It’s Your Business
- Subject: Preparing for a disaster
- Essential Reading: Shop Owner, Center Manager
- Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Business Editor
“Be Prepared” – the Boy Scout motto. I grew up with it. It was great for teaching us how to think ahead, to hopefully be ready for anything that comes along. What came along in the fall of 2012 no one could fully prepare for: a hurricane followed days later by a Nor’easter that turned into a snow event that shattered the record snowfall for that date by about 4 inches.
The significance of all this is that for the first time in the northeastern United States there wasn’t enough preparation to be done that could have avoided so much of the devastation. Instead of hundreds or thousands being without the essential utilities like power and water the way we are used to seeing after a bad thunderstorm, this time it impacted millions and will continue to for quite some time.
Remembering the gas lines from 1973 and 1979, as Yogi Berra would say, “It was déjà vu all over again.” Cars were lined up sometimes for a half mile to try to get into a station that had some gasoline in the ground before the storm hit and still had power to pump it out. Deliveries to the stations were few and far between because the local refineries were hit hard by the storm as well. My son-in-law works on a tugboat that pushes oil barges up and down the coast. He reported that they couldn’t even dock to on- or off-load because all the docks at the refineries and storage facilities in New Jersey and Brooklyn were washed away. Fuel then had to be trucked in from other parts of the country, making supply scarce and delivery undependable. As power began slowly to return, service stations would open for a few hours, sell off whatever supply they had, then close and wait for another delivery. No one knew who would have gas next, so if you needed it and saw a line of cars you got on it and hoped that they wouldn’t run out before you finally got to the pumps.
A lot of folks bought generators over the past several years. They’ve become a hot item. Although it’s great to have one you need to prepare by making sure you have enough gasoline to power it. Normally, that would mean no more than a week’s supply, but this was different. It wasn’t the typical storm that knocked out some overhead power lines and fried a few transformers. This one flooded the underground infrastructure as well. It wasn’t going to be handled within a few days or even a few weeks, so this time we had a whole new type of gas line: people standing in line waiting to fill their gas cans so they could power up their generators.
Driving past the Nassau Coliseum, a huge event facility on Long Island in New York, the other night I was amazed to see hundreds of power-line maintenance trucks from all over the country filling the parking lots. They are camping there every night and going out to make their repairs in the morning. Slowly but surely they are restoring power. They’ve been at it now for a couple of weeks, but it may take months, and there are some areas that are so devastated they just don’t exist anymore so there’s nothing to which they can restore power.
I called to check on a friend who owns a transmission shop in Brooklyn but lives on Long Island. He said the shop was OK as far as storm damage went although they didn’t have much work because people can’t drive very much in that area right now with the gas shortage and so much of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan being under water, but he told me what happened to his house. First, his power went out, but he was able to borrow a generator from a relative. Fortunately, it wouldn’t start. Why fortunately? Because his family would have been in the house when a tree came down and leveled it a few hours later. Not having any power forced them to evacuate and probably saved all their lives.
There are so many stories of devastation and heroism from that time frame, just as there are every time disaster strikes anywhere. What it does for the rest of us who weren’t affected or were only inconvenienced by the problem is put life back into perspective. Yes, some of us had it tough but others had it much worse.
As a business operator it makes you take a step back and look at your big picture. What should you be doing after you get your family secured and your business up and running if you’re in the middle of such a situation? How can you turn a tragedy into an opportunity?
To some it might sound cold to think about opportunities at this point, but I’m not talking about the kind that many gas stations and other essential businesses have been taking advantage of by price gouging and playing games with supplies. I’m talking about the opportunity to help your customers get through their hardest times, even if it’s only a matter of calling all your wholesale and fleet accounts to check up on them and see whether there’s any way you can lend a hand if they are in need. If you can’t reach them on the phone, stopping by to see what kind of shape they’re in and what you can do to help goes a long way toward showing how much you care about them and their businesses. If you have time and do business locally, you may be able to visit with some of your retail customers as well. The goodwill you can generate is priceless.
After the smoke clears it might be a good idea to come out with some specials, coupons or advertisements – either in print, on the Internet, in emails or by social media – offering a break on maintenance or diagnostic services to help your customers get rolling again. Being more accessible during a crisis helps as well. Keeping longer or weekend hours to accommodate as many customers as possible, going out of your way to find much-needed parts, and being very careful to diagnose and repair properly the first time will go a long way toward strengthening your reputation in the community.
At odd times such as these, making a pile of money off the suffering of others is not a long-term solution. Taking care of as many people as possible is. The goodwill you build can last a lifetime.
Money almost always makes the top of the list of reasons for anyone to be in business. However, when special circumstances exist, making a profit shouldn’t be nearly as important as building for the future. If you can break even ’til the crisis is over and build lots of goodwill during that time your efforts will be rewarded. It’s like my “lost-money mode” that I used to go into whenever we had a major comeback. As soon as I knew a transmission was going to have to be pulled again I would go into that mode. I would tell myself that any profit I might have made is now gone and that all I can hope for is to salvage the customer by fixing the car right this time, being as apologetic as I can and providing priority service to get them back on the road as quickly and conveniently as possible.
Some type of disaster may strike your locale during the lifetime of your business. How well you prepare for it and what you can do to help out your customers and competitors in its aftermath can go a long way toward establishing your credibility as a caring member of the community, and when all is said and done what more can we hope for?
Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Business Editor. Visit www.TerryGreenhut.com.
