By Steve McLinden
It’s a hectic Friday morning at Grumpy’s Body Shop & Auto Repair of Crowley, Texas. Outside, a verbose customer who is dropping off a car is bending the ear of owner Chris Scotto.
“Everybody I send up here tells me they always come away happy,” she says. “When they went to other places, they always felt ripped-off.”
Scotto was grateful for the unsolicited comments, not just because they were spoken within earshot of an Automotive Report writer, but because they are reflective of an ethic that has generated repeat shop business over the years.
“We pride ourselves in being 100 percent honest,” he said. “We are honest when we don’t have to be; we tell the truth at all costs.”
Because the public has a natural suspicion of mechanic and body shops, convincing potential new customers that Grumpy’s is on the up-and-up can be a challenge, Scotto said. But once customers get a repair, service or body job done at the shop, they return, he added. In fact, he said the shop counts many second-and even third-generation family members as patrons.
Scotto is more a mechanic by trade than a body worker, and likes the diagnostic end of the business. That’s little surprise, since he once attended the University of Texas at Arlington and Texas Christian University, studying pre-med.
The founder of the 35-year-old Grumpy’s shop, the somewhat crusty Larry Rea, was nicknamed “Grumpy” by his grandchildren, hence the shop’s original moniker. Rea put the place up for sale 26 years ago, and Scotto’s father, Rick, bought it and settled into the area. The elder Scotto was a nuclear power-plant engineer “and he got tired of moving the family from city to city,” said his son, who was born in Kansas. As a young man, Chris Scotto hung around the shop, learning some of the tricks of the trade before being hired on as an 18-year-old
Scotto’s dad elected to keep the Grumpy’s name for its local recognition, though he did change things up a bit, opting to add repair services to the menu. The move has helped keep the place busy year-round, because seasonal slack periods are different for each discipline, said owner Scotto, who is 39. Grumpy’s does about 70 percent auto repair and 30 percent body repair.
Grumpy’s also performs state inspections, a service that has become both a reliable income stream and a way to promote the shop’s other offerings, Scotto said. One local car dealership now uses Grumpy’s for inspections of its fleet. The shop invested a cool $50,000 on the emissions-testing/inspection equipment when it came out in the late 1990s, “and it paid for itself long ago,” said the owner.
Grumpy’s has earned the NAPA AutoCare certification to become part of NAPA’s network of trusted, locally-owned repair facilities, and also has qualified as a designated O’Reilly’s Certified Auto Repair Center through the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) program.
Scotto said another big challenge for the shop is finding quality workers in both the body-shop and mechanic trades, adding he goes out of this way to hang onto to them when he finds them. Some who have gone off to “greener pastures” elsewhere have returned to the fold, including master mechanic Danny Smith.
Auto trade schools are not producing qualified graduates and none who have come aboard Grumpy’s have worked out, Scotto said.
“Our people are ASE-certified from the school of hard knocks,” said the owner. “Most good auto-repair people usually owned crappy cars when they were young and they learned how to fix them themselves, then started fixing other peoples’cars.”
The one-acre Grumpy’s property has two auto-repair buildings and one large body shop. Tools of the trade include an EZ Liner frame machine and standard paint booth. The shop has been able to control some fixed expenses over the years through long-term relationships with vendors, particular paint and parts vendors, Scotto added.
Customer trade at the shop, at 629 N. Crowley Road in the city of Crowley, next to Fort Worth; comes primarily from in-town, south Fort Worth, Burleson and a few other surrounding burgs, though Scotto has seen a surprising number of customers from much farther distances lately. The shop handles all manner of repair jobs, including classic-car customizing and restoration, though Scotto is reluctant to take on custom jobs because of the time and expense involved and the small profit margin.
The staff of eight can cross over from mechanic to body work and vice-versa if necessary, though they are generally contained within their specialties. Office manager Frank Ables, who in nine years has worked his way up from doing oil changes to office manager, said juggling the shop’s varied disciplines can get complex.
“I quit every day,” he joked.
Scotto’s youngest son, Carter, who was off school on this Good Friday, accompanied his dad to work and followed him around the shop from station to station, holding tools and keenly observing how things are done. The owner has three children, ranging from 8-year Carter to a 14-year-old daughter.
The shop consistently gets rave reviews. On Yelp, one customer wrote: “The guys at Grumpy’s are good, honest men. Our van needed about $5,000 worth of work (dealership quote). We took it over to Chris and he fixed it up in two days for just over $2,000!!” On Google, most of the shop’s reviews merit five-stars and the owner responds personally to all of them with a “thanks” and an individually-tailored note.
Grumpy’s is not the only body shop along this industrial stretch of Crowley Road — there are five other shops within a two-minute drive — so doing the right thing is tantamount to continued success at Grumpy’s, said Scotto.
“The competition doesn’t really hurt us, because we’ve been here awhile,” he said. “Of course, it doesn’t really help us either. Unless they do bad work.” •
