The dilemma that honest, competent mechanics (and other highly skilled trades) face in today's world...(SEE EDIT)

[Ace-Garageguy]

8 hours ago, Brudda said:

Yup, glad I’m passed those days. Same goes for collision repair. I usually can read a customer. We have writers and they are good. And we have to deal with insurance companies. That’s a whole discussion in itself...

...I have one customer, Ferrari and they do not care about costs, they just pay their bills. I’m very lucky in that way. 

The shop where I'm building the Chevelle primarily does late-model collision repair. They used to do a fair bit of custom work, and the current owner's father built several national-level touring showcars. The '59 El Camino they're wrapping up (that I made several custom parts for, and which is currently being upgraded to Inglese stack-type fuel injection), and the '66 Chevelle I'm doing (that the shop owner will paint) are the last two custom jobs that will ever be done there...because try as they might over the last decade, they haven't been able to hire ANYONE either competent or trainable to work to their standards.

The shop still works for insurance companies, but the writer-manager is as tough as they come, knows the business inside out, and gets every penny it takes to provide as close to "undetectable" repairs as you can get. He's ex USAF and ex Lockheed, and isn't intimidated by insurance clowns.

The shop owner is the now only bodyman (the best I've ever seen on normal production vehicles) and his BIL (who races SCCA and builds street rods on his own) helps him. The shop owner has a '69 smallblock Camaro he built and painted, it's gorgeous, and also has a matching multi-award-winning chopper built by a very well known shop for him.

The collision painter has been working for them part time off and on for decades, and paints semi-full time since retiring from a career in law enforcement. He's also finishing up his own '66 Corvette coupe that is the straightest, best-fitting C2 coupe I've ever seen, anywhere...which he's done all himself except the engine build.

They're all hard-core hands-on "car guys" with a very broad knowledge base, and I count myself lucky to have been able to work in a shop for a while with people who are ALL as quality-driven as I've always been...and people who know a lot of stuff I don't, but never pretend to know anything they aren't 100% sure of.

I just sometimes wish I'd met this great crew a long time ago. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Ace-Garageguy
punctiliousness