T&A Performance
Good repair shops can be a scarce commodity, but Tim Anderson’s T&A Performance aims to be a bright light in a vast sea of despair. “It’s very unfortunate about what’s out there in our industry”, comments Tim, “we get a lot of folks that have been had by other shops.” Tim prides himself on actually looking for the problem and diagnosing the issue, rather than guessing and just changing parts.
“I’m not saying that we know everything, but we know a little bit about a couple of things. If there’s something that we don’t know I will find out the answer.” Tim went on to say what he believes adds an extra level of trust, “It’s all about owning your mistakes. If something happens with something that you’ve done then you take care of it. There have been times where I’ve loaded up my gooseneck and traveled to where the customer is to make sure that what happened wasn’t anything that we did.”
One example of such customer dedication took him on a nine-hour trip. “There was one time a tensioner broke, throwing a belt and it left the guy on the side of the road. Turns out that it was nothing that we did, but I wanted to make sure with that customer that it wasn’t, so we went in the middle of nowhere to find out and service the problem. Got him all fixed up and back on the road.” This line of thinking carries out to the products that his shop installs.
“The issue was a black onyx head gasket nightmare that we went through. The company that sold them marketed them as a performance upgrade. We ended up redoing them out of our pocket. Over 40 head gasket jobs because of a defective product. We covered repairs even three years down the road. I lost a lot of money, but it wasn’t the fault of the customers and we had to make it right.” That kind of dedication becomes legendary in people’s minds and has worked well for the reputation of the business. “We have a guy in Ohio that makes the trek down to us when he needs any major repairs. It’s very flattering, but also very sad that he can’t find anyone between Nevada and Ohio who is honest.”
Tim got his business license in ’07 when he was still working for the city of Reno. “I was one of the lead techs working on everything from three-wheeled meter maid carts to the big 6 x 6 vehicles and anything in between. People at the job would ask me if I’d work on their truck, and then word of mouth spread. Soon I was coming home from work and starting my second job of fixing vehicles on the side.
Shortly after I bought my house, the bottom fell out of the market and people in the neighborhood started abandoning their homes. I started parking customers’ trucks in the driveways of these empty houses to operate my garage after work. I ended up having to hire two guys to help me with the workload and sometimes we’d go til’ 2-3 in the morning, and then go to work at 7 a.m.,” Tim laughs. “I’d get off at 3:30 p.m. from the day job and start the cycle all over again.
When asked about why he ended up starting T&A Performance Tim said it was a few things that guided him. “Around 2010… 2011 it got to the point where we were doing so many trucks people started to notice all the activity, which got the home owner’s association and the city involved. Then there were layoffs at the city job, and that’s when I decided to make things official and open up a real shop.” And it wasn’t a bad decision as Tim’s five-stall shop keeps plenty busy with repair bookings that can last four to six weeks out at the time.
While T&A Performance is well known for its repair abilities and integrity it’s not just about fixing things. Tim’s knowledge extends to performance modifications, upgrades, and turbo swaps. “I like to do upgrades that are useful and serve the customer,” Tim explains. “Customers come in with some very ‘vivid’ ideas of what they want, but numbers don’t matter. It isn’t about smoke and being a trailer queen that can buzz a dyno for a short period of time. If they want that they can go somewhere else. It ends up being too much work because the customer is never going to be satisfied with their lofty expectations. For real, usable power that is reliable, they know where to come. I’ll stand by every job that we do.”
Keep up the good work, Tim!
T&A Performance
525 Spice Islands Dr.Sparks, NV. 89431
(775) 358-5549