Building relationships is key to owner’s approach.
When you take your car to Redd Auto for the first time, you are doing much more than putting your vehicle in the hands of an expert mechanic.
Whether you know it or not, you are getting the chance to make a friend.
“I develop a relationship with 90% of my customers, and they can basically count on me seven days a week, not just the one time they come in the door,” says Charles Redd, the owner.
He has been working on cars since he was a student at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School and has been offering his services on Glenwood Avenue for 30 years.
Redd takes a different approach from what you’d find at most auto places.
“I’ve actually been out to people’s houses,” he says. “I’ve helped them get home from trips. I have bailed out a whole bunch of customers. And the whole time I’ve been here, I always look at a customer as being a person that I can develop a relationship with.
“And when I work on their car, and if it’s a problem car, I normally call in a couple of days and check on them. I always try to keep informed of what’s going on.”
Around the corner from York Road and a short walk from a treatment and counseling center, Redd Auto stands out like a beacon under a gleaming coat of white paint. The premises serve as proof of Redd’s strong belief in the power of having a vision and turning it into a reality through hard work and dedication.
“When I got the opportunity to take over this place, it was really rough,” Redd says. “I’m really shocked that the city allowed it to be here for so long, because it was pretty bad.”
The building that houses his business today started out as a dry cleaners and then went through multiple uses, including a body shop and later a car wash, before he and some friends took it over, using it in their spare time to work on cars and make some extra money.
He ended up buying four adjacent lots, including the house, now demolished, where the previous owner lived. “I actually started looking at this shop in 1996 as the place where I’m going to be for the remainder of my career. And I saw it. I saw the vision of what could be.”
A decade later the next step for him was walking away from a high-paying job at a car dealership to strike out on his own “because of a dream that I always wanted to have my own business.”
There were struggles over the years, and a significant investment of his personal funds.
But “it came together,” Redd says. “It took some time, and as an Afro-American person, I kind of pat myself on the back, because I did it all by myself.”
Some of the people who walk past his shop each day are on the way to or from Glenwood Life Counseling Center, which offers substance abuse treatment. But Redd does not look down on them. “I’m no better than any of the guys in this neighborhood,” Redd says.
“I actually was raised around this neighborhood. I’ve seen the ups and downs. I’ve seen the ins and outs. I’ve seen the struggle with drug addiction. I’ve seen the abuse of what went on with drugs, alcohol, unusual activities, but I never even judged them. I still stayed here with it, and God has blessed me with a lot.”
Redd offers a full range of services, from routine oil changes to fixing brakes, repairing tires, replacing radiators and solving electrical problems. But there’s a surprising side to Redd that you may not realize from an initial conversation with the soft-spoken mechanic–he is really, really into motors and figuring out how to make cars tear up the track.
Wearing a shirt that says “One Man Show,” Redd has been racing in a bright blue 1968 Camaro for three decades, reaching speeds of 157 mph in a one-eighth mile race and 199 in the quarter mile.
“This car is really fast, and I did it myself: motor, transmission, rear, electrical, trailer, tires. Everything–it came from me,” Redd says. “That car means everything to me.”
“Sue Ellen” is the name he has given the car, which he acquired for everyday driving but has since put through a series of upgrades. Now he takes it to tracks as far away as Florida in a customized trailer.
“I have two motors, two transmissions, two rears, spare parts,” Redd says. “They call my trailer the machine shop. Everything’s nice and organized. Whatever I need I can just reach right in. It’s there.”
Redd and his siblings were raised by his mother, after his father, a longshoreman, died when he was 5. He remembers the hard times she went through, but in the end he believes that hardship is just the first step to happiness
“Struggles make success,” Redd says. “If you have struggles in your life, if you dream big and go after it, it’s going to happen. Opportunity is for everybody. It’s all in who can hold the shovel the longest and who can dig the deepest.”
His fascination with fast cars started in high school, and then his first two jobs broadened his skills. The first one paid little but taught him how to work with motors. “I was putting motors in vans for 25 cents an hour,” he says.
Next stop was a junkyard, where he learned to work fast. “I went and got good at doing motors, and then I went to the junkyard and got fast taking stuff apart.”
This experience set him up to thrive in a dealership setting. “I was good at the motor work, and I was fast doing it.” While other mechanics worked at two lifts, Redd had four. “And I would do two or three motors a day.” The work came at a physical cost, but it paid well. “I had two kids to get through school.”
In conversation Redd repeatedly comes back to the importance of having a vision. “It’s not how much money you got. It’s not who can help you. The secret to success is seeing where you want to be at, what you want out of all this.”
A vision that he has for the York Road Corridor is hosting an auto show on his lot. He is planning to invite some of his friends from the drag race circuit to bring their souped-up vehicles with their loud engines and gleaming chrome to the neighborhood.
Because they are high-performance off-road cars, they would have to be transported on special trailers. Redd would love to use the Family Dollar parking lot as a staging area, and then have the cars parade down York Road.
Redd is confident that the sights and sounds of seeing these expensive, powerful cars will turn some heads.
“Bringing that car show here, it’s going to make a difference,” Redd says. “I mean something different for the neighborhood than the norm. That’s what I’m about–bringing something different than the normal stuff.”
Another part of his vision is partnering with Fabian Brown of Premium Details so that he can expand the range of services available to customers at his location. Brown has leased a garage that is connected to Redd’s shop.
“My vision is that when the weather breaks and it gets better out, I’ll be fixing cars here, and I’ll be sending them next door to him. He’ll be cleaning them up, and we’re going to be able to service everything with a car.”
Redd is hoping that a pair of thriving small businesses will reinforce a message that he wants to send to the people on the street.
“What I’m really after is the guys in the community,” Redd says. I want to help them see a different path and understand that change is possible. It takes effort and commitment,but it can be done.
He would like to see attitudes about the neighborhood changing as well. “I think this community deserves a lot, because I know that this area was always identified as a tougher area,” he says.
He disagrees.
“I think it’s time for this area to really shine, because it’s not that hateful. It just needs some fine tuning.”
