STATS: Website: cam2.com Cost: $200 Uses: Storing oil Training Required: None
The Reviewer:
Jay Huh quit his job as a service advisor two years ago and started working out of his home garage. Huh has experience in almost every aspect of the mechanical repair industry. He’s done mechanic work, car sales, and has been a service manager, store manager and service advisor. In 2015, he opened his Durham location and has been expanding ever since.
The Shop:
Carmedix Auto Repair has two locations in North Carolina—one in Raleigh and one in Durham. Both locations have six bays. The Carmedix team is made up of six technicians and four service advisors. Owner Jay Huh says that they are currently working on opening a third location.
How It Works:
Huh says that each month he would end up throwing hundreds of quarts of oil out and that the different weights of oils available meant that he needed to buy many different options, which ended up taking up a lot of space in his shop. When a representative from Campbell Oil Company, a CAM2 oil distributor, came and showed Huh the E-Pack oil rack, he thought it would be a great way to save money and space and that eliminating the plastic quarts would be better for the environment.
The oil rack that Huh uses in his shop houses quart boxes of oil. The rack holds six boxes at a time. Underneath the box is a pitcher that catches all of the oil. The boxes have a faucet-like attachment that pours the oil into the pitcher underneath. Huh explains that once the pitcher is filled up, it can be removed from the rack and taken and poured into the car. This replaces the funnel that he had to use before.
The Review:
Huh says that by storing the oil in boxes, he’s able to get every last drop out. He says that before, there was often leftover oil in the bottles that would inevitably be thrown out. Huh estimates that on average, roughly 5 percent of the oil would be thrown out with the bottle.
By storing the boxes on a rack, he’s also been able to save space in his shop. Before, Huh explains that he would just stack the bottles on an empty wall. Now, the shop looks more organized. Another benefit is the fact that the pitchers prevent oil spillage.
The Return:
The cost savings from switching from the boxes to the bottles was reason enough for Huh to purchase the oil rack: A quart box of oil is only $2.68 compared to the $3.99 the shop was paying for a bottle. Huh also adds that by using all of the oil, the shop saves even more money on materials. At an average of roughly 200 oil changes per month, that cost savings really adds up.
