Originally Posted by F-2 Speedy

I bought an o-ring from McMaster car for a 1.50...........Mercury wanted 17.00........ya no profit in parts

Originally Posted by flat rate

I never understood why working on and especially building boats get paid so poorly. $20.00 a hour straight time is big money in the boat world yet a Flat Rate auto tech makes $27.50 plus. And on the building end especially painting they don’t pay ****! I’d much rather paint a Honda Civic fender than sand and paint and buff a 52 MTI yet guess what pays more.

Originally Posted by Mentalpause

I should tell my son to move to the lake, where his wife would rather be if they are paying flat rate mechanics $27+ per hour there. He was a flat rate Honda tech in central IL for over 15 years. Moved to a Ford service writer last year, but after all that time he was just under $20 per hr. Had 401k with some match, medical and vacation,, typical benefits.

Originally Posted by luke81

Couple things attribute to it. On the building end, much of the labor of building mass produced boats is fairly unskilled general labor. It's doing the same thing over and over, and following basic instructions. Intrepid boats is about 5 minutes from where I'm sitting now and there are very few people in that facility making even 20 bucks an hour. And most of the people there have no speciality skills. They could be working at a boat factory, a furniture factory, or bagging groceries next week. They're just going through the motion of the task.
On the service side I'm not as sure about it. My shop does marine audio, lighting and electronics and some electrical rigging type work too. So we're not true service work but it's sort of close. My best guy was making about $20/hr straight time, and aside from going onto a commission or flat rate type scale there wasn't much room to pay him more. You can't really compare a flat rate auto tech because while they might list at $28/hr they often get flagged less hours than the job actually takes...and of course sometimes its the other way around too. But a lot of flat rate auto techs actual hourly rate is sub-20$.
A big part of it is there is basically no margin on boat parts. We make decent profit on audio and lighting, but other stuff we make squat. I'm sure bigger dealers get better programs but across the board I don't think anyone is making a ton of money on parts. Any customer can typically buy a Lowrance chart/fishfinder for less at ten online stores than I can buy it from the actual Lowrance distributor. If they're not able to make 40-50 percent on the parts they've got to make it up in the labor, which means paying the tech less.

Originally Posted by flat rate

so let’s not even say your building a new boat let’s just say your paying $50000-$75000 to paint one. You want me to justify paying kids nothing to do it !the profit margin is stupid. Dave Scott’s old mystic was just repainted for $85000 by $10 a hour kids. mti pays $15-20 a hour to paint a boat and they wonder why the turnover is so bad. A bare hull is around $200000-$250000. So your telling me your paying $750000(minus power ) for unskilled labor to build your million plus boat. And we know $10 a hour guys laid it up. I get it if that’s the industry just doesn’t seem fair for the workers. They see all this money thrown around and don’t get paid ****.

Originally Posted by Jupiter Sunsation

So if boat builders were being paid $35 an hour would the product be better? Considering how many man hours go into a new build wouldn't the extra wages make an already expensive product really overpriced at that point?

If you look at auto workers (keep it non-union for argument sake), if a guy makes $20 on the line assembling Hondas and there is a guy in England assembling Rolls Royces should he make $50 an hour because a Rolls Royce costs more than a Honda? Is the car better because the employee is paid more? If both jobs are identical, lets say they are both the guy that puts the 4 rims on the car, torques them down and moves on to the next car should they be paid any more than the tire guy at the local tire store?