Express Oil Change is expanding from two bays to eight and becoming a full service station in early 2017.
Originally Pennzoil, and most recently Castrol, the business has gone through a lot of changes over the past 20 years, but ownership isn’t one of them.
Chris Nonnenmann started the business in 1996 and has owned it ever since, throughout all of the branding changes.
“People might think that we’d sold out when we made the name changes, but that’s not the case,” Nonnenmann said. “We were with Pennzoil for a long time but then they sold out to Quaker State and eventually to Shell, so we just started looking for another partner.
We went with Castrol for a while, but settled on Express because we wanted to do more and they have experience with that.”
Another reason Nonnemann said that they made the switch to Express was because they use Valvoline oil.
Nonnenmann explained that the business needs to expand because of how many customers it serves.
“We’ve built up a good customer base and we’ve outgrown our building,” Nonnenmann said. “We needed to more adequately serve our customers. The lines are typically long and they reach out to the road.”
In order to do that, Nonnemann is adding two oil change bays onto the side of the lobby that the other two are on, and adding four service bays on the other side of the lobby. The lobby will also be bigger and better.
Nonnemann said that the addition of the tire business and other repair services came about from requests.
“Usually every day someone asks us to do something else while they’re here and we have to send them to somebody else,” Nonnenmann said.
Nonnenmann said that there will be some “growing pains” while construction is ongoing.
“At some point, the wall on the back side upstairs has to come down,” Nonnenmann said. “And we’ll have to connect the basement to the new basements. But we’re trying to remain open through the whole process.”
Plans to expand or open a new location have been in the works for a while, Nonnenmann said, but everything went on hold when his dad passed away in 2005.
His dad was the contractor that built the building in 1995.
Nonnenmeann’s brother and two sons also work at the store, which Nonnenman said will be one of only two locally-owned tire stores in Troy.
“We want to be the home-owned provider of services in Troy,” Nonnenman said.
Express Oil Change is located at 1007 Old Hwy 231 N. Hours are Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
This article originally apperaed on troymessenger.com
