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Jerry Kottschade, a farm boy from Kellogg, was attending MSU when he went to work at Ben’s Beeline auto body shop on Rock Street in Mankato. When the business went bankrupt, Kottschade bought it and started Jerry’s Body Shop.

Today, 36 years later, Jerry and his wife, Geralynn, are far removed from the one-man shop — operating out of a spacious, modern building off Madison Avenue and employing 16 people.

They’ve brought some 54,000 vehicles back to pre-accident condition for motorists across the region and grown into one of the largest collision-repair centers.

Their son, Daniel, is studying auto body repair at Ridgewater College in Willmar.

Jerry and Geralynn, of Madison Lake, have been married 24-years. She started working with Jerry in the early 1980s and in 1987 they made a big move building the current shop. They expanded it to double its size in 1993.

Geralynn handles the financial end of the business, helps with day-to-day production and deals with insurance companies.

Mankato Magazine: What’s different on the vehicles today compared to those you worked on years ago?

Jerry Kottschade: The computer systems are a big change. You need a lot of diagnostic equipment to do repairs.

Geralynn Kottschade: The computers are different on each vehicle. If we put a new cargo door on a van you have to figure our how to reprogram the computer that opens and closes the door. The whole design of vehicles has changed a lot.

MM: How much does business go up in the winter?

JK: A lot.