What qualifies me to write this book? It’s certainly a fair question and reasonable to want some assurance that the person writing a book knows what their talking about…. I sure would!

Perhaps even more important, I know without a doubt, a lot of angry garage owners, service writers and mechanics are certainly going to want to know where I get off writing a book that exposes a lot of their tricks and secrets that have more to do with what can only be described as outright theft and deception than doing straight honest repair work.

So, I’ll get right to it…..

At a very early age, I became fascinated with cars. I started building models at age 6 and that led to the curiosity of how a lot of other things worked. I was always one of those kids that had to take everything apart and put it back together. And no doubt, it didn’t hurt that my grandfather was a mechanic all his life until he retired from an armory where he worked on a fleet of military vehicles. Also, when my father was in the Navy, he was a ships machinist. He went on to work in the construction trade after his service. That makes me the third generation of mechanically minded men who have earned good livings working with our hands.

I was very fortunate to have grown up during the “Muscle Car” era of the 1960’s, and that just fueled my love of cars and machines. They were as much a part of my life as my family and the values I was taught and grew up with. One of which came from my dad who said “If you have to lie and hurt people in their pockets, how are you any different than a bank robber?”

As I approached high school age, I decided I wanted to attend a Vocational/Technical School to study automobile mechanics. This came as no surprise to anyone in my family! I enrolled in such a school and studied mechanics and drafting. That school’s curriculum was a combination of two years of mechanical theory and class training on donated cars and then a year of actual employment in a garage environment before being given certification as a trained mechanic.

Over the next few years, I would work for a couple of independent garages and a very large heavy duty truck dealership. For the most part, I enjoyed the work. After all, I was doing what I always wanted to do! But the attitudes of those that ran these businesses would sometimes be contrary with my personal belief in the “hurting people in the pocket” thing I mentioned earlier. Every now and then, one garage owner I worked for would say “like shooting fish in a barrel” referring to how easy it was to screw and take advantage of peoples’ lack of knowledge with cars.

Like a lot (but not enough) of trades people with a conscience, I grew disenchanted with the business and sought other employment. On a suggestion from a friend, I decided to try auto sales. That worked for me for a few years and led to other sales positions which included real estate. There, I not only got to sell, but could also continue to work with my hands and got involved with the rehabbing of a number of properties as well as becoming a rental property manager, just one of the things I still do today!

All the while doing real estate and property management, I kept my hands in mechanics as a hobby working on my own daily vehicles, some antique cars I owned, and the occasional car of a friend.

After a dozen years of renovations and other real estate activities combined with my natural restless nature, I took a position running a garage for a friend of mine after he suffered a number of minor heart attacks. I enjoyed and was comfortable with this near 2 year long position. But unfortunately, my friends health would continue to decline to the point where his family convinced him to close the company altogether to lessen his stress.

With his lead mechanic, I went on to open my own garage and ran it successfully for four years.

A day came though, and I think many business owners can relate to this old expression. “You don’t own a business, a business owns you!” And, indeed after four years running my shop, and while sitting at my dining room table one gorgeous Sunday morning doing the weekly bookwork for my business, I began to reflect on the amount of time I was putting into it, staffing hassles and thinking of my friend who had the three heart attacks and not wanting to end up like him! I started to consider whether or not I really needed to be doing this. I was, after all, coming up on the half century mark myself and I did have other business interests, so… I concluded,…. no, I don’t!

I would spend the next six months winding down my garage business and referring many of the very nice customers, some who had become good friends, to other quality shops where then could continue to get the same level of honest service I had given them.

In the years since, people who know my background will still seek my advice and some of them just can’t resist sharing their stories of customer abuse, and repair shop horror stories. Perhaps you even have a few of these experiences!

My days working in bad garages, and the stories that I’ve heard from friends and other peoples experiences, including those of my own children now, who have grown up and moved from home and must themselves depend on the competence and honesty of repair shops, serve as my motivation for writing this book.

I’ve actually wanted to write it for some time, but a recent experience that finally got me to put the pen to paper so to speak, was when my oldest daughter called me to ask about a quote she got for a needed repair to her power steering system. She thought it seemed high. A shop had quoted her $560.00 for a relatively simple repair that I got an honest garage to charge her $190.00 to do! And no favors were called upon to do it for that price. It was just the right price for the job!

I hope you enjoy my book, learn a few things and become a wiser consumer in the bargain. I honestly feel that after you’ve read it, you’ll have a new awareness of the games, tricks, and scams out there at many garages. And with that, you just can’t help but save yourself money year after year for as long as you drive a car.

Thank you….

Be safe on the roads, and be safer… and wiser in the repair garage!