$199 per hour shop labor rate
I was floored today while at General RV. Their new 2018 labor rate charged is $ 199 hr. I had to look twice. It goes up every year. 5 hours working on your rig ... $1000 bucks, not including parts.
Forum Discussion
Harvey51 wrote:What a crock. John Deere never had a problem or a $ for me when I retrofitted their machines to avoid a technical difficulty. The last time I saw their Service Manager, I called him out on a couple of my fixes that became standard issue. I was screaming Patent infringement and any other thing so that anyone within earshot knew how they operated. The other nastiness is that they probably charge big $$ for those parts, even if my fix only required a piece of drilled mild steel.
Another trend to worry about . . . Farm equipment manufacturers are starting to use the computer control to require all work to be done by the dealers. John Deere, for example has the computer on a combine or tractor programmed to require a dealer password to allow major new parts to work on the machine. If the farmer installs a new or used part on his combine in the field a dealer tech must come and authorize it to work. A typical fee for that is $500. Here is a Video about this and a group trying to fight it.
One time, I had a miscommunication on a bearing order. They shipped me an axle bearing with one number misplaced on the order. That bearing was $1200. Green and yellow isn't cheap!
