Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Looks like diversity is a trait for those of us interested in Mach3.
When i was 15 I worked with my neighbor during the school year who was a vinyl siding contractor and the summer building turkey barns......... don't forget the tan. School year when I was 16 I helped my neighbor with the siding and that summer I lived at my girlfriends parents house 
and a friend of a friend that lived near by put me to work restoring Corvettes. School year when I was 17 (back home now) the owner of one of the parts houses I dealt with bought a John Deer dealership and paid me per tractor to uncrate the new ones and assem. fluids, acid in batteries, etc. When I had all those put together he hired me full time (after school) to do repairs, auto machining, (boring cylinders, valve jobs, etc.) and help run the parts counter. When summer came around one of our customers that we had at the parts house asked me to go to work for him doing auto repair and I took him up on his offer. We worked on cars till about 11:00 every night except the nights we were drag racing (usually at least 3 nights a week and every Saturday and Sunday). We had a lot of fun. I worked with him until i graduated and went to a technical college in Texas. We had school 40 hours a week and they got me a job at an auto repair chain. I worked 60 hours a week there and it was ranked the top independent shop in the nation at that time. Through them I had chances to take classes that the same school I was going to during the day put on but was advanced compared to the day classes I was paying to take. I liked those but there was a problem. Going to school 40 hours and working 60 hours didn't allow time for the advanced classes. I asked the school if I could transfer the advanced credits to the lesser and they wouldn't allow it so I was getting pissed.... Came home for Christmas break and the first person i ran into at the mall while Christmas shopping was the guy i had worked for while at my girlfriends for the summer. He had gotten a huge state of the art auto restoration shop and asked to come talk to him. I did and offered a very good job so i went back to Texas, loaded up my tools and came Right back (told the school they could kiss it too )and went to work. They had a huge back log and I was banging it out. Caught them up in about 6 months and butted heads with the owners son more than once. I had put a clutch in his dads road coarse race car and a lot of suspension work one weekend when I was working for him in the past and that really bothered his son. He never got over that but I did . Only time I ever just quite a job but i drove home with my tools grinning like a cat eating briers. The next day I went to a small production shop and applied for a job. They called me 3 days later wanting me to come to work but I already had 30 cars in the yard and 2 in the shop. A year into this my brother-in-law bought an oil compnay and with it came a full shop up town. He asked me to move up there so I did. We had a good time as well but he really had a good time. Got a cal from the cops one night saying the door to the shop was open and I found my brother-in law passed out on the couch in the office. LOL He wasn't feeling any pain. Well, I decided it probably wasn't in my best intrest for him to be leaving the door open with all my tools in there and the owner of another Shop/Tire store had been wanting me to manage it for him, so I did. This was a lot of fun too but the insurance wasn't the best and it was very long hours. I was looking at having kids in the near future and insurance, benefits, decent hours (not to mention good help is hard to find) were starting to look better than partying and drag racing. I did that for 2 years and went to work at a good sized plant. I was hired for weekend shift as a cnc operator (3 12s) and really liked that. I had insurance and still got to work on cars in my shop. The shop grew to include auto body repair and painting and was working 5 other guys and running 2 shifts Monday- Friday and still working weekends too. After about 3 years of this I had worked up from operator to lead to setup to supervisor, the auto shop was wide open, I had a 1 year old and was remodeling the house my Gradpas Grandpa had built in 1862. I had a full plate and decided something had to go. Since I had been working on cars pretty hard for about 12 years I was getting burnt out and the shop was by far the the greatest source of stress. I closed it to the public and picked which ones I wanted to work on. Sometime after that the plant was getting ready to do a fair sized addition and asked me if would consider going into maintenance. 6 months or so later I gave in and that's where I have been for the past 10 years or so. About 2 years after going into maintenance one of the corprate guys saw a car I had painted and asked me to take a piece home and make it show ready. I did, he liked it and I have been doing that for the past 5 or 6 years as well. The second year of doing the trade show parts the sales guy called and said of the 31 trucks inside at MATS 30 of them had my parts on them. This brought other companies in as customers and times it demands going days without sleep but I must like it....... I still do it. LOL The trade show stuff is what ultimately introduced me to Mach because I wanted to keep as much as possible in house. Dealing with trade shows there is often last minute changes, something someone forgot they needed to display, etc. and dealing with others schedule can be a real pain at times. I also do training aids for sales groups. While all of this was going on I also managed to do some residential construction, high end custom cabinets, got certified in land and game management. I keep my PPG certification up to date as well so if something should happen to my friend I can spray for him while he is layed up. I let all of my ASE certifications expire but picked up several in other areas including welding. I have no idea what I'll be when I grow up. 
Guest