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Fluffy Mexicanik Talks Flat Rate Pay and His Popularity on Social Media
Fluffy Mexicanik Talks Flat Rate Pay and His Popularity on Social Media
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About this episode
Fluffy Mexicanic joins The Jaded Mechanic Podcast to discuss his journey in the automotive industry, including his rise to social media fame and the challenges of flat rate pay. He shares insights on working with Nissan, the intricacies of diagnosing issues, and the importance of customer communication. The episode dives into the differences between dealership and independent shops, the impact of social media on automotive careers, and the evolving landscape of technician roles. Fluffy's candid experiences highlight the realities of being a technician today, making this a relatable and informative listen for automotive enthusiasts.
Topics:
flat rate pay
social media presence
Nissan experience
diagnostic challenges
customer communication
independent vs dealership
automotive training
technician roles
industry changes
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In this episode, Jeff and Fluffy Mexicanik talk through their ups and downs in their automotive repair careers. They both get pretty raw about dealership life, touching on topics like flat-rate pay, the challenges of warranty work, and the growing influence of social media for technician networking and learning.
00:00 Unfriendly Service Manual Navigation
06:19 Faulty Deliveries: CVT Issues Occurring
12:11 Vehicle Repair: Diagnosing to Maximize Time
16:57 Power Probe Tools Misdiagnosis Issue
23:02 Seam Sealing for Leak Prevention
29:13 "Engine Troubles Due to Timing"
34:17 "Service Integrity vs. Profit"
37:24 Recycled Auto Parts Controversy
47:24 Jaded Perspective on Car Guarantees
49:09 Guaranteed Pay Requires Presence
54:29 "Frustration Over Unpaid Labor Time"
59:03 Uncertain Pay and Motivation
01:09:16 Dead Battery Dilemma
01:12:37 Unpaid Diagnostic Time Issue
01:18:32 "Wind Noise Repair Challenges"
01:24:44 Dealership Challenges with Older Cars
01:31:07 Augmented Reality Auto-Repair
01:35:12 Honda-Focused Business Success
01:38:04 Networking for Business Success
01:42:23 "Social Media's Impact on Mechanics"
01:52:01 "Redraw Industry Boundaries"
01:56:10 Discovering Deeper Connections
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Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Nissan Rogue
"Yeah. But that's from that newer rogue that they came out with. Yeah, I didn't, I don't ..."
Car
Infiniti Q60
".... Like. Like, you know, when I started that. That Q60 upper Q, what was it, a G37? Yeah, it was a G37. ..."
Car
Nissan Pathfinder
"...ere by the time I was there. I want to say it was pathfinders also. Okay."
Car
Master Tech
"...u get with Fluff or did you get it with the other master tech when it's a different technician? Yeah, yeah, yea..."
Car
Jeep Wrangler
"Yeah. How do we sell Jeep Wranglers to so many people that don't, like, really should..."
Car
Toyota RAV4
"... like, what the f. It's like, yeah, it isn't your RAV4, man. It's like. It's a Wrangler. Like, it's a di..."
Unfriendly Service Manual Navigation
Faulty Deliveries: CVT Issues Occurring
Vehicle Repair: Diagnosing to Maximize Time
Power Probe Tools Misdiagnosis Issue
Seam Sealing for Leak Prevention
"Engine Troubles Due to Timing"
"Service Integrity vs. Profit"
Recycled Auto Parts Controversy
Jaded Perspective on Car Guarantees
Guaranteed Pay Requires Presence
"Frustration Over Unpaid Labor Time"
Uncertain Pay and Motivation
Dead Battery Dilemma
Unpaid Diagnostic Time Issue
"Wind Noise Repair Challenges"
Dealership Challenges with Older Cars
Augmented Reality Auto-Repair
Honda-Focused Business Success
Networking for Business Success
"Social Media's Impact on Mechanics"
"Redraw Industry Boundaries"
Discovering Deeper Connections
Select text to request an explanation
We just got a brand new 100 alignment machine here, new rack, the whole thing, you know, it's going to be able to do your alignments a lot faster. Don't worry though, we're going to cut the time on the alignment. Do it. Do we cut the price of the customer? Oh no.
Oh, raise the price. They raise the price.
Oh, so we paid for the friggin machine. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jada Mechanic podcast. I'm sitting here with a fellow bearded brother, somebody that, this is the first time getting to talk to him in this manner, but I've been following for the last little while on social media. You know how we do we kind of like. I want to highlight the guys that are, that have got a platform on social media and have really putting themselves out there and showing them what to do. And I am with the one and only, the infamous, from way down in Texas, Fluffy the Mexicanic Fluffy. How are you, buddy?
I'm doing good, brother, I'm doing good.
It's good to see you, man. So I gotta ask the Fluffy thing, are you, are you Gabriel Iglesias fan?
No, no, no.
Oh, cuz see that's where I just, I kind of put the two and two together and I thought he must know who Fluff is because that's like, you know.
But yeah, so the backstory behind that when I was at Lincoln Tech is one of the guys said I look like him.
Okay.
So I always, I always went by the name Mexicanic. Right.
Yeah, right.
So after that When I started YouTube, I was like, you know what? Fluffy Mexicanic. Let me combine the two. Because when I started at the dealer, there was multiple people in my name.
Right.
So you know, everybody ends up with a nickname. So you know exactly who's, who you're talking to or talking about. So I, I held Fluffy from the, from tech school.
Yeah.
And then I was like, ah, Mexicanic. Yeah, let's combine the two. And that, that was the name.
And it works for you. It works for you for sure. How big is your following on, on YouTube right now?
I just rolled over 85K.
Nice.
Yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm on there.
I'm trying to get up there. Yeah. So. And I first saw you on Tick Tock. I'll be truthfully straight up, that's where I first saw you. And then it's like, and that's the beauty of thing, like everybody, you know, Tick Tock has its detractors, it has its haters. It's, you know, oh, you're selling your to China. But there's so many more people I've found on YouTube that I would have not even known because the algorithm didn't show them to me if it hadn't been for tick tock.
And that's what I mean. So I'm blessed that I've had it. But so you. I saw you and it kind of popped up because you work at a Nissan store and I did a tenure at Nissan and people have heard me talk. I hate that brand. Like, it just, you know, I've heard you like it.
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I'm curious, like, why. Why do you hate it?
So? Truthfully, I find the service information to be the most unfriendly to navigate that I've ever used in the. In the dealer environments, the way they set up. And again, maybe it was never like a. Just I hit the ground running and I never really got comfortable with it, but it was like trying, especially the electrical side to try and navigate the service manual side for electrical. And then it was like the connectors would be in a different section and I was just like, man, this is so. Because I come from Chrysler. Have you ever looked at oe Chrysler? It is by far probably the best in terms of layout, point, click, navigate, search functions. All the thing where Nissan didn't, Didn't.
Didn't do it for me. I used. A lot of the time I'd use an aftermarket service system information system just to get to where I needed to go. Now, not obviously on the TSBs or stuff, but like, if I wanted to look up the wiring, I just popped over to identifix, hit it, which, because what I was familiar with, and use that, then try.
That's where. That's where we're opposite. Because I love Nissan's ewd.
Yeah.
Freaking love it. And when I. When I look at. I'm gonna call them a foreign wiring diagram. Right?
Okay.
Yeah.
From Chevy. Oh, God. Dude. I look at that stuff, I'm like, yo, what am I looking at? Yeah, Like, I know, I know the generic symbols and how to read wiring diagrams, but I'm just like, okay, I'm really gonna have to look at this versus okay, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. Because I started with Nissan.
That's what I was gonna ask you. Right? That's kind of.
Yeah.
So how many years now have you been with them?
Oh, going on 13 in August.
Yeah.
See, I did three. I did three years and a bit.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
You know, I can't and otherwise though, I can't really say that like the, the product other than the CVT's and the way some of the, they would get some harness issues up here in our climate. Other than that the cars are pretty, pretty like durable. I mean I saw more than one Nissan come in a Versa with like no oil in it and it'd be, it'd leave totally fine.
Their engines are stout. That's, that's one thing I will say.
Yeah.
Engines on the Nissans are style.
Yeah.
But that's from that newer rogue that they came out with.
Yeah, I didn't, I don't want to them yet but.
Ah. That's all I'm gonna say. You want to know about the three cylinder road, go do your research, man. Dang.
Yeah, but I see you're doing videos rebuilding the CVT's and all that kind of stuff. Like I. Up in Canada, we, we never got to where we actually had to rebuild them. We were just yanking them out, throwing another one in, you know what I mean?
Now did y' all do as many up there always? I know the cbts hate the heat.
Yeah, no, we, it don't matter. You know what, I bet you fluff they hate more than the heat. They hate the snow, man. With people spinning the tires on them.
Yes, yep. Because spinning tires will definitely. Because. Because where they slip, they slip in the highest gear ratio.
Yeah, yeah.
Or lowest gear ratio. Yeah, wherever, you know.
Yeah.
At low speeds.
We would see them coming a lot of the time and it was like. And so the, the I saw, now I didn't see it personally but the guys that would tell me there was a rash of them would come off the, right, off the, off the delivery truck and the CVT was shot. I want to say it might have been the Centris and not the Rogue so much, but I, I remember a couple of them I saw. The earliest one I had was 11, 000 kilometers on it. So do the math on that. Like 7, 000 miles. And she was all, she was all, she was all neutral. She was no, she was no go.
Just that big high pitch point. And it didn't have like bald tires on it. Like somebody had been like hogging on it, you know, trying it just whatever came apart inside just decided to come.
No evidence of an accident or anything? No man, no.
It was so that for us was kind of like. And you know, they're, they're, they're okay. Steady work. Like, I mean it was good but like it was hard because some of those customers after they go through that on the car. You know how that is? Roughly, they don't want no part of that car no more. Right. Like, they either want to trade it in or they think everything is related. I had a guy with a verse, I can remember that we put a.
We put a transmission in it. And then he comes back like six months later, says, my AC doesn't work ever since you put the tranny in. And it was. The clutch was failed on the AC compressor. Like all the clutches on the Nissan compressors fail and. And totally unrelated. But like, you could not. We had a problem where you couldn't get the cirrus advisors to actually sell the diag time to that.
If the customer said it was. Ever since it was an. Ever since it was a comeback. And it was like, so then you go and do the real quick, you know, check to the clutch to the clutch circuits there. Clutch is open, and don't get paid. And I was kind of just like, I could see where that kind of customer was starting to get really frustrated with the. The CVT thing. And I said to everybody, I said, like, man, if they'd start selling these cars with stick shifts in them, like, I would recommend them to everybody because the engine.
Neglect the engine.
But dude, you know the, the versa manual transmissions. Yeah, those things will run. Those things will run forever. The central. You get a central with the, with the stick shift that'll run.
Yeah.
Like, man, the only thing is the clutch. You know, you get a beginner driver driving a stick shift and then they burn up the clutch. But yeah, I mean, it's still. You do a clutch job. Which. To do a clutch job on Aversa, I think is like four and a half hours. Yeah, it's not bad. I mean, depending on.
On the labor rate, it's a lot better than doing the cvt.
Yeah. Yeah.
And even, I mean, man, you. You know how it is. You get to where you've done so many of them, right? It's like muscle memory just all right. And you know what tools. You reach behind your cart, you grab your tool, you take the next bolt out. Like, it's just. It's. It's so, so incredible.
You mentioned you went to UTI Lincoln Tech. Excuse me.
Yes, sir.
Excuse me. How was that?
In my opinion, it was a waste.
Okay.
Aside from electrical.
Okay.
I could not grasp electrical for the life of me, really. So, yeah, I. And you know, it. It all depends who's teaching you.
Yeah.
Right. So in high school, when I was going through my Automotive program. I did four years in high school of straight automotive. The way my instructor there was, was teaching it. I couldn't. I couldn't grab it.
Yeah.
Fast forward two years later into tech school. After my intro class, we went straight into basic electrical.
Yep.
Three days, bro. I got it.
Yeah.
Everything just. I tell people it was like a light bulb just going off. Boom. And then I start remembering. I started remembering everything that my high school teacher was talking about. Right? Like, oh, dude, okay, I get it. And after that, it was just.
So did you get tripped up too much, you think, on maybe the math of it versus the theory? Because that was the big hurdle for me, was to get away from the A series parallel and calculating for resistance and all that stuff.
It wasn't the math. I was. I was great at the math. It was. It was the grasping. The concept of how the hell do you know there's voltage right there?
Right.
Yeah.
You know, how do you know it's the component versus a power issue or a ground issue? And as simple as. As my instructor in tech school said, go to the source. I mean, go to the component. Yeah, Power, ground, Right. Whatever you're missing, that's. That's the. The path you want to go. You got power there, you got ground there.
You're looking at a component or a pin fit.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, See, I found the way they tried to teach it to us in my class in the college class was so much. It was written in, like, an engineering level. Okay. So this is. If you want to design circuits, this is series, you know, serious circuits, parallel circuits, and all this kind of stuff. And the resistance. Resistance changes this way versus that way. And that was all great.
And then it was like. And then you'd get out to. And they're trying to tell you, like, okay, how would you troubleshoot this component? And it all comes back to just like you said. You go. Or this circuit. You go to the component. You test for what's supposed to be there, if everything is supposed to be there. You flesh out the component, and away you go.
You're on to your next thing. But I was getting so tripped up until I got with my first employer. And then he, like, I can remember, he took my meter away. He gave me an incandescent test. Light bulb, you know, and he said, here, this is how, you know, we do it here. And. And light the same thing. Light bulb moment.
And all of a sudden, it was just like, you know, you'd walk out to a truck or trailer with a test light in Your hand and a couple jumper wires and you know, you'd make the truck run. Right. And then it was like after that it just became put that on a broad level of every component in the, in the vehicle, you know, whether it's a horn or a wiper motor and, and just go. And that was it. It served me so well for flat rate because it's like I want to prove that the, the expensive component, maybe I can make it work and then I can sell a whole bunch of time. You don't need a 900 fuel pump, but I got to find that wire. Now. I can sell three hours of diag to flesh out the harness.
Right? Or flush.
Correct.
If I, if I chuck the fuel pump in and it's 900 and still don't think start. Nobody's paying me now. Three hours to find the wire. Right. Or the ground or whatever it is. That's how I learned real quick to, to prioritize it.
That is a gut wrenching feeling when you put a component in and you were so certain.
Oh my God, I still to this day I hate to call a module hate. It doesn't matter what the module.
And it's so scary.
It is, it is. I'd rather put an engine in every day and like wait to hear that click to know that it's like, you know, is it fired up that that crunch mode isn't going to knock or whatever than to ever call modules? Because it's like we're trained that it's never the module. But you and I know it is a lot of the time, you know.
See and, and that. Let's go back to where you said about Nissan, right?
Yeah.
A lockout code P1610, right. For the NAT system.
Yeah.
You can't get a key to program. What does it tell you to do? Do a bcm, right? Does it fix it? Yes or no? You click, no. Boom. Ecm. You're like, dude, you're two modules in now and it might have not even been the bcm.
That's right.
But it tells you to do that first before you go to the ecm.
I saw your, one of your more recent videos on that kind of stuff and it was like, it was really cool because I mean, that's the thing with Nissan. Like when I would look at their flowcharts, I'm like, this is not. There's a better way for this, you.
Know, And I'm talking about that Infinity I posted.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So.
And I mean, I'll never know whether whether that yeah. Key unit is going to fix it or not. My assumption is that they. They jump started the vehicle backwards, you know, But I. I know for a fact that key unit was bad only because I could not communicate.
Yeah.
With, you know, there's no steering. It has a steering lock.
Right.
So it's.
It was. It was stuck. Unlocked. And then I couldn't get the. The key to even want to program which. That, you know, that's a security gateway, if you will, security system.
I did a bunch of those recalls for the steering lock.
The steering lock unit. Oh, then you know all about that.
Well, we were just like, we were driving them in and just doing the, you know, doing the module and putting it back out. Like it wasn't. We weren't having a ton of them coming in by the time the recall was released for us anyway. For me, that had been like the. That module had caused the car not to start. Like we.
Man, that was what, 2010 through about 14. That. That recall was alive.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember used the first time you look at that stupid bolt and you're like, how the hell do you get that? Get an air hammer in there and, you know, chisel and walk it back out, twist out your fingers, put the new one in like it was. But the first time I'm like, how are these getting these out? You know?
Yeah.
Stupid. We're talking for people that are wondering, we're talking about these bolts that have that torque to break off head fastener type thing on them. Right. Because that's what they want.
The breakaway bolts.
Yeah, yeah.
Those are fun. They were put in when you're doing it in the. Doing it in the parking lot and car don't want to start and you have no choice.
Yeah, yeah.
Hot.
Hot.
Well, yeah, but imagine it in the snow fluff like up here. You know, we didn't. We didn't work too much in the snow. We just pushed the damn thing in. Yeah, but that's.
Oh, I'm a bear.
We had a. We had our ramp, like, actually to push into our shop that was on an incline. So it was a bit of a ramp to get it going. So it wasn't like I could push a versa by myself out of the shop. Yeah, but trying to get anything up the ramp into the shop? Hell no. Like, no.
Y' all didn't have a. A pusher? Oh, I don't even think that would work in the snow.
Yeah, we had a pusher. It's called a shop full of people that you got to be friendly with. You know, you've seen those politics, right? If they don't like you, they're gonna stand there and watch it push the thing.
Why don't you ask you a quick. Let me ask you a question real quick. You did mention the. The test light. How do you feel about power probes? I'm a big power pro guy.
It's a fantastic tool for making a component work, but I have gone back behind. It's dozens of technicians at this point that I've seen them misdiagnose the circuit because it shows. It beeps. It shows I have 12 volts and it, you know, so for me, I had a Power Probe 2 when it didn't have the screen, so it didn't have the volt meter. And then I have the three I've never gotten. I have a drawer full of the other stuff, the 5 volt adapter, the pulse width adapter, the amp tip. I just bought the power probe fault finder, the PP draw or not fault finder, parasitic drain tester, the ppdraw. I just bought that this week.
I love those tools. But for me, the, the Power Pro 3, when it came out with the voltmeter in it, I tell kids all the time that I'm training, put electric tape over that. Don't just use it for. If I want to go to a blower motor, I want to go to a window motor, I want to go to a tail lamp. I've got the circuit isolated from the rest of the car. I can't really hurt too much. Then use it that way. But don't trust that it shows you 12 volts because I've got an open circuit here and I touched my meter to it and it shows me 12 volts.
That ain't loaded. You know, Chuck and I had that conversation over a year ago because I would watch all his videos and I mean, I love the dude and. And he'd be t. He'd be whipping through his videos. And I'm like, well, you don't really know that you have 12 volts. Or he's like, well, my meters, my power pro. Yes, but. And then now he's got his load cage.
I'm not responsible for that. He was already. But for editing sake, he was just showing that I have 12 volts. And I'm like, you know, no. And it's no different fluff than. Than using a fluke and unplugging the component and going, I have 12 volts if there's no load, right?
So that's why I tell people Always, you know, when you're. When you're checking for available voltage.
Yeah.
You know, make sure the circuit is working or plugged in.
Yeah.
You know, it has its times. I get that.
But what I love about a test light is it's. It's. For me, it's faster because I'm about current. Right. I don't care about. Voltages are just a number. It's math to me. But if I have current, the thing is gonna work, right? It's gonna work.
So it's just. It's just faster for me. It's just. It's just numbers to be 12 volts. I worked on trucks for years. It was 24 volts. Like, I don't care about what that number is as long as it's at least close. I want to know that current's flowing.
Then I know I'm not dealing with a break in the wire or a rubbed wire or a loose whatever. I've got current flow. That was just it for me. It's how I learned.
So that. That. That instructor I was telling you about that made the light bulb go off in my head.
Right.
He feared us on test lights.
Really?
Yeah. You know, testing. His whole thing was testing computers. Yeah. Yeah. Right. This dude was a wizard. You know, these guys that are so smart, they're weird.
Yeah.
So, you know, he's like. He's like, never use a test light when you're testing circuits because, you know, the draw can fry a computer. Oh, okay.
Yeah.
You know, so I. And then he's all, use this.
And he put. But he didn't pull out a power probe and say that. Like, I used this instead. Really?
Yeah.
It's all good until you hit that switch accidentally.
Oh, dude, I am. So I. Unless I know what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Unless I know for a fact I need 12 volts there.
Yeah.
I'm hitting that rocker.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like. Like, you know, when I started that. That Q60 upper Q, what was it, a G37? Yeah, it was a G37. Unless I know I. I need 12 volts there. Boom. And I'm hitting it.
Yeah.
And that for. So, for me. And. And I. So the groundbreaking moment for me was. Was learning Paul Danner and some of the other guys that taught about, like, a bypass test with a test light and any. You know, they say, like, this is, like. Think about it.
Think about how many modules we've seen survive when a coil shorts or an injector shorts or something like that. If you mean to tell me a bulb Going across those two wires is going to hurt that driver versus it can shut down. Like it can have a failed injector go shorted. And depending on, as my friend Brian Pollock used to say, how much ass that module's got, it can tolerate it. It can take it and come back fine. So he's. Paul says, you know, most of the time you're going to be safe 99 of the time.
And that's what I love about this whole social media thing, man. I'm. I learned from guys oh all the time, dude. I may not apply it to my everyday, you know, because Nissan has their certain problems and yeah, like I've never needed to load test the wire because it's always just. That's why I feel like Nissan's easy because it's. The problem is just always like right there and then, you know.
Do you see the, the. The rogues up here? Those in the kick panel on the driver's side, those connectors that fill up with water. Do you see that a lot even down in your area or is that just a Canadian thing?
I. It might be. It might be up there, bro.
We'd see that all the time, bro.
You know, they came out with that connector recall where you put the lithium grease on there or you, you put that, that foam padding to cover it. You know, hell, we. I have never put a pigtail on there. I've never had to clean it out. Just inspect does no corrosion.
Dozens fix dozens of them all the time.
But why was there getting. Why was there getting moisture in there? Was it. Now I've seen some where I think this was a frontier way back way back then when they had the, the luggage bars up top right on the frontiers and they said frontier. I had one that had a seal leaking and it went down the. A pillar and then down into the. To the kick panel.
So the rogues, they would want us to take the inner fender well out and some of the stuff under the hood and actually run more body sealer on some of the seams. They said it was coming in on the seams on the firewall and on the inner fender. Well that's where this and it. But it could also come down the. From the sunroofs, right. Like water drainage. But I mean that's, that's where Reese. I had a bunch of them that I had the inner fender well out running way more like seam sealer onto those seams to stop it now.
And you know what that work is like fluff like trying to get them to Pay you to do the water test and. And film the water coming in and all like that's just horseshit. We went ahead and most of the time inspected that connector. If it was full of water, then we pulled the inner fender out and started seam sealing everything. We didn't pull the water to the car. We found the failure, then went by pattern failure fix what was probably going to be the problem.
Yeah, see, I never. I never even knew what that recall was about, why it was even there.
I was like, yeah, it was a good one. I can't remember so much of what was the symptoms of what the car would do when that connector is full of water. Like I can't say, oh yeah, I had to push a bunch of them in for it because of that or. But I remember like a lot of weird electrical stuff. You'd go there on the roads and.
And well, I know that connector. I want to say it went to the rear of the vehicle so like you would lose like fuel. Fuel level readings.
Okay.
Certain lights and stuff like that.
Yeah.
I want to say I might be wrong, but I want to say that one led to the rear of the vehicle.
Yeah.
Nissan was one of the worst ones I saw OE level for pin fit too, right out of the gate. I can remember having multiple new verses that like the guy go and pdi them and run them over the gas station and fuel them up. And the tank, the gas fuel gauge is sitting there reading empty. And it's like, oh yeah, you know, rip out the back seat, unplug the fuel pump, plug it back in. It works. That's all it would be.
You remember the. I think it was exterras where you had to brake clean out the fuel pump connector.
I remember hearing about it, but we didn't see many exteras up here by the time I was there.
I want to say it was pathfinders also.
Okay.
But you'd get a dummy connector and it had a hose for. For a brake clean can connect it to the, to the fuel pump and just go to town some of the recalls, man, I'm like, Hey, 0.5. Whatever, dude.
Right. No, I can remember. I can remember doing the rogue fuel pump recall that was coming out and we were like that time initially you looked at this and like, I think it was like 1.1. And of course the customer always bringing in. Right. Full of fuel. Right. And you're like, how do I keep the smell of fuel out of the car? Like it was just.
But we got to. We're doing it Pretty fast. You know, like it was, it was nothing at all. But it was frustrating at first because.
Like that was for the. Where you replace the. The lock ring. Right.
We did a pump and a lock ring, pump, lock ring and seal. So I'm not sure why.
I think initially you might be right. You might.
I think they were saying fluff because they thought the lock rings were over torqued and it was cracking the top of the pump, the plastic and that you were getting a fuel smell or possible fuel leak. So change it all. I remember doing that and then it might have been updated to only the.
Lock rings, but you might. You know what? I think you're right.
Yeah.
I remember doing a pile of them too because.
And we had to, we had to pull out both of the pumps.
Yeah.
The transfer. And. Yeah.
Get a piece of wire and snake it through the tank to pull out the other side.
Dude. I use speaker wire.
Yeah.
Then I would tie it off to the door hinge and. Yeah.
What. When that. Like you're talking about the older Pathfinders, I. That rusts up here. Right. So I mean we don't. I know one friend that has the older the, the Pathfinder generation previous to what you and I are most familiar with. And all I remember hearing about those things is like the, the rad would, you know, grenade intermix and it intermixed with the transmission.
And I saw one of them come in like that. It had a brand new tranny in it. And he left. He was two hours away from where he had the tranny put in. It started to slip again and we caught it in time. And I'm like, is your rad level down? He's like, son of a. It is. I'm like, they didn't.
And he'd had it done at the dealer. That was the sad part. And I'm like, the guys at the dealer didn't know about this but it was already a 10 year old car at that point. So the chances are this is where.
People need to understand that just because you're at a dealer doesn't mean you're going to get the highest level quality of tech there.
That's right.
You know, you might get a guy that just started.
Yeah.
You know. Oh. And, and yeah. Every shop has their good, they're bad in their mids. Whether you're a dealer or independent.
Yeah.
You know, so I, I just wish they would stop pushing that whole. I'm like you, I hate steelership.
Yeah.
It's so annoying because I know what I am. I Know what my ma, my other master is, right. Because it's only two of us that are the masters there. And then we're watching over a shop full of eight or nine other techs.
Yeah.
So you know, we, we know what we got.
Yeah.
And then to know that, you know, there's people constantly just dragging the name or, or the dealership name, it's like, dude. But you know, on the other side we get independent cars that come in. You're like, what the.
Oh, dude. All kinds.
They MacGyvered the hell out of this vehicle.
I want, I can. One of the last ones when I was still there, I can't remember. It was an older Nissan front wheel drive car senter or whatever. Right. Something like that. And it come in and it was gutted. I mean it had the fuel pump out of it. There was a fuel pump sitting there in the seat and it was like towed in, not starting.
And like he left under the hood. Half the stuff wasn't plugged in. The air box is flopping around, all this kind of stuff. And of course you get a, you know, one hour to diag and I, I want to, I can't remember what it was, but it was a little four cylinder, four, seven, six, seven. Can't remember. But I remember I walked out to it and I cranked and I heard how it sounded and I reached down and I unplugged the cam sensor and it started and ran long crank, but it would run to the cam sensor. And I walked back in, I said something's wrong. The engine, like how do you know that? Well, because it's out of time.
Well, how do you know it's at a time? Because the sensor is obviously putting out some kind of signal because when it's plugged in it don't run. But if I eliminate it.
Yeah.
And. And so that thing had been sitting at this shop for two weeks. The guy chucked all them parts out. Not a good shot. And of course, so then when we tell the customer that gets towed back out because the customer in that, in that case was the shop bringing it in because he was convinced that he needed an ECM and he couldn't program it. I had another one that came from the local Midas store that sat there three weeks and they send over with a used ECM program. Used ECM can't program it won't communicate. Can't communicate with new or old.
Guess what? And it was an ultima and the wiring down near the battery corroded so it wasn't Sending power all the way through the harness up to the thing. So I jumped. I jumped 12 volts from the lighter socket and drove the car around back out front with the wire still tagged and said here, how come?
Was it those. Those two big connectors on the fusible link? Yeah, Yep. I've seen. I've seen plenty of those.
So, I mean. And I'm like. So when people say to me, oh, you dealership guys are crooks. And it. Listen, it's not about crook that I've said it aund times. Most of us are not out there trying to rip anybody off. It's. It's.
It's incompetence. It's not enough. And I don't even say it's incompetence. It's not enough time to actually get to the root of the most of the problems in these cars. That's it in a nutshell. You cannot diagnose a lot of this stuff in under an hour anymore. Unless it's pattern fit. That's it.
This is like guys in the aftermarket want to charge an hour for initial diag. You're shooting yourself in the foot. You know what you're doing? You're walking over identifix. You're quoting the top part. You're quote, you got a Nissan with a 101. I'm going to quote, A mass airflow sensor. Fluffy. You know how that goes most of the time, right.
How often is it really? The sensor.
Rarely.
That's right.
Throttle bodies.
Yeah.
Clean it up and put the software in it, you know, y. Yeah, like I will.
I will throw a mass airflue in there. Because sometimes these, you know, it's always that luck, man. You get burned once, you get burned twice, and you're like, you know what? I'm doing both at the. The same time.
Yeah.
I'm not. And. And it's just because the customer. To have a customer come back with the same code, now you got to disgrunt customer.
That's right.
So you know what? I'm gonna charge them once, cry once, buy one, or however they say it, buy one, scrap once.
Right?
Yeah.
And they be done. And then they're happy. Right.
I had a lot of them where it ran fine, but I had a 101. I had a rogue just last month. It was like, you know, she come in and she's like. Or been to two other shops for this check engine problem. What. What code are you fixing? Last time? 4, 5, 6. Yeah, they got it right. They change the vent Valve that fixed the evap code.
Now you got a 101. Oh, so it's not the same thing. No. So they're already up in arms. Right. Fluff at like the last shop and it's like, hey, guess what? Different problem. And it's the same thing. Like I looked at her air filters like a mess and take the mass airflow out of it, like blow it all out, clean it.
And the car drove fine. Just had a 101 recurring. No, not down on power. Not stalling or nothing. I said, you need software for this. And same thing. Send it over to the dealer. The dealer says, oh, we can't flash it.
There's something wrong with the dlc. Bring it back. Straighten one pin in the dlc. And then we logged in through Autel and went through expert remote and got it.
Yeah.
And that fixed it.
And. And for that, that update, it tells you in there, you know, if there's a drivability concern.
Yeah.
The update won't fix it.
That's right. 100.
Yeah.
And so you have to go through.
The flowchart, look for the color of the PCV valve that it has. Remember that? Is it orange or black? And then. Yeah. And then proceed on.
I literally just did one today.
Yeah.
Literally just did that.
Yeah.
Drove like the customer thought they needed a transmission.
Yeah.
I get in it. Advisor was stoked. He's like all translation. Sorry, buddy. Oh, is the perform TSB replace MAP sensors and ship it. Get it out of here. Yeah, I made a video on that one.
Nice. I'll be looking for that. And that's. So I gotta ask because here's the other thing that sometimes happens that we don't talk about it near enough in this industry. You made a very good point. And I'm not trying to run down service advisors. Right. But your service advisor or anybody from an incentivized commission thing is going to.
Right.
Man, this is a $6,000 ticket right here. Like my, my kiss of this is going to be good, you know, and then you go and do the right thing. Doesn't need a transmission yet. I mean it's a Nissan going to need one eventually. Yeah, but. And that's the thing that I sometimes think gives the whole industry a black eye is the, the. The actions of the service advisor, you know, versus the mechanic. Everybody wants to.
I left such and such Nissan store and the experience was terrible. Sometimes that's not the mechanic, that's the advisor.
Yeah.
Dropped the ball, screwed that up. Right. Got really overzealous. Whatever it Is right.
Y.
That's what.
Sometimes it's neither. Sometimes a customer just doesn't like the prices or doesn't get the answer that they want.
Yeah.
And so how many times have you seen the. The aftermarket mass airflow? You have to have that tough conversation with the customer where it's like, guess what? You only needed initially just a throttle body clean. But whoever you took it to, Jim Bob or whatever that took your good part and threw it in the trash, you now need a 400.
I had one. I had one that I put a Hitachi Oreillys in. Right. It's supposed to be OEM. Hitachi from O'Reilly's. Put it in three times, dude.
Yeah.
Each and every time we said, no, you need. You need to buy one from us. Because, you know these aftermarket companies sell gray market, black market parts.
Yeah.
Where they're freaking cloned. No, no, no. Just put it in, Program it.
Okay.
Each time, put it in, try to do idle air. It won't go through. I'm like, yeah, so I'll freaking limp it up to the front. This is, you know, it is what it is. By the fourth time she came back, okay, I'll buy one. She bought one, put it in. Haven't seen her since.
Yeah.
Now, were they paying you every time?
Yes.
They charging her every time?
Yep.
So she saved nothing.
She saved nothing. Saved nothing, man. Oh, I felt bad. But at the same time, and here's the funny part is when I located to the vehicle, I went to go get the keys from the cabinet, right?
Yeah.
And it had the bag with the mass airflow attached to it.
Yeah.
And I said, oh, no. Contacted the advisor right away. Dude, we need to sell them one of ours because this ain't gonna work. Well, she don't want to. She don't want to just install it. Okay. All right. You know, I try.
I try to push back, try to push back. And you know, it's always. And the crazy thing is our. Our mass airflow was only $20 more.
Can you believe that?
No, I did a whole stream. I. Dude, I wish I still had it, because I had. I did a whole stream on that one when. When I had did it. And yeah, I was like, these two right here look freaking identical.
Yeah.
One has our part number scratched off, the other doesn't.
Yeah.
I don't know what they do. They mess with them.
I think they take one that doesn't work and they clean it. I think what they're doing out there is they're buying up Returned parts under warranty from dealers when they take your back because oh, we need to know that you actually put a part in this before we'll pay the warranty claim. I think they're buying that from the OEs and they're cleaning them, painting them, doing something right with these parts that get returned and then they're, they're buying them up and selling them out. There's no, you can't convince me there aren't parts suppliers out there. Doing that will not convince me. Cardone. That's pretty much what Cardone is.
And what people don't understand, there's a, there's a computer chip inside the mass airflows now. So it's not just power ground. You know, you get your four to six wires. They're three wire now.
Yeah.
You have a communication line in there. So.
Yeah.
What I gotta ask this because I've never, when my times at the dealer, like I never got to an official master. When you go to the advisor and you say it needs this versus one of the other guys, do they, do they treat you the same or do they just like if, if Fluff says that it needs a math. We don't, we don't. We just call the customer or.
Yeah, it has its perk.
Yeah, good.
It has its prayer. Now there are times sometimes I am wrong. I'll shoot from the hip because I'm like, oh, I'm confident. I already freaking know. But yeah, you know, it happens. But 99 of the time they're like, well, did you get with love? You know, and that, that's the thing too. They'll be like, did you get with Fluff or did you get it with the other master tech when it's a different technician? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And okay.
Okay, yeah.
So like being a master at a dealer holds a lot of weight. If you could back it up. You know, I've seen masters that, you know, they passed the test, they went through the courses and you know they can't find their way out of a. Freaking, out of a rabbit hole.
Right. How do you find? So then in that way, how much of your day to day are you called on to actually have to mentor the other young people in the, in the dealership? The under techs that are not at master yet. And is it a big time constraint on you? Oh yeah, rewarded.
Like, like at this point they're like, Fluff, be, be our, our foreman. Be our foreman. I'm like, hell no. You know, no, I don't, I don't want that. Responsibility. But, you know, we do have our shop foreman. And then it's hard for us, me and the other master to be like, you know, you know, go talk to so and so, because I get it. They're on flat rate too.
Right.
And. And sometimes I'm like, man, I don't want to help them. But at the same time, the longer they struggle, the longer we get set back, the longer, you know, the customers behind that vehicle have to wait. Because if this dude is waiting too long or. Or struggling too long, it just. It. It's a freaking snowball effect.
Yeah.
And so I take that in. You got to be a team player, man.
Yeah.
And, you know, it sucks sometimes because you're trying to make your own money to defend your family, but, you know, oh, for sure.
I was not always the best team player because, like, I was out for. The way incentivize works for me is I'm out for me. I am. For me, like, I don't. And I was bad. I didn't care if there was a parking lot full of cars, and I was the only one that could solve them. Didn't care. It's good more for me.
That's how I thought. And it. It took a long time and getting into the aftermarket side of things to realize that's not a good attitude to have.
Yeah.
But yet that's what they rewarded me with was like, the more cars that I could get through, the more cars that I was the only one that could get through, the more money I made. So it was an unfortunate situation that that customer was waiting maybe three days before I get to. It didn't matter.
Yeah, it's gonna be mine, you see, and. And here's something that I'm having trouble dealing with, if you will. So when. When, let's say the foreman comes up to me, hey, can you look at this vehicle? Yeah, dude, I'm kind of busy. Well, I need somebody who's going to be able to figure it out. I don't trust them. I'm like, they need to be able to struggle a little bit to learn 100.
Yeah.
You know, but then on the other end, the. The shop managers and stuff like that, they don't want them to mess up. I remember a term, right. Gotta earn your dues. You gotta. You gotta pay your dues. You have to struggle. Struggling builds character.
It's. Yeah, you learn your instincts. Well, you don't learn your instincts, but you develop a lot of your process and you kind of get the feel for the product. If I Can say that if you kind of know what I mean about what it tends to be and what it tends not to be when you struggle. You know, that's the cars that kick my butt are the ones I'll remember forever. That's where the.
You always remember the bed.
That's.
Always remember the best.
That's how the lesson got burned in my friggin brain. Don't hook up the ground to that. Hook the ground to the battery, dum dum. Every time it doesn't matter if you're on the front of the car or the back, you go to the battery because you don't know what that ground is. Yeah, I know you could one test and you've proven it. But it's just that one time that you don't, you don't verify your tool and you make the wrong call. Yep, been there, done it. You know, it's happens.
That's how people improve. That's how we grow. So when I was, I was that way too, where it's like they'd say, can you look at this card?
Sure.
Put it in the pile, man. When I get through this, I'll go to the next one. But I did not want to stop what I was doing to go look.
Yeah. You know, knowing what you're doing and, and the higher ups knowing that you know what you're doing is a blessing. But sometimes it, it sucks.
Sucks.
You become very dependent.
Yeah.
Become very dependent.
It gives. It's like Mark Elliott though, like Toch. He posted how like you become indispensable. Yeah. I go and I'm like, there's no such thing as that. No such thing. They will, they will, they will toss you. You know, if you get too much, too big ahead to too greedy to whatever.
You go through something in life that maybe just, you know, you're fighting with and your focus is not 100. They don't care. You're not indispensable.
Yeah.
You know, you have to make yourself like valuable to them for sure. But you got to make yourself like. It's a constant battle of playing your abilities against what they need. That's it. That's all you can ever be, is you can be somebody that they tolerate because it's like a. You know, I've worked with countless really good mechanics. They're not punctual people. They didn't walk in at 8 o' clock.
They missed the morning meeting every damn time it was supposed to happen. Like, you know, they, they had quirks, but they needed them to get the Cars fixed because they had tons of experience and tons of insight. Oh, they love them.
I'll be straight up with, I'll be straight up with you right now. I. You want me there at 8 o' clock, I ain't getting there at 8. I have morning duties with my kids that I got to take care of. You know, I tell them 8:30 to 9. I don't live the closest to the dealership either.
Right.
So, you know, kids going to school is kind of important. I get it. I need to be there at 8 for those morning whatever.
Right.
How, how much am I really affecting the shop? To me, not that much. Right. I don't get paid to be there. I get paid to work on the vehicles.
That's right.
So if I show up and the parking lot's empty at 8 o' clock and my, you know, I had an issue with my kids or whatever, I'm like, I'm literally just standing around.
Yeah.
Or I'm helping somebody else make money while I have nothing to, to pull into my bay.
That's right.
Right. So it's just, it's a weird balance that, that we have to go through.
So as the master, how can I say.
But I do stay late. I do stay late every day.
Okay. I was gonna be, this is gonna be my follow up question, but as the master, do you find like they look after you guys to make sure that you have work or is it just still like it doesn't matter. It's a free for all.
It's a free for all.
See, I ain't about that life.
Yeah, it's a free for all. I will say the first two weeks of this year, probably my worst, dude, I had like 12 hours for two weeks. And one of those weeks was like 0.4, 0.4 hours.
Actually.
That was a week of Christmas.
But there were still cars coming in the dealer.
Hardly. Yeah, hardly. It was it. This winter was a weird winter, bro. Yeah, it was a weird winter for us.
Yeah.
And you know, I thought we talked to a lot of technicians. You talk to a lot of technicians? I talked to a lot of technicians. And like we had a talk last night and they're saying the same thing. Like, man, it just, this has been one of the slowest winners for us.
Do you have any kind of guarantee at your shot?
No, I'm pushing for it. I am pushing and pushing, trying to make it happen. But we're a small. I, I think this is why too. We're a small group.
Correct.
Right. So we're not we don't have, let's say Matt Kike. Right. Mac Height has dealerships throughout the country. Not us. We are who we are and that's it.
But you're still part of a dealer.
Group, just whoever's on the lot.
Yeah, that's it.
See, I'm different because I look at it like from a very jaded perspective, which is like as soon as you hold them accountable in some way with a guarantee, it means that they are forced to operate efficiently enough, have their marketing right, have all their pricing right, that they can continue to supply a steady stream of cars for you guys to fix. And you know, everybody thinks like that because there's a lot of dealers now that are finally, well, we're guarantee you 30 hours, we'll guarantee even 40 hours. That sounds good because like my tenure at Nissan 45 was a good week. Like it wasn't. We, we had too many pigs at the trough, if you know what I mean. And way too much warranty work. Not a lot of retail work at all. I never saw a transmission get done retail ever.
I never saw. And it don't. Never saw an engine repair get done retail. Not while I was there. It was always warranty or it wasn't being done. That was just the way it is in my area.
So.
Most of our retail work was services, brakes, front end, some diet, which was a, you know, short term ride. We didn't get into long, you know, drawn out things. So what happens then is it's like, okay, well, going to guarantee you. Okay, cool. All right. I'm the type where if like there's no cars, I don't want to be in the shop. It's too, it messes with my head. It pisses me.
I get in a really bad head space. I just, I want to go, I want to go home, go fishing. I want to spend time with my, my friends and family. I don't want to be there. It puts me. I'll come back in tomorrow morning, 8 o' clock, ready to go again.
I get you, brother, I get you.
So with the guarantee, they say, listen, you got to be here, you got to be here scrubbing your bay or you know, dancing to the music in the, in your, between the hoist arms. It doesn't matter. Like you got to be doing something to get that guaranteed pay. And I get that. But man, like what, what it can happen the other way is all of a sudden now when we're busy guys might be making 50, 60 a week again. But on your guarantee, you got to Be there. Well, somebody hands you sunroof job, you know how that's going to go. And it's like, you're gonna lose your butt.
And then it becomes the same thing it always was for me. Again, that guy that won't do a sunroof, he's gonna hit 60 this week. And because he's gonna turn and burn easy, upsell, whatever, and me, on my guarantee that got stuck with a sunroof job, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna get shafted.
So. Yep, it always happens like that.
And that's the guarantee thing for me. So it's like, it's not. When they wave it around like, here's a carrot. Come work for us. We got a guarantee. I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to look at your numbers of what. What the techs are actually earning. Show me the hours sheets.
I'm glad that you brought that up. So I get asked that question. Hey, how. You know, I'm looking to move, go somewhere else, to a different dealer, different shop. You know, they're offering me this much money and guarantee and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, ooh, guarantees are scary when they bring that up.
Yeah.
Ask for their. Ask for their tech sheet.
That's right.
How much they've been flagging the past, I don't know, three months.
That's right.
You know?
Yeah.
If you have one guy hitting over 40. One or two guys hitting over 40. Everybody's down in the teens and twenties. Be careful, buddy. Be careful.
Yeah.
You're not going to walk in and hit 40. Nope. You're going to be.
That's a big thing that. That shop managers push. Oh, you have a potential. A potential to make, you know, 50, 60 hours a week. Yeah, that's true. But there's a workflow there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I've seen it. I've been that. Where it's like, you're the new guy and they give you good work right out of the gate. You're like, it's the honeymoon phase. Like, look at this. This is. I've turned 12, and everybody's looking at you like that over there. Like, he, you know, he had 10 break jobs in the last minutes.
Wednesday, you know, and then. And like, the flush machines have never left his bay. And then reality hits, and it's like, you get a couple, you know, certs and you do some training. All of a sudden it's like, oh, here's a really, you know, ass kicker of a diag problem or something, and you'll be on that sucker for or like the sunroof thing like that, that, that I was never about that. Like, if you brought me water leaks of wind noises, you probably watch me roll my box out because I'm half deaf.
So I tell them, I, I, I suck it.
I'm saying. Yeah, I'm the same. I got two bad.
Yeah.
And the water leak thing. Like my first tenure in a dealership when I was a kid. I say a kid, but a straight time apprentice. We had a guy that did it like he was, he'd come from the body shop side of things and he did all the water leaks and all the wind noises because he could, he was a body tech. He could adjust doors, he could do water. He was that way, you know, over here. Nah, didn't work for me.
Yeah, I, I freaking, I hate those. I hate noises. I can't stand them.
Yeah.
And I know some guys are good at them and they're like, hey, man, if you're good at it. Freaking right.
But I hate interior noise. I can catch an exterior, you know, a suspension, stuff like that. I, I don't have a, the chassis ears.
Right, right.
If I have a noise underneath, I'm getting that thing on the alignment rack. Hey, buddy, get in there. I need you to accelerate and stop. Or, you know, let's bounce this thing around. Yeah, it's been, it's been good. But every now and then, yeah, I do need them chassis ears. I will admit that the people, it's hard.
The people that complain about the interior noise, like I just asked them flat out, was your radio don't work. Like what? And people look at you like you're crazy. But I mean, I, I, I never in my life would have thought that there were so many people that drove around without radio on listening to their car.
So I will, I, I will admit I have been the same way about that.
Right.
Until I got an annoying ass squeak.
Yeah.
In my uncle's car because I was using his car while my car was down.
Right.
It was the right rear or, I'm sorry, the left rear quarter panel. I think there was a bracket loose in the bumper and that thing went. He has a system in there. So I crank that thing up. You can hear it through the dam over the radio. It was that bad. I'm like, oh my God, now I understand these customers. And so that changed my perspective.
Like, well, okay. They must be that annoyed by it.
It's frustrating though, because it's just like, like when I look at it from a flat rate perspective, it's like, it's, it's, it's so frustrating because it's like you can't get paid for all that time that it takes. There's no, there's no labor guide. There's no process that really says like I've seen guys put tape down the seals and you know, all that kind of stuff. And that's all good, you know, chassis, like I said. But she's got so much time into investing it to, to what? Find a loose bolt that was left loose at the factory and tighten it up?
Yeah.
OE is not going to pay you for all that time. So I look at it and it's like, what is the reward at the end of the day for getting to the bottom of that problem as a technician in a flat rate environment? Pride. That's all you're getting because you're gonna lose time. Like you're not, they're not going to cover your full nut. Even if you do cover your full nut. You got eight hours into. You find it when the workflow is there. I could have made 12 on something else.
Yeah.
And then it's like, what's the reward at that point? Point. You know, you got to always think about that because. And here's the thing, it isn't like a pattern failure for electrical drivability work. I do it the first time, I'm gonna see it again. That's one stupid loose bolt that probably you'll never see again.
See, and here, here's the thing too. You invest so much time on that. We talk about locating to vehicles or getting dispatched to vehicles, you know. Yeah. You might get your, I don't know, four or five hours off of it.
Right.
Big whoop. Or eight hours, like you said. How much potential work did you miss out on?
Yeah.
That is no longer available because it got scooped up by the other technicians. Yeah, that's one thing I deal with too. Like, you know, I had an EV in my stall that I had in my stall for three months waiting on parts and stuff. But in my diag process I was back and forth with Nissan. I'm missing out on all this work.
That's right.
Okay. Not all this work, but the potential work that I could have located to.
Yeah.
The little bit of work that would come in I couldn't grab because I had to be invested in this EV to try to figure out what was the issue.
Yeah.
And you know that, that's one thing. That's an issue also. I've heard, I've seen multiple people talk about hourly versus flat rate. You know, I get both sides. But see, what people don't understand is flat rate. I feel you can make the most money, like when you're mid-20s, early-30s. That's your peak right there. That's where you're grinding out, right?
Yeah.
And being flat rate, you can make badass money, but you have to be hungry.
Yeah.
You have to be hungry.
Yeah.
And I just. I just. There was another guy who was hourly. He came from a fleet department.
Right.
And this is on the Internet. Right. He tries to go into a dealership to work flat rate. And he wasn't quick enough.
Yeah.
So they let him go. So, you know, working hourly, you still have to uphold a productivity. Right?
Sure.
You can't just ride the clock.
No.
So you know the guys that. Oh, flattery, flattery, blah, blah, blah. You have to be able to hustle yourself up there.
Yeah.
I have a reputation for being not fast. You know what I mean? I'm not a 100%. I'm not. I'm never going to be that technician that's going to do like four tires in 12 minutes. You know what I mean? I've seen. I'm not going to be that guy. Not anymore. You know, when I was 20 something.
Yes. Like, and then it just becomes a situation of like, the more estab. Not established, the more specialized work that they give you, it just mixes. It just messes up the mix even more. So at the end of the. Of the week, that guy over there that just did tranny re and re all day long. Right. And it's just.
They're not talking overhauls, we're just dumping units in. He's killing it, man. He's making 50, 60. And then you're over there solving like that pinched wire in the harness that, you know is happening every once in a blue moon. And you find it and you fix it. Or you put a whole harness in the truck or whatever or the, the tight dungeons. You know, if you're doing one of them after a while. Yeah, you can get some time.
But I can remember the first ones when we were putting, like, guys were losing their ass on that. And it's like, so you're doing that and then all of a sudden it's like it starts to play with your head where it's like, what's the sense in really trying to hustle on here? Because you know what? And I would see them do it especially. Here's something else. The pay plans where it's like, well, once you hit the 45. We're going to roll you up, like, two more bucks. Oh, sweet. Right on. I can hit 45 easy.
And then you'd be at 43. There's no work. Where'd all the work go?
Yep.
You'd almost think that it's like they're holding, so they don't want to. And listen, I've talked to hundreds of technicians that have worked in dealerships under the exact same pay plan, and it happens. It is a tool that they use. Yeah.
Ours goes by proficiency.
Proficiency.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, as long as we're above 95, as far as, you know, they. They hold us accountable for eight hours a day. And then on Saturdays being a short day, you get four hours. So if you work that Saturday, you're held to 44 hours that week, and if you don't work that Saturday, you're held to 40. So they expect you to hit those numbers. But here's. I would. This was a big argument when.
When this was becoming into play, when they were. When they brought it up to us about, oh, you're gonna make a lot of money off of this. Like, the reality is 8 hours per person isn't gonna be there, right?
No.
Right. It's not gonna be there. That's the reality. You're gonna have 20 hours, some text at 20, some at 30, some at 40, and then you're gonna have your few that are, you know, always hitting their bonus.
Yeah.
And this is for the whole month that they. That they ran this. So as long as you were at 95 for the whole month, you got a said percentage or a said dollar amount more, you got it in a check. But at the same time, they hold you accountable for fix it. Right. First time. So the surveys that get mailed to the customers, if the customer didn't feel like you fixed their vehicle. Right.
They bombed you on it, you lose all that money. That's one I don't agree with.
Nope.
Because if you busted your tail, you made the hours that should be your money not taken away because of. Customer got upset that they brought their vehicle to you, you made a recommendation. It didn't get fixed because they didn't approve the repair.
That's right.
And so they bomb you on a survey.
Yeah.
You know, I had. I. I had a customer come in. I had a customer come in, he bought a brake switch over the counter, installed it. Okay. First off, this brake switch bag, the packaging was already opened. You remember the brake switch recall for the centrals?
Yeah.
Okay.
The Armada used the same Brake switch. So he installs it. Brake switch is bad. He brings it in to get diagnosed. I'm like, this freaking brake switch is being used already. So what do I do? I sell him a break. I. I tell him he needs a brake switch.
I just bought it. Blah, blah. Well, okay, you could take it back to parts, return it, and then I'll install it. But I gotta charge you for diagnosis and, you know.
Yeah.
Oh, my. I lost like $3,000 off of that.
Oh.
Because he felt like it was a comeback.
I'd roll my box. I'd roll my box right out. It's the same to me as. The CSI thing is a rigged game too. Yeah.
This wasn't. This wasn't a dealership bonus. This was a manufacturer bonus.
Right.
I don't know if you remember the, the losing it. Invest in the best. Nissan had an invest. Invest.
Nope, never saw that.
Okay, so there's a potential there for $12,000 a year. Yeah. You can make up to $12,000 a year if you hit all the criteria criterias and you have your. All your ases. You know, there's tears to this.
Right.
So as long as you're a master and you hit all. Everything, you got the number of years in there, you have a potential to make 12 grand on top from the manufacturer.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I lost. I lost some money off of that. And I was, I was not upset. I told that parts guy. I was like, dude, you messed with me. You messed with me. Don't sell a customer an open baggie.
Yeah. Yeah.
I was like, dude, it's the same. It's the same. No fluff as like, csi because they can. You can fix the car, but if it doesn't get washed the way they like, when they come to pick it up, they'll trash the survey. If the coffee in the. In the waiting room was empty, so many. The car got fixed, that trashed the survey. And I'm like, I've had that argument for years.
That should have zero bearing on anything. Nothing at all. It's. Especially to the technician standpoint. It's one thing.
Yeah.
If they want to come and complain to the advisor about the coffee being crappy, complain to the advisor about the coffee and crap. But the technique, it shouldn't even. I don't like. I, I don't. I'm not allowed to go out there and drink that coffee. Like, what do I care if you can't. Like, if you don't like it, it's not. You know, we're on different sides of the world here.
It doesn't, it shouldn't affect me at all. I fixed your car. And that's the whole thing of, like, for me, when I think about going back to a dealership, it's like there's pluses, man. Like there's some good tooling and, and you know, you learn one brand. But I, I don't want to deal with that nonsense of CSI or any of that because I don't, I don't buy into it. I don't, I don't buy into it. I don't want the politics, I don't want the rigged game. I don't want them to say, oh, well, you know, our csi, if we hit this, the dealership gets a bonus.
I know what it's about. It's about they can get a big check at the end of the year and then they don't have to. Like, that's just free money to them. That's how they always look at. It's free money. It's not free money. You have to change your whole culture about how you do the business in the dealership, how aggressive you are with sales in order to keep that CSI high. And it's the same thing.
The dealer I was at in Nissan at one point, they had the highest CSI in Canada. Nobody was making a lot of money. And then they came in and said, let's make a little bit more money so they get a little more aggressive in their sales. CSI goes in the toilet. Nothing changed in the sense of the ability of the technician or the way the cars were getting fixed. It was all in the demeanor of how the customer suddenly felt like they were being treated. Yeah, so they're trying to go, we want to get that back to that. Because we want to get that hundred thousand dollar check for a CSI score average or whatever, man.
Give up on that. Learn how to make the hundred grand extra in your sales and then you're not relying on Nissan to decide through a rigged game that we're going to give you a hundred thousand bucks. Yeah, but they look at it like we can make the hundred thousand and get the bonus. No, you can't. It completely changes how I have to act as a technician if I'm so, so worried about csi. So worried about. I'll tell you right now, when I was fly, I didn't give a, did not give a crap. It didn't matter if it had five miles on it or 500,000 miles.
I was going to do the job the same way. I just knew that if it was under warranty. It was paying me less, but I did the job the same way. But they look at it as like. Oh, it's true as well. You got. No. Then you know what? Let's pay me more to work on CSI card or.
We're not going to do that. Well, then let's just stop the nonsense. That's the, the whole double standard, double speak in the dealership thing with the warranty. It just drives me nuts. I'm so happy. I see the guys now. They're talking about they're not getting paid warranty time anymore. They're getting paid book time even when the car is under warranty in certain states.
Right. They got that pass. That's Lana.
I was gonna say about that. New York just passed that back in September.
Love it.
Why is that not a standard in the industry? To get stuff. To get stuff approved? Like, this is what, what people need to understand, okay. A dealership is a franchise.
That's right.
That gets that they have the ability to wear the brand name. Okay. We don't work for. We work with the brand. So when we have to call in stuff, we have to do all this paperwork on the warranty to get your transmission approved.
Yeah.
They don't understand that.
No.
You know, there's about two hours to get recordings and symptoms, and you got to record and send videos and upload it and get in contact, fill out a form online just to get a transmission replaced. Hell, even batteries now. Well, they have to approve the battery. You have to take a picture of the slip, send in an email, take a picture of the battery, and then wait for a computer to tell you, yes, you're okay to replace it. That adds time. They want you to charge it. You know, do run all these tests, and you're like, dude, it needs a freaking battery.
Yeah.
And it's just so many, so many more steps than telling a customer you need a battery. Do you want it? Yes or no? You know, point four to replace the battery under warranty, zero point three to replace the battery. How the hell am I spending 30, 45 more minutes trying to get this battery approved and I'm getting paid less.
That's right. I, that's. I, I've told the story that the battery was what cost me my last dealer job because I. When they said they wanted three slips printed off, I had two. And I told them to go f their hat on the third one because I wasn't going back through it again. And it was just like, nope. And they were like, you can't you can't tell the service writer, tower person. I just did.
Like, you know, it wasn't my best moment, but it was like it was a car that had been. It is sat on a lot nine months before they sold it to the guy. The guy bought the car. Then he proceeded to drive the car home, park it, and he took the bus everywhere he went. And he would go out once a month and go to use the car, and the battery's dead. So the first time he came in, you put it on the midtronics and medtronics says charge and retest. Well, we all know most of the time when the stupid thing says charge and retest, it's gonna need one. But of course, you can't get a failed slip and an approval to put a battery in.
So charge the thing back up, give it to the customer back. Tell the advisor, you gotta tell this guy to use this car just like the. Just like the salesmen are told. If you leave the IOD fuse in or the radio fuse for Nissan world, I'm going back to my Chrysler talk. You got to drive the damn things around the lot once in a while, put some gas in to charge the stupid thing back up. Nobody does that because salesman won't do it. So he comes back a month later, it's gone 9 kilometers. It's 9 kilometers from the dealership to his place of residence.
It's gone 9km back a month later, dead battery again. Same thing. Got it boosted from the tow track. He drove it in this time. Like, why don't you put a battery in your car? Because I can't feel the slip. So we go into the parts room where all the cores are, right? You know this game. You should know this game. Don't admit to if it's going to incriminate you, but this is the game I played.
I went to the course and I printed one and I got two slips that said the battery is bad. There you go back from the two slips, get the battery, put it in the guy's car, give it to him, whole thing. Excuse me, Mr. Jeff, you're gonna need a third slip. Like I'm gonna need a third you. I'm not getting in. You know, that was my final day. So the battery thing for me is.
Is a. Is a complete joke.
Because that was. That was your breaking point.
That was my break point, yeah.
That was your breaking point. That was a build up of a lot.
Oh, yeah. It was a build up of like none of us were hitting 40, right? They were.
Yeah.
None of us were hitting hours. It was, oh, we just got a brand new Hunter alignment machine here, new rack, the whole thing, you know, it's going to be able to do your alignments a lot faster. Don't worry though, we're going to cut the time on the alignments. Do it. Do we cut the price of the customer? Oh no.
Oh, raise the price. They raised the price.
Oh, so we paid for the friggin machine. And that's, that's just the way I am. Right. Like I'm, I'm, I'm wired that way where it's just like I'm blunt and right to the point. Just truthfully I don't, you know, I, I see it, I see black and white and I see the truth. I don't, you know, you're not gonna snow me on it. Am I wrong sometimes? Sure. But it's like I'm just, I'm fed up with that.
And that's the whole thing with the dealership thing. I'm. It doesn't even have to be the dealership thing. It can be anywhere where they look at me. It's just like my rant that I had the other day last Sunday I recorded it got released on Wednesday. The whole production thing is so not a telling indicator of what a technician's true ability is is their production. It's such a misused, misread representation we shouldn't even be using it anymore. It's got to start with level of competency, a level of, of certification.
It's got to go there. Yes. There's some hours that have to show that like they're hustling but man, there's so much more. As soon as you bring diag work into it, throw the production number as a yeah. Out the window because there is no, there's nothing written in the book time. And that's the thing going back to the guys in the, in New York State that get their, their warranty time covered at retail work. That's great from a component RE and RE standpoint if you're still spending time to diagnose the problem and the OEs are not paying diag time like GM and Ford are known to not pay hardly anything, then it's not going to change. CSI is not going to fix itself with these customers being happy.
Because if you're not going to invest in me to figure out the problem, I'm going to throw a dart at the problem, see what sticks to the wall. I'm going to go with the most likely failed pattern failure And I'm going to put that in the car. I will not give you time to tell you what is wrong with it. If you're not going to pay me for that time, I will not do it. Will not donate. Doesn't matter. That customer is no friend of mine. The customer is not my customer.
The customer is everybody's customer. The service advisor guy like Chris Craig got paid something to interact with Mrs. Smith just as soon as we go to the other side of the service department door. And all of a sudden, now I'm on straight, incentivized, flat rate. No nothing. If I have to figure out what's wrong and you don't want to pay for that, I ain't figuring. It's just the way I am.
Yeah.
I think. I think more of us need to get there. You know, I think it's proof of why, like many young people are coming and trying to get into your dealership. Fluff.
As far as I know, few.
Yeah.
You know, it's not. It's not as much as it used to be, you know, now it is. It is. I'll say this. It's hard to hire a good technician.
More.
More bodies than anything.
Yeah.
So getting a good technician in the door, they're. They're out there. But then at the same time, the good technicians don't want to work at it. They don't want to work for somebody anymore.
Yeah.
And that's a sad reality.
What makes a good technician flow for me, Diag.
Yeah.
Being able to look at something and know how to take it apart.
Yeah.
Putting it back together properly. You know, it doesn't take much to be a good tech. Just understand what you're doing.
Yeah.
And don't don't freaking. How do you. How do you say it? Don't butcher the damn car to get something done.
Yeah.
You know, I. I am hard to please in the dealership. I get it. But that's because of the. I guess you'll say the pride I have because I can. I can be real meticulous on certain things and very cautious on others.
Right.
But I will not damage a customer's vehicle for the sake of me feeling like it's going to come back on me.
Yeah.
You know, and I hate seeing that type of work get done, too, man. Oh, boy. I'm trying to do it quick.
Well.
Dude, no, because if you quit and it comes back and I get it and I'm not gonna get paid for your cup, I'm gonna be pissed.
But see, Fluff, that's where I've seen it. Where the dealership when you have to go in behind a fellow tech and he don't work there anymore, he or she's not there that day, whatever. And you, and you sit there and you go, wait a minute, this isn't my comeback. This is, you know, we just need to make it right. Yeah, okay, well, you know, we'll, we'll pay you whatever it takes to make it right. Like this is, this has gone way up the ladder now. This is a big. Why wasn't that money there in the first place? There's always that damage control money.
That's like the saying goes, you know, there's never enough time to do it right the first time, but there's always enough time to do it the second time.
Yeah.
Why are, why do we just not do it right the first time with the right amount of money? Because it's, it's greed. It's greed. It's. Somebody says if I, if I do it in this level, the margin's this cool, great. We don't always doing things that are so contrived to be exactly repeatable. We are in there trying to solve a problem, right? We're trying to find that noise. Trying to like your bumper bracket situation. There's no time for that.
There's no time for that. It's just whatever it takes, whatever the process is. And if there's no friggin leadership to teach these people the process, guess what? It's just fly by the seat. And that's what everybody's doing. And that's what you've all agreed to. That's what you're going to pay for.
Do independent shops run like that?
No, because as soon as, oh, we just opened clicked, you'll hear that can of worms open. So here's how it goes. Warranty and a comeback is a different thing because it's always like, well, maybe we can charge Nissan to look at it again. Maybe we can make a claim, you know, make something up. As soon as it's in the independent, you start telling the customer, listen, you're paying. Every time we're looking at this. It's amazing what those are learned to live with, right? It's like squeaks and rattles and water leaks and never get fixed when it's out of warranty. I've seen so many sunroofs with duct tape over them because like they paying to fix a sunroof.
Yeah, right, but it's like, or a wind noise or something like that. Like that. The Only time the wind noise might get fixed is if it was in a body shop and it was went through their insurance and it was supposed to be pristine. And when it was out, they had a wind noise that, that'll go back to the body shop and they'll fix it. When you are in the independent side and the customer is responsible for the repair cost, they will live with a lot of things. Now you still have to get it right, right. If you go and cannon the parts at it and you don't fix it and this problem's still there, you're 101 as an example, you owe them their fucking money back. Yeah, right.
But if you sit there and say, let's talk about a rogue, for instance. I got this clunking noise in the front end. Now we know the rogues were bad for struts and mounts and the whole thing. Like you've seen it, you put the rogue in the, in the hoist, you go put it down, you drive around the block, it clunks because the shock shot strut. Shit. If I have a rogue in and I'm looking for a noise and I've got ball joints that are falling out of it and I sell you ball joints and then I go around the block and all of a sudden now it's clunking from the strut and it didn't before. That's not a comeback. I took care of the safety related stuff.
The stuff that's going to keep the wheels pointed where they're supposed to go. If I don't have a problem with saying to the customer, listen, unfortunately this sucks. But this is, they all do that. You can show them like this is where documentation and being able to be confident with your communication. Your customers like, listen, I can show you how many sets of struts the, you know, we've done on this model in the last six months. It blow your mind. It's very common. We took care of the safety thing.
When you tell the customer, oh, that's a strut noise and it ends up being a sway bar link, then you're, you're gonna have to. How do I say it? If you're gonna load the can and you gotta load with a small caliber round to start. Yeah. The independent side of it, that's how you have to go. You know, it's like that 101. I'm gonna tell that customer every time, you know, unless I can grab another one out of another car and put it in and prove it on the test drive that it's the math.
Yeah.
I'm going to recommend you get your software fixed every time first. Every time. If I can't fix your software for you, I'm going to collect your diagnostic for that. I'm going to show you the tsp. I'm going to might have to go to the dealer to get a software done and then that's it. So it's a different thing. As soon as they're paying, people learn to live with a lot more stuff. That's why I find in the aftermarket for me, fluff, the customers have been so much more appreciative.
The entitlement that hat people in the dealer when it's under warranty have turns my stomach. They just think that they can walk all over everybody, treat them like shit because they have a warranty. Listen, I didn't sell you that car. I didn't build that car. You're not my friend. You're not going to treat me like that. And that's just like, that's why I'm not a good fit for that environment anymore.
And how long were you in the, in the dealer world?
It's been, it's been the first time I ever worked in one was like 2003 and that was Chrysler. Now it is done at Hyundai. I've done a stint at Nissan. So, you know, I've done three different Chrysler dealers and then one Nissan dealer and one Hyundai dealer and the Nissan dealer changed owners while I was there. And that went from being, yeah, that went from being a really bad situation. It was a second generation dealership owner who had a lot of really out there ideas. They had an oil change for life promo. They had everything was going to be for life promo.
And what it trained was it trained every local, you know, penny pitcher in my local area to come buy a Nissan because oil changes were free. Maintenance was free. Yeah, he didn't pay it. Tell everybody that the, the fine print said you got to do all your maintenance for your oil change to be free. So we had customers coming in. It was just like, I'm here for my free oil change. Okay, well you're supposed to flush your brake fluid at 20,000, you know, miles and a brake service. No, I'm just here for the oil change.
And then they would pull that and they would say, okay, your oil changes aren't free anymore. The customer go, what I paid for this program when I bought this car. This is what, okay, well what do I need to do to get like a, my oil change for free? We got to buy an Air filter. That's all I got to do is buy an air filter. Yeah. How much air filter? 18 bucks. What's it pay the technician to put the air filter in? 0. So now every time they're coming in fluff, there was an oil change and an air filter.
The air filter out that you just put in three months ago. Chuck her in the trash stuff. Another Nissan air filter. That's how the way bro, if I'm lying, I'm dying telling you.
Was, was that like a prior? Okay. We had a, a deal called prior zero. Eight oil changes. Right. So any vehicle that rolled into the shop that was purchased before 2008 got a free oil change that lasted for about seven, eight years.
Yeah.
To. So that was set under a different service manager. So the service manager that I have, he came in a year after that.
Right.
Well it took him a while to realize, you know what that didn't make. People just keep coming in for their free oil changes and they ain't buying nothing.
Of course.
So he stopped it, he stopped in like 2016, 2017, I want to say. So it lasted about 10 years.
Yeah.
All them customers, oh when they found out they, they don't get their free oil chain no more, you don't see them no more.
That's right. And I can understand that, the marketing to that in a way because you want to get those cars that are out of warranty into your dealership to try and sell.
Right.
You got to realize if that's a 10 year old car, most people driving a 10 year old car are not a dealership customer. From just the cost alone of a door rate versus what they can get it done. They can go down to somewhere and still find an $80 an hour door rate and get their struts and their front end and their tires done right. The brakes and all that stuff. They don't want to pay 130 at the dealer when they can get it for 80 at wherever. My situation was like he, he, that program ran him right into the, ran a dealer right into the ground. And then a local dealer group came and bought that Nissan dealer and he was, he, he was a Ford owner for dealer owner and he completely changed the, the methodology of the, of the dealership for I guess maybe for the better. He turned over the whole dealership anyway.
Every service technician that was there when I was there within two years was gone.
Done.
Because he came in and talked about, oh, you're gonna make a ton of money. No, he was all about selling cars. He was high on sales of cars didn't give a flip. He wanted to build the fastest drive through oil being oil change bay in the thing so they could start to evaluate cars Right on the thing he does. He had salesmen set up on podiums right at the end of the drive thru. This was his dream. So that when the customer came in and looked at the mileage and somebody underneath that, a real quick inspection and an oil change, he was ready to start selling them. Like, oh, you got 80,000 K on your Nissan.
We can get you a trade in value of this right now, today and get you in the new one. And I am in the service department. I'm thinking, are you smoking something? But dude, that's what it all depends on who you're working for, what their mentality is. Do you want to make a ton of money in service or do you want to make a ton of money selling cars?
And you know what? I don't know if this is true or not, but where I'm at, we're told that the service department holds up the entire, entire dealership.
Every dealership in the world is run is that way. Because maybe not on the high end, like I'm not talking about Gotti or something like that, but on, you know. Yes, every dealer.
Because we don't sell a product, we sell a service. 100 profit service. So it's not like, you know, you sell apart, you got to mark it up, you know, however much. And you know you make a hundred dollars off of.
Yeah.
Three or 400 part that they buy.
Yeah.
Versus, you know, charging 200 an hour and technician gets 25 to 30. And then you know, so. And you know, the service department pays for your cashiers and your, your porters and all that stuff keeps the light on. Yeah. So all that other overhead that, you know, people don't realize.
Yeah, but that's the, that's the beauty of it though, right?
Salesman are held to a freaking. Like they're salesmen are the. Oh, you know, you know what I mean?
In their eyes. Yeah, yeah. A lot of them that I worked with are just a bunch of coked out kids that like to play golf. Like that's what I work.
They get taken on trips and do this and do the. Dude, what the. And we're back here busting our ass.
But then fluff. If salesmen are so great, why is it that Hyundai or Kia now are going to sell their cars on Amazon?
Because I was not aware of that.
You don't need salesmen to sell cars. I can Sell cars with a kiosk. Carvana.
Yeah.
Prove that you can sell cars from a vending machine. And it.
Yeah, that's crazy.
I said that 10 years ago, and everybody thought I was nuts. You can't. They don't need it now. With the Internet, people can literally go in, pick the color, what they want, drive over to the dealership if it's in stock, and drive away with it. I don't need to be sold the car. I need you to provide me the car. I've already decided that's the car I want because I read 100 Google reviews on it, and you have the color I want, and it's like. I just like it, you know, it's like, how do we sell.
How do we sell Jeep Wranglers to so many people that don't, like, really shouldn't have a Jeep Wrangler. It's because they decide that they want a Jeep Wrangler.
Yep.
I had a toy when I was a kid that was a Wrangler. Watched Daisy Duke on Duke's a Hazard. Like, Barbie had a Jeep. You name it, you know, like, I want a Jeep. And then they get in and they're like, what the f. It's like, yeah, it isn't your RAV4, man. It's like. It's a Wrangler.
Like, it's a different thing. Oh, I don't like this. Okay. That's. You don't need a salesman anymore, 100%. And you don't need a service advisor, because I'll tell you, we experimented with a kiosk and that kiosk, and there's bigger dealerships, fluff, all over the nation right now that are doing this, and they're proving that the kiosk, because you limit the amount of time that the customer will stand there. You limit the amount of interaction that actually happens. And it's just.
You're just here for. Okay, Mrs. Smith's here. Keyed in.
Yeah.
Thanks for showing up for your appointment today. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, so you're here for your service. All right, at 50, 000 miles, we recommend X, Y, and Z. Are you interested in doing that? She's gonna go yes or no. Click. Like, we don't give her options to discuss other things that she's here to maybe complain about or be unhappy about. We're just treating them like cattle, man, putting them through, and it works.
I don't like it, but Chris Craig guy's doing an amazing thing. You're trying to change it. I love it. He's got a book out. But man, like we, the dealerships have figured out now we're going to eliminate that position. We'll eliminate it. We'll eliminate the sales positions. The last people that will be standing fluff with the dealerships will be the mechanics 100%.
So that's something to think about.
That's if you can keep the. Not, not so much phasing out the technician job, but keeping them there. Yeah, keeping them satisfied to where they're not gonna walk.
Well, they say fluff. We're gonna have a bunch of AI learning and AI is going to. Who has it now? Somebody saw it and it's like it might have been Mercedes or one of the high end things. You put essentially a set of meta glasses on and then you have the tablet and it walks you through like you're going over to the car and it's showing you through the glasses on the thing like how to do all that, how to remove that component, how to check this. Like your service information is playing on the screen and your meta glasses showing you where that connector is going to be. Go to there, go to that pin. Like it. That's going to be the way it's going to be 100 still a person wearing the glasses doing the work.
Whereas that car was booked in all through AI at a call center that ain't even on the property. So people that think they're going to be a salesman, you're going to be a service advisor. You better start looking at your aftermarket options to go out there and work in the aftermarket because the dealerships I 100%, I promise you are trying to phase you out as we speak.
That is crazy. And you know, I've seen something about that. But I was, I wasn't too sure if that was true. True about the. Yeah, the whole asking A.I.
Yeah.
You know, but I saw that more through the phone where they take a picture and then they Google it and AI does his thing and you know, point leads them in a direction.
AI is getting better and better. I saw it in one of our talk groups on Facebook and somebody was talking about. They said a car's got a misfire. They punched it through AI and AI actually had a pretty good process of how you would start to eliminate causes of the misfire. Like it. It's learning all the time, right? Skynet is here, people.
That is crazy.
So would you ever leave the dealership Fluffy right now? No.
I don't know what it would take for me to leave. Like I get so Comfortable where I'm at. I hate change.
Right.
So I could, you know, I could be so upset at something that's going on and get bent over so many times. I'm just going, like you said, I'm, I'm gonna take it in the chin.
Right.
You know, but there's a breaking point. Everybody has a breaking point. I'm not there yet.
Yeah.
But I know if I do, I'll probably, I'm probably going on my own because I'm, I'm the type where, you know, if it didn't work out there, I don't want to do it again, you know, so being employed by somebody else and having to answer to somebody else, I don't want to do it, you know, so that's, that's why I feel like having social media is good too, because I could gain customers through there.
Yeah.
You know, we'll see how that goes.
You're not worried at all about if you walk out of the dealer about fixing other brands? You're not stressed about that at all?
Yes.
Okay.
Just because I don't have all the resources at my fingertips.
Right, right. Are you familiar with. You've probably seen Chris and Right and Right Auto and Right Auto on Tick tock and on YouTube. On YouTube. Okay.
I've, I've tried to communicate with him. I don't know if he thought I was just some troll or something. I had made a comment about advisors and then he like snapped back and I was like, yo, like, whoa, hold on. Yeah, I, you know, we got about the same amount of subscribers, brother. I don't know what the, you know, but ever since that I was like, you know, I watch his videos.
But he's got it figured out because what he has done is he's built himself a business on the independent side where he specializes in Honda because he's a Honda trained Honda Master certified or he never got master certified. He, that's the one he said he wasn't going to do because he watched the guys with master certification make less money because they got all the nightmare.
That's a big one.
Yeah, but like, so he set his own business up now where he caters to the Honda owners in his area. His marketing is set up perfect to get like a lot of them in. He buys all the Honda. Almost everything he installs is a Honda Oe, part Honda Oe tooling. He's, he's just figured out so there it can work. That's what I'm trying to get to is like, yeah, if you, if you have a large percentage of Nissans in your area and you wanted to get into that. You can make it work. You really can.
You know, see one of. One of my. One of the guys that I seen become a master. And within a couple years, he. He went out and did his own thing. Now he has his own shop where he opened it as a Nissan certified master technician. Right. Mastered in Nissan, you know, to market to the Nissan people.
And he said that, you know, it was hard in the beginning, but now he works on everything. You know, you start testing your waters and then, you know, you start hiring other people to where they. Okay. They come from a different.
Yes.
Manufacturer or. Or an independent. So now, you know, I guess he's just gotten comfortable with everything.
Yeah, that's the trick. That's the trick.
That was one. Man. I hadn't seen him in like five years and I went to go. I went to go give him a hand on something. Right.
Yeah.
And I seen in a month, aged. Holy crap, I'm a dude. Are you all right? Half love is just. It's a lot. The first couple years were hard. I'm like, I see it. I could tell. Yeah, that kind of.
I was like, oh, that was an eye opener. I'm like, man, and I want to open up my own shop. Oh, it's a little scary.
I. I've talked to lots of technicians, though, that became shop owners that tell you that. Like, we were talking before we started recording. Some of them don't make a penny more than what they would have as an employee for somebody else. 100. And yes, it comes with a big stress level. And that's the thing. You'll talk to some of the coaches like, listen, it ain't worth it.
Don't. Don't do it. Some of them just take solace in the fact that I didn't make any more money. But I called all the shots if I wanted to shut down Friday at lunch or I didn't even want to come in on Friday. I just didn't. And it was all on me. Nobody forced me to, you know, and they. So it's not just about the money, like you said.
Sometimes I. I can't be there at 8 in the morning. Right. I can only be there at 9 because I have something to do with my kids. I only opened my shop now at 9, you know, and. But I'm there until 6 instead of at 5. You can do anything, you know, you put your mind to in this industry. If you're.
If you're talented and you're good with people. You can be a success in this industry. 100. I know this to be a fact because I've seen people do just like you have to if you're going to go out there and do your own business thing. I, I, I tell everybody, first thing you do is start to network with people that are better than you. Don't ever be the smartest guy in the room from a standpoint of the business side. Surround yourself with people that are way, way smarter than you, way more successful because they'll show you, they'll lay the ground when you go to these events. Fluff.
They'll sit there and they'll, they'll sit you down, you'll have a beer and they'll tell you how they did it right to the, to the dollars and cents of what you know.
And that's not just automotive. That is life in general.
Yeah, but in automotive there's so much of like people just doing the same thing over and over again. The cycles. That's what drives me nuts is it's just like, you see so many start and fail or not fail. They're not really successful from the standpoint of like when they were done, they had something that was worth something to either pass on or sell. There was no succession because it wasn't really like they had a bunch of customers that nobody else wanted. And, and the tools weren't worth when it was done. And what are you left with?
Nothing.
You got maybe your retirement paid for, which is not a small thing. I'm not trying to say that it isn't, but you could have stayed as an employee for somebody that had pension benefits and you'd be just in the same spot.
Yeah.
So you know, the people that network with the, the shop owners that have been successful and have learned how to do this. That's what I tell everybody. When you're starting out, start to network as soon as possible. If you're a technician, start to network with everybody as soon as possible. Like I said, this has been like we were talking. The Internet has been absolutely fundamental for my abilities to fix cars and still be in this industry. It wasn't for YouTube and social media, I wouldn't be doing it. Not even close.
Doing something really. Hell yeah.
See, and I, I only started reaching, looking into social media about four, maybe five years ago. Yeah, no, because I mean I'm still fairly new to all this stuff, but I, you know, I've seen. What is his name? Eric. The car guy.
Yeah.
Like I, I used to see some of his videos pop up, but I was like, more into like the vlogging style car channels and fixing up your cars and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And then that's where it clicked on me. I'm like, yo, wait, hold on. These guys are getting all these subscribers, all this, you know, views and this and that of just simply talking about their car, taking it to a mechanic, filming the mechanic for a little bit, and then, oh, my God, right? I'm like, yo, I'm the mechanic. Let me do this.
Yeah.
And like, I had always wanted to do YouTube. I. I used to, back when YouTube was brand new, doing parodies and funny skits and stuff like that. And I was like, you know what? I've always wanted to do this. I have a niche. I feel like I'm pretty good at what I do and I have the confidence to do it, so let me fire it up.
Yeah.
And then. So now, you know, I would. I hated independent shops. I couldn't stand them really. Until I got on social media and I started interacting with good guys, smart, smart guys from independent shops.
Yeah.
And I'm like, yo, these guys are like, what?
Yeah.
Next level.
Yes.
Yeah.
Like the, the independent. I mean, the dealers don't even talk about stuff like this.
No.
Like, oh, man. So I will say definitely, social media has opened up my eyes to being a mechanic as a whole, not just a dealer technician thinking, you know, if I can't fix it, nobody else can because surely there's somebody who came from somewhere that can get it done.
Yeah.
You know, I.
Social media was paramount for me because it was like, I. From the moment I had a Facebook account, I started to want to talk to other mechanics through. Through Facebook group because it was just like. And it starts on a very organic, natural thing of like, hey, I got this car that, you know, can somebody help me? How would they approach this diagnostic problem? And then it just, it just spiraled into discussing the politics of life of the dealer and then politics of, you know, because you'd see it. People talk about dealer technicians, like their Steelerships, like, we won right where we started here. Or, or, you know, and then it was like, I'm like, I've been at the dealer and seen these cars come from independent shops that are just like, it's terrible how far off the mark they were on their diag. Nobody's going to disrespect me.
Yeah.
Dealership technician. And then it went the other way where it's like, oh, you know, it has to go back to the dealer. I Have to talk to a dealer guy to be able to diagnose my car.
No, you don't.
You just have to talk to somebody of competence. And that's where a lot of my competence came from, was being able to network. People set me up with like Scanner Danner and Eric the car guy and all these other people on YouTube that I started like learn from because I wasn't working with a ton of employers throughout my career that have always seen training as being the num. Like such a priority. No.
Yeah.
Even the dealership, you know what the dealership training is like. If you got your fundamentals down, it's kind of on. What did we change about the rogue in 2024 versus 2019? This is the changes. It's not really like a whole lot of how to become a better technician. It's just knowing the product better.
Yeah.
And. And to be a constantly evolving better technician, constantly improving, you have to improve your skills, not know what makes the car different. You want to improve your skills and then you fix them all the same way. It don't matter what makes them different. Your process will flesh out what's wrong with the car. That's what it's important. So that's where I never had a, a great love for the OE training and I got all my training on YouTube. All of it, dude.
Like I in a monetization standpoint. Right. So when you sell a tune up on a Nissan spark plugs, right?
Yeah.
From an end. Not an independent guy. From a mopar guy. Right. He would say whether tune up. He sells PCV valve, PCV hose and a flash update if it's available.
Yeah.
Oh, okay. Well you know what a one hour standard program. Throw a couple tents in there for a PCV valve. You're making a little money. More, more money there. So me versus doing the flash updates because we don't really see that many on Nissan unless it's P11.
Right. Right.
So if I do, if I go to sell a tuna, guess what I'm selling with it now? PCV valve. Yeah, PCV valve and a throttle clean.
Yeah.
With an idle relearn. I'm throwing another half hour in there.
Yeah.
I, you know you could you by watching multiple people you start to realize, oh you know what, maybe I'm not doing enough. Enough for this particular job. Let me give the customer more. Yeah. It's going to make me more money. But they're getting more done to their vehicle as far as preventative maintenance and stuff like that.
Yeah.
It's just that CYA factor to cover your ass. Because it's like how many times do you do a tune up on a car and then the customer comes back all of a sudden really, really tuned into like every little thing with the way it idles or whatever, Right? Like yeah, you know, all the time. So I would do. So the way it would work for us a lot of time is like if it had, I don't know, pushing 60, 000 miles and this is back when I had copper plugs still in it. We do a tune up and we do a fuel system cleaning which was an injector flush through the rail. Clean the throttle body out and do the plugs and sometimes you do the wires. If it an older 38 caravan, whatever too. That job paid you four hours.
And I mean I'd whip them off in well under an hour and a half by the time it took me longer to wait for the injector clean to run than to get the rest of it done. And so what I would often do at the same time, I just load the most current software into the ECM and flash it while I was doing that. Just because to cover all the other.
While you were doing the tune up, right.
Yeah, yeah.
Because that way if it had that little idle sag when they turn the AC on on certain times or something like that, all of a sudden it just avoided that. Just got it done out of the way, you know, because I would have countless cars that somebody else did a tune up and it. What it was here for was the idle sag. And then I got to go and do the software flash that only paid like 0.6 and they got the tune up in the fuel system cleaning that didn't address the problem.
And, and that goes back to also I've. I've found also that that sag and it's even happened on my own vehicle to where AC compressor kicks on, puts a little bit of load and. And the rpms drop and it, you know, wants to stumble. Throttle. Throttle body is dirty.
Yeah.
Like I don't think people realize how important.
Yeah.
It is to clean that throttle body.
Yeah. But they don't. They don't want to pay for it because it's like. Or. Or you know, somebody runs it through a hose in the side of the snorkel and tells them that it's the same and is it doing something. Yes. But I remember when the idle air control motor was still in the side of the throttle body on a Chrysler or a lot of the other cars you could you clean that blade all you want, but where it really mattered was that you got the pintle in that passageway clean. That's what really mattered.
And yet, so I would see guys take that throttle body off all the time, clean that blade. Cool. Yeah. You're doing something there. And they leave that idle air control motor in and I'd pull that idle air control motor out and there'd be all kinds of chunks on the end of the pintle. It was dirty. And here I go cleaning that for the idle sack. Like it just little details like that again.
You get an hour to do the throttle body clean. Clean throttle body. Do it properly.
Yeah.
You know, and we're talking way back in the day fluff where you didn't really have to do a reset. Like Nissan's were the worst I saw for after you cleaned it. Trying to get the thing. You've seen them have you had them where you had to like pull the spark plug wires off to get the RPM down low enough that the reeler. You've done that before?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ain't that some stupid.
Now. Now we get this thing where it'll do a bouncing and you're like, it won't start relearning until you're under a thousand. So what I do to get rid of that is I'll put it in gear while it's trying to learn, bring the RPM down a little bit. Once it's satisfied, then throw it back in park and let it finish off.
I still remember the first, first time the old tech. Down, down the bay. Watch this. And he starts unplugging coils and he gets the RPM to drop down and I'm like, that's like. But it worked. He's like, oh yeah. Sometimes you just gotta do that. So it was like some of us hated, hated to have to clean the throttle body or whatever because it would, it would be, be a.
You know, whereas like the old stuff was like Chrysler, it, it, you turn the thing on and you know, it relearned in like 20 seconds if it wouldn't relearn on a Chrysler, you had a bad battery. That was it all the time.
Yeah.
Now there's a couple other tricks on these new, new vehicles that we got to do to, to keep it from stalling out. You know, basically we got. We have to trick the map sensor.
Yeah.
And put it in a fail safe and then, you know, connect the map sensor cycle keys.
Yeah.
Click your toes to get your heels together and you know, get it to go through.
But I as I get to know you, man. I really think you and I come from similar, similar, similar places, similar thinking, similar. Like what you're, what really grinds you about this industry and the dealership thing. And I want you to think about, you know, what am I trying to say? If you think that you could go out in the aftermarket and, and be successful, I guarantee 100 you could. So if you have any kind of whatever, you know, apprehension, don't, don't. Because I, I, I, I interact with a lot of technicians. I see a lot of guys online, and you're certainly smart enough to make it a go. So if you get frustrated with your situation fluffed up, don't think for a minute, man, that you can't be a success wherever you go, because you can.
100. I am living proof that, like, nobody.
My service directors told me that.
Yeah, I am living proof that, like, nobody has to stay where they are. I'm not, you know, I move around more than probably most techs ever will and most tech should, and it's just because I always will. I'm willing to not. I believe that I impact more change when I leave than when I stay.
Yeah.
That's what people have to remember is, like, if you want to make the industry better, you have to draw that line in the sand and say, this is my limit. And when people come up and they kick their toe on the sand, you can turn away or you can put your toe back down and say, no, yes, this is it. This is it. And, and I believe that the industry right now is under, under a big change because young people, you know, they ain't, they ain't picking this and they ain't coming in. And the ones that come in, right, like, they're, they're different. It's hard for them to, to, to get up to speed on this. And everybody's floundering, going, oh, what am I gonna do about tax the text that you got? Treat them better and you won't have to worry so hard about finding text.
Yeah.
You know, it'd be so much simpler to take care of the people that you have. It's the same. Marketing for customers is the same damn thing. They'll tell you, take care of the customers you have because it costs thousands of dollars in marketing to get new ones.
Yes.
Technicians are the same thing. Take care of the ones you've got so you don't have to spend $5,000 signing bonuses to get a technician on. Come on. To stay 13 months, to leave.
Yeah, they ain't that crazy though, now that you mentioned that about the sign on bonuses.
Yeah.
They stay, collect that money and then they're out. Or they collect that, that few months guarantee and then they're out.
Yeah.
And you know what I say? I say all the time, good on them if they do that. Because what that $5,000 meant is that's really what they can afford to pay you for the year. They just don't want to until. So, you know, I'm never gonna look at a guy that, or a gal that laughed at 13 months and took that signing post and go and judge them. I'll be like, good on you, man. You know.
Oh, you know, technicians talk. They already know, you know, the text in the shop already know the guy's plan. Yeah, but. And we're like, you know, hey, man, that's your decision.
You know, I can't close. Any closing thoughts, Fluffy, before we let you get back to your family?
No, not really. Just no, you know, to the ones that watch this. Appreciate y' all watching through.
What nights are gonna try and go live again?
Man, Fridays I'm gonna try to hit it up Fridays get back on my 9.0pm central time because it, I really miss doing the live stream stuff.
And that's on YouTube.
On, on YouTube. So, yeah, like I said, anytime you want to come on, we're there. I'm trying to get some more guys to come in, you know, because I've kind of held the same panel for, for about two, two years. I don't know how well you know people on YouTube, but like I have a, like a mopar tech that he introduced me into the live stream stuff.
Okay.
His name's online Mechanic tips.
Oh, I've seen him.
Yeah.
Big, big Chrysler guy.
Yeah.
Rain Man Ray.
Yes, I know Rain Man.
I, I've, I've gotten him on the channel.
Right on.
Bearded forte. He's up and coming.
Yeah, I know him.
Power stroke tech talk, you know. Yeah, yeah, I've got some, some guys that I'm working with and.
I'll definitely do my best. Like I said, sometimes I'm asleep.
Yeah, I'll hit you up and you know, if you catch a stream. Come on.
Yeah, come on. Sure.
I usually cover a topic for about an hour and then I start sending out invites. And then after that we, the conversations could get kind of crazy. You know, we just go off the, off the hip and I like that you get a sense of how technicians interact with each other.
Yeah.
And get along. So that's what a good camaraderie that's.
What I've found with doing this. Right. Is that it? It's been amazing how I can't honestly say I've ever had somebody that, like when I came away from doing the conversation, doing the interview, doing the episode that I didn't like even like them even more. You know what I mean? And have a respect for them even more because we all know what we all do day to day, we fix cars. But it's like you get a real feel for the person's soul and their passion for it.
Yeah. Deeper than watching a 60 second video.
Yeah. When you sit down and have a conversation.
Yeah.
100. And that's the thing. And it's like, you know, I'm not always about, like I don't, I don't, I don't care if the customer understands better the process of what I'm doing to the car.
Yeah.
But I want to help the other technicians know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and how you get paid really good for doing it. That's what I want. You know, I don't want to see us have to go to work anymore and hope that we hit 20 hours this week. You know, I want us to go to work and it's like, man, I'm taking home six figures a year now because I'm, you know, smart and, and so.
Which is attainable. A lot of people don't think so, but it, it is. Yeah, it is.
But I want, I want it consistent and attainable. Not just like, I don't want it for a four year window before your body starts to break down or all that good work that was coming in that you really knew the labor, like you knew all the shortcuts and all that dry up and go somewhere. It's like the cvts, right. When they go out of warranty and all of a sudden they don't come in the shop no more.
Yeah.
If, if, if they, if the brand gets better and they don't have that big ticket, you know, gravy ticket attached to it, you're not as worth as much to the, to the employer.
Correct.
And that's what I, I want to see them have to realize they have to value us and, and that comes with money and, and you know, we have to hold ourselves a really high standard and do good work. But man, they gotta know like, you know, we are like you said, like I said a couple minutes ago and the dealership, that department carries everybody and what that means some respect on my name Right? No.
Yeah.
Salesmen don't get all the perks. Put the respect on the technicians. So, everybody, this has been a lot of fun. I was looking forward to getting this one done. Oh, yeah, we're gonna. We'll have Fluffy back for sure in the future. And we're gonna have some other really interesting, some really cool standouts, people that you guys all know from social media are going to be on. So it's gonna be a lot of fun.
So fluff been a hoop, man.
Thank you. Thank you for having me, brother.
We'll have you back for sure, bud.
Oh, yeah.
Love you all. Talk to you soon. 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 be. Please join us again next week on this journey of 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 10mm, and we'll see you all again next time.
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