bantar

Off topic, but this comedy sketch mirrors your bathroom door sign. The real question is does this still apply in retirement?

Want one? 🤪 Backstory: This was a flooded and totaled Tesla that now has a 6.2L LS3 engine from a 2010 Camaro SS. This guy has a whole Youtube channel dedicated to Tesla teardowns, repurposing and rebuilds. Check his channel out here. He's even built a 6 wheeled Tesla!

I'm not intending for this to be a political statement, but I do want to touch on the political news of the moment as it pertains to electric cars. I previously said: Listening to the news over the past few days as the calls for lower gas prices getting louder, we hear that you should be driving an electric car. Some comments are overt and some are subtle, "as we transition to 100% renewable energy sources". Everyday Americans are getting hammered by these high gas prices right this minute. Telling them to buy a new car only worsens their financial picture. So, are the politicians encouraging our fellow American's to be more accepting of Electric Cars or are they discouraging them? “The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” Personally, I think they have just breathed new life into the ICE cars. I believe that this intervention is actually driving a wedge in the electric car vs ICE debate that wasn't really there (or as loud) before. Even Elon Musk recently called for gas prices to be lowered. In the past, he spoke negatively of gas prices being artificially low, (IMO) as a sales pitch for EVs. I wonder what he's really worried about?

We have a 2013 Kia Rio on my lot now that needs an engine. We found a med-high-mileage engine for about $8000 as well. Contrast this to finding a 85K engine for a 2012 Nissan Sentra for just over $400. It seems no rebuilders like repairing grenades. (They don't want the warranty liability). Interestingly, this vacuum in the scrap market illustrates the gap in the rebuilder market. And, the scrap guys know that they have a diamond in the rough, so diamond pricing it is!

Great marketer? LOL, no. The only thing I'll give myself credit for is recognizing that I don't know what I'm doing regarding marketing and thus embarking on a path of copying what others are doing and have done. Can't go wrong copying success. By chance, I met a Houston based small business marketing company and hired him. As a startup with little money coming in, it was a difficult decision to decide to move forward, but I knew that we needed to be known. They say, your marketing piece must be seen 7 times before it's effective (so I copied this too). Is that CarWash next door mine? Thank heavens, NO! The owner recently sold, but before that he was the most-depressed man I knew. It's hard to make a living at $6/car. He did zero marketing though. I too grew up with 100% humidity and found Dallas to be arid and way better. But our Mountains aren't as impressive as yours.

They didn't have enough space on this little ad to be thorough.... Here's the long form. "Guards your child as you're busy driving through traffic. Let's him sit, stand, kneel or sleep without disturbing the driver. Prevents spills from sudden stops. Protects him from falling out of the open window. Heavy web harness attaches to the safety strap that snaps to the car seat frame. Removes easily. Also use as a walking harness. Sturdy enough to use as a belt for instant discipline. For 1 to 10 year olds." I remember sleeping on the deck behind the back seat while on long drives. It was roomy, but no tie downs there.

Well, I'll have to say that this has gone both good and bad. I'm going to explain what I expected and what I'm seeing. I'm partially surprised... in a good way. With this being an often used service, it's possible that folks remembered what they paid the last time. Right now, for each customer, we are quoting the price for the service before starting. We solicit a positive affirmation. We don't quote the price for repeats that are not experiencing a price change as we've always done. We are not explicitly calling out the price increase. If a customer comments, then we have that conversation. Our repeat customers are saying ok. I don't think anyone has walked over it. They may or may not return for the next visit, so it's TBD. I really expected an Indian Revolt. We have a lot of Indian customers who appear to be price sensitive, but most are not reacting. As a group, they tend to negotiate the most, but I've learned that they were often cheated in their home country, so they do value honesty. But the old ways of haggling seem to be hard to shake. Many customers, both old and new, simply say ok. No reaction to the pricing at all. I expected more reactions from new customers, but this has not materialized. Having said this, we are seeing a increase in the number of "no thanks" abandonments. 1-2 weekly has moved up to 1-3. Much smaller than I feared. But, we get lots of phone calls asking about price before arriving and with these, I believe that we are taking a hit, but it's a gut feeling only. Are they price shopping, or planning their budget for the month? You can't tell. We know that some do come after this call. Until the local market pricing stabilizing, I'll be losing all price shoppers, which is ok. We weren't the lowest to begin with and still aren't. I send out post service surveys and did get one back from a fellow that said: "You don't need to make 80 dollars on a 15 minute change." (his analysis on my costs) He's a VW owner and my VW guys don't always realize that they are driving Euro vehicles. He did not do the service. In the same note, he said: "I want to come here for things because everyone is friendly and knowledgeable but I can't pay $$$ ..." There's the catch... what kind of service do I want? In the end, it was the right thing to do. Timing was good, but my have been ok sooner. At least, we have a scapegoat in the news. May need to do it again sooner than I expected with this inflation.

Ol' boy has been put out to pasture. I've never fired anyone without first giving them a chance to redeem themselves. Hung a sign out front that says: "Help Wanted - Must be a Team Player", with fine print that says: "Please don't lie to me" (like the last one did). 😄😔

Great tip! I shared this with my manger this morning. We're similar in presentation, but using the power of silence / pause is the real magic that I see.

I do a lot of marketing and have broken it into 4 categories: Presence Marketing High Visibility Location My Website (poor SEO - no spending on SEO) Two other group websites with great SEO rankings Business cards - Transmission shop and Tire Store referrals to each other (quite effective) New Customer Acquisition Monthly Mailers via RedPlum (two sides about 14"x12") Front Quick Lube, Rear Auto Repair Vivid colors, consistent format Marketers say that you must be seen 7 times to be remembered and most effective (Brand Awareness) Targeted Plastic Post Cards mailed to people who have never visited my location. (Quick Lube) Retention Marketing Postcards to customers, reminding them to return for service (Quick Lube) Send up to 5 postcards reminding them to return, before giving up Monthly newsletter via email Emailed survey after each visit Targeted Online Advertising (this is also new customer acquisition) Google Ads Focused all on Auto Repair The Quick Lube business is all about the discounts. Much as I hate it, you have to play the game. What is interesting is that only about 30% of the customers use coupons. I'm sure that many do like I did last night. Grabbed a coupon to use at a new restaurant and then forgot that I had it. It went unused. I also take competitors coupons, but cap these at my discount level. While we are running discounts, they are NOT loss leaders. The discount is priced into the service. Auto Repair is not really discount driven. It's mostly a trust business. But, there are some that are looking for the lowest prices and we have other local shops advertising to them. There are always people hunting for a repair shop. So, advertising is trying to attract them. I don't spend any money on Social Media advertising. The managed services that do this work are very expensive. All of the above is done thru various marketing companies. My involvement is mostly limited to picking the strategy. I do track spending and redemption stats. As best I can tell, my advertising has positive ROI, but I don't feel that it can be truly proven. I mix blind faith and some signs that it is working to keep doing it and I'm too scared to try not doing it.

We've been encouraging each other to raise prices to meet our business profit needs on the Labor Rate thread and I mentioned oil change pricing being more commoditized. I was really afraid of changing my basic oil pricing. Well, we made a big change yesterday and I'm nervously watching the reactions. In my mind, when gas hits $3/gallon is the time to raise prices, which in Texas is a pretty recent event. It happened, but there was little overall noise, so I sheepishly waited. Thursday night I go to bed, thinking nothing of this. Friday I wake up, watching the news and it dawned on me that the news cycle was all about inflation. It was the RIGHT TIME to act!!! (In truth, it likely was the wrong time because the right time was long ago, but I digress). So, I did an area pricing survey and found that I was priced in the bottom 40% of the field. I was actually late to act. Starting on Saturday, we've raised our prices about 25%. I know some of the other shops are also planning price increases, but we are now priced in the top 20% instead of the bottom 40%. We've not had anyone walk out due to pricing. We've had but 1 grumble so far. We will get some pushback eventually, but I was really surprised that it was not immediate. Shame on me for not acting sooner. Now, back in August 2021, we did raise prices on our European Oils and received almost zero pushback. But, this was expected. They are thrilled to get such a bargain compared to the dealer. In some instances, I'm actually higher than the dealer. In most cases we are maybe 25-40% less. I remain nervous because we might see silent pushback... that is, they pay this time, but seek someone else for next time. I do believe that the rest of the market will be moving soon, so the search for yesterday's prices might be futile.

Thanks. I don't think he understood FLMA either. We've made it over this hump. His odds of remaining here have improved from 3% when I wrote this post to about 55% today. For sure, we cannot afford a Negative Nancy and I won't tolerate it. But we all have moments where we dislike our jobs and need to vent. I was talking to a friend this week and he has a lake house, but it's not the fanciest lake house. Now, mind you, he can afford a fancy lake house, but doesn't desire this. He was saying that his lake house was not good enough for his son, who just graduated and has contributed nothing to the party. Entitlement came to mind again. He was explaining to me how he's trying to guide his son down the correct path and how fragile his reins are. Plant a seed, a little water and see if it grows. Rinse and repeat. It sounds like his son has a good chance of making it, if he's open to guidance. They are planning to visit my shop together in the next few weeks and together we'll plant some more seeds. Also, this week, I found this on LinkedIn. It captures the essence of my young service advisor's challenge: "You are not as good as you think you are, and we are OK with that. We are willing to teach you. Are you willing to listen?"

Again, I don't know what the future will bring, but it is way easier to retrofit 10,000's of gas stations with hydrogen tanks than it would be to add charging stations. Fuel cells could win the infrastructure game easily, if they become viable. How many states have enough excess power to absorb all EV? Here's a real tell... how many states believe that all EV is here and are building NEW power plants in anticipation? I think that infrastructure is the biggest hurdle for all EV adoption. However, as you mentioned, the wildcard is if the government says I don't care how much it costs and uses our taxes unwisely. Lastly, as EV adoption climbs, gasoline consumption drops and we will see very affordable gas, if the government does not first bankrupt the fuel stations. The free market will keep the playing field level. The government is the disruptor. But every time they step in to help us save (fuel economy, toilet flushes), it's a false economy. You piqued my curiosity and I took a look at the charging options for EV. What I found is that your charging rate is a function of your supply amperage (makes sense). If you look at their charging tables, it shows various options from 11 miles per hour of charging up to 44 miles per hour of charging. With a 110V plug you can get about 100 mile charge overnight. Not exactly terrible if you are a local commuter. Now, I peeked at my 2 service panels and they are both loaded up full. My costs to add a higher amperage charger would be higher than others that have excess breaker power. To get to the 44 mile charging, you need a 100A breaker and probably draw 60-80A I'd guess. I think we're really seeing the Tesla as a 2nd car for local commutes and not the primary vehicle for the family. And, if this is the case, then what are my service opportunities on a low-miles-driven-commuter car?

I was approached by my new (starting his 3rd month here), junior Service Advisor, who's having his 1st baby in the next 1-3 weeks. His question was "How are we going to be handling the pay during my time off for my baby delivery?" I asked, "How many days off are you wanting to take off?" Now, before I say any more, what would you say is a reasonable amount of time off for such a request? I figured he'd be asking for 3-5 business days off (more or less a week). He responded: "4 weeks". I stared at him for a minute and then said, well, it will be an unpaid leave. He then said, "Well, I'm going to have to find another job!" I said "OK". Later, we passed each other, and he mentioned that FMLA Leave is 12 weeks and that he's doing me a favor by only requesting 4. I then let him know that 1 week was what I had expected and was the norm. Then, he said, it's no longer 1959. LOL As they say, you learn something new everyday. Yesterday, I learned a lot about Entitlement. I also offered him a 2nd week off unpaid, which he cannot afford. BTW, this kid is walking a tightrope. If we can break this horse, he'll will excel, but he's dangerously close to breaking himself and will be put out to pasture. His heart is in the right place, and he has tremendous potential, but his problem solving skills & approach are dead wrong. I used to suffer from his same abruptness, so I'm a bit more forgiving than I should be. But there's a limit. Now, in fairness, I knew he had a baby on the way when we hired him and of course, we would support him in his great family event. During that conversation, I did not yet understand Entitlement. We were speaking of two completely different things with the same name. Had he said 4 weeks in the interview, we would have stopped there. Ignoring my employee difficulty, which will be resolved one way or another..... Is anyone else seeing this new workplace phenomenon - Entitlement?

First, let me say that I think EVs are here to stay, but just as a hammer isn't the only tool in your tool box, neither will EV's be alone. Adoption Barriers: Amongst the many single family homes here are some super sized apartment complexes... lots of them. Living in an apartment severely dampens the convenience of having a personal plug for your EV. You will have to hook up, charge and leave so that the next person can arrive for charging. If all spots are full, you must wait for one to free up. Most apartments do not have EV chargers and if they added one, it would need to be a profit center as apartments are experts at expense reduction. There are some apartments here with garages, so that helps. I think this inconvenience will continue to be an impediment to adoption. How many of us have been so late for a meeting that we can't spare the few minutes to pump gas into our tank? Imagine forgetting to charge and needing one now. Another factor is the vitrol that I hear about EV's from everyday customers. It's surprisingly loud. Then, you have your EX-Tesla drivers with not so great stories of their adventure. Contrast that with Prius drivers and those guys are generally happy and keep their cars quite a long while. IMO, I think the manufacturers with the most ICE engines remaining will mop up the majority of the new car sales. I think the CEOs are building for a perceived market vs an actual one. Hype always precedes adoption. But, hey, I'm not a visionary. Personally, I have no desire roasting in a spontaneous Lithium fire, so it's never in my future. I'd be open to other alternatives (fuel cell, propane, alkaline batteries, etc) if it made sense and was peppy. Profitability: I would say that the majority of the Tesla drivers that I see at our shop (for State Inspections) are cheapskates. They think that they've solved the maintenance and gas mileage conundrum. Add to that, a very small set of early adopters (not cheap folks). I also see their cheapness in their driving habits. They have a super-accelerator-machine, but pushing on the pedal uses their precious battery, so I zoom past all but 1-in-a-1000. These guys aren't using their brakes much. I see more tire wear from alignment issues than driving wear. (For reasons noted here are currently refusing Tesla alignments... we've only done 1). Most of the Teslas are low mileage vehicles. The highest I've seen is 70.3K miles on a used 2016 Tesla S. 93% < 40K miles in all. I bring this up, because I think it foretells the types of customers that you are likely attracting.

I'm curious... Do you manage daily profitability on a job by job basis as he does? I definitely get measuring and monitoring overall profitability. I thought I was tracking lots of data, but I am humbled in seeing your charts. For your red arrows, I think your asking these questions (am I close?): Technician Hourly Pay (total pay / hours worked) Technician Effective Flat Rate (total pay / billed hours) Gross Profit per Technician Clock Hour (GP / hours worked) It seems to me that these measurements are mostly comparing technicians against other technicians. I guess #3 is a good way to normalize measurements across different sized businesses. I track this data in aggregate monthly. Not per technician. I do keep an eye on individual Technician Efficiency (during payroll), but I'm not tracking (logging) it. I may need to do more. So far, I've focused on startup survival over efficiency. We are just now starting to look deeper and wider. For your daily technician tracking, I see hours worked and hours flagged and labor hours. What happens for jobs that span multiple days? What happens if they finished today and cashed out 4 days from now? Are they logged on actual day completed or on the day it's invoiced?

MotorAge published a training article and video from Jeremy O'Neal, AdvisorFix. See this article here: https://www.vehicleservicepros.com/shop-operations/service-repair/whitepaper/21253866/advisorfix-beyond-flat-rate-mastering-the-hidden-art-of-labor-profitability It's definitely an interesting training session. Jeremy explores some areas of thought that I've never considered. My mind is a bit more basic in my approach. I'd encourage you to check it out. What do you think of his approach to managing profitability?

@JerryK Hi Jerry, in the Shop Labor Rate thread, you posted 3 labor rates, regular, euro and Pre-1975 cars. I find it interesting that you've set your labor rate very high for these cars. It either means that you don't want those, or it's more expensive to work on them, so you charge more, or it is a specialty skill set that you possess and thus it's a more valuable service, or you are building in an inherent storage fee due to the extended time it takes to get parts, etc or ? I'm interested to understand your thinking regarding this particular rate. Also, why is 1975 the cutoff date? We've been working on a number of older cars, and I've taken the approach that it's a time and materials job. If it takes me 3 hours to remove the stuck drums off of your old car, then your brake job will cost more. If I above-normal spend time looking for parts, then this is billable time too. We shouldn't absorb the added difficulty of rust, age, etc. Maybe I'm approaching this incorrectly. I took in a 1984 project car on Friday... non-standard engine, but newer, bubba's electrical wiring mess, etc, but overall in good shape. We started with 5 hours of labor to assess and possibly fix. It's partly a test to see if he's serious on fixing the car. P.S. I live in Plano, but my shop is in McKinney. In my previous life, I worked not far from your shop.

OK, this lead panned out. However, after taking a tour, I was unimpressed with his rag-tag facility, but we looked at some of his work and it was good. Without a referral, I would not have selected this shop. I have two cars that need body repairs right now. I'm going to start with the Jeep and see how it goes. The owner is 81 years old, loves his job and is not interested in retiring. He didn't seem 81. I liked him. We seem to have similar approaches to life. Has the oldest operating business in his city.... and it shows.... no remodels or makeovers of the facility. Thanks for your guidance!

What timing.... As I was walking into my office, I saw the MAC Tool truck drive up, but gave it no thought. I chat with him often on various matters, but never thought of him knowing body shops. Well, I read your note and then ran out to talk to him. Got a good reference that I'll go visit sometime this week, and see how it goes. Best lead so far. Thank you! While searching on Google for shops to visit, I ran across the referred shop, but he had a number of 1 star reviews that seemed troubling. After talking to the tool salesman, he explained that the owner is 81 years old and does not likely respond.

Thanks Weighit. I have no problems with visiting, but I'm still stuck on how to discern quality. All I'm qualified to ask now, is can you do body repair? What makes a body shop good / great? There are very few independents near me, however, there are many chain stores nearby. I do have mutual relationships with other disciplines, but I've never taken the time to find a body shop.

We do not do any body work. And I have no clue on how to judge a body shop. We have people asking us for body work quite often, as well as referrals. As a quick response, we just refer them to the big chains. Around here, most of the body shops are large chains, and trying to forge a relationship with them is difficult as people switch jobs often. The few independents that I know, I'm suspect of their quality (because of my ignorance). I recently took in a collision repair which was about $18K of mechanical with only about $5K amount of body work. We sublet the body work out to yet another place that I was leery of... and they are way too far away... but they did good work. Was a referral. Now, the same jeep is back in my shop with another collision and it's all body work. (His dad is way too nice and believes what his teen+ son is saying. We don't. LOL). I tried gently pushing this guy to a body shop, but he trusts us and wants us to handle it. I told him, that I would be subletting it to a body shop anyways. I'm going to go on a referral hunt for an independent good body shop, but I have questions on the definition of "good". How can I qualify them? What makes a body shop top of class vs bottom of the barrel? As they say, you can't judge a book by it's cover and most smaller body shops have ugly covers. For sure, I'll be looking for a body shop that stands behind its work. Part of what makes me skeptical is that we often see the carnage from body shop repairs that are shoddily done during inspections for general mechanical work. The outside is shiny and you are sometimes lucky to find that they replaced or installed a radiator support. Yet, if it's done right, we don't need perfect looking hidden repairs. And the opposite is likely true, in that we see great work, but don't realize that it was repaired, so there's no admiring what you can't recognize. In one query yesterday, I mentioned on of the big chains names and I got back a "crooks" response, likely more implying gouging. How do the smaller body shops compete with the bigger chains? What's the value? Would and why would my customers be better off by avoiding them? In general, I see two types of body requests: 1) Insurance jobs and 2) Minor body work that is looking for a more custom control. e.g. "Paint this front fender and don't blend the next panel so that I can save money" Or "Stick this part back on, but don't bother painting it." "Pop the dent out of this plastic bumper, but no need to repaint." Do body shops even want these types of #2 requests? With sublets, such as this one, should I be looking for or expecting a business-to-business rate or not? Most of the time, I'd rather not be in the middle anyways. Most people would rather go direct too. I'd be happy if I can find someone that would help me fix our at-fault goofs for a favorable rate and let all referrals be regular retail. I don't even know if this is a valid question. Unrelated to my questions, I found that Service King, is only taking on insurance jobs. No customer pay jobs due to staffing and parts shortages.

No, you misread it.... It was a challenge for you to beat. You deserve a pay raise!

Northern suburb of Dallas.... We bumped our labor rate to $149.99 (from $130) at the beginning of August. It's been 4 months. No one noticed, nor complained. We're staying busy and have more work now than before.

I think this is a great thread, because this is such a complicated topic. Pick the wrong plan and you are paying way too much. When I switched 2 years back, I saved about 25%, which is huge. And, I thought I was already on a good plan provided by a local rep.... On the surface it was good, but littered with junk fees. Sadly, the CC Processing industry thrives on complication and confusion. This is a difficult jungle to navigate. The subject matter is not our core business, so seeking advice and sharing is really helpful. However, you do have a good point about the need to pick a solid supplier that provides who adds value to your business. I still think my plan has some junk fees, but I'm OK with it given how they've treated me, so...