Used Vehicle Recon/PDI Techs

[gordyw]

I would like to know what others are doing as far as distribution of used vehicles and PDI's. We have altered approaches over the years between having a designated Tech(s) to do both used reconditioning and PDI's and presently we distribute all amongst the shop.
I know the financial implications of not having the lower paid tech do this type of work, but what are the other pros/cons?

[Mark@vw]

We used to have one tech that did all of the used cars and one that did all of the pdi's. These guys would sometimes make more than the tech's that had to really work on cars. I fought for a year to change it and finally did. It made a difference to the other guys at first, but if the shop gets busy used/pdi seem to be put on the back burner. They have to be fit in quickly to keep new/used mgrs off of your back.

[Doug]

I guess the answer may depend a bit on the
size of your operation. We sell about 3000 cars per year so we have a group of fellows devoted to PDI (lower paid...but not dirt cheap) and two techs and 4 detailers devoted to used cars. On occasion things get swamped and we have the regular techs doing used car work but not that often.

I think it's a good idea to have specific techs devoted to these jobs. Having the regular line techs do it has never worked well for me....they consider it to be "fill in" work when, in fact, it's a major profit point.

A few years ago I gave the line techs "one more shot at the gravy money" but they didn't have the right attitude about it so that's when I hired separate staff for those jobs. Never have regretted it.

Doug

[RENRIGHT]

we run both pdi and u/c recon thur shop. I make my dispactor hand it out as we can some back ups but not too bad. I like this system because one of the problems I have seen over the years is that is that pdi aren't performed correctly. We have a rule in our shop the tech that does the pdi owns that vehicle for the first 3 months 3000 miles. The techs hate cb so they pay closer attention. Same with used cars.

[bassslap5]

We have 4 used car techs that do both used cars and pdis. What we normally do is get the used cars as they come in, put them through the shop and when techs are waiting for authorizations we get pdis done. If we have a big volume of pdis and u.c. then we'll split the techs and have 2 on pdis and 2 on u.c. and rotate them. Thanks.

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