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I am trying to come up with someone who can be helpful but NY is a tough state for health insurance. Here is an article I think you guys may find interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/health/p...mp;pagewanted=1

I offer my love, respect, and appreciation to all of those currently serving in our armed forces, our veterans, and their families. Your service and your sacrifice are deeply appreciated. May God bless you and may God bless America.

They have been in my prayers. God bless our loyal patriotic soldiers and may He execute judgement on cowards who slay the innocent.

Not only was Cash for Clunkers a bad idea and ineffective but the Tire Tariff that this administration signed is also another very bad idea in my humble opinion: http://tirereview.com/Article/66890/fixing...re_wronged.aspx

Those are tough ones. If you have someone you can't reason with it is a tough situation. On an oil change once we had a customer return claiming we had dented the passenger door. The door was dented like someone ran a bumper along it and had black markings. All we had done was pull it in the shop, pull it onto the rack, and pull it back out after we changed the oil. My technicians all said that nothing had been done to it and I believed them. I was present the whole time and I do not believe anything happened in our shop. I walked the customer through our shopping looking for something it could have been scrapped against that was the right height and color. There was literally nothing that was the correct height or surface. My guess is that it had happened in a parking spot prior to coming to our shop and they didn't find it until after they left our shop. Because I had no evidence or belief that we had any responsibility I refused to do anything (it wasn't a regular customer). We did get a letter from a lawyer for them but I ignored it and that was the end of the matter.

NY is a tough market for insurance but I'll see if I can find someone who can help you.

You need to contact one or two local health insurance agent/brokers and let them do a group quote for you. This will give you the ability to decide if it is affordable or not. There are actually a couple of ways of going at this. First, you can do a straight group plan. What some people don't realize is that usually group plans are more expensive if a person is in good health. They are more expensive because everyone in a group has to be covered and because the state will often mandate that certain coverage be included in a group plan that can be excluded from an individual plan (say pregnancy or mental illness). If the agent/broker has the ability to set up a 125 (cafeteria) plan and your employees are in good health one can look at individual plans. How this would work is that the employee funds this with pretax dollars (you can contribute as well). The policies can then be set up on what is called a list bill and they are billed to your company but you pay the premiums out of their 125 plan dollars. Someone who does volunatry benefits can help you on this one. If you will tell me what state you are in I may be able to put you into contact with someone.

That sounds really neat!

Very true. What days will you be closed during the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays. We will be closed Thanksgiving and Christmas day but I am debating what do with Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas this year.

That would be really nice.

We use brake clean as well. You can use the non-chlorinated version. However, we have found a cleaner called Drive-up that is made to clean oil from concrete but a solution of it works great as a degreaser on engines. It is not a petroluem based product but must be some type of akaline. It does not have any obnoxius odor or fumes. Driveup is a good product. http://www.driveupusa.com/store/dynamicIndex.asp

I am with you Joe!

I am license to sell insurance and have some experience. I have thought about finding a good warranty company that would let me sell their extended warranties. However, the problem would be how would people pay for it. Most people can't come up with the money independently and are only able to do it when they purchase a vehicle because it is all rolled into the loan.

We do the same thing that you are doing and it works o.k. Some of the warranty companies are great. Think AUL or GE Capital. Some are almost worthless. Think Penn Warranty. This past week we dealt with one called Royal Warranty Services. We had a car with a bad fuel pump. They told us to do nothing untilwe heard from them. It took them 2 1/2 days to send out an adjuster although they then did do an approval. This is the first time in ten years we have had an adjuster. The good warranty companies always have us fix it on the spot. The consumer paid $3,300 for this warranty. http://www.ripoffreport.com/Auto-Warranty/...royal-fd78c.htm

This is a path fraught with peril. The consumer will not know why you use a more expensive direct fit oxygen sensor verus a cheaper universal. He has not saw a wiring splice fail, ground out the ECM causing a new running problem and necessitate the replacing of a computer but I have. He will not understand the difference in the cheap chinese bearings and the Nationals, BCA, or Timkens. The reman water pump looks as good to him as a new one. After all they are all "warrantied". Even the repairs the consumer thinks he needs are the majority of the time not the problem. The shop who low balls a repair on line that the customer doesn't need is then free to charge what they like on the repair that actually gets completed when they get the car into the shop. The dishonest shop can get people to give them positive reviews, etc. etc.

Thanks I needed that!

Do any of you guys currently have nitrogen or intend to add nitrogen soon?

Our sales are down less than 1% for the year. We still have hopes of topping last year. May, June, August, and September were soft.

You have a really nice website. Very impressive! How do you acquire your inventory?

We don't sell used cars as a business but every opportunity I have to buy a worthwhile vehcile we can repair I do it. Just this week I bought a 2002 Neon that needs a transmission and a 97 Grand Am that needs an engine. We will repair them and sell them and make a few hundred.

Let us know if you get any response!

Joe, I saw your picture and the article above in the October 26, 2009 issue of Tire Business! Nice article, nice picture, congratulations!

Man Gets Prison For Wheel-Off Negligence http://www.tirereview.com/Article/67388/ma...negligence.aspx

I did find the following blog on software to be interesting: http://auto-repair-software.org/blog/ http://www.auto-repair-software.org/ratings.htm http://www.auto-repair-software.org/first_round_recap.htm

I am in process of evaluating software. I want a system that allows me to import part numbers and labor times into the estimates. I will look at Mitchell and Alldata. What others do you suggest?