Since you damaged you rear quarter panel and a backup lamp, I don't think that your vehicles met square on, but maybe corner to corner. (How else would the quarter panel have been damaged.) The truck may not have been in the view cone of the backup sensor, but should have been visible in a rear view mirror. The Jeep Cherokee has decent ourside rear view mirrors.

So your dad quit the auto repair industry, and went to school for aerospace engineering? That is what I wanted to do coming out of high school, aerospace engineering. I was on the doorstep to the Naval Academy in a bid to do just that, but fell short of my dream. I ended up becoming a mechanic because it was something I could do and figured I'd work a little while and then work my way through school. Only I never managed to make enough money to put anything aside in order to get to go back to school, got married, kid came along, and here I am in 2006 still working as a tech albeit self-employed. As far as me being "down this road before" when it comes to me attacking predujuices against my feild, you can be assured that I have been. I can't begin to tell you how many times a "customer" looked down their nose at me because I was fixing cars for a living, and their attitude showed right away that they felt for me to be doing this I either had to be dumb, or a crook, or you go ahead and fill in the degrading label as you choose. Many times it made me want to quit fixing cars, and physically throw them and their POS out the door. I'll bet your dad had similar feelings. The one problem though that I see reguarding your dads automotive repair credentials is about how you said he was only in this for two years. Many people try and start their own shop with little or no real experience, or training. That is one of the problems in this industry that has held pricing in this feild well below where it SHOULD be, especially if you compare what I(we) have to do to almost any other SKILLED LABOR field. When you wrote this "Now I figure with the rates higher in the NE...we should EXPECT to pay a higher charge for this service!! It's criminal." You pushed the button that got me on your case. My accountant told me just last month, with the investment that I have to provide the services that I do, and the costs that I am faced with to continue to upgrade tools and equipment to stay up to date, any other equivelent field would be charging over $120/hr with at least a 50% gross profit margin on the parts. That would work out to an average of right about $200/hr Gross Profit. Now that number is a little higher than industry average, first of all because I am one of a very few techs that specializes in engine performance, emission controls, and all vehicle electronics and has experience on just about everything on the street. Plus I have the mechanical experience that allows me to take on virtually anything, bumper to bumper. But one more factor, I also work by myself, which means the entire cost of the operation weighs squarely on the work what I produce. What this all means is that for me to work at full potential I would easily have to outprice all of my "competition" by more than 2 to 1, and anyone then that would compare prices normally would take the stance where you did earlier and use the word "criminal". That's pretty unfair, being called criminal because they don't understand the costs we are incurring to try and provide the best service that we can. Now in trying to keep that reputation from happening, the only thing that I can do is first, underprice, and second I have to choose what I am going to buy and which cars and systems I will no longer work on. Even though physically I have the means, without electronic support (O.E. scan tools) I have to turn ever more cars away. Right now if you by a 2007 Chrysler product, (Plus some 2004's and on up in numbers through 2007) I don't have the equipment that I truly need to function at the same level that the dealer does. Worse than that is I don't see where the $10,000 that I will need to purchase this equipment will come from, especially when I have the same problem to deal with multiplied by each manufacturer. Ten years ago, I had a single scan tool and I could do everything that showed up at my door. The cost for that tool was $3000 and change. That same expense today is over $250,000 for just that kind of equipment. That is an expense that we didn't have ten years ago, and one that virtually every shop out there is not making. Do you want to know just how big a quarter million dollars is compared to my shop? That amount is more than my shops total gross sales for a year. That amount is more than every tool and piece of equipment that I have collected over the last thrity years. Plus even if I hit the lottery and bought this stuff, it's not like buying a house and is equity. It's all depreciating assets. Ten/twelve years later the best expectation I can have is that they may still have occasional use (one or two times a year), and that I will be able to afford whatever their replacements end up being. After that, they are dust collectors, a quarter million dollars worth of garbage can fillers. That's the reality of the field I am in. One where we get no vacations, I'm always spending every available dime on something for the shop. We have nothing saved for retirement, same reason. Well, let me clarify, I have about $3000 in an IRA from a previous employment and we will have social security, plus I could continue to work at some level until...... So yea I take offense when I see a post like yours. But instead of getting angry, and just blowing it off, I take and grab the chance to help people get a better glimpse of exactly what it takes for their corner garage to be there. Now granted we are not all created equal, we have few if any standards (something I would like to change). If your dad retired from aerospace tomorrow, and wanted to open a shop we don't have anything inside this industry to make him prove that he is actually trained and qualified to do so. (That's something else I would like to change but I know it's beyond my abilities) Now, you wanted help with your Jeep. When you figure out what I am actually saying, you will find exactly what help I have provided. Granted it's not what you thought you were looking for, and it may take some time to understand it fully. But it's there. Me? I have to head to the shop today, I have a couple cars that I can knock out, and make more space on the schedule tomorrow for something else. If I was actually priced correctly, I would not have to work seven days a week. But If I was priced correctly for what it costs me for what I actually provide, I'd only ever get the nightmare cars that "no one else can fix". That would put me out of business in a month.

I too have the "burn at the stake" one. I must have forty or so accumulated over time (and I'm talking about around 8 years) in an envelope in my glove compartment. People give me stickers fairly often - I keep the ones I like best and pass along others - and they're not exactly expensive investments. The ones from the Northern Sun catalog are the priciest ones I ever buy at $2. Allison, although there is a risk of theft, you can mount a regular sticker on the very thin magnetic sheets from any craft store. Barb, the dragons sticker is a spinoff of the line from one of the Lord of the Rings books - "do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger". I picked that one up in a science fiction bookstore. (One of my dream bumper stickers would read: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. -- JRR Tolkien No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style. -- Steven Brust) I'll grant that there are many bumper stickers out there that make me wish I had a rocket launcher mounted on the hood of my car - usually expressing some kind of hate-filled, couldn't-pry-that-closed-mind-open-with-the-Jaws-of-Life vileness - but I would never even consider defacing someone else's property no matter how much they p!$$ed me off. I saw one today that made me rather sad: "War does not define who is right. It only defines who is left." (As in left alive.) So true, and I wish it weren't. However, I don't care to put any kind of advertising stickers on my car, just like I don't wear clothes with brand or store names splashed across them. (I do like to wear kooky t-shirts, I'll admit it, because I think it's fun to make people do a double-take. My favorite is worn to tatters - reads "give me that old-time religion" with a drawing of people dancing around Stonehenge. LOL) I figure if a business wants me or my car to be a billboard they can dang well pay me for it.

'My other car is a Corvette". This sticker was on a Corvette! On a small car with 4 cylinder engine: "I could've had a V8", the sign emulating the well known tomato based drink. "My dog is smarter than your kid" "Don't blame me. I did not vote for him." The name of a local beauty parlor: "Curl up and Dye" "My Toy" On the plate of a Jaguar: "Purrrrr"