Two bays, one lift I can afford, and a landlord who will not let me cut the floor

Miguel Alvarez· Second-generation mechanic opening my own two-bay repair shop· Registered, Automotive·3w

Entity filed, insurance quoted, and now I am stuck on the least glamorous thing in the building: the floor.

The space is two bays, 2,200 square feet, $2,650 a month on a three-year lease. I need a two-post lift, which means anchoring into the slab, which means knowing the slab is thick enough. The landlord's response to a core sample was a flat no at first, because he sees any hole as a future repair he inherits. We have got as far as maybe, if I pay for it, restore it, and get the lift approved in writing.

Equipment is the other fork. A used two-post lift, installed, is quoted at about $5,800. A new alignment machine is $22,000 and I do not have it, so my options are a lease around $480 a month, a used one at $9,000 with no warranty, or sending alignments down the road for a year and losing the work. Tire changer and balancer, used, $7,200 for the pair. The scan tool is its own tax - subscriptions run a few hundred a month and they are not optional if I want to touch anything built in the last decade.

My dad's position is buy used, never lease, and he ran his shop until 2009. I am not sure that advice survived the software.

What did you lease versus buy in year one, and what do you wish you had skipped?

3 replies

Rob Mackenzie· Open·3w

Skip the alignment machine in year one. That is the one I would bet on. It is the biggest number, it has the longest payback, and sending that work out for twelve months tells you honestly whether there is enough of it to justify $22,000. If you are sending out four a week by next summer, buy it with money you earned instead of money you borrowed.

On the landlord: get the lift approval and the restoration language into the same signed amendment before the core sample happens. A verbal maybe from a landlord has a way of becoming a deduction from your deposit three years later.

Miguel Alvarez· Registered·3w

That is two people now telling me to send alignments out, and I think I have been treating it as a pride thing rather than a business one. My worry is the customer who wants tires and an alignment in one visit and goes somewhere that does both. But four of those a month is not $22,000 of reason.

I will push for the amendment. He already sent me a text saying he is fine with the lift, and I nearly filed that under good enough, which is exactly the habit that gets people like me in trouble.

Tom Reilly· Idea stage·3w

Coming at this from outside a building, since my whole plan is not having one, but the scan tool subscription is the line that would have caught me out. I had assumed it was a one-time purchase, and I have been pricing my detailing setup with the same assumption about everything else, which is probably wrong in three places.

One question rather than advice: does your quoted insurance change with the lift? A guy I interviewed last month said his garage keepers coverage went up when he added a second lift, and it was enough that he factored it into the equipment decision.

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