My dad and I were out hunting down some brake parts yesterday, we passed a 8 bay shop attached to advanced auto parts. He mentioned to me that it would be cool to have a shop there with all 8 bays that have lifts, Air, and tools for rent. Basically you would drive up give the cashier your CC and pay hourly to rent the bay and also could rent other air tools as needed. The bays would be super clean, heated( for the winter, Air conditioned for summer) and very well lit. You would also have to sign any insurance forms if necessary. They could also take reservations and such. Maybe even a snack bar in the lobby. Anyway what do you guys think.
they have them on the navy base’s, ~ok but i dont think it would do well.
Definitely a cool idea.
I think they already do that in Canada.
I am pretty sure the insurance you would have to hold would be ridiculous…waiver or not.
yeah they have these on most military installations… and yes they do pretty good. they only charge us 4 bucks an hour to use the lift and they drums of generic oil to use, techs that are there for any help and every tool you can think of… awesome idea… not sure how well it would fly on the outside mainly for liability purposes… if someone will sue over coffee being too hot, imagine what will happen when i lift falls on their foot
somebody comes up with this idea every 6 months.
same conclusion every time - impossible due to insurance liability.
you can’t just take $50 and let some n00b go play with a car on a lift.
It does blow that there are scumbags out there who will sue over anything.
It might be viable if your using the shop space yourself for business and rent out the extra to friends and such.
Some idiot will definitly drop a car off a lift because they have no idea how to properly rack it.
you could do it if you only rack it for them, but theres still other liability. ive heard of some places that make you take a quick lift saftey course before you can touch it
Turst me…this scenario would ALWAYS lead to bad things. I’ve tossed the idea around, and the negatives outweigh the positives by a factor of 6 or more.
And as far as the original idea posed goes…I can’t imagine an insurance company on the face of the earth who would underwrite this. Right now, I’m lucky, only having “myself” as an employee/worker, so my rates aren’t completely horrendous. Even then, I had to go through a lot of scrutiny when I opened my policy, meaning background info, technical associations, credit, and so on. However, once I add an employee, everything changes.
Overhead, aka Insurance, is our biggest killer so I have to agree with jason. if it were people I knew or was friends with I wouldn’t mind them using a lift for a bit but not the public, they tend to be pretty dumb
Other states have this set up. The problem in NY is the Law that has to do with being able to sue someone (cant think of the name) for something that is technically not their fault. For example some one illegally tresspassing on your property and gets hurt can actually sue you for damages. I think we are the only state that still allows this. Thanks the lobbyist for lawyers.
I tossed this idea around about 4 years ago, when I looked into it the cost of insurance made it not worthwhile.
Did you look somewhere other than here?
Really though… did you call an insurance place and see what insurance would cost?
We actually had one of these in town maybe 10 yrs ago? I think they were in business maybe a year or possibly a little more.
Business insurance is a serious problem these days. I looked into renting space out in my place and they insurance company went into metldown. Without even submitting it to the underwriter they assured me the rates would be high. But once it came back their answer floored me.
When you apply for insurance they ask you all the appropriate questions. Then it goes to an underwriter to assess risk. They punch the codes from your interview into the computer and out pops a number. In my case I was selling auto parts, ok good. I could have also rented space, that was ok too. Both of those categories had proper codes. BUT putting the two of those together caused a NO CODE for that type of business. Not a big deal right, they’re semi-related and if a person was actually looking at it, they could figure it out, right? Wrong! They rejected it because since there was no code, that it became a high risk business, and as a high risk business the underwriter was afraid that any customers car coming in…get ready for this… might contain nuclear waste. Yes, that is actually what they came back with and rejected my application. All high risk applications are boilerplated to endorse ANY possible liability and as such cost an impossibly high amount.
As it is, just like Jason my insurance is on a very thin thread. I can’t employ anyone and I can’t have any walk in customers. I had to list my business as being an online business, which it is, but it prevents me from doing a lot of what I’d like to do. Some of the questions they first ask you are, do you have torches, lifts, floor jacks, saws, what amperage service do you have, plus a whole lot more.
I even had to change my business name after I was rejected by another company. Just over the phone the guy interviewed me and as soon as I said…Racing Products… he said, nope to risky. I said but if I was in business of selling racing magazines and stickers and such it would be a ‘risky’ business and he said based on the name…yes. So I had to get the lawyer involved again to list my business as having another dba without the that in the name.
Doing business in NYS is not fun.