Banks certainly has been successful, having sustained a career in the business of repairing injured cars and trucks since the mid-70s. He knows down to the date when it began. “So I went to work for Richard Porter's Body Shop. July 7, 19 and 74. It was right after the Fourth of July. I worked for Richard. When he started me out, I never will forget after I worked for him a few days, he said, ‘Boy, if you'll stay with this, you'll make one best body men in this part of the country.’” 

The prophecy held true. Randy’s Collision has certainly achieved a reputation for excellence in its workmanship such that it is one of the first places anybody in Southwest Arkansas suggests if you need your car brought back into service after a crash.  After working for Porter, Banks worked for Yocom Body Shop for three years and then turned for almost a year to “rough-necking,” working with the oil drilling industry, but did not like that it required so much time away from home. 

“I didn't want to be away from my family half my life. So then I came back, and I opened up my shop down there at the old Hope Auto building,” Banks said.  He had succeeded in talking the manager of the Ford dealership, Jack Caldwell into letting him rent two bays there. 

“So I opened up Randy's Body Shop. That was June 11, 1980, during the Carter administration. I felt like if I could make it at that time with the gasoline going from 57 cents a gallon to $1.10, cars jumping sky high and the interest rate at 18 percent, I thought, if I can make it then I'll make it from now,” Banks said with a chuckle. 

From childhood, Banks had an interest in cars and in the way they were put together. He recalled being able to put together model cars without consulting the instructions and being able not only to take apart his bicycle, but being able to put it back together, too. (Most of us were only able to accomplish the first of this sequence.) 

“I was always intrigued with trying to learn how to fix something. I don't know what it was. I just like fixing something. I'm really proud that when I quit school, I prayed to the good Lord that he would let me find some type of trade that would become a passion to me, and give me the discipline to get out of bed every day and make a decent living for my family, and I didn't ask him to be rich, and I didn't ask him to be famous, just let me make a decent living for my family. And He did that. I still remember that prayer like it happened yesterday,” Banks said. 

He also pledged to do business in an honest way: “I made myself a promise that I wasn't going to steal from the insurance companies. If you could do that, you wouldn't have any problem stealing from a customer and I've just built my reputation on being honest.” 

Banks also made clear the importance of certification by I-CAR, the Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair, a status he has but which is not required in Arkansas in order to advertise one’s services in car body repair. “I was the first one to get certified through I-CAR here in Hope, and I wanted to get certified … You could go across the street tomorrow, put up a sign saying John Doe's Body Shop, and you can work on a $20,000 wreck. Somebody's life depends on you being able to put it back to where it's crashworthy and safe again. And you have to have absolutely nothing, no certification showing you’re qualified to do that.” 

This dispels the myth that all body shops can provide the same quality of service. Look to see what certifications its employees have, advises Banks. 

Another myth widely believed by motorists has a more comforting resolution now, though.  If your vehicle is brought to a quality body shop, Banks says, the belief that it will never drive as well after the collision as it did before is just that, even if its suspension has been bent. “It will drive as good as it did before,” he said.  The modern machinery in a body shop together with the know-how of the repair person can ensure that’s the case. 

On the other hand, the widespread belief that today’s cars are more likely to be considered total losses after a crash, Banks said, does hold water, not just because of the rising costs of replacing parts but because of the safety measures in the way a car is designed. 

“Cars are designed to collapse like an accordion,” he said. “They're designed to keep you safe. If you had a 57 Chevy and you hit something at 30 miles an hour, it didn't do a whole lot of damage to the car, but you went to the dentist and got your teeth replaced.” 

Other changes Banks has seen in the makeup of cars include an increasing use of computer technology to gather information about the car’s functions. This is a trend he expects to accelerate rapidly. “The big thing now is the data … They say that here in the next four or five years there’ll be more changes made to the automobile than in the last 50 years. Most of it is going to be just like having a black box in your car like an airplane. It tells you everything,” he said. 

The result is that technicians will have to race to keep up with these changes. “You really need to be very careful where you take your car now, because you can really get messed up pretty good if you get somebody that's not trying to stay up with technology,” Banks said. 

Another change relates to the car’s outermost layer.  What used to be a car’s paint job has now become a much more complicated phenomenon of many layers and exotic materials, much in contrast, Banks said, to the days when one business had commercials advertising a $99 paint job.  “Some of the materials and some of the mica and metallics in those materials come from very unique places. You better have a good product,” he said. 

This complexity has brought benefits, though, in that today’s cars no longer fall prey to corrosion in the way cars did in the past.  Banks said he also has seen increased durability in vehicle engines and parts. In the past if you managed to get 100,000 miles from a car engine, “you were a particular kind of person.” But now a car can go its first 150,000 miles and not even need spark plugs changed. 

For young people today interested in vehicle rehabilitation as a career, Banks advised they try to get an early start by simply applying to a good local body shop. “First and foremost, if they could ever start out in a body shop, just sweeping the floors and just doing odd things, it isn't going to happen overnight, but just, just let them know, that's what they want to do and they want to learn.” But the most important thing is to enjoy it and, like the people who work at Randy’s Collision Center, develop your skills to the point you can take pride in the end product, the repaired car. 

“I've got eight people that work for me. I think they all take pride in what they do. I know they do, because if they didn’t, I don't think they'd be here. And that's hard to find,” Banks said.