Nope.lgao0612 wrote: ↑ This is a very uninformed and ignorant comment.
Have you ever taken the time and effort to consider what "Shop Supplies" involves?
Heavy duty shop towels cost more than your home paper towels. Air compressors are not cheap to fix or maintain. Oil disposal is not cheap when you have giant tanks that require trucks to come empty them.
Commercial absorbent costs a lot. So do gloves. Have you considered how much gloves cost during a pandemic? Especially at the rate that shops use it at?
No gloves? OK, ask technicians to change fluids and come in contact with all kinds of chemicals with their bare hands then. Well just use more heavy duty hand cleanser. Guess what? That costs a fortune now that you're using more of it and so is the world.
Getting tires mounted? Wheel weights and tire lube cost money. You've never had to pay for wheel weights have you? That's because we absorb the cost because they're considered supplies, for the shop.
Getting other work done on your car? How about sandpaper, grit pads, brake cleaner, silicon spray, white lithium grease? These are all consumables that aren't billable but add up real quick.
THAT is what goes into shop supplies.
Combine that with slow business in the past year with COVID and less people driving + people asking for discounts because they've been laid off, etc while still keeping a business afloat.
These are necessary costs involved in keeping the lights on and while you see it as a scam, I call it trying to keep your business alive and keep a payroll going.
You don't see the parts invoices for $1000 worth of chemical absorbent, air tool grease, Shop Towels, heavy duty hand cleanser, brake clean, cutting discs, sanding discs of different grit, printer paper, heavy duty gloves, particulate masks for working on dusty jobs to keep our techs from inhaling harmful dust(quite expensive during COVID believe it or not), wheel weights, tire plugs (have you ever been charged for the plug in a tire repair?), cables to keep our hoists operating properly, ear plugs, A/C machine dye, different lubes and greases, anti-seize, loc-tite, etc. And that's $1000, weekly for a big shop. That's before you add in hoist repair, shop equipment maintenance and repair, oxy-acetylene for welding & welding rods, training that we send techs too, special equipment purchases, running a heating system in the winter for our techs, etc.
I hope this educates those of you that think "Shop Supplies" is a BS charge purely there for profit.
Is it there to make a profit? Not necessarily.
It's there to recuperate costs that are required in vehicle maintenance and repair procedure that cannot be realistically billed on an invoice ie. It's not realistic to bill you $0.50 for rags, $3 for absorbent if your vehicle leaks oil all over the ground requiring us to clean it up and stop it entering the sewers, $$$ for miscellaneous bolts we had to replace because your regular "mechanic" forgot to put them back on, etc.
Some of the residual may be all profit but hey, if you get charged $10 for shop supplies and your bill was $300 for an exhaust repair, we probably spent $10 or more on grinding discs, cutting pads, brake clean, clamps, etc.
At the end of the day with vehicle maintenance intervals getting longer and more cars going EV, Service centers are starting to lose money.
You can complain about Shop Supplies and labor rates all you want - just don't complain when smaller shops start going out of business because you all thought the Shop Supplies was a BS charge.
I've seen enough stripped / cross threaded / rounded drain plugs and half tight oil filters from quick lube places that hire teenagers who don't have formal training.
I want to be clear, I don't work at a quick lube but I did work in the Dealer world. I support people getting good deals on maintenance however I implore you, before you go in, educate yourself on your vehicles maintenance needs. Check your service manuals. 90% of what quick lubes and small shops sell in terms of "maintenance" will be BS but that doesn't mean they won't recommend something that your car will ACTUALLY NEED.
I had a customer once who said Mr.Lube kept telling her she needed a coolant flush and she kept saying they were BSing her. Guess what? She really did need it! Her fluid was 150,000KM old and barely had any left in her reservoir!
P.S: in my experience, people who float around getting their $29.95 oil changes have cars in the worst conditions because they don't have a "trusted mechanic"
That is if the shop does a proper job and actually uses these supplies without just billing u for them like most of them do. Hence why no one trust these rip off shops and those that have, has been left with bitter taste.
