Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Underutilized Service Bays

Service bays are the core of daily operations in tire shops, oil change centers, and automotive service chains. Yet many shops are operating under their potential capacity. This gap in utilization represents a missed opportunity for increased efficiency, higher revenue, and improved customer experience.

What’s Limiting Bay Performance?

Even well-run service centers can struggle to identify where time is being lost. The most common causes are subtle but persistent.

Delays That Go Unnoticed and Untracked

Manual systems like whiteboards or spreadsheets make it difficult to see where time is slipping away. Without real-time tracking, vehicles often sit waiting for technicians, parts, or direction. These idle moments accumulate, reducing throughput and increasing wait times. Without delay tracking, managers are flying blind when trying to improve workflows.

Utilization That Isn’t Measured

Many managers are unsure how much time bays spend idle or how often they are tied up with low-priority tasks. Without reliable data, optimizing staffing, scheduling, or layout becomes guesswork.

Limited Insight Into Technician Activity

It can be difficult to know how technicians are spending their time without visibility into bay-level activity. This makes it harder to identify coaching opportunities, recognize strong performers, or intervene early when support is needed.

A Practical Approach: Real-Time Bay Intelligence with PitCrew

PitCrew by Leverege is an AI-powered product designed to help service centers monitor and improve bay utilization. It provides real-time data that supports faster decisions and more effective management.

Track Bay Utilization in Real Time

PitCrew automatically logs when each vehicle enters and exits a bay, capturing occupancy data and highlighting when services go over time. If there’s a delay, technicians select a reason code, creating a goldmine of insights for managers.

At one tire chain, PitCrew revealed a common delay source: incomplete invoices and unclear instructions from the front desk. With that insight, the store improved its handoff process and saw immediate gains in efficiency.

Technician Activity Monitoring

PitCrew tracks how many technicians are working in which bays and when. That allows managers to balance labor in real time and identify whether specific bays are over- or under-resourced.

Identifying Opportunities for Coaching

PitCrew highlights irregularities like extended cycle times or frequent delay codes. These outliers can indicate training needs or process issues.

In one shop, the shop manager noticed some technicians were less productive but didn’t know why. PitCrew revealed that newer techs were underutilizing their time due to lack of proper training. With this insight, the team launched targeted training that quickly improved performance across the board.

Results from the Field

Service centers using PitCrew have seen measurable improvements, including:

• Up to 8 additional daily invoices per location
• 18 percent reduction in customer wait times
• 13 percent decrease in average service time

These improvements were achieved without hiring more staff. The difference came from better insight and more informed adjustments.

Final Thoughts

Running service bays efficiently requires visibility into how time is spent and where delays occur. PitCrew helps uncover these patterns and provides the tools to respond quickly and effectively.

To see what your operation could gain from better bay intelligence, schedule a demo of PitCrew today.

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