More Wrenches vs. Better Worklow, or, How Do You Know When It’s Time to Hire?

Hiring can be an exciting time in a shop’s life. You’re hiring! You’re growing! You’ll probably take on more work and make more money and everything will be awesome, right?

Right?

In an ideal world, sure. But here in the real world, there’s often a hesitation that comes with the hiring conversation. It begins as a whisper as you start thinking about job ads, and sometimes intensifies into a sinister little song that follows you throughout the day: 

Are we really ready to hire?

You think your shop is ready to bring on new staff, but you’re not entirely sure. Hiring someone (or a few someones) can end up being very, very expensive. And what if they don’t work out? What if you’re not ready to grow at all, but you’re just really busy this month and next month all that work will drop away and…

OK, hold up. Just breathe. We’ve got you. And we’ve got some expert advice from a true expert in the field: Dick Bascom, founder and president of Bascom Truck & Auto in Des Moines, Iowa. Dick founded the shop in the mid-70s, so he knows a thing or two about hiring. In May of 2025, Dick and his family presented “When to Hire to Grow Your Shop” at Diesel Connect, and much of the information taken from this article is from that seminar (go watch it!). 

While we can’t hire someone for you (yet), we can help you decide whether your shop is ready to bring on new employees. 

FIRST, DECIDE IF YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO HIRE MORE

It’s very easy to say, “We have too much work! I need to hire help!” and the thought process stops there. And maybe that’s true. But that may not be the case for every shop. 

Sometimes “We have too much work!” conceals other pain points that won’t be solved through hiring. Ask yourself the following: 

• Workload vs Workflow: Are you actually overloaded with work, or are your shop’s processes and scheduling leading to bottlenecks? Look at your bays — are they actually full, or do trucks show up and sit because approvals and parts aren’t showing up? (Fullbay can help with all that, BTW). 
• Tech Efficiency Check: How are your techs currently spending their days? Are they wrenching steadily, or are they running around looking for parts and approvals? Are they doing the right kind of work for their skill set (for example, lead techs aren’t getting their time gobbled down doing lube jobs, and newbies aren’t getting assigned to heavy diag work)?
• Support Staff Gaps: Are you short on administrative staff? If your techs or foreman are doing the quoting, the parts ordering, the phone answering, the paperwork, and handling walk-ins and upset customers…you’ve got a problem. A good support staff — and enough of them — will let your techs focus on wrenching. 
• Missed Work: How much work are you actually turning away? Is this work that might not require another technician if it’s parceled out correctly? “Think about this carefully,” advises Dick. “Maybe it only works out to about two hours more a week per tech.” If that’s the case, he goes on, “paying some overtime lets you take that work with the staff you have.”
• Management Bandwidth: Can your foreman or lead tech take on another report? If you’re an ultra-small shop making your first hire, are you ready and able to manage someone?

Figuring out the answers to those questions may take some time (particularly if you’re not using Fullbay), but it’s well worth looking into. You may end up sorting out problems you didn’t realize you had and gaining more clarity into your shop’s operation. Maybe you put your most senior tech on the diag work and free up other techs to handle more jobs. Maybe you rev up the marketing engine in an effort to bring in more business. You get the idea. 

If you do realize that you need another tech (or two), then it’s time to look at the C-word. No, not coffee. Not cookies, either, although you might want both of those things nearby. 

No, friends, we’re gonna talk about capital. 

DO YOU HAVE THE CAPITAL?

You need capital for everything you do. 

Want to move to a new place? You need the capital. Want to invest in a new lift? Capital, baby. Hiring a new tech? Oh yes. Capital will be your best friend. 

There are lots of numbers associated with hiring a tech. You’re looking at expenses for:

• The person’s starting salary.
• The person’s benefits.
• Any training you need to provide to them.
• A subtraction of earnings from work others might be getting done while they’re onboarding this new person.
• The costs associated with advertising for a newbie: posting on job boards, using a headhunter or agency, aptitude tests, and so on.
• Etc.

Even the most talented senior technician is probably going to add more expenses, at least for a while, before they start adding profit to your operation. Dick estimated that every new hire costs “about $50,000 in capital until that money comes back in.” 

So: does your operation have the capital set aside to float a person while they get up to speed?

DO PEOPLE WANT TO WORK AT YOUR SHOP?

We’ve written a lot about the importance of repair shop culture, so we won’t get too deeply into it here, but it bears repeating: wages may get someone in the door, but a good culture will keep them with you. 

More and more technicians want clear career paths. They’re interested in flexible schedules. They want certifications and a tool allowance and a tidy shop (customers love clean shops, too).They want coworkers they can get along with and bosses they feel they can approach for help if they need it. 

Well, that’s nice, Fullbay, you might be saying, I want all that and a dinosaur, too.

Bruh, if you’re an owner, you can make all that happen. Er. Maybe not the dinosaur part. (But if you do, please show us.) 

Bascom Truck & Auto has been around since the mid-70s, and they’ve had some employees who have lasted almost that long. When asked what kept them there, the answer is, “Our shop culture, how we treat them, the fact that we care about their family, that we’re flexible when something happens in their life,” says Bascom Truck & Auto’s VP of Finance, Mandy McWilliams. “The culture is why they stay.” 

OH GOSH, SHOULD I HIRE?

Only you can prevent forest fires…and only you can decide if you’re really ready to hire or not. 

If you’ve got the capital and the work, then hiring on a new tech can absolutely be the next step. If you’re still uncertain, look at your numbers again and figure out what would make you comfortable. Maybe you need to do more marketing and drive more work into the bays. Maybe there’s areas of your operation where you can streamline things, like taking payments or creating service orders. Bring in the cash and then bring in the person. 

Here’s a last bit of advice, whatever you end up doing: if you want to grow your business and bring in more revenue, then keep your techs working.

Maybe you’re not in a position to hire a new tech. But you might be able to find a parts runner, bookkeeper, or cleaner who can take some of the work off their shoulders. You might be able to find part-time or freelance people. The point is to let them take on support work while your techs keep wrenching.

The revenue keeps flowing, and suddenly you’ve got more capital.

Hey, what can you do with capital?

Grow. 

And hey, if you want to grow even more, then you should probably know that the next Diesel Connect is going to be packed with sessions just like this one. You want informative, practical advice about running and growing a heavy-duty repair operation? You want Diesel Connect. Find out more here.