MOT Testing

Beware of the cheap MOT.......

The Government sets the maximum price for MOT tests. Currently, it's set at £54.85 for cars.

That’s why, if you ask a garage (including ourselves) the cost of a MOT, unless they have a big sign up offering a different price, they will probably say £54.85. It’s also why most main dealers charge £54.85 even though their labour rate per hour is much higher. It’s why all rural garages, with little competition, charge the odd sounding figure of £54.85.

Yet if you go online, you will find lots of independent garages offering much cheaper MOT tests. This can even include collection and delivery. This might seem like too good a deal to pass up. Less than half price and you don’t even have to leave home. But unless you are a mechanic, or related to one, you should be very wary of these offers. Here’s why:

An average MOT test time is around 45 minutes.

If you live just 5 miles from the garage it is a ten mile round trip for collection and the same again for return:

• So it is 10 miles in their car (using fuel)
• 10 miles on your car
• it costs the garage 30 mins in lost labour time

So the entire job takes an hour and 15 minutes on average.

The garage has:

• building (rent or mortgage)
• employer’s national insurance (on top of the salaries)
• testing equipment (a MOT station costs a minimum £30,000+VAT to fit out)
• lighting & heating
• various essential insurance (public liability, employer’s liability, building and contents policies) to pay for

If they are not in a prominent high street location they also have advertising to pay for.

The classic business model that ensures this kind of garage will be a sustainable employer is based on working out all these costs, and charging customers a rate based on approximately a third for staff costs, a third for all the costs listed above and a third for profit.

Remember, garages have only two ways to make money. The first is an hourly labour rate. The second is a margin added to parts.

The average independent garage charges £45 per hour and makes up to 15%-25% on parts. In a typical hour of service and repairs this translates to £15-25 income from parts. So you can estimate that every hour of trading generates £60 to £70 of revenue, of which £40 - £46 is lost to costs with £20 - £24 profit.