by Larry Brown, Davis Repair
Here at Davis Repair, where our family takes care of your family’s cars, we’re all into doing everything we can to save the planet.
It’s the last thing we think about as we drift off to sleep at night, and it’s the first thing we think about when we get out of bed each morning.
Well, okay… maybe saving the planet is NOT our Number One primary concern. Maybe it’s only Number Two or Three. But saving money is right up there on the top of our list, too.
Around our shop, we like money almost as much as we enjoy busted knuckles and greasy hands. Or those car manufacturers (you know who you are!) which crank out cars destined to spend more time in our shop than they spend on the road.
(LOVE those!)
Saving green by “going green” is great… because we get to pass that savings on to our customers!
So if you’re like me… and I know I am… and if you do have at least a passing interest in saving the planet… and if you’re always looking for green businesses working to save your planet AND save you some greenbacks… I thought I’d share a couple of recent experiences which might interest you.
Or, at least, entertain you.
Going Solar
We have solar panels on the roof of our shop in the south metro Denver area… and getting those babies up there was only slightly easier than changing about, like, 412 head gaskets on old cars which will no longer pass emissions tests.
Using nothing but a crowbar and a meat thermometer.
We applied for permission to install the solar panels, being all legal-like, but we actually got some push-back from our local city government. I won’t say which city, for obvious rea – hey, is that a black helicopter?
Anyway, that turned out to be nothing more than a bothersome delay. The City Fathers and Mothers eventually saw the light (the sunlight?) and let us get away with doing our part for Mother Earth.
Then there was the snow.
Occasionally – usually in the winter – it snows here in the Denver area, as I’m sure you’re aware. And it turns out that, if your solar panels are covered with snow, they don’t work as well.
I remember thinking, “Okay, Anonymous Energy Company! (Again, actual name of company withheld to protect the innocent – me.) Here we come, getting with the program and getting on line with clean solar power!”
But our clean solar power didn’t amount to much at first, I’m afraid.
Then it hit me: Maybe the foot of snow up there on the roof is blocking the sun from getting to the panels! Which just shows you what a super-fast learner I am.
I got up there and knocked the snow off the panels… and they started generating immediately.
Now, I get two rebate checks every month from Anonymous Energy Company.
And our business has doubled our money from our investment in solar energy.
Talk about saving money AND planets!
We’re so happy… the savings on our energy bills makes it super-easy to keep our prices low, and still provide top-quality work.
Recycling… On Steroids
We got so accustomed to sweet, succulent money that we decided to get into recycling, big-time. And today, we recycle everything we can in our shop.
We’re so into it, my staff is considering recycling me.
But here’s the truth of the matter: When you’re in the automotive repair industry, you are likely to come across a lot of scrap in the normal course of your business.
I got me a ’92 Dodge one-ton diesel truck, and every chance I get I fill it with scrap and take it to the local recycling center, where they pay me some of that sweet succulent money for it.
(They pay for the scrap, not the ’92 diesel, just to be clear.)
Of course, due to geo-political economic factors, you make a little less dough recycling scrap these days than you made a few years ago… but it’s still money, and we still recycle like crazy because it’s the right thing to do (remember that planet-saving thing?).
And because our customers love it.
I keep a spreadsheet on which I record everything I’ve recycled. For instance, I can tell you that in May of 2018, I recycled nearly sixteen dollars’ worth of cast aluminum.
Now, you might not think that’s a big deal… but over the last decade or so, our shop has actually been able to recycle more than 95,000 pounds of scrap material which might otherwise have ended up in a landfill or possibly in Congress.
I’m no statistician, but that’s, like, more than 47.5 tons of scrap we’ve taken off the street.
In fact, if you assume (as one expert has recently suggested) that Godzilla weighs between 14 and 39 tons (depending on current dietary circumstances), that’s a whopping 1.22 to 3.39 godzillas worth of scrap. In just a few years.
And we got paid… maybe not a lot, but something… for all of it.
In the case of both the solar power AND the recycling, we’ve saved a modest pile of dough… dough which we can share with our customers by keeping our prices lower!
If planet-saving “green” practices are important to you, and you also enjoy the savings that can be passed on to you in the form of lower repair bills, look no further than your friends at Davis Repair to take care of your family’s cars! If my experiences have taught us anything, it’s that Godzilla weighs 14-39 tons. And also that recycling and going solar can help save the planet AND save us all some of that sweet, succulent stuff we appreciate. And I’m not talkin’ about cast aluminum.