I never did insist that, you just have a wild imagination FIND, it's something I've noticed over the past few weeks. Instead of reading, you'd rather imagine what I might have posted and go from there.
Mechanics get paid garbage, shops charge a mint for labor. That should cover overhead, and if it doesn't then they need more work. If they didn't charge double retail for parts, they'd have an easier time getting that work.
I know they have advantages that are worth paying for in the labor, that's as far as that goes. The rest of the criminal activity is why I do everything myself.
I read your posts, and I am just trying to respond to whatever coherent thought I can find in them, which are few and far between. Would you like me to quote examples?
I worked in a shop for years, I know what it takes to run one. If they don't charge as high a mark-up for parts, they would need to raise their labor rates. If they don't charge for supplies, that could also be applied to the labor rate.
I stayed busy 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. My shop was attached to a truck stop, so a lot of the overhead was really taken care of. I took care of all the parts, billing, and I did most of the automotive work, and the electrical on the trucks. I had very little overhead, yet we still had costs to pay. No matter how busy you stay, you need to make money to pay the bills. You are just changing what you call what you are charging people for.
As for wages, skilled mechanics get paid well. Mechanics in areas where it is harder to get skilled mechanics, or where base pays are higher, get paid even more. Mechanics in areas where people don't make a lot of money get paid less. In rural North Dakota, I could make $20 an hour, and that would be the same as making $60+ an hour in California.
Sorry if I am misunderstanding you, but you keep saying shops shouldnt pass their overhead on to you, or shops shouldnt charge as much for parts, and their labor rates are too high. No matter how busy a shop stays, it costs money to stay in business, and it will rely on its customers to pay those costs. Like I said before, the rates and markups he mentioned in his bill sound perfectly reasonable depending on the area, though 3 hours was an excessive amount of time for the job.
When you pay a few million for a commercial lot at a good location (convenient for customers and visible enough to attract them), spend a few hundred thousand erecting a building, spend thousands on tools, spend a couple thousand a month on supplies, electricity, training, certifications, diagnostics hardware, and whatever else, you need to pay for that stuff.
It is a lot cheaper wrenching in your driveway than it will EVER be to run a shop.
