Initially it was just repairing curb rash and straightening wheels out of an enclosed trailer. Utilizing incredible support from my father-in-law, the business grew to 3 employees within a year. A brick and mortar location came in 2014, which we outgrew in about 2 months. A partnership was formed with a client who had a background in auto parts recycling. We started sourcing and selling used OEM w
heels on eBay. This grew rapidly and became a full fledged warehouse in 2015. The instagram page started during this time frame. Express peaked at 16 employees in the tail end of 2016. Shortly thereafter, the partnership failed due to accounting disagreements, and Express had to find a new lease to continue operating. Luckily 2 doors down we found a property for sale by owner. It took insane effort to secure the owner financed loan on the property in 2017, but we pulled it off. However this was the beginning of a very challenging season for Express. One of my best employees/newly promoted "manager" quit. shortly thereafter one of our experienced painters and mobile techs moved back to family in Tucson. These 2 losses were very costly to the company. Neither of which were ever replaced. In late 2018 performance issues caused a termination of our powder coater at the time. The very next day a representative for OSHA appeared at the door. This eventually led to there being no production employees. Back to a 1 man show basically. Fighting and clawing my way back to 14 employees by 2020, and then covid-19 hit. 2020 was an absolute mess, again bringing me down to just me in the shop fixing all the wheels, doing all the powder coating, stripping all the wheels, mounting and balancing all the tires. I brought select employees in to help out but only for limited hours. Finally the PPP money showed up and we attempted to get back to normal. Lucky for me, someone filed a very very specific report with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality regarding how we strip our wheels. Stress level MAXIMUM. It was at this moment that I thought I was done for. Determined to continue I decided to be as cooperative as possible with ADEQ. After testing every single waste stream in my shop and not identifying the source of elevated levels of barium found in the soil in the front of our shop, I challenged ADEQ and tested the soil myself using the same lab they used. I found that their results were from a "totals" test, where the test I paid for was a TCLP test. "Totals" tests rely on "math" to assume the environmental impact of hazardous constituents found in soil. TCLP tests simulate the conditions of a landfill over a 20-yr period to find actual environmental impacts of hazardous constituents. My test came back with barium at .1 ppm, the industrial zoning limit for barium is 14,000 ppm. ADEQ sent me an apology email and said I was all set. Stress level much lower. The remainder of 2020 and the balance of 2021 was an epic mess, As I'm sure many of your experiences were. Into 2022 the struggle has become even more elevated. 4 key employees have left for differing reasons. We have raised prices on most of our services for the first time since the end of 2019. The quality of our services has not wavered, and nor shall we. Support your local small businesses. It's been rough.
