Labor hours question

ILENGINE

Lawn Pro
Joined
May 6, 2010
Threads
39
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9,866
the shop down the road that i have a good relationship with is 50. and they love me because I work on the junk they don't want to work on. My overhead is only about 1000 a month with everything, and i still seem to struggle,but were getting by, Figured id try to suck some info from the limitless internet.
And i'll definitely look into some warranty labor books
Don't sell yourself short. The average labor rate for most parts of the country are $85-150/hour.
 

bertsmobile1

Lawn Royalty
Joined
Nov 29, 2014
Threads
64
Messages
24,647
12 hours a day
Pure luxury
When I kicked off it was 10-12 hours in the shop + 6 to 8 on the web finding out what I did not know .
Even now it would be a 1:1 ratio spanners to keyboards although now days most of the keyboard time is invoicing .
One of the good things about being old & living by yourself is you can afford those hours.
As for rates, keep in mind what Rivets & Illengine said
The local Stihl shop is $ 175 / hr
The JD dealer is $ 160
The Husqvarna / Toro shop is $ 150
The nearest shop is $ 120
I charge $ 75 because I am mobile so have very little fixed costs & live above the shop ( illegally ) so I have no living overheads as the workshop pays all of the bills
There was a link here a while ago to a site that had the Stihl dealers info on it as a disk image for PC's which included the current charge out hours.
A bit difficult as each model series had different hours .
AS you have a shop front apply for accounts with Rotary, Stens, Prime Line & Oregon.
All of them run monthly specials most of the aftermarket parts they sell are good
Basically I use Stens for belts , Oregon for blades, Prime Line for electrics & Kohler parts & Rotary for mower parts.
A friend who now has a Stens & RGS ( RGS is Aust wholesaler ) and when ever he gets a specials catelogue he adds his mark up then posts them as his weekly specials on Face Book market place takes orders (& payments ) then places the order with Stens so he has the cash up front & 2 months to pay Stens
HE only takes orders for the first week so he has a good chance of getting all he has sold.
This pushed up his total sales volume which increase his wholesale discount by 8% so all of his regular parts are cheaper allowing a bigger mark up .
I buy SAE 30 & 10W40 in 44 gallon drums which is 1/3 of the 1 gallon bottles & charge it into the customers mowers at the bottle rate and 10W 50 full synthetic for hydros.
I use 3 drums every 2 years so that is a lot of money and covers things like grease .
Grease is bought in 5 gallon buckets from Tractor supplies, 00 Li for gearboxes , bentonite for Peerless gearboxes, marine Li for general greasing .
I use 3 McNaught mini lubes that I refill out of the 5 gallon buckets and 3 Tricor lever guns with right angle ends for hard to get to places .
The Tricors take standard cartridges but have no plungers so they don't leak and the plungers get refilled from the buckets as well
Thus a $ 15 cartridge gets refilled for $ 6, these sorts of things make a big difference as you go through about 1/2 a grease cartridge on a normal service + additional 1/2 cartridge for each spindle bearing replacement .
 
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