small jobs

[LOW1]

Perhaps your problem is that you are simply charging way too much,

$180 - $60 for parts (which really should be $30 tops) leaves $120 for a 45 minute job (which really should be no more than 30.)

Surely you can find a very good oil changer at $80 per hour including benefits, etc. (I would think that $50 per hour would be more reasonable)

That makes $180 - $60 parts - $60 labor = $60 overhead/profit.

Quick change places charge less than half that and have more oil to put in.

And when you factor in the revenue generated by your inspections your oil change price seems to have a lot of fat in it.

 

[richfinn]

Ok, here's another topic for discussion, kind of goes along with the smaller jobs (in a way). Powersports, although I'm sure some of it follows automotive dealership practices.

Say a guy brings in some old pile of garbage that has been sitting for 30-40-50 or however many years. It's a 20+ year old piece of, uh, equipment, but he says "make it run again". We know we can't get too many parts, thus we know ahead of time that it's gonna be a long drawn out ordeal trying to, source parts, much less fighting old broken bolts, rust, neglect (especially with powersports stuff), etc and we know it's gonna take more labor and thus more cost to get it back into basic running condition, than it generally would with a newer unit that may be in a little better condition and/or have much better parts (and to an extent) service literature availability. So as customer is filling out a R/O, how do you guys approach this?

Past dealer, we told customers that we don't work on stuff that is x number of years old, period. That ran a lot of folks off, understandably. If I were told that, I'd probably not be very happy either. Another shop I worked at, we required about 50% (+/-) of generally estimated cost up front, which is applied to the cost of the repair, and if that deposit exceeds the final tally, a refund is due to the customer. Generally speaking it was around $250 at the time. If customer is ok with prepaying $250, he is serious about fixing it and we'll go ahead with it. Most folks will balk and take it to a shop (we were/are a dealer, not just a 'repair shop'). On older motorcycles that was a big issue, because in this area if someone abandons their bike, and parts & labor are owed on it, most of the time you never got your money back on it-so it was a loss to the dealer, even if they were to sell it. I did a Royal Star 1300 once with leaking crankcases, replaced the crankcases which is a huge job, and the guy never showed up to pay for it & take it home. Never answered the phone, nothing. Sent registered letters, certified letters, everything "by the book", nothing. I had my time in it and the dealer had about $3000 into it, and that bike was worth, maybe, $1800 (it had been wrecked). Couldn't sell it without jumping through hoops to get a title, etc, so it just sat out there for a number of years, rusted away, and was still there when I left in 2020.

What is y'all's opinions on this?

There are literally hundreds of companies in the UK restoring and upgrading 30-40 year old cars and making good money.

The key word is "Restoration", nobody is patching them up/doing basic repairs and making a living out of it. It would be a living hell just trying to find the parts for a regular workshop, the resto guys have yards full of donor cars and a wide network of contacts.

700 hours of work!!! https://tolmanengineering.co.uk/editions/peugeot205

 

[junkyardwarrior]

There are literally hundreds of companies in the UK restoring and upgrading 30-40 year old cars and making good money.

The key word is "Restoration", nobody is patching them up/doing basic repairs and making a living out of it. It would be a living hell just trying to find the parts for a regular workshop, the resto guys have yards full of donor cars and a wide network of contacts.

700 hours of work!!! https://tolmanengineering.co.uk/editions/peugeot205

Having been through restorations on motorcycles, I can tell you firsthand that sometimes a customer approves X amount of money, and never comes back to pick it up. I have taken them home (paid the bill and made them my own)--just to get them out of the shop. If it was a '65 Fastback resto with a $100,000 bill on it, maybe they'd get their money back on it if it was nice enough and the auction house could get enough out of it. Again, comparing powersports to cars, and they are totally different.

It is often that customer shows up with a worn out ATV that is 30 years old and expects to make it run again, and gets pissy when you tell em parts are NLA. Now they can't fix it because they ain't no parts, and the tech has already put an hour's labor into it and won't get paid for it, the shop won't get paid, and it'll cost the business money to dispose of that pile of junk, because if you can't fix it with parts, you can't sell it broken. It piles up out back with the rest of them and rusts away. Business loses money, tech lost money, parts guys lost a lot of time dealing with the jerk who thinks it's a car and that every single part is still available because his 50 year old truck with the little flathead V8 still has a catalog from Vic Edelbrock where he can get almost anything to build the engine. That is NOT the case with powersports.

So moving forward I think the best option is to give customer two options. Take it to an independent shop (not a dealer) who may or may have a tech that works by the hour instead of commission like we do, or option #2 pay us, say, 2 hour's labor up front and we will get started on it. Once we get to that amount, we'll stop and reevaluate then call him/her back with details. Put the ball in their court and let them decide if their antique vehicle is worth throwing money at, because 99% of the time when they get old, they are shot and become money pits. Difference between an ATV/UTV/MC and cars is that cars have a HUGE aftermarket and most ATV/UTV/MC do not. And, if you take your 50 year old car to the dealership, they probably won't touch it either.

Every time I've had paint done on a car/truck they want at least some prepayment, and these range from high end shops to backyard shops, all the same in that area. This guarantees that the customer (me) is serious about doing it and secondly gives the business a little bit of motivation to get started. I had one that didn't want to do the work AFTER I paid him up front, but that was an easy solution....documented everything, took him to small claims, and slam dunked him. That was a nightmare too. Hated to, but it had to be done.