West Sacramento, Calif.--Like many collision repair shop owners, Randy Erbes has heard plenty of stories about the wrecks that lead to his customer's vehicles coming into his shop. But the stories he hears tend to be a little more unusual, he said.
"Two of the 10,000-gallon fuel tanker trucks at the Sacramento airport ran into each other on the tarmac, and we just finished working on one of them," said Erbes, president of West Coast Frame & Collision Repair. "Fortunately, they didn't rupture the tanks, but the frames were bent."
Pulling the frame on a massive tanker truck is not something a typical autobody shop can handle, Erbes said, but it's the type of work in which West Coast Frame specializes. He said he has worked in the heavy-duty repair industry for more than 35 years, founded the company just nine years ago, and has built it into one of best-equipped shops of its type on the West Coast.
Housed in two buildings totaling 26,000 square feet on a 4-acre lot, West Coast Frame offers parts, service, collision repair, and warranty work on trucks, trailers, RVs, and even fire and rescue rigs of all sizes, Erbes said. Some examples of what it is set up to handle:
• The shop uses what Erbes calls "state-of-the-art" Beeline equipment to offer all-axle laser alignments. "We actually rebuild steering gears here in-house, and we can do any kind of suspension, any brand, make, or model," he said.
• The company's metal fabricating department manufactures custom truck bodies and can even remanufacture out-of-production truck and trailer parts.
• The shop houses "the biggest frame rack on the West Coast," Erbes said, a 60-foot-long mass of beams--a total of 52 tons of iron–that he designed and built himself over the course of three months. "I can push 200 tons vertically and 100 tons horizontally in any direction, up to 12 rams at the same time," he said. "There's nobody else out here that can do that."
• The company launched its fire truck and emergency vehicle division about a year ago, and now does warranty work for three fire truck manufacturers, as well as pump tests and bumper-to-bumper repairs for fire departments throughout Northern California.
• Three years ago, the shop installed a 60-foot Eagle Spray Booth that Erbes said allows the paint department to spray two vehicles, even if different colors, in the booth at the same time without overspray. The shop is DuPont-certified, which he said he chose because it is the brand used by such manufacturers as Kenworth, Freightliner, Peterbilt, and Reliance.
"We're the only heavy-duty collision shop in Sacramento that can mix the new Imron Elite, the latest generation from DuPont," he said.
• The company is an authorized warranty shop for Reliance Trailer Manufacturing and now has a $100,000 inventory of Reliance trailer parts, helping it ensure quick-turnaround for its repair customers and adding to its bottom line through outside parts sales, Erbes said.
• Erbes said he has done work for insurance companies and attorneys by investigating mechanical failures, conducting accident reconstruction and serving as an expert witness. "After a wreck, the driver almost always says he couldn't steer it or stop it," he said. "So I can investigate the damage, the 'forensics' of mechanical physical damage, to determine if a component actually failed before the accident, and if so whether or not it caused the wreck or if it failed after."
Although the business had grown consistently during its early years, Erbes said he eventually saw sales leveling off. So about three years ago, he said he contacted Management Success, a training and consulting firm that focuses on automotive repair businesses.
"I'd hit a wall and just stayed right there within a couple hundred thousand dollars in sales from year to year, and I realized that if I didn't do anything different the next year than I had done last few, I was going to be looking at the same numbers," Erbes said.
"My situation is different than most of the general automotive repair shops they help, but the principles are the same: managing by statistics, watching the work flow and the production hours of each tech. Which guys are making money, which guys are not. Where I'm making money and where I'm losing it. So I started applying all those principles."
One step Erbes took was developing help in running the 25-employee company. His daughter and son-in-law, Kristi and Curt Metcalf, now serve as the company's chief financial officer and general manager, respectively, Erbes said, and he has named managers for each of the company's departments. The management team meets weekly to discuss work in progress and plan production, he said, adding that he has sent many of those employees to Management Success and other training courses.
"Kristi and Curt continue to get better at what they do, and I'm now able to step back and do some of the more specialized stuff that needs my expertise, plus get out and do more PR work," Erbes said.
In the 2 1/2 years he has been working with Management Success, Erbes said he has seen the company's gross sales more than double.
"I can't credit them for all the growth, but I can credit them for my being able to manage it," he said. "I would never have been able to manage the growth without their systems."
As he looks to the future, Erbes said the slowdown in the construction market has him eyeing other potential heavy-duty repair work.
"We're trying to get into more government contracts, like with the U.S. Forestry Service or local and state agencies," he said.
"I'm looking to expand into areas that are more recession-proof, like the refuse business; like our fire shop, (which are) less impacted by the economy. I'm hoping that in the future, we can avoid some of the peaks and valleys, the highs and lows, and just make it a little more stable."
