Chris Collins breaks down why quick-lube techs paid on flat rate only hit 40% efficiency. The math: a tech earning $20/hour for 8 hours produces just 3.2 billable hours of work, exposing the mismatch between flat-rate pay and the actual pace of quick-lube jobs.
December 28, 2025
$20 per hour
Eight hours per day
About 40% efficiency
If you understand what flat rate is, that you know, you're not paying for the hour until the hour is produced. Once you have that understanding, then it's easier to back up and explain on applied time that you're paying the hour even though there's been no hour billed to the customer.
Yeah, flat.
Rate until you're billing it to the customer.
You know, simple analogy is say you have a quick loop tech and they work eight hours a day. Quick lube techs are not flat rate because they wouldn't be, you know, it would be very rare that a quick lube tech could run at 100% efficiency. And so you're paying, let's say you're paying a quick lube tech $20 an hour just for a number. And they work eight hours a day. And let's say they, they usually a quick lube tech in most dealerships runs at about 40% efficient. Yeah.
Somewhere else.
So 60% of their pay. Right. Like five plus hours a day is they're getting paid for it, but it's not billed to a customer. And so that's the unapplied part.
