Auto Service World Conversations

Rick McMullin, owner of Ricky Ratchets Auto Repair in London, Ont., had one of those days just before Christmas last year. A runaway truck smashed through the front of his shop just after closing. Fortunately no one was hurt. We gave Rick a call to find out how it all went down.

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Derek Suen, manager of new product development at Dorman Products in Canada, has been named the Young Leader of the Year by the AIA’s Young Professionals of the Aftermarket networking group. He has a passion for helping to bring great parts into the aftermarket. We thought it would be worth asking him how our industry is faring at attracting young professionals.

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Sebastian Zelger is the general manager for North America for the Germany-based oil and additives company Liqui Moly. For the last three years, he’s been based in southern California, overseeing the sales and marketing efforts for the company. If he brought any European management ideas with him when he arrived on this side of the pond, it could be related to his views on transparency. We called to ask why that's so important in business.

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The bulk of John Fisher's job used to be done on the road. Now the regional sales manager for UAP-NAPA spends most of his time on the phone and online. We wanted to find out how jobbers are staying in touch with their suppliers during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and what John is hearing from the field.

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MAY 11, 2020 -- Tracy Carnahan and her husband Gord are the owners of OK Tire Park Street in Regina, Saskatchewan. Like every shop in the country, they’ve had to radically redesign their entire process from client intake, to shop procedures, to transaction completion. Tracy says it all boils down to the word trust – but not in the way we normally use that word in this industry. We called her up to talk about it.

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MAY 4, 2020 -- As a business coach with some 25 years of experience in the auto repair industry, Susan Hitchon has some interesting views on how auto repair shops can continue to connect with their customers at a time when physical contact is pretty much ruled out. Hitchon is a licensee of the Automotive Aftermarket E-Learning Center.

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APRIL 29, 2020 -- J. F. Champagne, president of the Automotive Industries Association of Canada, needs your help taking the measure of the aftermarket, some six weeks into the current coronavirus pandemic. The association has created a survey to gather critical data that can be presented to the federal government and provincial legislators as evidence of how Covid-19 has impacted the aftermarket.  As you'll hear, lay-offs and lowered revenues tell only part of the story.

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APRIL 24, 2020 -- Today we speak with Zara Wishloff, vice president of sales and marketing for Edmonton-based warehouse-distributor APD. He points out that it took a lot of people in our industry by surprise when we were deemed by governments around the world to be an essential service. So, why does he think we have such an inferiority complex? We asked him. Host: Allan Janssen. Producers: Delon Rashid, Peter Bulmer.

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APRIL 20, 2020 -- Closing the shop for months on end is a scary proposition for anyone, but to Daren Hodgson, owner of Atelier D.H. Tech Pro in Ste-Marthe, Que., the prospect of continuing to spread the coronavirus is even scarier. He questions the Quebec governments recent decision to reopen the repair trade in that province, and he says he'll stay closed until at least June. We asked him how he came to that decision.

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APRIL 15, 2020 -- At the beginning of the current pandemic, automotive management expert Bob Greenwood was quick to offer practical ways to respond. We asked him to weigh in on the potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the auto service industry. He believes the new realities of retail will stay with us for quite a while, and shops will have to adapt quickly in order to survive. Host: Allan Janssen. Producers: Delon Rashid, Peter Bulmer.

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