It is an American dream to have a job that you can wake up excited to go to, a job that involves doing what you love.

In the 1970s, Steve Russell Tompkins and his father found their dream job.

Tompkins and his father bought a snowmobile as a hobby three decades ago that turned into a lifelong job.

President of the Snowmobile & Motorcycle Salvage, located at 4101 E. River Road, Tompkins and his father began taking apart the snowmobiles they bought.

“Once we started taking the machines apart, people started to come here for parts,” Tompkins said.

The snowmobile yard has 10 to 12 acres of snowmobile parts, and about 10 acres of motorcycle parts, Tompkins said.

Snowmobile & Motorcycle Salvage sells parts, and they buy about 90 percent of what they price.

Tompkins was also working at two other jobs when the business first started.

“My father owned a little machine shop on the corner first,” Tompkins said. “And I worked at a car manufacturer and one other job before this became a full-time job.”

Tompkins said the salvage yard has a good amount of business, especially since it expanded to motorcycles around 1980.

“We needed business in the summer, so we took on bikes,” Tompkins said.

The business has also expanded its market by using eBay to sell some parts.

“We try to limit it to the United States because of the cost to send parts into other countries,” Tompkins said.

Chuck Fitzpatrick, director of the Small Business Development Center in the LaBelle Entrepreneurial Center, set Tompkins up with two students who had to do a business project to get started.

The salvage business also buys lawn mowers, snowmobiles and motorcycles.

“We buy anything with a motor besides automobiles,” Tompkins said. “The stuff we sell on eBay is older stuff, so it’s one-of-a-kind, so a lot of it sells.”

Tompkins said a lot of the business comes out of Flint and Detroit, and a lot of stuff gets sold to people in Canada in the winter.

“We have mostly Japanese bikes, and we take pretty much any brand of snowmobiles, because there are really only four or five brands,” Tompkins said.

metro@cm-life.com

E-mail the author: Vanessa Fayz