Having our business acquired by a larger MSO earlier this year has had me thinking about my start in the industry, which was just shy of 40 years ago. Unlike many shop owners, I didn’t grow up in a body shop. My family wasn’t in the business.
It was actually my high school consumer economics teacher in the fall of 1976 whom I can credit for my career in the industry. His father operated a body and paint supply store. The examples my teacher used in the class – related to inventory, ratios, income and expenses, etc. – were often based on his father’s store and its customers.
That was my introduction to the idea of collision repair, and I thought it sounded like a cool business: taking something that was wrecked and putting it back together. If you’d asked me as a 5-year-old what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said an artist or a racecar driver. This industry sounded like a chance to combine my two interests: cars and art.
My high school teacher helped me spend a few weeks working in his father’s supply store, and he in turn helped line me up a job with Mr. Lee, a Korean immigrant still fairly new to the United States who was doing autobody work.
Mr. Lee had a single bay within a transmission repair business in a suburb of Philadelphia. He’d pick me up from school at 3 o’clock, and we’d go to the shop to work. At about midnight, we’d pull all the other cars out of the shop, wet the floors down, put the enamel paint on a hotplate, and by 2 a.m., we’d spray a car. We did the painting when the neighbors wouldn’t complain about paint fumes because they were all asleep.
At about 3 a.m., we’d finish and pull all the cars back into the shop. He’d drop me off at home, I’d go to school the next morning, and then I’d ride back to the shop with him after school to start the process again.
The very first car Mr. Lee had me work on was a 1974 Chevy Vega that was in for a complete paint. Keep in mind that I’d never before worked on a car other than helping my father change the oil on our car. In his thick accent, Mr. Lee instructed me to “sand the car.” He gave me a piece of 220 sandpaper and a water bucket and a quick demonstration of how to sand on the fender of the Vega.
I asked him, “What do you want me to sand?” I can still hear Mr. Lee saying, “Whole car. Sand whole car.”
So he left, and I sanded the whole car. I sanded the fenders and the hood. I sanded the doors. And I sanded the taillights, the grille and the bumpers – every part of that poor little car except the glass.
I don't know any Korean curse words, but I think I probably heard them all when Mr. Lee returned. You can imagine how many parts he had to replace on that car.
But you know what? The next day after school, Mr. Lee was there to pick me up and drive to the shop for work. I have to think that he gave me a second chance because I really had listened to what he’d said—I’d sanded the “whole car.”
It wasn’t long before I’d fallen in love with the whole process of fixing cars. I had a passion for it. After high school, I attended autobody training at what is now the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, Penn. I like to say I had four years of training in this industry: two with Mr. Lee, who taught me to do everything wrong, and two in college where an old-school teacher (all metal work, no plastic fillers) taught me how to do everything right.
How about you? What was your start in this industry? Drop me an email ([email protected]) so I can share your story.
