Here I would like to comment on the owners of private shops. There are many great technicians and shop owners out there. But in expensive areas of this country, you will have a hard time finding them. Instead I think they learn that the right combination of greed, arrogance, and ignorance yields them more money than direct and to-the-point troubleshooting.

Clearly there are some good ones out there. I wish I lived near Steve's shop for example. Merely his credentials alone put him well over the top of shops in my area. His ability to communicate, very clear technical knowledge, and diagnostic capability appear to be well beyond what I've seen in my area.

But if you open a shop in an expensive area, apparently you can do very well. Here's what I have seen.

Where I live, the owner of a local 8 bay shop has at least a few private jets, he does very well. He is never there and has several expensive hobbies according to several people I spoke to. The shop is expensive but known to be one of the better ones. They are arrogant and the Internet has a number of reports about surprising experiences where they embarass customers. They did this to me, and I can tell you I was nothing but open, generous, and communicative. I had also already spent $6000 with them a few years ago for work done well. Instead you get pissed-on because the mechanic is having a bad day and decides to walk by you and mouth-off. I realize it's hard to believe, you just have to be there to believe it. By the way, this is a good shop for the area and may very well take my car back there if I have to (if I absolutely can't fix it myself). If you take your car in there, it does have an excellent chance of getting fixed right the first time. You will likely be humiliated in the process though.

Then we have others who I proved and witnessed breaking my car and overcharging me an arm-and-a-leg. I run my own business and I'm very much into making sure that others are treated well in a business transaction because I know what it's like to have the screws put to me. But most of the shops in this area are some combination of arrogant, inept, and greedy. I've seen it all. I've taken my car in one shop, gave them as much as $5000 in one instance, and got it back broken worse than it came in there. What was the cause? Something they didn't fix in the first place was STILL broken and something NEW they broke when they were addressing something that was fine. In my case I discovered numerous problems including seals with big vacuum leaks (they didn't replace seals when replacing a component, eg a fuel distributor), a new catalytic converter that hits the engine when I turn, fuel pouring from a newly installed fuel distributor causing a VERY dangerous situation, and a much-too-rich running condition. To put an end to this I learned myself, leveraging this site including the help of many GOOD TECHNICIANS and owners here. I found these issues and either fixed them myself or took them back to the mechanic and stood over them while they fixed it. I now have a a 20 year old SL that purs like a kitten (very very smooth idle), has new car emissions, incredible gas mileage, cool as a cucumber, and incredible power. It is really better than new. But that was me going in there and fixing everything and spending, by the time I was done with their work and mine, probably like $7000 plus my time. Now, if there was just one decent shop in this area that could take care of this and that I could trust, I would have had them do all of it. They could have easily made a big profit at much fewer dollars if they were knowledgeable. There's a reason why people are afraid to take their cars into mechanics. Because good honest shops are hard to find. It's just a fact. If you are lucky enough to live near one of the mechanics posting on this site, you are very lucky. For the rest of us, it's hard work and people will vent on the subject.

While not directly related to MB techs, I own an independant motorcycle repair shop. We have been in business about 12 years, and today I have 2 "mechanics" that work for me.

My head guy has years of experience fixing a wide variety of things (grew up in the communist bloc), and got his official training from a two year stint at MMI (Motorcycle Mechanics Institute), followed up with 4 years at a dealership doing line work. He has been with me now for about two years. His tool kit costs under $1000 (he uses the cheapest he can find, not chinese stuff, but lots of Craftsmen acquired used), and he makes about $50k working 25 hours/week. (He comes in, gets his stuff done, and goes home - no BS.) He is certainly a unique and rare exception.

My other guy is a recent MMI grad. Owns over $5000 in tools, maybe much more. Works 40+ hours/week, and has a hard time keeping above $20k. He is much more typical.

On the other hand, I have no "official" training, although I consider several years of engineering school to be valuable in what I do today. I own over $30k worth of tools, and work at least 50 hours/week. I don't pull $30k except on the best years, but my hope is that the investment in the business will pay off. (This is a major gamble...)

-David