It’s been the end of another era in our village today (Thursday 31st March) as a long established and much loved Ruddington business closed its doors for the final time.
The two highly skilled car mechanics behind it, Dave Pearson and John Dennis (pictured top), have brought to an end over 30 years of running Brookside Autoservices together by announcing their retirement.
Being a little out of the way, tucked around on Brookside Road, has meant that customer recommendations have always been important to their continuing success. The two business partners modestly tell RUDDINGTON.info the key to the survival of Brookside Autos has been by “building up a decent customer base – making lots of friends – and knowing that customers are satisfied with what we’ve done.”
The duo amalgamated their previous motor repair and servicing companies to create Brookside Autoservices in the early nineties. They’ve been at their current, roadside premises for twelve years – having been hidden around the back at Unit D then Unit A for the first twenty!
It was five weeks of the business being closed due to COVID-19 restrictions that convinced Dave he did not need to continue working: “We don’t need as much money as we thought we did to live on, so it’s one of the things that made me realise, and gave me a bit more confidence, that I could survive on that amount of money if we cut down on what I (and the mrs) do.”
Dave reveals: “I wanted to pack up before now. The staff were going to buy it and John was going to carry on. Then Coronavirus came along. It put staff off from buying as they were going to take out loans, but if there was another lockdown and they got loan repayments and could not come to work so not earning, they’d end up in bother and financial ruin. That’s why they pulled out and did not buy it.”
When this fell through, a couple of years’ ago, Dave and John approached the developer of Malmic Lace (Sheldon Cohen) to see if there was interest in buying the garage and all the (7-10) adjacent plots which Brookside Autos own. Most traders who used to work from the site have already moved or closed: Ann Dunstan is now running her Add Embroidery business from home. The lockdown certainly had a knock-on effect on many small companies, like Dizzy Rascalz, where Dave’s wife and daughter worked. It had to close down for a year to adhere to COVID-19 regulations and then never re-opened.
Near and Far Removals is still there but will be relocating to a new office adjacent to the existing site. Owner Elaine Langridge says: “Thanks to Dave and John at Brookside Autos for allowing us to share their premises with them over the last 12 years. Things are well on the way with our new office, which will only be next door, we should be moving shortly. We wish Dave and John all the best in their retirement – but who will we go to now when we have a quick question on one of our vehicles!?”
As with any business John and Dave have faced “some low and stressful times” over the years. But with over 80 years’ mechanical experience between them, and being embedded in our village economy, Brookside Autoservices had an impressive 2,600 ‘live customers’ on their books when they closed! They wanted to send an email message to everyone on their system, but their computer system limits the amount of sent messages and their requests to resolve this regrettably did not happen before closure day. They would like to take the opportunity here to say to all clients: “Thank you for all your support over the years and using us”.
John and Dave confirmed the site sale has not been finalised: “It doesn’t get sold tomorrow. We’re just shutting the business down as we can’t move forward whilst we’re still working. We’ve got to get the buildings emptied.”
John says he’s hopeful for a happy retirement: “We’ll have to wait to see how things pan out when everything’s been sold and then how much is left in the ‘pension pot’!” Dave admits it has been stressful when working full-time whilst winding up the business and selling the site: “It’s not like there’s a golden handshake from a company and off you go. It’s not that type of retirement! But we’ll drift into retiring and it’ll all work out in the end.”
In the future, hopefully they’ll both have more time to dedicate to their love of restoring old motorbikes. Dave is also looking forward to renovating a house he’ll be moving into in Ruddington.
