The Jaded Mechanic Podcast Oct 28, 2025

Don't Stay at a Toxic Shop! | David Peacock

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109:53

Part

bull bars

Bull bars are metal bars attached to the front of trucks to protect them from hitting animals or obstacles. They also make the truck look tougher.

Part

light bars

Light bars are bright lights attached to vehicles that help you see better at night or in dark places. They're often used on trucks for work or off-roading.

Term

cat-back exhaust system

A cat-back exhaust system is a part of a car's exhaust that goes from the catalytic converter to the back. People upgrade it to make their car sound better and perform well.

Term

tig welding

TIG welding is a method of joining metal pieces together using a special tool that creates a very hot arc. It's great for making strong and precise welds, especially on thin metal.

Car

Ram 2500

The Ram 2500 is a strong truck designed for heavy work, like towing trailers or carrying heavy loads. It's built to handle tough conditions.

Car

Ram 3500

The Ram 3500 is a bigger version of the Ram 2500, built for even heavier work, like pulling large trailers or carrying very heavy loads.

Term

A 'no start' means the car won't turn on. This can happen for several reasons, like a dead battery or problems with the parts that help start the engine. It's a common issue, especially in cold weather.

Part

battery

The battery is what helps start the car and powers things like lights and radio when the engine is off. In cold weather, batteries can have trouble working properly, which can make it hard to start the car.

Part

starter

The starter is a part that helps the engine start running. If it breaks, the engine won't start, which can happen more often in winter when it's cold.

Part

alternator

The alternator helps keep the battery charged while the car is running. If it stops working, the battery can die, which means the car won't start.

Car

Ford F-250

The Ford F-250 is a tough truck that can carry heavy loads and is often used for work, like construction or towing trailers.

Car

Dodge Caravan

The Dodge Caravan is a family-friendly minivan that has a lot of space inside for passengers and cargo, making it great for trips.

Term

heavy duty

Heavy duty vehicles are built to carry heavy loads and do tough jobs. They are often used for work like towing trailers or carrying large amounts of cargo.

Term

light duty

Light duty vehicles are those that are not built for heavy work. They are usually used for everyday driving and can carry lighter loads.

Term

310T

The 310T is a type of truck made for carrying heavier loads and doing tougher jobs than regular cars.

Term

310S

The 310S is a type of vehicle made for regular use, not heavy work. It’s designed for everyday driving.

Term

trailer

A trailer is something you attach to a vehicle to carry things. It doesn’t have its own engine and is pulled by a car or truck.

Term

frame jacking

Frame jacking is when you lift a car by its frame instead of the body. It's important to do it correctly to avoid damaging the car or making it unsafe.

Term

FRM module

The FRM module is a part in some BMW cars that controls things like lights and windows. If it has problems, those features might not work properly.

Term

extended warranty

An extended warranty is like insurance for your car that helps pay for repairs after the original warranty ends. It can save you money if something goes wrong later on.

Brand

BMW

BMW is a well-known car brand from Germany that makes luxury cars and sports cars. They are famous for their quality and performance.

Part

ignition coil

An ignition coil helps start the engine by sending a strong electric spark to the spark plugs. Without it, the engine won't run properly or may not start at all.

Car

Ford Mustang

The Ford Mustang is a popular sports car that many people recognize because of its cool design and speed. It's been around for a long time and is loved for being fun to drive, which is why it often comes up in conversations about cars.

Term

EV

An EV is a car that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. They usually need less maintenance because they have fewer parts that can break down.

Term

ICE

ICE means Internal Combustion Engine, which is the kind of engine that most cars have. It uses fuel like gas to run, unlike electric cars that use batteries.

Part

sway bar link

A sway bar link is a part of the car's suspension that helps keep the car stable when turning. It connects the sway bar to other parts of the suspension.

Part

head gasket

The head gasket is a part of the engine that keeps oil and coolant separate. If it breaks, it can cause leaks and engine problems.

Term

transmission cooler lines

Transmission cooler lines are tubes that help keep the transmission fluid cool. If they leak, it can cause serious problems with the car's transmission, leading to expensive repairs.

Car

Chevrolet Equinox

The Chevrolet Equinox is a popular SUV that many people drive. Some versions of it have a problem where they use more oil than usual, which can cause engine trouble if not fixed.

Part

fuel injector

A fuel injector is a part of the engine that sprays fuel into the engine to help it run. It makes sure the fuel mixes well with air for better performance.

LIVE

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I equated to like when that generation had pet rocks.

You know, some guy made a billion dollars

because he went and pulled all these river rocks out

and drew faces on them, and this is your pet rock.

I think that that's the generation of drivers

we're now dealing with,

where they want the most low-maintenance thing

they can get.

And they think that an EB is going to be that.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen,

to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic Podcast.

I just have to, for a minute,

give thanks because in Canada,

it's our thanksgiving weekend.

And, you know, so people are like,

well, what's that?

Well, think about it.

It's your Columbus Day.

It's our Canada, our thanksgiving.

And, you know, we don't have any kind of like,

we didn't discover anything on this particular day

like you guys did, but it's still an important day to us.

And I'm kind of doped up on Turkey

and gravy and everything.

So if I, you know, seem a little giddy, that's why.

So, and with that, I have another Canadian on.

You guys are sick of that by now, aren't you?

Right? But I mean, you know,

we're trying to make it into the 51st date.

So I got a friend of mine tonight named David Peacock

from Calgary, Alberta.

David, how are you?

Good, man. How are you?

Very good. Like I said,

I'm running on that dopamine from the Turkey

and the germinthepaptin or whatever chemical

it's supposed to be that's supposed to be

make people sleepy.

So if you see me guzzling on coffee, that's why.

It's because I'm just trying to stay awake.

But yeah, I feel, yeah, I feel, don't worry.

Mine's coming to Monday.

So I'm counting down hours.

Yeah. I'm hoping to, I won't go fishing either tomorrow

or tomorrow and Sunday.

So we tried to kick it off and get it out of the way today

so that we can, because the weather this morning sucked.

But if the weather is supposed to be on the upswing,

we might get a, we might have a couple of really good

mornings. So, and what's it like in Calgary?

It is pretty much the same.

It's cold in the morning today.

It was like 20 degrees for most of the day.

And then now it's five degrees Celsius, obviously.

But yeah, mornings like tomorrow is supposed to be

minus 10 and then zero all day.

And then Tuesday is supposed to be like 20 degrees again.

So, yeah.

Now where in Calgary are you?

I'm in like the northwest, northeast section of Calgary.

So close to the airport for reference sake.

Yeah. I've never been the farthest.

I've never been very far west at all.

So, okay.

One day I want to definitely.

I haven't been that far east. So, I feel you.

Yeah.

Trade for a week. It'll be cool, man.

What's, kind of tell everybody what you do

and your shop situation, all that kind of stuff.

So, I'm obviously mechanic, red seal, journeyman,

all that fun stuff.

Yeah.

I've been in the industry for almost 15 years.

So, started when I was 20-ish give or take

and then just been kind of hopping around

seeing what's going to work best and what's out there.

Spent most of my career at the same shop.

I worked there for about 10 years.

And then after a long stint and getting my license

and all that jazz, I decided,

got to see what else is out there.

So, I went from all independence.

I've never been in the dealer.

So, I did pretty much small independent

to performance to a large independent.

Right.

And then I went mobile actually for a little bit.

Oh, cool.

Went back into a small independent

and then went into actually like a chain independent kind of store.

Right.

So, I've been everywhere.

And actually right now, I'm back to being mobile again.

So, very cool.

Pretty much tried everything at this point.

Separate dealerships, obviously.

I see all the time like different head hunting companies

will post like relocation to Alberta, right?

For mechanic jobs.

Like there seems to be a big shortage out there especially.

Absolutely.

I don't know if they all wind up in the Mac, David, or?

Not necessarily.

They're really struggling to get guys up there,

I think the last couple of years.

Obviously post COVID kind of messed everything up,

but they're hiring guys.

They're trying to get the fly in fly out thing going.

So, they're paying them a premium,

but you work in 10 days, 12, 14 hours straight.

So, it's like, you really, you're making a lot of money,

but the personality, usually you spend a lot of money

when you're up there.

You come back, you spend a lot of money.

So, to go up there, it's not fun work.

It's not fun to work up north.

It's shitty weather.

It's cold.

It's expensive.

Yeah.

So, for people that are not familiar,

like our American friends, when we say the Mac,

what we mean is Fort McMurray, Alberta,

which is kind of like the boom town for the oil sands,

and essentially is a boom town in Canada

for a long, long time going back 20 years or now.

It's been kind of the very economic epicenter

of a lot of good paying jobs, very high cost of living though.

Like he said, friggin cold.

And being in the Mac, like he says,

it's a lot of you're almost like camp work.

So, you're going in and you're staying for like 10 days

and to put you up in a job,

and then you can fly out for 10 days.

A lot of guys sit up there and like gamble a lot,

drink a lot, you know, smoke a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah, if you get hooked on like the gym,

instead of hooked on the strip club,

you can come home with your money.

But I know more than one person that for my area,

because I can remember David like 10 years ago,

seeing ads and was like they'd pay technicians

and dealerships like $55 an hour flat rate.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, that's crazy.

I worked with a guy when I first joined the industry,

his brother worked up north,

Grand Prairie at a Ford dealership.

And all they did was at that time, accessories,

they're putting bull bars, light bars,

pretty much just decking trucks out

for these guys driving up into the rigs.

And they were making 50 bucks an hour flat rate

to put LED lights in like crazy simple work.

But that obviously changes with the whale up and down, right?

Yeah.

And I know like I've never seen a couple guys from here

who were there and they're like, well,

I'm going to go in three years, you know,

and I'll come back here and buy a house.

I'll come back here and get some last words.

And a couple of them lasted like one year

and they came back like broke.

Yeah.

And couldn't handle some of them.

It's just they couldn't be away from the family.

It's all they got out.

And it was like, wow, I didn't realize

how much it actually costs to live out there.

You know, that's easy.

A lot of people go out there guys with like

and take a win of Bego like an RV

and hope to like live in that and that's can be.

But you don't want to be a cold man.

You don't want to be in an RV in Canada

in the wintertime.

It's not fun.

Nobody wants to be there.

Yeah.

So you kind of why why all the moving around

if I can ask just like always looking

for a new opportunity or a culture or it's mostly

a culture thing, I think for me.

My stint at the first shop was

I wanted to play smart, get my license,

get all that jazz out of the way,

learn as much as I can at that point.

It was a do anything shop, right?

So I started as an exhaust guy.

So they taught me how to weld,

bend pipe, expand, do all that jazz.

Eventually got the apprenticeship

and then spent my time just trying

to figure it all out there.

After 10 years, you know,

growing pains, I'm wanting to see the world

they're not really seeing where I'm seeing

where my career is going.

So a lot of clashing and a heavy shift

in culture very quickly.

So it felt like a good time to walk away.

And then after that, it's been

like most guests in yourself have expressed, right?

It's the culture.

It's the how you're treated, how you're paid,

how you spoke to parts, everything.

So it's like a bit of a duck-duck goose

just trying to find a place that treats you with respect

almost at this point.

Yeah. I mean, people don't believe you,

but I mean, I've talked to so many people

and it's like I left a job for less money

because I couldn't stand the way they were treating me.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. Absolutely.

I've left dealership jobs where it's like

it might pay the same for a flat rate hour,

but you knew you were going to make less hours.

So you just knew you're going to make less money.

Yeah.

But it was like I couldn't stand being

treated the way I was being treated by that,

say that service manager or that, you know,

I was the guy that would grab a parts guy by the neck

and pull across the counter because it's like, you know,

you had everybody that was on you like,

I got to get this done.

Got to get this done.

Got to get this done because we're waiting,

because we're waiting.

And you know, the parts guy is on his phone, right?

Or he's playing with a fidget spinner or something.

And I'd be like, hey, and then you're lit back.

And I get it now while they're lit back

because they're not getting paid squat.

That's a whole other conversation.

But I mean, I had lots of managers tell me like,

everybody else is a support staff for the technician.

That's what they said.

That's their role.

That's their thing is to keep it, the wheels moving,

keep the wheels turning, keep them producing ours.

So when I would see that lackadaisal like attitude piss

on you tech, I came unglued.

I'm not a good person when I want to work flat rate.

I'm not good.

When it comes down to what you take home

at the end of the day and frankly,

like the level of perfection we have to operate

at most of the time, I think it's hard to see people

for lack of better terms in those environments,

piss your time away for no reason other than selfishly

to what play fucking Candy Crush or something.

Like what is it?

Right?

Like what is so important that we can't just

get the parts going?

Yeah.

And I get it.

Like, you know, some of them, it's like it doesn't matter

whether they get a hundred parts off the shelf

for the technician that day or 50, they're only paid the same.

Right?

And they think, well, the visitor you guys are,

you're making more money.

Not always the case because I don't show you my paycheck.

Like I could be doing a job that I'm not even

going to get paid for.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, all right, all right.

But the idea that they just sit there and go,

like, man, like if you want to, yeah, parts guy,

if you want to make more money, go be a tech.

Oh, wait, you can't.

Oh, sorry.

Well, let's stick in your lane.

Give me the parts.

Let's go.

Yeah.

What, so when you say you did a lot of exhaust,

is that a lot of like custom stuff?

Or is that a lot of like one-off kind of like repair this

and repair that?

Because that's most of my exhaust training.

I never did a custom system in my life.

You know, mine was always like fix this because,

you know, we can't get that.

I did both.

So this shop had two full-size vendors.

So we did everything from hot rods, muscle cars,

imports to full systems, cat-backs.

Never built manifolds or did any crazy tig welding,

but we had contracts with like self-land transportation,

which is like the big cheese wagon buses.

So we'd get those coming in and we'd put them on this

huge 30,000-pound hoist and we would rebuild the exhaust

from the turbo back.

Right.

RVs, semis, pretty much.

I've built literally exhaust on everything.

I've cut holes in boxes to build stacks.

I've done it all.

So it was really cool.

It's cool to learn.

And at that point, I was as green as they came.

And literally did not know anything

and they took a chance on me.

So I appreciated it.

But yeah, I've done it all, man,

from Ferrari to bigger semis.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Yeah.

You see some neat stuff out in the oil patch trucks,

kind of those things run into the rigs, eh?

Yeah.

Some unique builds to save the case.

And some is pretty impressive too,

like what those trucks will do.

Essentially, it's like somebody started out with a Ram 2500

or whatever, a 3,500.

When you see it done, you're like,

that thing, I think you could go on the moon.

Yeah.

It's ready for the world, man.

Yeah.

A lot of money.

Oh, yeah.

$100,000 trucks are nothing out there.

It's crazy to see, man.

People, your average person doesn't realize,

but when we drive around and we just see the cars

on the road, right, you think a big truck,

but I see that's a $150,000 truck

and there's another and another and another and another.

And it's just like staggering how expensive cars are

that your average person drives, right?

Yeah.

So to go into the mobile thing,

like how did that, because that, I mean,

that's a, I guess I should say,

traditionally, I guess what the image we get of a mobile guy

right now, what seems to be in the industry is a lot

of like a diagnostic programming kind of guy, right?

And you'll see a couple guys that are like out there

on TikTok and they're like gone a completely different way.

Like they're a nuts and bolts mobile guy.

Yeah.

And they don't get into too much.

Diag like, were you kind of right in the middle?

So yeah, like I've been, I really enjoy Diag.

I really enjoy the trouble shooting, solving.

I enjoy that stuff.

But my whole career, I've been a nuts and bolts guy.

Like I'm a big dude, I go to any shop.

They're like big guy transmissions engines

and it's just, you get pushed into it, right?

So the mobile thing for me

was more of a, I did the 10 years stint at my first shop,

did performance for a year.

And then the mobile is actually a subcontracting job.

So they pretty much just give me a van.

I outfit it with whatever I need.

And then they just give me work.

So that, at that point in my career,

hadn't had a lot of positive affirmation on my skill set

up to that point.

So to me it was, you know what,

if I can't get it from other people

and I can't be taught how to do it,

the only thing I can do possibly is throw myself into

an environment where it's only me.

And if I can make it,

I'm going to find out pretty quick if I can or can't do it.

Right?

Yeah.

So, yeah, I just kind of jumped in and I took the job

and I bought a bunch of Diag stuff and scanners and shit

and just started.

That's very cool.

It'll happen.

That takes some balls too, right?

Because, but I understand what you're saying about,

if you can't get kind of affirmation from your people

around you that you can make it,

you might as well go try it yourself.

And I mean, I've had my toe dipped in a couple of times

there where it was like I was going to just like

do the same thing.

I was going to buy a van for scan tools,

a service information system,

and just go around and the way Keith Perkins from L1 talks

about like he would just go to every shop,

hand out a flyer and go here.

I'll fix them problem cars that are driving you nuts,

right?

Most automotive conferences, unfortunately,

only focus on one side of the shop.

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Is that kind of you took that same approach or?

So that's kind of the now that I'm I did the mobile thing

and I went back into shops for a little bit

and then I came back to mobile.

And now this stint around is the cool thing

with where I'm at now is it's very little investment

apart from paying them to rent the van.

So I get the kind of pretend to be a shop

and pretend to do a business without actually

taking all the risk.

So this time around, it's very much

nose to the work.

Can I do this past just, you know, basic work?

And like, can I make this a business for me

instead of working for somebody else again?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's kind of so how did that come about?

Like to be doing it now as a contractor,

that kind of sublet or whatever you want to call it

because like, did they had did you start out

doing work for them as yourself?

And then they kind of were like, hey, you know,

we're going to develop this position for you

or tell me about that.

So the company is actually based around

everybody's a contractor.

So it's based out of Edmonton, Alberta.

And then most of the employees outside of Mechanics,

they are offshore.

So it's kind of like a call center situation.

But they have techs in Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary,

random cities, odds and sobs throughout Canada.

And all of us are subcontractors.

So we do all remote interviews, everything like that.

And then they have one kind of main guy in the city

who just gives you a van and then they just set you free.

And the subcontracting thing initially scared me

because it was different, but with the perks of it

and the no hold.

So it's autonomy and agency, I think is what it is for me.

It's they don't dictate my schedule.

I tell them what hours I want to work.

I tell them what I want to do and don't want to do.

There's a lot of...

It's nice because they don't know anything

about cars or automotive shops.

So they're just like, you just tell us what you want

and how you want to do it.

And we'll try our best to fit that mold.

So we kind of have guys in cities who...

Vancouver, there's a guy that's a lot of programming

and dyague here.

There's a new guy that just started.

He likes nuts and bolts.

So I'm looking at maybe investing in a programming

and more dyague to fill the gap for them.

So it's been a blessing and a curse in its own

with working with them.

But that seems so weird though, that they're in that business

but yet they don't know anything about cars or running a shop.

Makes for some interesting conversation sometimes.

Must be a need in the industry for it though.

Somebody can come in like that and make it work.

You know what I mean?

We stay busy for sure.

I work 10 hours, four 10s and I'm pretty much busy all the time.

We have a couple of fleets.

All in all, it's a good gig.

It pays well.

The hours are great.

It's just not my own, I think is what it is.

How is it in the wintertime?

It fucking sucks.

I'm not going to beat around the bush man.

The layers I put on, I went to the gym last winter

and I get to the change room and it's like coveralls, hoodie, jacket, more things.

It's like six or seven layers of lockers full of just clothes to wear.

And not enough room for my bag even.

So it's like, man, what am I doing sometimes?

I mean people, I can remember that too.

Like I would come in and I would, I remember walking into a McDonald's one time

and I was like, it was during one of the coldest weeks last two years ago, three years ago.

And I was doing road service all morning, one truck after another, right?

Just wouldn't start.

And it was basic stuff.

Go out and hook the truck on, start putting some charge in the batteries, right?

Like pick the fuel filters off, put some anti-gel in, fill them back up with these

and get the truck going, right?

I remember going into like the McDonald's where it was like, it was sweltering hot.

And then start peeling off layers to sit down and take like a coffee breaker.

And like they're just, I'm piling the clothes up in the booth and people are looking at me

like you're crazy.

But it's like, yeah, you go stand out there for an hour though and see,

you know, how you would dress, right?

Like, yeah, dude, it gets cold quick.

But like anybody, I don't know, in my part of the world, anybody will tell you

that works in Fort Mac, anything after minus 35, it's all the same.

So like, you just have to dress for minus 35.

Anything after that is, you don't feel the difference.

Man, it could be minus 40 or it could be minus 60.

It's all the same on your skin at that point.

It's just more exposure, right?

Like you can't expose it for as long.

You know what I mean?

Like if you take your hat off, your hat's off for 10 seconds or 30 seconds, right?

If you take it off at all.

Yeah, we don't get like minus 60 too often here.

I've seen it like minus 40 up and out and that's cold, right?

And that's when you've been down near the lake and it's been whipping off the lake.

That's when she gets really cold here.

But yeah, I guess.

Yeah, you guys would be more, be more human where you guys are, right?

So it's cold to your bone.

It's a damp, damp kind of.

Yeah, we're lucky it's dry here.

So it feels weird on the skin and makes you feel like hell.

But we don't get that like piercing cut through you cold like you guys do.

Yeah, it's a different, it's a different thing for sure.

And then in summertime, it's the same thing.

You could get just swelter heat, eh?

Like it's just brutal.

I mean, I'm two blocks from the lake.

You know what I mean?

Like the lake can tear out two blocks.

There's always a breeze.

Always.

Sounds nice actually.

Sometimes it's nice to just have that regular like,

we have such crazy swings here with the mountains and stuff, man.

Yeah, it's not terrible.

But what's, so if you get into the wintertime,

does it change the kind of jobs that you'll take on?

It does.

Winter is a lot of no starts, right?

So I'm doing a lot of the work I do in compared to a shop.

It's going to be a lot simpler.

So I'm doing a lot of no starts, a lot of batteries,

a lot of starters, a lot of alternators, stuff like that.

I would say winter is probably more of like,

let's get you back on the road and it's an emergency.

We're just going to try to get you to spring.

And then once we get spring, we can take care of as much as possible kind of thing.

But to work out and to spend too much time in the cold,

when it's that cold, it's just not conducive, long jib wise, right?

Yeah.

I remember going and trying to put like,

you know, a guy ripped his bulkhead fittings right off the front of a trailer,

pulling away, right?

New driver unhooked everything on the truck.

What the air life was for the trailer,

of course, rips right off the front of the trailer.

And the sin flex, I remember being so cold, right?

I was trying to fix it and he could not.

It kept just cracking and cracking and cracking.

And I was like, I call him and said, I'm done.

Quit.

Not happening.

Not already happened.

I said, I know it was supposed to be Friday.

It was going to be my last night.

It's Tuesday.

I'm done.

Yeah.

That's it.

You know, it's in a yard somewhere in the yard.

It's only like 10 miles from the shop.

So it would have been a pretty easy tow.

But they just said, I'm going to pay the tow.

Yeah.

It's always that stuff.

Definitely.

Yeah.

And that's the kind of part of the battery thing.

That always surprised me because it's like,

and again, you're working for fleets.

Like they know the batteries in the trucks are three years old.

They know they're three years old.

They know they've never had a truck go four years without needing batteries.

Yeah.

So why in like October do they just not pull the truck in and put

four new batteries in it and kick it out of the door?

Questions as good as mine, man.

Like sometimes fleets, like you can,

you could spoon feed them on how to take care of their car.

Like you could essentially write yourself out of a job

and they'll look at it and be like,

nah, we'll call you when it's broken.

And you're like, whatever, man.

You're going to pay for it either way.

So.

And you're going to pay a lot more when I come out.

Exactly.

Right.

When it's the dead of winter and 30 people need batteries

and now the priority needs a battery.

Yeah.

You're paying a premium.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

I don't, fleet managers are funny.

They really are.

Like I've said on other episodes,

I've never met one yet that was A, ever a mechanic?

Or B, if they had been a mechanic,

it had been like so long ago

that I don't think they ever really, truly were,

you know what I mean?

Still relevant to what the conversation was happening like.

The first shop I worked in,

we ended up getting a fleet with the Calgary Zoo.

Oh, cool.

So we were taking care of all their odds and sods vans.

Pretty much they had a slew of F-250s

and a slew of Dodge Caravans.

That was that was it.

And when they came in,

they effectively approved or approved,

I bet you 99% of the work we called,

the first one we had an F-250,

we called,

they wanted the whole car looked over front to back.

We called like the weather stripping

and like odds and sods, things like that.

They did everything.

It was like a $30,000 bill.

These trucks were coming in

and we were pumping these trucks out.

Like we were just a fleet shop at that point.

And he used to be mechanic

and he took care of like,

you know, light bulbs and odds and sods.

And when he found us,

he was like,

I know enough of what you do

and what the problems are

and I understand it.

So I know that if you do it,

it's going to stay on the road for a while.

Perfect.

And it was great for a while

and he eventually got fired

and a new guy came in

and that fleet left right away.

And that's what that's always the same thing.

Like they never look at like,

well, we never had one breakdown

or, you know,

we never had to call out a tow

for a boost or something.

But they just said like,

holy crap.

Like they spent, you know,

$200,000 last year

and the last guy only spent $80,000.

And the last guy spent $80,000 on repairs

and, you know, $150,000 on service calls.

Yeah, exactly.

You're paying for it somewhere, right?

Yeah.

Like it's,

the fleet's going to cost you the same

to operate yearly.

Like, I can remember

my old job at the bus garage.

The only time he saved money

on fleet maintenance

is during COVID

when he wasn't allowed to run.

So in the time,

the bus just sat there

and we still had to safety them,

but they're not burning fuel.

They're not running tires off them.

They're not running brakes off them.

Like they're just sitting.

Jesus.

I still had to be safety to stay valid.

But like he could look back

all these years and go,

yep, he could tell you that the

the bus is going to next year

is going to cost,

you know,

10 grand more to run

because it's going to need

and a lot of it

was a lot more AC work.

You know, after the five year mark,

that bus begins to like leak refrigerant

and people are always like,

well, I don't understand.

They build the piping

to plumbing is all in the floor

of the other thing, front to back.

So there's no way

if it's got a leak,

you're ever going to find it.

You know, like this action.

Yeah.

But and it's not a big leak

because if it was,

you'd be able to fix it.

But it's a pinhole somewhere

and then died doesn't show up

because it's a bus that just wipes it off

like it's blowing your own.

So they're throwing in

probably two more charges a year

that's adding all this cost to,

you know, whatever.

It was it was fascinating,

but I was just like,

this is ridiculous.

Just no thanks.

No, thanks.

You know, I had no interest

in the tour bus side of it at all.

Like, no, no, it doesn't,

you know, because it was like,

I can remember you had to

like, I would have to go

mop out the bathroom

because they all had like,

even like an economy line,

you know, school bus kind of thing.

What do we call a short bus

up here for the kids?

You know, it had a bathroom on it,

right?

So, hey, like,

listen to animals, man.

So I'm like, when they say no,

I'll stick to the transits

that have no bathroom on it.

Like, it's just

yeah, it's a good line

to draw on the sand.

I think I don't want my vehicles

to have bathrooms.

And I think I'll stick

to the the functionality part of it.

Pretty bad when you're

picking a transit to work

on over some other stuff,

like those things.

Yes, they are.

They truly are.

So bad.

What's some, so what like,

for the people that are you 310S

and 310T?

So, I don't think we have

the same like certifications

as you guys do.

My, I'm technically like

an AST journeyman Red Seal.

And that's where it ends for me.

There's no number affiliation

because I think that's how

you guys differentiate

like light duty and heavy duty.

Right?

310S is automotive.

310T is truck.

And then I think they added

another one that's 310 something

which is like trailer, you know.

So you can go out

and do anything

from an air brake chamber then

to like.

No, so I'm just 310S then

technically.

Yeah, no heavy duty on my end.

Okay.

It's just purely light duty

is what I handle.

Very cool.

Yeah.

No, and see, I'm not supposed to

have ever touched, you know,

air brakes and whatnot.

Now, up here, you can get

a kind of a supplement license

or used to be as you were

endorsed to drive the truck.

Then you could kind of like

if you went underneath the truck

and could set up your own,

you know, brakes or slack adjuster

set that thing.

Then you, they wouldn't really

mind it if you went and did

any other repair.

Now it's getting really hard to

it's getting really hard to find

truck mechanics up here.

It's getting really hard to find

automotive mechanics, but the

truck mechanics locally,

I guess we had like three shops

shut down when we brought in

the new way we did because we,

a year ago, they changed the way

we do safeties now.

So, and a lot of the shops said,

I'm done.

Don't wait, because we had that

now actually has to be done with

a tablet and you're logged in

with the provincial government

when you do it.

So you're actually there,

you're uploading photos to them

and they're looking at everything

you take photos is all being

documented.

And these shops decided I'm not

bothering to do that.

No, I want to like,

like you have to pay for the

tablet.

Is there like a buy in there?

Well, there's a buy in,

but I mean, it's no different

really than like,

because the old way used to be

you just did a yellow sticker

for a commercial unit, right?

And it was an automotive unit

being sold.

You just had to keep a logbook

and that was it of what you

safety didn't want it needed

and blah, blah, blah.

This tablet thing, I think it

was they were like looking at

it going, oh my God, it's

going to take like three hours

to do a safety and

oh my God, like I can't like,

and I think a lot of it was

they were they were passing

stuff that by the by the book

shouldn't have been passed, right?

Because now like frame jacking

is a big one on the trucks, right?

They want pictures of that

and if you fail it for

jacking of the frame,

they want to see it.

While everybody knew there's a

lot of trucks that are 20

years old around here

that have got substantial

frame jacking,

but they're still rolling up

down the road.

Now, because you actually have

to have a picture,

we can't pass a lot of these trucks.

It's all going to come in

in like an influx now, right?

Yeah, so we have a lot of the

truck shops now are trying to

hire automotive techs

and then they're going to

train them up to be truck techs

back in the apprenticeship program

try to get some of their hours

like credited,

write the exam,

all that kind of stuff

because as long as there's

a licensed truck guy

overseeing their work,

air quotes overseeing,

it's all legal, legal, legal.

And I talked about we had a,

there's a local one that she

took a break chamber

in the side of the head

and came up with her

because she wasn't being,

she wasn't being a mentor.

You don't know, you don't know, right?

Yeah.

And it wasn't like she did

like stupid.

I think she just,

there was something where

she thought she had a cage

and she didn't have a quite

cage and it was broken

on the inside.

And I don't know the whole

story, but she's going to be

okay.

That's what I mean.

Like they were running an ad

every week trying to hire

automotive techs

and now that's happened.

They're not hiring

or any automotive tech.

Let's look the other way.

So yeah, it's,

there's the shortage is huge, man.

Huge, you know.

Yeah, I think it's

similar vein here.

You see the same places

hiring for months

and months and months

and months.

It seems like

either most places

keep their core group

or people leave

into other industries

or it's always the same

dealers, the same truck shops,

whatever it is,

always looking for people.

Yeah.

Every dealer in my local area

is trying to hire a technician,

everyone.

Yeah, same here.

Yeah, at least one.

Most of them would take two,

three if they could get them.

Oh, easily.

Yeah.

It's most of them

seems like you're

fairly understaffed right now.

Long,

long wait times I bet.

Yeah.

It's two weeks,

three weeks.

I worked on a BMW

a couple of weeks ago.

I need to go to the dealership,

had an FRM module

failure,

mid repair,

went to the dealer

and we squeaked in

because it was a Friday

of a long weekend

and they pretty much told us

though if it was anything

outside of a basic update,

it probably would have been

a month before they even

looked at the car.

It just sits in the lot,

collects dust,

a month later,

maybe we'll get to it.

That's not saying.

I mean, it's one thing

to like look at it

and be that long for a part.

You know what I mean?

I get that,

especially the

electronic module stuff.

Right.

I totally understand that

because the parts supply chain.

but the

oh, yeah,

we were even a month

before a technician

can look at it.

Like, I mean,

if I was running a dealer

tomorrow,

I'd be like,

well, I mean,

I probably get my wrist

slapped for it,

but I would probably be like,

wait a minute,

it's retail.

Yeah,

bring it in right now.

Oh, it's warranty.

And yeah,

it's gonna be a month.

It's not like I would be

doing it right because

like stack your deck,

right?

Make your

absolutely.

Yeah.

But I guess it's just

they look at his appointment,

appointment, appointment,

appointment.

And

wow.

Yeah,

I think they just take them

in his numbers

when my buddy took the car

when he showed up.

Yeah.

Before they even knew

what the problem was.

He explained it to the lady

at the counter

and she just told them

it's probably gonna be

a thousand bucks.

Is that are you okay with

that?

And he explained to her,

well, you know,

pretty sure this is a

warranty thing,

like extended warranty,

BMW,

all that jazz.

And she just really wanted

to verify,

are you okay with spending

a thousand dollars?

And he was like,

you know what?

How about you just look

at the car

and then we'll talk

about the thousand dollars.

Yeah.

And I don't know how

it got to the front of the

line,

but I had a conversation

with BMW Canada

and they clarified with me

that yeah,

no, it's definitely

under warranty.

And then shortly after

they looked at the car.

So I don't know what

happened there,

but either way,

the car got looked at

and no thousand dollar

charge.

But so do you think

there's a lot of people

David that are getting,

I don't want to use

the term duped,

but they're probably like

getting duped

when they go in there

and they don't really know,

especially on that high end

car line, right?

Because a lot of those people

just don't know

and a thousand bucks

to them is like

not necessarily the same

as a thousand bucks

to somebody else, right?

So it goes a thousand bucks

and it's done next week

and they go sure.

And you know,

really if it had to go

through the warranty

process,

it might be a month

and it wouldn't cost

a thousand bucks.

You think stuff like

that's happening a lot or?

I think so.

Yeah.

I think it's,

I think this is warranty.

I feel like it doesn't even

mean anything anymore

to like a customer

because like when you show up

to the dealership,

like every brand's

having problems with

these crazy warranty claims

and blah, blah, blah,

and you need to pay for this

just for us to warranty

this engine

and all this like

underhanded kind of

shady shop

business that they're running.

I guarantee if,

because even for me,

when I looked up that FRM module

for the failure,

I went through

identification and all data

and couldn't find an actual

labeled date

for the extended warranty.

I had to call a local

independent BMW shop

and they informed me

and emailed me

the revised version

for the module.

Otherwise,

it would have gone to the dealer.

He would have paid a thousand

bucks to replace the module

that BMW has stated

is to be replaced

up until I think next year

for all cars

for like the last 20 years.

So somebody's paying that.

I don't doubt it for one second

and I bet you most people

are paying it

unless they have a guy

like us to be,

hey, I don't think

that you should pay this.

This is not cool.

Yeah, like it blows my mind

because way back

when I was in the dealer

and right or wrong,

you know, like if I diagnosed

the car and I needed

an ignition coil

and the car was like,

you know,

under warranty of any kind,

well, it just got the ignition coil

and they didn't like

the customer didn't pay

for a diagram or anything like that.

Like it was just all part and parcel.

Now it's like,

I'm looking at stuff

and it's like,

I have Kia tell you right.

And it's just got

a failed ignition coil.

It's like,

I don't know,

it's got 53,000 kilometers on it.

Right.

So it's well within the three years,

60,000.

Hey,

and I do the real swap

the coil from one cylinder

or the other real quick,

the misfire moves.

Okay.

Coil's dead.

You don't need to go.

Send it over the dealer

and the dealer's like,

okay, well, we're going to charge

the, you know,

and I work going to use car lot.

We're going to have to charge you guys to

die again.

And I'm like,

you don't have to charge us to die again.

I already told you what's wrong.

Here's all my notes.

Like, oh, yeah.

But, you know,

if it's not something covered,

I'm like,

not something covered

it's ignition coil.

Like your paperwork,

but I'm pretty sure

within 60,000 kilometers,

it's still covered.

They go back and like,

okay, it's covered.

Like, you know,

we'll have to order one.

And I'm thinking,

yeah, I just have to order one.

Like this is a common thing.

Like, don't

yeah.

I'm not on the shelf.

Go out to the PDI car line up

and grab one and stick it in my car

and get my car back.

I got a customer who wants to buy this.

Tell you right.

Right.

Like that's what you want to say,

but it's that shit just drives me.

It's just deaf ears at that point.

Right.

Like,

yeah.

Same thing with like the fleet managers.

You could write it out for them

on how we can progress

effectively and efficiently.

And it's just not going to get anywhere.

It sucks because like,

you know,

and I mean,

I've never been a service advisor.

I don't know if I ever going to be or not.

I have that dream that might happen.

But like,

the level that I see them now,

and I know last couple episodes,

I've been really beaten up on them.

And I think it's deserved,

but a lot of them,

it seems like they have never done

the job in their life.

Yeah.

And then in a minute,

it's like, oh, Mrs. Jones,

we're going to have to charge you

maybe to check this out.

And I'm like,

is this coming from just commission base?

Because if it's coming from commission base,

I understand then,

why you might be trying to do that.

Right or wrong,

you know,

I can kind of understand it.

I don't approve it,

but I can kind of understand.

This nonsense of it seems like

they don't even know

what's covered,

what's not.

You print out a TSB,

you take a TSB into the handed to them,

and they still say,

oh, well,

we're going to have to have my guy look at that.

Like, you don't,

you're guys going to find the same information

I'm going to have.

He's going to print you that piece of paper

and hand it back to you.

Yeah.

Right.

He should be anyway.

They should be like,

that's the part that just drives me.

I don't know.

I guess there's a shortage of advisors too.

There has to be if there's a shortage tax,

because yeah,

I think the tech shortage is fed into

the service advisor shortage

and probably vice versa.

And it's,

it's just an automotive industry shortage

at this point,

like because it was like a couple of years ago

or last year even,

where the union workers

of the automotive factories

wanted to go on strike.

And it's,

it's across the board, man,

that there's,

there's a,

there's a problem.

And it's not just with us.

I think it's with a lot of things right now.

So how does it work for you?

Do you have like,

are you dispatched or did somebody who just

within your area call you

and tell you what they have going on?

And you,

a little bit of both.

Yeah.

So like,

so I worked for 10.

So Tuesday to Friday,

I'm available to this company for

10 hours a day, obviously.

They pretty much dispatched me my work

a day in advance usually.

But then if there's no work,

I find my own work,

do what I got to do,

get my own side of the things

flowing as well.

So they kind of just work

as like a secretary

for that end of it.

And then I hunt

and find my own work as well.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're responsible for source and parts?

Yeah, source parts,

diet,

repair,

customer talk,

literally everything.

The only thing

the company does is

take the phone call

and then put it in my schedule.

After that,

it's up to me to source it,

quote it,

sell it,

build it,

or fix it,

all that jazz.

So one step out.

It's like being flat rate,

but being an advisor

and a flat rate.

Yeah.

That's the vibe I get.

This is so

it's a flat rate system.

So I'm able to build my quotes

accordingly because

changing,

you know,

XYZ in someone's driveway

may not be the same as changing

XYZ in a shop.

So I'm able to,

obviously I stick it's close to

possible of his book time,

but it was obviously

going to be things that

change that, right?

So when I go to a car,

if it's heavily rusty,

I can see that

and then I can make

the executive decision that,

you know what,

these bolts are rusty.

It's probably going to take time.

Might have to cut something,

blah, blah, blah.

I can add that to my time

and then I can justify it

by talking to the customer,

showing them their car

and being like,

unfortunately,

you know,

not all cars are made equal

and this one's going to take

a little bit more.

And so I'm able to

get that flex time

by being the voice to the customer,

which I found in shops

I wasn't getting.

Great.

Yeah.

Is it a lot of high end cars?

No, actually,

it's,

I'd probably say we're

right in the middle.

It's probably,

like mostly what I see

is I'm going to be honest with you,

is probably dodges for it.

It's like anything

in a normal shop

to tell you the truth.

We have the casual Porsche,

I think.

It's probably

the highest end we'd get.

Not a lot of BMWs,

not a lot of Mercedes.

A lot of that stuff,

it's not conducive to

the time that they give you

and the buy-in.

Like it's,

it takes longer to die egg.

The customer doesn't really

want to pay that.

You got to try to sell it,

but you're a mobile tech

and they're looking at you

like you're the dealer,

but you're just,

there's discrepancies there,

right?

So sometimes

getting the team on board

to realize even

there's things we can do,

it can't do

and brands that we

can focus on

and maybe brands

that we should focus on less.

Yeah.

I had a conversation

last week in the group

and I can't remember

what sparked it,

but I mean,

I have met a lot of that

high-end type of customer

that they just prefer

to go to the dealer

because of the status

of saying it's always been

at the dealer.

Exactly.

You know what I mean?

Like they'll complain

about necessarily the service

or like the wait time,

but you tell them that it's

like, hey, I got a guy

that's got all the same software,

probably more training.

He's going to buy the same part

that the dealer's going to have.

He's either going to go over

to the dealer and buy the part

or he's going to get it

through World Pack,

same part, blah, blah, blah.

They're like, nope,

I'm going to take it back

to the dealer.

I know them.

And I'm like,

you're just complaining

about them.

Yeah.

But I think it's like,

they think it adds

so much value

when they trade it in

as if it's got this,

you know,

record of all dealer service

performed maintenance

repairs or shit.

You need to meet somebody

who even knows

what that is

and sell it to them at a premium.

I'm like, you need the perfect buyer

for those situations.

And it's,

I don't think we live

in a time like that anymore.

90% of the time,

it's traded back to the dealer.

Yeah, that's true.

But they don't care

whether you did every

lick of service on it.

I mean, they care a little bit,

but they really don't

because they have a number

of like top end

and bottom end.

And then you're somewhere

in the middle, right?

You're not,

we're not going to scare

you're the low end

unless it's every fenders

got a dent.

We're not going to give you

the high end either

unless it's like

completely no mileage cream puff.

Right?

You're always going to be in

the middle.

So they're not looking at

your that kind of stuff.

Doesn't matter, right?

They're going to buy

for as little as they can.

They're going to sell

for as much as they can.

They're going to sell cars.

And the next guy

that buys it,

he may not even ask

for the car facts

or any sort of service records.

Right?

Sees the pretty white Mercedes

wants the pretty white Mercedes.

That's where it ends.

Yeah.

Because I was thinking about

when I think about the meat,

the mobile guys that do like duty,

I think like,

I guess I get,

we're trained to think

that it must be like

either car lots

or like

you're going to somebody

that's got a higher end car

that just doesn't have

the time to take it in.

Right?

And that's what I,

but that's not the case.

You're saying you get like

caravans and

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Big up trucks

and stuff like that.

Because of the

because of the wait times

to get into any shop,

not just dealers,

like we're able to kind of

fill this

gap right now

that not many people can do.

So there's a lot of guys,

you know, marketplace,

mechanics,

DIYers,

whatever you want to call them.

I got a bag of tools

I could totally do your breaks

kind of guys.

Those guys

are a plenty where I am.

And

you know,

props to those guys.

You want to make a hustle.

You want to be mechanic,

whatever it is,

good, go,

go to town.

But I see a lot of mistakes.

And people are just

trying to get their cars fixed.

So it's going to be three weeks

getting the dealers,

getting my brakes done.

This guy's going to do a marketplace.

They're cheap.

He does it wrong.

This is where we come in,

where, you know,

certified or licensed.

We have the tools.

We're equipped.

We look professional.

There's there's a lot of weight in that.

Yeah.

And I mean,

a lot of people are pretty grateful.

You get a lot.

They're not all great,

but you get a lot of people who are

happy that you're there

to help them so quickly.

Everybody told me it's going to be three weeks.

You guys came up the next day.

This is amazing.

Thank you so much.

And it's

it turns that customer dynamic

that maybe a shop gets to see a lot of the time

where I don't want to be here to spend $1,000 to

I'm just happy you got my car running.

That's kind of where you want to find people, right?

Oh, 100%.

I always appreciated more

when they just appreciated what I did.

Yeah.

You know, like, yeah, I wanted to get paid,

but it was really nice at the end of the day

that they said, thank you.

Like we were able to actually, you know,

we didn't have to cancel our vacation or something

because like, you know,

you couldn't get us in,

you know, like this completely

you know, you know how it goes Wednesday morning.

They go and get the key and it doesn't start

and Friday they're supposed to be going on

taking the kids to, you know,

summer vacation trip.

Like, how does this happen all of a sudden?

And it's like, call it a dealer.

Look at it three weeks, like bring it over.

It's like, what do I do in the meantime?

Rent a car, right?

You know, and you don't know it could be a starter, right?

So you get, yeah.

I don't know.

This is an interesting industry right now

because I see, like you said,

this shortage and then I talked to Ben,

former guest, right?

From 3Ts on YouTube.

And he talks about like the stuff that he, you know,

he's almost doing a video a week

where he's gone in behind another

mechanic mobile guy has been there

and completely screwed the car up.

Yeah.

He just did one where the fuel pump was in.

It was, I want to say it was like,

it looked like it was a Mustang.

The guy didn't even put the retaining ring back in

to hold the fuel pump down.

Just float in the tank.

Fuel pump, it was end up being a loose connection

on the battery.

It was not powering up.

Like when it was cranked, the voltage would drop.

Fuel pump wouldn't prime.

But it already had the low pressure pump,

the high pressure pump, like a bunch of other stuff.

And then Ben comes in as like,

test lights going away when we're cranking here.

Like, you know, something going on.

Simple diving.

Yeah.

Not too crazy difficult.

And I'm just like, you know,

this is why I think, again, I've upset some people,

that the mobile thing for me right now,

least in Canada, they shouldn't be calling people

that aren't a licensed mechanic to come and fix your car.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like we should.

But you see them post in the neighborhood groups,

like, hey, can somebody come or interact with them?

Somebody achieved footbreaks on my car.

Like, and that's what scares me with the mobile guy

is because the mobile industry, excuse me,

it's because it's like the wild, wild West.

There's no certification.

Not saying that everybody needs it.

I'm not saying that every guy out there

doesn't know what they're doing.

Please don't take it that way.

But it's a tricky thing when we don't have

because there you go.

Ben's like, there's somebody who we don't even know

if they've ever been in a class

or worked in a shop or had a mentor.

They don't even bother, but they're

tending rain to hold the fuel pump in.

Yeah.

Because that car could have caught fire, you know.

Yeah.

It's so much further past even a safety point

like this time because Wild West hits it

bang on the head, I think.

It's like a lot of what I see you go out to

and it's clear as day that this guy or this person

does not have a clue what they're doing.

I went out to a Chevy Sonic last week

and he was trying to get that common ignition coil out.

It's got those two little torque screws.

It looks like the guy got one screw out

and then he just totally demolished

the other screw.

So, you know, I tap a hammer in there.

I get it out with easy out whatever.

Easy peasy.

The guy thinks I'm like a magic that I just got this thing out.

And then I'm looking over the car.

I get under there and I'm looking at the oil filter.

The thing is like crushed with what looks like a socket.

The drain plug is rounded and you can see that

he's rounded the plug and then the center

where the torx is, he's rounded that also.

So I'm talking to the guy at the end and it's

it's such a weird conversation because he's like,

oh, you know, my friend takes care of the car,

so you don't really want to quote for anything else.

And I'm like, okay, you got to tell your friend

he's got to buy some tools that fit

because he's just going to make things worse.

If this is what he's touched and it's this bad, like

these things, whatever he's putting in there,

or it's not even close to the size or the shape or anything.

Like, I don't know what you use, dude,

but it looked like someone tried to drill it out.

And he's like, no, he stripped it and left it.

All right, dude, whatever.

But it's like that, right?

And then guys like me come out, quote somebody

an oil change and I get there and I see this

and then what do you do?

So it's going to cost you more money.

Well, why?

It doesn't know what he's doing.

$200 oil change.

I can remember, oh, this is funny.

My mom and my stepdad a long time ago,

my stepdad was doing a couple of oil changes

for my mom on her car.

And I remember she gave me the car to drive.

And well, I had the car to drive for like a month.

She's like, can you change the oil?

Yeah, sure.

I change oil.

And I was early in my apprenticeship, right?

And again, underneath and the drain plugs all rounded off.

Like, how did this get like this?

Well, it's because, again, my stepdad grew up on a farm.

Everything was like a pair of slip joints,

restaurants or vice grips.

That's what you took everything apart.

So the drain plug completely rounded off completely, right?

So I'm under there with like every kind of wrench until finally,

I have to get it off of the pair of vice grips too.

And I'm thinking like, who does that?

And then I remember like, you know, people that I don't want to say low skill,

but low investment and tooling, you know, that find a way.

That's the people that do that.

And it's scary, man, like this same thing.

Like, you know, but how do you keep your cool when you say, well,

okay, I just get this done because I have my friend looking after it.

Like he's the one that's, I want to say,

I want to scream, pull my hair and go, your friend is who was f this all up.

You shouldn't be calling them again.

Yeah, it's, I have my moments, you know, sometimes to go in the van,

you have to just kind of like scream in the van,

like a scream to a pillow kind of situation.

But it's hard to have those conversations.

But it's, I think it's important that those conversations are had with

customers at be like, I get you want to save money.

I understand it, everyone does, right?

But you have to understand that if he's not the only guy fixing the car,

somebody's going to charge you a lot of money at one point to fix one of his mistakes.

And I think that goes for everybody, any customer.

You want to pay a guy 50 bucks or 30 bucks to change your oil in an alley?

Great, be my guest.

But don't be surprised when the next guy who actually knows what they're doing,

tooled out, equipped, business, whatever is going to tell you, you know,

there was a mistake.

And now we have to simplify it.

How do we do this?

What?

How do you want to proceed?

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I just, I, yeah, you all change thing for me is just like, I,

I hated doing them towards the end.

Like at any place, I mean, I still do a pile of them where I work now,

but I do them on like the cars we're getting ready to sell.

You know, they get every car that we sell, we service it before it goes.

So we know that it's been done.

But like these people that are just like, if you ever called me up and said,

like, yeah, I wanted, can you do my oil change for 30 bucks?

I'd be like, no, like, you know, I'm going to charge you 50.

And they go, okay, 50 is not bad.

Cause Midas will do it for 40.

Yeah.

Cause I'm going to drive it in there and pay Midas 40 bucks to do the 10 in

my pocket to cover my time.

Like I'm not, I couldn't be bothered these people that like, you know,

take cars in and jack them up and do an oil change.

In their driveway, just to help somebody like, I'm not, I'm not about to do that.

Yeah.

It's, you know, I don't, I personally, like the subcontracting deal, it's a lot of

oil changes, a lot of services.

My end of it, I really try to avoid oil changes as most as I can.

People that search me out that want an oil change, they want it for as

dirt cheap as possible.

And it always comes down to the same conversation of, well, Mr.

Lou, whoever X, Y, Z can do it for this much.

Can you do that?

No, I don't buy oil in the quantity that they do.

How could I compete with them?

I'm one person with a van.

If I was doing something else in the car too, like I would do it.

But I mean, like if I needed struts and a break job and an oil change,

yeah, I can do it once there.

But to just drive out and do the oil change, I'd have to charge 200 bucks

to even make it worthwhile.

That's usually what it turns into.

It's a, I'll quote you it, sure.

But it's going to be very expensive.

And if you want it done, I'll do it.

But I'm not doing it for what they do it for.

I can't, it's just not realistic.

How much in your day is spent going from job to job?

Like a typically long, lots of seat time between or?

Yeah, I would say probably a third of my day is driving.

Wow.

It's a lot.

That's something I think when I'm on my own, I'm going to try to

mitigate and organize.

The contracting situation is a little messy.

They don't know the cities.

So you're kind of going southwest, northeast, southeast, northwest.

You're just going corner to corner.

That makes no sense in terms of efficiency.

That's a whole other issue.

But a lot of time driving, like I put on a couple thousand K in the last couple of weeks,

like they adds up really, really quick.

Yeah.

Good time to listen to the podcast though.

Honestly, dude, ever since I started this gig, I've just been binging automotive podcasts.

So yeah, I do it too.

Even at the shop.

I mean, I'm not traveling around, but it's just like, it's just the radio ports me anymore.

You know what I mean?

Like it doesn't matter if it's Rogan or like Mike Allen or, you know, Lucas and David.

I'm listening to one almost all the time.

If I can, it just breaks up.

The music thing for me is just it's over.

They're playing the same 10 songs five times each day.

They're just like, I can't, I can't do it.

You know, I'm a big music guy.

I love music and I always have headphones in, but driving that much and listening to

even my own playlists in my Spotify, it just, oh my God, I just need something to

break up just the monotony of music, right?

Yeah.

So what's your, what's your favorite scan tool right now in rotation?

So I have just like an MP 808 Autel, just kind of a bare bones.

I'm looking at getting something a little bit bigger, maybe within a oscilloscope in it.

And that's going to be kind of my, my big boy scanner to kind of fill that void.

I'd love a Pico, but realistically having the Pico, having the scanner,

being in the van, mobile, it's not exactly in that position right now.

So it's looking like it'd be nice to get whatever, whatever their professional level

scanner is with the JBOX attached to it as well.

Yeah.

So that's kind of where I'm at right now.

Yeah.

That's kind of like, looking back now, I wish I'd have paid a little bit more attention

on to that side of things because any of the flashing that I've done has been always

like at the OE level when I was at the dealer flashing or like we use the snap on that

wrap system, right?

Yeah.

That they have, which is a beautiful system, but you're paying a lot of money above what

a JBOX does to just essentially phone snap on and have them hook it up.

Yeah, exactly, do it for me.

Yeah, the rest of the last shop that I was at, we did everything Autel remote,

you know what I mean?

You just log into them and you're bidding on who wants to, and you see all the names

in the industry, Keith Perkins and Mary are all there and they're like,

hey, you want to flash this radio frequency hub in a RAM for us?

And they're like, maybe I can get to it later.

And it's like, okay, we kind of need it done.

Oh yeah, old time zone difference, right?

And you're like, shit.

Fair.

But that was pretty cool.

But that was like, you know, then it's more of a free market thing where a snap

on it was handy because it's just like, how much is it?

Okay.

And you can do it right away?

Cool.

All right.

Let me call this emergency, right?

Like that was the speed of it was invaluable, right?

Yeah.

But it's an expensive piece of equipment just to do that, right?

Yeah.

Like the J-box is a lot less money to set up.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But you're paying subscription, you know, snap on his hand on all that for you,

right?

Like, I remember we did a Nissan for, when we do the Nissan's always for the

101 DTC that math code that I was almost never a math, right?

And I'm like, holy crap, they did that pretty quick, right?

Like whereas like trying to do one at the last shop, it was like three hours

before we could get somebody remote to do it.

Holy.

Just snap on, just like call it up and it's like, yep, bang done.

You know, so pluses and minuses, right?

It's just a few.

And I don't want to buy a Nissan's script just to do one Nissan.

Exactly.

You know what I mean?

That's the catch 22 with this whole programming thing, right?

It is like, if we could just cover everything, that would be great.

But it's just not.

Condusive to that in our world.

Are you going to go into keys?

I'd like to.

The key thing I wasn't super keen on.

It didn't really seem like something I was interested in even, but

it seems as I get closer to that direction and wanting to get more into,

you know, diet and programming and in that world.

Keys I think are just part and parcel with it.

I think a lot of those guys do keys and it's a good way to supplement

everything, right?

So three is the pretty much the guy started following with this whole mobile idea.

So yeah, stuff like that, right?

Yeah, Ben's Ben's a super guy.

He gives me shit at all the time all day.

He got in a in a rant in this video about the damn Canadians doing everything

a metric.

You know, his wife was like, because he was with her, it was like, you know,

she's like, well, it's like five liters of oil.

She's like, he's like, what the hell is a leader?

He's magic numbers.

He's magic measurements.

You're going to get it right back to supertroopers.

I'd like to goddamn.

That's my blessing, but he's like, well, I saw a course of comment on the video.

I'm like, well, the engine displacement is it isn't like 5.7 quarts or is it

5.7 liters?

There you go.

I rest my case.

That's all my man.

He's like them damn Canadians.

I really enjoy, like I was watching Matt Fonzo and Mike Molesky from PSK talk in one

of Matt's most recent episodes.

And like Mike said the same thing, like the key thing kind of took off

because he said the margins on keys are fantastic.

Comparable like what the guys say like ROI for tires is similar to like keys.

Like once you get that kind of, you know, and that's even if you want to,

it gets a little more if you want to buy a key cutter, but if you want to just stick

to doing the push button, phobic type stuff, you can make a lot of money

and not really need a whole lot of, like you don't need a cutter.

Yeah.

You know, you can just like, and then the whole thing,

hotels got the universal keys, which are, I guess they're like the,

their universal tip.

And last they worked like 99% of the time.

Oh really?

Yeah.

I didn't know it was, I had heard some mixed things about the tip or the

hotel key cutting job.

Yeah.

I had, I've had pretty good luck with the TPMS and the shop type in it on real.

Great, great, great idea.

Yeah.

Oh, it's just stupid.

One part number does like, I don't know, almost 99%, right?

Yeah.

98. Something like it's just fantastic.

I mean, I just trained my other technician to the shop because he never used one.

So he'd call out the dealer and get a pre-programmed one.

Pre-programmed TPMS?

Yeah.

Pre-programmed TPMS sensor from the, you know, dealer and just do the relearn.

I'm like, what are you doing that for?

Like we have like a box of TP, you know, hotels.

He just didn't know how to use the tool to go in and give it an ID and all that kind of stuff.

And I'm like, man, it's so simple.

Like if I can do it, anybody can do it.

Like I ain't smart.

Probably big money saver compared to the dealer, right?

Yeah, $100 for a TPMS sensor.

Yeah.

Versus $26 where you can buy them from, from the local parts store, $26 for an hotel.

When the first shop I worked at, we had a rep.

He was really pushing an hotel into the shop.

The point of hotel was really starting to pick up.

And his deal was, I will sell you the box with the tool and the sensors in it

until all your techs have their own machine.

And then I'll start selling you the sensors in bulk.

So we were getting, all the guys in the shop got our own TPMS tool with sensors in it.

And then once everybody got one, he was just dishing out sensors to us and everybody was happy.

It was unreal.

Oh yeah.

Because it was like, I know they still run it because Brian Pollock was,

still does it.

Like he's the same thing at Wilco almost every guy's got their own hotel

because it's like buy 50 sensors.

Here's the tool.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Their entire shop doing, you know, sometimes 50 sensors a day,

right?

When they're making tire packages up, snow tire packages up and they're putting the sensors.

Not hard to go through 50 sensors, right?

So then here's the tool.

There's another tool.

Like there's so much.

I don't know why the dealers didn't jump on that years ago.

Like just figured out how to make it work.

Do you use dealers?

They really just want to live in their own little worlds a lot of the time.

Little bubble.

It's so funny because it's like,

there was a conversation that popped up and it's about the wheel lock thing.

And it's a clip from Asta.

And I said, do you think about all the time wasted just looking for a wheel lock key?

And of course then the clip goes out and people are like, well,

you know, I just go and get the master set.

How does that work at an independent shop?

Like, do you have a master set on your truck for wheel locks?

No, you don't, right?

Like you have some and you have the extraction tools.

And the guys are like, well, I just extract them.

K scooter, who pays for that?

Exactly. It's time.

Like, right?

We live in a world where time is literally everything.

Or you call up.

There was another post that was like a guy was selling,

so you're placed every lug nut on a Dodge Durango or grant G-Wagon here.

Same, same fucking lug nut.

And it was like, by the time he ran it through his matrix and everything,

his markup was $787 for every lug nut on the car.

And everybody's like, is that too much?

And everybody's like, we did a little bit, you know,

but he's like, it's in my matrix.

Yeah, I get it.

But like, you know, dude, you can buy a set on eBay for $80, you know?

Yeah, like, look at the optics on this situation, right?

Like, how do you go to somebody and you're like, it's going to be 800 bucks?

Well, and I said to them, I said, think about it like this way, right?

There's a lot of people, a lot of cars that you can still put a brand new battery in

for under $750.

Think about that, right?

So the customer's like, I got $750 to spend, I need lug nuts or a battery,

which is going to give the customer the more value, the battery.

But so that's where we kind of, we get a little lost sometimes.

The dealer thing, oh yeah, like they're just so, you know, that's all I have to do is this

and that and the other thing.

Yeah, I know I worked there.

Like I had a box of master set and we just took them off and put them back on the car.

We just said, F, but we don't care if the customer gets a flat and doesn't know,

like that's the thing always needs to me because it's like, it's not in the car.

And you get a flat, what are you going to do?

Exactly.

And then I remember that most of these people, like when they get a flat,

they're not even thinking about like getting a change on the side of the road.

They're just like, hey, tow truck, take me to a shop.

Yeah, we're so in the mindset of repair, right?

But most people, it's AMA or whatever tow truck is going to get you to the

closest place to fix the tire.

And fair.

What's the most frustrating thing you're dealing with when you go out there?

Right now, it's probably going to be, it's going to be

bridging that relationship between customer mechanic of, you know, like the reality of

repair and the expectation of repair and the expectation of, you know, what you own

versus what we can do and what needs to be done and the money you have.

I would say is probably up there.

With the company I'm contracting with, I think an issue is going to be making sure

we actually know the right information getting the car, you know, like what's

actually wrong and it's like that everywhere.

I've had service advisors where I work next to them and they can't do that.

So it's, I think that's more of a bigger problem.

But day to day, getting people to understand their cars, I think is,

can be a steep ask sometimes.

Yeah.

That's the whole thing with the EV thing that scares me.

Because I mean, it's like, I think a lot of people right now want to buy an EV

because they just think it's going to be like less things to worry about.

Exactly.

You know, like I forget that a lot of these drivers right now,

they're still not even necessarily comfortable putting gas in a car.

Like what size is it on again?

And how do I know when to stop?

And, you know, oh, it's shot out at me.

And, you know, like what's that mean when it does that?

They're just like, if I just plug it in when I go to bed and I wake up

and it's all good to go and I never do anything else to it.

Like I equate it to like when that generation that had pet rocks,

you know what I mean?

And like it was your, you know, some guy made a billion dollars

because he went and pulled all these river rocks out and drew faces on them.

And this is your pet rock.

I think that that's the generation of drivers we're now dealing with

where they want the most low maintenance thing they can get.

And they think that an EV is going to be that.

And I think we're, when we look at our history in the industry,

of barely being able to sell the value of what we're truly doing

on a combustion engine vehicle and ICE.

And we turn around and we say, okay, like we're going to tackle this EV thing.

Like, no, we're not in the industry.

We're not even ready for that, right?

And to understand, yeah, the tires on them cost twice as much.

Yeah. The brakes on them cost, you know, twice as much

because they're twice as big.

The front suspension wears out constantly because they're heavy.

Like all these kinds of things we're failing.

And if you sat down a bunch of advisors that haven't had training

and said, why is an EV burn tires off?

They'd go, I don't know.

Great question.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Like the weight might be a problem.

Well, why would it weigh more?

Come on.

Like, let's think about this for a minute, right?

But they just don't know, David.

Like they're not trained.

Yeah, no, that's the thing.

One thing you guys have talked about before

that I had never even thought about was,

we obviously have to go through so much training, right?

You know, constant, we got to stay on top of the ball.

But service advisor training, like I had never heard of that,

I think, until this podcast.

And I've worked with a lot of service advisors, old and young.

And I always was baffled at how there can be such a disconnect

between two people that work in the same building,

in the same industry.

And, you know, I get maybe having to explain some things

to people, but there's some things at some point

you'd have to just like intrinsically learn.

There's no way you can work in a shop for 30 years.

And when I ask you for a sway bar link,

you order me a sway bar bushing.

That is, in my opinion, just unacceptable.

How does this happen?

I always would shake my head and go,

the amount of work orders they must read in a day

or should be reading for the customer,

like the mechanics complaint, the mechanics repair,

they should all be reading that.

Like how it just doesn't work.

Two years later, like at a dealer,

to me, you should be a wealth of knowledge

on what the pattern failures are,

at least that are coming in.

Caravan coming in with a stiff steering,

you know, yeah, the lines are going off the cooler again.

They should be able to quote that without even seeing the car.

Exactly, yeah.

They don't.

And I'm like, how do you not get this?

And then you see some of them and it's like,

they just look at the bottom line.

They do their soft skills, which is like,

hey, Mrs. Jones, like, how's the kids?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, so my technician checked it out.

It's, you know, $585 and they go great.

They come in and, you know, get a big kiss on the cheek and,

you know, get their car turned on.

They never read a damn thing

about what the technician actually said.

This is where we're going to do this comeback thing

and this divide between because it's like,

technician makes little notes.

Again, before the DVI thing was so big,

I'm saying, hey, I also notice this

and I also notice that.

They don't bother to call them and tell them.

Yeah.

Don't even bother to mention it.

And then the car comes back and it's like,

you fixed my muffler last week

and now the brakes are squealing.

I couldn't hear the brakes because the,

you know, the pipe was broken.

And now I'm pissed and I want a free brake job.

Yep.

And they're chewing the tech and it's like.

Spot on.

The technician said, hey, you know, advisor,

dude, I told you the brakes were bad.

Well, yeah, but I didn't, I didn't tell a customer,

you know, or I didn't.

But whose fault is it?

Right.

Let's.

It's written down.

Yeah.

You know, he used to drive me nuts.

You might have seen it.

I would write out these stories,

you know, what I did to the car

and it would get all deleted.

Oh, I've never seen that.

That would, oh my God, that would boil my blood, I think.

Yeah, I see.

And then we talk about this DVI thing and it's like,

I've seen some of the guys put some videos up this week

and it's like, they're joking because the one guy,

he puts his kids pictures on his hoist leg

and he's going there pointing at the brakes.

And he's like, so the brakes are at like,

you know, 30 percent.

My three kids, you know, Daphne, Donald and whatever,

right?

They would really appreciate you if you,

you know, fix the brakes today,

because that would mean that they can,

you know, go to summer camp.

And I'm watching these videos and I'm just cracking up,

but you know,

there's somewhere somebody's doing something like that,

right?

Like they're, they're making a point to say,

like, really get to know your customer.

You get to know your mechanic too.

Yeah, right.

My kids really like to eat today.

So if you could, you know,

get these flushes done,

that would really help us.

I appreciate you.

That's kind of slimy when you think about it, you know?

Yeah.

But it's covered in what, right?

You're documenting what the car needs.

And that's the thing.

Like I was, I was always taught,

even in school,

they really drilled this into us from like our first year,

was write a story,

like be descriptive.

Even like I've worked with guys who would tell me,

you know, don't put the details in

because you're just giving the customer dye eggs

so they can figure it out themselves.

And you know what I mean?

Be my guest.

You want to pull out a DVOM

and you want to try to figure it out, whatever.

Go for it.

I don't care.

But yeah, like I was always taught to write stories

of what I did, justify the dyeing,

justify the price, right?

And then I left the first shop I worked in

where we all wrote stories.

And I haven't been to a place since

that wants anything past the sentence of,

you know, the brakes make noise

because the pads are low.

That's all they want to hear.

They don't want to know any details.

They don't want to know anything.

But then again, car comes back

because the axle is bad or it's throwing grease

and then why didn't you tell me?

It's like, well, you're not asking

for those, I guess, right?

So you want to know everything.

You want to know a little bit.

You want to know nothing.

And the DVI is touted as the, you know,

this saving tool for the industry right now.

But I mean, we've seen cases now

where they're being manipulated

where guys have talked about in the groups

where it's like, yeah, I know

she's got pictures of brake pads that are like low.

But when I looked at her car,

those aren't her brake pads.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

It's like, and that's so, I don't want to say it,

but I'm sure there's a bunch of people

who've got files out there of like,

you know, low parts, like shitty parts

and they're putting them up to the inspection.

What are you saying?

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Okay.

It comes back to that.

Here we go again.

It comes back to a whole incentivized pain

right where it's like,

you know, me, if I have to,

if I have to eat, I'm going to eat, right?

And we all have to eat.

So if I have to go out there and find work

in order to eat, I will.

And everybody goes,

you should never have to do that

if you're a good technician.

I've been a good technician for a long,

long, long, long time,

but I've always been in shops

where there was a whole lot of good technicians

more than they needed, right?

And that's why it's so too many pigs

at the trough.

It's that same old thing.

You know what I do, right?

Yeah.

And it's not like if you find less work

than everybody else, they reward you.

They think there must be something wrong

with you because it's,

you must not be a keener

or you must not be that ambitious.

And it's like, no, that's not it at all.

I just, you know, I thought she could go

another four months on her breaks.

I didn't need to do it now.

Yeah.

I think that's kind of a strange thing

in automotive.

And there's just so many opinions

on how to do things and opinions,

what's right and wrong.

And I've heard you guys talk about before,

like, I think I agree 100 percent that

the red, yellow, and green on inspections

should just be green and red.

There's too much ambiguity in the middle

for, you know, well, what is this

actually, how long is this?

Is this okay?

Is this safe?

Like, yeah, you can't possibly know the yellow.

That's my argument.

It's like, it's going to depend on how they drive,

how often they drive, what kind of car is it,

like all that kind of stuff goes back to

what's a leak.

Like it's leaking.

You know, well, how bad is it leaking?

It's leaking bad enough that,

like, we bothered to write it down.

Yeah.

Otherwise, like, I don't even write some of them down.

I look at them and go,

that's a bit of a stainage from a rear main.

That's like four years of seepage

past a rear main around the bell.

I was like, I ain't writing that up yet.

You know what I mean?

Like that's just, but then if it's a big gusher one

and they go, how bad is it pretty bad?

Like if they don't, because we got an engineer

that burns oil and now it also leaks oil.

So if they're not fixing one of those two things,

like perfect storm, we should send them out

with a case of oil in the trunk.

That's how bad it is.

Exactly.

Oh, I guess they should fix that.

Really now?

But then do you think like experience and skill set

really plays into what gets called to?

Because like when I look at an oil leak,

like a rear main that's been leaking for four years

and okay, the dust is sticking to it.

It's not that bad.

But then Joe, who it's his third day comes in

and he's all gung ho on finding all this work

and maybe making money on flat rate.

He's going to call everything he sees, right?

So the customer says, well, I was here a month ago

with no problems.

I'm here a month later and now you tell me

I need 20 grand worth of work.

Like how to win that.

So that's where again, the front counter drops the ball

because it's like, if we're going to do DVIs

and we're going to document in 300% room,

all that kind of stuff, which I'm all for that.

I think they're good tools.

The front counter has to be looking at

what was recommended last time.

And before we even have that customer in here,

we need to know what she was recommended last time

to know what we're recommending this time.

Because we need to have a continuing conversation

with them about, hey, last time we looked at this,

we noticed this.

Are you, did you get that address somewhere else?

No. Okay.

Are you interested in getting an address

because it's not going to have gotten better.

It's going to probably have gotten worse.

And that way, because we know then,

when they get a DVI from this time,

different technician, a DVI from last time.

And this time, like you said,

this tech didn't bother to write up anything.

The whole effectiveness of the tool is gone.

Yeah, exactly.

Because, right.

Well, that tech must have been really trying to upsell me.

No, he just knows that like, this would be me.

That person on front counter ain't going to sell it anyway.

Yeah.

Right.

And I don't even have a clear time

on how much I'm supposed to this DVI is supposed to take.

Nobody can give me a straight answer

that exactly how long it should take.

So I just, do I pencil with the note,

but I go through them pretty quick.

You know what I mean?

And it's like, you know, red,

yeah, brakes were red last time,

brakes were red this time,

tires are really red now,

like I can't make it any redder.

What's worse than the worst it was last time it was here.

We had a big conversation that popped up about like an oil leak

in one of these that's in an upcoming episode.

Oil leaks for me were always something that was like,

if it was under warranty,

would you call it because of your flat rate

and you lose your Irish and you go, no,

once it's retail, would you call that?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, that's something wrong there

because that means that it's like,

it's not all that serious because it went say 60,000 K

and nobody even noticed a drip or a drop or whatever.

And I get it, customers don't put oil

or don't put fluids in their car anymore.

But when you look at it and you go,

that's not even going to lead a leader

between the next oil change.

You know, we all see it,

I'll say it with this with coolant.

We all know some of these cars just like use a little coolant.

Yeah.

And these ones are famous for that.

Like they leak around the head gaskets.

That's always a dry leak.

Yeah.

Leak down in the,

you see the blue crust all over the place.

If you go and try to fix that, guess what?

The new one's going to do exactly the same thing.

So like you just, you're topping the coolant up between oil changes

or when you get an oil change, you dump in a leader.

It's good to go for another 5,000 miles.

These trying to sell that to me is,

I'm not, I'm not on board with that.

You know what I mean?

And it's like, so you get into a situation

where it's like I added one leader of coolant.

Well, where did the coolant go?

And sometimes you work for people

and they don't want to accept that as an answer.

Well, shouldn't we table that customer

and then that they need to do head gaskets on that car?

What do you really?

Yeah, it's a money game at that point, right?

Like, well, we could sell the job.

We can make the money.

It's like, well, you're not, you're not fixing anything.

Well, do you really want to do head gaskets

on a 10 year old engine?

That too, right?

It's a whole other can of worms.

So what's the solution?

Well, I can't, like they're going to want to know

why there's a leader of coolant on their bill.

Tell them exactly what I just told you.

So you're time to do your job and express to them

what we, our experience shows them.

Yeah, I find that again, it's the advisors,

the weak link in this chain of this industry right now.

I believe too many don't, they're not getting training.

I'm going to really piss some people off.

Sometimes it's the wife or the daughter that is in that role

and they can't, like their soft skills are so good.

Their rapport with the customers is so good

because they built that relationship

in the beginning that they're,

but they're just not doing what needs to be done,

which is truly advocating for them and saying,

hey, you know, I, you know,

it isn't about whether their kids can go to summer camp,

like can afford it or not.

You have to tell them what's wrong with their car.

Exactly.

And I find a lot of them don't really want to

scare them off, seem like they're accused of upselling.

That's none of that, you know what I mean?

It's just like if to separate yourself from the transaction

and just be like, this is what the car needs.

Yeah, exactly.

This is our role in the job that we do, right?

It's, I'm not, I have no problem like breaking bread

and, you know, learning about the family and kids and stuff,

but that doesn't, A, pay the bills.

It also, B, doesn't justify why you're here

and we're talking right now.

Like I'm here to tell you what's going on

and you make the executive decision

on what you want to do with that, right?

So it doesn't make sense.

Yeah, if you tell them that oil leak

is really should be done within the next three months

and at six months that oil leak hasn't gotten any worse

and they're still driving the car around,

their faith in you and like your severity of like,

you know, evaluating the condition of a failure

is shot.

They think you're completely like over analyzing everything.

My car still runs fine, you know.

And to them, they don't know, I get it.

They don't stare underneath their car.

If they live on a gravel,

like my parents have gravel everywhere

where they don't care if it leaks a little drop of oil

they're never going to see anyway.

You know what I mean?

But, you know, you have to be making the customer aware

that whole yellow thing is like I've seen

transmissions blow up because the cooler lines were leaking

but somebody put them down as yellow.

Yeah, stuff like that, right?

Like, what's the severity of that yellow?

Is that going to take my engine out or my transmission?

Or is that going to, you know, leave a drop

on the driveway every month?

Who's to say?

Yeah, I think, and that's again, you know,

we talk now where everybody's like just hire

a dedicated person to do the inspections.

I think we get into a tough spot there too

where it's like, because that person

that's brand new in the industry,

they don't even know the severity of it.

Yeah, exactly.

You or I might know, okay, oh, you got a Chevy Equinox.

Like, yeah, they burn a ton of oil,

like a liter every 1000 kilometers is perfectly acceptable.

And then now it's leaking a little bit from the,

you know, Crank Seal too.

So now it could be hypothetically leaking two liters of oil

or losing two liters of oil in a 1000K.

That's something that should be addressed.

But somebody else that doesn't know

would look at that car and go,

oh, that's got a big, big, you know, oil leak.

And you might look at that car and go,

yeah, but, you know, it doesn't burn it.

And that's 10 years of, you know, residual off.

Not a big deal.

Not going to make customer wear.

I'm thinking of like the, you know,

the older caravans, the 33s and the 38s,

the off covers all leaked.

Like they'd be coming in to just covered in oil on the bottom.

They never dripped on the ground,

never hit the ground.

And it would just sit there and sweat from there, right?

So you'd see five years of crust.

When people are going to need some off covers, it does.

But, you know, it's like,

They're machines, right?

Like they're going to have some things going on

and some flexibility.

And even we know that and can see that.

And look at the parts quality, right, David?

Like sometimes you're thinking of something that like

has been in there since it was new,

and it's always managed to leak just a little bit.

Now you go put in something completely different

and guess what?

You've now got a tracer oil leak coming out, right?

Because it's now it's all you to figure out, right?

So yeah, what do you do?

You all get their old parts out of the garbage can

and give them money like you can't do that.

No, it's you're just stuck in that loop now.

You're hoping the next part is going to be

better than this part.

Yeah, what's what's the near like you talk about?

You kind of want to think about going out for yourself.

Do you have a time plan for that or the next

within the next year is the plan?

It's just it's pretty much getting money sorted

and getting my own van and then

picking up the ball and running with it

is kind of the goal right now.

This second term, I guess, with this company

was kind of my the first time.

A little bit of a sour taste when I left

thought maybe I was just destined for shops.

But obviously back for a reason.

So there's no point in not trying at this point, right?

So the next year, hopefully that's when

I'll have all my ducks in a row

and then we'll be able to just get her going.

Yeah, I mean, I think I'll be thinking about you

because like when I think about Ben

and it's like Ben's in Florida.

It's like there's no snow.

Yeah, I wish man.

Like we had a hurricane so I didn't do,

you know, we only had two days this week

that we're working instead of four.

His wife do Monday to Thursday now.

Like they don't even do Fridays.

That's awesome.

Good for them.

Yeah, they're doing well.

They're killing it.

I mean, he's had a couple of bumps like he talked about,

but I mean, he's doing really well.

And then I thought like

Matthew Patton that I interviewed

a couple of weeks ago there

that was I think the episode just dropped.

He's in the Ottawa area up near me

and he does more heavy line stuff

and it's all mobile.

And he says, yeah, like a lot of the time now

he's able to at least get the thing back to his shop

or where he goes if he has to work on it.

It's in their shop.

He's not doing a lot of stuff outside anymore.

So yeah, that'd be longer term five-year goal

would I'd say probably if I could just have a one-bay shop

that would be great.

How old are you now?

33.

33, yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, I don't know.

It's like with anything, right?

Or with everybody it's

you've got to kind of, it seems like most guys

if they want to stay in this world

and they want to have it worth it,

they have to go out and do their own thing

or excel in one thing really, really well

to build that, right?

So yeah, yeah.

Like if I didn't have,

yeah, if I didn't have the podcast

to supplement some income, right?

Like from my standpoint

where I'm getting paid what I do now

I'd be a lot more irritable

because I'd be like, you know,

they're getting a smoking deal

on what I can do for what they pay me.

But I mean, I'm into the point right now

where it's like they treat me really well

in terms of like they really appreciate me.

They tell me that, you know,

it's a small operation

so they can't pay me $50 an hour anyway.

Even if they wanted to,

it just there's not enough work going through.

So it's like, you know,

it's more important right now for me

to be like living within my means

and having a comfortable headspace

about where I am, you know,

at 50 then to start getting upset

because at 50 I can't really start getting

where I want to, you know,

start over again like I did at 30

and tell this industry to go eff itself

and, you know, move around a bunch.

Like it's, you know, I don't regret

one second of that, not for one minute.

I wouldn't do a darn thing different.

Nope.

Not one thing.

I think this was what you were like to do, per se.

Yeah.

I mean, I never knew I was going to be here

doing this podcast.

Blame Lucas for that, right?

He's a catalyst.

Yeah, he's the catalyst.

But I mean, I 100% knew after like a year in

that I was never going to shut my mouth

about what was wrong with this industry.

I knew that, right?

Yeah.

Not, it wasn't like I didn't,

we'll seek out an audience for it.

It was just, if you wanted to talk about it,

we were going to talk about it.

You know, I tell the thing,

like I'd be at Christmas parties

with my ex-wife and people would

start talking about, you know,

all of my shop, car was in the shop

and they couldn't fix it.

And my ears would start burning.

I'd put my hand up and I'm like,

let me talk, let me talk.

With my dirt.

It's like you take them to church, right?

You give them, take them to task

so they understand exactly.

Oh yeah.

Well, what did you get paid today?

Well, you just, whoa, wait a minute.

You showed up and they just paid you?

What?

That's pretty cool.

Like I showed up.

Yeah.

And I didn't get a car till noon.

So they didn't, I didn't get paid.

Yeah.

Looking at you crazy.

No, that's how a lot of us were.

Yeah.

So I wouldn't go back and do a darn thing

different though.

I'm so, even the people that didn't,

like what forged me, the stuff that I

went through, I'm very fortunate

that I had that because of on this

path of where it's like, you know,

yeah, I got really good at doing this.

I'm terrible at doing that.

This kind of thing really upsets me.

This thing doesn't bother me at all.

Like I'm totally cool.

I wouldn't go back and change a thing.

It's, it all happened for a reason

and that's the good part.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's so cool to see, you know,

the younger people coming in now,

like when I was at ASTA, I was sitting

there talking to a bunch of people

and some of the young people are like,

they're 24 or 25 years old,

David and then they're just like,

they're so optimistic about this industry.

They just love it.

And I'm like, that is so cool.

Yeah.

You know, the difference is they're

not working in dealerships.

You know, they're working in independent

shops where they're paid hourly.

They got a tool supplement, right?

Like they're being taken care of.

Yeah.

I think that's the thing, right?

That it's like pay feels like,

yeah, everyone wants to make more money,

right?

But it's like lots of people have said

and I'm sure we've all had the conversations that pay is,

I don't even think it's the most important thing

or even the top five most important thing

for us anymore.

It's like, it's just chipping its way down

the list of priorities and everywhere

feels like they just want to throw money at it.

But I just don't think more money

is the solution anymore.

It's something's got to budge like,

like tool ounces.

Oh my God.

When I started, man,

the thought of a tool allowance

would literally have changed my life at that time.

Oh yeah.

But like most of us, we just have to slum it

for years and years and years to collect tools

to hopefully make a little bit more money in the end.

And it's like, come on, man, it's crazy to me

to have to supply tools for a shop

to work on cars for that shop

and only make a fraction

while my tools take the wear and tear,

my body takes the wear and tear.

And I can't even take a Friday off

after working somewhere for five years.

You know what I mean?

They go, you know, they say, well,

what are we going to do while you're gone?

This is not my business.

I don't know, man.

Like I got, you know, I got to get my teeth looked at

and I want to get a haircut.

You know, I'm trying to do it on the same days.

I'm slipping behind here.

I'm very lucky that like,

I literally just got home

from North Carolina from Asta.

Then I go to my boss and I go, yeah.

So the first week of, you know,

November from the third till the following Monday,

I'm going to be gone.

I'm going to be in Las Vegas

and doing the same next thing.

You know, when you hired me,

I told you I'd be doing that.

So just giving you a heads up, like it's,

you know, it's happening.

And my boss and I,

I'm so lucky because other people have been like,

oh, gee, I got to run that by HR.

And my boss is like,

can you grab me a hat while you're there?

Give me some memorabilia.

Of course I can, Joe.

Like I'll certainly grab you a hat.

Like that to me is worth more than the money thing.

Yeah.

I'm not getting paid while I'm at SEMA.

You know, they're not,

I don't have paid time off for this job.

Like I just show up on my work

and when I work, they pay me.

And when I'm not working, I'm not paid.

It's simple.

I'm very lucky that it's like I'm,

they allow me to be able to do this.

You know, I haven't had an employer yet.

Try to stop it.

But I have had other employers.

I know that if it was like,

you're going to be gone, how long?

How many weeks of the year

now I'm sure that's going to work because, you know,

like that one is enduring tire season.

Yeah.

Okay, man.

It's entire season.

Like you want me doing tires?

Have you seen me do tires?

And like realistically, what does a week really do?

You know what I mean?

Like you get the heads up.

You know how to book it.

Maybe you have guys work a little bit different

around that time.

Like there's solutions for this stuff.

Right.

And it's not like you're popping it on in the morning

of calling in sick for the next week.

You want to be the responsible guy and, you know,

give them the heads up because you have a life,

but that's a place that you don't want to hear it.

And I tell them it's an obligation.

Like I'm, they, I need to be at this.

So it's not really, I'm not really negotiating with you.

I'm telling you that I'm going to be gone.

And like if you want to give me

termination papers the day before I go, cool.

You know, I'd rather have a job when I come back.

But, you know, like if it's going to mean that we're going to end

a relationship based on that, because you need some,

I totally understand it.

But then what is that, what is that like show to you

and even kind of to them on what they value you like?

Like if you taking a week off a year in advance

is somehow enough to rock the boat that they want to maybe terminate you

or cut you loose or give you a slap on the wrist or whatever.

It's like that shows volumes of just the level of

respect is just not there.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And you know what is so sad about this shortage?

Is it's taken the shortage for people to finally realize

I think how they actually have to treat us.

Yeah, that's sad.

I think they have to treat us that it's like for every five that leave,

that's the stat for every five that leave only one comes in comes in.

Yeah.

None of everyone that comes in is even lasting,

but if five leave one comes in.

So yeah, I don't like to think that it's like we have them by the short curlies now

and it's like we can control the narrative a little bit,

but we kind of can.

It's like, yeah, they could be really miffed and fire me.

But there's not like you're not going to, there's other texts.

But like, I mean, the shops already had them

and they're already that's why there was still an ad for me.

Like there was a position for me to fill.

It isn't going to be like, oh shucks.

I wonder if I'm ever going to find work again because you're firing me.

No, I'll go over to like promoter indeed and click one button activate resume

and the inbox will fill up.

Exactly.

I'm not sure.

It's not not hard to find a new place right now, right?

Whether that place is worth the time and stuff is a different conversation.

But yeah, it's sad that has to come to this point.

And then even those guys coming in 10 years in this industry,

you know, is it's a chip on the block.

There's still a lot that you'll never learn.

Maybe you're good at a lot of this.

Maybe you're good at a lot of that.

But 10 years in, I think like, I don't know.

You have experience, but you may not still be the best guy in the room.

And you may be the best guy in the room at two years,

but experience and what you see and what you do,

I've worked with guys who've been in the industry for 30 years

and I wouldn't trust them to change a light bulb.

But yeah, I've worked with guys who are their first years,

they've been in six months and you're like, this is the guy.

Like he's the guy you want to nurture in this world.

But it's all the same.

What does that look like to you?

Because like, I know I talked to a lot of people and they're like,

I just need somebody that's reliable, right?

And then, but what's it look like to you when you look at somebody and go

yeah, like they've got a future.

What is it?

I think it's it's reliability and it's care.

I think is a lot of it.

I think it's you see a lot of guys that it's a job to them

and maybe they don't want to go anywhere with it.

Maybe it to them, it's, oh, whatever.

I left a bolt loose.

It is what it is.

But it's like, but you don't realize that you leaving this bolt loose

when you're only two months into the industry,

that's just going to magnify, right?

You're just going to find more reasons to justify why this was this way

and why you got fired here maybe and why your life is in panning out

or this career is in panning out.

And it feeds into that machine of mechanics or scammers, mechanics,

where this blah, blah, blah.

I think it really just it brings us all down when people

that don't want to be here stay in here longer than they should.

Yeah.

So it's just give a shit, I think is the big thing.

Like I've always said to guys in the past,

you know what, you may not think you're the smartest.

I promise you if you give a shit and you're here, we can build skill.

We can make you good at this because this part of it is easier

than just the part of wanting to be here for a lot of guys.

So if you care, great.

I can make you and I've been made a decent tech because I care.

And I've worked with guys next to me who didn't give a shit

and came at the same time as me

and didn't last because, you know, well, this, this, this, that blah, blah, blah.

Right.

There's excuses for every mistake, but it's clear they just don't give a shit.

Yeah.

It's it's like that the old sports analogy is right.

Like effort will trump talent every time, right?

If you have more, if you're putting more effort in

than the person that's got the talent,

you might get more time off the bench than they do.

You know, they want to use that.

But it's like, and then like my friend Josh Parnelli says,

just try to be 1% better every day.

Exactly.

You said, if you get 1% better every day,

you know, some days you're not going to be able to,

but if you get up every day with that, just 1% better.

And at the end of the month, you're 10% better.

Think about that.

Yeah.

That's like, I mean,

I already quantify, but I mean, think about a 10% improvement in anything

is a big deal.

So if all of a sudden you take like something that you're weak at

and you learn just a little bit about it, you know,

I go about this like with drivability when I'm trying to teach it to people.

It's just like, just start with the little things.

Just start with like, how an oxygen sensor works, you know,

and then build from that and just think about like,

don't get into a whole pressure transducers and all this kind of stuff,

but just like focus on what really is an oxygen sensor doing and how does it work.

And then learn how to really dial in on what that O2 is telling you.

And then apply that kind of workmanship

to the rest of the systems in the car.

And before you know it,

you're solving a lot of problems in the engine

because you're understanding how to, you've developed your process.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

There'll still be a new system maybe in the car

that you've never seen before,

multi-air or something like that.

But you have a process to diagnose something now.

Yeah.

So you just take the data,

you take the service information,

you apply the process, you fix the car.

You know, it's a wonderful thing, but it's 1% every day.

You know, I never sat there and somebody drilled in concepts into my head.

I spent a lot of time just like trying to drill in my own day ahead

because I had to read the service information.

I had to go look at an own good or I had to like,

I joke, I spent so much time driving, staring at a scan tool.

It's amazing. I haven't had a car accident.

You know, because I'm literally like,

Just walked in on the steering wheel.

I'm sitting there watching it for 20 minutes going,

Okay. And that 20 minute graph, that fuel injector, you know,

the on time was 8% more than the others.

That's the one injector that I'm changing for this code.

And it fixes the car.

No, that's not written in service information anywhere.

It's just like thinking.

Just intuition and time.

Yeah.

Right.

But everybody's like, Oh my God,

you have 30 minutes of driving the car.

Yeah, we got our specs.

We got an hour sold for Diag.

I spent 30 minutes driving the car gathering data.

Like, yeah, the rush to figure out problems really needs to just dial back a little bit.

Like, especially as they get more complex, right?

Even a car 10 years or 10 years old,

it may have an issue that you never seen

or no one in the shop has ever seen

or it's an auction car, a one off, a flood, anything.

Right? It's a million variables.

So like to think that, oh, you spent a half hour trying to figure it out.

It's like, my dude, I'll give you the scanner.

You figure this out in a half hour.

I'll give you half the day.

It's just, yeah.

And I've got them sometimes.

And I don't know, I just get lucky.

It's like I talked about that Mazda that wouldn't shut off.

Like I had that narrowed down in 40 minutes, you know what I mean?

And it was like, I didn't do it.

You would push the button and nothing would happen.

You had to like go out there and pull relays out of the fuse box.

Ended up being a stock relay.

But it's not like the codes and the data

were telling you this relay is stuck on.

Right? It's just giving you multiple codes

and like some stuff and you're like,

hmm, let me think here how this is working for a minute.

And it's like, look at some services for me.

Like, and that was a car that had been traded

for that very frigging reason.

Oh, yeah.

Once we, yeah.

Because once we started getting into the car

and I started taking things apart, I'm like,

okay, so around the steering column,

somebody's had that shroud off.

And, you know, right around the battery here,

somebody's definitely been in here at some point.

Now, this never gave us the symptom

until it was being washed customer on their way

to pick it up to take it by it.

Obviously, it had a problem that somebody had looked at.

And when they couldn't fix it, they traded the car.

Just gave up.

Phone to the next.

Yeah.

So, you know, do I fault myself if it took me,

you know, 45 minutes?

Hell no.

Like I would have followed myself if it took me four hours.

The time has stopped, but I mean, like,

you know, what do you want?

This idea that it's like, and I'm not saying

a car should wait at the dealer four weeks

before somebody can look at them.

But I mean, when people are like,

well, you know, the technicians,

he's got an hour into it

and he hasn't really been able to give me anything.

Yeah, I am like, okay.

I spend most of the time, I spend the first 30 minutes

just like driving the car and looking for TSBs.

That's my first hour.

Half the time, you like familiarizing yourself

with what's going on even, right?

Yeah.

So, yeah.

What's the word of advice for the young people?

Man, I don't know at this point.

I think this trade is a great trade.

I do.

I think working on cars is fantastic.

I think you just need to know what you're signing up for

because I think that's like what a lot of guys

get blindsided by is like you've said before,

you know, everybody wants to work on fast cars

and hot rods and shoot flames and burn rubber, right?

But at the end of the day,

everybody's got to get groceries

and that's what you're doing a lot of the time.

And just be prepared and find the right shop

because I think a lot of us, myself included,

spent a lot of time in the wrong places,

not having these places serve me or set me up for success.

I think the best texts come out of places that are culturally well

and they care.

It's not just a numbers game.

It's not a speed game.

You want to learn how to fix a car?

We'll teach you how to fix a car

and then you're going to make us money.

Have investment.

Have somebody invest in you, I think is the big one.

That's a true skin in the game.

I hate that term when people say

that the technician has that skin in the game

but I mean, I'll challenge the owners and the leaders in this.

You got to have skin in the industry,

which means you got to have investment

in training the industry to be better,

which means every person that you employ

and you're responsible for,

you should be trying to make them better.

Not just like on the spreadsheet at the bottom

for the ROI, better, but better technicians,

better industry every day.

And that's why the flat rate thing,

we've almost had a whole episode where we don't talk about it,

but I still believe that if you're advocating on the side

as a pay method, you're not really advocating

for the betterment of the industry.

And I think that that's like,

we've seen enough evidence now to say

that it's not the best way,

especially for the young people coming in.

And that's all I really want to do,

is see it to become an option and not the only way.

Yeah, I'd be wrong with it.

Establish tech wanting to work flat rate.

I have no issues with that at all.

Like the stat support to the washout that we're having

is because guys are not getting paid in gals

for their diagnostic time

and the times just aren't what they should be.

Exactly.

To want to fix these cars.

And that's an unfortunate reality.

And if you're paying that way,

you know, I think you're not advocating for the industry,

you're just advocating for your bottom line.

But David, I'll let you go, man.

It's kind of getting late.

And I appreciate you going on the Thanksgiving night

and having this conversation with us.

I really appreciate you reaching out to me.

And I'm sorry, we had some scheduling issues getting it to happen.

So good, man.

We're both busy, right?

Like, you had to go to the dentist.

Nice, man.

Yeah, you didn't know I wanted me on here after the dentist, dude.

Like, I was like lip was sagging.

It was pretty gnarly.

Well, you're good now, man.

Good.

Thankfully, yeah, thankfully.

I appreciate it.

Just get yourself a big beard for your winter service calls.

It's creeping on, man.

It's got to get that nice warm layer of freeze out there.

It helps.

All right, everybody.

For those of you attending SEMA, I look forward to seeing you there.

Apex is going to be a great show.

SEMA is an amazing thing.

We had our giveaway.

We've got our final person coming.

So Mr. Paul Zill is going to attend.

He won the free trip.

That's pretty sweet.

So he's excited.

And I'm excited to see everybody there.

We've got a great episode coming out on Tuesday

that you're really going to like.

It'll be out before you probably hear this episode.

But we've got a lot coming in the new year for you two people.

So as always, I love you all.

Thank you for all the support.

And we'll talk to you again.

David.

Later, man.

Happy to see you, brother.

You too, buddy.

Appreciate it.

We'll talk again.

Thanks, man.

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.

About this episode

David Peacock, a seasoned mechanic from Calgary, shares his journey through various automotive roles, emphasizing the importance of shop culture and technician respect. He discusses the challenges of finding a supportive workplace, the impact of the technician shortage, and the need for better training for service advisors. The conversation touches on the realities of mobile mechanics, the significance of understanding vehicle maintenance, and the evolving landscape of the automotive industry, particularly with electric vehicles. David's insights highlight the necessity for technicians to care about their work and the importance of investing in their skills.

310S 310T alternator battery BMW bullbars cat-back exhaust system EV extended warranty frame jacking

Chevrolet Equinox Dodge Caravan Ford F-250 Ford Mustang Ram 2500 Ram 3500

Original notes

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Need to update your shop systems and software? Try Tekmetric HERE

In this episode, Jeff is joined by David Peacock, a mobile mechanic based in Calgary, Alberta. David talks about his life as a subcontractor, pointing out it's pros and it's cons. He's had plenty of run-ins with harsh Canadian winters and long commutes. They also bring up the current tech shortage and what needs to happen to see it improve.

Timestamps:
00:00 Fort McMurray: Canada's Boom Town

08:28 Leaving Toxic Work Environments

13:57 "Embracing Mobile Work Independence"

17:29 "Automotive Collaboration Challenges"

25:32 Fleet Operating Costs Insights

30:14 Truck Inspections and Frame Issues

35:05 Dealer Warranty Issues Persist

38:22 "Commission-Based Confusion in Charges"

46:06 "Vacation Saved, Gratitude Earned"

52:41 Oil Change Frustrations

57:27 Autel Remote Shop Experience

01:01:35 TPMS Tool Usage Tips

01:07:15 "Low-Maintenance Generational Drivers"

01:10:31 Miscommunication Leads to Customer Frustration

01:20:38 "Advisor Weakness in Auto Industry"

01:23:41 Understanding Oil Leak Perceptions

01:27:49 "Choosing Stability Over Ambition"

01:36:03 Experience Doesn't Guarantee Mastery

01:39:20 Start Small, Build Understanding

01:43:13 "Technician Time and Process"

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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast

Jeff Compton

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