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1.) ACCURACY COMES FIRST, speed comes later. SLOW SLOW DOWN. CRAWL. Crawl before you even walk. If someone had to ask me what the single, number #1 most important quality a technician ought to have, I would say, “Memory”. A good memory. If you forget to torque those wheels or tighten that drain bolt or double gasket an oil filter or forget to put oil into the engine, it’s game over sweetheart. Don’t double-check, TRIPLE-CHECK. Even mentally go through it in your mind before you turn that key. “Drain plug… tight. Oil filter… tight. Oil in the engine and cap is on…” I put the oil cap where the hood closes as an extra reminder. TRIPLE-CHECK. TAKE YOUR TIME. I DON’T CARE IF THE BOSS HIMSELF IS YELLING AT YOU ABOUT HOW SLOW YOU ARE. HE IS WRONG. And if he wants to foot the bill for a $5,000 engine, then let him keep yelling at you because he’s only going to faze you more and make you prone to even more mistakes. TAKE YOUR TIME AND DO NOT MAKE ANY MISTAKES. If you ask me, a good memory is the single most important thing a tech should have. (But of course, there’s a lot of other things he ought to have as well.)
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I say go as fast as you possibly can because flat rate only works if you are flying through cars like hotcakes. If you forget to do something, they will bring the car back and you can charge them even more money.
No, if you get a comeback, you do that for FREE. And sometimes if you’ve messed up bad, you can even lose the time you had and have money TAKEN away from you, losing the hours you had.
TAKE YOUR TIME. Accuracy first, speed will come later.
When you first start out, you’ll be hourly, and any place who wants to pay you flat-rate either better be paying $50/fh or pay you hourly, otherwise you’ll barely make half of minimum wage, doing oil changes for .2.
I say avoid flat-rate if you can, or have a 30-hour guarantee or something.
hitachi makes a good point. When I first started working flat rate I tried to rush a bunch of stuff and messed up a ton of things. You want the customer coming back to you because you do a good job and they trust you to work on their car, not because you worked on their brakes and now they have a squealing that won’t go away.
That said, you shouldn’t even attempt to work flat rate until you have a good amount of experience under your belt. Stick with hourly unless you’ve been at the shop at least a year I’d say. Managers are quick to put you on flat rate simply because a flat rate technician is much more profitable than an hourly technician for the shop.
[quote=”quickNpainless” post=102622] You want the customer coming back to you because you do a good job and they trust you to work on their car[/quote]
That, and nobody likes the feeling of being ripped off …even if they weren’t.
The original post is right on the money.
I just wanted to add that when it comes to tool money, buy the cheapest possible tool storage you can deal with and spend the real money on your core tools. Stick to small tool boxes that are easy to move, both around the shop and from employer to employer. A couple small tool boxes works way better during the first few years than anything big, fancy, and heavy. Your first 10 to 20 grand in tools should be stored in boxes worth less than 10% of that amount. If you make it to A level making $20+ per hour and are fine with flat rate, only then should you consider a high buck toolbox.
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