Business & Tech

Auto Repair Mainstay Celebrates 25 Years in Centreville

Virginia Tire & Auto Service is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and John Miller has worked at the Centreville branch since it opened.

Fresh out of Woodson High School in 1976, John Miller got a job cleaning and pumping gas at the Main Street Shell station in Fairfax, then worked his way up the ladder, earning promotions as a night and weekend manager. 

A Centreville resident for about three decades now, Miller helped his employers open a little auto repair shop in that area in 1988, and now manages 50-60 people. And his employer has fared well too: 25 years after opening the once-small auto repair shop in Centreville, Virginia Tire & Auto has expanded to a total of eleven locations across Northern Virginia, and now employs over 400 people. 

"It's exciting and it's so much fun to watch things grow because we started out so small," said Miller—who remembers a time when Centreville was pretty small, too. 

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Miller has worked at Virginia Tire & Auto long enough to start taking care of customers' kids' car repairs, too. In fact, Miller has stayed so long at Virginia Tire & Auto that he now works with both the original owner, Myron Boncarosky, and Boncarosky's daughter, Julie Holmes—who wasn't born yet when he got that first job in Fairfax. 

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And little extras from Miller keep customers coming back—like Spencer Marker, a realtor, who first brought a car in about 23 or 24 years ago. Miller diagnosed the problem as an $80 freeze plug. 

"I thought that was impressive. Because the dealer was telling me I needed a whole new motor!" Marker recalled. 

Likewise, Scott MacDonald, another realtor, has brought his cars to the shop for 19 years.

"My grandmother is 94, and Johnny will drive to pick up her car and get it oil service," said MacDonald. 

"Those are the kinds of things I don't think you can get anywhere else," he added.

Miller has no plans to retire anytime soon, and will concentrate on helping the shop as it coordinates a major redesign this year, with a new logo and other improvements at the shop. 

So what's his secret?

"It's luck, and hard work, and dedication, and treating your customer like a guest," Miller said. 


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