By Hunt Demarest

I was talking to a shop owner the other day who was fired up about one of his technicians. And before you ask—no, I’m not talking about you… probably.

His frustration sounded pretty straightforward. He paid a tech for 40 hours, but half of that time—20 hours—was spent fixing a comeback. In his mind, he did the math: $25 an hour times 20 hours… “Hunt, I just lost $500.”

And that’s where I had to stop him.

Because the real problem wasn’t the $500. Not even close.

You’re Looking at the Wrong Number

Most shop owners look at situations like this and focus on what they paid out. But that’s only part of the story—and honestly, it’s the smaller part.

The bigger question is: what didn’t happen?

Those 20 hours weren’t just “wasted payroll.” They were 20 hours that could have been sold to a paying customer. That’s where opportunity cost comes into play, and if you’re not thinking this way, you’re underestimating the problem every single time.

The Real Cost of That Comeback

Let’s break it down the way I explained it to him.

His effective labor rate was $165 an hour. So those 20 hours of non-billable work didn’t just cost him $500 in wages—they cost him $3,300 in lost labor sales.

And that’s just labor.

Because let me ask you this—how often do you sell 20 hours of labor and zero parts? Almost never.

So now you’re layering in lost parts revenue and gross profit on top of that. When you zoom out, that $500 problem starts looking a lot more like a $5,000 problem.

That’s a very different conversation.

Labor Doesn’t Carry Over

Here’s the part I really want you to hear: labor is perishable.

If you don’t sell it today, it’s gone. You don’t get to put it on a shelf and sell it next week like a part. At the end of the day, whatever labor hours weren’t sold just disappear.

That’s why this matters so much.

You can recover from a bad parts decision. You can’t recover from lost labor hours.

It’s Not Just Comebacks

This doesn’t only apply to tech mistakes. Same idea shows up in:

· Warranty work

· Goodwill repairs

· Fixing your own vehicles

· Inefficiencies and disorganization

Any time your team is working and you’re not getting paid, you need to be asking: what could this time have produced instead?

That’s the number that matters.

Stop Focusing on Cutting Costs

A lot of shop owners try to fix this by cutting expenses. But let me ask you something:

Would you rather save $100 on lunch… or generate an extra half hour of billable work?

Same effort. Completely different outcome.

The goal isn’t to pay your technicians less. The goal is to make sure their time is being used on the highest-value work possible.

You Have to Track This

Here’s where most shops fall short—they don’t track non-paying work properly.

If you’re not recording warranty, comeback, or goodwill work at full retail value, you’re flying blind. You’re only seeing what you got paid, not what you should have been paid.

And that’s how shops end up thinking they have a productivity problem… when really they have a collection problem.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, it’s not about what you paid—it’s about what you didn’t get paid.

Once you start looking at your business through that lens, everything changes. You make different decisions. You manage your team differently. And you start seeing where the real leaks are.

And yeah… sometimes those realizations lead to tough conversations.

But they also lead to better businesses.