Show Summary:

David Long shares his journey from fixing family cars in a small rural town to owning and growing multiple successful auto repair shops. He reflects on starting in the industry out of necessity, building his first shop in Palo Alto nearly from scratch, and learning the business side through training and mentorship. After selling his first shop, he opened TrueCare in Shingle Springs, California, where he recently expanded into a larger seven-bay facility. David discusses the challenges of finding good employees, the importance of developing managers and technicians, and the lessons he’s learned about renting versus owning property. He also opens up about stress management, the difficulty of industry training, and what keeps him up at night while moving his business into its new permanent home.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

David Long, Owner of TrueCare Automotive

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:47] – David expands his shop from five bays to seven and finds the perfect property by chance.

[00:02:39] – Growing up fixing cars with his dad and neighbor sparked his automotive path.

[00:05:01] – Remembers sneaking out with a 1978 Dodge truck and push-starting cars on hills.

[00:07:37] – Starts career working at his aunt and uncle’s shop, learning diagnostics without internet or modern tools.

[00:11:22] – Mentor encourages David to open his own shop and loans him money to start Dave’s Auto Repair.

[00:12:26] – Runs a highly efficient two-bay shop that nearly hits $1M in annual sales.

[00:14:02] – Opens his second shop, TrueCare, after moving out of the Bay Area.

[00:16:34] – Shares vision of stepping out of daily operations and developing strong managers.

[00:20:26] – Biggest regret: renting for too long instead of buying property for the shop.

[00:22:19] – If given a magic wand, he’d strengthen technician training opportunities industry-wide.

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Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or goodnight, depending on when and where you're joining us from today. My name is Jimmy Lea. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. And you have joined us for the Leading Edge podcast. My guest today is David Long with TrueCare in And you're in California, right, David?

David Long: Yeah. Shingle Springs, California.

Jimmy Lea: Shingle Springs, California. How is the weather in California today? It's about 90. It's not too bad. It's gorgeous. I moved, I just recently moved. And you recently moved? I recently moved from St. George, Utah to Northern Utah. We went from the 100 and teens into the nineties.

Jimmy Lea: I'm thinking it's gorgeous outside. It's so beautiful.

David Long: Oh yeah.

Jimmy Lea: And you just recently moved as well from five base to a seven base shop. Tell us about that.

David Long: Yeah, well I've been looking for a bigger place for years actually. And sometimes universe just pushes you. Had a problem with my landlord at the old place.

David Long: We found out about this place hitting the market. We actually were able to come and look at this building the day that the realtors signed with the seller. And so we were able to get a contract like just a couple days after that, before they ever even advertised it, which is lucky because there's very little inventory out there for automotive.

David Long: Commercial properties, so, oh my

Jimmy Lea: gosh, yes. Congratulations. And David just gave me a little tour around the place. If ever you're in Shingle Springs, California. You definitely wanna go see this shop. It's absolutely gorgeous. I love his waiting room, the woodwork that was done in there. You own a fabulous shop, seven Bays, two outdoor lifts.

Jimmy Lea: Is that correct?

David Long: Five indoor, two outdoor.

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. And how many technicians are at the shop? How many service advisors? What does the makeup look like?

David Long: Currently there's just five of us here. We've got a service manager, three technicians, and I'm a floater. We're kind of, we're gonna be expanding our employee inventory soon, once we're more settled in here.

David Long: 'cause we just moved into this building a month and a half ago.

Jimmy Lea: Yep. Congratulations. That's awesome. Get your feet on the ground, make sure you're stable. And then start the expansion.

David Long: Yeah, exactly.

Jimmy Lea: Gotta love it. Gotta love it. All right, well let's go back in time if you will. Go back with me. How did you get started in the automotive industry?

Jimmy Lea: That's slower.

David Long: Well, I grew up in a small rural community and our family. We mostly had to fix our own cars except for the many times that they became unfixable. So a lot of cars went through our family over the years growing up. And my next door neighbor down the hill from us was a heavy duty mechanic.

David Long: So he would work on tractors and anything. He would work on anything. So I remember going down there with my dad when I was a little kid and they, he'd be. Asking Dick for advice and I was just looking and learning. And you know, then when it was time for me to go to college, I was thinking, well, I don't have money for college.

David Long: I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I have a knack for working on stuff. So I went to school for automotive technology and that was, let's see, I took my first. Job as a mechanic in 1996.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Okay. Now you talk about all the cars that went through the family. I think our, we fell out of the same tree.

Jimmy Lea: There were a lot of cars that went through the family that, that we would work on as well. What was your first vehicle that you drove that you had to maintain and if the. If the battery died, you had to replace it. If the windshield wipers needed new windshield wipers, you had to replace it. If the starter got a didn't work anymore what was that first vehicle that you worked on?

David Long: Well, I mean, before I had my own first vehicle, of course I would do whatever we could do. I mean, jumping the bat that batteries that were dead. Did you ever push

Jimmy Lea: start?

David Long: Oh yeah. All the cars were stick shifts. Oh yeah. And we did live on a hill. Oh yeah. Matter of fact, when I was, before I had my driver's license, I'd sneak out and steal the truck and I'd just coast it down the hill far enough down that my mom wouldn't be able to hear it start.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. No, I understand. Oh man. So what was the truck that you were? It

David Long: was a 78 Dodge. Would've been a half ton pickup, whatever that was. Had a slant. Six engine.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Nice. Mine was a, my great grandmother's 1952 Chevy Deluxe, Bel Air three on the tree. Three on the tree. And I would park it at school on the downhill.

Jimmy Lea: So after school I could jump in coast, pop it into second, jumpstart it.

David Long: Because it wouldn't start otherwise.

Jimmy Lea: No. 'cause the battery was dead. Oh. And I couldn't afford another battery, so I know, right. That was my solution. And you know, you get creative when the mother of invention is creativity or creativity is the mother of invention, one of the two.

Jimmy Lea: It works that way. So what's one of those defining moments for you in the beginning of your. Working on automotive you've got the neighbor that's doing everything from lawnmowers to diesel trucks and tractors, but what's that defining moment that you go, Ooh, I think this is me.

David Long: Well, honestly, it was more of a decision out of necessity to try to get a job and be able to support myself.

David Long: I don't think working in automotive was ever my. First choice. I mean, it was a choice, but like I probably would've gotten into engineering or something if I had lived somewhere else and had, you know, different resources available,

Jimmy Lea: different opportunities. Yeah, no, I understand that.

David Long: But I mean, looking back on it, I'm really grateful that I made that decision 'cause it's been great.

David Long: Way to interact with the community, I think is probably my favorite part about it Now. So it's just nice helping people. Sometimes we get to save the day.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. And it is good when you can save the day. For sure. There, I'm sure there's been a lot of opportunities for you to save the day for many family vacations, road trips kids going off to college, coming back from college.

Jimmy Lea: Yep. Exactly. Nice. And when you started in the automotive industry you started in 96 you were working for somebody else or did you start your own business right out of the gate?

David Long: No, I worked for my aunt and uncle. They had a shop in Palo Alto. And I moved down there. I basically lived in the shop on a couch.

David Long: For, I don't know, close to a year before I was able to go and find some roommates. But but yeah I just started out at the bottom and I had gone to college, so I knew like a lot of theory about admission controls and. Different, complicated things that surprise, it surprised me that most of the people that worked there didn't know that much.

David Long: And they had tools and experience and they knew how to wrench, but none of 'em were that strong in diagnostic work. And also, remember back then we didn't have like the internet and like there were paper shop manuals. Eventually we got all data, which was a stack of like. 20 discs CD ROMs that were Yes, just for the Asian vehicles that we worked on.

David Long: It wasn't even the domestic or European stuff. Like if you needed this or that. Okay. Put in disc seven and sometimes you'd get partway through reading something, then you need disc eight. And things are a lot better now. Oh yeah. For diagnostic stuff. That things are much, you know, I mean, the first shop was a Honda shop and all of those manuals were.

David Long: Poorly translated from Japanese, so you had to kind of read between the lines in a way. The wiring diagrams were just horrible. I mean, the older guys couldn't even do that. They couldn't see good enough to tell which little line was which. Oh yeah. I don't know if you've ever seen those older wiring diagrams, but they're on paper.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. The black and white ones no color.

David Long: There's black and white, and they'll group like 20 or 30. Just horizontal lions. You'd have to follow it along.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. I remember. And then PHI came along and that helped a tremendous amount.

David Long: Oh yeah. That's fantastic. We use that all the time.

Jimmy Lea: Yep. So that's good.

Jimmy Lea: So you worked for aunt and uncle for how many years? How many years were you there before you struck out on your own?

David Long: Yeah. So let's see. I worked there. Must have been like five or six years. They sold the business to a guy that didn't have any automotive experience. He made me the general manager, but he, it was not managed well from him though.

David Long: It was, there were some issues, so I ended up going with a couple of the other employees to another shop, which was just across the street. And I worked there until 2008 and great guy to work for. He owned the building there in downtown Palo Alto, and he eventually got an offer to sell the building and they wanted to redevelop it, you know, which is what's happened down there or everywhere.

David Long: It's just a lot of you know. 6, 7, 8 story buildings now what used to be a exclusively automotive area that started back in the fifties. But anyway, so when he sold the building, he told me, Hey Dave, you know, I think you're ready to have your own business. So here's the deal. I'm selling the building and I'm closing the shop.

David Long: But if you can figure out a place to move to open your own new shop, and you can have all my customers. I'll loan you all the money that you need. You just gotta tell me how much you need. Yeah. So in 2008, I opened up my first shop in Palo Alto Dave's Auto Repair and owned it for 10 years down there.

Jimmy Lea: Congratulations. What was the footprint? What did it look like?

David Long: It was an old gas station that was built in the fifties. Metal shell building. Tiny, two bays. Two bays? Yep. Two bays. Yep. I had hydraulic lifts. Yep. Hydraulic lifts. Yep. I bought one of those little portable outdoor lifts and used that occasionally too.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, okay.

David Long: Yeah. But yeah, we did really well there, actually, surprisingly, we were. Almost got to a million dollars in sales, like for years

Jimmy Lea: outta two bays. Bro that's awesome.

David Long: We were very efficient. You had to be.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You had to be.

David Long: And when I opened that shop, I had no experience of being a business owner.

David Long: So, you know, I, I did a couple different training programs one with. Management success, maybe if you've heard of them or remember them.

Jimmy Lea: I do. I do their drive now.

David Long: Very intense program that they offered. Not sure. I totally agree with everything that they had going on there, but and then I was with a TI for many years and got a lot out of that.

David Long: Was in a 20 group for a long time. So

Jimmy Lea: nice. What are you in now? Are you in training now with any training companies? No. Okay. Masterminds, business development groups, BNIs, nothing. Nope. Nope. Just David on his own. I

David Long: completely pulled away from all of that stuff, so.

Jimmy Lea: Well, congratulations. It sounds like you've learned a lot along the way.

Jimmy Lea: You've got a tremendous amount of. Technical knowledge. Couple that together with the business knowledge that you now have and you're doing a lot better. And congratulations a month and a half in the new location, which is awesome.

David Long: Yeah. So this is my second business. The first one I sold in 2018.

David Long: This business I opened in 2017 just 'cause I moved out of the Bay Area and where we're living now, it's, we're about between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, if you're familiar with the area.

Jimmy Lea: I am. My brother lives in Cameron Park.

David Long: Oh, okay. Well see Cameron Park and Shingle Springs share the same zip code, so I know

Jimmy Lea: exactly

David Long: where you are.

David Long: Yeah, and we just moved from our shop was in Cameron Park where I opened it. So.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. That's awesome. Well, next time I'm out visiting my brother, I'm gonna swing by and we'll say hello.

David Long: Yeah, you should. That'd be awesome.

Jimmy Lea: That would be awesome. So the we, we got the footprint of where you are today and what that looks like.

Jimmy Lea: Where are you gonna be in five years? David? What does that look like as you look down the road, five years, eight years, 10 years, what are you gonna be doing?

David Long: Well, so. I definitely wanna get back to where I was with my other business, which was not involved with the day-to-day operations. That has to be the goal of any auto shop owner or any business owner I would think.

David Long: And I mean, if you're a dentist or something, well you have to work on the teeth. But if you own a shop, you shouldn't be the one working on cars all the time. Love it. And so I'm not there yet. This business. I opened it from scratch. We moved here, we didn't know anybody in the area, and I got my toolbox, rented a space.

David Long: I knew how to, I knew the recipe, just, I was like, I just need to get some people in here, advertise on Google and get reviews. And you know, then it took probably. A couple years before I was able to hire my first employee, and it's just, and now I have an incredible presence in the area. I think we've gotta be the top rated shop, like for a wide radius, very wide.

David Long: So

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah. It sounds like you just went scrappy on it and claw your way to success.

David Long: Pretty much. But yeah, so back to your question of where I wanna be in five years. Yeah. I definitely want to be like have a back office that's kind of detached and spend maybe part-time there and be able to focus more on other stuff, whatever that might be.

David Long: I don't really know. Sure. I mean, I'm just, I had a lot of time before with my old shop and played a lot of golf. I really was thinking about maybe just doing something else too, you know, but I couldn't really put my finger on what that was, so I just decided to open another auto shop. But

Jimmy Lea: there you go.

Jimmy Lea: And eventually you'll get there. You get to the point where you're either a multimillion dollar per location as a single location shop, or maybe you look at expanding the kingdom and you create a bigger footprint for yourself where you have multiple shops doing multimillions and now you just manage the kingdom.

Jimmy Lea: You're not in the day to day.

David Long: Yeah. I've thought about having other shops. It's a possibility. I mean, it's all about having good managers though. I mean, that's what the key is.

Jimmy Lea: So how do you find a good manager, David? How do you develop 'em? Do you find 'em, do you recruit 'em? Do you poach 'em? Do you what?

Jimmy Lea: What? What's a good, I think you have

David Long: to develop 'em. That goes for any good employee, you know. I mean, technicians, I've always had to develop them.

Jimmy Lea: Do you have an program keeping

David Long: develop? Developing 'em and keeping 'em is keeping 'em sometimes the tricky part, but

Jimmy Lea: yeah, my, my father built gas stations in Las Vegas for 28 years or something like that, and he said that he was always developing his competition.

Jimmy Lea: He would invest and train and teach his people. Then they would go out and start a competing business and compete against him. So do you feel like you're compet, you're training your competition?

David Long: I guess it could be. You could look at it that way. I don't know. I never thought of it that way, but that's an interesting concept.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And hopefully you stay friends. You remain friends. You remain com Oh yeah. Is in the business so that you can refer business back and forth with each other and just have a really good relationship for the future.

David Long: Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's good. So what's something that you have learned from the most in the past?

Jimmy Lea: We learn more from our failures than we do our successes. What is one of those defining moments that started out as a failure, but in the end it probably became one of the greatest success stories that you have in your business life cycle, if you will.

David Long: So just related to business alone, you mean? Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We'll stay out of the personal stuff. Let's just remain in the business realm.

David Long: It's, that's a tough one for me, Jimmy. I mean, honestly, I've been so blessed. I, got the training I needed very early on after opening the first shop. And I feel like there would've been a lot more pain and discomfort if I hadn't done that because I've never had a time where we were slow or where we weren't making money.

David Long: So

Jimmy Lea: yeah,

David Long: I haven't had like a lot of like, I guess. Just renting. I guess that's kind of a failure. I think that, you know, buying a property ought to be the goal for any auto shop owner also. Yeah. But I've only now just now able to do that. So that's after a long, many years of owning a business.

David Long: It's just a, you know, if you were to buy a parcel of land up here, I looked into this last year. I was in escrow on a parcel and got a bunch of bids on building a building. Well, guess what? By the time you're all done, you've got a building that is worth way less than what it costs to create.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah.

David Long: And I don't I just don't think that's sustainable.

David Long: So

Jimmy Lea: Yeah.

David Long: It's just tough to find places, footprints, you know,

Jimmy Lea: it's, yeah

David Long: They're building. What was it like. How many thousands of new homes in Folsom right now? Guess what? They're not building there auto shops,

Jimmy Lea: right?

David Long: That will not happen there.

Jimmy Lea: No. No. And the amount of red tape that you've gotta wage your way through the amount of red tape and scenarios and case studies that you've gotta do just tremendous.

Jimmy Lea: It makes it even more difficult. To try and establish an automotive business in California. What a challenge.

David Long: Yeah. But yeah, I think that'd be like the biggest thing that I wish I could have changed Uhhuh, is to been able to purchase a building for the business to live in sooner. Because all that money you throw away in rent and plus you never know what's gonna happen. You got a good landlord today, tomorrow he dies and it goes to somebody else and they might not be so great.

Jimmy Lea: Right. So, makes it difficult. Very difficult. So if you were to have a magic wand, if you could go, if you could change anything in the industry, what would you change?

David Long: The industry. Big magic wand. Well, it would be great if we had enough flexibility or bandwidth as an industry as a whole to train technicians, I think as one of the biggest things. And, you know, maybe it's different in different areas. There, around here, there's a fair amount of young guys that are interested in being mechanics, but it's a tough, it's a tough job, you know?

David Long: So that'd be my magic wand. I mean, I get kids coming in a few times a year saying, do you can you do apprenticeships? Can I work? I just wanna get my foot in the door. But the thing is we don't, we're not big enough to really have someone take the time to train someone completely from scratch like that.

David Long: Very difficult. It takes a lot of time. And so I think just better, more training. That'd be my magic wand.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I love it. I love it. That's a great magic wand. That's a great magic wand. So if you were to have the ability to go back to yourself when you were starting, and you've talked a little bit about rent, you've talked a little bit about starting your own business, what advice would you give yourself in starting your business?

Jimmy Lea: It's the same number. It's just x and that two.

David Long: Which would mean doing something differently.

Jimmy Lea: So, or reinforcing something. Just say, go after this quicker, faster, better, stronger.

David Long: Maybe just don't beat yourself up so much. Managing stress better. Definitely could have done that better, you know? Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, no. Stress is a tough one, that's for sure.

Jimmy Lea: That's for sure. Well, David, I am impressed with your story. I'm impressed with your lineage in the industry. You've got a great location. I am definitely coming out to Che Link Springs and gonna come see you next time I go visit my brother there in Cameron Park, so you're probably not too far from his exit.

David Long: Yeah, no, that's a small area up

Jimmy Lea: here. Nice. So, you know, one last question for you. What keeps you up at night today? What keeps you up at night that you think about that is heavy on your mind that is keeping you awake today?

David Long: Well mostly just with the moving the business. We're. We've moved into the building, but we're also still in escrow.

David Long: And there's been a bunch of environmental tests that the SBA wanted done, which were very costly and time consuming. I think we're on our 11th amendment to the purchase agreement and we're about to have a 12th one, probably like today or tomorrow, but we're almost to the finish line. And that's been.

David Long: For the last, since March, what's been keeping me up at night is just moving the business. But I mean, other than that, we have a really solid process and I mean, there isn't any, there isn't really any for the most part, I'd say it's just smooth sailing for us all the time, just because we have such great customers.

David Long: They love us, we love them. We have a great team of people that work here. And yeah just having that stability of not worrying about, well, what's gonna happen if we don't have a place for the business to operate? That's a big one.

Jimmy Lea: Sure. Yeah. That, that would keep me up at night as well. Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Are we still gonna have front doors to open tomorrow? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, David, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate your insight, your influence, and your inspiration here We are in this industry. That's awesome and amazing. We keep the world running.

David Long: Yeah, it's true.

Jimmy Lea: Doors open.

David Long: Yeah. Thanks, Jimmy.

David Long: Hey, I appreciate that. All right. Take care.

Jimmy Lea: Take care.