Michael Grossman wonders why he didn’t make the move to buy his own building earlier as his Midwest Automotive has its new home at 25 N. 17th St. in Keokuk.
“I wish I would have bought a place sooner,” he said. “It’s scary to do.”
Midwest Automotive operated for about eight years renting a building at 2503 Johnson Street Road. Many in the area would remember that as once being Lem Blankenship’s Auto Body.
Grossman said it was a good way to start out in the business, by renting the shop, but the new location has a better layout, though it is actually slightly smaller than the old location.
He said the layout is better because they now have seven doors to seven spaces for vehicles, whereas the old location had nine vehicle spaces, but five doors, so things had to be moved around.
Moving into the new place also has given Midwest Automotive a chance to expand its services. Grossman said the new shop came with an alignment machine. He said it’s probably $60,000 to buy one of those and when you make maybe $75 off of an alignment, that takes a long time to pay that off.
Before having the opportunity to be able to do alignments, Grossman said they would either take a vehicle to another local shop that had the equipment, or they would recommend a shop to the customer so they could take it there themselves.
Now they can put on a tie rod or other front end component, align the front wheels of the vehicle and get the customer on their way.
Grossman said he has gotten into making keys as well. That is an interesting process now that many keys are not jagged pieces of metal. There are a lot of push button start vehicles now, or plastic keys that go into vehicles.
He said the return on investment for the key equipment is a lot better than for that of an alignment machine. He said outside of area new car dealerships, there aren’t a lot of places around here that can make keys, either.
There is some computer software involved and machinery. He said the government is working towards having those who have the equipment to program these keys be vehicle security professionals (VSPs), through a licensing program.
Grossman said he is already a VSP.
Right now, anyone can buy one of these key programming machines, and some vehicles are easier to steal than others. If there’s a change with the VSP system, those making keys would need to put in their VSP credentials before being able to make a key.
He said car theft has gone up since more and more push button start vehicles came onto the market. The vehicle’s key fob has to be near the vehicle to start it, but Grossman said there are some range extenders that thieves use to amplify the fob’s range, where a person could be sitting in their house and the thief could get their car started using the range extender and then get down the road and have a key made.
Vehicles continue to change and get more complicated with computers and electronics. Grossman said he keeps up with those changes through ongoing education. He did two nights of classes a month ago, and next month he is going to Kansas for an annual training.
He said he subscribes to a lot of online training courses as well.
Grossman said he also follows a lot of podcasts and Facebook groups of other shop owners and they all can learn from each other.
“I try to take advantage of any of it,” he said.
There’s also plenty on YouTube. He said it’s not just people fixing cars, but the business side of it as well.
That is something that was new to him when he got into the business. He started because he loved to work on vehicles. His dad was a mechanic, so Grossman started at a young age, messing with remote control cars, then small engines, dirt bikes and then other vehicles.
But the business side was something he had to get acquainted with when he started working as a shop owner. He said some of what he has learned has taught him he has to work smarter, not harder, on some issues.
Sometimes people think that a mechanic wouldn’t feel like working on their own vehicles when they get home, but Grossman said he spends a lot of time on his own projects at home.
He said he enjoys working on the older vehicles — he owns a couple classic cars himself — but sometimes it’s difficult to track down parts, or find parts that fit, even when the supplier says it will fit.
More modern vehicles have a lot better chance of parts being right when they come in.
But he enjoys when an older vehicle comes into the shop.
Midwest Automotive offers a wide variety of auto repair services. Grossman said they do not do auto body repair, but pretty much anything mechanical, they can handle.
The shop is open Monday to Friday from 8-5 and can be reached at 1-319-470-3103.
