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Ben Dellaria From 3T's Automotive on YouTube | What's It Like Being a Mobile Mechanic?
Ben Dellaria From 3T's Automotive on YouTube | What's It Like Being a Mobile Mechanic?
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About this episode
Ben Dellaria from 3T's Automotive shares his journey as a mobile mechanic, discussing the challenges and rewards of the profession. He reflects on his early career experiences, the importance of integrity in automotive repair, and the impact of social media on the industry. The conversation dives into the struggles of maintaining quality in a field often plagued by unqualified technicians and the need for better education and standards. Ben emphasizes the value of transparency with customers and the importance of networking among professionals to improve the automotive landscape.
Topics:
mobile mechanics
customer service
automotive integrity
social media impact
education standards
diagnostic challenges
networking in the industry
professionalism
repair quality
ASE certification
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In this episode, Jeff chats with Ben Dellaria from the Three T's Automotive YouTube Channel. Ben reflects on his journey from working at dealerships and independent shops to becoming a successful mobile mechanic, emphasizing the importance of professional conduct and strategic decision-making in business. Jeff and Ben discuss the significance of transparency, particularly when addressing mistakes, highlighting how it builds trust with clients.
00:00 Podcast Recognition Milestone
06:17 Outdated Carburetor Lessons in 2001
15:36 Stagnant Career in Auto Shops
21:17 DIY Mobile Auto Repair Journey
24:47 Critique of Mobile Auto Repair Jobs
29:16 Optimizing Mobile Business Efficiency
35:19 Transmission Repair Dispute Explained
39:07 TikTok's Impact on Job Viability
45:38 Incentive-Pay Myth in the Auto Industry
51:47 "Focused on Vehicle Condition"
59:25 Nissan Clutch and Compressor Failures
01:02:11 Chevy Communication Issues Explained
01:09:08 Repair Value Beyond Hourly Rate
01:14:12 Florida Estimate Quoting Regulation
01:17:49 Drawing the Line
01:23:21 Corporate Dealer vs. Independent Dynamics
01:31:22 "Resentment Towards Unqualified Technicians"
01:36:27 Ignoring Advice: Miscommunication Issues
01:40:14 Avoid High-Liability Jobs
01:45:42 ASTA Networking: Transformative Experience
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Filter:
|
Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
"... running a carburetor around somebody with an old Camaro or a Mustang or something that, that wants a basi..."
Car
Ford Mustang
"...arburetor around somebody with an old Camaro or a Mustang or something that, that wants a basic carburetor...."
Car
Dodge Ram
"...no business taking this dash apart. This is not a Dodge Ram where we can take it apart in 40 minutes and put ..."
Car
Honda Odyssey
"... not doing it. I, I've had customers with Honda's Odysseys, and they, they had a hundred percent dealer part..."
Podcast Recognition Milestone
Outdated Carburetor Lessons in 2001
Stagnant Career in Auto Shops
DIY Mobile Auto Repair Journey
Critique of Mobile Auto Repair Jobs
Optimizing Mobile Business Efficiency
Transmission Repair Dispute Explained
TikTok's Impact on Job Viability
Incentive-Pay Myth in the Auto Industry
"Focused on Vehicle Condition"
Nissan Clutch and Compressor Failures
Chevy Communication Issues Explained
Repair Value Beyond Hourly Rate
Florida Estimate Quoting Regulation
Drawing the Line
Corporate Dealer vs. Independent Dynamics
"Resentment Towards Unqualified Technicians"
Ignoring Advice: Miscommunication Issues
Avoid High-Liability Jobs
ASTA Networking: Transformative Experience
Select text to request an explanation
It's the customer that's usually the one that doesn't want to save face and tell you that they did something wrong or they just chose to stop paying it or whatever. You know, you'll get calls all the time saying, well, he put my brakes on and now it makes a noise and he won't fix it. Well, because you supplied the parts. That's why.
Welcome back, everybody, ladies and gentlemen, to the exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. You guys have, that have been following me, have known for a while that I'm, you know, I'm. I can be humble, but I can be, you know, proud of myself at times, and I'll speak that out. And a couple weeks ago, I'm sitting on my La z Boy watching YouTube like I always do, and somebody that I follow on YouTube and social media, TikTok just happened to say to the, to the camera, you know, or anybody here listening to podcasts, and of course, like, my ears perk up because, like, sure, yeah, I'm in the podcast realm. And. And then he mentioned this podcast and I kind of had a not a fanboy moment. But, I mean, I felt like there was a next level of achievement in what I'm trying to do here is because for somebody that I have a lot of respect for to recognize what we're doing here, this channel felt like we got to a next step. So enough about that.
I'm sitting here with Ben from three T's Automotive. Ben, how are you today?
I'm good, man. What's going on?
Oh, not much. We just talking. Before we got on, we had a bunch of snow and I've been out shoveling. And now my. If you see me put my arm up, I got an ice pack on my elbow. Because every old mechanic has issues, right?
So, yeah, we're all getting to that point where our body doesn't work anymore.
But, Ben, a couple weeks ago, you. You shouted me out in a video, and then you showed me out a week later in another one, and I was just over the moon excited about that, man, because, I mean, that's. That's the end goal is to just. Guys like yourself that are out there. Not to be recognized isn't the goal, but to have the impact that, that, you know, the conversations come up and people resonate and kind of let people know who you are and what you're about, man, because you're relatively newer.
Yeah, I'm not. I'm very new at the whole social media thing. I'm new on YouTube. YouTube. I've only been going consistent for less than a year. Tick Tock. I suck at Instagram. I suck at.
I started. I used to post just anything that I had from YouTube and I used to just shove it over to Tick Tock. And that was just the way it was. So, I mean, I've been a technician since like 2004. I went to school. It originally was. I. I'm from South Florida.
I live in, like, Central Florida now. I always wanted. I, I knew since I was a kid, I always wanted to fix stuff. I didn't know it was about cars, but as I got older and it changed from lawnmowers to dirt bikes to cars, that's just the. Where it went. I, I always wanted a job, but every time you went somewhere, they said, oh, have you gone to school? Have you gone to school? No. Okay, go to school. So I did that.
That was a joke. The school. I'm not gonna say the school was bad. I did it and it got me my first job, but it was called Lincoln College. It was in West Palm Beach. It. That was the new name. It got bought.
It was Lincoln Tech first, and then Lincoln College bought it out. To just give you an idea. So at the time, I'm. I don't know how old I was 22, 23, something like that. And I got a job in my second semester working fleet for a company called Butler Services. And they were. We were a subcontractor for Bell south, which. Which is now AT and T.
Right. So I got. I had two bays that were my own. My own office, my own parts room. And you're just like, go to work. And I'm like, all right, you know, cool. Well, I mean, that was a great job. I made a lot of money, especially being a young.
We just had my son, he's actually getting married next month. And that's crazy. And. But, you know, no, no service information. No, Just old. Old books, you know, that old school way. Looking up labor times, looking up, trying to. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
I'm in school still, and I got a job where I'm in charge of 300, 400 cars, trucks, all the way up to air brake trucks and everything, Right? Great. I made a lot of money because you didn't have to sell a job. You didn't have to. You had to ask Permission over like 300 to do this or that, but you'd have tow ins. You know, your cars were brought to you from other satellite lots every night by drivers, and you come in at 7:30, you were out at 3:30, and you made flat rate and that was it also.
They paid you flat rate doing that?
Yeah, yeah. So like, I'd write it all up and I, I'd fax in my paperwork, you know, at the end of each day, you know, so it was easy. You're turning 80, 100 hours a week easy. Because there was no sell, no service rider to sell the job. You had to keep these trucks on the road and they came in for preventative maintenance every six months. So that was fun. I did it for a few years and then school's over by that time. And then they hired me to be a teacher and I'm like, all right, I'll do it.
But it was, you know, brakes, steering and suspension. But that kind of like, was like I, I, I passed the school without opening the books. Right. That shows you, like, kind of how jokey it was because they were still teaching us TBI. Like we're in 2002 and you're teaching me stuff that, you know, is 95, 96, 97. Like, I don't understand, like, why are we so far behind if we're going to get into the industry? So it was, and when I was.
Coming through in 2001, sorry, it was delay there. When I was coming through in 2001, people have heard me talk about, they were still, they were still teaching carburetors, you know what I mean? Like, they were still teaching carburetors, mixer, solenoids on the side of a carb. And like. And I was like, first of all, we're not going to see many much of this. And if we are going to see a car, we're going to see a basic carb, like either on a piece of power sports equipment or a lawn tractor, or you're going to see like a basic carb that doesn't have the emission stuff working on it. Right? We're not going to. Because who's going to still be running a carburetor around somebody with an old Camaro or a Mustang or something that, that wants a basic carburetor. They're not going to be.
If you're trying to get parts for a mixture solenoid for a quadrajet in 2006, good luck, you know. Yeah, it's already been with. And nobody wants that on there anyway. Right. They want it tuned up. They don't want it. Yeah.
That leads us into later conversations of people. But so it, it, the, it was good at the, the job because when I had a problem. I had to figure it out and I didn't have someone. And that's kind of like how my life is now with my company is I don't have anyone to look to except me. Right. So I had left there, I went through a divorce, I left there and I went to the dealer, I went to Chevy. Go ahead.
Before there. When you're building your hours for your. For your fleet job, diag time. How did you approach that from the flat rate time? Like was it kind of. You had to. Did the. Could you sell it as part of. No, just checking it all.
It was like a five minute.
It was.
Yeah. Okay.
And there wasn't. I can tell you right off the bat when we talk about like diag time it's. Or like if you think about typical diag. If there was a check, they didn't have many problems with those vehicles. So like, like when. If you look at Erico's channel and every. And you probably your stuff way up north, you probably deal with a lot of obvious rust and green crusties. We don't deal with that here.
I mean, you want to take a bearing out, you take the bearing out. You don't heat it, you don't beat the crap out of it. You take the bearing out. I don't get that a lot here. We get. I get rodent damage consistent.
Okay.
So we do get broke wires. So it's, it's a very different aspect. So when I was down there, even though we were close to the, the eastern border of the beach and stuff like that in Stuart, Florida, it was just repairs. There wasn't really any diag. The one time that I can tell you I had a very hard diag job was my own fault, but it taught me a lot. And you know, this is maybe my first year in on an old 96 Cavalier. There's the ground cable comes off the battery and runs past the battery and has a clamp that bolts to the battery tray. Well, the, that clamp is an added ground.
The insulation is missing in a 1 inch section. The clamps on it and it clamps to there. I didn't know that. And all of a sudden I put a head on it because they used to leach coolant. And I'm beating myself again. I'm looking in the books, I'm like what does this have in common? And finally I'm like, okay, well ground is common. And I just happened to find it. It was because I left the bolt out.
But that was a huge learning thing for me. That I had to figure out on my own, without service information to say. I got to read through this old Chilton's book and look at wiring diagrams. I have no idea what I'm looking at to figure out what the hell's going on here. That was my first time doing that.
So you go off to the dealer?
Yep.
What made that choice? Was it like more money or more training opportunities or why make that move?
So I left there because, like I said, I went through a divorce and I kind of screwed the job up because I transferred to one location in the back and I just. I wasn't mentally right. So I just. I don't know why I went to the dealer. I just was like, there's a Chevy dealer down the street. Let me go there. And I think it was because I kind of knew some of the people there because we would send stuff there for modules or programming or anything like that. Because it was right down the street.
And yeah, I don't know, I just got a job there. And that sucked.
You can't just say it sucked. You gotta elaborate on.
So, like, you know, dealers are a little political, but yeah. But outside of that, it was an extreme amount of favoritism. So I've never worked in any facility in my entire life where I felt like it was family. It was always just, I'm gonna cut your throat to get mine. And that's what the dealer was all about. And then. And also I was too young in my career to have my head on straight. I didn't understand.
I didn't understand training. I didn't understand why they wanted it and what they wanted because they weren't giving us more. Like recent episode of yours, somebody was talking about the dealer stuff. And I was like, they didn't do that at mine. They had certain guys that were real leveled up that allowed for the dealer to keep getting certain warranty work and stuff like that. But if I went and took XXX training, I didn't get more incentive for it. They would pay us to take it. But like you said in your.
In your episode, it was like, well, if I was in there for an hour, they gave me an hour. Well, I'll go do four tires and two in a brake job and go make six hours. Like, why am I. I don't want to do that. I'm here to make money. You know, this is a. You pay me to fix the car. Why should I give you an hour when you're only giving me an hour and you're not going to give Me, an incentive to learn more of your company.
And I was naive and stupid that way.
My thing was, I was constantly like, there was guys leveled up higher than me on. On their certs and I was fixing their comebacks. I was doing their diet, and I'm like, you know, because. Why? Well, they. They maybe got an EFI, you know, a fuel injection certification or whatever in 96. Well, by 2008, it's different. You know, the O2s work different. The.
The module is different. There's a whole lot more modules. Like, the networks are different. And I'm fixing those cars day in and day out, and they're like, you got to go to school and get the certification. Like, I don't have to go to school and get certification. Excuse me. Like, I'm already fixing it. Like, who's come back? Did I not fix this month? You fix them all.
Cool. I don't need to go then, because you want me to go and sign on at night, go through this dribble and take the course. All those guys that I'm fixing their stuff for, they've had it since before the Internet existed. So they got paid to go. Just pay me my time. You know, that was my thing with the dealer training. Like, I hated it. I wouldn't do it.
I refused, you know, after a while, unless you're sending me, take my time. Yeah.
And it was. Even. It was on premise. But you would go upstairs and you'd sit in this stupid room. And I'm not like that. I can't. If I don't have stimulation in my head, I can't do it. And I think that's why it took me, and we get into this later, too, is I never knew about all these guys on YouTube until about maybe two, three years ago.
Wow.
I. I didn't. I never picked up YouTube because I just was not a technology style person. But anyway, yeah, the dealer man. Okay, so this is the main reason why I left. So I was doing a car that I don't know what the hell I was doing, but it was a car. And it so happened to be a lawyer who was friends with a service manager. I screwed up.
I left the tire loose, but I didn't leave a tire loose to the point where, like, they left and it fell off or anything like that. We caught it, I tightened it, no big deal. But I got reamed for it. And yet the front end guy did it on three occasions that I know of. And one of them, a tire fell off and he never got reprimanded never got demoted, never got nothing. And I'm like, he's been here forever. So he's, you know, the old man that you are looking at. And I'm like, yeah, I don't think so.
This isn't going to work for me because I'm the young punk kid that's here and I know I'm a punk, but you know, come on. So I left. That was why I only lasted there about a year and a half and then I got into the independent field and it's. I've been in the independent field ever since.
So you, you left the dealer. Did you go to an independent shop or.
Yeah. What the heck was it? It was a. Just a guy's shop in Port St. Lucie, Florida. And I was doing not everything. I, I did a lot of front end work. I was doing his alignments because nobody else knew how to do the alignments. And that's when I kind of learned, don't let the owners of the shops know you can do a billion things outside of being a technician because then they're going to use you for it.
And that's what happened in almost every shop I worked at. Like, oh, you can fix computers, you could fix this? No, I can mutter my way through it and they, you know, you know, and then all of a sudden I'm doing that crap. But anyway, yeah, I went to a shop, I was doing alignments, you know, and just basic repair. And that's what I did from like 07 all the way through like 2016, 2017. I never progressed. I never was like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, do this. But I worked at multiple different shops because in that time, time frame I moved up here where I live now, I live in Okala. And I've worked for one, two, three different shops here in all that time frame.
But it was the same thing. Either the owner, one owner was a line tech for like the electric company and he wanted to open a business and he had no business being in an automotive field. Another guy used to be a service writer for a transmission shop and then bought his own shop next door. He was a crook. And I hated every minute of that place because he, he was just one of those ones that thought it was okay to tell a little white lie all the time to your customer. And I'm like, I'm like, this is not really good. And then the other one, the guy was a drunk, you know, and he just, he had other people running it. But the same, the same favoritism would Go on.
So if you weren't willing and they weren't. And the bad part is most of those shops, instead of just being a straight flat rate technician, they wanted to pay you both ways. They wanted that, that hybrid that you talk about.
Yeah.
Where they're giving me $400 to be there for six days and then everything after 20 hours, I can make like $12 on per hour. So if I do 30 hours, they'll pay me 30 hours by 12 bucks plus the 400. Yeah, that was, it's fine, we made enough money to take care of the kids and everything. But there was no progression and there was no incentive to do anything else. But the reason that they did it was if my bay is clean, they're like, why don't you go sweep over there? And I'm like, no, I'm a technician, I didn't make that mess. Well, we pay you to be here. Yeah. Well, you see that tow truck? My toolbox is going on it.
Yeah.
You know, so I've never had a real good experience in this field.
And that's why it would scare me to go back now to a dealership because they all have a guarantee now, which I'm, I really, I'm for a guarantee, but I'm also against it because it means that like if you still want to feed that one guy, you're going to feed him and then you're going to turn around, you're going to say, here's a sunroof, water leak to do or here's a really shit job. And, and you're stuck doing it because you're under guarantee. And that's. So it doesn't really fix the problem of unfair. And I know life's not supposed to be fair. I can hear the old guys in the, in the groups telling me that right now life's not going to be fair. Stop worrying about what everyone else is making and listen, here's the thing. At the end of the day, if I eventually, if everybody else's comebacks peter in and they wind up in my bay and I fix them, you're darn right I'm going to be worried about what the other guys are doing because I'm going to wonder why I can do it and they can't.
Is it lack of effort or lack of ability? Effort is one thing, abilities another. We can work on the ability. Effort, that's an attitude thing. You got to look at that. So everybody that goes, don't be worried about what somebody else is making, just work. Excuse me. It doesn't quite work that way. Because if, if good work is good work and crap work is crap work, and if I'm steady, diet of crap work, and we're still incentivized, I'm still getting screwed, you know, and there's no one.
It. Right. It doesn't incentivize me. So the, the, the guarantee thing, I'm not a. I don't, I can't say I'm not about it, but it, it, it's, it's an obstacle for me going back because I feel like they hold it over my head. You're going to come in on Saturday because you're on a guarantee. You're going to work, you know, hours, overtime tonight to get something done because you're on a guarantee.
Yeah, I agree. And that's so, I mean, and that's. Like I said, I just, I never had, I never had a good experience. And that's what, like, drove me, like, listening to a lot of your episodes. When I hear people talk about, oh, man, this was like, it was my family atmosphere. It was great. I'm like, what is that? Like, I don't know what that means, but. So that leads me all the way up into like 2017.
I left the field. I left behind being a professional. And that's when I started to change. I went and I was like, you know what? My kids are getting older. I'm tired of working 10 hour days, six days a week. I'm. I went and I opened a lawn service for a bit just to make some money. But I stayed in the field as, like we discussed earlier, as a person that I despise today.
The, the other guys that are out here today that I despise 100%. And I realized it because I was like, man, I don't really like this. Like, I'm getting these. All of a sudden, these customers think that everything should be free. They want to bring me their parts and everything else. And at the time, I was just doing it to stay active and keep my mind moving. And a couple years go by and I'm like, all right, kids are a little older now. I'm ready to get back in.
And this was Covid. Yeah, Covid hits. And I'm like, we were ready. I had, I had like twenty something thousand dollars sitting there and I'm like, all right, let's. Let's open a shop. Let's go. Let's do it. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna jump in, you know, feet first.
I got enough people that will probably come to the shop and I'm, I'm pretty good at getting people to putting myself in front of people. I have good way free ways of advertising myself and, and you can fix, yeah, I can fix the car and covet hit. And I was like, yeah, I'm not doing that. So that's when I decided on mobile and I started out just doing a few things to kind of dip my feet in the water with just a pickup truck as I was still cutting grass and I like, I, I took a compressor, I went to Harbor Freight, bought the compressor motor, the pump and a separate motor. I took apart a Walmart compressor for the tank and I laid it all out and built my own compressor to go in the bed of the truck so I could close it with a tonneau cover. Come to find out I use battery now anyway, but I built the bed of my truck into a shop and I was like, okay, that's what I'm going to do. But then I'm like, okay, now I don't have this, I don't have an AC machine, I don't have all this other stuff. And I'm like, well, how am I going to stand out to, you know, Billy Bob over here that you know, shows up in a Corolla with a trunk full of tools? Yeah, how do I change this? How am I different? So that's when I built my trailer that you guys see in the videos now.
Man, the month I put that in service was like May of 2021. I sold the lawn service in May of 2021 because the auto business flew and took off from there, right? And it's been, it's been non stop since that day. And I, I, it's ever evolving and ever changing still to this day. But yeah, that's, that's been how it took for me to get here. And I wish it was a better circumstance in the beginning. I wish I had done the training and all that stuff back then. I wish somebody would have been like, hey little guy, come here, let me explain something to you. Yeah, listen, you need to go learn the theory, you need to learn the technology, you need to learn how this works.
And no one taught me that I had to learn it on my own. And like I told you before, I had no idea who Paul Danner was. I didn't know who Paul Danner was until right around like 2021, 2022. When I started like, oh, late, let me go figure a little bit of this stuff out. I was like, oh, he's really really good, you know. And then I saw Eric and now on TikTok I see Chuck and Sloan and all these guys and Mr. Subaru and stuff like that. But outside of that, I started to find guys that were like me.
Like there's a one. I just realized you had them on. I think his name's Bill or something, but it's Advanced Level and Programming or something. Advanced Diagnostic and Programming. He's got earrings, real soft, slow spoken, gentleman. But he didn't start very long ago. And you know, same with like Super Mario started a tire store and now he's a diagnostic guy. There's one other guy I watch, it's called Advanced Level Diagnostics.
He's really, really good too, you know, and it's like, okay, I didn't know you guys existed like, because I didn't think outside my little bubble and I'm like, I could do this. Like I do this every single day. Let me go ahead and start my own channel and let me do my own thing and tell people what it's like to have this. So that's kind of where YouTube came from.
Go ahead back up. You were kind of talking about the, you were, you were being what you see now, the, the kind of guys that you despise now. And that's kind of before we got in the air, the guys that will show up and it's like I'll slap set of brake pads on that, you know, or I'll, I'll go and, and change. Nothing drives me worse, crazier than seeing people that will show up and do like, you want an oil change? I'll show up in your, in your office parking lot and I'll jack that sucker up and do an oil change for 60 bucks. That's just, I couldn't, I would, I would, I would quit at all if that was the, the bulk of my. And I'm listen, I know there's services that do that and it's scalable and it makes money and all kind of stuff, but to me it's, it's, it's just different than, than calling yourself an auto repair tech, right? Like, so if you're a mobile guy and that's the, that's your niche, what are you doing? You know, like, because if you're, if you're doing it to hope that like while I was under there, I saw a break job that needed to be done. Well, guess what? That customer's probably going to phone another mobile person for a quote on a break job. They may phone you first, but you're competing against each other and you're going still after the lowest hanging fruit.
The guys that I watch, like Paul Danner, early on in his career, he'll tell you, I was doing mobile to help out, know the other shops. I was. It was my diaper money he talked about, right? That was why he did it. And it was so groundbreaking to me because he's like, so wait a minute, you're showing up to these shops and you're collecting. I think Paul said back then it was like, you know, 100 bucks. And you know, your 100 bucks something or 15 minutes, bam, you did two of them that night. That's 200 bucks. That's diaper money for the week.
Like, it was good. And I'm like, I'm sitting there thinking, so he never has to touch an oil change or nothing. He is just there to do that. The guys that I see all these mobile guys, we talked about, you know, somebody that everything is candle wax and a seize bolt and, you know, like, I'm not hating on those guys that are all general do it all on the side of the road. But I mean, you're talking to the obstacles they have with, like, one guy was speaking the other day on Tick Tock about he wasn't even allowed to be working where he was working, right? Like, his customer had told him, it's okay to slap the brakes on in this parking lot. And then somebody, the security guard comes around says, you can't do car repairs on this piece of property. Like, I didn't want any part of that. Like, if I'm gonna go up mobile, I'm gonna boost your car.
Maybe I'm gonna crawl underneath it like I did when I did in the truck shop, put a starter motor in it. I'm gonna swap some batteries out. I'm not there to pull the front clip off to do a water pump on something, bring that to a shop. I'm not interested in jacking that up in the parking lot and getting that involved and doing, you know, control arms and struts and all that jazz. Like, I want to stick with what is. Not everybody's gonna do and what is relatively clean and quick.
Yeah, sorry. That's kind of where my head's at. You're good. I always go on those rants like that. It's. That's where my head is getting to lately. Because the PAT since 2021, when we went full time, that's what I've been doing. I've just been a repair facility on wheels and you know, I do a ton ace.
I do a ton of AC work because I have a full size AC machine in the back of that trailer. And it just, it's great. I make a lot of money. We. I have total gross sales of over $200,000 every year. And it's just me. I have to wear every single hat. I'm the service writer.
I'm the owner, I'm the manager, I'm the bookkeeper, I'm the scheduler and I'm the technician. So yeah, in 2021, that's what we opened the business as to be. I didn't, I built it as, okay, we're going to be a repair facility on wheels. And that's, that's what I am to today still. But I want to change that and move into something different. But I have to pay the bills. I didn't prepare my life to do that, so. And I do really well, you know, I wear every hat.
There's. There's nobody else here. You know, this year I'm hoping my wife will come home and she can work with me daily. But the phone doesn't stop. I have to answer the phone. I have to do this. I have to be the service writer, the owner, the technician, the scheduler, the bookkeeper, do the accounting, do all the freaking paperwork. It gets to be a lot.
And that was the thing, is that when I was researching how to do this, nobody told me I couldn't figure it out.
Well, that's what I About your recent stuff is you put out a couple videos and you actually had an hour long video with another gentleman and you're coaching him through like how to set your numbers up in a mobile business to where it's like your, I don't want to say it, but you're not just another guy going and slapping a set of brake pads in the parking lot somewhere. You're. You're bringing your business up to where it's like really competitive with what you could do with a brick and mortar, business wise, right, without having to work seven days a week, 7am to 8 at night. That's the other rub, right, is the mobile guys. You'll see them sometimes it's like they're. They're putting a starter in at 9 o'clock at night in the parking lot. And I listen, I love those guys for that. I, I respect the hell out of the hustle, right? Like if, if I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but we all should want to work like five days a Week, you know, seven in the morning till six at night.
Have our weekends with their families and, and. And make a really good living doing this. This is a specialized field. We should want that not having know I'm. I'm at a car lot on a Saturday for six hours trying to solve some nightmare science project, you know, that they brought home at an auction. And I can only charge two hours. I ain't all about that, you know, and I don't. I.
For my brothers and sisters. I don't want that for you, you know, I want you to. Numbers. So when I saw your videos with that young man, I was like, God bless him. Because we know we see lots of mobile guys on. On social media now. It's become. They're.
They're accepted and we see them grew. But nobody was doing what you were doing. They were talking about like, this is my numbers, right?
Yeah, nobody. Everybody is so, like, they hold it so close. And that was what annoyed me when I started, is that no one told me how an LLC works. Right? No one told me or not how an LLC works, but like the cost associated with it and versus a sole proprietor. And you have to give yourself a paycheck. You have to give yourself a certain amount of payroll throughout the year. You have to give yourself, you know, and then what the taxes would be vice versa and like how I built it and everything else. And I figured it all out and yeah, I could like, you know, be one of those talkers and, you know, go and do seminars and sell my.
No, I'm gonna help the young guy. If I can help somebody become me and not the guys that are in my town that I hate that do this, I'm gonna give it to you for free because I'm gonna do my damnedest to make sure that whoever takes my place in this world and in this industry is going to help more people down the road. Just like, you know, yours. You're getting everyone's voices heard. And that's what these platforms are for. And that's kind of where my YouTube channel has gone lately, has been those. I still have a few of those. I just got off.
It was three hours. I talked to this other guy the other day. I haven't made the video yet, but the same thing, just walking them, you know, I use TechMetric, I use all data. I use identifix as a tool. You know, these guys that are like, oh, I'm just gonna throw this in it. Like, don't do that. You know, I got QuickBooks, I got all These things that, you know, it costs me a lot of money to run my company every month. It's like 8, $300 to run my company every single month.
And that's with my payroll. But still, like most of these guys. And you know what? Oh, the thing that drives me nuts in my town and you get all these guys that are like, oh yeah, we're mobile, we're this. What. What's your, what are your license numbers? Oh, yeah, we're licensed. We're insured. Oh, yeah, what's your number? What do you mean? What's your, you know, what's your motor vehicle number? They can't answer because they don't have it. I don't know how it is there, but Florida uses the Florida Department of Agriculture and that regulates our estimates and our invoices for the customer.
And it has a lot of stuff on there that we have to legally have on there. And these guys ain't doing it. So it's my next couple of posts, posts that I'm going to put out, like, not on YouTube but like in these Facebook groups where I advertise in kind of. It's like, do you want a guy to put a roof on your house that doesn't pull a permit and is not a licensed contractor?
Well, no.
Well, it's the same thing with your damn car. Stop hiring. The guy that is showing up at Flip Flops smoking a cigarette and his wife is hanging out the window flicking her ashes on your driveway. If you smoke, that's great. I used to smoke. I quit 10 years ago. But I'm not going to smoke near your car or in the shop or on top of your vehicle. Like, that's just wrong.
But that's how it is here. And it's like, you know, I, I'm glad that I'm the better one because you can have those customers. And that's how it has been since going back. Talking about before where, like, I don't want to do those pads. I don't do them. Yeah, my clientele base is return repeat customers. I don't do a lot of inspection because I just don't have the time or like oil changes and inspections. But I will go do oil changes for my customer.
But I make a markup on it. My oil change is $90 for a full synthetic oil change, up to 5 quarts and then it's $9 an additional quart. I have my shop supply fees on there, everything, you know, taxes. And people like it because they. It's mainly for like doctors Teachers, you know, office staff that can't leave there. Or like, oh my God, I got to work and I got coolant leaking. Okay, that's great. But I run a schedule.
I can't get to you until my schedule allows me to because I get a lot of those calls. Hey, like. But right before we got on today, I think I had two texts on Facebook. One said, and they're so vague and stupid. They're like, you know, I can't even say what she said, but it was just dumb. How much to take a tranny out? Why? Like, what is your. What? I don't even understand your question. Because first, what kind of vehicle, what year, what make, what model? Four wheel drive, two wheel drive engine.
Come on, like, let's you, let's be a little bit, you know, you know, what the hell is wrong with you? And then, and I was like, man, what's wrong with it? Why do you want to take it out? Well, I need to take it to go get rebuilt. I said, ma'am, I am not coming to take your transmission out just so you can go get it rebuilt. And I come back in two weeks and the bolts are missing. I said, this isn't how that works. I said, I am a repair facility, but I bring it to you. So you want a transmission, you need to tow it to me. And I will put a remanufactured transmission in it. It'll have a three year unlimited mile warranty directly from the manufacturer nationwide.
If you'd like to do that. Oh, how much? I don't know. Send me your name, your email and your VIN number. I'll be glad to get you an estimate. They're not going to send it. They'll. They'll move on. And those are the ones that.
That's fine, I don't care. I have the customers that when they call and they say, I went to AutoZone and I got this. Okay, you got that code? I need to come and diagnose it. Okay, how much? I tell them $105. This is my first hourly charge, is 105 bucks. This is how much it costs. Okay, great. When can we schedule it? This is the day.
I'll put you on. This is the two hour time block. I'll be there. Okay, wonderful. Thank you very much. I keep those customers close to my chest as much as I can. And I turn away probably the same amount of people I go to every week. And for the first two years, I was booking 30 to 35, 40 cars every week.
I now have Cut that back. Because I can make the same $5,000 a week in total revenue on 20 to 25 cars than I need to on 40 cars. Yeah, because it's too crazy.
And that's such a huge thing that we. We're trying to teach in. In the change in industry group and the shop owners groups that we're on. On Facebook, we're trying to teach them that, like, listen, you need to hit that number with less cars. And it sounds simple. Everybody's like, well, yeah, no kid and smart guy. But really, like, it really is. And how do you do it? By not saying yes to everything and by focusing on what you already have.
You probably already have the car in your bay that you can make the extra hour on. You just have to present it better, calculate it better, margin it, properly put the parts margin where it is. Like, that's what. Going back to the people that you despise and all that kind of stuff. There's a guy that on. On online that I've had some history with, and like, he will show up, and if the customer's got the parts that's even better for him. He just bolts the parts on, right? And I'm like, there's your money gone. There's your, like your.
Your markup. There's your liability shot through the window. What do you want to do? You want to come back? And. And this guy I know, if he comes back next week and the part's defective, he's not charging them to check that out. And. And. And I'm like, if. If I didn't provide you the part, you're paying both times, no questions asked because I didn't provide it.
He wants to then use that as some opportunity to send a lesson. But, well, listen, you know, like, you got to be careful with some of these parts that you buy, like Amazon's crap. But the Zone's okay. No, it's not. You know, certain things are fine, but certain things are not right. A lot of your engine control stuff needs to come from a certain.
A certain brand.
Right? You know, you can't be jamming just any oxygen sensor in there you want because it's got an oxygen sensor code. And watch what happens. You know, you fix one oxygen code, and then you wind up with a different O2 related code. And you're like, I don't understand that. It's got a brand new one in because it's. You're sticking a Bosch where an NTK is supposed to be, or you're sticking a Denzel is Supposed to be the heater element's completely different. The PCM is smart. It knows it's not right.
It's flagging you a different code now saying, hey, I'm not lean anymore, but my, you know, my downstream cat's not happy. Why is that? Well, there you go.
Yeah.
So when I see this Amazon special, so people have heard me rant like the, the people. When TikTok almost went away, part of me was like, I don't want it to go away because it's been very good for my growth for this platform. But the awesome thing is like there was a whole lot of guys that were puckered because if Tick Tock went away, they were going to go and get themselves some real jobs because they were not making enough money on their business. Without that download out that view. Without that there, there was a whole lot of guys that were gonna go get jobs because, oh yeah, but they were their business not viable without people tuning in and making comments and go, oh, you're the singing. I wish you were in my community. I wish.
Oh my God, I can't stand those Tick Tockers. I, I called them that. I called them Tik Tokers. And, and no offense because there's a lot of Tick Tockers out there that are very good. Like I love the guys I mentioned before because they are doing real stuff. It's the ones that are out there and they show up with a freaking Milwaukee Packout thing with some sockets and they call themselves a mechanic or a technician and you're not. And you're, you're. I'm going to diagnose it and you've got the all tell little code scanner.
No, stop. Just please stop. Because all you're doing is hurting our world just like autozone's hurting our world in advance and carquest, all of them are hurting our world by telling people. I just had. I got a bad review on Google the other day for a customer that's not even my customer because I told him I will not come and put a thermostat in his car. The one I posted on Tick Tock the other day and he left me a bad Google review saying, oh, it's this much when I can go to the store and get it for free. That's the problem right there. Thank you, autozone.
I appreciate you for. I get it. You're making your business better. It's just like them. They're making their income, but they're not realizing the effect it's having on this industry to help to Keep this going. And they're just like. And some of them do really, really good stuff, like they're giving back to their community. So do I.
You know, when I come across a veteran, I have a couple videos up. A veteran that was in a wheelchair. I gave him the job. I didn't charge him a dime. Whose pocket does that come out of? Mine. My pocket. My company. But I didn't do it for clout.
I did it because he deserved it. And I wanted to because I felt it in my heart to give it to that man. I don't do it so I can post it to get donations, to do it more. Because you're just using us as your guinea pig, and that's wrong, and I want to strangle you for it.
Every single mom out there doesn't need a free repair on her car because she's a single mom. As unpopular as that is to say, because it works for you, you pump the algorithm up, and you got a thousand more people following you next month. And, you know, somebody's sending you free tools or whatever. Good story, bro. Oh, yeah.
Like, that stuff drives me nuts. Oh, you got this for free. And these tools for free. And I got this. And I'm like, you're a schmuck, and I can't stand you. And I've done it. Like, I've given free stuff to people before, but again, it's just not for. Not because I got tools and not because I'm making millions off of Tik Tok.
I make, like, another guy on that same video I posted. He's. He. He put on a long rant saying how all of us creators are bad. And it was on that Equinox video. You'll have to go back in the comments and look at it, because it was pretty long. And I gave him a long one, too. But I.
And I. It took me a day to not go on there because I'll. I'll ruin everything. I will chew you out. But, you know, and. And then he said a separate comment. I bet you something about, would you still be doing all this free information if you didn't make money? I'm like, bro, I barely make a hundred dollars a month on my YouTube channel. That's it.
Yeah.
I get enough to go take my wife out to dinner once a month to go eat some pizza and have two beers. Like, come on, man. Like, I do this for the other generation. And that's exactly why you do your podcast. It's the same thing. It's for. It's for Us because like I said before, when I was in the shops, I was closed off. Nobody would pay to send us to training.
No one would do any of that stuff. And now that I own my own company and I started using YouTube again to see or not again, but actually used it and I was like, hey, let me go see how many people are doing this. And found all these guys and it's like, oh man. Like, this is. It gave me a re. It rejuvenated me to love the industry again because I thought I was you. I thought I was just another jaded mechanic and I was just going to be doing this for another 20 years and be pissed off about it. And I don't have to be anymore because I can give back to everybody.
And that's what we started doing.
Well, and, and the thing is, like for me, you know, I learned very early on that a lot of what was promised to me by my career coaches and you know, the guidance counselor in school and whatever, as soon as I got into the world was not the world. It wasn't. It was a myth. Like it's the same. I was just thinking about it today. We still do it. We tell everybody, like, if you've got that critical thinking skill or whatever, like you're going to be the top tier technician, the reality is that's crap. If you are the guy that just shuts up and learns a couple repetitive jobs and you stick to them and you stay in your lane and you pump a bunch of hours and you go through that window where about 45, where you become that guy that's been there forever, reliable, can turn 50, consistent, right? They'll leave you alone.
And you ride it out. If you were that guy that comes in here and you're like, I'm sick in the head. I have to know, what is that intermittent glitch? What is that problem? You will not make the top money in this industry. Still. Still you won't. And I can show you. Because I can show you all the top, sharpest brains in this industry are not working in a shop for somebody else. They're in a mobile thing like you.
Or they're going around doing programming of flashing all day. Those are the people with the critical thinking skills. So I learned very early on. So it was like when they would start to do things to me in the dealership. You know my old story, oh, I can't give you a raise, you don't produce enough hours. All my hours are unflagged and unclogged because I'm fixing on straight time and I'm doing everybody else's comebacks of course they're unflagged and unclogged like that's not on me. That's on them. I should have all his hours plus mine.
I should get the hours that he did that he put in that didn't fix the car plus my hours because I had to do tweak one little thing at the end that his job I could sell a tune up on every caravan that ever came in and if all I did was a software update on the end that he didn't bother to do I'd fix them all hypothetically because I knew to do the software update that fixed that customer's complaint he didn't know because he didn't spend all that TSBs. Those are ATSBs. I could have sold every like wallet flush I wanted because the car would leave fixed. That was my point was that this whole thing of production based and flat rate and all that Jack it was to me the I was awakened very early in the 2000. It's just a myth. It's just a myth and it pisses people off because in the groups that I talk about in the shop owners and they're still going for an incentivized the same been the same obstacles and issues they have with their text coming up is still the same as it's been for 30 years because they're on incentivized they're cutting corners, they're rushing they're doing because why because you reward them for it. That's why they do it.
It's part of their number in the end looks better average not even the average it's the average RO number looks better if they allow that guy to keep selling all that crap and they don't care if the customer is not truly taken care of because it doesn't matter. Like I think you had one guy on there had said it at a really good way that old shop he or an old technician next to him said well it's just another opportunity for me to make more money.
I don't want to fix it. I just want to work on it. I've worked next to said that for years and I I didn't get it until and now I joke with them but the last I don't want to fix it. I just want to work on it.
Right you know because like oh man.
You come back it's just another opportunity to make to make money and like the guy I'm like you're Kidding right now. But he was dead serious.
Dead serious. That's crazy, man. I just. But it's true. It's so true in this world and we've seen it for so many years and man, I don't know, but I don't know. Again, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. Because I want these guys to. To know that you can go out and make an honest living.
If you want to go out and do the hustle like I am, I'm hustling, I'm making a ton of money and I'm building it to the point where it's a sellable product. It's just like a person sells their company. I want to sell this one day and do something different or focus it in some other way or move it to like Chuck did, where he moved it to just straight diag for the, for the dealers and the shops. That can't do it. But that, again, it depends on area. My area. I try to network with people daily and most of the time all I get is a okay. What do you mean? I gave you a paragraph.
You know, I'm like telling you, hey, I've seen you around. You've got a trailer, I've got a trailer. This is what I do. How are you? Like, how are things? If you want to network, I'd like to know you a little bit so I can be confident if I'm going to send a customer to you and all I get back is okay, all right, Yeah, I know what that okay means. It's. You're holding it too close. You think I'm going to do something to you? You think I'm trying to take your people? Trust me, I don't need your customers. I'm trying to give you customers.
And I know you're not. And then granted, two days later, somebody on Facebook in one of the groups said, oh, such and such was supposed to show up at 8. They never showed up. It's 4:30 and they're not answering their phone. Okay, I'm glad I didn't network with you because you're obviously a douche and you don't know what you're doing.
Yeah. Now I gotta ask you. So when a customer calls up, for instance, and he says, like, your. Your guy, I got a P0128 DTC and you say I gotta show up to die, you know, to diagnose that, and you get a little bit of kickback or whatever. But say the person, you know, agrees for the thing, do you go like, for inventory. So we kind of know. Okay, if that's a Chrysler 3 6. Right.
You can probably put a thermostat on the. In your pocket and show up and you're going to fix the vehicle. Or do you show up, do the diet, confirm it, and then come back, make another appointment to come back, or do you kind of stop? Really? Eh, no. No parts until you know what it needs. No.
Nope, nothing. I will not go. The only time I'll do that is if it's a very, very good customer. And they say, hey, I got a break. Noise. Okay, you live over here. And I know that we've never done breaks. And I look at my inspection reports based on the other times I was there and say, okay, I told him it was getting to, like, 30%.
All right, listen, this is what we're gonna do. I got a grinding on my right front. I can hear it real bad. All right, listen, I'm gonna give you a price based on this. I'm gonna give you a price based on pads, rotors and a caliper and a line on the right hand side.
Right.
Just in case we have to do all that. I said, it could be nothing. Could be a backing plate. Let's just come see it. And because they've spent $3,000 with me over the course of a few years, you know, it's the same as a shop. And I'm not going there to do electrical diagnosis for three hours for free. You know, it's different. I'm bringing a $600 job with me because chances are it did go metal to metal because he didn't listen to the indicators.
And when I told him seven months ago to put brakes on, I didn't do it.
Yeah.
So that's usually how it is. But no. Any type of jobs, like that guy that. That cussed me and everything. Now, if you're a new customer to me, I'm gonna come and feel you out. I'm gonna come and make sure you want to spend money to take care of your asset that takes you to your job to pay your home bills. If you're not willing to properly and professionally repair your vehicle, you're not my customer, and you're not the customer for me. Because I'm not here to play games.
I'm here to make sure you're taken care of and make sure my family is taken care of in my company. So when you want to play games with me, see you.
Lucas taught me all about that early on. He kept saying, and it didn't register right away. It's like, it's, this isn't about fixing the car. This is about being an advocate for the customer. And then other people take it to the next level and it's, it. Some people don't like it, but they're like, I'm not even advocating for the customer. I just advocate for the vehicle. What is the best thing for the vehicle.
And that's helps me move the emotional attachment or the sympathy card away from the thing. And I'm just advocating for the vehicle. I just focus on the vehicle. I try. I seem to be the natural born expert at that because I don't know if I'm just so beat down from the years, but it's like you could show up with like kids in rags and starving and I'm going to look at the vehicle, I'm going to be like, well the tires are effed and the brakes are shot and you know, I understand you only want a set of wiper blades but like I'm, I'm going to go out there and tell you your stuff is bad, in bad shape. Right? Whereas other people look at that and go, and I'm just gonna like, you know, I feel for that person. I feel for them too. But I just have to have to make them aware.
And it doesn't come from some flat rate, you know, dog eat dog mentality. It comes from, I'm gonna advocate for the whole thing and I'm going to make you aware because maybe you thought it only needed wipers and you're not aware of everything else in this needs to be and maybe you're in a better situation than you appear and you might be cutting losses with this car and I won't ever have to see it again. But I cannot have somebody driving around in something that's unsafe. I'll always tell people about it. Always. And that's that. For me, advocacy was something that I learned from Lucas. Before in the dealership I just wanted to make money.
But now, you know, they're gonna, I.
I agree 100 because like I something I tell my customers, even if I see that situation, I don't know what they chose to be in the situation. Maybe she or he chose to buy a thousand dollar iPhone instead of fixing their car. Because that's what most people do. Because that's where it is. If you think about it, most people like they want to pay for Internet, they want to pay for coffee, they want to pay for this, they want to go out to eat with their family. Oh, I'm not fixing my car. Why does it cost so much? Well, because you're a jack off and you don't know what you're talking about. But your wall, your car doesn't care about your wallet.
That's right.
At all. It has does not care if your wallet is big or little. It is broken. And this is the reality of it. But again, stems back to the people that we discussed that we don't care, we don't like in this industry that are hurting the industry because they just think, oh, I see these guys online doing it for this. Maybe he's going to do it. Or AutoZone does it for free or Advanced does it for free. Why can't you do it for free? Because I'm not a multi million dollar corporation or just some, you know, and another thing, I tell people all the time, all right, well McDonald's doesn't allow you to bring your own steak for them to cook, you know, or Chili's does it.
You can't bring your own food and have them cook it. You know, you're not bringing your own parts. There's a whole process to this and there's a reason why. But I'm not blunt about it. I give them a reasoning and I have a nice spiel. Listen, this is why we bring the parts. Because we're giving you warranty. You don't have to deal with it.
The warranty coverage is this, this is how long. This is why we do this better part. You're choosing. It's not apples to apples, it's apples to oranges. You're picking the wrong thing and you're getting a bit and you're getting a guarantee. So if you want that, we're for you. If you don't want that, go on down the street and no harm done. I'll wave tea in the grocery store.
But you're not my customer and that's just the way it is.
Right. What about what's. So I see you get people like and I see in your van, in your trailer, excuse me, you got an AC machine in there. And I like, I understand in Florida that's, that's a big money maker. Like up here AC is a seasonal thing but down there, you guys, it's an almost all year thing. Is that a tough one to do? Because there's so many people that just like run down, buy a can, buy you know, a manifold, like a little manifold kit and throw it in and try. Is it tough to get the proper return?
No, because when they do that and it doesn't work. I can. I could go there and do my full recovery. And because I like air conditioning, unlike other people, the. I'll recover it and be like, you've got way too much refrigerant in here. This is why it's not a refrigerant problem. Now I'm gonna put it back, and then we're gonna test your system electronically. We're gonna make sure everything's working okay.
Look, you got the right refrigerant in it. This is why it doesn't work. So I do an evaluation. They there's an evaluation charge for me to come out to your home. And that evaluation is hook up the machine, recover it. If it's low, we'll refill it and make sure it's full and make sure the system operates. If the system operates at that time, you're paying my evaluation. And now you're going to pay me for a leak check.
Because a leak check takes 20 minutes, two hours. It depends. I do two different styles of leak checks, right? I'll either do dye as a last resort, or I prefer. I do a little bit of refrigerant, a quarter pound, and then I back it up with 300 pounds of nitrogen and then use a sniffer. And that usually finds me a leak every single time. And then I sell that repair, right? If I refill it up and it needs an electrical side, most of the time it's just a compressor. I tell them, unfortunately, your compressor is crap because it's right there and it has power and ground and it doesn't go anywhere. But if I have to do anything extensive, I say, listen, your system was full.
You put refrigerant in it, but you unfortunately need electrical diagnosis, yes or no. And most of them are like, yes, let's go. I need air conditioning. That's why in the summertime, I make a lot on air conditioning and why I got the machine for multiple reasons. I've been in the AC field even longer than my automotive career. I used to do home air conditioning before I became an automotive tech. I just like it, and I think it's really easy. I can go do three AC jobs in a day and make $3,000 for the day, you know, total revenue for the day, you know, and that's why in the summertime, it's really big for me, and I push it really hard because it's so freaking easy.
You know, most cars down here, they run them so hard, the compressors fail. And. And they don't even fail, like, internally. They just Fail clutch wise and put a new one on and send it on down the road and move on. And that's another thing. So like, and a lot of people will give me about this but if a clutch fails right. Most shops are forced to sell the dryer and something else whatever our expansion valve or orifice to for warranty. Right? Okay, well that's the manufacturer's warranty.
That's not my warranty. I can get a 1 year12,000 mile warranty from Four Seasons that I buy from Autozone or Carquest or whoever I'm buying it from. Now effectively now this takes out of other shops but again this is where most of the shops don't understand something because the GPD or Four Seasons are telling them if you don't sell this we won't warranty it.
Right.
You're not buying it from them, you bought it from AutoZone. AutoZone will give you a labor warranty if you just file the claim. But I never run into the problem so it doesn't matter. But if it failed and it came apart, you better sell that stuff because you're just going to end up with high head pressure when the job is done. And that's what these guys we were talking about before. They don't. They come out, they pump a can or they let it off into the atmosphere and the homeowner has no or the vehicle owner has no clue that that's the wrong thing to do. Yeah, they don't realize that these guys are jack offs.
My, my tenure at Nissan clutches were a huge failure issue like on three or four year old cars. So I can tell you right now we did a ton of compressors because they didn't have a serviceable clutch at the time or if they did, nobody bothered to put it on. And we never went through and did the receiver dryer and a whole other thing. It was a spiel like it was, it was a tough enough sell customer an OE compressor on a, on a just out of warranty Nissan to go and say hey we also think we should replace these parts based on you know, recommended practice. I'm not against recommended practice. It's just Chuck made a video where he talked about, listen, sometimes the person doesn't have the money for that and you know he was on the fence about like there might be the right way but it's not necessarily the wrong way to only put a compressor on it too. Right. Like at the end of the day the relationship is between you and that customer.
Customer and your communication and Your transparency with them is going to determine their image of you and the industry. Like, so that's why we all have such a responsibility. Your last, your video, your most recent one with the Equinox. Yeah, that you mentioned me again. Everybody needs to watch that because, like it. I'm watching it through and I'm going, holy crap. He could have just put the fuse in at the end of it, like. And I kind of gave away the, the ending there, folks.
But like, I don't say Ben had a. Ben had a diag that went sideways on him. And it's, you know, we all been there and else all the thing. But like essentially he put a BCM in it that it didn't need. It had a missing fuse. And you know, the whole. Keith Perkins was just on last week or I just talked to last week. He talks about like the missing fuse is like the best revenue generator in his business he's ever had.
That episode will be coming out, but you could have, you could have just put a 5 cent fuse in out of your own pocket and nobody would have been none the wiser. Customers still would have been happy with you, Ben, because you would have fixed the car. You went and did the right thing, right? Yeah. You need it, you took it back out.
Yep. Gave her hers, told her everything on the phone call and she was so happy. And the same thing because like. And that one. So I'll give some context on that for people that are listening. It's if you don't watch the video, if you know service information. Right. All these guys are always telling us, oe, OE don't use in.
Don't use the interactive. The interactive saved me. The OE screwed me. If you look at the OE for the left front turn signal, there is no fuse anywhere inside that circuit. It comes directly from the bcm, goes to the left front turn signal, the mirror and then to ground. That's it. Okay, well, so does the interactive. The interactive has the same thing.
But what, what do they stick into our head all the time? When it comes to comm issues with modules, if you're missing a power, they either have no comm or no this or no that. Okay, well, why did Chevy change that? In the service information under description and operation, nowhere does it say that that system is controlled by its own individual fuse. Before the body control module, left turn signal switches has ground. Turn left, it sends ground to the BCM under a certain leg. Turn right, it sends ground to the other leg. That worked all fine, but the internal switch on the interactive wiring diagram at the end of that video, I circled it and that's underneath it. It said. And then when I was doing the check, I was like, that's a red and white wire that probably should have power on it.
And so I'll give this one to Chuck too, because Chuck's a die hard power probe guy. Yeah, I don't use a power probe just because I just never really used it. And the power probe I have is a. Like a power probe one. That's how old it is. I bought it, like one of my first tools in like 2002. It still works and it's great. But I was like, all right, let me test against the right hand side because it works well with a power probe.
And I learned this from Chuck. A power probe, if the light turns green but there's no noise, it's not a good ground. It's an open circuit or a back feed. I touched the right hand side control side out of the BCM to the right hand, it beep and it's green. Plugged it in. The other one, I'm like, this has got to be another bad body control module. It just doesn't work. What the hell? And I just saw it on the interactive below it.
It said, power input for left turn control. And I'm like, why is that not in service information from the dealer? So again, that's what I tried to explain to the customer. And she was like, because. Or in the video. Because. I'm like, I could technically say that this isn't my fault if you're smart enough and you understand vehicles and how complex they can be, but it doesn't matter. I'm not going to do that to my customer. I told her, there's no charge.
This is it. She did. She tipped me a hundred dollars. Anyway, I was very appreciative of it because I did spend four hours dealing with her car after that, including the program and everything else. But no. Yeah, she doesn't get charged because we're in the wrong. I don't care. Yes.
It sucks that somebody else. And I asked her too. Did anyone touch your vehicle beforehand before I ever did the job? Because somebody else was trying to replace the bulb for her and they couldn't do it. So I made sure that nobody else was touching it and she said no. But then we come to find out that somebody was in there farting around with the radio months before. And she's like, oh, no. That's about when it stopped working. I'm like, yeah, well, that Would have been good information to know.
So. But I mean, again, it's all the right thing to do. I'm okay with losing. I lost 145, 150 on the job. I. So technically, I lost a hundred. I lost $50 because I had $45 in service programming to buy the VIN and I had. I bought the part for like a hundred and something dollars.
The BCM was really cheap, and I had my initial, you know, diagnosis to put the BCM in it that you saw in the beginning of the vehicle or beginning of the. The episode, which I was only there for like 40 minutes that day, so I wasn't really going too much further. But, yeah, I mean, you know, hey, the best of us. It bites other people in the butt. You. You ask Paul Danner, you ask anybody that's out there that does this for a living, and they'll tell you, yep, I've made goofy mistakes because I had to trust the service information. And I run into it a lot where that service information is just wrong.
L1 Keith Perkins, he's. He'll tell you they've got a shelf of known good that has been the wrong calls, and they're still sitting there because they didn't leave with the vehicle. They didn't go with the customer. Right. We didn't. They didn't do what, you know, jam a fuse in it after the fact, and the car still leaves fixed none the wiser. They don't operate like that. They don't do business like that.
That's why that video was so cool to me. Because it's like, okay, he's one of the. He's one of the good ones right here that we're watching. Right? Because this is.
I appreciate it.
People talk all the time about there's a reason that we have to have all our profits. There is. Because when. When we say take care of the customer, we don't just mean like, hey, I busted this mirror off or I put a dent in something and I. Or I cracked a panel and that's taking care of the customer, sure. But taking care of the customers, like when we grew up, when we shoot the bid, that's when we're truly taking care of the customers. We're coming forward with our transparency and our reputation, and we're saying, listen, I'm human. I went down the wrong rabbit hole on this and I blew it and I took care of it for you.
Here you go. Right? And that's how we take care of it. So that's why we need to Be operating with profits and have our shit together, because otherwise we're not doing it. We're going to keep doing what we always have done, which is it always comes back at some point. Always. People find out, you know.
Yeah. People are going to realize if you're. And you're. And those people aren't going to know it because they come to us in the end when those customers are coming to us because they were taken advantage of from somebody else, I'm not going to go chasing the other person down. I'm not going to talk bad about them. Just say, okay, well, this is what we're going to do for you, and this is how we're going to get it fixed. This is how we're going to move forward. And then they're my customer forever.
It's better than. Than trashing the other guy. Because I don't really know the story on what happened, because I learned this in the. I learned it when I cut. When I was cutting grass. I'd go to some old lady's house because I worked mostly in a retirement community, and she'd be like, he just stopped showing up. Sure he did. You stopped paying the freaking bill.
That's probably what happened. That's what I came to find out, is that it wasn't the other guy. See you, bud. It was they. It's the customer that's usually the one that doesn't want to save face and tell you that they. They did something wrong or they just chose to stop paying it or whatever. You know, you'll get calls all the time saying, well, he put my brakes on and now it makes a noise and he won't fix it. Well, because you supplied the parts.
That's why, you know, I can't help you in that situation.
Not.
And, man, I mean, the faults on both sides, right? The fault is in the bad technicians. The fault, or the people that are trying to do shady stuff. And the fault is in crappy customers. Because there is good text, there is bad text, there's good customers. So there's bad. If we could just let these guys go with them and play in their own little weird field over there, I'd be happy with my good customers over here by myself.
So let me. The conversation kind of popped up. And I don't know if you're in some of the groups or whatever, but it popped up. We were talking, Ben, about how Mike Allen, who's somebody I'm going to help you network with, and you really need to get to know him. He made the Comment about, like, so if a customer's been somewhere and they've had $3,000 worth of parts thrown at a car for a complaint and it doesn't fix it, and your tech fixes it in an hour by cleaning a ground or reconnecting a ground or something like that, or putting the missing fuse in, what's the true value of that repair? And a lot of people, like, here's my take on it's a lot closer to 3,000 bucks than a lot of people want to accept. Because the real, the value of it is whatever it is is what they were willing to pay that didn't fix it, and then I fixed it. My value shouldn't be only a hundred bucks because my, that was my one hour charge or whatever. Right.
My value of it should be a lot higher. Where are you on that, on that idea?
The same way. But it's, it's more. I'd give it to customers in this way. I get a lot. I'll. And I'll change. It's not a change of subject, but it's the way I can make it think properly in my head. So if a customer comes into the like, oh man, my air conditioning to pull the dash, it's going to be fifteen hundred dollars.
I'm just gonna go buy a new car. All right, well, that fifteen hundred dollars is now costing you thirty thousand dollars. Are you not seeing it that way? You know, so that customer. Yeah. They were willing to spend $3,000 on parts because they saw a tangible object and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna fix it. But when you tell them it's $900 because it's, you know, seven hours of my diagnostic fee, they're like, that's crazy. Why would I do that? Because they don't have the knowledge and the experience to understand our world. So.
But do I sit there and explain that to them or not? Or do I just take the money and run? It's everybody's individual thing. And I, I guess it's more of a. Depends on how the customer's treating you. Right. If the customer's being a jack off, then yeah, I probably would be like, what you're saying, like, yeah, my experience is worth what you spent on that car. Take it or leave it. The car could be fixed for this. And this is what it is.
If it doesn't fix it, I'm not going to charge you. That's fine. Because I'll know. Like in this scenario. Yeah, I'll know. Listen, it's $600 this is what it's going to cost, take it or leave it. And because the customer is being rude, if the customer is a little old lady and she had no idea and like we paint that picture, you know, I'm still not going to only charge, you know, a minimal. I'm still going to charge my value for knowing that there's a difference.
Right. Do I go in and charge an hour because it's a, it's a misfire code? Yes, that's what we charge. Do I have a car on the side of my house right now that has loss of communication, got towed in. Loss of comm with the power steering control module. Loss of comm with the cluster. Loss of comm with the AB steering. I said the steering module. I have ABS code, I got a ton of codes and they're all lost communication and I can't talk to those modules.
They got charged a minimum of three hours to tow that vehicle into my home. And I'll go work on it on my, on the side and do everything. I already looked at it. But the point is, is I was able to get to it in a fraction of the time and understand, because I understand communication lines, I understand power and grounds and, and electronics where the other shops that are like, put this in it, it'll fix it. Put this in it. Because they're identifix fixers, you know, there it's, where's my value? And I don't look at it as in, oh, I'm charging you three hours. I'm charging you $330. Why $330? Well, advanced diagnostics.
It's $330 for an hour, you know, so it depends on how you word it to these people too. You could change the scenario and all the words to make it sound better for those people that we're talking about. That felt good about spending $3,000 for tangible products. If you tell them it's going to cost you $909 hours of work versus $900 in an hour worth of work, they're like, wow, it's really expensive. It's really going to fix it, huh? They, it's different. The way they perceive it is different. And we have that capability and that power to do that. So I agree.
I, but I agree with you. Like, I didn't spend 20 years figuring this out and understanding these complexity vehicles that change every single year. And I have to take the failures to get to the better point, take all the classes to learn and watch all these people learn to Give it to you for $90. No. Yeah, that's not going to be. You can keep going, spending another $4,000 because that guy shouldn't have charged you that when they didn't fix the problem. You're the one that kept saying, okay, try the next one. I'll give you more of my money.
You were wrong for doing that.
And Ben, let me ask you, because you're somebody that obviously probably goes in behind a lot of other mechanics or a lot of other shops and you hear some of those stories, why do they not go back and get their money back?
I don't. Okay, mo back to the Florida Department of Agriculture, right. Florida Department of Agriculture states on their s on your estimate that your estimate cannot exceed more than $150 of the original quoted price. And then there's three other choices on there saying, I request a written estimate. I request a written estimate if it's going to be above this dollar or I do not request a written estimate. I guarantee you most of the people that are signing that paperwork are not paying attention to that and therefore they feel that they're stuck. You don't. If you contact, if you were to threaten some of these places, if you're in Florida, I don't know about other states, if you were to threaten some of them with calling the Department of Agriculture that you're getting ripped off and they're doing the wrong thing because they're charging you for parts that your car doesn't need.
I think the customers have a leg to stand on. But it's just goes back to the uneducation that people believe. The tick tockers that have a bazillion views, they don't believe the low guy that's got a hundred views. But yet I'm telling them the right thing and not the wrong thing. And they're learning from the improper ways. So why they. And I think it's. They're scared.
Oh, I didn't know I could ask my money back. I tell people that all the time. I'm like, do you have your keys in your hand? Yes. Did you sign an estimate? No. Leave. What do you mean leave? I'm like, you're legally allowed to leave. Just leave. You do not have to pay anything if you did not sign any paperwork.
That's the way it is in Florida. And boy, some of the shops don't like that. But guess what? If you're paying the Florida Department of Agriculture to regulate your stuff, you better go by their rules because they're there for you. And the customer and you're taking advantage of customer, you'll be fined and kicked out of business at that point.
Yeah.
And these customers just don't know it.
And that, that's what always frustrated me because it's like you knew that they never even probably bothered to make the phone call or go back and ask and say what happened here. They just tried somebody else. Right? And I tried and I tried and I tried. And people going back to the beginning of our conversation before getting on where my issues with some of the Diyers and how we've sometimes earned that disrespect that they sling on the pros, when you see the, the talks on Tick Tock and the, you know, the. It's because we've earned it. We have. But at the same time, it's like I can't be responsible as a technician. Right.
Like you're now talking to a tech how ineffective your service writer was in conveying to you what was actually happening. Right. And how, because we've seen them, right? They're just, they're running 100 tickets a day. They're blowing through, blah, blah, blah. They're not being, they're doing whatever it takes to get that. Yes, that stamp gone, works done. They're pushed that way. I, as the technician is now talking online about how your experience went.
You're saying the guy in the back didn't do anything. The guy in the back didn't fix my car. The guy in the back was given 20 minutes before closing time to figure out your check engine light while you stood there waiting. And you got charged an hour, right?
And he got paid 0.3. He got paid 18 minutes and you got paid and you paid for an hour, which, you know, is all the profits and everything you want to look at. But the customer doesn't understand that. And the service writer in the dealers are in the shops are not conveying that to the customer in the right way. And again, hence why I went into business for myself to try to make. I'll make the most minuscule dent in this industry compared to what other people are making. But it's enough for me to make that dent because it's helping.
Well, that's exactly where I'm at because I'm like, I'm looking at this and I'm going, I'm never going to be Paul Danner. I'm never going to be, you know, these, I'm never going to be Chuck. I'm never going to be, you know, some of these guys like Chris Craig on TikTok, I'm never going to reach the amount of people that I reach. But if some technician out there somewhere remembers what I said about something that upset me and said, I drew the line in the sand, saying that's not acceptable way for me to be treated as a technician. If it resonates with them and they go forward tomorrow and they put that same line in the sand and they say, I don't step over this. This is my. I'm up to here with it, then I've done everything I ever would have wanted to do because it meant that the next person that was going to come along behind me and wherever I worked and they were going to try the same old shit, they know now that they're not going to try that. And it sucks because it's like.
And I've seen the fallout. I have seen the effect of like trying to get a tech to work a Saturday. It's getting harder now. Trying to get a tech to come work at a dealership without a, A guarantee. It's almost impossible, right? Like, it is because they're, they're not trying to get a tech to go and say, oh, it only paid 2/10. Like, they're just not happening. They're not having it. You're seeing the guarantee is there now because there's so many guys that it's like, to diagnose that intermittent.
And then they go, which still sucks at the end of the week. They go, you only turn 20 hours. Like, you fixed all the cars. And that one, that intermittent, like, you were four hours on that and the warranty is only going to pay 45 minutes. But you fix all the cars. That's where if I keep having the conversation about production means very little to the reality of how good you are, then that just goes away. And then it just becomes like, we win some and we lose them. Because that's all you're ever told as a technician is you win something, you lose some.
Well, I'm all, I've been just the one putting that on the other foot to the owners going, hey, you win some, you lose some.
You know, but they don't, they don't see it that way. It's, it's, it's goes back to the AutoZone thing. Like, you could be the CEO or the person that decided to say, you know what, we're going to put this into effect at AutoZone and we're going to say every time that a customer comes in for a code scan, our computer system is going to tell you the most common repair and we're going to sell that. Oh, we're hurting the industry. I don't care. It's my dollar. Same with the dealer. Like you're saying, we're going to give you a guarantee because we want to control you.
You. If I can control you, you're gonna do what we want. Like you now, you don't have the power to say I'm flat rate. I'm leaving at 2:00 because there's nothing going on. No, no, no, no, no. We're giving you a guarantee. You gotta stay here till the end of the day. Oh, you don't want to do this.
This intermittent problem. Too bad you're gonna do it because we give you a guarantee. Oh, your, your numbers are down? Well, yeah, because you gave me all the shit work. We're gonna have to let you go. What do you mean you're gonna let me go? You know, this isn't back in 2000 where I could load up my toolbox and be at a dealer down the street in 20 minutes and make $40 an hour flat rate versus 37. It doesn't work that, you know, that's. It's. The world's not there, but they forget.
You know who I, I think they used to do it this way was Disney World. I. They used to allow. They used to put their management. If the guy was a manager of the people that cleaned up trash once a month he would go back and do that job.
Wow.
To remember what that job was. To have more respect for those people. To keep the employee happy. Okay, Service manager. You used to be a tech. Come on. Point three. Go diagnose that.
Whatever. There's an open short to the fuel tank pressure sensor. Go, go diagnose that because I guarantee you, you forgot how a three wire sensor works. And oh you know, if it shows 5 volts on the scanner. Okay, now what, what are you going to do? How are you going to confirm integrity of the circuit? You know, let's go do it. You know, we can do it in 10 minutes. He's gonna take an hour. Oh, that sucked.
Yeah, it did suck, didn't it buddy? You know, like you get some humility back but none of the. It's, it's. It's. Ah, man, I don't know. It doesn't matter like we can about it till we're blue in the face. If, if we could change a little bit of it, it's gonna feel good. But we know that the whole industry is going to take a While to change, to make it better. But if we keep pushing forward, like you mentioned it before, you'll never be Paul Danner or this or that.
But that's not what you're striving to be. You're striving to change the industry. How? You know how. By talking. You're very, very good at networking and talking with all of us, and I pride myself in that. I've been watching you for a long time, so I threw myself in front of you, you know, and I wanted to see who you were, and I was right on who you were. You're a great person and you're very good at what you're doing in this industry and I wanted to showcase that as much as I possibly could. So I, I'm gonna try to get to know people.
You know, I'm gonna try to network with whoever I can, but. Sorry, I'm going on a rant there, but I mean, it just, I'm. I became more passionate about this industry again in the past few years after paying attention to you and realizing YouTube and tick tock and all that stuff, because I wasn't before. I was very. Just off in my own little world.
So I always ask the question because, like, coming from where I came from in the beginning of this, where it was like, I wouldn't recommend this as a career, right? I, I would tell somebody to go do something else. How do we, how do we fix this technician shortage? Ben.
I think back to almost like what we just said, like the people that are, or have a different person in charge. So like, if I remember back to the dealer, we had service writers that would give the tickets to a dispatcher. Okay, the dispatcher. It's so hard because it was such a political, corporate world. So if we're talking dealer or we're talking independent, I think it's two different conversations. Because the dealer is so political and corporate that our dispatcher was just a guy and then he was not a technician and then he got fired and then our front end alignment guy got a promotion and he was now the dispatcher. So it was a little better because he knew everyone's capabilities and where people could help get the ticket done right and gone instead of just being like, well, sorry, you're stuck on it for four hours, or you're, you know, you're the, the highest paid guy, but now I'm going to give you an oil change. Like, what are we doing here? You know, like, I mean, granted, thanks for giving me an opportunity to maybe overlook something because nothing Else is here.
But where's the work? I've been, I'm paid to do the job I've been technically trained to do. I'm here, I'm a fighter jet flyer. I'm, I'm not a broom sweeper, you know, come on. So, and then in the independent field, so in that case, you know, have certain people that are overlooking the technicians and can know the technicians on a personal level to be able to say you're very good at this. This is what we're back to the old days. You had heavy line guys, you had tranny guys, you had front end guys, you had diagnostic guys. Now it's like everybody is just thrown to the wolves and it's like, oh, you're a technician, you need to do it all. It's like, okay, well we could do it all.
But, but why? Like this guy's not trained to do that. He has no clue how to look at circuits. He doesn't understand them. Yeah and you know, it goes back to three wire circuit. Like if they don't understand that most basic circuit, they're never going to make it. So auto. In the independent field, the owners, the owners should not. The owners use.
There should be qualifications. So this will take me on another direction that you'll, you'll appreciate also is like these guys that are starting these, these mobile, they're not really mobile businesses. They just put up these posts saying I'm a mobile mechanic, call me, these are all of my prices. Thanks buddy. Now you're just undercutting everybody and you're being an idiot, right? ASE testing in, in the United States that you have something else up there I've heard you talk about. Yeah, but there's, there's no regulation in that any. The only regulation they have on the ASE is two years in the field or two years of school. So you can get the piece of paper.
That's it?
Yeah, that's it.
So anybody that is really, really, really good at going and taking a test could go take the ase, but it doesn't give you anything. It's no incentive for the industry. I get people ask me all the time, are you ASE certified? I was. I still am. I am going to research just for my own well being. And it's good to do the recertifications. I always do it. But it doesn't prove anything.
It proves that I can take a test. But if you look at it a different way, it also proves that I can stay up in touch with the new technology today. But it doesn't tell the shop anything. The shop owner has no qualification. He could just open the building because he has money, and they could just fill it with people. And then he fills it with junk people. Sorry, I'm going on a different Durant. But he fills it with junk.
Quality junk people, junk cars. And then no technician wants to work for him. And he goes out of business. Having a company that if we employ more standard in the field, saying, you could open this company if you prove that you're going to do this, and there's more stipulation to controlling the estimates and the inspections on a car and the quality control of the vehicle leaving would make the technicians want to do more work. Because if you're going to. If we're going to allow people like that $3,000 worth of work, and it doesn't fix the car. That's. It's.
You're. You're. I don't. Nobody comes back to the shop. And now I'm out of a job, and I got to go somewhere else because you guys did that. And then now this guy think like me. I thought that the industry was so blind and dead that I was ready to just. I got to do something else.
These shops suck. Not, you know, I'm making money. I'm making enough to pay my bills, but what's $50,000 a year? That's nothing, right? That's. That's no money to make. But I don't know. I mean, I could rant about it all day long and go in different directions, because I know I already am. But I think the.
The ase thing shows a. Brian. My buddy Brian Pollock and I talk about this all the time, and I'm still him. And I don't agree. We want down the line, but I think it shows a base level of competency. But a bigger standout for me today was there was a conversation somebody put in the group, and they're like, when does a technician become professional? And I said, professional is not about a time thing. Professional is how you conduct yourself. You can be a quick lube kid.
And if you take pride in how you do your job, you're being professional. You're being, you know, if you're talking the drain plug properly, if you're looking, resetting the service light, putting the sticker in the window, doing the job properly, you're a professional. Because to me, the amateur is the guy that's doing it himself. Professional is how you conduct yourself. Professional is how you are as a person, how you approach the Job is, is what makes you professional. Not time in, time in is. I thought 10 years in that I was a professional. I wasn't a professional.
Ten years in, I could do the job. I was better than the Amateur or the DIYer. But I wasn't a pro tech until like 15 years in. And that was because, like, I had to unlearn all the bad habits. I had to get my attitude right, you know, like, I had to realize what there was more to this than just like blue car, red car, whatever it was, was on the blue car last time is what'll fix the red car because it's the same car. You know, I had to get past that mentality of, of. And I still love pattern failure. Like, if you try to disprove the pattern failure, you're wasting time.
You need to be and, and be embracing it and trying to prove that it's not it. But like, I, I was not a professional until I.
And that's what I mean. Like, it just, it takes so much. But I mean, I don't know if there's really a shortage of technicians. I think there's a shortage of quality. I think there's a shortage of professionals. I think there's people that they're in shops and they just, they don't deserve to be in a shop. They don't. They shouldn't be touching cars.
I'll give you another. For instance, I worked on a red Tahoe. There's a video that's up on a mobile. Mechanic was there before me. And it's a 98 Tahoe or a 99 Tahoe. It's got that big square box PCM and it has, you pull it up, it's got blue, clear, black and whatever. He some reason took the covers off and put them on the other ones and plug the PCM back in. I don't know how he didn't smoke that pcm.
And I figured that out because I looked at service information and everything else. He should never be a technician. And it's one of those ones that's posting on Facebook all the time. His wife will post. My husband has his llc. Do you think that's a qualification? Like, are you that stupid that, that you think that that's what it is? Like, I don't mean to call someone stupid, but Jesus Christ, that's wrong with it. And that's the same as in the shops. And you know why he's doing it mobile? Because he couldn't make it in the shop.
He couldn't make it being a Real technician in a facility. So now he's, oh, I'm just gonna be the dirty shade tree guy and I'm gonna go make a couple of bucks so I can buy my cigarettes and everything else. And that's what he's doing. And fine, go. Just stay away from me. Because if I see you, you're gonna get an earful from me and you're not gonna like me at that point because I'm gonna get really freaking mad at you because you're destroying our industry. And I think that's the same thing in the shop is that these guys that I see in my town that are ripping people off and don't know what they're doing, it's the same guys in the facility. And I.
So there might be an influx of people, but I. There's not an influx of good. There's not an influx of us that are now owning our own companies because we got tired of the crappy owners and now we're out on our own. And that's why there's a decrease in it, because more of us are starting to go out on our own.
So I gotta ask you with. Do you struggle? I think you probably do, but do you struggle with the amount of stuff that you're now putting out there? Like, how do you handle the. Because you see it for me. You see how like agitated I get when somebody will be asking a question, right? And I just lose my crap because it's like you're asking a really. I wish the conversations could stay in the closed room. Small group of like professionals coming on going, hey, like, fix my fuel trim problem. How do you. How do you handle the detractors that you have and the people that are just like a holes being critiquing you, like online.
Yeah. How do you do it?
Ah, man, it took me a long time, but I ignore most of them now. But I still, I cave. You know who the ones I cave on are? The ones that don't watch the video all the way through, right? And I'm like, just watch the damn video, like. And I. I got into it with a guy on Tick Tock the other day and it was my fault because I misread what he said and I apologized to him because I'm very dyslexic with that. But going back to that woman that posted. As soon as I saw your post, holy crap, I died. Because in.
I feel. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel in your head that day when that woman posted that and you commented on it. I was like, he's writing back something so technical that she has no clue what he's talking about. And she's gonna go somewhere else now because that's exactly what I would have done. And someone did it recently. And I was, he's like, oh, man, you did this. But I can't find a video of that. How do I do it? I said, go to the shop.
Yeah.
And that's all I wrote to him. Because, dude, I don't, I'm not gonna answer. I don't have a freaking magic ball to answer you over text in a YouTube video. Like, I don't know you. I, I don't. I, I get it, but I don't get it. Like, how do you have the audacity to ask a question like that? Because we're not here to do that. This is content.
For whatever reason. It doesn't matter why it's content. But, like, man, I can't. It's. It's the, it's the keyboard warriors. I want to make shirts that say, I'm an anti keyboard warrior. Because it's those ones that they drive me nuts. They just, they, they enter their two cents and it's like, I gotta answer you.
I have to do this because in my eye, I'm laughing the whole time and you're just getting so angry. And I'm laughing at them because they're so stupid. But, I mean, but that lady the other day, I ignore them. Now I, I can't. I just can't feel.
Trim question was like, to me is because for the 10 years that I've been online or longer in Facebook groups, talking about, you know, people saying, my car does this, or. And I'm talking technicians, I'm not talking DIYers. And they're saying, my car IATN days. Sure. And you're like, okay, so tell me what the fuel trims are doing. And they're going, well, they look normal. Okay, well, like, you ask when did. Oh, so it's pulling fuel away at what RPM is it doing that? No answer.
Crickets. Okay, are we talking about idle here? Like, because I know from my training and my years of doing this, if I can start to know if you can tell me what it's doing, when it's doing it, I can start to narrow things and cross things off in my brain about what I'm not looking at. I. Those things I don't have to give you answers for. The reality is, is like, well, your car is lean. Go change everything that's the answer I really should give those customers because it's like, you. You gave me nothing. I'm gonna give you nothing.
But they get so mad at you, and it's like, so then. But the other answer is if you tell them, just go seek a professional. Like, oh, they're ripping me off. They're too much money. That's. That's why I never answer anymore with go seek a professional, because it goes to that next step. And then I completely come unglued because then you start talking. I really.
Now you're in my crosshairs, right? Like, I'm just kind of like, I'm answering that lady to try and take workload off of you. Right? I'm trying to open up.
Yeah.
Hey, tell me what it's doing. There's. There. She hasn't answered back because she has no idea what she's talking about. Why are you looking at the scan data then? Don't look at it. Yeah, don't look at it.
But I guarantee you she's not even looking at it. Someone told her that, and now she's using it to say it to somebody and that's why she's doing what she's doing. Or. Or it's her husband using her page or something like that. Because if you're on here telling me and you can see it in her words, you know, my bank one is negative this. My bank two is negative this. So, you know, what's the issue? How many different things do you want me to tell you to go and fix? Like you said, what happens when you raise it up to 2000rpm? What do the fuel terms do? Do they get closer to being better? Do they not get closer to being better? You know, do they get closer to zero? Do they, you know, what's going on? What are the short terms reading? Is it. You know, come on.
I can't answer. And I don't. I just. I never had it. I used to. Maybe in the far beginning when I didn't understand YouTube or tick tock, I would answer some of those things. But as I've grown on it, I. I don't anymore because I just.
And even the comments, I'll answer, like, within the first day. And then in the morning, I'll take a look at who's said something on there because I can get too attached, right? And then I'm like, oh, my God, I can't. I gotta stop. Because, like, I'm being so mental right now. The same with cars. Because, like, if I have a car that's driving me nuts. I have to fix it.
Yeah.
If I can't, you know, it's this. So everyone listening, don't take this the wrong way. Like I have fixed every car I've worked on because I can't let it go. Right. I don't care how much time it takes or money it takes or whatever it is, I have to fix it because I need the customer to have a properly fixed car. And I won't be able to sleep at night if I don't fix the car. You know, maybe something way back when if I worked with three other guys on it, you know, we got it done together, but. But you know, in my business now, if I go look at the car and I don't like a Mercedes if I don't have service information for it, I'm going to tell the customer, I'm sorry, I can't work on your car.
Yeah.
Because I'm not going to open that can of worms. I have enough integrity to say, this is where you should go. We have two shops in town that are European specialists. Go to them. This is where you should take your car. Stop looking for the cheapest guy because you own a Mercedes. Stop doing that crap. Yeah, people are, they're crazy.
And I could talk about this all day long because I. Every day is a new experience.
Well, I appreciate you saying that because it's. I think that's a lot more of what a lot more shops need to start doing is staying in their lane and doing what they're good at and staying out of the. That they're not. Don't touch a Mercedes if you don't have the proper tooling to even begin to do it. And if you have a shop full of guys that don't normally work on them and don't want to work on them, don't book it in. You know, they see this, oh, I hear this one might need a transmission and it's like, oh, it's a 22 hour ticket. Like, doesn't matter, stay away from it. It's going to be a can of worms.
You're going to make the industry look worse.
You know, their eyes get big and they see dollar signs and that's the problem with the owners. That was the problem at the last shop I worked at. That guy, we did predominant AC all summer long. And this guy, he hired in. We always had drug addicts or con artists. We had a lady in our parts department that was a convicted felon for money laundering and she ended up laundering money out of him and, or not. Money laundering, conspiracy or something like that. She screwed him out of money.
But anyway, this old, old Mercedes came in and a dash that you should not be taking apart. It needed an evaporator. And I told that guy a thousand times, do not do this job. It's gonna bite you. We have no business taking this dash apart. This is not a Dodge Ram where we can take it apart in 40 minutes and put a new evaporator in there. We do those all day long. Not this.
And he did the job, and he had our lowest guy on the totem pole do it. Light bulbs didn't work, the car didn't work. They got into it, the customer sued him, took him to court, all this stuff, and he lost because he was a jackass and he shouldn't have done that job. You know, it just. You, you need to learn to pick your battles. And I don't do anything that has high liability. So if you want timing chains done on your car or timing belt done on your car, I'm not doing it. Yeah, I could do it all day long, and I will beat the crap out of the labor time all day, but I'm not taking a chance to go buy a cheap clotus, or however you say it, timing kit, because that's the one you want to buy because you don't want to buy the dealer one.
I'm not doing it. I, I've had customers with Honda's Odysseys, and they, they had a hundred percent dealer parts. We bought it from the dealer, and still six months later, it broke the belt and destroyed the engine. I'm not taking that liability for that with my little company. I'll. That's why I want to move into that diagnostic side over this heavy repair side, because some days I want to kill people with the amount of stupidity they bring to my table.
I love it. Well, I, I've appreciated this. This has been an. On an absolutely fantastic conversation. And, you know, say the same, man, I don't want to take any more of your time up and I, I, I, we could talk for hours. And I'll have you back for a part two. Yeah.
Awesome.
Like, how do people find you so well?
I don't know. To be honest with you. I've never really been asked that question. I do have a Facebook page. We have Instagram, we have Tick Tock, and we have YouTube, but mainly it's YouTube. I'm gonna start trying to post a little bit more on Tick Tock as we go along here. I'm Trying to do better. I don't know.
I'm not a social media guy, but yeah, it's on YouTube. So it's the number 3Ts mobile mechanic. And we're on YouTube. You'll see the trailer. It's a 7 by 14 enclosed trailer. It says 3T's mobile automotive repair on the side. And that's my intro to every video. So if you want to follow us, you can follow us there.
I appreciate the heck out of you. And like I said, this has been. I, I really jive with what you're, what you're about. And I think like, you and I are two kindred souls or similar age. Didn't down through some of the same foxholes. And I mean, and that's, that's the whole thing. Like, it's, you know, I like what you're about, what you're trying to do for the industry for, for the same reasons that I'm trying to do it. And I, and you know, I can really appreciate that, Brent or Ben.
And you know, going forward, we'll have you back on because I think we've just touched. We've just scratched the surface of what? More ops, you know, more issues we can talk about and. Yeah, but people, like, if you're on YouTube and you live on social media like I do, check him out. He does fantastic stuff. It's great videos. And like I said, he's one of these guys. He will show you when he makes a mistake. And I think that's more important.
You know, we have other people that go like, like Chuck gets blasted because like sometimes there. And I think that's more telling, you know, like, I mean, the guys never made a mistake. Nobody's still watching them. I mean, Paul, Paul Danner blew up, blew airbags up in a vehicle, right? He's caught it. Jeep down. Like, I mean, the guys that have made mistakes and stand by it and, and you know, that's who we're still, we're still following because they're, they're human like us. And I think that's the important thing. So everybody, you know, give Ben a follow.
Follow him. You know, he's doing amazing things. He's a great guy. And I appreciate you having on here today, man. It was.
Hey, man, I appreciate it also. This is very. It's something like I've been telling my wife and you know, I'll tell her again today because today's actually our anniversary. She's at work. She'll be home soon, but 13 years. Oh, boy. Good thing I Bought stuff earlier. But anyway, yeah, you're, you, you're, you're.
Your podcast has rejuvenated me to be able to love this industry again and realize and to network further. I never. Like a, A. What is it called? AITN or ati?
ASOG Automotive Shop.
The, the North North Carolina place.
Oh, asta.
Yeah, I will be going to that this year. I will take the time off and I will go and sit these classes and meet everybody and do all that because I never, like I told you all before, sorry to continue it, but I never knew that that stuff existed. I am so sheltered when it comes to social media. Like, you talk about, Ietn all the time. I never knew that existed back in the day. I saw it recently. I was like, oh, that's what he was talking about. Oh, that's not really a thing anymore, you know.
Yeah, it's pretty. But for Facebook, it was the place, you know?
Yeah. And I didn't know that. And even like you're talking about, there's groups on Facebook. Like, I, I don't. I'm in maybe some of the auto automotive business owners groups. I think there's a few that I'm part of, but I just never knew that that stuff existed. And I'm gonna. Because of your podcast, I will be seeing more of that and moving into more of that so that the business side can grow more so I can give better information to those young guys that are starting and have more of that on my channel so people understand that, like, oh, wow, like, I could really get into this and I could be somebody.
Well, then, if you're going to be coming to AASTA in the. In next fall, then by then it'll be my goal that you will have networked with some of the key players in this, in this game. And so that you're going to be. You're going to be there, you're going to know who they are. You guys will be having drinks at the bar and you're going to. You're going to come out of there a completely changed person because I've seen it. You can ask Chuck, you can ask Brandon Sloan, you can ask Tobo Attack. The guys that came last year walked away from that event absolutely revitalized with what this industry was about and never knew that the thing existed.
And it's going to be a big thing this year. So if you're going to be there, I'm going to be there for every year for, I think, for the rest of my life. Yeah, it's gonna be a thing. But yeah, I appreciate you and I can't wait then to see you there. And I will network further and I'll get you linked up with other people that can really, really, really show you some good conversation and ways to do this business and do this industry right.
So everyone listening, I really appreciate it.
Thank you very much. We'll talk to you soon. Love you all. Ciao. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast.
Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.
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