trady’s rate of pay.

[Nick AgainMember]

When I first got into teh mining game, i worked as a Contractor for $9.76hr+ Ot rates allkinds of penalties and bonuses..If I worked O/T my “contracted rate ” went up with it and capped at $120/hr for the company whom i worked for. I could earn some serious money, but my employers were making a killing. On the Bike shops…I have found a shop I’m happy to use..Yes I am capable of most things on my bike, however teh anti pains tend to make me forgetfull of shit ..so i spend the $’s to make sure its done right…after all..it cost a heap and was 16yrs in the making..Saying this..it took some time to find one I’d recomend.

[Bruce CurtisMember]

It also depends on how efficiently the workplace is run, and I don’t mean undercutting the wages or anything like that.

IE: we had a main street refurbishment done.

Can’t use our own blokes, apparently too lazy and too complacent.

18 months later the contractors (huge company) had finished the southern side 20-30 workers working night and day, 25% over budget.

What the hell the moneys getting tight can our blokes start the northern side?

12 months, and 250k under budget later, including locating and safely removing 8 previously forgotten underground fuel tanks our 6 “lazy idiots” had done the job, including finishing off the bollards for the other side and redoing new Ped crossings.

My morale? sometimes overheads are pure gluttony, I know one little firm that had 12 workers and off them 8 of the owners family members drawing huge salaries, all the while paying base award and charging customers top dollar. They no longer have that business.

BC

[Nick AgainMember]

Mr Blue wrote:

Quote:

It also depends on how efficiently the workplace is run, and I don’t mean undercutting the wages or anything like that.

IE: we had a main street refurbishment done.

Can’t use our own blokes, apparently too lazy and too complacent.

18 months later the contractors (huge company) had finished the southern side 20-30 workers working night and day, 25% over budget.

What the hell the moneys getting tight can our blokes start the northern side?

12 months, and 250k under budget later, including locating and safely removing 8 previously forgotten underground fuel tanks our 6 “lazy idiots” had done the job, including finishing off the bollards for the other side and redoing new Ped crossings.

My morale? sometimes overheads are pure gluttony, I know one little firm that had 12 workers and off them 8 of the owners family members drawing huge salaries, all the while paying base award and charging customers top dollar. They no longer have that business.

BC

Thats why we got it so good in the mines .We’d strip and gouge cracks out of an illmade Ballmill, run a nonstop shutdown, 30+ hrs later Mills back online..the Mines staff wanted 2 weeks.when the $ get tight, the mines put off the contractors?? go figure

[drewMember]

hey husky, you still in the mines? which one?

made friends with a guy that used to be in Mt Isa. he was in training. he finished up in 05.

some of the experiences he told of fixing stuff etc. are an eye opener!!!

[TrentMember]

I’ve worked for a couple of larger engineering/EPCM companies and its still the same percentage markup only the mark up went up when we’d do shut downs or night shift because we were on salary! Friends of mine work for Price Waterhouse Coopers and get charged out at $300/hr and would be lucky to see $48/hr when you figure out their hours of work since they’re on salary also. I figure the end user is paying for the assurance and depending on the product there can be a lot of overheads that we don’t see but the supplier relies on. Training, sick pay, tools etc. add up quickly.

The way I see it is if I have the time and the tools I’ll usually try and do it. If I don’t have one of those I’ll weigh it up and see if its worth waiting for the time or buying the tools. Putting a helicoil in isn’t something I anticipate having to do again so I wouldn’t go out and buy the tap and dies etc. Plus since I haven’t done any fab/engineering works I wouldn’t want to risk the casing for the sake of $100.

Normally if my bike needs work I pay a mate who is an ex KTM and current Yamaha race team mechanic and he does it for cost but I insist on giving him grog. When I bought my 250f my brother took it to camden bike and power and they estimated that they’d need to rebuild and replace the bore and I’d be looking at $1500 in parts alone. Danny did it for me for about $600 and no time at all and I struggled to convince him to take a bottle of top vodka. Unfortunately he’s busy with meets right now so I had to ask him to recommend someone.

[scott bockingMember]

Uncle Fester wrote:

Quote:

I had my rims relaced recently and got stung $66/hr only to be told after I took the rims back to get them re balanced, as they as wobbly to be told that the young guy doing a trial before getting an apprenticeship with the shop didn’t know they had to be balanced:angry: :angry: :angry: . That poor kid would be lucky to see any of the $196 3hrs labour I paid to get both rims relaced. After 6 days at the shop in total the wheels still wobbled and I ended up taking it elsewhere to get it fixed.

Hey Fez

Where was this done?

The reason I ask is I am trying to work out which of the four shops in Coffs I should become loyal to as it does not necessarily have to be the Yami shop.

Cheers

[FezMember]

I will PM you the shop details as I don’t want OBT to get into any strife over name the shop on the Internet.

[TobyMember]

I do want to defend all bike shops, but i have managed a couple of dealerships and believe me making ends meet can be hard at best. Bike shop insurance is horific paying public liabilty for a mechanic to be able to do rego checks can be around $30K not to mention all the other insurance you must have. The other thing customers often fail to see is you may be charged 2-3 hours for a particular job but it may have taken the mechanic 4-5 hours to actually do it,this is called effiency in the trade and mechanics that are 100% effecient are as rare as rocking horse shit. Apprentices are normaly about 20-30% effecient.

Hey if you all think it is such a great money spinner go start up your own workshop and employ a few mechanics. Nothing is stopping you.

One thing that shits me about this site is the amount of bitching people do about bike shops. No one is forcing you to ride or go to bike shops, so if you dont like it take up golf. Stop your moaning and get out and enjoy it.

I do not want to come across as defender of pricing in bike shops, i know it expensive, but it is also a competitive industry and believe me if they could they would charge more because workshops rarely make money.

Well I have had my bitch? I sound so cranky. I need to go for a ride. It has been 13 weeks since I,ve been on my bike, now that is something worth bitching about…..

[drewMember]

Well Fossil,

you make some very good points indeed. yes i have no idea what the overheads are.

i’m not bagging All shops, as i tried to say some are worth the money the shop charges them out at. and i do not argue paying it if it’s worth it.

my main bitch was over a shop i had dealings with, they ripped me off as they were partly to blame for my bikes problems, and said they would “look after me” on the fix, they only looked after my money.:angry:

and will never deal with them again and i WILL tell people that i would not recommend them at all.

[TrentMember]

Fossil wrote:

Quote:

I do want to defend all bike shops, but i have managed a couple of dealerships and believe me making ends meet can be hard at best. Bike shop insurance is horific paying public liabilty for a mechanic to be able to do rego checks can be around $30K not to mention all the other insurance you must have. The other thing customers often fail to see is you may be charged 2-3 hours for a particular job but it may have taken the mechanic 4-5 hours to actually do it,this is called effiency in the trade and mechanics that are 100% effecient are as rare as rocking horse shit. Apprentices are normaly about 20-30% effecient.

Firstly, I don’t think you’ve directed your rant at me but let me be clear and say I have no problem with shops charging that much because there’s a lot more behind the scenes that we don’t consider and the convenience of having a good mechanic on hand is worth $$$.

That said I can’t stand the attitude that customers should pay to cover incompetent mechanic’s inefficiencies. We go to a shop to use the services of a professional mechanic because they should be able to deliver a professional service. The one thing I like about car dealerships is that they’ll have a book that says it should take 2 hours to do an oil change so that’s what we charge. If it takes us longer and uses twice the oil because we left the copper washer out and had to dump it again then that’s our fault but if you give it to me with a half stripped bolt and I can’t get it off without a lot of extra cost then I’ll give you a call and tell you but its at the bike owner’s cost.

My ute just spent a month at two different dealerships to replace the MAP sensor. Granted they didn’t know up front that that’s what the problem was but any competent mechanic should be able to diagnose that relatively quickly. Should I pay for a month of farting around if the car’s not covered by warranty or should the dealer cop it on the chin then fire the bludging dolt after a week of not getting the job done?

[drewMember]

to add to that AB, i have a 91 ltd V8. duel fuel.
now it died in the main street and would not start.

my bro a diesel mechanic, looked at it but not really know. we sprayed wd40 down the airflow meter it fired and died.

so we knew the injectors were not working.

took it to ford, begrudgingly. they said i needed to reco the ceu and had to replace the lpg converter as it would not run on gas.

it starts on petrol as most if not all efi cars do, it has an electronic switch that changes it over to lpg at 1500 rpm.

so if it dose not start on petrol it will not run on lpg, makes sense if you ask me!

they quoted me 500 min. for the ecu and 350 for the converter. + their hr rate to remove/refit.

i tried a wrecker, he sent me to a mechanic shop, they sent it to a specialist in Melb. ecu fixed 320 including post each way.

converter is still working just fine!

so where was all the extra cost?!?!?!?! apart from the workshop hr rate.

and after that the auto played up, went into what they call limp home mode= 3rd, reverse and nothing else.

the same ford dealer supposedly did the on board diagnostic and said that a solenoid needed replacing, 600 for part on it’s own.

i called a guy we used in past 2 hrs away, he said up front he had no idea and would call another guy in Melb. came back with the answer that in the whole time as an auto trans specialist had never replaced that particular solenoid.

after another call to an ecu specialist, it ended up being the earth wire had come loose in the connector on the ecu.

auto still works as it should.

i still wonder what the mechanic would have done after replacing the solenoid and still had the problem!!

[Bruce CurtisMember]

I once had an RZ350 cafe racer for a work bike that I played with, flatslides, pods, handmade chambers, cut pistons, trick reeds, squish band modded heads pommie ignition, clipons, digital dash, the works, was a little fire breather, but docile as around town, Loved that little lady. Started stopping on me every now and then, so i narrowed it down to the spark, but where in the massive loom was it? so one day i took it into my local yamaha dealer (whom I’d know personally for years from bike rallies and the such) and left it there telling him what I had eliminated, got a phone call 3 weeks later was ready to go, was the fuel system, got a mate to dink me the 120 klicks into town late friday arvo after work, and picked it up, they had replaced the carbs, pods and exhausts with standard items and charged me lots, said it was right to go, a bit disappointed in my own ability I paid up and rode out.. it stopped again at the driveway leaving and wouldn’t start exactly the same problem. I was pissed badly, so they promised me my bits back and gave me half my money back. I rang an auto electrician I used to ride with and he came and picked it up bike and called me the following monday and left a message it was a goer, had a broken wire in the loom $40 would cover it.
I hassled the dealer never got me couple of $k worth of bits back, and to add insult to injury the dealer did the dirty on one of me best mates with his wife and split them up. I went back in finally early this year as I relly needed some yamaha bits to ride the next day and the mongrel was still grinning his shiteating smirk, except now he’s got 6 houses and two dealerships and runs a race team. I still felt like smacking him around a little bit and he did a disappearing act real quick when he realised it was I, and left in his new clubby commodore, left his now grown son to deal with me, I was a nice bloke to him, can’t help who his old man is.

Now I know most aren’t like him, but he’s the one who we may judge many others upon, I got him back though once, saw him on the road undercut him on a corner and sent him into the gravel on his new 1200 yamaha, mongrel lived though.

BC

[Anonymous]

Trailboss wrote:

Quote:

I live my life by those rules, but there are some great trades people out there that care and try for their customers.

I live my life a 1/4 mile at a time.

[Anonymous]

I do think bike shops charge a lot of money for what seems to be little work. But then again, as others have said the revenue raised out of the mechanics time isn’t just paying his salary and the rest is profit.

Rent for somewhere like Newcastle KTM is probably around $4K a month, plus insurances, public liablity, heating, power, salaries for the other guys that are ‘overheads’.

Considering they actually make very little on the sale of a new bike they have to makes their money somewhere. Most of this comes from parts and servicing. Some bike shop owners do quite well out of it, but that’s why you run your own business. I wouldn’t run a bike shop for $30K a year so all of you bludgers can have cheap servicing for your hobby.

I don’t like paying the money just like the next guy but I understand why it is like it is.

[Bruce CurtisMember]

I agree Moto, but sometimes it seems there are more sharks in the waters of Motocycling than Snapper, the few i know who are passionate about the business they are in have a loyal band of followers, but because they are not flashy seem to miss out on the bigger slice of the pie. All businesses are only as good as the last job or sale they made, and everyone of them needs to realise that word of mouth is extremely effective.
For instance when I had my 2 Cr250s, I went to a large chain dealership needing parts to get one of the CRs’ going and with a Lazy 20K in my pocket a portion of the profit after a property sale that SWMBO hadn’t earmarker yet, I had my eye on two bikes if a good deal was offered I would have bought it on the spot. The flashy salesdude approached judging me in my “day off” clothes and I expressed interest in a CRF450X (first ones out) he flat out wouldn’t negoitate, and was downright condescending and full of hype. He walked away from me to serve another flashier looking couple in the middle of the speil. Didn’t even buy the parts off them and haven’t been back, he actualy did me a big favour cause i poured that money back into my Home instead and bought a 4 yr old KTM300 instead, which i do believe to this day was a better bike.
Now the mechanical workshop relies on the out front blokes to do their job, and vice versa, it is a team effort, and I for one will fully support any business that supports it’s staff and their customers. IMHO out of the 6-7 local shops within a 120klm radius only one is worthy of my business, he is a good man who has passion and makes a quid without ripping the guts out of one-off clients, unfortunately the rest have novelty value only to I.

Bruce C.

[Author]

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