hour shift in hard dollars. 4. Break down your rent, insurance, and utilities down to a daily cost, that way you will know your daily break even sales target. 5. Learn to use excel and make a dashboard that will help you keep track of your daily numbers. This way you will know day to day how your business is doing. 6. Learn to know the difference between mark up and margin, as a rule of thumb, mark up things higher than your expected margin, for example, your cost is $10, mark it up by 50% for an expected margin of 33%. ...

The way I deal with delays are by preparing the customer ahead of time, for example, when quoting the job in addition to price we tell the customer that a job typically takes a certain amount of time barring any delays. However, rusted bolts, hidden defects or damage will cause a delay. Most customers will not pay attention to you when you are telling them this, yet I make it a point to repeat that delays can occur. This practice has become second nature and cannot tell you how many times it has saved my butt.

Joe, what an experience! Thank you to you all for sharing and lending an ear!

Know your numbers! Study them, once, twice, thrice and you will succeed. I will share with you what I know as time allows.

You cannot really learn this in school and only seem to be taught by the school of hard knocks called Experience: -There are days that everything seems to go wrong. My old mentor told me that life goes in cycles, and that no matter how much I prepare I should accept that there are days that are going to be tough and difficult to survive. Well, yesterday was one of those days. I had that customer that every shop hates come in, nothing we could offer or do makes this customer happy. He claims mechanics are always out to rip him off. That we damaged something in his car and that after we had serviced his car it never ran well. I have told this customer that we are not the shop for him and that we are not setup to handle his car troubles, but he always stops by and makes it a point to have his car checked by my guys. He usually waits to come in when I am not running the service desk. So yesterday, my senior mechanic damaged a car when backing out of the bay and hit this trouble customer's car, pending jobs parts where boxed wrong, also one of the lift's motors died, and my wife drove over a parking spot limiter and took out the oil pan on her minivan. Thank God I am healthy and have a sense of humor or I would have had a heart attack!

First, look in the mirror and see if the problem begins with you. That's what I have had to do when things are not going my way. Then, sit down and write down your expectations. Set the list aside for a day and then review it, add or delete to it. Set it aside again, and then see if you can get a clear idea of what you want and if you have reasonable expectations. Primadonna mechanics are a pain, but there is a way to deal with them. One of them is to hurt them in the wallet when they do not perform as expected. The primary problem when defining your expectations will be to articulate and know what is the problem that you are having. In my business the most fundamental problem I had was finding what was a reasonable expectation of a net profit. After doing my research, I came to realize that what I wanted was not reasonable and my shop was in fact much more prosperous than the industry norm. That was a hard pill to swallow at first, then a gladness at the fact I was running an excellent shop. YMMV...

Up by 12%. I am max out at my current setup and business is going strong. I know my formula well and don't really want to expand the business right now.

I did not like doing tires because the capital I had to tie up was pretty high for a negligible return. I even used to tell my customers to buy the tires from tire rack and had them deliver to the shop. I spoke to a good friend of mine and he suggested to work out a deal with a local tire warehouse. My guy carries the inventory and I mark up the tires 33%. It is working out pretty good so far.

Yes, $45 if I have to reprogram the TPMS module to recognize the new sensor(s).

http://www.wurthusa.com/web/en/website/produkte_1/wurth_sis_/sisinventorymanagement.php

For those of you that have experienced frustration getting the right serpentine belt size on custom applications, here is this nice web site from Dayco: http://www.accessdayco.com/Dimensional.aspx I work on lots of fleet vehicles that have custom A/C and/or dual alternators and PTOs. And this site has got me out of trouble.

I have been in the same situation, I had to rethink my pricing strategy and how I sell the work from several incidents like that in the past. Now, I use AC Delco in most vehicles, Napa and the best parts that the customer's budget will allowed with my margin built in. If they want economy parts I note it in the invoice.

I have not worked at a dealer in about 15 years. But if you are doing oil changes, tires, and cleaning up the shop, I would normally expect a minimum salary, although this work is not well paid. Shops don't make a big profit doing this type of work. If you are doing brakes, timing belts, water pumps and other light to medium duty work, I would expect a much better salary. If you are a master tech and diagnostician that helps sell the work, run the shop and train junior techs, I would expect a base and billable hour premium. The bottom line is everything is negotiable, and as long as you help the shop make a profit you can be sure to have a job and a decent salary if you negotiate for it.

I must be missing something and don't quite understand? They only pay you $11 per billable hour? What is your minimum salary?

Joe, I observed this pattern about two years ago, now is becoming more pronounced. For some reason, I have developed a very large African-American customer base, they are not wealthy by any means but are very loyal and in the most part follow my vehicle maintenance recommendations. Their vehicle's miles tend to average between 180,000 miles and 250,000 miles. If they have been with me a few years, I have done their water pumps, timing belts, wheel bearings, shocks, brakes, ball joints or control arms, etc... I recognize that I do leave a lot of money on the table since I realistically could not do all my customer's maintenance and have decided to control my growth to a very limited rate. And like you, we do an initial full complementary inspection and give the customer a written report to keep them informed when they come into the shop. Another thing I had to learn to do well was when to use the word "No." As in "Mr. Customer, I appreciate your business, but I would not recommend you put any more of your hard earned money to repair this vehicle. After having given it a complete inspection it is my opinion you will not recover your investment if we make this repair." You may think I would be going out of business turning away repairs, but to the contrary, they seem to bring me even more customers that produce very healthy margins. I love, if you can love anything inanimate, and like this business very much, and I am sure my customer can see and feel I do like very much what I do. Having said that, the standard I use when dealing with my customers' cars is like if my wife and children would be riding in that car. I make sure that I do communicate that fact to my customers. Another thing, you will not come on as pushy if you tell the customer what his car needs like you would like to be told what your car needs to be in top reliable shape. Let them know the last thing you would like to be is stranded on the side of the road because your mechanic failed to inform you your belts needed to be replaced.

The trade used to be a lot of fun and lucrative when I started in the early '80s. Now, not so much. -Tough government regulations, low profit margins, financially broke customers, long hours, shady vehicle manufacturer trade practices, counterfeit parts, high insurance premiums, etc. Why do I persists? Because I haven't found anything else that I enjoy doing that would help me pay the bills like this trade.