nctransmission
Forum Replies Created
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[postquote quote=115478]
Well, up 135%..January started the problems here locally.
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Calendar 2020 was down 13% from Calendar 2019. December 2020 was up 51% vs December 2019.
The first week of January 2021 has done the same volume as the MONTH of January 2020.
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My labor rate went up $5/hr for transmission, and $15/hr for general auto. I remain one of the most expensive shops in town, and ye am still here in business 10+ years after buying a business.
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Yessir!
I’m still tracking for a record year, but my period 8 and 9 were both off by a tick or two from 2018. I too am certain we will see a positive upwards trend as we go into travel season.
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On a typical car how much labor time does your shop normally estimate for:
Pad and rotors (2 wheels) ___1.5_______ ?
Caliper, pads, and rotors (2 wheels) 1.5 + whatever Prodemand suggests and a tad more
Thanks in advance!
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I’m not going to hijack the thread, but he’s not committing “theft of labor” from anyone. He’s adding labor time to his estimate for his shop. The techs who work for him agree to work for what he pays them. I can tell you his numbers, by Mitchell, are more than they would get paid for by the book anyway. Most pad/rotor combos pay 1.0 to 1.8.
If you were in business, with overhead, insurance and employees, you might feel a little different about the opportunity to earn profit on a repair order.
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Well I did it with a VERY convoluted a whacky way, because I come from outside the industry. I took a rolling 18 month sample of my overhead costs and determined a basic “overhead required base rate” per month. That included everything from my fixed costs like internet, phone, trash, etc, as well as my floating costs like electric, snap-on expenses, etc. I then looked at payroll across the same period and came up with my so-called “known costs” estimate.
From there I then determined what the 24 month average hours billed per week was and extrapolated form there what my costs per billed hour needed to be in order to be profitable. I got blown away when I realized how high it was, but making the change was necessary for me to stay “in business”. I review that number on a biannual basis in order o ascertain if I am still where I should be. Things change, and for me, my costs continue to go up, never down.
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I have been very fortunate to have staffed my two key employees with the help of the Snap-On representative. I have cycled through a series of ancillary employees with the help of Craigslist and indeed.com. CraigsList has become a go-to for a lot of BS, and I haven’t been SUPER happy with the results i get from those ads. I also don’t like that they have started to charge me $25 for posting help wanted ads.
I use my chamber website to post jobs, Facebook and of course, word of mouth… -
In this day and age, if you’re basing your labor rate off of what the competitors are doing or other shops in the area, then you’re not in business. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours trying to track what my costs are per hour to perform the work we need to do on the vehicles we have in our location. My labor rate is what it is not because the other shops in town are doing it (for the most part they are not) but rather because that is what is costs for us to do the work.
I’m on main street in a small town, I pay a lot for rent and I don’t have inexperienced technicians on staff. I guess my point is that if you’re basing your business model on what everyone else is doing you’re not going to be able to do what the others are not doing… -
I can’t tell you the right way for your shop without knowing a lot of other information. I CAN tell you how I figured out MY labor rate for MY shop:
I added up my fixed expenses, rent, uniforms, small tools, and an average of electric and gas costs over a 36 month period. I then took all that information and divided it amongst my employees and added that to their hourly pay scale. Then I picked my jaw up off the floor and set my labor rate just under that amount because it would have pushed me off the charts expensive.
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1. RO Writer, Mitchell, WinWorks, Quickbooks, several others.
2. RO Writer “pro”lite edition.3. RO Writer is one expensive, outdated, bloated, glitchy piece of machinery. They complain that people only use a fraction of the capabilities of the program, but the places who can afford the $2000 add-on modules and take advantage of the capabilities of the entire thing propbaly aren’t as put-off by the design (windows 3.1 based system) as cumbersome and slow the thing is, and how hard it is to get help with a specific “off item”. I want it to track transmission information and generate a report for me based upon MY criteria for how many of what type of transmission. They claim it will cost too much to generate a report like that.I like my RO writer, but i would NOT buy it again. Just the $65 per month every month fee for “support subscription” seems shitty when I spent $4500 on it to begin with. Add in the other fees, and that EVERY module is the cost of the program all over again, and there’s just no way.Every month the owner sends an email with “updates” about what is going on, and it’s ALWAYS selling the classes to learn how to use the program. The last 6 months have said NOTHING about the forthcoming big release of the program that is supposedly NOT 3.1 based….Yes, I’m a little cranky. -
Why do you have the checks and balances if the employees don’t know the repercussions?
Why is it YOUR responsibility to both pay the employee to perform the service correctly AND pay to repair what he didn’t perform correctly? Why are YOU on the hook for financially fixing HIS mistake?Yes, I see it as a cost of business in this case, because you’ve not set the stage appropriately for the repercussions. I have to do it from time to time, where if I can not afford to pay for a “fix” that they want to do, then it’s on them to do it, not me. But I have that conversation up front before something hits the fan. -
I went to my state DMV/DOT websites and found the appropriate forms to declare an abandoned vehicle and a permission to sell for Mechanics lien. It costs me $10 in fees and about 10 hours of my life to handle the paperwork, filing, follow up and misc BS. Then we are listed as primary lien, and I have right to sell the vehicle…
Not exactly easy without a title, but better than not having any recourse at all. Got a Nissan Pathfinder that the customer told me to go ahead, paid some money down but owes me more than I want him to for all the work, and now he “can’t get his money right now”… I’ll gladly sell that one… -
Very nicely worded, Joe. Very nice indeed.
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My location is on an excellent street, according to the DMV I get almost 175,000 impressions a week from traffic. I inevitably hear “I drive by here all the time” but my business name gets in the way of getting as much business as I’d like to. I have 4000 sqft, and this years lease is about $3500. That puts my rent on the extremely high end of those “suggested numbers” but is very fair for rent prices in my suburban Raleigh location. One of my competitors in town is paying about double the price per sqft, and admits he’s been “had” by the landlord.
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Sir –
I cannot imagine trying to staff, supply, manage, and upkeep a facility as large as that. My transmission repair facility has 3 bays, 3 lifts, 4500 sqft, and does about $50,000 per good month. It seems, as a business, you have gotten in too deep too fast.Have you done your due diligence as to the demographics of the area? Can your local clientele afford your facility? What is your competitive hourly labor rate compared to yours? You mention your unique attide towards the customers, which will take a while to get hold. Customers who are used to one type of treatment will not necessarily know how to react to a different style or method. You need to work that angle with your customers and ask them for referrals, ask them if they know of anyone who can benefit from your work and services.What do you offer, work wise? Can you differentiate yourself by being “VW experts” or “transmission physicians”??Do your employees know what is expected of them, what their duties are and what they should be doing? How is their compensation based? Do they earn commission, flat salary, hourly pay? What is their incentive to “get better”?You need to act NOW to save this investment, and you have a LOT of unknowns going on. Feel free to email me if you’d like to discuss offline or in further depth. I can be reached at daniel at nctransmission dot net. -
Uhm, this looks OK, but you should probably include some pertinent information for the candidates to help weed out the uninterested or uninitiated. I’d offer some examples of expected work, better framing of the hours and compensation platform, and hey, why not tell them where the heck you are, too.
Good luck finding the right person, it’s a mess out there with “techs” for sure! -
I buy from 1-10 vendors a week. I have one go-to transmission parts supplier, and one go-to general parts supplier. In addition, I buy dealer parts and when my arm is being twisted, I buy from salvage yards.
My main supplier of transmission parts gets the largest percentage of my money spent, followed by my general auto parts. I’m not a big shop, a $50,000 month is huge here. -
Tom, I think we would be foolish if we thought we were the first generation to feel this way. Imagine how hard it was to find good employees after WWII – a buttload of the generation was DEAD or had spent the prioer few years killing people for a living.
It’s up to us as entrepreneurs to find the potential and help mold it into what we want. The thankless part is when we’re done, they will take what we taught them, dump us and go find greener pastures, it’s the way of the world.As to the net effects of the incentives NOT to work, well, all I know to say to that is that it is our responsibility as Americans to vote the way we feel, and to campaign for the things we believe in. I was never HANDED anything, but I have had to HAND OUT a lot… -
I am having a lot harder time finding a QUALITY candidate, but the
quantity is about the same.
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Not sure if you’re calling me out or what Steve, but I feel like that
post, as poorly written as it is, was directed at me and my business.
My shop and my investments are far from a “fraud” and when we work on
a vehicle we build a customer for life with honest hard work for a
fair price on their entire vehicle fleet. I’m very glad you feel you
have fixed up to five or six European vehicles within your shop. We
fix five or six transmissions a day in my shop on a good week.
Anyway, good luck to you, let’s let this thread get back to its
original purpose.
Steve Brotherton wrote:
> You are in a specialized business that does is not based on systems
competence, except maybe transmissions. I have fixed atleast 5
transmission issues this year through programming, 1 VW, 1 Audi, 2 MBs
and a BMW, maybe two BMWs.
>
> You may live with a general business model though specialized, but a
repair shop that does systems diagnostic work is a fraud if it doesn’t
have the testing, diagnosting, and programming capabilities built into
the systems they claim to be able to work on. The tooling to do that
is cheaper now than it was 25 years ago and is the smallest cost of
business in a modern professional shop.
>
> The proper tools make money they don’t cost money. They enable a
competent business, and they assure a productivity that works to make
a profet.
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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…
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I am SHOCKED at the number of people who said to buy the OEM specific
tool. I’d be broke if I had to purchase the OEM tools for the cars that
I work on most… We see them all from Domestics to Euro to Japanese
imports to every other damned thing in between! Being transmission
oriented there’s not much that an OEM tool will do that my SnapOn Modis
won’t and we use some specific trans tools after that.
If I had to make a new purchase along those lines, I would be looking
into the laptop based solutions as well, as I would like to be able to
flash ‘puters.
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Good luck with your purchase, I am one of those folks stuck with a
crappy product I purchased a long time ago. Well it’s not so much the
product as it doesn’t live up to the expectations set by the sales
force.
I used the Mitchel as a trial and found it to be very constrictive in
the way it tried to force you to do things, but I love their estimating
and repair software. They just had a pretty big price increase on me
recently so I will be shopping around and checking the alternatives out
for price effectiveness.
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Hey josh!
I think you might have a challenge finding dot matrix printers in this
new millenia…
I used inkjet to print my work and repair orders for about the first
six months in business. I wash churning through about $100 of ink a
month – STUPID. I switched over to a wireless print, Multifunction
laser. I cleared about six acres of additional space onto the desks,
and reduced my costs of print material to about $100 every three
months. I chose a Samsung unit, but after a year and a hlaf of
service, the Sammy has elected to part ways with the shop. I’ve had
nothing but troubles with the Samsung “technical support” trying to
keep the unit running on wireless. This last episode has driven me to
buy a Dell multifunction. I got almost 2 years out of a $300
printer… hopefully this Dell will last me a shade longer.
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Wow George, I am really surprised that there aren’t some responses to
your issue. I don’t know if it is still an ongoing issue, but it
sounds to me like it’s time for a “s— or get off the pot”
conversation. This isn’t about you and he, nor is it about you and
your customer, this is strictly a business conversation. If he’s
providing you with 18 hours of billed work, and there is additional
work to be done (you’ve done your job and gotten a customer to come in
the door, buy your services) then your tech needs to step up.
If there are health issues, excuses, concerns, blah blah blah, it’s
all to be left outside the place of business. It’s not a personal
thing, and it’s not about any one individual, it’s about the health
and welfare of the BUSINESS.
Does your tech WANT to work there? Is there work to be done, and he
won’t do it, or he just takes forever to do what you have for him? Is
he trying to get you to fire him so he can have a 6-8 month holiday on
your unemployment insurance bill?
Good luck with that one, it seems like he’s taking advantage of his
tenure with you instead of returning the loyalty you’ve had to him
with his own to you.
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Bruce, the dealers around here openly quote “List Price” to consumers,
our markdown is 17%, meaning we make nothing on dealer parts. I use
more labor charge to make up for a minimum blended repair order of 40%
margin. If an RO is below that, I need to be involved.
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Parts margin we shoot for is 40%
with supply charges added in, we average 35%. we will mark down parts
instead of labor because of the damned taxes.
Overall I trade at 65% MARGIN on parts and labor.
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I see a lot of the chain guys advertising a free “visual” Air Conditioning inspection, which always makes me chuckle. I offer the same service for free, can pretty easily tell someone when they have an issue or don’t. We’ve only been doing AC work for a year, but we have already identified a pattern with types of vehicles and the repairs required.
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that looks like one hell of a nice unit. I don’t see anything specifying they are making them in the states, though so I fired off an email question to them… Thanks for the heads up about them!
