Auto Repair Shop Plan: More Lift Time or More Technician Time?

A second lift increases workshop output only when lift time is the constraint and the technicians can complete the additional jobs. Calculate both resource ceilings, then connect the extra completed work to contribution and the cash needed before customers pay. Doubling lift count does not automatically double paid output.

Use technician hours and bay hours as different units

Define one comparable completed job, its productive technician hours and the time it occupies a lift. A vehicle waiting for parts can occupy a bay without producing another billable hour. Diagnostics, rework, training and other unbilled time must reduce available technician capacity or be costed explicitly.

The worked case holds existing paid staffing and other shop commitments unchanged. Parts, consumables and outsourced work are job-dependent costs; existing technician wages are not deducted again as if each extra job required another paid shift. If the additional work needs overtime or another employee, rebuild that cost case.

The added lift moves the bottleneck to technician time

Original monthly planning assumptions, not repair rates or productivity benchmarks. Two technicians provide 320 paid hours in the month. Reserving 80 hours for the selected nonproductive tasks leaves 240 productive hours. A comparable job needs three productive technician hours and 2.5 lift-hours. One existing lift supplies 160 usable hours; a second supplies another 160. Assumed demand is 84 comparable jobs. These aggregate limits still require a feasible daily job and parts schedule.

The additional lift releases at most sixteen jobs in this simplified case, taking output from 64 to 80. It does not release another 64 jobs: technician time becomes binding. Those sixteen jobs require 48 technician hours, exactly the unused capacity after the existing 64 jobs use 192 hours. Confirm that the actual job sequence, skills and parts arrivals can deliver that apparent spare time.

Price the additional work, not the whole workshop twice

Assume $300 net receipts per job and $140 of additional parts, consumables and outsourced work. Contribution is $160 per extra completed job. The new lift adds $150 of monthly servicing and other selected running commitments. Existing payroll and premises costs are unchanged and excluded from this incremental comparison.

If demand is only 64 jobs or less, the added lift produces no additional jobs under these assumptions while its $150 commitment remains. A list of enquiries is not evidence that sixteen extra completed jobs will be collected each month.

Keep installation and the first collection gap visible

Assume the lift costs $12,000 and installation $2,000, paid before use. In the sixteen-extra-job case, assume the $2,240 job costs and $150 monthly lift commitment are also paid before the first customer receipts on day 14; the assumed additional jobs are completed and collected within the month. The selected initial cash requirement is $16,390: $14,000 plus $2,390. It is not the whole-shop funding requirement; existing payroll, rent, tax and finance dates are outside this illustration.

With a constant $2,410 monthly incremental cash benefit after those collections, simple recovery of the $14,000 installation outlay is about 5.81 months. At $810 it is about 17.28 months. Those are undiscounted assumed payback calculations, not a financing offer or an investment recommendation. Changing demand, costs, downtime or later replacement spending changes the result; payback also ignores value after recovery.

Evidence needed before ordering equipment

• Reconcile completed job cards, billed work and collected receipts for the relevant job mix.
• Measure technician time, lift occupation and parts waiting separately; aggregate monthly ceilings are not a complete schedule.
• Document the jobs actually lost to the lift constraint and the available staff hours that could serve them.
• Obtain a dated equipment/installation quote and a monthly cash calendar, including any changed wage or financing commitment.

The investment payback calculator can assess a selected constant cash case; it does not establish demand or schedule repairs. Use the cash runway calculator separately for monthly funding inputs. General cost/contribution planning context: SBA business planning. All workshop figures above are original assumptions, not source statistics or tested workbook outputs.

The separate Auto Repair Shop Financial Model page explains the business use of the file; no particular worksheet or compatibility result is asserted here.