Des Moines, Iowa--Randall Garrett, owner of All Drive Transmission said he is “old school” in the fact that he does not charge a diagnostics fee to his customers.
Offering the service for free puts his customers at ease and brings more work into his shop, Garrett said; however, it is a service that is becoming harder and harder to justify.
“I do most of the diagnostic work and road testing,” he said. “It can be a real challenge because the transmissions are more complex than they were 10 or 15 years ago, and we can spend as much as one and two-and-a-half hours on diagnosis per vehicle.”
Regardless, Garrett said he is going to stick with his system until the time and cost of diagnostic equipment are too much to bear.
“I am holding out as long as I can on charging for diagnosis,” he said. “It sets us apart from a lot of the competition. When somebody is shopping around, lots of time we can get that business.
By offering free diagnostics, Garrett said he is able to close about 75 percent of work, with the remaining 25 percent tending to be issues unrelated to the transmission, primarily related to the engine.
In those cases, he said he recommends that the customer go to one of his wholesale mechanical repair shops that can fulfill his engine needs, since All Drive Transmissions focuses specifically on transmission, transfer case, and driveline repairs.
About 55 percent of work at All Drive Transmission is derived from wholesale accounts, including, dealerships, and repair shops, Garrett said.
“There are a lot of shops in the area that do everything but transmission work, so we fill that niche,” he said. “We do a lot of work with the repair shops, answering questions, helping them out with diagnostic questions, and lots of time they will end up bringing transmission problems to us for diagnosis.”
Garrett said he works with wholesale customers within a 50-mile radius of Des Moines, and through his involvement with Automotive Transmission Rebuilders Association (ATRA) and Automatic Transmission Service Group (ATSG) can offer a one-year nationwide warranty on transmission repairs and rebuilds.
Membership in those organizations also gives Garrett and his staff access to training, service bulletins, and help lines, he said.
Recently, he said he also signed on as a distributor of Certified Transmission in order to help increase his outside sales in shipping units and offering a three-year, 36,000-mile warranty on remanufactured units.
Garrett said he keeps 140 transmissions in stock, which allows him to swap a transmission for customers, getting them back on the road quickly.
However, as the development of the transmission has evolved, keeping necessary units in stock has become a challenge, he said.
“Twenty years ago, you could have a certain type of transmission that would fit in several different vehicles,” he said. “Now, to fit in even one vehicle, it has to match the criteria with the engine, tire sizes, and gear ratios. It is totally different, and it is harder to keep the right balance of keeping everything in stock to just what is going to move.”
Weekly, Garrett said his team of five technicians put out about seven to 16 rebuilds and tend to another 25-40 minor repairs.
Garrett said his team is broken down into three rebuilders and two R&R technicians, while he performs the diagnosis, and his wife, Vicki, and daughter, Sarah, run the office.
“My rebuilders each have a specialty, so I have a certain guy that builds one type of transmission and another that works on a different kind, with some overlapping,” he said. “It narrows the requirements from each guy by having them specialize and allows them to handle what is on their plate.”
As transmissions have evolved from rear wheel to front wheel, to electronic controls, Garrett said the time to R&R a transmission has increased drastically.
“It is not uncommon to take six to nine hours to R&R a transmission,” he said. “Front-wheel-drive vehicles are being manufactured with a lot of components in small area in the front engine compartment, which makes it harder to work on, but it is just how the industry is evolving.”
That being the case, Garrett said it is imperative to get a quality rebuild installed the first time, which means using quality products.
For soft parts, he said he uses Transtar Industries based in Cleveland; hard parts and cores come from Midwest Hard Parts in Hamlin, Iowa, manual transmission parts are supplied through Zumbrota Bearing and Gear in Zumbrota, Minn, and torque convertors are supplied from Precision of New Hampton in New Hampton Ia., and Dayco out of Cookville, Tenn.
Garrett said he has noticed that there is often a connection between transmission and engine drivability problems, so eventually he hopes to cross over into those issues as well.
“As a shop owner, trying to get where we can diversify more and take on more drivability issues would be good,” he said. Transmission work is becoming more interrelated with engine drivability problems. To having an understanding of all those components will be important for us in the future.”
