Haulage, general freight
The yard that kept flattening batteries over a weekend
Three units in nine would not start on a Monday.
An illustrative composite, not one job
Arable farm, about nine hundred acres
The combine that stopped three times in one week
One combine, two tractors, harvest under way
What was happening
The machine cut out at random and restarted after ten minutes. It had been to a dealer twice in the winter, and both visits ended with codes cleared and nothing found. It only ever did it with the header full and the machine working hard.
What was done
Instrumented rather than inspected: a recorder left on the supply and the ground of the circuit the stored codes pointed at, and the machine sent back out. Four hours over two evenings.
What it turned out to be
The recording caught the supply collapsing for about eighty milliseconds each time. The cause was a conductor broken inside intact insulation where the harness crossed a bracket, which opened when the machine flexed under load. Repaired and re-supported away from the bracket, and the recorder was left on for another day to prove it had stopped.
Every case study on this site is an illustrative composite assembled from several jobs. No customer is named, no vehicle is identifiable, and there is not a single testimonial on this website attributed to a person — a fabricated one would be the one genuinely dishonest thing a workshop's website can do.
The piece of work
Harvest-season breakdown callout
Evenings and weekends between the middle of July and the end of October, for machinery that is standing in a field. Charged at the after-hours rate, which is published like every other rate.
How that figure is arrived at
- After-hours on-site hour× one$265
- The same rate, at the long end× six$1,590
- Parts, if any are neededcost + 20%separate
- Labour for this jobone to six hours$265 to $1,590
The after-hours on-site hour is $265 and it is on the rates page. That multiplication is the whole of the labour charge: no callout fee on top of it, no shop supplies percentage and no environmental levy. It is the cost of the work — it is not a quotation for a vehicle nobody has seen.
The first hour: Getting it moving if that is possible, and being honest within the first hour if it is not, because a machine that has to be recovered is better recovered before dark.
What you are left holding: Either the machine running, or a written note of what it needs and what we did to get it as far as the yard.
The other three
More of the same kind of thing
Plumbing and heating, four vans
The van that was booked in for an alternator and did not need one
The battery light came on intermittently and the previous shop had replaced the alternator eleven months earlier for the same symptom.
An illustrative composite, not one job
Agricultural contractor
The module the dealer said was no longer available
A control unit had stopped driving one section of the machine.
An illustrative composite, not one job
$145 a workshop hour · $185 on site · agreed before it starts
Describe the symptom, or just telephone
The symptom check takes about three minutes and gives you a written summary of which circuits would be tested first and why, with the hours and the published rate against each. It is an indicative scope and not a diagnosis — nobody has seen the vehicle — but it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works.