From sweeping floors
to thirty‑seven stores.

The official start date was January 1982. Dad was fixing the neighbors' cars in my grandparents' garage and kept getting thrown out of it, because the only way to paint a car was to shut off the pilot light on the water heater. Eventually my grandmother had had enough of cold showers. My grandparents covered a month's rent, he put his paint gun in a toolbox, and he opened a one-bay shop.

I arrived in 1988, with the shop already in full swing. I remember taking him dinner there, because that was the only way to see him. Once I was old enough he let me tag along, as long as I could keep up. He wasn't going to slow his pace down for me because he had stuff to do. When he'd go deal with a customer or an adjuster he'd leave me with the body shop guys. I had multiple dads, if you will.

I was too small for the frame rack and I hated my hands being greasy, so I was never going to be a mechanic. Painting in those days meant wet sanding, and I hated my feet being wet and my fingernails splitting. But I loved being a body guy — spreading mud and shaping a beat-up panel. It's still something I enjoy.

I was headed for mechanical engineering. Good prep school, college the obvious next step, and I was racing semi-professionally. I finished my first semester with straight A's and exactly at the limit for absences. Ten days into the second semester, the teachers wanted to know whether I planned to keep missing. I had a race the next week. So I made it easy for them and told them it was a pleasure to meet them.

My parents weren't going to let me be a bum. It was college or work, so in 2007 I went into the shop full time. That one location — 80,000 square feet in Albuquerque — would grow to $1.7 million a month. This industry, once it sucks you in, you're stuck: love it or not, you're not leaving it.

“You're going to have to work twice as hard and twice as long to have half the respect — because people are going to assume you're here because of who you are, not what you're capable of.” My father, Jim Guthrie

I started in parts, moved into parts management, then estimating, then production manager, sitting next to Kevin Weldon — a second dad and forever friend.

Then in 2015 we bought our largest competitor and its three stores, added two more and opened a greenfield inside eighteen months — one location to seven, ultimately settling to five through COVID. That's when the real learning started. I went from manager to regional manager to director of operations, leading, training and earning the respect of men and women I had never met before, and who certainly weren't used to being managed by a 27-year-old.

In the fall of 2021 we nearly sold to Crash Champions. Weeks from closing, contracts written, employees already told. We backed out, deciding it wasn't the right partnership for our family or for the people who had stood beside us. Then an opportunity came along to become our own platform — to partner with private equity. Car Crafters and our partners formed OpenRoad in May 2022.

I was in those negotiations and I ran the Quality of Earnings process from the sell side, including every addback — an education I'd recommend to anyone selling a business and wouldn't wish on anyone twice. They named me COO that December. In three years we went from five locations to thirty-seven, six hundred people across six regions and a $140 million run rate, thirty-two sites through more than ten transactions. I also covered the CFO chair twice and went through three CEO transitions. When accounts payable had drifted past 90 days, I rebuilt the process and the team to hold it under 30.

By the end of 2025 the platform was fully staffed — a CEO, a CFO, every regional and store manager in place — and for the first time in twenty years I could take a breath. I spent a long time in prayer about what came next and what was best for my family. I became convinced it was time to go. For twenty years before that I either didn't want to or I couldn't. My wife and the kids agreed God was calling us to something different. I gave ample notice and stayed through the end of the year.

That's what took me into a dealership group for a year: rebuilding financial reporting, cleaning up a receivables ledger showing nearly a million dollars against about $250,000 of real money, fixing the communication between the dealer management system and the collision system, and installing WIP control. Good work, and I'm glad I did it. It confirmed something I already suspected: I'm a builder. I like building the tools that measure the result, installing the process that gets it, and then watching a team own the number.