How is COVID-19 effecting you?

How is covid-19 effecting you guys?

I work for a large snack food company. Since junk food is still considered food we’re an essential business. Business as usual for me. Trucks got to be repaired. The company is giving us 20 extra dollars a day until this is over.

Sounds like a good gig!

Personally for me things took a twist this week. Both of car lots that I typically do business with are starting to bring in less vehicles which means less work for me. Could just be a slow week, but I haven’t really been slow since October of last year. I’m okay with it for the time being but I also do not want to be going out and conversing with shop owners face to face to try to get more business right now. Not that I’m concerned about me catching the virus but because I don’t want to bring it home to the family.

Car sales were among the first to take a hit long before lock down , less trade-ins ,no car auctions.

We have been in the toilet for weeks, months. I haven't hit forty hours in months. We went down to working two teams swapping every other day, then went to all working on Monday then swapping the other so we all got three days, now we are on every other week.

Collecting unemployment for the first time in my life and because of the circumstances, making more than I have in a long time with the state and federal additional. This is my first full week off, then going on my first full week on, so we will see how it goes. Hopefully better since the morning usually start ok but afternoons are just standing around. Typically 5-6 hours a day, sometimes worse. Only guys doing well now are the ones snatching up used cars to prep for the lot.

Hopefully this doesn't run straight through our summer busy season cause this winter was really rough...

Nissan Technician

Very few people aren't hurting bad, I went past the local credit union (a sort of non-profit communal bank) and people were queued almost round the block with not much evidence of social distancing.

We are suffering quite a significant drop in income from Ruth's job but will survive thankfully here in Scotland there are real signs that the transmission rate of the virus has dropped significantly and hopefully full lockdown may be lifted earlier than than the rest of the UK

What happens after all this is over ? how do we get the world back on its' feet ? only time will tell.

Still making my regular hours thankfully. My boss is very sympathetic and will run out of pocket to keep us working.
We've got our used cars to keep us busy. I've got a Navigator I bought for cheap money to flip and am going half and half with the boss on the profit. So he's been letting me bring it in on the clock and letting me take what I need from the junk yard.
Yesterday I tried my hand at body work for the first time and cut a dog-leg section out of a parts car and welded it into mine ontop of changing the rockers. Bought a can of Bondo and started playing with that. First time for everything. Feeling very fortunate (some might say blessed) to have kind hearted people in my life.

For anybody that can hang on the next two to three years might be good for the repair trade because people will not be buying new vehicles and older vehicles breakdown or fail inspection . Also most countries have put a 6 month grace period on vehicle inspections so expect a short term rush at the end of autumn.

There are going to be a lot of no-cranks due to battery problems ---- use local social media groups to tell people you can do house calls.

We had a good news email last night managed to get our Italian vacation that was already booked and -paid sorted and moved to September.
As a substanial amount of £ was involved although it is in theory covered by an insurance scheme backed by UK Gov with the state of the travel business it was getting worrying.

Try some cornhusker's lotion. Most stores sell it. Has some alcohol in it so it moreso evaporates rather than leave a oily residue. It does good on hands. Another one is the green round can, can't think of name right now though.

If you've got some knit gloves lather your hands up, throw the gloves on and go to bed and they'll feel better the next few days. Do it nightly or throughout the day once they get better and you'll feel well with better feeling hands.

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Don't some of you who are stateside and have had hours cut have bosses that did the loan thing with feds where it's forgiven and they even have some cash to help pay down debt from the sounds of it as I heard but haven't read that a certain percentage had to be used on your typical employee payroll (keep them off unemployment) and the loan gets forgiven.

If I had a business with even a few employees I'd look into it at least with my tax guy and make sure it wouldn't adversely affect me as it's not to often deals come along that are essentially grants.

Supposedly today a new infusion of loans starts for business owners to get at.

They said it was 500 employees or fewer last time. They should make it for 100 or less employees as the upper 90% percent, 95% or possibly higher of American jobs are 100 employees or less and the 20 or 10 or less accounts for the low to mid 90% range of businesses in America so it really shows the companies that need the money and we're not talking big companies. They got theirs back in 08-09 and they could've prevented it. This is something legit at least.




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From what I understand about the small business loans, the federal government set the terms and told the banks "do it".
So the banks at the end of the day had little guidance and some even backed out of the program. They are the ones who will ultimately determine if the loan was used in such a way that it will not have to be repayed.
Also, the funds were depleted quickly.
Business owners who already are over leveraged with little cash to maintain payroll costs simply had to lay people off and couldn't wait to traverse the red tape to hopefully get a loan to keep everyone working.

These emergency funds are being badly managed in the UK as well

I have a few businesses and have actually not really dealt with anything SBA was until this year and before the shut downs but essentially the EIDL program was also given a GRANT. So those who applied for EIDL they could receive a grant without actually completing the loan process which you are not required to pay back. The loan has to be paid back but the grant portion does not. The government also provides protection to the lenders in case the business owners default in their loans. That said the EIDL program has been in place provided by the SBA (government back business loans) for a long time.