Dan Deitz lives in his own home on a dirt road in Westminster West. So do his mother and four (of eight) siblings, each with his or her own home and three acres of land purchased in the early 60’s by their parents to start a new life in Vermont, having left Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Dan graduated from Bellows Falls High School in 1981, having spent his senior year in the automobile tech program in the Career Center at Brattleboro Union High School. Virtually the next day, he started work at Brattleboro Tire on Putney Road in Brattleboro. He’s still there: 42 years and counting.
In June, 2016, after 35 years working with the then owner, John Penfield, he purchased the business. He was quick to point out: “Now I’ve got nowhere to go except down!”
Dan oversees a five-bay operation, each with its own specialized mechanic and lift, a showroom/office as well as a 30’x70’ one-story, immaculate and well-organized tire warehouse up back for between 600-700 new tires.
He remembers when he first started changing and balancing tires in the 1980’s, “it was all work on Fords and Chevies, and, every once in a while, a Subaru or Toyota. Now it’s just the opposite. Back in the 80’s it was all about mechanics; now it’s all about mechanics AND computers. The most advanced European cars have upwards to seventeen computers in them.”
And what that means is that Dan and his four techs “ have to have command a vast range of knowledge and skills. And customers don’t just pull in their cars and get tires changed. There are five bays, each designed for specific purposes: passenger cars, light trucks, mid-sized tractor tires, even lawn mowers. The first two are Hydra lifts – car-hoists for tire and brake work. The second two are rotary lifts giving access to the whole underside of the car to solves other problems related to the four wheels.
The fifth lift is a “heavy-duty runway” with a 14,000 pound lifting capacity for vehicles with 18’ wheelbases: double-cab four-door pickups…. One of Dan’s techs pulls the vehicle into place positioning the vehicle just-so in front of a state-of-the-art Hunter Engineering alignment computer. It produces computer-based images and data to show the utterly precise alignment of each tire to determine exactly at what angle the rubber of each tire meets the road. All four are then adjusted to match and be perfectly level. And that’s just one element of what the computer reveals that needs to be adjusted.
The five techs who work with Dan are: Frank Wilson, in his 30’s who studied at WYOTECH, a trade school in Wyoming; local guys Chris Avery, in his 30’s; Jamie Wieckers, age 49, and Robert King, 65, about to retire, and William McNary, 28. Duane Fowler-Shaw, in his early 50’s, is the shop manager who has worked with Dan for over 25 years. These guys work throughout the day to the sounds of WTSA Radio located just down the road (and other stations). Each has his own tool chests and computers. Those computers link them to national auto-repair sites where they can access both solutions to thorny problems and individual specialized tech experts nationwide.
As manager, Dan organizes the day’s work, the paperwork, and, as he told me, “I’m the smiling face. I’m the people-guy for the customers, the organizer of the business and chief bottle washer.”
This all boggles the mind of this writer who doesn’t even attempt to change the oil in his own riding lawn mower. I turn to Dan’s brother Tom, a mechanic for Pinnacleview Equipment in Walpole, NH. As to plowing snow off our driveway, their brother and crack mechanic Howie Jr. (in 2005, named by NASCAR as one of four Craftsman Mechanics of the Year) takes care of our snowplowing.
I asked Dan about his life at home. He has two daughters, both of whom have flown the nest. Amanda is 31. She lives in Charlestown, NH and works in the offices of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Natalie, age 21, lives near Portland, Maine and is a 2nd year student of automobile technology at Southern Maine Community College near Portland.
Dan recalled that when Natalie was in high school, he suggested they work together on and off through the summer on a project. Dan had an old Jeep in the back yard. They took the Jeep apart COMPLETELY, leaving every single part in an organized way all over the backyard. By summer’s end they had completely rebuilt it.
What does Dan do other than work? He’s a member of the Brattleboro Sunrise Rotary Club and has been for 18 years and is a past president. “It’s a do-gooders’ breakfast club. We do volunteer work helping people insulate their homes, maintain public gardens, raise money for student scholarships, send money to needy groups in places like Nicaragua and The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the Dakotas.” He’s also into snowmobiling, motor sports, Jeep off-roading and motor sports. “What can I say?”
Shortly after interviewing Tom just before Christmas, my wife Mary and I went with friends to Peter Havens’ Restaurant in Brattleboro for dinner with friends. Shortly after we four were seated, Dan, his girlfriend, and all his tech guys and their partners took over a very long table in the second room of the restaurant. When I saw Dan a few days later, I asked him if that was a Christmas bash he was throwing for his crew. “Yeah,” he said, “I take them out four times of year to have a good time together.”
This is one of a series of some 30 profiles of working people from southern Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire that I wrote and then published in the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper every Friday from Jan 1 - May 30. Do the same with your local newspaper.