In the fall of 1970 I realized I had to start making money. MIT was too great a financial burden to continue, and I was 27 years old and no longer subject to the draft. The engineering job market was not strong — there was a mild recession and it was not easy to find work in the computer industry — so I started researching going into business instead.
The first thing I found was a motel for sale in Yarmouth on Cape Cod. It had around 30 rooms, an apartment on the second floor for the owner, and a swimming pool, and it was priced at around $250,000. It seemed like a good opportunity. I spent several weeks researching it thoroughly, talking to other motel owners in the area, studying the seasonal patterns, and running the numbers. In the end I decided against it. The motel was too dependent on the summer season, and one bad summer could wipe you out. I wanted something that ran year-round.
Around the same time I had a few Czech friends who had come over after 1968 and were working at a Texaco station in Burlington. One of them told me that Texaco was looking for people to lease stations. I went to talk to them. The deal was straightforward: you leased the station from Texaco, bought the gas from Texaco at a fixed price, and kept the difference between your cost and what you charged customers. You also had the option to do car repairs if you had a mechanic.
I found a Texaco station available in Burlington, on Route 128. To cover the startup costs I borrowed money from 2 friends — $2,500 each — and used savings I had accumulated. I signed the lease and prepared to open.
Before the station opened I had to complete a Texaco training course — about 2 weeks at a facility in New Jersey. It covered basic operations, safety, customer service, and how to read the numbers. It was not complicated. When I came back I was ready.
The station opened in early 1971. I hired one attendant to help with pumping gas. The hours were long — 7AM to 10PM, seven days a week in the beginning — and I was doing most of the work myself.
I was now committed to running a gas station alone, having already borrowed money and signed a lease. I had to make it work.
As it turned out, I was not entirely alone. Marie had a boyfriend at the time, a Czech man named Honza who had come over after 1968. He was looking for work and I asked him if he knew anything about cars. He said he had worked on cars in Czechoslovakia. I told him I could use help at the station.
Honza said that he was also an auto mechanic and would go into partnership with me on the car repair side of the business. He would bring in the customers and handle the repairs and we would split the profits on that side of the business. It sounded reasonable.
Car repair business was slow at the start. It was during those quiet periods that I taught myself how to do oil changes and minor repairs by watching Honza and reading the manuals. I had no formal training as a mechanic, but I was good with my hands and I understood how things worked. I had rebuilt radios as a teenager. Learning to change oil and brake pads was not so different in principle.
One afternoon a customer brought in a Mercedes for an oil change. I was alone at the station. Honza was not there. I had watched him do the procedure several times, and I decided to do it myself rather than turn the customer away. When I got under the car I noticed the engine was an unusual configuration — the drain plug was not where I expected it to be. I stood there for a moment. Then I thought back to repairing bicycle gears as a boy in Prague, and how I had learned to look carefully at something before assuming I understood it. I found the drain plug, changed the oil, and the customer drove away satisfied. That was the moment I knew I could learn this business.
Honza was renting a room not far from the gas station. The station was on a busy road and we had good traffic for gas, but the car repair side was slow to develop.
The problem was that most mornings when I arrived at 8AM the station was not open yet. Honza was supposed to be there at 7. Sometimes he arrived at 9 or 10. I spoke to him about it repeatedly. He apologized and said it would not happen again. It kept happening.
Then one day a stranger stopped by and introduced himself as Joe, the previous Texaco station operator. He had run the station for several years before I took over and knew all the regular customers. He told me he missed working and asked if I needed any help. I hired him on the spot as a full-time attendant. He knew the customers, the neighborhood, and the business far better than I did. Having Joe around made an enormous difference.
Things improved somewhat after the American mechanic came on board, but the fundamental problem with Honza did not go away. He continued to arrive late, sometimes by hours. I eventually let him go.
After about a year at the Texaco station I realized the location was not right for me. Burlington was suburban and the traffic patterns were unpredictable. I started looking at other options. A Shell station on Route 9 in Wellesley came to my attention. Route 9 was a major artery connecting Boston to the western suburbs. The traffic was dense and consistent. The demographics of Wellesley and the nearby communities meant people had money to spend on their cars and they expected quality work. It was a better fit for what I had in mind.
In May 1971 I broke the Texaco lease and opened the Shell station on Route 9 in Wellesley.
When I was leaving the Texaco station I asked the representative what he would tell future potential operators about me. He paused for a moment before answering.
He told me he would say I was a sucker who did not know how to run a gas station.
I thanked him and left.
After I left, I received a bill for $35,000 for inventory I had supposedly used and not paid for. I disputed it. We eventually settled for $1,000. That taught me something important about reading contracts carefully and about what people mean when they tell you something versus what the paperwork says.