I get Mail
From Stevie Day up in Canada comes this Gem: “I worried about my work and how I was doing. Then, one day in the middle of a sea of cars at a dealership, I’m fixing a dent and I realize someone has already worked on the car in another spot on the same panel. My work looked way better than whoever was there before.
I started jumping up and down, hooping and hollering right then and there. At first I was glad no one was around, but then I thought, hey I deserve a little celebration for this.”
Stevie’s story is uplifting because she bought her “Dent Busters” business in from the previous owner only 8 months before. The seller spent two and a half weeks training Stevie and said, “There ya go. You’re on your own.”
Stevie gets props for being willing to fix dents outside in minus 30 temperatures. She doesn’t want to be known as the namby-pamby dent girl. “I put on 18 layers of clothing and just went out and did it.”
Rennie Burrus is taking on bigger and more complex dents. He figured out access on the Ford and Chevy truck bedsides is easier when you remove the plastic cover at the top. This exposes a bunch of rectangular holes which can be wallered out, or distorted for access with pry bars. Excellent for side hail damage.
He also impressed me with his persistence in the face of a potentially huge problem. Murphy’s law says if something can go wrong it will. This time a door panel removal and reinstall without putting the latch back in place. Gives you a door that shuts once, never to open again.
Rennie got through it calmly and stepped back to figure out the solution.
Reminds of the airline pilot impressed by what seemed like diligence on my part as I replaced his interior quarter trim.
“Pilots have a saying as they go through their pre-flight checklist: ‘Always one more thing,’” he told me.
He paid me, left with his car but returned an hour later and said, “Uh, one more thing….”
Seems I didn’t quite get the bolt in the seat belt eye attached. Very embarrassing.
Finally, I was humbly surprised by a nice note from PM student and twelve year PDR veteran, Ricky Rodriguez in New York. Ricky was trained by an ex Dent Wizard tech and it was fun sharing notes about the early days of PDR.
Ricky said, “I know there are probably 40 dent guys in my area, but I never see them. All these years I’ve had a business and feel like I’m on my own.”
This loops back around to Stevie’s mid parking lot celebration and the feeling of isolation which is part of our business.
How many times have you fixed a dent where it could not be seen? Did you celebrate it? We strive for independence and enjoy it for the most part, but no one is going to come along and give us the recognition we are owed.
So, we must be our own back slapper and encourager. This is a mark of a successful person.
The opposite action? Whining and constant licking of wounds.
The skill of self acknowledgment fits nicely with refusing to wallow in our misfortunes.
Picking one self up and dusting off for the next appropriate action is something you do every day. Business, PDR, life, all these are challenging. If you make it to the end of the day in one piece, don’t forget to hoop and holler a little for facing it with dignity.
You are better than you think
The first three years of my dent career it was just me and my boss. We pushed each other for excellence, but the only measurement of a good repair we had was each other’s work.
It was only when I traveled to do hail and work alongside some excellent techs when I discovered just how “good” my work really was.
I was happy to discover I was on par with other quality minded techs. But until we knew for sure, the question always lingered.
Too many times, I hear from students who practice and practice and finally, give up.
“I don’t feel my work is good enough to offer to the retail world.”
The problem with this is – how do you know?
Is it fear of criticism or fear of being uncovered as a fake?
Paintless repair is rarely perfect. Nothing is really. Not even a new car.
A friend who trains employees at car factories told me that an auto plant which produces 1000 cars a day will have 150 to 200 of them get a ding in it.
This means 15 to 20 percent of cars produced have already been damaged, repaired and sold as new. Rarely does the buyer ever know it.
You and I do, because we can see the spot where it was worked and then sanded slick and buffed.
Now that you know paintless repair, you’ll feel this innate moral obligation to fix everything that can be fixed without painting. You will also get a sick feeling at the times when a car is fixed with paint and filler instead.
When you know what is possible and what is best, your world view changes.
So does your customers’.
A body shop owner who first came to me in 2000 has become a better and better customer over the years. At first, he doubted everything and therefore limited what he wrote as PDR. Years of proving to him what can be done now has him pushing our envelope sometimes. His inner guide has changed.
Like you and I, he has a deep rooted desire to do what is best for the car, the owner and the longevity of his business.
In the real world, sometimes best practice is overcome by other factors. Economics, time restraints, industry myths, all these can skew the playing field.
I might not get to fix a hood at a body shop on a hail car since the painter needs to stay busy. Is this fair?
Read on.
Assembly line back scratching
Do you think all the cars at an auto plant that could be fixed without painting really are?
So did I. Turns out only about half that could be fixed with PDR really are. Blame it on the pay scale.
When a new hire comes into an auto plant, after 90 days he makes the same hourly wage as the guy who has been there thirty years and is about to retire.
Not a great prospect for upward mobility or being rewarded for seniority.
Every social group has a pecking order, and pay plan be damned, so does a car factory.
You can’t get promoted to a higher wage level, but you can get an easier job assignment. A new hire is a grunt so he gets a grunt’s job. A long time guy gets the cushy jobs, like paintless dent repair. Another is the paint department.
These job assignments are the only carrot on a string which keeps the workers striving, hoping for a better day. Or at least, an easier workday.
Because these jobs are the only real reward, they are protected as if they were the holy grail.
How? What would happen to the paint department if the paintless guy fixed every dent he could on a given day?
Less paintwork means downsizing and potential loss of that trophy job. It would also mean lower costs, faster production, more profits for the automaker and in the long term overall stability.
All of which are good for the employees. But on a daily basis, the paintless guy knows the paint guy has to keep busy or a cake job goes away. So, half the cars that could be fixed paintless get sent down the line to the painter.
PDR guy stays busy, painter stays busy, everybody’s happy.
Its an easy sale to make and tough for a company to overcome.
“We have to take care of each other.”
“That could be me over there. I’d want someone to help me out if I were in his shoes.”
I believe we all have a moral compass which is programmed into our DNA. I also know what is right and wrong are sometimes distorted by mitigating factors.
If the body shop wants to put a hood on a car which I think I can fix, do I scream about it? Turn them into the collision repair police for unlawful and reckless use of repair methods?
No, you have to pick your battles.
Paintless repair can fix this dent. Its a principle, not a rule of law.
We might not be on the assembly plant line, but we do have to survive. A compromise can be reached which makes everyone a winner.
Besides, I think I saw some chips in that hood. Fresh paint for the customer is not so bad, right?
Fear of … What if?
In 1992, I wanted to learn PDR. Questions about the longevity of the business were all around.
“The paint will crack later.”
“All the cars are going to plastic, like the Saturns”
“They are making a machine to do that”
I’m happy to report that Saturn is moving to metal panels, the paint does not crack later, it cracks now if its going to.
The machines?
Well, never underestimate the ingenuity of mankind.
There is the Dominator, a long shafted die grinder with a wheel with bumps on it which mimics pushing with a pry bar and is done with a PDR light.
(Google search: dominator dent tool for video)
Does it work? In my opinion, yes, sort of.
It is a lot less forgiving and it murders the backside of the panel. Read: ecoat gone, rust to follow.
Will it put you out of business? No way.
There will always be a place for what you do. You are a precision instrument with finesse no machine or operator of a machine can match. Its like comparing a micrometer to a yardstick.
Another “machine” touted as a PDR alternative is the inductor, an electromagnet with super fast switching poles. As the magnet switches it creates heat in anything metal, even the wedding ring on your hand.
Does it work?
Better question is what is it doing to the paint?
In my body shop days, I used an oxy-acetylene torch to “suck” dents out of panels with heat. But I knew these were going to be painted and I scratched them with a file or 80 grit sandpaper to “read” the highs and lows.
Not every dent was removable. Some were made bigger, going down instead of up.
No, the inductor is not going to replace you.
To prove it I’ve included a white paper from Dent Wizard which uncovers their testing of it at the auctions.
Which is what I want to leave you with.
If you know the dry ice myth and electromagnet myth, you have an obligation to educate your customers.
This business is still in its young stages and is not going anywhere. Ten years, twenty, longer you will still have a place fixing dents. Don’t wish it away and build mountains in your mind as to why it won’t work.
Reading dents the way you know how to is a skill that is portable and you won’t lose it. Its like riding a bike.
Even if some better pushing method comes along, it will still require a keen, trained eye.
Stay the course.
Till next time,
Tim Olson