Case Study: STM Automotive, Parkwood Road, Neepsend, Sheffield, so efficient that it can be run by a single fitter

Sheffield garage owner Martin Dawson is a Tecalemit customer with a real story to tell.

He was all set to build an extension to his Neepsend garage when thieves stepped in and stole the extension!

Martin had stored the building materials on his premises and had planned to do the construction himself but the thieves beat him to it and carted off more than £20,000-worth of specialist steels which had been cut to shape. Even the delivery wagon was stolen.

The extension was to house a brand new state of the art MoT facility for his business, STM Automotive, in Parkwood Road. The firm carries out servicing, repairs, diagnostics, body painting, and specialist work on classic cars – the sort of thing which other garages find time-consuming and expensive. STM gets a lot of subcontracted work from garages around South Yorkshire as a result.

That was back in 2012. But Martin wasn’t beaten – he ordered new steels, beefed-up the security...and slept in a caravan on the site for six months to ensure the replacement materials weren’t stolen before the construction was complete.

Once the building was finally erected it was equipped with a full Tecalemit MoT Bay and opened ... a year or so behind schedule!

The operation is now so efficient that it can be run by a single fitter.

“It’s amazing technology and it makes MoT work very fast and very accurate,” he said. “Thanks to the thieves, it took two years from placing the order to having the equipment installed, but it was worth it in the end to have one of Yorkshire’s most up-to- date MoT facilities.”