Why Your Tire Tech Might Be More Profitable Than You Think. A Diesel Stories Recap

Summary:

• Gross profit per hour shows which techs, jobs, customers, and repair categories actually make Kerry Brothers money.
• Parts matrices and house part numbers turned pricing from guesswork into a daily profit engine.
• Morning KPI reviews gave team leads clearer standards for utilization, efficiency, shop supplies, and technician growth.

A tire tech near the bottom of the pay scale may be one of the most profitable people in the shop.

Yep. That one can sting a little

In this episode of Diesel Stories, host Peter Cooper talks with Bill Kerry of Kerry Brothers Truck Repair in Detroit. Bill’s family business started in 1985, when his dad and uncle rented an old horse-and-buggy garage at a closed dairy company and started fixing trucks.

Bill came back to the business in 2014 as employee number six. He started as a technician at $15 an hour, with a family at home, and worked his way into becoming a master tech. Since then, Kerry Brothers has grown past 100 employees and into multiple locations.

This episode gets deep into KPIs, but not in a “let’s stare at dashboards all day” way. Peter and Bill talk about parts margins, technician pay, service advisors, repair categories, shop supplies, fleet customers, and the numbers hiding inside everyday work orders.

Look, nobody opens a heavy-duty shop because they love staring at dashboards. But when the bays are full, the phones are ringing, and trucks need to move, the numbers tell you what’s really happening.

Your Best Tech Is Not Always Your Most Profitable Tech

Most shop owners think they know who their most profitable tech is.

Usually, they start with the master tech. The guy who can chase an electrical ghost, handle aftertreatment headaches, and rebuild the thing nobody else wants to touch. And sure, that tech may produce well.

But Peter’s point in this episode is sharper than that. The best technician and the most profitable technician are not always the same person.

Bill showed a demo dashboard that broke down technician performance by revenue, margins, efficiency, and gross profit per hour. One example was a tire tech who produced $311 in gross profit per hour. That tech was not the highest-paid person in the building. But the dollars were very real.

As Bill put it, “We don’t deposit margin in the bank percentages; we deposit dollars.”

That matters because shops often judge people on the wrong things. A tire tech, lube tech, or PM tech may not get the same respect as the diagnostic wizard. But if that person keeps work moving, bills clean hours, sells parts through the repair order, and turns bays fast, the shop needs to see it.

That also changes the conversation. A road tech may feel underpaid because he handles tougher calls, drives the service truck, and deals with breakdowns on the shoulder. But if the invoices show the tire tech produces more profit per hour, the owner has facts instead of feelings.

That is better for everyone. The shop can pay people based on what they produce, not based on who sounds the busiest. It also helps owners stop undervaluing the techs who keep the bread-and-butter work moving.

If a good tire tech feels ignored, he eventually finds another bay. Maybe not today. Maybe not next week. But if the shop keeps treating production like a feeling instead of a number, someone else will pay attention first.

Parts Are Not a Necessary Evil. They Are a Profit Center

Parts can make or break a heavy-duty repair shop.

Peter said shops need to stop treating parts as a necessary evil. They’re a profit center.

That matters because many shops still treat parts like a pass-through item. The tech needs an air dryer, brake drum, radiator, filter, OEM sensor, or aftertreatment part. The parts counter gets it. The service advisor adds it to the estimate. Everyone moves on.

Not ideal.

Bill explained how Kerry Brothers got much more serious about parts pricing. They built around 100 Fullbay matrices, with some reaching 50 lines. They use different approaches for different customers, vendors, and part categories.

That means oil may not get treated like brake drums. OEM engine parts may not get treated like marker lights. Tires may not get treated like trailer parts. Each category has its own margin of reality.

Kerry Brothers also uses house part numbers. So instead of letting the same air dryer live under five different vendor numbers, they group similar parts together. Then they can see real volume, negotiate better buys, and stock smarter.

That’s not a fancy theory. That’s a parts manager looking at actual buying history and asking, “What do we sell often enough to buy better?”

It also gives the service team cleaner information. When an estimate goes out, the shop can see whether the part fits the right matrix, whether the customer pricing makes sense, and whether the repair order can still make money after approvals, delays, and labor time.

This is where shops can find real money. If parts margins improve, the business can hire better people, cover benefits, handle parts delays, and still keep trucks moving. Fleet customers care about price, sure. But they also care when downtime starts costing more than the repair.

Morning Meetings Hit Different When the Numbers Are on the Table

A morning meeting can be useful, or it can turn into everyone staring at coffee.

At Kerry Brothers, Bill said service managers and team leads use KPI dashboards every morning. They review efficiency, utilization, revenue, parts margins, labor margins, customer profitability, and service advisor performance.

That sounds simple until the phones start ringing.

The point is not to bury people in numbers. The point is to define what good work looks like before the day starts. If the shop has a three-day backlog, Bill does not want technicians sitting at 85% utilization. He said Kerry Brothers moved the standard to 95%.

That number gives team leads something clear to manage. It also helps compare a three-person team against a 10-person team without guessing.

Bill said, “There’s no hiding in this.”

Good. There shouldn’t be.

If a service advisor keeps overriding shop supplies because one fleet customer complained once, the data catches it. Then the manager can ask a real question. Was this a one-time issue, or did the shop quietly stop charging for something it still has to pay for?

That kind of visibility matters. Floor dry, zip ties, connectors, rags, fluids, and supplies do not magically appear. Neither do safety lights on road service trucks.

It also helps the team lead coach better. They can look at the work orders, see who stayed productive, spot where labor hours slipped, and talk through it before bad habits turn into shop culture. That beats waiting until payroll, invoices, and customer complaints all point to the same mess.

When the numbers are visible, accountability feels less personal. The work order shows what happened. The invoice shows what got billed. The dashboard shows whether the shop made money.

But Wait, There’s More

This episode goes beyond KPIs and dashboards. Bill and Peter also get into the human side of growing a heavy-duty repair business, which may be the messier part.

A few moments worth catching:

• Bill’s dad once fired him from the family business so he would not feel trapped there.
• Bill admitted that process and documentation make him want to “jump out a window.”
• Peter talked about bringing in his wife, whose nickname was “the hatchet man.”
• Bill said some people left once the shop added real accountability.

There’s also a bigger thread about hiring from within, giving technicians a path from entry-level work to leadership, and building a shop where people know how to win.

So yeah, if you want the full conversation on KPIs, parts strategy, tech pay, culture, and controlled chaos, 

Watch or listen to the full Diesel Stories episode.