Rick Carter, September 12, 2026

Rick Carter

I've been in this industry for roughly 40 years. I started in high school working at a garage and worked there for 21 years, and then I started my own business a little over 19 years ago.

Rick Carter

At our shop we do basic general maintenance, repairs, safety and emissions inspections and emissions repairs, brakes, tires, exhaust, suspension, transmissions. We don't do any body work, and we don't rebuild engines or transmissions. We just don't have the space for it, but we do install them or replace them if needed.

Rick Carter

I'm a certified master tech, so I'm certified in everything auto repair that you can get. Brakes, tires, suspension, transmissions, engine repair, engine performance, electronics, air conditioning, airbags, pretty much everything. Certified safety inspector, emissions inspector, and a certified emissions repair facility and technician.

Rick Carter

I'd say somewhere between 1,500 and 1,700 a year.

Rick Carter

I would say anything having to do with the safety, the general safety of the car. Brakes, tires, things like that.

Rick Carter

You'd probably get a positive return. I'm not really involved in sales of vehicles, but seeing what I see on a daily basis, I think anything that's more safe for the person who's going to buy it. And if you have receipts where you've had those things done, like brakes, tires, or whatever it could be, to make the car pass inspection or be a better vehicle, I think it makes the car more valuable. So I would think you get better return on your money.

Rick Carter

I do see a lot of bad things come through my shop that come from a lot of used car dealers around me that try to, shall we say, make a car just look good, polish it up, make it look clean, and try to sell it for as much as they can. And unfortunately, a lot of people get taken advantage of.

Rick Carter

I had one in the shop the other day. A gentleman bought a truck from some used car dealer around me that supposedly had been in a minor accident, they said, and it got hit so hard in the front that it bent the frame, and there's no metal bumper on the car. So he has the plastic cosmetic bumper on the front of the car, but the metal bumper is not even there, and you can't even put it back on without going to the body shop and having some framework done to it.

Rick Carter

So I see a lot of bad things, and it's really unsafe, because if he runs into somebody or runs off the road and hits a tree or whatever, everything from the radiator to the engine and everything else are coming back to him because there's no bumper on the front.

Rick Carter

When it's going up in the air, I'm looking at the tires and trying to look through the wheels and see if I can see the brakes, and checking any visual things that I see that's wrong with it.

Rick Carter

If I'm doing a pre-purchase inspection for a customer that's buying a used car, I would be looking at tires and brakes and body lines, and looking at the paint to see if the paint matches. Looking at the doors and the fenders, and see if it's the same color paint, different colored paint, or any signs of body work, and then go from there.

Rick Carter

If it's coming in for an oil change, I'm still looking at brakes and tires, but I'm probably not looking at the body work. Anything I can advise the customer of that I see that is a potential problem, whether it's there for that or not.

Rick Carter

If somebody wants a pre-purchase inspection, we do that for anybody who's potentially buying a used car from a friend, a neighbor, online, or from a dealer. We let them know if the car would pass safety inspection in Virginia, emissions inspection in Virginia, and then we try to do our due diligence to look for accident damage.

Rick Carter

Because accident reports are only as good as what gets reported. I could drive my car into a tree over here and take it to the body shop and pay them, and it doesn't necessarily get recorded with Carfax, and nobody would have privy of the information of that.

Rick Carter

I would say 95% of the time, yes. I'm looking really good from the top side, the bottom side, looking for any kind of paint work, weld work, any kind of bent metal, any kind of difference in paint shade, color. Generally 95 percent or more, you can tell.

Rick Carter

Even the best of body shops in this area, you can still, if you look at the right angles, you can see body work behind the paint or under the paint. You can see sometimes sand marks. You can see different shades in the paint. You can see dirt in the paint. There's all kinds of ways you can pick it up.

Rick Carter

Certainly. You'd be looking for problems with floor pans, or bent suspension and steering components like control arms or tie rod ends, struts, shocks, and sometimes exhaust. If somebody runs over something or bottoms a car out, the exhaust will be bent. A lot of people back up and tailpipes hit something and bend the exhaust from backing up.

Rick Carter

All those things are visually noticeable. If you've got it up in the air and you know what you're looking at, it's pretty easy to pick up on.

Rick Carter

It could be as simple as fluid leaks. If you've got oil or antifreeze leaking on a car, and it's not properly diagnosed, it can go either way. You could have an oil leak, and it could be something as simple as a valve cover gasket that's a $150 repair, a $200 repair, versus a rear main seal of an engine or something that's leaking that could be thousands of dollars.

Rick Carter

Any kind of malfunction lights, indicator lights, engine lights, ABS lights, airbag lights, those can range from simple to very expensive depending on what the code is and what area the problem's in. An engine light could be something as simple as a gas cap that's not put back on the car, they left it on the gas pump. Or it could be a code for a catalytic converter, which could be a $3,000 job.

Rick Carter

Actually, the same things. A lot of people freak out when the check engine light or an airbag light comes on because they think it's going to be something costly, when in fact it could be something very simple. I've seen people come in with a check engine light and all it is is the gas cap wasn't put back on when they got gas the last time. I've seen people come in with ABS lights on, and they think, my God, do I need brakes? Do I need an ABS module? And somebody worked on the car and boogered the wire up, and it's a simple fix.

Rick Carter

We charge an hour and a half for it, so for us it's $240.

Rick Carter

100%.

Rick Carter

I would say any of the things that relate to the safety of the operation of the vehicle. Rims, tires, brakes, bent suspension and steering components. All those things that help you drive the car, maintain and operate the car safely. Those are the most important that need to be fixed and fixed correctly to be safe for the consumer.

Rick Carter

It would be beneficial to save money and do cheaper things cosmetically, and provide a good product for the person who's receiving the car and buying the car and having a safe car.

Rick Carter

Safety is number one. Operating a vehicle can be a dangerous thing.

Rick Carter

I don't think there's any number. There's no given number for anything where at a certain time it's going to break. Certainly services like maintenance services need to be done at certain mileages. But as far as this is when things are going to start to break on this car, not really.

Rick Carter

If you maintain the car and a car is maintained properly and taken care of, any of your well-built vehicles can last hundreds of thousands of miles. I have numerous people that have over 350,000 miles on their vehicles that are still driving them. They bring them in religiously and they do the services to them.

Rick Carter

The one that I can think of off the top of my head is an '03 Suburban that is 23 years old with 359,000 miles. Original engine, transmission, rear differential. All that car has ever had its entire life is brakes, tires, belts, hoses, fluid changes and tune-ups, and it's never had a major component fail on it.

Rick Carter

Yes, 100%.

Rick Carter

From my standpoint, being in this field and just as a consumer, I would say if I had two identical cars, one that had all the maintenance records for the last 150,000 miles, and another car that didn't have anything and looked like it wasn't maintained, I would say that car in my opinion is well worth 25 to 30 percent more.

Rick Carter

Just because if you have the documentation, you know it was maintained. You have a good feeling that the car is not going to break down on you tomorrow. Those people that keep those records and do the services try to do it to get the longevity out of their car, and that's a good thing for it.

Rick Carter

If I were going to buy a $10,000 car that had no records and didn't look like it was taken care of, and I had one with a folder full of records where they had the oil changed every 3 to 6,000 miles and all the records of the tune-ups and the fluid changes and the filters and hoses, I'd definitely pay 25% more. I'd pay 12,000 or so.