Flat Rate is Killing Teamwork in Auto Repair! (Mike Pereira)

Like I said, there's guys that are proponents of flat rate, but for me, no way. I, like, would I pay. If I hired a guy and he said, listen, I want to go on flat rate, I would. I guess I would consider it. I want to give him the ability to do that. I would never pay a guy a flat rate unless he requested it. You know what I mean? Like, if I hire anybody, they're hourly. Unless they, you know, they want otherwise.

You know what I mean? Just because I want them to actually be a team. I want my guys and myself to be a team, to work together for the end goal, which really, at the end of the day is fixing that car. Right. And having a happy customer. Right.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaden Mechanic podcast. I sound a little bit different because I came home from Pennsylvania with some whoopie pies and some shoo fly pie and some kind of head congestion. So if I don't sound exactly like myself, this is not an imposter. This is still me. But I've just been fighting this cold for. Since I came home from tools. And, yeah, we're just trying to shake it. So I have with me, I gotta say, a new friend, somebody I haven't had a chance to talk to, but he reached out to me and he was just talking about the Canadian landscape of auto repair.

And Mr. Mike Pereira is. Lives about two hours away from me in the greater city of Toronto area, which I'm not a fan of Toronto. I live there for a little bit.

Greater's relative. Yeah.

So I'll get the first question right out of the way. Mike, are you a Leafs fan or not?

I. I'm not a hockey fan at all, believe it or not.

Same.

Because of the Leafs. Because of the Leafs. So, yeah. Yeah.

Every time I go to the States, people like, oh, what do you think of the hockey? I'm like, are they still playing? Like, I don't follow. Like, I know it's Florida and the Oilers now, and of course, cheer for the Oilers because they'll cheer for the Canadian team. I couldn't tell you. Connor. Connor McDavid, plays for the Edmonton. But, I mean, I couldn't tell you. Like, there are people like, well, Florida could repeat. They won last year.

Like, I don't remember.

Same thing. I had no clue who won last year. I know the series is 1:1 right now, but that's about all I know about it.

So, yeah, people being from Toronto are like a. Or from Kingston, people are. How can you not like, be such a hockey fan. I didn't grow up playing it, man. Like, I had a twin brother and, you know, it was expensive to put kids in hockey. It still is. And I never got around to playing. It wasn't my thing.

I learned to skate, but I never really picked up a stick and mastered it. So, you know, I'm more of a.

Baseball and soccer guy.

So, yeah, I like to fight. That's about pretty awesome.

They build up to that. You watch them start, you know, starting sticking it to each other and you know what's coming sooner or later. Yeah, it's pretty wild.

Yeah. So do you cheer for the Jays?

I do. Right. Yeah, I usually just have them on in the background when we're doing tasks on the weekend or whatever. But you can't sit through a full game, let's be honest, three hours or whatever a game is. It's tough. So it's.

We were just talking about that. It's brutally like the, the rule changes they made in baseball to try and speed it up because. Yeah, who wants to give four hours on the in to. To watching a game that's so slow? Like, I. I think I could watch golf before I'd watch baseball.

100. Yeah. That's a long time to commit. Yeah.

I get to see more guys drive the ball. That's the way I look at it. Right. Like, it's just, you know, all that kind of stuff. So Mike, kind of give us some. An introduction. You're in Etobicoke area, which is, you know, Toronto area, for those people. What.

Tell us about your business and your background and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, so I, I started like yourself and so many other techs, small shops, dealers, you know, I've done. I don't even know how many. I've moved around a lot. And then my last stint was at a GM dealership and it was a terrible experience. Listen, I'm not going to knock flat rate, but that was one of the things that drove me nuts about it and some of the stuff that goes along with the flat rate environment and stuff. So I had. Was there. That was my last place before I decided to go out on my own.

I was there about six years and then I had just. By the time I was finished there, I was just fed up. I wanted to. I took a few months off. I decided, well, I didn't know what to do. Basically I thought, maybe I'll become a police officer. Maybe I'll just try something else. And honestly, I decided I love working on cars.

You know, it's my career and, you know, my passion. So I decided, let's just give it one more go. I'm going to try it on my own. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then I'm out and I'm doing something else. So, yeah, here we are. That was back in 2009, something like that. So I've been on my own ever since.

Well, not on my own, but in my own business ever since.

Yeah, right. Good for you, man. It's probably. That's about the same time that I made the move to come back home here. And probably what I should have done is when I left the dealer in Ottawa, I should have come home and. And started on the same kind of path, setting up something for myself instead. Because, like, we were talking before, you know, we hit record, I bounced around so much in the last two years. It's crazy.

And, you know, some of that is just because, like, we were talking. This town is got a. Is. Is behind in the times. I think I'll say, in terms of valuing what it is truly that we, you know, want. And the attrition rate that I've seen in technicians in this province, Kingston, is the worst I've ever seen it really. It's so bad because, like, I keep talking about, we got Goodyear Tire factory here. Right.

That makes all the tires for all the GM trucks that go out of.

Yeah.

So they've snapped up all of the local talent to go work in that factory on the machinery in the factory. You're not building the tire. You're. Yeah, it's in the type of machines.

That build line stuff.

Yeah, yeah. So they sucked up a huge talent pool. And like, I went and interviewed at a place and literally, like, their top tech, who was like, I don't even think it would have been 30, but their most, highest level, longest experience there. That was. That was it for him. He topped out at 35 bucks. And he was like, I'm going a good year. And it was like.

And I'm seeing this happen all the time. And I'm like, this industry is so backwards.

Yeah.

What did you hate about the dealer? The typical stuff or.

Yeah, I think the typical stuff I was listening to on the way back from Tools, I was listening to what last podcast was. Or yours. It was one. I can't remember the name of the guy, but a lot of flat rate came up. A lot. And just a conversation about how things are done and all the, you know, the sneaky ins and outs and all the Gray areas. And I mean, at my dealership, it was like that on a regular basis. And you'd have guys, you know, you'd have your tiered guys.

I was the youngest tech there.

So.

You know, seniority plays a big role. And at least at that place and the type of work that you got. So it was tough, right? Like you're, you know, you're coming up, you know, that was. Like I said, that's years ago. Now. You're learning the brand. I was. I'd worked at a few other places before, but you're.

You're learning the ins and outs of the dealership and how it works. And yeah, it was. It was a dog fight almost every day kind of thing. Right when I started there, there was. I think There was about 12 guys in the shop. And the shop was literally divided socially divided between maybe three or four guys, and then the rest of the guys. And these guys would walk by each other every morning, not say a word to each other. And it was just that you could feel.

You could feel the tension in that, like that bad energy in that place. And the beginning, I just shook it off thinking, wow, whatever, maybe it's a bad day or a bad week or whatever. But never. It really. I mean, it got better eventually with a bit of my own intervention, with a couple of big guy, big, you know, big heads there, right? It was. It was. It was tough. It was.

It was not a great experience. You know, I. I came from the thought that going to the dealer, the dealer's got to be the best of the best. There can't be better than this, right? I mean, they got the nicest buildings, the most well lit. Some of them are air condition. That's why I want to do it. And to be totally honest, yeah, they weren't any better. You know what I mean? Sometimes where they were worse.

So.

Yeah, and it's so funny to me because as I've gone aged up, you know, I've seen that culture you speak of, that the dealership. I've seen it in so many dealers and talked to so many other people that have witnessed the same thing. And what's crazy, Mike, is that it's almost like a constructed culture within the thing. You know, how they.

Almost like they just read a handbook and they're like, this is the way you got to be like, it's. It's insane because I've worked at a couple of other dealers and it wasn't much different. Yeah, it is. Like, it's. Yeah. And I wonder if it Starts from the head down. Like, I mean, we used to. They used to have like town hall meetings and everything.

And you'd have the dealer principal there and he's got the silver tongue and everything's amazing and you guys are the best, blah, blah, blah. But as soon as he's gone or as soon as he's faced with tough questions, you know, it all goes silent. Right. And nothing ever gets done.

And they don't, they don't want to upset the apple cart. But I mean, the reality is, is like we. Somebody was talking today about how this industry is. Is not changing and never will. And I said, first of all, it already has changed because the shortage is totally. We're. We're stuck where everybody's pointing their finger at each other going, I don't know who did it first and what do we do? Like, and that's fine. But that's still change.

It's still change. The fact that the shortage. Now we're talking about it. Yeah. The same thing that you're talking about is like we would have the service manager and once in a while you'd see the fixed ops guy and he'd. And you know, oh, this is good and this is bad and here's your pizza. And you know, and we would all sit around and we were. I was a very open.

Funny. Right. I'd be very open. I was very outspoken about. We know what the problems are. They're sitting here at the table with us. Right. And.

And it's a situation of like I'm fixing his comebacks over and over and over again. And we're continuing to give him work that is out of his scope.

Yeah.

Because we have to do. Why do we do that? And of course you get. Well, it's not what's going on. Okay. It is examples of what it is going on. Why do you do it? Just cut the BS and let's just all be. Know our role and, and work with it. But they didn't want to because they can't.

Yeah.

And that was what frustrated me. Right. Was it's just like I'm a very. Just be transparent.

Just cut and dry. Exactly.

If you're going to treat him better because he's been here 20 years, just say that.

Yeah, exactly. And I'm either going to deal with it or I'm going to move on. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But that's rarely the case. It's usually a lot of, you know, mints and words, you know, going around the real point of the story and yeah. Like we used to deal with that. We had a tower operator and you'd see the work, you know, get unfairly in the divvied out and everything. And they, the worst was there I was, they paired. So you, it was specialized there. So you'd have your general techs, you'd have your diag tech, you have your front end tech and everything. And I was one of the general techs.

The majority of them were general techs, obviously.

Right.

But they stuck me and the guy beside me with general and trim. Oh, and the rest of the generals didn't get any of that. So you can imagine how fun that was working at a dealer. Warranty, water leaks, warranty trim noises. Meanwhile, guys. So, you know, back at then it was, you know, I'm sure You're familiar with 3400 intake manifold gaskets and head gaskets. We were, you know, blasting those up three or four a day at some points at times. But you'd get a back to back water leak or wind noise and you're just watching one guy just popping an intake gasket, you know, set off in record time and he's going to do a head gasket on a Montana and that's his day and you're stuck, you know, for hours.

We were talking. That was one thing about your last podcast. We're talking about trying to get straight time. Oh yeah, good luck with that. Good luck with that. A 0.2 even, you know what I mean? Like a 0.2. And they're like, wow, you know, have you really spent that much? You know, is, is the time. Can we have look at your log to make sure you're on that for that much time.

They'd always try to grease you for that much more than they'd give you, you know what I mean?

And see and I, I joke all the time, right? Like I mean the, the water noises or water leaks and wind noises were the two things that I just thought were the most wasted point time ever. Because like, you know what happens as soon as that car's out of warranty, that customer loses it. They never open that sunroof again because they got it where it's sealed, leave it alone, you know, or they let they turn, turn the effing radio up almost cost there because that's like we, we got talking this week about how I can remember having the complete heater box out of a Dakota and driving it around trying to find a creek noise up in the dash and the dash is out of it. So obviously Then the heater box is out of it, the dash is out of it. It ain't a creek from the dash, it's a creek from a body. Like what's the fix for that? Well turn the friggin radio up because like what are you going to do? Go in there, find a seam that's flexing? Like how are you going to do that?

Yeah.

Not, you know, not going to work.

Yeah, it's not going to happen. Exactly.

And, and the idea that they keep saying there's a process to find that and there's a. There's an allottable time. That's. That's. Yes.

Because I'd love to see it.

There isn't one.

It definitely isn't.

I had a Chevy Traverse yesterday, 2020. We were talking before we got on the air. I'm on a used car lot and when you drive it around the parking lot it would squeak like a mother from the back end. The 2020 Traverse and it's like 120,000 kilometers on the thing. Right. So that's you know, communist units for my American friends and just an awful squeak. Well you put it on the air and you look at it and you're like well the sway bar links busted right off.

Yeah.

So put a set of links in because I got to save this thing anyway. Well if it don't make the same damn noise.

Yeah.

So now I'm into the whole. Disconnect the sway bar again. Nope, still squeaking. And it was pretty like we don't have a drive on hoist but it's. You could sit there in the bay and push on the right hand side. No, it would squeak. Well I just ended up taking a grease needle.

Yeah.

And going into those seal bearings in the, in the. But there's five lateral links that connect that. That rear suspension. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's three too many. Yeah.

Yeah, no kidding.

So I just like. So which bearing was the one that was making noise? I couldn't tell you for sure but I greased the two that are sealed and the noise went away. That's a fix.

That's a fix. Yeah.

There's no plane anything. There's no tire wear. Yeah, right. But I mean when I think about the stuff that I. Water leaks and wind noises. Those are the ones that like give me the most stupid intermittent wiring problem. Drivability issue all day over giving me that nonsense because I just, I can't get my heart into trying to. Because it's such a simple fix.

You can tune yourself out to not hear it.

Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. You know what I mean, it's, it's literally that simple. And like you said, as soon as it's out of warranty, that's exactly what you're going to do. You're not going to go after that, right?

Yeah, but I mean, but I, I'm not trying to say customers shouldn't complain of it because I mean, If I'm paying $100,000 for a truck, you know, which is what we're paying now, it shouldn't do that. No, but the reality is, is like, you know, the people, customers especially, don't appreciate the time it takes to actually go in and be really good at that. Yeah, you know, it's, it's an art form. My dad was a collision guy, so I mean, like I saw him do things, you know, that he didn't have to worry when he put the car back together, it was going to squeak because it was just how he knew how to do it, you know, sun and stuff. It's incredible.

But it really is an art form. Like you said, it isn't your regular I'm gonna. I know it is. It's this part, take it off, put it on kind of scenario. Something like that is very, very specific and that's why it should be valued better than the dealerships usually value it at. Right? It's. You gotta write 17 paragraphs and make sure you run out your time for a noise. Well, good luck giving that to, you know, could you.

Could 10 out of 12 guys solve that problem? Probably not, right?

Yeah.

And that should be valued properly, but unfortunately I don't think it probably still isn't to this day. I'm glad I don't know anym. Yeah, I'm sure it isn't.

So what like did you find when you left the dealer and decided to go out on your own? Were you lacking in some skills? Some skills, because like you had done a lot of that work and a generalized stuff and I'm not trying to say that you couldn't solve drivability and dialogue.

I know what you mean. Yeah. No, 100% there was, you know, like we did general stuff. I would always try to, like when we had their slow times, I would try to go with the drivability side of there. We had two drivability texts. I would try to spend some time with them and try to, you know, just pick up some stuff from them because that was the other downside to a flattering flat rate environment. Nobody really wants to teach you anything, especially if you're going after their piece of the pie. And I get it, you know, they might get it from a tech to tech perspective, but it doesn't breed the most hospitable environment for somebody that's learning.

By that time though, I was pretty confident in my general repair skills. I think my diag sort of side of things needed some brushing up. And yeah, I, you know, Scanner Daniel was a big one. Like we talk about that. You know, Paul is amazing. You know, I had a chance to, you know, say hi to him at Tools. I was like, that was a while, dude. Just like I could care less.

You know, you'd see all these people on the movies and this and that. Yeah, I couldn't care to meet any of them. You know, Paul and a few of the other guys. It was just like, you know, it was amazing to meet them. Right. So, yeah, he was huge.

Yeah. So I gotta put my, my hand up for a minute. I forgot to mention Rudy, Mike and I kind of missed each other in transit. We were both at Tools last week, so I don't know when this will drop a couple weeks from now, so it'll be two, three weeks removed. But we were both in Pennsylvania at Tools put on by Brett Fadley. And I kept saying, everybody, there's only two Canadians there. There's actually three.

Yeah, I think Arlen, I think it was corrected you that night there, the night before Saturday, whatever it was. Yeah. And he said, looked for me. And then I saw him that morning. Funny thing, funny thing. Sunday morning, right before the Sunday morning session started. We were parked almost exactly right beside each other and I watched you walk away. But I was on the phone, our FaceTime call with my wife, and I was just like.

And I didn't end up making it, but. And then I tried to see if I could catch you afterwards, but I think you did. You. You stayed for the session and then.

Left right after I left at 8:30 on Sunday morning.

Okay. So you left super early. Yeah, yeah. Because you had been you. I like, I, I saw your Jeep. We parked, literally, I saw you walk out of your Jeep and I was like, well, now's my chance and if I tell my wife I got to go to talk to another dude, she's gonna lose her mind. So I had to stick the phone with her. I think I made the right decision there.

But.

Yeah, no, always, please, the wife first. Yeah, I'll totally understand. But like, it was. So you drove down.

I drove down, yeah. Yeah, it was. I got a little lost. Long story. But I got a little lost on the way down. So it took me about eight and a half hours by the time I was there. Yeah, I drove down, I took the Friday off. I left my.

I got the one tech. Right now it's just me and another tech.

He.

He stayed behind. We had a bunch of work to catch up on, so he stayed behind to do that. And I left Friday morning for around 11. I got there about 7 o' clock at night. Yeah.

So you didn't get too bad.

Yeah, it was a beautiful drive down.

Oh, isn't it amazing? I like, I left. So I left Kingston Wednesday morning and like, I was in Watertown within an hour. Right? Watertown, right across the border for me. And then I. I got gas and I got Stewart's coffee that everybody was telling me, gotta get coffee at Stewart's because no Tim Hortons, get Stuart's coffee.

Yeah.

And so I start driving down and. And getting out of, you know, New York was no big deal. You get it across the border and all of a sudden going down through Binghamton, down 81 was. Was. I hit my first bit of traffic and they routed us through, like, parts of Syracuse. It was all under traffic and everything. I'm like, this is weird. But then once I get into pa, Beautiful, like all the Pokemon mountains and everything was just fantastic.

I'd never seen. I keep telling this morning people I've never seen so many deer on a road trip as I say the exact.

Same thing, except on my side of things, most of them are dead.

Yes.

I think I must have seen 40 or 50, you know, on the way there, on the way back. It was insane. It was like, oh, it was basically every kilometer or so.

And everybody was telling me in Pennsylvania, that's a real thing. Like, they have a huge population of deer and like, they're. There's not a lot of hunting, I guess, and people, you know, no predators and all that kind of stuff. My mom's like, well, aren't they smaller? I'm like, well, all the ones I saw were small. They were all fawns and does. And I said, I don't know whether they can't get over the barrier. So they come down onto the highway and then they can't jump. I don't know what.

But they. It was sad to see, but yeah, you know, cycle a lot of them, that's for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. But it was. It was a beautiful drive. I picked up the rain in Watertown and had rain all the way coming down.

So you left when? Thursday. Or Friday or Wednesday morning.

So. And I got there going to seven, I guess, on. On Wednesday. And so it was like a little. Yeah, that seems about right. Seven o' clock, I think, is when I finally got to the thing because I hit traffic coming into Pennsylvania and around, like, Atlant Castro and all jazz.

Yep.

And I made two gas stops, got out of the Jeep, stretched. I made way better time coming back because I knew, okay, like, I filled it up in Lancaster when I left on Sunday morning. Then I was sucking fumes when I hit Watertown, but I knew that's like, okay, I can do 583k on a tank. And it was 575 to get me back to Watertown, so I knew I was good. But, yeah, so I only stopped once to get out, stretch and. And go. And way less traffic, obviously, on Sunday than a weekday.

But, yeah, I made it down. I didn't run into any traffic there or back. It was. It was pretty smooth sailing. I mean, I felt like I spent over two hours, two and a half hours maybe, going through the mountains and the Susquehanna river there and everything. It was, you know, you're going like a buck 40. I don't know what. I couldn't do the conversion.

I was so tired, I couldn't do the conversion. I'm like, whatever. If I get caught, I'll deal with. Was a beautiful drive.

Yeah, it's nice, eh? What did. Is that your first main event like that? Like, big.

It is. I remember. You know, it's funny, so I. I first got turned on to everything, probably 20, 21, maybe. Maybe more or less when I first, you know, heard Lucas and David on their podcast and everything. And that just opened up a huge, huge world for me. You know, you talk about, you know, how some guys are saying that things are just as bad or worse now, but I feel like, you know, that yourself and Lucas and David and Carm and all those guys, we didn't have that stuff before, you know, just an avenue for guys to be able to. Even if it's a matter of.

Of venting or to say, you know, you're not alone, or I'm not alone, or, hey, that problem that I dealt with isn't unique to me. You know what I mean? I've got brothers in this that have gone through the same stuff. I think just that alone is huge. Because, yeah, I don't know how it is in. In Kingston in general, how the shops are, but in Toronto, you know, there's shops everywhere, obviously, but most, I would say pretty Much. Any guys that I speak with that are shop owners around here, they tend to hold their cards pretty close to the vest. And you know, a lot of guys haven't even heard of, you know, you or Lucas or any of the guys in the, in the groups and anything like that. And I just feel like they're just missing out on a huge, huge part of what makes this industry, you know, better than it was, you know, yesterday and the day before.

And you know, I, you know, I think it has you guys to thank for it. And in so many ways it's massive. That's like, I'm telling you, for me, it's massive. Like, I don't know, I, if I'm not listening to the radio, I'm listening to, you know, yourself or Lucas and David. And yeah, it's just, just, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. And I, I do listen to some of Mike Allen's stuff. I know there's a little bit of a thing back and forth.

I just like variety, let's just say.

Right.

But.

And he's a great guy and he's got awesome, awesome things to bring to the table. It makes me, you know, for people that are listening in Canada, we have an event that happens in Toronto. Like we have a pretty big event and yet you've never attended it.

So, you know, that was through aaro, right? I think it is. Or.

Yeah, and it was. I, they wanted me to get there last year, but it's like it happens, I think within a couple weeks of like asta. So, I mean, hard for me to get time off to do from a job to do both, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But it's, it's so funny to me, you know, for you, like, you don't have to travel very far. You could go to it. You're not necessarily staying in a hotel to go to that event. Like it's. And yet there's so many people in Toronto that don't go. Like Murray Walton telling me how so Canada is such a big country, so spread out and yet we, we need more of that because I mean, this industry up here has some definite distinct challenges and some advantages and disadvantages of, of how it works up here. Like our tire industry rivals. I don't care what anyone says in, in the U.S.

like, yes, they sell more tires. They should, there's more cars. But the way we've been able to build the industry around here just on a twice seasonal tire thing is huge. And I think there's some things down there that they could learn from us Right. Especially if they start to adopt the idea that, you know, it. Just because you're in some of these other states, like Pennsylvania, doesn't mean you don't need snow tires, you know?

Yes. 100. Yeah. And that could bring a whole, you know, like, if you're doing your inspections properly and everything like that, that brings a whole world of potential sales and just safer vehicles on the road. Right. If things are getting done, if customers are approving them and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

So the people that are listening up here, we. You to, you know, aro if anybody's listening, we need you guys to really start pushing that, making people aware of the fact that it does go on. And it's like, you drove eight hours, I drove seven, essentially, to like, people will drive for a good event, you know, I loved it.

I mean, I. I think it was an amazing experience, you know, just to be around guys there. I would say, you know, they always say, surround yourself with people better than you. Right. If you want to just be better as a person and just in general. Right. And just to be. I don't know.

I just. I came back on the Monday and I felt like, you know, not that I was necessarily going to change, you know, flip my business upside down and fix a billion things, but like, you know, I just felt a bit more calm. Now, we're still not over the tire season, so the calm went away by Tuesday or Wednesday. But, yeah, I think we still got about, believe it or not, three or four. We're doing about three to four sets a day still.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. But it's just. It's amazing to have of an event like that. And, you know, it's. It's like you said, I really feel like aaro, for instance, you know, not to say anything bad about them, but, you know, it's an organization. It's great that they exist. But I just.

I mean, if I hadn't gone out and done the research to even know they existed.

Yeah.

I would have never known about them. It's, you know, I. I just. I think I feel like kind of like, you know, it's kind of akin to ASC in the US in the sense that, like, nobody. Yeah, it exists. Nobody really, you know, texts have it for, you know, look. Look what I've got. And, you know, look at my credit for this or whatever.

But, you know, as a consumer, they don't know. And as a tech here, you don't. Most guys don't know or never heard of aaro, and I'm sure they're Doing good things, but it's just not. It's not reaching out to everyone. Right. Shop owners and techs and everything. So. And like you were saying, that event.

Sorry to cut you off. You're saying that event that. I think it just happened a couple of months ago or something like that, maybe was it. Was there one where Karm was there and everything?

So there's always Aro, I think their big one. And again, even. Hold on one second. My dog is. No. So what I remember about hearing from. Maybe it was. Murray explained it to me.

ARO had a thing where they changed the dates around by like a four month block or something because somebody, one of the organizers I think was sick or something. And it didn't then line up for me to go to asta. And it. Yeah, So I have. I've never been to it. I'd like to go.

Yeah, I'd like to go too. Yeah.

But it's. It's one of those things because it's two hours away. Right. Like it's. Yeah, it's certainly feasible.

Yeah. For you. It's a bit of a drive still, but still. It's not seven and it's still here. And there's no hoopla with trying to get over the border, which was fine for me. I didn't have any issues. A little bit of long wait time getting over and everything, but it was pretty straightforward. Everyone I talked to was like, oh, what? How did the border go? Everything okay? And I'm like, yeah, you know what I mean?

Like, the media propaganda is something else. It's like my mother was just my God bless her, my 79 year old mother's like, oh, they're gonna rip it, you know, they're gonna tear your Jeep apart and hope you make it back alive.

Yeah.

Why? She's like, you should take that Trudeau sticker off. They're gonna. Why? Like, you know, and just for the record, it's not a for Trudeau sticker. It's against Trudeau sticker.

I saw that sticker.

So my mom and she's like, she had no problems, like, no, they just asked me the same thing. Any weapons? No. Alcohol? Cannabis? Nope. Drive on. Like, I don't know if I look like. I mean, I think I look like somebody that probably, you know, would be questionable with the beard and, you know.

I think we both, for the most part, we look the same. We almost all talk the same. You know what I mean? It's. Yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah.

They asked me. They asked me now when I'M going down. And it's like you say, I'm going for an automotive training event. They go, oh, cool.

Yeah, yeah.

And they go, are you working it? No, I'm not working it. Like, I have a podcast. Oh, you have a podcast? Oh, yeah, my record episode or two. But I said, I'm not working. I'm there to learn. So.

Yeah, exactly.

And then they're pretty cool. But what. What courses did you take?

So I took. You know what's funny? I took a picture of it. So I. In case you were going to ask me, because I can't remember the names, but they took. It was Get a Grip. Mastering Organizational Skills and Time Management. And that was Kim Orenheimer, if I'm not mistaken.

Okay.

And then I. That was the Saturday morning one. And I took Rick White's KPI1, which. That was an awesome one. They were both really good. Rick. Rick's was one I was really looking forward to. I've heard him on, you know, I've heard him all over for them on Lucas's podcast and such and everything.

And it's got some interesting stuff. So, yeah, it was nice. Now, mind you, I couldn't sleep. Oh, it was. I had the hotel across the street, the red roof, in.

Okay.

I'll tell you that. And they had an AC unit under the window that might as well been a gigantic hole in the wall. I was just hearing engine brakes all day and the birds started chirping at like, I think it was 3:45. So I was up every other hour. So, yeah, yeah, it was hard to retain a lot that weekend.

But, yeah, I. I didn't. So what did I sit through? I sat through. I sat through. I shouldn't say it like that. I took Brian Pollock's class and I took Brandon Stickler's class and Brandon Steckler's class. I'd taken it before, but it was worth taking again. And then Brian Pollock with Jim Kokonis's class.

That was fantastic. I've been wanting to see that because Brian and I go back a long time, so I had to sit in his class. And finally. But I keep telling anybody, if you can sit through, like, sit through there, do it again. If you get the opportunity to take a class with either Rick White or Cecil, take it like it is. It's such powerful stuff. Like, I. I sat in with cecil for about 20 minutes before his class broke for lunch.

The. I think the Thursday.

Yeah.

And it was like, it was only 20 minutes and it was fantastic. Like, it was so good.

You know, I've heard him talk so many times. It was funny. I. After Kim's class, Cecil was. Cecil had a class on at the same time. And I caught him on the way out and I had like a little awkward of a conversation. I was telling him I wanted to take his class too. It just happened to be at the same time.

And my wife knows me pretty well and she knows my time management skills can be a less than optimal kind of thing. So she suggested I take Kim's course, which is awesome.

Yeah.

But I had to make a point of saying hi to Cecil and telling him, you know, I want to take his. And Interesting. Well, not interesting enough, awkwardly enough, I told him, I said, I wish my dad had your voice when I was a kid, because you have the most warm, caring, calm voice. I could listen to that guy all day even. Even if I'm not even interested in the subject matter. You know what I mean? Like, he was. He was appreciative of it, but he was probably thinking, this guy's a little bit on the weird side.

There's so. Him and Rick both are so refined and polished in their presentation that it's like, when I think about, you know, like, I'm not necessarily discussing the same subject matter, but when I think about how well they deliver. Yeah, I keep working towards that in this platform. And it's like. But Cecil especially, like to sit there is just like, you know, very calm.

Yeah.

Commands the room. You know, big presence in the room. Rick White, same thing. Big presence in the room. Commands room. Like, they're. They're such professionals, right? That it's just Murray Vaugh too. Like, if you ever get a chance to sit in with one of Murray's classes, they're fantastic as well.

I haven't had a chance to sit in one of his classes, but I. I've got to talk to him quite a bit. Same thing. Just absolute standouts in the industry. Right. And I. I joked with Murray. I've been reading Murray's stuff for 25 years.

I used to read it in Canadian Technician magazine and SSG magazine. Like, it would get delivered to the shop. I was the only one reading it, you know?

Yeah.

So I can remember those names and I would read it. And so when I finally got to meet him, I'm like, this is so cool, you know, because it's like. And they're not saying anything different really, than they were saying 20 years ago, you know, and so they're just saying, value what you do and what you have to offer and charge for it 100. Yeah, but we, so we just like, why are we, why are we still dropping that ball so much, Mike?

I don't know. I think a lot of guys are scared. You know what I mean? I think a lot of guys, you know, I feel like one of the biggest problems is, and you can roll me up into one, into that same kind of category is that, you know, and we've heard it all before. A lot of shop owners are ex techs, right? And as a tech, you don't have that business mindset, you know, they talked about. You know, you want to be at a certain gross GP and stuff like that. I had no clue what that was. You know, going back to what I said, you know, I've had the shop since 2010 or whatever it was, and I, I would say 80% of those years, I still had no clue what that was. And it took, you know, getting involved with these groups to kind of get a better understanding of how things were on the business side.

I remember having years where I thought, I'm doing well, man. I'm, you know, I'm making good money, blah, blah, blah. And I, I. You look back at that, those, those years and you, you really start breaking down the numbers because you never thought, yeah, I mean, yeah, the numbers might have looked good coming in, but you had no clue what was going out. And, you know, you were essentially or effectively working almost for free and all that time. And as we get older, I'm. I'm 43 and I've got two kids and a beautiful wife. I love her, you know, and the kids are amazing.

But you start like, I'm here 12 hours a day most of the time, right. Just because it's me and one other guy and especially tire season, right. So you start like time starts meaning more than a lot of things, especially money. Right? So, yeah. And you start realizing all that time I spent, you know, discounting, not this, not even discounting, but not charging accordingly. And you think about how much different of a position you may have been in for, you know, to be able to afford things for your family or whatnot, if you had just found these things out earlier, which I, I'm glad I found them out, period. I, like I said, you know, like, you. Everything that you guys are doing, like, all, all of you guys, yourself, Lucas, David, like, it's just, I, you know, it's, it's funny because I don't, like, I know that you're you, Jeff, and you know, David, Lucas, you guys know that you're making a change.

And I think you do, but I don't think you know how much of a change it means to some people. And like, it's. It's huge. And to some people, it may not mean as much or whatever, but the fact they're even instilling any point of change in an industry that felt like to me, even just five years ago was really closed off from itself. Like everybody was in their own little room and the door was locked. And maybe you made a phone call to one guy back and forth, but you didn't want to, you know, divulge too much information. I feel like for me, I go to. I got a couple of shop buddies in the area.

I. I'm completely open with all my stuff. And, you know, you take with that information what you would like. And, you know, you have some guys are like, oh, you. You charge that much or you charge for this? I can't charge for that. And I mean, hey, listen, you just gotta open up your mind, you know what I mean? And, you know, realize there's a different way to do things other than, you know, going back to what we said, discounting your labor and what you're worth and what your skills are worth. Like, we work all our lives to learn some of the stuff, and we're constantly learning. We talk about how we have to know, you know, electrical, plumbing, H vac, mechanical, you name it, Right? There is another trade where you got to know all that.

And then we give it away. And we give it away.

And especially the dyag side of things, like the most important, I would say if you got a hundred guys in the room, 100 techs in the room, even with 10 plus years.

Yeah.

I'd be surprised if 20 of them could diag. Some of the most complex, just gonna.

Say five out of a hundred can. Can get like. And I. I tell you, I only know of my circle. And again, some of them I know in my circle, I know really well. And then some I know. Okay, it's. It's.

If. If you gave me a hundred in my circle, I'd say 10. I know that I would trust that it wouldn't matter what I give it to them. They're going to give it to the bottom of it. The other 90 would like, not necessarily make a mistake, but they would be like, no fam. I'm good. You know, I want to touch it. The other 10 are just like, sick, obsessed with and super.

Like, we go back to Brian Pollock. There isn't a car Built that. That guy can't figure it out. It's. He's such a badass. Like, it just. It wouldn't matter if it was a Lamborghini. It would.

He would just look at the service information. He'd look at it. He. And. And he would just fix the car. And. Yeah, it's saying something to say, well, we can all do that if we have the service information. But the rest of us are like.

And I'm that way. I don't want to, you know, I mean, like, I want to stay in my lane and. And, you know, but he's just. He's. Yeah, he's a special dude, man. He's special. Going back to what you're talking about, the. The shop owners keeping everything so closer to chest.

That's like this area, like, I've talked to. Because what's weird for me is I go to these events and like, yeah, there's some text there, but, like, there's still a lot of us, predominantly owners. Owners and tax, like, owner techs. And I'm always thinking with this impact that I'm having, like, yeah, the technicians get what I'm about, but I feel like some of the owners are going to be like, that guy is, like, trying to really, really, you know, throw a wrench into the works and. And screw this up from profit. And it just blows my mind when they're so welcoming and warm and encouraging to me and going, no, you're doing exactly what needs to be done. Because I keep thinking, like, I want to see text make 100 bucks an hour.

Yeah.

Like, it's just like, when you think about what that does to the door rate, but they all feel like that's what it should be anyway.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, like, I'm. I'm blessed that they're so accepting. Everybody around me, the local talent shop owners, they might talk to one other shop owner.

Yeah.

But that's it. And normally it's like, it was a. They might have worked for them. So they'll still share some things, but they don't. Like, nobody around here is being very transparent with, like, this is what. And I get it, they'll call it collusion. I don't care.

Yeah.

No, Everybody around here, if we would all sit down and just say, look, we're not going to do tires for less than this price. We're not going to do alignments for less than this price. We would.

Everyone's better. Everyone's better off that way. Exactly. And you have that conversation. They don't want to do it. Because everybody. I. I don't know if, if it's a matter of, you know, they think like.

Like you're were kind of alluding to, like, if it's a matter of one guy feels like, you know, okay, we're all going to be on board and then that one guy's going to change his mind and all of a sudden he's going to get all the business. And you shouldn't really be worried about that. There's so many cars on the road. You can't possibly do them all anyway. You know what I mean? You get the tiny, tiny percentage of what you see driving down the road every day. Maybe you're going to get your hands on it, but, you know, there's. There's too many cars. You know, that's why there's so.

One of the reasons why there's so many shops, obviously, because there's so many cars to fix. The other being a lot of techs that weren't happy and decided to try it on their own.

Like, my know and technicians. We're used to working 12 hours a day, like going back to. Like you said, you're. You're there from 7 in the morning till probably 7 at night by the time you finally. We're used to that.

Yeah.

But it's when you go back at the end of the year and you go frig.

Yeah.

Like, I was there, you know, 60 hours that week.

Yeah.

And I took home less money than what was my, you know, good week at the dealer way back when.

Right.

Like, it's just. And money's not everything. It's not about necessarily. It's about being able to call your own shots. And, you know, you, you get all the reward, you get all the thanks, you get all the risk. But man, like, going back to. Like you said, if it was. If I could just afford a little bit more, maybe, you know, maybe I, I don't work Saturdays and maybe we only work four days a week or maybe, you know, and I, I challenge people that, like, I keep going back to tires.

If every shop just decided that, like, this is how we're going to do snow tires and it's going to be a RIM package with, with sensors and we're going to charge this amount and then the road to the swap's going to charge this, how many would we'd all be able to turn around? A lot more cars.

Yeah.

Because. And make a lot more money doing it.

Yep.

Because we're not tying up the bay with this. I'm only Here for that. I just need to get this done. This is all I'm thinking about. Right. Like, I need my tires done. You know, we check out the car like we're supposed to. We're advocate for them, and it's like, oh, frig, here's the upsell again.

And it's like, that's not. But, you know, I haven't seen you since November.

It's not something. Exactly. Yeah.

You know, you've gone 10,000k, your 2,000 overdue for your oil change. I'm swapping your tires again. Guess what? You know all those potholes in Toronto and Kingston and everything that has. You got a tie rod that's bad. You got a broken coil spring. Like, if we would all just slow down and start to say, a tire changeover is going to be an hour minimum on rims, relearn the tpms, torque the wheels, clean the corrosion, do it properly. But it just takes one idiot that'll do it for 30 bucks.

100. Yeah.

And. And, and we're screwed. And that idiot that does it for 30 bucks. Or what drives me even worse is the oil change. Places that are now doing it.

Yeah.

They don't even check anything.

Nothing you can imagine. You know, you wonder. You always wonder, like, that business model, like, are they putting themselves at any sort of risk in the sense that, like, you know, you know, they do an oil change to throw those tires on, the ball joint pops out down the road and something happens. Like, I mean, just for that, you know? Yes. You want to. Of course, you want to advocate for the customer, but you also want to make sure that you're protecting yourself. You don't want to. You're the professional.

You're supposed to be the professional. You know, that car shouldn't be going down the road with a ball joint that's hanging on for dear life. You know what I mean?

I really should steal my brother's car one day and take it in there and get an oil change. Just so I can see the disclaimer that must. Because there must be a disclaimer somewhere saying, we don't employ mechanics. That always pissed me off as they go. Well, they've got mechanics there, too. No, they don't. They do not have people in the building that necessarily know the difference between a trailing arm and a ball joint.

Yeah, they just have a bunch of dudes there that know the basics that they need to get the job done every day, whatever the job that is. And that's it. Yeah.

And. And people get mad at Me, because I pick on them a lot. Like between the DIYers and the oil change, you know, lube kids I like, I've emptied both barrels on them numerous times. But it's because they're not, they're not truly in our industry and they're truly not advocating for our industry the way it should be done. So it's like, like people go in there unaware that it's not actually a mechanic that's inspecting the car.

Yep.

They just think it's a mechanic. It's a lower.

It looks like a shop. It looks professional. Yeah. They've got to be able to tell me every single thing. They must be qualified. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They told me my air filter is dirty again. It's the weirdest thing. Like I get a cabin filter every time I come in. It's nuts, you know.

Yeah.

But. And then my tire, like you said, my ball joint pops off and I call them up and they don't do ball joints. Who do? I go see a ball joint now.

Exactly. And then, you know, you don't have a rapport with any shop or reputation. Now you're worried, oh, I'm going to take it to this guy, he's going to screw me over and this and that. And then it makes it difficult for the shop owner now. Well, not difficult, but it's a task to try to build that relationship. Like we're really lucky here. Like the shop that I'm in now, I purchased it about a year and a half ago off the previous owner who I knew. And I went from a little two, one bay door with two hoists in tandem, one behind the other in a very popular area.

But we basically, I was. This shop was close enough to the old one about like I've got a seven minute drive to work.

Oh, nice.

Super lucky. It's amazing. And the sh. That's. Now I used to have a four minute drive to work to the old shop, so that was even closer. But I was lucky enough to bring all our clientele over and then we, we took on, we absorbed the previous owner's clientele. So we're lucky enough that, you know, over the last year and a half of, you know, I've made new relationships with the clientele that I've absorbed and there's. We have so many clients that we're lucky that we have reoccurring business.

To be totally honest. You, you know, we're looking to add another tech. I'm hoping maybe an advisor just to be able to push the work out quicker. But it's, it's nice to not. I like, I'm not even really taking on new customers unless I'm very selective of who that person is. You know those discovery conversations on the phone when they first call in, you know, those are so important, you know, and is this customer going to be a drag down on the shop just because of the vehicle they have or the way they are? We implemented that, you know, no cars older than 20 years. We're doing approximately right now just because it just, it just destroys the flow work in the shop. And a lot of the guys, if you see something old coming in, they got a wow, that's a pretty cool car face until, until they got to touch it and then the real expletives come out with how they feel about it.

Right.

So yeah, or you gotta, you gotta find the parts for them. Like that's the thing everybody thinks is like. But look how hard it is now to get quality parts for a 10 year old GM.

Yeah. Quality parts in general for anything. We had a, a Corolla really quickly yesterday actually that we had put quick struts in it. I don't know if I should mention the brand or not.

Probably won't.

But we put quick struts in it back in Sept. Come to us on Monday saying that she could hear some noise while she was turning. So I go with her for a little rip and you can hear it's a strut mount bearing, you know what I mean? So I said okay, let's book you in right away. So that was the Monday she came in on the Tuesday we were inundated with work. She's like, hey listen, I know you're really busy. She was sweet lady. She's like, I'm going to come back on Friday if that's okay with you. There was no way we're going to get around on Friday.

But I said, you know what, we're just going to make it happen. So you know, I, we pressed it in there, I let one of my guys know that morning it's going to be a bit busier than usual. So you know, I appreciate your patience to my tech, whatever, right? So we get it in, I order a. Before we even look at it, I order a right front quick strut, you know, for warranty. You go to put it on. As we're putting it on, my tech looks at, he's like the driver's side wheel looks abnormally low. And I go look at it and this thing's fully extended, fully extended. So I, I Go look.

Look at the strut mount. The nut is gone. It's not there. It's not there. This. This is stuff that's been. Was put on in September, you know what I mean? So I, I told her, I said, listen, it's going to take a little bit longer, but we don't really have a choice here. And she was extremely understanding and thankful, but, you know, I don't know how they can, you know, I know this has been like, you always hear about the guys in the stateside talk about all the quality issues.

I haven't really run into it that much as, you know, recent. Like more recently. Yes, in the last, let's say six months or so. But previous to that, I always thought, well, I must be luck. Just, it's not really happening that much to me. But lately we've been seeing stuff like this. Like, that could have been an accident waiting to happen. Like, she could have been in a boatload of trouble.

And of course, you call your supplier and he's like, oh, yeah, you know, I. I looked at the part number back to March and we had no warranties. And I'm just like, I don't care. I don't give a crap about whatever. This car has a wheel, you know what I mean, with a spring that's ready to shoot out like a missile. That's what I care about. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So we touched on a good subject there, because the strut thing, I'll kind of share. I have a local friend that I talked to. He runs a shop, and he used to be very proactive about, like, at around 160,000 km, if the customer is still driving the car, he's going to recommend struts. It's like, you know, Monroe used to tell us the triangle of safety. Right. And I'm going to let the cat out of the bag. Gets that brand Monroe Quickstrap.

Yeah, it is, it's.

It's. He's gotten so bad with not just Monroe, but the quality of everybody that sells a quick strap strut.

Yeah.

That he no longer offers it.

Yeah.

So, like, and so he. If he has to put struts in the car.

Yeah.

He very begrudgingly does it and he orders all OE parts, builds the street, puts it back in the car, and we're.

I'm, you know, after that, you know what I mean? I. I mean, I'm gonna be a little graceful and see if we got, you know, if this is starting to become a trend. But if it is, I, you Know, I've already given it the same thought and I've heard that before in some of the other podcasts or maybe even your own, where, you know, some guys are just switching oe stuff and like, listen, when you, by the time you, you know, you make a buck on it or whatever. Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna up the cost, obviously. But at the end of the day, do you want a safe, reliable vehicle? Like we've put some struts in, in vehicles. Yeah, they're a little bit older, but you take it for a road test, you're like, maybe it's just me, but it just doesn't sound exactly what, like what you expect. There's just a tiny bit more thump or a tiny. And you, you wonder like, you know, are you, you really doing your customers a good service by, you know, putting in something that's, you know, potentially subpar? You know what I mean? If it's an old beat up thing and it's got coils broken and struts are blowing out, you know, it's still an upgrade, obviously, but you want to make sure you're giving your customers the best you can.

You don't want to be giving them something worse than what they had on there if it was totally operational before you changed it. Right.

So my, A good friend of the family, she had a Kia Sorento. She brought it to me three years ago and it had broken coil springs in it, right. Which is common on Hyundai's and Kias. You can almost always count on one of them that'd be broken. So we put quick struts in the front. That car has gone two years and already has a. She called it. She's like, it's, it's got a funny noise in the front end.

Yeah.

I'm thinking, well, maybe it's got a link that's bad or something like that, right? Because we used to think, oh yeah, the links we were putting on when we did the strut jobs were less quality than the dealer one. And that's probably what it is. No. Nope. It's a strut mount. You go and take a corner, it's like, what the hell? Like it's two years old and she doesn't have a long commute. She doesn't like. She's not living in a pothole.

She's not driving downtown through all the potholes. It's ridiculous. The quality has gotten to be. So going back to my friend that runs the shop, he said what his suppliers told him is there's all These parts that were made during COVID when they had to source them out and everything got built and shipped and all this kind of stuff. He's like, I don't care at this point what the excuse is. It should have obviously never happened.

Yep.

And, and it goes to that thing of where like our industry sometimes has really good intentions, but it's our, the, the crap that we bolt in. It's like they're living on a completely different acceptable amount of standards than what we hold ourselves. And that's not right. You know, you can talk about it from the engine management side and you say, okay, don't use this brand for engine management because it's going to come back. Right. And we all joke about that. That's so what the check engine lights on, the car's still driving safe. We're talking about like stuff that keeps the wheels pointed where it's supposed to go.

Exactly. Yeah. And they got more important than that in regards to safety and yeah, knocks.

Coming off like, you know, we're the.

Ones, you know, we're lucky. I think like, like I said, I'm lucky. We, I know most of my customers pretty well and they're very understanding when something like that goes wrong, they're not going to point the finger at me. But yeah, it's, it's just, it's unbelievable. She was actually, that one with the Corolla, she was nice enough to say, you know, I put it outside, you know, like, like I said that was back in September. And I just said, you know, here's your keys. I'm sorry that you had to come back in here for this so soon because that's, you know, unbelievable. And she was like, do I owe you anything? I'm like, absolutely not.

I said, there's, you know what I mean? I'll have to try to fight with my supplier for good luck with that. But you know, we offer like a 2 year 24,000, 000 on pretty much everything we do. And a lot of times you end up eating the labor on that because, you know, they're not, you know, dealers now. You know, like World Pack's pretty good about their stuff and. But some of the other suppliers I deal with, yeah, you're lucky if you get a year on it. But I'll, I'll do the two years for everybody. And you know that it doesn't. Like I said, I haven't had to eat too much.

But that one doesn't even sting from a financial sense. Right. Like, I understand if you had to play Pay your guy flat rate. It would hurt because, you know, you're not making anything. You got to pay the guy or whatever. But my guy's elderly, so it's not a big deal, but it's just more of, you know, like they should be, you know, that's their name. Like that Monroe brand, you know, that name brand. They should hold themselves to a way, way higher standard.

A company that's been around, I don't know, since it's been over 100 years now or something like that. I don't know. It's a long time.

Yeah, a long time.

You can't be putting out garbage like that. There's no way. And then expect us to put it on and serve the customer with their keys back with a smile, saying, we did a great job for you. Like, it's got to be a billion times better than that, right?

Did you get a chance when you were at Tools, do you get a chance to go through the Expo?

I did. I. I saw the ADOS presentation. Justin Allen there. I thought that was really well done. Pretty cool.

He's a lot smarter than. Than we all realize. He is. He really is.

Yeah.

He's just like, he, He's. He's an absolute PR machine for the company.

Yeah.

But he knows his stuff too, right? Like, he's. He's. Yeah. Did you get a chance to talk to Lester from Dorman?

No, but I have spoken to him in the past. I don't even recall when. Probably more than once, actually. I know they're really good with, you know, customer or, you know, technician and ownership feedback and, you know, in terms of trying to rectify any issues, they're pretty good. And I've used. I know we always hear about, you know, they knock them for this or for that in general, but that. I've had some other stuff where I've had great success, like the oil filter housings on the 36 pentastars and stuff.

Right.

Awesome product. Way better than what it came with from Chrysler. So. Yeah. Yeah.

He. If. If more on it. What I'm trying to get say is that if every company approached when they dropped the ball the way Dorman does.

Yeah.

This industry would be like, in such a better place. Those guys are. When they have a problem, they want you to. To contact them, tell them about it, and they will do everything. Like, I'm not kidding when they say, if you come up, say, I got a vent file from you guys and it's doing this, the next question they ask you is, what's Your address.

Yeah.

And they send you the OE one to put in to get the car fixed.

Yeah.

No questions asked.

That's the way it should be. Right. You're standing by your name and you know you're gonna have, you know, a certain percentage of failures or stuff that's not done properly. But when you, when you, when you don't do that and you just put out a product and then if it doesn't, if comes back bad. Oh well. Or you know, you don't hear from anybody, that's just, you know, it just, just sucks. It's just a terrible way to do business with everybody. Right.

Because they don't have to see that customer at face value. God forbid, if something was to happen to them. Right. They. They've got, you know, positions upon positions to, to hide behind. And so they never really have that heart to heart or one on one. I. I would say, you know, so yeah, it's Dorman does it really.

Well, like that. I don't know of another company that does anything anywhere close to that. Well, in terms of, you know, wanting to hear feedback and wanting to improve on products and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. Monroe really needs to step up the game. And. And I understand that there's other people making pre made struts and they're probably made in the same factory. It's a different box and different paint and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't excuse it. It does not excuse it. And I mean, we have to get ahead of it.

You know, we used to joke that it was just like, you know, you could buy different levels of tires and that was just the running. They're like, oh, you know, you got 30,000 of them. That's all they're supposed to last you. It's pretty sad now when we can't even put a strut in and say in, you know, 50,000 kilometers, we're gonna have to do that again. Like the OE strut lasted a hundred.

Yeah.

You tell me that they can't make a strut.

Yeah. Give us. Yeah. Especially considering there's supposed to be the OE for some manufacturers. Right. You've got the capability, the quality and the materials to do it. Let's do it, man. Even if you gotta, you know, even if the product's got to cost a few more bucks.

Make a good product. Just make it good, you know.

So like what's at your shop? Is there any brands names sake name plates that you don't take in, do you? Don't touch or.

Well, we don't do any high end stuff.

Okay.

I, like, I'm a car guy. I, and I love everything on the, well, not everything, but, you know, I love, you know, we do a lot of Euro stuff too. We don't do it like, because I own a few, you know, European cars and everything and I, I do love them. They're pain in the butt sometimes, we all know that. But yeah, we don't, we don't shy away from too much. But I also have a good barometer on what I'm not comfortable with if something comes through the door. And I know I'm not going to be the right fit for this customer because I'm not going to do the best version of the job, you know, either through, through not having the proper service information or just not knowing the car. I'll, I'll, I'll tell them, hey, listen, I just, I don't think we're the right fit for you.

You know what I mean? I'd love to work on it, but I'm gonna, you know, this is probably not gonna work out the way you or I want it to go and we'll turn some away because like, again, we also have the luxury of not needing that.

Right.

But you know, I, I remember a day, you know, a long time ago where I used to take on stuff that I probably shouldn't be touching for, for, you know, different reasons, whether it's lack of knowledge and I know that's how you, you grow and you learn. But yeah, you know, I remember just because of, I didn't have the work and you know, I wanted to look in those cars. So I'm glad for the most part that those days are, you know, behind me because that was, that would make for stressful days, sometimes weeks. Right.

And see, I. So at my new job, my, my co worker, he's 59.

Yeah.

And I'm 50. Well, I'll be 50 in November, but I'm close enough. And he's similar background. He worked a lot of dealerships and now this is kind of like he's at this, you know, car lot and he gets talking about how sometimes the, you know, the narratives online and everything is always running down the dealer guys. Right? Yeah, but like, and you know, the content creators would be like, oh, the, you know, the dealership fires the parts Canada or something like this. And him and I both, we had a great conversation the other day and I said the aftermarket forgets sometimes that there's so many guys in the aftermarket that will donate like, like five Hours of ego to solve the problem and charge two.

Yeah.

And the dealer can't do that. Right. Because the dealer, like, if you're flat rate tech like you and I, if it takes me five and the advisor says just. The customer just wants it fixed, come back five hours later and it's fixed. And they go, I can't get five hours from him. You know, that's, that's. Let's do the math real quick. You know, $150 an hour door rate, five hours.

What are we charging? $750 to fix the broken wire. I can't charge. Charge that.

Exactly.

But the independent shop will do that. But they'll say the same thing. They'll go, well, I can't charge them 750, but, you know, how's 300 bucks sound? And that covers their cost of the labor, let alone only that. Not only overhead.

Exactly.

And they go, I just made a customer for life. That's the reward. Right. So that's the investment. I hate that. That we keep going back to that. Is this like, it's a skill thing. It's not a skill thing.

I know so many guys at the dealer that are smart, smart, really smart, but they just will not and cannot and should not invest unpaid time.

Yeah.

Just out of an eco thing.

You shouldn't never, ever happen. That should never ever happen. I think that's, you know, at least back in, you know, we're going back 10, 15 years ago. You know, I may. I'm sure it's still evident today. But that's one of the big drivers for guys leaving. Like, why would you want to, you know, like you do any other trade. You get paid for every, every, you know, you, you would hope, you know, you get paid for every hour that you're working.

You know what I mean? Like, you should not have to do anything for free.

Yeah.

Because what are you doing? Unless you decide out of the goodness of your heart, I'm gonna help, you know, little old miss whatever. You know what I mean? Because, you know, I just want to. That's a different story. But when you, you know, when you're like, yeah, I'm gonna get this done, and you go to your advisor and he turns around, it's like, yeah, I just, I can't give you. I'll get you on the next one. And that next one never comes. You know what I mean? And it doesn't come again. And if you were to all add up all those get you on the next ones, you know, that's a paycheck or two sitting around that you're never going to get back and that's it.

Shouldn't be allowed in a place where, you know, you think about it like our, our. The previous GM dealership I worked at. It was crazy because you were flat rate but you were not allowed to leave during your 8 to 5. Yeah, I used to just leave. I used to just pick, you know what, know what? Fire me. You know what I mean? This, I'm not, you know, we. I remember that in the slow times, you know, just before the tire season kicked off and everything, there would be days where you get in at 8 and you know that one guy, some guys would come in from out of town and they'd be an hour, hour and a half in. And their excuse for being there, everybody's supposed to start at 8.

Their excuse for being there at 7:15 was because they want to beat the traffic. Yeah. Meanwhile they're into the gravy, you know, and it's not even 8 o' clock yet. And you're sitting there, there sitting around for three hours or so and you haven't gotten a job yet. Right. Like. Oh yeah. Bringing back some past traumas.

I can remember sitting there lots of times. It started eight, you know, you were there at quarter two, 7:30 some mornings. Right. By 11 I might have drank three cups of coffee. I've been made two runs to Tim Hortons around the corner and I hadn't got a job yet.

Yeah.

When lunch came at 12, I didn't worry about running back to be there by one o' clock.

Clock.

Yeah, there's lots of days I strolled in at 2 and they would go, where were you? Yeah, I was on lunch. Oh well, you know, we had a waiter. Okay, where am I on? Because we would. You've probably seen this too. They had a list.

Yes. Yeah.

You're, you know, the last guy that got a job. You're 12 down on the list.

Yeah.

Well, you know that if there's only one car coming in, you know, and you'd look at the schedule and that was the thing. Thing the advisors will tell you what's on the schedule for today? Nothing after 1:00.

Yeah.

No schedule now. People could drop in, sure, yeah, of course, whatever. But it still had to go to the next guy on the list.

Exactly.

Unless it was a comeback or something like that. So like you're looking at this going, it's 12 noon, there's 12 guys ahead of me and nothing on the appointment. Why am I here for the rest of the day.

I'm not getting anything. Yeah, exactly. Wash my car and go home or just get the heck out of here.

Yeah.

And it was tough. They wouldn't let you go. They wouldn't let you go.

That was.

And I had multiple conversations. We had. Had. We went through a changeover because we got bought out by a. A bigger group, and they had put an interim service service manager in place. And great guy. He was awesome guy. Easy to talk to.

The best one we had. And I'll never forget. I. I had. It was one. This was probably about three weeks before that, my last day, and I just. I had a massive blow, and I just lost it. I started yelling at the tower operators, top of my lungs.

I mean, you know, f this, F that. Just losing my. Sorry. And. Yeah. And the. The service manager came by. He's like.

Put his arm on my shoulders, like, mike, Mike. He goes, you know, are you okay? I said, you know, I'm just. I'm still irate. I'm yelling at him. I said, I'm okay, but, you know, you know, you guys got to sort out your s. Your crap here, this and that. And that was, you know, it was about. All about job distribution.

And, you know, you knew you were getting screwed over sometimes it was hard to prove, but. And the guy was nice enough to say, you know what? Listen, he goes. I understand. He goes, something must have taken you, or there must have been a lot to take you to get to this point. I'd like to have a conversation with you on Monday to discuss some of these things. I've only been here for a few months, but I'd like to see if we can find a solution to this. And that was the first time I had ever heard anyone have, like, a positive reaction to anything that was related to that, whether it was myself or some of the other guys, because a few of the other guys had. Were, you know, Took issue with.

Some things happen. And we had set up a meeting for Monday morning. I come in, and I'm sure it was other reasons. I come in. He's not there anymore. Yeah, he was gone. And I'm sure there was other reasons other than that. Maybe there wasn't.

I have never spoken to him since. And I thought. Thought to myself, these guys, you know, they let this guy go, and this was probably their best shot at trying to get rid of the toxicity in this place and try to. To, you know, just make things, you know, cohesive and make things worth and work. And that was it. They got rid of.

Instead of yeah, all they see is money flying out the window. 100 all they see, right?

Yeah.

And, and good on them. Because I've never had a manager that's really ever sat down and had that kind of conversation maybe at the dealership level. What do you want to do to make it better? Yeah, they all said it. But I mean I go back to, you know I had a friend that worked at a Nissan dealer and he was the first time I hadn't worked in a dealer yet and he would tell me, yeah, he, he would get there half an hour early and there was a stack of work orders on the tower desk. The dispatch tower wasn't there yet. And he would grab the first three good ones. Yeah and he was a front end alignment tech and he'd have his day sold by noon. He'd have eight hours sold by 11 o' clock.

You know, pre sold, work done.

Yeah.

And, and I'm like, you do that. He's like yeah, like f them guys if they don't want to, you know, they don't want the hustle. I'm thinking and it's not a hustle yet.

Like it's haven't even started yet.

You're cherry picking. And you know we had guys that would show up habitually like 20 minutes, 30 minutes late every day because they'd missed that waiter rush. Yeah and I used to drive me crazy too, right. Because it's like everybody had seemed at 8 in the morning the first thing you flagged was a waiter oil change. First thing. Even when we had a quick lube bay out front you still flagged to a, a waiter oil change. Because I had a set of tires to go on at the same time or some like that. So these guys are strolling at 8:30 and there's the first like you know, clunk noise and break noise on a, you know, caravan or something.

Well that's a good ticket. That's a good ticket.

Yeah.

You know, so I, I just was like. But they would allow it because two of them were really strong tax with drive drivability and diag so they weren't going to piss them off because it's like, like who's gonna fix the, that they you know, if we, But I, I never took liberties like that. Like if I was going to take liberties it wasn't like I'm not gonna start and I'm not gonna work late but if there's no work I'm not coming back at exactly one hour, you know, for lunch. Like we, we would take a 90 minute break. Like if there was work, we didn't take lunch.

Yeah, you just work right through it. Just get it done. Yeah. Stuff a sandwich in your mouth with a wrench in your other hand. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, but I mean, but the days when they couldn't provide us with work, now, I don't know, you, you know, exactly one hour. And regardless what anybody says now, when you're flat rate, when you're hourly, that's a different thing. You know, they can, they can. When they're hourly, to me, they can guarantee they can make me do it just about whatever they want because, you know, they're, they're, they're valuing me to pay me to be there. Yeah, but the flat rate thing is like, no, I'm a contracted employee for you. If there's no work, I'm not getting paid. We had a guy, I can still remember the first now, it's common, but he was a groundbreaker. Styles was his name.

First guy I ever saw that put a laptop on his, on his hutch and watched movies.

Oh, really? Yeah. You got nothing going on. What else are you gonna do? You're just supposed to sit there like. Yeah, exactly. Right. Our shop would try to get it, get us to do training, which is good. Obviously it's useful, but they weren't paying you for it. You know what I mean? And it's, it's depending on the, there's certain guys that are just like, listen, I just want to soak up as much information as possible.

Although at my dealer there was none, but there are some that would, you know, probably sit there and take all the training. But, you know, you feel like, okay, listen, like if I'm gonna, to sit here, you know, you, you, you gotta switch gears too, right? Mentally, you got to switch gears to, you know, sit there and take a training course. You can't just sit there and all of a sudden you're ready, prepared for, and you're gonna absorb and retain everything. Right? You came to work, to work, and all of a sudden, you know, you got three hours of nothing going on. It's very different to go from, you know, just, you know, hitting the wrench and everything to, you know, taking a, an hour, hour and a half course. It's not that easy for me anyway. Everyone's different. But like, for me, it was very hard to adjust to that, that, okay, you know, go take an hour's class, but, you know, again, it wasn't paid for.

You know what I mean? As a tech, you should be paid for that time, you know, just like, you know, you got some of the guys that bring their texts over to tools and everything else. I think it's amazing, right? The only reason I didn't bring my guy is he couldn't make it. He had an event over the weekend. He didn't want to be away for that time. But, you know, stuff like that. I always felt like flat rate for me, there's guys that love it. For me, I. I disliked it.

It just, I felt like it brought out the worst in people a lot of the times, you know what I mean? And. And put up a. Like a. Kind of. Like I was saying before, it put up a wall in between people that could otherwise be good friends and assets to one another. You know, instead of working together like they, Like I said that dealer principle would always promote, you know, working as a team. There was no team there. It was a bunch of individuals just trying to make as much as they could every day because they had a family to support and everything else, and they didn't want to get that crap job that was going to stop them from making, you know, a decent day's pay.

Right. So. And like I said, there's guys that are proponents of flat rate, but for me, no way. I, like, would I pay. If I hired a guy and he said, listen, I want to go on flat rate, I would, I guess I would consider it. I want to give him the ability to do that. But I would never pay a guy a flat rate unless he requested it. You know what I mean? Like, if I hire anybody, they're hourly.

Unless they, you know, they want otherwise. You know what I mean? Just because I want them to actually be a team, I want my guys and my. Myself to be a team, to work together for the end goal, which really, at the end of the day is fixing that car. Right. And having a happy customer. Right.

And you want the quality control that comes with having, excuse me, you know, an hourly tech. Because. And I'm not, I'm not saying flat rate guys don't quality control, but, you know, I. I didn't. I didn't quality control the way I do now.

Yeah.

You know, like, now if it's like, okay, I went and road tested that. I want to road test it again. I want to put it back on the hoist. I want to check this. Like, I never did all that flat rate. I was like, I'm already, you know, 20 minutes over, and I know there's a stack of jobs still waiting there. Like, you know, the door yeah, get it done. Yeah, that's the whole.

The guys that argue for flat rate for me, I've never met too many of them that say, yeah, flat rate me and, you know, give me all the diag too. Like, they, they don't want to. No, they just want, want to turn and burn. Just I'll do heavy line and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

You know, I'm good at that and that's fine. And there's nothing wrong with that. We need guys like that. I'm not saying, and I'm not saying you shouldn't pay them flat rate if they want to, but the idea that the. So many dealerships and you know, we always talk about dealerships on here, that it's just whatever it is, is whenever, like, because again, in Canada, well, as soon as you get your license in the dealership, they're flat rate, like, that's it. Throw you the walls. That's, that's what's. They, they sit there and they say, I can't.

You know, my friend Joshua Taylor's like, well, we have a really hard time, you know, some of the dealerships hiring people. Yeah, yeah. Because of the way it's always been done, the young people now will not do it.

Yeah, they're not going to tolerate that. You're. Yeah, you're dealing with a very different mindset. You know, people generations before us, they don't. Yeah, there might be a sense of entitlement generally across the board. I feel it, I'm sure you feel it with some of the people you talk to. But is some of it wrong? Maybe not, you know what I mean? Like, maybe we put up with more than we should have when we were their age. And you know, for whatever reason, you know, they're, they're not.

And you know, they're not necessarily wrong. Like, you shouldn't be putting up with some of the stuff we dealt with. I remember, you know, in my earlier early years doing co op placements in high school where, you know, you didn't touch a car, you didn't learn anything about cars. I understand it from a business owner standpoint, like, you don't want this guy to, you know, destroy this vehicle, but like, take the guy aside, set up a laptop somewhere, say, hey, listen, I'd like you to do this training, you know, I mean, like, even safety stuff, your basics, none of that happened. Right. So, yeah, yeah, you know, now I think people just don't stand for that the way it was before and rightfully so, like I said.

And I think you Know, we all had to serve a time where it was like, eventually we saw the good come around, like, but we had to pay our dues. It's not that these kids don't want to pay their dues, but they've realized that, like, what's good coming around isn't all that good compared to what they could do in a different line of work. And that's why they're just not picking this. You know, it's like we, you know, we are good months, and our good months and our bad months are our bad months. They don't want that. You know, it's too hard to. To get approval for, you know, renting a place or a mortgage or whatever. If you go up and down, you know, my pay was this last year.

Like, I earned this, but it was, you know, they look at you and go, holy crap. You had like three months there where, you know, yours like equivalent to minimum wage. Yeah. Those are our. That's January and February up here, right?

Yeah.

And then. And then go, oh, okay. And then they look at you like your risk. And that's. I keep saying, like, at the dealer level, it takes one management change and the wheels come off 100. It's like, you know, whether it's a parts person goes, and then the parts people start, you know, they get all fired and they don't know how to find your parts in the system, or they make a sales manager change or service manager change. And all of a sudden, like, I've seen sales managers decide they're not even going to safety the cars at the dealership that they work for.

Oh, really? I've not seen that. But I believe it, though.

Yeah. Oh, at least they're just ripping us off. They're charging us too much. I'm going down the street and I'm thinking, first of all, like, you're an a hole.

Yeah.

That's going to be conflict of interest. Like, who. What's your relationship with that guy down the road that has the shop that you're sending all the used cars, or what's your kickback on it? Because we know you're getting one.

Getting something. Exactly.

You wouldn't just do it for the sake of your benefit of your department that all of a sudden you're finding a cheaper labor y. The second thing is, is like, how do you expect anybody to stand behind that car?

Yeah.

When you sell it on your lot, if we didn't work on it. I'm not. I would be the first to walk out to the customer go, I Understand that you bought it from us, but I don't know a damn thing about it. And we didn't even work on it. Like, you know how fast that person would have. Have a, A coronary in the parking lot if we told them that if we were truthful.

Yeah.

Like stuff that they've tried to pull on us that we just throw the key away and don't say anything. It. It. I can't even. The stuff that I've thought of, gone through and forgotten until something triggers and it comes back is just like, you know, going to the safeties thing. Like the drive on stuff.

Yeah.

Everybody's up in arms in Ontario about the, like that's been. I like it. I like, you know.

Long, long, long awaited. I think it should have come a long time ago.

So that's what worries me is like, it'll take one political change and this thing will all go away. And then you see it too, obviously, for the people that are just listening, part of this new safety thing that Mike and I do up in Ontario is we put the, we put a, essentially a scan tool into the dongle for the obd. And all it's asking for right now is just for us to start and run and it's grabbing some information and looking at the status monitors and all that kind of stuff. But it has nothing to do with safety yet. But Mike, I think they're doing that because I think they're going to bring emissions testing back.

Yeah. I mean it seems pretty obvious. Yeah.

Yeah. Which I'm not against. I was following an Equinox on a test drive yesterday and young lady. And driving it. And I'm not trying to stereotype prototype and like that was the most blue smoke I'd seen coming out of a car in like 10 years. Was this Equinox. Right.

And I'm surprised.

Yeah. And I'm thinking, well, I know what's wrong with that.

Like it surprised it's still running more than anything. Right?

Yeah.

Those two fours, they messed them up.

Oh, they were junk. Just my mom has one and thank God it's been good. But I told her as soon as there's a problem with it, it's time to get rid of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, their disposal. I like the new thing for the people that we've talked about a little bit. When we do a safety check now in Ontario, everything is done with a tablet and photos. And it's frustrating because it is a lot more work than what Mike and I were used to doing where you just had to kind of check off that. Yep. The tires had X amount for tread and pressure. And now they want pictures of you with your tread depth gauge on the tread of the tire showing the measurement and the reading.

And yeah, guys are still faking it, obviously because like, like, you know, unless you shoot a video and walk around the car and do it, you can take the same picture of the same tire four times. Like you have to take four individual pictures, but you can't upload the same picture more than once. But they don't know that it might have three good tires and one crap. Right. And you just, you don't want to fail the car. But I think for the most part, people for them are seeming to follow the rules because I think we've all seen that there's enough going on now that like has to do. We have to do something about it.

Hey, Michael, must be some changes. Yeah. Oh, 100. I think it's great too. We've got a couple of co op students from local high school with us now. And I usually employ. Well, not employ, but take them with me and we can do the safety around the car and they get a chance to, you know, take actual measurements. I mean, how often do you have, you know, kids or techs learning and they've never busted out a measuring device for anything.

So you know, just, just a tread. Digital tread depth gauge or measuring. Measuring those rotors and such. Yeah, I think, think that brings a more technical element to what they're doing and you know, it helps to understand, you know, if. I mean, I've never seen somebody take out a dial indicator to measure thickness variation on a rotor. Should you be. I mean, you're going to do, you know, if it's got a front pulsation, you're going to do front brakes regardless. But you know, in theory it would be nice to be more finite and precise and say, hey, listen, you know, your right front rotor, it's got a thickness between deviation of 20 thou or whatever it is.

That's why we're recommending, you know, front brakes, you know, and I think it's just going that route. Maybe you don't have to do it all the time. But I think makes technicians think with a more scientific mind, more precise mind instead of just, yeah, it's my steering wheel shaking these front brakes, you know, stuff like that. Right. Yeah.

And it teaches us that they're going back to like, I really nerd out on Sherwood from Royalty auto service on YouTube because he showed how it was like, you know, the stack Tolerances of like if you leave the rust on the hub and you put the rotor on, like you just introduce something and you'll get, you know, and we've all seen it, guys. Multiple sets of rotors on and it's like, why? Well, because the hub's dirty. Why is the hub dirty? Because somebody didn't bother to clean it. Why didn't bother cleaning. You went to the cheapest guy, that's why.

Yeah, exactly. He just slapped them on and see you later. Yeah.

And we all know why it happens, but I mean it's, you know, it's tough when you get that customer in and it's like it's got brand new parts on but it pulsates like. Well, it's either the quality of part you put on or the execution of the job.

Yeah.

And that's always. I hate having that conversation with people because either way it's like you're pointing blame and really the who you want to blame is a person who didn't do the job properly.

Exactly.

But at the ultimate, at the end of the day, the customer, you know, took it to who they took it to. To on. On faith. And that's really.

Who's really at fault though. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, I guess it's all situational based, but yeah, your.

Your dad put your brake rotors on and your dad, you know, used to do brakes on, on an old Mustang.

Yeah.

You know, it had a Hubbard rotor pulsation wasn't a thing. And now, you know, he didn't know or didn't have a grinder, didn't know to clean it off. Just put them on and thought, you're good. And now the car shakes like it didn't shake before with your old rotors. It just cracked ground like it was just noisy. Why does it do that? We have these conversations and people are like, you're losing me here, Jeff. Like where, where? Because it's, it's all the way. We're trying to explain it.

So. Yeah, I wish that the. I like the fact that the pictures that we take, the customer can see the, the inspection, they can see the pictures of the car. You know, I like that because it means that, you know, there's some, a little bit more transparency going on than people that just because this man. I've seen some shop owners safety, some stuff that like I wasn't going to sign my name on. They're like, yeah, well according to the book. And I'm like, I don't get me started on the book. Like the Book always says, and then when you go to court, they throw the book away and they go, who, you know, who allowed that to go out like that? I did.

Okay, sign here. You know, we're taking your license. You're unemployable.

I remember being a teenager and needing a safety for. I don't know what it was. I think I was probably 17 or something. And my dad's like, yeah, I know a guy just, you know, do you have 100 bucks on you? He's like, just give me your ownership. And the next day there's the safety and the ownership. Right. Right back at me. Never met the guy, never knew anything.

Like, you know, I, you know, and some people don't. You know, as a consumer, maybe you don't really realize the impact you could have have if that ball joint breaks or that tie rod breaks or your bald tires cause you to go into a slide and smash into another vehicle. But like, you know, that was one big thing. And we had, I used to have with the others, the old safety system. We used to have people all the time. Oh, yeah. You know, can you just let that slide? And you know, there's a response to every conversation, but, you know, sometimes you just look at them sideways and you're like, you have no clue.

Yeah.

The danger you're potentially, potentially unleashing. You're not doing the job properly. It's not my fault you bought a vehicle, vehicle that needs more work than it's worth or it's just not repairable. You know what I mean? It is what it is. You got to do a little bit more research. But, you know, you want to have safe vehicles on the road. And I think this is a huge step into making sure that, you know, a lot of that stuff. Hopefully, you know, like, like you said, there's.

You can still circumvent things here and there, I'm sure. But I, I think this is a big step into, you know, getting rid of some of those vehicles that shouldn't be on the road.

Because I, I, for me, the minimum brake thickness and the minimum tire tread is still too low. Low. Like, in my opinion, that's just me. I understand.

Especially with our winters and everything. I mean, you know, the minimum thickness of what is it? There's a 2 mil, I think it is for tires. Yeah. Whatever it is. Like, yeah, you got enough rain or a little bit of snow, you're not going to get anything. You're not picking up any traction if that tail slides out, you know. Yeah.

And, and then I'VE always looked at it like if I ever saw. Rarely did I ever see a car when I think about it that like had really good brakes and really good tires at the same time. Like you. You know, I think in this industry we see it a lot where they just did tires.

Yeah.

That was a thousand bucks.

Yeah.

Next six months later, it needs brakes. They're still waiting before they can do the thing. So for me, the whole standard thing is like, we have to look at it from reality of like 2 mil is not enough because probably that same car that might only have 2 mil on the brake pads probably has some ball tires. Which is again, goes back to Monroe's triangle of safety thing.

Yeah.

Cars not in control. You know, there's the secondary line of defense of keeping the thing pointed where it's fucking supposed to go.

Yes.

You can't rely on any either.

Can't.

You know, I hated the whole. Oh well, you know, the rusted like passing cars with rusted rocker panels and shit like that. Like it just drove me nuts, you know. And, and it's. I. I couldn't stand that. I've seen so many. And you're looking.

And for what? You're looking at this customer like if that's all they can afford.

Yeah. They got other problems. Yeah, they got bigger problems big time.

And what. What am I gonna. What am I getting out of them? Like they can barely afford to get this car and get it safetied.

Yeah.

Probably all they're going to be for me is an oil change customer.

Yeah. Like it's crazy. Really. Yeah. And. And really, is that car of the right fit for that customer? Like maybe they can't afford it, but maybe they should be looking at alternate means of transportation because, you know, you've seen it a million times. You get a car that's got rockers that are falling out of it and let's. It's had less than an optimal maintenance on it and you know, the.

Somebody buys it for cheap. But by the time you get done of what you spent on it, in a year and a half, you could have had something half decent. Right. And you still spent the money. Sure. You didn't have to do it in one shot lot, but they still spent the money. And every transaction is a fight. You know, I was hoping I could get this much more time.

Go ahead, do it. You know, it's a fight for it. It's like you should have just bought something decent.

Yeah. And save up your pennies and that's. I understand. And it's like people go, well, I didn't have the money. Yeah, well, I, and I, I get it. But like when I think of how many times like a 200 inspection would have before pre purchase inspection would have saved the them.

Yeah.

I can think of the last job I was at. Sorry, the second last job. A year ago we had a guy and he brought us three cars that all he bought with no pre inspection. And it was like, oh, they told me it only needed a steering pump. No, it needed the rack.

Yeah.

Not the pump. Like, and, and guess what? We can't put the rack in because the subframe's rotten.

Yeah.

You never told me that. Why are you going on what that person is trusting. You know why? There, there's a reason they're not driving it. There's a reason, you know, there's a reason that they didn't trade it. There's a reason that it's been parked for six months while they. She drove something new and she wasn't going to put any more money. There's all reasons to just take them on their word and not say, I'm gonna go over to Mike's shop or Jeff's shop and pay Mike or Jeff 150 bucks and rack this car real quick and look at it. I haven't seen too many things that people bring me that I don't find something wrong that they didn't know about.

I don't fail.

But there's always something as simple as, you know, wiper blades, whatever scratches on the car you didn't see whatever it might be. There is literally almost always, I would say 90 of the time you're gonna find something. Right.

Exhaust is starting to get punky or you know, like all stuff. That's a big, big expense. You know, it's one thing to go, oh, it's got shiny tires on it. Yep. Okay, cool, cool. Then you get underneath and you're like, well, that catalytic's starting to, you know, look pretty holy. That's a thousand dollar kiss. And it's.

We can just go on. It's not. Or people buy it and then they bring it in. It's like the AC doesn't work. Yeah, well, they just saved it. That's got nothing to do with safety, mister. Like, you know, does it clear the windshield? Yes, that's good as a good. So yeah.

You know, and that was the reason it was for sale in the first place. You know, tranny didn't shift right. Or AC didn't work. It's nothing to do with unsafe Sometimes that was why it was for sale. We joke, you know, the salesman at the new job. Well, that's why I was at the auction, you know, because that's where they bring them home from. It's the same thing. It's not just the auction.

It's when. When they. When you went and found Mrs. Smith's car at the end of driveway of the for sale sign. That's why Mrs. Smith wasn't driving. There was something seriously wrong with it. Yeah, people just don't get tired of driving something other than the elite rich and go, I just want something new.

If they want something new, they take it and trade it. And if it's worth anything that they take it on trade. If they didn't take it on trade, it's because there's something wrong with it. They know what it is and they don't want it for the money that you think it's worth. And then you're gonna find some sucker to buy it and not suck.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, I got a little worked up there.

No, I love what you do. Yeah.

So what's. What are you gonna do? You. Will I see in another event then, because we didn't really get a chance to bump into one another or.

Yeah, well, it's, you know, I'll be honest with you. One of the hard. The only difficult thing. Sorry, the sun's coming in a lot now. The only difficult thing I found for me was being away from my wife and kids. It was tough. You know, my kids are at an age where time is so valuable to be with them. My daughter's three years old, my son's five and a half.

So. So it's. It's tough for them to be like, you know, are you coming home tonight? And no, I'm not. I'm going to be there tomorrow or, you know, and so. But I do want to. I know ASTA is coming up, I think. Right. And, you know, I.

The original one I wanted to go to was Vision, you know, when I heard about it back in 21, I think at first. And I haven't made my way out there, but yeah, I intend to. I think I'd love to come to Tools again just because the sheer fact that it's not that bad of a drive. It's a nice drive down and everything thing. Yeah, I mean, I, I never want to stop, basically. There's so much information. You, you never learn and you never know everything. Right.

So I'm, you know, and as the years go by, different trainers are introduced. You Know, just everyone's got a fresh take on things and it's just nice to even just to hang out and talk and.

Yeah.

You know what I mean. I was sitting beside. Oh, I forget his name now. Matt. It doesn't matter. He owns Dap Dap Auto Works in Ohio. Nice guy. We're just talking stories back and forth at the, at the keynote there and everything.

And it was just, it was. It's just nice to hear other perspectives. And I think that's. That's the way everything gets better. Right. Just talking to each other. It goes back to what I said about how it feels like everybody's in the room with the door closed when it comes to shop owners around here. It'd be nice to see that, that change.

And I think it's definitely, from my perspective, it's changed huge. The stuff, like I said that you guys were doing. Right. Like, and that's step one. And all it takes is people to catch on and you hope that the ones aren't willing to. Will eventually kind of just phase out and make room for guys who want to make. Because it's not just about making money. Right.

It really isn't. It's not about. It's about, you know, just networking, doing the right thing for the customer. And, you know, I think the guys in and like, they saw a group and stuff like that. I think a lot of guys are of the same mindset. We want to better ourselves, we want to better the industry, and we want things to, you know, just trend in the right direction. Right.

Yeah. There's a reason there's more technical training than there still is business training at these events because, like, you know, it's ultimately that if you can't keep a hold of the tech, you're not going to have business. Doesn't matter how good you are, your smile, your waiting room, all that, if you don't have anybody that can fix the car, you're not going to. Gonna have a business.

Yeah.

But I, I think sometimes, like, a lot of people still go and attend the wrong classes. And that's something that, you know, like we'll touch on in, in other episodes is, you know, yes, you're a tech, yes, you own a business. But like a lot of them, if you're already making your right choices about who you pick for your customer, you probably don't need to sit through a ton of technical classes. You probably need to be really knuckling down on, like you said, your. Or what you took, your time management, organization, and, you know, your KPIs and all your business kind of stuff, because that's ultimately is what's going to get you to survive. If you're already doing the right thing and not booking the wrong cars.

Yeah.

Then just maximizing your business is going to be the big step towards getting there. And you know, guys, too many guys get into the. I want to. I want to do this and I want to do that and, you know, yeah, it's good.

I would have loved to be able to take. And in the business side of the training and the tech, the technician side, if they, if they had, Listen, if they had courses all day long, I would have just kept on taking them, you know what I mean? From start to finish, I would have been wiped. I probably would have been snoring, you know what I mean, by the last one. But there's just, you know, it just nice to soak up so much. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I won't keep you any longer. It's a weekend and, you know, it's a nice day out and you're asking me if I was getting fishing and I have work to do on the boat, but I'm not going fishing yet. But I wanted to thank you for reaching out and I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to bump into you because I think we would have a really good time talking because, you know, we would have shared probably. You know, I mean, if you're parked that close to me, then that would have been pretty cool. But, yeah, you know, we could have. I probably could have given you a sticker or two.

Well, if you ever come down Toronto way, I've said it before, you, you got, you got a coffee or a beer waiting for you, you just let me know kind of thing. And I hope I see you at one of the events, you know, in the future, in the near future.

Yeah, for sure. Because, I mean, I come to. Like I said, I. I'll go to Vaughn Mills to go to Bass Pro, but I mean, the rest of the time. But it's not that I Disney like Toronto. I just. I would never live there again.

Oh, it's. It's nuts here all the time, you know, I mean, people are honking and yelling and there's. There's a lot of chaos going on. So I don't blame you. I don't blame you.

But I, I thank you for coming on and, and we'll definitely. We'll catch up again on another day because this has been fun and I enjoy this. We need a lot more content so.

And I appreciate everything you're doing for the industry, man.

Thank you, man. It means a lot coming from everybody. It's a. It's a heavy weight to carry some days. But. But, you know, I definitely. When people say it's never going to change, I'll show you. It's definitely changing for the.

Sure.

And it's. We're. We're in a weird spot right now, but it's already changing. I see it every day in the conversations, and I see it in the attitudes and I mean, and that's just it. Somebody had to start it. And, you know, I don't take soul, you know, blame or credit for it, but, I mean, a handful of us just decided a long time ago, you know, we're going to keep talking about it until. Until people shut us out or the changes. And, you know, it's changing.

So good on us. So thanks, everybody. Mike weekend, we'll talk to you. Thanks, everyone. Bye. 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.

Change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.

Flat Rate is Killing Teamwork in Auto Repair! (Mike Pereira)

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