Tired of the time and expense of sending his staff to training sessions three hours away from his shop, Richard Smith decided last year to become an I-CAR instructor.
The owner of Sharp’s Auto Body & Collision, Inc. in Pittsburg, Kan., still sends his staff to off-site training occasionally, but now he has the ability to teach a variety of I-CAR courses at his shop.
“It’s kind of like a second job, but something I enjoy doing,” says Smith, who is also an Automotive Service Excellence master technician. “It’s beneficial to the shop and to the techs.”
Being an instructor keeps Smith in the loop on the newest technologies and repairs. His shop is a small operation in a rural corner of Kansas, but that hasn’t kept him from being a progressive owner. Smith’s main concerns are quality and safety. Using outdated repair techniques can put customers in danger and shops in legal trouble, he says, so repairs that only look good won’t cut it.
“The main thing is it gives me peace of mind,” Smith says. “This is our business, these are the standards that we want to set and what we want to keep. When a customer leaves, I want them to be happy and I want their repair to be correct and safe.”
But because his shop is small, Smith is careful about his education investments. He will cover the cost of courses for techs, but if they decide to leave, they have a contractual obligation to pay the shop back for classes taken within the previous year. The payment is partial or full depending on when courses were taken and when the tech leaves.
“It’s a benefit for them as well,” Smith says of continuing education courses. “It helps them with their daily routine of repairing cars and makes them more valuable.”
Oakland Auto Body
(two facilities)|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||OWNER: Ron Vincenzi
LOCATION: Oakland, Calif.
SIZE: 22,000 square feet total
AVERAGE ANNUAL REVENUE:
$5 million
AVERAGE CARS PER MONTH: 150–175
EMPLOYEES: 25
I-CAR GOLD SINCE: 1990