Sorry guya\s, I still disagree with you, my mechanic has a reasonable labor rate of $65 an hour, He does not instal parts you buy but he guarantees his labor on the parts he buts for one year. He doesn’t charge to give you an estimate and if you decide not to have the work done.
If you buy parts yourself, the auto parts store is not going yo reimburse you for the labor if the part fails. He does not mark the part past list price. When he (and I) started repairing cars, you could not walk into an auto parts store and get a discount unless you had a professional account.
Twice he has called me to come and get my car because there was nothing wrong with it. I misdiagnosis was by an inspection station for supposed bad ball joints. I called the State Police on them. The other misdiagnosis was mine, I hears a clicking noise from my left front wheel at low speed on a smooth road, just days before starting on an 8600 mile trip and thought it was a wheel bearing. he told me to throw a new rotor on it because it was a kittle waroed, just enough to tick the pad each revolution. No charge either time.
His total bill is lower than other shops around so I don;t care how he arrives at the price.
I’m a pretty good cook, but I expect to pay when I go to a restaurant. Even though you can do it, you’re choosing not to and therefore the guy who’s doing it for you should be compensated.
Well in my case, parts weren’t in stock anyway. Still not paying $900 for a $600 retail part. Just ain’t gonna do it.
I’m fine with a reasonable markup by the installer for ordering and / or stocking, though. I don’t think $100’s of dollars is reasonable.
In the case where I’ve bought just parts (no install) from the dealer, I’d be foolish not to buy the part cheaper elsewhere if they didn’t match the price.
Yes, he should be compensated for his diagnosis, labor, and a reasonable price for the parts plus his time in ordering them. No disagreement there.
The price for the parts if they’re listed on the invoice should be…reasonably close to retail, I’d think. Otherwise it’s going to appear to the customer that they’re getting it on both ends. And they may or may not be, depending on how high the markup is.
I don’t remember what the bill was in total for the converter replacement. I believe labor was $600 or so, the part was $600. Another $300 for the converter (their original markup) is a bit much, I think. Didn’t have an issue paying the $600 labor. I imagine it took about 4 hours, $150/hr.
Years ago I use to buy tires from the local BJ’s warehouse. Those not in the North East BJ’s is like a Sam’s club. Then for some reason the BJ’s turned over their tire shop to Monro Tire. I went there to have get my free tire rotation. And they come back with this bull that my ball-joints are bad. This was when vehicles still had zerks, and I ALWAYS got my grease gun out when I did an oil change. Never bought tires from BJ’s again. And after 5 years BJ’s kicked out Monro and is doing their own thing again. But I moved on and found a better place.
At 230,000 miles later one of my ball joints needed replacing. Vehicle had over 400k miles on it…so I wasn’t too upset.
Exactly. All that matters is the total cost and what you’re getting for that money. The fact he warranties his labor if he supplies the parts is a huge factor in the equation…
next time I go to a restaurant I’m going to bring my own steak and ask them to cook it and only charge me for the ten minutes of labor it takes their chef to cook it.
Not sure how it is in the auto biz, in the restaurant biz, 33% food cost, 33% labor and 33% for overhead and profit were set as my goals, luckily the bar was based on 15% cost. Then had to audit a place with negative bar casts, they were throwing cover charge into the mix. CA CHING! Bar cost as a percent of sales, then add in $5 cover charge. The DJ was taken out of general funds.
If that is how you view a markup on parts, then we would from your view point be getting bent over at the restaurant. Only difference is that the restaurant doesn’t breakdown the markup (and it is huge) on the steak.
I’m not certain auto shops and restaurants are comparable straight across the board. You’re paying for “ambience” and a dining experience and all that, and different restaurants have different markups. There’s not really a “fast food” auto shop and a “fine dining” auto shop.
Would you be comfortable with a roofing contractor putting on your shingles and selling them for 50% over the cost you could get the shingles for yourself? And giving you a parts and labor invoice stating it?
Whatever, everyone’s opinion is different, I suppose. I generally fix my own stuff anyway. May be a good thing.
Compare iffy lube to dealer cost for an oil change. I am not sure it is comparable across the board, Cafe de lube has nice gourmet coffee while waiting for your oil change, local shop has keurig, not sure about quick lube.
The shop I work at has a heated and air conditioned waiting room with cable, coffee and donuts, and wifi. We offer free shuttle service, have loaner cars, and every car gets a coupon for a free car was. We offer a 3yr/36,000 mile nationwide warranty. I think that’s closer to fine dining than fast food.
For a typical independent auto shop repair order:
20% for cost of parts
20% for cost of labor
20% for fixed overhead like rent, utilities
10% for front office staff like service writers, porters.
10% for back office expenses like accountants, payroll, tech info subscriptions, I/T expenses.
10% for shop equipment and tooling expenses, maintenance, upgrades, etc.
That leaves 10% pretax for the owner, if everything goes well. If a guy leaves a drain plug loose and lunches a $4000 engine, well, being self-employed means some months you don’t make much money.
In your previous example, many posts back, the customer had parts that he’d sourced for $300, and your shop would supply the parts for $550. Is the markup that much or do you think his parts were just inferior junk? If that’s proprietary info and you’d rather not answer, no problem.
I wouldn’t be interested in paying almost double for the same parts of the same quality. I’m not knocking your shop, just being honest.
I haven’t had much automotive work done by a shop in a long while (other than the cat converter replacement). I honestly don’t look at the parts cost and then go compare to retail and try to be a ball buster. The cost of the total job is all I’ve looked at in the past. It does seem strange to pay a large markup on parts that you’d think the shop got at a discount, but maybe that’s standard practice. I’d balk if I noticed a 50% plus markup on an expensive part (like a Toyota catalytic converter). Brake pads, gaskets, etc a big markup wouldn’t really matter.
In that example the guy got a complete quote from us and bought parts from rockauto. I didn’t bother to look what he bought because I was refusing the job. But…
I know for a fact that rockauto can sell a Moog ball joint for less than I can buy it from my wholesaler, usually by 10-15%. And the business needs to maintain 35% markup give or take. So if he says he paid $300 for parts I would buy for $350 and sell for $550, I believe him.
Also, when I see a poster here claim that he has a shop that works for $65 an hour I’m sure he’s lying, because I haven’t seen a shop rate that low in 25 years. But today I’m in southern Missouri and I’m wondering why everything is so darn cheap here! Maybe prices, markups, and profit requirements are more varied across the country than I thought.
Yeah, lots of poor folk in rural Missouri. And Mississippi too!
The way I’d probably look at it:
35% markup on $100 is $135. Who cares?
35% markup on $300 is $405. Meh.
35% markup on $1000 is $1350. Now I might get uncomfortable and ask if you had any wiggle room on the parts, if I noticed.
The mechanic I liked to use passed away ten years ago or more. His shop was right next door to a Napa. The parts cost on his invoice was pretty close to the price an individual could get the part for, although I would hope he got a volume discount of some sort. I guess that’s what I got used to. I hope he made a pretty decent living and charged enough. He was a pretty good ole coot.
The last time I took a vehicle there, he had gotten older and started letting a couple of other guys do a lot of the work. I had the timing cover replaced on a 98 Dodge truck. When I picked it up, they left the washer fluid level sensor unplugged, air in the cooling system (I got the gurgle when I cranked it), and they left a trans cooler line brace off. I went back and got the brace and fixed all that stuff. Not a huge deal, but nagging little things like that made me think the younger guys weren’t going to have the same attention to detail that he had. So, I got a little heavier into doing my own work, where I could. I did go back and get a quote on changing the heater core in the Ram. I decided to do it myself. They quoted $600. And after doing it myself, I decided they might have quoted too low!
When you bring your car in for an alignment and it needs lower ball joints, the answer is “I will have it ready at 4pm and send my shuttle driver for you”, not “I’ll order the parts and have them in 3 days so you have to bring the car back next week.” That’s part of the fine dining vs. fast food experience.
Also, by buying and keeping parts in inventory, I lose the buying power of my dollar for the time it sits on the shelf. I do that with certain items, but to make up for tying up my money I mark them up even more.
My son is playing in the Babe Ruth World Series in Branson. Why is it so steamy hot down here?
Actually there is a restaurant by the lake around here where they provide the steak but then you have to grill it yourself. Haven’t been there for a while 'cause I’d like a pro to cook my steaks and not me.
I guess my only issue is that the parts mark-up should equal fairly close to premium retail. If I go to the dealer and buy a part, I know they marked it up 100% but I don’t see why a shop then should add another 30+% when they got the part for wholesale already without the parts mark-up. Bottom line though is the bottom line you pay and if you don’t like it go somewhere else. Just sayin’ you can lose business with too much of a mark-up.
