Toyota's labor rate for a Prius tech?

we're finishing up our final flip car this month. a 96 camry wagon we picked up that needed some major fluid leakage fixed up.

we stand to make a good profit (ie, reflective of the time he's put into fixing it) if the car fetches our asking price, but we're not doing any more. too time consuming, too many parts errors and backorders that set us back time wise. i was hoping the car would be gone last week.

just remember to account for backorders and parts counter mix-ups and you'll do fine flipping them. the key is to flip the ones in demand

edit: oh, and make sure you know how many cars you can buy and sell in a year without obtaining a dealer's license.

 

Having run engineering labs and been a user of engineering labs, I'm convenced a shared pool of tools never works. People who would ignore your wallet will slip a tool in their pocket or if it breaks, fail to let you know it is broken. But the problem is convencing management that engineers need a tool budget or worse, some engineers that they need a tool budget.

When I have engineering interns, one of the earliest exercises is to visit Harbor Freight and gift them some tools they will need. I explain that this is a personal gift, not an expense account or anything else. I explain that having the right tool makes it possible to get their work done and this should be considered 'part of the territory.' Then I explain the importance of respect for those who will be working under their direction.

One of the ironies of life is I went into engineering because I wanted isolation from the world. I thought, "now there is a good job. I can go to the lab and not have to deal with ..."

Bob Wilson

 

I agree 100% with you there, this is the way the Army does it, each unit has a tool room that has the big tools and each mechanic is assigned a tool box. You can't expect each Private making $1350 a month to buy $4000 worth of tools... These shared tools get neglected and abandoned, there is minimal tool maintenance or care going on. When I had a squad of soldiers I had to be on top of them daily for tool accountability, maintenance, etc. If I slipped they would be carrying broken, dirty tools before I knew it. Tool accountability, however, was the #1 issue for us, as each tool that enters an aircraft must leave the aircraft. People have died before because of lost tools in aircraft.

I think for civilian mechanic their toolboxes should be subsidized or
financed somehow. Of course if that happens it will be the established, contracted mechanics who will get the subsidized tools, the newbie out of the street will be on his own, as usual.

 

Our current labor rate is $80 an hour which is about average between all dealers in our area. And for the record a dealer can not change its labor rate without approval from Toyota. In effect, you must justify your increase before you can start charging more per hour. Our top paid technician makes $23 per hour flat rate. In our service dept. atleast, our profit is used for dealer expenses. Payroll, utilities, supplies, training, all comes from service. Sales is pure profit from my understanding.

$20K in tools seems a bit extreme for my area but it's not unreasonable over many years of working in this field. I started with a $300 Craftsman tool box and about $100 in hand tools. Since then I've probably spent a total of $10K between a larger tool box and tools to fill it. Our dealer does provide Toyota specialty tools known as SST's.

Techs can specialize in say transmissions, electrical, driveability diagnosis and so on if the shop is large enough. Where ours is so small we all have be able to do pretty much anything that comes in. We have one dedicated oil change tech and everyone else has different levels of experience and training but everyone is cross-trained so if someone is off for whatever reason it doesn't stop us from performing a certain service.

If a customer comes in with a random condition it makes it very difficult for us to confidently repair it. If it's something that could be a safety issue (i.e. unintended accel.) they would be placed in a rental vehicle so we could keep their car and hopefully duplicate the concern. The problem with trying to make a repair to a condition you can't duplicate is that you have no way to confirm your repair. There's no way to know you fixed anything.

It's not a case of we don't believe the condition occurs, it's just that if we can't see it we can't be sure we have repaired it. Sure we can guess and might get lucky. However, if we're wrong, the customer is angry, they have to return, and we have to try again. It is up to the Service Advisor to attain all the information they can from a customer at write-up so we can hopefully readily duplicate the operating conditions to duplicate the problem. If a repair order says "Cust. states abnormal noise" that's not gonna cut it. I'm immediately thinking "what speed does it occur, what area of the vehicle is it in, describe the noise, does it go away when the car is cold/hot" in which case I would ask the SA to get more infromation from the customer or I would ask the customer to ride along and help me duplicate the noise.

ALL service departments should really be run in the same manner. Every customer that walks through our door may recieve a survey. Toyota, the dealer owner, and the service/sales managers see these surveysbe they bad or good. Also, each person involved in the sales or service process of a vehicle is effectively "graded" on each survey. The service advisor has a score as does the technician. Toyota offers incentives for individual employees and the dealer as a whole for customer satisfaction. Our dealer recieved the Toyota President's Award which is mostly based on customer satisfaction with the entire dealership. Toyota wants their dealers to be an extension of the parent company and follow the philosophy of "kaizen" which means "continuous improvement".

 

Not around here has it gotten better. I keep thinking it was about '99-'00 that work started changing drastically. It sure isn't like the old days and the future just doesn't seem to be getting any better. Cars getting more and more high tech but the pay schedule stays the same.

 

The tools are subsidized. They are deductible as a business expense on Form 1040.

The salesman driving the truck makes more than the mechanic.