Data for Trades

Auto Repair Data · By Anthony Limpert · October 31, 2026

What 2,632 Real Repair Jobs Taught Me About Pricing a Shop

Most repair price guides are built from quotes. Somebody asks a few shops what a brake job costs, averages it, and calls it data.

I run a mobile mechanic business in Riverside County. I write up our jobs in Shop Desk, the software we built for it, and other shops run on it too. So I pulled every auto job out of it, stripped out every name, phone, plate, address and shop, and looked at what people actually booked, what they cancelled and what they paid.

That came to 2,632 jobs from August 2025 to October 2026. Then I put them next to what 18,181 independent shop websites say they charge. Here is what jumped out, worst first.

Almost One in Three Jobs Never Turns Into Money

Of the 2,632 jobs, 1,749 got done. 484 were cancelled. Another 399 were quotes the customer never booked.

That is 883 jobs, about a third of everything, that took a phone call, a quote and somebody's time and paid nothing.

Pre-purchase inspections are the worst of it. We booked 340 of them and only 26% got done. A buyer calls, the seller sells to someone else that afternoon, and the inspection dies. If you sell inspections, take a deposit or a card hold at booking. That one rule protects more money than any price change.

Diagnostics Are the Front Door, Not a Side Job

Diagnostics were the biggest category by far. 733 jobs, 28% of the whole file. 70% got done, at a median of $150 paid.

Now look at what shops post. 504 shop websites list a diagnostic fee, and the median is $100. The middle half runs $80 to $150.

So the shops that publish a number are mostly publishing a low one, and real jobs land higher once the tech is on the car. If your diagnostic fee is buried or missing, put it on the site. People call the shop that answers the price question first.

Posted Prices Are Labor Plus Hope

The batteries tell the story. Across 188 shop websites, the median posted battery replacement is $150. Our 126 real battery jobs had a median paid total of $260.

That gap is the battery itself. Most posted prices leave the part out, and the customer finds out at the end.

Brakes are the one place the posted number and the real number meet. 82 shops post pads and rotors, median $312. Our 199 brake jobs paid a median of $316. When a shop posts the whole job, the price holds.

JobShops Posting a PricePosted MedianReal JobsMedian Paid
Diagnostic504$100694$150
Battery replacement188$150126$260
Brake pads and rotors82$312199 brake jobs$316
Oil change569$6958$138

Posted prices come from independent shop websites, chains and dealers left out. Paid totals are what the customer paid, parts and labor together. Real jobs are mostly mobile repair in Riverside County, California.

The Labor Rate Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

We crawled 22,085 independent shop websites and read 18,181 of them. Only 207 state an hourly labor rate. That is about one shop in a hundred.

The ones that do post a median of $129 an hour, with the middle half at $100 to $165. In California, 53 shops post one and the median is $160.

Shops hide the rate because they think it scares people off. What scares people off is not knowing. Put the rate on the site next to two or three real jobs and what they cost.

The Big Jobs Close Best

This one surprised me. The bigger the ticket, the more often it got done.

Transmission and clutch work, 49 jobs, closed at 86% with a median of $955 paid. Alternators, 62 jobs, closed at 81% at $508. Drivetrain work closed at 80% at $657.

By the time a car needs a transmission, the owner already knows. They are not shopping. They want it fixed by somebody who shows up. Oil changes were the opposite, 59% done, because that customer will go wherever is cheapest that week.

Most of This Work Happens in the Driveway

75% of the jobs were done at the customer's home or work. Hemet, Riverside and San Jacinto made up most of them.

The cars are what you see on the road. Ford led with 202 jobs, then Chevrolet and Toyota at 171 each, then Honda at 132.

If you are a mobile shop, your price page should read like a driveway, not a waiting room. Say what you bring, what you can do on site and what has to go to a bay.

Why I Publish This

I have been doing SEO since I started Clickflame in 2004, the year I finished my B.S. in Computer Science at the University of Akron. The pages that win now are the ones with numbers nobody else has.

Our pre-purchase inspection site, PrePurchaseAuto, went from 2 Google clicks to 2,672 in eight weeks, and from 4 paid inspections to 55 in the same windows. MechanicRank went from 1,048 sessions in its first 24 days of tracking to 9,943 in the 24 days ending October 20, with scraper traffic taken out. Both are built on real prices from real jobs.

The full job file, the shop price crawl and the rest are on Data for Trades. Every set has a free sample. Take the numbers, put them on your site and give your customers the answer before they have to ask.

Anthony Limpert owns Supercanic, a mobile mechanic business in Riverside County, California, and the Shop Desk software it runs on. ASE Business Built With Master Automotive Technicians. He founded Clickflame in 2004 and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from The University of Akron. Full author page.

Sources

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