We hit our KPI target, we had a awesome technician lunch, we worked well as a team, and had fun doing it!
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🚗 Celebrating National Automotive Week at Toyota of Corvallis! 🚗
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KPI has been our main focus! Getting customers to fill out their surveys is a challenge; one that we are most willing to take on. Reminding advisors to get their follow up calls in and in general touching base with the customer to make sure the service provided was top notch. We added scan codes to make it easier for online reviews. what creative ways are you using to make filling surveys out for customers easier or more enticing?
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During our shop monthly meeting today we recognized Garrett Zale for 4 years of service. Thank you to Garrett for your years of service to our client’s and making Craig’s Car Care the best shop.
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Let's go back to our epic Grand Canyon Rally with Ferrari of San Francisco and Boardwalk Ferrari! Driving a Ferrari among the red rocks, visiting the Grand Canyon, enjoying great company, and more. Four days of pure joy!
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Enjoy these highlights from Lamborghini Dallas. Thanks to the 150 exotics and 800+ spectators, we were able to raise $4420 for the Children's Advocacy Center of Collin County. Thank you to everyone who came out and made this possible. Until next year!
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Enjoy Boardwalk Ferrari highlights from our 2023 Boardwalk Spring Concorso! Over 150 exotic cars, 800+ spectators, and the most perfect weather.
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Are you attending Fullbay’s Diesel Connect Conference this week?
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The first half of the year brought some victories, some challenges as well. MNTT has been able to deliver exceptional work for MNTT's customers, the whole team is proud of their efforts on both the mechanical and truck body sides! MNTT's challenge for the second half of the year is to add more help, the goal is to continue to deliver exceptional work for our customers, but faster.
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Green Bay Master Fleet has secured additional trailer parking to help service our customer needs.
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We would like to congratulate our wholesale team for being #1 in all of Sonic in wholesale and for being #3 in the country in wholesale sales in BMW. With this achievement, we got a beautiful plaque and a spectacular Germany trip.
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Introduced our new Mobile Service van to the team today. We are so excited to put this van on the street starting Monday. Thank you Shawn Sharp & Thomas Kuranoff for this presentation and delicious breakfast!
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Be Connected lunch today! We had delicious Colombian food from La Fogata. Everyone loved it and I loved seeing everyone’s smiles ❤️ Thank you team for everything that you do! #beconnectedweek2023 #BeConnected
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Our team took a motorcycle ride to San Felipe, Texas yesterday and visited historic landmarks. They also had lunch at Tony’s in Sealy. We’re so happy to have the privilege to do these things with our amazing team. ❤️
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In the month of May we received a few incredible 5 star Google Reviews! It's such a great feeling when people take time out of their day to share their great experience with us! Thanks to all of you who do this!
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THROW IN THE TOWEL? Automotive Technicians need tools to perform our jobs, in fact we need more tools than any other skilled trade (not discounting HD or aircraft technicians). Early in my career, buying tools was fun. Every tool helped me perform my job faster, better, and made more money. I wasn’t fond of the tool bill, but those tools were helping me pay it. For instance, early in my career I struggled breaking loose fan clutches. I often burned 1/2 hour to get it broken loose and I broke several holding tools. After 1.8 years I changed shops and the new shop had Lisle 43300 as a shop tool. When I moved on from there, I bought my own, cost me $117. It took about 3 minutes to set the tool up, find the right wrench head, hammer the clutch loose, and put everything away. So, per use I am winning by about $16. If I only use that tool once a month and I have owned it 8 years, it has made me $1,536 off that $117 investment. What’s not to like about that? In 2020, I was really struggling with some ball joints. The tool I had wasn’t beefy enough, so it was an 8 hour slog getting the old joint out and the new one in on one side. I was 2 hours into the other side when the Matco man showed up and said, “I have just what you need.” “Prove it.” “It would be a used tool then and I can't sell used tools.” “Okay, if it works, I’ll buy it.” It worked. $1,500 later I was the owner of a new ball joint press. I figured the time saved was worth $368, but all it did was help me break even. I’ve used it 3 times since for the job I could not do any other way. $1,104 lost time saved in 3 years. Yes, I might make money off of it someday, but was it a good investment? During the time frame I bought that ball joint press, I paid out of debt. From that point on I’ve been paying cash as much as possible for tools. Lately I've had to buy several expensive tools for odd jobs. Latest one is a no start, customer swears fuel is fresh, I want to test but I don’t have a way to pressurize fuel while bypassing the vehicle’s fuel system. I can cut it off, but not tap in and pressurize so I can attempt to start the engine on known good fuel. So I looked for a tool to do that, found one for $552.54. I choked. 10 years line wrenching and this is the first time I tried to do this. Is it going to be another 10 years until I need it again? I felt physically sick. At what point does a technician stop investing in more tools? Does it mean a tech is no longer growing and improving when no longer buying tools? When is the return not worth the investment? I dread needing a new tool. It doesn’t get me excited to have the latest and greatest. I want it to work, work well, and last. I want a good return for my investment. I don’t want to stare at the trash can wondering how bad it’s going to stink when I vomit in it. When I no longer want to spend money on tools, does that mean it’s time to throw in the towel?
Technician
Now this is the kind of discussions I think this app really needs. I don't think I have enough experience under my belt to give you a correct answer, but all I can say is 6 years in I still look forward to finding my next tool to make my job easier and faster. I do think that there is allot of ways a technician can continue to grow and tools is certainly part of the equation but not the full solution. I know there has been a few times in my career I felt I did not have a purpose moving forward, and have been very fortunate to have some mentors help me get back on a path of improvement. I hope you can find that same excitement you had early on in your career even if it's not tool related! (edited)
Technician
Hi Josh, Thanks for chiming in. In my opinion this forum is trying to find it's feet still, so content producers are still learning what to do with it. The good thing about here is it's strictly automotive related, so we can relate because we're walking in those shoes. I've been in the field 15 years overall, including tech school, so I've acquired most of the inexpensive tools I need, so the things left are expensive diagnostic tools. It leads to hard questions like, "Did I earn enough money from the scan tool I bought to justify the cost?" When I bought it, I didn't care, it was a fun toy and it would give me a leg up on the other techs in the shop because they didn't have access to a scan tool that would read anything except gm vehicles. 7 years later as it's nearing the end of life and I'm looking at needing to sink another $6500 into a new one, I'm asking, "Can I recoup the cost?" It's convenient to have a handheld that goes with me, and it's nice to not have to rely on gm and their flaky software, but unless I go out on my own, I likely won't recoup the cost. Do I want to go out on my own? Lot to think about.
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