MACS Service Reports - 2015 - NOV1

Total Vehicle Climate and Thermal ManagementTM

November 2015

By Dave Hobbs, MACS Technical Correspondent
MISSION POSSIBLE: PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE!

Motor & Equipment
Manufacturers' Association

The technical and business side of repairing vehicles
BEFORE they break
We regularly cover the most technical aspects of HVAC mechanical and electrical repairs in our monthly service reports to
help you tackle today's technology challenges. The benefit of being technically educated is greatly diminished, however, if you
are struggling to keep your business growing! Have you ever
heard the phrase work smarter, not harder and thought nice
idea, but how? Then this MACS Service Report is for you! This
month we'll cover some proven techniques to work smarter by
focusing on PM (preventative maintenance). First we'll provide
the business aspect of motivating yourself and your customers
on the virtues of PM, and then we'll present the nuts and bolts
(and software) side of the case for preventative maintenance to
keep yourself and your customer informed on this often overlooked aspect of today's auto repair business.

Figure 1: What percentage of the $60,000,000,000. in unperformed
maintenance would you like?

number, of course, includes A/C systems that need proper
charging, cooling systems that need flushing, brake pads that
need replacing, overdue oil changes, tire rotations, and so on.
That financial number is mind boggling. 60 Billion is just slightly
under the net worth of Bill Gates. According to the US Bureau of
Labor Statistics, there are around 700,000 techs ready to do that
work should the vehicle owners opt to have it all done this year.
Now let's do the math. In fact, you can even do a very conservative discount of that number and estimate that as much as half
of that will never be performed due to a substantial number of
vehicle owners who can barely afford to put gas in their rides,
much less spend money on PM. That number would also include the vehicle owners who probably could but won't spend
money on their vehicles until they break down. If you do the
math now, with $60B X 50% ($30B) and divide that into the
number of technicians (700K), you get around $43,000 of unperformed maintenance per technician per year. Every shop owner

The Preventative Maintenance Numbers World
Preventative maintenance seems so obvious: Pay me a little
now to prevent paying me A LOT MORE later on down the
road. But the obvious things in life are sometimes the hardest to
grip in this overly technical world we live in. PM is so obvious
in fact, it's not only overlooked by many customers, it's overlooked by a lot of repair shops! A quick look at statistics reveals
that over the last decade, the financial number that is consistent
is that there is annually around 60 billion dollars worth of unperformed maintenance in the United States according to MEMA
(the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers' Association). See Figure 1.
$60,000,000,000. That's a lot of PM not being performed! The

ALSO INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
NUTS AND BOLTS .............................................................................................................................................................. 3

MACS Service Reports is the official technical publication of the
Mobile Air Conditioning Society Worldwide, Inc., P.O. Box 88,
Lansdale, PA 19446. The material published in MACS Service
Reports expresses the views of the contributors and not necessarily that of MACS. Every attempt has been made to ensure

November 2015

the accuracy of the content of MACS Service Reports. MACS,
however, will not be responsible for the accuracy of the information published nor will MACS Worldwide be liable in any way for
injury, labor, parts or other expenses resulting from the use of
information appearing in MACS Service Reports.

MACS Service Reports

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