Certainly we have seen an increase in older people of retiree age going back to work. So many factors make up this phenomena. 13.2% over 65 still work in some capacity. Why? Well because they can, because we need them and their humble approach to reality, having been through the hard knocks of the past and through tough times, they often do not take things for granted respect customers and have excellent work ethic. This is good. One third or more of these people we visited in Sun City live alone and of course they have time consuming hobbies or par time jobs to stay busy. So then when considering setting hours of your shop one must consider that these individuals need after 5 pm appointments.

It is difficult in these retirement areas to change your own oil, the CC&Rs are outrageous, one person told us he put a flag on his mail box but had to remove it. It seems many of these 65 and older have joined the HOA as their contribution and sit in committees and act like government bureaucrats making stupid rules to keep everything sterile and unexciting like the socialist country we are becoming, with no one taking responsibility for anything and everyone suing each other for looking cross eyed?

The 13.2% of over 65 age still working is an increase over the last five years of 50%. That is a significant trend that was predicted no less by the Yanklevich Group, and they are correct. The trend, well it is accelerating after many have lost their pension valuations to the 10 trillion lost in the stock market. Yes it will return, but if they take a draw while it is low they decrease their base money and the growth of the future will be severally hurt. How serious is this. Well right now the dollar is weak and there are more going to be employed making stuff. The Europeans are debt borrowing in a few countries and that is temporarily causing some inflation which will come back, then the dollar will have some inflation and right itself as a stronger currency in a few years and the Older crowd will have some of their nest egg back if they have not spent it all. But the under funded pensions are going to be the cog in the wheel and what we saw with those who lost pensions with Global Crossing, Enron, WorldCom is nothing. We are talking a huge scale. And we are talking all the Blue Chips. These people will need jobs and maybe you might hire them for your Oil Change Shop, you can trust them no doubt, they are not asking for a hand out and will put in an honest days work, unlike some of the work ethic challenged current work force.

Now then with all this said and the trend continuing we see the problem of shop hours, These older folks which have been bread and butter to our industry for so many years will not be filling up you bays at 10 am any longer. People without jobs are coming less frequently due to not enough money to pay to change their oil and therefore prolong oil change interval out of necessity of their pocketbook, not the special oil additives or the G-4 guidelines or even the dealership changing oil for free. You might think about re-adjusting your hours of operation to maximize the usage of your facility to make sure you are getting the 13.2% of the older market you maybe missing right now. There are many ways to do this, some folks like to work late, some early. Look at your crews and scheduling and busy times, re-adjust and add an hour or two to your operation hours for a few weeks, see what happens?

"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs