Auto Service News

If I had to tell you something about January 2009 it would be it has been cold. Just about everything we have done this month has meant being wrapped up just to keep warm.

First the garage, which to be fair is always cold this time of year even with blowers throwing out the heat, but when the blowers decide not to work, the work just slowed down. At one point we were 2 days behinds with fixing the cars, not because we were busy, but more because we couldn’t expect everyone to stand over a freezing cold car for 4 hours until lunch time.

So everyone was fed hot coffee and regular breaks just to keep people here. The breakdown cover call outs were no better. Just pick a time of day or night where that thermometer went to its lowest point; that would be when the breakdown cover call would come in.

It is inevitable that cold weather increases the likely hood of a recovery call out, but at least when you got back to the garage you would warm up, but not this month. The salvage projects got put on hold which was a shame as prices were very low on the auto salvage auction we use and so would have liked to have bought some more salvage projects in. But when you are behind with customer cars and lacking in space it just did not make any sense to do so.

We have seen an increase in breakdown cover call outs and the amount of times we heard from the owners of the vehicles that normally they would have an annual roadside assistance policy but because money was tight had decided against it and took a chance, was astounding. I can’t believe it, but we are benefitting from the credit crunch and what customers don’t even get is that your car will breakdown credit crunch or not. The weather forecast for this weekend is even colder blizzards, god help us.