Holcom: Are your customers ‘family’?
I’ve been in this business for a few years, and whether I heard it during a training event, picked it up while networking or just figured it out, I’ve learned that to retain or to acquire new clients you have…
Features
Greenwood: Supplier vs. Partner?
Owners should plan all their management and employee training a year in advance. There’s too much to do to think it can be handled in a last-minute fashion. Because proper planning is required to ensure the team continues to develop…
Prepare to Repair
Fred Hules II, AAM, newly elected general director of the Automotive Service Association (ASA)…
A Tale of Two CRVs
Case studies illustrate diagnosing a vehicle’s misfire and a customer’s misfire. If your shop is like ours, Honda CRVs make an appearance weekly. Mostly…
Schnepper: Cars, sensors and scanners
Mary Barra, GM’s CEO, recently stated that the car industry will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 50. I don’t know about you, but I think the past five years have been a…
Redding: Insurance reform returns to spotlight
House passes repeal of McCarran-Ferguson Act for health insurers. Two major national issues have pushed insurance reform back in the national spotlight. First, efforts to reform or repeal Obamacare have produced a renewed interest in the repeal of the McCarran-Ferguson…
For Good Measure
The more advanced our vehicles become, the more exact each system within them needs to be, especially with developments made in the past 15 years.
Tools of tradition
Tradition is often cited as the reason certain processes exist, and, sometimes, the tradition makes sense. Other times, though, learning the reason the tradition started can make you roll on the floor with laughter. For example, one of my favorite…
The Millennial Dilemma
With the average age of a shop owner in America at 55, they’ve been through many generations of customers. But when considering marketing to millennials, many shop owners say, “I’m not sure who they are, and I’m not sure anyone…
They’ve Got You Covered
Something unique is going on in the black-land prairie city of McKinney, Texas. Located 37 miles north of Dallas, this community of just over 150,000 people boasts the presence of a company…
Continuing the Data Debate
In the May-June issue, AutoInc. conducted a Q&A with CCC Information Services about its newly launched Secure Share Network, a significant change in terms of how shops using CCC’s estimating system can share estimate information. Readers of this article suggested…
Keller: Sync up for success
In 43 years of shop management and ownership, I’ve made every mistake possible. There was a year when my accountant had to prepare 102 W2s. Imagine how broken my systems and procedures were to go through that many employees in…
Greenwood: The Big Decision
Many complexities of our business are now front-and-center. Consider the following: The independent sector of the automotive service industry is experiencing a crisis of profitability, retailer attitude and public perception. Most shop owners have bought themselves a job, not a…
Customer complains of brake noise, has them replaced elsewhere, seeks reimbursement
An ASA member writes: I have a customer who has spent thousands of dollars with me during the past several years. Eighteen months ago, we installed genuine Toyota brakes on his 4Runner. A month later, the customer returned to my…
Redding: House subcommittee holds hearing on self-driving cars
When the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released its Federal Automated Vehicles (AV) Policy in September 2016, the focus was on NHTSA issuing a guidance document and its four key sections: vehicle performance guidance; model state policy; NHTSA’s current…
Learning for Life
Jim Maddox learned a lesson growing up in rural Los Lunas, N.M., that he has not forgotten: The value of a good education. He uses that lesson every day as a guidepost for his…
Van Batenburg: How does the original Toyota Prius Plug-In stack up to the new Prius Prime?
Twenty years ago this December, the Prius was introduced to the world. Three years later, it came to America and the quintessential hybrid was born. Everyone has heard of Prius. The Plug-in Prius came out in model year (M/Y) 2012…
Schnepper: Importance of teamwork & friendship
This is my first article as ASA’s chairman of the board. And I thought this would be a great time to share how I got involved with ASA and with two of my mentors. First, I had the opportunity to…
