On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 04:08:55 +0200, "Åmund Breivik"
wrote:


"Wayne Cook" wrote in message
.. .

That's for sure. A long time ago mowers was my main business. Back
when I started out my fixit shop I did a lot of mowers and managed to
make a living as a bachelor. I still do mowers though it's definitely
the low priority part of my business. The fact is about 3/4 of the
time it's possible to make some money on a mower. The problem is that
the other 25% cause such a loss that they eat into the profits of the
good ones real fast.


My dad used to sell mowers, and had to carry out warranty repairs and
otherwise help the customers service the things. I was (and am still, for
old customers) often given the task of fixing mowers that the customers
couldn't get to run properly. What we've observed is that the amount people
are willing to spend on a mower is inversely proportional to the size of
their lawn and the difficulty of mowing it. For some reason, those who have
small, tidy, flat-as-a-billiard-table gardens buy the expensive
self-propelled mowers that never develop any problems, while those that have
large and bumby lawns buy the cheapest mowers available. And damned near all
lawnmower buyers are useless bloody morons who should not be allowed to own
anything more advanced than a scythe ;-)

Pretty good synopsis. :-)


Long story made reasonably short: about half of all lawnmower repairs are
laughably simple, but take so little time to accomplish that I can't with a
good conscience charge much money for them. The rest would be more expensive
than buying a new mower, and preferally one that is actually capable of
mowing the customer's lawn without breaking. Since I can't/won't charge
money for the "repairs" that are worthwile and won't do repairs that aren't,
there's no money to be made from this whatsoever.

Actually that's the real secret. You have to charge money for the
simple repairs so that they cover the ones that you loose on. For
example I get a straight $45 for carb rebuilds now. About 1/4th time
that's not enough but the rest of the time it's to much. But if I
didn't average it over the whole I would end up loosing. The fact is
you can't get much more than $45 for most push mowers and that
especially goes for weed eaters. Most of the time a rebuild can be
done in 15-30min (though some seem to get getting harder) which makes
the $45 pretty good money. But there will always be those hard core
cases that refuse to repair properly. Whether it's the float not
wanting to seal or any number things it's entirely possible to take
several hours to get all the bugs worked out reliably. Thus the flat
rate helps recover from the tough cases.

Wayne Cook
Shamrock, TX
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/waynecook