kimw57•8d ago

Watched my old shop go from paper work orders to full computer tracking in just 5 years

I started at a garage in Cleveland back in 2017 where we still wrote everything on carbon copy triplicate forms. By 2022 that same shop had tablets mounted on every bay and the service writer just tapped screens all day. The biggest change was how fast we could pull up a car's history, no more digging through dusty file cabinets. Has anyone else seen shops change that quick, or did yours do it slower?

2 comments

2 Comments

shanec617d ago

Oh man, I gotta push back a little on the timeline. You said "just 5 years" for the full switch, but 2017 to 2022 is actually pretty slow for a big change like that. Most shops I've seen in the rust belt made that move way faster, like 2014 to 2018 when the affordable cloud systems finally got good. My buddy's place near Akron went from paper to full digital in about 2 years because the owner got tired of losing work orders. The triplicate forms you mentioned, those were already getting phased out hard by 2015 in a lot of places. Not saying your shop is wrong or anything, but that pace sounds more like a slow rollout than a sudden change to me. How many bays were they running when they finally switched over?

nathankim7d ago

Actually the 2014 to 2018 window you're talking about mostly applied to shops that were already using some kind of computer system for billing or parts ordering. For the really old school places that were still doing everything on paper in 2016, the jump to cloud based stuff took longer because they had to digitize decades of records and retrain everyone. I know a 6 bay shop near Canton that didn't fully ditch their carbon copy books until 2021 because the oldest mechanic refused to touch a tablet. So 2017 to 2022 sounds about right for shops that were starting from zero digital presence. Not trying to be a jerk about it, just saying your buddy's experience was probably from a place that already had some digital bones.