ARCHBOLD WEATHER

Pettisville Garage Goes Back To Founder’s Family





From left: Eric Rychener has taken over Pettisville Garage from Luana and Gary Esterline. The garage has been part of the Pettisville scene for over 100 years, and will continue doing automotive repair. The clock in one of the front windows will remain.– photo by David Pugh

From left: Eric Rychener has taken over Pettisville Garage from Luana and Gary Esterline. The garage has been part of the Pettisville scene for over 100 years, and will continue doing automotive repair. The clock in one of the front windows will remain.– photo by David Pugh

An iconic landmark in the unincorporated community of Pettisville has changed hands.

But it’s fallen into good hands.

Eric Rychener, greatgrandson of Harvey Rychener, the founder of the business, purchased the garage from Gary Esterline, who has owned and operated the business for four decades.

Gary said he has mixed feelings about selling the business.

“Yeah, I hate to see it go, but I’m really happy with what Eric’s doing,” he said.

“He’s going to take care of the business the way we did, and take care of the customers. It’s fine.”

Pettisville Garage traces its roots back to 1916.

A 1925 history of Fulton County states after leaving school at the age of 19, Harvey farmed at home until 1916, “then being 35 years old.”

In 1916, Harvey “formed a business association with William Weber, the partners building and organizing an auto sales room and garage on Main Street, Pettisville, and entering energetically into the automobile business.

“They secured some good agencies, and being good salesmen, energetic, enterprising and of good repute, they were not long in establishing a satisfactory business.”

In 1919, “Weber sold his share of the business to Ervin Lantz. The firm name changed from Weber & Rychener to Rychener & Lantz.”

Later, Harvey bought out Ervin. At one point, the garage was a dealership for Nash and Dort cars.

Esterlines

There were other owners over the years. John Yoder owned the garage in the mid-late 1970s, when Gary was working at the Fulton County Ohio Department of Transportation garage.

“I went through the 1977 and 1978 blizzards,” Gary said, working many, many hours.

“It amounted to about six weeks of comp time,” said his wife, Luana.

One day, Gary called and told her to go down and see John about buying the business

Luana said, “Johnny says, ‘Well, I guess I never thought about (selling the garage).’ I told him, ‘Well, you think about it and get back to me.

“It wasn’t a day or two later, he came back and said, ‘I think I might do that.’”

In June 1978, the Esterlines bought the garage.

Over the years, the garage did a little bit of everything, repairing cars and trucks and taking care of the Pettisville school buses.

It did everything from engine overhauls to minor repairs.

“Like any business there were trying times, but for the most part, it was very enjoyable,” Gary said.

Rychener

Growing up in Pettisville, Eric, son of Chris and Marilyn, always had a thing for mechanical things.

He had a go-kart that he couldn’t stop tinkering with.

He would ride his bike to the garage to talk with Gary and Gary’s son, Tully, about problems with the kart.

He said at one point, Gary told him, “You need to find something else to do.”

After “blowing up” the kart engine, Eric said his father took the kart to the garage, where Gary and Tully modified it.

Eric rebuilt and modified a 1967 Pontiac in high school and college, eventually turning it into a show car.

When the diesel truck performance industry took off, he was on the ground floor, and in 2011 began making parts for that market.

Today, the business he operates out of his house, Rychener Speed and Fab, sells high-performance parts all over the country.

Eric said one time, “Gary was joking around with me, and he said, ‘I really want to retire. Why don’t you buy this (the garage) from me?”

“I kind of chuckled about it, but it kind of stuck in my head. It wouldn’t leave. That might actually be a somewhat of a consideration.

“The longer I sat on it, I thought I should just approach him and tell him I’m actually thinking about making it serious.”

Eric said the two discussed the sale; then Eric had a chance to work the front counter at the shop starting in August of last year.

During that time, Eric worked with Gary to learn the management end of the business, but sometimes found himself working on cars and trucks.

“In a small business, you do a little bit of everything,” Luana said.

The actual sale of the business started after the first of 2018.

Overwhelming

The responsibility of taking over a business is “overwhelming,” Eric said.

“I’m going from running a business where the only responsibility I feel like I had was basically taking care of customers… If times got tough, it only affected me and my personally…

“Now with this, there’s employees and their income and livelihood that you’re in charge of, and a much larger customer base that you need to take care of.

“Now there’s a mortgage that needs to be paid.

“It boils down to the last person you need to worry about is yourself.”

It’s exciting to be returning the business to the Rychener family, “being Pettisville and how small it is, and the neat history of how the town actually started,” Eric said.

Eric has no plans to eventually walk away from the location next to the railroad tracks.

“When you come over the tracks heading south, the first things you see are the grain elevator and the Pettisville Garage,” Eric said. “It’s like you know you’re coming into the town.”

It’s like coming home, he said.


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