Proudly serving the industry for which it was named for more than 50 years, Outdoor Power Equipment provides dealers who sell and service outdoor power equipment with valuable information to succeed in a competitive market.
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At Outdoor Power Equipment, we recently followed up our nationwide dealer surveys from 2001, 2006, 2010 and 2012 by conducting a similar survey. Topics ranged from hourly shop labor and technician pay rates based on skill level to annual gross income and social media use. We sent the survey to approximately 2,500 dealers on Aug. 19, and I'm pleased to report that we received an excellent re- sponse rate of nearly 6 percent, with some dealers electing to skip a few of the 22 questions. Realizing that the answers to a few questions would vary from region to region — especially when it comes to service technicians' salaries and shop labor rates — we decided to fur- ther validate the results to those specific questions by breaking down the responses into the following five regions: Northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Caro- lina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Min- nesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin Northwest: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming Southwest: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Ne- vada, New Mexico, Utah Without further delay, I would like to share with you the findings of our survey with a few observations along the way. Aging ownership If you take a look at all of the graphics in this article, you will be hard pressed to find a more notable trend than the aging dealer population and the industry's inability to attract younger dealers. When we first asked about the age of dealership owners in 2001, only 18.77 percent responded that they were at least 60 years old. That figure has more than doubled to a whopping 39.2 percent this year. What may be an even more telling statis- tic is that nearly three out of every four dealers (76.4 percent) are now 50 and over. Meanwhile, during the same 13-year period, the percentage of dealership owners who are 20-29 years old has been nearly non existent, and risen from a mere 1.96 percent to 2.7 percent. Passing the torch to the next generation or finding someone outside of the family to take over the business has apparently been a major challenge facing dealers. workforce composition On the bright side, I'm glad to see that although many of you are either having a hard time finding a successor or in no hurry to retire, you are deciding to hire more help. More than half of the survey respondents continue to operate Hourly pay rate for starting service technicians * = $7 - $8.99 ** = $21 or more NA = Not Applicable Hourly Rate Northeast South Midwest Northwest Southwest United States 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2001/2006/2010/2012/2014 $5 - $6.99 NA NA NA NA NA 10.36%/3.55%/NA/NA/NA $7.25 - $8.99 13.3% 10.0% 5.0% 22.2% 0% 33.89%*/21.30%*/13.7%/8.8%/8.8% $9 - $10.99 30.0% 23.3% 25.0% 11.1% 0% 27.73%/32.54%/29.5%/36.3%/23.5% $11 - $12.99 26.7% 43.3% 35.0% 22.2% 57.1% 16.53%/19.23%/30.2%/27.5%/35.3% $13 - $14.99 10.0% 13.3% 18.3% 33.3% 28.6% 5.04%/8.58%/12.2%/16.7%/16.9% $15 - $16.99 10.0% 3.3% 11.7% 0% 14.3% 3.64%/8.28%/10.8%/3.9%/8.8% $17 - $18.99 7.0% 6.7% 3.3% 0% 0% 1.12%/0.89%/1.4%/2.9%/4.4% $19 - $20.99 3.0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0.84%/1.78%/1.4%/1.0%/0.7% $21 - $22.99 0% 0% 0% 11.1% 0% 0.84%**/0.30%/0%/2.0%/0.7% $23 - $24.99 0% 0% 1.7% 0% 0% NA/0.30%/0%/0%/0.7% $25 or more 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% NA/3.25%/0.7%/1.0%/0% 22 OCTOBER 2014 OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT www.outdoorpowerequipment.com OPE 's 2014 Dealer Survey ■ By Steve Noe Cover Story | Survey