RIDING MOWER
Without bricks & mortar business, lawn-mower repairman makes house calls
There used to be a nondescript, but rather beloved and decadesold, lawn mower repair shop near the intersection of Dunbar and 16th Avenue on Vancouver’s west side.
It has not been at that location for almost 10 years, when the City of Vancouver bought and amalgamated several properties there, and new condos and retail spaces were built.
More recently, repairman Andrew Ranko, who was working in the 1990s for what had been Point Grey Sales and Services, has adjusted to another wave of rising land costs and rent hikes that is pushing out many small businesses in Vancouver. Usually, customers are left with little choice except to mourn and debate the kind of city this is becoming without their favourite momand-pop places.
This time — eager to avoid another forced move — Ranko is serving loyal customers, not to mention making a go of things for himself, by making house calls.
He drives around in his van, picks up lawn mowers, takes them away, services them as needed, and returns them a few days later.
Some clients have been calling the same phone number for four or five decades to get in touch with someone to sharpen a blade or fix a motor, and still reach Ranko now by using it. They have been dialing 731-8633 since even before people had to dial the 604 area code. Ranko arranged to get his cellphone number to match the former landline one.
“They’ve been calling it for 50
years,” he says, explaining how he’s been trying to sort out a mix-up with his mobile network provider after he lost his phone. “I’ve got to get it fixed.”
On a recent day, Ranko meets up with customer Angelo Sabanis to have a coffee at their usual spot near Main and 15th Avenue, and to pick up his Weedeater for repair.
“He’s a good guy,” says Sabanis.
“He knows what he is doing.”
Sabanis bought his first lawn mower sometime in the 90s from Point Grey Sales and Services and followed Ranko when the original owner sold the Dunbar location to the city and bought a new one south of Marine Drive near 71st Avenue. That was in 2009.
By early 2015, the original owner
was getting older and wanting to retire, says Ranko, who told her, “if you don’t want it, I take it over.”
“I started building it up. First, I know how to talk to people. Maybe it’s not always correct English,” he says of his mild accent, explaining how he fled a small town in Poland at the age of 23 with his wife and son in tow, stopping to live in Athens for
two and a half years, before arriving in Vancouver. “I try to be honest, and people said OK, and it’s been pretty good.”
However, the original owner of the business also “owned the location and I rented it month-tomonth because she wanted to sell the property.”