I went away of business through Leeds Bradford Airport to return the same day and was astonished to find a £30 a day change for car parking. Why would this be except to rip business travellers off. They don’t even do anything. I put my credit card into the machine as I go in and take it out as I come out, no extra work. The fact is, the car parking nearly cost as much as the flight, quite astonishing really, how one company can have a different price model to the other. Roll on the day when low price airlines buy their own airports and squeeze these guys out.

I have flown from LBA before and even though there always seems to be more security there than other airports, so take longer to get through security, I have always found the Off site airport parking pretty good, although they also admitted to high charges for a single day. There are apparently websites where people high out their drives for the day to park, but it is a bit too far to walk at LBA.

However when we started to look for boat salvage, we were surprised at how few sites there were selling UK boat salvage, quiet a few for America, but not UK. In fact we found our trusted SalvageSpareFinder USA site had a really good selection of boat salvage from the  co part auctions over there.

I can only assume it is in many cases not cost effective to take the boats out of the water and transport to an auction site, so you end up with many boats spread across a large area. you never know, someone may take up the challenge.

I have never driven a motor home before, but obviously I end up driving vans all the time, so no surprise that it was easy to drive, and was almost like a car. The Mercedes based vehicle was fitted out to a standard, I don’t even see at home, so OK, I was watching a smaller TV and it was a bit smaller, but at night time it was juts like being at home. The only disadvantage I see with motor homes in general, is getting around once you have set up in the camp site.

I often see motorbike fixed to the back of the motor homes and I now know why, because the last thing I want to do is pack everything away in the van to go for a drive, so when we were parked we stayed. It was more chilling than I though, probably because most of the sites we went to, had good stuff for the kids etc.

Although I still hate summer traffic, and there were times I was wondering, why I wasn’t on a beach abroad somewhere. Never mind, I soon will be in a few months.

This is something I did not know you could from here in the UK. I don’t know that much about dealing in cars (autos) in the States, but I did know that you needed specific licenses to deal with car salvage over there, so surprised to see that anyone can buy USA salvage as an American Import.

There are some truly great looking cars from all standards of repair and you can even buy cars that cannot be registered in the USA as they are deemed as un-repairable (cat B over here), but can be exported out of the States to countries like the UK. What a great source of car parts and the projects you can buy look right up my street. Suddenly that classic car I was talking about last week, doesn’t have as much appeal.

Then we get a phone call from this guy stating that the AA would soon arrive at the garage to look at the car and get it started and would we leave it outside to do so. I found this strange and insisted he paid for the recovery charge at this point, which he did. The AA Patrolman turned a bit later also a bit surprised and possibly a bit embarrassed to find himself working on a car we have recovered back to the garage. He couldn’t understand if this guy had AA Roadside Assistance, why he would have called the garage out to recover the car first and be hit with that bill. The AA patrolmen did a good job and 20 minutes later the car springs to life and work done.

So when the guy turns up to collect his car I asked him, why did he pay for recovery and then get the AA out to fix the car? He then told us that he didn’t think the AA would be able to fix it by the roadside and because he only had an AA Roadside Assistance policy and not a recovery one, he was worried that the car would have been towed to the nearest garage rather than ours, which he said he trusted.

So i asked him, why he did not get the AA out first and if he had not been able to fix the car, then ring us up to pick the car up? He then froze and you can hear the brain ticking, “never though of that” was the reply and an embarrassed motorist drove away in his car, with a recovery fee paid

Then I got to drive the Morris Minor, and oh god what a difference, what a clutch and did I move, hardly at all, but it was good fun. So last weekend I was on the internet, looking up prices on Morris Minor convertibles to enjoy the sun, and yes these classic car parts are just as cheap. You will have to tune in later, to see if the wife lets me. I did see an E Type Jaguar cheap, but that would be pushing the boat out too much.

So a consideration is to buy a company car for the garage or to be more exact lease one. I had thought about using one of the salvage vehicles we do from time to time, but the time it takes to repair each one, means I need a profit back. I have been looking at contract hire rates and to be honest, some are a very small outlay, considering I can claim back all the VAT (as the car will only be used on business and will stay at the garage) and set other costs to the business and always have a nice clean new car.

On saying this, I haven’t fully decided if contract hire is for us yet, being in the trade I often get offered great cheap cars, but even a cheap car means taking money out of the business, so for now the brain cells are working on what is right for us.

Now I can understand a bit more if we sold petrol, but we don’t and what’s more how do you make an intrinsically safe welding torch, as we do weld all the time and I can tell you there are hell of a lot sparks coming out of that. Another way to describe this stuff is ATEX equipment, something to do with Europe and explosions and I can see their uses, as we watch what is going on in the Mexico gulf oil rig, but while we use welding torches and every time we start up a car, a huge amount of electricity of forced through the spark plugs (notice the word spark), I am not sure we are yet ready for this Atex equipment stuff just yet.

A lot of cars are not actually owned by the drivers but leased instead. Often these lease contracts insist of certain mechanical serving to occur at certain periods during that cars life, otherwise fines or excess payments can asked for at the end of the lease period. We find ourselves servicing these cars in higher volumes than ever before, which can bring in company car owners and small business work, which we are happy to oblige with. The problems we have had with this is that newer cars have technology that requires ourselves to invest in certain equipment we did not need before. There is often a complicated way of order parts also through the dealerships, as even though we can service we have to be very careful with the quality of parts we put on these cars. Not that it matters that much to the lease companies, who normally have these cars sold before the end of the contract to retailers. I have considered using a lease car for my work, but in truth I am always dirty and there is always some sort of transport available in the garage, so it would only be for days off that I would like a nice car. But days off are too rare to justify a new car and anyway, the salvage project we do, turn out some nice cars, albeit a few years old.

This is where we are now, coming into spring and trying to lift an engine from he yard in to the garage and of course one of the bucket teeth decide enough was enough and snapped. After a bit of a panic we found out that this was not big deal to replace just like the UK rubber tracks we had done late last year.

Give me a car and I know the bits and pieces but as soon as you move out of this area, the brain does not kick in as quick. Again we found delivery quicker than we get parts from our auto-factors, seems we are in the wrong business. An update of everything else we do in the garage is well overdue and I can’t blame the weather now as it has cleared up ages ago. It is also not that busy, so maybe the salvage projects will start again, lets see an I  will try top post again soon.