Owner Kevin Rohit at his new Stars Auto and Towing business on MacArthur Avenue in Cobleskill. Photo by Chris English.
By Chris English
COBLESKILL — Kevin Rohit has accomplished a lot in his 25 years, and the latest example is his new Stars Auto and Towing LLC opened three months ago at 142 MacArthur Avenue in Cobleskill.
It's the second Rohit-owned business and follows the Stars Auto and Towing he opened at 28 Kelton Avenue in Schenectady three years ago. Cobleskill offered a good area for expansion, he explained in a recent interview from that location, just a few blocks from the SUNY Cobleskill campus.
"There wasn't much towing going on here, maybe just two or three places," he said. "There's not much traffic that goes by here but word has gotten out that we're here and it's been great so far. Both locations are busy."
Like the Schenectady business, the Cobleskill Stars offers 24/7 towing and also other emergency road services like tire changes, lockouts, fuel delivery, jumpstarts and more.
Unlike Schenectady, Stars Auto and Towing in Cobleskill also has a full range of auto repair and maintenance services including oil changes, brake service, tire repair and replacement and engine and transmission replacement.
"It's pretty much any auto repair light duty to medium duty," Rohit explained. He has one full-time and three part-time employees at the Cobleskill location doing towing, auto repair and office work.
Rohit's road to owning two businesses by the age of 25 is one paved with hard work and persistence. He grew up in Queens, New York, moving to Schenectady about eight years ago and finding a job driving a box truck for a warehouse.
His interest in the towing business was sparked about six years ago when his car broke down and he had to call for a tow. Talking to the tow truck driver and watching him work got Rohit interested in doing the same thing himself.
"I originally had to take a $10 an hour pay cut from driving the truck for the warehouse," he recalled. "I ended up driving for three different towing businesses and was working full time during the day and also on call at night."
All that experience eventually led Rohit to opening his own businesses, first in Schenectady and then Cobleskill. He's a very hands-on owner, still spending the large majority of his time either on towing calls or doing auto repair at the Cobleskill shop.
"I always liked working on cars," he said.
As a single man, Rohit has lots of time to devote to his businesses and estimates he puts in about 100 hours a week between the Schenectady and Cobleskill locations. He takes a lot of pride in the self-made nature of his success.
"There was no inheritance from family or anything, everything has been by myself," he noted. "The way I see it, it might be a legacy, something I started."
Rohit hopes that the success of his businesses so far leads to more of the same.
"My goal for the future is to expand more, add more trucks to this (Cobleskill) location and maybe add more locations," he said.
"The main thing is we want to make customers happy. Customer satisfaction, that's our No. 1 goal. If we make customers happy, that makes us happy."
For more information on Stars Auto and Towing in Cobleskill, call 518-881-9987.
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