Oil Change Economics

When was the last time you changed your own oil in your car? For me, it's been over 20 years.

Did you know that we have over 200 million cars in this country? That means there are at least 400 million oil changes every year. So who's changing your oil?

EZ Lube, JiffyLube, etc. . . .

If an oil change takes 20 minutes, than an employee can do 24 oil changes per day. At 260 work days per year, that's 6,240 oil changes per employee per year. You can see that there must be a lot of oil change mechanics in America.

Yes, it would take over 64,000 mechanics to do 400 million oil changes per year.

But how many people actually change their own oil? Let's say that 25% of all Americans change their own oil. That means that 48,000 people are actually employed annually just to change oil.

So what is "Oil Change Economics"?

When taxes are increased for America's highest income bracket, they respond by spending less. No, they're still not going to change their own oil, but they will spend less on everything else. When they spend less, more companies make less, so they limit overtime, cut salaries or lay people off. As these employees begin to feel the pressure of making less money, more of them will be doing their own oil changes.

As the percentage of people who change their own oil goes from 25% to say 50%, we just lost 16,000 oil change mechanics jobs.

Process: