In 1992, a small village owner became the richest man in the village by owning a car.

Chapter 205 Repair Shop Inventory and Summary
It took Yu Dawei about a week to go from leaving the factory to returning from Dingcheng and then from the oil city. In other words, the factory had been operating for almost half a month since Lao Ji arrived.

The fact that the "Captain's Repair Manual" is filled with grid-like records shows that Lao Ji and his colleague have indeed been repairing a lot of vehicles lately.

Axe put all the money he received into a small wooden box. This box was a medicine box that Yu Dawei had picked up from Brother Duan's place. Before leaving, he specifically gave it to Axe and Lao Ji to store money. Then the two of them put the box into the cabinet on the north side.

Yu Dawei opened the box, took out the cash inside, and counted it. The amount shocked him.

The repair shop's income over the past two weeks has reached more than 9,500 yuan, which is about 200 yuan more than the daily income I expected.

This is still before the factory has equipment for tire repair, welding, and other similar tasks. Many repair jobs are not fully available. If the repair equipment were complete, earning 20,000 yuan a month in the factory would be no problem at all.

This situation caused Yu Dawei to frown deeply. He hadn't originally planned to focus on developing the repair shop; it was merely a product of his passion, a side business.

But now it seems like my side hustle is making more money than my main job.

“Boss, this nine thousand is only a part. There are still a third of the cars in the yard that haven’t been settled yet. There are all the receipts in the box.” Old Ji picked up the winnowing basket and rolled his pipe. “As you said before, those who live in the town can sign a receipt first and settle the payment later after the car is repaired. Those who come here to repair their cars pay half a deposit on the spot and then settle the balance after the repair is completed.”

Yu Dawei nodded. He learned this detail about collecting payments from his eldest daughter-in-law in his previous life. He used to be careless when it came to collecting money. Sometimes, after the car was repaired, some bosses would delay paying the repair fees for several months, until the debts became a mess.

One year during Chinese New Year, I was drinking with my eldest son. He was bragging about how many cars he had repaired and how much money he had made that year, while also complaining about not getting paid.

It was around that time that his eldest daughter-in-law gave him an idea, telling him how she usually settled accounts with customers, which made him really take the matter of settling accounts seriously.

Now reborn, he not only used the prepayment and final payment from his previous life, but also used relationships to bind IOUs, firmly holding onto some deadbeats who refuse to pay.

In short, you don't have to give it to me, but I definitely won't lose out. But if you really don't give it to me, then you don't need to come back next time.

The factory's daily turnover is now around 650. Yu Dawei is shifting his focus to the factory and plans to buy some common repair equipment for the repair shop. He thinks the money he has earned in the past half month will be enough.

The three of them began to gather around the kang table, listing the equipment they needed to buy and the approximate estimated prices.

During this time, Xiao Agui was not idle either. After cleaning up the dishes, he took the kettle and sat on the stove to boil water for the three of them.

"You definitely need to buy an air pump. With an air pump, you can inflate tires on any car, and even if you don't use it to inflate tires, it will make cleaning oil and dirt much easier when you're doing repairs," Lao Ji suggested.

“I’ll buy it. Boss Liang has them. I bought one from him before. I’ll just go to his store and buy the air pump again.” Yu Dawei took notes with a pen in his hand, and then added, “His air pumps have four cylinders, which is enough for everything.”

Upon hearing this, Lao Ji and Fu Zi both nodded in agreement.

The air pump used for car repair is also called a piston air compressor. Smaller ones include single-cylinder air compressors, as well as double-cylinder, triple-cylinder, and four-cylinder air compressors. Double-cylinder air compressors are rare. The most common and widely used air compressors on the market are single-cylinder, triple-cylinder, and four-cylinder air compressors.

Four-cylinder air compressors are the best among air compressors. They not only have a large air compression capacity, but also stronger air pressure and a longer service life. It can be said that Yu Dawei's decision to buy a four-cylinder air pump can be considered a one-stop solution for repairing equipment.

The market price for a four-cylinder air pump is now around three thousand yuan. This was one of the things Yu Dawei bought with extra money back then, costing nearly four thousand yuan, which is quite expensive.

"Besides the air pump, we also need a set of oxygen and acetylene equipment. We might not use it normally, but we can't do without it when we really need it," Yao Jinfu suggested.

Yu Dawei nodded, which was considered an agreement. In fact, he had wanted to buy it before, but he felt it was unnecessary and he didn't care much about the repair shop's business.

To put it more bluntly, he ran a repair shop at least four or five times in his past life, and he never made any money. He has long lost the desire to make money from repair shops; it's mostly just a sentimental thing for him.

However, this unintentional act unexpectedly created a repair shop with huge potential.

"Let's get a welding machine too," Yu Dawei suggested, and then wrote the welding machine on the list. The repairman didn't use the motor too often, but it was better to be prepared, as there was always a chance he would need it.

After listing the major items, Yu Dawei added a few smaller items, such as needing to buy two more kilogram wrenches, as one wasn't enough. He could weld a super-large tripod himself, but he was missing a larger chain hoist.

Getting a ten-ton chain hoist isn't exactly a one-step solution, but it definitely pushes the tripod to its limit. In fact, the crossbeam on the tripod would bend even if it didn't reach ten tons.

From this perspective, a ten-ton chain hoist should be sufficient.

In addition, there are shackles. Originally there were only two, but Yu Dawei plans to buy four more, which is two pairs, one for twenty tons and one for ten tons, so that he will have large, medium and small sizes.

Add four more steel wire ropes, four slings, and one set of ratchet wrenches.

In addition to these tools, car repair also requires some consumables for routine maintenance.

For example, cotton gloves, thick rubber gloves, welding gloves, welding rods, laundry detergent, and so on...

There were many things to buy, and the total cost was about eight thousand yuan. Yu Dawei took out another thousand yuan from the remaining money and put it in Fu Zi's hand.

This money was for food expenses while living at the factory.

Everyday things like buying eggs and vegetables require money, and a thousand yuan is enough for the few people in the factory to live on for a while.

Yu Dawei specifically instructed Fu Zi to buy more meat, as Xiao A Gui was rather thin and needed to eat more meat and protein to gradually recover.

After sorting out the various pieces of equipment to be purchased, Yu Dawei's factory still had 500 yuan left. Of course, there were still outstanding payments, but the cash flow was still quite sufficient. Fortunately, Fanfan Repair Shop had been generating revenue from the very beginning, so Yu Dawei didn't need to put any more money into it.

Once the water was boiled, Xiao Agui took out several tea mugs and placed them on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed). He then poured a cup for each of them from the kettle and placed them in front of the three of them.

"I still have some top-quality tea here." Yu Dawei took out some of the white tea that Xiaobai had given him, put a little into everyone's teacup, and also made a cup of tea for Xiao Agui.

The four men continued to sit at the kang table, discussing the next steps for the repair shop.

"Boss, here's what I'm thinking: we should focus on construction machinery, with various types of cars as secondary products. As for farm vehicles, motorcycles, and bicycles, we won't be considering them anymore." Old Ji puffed out a cigarette, and perhaps afraid of choking Xiao Agui, he deliberately turned his back to exhale the smoke.

"Why do you do it this way?" Yu Dawei picked up the white teacup. Although his thoughts coincided with Lao Ji's, he still wanted to hear the other's opinion.

"Boss, you see, first of all, we have few people, so we definitely have to maximize our profits. I saw it when I was repairing farm machinery and bicycles a while ago. That's not making money at all, it's begging." Old Ji said, taking another puff of his cigarette as he spoke.

The people in the village weren't wealthy, and they were all very meticulous and thrifty, making it quite difficult to earn money from them. Therefore, Old Ji didn't dare charge too much, even lower than the prices in their town. So, when their bicycles broke, they would buy glue and fix them themselves. (Meticulous: a Northeastern dialect term meaning meticulous.)
Farm machinery and bicycles are definitely not worth repairing. Besides not making money, there's another reason, which is just a feeling he can't quite put his finger on, but he can sense that the business of repairing tricycles and bicycles will definitely get worse and worse in the future.

"And then?" Yu Dawei nodded, acknowledging what the other person said.

"Furthermore, I advocate repairing construction machinery because we have this advantage. Boss, you are a master of special machinery, and I am also a master craftsman. We can basically handle all kinds of imported and domestic construction machinery." Old Ji looked at Yu Dawei with confidence. "You tell me, wouldn't it be a pity if we didn't make use of our advantages in Luhe Town?"

"Not bad." Yu Dawei took a sip of tea, nodded in satisfaction, and then looked at Yao Jinfu, "Axe, what are your thoughts and suggestions about Fanfan Repair Shop?"

Yu Dawei tried his best to take everyone's thoughts into account, uniting everyone's ideas and working together as one. This kind of review meeting was very important at the beginning of the factory's establishment.

A boss who doesn't listen to his employees' ideas and insists on doing things his own way will end up like he did in his past life, with everyone becoming alienated from him.

“I think we can do both. We can focus on construction machinery repair, but we can’t neglect cars, trucks, and buses.” Yao Jinfu thought for a while before giving his suggestion. “Through the repairs we’ve done recently, we can see that we’re not doing a lot of construction machinery repairs, but we’re doing a lot of all sorts of miscellaneous vehicles.”

“This is due to the scale and base.” Yu Dawei explained to the two of them with a postmodern mindset: “After all, construction machinery is just a small circle. Compared with the automobile industry, its scale is simply insignificant. Moreover, this was at the beginning of the rise of the automobile industry.”

(End of this chapter)