Tough times

[JShadzi at aol.com]

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Hey Tony, sorry to hear about that...this is quite common in this area,
however, and there has been a trend of businesses (many machine shops/Auto repair
shops) moving out of the Bay Area in the last 10 years or so due expensive
real-estate costs, growing labor costs and overall cost of doing business
expenses.  One example was a great muffler shop called Custom Muffler, they actually
had a true mandrel tube bender, the shop was usually full of Porsches,
Ferraris, built up muscle cars, etc.  They did amazing work for reasonable prices,
like $65/hr.  Couple of years ago they up and closed shop, last I heard the guy
moved out to the central valley somewhere and opened a shop there.  Another
great head shop I used to use, B&B machine left due to similar reasons.

Its just a tough area to do business sometimes, and when the economy is in a
slump everyone suffers.

Javad

In a message dated 5/30/2003 4:31:33 PM Pacific Standard Time,
cobram at juno.com writes:

> Tony Lum <tlum at flash.net> writes:
>
> >consider him a good friend.  An expert Porsche and Audi mechanic,
> >he usually did all the heavy duty mechanical stuff like clutches and
>
> If he's that good and has that kind of experience he can write his own
> ticket at just about any Porsche/Audi/VW dealer.  I've yet to see one
> dealer in my area that wasn't actively recruiting experience techs.  The
> dealerships are cutting the dead wood and only want experienced techs who
> can pump out the work.  About a year ago a friend of mine sold his
> lucrative repair business to 3 of his techs, he is a great
> Porsche/VW/Audi man, a large Porsche/Audi dealer kept making him offers
> until they arrived at a package that he would have been nuts to refuse.
> His son (Ford man) went to work at a Ford dealer as a service writer,
> also bringing in alot more money than he did working with the old man.
>
> Location is important, there was a Qlister a while back who had a repair
> shop between Phoenix and Tucson.  99% of his business was Japanese cars,
> his Audi was the only type 44 he know of within a 200 mile radius.  He
> also did all the VW's in town...all 3 of them if I recall correctly.
>
>