(Aaron Schulze & Mat Barrett/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

Cars and COVID

Effects of COVID-19 pandemic felt by local mechanic shops

Apr 1, 2020 | 5:41 PM

Local mechanic shops are not immune to the effects of the COVID-19 on business.

While they remain open, a couple of shops in Melfort have seen things change over the past few weeks.

Tyler Fahlman owns Fountain Tire and said they started to notice a decline in business when the virus began to get closer to Saskatchewan.

“And then as soon as they said the schools were going to be shut down at the end of the week, that Monday,” Fahlman told northeastNOW. “We definitely noticed a very large drop in just regular traffic that would just pop in here.”

He said their door traffic is down about 50 per cent, and that has resulted in Fahlman needing to layoff some staff. However, he hopes they can come back soon.

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“As soon as the farm side of things start to kick off for us, we will be able to bring some of those guys back,” he said. “Because it gets a little crazy around here when seeding starts.”

Meanwhile, Oil Can Alley in Melfort has also seen things decrease at their shop. Owner Robb Misskey said they’ve started noticing things really slow down recently.

“With our oil changes especially, the drive-thru oil change bay, we’ve noticed for the last, I’m going to say three weeks it’s started to decline,” he said. “But lately here we’re probably down 75 to 80 per cent of our business.”

Misskey added his staff is pretty small to begin with, so he hasn’t had to lay off anybody. He said the decline in businesss not only applies to them but all of Melfort.

“With the lack of traffic, people aren’t moving around as much,” Misskey said. “So we don’t get the customers driving as much and getting out and about, which is the right thing to do, but it definitely affects us as a business.”

Both shops have also had to adjust, and ramp things up when it comes to cleaning, and making sure they do their part to not spread the virus.

Fahlman said they are sanitizing the showroom at least twice daily, and they’re also mandating that their staff wash their hands every half hour with soap and water for 30 seconds.

“That’s even if they haven’t touched any new vehicles or anything like that, it’s just an hourly thing we do all day long,” he said. “If anybody goes on a service call, or pulls a vehicle into the shop, handles keys or money, we wash our hands.”

He said they’ll also wipe down any vehicle that comes into the shop.

Misskey said for them, they’ve had to put some measures in place to make sure their customers are safe as well as the staff.

“They either sit in their vehicle or they wait outside when we’re doing oil changes,” Misskey told northeastNOW. “And mechanicals are all just drop offs. We’ll either go pick up a vehicle, drop it off for them, or else they drop it off here and leave the keys and they take off home and when it’s done we delivery, and that’s just kind of how we have to do things, and cleaning is just non-stop.”

While both shops are able to remain open right now as essential services, both owners understand that things could possibly become more restricted.

Misskey said for now, they’ve got enough work that they are able to focus on their day by day work.

“Worst-case scenario I guess, you lay people off, and if you have to close the doors, you close the doors,” he said.

Fahlman said they do have plans in case things do get worse.

“If the worst-case scenario happens, we will be offering on-call services for anything,” he said. “And that means that we will have somebody at the shop within an hour to do whatever tires or repairs are needed.”

Fountain Tire has had to adjust their hours of operation, while Oil Can remains the same.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6