MYERS DIESEL REPAIR

Automotive > General Automotive Services

Ken Myers comes from humble beginnings as a young boy of 12, washing trucks for his uncle to growing his company into a nationally respected truck repair company in Bakersfield, CA.

With a long history of working as a diesel truck mechanic from the age of 12, his experience is second-to-none.

Myers Diesel Repair is a family-owned business. Ken is 3rd generation diesel mechanic after his uncle and his grandfather. Ken specializes in truck repair in Bakersfield.

At 12 years old his uncle didn’t want to hire Ken. Ken simply wanted to buy a bicycle so he set off to find some work with his uncle who was resistant. So Ken went out and made it for himself.

His uncle had a rule that after work every day, his employees had to pull around the back of the shop at the time and wash their trucks.

But as you can imagine, those drivers were tired after a long day and hated doing this. So Ken thought of the brilliant idea of earning some money by washing the trucks for the guys after work. Back then there were no labor laws and the truckers were tired.

So Ken grabbed a 5-gallon bucket, grabbed some Dawn dishwashing liquid and a scrub brush, and started washing trucks for $5 a piece.

Back then that was a lot of money. The only problem that Ken had was he didn’t know how to drive the truck off of the wash rack after he was done because he was so young.

Finally they taught him how to drive the truck, so that’s when business got really good for Ken. Ken had an entrepreneur mindset at a young age.

His uncle took notice of that, and finally took his nephew under his wing and had Ken start working on tires, from there, brakes, and then services and then kept going from there, assisting on overhauls, clutch jobs. After a few years he was no longer assisting.

By then, Ken started working after school as much as he could to bring home a check to help his mother with living expenses, as she was a single mother with three boys.

Ken moved directly to full-time at about the age of 16 for his uncle. He was unable to go to high school because he was too busy learning the diesel mechanic trade. His uncle was the one who raised him and taught him everything he knew for over 10 years while he worked for him.

Ken finally got his own apartment and had enough money to buy his first car, an AMC Pacer, so that he could drive back and forth to work to his uncle’s shop. Things were moving now for Ken and he was gaining valuable experience.

At 22 Ken got married to Lisa Myers, and they are still happily married today. Then at about 23 Ken went to work at Phillips Grain in Delano CA. They had about 30 trucks that he was in charge of. He immediately moved up the chain because of the incredible amount of experience he had because he started so early.

Through hard work and good old fashioned savings, Ken kept working and finally started Myers Diesel Repair in 2001. Ken’s first investment was an $1800 service truck that he could use to service his customers. And this was the beginnings of Myers Diesel Repair.

At this point he had no shop. People were simply calling him and having him come out to their location to do the repairs. He actually had a stroke of luck because RMC Transportation helped him by letting Ken use his shop.

RMC Transportation wanted Ken to work for him on the side. The owner let Ken use the shop to work on his trucks as well as work on the trucks for RMC Transportation. Just as long as Ken did the work for RMC Transportation first, then everything was good.

A turning point in the business was when Ken was going up the grapevine, and the engine of his old truck almost fell out, so he had to go down and buy a new service truck the next day. So Ken bought a beautiful new truck and business took off to a whole new level!

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