Hands On

25 minutes ago, RYAN B said:

I made out great, the new shop was a stone's throw from our old shop, a half a block away. 100% customer retention plus new customers from the other shop, at the old shop I had 2 techs plus myself now I have 4 techs plus myself and a receptionist. The new shop was over twice the size plus a bigger parking lot and more storage are for vehicles. The shop was a lease purchase, a good start, but in the first 6 months I put a new roof on it and new heaters, new lighting 3 new lifts! The second year was new windows, a good way to spend 45,000. I had to excavate and stone my rear parking lot! Then the 3rd year we had to pour new concrete pads in the front of the doors in front of the building and the rear of the building and repair part of the parking lot, another 50,000. Every year it seems as though I spend about 50,000 on the building, it was in worse shape than I intialy thought. I don't mind it except the ceiling height is like 10 to 12  feet, and that is a little to low. My landlord that I am doing the lease purchase with is great and I am fortunate to have him, I wanted to fix the place up and establish my place before I went to the bank to get a mortgage, and now it's just a matter of timing, I don't want to pay ridiculous interest, so hopefully within the next year I will own this property and will secure my future.

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

16 minutes ago, RYAN B said:

The last 2 I had were above ground, and we moved the last one from the gas station we were at forever to the shop we are presently in, and it wasn't expensive or a big deal. 

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?

9 minutes ago, RYAN B said:

For Us it did, My father put our first machine in in 1989, and it was a top of the line Hunter and it was total about 40,000. As soon as we did we were doing 10 alignments a day it was totally crazy, 2 dealerships paid off our first machine in the first year. After about 6 to 7 years of that we just stopped doing alignments for outside shops, because 75% of the time they didn't check the cars properly and parts were always bad and we were always doing double work. Now we only do our own customer cars, but people who come in see the machine and it does sell itself. If you send out 2 to 3 a week, and you have a machine I would see you doing 4 to 5 a week at 110.00 each you would be looking at like 2000 a month 24000 a year and its not hard to push that up. Our rack does generate extra income. I will always have one.   

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.

3 hours ago, pfseeley442 said:

I bought the smart aligner by RAV America, Had my last one for about 12 years, this one also will work on a two post lift. Check alternatives before spending 85K.

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?

On 1/3/2024 at 12:39 PM, DUFRESNES said:

Over 10 years ago, we paid $65,000 for our hunter.  Does it pay for itself, doubtful.  Takes up a whole bay.  Yes we needed it to be a complete shop for the customer's full needs.

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.

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?

27 minutes ago, Transmission Repair said:

Speaking of advertising dollars, are you using tracking numbers for different marketing/advertising efforts?

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.

15 hours ago, Transmission Repair said:

I didn't use the phrase "loaner car".  I had the customer sign a car rental agreement.  It worked well for me.  If the job turned out to be something major, I had the option to waive the car rental charge.  We were a transmission shop, with no general repair.  Just transmissions, clutches, transfer cases, and differential work.  I sold our shop to a nearby competitor in 2015 and sold the real estate to a plumber in 2020.  I often miss the good old days. 🙂

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.

6 minutes ago, Transmission Repair said:

Free?  You've got to be kidding.  You're offering a convenience service and that has value.  What value should be determined by you, even if it is only a token fee.

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.

9 minutes ago, Transmission Repair said:

I would offer a pickup & delivery service instead of working in the customer's driveway.  An hour's shop time would be an appropriate fee for both if they are within a 5-mile radius of your shop.  More time for further out.

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.

41 minutes ago, Twilight said:

YES. The landlord came to me for contacts, his insurance is more than doubling. My stepmom is a bookkeeper. one of her clients up 600% and my wife is in commercial insurance. best she could get a client is half of it if it's a total loss. lucky for him his properties are spread around but still uneasy he could lose more than they'll pay. and he was willing to pay more premium they just won't cover anymore. 

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?

53 minutes ago, bantar said:

Nice!  I'm currently doing this with a different tool.   However, I can DEFINITELY say that asking for reviews works.   Just this morning a new customer said "WOW, you have great reviews!"  Good reviews help.   We send a text message to see how it went and if bad we don't ask for a review.  Then a few days later, they get a text message asking for a review.  We are being flooded with reviews.     I was previously using (still using) a Survey that would then prompt for a review, but they filled out the survey and thought it was doing us a favor and thus never getting to Google.  Had this for years, but it worked poorly overall. 

Your pricing is very affordable.  

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.

On 3/10/2023 at 8:11 AM, bantar said:

You've heard the expression that you can't teach an old dog 🐶 new tricks, right?

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.

35 minutes ago, bantar said:

You might take a look at ShopWare.  I don't know their pricing, but it's growing in popularity.   Protractor is $399/mo, a little less if you need less than 6 computers.   Then on the new up and comers, you have Shop Monkey, ShopBoss, AutoLeap, etc.

I'm intrigued by what they could have done to cause your headaches.   I peeked at their website for screenshots, but they could be the old style.

I am slowly getting used to the changes, but what they had before worked great, and to log into a complete re design that makes things harder to read was very frustrating to say the least.

I ended up checking out demos of ShopBoss and AutoLeap, as well as identifix. I want to say Autoleap was the closest, but they all lack one or two functions that seem to make tekmetric the leader. I did not check protractor, but I only need 3 computers, so if they have a tiered pay schedule and it hits all the marks it might be worth checking out.

Tekmetric re-designed the appearance and I can not stand it. I refuse to pay $399 a month for software that gives me a headache to look at. Anyone have a good alternative to tekmetric with all the same functionality that either has a tiered pricing schedule that makes sense for smaller shops, or is less then $399 a month, or looks like tekmetric used to and costs about the same?

The only integrations I use from tekmetric are parts ordering and the built in labor catalog, I do not use any of the marketing features so those are not important to me.