Autorepair/20″/dt1st/mark2nd

By REBECCA KUZINS

Staff Reporter

Gus Hernandez arrives at A & B; Auto Collision in Inglewood around 8 a.m., smiling broadly as he carries a box of two dozen doughnuts to share with the other mechanics.

It’s a sunny attitude considering that today, Friday, is the busiest day of the week. “That’s when the customers want their cars for the weekend,” he says.

Hernandez is one of a dozen auto body technicians at A & B;, which the Los Angeles Urban League says is the largest African-American-owned auto shop on the West Coast. At 38, he has 15 years of experience as a mechanic, though he’s only been with A & B; for two years. The quicker he works, the more he gets paid, so he wastes little time before diving into the day’s chores.

James Armstrong, one of the shop’s owners, comes by and grabs a doughnut. “I said no earlier,” jokes Armstrong. “But the sugar bug came to you,” responds Hernandez.

Armstrong and his partner, Elmore Beck, have owned and operated local auto shops since 1977. The two started as salesmen at a small used-car lot in Los Angeles. They bought cars at auction that needed to be painted and repaired before they could be sold.

“The shop we were using couldn’t do the work fast enough,” says Beck. “So we opened up a two-bay shop with one painter and a body man.”

Armstrong and Beck now have two shops in Los Angeles as well as the one in Inglewood, and they employ about 100 people.

Hernandez has a pencil-thin moustache and sports a small earring on his right earlobe. He wears dark-green pants, a white and green shirt with an A & B; logo stitched on it, a navy blue jacket and tennis shoes.

Hernandez’s stall contains two cars he’ll work on today. The stall is covered by a concrete roof, but has no walls or doors. Today it’s a little cold outside, so he keeps his jacket on. But at least it’s sunny not like Thursday, when it was pouring and Hernandez and the other mechanics had to remain in the stalls or get drenched.

His first task is to reassemble a ’95 black Chevrolet Prizm. Another car rammed into the driver’s side, causing extensive damage. Hernandez previously stripped the damaged and defective parts and sent the car to a shop for painting and sanding. Now he’ll install replacement parts.

The front and rear bumpers have been removed and are temporarily covered with Styrofoam. Hernandez has ordered replacement bumpers but they haven’t arrived yet. In the meantime, he’ll install new windows, molding and other parts in the driver’s rear panel and trunk.

Hernandez has been working around cars for as long as he can remember. “My brother’s godfather owned a shop,” he says. “I used to sneak out, skip school and go there. My mom gave me an old car. I started getting into it, repairing it.”

He boasts of being able to repair any kind of car and knows “everything to do with a body shop painting, production, helping to order parts. I know how to tint glass, how to pin-stripe.”

After donning a pair of latex gloves (“My hands used to be very coarse and oily,” he says. “My girlfriend told me ‘Your hands feel like sandpaper.’ “), he examines the rear door panel, which needs new window glass and molding. He screws in the window handle, then turns it to make sure it works. Then he starts installing the window molding.

Because Hernandez is paid on commission, it’s important to do the job right the first time. A & B; has a computer program that estimates how long it will take to repair each vehicle. Hernandez is paid a set wage for each estimated hour.

The shop estimates it will take a little more than 37 hours to fix the Prizm, so Hernandez will be paid for 37 hours of work. “If I finish it in 30 minutes, I got 37 hours (of pay). If I finish it in 80 hours, I still have 37 hours,” he explains. So it’s to his advantage to repair a car quickly, so he can repair as many cars as possible and earn a lot more money.

He dreams of owning his own auto shop someday.

“It takes money,” he says. “You need at least $200,000 to get a nice place, a frame machine, a spray machine. And most important of all, you need a contract with an insurance company to make sure you’ll get the cars to work on. If you have the work, it’s just a matter of getting good-quality technicians who can do the work.”