Auto repairman dabbles in doughnuts, parade floats

By Katie Hotynski
hotynskg@uwec.edu

Joel Mikelson was outside his car repair shop, working on one of his “pipe dreams” — a trailer he wants to turn into a doughnut stand. The floor of the trailer was lined with dingy, green, ’70s-era linoleum flooring, and the walls and countertops were torn up. He wants to fix up the trailer and use it to sell fresh doughnuts, which he makes with applesauce, cinnamon and buttermilk and deep fries every morning – along with cappuccino and other breakfast food at the bus stop at Seventh and Water streets, in front of his shop.

“Do you think I’ll get some business?” he asked.
           
When he’s not frying doughnuts — or evading the health department, who he said insists that he stop selling them — Mikelson, 48, is busy changing oil, fixing cars and managing his four employees at Joel’s Water Street Auto.

It’s a struggle to keep a small business running, he said, but he enjoys meeting people every day and said enjoying his work is more important to him than turning huge profits.
           
Mikelson sat in the customers’ area of his shop, a small waiting area with the feel of a ’50s diner. Black-and-white photos of the place when it was still a Texaco station line the walls behind the counter with its red-cushioned barstools. An old poster advertising Coca-Cola was taped to the wall behind him.
           
Mikelson’s career in the auto service industry started when he got a job at a gas station in high school. He enrolled in the marketing program at Chippewa Valley Technical College after graduation. After three semesters, he was working at a garage full time and making $12,000 a year, so he left the program.
           
He bought the shop that would become Joel’s Water Street Auto 16 years ago when he saw it up for sale. Lacking the funds to pay for it, he bought it on a land contract and took out a $5,000 loan, which took more than four years to pay back – a time, he said, that felt like forever.

Mikelson started out with two employees and hired another as business grew. He added his son, Jay Mikelson, to the payroll two years ago, though he had been helping out at the shop since childhood, working during summers and “cutting and torching” as a boy.
           
“He started working here when he was six, really,” Joel Mikelson said. When times got tough, he said, Jay Mikelson often worked at the shop without pay to help the family get by.

For 10 years, Mikelson ran a second shop on London Road. He said that to break even, he had to make $1500 a day at his London Road shop and $1000 a day on Water Street. The overhead was killing him, as were the hours.

“That’s a lot of money, and it’s also a lot of stress,” he said.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, there are 63 auto repair shops in Eau Claire. More than half employ between one and four people.
           
“I learned that a city this size is pretty small to become your own competitor,” Mikelson said.

At his remaining store on Water Street, Mikelson said he takes in about $400,000 a year in sales, which adds up to little profit after paying his employees and covering expenses. Five years ago, he said, he only made $5,500.

“It’s a struggle,” he said. “There’s never quite enough money, and if you do have the money, you spend it right away.”

Links

Directions to Joel's Water Street Auto where you find more than just car repairs.

Check out The Spectator's 'The Best of Eau Claire 2005' where Joel's Water Street Auto was voted the best auto repair by UW-Eau Claire students.