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Have any of you ever opened a car shop or resto shop from scratch?

That's not a desk,this is a desk!

20220529_201904.jpg
 
SteveSS said:
I've been thinking about it. I'm a hack mechanic but I figured on hiring talent. I found a cool place in town for $700K and another one way out of town. 40 acres with an insulated and air-conditioned shop. My thought process is that a resto shop doesn't rely on foot traffic. Most cars would be in there for months. The shop building was built and used for growing marijuana and all the equipment for that is still there. There's that as a side business. 40 acres and shop and big RV trailer for $235K. I guess the only problem would be getting mechanics willing to live 45 miles from CS. It kind of sounds like Hooovies Garage Farm but on a smaller scale. Who knows maybe I'll have a YouTube show.

Have any of you tried this before and can you offer up some helpful advice?
Click to expand...
Yes I have. I don't recommend it. Hiring anyone to work with their hands is just impossible. If you can't do it yourself to start and slowly hire and train your employees to gradually expand your crew, you'll be broke in a few years. You'll hire all the guys no one else wants and you'll find out quickly it's not all it's cracked up to be.
 
440plus6 said:
For what it's worth, the worst time of my adult working career was when I was a self-employed business owner. I wouldn't do it again for anything. Sleepless nights, stress out the wazoo and ungrateful, thieving employees. NEVER again.
Click to expand...
Exactly!!! My experience to a T. When I finally got a good crew, the market crashed or something and I had to lay everyome off, closed the doors. It sucked! Disappointing people is wosrse than anything for me.
 
What do you think about buying fairly good in-process project cars that are all amateur restorations or not really finished? I'm finding cars where owners have poured a lot of money into and lost interest or became discouraged after realizing they did not have the ability or what it takes to finish the job properly.
 
Rusty34 said:
What do you think about buying fairly good in-process project cars that are all amateur restorations or not really finished? I'm finding cars where owners have poured a lot of money into and lost interest or became discouraged after realizing they did not have the ability or what it takes to finish properly.
Click to expand...
Just gotta make sure you don't have to undo their work or it could make your costs really escalate....but if their work was good, then you could really save some time and money.
 
You could specialize in ~20 year old vehicles with bad engines, rebuild the engines, and sell them for a profit. Same for bad transmissions and other common failures. You could specialize in collision damaged vehicles, where you repair body damage. If you decide to do something like that, make it your specialty. Find vehicles that fit your cooky-cutter description, repair the, then flip them. If you venture outside your well-established business model, you will most likely loose money.
 
mpgmike said:
You could specialize in ~20 year old vehicles with bad engines, rebuild the engines, and sell them for a profit. Same for bad transmissions and other common failures. You could specialize in collision damaged vehicles, where you repair body damage. If you decide to do something like that, make it your specialty. Find vehicles that fit your cooky-cutter description, repair the, then flip them. If you venture outside your well-established business model, you will most likely loose money.
Click to expand...
This niche within a niche approach served me well in a different enterprise. My last two decades in the trucking business, I hauled only hazardous dry bulk, furnace dust from steel mills and recycling plants. I was able to maintain far stronger pricing than guys hauling mainstream commodities, and never had a year that failed to show a profit.
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A strange friend of mine used to say to pick your junk and stick to it. I have played with alot of different cars in my life and the older I get the more I can see how singleness of purpose could be handy.

Pick something like older Toyota's and rebuild wrecked trucks or something-everybody wants a Tacoma around here. I know several who do newer wrecked Wranglers and they do pretty good. He has a wife who is some sort of YouTube salesperson, they breed dogs. From the outside it looks pretty good, like he is doing ok. He's happy and has nice stuff at least, I don't know him real well though.

I am a Mopar fan and all that, but finding parts etc. is really difficult for these older cars and rebuilding could be really time and space intensive unless you have a really good source of stuff. It would be awfully hard around here due to lack of cars etc.

Personally, by yourself at home rebuilding / restoring a car a year or two while working is doable. And possibly fun.

All my friends who seem pretty happy and look like they are making money are doing it themselves. Most have said that stress goes up and profits go down with each employee.

Just my thoughts.
 
jeeper said:
All my friends who seem pretty happy and look like they are making money are doing it themselves. Most have said that stress goes up and profits go down with each employee.

Just my thoughts.
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I went from being a general counsel for a trucking company with over 1000 employees to a one truck owner/operator with just myself. Drop in stress level was unbelievable, probably why I'm still alive today.
 
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Kind of funny to be following Counsel up there, I was a paralegal for over 20 years (mostly Constitutional / Public Entity and Labor & Employment). I absolutely loved it most of the time.
A natural disaster turned me into a business owner mainly out of desperation after a relocation to BFE Tennessee where lawyers are scarce. A fun hobby started on my old hot rod in 1999 turned into a full time job in 2007. I've never looked back, and love it just as much as my old career though it's not nearly as lucrative.
Hiring people was a short-lived idea. I wouldn't trust local talent to drag the trash to the road let alone touch a customer's parts. Recruiting might keep the floors cleaner and help out with blasting ... but would just divulge trade secrets once they learned my witchcraft and moved on. Even Billy lost all interest back in 2009, preferring to flip projects and build engines. That was fine too, though it's usually a lot to balance.
If you love what you do though, you never work a single day.
I think everybody should own a business at least once. It teaches you a lot and offers a true opportunity to Give Back some of what you've been given and taught over the years.
Let your head guide your plan, let your heart do the talking via honest and ethical dealings, and let your passion pave your road to success!
 
CudaChick1968 said:
Kind of funny to be following Counsel up there, I was a paralegal for over 20 years (mostly Constitutional / Public Entity and Labor & Employment). I absolutely loved it most of the time.
A natural disaster turned me into a business owner mainly out of desperation after a relocation to BFE Tennessee where lawyers are scarce. A fun hobby started on my old hot rod in 1999 turned into a full time job in 2007. I've never looked back, and love it just as much as my old career though it's not nearly as lucrative.
Hiring people was a short-lived idea. I wouldn't trust local talent to drag the trash to the road let alone touch a customer's parts. Recruiting might keep the floors cleaner and help out with blasting ... but would just divulge trade secrets once they learned my witchcraft and moved on. Even Billy lost all interest back in 2009, preferring to flip projects and build engines. That was fine too, though it's usually a lot to balance.
If you love what you do though, you never work a single day.
I think everybody should own a business at least once. It teaches you a lot and offers a true opportunity to Give Back some of what you've been given and taught over the years.
Let your head guide your plan, let your heart do the talking via honest and ethical dealings, and let your passion pave your road to success!
Click to expand...
Our experiences have some common themes, and some contrasts. My heart was always in running my own truck, until a changing regulatory climate, combined with my aging body, made it not fun anymore. I never planned on being a big city lawyer, having grown up in rural PA, and totally turned off to city life after my first job out of school working in the DC metro area. In my town, unlike your community, the lawyer population is excessive, but work is far from plentiful. With my trucks, I always made at least twice the income of the average solo practitioner here.

Unlike yourself, I never much cared for legal work, although I was fairly good at it. I never imagined I'd be a corporate guy, it just happened. During my early years with the company, I did small cases for them, carried a suit in the truck a few times, and took a company pickup truck to the courthouse. When my employer became a top 100 carrier, I was in the right place at the right time, and got a good ride out of it. When the company finally imploded, I didn't have to do any soul searching. I went back on the truck the next day, and never looked back. Your words could not have expressed my experience more eloquently.
 
mpgmike said:
I ran a small 1-man speed shop for a few years starting in around 2003. I did work on the side while working my day job for a year and a half. When I quit my day job, I had jobs lined up, had started to make a name for myself, and a plan to use the extra time to drum up more business. Conversely, a business associate of mine recently acquired his medical practice. Purchase price was $1.4M. Dealing with state and local authorities, along with accountants and lawyers, he's into the acquisition $10M and still hasn't changed the sign out front. Jumping in with both feet is one of the big reasons so many businesses fail. Growing it organically can help it succeed. My thoughts to consider.
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I think he’s pulling your leg. There isn’t anything bought for 1.4 million that has 8.6 million in fees etc on top of it. It must be a big practice, I know for a fact what a practice with more than a few docs costs and it isn’t that much. Not even with the building would you get that high, except maybe in CA, but that’s not the practice itself worth. I also know what a consultant that specializes in med practice acquisitions charges, it’s not outrageous at all.
 
Work on older cars on your
own and find a California
"specialist" to grow your
weed.
Call your business "Wheels
In The Weeds".
:lol:
 
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