Do mechanics really make a huge profit when they help you buy your parts? I had one highly reputable mechanic quote me an additional $200 "bring your own parts" fee and another highly reputable telling me that he wouldn't do the repair because "he wouldn't make any money," with additional info saying, "oooh, if you buy your own parts, i'm liable if it goes wrong. Mercedes wont reimburse me for the repair if it fails within a year" and stuff like that. Like is a $150-$200/hourly rate not enough?? Im trying to understand the finances. Shop rent is around $1/sqft/month. Both shops are no more than 3,000 sqft. $3000/month rent / 5 days a week = $150/day fixed cost to break even. Now comes the variable like employee and utilities. i’ve been to the second shop a few times and never seen more than the owner along with 1 other employee. So assuming this owner is generously paying this guy at $25/hour * 8 hours = $200 + $150/ fixed rent = $350 break even. and to be extremely generous, we’ll add an additional $50 per day, round up to $400 for daily utilities and insurance. Now break even is $400/ day. 1 owner and 1 employee = 16 workable hours. Keep in mind, the employee only has to work 1 billable hour for the shop to pay him for the day. So saying he probably got more than 1 employees dont make sense. amount of employees can vary but fixed cost is still his $200/day pay which is pretty much 1 billable hour. Each additional employee would tac on another 8 workable hours. So theoretically, more employees = fatter profits for the shop. Tools/equipment are an upfront cost but they’ve both been opened for years. Their stuff should have depreciated substantially and received what they paid for in tools/equipment from their tax deductions. I cant think of any other costs involved. So basically, the shop begins profiting after 2- 3 hours out of the 16 workable hours. Im not saying to avoid shops but im just really trying to understand why shop rates are over $150/hour min. It doesn’t make sense to me. What am i missing here??

I have a few friends who work for nissan / lexus / mitsubishi dealership as mechanics that dont even make $25/hour lol up front cost should be tax deductible through various method of depreciation. Not to mention these shops been opened for years. upfront cost shold have been well taken care of years ago. However, 300K/ year seems quite a lot for a 1 owner + 1 employee operation. What’s weird is that I told the guy my parts were brand new OEM in mercedes boxes and he still refused to do it. I mean, they could have knocked the job out in 3 hours and made $600

Or it could simply be supply and demand. My experience tells me there aren't enough mechanics in the bay area for them to consider lowering prices. We like high salaries and appreciation for our property here but we'll have to deal with high taxes and cost of services.

I just decided to stop whining after a while. Bay area life is a b*tch lol

most likely just trying to resell parts for a huge profits. doubt it’s using known parts, keep in mind i told both of them that i had OEM brand new parts still sealed in mb boxes.

now that i can believe. opening up shop sounds better than 4 years of college 😂 haha

Yes you make a ton of $$ on parts
For example when I had my tire discount a set of tires that would cost the average dude $1000 at tire rack I could get for around $600 so without doing **** you are making 30-40 percent part markup and the price of parts via dealer discounts is dependant on the amount you buy. So if I bought $20,000 in parts from Mercedes for example they might give me a 20% discount whereas if I bought $50,000 I might get 30-35 % which makes the prices I could charge lower and profit margins higher . However we charged less for the parts then you could get them via a dealer or most online places to further the drive for people to just give us the entirety of their business... so that could be a reason why they don’t want to accept foreign parts ... cuts into their wholesale price potential