Osborne's brother and Shop Manager Greg Osborne added that steel palm trees offer maintenance-free landscaping and that they were the only thing they could find to "grow" in concrete.

 
"People love it," Dave Osborne said. "It is something that grabs people's attention. Now we have exploited it and put palm trees on our business cards and in our yellow page ad."

 
The new building, acquired last year, was a necessary addition to the business, Osborne said. He said the business had outgrown the 5,000 square foot shop it had occupied since 1990 and needed office space, a waiting area, and a larger parking lot.

"We didn't have a place to sit down and talk to anybody," Osborne said. "Now we have a parts area, break room, and a drive-in bay where we can write estimates in inclement weather and hold training classes and seminars for high school kids and insurance agents." He added that the new building is aesthetically appealing and adds professionalism to the business.

Osborne said his work crew consists of six technicians and three office workers, including himself, his brother, and his wife, Debbie, who takes care of the books and reception area. Osborne's father, Charlie, owner of the business since 1972, is still involved in the business and spends most of his time picking up and dropping off customers, taking vehicles to get alignments, and picking up parts.

Osborne said he operates things differently than most collision repair shops. He said he is responsible for writing all the estimates, communicating with the customers, and the paperwork associated with the estimating process. His brother, on the other hand, makes sure it all goes through and works, he said. He orders the parts, keeps the work in line with the technicians, and makes sure the car is cleaned and ready to go in the end.

"I know that a lot of places have an estimator that follows a job from the beginning to the end, but we divided it up here between office and shop," Osborne said. "It plays upon the strengths that each one of us has. I am certainly better at the clerical stuff, and he is very good at running the shop and purchasing parts and materials."

The parts arena is an area that Greg Osborne said has changed dramatically due to online services such as www.car-part.com. "It has allowed us to not be limited to a few local used parts businesses," he said. "Now we can get stuff from Des Moines and St. Louis as fast as we can get it here in town because we can call the salvage yards directly instead of going through somebody else."

He added that Web sites such as www.car-part.com are the way of the future, and if a salvage yard is not part of the system, he is not even looking at them as a possible source.

Dave Osborne said he is involved with a lot of direct repair programs that provide criteria they expect shops to adhere to. For example, he said, once a car is a certain number of years old, the insurance companies want a used parts search to be part of the estimating process.

"A lot of times you have to ask yourself, 'Would I do this to my own car?'" he said. "If I needed new door, and a used door is as good as, or better, than the one that came off my car, then I would be fine with it. There is nothing wrong with the used part as long as it is a good used part."

Osborne said he performs more work for State Farm Insurance than anybody else. The numbers from State Farm showed that his average repair order was approximately $1,000, of which parts accounted for $780 and labor was $1,000. The remaining dollars are attributed to supplies and materials.

 
Of the parts used, about 53 percent were OEM, 40 percent were recycled and reconditioned, and another 6 percent were non-OEM.

For OEM parts, he said he turns to Blue Springs Ford, New Century Dodge, and Cable-Dahmer Chevrolet. He said he uses DuPont paint, which he gets from Spray Paint and Equipment.

Osborne said he works with about four direct repair programs, and although he said at times it can be frustrating, it is the way the business is going.

"I think they are a necessary evil, so you just have to find a way to make it work," he said. "I think it is going to be hard to stay in business and be busy all the time if you are not participating."

To help things run smoothly with the insurance companies, Osborne said he does a lot of initial teardowns.

"If I know that an insurance company is coming to look at a vehicle, especially one that we don't work with a lot, we will take photos of the car, disassemble everything that can be disassembled, and write an initial estimate," he said. "When they walk in and you can hand them that head start, you really head off at the pass a lot of issues with multiple supplements."

Osborne said the shop stays busy with four direct repair programs and that any more would take away from the personal experience associated with the shop.

"Our customers expect to see our faces when they come in," he said. "If we grow much more, I will lose the personal contact I have with each repair order, and I don't want the headaches of a mass production shop."