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Overhaul Bids makes pricing public

What does an average engine overhaul cost? Now you can see actual numbers from projects that have gone through OverhaulBids.com.

• Continental Overhauls
• Lycoming Overhauls
• Pratt & Whitney Overhauls

Alan Depauw, Overhaul Bids founder, said jokingly, “Don’t ask me how long it took to do this. I’d rather forget.”

“We already have a complete directory of all overhaul shops in the country and wanted to give people a price list too,” he continued.

The price lists are a great way for anyone looking to buy an aircraft, or just for long term budgeting, he adds.

For those who need their engine overhauled within the next six months, Overhaul Bids just launched a new feature to get quotes in an easy to understand apples and apples comparison.

“After quoting the first $15 million of overhaul projects, we know what to look for when comparing quotes to one another, but the average person doesn’t,” Depauw said. “So we spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of programming hours to build a matrix comparison structure that includes all the major factors needed to compare options and find the best value.”

Upgrades are offered in two levels: Premium ($49.99) and Top Gun ($99.99). Both have the same display of quotes, but Top Gun allows the whole thing to be exported to Excel so the user can add local options to a spreadsheet and make modifications. Also with Top Gun, the user gets Depauw’s cell phone number for unlimited support.

“We’re finding that 25% of our projects are upgrading and they are really happy with the support,” he said.

“One example of someone who upgraded to Top Gun saw the value in it right away,” he reported. “He had a cracked case and in five minutes I made contact with him to get pictures. Once I had the pictures, I forwarded them to all my shops and he got nine different opinions on whether or not it was repairable. I took the phone calls and discussed the situation with my shops so he didn’t have to. Within two days he had five quotes and after several phone conversations we had options customized to his changing situation as more info came in. According to him, it was worth every penny. He said he wanted to look his wife in the eye and say that he has considered all options.”

When Overhaul Bids first started, quotes looked like this:

Now with the new upgrade feature you can get quotes like this:

An Angie’s List for engine overhauls

On the day that Alan Depauw’s third child was born, a brief story about the launch of his new business, OverhaulBids.com, appeared on GeneralAviationNews.com.

As he sat in the hospital room with his wife and new son, he remembers getting an email that a project had posted to the new website, which helps aircraft owners find shops to overhaul their engines.

“Then another and another,” he recalls. “I checked my Analytics and it showed my website was loaded up with users all posting projects. By the time things settled, I had received 450 visitors from GeneralAviationNews.com and $1.2 million of overhaul projects in a day. This was the point that all my work over the last year came to life. The invention became real.

“That was an emotional day for me — my son was born, and my business was born,” he added.

The idea for the business began when he was working as a CFI in Florida and a client asked for some help in getting quotes to overhaul the engine on his Baron.

“I got the quotes, but it was impossible to compare,” Depauw noted. “There were no reviews of the shops, no Angie’s List. You could go on Yelp and get a review on a $10 burger, but not on an engine overhaul that costs thousands of dollars. Plus, if you chose wrong, it could costs lives.”

Telling the client he just didn’t feel comfortable making a recommendation, the idea for a new business began to form in his mind.

“I saw the shortage of information — the lack of reviews, the lack of in-depth information,” he said. “These aircraft owners were just taking a stab in the dark.”

So he came up with OverhaulBids.com, a website that addresses all those shortcomings.

He likens it to an Angie’s List of engine shops — but with prices included — where owners can search for information on engine shops, pricing and reviews for engine overhauls and inspections.

“Before Overhaul Bids, aircraft owners would have to buy engine overhauls on faith while relying only on the information that came from the salesperson,” he said. “I can’t think of another example of risking $15,000 or more on a service from a virtually unrated supplier.”

Now, an aircraft owner spends about two minutes posting a project and in less than a week, will have three to five quotes from the best shops in the country, along with information catered to their situation to help their decision.

After the quotes are in, aircraft owners call the shops of interest and award their project to whomever they choose.

Depauw has personally vetted every shop that bids for projects on his site — it took him four months to call all 75 shops on the site that do piston overhauls.

There are some big names on the list too, including Western Skyways, Poplar Grove Airmotive, and Zephyr Aircraft Engines. It even has Continental Motors and Air Power submit quotes for factory engines.

He also offers an educational component on the website to help aircraft owners really understand the process. The site’s learning center gives information on a variety of topics, such as understanding quotes, options, warranty, alternatives, and more. It’s loaded with external content for those who want more in-depth research on topics like what cylinders are most reliable.

“What I’m selling is confidence,” he said. “It helps people make well-informed decisions.”

But even better for the aircraft owner, the service is free. The shops that win the bid pay a small finder’s fee to Depauw.

Depauw acknowledges that a big fear of his when starting the business was that people would post the projects and then go with a shop without him knowing, allowing the shop to avoid paying a finder’s fee. That’s why, at first, he initially designed the website to process payments to the shops, less his fee, as a way of staying in control of the project.

“But then I got to know the shops and the good people behind them — and something occurred to me about that setup,” he said. “Why would I tell my aircraft owners to trust a shop with their money if I can’t trust them with mine? The truth is, I do trust my shops with my money. I’ve done away with processing payments and let the shops take them direct. It’s the classic litmus test for whether the shop is really a trustworthy shop. I put my money where my mouth is.”

He notes that many of the people at the shops have helped tremendously in designing content for the website.

“Some of them loved the idea so much they were spending sometimes an hour at a time with me on the phone discussing things that I would use in my learning center,” he said. “I try to send my shops hand-written thank you cards every month. I’ve visited half the shops and have plans to meet the rest in person. This weekend I’m driving five hours up to Poplar Grove Airmotive to have pancakes on Sunday. I love these guys and behind the scenes it’s very personal. So much so, that the thought of inviting in a new shop is a very, very cautious undertaking for me because it’s like I’m inviting them into my family.”

He also feels a lot of responsibility for the aircraft owners using the site.

“I try to touch base with the owners,” he said, noting he recently spent an hour on the phone with a Cirrus owner to discuss his overhaul options. “I want it to be as personal as possible.”

And the owners seem to appreciate it as well.

“Alan, thanks a million for this. Between your emails and the resources on your site, I feel like we have a solid factual basis to make a decision,” one wrote in an email. “I will keep referencing your site… lots of good info and advice,” another said. “Read about your site online and even though not actively looking to overhaul the engine just yet (I’m at 900 SMOH) I was very interested in see what your new site had to offer. I must say you have put together an impressive product and in a few years I will be using your service when the time comes. I had heard numbers thrown around forums for the overhaul on these engines being upwards of 70-90k and the bids submitted were much lower. Your service is extremely valuable in my opinion and, like I said, when the time comes it will be where I look first.”

Depauw added that the shops know that “if they do an overhaul for one of our users, it better be done right or the pipeline could get cut off — our site has a lot of influence over lots of aircraft owners.”

And that influence is growing. While he started with bids on piston aircraft, he’s already seen about $5 million in turbine projects go through the site, ranging from a single Pilatus owner to a fleet of Bell helicopters.

He’s also seeing bids from charter companies and even some interest from the airlines.

“It’s getting big quick,” he said, noting that the site’s current count of overhaul projects has soared to $12.5 million, up from $2 million in June.

And that was surprising to him. For example, he didn’t expect to see turbine bids until maybe next year.

“It seems like every week there’s something new,” he said excitedly.

One new feature he recently added to the site lets people get learning center content emailed to them at a frequency of their choice. You can check it out by clicking the lightbulb in the middle below the picture at Overhaul Bids.

Another new feature is under construction that will help standardize quotes, he noted.

“With engine overhaul, there’s no standard way to quote,” he said. “So, you end up with different formats that are difficult to compare. Right now I am helping aircraft owners understand the differences, but in a month I’m going to release a feature that will standardize quotes and put them into a spreadsheet-like comparison. I feel this will help people explain price differences and decide what shop to use with even more confidence.”

And GA pilots can remain confident that even as Overhaul Bids grows, they will remain a priority, according to Depauw.

“Despite our recent pull into the bizjet and commercial turbine market, our dedication to GA will not waver,” he said. “My heart is in GA where I worked five years full time as a flight instructor. I have 3,500 hours of flight time in GA and the instructor in me gets a lot of enjoyment from educating a first-time overhaul buyer. That part never feels like ‘work’ to me — especially when I get a really curious aircraft owner.”

Want to know more?

Depauw has a video that tells you how it works here.

New website aims to help owners get bids for services

About one-third of all aircraft maintenance expenses are devoted to the engine, and when this vital organ needs to be overhauled, that figure could exceed the value of the airplane itself.

Many owners find themselves bewildered by the process of completing an overhaul. It was for that reason that one man took on the task of researching every piston maintenance shop in the United States—doing all the dirty work in the name of “helping people make confident, well-informed decisions” about aircraft engine overhaul.

Alan Depauw launched his new website, OverhaulBids.com, in March and since then, has already seen more than $10 million in projects. “Essentially, I solve the old world problem of calling around and rolling the dice,” said Depauw, a former Part 135 charter pilot and flight instructor. As stated on the website, OverhaulBids.com is essentially an Angie’s List specifically for engine repair. Depauw said Angie’s List founder Angie Hicks once said that she found success because the cost of deciding wrong is high, and that is especially true with engine overhauls. The price of a piston engine overhaul can be in the tens of thousands of dollars, with many different shops quoting wildly different prices from one another. If you choose incorrectly, expect to pay more in money, time, and aggravation.

After deciding there had to be a better way, Depauw set out to research every piston maintenance shop in the country—an endeavor that took four months. Instead of contacting these shops as the entrepreneur of OverhaulBids.com, Depauw put himself in the shoes of a consumer and called as if he was looking to overhaul an engine for a personal airplane. After reaching out to 75 piston-engine overhaul shops in the United States, he narrowed his list down to 15 that now encompass his “A list” shops.

All users of the site will need to create a free account in order to locate and get bids from engine overhaul shops. Users can also solicit bids for repairs and inspections, or simply search the list of shops. The website also helps educate users about engine overhaul.

When a bid is accepted, the user contracts and communicates with the shop and pays the shop directly. Once the project is completed, aircraft owners are encouraged to write reviews, just as they would on a site like Angie’s List.

To date, OverhaulBids.com users have procured quotes for projects ranging from a prop strike to turbine engine overhauls for a fleet of military aircraft. Depauw has many more goals for his new venture, including expanding the network of maintenance shops to include all turbine engine overhaul providers in the United States and Canada (which he plans to complete by the end of August), but the one that trumps all is “helping people make confident, well-informed decisions,” he said.

Depauw said he wants to stay true to personalizing customer experience and getting personally involved with his clients’ projects, which he acknowledged can greatly vary case by case. “I like to offer personal help to people and not be just some impersonal website that procures quotes. I believe in connecting people with the right shops for their needs,” Depauw said.

Alan Depauw at Overhaul Bids reports that the start-up brought in more than $2 million of engine overhaul and repair projects in just its first three months.

Overhaul Bids is similar in style to Angie’s List, but with pricing on engine repairs, overhauls and inspections.

He attributes this early success “to a long unsatisfied need for information about engine overhauls.”

“Essentially our main product is helping the aircraft owner make a confident well-informed decision,” he explains. “Before Overhaul Bids, aircraft owners would have to buy engine overhauls on faith while relying only on the information that came from the salesperson. Now, they spend two minutes posting a project and in less than a week, they have three to five quotes from the best shops in the country, along with information catered to their situation to help their decision. After the quotes are in, aircraft owners call the shops of interest and award their project to whomever they choose.”

Overhaul Bids hand-picked 15 “Bidding Shops,” which include big names like Western Skyways, Poplar Grove Airmotive, and Zephyr Aircraft Engines. Continental Motors and Air Power also have submitted quotes for factory engines.

Best of all? The service is completely free to the aircraft owner. Shops only pay a small percentage when they complete a project through the website.

Depauw explains his transparent style of doing business: “Other websites of this nature might go to great lengths to hide the options of other vendors outside their network. Here, I’ve listed all of the Continental and Lycoming overhaul shops in the country and you can even map them. I’ve talked to each one and spent four months playing fantasy baseball with engine shops so you don’t have to.”

True to its mission of helping aircraft owners reach a well-informed decision, Overhaul Bids features more than 13 pages of learning content. It covers topics like understanding quotes, hidden costs, options, warranty fine-print, and includes links to external content like cylinder reliability surveys and expert opinions.

“Overhaul Bids has broken a lot of virgin ground on the past few months,” he said. “It will continue to develop new and innovative ways to solve old-world problems. No longer do aircraft owners have to buy engine overhauls on faith.”