Men@Work

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livan, a classic fighter of a century ago, over his desk, and he speaks with admiration when he talks about wanting his boxers to appreciate the science developed by such greats as Jack Dempsey.

“Dempsey could teach you six types of jabs – I like to teach the science behind it,” says Eckardt. “Gene Tunney (who famously defeated Dempsey in the 1920s) turned boxing into a chess game.”

Eckardt says both men and women use his facility, with many coming in to lose weight and get in shape.“You come here, and you leave feeling you definitely had a workout,” he says.

airDrie autoboDy

For Brendon Empringham, there is nothing more satisfying than taking a vehicle that’s been damaged, and making it whole again.

Established 14 years ago, Airdrie Autobody specializes in collision repair, but there’s also time for the occasional bit of custom work too.

“Some guys want to throw a little chrome on their car, or put inserts in the fenders … they want their car to look different [from] the next guy’s,” says shop manager Empringham.

“This time of year, we get a lot of motorcycles. We do a lot of custom fabrication –people coming in with bikes bought on consignment, saying, ‘I like that bike, but I want it to do something else for me; I want it to be jazzier.’”

Cars and trucks have a lot more surface area to cover than bikes, so it’s a substantial proposition when someone brings in a vehicle to have an airbrush design added.“We just finished one recently that’s a Dodge Dakota that was airbrushed with flames, all the front end and the side of the truck. It was an extensive deal,” says Empringham.

Some clients don’t want to go through the expense of airbrushing and so opt for the lessexpensive option of having a decal designed and applied. “We did another Dodge truck … with a decal and we cleared over top of it so it resembled paint, but it wasn’t really paint,” says Empringham.

Airdrie Autobody, owned by Rick and Theresa Whitty, is one of the sponsors of the annual Doing It On the Grass car show that takes over Nose Creek Park in late summer, and has also sponsored racers in Legends Cars of Alberta.

The 13-strong shop also supports youths entering the automotive industry and is currently working with a student in the province’s registered apprenticeship program. “We have an apprentice we’re looking at bringing on full time; we’ll sponsor him and help him get his ticket and his journeyman [certificate],” says Empringham.

Airdrie Autobody’s main work is helping restore vehicles that have been damaged, from street-corner fender-benders, to collisions with neighbours’ wind-blown trampolines, to “cows leaning up against vehicles and KO’ing the sides of trucks,” says Empringham.

“The best part about the job is taking something of somebody’s that’s been damaged, and they’re sad or mad about it, and turning it around and putting it back to new.”

airDrie truCk aCCessories

To some, it’s a pickup truck; to others, it’s a blank canvas.

Helping truck owners transform their vehicles into something unique is something on which the staff at Airdrie Truck Accessories has been focusing for five years.

Manager Mike Mierke says off the top that his shop doesn’t do much work with drivers simply wanting to add ‘bling’ to their trucks. His customers are most often people wanting to get as much functionality out of their vehicle as possible.

“Our primary customers would be dealerships, and we do a lot of retail work and a lot

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of customizing, and fleet work is important too,” he says.

Mierke, a welder by trade, started out specializing in Armaguard Sprayed Bedliners – a black, grippy covering that’s applied to protect truck beds against rust, UV rays and scratching. It’s still his most popular truck accessory.

He’s since expanded into a recently renovated 5,000-square-foot showroom offering accessories ranging from chrome bumpers to fender flares and trailer hitches.

“Recession or not, [trucks] are viewed as a tool we need for life and for our own income-earning potential,” Mierke says. “A lot of the accessories we sell are required [items]. For example, someone buys a Dodge 2500 truck and wants to pull a trailer with that: right away you need a hitch, mudflaps so you’re not wrecking the trailer, maybe a trailer brake control – it’s stuff they need.”

Practical and functional accessories take priority, with customers wanting to haul RVs coming in for fifth-wheel hitches, or looking for fender flares which are a requirement if they plan to add bigger, wider tires to their vehicle, Mierke says.

That doesn’t mean his shop doesn’t get the occasional call to transform a truck from a factory-standard, one-ofthousands model rolling off the lot, into something special and unique.

“We just did a 2010 Dodge 2500 –that’s a three-quarter-ton truck – with a six-inch lift, Bushwacker fender flares and we took it from 31- to 35-inch tires with after-market rims,” Mierke says. “The truck was completely different when it rolled out of here. And there’s definitely some satisfaction in that.”

Installing truck accessories is one of the few jobs that is still primarily learned on the job itself, rather than through a course, and Mierke says he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“It’s fun – just the variety and you’re doing something with a blank canvas that will leave your shop quite different from when it came in,” he says. life