Why EricTheCarGuy doesn’t have a lift

I’ve been seeing a flood of comments about me getting a lift lately and I’d like to respond to them here. This will be my ‘go to’ link as a response to this question from here on out.

As for why I don’t have a lift there are several reasons. The first of which is that I don’t work on cars for a living, I make repair videos for a living. As a result I’m at the shop 1 maybe 2 days a week and I only work on a few cars at a time. Repairing vehicles is one thing, making videos of those repairs is quite another and it takes a great deal longer to do. For example, the Accord/CL clutch video that I shot last week took 16 hours. If I was just doing a clutch on the car, 4 hours tops but since I was setting up every shot and dealing with the electric going out every time the compressor kicked on I ended up working till 2:30am. For that reason alone it’s hard to justify the cost of a lift. In fact I’d rather invest in a new computer and some new cameras before looking into getting a lift. Trust me, that’s going to set me back quite a bit but I believe it will have a much higher return on investment based on what I do.

The second reason is that the electric at the shop could be better. Well, it could be a lot better as I mentioned above. I pop breakers all the time while I’m shooting because the entire wall of outlets I use is on the same breaker. When I’m running my lights and the compressor kicks on, the lights and everything else on that wall goes out. A lift runs on 220 and I’d first have to make sure I have enough juice coming into the shop to run another 220 line, not to mention fix the outlets on the wall I’m having issues with now. If I’m maxed out with the breakers I have now then I have a real problem. So factor in the cost of redoing my electric into the cost of a lift. While I’m at it I should probably replace the electric hot water heater that went out last winter at the same time as I do the electric for the rest of the shop. Now we have plumbing AND electric to worry about. The rabbit hole keeps getting deeper…. Welcome to life as a small business owner.

Something that also needs to be considered is the shop itself. My lease is up as of August 2013 and at that time I need to decide if I’m going to stay where I am or look for a different place. The reason I would consider moving is because I’m right next to a busy intersection not to mention the trucking company next door. If I was a repair shop this wouldn’t be a problem but as I said I’m not a repair shop, I’m a production studio. Having noisy trucks parked outside doing loud things doesn’t make for good video. In fact it’s an interruption that’s been an issue in the past. It would be great to have a place that was a little more ‘out of the way’ and didn’t have the same noise issues. So when July/August comes I’ll take a good look at the situation and decide where to go from there. I don’t see the point in going through the electric and putting in a lift if only to use them for a couple of months and then leave. Another possibility is if the owner wants to do something different with the property and I’d need to leave anyway. There’s no guarantee that he’ll renew the lease and if he does perhaps the new terms will be beyond my reach. That being said, I think no matter what I can’t even think about a lift till later this year as it would be just one more thing to move if I did need to leave for some reason.

Lastly, I estimate over 90% of my viewers don’t have a lift. If I start doing my videos using a lift I can still show the work but it’s not the same as if I was on the ground working in the same way they would. In part I put off getting a lift as a way to remain close to my audience and the problems they face working on the ground. I wouldn’t have the same experiences working on a lift. In fact even if I did have a lift I would still do some work on the ground for that very reason.

I hope that clears up any questions about why I don’t have a lift at this time. If not, feel free to post away. (pun intended)