alfredauto

This last winter was extremely busy for us, mostly snow tire installs and maintenance issues. Come the end of February and beginning of March and it was as if someone hit the off switch. No tires, no oil changes, nothing. We made it through 2 weeks of no phone calls by luck, a couple transmission jobs came in which took up the time. (Normally we don't do tranny r&r's but any work is better than no work) You could play hockey on the road in front of the shop, nobody was doing anything except trying to keep warm. Propane shot up to $5 a gallon. Then like the switch turned back on we are backed up 5-7 days again, phones ringing off the hook. The story is the same with other shops in my area. Feast or famine for all of us. I'm optimistic for 2014 as a whole.

We burn waste oil for heat. The oil change itself is break even but it keeps the customers happy and my garage warm. We don't push anything extra on lof jobs unless it's literally an emergency safety issue. it's why people come back. State inspections are the same way, a loser on paper but it keeps the clients happy.

We carry 5w30 in bulk that meets SN rating, that gets used in generic older cars that specify 5w30 like s10 blazers and such. 2nd most common is semi synthetic 5w20 in quarts that meets the Ford spec. Most major brands do like Valvoline and Mobil. We carry Mobil 1 synthetic 0w20 for the Japanese cars. I used to stock dexos1 for the new gm's but now autozone 5w30 synthetic has the Dexos1 official stamp on the bottle so we use that. For the German cars we stock 5w40 Euro spec - it is "approved by" Mercedes, BMW, and VW. I get it from amazon, nobody local has it. For the European cars if the bottle does not have the exact wording as the manual specifies then I wouldn't use it. "Exceeds standards" means it's not approved. I'm sure it will work but we don't take a chance. Most euro cars have a 10-15k + mile drain interval so it seems pretty important to use the right stuff. We use the oe Mann fleece filters on the German cars too. Once again Amazon to the rescue. 6 or 7 filters covers all the common cars we see. That being said our oil changes cost as much as the dealer but it saves the customer an hour + drive. That's the drawback of being in a college town, we service the whole spectrum. No one size fits all oil anymore.

Fwiw we have been using denso direct fit sensors on gm's with zero problems.

We stock oil and air filters, chemicals and oil. A selection of steel brake lines too. That's about it. The parts stores get here in 10 minutes, I let them carry the inventory. No price difference . I got a free cabinet for stocking oil filters - wow - the convenience makes it worthwhile. Even air filters are crazy , I probably have 300 in stock but if it's not here 99% of the time it won't get sold.

Oilchangestickers.com and a sharpie. Old school but it's cheap and trouble free.

I think it depends on your area. Around here nobody is open on weekends except Walmart and Monroe muffler. Are they taking a chunk of my business ? Absolutely, but It's worth it for me to take a break. We could work 24/7 and still not get everything done, so we do what we can 8-6 m-f and try to have some type of life outside of work on the weekend.

We have a spot out of the way where we save all metal junk parts. I sell the rotors for market value to the scrapers that come around. Same with the other junk except cats, sell them to a dedicated converter recycler for top dollar. Don't give it away rotors are worth. $2 each at the yard and $1-$1.50 on site. When prices are up we get 5 guys a week asking for metal . Some bigger places will put a metal bin on your site and pay you when it's full. It buys a nice dinner for your family or save up the junk for a year and go on vacation with it. It adds up.

In response to some other points brought up, we always double check our work if a complaint is made. Mistakes happen. If we are sure we didn't cause the problem then customer pays or goes somewhere else. Period. If we did cause the problem we fix it for free . That includes misdiagnosis. If a vehicle has multiple issues and the customer only wants to fix some of them, then it's on them when it comes back. We had an older 90's truck last year that gave us fits, came in running like crap and leaking so the tech did a tune up and valve cover gasket. Got all done and it started knocking on the test drive. Ouch. We ended up buying the vehicle and I scrapped it, don't ask how much $$$ I lost on that deal it was too much. The customer was understanding but still not too happy. Did we break it ? Probably not. The problem is the thing ran when it came in and wasn't able to drive out. In retrospect I probably would have done things exactly the same. Sometimes you get the short straw.

Don't do head gaskets. That's my advice. Antifreeze will ruin an oxygen sensor and catalytic converter quick, water in the oil will ruin all moving parts. God forbid if the head is cracked, a new head with new valves will pull oil past the old worn out rings once your done, head jobs have been losers for us every time so we gave up. Cars that get towed in as no starts or not drive able we deal with the problem that caused it to be an INOP, anything else we find I let the customer know . They already know but sometimes they get Alzheimer's but we don't let them bully us. Since-ya's we call those people. "Ever since ya did my fuel pump my brakes vibrate" yup

I agree with the parts quality, frustrating at best. I don't see a solution, new cars are made cheaper every year with parts that are designed to be just good enough. We had a 2012 Hyundai sonata in today 44k miles and the starter was junk. 2014 Subaru 7k miles tranny leaking like a faucet. Dealer took the hit on both under warranty but it scares me to see the crap the manufacturers are producing. Hopefully the aftermarket will step up and make parts superior to the OEM, we are starting to see it on some items. Steering racks are a sore spot with me, Try a Cardone rack sometime and see if outlasts the test drive. Nothing like doing a job 2 or 3 times to make a tech want to quit.

Looks great! Always give your customers much more than they expect and you will be backed up for days with too much work.

$400k gross in a 8 bay shop is terrible. Something is wrong. Look back 10 years if you can, maybe he slowed down. 8 lifts can accommodate at least 5-6 techs and should be grossing well over 1m. There might be a problem with 1. Equipment isn't usable, 2. Good help isn't available? 3. Customer base too small , 4. Customer base too poor. 5. Some other reason. The utilities remain constant, so the reason the current owner is under-utilizing the space should concern you .

I bought a energy logic waste oil burner last year , it works great . Only problem so far is 1.5 gallons per hour = no more oil to burn. 5000+ sq ft with. 5 doors with the average temp of -2 degrees every day we burned a lot. I have natural gas backup which isn't too bad but free oil beats it every time .

Recently we paid to have 10,000 sticky notes attached to the front page of the areas largest newspaper advertising tires with a coupon you had to mention to get the deal. 5x5" you couldn't miss it. I miss my money as nobody called. Sometimes great ideas amount to nothing.

As a teenager I handed out flyers for a carpet cleaning business at condos and apartment buildings. I got paid per call. On average 2% would call, and 10% of that 2 % would book a service. I handed out thousands upon thousands of those stupid things, you can't pay me to hand one out now. It worked but it wasn't so easy.

Too much rust here to install them. It would take up 30 minutes to put one on a car. It seems like a good idea though. We have keychains with our phone # on it, everyone gets one. At about $.15 each in bulk it seems to work. It also helps us recognize repeat customers when a different driver brings the car in so we don't forget to check the history. It helps the customer find our # easily after their oil change sticker has faded out after 15 months

I agree with less is more strategy. We recently painted our waiting room and put in some new furniture. I removed 90% of the stuff and didn't put it back. Customers like the clean look better. I display a few tires and have a nice brake pad display and a few nice metal signs. The rest is non automotive stuff. No tv in our place, magazines and free wifi only. Customers like it because they can work in relative quiet. I have some informative automotive brochures out so they can get their own ideas of what they should be asking for rather than me trying to sell them something.

When people call and ask how much for a brake job, the answer is always "bring it in for a free estimate". We tried to package price brake jobs and it brought in too many price shoppers. However, if we do an oil change and notice the rotors are rusted we suggest a future appt. for brake work. They ask " how much " and I tell them it's normally around $250 per axle, (pretty close to the average in my area) that way they know what to budget for. I assume we can put pads & rotors on most cars and rebuild the calipers for about that so it seems to work. Recently we flat out refuse to do pad slaps, it costs us too much time explaining the fact of cheap = cheap.

I signed up today - $99 for the 1st month. We'll see how it goes, I'm going to try it until the college breaks for summer - about 3 months. I quit radio commercials, newspaper ads , and yellow pages which brought in basically nothing so I have some advertising budget to spend. Google Adwords has been working very well , although the free word of mouth referrals from happy customers really is what brings people in.

Look up interchange plus plans from first data or I payment. Most of these ads that offer .69% or free machines usually are more expensive. They fail to explain the interchange costs. They get away with it because your monthly bill is low - the one that you see. The discount that comes off after each transaction via interchange rates and markup are not so easy to see unless you study your statement.

Any updates on Repair pal? I'm thinking of signing on as a paid shop. We are busy 99% of the time but I like new customers, it makes me feel more secure .

Not to over post but a comment on parts quality. Compare an economy Autozone bearing to one from Advance, Napa, Carquest, or any other store and tell me the difference. They are exactly the same part with a different sticker on the box. Same goes for anything rebuilt - it's almost all restickered A1 Cardone. We buy from the store that offers us the best price, service, and warranty. Right now AZ has the best parts and labor warranty we have ever seen. FYI rock auto shares the same warehouse as some major parts chains, the only difference is the price. The parts are the same at the bargain quality level. That said we try to put premium brand name parts on everything, it's way better for everyone.

I've learned the parts store managers are good liars. They tell everyone that they achieved diamond or top tier level or whatever and it makes you feel good . Normally we get 10% off walk in price as the norm on our our computer's catalog. We base our markup matrix off of this number. Once the job is sold we call our contacts at the parts store and ask for a deeper discount, this extra 5-70% is real money in our pockets. We aren't PITA customers and most of the time we don't haggle on a couple dollars, but our main parts supplier will sell us parts at a much better price than initially offered to keep us as the first call. Some parts stores won't budge at all, we don't give them as much business. Think about it from the part stores eyes - $20000 a month in commercial parts sales @ 40% profit is way better than $2000 in sales @ 80%. The truck uses the same amount of gas and the part driver gets paid the same in both scenarios. On some big jobs we pass the savings on to the customers to stay competitive. A lost sale = 0 profit for everyone. Some stores have a "creep" where we get 50% off walk in the first month, then 40%, and so on until there's little discount. They know that most shops get too busy to shop around. It keeps us on our toes, that's for sure.

Since the law passed we installed about 80% less cats than usual. They get a price from us for $1000 or whatever the CARB compliant costs to install and then they go to Joes unregistered garage and get a $60 universal welded in. I refuse to do it so they go somewhere else, sucks but I can't afford to risk a fine. We never had a problem with the Walker direct fit OBDII compliant cats which aren't cheap to begin with but the CARB ones are nuts.