about your shops pay structure

Hi! I'm new to the forums and own a shop in Fort Worth, Texas. I am making some changes in my operation and would like to ask all you other shop owners about your pay structure. What have you found to be the most fair and profitable pay structure for your shop? Salary? Team system? Hourly? etc.

It all depends on the dynamics of your shop....number of techs, shop loading, tech experiance, business (getting more or losing)
I would check with some of your local compition to see what their payscale is.

Mostly it seems that in this business "the more you know, the less you make" and I mean by that is you tend to give your experianced techs the more difficult work, while the less experianced get the cut and dry work.
I believe in treating my people right and rewarding training and experiance...."the more you know, the more you will make"

To answer your question..top pay flat rate and bonuses for my good techs and a lower hourly pay for my inexperianced guys

Hello!

I help my brother quite a bit with a diesel repair and wrecker service up here in TN. Generally speaking, we think that simple hourly pay is the best way to go for this kind of stuff. Time and a half for overtime is required, of course, and only fair. It's just a pain to monitor absolutely everything that goes on. Every once in a while you might get someone who wants to pull their own car or truck in the shop to do some work on it. That's fine- we consider access to all the tools and equipment a well deserved job perk. But he might try to stay on the clock while he does it. Make it clear that you will NOT put up with that kind of behavior. As far as pay rates go, we pay pretty high wages compared to other shops in the area. It's fair. Good mechanics are the backbone of the company, and good pay helps insure that our mechanic stay with us, as well as attract top notch ones when we have an opening.

I don't know if your shop does wrecker service, but that can be the biggest headache of all. We have off hour calls transferred directly to our cell phones, and then we in turn transfer call assignments to our on call drivers. If you make the mistake some companies make, and have calls transferred directly to the drivers, you will have no idea the driver even went out if the customer paid in cash. It's a pain to handle calls when you're at home with the wife or eating dinner, but that's just part of it if you don't want to get ripped off. Good, honest wrecker drivers are, for some reason, hard to come by. If you get a good one, hold on to him.

Just a few things I've learned. Hope this was some help!

the flat rate w/ bonuses, and hourly for inexperienced is exactly what we were considering. thanks for the input!