This shop owner was turning wrenches
when he was 7 years old

By Roger Randles

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Tony Duncan got his feet wet doing auto repair at a young age … a really young age! “I grew up around it. We had a step-dad that made us, at seven-years-old, get out and help him in the garage.” Then, it seems, it became easy for Duncan to head down the path of his eventual career. “It’s just something that I kept gravitating towards when I got out of high school,” says the 54-year-old shop owner, who has been doing this work since 1975.

Duncan has had his own shop for over 25 years — 15 of those in a previous location, the balance at the current Wilson Ave. site which he says is “5,000- or 6,000-square-feet.” Besides himself, there are three employed at this shop: his daughter, Miranda, runs the office and does estimates, Paul is the painter and Mark the bodyman. Duncan says he does the heavy work, the pulling and the quarter panels. “Now that I’ve got her in the office where she can handle all this, I’m back out [in the shop] doin’ what I enjoy doin’.”

At this shop a cross-flow paint booth manufactured by Tools USA is utilized along with a DuPont mixing system and a Kansas Jack frame rack. They use ADP estimating software.

When a new tech is needed, Duncan says word-of-mouth is his best recruiting tool. “I’ve tried putting ads in the paper and it seems like you get everybody that’s trying to fill out an unemployment card calling.” He says his major input on potential employees comes from the paint reps, the parts people and “the tool man on the tool truck — he helps with that.”

He got most of his training on the job and after 10 years of that he says: “something inside of me was looking for something else. I kinda felt trapped or drowning; I don’t know how to describe it. So I started looking at trying to go into business for myself … at least try before I was 30. I was 28, I think, when we started.”

Duncan says things have not always gone as planned since he became the boss: “It’s been up and down; it’s been a learning experience.”

It seems part of that learning experience has had to do with the way customers have reacted to today’s poor economy in America. He explains what he feels is the biggest problem facing his business this way: “I would say the economy … we’re experiencing more and more people who are trying to lay the blame on accidents to problems that they’ve had with their cars before. A lot of people try to run a game on you all the time. You’ve gotta keep watching for that, and I believe that’s [caused by] the economy; it’s got people trying to get a dollar any way they can,” he said.

Another way people try to “run a game,” to use Duncan’s words, is a kind of reverse bait-and-switch, where the consumer, not the business, is saying one thing now and another later. “What we get, somebody will come in and say ‘You know, I’m paying out of pocket — give me your best deal.’ And then you schedule them and get ’em in and they produce an insurance check. And I just decline that,” Duncan said.

Duncan says that treating people the way he wants to be treated is the key factor in his success over the years that he’s been in the bodyshop industry. “I give a real big leeway to older people and women to try to make them feel comfortable. And with my daughter here now, a lot of women are more comfortable with her, talking with her when they come into the office, verses a man and being intimidated by that.”

Duncan says he brought Miranda into the business on a part-time basis about 10 years ago mainly to do the books. “And I was slowly teaching her and three years ago … I brought her in full time, and I was working with her on estimates, and now I don’t have to do that anymore. She pretty much knows what to do and if she’s got a question, she’ll come get me,” he said.

This shop is not on any DRPs, and Duncan likes it that way. “I’d rather stay independent,” he says. “I hear a lot of … you know, when I pick up the trade books, shops are just constantly complaining about the DRPs, but if you’re gonna complain about ’em, then why be in bed with ’em?”

He further explained his dislike for DRP arrangements this way: “There’s a lot of pressure if you’re on the DRP. Different companies want different things and then they want you to put their stuff in front of everybody else’s and that sorta thing.”

When asked to discuss the future of Duncan’s Body Shop, the owner pauses, takes a deep breath, exhales deliberately and says: “You know, at this stage of my life I’m just trying to get everything paid for, and when it’s paid for I’m gonna step back a little bit and turn it all over to her,” he says, nodding toward Miranda.who is working just around the corner from his office. “I don’t really see myself doing another location or expanding or anything. I’ve had as many as seven employees at one time and down to two, and three seems to work really well,” he said, acknowledging that it is easier to manage less employees than more before adding: “Yeah, and I can be pickier about the work.”

When regulations are mentioned, Duncan says that more and more are constantly being added on. “I really feel that some of it is good. You know, I fought it for awhile, but we have to log all the materials when we get ’em in, and so we’ve got a pattern set that we use about five gallons of thinner a month. And so if it starts to go over that, then I can go out to the shop and ask ‘what’s going on?’” In this way, regulations are helping Duncan determine if anyone is wasting product or slipping some out the back door to use on personal projects or whatever. “That’s been beneficial that way; we can keep a better control over what’s used and what’s not.”

There seems to be some mystery associated with regulations that Duncan addressed next. “I would like ’em to get things leveled out to where we actually know what the regulations are and not change ’em. In ’07 I went to the EPA’s final ruling down in Bowling Green and within a year they changed some of the things right off. So I don’t know … to me it’s rather confusing.”

Duncan then wondered out loud why a disparity exists between the way regulations are implemented across the board. “And then, we have these regulations to keep up with the paint filters, the junk material and there are people out there who just throw open the doors and they’ve got a body shop, with no paint booth, no anything, and I find that really disheartening.”

And what is the solution to this problem? “I think if they wanted to crack down, I think, you know — produce your EPA number to be able to buy materials, that sort of thing. But they said at that meeting that if we had to go through all this, if we knew someone who was not legit to turn ’em in. I just don’t feel comfortable being their police. That’s their thing. I mean, I know everybody’s trying to make it but they could do a couple of things that would stop a lot of that,” he said.

Duncan says that over the years, customers have gotten more difficult to deal with. “Some of the younger people are more disrespectful. Some of it has to go back to the economy — people are trying to lay more and more on the wreck, or you. If they can’t get the insurance company to pay for something then something you did made the check engine light come on or something you did made it shift funny or something. You know, that sorta thing.

“We don’t see a lot of that, but it does happen. It’s really one of the downsides. You’ve just gotta keep watch — you just can’t conduct business and think everybody’s gonna be fair. You’ve gotta keep watching your backside,” he said. •

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