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Flat rate or hourly?

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robp823

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Always the spoiler..... "flat rape or hourly" is a tiny question in a big pond.....

 

I have flat rate guys that made well over $100,000 last year... without selling flushes.... without any dubious shit going on....

 

There is no "best system".... but anyone and everyone will try to take advantage of what is there...

 

At this time, I am shop foreman... I am paid straight time with OT as per government requirements.....

 

Flat rate is a fond.... a very fond.... memory.

 

Ford has made it hard to have flat rate be profitable... In that light, it is important that a tech knows the system and develops the ability to work within it.

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Quote:
In that light, it is important that a tech knows the system and develops the ability to work within it.


How does everyone else feel? It seems like Jim is working on part 2 of this post, like he left us hanging.

By the way Hourly.
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Flat rate. I agree with Jim about it being hard to make good money with the way Ford pays for warranty work now. I used to make good money flat rate. No more. The biggest problem here is that I work in a general shop, so get my share of every type of job that comes in the door. The percentage of warranty repairs has declined in the last 10 years, and every job in the door seems to be "and now for something completely different". It's hard to keep up with the new technology as well. At the rate it is changing, it seems like every new diagnosis involves learning the system before you can even attempt to diagnose it. Almost everything you already know is useless and you will never again likely see the exact same repair and if you do, you can't charge extra time for your diagnosis because the customer saw you fix it in only a few minutes. Oil changes are one of my least favourite jobs and yet we seem to be doing more of them all the time and trying to fill out the QC 550 sheet to the best of my ability takes extra time that almost never seems to be made up. It would be nice to get paid hourly at a fair wage for the level of my skills but that is never going to happen, so I will keep plugging away as long as I still manage to somewhat enjoy my work. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/2cents.gif

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I agree. Idk, i havent been working in the ford field long. but out of school i worked an hourly shop, and got bitched at by the techs that worked there (old bitter men) that i worked too fast. Now working at a flat rate shop experiencing new and sometimes intriguing problems, i feel like i'm working too slow. Now, i know as time goes on i'll learn more and get faster at what i do. there was another post on here that i totally agree with, how entry level techs should follow the wsm and make their own decisions. i think for a real heavy diesel shop, hourly would be more of a safety thing than flat rate, but i've seen plenty of guys bust 70-80 hours workin on just diesel trucks. from what i've known and heard, warranty work always sucked. now ford's just makin it worse for us.

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Flat rate here. We're a small shop, with me and another tech doing diesel. Until about a year and a half ago we both were barely making our 80, even though we had no guarantee, our attitudes were you write us back for diesel, we'll write you our resignations. With our general guys making 110-120 hours, brakes, ball joints, all the big services. It sucked, job comes in they do all 4 ball joints for retail it comes to us for warranty diesel, yee haa. With our new service manager everything changed, he realizes we are valuable. Now if you are not diesel trained you do not do anything on diesel trucks period. Now the other tech and I are busy as hell getting retail and warranty. The way it should be.

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yea i have that happen to me a couple times truck comes in goes to another guy o i guess theres nothing wrong just maintence nope i get the truck later that day after all brakes ball joints etc have been done cash work i get the good ol warranty diesel......bullshit our shop needs a new service manager

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Flat rate down here in Windsor, but our shop has a 40 hour guarantee so we have some lazy sumbitches working there.

 

Was hourly up at Diavik/Kingland, making about $40 an hour, HOWEVER - 1 month for gas for my house? $577.00

 

Gas bill here in windsor? $91.00

 

Yeaaaaaaaah.....I'll stick it out down here for a bit still, methinks. Thing that kinda bites is myself and Shlep.....for lack of a better term, work like....well, I guess I'd better be P.C. but we do more than our share of work, and generally are heavily involved in repairing the 'unrepairable' and other tech's screwups. I can only stand there and shake my head as a guy I like to call "Shortbus" is teaching another guy we call "A.D.D." how to reprogram PCM's using the IDS, resting on the roof of a customer's vehicle. I await the ONLY working VCM in our shop to fall off the roof, or the laptop to cascade off onto the floor and bust into a million pieces.

 

At any rate, I think we get paid alright, but a lot of the time the garbage jobs we end up screwing with for hours and hours at a time to repair so the customer will come back, and not have been charged hundreds of dollars for a repair that was not effective - we generally get...."missed" when it comes down to getting paid for our time. Guy across the hall, before I left to go up north, had a no start 6.0, and Shlep and I spent a LOT of time working on it FOR him, and our combined time, I would imagine, surpassed that of the actual tech getting paid for the job. At times like this, it would be nice to have a second punch ticket to run M/T on for situaitons like this to get paid straight time for them.

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Flat rate sucks. When we run out of Diesels. I make over 40 easy in a 45 hour work week. I get diesels by the half dozen. One week I'll have none. I'll do well with the bookings. The next week I'll have 6 basket case diesels waiting. There goes my hours in the dumpster. My service director will throw me traing pay. 25 an hour. Ranging from 8hrs to 36hrs depending on how much I get my ass kicked. I can thank Mekanik for that. After he left our shop. The service director open his eyes. He found out diesel guys are hard to find. Are other diesel, well he sucks. I wish I still had Mekanic on board with us. We kicked ass together. Now I have to hold the hand off a guy who's alittle past his prime. He also can't deal with the heavy lifting any more. My vote is for Hourly. My work log has proved that to me.

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hourly, i get about 80% warranty and 20% customer pay, wouldnt do it flat rape. only way our shop could even go flat rate is if the owner sold or the parts manager was fired and the parts and service director(owners son) was also fired. only reason the dealer i work at has survived is because we are out lasting the others near us and we have a better service department in general, even if management is clueless the techs give enough of a shit to care about making the customer happy for the most part

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I work flat rate. It blows, but oh well. I rarely make my 80 per pay. The only thing that I really hate is when I get compared to guys that don't put out the level of quality that I do or the dishonest techs. I go above and beyond to make sure the job is done right. And I don't slam warranty. Integrity...... it's kind of a bitch. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

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Flat rate here, usually do pretty good, but its been grating on me lateley. have trained, (aka babysat)4 new techs in last 2 years,only to have them quit or get fired in first 6 months, have a good secondyear apprentice, but he's fairly green, and now a boneheaded very slow moving parts counter guy. Ive taken to looking up lots of my parts,among other tasks, and find my efficiency falling to the toilet because of other peoples lack of ability or care. I also get alot of the so called unfixeable problems, and lots of "can you double check the diag on that job".

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Ford has made it hard to have flat rate be profitable... In that light, it is important that a tech knows the system and develops the ability to work within it.

Flat rate here...and Jim you are so right!!

 

We are unionized, so if you don't make the flat rate time, they still pay us the actual time.

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