Crawford’s four Brisbane sites

 

From an apprentice painter at age 15 to running four shops under the CCR banner. David Taylor started his apprenticeship as a spray painter aged 15 with Wacol-based repairer Bob Crawford.

Twenty-three years on, Taylor owns Crawford Crash Repairs, operating from four shops south-west of Brisbane on the way to Ipswitch, and turns over $12 million a year.

From the original Wacol base, CCR also operates from Bundamba, has a prestige vehicle repair centre at Sumner Park and a newly-opened CCR Express at Goodna which was set up for small jobs that do not require structural work.

With its four locations, Crawfords has a staff of 69 which includes 10 apprentices in the panel beating and spray painting sections.

Taylor said CCR recently moved to a centralised administration system  for all accounting and invoicing, incorporated with Webtrim Professional.

All four shops use PPG refinishing products and use the PPG Business Manager for quoting.

“This has been a great help for merging the four shops’ data into one,” Taylor said. Because of the different types of work carried out the four locations, Crawfords uses a variety of equipment to make good their repairs.

At Sumner Park they have Car-O-Liner and Car-O-Tronic, the Wacol shop has Autorobot and the Bundamba shop as a Car-O-Liner Speedbench. Booths include Masterbooth. Welding is carried out using Fanweld at Wacol and Bundamba and Car-O-Liner at Sumner Park.