UCHANICS – Certified Mobile Mechanics Who Come To You!

BY: ALYSSA MAHADEO

The weather outside is frightful, and with frigid temperatures comes something all Canadians dread more than having to shovel snow; car troubles.

No matter the time of year, car maintenance is always present in the mind of a car owner. Working year round to ensure regular oil changes are done, tires are changed and worn brake pads are switched out for new ones. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with yearly maintenance much less find the time to take your vehicle to your local mechanic.

What if there was another more convenient way to get your auto maintenance needs fulfilled?

Jemal Walker and Damion Platt are two local entrepreneurs and business partners who worked together to create a company where just this could be done. Damion and Jemal have been friends for just over 15 years and putting both of their diverse work backgrounds together they started up a company called Ucanics, a mobile mechanic servicing company that comes to you.

“I had a background in English and Political Science, before I got into customer service, working for the bank, and then working for the federal government,” Damion recalls. “I wrote a couple of novels and I was very involved in community service working for Big Brothers and Big Sisters in Peel and I was an instrumental part in helping them find black mentors to mentor African Canadians and Caribbean Youth across the Peel Region.”

Damion and Jemal have been friends since Grade 11 and both share an avid interest in the customer service industry, helping to make the client service experience as seamless and easy as possible. They are best friends, they’ve been through a lot together sharing similar mindsets and a strong desire to succeed by building their lives the way they see fit.

“I started off at a young age interested in entrepreneurship and starting my own business I just didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Jemal explains. “I kinda crossed tracks with a movie What Women Want, and I thought to myself I’m gonna become a marketer.” Like Damion, Jemal also found himself in financing starting a career in the banking industry before realizing it wasn’t for him.

“I was working different positions in customer service and marketing, but I still had that passion and drive to start up my own business and I wanted to pursue something where I could give back to the community, and I could control and take responsibility for the way my life turns out,” Jemal says.

Jemal considers himself a bit of a serial entrepreneur and it was one of the motivating factors to get back into his entrepreneurial mindset. “I always say if you’re going to get into anything immerse yourself in it and around that time I started reading up about business, joined up with the BBPA met a lot of people through there and ultimately my goal was to surround myself with like-minded people.”

There was one particularly busy day, and Jemal had a lot going on in his life. He had a cousin’s birthday party to attend and he was helping a friend out with the marketing side of his own business. “I had a whole bunch of things to get done that day and as I was leaving work to go help my cousin out for his party my car would not start at all.” Jemal shares.

Knowing all that he had to get done, and the limited time he was working with his car refusing to start left him feeling like he couldn’t do anything, and on top of that, he had to find some way to get his car to the mechanic then wait the 2-3 hours it might take for the car to be repaired.

“I just did not have that time, but the car wouldn’t start and so I still called around to a bunch of different places trying to get a quote, but most mechanics need a day,” Jemal says. “I finally found one at a reasonable price, but then I had to get a tow truck as well. I called around again to find out if someone had a tow truck and someone told me they had an independent mobile mechanic he can just come through and fix the car.”

In his predicament it was the most interesting idea he had heard for the day, so he took the number and called them right away. “My first thought was that this is going to be a lot more expensive than going to a shop and when I spoke to him he told me he was in the area and he could be there within the hour,” Jemal says. “It turned out being a couple hundred dollars cheaper than going to the shop.”

Jemal wasn’t able to make all his commitments that day but being able to have his mechanic come to him did save him some time and after about 2 hours the car was done, it started up and he was able to go about his day. After that experience, a lightbulb went off in Jemal’s head and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t known about this service beforehand.

In a similar string of events, Damion found himself in a situation where his own vehicle stopped working as well. “I was down in Texas for about 5-6 months when my vehicle stopped working as well, there were some issues with the alternator and we had a mobile mechanic that came out and fixed the care down there,” Damion explains. “When I got back and he told me his idea I thought it was amazing and that it made perfect sense because I had experienced it first-hand.”

Ucanics started in February of last year and since they have started servicing the GTA, they have been well received and experiencing steady growth over the past months. Jemal has always had a fascination with business models like Uber and Air BNB or Groupon how they work and how they become profitable without owning any assets.

“You don’t really find services like this in Canada,” Damion says. “In the States, they start all of their innovative ideas up first and Canada follows after so there are sometimes certain things we are lacking in the Canadian service industry.”

Ucanics puts the power of your auto repairs back in your hands by allowing you to book a service online or over the phone and have a mechanic come to your home or office to service your car.

They make the entire process easy for you. By using their website and mobile apps, you can access the maintenance schedule of all your cars, get a fair and transparent price, book an appointment, make payments, access service history and get maintenance reminders. Since they don’t have the overhead cost of a shop, they are able to charge less while providing a convenient service.

“Auto repair is something that once you have a car no matter what it has to get done,” Jemal says.

Some of their most popular auto repair services are brake pads and rotors, oil changes, car inspections, diagnostics, starter replacements, tire changes, alternator repair, battery replacement, used car inspections, engine checks, electrical work, and any other regular maintenance service needs.

“Once a customer calls us we take down their information, and details about the issue they are experiencing making detailed notes to ensure we have all of the information,” Jemal says. “If we can tell what the issue is over the phone, we can offer them a quote, and if we can’t diagnose over the phone, we will dispatch a mechanic to do a diagnostic at the customer’s location.”

At Ucanics their goal is to facilitate healthy relationships between customers and their business by offering high quality and convenient auto repair services and help save time and money. They aren’t just looking to repair your car, but also help educate their clients on how to take care of their own maintenance needs.

At Ucanics their fusion of convenience and high-quality car repair services is there to serve your auto maintenance needs. Give them a call today to find out how they can help. They are now serving Scarborough, North York, Downtown Toronto, Markham, Mississauga, Brampton Etobicoke, and Oakville areas and looking to expand into more cities in the GTA.