How a 5-bay shop stopped losing billable hours to surprise equipment failures — and finally found out which machine was the real culprit.
Kessler runs five bays flat out. When a vehicle lift or the tire machine went down, a car sat half-finished, a tech stood idle, and the owner ate the lost labor — often without ever pricing what it cost.
Preventive service on the lifts and air compressor lived on a whiteboard that nobody updated. Two lifts had quietly drifted a year past their annual inspection.
Worst of all, nobody could say which machine was the money pit. It felt like Lift #2 was always the problem, but there was no record to prove it or justify replacing it.
The morning of go-live they printed labels from the dashboard and stuck one on each lift, the tire machine, the compressor and the alignment rack. Two minutes each.
When Lift #2 started drifting, the tech scanned the label and tapped “Won't lift / lower.” No login, no app — a work order appeared on the owner's dashboard in seconds.
Annual lift inspections and 90-day compressor service are now time-based PMs. The shop gets a reminder before each is due, so nothing drifts past inspection again.
Within a month the dashboard flagged Lift #2 as costing 11× the shop average. That single line justified a replacement the owner had been putting off for a year.
The login-free scan a tech sees
“I always blamed Lift #2 and I was right — but I could never prove it until the dashboard put a dollar figure on it. Replacing it paid for itself in a season.”
Start free, label your first machines before lunch, and see your own numbers instead of ours.