218: Malcolm Trammell

Welcome to the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

We're going to explore ways to sharpen our diagnostic skills, find learning resources and hear from experts in the automotive field.

This episode is brought to you by L1 Automotive Training and Keith Perkins.

If you're looking for education on module programming, j2534, eprom work, key and immobilizer, electrical diagnostics or drivability diagnostics, keith has a website, l1trainingcom that's got over 60 hours of training videos on all those subjects and more.

When I first started out doing mobile, I utilized Keith's videos on module programming and J2534 in order to get my head wrapped around what I would need for the tooling, the computers, the software setups, what kind of obstacles I would be up against when I'm out there programming modules on cars, and it was a huge benefit to me.

I continue to use the training videos that he has on his website.

I strongly recommend checking out L1trainingcom.

We have got Auto Rescue Tools and Isaac Rodel as a sponsor for this podcast.

Hey guys, if you're looking for programming laptops, you want the laptop setup ready to go for programming control modules on vehicles.

You need key cutting equipment.

You need diagnostic tools.

Isaac is your guy.

There's all that stuff available for purchase and the support that he offers, along with the purchase, has been outstanding.

I bought some stuff from him in the past.

I got my dolphin key cutting tool from him several years back and again the support has been phenomenal.

Help me out along the way with anything additional I needed to make it work for me, so make sure to check that out as well.

Again, that's autorescuetoolscom.

The link will be in the show notes.

Hey, what's going on?

Automotive World.

Welcome to another episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

My name is Sean Tipping and I'll be your host once again for today's episode.

Thank you so much for joining me Today on the show.

I've got Malcolm Tramel joining me.

Malcolm is a technician and a teacher down in Texas.

A former military member.

He's spent some time in the field doing some mobile diagnostics and programming.

He's actually still doing that, but he's recently taken on a full-time teaching position at a technical college down there in Texas.

So he's going to tell us all about that and we're going to chat a little bit about teaching.

I did some of that as well for about five years, so we'll share some stories, experiences centered around that the good, the bad, what we enjoy, what we struggle with and also talk about life as a technician as well.

So this was really cool to get hooked up with and meet Malcolm.

He's a great guy.

I think you'll enjoy this interview, so with that out of the way, let's jump in.

Well, good afternoon Malcolm.

How is it going today?

It's going pretty well.

Just got out of class and got in my office to set this up.

Nice.

So you are a teacher.

Where do you teach?

What do you teach?

I'm a teacher here at Austin Community College here in Central Texas.

I teach automotive for the most part.

The classes I usually teach are electronics and engine performance based, though that's where my forte is at the moment.

Okay, how'd you get into that?

What led you to teaching?

Well, I came through this school for the automotive program as a student when I got out of the military, so I can get a head start, and I did this while working at the local GM dealer.

Okay, and the acceleration of how I started grasping a lot of these concepts accelerated drastically.

But towards the end I started realizing that I started learning new skills Some of the few last classes I took before graduating.

I learned how to use an oscilloscope and it helped hold new avenue of possibilities that I can go through and it piqued my interest all over again and I kind of wished I would have learned stuff like this earlier on and it would have helped a lot more.

So I was like, okay, well, why is that?

I asked one of my instructors well, not a lot of people know how to use a scope, so they don't teach it.

And I was like, oh well, that's not good.

So, along these lines, using an oscilloscope as an example, there's a lot of changes I wish that could have been made.

And it kind of made me start thinking along the lines of me being a teacher.

So after thinking about it over a course of a few years, I kind of was like, okay, well, I'll apply to be a teacher.

It was an opening at that time for an adjunct for part time and I applied for it and I ended up getting it.

Didn't realize how much I liked it, though.

Okay.

But this year, this semester, I got the position of full time, so now I'm teaching full time at the same time too.

Oh, nice, congratulations.

That's a good feeling.

People listening may not be familiar with how the adjunct and full time faculty thing works and they throw all these funky terms at you when you get into the academic world.

That I had to learn.

But so an adjunct is like basically a part time and your job position, in my opinion, is pretty vulnerable when you're an adjunct.

Basically they don't have to bring you on for the next semester or the next school year.

They can just say, yep, we don't have that position for you anymore and you're not really locked in the full time faculty position.

That's still true you could still lose your position there.

It's a little bit more secure.

You can get all the benefits that the college offers and stuff like that.

So when you can transition to that, that's a really good feeling and good obviously for you and for your pay too.

That was the other thing this man.

In my opinion, adjuncts really get the shaft when it comes to compensation for the amount of work that you have to put in.

That's definitely true.

That can definitely be an issue, but luckily I was for the most part able to get at least one class a semester.

But it's being an adjunct the more classes you teach, the more money you make, of course.

But, it didn't matter, because I still had my other job through my business, so I was able to go to shops and diagram program for them as well.

Oh nice, that was a nice add on.

You're doing mobile stuff too.

Yes, I am Not as much right now currently because I'm trying to settle into the full time position, but I still do it occasionally for this semester.

But I do mobile stuff for commercial use.

Go to shops.

They can't figure something out, I'll help them, not for free, of course, but diagnose it.

Get my pay, go into the next shop, do the same thing, get, whatever the case may be.

Cool, is that how you knew Zach?

Because Zach connected us.

Actually, zach, I knew Zach actually.

Yeah, no, that's exactly how it happened.

There's a group of us here for the local Texas boys and I met them through there, turned out we went to the same school, didn't even know it.

Oh yeah, we actually lived very close to each other and then I saw that he was on your show and I said, oh, that's awesome.

Then I found out a couple of other guys in that group and I said, wow, I feel like I'm left out here.

I just had to hop on that.

You're a pretty well known guy in this industry.

I know that much.

I try to connect with as many of the passionate, interesting people as I can.

I did it in the reverse order when I did the teaching thing.

I started the teaching first.

I left.

I was full time tech at Firestone and I left there to start teaching.

And then it was the first summer after I had finished my first year teaching that I started the mobile thing.

Because I sat around for a month I was like summer is going to be awesome, just do whatever I want, and honestly, that kept boring.

After a month I was like, okay, I need something to do, I need some work Driving people crazy at home.

That's when I started doing the mobile thing.

I was like, well, this would be a good secondary thing to keep me active in the field and keep me up, keep my skills sharp.

That relates to teaching.

I did that for about four years doing both.

My mobile portion got to a point where it was just expanding so much that I had to pick a path.

It wasn't easy because I really did enjoy the teaching.

I really liked it.

Working with the students was extremely rewarding challenging but rewarding.

But the mobile one is what I ended up picking as like okay, I'm just going to focus on this now and see what happens.

I might go back to teaching someday, but for now that's my path.

But that's cool, you're doing it, man.

We need people in that instructor role that are really passionate about this stuff and can help people get up to speed.

Yeah, I agree on that, and that's one of the reasons why I'm trying to stick with it, because you don't see a lot of instructors that are still in the industry seeing the stuff that's coming out today and using that to guide the future technicians into the field.

And there's a couple of us, currently mostly adjuncts that are in the industry and teaching at the same time, which I think is great.

We need that because I still see some instructors teaching how collaborators work and how distributors work.

I think we need to kind of focus a little less on that and more on direct injection and understanding why we have 500 to 1300 PSI in the fuel rail plus.

Yeah, yeah, it's both time to move on.

Past collaborators.

So, even now, because with everybody wanting to go to this 20, 40 EV industry which in my opinion is isn't a bad thing, but it's kind of fast paced If, in personal opinion, we need to prepare the technicians that are coming into the industry for that same direction, just in case.

Because there's a lot of text in the field that really don't want to touch those, and there are those that, coming in, don't want to touch those, but they don't realize that, hey, you're going to have to touch it.

Yeah, with the push in the way the government is going with regulations and incentives towards that, you're not going to have a choice.

It's going to be in your bay or you're not going to have work to do.

I won't say that it's always more difficult, but it's definitely different and you have to read up on it.

You have to be educated on the safety stuff and then also the diagnostic portion of it too.

So, yeah, you got to have something to prepare you for that.

So let me ask you this Do you guys teach or have like a hybrid high voltage electric portion of your program?

We do.

But don't we do because we do have a course.

That's not officially a program, but it's a class that you take.

It's alternative fuels.

Currently, we're in the process of revamping it into its own course, its own program for hybrids and EVs, because alternative fuels doesn't just focus on hybrids, evs, it also focuses on CNG and Nigerian and all the other forms of fuel.

Sure, but our department chair, my boss, he's starting to see that now and he's pushing on to not just me but a few other instructors to come together and kind of get something going so we can invest more of our funds into that direction, so that we're better prepared and not just hybrids and EVs.

I'm also trying to sneak in some ADOS as well, because not a lot of instructors know a lot about that now.

Yeah, so our challenge was, because we had purchased an ADOS kit at the college because we wanted to integrate that and we bought a couple hybrid vehicles from.

We worked with some local dealerships and we were able to get a couple.

But our challenge was where do we fit it in within the time that we're allotted with the students?

Because ours was a two-year program and you could do as a student.

You could do one year and get a certificate, or you could do the two years and get your diploma for the entire program.

So even if you did the two years, it's like we already have to because we were ASE accredited.

Where do you fit in more stuff?

Right, because you have to teach a specific amount.

You have to teach certain sections.

You can't leave stuff out and be accredited by ASE, and I mean for good reason.

Like you got to teach breaks and steering and suspension and cooling systems in HVAC, and right, that stuff isn't going away.

But where do we put in electric vehicles?

Where do we put in ADOS?

It's a whole nother program, like another four credits of stuff.

So how do you add another year to the program?

And that was our challenge and we didn't come up with an answer, we were just trying to squeeze stuff in where we could.

Yeah, we're facing that same struggle because we have to have a minimum and we have a cap off of how many credits that we can have for a program.

We have an advanced certificate that adds on extra stuff.

So we have a course for diesel, which we're revamping now.

We have a course for automatic transmissions too.

So you want to go more on the diagnostic side?

Same engine performance.

We have a second one of those and we moved electronics, which is an advanced electrical course, to the main degree program, Just so we can move some other stuff around.

When they swapped it or they changed the regulations, so we had it and our terminal fuel is part of that degree program as well as the advanced certificate, so it's not required by them to take.

We're trying to push them in that direction.

Ok, we'll have to probably change some of the credit hours, but not a lot of people understand how this part works.

But each class has a certain amount of credit hours.

It also changes how much they cost Makes it more likely that they'll sign up for the other classes as well.

But I think the main thing is pushing to see, or to show the students that this is stuff that you would want to learn and see more about.

Because if you go into a shop and it's like, oh hey, there's a I don't know Ford Fusion Hybrid here with a battery issue, I don't know how I'll go about it, and it's like, well, I could have taken this course and learned all about it and see how it goes.

And now they're just going to go, pull a code or pull a DTC, go and identify and look up the hot fix section, see what works.

We're trying to teach students to not do that.

Right.

One of the things I found because I was trying to be up to date with current technologies and testing methods and tooling that's available, and I mean one thing that I don't even this isn't really groundbreaking or on the cutting edge of stuff, but it's a relative compression test.

I would teach that in my engine mechanical program or course that I taught was here's a relative compression test, like it's a super easy way to get an idea of the compression of the engine, and so the students would yeah, they got to learn how to use the scope to do it, but they'd go into the shops and I remember one student come into me.

He's like the text at the shop kind of like balked at me that I wanted to do this test and nobody does this test.

Like what's the deal with that?

I'm like I don't know.

It's really really easy and I think it's just that little barrier of learning that stops people from integrating the easy stuff.

But I just like, just push through that man, because I guarantee you this is something that you want to utilize.

That's going to make your life easier and maybe once those other guys see like, oh, he's figuring out that that thing has a dead hole within five minutes, they might do the same thing, you know.

Yeah, and I see that all the time with those students.

I see it especially if because I've given out a couple of classes to the other instructors to show them that so they can teach it in the beginning courses and before that, I would blow minds showing that same test relative compression and I've had it to the point where I would show some.

Like when I go to shops out in the field I was like, hey, you have a dead hole after they just replaced all the spark plugs and coils and injectors in the world.

It's like I don't know how you miss this.

And then they would fight it and say like, oh yeah, we did a compression test.

It was pretty good, it was good.

And I was like, no, it's like, look at this, that's just nothing.

Yeah, and most of the time that kind of scenarios because they've abused their tool and it lies to them, whatever the case may be.

But it's like I don't even know what that is.

How is that telling us?

And it's like, well, it's a mechanical reference, you know.

That's why it's called relative compression test.

So it tells us like we have this cylinder with this mechanical issue it's not putting out.

We need to figure out why.

And then that same shop or that student will ask us OK, well, once we see that, what's next?

And I'm like, well, and I pull out a pressure transducer.

And I was like, here's what we're going to do.

And at that point I'll do the tests, show them and they know, asking a bunch of questions for the next two or three weeks.

Or the customer will say, ok, whatever, I have no idea.

Here's your money.

Figuring it out.

Yeah, I've seen some eyes glaze over at shops.

When I got the scope out, I'm like, see, right here, yeah, there's no compression.

He's like, oh, oh, yeah, for sure, I definitely see it.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, he's like, so what do I have to fix?

Ok, all right.

Yeah, pamey, what areas do you actually teach?

Like, what courses are yours right now as the full-time position?

Right now as a full-time.

I'm teaching HVAC for the first time heating and air conditioning, so that one's kind of new to me.

It's mainly because some of these classes are last minute, but I'm teaching electronics.

That class I just finished here a few minutes ago.

I'm teaching injured performance Injured performance one right now and I have an intro class that I'm teaching, which is, in my opinion, the hardest class to teach and that's also a last-minute class as well, because before I was only teaching the two.

Yeah, I remember when I started I got the job in May.

I was a big long interview process throughout the spring of 2017.

They called me at the end of May.

I said, hey, you got the job.

Yeah, that's cool.

So I go down in June to talk to some of the other instructors within the program and we start late August like August 21st I think it was the first day and I was like, hey, can I get all the course material?

Because I was doing like 10 courses.

Can I get everything so that I can get up to date on stuff and figure out all the stuff?

And he's like, well, here's the textbook.

The guy before you took all of his course material.

I'm like, huh, so luckily I had that couple of months of the summer, but that wasn't nearly enough to write those courses, especially never doing it before.

And I was actually pretty blown away by that that the college was just like, yep, figure it out.

Yeah, that's very good, yeah, and I did, and I was glad because I made it mine.

Everything I was teaching was obviously with a lot of resources and stuff, but it was constructed the way that I wanted it to be, so that when I was teaching it it was really my material.

I'm not teaching somebody else's material.

I'm not reading out of a textbook.

This is based off of Sean and his experiences in the field and then the other resources.

But yeah, there's a lot of work to create that stuff and yeah, they do kind of throw that stuff on you.

And pretty much it's like usually you'll have a class last minute and say, hey, figure it out.

But reality, there are instructors that we have here, at least at my school I'm not sure about everywhere that's like, hey, I know it was last minute, I have this class set up.

I know it may not be what you want, but here is what I had for that class previously.

I hope it helps out so that way we can prepare the class a lot sooner.

Better we can get some sort of a head start and everything go along.

At least that way they don't think that they haven't helped out or whatever it is.

Maybe yeah, I tried to do that with the guy who was replacing me Was set him up the best they could.

I wasn't going to just hand over all of the stuff that I worked on completely.

Here's everything that I just worked on for the last five years, but I can still set him up with.

Here's the outline, here's how I did things.

Here's the things I covered.

Here's what you need to be aware of and we spent we had several meetings with each other to try to get him up to speed and what he would expect from that first year in the college, and so hopefully it helped.

I've talked to him a few times since and sounds like he's doing all right.

That's good.

Yeah, because teaching is definitely a lot harder than you think it would be.

It's a lot more work than people think it is.

That's the thing.

What do you think is the most challenging thing about teaching?

Planning an entire semester from start to finish and making sure they get it.

Planning is the biggest part because you can go every two weeks figure out what you want to do for the next two weeks, for an entire semester.

But you can end up so jumbled around with what the students learn and then at the end of the semester like they'll either forget a lot or they'll have a lot more questions.

But if you have the time or if you know you're gonna teach a class months in advance at least like three to four months in advance you have that time to set up an entire for us to 16 weeks, a whole 16 weeks worth of curriculum.

The more you have scheduled and set in stone, the smoother it's gonna go, but the less time you have like in my case, if you have two weeks in advance and never taught this class before you have that just that little time to take everything you know about a subject and everything you have available to you to help teach that subject and plan out how you're gonna

get these students to understand it.

Yeah, it takes so much prep time.

You know, if you want to make an hour of content with the, with the students, it's not an hour of prep time, it's maybe three, four, depending on what you're doing in order to get this stuff.

And then you have to run through it.

That's what I found is like I made these things you know, these exercises or this lecture or whatever we're doing in class I make it up, outline it, try to structure it the best I can and think that, yeah, this is going to work this way, this will get this message across the students.

But then you go do it.

You're like oh shoot, I didn't think of this happening.

Or what if the student asks me this?

Or what if this breaks and doesn't work?

And you know, sometimes cars don't cooperate right and so you have to, like, you have to redo it for the next time.

But that going through it once in real life I think really helps you understand, okay, thinking it's gonna work this way but it really doesn't.

Then you can kind of pivot, adjust, make differences, well, and then different classes will react to a specific exercise different ways, like every group of students has their own identity.

So one you know thing that you had.

You're like, wow, this really worked.

Great, everybody was engaged.

I feel like they really learned something.

People even told me they like it, you do it next year.

Everybody's like okay, whatever yeah, and I have a perfect example of that.

That happened today.

Actually, we received a Honda Fit this is a 2015, it's 2015 Honda Fit and it wasn't an accident.

I could tell mainly you know body damage and it was repaired half, half-assed in a way and the tail lights on the passenger side were damn or didn't work, whether it was break or turn on at all, and I was like, okay, this would be good for my electronics class.

So I had them pull it in and say I want you guys to diagnose this passenger side, tell them personally, tell me why it's not working or working them, and they got it out whatever they put.

I had them pull up the schematics, do all this and that.

Give me some pinouts.

Tell me what you expect to find each connector.

It's a basic light system.

They're LEDs, but still basic powers and grounds just to get them going.

I thought this was gonna be a good hour hour and a half shop time.

You know we have five hours per class.

We have to make sure it's all used to the max.

Turns out it was just unplugged, it was barely connected, and I was like, oh man, they do their all this time.

You know, at this point it was like 10 minutes into it.

I'm thinking we're gonna have at least an hour and it was just unplugged and I'm like, okay, well, that's a good example of how quick a job can be.

I guess we'll take a quick break, yeah yeah, you gotta be able to think on your feet, that is for sure.

Maybe when technology stops working, too is like the projector stops working one morning, the ball burns out.

You're like, huh, what am I gonna do now?

let's head out to the shop.

Yeah, yeah, hopefully we can find more work coming in.

HVAC, though that's that's definitely needed there down in Texas.

Huh, you know lots of ASU work usually usually have students that have a hard time wanting to bring something in the class, but that this is class of particular day one, like half the class had a vehicle in the shop ready to like know what's wrong with my car.

How do I figure it out?

yeah, yeah, pretty sure, yeah.

And then the the electrical side of things.

You like, that you get into that that is my favorite subject, honestly, that's the one reason why I stayed in the industry for so long and, like I said earlier, like when someone introduced me to the Pico scope, I was already like questioning, like, should I just change industries?

You know, I I learned more about the electronic stuff and I took electronics class and it opened up my eyes and I was like I really like this, this is nice, and I taught that class and all my students liked it as well, you know, had the similar reactions, like I was really questioning this.

But I really grew up.

I realized how much I liked the electrical, but I also have a little bit of a background in it too, though okay my background goes.

I was in the military.

I did four years in the Marine Corps.

My job was a motor T, which is a diesel mechanic.

Okay, so we did all the mechanical stuff.

They taught us a little bit about electrical, but not a lot, mainly just how to, you know, read a book to figure out how to troubleshoot certain issues and fix it.

But I went back.

They sent me back to the events training to learn fuel and electric.

So we went more in-depth and that's what I did for my four years overseas, and states did it all and I really enjoyed it.

It was really interesting because it never, it is never the same.

It always changes, but the but, the very, is still the same.

It's just the faults and the problems are never the same yeah, like you have the rules of the game, those don't change.

But the, the puzzle, the challenge is going to be a little bit different every time, but you got that's like.

I know how it works and it has to work this way.

That's, I think that's the reason I've always enjoyed electrical too is you can, you can apply that base to no matter what it is, and it's got to be that way yeah, and that's you know.

When I got out, I decided that you know, my job transferred over and that's how I ended up in the program and continued on and then it started.

I started getting burnt out until I found, you know, better tools and better new things to learn of electrical.

When I stayed.

I liked it you say you worked for GM.

I did.

I worked for GM dealer and going there I was an apprentice.

Starting my second day working there, they wanted to fill me out by putting me in an express lane.

By the end of the day they're like this guy doesn't need to be an express lane, make him an apprentice.

I got lucky because most guys are on the lube line or express line for six months over a year mm-hmm so they put me with a lead tech and he trained me from that point on and he always wanted to be clean.

He didn't like getting dirty, he didn't like taking out engines all the time.

He mostly diagnosed and did a lot of the problems that nobody else in the shop wanted to do.

So that's what he trained me on and I was very grateful for that because it taught me what I was hoping to learn and he was a real great teacher.

I hope he, whenever he decides he wants to stop branching and become a teacher, he comes to the school.

You'll be a great teacher, and I was there for about four to five years, almost saying okay and it started capping out because the dealership life is you have to fight for customer pay, warranty times are garbage, basically mm-hmm.

Pay nickels for jobs that should be paying money, like yeah, and it started to affect me.

So after a certain point, after capping out on learning things, not making the money that I think I should be making, I decided to leave after a bit and I tried doing my own thing.

I started, I got my LLC, I got all the credentials and things I need to have to have a business and I marketed out.

I started going to shops, started going to businesses.

In the beginning I did try to do some regular customer work.

I'm not a people person, so that kind of went away real quick.

Okay, but I start.

I kept going to shops and in the beginning it was really slow.

We get like a call occasionally there'll be a shop.

I was like, oh hey, we could probably use you right now.

And I was like, oh great, I'll diagnose something or I'll try to program something.

And at this time I was only able to program GM efficiently.

But this first car was a.

It was a land rover.

And so trying to program my first land rover that's quite the jump from GM the land rover.

I'll see what I can do and I had a mentor.

He's my mentor now still one of the common programmers.

He teaches here at the campus.

To also help push me to become a teacher.

I called him, say hey, can you help me out?

Because I don't worry, I'll take that one on.

So I passed him on to him and he fixed him up.

But he helped me learn how to do it.

I were after and the next two ones I had that were also landrovers or Jaguars.

I was able to program them, then have a whole laptop dedicated just for that and then went from there and it was great.

It started to pick up after a few months going to shops, diet and programming, and I didn't mind it because I was able to talk to people in the industry.

I didn't have to explain every little detail, except for diags.

I had to explain that a lot because it would I would lose them and how.

I didn't find it on Google or in a hot fix section, right like, just just replace this or do that.

I'll give them some instructions.

Whether they listened or not was on him yeah and it was going great.

A couple years later.

That's when I did the whole process to become a new teacher and it was good after that.

There's a lot that happened over the years is most of the time I hear your.

Your podcast is.

Usually I hear people talking that either that's been in here for five to ten years I've only been in this part of the side for about three or four years now, not that long or people that are just now starting out.

So they they have all this stuff that happened to get them where they're at like fresh in her mind, and I'm having to recall back to man what happened back in 2015 all right, yeah, right, right.

I have some of those two where I'm like man, I know that I dealt with this problem, but it was like 10 plus years ago when I was a tech at Firestone.

I'm like what the heck did I do to fix this thing?

yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I was there from 2011, 2017 and.

You know it's like any job there's there's pluses and minuses to it.

It definitely wasn't all bad.

I made a lot of money.

I was, I figured out the flat rate thing and I made it work to my advantage.

It definitely doesn't play into Diagnostics but luckily I had a knack for Diagnostics so I was able to make some money with it.

But that wasn't the money maker, right it.

It just got.

It funneled me work because then I could do the repair right.

Like you know, you figure out this where this open is and then you get an hour to repair the wire, which that takes you five minutes to do right.

So it actually made me work by funneling to me because the the people who ran the shop, the service writers and the manager would say, yes, sean, I'll be able to figure that out, just give it to him, sort of thing.

And so it was a good thing.

But the diagnostic work itself, which I enjoyed, didn't really pay the bills.

But I made a lot off of doing steering and suspension and alignment and brakes and so that part of it was good it it does eventually become just a grind Because they want you to work.

I mean, they're open seven days a week and if you don't set some boundaries, they want you there as much as possible, right?

They put you on the schedule for six days a week unless you really fought for it.

You had to be there every Saturday unless you really fought for it.

And there's no.

There's no work-life balance.

The benefits are good.

They have a good 401k and health insurance and vision and dental and all that stuff, because it's a big corporate company.

But Just, it wasn't the place I knew I wasn't gonna stay there forever.

There's a lot of turnovers in stores.

You know the way that it's managed.

It's it's all about the money, it's all about the profits, and they would turn over people.

They did this thing with store managers, right.

They'd have a set amount of store managers within.

You know we're in the Twin Cities area here and there's there's 20 plus stores around here because they do Bridgestone owns Firestone and tires plus, so they're kind of all the same and they take a store manager and They'd all kind of have their own vibes in the way that they run the store.

Right, and they'd have these guys that are just sharks, right, they're gonna drain the customer base for every single dollar they can and then upsell everything they can and every break, jobs getting four calipers and everything's getting an alignment check.

And If you were attacking that store, yeah, you're making a lot of money for a period of time, but inevitably it's gonna piss off that customer base and you're not gonna keep getting that work for longer than six months or so.

So then they have another guy and I this wasn't laid out to me, but I saw it, I know this is the way it is.

They identified how the store managers operated and and they would have another guy who's a fixer.

Okay, he would come in and he repairs the relationship with the customer base.

And that's not a quick thing by any means.

That could take Two, three years to build back up that trusting customer base within the neighborhood that that store is in.

And then they move him out of there.

And that sucked, because I was in that position in that store.

We had a really good store manager, we had a really happy customer base and we were making enough money, we were doing good.

But then they're like, nope, you're out of here, we're gonna put that shark back in the store and boom, then they're hammering and again the dollar amount of the store goes way up for the next couple years, but then it's gonna come crashing down.

So if you're a tech and you're running through that cycle, yeah, at times you're making really good money, but then at times everything's tanking and you got to wait through that like rebuild process and I I did not like the way that they Decided that was how they were gonna run it and I don't know if somebody at corporate fire still doesn't listen to this and knows differently.

You can tell me.

But I watched that happen that cycle several times while I was there at different stores and it's got it in my mind.

It's got to be intentional.

So anyways, that's a.

That's a long-winded answer to.

It's not the worst place to work in the world and you can make a good living, but the work life balance isn't great and I Don't always agree with the, the business practices.

I think it kind of reduces the morale.

And here's the other thing too I go to a lot of Firestone and tires pluses and not to Yameron here.

But when I left Firestone I went to my area manager and I said, hey, I'm teaching now, but I'm willing to be the diagnostic.

I didn't even do programming at the time.

I'm gonna be the diagnostic guy for all of your stores, right, I'm not gonna work in a store, but call me and I'll come out.

I'll figure out the cars for you.

He's like I don't think there's a really a need for that position.

I don't think we can do that.

I'm like okay.

So I went out, I started my own thing and I Service pretty much all of the tires plus and firestone stores around here.

I have like almost 20 on my customer list right now and so now I can charge whatever I want, so that I thought that was funny.

But I go into these stores, right, and I was just in one yesterday and the morale in these shops is so Poor compared to some of the other independent shops that I go to, like you can.

Just being that I go to five, six different shops a day, I can feel the vibe, but the energy between people, how interactions are going between the tech and the, the people up front and between the customers, and just how the shop is Maintained and how clean or is it not clean it is and it is.

Compared to a lot of other independence that I go to, it is so poor and I really do believe that's a product of the.

We are only just focused on those numbers, crushing those numbers, and not much else, and people are just kind of unhappy there.

So sorry if you work at Firestone, but that's my personal opinion on it.

I don't think they disagree with you at that point.

I've been to a few of them to help them diagnose a program something, and I kind of see that vibe too.

Some of them it's kind of all over the place.

When I saw that they were seven days a week I was already like I was thinking like these guys need a break.

I don't know how they can open up that long.

I mean, it's great for the customers but I don't, like some of them, or a lot of them, hardly had texts at all.

One of the Firestone had like three texts and they were rotating them.

Like two of them will have a certain amount of days and then the other guy will have the other amount of days and they'll have days off in between or something like that.

But I don't think I can do that personally.

I kudos to those guys.

Yeah, you can only do that for so long before you get burned out.

And every Saturday thing I did that for a long time and, man, I missed out on so much stuff.

When I finally left, that went to teaching and I had weekends off, that was such like a magical thing for me.

Like, oh, I can go to that thing that's on Saturday afternoon with my friends and family.

What is this?

And that should be how it is.

Like everybody should have a couple days to reset and not have to go into work.

And they capitalize on it because there aren't other shops open, or very few shops are open on Saturday, sunday.

So they're getting all of the panic, emergency work that's happening on those days, or people that can't make it to a shop during the week.

And so from a business, corporate perspective, sure that makes sense.

But I, like you say they're struggling, just like everybody is, to find texts.

But I think, even more so in those stores they can't find technicians to fill those spots.

They have a few.

You know top of the line guys that they're paying very well to stay there and then fill in the rest of the spots is extremely difficult.

It is difficult up here and it makes me kind of wonder too, because I visited my old dealer earlier last week, I want to say, mainly because I need a stay inspection done.

They don't call me for dags, they don't really need it.

Gm dealers tend to have what is called a field engineers, basically what we are for the independent world.

But I was there for a stay inspection and I see that they still have a full shop, because that dealer that I worked at had three levels a top shop, middle shop and bottom shop, which we call the dungeon.

In all three it was about like a 30 to 35 texts and they didn't seem to be lacking in one.

I'm just wondering like, how did these guys like maintain them?

But I saw that the manager was different.

The manager they changed management.

I believe they were actually bought out.

They were bought out by some corporate because they used to be family owned.

I think that whoever they hired to be the manager did it because the same guys are still there from when I left.

When I was talking to someone I was like oh yeah, you've been manager for a while now.

I was like what do you mean by a while?

I was like well, he's been here for at least a year and a half and I thought that was crazy because at the dealer world where I was at, I was there for about four or five years and every year I had a different manager, or at least two.

So those are evolving door for management.

So I was like, okay, well, that's good, because during that time we would have new faces every so often, except for like a handful of guys.

I think it really goes to show something about a company or store or whatever management when they can hang on to an employee for a long period of time, especially today.

I think you go back 30, 40 years.

That's not a surprising thing.

That was the norm, as you go to a place and you work there for 30, 40 years and you retire with a pension.

Right, that's not today.

Today, job hopping is almost encouraged and if you run into a place there's a local Napa store.

To me that's just a couple of towns over.

They have the same core group of people working in this Napa store as when I started as a tech in 2006, which to me is like unbelievable.

What is this guy doing in this store to keep these same group of guys there for so many years?

When you go into O'Reilly's and you might go there later in the day and have a different person there, you know, I think that's a really impressive thing.

That says something about the management when you can hold on to people like that.

Yeah, it really does, and it makes me a little happy about it, because if people are looking to hire, it makes me feel a little bit better to say like, okay, well, if you're looking to hire, we have students that can go there.

If they're good students, good technicians, potentially, I don't feel bad like saying, hey, I have this potentially really good technician that can go there and not have to worry about like, oh, he's probably going to quit pretty early on.

Because of that Makes me feel good about it.

How involved are you guys with getting students into shops?

What's your role there?

Oh man, we're very big into it.

We always, every semester, we'll hold an event called a meet and greet and we'll invite local shops where they're independent.

They could be Jiffy Lou, we're unbiased with it.

Mostly it's dealerships that show up a couple of other franchisees, like Lambs or what's the other one I think I've only seen Firestone once in the last few years They'll come set up a booth.

They'll have little merchandise to give up the handout, little pocket screwdrivers.

I always tell my students to grab a handful and they'll hand out business cards.

And we tell the students like, hey, if you're looking to be in a shop, you know, if you have a resume, something to give them, give it to them as well, so that way that y'all can, you know, build relationships and network, see what your options are out there.

And it's kind of difficult on that part because there's about 50% of the students that are very timid to jump right into it, whether because they're straight out of high school or they don't think they're ready for a shop.

And I try to push them, or we instructors try to push them to say like, well, just do it.

You're not going to know until you do it.

The sooner you do, the more you'll find out that you really are.

And me personally, I am really honest with my students.

Like I'll tell them like, yeah, you need to, you know, practice a few things first.

Or practice how to you know, change oil without accidentally draining the transmission fluid out, you know.

Or I'm like, yeah, you need to get into a shop yesterday if they're that good, Because I, you know, I have to be honest with them, so I'll point them to whichever shop they're interested in, whether they want to work from Mercedes, GM or whoever.

A lot of them really want to work for Asians or European shops not going to lie but there are some that do go to the domestics and they are the ones that are going to excel the most, I think.

And dealerships and other shops are happy about it too, because they have someone that they can start off somewhere, whether they need someone to be an oil changer, they need someone that needs to help out the old timer in the shop, be an R&R tech or something Everybody's happy about it.

Yeah, it's a good thing to be able to help somebody get their career started and get into a place that's going to, you know, be good for their good fit, for them.

And I always told everybody there's a right place for everybody.

Like, some people are going to enjoy the independent side of things way more, and that was me.

As a tech, I tried the dealer thing.

I didn't like it.

Independent was mine.

But then the opposite is true as well.

There are certain people where the way that the dealership is run and the fact that you get one car line, they really enjoy that and so that's right for a certain type of person.

So we tried to get a mix of everybody into the school as far as what was being advertised to them and what job offerings we would present, because we got an onslaught of people reaching out to us saying, hey, we have a job, do you have any students?

And so we just kind of had a board at the college of like we put everything up.

Like, here's all the places that are looking for positions, here's what they're looking for, here's what they work on.

Get in contact with us, we'll hook you up with whoever is in charge of hiring over there.

But that was a cool feeling is to like get them just going with their career and getting them into a shop and obviously you know I don't have to tell you, or probably anybody listening like there's no shortage.

I was like if you wanted to work, there was work.

That was a good thing about this.

And there is no shortage at all.

It's either you want to work or you don't.

And then the employer that says that no one wants to work.

Well, what are you doing wrong?

Both ways, like there's people out there People want to work and then there's people that don't but say that there is.

It goes both ways.

Yeah, speaking of classes, anyway, you were at Vision this year.

Right, I know it was months ago now, but I believe you're right.

I was actually hoping to meet you, but with everything going on I couldn't find time or see where you are anywhere.

That's the trouble.

Of vision is so many people and there's always people like that Like, oh man, how did I miss you?

How are you?

You were there, I was there.

How did I not see you?

I got a.

I don't know if you have received one, but I received an email saying if I wanted to instruct a class, I can submit it.

Have you received something like that?

I don't know that I received one for vision.

I'd have to check my emails or not.

I'm doing a class for in October for the Florida Alliance Auto Care, I think is the acronym, but it's the Accelerate Training Event.

I'm doing that one.

That's actually my first full professional training event that I'm doing up in front of professionals, so even though I've taught in front of a group of students for five years, I'm super nervous about this one.

It's a really different group.

You guys know what they're doing already, right?

Yeah.

I think you'll be fine.

You're a pretty intelligent man.

So the Florida intelligent, is that something with Mario Diagnostic or anything like that?

I don't know.

He does some stuff.

No, actually I should be exact about this.

Let me see if I can find it here.

It's a brain client is the one who kind of talked me into coming down for this one, and they're actually holding it at the Disney.

It's like the Disney resort or whatever.

Here we go.

So the Florida Florida Auto Care Alliance and it's the Accelerate Auto Training Event October 14th At the this is a mouthful Windham Lake, buena Vista Disney Springs Resort.

But yeah, I think they did it that way so you could bring your family down.

But yeah, they got John Thornton, rich Falco, brent Klein.

Let's see what else did they do.

Adam Robinson, gary Smith, they got a few.

Oh, jim Morton too, they got a lot of people down there teaching.

So if all those classes are full and you can't get into them, I guess you can come hang out with me, but there's a lot of really good instructors there.

I was able to go and go down.

Why not?

That's actually cool.

Me and the guys in the Texas group, we were talking about doing something like that where, if we can get something set up to create an automotive Texas tech meeting and have some of the great of the great skies come down and host some classes, kind of like a, like a what you guys are doing there, or like a mini AST or AST.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I talked up with like Fonslow about potentially doing something like that up here, and my my issue has just been time.

I've been so strapped for time to take on any additional projects.

So kind of kind of definitely a vision of mine is to have something up here near the Twin Cities, because we don't have a ton of stuff live in person up here in the Midwest.

There used to be some stuff in Chicago, but I don't think there has been within the last three, four years, or after COVID at least, and so it's all either East Coast yeah, ast is down North Carolina, kansas City Kansas City, I guess, is still considered the Midwest, so that would be the closest one.

That's only a six hour drive.

But you know I like stuff in my backyard too, so I have those thoughts too.

It's just the planning that goes into.

It is quite a bit.

So I get props to the guys who figure that stuff out.

Yeah, if anything, we'll probably figure out the next five or so years once we all start to settle down more.

But I think it'll be kind of cool.

We have more than enough stuff, in Texas at least, to hold something.

It's just at the time and all the setup, setup procedures that you got to do, and a good amount of money goes into it too, to get going.

But yeah, you said this is your first time, like no shops ever asked you to go out and teach their shop anything ever.

I've had a few requests for that and just again with the time I've just never followed through with actually putting something together.

But I've had a couple shops say, hey, would you do an electrical class for our shop?

And just never panned out for one reason or another.

But I did the tech talks at vision the last couple of years, where it's like a 10 to 30 minute presentation, just real quick get up there, say your thing and get off the stage and that was a good starting experience for sure.

And again doing it in a classroom obviously helps.

But yeah, it'll be experienced doing it for the first time, so I'm excited.

Yeah, I was always wondering about that.

I don't know how I feel Partly wants to, because I've gotten some requests for that as well, and mainly it's electrical, because I have some shops that don't have that, doesn't have any service.

I have some shops that have not used service information or don't own it, sure.

And then I have shops that have it and don't know how to go about it and they have no electrical foundation anywhere.

I don't know if it's because they just can't get it or whatever the case may be, but they always end up calling me and one of the shop managers, or a couple of them, asked me hey, can you do electrical class?

And I've done one so far for a shop and it was a CAN bus course and I put it together over the course of a week, so it was very basic, but that shop still managed to get a good amount of information out of it and I charged them was it like a few hundred bucks?

It was?

I don't remember.

It was a while ago, I think it was about five or so just to train like six guys, that's it.

Okay, for a couple hours and I was thinking to myself am I taking money away from myself?

The Chinese guys how this stuff works, and because I'm already a teacher.

So I wasn't thinking too much at the time and I was like, well, I guess not because there's companies and guys that travel around and giving out training as well, but locally I'm not sure if I'll get less calls if people were to start to get it more.

By the same time I'm thinking, well, we need these guys to understand this more so that way we can kind of grow as an industry.

I don't know if you think you think similar to that.

Yeah, I definitely understand.

What you're saying is, yeah, if you're going to go to the local shops that you service as a diagnostician and you're going to train them how to fix the problems that they're already paying you to fix, it could be definitely be looked at as taking money out of your own pocket.

I did something similar with shops that have difficulty with the secure gateway with Dodges.

We got to call you every time just to clear codes out of these things.

So what I set up was you pay me X amount of dollars and give me your check card and I will set you up with an auto off account and you give me your scan tool, I'll get it in there and then it'll be the $50 a year to your card.

And here's your username, here's your password.

Log your tool into the Wi-Fi, you're good to go, and then I get my one time payment for that, rather than getting paid for every time I go out there.

Now, does that take money out of my pocket?

Potentially, because I could charge X amount every time I go out there, but it's one of those things where it's like is that what I want to do all day is go and clear codes out of Dodges.

It doesn't really interest me, so I'm okay if that goes away.

There's in our industry right now the problems that exist with cars.

I think there's enough of them where you can teach people how to do some of this stuff, and there's still going to be plenty more challenging issues that are going to come your way.

If you're doing diagnostics and you're showcasing your knowledge on these systems, so they're all the more likely to call you when they do have an issue that they can't get past.

Right, so maybe they solve some of these easy ones they find the connector that's unplugged on a GM or whatever but there's still going to be some tough ones.

Well, what do we do now?

Okay, well, we got to call Malcolm.

He's the guy, he knows this stuff really well.

We're going to get him in here, and so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.

It's like you don't want to share all your secrets, right.

But diagnostics is one of those things where it's like I can show you everything that I do, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to do it without the same amount of years of practice that I've put into it.

Right, I've put it like you can watch LeBron James play basketball.

He'll show you everything he can do.

Good luck duplicating it.

And I'm not saying I'm LeBron James of diagnostics.

That's not what I'm trying to say.

But what I'm saying is diagnostics is like that.

It's a skill that you have to build over a long period of time and getting your butt kicked, and so, as much as I'd love it to be, one class is not going to get you there, so you're still going to have plenty of people calling you for work and, if nothing else, you're just getting your name out there as you're the expert on that subject, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that, and yeah, that's a really good analogy for it.

It's the, the programming and stuff.

I think is not so much that way.

Right, I could show you how to program in GM and for the most part, if GM server is working, you'll be able to do it.

And maybe you won't be calling me that much anymore If you buy the tools.

It's like, oh okay, this is pretty straightforward.

But yeah, I can show you how I diagnose a parasitic draw and what I do.

But if you get the next vehicle and it's a little different and has a different draw than that one, are you going to be able to figure it out?

I don't know if I'd be okay with teaching them how to program because, for a few reasons, when shops there's some shops that I don't tend to listen you have to have certain guys that have to master it and they're not always guaranteed to be there.

And then the biggest one is that they money wise as far as buying all the tooling and subscriptions.

I don't think that a lot of shops program enough to validate having the capabilities of programming.

Right, right.

It's tooling in a lot of cases.

There that's stopping.

Yeah, I see some shops with the what's it called?

The wrap, whether it's by Snap-On or Straight from Cart.

And I don't.

I still get calls me and everyone else I've talked to about it.

They still get.

We still get calls to call and program something because the wrap has proven to not be it's got holes.

Yeah, it's got holes.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it's not trying to knock hard act, because it's one of my main programming functions there.

It's just got holes, man.

Yeah, you can do about it At that point.

It's just experience.

I don't know what else you got going on today.

Yeah, Let me ask you this we can wrap up with this one what's your favorite part about teaching?

That's what the most challenging part is.

What do you like about it the most?

What I like about teaching the most is seeing those students, because we can have a group of students in a class.

That's about, say, 15 students.

They're not that big usually, but it's a good number.

It's a good number Out of 15 students.

Maybe all of them will learn something.

But then you'll see that small percentage, that 5, 10, 15 percent of those students take it and they'll run with it.

Then you'll see them about a year or two down the road, that one guy that used to meet in that shop.

Or they'll come to you and say, hey, I'm one of the leads or something of that sort.

They're the diet guy, they're the go-to guy.

They go far with it, especially when I teach a class as an advanced class and I tell them that their final can get an automatic hundred if they pass the L1 or the L2 or the L3.

They go and do it because it just gives you a good feeling, because those are exactly easy tests in the beginning.

Being able to pass on that knowledge is really sharing it with people that deserve it, because I don't like to share knowledge with people that want to abuse it or just want to find a quick fix when they are stuck.

I want to share it with the people that are driven to do better in the industry with it.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it is really cool to see a student that takes off.

I've got a couple in mind.

One guy went and worked for Tesla and is doing awesome things.

I got another student local to me that opened up a shop of his own recently after being out in the field for a few years, and that's pretty cool to see.

Just to know that you've helped somebody get started in their career path that's going to allow them to support themselves and their family is a very satisfying, rewarding feeling.

That's the part about teaching.

I think that is really rewarding.

Like I mentioned, I might go back to it someday once I'm done with this bubble thing, but it is pretty cool.

Yeah, I'd say I'd probably give up on a mobile thing, but it's too good and I have too many experiences with this.

It's kind of hard to pass on some of these customers too.

They keep calling regardless.

Right, they won't leave you alone.

It's like how did you get my new number?

You got that going on.

I'll be a good case study for clowns.

All right, it'll be this much.

Yep, yep, yeah, for sure, keeps you right.

Yep for sure keeps you relevant.

That's an important thing.

For sure you fall behind pretty quick when you're not doing this stuff.

Yeah, that's made the reason why I'm going to still do it, just not as much.

I'll do it when my time's where I'm not teaching.

I'll schedule you.

For this time.

I'll say, oh, can you schedule me sooner?

Nope, you're going to have to wait.

That's usually not a problem.

But yeah, staying relevant, that's definitely a big thing for me.

I'm in the biggest fear right now.

It's staying relevant, getting those calls, so I don't plan on giving it up nine times soon.

Cool man.

Well, it was really nice to meet you and thank you for spending some time with me today.

This was awesome.

Yeah, no problem.

I was very nervous the entire time.

I don't know if you noticed tonight.

Yeah, especially right after class.

My mind is still going 100 miles an hour for the students, trying to slow it down a bit.

No, you did just fine, so it's all good.

All right.

All right, that's going to do it for today's episode.

One more big thank you to Malcolm for joining me on the show.

I really appreciate it.

Also appreciate everybody listening to the show and all the feedback that I get.

I try to get back to everybody, as I try to get back to everyone as quickly as I can.

If it's a little delayed or if I miss somebody, definitely don't take it personally.

I've got a lot of emails coming in, but keep them coming and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

The email's in the show notes.

You can also message me on Facebook, which you find me there.

That might be the quicker way to get a response.

Usually that'll pop up on my phone.

Sometimes the emails will slip through the cracks or even go to my spam folder sometimes.

But anyways, with that all of the way, let's get out there and start fixing the world, one card at a time.

218: Malcolm Trammell

Ford Fusion

Honda Fit

About this episode

Original notes