Fixed Ops Journal - June 2017 - 34

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

SIDE BY SIDE

Veteran JM Lexus techs
Des Gibbs, left, and Clem
Hall have been partners
for so long they finish
each other's sentences.
MARK ELIAS

 Service technicians retire after working together for 30 years

MARK ELIAS

foj@autonews.com

ARGATE, Fla. - Des Gibbs and
Clem Hall began working together as dealership service technicians in South Florida in 1987.
President Ronald Reagan was in his second
term, the stock market crashed, General Motors
rolled out a solar-powered car and the Detroit 3
claimed a 71.7 percent U.S. market share.
Three decades later, Gibbs, 81, and Hall, 67,
are retiring together as certified, full-time
master body specialists. The techs, both natives of Jamaica, will hang up their work grays
for the last time on July 1.
"I am going to really miss it," Hall says. "I am
tired - that's why I am retiring. Otherwise I
would keep going."
In all, Gibbs' career as a tech in U.S. dealerships dates to the early 1970s. In a conversation with Fixed Ops Journal at JM Lexus here,
where they have worked as a team in the body
shop since 1991, Gibbs and Hall reflected on
the changes they have seen in fixed operations during their tenures.
The partners suggest that today's technicians don't get the amount of training they

PAGE 34

JUNE 2017

Words to work by

Service technicians Des Gibbs, 81,
and Clem Hall, 67, will retire next
month after working as a team for 30
years. They offer this advice to
younger techs.
 Get all the training available.
 Appreciate the value of teamwork.
 Embrace technology.
 Help others advance.
 Have fun.

did before they were permitted to work on vehicles. Gibbs trained as a coachbuilder in the
United Kingdom and came to the United
States in 1971 to work as a body specialist at
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Manhattan.
Hall completed a similar yearslong apprenticeship in vehicle repair that he says encouraged him to take pride in his work.
Gibbs recalls: "I attended a trade school [in
England] where we had to learn about metalworking, modeling, woodworking and geometry before we were allowed to touch a car.
They [assigned] you small toy cars to build,

then you would build a body from scratch."
As a coachbuilder, Gibbs adds, he developed a system that enabled him to build as
many as eight car bodies at a time instead of
one. He finished faster than his coworkers, he
says, with no loss of quality. Younger service
technicians, he says, don't get the same opportunity to learn and experiment.
"I know they try their best," Gibbs says, "but
I don't think there is enough training when
they start. To really learn the trade properly
takes time."
The pair mentored other body shop employees at JM Lexus. Hall says he warns younger
techs that "everything you do, if you do it
wrong, you will have to do it again."
After Gibbs left the Rolls-Royce dealership
in New York, he opened a body shop in the
city. Thieves looted his store during the 1977
New York blackout, he says, causing him to
move to Florida to start over.
Separately, Hall also left New York, where he
worked for 13 years at an independent body
shop, for South Florida. Gibbs and Hall started working side by side in 1987 in the body
see RETIRE, Page 35

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