Although Suzanne Mayo has kept the automechanic business of her father and grandfather going for the past four years in the oil-change shop at 102 West Hill Street in Spur, it was the change in Texas law phasing out passenger vehicle safety inspections that finally brought the three-generation legacy to a close.
“Vehicle owners still have to get safety inspections done through January 1, 2025,” Mayo explained last week in the small lobby of the former Texaco station— painted years ago in a Spur blue-and-gold scheme. Mayo said that she would continue her inspection license for the next year under the auspices of Wyatt Tractor, farther down on Burlington, because Wyatt’s shop meets TxDOT’s equipment requirements.
Mayo got into the family business, she recalls, when as a skinny eleven-yearold she helped tear down and rebuild an old garden tractor—and managed to maneuver the 100-pound engine head up onto the workbench solo. When the tractor was finished, she learned to drive in on their farm, helping with wheat and cattle. She assisted on the farm for nearly two decades.
“Mom made an agreement with me when I was a kid,” Mayo said. “As long as she didn’t have to feed a cow, drive a tractor, or work in the garage,” the youngest Mayo would be free from any obligation to housework.
For several years after leaving the homestead in 1996, Mayo worked for the Sticker Station in Denton, Texas. Employees had to pass a rigorous test, she recalled. She scored 100—when “most of the guys didn’t pass, and I was the only one who could drive a stick shift.”
When her father, Reggie Mayo, who had worked for Spur’s Rickels Chevrolet before striking out on his own, died in 2019, Suzanne took over the shop he had bought. She named it Mayo III in honor of both her father and grandfather.
Twenty years ago, Mayo said, the Texaco building had gone on the tax sale after the owner died. Glenn Martin then bought it, and when Suzanne Mayo went in search of a facility with a working lift, David Blackburn bought it as well as the efficiency apartment next door. He sold the property to Suzanne in 2019, and in that year she became certified to do Texas safety inspections.
Inspections aren’t a profitable business, Mayo admits, since the facility requirements are exacting and the margin extremely low. And even oil changes aren’t as straightforward as they used to be, with specialized oil wrenches and a wide variety of products consuming a chunk of revenues. Then the change in the inspection law persuaded her it was time to hang up her tools.
Mayo has done hundreds of oil changes, her patrons coming from a four-county area, she said. A lot of her father’s old customers and acquaintances would come in. She’ll continue
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