Auto Shop Growth is an independent site for people who own repair shops and for mobile mechanics building a book of their own. The goal is narrow: help an independent stay full when the dealer service department and the national chains are outspending it every month.
Who writes it
Steve Meitler is the editor. He has spent years running marketing for local service businesses, including auto repair shops and mobile mechanics, and has watched enough owners buy directory listings and coupon mailers to know what those pitches are missing. They never show you the numbers first. Everything here is written so you can check it.
Where the benchmark numbers come from
The benchmark report is built from public Google Business Profile listings. We search Google Maps for repair shops and mobile mechanics in every US state, collect the public fields on each listing (review count, star rating, website link, hours, primary category, location), remove duplicates by Google place, and compute the statistics. Nothing comes from behind a login and no personal data is stored. The dataset currently holds 90,000 listings across 51 states and refreshes monthly.
Two notes on reading it. First, at this scale collection errors happen, so treat every figure as good to within a point or two, not to the decimal. Second, the set merges brick-and-mortar shops with mobile mechanics on purpose. Mobile operators are the fastest-growing slice of the trade and they compete for the same searches, so leaving them out would flatter the shops.
Editorial rules
- No pay-to-play. No one can buy a mention, a recommendation, or a place in a list here.
- Every number is sourced, either to our own dataset or to a primary source such as Google's documentation. Opinions are labeled as opinions.
- Guides are written for an owner who is also writing tickets and ordering parts. If a step cannot be done by a busy owner or handed to a service writer, it does not go in.
- Guides get updated when the platforms change, and the date sits at the top of every one.
How the free trial works
The site is funded by the marketing work we do for shops. We offer every service as a free 14-day trial because a shop owner should see cars in the bay before paying anyone. You text or call, tell us which service you want to try (Google Ads, Meta ads, AI search optimization, local SEO and Google profile work, a website, social media, review generation, missed-call text-back and follow-up, email and SMS, bookkeeping, or cold-call appointment setting), and we build it inside your own accounts, usually within 48 hours of a short setup call.
It runs for 14 days. There is no card on file and nothing renews. At the end you keep it at a price quoted before it started, switch to a different service, or stop and keep whatever we built.
Text or call (385) 832-6175, or use the free trial page.