NOLN at 40 | Why They Stay

Airline luggage loading. High-performance racing and product sales and distribution. The credit department of a lumber company.

Quick lube operators come from diverse professional backgrounds, but for many, once they enter the world of fast automotive maintenance, they’re in for the long haul.

As part of its 40th anniversary celebration, NOLN recently caught up with SpeeDee franchisee Mike Guasch, Lucas Oil Center founder Bill Floyd, and Lucas Oil Center Vice President April Maxey, Floyd’s daughter and a current member of the PAMA board of directors.

Guasch, Floyd, and Maxey shared with NOLN their first impressions of the quick lube industry, as well as what made them decide to stay and what advice they have for those entering the field today.

Taking Flight

Prior to entering the quick lube business, Mike Guasch grew up on a ranch before spending the early part of his career as a luggage loader for Southwest Airlines. Taking an interest in aviation, he served as a jet mechanic for the U.S. Navy for four years. Unable to find a job with any airlines after his time in the service, Guasch discovered an opportunity with a Bay Area quick lube business named Express Lube in 1989.

“They knew that I had some mechanical background, so they put me in the pit and I worked the pit, I don't know, maybe eight months straight,” Guasch says. “And this is back when, I mean, we were doing 750 cars a week. … All we did back then was just oil, PCV valves, breathers, manual transmissions, and wiper blades and air filters. None of the other flushes, belts, none of that stuff was even around the quick lube business back then. So, it was just flushing cars basically in and out.”

Guasch says he was fascinated by the sheer volume of vehicles rolling into his shop’s bays every day.

“I was younger back then, obviously, and I was able to run all three bays, and then I found some kind of enjoyment in it,” he says. “I'd come back with these burns from these Hondas, reaching up and getting the filter from exhaust and cuts, and just I don't know what it is. It's just some kind of attraction to that.

“As hard as it sounds, I was probably hooked from those Express Lube days down in the pit and just draining the oil and putting new drain plugs in and just learning every single car.”

Over the next three years, the shop for which Guasch was working expanded from one location to five. He was named manager of the second store and began training other managers before they were sent off to their new locations.

At this point, Guasch saw an opening with SpeeDee for a district manager position. The opportunity to take on a corporate role with a national brand was too good to pass up. Almost immediately, Guasch was tasked with taking the lead on opening a series of stores in Northern California. A successful expansion from five locations in the area to more than 15 earned Guasch more territory to cover and an eventual promotion to director for the West region. When his counterpart in the East departed SpeeDee, Guasch found himself overseeing stores nationwide as operations director of North America.

Bill Floyd, meanwhile, founded Lucas Oil Center in 2008 and opened the doors of the business’s first quick lube shop in Evansville, Indiana, in 2011. But Floyd’s roots in the automotive world trace back decades earlier.

Floyd’s entry point into the industry came when he took a job with a local service station in high school that included a lot of vehicle maintenance-related tasks. Floyd says he briefly ran an auto repair shop before following his passion for racing, building a career in high-performance racing, manufacturing, product sales, and distribution.

“As a mechanic, we didn’t have code readers and scanners,” Floyd says. “We didn’t have a lot of the diagnostic equipment we have now. We used scopes in those days for a tune-up. Really, you mechanically understood a car. You understood how brakes work. You understood how the clutch and the transmission, if you had to take it apart, how you could fix it.”

Floyd’s daughter April Maxey now serves as Lucas Oil Center’s vice president of operations and human resources manager. Maxey says she grew up “watching Dad chase dirt in his race cars,” but her experience prior to the Lucas Oil Center venture came not behind the wheel of race cars, but behind a desk in a corporate position with the credit department of an Ohio-based lumber company.

Her transition from lumber to quick lube was eye-opening, she says.

“As I started in (the quick maintenance) industry, I felt the pressure of really how male-dominant it was, which could be kind of intimidating, especially since I really, other than just being around Dad all the time, I hadn't dived into it yet,” Maxey recalls of her early days with Lucas Oil Center. “But what I found out pretty quickly, though, was that this industry does value hard work, quality, and people who genuinely really care and want to be involved.”

Guasch intended to ride out the remaining years of his career at the corporate level for SpeeDee, but another unexpected opportunity emerged when a location 20 minutes from Guasch’s home became available. At the age of 55, Guasch left his corporate position to become a first-time franchise owner.

“Everybody's like, ‘Why didn't you do it sooner? You know, you waited so long. … You could have bought your own,’” Guasch says. “I go, ‘Well, I wouldn't have the knowledge I have now to take over the store at 55 back then. It might have been a little bit hard for me.’ And nobody wants to leave corporate when they’ve got a paycheck coming in and you got weekends off, right? I mean, you got a company car and you got a travel and expense account and all that stuff. You had to give up a lot of that. So, it was a risk. Anytime you open a business, it's a risk.”

Asked what has kept him in the industry for the long haul, Guasch says: “It’s two things. I love the customer interaction. I love the culture. I drive to work, and I have a smile on my face every day. I just can’t wait to see my guys and my team and my customers. And I’m heavily involved in charitable organizations in Modesto(, California).”

Guasch works with Modesto Gospel Mission, a women’s shelter, and multiple initiatives to help those without homes.

“That’s been the biggest blessing to me is having the ability to give back and help people,” Guasch says. “Because I have my corporate career. I'm not here squeezing pennies from the shop. I'm going to do fine.”

Prior to launching Lucas Oil Center, Floyd was involved with SEMA and the AOCA, which, of course later became PAMA. In the mid-2000s, Floyd and his family began to take a harder look at the quick lube industry. Having “always had my hands on the pulse of cars,” Floyd decided to make a career switch and get into the auto service business. In 2010, he arranged a license agreement to build the first quick lube shop with the Lucas Oil name.

“We built the building. We designed the processes. We installed the equipment. We hired people. We were off and running,” Floyd says. “There wasn’t anything—from working on cars to cleaning the toilets—that I didn’t do in those days.”

Similar to Guasch, Floyd says he finds joy in helping others.

“It’s not just what we do at the service center. It’s what we do and serve in our community as well and take care of our customers. We have a tagline that we use: We aren’t just changing oil, we’re changing lives.”

In practice, that has included supporting autism care-related causes, as well as a local children’s hospital.

The Next Generation

Guasch aims to create an environment where today’s entry-level lube technicians can catch on in the industry, following a path similar to the one he carved in his 20s. While some aspects of the job have changed, there are similarities in the basics—inspecting cars correctly, being safe, showing up on time, working hard, he says.

Guasch proudly points to his most recent hire, Gerardo, who came on board about a year ago, as perhaps his best hire to date.

“He’s been here a year in June, and he's never missed a day at work. He'll work anytime we want him to come in,” Guasch says. “He's bilingual. He’s just amazing. He gets the highest bonus out of anybody in the shop, and he's the newest employee. He does things one way, and it's the right way every single time. There are no shortcuts in his work. It really gave me hope for this new generation.”

Floyd has a similar success story from his staff. One long-time manager now sports a Lucas Oil Center tattoo because of the impact the business has had on him.

“The story about that is very simple,” Floyd says. “We really turned his life around, and he said, ‘You know, someday, I want to have one of these stores. And it means so much to me, I put it on my arm.’”

Asked what advice she would have for someone looking to make a similar leap to the quick lube space from another industry, Maxey says having the right personality traits goes a long way.

“I think first of all, you have to be coachable. You have to be able to adapt,” she says. “If you're just looking at it now versus 15 or 20 years ago, this different generation, they can't be managed the same way that we did. A lot of people now are not just looking for a paycheck in a stable job. They're looking for more than that. This generation, they're looking for purpose and growth and flexibility even within their family dynamic.”

For the up-and-coming technicians at Guasch’s SpeeDee location who have aspirations of career advancement, Guasch offers a smog training program for employees. Training is conducted for four weeks on Saturdays and Sundays, and time spent in training is incorporated into techs’ work schedules. Four employees have completed the training so far.

“It’s a good program because if they find something at a dealership or something like that, I would be more than pleased for them because I just want to give them more skills,” he says. “If they have a small license and they’re the tech, they’re more apt to get something better down the road.”

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The NOLN 40th Anniversary is presented by Mighty Auto Parts and Solid Start/True Brand.