Used car dealer work

[Tom]

Aaron Schreur wrote:

> Do any of you do work for used car dealers? If so what kind of deals are you cutting them(percentage)? I have been working for one for a couple years now and have just been charging labor and the parts go on the car lots accounts. I have covered some of the lost parts profits by a higher than normal hourly rate but I am starting to think it might be to good of a deal for him. There is always a backlog of cars to work on which is very nice when the walk in customers slow down.

Once in a great while when a very complex issue arises a dealer will bring us a car. But, that’s about it. I believe there is a nearly endless supply of underground/illegal shops around here that get most of that type of work.

[rhopp]

For what it’s worth, we service import vehicles for many of the local

dealers. No discounts, just clear, priority service. Small town, no

import dealers, just the big three.

[Aaron Schreur]

Are they always trying to beat you up on your prices?

[rhopp]

They ARE used car dealers, after all. We seem to be getting them

trained. We’ll negotiate a little, depending on current work load.

[garythomas]

Almost all dealers want it as cheap as possible and we try and help them out. The vehicle must be dropped off so we may do the work on our slow time. It helps fill any dead time. We fortunately buy our main parts by the pallet loads, so we have some room on pricing.

[bilthemech]

We do a lot of used car repair for local dealers at our fleet rate and it has worked out very well for us. They are usually not in a hurry and because it is the fleet rate they never haggle price. It has worked out to be about 5% of our work.

[deanh612]

We do not offer any special pricing to dealers. Mainly because as most have already stated pricing is usually an issue. We focus on our target customers and great service.The few dealer jobs we do take on is because we can still beat the new car dealer service prices without cutting profit on labor or parts. We are a European shop so there are a limited number of shops that are equipped to handle what we do.

[nctransmission]

I have two or three used car lots around here that will seek out

transmission problems at the auction and bring them to me before putting

it on the lot. We make VERY little on those projects, but we get a fair

amount of referrals and maintain some work during slower times.

I have no luck with the pricing with these guys, they have the same

software I do, and they buy the LEAST expensive parts they can to throw

at it…

[deanh612]

I understand why you would want these type of jobs to fill in slow times but I do not understand why you would let them dictate your pricing and profit margins. I am interested in the business strategy

you are employing.

[Alan Ollie]

We are not dealer friendly. I have bought a bunch of broken cars from dealers who call and try to have us fix problems other shops made.

My friend once said If you want to loose money do used car dealer work.

There are a few dealers we do work for.Carmax has sent us 3-4 VW and Audis last year.

[gcauto]

We have (2) local used car lots we do work for, (1) we’ve been doing business with since we opened our doors and the second one we just started working with last year. Both have been very easy to deal with and they don’t question our pricing. If they can do the work cheaper themselves, they just come and pick up the vehicle. We fill in our slow times with this work and it works out really well.

[Alan Ollie]

We always tell Used car dealer’s we are not very Dealer Friendly

and will only fix the car correctly. No half ass repairs.

Wow all the car dealers down here only bring us the cars they already sent to many other shops and could not fix them.

Thant we never get this “very easy to deal with and they don’t question our pricing”.