Remarkable Results Radio Podcast Feb 10, 2026

Executing a 25 Year Plan: Retired at 47 [RR 1078]

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Brand

Toyota

Toyota is a car company from Japan that makes many popular cars, known for being dependable and good on gas.

Brand

Kia

Kia is a car company from South Korea that makes affordable cars with good features and long warranties.

Brand

Hyundai

Hyundai is another South Korean car company that makes a variety of cars, known for being good value and having modern designs.

Brand

Honda

Honda is another car company from Japan, famous for making reliable cars and motorcycles.

Term

electric vehicle

An electric vehicle is a type of car that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. This means it uses batteries and electric motors to move instead of a traditional engine.

Term

gas engine

A gas engine is a type of engine that uses gasoline as fuel to make the car go. It's more complicated than electric engines because it has many parts to control pollution and make the car run better.

Term

Variable valve timing is a system in gas engines that changes when the engine's valves open and close. This helps the engine run more efficiently and powerfully depending on how fast the car is going.

Term

gasoline engine

A gasoline engine is what most cars use to run. It burns gasoline to create power, but it has many parts that can wear out and need fixing.

Term

transmission assembly

The transmission assembly helps the car change gears, which is important for going faster or slower. It's a key part that connects the engine to the wheels.

Term

electric drive motor assembly

This is the part of an electric car that helps it move by turning electricity into motion. It’s different from traditional car engines that burn fuel.

Part

inverter

An inverter is like a translator for electricity. It changes the type of electricity from the battery so that the motor can use it to make the car move.

Term

gear reduction system

This system helps make the car go faster by changing how the power from the motor is used. It slows down the motor's speed but gives more strength to the wheels.

Car

Tesla Model S Tesla

The Tesla Model Y is a type of electric car that looks like a small SUV. It doesn't have gears like regular cars, which means you don't have to shift while driving, making it easier to handle. People talk about it because it's popular for being eco-friendly and having a lot of cool tech features.

Car

Tesla Model S

The Tesla Model S is an electric car that doesn't use gasoline. It's known for being fast and having a high-tech interior.

Term

batteries

Batteries in electric cars are what store the electricity that powers the vehicle. They can be very expensive to fix or replace if they break.

Term

battery failures

Battery failures happen when the battery in an electric car stops working properly. This can make the car unable to run or reduce how far it can go on a charge.

Term

ICE vehicles

ICE vehicles are cars that use gasoline or diesel to run. They have engines that burn fuel to create power, which is different from electric cars that use batteries.

Car

Chevrolet Silverado

The Silverado is a big truck made by Chevrolet that people use for work and everyday driving. It's known for being tough and having a lot of features.

Term

supercharger

A supercharger helps electric cars recharge their batteries quickly, similar to how a gas pump fills up a gas tank. It makes it easier for drivers to get back on the road faster.

Term

pre-planned maintenance

Pre-planned maintenance is when you schedule regular check-ups for your car to keep it running well. This includes changing things like brakes and oil at certain times instead of waiting until something goes wrong.

Part

brakes

Brakes are what help your car stop when you press the pedal. It's important to check and change them regularly to make sure your car can stop safely.

Concept

unit replacement

Unit replacement means taking out a whole part of the car and putting in a new one instead of fixing just a small piece. This is common in electric cars where parts can be complicated.

Term

R and R

R and R means to take something out and put a new one in. It's a common term used by mechanics when they fix cars.

Term

high voltage

High voltage means electricity at a level that can be dangerous. It's used in electric cars and requires special care when working on it to avoid getting shocked.

Term

stator

The stator is a part of the motor that stays still and helps create the magnetic force needed to make the motor spin. It's important for how the motor works in electric cars.

Term

modular repair

Modular repair means you can swap out parts of a car easily instead of having to replace the whole thing. It makes fixing cars simpler and cheaper over time.

Term

preventative maintenance

Preventative maintenance means taking care of your car regularly to stop problems before they happen. This includes things like changing the oil and checking the brakes.

Term

ICE engines

ICE means Internal Combustion Engine. It's the kind of engine that uses fuel like gasoline or diesel to run, unlike electric vehicles that use batteries.

Part

catalytic converters

Catalytic converters are parts of a car's exhaust system that help clean the air by changing harmful gases into less harmful ones. They are important for keeping the environment safe and are required by law.

Brand

BMW

BMW is a car company from Germany that makes luxury cars, including sporty models and sedans.

Term

oil changes

An oil change is when you replace the old oil in a car's engine with new oil. This helps keep the engine running smoothly and prevents damage.

LIVE

This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Hey, everybody, Karm Capriotto, remarkable results radio.

Good to have you here.

Thank you so much for being here as we're pushing into close to our 11th year, I think we're

at.

It's amazing.

Hey, look it.

In all this great time, and I think everybody hears me speak about this so often, but

I'm going to speak about it a lot because it is such a powerful tool, the Automotive

Repair Podcast Network app.

Yes, for your smartphone, the ultimate professional Automotive Repair playlist, it's all in one

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You can read show notes, link with our sponsor partners, get all the shows in our network,

Automotive Repair Podcast Network.com forward slash app.

Love to have you there.

Oh, by the way, I'm going to be out at the TST annual event, the TST big event on

Saturday, March 28th, 2026, Tarleton, New York.

Here from educators Andrew Fisher, Ken Zanders, Adam Roberts, go to TSTSeminars.org and sign

up for one day technician training.

And even here from the keynoter, I happen to know her, Tracy Capriotto, it'll be your

first keynote ever.

She thanks G for giving her this shot.

Hey, look, great show from a good old friend catching up with Pete Rudloff and that

comes right after a great word from our partner.

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Welcome Pete.

Glad to be here, Carl.

Oh my God, Pete.

I don't know why, but I was thinking about you and I really have a lot and then I

read this article that you wrote on lighting and I said, screw this, I'm just reaching

out to Pete.

I sent him an email and I said, I got to catch up with you.

What are you doing?

How's it going?

First of all, we recorded eight episodes together back in the day.

Me and you one-on-one and then you came on all these great panels with us and I found

out he says, oh, I don't have the shop anymore and I go, this may be an interesting

episode.

Because so many people, Pete, we call it the senior tsunami that's going on in

our industry.

They're all thinking about getting out or how do I transist, who do I give the

business to?

And you just said, screw it, I'm out.

What happened?

25 years in and you decided just to get out.

No, so it was always the long-term plan.

If I'm being honest, I missed my plan by a couple of years.

Early on as a technician working at a dealership, I knew that I didn't want

to be fixing cars full-time once I was past like 45.

So I'd set a goal to be able to retire by the time I was 45 and to be able to do

easier stuff, basically.

So I was always the plan was to be done by 45.

I ended up, I retired at 47.

Selling the shop was never really part of my plan.

So I was always the guy that rented a job and made a good living, renting a

job and like having my tools and equipment, so I still have all my tools and

equipment.

I built a workshop in my backyard at my house.

I got a 2,400 square foot workshop with three automotive lifts and a motorcycle

lift in it and like all my tools and equipment fits in there and I can do

whatever I want to for my own stuff and family, friends, or I've been working

on some research stuff as well.

It's the peat cave.

It is, yeah.

I didn't ask you when we talked the other day how big it was, but 2,400

nice little size there.

Side note, I built it myself.

You didn't call the Amish people to come up and put it up for you?

No, it's all steel.

So we built it out of steel.

It's a fully steel structure, the skeleton, the paneling, everything.

We did the insulation, the electric, the plumbing, the HVAC.

I did all that myself on the building.

Good for you.

What I find interesting, I don't want to belabor the thought that since he

didn't sell and he took all of his equipment back to his place, you

obviously plan this.

And I think that's one of the key components to this whole story

of peat is I knew I was going to retire at 45.

You said you missed it by two years, so you did it at 47.

You were 25 years in business, right?

Yep, 25 years in business, yeah.

25 years in business.

And you said, I was smart enough to know that I did not have to sell

the business or sell the equipment.

And basically, peat, everything I've ever known about you,

you loved what you did.

I did.

So I've never worked, right?

Like I've always, working on cars has always been fun for me.

The challenge of it and all that, I've always just enjoyed.

So it's never really felt like work.

The employee aspect was always work to me, having to manage employees

and that sort of thing.

That was the hard part of shop life, I guess you could say.

But now I don't have that to worry about because I have no employees.

It's just me.

So you did it.

You earned a great living.

I did.

Yeah, yeah, working on cars has been phenomenal for me.

I was a guy who never intended to get into fixing cars.

I got into fixing cars really by accident and stayed in fixing cars

because the money was good.

And fixing cars treated me really well financially.

So it's been a good career for me.

You wrote a lot of articles I know for Auto Inc.

Wrote a feature called Show Me the Fix.

I know a ton of people read those columns.

Were those your big challenges?

Those were jobs that probably appeared challenging.

So Leona used to ask me for different ideas of what we could do.

We thought it would be fun to take cars that the vehicle owner's perspective

was the car was hard to fix and figure out solutions for them.

So we would advertise on Craigslist for cars that had been to three or four

different shops and we would offer to fix them for free.

And we would bring them into the shop and we would figure them out

and then I would write an article based around it.

To say it was hard, it's not really hard.

It's just you got to know what you're doing and have a plan.

Just like anything else.

So it was really what it was about was having a plan.

And then for sure those were fun articles right

because you're unwinding a puzzle basically.

So then a lot of times the pieces were broken

and so you had to figure out how to make them fit back together again.

It's amazing to hear that and I think that think helps the people

that are in our industry that are successful

but maybe aren't as successful as they'd like to be.

And the tough challenges that came at you,

you said to me, Karm, if you can't stay in your lane

you're not going to be as successful as you want it to be.

That's always been key for me.

As a shop I never was a work on every make and model guy

so we always focused on a handful of models.

I was never big enough shopping.

The biggest we ever were was four technicians and an apprentice

was the biggest that my shop ever was.

So from a volume standpoint

we never had to work on everything

that could possibly come through the door.

So we narrowed our focus down, raised my labor rate up.

I was always the most expensive shop in the area

and we just stayed really well-told

and well-educated on the stuff we were working on.

And for the most part I'd say that really made cars

not hard to fix.

Stay in your lane.

You can't own every single tool to fix every single problem.

And I think that's what made you,

maybe it made you happy, satisfied

that you loved what you did.

Every day was a challenge

but it wasn't a challenge out of your realm.

It always stayed in your realm.

We knew everything that we would bring in that day

was going to be something that we would have familiarity.

We would understand the architecture

of the electrical systems on the cars

that we're working on.

It was pretty rare that we would see something

that blindsided us.

So it was important.

So you can't have every tool.

You can't have every tool.

You can have a lot of them though.

But I do have a lot of tools.

Boy, I'd love to see your shop.

Wow.

One of the things that you said in our discovery call

and just catching up with each other.

You said the word engineers.

You said the engineers know how it works.

Yeah.

Fundamentally we were talking kind of about

the differences between medicine versus fixing cars.

There's a lot of people that use the analogy

that fixing cars is the same thing

what doctors are doing.

My opinion is it's really not very accurate

because what's known about the human body

is really, really a small amount.

Like I don't know what the exact number is

but it's probably 12% or something like that

of what's known about how the human body works

versus any automobile or any piece of machinery.

It was designed from the ground up by some human being.

So everything about how that works

is 100% known by somebody.

So it's just a matter of whether you know it,

how it works or not.

So if you stay in your lane

and you work on a narrow group of automobiles

makes it pretty easy to understand

how other systems work.

And then really you don't have a lot of unknowns.

The unknowns would be because you haven't studied,

you don't have the right equipment.

Right, so yeah, so everything in cars

is either you know it or you don't know it, right?

So then when you encounter stuff that you don't know

you try to apply your knowledge to what you don't know.

So the more that you know about what you're working on

the less it becomes a challenge.

And then it just becomes a process

getting through that process.

Did you ever repair a BMW?

Nope, never worked on BMW.

So it's the European cars we've always stayed away from.

You stayed away, you stayed in your lane.

The domestic lane,

did you work on probably Japanese?

So typically what we would bring into the shop

were the big three Americans

and then the big Asian cars.

So Toyota, Honda, Kia, Hyundai,

and that's pretty much about what we would work on.

We didn't need to stretch in,

a lot of the other Asian makes.

So I want to challenge your thing.

BMW comes in, really, really good friend.

Pete, you got to help me, man.

You would probably say it's out of my lane,

I don't work on these,

or would you for this bleeding heart friend of yours

take it in there and then apply

how you know how systems work?

Would you do that?

No, so almost never.

Probably one or two times,

over the last 30 some years,

working on cars got out of my lane,

but almost never have I done that

because the couple of times that I have,

I realized it was a mistake

because I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know what's going on here

and I got to get myself educated

in order to be able to work on this thing.

If I'm not going to do it again,

it doesn't make sense to educate or tool up

to do a one of car.

So the fundamentals won't work?

I'm sure the fundamentals would work,

but from a dollars and cents standpoint,

it doesn't make sense for me

to educate myself on one BMW car

so I can solve a problem

that somebody else is having trouble figuring out.

I would just recommend it

to somebody that knows BMW well.

You said a mouthful there.

You basically said, yeah, you can take it on,

but you'll probably never make enough money on it

because you're learning as you're going.

So this say typical two hour job may take you five

and unless the person's willing to pay you all five hours

for your learning curve,

I think that's what you're saying.

That's in a nutshell.

And I mean, we're in business to make money.

I'm not in business to be a superhero.

If it's not something that I'm going to see

over and over and over again down the road,

it doesn't make sense to pay for me to learn it now

to lose money on one job.

So one day you said,

I got to figure out this EV thing.

How did Pete get into EVs?

So I got asked by a local parts manufacturer

for some technical assistance

on an EV research project they were doing.

I hadn't really worked on EVs previously,

but I understand how electricity works.

So I spent some hours and 20 or 30 hours

kind of reading study on specific to EV vehicle

that they wanted to get knowledge on.

And that got me really curious

because I realized by doing that studying,

I realized how simplified the electric vehicle platforms are

versus the modern gas engine cars

that have extensive emission systems

and complicated engine like variable valve timing

and stuff like that.

And all that complicated engineered stuff,

it fails versus the electric vehicles.

They seem to me on an initial look incredibly simple.

As I've dove deeper in,

they really, really are very, very, very simple.

Long-term should be more robust

than your modern gasoline engine platform.

What do you mean more robust as far as how they go,

how fast, how they don't break down or reliability?

So all of that together.

So an electric vehicle drive motor

has a lot fewer parts total

and a lot fewer moving parts total

than a gasoline engine and transmission assembly.

And just that in itself is going to pretty much guarantee

some more robust long-term reliability.

You lose spark plugs and versus a gasoline engine platform,

you've got an engine, you've got a transmission,

both are expensive items.

You've got emission systems that go bad

on a gasoline engine.

You really don't have any of that

on an electric drive motor assembly.

You've got the electric motor itself.

You've got an inverter that controls the power

going to the electric motor.

And then you've got some sort of gear reduction system

in order to get the power from the motor out to the wheels.

But you have no transmission.

There's no shifting or anything like that.

So a Model S Tesla that I recently took apart

has three gears inside of it.

And that's incredibly simple.

So it got me interested.

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About this episode

Pete Rudloff shares his journey of retiring at 47 after 25 years in the automotive industry. He discusses his long-term plan to step away from full-time work, the challenges of managing employees, and the importance of staying within one's expertise. Pete reflects on his successful career, focusing on specific vehicle makes, and emphasizes the significance of having a clear plan. The conversation also touches on his transition to working on electric vehicles and the unique challenges they present.

batteries battery failures BMW brakes catalytic converter electric drive motor assembly EV gas engine gasoline engine gear reduction system

Chevrolet Silverado Tesla Model S Tesla Model Y

Original notes

Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS Watch Full Video Episode

In this episode, Carm Capriotto reconnects with industry veteran Peter Rudloff to explore his transition from shop owner to consultant, his “stay in your lane” philosophy, and the future of EV repair.

Rudloff shares how a 25-year exit plan allowed him to retire from shop ownership at 47 and transition into his home-based “Pete Cave,” where he continues hands-on work without managing employees. He later founded Rhino Collective LLC, helping manufacturers connect engineering with real-world repair.

A central theme is specialization. By focusing on domestic and Asian vehicles and avoiding brands like BMW, Rudloff improved efficiency and profitability. He argues that staying within your strengths leads to “profit by default” and long-term stability.

Looking ahead, he predicts EVs will dominate, and repair will shift toward modular, aircraft-style maintenance. He encourages new shop owners to consider EV specialization as a growth path.

Rudloff also emphasizes ongoing education, recommending 60 hours of training per year and crediting the Delaware Training Group as a major influence on his career.

This episode delivers clear, practical insight on focus, future-proofing, and lifelong learning in today’s repair industry.

Peter Rudloff, Rhino Collective LLC, [email protected]

Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS Learn more about NAPA Auto Care and the benefits of being part of the NAPA family by visiting https://www.napaonline.com/en/auto-care NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with onsite training and six days a week of support and local representation. Find NAPA TRACS on the Web at http://napatracs.com/ Connect with the Podcast: - Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RemarkableResultsRadioPodcast/ - Join Our Virtual Toastmasters Club: https://remarkableresults.biz/toastmasters - Join Our Private Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1734687266778976 - Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/carmcapriotto - Follow on LinkedIn:

Remarkable Results Radio Podcast

Carm Capriotto, AAP

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