The Shop

This is how I make a buck. Heavy truck collision repair, welding of steel and aluminum and custom work.

They roll them over and we repair them. We also do alot of gravel truck dump box repairs also garbage trailers too.

Today we are getting a small fleet ready for the upcoming gravel season. General check over for lights, brake adjust, some welding here and there. Grease and fluid levels check, check tires. Paint a frame on one truck a brake job on another. We are fully equipped for the work that we do and have been in business for five years now.

Do alot of truck frame work, trucks with broken frames, trucks that need to lengthened or shortened. We seem to always have work although the last six months I have noticed a overall slowing down in the workload.

Everything is paid for in the shop, I bought everything during the first three years and cause we live in our rv and have very little personal expenses we were able to invest heavily into the shop. Were just a small shop, myself and two other guys so we really don't need alot of work to keep us afloat. We also buddies too and spend time together away from the shop. I often say, dumb dumber and dumbest thats us. We sort of got our own thing going on and not like how other shops are run, pretty laid back here, alot of laughing and joking.

Were well known in the area and have alot of guys drop in to chew the fat or discuss upcoming work for us. We don't charge a big dollar and alot of small jobs we let slide, we don't nickel and dime a guy. We actually work for the money we make and I believe in a honest days work for honest pay.

We like the hard jobs, the jobs that the other shops in the area refer to us. Thats got Coal all written over it, is what I hear. Keeps it interesting.

I want to work another 3 years and then hopefully move to Northern Ontario and either work for a guy in this line of work or open a small one man shop. My immediate plan is to survive the next couple of years and keep out of debt as I am now.

The last 8 months here in the shop has been brutal, I moved the shop four times till we found the location that we are in now that is suitable, very hard to find a suitable shop. We lost our first shop due to a mold problem in the walls, it was the best shop out of the bunch but the landlord had to do major reno work forcing us to leave.