Lube Talk

This month in Lube Talk, our forum of operators discusses the vehicles that most commonly come rolling into their bays.

Brad Phillips
Phillips operates a three-bay Valvoline Express Care in Lubbock, Texas.

Q: What is the most common vehicle you see come through your shop, and does the sight of it make you cringe or is it a breeze to service?

A: The most common vehicles that we see in our shop are Chevrolet Trucks. That would include Suburbans, pickups and Tahoes. Most months they make up about 20 percent of our business.

They are a breeze to service, and they are great for business. Depending on the year model, they have air filters, cabin filters and fuel filters that need service. Chevrolet also recommends transmission service and radiator service in their owners manual, and you can have a great ticket on these.

When we are servicing a nightmare vehicle, we always say, “They all can’t be Chevrolets, can they?”

Chris Shepanek
Shepanek is chief executive officer of OCH International, Inc., franchisor of Oil Can Henry’s quick oil change centers. There are 86 Oil Can Henry’s centers in Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota and Idaho.

Q: What is the most common vehicle you see come through your shop, and does the sight of it make you cringe or is it a breeze to service?

A: Hondas are the most common vehicles we see in our centers. They’re quite easy to service, but we make sure our technicians are cautious about the threads in the oil pans because it’s not uncommon for a vehicle to come in with the threads already damaged. The threads are a bit delicate and can be easily damaged during a service.

Nick Vuko
Vuko is the general manager of Quick Nick’s Snappy Lube in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Q: What is the most common vehicle you see come through your shop, and does the sight of it make you cringe or is it a breeze to service?

A: The most common vehicle I see come through my shop is a Chevy Silverado. When I see these vehicles I am actually happy — except for when I have to take out the air filter. I would like to strangle the engineer who decided to use torx screws for this design. Otherwise, this vehicle is pretty easy to service and can be done fairly quickly, which makes it a breeze.

Our second most common vehicle to come through the shop is Volkswagens. Everything that makes me happy about the Silverado is completely undone thinking about Volkswagens (although I never tell my guys that). They take synthetic oil which makes a nice ticket, but the skid plates make the job that much longer and more difficult. I carry all the necessary screws and clips to secure these plates in case some are missing. When that happens, we note on the invoice that some were missing prior to service. These vehicles take a lot longer to service than others that come in, but most quick lubes in my town do not service Volkswagens, which I like to capitalize on. That is one way to set myself apart from my competition, and if you can train your guys to service them correctly, I think it can pay off.

Scotti Lee
Lee is operator of Oil Change Express in New Castle, Delaware.

Q: What is the most common vehicle you see come through your shop, and does the sight of it make you cringe or is it a breeze to service?

A: We see more Hondas come through than any other vehicle. They are easy to work on, and we can run them through our system in less than 10 minutes. What is nice is that they do not need any special tools to do the work. On a side note, Honda wants to start using 0W-20 motor oil and would be using it today except there is not much of it around. Their next goal is to move to 0W-10.