Its been a couple of decades or more since I worked at a dealership, but I do follow labor guides to this day, there are two labor rates listed in the books.
One is for warranty work when everything is shiny new and will come apart easily and, you’ve been trained at a dealership on how to go about things,, I will add, a dealership is not going to pay you if the book says two hours and it takes you four unless you can prove why it took that long, on occasion they will make exceptions and adjust accordingly.
You bet I am going to charge the flat rate, why?? because like all mechanics we have to buy our own tools and those dang things are expensive! I will tell you straight up that I am not going to buy tools out of my own pocket, give ya an idea, tools and equipment dont know how to pay for themselves and I will not work for nothing, if you think its cheap and easy, open your own shop and see how long you can stay in business.
The money pays for lights, compressors, insurance, building payment, employees vacation, their insurance, forty hour weeks even if they dont bill forty hours, oh, lets add heating, cooling, inventory that sits on a shelf that there is no profit on until its sold and you are paying interest on it, and a bunch of other things that need paid for.
Here is a simple example of parts sitting on a shelf, because of the diversity of oil filters out there in my little shop I am sitting on four thousand dollars of filters, auto and marine alike.
When you sell those filters at an average of lets say 8 bucks a pop, and you go through fifteen filters a week, can you see what I am getting at?? and you have to restock what you used so that cost is always there, its money but you cant spend it.
So, lets say your car is now ten years old and out of warranty and has one hundred thousand miles on it, do you believe everything is going to come apart easy?? not on your life, lets use a wheel bearing for example, for many years now those rascals are mounted in either aluminum, magnesium, or malleable iron and they get corroded or rusted in so tightly they have to be pressed out, or driven out with a big air hammer, they never just fall out.
A typical Chevy 4×4 pick up labor guide gives you 1.5 hours to change one side.
I am not counting replacing brakes when you find it needs them also I am talking about the hub assembly itself, fighting the corrosion and worse case scenario cutting it out with a torch adds an extra half hour, you bet you are getting charged the extra time, I am not paying for the torch and its gasses to be a good guy, it no way shape or form is it my fault the factory cannot add two cents worth of anti-seize to make it easy to do and its not my fault you drove it in salt and brine and didnt trade it in before something goes wrong with it.
Now, several of us here will concur that it gets worse when someone tries to fix it themselves and creates twice the work, am I going to eat the extra time??
Nope, no way, I am not going to be a good guy and eat the time it takes to fix it right when you screwed up and you should see some of the stuff I am talking about!!
Rusted out brake lines, time and materials period, same with many other things you just have to be there to see what it takes to do these, they are routed along emissions lines, fuel lines, etc. and those things are most often as rusty as the lines you are going to replace.
To be honest, many of these labor rates are too light and yes, I can beat the hell out of a lot of them sometimes by half and you are still going to pay for it, why?? Reread the costs of being a mechanic.
Here is an example of beating time, and this just happened last week, I had a 1996 Ford F250 with the 7.3 diesel come into the shop dead, the fuel transfer pump mounted in the valley between cylinders was shot.
Book time is 4.5 hours to replace it, I can do it an hour and a half, how???
You are supposed to remove the turbocharger to get to the fuel return line banjo bolt on the backside of the pump, I made a wrench that will let me remove the banjo bolt that holds it together and I dont have to remove the turbo and then add to that the expense the extra gaskets, turbo mounting bolts that break about every time because they have been thermal cycled a bazillion times, etc.
Okay, I am sick of typing, I am going to add this one final thought.
My labor rate is one hundred bucks an hour, ten dollars pays for the work done, the other ninety pays for me knowing how to fix it, and of course, it helps pay for the other stuff in the upper paragraph, hope this makes sense and if you still think shops are too high?
Go buy a hundred thousand dollar building and property, invest at least a quarter of a million dollars in tools and equipment, knowledge, etc, it aint as Rosie as you think it is…..
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