On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 22:07:43 -0500, "Greg O"
wrote:



I had a small engine repair for five years here in North Dakota. About 1/2
the push mowers you see are throw away machines. I always got a kick out of
people buying the $99 mower down the street, forgeting to put oil in it, or
bending the crank, and then wanting me to fix it. Lets see, crankshaft $45,
two hours labor at $26, (this was a few years back!), gaskets, oil,
whatever, over $100 at any rate! Hell a new 3.5 HP engine from Briggs &
Stratton was $159! Try to explain way a whole mower sells for less than just
the engine!
That's always the problem.

Once in a while I had people bring in higher quality machines with a bad
engine that they wanted to repair and were willing to pay the price. Down
the srteet I would go to the $99 lawn mower store and buy a mower, strip the
engine off of it and install it on their mower. Even as a dealer I could not
buy a engine that cheap.
Yep.

I did a ton of small engine repair for consrtuction companies. I was the
only shop in town that would do LP gas powered small engine repair as it was
so differant in the way the engines would run. It was good money as they
would have me fix everything they brought in, no questions.
Those are the good ones.

Still on our 3-1/2 day long summers, it was inpossible for someone to run a
small engine repair and make a living at it. Shops start up every year and a
couple of years down the road they are gone. There is one shop in town that
hass been around for maybe twenty years, but has changed ownership 5-6
times!
You definitely have to other things as well. Just fixing mowers
won't cut the mustard.

This is a small town (and it just keeps getting smaller). When I got
out of the Air Force I wanted to start a shop of my own. Now I'm not a
master of any one trade but I've always been fairly versatile so I
could do anything I needed to do. I spent a lot of time trying to
figure out what would work. I considered computer repair, motorcycle
shop, small engine, and many more. Every one of them suffered from one
problem. There's not enough demand in a small town to make a living at
any one of them. Then while taking my mothers stuff to Oregon I
stopped by my Grandmothers in Utah. She lives in a town so small that
I swear it's just a one room post office in the middle of a field. :-)

Anyway while there it was noticed that the trailer tongue was
cracked. They didn't have a welder but the neighbor down the road did.
He was to old and couldn't see to weld but I was welcome to use his
welder to do the repair. When we arrived I found his shop was
basically a slightly oversized two car garage made from cinder block.
He had a welder a old drill press (just like the two old ones that I
have, I can remember lusting after it while there), and a few other
tools in the shop. But what caught my eye was the sign on the back
wall. It was his name (I can't remember it after all these years)
Fixit Shop.

That's where it finally dawned on me that in a small town you can't
specialize. You have to be willing to take on just about any kind of
work. I think it took me about 3 years before it got to the point that
I was always so far behind schedule that I couldn't keep track of all
the work. Some of it paid better than others but at that point I was a
bachelor and I always had enough money to do what ever I wanted. I was
working on building up my capabilities the whole time. I added new
machines in any way possible. Many where home made. I built the chop
saw I currently use before I had any real machine tools. All I had at
that time was a drill press, a home made simple lathe (which I did use
to turn some metal with gravers, files, and grinders), a sander,
grinders (some home made as well), and of course my cutting torch
(which I bought when I was 13) and the old cracker box which my great
uncle "loaned" me about a year after buying the torch.

Then I got married and things got even better for a while. When she
was working we could pretty much live off what she made and I could
put nearly all my money back into the shop. I bought the Shop Task
during that period. Then it happened. She got pregnant and had to quit
work. The combination of me being burned out from all the work (I was
at least 6 months behind about then), the worry about the cost of the
baby, pressure from her parents to get a "real job", and the offer for
work at the local machine shop (a place I had always dreamed of
working but could never get in) caused be to once again put the shop
in moon light mode. Even that didn't last to long since it wasn't to
long before I was so tired after work and my feet hurt so bad that I
didn't have the energy to work after hours. This was the dark ages
around here. Never before did I have to budget so close. I was just
barely making enough to keep up with the bills.

After several years at the machine shop they got in trouble. It got
to the point where they didn't have enough money to pay me for the
next week. When I heard that I decided that it was definitely time to
get out of there. I had been considering it for a while but had never
managed to build up what I considered enough of a buffer fund for the
startup but this forced my hand. Fortunately I did have a little saved
back by then (about $1800). The Saturday after my last day there I put
out flyers saying I was back. The whole time I had been in the machine
shop people had been calling me wanting me to work on there mowers.
Well that first series of flyers has been the only advertising I have
had to do to date. I brought in $300 profit that next week which was
equal to my paycheck from the machine shop (all of it small engine
work). It only took me about 1 hour a day to do the paying work so I
had time to start my shop. I knew at that rate it wouldn't be long
before I wouldn't have time to work on the shop so I pushed it's
construction hard. Fortunately I had already stockpiled the material
for the shop about 2 years earlier. I started it in april and I barely
managed to get it closed by winter for all the work coming in. In fact
I had to use tarps for doors that first winter and the next summer.
That winter the machine shop had it's auction and through some help
from local businesses that didn't want to be without a machine shop I
managed to get a loan for enough equipment to keep the most needed
capabilities here. It's been a race since then to keep up with the
work. I can't say that there's not been any hard times but I'm
definitely bringing in more money now than when I worked for them.

This is the reason why I won't turn away small engine work. It's
saved me to many times in the past. It's not the most profitable part
of my current business but it's still a part of it and will probably
always be a part of it.

Wow. I didn't mean to get that carried away. Hopefully not to many
fell asleep during that out burst. :-)

Wayne Cook
Shamrock, TX
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/waynecook