Working in Clark County: Roland Homola, master technician, owner at My Auto Works

Vehicle use in the United States has taken a back seat, thanks to the coronavirus, and our new reality of staying at home has emptied many once-bustling streets. For some, that may be a good thing as they’re able to save on gas and avoid costly repairs.

But for Roland Homola, master technician and owner at My Auto Works, it’s not so good.

“I totally understand they’re not coming in near as often,” Homola said. “The more they’re working from home, they’re not driving. That’s how that works I guess.”

The lifestyle change creates a problem for auto repair shops, still deemed essential businesses during the pandemic. At My Auto Works, a small brand with one shop in Ridgefield and one in Woodland, road travel coming to a screeching halt has meant about the same for business. But not entirely.

“There’s more time for restoration,” said Homola, who’s still working regular days between the two shops. “We have a ’69 Buick that we’re doing quite a bit on the cooling system, and other work like door repair. We’re taking extra time on that.”

Homola, 43, who grew up in the Hockinson area, opened My Auto Works in 2000. Though the company avoided any permanent layoffs, he said employees have had to cut back on workdays.

“We had kind of a buffer, but probably not as big as it should’ve been. As your company grows a bit then your buffer should grow a whole bunch and we didn’t grow our buffer as much as we should have,” he said. “We’re going to keep trying to go through this and see how it goes.”

The Columbian caught up with Homola to learn more about the job.

As you know, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Auto repair shops weren’t forced to close. Did you ever think at any point about closing the shop anyway?

We certainly did discuss it. We had a couple meetings on it when this came about. But we knew that we had quite a few customers that were still coming in and wanted us to take care of their vehicles. We had quite a few customers in the medical field, and they said they need their car ready when they go to work in the hospitals. So we said OK, we’re going to take it week by week and see how things go.

Have you worried about picking up the virus from someone’s vehicle?

We definitely have worried about it. We wear gloves and stuff like that. We do have some masks available when we feel like we should use them for picking up vehicles or dropping off vehicles. We had a few vehicle owners who have had animals, and I have nothing against animals at all, but they do tend to collect a lot more hair. Those ones we’ve seen a lot more plugged air filters and vents. Most of the customers, their cars are fantastic to work with. Some of them get dirty and the customer gets used to it and don’t realize it gets that coated. We do try to say it’s their car, their space, they’re in it far more than we are. We still want to keep ourselves clean.

What is your biggest challenge as an auto technician?

The biggest challenge is getting the right information for the vehicle. Like wiring diagrams or theory and operations on the vehicles because they’re changing so fast that a lot of the companies that pull from the manufactures are a year or more behind. We use a few different companies — a repair information company, they buy the information and put (it) on their website, and we pay them to use their product. That in turn puts an independent repair facility in a tough spot because they want to repair these vehicles and they want to service these vehicles these customers have. But if they’re unable to get the proper information from the manufacturer, it makes it real difficult to do. In some cases you got to say “OK, so how is this supposed to work? What do I have to do to make it work?” and “What’s the theory and operation of this brake system? How can I figure that out before I go in and test it?” Some manufacturers will hide that information so the after market or independent repair facilities have a hard time getting it.

How do you feel the public generally views auto mechanic workers?

I think they don’t have a very good view by the general public, but we’re really trying hard to change that. Because it is a difficult job but it’s a really rewarding job too. You get rewarded every day for things you do.

Why do you think people hold that view?

There are several parts of that. One is that the vehicles themselves, they don’t really schedule their breakdowns. It doesn’t warn you when your battery is going to be dead when you going to leave or your tire is flat. No one wants to go, “OK, well I’m going to go spend $1,000 today. Awesome.” We have had an upset customer or two. We try not to look at those because we look at the hundreds who are very happy. Vehicles have come a long ways. They used to be a lot more likely to break down. They didn’t have tight standards and they were more likely to break down and be harder to keep up. Auto repair and general repair, it is definitely getting more expensive because the information companies that buy the information from the manufacturer so we have access — it’s getting a lot more expensive. So if you add everything up, a company’s got to make somewhat of a profit because in a way it wouldn’t be worth even doing. So it is more expensive and people don’t like to spend the money, even for myself.

What are your tips for people taking care of their cars when they’re not running them every day?

You can go longer on your services due to mileage, but also I would recommend getting it serviced, even if you’re not driving at all, every six months. If you’re not driving it every day, take it in so you can keep the moisture out of the engine. A problem we’ve found even in 2014 vehicles is lack of lubrication. A lot of the other engines we’ve replaced we believe would have lasted a lot longer if they were serviced with an oil service at the proper time and good oil put in. And if there’s an oil leak or any kind of fluid leak, it’s important to take care of that right away. And clean those air filters.