How Steger Service Grew Gross Profit $39K by Running Maintenance Hunter on Every Vehicle

I talk a lot about the revenue that’s already in your bays. Not new customers. Not a bigger ad budget. The maintenance work that’s due on the cars already sitting in your shop — that nobody’s looking at.

Steger Service in St. Louis is a perfect example of what happens when a shop decides to actually look. They’ve been a SideKick360 customer since 2022. Good shop, solid operation, steady car count. But at the start of 2026, they made a deliberate decision to start running Maintenance Hunter on every vehicle — at the counter, before writing up the ticket, not after. One process change. One tool. One quarter.

The results from Q1 tell the story.

The Numbers: Q1 2025 vs. Q1 2026

Same shop. Same team. Same location on Manchester Road. The only real change was how consistently the service advisors used Maintenance Hunter at the point of write-up. Here’s what moved:

Read that carefully. Sales went up 5.0%. But gross profit went up $38,622 — an 11.6% jump that far outpaced the revenue increase. The margin expanded by 3.2 full percentage points. All of it came from one place: improved maintenance execution.

Here’s what makes it even more striking: $36,946 of that $38,622 came from March alone. In a single month, Steger posted $150,080 in gross profit at a 57.1% margin — up 32.7% and 4.7 margin points over March 2025. January and February were essentially flat year over year. The improvement isn’t averaging out over the quarter. It’s accelerating. The longer the team runs Maintenance Hunter consistently, the bigger the gap gets.

Where the Growth Actually Came From

When you break it down by service category, the story gets even clearer. The biggest year-over-year jumps were in exactly the services Maintenance Hunter flags as “Due Now” — the work that’s overdue based on mileage and time intervals, but that nobody mentions unless they’re looking at the data.

Cabin air filters went from 22 to 83 — a 277% increase. Fuel system services up 171%. Engine air filters more than doubled. Coolant flushes up 62%. These aren’t services customers are requesting. These are services the advisor is recommending because Maintenance Hunter shows them what’s due before the conversation even starts. Every one of these is a high-margin, low-complexity job that takes minimal bay time. And every one of them was being missed before.

March 2026: The Breakout Month

If you want to see what happens when the process really locks in, look at March in isolation. This is what a single month looks like when the team is running Maintenance Hunter on every vehicle consistently:

In March alone, the maintenance-first process added $36,946 in gross profit over the prior year. Cabin air filters went from 7 to 39 — a 457% increase in a single month. Engine air filters jumped from 16 to 52. Coolant flushes doubled from 17 to 34. The team isn't slowing down. They're getting better at it.

Why Filters and Flushes Matter More Than You Think

There’s a reason the biggest jumps are in filters and fluid services. These are high-margin, low-complexity jobs that take minimal bay time. A cabin air filter is a five-minute install with strong parts margin. A coolant flush is a straightforward service that most shops can knock out quickly. These aren’t big-ticket repairs — they’re the maintenance work that adds $40, $80, $120 to a ticket without adding meaningful time to the repair order.

And that’s exactly why they get missed. When an advisor is focused on writing up what the customer came in for, nobody’s thinking about whether the cabin air filter is two years overdue. The customer isn’t going to ask for it. The advisor isn’t going to guess. Without data at the counter, that revenue walks out the door every single time.

Related: How Meineke Doubled Revenue • Why Every Vehicle Deserves an Inspection • See Maintenance Hunter in Action

Parts Margin Tells the Real Story

One number that jumps off the page is parts gross profit percentage: 46.3% in Q1 2025, 51.4% in Q1 2026. That’s a 5.1-point improvement. The shop isn’t selling more parts — they’re selling higher-margin parts. Maintenance items like filters and fluids carry better margins than commodity repair parts. When advisors run MH on every vehicle, the parts mix shifts automatically. And here’s what’s remarkable: parts cost actually went down $10,907 year over year while parts sales went up. They’re spending less on parts and making more — that’s the power of a better mix.

What does that mean? Steger shifted toward selling more maintenance parts — filters, fluid services, preventive items — and fewer low-margin commodity parts. They’re selling smarter, not just selling more. The mix changed because the conversation at the counter changed.

Labor Hours Up 10.2% — Without Adding Staff

Labor hours went from 2,241 to 2,475 — an extra 234 hours of billed labor in the same period. That’s the equivalent of nearly six full-time weeks of tech labor across the quarter. Not by hiring. Not by extending hours. Just by running Maintenance Hunter on every vehicle and identifying work that needed to be done.

When advisors have the data in front of them, the write-up changes. Instead of “oil change,” the ticket becomes “oil change, cabin air filter due at 30K, coolant flush overdue by six months.” The tech has more work on each car. Bay utilization goes up. Everyone wins.

What Changed — And What Didn’t

I want to be clear about what Steger Service did and didn’t change. They didn’t remodel. They didn’t run a marketing blitz. They didn’t hire a new service advisor. Car count went up 3.5% — a modest, organic increase that you’d expect in any healthy shop. The difference was the process at the counter.

What changed was the process at the counter. The advisor pulls up the vehicle in Maintenance Hunter before writing the estimate. They see what’s due, what’s overdue, and what’s coming up. That information becomes part of the conversation with the customer — not a hard sell, just a “hey, your cabin air filter is two years past due, want us to take care of that while we’ve got the car?”

That’s it. Run Maintenance Hunter on every vehicle. Let the data drive the conversation. Over the full quarter, it produced $38,622 in additional gross profit — and the momentum is building. March was the breakout month: $262,856 in sales, $150,080 in GP, and a 57.1% margin. The team is getting better at this every month.

The Compound Effect

Here’s what makes this even more interesting. When you start surfacing maintenance at the counter, you’re not just adding revenue today. You’re changing the customer’s expectation. They start to see your shop as the place that keeps their car healthy, not just the place that fixes what’s broken. That builds retention, increases visit frequency, and turns a transactional relationship into a maintenance relationship.

Steger’s new customer count went from 284 to 321 — a 13.0% increase. And their unique customer count went from 869 to 915. More customers coming back, plus more new customers walking in. That’s the flywheel starting to turn.

The Bottom Line

Steger Service didn’t transform their business overnight. They did something simpler and harder: they committed to running Maintenance Hunter on every vehicle. Not some vehicles. Not when they remembered. Every vehicle, at the counter, before the write-up. The result: $38,622 in additional gross profit, margin up 3.2 points, and 234 more labor hours billed — all on a car count increase of just 3.5%. March alone delivered $150,080 in GP at a 57.1% margin. The upside is still in front of them.

The revenue was already there. It was sitting in their bays every day. They just started looking at it.

If you want to see what Maintenance Hunter can surface in your shop’s data, book a demo at sidekick360.app/demo. We’ll pull your actual numbers and show you exactly where the opportunity is.