When I started it was a 60/40 split. Shop got 60 I got 40 of the total bill before taxes.
When I left I got 17 an hour flat rate with no commission on parts. There is a book that says how long a job will take so if it says 2 hours you get paid 2 hours.
if your not working your not getting paid. Or better put, if your not working on a customers car, your not getting paid. I was asked many times to do work on the building or grounds when there was no cars to work on.
To make matters worse, the better you got, the more likely you would get the hard jobs with no flat rate in the guide. Drivability problems that can take hours to nail down (it only sputters at 12:01.49 pm on the hill on the way home from church on Sunday) it was not unusual for me to nail down a problem several other shops (including the dealer) could not fix but it’d take the time the other shops where unwilling to invest.
I’d always get the “well.. they have put so much money in to it, we can’t charge them for the full amount of time you spent on it” or “they won’t pay that much for it. we’ll have to discount it to get them to do it.” coupons cut in to my take as they ALWAYS discounted the labor, not the parts.
Shop owners (some I really trust) will tell you the cost of operating has shot up, rent, insurance, utilities, advertising, environmental compliance.. you name it and I suspect this has a lot to do with it.
Lastly I blame the 0% car deals and cheap money (now gone thank god) if a car rang up a 2-3000 dollar quote the owner would just trade it in. During the end of me being a mechanic the average age of the us fleet was 5 years old I think it was. People just would not keep a car, and cash for clunkers killed off a lot of cars I would normally see in the shop for repairs. The average age of the US fleet is now on it’s way back up.
I hear shops are doing better now as people are forced to keep cars longer. However, they are also not repairing things until they have to. People are putting off maintenance because they are broke. However this leads to failure of the car much faster. (no oil changes, worn brakes, that sort of thing)
Wow, and I know that the flat rate numbers are not easy to beat. My kid’s dealing with a snapped bolt on the bell housing, which we got out, just to find stripped threads in the engine. So now we tap it out. I’m sure there’s no allowance for that in the flat-rate book.
Yea, it certainly does sound crappy, I’m glad I do my own work, as it seems that they’re driving everyone with half a brain (i.e., your type) out of that profession.