anyone actually pay the dealership to change their engine oil or hydraulic fluid? $290 just in labor to do that? thats nuts. I need a new throttle cable and a lever for the 2 speed put on and they quoted me over $1100 bucks just for that. I think I remember why I do most of my own work now
approx 1/2 our business involves doing PM services :drinkup
LOL, this is why my boss employes an in house mechanic that can take care of 85% of the PM stuff, sometimes though even I have to admit that it goes to the dealership, but with the help of a lot of guys on this site my knowledge grows more and more daily.
That's why I took diesel mechanics in high school and have dirty fingernails all of the time. I wonder which Case dealership it was? They must use gold plated tools and have brain surgeons working for them.
LOL, my wife says I reak of hydraulic fluid all the time lol
Wow. That is the exact opposite of the experience I had with my local Case dealership here in New Brunswick, Canada. They actually lowered the cost for travel (79 cents a km now, roughly $1.26 a mile), labour is $94 per hour, and you are only billed for the time they are working. I had an oil cooler changed out in my backhoe, adjust idle speed, transmission oil and filter change and hydraulic filter change for under $300 in labour, after hours, on a long week-end. I live an hour away from the dealership, and they split the travel costs with another customer rather than double billing both of us. Whenever I have a question, a mechanic often will take the phone and give advice for free. The dealership is family owned, and bends over backwards to make things right for the customer. Having said all that, I know the local John Deere dealership does not give any slack to their customers, and turns over their mechanics fairly frequently from not great working conditions. I guess it is highly regional.
dealerships You never win, thanking whatever to a dealership. They all are you to get you. Im running dump trucks for $65hr and I take it to dealership and have to pay them $85-$100hr. I did some site prep for a dealership, charged them $60 for a dump and $55 for a skidsteer, $60 D5 dozer. They opened up about a year later and I had to take my Bobcat to them and they charged me $90hr, they pay their techs $15 top pay, we had a big falling out over this crap, OH I forgot, they worked 5 hrs on it and didnt fix the problem, so you know I was happy. I paid them and took it somewhere else and in 2 hrs, it was fixed $150 more dollars Took my dump truck, automatic tranny to the shop to get the tranny filter and oil changed, labor $275, oil $275, filter $47. The next time I did it myself, it took me one hour, oil $155, filter $14 I could go on and on, but I have to watch my blood pressure
No doubt about that!!!! I had a water pump go out in my T-300 dump truck a couple of months ago. I was 2 hours away from the shop so i called Kenworth and was gonna just have them do it. They quoted me $550 labor to do this job. I limped it to the dealership to grab the new pump ($150) and limped it 20 miles to the jobsite and changed it there. I had it replaced and fluids topped off in 45 minutes! I am by no means a mechanic either. Funny thing was, i asked their shop rate and they told me it was $95 per hr. That means they estimated the job taking almost 6 hours...... What planet are they on?
Are dealers expensive yes, but have you ever broke down the numbers for what it takes an hour to be profitable. I have a pretty healthy side business fixing cars to the point I LLCed. I have pretty low overhead, but that said, taxes, insurance, paying the other shop bills and giving myself $10 an hour, I have to charge $65. That is figuring next to no profit, my pay is my profit. The other thing is equipment is not like cars, there is more time involved and parts add upr real quick. Also most auto shops use oil changes as lost leaders. Equipment dealers don't. I get asked all the time why it doesn't cost $19.95 to change oil on askidsteer. Lets see, there is $40 in parts alone. My average oil change service is 1 1/2hr.
Lots of people do. Same reason I pay somebody else to drywall my house. I am capable of doing it, have done it in the past, and know the costs I would have in doing it myself, but I have better things to do with my time, and don't care to do it at all. So ill gladly pay 4 times more than the cost of the materials to have somebody come in and have it all done in a couple days versus me dragging it on all summer and being pissed off. Apples to oranges in a way, but it is one scenario. a lot of people just don't like turning a wrench. Thats calculated into their costs. With a good dealer too, their service will take an hour or two to check everything over for you and make sure the machine is in good shape and find things some people may not find otherwise. The planet called earth. Everything is billed off of book time. the dealer did not estimate it, they looked up what KW's flat rate time was for out of warranty work which happened to be 6 hours. They multiple that by their labor rate, add up the parts, add on any additional charges (tax, disposal, supplies,etc) and that is your price. Yes warranty flat rate is always less hours. Shops do flat rate enough times simply because it is easiest and safest. If they do the water pump on one guys truck and it only takes 30 minutes then great, but then if it takes them 3 hours on the next guys truck because there was a hiccup on their part, they then have to try to come to terms with the customer on what is fair. Not only that, it also allows easier estimating, and allows them to plan their schedule better. Also encourages techs to push trucks through which is good and bad. Good that it motivates them too get stuff done, but bad if they just overlook things to speed up. Its not uncommon for a tech to bank 70-100hrs in a 40hr work week. Their pay takes this into account. $15 per hour doesn't seem great when you have $20,000-$50,000 invested in tools, but when you can double your money due to the flat rate it works well and suddenly that tool that cost $50 to make one specific job take 30 minutes less, pays for itself faster. If they didn't charge flat rate, their labor rate would be higher. They take into account that the flat rates are often high. Heres some examples from what I work on daily, duramax trucks. Water pump:7.5hrs, actually takes around an hour. Transmission R&R:10.5hrs, actually takes about 3hrs with relearn. Headgaskets:30.5hrs, actually takes about 15-20hrs depending on the truck and if you have an auto parts washer or not. Injectors: 12.7hrs: takes about 6-8hrs equipment also takes more tools. Expensive ones too. Most auto techs can work out of a tool cart just fine all day. metric sizes 5-19 covers pretty much everything for them. anything outside of that the shop often supplies. A lot of people don't grasp the costs associated with shops. One shop may stock nothing and have a cheap rate, but they wont ever be able to get you going fast because they stock nothing. The other shop may stock everything, but their rate is going to be higher because of this overhead. Im not even talking about specific parts, just basics like fasteners, hydraulic fittings, hose and adapters, and electrical connectors. Those add up fast. Were just a farm shop and have thousands invested into our hydraulic fitting/hose inventory because we can't afford to be down due to a blown hose. Many people feel raped by dealers, and many people are often raped by dealers. When you understand both sides you can make a better judgement about it. Yes they need to turn a profit too but at what point do they become crooks? To me that point is when laziness leads to assumptions. They don't fully diagnose the issue all the way and leave the window open for a lot of problems. they then start with the most profitable fix (most expensive, least amount of effort), then you come back in and they move onto the next most profitable thing and give no sympathy for their laziness. Maybe its just the diesel trucks and they fact their are surrounded by auto techs, but the number of Duramaxes that come to me with issues that the dealer has shared their two cents on and been way off is astounding. One dealer diagnosed a bad set of injectors without running any sort of tests really, just knew the truck wouldnt built rail pressure. Boy would that guy be pissed if he would've gotten a $5,400 bill then gotten a bill after that for $2,500 because the CP3 pump was actually bad. Or the one who came with a "leaking headgasket". The return line for the turbo coolant was leaking. I dont understand how techs can be that lazy. I think a lot of it has to do with the corporate blanket. When you run your own shop you have to establish a name and live up to the reputation you built. People automatically are skeptical of you. Most people automatically think the dealer is the end all best solution for fixing your vehicle because they should know it best. The reality is they usually don't. They've all priced themselves so far out of the market that guys like me, bobcatdan and many others side jobs have turned into a second full time job nearly. This means the dealer doesn't get the experience. a local dealer has done 2 sets of duramax headgaskets since the trucks came out, ive done 6 IIRC in the past two years. The dealership wont rebuild a transmission but they will put in a reman for around $5,000. Ive rebuilt too many Allisons over the past years, and wish I couldve saved more people thousands of dollars. Anytime I hear someone talking about their repair bills from dealers I cringe. I know what they parts cost and the difficulty of the work. For around $300 in parts you can have a completely freshened Allison. For $600 you can have all of the parts needed to do headgaskets.