My dad, who had bought the car, was the first to notice what a speed machine it was. He ran it up to nearly 100 mph one time, with me in the car, amazed at what that big Cadillac would do. That long, white Sedan DeVille was three years old when he bought it in 1968, and it had a 478 cubic inch four barrel V-8 engine, the biggest car engine I’ve ever seen. And within a year or two I was old enough to drive it.

I remember taking it on an errand one time for my dad, and when I came to a stop at a red light, I accidentally pushed down on the brake pedal and the accelerator at the same time. That engine roared to life and, scared out of my mind, I pushed down on those pedals even harder. The brakes held on the front, but the back wheels gave way to all that horsepower, and the car surged, skidded, roared and screeched in the middle of a busy intersection. I was in living terror until I realized the enemy was me. The car and I barely survived a case of 5,000 lbs of brute horsepower coming face-to-face with 165 lbs of pure stupidity.

I guess I had commented one too many times to my friend, Rodney, about what an amazing machine that old Cadillac was, because it was that car, my dad’s used sedan, that he wanted to race with his little souped-up Mercury Comet he’d been working on. It had a hot little V-8 engine, and was light and quick and could cover a quarter mile pretty darned quick.

I put Rod off for a while, knowing my dad would kill me if he thought I’d been racing the family car. But, in a moment of weakness and considerable curiosity, I agreed to meet Rodney out on the newly completed loop around our town of 50,000. There was no traffic, no lights, and not even an intersection for a mile or so, which made it a safe spot for a very short race.

Rod pulled up beside me, smiled, and confidently said, “I’ll let you say ‘go’.”

I said, “Well then, we’ll go on three.” I counted down and hit the gas.

I heard some tires squeal and spin, and saw the smoke of burning rubber, but soon realized this was all in my rearview mirror, as my unlikely racing machine left Rod and his little hotrod somewhere back in the dust.

I pulled over and Rodney soon caught up with me. He said, “Hey, you got the jump on me back there. This time I’ll say ‘go’.”

It didn’t matter, as his little Mercury was too light and prone to spin out and that big car of dad’s just dug in and took off. I never found out how fast it would go, but man would it go! It hit on all eight cylinders and didn’t waste an ounce of that massive horsepower and motion.

Hitting on all eight cylinders, and wasting as little motion as possible, is also what we have to do every day in our commercial sign business. The cost of doing business, of paying vehicle insurance, health insurance, payroll and payroll taxes, property taxes, utilities, advertising, supplies, materials and so forth is very high. And not a dime of shop sales revenue goes to the bottom line (my pay check) until everything is paid.

We, that is myself and every employee, really have to be firing on all eight cylinders virtually every day to make things work out. Now, with today’s high fuel costs, let’s make that eight and one-half. And that’s not easy to do.

Besides hiring the right employees, setting up the shop as efficiently as possible, staying well organized and keeping all the materials we need in stock, perhaps the two most essential elements of a small commercial sign business that survives and thrives are repeat customers, which we have many of, and repeated projects or at least similar jobs whose cost to produce and bottom line profitability we can predict and count on.

Customers who know us, and trust us to do professional layouts without sending faxes or e-mails back and forth, and work that is continuous such as fleets of vehicles, repeat orders of digitally printed decals, screen printed work, industrial signage and so forth help us produce work at a pace and a profit margin that keeps us viably in business even when the cost of being in business is going up every day.

I’m sure that old Cadillac has long since been retired, but that’s not yet the case for the young kid who enjoyed driving it. Nope, I’m still in the race, and trying to run a commercial sign shop that hits on all cylinders every day, because we have to. If that’s your job as well, I wish you much success, and hope you leave your competition in the dust.

Have a great month,

—Rick