Career change - former cop buys repair and wrecker service

By Jim Obert

Business Today

Until last year, Sonny Kincade wore a badge and his uniform was usually spotless. He had been a police officer in Charleston for a year and spent the past eight years enforcing the law in Cape Girardeau.

During those years he did some mechanical work on patrol cars, which was a natural since he was a service station mechanic in Dexter starting at age 14 and continuing until age 22 when he joined the Air Force to work on jets.

After his stint in the Air Force, Seabaugh managed a 72-acre salvage yard in southern Georgia for a year before returning to Missouri in 1993 to work as a police officer.

He soon met Charlie Seabaugh, who had started two service stations with Ronnie Slinkard on Broadway in 1972.. In 1985 the stations were combined in a building on Enterprise and the business named Slinkard and Seabaugh.

Seabaugh eventually took over the auto repair and wrecker service and one day asked Kincade if he wanted to buy the business.

"I told him I couldn't afford to buy the business on a cop's salary," said Kincade. "Then one day he looked me in the eye and said I really ought to buy this place.

"We put a deal together and everything just fell into place."

Seabaugh died last April and Kincade became manager of the business in May. In August he purchased it outright.

For many years Seabaugh Auto Repair & Wrecker Service did light repair work and pulled disabled vehicles into the city for repairs. But in September, Kincade opened a body shop. He bought a frame rack to straighten frames on cars and trucks.

"The early months were kind of rough because some equipment needed to be fixed and other equipment needed updated," said Kincade, adding that things are running smoothly now.

Kincade said diagnostic software has been updated to better interface with newer computers. Last spring the diagnostic equipment was reliable on vehicles up to model year 1995. Now, problems on model year 2000 vehicles can be determined and fixed.

Computerized schematics and wiring diagrams have been added to the diagnostic modes.

Kincade said a large part of his business is in towing. He has two flat-bed trucks and a wrecker.

"We have a flat-bed that pretty well runs non-stop. Every day we're pulling in stranded vehicles, stalled cars," said Kincade, adding that he does towing work for the state Highway Patrol and Cape Girardeau County.

Although the towing service area is generally 35 to 50 miles from Cape, Kincade once helped a Sikeston customer retrieve a truck whose transmission had gone out in Cincinnati, Ohio. That job was about a 695-mile round trip.

PICS -- PICS - Sonny Kincade, owner of Seabaugh Auto Repair & Wrecker Service in Cape Girardeau, uses a Snap-On Diagnostics scanner to decipher vehicle codes in order to determine engine problems. BT/Jim Obert

-- Joe Kitchen, head mechanic in the repair shop, studies a wiring diagram on a computer.

-- In the body shop, Chet Harmon repairs a door on a Mazda that tangled with an 18-wheeler on an interstate near St. Louis.