The Mechanica Show · Episode 1

Craig Schmitke: 40 Years at Precision Automotive of Utah

Craig Schmitke has been at Precision Automotive of Utah since it opened in 1986. He skipped a baseball tryout to work at his girlfriend's dad's brand-new shop, and he's still there 40 years later (still married to the girl, too). In Episode 1 of The Mechanica Show, he tells Del Lee what 40 years in one shop taught him.

Del LeePublished September 24, 2026

Episode 1 · 19:24 · Presented by Mechanica · Watch on YouTube

Key takeaways

Bet big when it counts. With almost no work in year one, they spent more than they could afford on a half-page Yellow Pages ad. The phones lit up, and they outgrew the building in two years.
Fixing cars and running a business take separate skills. His father-in-law had the first one. The shop floundered until they found classes and coaches.
Grow your own techs. Every shop does things its own way, so train people in yours, and keep a bench for when someone's out.
Techs are the #1 problem, and parts are #2. Quality has gone downhill and counterfeit parts are out there. Doing a steering rack right now costs $6,500.
Accountability is good for the industry. Online reviews keep every shop on its toes, and Craig thinks that's a good thing.
AI might be sending people back to the trades. Craig believes people who left for coding jobs are coming back, and says his shop has been seeing a lot of impressive resumes.

The episode also covers buying and moving a European shop. It ends with the hubcap story.

Chapters

Each timestamp opens the video on YouTube at that point.

In Craig's words

"He knew how to work on cars, but he didn't know how to work on the business."

Craig Schmitke, on his father-in-law's first years running the shop

"It's so much better to grow your own."

Craig Schmitke, on training techs in the shop's own procedures

"If we don't do it that way, we're not taking care of him."

Craig Schmitke, on paying for an OE rack and pinion over a cheaper aftermarket one

Related on the blog

Craig still remembers hiring the shop's first outside employee. Should I hire another service advisor? works through the same call at the counter.
For owners growing their own techs, the technician efficiency calculator puts a dollar figure on one point of efficiency, and the master technician entry covers the certifications a senior tech carries.
Running the business is its own job. Start with the shop break-even calculator, then check what an hour of shop time is worth with the effective labor rate calculator.
Craig's parts problem comes down to OEM parts against aftermarket parts. A failed part turns into a comeback, which is the bad reputation he describes.

About Craig and Precision Automotive

Craig Schmitke has been at Precision Automotive of Utah since 1986. Its sister shop, Precision European Auto Repair, works on European cars out of Precision's old building, about 300 feet away.

Precision Automotive of Utah: website and Instagram
Precision European Auto Repair: website and Instagram

About the show

The Mechanica Show sits down with Utah auto shop owners, inside their shops, to hear how they built them. Del Lee hosts, and Mechanica presents it. Every episode is listed on The Mechanica Show page. If you run a shop in Utah with a story like Craig's, send the show a message on Instagram.

Transcript

The edited cut of the conversation, lightly cleaned up for reading. The cold open at 0:00 repeats lines from later in the episode, so the transcript starts at the first full chapter.

The girlfriend's dad and a brand-new shop

Del: I'm mostly wanting to know, like, the story of your shop. I did a little bit of research, but I would just love to hear it.

Craig: I mean, it's a pretty cool story. Clear back in high school, I started dating a girl. And while we were dating, her dad would pull me into their bedroom, which was really weird, and want me to look at logos and stuff for this new shop that he was going to start up.

He moved, they moved from Southern California. He had a carburetor shop back in the '70s and '80s down there. They moved up here, and he decided that he was going to open up a shop. So he brought me in and was getting my opinions. I'm like, I'm just dating this girl, and her dad's asking me in to look at these logos. And it was Precision Automotive. It was really cool.

Del: Is that the logo?

Craig: It's basically the same logo, only we've added the plug, because we do electric cars too. So it's pretty much been the same forever. It's really a bummer, I don't really have the old logo too much anymore.

But yeah, so he asked me in, and when high school got over, this is the weird story.

Skipping the baseball tryout

Craig: I was a pretty above-average baseball player back in the day. And back then you had to pay money to go do tryouts with the local, I think it was a Double-A team back then. I think it was the Salt Lake Trappers. And so he said, "Why don't you come down to the shop and hang out with me, and we'll get you some money to get to the tryouts."

And guess what? I never made it to the tryouts.

Del: Why not?

Craig: I just ended up working on cars. I'd never worked on cars before with my dad. My dad knew how to do it, but he was my dad. It was different going down with some other person. And this business was just starting. He asked me to come down there and start working full-time. I mean, this was back in the mid-'80s. And we'd sit around and watch reruns of Dallas and I Dream of Jeannie. Yeah, they're old shows.

We'd get a job in and we'd go, "Yeah, this is so cool, we got a car coming in." That's how it started. Just the two of us. And it's really weird, I can still remember each hire that we had to hire way back then.

And then of course, our plans were to get married. So I did marry her, and we're still married today. So he became my father-in-law.

Del: Did he know, was that the plan when he gave you the job as well?

Craig: He started talking right away, clear back in the '80s, that when he retired, I would take over the shop. So yeah, that was the plan all the way back in the '80s. Pretty crazy. So that's where it started. He had a doctorate of motors from General Motors, so he was a car guy.

Del: Super cool. Okay, so in those early days, it was like, if a car came in, you were like, "Let's go."

Craig: Yeah.

Del: And then kind of walk me through what happened, stage by stage, after that.

Year one: almost no work, then the Yellow Pages bet

Craig: It's kind of weird, because I still remember the first year we were in business, we had basically no work, right? It was our first year, and we went big with the Yellow Pages. Do you know what that is?

Del: Yeah.

Craig: It was this big book. Anyway, we did this, and we got in late, right? So we just barely missed the printing of the Yellow Pages. So we did a half-page ad the first... it killed us, because it was more money than we ever could dream of, how much it cost.

Del: Yeah. How much? Could I ask how much it cost?

Craig: I don't remember, but it was ridiculous. It was like, whoa. But we had to do it, right? The day they started tossing the Yellow Pages on people's porches, the phones lit up. In fact, it got us so busy that my father-in-law (at that time he wasn't yet) went and did a commercial for Yellow Pages in another state. It was like, this is how good this thing does. So yeah, the Yellow Pages, at least a big half-page ad, was tremendous for us.

And then we stayed in that building only for two years, because we outgrew it in two years. We moved to a bigger building that was about four times bigger than that, and worked in there for 38 years. And then we moved into this location just two years ago. So that's been 40 years ago now.

Buying and moving a European shop

Del: And then, do you have a separate location that's for...

Craig: We do have a European location. It used to be down in South Salt Lake. When we moved out of the building that we had been in for all those years, I was going to start to rent it or lease it, or I couldn't figure out what to do. And we were like, why don't we just move the European shop? Which was weird, because the European shop had been down there for a long time. I actually purchased that fairly recently, and it had been in that same location since 2010, I think. So it'd been down there for a while, and it was going to be a big deal to move it.

So we moved it into Automotive's old location, and it's been wonderful. It's only like 300 feet away. So we share tools, we share mechanics, we share things. For the most part, we don't share too many mechanics, because the Euro world is a lot different. So it's pretty crazy.

Del: So that's been a good purchase for you now?

Craig: Yeah, I think so. It's a struggle. The European world is definitely different. The cars are different. The customers are different. The parts that you have to buy are different. Almost every job that comes in, you have to wait for parts. Where in the auto world, Hyundais and Chevys and Fords and all that stuff, their parts are pretty readily available. So you're not telling somebody, "Hey, you've got to wait two weeks." You can get them in and out way faster.

So it's been a struggle, with just parts. A lot of them come from England. They're not tariffs, they're some sort of customs that you don't even know about for a month later. All of a sudden UPS sends you a customs. So there's a lot of weird, what word am I looking for, idiosyncrasies about it. It's pretty crazy how different it is.

Why you have to grow your own techs

Del: Yeah. What would be your number one piece of advice to someone who's thinking about getting into the Euro side of things?

Craig: Getting into Euro, for sure, you want to be a car guy. Because most of them love the Euro world. They love BMWs and the Audis and all that kind of stuff, and most of them love the supercars. And so the difficult thing, if they're wanting to get into working on them, is you really have to be pretty experienced to get in and start actually working on the cars.

We do have an apprentice over there right now who really doesn't know much about cars. So he's learning on the fly. We're teaching him a lot, so he's learning a lot every day. And it's difficult for us, because most of the time we don't have time for that, but we're making time.

In this industry, it's best to grow your own. It's so much better to grow your own. So take somebody, bring them up, teach them all your ways, and make it work.

Del: Yeah. Why do you feel like it's so much better to grow your own?

Craig: Because they know your procedures, your policies, your standard operating procedures, where there are a lot of shops that think differently. You would think that we all just do things the same, but we don't. So if you can get somebody, and you can make them go through your kind of training, your classes that you like, go through the instructors that you like, that's basically what you're doing, is growing it that way.

Hiring the first employee

Del: Cool. Well, I'm curious to go back to the point where we left off in the story, where you had the ad in the Yellow Pages. It was about a year before then that you were really struggling for work, is that right? And then you had the Yellow Pages ad, things kind of took off. Where did things go from there?

Craig: They just went. I remember when we had to hire our first outside person to come in. We didn't trust them. We didn't know them. We were like, is this guy going to rip us off? Because he wasn't quite my father-in-law yet at the time, but we knew each other so well, we were kind of like family already. So we trusted each other, and he trusted me. So we were kind of like, "we, we, we," you know what I mean? It was a "we."

So yeah, hiring the first guy, I can still remember, was really, really exciting and scary at the same time, because we just had too much work.

Fixing cars vs. running the business (get a coach)

Craig: Back then, my father-in-law, unfortunately, did not really know how to run the business. He knew how to work on cars, but he didn't know how to work on the business. So we kind of floundered like that for a long time, until we finally started getting into some classes and found some coaches.

That's the number one thing that I always recommend to anybody: no matter what industry you're in, you need a coach. Everybody who's successful has a coach. And I know other people can get successful without a coach, but you look at almost any industry and they've got some sort of a coach.

Del: Yeah, you come from baseball, so you know.

Craig: Yeah, you definitely need coaches. And I really, truly believe it in this industry too.

How reviews changed the way shops treat customers

Craig: I've got all kinds of weird stories that we've talked about, the crazy customers that come in over the years. Back in the day, there was no social media. So you could tell somebody to get out of your shop, never come back, kick them in the rear, and not get any repercussions. And now you just talk to somebody wrong and you'd better hold on.

And so that, to me, is really a good thing, I think, because it keeps everybody on their toes all the time, nonstop. We worry about reviews. We're always after those really high-star reviews. And so you always want to treat everybody really well. You want to take care of them on the repair really well. So things from back then to now have changed dramatically.

What's hardest now: finding and keeping techs

Del: I guess one question I have is, right now you're at a totally different spot from a small shop. You're really established. What are the things you're focused on?

Craig: Obviously, well, our...

Del: And maybe also, what's hardest for you right now? What are you guys kind of coming up against?

Craig: It's difficult. Technicians. That's probably the number one hardest thing, to keep and find. That's why growing your own is so important. You want to grow them and keep them and get a good culture going. And so everybody's always on a good... they become friends, they go golfing together, they do things like that. We have shop get-togethers, things like that. Try to keep everybody together.

AI is sending coders back to the trades

Craig: So yeah, employees, it is getting better. I truly believe that with AI coming out, a lot of the guys that left this field for maybe more computers and coding and all that kind of weird stuff are now coming back. I really believe it, because recently we've been seeing a lot of impressive resumes coming through.

Even though we're not hiring right now, or we don't have any room for anybody, it's still a good idea to have a bench. Which is difficult, because you've got to talk somebody into saying, "Hey, we don't have room for you right now, so if you can hang on, maybe if I get room, we can get you over here." So it's tough. They call it a bench, build a bench, and then you've got potential.

For example, we've got one guy who twisted his knee playing soccer after work, and he's going to have to go get an ACL replacement, so he's going to be out six weeks. And so if you've got a bench of guys that you can get in and just take their place, then it makes it way better. So yeah, technicians is number one.

The parts problem: counterfeits and a $6,500 steering rack

Craig: Number two is probably parts. Parts have become a major concern. They've gotten really poorly. They've gone downhill in quality. So it's really difficult to put a part on and then have the customer come back a week later: the part failed. It starts to give you a bad reputation. You want to start using the more expensive parts, which people can't afford, it doesn't seem like. So parts have become a problem. There's a lot of counterfeit parts out there that are really affecting the industry. So it's difficult. I'd say parts and employees are probably the two things that we have to always keep our eye on.

Del: And what are you kind of doing to manage the parts right now?

Craig: There's not much to it. Over at the Euro shop, OE only. And it's tough, because they're so expensive.

But just like over here at the auto shop: a Chevy Malibu. They have electronic steering now, they don't have the old hydraulic steering. And a gentleman's rack and pinion went bad on him. Yesterday, just for example, we could have got an aftermarket rack and pinion for about $2,000, and the OE is... Now, it was less than that. It was like $1,500, and the OE one was like $5,200 or something like that.

And we chose to go with the OE, because we had been reading in our technician forums that the aftermarket ones don't work at all. They don't program properly, and they just don't work.

So it really is frustrating, even for us, to tell a customer, when we used to do a rack and pinion for two grand installed, that we're up to $6,500 for a rack and pinion. It's insane, actually. But if we don't do it that way, we're not taking care of him. We're just not doing it correctly. So that's a tough thing with parts.

The hubcap story

Del: As a last thing, maybe, if you're willing, let's hear one of these crazy customer stories.

Craig: Oh my goodness. Probably the best one, I always tell everybody, I call it the hubcap story.

It was in the other building, and everything was really tight. We did have to work outside, because you could fit about eight cars in the building, and then in our back area you could fit some more. And we were really busy, had cars torn apart outside, inside, everything. Back then we were kind of gluttons for punishment. We would work on whatever. So one of our techs just finished putting some belts on a Class A motorhome. That's the one that you basically have to climb in there to do, anyway.

So we got done with it, and he pulled in this truck. It was a four-door Dodge pickup truck, long bed, and it barely fit in the shop. And he jacked it up, popped a hubcap off. And then this motorhome had gone around the street, and he said, "Oh no, my belt's squealing." So he pulled back up out front. So we grabbed the technician: "Hey, one of his belts is squealing, maybe you have to tighten it up a little bit more." So he grabbed some wrenches and ran out there to tighten up the belt, out in the street, actually.

And the customer (the doors were all open, it was summer) noticed that he left his vehicle, and he was all upset: "Hey, I thought I was next." And he started really getting mad. So my father-in-law, he was that generation, would get irritated really quickly. He finally just said, "You know what? Take your truck and get out of here." He let the jack down and told the guy to get the truck out of there.

And the wrong thing to do was let the customer try to pull it back out of the shop, because he did about a 40-point turn to get it back out. Instead of coming in the way it came in, he went the other way. And my father-in-law was just stewing back and forth. And finally he saw the hubcap sitting there, and he yelled at the guy, "And take your hubcap with you!" And he threw the hubcap at the customer's truck, and it went right into the bed of the truck.

It was the most... it was perfect, actually. We employees (even though I was his son-in-law by then, I was still just an employee), it was like, "Whoa, did that just happen?" And that's probably one of my favorite stories, the hubcap story.

Del: That's great. Yeah, that's cool.

Craig: There's all kinds of fun stories. He might have had a couple explicits in there too, but I don't remember. Yeah, I do.

Del: Very cool. Well, thank you so much.

Craig: You're welcome.

Del: I appreciate it. Thank you.

Sources

The Mechanica Show, Episode 1: the full recording on YouTube (every figure and quote on this page)official

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