It has been 15 years since husband and wife team, Robert and Jane Dehnel, bought Taylor Body Shop in Merrill, Wisconsin. Since then, the family-owned and operated auto body shop has rebranded as One Way Collision Center. More recently, they relocated to a brand new building nearly twice the size of their original facility.
With more than double the capacity of their auto collision repair service, it has allowed them to expand their offerings to nearly every dealership in the area. In total, the shop can now house upwards of 27 cars, whereas their old facility could only tightly fit 11. This proves beneficial for staff and workflow.
The additional space, including a drive-in estimating bay, enables One Way to better serve their customers. Detailed with accents of wood made from the trees that were cut down to build the facility, the indoor 20-foot-by-36-foot drive-thru estimate bay is just a token of the amenities they offer to customers. They also offer loaner cars and a lifetime guarantee on repair work.
The paint side of their repair work also benefited when their new building opened the doors for One Way to add an additional spray booth. Relocated from the old location was an older model Ultra XD Paint Booth and Paint Mix Room. The shop is now complete with an additional Ultra XD spray booth, an Ultra XS prep station and separate Curtain Wall area that fits six cars.
“It’s been really nice having two paint booths, so we can be working on two things at the same time,” Dehnel said. “It was a huge bottleneck before. It’s all about turnaround time for the customer, and our GFS equipment helps us do it faster.”
From 2010, when One Way purchased their first GFS paint booth, to today, the efficiency of the spray booths, combined with the 4-inch-thick walls of their new building, have provided the necessary steps to keep the collision center moving forward.
“A decade ago, I took a paint certification class in Chicago, which had GFS spray booths,” Dehnel recalls. “I said, ‘These are nice booths.’ Now that I have all GFS equipment, I don’t know why you’d want to get anything else. You are going to get a lot better quality job. Period.”
