Hands On

Man this sounds like a dream come true. I hope I can find something similar soon.

How did the move go, did you find yourself having to ramp up again, lose any clients, business drop off? Did you go to a bigger facility? Did you buy or lease?

That is positive news. Maybe I should just do the above ground. I would feel much more comfortable pulling the trigger on an expensive setup if I was not leasing my space.

I do maybe 2 or 3 alignments a week. Would that increase if I had a machine? I never did hear back from my landlord about digging up the concrete for a flush mount rack. I do have the ceiling height for non flush mount, I just worry about maneuvering around it. I would be looking at a 5 to 6 year pay off before I started making money with the machine. I pay $69/ alignment right now, it is just a hassle. I would prefer to know they were being done properly in my shop.. Decisions! I still like the idea of the 20k unit, It would pay for itself in a year and a half. If we find ourselves doing way more alignments, I could maybe sell it and upgrade.

How does this work on a two post lift, do you have to set the car on stands, or does it take measurements on the floor then adjusts for droop as you lift?

Thanks for this. I lose an employee for an hour each time we need to send out an alignment. I feel like it would eventually pay for itself in that aspect alone. I do worry that the bay would get less use due to the difficulty of pulling wheels on a rack style lift. Decisions!! Thanks for the input.

Right, like we have outgrown the building, but I am reluctant to get a larger building, as I hear more headaches more problems. I usually just advise clients to use the local Valvoline for their routine oil changes, and hit us up once a year for the inspection and maintenance stuff. My ARO is at 962.73 right now. I could use another super tech that can produce 60 Quality hours per week, but have trouble attracting the good talent in my little tightly packed shop. I would not mind getting a larger place, but I am intimidated by the process of finding the financing and location, and nervous about moving. If I could find two more 60 hour a week techs and convince them to work here, I could hire a good service writer and go open a second location or expand ect.

How do you handle this when your shop is too busy to schedule more then what already shows up with out any effort?

Hi folks. A quick search and I did not see any recent alignment machine posts. I have a quote from Hunter, $86,000 includes a scissor life and the concrete work to flush mount it, shipping, the machine with wall mount cameras. Some accessories. If I do conservatively 3 alignments a week my break even is approx 4.5 years, a bit longer depending on financing cost. I lease my shop, and one of my biggest fears has been getting kicked out of here. Should I be looking at obtaining a location instead? I am always nervous about taking on the massive cost of a bigger building, especially when I struggle so often to hire good people. I talked to a friend that went from a small shop like I have to a larger facility and he said it was a lot more headaches with very little increase in income. I want less headaches, less stress. Maybe it is my small shop that makes it hard to hire? Is this the right time to try to get a new location? How do I even start finding financing, I do not have a ton of cash saved up right now. Should I get the alignment machine now, and continue to save up for a new location? How much do I need down for a new spot? Should I keep my eye open for other shops that might fail in the coming year and hold off on the alignment machine and continue to stack cash? I am kind of tired of loosing an employee for 30 minutes to an hour to run an alignment across town that may or may not get done to the same quality standards I hold my employees to.

I am well aware of how it works, I did not want 500 people who had 50 different phone numbers for my shop stored in their cell phone. What happens when you cease using that call tracking number?

I do all of my own advertising. I raise and lower my budgets on both Ad words and Yelp as I need to control my car count. It works amazingly well. With a few clicks I can fill my bays in a couple of hours. I do not use tracking numbers. I do not want someone to put a number in their phone book that might not be valid a year form now. Yelp is way better then Adwords these days. Google is being super sneaky, they put you at the top when someone searches for a specific shop. I get too many calls form people asking if there car is ready,and the car is at another shop across town.

I envision my self standing at my front counter until I can not stand any more. I hope one of my kids wants to take over, or expand... I thought of doing them as rentals, but honestly, it is more for my convenience then the customers. I just do not like the pressure of when is my car going to be ready, and the amount of good reviews and word of mouth the free loaners have generated is way better then any of my advertising dollars. I do carry a commercial insurance policy on them. In the end it is an expensive program, but has paid me back many times over. I also have them constantly listed for sale, so they make nice little cash bonuses from time to time.

I give out free loaners also. I also bill $20 more per hour then the shop literally right across the street. It is pretty rare we have to do pickup drop off, the loaners are used way more often, and I use the loaners because it takes the pressure off of me.

We do offer pickup and drop off, and we offer it for free. Most of the people requesting I come to them are trying to save the cost of a tow, and think , for some reason, that it would be cheaper to have someone come to them. I have seen some horrific stories form Mobile Mechanics first hand. There was or is an app that was released, where you could hire a mechanic like you would call for an uber. One woman had her van left on blocks and lost cash she gave out for parts. You can not save people from themselves unfortunately.

Nice. I was thinking of it like this, sitting in my office, with three techs working, I am generating $569.85 per hour. If I have to give up after hours family time, travel to your location, then I would like to make more then that. I have gone out of my way to help clients that we did work for like you mentioned, but I usually just eat the tow cost, unless it just needs a jump or something, and they are close by. If we are doing it for free as a courtesy, It does not make sense to me to lose an hour of labor to save half that much on a tow.

I keep getting a request now and then to go to someones house. I am starting to wonder, is it because they think it would be cheaper, or is it like in that show billions, where the guy has so much money, he can afford to pay chef ryan to come to his house to cook dinner. How much would it take to get each of you to come to my house to work on my car? Honest answers, and you have to give an amount.

Traditional flar rate is illegal there. May pay structure is base pay plus bonus commission, so if Colorado follows suit, we should be good to go already.

I am paying the highest ever at $42.5 and my lead is about to get a bump again. Christian brothers is advertising $60 an hour in my area, although looking at Glassdoor reviews, that number is mythical, and the bar is often raised making your goal post to reach that pay constantly moving. I am also curious what others are paying now. As far as how to afford it, simple. Every time my tech gets a raise, the shop gets a raise x2, so if tech rate goes up $2, shop labor rate goes up $4, this covers the extra tax burden with a small raise for the shop also.

I would think this should be factored into anything anyone plans to open in Florida. It is going to be tough for small businesses all around, the rent for me is manageable with my profit margins, but how much profit can that toy store, bagel shop, oil change only shop generate...

I never felt it was worth it. I did not want to lose all I have built over some tax cheating. There was a fellow one town over from me that started at the exact same time I did. The last I heard he was shut down and kicked out and owed the IRS over 60k in 941 taxes. I am still going strong.

Does Florida commercial insurance suffer from the same issues as home owners?

I found in the past that this tends to generate a lot of one and two line/sentence reviews. I found organic reviews, ones that are not requested, tend to end up with longer, paragraph or two, of a review. I worry that these requested reviews that generate one line responses flood out the really good, heartfelt reviews that propagate organically. take a look at your reviews, when you sort by relevant, you see those long, heartfelt reviews that have photos. When you sort by newest, you see the one and two line reviews I am talking about. Also, just because you get to choose if they leave you a review or not, does not mean you are filtering out bad reviews. See, when you remind someone of their visit, you may be reaching them at a more convenient time for them to leave a review, and they may say, Oh yeah I remember this bad experience, I meant to run online to google and talk about it. So while you may now have 500 reviews, you have the same 4.7 rating as I do, and it looks like a bunch or Russian bots are leaving fake one sentence positive reviews about your business. Just my two cents, and I am sure I am very wrong in my thinking.

I once bought a paint gun to paint a hood on a jeep I was restoring. I found it fun, and it looked amazing when I was done. But I also value my time, so I pay the $350 to let the body guy next to me do it.

A wise man once told me if you can not make your money Monday thru Friday, you are doing something wrong. I found the people that would "show up" on a Saturday were usually people that could not afford to have their car well maintained. I do take calls after hours and on weekends. If someone calls and they push 2 to leave a message, that goes right to my cell phone. If they push 1 and get my voicemail, I get an email that I can choose to respond to , or not.

What an amazingly beautiful shop you have. I wish I could put something together like that. Maybe in 5 years after I finish off some more debt, maybe. I am nervous to make another leap like I did when I first started out. Great work.