Fixed Ops Journal - February 2020 - F4

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

EDITOR'S LETTER

HOME AGAIN

After growing up in the family business, you know it's where you belong
odd collection of junk that reporters hoarded. I didn't clean any toilets.

Smells and sounds

DAN
SHINE

I

came to be the new editor of Fixed
Ops Journal the same way Adam
Silverleib got into the car business: by
following in Dad's footsteps.
dan.shine@crain.com
Silverleib, 48, whom you can read
Fixed Ops Journal
about on Page 16 of this issue, is the thirdeditor
generation owner of Silko Honda in
Raynham, Mass., about an hour south of
Boston. As a young boy, he accompanied his father to the dealership
and would run around the showroom and turn on all the cars' hazard
lights. As he got older, he worked in the parts and service departments
and did "whatever needed to be done" - including cleaning the
toilets.
Likewise, I spent a lot of Saturdays in the Detroit Free Press newsroom
as my father, Neal - the longtime editor there - worked with reporters
on projects. As the youngest of six, I think the only way my mother
would let my father leave her home alone with all those kids was if he
took one with him. I would write make-believe stories on a spare
typewriter and wander through the cluttered newsroom, looking at the

PAGE 4

FEBRUARY 2020

Silverleib says the dealership was an "extension of us, an extension of
home" and that he has fond memories of those days.
"The place was magical," he says. "When I think of it, I think of the
smell. I can close my eyes, and I can smell it."
While my father's newsroom had the distinctive smells of coffee,
cigarette smoke and newsprint, for me, I remember the sounds. The
rhythmic rat-a-tat-tat of the typewriters and UPI newswire machines,
the cursing of stressed reporters and editors and the low rumble you
heard - and felt in your feet - as the massive printing presses in the
basement came to life.
Not surprisingly, I studied
journalism at Michigan State
University and followed my father and
two older brothers into the newspaper
business. I was a reporter at the The
Dallas Morning News for eight years
followed by another eight at the
Detroit Free Press. And before joining
Automotive News in January, I held a
number of communications roles at a
think tank at the University of
Michigan.

New sights

We will continue
to tweak the
magazine's
design and
features to make
it even more
engaging and
reader-friendly.

I'm excited to be at the helm of Fixed
Ops Journal. Some of you might have
noticed a new logo on the cover of this issue. We will continue to tweak
the magazine's design and features to make it even more engaging and
reader-friendly. But what won't change is our commitment to
professionally report and write about how fixed operations are
increasingly important to dealership profits, and to share best practices
occurring on the service drive and in the bays, in the bump shop and at
the parts counter.
I'd love to hear from you about what you want to see in theses pages.
Please send me your ideas and feedback.
Silverleib and I share one other thing in common: We both strayed
from the family business. He took a communications and public
relations job after college, and I left newspapers for a university job.
But Silverleib came back to the dealership to help during a difficult
transition several years ago and never left. "It just felt very, very natural
to be here," he says. I know how he feels.
Fixed Ops Journal - February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Fixed Ops Journal - February 2020
