DealersEdge Professional Forums

Hi Guys,

Longtime Forum Lurker here. I've been with GM dealerships for 20 years and have spent the last 5 with a dealership considerably smaller than where I had been previously and most of us wear many hats. Our service manager is retiring after 40+ long years of service. Trying to replace him will tough. I was wondering if any of you are in a store similar to our size, and if so, who is doing your warranty submissions, dispatching, keeping up with GM & OSHA compliance, building maintenance, etc.

Here is what our current service manager is overseeing:
4 techs + 1 lube tech, 2 detail/porter guys, 1 body shop tech, 1 body shop manager, 1 part time janitor/maintenance man, 2 service advisors
He keeps everyone moving, prepares and submits warranty, tackles odd maintenance/electrical jobs around the building, writes service as a back up, scraps warranty, and probably a lot of other little tasks I am missing.
We write 450-500 RO's a month. Open 7:30-5 M-F.

For a shop our size, what is a reasonable expectation for a new guy? I wonder if other small shop service managers are handling their own warranty submissions? I doubt we can expect a new guy to walk in and do it all - we will probably have to shift some tasks around....

Anywhoo, just looking for ideas

I am at a similar sized dealership. We use an outside company to do our warranty submissions. She is here twice a week at least and does all of the paperwork and submissions for warranty. We do all of our scrapping here in parts after we receive our scrap list and we do all our or WPC returns in parts too.
Dispatching is done by our advisors now. We used to have a dispatcher but it wasn't worth the expense anymore.
Maintenance is all handled by department employees and management. No maintenance person here. All major issues are subbed.

partsgoddess, Your description of your service manager is almost a mirror image of ours. Same duties, same time served, retiring soon, and very difficult to replace. I too am interested in possible answers to replacing him, but have none. It is difficult to hire good help in a rural area.

partsplanet81, Who does your warranty submission? That might be an option for us as well.

A local company in the western NY area. I believe they only service local clients...

PartsPlant81 wrote:A local company in the western NY area. I believe they only service local clients...

Thanks anyway!