Auto repairer’s retirement opens door for print-media worker

It was time for Cecil Vencill to get out of the auto-repair business, and it was time for Todd Atkinson to get out of the printing business.

After 50 years in the automotive industry, Vencill retired this week at the age of 77.

"I feel like it's time to stop now," Vencill said, "and enjoy what the Lord has in store for me."

And that opened an opportunity for Atkinson and his wife, Barbara, to buy Vencill's Battlefield Service Center on Walnut Grove Road in Mechanicsville.

"Companies [are] no longer buying print media," Todd Atkinson said in explaining his career change from sales and management in the graphic arts printing business. "I'm in an industry that's on a major decline."

Atkinson is not a stranger to the automotive work. "I've been in cars all my life," he said. "I race cars, I build engines."

Through his AMD Motor Sports, Atkinson runs two Camaros in drag races at Richmond Dragway, where he has won the track championship, and at other East Coast tracks.

Learning by doing, Vencill started out in the service-station business in South Richmond in 1959 and moved to Mechanicsville in 1966.

"I feel thankful . . . for the many, many friends and customers I've had over these 50 years," the Tazewell native said.

Vencill's two-bay shop specialized in state vehicle inspections, he said, doing more than 500 a month. "It's 80 percent of what we do."

But Atkinson, who has a Virginia Commonwealth University business degree, has a large vision for the new Battlefield Service Center, expanding the business and offering more services: "We want to be the complete auto care for the consumer."

"The first day on the job, I sold five tires," he said yesterday. "I did a brake job today."

"'Customer focus, community driven,' that's going to be our motto," said Barbara Atkinson, who is the company's president and major stockholder.

That goal should work just fine, Battlefield Service Center's former owner said.

"If you treat people as you want to be treated," Vencill said, "it works out great."

Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or .