The $1,950 Bay: What Idle Shop Space Is Really Costing You

How much money are your bays costing you?

Take a minute and think about it. We’ll wait.

Did you need longer than a minute? Did you realize, much to your horror, that you’ve never once really thought, “Wow, that bay is costing me some serious dough.” 

Hmm. You’ve either mastered the art of bay utilization or you are probably losing money. 

Have no fear, gentle shop owner. We are not here to yell at you.

Peter Cooper is, though.

He’s on a mission to help heavy-duty shops run in a more efficient, profitable way. Heck, he even teamed up with Fullbay to write a book on the subject. We sat down with him to learn more about bay utilization and bay efficiency, and what they’re costing shops — and how owners can plug those particular revenue leaks. 

What Is Bay Utilization And Efficiency?

Bay utilization and bay efficiency sound kind of similar, but they’re measuring two different things. 

Bay utilization measures how much of your available bay time is being used at all. As soon as you plop a truck into a bay, it’s being utilized, because something is occupying the space. Whether it’s being utilized in a way that financially benefits you is something you’ll learn shortly. 

Bay efficiency measures how much of that available bay time is producing billable hours. If a truck is sitting in the bay taking up space while everyone is waiting on parts or approvals, the bay may be utilized, but it is not efficient, and it’s probably not earning its keep. 

That distinction matters. A shop can have every bay full and still lose revenue if too much of that occupied time is unbillable. 

Of course, we’re going to tell you how that happens. Brace yourself for lurid detail. 

Mindset Is The Problem

It happens every day.

A tech brings a truck into the bay. They pull it apart and find the problem. And that, Peter says, is where the trouble begins. Aha, the tech announces, the truck is down and we need all these parts to fix it! 

“Well,” Peter says, “you just downed the truck in the bay.”

Now the truck is pretty much stuck in the bay until it’s fixed. Is the turbo it needs three days out? Bummer. Should’ve held off on ripping the thing apart. Your very nice bay is pretty much a parking space. Are you charging your customer for parking it? Probably not. They’re not the ones who ripped into it and left parts scattered all over. 

Yes, we know you don’t necessarily have to dismantle the truck to diagnose a bad turbo. We’re taking some artistic liberties. But something like that plays out every single day in repair shops across the country. It’s no one’s fault; it’s just that no one has really sorted out what their bays are worth. Many shop owners have put a solid number on tech time (their hourly rate) and technician efficiency, but not the space the tech works in. 

Peter came up with a formula to solve that problem.

The Daily Revenue Per Bay Formula

Daily revenue per bay = Your weekly revenue ÷ Number of bays your shop has ÷ Number of days your shop is open per week

So, if your shop brings in $39,000 per week, has four bays, and is open five days a week, you’ll be looking at:

39,000 ÷ 4 = $9,750

÷ 5

=

$1,950 per day.

That is what a bay is worth each day you are open. 

Man. That is a lot of cheddar. That would be enough to buy a 1970 Ford Maverick outright (when it was brand new). It might get you a one-bedroom apartment in some cities. It would also get you around 390 filet-o-fish sandwiches and around 108 pounds of coffee beans (both of these depend on where you’re buying them, obviously). 

Yes, we’ve provided silly examples to keep you amused, but the point is that suddenly that bay has a daily value. Every day it isn’t working represents $1,950 in daily revenue capacity that isn’t happening. 

Your Bays Have Value

We forget how much worth bays on their own have because, well, bays don’t talk. They don’t ask how the weather was, they don’t hit you up for a raise, and they don’t drink the last of the coffee and forget to make more. But now you’ve got a number attached to them — a number they don’t meet if they’re sitting empty.

Let’s take the waiting-on-parts scenario again. You’ve got a downed truck sitting in one of your four bays, just taking up space. It’s going to be chilling there for at least three days while you wait for parts to arrive. All too often, shops shrug and say, “Well, it’s not worth the effort to move it in and move it out.”

Hold up. If that bay is worth almost $1,950 a day, you’re going to lose almost $6,000 ($5,850, to be specific) in revenue while it’s just sitting there. 

You really don’t want to spend an hour taking it out and putting it back in?

Really?

Look, we understand that it’s kind of a hassle to drag the truck in and out. We do. The human reaction is to shrug and go about our day. 

But…but that’s almost six grand…

Yeah, it’s kind of shocking on paper. 

Peter works with repair shops every day through his business, Ascend Consulting. He’s helped a lot of shop owners figure out how much their bays are worth (and in contrast, how much they’re losing). “When they come up with that number, they are absolutely shocked,” he said. 

Again, that’s a lot of cheddar. Enough to impact your business if it happens frequently.

How To Calculate Your Bay Efficiency Rate 

Actually, let us touch on that for a second. Not every stalled bay is avoidable. Parts disappear into the shipping void, and big jobs do happen. In the body shop world, for example, you hear stories of trucks tying up a bay for three months. Sometimes you just have to do what it takes to get the job done, and if the bay is out of service for a while, well, that’s part of the game.

Peter advises shops to aim for 80% bay efficiency. “If you can’t hit 80%,” he says, “you either have too much space or a truck count problem.”

Here’s the formula:

Bay Efficiency Rate = (Billable bay hours ÷ Available bay hours) × 100

In other words, you’re comparing the amount of time a bay is producing billable work against the total amount of time it could have been producing billable work.

Back to our earlier example. The shop’s daily revenue per bay is $1,950. But if the bay is only operating at 65% efficiency, the shop is only getting about $1,268 of that $1,950 potential. We’re not great at math, but that’s about $682 left on the table. 

Every.

Single.

Day. 

Uff da. 

And if that habit continues across several bays and/or stretches into weeks and months, that lost revenue starts to pile up.  

How To Improve Bay Efficiency

So, what keeps a bay from producing billable work?

Usually, it’s just waiting.

Waiting for parts. Waiting for customer approval. Waiting for a technician to finish with their notes. Waiting for the Rohirrim to save Helm’s Deep.

Some delays are not avoidable. Sometimes you have an ant infestation and really, really cannot get to work until the bugs are dealt with (if you know, you know). But a lot of delays are avoidable. So if you’d like to improve your bay efficiency — and who wouldn’t? — start by looking for the points where work generally stalls:

• Waiting on customer approvals. Digital estimates and approvals generally reach customers way faster than phone calls, voicemails, and paper forms. Gosh, if only we knew of a software that made such things super easy. Oh wait. We do. (It’s Fullbay. Fullbay speeds up authorizations and makes it easy to update customers.) 
• Waiting on tech notes. If techs have to stop wrenching to type out lengthy notes, the work can slow down and important details can float off into the void. AI-assisted tech notes and voice-to-text tools (why yes, like the ones Fullbay offers) can help them document the job while keeping the work moving.
• Waiting for the next job. Better scheduling and visibility can help the shop line up work. Need we say more?
• Waiting for information or parts. Missing unit histories, spotty job details, and “I dunno if we have that in stock” can delay diagnosis and repair, and absolutely keep a bay from reaching its full potential. Keeping that information in one place (and knowing what’s up with your inventory) helps the crew get to work faster.

You might not be able to eliminate every delay, but you can identify the recurring ones and reduce the time they consume. That will keep more of each bay’s revenue potential in the shop (where it belongs). 

Go Forth And Calculate

So, how much money are your bays costing you?

You can answer that question now. Once more for the folks in back, you just take your weekly revenue, divide it by the number of bays in your shop, and divide that by the number of days you’re open. The number staring back at you is roughly how much revenue each bay needs to support every working day. 

Now, take a walk through your shop and look around.

Not every stalled bay is avoidable. But once you know what each bay is worth, “Eh, why bother moving it?” stops sounding like a harmless operational choice and starts sounding expensive.

Sometimes very expensive.

So calculate the number! Share it with your team. And the next time someone wants to turn a revenue-producing bay into a parking space, ask whether that convenience is worth the financial hit. 

Then ask them to pay for parking.

Want to see how Fullbay helps you move work along faster, so you can keep those bays earning? Head to our self-guided walkthroughs — there are no forms, no sales calls, and absolutely no pressure. Just click, watch, and see how it works.

Like what you see? Book a demo and take a closer look.