"rangerssuck" wrote in message
...
The wife's car was making some rubbing noise from a rear wheel. I pulled
of the wheel and found significant (structural) rust on the brake drum. I
didn't have time to do this myself, so I took it to a local garage where
they've done good work for me in the past.

I checked the price of drums & shoes on Autozone's web site (there's
actually an Autozone store directly across the street from this garage),
and figured an hour & a half for labor. It turns out that I was spot on
with the labor, but he charged me almost exactly DOUBLE Autozone's price
for the parts.

I gotta figure that he get's maybe a 15 or 20 percent discount on the
parts, and I would have been OK with a 20 or 25% markup over list, but
this seems kind of excessive. He's entitled to earn a living and all, but
a hundred bucks to walk across the street?

It's been a long time since I was in the mechanic business, and I'm
wondering whether this is the new normal?


What is new, is that 30 years ago you didn't have half a dozen discount
chains buying at such volume as to be able to drive retail pricing down.
Instead you had varying levels of distribution each adding their markup to
the price so the corner autoparts store own by Bill or George who lived on
the next block over from you was selling at a higher relative price than
Autozone, Pep Boys, or O'Reilly of today.