Shop Operations: Setting Up a P&L Statement for Your Auto Body Shop
Tulsa, Okla., collision repair facility Trinity Restoration closed its south Tulsa store due to the recession and over-expansion, according to owner David Miller.
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Trinity will keep its restoration shop open but will close its collision and mechanical operations along with an Orange County Choppers dealership.
The $4 million, 25,000-square-foot south Tulsa shop, which opened in 2007, employed 39 people.
The recession has brought a slowdown in business, Miller said.
“While it’s always a risk opening a new business, we did not anticipate that our country would enter into an economic crisis,” he said.
Still, Miller wasn’t sure that the shop would have survived even if a recession had not hit. He believes Trinity simply expanded too fast.
“This has been going on for months,” he said. “The numbers just weren’t clicking.”
In Florida, a dealership shop more than tripling its size hopes the expansion will improve its business.
While the National Automobile Dealers Association is predicting that 900 of the 20,770 new-car dealers in the United States will be out of business by the end of this year, Legacy Toyota in Tallahassee, Fla., is banking on a new 34,000 square-foot collision center opened Dec. 3 to boost its business, Tallahassee newspaper the Democrat reported.
The center is more than three times the size of the dealership’s previous location, a 10,000-square-foot shop.
“I have gained throughput, which means I can get vehicles repaired more quickly,” said collision center manager Tammy Albritton. “We’re capable of handling a very high workload.”
The shop employs 15 people and uses PPG waterborne paints, Albritton said. The facility also is fully air-conditioned.
Albritton said the large facility is “built for the future,” with room for increased repair volume and more employees.
