Midas had long been known for exhaust systems, brakes and other under car services, however, a dramatic reduction in the size of the exhaust market forced Midas and its franchisees to expand the range of services offered to include tires, engine repairs, and maintenance.

This expansion to a full service platform also allowed Midas franchisees to begin servicing local and national commercial fleets. Local fleets usually include light trucks and vans operated by air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, pest control and other contractors.

The competition for the local fleet business, like that for all segments of the auto maintenance and repair market, is fierce.

To differentiate our local fleet service offering, I designed and worked with a programmer to create a web site that allowed our fleet customers to view the repair history of their fleet on line via our own web site: www.midas-palmcoast.com. The MAINTrack segment of the web site let fleet customers see:

• Cost per vehicle
• Cost per mile
• Last service date
• Next recommended service date
• Complete repair order details on any vehicle

The MAINTrack application pulled the vehicle data directly out of the Access database that is the foundation of the Midas point of sale (POS) system. The data in the central Access database, which also served the midas-palmcoast website, was updated every night from each of the three stores owned by Palm Coast Auto Service.

I hand coded the balance of the web site (consumer information, etc) based on the then current Midas web site design. The site I built listed all of the services that we performed and included copies of the "Midas Matters" newsletters that I wrote for delivery to our customers.