I am curious, did that article that you read say that each bay with 4 technician also had 4 Tire Changing Machines? If they do not, then that would be an expensive waste of manpower with the technicians waiting in line to install the new tires…
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Discount Tire has one tech per tire being installed on a given vehicle, they also have supporting equipment… Everything owned by the shop… They do NOT deal with broken or stripped wheel studs, last I heard… Not sure how they handle 5, 6 or 7 or more tire changes… lol
I would think most would quit at that rate, allowing 1.5 minutes to do all the steps required per tire/wheel combination.
Four tire mounting machines and four balancers for each team of technicians?
A practical process is to have one tech mounting tires, next tech balancing, third tech installing wheels on vehicle, fourth tech preparing the next vehicle on a lift.
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Where are you getting 1.5 minutes at, they get paid 0.6 (36 minutes) to mount and balance 4 regular tires, low pros give them an extra 0.5 for a total of 1.1…
Where they make their money is alignments, they pay 0.6 just to check one, it takes a few minutes to set up and check, it pays 1.2 to do a standard alignment, extra for resets… Most alignments are toe and goes and can be done in a matter of 10 minutes most of the time, if you find other needs or requirements and they are sold then even more money… Our techs made good money if they knew what they were doing, again in a high volume shop, they can easily turn 60, 80+ hours a week, if you couldn’t turn at least 1.2 hours per hour worked, you wouldn’t last long, you should easily turn 1.5 hours for every hour worked…
Discount Tire only uses floor jacks… no lifts… at least in our area…
You should swing buy one and sit out in the parking lot and just watch them…
Yeah, I’d tend to agree with this as someone who spent years reducing cost and increasing efficiency. No point having four identical pieces of equipment when you can break the tasks up. It also allows the person to gain momentum doing one job instead of switching tasks. No reason not to rotate tasks every so often to get everyone proficient on all the equipment.
I think that’s what I read meant.
You guys at Firestone could turn more dollars than us indy shops because you had fleet accounts for which you were preferred providers. At least that’s one reason I can think of. I know there are many more, like your operating hours.
Last retail job I had I was the working manager at a large indy shop. 11 stalls, 6 hoists and 2 alignment racks. Before covid hit, we would easily do $140K in a month, and that was Mon-Fri with techs working 8-5. I proposed to the owner that if we added Sat hours we would easily increase sales, but that was shot down immediately.
My guy like that was the opposite, maybe 5 foot 8. But he could sling iron like crazy. Burned out on the work eventually, wanted to get more into driveability and electronics. He had the brain for it too, he picked up on everything I taught him. He had the mind for alignments too, you know the kind. Understood all the angles. Lots of techs can do “alignment”, but too many of them just look at the red and green arrows.
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Nice hours for a tire place. Where I interviewed, a standard work week is 10 hours per day, 6 days per week, Saturdays mandatory.
The place I interviewed at say you have to be ASE to do wheel alignments.
You do realize that there are various levels of ASE Certification and the Wheel Alignment certification is passing the ASE A4 Suspension & Steering exam.
And there are industry-standard credentials covering over 50 specialties for automotive professionals, including technicians, parts specialists, and consultants. Key areas include Automobile & Light Truck (A-series), Collision Repair (B-series), Medium-Heavy Trucks (T-series), School/Transit Buses, and Advanced Diagnostics (L-series), just to name a few…
So, if your employer required you “to be ASE”, I hope they know that and that an ASE certification does not mean you even know how to jack up a car safety…
For instance, here is an ASE Certifications that you could respond that you are “ASE Certified…”
P-Series (Parts Specialist): For working in parts departments (P1 and P2). I am guessing that the differences between P1 and P2 are “Little Parts – like spark plugs…” and Big Parts – like blocks, heads, etc…" 
No, we didn’t sell tires. Not on purpose anyway. What I mean is we had all the tire and TPMS equipment, but we couldn’t compete with Discount and the chain/club stores and we didn’t even try. Out of 8 guys I think there were only 3 (myself included) that could be trusted to do tires properly and quickly. If we sold 40 tires it was a banner month, I think we did that twice in 6 years. Typical was 20.
It was a general repair shop. Walk through on a typical afternoon, Brad would be slinging ball joints, steering box and stabilizer on a Ram 2500, Jeff would be elbow deep in a 30-hour Duramax head gasket job, Ed would be installing a reman Ford V-10 in a phone company truck, Mike would be doing A/C condenser in a Silverado, Nate would have a timing chain in a Mercedes, John has the dash out of a Nissan Leaf to do a heater, Sammy has brakes and window regulator on a Caravan, and I’m working on a Civic that won’t start after someone stole the radio. And after that I’m going to do an R-12 to R-134 conversion on a John Deere 4410 that no one else wants to work on.
I could give a d$%& about being ASE Certified when it comes to doing alignments. What I expect is for you to be able to align a car without having specs in front of you, knowing when it’s better to be out of spec than in, and understanding what to do when the car is a 56 MG from another shop, or a 66 T-bird with tubular control arms and airbags, or a Silverado that wanders when towing. We did a lot of custom alignment work, from people with circle track cars that brought in their own specs to people who had been to the discount shops that couldn’t get it right. And you know what Chris? The guy that always got the alignments right on never used the steering wheel lock like I did. 
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From this. Did not realize we were to multiply the 6 by 6.
As explained already by more than just me, I will try to break it down even more…
Labor rate time is broken down into tenths, with 10 tenths per hour, well since an hour has 60 minutes in it, that makes each tenth (0.1) equal 6 minutes, so for every 0.1 paid, that equals 6 minutes…
0.1 = 6 minutes
0.2 = 12 minutes
0.3 = 18 minutes
0.4 = 24 minutes
0.5 = 30 minutes
0.6 = 36 minutes
0.7 = 42 minutes
0.8 = 48 minutes
0.9 = 54 minutes
1.0 = 60 minutes
So just take whatever the time in tenths is and multiple it by 6…
Our flat rate standardized time was 0.6 to mount and balance 4 tires start to finish, if a simple CC (courtesy check) was included, then that was an extra 0.1… Now rarely did a vehicle come in for just tires, most of the time it also included an oil change (LOF) that added 0.3, alignment check was 0.6 or 1.2 for the alignment, if it had to be pulled off the rack because we could not get a hold of the customer for whatever reason and they finally called back and agreed to the alignment then the tech got paid for both checking and aligning the vehicle… You be surprised at how many times we would roll the dice (depending on if we thought they would buy or not) and go ahead and align the vehicle, techs choice, yes a few vehicles got free alignments… lol… but now that tire ticket just turned into an hour with the LOF and CC, add the alignment check and now it is a 1.6 hour ticket, align it and it just became a 2.2 hour ticket, add an air filter is 0.1, CAF is 0.4, wiper blades is 0.1 each, starting to get the picture yet?? IF you know how to flow a car you pull it in and do the CC, then rack it and raise it, drop the oil, lower back down and before removing the wheels shake the front/rear end down, if you feel/see something loose then you request a CVI (0.3) to check it out, then remove the wheels (loosen the Schrader valves so the air will already be coming out) and start to mount and balance the tires, and so on and so on… In a high volume shop, a tech will make a lot of money, if they can’t then they are either lazy and or is in the wrong line of work… The Ford dealer I work for was ran totally different, lots of standing around waiting on part department, if you wanted a quart of oil you had to go wait in line at the parts counter to get it, want a bulb, or ANYTHING, go wait in line at the parts counter… At FS, we had all the stocked parts available for the techs to go get, and the parts houses when needed normally got us our parts with in 30 minutes or we used someone else, when your company has the buying power we have/had you tend to be priority for them… A good tech (or service/store manager) will grab a waiter flat repair (basic 0.6) or battery check etc etc to do while the tech is waiting on parts or the customer contact, trick is to never stop, not everyone is cut out for the pace…
You have to take the bad with the good, sometimes you loose money on a job, but overall you WILL make money…
You took it out of context…
Not if the service director/manager IS the problem
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About 10-years ago, the wife brought her '85 Toyota in for an all-wheel alignment… When she got home, she complained that the car was hard to steer and she could barely drive around corners and she said that was why she had to drive on the lawn in order to turn Right into our driveway.
I went out and checked it, the steering wheel was correct at 12 o’clock for straight driving, but when turning Left, the wheel turned more times that its normal 1-1/2 turns and it would turn so far that the front tire now scuffed the wheel well and when turning Right, the wheel locked at barely one turn…
I looked underneath and with the wheels turned straight ahead, the boots on the driver’s side were fully extended and the Boots on the passenger side were tightly compressed…
There were no threads showing on the tie rod on the drivers’ side and the passenger side had so many threads showing on the tie rod that there could not have been more than a few threads engaged…
I took the car right back to the dealer, they apologized said they had a recent new hire and said they would correct it immediately… The entrance to the workshop (bay area) required a 90° turn and they had to back it up several times to make the turn…
I have no idea how they could have gotten the Rack so out of Phase (not centered…) and then think that was right… They did refund the cost of the original alignment…
Anytime a vehicle has an alignment, 4 things should happen, 3 before even hanging the heads on the wheels/tires, 1st test drive the vehicle to confirm the customers complaint if needed, 2nd check and adjust the air pressures, 3rd raise and check for any loose/out of spec steering and suspension parts (doesn’t matter the order between 2&3), and then once the alignment has been done, 4th and VERY important, test drive the vehicle to confirm the pull is now gone and the wheel turns both ways equally, if gone finish up work order and turn it in, or if the pull is still there or worse, pull it back in and find out why, that basically means re-check the alignment, your work, and or cross rotate the front tires checking for a radial (tire) pull…
That remind me that I had a young tech that did some tires and outer tie rod ends on a Honda something or another that I sold, he did the tires then tie rod ends and finished up the alignment, I always look at the alignment sheet to make sure no red flags that a lot of inexperienced techs may miss… Well the customer picked the vehicle up and turned around and came right back, said it was grinding every time he turned the wheel, either way… So I grab the keys and pulled it back in (already had the tech on another waiter)…
Saw this… 
So I grabbed some tools from the closest tool box and swapped the outer tie rods to the correct side, checked the alignment (still in spec) and pulled it back off the alignment rack in 10 minutes flat, did a quick test drive to confirm all was good again handed the keys back over to the customer…
Then when the tech got to a stopping point I showed him the pictures and chewed him out for a bit, I can see maybe getting mixed up and installing them on the wrong side, but he HAD to of heard the noise while driving from the work bay to the alignment rack, not to mention he did NOT test drive it… Yeah I was very ticked off…
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Used to deal with a lot of smaller indy shops and used car lots that we did all their alignments after they did steering and suspension work, well we kept getting them with new racks and the steering wheel would be 90° off or just plain upside down…
I would have to tell them when they drove it over if the wheel was not close to being straight to turn around and re-clock the steering column to the rack, because there ain’t enough threads to safely adjust that much steer ahead being off…
as far as I’m concerned, EVERY vehicle in for a service gets a proper test drive
and that includes some junky roads, and ESPECIALLY a quick trip on the freeway, get up to speed, hit the brakes a few times
Can’t think of how many times everything seemed fine at 35mph, but when you get on the freeway, things change in a hurry. All of a sudden you’re aware the rims need to be balanced and the rotors need to be turned
And the radio stays OFF during the road test. How the heck are you going to hear brake squeal, suspension rattling, etc. with the tunes cranked all the way up . . . ?!
If you’re going to do a service, DO A SERVICE
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