When he was in high school, Alan Alford enjoyed going to school to spend time with his friends but he didn’t like the schoolwork. From a young age, Alford already knew what he was passionate about. “Ever since I was a little kid I was obsessed with mechanical things and cars,” he said. “For me, it was always about hands-on working and learning about cars.”
He got his first car when he was 13, from a junkyard. Instead of doing his school work, he’d spend time reading books about cars and working on his own.
After Alford graduated from Dublin High School in 2004, he went to trade school, first at Lincoln Tech in Grand Prairie and then at Texas State Technical College, where he studied auto body, collision and paint.
After graduating, Alford threw all his free time into working on cars. “At first I never wanted to do this professionally, because you don’t want to take your passion and turn it into a profession because then you tend to hate your passion or get burned out,” he said.
So Alford gravitated towards factory jobs, finally landing on one as a machinist at FMC. “To me, machining is a very satisfying job,” he said.
He stayed there for nearly ten years. “But I got to a point where I wasn’t gaining there, and for me personally I have to constantly show improvements year after year to myself,” he said. “When I start getting stagnant, that’s when I will start looking elsewhere.”
In 2017, Alford quit FMC and decided to open his own auto shop. “It didn’t last very long,” he said. “I was not set up to run my own business right off the bat and so I think that only lasted maybe a year, and then I got in with Harry Brinkerhoff, who I would consider a mentor of mine.
Brinkerhoff started AAMCO transmissions in Stephenville, and Alford worked with them starting in 2017. A few years ago. Harry opened Auto Tech Pro, and Alford now works there as the manager.
Alford starts his days around 5:45 in the morning. “I get the shop lined up for the day, get prepared for customers that are planned for the day, and drink my coffee,” he said. “Around eight o’clock when we open, I brief the guys about what we’re going to be doing. A lot of times I have to run errands and work on cars, make invoices, shake hands, pretty much everything. I cover all aspects just to keep everything rolling.”
Alford loves his job at Auto Tech Pro, and plans to stay there as long as he finds it fulfilling. “My future plan is just to keep growing, whatever that entails.” he said. “You never know. It might take me into a career where I don’t even work on cars — I could end up in a whole other profession. My goals in life are just to continue growing financially, professionally and with my family. To just keep building up. And so for the past five or six years, you know, things have been going upwards, so I’m content and I just stay focused on just improving year after year.”
When he has free time, Alford still works on his own mechanical projects. He enjoys projects that require metal fabrication, which is one of his favorite parts of the work. He also enjoys doing LS engine swaps, meaning he puts a new GM engine in a different vehicle. Most recently, he swapped out the engine in a 1979 Chevy ice cream truck. “It was just fun to do because I wasn’t held down to making it pretty,” he said. “We could just kind of have fun with it. It was just something different and it gets a lot of attention on the road.”
Alford lives in Proctor with his wife Chenoa and their two children, Izzy, 10 and Titus, 6. “On the weekends, we don’t go in the house — we’re outside and either working outside or just playing with them, whether it be on go karts or going for a drive or whatever. I try to do as much as I can with them during the week, too.”
Alford and Chenoa met in 2002, in the Bosque River Center. “I had a truck that was on hydraulics at the time, and I was just cruising around Stephenville,” he remembers. “One of my friends introduced me [to Chenoa]. She had a Dodge Neon at the time that had neons underneath it. For a car guy to see a girl that’s into cars, you’re going to be naturally attracted. So for me, that was it. We were dating on and off since 2002 and then we finally got married in 2011.”
Alford’s parents, Joel Noonkester and Tina Green, live in Lipan.
Dublin still holds a special place in Alford’s heart. “I’m still pretty nostalgic about Dublin,” he said. “On Saturday or Sunday evenings, me and the family will get in the car and we’ll go to Sonic to get ice cream or slushes or whatever, and then just drive around Dublin. And I show my kids where I was growing up and where I went to school and all that stuff.”
Alford’s advice to Dublin graduates is to “financially educate yourself and figure out what you love and how to make money doing that at the same time,” he said.
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.