I have been to hundreds of dealerships and service operations in North America and there are many beautiful facilities that have more capacity than they will ever need. On the other hand, I believe there are considerably more facilities that are in need of additional space.

I am always surprised when I hear dealers say that they need to build an addition or an entirely new building to accommodate their service business. Naturally, my first question is "Are you operating 24 hours?" When the response is an emphatic "No", my follow up question is always, "So why build?"

The current building/shop is there for 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days per year, yet most dealerships only use it for 8 hours per day, 5 days per week and perhaps 5 hours on Saturday. While some shops have started to offer Sunday service, they are in the minority so let us not include Sundays in this analysis of the current use of the shop:

AVAILABILITY:
24 hours X 6 days = 144 hours/week X 52 weeks = 7488 available hours per year.

CURRENT USAGE:
8 hours X 5 days = 40 hours + 5 hours Saturday = 45 hours/week X 52 = 2340 utilized hours per year.

So, effectively: 2340 / 7488 = 31% of the shop’s potential is being utilized every year.

With 69% of the shop never being utilized – why would someone build an even bigger shop?

Other than the obvious underutilization, there are many other factors that support extending the hours option in lieu of building. Realistically, the only additional expenses you incur to extending hours are the personnel costs involved, rent, various amortizations, and all other fixed costs. Many of the semi-fixed costs are unaffected.

A dealer can extend the hours of his/her business without having to move immediately to a night shift if the business doesn’t support it. Four day, ten hour days are becoming very popular and, in some cases, dealers are trying a 3 day, thirteen hour shift. Realize too, that extension of the hours doesn’t necessarily mean staying open later. Some dealerships, especially metro dealerships, have experienced great success opening earlier in the morning, rather than staying late. Interestingly, employees are often more open to coming in early, as opposed to staying later.

The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of options considerably more cost effective than building a new facility, and after all, aren’t we interested in maximizing our investment with the least amount of expenditure?