Todd Burr This is Me

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1. 1. Better Business Bureau of Middle Tennessee, Inc.

   www.gobbb.org/consumersedge?id - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/11/2004   Last Visited: 6/10/2005

   This week on the Consumer's Edge, Todd Burr, owner of Hillsboro Village Auto Service and Woodbine Auto Service will discuss how a good auto repair shop with knowledgeable, trained technicians and mechanics can keep your vehicle running 150,000 to even 200,000 miles.

2. 2. [[ OnePaper ]]

   onepaper3.localweb.com/publica - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/21/2003   Last Visited: 12/11/2007

   Todd Burr of Hillboro Village Auto Service now offers all types of import and domestic products and services
   
   Would you trust your car to this man?
   
   Todd Burr's former employer thought so, bringing him in three years ago to steady his ship (Amoco at Hillsboro Village, now Hillsboro Village Auto Service), which was reeling from a crisis in customer confidence. Burr now owns the business, having bolstered the service side of it by 40 percent, and he's already parlayed his success into the purchase of another location, on Nolensville Road.
   
   Burr loves his situation in the Village. With the influx of new customers and the return of old, and with so much foot traffic about, he's recently remodeled his building to allow for more vending space. He got a beer permit and laid in a small but eclectic selection of beers. He added a humidor. He sells fresh sandwiches every day and doughnuts from the Donut Den. A newly installed newsstand will soon carry an impressive array of magazines and papers, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Vending sales have gone up 300 percent in the last four months.
   
   Burr plans a similar renovation of his other station, Woodbine Shell and Auto Service (formerly Nolensville Road Amoco), just about a mile from I-440 on Nolensville Road. That area is experiencing a mini-boom through revitalization.
   
   Burr is a native Middle Tennessean who's always had a curiosity about people and a penchant for winning them over. He studied religion and psychology at Belmont and had a 10-year career as a counselor with adolescents. What ended that career was a wild hair - he and his wife, musician Vivian Slade, decided to put out a CD and go on the road. Burr quit his job in May 1998; the couple produced the CD, hired a publicist, built a Web site, rented their home, bought a conversion van and took off with 2-year-old daughter in tow.
   
   They spent a year and a half traveling - and every last dime - stopping everywhere from Austin to Boston to Miami with "moderate success," as Burr describes it. They had a blast.
   
   Returning home with his family, Burr needed a job, and he went from sowing wild oats to working there. He helped open the Wild Oats store in Green Hills and rose to supervisor. But the lure of more money and the repeated entreaties of the Hillsboro Village service station owner persuaded him to come aboard.
   
   Burr's father, grandfather and uncle were auto technicians; he'd been around the business his whole life, but he'd never had a particular flair for it. He was confident, though, that he could pick up on it and, moreover, mix well with the people in the Village.
   
   Burr did so well that he ended up buying the business, in August 2001. Although the auto service industry calls for a great deal of skill and training - vehicles are incredibly complicated today, he notes - the business is based on the same simple premise as any other: customer trust.
   
   "Small, independent shops want long-term relationships with people who trust them," Burr says. "And the shop should work hard to earn that trust."
   
   Given people's innate distrust of the industry, the service station owner has his work cut out for him. Burr says that while customer misgivings can be well-founded, based on painful experience, often it's not a question of dishonesty, but a case of there not being enough qualified technicians to go around.
   
   "Less than 20 percent of technicians are Master Certified," he says.
   
   Both of Burr's technicians are, or soon will be, Master Certified. Both are Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) Certified. They can do everything from air-conditioning repair to full diagnostic work.
   
   "Other than transmission work, there's nothing we can't do," Burr says. "And we work with a reputable transmission shop."
   
   While Burr can understand public perception, he points out that quality service doesn't always jibe with hectic "lifestyles."
   
   "It's hard to get quality service when everything's based on speed," he says.

3. 3. The City Paper - Smart, Fast, Free

   www.nashvillecitypaper.com/ind - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/9/2002   Last Visited: 5/23/2006

   The station's new name will be Hillsboro Village Auto Service, according to owner Todd Burr.