As if he is not busy enough with his auto service and towing businesses, Jason McKee of Perry has put another iron in the fire by buying out longtime Perry serviceman Phill Naylor’s Naylor Service and Sales on east Willis Avenue.
The new sign is not up yet at 2924 Willis Ave., but McKee is calling the new shop All Outdoor Power Equipment. The store will carry the same brands of mowers and yard gear as always — Snapper, Toro, Stihl — as well as new lines from Simplicity and Ferris.
McKee, a 1998 PHS graduate whose grandparents ran McKee Jewelry in downtown Perry for many years, is especially bullish on the new Stihl line battery-powered chainsaws, string trimmers and leaf blowers.
“For people that don’t use them a lot,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about gas going bad, getting old and gumming up the carburetor. If I had a small yard, I’d probably have all battery-powered stuff so I don’t have to bother with going to the gas station and getting that little bit of gas and mixing it.”
McKee knows autos like the back of his hand, having run his auto shop at 13152 Kimble Place in Perry since 2002, but the small engine manufacturers have their own set of standards.
“They make you go to classes, or otherwise they won’t sell you their product,” he said, “so it sounds like I’ll have to do a whole bunch of Toro because they use a whole bunch of different engines. Simplicity, Ferris and Snapper are all owned by Briggs and Stratton, so typically they have a Briggs engine on them, but that’s not always the case because you can order them with a Kawasaki if you want one. It’s costs more, but we can get them in.”
Like Naylor before him, McKee is committed to selling and servicing high-quality products.
“We don’t carry the horrible stuff that you go and buy at a lot of smaller farm stores, Home Depot, Lowe’s,” he said. “They’re buying low-end items, and you just can’t fix them because typically you can’t get parts and even if you can get parts, a lot of times it’s cheaper to just buy a new one than it is to fix it because by the time it’s broke, it’s wore out, and it’s a piece of junk. We’re servicing Stihl stuff that’s been around for over 20 years if not longer. I just dealt with a weed eater that was more than 30 years old. We’re carrying a decent product that you can service. It does cost more to start with, but you get what you pay for. If someone wants a $100 mower, we don’t have one.”
McKee said he and Naylor talked about the handoff for a while. “I heard rumors that Phil was going to retire, so I thought I’d come and talk to him,” he said.
Naylor, a 1972 Perry High School graduate, is now 64. He said he has been toying with the idea of retirement for a few years.
“I had a company out of Carroll trying to buy me out when Jason come in,” he said. “This is a much better fit. You’ve got somebody local, and it’s just a better deal all the way around. So this really worked out good.”
Naylor started servicing small engines in 1973 and opened his own shop in 1982 in downtown Perry behind Mutt Smithson’s grocery store on Railroad Street, the present site of the Oasis Market.
“Mutt was always wanting me to buy the place,” Naylor said. “He was just bound and determined we’d buy it. I guess he seen the value in what I do and who I am.”
The business has changed over the years, he said, recalling the early days of the zero-turn mowers.
“It all started in Kansas,” he said. “This guy invented a zero turn, and then monkey see, monkey do, we had three manufacturers in Kansas by the early 1970s.”
Naylor said he will stick around the shop for another year to help guarantee a smooth transition. McKee said he is happy to have the seasoned views of Naylor on hand.
“He’ll be here another year,” he said, “but then I heard him mumble that maybe he’ll come back part time, so we’ll see. So I’m stuck with him for a year, or he’s stuck with me. One way or the other.”
The shop is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon. The phone number is 515-465-2248.
