Superior Automotive

America runs on auto pros and for 100 years Napa has been right there with them, keeping their businesses strong and their customers on the road. In the rough, unforgiving, ever-changing climate of Anchorage, Alaska, keeping customers on the road isn't always easy, but Elliott Layton and The seasonal changes that we have here don't And Elliott knows a t We had that fire two, three years ago, moved over down the street and came back here to the nice new building. A fire that started as a customer mistake, but devastated Elliott's business. It was a diesel truck filled up with gasoline and I didn't realize he did it until it started running rough. At that point, it was too late, so he shut her down, towed her down to the shop and it was about five o'clock when it showed up, so weren't working on it that day, so we had the tow truck driver drop it in the bay. Somet So thankfully no one was in the building, it was after hours. And to make matters worse, Superior had just gotten in a s $17,000 in oil the day before, stored right above where that truck was parked. News of the fire caught Elliott completely off guard. I was golfing in Arizona and I got a call from my electrician asking me if it was And I said, what? I said, oh, you must not know, your building's in flames right now. It was a terrible feeling. I ended up getting on a plane a week earlier than I was supposed to because I just wasn't able to relax down there. Superior Automotive had to relocate as they rebuilt. That wasn't great. Went from eight bay shop down to a three bay shop. I couldn't retain all of my employees, w Luckily, some good came of it. We ended up buying a commercial building out of it. One that were in, were leasing for the first six months. Ended up buying that building and made it home for a little over two years. And until we moved back in over here to the nice brand new shop that we have today. Elliott and It was an old building. I mean, not much from the bones other than the piling in the corners of the room. And that's all that's left from the original building. The change to the new shop was a challenge. It's been a change of pace. Went from having three operational bays back to having seven and a half, eight operational bays. So that's been the biggest curve for Hurtle to leave is getting kind of, We can schedule more work, keeping up with the workflow. I mean, scheduling has kind of been, So scheduling eight bays again, it's taken me a minute to get adjusted to it. But with the help of the community, Superior has risen from the ashes. Community was great. A lot of people stopping by after a lot of people calling. I mean, hundreds of people, hundreds of good customers calling, checking in, making sure, But thrilled to hear that were still operating a couple of blocks down the road. There's nothing like, And it's very assuring. A lot of good customers. And now as some normality returns in their new shop, Elliot is able to get It's been great. I opened up A couple of the other guys back as we're expanding, you're not supposed to build the relations The way that I have, we're all, we're absolutely a family here. Everyone looks out for each other. It's, there's nothing like consistently waking up wanting to go to work, excited to get to work, Most of the guys do too. With all of these challenges and the stress of having to rebuild not only the building, but heart and soul of It's a good place to live. It's a good place to, it's a really unique place for automotive.