Cyclist0108

Well, it does definitively explain why it is hard to find (and keep) a competent mechanic.

Rage

Yeah, that’s rough.
To put it into perspective, a first year schoolteacher can expect to make fifty to fifty five grand a year here in NYC. Which is like poverty wages hereabouts. A friend of mine is a non-union doorman or “front-desk operative,” as they preferred to be known in my old tribeca apt building, and he says he makes less’n that.

I have no idea how he supports a wife and three kids and that’s taking into account he has to commute to work in the west village from Jackson, NJ. That’s gotta be an hour and a half one way? And how much does that even cost btw? Getting to work has to take a bite out of his wages. He has to spend fifteen or twenty bucks a day, I think. Maybe more.

If it were me, I would try and find work closer to home but he says he loves working in the building.
I can’t imagine a three hour or more daily round-trip commute to work as a doorman for less’n fifty grand a year.
I think I might have made more as a bike messenger twenty five years ago when I was in high school/college.

My rent in the financial district in the early 2000s when I was right out of school was over 2700 a month. That’s a little over thirty grand a year. Rents have dipped recently because of the pandemic but I doubt that they are lower than 2700 for a nice-ish three bedroom. It’s probably more like 2700 for a tiny two bedroom shoebox now.

Unless you’ve got a nice rent-stabilized apt or indulgent and wealthy parents or something, it’s going to be really tough living on a bike mechanic’s wages. Even in NYC, formerly one of the biggest economies in the world.

Koyote

If enough people were not willing to do the jobs at those salaries, they would rise.

DorkDisk

Last shop I worked at in NYC (2017) paid the head mech $17/hr.

And access to wholesale prices.

rydabent

As usual you get what you pay for. A good experience bike mechanic should make more than that.

deacon mark

Well I am not a paid mechanic at a shop but with maybe one exception I know, the ones in the LBS around here are not stellar and do not seem to be top notch. They find someone that can do the basic things but to build a wheel, or deal with various headset they are clueless. Bottom brackets can throw them for sure, fact if the parts and bike are not part of the line they carry they basically do not know what do. I am not a fast working mechanic but I will get it done correct. No, I cannot work for $17 a hour takes more to pay the bills for sure.

2old

My LBS charges $80+ per hour for service ($100 for a wheel build, for example), so must be paying a living wage to the techs, although nobody is buying a house in socal on that wage. Must be doing OK since their backlog is four weeks+. I always get a kick out of these "one-post wonders".

HerrKaLeun

Interesting insight and explains why if you like bicycles you should make it a hobby, not a career.

I wonder what the billable rates for the above wage workers are. In construction it ends up to be around double the wages. But I doubt the above shop paying $17, only charges the customer $34.

hokiefyd 

A 2x bill rate is not uncommon in a variety of fields, but I imagine something like service rates in a bike shop would have a higher multiplier. Recuperation of direct labor costs in consulting or construction is somewhat predictable. You have a guy working 40 hours a week doing a given job and you can bill 2x his labor rate to cover your overhead, rent, insurance, etc. But service labor in a bike shop, traditionally, is not a guaranteed or steady activity (I realize localized market forces recently have created long backlogs, but I'm talking longer term). You'll have people who may not be servicing a bike 100% of the time, or folks dedicated to sales, etc. I don't imagine a busines as small as a local bike shop has multiple profit centers within the operation, so the markups on labor and parts really have to combine to cover the overhead of the whole deal. So service prices in a bike shop might be based on something like a 4x multiplier -- a job that takes an hour for a $10/hr tech might be invoiced as $40. A $15/hr "senior" tech doing a 2-hour job ($30 in direct labor) might cost the customer $120.

Another thing a tech's labor rate multiplier has to cover is the multitude of services offered with the purchase of a new bike. Some shops offer free adjustments for the first year, first three years, or even for the life of the bike. I imagine some of that is covered with the sale of the bike, but at some point, the investment in free adjustments eclipses the profit realized from the original sale and the shop has to start swallowing the cost.

I have not owned a bike shop and I imagine the finances, and pricing and labor strategies, are pretty interesting.

deacon mark

I do some work on bikes for friends and I am guitar repairment/luthier. I have to make $35 an hour for that work or I don't touch it. Some of the usually stuff repairing guitars is fine and pays ok it has so offset the occasional situation that requires a huge amount or time and/or process. Dropping a $7000 guitar in the process is not the same as knocking a bike over by accident. That usually is nothing at all and not many bikes worth $7k. Guitars I work on worth more than most bikes by far.

HerrKaLeun

I don't think the service part should subsidize new bike sale. The " free" tune up with the sale of a bike should be covered by the bike margin. Not saying it isn't done, just saying this isn't good business practice. But I can imagine an LBS has a lot of non-billable time of people coming in just asking stupid questions, getting a quote and never buying something etc. Also not every hour paid is billable. There is training, cleaning, HR related hours etc.

I'm a self-wrencher and forum/youtube learner. But I feel sorry for LBS when people do it half-way. They buy their own parts (or cross-shop on internet and then demand the same price) and make life just difficult with knowing everything better. And then the people who come and want free advice on how to it themselves or want to borrow tools for free I'm of the opinion, if you can't or won't do it yourself, you should go all in and have the shop do it inc. parts.

DiabloScott

I'm used to seeing 3x to 4x labor multipliers... that has to cover fringe including vacation time, sick time, health care, and other overhead maybe bike shops don't pay.

But if an LBS charged me $45/hour for labor, I'd assume the mechanic's getting $15.

Iride01 

See what you started by commenting on a three year old dead thread? I guess on the plus side you've given others something to do with their spare time. <grin>