The Dealership That Chose Mobile Service Over a $25 Million Build

Case studies are for grad students. Dealers are busy. So we filmed this one instead. Watch it in two minutes or read it in five minutes below.

Ewing Automotive Group turned mobile service into a profitable, retention-driving operation adding hundreds of incremental repair orders a month across three stores and four brands — proof that dealership mobile service can be a growth strategy, not just a convenience.

When Ewing Automotive Group rolled out mobile service across its Mercedes-Benz, Buick GMC and Subaru dealerships, the goal was modest: keep customers happy and avoid the expense and disruption of adding bays in the service departments. But their rapid success exceeded what even the most optimistic team members among them expected.

Within months of added mobile service, customers weren’t just satisfied, they were pledging loyalty for life. The dealership sidestepped the multimillion-dollar construction bill it would have taken to expand the service department footprint. And the bottom line? Mobile service was additive. It was attracting customers and racking up net profits long before the chief financial officer ever thought possible.

Pete Mueller, Service Manager for Ewing Buick GMC, describes mobile service as: “The single largest impactor that I have seen in the 25 years that I've been (working in dealer service), for service retention and customer satisfaction."

Here is how a fourth-generation family business in Plano, Texas, achieved success (and why any dealer losing customers to independents should care).

Built on principle: proof that commitment to the customer pays

Finley Ewing IV is the fourth generation to lead Ewing Automotive Group. "Being able to serve North Texas has truly been a blessing for me and my family," Ewing says.

And the two principles Ewing’s grandfather laid down from day one remain his North Star: "always take care of the customer and put them first, and reinvest in the communities in which we serve."

Today the Ewing group runs three distinct franchises: Mercedes-Benz of Plano, Ewing Buick GMC, and Ewing Subaru of Plano. All three now offer mobile service, and all three have made it work, keeping customers happy and making a profit, Ewing's leaders say. But the real benefit is slightly different for each store. A luxury customer, a high-volume brand customer, and a low-volume store don't have the same challenge, and mobile service turned out to solve the issues for all three.

The why: traditional service was running out of room

Every growing service department eventually meets the same immovable object: the building. The bays fill up, schedules are jam-packed, and the classic fix (pour concrete, add more bays) is as expensive – and limited – as it sounds.

The textbook solution meant investing another $20 million (or more) expanding Ewing’s service shops. Instead of writing that check, Ewing asked a better question:

“Why do that when I could go buy 25 mobile service vans at a fraction of the cost?"

A fleet of vans, or one very expensive construction project — when you put it that way, it stops being a hard call.

And this isn't just a Ewing-sized headache. Zoom out and the whole industry is tilting: there are now roughly sixteen independent repair shops for every franchised dealership in America — a gap Curbee has a name for, #The16. As cars age out of warranty and customers increasingly pick whoever's easiest, the old dealership playbook — come to us, on our schedule, and bring a book — has quietly become a liability.

Meeting customers where they are isn't a perk anymore. It's survival.

The vision: let the customer lead, the money follows

What made Ewing's move more than a shiny experiment was the conviction underneath it. It was where the customer was already headed.

"The customer is what drives everything that the industry needs to pivot to," Ewing CFO Autumn Ross said. "It's all pivoting to convenience for the customer. And at the end of the day, if a customer is demanding it, then obviously that financial result will follow."

That's the whole philosophy in three sentences.

Give people the convenience they’ve come to expect from every other corner of their lives, and the economics sort themselves out. It's the same instinct behind the group's mercifully jargon-free mission statement, all of four words long: “Make vehicle ownership easy.”

Answering the question: "Is dealership mobile service profitable?"

Conviction is one thing. A strong P&L is better. And the objection Ewing heard most was the classic one: mobile service is nice, but it can't actually make money.

"That was not the case," Ross said. "We were profitable quickly."

By the Numbers: Ewing's Mobile Service

• From 30-40 to ~400 — monthly mobile repair orders, from the early test phase in October 2025 to July 2026

• Profitable early — turned a profit faster than the team's own projections

• 100% incremental — mobile ROs are additional customers, not volume shifted from the shop

• $20M–$25M — the cost of a physical service expansion Ewing didn't have to build

• 3 rooftops — running across Mercedes-Benz, Buick GMC, and Subaru franchises

Better still, mobile service quietly made the rest of the operation more profitable. By pushing the simpler, lower-margin jobs into the field, Ewing freed up its in-shop service bays for the heavy, lucrative work that really moves a service department.

"Not only can we offer the customer more convenience, but we can improve our shop efficiency," Ewing Mobile Service Director John Wallace said.

Mobile service didn’t pull business away from the shop, it added an entirely new stream of customers the shop couldn't reach and made every existing bay more profitable.

How does a dealership run mobile service at scale?

None of this ran on enthusiasm alone. Ewing credits Curbee as the partner that made mobile service both operable and scalable.

"The integration of the [Curbee] app with our operation has been integral in our success with this," Mueller said.

The reason is simple road math: a technician stuck in traffic is making the company zero dollars (other than being a rolling billboard). Curbee "takes real-time traffic data into effect ... and coordinates our routes so that we are not wasting time driving across town and then back across town." The Curbee app manages the schedule, the mileage, and the appointment density. That’s the fine line between a mobile operation that hemorrhages money on windshield time and one that actually turns a profit.

Beyond the software, Curbee's playbook helped Ewing sort out the genuinely tricky bits: from changing how the team thinks about adding the service to simple adjustments that save home driveways from oil stains.

How does mobile service improve customer retention?

Strip away the routing software and the profit math, and the reason this all works comes down to something much simpler: how it feels to be the customer.

The feedback, Ewing leadership said, comes down to one word: "unbelievable." Customers hit their third mobile visit and start saying things nobody scripted:

"I'm a mobile service customer for life."

"Please don't make me do anything else other than this.”

"It's so convenient for my work, for my family."

It's hard to buy that kind of loyalty.

A customer you've taken care of conveniently, happily, and repeatedly — without ever making them rearrange their day — is a customer who comes back. For the next oil change, and eventually the next car.

And remember those sixteen independent shops between the customer's driveway and yours? Loyalty like this is how you make sure they drive right past all sixteen.

Ewing Automotive Group operates Mercedes-Benz of Plano, Ewing Buick GMC, and Ewing Subaru of Plano, serving the North Texas community since 1938. Curbee partners with Ewing to power its mobile service operation across all three stores.

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