East Road Motors, Carmel
DAVID PROPPPER PHOTO
For almost four decades, East Road Motors has been tucked away in a mostly residential but the lack of drive-by traffic has never hurt owner Bill Zacotinsky.
His professional auto service has been such high quality that East Motors’ reputation speaks for itself. The Carmel based business has been repairing cars and keeping vehicles on the road since the Ronald Reagan administration. And East Road Motors offers more than just quality car service, with the shop featuring professional lawnmower and outdoor power equipment repairs, commercial equipment repairs and generator repairs. The shop has also done work for local municipalities and is now an authorized service center for Home Deport and Lowes.
Zacotinsky followed in the footsteps of his father, who was an auto mechanic, though ironically his father told him to never become one. So Zacotinsky went into the engineering field and ended up at NASA for several years. After the Berlin War fell, the country didn’t need as much defense so Zacotinsky was out of a job.
He had to consider what to do next.
“Well I know how to fix things,” he said, so he went into the auto repair business, using the garage his parents owned as his headquarters. It was a garage that Zacotinsky used to spend hours in growing up and building racecars.
“I was a very mechanical type kid,” he said.
Zacotinsky’s family has been in Carmel for 71 years and the family has been entrenched in the community. Zacotinsky was on the Mahopac Chamber of Commerce board for six years, including three years as vice president and as board chairman for one year. He also helped run the chamber’s street festival for several years.
One of Zacotinsky’s sons, Andrew, is an imperative part of the business who will one day own and run the business, Zacotinsky said.
Zacotinsky has cherished his time running his own shop.
“I always had a dream of owning a business,” Zacotinsky said. “I always thought ‘wow that’s a man who owns a business, that’s somebody important’ and I always thought that’d be the coolest thing in the world to own your own business. I never realized how much work it was, but I like it.”
And even through all the trials and tribulations, Zacotinsky has been around for now 37 years. And he’s still passionate about the work he does.
“I still like what I do,” he said. “That’s the best part.”
