Truck repair -- parts markup seems high...

It is normal. They are doing it for a living.

My Brother in law, who is an independent mechanic, would tell you if you want to supply the parts install them yourself. He's not being a spchincter, he's just a businessman. Then again I have been telling him for years his prices are too cheap but he is one hell of a nice guy and honest person. When he buys parts at the chain stores, or a dealer, he gets them much cheaper than the average Joe gets them walking in off the street. He marks them back up 15% over his cost so depending on the part it may still be less than what you can get it for. The markup on OEM parts at a dealer is really high FYI.

People go out and buy the cheapest part they can find, the mechanic installs it, and when it fails a few weeks down the road they then expect the mechanic to replace it for free.

It's even worse than you think as a 7.3 water pump can be bought for $60 delivered on Ebay plus no sales tax and a 12 month warranty. If you need it the next day then use Amazon and pay the sales tax.

$75+/hour is more than enough to be "one hell of a nice guy and honest person" without making a profit on the parts. If not needed today, I can buy it for a lot less than what he's paying locally.

My parts bill last year was over $8,000 and without the internet it would have been $15,000 as with a little research I can often find the item for half plus shipping on some item and often no sales tax. Last week I probably should have bought the entire gear box for $700 instead of one shaft and no gears for $300.

Ben Franklin said a dollar saved is a dollar earned. Today he is way off as I have to earn over $17 to have $10 to spend. That $7,000 savings above actually saved me $12,000 as that's how muck I'd have to earn before all the various taxes are taken out or paid...sales tax.

cannesdo wrote:
Why would anyone buy parts from a garage for that kind of mark-up when they could get them retail for so much less?

austingta wrote:
It is normal. They are doing it for a living.

Somewhat true. Are the prices from the "auto supply place" true "retail" prices ? Are they for parts from manufacturer ?

The sad truth is most auto repair places charge full retail and very few will allow you to bring in your own parts.

I do most of my own maintenance on all of my vehicles, but I did take on to my preferred repair shop for a new muffler (it had a lifetime warranty). There "safety inspection" recommended that I get a new belt, $90 installed. An online discount part store (Rock Auto) sells "top of the line" replacement for about $35. Lot's of profit in that quote !

One of the reasons I'm getting out of the business is my wholesaler sells on Amazon for the same price I pay- not worth it to have $25K tied up in inventory only to have people think I am a crook for wanting to get a 35% markup.

Do you take eggs to a restaurant and ask them to cook them? It is the same thing.

austingta wrote:
It is normal. They are doing it for a living.

This. It is how they make a living.

Find a good repair shop, frequent them, and DO NOT "nickel and dime" them to death! Be a good customer, and it will pay off when you are really in a jam and need help.

I work for a medium/heavy dealership and also deal with a lot of heavy duty independent repair shops and can tell you that is the normal depending on the part. This is how they make their money because you can't make it on the hourly rate alone. Many of my repair facility customer will charge you double the hourly rate if you want to bring your own part. However, that mark up on the water pump seems a little high, but that is the light duty industry in general(and yes a F250 is a light duty truck in my industry). You would be lucky to get that GP on an engine part in the heavy duty world.

Here is a funny little story about mark-up. In my previous position as an accounts manager, I was over an hour away from my dealership and a customer who was only 10 minutes away called me needing a water pump for one of his medium duty Ram trucks with a 6.7L Cummins in it. The dealership I worked for is a Cummins distributor and the water pump cost us $59 from Cummins at the time and my markup to my fleet customers on engine parts was around 10% so his cost would have been $65.

Since I was an hour away from my dealership, and my customer needed the part quickly, I decided to just call the local Ram dealer since they would be selling the exact same Cummins OE part in a Mopar box. They wanted to charge me $189 for that water pump and that was without Vaseline. I told the guy on the phone that he was nuts and I knew how much he paid for that part. He would not budge so I decided to call another Ram dealer about 30 minutes away in the next town over. They wanted $195 for the same part I get for $59.

After telling this to my customer, we just decided that it would probably be best if I just charged him an extra $10 markup to drive back to my dealership and pick up the part for him. He also told me that he called the Cummins dealer and hour away and they wanted $130 for that part.

Moral to the story... if you own a Cummins 6.7L and need an engine part, get your engine serial number off the engine and try checking the local medium/heavy duty dealerships like the Peterbilt and International dealerships instead of the local Ram dealership. You might be surprised on how less the OE Cummins part cost is. This may not be the case for every market though and is mainly due to the fact the medium and heavy duty parts industry is so competitive.

When the mechanic supplies the part, he's got to guarantee the labor AND the part too. If you supply your own, no such guarantee.

I don't know what level of quality this mechanic was supplying. Maybe genuine factory parts?

Some of those "auto parts store" parts are China junk BTW.