Pennellville Garage

07/27/2026

Phone and Vacation Update

The phone line was replaced this morning 7/27/26 and is now working. Thank you for your patience.

We will be closed next week Monday 8/3/26 through Friday 8/7/26 for Summer vacation. Returning to regular business hours Monday 8/10/26.

At the time of writing this we are at capacity for the current week and any new appointments would be for the week of our return from vacation. Appointment slots are on a first come first serve basis, hard commitments only.

Thank you, we hope you are enjoying your Summer. We'll see ya when we see ya, and if we don't see ya we'll see ya

07/23/2026

Update 9:43AM 7/24/26
It has been determined the physical line to the building has failed and expect to have functional phones by Monday.

Thank you

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We're currently experiencing an issue with the phone line and it is under investigation. We will post back here with an update.

Thank you

2:48PM 7/23/26

07/21/2026

07/20/2026

Going forward I will no longer be taking on work that requires prompt or exceptionally fast turnaround time, especially if the scope of work is complex or extremely laborious.

We always strive for a reasonable turnaround, I don't like to see things piling up or have multiple half finished projects accumulating. But the demand for our work significantly outweighs the supply. The extra pressure of a "quick" turnaround with so many variables like parts quality and availability etc. just puts us in a situation where I'm making commitments to unrealistic expectations.

I totally understand people need their vehicles and spares are hard to come by. My priorities are always to deliver thorough diagnostics, high quality workmanship, with the best quality of parts immediately available to deliver a top quality end product. We honor our work, we push for parts and labor warranty if things come up down the road. We're honest and try to save people money where it makes sense and is safe to do so. And it has become extremely difficult to stay committed to those values while also committing to a 8 or 24 hour turn around.

I used to play the schedule game to attempt to accommodate people but we're at a point where the demand for our services increases every week and the capacity to take it all on stays the same.

Life is short, when walking into that crossroads we have thought long and hard on which way to go. We have decided it's okay to say no to the rat race. The undue and unnatural stress that it brings with it.

We will continue to offer top quality diagnostics and repairs, and end product for the price that is rarely found and a moral obligation to always be honest and transparent. We will do our best to turn things around as quickly as reasonably possible but are walking away from time constraints or completion date commitments.

If that doesn't work for you there are no hard feelings on our end, it just means we're not the right fit for each other, and that's okay.

If you value quality of workmanship, a fair price, from people who honor your trust and your finances. Then we're your shop.

Thank you for understanding.

-Steve Quintal
Pennellville Garage

07/17/2026

Change Of Business Hours for Friday 7/17/26

We will be closed to the public on Friday 7/17/26. In order to put our full attention on completing jobs in progress.

We will be short staffed and things like walk ins and communications, when they happen in a high enough frequency, can quickly absorb all of our time and make it nearly impossible to tangibly make any progress completing diagnostics or repairs.

Walk-ins will be politely turned away. There will be no one answering the phones.

Return calls will be for jobs in progress as needed only.

Thank you for understanding so we can be efficient and tangibly productive.

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On a different topic all together, just a teaser for now.

Communications Update:

We have long been planning and implementing systems to make communications, returning calls and messages, prioritizing core and return customer communications as well as scheduling transparency and ease of making appointments.

Improvements in all departments are past the planning stage and well into physical implementation.

Full details at launch but will include

Phones
-Categorized voicemail boxes, minimal direct noticable impact for you but will allow multiple callers to leave separate voicemails simultaneously instead of a busy signal, along with making it easier for us to digest if the call is regarding a future appointment, a job in progress, work you already had done etc. this helps us prioritize our time.
-Visual voicemail/ voicemail transcription. Manually listening to voicemail after voicemail while manually writing down information is extremely time consuming and makes getting through 20-30 voicemails a day a massive task and leads to not being able to address them all or take away from producing tangible work. Leaving people feeling ignored, frustrated etc. Along with a portal for easy management and review we will receive pop up notifications along with transcriptions at our computer stations to be able to more efficiently review and follow up.
-Additional phone lines. No more busy signals.
-VIP lines for core customers and jobs in progress.

-Virtual scheduling center. All appointment requests will be manually confirmed or denied (denied also includes different date options if it's due to a scheduling constraints etc). We don't expect everyone to use this but it automates and speeds up the process significantly for us and is intended for those that like the feature. On our end the efficiency goes deeper as it is directly linked to our shop management software and ties directly into work orders and customer profiles. Less manually tracking details and customer information.

-Texting service. For those that appreciate short form correspondence a service will exist for both inbound and outbound communications. Not the best for larger conversations but much easier to manage for quick communications. Example: "hey I forgot to mention when I dropped my car off I heard a clunk." "Your vehicle is ready for pickup", status updates and the list goes on.

-Communication preference selections. Hate getting calls at work that you would have to walk out of a meeting to respond to and now you're making time to break away and return a time sensitive call? No problem, text us. Do you despise technology and wouldn't know how to open a text let alone respond or use a virtual calendar? That's okay, future tech isn't for you. Having these options helps streamline the processes for those that prefer it so that we have more available time to have verbal real time communications.

More details to come as we officially launch each update.

Until next time,
The Pennellville Garage Crew

07/08/2026

We will be temporarily closing in the late morning on Wednesday 7/8/26 and returning at some point in the afternoon to celebrate the life of a long time customer and friend David Graham. May you rest in peace Grahamy, you will surely be missed.

Obituary below for those who knew David.

View David L. Graham's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.

07/02/2026

Fair warning

06/03/2026

Happy Birthday Mike!

05/19/2026

UPDATE TO HOLIDAY CLOSING SCHEDULING

Friday 5/22-Wednesday 5/27.
We will be operating Thursday 5/28 and Friday 5/29 but closed to the public, details below.

Originally we planned to be off from Friday the 22nd through Tuesday the 26th for Memorial Day weekend. Last year we noticed some honey bees around part of the building but they were not causing any disruptions and were advised the timing was not great for survivability of the colony during relocation. Winter came, the bees disappeared (hibernating) and life moved on. Yesterday we were reminded we had a bee colony living among us when we walked into one of our side rooms to see it full off what I would estimate is at least a thousand honey bees.

We have a professional coming Wednesday 5/27 to relocate the queen and as much of the hive as possible. The area has been blockaded in the interim. We are closing the shop to assist as needed in the extraction as they're in a wall cavity and while the bees haven't bothered us literally at all (walked right up to the hive to close a door) we don't feel as we should have anyone else coming and going during this time.

The intention is for us to be back to scheduled repairs on Thursday 5/28 and Friday 5/29. Even though the queen and colony will be gone by then it isn't possible to get every last bee as some will be out working during time of removal. Once the remaining bees realize the queen is gone they will eventually relocate, sometimes even finding their own way to their own home. Without the queen bee the colony can't survive on their own. What happens is there is a 1-3 day period where the remaining bees are trying to figure out what's going on before moving and their behavior can be erratic during this time.

In an abundance of caution we will be planning to operate on those days while closed to the public. We have strategies in place for us to remain isolated from the location of the hive and remain productive but customer's and vendors coming and going from the parking lot to us are unprotected, rather than taking a risk it is safer to temporarily close.

This does unfortunately push scheduling back.
No action needed on your part.
If your appointment is affected we will be reaching out to you to reschedule, if you're not affected by this change you won't receive any separate communication.

If you have an appointment during any of the listed closed to the public dates we will be reaching out with instructions for alternative vehicle drop off and pick up.

Thank you for understanding, thank you for supporting us, and thank you for helping us save the bee's by being able to adjust business hours as necessary!

Have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend and we will see you on the next one!
-Steve

05/13/2026

***Edit*** New Update To Holiday Schedule full details in another post but noting it here to hit the largest reach. We will also be formally closed Wednesday the 27th due to having a honey bee colony removed from a wall. Thank you for understanding

Hi Folks 👋 it's been awhile! A couple of updates below:

***Holiday closing hours- closed Friday May 22nd through Tuesday May 26th, reopening at 8am Wednesday May 27th.***
It has been sense Christmas sense any of us have took any extended time off and we're all well over due for some much needed R&R. Phoenix Central Schools didn't use all of their snow days this year so the kids are getting two extra days off to use up their remaining snow days and we plan to mimic those closures to cherish the extra time with our families.

Schedule- we are consistently booking 2 to 4 weeks out in advance. Obviously break downs happen, sometimes unexpectedly and even out of your control but don't put off planned maintenance. If you know you have service coming due please attempt to make an appointment in advance to minimize vehicle down time.
We're always open to tentative appointments or place holders. If you need to cancel or reschedule advance notice is appreciated, at least this gets you your place in line.
***No call no shows will not be rescheduled***
Our time is valuable, please don't waste it.

Phone communications- this one has been an on going pain point for pretty much everyone. I hate to admit that but it's reality. Things have gotten to the point where we average 78 inbound calls per day. We're a team of essentially 3.5 people. (Dave's technically semi retired so he has zero assigned obligations but he doesn't have an off button so he still helps us out quite a bit, hence the half half a person on the team.) Our voicemail system holds an average of 40 messages depending on length of each message. We can delete these messages every couple of days and we still find the voicemail box full more often than not. We do our best to answer and return as many calls as possible but unfortunately we realistically just can't get to them all and some do get missed. We're not at a place to expand at this time but plan to in the future. We apologize for the inconvenience in advance but we promise we are worth the wait. We have accepted this unfortunate reality but have found solace in that the trade off means we can focus on and commit to providing a through quality service for the repairs and interactions that we have in front of us instead of attempting to satisfy everyone. Quality over quantity always. Please know we have spent a lot of time and effort in attempts to improve this one and the current situation doesn't make us feel good. With current resources we've hit a communications ceiling. It's not ideal but we're making it work, be patient with us as we grow.

We appreciate you taking the time to catch up and hope everyone has a great Holiday Weekend.
-The Pennellville Garage Team

P.s. if you're wondering what Dave has been doing in his version of retirement the picture below has been is latest personal project. A 1960 International 4WD B100 Pick Up Truck with a fully functional dump box 😎