THE UPTIME REPORT- September 2026
By Laird Sutherland Senior Operations Manager, Stephenson Equipment Ltd.
The burning question:
Most shop owners track labour rate, parts margin, and technician headcount closely. Far fewer track how much billable time their shop layout is quietly costing them every single day — and that number is often bigger than any line item on the P&L.
What's actually happening on your bay floor
Industry estimates suggest that when parts, tools, or diagnostic equipment are poorly zoned relative to the bays that need them, technicians can lose 90 to 180 minutes of billable labour per day just walking back and forth. At a $120/hour labour rate, that's not a rounding error, it's hundreds of dollars in lost capacity, every day, per technician, whether or not the shop is busy.
A few patterns worth checking against your own floor:
Bay utilization under 75% is generally considered a signal that money is being left on the table, not because techs aren't working, but because bays are occupied by stalled vehicles waiting on parts, approvals, or the next open lift.
Bay-to-technician ratio matters more than most owners assume. A commonly cited target is 1.5–2 bays per technician — enough flexibility to keep a tech moving to the next job instead of standing idle during a parts delay or curing/cooling wait.
Parts proximity is one of the cheapest fixes with the biggest payoff. Positioning inventory within roughly 30–50 feet of the work area is a frequently cited benchmark for cutting walking time without any equipment spend at all.
So-what ...
None of this requires a full rebuild. Most of it is a reallocation of what you already have: where the parts cart sits, where the diagnostic scanner lives, whether your alignment bay and ADAS calibration space are fighting each other for the same square footage. The shops that treat layout as an ongoing efficiency lever — not a one-time construction decision — are the ones that see the productivity numbers move.
Worth a second look?
If you haven't audited your bay flow against actual billable-hour data in the last year, it's worth 30 minutes. Happy to talk through what that could look like for your shop; book a service visit.
Contact Laird: 204-831-9633 or email: laird.sutherland@stephensonequipment.ca
