After being in this business for 30 years sometimes I realize how much things have changed..not always for the better..Day before yesterday I had a customer stop by and he knew my Dad and my brothers...after giving me his name I realized that I had never met him but I had herad my Dad and brothers talk about him..anyway he had a two year old Duramax Chevy that was a really nice truck. He had the misfortune of backing it into a post a couple of days before and he couldn't get his tailgate open and wanted us just to pull the bumper out and get the bedside pushed around good enough to open the tailgate..in other words..just do the minimum and get him back on the road with a tailgate that would open. Normally this job would have cost about 1200.00 because the tailgate was bent..it needed a new bumper assembly and there was damage to the left bedside also..
As I looked at it I realized in about an hour we could probably have everything working again..so I told him between 50.00 to 100.00 and he said fine..then he asked if I could run him home and do it in the AM...I said sure..so off we went..On the way there it was eating on me that I was only going to make a few bucks and how I wished we could repair the truck correctly. I don't like to patch things..but that's what we are doing lots of lately as this economy doesn't lend itself to people doing everything they wish they could.
So yesterday we fixed it and down he came to pick it up..he was very happy and he got out the door for 75.00..with a working tailgate and things looking better then the day before..as he drove away I stll was in a funk about this whole deal as I stuck the check in my drawer..then it hit me like a ton of bricks..why are you being this way..it's not my normal way of looking at things....I turned to Kevan my manager.."Ya know Kevan..this is the stuff we used to do for free...we used to pull things like that in the shop and you and I would repair it while the customer waited"...we would look at those type of things as "good customer relations"..in great times..He agreed..and I said.."hopefully some day we can act like that agoin"..
I don't know why I felt the urge to write about it...but thanks for reading it..
Mike Minegar
