Doing More With Less (or, Stretching Dollars Like They Owe You Money)

Screep screep.

What’s that?

That, friends, is the sound of belts tightening.

Times are tight for a lot of folks. Some shops are seeing a drop in business; others are seeing a work boom that somehow isn’t translating into more revenue because their overhead has skyrocketed. Life in general is just getting more expensive, and has been for a while; one of our most-requested Diesel Connect 2025 presentations was “How to Do More with Less,” featuring Keith McMaster of Fireweed Heavy Truck & Equipment Repair. 

We’ve highlighted some of Keith’s advice in the article below, along with general tips we’ve picked up over the years of working with heavy-duty repair shops. 

Why Time Is Everything for Heavy-Duty Repair Shops

For many of your customers, time is the one thing they don’t have enough of. Drivers and companies have delivery schedules they need to stick to; the faster a truck gets back on the road, the less money they’re going to lose. This, for Keith, has translated into customers being willing to spend a little extra if it means his shop can get the work done faster.

Sometimes that turns out to be as simple as paying for ultra-fast shipping on a part. But sometimes it means that the Fireweed crew needs to get creative. 

How Building Custom Parts Can Reduce Downtime

It sounds like a nightmare: You need a component for a repair, but you can’t get it. The factory where it’s made is backordered, or tariffs have made the cost prohibitively expensive. What, exactly, is a shop supposed to do?

Keith recalls having that exact problem with a wheel stud. The equipment Fireweed was working on needed a particular size, but weeks of searching did not turn up a viable option. So, he said, the Fireweed team solved the problem themselves: “Fill the hole up with weld, drill her out, put new threads in it, and put a different stud on it,” he said.

Holy gorgonzola, Fullbay! you might be squawking, we can’t just drill holes at random! We’ll void the warranties!

Okay, yes, there are some areas where making your own solution isn’t the best route to take. That’s a judgment call you and your customer will have to make. And the Fireweed crew has built relationships with several local machinists that can fabricate parts and even installers for hubs, so long as they’ve got the time to do it. This, Keith admits, isn’t always the cheapest solution, but again, if you can’t find a necessary component, well, sometimes you’ve got to build your own. 

Using Flexible Work Schedules to Improve Shop Efficiency

Yes, the 9-to-5 is standard, but there’s actually quite a few ways for a shop to reach 40 hours a week. A 4/10 workweek (four days a week, 10 hours a day) means the shop can chew through more jobs without increasing payroll. A 4/10 also means people get a three-day weekend, which we probably don’t need to tell you is extremely exciting to a lot of employees. 

Shop owners can also look into staggering lunches and start times to ensure more coverage throughout the day — say your early bird gets started before the sun rises, while your night owls prefer to start their shift in the afternoon and see as little sunlight as possible. Again, same 40 hours, same coverage, just differently arranged.

(You might also find your customers are excited to have earlier or later hours available if they’d like to get something done, y’know, without eating into uptime.)

How Repair Shop Networks Help You Do More With Less

What we’re about to suggest to you may sound scary, but we hope you’ll give it consideration rather than clicking off this website in a rage: put together a network. It doesn’t have to be huge; maybe two to four shops in your general region. Then, when you have a customer who needs help now but you’re full up, you can refer them to your network. 

But Fullbay, you might be saying, won’t they just leave me for that other shop?

Honestly, probably not. Assuming there aren’t additional factors in them switching over entirely (the other shop is closer, or they have really good coffee in the lobby), odds are referring a customer to another shop for a one-time thing isn’t going to damage the relationship. If anything, it’ll strengthen it, because they’ll have their vehicle fixed quickly thanks to you. 

“They’re getting fixed. They’re happy,” Keith said. “They’re gonna come back.”

Are there other ways for shops to combine forces? Absolutely! We looked deep into our memory banks to find out how shops have worked together to stretch their dollars: 

• Buy in bulk together. Things like shop supplies and even some parts may be available at discounts if you’re buying a lot of them and then splitting them up.
• Share equipment. This isn’t common, but we have heard stories here and there where shops go in on a large piece of equipment together. And yeah, we’ve heard stories about a shop offering up a part their friend needed. 
• Solve problems. Bouncing mystery diag work off another brain can sometimes be exactly the fix you need.

Why Customer Communication Matters More Than Ever

This seems like a good place to offer a gentle reminder that customer relationships are more important than ever. You should always be keeping them apprised of how a job is going, but you’ve also got to be willing to give them bad news. “Don’t keep them in the dark,” Keith says. “If they’re in the dark, they’re pissed off.”

So keep the lights on, literally, and let them know what’s up. Provide daily updates. If getting a part is proving harder than it used to, let them know. Give them the bad news with the good news. 

Your customers, by the way, can sometimes be your ticket to parts you might otherwise have a hard time finding. Keith told us a story about bouncing between vendors trying to get a part for a customer. One vendor told him that they were clean out, but the other vendor had it. The other vendor also claimed not to have the part. Keith’s customer, who ran a large fleet, finally got in touch with the other vendor.

Surprise! The other vendor abruptly came through.

Sometimes a little clout can go a long way. If your customer has some weight in the industry, you may want to lean on them if parts are difficult to get. 

Speaking of parts vendors…

How Strong Parts Vendor Relationships Save Time and Money

Take all that stuff we just said about relationships and apply it to parts vendors. That’s it! 

(Editor’s Note: That is not it. Tell them more.)

You want to be friendly with parts vendors for the same reason you want to be friendly with customers: they’ll keep coming back. Or in this case, they’ll keep getting you parts. How do you build a good relationship with a vendor? Be the shop they want to work with. Be nice to them and pay them on time. 

Fireweed’s primary vendor is located about seven minutes away from them. “We spend a lot of money there,” Keith said, “and they show it.” How? By shipping over parts all day long. The vendor has even on occasion put a part on a cab to get it over to Fireweed because the relationship is solid. 

Now, is a parts vendor going to magically get you a free component that has been difficult to source? Probably not. But let’s say a vendor has that component. Only one, naturally. They have two shops they’re working with, and one shop treats them like an automaton and gripes about payment, while the other shop asks after their dog and pays for expedited shipping with no comment. They’re gonna offer the second shop the part.

Streamlining Your Repair Shop Operations

Time is money, and there’s no question that a lot of time can be lost in the quest for parts and tools. If your parts room is a miniature Bermuda Triangle that swallows all who venture inside, well…get it cleaned up. A neat, organized inventory, along with tidy tool stations, will save your techs time when they go in to retrieve this part or that wrench. And while we’re not going to plug Fullbay or how much time you can save by switching to our shop management platform, well…you totally can. And that was totally a plug, wasn’t it? Sigh. 

Since we did just end up yapping about ourselves, let’s embrace the shamelessness. The Fullbay workflow lets you run a more efficient shop, and dude, efficiency counts more than ever when you’re trying to do more with less. It also takes the pain out of invoicing (so you can get that cheddar) and keeping your customers in the loop, because like Keith said, if they’re in the dark, they’re pissed off. Don’t piss them off. 

And hey, if you like Keith, you can see him again at Diesel Connect 2026!