Rod Wilkinson is 59 years old, general manager of Precision Automotive and not looking to retire any time soon.
“I love the industry and am enjoying working for Bapcor,” he said.
“After 32 years of self-employment, this is a great business to work for; there is a camaraderie and great balance about the business I am involved in.”
And for much of the time Precision Automotive has been open for business, it has been a family affair. Rod’s wife Karen worked in the business for 20 years, and son Brent has been involved for the past 14 years.
As with many other auto industry managers, Rod learned and honed his craft in his teenage years while working for auto industry giant, Repco:
“I left school at 16 in 1974 and went to work for Repco,” he said. “I started out in the warehouse, moved to internal sales and sales rep, I was a manager at Repco in Canberra at 21.”
Like many other former Repco-trained industry stalwarts, Rod has nothing but positive words to say about his former employer believing, as do many others, that “Repco was a good training ground in the Industry at the time; a great business.”
The Canberra branch was then Repco’s largest national branch, and Rod said it was the biggest because it was a road hub. He worked for Repco for 11 years, leaving at 27 years of age to go into business for himself, buying a food wholesale business, Midwest Foods based at Dubbo, New South Wales. Rod ran this business for four years before selling out.
At 31 years old he was back in the auto trade as a franchisor, selling garage equipment. He ended up owning three franchises under the company Garaquip at Dubbo, Canberra and Newcastle selling equipment sourced from local Importers.
“After I sold the shares in those businesses I moved to Queensland and worked for the company that owned the franchises I’d sold,” Rod said. “I observed that I could probably do it better than they were.
“My background was sales and there was an opportunity for a couple of players in the Brisbane area as it was under serviced so, in 1996, I started Precision Automotive, which was based predominantly around vehicle hoist maintenance and relocation.
“About 12 months later, with the business growing, Phil Atkins, my former partner in the Canberra franchise, moved to Queensland to come into the business with me.”
Precision Automotive started as a vehicle hoist maintenance company but grew into selling equipment, and then became a major importer of quality automotive equipment and services. These days the company sells world renown brands of equipment including Rotary Vehicle Lifts, the world’s largest vehicle hoist manufacturer which makes a full range of products that cater for everything from cars to heavy trucks. As well, there is CEMB Wheel Service Equipment, Guiliano Tyre Equipment and a complete range of sundry workshop equipment.
While these are globally recognised brands, Precision also developed its own national brand range under the Summit label.
“And when I say sundry workshop equipment, I don’t mean tools.” Rod explained it included workshop presses, air conditioning service equipment and mobile lubrication products.
“We carry a full range of car workshop equipment in terms of items that are traditionally fixed workshop equipment; it’s all about repairs,” he said.
Precision Automotive opened its first outlet in Brisbane before expanding into Sydney in 2012 and Melbourne in 2014, and had distribution in Adelaide, Hobart and Perth. Despite coming from a franchise business, Rod never pursued a franchise option for Precision Automotive.
A couple of recessions and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 didn’t affect business: “The GFC wasn’t even a speed hump in my estimation, and the following year was one of the better years we had,” Rod said, adding that the government “pumping cash into the economy” didn’t do business any harm.
“We had growth every year for 20 years,” Rod said. “We never had a negative year. During the GFC our business was about the same as the year before, and the next year it just kept moving forward.”
Precision Automotive focussed on dealerships for the bulk of its business, with about 25 per cent of trade made up by independent repairers. To get to the independent repairers without a footprint Rod went and spoke to Andrew Schram, then Burson purchasing manager in charge of stock management, warehousing, range and pricing.
“I said to Andrew: ‘We have a product range better suited to your customer base than what you are currently selling.’ They were selling premium product to smaller customers, and I developed a range of products for Burson under the Summit brand.
“Summit is what we call our value range. If you can picture a small guy who wants to get into tyres, but won’t or can’t spend $15 or $20,000 on equipment we would go and do him a deal for $6 to $7,000 and he was up and running.”
Rod said the Summit brand grew dramatically through the Burson network, and Burson became 30 per cent of his business.
Precision Automotive was bought by Burson Auto Parts in February 2016, just prior to the name transformation to Bapcor.
But that wasn’t the end. In July, 2017, Bapcor purchased a Melbourne-based manufacturing and engineering company, Tricor, which is now known as Precision Tricor.
Tricor designs workshop layouts, installs, supplies and commissions oil lines, air lines, vehicle hoists, dispensing and waste oil equipment to dealers in the automotive and transport markets. There is an obvious synergy and Melbourne-based Tricor is now known as Precision Tricor.
Tricor manager Ian (Blackie) Blackhurst explained that Precision Automotive couldn’t break into the Melbourne market because of Tricor.
“We probably do 90 per cent of the car dealerships in Victoria,” Blackie said. “We put our own hoists in, all the pipework, all the hoses hanging up to do the servicing, and the benches.”
Which explains why Tricor was added to the Bapcor company structure. Precision boss, Rod Wilkinson, said the two entities were now known as Precision Tricor in Melbourne.
Interviewed May 2018