Smithville Mo.--"My business draws from Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri," said Yancy Shepard, owner of Yancy's Automotive, adding that most of his business comes through customer referral. 
"I learned that if you put the customer first, your business would grow," Shepard said. "We do a lot of circle-track engines and set-ups. We also build a lot of mud-racing engines. People are so secretive in racing. So they would rather send their work out to be done by someone they feel is competent and that they have faith in, and not to someone in their immediate area."
Shepard said he started out building engines for friends in high school. Most of those engines were on motocross motorcycles. After high school, he said he went to college at Maple Woods Community College in Longview, Mo.
"I wanted to be a math teacher," Shepard said. "I started working for Bill's Performance Center in Gladstone, Mo., where I worked part time at first, and then, later, full time for four years. It was kind of a good job to have while I was in college. Then I went to work at Curtis Farley Engines for two years. I was able to learn how to treat a customer, and I have applied that to the way I treat my customers."
Shepard said he opened his own operation on April 1, 1994, in Gladstone, Mo. "I worked at the first location for four years" he said, "and outgrew that building. I then moved to another location in Gladstone. I wanted to install a dynamometer but the city would not allow me to put one in the building because of the noise. So I started looking for another building, and in 2001, I built a 4,800-square-foot, three-bay shop here in Smithville, Mo. We have a separate room for the SuperFlow Dynamometer. All my equipment is Sunnen, and Steve Bauer is my Sunnen representative.
"The reason I use Sunnen," he said, "is that I feel they do everything just right. I haven't found a downfall yet, and the representative treats me right."
Yancy's Automotive has two employees, Darrin Shaw and Don Chaffin. "Shaw has been with me for four years and does the machine work," Shepard said. "Chaffin and I have been together for eight years, and we do the assemblies and set-ups. "As for training," he said, "I just wanted to race, and that is how I got started. Working for Bill's and Farley, I was able to learn a lot. We go to as many seminars as we can. We attend Performance Racing Industry (PRI) and the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) every year, and we go to all the local seminars in the Kansas City area. The two major shows let you know what the industry is doing. Sterling Bearing has meetings and seminars that we attend whenever they are held."
Shepard said the shop does all kinds of racing work. Some customers send motors in a box for machine work, and some customers have the shop do the entire set-up, from engine to chassis set-up, he said. "We will do anything from drag racing, IMCA racing, and most recently, we've been doing mud racers," he said. "I believe that circle-track dirt racing is going to slow down and mud racing is going to take off.
"We do a lot of port work on heads," Shepard said. "We dyno engines, and any kind of custom work involved with racing, we can do right here.
"It used to be that we sent out a lot of work," he said. "We sent the crankshaft to one shop and the port work to another shop. It got to a point that I did not get the consistency that I wanted. You know everybody has their own way of doing things, so I turned around and started purchasing the equipment myself. We turn crankshafts, port heads, balancing, and blueprinting, and assemble the entire engine or chassis. Today, we do about 80 percent complete engine assemblies and 20 percent piecework."
Shepard said he gets his supplies from Sterling Bearing and Parts Warehouse in Kansas City, Mo., Arrow Speed Warehouse in Kansas City, Kan., and Jet Racing in Beatrice, Neb., and Jobbers Warehouse Supply in Minneapolis. He said he likes the quality and availability provided by those companies. "I stock parts, but it seems like I never have the correct part on hand," he said. "You have to have some parts on hand, so I just stock the hot movers.
"The first two years I was in business," Shepard said, "I kind of put myself first and made sure my stuff was ready to go by Friday. I was getting by, and the work was coming in, but then my perspective changed and I started to put the customer first. It was unbelievable the difference it made. My business tripled. Now, I make sure the customer's work comes first. I found that I could get the customer's work done and my stuff too.
"Now I am at the point where it is getting tough to get it all done, and I think that I need to hire another employee."
Shepard said that finding a good employee is very hard. "I need to find someone I can train to do things my way," he said. He said he has been approached by some of the schools in the area to take on a student but is not comfortable with that. "The thing that bothers me the most about hiring someone new is that everyone now is working together and getting along. Employees working and getting along, customers getting along with other customers, and employees getting along with customers. I need to make sure that nobody is going to rock the boat."
As for the future, Shepard said he would be adding two people and possibly another 2,400 square feet to the building. He added that he is also working to update his Web site, www.yancysauto.com .
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