They did what? or Things that make me not use companies again

I bought a really nice Lincoln Continental out of Virginia a couple of months ago. I contracted with the company I've contracted with to move several other vehicles to get this Continental to Memphis, and bought a transmission with only 5,000 miles on it. I shipped it to Memphis and then I waited. 3 weeks went by. I waited another week. Then I started to get angry. I don''t yell at people I do business with when I get angry - I remind them of what they told me they would do when I pay them, and I remind them of the volume of business they will miss if they don't do what they've told me they will.

After much frustration, dozens of calls, and me planning on driving to Virginia to get the vehicle myself, they finally picked my vehicle up. I got a call Friday from the company they contracted to asking why they were being paid to haul a functional vehicle when the vehicle was non-functional (completely shot transmission). The idiots I hired LIED to the haulers, and now the vehicle was sitting in a cradle, unable to be moved off of the truck. Amazing!

The company (CK Transport) was nice enough to take the vehicle to their lot and use their equipment to pull it off the trailer for me. They'll deliver it to my shop on Tuesday. Crazy! I'll just go through them directly, as I plan on getting a lot of vehicles in Virginia from this supplier.

I'm finding out that one of the main components of business is knowing who to deal with and who not to deal with!

Things Are Looking Up

Things are definitely looking up for me. In a way, my mechanic problems are turning into a blessing - instead of splitting profit on vehicles, I'm simply paying a guy by the job now. He's doing the work faster, better, and for less. I've sold the guy a ton of engines in the past for his customers, and I don't know why I didn't think to use him for my stuff. Irregardless of past details, it's a huge blessing to have his company do work for me.

Also, Dad and I are thinking of getting into remanufacturing engines. We handle a lot of newer, high dollar engines (late model Jag, Mercedes, BMW) and are pretty much wasting the "core" engines (some of these rebuildable Jag engines are worth $1500 bucks for the old core!). On Jag engines, you can literally quadruple your money - it's worth it, if you don't mind sitting on the engine for a while.

Today, I ordered several books on accounting and bookkeeping. I think we can cut our company accountant loose and save significant money by working more closely with our CPA and doing more in house... but I have to convince everyone else of this.

Back to Blogging

I woke up this fine Saturday morning and realized that I miss blogging. Blogging is, in a way, therapeutic for me. I'm able to sift through the torrent of thoughts I have and figure out which ones are important - even if I don't write about them.

So, a few updates.

The car situation in Memphis is going both good, and bad. The mechanic I really want to work with, and that I worked with at first, just flat out isn't getting my stuff done anymore. In fact, I send customers to him, and he's not getting anything done for them either. He's literally the best mechanic I know - when he works. It's like a month ago, he just decided he was done. So, I have a few vehicles over there, but I'm sending all of my new stuff to a mechanic we've sent engines to in the past, that customers have been very satisfied with.

Organization of all of this is fun. Tracking parts throughout the country, planning work timelines, creating profit estimate spreadsheets - I love it. It's a lot more fun than organizing my own life, to be honest.

On that note, my financial situation is greatly improving. I have good cash reserves, which I have to have to do what I'm doing with cars, and that reserve is growing. Bills aren't dreaded now - I can pay them without worry. Hopefully, I can get out of here and get on with my life on my planned timeline!