Dealership versus In House

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Nickrosis

Manned by Boderators
Joined
Mar 10, 2002
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Location
Milwaukee, WI
The debate rages on at our company from time to time... The clear cut cases this week were our 2001 Dodge Ram 2500 with the Cummins and our 2004 Ford F-550. They're both getting transmission work done under warranty this week. With 32,000 and 4,200 miles, respectively. :angry:

But in other cases....
We aren't big enough to have dedicated mechanics. And it's easy in a lot of ways to just tow a vehicle to a shop and have a "pro" repair it. A $200 tow bill and $700 repair bill is pretty small compared to having our mechanic fix it at his hourly rate of $24 (equals $48/hour when you calculate the real cost of an employee). If he spends a day and a half, that's $600 in labor and $300 for the parts. Coming out even? Not really.....

He was stumping today instead of fixing the leaf springs. If he stumps at $100/hr for 9 hours, we're coming out ahead. Why? Because I think the work was done better by having a company that specialized in the work (truck springs) and because I know that many times a project that is just supposed to last for 45 minutes or just for 2 hours ends up being a long and drawn out project. And we can't afford to be losing both an employee and a truck.

Anyways, I know there are many different viewpoints on this, and I know I will have a different angle when our building is built, but this is my present state of mind.
 
I fix most things, and do all my own routine maintainance.

Some things I can do, but farm out for other reasons.

Case in point:

Brakes... if something happens to EFF up and I hit someone, it falls back on the shop, not on me.
 
Yeah.... we have a 2001 Dodge Ram 3500 on its second transmission with only 30,000 miles on it.

I don't like full-size pickup automatic transmissions. Compared to the International manual transmissions, they're all crap. The big truck transmissions are bullet-proof. Except for clutches. We had one driver wear out a clutch in 8,000 miles. :rolleyes: Smart guy, but we called him Coffee since he ground a pot every day.

Told the Ford dealership today that I don't think they work on big vehicles very often... I like the new Chevy/GMC 4500/5500/6500. If the Ford F-550 keeps tanking, we'll keep our money walking. At $40,000 a pop, it's no small purchase decision. When you're buying a bunch. :eek:

Now we're getting a couple of Penske trucks to replace the chip trucks. The diesel automatics are great, but they're trying to unload the gas models and are pricing them "aggressively." Great time to buy.
 
The Dodge trannys were notoriously weak until '00... a problem that was fixed. They actually weren't that bad, just didn't stand up well to intentional abuse. You way want to take a hard look at the driver and his...err...."style".
 
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