One of the most basic parts of car ownership is taking care of basic maintenance. The most frequent item that should be addressed is changing your vehicle’s oil , and that’s a task that comes down to a simple choice: Do you do it yourself or take it somewhere?

As we’ve established, I was a grease monkey in a prior life. But even with those skills and know-how, I elect to have someone else handle the job. Why? Well, time is money, and the money you save by doing it yourself, you might have to reinvest many times over in labor, risk, and cleanup. I was trained to work on cars standing up; crawling under is a hard adjustment. But I’m cheap and picky, so I’m selective on where I get an oil change done. 

Let’s run the numbers.

As Matt has recently shown us, oil, through the right retailer, is cheap. And based on lab testing as David discusses in “Expensive Oil Is Waste Of Money,” there is little difference between the performance of the cheap stuff versus pricey oils. [Ed Note: I hated the headline “Why Expensive Oil Is A Waste Of Money.” I didn’t write it. That headline, without the word ‘sometimes’ after ‘is,’ is misleading. -DT]

However, if you’re going to a shop for an instant oil change or even the dealership, you might feel like you’ve just lost an arm and a leg. It just depends on what the shop is prioritizing and what you’re willing to accept. 

For this demonstration, I’ll be using my Ford Maverick hybrid. It takes 5.7 quarts of 0W-20. When I called the nearest Valvoline, they quoted me:

• $107.68 for full synthetic oil: $99.99 for 5 quarts and a filter, and an additional $7.69 for the remaining 0.7 quart
• $75.99 for synthetic blend oil: $70.40 for 5 quarts and a filter, and an additional $5.59 for the remaining 0.7 quart
• $55.88 for conventional oil: $50.99 for 5 quarts and a filter, and an additional $4.89 for the remaining 0.7 quart

Now let’s look at the nearby Ford dealership where I took my Maverick to address four recalls.

• $98.47 for 5.7 quarts of Full Synthetic Oil and a filter

Welp, that’s the last time I ask someone to do an oil change without asking the costs ahead of time. And now the Chevrolet dealership in Mishawaka that I took the truck to last May.

• $55 for 5.7 quarts of full synthetic oil and a filter

Between the highest and lowest prices, for the same type of oil, that’s a 95% difference in price! So what are the differences between these places?

Let’s Talk Labor Costs

At Valvoline in 2016, I was making $10.50/hour as a Senior Tech. I was one or two steps above entry level and was a keyholder, a shade below Assistant Store Manager. Then in my second stint with Valvoline in 2021, I picked it up as a second job in an attempt to pay off bills, and my primary source of income was just enough to break even; I was making $15/hour. Based on this trajectory of increase, I’ll use $18/hour as the going rate for labor in 2024.

For a two-bay store, there’d typically be between four to five staffers at a time; one or two customer service advisors, two toppers, and one pitter. Each car would take at most 15 minutes, barring any complications or additional services. Based on this, on a busy day, the store could get through at least eight cars in an hour.  

Labor cost per car with four staffers:
$18/hour x 4 staffers ÷ 8 cars = $9 in labor/car

Labor cost per car with five staffers:
$18/hour x 5 staffers ÷ 8 cars = $11.25 in labor/car

Seems straightforward enough! Yet, while eight cars in an hour would be ideal for profit, like any business, there are rushes and dead times throughout the day. A possibly more exact calculation would be to look at the average number of cars a quick lube shop sees in a day and the total hours paid out for that day.

Using my primary store in Midland, we would see roughly 32 cars a day and hopefully have at least five people scheduled for eight-hour shifts.

$18/hour x 5 staffers x 8 hours ÷ 32 cars =  $22.5 in labor/car

Cost Of Oil And Filter

Oil is cheap! While that might run counter to current prices at a quick lube, you can get 5 quarts of full synthetic for $18.98 at Walmart, $21.99 at Meijer, or if you’re getting more outdoors supplies, $24.99 at Tractor Supply. I’ll stick with using full synthetic oil for the rest of this exercise because if you need to use 0W-20 oil, it’s probably the best option. And the Maverick is my queen and deserves the best. 

Looking for cheap but acceptable filters, Bosch filters for my Maverick start at $2.60 a piece at Rock Auto. 

Obviously, places like dealerships and Valvoline get fluids at wholesale prices. A quick search for bulk quantities and I learned you could order a 55-gallon drum of 0W-20 full synthetic oil from the Miami Oil Company for $654.75. That works out to $2.98/quart or $14.90/5 quarts. I’d assume there are even better rates for Valvoline and the like but I do not have access to their books.

Ticket Price, Or ‘How Did I Just Come In For Just One Thing And Leave With Five?’

The ticket price is the hidden number customers don’t see. It’s a target corporate sets as the desired revenue per car. At Valvoline, if your store did well on the number of customers you saw per month, the average “ticket,” and customer reviews, you’d get a bonus. This obviously encouraged CSAs to upsell when possible.

That could be from suggesting customers try a full synthetic oil instead of a mix, or attempting to sell a coolant or transmission service. Heck, air filters were/are a big part of this too. As of now, Valvoline charges $24.99 for an engine filter and $54.99 (!!!) for a cabin filter. While researching prices for my significant other’s 2012 Honda Fit, I saw Rock Auto sells Bosch engine and cabinet filters for $4 and $9 respectively. This is one of the more uncomfortable aspects associated with working in quick lube.

I was texting one of my closest friends whom I met while working at Valvoline. I had expressed my shock after discovering Valvoline’s new prices. He gave me permission to share his response. 

Adding It All Up

So working with limited data, my best estimate is that it costs at least $22.50 in labor/car and at most $17.68 in materials costs for my Maverick, for a grand total of $40.18 for a quick lube oil change. Subtracting that from the original quote of $107.68 leaves $67.50 to go towards overhead costs and net profits.

Now looking at the Mishawaka dealership, labor costs are slightly different. The best-going rate I can find when calling around is a $25 labor charge when I supply my own oil and filter. If an oil change takes 15 minutes, that’s $100/hour in labor costs, not an unheard-of number. $25 in labor + $17.68 in materials = $42.68. Subtracting that from the $55 overall cost leaves $12.32 for revenue, a much more reasonable number.

I once asked one of the dealership’s service managers why the cost was so low, relatively speaking, compared to their competition. He said it’s an intentional loss leader. They didn’t care about squeezing the money out of an oil change because that’s not their main business – they want to sell cars. By offering cheaper oil changes, they establish a positive reputation in the community and increase the number of people who visit their dealership. And boy, did it work. It wasn’t uncommon to see the dealership’s driveway filled with cars in line for oil changes.

For me, my go-to is grabbing oil and a filter for $29 while I’m grocery shopping at Meijer. I then take it to whichever dealership has the best quote for labor. I’m okay with that because I don’t have jacks or stands (yet) and my apartment complex frowns upon wrenching in their parking lot. But one day, I’ll have a house with a pole barn and a lift. Then just watch me. I’m sure I’ll find new, unexpected ways to make mistakes and get messy. [Ed Note: And write about them!]

Topshot: oil container via Valvoline; background image by methaphum/stock.adobe.com

The post Quick-Lube Oil Change Math: How A $20 Job Becomes A $100 Job appeared first on The Autopian.

Enlarge (credit: Géza Bálint Ujvárosi / EyeEm via Getty)

Ruth Ann Norton used to look forward to seeing the blue flame that danced on the burners of her gas stove. At one time, she says, she would have sworn that preparing meals with the appliance actually made her a better cook.

But then she started learning about the toxic gasses, including carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and other harmful pollutants that are emitted by stoves into the air, even when they’re turned off.

“I’m a person who grew up cooking, and love that blue flame,” said Norton, who leads the environmental advocacy group known as the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative. “But people fear what they don’t know. And what people need to understand really strongly is the subtle and profound impact that this is having—on neurological health, on respiratory health, on reproductive health.”

In recent years, gas stoves have been an unlikely front in the nation’s culture wars, occupying space at the center of a debate over public health, consumer protection, and the commercial interests of manufacturers. Now, Norton is among the environmental advocates who wonder if a pair of recent developments around the public’s understanding of the harms of gas stoves might be the start of a broader shift to expand the use of electrical ranges.

On Monday, lawmakers in the California Assembly advanced a bill that would require any gas stoves sold in the state to bear a warning label indicating that stoves and ovens in use “can release nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and benzene inside homes at rates that lead to concentrations exceeding the standards of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and the United States Environmental Protection Agency for outdoor air quality.”

The label would also note that breathing those pollutants “can exacerbate preexisting respiratory illnesses and increase the risk of developing leukemia and asthma, especially in children. To help reduce the risk of breathing harmful gases, allow ventilation in the area and turn on a vent hood when gas-powered stoves and ranges are in use.”

The measure, which moved the state Senate, could be considered for passage later this year.

“Just running a stove for a few minutes with poor ventilation can lead to indoor concentrations of nitrogen dioxide that exceed the EPA’s air standard for outdoors,” Gail Pellerin, the California assembly member who introduced the bill, said in an interview Wednesday. “You’re sitting there in the house drinking a glass of wine, making dinner, and you’re just inhaling a toxic level of these gases. So, we need a label to make sure people are informed.”

Pellerin’s proposal moved forward in the legislature just days after a group of Stanford researchers announced the findings of a peer-reviewed study that builds on earlier examinations of the public health toll of exposure to nitrogen dioxide pollution from gas and propane stoves.

A group of Stanford researchers collect data on nitrogen dioxide pollution from gas and propane stoves in a test kitchen. (credit: Rob Jackson/Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability)

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, found that gas stoves contribute to about 19,000 adult deaths each year and increase long-time exposure to nitrogen dioxide to 75 percent of the World Health Organization’s exposure guideline.

That last figure was one of the most significant findings by the research team, said the study’s lead author, Yannai Kashtan.

“This study’s main contribution is quantifying how much of that pollution really makes it to your nose, if you will,” Kashtan said in an interview.

Kashtan said that the study found that the most pressing dangers to gas stove owners—estimated to be as much as 40 percent of the population—stemmed from long-term exposure to harmful gases.

“The exposures that we’re estimating, they’re not going to cause immediate, terrible health outcomes tomorrow,” Kashtan said. “So we certainly don’t want to be alarmist. On the other hand, day after day, year after year, using a stove that the exposure really does build up and does increase the risk of all these respiratory diseases.

“It’s most important that people are aware of the risks and on the one hand, don’t freak out tomorrow, but also think seriously about indoor air pollution when they’re thinking about, ‘OK, you know, what’s my next appliance going to be?’” he added.

Researchers also found that people of color are disproportionately affected by the stoves. American Indian/Alaska Native households typically experience 60 percent more exposure to nitrogen dioxide than the national average. African American and Hispanic/Latino households record 20 percent more exposure than average.

“Poor people breathe dirtier air outdoors,” said Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was the study’s senior author. “And if they own a gas stove, they breathe it indoors, too.

“The same applies for various racial and ethnic groups that we identified, including Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans,” he said. “Solutions are more difficult for poor people, people in public housing and in poor neighborhoods, for often renters can’t switch their appliances because they don’t own and can’t afford to do so. So they need help to breathe safer air indoors.”

Milagros Elia, who grew up in New York, not far from a community nicknamed “Asthma Alley” because of the many people who live with the ailment there, said gas stoves are a racial justice issue. The neighborhoods near her childhood home are where researchers have found some of the highest death and disease rates for asthma in America.

Elia, who is the program manager for Climate and Clean Energy Advocacy for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, said the study confirms that gas stoves are a “threat to public health.”

And she notes that while New York has become the first state to ban gas stoves in many new buildings, “for the neighborhoods that I grew up in, there’s no policy that requires an update to happen.”

“Typically in the winter, for example if you’re not getting enough heat, what the community continues to do is simply open the oven and turn it on to heat the apartment,” said Elia, who is Hispanic. “Children are growing up in these apartments and in these homes and it is a legacy. Generation to generation, living in these neighborhood environments and building structures, we’re left with an inheritance of chronic illness.”

Another study author, Kari C. Nadeau, who is a doctor specializing in allergy, asthma, and immunology in children and adults, said she believes the most important takeaway is “we care about the public’s health.”

“Just like when public health scientists found that seatbelts were able to reduce risk of injury in car accidents. And just like when public health researchers found cigarettes to be dangerous to our health, there are now many scientific studies, including our recent article, showing gas stoves are not healthy because of the indoor air pollution they create,” said Nadeau, who is chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Therefore, we should focus on solutions to reduce indoor air pollution to try to protect children, pregnant women, the elderly, adults and public health in general.”

In the California General Assembly, Pellerin said that she hopes the legislature’s consideration of her bill requiring warning labels might lead to changes nationwide.

“We often hear, as goes California, so goes the nation,” she said. “We’re hoping that California leads the way on this and that other states will do the same.”

Victoria St. Martin covers health and environmental justice at Inside Climate News. During a 20-year career in journalism, she has worked in a half dozen newsrooms, including The Washington Post where she served as a breaking news and general assignment reporter.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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It’s been 16 years since Beth Gibbons made Portishead’s Third, her last studio album, and a lot has happened since, especially in the last decade as she entered her 50s. “It has been a time of farewells to family, friends and even to who I was before,” Beth said in a statement announcing her debut solo album, coming 11 years after signing a solo deal with Domino. “When you’re young, you never know the endings, you don’t know how it’s going to pan out. You think: we’re going to get beyond this. It’s going to get better. Some endings are hard to digest.”

Lives Outgrown, Beth’s first record solely under her own name, puts all those ruminations on aging and mortality front and center. Her lyrics and delivery have always been stained with anguish but even those who don’t usually pay much attention to the words will be hard pressed to miss the messaging: “The loss of faith / Filled with doubt / No relief / Can be found” (“Beyond the Sun”); “Forever ends, you will grow old” (“Lost Changes”); “Now that we have had our fun / Time to recognise the damage done” (“Rewind”); “The burden of life… just won’t leave us alone” (“The Burden of Life”). Lives Outgrown is heavy and you feel every gram.

That said, this is also what you want in a Beth Gibbons record, tracing all the way back to “Sour Times” and “Roads.” But this is not Portishead. Beth said she wanted to “draw away from breakbeats and snares,” and working with producer James Ford and longtime collaborator Lee Harris of Talk Talk, she has made a record of autumnal chill and color, the sounds of the last leaves falling off the trees as rendered in exquisite beauty and earth tones. It is closest, sonically, to Out of Season, her 2002 collaborative album with Rustin Man, but it’s more expansive than that record, full of unexpected touches including a few things that are tough to pull off. For example: “Floating on a Moment,” the album’s first single, features an extended refrain with a children’s chorus who sing, “All going to nowhere.” It shouldn’t work — I can count on one hand the good rock/pop songs with children singing on them — but against dulcimers, flutes and other baroque instrumentation, it’s beautiful and downright chilling.

One thing that hasn’t changed since Third is Gibbons’ voice, which still has the power to wreck you with a single phrase and her facile delivery electrifies every song, every lyric. Beth can also do as much with an “ooh” as a perfectly worded couplet, as “Burden of Life” proves as strings and timpani underscore the emotions. The album’s entire production, from the melodies to the arrangements, all feel custom-built for Gibbons’ voice, even on the more esoteric songs like “Rewind” and “Reaching Out” which both pull from from Eastern influences and are arguably the closest things to Portishead territory found here.

For all the dwelling on death and pain, Lives Outgrown never wallows, and a few songs offer a sense of hope and metamorphosis. “Now I’ve come out of the other end, I just think, you’ve got to be brave,” she says.  Or, as she sings on “Floating on a Moment,” with those kids behind her, “all we have is here and now.” Don’t look back, appreciate all that’s in front of you today.

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