The Mobile Mechanic: One Man's Recession Remedy

NEW YORK (Jan. 1) -- On Christmas Day, as on just about every other day of the year, Ramon Montes-Deoca reports for work at his "garage," the slushy, iron-cold pavements of East Fifth Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

He rummages in his "tool box," a battered 1995 GMC van he drives into Manhattan every day from his home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. And kneeling on wet cardboard in a raw wind, he gets busy replacing the rear ball joints on a customer's Mitsubishi SUV. It would have been a nasty job on a spring day, and on this day it is downright brutal. But Montes-Deoca, a voluble, sunny-faced man, is not given to complaining.

Montes-Deoca made a series of smart decisions before the recession hit: He decided to work for himself. He decided to eliminate all overhead. And he decided that nothing – neither snow nor rain nor a local and national unemployment rate of 10 percent – is going to stop him from making an honest living. So he became a mobile mechanic.

"It's better like this," says the 39-year-old native of the Dominican Republic who came to New York 20 years ago and now has two sons, ages 16 and 8. "I make more money this way when I don't work for nobody. This economy isn't killing me because people are trying to save money. So every day I'm busy."

His customers come from the outer boroughs and the immediate neighborhood, and they include postal workers, police officers and anyone trying to save a few dollars in these tight times.

The only complaint about his unorthodox setup came from the owner of a parking lot, who claimed Montes-Deoca's mobile work station sometimes blocked her driveway. A Department of Transportation official came to investigate the complaint last summer and hasn't been heard from since.

One of Montes-Deoca's most loyal customers is Alberto Pena, a limo driver who used to live in the neighborhood and now drives a Lincoln Town Car into the city every day from his home upstate. He frequently stops by to kibitz.

"I give credit to people like Ramon," Pena says. "He doesn't care about the weather. He never tells a customer it's too cold, it's raining. Some mechanics do nothing and want to get paid."

As Montes-Deoca mutters some colorful expletives at a stubborn bolt, Pena adds, "That's a popular guy. A little crazy sometimes, but people like him."

People like him because he does superb work, charges reasonable prices and is willing to go the extra mile – in some cases several extra miles. One day Humberto Goris, a maintenance worker, stepped out of his home in Queens to find that the starter on his 1996 Toyota Camry was dead. He picked up his phone and punched in the number of Montes-Deoca's well-used cell phone.

"He came all the way out to my house in Queens, at no extra charge," Goris says. "He's not going to rip you off like some people."

Standing beside his 2001 Ford Taurus station wagon, neighborhood resident Kyle Tortora adds, "I'm getting ready to drive this thing to San Diego. I don't care if it's pretty, but I need it to be reliable. Over the past eight months, Ramon has done a whole overhaul – front brakes, rear brakes, struts, fuel pump – for about $1,800. It would have cost double anywhere else. It's been great having him here, something very specific to New York."

Montes-Deoca started cleaning wrenches for his uncles in the Dominican Republic when he was 5 years old, and today he can work on anything from a clunker to a Corvette. After coming to New York City in 1989, he worked in several auto dealerships and garages before deciding to go to work for himself, outdoors and under the radar.

"In a garage you pay too much for rent, gas, boilers," he says. "It's not easy working like this, but I'd rather do this than work for somebody else for $400 a week. Now I can make that much in a day.

"I work for me. And I'm free."