S&P Garages: Looking after you and your vehicle

Peter Frohmaier runs S&P Garages based in Lincoln and tells us how the company started and how they are keeping pace with the ever changing world of commercial vehicles and workshops…

My name is Peter Frohmaier, prior to opening S&P Garages Ltd I worked for H&L Garages Ltd for five years as their after sales director. H&L Garages had seven Mercedes Benz Truck & Van dealerships dotted around Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire selling new and used trucks and vans operating service and parts departments in every site.

My job at H&L was to ensure that all service & parts departments operated successfully and profitably and offered first class levels of service to all their  customers. H&L Garages Ltd ceased trading on the 2nd December 2011 and after some careful consideration and plenty of sleepless nights my wife and I decided that we would throw everything we have at re-opening the Lincoln site of H&L and rename as S&P Garages Ltd (Sarah & Peter Garages). We knew that we had to act very quickly if we wanted to retain all the existing H&L customers.

Everyone involved in the re-opening process worked their socks off and despite the Christmas break where we see solicitors etc close for two weeks, thankfully we manage to get everything in place, and we opened on the 2nd January 2012 just one month after the closure of H&L Garages.

S&P Garages Ltd is a Mercedes Benz Truck, Van & Mitsubishi Fuso approved repairer. Having the MercedesBenz franchise gives us the ability to do many things, such as enabling us to carry out and submit any warranty claims for our customers directly to the manufacturer. Our fully trained technicians are approved by MercedesBenz to carry out any work within their warranty period.

On top of this, any service contracts that you have taken out with Mercedes-Benz to maintain your fleet, we are able to submit claims to the Mercedes-Benz service contract team as well. We purchase parts directly from Mercedes Benz every day, delivered next day if needs be. We mainly sell these parts through our workshop but also sell parts to our trade and retail customers. All parts are delivered on the day of arrival with us via our parts delivery van.

We also operate a fully equipped breakdown vehicle that operates 24/7, 365 days of the year to help our customers and passing vehicles that are passing through Lincolnshire, to run safely and efficiently. During 2021 we attended 1436 vehicles which equates to approximately 4 vehicles per day. Of this figure we have managed to carry out a roadside repair on 82.6% of the vehicles, enabling them to carry on with their business. Unfortunately, the remainder had to visit our workshop for further investigation and consequent repair.

As well as being an approved repairer for Mercedes-Benz Trucks & Vans we are also an independent Mercedes-Benz car specialist. We have invested in specialised equipment and knowledge to enable S&P to deliver an affordable offering to all owners of Mercedes Benz cars in terms of carrying out service and repair work to all types of Mercedes Benz cars new or old.

S&P Garages aim has always been to deliver a high level of service to all our customers as we strongly believe that if we look after our customers they will look after us. This philosophy appears to work as we are still trading healthily after being in business for over ten years!

Over the past ten years our business has grown from strength to strength. Because of the vast growth we now operate a night shift, this enables us to repair some of our customers vehicles when they are not using them thus minimising there downtime. To give you some idea of the growth of the business, we employed a total of seven members of staff when we opened back in 2012 and we now employ a total of twenty-five members of staff.

COVID-19 hasn’t really affected our business in terms of the volume of work coming through the door as a very high percentage of the work we see comes from the business sector rather than the consumer sector. COVID-19 has had a major effect on the staffing levels though, especially at the height of the pandemic when everyone had to self-isolate for 10 days if they had the virus or had been close contact with someone who had it. This did put immense strain on the remaining staff to carry on delivering high levels of service, however despite these pressures we still managed to deliver all our services and we haven’t had to close down any part of the business due to an extreme lack of staff.

Our biggest challenge currently is the recruitment of staff. It very difficult to find quality technicians and administrative staff. This has been the case for several years and is mainly due to the lack of interest in joining the motor trade. To help combat this we decided two years ago to invest in recruiting apprentices within our business. This decision is now just starting to pay dividends as the staff we recruited two years ago are now becoming key members of staff within our business. We will continue to invest in this area as we feel this is the only way forward if we want to carry on delivering high levels of customer service.

Our industry is continuously changing and the latest massive change, of course, is the move to electric vehicles. S&P Garages have embraced this change by making sure that we have staff trained to undertake work on electric vehicles in a safe environment with the correct equipment. Currently we are not seeing large volumes of electric vehicles however in the months and years to come this will undoubtedly increase especially as by 2030 manufactures are unable to sell new petrol and diesel vehicles. The future of electric vehicles is very unclear to us as we are unsure what the impact will be on our business in say five or ten years ahead. Will we see a similar volume of vehicles through our doors as we see today, or will this reduce dramatically because they will become more reliable and require less service work carrying out? These assumptions are difficult to predict at present because of the very low volumes of existing electric commercial vehicles. No doubt in the years to come we will start to see a clearer picture and will adapt our business to meet the challenges that we are presented with. One thing is certain, S&P Garages will continue to deliver first class levels of service to all our customers and in return we will continue to survive in this ever-changing industry.

One of the biggest changes in the past ten years that we have encountered and benefited from greatly was when Inter-county Truck and Van left Lincoln. Inter-county moved into Lincoln in March 2012 just two months after we opened our doors. But 10 years on we can proudly say we are the only MercedesBenz Truck & Van approved workshop flying that three pointed star in Lincoln!

Witham Paint & Oil have worked with us right from the beginning. Nigel and his dad Geoff met with me, and I shared my plan for S&P Garages. I’d like to think
that they must’ve heard something they liked as they agreed to lease the premises to me. We look after and maintain Witham’s entire fleet of trucks, vans, and some of their cars. We fully utilise their oil products that all have approval from Mercedes Benz which is used in every vehicle that visits our premises. Price and availability are important to us and being just behind their premises at Lincoln we do get our deliveries very quickly!

Although Witham Group are indeed our landlords, they still treat us as an important customer. This is very important to us and encourages us to purchase their products rather than buying our oil and other products directly from Mercedes-Benz.

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