Chris Collins says dealership quick lube services can be very profitable if you hit 20-30 minute oil changes, staff properly so two techs aren't sharing a stall, and train advisors to build rapport with customers. Clear pricing and add-on presentation matter too.
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Here. And my sidekick, Bacon, he's right here. You can't see him, he's off camera, but he's doing good. I want to talk to you today about quick lubes. And it's probably the question I get asked about most is, do we do a quick lube? Can you make a quick lube profitable? And I'm going to tell you the good things about a quick lube. And then I'm going to tell you the mistakes that I commonly see. First of all, quick lube can be profitable. It can be very profitable. And it's the greatest way in today's competitive market to drive traffic. And the key to having a successful quick lube is you gotta be fast. You've got to do the oil changes really quick and kill your competition. It's the greatest way to drive ro counts and to kill the quick lubes in your market by a customer knowing that they can get in and out of there 20 or 30 minutes. And one thing that you can do as a strategy is peel the car wash away and tell a customer like, this is going to be about 25 minutes for us to get this done. If you want a car wash, it adds another 10 or 15 minutes. And separate that when the advisor presents it to the customer. So they perceive the difference between us and a quick lube because quick lubes don't wash their car. So a customer's idea of a quick oil change is less than 30 minutes. But when they come to a dealership, we start talking about, oh, with the car wash, it's an hour. Then customers can't connect with that. And that hurts you. What you want to do is separate the two and tell a customer, we can get this done in 25 minutes. If you'd like a car wash, it'll be a little bit longer. And separate that and frame your customers that that is what's going to happen. And they have a choice. And so then the added time is their choice. And it's not that we failed them. We or that we have. When the car leaves the service drive, it goes in the back. It goes through a different link than when it's at a quick lube. And there's more steps to it. Cause there aren't. So a quick lube can work really, really well to drive traffic and to kill your competition if you can do them fast. The mistakes that I see dealerships make with quick lubes is they stick to the 1995 or 29.95 pricing strategy. Now, I don't know if you have shopped the quick lubes in your area. But I was just in Iowa last week, and the dealership that I'm working with, their oil changes are 29.95, and the quick lube is 79.95 in their market. And there's a quick lube right on the same street as them, and they're 79.95. So you don't have to necessarily drive price in order to have a successful quick lube. You can raise that because the lowest I've seen a jiffy lube or any of those quick lube guys is 50 bucks, 49.95. So be aware that they're doing them fast, but they're not doing them as cheap as we are in the dealership. So make sure that you shop those. And you know, you can be 69.95 if everybody around you is 79.95, and you'd be surprised at their pricing. And you don't have to match that. So that's one key to having a successful quick lube. The two things that I see going on is manufacturers are coming in with programs for canned quick lube programs that they want us to do. And the part that they get right and that we all would agree with is the time. And what we talked about at the beginning of this video, that a Customer's perception is 20, 30 minutes. That's it. And that's where the quick lubes kill us, is on the time, not on the price. And so they have that right. But a couple mistakes that we make is one is two technicians. Two unproductive hourly technicians, mind you, in one stall is never going to be profitable and does not double the time. You can do an oil change, and I've done it many, many times with one technician. I can get an oil change done in 20 minutes. Two people does not get it done in 10 minutes. And if it's taking you 40 minutes to do an oil change, two guys in a stall is not going to get it done in 20 minutes. So the idea that one guy is getting the filter while the other one's draining an oil, unless you're running a pit, it doesn't pencil one you can have. You'd be better to have two kids.
In two different stalls doing oil changes and fix the rest of your system. Get service, drive judo in place and fix your system of how the customers are written up, the flow of how the cars get to the technicians and the parts part of it, and all that. Fix that. But I've never seen two Guys in a stall, double the productivity of that stall and that hurts your profitability. Then the next thing is we don't do an inspection on those cars. A lot of times we have technicians that are making $10 an hour that are left all alone in a quick lube. And they're not inspecting the cars like your veterans would in the back, who are flat rate technicians. And so we're running all these cars in and out, thousands and thousands of cars, but we're leaving the least qualified guy to inspect the car, inspecting the car. So you want to make sure, however, you can do it. And I have a lot of different ways to do it in my training, but you want to make sure that, that somebody who's qualified is inspecting those cars and looking at it through the eyes of a flat rate technician that wants that work, not through the eyes of a guy who just wants to get it done in 20 minutes and get the car out of there. So those are kind of the good and the bad. But overall, a quick lube can be very profitable. And drive RO counts, especially when RO counts are dropping. We can't afford to be losing customers to the independents. When cars are made better and the maintenance intervals are longer, we're seeing our customers less. So when we lose them to the independents, it hurts us even more. And beyond all that, and I preach this all the time, is the advisors gotta connect. They gotta connect with these customers. And don't just have somebody running these customers in and out. You gotta talk to them about where they're headed for the day, what their kids are doing, where they work, things that are important to the customer and give them a little time to chit chat and build rapport. It's not just an in and out and there. It can be two minutes, it's not a big thing. But you want to connect and really pet the dog with these customers. And that can make a quick lube very, very successful and will increase your retention in your dealership and drive more cars to the sales department also.
