What’s the Most Unusual Job You’ve Worked On?

by ALANA BONILLO Collision repairers are always wearing many hats – and sometimes those hats can be pretty odd and memorable!

Ted Rainer (Ocean Bay Auto Body; Point Pleasant) has repaired and painted his fair share of interesting vehicles over the years. But perhaps the most unusual piece of machinery on wheels to roll through his shop was SICO, the robot featured in the film Rocky IV! Rainer had a friend who worked for a robotics company who asked him if he’d have any interest in painting a real robot that could move around and even carry a conversation!

“They brought him here, and he was rolling around,” Rainer recalls. “You could even talk to SICO. If you asked him, ‘What makes you work?’ he’d turn around and ask you, ‘What makes you work?’ In the film, SICO is a robotic maid that serves a birthday cake to Rocky’s brotherin-law, Paulie, and proclaims, “Please make a wish.” (A clip is available at bit.ly/ paulierobot.)

SICO’s presence at Rainer’s shop drew lots of attention! He remembers local police officers coming by to check out the robot, and many are still talking about it today. One of the town’s officers was in high school at the time and recalls his father (also a police officer) taking him out of school to come down to Ocean Bay Auto Body to meet the mechanical film star. Outside-the-box jobs are definitely fun, but Rainer believes this line of work is interesting in general. “Every day, we meet the neatest people. It’s almost like a journey, like reading a novel.”

Over at Secaucus Auto Body, owner Rick Symons once worked on a refrigerator that he imagines dated back to the 1970s. It must have had sentimental value to the owner, as Symons says it still ran but needed to be repainted. He has also worked with the town of Secaucus, having painted various signs around town notifying passersby of where resources like the library are located. Shortly before the pandemic set in, Symons’ shop was asked to paint a series of metal brackets of different sizes to support the WiFi system at MetLife Stadium, home of the New York Giants.

Brian Vesley’s facility – Valtek, Inc., The Truck Body Shop in Paterson – has also taken on plenty of surprising work. One of the first things that comes to his mind is a customized firetruck the shop had to turn into a caisson, or casket. “We had to cut out the hose bed to make room for the casket and for people to stand at attention as it was paraded through the crowds. It required reconfiguring the body of the firetruck, and we used a lot of high-quality paint and finish.”

Vesley also has painted many homes – homes on wheels, that is. For the past 15 years, Valtek has become a go-to source for RV paint work.

“RVs are people’s homes that move. So, most people are particular about how they appear and don’t know where to go to get body work done. It takes an extralarge shop with a large paint booth facility where you can paint an RV inside. They also require a lot of work with fiberglass and aluminum and lots of multi-color paint jobs with fancy stripes.” Clearly, these unique jobs are proof that there really isn’t anything body shop technicians can’t do!

Photo credits: cbr.com facebook.com/MetLifeStadium

NJA

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