Hi, I really need your services as of the other day!
But I live in Alameda - will you service my?
My car broke down, and its the only car we have - my wife is a stay at home mom and I bike to work and we have been trying to figure out the best way to deal with the car issue and as a long time HNer - I would far prefer to try and support your startup than randomly call unknowns and have the thing towed some place.
Sam - please email me at art@yourmechanic.com and please let me know what type of car it is. I will check with our mechanics to see which one can drive up there.
Is the idea of a mobile mechanic new in the US? Lube Mobile [1] has been in Australia for at least 25 years and has spawned a bunch of local copies. I'm not knocking YourMechanic, but I find it interesting that the idea hasn't made it to the US earlier than this. Is there some difference to Lube Mobile that I am missing?
yea. it is similar. one immediately visible difference is that we don't provide vans to mechanics. also, we have a full pricing engine online (unlike lube mobile) which allows us to ensure that people are getting fair prices. Its totally transparent. You can see mechanics reviews, fair labor time, parts info etc - all without calling us!
I am very surprised that there's so much work mechanics can do without a lift.
One very obvious thing I'm sure YM considered was used car inspections; having a place I could sign up on a website to have a potential used car inspected would be killer.
With a jack, some stands, and some ingenuity, you'd be surprised what can get done :)
Honestly for many cars there's not many jobs that require a lift. Even an engine swap can be done with a crane and some clever-ness/swearing. Granted working on an MR car (or poorly-designed front engine) may require dropping the engine out the bottom, but most cars you can get to most everything without lifting the car up more than a foot or so.
You forgot "... and a front yard." I was surprised when I moved from Los Angeles where working on a car in front of the house was not unusual, to Sunnyvale where there was as specific rule that said you could not work on your car on your front yard. Your driveway was ok, but not on the street (except for temporary repairs) but not on your lawn.
The claim was that it prevented toxic chemicals from entering the water table. Most folks seemed to thing it was to avoid the 'blight' of people leaving cars up on blocks in front of their house. Oh, and in case you're wondering there is also a rule that your lawn can't be more than 50% concrete :-)
Yeah, but even with a tarp, oil and coolant has a way of reaching the pavement, especially on inclines (based on direct experience). Fortunately for me, the property owner doesn't care if I spill a little, so long as I make a good-faith effort to clean it up. On the other hand, this could be bad news in a parking lot, especially if there is a stormwater drain nearby.
It's not an insurmountable hurdle, but it's an issue I could see creeping up from time to time, especially if the service becomes popular.
With a jack, some stands, and some ingenuity, you'd be surprised what can get done
I know from personal DIY experience there is a lot that can be done without a lift, but in a lot of cases, not having a lift may turn a 45-minute job into a 2-hour job :(
I'm curious as to how they handle fuel spillage and if they have to reschedule in inclement weather.
I _would_ have been surprised, but I saw this on their homepage:
"2012-09-09 in Redwood City CA
Whitney worked on 2000 Ford Mustang to do Tail Lamp Bulb - Driver Side"
Whereupon I remembered that just like most people don't whip up a quick Perl script to "fix" things on their computer, there people who ring up companies and pay them to replace light bulbs.
When you're the sort of person who's happily scheduled a Saturday afternoon to pull the engine out so you can replace the clutch, it's easy to forget that even the most trivial of car maintenance tasks are things that many "regular people" choose to pay someone else to do rather than learn how to do it themselves.
(But I'm still thinking to myself "You paid someone to come out and replace a lightbulb? _Really?_)
Its a 12 volt electrical system running about 10 amps on that specific line. Any mishap could potential cause more trouble. I've seen (and fixed) cars whose owners fried the whole brakelights harness when replacing "just a lightbulb."
Also, cars these days use the type of fasteners that most people don't have tools to deal with. Look under the hood of a new Chrysler, for example, and you will be amazed.
Agreed. I get the point that new cars are intricate, crammed and complicated but a light bulb is a user serviceable part that is really not much harder than changing a lamp at home. Would you hire an electrician for that because you didn't want to blow your home's electrical system? ;)
Its not the same thing. You are comparing a live closed system (brake lights have live 12 volt wiring) to a open circuit that you can switch off at at least two points.
Where by "live 12 volt wiring", you mean "live 12 volt wiring, , but only 'live' when both the ignition and the brakes are on (or sometimes the tail-lights where they use dual-filament bulbs), which is suitably fused so it wont catch fire if you short it, and which is completely safe to touch unless you manage to pierce through your ribcage with two conductive spikes and connect opposite ends of the low-voltage supply directly onto your heart muscle", right?
Seriously, I'm trying to imagine any scenario where ham-fisted attempts to change a brake light bulb could result in anything more dangerous than a mild surprise and a blown fuse if you manage to short the contacts. You are, in my experience, _much_ more likely to injure yourself kicking the cat 'cause you end up so frustrated having to remove 47 easily breakable plastic clips holding the shitty carpet/trim in the trunk to get to the bulb - than being in any danger from a 12V electrical system, live or not.
And, as someone who lives where out wall outlets provide 220V AC, and who's taken more than his fair share of belts from not only 220V but also 415V three phase power, I find it vaguely amusing when people are deadly afraid of puny 110V electrical systems ;-)
I've had past clients partially burn their cars after chaging a light bulb. Keys off the ignitio and all. I talk out of experience. I've owned 3 repair shops. Seen worse things happen.
One of them was an electrical engineer believe it or not. He partially burned the wiring on his 911 Porsche when replacing a lightbulb. Its just crazy.
Was this _just_ a bulb replacement? Or was bulb replacement the last action is a chain of errors? I'm pretty sure I've never worked on a car that didn't have suitable fuses for light bulb circuits/wiring.
(Having said that, I have been personally responsible for screwing that up - "130W headlight globes, Sure! I'll just swap out the 15A headlight fuse for a 30A one! This wiring looks _fine…_" (So far as I know) I always got away with that, perhaps more out of luck and good engineering by the manufacturer, rather than having sufficient expertise to be able to make a correctly informed decision about whether the OEM loom was good for double the original current…)
Perhaps modern cars are build with significantly less margin-for-error than my experience dictates? My car-tweaking experience was mostly on late '60s / early '70s Volkswagon Beetles, and mid '70s Ford Escorts. I haven't owned a car since '95 (and the last one was a '72 SuperBug). I've been pretty much motorcycle-only since then.
No. I'm advocating to booking a mechanic to make sure that the car is repaired properly. The fact that it is a light bulb does not matter. Then you wonder why people dont want to hire you to build them "just a website."
I don't build websites for other people, but if I did, I would ideally provide the customer with a way to maintain their website, whether that's managing comments or posting articles. These are simple jobs the owner can do without paying a professional developer.
Similarly, replacing a light bulb on a car is a job the owner can do without the cost of a professional.
I did not mean the post to be offensive. I apologize.
Ok here is where experience has taught me that your conclusions are wrong.
Similarly, replacing a light bulb on a car is a job the owner can do without the cost of a professional.
A lot of people cant do that. And I mean a lot. Same with wipers, and even windshield fluid. I even had people coming in to check their tire pressure.
Just because you can do something for yourself, does not mean others can do it. I cant, for the life of me, correctly sew on a button. Just cant. I pay people $15 bucks to sew on a 10 cent button. Am I dumb? Probably. But I can sew and they can. So I pay them whatever. Same with cars. I fyou can do it yourself, then more power to you.
I can confirm that is a small cash-cow (calf?). I used to charge $100 per car and did about 1-3 a week. Not bad, but had to stop due to time constraints.
Question - how do you deal with private lots that prohibit people working on their cars? I know my community has restrictions against this - I've never run into it myself doing simple things like checking oil level and such but I wouldn't attempt a major service like timing belt replacement in my community (hence why I find a friend's driveway to do such work in :-P). How does YM work around this?
Another happy customer here. What really surprised me about YM was they told me upfront how much a service would cost and while getting the service came the most pleasent surprise of all, the mechanic said I did not need front brakes, just the rear, and the quote YM gave originally was chopped in half! And finally, the guy was so nice and friendly, it felt like you were dealing with the owner.
And before I got the YM service I did call the dealer and a few other shops. The dealer would not quote me a price until I brought the car in, had the wheels taken off and "inspected", this despite the fact that I told him I need a quote for replacing all four brakes and rotors on car type x - it was such a turn-off. Especially when I asked what the inspection would cost - $150 if I don't get it serviced there.
Really glad to see a company improving my experience, saving me time, and saving me money on a chore I don't enjoy.
Another very happy customer here! My car wouldn't start one day, and after determining that it wasn't a dead battery, I was dreading the nightmare/cost of having it towed to a shop.
Fortunately, I remembered YourMechanic from when they were working out of the Hacker Dojo. I gave them a call, and a mechanic arrived within 30 minutes. He did an amazing job patiently troubleshooting different components in the engine and electrical system before determining the problem (busted ignition), implementing a temporary fix (new fuse), and helping me understand what we'd have to do for permanent fix.
One particularly awesome thing about my experience was that my mechanic (his name's Whitney, if you ever need to make an appointment) explained everything he was doing each step of the way. I learned more in about 45 minutes than in all my years referencing manuals/forums/friends.
I'd never expected to be delighted by an auto repair/maintenance experience, but these guys proved me wrong. I expect them to do very well.
You think finding good engineers with people skills is hard? Try finding mechanics who can talk to people. Good luck. Whitney is one in a million. Plus, a lot of mechanics out there will go ahead and ask the ladies out with no regard to marital status (either of them).
I used to work with a mechanic that did this and even now I own a site that collects requests in an east coast city and forwards them to some local mechanics I have an arrangement with. It's a great idea and people absolutely love it. Every tool needed is in the mechanics mobile shop, usually an outfitted van, and even fluid collection and disposal is not an issue.
The problem is permits and insurance. These expense take a nice chunk out of any margin you have set up that keeps your prices competitive. The other issue is scaling. Mechanics will not work for per-job pay, they all want hourly. Putting a crew with a mobile unit on standby and waiting for a job is very inefficient if you have to pay them while they wait.
While YM may have figured out how to make it scale as one large organization, it would be much better to build a marketplace where qualified independent mechanics compete for jobs as they come in, with work certified and backed by YM - like the Uber model.
So then how do you schedule them if they don't compete? Is this more of a "fill your spare capacity" setup or do they work certain shifts? Also, what is your average response time? Same day or scheduled in advance?
I don't really mean to reveal all your secret sauce, but since I dealt with this stuff for a couple months I'm curious. The mechanic I worked with wanted to go big time but my partner and I decided he wasn't a good fit to run an operation at that scale.
mechanic set their own time. response time really depends on how busy they are. we don't promise a response time yet. our mechanics use our mobile app to do all their scheduling. it is really fill your spare capacity model (work on weekends, evenings, free days during week) etc.
I wish these guys the best of luck. But, as someone who operated the same kind of business successfully for a long time, I have to say that their work is cut out for them. You think people are hard to deal with when it comes to computers? Its 100X worse with cars. Computers are cheap, and relatively easy to replace/repair. Now cars, well, good luck with that.
The biggest issue in this market are the clients trying to get money out of you for stuff you didnt break. Day in/da out. Its tiring. Reapir shops also go through the same deal, that is why most shops turn into assholes. People make mechanics lose faith in humanity.
If any of the yourmechanic.com guys is reading, shoot me an email. I ll gladly talk about what difficulties I had. maybe Ill save you some time/money.
This is a good opportunity for YM to educate their customers. I have a great mechanic who I trust and bears with me when I ask exactly what is going on. We built a relationship based on him educating me. YM could do the same for it's customers. Your cam belt needs repairing? Why exactly? Your wheels needs alignment? Why exactly? Keep a dossier on the car and what's going on and your customers are happier and have less to complain about when they get hit with a $2k upgrade because your car is 15 years old and you can't get a used radiator for your model.
Your and your mechanic are rare. Most people dont even stop to listen to what their mechanic says. They just complain how expensive things are, never bothering to find out why it happened.
Satisfied customer here - the difference between YM and the old way of doing things is night and day. If you live in the area and value your time, you really owe it to yourself to try them out.
Yet another satisfied customer here, and to me, one of the huge advantages of YM is that the mechanic comes to you... no more worrying about how to get your vehicle to a shop, whether you will make it there by closing to pick it back up, which of your friends to bug to give you a ride, etc.
Wow as soon as I saw this the Lube Mobile ad and phone number (13 13 32) popped into my head immediately (I'm in Australia). Who said TV advertising is dead?!
The use of 'contractors' is interesting (following on from Exec, iCracked, TaskRabbit etc.) Perhaps this is the future of employment - providing more flexibility to both the firm and the individual?
As well as this the mobility of the contractors is really fascinating. The internet has really started to disrupt the need for retail-service premises; think of print shops (Printing.com), computer repairers (iCracked), florists (1-800 Flowers), real estate agencies (Redfin), education (ie TutorSpree). Interesting to see what verticals remain untapped.
I wonder the implications of completely opening up these sort of platforms entirely - ie allowing 'anyone' to complete a car repair job. [Obviously in the case of YourMechanic there are warranty implications :P]
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