About Us
My name is Lee Carthel I own and operate King Daddy Chevy and Dodge truck repair shop Tulsa. I wanted to say a few words so that you could get to know me. I grew up in a small town in the Texas Panhandle. Farming and ranching seemed to be the primary source of income. My father bought and sold farm equipment. At a young age he taught me how to have a good work ethic. At this young age I would work for my dad after school and on the weekends, this is where I learned to take things apart and put them back together. He would bring in all kinds of farm items, we would refurbish them and he would resell them. Although farming and ranching was a way of life I couldn’t get in tune with it. I fell in love with taking things apart, making them look new, and putting them back together again.
In high school I excelled in Automotive and welding classes. I graduated high school in 1992 and immediately started my professional career as a mechanic, that’s what we were called in those days. We didn’t have fancy names like technicians that came much later. I started working for a Chevrolet dealership and learned about running a Chevy and Dodge truck repair shop Tulsa a few years later but just didn’t like the way things were done. I stayed for training and technology reasons. Once I felt comfortable with my capabilities I gave them a two week notice and moved out of the dealership and went to work for independent garages. I seemed to love working for mom and pop establishments more so than big corporate owned establishments. Like most individuals that start out I started in the heavy line field. This means removing engines, transmissions, rear ends and reinstalling them. The love I had as a young teenager helped me to accelerate and it wasn’t very long before I started to overhaul engines and rear ends. For some reason I seemed to be able to pay attention to the details, which is very important when doing this kind of work.
I grew up with four older sisters and no brothers. One of my sisters married a shop owner and he was more like an older brother than a brother in law. He was very successful at running a shop and dirt track racing. I fell in love with dirt track racing. Every weekend we would go to the local track and compete. During the week we would work on the race car to ensure that all was in good working order. I met some great people and we began to travel to several states and just absolutely loved this arena and time in my life. Although I know longer participate in racing I still enjoy a good hard fought victory in the dirt, and even a good pile up down the front straight away. Nowadays I have traded in the dirt track tires for horse shoes. I enjoy riding horses and team roping in my spare time. I don’t have a lot of time outside of running the Chevy and Dodge truck repair shop Tulsa and taking care of the business end of things. I wouldn’t trade it for any amount of money.
In 2009 my wife, Kris, and I decided to leave the dry windy Texas dirt and come to Green Country. So we came to Tulsa looking for job opportunities and housing. We quickly both found jobs in our career fields. I took a job working in a fleet repair facility while she went to work at a cancer institute. The shop owner hired me as the service manager. I performed these duties and quickly learned that managing people is a lot harder than fixing diesels. My love for fixing things wasn’t inhibited while working there. I was able to continue doing what I loved as well as being the service manager at a Chevy and Dodge truck repair shop Tulsa. The company had two locations, one in Tulsa Oklahoma and one in Oklahoma City. Three years into me managing the Tulsa location it had grown by leaps and bounds while the other location was struggling to make ends meet. The owner asked me to manage both locations, so every other day I would go to the Oklahoma City location. I did this for about two years. At the end of this period I had a strong desire to maybe step out and start my own repair facility. It was a pipe dream and seemed so far away i wasnt for sure that I could do it. We had no money to speak of, no property, just a dream and a few clients that said they would use me if it came to pass. What did we do? We started to pray and save. Not long after that a friend of Kris called and said, “there is a shop over in west Tulsa for rent right behind the big truck stop and truck dealerships. You should go look into and see about starting your own business.”
We got in the car and drove to the address. There was a sign on the fence to a realtor, so we called. The first thing he asked was what my intentions for the property was. I told him about a diesel shop. He said no thanks! The owner isn’t interested in that type of lease. What did we do? We prayed. One Saturday I decided to just drive by and noticed there was a vehicle outside, so I pulled into the gate and politely knocked on the door. An older man, about retirement age came to the door and asked if he could help me. I said, “yes sir i would like to speak to the owner about leasing this property.”
He informed me that he was the owner and that I would have to go through the leasing agent that was on the sign, hanging on the gate. I told him I had already talked to that gentleman and thought that maybe we could talk. We began to make small talk and I soon learned that he is a dirt track fanatic like myself and we love Chevy and Dodge truck repair shop Tulsa. We talked for about two hours. By the end of our conversation I had secured the property for a year. Not a bad deal except for the fact I still had no money and it was gonna take more money to get started than I had ever seen or held. We just did what we knew to do, pray and save. I quit the job that I had and began my own journey. I opened for business in March of 2013. No money, no credit, no idea how or what I was doing. I just knew to do what I loved, that was to treat people the way I wanted to be treated and do the best job I could. It worked.
A major company in the oil field business called and I was able to secure a three year contract with them, through negotiations. It meant that I would at least be able to stay open for that amount of time. I would work till around five o’clock and Kris would normally come into the office after she put in a full day of work and we would do invoicing together. After that was done we would normally throw some food down our necks and I would go back to working on the units that were in the Chevy and Dodge truck repair shop Tulsa at that time. Looking back on those early days, we didn’t get much sleep, we just did the next thing that was in front of us that needed to be done to insure that we would make it another week. I had a trailer and we would go almost every Saturday morning for this account and we would do preventive maintenance on their fleet. This meant I had to have help. I called on every friend I had and family members would drive six hours to help us when needed. I will forever be grateful for all those that helped.