I saw a youtube video on sunday from a former mechanic in Ontario, Canada who he said was making $150,000 a year at a dealership. He could do 10 alignments in a day and said he did them right.
He quit his job because the dealership lowered the rate they pay the mechanics and raised the price of an alignment to the customer.
He figured that he would lose $5,000 a year with the new prices and the dealership would make $100,000 from him and the other mechanics on just this.
He now fixes mining equipment.
Alignment is one of the few things that “should” be able to be done outside the dealership because it shouldn’t require a dealer-proprietary scan tool.