We are about 30 miles east of Harrisburg, which is the capital of Pennsylvania.
Small town, small community, everybody knows everybody. My dad was born and raised here,
my mom was born and raised in Lykens. I mean Lykens is half a minute from here. My grandfather
built the place, March of 1957. He made a go of it, in other words, he was well-liked, and
give quality service for a reasonable price. He passed it on then to my dad, in 1972,
my dad took over. I started here full-time in 77, when I graduated.
My name is Douglas Thompson, I'm the owner. Brakes, exhaust systems, tires, and alignments
are our biggest thing right now. I've invested my whole life in this place. Sometimes my wife
gets upset with me what's the stuff I buy, and she says that every time I take a quote home,
"Can't you buy anything cheaper?" she goes. I go, "Yeah I sure could",
I said, but I'm not, "It's either we're getting hunter or I'm not getting one!" I want to make
their job easier and I also want to do the best possible job there is, she understands.
Hunter Engineering to me is my best tool, whether it's the changer, the balancer, the Quick Lane,
the aligner, I honestly don't think I would be here if it wouldn't be for their equipment. You
know years ago, they used to say tools are half the job, today they're 80 or 90% of the job.
I bought the ADAS Link, number one, I like the fact that it's going to integrate with the
Hunter Aligner. I needed it to be able to reset the ADAS stuff on these newer cars, so basically
as the cars change, I have to change. I have a lot of body shops that come here for alignments,
they started asking me, you know, "Hey, the insurance company is saying we must prove
that the ADAS was set and right. Some of the sales then I lost because I couldn't do that.
I thought well, I'm going to get it. I have now told my body shops that I can do it,
so you know, I'm getting more work from them, because of that tool.
Well, it was a car wash bay, okay and I'm out of room here, I have nowhere to go, okay. Hunter
got me a price through Chris Mueller. Breaking the floor up, repouring, you know, the whole thing, you
know, and I kicked that around probably for about two weeks. I'm thinking that's a lot of money
to spend in a small town, you know, but I took it home, showed it to my wife, and she wasn't real
happy, but we went ahead with it, and I'm glad I did. I really am, since I put that Quick Lane in,
my alignments have more than tripled what I was doing, it's definitely paying for itself.
This alignment machine is just fantastic. Nobody makes anything like that
but Hunter, I mean it's just that's just the way it is. We've had others,
and it just isn't the same. I'm on my third aligner with Hunter right now,
you know, as the technology advances I try to keep up with it. I have a saying here,
"You either update, or you liquidate." Or you go out of business, it's that simple.
Before Hunter Net came out, I kept everything manually. No seriously, I had a book sitting
at every piece of equipment. My dad taught me that years ago, keep track of what you're doing,
then you know was it worth the investment. Well with Hunter Net, every night I go into that
and I see how many tire changes we did, how many alignments we did, compared to how many
Quick Checks we did. You know, you might do 30 quick checks and only get 15 alignments.
I check that every night when I close. Same with the balancer, I mean, we do tons of balances,
that thing actually paid for itself in 11 months. So I sit down at night if I need something,
and I go on Hunter Net consumables and I order what I need and within seriously two, three days,
they're dropping it off, but the consumables part is great, as far as any tools for the machine
or any brushes, anything like that, because we really like those brushes from Hunter. Can't
buy them anywhere else, they're the only ones that make them like that. I was on Hunter Net one night
and I'm going through and I thought, "Geez there's them brushes!" I think I ordered 20 of them,
they're in that cabinet, I thought I'm getting them while I can.
I just think Hunter is a quality company, let's just put it that way. Everything here that I have
Hunter-wise, was definitely worth the money. A lot of places you know are cheaper you know,
but they're not better, let's put it that way. In other words, their equipment is in my opinion,
is leaps and bounds ahead of any other equipment out there wheel service-wise.