Gish said he and his wife opened the shop on April 1, 1974, thanks to some assistance from a local parts store.

"We opened on April Fool's Day," Bonnie Gish noted with a smile. "I always get a laugh out of that." But it was serious business for the Gishes, who were in need of a line of credit to get their shop up and running, she said.

"When Mike and I started, we went to Mr. Catch, who owned Catch's (Automotive Parts)," Gish said. "We asked him for $500 credit to get started. He provided us with the credit and we had him paid back in a couple of months. We still get our parts from

Catch's (now Kansas Automotive). Catch's was a part of us, and you can't forget the people that helped you get where you are at today," she said.

Although Mike's Frame Shop started as both a frame and body shop, today they specialize in automotive suspension care including ball joints, tie rod ends, brakes, springs, and framework on all types of vehicles ranging from tractor trailers to the smallest sports car, Gish said.

"We no longer do bodywork" she said. "A lot of insurance companies want you to be involved in both, they want a one stop shop, but I don't think it is good to be involved in both."

Gish compared their sole focus on suspension care to that of a specialist in the medical field.

 
"If you have heart problems, you go to a heart specialist, not your regular M.D.," she said "We are the heart specialists."

Keeping with the medical analogy, Gish said addressing every vehicle the way a doctor treats a patient helps to diagnose the problem.

"Customers expect you to know everything about their car," Gish said. "But we have their car for maybe an hour, and they are driving them daily. We have to get the history on the vehicle like a doctor gets from a patient so we can diagnose the problem properly and eliminate comebacks."

Gish said training classes have also helped to diagnose many problems, especially on late-model vehicles.

  
"To keep up on the industry, we go to classes that show all the new updates, and I go to classes, too, so I can speak to the customer professionally about what is going on with their vehicle," she said. "I want the customers to understand what they are getting and what they are paying for."

Gish added that educating the customers is important because many of the vehicles they are driving are going through technological changes including electronics such as ABS systems and tire-pressure monitoring systems.

Although the employees at Mike's Frame Shop continue to keep up with the industry and technological advances, Gish said they keep things simple and are still just a mom-and-pop business. 

 
"Mike runs the shop and I run the office," Gish said. "We probably could be a shop a block or two long, but is it worth all the gray hairs?  When you have too many people, your business gets out of control. We keep our focus on quality over quantity. Everybody wants to make money, but you also want to turn out good work."

Mike's Frame Shop employs two technicians: Suspension Specialist Pat Monhollan, who has worked at Mike's for 14 years, and Frame Specialist Domingo Celvilla, who has been with the shop for two years. Mike Gish also works in the shop, predominately on larger trucks, such as, tractor trailers, tour buses, and motor homes, Bonnie Gish said.

    
Mike's Frame Shop is one of three repair shops in the Topeka area that do alignments on big trucks. Gish said that sets them apart from the local competition. 

 
"We do a 10-wheel alignment," she said. "We correct the I-beams, balance all the tires, and get it aligned correctly in order for the tires to wear properly." The shop receives a large number of alignment jobs from the Topeka market but also sees a lot of business from surrounding towns, she said, and even has one truck driver from Florida who stops in at least once a year to get his truck aligned. 

 
Fleet accounts from the city of Topeka, Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT), and other state and local businesses keep the shop busy, Gish said. However, she said she has seen a decrease in the big-truck business.

"Work on big trucks has slowed down because the cost of fuel is up so high," she said. "So many customers have turned to cars, so a lot of our work has been on smaller cars now."

Gish said another recent change at the shop is how they handle estimates for customers.

"We have started charging $26.50 for estimates," she said.   "If a customer brings their car in and we give them an estimate for free, many customers will take the car home and do the work at home.

"It is necessary to charge for estimates because we have expenses. We have to pay our technicians and we have spent a lot of money on the equipment we use to diagnose their problems." Gish added that if a customer decides to have the work done at the shop, the fee is waived.

    
Gish said that charging for estimates is a sign of professionalism and should be adopted by all shops in the automotive industry.

"Shops need to unite and work together to help eliminate the backyard mechanic," Gish said. "You go out and buy these expensive machines to diagnose problems; you can't just do the work for free."