STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More

Share and Enjoy [?]

Frank Panipinto’s 23-year-old tire and service center runs like a well-tended engine.

He’s got the business formula down. He knows how to accurately anticipate expenses, set labor rates and make a profit while serving the nearly 5,000 people in the customer database at Frank’s Tire and Service Center.

But Panipinto has a problem. He’s been forced to work 10- to 12-hour days since summer because he can’t find the experienced help he needs.

“There is a correlation between the shortage of mechanics and the housing problem,” Panipinto said. “A lot of service industries have lost the proper amount of help because people just can’t afford to live here.”

Panipinto used to be an “orchestra leader” directing three certified master technicians. Today, he and Kyle Smith, an 18-year-old apprentice, often work alone in the six-bay garage on First Avenue South in Naples. Sometimes, Derek Yergey, a 17-year-old hired to clean, lends a hand.

The trouble started last September, and since then, Panipinto has spent hundreds of dollars on job advertisements without luck. For the moment, he has stopped advertising his openings.

On a Monday afternoon, Panipinto and Smith bent over the open hood of a ’97 Chrysler sedan. The owners planned a long trip north, and parts like the timing belt, deep inside the engine’s guts, needed replacing.

Tracy Boulian / Daily News

Frank Panipinto Jr. finds the source of a noise in a customer's car in his shop Frank's Tire and Service Center in Naples. Panipinto is a certified master auto technician.

Including the Chrysler, Panipinto already had five cars in the shop when an unexpected customer pulled up. The Toyota Camry was making a scraping noise at slow speeds, explained Arthur Chase, who lives in Naples with his wife, Elaine.

After a few questions, Panipinto went for a test drive to listen to the noise himself. When he returned to the garage and raised the car on a hydraulic lift, Panipinto discovered the noise was a result of a rusty brake drum.

Within an hour or so the job was done and the Chases drove away in their Camry, minus the rust and noise.

Being understaffed makes it harder to spend the time he wants with customers, Panipinto said. Smith was there that day so Panipinto was able to test drive the Camry. When the apprentice is sick or unable to work, the owner can’t leave the business unattended, so test drives are more difficult.

If he had a certified master technician on staff, Panipinto would have assigned that person the Camry job and continued working on the Chrysler’s timing belt. Because he’s the only master tech, the Chrysler had to wait.

“My life is so unpredictable when it comes to this place,” Panipinto said. “You can’t defy the laws of mathematics. The time we’re spending on the car is what we’re charging (customers) for but I have only so much time to sell. ...Quite frankly, I don’t want to work 12-hour days but I have to.”

Since he’s been short-staffed, Panipinto has begun scheduling customers a week or two in advance.

Affordable housing is a large part of the problem, he said, but it’s not the whole picture. High school guidance counselors aren’t pointing kids toward blue-collar jobs.

“This business that I’m in is not an easy way to make a living. It’s hot, dirty work and you get cut, you get burned,” he said, holding up his grease-stained hands and pointing to burn marks on his forearms.

Given the difficulties of the work and business, would he do it again?

Yes, said Panipinto, 50, who grew up working on cars and changed his first water pump at age 12. He will keep fighting for his business, working long hours and looking for mechanics.