All roads lead back to the family business

I came to be the new editor of Fixed Ops Journal the same way Adam Silverleib got into the car business: by following in Dad's footsteps.

Silverleib, 48, whom you can read about on Page 16 of this issue, is the third-generation owner of Silko Honda in Raynham, Mass., about an hour south of Boston. As a young boy, he accompanied his father to the dealership and would run around the showroom and turn on all the cars' hazard lights. As he got older, he worked in the parts and service departments and did "whatever needed to be done" — including cleaning the toilets.

Likewise, I spent a lot of Saturdays in the Detroit Free Press newsroom as my father, Neal — the longtime editor there — worked with reporters on projects. As the youngest of six, I think the only way my mother would let my father leave her home alone with all those kids was if he took one with him. I would write make-believe stories on a spare typewriter and wander through the cluttered newsroom, looking at the odd collection of junk that reporters hoarded. I didn't clean any toilets.

Silverleib says the dealership was an "extension of us, an extension of home" and that he has fond memories of those days.

"The place was magical," he says. "When I think of it, I think of the smell. I can close my eyes, and I can smell it."

While my father's newsroom had the distinctive smells of coffee, cigarette smoke and newsprint, for me, I remember the sounds. The rhythmic rat-a-tat-tat of the typewriters and UPI newswire machines, the cursing of stressed reporters and editors and the low rumble you heard — and felt in your feet — as the massive printing presses in the basement came to life.

Not surprisingly, I studied journalism at Michigan State University and followed my father and two older brothers into the newspaper business. I was a reporter at the The Dallas Morning News for eight years followed by another eight at the Detroit Free Press. And before joining Automotive News in January, I held a number of communications roles at a think tank at the University of Michigan.

I'm excited to be at the helm of Fixed Ops Journal. Some of you might have noticed a new logo on the cover of this issue. We will continue to tweak the magazine's design and features to make it even more engaging and reader-friendly. But what won't change is our commitment to professionally report and write about how fixed operations are increasingly important to dealership profits, and to share best practices occurring on the service drive and in the bays, in the bump shop and at the parts counter.

I'd love to hear from you about what you want to see in theses pages. Please send me your ideas and feedback.

Silverleib and I share one other thing in common: We both strayed from the family business. He took a communications and public relations job after college, and I left newspapers for a university job.

But Silverleib came back to the dealership to help during a difficult transition several years ago and never left. "It just felt very, very natural to be here," he says. I know how he feels.