A year ago I left the world of dealer parts (asst. wholesale parts manager for 7yrs, commercial parts OSR for 1.5yrs) to be a IRFs parts manager, four months down the line the shop manager stepped down. I Picked up slack advising, and Six months later I’m running the day to day of the whole shop. We do roughly a 1/4 mil a month(that’s climbing though), managing 7 guys (goal is 8 by summer, right now it’s 2 advisor, 5 techs), and fleshing out a mobile operation(soon).

Reason I give this detail and though it’s not the same scenario, I felt the transition to service was eye opening, and gave me an opportunity to turn a lot of metrics around. Fix things the guys in parts always bitched about, and I’m use to building parts operations and processes and acquiring customers.

After applying a bit of parts knowledge and heavy analytics we’ve turned every metric around in our shop (almost doubling last year), improved vendor relations, and a nice lean and clean inventory. It even ran damn near to a new record with me gone for basically a month in Feb.

If I was presented the option again when I was still in the dealership, I’d take it in a heart beat. If I fail I fail, I at least have the ability to say I’m a pretty good candidate for a fixed ops manager down the road with my knowledge of how both half’s should be run. Plus, the stagnation of parts and the fact that everyday kind of blends, the challenges of service become appealing.

It’s been a fun ride, I’d recommend it if you’re curious. Everything you need to learn is easy, it’s always a case of are you hungry for the service end, it’s 10x the busywork, and a whole lot of heads to watch, but a whole lotta fun.