DO NOT Discount Your Labor JUST to Get the Job! | Joel McLearn

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One of the diags that they sent us was a Camry with no high beams. Panels flipped up,

they had things, they had poked wires, they had done all this stuff. And what was the fix for it?

Two headlight bulbs because they run them in series. So one went out, the other one went

out. Yes, you're going to pay me for the time because all I did was I went on,

looked on a wiring diagram went, oh, it goes in there, it goes out there, and it goes to ground.

Okay, I bet you one of these bulbs is bad. Oh, there's the bad ball. Let's change him both.

We're done. That is worth something.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to another exciting episode of the Jada Mechanic podcast.

You guys are going to get so sick of me after a while because like,

I have another Canadian guest with me today. That's two in a row. And you know,

Uncle Donald, he wants us to be the 51st state. And I'm not really down with that because it's,

I don't think he really, he wants to pay the nut for what the company's country's worth.

But you know, it's pretty cool. We're not here to discuss politics. So that's not what it's

about. But I do want to try and always bring up the average and keep it like one for one,

one Canadian, one American, one Canadian, one American. If I can get a guy from Australia,

bring him in too, right? That's just evens it up. So I got a friend with me tonight

named Joel McCorn from Nova Scotia, which if you're not used to the Canadian accents,

you're going to be like, well, Jeff's got a Canadian accent for sure. But when you start

to hear people come like my, my guest last night, Mr. Matthew Patton, and he's a

French, French Canadian, and you're going to listen to Joel and you're going to be like,

that's a cool accent too. And that's just the beauty of Canada is we all are very culturally

diverse. So Joel, brother, how are you tonight, man? Not so bad. How are you? No, I'm very good,

brother. Very good. Like I said, I was tired. It's been, since we, since we rolled out this,

the CMApex trip, I gave away the phone blows up. So then that's how I got where my time

screwed up where I'm sitting there making you wait for another hour. And we're not here

15 minutes late. So thank you for, you know, reaching through the phone and smacking me up

so I might go. But it's all good. Yeah. How's, how's things in Nova Scotia?

Not too bad. Yeah. It's been, we're, we're getting into some fall weather. So it's a little

cooler right now. Yeah. But I know things are going good. We had frost yesterday morning.

I was up launching the fish before dark or before sunrise. And we pulled the plug at

like 10 o'clock because like my fingers got a little wet and then they stayed cold in them.

And I was like, you know what, the fish are biting okay, but I'm not getting like giants.

So let's head her back to the house and get some hot coffee. So that's kind of what we did.

You know, and I, I can't complain. We're almost in October and I'm still fishing.

But normally like, you know, I, I've been out first week of December before we had a couple

years ago, we had a really mild, mild fall and we had one warm day in December where the ice hadn't

even, ice wasn't in yet. And we went out, caught a couple, you know, took some pictures just to

show that we're out in December. My birthday is in November. And normally before I would

go to sea, but I'd always fish on my birthday. I remember fourth, if it was a weekend, I

was always fishing and caught some really good ones. Like you don't get the numbers,

but the big fish move up shallow and then it's like, they just gorge and right,

like if you can find them, they're, they're giants. So yeah. What do you do when you're not fixing cars?

Actually, I really enjoy fishing. I've not had a lot of time to do it this year just because we,

we've recently moved our shop and house and all that stuff, but I'm more of an evening

fisher. Like I, I like going out in the mid afternoon and finding my spot and fishing

into the evening. I got a few friends that do it. And yeah, we like to go that way.

Now what's your, you're in Colbrook. Is that what it's called?

Yeah. Yeah. Colbrook, Nova Scotia. So is that, I had a friend that's from Nova Scotia,

he's, he's into the fly fishing kind of doing the rivers for trout and that kind of stuff.

Are you kind of the same kind of ideal or? I like lake fishing. I'm, I'm into the small

mouth bass and perch and whatnot. We do a buddy of mine and his family, they have a camper

down in the Chester basin. So we will go out and do mackerel fishing and some, but I, I do like,

like regular bait fishing. Yeah. Smallmouth. That's what we were chasing yesterday. So like,

mostly that lake that we were on is, is known for bigger size smallmouth. We,

actually the biggest fish today was a largemouth, which was pretty unusual for that lake, but

it holds some absolute giants for smallmouth considering it's an inland lake. Like I'm

two blocks away from Lake Ontario, which has probably the largest smallmouth on the continent

in it. We just haven't caught them yet except for maybe a couple of lakes in Tennessee that have

got them where they have a longer growing season. But right now, like we have guys pulling eight,

eight pounds smallmouth at Lake Ontario every summer, which is like, think about that. That

fish. We're lucky if they're, you know, we're 12 to 18 inches kind of thing, not, you know,

my PB goes just under six. And I've worked with a guy that's had one almost eight,

you know, so at Lake Ontario and St. Mark's River and all that jazz. So I mean, we're

a lot, we're so fortunate. We're blessed. Tell me a little bit about, you said you just

kind of moved the shop and all that jazz. Yeah. So back in 2022, I started my shop. I actually

rented a bay and which turned into a couple of bays out of a gas station that I used to

work at when I was in school for automotive. Right on. Things kind of went south with

that whole deal. So we ended up sort of being forced to buy a space. So we just,

we bought it to the end of May and we moved the shop one month and moved the house next and

we're just rolling along from there itself. Very cool. So you're a relatively new business owner

then. Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations, man. That's pretty, that's a big achievement. How old are

you? I'm 30. That's, listen, you're doing well for yourself. You're kicking off at 30. I mean,

I know people started younger, but I mean, like it's, you kind of, the earlier you get in,

the better, I think. You know what I mean? Like I'm to the point now where I probably should have

done it 10 years ago. If I was going to do it, I'll be 50 next month. So I'm not going to try

and start it at 50. That would have been crazy. But I should have done it at 40.

And I just kept procrastinating and whatnot. But congratulations, man. That's pretty cool.

Actually, I had a buddy of mine that I worked with. He started his own shop and I think

he started at 50. So that was a couple of years before I started mine. So he's been at it a few

years, but we'll see how he makes out. He's doing well, is he? Yeah. I think it's one of those

situations where he's trying to wear all the hats, right? So he needs to decide whether he's going

to do the service writing or booking side, or if he's going to keep wrenching. I've got,

my wife does all my service writing. And obviously, I do the big estimates or whatever,

but she does all that so she can keep me busy working in the bays, right?

Very cool. Have you got a technician working with you?

Not yet. Because of the move and because how things went, we're a little bit slower

right now than what I would like to be. And I don't believe in hiring somebody

just for the busy tire season and then kind of boot them off afterwards. So

if I'm going to hire somebody, that's going to be it, right?

Yeah, that's not, I've said it before on here, right? Like there's like four dealerships around

here that you can count on right about now. They're going to throw up an ad to hire a technician

or even an apprentice. And then come January, you know, the end of January, they're gone.

They're firing them. They're laying them off or something because, you know,

the Canadian thing, right? It's a tire season rush, right? It's a twice annual tire season.

And it just fills the shop. Some of it's not very great ARO, like, you know, making a ton of money.

You know, every car has a chance to look at stuff, but you know how it is, right? If you've

got these customers that are just buying a tire swap, you know, you're not really,

you might get an oil change with that and might get a break job with it, it's good.

But you got to be able to convert that work you find otherwise.

Like there's lots of people that can do tires faster, better, cheaper, you know, than trying to.

I don't, I talked to my friends down in the States and they're like, oh, it's a great,

it's a great supplement for, for our shop. And I'm like, yeah. And up in Canada, some of them,

it's the only reason they started a shop was to get that twice a year rush. And the rest of

the time, if they're not converting on that, you know, you're standing there going, well,

what do we do? It's January, right? Like all the tires are done. And now we're standing,

I can remember Joel, like February, March up here, like I'd be shoveling the parking lot with

his shovel, because we had no cars coming in. We had done everything up to Christmas. And then,

you know, people go nuts financially at Christmas time and they had no money.

So, yeah. So how did you get into the decision that you wanted to be your own shop owner,

be your own business? Well, that's, I mean, I've always kind of,

I've always sort of hustled in different things. I started the automotive thing a little bit later,

like I didn't grow up in a grad or anything like that. Okay. So when I finally decided that I wanted

to take automotive, I did the, you know, I went through, through the program and started the

apprenticeship with one shop. Most automotive conferences, unfortunately, only focus on one

side of the shop. But tectonic 2026 presented by Tec metric is different. It's built for the

whole shop owners, advisors and technicians all have sessions designed for the work they actually do

day to day. It's three days in Houston packed with workshops, panels, and over 1000 people from the

industry are set to attend. You don't need to be a tech metric customer to qualify. Hit up the

link in the show notes below and check out tectonic 2026 register now while you still can to get

the early bird pricing. Yeah. And the shop that I was at, like, he was, he was an awesome

tech diagnostic wise. He was really sharp with electrical and all that. And it was really cool

being part of his team. But what I, what I found was is he also had his wife running out front,

right? And there was a lot of difficulties between them. Like you, you, you'd watch them and it was

nobody wanted to be in charge when, when things went tough, right? And there was a lot

of all you do it, no, you do it kind of stuff. And I just got to a point where my attitude got

worse and worse, because as you know, all of us technicians, we all have a problem at one time.

So at sort of at the end of where I worked, I sort of decided like,

do I want to go through that? Oh, everything's good. And then it becomes not good

situation. Or do I just want to try going on my own? And that opportunity was always there, because

in the background, I was working at this gas station anyway, right? And they were always kind

of in my ear, like, if you ever decide you want to go on your own, let us know. And we'll,

you know, we can sort of help you out or whatever. And that's kind of how it happened,

right? Now, as someone then that watched the husband and wife dynamic in the shop,

and you have your wife with you, do you see kind of like, was it a good lesson, a good kind of

example of what not to do? Not to throw shade at your former employers, but you know,

Churchill must be like, well, I can remember watching this conversation happen. And you know,

this is how bad it got. Let's not go there. Is it because I mean, I worked in a shop with

husband and wife. And it was tough some days, it really was, you know, well,

sort of what I it's funny, you should say that because there were days where I'd go home

and I'd look at my wife and be like, if I ever run a shop, you're not working with me.

Because I don't want this what I'm seeing to happen between you and I, but in that way,

of course, me chewing on my own words now, because she's the best thing that happened to

my shop, because I got, you know, it made allowed me to be busier. But we do, you know,

we get along really well, we work together extremely well, we don't have a lot of issues

that way. And I think it's because of certain things that I witnessed that I just said, you

know what, I don't want it to be that way. And, and you know, she, she was a nurse before she worked

for me. So she can always go find a job. Same as the shop I was at, she was, she was a career

nurse. And you know, when COVID hit, she kind of was like, I wanted this, like this,

this is not what I signed up for in terms of the way the, I guess I call it the industry,

but you know, went for her, she wanted out. And she had always been like, you know, because

you know how nurses or schedules can be varied, right? Like you can work weekends, you can work

nights. She had always even before COVID had always be someday she would be in the shop and

someday she'd be out of the shop and someday she'd be, you know, head service writer position

and the other day she wouldn't be there. So she's, she was great. But I did see lots of

things where nursing, you have to be very empathetic, right? You have to be, you know,

very she's so and she's a Newfoundland. She's a Newfoundland girl. So you know what they're like,

right? Like they're, they're so into people, you know what I mean? Like they're amazing,

caring people. Sometimes I felt like that was getting in the way of like really making

the number of what it should be. You know what I mean? A lot of sympathy to the, to the customer.

Oh, discounting on emotion and all that. Yes. She, this customer's husband is, you know,

the mother and father are going through this and that and the other thing. And that's me,

the jaded old dick in the back. I'm like, I don't care if they live in the car. You know,

this is what it costs to fix it. Like that's reality. If they don't want to do it, no problem.

We'll push it back outside. Let's get to the next one. Right. And because we do that

where we, we emotionally discount and everybody thinks, oh, it's just one, this one job. It's just

I just emotionally discounted this one and maybe another one that week, you know, but I only did two.

You had all that up at the end of the month and it's like, wow, there's some money lost there.

And then you add it up at the end of the year and you're like, shoot, there's a lot of money

gone. That's our training budget gone. That's our, our new scan tool budget. That's our new

AC machine. So I always was like, you know, I always said, like, if I, if I was going to hire

somebody to be an advisor for me, they, I would want somebody like cold and callous just like myself.

I talked to other people who are like, it doesn't work. Trust me. And I'm like,

so it's fine. That happy middle ground, I guess, you know, what works for us is our,

and I mean, it always worked this way, but it works better now. The way our shop is designed,

our house and our office are out front and the shop is out back. So now like I tell Jayden what

we need, she puts it together and she can either sell it or whatever. She doesn't know or care what

those things cost. So she just, whatever it comes up, that's it, right? And if I say, I need

1.6, I need 1.6. She's not going, oh, wow, 1.4, whatever, you know? And because I'm not out there

to emotionally care about those things, we sell it more legitimately instead of me being the one

that makes those discounts because before we had one bay at that gas station and the office was

right in the bay. So every time she'd be like, well, how do you feel about this? I would say,

well, no, we can shave it here or whatever. I don't do that anymore because I'm not there

doing it. So it kind of works out that way. The other thing I would see a lot and I know

I talk to a lot of shop owners and they see this happen sometimes too is when the wife is at it,

the counter is that the customers, and I don't think they mean it to be disrespectful

and whether the customers come in and be like, I want to speak to Joel. Even though like your

wife is the one that they're supposed to be speaking to, I want to speak to Joel.

And then you come out and it's like, or and then your wife's kind of getting disrespected

by the fact that they're not respecting her position, right? And then sometimes you can be,

you hear their plight and you're trying to make the conversation over. So they're like, well, you

know, blah, blah, blah. So it's like, you end up discounting it or you end up putting on the

different part that maybe you wouldn't have chosen or that kind of stuff, right? You say,

yeah, I can wait three more months to do. I saw that happen a lot because

he didn't really empower his wife to like, this is it. This is the concrete thing.

Always like if they call, he didn't want to see her deal with a difficult customer, so he would come

and get involved. And I'm like, I'm most like, that's their job to deal with difficult customers.

Like you come in and you take over and then the next time the customer is going to come in,

they're always going to sidestep her and want to talk to you. That's not how it's supposed

to be done. And I sit there and people are like, well, what the hell? You're just a technician

because you watch little things like that and it has the effect at the end of the month of

customer, this difficult customer is allowed to be a difficult customer because we didn't empower

our people to know. If they don't want to do the job this way, cool. Shake their hand,

let open the door for them. I was actually at a course not that long ago. I'm not going to say

who it was because it was a break course. And I was sitting beside another tech slash friend of

mine and we were sitting there and all of a sudden the trainer said, if your customer will not

pay for this set of breaks that they need for whatever the application, if it was for like

a heavier duty thing and they needed to buy this level of breaks and they weren't going to do it,

the trainer said, you should discount your labor so that they will buy the right

tier of part. And I looked over at Tom and I was like, did I hear that? And he was like,

you absolutely did. And I'm like, no, if that customer isn't going to put on what they need to

put on either A, we're not explaining the benefits or B, you need to send them down the road.

You're not telling about the consequences. I would see this a lot in some of the shops where

these guys have got work vans or pick trucks and they're pulling the trailer all day long.

Right? And they want the cheapest breaks put on. And you can put the cheap breaks on it

and Napa's still going to warranty them for one year. But you know that it's supposed to get

that fleet line because of how that thing's been using so that they're not burning the

breaks off at every six months. I've always been of that belief that if I can't sell

the customer the absolute best part that it needs and somebody in that situation is from

the parts manufacturer told me, well, you should put the lower end on just to get the

job or discount your labor just to get the job. He's telling me that because he just doesn't want

to warranty the shittier shit. You know what I mean? The second grade apart. He doesn't want to

warranty it. I want my labor and my parts margin. That's what I want. That's what I'm in business

to sell parts at the margin that needs to go and the labor. We're not here to sell.

We're not even really in the business of selling parts for some foremost. We're in the

business of fixing cards, which is sometimes you have to put a part on. Sometimes you just

got to go in and find the broken wire. This nonsense of, oh, you should discount your labor

to put on the best part. I'm sorry. Whoever was teaching you that course, I agree. I just sat

right up and said, F that idea. That's not what I'm here for. That comes down to a strong advisor

being able to say, sure, I can put the cheap stuff on, but I'm not warranting it.

Exactly. My thing is, if I can't warranty it, I'm not putting my name on it.

For a fact, there's shops down the road. I've told people, if you're not willing to do that,

I'm not the shop for you. No, we're not the most expensive shop in the area, but we're all so far

from the cheapest. We know what we need to survive, and I know what I'm willing to do

to look after my client. I've never had any issue with Jaden selling that or anything like

that, but yeah, I definitely would not be discounting my labor to put a part on the needs, right?

It makes no sense because so much in this industry right now, especially on that example of in the

classroom on what they're being taught to you guys, you're already being taught most of the time

that you're supposed to be doing a free break inspection anyway, you know what I mean? Or a

very discounted in the discounted amount of time, right? Yeah, but you know how it goes sometimes.

We don't even get the break inspection if, say, we rack the car for an oil change and we notice,

right? Then we just, we pen the estimate without actually doing an estimate, you know what I mean? Like

in terms of an order inspection or any geography, that's wrong in the first place too because like

the way my former employer would do it is if I road tested it and the brakes didn't feel right,

before I ever even anybody tabled what it probably needed, didn't matter if I could look

through the wheel and see that there was no pad left, an inspection was sold, right? So that

we have the conversation now opens up to the customer like, hey, how's your brakes feel? Oh,

they've been feeling kind of crappy, come to think of it now that you mentioned it, right?

Okay, well, do you want us to do an inspection? This is what an inspection entails. This is what

it costs. You know, if you do the brakes with us today, we take some of the labor off the

inspection because the car is a part, you know, I'm all right with that. But we always have to,

if like, if they don't have a budget but they want to know, I got a charger for the

inspection today. No questions about it. I have to charge you for the inspection today

because you can leave, you got time to shop around, get a different price, go somewhere else.

The car can blow up tomorrow and then you're not going to get a break job. Like, I need to cover

my text time for presenting to you your brake problem, right? It's just common sense. So when

they do these classes and it's like, oh yeah, just shave your labor so that you can put on

this part. That didn't fly with me, you know, and, you know, I like doing the brake

inspection and billing for it because I forget who it was that you had on. They said, if I bill

you for that inspection time, then our financial obligations are done. You've paid for your time,

you can go somewhere else. You don't owe me anything. I don't owe you anything. We're done.

And I like the way that that, and I've said that to people since then because that's the

best way to put it, to be perfectly honest. Yeah. And see, everybody thinks that I can't

charge them for an inspection because like they're going to go somewhere else and get their

break job done. But we have all seen somebody come in with where they had it checked out somewhere

else and they paid for an inspection or maybe it was a free inspection, but whatever free doesn't

mean that they got anything then at all, right? Like a free inspection for me, I'm going to stare

through the wheels. That's it. If I can't see, I'm going to test drive it instead of

it feels like this. So if you mean to tell me that if they go somewhere else and they've already

paid for an inspection, I can't sell them an inspection, I can guarantee you I've proven that

wrong so many times in the industry, like they will pay great customers will pay multiple times

to get a second opinion. And they should. And as they should for sure. But we have to train

them that they're going to pay for that inspection every time. Exactly. I'm not of the

the coaching ideas that, you know, some they popped up in the conversation the other day that they do

some shops do a 15 minute no tool inspection on disability on the car. So that can be like,

if you come in and say, my breaks feel funny, they might spend 15 minutes going on a road test

with a customer, right? Or by themselves, they might do a lift the hood and look at the fluid

level of the brake master cylinder, you know, they might get in it and do, oh, there's a

warning light on that's their 15 minutes, no tool, right? If they're not hooking a scan tool up,

they're not racking the car, they're not taking a wheel off, that's their 15 minutes. Right. I can

see that. But to me, it's always been a slippery slope then because if somebody spends 15 minutes,

somebody else will be, I'm going to give my customer even more value and I'm going to do

30 minutes. Right. Before you know it, we're back to a free brake inspection. Yeah, that

takes an hour. And everybody's like, it doesn't take an hour to a brake inspection.

To do it properly, it does. Amen, right? Because what's the proper way to do it? Well,

the proper way to do it is if it's got a warning light on, now I'm scanning it, right?

If it's got electronic parking brake, now I'm checking the operation of that.

If it's got drum brakes, and we live in Canada, how often do they come off real super easy?

Not worth a shit. Never. If it's got old school parking brakes, right? Do you test

them on every car that you use that you inspect? You're supposed to. That's part of the brake

inspection. But you and I know how that can go. If it hasn't used, nobody's applied the

parker brake in five years and all of a sudden you pull the park brake on, guess what happened?

You've made yourself some work. Especially if it's a Dodge Grand Caravan.

Come on. You know how to quote them. They need calipers pads and rotors every time.

You get the brake inspection for free on that one because it needs everything. There's

nothing to inspect. Junk. Thank God. God, they finally put electronic in the back of a caravan

because the manual system locked up constantly. Constantly. Didn't matter.

Or leak like a sieve. Oh, the aftermarket calipers, all of them leak. Every freaking one of them.

Doesn't matter. You might, you'll buy four and you'll probably get two that don't leak

and you're lucky will be it'll be two of the same fucking side, right? Like

you know, and they blame it. Oh, it's the curbside again. Like, yeah, makes me laugh. I'm trying

always to defend Chrysler because I love them, but the, you know, and I love, I love caravans.

I made so much money on those stupid is great, but, you know, that, that rear brakes isn't

just socks. And that's, you know, what's always so funny is cause like

people are like, oh my God, like you're talking about drum brakes. Yeah. I had done thousands of

them. Like, I mean, it's not a, it's not an uncommon thing for me still up here to do them.

You know, same with the electronic parking brake. Like I like that and everybody's like,

and at first I didn't, I don't like, and I've had conversation about this. I don't like the

fact that some scan tools are locking it out. You know, that, that, that's greasy. That yeah,

that's kind of crappy. But I do like the fact that there's no cables to seize. You know,

I do like the fact that there's no pivots like all that jazz. I don't, I like the fact that I don't

have to pull the axles out, you know, to put the shoes on some of them. I hated that man

like that, that just blew. You know, that's terrible. Yeah. And you're not going to tell

me the name of those people that was coaching this for you. That's okay.

I would get in trouble if I did.

Let's talk about it after. It's all right. What's some of the stuff that you see?

Like, is there anything that you see in your area that you could say is like

specific to your area in terms of types of failures on a car?

That's a good question. Not, I don't know. I mean,

like the guys in PEI have heard they get that red dirt in a lot of the stuff.

Oh, yeah. You know, yeah. Yeah, I don't really think around here, it's just regular old

rust, you know what I mean? Like, like just this, we're in the salt belt and, you know,

we're surrounded by, by the ocean. So you've got, you know, 20 minutes up the way,

you go up over the mountain and you're at the ocean. So if you're working on any of those vehicles,

they're rotten or dirt in there, you know, your dirt roads to get there. And, you know,

other than that, not really. It's, I do find though, like for whatever reason, things come in

waves at the shop. So like, you might have a bunch of toans for no crank, and you're doing

a bunch of starters that week, and then you don't see them for a while. And then

you'll do a week of, of Ford F 150 leaf springs, like it's just weird how things like that, and I

don't understand, I know it's completely coincidental, but, but that's what happens.

They're not fleets with the same way to truck and you can draw the same rows. Yeah, no, I get it.

What? Yeah. Oh, geez, what was I going to ask you?

You slipped my mind there. Oh, undercoating. Yeah. Do you do it?

I used to. Yeah. I used to do it on my day off. So, so we do Monday to Thursday,

7am to 5.30pm, right? Yeah. I was doing it on Fridays just to sort of supplement things.

And I got so busy at the other shop that I decided, no, I'm not doing it anymore. But,

that was kind of funny too, because the shop beside us did it. And they had a huge problem with the fact

that I came in there doing it too, even though we were using different products, but he was,

he was so insecure with things. I was just like, whatever dude, right? Yeah. But I did it for a while

and then I just thought, nah, it's not, it's, it's, it's messy. It takes me way too long

because I'm way too particular. Me too. And I just sort of phased it. But now,

right now at the new shop, I'm in a bit of a slow spot right now. And I don't know if it's because

of moving, like I said, or anything like that. Now I kind of wish I had kept doing it.

You find that it actually helps. Yeah, I do. I, my, my first car was a 2005 Honda Civic that,

that had never been undercoated before I got it. And, and, but it drove from, from the valley

to, to Halifax every day. So it never rusted. It just was always getting washed off on the highway.

Yeah. But when I bought it, I just hung it in undercoating every year. And,

and I don't know where that car is now, but I drove it for eight or nine years and the thing was

fantastic. Yeah. And I, I, I attributed to undercoating. I'm a, I'm a 100% of believer,

like I have a, I have a 2015 Wrangler, which is only 10 years old. Right. But it is like,

way less rust underneath than a lot of the 2017's and 18's and 19's that I put on,

because it was undercoated right from day one. I didn't own it from brand new,

but the previous owner had done it once and then I do it every, every year, every fall I do it.

And what a big difference it makes, considering like for me, again, going back to the fishing

thing, I'm backing it into the water every week. Like I'm putting the muffler in the back

axle right in the water, you know, and yet you go back there, it's still

not all that surface rust is all up in it. And to me, it's already 10 years old. If I get five

more years, because I drove like, I drove a 96 Cherokee, I drove a 2000 Cavalier, and they're

all rotten. Like they're, by the time they were eight, 10 years old up in my area, and they

hadn't been treated. They were junk garbage, you know, no floor, I'd put floor pans in

a couple of Cherokees I've owned, you know, rocker panels, like I've done all that.

The Cavalier, my brother's ranger, we just got rid of, there was no floors left in there,

he never undercoded it. So I mean, every single ranger ever, driver's side floor.

Yeah, because if we're good little trucks, otherwise. Fantastic. And he comes to me and he's

like, we need some tires, we need some brakes. And I pulled up the first format, I'm like,

now you need a new truck, dude. There's no floor here, man. Like I fixed the exhaust

last year and told you, this thing's rotten, like you signed to get rid of it.

And yeah, but he's not a guy that's very good about taking care of his vehicles. And it had

a four liter in it, like that engine that everybody hated from Ford, that six with all the

timing chains and the tight cassettes on the back. And like it was still going really good.

It had both, both cats had gone hollow on it. And, you know, like 240,000 kilometers on the

original plugs and original wires, it didn't run great, but it ran, you know, it was okay,

you didn't want to put any money in it, but lots of brakes, lots of control arms,

leaf spring shackles, like, you know, all them good paying jobs, you know.

But they do rot really bad. So I, again, at the shop I was at, we ran, we were a rust check

facility and we did it. And I saw enough of the cars that had been done 10 years before

coming in still. And it was like they were still well worth putting money into, you know.

And I tell people like my mom's own car, same thing. You can do it every year if you want,

but the main thing is to get it done. I want to say probably the first three,

four years that the cars, when you have it, and then if you miss a year after, it isn't

the end of the world, man. You've got a good layer on there, you know, like it helps. But if you

decide it's five years old, I'm going to start spraying it now. Right.

You might just flush that money down the toilet if you live up here because it's already,

the rust is already in it. It just hasn't gone.

I'm so glad you said that because we just were, we're going to lease a brand new CRV hybrid.

And I told my wife, I said, as soon as it gets here, I'm taking that down the road to the guys

at corrosion free and I'm getting them to do it. And she's like, well, if it's a lease, why,

why are you doing it? And I said, well, what if we want to keep this? I don't want it to

be too late in 40 months when it has to go back. You know, I want it done because,

and even if I want to do it once, it's got that one layer on it. That's right.

We're good. If I decide I want to keep it, it was worth spending a couple hundred bucks to get it done.

So you're not going to, when they offer you that rust module, that little blinky light there,

are they not great? I just put, I just put an alternator in my mom's car this weekend.

And she got the rust module way back in 2012. And I disconnected the negative battery terminal

and there goes the wire corroded off for the rust module. So how well did that work?

And what makes me laugh is I see the guys and they like, they just high strap them to the

wiper cowl or something. So it's on plastic. Yep, that's doing it. That's not, you know,

the guy that sells it and says, oh, yes, it does. It still puts the charge through the car.

And I'm like, show me how it puts the charge through the car. Well, you got the

little stick on over here and the little stick on over there. And I'm like, yeah.

That works on boats, pal. That's right. And again, the boat thing's got what we call a

sacrificial anode, right? You being out there, you know, a little bit of boats, they take a

block of magnesium and stick it on the boat and stick a charge to it because magnesium

corrodes really fast. What I'm thinking is that we just keep changing that block of magnesium

out and the boat doesn't rust near as much. Any outboard engine or any electric

trolling motor made for saltwater, news flash kids all has that in it, that sacrificial pieces

that are supposed to, and you change them out. It's the coolest thing in the world.

When you stick it on a car, you don't buff the paint off and you just stick it on and hook

it up to your battery. Congratulations. You just installed a battery drain module. You didn't

install a rust erosion module, but I digress. Sales will make a thousand bucks when they

put them in. So it's a good thing, I guess. Where I work, we stopped putting them in because it was

just like, you know, and anybody that comes in and I've had, because you forgot to hook it up.

You know, you change the battery, forgot to hook it up. It's like, okay, wink, wink.

You're going to notice the difference, aren't you? Yeah. If it's not hooked up,

my car is going to rust. Your car is going to rust anyway, Mrs. Jones. It's just the

way it is. Do you know of, so what are the, what's the dealers like around you?

They're not too bad. I mean, I, they're actually just off the road from our shop. And I kind of

like them being there because like all the parts guys at Ford, they know who we are, right? We

spend a lot of time going there. I don't mind, I don't mind them being around. I don't consider

them competition or anything like that. It's, it just is what it is, right?

Because I know my friend, he worked for the Oregon group, Oregon or Oregon. I know how you say,

which I guess is the largest group in Nova Scotia now, right? And he's been,

God, he left Kingston and went back to Nova Scotia. She was an Nova Scotia boy like

yourself and he came to Kingston and he went back to Nova Scotia and he's back to

Oregon. He's with Nissan with them and seems to be doing well. But he says it's a funny thing.

Once they get to be where they're the largest player, they've got a real lock on wages and,

you know, whole thing, right? Which is, you know, I can kind of see that. That seems to be the

future drill of where this industry is headed on the dealer level side is you're seeing these

groups like our Chevy dealer in town that had been an independent Chevy dealer since like the

40s just got bought by a group. I was did by the steel group. Same thing. It's steel Valley,

Chev instead of Cornwall is Chev. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen steel, a lot of cars. It's funny

when I lived in Ottawa, I'd see the occasional steel Chrysler like steel like that dealership

group sticker. I'd seen them in the back of the car. So, you know, they get around for sure.

It's a big group, but. Yeah. Oregon's is more in the city, but yeah, but we obviously

did you see them too? Yeah. Yeah. I know when I would see a couple of them too, especially like

my buddy always pointed out when there was a Nissan and, you know, that obviously had gone

through an auction, probably a Quebec auction and winds up in my area because that's where a

lot of them go. But you know, a lot of the stuff from the East isn't seeming to make it all the

way to Toronto, but it's definitely making it to Quebec. And then we buy a lot of stuff

out of Quebec, you know, some of it ain't so good, but it's it's cars, you know,

they need inventories. That's right. Yeah. What? How do you find their parts for you?

They keeping good inventory or? To a degree, I've found, I mean, and if they can't get it,

it's a couple of days. Like it's not, it's not crazy. I did run into

transmission lines on a 2006 Explorer. You can't get them anywhere. Yeah.

They are completely discontinued, can't get them into the States like the four dealership

couldn't help me. So I don't really know what we're going to do with that one,

but that's the only time I've run into not physically being able to get anything. And

that's obviously that's not just the local dealer. That's everywhere. But no,

they're pretty good about keeping, keeping stuff on hand. Yeah. They might have to get

creative with some kind of fabrication for that thing. Yeah. Yeah. The flaring tool or

something, some line and yeah, I've tried to do stuff like that too though. And I find that like

it unless you can get a crimp, like an actual like a hydraulic line fitted crimp on, but you can't,

doesn't matter how many hose clamps and how you flared it, it's still leaking. There's too much

pressure there, right? So much expansion. What's the bulk of what comes into your shop then?

Like you guys, we were going back, are you, do you really go after the tire sale thing or

do you just kind of use it? Well, for me, it's, it's, it's a little different for me because

when, when I started my shop at the gas station, the deal was is they still did all the tire work

and I did everything else. So when everybody was, was two weeks behind on tires and stuff,

I was two weeks behind on brakes and ball joints and whatever, right? So that was good

for me. I never minded that part of it. The only problem was is you love not doing tires until

the people that are doing your tires are continuously screwing them up. So now that we've moved here,

obviously we've got the tire changer to balance or stuff like that. I've got a

shipping container out there to store them if people want to do that. But I'm still not

going to push it. Like I've got, I've got three bays, two hoists. When I do have somebody

with me, I'm not doubling up on tires. There is way more money in other things. It's just not

going to happen. Like I'm going to do one bay of tires and one bay of everything else and just

kind of leave it that way. Amen. I, nothing drove me crazier than seeing like the same car come in

and it only gone maybe like 6,000 kilometers since the spring. There we are in the fall,

we're breaking the tires back down because nobody ever sold them, you know, a winter package,

rim and tire. So we're busting down the rowy rims again, scratching the hell out of them,

putting on, you know, some eight-year-old dry rotted, you know, whatever fucking winter tires,

no TPMS. It drove me nuts. I hated the business period for it because I was just like,

this was obviously never done right from the beginning and they're like, what are you

talking about? I'm like, well, we're doing it all day long for an hour. You know what I

mean? And we're, we're, we're filling up the shop, we're getting backed up because it's

taking longer. The thing that used to drive me nuts is we go pull the tires out of storage

and you look at them and you're like, these aren't worth putting back on.

Exactly. Well, then it becomes a whole deal because the customer's there, right? You've

got them out of storage, you look at them and you're like, these aren't worth putting on,

Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith goes, what do we do? Well, I can phone, you know, a tire vendor

and I'll get you some tomorrow because we're not a dedicated tire store. We don't keep every

possible frigging thing in stock. And then Mrs. Smith's like, shit, I already booked the

day off. What do you do? And that's the part that I hated. So then we're trying to like,

okay, like before we put them away, let's document the, the, the tread depth, cool.

But we would document it Joel and still say, Hey, you know, like we took them off,

they're at four next year, we're probably going to suggest and they go, okay,

well, we'll see. I might not even be driving it next year. And then they drive in in November

and they're like, Hey, I'm here for my snows. And like, yeah, your snows that we told you about

that we stored and like their trash, like what do you want to do? Oh, this will be the last

year for it. Like, and they just make it through the winter and somebody goes,

you know, let me get through the winter. What I wanted always to think is like,

you know how I am, I'm like, I want to sell them a tire package, rim, tire, TPMS,

right? I want to, when they book in, I want to rebalance them, put them on the car,

in and out, sell it for one hour, retrain the TPMS, gone. Not this 1.2 to break them down,

clean the rim, rebalance them. Oh, shit, that rim's bent. It won't rebalance,

put it on hold, call her up, say, Hey, do you need a hot hole? Like, you know, we need a rim

now, but I didn't want any of that BS, you know, I wanted and the detractors, Joe, for the tire thing,

for the rim thing is like, Oh, what are you putting on universals? And then you get into the lug nut

thing and the hub centering and all that. Like, it's not a perfect world. But I mean,

I had a friend that went to the work at the, the BMW dealer and I'm like, Oh,

what's like snow tires doing there? He's like, it's the easiest thing in the world.

Like, Oh, what do you mean? He's like, they literally just call the parts department

and the parts department orders right from BMW for rims, for tires, for TPMS sensors,

all reprogrammed and put it on the car. And I'm like, that must cost like $6,000. They're like, yeah.

Yeah, that's BMW. But I mean, it's not, I mean, it would be a caravan. Like,

I mean, I can build a caravan like package for $500 all day. I'm not making a ton on it,

but I can do it. It's so like, oh, let's, let's sell them four premium tires for $600. Okay,

let's sell them. Well, let's sell them rims and oh, they're not going to have any money left.

I'd rather put a cheaper tire on with a rim and a sensor

than put on a Michelin tire and strip it off every year, strip it back on in the spring,

on and off, tear the hell out of it, fuck up the sensors, pardon my language, rebalance the rim,

you know, scrape them, stick on ways. You can tell where I'm going with this, right? I got PTSD from

this. Well, there's, there's just so much wasted time with it, right? And I even ran into that,

like I have, you talk about the humming and hind when they take them out of storage or whatever.

I told the guy he needed tires. It was okay for inspection, but they were going to need

to be done. Okay, well, I'll, I'll bring these ones over. Yeah, okay. Brought them over, put it up,

got them all apart. These tires are no better than the ones that you have on now. What do you

want me to do? Homs and haws for five minutes. Well, what would you do? Well, I'd buy tires,

here's a price. And then he goes, no, don't want to do it. Just put it back up. Great. So

there's an hour of my time, right? Plus a lost sale. Like I'm never hold on just tires.

There's so many other avenues to make money and be honest and, you know.

So in that scenario, do you charge the guy for your time for that?

That time I didn't. Yeah. But there, I did say to Jay afterwards, I was like,

there's got to be something we can do some kind of inspection fee or something for doing that.

Because it's not, it's not my fault that whoever did his tires before didn't, you know,

tell him, right? 100% documentation is key. And that's what would drive me nuts. I'd be at, you

know, one of the former shops and they're like customers calling up, how much to do a tire change

over 149, right? Off rims, rebalance, whatever. We're throwing numbers around, right? And they

go, okay, can I make an appointment? Sure. Same thing. You get them out of the car,

you look at them and you're like, these aren't, we can't put these on. Like I in good standings

can't put these on. They're, they're dry rotted. They're the belt that's got cord coming through.

Like that rims bent, the wheel bearing shot, the tire rods falling out. Oh my God, you're trying

to up some. Why don't we get sued when it goes down the road? We even bother like Costco and

Canadian tire are waiting for this customer and waiting for this type of customer. We're not.

Why are we doing all the old adage, the old thinking, everything that got published in

our Canadian trade magazines, you've read them, I read them. Well, that's how you,

that's how you get the upsells. That's how you get the, the fine, the brakes, the bulge.

Sure it is. Yes. I want to do it for my established customers though. I never got

into the idea that the tires was going to bring me a whole bunch of new customers.

And I know the guys that are going to listen to this are like, you're crazy. It brought

me 20% of my new customer base came from tires. I'd rather. Good. You can have them.

I'd rather get the 20% new customers from the fact that I have a reputation for being able to do

a good dyke. That's what I'd rather get that 20% for. I don't have to buy a $20,000 tire machine.

I don't have to buy a $20,000 balancer. Right? Yes, I got to buy a scan tool.

Yes, I got to get some subscriptions. Yes, I got to do some training. I can put all that

in a spot of real estate this big. I'm not tying up a whole bay. Exactly.

I find that the guys that make money doing it Joel are the guys, and again,

when you're paying your high level tech, let's throw a number out there $40 an hour

to do tires. I don't care. You can show me how you make it pay. It doesn't pay.

It's not worth it. You need a bunch of staff if you're going to do it at like the $20, $25 an hour.

That's how you make it work, make money. At the dealership when I was there, the last kick at it,

you'd be assigned it. It had tires in the R.O. and something else. All the quick loop kids

were the ones that did your tires for you. You got the time, but they did it because it was

like they'd be stacked up around the machine waiting and they would just stand there like

God bless them. They worked hard, man, those young kids, but they would do four,

put it on the balancer like it was an assembly line thing and they'd bring them over to your

bay. I didn't have to touch them other than to take them off the car. There was four people

on a car sometimes. Yeah. If you can't run that in your independent shop, you got to really think

man, it's different if you're just doing a bunch of swaps, but if you're doing like,

oh, Mrs. Smith is here, four new rubber, you're going to hit a snag,

I guarantee you ain't going to turn that car over in an hour. Not like, or you're going to turn it

over an hour, but you're going to bring it back in two hours later to do the brake job that you sold,

which is, it is what it is. It's not a perfect world, but man, that's the part that I hated.

I absolutely hated it because like I should have been doing my DVI, driving the car, going,

it needs brakes, selling the brakes. Then I bring it in one time. Then I do the tires

and the brakes and they're like, well, how do you know the brakes are bad if you didn't take

the wheels off? Again, it goes back to, you know, I racked it. I see that they're metal on metal,

or I hear that they're metal on metal, and I sell that inspection, you know.

And don't have frigging waiters so that you can shuffle that stuff or anything.

What's your policy on waiters, Joel? Well, I basically, I leave that to Jayden,

she hasn't figured out. She does like, if the day works out, she does like four

waiters a day, 7 a.m., 11.30, one, and like five. And that's all it is. And a lot of times,

it's not even that. We don't do, look, we don't advertise, we've got a waiting space, yes,

we've got a couple chairs, you can sit down and find. But I, as much as I can, we avoid doing

waiters. I've got two hoists and I'm one person. So if, like you said, you do your checks

and all that stuff, you shove that car on a hoist. Well, now I can move on to something

else and we can sell that work. And hopefully if the day works out, it's already on the hoist,

the wheels are off it, you can do what you've got to do. So that's kind of how we do it. I really

try to avoid waiters. And of course, people think like, oh, well, if you're not allowed

waiters just because you, you really weren't that long in the car and you take an advantage of them.

No, I'm not going to have somebody sitting there and tell them, by the way, you need

$700 worth of brakes and they sit there and they go, well, I have somewhere to go. So I

can't, I can't stay. Well, if you left the car all day, that's not a problem.

Yeah. And everybody thinks, well, the solution to that is you just need loaners or the solution

to that is you need a shuttle. You know, the dealer thing works for a shuttle because like,

here's the other thing that the dealers do with the shuttle. They pick up the parts in

the afternoon, right? So you may need a part picked up somewhere else. The shuttle bus

driver grabs it on the way back from dropping Mrs. Smith off of the office. I love

shout out to Mrs. Becky Witt. If you guys are not seeing her, she does her weekly thing.

Becky, the most groundbreaking thing Becky ever talked me through was how they got rid

of the waiting room during COVID and they never brought it back. Right. And she can show you

all the numbers, how it went up, not down, up because they got the people out of the building.

Like, and, and I joked with my former boss. He's like, we got some new chairs in the

waiting room and like, they should throw them right in the dumpster. You shouldn't

have your customers waiting around because I've been at the dealer where, you know,

the service advisor, they bill them for an hour, Diag and he goes out to them at 35 minutes and

he says, Hey, your car needs a new ignition coil. And they go, I just watched the guy through

the window. Like it didn't even take him 35 minutes. Like it took him 15 and then he went

over and, you know, he went to the bathroom or he went and he was over on the other side

of the shop talking to a guy drinking a coffee. Like, I don't want to pay 35 minutes or,

you know, an hour. That's the other problem with the waiter, right? It's, and I'm not trying to say

we're trying to mislead or dupe people or oversell, but the reality is sometimes that's how minimum

charges and flat rate work, you know, even from the basics is, yeah, I'm an hour allotted for

Diag. I'm a sharp guy. I figured out in 15 minutes, I'm going to get paid an hour because

the next time, I might be two hours and only get paid an hour for my tech. And then I had a really

good conversation with Cecil last year, Mr. Bullard, and he talked about how at 30 minutes

of an hour Diag sold, they should be coming to you saying, do you need more time or not

at 30 minutes? Because he says, we're not selling parts in that. So the loaded labor rate is

different. And we need to account for the fact that there's no parts on that Diag. So

it makes all the sense to me in the world. And that's exactly why my initial Diag fee covers

half an hour and that's it. Yeah. And that way I can go to that customer and say,

like, what's your limit on this? Because I'm going to get paid regardless, because I'm going to get

paid to tell you all the things it's not, right? Because there's a lot of value in that. Yeah,

they're not. And so that's, that's where I started. So it's like, well, if it's, if it's

$79.95 for that first half hour block, how much more straight time after that, how much are you willing

to spend on this problem? Right. And it doesn't. And just like you said, if I figured out 15

minutes, it's still $79.95, right? Because I'm paying for a scan tool. I'm paying for the

updates. I'm paying for everything. You're paying for your 20 some years of experience.

That's the other thing I say all the time. Like, there's so much that I get from the

initial scan and the road test that I'm 80% there most of the time, you know, like somebody comes

in and they say, it seems down on power. I want a new fuel pump. And I walk out to it and I hook

the scan tool up and I go for a drive and I come back and I'm like, it's not a fuel pump. The

cat is restricted. Like I didn't have to put a gauge on that car. The data is showing me that

it's not fuel. Right. It's cat, right? And they go, oh, well, I only want to pay 15 minutes.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It took me 30 years to get to where I can do that. That

fast. I'm watching your mass airflow data take a nose dive under wide open throttle.

Exactly. You didn't know that coming in here, but I did when I watched it happen.

Yeah. And the other guy that put some coils on it, he didn't know that either.

Exactly. You know, or, yeah, or I had, we've all had the trucks or the cars,

you go up the hill and you, and you have wide open throttle it and the O2

drops off. The thing goes pig lean. Well, guess what? Now we're into a fuel problem, right? Or

probably into a fuel problem. I mean, there's one more check, right? We unplug the math and we

try it again. And, oh, shit, she's still lean. Like I'm coming back and I'm going,

there's a fuel problem here. People go, oh my God, I'm not paying an hour for that.

I didn't sell you any other parts that didn't like fix it. I didn't do a bunch of tests.

I just know that this is the next thing that's going to do because here's the thing, right? Guys pull

a plug out. Like the amateurs pull a plug out. I broke the plug off or break the, let's pick up

Ford here. I go, I go to take the coil out and I break the ball off of the valve cover. Guess

what? I'm just selling now. I just upsold a valve cover just to tell you that it's,

your fuel pump driver module is bad or something like that. I didn't even need to take the coil

out. But if I didn't know what I was doing, I'm causing more damage. This is the other thing where

like experience and time don't always equate to one another in terms of how like, oh,

I want to flat rate this tech or I want to, you know, the production is down because blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I say there's no, you can't, there's no metric for

what he saves or she saves by not going down rabbit holes. We all do it. We all go down

a rabbit hole once in a while, but I didn't damage stuff. That was a pointless thing to

endeavor to check anyway. That's the beauty of it, right? That's where the training comes in.

If we're giving away that diet, we can't even pay for the training. Step it. You know, I didn't

mean to pick on Ford. They're fun. They're all junk. Funny story. I was at Canadian Tire

today and my 2015 Wrangler has the original battery in it. I know. 10 year old battery.

I know. I couldn't believe it. I checked it. How did you do that?

I just use it. It's been used nonstop since I've got it. So it's not like it's ever had a chance

to sit. And so I come out of Canadian Tire and I bought the battery there and you're like,

why don't you buy the battery there? Well, because I can get a four year replacement

with the warranty for what I buy. I can't, the parts still can't even touch it.

And I had some Canadian Tire money accumulated. The Americans would be like, what's Canadian Tire

money? I'll tell you all about it in another episode. But I had a bunch, you know what it is,

Joel knows. So I had a bunch of Canadian Tire money that helps me pay for the battery,

get the battery, come out. And there's another guy, he's carrying oil out and he gets into the

Ford part in the line behind me. And he hears me hit this key on my Jeep and of course,

click, click, click. So of course I have a booster right in the back, right?

And he looks over and he goes, do you need a boost? I go, no, I got a booster right here,

you know, I'm kind of embarrassed or whatever. And he's like, he says, because I could get the

Ford here and, you know, push it, but she probably don't want that to be embarrassed,

you know, took a Ford to push start your Jeep. I'm like, no, I like Ford,

they've made me a ton of money as a mechanic. And he goes, and he goes, yeah, I'm one too,

it's made me a pile. Well, it doesn't seem to matter where you go, right? Like it's the same

old thing. It's the last, the only reason I'm putting the battery in is because I'm driving

to Syracuse to fly out on, on Wednesday morning. So I'm driving to Syracuse Tuesday night to

catch the flight to Asta. And I don't want to be coming back and finally have it where I

can't even get the thing to start with a boost. And like, where am I going to find a battery

in an alternator or whatever I need in Syracuse New York? You know, before everything shuts down

when I happen to fly back in, I don't want that headache. So, you know, 10 years is good enough

for the old battery. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. That's actually really good. Yeah. So I couldn't

believe it. I'm looking like, this is a friggin original. Are you like, that's incredible. So

yeah, I can't, I can't complain. I can't complain. It's been a good buy your Jeep new.

I bought it. So it's a 2015. I bought it in 2020, 2021.

That's what already had an oil cooler put in it. No, well, maybe. Maybe.

If they did, they didn't upgrade to the aluminum one, right? So it was,

may it have been done at the dealer. I don't know. I have one from dormant sitting here.

Actually, when I come back from Asta, I'm going to put it in because it's,

it is leaking a little bit around the seals. And it's so funny. I go to the parts counter

at Canadian Tire and everybody's like, the Americans would be like, what's Canadian Tire?

Well, I'm the largest player in the game up here in Canada, right? But I go and I'm,

you know, I'm like, how much for battery? And he's checking me. He goes,

how do you like your Panistar? I go, I freaking love it. Got a hundred and,

what do I have on it now? 158,000 kilometers on it. He's like, Oh, is it ticking yet?

Nope. Not ticking yet. So I changed my,

you maintain it. I said, I changed my like every 5,000 K. I don't let it go to the oil life is

telling me to change it. I do it early. I said, I keep an eye on it. Like I don't, you know,

what about your oil cooler? I said, well, it leaks a little bit of coolant when it's hot,

but it's not leaking the oil yet. And it's like, it's not leaking the coolant that you

can see it. You can just smell it. When it's hot, you can walk past and you can smell it

coming out of the cooler. So I said, I got a new one coming in. So because he gets talking

about, Oh yeah, because I got an oil pressure switch I got to do in mine. I'm like, Oh yeah,

why is that? And he's like, Oh, it just threw me a code for that. Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

So he's like, you know, and I'm like, Have you done your cooler? He's like, No, I got,

I got one to do. And he says, I'm just going to do the cooler because the cooler comes

with the sensor. I'm like, you don't want to put that sensor in there. You'll be doing

the job again. Absolutely. And he's like, Oh, because I think it's a, and then he says, Oh,

I also ordered a sensor from Rock Auto. I'm like, Oh, what brand did you order?

That one with the wings. She ate on them because I, you know, I do like their, I like the company,

but you know, and I said, Well, this has been my experience with those. They either work

or I said, they don't, as soon as you're done, and you put them in and you got to get back

out. And I said, I understand it's a pretty easy job to get in there, but it is, you still have to

take the cooler back out essentially to change that thing. So I said, my opinion, just go back on

Rock Auto, see if you can buy an OE sensor. If you can't go down to the dealer, buy the OE sensor,

when you do your cooler, put it in. That's probably what I'm going to do. And I've done

some coolers. I don't know if you've done them on the pen and stars. I've had a couple,

I can't get them to come out. They, they stick in pretty hard or the little brass

thing will spin in the friggin cooler or whatever. Yeah. No, I'm with you on that one.

Yeah. So I know Dorman used to sell it completely full, like with the sensors and everything like

that. And then they changed the part number and they don't put the sensors in anymore and blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. I, I'll probably just order two sensors right from the dealer.

And I'll put them in when I have it out and done with it.

And that, that Dorman fix is sweet. The only, the only complaint I have, and it's just

a little bit of experience, we'll tell you not to, is if you read the instructions,

they give you the torque spec right in the instructions for those sensors.

And you get nervous trying to get to that torque spec, so you just don't.

Yeah. And I'll tell you right now, I've done a pile of them and I've never torqued the sensor.

Exactly. And I know for that reason. Yeah. I just, because I same thing,

I looked at it and it's like well over 20 foot-pounds or something like that.

I'm not even going to try and put that in there at that.

No, thank you. No, I, I've done enough oil sending units and all kinds of stuff to know

when it's tight, you know, it's not, it's not going to leak. Like I don't want to,

I don't want that headache, but Dorman get a big, you know, and like I've seen,

every show I go to now Lester from Dorman is there and he's a great guy and we have some

awesome conversations and I mean, they are a fantastic company because Lester has never

once ever shied away from a tough question. I'll be standing there talking to and somebody

will come up and give them a smart remark or whatever. And they, they're just consummate

professionals. They handle it like pros and you have to remember the guys that are,

you're dealing with at the trade show, they're not the ones that are making the decisions on

how the parts are being built. So like, yeah, we all rip on them and we say like,

but like I go up to my goal, man, I love that fix for that. And so there's some other

stuff too that's not the electronic stuff that is just great. And he says to me and

I'll remind everybody else like this, if you have a Dorman part and you put it in and it doesn't work,

you can send it back to your supplier and they'll warrant it out for you and all that jazz.

What Dorman really wants is for you to send it back to Dorman and they will pay you the value

of that. And because they, what they really need is that part back for to understand

failure analysis of what happened. And you know, it's not going back to them

when it goes to the parent store. And I get that 100%. I'm with you. I really like Dorman as a

company. I don't care for the things that they just made to mass produce, but anything that you

know was built for a fix, you know, the Ford vacuum hub deletes is sweet, you know, the

penister oil cooler, they're sweet. Do I want to buy window regulators from? Absolutely not.

A lot of the thermostat housings for the three sixes and they've got the updated ones in the

Chrysler where it used to be plastic and now it's aluminum. If you can't tell me that's not a

wonderful built idea, you're just hating on the brand. And I get it, you know, like

we all got stories of I had to do the job twice because of whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I get it. I'm not putting a Dorman vent solenoid or a purge solenoid in a car. I'm sorry, I ain't

doing it. I have a Corolla that has come back. And to be honest, I didn't even know it was a

Dorman purge solenoid. It was, I bought it through Napa. They use the Dorman number, but it's Napa

whatever. Yes. Yeah. So I put, I think four of them on before I realized that it was

actually Dorman and it was constantly sticking open, causing lean, this and that. And I finally put,

I don't know, I don't know where I got it from. Might have been car request. I'm not sure. But I

looked, I was like, okay, I know the Dorman part number lingo. That's not a Dorman part number.

And I put that one on it and it's been going for a year and a half. Yeah. No problem. Yeah.

And it sucks, but and I don't like throwing that out there because they make so many good

things. Yes, they do. Yeah. And they really genuinely care. They really do. Like, I mean,

I talked to the guys last year at Ashland when I was at Seaman Apex, I talked to the guys that were

like, oh man, some standard blue streak, you know, Dorman. And I can honestly say that Dorman

like takes it on the chin better than anyone else because we've, we bought standard parts

that don't work. We've bought Ashland parts that don't work. We've bought, I'm trying

to think of the other wells. There's another thing I talked to them. Great company. They're not very

big here. They're hard to get. Like if I phone up the parts store and go, I need a wells, they can't

get one. You want, right? Not, not a big distributor here. But Dorman is the, is the best for me

in sitting down and listening to what I have to say about like, you know, their parts.

And if Lester's such a great guy, like he's been on, I think he's been on twice,

you know, he's been on for sure once and I know he's been on twice. Yes. I've gone through the entire

frigging catalog and you hear these names and you start to remember and you start to feel like you

actually know them when you say Lester. I'm like, yeah, I know exactly who you're talking about.

And he does. He's just seemed so easy gone and he gets, he gets the struggle, but he's also

trying to communicate like this is what we need to make this go better. And I think that's

great. 100% Brian Pollock has that story of like there, it was again, it was a Perch solenoid or

something to do on a Honda. And I can't remember what, but Brian literally, because Brian's

the smartest tech I know, uses a lab scope and captures the, the Pintel hump of the,

it was a solenoid sometime closing. I can't remember. He'll remind me tomorrow when I

ask him and, and literally, so he takes a screenshot, takes the lab scope captures,

send them still Lester and says, because Lester, this is what it's doing.

This millisecond on time is not enough compared to the OE one. And, and this is what you need to do.

Well, they fixed the friggin part. They fixed it now. Brian can confidently buy that one and it will

work because Brian took them and gave them the data that they actually need. Because you know how

it is. He put it on the bench and you test it, run it through a cycle and it, and it,

it doesn't stick for 50 times. You go, I don't know what's going on. It's misdiagnosed. It's

not. It's just that bench is not real world, right? The car is real world. It's that kind of stuff

that Brian was able to provide for them is what we need. So that's why Lester says to me all the

time, like, if we could get the old parts back, it's to your benefit of the shop because we will

pay you for the part. Like, it's not a problem. You'll get credit. It's no big deal. Can they

pay warrant like labor? No, but we know lots of shops now dealing with buying it from Napa.

You're not getting your labor covered. Right. You know what I mean? Or if you are,

it's not a full jam. No, it's a really one. Significantly less, yeah.

What's it really worth? You know, do you get a lot of customers? So what's your part,

what's your breakdown on like, how many times you're selling old parts versus aftermarket?

I find like with Ford, for example, there's, for whatever reason, there's less

availability in the aftermarket form. So we go to the Ford dealership a lot.

And that's why I keep saying that because it's true. We go to them a lot. I am primarily

aftermarket until I realize that I'm having a repeat failure that I can prove isn't something

that I did, right? And then it's like, okay, no, we got to do this differently.

We are on the CarQuest TechNet program. So we, a lot of it, we do have our warranty

and stuff like that. But you know, like you said, the labor warranty doesn't cover when I have to do,

when a starter needs 60 bucks, and it's a starter on the backside of a Nissan Titan,

and you got a million take to do it, and it's several, you know, it kind of blows. But

the chances that you take, is it like that most of the time? No. But it's not the end of the

world. But I'm okay with the aftermarket side of things, like I said, until it becomes

repeat issue, and then it's okay, we got to make some changes. Yeah, rotating electrical,

when I talked to a lot of my shop owner friends around here and all over, it's become the worst

sector of the aftermarket parts thing in the last two years, I say, without question,

followed by, can you pick number two?

So some places I can go with, oh my God, don't get me started on friggin strats, holy Jesus.

That's it, my brother. Yeah, a good friend of mine, Greg Bowman runs a good shop here

in town, he says no more aftermarket, no, won't buy them out aftermarket anywhere, he says,

won't even buy. And I used to think like when real quick strats were a good product,

and I have a friend's Kia that we put a set in three years ago, 40,000 kilometers in three

years, not a lot, and it's not going to make a pile of noise. And I said to her, Beth, I said,

I can't do anything about it, there's no warranty on it, and I don't work there anymore, like if

you could get warranty on it, I'd probably throw it in for 50 bucks, it's not a hard strut to

change. And even if I go, what am I going to do, go buy another one real quick strut and put

it in? Like everybody's like, oh, during COVID, you know, parts supply dried up and they were using

whatever. Okay, well then warranty the damn part. Just tell everybody, hey, you know how it was,

we're going to extend this, you know, bring in your paperwork, blah, blah, blah, they won't

do that. No. What do I buy then? Call the dealer up and order strut mounts? I guess.

That's pretty much it, unfortunately, like, you know, for a long time, like,

I don't have a spring compressor because very rarely do you break struts down. But you're getting

to the point where, no, I'm pretty much going to have to, at this point, and start putting

actual good mounts in. That seems to be the only, the only fix. It's brutal. It's terrible. Not

in rotating electrical, back to it. Like, I mean, I, again, my good friend, Greg, same shop.

I don't know how many he was telling me like Altmere's he was putting on this one high on

Dandy. It was like six or more before we finally got it, one that worked. And like to where CarQuest

was not warranty him anymore, he'd put it in, you know, and it's one of the, again, it's an ECM

controlled system. So, you know, it would charge, but it's flagging DTCs and turning the

battery light on even though, until CarQuest is like, well, it must be something you're doing

wrong. And he's like, no, man, this is my least favorite thing of them to say is that.

And, and actually, it's funny, you should talk about the rotating electrical because my mother's

2012 Civic is sitting out there right now, low output from the alternator. Okay, you know what?

It's my mom's car. I'm not going to do any diagram. I'm just going to, you know, it's got

almost 300,000 clicks on it. Okay. So I put a reman alternator in it first. And now charging

output is great. Guess what? Battery lights on. So what do I do? Now I get a new alternator.

Charging outputs, great battery lights on. Original alternator back in low output. So I know

it's an alternator issue. So what do I do? I need to, I'm going to go on WorldPak tomorrow morning

and I'm going to get a Denso alternator for my 20, mom's 2012 Honda Civic and that better

well fix it. And it most likely will, you know, but I mean, at the same time, like you got to

go on WorldPak, you might save a hundred bucks, you know, between WorldPak versus buying it at

the dealer, except the dealer is going to go, what? How old? Yeah. Well, let me check. I can get one

at a moose job, you know, like five days to get here. Like it's not sitting in a warehouse anymore,

something that old. That's the frustrating part for me. And like Greg said, like when they say

to him, are you sure you're, like Greg's one of the top diagnostic guys in my local area,

like he can diagnose cars. He's not long. He can tell you that, yeah, I put it in again.

And it's like a five hour alternator job. He's got it down to where he does it in like an hour and

20 minutes, you know, like he's got it done might as well be Velcro by now, right? He's had it in

the past many times. But that's frustrating. And it's not paying the full labor rate is,

is I think at some point the parts suppliers are going to have to make that correct and step up

to the plate. Because otherwise, what are we going to do? And I've said it for years, like

there's a reason that there's such a divide between the dealers and the aftermarket in this

industry is because like so many years ago, you can probably remember, you're old enough and we

might still do it. You call up the dealer once in a while for help. Not like I need to buy a part,

but can, you know, like, what are you moving a lot of these? Like I got a car here. And then as

soon as they say, yeah, it's that, we go, okay, I'll get off the phone. I'm going to phone

my supplier and see if I can get the part. If we stopped doing that to each other, right? Like

if we made the OE part, the first call, the first install, the first choice. And they started stop

here's the other thing, dealers, you're gonna have to carry some inventory. But if we started

doing that, we'd have a much better relationship with each other in terms of the OE side, I

think in the aftermarket side, but we don't because we want to buy this crap

from offshore for one-fifth the price so that we can get our parts margin up to where it's the same

damn price as the what the dealer would sell. Or it's a work as long too. Yes. And then we put it

on and go, that alternator didn't last 18 months or the Ford trucks, that was the worst for me

because they'll chew the flywheel up. They'll chew the flywheel right off. And it's like,

what's the fix with that? Put the OE one on. Oh my God, it costs three times as much.

Well, now we're doing a flywheel because we skipped out on the starter. Do you mean to

tell me that was the right answer? Like, you know, no, it wasn't. But they go, oh, it's

maybe it's got a voltage problem or maybe that, you know, the solenoid's not holding incorrectly

because of a volt drop problem that's chewing them, it could be. But I also know it's not

because I'm trying to understand properly. And it's a shit solenoid and a shit gear

and it's chewing my flywheel. Now I'm putting a flywheel in the car. Right. Because I skimped

on the thing. It's one thing if the customer says, no, give me the cheapest part I can.

I got no problem with that. You put on whatever you want to do that. But when we don't even,

Joel, when we don't even give the customer the conversation of this is the part that I would

really like to put in. And yes, it's a lot of money. And yes, I marked it up

to get my margin where it needs to be. So it's even a little more money than what the dealer

would sell it to you at, which we don't, we know they play that game too, right?

All that list price is a gimmick. Yeah. It doesn't matter where it comes from for me,

it gets the same mark up because I'm, you know, to that person, it's like going to Walmart.

You're not asking Walmart where they gave, they got those grapes from. Yeah.

That part came from me. It did not come from Ford. It did not come from Nissan Toyota,

Carapace, Napa. It came from me. And I'm going to look after it with you,

because that's what you pay for. That's why you pay for markup and know we don't

discount our labor to sell the job. Yeah. Right. But it's frustrating because I know,

I worked at a shop that like he had a really high door rate. And I've said this before,

he had a really high door rate. So what we ended up doing was we ended up putting a lot of

not great parts on, but the margin was marked up properly. Like it should be whatever 200%

or whatever the number is. Like, you know, it's on a sliding scale, all that jazz throw.

Again, I throw in numbers that are not please don't quote me on it.

So we would put on a lot of cheap parts because of the high door rate. We were

already like he was trying to be competitively priced. Well,

frig, if we didn't have a ton of rework, starters and alternators and purged solenoids and vent

valves, and we had a lot of rework, right? You know, we even had a lot of rework sometimes on

brakes and brake calipers that's going back to it, right? Like half of them you would buy

the leak after or like, well, I don't know how many I had that I took out of the remand box.

And I couldn't crank the piston in on the rear, you know,

caliper. It's supposed to be a brand new one. Can't do it. Now it's a 45 minute run

to come back from the parts store. They got to bring me another one. Like you were to the

point where you almost wanted to say like, hey, send four calipers, right? You know,

and then be like, wow, the joke was like, come on, exhaust system's another one.

Like, do you touch it at all? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Do you have any kind of

specialized like, do you have an expander and a bender of any kind or?

I have an expander. I don't have a bender. It's funny. When I first opened my shop,

I bought the Blue Boy expander and everybody was like, why have all the things that you could buy

first coming out with not a pop piss in? Why would you buy that? I'm like, I don't have to

stock 100,000 reducers and all that crap because I've got this tool and it has saved me so many

times because you know the Walker stuff is only going to work if you buy a Walker right from

one end to the other. And it's going to roll off in 18 months. Exactly.

And the Walker pisses me right off. It's leaking again within 18 months. And again,

they've always been that. And I remember when you used to be able to buy a Bezel muffler and

it would last for Bezel, B-O-S-A-L. They used to be made right in Kingston. There was a

Facker right in Kingston made them. I haven't even seen one anymore.

You can get them on Worldpack because I have bought some of them and I really like them.

That's a good brand. Yeah. With the Walker shit, it doesn't matter who you buy it from,

what line you buy. It's all garbage. It's non-galvanized. It's rotten within a year.

The muffler is blown out. I hate it. It's crap. And the same thing, it doesn't matter.

Everybody wants the seals welded because it's a better job. It's quieter. It's actually sealed.

And then you go in and you're cutting the pipe to get the flippin' muffler off again.

You know, the flange rotted out on the back of the resonator. Again,

non-welding a flange on. Like, you might better, I know when I worked at Nissan,

we were welding flanges on the factory stuff all the time. And once you put the aftermarket

flange on, the thing was good for two years, three years, no problems. But you go and put

that Walker kit on and you'd see it come in. It had an all new kit on from like about a year ago

and it's already leaking. It's already rotted out. You're like, call the customer over and put a flange

kit in this. And then they say, oh, I only want to pay 100 bucks to put a flange kit in. No, no, no,

no, no, no, no. That's not how it works. We need a little more labor than not because like,

I'm going to weld it in. It's going to be done properly and measured and fit and all that

kind of stuff. Oh my God, that's $200. I can buy a whole, yeah. So go buy a whole system

and for $600 and put it on and come see me again next year when it's leaking. Like stop with it

already. The OE pipe lasts. We just have to work on it. Just, oh, well, Speedy will do it. Well,

then why the flipper in front of me? Speedy will do it for 100 bucks. Why are you in my

frigging waiting room telling me what Speedy will do it for? You already know.

You want me to do it for 90? That ain't happening. Come on. Little dealership, like

expect more than Speedy. Like it just, yeah. And I'm not the greatest welder. So it would

frustrate me to have to do it, right? And I was meticulous about it. And like,

I love welding. It's just one of those things. I love making things work that way

and it not end up being a hack. Do you know how many mirrors I have screwed up with welding

slag trying to weld the top of the bike? Yep.

Squinting and stomp. I welded right to the mirror again. Like it just, I hated it. I hated it.

I've had lots of systems that I just took the whole system out, put it on the bench,

put my pieces in and put it back in the car. It's not the fastest way,

but it fit perfect. And I got a good weld. Like I was doing that with the Toyotas because that,

you know, they break theirs up into two pieces, the million converter piece and the muffler.

Well, guess what? I'm yanking that converter off and I'm taking those heat shields off and

welding a band around them and all that stuff. And that's way cheaper. I can do that for

three, 400 bucks versus that pipe is $1,300 from Walker. And guess what? You're going to be back

in 18 months, whatever. Look at the newer Mazdas that the cat manifold with the white,

with the flex pipe right on the butt, you know, right? That flex cracks and breaks all the

time. Yeah. And if you're going by the aftermarket one, guess what? Well, you sealed it up, but you

get a 420 DTC. So what do we do, folks? Do we, do we put a spacer in like when nobody's looking to

get rid of the 420 DTC? Or do we do, or do we install the OE part? Okay. You install the OE part.

Well, what's that cost? 1,400 bucks plus labor. It's a $2,000 job. You know,

so this is the whole thing for me. Like I look at that and go, I should be able to sell that

customer of the labor to remove that, put in a universal flex and put it back in the car and

I'll still be less than 2,000 bucks. You can't tell me that's not a good repair. That would be

the repair I would want. But yet everybody's like, I can't sell them that because I'm selling them

$1,400 for a fix versus 2,000 for a brand new. This industry's got to get back to where we're

proud to fix things and actually sell the fix, not sell the new part. And I know,

I know, we're supposed to be selling parts. You're coached to do that because that's your

second half of your profit. But when it comes to Canadian cars and exhaust,

it's not that easy. It's not that easy. Sure. You know,

do you guys still have emissions testing in Ontario?

So here's the thing. I love this because we just, we just brought in the new,

so you guys have mandatory safety inspections, right? We have inspections, but we don't have

emissions. Right. And you do your safety inspection every two years. So right now,

we brought it where they're still not, we're not doing like you guys where if you own the car,

you've got to get inspected every year or every two, excuse me. They think that's probably,

they're talking like they're going to roll that out in Ontario because here's what we did.

We said, okay, Ontario citizens, we're not going to charge or renew your license plates

anymore. Everybody, oh my God, that's amazing. That's just great. Like, you know, they don't

buy a sticker, you don't do nothing. You own the car, you just like keep your registration up,

but they're not charging you. That's great. But everybody went, wait a minute,

what are they doing that for? The talk is, at the same time, they rolled out a new safety

standard that had to be all done with a tablet now. So we take photos of everything now.

It's not like the old stuff where it was like, yeah, it's good. Like everything is documented on

a tablet with pictures. And in the process of doing this, Joel, they ask you, you know,

there are any check engine lights on in the car, and they ask you to hook up to the OBD2.

Now, it doesn't fail the safety if it has a check engine light on, but they've made it part

of the process now that they're scanning the cars. So we think that pretty much the,

instead of having the dyno system testing the way we used to do in Ontario, that they're going to do

the way the Californian and the United States always did it where it's, you know, where they

tried to do it last time in Ontario, which was just a readiness monitor. But all those European

cars that wouldn't come up, they wouldn't, essentially when you, when you, people were

complaining, they had brand new Audi's, brand new Mercedes, brand new, whatever. And they go to

the testing center and say, not ready, not ready, not ready, not ready, not ready. And they go over

to the dealer and the dealer's like, that's wrong with the car. Everything's already, they'd send

them back and you retest them, retest, retest. It was a software thing. So that's what got the

system scrapped here, because it was too hard to implicate on those cars. But I think it's

coming back. It's only a matter of time. They keep saying, we just did a scan tool or scan

tool. We just did a tablet update through Ministry MTO Ontario. And they didn't change

anything on that side, but they keep the rumors are it will be coming within the probably the next

calendar year. You know, if we change premiers, it can all be. Exactly. You know, I get that. Yeah.

But so, so now you guys have like, does it, is there a certain dollar amount that you have to

charge? Like, is it a government mandated thing? I don't, you know, I don't honestly know that

because I think there is actually like, you can't charge more than no, you know, that's

that change. No, I can charge as much as I want to do a safety. That's right. I can charge as much

as I want because now with the tablet thing, when they brought the tablet, everybody thought

it was going to take two people to do it. Right. And it was going to take a lot

longer to do. I can tell you now that when I already have the car on the bay and I already

have the wheels off the car, I do them in about 32 minutes, right? All the inspection that needs

to be done and photographed and evidence and all that kind of stuff. But if you're bringing in,

that's that's cars that like, I'm getting ready to sell at the used car that I work at.

Now, when a customer brings me a car and I have to do a safety on it, it takes me a lot longer

because I road test the car. I pull the wheels inspect everything. What slows that process

down is now is again, because we're doing it, when we're doing it, they want to start estimating

the work that needs to be done because nobody wants to pay for a retest. So what happens is,

is like, I'm inspecting your car for safety, you want to sell it to somebody else,

you're going to do all the repairs that it needs. Well, shit, it needs brakes,

shit, it needs a muffler, shit, it needs this. So all of a sudden, now we're prepping and it's

adding time to it. Right. But just from the me, what I do every day, 32 minutes,

safety is done, clocked. And that's if I do a pre-inspection on the car, I go for road test,

I inspect the brakes, if it needs brakes, it needs whatever, I do it, and then I do my safety

after all the repairs are done. Where it gets tricky is when the customer brings it in,

we have to decide we're doing a repair or not. A lot of these cars come in Joel and it's like,

oh, never mind, don't fix it, I'm getting rid of it because it needs too much. Everybody

wants to sell a car right now, safety. Well, shit, going back to your rust thing.

Oh, I got a 2012 Equinox, it's only got 150,000 kilometers on it.

Cool. It's already had two sets of rockers put in here.

I condemned one last week, 125,000 kilometers on it ran awesome. Check Angelite on for an

oil control valve for the VBT, but it ran good at the time. I go to put it on the hoist,

nope, start lifting it from the pinch welds. Rust starts falling out from underneath.

I go ahead and lift it anyway, but I'm like, yeah, this one's done.

It's done, what do you mean it's done? It's done. It's rotten. Oh, it's only got 125,000. I know,

they should have undercoded it. Here's your pitch for undercoding in guys, like,

didn't need to be done every year, but the first three years was life, we wouldn't be

having this conversation. Somebody came and bought that car as is, and they took it

somewhere where they're either going to get a lick and stick safety or they're going to get

somebody to throw some rockers on it. But I like it because now we're not putting a lot of junk

back in on the road. It drove me crazy to put brakes, tires and struts and stuff that doesn't

have rocker panels. And in the old way of doing things under safety, we all know we all

did it. We all did it. Everybody in Ontario did it because it was so gray area as to

does it pass or not? I know my friend told me like you guys, you guys can fail rusted brake lines,

right? No, you can't fail rusted ones. They have to be leaking, but they could be

bloomed up the size of your thumb. And you know they're going to fail a panic stop, right? Right.

But if they're not leaking, you can't fail them. Okay. And it's sketchy because you want to

document that and make sure everything, you know, you definitely don't want someone going

down the road where you just stickered it and then it comes back with a blown brake line, right?

And you see guys get creative too as to how ballooned up the line is too, I'm sure, right?

Right. Yeah. There's a lot of that. Do you like doing brake lines?

You know what? Brake lines is one of those things I actually do like doing them because

my mindset is if I know a job is difficult, I'll do it. No problem, right? It's the easy jobs that go

to shit that make me savage, right? So when you tell me that your 2004 Chev half ton needs brake

lines behind the gas tank, give it to me. I'll do it. You know, we're all under the understanding

that it's hard to estimate that kind of work because obviously they're brake lines. And yes,

I'm not just going to cut the old ones and leave them in there. I'm going to pull the other 15 lines

from where nobody wanted to take those lines out. They're all coming out and being done right, you

know. So as far as brake lines go, I actually do quite enjoy them. I hope nobody in my area

hears that because I don't want to be inundated with brake lines for the next three goddamn weeks,

but you know. But you're not scared to charge to do them right either.

No. Yeah. See, like I worked for guys that it was an hour of line. I'm like,

no, that ain't going to fly. Are you fucking nuts here? Like an hour of line? Like how do I,

you know, because you know what? Without them saying, you know how they want it done.

Just stick it in there. As long as it don't hit the driveshaft or the ground.

Yeah. It's done. And I don't like doing it like that. I hate it. But again, you know how it's

like you talk about it, we might have to remove the gas tank in order to run the fuel and

brake lines. What's that going to be? Well, we're going to be a fuel tank.

Everything else. We just took a leaky brake line job for 300 bucks. And it's now we're

into a $2,000 job. Like this is where in Canada, the challenges that we face is a lot of people

don't appreciate. My friends in North Carolina, they can't even, they just shake their head and

go, what are you talking about? Like we got 2003s around here with the original brake lines

on them. I'm like, yeah, not up here. Nice. You know, no, it just doesn't happen. And

you know, the guys in the rust belt, we all see Eric. Oh, it's the same thing, right? Like he's

cars are eight years old up there. He's put in the scrapyard because that's where they belong.

There's so much salt. I don't like doing brake lines because the very first guy that I

ever mentored underneath, he would be two days doing them. And it looked OE. You could not

tell when it was done that it wasn't the OE lines in the car. I would see him doing them.

And I'm telling you, like he was two days on them and the car wasn't worth the time that was spent

to do it. Like we're talking old Toyota Crescities. You're probably not even old enough to

like look like, but like imagine a Camry that was uglier. Right. It was like a 1984.

And in 2001, we're still we're doing this. And it would be two days and they looked OE fuel

and brake lines. That was the only way you do it all. But it wasn't, the car wasn't worth that.

You know what I mean? Like it wasn't worth the job. So finding that middle ground Joel of like,

how do we get the thing back on the road and safe, but not completely exceed the value of what

that's the trick for me. And that's why I want no part of it. Like,

give me the stupidest, hardest dyke job. I'd rather do that than run fuel lines and

brake lines. The first thing I touched the straps break the bolts that where the straps

go into the frame, bust off, the bolt comes out. Oh, look at, you know, there he is with a torch.

You've seen the guys use a torch to get an old Chevy fuel filter off. We've done it.

Oh yeah. Like what? Oh yeah. I've worked with lots of guys that do that. Listen,

it's only the vapor that starts not the fuel. That's right. As long as it's wet, you're good.

Meanwhile, you're outside like standing in the shop waiting outside in the parking lot,

waiting for him to be finished before you come back in because you just, you know,

you don't want to see your friend become the human torch. I like the, I like the dyke jobs better.

I like the, then, then those kind of things because I'm always like,

I always know what most people charge to do it. And I know we always go over.

And those are the jobs where it's like, well, it was still a $2,000 job.

Yeah. Okay. So it's, you know, we've still got eight hours labor out of it, but

frig, man, like we were on it a day and a half. We went over, you know, there's a whole like,

I didn't get all my fittings because I didn't get the exact estimate on fittings. We need,

and like I, you know, I gave them the fuel tank at cost or the pump at cost or the

fitting to repair the fuel line. I gave that at cost because it wasn't like,

it's like you said, it's too hard for me to estimate, you know, it's an open end for

extremely difficult to estimate that stuff. You have to be, you really have to vet your

customer on that and just say, like, look, this is where we're starting. And we kind of

have to roll from there. And, and that's why, like, like you say with the dyke stuff,

I'm kind of with you on that one because, yes, it's, it's hard. Some people think that when

you dump it down and say, well, it took me four and a half hours to find this broken wire.

And they say, oh, so all you did was fix it and you charge me this much.

Well, no, it's, that's not, that's not what you're paying for, like all the time and all the testing

and, and all that, right? Like that's, that's different. Eric O had a video that went out just

the other day and it's a truck that the fork oils on that side of the six liters,

like 2009 Silverado six liter. It's not, there's no spark on one side of the engine.

We know what it is. It's a, it's a ground, right? It's the ground.

Power steering pump. Yeah. And that's the same thing. He, he, you know, he leaned on the line

to the power steering pump and thought he was going to break it off. Thank God he didn't.

But like, we know that if that winds up in the other shop, you know what it's getting,

it's getting an ECM, it's getting a fuse box. And then they're going to say,

it's got to be a harness somewhere, but it's getting a fuse box and the PCM first.

Yeah. Well, Frig, he, he diagnosed it in under an hour. I mean, the guy's brilliant, brilliant,

brilliant. But I mean, like a lot of us have diagnosed that in an hour or two hours. And

save the customer a ton of money. But you look like a dick for charging it. You know what I mean?

Like it just doesn't make sense. I'm good with looking like a dick, honestly.

That comes with the trade. Okay. Listen, if I wasn't comfortable with my level of

dickness, I wouldn't have this body ass because I mean, I wouldn't be like, it's, it's okay. Like

some things are going to rub people the wrong way. And, and you can't make everybody happy.

And that's all right. You know, I just, if we have, if we've vetted our customer property,

and again, it's the same thing. I, I, I keep, I catch a lot of flak because I say,

like most service advisors in the industry right now are not cutting it. And they go,

oh, they're, they're selling great. There's their numbers are awesome.

Yes, their numbers are awesome. But the customers, we're not changing the customer's perception of

really what we're doing in terms of when they leave, they still don't really understand. Like,

that's the big thing right there. They have to understand before they leave. You can't just

say, Hey, you, you need a fuel pump. You need to explain to them, well, you know,

fuel pressure, low, this, that, or whatever, right? You can't just say you need it.

And that's it. Like they have to see the value in, in what they're getting.

Yeah. And that's where they fall short.

I've always been totally cool with telling a customer when they came in and that thought

they needed a fuel pump. And all it needed was like a broken wire under the fuse box for the

fuel pump fuse or the fuel pump relay or the IPDM or whatever, right? Fuel,

the, the modules on the back of the Ford's are always wrought off. Totally cool. I'm

totally cool with selling them that and some dyag time that is less money than a tank

and a pump. And they go, I don't want to pay for that. It seems like the value.

Let's, let's, let's back up for a minute. The repair that you expected to get,

you know, in your head is going to be around 2000 bucks. I am doing the repair for 600.

But as soon as I say, I just fixed a wire, you don't see the value in 600 bucks.

That's where the advisor has to step up and go, no, this is the time that we took.

This is what we were doing in that time. This is the level of expertise that it actually

I'm paying that guy $55 an hour to go out there and prove that it's only a broken wire and not

three parts that don't fix it before we finally call a mobile guy in. That's, if you can't have

that conversation with your customer, you're not that good an advisor in my opinion, no matter

how many thousands of dollars you sell at the end of the year, you're not doing what the

industry needs to be done to fix the industry in the eyes of the public. And that's, that's

like a big concept for a lot of people and they're going to argue it and that's cool. Totally get

with it. You understand what I'm saying though, because like, if we want to improve it where it's

an easier sell next time and an easier sell the time after that until they just completely trust us,

we have to have that conversation with them every time. Right. And that's what

we're training our advisors is so important, not just training them on how to have conversation,

but the technical training that they have to be taking right now is a lot more than what

we've ever given them. Exactly. And one side of why I like running the business is because,

you know, you know what it's like, it's a game of telephone, it's you to the shop form and

to the service advisor to the customer and all that information gets lost throughout, right? And

you're right, there is a training aspect of that. So in the situation that I've got here,

like where I've got my wife run in the front desk, a lot of times when it's a really complicated

diagram explanation and all that stuff, I'm still going to go out and deliver that to them

and sell them on that. But what that's doing, not only is, is you're getting that first hand

from the person that diagnosed it, but you've also got Jayden sitting there and she's listening

to what I'm saying and how I'm saying it to that customer. And I find she calls upon me less

and less and less when somebody calls, she learns the questions to ask. She doesn't just

book people in for break stuff. She says, you know, what are you experiencing? And then she's

learned how to sell a break inspection first and how many people, she used to get so much pushback

on that when we first started because she didn't know how to sell it. And now it's like most

people are like, well, yes, I would like to spend the $58 or whatever the hell it is to,

for that peace of mind of knowing that I'm not going to be spending XYZ on

calibers I don't need or whatever, right? And that even goes with Diag. Like she sits there

and she listens to what I say. And then I can write out my story and she can deliver that to the

customer in a way that they believe what she says. And now mind you, I still like going out and

talking to people because now I can say, here's what I found. Here's what I, you know, and

even when I worked for somebody else, if it was complicated, I didn't mind going out and

talking to somebody because I knew that if I relied on my ex boss's wife to try and

relay that, she was going to come back out to me and say, well, what do I tell them? Tell them what

I wrote because that's what they need to know. That's how you're going to instill trust in what

we're doing. If you can't deliver that, then you need to find somebody that does and I'm that

person to go out and deliver that because I'm the one that found it, right? Yeah. That's kind of how

I feel. Question for you. Here's some people talk about when they're doing Diag in a shop,

they're doing a couple of things. They're doing a retainer and sometimes they have a different

labor rate. Do you do either one of those things? I do in some aspects. I do have a different

labor rate for that kind of thing, but it's more along the lines of like I said, I've got that set

Diag Fee and it costs this much. And on the other side of that, you look at your labor as a unit

sold versus rather than time, right? And it's worth this much to diagnose that. And on the

retainer side, what I will do is rather than get a physical retainer, I'll say do you want to spend,

I say typically when it comes to this kind of thing, it costs between $200 and $300. If you're

okay with that, we will move forward. If you're not okay with that, then we need to have a

different conversation. And if they give me the go ahead on that, then it's okay. Well,

they know what they're going to spend and they know that I won't go any further without

contacting them, right? I'm a huge proponent of getting paid for your diagnostic time.

There was a shop in town here. He's closed down now, but he used to send me when I opened on my own

and my old boss, a lot of his Diag and a lot of his like complicated AC stuff and all that.

And I always found that every single person that came to us,

you almost didn't have to let them know how much it was going to cost because they just

wanted it fixed at that point because it came from another shop and you know,

but you were able to say again, how much have you spent on it? Well, I spent this much, right?

You willing to spend this much more to get to the bottom of it? Yes or no, right? And that's kind

of how I've done it. Like you just have to be transparent. And transparent and it comes back

to that emotional thing. Like I have never felt sorry for somebody that used my competition

to get us less than satisfactory result. And people listen to that and they go,

well, that's a really weird thing to say. You should be every day trying to be the best that

you can be in your area at a certain particular thing. Like you don't have to be the best diagnostic

tech. You could be the best tire shop in town. That's what you should be doing. If somebody

goes to the Costco or the Canadian tire and they get their tires all screwed up and they

come to you and say you're an okay tire facility, right? You're an okay tire franchise.

You're the best. You got the best hunter machine, all that kind of stuff. If somebody

comes to you and they've been screwed up at some shop and they come to you finally to get this

vibration fixed. I've never felt sorry for them if I had to go in and use my skills to fix their car

because I look at it like I got a good reputation. I got the skills. If I'm a little bit more money

and they roll the dice and they gamble and they lose, that's gambling. Right. Talk all day about

that. I never felt sorry for that person that gambled because they didn't use me. It's

different if they didn't know I existed, right? That's the other thing. But if they know I existed

and the reputation for me is, oh, that guy's, he's expensive. I'm going to go try someone else.

I don't owe you a discount then because you tried somebody else. Right. Anything I might maybe

should be not extending the same. What's the word? I shouldn't be extending the same

graces to you, a stranger to me that I might extend to my established customers.

You can take that any way you want. Pricing and people call the idiot for you or whatever.

I'm good with it because I am going to stand on business that says I'm the best person around

to diagnose your car. I'm not. I'm just, we're talking facetiously here. If you've gone to

the local guy and he's thrown three parts and it didn't fix the car and now you need me,

I'm going to start with a $500 retainer that says I have to go in and check what he did

or she did. I have to check what parts they put in. Are they even the right parts?

That all takes time before I can put the vehicle back where I can start at the beginning because

that's the thing. When we get it from somebody else, we can't start at the beginning. We don't

even know where the beginning is. That's 100% right. When we start Diag that's been somewhere

as else, that's a huge thing. In some ways, you're right. You don't know where the

beginning is, but you almost have to find that beginning and you have to say like,

look, you are paying for what's already been checked because I don't trust that it's been

checked properly. That same shop that is no longer there, one of the Diags that they sent us was

a Camry with no high beams. Okay, fine. Let's look through it. They had panels flipped up.

They had things. They had poked wires. They had done all this stuff. What was the fix for it?

Two headlight bulbs because they run them in series. One went out, the other one went out.

Yes, you got to pay me for the time because all I did was I looked on a wiring diagram and went,

oh, it goes in there. It goes out there and it goes to ground. Okay, I bet you one of these

bulbs is bad. Oh, there's the bad bulb. Let's change them both. We're done. That is worth

something. I had to start at the beginning to figure that out. What do you do when something

comes in with no headlight bulb operation? You put headlight bulbs in it. That's it.

I still say the same thing, unless it's got a really easy access relay or a bunch of data

pins that I can look at, I'm still going to the headlight bulb first. That's the part when

we drop the ball on those kind of Diags as an industry. Those are the ones that the people

that hate us online, the DIRs that talk such shit. We give them the ammunition to talk

like that does for us. Because the most basic thing is you go to the headlight bulb and check

what do you have there? What's missing? And if you got everything that's supposed to have, then

put a fragrant headlight bulb in it, like fix the car. Don't question yourself, why are both bad?

My old service manager a long, long time ago, it was a legendary car for him. It was a joke

because he had gone through the same thing. It was an older Chrysler product. He tried to

switch and try to relay and something else. Both bulbs were bad. He's like, I've never seen

a car come in with both bulbs bad at the same time. I don't know why the both bulbs would fail.

Power surge, who knows? Who cares? Instead of starting at the basics of fundamentals

and what he should have been doing. And let's think about that. We're talking the old seal

beams, right? They're not hard to take you to any car back then. But why would you not

do it that way instead of take a switch out of the column and jump this and piss around

with that? And no, no, no, no, no. I know lots of, it's bits and really smart texts in the past.

I'm not naming names. It's just that it has bit them in the butt because we overthink it. That's

what we do. It's part of our, what makes us so effective sometimes. And we're all human.

I've never talked to a shop owner yet that was perfect or technicians perfect. So

give your people some grace. So I gotta ask, how do you handle like with your small

operation, you know, the kind of that we've seen in the comments and the conversations,

do you implicate any kind of DVI or just kind of like, you know, do you kind of respond to

what the customer is there for? I don't know. I struggle with the DVI thing because in my area,

I have seen the dealerships use a DVI to try and instill trust, but they're showing people

things that aren't actually bad. So like the case was a local dealership, somebody went to them,

they did a DVI and they said, Hey, I'm your technician. And they went, here's your brakes.

They're at two 30 seconds and they need to be replaced. And then they pull the camera away.

Well, if you stop and you look at that picture, you're like, Oh, no, that looks more like four

or five 30 seconds. And you're just playing on the fact that you're showing them. So they

must believe you. And I really struggle with that. So for me, like, I would say 95% of the

pictures on my phone are of things that people need replaced. And I'll take my phone, I'll take a

picture, I'll say, look, this is what we've got going on. And we can discuss further from there.

As far as it goes, like, I like the idea of DVI, but I think that they can still be used in a

greasy kind of way. 100%. I don't use them. I just do really good documentation. And I have a

good rapport with my clients so that I don't, you know, I don't want them to feel any

certain way, right? Yeah, because that's sort of where I stay.

But the conversation, again, it popped up again today was like, you know, and at my farmer

guest, Curtis, he's talking about, you know, like, the guys don't want to do them because

it's like, and again, somebody else in another chimed in, it's like, well, they counted for

60% more in sales last year. Cool. You mean to tell me then that's a 60% more

than it accounted for in sales, you can't pay your technician

on every one of them. Nobody should be doing them for free.

Yeah, 100%. That's not, you know, as far as I'm concerned, there's only one person in the shop

that should be working flat rate and that's the owner. I, like I said, I never worked flat rate

in my life until I opened my business. And if I have an employee, they're going to be hourly.

And if you need, you pay them hourly to do that DVI if you so choose to do it, right?

There's only one person that should be taking that hit and it's not a technician.

Yeah. And, you know, I have to say it again, because everybody thinks like we talk about flat

rate in every episode and we don't with almost every episode. And, you know, because it's the

very, it's the still very, the prominent issue or not issue topic of contention, I guess is what

you could say. It's a better way of saying it. That's moving forward in the industry,

I think it's because it's very, I have a, I have a great friend, Zeb that runs a shop

that is top notch and Zeb like pays his guys flat rate and it works.

He's sharp. He, oh dude, he's so past sharp. It's not even funny. He is brilliant. And not

only is he brilliant, I say it all the time. I've never met somebody that has the kind of

Cajones, the confidence, the balls to be himself. Like he doesn't care. He's like,

I'm the best shop in the state. You can take your shit somewhere else. It doesn't

bother me. If you need it fixed, I'm here. This is the price and that's what it is. And he doesn't,

he doesn't back away from it. He promises and he takes care of his customers. When he makes a mistake

and he does make mistakes, we all do. He comes good for it. He does what is necessary. He's

just, I love the dude, love him. I have so much respect for him because he's just,

it's that confidence that goes back to that I say, like all the time,

you can't be that kind of owner unless you've been that kind of tech, right? So it's one thing to get

up there and say, my guys are the best in the industry. Can you turn a wrench? Can you go out

and lead them? Can you go show them what makes you this, the culture of this shop so important

is because you're that level? If you can't, then can you really appreciate how good they are?

And are you really qualified to know when they're not that good? Like you're, again,

I think it comes back to the looking eight numbers and they're not looking at what actually

they saw. Like look at Zeb's video where he's showing you the diesel that the crank gear slips

and how he fixes it and he built a puller and he takes the gear off and he, well,

like dude, we're talking about like somebody that has figured out something that saves the

customer having to buy a whole other engine. But here's the reality. Most technicians would

never even figure out that problem in that. And Zeb does with a lab scope and he goes,

instead of selling the customer engine, this is my fix for it. And it works flawless. Like

we're talking a one in a thousand technician with him. Like it's just incredible. And that's

just the technical side. The way he set up his business and like Zeb loves it when you say

you can't do something. Because he's literally like, you know, Motherfucker, watch me do it and he

he does. It's amazing. I'm blessed to have the friends that I do. And we don't always see eye

to eye on every little thing. Because like, you know, I'm right there almost on anti flat rate.

And yet Zeb's an example of where he makes it all work and his guys want to be paid that

way. Again, because they're not they're not looking at the book going, Oh, I can't charge

more in the book. Like he's like, Oh, that takes me this amount of time. And I'm going to do it

faster than most of my guys might, you know, and he breaks it down into the middle and he goes,

I'm going to charge all that. The job's got to be worth this. A fuel system on a six seven

is got to be worth this or I ain't doing it. And all these guys are going and Zeb's laughing.

He's like, they're doing fuel systems in six sevens. You do the math, they're paid

themselves minimum wage because they want to pat themselves on the back for being the cheapest

to do it. He's like, I didn't build all this on being the cheapest. And that's where this industry

has screwed up. It's because we think we need to build it on the cheapest and we don't we need to

build it on being the best. And that goes as an ignition that goes as an owner, both right. And

when somebody says, you know, Oh, that's awful expensive or you're you're quite expensive. It's

like, that's a in some ways, that's a thank you, I guess a badge of pride, because it's

like, you know what, by being at whatever pricing I am, I have weeded out a lot of that, the people

that are like, that's too much money compared to what, you know what I mean? So it kind of kind of

feeds you, you don't want to be the cheapest person around. And, and that's just what it is.

Like, and I'm kind of with you, like I'm I'm almost anti flat rate, except for like you

say there's there's people that make it work. And I'm glad that they do.

And there's a way to do it without being slimy.

And his proof of that, right? Yeah. And then what Zeb sets his shop up is so it's like,

if the car gets diagnosed, it gets diagnosed by Zeb. And then the flat rate guys go and

put the parts on. Now, I'm not saying Zeb is not making his hours doing dyke, he is.

But he's an exceptional diagnostic tech too, right? Same as Brian Paul,

like same as my buddy Tommy Markham, same as Sean Miller, same as I could go on and on and on,

you know, Keith Bergen, they're all exceptional. So what might take somebody a day to track down

in a car, they'll track down in a couple of hours, right? We don't have an industry full of

people like that yet. We want to get there. So just because Zeb or Keith or somebody

diagnoses in the Brandon Stekler diagnosis the car in an hour, doesn't mean that that's

we none of us can charge more an hour. That's horseshit, horseshit. As long as we show the

testing that we did and our process and we don't go down rabbit holes that we don't have to go down,

charge as much as you can. If you can justify your time, it's worth it.

You're giving the customer value saying, I didn't put six coils on and then try something.

Right. I didn't try an ECM and then try something, right? I didn't. I eliminated the

ECM. That took me an hour to eliminate. I eliminated the coils. That took me an hour to

eliminate. I eliminated your fuel pump. That took me whatever time to eliminate.

Yes, our process gets better. We can eliminate a lot more things faster, but like,

shit, if I give you three hours' dyague and I show you $3,000 worth of parts on your car

that are still good, that's value. That's way more value than $3,000 that I got to eat

or I got to charge the customer for that didn't fix it because I called in a mobile guy and he

put in a missing relay or he put in a missing fuse. That we don't want in this industry and we

have to get away from that. It's not about flat rate. It's just about showing value. That again

comes down to the advisor role. They have to have the stones to say, you're paying this

amount because this is what we're giving you. We're giving you testing results.

Sometimes you have to show them we're giving you all the results, but that's not all you're

paying for because we have all these things that we have to pay for in order to save you.

I saved a guy. He thought he needed an engine. It was another Ford and it was a variable valve

timing solenoid that was his issue. The previous people that I rented from said,

don't go to Joel because he's ripping you off. He clapped back at them and was like,

look, he just saved me three grand on an engine job for $500 with a diagonal variable valve timing

solenoid replacement as part of that. You have to show that value because if you show that value,

then that customer can go to bat for you and he did. That's how I see it.

You got a customer for life and that's what we always want to build is customers for life.

We don't want to burn them up on every time. Where do you want to be in the next year, Joel?

If I was to drive out and see you visit, you're not driving probably fly out. I would love to

drive. If I come to your little corner of the world, where do you want to be in a year from now?

Well, there's a lot going on for us right now. We're going to have a baby in April.

Congratulations.

I'm kind of gearing up for that. I want to get somebody in here that can work with me

so that I can maybe focus a little bit more on that because obviously,

Jayden is going to be going on, I believe, whatever. Yes, I'm still going to have to be

working in that time, but I need somebody here that can sort of work. I would almost do the

out front stuff and have somebody else out back. That's where I want to be. We're doing things

slow right now because we've only been in this space since May, June. That's where I'd like to go.

I mean, the space that we have here doesn't allow for much more than a couple of people,

so I'd like to maximize on my space. But overall, I just want to provide for my family

that is going to happen. I think the best way to do that is to stop wearing multiple hats and

focus on running the business while I'm down a person and kind of go that way.

Yes, and that goes back to that old, we saw that the conversation come up,

kind of a one-man show like you and you are with Jayden. I don't mean to disturb her,

but when she goes away, that's kind of the whole conversation. Do you hire a really good

service advisor or do you hire a technician and you step into Jayden's role? That's going to be the

tricky thing to figure it out, but I think you're going to get there. I think you've got a little

talent that you need. It's just making money. Who's to say, I made more money by hiring

Jayden out front because that was the whole thing. People think you get a higher more text. No,

if you can't get as much as you can out of, don't bring on another one. Jayden gets as

much as she can out of me. If I can step into that front role and hire somebody and then I'm still there

to help get as much as I can out of that person. That's because the whole working on the business

versus in it or owning a job. Right now, I do own a job. Let's be real here. I don't want it to

be that way forever. That's where I want ahead. I don't know how long it's going to take to

get there, but that's where I want to head. Yeah. There's nothing stupider than a shop

that has seven texts and is convinced they need seven texts and they're not building seven hours a

day for each text. That's dumb. Everybody in the conversation always come back to the text

they're not producing enough, text they're not producing enough. We got to stop that

shit and go, first of all, if you've got seven texts in the back, you need two,

probably three advisors. Then they got to be absolute killers in terms of converting

those DVIs or the inspections or the diag or whatever into repairs. If you don't have that,

hiring another tech doesn't fix it. Hiring a better advisor fixes it. Then we don't have to

blame the tech for the low production of the shop because production, you all heard me say it,

that's more on the ability of people to convert the repairs into sales. That's production.

Yeah. That's what the customer came in for was with a broken vehicle

and you're supposed to produce sales off of that. It's not about, it's a five hour repair. I need it

done in three for production. No, it's five hour repair. You need to get where it's like by the

time you do QC and everything, you get it close to seven with a matrix and you want them to

do it within seven. Right. They said it. Oh my God, you only want them to be 100%. Yeah,

I want them to be 100% because I can show you some absolute killers that are running good stuff.

Their guys are not at 100%. They're at 85, 80 when it's slow. Maybe they're down to 70,

but they're all happy. They're all willing to die for their owner. That's it because again,

it's strong people on the front counter converting what we find into sales. I can't say it enough.

It's not, I can fix the stuff in the back. I can fix the tires. If you can't convert the value

into dollars, you don't even need me. You don't even need me. Right. I'm only costing you money

at that point. Get rid of me. Get rid of me. But get rid of me and realize you've just decided

we're going to change what we are now. Right. I say I'm fine. Just stick to being a tire

shop. Exactly. You can't torture a mechanic out back to try and make that money because when I

first started, I took Murray Voth, I know you've had him on, fantastic fella. I took his

in-class training and he said 90% of your time and money lost is out front. I saw that when

I worked for somebody else. I remember, I wasn't there for very long and they sat us down and

they said, how can we get more out of you? Well, when we start at 7 AM and I go to grab a set of

keys and the boss's wife comes out and doesn't let you take those keys out because she wasn't there

early enough, put key tags on it. That is a couple of minutes of her flipping through a recipe

book, then looking for a key tag. That's time wasted. Yes, I was hourly, so I don't care,

but when you sit there and say, how can we get as much time as we can out of you,

well, it starts out front. Ever since I took Murray's course, I put Jaden on Murray's course

after that and she's implemented those things and it's just made things so much better because

out front is where you lose that. When I get involved in out front, when I try to put my

fingers in there, that's when we freaking lose out. Just let her do that job. That's good

on you. That's the thing. I saw so many things where it's like, okay, Mrs. Smith,

we knew she was coming in for breaks, but the parts aren't here yet. Why are the parts in here?

Well, she called on Monday and the appointment was for Wednesday and I forgot to call on Tuesday

to have the parts shipped over. Okay. So what does the tech do while you're waiting for the

parts to get here? Well, you know, he racks it and takes it apart. No, that's not how

those parts show up and they're wrong, right? Or whatever. Yeah. Going back to the tire

thing. What if you take all four tires off the rims before somebody has pulled them from the storage

bin and they're all sitting there broken down, right? Rims are there polished, do valve stems

ready to go in and you go, we're not putting them tires on. Now what do you do? Do you go and get

them out of the scrap pond, put it back on to get the bay freed up? No, it's shit hits the

fan panic level. That's all avoidable. Again, where? Front counter. Front, yeah. So again,

people that you keep hearing me talk about this production thing before you go after your text and

say, I need you to do more or we're not hitting this because of that. Look at yourself in the mirror.

Look at your, I'm going to say it, no disrespect to your wife. Look at your wife or look at your

daughter, your son that's working on a front counter and go, what are they doing that I

really don't want them to do? And I've asked them not to do it before and they're still

not doing it. Fix that first before you come after your people in the back because your

people in the back, you sour that culture. Guess what? Production doesn't go up. It goes down.

It takes a nosedive and a hurry and that's one thing like everybody says it and I will agree.

Text makes shitty shop owners. I am a shitty shop owner. I'm going to tell you right now,

right? But what I am is I am an advocate for those people and that is one thing I need

to keep in my brain as I move forward and out of the shop and into the other side of things

is you still have to be an advocate for that tech. You still have to realize that a lot of the

shortcomings may not be due to them and there are, there are slow people out there. I get it,

right? But that's, yeah, you can't really say that about you because like you said,

you're doing diet stuff. There's people that change parts and they're really good at it

and there's people that do diet that are really good at it and they may not be good at the

opposite. That's, you can't really help that, right? But who would I be to sit out front and be

like, what can we do to get more out of you full well knowing that I haven't gotten as much as I

could out of you because of my own screw ups or my own shortcomings? Like I said, it's the

little things. It's the having to wait for keys. It's the having to wait for a phone call

or anything like that. Wheel locks. Jesus, don't even get me going on that one.

Yeah, I know. But that's it. You tell that advisor, you tell them, did you ask the customer

what the wheel lock is? No. Well, it's probably in the car somewhere. There goes five minutes.

Is it in the trunk? And that's in the trunk is the best case scenario if they're not like so

many other people we know that the trunk is piled up from the Victoria Day holiday.

Right. That's still all that shit still in the back of the hatchback because they never

bother to carry it in the fucking house. So you're moving 100 pounds of gear just to look

where the spare tire is to see if that's where the wheel. None of that is the technician's

effing job. It is the service advisor's job. And if they won't follow that first step of the

process, booking Mrs. Smith in for tire, fire their ass, get them to hell out of your business

and bring somebody in that will do it the way it's supposed to be done. I don't want to

hear the excuses of like, I forgot or, you know, she says we didn't put it back last time.

I don't want any part of that. Don't want any part of that. None. I'm going to call you up and

I'm going to, my paperwork is going to say, if we have to look for your wheel lock, we're

charging you time. If your wheel lock is missing from the car because this is the first time

we've ever seen it and the dealership used a master set or the dealer tech last time didn't

put it back, I'm charging to remove them. You're signing all this agreeing to because

I am not going to piss around on a one hour tire job and lose an hour looking for a wheel lock key

and then figure out how am I getting the lug nuts and how am I selling the lug nuts? That's

not happening. That ain't happening. It's, you're going to get a hundred dollar bill

for four new lug nuts and the time it takes to remove it. And then we're going to go to

your tire job because I'm not, because if you think those little stupid wheel keys are

stopping anything from happening on your car, that's why they're not. It's stopping efficiency.

Yes. And we need to be efficient and that's how I'm going to do it. And again, if you,

it's a simple thing, get the service information, get the fucking mileage, get the fucking wheel

lock key. If your advisor can't do those two things, fire them, get rid of them. I'm sorry

I said it, but it's the truth. You can tell by the tone of my voice, I've worked with

people that can. Right? And it comes back to you because like here we go. We might be giving

a family member a big Irish chewing when they're not, when they're failing to do it,

but that doesn't excuse it. Doesn't excuse it. You have to perform. I'm expected to perform

every day. You're expected to perform every day. Everybody's expected to perform.

Family is not the problem with that. You know what I mean? Like if you're not willing to

to discipline somebody that should be used to you being that way, why, what makes you think

you'd be able to discipline anybody else? Like that was part of the issue at my first job.

If you guys can't communicate with one another to keep this going forward or one of you scared

of the other or whatever, then why are we doing this? Why am I the one that has to suffer?

Why am I the one that has to stay late or not eat my lunch at noon or whatever?

Because of what you guys are doing. We love the word leadership in this industry. We love it.

And it's a buzzword and it's a true thing. I'm going to piss some people off, man. If you can't

lead your family, you're not going to lead your business. Right. And that's for the people that

put a bunch of their family in their business. You have a friggin' God-given responsibility

to lead them in life, which means you lead them. You set the example and you hold them to it.

If they won't do it, you lead them again by showing them the consequence. You can't just say that

that's the way it's going to be because they've always been that way. It doesn't cut it,

especially when you go to work. It's one thing when it's at home. Don't fuck up your family

relationship by trying to have mediocre performance out of your family at work.

Don't do it. It'll cost you more damage. I saw a guy work for a long time ago, his son and dad.

Son's a fantastic mechanic. They couldn't work together. And when they couldn't work together

anymore, they didn't talk to one another for a decade. You think that's how you want to run

your business? If they're not, then don't waste time. Don't damage the family relationship to

try and make it work. And that was the biggest thing that I said to Jayden. I said, if there's ever a

point where this is going to completely affect our home life, like if we're not going to get along

at home, one of us has got to go. That's the big thing. Joel, I don't want to keep

any more of your time, buddy. It's been a great night and I appreciate you coming on.

I definitely want to have more, pick up more on this because I think we can really go down.

Maybe, maybe Ms. Jayden comes on too. That'd be great. I'm sure she would. She definitely,

she keeps me in check. So she's got boss to say too. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe we do it

before the baby shows up. Maybe we do it after the baby shows up. It's whatever you

think. But I mean, you know, I keep saying I want to try and get to the East Coast one

day and come out there and see it. My parents have been out there and seen it and it's

absolutely beautiful. And shout out to my buddy Adam McBain that's out there now. He just loves it

out there. Like, you know, moose hunting and fishing and bear and the whole thing. Like he

just lives for that life. So, you know, one day I'll be out there and then I'd love to see it.

Yeah. I want to thank you for coming on, man. I'll be thinking of you when I'm down in

North Carolina and you're, you know, still working on rusty vehicles out here in the

Great White North. And then when I go to Vegas, I'll think of you too. And I'll see Murray Both at

Seema. Most likely he'll be there. That's where I met him the first time last year. And he's a

great guy. And I'll be sure to, you know. He remembers everybody. So I'm sure.

He certainly does. I mean, what's amazing about Murray is when I mentioned Murray

and I say where I work in the area, he can rhyme up, rhyme off 10 shop names in my area

that he's had direct contact with at least 10, at least 10. Like he'll even ask me,

well, I think that one was going to be sold to this person out. Yep.

Like he's got his, he's got his thumb right on the pulse of somebody. He's a brilliant,

brilliant man. So he's amazing. Yeah. All right, brother, I will let you go.

And everybody has always, thanks for being here tonight. I love all these. And like I said,

if you want to try and get that trip to Seema Apex, you know, check out the Facebook page,

do what you got to do, cross your fingers, say a little prayer, and you might go to

Vegas with me and look at, we're going to have some fun. So, all right, everybody. See you

next time. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on and share this

episode. I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically

download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their

perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this

journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the change in 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.

DO NOT Discount Your Labor JUST to Get the Job! | Joel McLearn

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