Daniel Gott named “Vehicle Care RockStar”

Vehicle Care RockStars is an organization that highlights individuals making powerful and positive changes in the auto industry. They recently featured ACE Transmission Remanufacturing’s co-owner Daniel Gott. He shared his passion for hard work, his leadership mentality, the pressure of continuing the family legacy, and his ambition to change the world.

Family-owned and operated

“My grandfather had a general auto repair business in southern California,” Gott said. “My dad moved to Missouri, where he met my mom and worked for a local auto repair shop. Eventually, they sold a Mercury Bobcat for $1,200, and that’s how they came up with the money to start Ace Transmission in 1981 in Springfield, Missouri.”

The business outgrew that original single-bay shop and moved several times as ACE scaled. The brand now operates a 23-bay transmission repair shop, plus a 52,000-square-foot remanufacturing plant across town that produces about 100 high-quality units each week. ACE sells the units to wholesale clients across the country. This small, family business now employs at least 65 people – and it’s growing rapidly.

Learning from the school of hard knocks

“I worked at the family business right out of high school,” Gott explained. “But then, I decided to go do something different, so I started an over-the-road, refrigerated-freight trucking business.”

After seven years, the failure of Daniel’s own business venture taught him many important lessons.

“I went into that business with the assumption that most people are mechanically inclined like me,” he said. “My first truck was a 98-model with 3 million miles on it. When something broke on it while I was driving it, I could fix it.”

With a fleet of old vehicles and employees who couldn’t help maintain them, Daniel ended up losing his seed money and racking up a large debt. But he was able to turn things around. After investing in new trucks and learning how to make the freight business profitable, his dad offered him an opportunity to return to the family business.

“It was such a huge opportunity,” Daniel Gott said, “and I couldn’t turn it down.”

Continuing the family legacy

Taking on a leadership role at his parent’s business put a heavy load on Daniel Gott’s shoulders.

“My mom and dad worked really hard for 42 years, and it’s my responsibility to carry that on,” he said. “As a business owner, you’re always just one wrong move from losing it all.”

Being a business owner is a big responsibility, Gott said, but it also comes with a lot of flexibility. His wife, Chelsie, also works in the office, and their new daughter makes frequent visits.

“I don’t believe in a work-life balance. I believe in a work-life blend,” the young husband and father explained. “I do what I have to do, when I have to do it. I don’t necessarily have a set schedule.”

This is a time of innovation and growth for ACE Transmission, which adds a lot of variety to Daniel Gott’s work day.

“I’m constantly working on a different project, or testing a new piece of equipment, or figuring out how to make a process faster,” he said. “I don’t have to do the same thing day in and day out.”

Overcoming obstacles

Running a business comes with a number of challenges, of course. Gott said that the state of the workforce is the biggest obstacle to running a smooth operation.

“We have a lot of employees who’ve been with us well over 20 or 30 years,” he said. “But many young folks think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. You can see it on their job applications. They jump from job to job every six to twelve months.”

Young workers often seem to have trouble paying their dues in the industry, Gott said.

“When I started working for my dad,” he explained, “I started out doing the dirtiest jobs – coming out covered in black from head to toe. I had to work hard to get to this position.”

But Gott tries to face staff management challenges with a good attitude.

“Getting angry doesn’t do any good,” he said. “Just state the facts and make your expectations clear.”

Information based leadership

Gott is a hands-on owner who fosters collaboration and communication with his leadership team. He attends frequent meetings with department heads and company executives to stay informed of the operations. They also hold quarterly leadership conferences to help reinforce the company’s goals and standards.

“Yesterday morning, I started the day at our repair shop. I wore plain clothes and sat in the waiting room for 30 minutes just to hear what was being said,” he noted. “I talked to some customers to gain their unfiltered feedback.”

Under Daniel Gott’s leadership, ACE Transmission also developed its own fully custom business software. This robust solution handles nearly every detail of factory operations.

“It does everything,” he explained. “The online portal gives our wholesale customers the ability to see live inventory and make purchases. It even handles packaging and shipping concerns. This software knows everything about every transmission that has come through our doors since April 2020. We know where the core came from –  which car that transmission came out of. We know which employee built each unit. We know every part that was used and where we bought that part. We have all the dynamometer data and who ran the test. So if there’s a warranty claim, we can track down the cause of the failure and make future improvements.”

ACE even makes the software available to other transmission reman facilities through a sister company.

A world-changing perspective

Gott believes the work done at ACE Transmission can change the world. This begins by investing in the staff and giving them a pathway to success.

“My business mentor helped me realize that you can’t change the world without the ability to write a check,” he said. “Money gives you the power to change things. I want all my employees to retire as millionaires – through competitive pay, 401K investing, and profit sharing. It’s very important to me that our employees have the ability to write their own checks.”

As the ACE Transmission team works to grow the family business nationally, Gott keeps the company’s good reputation in focus.

“I don’t want to be the biggest,” he said. “I want to be the best.”

About ACE Transmission Remanufacturing: We produce thousands of high-quality remanufactured transmissions, each year, right here in the American heartland. With hundreds of units in stock, the one you need usually ships the same day. And we stand behind our work with an amazing nationwide warranty. We’ve been doing this type of work since 1981. We’re happy to share decades of industry knowledge to help grow your business. Browse the articles here on our shop blog, and give us a call to speak directly with our experts.