Shop Rate $149/hr. ???

[patmsp]

Buddy Gregg in Knoxville is $135 PLUS a 10% charge for shop supplies. Total is $148.50. I think that is way too high. I'll use a mobile service next time when I need help.

[Steven Groves]

Alrighty then...

tl;dr version - we only have ourselves to blame. There is no 'conspiracy' to overcharge & under-perform on RV service. If you want good service, be prepared to pay a fair fee that supports a living wage.

My perspective of a couple of months experience & the last page or so of posts -

Rates - Looks like rates are all over the board, but generally in a range nationally from around $90 to as much as $140 or so. Bargains to be had, but only to the diligent who call around and compare.

RV Mechanic Skills - Skill levels are varied as well, but general consensus is that there is a lot of unskilled, untrained RV mechanics out there who are overworked & underappreciated by shop owners.

RV Shops - Shop owners are being pummeled by both workers, who want a living wage (a wage which has been stagnant for more than a decade) and RV owners who are multiplying like rabbits and the new RV owners are bring their experiences from other interaction with mechanic shops (not RV) to the table and expecting similar treatment. Often it seems they are disappointed.

RV Owners - RV owners by & large are challenged when seeing a shop owner the same rate they charge for work ($100+/hr.) and complain about rates, even though it is the expertise they're buying, not the actual time.

Path Forward - I came across a report that suggested that RV mechanics make between $25,000 to $35,000 annually. I don't know about you all, but federal poverty level (FPL) income for a family of 4 is $24-$32K and if you compare one to the other, being an RV mechanic looks like a poverty level job. No wonder they enter and then leave the field so quickly. I think I'd much rather have a well-paid professional doing my work and not some guy distracted / worried about making sure his babies have enough food and that the electricity bill is paid.

Better RV Mechanics - A dollar an hour more over a year = $1,800 more for the year and it seems like RV mechanics might need more than an extra dollar an hour to achieve income over FPL. The market would need to conspire to make it so - both RV owners would have to be willing to pay a bit more and RV shop owners would need to charge a bit more and put those extra $$ into the hands of their staff. Idealistic I know, but hey, if you see another way forward on this topic, please chime in!

Better RV Shops - How do we get local shops to up their game? Can we, as customers of those establishments, even do so? Here's one of the great powers of social media & online forums. As a group of like minded, socially conscious individuals, we already DO report on RV shops - albeit via anecdote and in an unstructured manner. I recently caught another IRV2 post on a specific RV wash company was not delivering on their promise. It's good to see one post like this. More data on shop performance organized in an accessible format will help RV owners and legitimate RV shops find one another. Poor performing shops will get the overflow and RV owners who opt to not pay a rate that supports a living wage will have a place to go. Anyone know of an app or website that does this? Is Yelp! a good enough platform for getting and managing reviews of RV shops?

Understanding RV Owners - We all have the ability to decide for ourselves what's fair & right. We do not have the ability to impose that perception on others - we might ASK the other party to enter into a discussion on a work engagement, but they are under no mandate to do so.

Owning an RV for the majority of us is an option. Making a trade-off for a mobile house vs. an immobile one is where it starts. If you were coerced into RV ownership by some nefarious party wishing you bad things, well, I'll encourage another decision. I think self-maintenance at some level is probably at the foundation of owning a rig, trading time & money for expert repair is another decision. It is in this equation of time vs. money that businesses get built.

For example - I know nothing (yet) about how to examine and diagnose a 50 AMP generator. Electrical systems are still mysterious & magical, but I know that there are positive & negative anodes on a battery and AC power is not DC power. I'll probably always be on the lookout for mechanics who will complement what I can do myself and be willing to pay a professional wage.

Initial Research Summary - I'm definitely seeing a disconnect on both sides of the equation and will continue to look at how the market balances the inequality. I think that anecdotal reporting via social platforms is only a 1st step into a more formalized process. I'll be looking more at Yelp to see is it can be one of the places we all might check to understand an RV shops capability and focus on customer service. Growth of RV use by an audience that understand how to use those tools will drive broader visibility into how shops treat customers.

I will continue to look for input on how the RV industry informs & educates the market on the actual cost a quality effort requires. I think that the cost of ownership, post purchase is glossed over most the time. The decision to look for quality absolutely impacted our decision to purchase a Newmar-manufactured unit initially and now that I own an RV which needs service before I can reliably travel with it, I'm learning about the industry's 'dirty little secret' - that there is little to no regulation on who / where someone can get into being an RV mechanic and there are there is lots of snake oil being sold out there by some of the biggest names in the RV service industry. My sense is that instead of seeing RV mechanic services as a niche, it's being treated as a commodity. RV owners act as if there is an inexhaustible supply of shops and shops behave as if there is an inexhaustible supply of FPL workers with expert skills.

I think an RV owner gets that if they're looking for quality, then they will pay higher rates - might actually seek out the higher rates as a form of 'insurance' against getting the same repair over & over. Some RV owners will continue paying rates that trickle down to FPL workers however and those RV owners then, as a whole, will only ever experience poor quality and bad service. If you can acknowledge the true cost behind market rates, you'll willingly pay them. Likewise, RV shop owners and solo-preneur mechanics will have to adopt practices that provide transparency and a deliver willingness to support an owner-centric RV service model.

***

Gosh - reading back over this sounds like a pipe dream conjured up over way too many margaritas. Looking forward to some f2f convos on this!

[Brian W]

Originally Posted by nothermark

In the RV industry the build rate of any particular model is less than 1 per day. The cost of developing and distributing a flat rate book would be astronomical. It would be nice but the tech would just spend more time looking at what the book said then figuring out whether or not what he has matches the book. The cost of the book is part of the shop overhead. The cost of reading it goes on your bill. So do coffee breaks, personal breaks and cleanup. If it's not part of your billed time then it's rolled into the markup. Somebody has to pay for it.

Maybe I am misreading/misunderstanding what you are getting at, and if so I apologize.

Are you saying the RV industry doesn't have flat rate manuals? If so, that would be incorrect. For new units we use each manufacturers flat rate manuals. For units that are out of warranty we use Service Management Guide and Spader. There isn't a whole lot of difference between all of them.

Our techs that have at least 2 years experience (my best guesstimate) know those manuals like the back of their hands. They actually study them when they get a chance.

[nothermark]

Originally Posted by Brian W

Maybe I am misreading/misunderstanding what you are getting at, and if so I apologize.

Are you saying the RV industry doesn't have flat rate manuals? If so, that would be incorrect. For new units we use each manufacturers flat rate manuals. For units that are out of warranty we use Service Management Guide and Spader. There isn't a whole lot of difference between all of them.

Our techs that have at least 2 years experience (my best guesstimate) know those manuals like the back of their hands. They actually study them when they get a chance.

I'm surprised they exist. What do the manuals cost for a year? Are they on line look up, local stored on a server or paper?

[Brian W]

Manufacturers are free and are mostly on line.

Service Management Guide is $175 per manual for members of RVDA, $350 for non-members. CD Rom is $290 for members and $585 for non. We get a mixture of both.

Spader is $400, and in my opinion the best organized of all of them.

[Brian W]

Here is an example from Spader
[ATTACH]

[Isaac-1]

My problem with the shop rate book approach is so often people end up being billed for a job that takes 7 hours by the book, but was done in 2 hours thanks to some shortcut like using a wobble head socket to reach a bolt that would otherwise require removing some other piece of equipment.

As to actual shop rate numbers, so often these are needed to cover operating overhead costs that go far beyond the cost of labor. Unfortunately it seems there are way too many RV shops out there with the attitude that they can charge whatever they want and the rich RV owners will not have a choice but to pay it. I got screwed over by one of these type shops with a $200 per hour shop rate a few months ago, and ended up paying $450 to have my brakes flushed and have a new cover placed on the brake master cylinder. I knew this would likely happen when I pulled into their shop, I know too many other people that have dealt with them over the years, but when the brake pedal gets soft when you are 3/4 mile away from a shop, you stop at that shop.

[nothermark]

Thanks for the reply about the manuals.

The gist of the discussion was someone said he wished they had flat rate manuals because costs would be lower as the techs would have instruction sheets. I replied that I did not think they existed based on the model of tearing down a model to write the instructions. Not cheap with cars but when we are talking a limited run RV it leaves me wondering. I'm still a bit curious. Are they limited to chassis issues or do they also cover house problem? It's hard to tell from the example.

Thanks.

[Brian W]

Originally Posted by nothermark

Thanks for the reply about the manuals.

The gist of the discussion was someone said he wished they had flat rate manuals because costs would be lower as the techs would have instruction sheets. I replied that I did not think they existed based on the model of tearing down a model to write the instructions. Not cheap with cars but when we are talking a limited run RV it leaves me wondering. I'm still a bit curious. Are they limited to chassis issues or do they also cover house problem? It's hard to tell from the example.

Thanks.

They cover pretty much everything. There are some things that will not have a time listed, but will instead say "quote". There are also items that will say "straight time", meaning the actual amount of time you spent doing the job.

The manuals are usually broken down by sections such as appliances, electrical, plumbing, electronics, etc.

[nothermark]

Thank You for explaining that.

[awol50]

RV dealers charge at least or more than franchise auto dealers in most markets.
Auto dealers work on the whole vehicle. RV dealers won't really touch the chassis.
Automatic dealers almost always get you in and out in a week or less for most issues. RV dealers, you are lucky to get them to so much as schedule you for a month out.
RV service gets an F in my book. And I will avoid them like the plauge.

[Magister54]

Happy to pay CA$85 here for guys that work on RV for like 10+ years, in a small shop