I want to love trailer care. It's close, I trust their judgment, I don't think their prices are terrible. The issues I have involve how busy they are, which is a good sign, but a major inconvenience.
They are the only trailer repair in the immediate area and this is horse country. A small shop of local guys, their business model is more mom and pop with hours from M-F, 9-5 and Saturday 9-12 (maybe 8am?). They close on and around holidays. And that would all be fine, except every time I've taken my trailer there, no matter what time of year, it was at least a week, maybe longer, before it could even be seen. Once I had them add saddle racks to the nose of my trailer and was very disappointed at how sloppily the work was done for the $350 I paid - raw wood, not painted or finished, and screws poking through the outer skin of the trailer. I think it's because they try to hurry through things, because they are always so far behind the work load and in that case quality definitely suffered. They offered a few options for fixing the issue with the screws and fixed it, but it ended up wasting more of their time in the end. And it makes me wonder what other corners they might be cutting.
They've had my wrecked trailer now for just shy of 4 weeks and have yet to even look at it. I brought it in after I was hit a week before thanksgiving and I need to know if it's totaled or fixable, so my insurance company and I can move forward. We are not even talking about fixing it yet - just assessing it for insurance. I've been stuck in insurance limbo, without a trailer in the middle of my busiest riding season for 4 weeks (so far), because they can't find the time to look at it.
My suggestion would be to add employees, lengthen business hours (for example, to 8pm on weekdays and 3pm on Saturdays), have the employees work in shifts, so everyone's still workin the same amount of work time, but more work is getting done. Whatever you have to do to ensure quality work and quicker turnaround time without losing the small shop atmosphere.
Seriously, 4 weeks for an insurance assessment is ridiculous. read more