Can the Technician Shortage Be Fixed?? | Josh Fowler
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Term
flat rate tech
Flat rate means a mechanic gets paid a fixed amount for a repair, based on an estimate of how long it should take. So if the job takes longer than expected, the tech may not get paid for that extra time.
Concept
technician shortage
It means there aren’t enough trained mechanics to work at shops and dealerships. When that happens, cars sit longer and the mechanics who are there get overloaded.
Car
Master Tech
In this podcast, “Master” isn’t a car—it’s about a top-level certified mechanic. The point is that a highly trained technician is better equipped to diagnose and fix problems correctly. That matters especially for newer vehicles with more complex systems.
Concept
used cars on the lot
If a dealership has lots of used cars waiting to be sold, they often need repairs and reconditioning first. That creates more work for the service department.
Concept
signing bonus
A signing bonus is extra pay a company gives you when you start a new job. Shops use it to get mechanics to take the position, especially when there aren’t many techs available.
Concept
electrical diag
Electrical diagnosis (“electrical diag”) is troubleshooting issues in a vehicle’s wiring, sensors, modules, and power/ground circuits. It’s often difficult because symptoms can be intermittent and multiple systems may be involved.
Brand
Chrysler
Chrysler is the car brand/automaker. In this conversation, they’re talking about Chrysler’s training and certification rules for dealership technicians.
Term
ASEs
ASE is a certification program that many mechanics can earn to prove their skills. The complaint here is that Chrysler may not fully recognize ASE experience for warranty work.
Term
lifts
Lifts are the ramps/hoists that hold cars up so mechanics can work underneath. If you have bays and lifts but no technicians, the shop can’t make money.
Term
progression plan
A progression plan is a structured roadmap for how a technician’s skills, responsibilities, and compensation increase over time. The speaker emphasizes showing year-by-year income potential and milestones so new hires stay motivated. This concept is presented as a missing piece in the industry’s approach to technician development.
Term
voltage checks
Voltage checks are electrical diagnostics where a technician measures voltage at connectors/components to confirm power, ground, and signal integrity. The speaker notes that if you can’t access the component or can’t get paid for the time, you may end up “shotgunning” (guessing) instead of performing these checks.
Term
relay
A relay is an electrically controlled switch that lets a low-current signal control a higher-current circuit (like a fuel pump, wipers, or horn). The speaker’s diagnostic approach starts at the relay because swapping/testing relays can quickly confirm whether the fault is upstream or downstream.
Concept
service manual
A service manual is the official guide for how to diagnose and repair a specific car. Learning to use it helps you do the job correctly the first time.
Term
snapped the bolt off
Sometimes a rusty bolt won’t come out and it breaks instead. When that happens, you usually have to spend extra time getting the broken piece out and replacing the bolt.
Concept
corrosion in connectors
Corrosion is rust/oxidation that can build up on electrical plugs and wires. When it happens, the car can act weird or throw codes because the signal can’t get through properly.
Concept
networking with other technicians
The speaker emphasizes that technician networking—especially through brand-specific online groups—helps people learn recurring failure patterns faster. By sharing what they’ve seen on lifts and in comments, techs can build a “memory bank” of likely causes.
Concept
pattern failure
A pattern failure is when the same problem keeps happening in similar cars. The speaker says good diagnosis starts by checking other possibilities, but often the repeated problem is the real cause.
Term
ABS
ABS stands for Anti-lock Braking System, which prevents wheel lockup during hard braking. Modern ABS modules also communicate with other vehicle systems, so an electrical or network issue can trigger ABS-related faults indirectly.
Brand
Harbor Freight
Harbor Freight is a store that sells tools for less money. The host suggests it as a way for new mechanics to start without going broke.
Term
scan tools
A scan tool plugs into the car and reads the warning codes from the computer. That helps you figure out what’s wrong faster.
Term
code read and code cleared
The scanner can show you what the car’s computer is complaining about, and then you can clear those warnings. After you fix something, you clear the codes to see if the problem comes back.
Term
hood latch
The hood latch is what keeps the hood shut while you drive. If it’s not working right, the car may think the hood isn’t closed and cause weird warning behavior.
Term
check engine chucker
This is slang for someone who just reads the warning code and tries to guess the fix. The speaker wants techs to actually diagnose the problem step-by-step.
Concept
apprentice program
An apprentice program is like a training job. A new tech learns from experienced people and works toward getting certified.
Concept
certified
“Certified” here refers to technicians earning credentials through training and testing, often tied to manufacturer or program levels. The episode emphasizes paying or incentivizing trainees for completing certifications because it helps them progress and stay.
Concept
retention
Retention is the ability of a shop to keep technicians over time rather than losing them to other employers or brands. The episode ties retention to training speed, certification pride, realistic pay conversations, and incentives like bonuses.
Company
NAPA
NAPA is a parts store. The idea is to ask them to help connect you with people who might want a mechanic job.
Concept
referral bonus
A referral bonus is compensation offered when an employee or vendor brings in a successful candidate. The transcript describes using tool vendors (“tool guys”) and team members to recruit, then paying bonuses for successful referrals.
Company
AutoZone
AutoZone is a store that sells car parts. They’re suggesting you partner with stores like this to find potential future techs.
Company
O'Reilly's
O’Reilly Auto Parts is cited alongside other retailers as a potential recruiting partner. The speaker’s idea is that parts-store employees often know local car enthusiasts and can help connect them to shop interviews.
Concept
1% better every day
“1% better every day” is a continuous-improvement mindset applied to technician development. In practice, it means small daily gains—better diagnostics, cleaner repairs, improved documentation, and faster learning—compound over time into real career growth.
Term
missing 10 millimeter
It’s a running joke among mechanics: the 10mm socket is always “missing.” It usually means someone misplaced a small tool while working.
LIVE
I was never a good quote unquote good flat rate tech because I, I always wanted to give the best quality. Sometimes that meant a 35 hour paycheck that week just because I can't stand broken stuff. Luckily, managers I've had in the past have always been very good of. Yeah, happens like, let's learn from it, move on.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic podcast. It's a nice sunny Sunday afternoon. You know, snow's melting in parts anyways. Snow's melting other parts, it's not so much. I'm here with a new friend of mine who's from Adams, New York. So Adams, just to put in perspective, is kind of like about an hour from me across the border. Josh Fowler was talking to me about am I familiar with Watertown? And Watertown is where I cross every time you guys see me going to like, you know, fly to Syracuse to go to Astor or Vegas or anything like that. So I've kind of grown up very familiar.
We used to take shopping trips all the time when we were kids over to Watertown before the dollar was completely worthless to go shopping back when the exchange rate was a little bit better for the Canadians travel. So I'm quite familiar with Watertown. I love the area. So. But Josh, how's things today, man?
Oh, not too bad. Just another nice beautiful sunny day down here, which is a relief.
We were talking shout out. He's not too far from where my friend Tommy Markham lives in Doug Hill. And we got talking about how cool that is and how Tommy's always talking about the snow hill. Right. So it's a beautiful area, Josh. Like I every time I through. I absolutely love driving through New York, so I just really enjoy it. It's a nice, that section like we were just talking about, you know, if you've ever been to the city.
And it's like you were saying New York City's like six, six hours from you.
Yeah.
And you have really no desire to go, to go in. But yeah, I'm the same. I go as a tourist, but I have no. Like I would probably take a bus trip or something. I wouldn't even try to drive in. Like it would. Just the idea of it just completely, you know, kills the idea for me. So what.
How's the weekend been?
Not too bad, just same old, not too eventful, which is wonderful actually.
And now I was admiring your shop. We had some. You got it. That's not. That's where you work. You're sitting in it Right now.
Yep.
Yeah. So tell us about that.
So the old Billy Facilo Dodge store.
Uhhuh. Nice.
He built this store brand new in 2012, I believe it was. And it's, we're now on our third owner since Mr. Facilo passed away. And I came back down here because I, I had to go to another shop because I couldn't afford to work under the past owner.
Yeah.
So I came back when I heard we're getting new owners and I'm here to help rebuild it as the, the shop foreman. And I know I reached out to you on a question of like, what are some good, good questions to try to help find quality tax? Because yeah, we've gotten probably a hundred applications and I could tell just from the applications maybe 10 of them might even be worth interviewing.
Now. Is it, is it still operating, Josh, as a new car dealer?
Yep, we're still a new, new Dodger, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Ram dealer. Yeah, the new owners definitely want to push used, but it's, we're still here as a new dealer, so.
And I can remember Facilo, the name was massive in your area, right? Like, yeah, we were, Josh and I were talking, like I listened to a radio station out of Watertown, New York, because it's, it's an hour away. So I mean, Froggy 97.5 and I've been listening to Froggy for 30 years at least. It's a really good country station, you know, independently owned country station out of Water Town. So they're absolutely great. But you would hear Facilo, it seemed like four or five times an hour with a radio ad, owning different dealerships all around. So. And yeah, you kind of reached out to me and said, so how do you kind of pick what a good technician is right for based on, you know, working the thing? And I'm like, oh, dude, we could talk about that for hours because. And you know, so it's kind of like.
And again, Josh, you gotta understand like sometimes that when I get on about, you know, my, my talks about flat rate and everything, it's not that I'm against, but from the standpoint, it's just like it all depends on what kind of technician you need to fill the role within the shop that you're hiring. Right. You got 100 applicants and like, so would you say that you have. Guys have a high turnover?
So the previous owner was not a well liked person with some of his things he did. So this shop, since me and the entire shop, literally three years ago, the entire shop left they fired. They fired the service manager when the. The new owners came in after facilos, and they fired the service manager and literally every single person in the shop walked out. So. And they haven't had a good shot of getting anybody in here. It's worth anything.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that's, that's. I came down here as a shop foreman and the lead tech to help rebuild this place. So I'm helping with the interviewing process and all this stuff and trying to get this shop back, too, because I have a personal connection to the shop. A ton of my learning and training and coming up as a tech was in this exact building.
Yeah.
So I want to return it back to the glory that it had.
I. I can relate to that. I go back to, you know, like I said, my. My formative years were in Ottawa, and I still go in and, you know, I'm. My good friend Dave that still works at the dealer where, you know, I didn't hire Dave, but Dave essentially came to me as an apprentice. And like, we spent, you know, six years working together, and I saw him become an excellent technician. And now he's been there like 18 years. You know, he's second in senior, second or third, and seniority at the place.
And I still. It's really cool because I go back now and I have all this, you know, I reminisce about the people that we worked with and the fun we had and, you know, the, The. The culture when it was good. And then, of course, they made some changes, and that's why I left. And then a lot of other people left. I could. I can respect that. You want to come back and try and, you know, carry it back up.
Would you guys say then that you're like, is your pay competitive with the other options?
My pay, I think I'm finally getting paid what I'm worth. But that's because they needed. They needed me way more than I needed them at the time. I mean, I feel like we're all being competitive on pay. I tried getting a couple other buddies down here who I worked with at a competitor, and obviously they realized if they lose them, who are they going to replace them with?
Yeah.
And that's what kind of we're running into now is. I feel like the push from the last 20 years in schools of go to college has just, we can't find anybody. And then me. We're trying to find at least one Chrysler. Being at a Chrysler dealer, a Chrysler certified technician, and there is literally not any that are to be found they're
from, they're hard from. They're hard to pull.
Yeah, sorry. No, it's good from me. There's only in like a 30, 40 mile radius. Only like three Chrysler dealers. So you don't see another Chrysler dealer south of here until you get to Syracuse.
Yeah, yeah. Which should be. Then, you know, if they run the store right, you know what I mean, could be very consistent workflow and you know, good, good customers and all that stuff. If they run it, the, the shortage is terrible. Right. Like, it sucks, unfortunately. It's hard to get, you know, and I understand there, everybody always wants a, you know, an OE level certified master tech. Right.
We talk about that all the time. And I don't know, the dealers have a tough, tough obstacle in front of them because, and I don't want to say necessarily that they have to completely drop the flat rate model, but like, are you on straight flat Raiders? Like, are they paying their guys some kind of guarantee or.
I, I have a guarantee as being the main dyad guy, the shop foreman guy. Until a couple months or a couple weeks ago, we didn't even have a service manager. So for the last three months I was also bouncing around to being, trying to take care of that stuff as well. So that's been fun.
Just a lot. Right? Because then you're, you're looking at the warranty, you know, I don't want to say nonsense, but you know what I mean, Numbers. You're more involved in csi, which from a performance standpoint is something that like, yeah, you have to be conscious of it, but it's not, you know, and it, I don't any foreman role I ever saw, nobody got too concerned with like, oh my God, we did way too much warranty this month or what didn't do. You know, it's just fix the car, right? That's guide the, guide your, your other staff into being able to get the car fixed. And that's tough now because I mean, you know, if you're, if you're only offering flat rate. When I say only offering, everybody immediately comes in and asks, you know, what's the, what's the production look like? Like how many hours the guys routinely hitting. Is there enough workflow right now, Josh?
So right now with the new ownership, they want a ton of used cars on the lot. So we have at least used cars to get through the shop as well. But there's currently only me and an old guy that's already retired from a state job and is doing this. He's good, he's just. Yeah, he's got his speed. And then I got another guy I'm trying to train. That's all we got. So, I mean, we're trying to bring more and more customers in.
Yeah. But we're literally getting stacked up from the lack of people out back.
Yeah. So, I mean, if you guys have got a steady diet, though, of, of used cars to recondition, I mean, that's, that's my jam now. That's day to day. Right. Like, you can. You can make some hours doing that, you know, for sure. It's just we always like, you know, and I talk about the dealers that I worked at routinely that, like, they always had one dedicated tech that they allowed to do use cars. And they did that for kind of quality control, budget control, all that jazz.
And we never really thought it was. It didn't make sense to do that because, you know, it wasn't that he was always the best tech in the shop. It was more like he was just the technician that the sales department may be liked the most, if you know what I mean.
Right.
And stuff like that. So you guys have. Then you're. You've got to get some of these used cars moved and then get some customers in and. And, you know, start doing that new car stuff and getting their issues addressed.
I mean, for a workflow, we have. I. I feel like we have a good workflow for what we got. I mean, we're scheduled maybe a couple weeks out. That's just because it's. We can't get the customers in fast enough.
Yeah.
With what we got.
So then you need to. Yeah. You guys, how. What's. What's the business doing to try and find tax.
I mean, we got like. Indeed. And a few other job board places. And we're also reaching out to anybody we know personally, whether or not they're in a Chrysler dealer or not. And it's. I don't know what the front office is doing beyond that. I try to stay away from the front office as much as possible. Yeah.
Yeah. Are you offering a signing bonus?
No, we're not. And that's. I. Something that our new. Our new GM came from Texas and he came from a city that's the size of our three counties combined for population.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think his expectation is just. He thinks there's more people in the area than what there is. And it's just.
Yeah.
Not.
And the signing bonus thing works. I've seen it work. You know, it can be a slippery slope, but I know, you know, if you say like, I don't know, say five grand signing bonus, right? And pay it on the under anniversary of their first year in, it can be effective because a lot of guys, you know, without knowing, say you match the dollar rate per hour and then you tell them, hey, there's a ton of work and you know, you can, you can hit 40, 50, 60 a week or whatever, and they're already, say they're somewhere getting 40 to 50, 60 a week, whatever it is, at a dollar rate. As soon as you say five grand, no signing bonus, payout at one year, that can just be that little bit to make somebody maybe go, yeah, I'll do the commute to that job or right. Or I'll, you know, I'll change that. It's, we have to be a little more, how do I say it? We have to be a little more creative, I think, in how we're trying to find these, these to pull from this limited pool that we have. Because it's like you said, there's not a whole lot of people in your area compared to where your general manager's from. And then the reality is, is like you're, you're hoping to pull, you're hoping to pull a somebody with dealer training from between you and Syracuse.
So, you know, an hour drive, you want to try and find somebody that's like on this side of Syracuse, halfway between and entice them to make the trip to drive from Syracuse Adams, you know, that's kind of what you got to do. And you know, sometimes that's the, the only way that's going to happen is money or a guarantee. The other thing, right?
Yep.
So you're listening. Like the guarantee is an effective thing because if you run it right, you don't even need it. Correct, work done. But that guarantee being extended makes them feel like, hey, they really want to care for me. Right. They really want to make sure that I, I'm still, you know, valued. I'm still, they want me here. That's two things I can tell you right off the shop looks like a nice clean, you know, not old dingy.
I've worked in dungeons.
Yep, I've worked in some dungeons myself. So yeah, this is, this is one of the nicer shops for sure, being that it's only 12, 13, 13, 14 years old. So it's not, not terrible. Hasn't had enough time to be destroyed, basically.
Have you got ac?
Oh, God, no. I don't know any shops in New York that have AC until you get down to. There's a big shop right off 81. The whole auto mall thing, they have AC because that literally was a mall.
Yeah, yeah. It's a nice facility. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I, I say this all the time. The auto. The store in Ottawa had AC until it stopped working and then nobody fixed it.
So it would be nice. But I've always gotten the excuse of, you know, you guys don't make enough money to pay for the AC for those four months the year we need it. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, I mean, I guess,
but it does, it does make a difference. I can remember, you know, and actually the, again, the Nissan store here in town that I worked at my last kick at a dealer, they had air conditioning. Now, again, they didn't turn it on to a level where you even knew it was on. So it's more like just a, you know, classification. But I mean, it was a situation that they did have it. It's just you weren't getting any relief in the shop because they're penny pinching, which I can relate. So what's, how long have you been with the product?
I've been on and off since 2015 with Dodge Crazy Jeep Ram. I tried a couple other things when I needed a little break from the dealer, but I always came right back to basically this store in this place.
Now do you find like. And I, you know, I've worked on, you know, the three domestics probably equally in the last 10 years, and I can honestly say that, like, Dodge is built worse than Ford or Chev. You know what I mean? I don't, I don't see. They all seem to have the same kind of problems lately. Like, if anything, I would think now the Dodge has probably got less transmission problems than General Motors. You know, from a truck standpoint at least. You know, camshafts. I mean, who's not doing camshafts? They go on the Hemis, they go into the Pentastars, they go in the LS's.
Like it, you know, the Fords are our own problems. You know, like, it's just, it's heavy line is. Is unfortunately where a lot of the. How do I say, the quality of the vehicles in the domestic side has kind of gone down. Right. So you, what are you lacking? You need a guy that can, can do some heavy line.
I think the biggest thing I'm lacking is someone else who can pick up some of the warranty stuff because currently I am the only certified person in my shop to do warranty work. So I. And some of the heavier diags like our one guy is basically a little lube tech, maybe a couple steps above lube tech. And then the other guy, he's like I said, he was retired from the state. He used to work on cars back in the 80s. Yeah, you can give him a task, he gets it done. But diag isn't very strong and I don't expect it to be with him either. Like, yeah, he's a great guy.
He does the work you give him. And I just need someone personally need someone that just helps lighten my load between some of these used cars. I got Chevys that the headlights don't work on. I got check engine lights on a Mercedes that they bought at the auction. So I'm trying to figure all that stuff out while also getting my warranty customers through. And there's never an end of electrical diag like that. That's my thing. That's what I love doing.
Yeah, there's never a stop to it. There's always something that's got to be electrically diagged.
So what they need to do, I don't know, maybe, maybe the solution right now is that they bring in a dedicated used car guy with a little bit more experience on, on more makes and models. Right. And that kind of eliminates some of that workload that you were saying on the Mercedes and the off brand stuff. And he can kind of work more part and parcel with the, the used card manager within the shop or sales manager, whatever they want to call them. And you can focus on then on your, your customers. Right, your Chrysler customers. Yeah, that's again, it's just a tough
situation that I got. I accepted the position knowing the situation I was going to be in. So it's not a huge deal. But it's like some days I go home and I'm like, I'm just mentally drained from the day.
What about like the local high school programs and stuff like that? Could you try and get maybe a young person to come like on a. Up here we call it a co op program. So sometimes they come two days a week or they would come half days and they would go to classes, say, excuse me, in the morning and then they would come to the shop and work in the afternoon and kind of just work out being anything from like just general, you know, cleanliness to, you know, learning how to do a couple oil changes or set of tires or something like that. I know it doesn't solve your immediate problem.
Yeah.
But it's one way to build somebody that, hey, when they graduate they would like to Come over to the dealer and work full time, you know.
Yeah. So we have what's called BOCES in New York State, actually right on Arsenal street in Watertown. They is the Jefferson county one, and then the one that's south of here. The teacher is actually an old tech of mine that I worked with at a Chevy store. So, I mean, I have. We have direct contract back and forth, and like, hey, if you got any students that you think are worth it, send them our way. I mean, I'm more than happy to be here to help teach that next generation. I went up.
I went to the BOCES program through the auto tech program. I actually did my internship at this dealership, but in the old building that was next to it. And I just worked my way up right from Lube Tech all the way up to where I am now. So I'm. I want to help build that next generation because we need it. I mean, if no one's gonna build it up, we're gonna be real in trouble.
And it's tough, right, because that's the whole thing. Now I see. Like, I can. I can wax nostalgic all I want, but back in my days in the dealership, like. And I don't know how they were doing it. So we're talking say, 2006, 2008, 2010. Like, I never took any of the Chrysler certified training, and I did warranty all day long and it got paid. And nothing.
No, there was no problem. I don't know back then whether the standards had changed that I had to have a certain number. Like, they just submitted the work order. There was my tech number, and I got paid. I never sat down and took all these mandatory courses. Right. I. Yeah, because my.
My thing back then was I wasn't going to take them because I worked with a bunch of guys that already had them and they couldn't fix a sandwich. Right. So I was doing their comebacks all the time, and they had all gotten them before there was an online portal to do them.
Yeah.
So they got paid to get their certs. Right. And I didn't. So I was like, I'm not good. You know, it's in hindsight, maybe best attitude, but, you know, you live and learn. And I decided that I wasn't going to, you know, sit there after hours and take a bunch of online training. That was just repetition at that point.
Yeah.
You know, how does an option sensor work? What's. You know, exactly. All that stuff, just so their warranty claims could get paid. Because I was fixing car that for all the intensive purposes they should just get paid. Right. I'm fixing the car going down, you know, rabbit holes on, you know, misdives and stuff like that. I was doing the job. But now it seems like every young person has to come in and they have to spend a bunch of time getting certified.
Even Chrysler level one, Chrysler level two. Like, you know, Chrysler master. Like you got a lot of hours invested by the time you get to that level.
So I looked up my training hours out of curiosity and it says I have completed 2100 hours of training through Chrysler over my career so far. And there's still every month there's a master tech that you have to do to remain what they say, quote unquote certified.
Yeah.
So yeah, they did, Chrysler did revamp all their training. Like they don't have the traditional level 1, 2, 3 like they used to, but now they have, they say it should take 90 days to get through. They have one phase one, phase two phase three, and then after that you can do warranty and then they split off into the specialized categories to get certified like as a suspension specialist or engine specialist.
Yeah. So ev. I know my friend, my friend is going for his, his EV cert. I think he was actually there this weekend on the Canadian side and it was like it's a six hour drive from where he lives be, you know, to then train on ev. And I'm like, nah, I have no interest in ever in doing EV stuff like it was. It's never. There's a lot that just doesn't interest me. I don't.
Yeah, it doesn't. So you've gotta, you've got a pickle then because you've gotta kind of get a young person in, get 90 days through them. Because that's kind of up here is like what he does. Three years of probation, they call, or three night, three months of probation, 90 days, where we kind of just get a feel for what they're like and all that jazz. So they got to get through that and then they got 90 days minimum before they even get certed to be do the warranty work. So that's like you could have six months there before you could even put
them onto a warranty job, potentially. I mean. Yeah, I mean what, what has been done to get around it is I'll go over and help or I'll assist with that job.
Right.
Because of the new rule changes, Chrysler did give the dealers a grace period, but that's ending this summer.
Yeah. So I don't. What does the I don't understand how the OEs think, though, that, like, do they really think, like, with Jim Farley's video and everything else which you saw, do they, like, I don't understand how they think that there's all these guys walking around already certified to do the warranty work that are not currently already working for the company. You know what I mean? Or the oe. They're not at a dealer. It's just asinine to me. And I understand they don't want to pay warranty. They don't want to pay warranty claims that don't fix the car.
Right? So you want to have. But let's real, like, I mean, if. If you're taking a guess or a shot in the dark or chasing an intermittent or something, you don't matter whether you're certified or not, right? You're going to. If you're knowledgeable, you're going to take the best guess that you can take or follow the process if you're not certified with them. But say you got some ASEs, right? You've had some training, you come from another brand, say, where you're master certified, say at Ford, but it doesn't count at. At Chrysler. That Stallion. Excuse me, that's.
That's stupid to me. You know what I mean? Like, that's just dumb. I think in the. Back in the day, what was happening, a lot of was like, the foreman. The claim might have gone through under the foreman's number, but the. The apprentice technician, as we would call him, was the one that actually did the work. And then the apprentice technician, you know, the foreman would check it out and, you know, all that kind of jazz. I think they've really cracked down on that, Josh.
I'm not sure, but that.
That still happens quite a bit at bigger dealers. Yeah, I mean, the bigger dealers are like, whatever they can get to get the job done. Because, I mean, we're. We're only. I mean, six text maxes out our shop. Like, six text is like the best. Best number. That would be lube tech.
Five main texts would be optimum. The dealer that I went to, kind of interim with the previous owner, they had 20, 30 lifts in that shop. So. Yeah, yeah. So they're getting in all sorts of people from wherever to fill those bays who can somehow somewhat turn a wrench. Because empty bays is lost money. Like, I understand that on the tech side of things, like an empty base sitting there is just. They can't have that.
So, no, they're getting anybody and everybody. They can and as long as they're halfway decent, it's jobs getting done.
So tell me, tell me about some of your recent hires then that you've had or have you had.
We've only hired one guy since I've been here. Our previous, like C Tech, he quit. Which I'll keep my opinion out of him, but the guy we got in, he's kind of bounced around to a few independent shops. He's never worked at a dealership before. So he's coming in and, you know, he's working his way through the training now just to try to get to the phases, get through the Chrysler phases to be able to do the warranty work. And it's seems to be working out. Seems to be a good, solid C. C plus level tech.
Yeah.
And then we've done a bunch of interviews, me and the new general manager, which thankfully, he's a guy I've known for years as well. So not general manager, service manager. And we're just doing interviews, trying to find quality candidates. And I mean, we found two that have GM experience and one guy has motorcycle experience. But it's like, okay, yeah, I mean, it sounds like you have good. They're like, yep, we did a bunch of electrical. Here's what I would do. And I'm like, okay, you guys sound like great techs.
I mean, it sounds like we need to just get you in here and then just get you through the training.
Yeah, that's. Yeah, yeah. So when they take the online training, here's the question that everybody's gonna be like, jeff, go ahead and ask. Is that expected that they do for free or do they get paid for it?
So if you are an hourly tech, which are in current new hires, hourly, the way we do it is every training has a stamp of how long it should take to do that. Basically signs a flat rate time to that training. If you're flat rate, print it off. Just print off the sheet that shows how much you're supposed to get paid. And if you do it at home, we'll pay you whatever flat rate time that training says. Hourly. They don't want to do that because it would be overtime. And.
Right.
Ownership with overtime is always a balancing act.
So the new hires started hourly, not normally flat rate is what you're saying. So then I'm gonna suggest maybe to you and your. Your partner that are struggling to do this, is that when they get through a certain phase or so, many give them a bump of pay. You know, I don't know, like 40 cents an hour. More, maybe, or 25 cents or whatever. Right. Show them something like. Because I can understand if you're already paying them, you know, a lot to get them in the door and they're not necessarily turning a bunch of hours for you in the first place.
They can be a real. Not necessarily an asset, but an expense. Right. And I get it. It's part of how you grow technicians, unfortunately. But the. It can be really hard sometimes to. To incentivize the young guys if they're already hourly, to then say, go home and.
And do, you know, your online training? But, oh, yeah, because you're on our hourly, we're going to make you do it for free so that, you know, you don't go on overtime. Maybe then the other option, Josh, would be that, like, for every. The same timestamp that you guys would do flat rate, they can clock that towards time off, you know, like a day off or something like that. That option. Right.
Yep.
That might be something to think about. If you don't want to. If you're already kind of maxed out at pay per hour of what you can do, you got to show them something. You got to have them. Because here's the. And it's going to sound terrible. The reality is, is like, sometimes when they come in and they start doing the same job over and over again, they might not see the idea that, well, you know, I get to this level and I get exposed to more work. Because the other option can be, yeah, I'm going to get to the next level and get exposed to more work.
But if there's a flip to flat rate, and they know about how sometimes the jobs pay crap when they're starting out and they're young and they're not as fast, it doesn't seem like all that incentivized, you know what I mean? Like, they, they. I think there's a lot of young people, Josh, that are hanging back because we're just not dangling. I hate that term dangling carrot, but we're not dangling a juicy enough carrot in front of them to make them take that next step. They need it. They need a progression plan that shows, like year one, you know, you can make $30,000, right? Round numbers. Don't, please don't grill me, people. And go, oh, my God. But you know what I mean? You want to see them, say, 30 to 50 to 70 to six figures, you know, whatever.
You want to be able to pull them that when they come in and go in five years, you know, Josh went from this to this. You can do that too. You know, if you have the ability and you have the hustle. I think right now we're always thinking like, I just need a person. I just need a person. And aftermarket shop, dealer, it doesn't matter. You've got to look at like, there has to be a plan to build and grow and feed and nurture a technician. It's just there, we have to come up with one.
I don't know how you, you know, that's not something that necessarily I've seen published in the industry that somebody has a legit definite plan of how you do that. I can tell you there's certain skills that you want to train them in and teach them how to do. You know, you want to get them where they're dick in their electrical courses and you want to be able to bring them over. And I talk about, have the light bulb moment where you show them, you know, this is a loaded power test, this is a loaded circuit test. This is why works. And you know, those little things, and this is how you, this is how you heat up this to get that out. You know, that kind of stuff. Like when you start teaching them those little things, they start to learn how to learn for themselves.
Yeah, right. But those, those key light bulb moments, that's what I think you need to do is you need the guys, you and your, your, your boss or your general manager need to kind of sit down and come up with a, a plan. You know, whether it's some of it's compensation based and some of it's going to be like, these are the skills that we want to be able to expect them to get through, you know, like after six months, I'd like to see them be able to get, you know, a car onto the alignment rack and the heads put on and, you know, at least do the roll and the sweeping and figure out, you know, what to do next. Things like that. I'd like to be able to send them out with a booster pack and have them boost the car and then be able to come in and say, okay, what's my next step in determining what I do? Little basic stuff like that that I think sometimes in the aftermarket side we just do instinctively in the dealer, when we're always talking about getting all these cars done and somebody, you know, has to only get one person, can flag the time and collect the pay. Again, we don't always mentor as well as we should because it's like, I'm not paid to mentor. Right. There's that attitude.
And you and your position, you're paid to mentor. Right. Expected that you do, you know, it's, it could be a tough thing.
I know one.
Go ahead.
So the couple people that I have interviewed, part of their pay plan was, hey, as soon as you get your New York state inspector's license and now can also do warranty work through Chrysler, you get through the three phases. Part of your pay plan is you are going to get a bump. And it was actually like a decent dollar amount bump. So I mean, that's definitely something that we're working on. And that's, that's great. It's a great idea. You have to, like you said, you have to incentivize someone to want to do it.
Yeah. Does it seem like too much of an obstacle? Maybe for the young people, though not
usually part of phase three on Chrysler is an electrical gateway. And as long as I can get through that, which there is a ton of resources that we have now, that's really the biggest hurdle. And so getting through that electrical part of it. And that's. Yeah, because I guess what we were told from Chrysler was the majority of their warranty repairs or failed warranty repairs were all electrical based. So they've doubled down, tripled down on making sure that the techs at least understand the basics of electrical.
Yeah, but you and I know that it's not so much even the lack of basics that means that the car doesn't get diagnosed properly. It's the lack of time that they're willing to, oh, to pay the tech, do the test. Right. Like, think about, you know, I always equate it to like this. It's like, you know, you might have a module that's intermittently going down. Well, what's the labor time to even access the module? Well, it could be an hour and a half. Right. Say airbag module underneath the console.
Right. Console removal. Take you an hour. Right. To get down there. Yeah. They want to pay you 410 to test the module. Well, that's not going to work.
Right. I'm not only going to pay me 4 10, I'm, I'm just going to order a module because I'm not going to tear it apart, get it to that point, prove that it needs it, and then put it back together for them to keep driving it. That ain't happening. Or, you know, like I'm, I'm not doing 410 for something that in the, in the retail book would pay me an hour to access. And sometimes I think that's where we have to either get Better warranty clerks that understand how to get additional time or we're just going to have to pay the tech and it's going to go in against the, the budget because the car's got to be fixed properly. Right. And then that's where CSI is supposed to roll in. Where if we start doing a really good job, csi, you know, pumps up that lacking that loss of money and compensates back for it.
That's what's supposed to happen is supposed to.
Is the correct word.
I think it's the times are, are. Are not realistic. You know. You know, when we think about like where they stick some fuel pump driver modules on some of these cars and it's like, okay, you gotta access that because you know it's, it's causing a bus failure or it's causing, you know, customers having an issue getting. It's got a code for it, whatever. And you're looking at this going like that's a pretty substantial, you know, I got to get the spare tire down. Like it could be seized up. Like there's, there's all these, these variables that happen.
And nobody wants to pay to go in there just to even access the damn thing. And then start doing your proper voltage checks to it. Of course the thing's going to get, you know, just shotgun. And then unfortunately like you know how that can be with Chrysler. Like you could have put the module in the back because of a code back there. And it actually is going to be the connector underneath the tip them. Right. It's not even going to be at the other end of the car.
Yeah. Was always something that I got very lucky. Not lucky, but I got. Part of my refined process was I learned where to start my diagnostic, you know what I mean? And, and how to weigh it out where if it was like it was going to take me longer to get at this here. But I could go to my relay or I could go to my tip them or I could go with my scan tool and start to bilaterally control stuff. That's how I built my process.
Yep.
And that's something that just is like it's only going to be mentorship that's going to teach them how to do that. That's not, you've seen it. It ain't printed in a service manual, right?
No, that's all stuff that comes with just pure experience. That's the only way that you get that kind of process.
You don't read, you don't read in the flowchart still under code description that say, okay, go to Whatever this screen of the scan tool and try this bilateral control like they're telling you to always access the component, check your circuits to the component. And it's like if we learn how more scan tool based diagnostics, even at the OE level we can learn that there's steps we can take out of the troubleshooting trouble tree. Because the scan tool does it for us, right?
Yeah.
And then it's the way I teach my people is if it's powered by a relay, go to a relay, you know what I mean? Go to the damn relay. First, first step, go to the relay. Is it even installed the relay there? Right. Switch it out with the other one, you know, you've been there. And then like do you start to do my testing from that point? Because that way I might be able to diagnose it in the parking lot without having to get underneath the car. Because I can go out there and jump a relay out and a wiper turns on or a horn turns on. I don't have to rack the car. Right.
I know I'm halfway through to my diag and I never had to bring it in, push it in, drive it in, do whatever, find a bay, all that kind of stuff that's taking, we're talking years of mentorship for them to learn. But it's all part and parcel when they're starting to watch what we can do, how they hopefully will pick it up and put it into their own process. It's tough when they come into you, what do you find? The young people, where are they lacking? Because you hear it, you see it. Sometimes they say, oh, they just don't want to work that hard or they're always on their phone or because I've been yours.
I mean I don't want to because I, I feel, I still feel young. Even though I'm now in my mid-30s, I still, I still feel young. But when looking at the people who are in their 20s coming in, some of them just they, their focus, I think it's majority of it is the focus on just their task or their working. Yeah, I mean everybody who comes in fresh is always lacking the abilities to do a of lot, lot of stuff until they just start to do them. Sometimes the importance of using certain tools or looking up service information is a big one that it's like, hey, did you look it up? No. Then look it up. Well, why are you bugging me until you look it up?
Like yeah, yeah, that's, that's huge. A Brian, my brother, Brian Pollock. He talks you know, rtfm read the F and man. And he's exactly right. Because it's. That is. That's the key component is being able to find the information you need in the service manual. Right? Or the service information.
I just dated myself by saying manual. But that's. That's it, right? The more you learn how to navigate that, the less questions you normally have to ask somebody else. Then the questions become, hey, I got one doing this. What do you think? That's the question that I might ask. Not, hey, what's the torque spec for this? Or, hey, what's the process procedure to get to this component? Like, we don't, you know, we don't have to ask that if we get more and more versed in how to navigate the service manual. Yep, I said it again. You know, but everybody knows what I mean.
It's still called service manual even though it's online.
Because I find a lot of the young people that I see and a lot of ones I've worked with, it seems to be a confidence thing, Josh. Like, they're so kind of part of that. You know, they're scared to, well, what if I break something? Well, yeah, we don't want you to break, but we also don't want you to be scared to try. You know, that's the tough thing. Like, I can remember I keep saying door panels, right? Like, yeah, it. How many you've done it, you smile. You know, we've all broke one or two or ten or a dozen or, you know, like, it's just, you know, they're doing better now at showing you where all the fasteners are. But if you do forget one and you go, you know, pull on it, you can.
You can make a damage. So I find that that's what. They're a little laid back. And sometimes I think it's how we handle it. When something breaks can really be the. The secret sauce and not killing their confidence to try again. Right? Because we don't. First of all, if they break a door panel, like, don't charge them for the damn door panel, because it'll probably be everything that they earn that day is paying for that door panel.
Like, let's be real. And so that doesn't make them want to go next time and try and tackle a new challenge because they're immediately. I just had a conversation last night, and Jean Ann was great, and she said, when you put technicians on a high incentive, what it is, is becomes first priority, becomes survival. So what happens is, like, when I think about all the times that I might have broke something if somebody had to come to me and said you're going to pay for that. And I never would. Firstly and secondly, it becomes, then I would be so focused on not costing myself money by not breaking things that I would have slowed down and I would have lacked confidence. So we can't put them in a survival headspace is my point. We have to teach them to be professional and you know, think what they're doing but not be scared that if something happens that it's gonna be the end of the flippin world, you know, that's, that's the trick.
Now I don't want, I don't want wheels falling off, I don't want brake calipers falling off, stuff like that. But I want them that if they feel like they can go out there and start to take a console out of a car, that the number one thing shouldn't be how long did it take you to do it? It should be more, oh, that's right on, you got it all out and you didn't break anything. You know what I mean? That's what we have to be teaching because that's when you're, when you become a true craftsman in this industry. That's what it's about is, is how well you can work on it so that nobody can even tell that you worked on it. You know, little things like that. I believe that when we're always focused on the flat rate mindset, we don't ever get to that, that top 10% level of where you can see a guy and he's had an engine out a cab off, you would never even know that the work's been done on the vehicle.
Yep. Never, I was never a good, a quote unquote good flat rate tech because I, I always wanted to give the best quality and sometimes that meant a 35 hour paycheck that week just because I can't stand broken stuff. I mean I've all done, I've done it. Luckily managers I've had in the past have always been very good of yeah, happens like let's learn from it, move on. And anytime I've worked with younger techs and they break something, they're like, oh no. And I'm like relax, relax, we all done it. I've got some pretty good ones where I've really messed a couple things up. Learn from it and just use it as an experience to not do it again.
Like yeah, we've, we've all snapped the bolt off. Taking the water pump out Right. Because, you know, we were trying to get it done and we looked at it, oh, it's not that rusted. And then you just created some work for yourself. And you know what? And that's part of those, you know, nature's way of giving us those little challenges that teach us the next level and how we level up our skills. Like, okay, good, now you're gonna learn how to get a bolt out today. I know you didn't wake up and go, good, I want to learn. But it's going to be, today's the day you're going to learn.
And it's just we have to learn how to kind of like roll with that, enjoy the process of it, teach them it and go on. Because we're building a better technician when we do that right now. He goes, hey, so what did, what would you do next time? Ah, maybe I'd, you know, maybe I'd have that engine a little bit hotter before I would try and break those bolts loose. Or maybe I would, you know, get in there with a torch and just warm them before I'd even try. And, you know, why did you not do that? Well, maybe the torch is being used or maybe we're, you know, we're rushing to get this job done because it was supposed to hit the shop by 11 and it's two and, you know, we still got a promise by end of day and you know how it goes, right? We can't, we can't do that. I find the young people, between the fear thing and then the. How do I say it? The feel thing, they don't have that feel of like, what's a bolt feel like when it's torquing up? They don't have a feel of like, what's that bolt feel like when it, when I'm trying to loosen it off? You know, I remember I worked with a guy and he worked at a shop and for like the first three years, they would only let him use hand tools. You know, they wouldn't let him, like he was still putting tires on with a tire iron and then a torque wrench because they felt like until you get a feel for it, we don't want you going out there breaking a bunch of stuff.
And now I think it was a little excessive for like two years. But I can definitely see the method that, like, I want them to all have hand tools and a really good idea about what it feels like before necessarily they go and grab, you know, the, the 38 cordless ratchet with 100 foot pounds and start breaking bolts off when they're taking them out. Right. You know what I mean? You're laughing.
Oh, yeah.
So that's the thing for me is the feel and the confidence is what's lacking. And then the process of diag that I've been able to teach a lot of text in my past, that's just something that I have to like. You kind of have to let them go and get to the solution and then kind of go over and go, okay, so this is how I would have done this, and this would be why. And then sometimes. Sometimes their method works. I don't have to touch it at all. Other times I might, like, think about. Okay, so think about this.
Like, you. You got there. But was there some steps that you could have maybe moved the sequence around and it would have. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. Like. Yeah, if I'd have gone there first, you know, that's. That's the trick.
I don't find them that hard, though, to. To get them to pay attention. I think if they're engaged, you know, in the job, they're pretty good. Like, do you get them. You've seen it. They talk. Oh, they want to sit in the bathroom for four hours a day or, you know, hide out behind the. I can remember hide it behind the trash cans and smoke when I was, you know, coming up.
That was a. That was a thing a lot of them wanted to do.
I mean, not a whole lot. You always get the couple here and there. But yeah, for the most part, it's. Once they can focus on the job, they seem to be decent at doing it. But I've seen a ton of distractions with phones and mainly with phones. Yeah, there's been a few times where I've done it myself, where I've gotten distracted with things going on. But it's even worse with the kids in their 20s.
Yeah.
The girlfriends that are too insecure to let them be at work or just who knows what. Oh, this new hot game came out. So they're messing. Playing on their. On their phone. It's like, let's get back to work, people.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. The. The girlfriend thing to me is so funny because it's like. And I get it, but I mean, like, if. If you're 21 and she is so insecure that you can't even go to work that day without sending her a dozen texts making sure that, like, you're. She's trusting you, that's not going to end well. Usually, you know. Yeah, that's not going to end well.
So people that are listening take that as a warning sign. I've been there. The phone thing is funny because it's like we see so many talks now about they're using their phone for their dvi. Right. Are you guys doing a DVI there?
No, thank God. I personally don't want to. Right. I mean, we've done them just a regular multi point on like Internet based multi points and even those. It's usually not doing the multi point that's a pain in the butt. It's getting to seems like it's 10 extra steps and then it's just like a huge waste. It feels like a huge waste of time so many times.
Yeah.
Which it sucks because the multi point is such a good way to bring in more money. But when it's tedious and redundant, it's like that's a whole, whole nother thing that's coming out.
And you know, and I know because we've both been there. You have a lot of customers that drive right up to the service advisor and they tell them, it doesn't matter what you find. I'm all here for this thing that I'm complaining about under warranty or my recall, and that's it. I have another guy. They say, right, so I'm right there with you. Where it's like the DVI in the aftermarket side of things is a, is an awesome tool on educating our customer that, you know, you need more than just a damn oil change. Like, you know, we're showing you that there's a tie rod falling out because we should be showing you that there's a tie rod falling out. But when you're doing it in the dealership, man, it's, it's tough.
Like you have to have. You got to pay the technician to do it. You got to give them time to do it. And you have to have advisors that are incentivized to actually sell the work that comes off and not just be like they want to sit up there and process warranty claims all day long, warranty customers all day long and not bother to sell anything because they're not paid enough on the commission of what they do for sales. That's the problem is that I, the last dealer I was at their, their commission on sold work was so light that they didn't care if they did it or not. It was like a dangling carrot for them. They didn't care. And so they would stand there and get all their customers through that were there for a warranty problem.
And maybe if we, you know, found a brake job. We'd celebrate job. But it wasn't like they were hustling, you know what I mean? Where it's like, okay, Mrs. Smith is here for a recall. I haven't seen Mrs. Smith in a year. She's got 60,000 on her car. Now, we have no history of, like, services being done on the car.
Now's the time to really talk to Mrs. Smith about who's been looking after the car. What's the maintenance look like right now? That's when we not convert. But you can give them an estimate that says, hey, you really should be thinking about these three things if you're A, gonna keep this car, or B, if you're gonna get rid of that car. And you can start to have that conversation because if they say, I'm thinking about getting rid of it, okay. So then I go and call up, you know, my used car guy in the, in the sales department, and he comes over and evaluates the car while it's in the shop, and he starts pitching for the benefit of the dealership. Hey, Mrs. Smith, you know, are you thinking about trading your Durango in the next little while we've got, you know, a new one in or something like that.
And that's all where we have to be. The value of the DVI and the, the person in the service drive has got so much more. What's the word? I'm thinking of responsibility and power that most of us are utilizing them for. And it's because, again, why we treat them just like in a tax, and we're not paying them enough to actually do it. You have to incentivize them. And not only incentivize them, you got to make sure that they understand it's their damn job to sell work. And if they don't want to sell work, don't have them in the building. Right.
It's not a popular opinion, but this, this industry is sales. We are selling because nobody drives in and wants their car rebuilt. But the reality is sometimes it does need to be rebuilt and you have to be able to sell that. You know, you know how it is. Like, you know, you've worked long enough flat rated a dealer. You know that like, you're looking at, what's the car need for repairs, what's the car need for service. You kind of want to always be doing both of them at the same time when the car's there to maximize your return. That's something that the advisors are not getting a lot.
I think the younger, younger advisors just don't know how to do it. I think they haven't been taught.
So yeah, there's been a couple advisors lately that I've worked with over the past couple years and great kid but he was just kind of thrown to the wolves. And I'm like he worked at Price Chopper last time, like he worked at the grocery store was his last job. Like you got to do some sort of formal training with them. I mean he's doing awesome for what he's taught, but it's like he's never going to do better if you don't teach him.
Like and that's the other funny thing too. Like when I, when I look at like say if I was to check in my demographic, service advisors above a certain age always seem in my demographic to be working at independent stores and younger service advisors all seem to be at dealerships and I would challenge the dealership. If you're listening any of them, why do you think they friggin leave? Well because you're not paying them enough. That's the start. There's just not enough good work coming in or you're not allowing them empowering to convert the work that's coming in. So they're only getting paid their base salary and maybe if they get some kind of bonus on warranty work, which a lot of places don't pay any kind of bonus to the service advisor for warranty ticket, they're not making any money and they're processing really difficult customers all day long. Whereas if you go see those same advisors, like I worked with a guy, he was excellent at the Nissan dealer. He now works at one of the best independent shops in my area on the front counter.
He loves it. Why he's making more money and he's not having to deal with warranty complaints because the cars that are warranty, they're only bringing it in because they want new tires, they want new brakes, they want something fixed. He doesn't have to, you know, listen to Mrs. Jones complain about this intermittent, you know, radio for the hundredth time or the radio that sometimes doesn't connect to her phone. Like you connect you connects a piece of eh.
Yes it is.
I have a friend with a Durango and it's like he's. I'm like Dan, how many times has that been into the shop now? He's like every time I go in he said it's. There's always something they're doing to uconnect and then he says it always acts up after they do something. He says it's just non stop. He says it's like the worst design system that Chrysler ever came up with. So. Yeah. And for the greater scheme of things it doesn't matter.
Like the car still runs and drives. Yep. But everybody gets so wrapped up in my phone I can't play my playlist. Oh my God. Like I got satellite radio. I don't even use a playlist. Like what. What's some of the failures you're seeing coming in a lot now that you wish you could have somebody up to task really quick on fixing.
And I know you're going to say like electrical diag but within that what's the real common stuff coming in now?
I mean we're finding a ton of corrosion in connectors. Corrosion and wires. The biggest one that I've seen this past winter is Pacifica Active grill shutter codes. It's never the grill shutter. It is never the grill shutter. It's always a broken wire a foot from the connector or there's a connector in the bumper where that's full of water that I don't know how it got water in it, but it's got water in it. Diesels we see all the time with sensors and deaf injection and.
Yeah. Cool.
Or the not coolant. The DF heater lines like.
Yes.
I mean for the most part it's pretty repetitive as what comes in but just to have someone take some of the other stuff off when I. Because I've had a few random modules going down. You know you get a vehicle towed in because it has a global failure and it's some stupid module tucked up in the front bumper because there's a wire that got corroded and it's corroded the power. Stupid like that.
Yeah. You know that's where again that. That being able to poach that technician from another dealer. Right.
That's.
That's an hour up the road from you that's seen some of the same stuff. Do you. Do you still get it all sent out for training? Like Chrysler. I keep saying Chrysler.
I call it Chrysler too.
So you still ever get sent out to training and get to network with other guys at other dealers?
Not so much anymore because I've literally completed every training that's currently available. So I mean eventually they'll come out with a new in class. They still do in class learning for me. My training center is actually in Rochester. So it's only a two hour drive which is great. It's amazing. And I have both of those instructors phone numbers right in my phone. So I really Wish I could go to more training because it does help with some of this newer stuff.
They're really big on their web based stuff and I, I mean, I understand it's easy to put out this web based course. We, I just did one on the new Cherokee and The new Hurricane 4 engine.
Yeah.
And it's quick, easy stuff. But yeah, having that connection and doing some actual hands on stuff in the dealership or in the classroom setting is invaluable. And I wish I could get more of it now that I'm at the
top because I can remember when we would go to training sometimes and the little few times that I did go, you would see like the. So you get to know some of the technicians that worked at the dealer, like 40 minutes away, you know, or 30 minutes away, the next county or something like that. And that became, sometimes how people networked to go, oh, wait, you're paying what, an hour?
Yep.
And then it's like, oh yeah, you know, oh, you guys are, you know, less an hour than me, but you guys are swamped. Like that's good. Like I might come there. That's going back to that poaching conversation. That's how sometimes that happens. Right. I believe that like every technician out there right now, if you're, if you're working at a dealer and there's an online group for dealer techs for that brand, you need to be in those groups and you need to be talking to them and you need to be networking with them because you're going to have, you're going to, you're going to talk to guys that like exposure, right, Josh? Like, they see way more cars a day, right? You talk about like 30 lifts and, you know, 20 technicians. That's way more cars that come in every day that they see problems on and they talk about it.
And then if you just lurk in those comments, it starts to go into your memory bank of like, oh, I want. And then if you make friends with them, you can talk to them and say, hey, I remember you talking about this. Did. What was it? And you go, oh, Josh says, yeah, that connector down from the grill shutter, you know, two feet under the bumper is always full of corrosion. Because when they go through the car wash, it just jacks the water right up into it. Right? Go there. That's the kind of stuff that, that learning isn't always even then. You know, your Chrysler training, it's your networking of people that have seen it before you.
Because I, as smart as I am, I always, if somebody else had Seen it first. I wanted to know. That's the way I am. It's just I'm, I'm inherently curious and I'm inherently lazy like that. Like, I believe in the idea that the pattern failure, the first step is to try and disprove that it's the pattern failure. And you and I know most of the time when you try to disprove it, it proves itself to be the pattern failure.
Yes.
But you still have to go at it with the mindset of disproving it. And that's, that's where your, that's where your superpower comes in is because you start to learn to, you know, it becomes. You end up with two pattern failures and three pattern failures and four pattern for those two, you know, the, the damn product really, really, really well. And then you can share with your, with your co worker and bring them up. I think that's, that's key. You know, we've talked about gatekeeping in this industry and I think that, like, it happens at the dealer level, but you are not having a situation of gatekeeping. You're having a situation of like you can't find people.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I don't know, man. I, I think you got to keep reaching out to that, that, you know, what about. So it's not focillo anymore. It's whatever dealer group has got this or dealer. Can they reach out for other dealers and say, we got, you know, are you thinking of having a technician that might be moving or want to switch brands? Can you do that that way?
I actually never really thought about that. Mainly because usually no one moves to New York. Okay. I actually know a couple good co workers I worked with. One moved to Kentucky, another one went to Florida. Florida. Another one went to Tennessee. So that's the other problem we're having too, is some of these really good texts.
They see the online ad of, oh, $50 an hour, we'll pay for your moving. We'll give you 15 grand to move here. And they take that leap. And then they go, you know what? That was awesome. And it's like, I'm never coming back. I'm like, oh, crap.
Yeah.
So, yeah, to go back to the networking thing, I did want to say there is an awesome independent shop down in Syracuse. They specialize in a bunch of exotics. They do a ton of Porsches, BMWs, European stuff like that. They actually just started an after hours, you know, once a month or so. Like, hey, if you're a tech, come down. We'll provide pizza, food, drinks, Come down and network with other techs. And I actually just went to one of those myself and I'm like, this is awesome. Because you get to see.
Because when I go to like Chrysler training, you see the common patterns in Chrysler and some of the weird stuff, stuff that Chrysler has go into that I'm like, oh, well, this brand has this problem and this band has this problem. And it's like, oh, maybe we're not nearly as bad as my mind thinks.
Yeah. Now do they do a training, any kind of training module at the same time that night or is it just.
It's just kind of like a social hour.
I like that. I like that. Yeah. I mean I've said for years, you know, the. Because you think about if you don't do that, when does that maybe happen at the Christmas party, You know, if they have more than one dealer in the other group, right. You meet them from. If you're so social. Sometimes it's like those guys over, you know, Volkswagen.
We don't want to have anything to do with them or whatever. But in the, in this industry we need to be doing more of that where it's just like, here's some pizza or here's some subs. Stand around, you know, drink a pop or drink a beer and, and just share. Get to know the guys in the other, you know, hear about it. I think why they don't do that is they don't want. Within a dealer group. They don't want them to necessarily know that it's like what you're paid how much flat rate an hour, you know what I mean? Like that's, that's the trick where I guess if he's just putting it on as an independent shop and he's making it available to anybody, I know exactly what he's doing it for us. So that the people that are coming in are sharing problem failures, problem pattern failures and you know, are, are filling up everybody's knowledge base with, hey, you know, if you get one of these doing this, call this guy.
It's pretty powerful thing. It's not a bad idea. Guys that are listening, think about that. You know, if you have multiple stores, I want to hope you have multiple stores. By now everybody's probably pretty friendly with each other and you can kind of say, you know, reach out and say, I got a guy at another store, let me bounce an idea off him. Because this, this stuff's just not easy, you know, especially chasing intermittence or yeah, you know, can is such as, like somebody posted how you Know, they used a lab scope to prove that, like it didn't. It was the backup camera that was causing. What did Brian say? A backup camera that's causing the ABS and something else to wig out on a car.
So Brian with a. With a lab scope, but it had come from another store that had already had a new backup or not a. It already had a new ABS module. And I think there's something else in it. And the car was still not running right. It still had faults and ABS module and something else, all because of a backup cameras pulling the bus down. Now, Brian's a super smart guy, so his process is just about as refined as you can get. But it's that idea that, like, if we get together and share, you know, somebody can go check this first.
There's. I can't. The newer Fords have got a tail light where they put a lane departure module or something.
We do too.
Yeah. So see, and now everybody, all of a sudden all over the Internet is going, if you have a cam problem, go back there and unplug that tail light or look at it and see if it's full of water. A year ago, when it wasn't nearly as common, it was kicking all kinds of guys butt, right. Trying to solve this problem. Now, we all know go there first and sometimes the pattern failure and the bullet identifix, whatever, it waters down the industry and the ability to actually develop the process. But I've always been okay with it because you know what, you just have to get the car fixed accurately, efficiently. Because the customer, at the end of the day, they don't give a crap about my process. They don't care.
Like, it's like Brian saying, you know, you can spend two hours diagnosing it, but they don't flip and care. To them, it's just an amount. They don't like. All the steps and all the documentation, like, it's important to have that, but they don't really care. You know, we have to be able to, at the end of it, give them a repaired vehicle. And it can't look like we tried 10 different things before. We found on the 11th arrow that we shot in the target hit the bullseye. It can't be that.
That's not what they want.
Yep.
What. When you are talking to some of the young people that don't stay or don't come on or whatever, what's some of the feedback they're giving you, Josh?
I haven't really had a bunch of. Bunch of experience with that with a bunch of the younger guys, there was one younger guy, when he finally left, he was like, oh, it's a lack of training. That particular person had had way more training than he should ever needed.
So,
yeah, most people like they. That I've ever seen left, they usually either laugh for money or they're just completely changing locations, like moving out of state or something like that.
Right.
Or they're retiring. That's how most of the people I see leave is. Most of it's been retiring or moving out of state.
Yeah.
And that's trying to get the new, new generation in. Is this. There's the deficit that we're having.
Yeah, it is. It sucks. You know, I. I see that sometimes where it's like, you know, people go, well, this young person, and they had all the training that I could give them, and they still weren't making it. Sometimes they just don't have the feel, you know, for it. And that's, you know, that's the unfortunate thing. I had a lot of employers that. That didn't think I had the feel for it.
And at certain points, maybe for what they were trying to have me do, I didn't have the feel for it. But I always was like, I was good at diag and electrical, and that's just like, they would put me in the corner and leave me alone, and I'd get it done. You know, I wasn't the guy that like, hey, go. Go yank that tranny out or go yank that cab off. They're like, no, don't give that to Jeff. It'll be two weeks before he has it done. You know, and that's just the way it was. But, you know, they could give me.
They could give it to me after the cabin went off and it wasn't working right, and Jeff would get to the bottom of it. So I think we have to look at, like, individual skill sets that a lot of the young people are coming in with, and we need to really, really figure out how do we make a place for them. Yeah, because it sucks, unfortunately. Like, I'm not saying that you want a whole bunch of texts that just want to stare at a scan tool and not actually put a wrench on a car, because that's not fixing the problem. But I'll make the argument that right now, with the way the industry's going, you could make the argument that there is a spot for a text like that. Now, I'm not necessarily saying they're new ones, but there is a spot where there's enough of that kind of work coming in, where, if they're proficient, they can just kind of grab a lab scope or a scan tool and go from car to car every day. Because if you look at how some of the shops are running right now that I talked to, they have one or two guys that do all the diag and the inspections in the shop, and somebody else is putting the parts on. And if it doesn't fix it, it might go back to them to be checked again as to why it didn't fix it.
And then you'll find either the parts defective or they were. Their diag was wrong. But there's more and more shops, Josh, that are adopting that plan. And it does work because, you know, if you can evaluate the car quickly, do the diag, get the part ordered, and get somebody to get the part on, you can go on to the next car. Sometimes we have all these talented guys that are really good with the nuts and bolts, but understanding what they have to do to fix the car is where they lack. And we have to find a place to make it all work cohesive, because we're not. The bodies just aren't there, Josh. You know, like, they're not coming in.
So at any given point, I've kind of. I am both the youngest and the oldest within, like, one or two people in the last three shops I've been at. So it's like, I feel. It almost feels like the kid. Kids that graduated around 2010 graduated from high school, which. That's me. Yeah. I don't.
It's almost like that was, like, the last time that they were really pushed to go do any kind of trade.
Yeah.
The other thing I've been noticing, too, is in this area, like, you can go be a welder and make 10 bucks more an hour, you can go be a house electrician or an H vac tech, and you're gonna make 5, 10, 15 bucks an hour more. And you're not gonna have to deal with the dealership stuff or the shop stuff or you. You know, like, if you're an electrician, you just deal with electrical. Us as technicians, we got plumbing, we got electrical, we got computers, everything.
Well, I mean, we have to kind of learn how to weld. You know what I mean? Like, you got a broken bolt in the cylinder head. How are you getting it out? Now everybody's grabbing a welder. Nobody's grabbing a drill. You know, when I was coming up, when welders were not as. You know, it's hard to believe that there was a time where lots of us worked in shops that didn't have a welder because a MiG didn't cost, you know, 99 at Arbor Freight. It cost, you know, a grand. We all grabbed the drill and went to work and it was a, it was a suck, you know.
And then now we see that those young people, it's just like, hey, you got to go learn to weld. And I thought when I was coming up, I was like, I was not. I don't need to learn how to weld. Like, that's just, just, you know, my dad was a body man. I know how to weld. I don't need to learn. I'm never going to be welding squat. And now it's like, you know, half your engine repairs that you do, at some point you're going to get the torch of the welder out.
The young people. You, you said something interesting on 2010 and I believe that that's, yeah, 100%. Like, I think it really ramped up to where we started pushing them towards university, college, desk jobs, content creation, you know, all this kind of stuff. And we, and we left the trades behind. And I think it's like Mike roll with dirty jobs. You know, he did a good job of showing people that, like, hey, get out there and work with your hands. And you can make six figures a year. The tool expense too, Josh, has just gotta be, you know, like, do you see that with some of the young people you had?
Oh, absolutely. You start, you know, you lend them their, your tools for a little bit. But eventually it's like, okay, I've lent you that tool 20 times now you need to go start buying it. And then they run out to snap on Mac maca, whatever tool truck happens to be there. And they're like, it's how much? I'm like, yeah, it's a lot of money. Now with the evolution of Harbor Freight, I advise everybody now I'm like, if you can afford it and they're even doing zero interest now, go to Harbor Freight and get your good starter set and maybe talk to some of us who have been doing it for a while on what tools you should buy off the tool truck. Certain things, like I find a ratchet, a ratchet, I'm probably biased. Has to be snap on everything else.
I've had breaks.
Although I will say that that icon ratchet is a very good ratchet for sure. 100. But I do have, I probably got 10 snap on rat inches in my cart right now from all sizes, half inch, all the way down to quarter different Handlings. But man, like that's my favorite part of coming across the border to do a trip is because I'm always stopping a Harbor freight on the way back. Always. And, and you know, it's a big joke, but I mean like I was in Lancaster last year with, you know, my friend John Firm. And it's like I walk in the store, I get a red bucket and I start putting tools in and everybody's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, do you see this dead blow hammer here? Like it's like a five pound dead blow hammer for like $15. You know what that costs in Canada? 50 bucks.
Like that's why I'm buying it here. And, and just on and on and on. And not everything has to be snap on. That's my point. Or tool truck brand. You know, we came up, when I came up there was still, there was a Sears in every community and you went and bought Craftsman tools. Now you can't do that. You know, I'm still lucky with.
I have a Canadian Tire up here for Mastercraft. But their quality of tool has gone down and their selection has gone down from when I was coming up. So it's not available. So it's like if we had a Harbor Freight in Canada and everybody in my Canadian listener go, we got Princess Auto. Trust me, if, if you haven't compared Harbor Freight, Princess Auto, it's not the same. Not Princess Autos. I buy some tools there too. But it's the quality is next step up from Princess that, that we don't have at Harbor Freight.
Excuse me, that Princess doesn't have. And you know, you look at the guys in royalty and you look at like Mr. Subaru and all these other brands that they're, they're showcasing that these young people can be buying online and getting serviced online, that they don't have to walk out to a tool truck. Like it's just the tool expense is still such an obstacle for the young people. But here's the reality. There's way more avenues for them now that you and I coming up didn't have. And that's what I keep telling them, right, is be smart with what you're buying. Buy good hammers, good pliers, you know, good screwdrivers, buy a good impact gun, buy a really good torque wrench.
And I don't mean like everybody out there torquing wheels on every day. You do not need a $600 digital torque angle torque wrench. You know, I think you really should have a split beam precision Instrument style, you know, one that you back delay. It doesn't. What I'm saying is you don't back that dial off. It doesn't matter. It doesn't kill the calibration of the wrench because that's what is designed for us for tires. All day long, you know, save your money.
Don't buy a $500 torque angle if all you're doing is torque and lugs. You're gonna wear that thing out. And it's a lot of money for a tool outlay. Whereas you can buy that icon one or you can buy precision instruments snap on whatever you want Mac for less money. And it does what you're going to be doing all day long. Consistently does it very well. You know, I don't ever reach for my torque angle to torque wheels. Not once.
You know, I don't guys that do it, I don't have a problem with it. That's cool. But it's, it's a little overkill at that point.
I mean, I've seen the price of tools in the last 10 years because I can remember when Harbor Freight first was a thing that I remember you wouldn't buy those things for a professional setting. You just couldn't. But now the majority of especially their icon line is awesome. But I had a snap on dealer aggressively trying to upgrade my toolbox and it was going to be $15,000 plus my old box to go upgrade to this new box. And I'm like, why?
Yeah.
And then you got. I've worked in a couple shops with people who bought the Mr. Bigs and I'm like, why are you spending 20, 30, $40,000 on a toolbox? It's just mind blowing.
I wish I could have like I have a, I have a maximizer that I bought Geez, 2008. And I bought it used then, so I didn't pay a ton of money for it. And it's maxed out like I can't fit any more to them tools in the damn thing. But I wish I could have all that money back and I would have gone and bought an icon, you know, from, from Harbor Freight because I would have had more storage for 20 years later. I would have more storage for the money that I put in that maximizer. Scan tools is another thing. I see these young kids and it's like, you know, they're buying scan tools and I'm like, oh my God, like stop. I mean the prices are down, thank God.
But I mean like you, especially if you work at a dealer, you really Only need like kind of a standalone code reader just to get fast through some stuff that if the couple of the shop diagnostic portals are being used you can still get the code read and code cleared without having to do it. These, you know, these guys that run out and spend, even if they spend a thousand dollars on a think tool or something like that, I would challenge that. Let me look at your tools and see what you need to buy first before you buy that. You know. And people that know me, I love the diagnostic side. So like if I see a young person that's really wants to develop it, good. I'm not going to necessarily fault you. But think about where you're spending your limited money right now because you don't have a lot of money every week for tools.
No matter what anybody says. Like I don't want to see these kids spending 200 a week on a tool truck. I don't want to see it.
Yeah, that's a mortgage payment for some people.
Like yeah tools like or rent, you know. Yeah, you spent. So you spend 250 a week on tools. That might be the difference between you living at mom and dad's for the next 10 years. Because that thousand dollars a month you're spending on tools could be like you could have a little apartment somewhere. Right. Or you could be making a mortgage payment. Like there's lots of.
I think New York is probably expensive to live in. But you understand what I, my point is that like we in this industry we need to step up and bring the pay up especially at the dealer level. And you know, we have to when everybody goes why? Well that's why is because like they can pick another trade and yeah make less payment towards the tool bill. And I, you know the dealer thing is we see in the aftermarket side of shops all the time they're starting out with a, a toolkit that the, the young people they hire can, can work out of. I know from what I've seen in the dealerships from when I was coming up, the amount of turnover that they had, that would never work. It was, it would become like you need one more responsibility on your plate, Josh, to go around and inventory those tools every day. At the end of like you just don't have the time. Right? Yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot I've
thought about because I saw what Royalty Auto has been trying to work up with that toolkit. Then I thought about like hey if you stay here for X number of years it's yours. Like but maybe as an extra incentive to try to get some of the younger people in. If I can find younger people. Because that's also part of the problem having. It's. You can't. You can't really find the younger people.
It's to even come in.
That might be something you and your manager, Josh, can think about doing. You know what I mean? Honestly, like, so like we talked about at the beginning, maybe a signing bonus that they get paid out at the first year. I do believe that, like, if they're going to do the mandatory training that they need to do, if you can't pay them because they're going to go into overtime, let them clock that time so they get a day off paid, you know, that's all again, between you and your manager and the accountant. But I mean, that's, that's just a couple ideas. It's stuff that I've seen work. Here is my point. You know, around where I am, I work with a bunch of. Or I work with a bunch of people around here.
Just expect that. It's like everybody. Young person wants to come in and they're just gonna have to, you know, do all of this stuff unpaid. And then they sit there and they go, I can't hire any technicians. Like every dealer in my area, Josh, is trying to hire a technician. Every dealer doesn't matter. Yeah, they'll hire an apprentice. They'll hire.
They won't even ask for a journey person anymore. They just like, they want an apprentice. And then if you come in and you go, actually, a journey person, like, you can have a job tomorrow because they're not, they're not building the young people into this. And I think that it's going to be a real thing that you and your manager are going to have to sit down and come up with a plan on how you do it. I think it could be done. I think that there's probably enough around you. It's just, how do you do it? And I think you've got to have to spend some time and money and really incentivize it, you know, what's the last. So what's your current crew?
There's me, one guy that's 64 and retired and then another guy that's two years younger than me and he's our like C plus stack now.
How does he look that he can, he can come through. Can he ever get to your level, do you think?
I think with a lot of hands on, mainly on the electrical side, he's actually not half bad at all with the mechanical side of things. Like he did an oil cooler on a ram on a 3, 6 ram, 4 hours maybe. So it's not, not on unrealistic. He seems to have the majority of the hands on stuff and the actual nuts and bolts part of it. Doesn't seem to have a problem with it. But definitely I think he could.
So he's struggling with the fuel and electrical, the drivability, the diag side of stuff.
He definitely struggling with electrical and even he admits that he goes, I just, I don't understand the electrical stuff. And I've been working with him the best I can to
do. You show them some of the, you know, the names that we always talk about, you know, in the aftermarket. The YouTube guys that are kind of can teach them like scanner Danner and
you know, I, I mention them from time to time. I usually don't like pull up very many videos. Like I won't pull up a video for someone but I'll be like, hey, check this guy out. Like this is a guy I watch and holy crap, he's got some good information, right?
You might have to get a little heavier handed with him, Josh, in terms of like, you know, if you've got his phone number, you need to be sending him like a homework assignment. Here's a video. Like I still do it with my friends. Like, you know, we share stuff back and forth that we still see online every day. You know, a lot of it. Sometimes as we're looking at that going, what do you think of the process? Because we already know probably what they're going to find to fix the car, right? The last one I really blew my mind was Sherwood's with his, that Nissan with the hood latch thing, right?
Yeah, it was nuts.
17 months, you know, 17 months that thing sat in that shop while they tried to solve that. Like. And again, you know, I'm not throwing shade at Sherwood at all. That's just, it's next level, you know, commitment to problem solving. And I think that that's, you know, so you got to get the young people excited that like, yeah, he may never want to be great at it, but he should have his fundamentals down that it's like, I've watched enough check engine chucker. I've watched enough Paul Danner, I've watched enough Sherwood that like I've watched enough Ivan, I've not enough Eric. Oh, that I know my process, what it, what I need to see at the component, right. Like I, I have that figured out and then I can, I can make the call or, or get somebody a little more, you know, familiar, like yourself to come over and say, what do you think about this? But we have to be developing that because right now there's going to be a lot of technicians that like, we're not lacking technicians that can put on oil coolers on.
On Pentastars, and we're not even lacking technicians that can take, you know, CVT trannies out of stuff or take out, you know, we're not lacking those technicians. We can, we. They're there. We already have them, you know, can drop fuel tanks and put fuel pumps. And we have all those technicians who do brakes. Like, we got. We got more brakes and tire techs than we need in this industry. We need that them to take that next jump from a C to a good B tech.
You know, that's what we need. We got all, all the ctechs we need. You know, it's not a case of. So I think that that means that we're failing to. To grow them. So that's what I'm challenging.
That's definitely, definitely could be we're failing to grow them. Yeah, I know this region, like the three, four dealers in this region don't have an apprentice program. I know I want to try to build that here because I know, I see it's required, but I've never actually worked at a shop that had an apprentice program. And it's. And it didn't really seem necessary until probably about five years ago. And then it's just been a downhill slope since probably about five years. That really coveted, I think feel like Covid really killed a lot of the drive for tax. Yeah, we just gotta get them in and get them trained and because a
lot of technicians, unfortunately, when covet came, they lost their jobs. And that was kind of, for a lot of them, that was their last straw. That was like, you know what? If you're gonna, like, lay me off because of, you know, that and, you know, I was already not making any, you know, good money anyway, and then all of a sudden you're gonna lay me off. And like. Or like a lot of technicians, I know there was a big thing that went through, I can't remember where, but the dealer, they took their guarantee away. And then so the one time when they finally needed their guarantee, they just took it from them. And I remember that dealership, it made national news. It was all, well, national news in the.
In the circles that we ran in, because it was all over all the Facebook groups of automotive technicians everywhere was talking about this, this dealership. And it did. It was not a good look for them. But I think that you're right. It was when Covid hit it, kind of like a lot of them that were on the fence about am I really going to make this a career or not. They went somewhere else and we didn't get them back. And now we're sitting here going like, you know, Jim Farley is like, how do I fill up all these bays? Well, you know, you can't. It's.
Stop talking about six figure, you know, that they can make six figures. They can't starting out, you know, but we need to have real talks about what they can make and what they're, you know, how we grow them. I think that's the key. What the local dealers in your area, are you guys friendly with them that you could talk about how to do something collectively to, to get more people involved?
Kinda, yes and no. So there's definitely some rivalries.
Right.
Especially with the, the local Chrysler dealerships. I mean I am personal friends with people inside of that dealership. But as dealership, the dealership, there's. There's definitely a not, there's not, not like hatred, but it's one of those like, hey, leave us alone, we'll leave you alone alone type feeling.
Now what about a different brand like a Ford dealer or a Chevrolet dealer? Could you kind of do something similar like what you were talking about that goes on in Syracuse? Could you do that in your area?
I'd love to. I just don't know how I would go about setting that up in. Up. Up here.
Yeah.
Because even though the. There's bit really like three main auto group owners within the Watertown Adams area and I now work for the outlier, the new guy who is one of only two stores in New York state.
Yeah. Yeah.
So they don't really like to discuss especially when you start. They don't want, like you said, they don't want to get text together. They don't want that to happen. Yeah. Because also they, they're afraid that oh hey, this is shops offering so much better. They're going to run over there like they, they don't want that to happen.
Yeah, I, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, I'm gonna reach out to some other people and we're going to talk about what they suggest for you and then I'll have another conversation. You and I, maybe we'll have to do a phone call or something when I can kind of get some thoughts Jot down on what they think you can do, and then we do that. The other thing I'll say is I think maybe when I come through for tools, I'll pop in on you and I'll visit you for, like, a couple hours or something. I don't think Adams is all that far from. I'll be coming down 81.
Yeah. Yeah, we're literally right off 81. We're. We're literally like two exits south of Watertown right off 81.
So I'll. I'll pop in and. And see you for an hour or so just to kind of get a feel for. For it. But I would. I'll challenge you with this, and I won't take up any more of your time. Go to your manager and say, I think that we. You know, here's some ideas that we need to.
To think about, you know, is maybe a signing bonus, you know, because here's the reality. Like, you pay it out at the end of the year. If they don't last the year, you're not out anything. Right. And the second thing is, like, your young people, in order to get them up certified, you're gonna have to give them something. Unfortunately, it sucks. You're gonna have to give them something for doing their tests, for doing their. Their certs, you know, because here's the other thing.
The beauty of it is once they get. Say they get a year into the product and they get at a certain level of accreditation within the product line, that in a lot of ways is something they take pride in and they'll hold on to, right? And they'll be like, well, I might as well stay here because I'm already at level one or level two or whatever it can be, instead of jumping from brand to brand. I mean, ultimately, money's a whole lot better. They'll still jump brands, but, you know, getting them. Getting them into the culture of learning and getting certified, if you can get them doing that quickly, I think it'll help some of the retention, you know, and then reach out to the high schools. Reach out to, you know, my friend Brian Pollock. He used to walk around. He does it, right? He still does it.
He'll walk around Harbor Freight, and he'll hand out his business card and say, hey, you know, you work on cars? Yeah. And. And John Firm. My friend Buckaroo Bob, he does that, too. And to say, you work in cars? Where do you work? Oh, yeah. What do you think about? You know, And Brian says, it's been fantastic for getting people at least to Come in and do an interview or try it out. Now some of them come with obstacles and they don't necessarily become. But you know what I mean, right? Like you guys, I don't know again, in the dealer side of things, you don't always buy a ton of parts from, you know, the aftermarket stores.
But I mean if you let them know that like, hey, we're trying to hire technicians, your local Napa, your local AutoZone, you know, O'Reilly's and all that kind of stuff, maybe they can help you out. You know, was saying, just keeping the word in the air. The other thing is same thing, tool guys, right? Tool guys are always, they know, right? So if you get really involved with your tool guy and go, hey, maybe, you know, if your tool guy gets your recruit, you know, that's the other thing too. Like if you can eventually get somebody, a big enough team and they bring somebody and I've seen it where you know, there's a signing bonus for that guy and then there's like a $500 bonus or you know, a gift card at the restaurant for getting a referral and that kind of stuff. There's, there's always levels to this that we can do it.
So yeah, there is. The, the competing dealer that I was at in the interim with the previous owner, they actually had a five thousand dollar sign on bonus and they had the. One of the techs that I've known forever who got me to go there, got a referral bonus and it's like, yeah, they also did really good Christmas parties. I mean it's such a little thing to think about. But I, man, I missed their Christmas parties.
Yeah, it's, it's a huge deal. It's that little things like that, like we had a Christmas party this past December and that's kind of the first one I've had in, in a couple years. And it was nothing lavish, but it was just nice to have, you know. And I've had, I've had other ones where it was like, you know, you felt like, yeah, it was a Christmas party, but it wasn't like you didn't want to be there. You know what I mean? Like, it was just like felt really stingy and cheap I guess is what I'm trying to say. So, you know, even though it probably wasn't meant to be that way, it just appeared like that. So that's what I'm going to leave you with. That's my, that's my suggestions for you is I'll pop in when I Come through.
And the. I'll try and make it the end of April, beginning of May, that last weekend, I'll pop in and I'll either, you know, if it's coming through on a weekday, I'll drop in or else I'll meet you in Watertown and grab you a coffee or something and you know, see where you're at at that point. And I'll reach out to some people and see how they can, if they can give me any feedback that I can pass on to you. But any close thoughts?
Not anything off top of my head, no.
Good, good. That's what we want to do is we kind of want to exhaust all, all opportunities. Just, you know, keep your, keep your head up and, and be patient with them. You know, the ones that you have your young guy that you got right now, or not that young, but your C tech keep putting in, pouring into him. You know what I mean? When you, when you find something cool, bring him over. Even if he doesn't seem interested, bring him over and show it to him every time. Because that's the only way he's gonna get to where it's like he might start to look for himself. And again, I'm a big believer in homework.
You know, Brian just talked this week about it's, it's the 40 hours you do at the job, but it's that second 40 hours you do every week that really take you to that next level in this industry and you know, give your young people homework. People like be sending them, signing them up for Scander Danner and sending them videos from Erico and Ivan and Sherwood and all that kind of stuff. Keep sending, sending that to them. And if they don't flip and open it and they don't watch it, oh well. But you know, if you're doing that and they don't bother to open it, then they can't say, well, nobody ever showed it to me. And that's the other thing is like we have to hold the young people accountable and make them understand that this is like a very rewarding career. But it's not just a 9 to 5. You don't just turn it off at 5 o'.
Clock.
You have to go home and pour into yourself every day 1% better, as I keep saying. And that's, that's how you, that's the secret sauce. That's all there is to it. There's nothing, you know, you, you've got a window that you can really learn. You got a window that you can really make money in. This career, and it's when you're young and you got to be open minded to it. So, Josh, I want to thank you for being here, man.
Absolutely.
I know I ranted a little bit at you, but that's kind of how it goes. Yeah, we'll. We'll talk, Josh, for sure. We'll. We'll keep in touch about this because I. I'm. I'm genuinely invested now in kind of seeing how you can, you know, bring this dealership up, because I can feel, you know, your attachment to it and you want to see it be successful. And, you know, I'll drop by and we'll.
We'll talk. And if I can get there when I could meet maybe your. Your manager and have a conversation with him too. Like, I think it'd be just. It'd be a good thing to do. So.
Absolutely.
We'll keep involved in this. All right, awesome. Appreciate it, man. Thank you for coming on, everybody. Thank you for listening again. As always, I love you. Be nice to one another. Try and get that 1% better every day.
And, you know, we'll talk to you next week. Thanks, everyone.
See ya.
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 AESAW 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.
About this episode
Josh Fowler, a Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram shop foreman in Adams, NY, breaks down why the technician shortage is so hard to fix—especially in a small radius with few certified techs. He describes rebuilding a dealership after major staff turnover, the limits of flat-rate pay, and the bottleneck created by Chrysler’s lengthy warranty certification phases (often requiring 90+ days before warranty work). The conversation focuses on practical hiring and training ideas: guarantees, paid training time, signing/referral bonuses, mentorship, electrical-diag development, and building local pipelines via BOCES/co-op programs and tech networking.
Original notes
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In this episode, Jeff is joined by Josh Fowler, a shop foreman at a Chrysler dealership in Adams, New York. Josh talks about how tough it’s been to find good technicians, especially with changing job trends and not much local talent to pull from. He and Jeff swap ideas on how to bring people in and keep them around, like offering signing bonuses and bumping pay as techs level up their training.
Timestamps:
00:00 Fuccillo's influence and radio presence
08:58 Discussing repair workflow challenges
12:30 Using signing bonuses to attract talent
19:20 Exploring high school co-op opportunities
23:42 Employee training and probation process
30:55 Addressing incentive structures for young workers
32:53 Developing mentorship and skill-building plans
41:36 Building confidence through experience
45:55 Developing practical mechanical expertise
52:37 Addressing car maintenance and trade-in options
54:57 Challenges driving service advisors to leave
01:00:16 Technician networking and collaboration
01:05:01 Encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing
01:10:26 Evaluating roles in auto repair
01:20:02 Selecting appropriate diagnostic tools
01:21:23 Addressing wages in the auto industry
01:26:20 Addressing technician problem-solving skills
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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
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