Originally Posted by
Mad Honk
Sorry guys my computer locked up while responding. I have spent over $50,000 in tools and $15,000 in storage to be able to service your bikes, and I still can't recover the cost of the tools. It seems far too difficult to post the message but suffice it to sa it costs way too much to do this for free.
$50k on tools? Are you sure about that because auto mechanics spend on average around 30K to 50k and they have a lot more tools and computer stuff then a bike shop would, Park sells a complete masters tool kit for $7,600. So I'm assuming your shop must be very large and have maybe 10 mechanics so you need enough tools to go around? I read this post early today, so I went to a small mom and pop (actually a husband and wife, wife is the mechanic) shop and asked them how much money do they thing they got tied up in tools, they estimated about $5,000 because they bought some of their tools from other places that were cheaper than Park but work just as good. Another shop in town has 1 full time mechanic and 2 seasonal mechanics and that shop spent about $8,500 to $9,000 in tools and some of that was sort of recent expenditures due to new electronic stuff that has come out, and some of it was redundant tools in case two mechanics needed the same tool at the same time, so they bought duplicates of the most commonly used tools.
I didn't see anyone mentioning that bicycle mechanics should do their work for free or they're charging too much, in fact I think shop rates are a bit too low if you ask me, but they consider bicycle mechanics as the lowest form of mechanical knowledge; on the flip side I think automotive shop rates are too high at now hovering around $120 an hour-of course the mechanic himself doesn't make near that much, they'll only make around $24 hour average which I think is crappy of the shops to take so much profit from labor and parts and pay the mechanic poorly especially since most mechanics are paying for loans on their tools, and those loans never stop because every year the damn car manufactures have to make a car that requires the mechanics to buy a new tool or several new tools so the bill just gets added to the loan!; now try to put the auto mechanic thing into prospective, while the bike mechanic doesn't get ASE certifications, so the expertise level is different and not near as complicated as auto mechanics, but for a bike mechanic to make an average of $12 an hour is just poor wages, heck McDonalds pays that much in a lot of areas! Most bicycle mechanics work for shop owner and the shop owner owns the tools so the mechanic isn't subject to buying the tools and getting a loan for them.