...take more of these dollars to buy what we need to repair vehicles, so what can we do about it?
"I have shop customers who currently have three-week backlogs and can’t find people to do the work, and more consequences are coming," Ronak said. "The experts are also predicting that the feds will raise interest rates twice in 2022. So, if you need to borrow money, now’s the time, because the rules are going to change fast.”
When supplies shrink, prices go up, and compounded with record inflation, prices are poised to increase exponentially, Ronak said.
“That means salaries for your technical staff might go up from $25 to $35 per hour because your competition will be the first ones to raise their rates in order to raise their rates to afford to pay people what they deserve. Their groceries, gas, energy costs are the unavoidable expenses of living that are going up, so they will logically be looking for more money to pay their bills.”
Ronak outlined the terms associated with labor rates.
A retail rate is a shop’s individual posted rate.
“The market rate is the average rate of all shops’ retail door rates in the local area,” he said. “A contracted rate is the rate agreed to by a third-party contract conditional on receiving work volume through a DRP, and a prevailing rate is an ‘asserted’ market rate by a third-party using a survey method they define (which may incorrectly include contracted rates).”
Typically, when inflation comes along, small businesses are the losers, primarily because...
Ed Attanasio