Don't wait for the snow
They call the wind Maria -- they call the snow @!&#*%!?$, and then they blow it
By John Quinlan Journal staff writer | Posted: Friday, October 07, 2005
Gary Wood checks out and puts into good working order a snowblower at Lonnie Guza's residence in Sioux City. (Staff photo by Jerry Mennenga) Lewis Matthews finishes up work on a snowblower at his residence in Sioux City, getting it ready for the coming winter. (Staff photo by Jerry Mennenga) Lewis Matthews attaches a shield to a snowblower as neighbor Don Hinzman lends a hand at Matthews' residence in Sioux CIty. (Staff photo by Jerry Mennenga)
When the snow starts piling up in December or January, or maybe even October, that's not the time to yank the tarp off your snowblower and pray to God your hibernating metal friend still works. It's not the time to call your favorite small engine repairman in the hope that he can get there RIGHT NOW. He can't because everybody else in town is calling him, too.
No, the time to check your blower or thrower is now -- assuming a freak snowstorm didn't appear overnight and you're already too late.
That's the word anyway from a couple of retired gents who make a comfortable post-retirement income repairing lawnmowers, snowblowers and other small engines, working out of their homes, keeping busy through word of mouth and the regular ads they run in the Journal classified section.
"You know, like not quite two years ago when we had that big blizzard in March, when we had all those inches, you can't believe the calls I got the day of that blizzard," said Gary Wood, 58, a retired banker who operates GW's Mobile Small Engine Repair & Maintenance out of a long black trailer he keeps at his Morningside home. "They hadn't started them for three or four years, and now they wanted them started. A lot of people just don't stop and think -- let's get prepared, a little preventive maintenance."
So he's been telling people when he works on their lawnmowers that if they have a snowblower, it's never too early to check them out and see if they'll start.
"They don't necessarily have to call me. I mean if they start, fine, leave 'em alone, let them run. But don't wait until the first blizzard," he said.
Operating a similar business out of his northside home is Lewis Matthews, 64, a "street-raised" Kentucky native who was involuntarily retired 2.5 years ago when Hertz, where he had worked for about 25 years, was sold and he and his wife, who also worked there, found themselves jobless. His wife found another job. He'd been doing repairs on and off for about 15 years. So he switched full time to the small engine repair business to supplement his Social Security income.
Matthews also advises anyone interested in buying a snowblower to not wait until the last minute. Two years ago, at the time of that blizzard, you couldn't find a snowblower or snowthrower anywhere in town. They were sold out in a few hours.
Conversely, last year there was little snow and lots of snowblowers left sitting in Siouxland stores.
"Last year, there was one place that had over 200. Another one had 25. A couple more places had 15 or 20. Bomgaars had a lot of them," Matthews said. "And then when they sell them new this year, they've still got last year's serial number on them."
Smart shoppers looking for bargain prices, he noted, will buy snowblowers in the spring and lawnmowers in the fall.
To oil or not to oil?
Snowblowers are simpler machines than lawnmowers, generally easier to service, the pros say.
The big difference?
"Lawnmowers -- they don't sit around like snowblowers," Matthews said. "You use your lawnmower once a week, twice a week, and some of the commercial ones, you'll use them every day. Whereas a snowblower -- I think most of the people in Sioux City only used them once last year.
"I've got one that I got from Bomgaars that I've had for 13 years, and I'm still using it. It's got the same sparkplug and the same oil it had in it when it was new. I mean ... they just sit around and rust."
Wood is still using a 50-year-old Montgomery Ward model snowblower that once belonged to his father, further proof that a good blower will last a lifetime if you take care of it.
While the owner's manuals may tell you to change the oil every year, Matthews said it isn't necessary.
"With a snowblower, you don't have any dirt or anything to get in the oil, and the only thing the oil does is get dirty. It don't wear out, and you don't even have an air cleaner on a snowblower because there's no dust," he said.
Those snowmobile chains, however, do need regular lubrication.
"You don't have to but it's best to grease it, oil the chains and stuff on them because the chains will rust and just fall off," Matthews said. "And they don't do it when you're not using it. They break when you're using it. I know. it's happened to me.
"The city'll plow you in out here on the streets and you go out trying to get that big drift out, and the chain breaks. And that's because you didn't oil it and take care of it and didn't lubricate the shafts and stuff in it, and it breaks."
Wood, however, changes the oil in his machine every year because of the moisture.
"It sits all winter and sits all summer and you get the change of temperature and that humidity and moisture in the oil, and that can ruin them quicker than anything," Wood said. "They don't take but between a half and three-quarters of a quart of oil. That's pretty cheap preventive maintenance every year."
It's the gas, gas, gas
Wood and Matthews agree that the main reason most idle mowers fail to start, however, is the unleaded gasoline.
"Most of the problems that you have with them," Wood said, "is that the carburetor varnishes up. The gas nowadays just turns, like, to molasses. You can let gas sit in them for one year, from last winter to this winter, and that will just varnish up your carburetor. Normally that's the problem I see with snowblowers. Probably 90 percent is the carburetor. So I have to take the carburetor apart and clean them and maybe put in a sparkplug."
Matthews, in a separate interview, offered the same 90-percent estimate. "I took the carburetor off one yesterday and it stunk so bad I had to push it outside of my garage," he said, noting that lawnmowers have the same problem.
Wood, a strapping North Dakota farm boy, got into repair work full time about three and a half years ago when he retired after 32 years as a banker, the last six years in Sioux City. He learned everything he needed about engines from his dad, tearing down and rebuilding mowers and blowers as a farm kid, finding it almost therapeutic. After taking early retirement from the bank, he found that just sitting around on his behind for six months was driving him nuts. So he bought a trailer, put an ad in the paper and went to work.
Both Wood and Matthews, who uses a pickup to haul machines to his home if they need extra attention, have found more than enough work to keep them busy. Word-of-mouth advertising has expanded their customer base.
Matthews, the lean, rugged-looking Vietnam vet who has had four heart attacks, two open heart surgeries and a host of other health problems, and Wood, the big, balding ex-banker whose pale visage and pleasant face belie the fact that he looks capable of tossing a snowblower a fair distance, only know each other in a passing '"how ya doin'" kind of way when they bump into each other while shopping at Ace Engine & Parts Distribution.
But both love doing what they're doing. They like being their own boss -- and they like the extra income.
"You're not going to get rich off it," Matthews said. "But I don't want to get rich off of it. I draw my Social Security. This pays for mine and my wife's gas. It takes us out to eat. Anything extra we want comes out of it. It helps out at Christmas. It buys a lot of my medicine. I have a co-pay. My wife's a sales manager at Staple's, and we have a good insurance policy, but like one prescription I got the other day was 50 bucks, just my co-pay. So that helps out with that, and I don't have to rely on my Social Security."
The usual problems
Most snowblowers are pretty much the same, Wood said.
"There's only about two or three companies that make snowblowers. They just make them for different brand names and then paint them a different color," he said.
The motors are usually Briggs & Stratton or Tecumseh, no matter the name on the blower.
Matthews, who also buys and sells mowers and blowers, said Kohler makes the best small engine these days, though Tecumseh makes about the only engines for snowblowers any more. Older engines win the durability battle simply because they were made out of steel.
The engines aren't too complicated. Repairs are fairly simple. Wood said he just uses hand tools and an electrical gauge to check for wiring shorts. But electrical problems are minimal ... if they haven't been sitting in a barn for 10 years at the mercy of rats and other critters, as was the case with one machine he had to fix.
One problem can simply be getting access to the machine.
During the last blizzard, Wood found one dead machine snowbound in a backyard shed. It was too heavy to be moved through the snow to his trailer. So he had to lay out a tarp on the snow and work in the cold -- gloveless because of the tiny parts involved. "And that was a long hour, hour and a half that I was working on that one, I'll tell you," he said.
He didn't charge any more, his usual fee being $50 a blower. Wood will charge a little more for out-of-town trips. "I don't have any other overhead, but the trailer and vehicle to pull it and the gas, and that gets to be a big item right now," he said.
"I did 44 snowblowers last winter with no snow. I think the year before -- that late blizzard -- that scared people because I did a lot of them that had not been started for three, four years."
Matthews said his customary fee is $45 a machine -- $75 for a riding lawnmower "and I furnish the parts ... cuz there's not that many parts." He gives discounts to seniors and will routinely charge the list price on more expensive replacement items like starters, figuring labor costs are all he needs to keep his customers satisfied -- and coming back for more.
John Quinlan can be reached at (712) 293-4225 or johnquinlan@siouxcityjournal.com
No, the time to check your blower or thrower is now -- assuming a freak snowstorm didn't appear overnight and you're already too late.
That's the word anyway from a couple of retired gents who make a comfortable post-retirement income repairing lawnmowers, snowblowers and other small engines, working out of their homes, keeping busy through word of mouth and the regular ads they run in the Journal classified section.
"You know, like not quite two years ago when we had that big blizzard in March, when we had all those inches, you can't believe the calls I got the day of that blizzard," said Gary Wood, 58, a retired banker who operates GW's Mobile Small Engine Repair & Maintenance out of a long black trailer he keeps at his Morningside home. "They hadn't started them for three or four years, and now they wanted them started. A lot of people just don't stop and think -- let's get prepared, a little preventive maintenance."
So he's been telling people when he works on their lawnmowers that if they have a snowblower, it's never too early to check them out and see if they'll start.
"They don't necessarily have to call me. I mean if they start, fine, leave 'em alone, let them run. But don't wait until the first blizzard," he said.
Operating a similar business out of his northside home is Lewis Matthews, 64, a "street-raised" Kentucky native who was involuntarily retired 2.5 years ago when Hertz, where he had worked for about 25 years, was sold and he and his wife, who also worked there, found themselves jobless. His wife found another job. He'd been doing repairs on and off for about 15 years. So he switched full time to the small engine repair business to supplement his Social Security income.
Matthews also advises anyone interested in buying a snowblower to not wait until the last minute. Two years ago, at the time of that blizzard, you couldn't find a snowblower or snowthrower anywhere in town. They were sold out in a few hours.
Conversely, last year there was little snow and lots of snowblowers left sitting in Siouxland stores.
"Last year, there was one place that had over 200. Another one had 25. A couple more places had 15 or 20. Bomgaars had a lot of them," Matthews said. "And then when they sell them new this year, they've still got last year's serial number on them."
Smart shoppers looking for bargain prices, he noted, will buy snowblowers in the spring and lawnmowers in the fall.
To oil or not to oil?
Snowblowers are simpler machines than lawnmowers, generally easier to service, the pros say.
The big difference?
"Lawnmowers -- they don't sit around like snowblowers," Matthews said. "You use your lawnmower once a week, twice a week, and some of the commercial ones, you'll use them every day. Whereas a snowblower -- I think most of the people in Sioux City only used them once last year.
"I've got one that I got from Bomgaars that I've had for 13 years, and I'm still using it. It's got the same sparkplug and the same oil it had in it when it was new. I mean ... they just sit around and rust."
Wood is still using a 50-year-old Montgomery Ward model snowblower that once belonged to his father, further proof that a good blower will last a lifetime if you take care of it.
While the owner's manuals may tell you to change the oil every year, Matthews said it isn't necessary.
"With a snowblower, you don't have any dirt or anything to get in the oil, and the only thing the oil does is get dirty. It don't wear out, and you don't even have an air cleaner on a snowblower because there's no dust," he said.
Those snowmobile chains, however, do need regular lubrication.
"You don't have to but it's best to grease it, oil the chains and stuff on them because the chains will rust and just fall off," Matthews said. "And they don't do it when you're not using it. They break when you're using it. I know. it's happened to me.
"The city'll plow you in out here on the streets and you go out trying to get that big drift out, and the chain breaks. And that's because you didn't oil it and take care of it and didn't lubricate the shafts and stuff in it, and it breaks."
Wood, however, changes the oil in his machine every year because of the moisture.
"It sits all winter and sits all summer and you get the change of temperature and that humidity and moisture in the oil, and that can ruin them quicker than anything," Wood said. "They don't take but between a half and three-quarters of a quart of oil. That's pretty cheap preventive maintenance every year."
It's the gas, gas, gas
Wood and Matthews agree that the main reason most idle mowers fail to start, however, is the unleaded gasoline.
"Most of the problems that you have with them," Wood said, "is that the carburetor varnishes up. The gas nowadays just turns, like, to molasses. You can let gas sit in them for one year, from last winter to this winter, and that will just varnish up your carburetor. Normally that's the problem I see with snowblowers. Probably 90 percent is the carburetor. So I have to take the carburetor apart and clean them and maybe put in a sparkplug."
Matthews, in a separate interview, offered the same 90-percent estimate. "I took the carburetor off one yesterday and it stunk so bad I had to push it outside of my garage," he said, noting that lawnmowers have the same problem.
Wood, a strapping North Dakota farm boy, got into repair work full time about three and a half years ago when he retired after 32 years as a banker, the last six years in Sioux City. He learned everything he needed about engines from his dad, tearing down and rebuilding mowers and blowers as a farm kid, finding it almost therapeutic. After taking early retirement from the bank, he found that just sitting around on his behind for six months was driving him nuts. So he bought a trailer, put an ad in the paper and went to work.
Both Wood and Matthews, who uses a pickup to haul machines to his home if they need extra attention, have found more than enough work to keep them busy. Word-of-mouth advertising has expanded their customer base.
Matthews, the lean, rugged-looking Vietnam vet who has had four heart attacks, two open heart surgeries and a host of other health problems, and Wood, the big, balding ex-banker whose pale visage and pleasant face belie the fact that he looks capable of tossing a snowblower a fair distance, only know each other in a passing '"how ya doin'" kind of way when they bump into each other while shopping at Ace Engine & Parts Distribution.
But both love doing what they're doing. They like being their own boss -- and they like the extra income.
"You're not going to get rich off it," Matthews said. "But I don't want to get rich off of it. I draw my Social Security. This pays for mine and my wife's gas. It takes us out to eat. Anything extra we want comes out of it. It helps out at Christmas. It buys a lot of my medicine. I have a co-pay. My wife's a sales manager at Staple's, and we have a good insurance policy, but like one prescription I got the other day was 50 bucks, just my co-pay. So that helps out with that, and I don't have to rely on my Social Security."
The usual problems
Most snowblowers are pretty much the same, Wood said.
"There's only about two or three companies that make snowblowers. They just make them for different brand names and then paint them a different color," he said.
The motors are usually Briggs & Stratton or Tecumseh, no matter the name on the blower.
Matthews, who also buys and sells mowers and blowers, said Kohler makes the best small engine these days, though Tecumseh makes about the only engines for snowblowers any more. Older engines win the durability battle simply because they were made out of steel.
The engines aren't too complicated. Repairs are fairly simple. Wood said he just uses hand tools and an electrical gauge to check for wiring shorts. But electrical problems are minimal ... if they haven't been sitting in a barn for 10 years at the mercy of rats and other critters, as was the case with one machine he had to fix.
One problem can simply be getting access to the machine.
During the last blizzard, Wood found one dead machine snowbound in a backyard shed. It was too heavy to be moved through the snow to his trailer. So he had to lay out a tarp on the snow and work in the cold -- gloveless because of the tiny parts involved. "And that was a long hour, hour and a half that I was working on that one, I'll tell you," he said.
He didn't charge any more, his usual fee being $50 a blower. Wood will charge a little more for out-of-town trips. "I don't have any other overhead, but the trailer and vehicle to pull it and the gas, and that gets to be a big item right now," he said.
"I did 44 snowblowers last winter with no snow. I think the year before -- that late blizzard -- that scared people because I did a lot of them that had not been started for three, four years."
Matthews said his customary fee is $45 a machine -- $75 for a riding lawnmower "and I furnish the parts ... cuz there's not that many parts." He gives discounts to seniors and will routinely charge the list price on more expensive replacement items like starters, figuring labor costs are all he needs to keep his customers satisfied -- and coming back for more.
John Quinlan can be reached at (712) 293-4225 or johnquinlan@siouxcityjournal.com
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