alfredauto

This week I lost 7 good customers. Not due to anything under my control, one guy had a stroke and can't drive, six professors/university faculty members moved out of state to greener pastures. The loss of these seven families probably means $15,000 a year I'm going to miss just in maintenance, maybe twice that amount. Another ten customers bought brand new cars in the last couple months with at least 3/36 warranties. What I'm getting at is no matter how good your shop is doing you need to keep recruiting new customers or life's going to be tough for you.

Contacting customers about a week after the sale is best. Normally if you fixed their car right they won't call you so by calling them its normally a pleasant call. "Hi, just calling to thank you again for busibess and see how those tires are working out, any concerns?" is enough to solidify your relationship. I'm guilty of NOT doing it enough, but its just because I'm short handed. Sometimes they will have a concern and if you don't call you just won't see them ever again.

It certainly would simplify things.

I've had Napa care customers from out of state come in for repairs to us because we were an auto care center. Each time the claim was not paid by the autocare warranty, they had some excuse to not pay. They basically asked us do the repairs as goodwill. Napa supplied the parts, we did free labor - free labor on another shops comeback with promises of getting reimbursed. No thanks. I assumed that my customers will experience similar results. Don't get me wrong, the marketing and customer care level is superb! Actually getting paid is the issue. It may have been my local stores incompetence in handling claims, your results may vary.

So as a few of you know I got into selling used cars as a supplement to the garage work. It generates headaches faster than it generates cash. Here's what's on my plate for this week: a girl bought a pacifica from me with 90k miles. Paid about $5k. I made $800. Clean car, no issues. I gave her a written 30 day warranty per NY law. That was in February. The first I hear back from her was last week, she is suing me in small claims court for $3,800. Huh? She claims she spent that much in repairs the last month and I'm responsible. So while the car was under warranty it didn't break. In the first 4 months of ownership it didn't break. Now 5 months later and 10,000+ miles something broke and its 100% my fault because I sold it to her. It really blows my mind the mentality of some people. The sad part is if any of my paperwork is out of order I'll probably have to pay her something. If she's friends with the judge I'm really screwed. Since when is a car dealer responsible for the life of a car? I just don't get it.

We use Mitchell manager. Its fast and easy to use and has a ton of useful features. It costs about $200 and change a month for the lease which includes the repair and estimator programs, one workstation. Support is excellent. Whatever you choose think carefully because its difficult to switch systems once you get used to one.

I'm in a college town, you name it from 1990-2016 we get them. I have 15 #'s that I stock 6 of, the rest I keep 1. I don't anticipate getting 2 diesel Benz's or BMW 540i's in one day, so one is enough. Subaru's or Caravans are a different story. We might do 5 a day. I'm also in a rural area where the parts stores don't stock European or even some Japanese filters. If I don't have a filter in stock when the college kid is heading out of town I miss the opportunity to get them as a customer. Now, if I had more time or more employees, or if the store had more delivery drivers, I would stock just one of each number and just reorder throughout the day. But with parts deliveries taking an hour on average I like to avoid waiting for an oil filter.

Funny you mention it, I picked up zig ziglars book at the dump one day in the book share pile and it really changed my life. As soon as I focused on helping others get what they want, I mean honestly ingrained it into everything I do, my life changed for the better. Thanks for the post, very uplifting!

Its a hard pill for millenials to swallow but they need to understand that you can't do everything on the internet. Their dentist doesn't quote them how much for a cavity repair over the web, its not possible. Same goes for auto repair. "How much is a tune up?" Yea right, are we to believe the customer just decided today to fulfill some preventative maintenance? Probably not.

I've been wanting to do my floors for a few years. Honestly the biggest hang up is removing everything from the floor. I've got junk piled under every bench and in every corner that needs to be dealt with (probably tossed into the scrap bin) but I'm not ready to let go yet.

Just about every day I wonder what were the engineers thinking while struggling to do something simple. Sometimes its simply my lack of experience with a certain model. A few minutes on Google saves me considerable time. Other times the reality is as it seems.

I was a Napa auto care center. Key word - was. The warranty I was able to offer as part of the program turned out to be worthless to the customer. If you want to advertise for NAPA by all means pay your $900 a year, buy their invoices, buy their advertising programs, and buy their training. Don't worry they will supply you with a large Napa sign. The rebate checks offset the costs, but ultimately I felt like I was working to promote Napa and not Alfred Auto.

My point is not to be a cheapskate miser, but to really think about how you can run a business or home on less. If a good generic scan tool will make you money, by all means go into debt to obtain one. Will going into huge debt to obtain every factory scanner make you any more money? Probably not. At first anyways. It took me a long time to get out of debt, I was pretty much bankrupt 20 years ago. In 1995 I was credit rich, new cars, new snowmobiles, big house in the suburbs. I had a job making almost $100k a year. Endless credit and endless money (or so I thought) By 2000 I got divorced and lost my job. The payments weren't so easy. I had zero money and zero credit. Spent my 401k to buy diapers and fuel oil. Add to that an illness in the family and I was on the way to an early grave. Maybe I have PTSD from it but I'll never go back to being a slave to the lenders. I'll eat ramen noodles before I go back to that rat race.

I too have very little debt. It took me a long time to be free of monthly payments. My secret is simple - I live off of $500 a week, after taxes, the same I made before I opened my shop. I live in the same old house, drive the same old truck. Regardless if I make $3000 or $30,000 in a month I don't spend more than my fixed income level. Keep working, save your money, and the rest is easy. I secured a loan to buy the shop I was leasing, it wasn't easy. The only way I got the loan was with 40% down payment. If I had bought a new car or a boat when I started making good money I'd be crying the blues paying $5000 a month rent vs the $1000 I pay on my mortgage. I understand life is short and you can't take it with you, but living debt free is a lot easier that sitting up at night worrying who's not going to get paid. Another tip is get a good business credit card or 2 that gives points or cash back. I sometimes spend $50,000 a month on tires and parts, it all goes on my cards. That's $500.00 a month free money just for paying my bills, more if I put the right expenses on the right cards. I pay the balance immediately. If I need a new piece of equipment I buy it, no interest. If I don't have the money I fix the old one. At some point I should upgrade my lifestyle, but I haven't reached that place in my life yet. Off topic a bit: I'm friends with a couple who are muilti millionaires. I fix his wife's car - 1997 suburban. He drives a 2001 pickup. Both have over 200k miles. I ask him why not get a new car? His response is his cars are paid for and still work. That's how he became wealthy. These people live like blue collar workers and are happy every time I see them. I have friends that make over $200k a year and keep buying stuff until there monthly payments exceed their income. One guy has a $700,000 home and buys a new lexus every year. He appears rich but struggles to make ends meet. He's not very fun to be around.

I have work for 2 more techs full time and I can't find qualified help. I can get a home taught mechanic easily, but a person with real skills? Impossible it seems. The hackers are always looking for a job, the money makers are happy where they are. How to recruit these guys that are happy? I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Just got back last week from 3 weeks off. Took a full Saturday to evict the spiders from the shop 😯 I assumed the first week back would be slow but it was the opposite. Everyone is rested up and focused. Based on last week we will turn a small profit in July even being closed 3 weeks. If any of you guys are tired of the same old vacation spots Croatia is the place to be. An overnight flight gets you there, and the friendly people and uncrowded beaches on the islands are magic to your body and spirit. Almost everyone speaks English but learning a couple phrases in hrvatski is easy and goes a long way to being an accepted American tourist. Did I mention its rediculously cheap? We stayed on the beach on Vis island for about $20/night. It wasnt a 5 star resort but clean, safe, and 30 second walk to the sea. A real nice sit down 3 course dinner averages $12-$20 per person including drinks. For $20 thats a rich mans meal with high end fresh fish with soup and vegetables, all freshly prepared. They let you smoke in the restaurants too if thats your thing. Street food like cevapi & ajvar with fresh bread is like $3 for a filling meal. Beer is about $1.25 for a half liter bottle of premium beer at a cafe. Cheaper at the grocery store. We rented a power boat for $40/day to explore some secluded islands. Gas included. We hired a private guide to take us around off the beaten path for about $100 for a 12 hour day, all inclusive. For the guide he was happy as can be because his normal salary is $500 a month before taxes. $100 there is like $1000 here. The other nice thing about Europe is the public transportation is outstanding. We toured most of the whole ex yugoslavia by train, bus, ferry, and the occasional taxi. Working on cars every day its nice to let someone else drive. I visited a couple shops over there, nobody rushes to get anything done. $13/hr is the standard rate for mom & pop garage. The shops that service the taxis charge much more.

If you are intending to start your own brand with fresh marketing why not just start with leasing an empty building? Its cheaper.

We use Napa filters, we have a Napa filter book. While using a book may be old school it really is the fastest and easiest way to put the right filter on the car. That being said 99% of oil change customers are repeats, so we just look at the number of the filter coming off the car. The frustrating part is stocking 50+ oil filter numbers.

We had a similar problem the other day on a f250. The injector ground wire was intermittently rubbing against another ground which caused the injector to fire randomly. So if you have a cyl 4 misfire cut the injector ground wire at the injector and at the PCM and run a new wire. This is a free fix for you to try, it costs you a piece of wire and half an hour. The PCM on the one we did was under the battery on the passenger side in the firewall, no need to remove it just the connector. Glad to see you got it fixed. Sometimes starting back at square 1 is the only way.

March and April are when most lower/mid income people get a tax return cash influx, they are "rich" and buy everything. By august they are living paycheck to paycheck and need school clothes and supplies for their kids. I can't figure it out though, as soon as I think I know what to expect I get proved wrong. Normally January is the slowest month, Christmas's credit card bills are coming in, heating bills are huge, seasonal workers are laid off, cold weather keeps people indoors. I always expect to lose in January, we paint the lifts and wash the floors. Last year we had our biggest month ever - in January. Go figure.

I thought about specializing but the potential loss of business has prevented me from doing so. What I do is park Mercedes and bmw's out front next to the road, and blend in the other makes next to the shop. When people drive by they immediately see that we work on European cars. Its the best of both worlds for us as there's not enough European cars to keep us busy in my area. If I park old rusted junk out front it attracts old junk. Word of mouth also drives business that we are interested in. I'm too expensive for a certain segment of the population, so that narrows down the work we do. In essence we specialize in customers that can afford professional service.

I've bought cars from insurance companies, I just asked for the price. In NY they give me the paperwork I give them the cash. Most of the time copart pays more than i want to pay so they get the car I get the storage. If you hammer the ins. Co. on storage they will blacklist you, just keep it in mind. It really depends on your area, I get $35/day outside but in a city its probably double or triple that.

Every day I hear this nonsense. They make an appointment for an oil change, then say "check it over real good for a long trip" OK no problem, when are you leaving? "As soon as the oil change is done". Now its my fault when they break down, because I checked it. It doesn't matter if I give them a 3 days list of work that needs to be done and they reject all of it, they had the mechanic check it before leaving. I think they read car care tips in the paper but don't realize that checking means fixing to be of any use.

Most Mercedes Benz cars use 2 plugs per cylinder. That translates into 16 spark plugs on a v8. At least they're not hard to change but 16 plugs take a minute to swap out. The biggest problems we find are when compound issues hinder the spark plug access. Get a s10 with a bad motor mount and you can't get a socket onto the middle plug, the steering shaft blocks your path. Camaro's are the absolute worst in my book, I mentally blocked out the last one I did. GM must have learned from the Vega. Anything with van in the model name means covered in grease and cuts. Now you know why I specialize in tires and not tune ups.

Great article! I'm guilty as charged with only thinking about cleaning my gutters when its raining and the water's pouring onto my porch. As soon as the sun's out I completely forget about it.