DTA Automotive: Home for All Your Foreign Car Repairs

Alex Roman has owned Budd Lake’s DTA Automotive since 2002.

“It’s coming up on 20 years,” Roman says proudly. “Half of what we do is BMW, so it's 50% BMW and then the other 20 - 25% is Volkswagen, Audi, and then Mercedes. We work on everything, but unfortunately in this day and age, you need a lot of specialized equipment. Early on, about 10 years ago, I slowly started working on more and more BMWs, started going out to take more BMW centric classes. I wanted not necessarily to specialize, but at least have a complete understanding of particular brands.”

Roman attended Rutgers University for Mechanical Engineering, and needed a way to pay for his education. “I started working at the local repair shop. One thing led to another. When I left school, I worked at a local repair shop full time, and as my family started growing, we moved out to Mount Olive and I started looking for employment closer to home.”

There was that first internship, however. “My first internship as a mechanical engineer,” Roman recalls, “I kind of just looked around and I was like, ‘I don't think I want this to be the rest of my life - sitting behind a computer.’ No offense to those engineers who love to sit behind a computer. That’s just not me. I’d rather be in the lab testing the equipment, see where things would break and putting things back together, that sort of thing. It probably goes back to childhood when I used to love taking things apart to see how they work. I'm sure that has something to do with it.”

Roman in his words “hopped around from one job to another” and eventually ended up at an automotive shop in Byram. “The owner there took me under his wing and just showed me all aspects of the business, not only just fixing cars,” Roman remembers. “Eventually I was running his shop, and I always had the entrepreneurial bug.” Then came a key conversation that would mean leaps and bounds for Roman. “I went to him and I said, ‘Look, my family is starting to get bigger. I need to make more money. Is there anything else I can do?’ And he basically said, ‘Yeah, you need to open up your own place.’”

His DTA Automotive purchase was next, and that RU education has been utilized. “I am extremely grateful and beneficial of my college education, because I use that to this day not only fixing cars, but now as I get new techs, explaining to them the physics behind diagnosing a car. If there's one thing I love about my job is that what I'm working on now is definitely not the same thing we were working on 5 - 10 years ago. It's always something new, and it definitely keeps the brain active.”

And Roman and his team are always learning. He and his crew headed south to Florida in March for five days of training. “In the beginning it was just mostly me taking training and then bringing back what I learned and disseminating my tips, but in the last several years, I've been taking the whole staff with me,” Roman says. “I can only take so many classes, so I'll do one area, one of my others guys will do another area, because there's multiple classes going on at the same time. So that helps when we come back with a lot more shared knowledge.”

DTA Automotive is very tech-oriented. More than half of their communication with customers is done digitally or via text. When a customer drops off a car, instead of calling them, DTA first sends an inspection report link including pictures and videos that have been taken of their vehicle. “That way they have visual references to go by,” Roman says. He then adds, “Because of COVID, we instituted a touchless payment system. I would say 70% of our payments are done online. Customers can even pick up their car after hours. We have secure lockers outside. I actually have several customers who drop their car off before we open, and they pick it up after we close.”

As far as giving back to the community, DTA Automotive techs put their skills to work in volunteer time to rebuild and donate cars. “We would take cars that needed a lot of work, or our customers didn't necessarily want to put any more money into them,” Roman says. “Sometimes we’ll either put the car in our rotation for our loaner cars, but other times where the car doesn't suit the qualifications for our loaners, we fix it up, make sure it that it's safe to drive, and then donate it to somebody. The last folks we partnered with were Mountaintop Church. They found a needy family to donate a vehicle to and we fixed it up, made it safe. We're hoping to do more and more of that. Also, what's great about it is my staff winds up donating their time. One of the things that I wanted to make sure of is that my staff isn't just doing the work so that the shop ends up donating vehicle, but that they are also part of the donation process.”

DTA Automotive is located at 360 Route 46 West in Budd Lake. For more information, visit www.dta-auto.com.