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What Happens When A Shop Closes

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This 1966 Jeep Gladiator is a beast. I mean look at it. Huge tires on a big lift, you would think you need steps from a motor home to get into it. Well, come to find out yesterday that’s what the owner intends on doing. Fold out steps designed for a motor home. How did we discover this bit of trivia? Not from the owner, but when we finally collected 85-90% of the parts needed to put this truck back together from the previous shop who lost their lease.

You see, this truck’s owner lost touch with the shop as they were getting kicked out of their building. Since we knew the shop, we offered to at least try to get the truck to our place. Hopefully, the owner could rest easier his project was safely stored inside. Little did we know, the truck came as you see it with all the parts and interior still missing until yesterday. It’s probably been a couple months of calling the guy who started the work. Where are the pieces? Can you drop them off? He always had a reason why not and the excuses dragged on. But holy schmoly, when we went to his house and saw his shop spewed all over his yard and in his garage, I get the excuses. It is no joke trying to move and organize years worth of machines, tools and supplies, let alone vehicles and parts.

So what happens to a shop that’s lost its lease, or retires, or simply goes out of business? What happens to your project caught in the mix? What happens to all the shop owner’s equipment as they move out? What happens more often than not, is you get caught in the wash. Fortunately, the former shop owner is a pretty stand up guy and kept most everything organized, kept in touch with us and eventually made arrangements so we could pick everything up. For the other less fortunate, they need more than a set of motor home stairs to climb out of the hole someone else dug.

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