You would imagine that after winning the title of best mechanic in Brisbane less than a year after starting his own business, 25-year-old Peter Triantafillou isn’t your run-of-the-mill mechanic – and you’d be right. We talk to a young man whose old-school approach to his trade is winning him customers and has turned a once rundown suburban workshop into an award-winning success.

Words & photos: Lindsay Saunders

What services do you offer at Bulimba Service Centre?

PT: We do all general automotive repairs and servicing, for all makes and models.

What’s your approach to the business?

PT: I firmly believe in customer-focused service. Giving people value for money and communicating with them throughout the process – that’s key.

I like to talk to people not just about their vehicle but life in general. We’re all human and we should treat each other like that. I also appreciate that different people have different budgets and expectations and we do our best here to meet and manage those. I keep customers informed about their cars and given them all the options I can – it’s up to them which one they go for or if they don’t want to proceed.

When did you establish this business?

PT: I started operations here on March 11, 2019. It was an existing business and I’ve concentrated on building up my customer base and getting known in the area.

It was a pretty rundown business doing just the bare minimum so establishing it as a service worth using was important. All of that was done really by word of mouth and continues to be – my best advertising is done by my customers telling friends about the business and their satisfaction with what we do.

We do pretty much everything here so it’s a full service, all done by the bloke you talk to when you book in.

How did you get involved in the automotive industry?

PT: I did a school-based apprenticeship through the MTA Institute from year 10 through to year 12. I was doing one day a week and pushed to get it to two days a week, so I had a pretty busy couple of years with study as I was quite an academic student, and had the apprenticeship and was working at a butcher.

The apprenticeship with MTA Institute was brilliant, second-to-none, and I can’t praise it enough. In fact, my apprentice here at my business is doing his apprenticeship through the institute too. It was my decision who he’d do it through, and I didn’t even think twice. It’s faultless.

I can’t recommend it enough to owners like myself who is taking on an apprentice.

Where did you work after school?

PT: I entered the family-owned mechanical business Skinny’s Garage in the West End. It was a big operation – it had six hoists – and did a lot of insurance contracts
for many companies as well as more general work.

I’ve worked on all kinds of cars thanks to that job, from cars from the 1960s to the newest models, and from budget brands to high-performance marques like Lamborghini.

The business’ premises were resumed by the State Government as part of an expansion of the local school in 2017 so it shut down. I decided to do something different and became a mobile crane operator and rigger, working for a Brisbane-based operation. Then I found this business for sale and went for it.

How many staff do you currently have?

PT: There’s me and my apprentice Adam, and that’s the way I like it right now. I don’t think I want to get any bigger, to be honest. I am very hands on – I became a mechanic to work on vehicles, not manage a workshop from behind a desk. Maybe I’ll feel differently when I get older but right now what I love is fixing vehicles.

I am also big on quality control. I check Adam’s work and he checks mine. You’ve got to set your standards high and maintain them or customers will go elsewhere. You’re only as good as your last job so it has to be good. I know if the business got bigger I wouldn’t be able to check things myself as much as I want and need to. It’s my name and reputation tied up in the business and I take that seriously.

The Courier Mail 2019 Top 10 Mechanics in Brisbane win must have reinforced you were on the right track?

PT: It was a surprise to be honest. I was nominated by customers and named in the top 10, then topped the vote of the finalists. I didn’t know about it until customers told me, and it’s really gratifying that customers wanted to nominate me, that they went to that trouble, and then voted for me. I’m not one to big-note myself – I prefer just to get on and do the job and do it well – but yes, it felt great to win that title when, at the time. I’d only had the business for nine months.

Aside from the Coronavirus and the impact that has had on the industry, what’s the biggest issue facing the mechanical sector today?

PT: One thing that I see as a growing issue for us is the losing of skills. Not so long ago, for example, if an alternator packed it in, you’d recondition it. Now, because parts have become so cheap, you just buy a new one and throw the old one away. The problem I see with that is mechanics won’t know the ‘why’ behind things, they’ll just be parts replacers.

Knowing the ‘why’ is crucial. I had an example recently of a car not charging, so we replaced the alternator and that didn’t fix it. The reason, we discovered, was that the brand-new alternator was faulty. I could work that out because I knew what should be happening. If you’re just replacing parts you lose the ability to really diagnose problems. Also, being able to fix things means you keep it in house and that then means you have control over the quality of the work.

As older mechanics – the ones with the real engineering skills – are leaving the trade, the knowledge is going too, and that’s to the detriment of the industry as
a whole.

Source: Motor Trader E-magazine (June 2020)

21 May 2020