Hello drivers. I'm just curious if you have your own mobile guy coming over to your yard to greese and do little repairs,brake adjastment etc .. how are you dealing with work he does for you moneywise. Say to change the light on top of your trailer or putting new bracket for your trucks fenders stuff like that. Big shop they go by black/blue book but these? He is fully certified guy btw. Should i just ask him to bing that book along with the invoice or what? Dealt with him for over six years . have a feeling that he is being little unfair on hours im being charged lately. Thx for replying
There should be a book with labor hours for any given procedure on a vehicle. My shop knows what to charge for say a alternator replacement a hour and half at 70 per hour. As long I know that upfront Im happy to pay that. But anything over, they are going to have to explain themselves to me first. We hammer that out before the keys are given to them. I remember a incident in our dealer in Searcy one of the more expensive ones doing two seperate work of a specific nature on the vehicle. We sit in their waiting room for exactly 2 hours and ten minutes. The first procedure billed a hour and 3/4 labor and the second procedure a little more surgery billed 4 hours labor bringing the total bill after parts to a significant 1200 dollars. Now you ask how in the world can they bill almost 7 hours labor when we have physically waiting on the car two hours and change. We stopped using the dealer's shop. We found three other shops for particular specialty such as front end Reducing a dealer's 460 dollar quote to a 120 dollar job in the new shop. We feel fortunate. I have relied on road service three times in trucking on my entire lifetime because they are of last resort. And cheaper than a tow. So the boss will send one out to fix me on the side of the road. Keep in mind the light stuff literally the light bulbs and small jobs I do myself out of the tool box and spare parts int he side box.
My guy comes to work on my truck while im home he has a key.. trusted mechanic who does full time working for city of Toronto bus shop. Doing only brakes on them. Has me and two or three more guys like me to work on in his spare time..
I don’t have my shop come out mobile unless it’s to do yearly inspections. I take the truck or trailer to their shop for repairs. Sometimes I feel like the hours are a tad bit padded as well but I overlook it since they pretty much drop everything and get me fixed up when I need the help. It’s worth it to minimize downtime. They have trucks stacked up ready to come in but if I pull in I go right into the shop or fix it out in the drive. Broken arm sore peter can’t beat it.
I highly doubt he's going to have book times for anything. That's more a dealer thing. These book times are also based off of working on a brand new and clean vehicle. They don't take into account mud/dirt/grease, seized parts, etc. Everybody seems to think we like working for free I guess.
I have one for each yard, I work with them on a fee schedule for common stuff and negotiate the prices on the more complicated things. Oil Changes are X, while inspections are Y. Everything is discussed from filters to slack adjusters. The one here comes and goes as needed, we give him three or four days notice on some trucks but talk to him at least once every 10 days or so. The other one in Indiana has a set schedule because we have trucks running in and out of there all the time, so he comes in, does his thing, signs the paper work and invoices me later on.
I do everything i can at home. If i can’t it goes to a trusted mechanic. The only bill i’ve had that felt padded was my transmission swap. It only seemed padded. He called me and had come over and look at what he had as soon as the old one came out. I was back over almost daily until the job was done. It was a lot of extra time & some extra parts. Let me tell you some of these fleet mechanics are pure savages. My God what they will do to a truck to just get the job done & the truck rolling.
This is where a good workorder story comes into play. Working at a dealer they drill it into us: If you can't explain it, we can't charge it. "Re and re transmission", for example, is pretty bland. "Drain transmission oil. Remove drive shaft. U-joint seized into yoke. Had to cut u-joint out in order to remove. Customer has 2 PTO units installed on truck. Remove hosing from pumps, remove pumps, remove PTO's from transmission. Remove shifter boot. Shifter boot screw heads were stripped out. Had to drill out shifter boot screws........ etc" The above has much more justification as to why a transmission replacement took an extra 3 or 4 hours.
Exactly. I was lucky enought to crawl under the truck & see what was going on, but at a dealer you may not be afforded the opportunity. In my case, the last guy to put a clutch in stripped out bolt holes then cross drilled new holes, drilled new so close to other holes that the threads were worthless. It was a mess. He had to source a used bell housing to replace what them savages had done. This of course now included a new rear main seal. It was a mess of a job, but he was up front an honest the whole way. I was aware of everything he had to do before he would do it. This is important to me, because it helps me keep cost inline. Maybe it is something i don’t feel is important, i can do myself, i already have parts for at home, etc... i’ve used this guy for almost 3 years now. I’ve learned a lot owning the truck, there’s still a ton i don’t know. He handles the jobs that are above my means and above my skill level. It would be nice to just keep teaching myself as i go, but the truck has to work, so it can’t sit for a week or 2 while i figure out how to do what needs done.
