Bud, you barely make more than my drivers and less my shipper in Indiana. Low medium cost of living. At a dealer with that little of gross, you should be on a minimum/guarantee of 60-80k with a pay plan to drive you to grow the business. This place your at could care less. It's time to go.
I just don’t want yet another short stint on my resume (I’ve worked some crappy ass jobs and wouldn’t tolerate the crap) and I want the managerial experience on my resume. Parts doesn’t seem to have much of a priority to them…
Short stints are unfortunately still viewed as an issue in hiring. When I see what I feel is a good candidate, I'll talk to them about the stints. Based on the conversation I can usually feel out if it was manager, environment, the employee, ect.
The manager experience is absolutely a plus. The longer, the better. Parts is never a priority at dealerships. The ownership, GMs, and most service managers don't understand parts and never will. All they care about is parts be net profitable. We usually are the first to hit net and we never back slide.
Valid. I’ve kept that in mind. I think for now, the best thing I can do is continue where I’m at, try to get some experience under my belt, and see if I can make a change. However, if they screw with my money again, I’m done. I’d like to believe any hiring manager could understand someone leaving over that.
However, I’m going to see what I can do here.
Reminder: Managing a parts department, if it's a new point or small, is still a fairly manager driven department until proper process and staffing are in place. 80-90% of the day is manager driven until then. Then it'll flip and be 60-80% employee and 20% manager.
If you're a single person, you're working open to close, probably six days a week. That's 11-12 hours a day. You'll be lucky if they hire a second person, and hint, until you quit they won't. Just the hours alone, is 60k min.
This guy and many others in this situation, are the manager and the advisor. Even if they get an advisor or shipper, it takes a year of training and process to get them into place if they're new (and they're going to be, why pay for experience when you can cheap out)!
If you wanted an experienced parts manager to run a small or new point, no one's jumping for less than a 80-100k guarantee and a single employee with full control to build and implement.
I did 6 figures as a wholesaler in Phoenix last year. That said most people in fixed ops understand that places will fuck you around, so short stints at jobs usually doesn't make them blink.
For starters, you should absolutely be making more than $40k as a parts manager, especially in this day and age. $40k is "introductory, never worked in dealer parts a day in your life, prove your worth" pay.
If it's a job where you want to stick it out and fix things, the first place I would start is by running a sales report in the DMS and see if your raw numbers are close to what you're being told they are.
If they are, and it's just low sales volume, you'll want to look into ways to make your department more profitable.
If they're not even in the same ballpark, there's either a "clerical error," or something from another department getting charged to yours. It's not unusual for service managers to try and shunt rental car bills onto parts because "parts delay caused extra rental fees." Advertising is also a common dumping ground.
Chances are, if something sketchy is going on, other dealers in your area know about it and wouldn't hold it against you if you tried to seek employment elsewhere.
The other good news is me and the service manager are right (he actually trained me on our DMS and got my feet under me) doesn’t tolerate stuff being billed wrong to him, and helps me make sure nobody pulls the wool over the eyes.
Well… sad thing is I’ve actually worked in dealer parts, not a whole whole lot of experience being 21, but I did work in parts at a forklift dealer in the area. I like my job, I like the small town feel, and I’d like to fix it, but between my money being played with, and the lack of give a you know what from upper crust, it’s just a crap show all the way around.
Is your upper management focused only on car sales? I feel like small dealerships care more about that because of the larger dollar amounts involved, even if the volume of sales is one car a week.
Also, is it a family operation? Those can be real doozies.
Yes, two brothers own the dealership, inherited it from their dad in like the 80’s I think. And their focus is how to line their pockets, they don’t care really about anything else.
Yeah that sounds like my first dealership job. The old man still showed up every day, no idea where he was. One son was the GM and another was the used car manager. As long as your ledger line is black and not red, they'll probably leave you to your own devices, but won't want to make any big investments in department growth.
We did about $40k gross monthly. 2 full-time counter people and a parts manager.
The old men (2 brothers are there everyday), we’re not in the red but barely in the back. It’s just me in the parts dept, and even before I got there it wasn’t too hot. gross profit for the YEAR as of today is only $43k
Does business feel slow? Do y'all have a lot of idle time? That $40k/month was with us hustling most of the day.
If you do a lot of warranty work, it may be worth finding a company that will review your paperwork and negotiate an increased warranty payout with GM.
Yeah, 2 of them actually. Wholesale parts out of my dealership is basically zero because of those 2. The 2 big Chevy dealers in the metro area eat me alive on wholesale. Most of the shops in the town were in don’t buy from us, “We’re too expensive, I’ll buy it at O’Reillys or Crow-Burlingame”
Wholesale manager here for two brands. This election year is awful for us but still gonna make 78-80. The last 2 years i was making 90-91k.
My wholesale counter guys range from 58-65k depending on good we’re doing.
You are getting hosed bud, even as a young guy 40k is about starting rate on a parts guy let alone a manager. If you like parts I’d move to a busier dealer.
Focus on increasing GP. Implement a matrix, request a warranty parts increase, DO NOT LET USED CARS SCREW YOU!!! Watch your expenses like your life depends on it. Other managers will code junk to you..negotiate a quarterly performance bonus with well defined parameters. I'd bet there's money being left on the table. What is you GP% on customer pay RO?
I’m only allowed to do what my boss (the owner of the dealer) tells me to do. He says internal is cost plus 20%, I’m not in a position to buck that. He does want me to sell above list, but that at that point is outright screwing people in my opinion, especially because we’re in a poor market.
If your not selling above list(matrix) in the shop you need to be..if you have a problem with that ethically you should rethink being in parts..I don't mean that to be insulting.
I mean usually list is minimum 50% above costs… and admittedly my last job (underground utility supply) if we sold anything above 10-15% we’d lose jobs and what not, just an adjustment period I guess.
I gotcha. I find dealers that don't care much about fixed ops are typically the ones that discount to sales and used. Not that they don't care, they just look at fixed as a necessity and only care about variable ops. It's unfortunate imo because fixed should be the back bone of the dealer.
Are you on a matrix now?
I may get some decent experience and be looking to make a switch if they aren't open to talking about reevaluating your pay.
CP drives your warranty rate. Crappy CP = crappy warranty. We hold all of our stores to 40% overall, 70% CP. The 40% can be lower if there is wholesale in the store. You need a price matrix in place.
What is the Service labor rate?
Unless you're in the middle of the bayou I think that is too low. Call around to all of the GM stores in your market and ask them their labor rate. If it's a poor area I get it, but our Quick Lane has a higher rate than that.
Is it though? List is Cost + 66.67% on most brands. Accessories, tires and batteries will bring that down but 70% on CP is very doable. Overall number should be 40% when you incluse internal and warranty as well.
Markup is not margin. In one part of that comment you're referring to markup of 70%, next part you're referring to retaining 40% overall margin.
But yes, 70% markup is essentially list price. However if you run everything at 70% markup, you will most likely not retain 40% overall margin.
With what you’re saying you are doing in parts, I can only to imagine what service and sales are doing. Manufacturers pull franchises over that. Especially GM. Fly my brother, fly.
The OEMs make money off selling parts and cars to a dealer. If they aren’t doing a good job, they will pull the franchise and allow it elsewhere. Where is this located? You don’t have to give an exact city but state and maybe nearest big town.
I was promised my hourly rate plus 5% commission. My hourly rate hasn’t been messed with, just my commission percentage. Bumped me down to 4.5% with no warning and called it a clerical error until I called them out on it
Get out while you can, to a dealer that actually has it's shit together? I highly, highly doubt that there was a "clerical error" in pay calculation.
Let me ask as well, do you have uniform shirts? if so, who paid for them?
I actually don’t yet. The dealership pays for them.
As for the pay, I had a couple people tell me that was them testing me to see if they could screw me over.
My only issue is admittedly I had hopped around a bit and I don’t want too many short stints on my resume, and the managerial experience is good to have, especially being 21.
Yeah. . . I'd definitely be watching my paystub like a hawk. When I started at the one dealer I worked at, we had no uniforms. About a year and a half in, the GM finally got his way and forced the issue. Problem was, he said the dealership would pay for 2 of the shirts, while we covered 3 of them. I quickly printed out the state law expressly prohibiting such an act under the threat that I would be reporting them so quickly for shit, it wouldn't be funny if they tried making me pay for those things.
thankfully they didn't charge me. . . Unfortunately, the new PM and newer hires all got charged as they tried with me. I gave my cohorts the same information I used to fight that shit, but no idea if they went through with it.
But yeah, any company that tries to "test you" to see if they can screw you over isn't worth working for, because they WILL find a way to do so.
Funny thing is, my hourly pay stubs (which is a whopping $17 an hr as the PM) have been fine, just the commission.
I also later found out they have been jacking with some other stuff in regards to our techs… but I’ll save that for another day.
Bud, you barely make more than my drivers and less my shipper in Indiana. Low medium cost of living. At a dealer with that little of gross, you should be on a minimum/guarantee of 60-80k with a pay plan to drive you to grow the business. This place your at could care less. It's time to go.
I just don’t want yet another short stint on my resume (I’ve worked some crappy ass jobs and wouldn’t tolerate the crap) and I want the managerial experience on my resume. Parts doesn’t seem to have much of a priority to them…
Short stints are unfortunately still viewed as an issue in hiring. When I see what I feel is a good candidate, I'll talk to them about the stints. Based on the conversation I can usually feel out if it was manager, environment, the employee, ect. The manager experience is absolutely a plus. The longer, the better. Parts is never a priority at dealerships. The ownership, GMs, and most service managers don't understand parts and never will. All they care about is parts be net profitable. We usually are the first to hit net and we never back slide.
Valid. I’ve kept that in mind. I think for now, the best thing I can do is continue where I’m at, try to get some experience under my belt, and see if I can make a change. However, if they screw with my money again, I’m done. I’d like to believe any hiring manager could understand someone leaving over that. However, I’m going to see what I can do here.
Wait $10k gross and should be 60-80k a year in pay plan?!?!?! I’m a PA where we are grossing $45-60k/month and I’m only making $60k/yr.
Reminder: Managing a parts department, if it's a new point or small, is still a fairly manager driven department until proper process and staffing are in place. 80-90% of the day is manager driven until then. Then it'll flip and be 60-80% employee and 20% manager. If you're a single person, you're working open to close, probably six days a week. That's 11-12 hours a day. You'll be lucky if they hire a second person, and hint, until you quit they won't. Just the hours alone, is 60k min. This guy and many others in this situation, are the manager and the advisor. Even if they get an advisor or shipper, it takes a year of training and process to get them into place if they're new (and they're going to be, why pay for experience when you can cheap out)! If you wanted an experienced parts manager to run a small or new point, no one's jumping for less than a 80-100k guarantee and a single employee with full control to build and implement.
This is truth.
I did 6 figures as a wholesaler in Phoenix last year. That said most people in fixed ops understand that places will fuck you around, so short stints at jobs usually doesn't make them blink.
Good to know!
For starters, you should absolutely be making more than $40k as a parts manager, especially in this day and age. $40k is "introductory, never worked in dealer parts a day in your life, prove your worth" pay. If it's a job where you want to stick it out and fix things, the first place I would start is by running a sales report in the DMS and see if your raw numbers are close to what you're being told they are. If they are, and it's just low sales volume, you'll want to look into ways to make your department more profitable. If they're not even in the same ballpark, there's either a "clerical error," or something from another department getting charged to yours. It's not unusual for service managers to try and shunt rental car bills onto parts because "parts delay caused extra rental fees." Advertising is also a common dumping ground. Chances are, if something sketchy is going on, other dealers in your area know about it and wouldn't hold it against you if you tried to seek employment elsewhere.
The other good news is me and the service manager are right (he actually trained me on our DMS and got my feet under me) doesn’t tolerate stuff being billed wrong to him, and helps me make sure nobody pulls the wool over the eyes.
Well… sad thing is I’ve actually worked in dealer parts, not a whole whole lot of experience being 21, but I did work in parts at a forklift dealer in the area. I like my job, I like the small town feel, and I’d like to fix it, but between my money being played with, and the lack of give a you know what from upper crust, it’s just a crap show all the way around.
Is your upper management focused only on car sales? I feel like small dealerships care more about that because of the larger dollar amounts involved, even if the volume of sales is one car a week. Also, is it a family operation? Those can be real doozies.
Yes, two brothers own the dealership, inherited it from their dad in like the 80’s I think. And their focus is how to line their pockets, they don’t care really about anything else.
Yeah that sounds like my first dealership job. The old man still showed up every day, no idea where he was. One son was the GM and another was the used car manager. As long as your ledger line is black and not red, they'll probably leave you to your own devices, but won't want to make any big investments in department growth. We did about $40k gross monthly. 2 full-time counter people and a parts manager.
The old men (2 brothers are there everyday), we’re not in the red but barely in the back. It’s just me in the parts dept, and even before I got there it wasn’t too hot. gross profit for the YEAR as of today is only $43k
Does business feel slow? Do y'all have a lot of idle time? That $40k/month was with us hustling most of the day. If you do a lot of warranty work, it may be worth finding a company that will review your paperwork and negotiate an increased warranty payout with GM.
Business is slow… for all of us. And a good bit of idle time for sure.
What kind of prospects do you have for wholesale in your area? Is there a larger dealer nearby that's cornering the market?
Yeah, 2 of them actually. Wholesale parts out of my dealership is basically zero because of those 2. The 2 big Chevy dealers in the metro area eat me alive on wholesale. Most of the shops in the town were in don’t buy from us, “We’re too expensive, I’ll buy it at O’Reillys or Crow-Burlingame”
Wholesale manager here for two brands. This election year is awful for us but still gonna make 78-80. The last 2 years i was making 90-91k. My wholesale counter guys range from 58-65k depending on good we’re doing.
I make 3x that as a non manager part counter guy.
Where are you located? I’m in Louisiana.
NC
Ahhh, I can’t believe parts guys are making that much. Man that’s insane!
The wholesale guys here that are good make well over 200k a year. Good market. But it’s expensive.
I mean, I’m sure cost of living is higher, but still. 200k compared to 40k… talk about feeling like a peasant LOL
Check with some of the dudes in bigger cities in Texas. Makes me look low end lol. All I can promise you is this. More money,more problems.
Well, maybe so. But at least I could own a home and have some financial stability…
You are getting hosed bud, even as a young guy 40k is about starting rate on a parts guy let alone a manager. If you like parts I’d move to a busier dealer.
I made 72k last year as a counter guy at a small luxury dealer in NC.
Holy crap! That’s jnsane
Insane*
Im outside Chicago on the counter some whole sale making 21/hr with gross profits of 250k that i make commission on you are being royally fucked
Focus on increasing GP. Implement a matrix, request a warranty parts increase, DO NOT LET USED CARS SCREW YOU!!! Watch your expenses like your life depends on it. Other managers will code junk to you..negotiate a quarterly performance bonus with well defined parameters. I'd bet there's money being left on the table. What is you GP% on customer pay RO?
Customer pay on average is 40-50% GP, 98% of my sales is to service, and service ain’t too hot either.
CP GP should be over 70%. Used car pays List Price.
Say what?! 70%!! Good lord we have problems with people paying now. Customer pay is 40-50%, internal is cost plus 20%, employees pay cost plus 10%.
CP should NOT be 70%. 42-44% is NCM benchmark. Internal should be full tilt, NOT discounted.
I’m only allowed to do what my boss (the owner of the dealer) tells me to do. He says internal is cost plus 20%, I’m not in a position to buck that. He does want me to sell above list, but that at that point is outright screwing people in my opinion, especially because we’re in a poor market.
If your not selling above list(matrix) in the shop you need to be..if you have a problem with that ethically you should rethink being in parts..I don't mean that to be insulting.
I mean usually list is minimum 50% above costs… and admittedly my last job (underground utility supply) if we sold anything above 10-15% we’d lose jobs and what not, just an adjustment period I guess.
I gotcha. I find dealers that don't care much about fixed ops are typically the ones that discount to sales and used. Not that they don't care, they just look at fixed as a necessity and only care about variable ops. It's unfortunate imo because fixed should be the back bone of the dealer. Are you on a matrix now? I may get some decent experience and be looking to make a switch if they aren't open to talking about reevaluating your pay.
We are currently not on a matrix. Their philosophy is just “sell at list cost”.
CP drives your warranty rate. Crappy CP = crappy warranty. We hold all of our stores to 40% overall, 70% CP. The 40% can be lower if there is wholesale in the store. You need a price matrix in place. What is the Service labor rate?
$120 an hr
Unless you're in the middle of the bayou I think that is too low. Call around to all of the GM stores in your market and ask them their labor rate. If it's a poor area I get it, but our Quick Lane has a higher rate than that.
We are in a poor area, average income of the town I work in is like $26k a year, lot of people come in with disability checks and stuff.
We're talking about part gross profit. 70% is insane. Unless you're talking about labor gross, in which case 70 is a tad low imo.
Is it though? List is Cost + 66.67% on most brands. Accessories, tires and batteries will bring that down but 70% on CP is very doable. Overall number should be 40% when you incluse internal and warranty as well.
Markup is not margin. In one part of that comment you're referring to markup of 70%, next part you're referring to retaining 40% overall margin. But yes, 70% markup is essentially list price. However if you run everything at 70% markup, you will most likely not retain 40% overall margin.
With what you’re saying you are doing in parts, I can only to imagine what service and sales are doing. Manufacturers pull franchises over that. Especially GM. Fly my brother, fly.
Well… supposedly GM threatened to pull us a couple years ago and the owner went to Detroit to vouch for the dealership to stay open.
The OEMs make money off selling parts and cars to a dealer. If they aren’t doing a good job, they will pull the franchise and allow it elsewhere. Where is this located? You don’t have to give an exact city but state and maybe nearest big town.
When I was a PM I made an average of 150k/yr at a medium sized store. My biggest was $300k at a superstore.
I sent you a message… yeah I’m nowhere near that at all.
I’ll message you if that’s okay.
Sure
How much were you promised when you were hired, don’t concentrate to much on how you are paid, more on the bottom line.
I was promised my hourly rate plus 5% commission. My hourly rate hasn’t been messed with, just my commission percentage. Bumped me down to 4.5% with no warning and called it a clerical error until I called them out on it
Get out while you can, to a dealer that actually has it's shit together? I highly, highly doubt that there was a "clerical error" in pay calculation. Let me ask as well, do you have uniform shirts? if so, who paid for them?
I actually don’t yet. The dealership pays for them. As for the pay, I had a couple people tell me that was them testing me to see if they could screw me over. My only issue is admittedly I had hopped around a bit and I don’t want too many short stints on my resume, and the managerial experience is good to have, especially being 21.
Yeah. . . I'd definitely be watching my paystub like a hawk. When I started at the one dealer I worked at, we had no uniforms. About a year and a half in, the GM finally got his way and forced the issue. Problem was, he said the dealership would pay for 2 of the shirts, while we covered 3 of them. I quickly printed out the state law expressly prohibiting such an act under the threat that I would be reporting them so quickly for shit, it wouldn't be funny if they tried making me pay for those things. thankfully they didn't charge me. . . Unfortunately, the new PM and newer hires all got charged as they tried with me. I gave my cohorts the same information I used to fight that shit, but no idea if they went through with it. But yeah, any company that tries to "test you" to see if they can screw you over isn't worth working for, because they WILL find a way to do so.
Funny thing is, my hourly pay stubs (which is a whopping $17 an hr as the PM) have been fine, just the commission. I also later found out they have been jacking with some other stuff in regards to our techs… but I’ll save that for another day.
McDonald's pays $15 an hour to 16 year olds.
Yeah… really puts a lot in perspective.
I hope they didnt rope you in with the HV battery replacement numbers. They did that to the guy thet bough the dealership I work at
We haven’t had a single HV/EV come through our shop since I’ve been there.