Using your shop’s Cost of Doing Business (CODB) as a baseline for labor rates.
Mastering the Numbers – Part 2
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TECHNICIAN CHALLENGE: Can you identify these dash lights? (VIDEO)
TECHNICIAN CHALLENGE: Can you identify these dash lights? (VIDEO) Description Think you know your dash lights? Shop Press contributors Keith, Miriam, Chris, and Greaser try their best to identify all kinds of lights, symbols, and indicators. Some are easy, others...
Dash warning lights: feature or bug?
Warning lights are something we’re all familiar with—all too often, they’re the reason a customer steps into your shop. Mechanics of a certain age will remember a time when the phrase “idiot light” was used to describe a dash light. The derisive term referred to the...
Three lessons from “Traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)”
I recently had occasion to sit down and leaf my way through a book entitled “Traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us).” It was very well-documented and researched, but perhaps a bit closer to a college textbook than light reading material for a...
Don’t let the grind of fixing cars wear down your love for ‘em
Fixing automobiles all day is tough. The work’s too hard, the customers get ornery, the money ain’t what it oughta be, working conditions aren’t always the best, and the hours are too long. In spite of that, I have yet to meet a tech, service writer, or counterman who...
Preston Tucker: Visionary or Villain?
It’s possible you have already heard of Preston Tucker. He was the subject of “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” a 1988 Francis Ford Coppola movie starring Jeff Bridges. More recently, he was the subject of the biographical book “Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build...