Shop Owner Staff

For more than 25 years, Matt Webster has led the charge to market Rotary Lift and other Vehicle Service Group (VSG) brand products. As vice president of global business development and marketing, Webster has traveled the world researching global vehicle service markets and setting up sales organizations for VSG’s eight vehicle lifting and collision repair brands, including Rotary Lift, Revolution Lift, Forward Lift and Chief Automotive Technologies.

According to Autoscope President Nerces Mavelian, “Superstar Technicians” are “built, not born.” It all starts with what can’t be avoided and what is usually a lengthy and arduous task: finding the right candidate in the first place.

Know Your Parts, the industry awareness campaign initiated by the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association (AASA), now has a new slogan and messaging: It’s What’s Inside that Counts!

California Gov. Edmund Brown has signed into law CA S.B. 869, legislation that amends current law regulating automotive repairers. The new law amends the Automotive Repair Act. It provides that an automotive repair dealer who prepares a written estimate for repairs that includes the replacement of a deployed airbag and then fails to restore the airbag, as specified, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a $5,000 fine, one-year imprisonment in a county jail, or both the fine and imprisonment.

Federated Auto Parts and its drivers, Ken Schrader and Tom Hessert, have gone pink – the Federated teams will showcase special paint schemes for the month of October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month.

The Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) is producing the Shop of Tomorrow at AAPEX in booth #3066 to showcase an innovative breakthrough approach to vehicle service using connected technology. In the Shop of Tomorrow, management and service information systems communicate seamlessly with equipment in the back shop.

If you’re like me, in the over-50 age bracket, it’s no surprise that you view the world a lot differently than the younger generation. On the other hand, people from the younger generation will struggle with many of the values and ethics of the older generation. When you consider the diverse demographics of today combined with a multi-generational workforce, it’s easy to see how the differences in values and behavior are having a profound impact in the workplace.

A customer’s Honda Civic was recently stolen from Import Performance Specialists in San Antonio, TX. The Civic was stolen from the repair shop’s back parking lot, which is shared with other businesses on the property. Unfortunately, the shop’s insurance does not cover the shared parking lot.

New rolling data from IMR Research that shows the average number of repair orders per week at various repair outlets. The data was compiled from August 2010 to July 2011.

NHTSA has opened an investigation of alleged failure of car jacks on certain Ford Motor Co. minivans. The agency is reacting to consumer complaints that the service jacks, used in changing to a spare tire in an emergency situation, can suddenly break, allowing the vehicle to fall and potentially injure users.

The latest Harris Poll measuring how the public perceives 22 of the nation’s largest industries shows massive changes over the past two years. The biggest changes since 2009, when the survey was last conducted, are a huge improvement in the number of people who think that the automobile industry is doing a good job of serving consumers and a very large increase in those who give the airline industry bad marks, the company said.

Two timely technical training programs for technicians and shop owners, sponsored by the Car Care Professionals Network (CCPN) and AWDA Manufacturers Advisory Council (MAC), are among the 30 education sessions scheduled for the Learning Forum at the Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX).