Business

Work We Do: Todd Davey, North Fork Garage in Peconic

My name is Todd Davey. I own North Fork Garage out here in Peconic.

It’s a little hectic. It’s the process of getting the cars inside the building, figuring out what it needs, putting a bill together, or an estimate, and then selling the job, getting the parts and then trying to fix it. Hopefully we get the diagnosis correct on the first go; in most cases we do. 

I was going to school to become school teacher. I come from a family of teachers.

My mom saw I was struggling or a little bored and said, ‘Why don’t you become an auto mechanic? You’re always messing with cars.’ At that point I switched over to technical school, went through that and got right into the field. I’ve been working ever since. I got placed in a dealership right away, and I liked that but I decided I wanted to be able to work on everything so I went to a mom-and-pop shop. From there, I was like, well maybe I should try this on my own.

I’ve been out here three years now.

I do things the correct way. I only sell what’s necessary.

Being that I work on a lot of family vehicles, I struggle with giving a big bill because I feel like it’s the same thing as giving my family a big bill.

We’re really referral based. We don’t do much advertising. If you fix it the right way the first time, and hopefully people tell others. I get a lot of calls from people saying they were referred to me from another customer. I love that. It makes me feel really good.

I’ve been a mechanic since 2002. I was always into cars. I always liked taking things apart, putting them back together figuring out how things worked.

My favorite part of my job … diagnosing something that nobody else can.

I get a lot of vehicles that have been in and out of other buildings and I enjoy being the one that actually figures it out.

“The Work We Do” is a Suffolk Times multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. It is made possible by Peconic Landing. See more photos on Instagram @thesuffolktimes.