Who's Who: Jason Simms, Owner of Kensington Service Station

Name: Jason Simms

Age: “39 — how about that?”

Occupation: Owner of in Kensington

How did you get into ownership? You recently purchased this facility? All of my life all I wanted to do was work for myself. Late in life, at 30, I decided that what I would like to do most is work on cars. I just quit everything, a great job, and went to work for somebody for no money and got into fixing cars. Then this opportunity came available to put my shop here. I talked to the (owner), and he said if you want to put your shop here, you have to buy the gas station. I said, “I don’t want to buy the gas station.” Three, four times I told him that, and here I am buying the gas station. That’s how it all happened. 

So, ideally you would have the shop alone, but everything comes with a price. Yes, it does. Absolutely. I would much rather not be in, as somebody called it, the energy business, but you do what you can.

Do you receive a lot of opinions about the state of gas today, being here in Kensington? Constantly. I have to put gas in my car, so I wish the price of gas would go down. I don’t know. It went down two cents for the first time just the other day, so maybe it’s on the downslide, but we’ll see. One would hope.

I wonder if a lot of gas station owners are in the same position you are where they are not actively trying to make things hard for people — they’re just saying, “This is kind of how it is right now.” Yeah, we are told what we have to pay for gas, and in order to make the rent on the building, I have to charge a certain amount for the gas, sadly. I’d love to be able to give it away. But, you can’t.

And working on cars, this is your fulfillment, being able to fix, tinker, analyze, assess? Exactly. I really like puzzles. This affords me the opportunity to do puzzles all day long.

You don’t look back at all to working for other people? No! I was talking to my wife the other day about, “What do I do now,” because my whole life all I wanted to do was work for myself, and now I’m doing that. So now what do I do, what’s the goal now? To survive? I don’t know what the next goal is.

What do you do for fun besides cars? I have two kids aged 5 and 3. That takes up most of my time. I remodel my house: I was a carpenter for a long time. I would love to ride my bike more, but I don’t get that opportunity that often. I toodle around the house, keep it up, keep it going and keep the kids happy.