His Son Told Him to Leave the Dealer | David Kline
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154:07
Car
Ford F350
The Ford F-350 is a large truck that can carry heavy loads and tow trailers. It's built for tough jobs and is often used for work or heavy-duty tasks.
Term
MTs
MTs are special tires made for driving on mud and rough ground. They have big patterns that help the car grip the surface better when it's slippery or uneven.
Term
dedicated snows
Dedicated snow tires are special tires made just for driving in snow and ice. They help cars grip the road better when it's cold and slippery.
Term
4-wheel drive
4-wheel drive means that all four wheels of a vehicle can move at the same time. This helps the vehicle grip the road better, especially in bad weather like snow or mud.
Term
scan tool
A scan tool is a device that helps mechanics check what's wrong with a car by reading messages from the car's computer. It tells them if there are any problems and what they might be.
Term
door rate
The door rate is how much a shop charges per hour for work on your car. Different shops can have different rates, and it affects how much you'll pay for repairs.
Car
Ford Edge
The Ford Edge is a family-friendly SUV that has a lot of space inside for passengers and cargo. It's comfortable to drive and comes with modern features that make it easy to use.
Term
muscle memory
Muscle memory is when your body learns to do something automatically after doing it many times. For mechanics, this helps them work faster and better on cars after they've practiced a lot.
Term
flat rate
Flat rate means mechanics get paid a fixed amount for each job they do, no matter how long it takes. This can make them work faster, but sometimes it doesn't match the actual work needed.
Company
Matco
Matco is a brand that makes tools and tool storage solutions. Their products are popular among mechanics because they are built to last and help keep tools organized.
Car
Rolls-Royce Ghost
The Rolls-Royce Ghost is an extremely fancy car that is all about luxury and comfort. It's made with the best materials and is designed to provide a smooth and elegant driving experience for those who can afford it.
Car
Chevrolet Spark
The Chevrolet Spark is a small and affordable car that's great for driving around the city. It's easy to park and saves money on gas, making it a good option for people who want a simple and budget-friendly vehicle.
Term
effective labor rate
Effective labor rate is how much money a repair shop makes on average for each hour of work done. It shows how well the shop is doing financially.
Car
Ford Flex
The Ford Flex is a big SUV that has a unique shape and lots of room inside for people and their stuff. It's designed to be comfortable for families and comes with useful features for everyday driving.
Part
brake caliper
The brake caliper is a part of the car's braking system. It helps squeeze the brake pads against the spinning disc to slow down the car when you press the brake pedal.
Term
oil changes
An oil change is when a mechanic replaces the old oil in your car's engine with new oil. This helps keep the engine running well and prevents damage.
Term
overhead
Overhead is the money a business spends to keep running that isn't directly related to making or selling things. For a car dealership, this includes things like rent and employee salaries.
Term
warranty
A warranty is like a promise from the car maker that they will fix problems with the car for a certain time. If something goes wrong, they will repair it without you having to pay extra, as long as it's covered by the warranty.
Term
turbos
Turbos are parts that help engines get more air, which makes them more powerful. They help cars go faster and can also make them use less fuel.
Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that many people love because it looks great and drives really well. It's been around for a long time and is known for being fun to drive, which is why it often comes up in conversations about cars.
Car
Honda Accord
The Honda Accord is a popular family car that many people trust because it lasts a long time and is easy to drive. It's spacious inside, making it comfortable for passengers, and it's known for being good on gas, which helps save money.
Term
PCM
The PCM is like the car's brain, helping it run smoothly by controlling the engine and transmission. It makes sure everything works together properly.
Term
TIPM
The TIPM is like a power hub in your car that helps distribute electricity to different parts. It makes sure everything that needs power gets it.
Term
no-start
A no-start means your car won't start at all when you turn the key. It could be because the battery is dead or there's another problem with the engine.
Term
ADAS calibrations
ADAS are smart features in cars that help with driving, like keeping you in your lane. Calibration makes sure these features work properly after any repairs.
Term
Euro car
A 'Euro car' is a car made in Europe. These cars can be harder to fix because they often have different parts and technology compared to cars made in other countries.
Car
Renault Wind
The Renault Wind is a small car that can turn into a convertible, meaning you can drive it with the top down. It's designed to be fun and stylish, perfect for enjoying nice weather.
Term
ABS module
An ABS module is part of a car's braking system that helps keep the wheels from locking up when you brake hard. If it doesn't work, it can make it harder to stop safely.
Term
transmission service
Transmission service means checking and changing the fluid in your car's transmission, which helps it work properly. Doing this regularly can help avoid big problems later on.
Term
steering rack
The steering rack helps you turn the car when you move the steering wheel. If it's leaking, it can cause problems with steering.
Term
tune-up
A tune-up is when a mechanic checks and fixes things in your car's engine to make sure it runs well. This usually includes changing parts like spark plugs and making adjustments.
Term
fuel system cleaning
Fuel system cleaning is a process where a mechanic cleans parts of your car's engine that use fuel. This helps the engine run better and use less gas.
Term
mass airflow sensor
The mass airflow sensor is a part of your car that checks how much air is coming into the engine. It helps the engine know how much fuel to use. If it's not working right, it can cause problems and warning lights.
Term
drivability problem
A drivability problem is when your car doesn't drive smoothly or has trouble speeding up. It can happen for different reasons, like engine issues or problems with the transmission.
Term
long crank
A long crank means your car takes a while to start when you turn the key. It can be a sign that something is wrong with the engine or fuel system.
Term
O2 sensor
An O2 sensor checks how much oxygen is in the car's exhaust. This helps the engine run efficiently and reduces pollution. If it fails, it can cause performance issues.
Part
coil
A coil is a part of the car's ignition system that helps start the engine by creating a spark. If it fails, the engine may not start or run poorly.
Brand
GM
GM stands for General Motors, a big car company in the United States. They make many different types of cars and trucks under different brand names.
Car
Jeep Wrangler
The Jeep Wrangler is a tough vehicle designed for off-roading, meaning it can handle rough trails and dirt roads. Many people love it for its cool look and ability to go on adventures in nature.
Car
Ford Fiesta
The Ford Fiesta is a small car that's easy to drive and park, making it great for city living. It's also known for being good on gas, which helps save money when you fill up.
Car
Jeep Compass
The Jeep Compass is a smaller SUV that can handle both city streets and some off-road adventures. It's designed to be practical and comfortable for everyday use while still having a bit of that rugged Jeep feel.
Car
Toyota FJ Cruiser
The Toyota FJ Cruiser is a tough-looking SUV that can go off-road, meaning it can drive on rough trails and dirt paths. It's known for its cool design and strong performance, which makes it popular among adventure seekers.
LIVE
A lot of times I think you see that happen when, when service managers leave. You get some, some techs that work for a good service manager, and that good service manager fights the fight for them. Yeah. And he gets tired of fighting the fight, and he goes in search of somewhere that he doesn't have to fight so damn hard to look out for his people. He leaves, those techs go, this guy always had my back here, I bet he'll have my back there, and they leave.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast. She's, uh, one of them snowmageddon weekends that, uh, probably when you're listening to this, everybody was talking about, you know, Texas was going to be under feet of snow and all this kind of stuff. It hasn't really been that bad from what I've seen. It's cold here. I mean, I'm in Canada, so it's always kind of cold in January, almost February, but it's, uh, we got some flurries and some kind of white skies, but it's pretty and nice and My, uh, I'm sitting here with a good friend of mine, former guest, uh, who's in a little bit— he's in Virginia, but they're getting some snow. David Klein, how are you today, bud?
I'm good, how are you?
Very good, man, very good. So for a Sunday, it's kind of been a quiet weekend. I didn't really— I went grocery shopping yesterday, that's been about it. I gotta run the snow blower tonight, but with it snowing right now, I'm gonna wait till it stops. There's no point in going out and do it and then having it like have to go do it again 2 hours later. That's zero sense. So And I'm blessed, I don't have a big driveway, so it takes me all of about 20 minutes to do. So it's not the end of the world, right? It's, you know, and I drive a Jeep, so I mean, if I don't do it, I can still get out of the driveway.
Oh yeah.
You know?
I've got an F-350 on 37s. Oh, sick. So I can go where I need to go.
Yeah, and that was my big thing last week, 'cause we've had a lot of snow in the last 2 weeks. And I joke because I mean, I'm not running dedicated snows on my Jeep, but I mean, I'm running, you know, MTs, right? Mud trains. And they're very good in the snow. So I just stick it in 4-wheel drive and drive the speed limit, right? Snowblower or not. And it just like the people that are potting along, bald all-season tires, or even they got winter tires on in an SUV doing way under the speed limit in the left-hand lane is just making me like pull my hair out. Like I just, you know, I was told a long time ago, like if you're You're one of those people that is just, you're nervous to drive under weather, just don't drive, stay home.
Just stay home.
You know, you're not gonna be your best, you're gonna be stressed, and you know, if something does happen and it could have been avoided, but you know. So tell us what's new. You're kind of, you've made a change since the last time you were on here. You kind of, some of the people really started kind of, your career resonated with them and you'd been a long-time dealer guy and all that kind of stuff, and you made some changes since then, haven't you?
I did. It's been quite an adventurous, uh, period since we last spoke. I, uh, I left my job with the dealer. Um, you could say I was asked to leave my job at the dealers, probably more apt thing. You know, coming on your, your podcast and, and seeing, you know, kind of the feedback and the reach I got, and to be completely honest with you, sitting in my car with my wife and my son and listening to my podcast with you, yeah, was, was, man, it, it turned a mirror back on me in a way that, that really made me uncomfortable. You know, I told my wife, uh, you know, 20-year-ago me would be heartbroken to listen to now me, you know. And, and I just, you know, once you reach that point, the decision had already been made. And I, you know, I was, was— what's the right word? You know, I mean, I was, I was hurting myself with my attitude going back to work.
I didn't want to be there. I mean, there were days where I was just thinking, you know, if I get in a wreck on my way to work, at least I won't have to go to work for a while, you know. And I had said when we recorded before, you know, my main focus had been, you know, making sure that, that we were set for my son to go to college and, you know, all the big life changes we had coming up. And We actually listened to my podcast with you on my way to take him to school. And when we got to school, we move him in, we do all this stuff, and we go to go home, and he texts me and says, "We made it. Go find a job that you like.".
Wow.
And I just, I had to. And I had been looking and interviewing. I had sort of made up my mind that, you always say, run to a job, never from a job. Yeah, so, you know, I started putting stuff in place. I got some, some pretty uncomfortable pushback after doing your podcast from some people. Really? That's sort of the risk you take when you say the things that you feel and need to be said.
People within your circle or people within the industry or people within your job.
Or— a little bit of all of it. Um, I, uh,— I guess for lack of giving too much away, I know I'm friends with some people that know some people. Okay. I was told it wasn't well received. Whether or not that's them gassing me up or whether or not it's the truth, I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Um, you know, one of the things I've always admired about your podcast from the beginning, and most of the guests that you have on, is, you know, sometimes the things that need to be said are the uncomfortable things. Yeah. And there's been kind of this whole sub-industry that's popped up Maybe in your wake, maybe it's just listening to you has turned me, you know, my algorithm, you know, populates it with me. But there's a lot of people that, that seem to be getting traction starting out under the guise of having those hard conversations, and then whenever they realize that maybe putting, you know, pen to paper, voice to video, what have you, and saying those things might have repercussions that they aren't necessarily ready to deal with. Yeah. And then they sort of turn into stans for the industry. You know, I'm not going to name any names, but you see lots of videos where it's like, well, maybe the best thing people can do is listen to their service manager. And it's like, no, like, really, we're past that, you know, in most cases.
So, wow.
Um, I've sent you a few, a few messages here and there regarding such things.
So, um, I've been very called out without being called out. You know what I mean? Like, without to name the names, I know who the people are when they're talking about me, and it's— and it's— I consider that a win. Now, I consider it a win in the sense that I wish you would just say the name, and then we could maybe evolve into sitting down together and having a conversation. But at the same time, like, here's what— I'm very blessed, and I keep saying that because of Lucas, I'm able to be free, right? Like, everything I say, I say it without any concern about repercussions, not because, like, Don't get to thinking that there's a pile of money here and it doesn't matter if I get fired again, you know, that I'm safe, I don't have this buffer. But we had a conversation a long time ago about it was just always gonna be real and honest and say what has to be said. And, you know, there's a lot of us in the industry now that are starting to maybe make a voice or make a platform. And I have all the respect for them. Some of them I consider my friends.
Here's the reality though. Some of them can't be as unedited as I am. Because there's a much more financial toll and a repercussion that would happen. There's some guys that are putting out a lot of content and they're saying— I'll give you the example— it's okay to do a DBI and not get paid for it because it's going to come around to you, it's going to be worth the investment. And listen, it might very well be, right? But I believe that it's always— my thing has always been it's a slippery slope to start giving anybody anything for free, right? Because I know that it's the take-take-take mentality in this industry has always been there. So when people are advocating for that or, or this and the other thing, or the flat rate conversation's always coming up and people are like, oh, it's worked for me. It's worked for you, David. Like, you made a ton of money on it.
Did well.
Like, a lot of people reach out to me when they're like, well, he's a superstar, eh? And I'm like, yeah, he's an A1 sharp, sharp tech, knows his product, hustles hard, knows the tricks, right? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But I said, this is not always like— it's still a struggle for all of us to get from where they start to get to be a David. And I'm not trying to say that we don't have to earn it, but I'm trying to make that the struggle should be— because obviously this David, the struggle has been part of the reason that there's a shortage. So all I looked at this is like, I don't want people to have to go through what I went through, maybe what David went through. They still have to earn it, but they have to understand that it's not so forbidding that they don't— they just go and pick something else. That just doesn't work.
So, you know, one of the things that, that I always try to, you know, you have to have an open mind, right? My reality might not be your reality, might not be his reality. And I have, you know, I've said this a thousand times, you can have two guys in the same building working side by side. One makes a great living and one can't pay his bills. And if you ask each of those people individually they're going to tell you two totally different explanations. But the fact that there are people that have it better than you and there are people that have it worse than you doesn't discredit either side's opinion. Yeah. And I think you've— your show especially does a pretty good job of showcasing kind of both sides of that. Yeah.
Openly, you know, whereas there's a definite undercurrent of bias in some of the other ones. And I, I can understand what they're going for, you know. Like, I get it, it's self-preservation. You want to go out and you start saying some things and you get some feedback and you realize, well, hey, if I, if I tell the story this way, then I can market it as I'm bridging the gap. And there's definitely, you know, that there's a need for that in this industry. There's a need for that in everything. I mean, life, love, politics, etc. Um, But when you have someone that's, that has a wide outreach that is only telling one side of the story, I think it hurts the general message here.
And I don't think most of us are out, you know, I know very few mechanics that want the easy road. Most of us do what we do because we're hardwired to do things that way. But when you hear things like the Ford CEO talking about all these $120,000 a year jobs, And it's like, well, let's do the math on that. $120,000 a year at 40 hours a week, $60 an hour. How many techs get hired at $60 an hour? None. How many techs today make $60 an hour that aren't at the bleeding edge of their particular shop or their specialty? Not very many. No. So to say, oh, we have all these jobs that nobody wants to fill is disingenuous.
And it's important that that message resonates because Saying that completely diminishes the point that most of us are out here trying to prove. And the fact is, is if you want to offer $120,000 a year job for this field, then offer it, but don't pretend like it. Because what you're saying is if we hire someone that does 200% productivity, well, they can make $120,000 a year. Great. How many 9-to-5, 40-hour-a-week salary jobs do people work 80 hours a week? Like, that's not the expectation in other industries. Why should it be in ours? Yeah. And those headlines grab the attention and then they just make it look like, oh, people that don't know think, well, God, these guys are making $120,000 a year and there's a shortage. Yeah, it's crazy.
And that's so far from the reality of it.
And again, Mr. Farley screwed that up royally in the sense that he had an opportunity where he could have the second part of the equation, the conversation. And it would again not been a soundbite necessarily nearly as effective, is to say But this is what they have to start at. This is to be what's expected. Instead of just saying, because he picks some random number, and it's random, that $120 is not like he spent any kind of research to determine. It's somebody in his staff has told them that, you know, uh, X amount of techs within Ford at dealerships earn $120, and, you know, whatever it is. And he's like, and I got that they could all get I've said it before, every tech in the dealer can't hit 200 hours a pay. There is not work coming into most dealerships, the good work.
Now this is the thing I always tell you, that we're not getting cars done. Yeah, I understand, but that car sitting over there for a headliner job isn't the same as a car sitting there that needs brakes and control arms, right? It's, uh, even if the amount of hours on the ticket is the same the stress level, the expertise, the liability of doing the headliner job, how much hustle you have to put into it versus, let's be real, brakes, a tune-up, and a flush or whatever. It's a lot of different hours. It's not the same. So I wish Farley had a different speech. It probably wouldn't have made any difference in the soundbite. You know, it got a lot of traction, and I think it was good in the sense that it got people talking. But it made him look like a fool, you know.
Well, it made him look like a fool amongst those of us that do this every day and know that that's not the opportunity that's being offered. It's very, it's very two-sided to say, you know, sure, of course there are. I've worked with techs that made a fortune. Yeah. But I've also worked with, with new people that came in and had no path forward to that. And to imply that one is the same as the other is crazy to me and undermines the goal.
And that we're not building a path. See, that's where the industry's really letting it down is we're not building a path to the young people to become a David Klein in their shop where they, muscle memory kicks in and we start doing these repetitive jobs faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. And the thing for me is all the people that said they're earning up over 6-figure on flat rate, they're all dealer guys. Now there was a couple that say they're in independent shops and I believe them, but I know what they're doing too. They're not doing heavy line. They're doing, you know, B-level, a lot of flushes, a lot of quick turn and burn type work. Not discounting that either, but it's a different thing versus, you know, again, like the guy that's pulling a cab on a Power Stroke to do, you know, CP3 conversion and all this kind of stuff. That's muscle memory, that's reps in there making hours.
It's a good paying ticket for them. That's a different thing on your body, right? It's a different stress level of how many more connectors you have to unplug, brake lines, and all this quality control that goes on in your brain. That, and that takes a level to get to before you can do that job that proficient that fast. That's not a inside of one year you're gonna start doing them. I know there's unicorns, and then, you know, 9 months in, I would have had me doing them. Okay, cool, you're awesome, dude. It just— it's not the typical path is what I was trying to say. And I wish there was a better lined out.
So when I see the people that have a platform and they're advocating so hard for that flat rate has to stay, and flat rate can work, and it's a leadership problem, that's the reason it doesn't work. Okay, I understand. But here's the thing: if we were to shut the mics off and go, the company that you work for, a lot of their client base is people that are only thinking paying flat rate, it's the only thing they want to hear. If you as their representative get up there and maybe say it might not be the best way to start. Um, there's going to be a fallout. I can operate pretty clandestine where it doesn't matter. There's not a fallout. The fallout that's going to happen because of what I say is only on me, and that's good.
It doesn't affect Lucas, it doesn't affect David. I mean, I could embarrass some of my, you know, sponsors, but I mean, like, I don't, uh, you know, there's no incriminating pictures from Vegas, you know, with me and all that kind of stuff. Like, There's none of that. It's good. So I love that I can operate independent and be able to say, this is what I really think about this and this is what I think about that. And it doesn't always align 100% with even my friends and even the people within the podcast group. But I like the fact that I don't have to have a list of things I can talk about and things I can't when the mic's turned on.
Right. And I think that's, that's important because, you know, the uncomfortable conversations are the most important ones to have. And I have beliefs that don't align with or resonate with some of my people I work with. And, you know, my upbringing, my path, my view of things isn't yours, isn't theirs. And I don't expect us to agree on it. Yeah. But if you don't, if you don't say the uncomfortable things every once in a while, then the conversations just never happen. And I think it's important that they do.
And, you know, getting back around to where we started, you know, coming on here doing your podcast, it created for me some conversations privately that people reached out to me and, you know, it really made me do kind of an about-face on myself. You know, I was very unhappy with where I was. I was making good money. There's no disputing that. It was a fairly, from a knowledge base level, it was fine. It was incredibly unrewarding. And, you know, I alluded to it when we spoke before, but I mean, God bless, man. I came home almost every day mad.
And I had just, I had just had enough. My attitude reflected it. My work product was starting to reflect it. You know, my focus wasn't there. I just, didn't want to do it. And I had, you know, a big long conversation with my wife. Um, you know, my son got accepted to the school he wanted to go to. He got some scholarships.
He got, you know, he, he did really well. And so once we had sort of gotten that financial monkey off our back, you know, I, I just sat down with her and I said, you know, I, I just can't do this anymore. Yeah, like something has to give. If we have to You know, if we have to scale back our spending, our things or whatever, you know, it's just got— there's got to be a better way. And like I said, I'm sure people I work with would tell you I'm crazy, but my reality is my reality, right? And so back then, I started looking for a job. I started interviewing. I started talking. I was in no hurry, but I wanted to make sure that whatever I did wasn't a knee-jerk reaction to go do something because I just got to get out of here.
Yeah. The unfortunate side effect of that is the more conversations you have with people, sort of the worse the, you know, the fight or flight kicks in. Yep. And, and it just, it just made the whole thing worse. You know, I was, I was, I was being an ass at work. I guess that my work product sucked. I was very open and outspoken about things that maybe otherwise I would have let go. And so, uh, so I was, I was asked to leave.
And when I had that conversation with my boss, I don't think I've ever felt a bigger sense of relief in my entire life. I wasn't the least bit concerned about what came next. It was just like, oh my God, it's done. And wasn't how I wanted it to happen, obviously, but it is what it is. And I'm going to tell you what, I stood 3 inches taller driving away that day. I just, you know, and I know it didn't happen the way my boss wanted it to happen. It didn't happen the way I wanted it to happen professionally. But at the end of the day, I slept better that night than I've slept in years.
And see, man, that makes me so happy, right? Because it's like, This, this platform is a weight sometimes. Like, I had a phone call this morning from a guy that is actually— there's a lot— we have a lot of common friends. And, you know, have— I actually interviewed at the shop that he's at like 6 years ago, and they ended up— I didn't— they— it ended up they weren't going to pay me what I should have been paid, and, uh, they said they were just starting out, they couldn't do it. Now it's all good. And we have a lot of mutual friends and everything. So he, not knowing that I had interviewed there and not knowing where he worked, he had just said to me like, um, man, "Man, I've had 2 weeks that's just kicked my tail and I feel like I can't fix anything and I'm newly got my license and all that kind of stuff." So I took a phone call from him and you get talking and it's like there's so many hours now a week that I'm giving to strangers to just say thank you or to.
Say—.
Or they're sending you and you're messaging back saying, "Well, wow, man. I appreciate the fact that I'm that important in your weekly routine that you listen to or you don't feel like you're on an island." I said, "That's pretty.
Cool.".
And I never let that get out of my sight, that the responsibility that this has brought me. It's so funny 'cause I say so many times, like, work is like a marriage. And there's so many times that, like, we're unhappy in one and we don't even know we're really unhappy. And certainly sometimes the other person doesn't know we are until we sit down and go, look, this just ain't working for me anymore. You know, like the little things that I used to tolerate, for whatever reason, something came up I don't tolerate them anymore, you know. And they could be, you know, you leave your socks on the floor, you know, like whiskers in the sink, or the little things, right? And it's just little things add up. And that's a lot of what it is, is little things add up in life and the shop. And it's— for me, I always have not been just the type that were probably— they— the little things got to them.
It was probably a situation of every time that they have talked to me about something I just don't nod and go, okay, I have a conversation, right? And that's just the way I've always been. And I think it's— they take that sometimes as like, first of all, they didn't want that, right?
No, I definitely didn't want it.
Who are you to say? Well, I'm who I am to say that's, that's who I am. I'm, I'm me, you know. We're gonna have a conversation. I'm not going to be dressed down by anybody at this point in my industry, in my career. I know, I know what I bring. I know what I am. I know where I'm strong, I know where I'm weak. I'm completely honest with people when they hire me.
And yeah, you know, it's not that I'm— I don't think I'm toxic. I don't think you were.
Oh, I can definitely be toxic. Yeah, my, my problem is, is that— and I don't mean this to sound whatever, but I'd like to think of myself as a pretty intelligent person, but when I latch on to something, I'm like a freaking pit bull, man.
Yeah.
And, you know, when you see something wrong, you go to the people and you go, this is wrong. And they go, well, we need proof. And then you go, great, well, I'm going to find the proof. And then when I find the proof and you go, well, right, so you didn't want proof. What you wanted to do is for me to go away, and you were hoping that I'd go away and not find proof and let it go. And, you know, once you see something for what it is, I can't unsee it. Yep. And some days I can put up with it and some days I can't, but there's nothing that drives me crazy than going, here's a problem, here's what it is, and basically just being told, well, no, it's not what it looks like.
Well, it sure as shit looks like that to me. So if it's not what it looks like, prove it to me. Well, I don't have time for that. Then you're wrong. And there was, there was a lot of that going on. And, you know, I'm old, man. I'm 44. I've done this for 26 years now.
I have seen every game, every, you know, every homie hookup. Every— this guy's getting fed, every policy. I could write the book. Yeah, man. So to sit here and have somebody act like, oh, we're getting over on you— no, you're not. And the fact that you think you are pisses me off even more. Yeah. You know, and I just got— I just got so— I was just so tired of all of it, from the way that I felt like I was being represented as an employee, from the way I felt like leadership wanted things run, You know, and like I said, some of it's me.
Hey, I can turn that, that, that, that camera right back around and point it at me. Yeah, I was, you know, when, when I took that job 4 years ago, I just wanted to be a minion in the back. I didn't want to be any closer to the sun than I was. And you get real close, but you don't have any ability to affect any change. Yeah, and it's like, I gotta know what's behind the curtain, but I'm just along for the ride and I don't want to be.
And that's a frustrating place to be, right? Like, because it's the same thing, us senior techs, as we come in and it's like, you just want to be a guy like in the like you said, but they keep leaning on you and leaning on you and leaning on you because let's be real, they can, right? You keep getting handed another car that like only you're going to be able to get through or whatever, right? And I need this knocked out real quick, Dave, and I know that you can— like, I need that done and you need that done and you need that done. Pretty soon you go to them and go, hey, you know, if this was changed, this wouldn't happen. And, and I'm the same as you. People have always said, like, feedback goes both ways, where we want it. You know, if there's anything I can do for that— that old saying, right? There's anything I can do for you, my door is always open. That is the biggest— biggest— because I was the same way. I put my hand up and go like, okay, dispatch should be done this way, I think, to avoid this particular problem that you're having. And they go, oh yeah, thanks for the input, and they do zero about it.
And well, then, okay. So eventually it's like I've told it all the time. I didn't want to go to the meetings, the staff meetings where we talked about the problems because the problems are all sitting at the table with us around the pizza. We know what's happening. We know why it happens. Like, just stop jerking each other off here with pretending that we don't know and let's just eat the pizza, have fun, watch the stupid video, then go back down and put the reps in again. You know, rinse, wash, and repeat. Let's keep going.
Like, because it just became offensive to me. To say that we want it, we want to change this, but nobody implemented the change. That's very frustrating to a technician, right? Because we, by nature, we polish our process. We get— oh, I learn if I take this before I take that, it speeds up the thing. And before we're long, we're faster and we're better. Exactly. When we're not implementing that in the rest of places in my life, I don't then want to hear, right?
Well, I mean, my personality type is what I do for a living, right? If there's a problem, let's fix it. I don't want to talk about it. I want to fix it. I'm that way in my, my marriage. I'm that way with my son. If you come to me with a problem, we're gonna fix it, or we're gonna do what we can to fix it. So existing 10 hours a day in a problem that everybody seemingly recognizes as a problem but nobody really actually wants to do anything to fix it is crazy. And then when you're sitting there like, well, you're telling me that there's not this going on, but if I was that person and I was going to do this, that's that's exactly how I do it.
Bullshit, you know? And when you, you work in a dealership and you see the same dumb people getting the same work they can't do, yeah, and it's like, well, maybe they shouldn't be doing that, or maybe you should help teach them so that they don't keep doing that. And instead you just give it all to the other people and let that guy have a free pass. Yeah, what the hell does that accomplish? You know, I, I made Master Tech, I didn't get a raise. I got my state inspection license, I didn't get a raise. And you come in and it's like, oh, well, the powers that be are in the background saying, well, we want all the easy work that comes in the door to go to the dum-dums. And we want to make sure that our, our, our main guys are buried in what, warranty work we don't get paid for?
Tough stuff.
Yeah. My reward for 25 years in this business and being good at what I do is to get screwed over every day, but I'm just supposed to be happy about it. And it's like, well, the guy down there that can't fix his way out of a bag, he doesn't get any of this. Because you can't afford his idiocy. But I'm not allowed to make the easy money that that guy's allowed to make because you pay me too much? You pay me peanuts. Like, let's be real here. Yeah. And it's just, you know, you, you exist in it for so long and you, you dumb yourself into thinking, well, eventually the ship will right itself.
And I was really tired of making excuses for myself. You know, I told you when we were on the podcast, I'd come home some days so mad that I'd vent to my wife and my dog wouldn't even sit with me. I don't want to be that person. And, you know, and I told my wife, I said, all the money, the stuff, the whatever, like, the hell with it. Like, we'll figure it out. We always have. You know, there was a time neither of us made hardly anything and we survived. Yeah.
But I'm, you know, I'm too old and too grown to play the dumb dealership games. Yeah. And so anyway, I was ready to go. They were ready for me to go. I'm out. So I come home, I call my wife, I said, I'm done, no more, no more dealer. And she says, okay, what's next? And I said, well, what's next is, is I'm going to spend the next month and I'm going to find a job, and I'm not going to go back to work until I find a job that I want. I have money in savings, I have whatever.
Good for you. And she was extremely supportive of this. And so I, you know, went back to some of the other places I had interviewed. I talked to some of the other people, and I was just, you know, I did the due diligence that I think we, we, we hurt ourselves by not doing when we're looking for a job. I went in the shops, I talked to the people, I watched how things were being done because I had the freedom. I didn't have to get up and go to work, right? That's right. And I was free in the hours that places were conducting business. And I went to a couple of places and thought, yeah, this is pretty nice.
And I went to some others and was like, I'm so glad I came here now because this isn't what I thought it was at all. Yep. And, um, in the course of this, I had to move all my stuff out of the dealer. So I, uh, you know, I had to have a huge tool collection. I've seen— yeah. And, um, the tow truck driver moving my box dropped it off the back of the tow truck.
Wow.
So I went from all right to holy crap, what happens now? Completely destroyed one of the toolboxes. The box, the hutch. Um, he was— it was two separate toolboxes, right? A triple bank with a hutch and a locker and a double bank. They were both full. I mean full. Yeah. All the tow company— I said I need to move my box, I'm just gonna go put it in storage. Here's what I have, I'm sure it's quite heavy, let's do this.
They send a guy, he backs his rollback up into the dealer, and he decides that the best way to load these two toolboxes is like a choo-choo train. So he hooks the winch to the front box, ties the front box to the second box, drags the whole thing up on the rollback, gets it up on the rollback. He's tightening his straps down. He goes to the front— the front box was the triple Hutch locker. He snugs the winch down and rips the casters off the toolbox. So now the toolbox is not connected to anything on a rollback that's at full tilt up in the air. So the big box careens down the rollback, smashes into the second box, rips the wheel off of that box, and the entire thing goes out into the.
Floor of.
The dealership. So pretty much every technician's worst nightmare.
How did you not just come unglued?
And no, man, well, I felt the guy that did it was extremely upset. Sure. And I felt really bad for him. Like, I'm a pretty empathetic person in the mood. I think he was doing it the best way he thought at the moment. I'm, I'm in this building I don't work in anymore, surrounded by a bunch of people that are just overjoyed that all my shit got messed up, right? Because they're a bunch of assholes and.
Just are watching you go.
Yeah. Oh yeah. So I'm like, I'm not even gonna give them the satisfaction of melting down. So we figured out a plan. Uh, the triple bank has 6 wheels under it, so we took the broken ones off. Anyway, we get it loaded back up and we take it, and it is messed up. So I went through a month of hemming and hawing with the tow company about replacing it because they wanted to fix it. And I don't know if you know, but that doesn't work.
No. And the toolboxes were immaculate. I mean, you know, I, I was, I was on a freaking YouTube show for it. Yeah.
So everybody, David was on Toolbox Tours as well, that long before he was even on the Jaded Mechanic podcast. So look him up on the, on there. Um, I'll try and when we post this get a link up so you can see it. It might have link on the last time we had David on, but like his stuff is immaculate shape and in perfectly organized— like it looks like how a professional— not how my shit looks, but it looks like how it should look. And I'm just sitting here because I've seen the video a couple times and I know— and I'm just— good on you, man, because I, I don't know, I'd probably use that driver as a wheel chock or something.
Like, that's how I am. The temptation was, was strong, so So.
They wanted to fix your box?
Yeah, they wanted to fix— well, the first— at first, the day it happened, the owner was very apologetic. We'll make this right, don't worry about it. So a couple of days go by, and, and, you know, I sent pictures and the driver sent pictures, and I mean, it's, it's, it's as— it's as bad as you would expect it to be. Sure. And, um, so eventually the, the guy's like, well, I want to send my Metco guy, because it was a Metco box, out to look at and I said, great. So he comes out and he's like, holy crap, this thing is messed up. And it's like, yep, it sure is. And he said, there's no way to fix this.
And I said, nope. And so he, you know, he goes back to the guy and, and tells him a dollar amount that he didn't want to hear. And so they decided that after all of that, the best thing they could do was ghost me. And I guess they thought I was gonna go away. Um, I didn't. And my Matco dealer, I guess, was in communication with their Matco dealer and was like, you know, this isn't the guy. Like, y'all need to make this right. And so I reached back out to them and, you know, basically said there's an expiration date on this conversation.
So they just decided drop your toolbox off the truck and then ghost you.
Yeah. And so I sent them some messages. I made some phone calls and didn't get anywhere. I was going back and forth with my tool dealer and was like, you know, that I'm not, I'm not going to go away like this was a, you know, I mean, these things cost more than a car.
Yeah, we're not talking about an old car.
Just to take a pat on the back, right? So eventually I, you know, reached out and kind of gave them an ultimatum, and they came around, and finally we were, we were, they agreed to replace it. The bigger problem is, is one of the boxes was still okay. So they were going to order replacements. Well, Matco updated their toolboxes. Yeah. And so the new one wasn't going to match. And so it was just one thing after another after another. And in the end, we ended up— my tool guy found the prior gen box, and, and it wasn't the right color trim, but anyway, we got it all sorted out.
And I got new locker, new toolbox, you know, all that stuff. But it— that took place over like the entire month that I'm looking for a job, which in a way helped because I knew I couldn't go to work without my stuff, so it was like, let's figure out— you know, it sort of forced me to take the time because, you know, I didn't want to show up and be like, well.
Here'S bags of tools, here's a couple buckets.
Yeah. And so, um, that was a nightmare. I don't wish that on anyone. Please, for the love of God, if you're listening to this, make sure the person you hire to move your tools is capable to move your tools. Watching seeing, you know, 20 years worth of investment and the cost of a house come careening off the back of a tow truck is probably one of the worst things I've had to witness. So that was awful.
Yeah, I— oh man, I can't even. Yeah, I like— I've been very lucky. The guy that's moved my box, and everybody's like, holy shit, Jeff, you move around a lot. And yeah, uh, the same guy's moved mine the last 3 times, and he's a great guy, and he is a former— so he's a former tech himself. That bought a tow truck. And a lot of what he's moving, a lot of flat deck, same thing, shipping containers, that kind of stuff. So he understands my, you know, pucker factor every time I have to move it. And he, you know, we can cut up and joke about, you know, why we're leaving.
And oh, he's like, oh shit, I didn't think that I'd ever have to move you again. It was supposed to be the last time. Yeah, yeah, you know, shut up. Um, but he gets it, and he— you can tell by the care that he takes that he totally understands. You know, my setup's not as big as yours, but it's big. And And I've never seen anybody in all the time that I've ever thought to daisy chain them up the ramp at the same time. I move a pretty full Harbor Freight cart and a double bank maximizer, an old school one. And they're heavy.
And he's never seen anybody think, oh, I'm just going to tow them, yank them both up the ramp at the same time. It doesn't even work.
No, it doesn't work. I'll testify to that. I mean, I had a triple and a double. Now I have two triples. Got an upgrade out of it, which was nice to kind of come out on the, the positive end a little bit. Yeah, but yeah, I don't wish that on, on anyone. Thankfully nothing in the box was just gonna ask that. Everything made the— yeah, I, I found a couple— I had to pull some drawers out to find some, some stuff that had gotten bounced out of the drawer, like behind it.
Um, but other than that, you know, I'm so like just particular about all of that stuff. Everything's organized and in a place, and yeah, it really, considering the trauma, stayed put for the spark. So I was pretty impressed with that.
Now I gotta ask, just to ask, because— and I'm not trying to call anybody out here, um, some people may be able to watch, uh, Sherwood at Royalty, you know, as much as I do, or we do maybe. Um, Chris that works there got a new Matco box delivered and it had some damage right off the truck, and I guess they're making it right and they sent him another one and all that jazz. But so the one you got from.
Matco, no damage on it? No, no damage. Good. No, and I've, I've I've, I've had a whole bunch of toolboxes in my day, and I've had some delivered that came damaged, and we negotiated some money off because the damage was on the back or whatever. And I've had, I had one come damaged to the point it wasn't serviceable. Yeah. And that's gut-wrenching too. I mean, you wait so long for them. Um, my Matco dealer that I have now, he typically has it delivered to him, and he meets the guy and unpacks it on the spot to avoid that.
I mean, it doesn't stop it from getting damaged, but it stops it from me being the one that QC's it. Um, I think the last time I ordered a hutch for mine, my other box, he had it just sent straight to me. But he said, you know, when the guy drops it off, open it then, make sure, don't sign the paperwork. And, uh, we're gonna order a hutch for this other box that I just got too at some point, and they'll probably do the same because they're just so dead on heavy. Yeah, I mean, trying to transport it, at least an accessory like that, there's no wheels, there's no nothing.
So, and I, I thought for the longest time, you know, when with the tow truck thing, I'm like, the next time I'm just going to move it with a tool truck. And then when you talking to the tool trucks and you realize that the only way most of them can lift it on or off the truck is empty. And when you think about how long it takes your setup, my setup, to empty it, and to think that it'll ever go back in any kind of organization after the fact is like, no, I'll just call the tow truck. But I do like the idea of it goes on a lift gate and goes up inside a truck. You know, I like that idea better.
Yeah. But I hate— I tell my, my tool guy all the time, there's a market for someone to buy one of those air ride flatbed trailers, those low, low ride-on done and just do nothing but move those toolboxes. Because God, man, winching those things up on a rollback is so sketchy. Yeah, and it's been sketchy every time I've moved, from when I first moved my little box to, to this gargantuan thing. And, um, I was so nervous to have this moved because there's so much money in it, and there's so, you know, I've— I'm so invested at this point. And, uh, it was, it was like the worst possible outcome. The only saving grace was that it didn't fall over. It stayed on its— what was left of its wheels.
And true testament to the durability of these Matco boxes, because both of them, I mean, took a hell of a fall and the drawers all worked, the doors all open. Um, the, the double bank, it smashed the handle down and flat into the box, which bound up some of the drawers. So I put a 2x4 on a floor jack and bent the handle back out and it was fine. But the frame of the boxes, the, the double bank was racked. I mean, you'd set it on a flat ground and it would tilt, you know, it would teeter. Yeah. Yeah, and so there was just no— and they took them. The, the tow company took the damaged ones and said they were going to have them fixed and do something else with them.
I mean, they bought them, they're, they're— that's fine, knock yourselves out.
Lots of tow companies have got, you know, tools and service bays and stuff. They can have that. I mean, that's— I wouldn't, I wouldn't.
Buy them that, you know, like— oh no, absolutely. And if they can bang the thing back out into shape, great. But that wasn't the condition it was in when that guy put his hands on it, so that's not the condition I'm going to accept it in.
Yeah.
So, and you know, I'm fortunate enough I owned all of love it. Yeah. So it's not like, oh hey, we'll offer this guy to pay his truck account off or something stupid. Like, I owned it, and that was one of the first questions they asked me was, how much do you owe on it? I was like, I don't owe anything on it, thanks. So that sucked. But, uh, it, it forced me to, you know, it, it built in time, I guess. And so I, you know, I made it a point, I went almost every day day I either talked on the phone or interviewed with someone. And in the course of that, I came across a guy that owns a local shop pretty close to my house, um, been in business 30 years, independent, family-owned.
You know, he's in the building all day, every day. Right on. And I talked to him on the phone the first time for like 2 hours. He was a former Honda tech. We just, you know, I got off the phone with him, my wife said, what do you think? And I You know, he's one of the first people that I've talked to that I just felt seemed like a genuinely good person, right? And he was one of the options I was considering. I was, I was pretty intrigued in another one. Um, I, I went and I had interviewed with them over the phone, and so they got my resume, they called and were like, when can you start? Yeah. And I said, well, I haven't met you, I haven't seen the shop, I haven't done anything.
And they're like, yeah, you can do all that on your first day. And I'm like, yeah, no, that's not, that's not how this works. So I arranged an appointment to go meet him. I go meet him, they greet me at the door and they call me Daniel. I said, well, my name's not Daniel, my name's David. And she proceeded to walk around and introduce me to everyone as Daniel. And I'm like, I'm not, I'm David, like Jesus Christ. So that left me with a real, you know, a real great feeling.
So I left there and I, you know, I went back to my wife and I said, I've talked to all these places. I said, I really like the, the guy with the shop in Williamsburg. And I said, my concern is it's a little shop. I don't know what the money would look like, but I feel like, I feel like that's really the, the kind of place that I want to be in.
Yeah.
What do you, you know, what do you think? Can we make this work? And so we sat down and we talked about it, and I reached back out to him with some questions and made an appointment to come in there and sit down and talk to And, you know, I'm an adult. I told him what I, what I can do, what I'm strong at, what I'm not, what my personality type is, what, you know, I told him my red flags. I told him the things that, that drove me crazy in general, you know. And he's kind of at a— it sounds cliché, but kind of a rebuilding point for the shop. Okay. And he was really looking for at least my impression, what I brought to the table. Okay. And what he seemed to offer was what I was after in terms of, of, of being open to perhaps my input on things with regards to, you know, how business is done in the, in the shop, as well as having a need for my level of experience and ability.
Yeah. And the other guys in the shop were both fairly new hires, so I wasn't coming in to— so, you know, I wasn't cooking in someone else's kitchen. Like, I saw an opportunity that was like, you know, we could— I can, can sort of, you know, they can teach me their culture while I can teach them some of my, um, what's the word, um, what's what I'm thinking of here, some of my processes and stuff to bring about more opportunity that perhaps they're leaving on the table, but do it in a way that's done at a more face-to-face level with the customer. Yeah, I got online, I I did my due diligence. They had great feedback, great reviews, you know. And so I met with him a couple of times and I told my wife, I said, you know, I think this is what I want to do. And I was really upfront with him. I said, you know, these are my expectations, but just understand I've been miserable at a job.
I will not be miserable at a job again. If I— if I'm, I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna do the absolute best I can in my work ethic and my behavior to not bring the toxicity I left here. But also, if I'm here a week and I get the ick, I'm out of here. Yeah, like, I'm just— I can't— I can't put myself through another year of being unhappy. Yeah. And so we set a date to start. I told him I wanted to finish my month off just so I could, you know, decompress and whatever. And I took the them.
And it has been an adventure. I mean, I worked briefly at an independent for a couple of years before. Um, I'm blessed in that in my 26 years or whatever, I've done it in a couple of car brands. Yeah. So unlike a lot of longtime dealer techs, I actually know how to fix a car, you know, and I'm not the least bit intimidated to pop the hood on anything. Yeah. And the guy that I work with in the shop really likes the big truck stuff stuff, which I just don't. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I like the imports and the cars and the Germans and the whatever, and he really doesn't.
So there's sort of a like, I won't do the— my ick, you don't do your ick. Yeah. And so that, you know, so that works. He's, um, not as experienced as I am, so there's an opportunity there for us to kind of help. And the culture is just— we're all friends. I mean, it's, it's so— I've been there since October group one, basically. And I haven't gone home from work.
Mad a single day. So that, David, that's awesome because you touched on something really cool. And it's like, I keep talking about it and, you know, it keeps coming back around where us dealer guys, it's like sometimes you have friends on the floor, but a lot of time everybody is either competition or an enemy, right? Or, and you might have one good, like my friend Joshua Taylor, like you might have a bay mate that's your buddy and you get along and you help one another. But I mean, it's always been so clicky everywhere that I've ever worked, like Certain guys drink coffee with these guys and it's always that kind of thing. And I'm not saying it's bad. When you work, everybody's like, "Well, what makes it that way?" Incentivized pay. Flat rate is what makes people kind of— because we all have our ones that we have a lot of common with. We click.
Maybe they both like fishing and that's what they're talking about on coffee break, right? But there's a lot of things where it's like, if I'm leaning on them and they're leaning on me back and forth, eventually, whether we want to or not, we form a clique. Click, right? Like, I'm going to go to bat for that guy, he's going to go to bat for me, and it just grows. When you bring money and production and pay into it, all that kind of, that grade, that score, it changes the level where, let's just, like you said, if, if you go to work and you're all just friends, right, and we're all on that same team— because no matter what they say, as soon as I say you bring flat rate in, you're not a team anymore. I'm trying to be the star player. Like, everybody wants to be the Michael Jordan, LeBron, Wayne Gretzky, whatever, of I love it. You know, in reality, what it's more like is everybody wants to be Mike Tyson. That's really what it is. You don't even want to be in a team sport.
It's all about me. And so when we get to this place where everybody's a friend, that's the dream. That's the dream.
And now for me, that's not to say, you know, that's not to say we don't have disagreements. No, for sure. You know, but the general thing, and I think a lot of it is tied to the fact that that, you know, it's a small family-owned business, right? So my survival is tied to their survival. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? You know, they don't have the blank corporate checkbook a dealer has. They can't chop their nose off with their people despite their face. You know, if I can come in and go, hey, X, Y, and Z will help me be more productive— me being more productive means more hours for the shop, means more money for y'all— why don't we try this? And they're, they're, well, you know, they're more open to that. Yeah, and you know, being— coming from a dealership level where nobody really gives a shit about what you have to offer, and being in a position that it's like, well, just give me the benefit of the doubt, let's do this for a week, and if it doesn't work, great, then I'm wrong. Yeah.
But at the same time, to feel like, you know, oh, they, they appreciate my contribution. And the gentleman that owns the shop is in the shop most— pretty much every day. Yeah. And every single day before I leave, he tells me good night and tells me thank you. Yeah. And when I was on your podcast, I said, you know, I'd give up pay just to be told thank you once in a while. And this guy makes it a point to say that, and I think he genuinely appreciates it. So it's a, it's a small shop.
They're paying me significantly more an hour than I was making at the dealer. Yeah, we're flat rate. Yeah, still, but But you know, that's, that is what it is. Um, no weekends. Yeah, that's cool. I get time with my son when he's coming home for school. I joined a shooting club, like, you know, and, and the, the mental gymnastics that it takes to trick myself into being happy at work are gone. I mean, I show up, I do my job, they appreciate I'm doing my job.
Um, one of the ladies I worked with came up to me the other day and said, I just want to tell you how happy we are that you're here. See, that is so— it's like It costs nothing, you know, but it's just such a transformative thing. And I told my wife, I said, you know, I don't know what the future looks like with this place. I'm not certainly not naive enough to think everything's going to be, you know, roses. And there have certainly been some things since I've been there that have caused some tension. Yeah, just personalities and whatever. But I'm not sure I could ever.
Go back to a dealer again. Yeah, I— and I said the same thing, like, it's, you know, around here You know, uh, all the job placement jobs, you know, websites and whatnot are still always trying to hire, right? And it's funny because the dealerships now, I don't even think they bother to run the ad anymore on Indeed or, you know, Monster, anything like that. But I know every one of them, like, you talk to all the tool guys and parts delivery guys, you could roll your box into any one of them tomorrow and they'd hire you. They're that— there's such a shortage, right? But I think it's just they've kind of given up and accepted that, like, it'll be what it'll be. Like, we just can't do anything more about it. It's a shortage, and they take that as an excuse. And the people that are listening, that if you're in any way can affect change— it's not the shortage. You guys suck, and they've figured out you guys suck, and they don't want to work for you.
Now, can you change that? Certainly you can, but it starts at the very top. You know, like the guy, the young man that I talked to this morning, like, he, he's been tried to be poached a couple times at the dealer that I came home to Kingston to work at. And here's the, here's the truth thing, you know. He goes in, he walks around, he's talking to the— because he has a friend that works there. And there, so the technician's like, oh yeah, where do you work? Yeah, let me— you know, how long you work? What are you getting paid? Where are you? Yeah, don't come here. That's literally what they tell them. Don't come here, man. You've already got it good.
Stay where you are. If that's what's going on and where you work, you have like already lost the— lost the competition, lost the game. You know, your, your own people are not advocating for your place of business as a place to work. And some people are going like hear that and want to fire every technician that, that say that. Go for it, go for it. The truth is the truth. You have, you know, if they're not saying, it means that they're dissatisfied, they're, they're not making the kind of money, you know. And, and making money is a whole variable, right? You and I know that some of that is hustle and some of that's.
Opportunity, and some of it's luck.
I mean, yeah, the thing with the dealership for me, and you can, you can attest to Everybody wonders why we all get up in everyone else's business at the dealership when there's something's not going right, right? When there's a problem child, we all know who it is. And everybody's like, why are you all up in that business? Why do you care? Just put your head down, do your own thing. Because reality is there's only so many cars that that problem child can screw up, mess up, you know, misdiagnose, rip off, whatever you want to say, till eventually it affects all of us in the back. You know, word travels, right? Reputation is what it is. And, you know, and we're talking— you and I are old enough to before there was a Google review, right? But now with the Google thing, it only takes a couple people to say, I was there and they, they pissed, you know, screwed my car up. It doesn't even matter if it's true or not. So when that's happening because either, you know, an advisor is failing to, you know, communicate effectively the expectations and the results, or the technician is getting a job that they shouldn't and butchering it, like, it all eventually affects all of us in back at any shop, but especially when you're, you're flat rate incentivized people. That's why we all get involved in other people's business, because now one person becomes a liability, right?
Right. Well, the dichotomy of it is, is that you're, you're, you're there, they need you, but you're a liability. Yeah, they don't— you know, if you've got a guy in a dealer making $40 an hour, right, I'll just use that as a nice round number, and then you've got a guy beside him that doesn't know how to do a damn thing making $18 an the leaders, and I don't mean the service manager, are looking and going, well, we need to give the dumb guy everything we can because I'm absolutely not paying the other guy $40 an hour to do brakes and steering and whatever. Okay, great. Well, what is that guy gonna do? Warranty work. Well, you don't pay for diag on warranty work. Warranty labor rate sucks. Yeah.
So you, you take somebody that's done this forever that is trained, that is invested, that is— and typically on their own accord, because most dealers offer jack shit for training. So if somebody's genuinely good at something, they got there through determination and hard work. Yeah. And their reward for that is to watch some nameless, faceless asshole that never even walks into the building enact policy that rewards the dumb guy that came in with his little Harbor Freight roll cart and a, you know, 81-piece tool set. Yeah. And you go, how is this fair? Like, in other industries that's not how this is done. But in this industry, that is how it's done. And it's done from greed.
Because if we can make $8 more on every transmission service we do, well, at the end of the year, that's another boat. Yeah. Or another whatever. And, and it's like, that's great, but I'm not stupid enough to think that it doesn't work that way. And neither are the rest of us. I mean, the guys that are in this business, we've watched it. We've been in shops where they've been in the 'we've totally screwed everything up and now we have to fix it' phase where they don't do that to their employees. And we've been there when it transitions then to the 'oh, we're in the green now, now we can figure out how to be deeper in the green.'.
Yeah.
And you go from hero to zero overnight. And typically that exists until they run enough people off that they're left with one or two, and then that guy's— he's golden. Oh, nobody's gonna do that because God forbid you lose the last decent person you have.
And he's in— he or she is sitting in that office every 3 months going, uh, we need to, we need to pump this up. I need more hours, I need a raise or whatever. Because like, I, you know, all these low-skilled people, or lower skilled or less experienced, whatever you want to use, as they're coming in, that the person, the Dave in the shop that has a ton of experience in the brand, he's having to go behind them and do a lot more of the hands-on and the mentoring and all that kind of stuff, which is affecting him. So he's in there going, yeah, like, you know, you want— we're in transition, we're a young shop now, we're growing, and, and you've got to build these people up. Well, that all takes more time. And it just cracks me up. I had a conversation with, again, one of the people, the platform and the creator, um, talking about, you know, the, the fast lanes going away from shops and how they want to send as much as they can up to the fast lane. And I know, listen, I, I'm not dumb.
I know what it's all about. It's effective labor rate, right? If I'm paying that guy $18 an hour and he can do brakes, I don't want to pay Dave $40-some an hour to do the same brake job. My effective labor rate rate is awesome on that job. It's the profit margin is so much better, right? Because at the end of the day, if they both go out and don't.
Come back, they don't really care, right? Well, they need that profit margin to cover all the other stuff that same guy.
Messes up. That's why it's just gonna stay. They don't fail to see it that way though, right? When, you know, the caliper comes in, the bolts aren't on, or, you know, something happens, wheel flies off, or the pedals up, you know, caliper's got a flex hose twist, whatever, you cannot convince that customer that the right thing to do was to take their lowest trained, lowest skilled, and put them in charge of that job. You'll never convince the customer that. And you don't tell them that. You tell them, I got master certified techs doing everything in here. Well, those people out front are not master certified, sir, are they? No, they're learning.
That's some training. But the, the flip side of that is, is when you, you do that at an independent, and the independent survival depends on that not happening. Yeah, if you're an independent and you send out, you know, Mrs. Taylor's car, well, Mrs. Taylor and her whole family and their brother and their— that's your business. That's right. And you can't afford sending Miss Taylor's car out upside down, brake caliper, what have you. So you go to the guy and you go, hey, we're gonna pay you for a professional level of, of workmanship, and that's what you have to give us.
And that's I mean, that's the dream, right? They don't have the luxury. Now, we do have a guy who does oil changes and tires and stuff like that. Great kid, you know, coming up. And he's— since I've been at this place, the few months I have, he's bought tools. He bought one of those new Matco Sidekick roll carts. Like, he wants to do this. He's investing in it. He's kind of a pain sometimes because he just follows you around, you know.
He wants to be involved. And at the dealership, you know, I was an island. I'd go days and wouldn't speak to people if I didn't absolutely have to. And so it's been quite an adaption for me because I'm constantly talking to everybody, and man, it runs my social battery down. I'm just like, oh my God, just leave me alone for 5 minutes. But again, the flip side of it is, is, you know, when they hand me a car that's been through people that have worked there before me and it keeps popping back up with the same problem, and I go 'Zinga, this is the problem.' Yeah. 'Oh my gosh.' I mean, you would have thought I found the cure for cancer. And what it is, is it's— it's they get to enjoy the same level of— I don't know if you call it relief— that this thing is really fixed as I do for finding the problem.
I get to go, 'Hey, this is what it is,' and they get to go, 'Oh my gosh.' And they call them, and they come in, and they bring you cookies, and they're just so happy. And it's like I'm like, this is the way it should be. I understand why dealerships aren't that way. I get it. You've got a bajillion dollars in overhead. You have all of these other demands. I'm certainly not naive enough to think what works in one case doesn't in the other. But at the end of the day, if this, this shop who charges way less an hour for labor is willing to pay way more an hour in labor for me to come in there and do a good job, job and appreciate that versus the other end of the spectrum where it's like we just throw a whole bunch of crap at the wall and hope enough of it sticks that we can close the doors and go home at the end of the day.
And I guess I didn't realize until I was out of it how much my personality type is drawn to, to that. And it's just been, you know, it's just been just a really, a really interesting almost self-development to be like, you know, and I'm turning the hours that I was turning at the dealer. I'm making more an hour, so the math— math's pretty close, right? I don't have to work weekends. Yeah. But 2 weeks ago, I guess, I turned into the most hours anyone's ever turned in that shop. And I won't tell you what it is, but it was a lot. Yeah. And it's a good example to me to say, hey, I can still do it.
Yeah. And it's a— it shows them them what can happen when, you know, with some of the things that I do the way I do to remove some of the obstructions to productivity, to say, look, the more efficiency we get, the better off we all are. Yeah. And it's a much, a much more, you know, grassroots, you know, you, you make a change, you see the change next week. Yeah. Whereas the dealership's like trying to turn the Titanic, you know, even if you can enact the change, good luck, it'll be in your lifetime. And I've left dealers that you go back to years later and it's like, well, that was my idea, like it does work. Yeah, but at least, you know, in this environment it's like, hey, I really think if we did X, Y, and Z it might be better.
And then it's like, okay, well, we're gonna do X, Y, and Z and we're gonna see. And it's like, great. And if I'm wrong, dude, I'm wrong. I'll own it, you know. I'm by no means perfect. I've and when I interviewed, I said, I'm not going to stand here and tell you I don't have comebacks. Stuff comes back. This is an imperfect science, but I want to do the best job I can do.
Let me do it, treat me as such, and we'll be golden. I don't— I'm, I'm an easy employee. I don't need— yeah, you know, I don't drink, I don't party, I don't sleep around. I just get up, I come to work on time, I don't call out sick, I just do my job. Yeah, just let me do my job in a way that I feel like I'm being rewarded mentally, emotionally for myself. And I, I'll do whatever I can for you guys.
And that, and that's the thing, the rewarding that, you know, David's talking about is not just like when you hear all that, it's not just the money, people. Like, it's so much more. Like, I can remember from our last conversation you talking about how they would give you the gears when you're going to book holidays because of how many hours the shop was going to be down in production while you were gone on holidays. Like, That is absurd to me that somebody wants to give somebody grief because the, the numbers are going to be so low because I'm going to be gone. Like, I understand it's a, it's a reality of, of our business, but to make somebody feel like, oh, do you really have to take it then, right? Because it's going to affect this, or like, it's going to be really— oh wait, like, he, he was just gone the week before. More. Now you're ultimately going, that's going to be a real crap month. That's got zero to do with it.
Like, that's obviously— you know how they— we talk about technicians, you need to be smarter and playing with your money and all this kind of stuff. Businesses, shops, you need to think about— and I know I'm preaching to somebody that really know, but think about this for a minute. If you lost one of your good techs for 2 weeks for an injury or something, 3 weeks, 2 months, whatever, and then say you lost your second, right back to back. Do you survive or not? A lot of you are going to go, no, I would have— Dave, we see it in the groups, right, where they fire a technician, all of a sudden the shop owner is back out on the floor, 10, 12-hour days again. Some of them are like, thank God I'm back here, what was I thinking, this is where I truly belong. And then the other ones get on and they go, holy crap, this is killing me.
Oh yeah, I had a friend that, uh, that was real unhappy at the shop he was at. He left, went to a shop and brought every single person worth a damn from his old shop. Within a month, they lost— I, I mean, I've never worked in that shop, but if half of what he says is true, they literally lost the entire brain trust of that shop, all because when the first guy left, the service manager's attitude was, well, good riddance. Yeah, we're just gonna dump everything that guy did on everyone else. And they were like, yeah, we're not gonna do that either. Yeah, the grass should have seemed greener over here. And it's like, right, so that's the, that's the real toxic effect to all of this. And like I said when we were on before, so much of that could be, could be stopped by just pulling your head out of your ass and recognizing the people you work with.
Like, I don't think most of us need a teddy bear hug every night. No. But we go, you go weeks and months without ever feeling any kind of validation for what you do, and then you go somewhere else and all they do is say fucking thank you. And it's just like, oh my God, like I didn't, I didn't know it could be so wonderful. And again, a lot of times that problem isn't the, the service manager level, it's a policy level and they don't really set the policy. Yeah. But it's just, you know, we exist in a time that skilled trade or tradespeople are evaporating and the dinosaurs in the background are still pulling the same lever. Like they've got them stacked up to go and they don't don't.
And the fact that the reaction to anytime anyone with any skill level has an issue is just, wow, toolboxes have wheels on them. Yeah, it's like, okay, great, you know, cool, let me know how that works for you. And there's some local shops around, around where I am that went from literally being one of the best in the country to I'm not even sure they're certified to work on the cars anymore. Yeah. And it's like, well, how did this happen? Was it the people? Did you get just an endless run of bad mechanics? Because those bad mechanics mechanics are having a great life 4 doors down from you, you know?
Like, and that's what I was gonna say, like, we have all eventually, when you've done this long enough, like, I've walked into shops and it's those 2 guys used to work together somewhere, you know what I mean? And they came from another dealer and they went to there. Sometimes it's 3 or 4 all used to work. So here's the reality, people: when 2 or 3 or 4 leave a place and go somewhere else and there's success, they weren't the problem. Problem. Whoever was there in charge of them was the problem. Whatever it was, they said, you know, I'm drawing a line in the sand here and I'm, I'm taking my toolbox with its wheels and I'm rolling down the street. And if they go there and they're a fit and they're a success and they're rocking and killing it, whoever you employ that's responsible for them leaving, you might better get rid of them right effing now because they are the.
Liability. And A lot of times I think you see that happen when, when service managers leave. Yeah, because you get some, some techs that work for a good service manager, and that good service manager fights the fight for them. Yeah. And he gets tired of fighting the fight. Yeah. And he goes in search of somewhere that he doesn't have to fight so damn hard to look out for his people. Yeah.
He leaves, those techs go, this guy always had my back here, I bet he'll have my back there, and they leave. I worked at shop, and I had a wonderful service manager, and he left. And the week after he left, the new guy came in and took over, and he was an ass. And my, my son was born, he was a preemie, okay, and he had a whole lot of health— so he was 3 pounds when he was born. It was quite an experience. And I had to miss a day at work to go to the hospital. We had taken the CHKD. He was, you know, had a thing going on.
And, um, you know, I called my then new service manager and said, here's where I am, I'll bring you a doctor's note, I'm really sorry, I'll be back tomorrow. The next day I come in, I get called into the office, and this guy sits me down and asks me, aren't you married? Don't you have a wife that can do things like this? And I said, well, I do, and my wife was there with me. Our 3— you know, our, our baby was in the hospital. Yeah, like, I don't— I'm not gonna stay here and put brakes and shit on a car. And he looked me dead in the face and said, if you don't— if you can't find a better way to handle your personal stuff, maybe I don't need here. And I called my old service manager and I said, I miss you, how about I come work with you? And he said, absolutely, if you're willing to make the drive, you can start tomorrow. And I went back to him and said, kiss my ass. And I rage quit that job like I've never rage quit a job in my life.
And within the course of a couple of months, almost everyone that was in my little circle had left that place and gone to the place where I was. And it It's like we're all going to lunch together, we're all doing stuff, we're just doing it from a different building. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's so eye-opening to be— to see, like, you know, some of us are pretty cantankerous people. I mean, I certainly can be. Like I said, I can be toxic as hell if I need to be.
Same.
But I think at the end of the day, you know, being, being an effective manager or being an effective dealer principal or whatever is understanding that. And if your instinct anytime somebody raises their hand and goes, hey, I have a problem, is to roll your eyes and go, again? Jesus Christ. Well, look, asshole, like, I don't want to be in here any more than you do. If, if I wasn't, you know, if there wasn't something going on that I thought was worthy enough to mention, I wouldn't be in here mentioning it. Yeah. And I guess the older I get, the more, you know, the less willing I am to put up with bullshit, for lack of, you know, and And when you, you see the games and you see the childishness and you see the whatever, and I mean, even just working with people that, you know, are just sitting across from you, you know, mad that you're better than them but just can't wait for you to screw something up. It's just like, why? Like, you're mad that, that I'm better than you? I've been doing this for 20 years longer than you. If I wasn't better than you, who the hell would I be? And instead of, of being like, wow, hey, how about I, you know, you know, eat a little humility, maybe I can learn something.
You just want to sit over there and be like, oh well, he changed the oil in this last and the screws are missing, he must have not put them in. It's like, okay, cool, well how about the car that you blew up last week? Like, we don't want to talk about that? Oh, you're just an asshole. Yeah, really? Like, and that's the kind of thing that fosters in a dealer. And I told the, the gentleman that I work for now, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that, you know. I don't want to do it. I want to just come in here and I want to, I want to build this for both both of us. I want to build me a place that I can work because I'm getting old. I'm 44, you know, and, and maybe there'll be a time that he'll transition kind of away from an active role in the business and it'll give me an opportunity to transition, or maybe not.
At least I'm, I'm currently in an environment that, you know, I just don't have to work so damn hard. Now it's hard, it's hard work, sure. Yes, because you don't get the muscle memory and the stuff like that, you know. I'm doing an oil pan on a Jeep one day and a transmission on this the other. Yeah. But it's nice to be able to remind myself that I know what I'm doing and get new challenges rather than just doing the same 8 things over and over again. But it's also nice to know that I don't touch a single thing I don't get paid for. Yeah, I'm not being handed pages of brand new car problems that they expect my full and undivided attention for, that they pay me nothing because it's warranty.
Yeah, and the fact that they think think dealer techs that are paid flat rate should have to touch something that they don't get paid for is the most absurd thing in the entire world. And if you do that on a car that's brand new, yeah, for a customer that really should get the best level of service, you're giving it to a super qualified guy and then you're not gonna pay him anything to look at it. Yeah, what a stupid idea.
And they tell you that it's like, well, I can't get paid for that. And the reality is, is like, I've never asked you what you can get paid for under a warranty. I've never asked that. It doesn't matter to me. Just, here is my time punch, this is what I did, the car is fixed, this is what I expect to get paid. And, and I've said that before, and people look at me like I've got two heads because we see the conversations coming up and it's like, well, the new legislation is going to change where they're not going to be allowed to pay warranty time anymore and they're only going to be able to pay retail time. There's still such a facet of the industry that we're forgetting about that. That's fine if it's all of a sudden like you're doing a bunch of turbos on this particular engine and it's supposed to pay $18,000 under retail and it only pays $8,000 under warranty, and now you're going to get your $18,000.
That's Cool.
Awesome.
Love it. The time that's spent digging through these brand new cars to find the, you know, the monster in the machine, that one frayed wire, that one loose connection, that pin fitment thing that's intermittent, there is no flipping labor op for that. It covers the real time. So guys that sit there and go, well, warranty time is going to go away, it's going to retail, you're missing the whole boat and a big facet of us that are still in the industry. Because what we're doing is just one car like that after another, after another, after another, after another. Another. The best I can hope to do is like my time that I'm there during the week gets covered because there is no book for that. There is no labor time for that.
You're on the phone with engineering, you're on the phone with, you know, tech line before you can make the next step and order this part. They want to know this. That's all stuff that I would much rather be over there making, you know, my, my, my retail time to do turbos that engine than to solve this problem. I'd much rather be over there doing that, thank you. But I'm not. So the whole idea of the flat rate in the, in the dealers, guys are like, I love it. Great, man, great. But it's those cars where we did all this work and we didn't get paid for.
That's the stuff I remember when I'm all done and out of it. It's not the cars that I remember that like I could cut the labor time into one-third. That's— they're all gone, they're crushed now, you know, we're tricking out of the soda cans. It's this— it's the stuff that haunts me, that like I had to take that carpet up and find that splice the first time.
Well, and it's— I mean, it's the stress of it. Like, you show up every day with absolutely no guarantee of earning anything, and it's like you're expecting somebody to exist at a professional level in a skilled trade with a tremendous, usually, investment in tooling and training and everything else, and you're guaranteed to them is nothing. And then when, when, when stuff happens, winter storms or elections, or— I mean, God, I worked, I worked in the business when 9/11 happened. Yeah. And it's like, okay, great, well, I'm not coming to work. Well, no, you have to. I have to come to work? How much are you going to pay me? Well, nothing. Right.
You get fucked.
Yeah. You know, like, what— who does that? Like, that's, that's an asinine thing to do. And to treat people that way that are— that, that have gone through years of investment to get to this is basically telling them everything that you've done and everything you've invested is worthless to us. And okay, great, so you don't have any work to do, you have 2 master techs and 4 express techs. Well, why don't you go to those master techs and put a plan together and say, hey, when the work runs out, let's teach these guys something. Let's go get a car and show them how to do something. We'll pay you, you're still getting paid. And then you get some utilization out of it.
But what they want at a dealer level especially is they want a bunch of young hungry guys willing to kill themselves to make productivity to justify not paying people a fair wage. Because if, if Jim down the thing is doing 200 hours a week making $150 grand a year, well, these are $150,000 a year jobs. No, they're not. And when little Jimmy gets good and trained and certified ride, you're gonna chop his legs out from under him on all that gravy. Yeah. And now he's too far down the road to do something else, and he's miserable and watching Timmy do all the flushes and everything else. And it's a terrible business model.
And I go back to that argument again about the, the fast lanes, or whatever you want to call it, right, where they're dispatching low skill. When we all talk, we make the joke, you know, like, these guys worked at the dealership for 3 years, and when they came to me, the only thing they could do was a 4-door latch, you know what I mean? Like, that was the only job that they could do. And I sit there and I look at this I'm like, thank God somebody before I had my license, before I was flat rate, just started handing me nightmare car after nightmare car and go, here's a wiring diagram, here's a scan tool, you know, don't come to me until you have a question or it's fixed.
Like, don't— yeah. And well, but it just— I think a lot of people are soft now. I think, I think we were a lot tougher coming in because I know I was doing stuff that I had no business doing because I just had the determination determination to do it. And nowadays I don't see that in many people.
Well, but for me it was real simple, Dave, because it was like I left the job where I was making $10 and I went to a job at the dealer where I was making $15, still straight time. But all of a sudden now I'm handed a scan tool, which we're at the $10 job. I had to watch the old guy do it and, you know, ask questions. And it was like this big mystique. And, you know, he would be hours and hours pouring over it as if it was And he's a smart guy. He didn't need to take that much time, but he was milking it. And now, in hindsight, I know he was milking it. That's all good.
It's— I would too for that employer. But when I was given that opportunity, it just became part of the process, you know, and it was like I was doing it, and there was no turning back for me. I couldn't see myself, no matter what was going on here, if I'm ever going to go back to him for 10 bucks. Bucks, no matter how much I hated these problem cars. Because to me, none of it was a problem because I was just paid to show up. So I just showed up, fixed the car, and then, you know, on to the next one. Tomorrow was another opportunity, great day, because I get to try something else. You know, it was, it was, it was incredible.
I couldn't see myself going back to, right, an independent shop where I thought they all paid like shit and they, they they did. They would have at the time. And I wasn't getting exposed to anything. I was going to be, here's another 3 cars today that we're going to do safeties on. Um, you take everything apart, he's going to come over and inspect it, and then he's going to sign the safety and you're going to put it back together, right? That's how you learn to do shit.
And I was like, yeah. Well, I told, I told my, my new employer when I was interviewing, I said, you know, I'm, I'm pretty particular about doing multi-points. You know, we never got paid for them at the dealer. I agree be in some regard that that's just something you do to create opportunity for yourself. I understand the slippery slope with volunteering to do anything because then it turns into video inspections, then it turns into this, then it turns into that. But just a good— you're doing a service to the car, you're going to check it over. And I told my employer, I said, you know, I'll be happy to do them, but I do what I find. Yeah.
Regardless of workload, regardless of anything else, like, this is my baby. I, I worth it. Yeah, I do it. Yep. And, you know, and, and, and obviously they were, you know, they were fine with that. But I understand when you, when you talk about like loss leader stuff. I mean, we do it at our shop with oil changes. You can't make money paying a master tech to do oil changes.
A master tech shouldn't be doing oil changes. That's like the worst utilization. I told my, my boss when I got hired, you know, he said, we have a guy that does oil changes, he loves doing tires. And I said, I hate to do tires. I will pay him to do my tire. Like, I hate doing tires. Yeah, I would much rather be with a laptop, a scan tool in my hand doing something. But I expect to be compensated for that time.
And the manufacturers screw the dealers by doing all of their warranty hoops and all. And the dealers don't want to submit all the warranty ops because they don't want to be the nail that sticks out. That's right. And what really needs to happen is there needs to be— I don't want to say a union, but there needs to be an agreement that says we're going pay our guys every op they can across the board, and every dealer does it. So there are no nails sticking up. We just elevate the entire level of warranty repairs 20%. Yep. And because I've been told numerous times, we just can't pay you for that, it makes our numbers too high.
Well, numbers to who? The manufacturer? Tell the manufacturers to stop building shitty cars. That's right. Stop having the technicians and the customers QC your products in the field. Yeah, I have no sympathy 50 for somebody. If I'm paying $55,000 for a damn Honda Accord, you can pay me the time it takes me to figure out where the water leak's coming from. Yeah, you know, and again, the, the people at the floor level in the dealership, they don't have any authority over that. And in some degrees, you know, the owners and dealer principals and stuff, the last thing in the world they want is the manufacturer coming down and doing an audit because it's going to cost them huge checks. I've worked at a dealership that had that.
I know what a nightmare was. It was— I understand that when I.
Sat through it, it was awful to watch. I mean, Chrysler came down and they took over the service manager's office and they shut the door, a young lady and a young man, and they just started stacking, stacking file boxes, going through files after one after another, work order, work order. And when it's all said and done, they shake their hands and they say, well, thanks, you know, and they get back in their little, you know, car, and you write them a check check. That's what the dealer does. And, and a lot of times, yeah, it's— we're well over six figures, right? Like, it's a lot of money. It's the kind of thing. And then you see the guy that was your labor clerk, or warranty clerk, excuse me, um, he probably is working somewhere else next month because that's what.
They take the— right, you know. But again, a lot of that comes back to the people that you have on the ground doing the work. If you are allowing the dum-dum down the way to do subpar work work. Yeah, you started the ball rolling, you know what I'm saying? He does a crappy job, he throws a bunch of parts on a car that doesn't fix it, it gets warrantied, it makes it through. Now 6 months later, somebody's digging through that ticket and they go, well, why did we put a PCM and a TIPM in this car? Oh well, no, we want money for both of them. And it's like, right, that guy shouldn't have been doing that. You failed that guy. You failed by letting him think he was a good mechanic first of all, and you failed by not having something in place to take somebody that obviously wants to do this job and make them better at it.
Yeah, because we need that. We need people to be better. And one of the things that I love about Sherwood is that he shows the good and the bad. Oh yeah, you know, and, and, and, uh, check into Chuck Rhymer, a lot of those guys, you know, to put yourself out there and say this car kicked my ass. We've had this— what was it, this Nissan here— forever. We did this, we made We made 14 false assumptions that led us to the fact that we could have fixed this with one simple part because that is our reality. 17 months. And admitting that so that the people that are at the beginning stages understand that you're gonna fuck up.
You're gonna make mistakes on day 1. You're gonna make mistakes on day 4,005. Yes. I've done it. I did it the other day. I messed something up on a car. I misdiagnosed something. Left, and I thought it was fixed.
And they call and they said it just did this, and I said, oh shit, it wasn't that at all, but I know exactly what it is, have them come back. Yeah, 5 minutes later the car was fixed. And I walked in there and I said, hey, if you need me to pay for this $22 part, I got you. This was— I, I misunderstood how they were relating their complaint, so I started from a bad assumption and I did this. And we had told told them that we couldn't duplicate their fault. We thought it was this.
Yeah.
And they wanted to go ahead and do it. It wasn't that. But as soon as I got the good information, I knew exactly what it was, and I was more than willing to go, yep, this was on me. I— yeah, because people said, you know, my car cranks but doesn't start. Well, no, it doesn't. It doesn't crank. You don't know what crank means. Or, you know, my car gets towed in, it died on me.
Did it die or did it just not start? Yeah. Well, it doesn't run. Well, which is it? Were you driving down the road or you know, and, and at the, at the, the, the micro level at an independent, there's only one person between me and the customer. And a lot of times there's nobody. A lot of times I just walk out there and go, hey Mrs. Jenkins, do that too, here's what's going on. But that eliminates a lot of that. And it's important to them that they get it right, even if the car— I, I had a car that I've been chasing a poor, what I think was a poor ground on causing an intermittent no-start.
Okay.
And the lady was like, I get it. You know, I sat down and explained it to her and she said, I'll just leave the car for a few days. And it's like, wow, at the dealership they would have had to, you know, like, it's got to be done now, it's got to be done now, it's got to be done now. And so the expectation with an independent is different. I think the customers approach the independent differently. The downside of that is, is, and you've talked about it before, and it's almost a, it's a term I heard somebody else use in, in a political sense the other day, but suicidal empathy. Where you're like, we feel so bad for Mrs. Jenkins.
We just— do we need to charge her? Absolutely, yes. And not because Mrs. Jenkins has done anything wrong, but because we are a business and have to operate as such. And I, I have fought that some here because, you know, they know the people. They know, oh well, so-and-so's kid's in college and money's tight and, and this, that, and the other. And I, I understand I understand that that connection is part of what makes a family business a family business, but you serve no one the day you close the doors because you can't pay your bills anymore. Yeah. So my, my emphasis to them is the importance of offering a positive value.
And that was one of the things that Sherwood talked about too. But if you, you charge for a service, if you can prove that that cost for that service can stand on its own two feet, you are 100% allowed to charge for that service. And some of that is understanding not every customer is your customer. Yeah, fine. But you do no favors to anyone. If you hurt your own sustainability to help somebody out once, you have ruined your opportunity to help 100 people out later because you, you can't, you can't get to that.
It's, it's the same. People talk all the time, and, and I keep reminding it, and I catch, you know, people don't like to hear hear it. The reality is on that last day when you shut it down and say, you know, well, it happened around here. Dad decides to close the shop, you know, they're selling it and son doesn't want to buy it or can't buy it or whatever, doesn't have the money. The very last day that you shut the door on that place and say there is no other buyer, it's just an empty building, everything's moved out, all those customers you did all those favors for, they just wind up somewhere else, right? And it's probably not going to be as huggy-feely, as inexpensive, as, you know, whatever, as what they were used to. And they survive, right?
Yeah. Well, I mean, they say that about, about private— I mean, small business. Nobody ever has a problem paying full price to Honda or Toyota or Nissan or Ralph Lauren or whatever. But every person you know that does something, you expect to hookup. And it's like, you don't want to support those people at 100% level, the people you know, but you so willingly do it to everyone else. If they're willing to pay $200 an hour to the dealer and you're only charging them $150, yeah, charge them your $150 and explain to them that your value is that you get face-to-face service, you get your car fixed right, you know, we send you a postcard and a calendar every year, you know. Yeah, there's intrinsic value there. There.
And, you know, the independents, most of them always lack that big corporate checkbook, so you're always operating at somewhat of a disadvantage. Tooling, equipment, stuff like that. You know, your, your local shop's not buying an $80,000 Hunter state-of-the-art whatever. They're getting by with what they have. And so there's, there's some, you know, that I've always said there's a huge market if you could afford to fund an independent at the level of a dealer, if you could offer that level— ADAS calibrations, you know, state-of-the-art equipment, top-notch, constantly updated scan tools and everything— and, and still bring that 'this is a family' touch to it, and do it in a, in a legitimate way, not a 'we pretend that we're doing this.' Yeah, you know, but, you know, offer the, the loaner cars or the shuttles or the service. And, and I don't know how you do it because you don't get all the built-in stuff that the big companies get. But you have to build your value in your product, and if your product is yourself, giving it away for free.
You'Ve devalued it completely.
And the thing— that's the same way I feel at the dealer with the warranty stuff. My product is my time. You've taught me my entire career that I'm only as good as the hours I turn that day, but you expect me willingly to do stuff for free for you? Yeah, like sales made tons of profit on this car that they old service will make money on the services they sell down the road. But where the rubber meets the road and the car needs to be fixed, you expect me to do it as a courtesy? That's right. Like, yeah, no, write the check to me every week, pay me a fixed, a fixed flat amount, guarantee my time. I'll be happy to do it all day long. Yeah, but when I have a really good week because I turned a ton of hours, and then you want to burden me with things that I don't get paid anything for and use the fact that the other week I was really productive on my alone doesn't offset anything.
And see, that's the part that kills me is when they— when they— because I've had those conversations where it's like, you know, you go to them about something that has happened yesterday or this week and they go, but you had a really good week last week. Like, but yet you got the benefit of when I hit 120 hours last week, right? And the whole point— and let's be real, you would love it if I hit 120 every week. I'm now coming to you with something that says I can't hit even half of that this week because of X, Y, and Z, these factors. And instead of looking at it and listening to me, I'm all of a sudden just the complaining tech again, right, that's always greedy looking for more money because last week I made $120,000. And they say, what, like you're not happy? Like last week you made $120,000. I should make $120,000 every week then, you know.
I should. Or pay me an effective wage that equals that $120,000 if that's what I'm capable of doing. Yeah, pay it to me. Yeah, and figure the rest of it out. Why do I have to be the one that has to figure out my survival at the job you hired?
Because the true management then doesn't exist, I don't think, for most places, especially at the dealer level. It's there at some of the aftermarket shops now, because as I get to know them, I realize how good they are at actually implementing the processes. But here's the thing, going back to the, the cost thing, the $175 versus the $200, if you look at some of the aftermarket shops that are rivaling the dealer in terms of what they're doing, their door rates is at least what the dealer is, if not more, or more. Yeah, the first thing that when somebody comes in and goes, you guys are more than the dealer— if your person at the counter goes, um, uh, uh, when they asked why that is, fire that person because they already should have been explained to how you explain your value to your customer.
Well, and that's— yeah, and that's the same thing, you know, that I feel like with a multi-point or an estimate. If, if you bring your car into me and I can justify in a way that's legitimate and makes sense to you what you to do to my advisor.
Yeah.
And then my advisor cannot take that information I've given and sell it to you, then either the advisor needs to be fired. Yeah. Or I need to be fired because I didn't do a good enough job explaining it to her. But the same token is, if your door rate's $100 and $250 an hour and they go, well, Kia only charges $180, and your guy doesn't go, well, I understand that, but you have to understand, Mr. Compton, that Kia has an 18-year-old kid from high school changing your oil and doing your maintenance, whereas we have a 30-year-old ASE Master Tech, and we are going to make sure that your car is QC'd. We're not the fastest, but we're the best, and we stand behind our work with a warranty that rivals what the dealer does, and that's what we charge for. Yeah, and one of two things are going to happen. Either you're going to price yourself out of work, and then you're going to have to reevaluate evaluate it, or you're going to build a customer base that supports the level of business you want to do.
Yeah, it isn't a pricing— this race to the bottom is ridiculous. Go in a shop that charges $75 an hour and look around. It's not a place you want to work. You want to do oil changes in the parking lot? You know, the same thing that I bet you was saying about guys that work from home. Yeah, like, yeah, Bob in his garage will do it for 50 $100. But if Bob drops that thing off the bottle jack and caves your rocker panel in, Bob's gonna tell you tough. Yeah, that's what you get. So you have to understand, I mean, there's a difference between getting a haircut at Haircuttery and getting a haircut at a professional salon.
People don't mind paying that money. Yeah, so why should this be any different? And I think the independents struggle with that because there's such a close connection with the people. You have such an empathy for from that. It's like, well, I understand, but this is this guy's son and he's been coming here for— and I was like, I totally understand, but at the end of the day, if you have to close, you're not providing anything to anyone. So if this guy has known you for 30 years and he's not willing to pay your price, maybe it's time for him to go see what the other side really looks like, because the grass isn't greener.
Here's the other thing. Brian Pollack and I talk about this a lot, and I used to think it was all empathy that was the And that so many were not, you know, didn't have the confidence to charge more than the dealer, as much as the dealer, the race to the bottom thing. Brian has showed me, and the conversation has kind of come up, and again, I'm not throwing shade at anybody that's listening. Please don't take it that way. A lot of them though, I think when they get in and they realize, whoa, I wasn't the level of tech that I thought I was when I started this business. Like what I really was, was I thought I was a master because maybe I came from the dealer and I had that product figured out, right? I knew all that shit. That was me. And all of a sudden you get in the aftermarket side of things and you're like, I really need to hire somebody that is like better than me at what I thought I was really good at.
Well, that becomes then, how do you make that work? And that's the whole, the whole trick to this is because that person that's better than you, and you need somebody to be better than you, you may not even be able to recognize them when they, or he or she, walks in the door. But if you do recognize them and you can't pay that, you probably need to rethink what you're trying to be for your customer base. Because, you know, maybe you just stick to being a tire and, and alignment and front end and brake kind of shop. You don't tackle the nightmare cars, you know. You don't say, yes, I can fix that Euro car, because you— like, how many Euro cars did you work on last year? None, you know. But it's just a car, right? It's not like that, unfortunately, anymore. And I hate to say it, So if you want somebody that's going to be that person that can work on that Euro cart, they're out there. You can hire them.
But you— if you've already started so low on your pricing, it's going to be really hard to get your pricing where it needs to be to get that person in here and not absolutely shock the crap out of your customer base, right? And drive them away. Because like, they're gonna be round numbers. Last week you were $125, and now next month you're $170. $175 because you went and hired a unicorn that you're gonna— they're gonna be— yeah, so, but think about how long it might take if $175 is where you really need to be and you're at $125. Think about how long it takes doing incremental jumps to get there. Like, do you rip off the Band-Aid, David, and just go to $175, or do you do like $5 more every month on the door rate?
Like, yeah, well, I mean, one of the, one of the things that is that we have a really high, um, tax rate for food and stuff in, in town here. It's a big tourist area, right? And so you get like the locals— the local restaurants have like locals cards where you give them a discount on stuff. Maybe something like that. I mean, you know, you're, you're gonna alienate people when you change your pricing. It's just inevitable. And some of it's forever and some of just for— until they go down the road to the cheaper place and realize what they're missing. Yeah. And I think, I think it's, it's a risk you take.
I don't— you know, the individual shops in their individual areas, some places just can't support it. They just can't. Yeah. And so you have to sort of decide at the business level, where do we draw the line? I mean, I told, I told this place when they hired me, you know, when, when we, we get into the weeds on stuff, it doesn't benefit anyone. So before we agree to do seemingly sort of out of left field stuff, let's have a conversation about it. You know, the, the shop I worked for, the independent I worked for before, you know, they always talked about the 3 C's. It has to make sense for the company, the customer, and the car, you know. And I sort of thought that was kind of doofy the first time I heard it, but it really does make a lot of sense, you know.
And, and sometimes the best conversation to have with the customer— and I'm sure you've had them up there where you are with the rust. Oh yeah, is this is just not worth fixing because I'm gonna do this huge repair on this car and at the end of the day you're going to be way worse off financially and you're not going to have a better vehicle. Yeah. And some of the things just don't make sense for the company. It's like, I, I'm gonna tie up somebody fighting their way through a convertible top on a Mercedes that that guy could be in here turning 10, 15 hours a day to maybe give you back the car fixed or maybe go, well, we didn't know as much as we thought we did, now you need to you take it to the dealer, we're not going to charge you anything. Yeah, like sometimes it's important to know. And some of that, you know, you get, you, you get high on your own supply, you know, you think I'm the best guy ever, I can fix anything. Yeah.
And if it was at my house and it was my vehicle in my garage and I had unlimited time, sure. But from a business standpoint, and it's, I mean, it's hard for me to do it better now than I used to be, to just admit I don't know how to do this. Like, can I figure it out? I I think so. Does it make sense that I figure it out on the clock for this customer? Not at all. Yeah, not when there's a shop 5 minutes up the road that specializes in it. Yeah. And the reason that they don't want to go there is because that shop charges $300 an hour as a specialist. Yeah.
Well, I'm sorry, this is specialist-level stuff. That's what you need to go pay for.
And that's the crazy thing. Going forward, we all need to have a lot more honest upfront conversations about what really is specialized stuff, right? Um, and sometimes it is programming and cloning, you know, uh, security stuff, that kind of That's tricky because like you don't know when it's being towed in and Mrs. Smith had it towed in and she'd been working on it, but you get in there and it's like, oh crap, you know, security system's got her completely locked out and it's a, you know, it's a, it's a can thing. Can you get through it? Sure. But I would always look at that and go, what kind of vehicle is it? Okay, so even if I diagnose this as being, you know, um, a security fault, is there one module? Yeah, what is there one module I can put even this and I can program?
No.
Okay, shit. Okay, so do I touch it then? And that becomes— because we'll talk about the Ram trucks and the, essentially, the wireless module that goes on the back wall, behind, underneath the sliding rear glass on a Ram truck. They put that module there, and that's your, you know, what used to be your wind module. So that's what allows the car to unlock, start up, all that jazz. Well, they fill up with water up here really bad. And, you know, so you can kind of go out to it, and you can kind of, with a little bit of thing, realize, wait a minute, Wait a minute, I plug my scan tool in and it's not talking. I can't get the door locks to work. Like, as soon as I do some jumping around the hood, because it'll— some of them, they'll come in and the horn's going off, right? I hooked about— well, right then and there you can kind of go, I got an idea about this.
And it's— but I'm still, once I put this little module in, I'm still having to tow it over to the dealer, say, unless I have some kind of J-box or something. And can I get security clearance? And that's a whole other thing. But we don't want to start telling everybody the Ram truck that I can't handle your no-starts, right? Like, this is where we've got to really— and people are just, oh yeah, sure. But I mean, lots of shops out there have these situations and these stories where it's like, well, it got towed to me, but then I had to call a mobile guy in, which is— I mean, that works if you've got one. I don't have one in my area. Yeah, or we— I had to tow it over to the dealer. So it's like What did that cost? And did we really give the customer good value? Because I had to charge them more than what it would have cost for the dealer to do it, right? Right.
And it takes longer.
Yeah. And it— oh, we had one that was— yeah, it was a long time sitting there, right? And it was like when we first called the dealer and we said this module, they're like, backordered 6 weeks.
Yep. ABS modules and Chryslers.
Yeah, yeah.
It came in through Intergalactic backorder.
It came in 3 weeks later. But I mean, it's like, at the same time, so it was 3 weeks instead of 6 weeks. We put it in, we got it fixed, it went, and all that jazz, all the good stuff. But like, and if it had been over at the dealer, it might not have gotten in there any faster than 3 weeks anyway, right? Because we bought— but at least it's not sitting on our lot with the customer calling us every day. And that's sometimes what we have to think about, right? Like, you know, going forward, what's going to seem very simple right now is going to become very tough on a car-by-car, case-by-case basis. And man, I catch a lot of flack because like I've been throwing the service advisors under the bus as of late in the industry, right? And, you know, people are going to hear more of the interview. And it's, it's not— I'm not throwing shade, but the reality is, is like a lot of them are really lacking in training. And, you know, we're talking about I want technicians to do 40 hours a year of training minimum, you know, paid or unpaid, a whole other conversation.
I want advisors doing 240 hours of training in the next year because I think there's so much to bring up in how to communicate and what the real goal is and all that kind of stuff. Some of it's going to be process and language, and some of it is just going to be like the young man I talked to today. He had a customer at his desk and he was asking about doing a transmission service. She said, the service advisor customer, "Well, I drive a 2008 Nissan and I've never done a transmission service. I don't think you need to do it. And of course, so he talked to his boss because we're talking and I'm like, hey, well, how did that go? Give me that rundown. And he's like, oh, we talked about it and realized that, you know, that's probably not the thing. And I said, that person should be lucky they still have a job because if you worked for me and you did that, that would be the last conversation you had with a customer working for me.
Because it's not about— and I'm not trying to say we rip customers off, you know, I, I— what I would do for my car is what I would only sell to a customer, right? But if you say no, you don't need something that the technician is recommending or part of the shop is recommending, you've just now made yourself look like you're not united in what you're taking care of the customer. That adds division and uncertainty to the customer. And in a real easy way to say it, you must be making too much flipping money then if you don't need the commission that comes off of selling what somebody's recommending.
Well, I think one of the things that, that goes hand in hand with that And it's one of the things that we've sort of run into where I'm at now is you need to have a unified— we'll call it a maintenance menu. You know, are we going to recommend brake flushes? Yes. Are we going to do them when? Are we going to do 3 years and 30,000 miles? Great. Well, if it's either or, then if the car comes in and it has 60,000 miles on it, we did a flush at 30, but it's only been a year. It's still due for that flush based off of what we're telling the customer. Now, whether that's right or wrong, that's a conversation that needs to be had in private. Of it, not in the face of the customer. It needs to be decided on.
But if I recommend it 30,000 miles but it's only been a year, and then you get it as an advisor and you say, well, we recommended this but it's only been a year, well, now that guy thinks I made it up.
Yeah.
And it's like, well, no, the important thing is to go, here we understand that age and driving aren't necessarily the same. What if the car has 3,000 miles on it but it's been 3 years? Yeah, that fluid needs to come help. Yeah. So, you know, it's putting that front forward. I talked about this when I was on with you before, you know, you get these advisors, they're terrified of the customers, and that person's sole goal is to be the customer, like the customer-facing representative. And that's one of the things we were talking about, you know, sending cars to the dealer that you have to program and stuff. The dealer doesn't give a damn about that car because your service advisor is the one that has deal with the brunt of it. Yeah.
And so you have inadvertently turned yourself into the middleman. Yeah. With a demanding customer and an unresponsive dealer. Yep. I mean, for what? For— are you gonna mark it up so you're gonna get paid an extra little bump on what you're— it's just not worth it. Yeah. And you should mark it up because you absolutely should.
You're spending extra time, right? Like, if you're not getting any kind of break on the, on the part that the customer would to pay. You're still supposed to make your parts margin. So it's all conversation to have. The advisor that just wants to avoid the easy conversation and just be everybody's friend and buddy, I have no room for them. Because like, I— and again, I worked for a lot of advisors in my career, a lot of them at the dealer, but they are in the aftermarket side of things too, and they are a flipping liability. They are not like— and Everybody, you know, loves them because they've been coming here to see— Jean's my counter girl. They've been coming to see Jean for 20 years. Great, perfect.
Jean, you know, and Jean's daughter now comes here. That's what we want as a shop. But if like Jean is constantly telling people based on their situations, she's modifying what their car needs based— I don't— I— Jean's not who I want out front for me. Jean might be then somebody that I would have like driving my shuttle.
Van, right? Right. Or changing the coffee and greeting the.
People, but not having the conversations about— and this is a slippery slope because like you want to advocate, and I understand, and, but at the end of the day, it's like the old, you know, is it red, yellow, or green? Like this, this shock right in the back of the car. I don't believe in yellow, and I'll never ever, ever, ever, ever fill out one as yellow. It's either green, which means it can.
Go right now, or it needs to.
Be replaced right now. There is no yellow because yellow is like— we forget yellow next time. The next guy that even looks at it, his interpretation of it's really red right now, and it's red. And then the customer's like, why didn't you tell me about that last time? Uh, the last guy that looked at it was— thought it was yellow. You touched on something really interesting, and, and, you know, you said where if I build the ticket, like if I do the inspection, it's my baby, it's my job. This Rack Attack thing that I've talked to some shops that are doing, it all sounds great in theory, but I know that a lot of them have these— what happens a lot every day, David, is the customer, you know, gets a Rack Attack, gets an estimate, the work gets sold, and then the tech that it got dispatched from to comes to them and says, um, this got missed, that got missed, this is what says it was a steering rack that was leaking but it was actually oil that we didn't wash off from the last time we did an engine repair. What do you want to do now? There's the big conversation that keeps having to happen. And so I'm the same way as you, right? Like, if I inspect the car, I'm doing repairs.
Yeah, well, I mean, then that comes back to the, the same thing with the, the angst in dealerships, because that happens, right? So what if that car gets dispatched to the guy that has some beef with me? Exactly. So now he has it, and damn if he's not gonna find, hey, this guy's a flipping idiot, he did this, It doesn't need breaks yet. Like, same thing with— same thing with comebacks. You know, if I screw something up, I want it back. I want it back because I probably didn't do it on purpose, and I want to know why. What I don't want is it to go to you and you feel like, I can finally get him one good time. Yeah. And you go tell the boss, I don't know how this idiot missed this.
Like, it breeds this total level of, of contempt. Yeah. That we don't— it serves no purpose. No. And, and recommendations are a big thing. You know, I've been working really, really hard with this, this younger guy that I told you we have doing our oil changes because he was very much in the, oh, it's a waiter, we just need to get in and get out.
Yeah.
But then a month later, that car comes in for a state and it's like, oh my gosh, this safety inspection needs all this work. Did we tell them last time? No, last time we did nothing. Yeah. And that undermines their confidence in us, but it also means we could have sold some of this stuff last time and maybe some stuff this time. And so there's, there's a, there's a, you know, if, if the ultimate responsibility is gonna lie with me, I don't want anyone else to have their hands in it, you know. And if I diagnose something and you fix it, that's your baby, because you should have double-checked my diagnosis. But I'll be damned if you get paid to fix it and then it comes back and then they give it back to me. And that shit happens at the dealer all the time.
It's like, oh, you weren't here, so he put the module in. Well, now it's back. Well, it's back because when he did the module, he didn't do this. Yeah. Well, he said it's a misdiagnose. We're gonna give it back to you.
Yeah.
And it's like, well, why didn't I do it in the first place? Oh, well, you weren't here. Well, then you should have rescheduled it.
Like, and don't— you know, if they just did a tune-up on it, now it feels different to the customer, or now it's got a check engine light on and it never had a check engine light on before the tune-up, don't give it to me. The guy that tuned up, that's his baby now. I don't care if it's nothing related to him. Give it to them, right? Yeah. But my God, like, if it just had a tune-up and all of a sudden the customer's like uber sensitive to the way this thing dries because they just got lightened over $700 for plugs, wires, and a fuel system cleaning on their Caravan, and now it's doing a little chuggle that they never thought they felt before, or, you know, a little hesitation— that a lot of this is, it's just freaking learning. But if it comes back, don't assign it to me because it's suddenly a big paranoid freaking thing. I remember Oh no, go ahead. One of the last Nissans I ever had at the dealer before I finally had enough, um, this guy across the bay from me, and he was terrible, sold a pile of work on it.
Drivability, electrical, like, I mean, tune-up, fuel system cleaning, all the flushes. He got all of it, and then it would come back with a check engine light on for mass airflow fault. But the weird thing was, and I never got to the bottom of it because they just wouldn't sell enough time— and I say sell enough time like they wanted me to— is the mass airflow code would only happen when the tank was below half a tank. Show me anywhere on the, on the wiring diagram rhyme or reason why that happens. Like, nobody could. It has to go below half a tank before it generates a mass airflow fault. And I'm like, you know, so they're.
Thinking, hey, yeah, that's weird. Maybe evaporative emissions or something. The tank's building a bunch of pressure up and it's somehow making your fuel trims wonky. I don't know.
I mean, I can manipulate the fuel sending circuit, uh, with a resistor. That was a tongue twister. And, and I could get the mass airflow fault to come back, and I.
Did that even that way. Oh, and it just sounds like the PCM's freaking out.
And that's what I kind of said, but I said I'm gonna need like another hour to really— and they didn't want to pay me. And I said then, then I'm done, give it to him across the thing. Well, he can't get through that. I said last week he was good enough to do all the, you know, flushes Got it.
Yeah, I mean, we, you know, you pull history on a car and it comes in with a problem, you worked on it. It comes in with all the gravy, he worked on it. It comes in with a problem, you worked on it. And I would get given tickets, and he's probably listening to this, yes, I'm talking about you, that somebody would do $2,000 worth of gravy on the car, come back the next week with a drivability problem. Yeah. And they give it to me or someone else because, well, I mean, it's not related. And it's like, well, this guy just made $2,000 off this car. Now you want me to fix it, but I can't sell anything on it because he's done run it through the wringer, but he has no liability with it.
Yeah. And I would get tickets where it's like I had worked on it a year ago. In between there, somebody else had worked on it twice.
Yep.
And then they give it back to me as a comeback, and it's like, say the truth. Say that this guy wouldn't figure it out. Yeah. And you know that, so you don't want to give it to him. Well, you don't gaslight me. Don't tell me that it's this.
But Dave, you had the engine out of it.
Yeah, it's like, oh well, he, uh, he just, you know, he didn't put the airbox lid on all the way and now it's got a field trim code. Why am I fixing it? Oh, we'll take care of you. Why didn't he go back to him in the first damn place? If you had your hands on that car less than a week ago, there is zero reason that anyone else should touch that thing until you have looked at it. And that's how you— I've worked on it and I fucked it up, give it back to me. I don't— I wouldn't do that to someone else. That's right, because they shouldn't have to. That should be my responsibility.
That's how you build your processes up of getting better and catching yourself, is you, you find your mistakes. Your mistakes come back to you. I, I remember I had an older TJ, and, uh, it was a 4-liter. It was one of the ones that had that coil rail. Now, I'd worked at the dealer a long time and watched a lot of them get changed, and it never fixed anything, right? So this is like, I don't know, at this point it's like a 12, 13-year-old TJ right? And, and it would misfire when cold. And I walked out to it and I threw the scanner on it, and I'm sitting there watching. I fired up and the O2 did not come online. And I went, oh, fucking needs an O2.
That's why it's causing the misfire. And so, and it wasn't cold cold. She'd driven it over and it sat for about an hour. So anyway, the next morning I go to bring it in and I bring it— I'd start it up up and it has a completely different feel now. And there is dead miss on 3 cylinders. And I'm like, oh shit, that's not the oxygen sensor. So there I go through my— and I go through my diag and I diag the coil rail, you know. And I said— I walked up front with a big plate of crow in my mouth and I said, um, I effed up here, uh, you know.
I, I said this needed an O2 sensor and I said this is the first one I've ever seen that's got a bad coil rail. It coil rail. Well, end up being the coil rail was going to cost about the same to put in as the, the oxygen sensor, right? Um, and so that's what we did. We called the customer and said, hey, you don't need an O2 sensor, um, you just need this coil rail. And she had— her husband had been working on this because he's a bit of a do-it-yourselfer for like months and changed everything because it had fresh plugs in it and all that kind of stuff, right? Well, that lady left with the Jeep. And I still remember they came to me and they said, um, Jeff, Mrs. Smith is out front with her Jeep. And I'm like, oh shit.
Part of me is going, ah, needs an oxygen sensor, right? And then I go out there and she's got a— she's got a box.
Of chocolates for me.
Yeah. And she said like, that was the nicest thing anybody's ever done. That— because I spent this time with her when she did come in to pick it up after the call rail, and I told her exactly where I screwed up, where I screwed up and why. And I, you know, working on these things forever. And so that was a little joke they played on me. But like, I, I still remember her to this day, and I see her Jeep around once in a while, and I wave at her, you know, because I don't work there anymore. But I felt so honored that like she totally got it, what I was talking about, which is like— so, you know, people that are listening, like, if you're— we're not perfect. But if you catch yourself, you know, and you get a chance to catch yourself, then do the right thing.
Like Sherwood says, we have to do the right thing. Walk out and tell them you were wrong, you know. Yeah, it's not a tune-up, it's not going to fix this. Like, I fired it up and it had a long crank, and, you know, the purge solenoid is sticking open, and And you know, that's what all it needs. Be honest with these people, they will appreciate it.
I mean, we've all gotten a car that comes back with a problem that somebody else did, and you go look at the history and you go, how in the world did they ever think that this would have fixed that problem? And I, I wonder a lot, and I've done the exact same thing. I've gone back to my advisor and been like, man, I, I messed up. Like, you know, I, I had a Saturn back when I worked at Saturn. I may have talked about this when we before, but this guy brought this car in numerous times for this problem and we could never duplicate it. And I had completely written it off as this guy's just a nut job. Yeah. And he left the car with me. I drove it for weeks.
I mean, we did everything we could do to this guy. And I was so headstrong that, you know, every time I'd see this stupid car, I was like, great, I get to waste my time with this. And then the last time it was in, the guy came to pick it up and it broke down in the parking lot. Yeah. And we walked out and I said, man, I, I totally— I didn't believe you at all. And he's like, this is what it does. And we fixed it. It was a very simple fix.
And, you know, it's important, like I said before, you know, you, you, you have to be almost fearless to do this job because, you know, you never know what you're going to get, right? They're going to put it in front of you and the expectation is just that you're going to do it. And the longer you do to it, the more that gets cemented in. But you get those gut check moments, and I do think it's important, A, to work somewhere that understands that that's gonna happen. Yeah. And deals with it appropriately. Because I've seen lots of times where the person that never gets it wrong messes one up, and you would have thought that they killed somebody's child. Oh. Versus the guy down the road that never gets it right and nobody really cares.
So that, that needs to be something.
That'S unfair expectations, right? We've talked about that before. It's, it's just Like you said, the guy that is known to screw up, when he screws up again, nobody even blinks an eye.
Yeah, but it's important.
Yeah, that guy that slips that one time or slips one time a month or one time, three times a year, all of a sudden they're like, what's wrong with Jeff?
Yeah, are you okay? But it's important, you know, for, for the, the company and for the customer to have a path to go, hey, I, I was wrong, I messed messed up, let's make it right. Not, well, I have to do my O2 sensor and then explain why they also need this coil, and the customer's paying for something they didn't need. Yeah, I watched a guy put $3,000, $4,000 worth of parts on a car because they had a bad key. And it's like, you know, the, the person doing it should have never had it. Yeah, first of all. But you can't walk that back. No. So that, you know, how is that— that doesn't help anybody.
But I've always tried, and sometimes I fall short, of being able to say, hey, I, I've woofed this one. I was wrong. I can't be expected to know everything. Nobody can. And I think, again, like I was saying earlier, when you look at guys like, you know, Check Engine Chuck and, and Sherwood and all those, you know, they show both sides of it. It's like, hey man, I was so certain it was this. It was this. And And I think people need to understand this is an imperfect science.
The customers should trust that we're going to do the best job we can. And if we fall short, that they're not going to be the ones paying us to learn because that's insane. But the company also has to have a, you know, service information is a big one. How many places don't have all that or Identifix or whatever? A foreman, a leader, somebody that can be, hey, Hey guy, you're new to this, this seems a little out of your wheelhouse, come get me. Yeah, show me how you got to this, you know, so that you can kind of grow everyone together. And I know Sherwood— again, I keep talking about him, I just love their channel.
Oh dude, he's so awesome.
Yeah, you know, they did their young, their young technician thing. Yeah, you know, and just bringing these kids in and introducing them to the environment and then putting out content that says, you know, none of us are geniuses. You know, we're just showing up and doing the best job we can to do the best service that we can. And for him to know that— and I mean, I've seen what he did with the, you know, the tools and the toolbox cart for the, the guy that worked there and the guy at the school, you know, to, to show that, that there's an underlying, I don't know, underlying current of goodness to this. Yeah, really helps to open the door because when I came into this business, I was just a dumb kid. Like, I knew how to do a few things, but I was pretty fearless, and I screwed up a lot. Oh yeah. And I worked with people that would hold me to task for it, because it's important to have your humility knocked down.
I mean, you know, your, your, your whatever, your attitude knocked down. But who would also say, okay, I'm done giving you shit about it. Here's— explain to me why you think it's this. Here's where you went wrong. Great. I've learned infinitely more from screwing stuff up than I ever have from the stuff that got done right. I had a car the other day in for a timing belt, and I did it in like 30 minutes, 40 minutes. And the— my service advisor was like, oh my God.
And I was like, no, you don't understand. There were many— oh crap, it's a tooth off. Oh crap, it's this. Oh, I got my ass kicked. Yeah. And every once in a while, you just get that one that you just— it just goes perfect, and you stand back, and you have to celebrate those things. And I think that's important too. But we need to, we need to have an environment that fosters growth without being penalized for everything.
Because nobody— I mean, the advisors screw up paperwork, oh, the service manager swipes a signature and it's fine. But a technician screws up a diagnosis on a complicated problem and it's the end of the world. Like, that's ridiculous.
They forget to put parts on the RO. They, you know, they, they they, they build them out at cost instead of list, or, or hit the matrix wrong. Or I— again, it's going to sound like I'm picking on them, but I mean, it's like, it's always been the thing for me where it's like, we're holding the technicians to such a high level, as we should. But the— it was just like, we had advisors that are like, well, they're still learning, you know.
Or, well, and then there's one of.
The years and she's still learning.
Like, right, if you want to hold the tech to such a high standard, great. Make sure you're supporting it in other ways. Are you paying them a rate commensurate with that standard?
Yeah.
Are you giving them the foundational stuff that they need? Do they have a modern scan tool? Do they have a, um, what, an auto authorization code so they can get into the real information? Yeah. Have they had someone teach them how to do it? If you can't raise your hand and go, I've provided them with everything and they messed this up, you're as much to blame as they are. You've got somebody that's never done anything related to this specific thing. There's no checks and balances. Your shop culture doesn't foster him getting the other guy. And I, I do it now. I mean, the, the guy that I work with was joking with me the other day. I asked him a question about something and he said, I, I love it when I get to help you because you help me so much.
Like, I love it when I— because I walked over and was like, have you ever seen seen this? And I have a buddy that works for, uh, for Toyota, and I have a buddy that works, uh, has worked on GM, you know, diesel truck stuff forever.
Yeah.
And I call both of them all the time. I called my Toyota buddy the other day and I was like, hey boo, you know I'm calling you, I have a Toyota question. And I've been doing this decades longer than he has, but he's in the middle of it. That's right. And I go, my guy here has this, have you ever seen this? And he's like, yep, it's probably this. And I'm like, oh my God, I love you, you're the best.
Goodbye.
And that's the environment that there should be in every shop. You shouldn't have somebody sitting across going, I know exactly what's wrong with it, but hell if I'm going to tell him. And the fact that that's the culture that exists most of the times is, is the root problem to most of this. You know, if you've got an old guy that's been there forever and is slow and isn't very productive anymore, and you've put him on this island because you're, you know, you're, you're feeding him easy work so he can still earn a living, have that conversation. Yeah, let's go. Hey, you know, Jeff's been doing this for 40 years. Jeff knows more than Steve will ever know. We're gonna make sure we look out for him in a different way than Steve because Jeff's done what Steve needs to do now.
Yeah, nobody ever wants to, to, to broach that. In every shop I've worked at, not necessarily the last one but the ones before, it's like, you know, if you've got an A-tech, a B-tech, a C-tech, and a D-tech, then you need to sit those people down and go I expect a lot from you. We're going to pay you a lot. I don't expect a lot from you in production, but I expect a lot from you in eagerness. Yes, I need you to show me that you're willing to work hard so that you can become a C-tech, then a B-tech, then an A-tech. Yeah, but the dealership also needs to not— or the shop needs to also not put insurmountable hurdles. And tooling's a huge one. I mean, good God, every time I get on the tool truck truck.
I'm just floored by how expensive that stuff is. And that investment from a dealer to do a tool allowance, to do a like a fixed toolbox that you can, you know, here— well, like Sherwood did with that guy, you know, here's a— I mean, what's a $2,000 investment to a dealership? Nothing. It's a rounding error. And but to, to hire a kid that doesn't know anything, dump him next to somebody that's got $300,000 worth tools, he feels like a, like a fish out of water from day one. And that guy isn't being compensated to look after the new guy, so he's the asshole nobody wants to, you know. And nobody, nobody gets anywhere. And so to see that, that places like Royalty get that, and then you look at the other side and you see endless ads for dealers trying to hire people, and it's like, if you had a dealership in one hand and Royalty in the other and I had to pick, I'm working with Sherwood, 10 out of 10, you know. And, and every time he and his people foster that culture— I was listening to a podcast the other day where this guy was saying that he ran this shop and he had a bunch of guys and it started off great and the culture had deteriorated.
And he finally just called everybody in and said, I'm shutting it down, this doesn't work for me, I just can't do this anymore. And it's a, it's a brutal step. But I can totally understand how you reach the point where it's like, we're just going to have to yard sale everything because this just ain't working. Like, you've gone so far down the wrong road, you can't walk it back. And I think, I think there needs to be more effort made in this industry as a whole. And that's why, again, I think, you know, guys like you, it's important. And, and of course, since I first sent you the very first message, my algorithm just eats you up. So I see you everywhere, right? I mean, I message you on Messenger all the time, like, whatever.
But, but I, I can see this evolution to where something that was almost taboo to talk about is now mainstream. Yeah. And, you know, you have guys like, you know, like Sherwood and Royalty and, and all these other guys from the operational end. You have guys like you and hopefully me and other people that are on this show talking about what we see from the the middle. Yeah. And then you have, you know, you can have the opportunity to give a voice to the, the corporate side of it. Like, let's get you in here, let's, let's see what you have to say. But to do it in a way that puts us all at a level playing field, not in the way that you're, you're kowtowing to them for their attention.
Yeah. And that's, you know, that's a slippery thing because like, I, I have to going forward, right? I can reach a lot more people or infect a lot more change, I guess, maybe by having some of the people in the corporate side on as guests, right? But it has to be a very kind of— I have to be very careful how I do it because, like, I love this industry, but I'm not and never have been afraid to or will not call out where I think the big offenders are and where it's gone sideways, right? And, and, you know, and that's going to be a slippery thing because it's not just about money. But I mean, like, when you hear certain things behind the scenes and you're like, you know, some of these people that are responsible for terrible culture and you know how much they're getting paid, and the result of their terrible culture is terrible culture, you just do the math and go, you're not worth spit for what you're doing for business, right? Because of your culture, the way you treat your people. And, and there's going to be a time probably where I'm going to run into some people and have conversations and they are that person. And then I just have to figure out how do I handle the decorum, but at the same time, not bow down and lose my credibility. And that's the trick, right?
The hard part is that so much of that is like a salesman and it's so easy to see the salesmanship bullshit. Real hard to not call it out. I totally understand that.
Yeah, like Jim Farley, I think we all know that he couldn't go out into the shop and manage to even do a set of tires, right? So all of a sudden he's talking about like all the shortcomings in the industry and all— like, I'm sorry, you're not the expert. Like, you're the guy that they put the piece together for and stuck the microphone. But like, you know, all the people that that brought out of the collective and came in and made videos on YouTube and everything like that, it great. Then it got people talking about the industry. But you can't just go to work tomorrow and proceed to do the same thing over again. Like, you have to really— and I— the young man I talked to this morning, I said, like, it's Monday, is gonna be a new day, and you got to think about, like, next week. You know, if you're starting to feel this way, you have to be completely honest with yourself. And you realize, did I do everything I could last week to be the best possible mechanic that I could be.
And if you did, then that's good. And he's, you know, it's funny, he says to me, you know, I'm just trying to be 1% better every day. And like, I steal that from Josh Parnell, my buddy Josh, who, you know, Josh got it from somebody else. I admit some days I'm not trying to be 1% better, you know what I mean? But I'm at the end of the week, I'm still trying to be 3% better than I was on Monday.
So, well, I think all of us, I mean, we want to do a net good, you Yeah, right. And I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of personal accountability that also needs to be talked about. I know lots of techs that have opportunity for knowledge and advancement and simply, I'm not doing that, you know. And you talk about paid training versus not paid. I definitely think dealer or shop mandated training should be paid. Yeah, again, it's that slippery slope of, of expecting something for nothing. You want someone to give up their days, their weekends, their their nights. If, if it has enough value for me to give up my time, it should have enough value for you to pay for it.
That's right. But I've worked at shops that offered that and nobody went. Yeah. And if you're not willing to donate your inconvenience to go, then what are you really doing? You know, the, ideally, the dealership or the shop you work for can provide you with as much opportunity to grow as possible, but there's a personal responsibility there too. There's tons of things. I mean, I do it all the time where I'll come across a system, a function, an operation, and I'm like, I don't think I understand how this works like I thought I did. And I'll sit down and watch a video, uh, Paul Danner, you know, stuff like that, where it's just like, all right, I'm gonna give up 15 minutes to go sit back. And I think you were talking about this on some podcast where, you know, everybody hates the guy that's sitting there on his phone, but it's the guy sitting there on his phone watching a video trying to figure out how to to fix this car.
If he is, then let the guy be on the phone and wonder why instead of that, that guy didn't go to the other guy and get him to show him. Yeah, do you not have that level of talent? I do it today. I'll get something I've never worked on before and I'm like, I bet there's an easy way to do this. I had to do a, uh, do something on a Jeep the other day. I had never done it before and I watched the video and I went to my service advisor. I said, I just watched this dude do this in 20 minutes in his driveway, we're good. But I had no idea. And the fact that there's a resource out there and I'm willing to sit at my toolbox while I'm eating my lunch and watch this guy's video or these couple of videos, you know, you have to be willing to do that too.
And if the result of you donating your own time and your own energy means that you advance to a point that you can go to your boss and go, I'm worth this, or I'm going to go down the road where they're going to pay me that. And you know, you can't expect them to build all of the value in you. So you need to do it yourself. We run into that all the time with, with longtime technicians that have only worked on one thing. Yes, I've worked with guys that were brilliant at this particular thing but couldn't fix their way out of a Chevrolet to save their lives, or vice versa. Yeah, and it's, it's definitely different. But in the type of environment where you're only working on one thing, you should have a pretty comprehensive knowledge base in that building. Spread it around, share it.
Let's, let's bring everybody up. But again, when the flat rate pay and stuff like that, you're training your replacement. I'm teaching you how to steal my hours. I sure don't want to do that. Like, I want to be the only one. And I know you've done it, I've done it. You find a trick that shaves an hour off a job, I'm not telling anyone. You know, I, I figured out a trick on something we used to do all the time at Honda, and I had a guy come over and go, how did you do that? And I was like, oh, I don't know.
And he sat there for 20 minutes just trying to figure it out, and he did. Yeah. And he was like, oh, oh, I see what you you did. And it's like, look, keep your mouth shut because they don't need to know this. Like, nobody helped me. Yeah. And so some of that's just— that's just the games that we play, you know.
I had a conversation, and again, I don't know if you saw it pop up, and we'll kind of close on this. They talked about how the technician wanted like 3 hours of pay to go and learn a system. Okay. And then the shop owner, the same shop owner, said to me, he says, this same guy guy that wanted 3 hours to, to pay to learn how to do this system. And I said, that's a dispatch problem. Personally, I said, like, you dispatched us the wrong tech. And I mean, like, I— in one hand, I'm like, I admire the tech. Well, I don't admire, but I understand why he's saying I need time to understand.
He's telling you I'm not your guy. He's telling you that. But then the shop owner says to me, says, this same guy, we have training next week at Napa after '4 hours. I pay my guys, you know, their rate to go to training. He's not signed up. He won't go.' And I said to the shop owner friend of mine, I said, 'We have a problem in this industry.' And I said, 'Here's the reality.' I said, 'You want something from someone, they're not it, and we're still finding a place for them.' Who's going to draw the line and go first and say, you know, like— because what is essentially happening is he's showing you, telling you, I'm not going to do the investment, it's on you. Now you can decide. And then the same thing, we all bitch and say I should— I'm worth more and I should get paid more.
And Brian Pollack really keeps me grounded with this. It doesn't matter. It's at the end of the day, like, I have to do the work to become better. It isn't just about getting faster, it's about getting better. Like Sherwood and I talked about, it becomes, you know, craftsman again, right? And, and that young man is showing that shop owner that, like, I'm not going to do that, and I'm never probably going to be that, or at least right now in my life, my attitude's all wrong and I'm not gonna be that. If we go to work tomorrow and we keep him in a place, we are just as guilty for enabling it as if we'd have taken it and said, I'm sorry, this is where we part ways because this is what I have in mind for you going forward, and it isn't the same. What's, just give us real quick, what's the challenge or the wake-up thing that you've seen since you came to this side of the industry from the dealer? What's the biggest thing that you catch yourself having.
To like— um, the biggest adjustment for me has been the workload. Okay. You know, there's a lot of downtime, and, you know, trying to turn that voice off in my head that's like, oh God, I'm not doing anything, I'm not doing anything. Yeah. The upside is that I don't do stuff for free, and so the time works out better at the end of the week than I feel like it is during the week. It's been a big adjustment. Um, I had a huge— I have a huge tool collection, so I'm, I'm using a lot more things a lot more frequently. So I've, I've come up short with some stuff there.
Um, skill-wise, um, I got my ass kicked pretty good on a, a diag on a little Ford, God, Fiesta for a no start. Okay. And I've got a, a Jeep that the owner actually owns that has a bunch of like Lin CAN bus issues. That's been, you know, and it's, it's part limited resource and part— is it a Wrangler? It's a Compass.
Oh, okay.
I think, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna talk about that off the air. We will. But, um, but yeah, that's the big thing. The biggest, the biggest thing for me, and I was going to touch on this, I know we're running kind of long, is the quality of parts. You know, not buying dealer parts, oh my God, it is so frustrating. And sure, we're talked on it. You know, you, you can't— you don't get a good enough job or price to buy it from the dealer to mark it up to make money, to be able to cost, you know, to justify the job almost. Yeah.
But some of the aftermarket parts are so bad. Yeah. And it's like, I know that's what's wrong with it. Well, it didn't fix it. No, hear me out. I need another one. Yeah, they're like, you need another one? I'm like, it can't possibly be anything else. Humor me, order me another one.
Yeah. And I got a brake switch for a Mazda the other day from WorldPac, one of suppliers, and it had 6 different part delivery labels stuck to it.
Yeah.
And I said, I don't even need to open it, it's the wrong part. This thing's been returned 6 times. And I opened it up, it's the wrong part. Yeah.
You know, and that's so frustrating. I'd be so scared if it's been back 6 times, even if it is the right part, I don't want to.
Put that one in, you know. And, you know, timing components and stuff like that, the dealer stuff is so expensive, and the aftermarket stuff, it's like you go in and you're, you you've got 3 choices and 2 of them just look like somebody hit a bunch of letters on a keyboard to make a name. And it's like, God, I have to spend 9 hours to tear this thing down to put this in? Get me dealer parts. Yeah, well, if we get them from the dealer, it adds $1,000 to the job. It's like, okay, but we put a 2-year warranty behind this, so how do we want to do this? And I had a, uh, FJ Cruiser the other day. I put a catalytic converter on on like my first week, come back with an exhaust leak and it's leaking at the flange. Yeah. And it was an aftermarket converter.
And I told my boss, I said, it's either the flange is warped or the gasket's crap. And so we ordered an OE gasket and a new warranty, you know, warrantied outlet converter. And the flange was so out of square, Walker. And he's like, how does this happen? And I'm like, well, they cut the flange and then they welded the tubes to it and they warped the flange welding the tubes. Yeah. He said, well, how do you fix it? I said, you got a mill? I mean, that's— you put it together, you torque it back down with a better gasket, and you hope it works. So that's been the real problem. I mean, at Honda, we were getting occasionally bad stuff out of the box or damaged stuff, but man, when you get past like basic, you know, pads, rotors, shocks stuff, any kind of electronic part, it's like, God, do we— can we just get this from somewhere themselves.
And so that's been a big, that's been a big struggle. It was a struggle when I worked with independent before. It's way worse now. Yeah. And I, I don't know what the fix is. I mean, and, you know, and of course what, what we were saying before with all the security gateway stuff, you know, it's like when I, when I started there, we didn't have an auto ID or an auth ID, whatever, set up for Chrysler AutoAuth. And, um, I had my own, but the shop didn't have one. So I have my own scan tools, the shops wouldn't work.
Yeah. And so I sat down with our, you know, our office lady, and we got everything, you know, reset up and rolling and stuff like that. But, you know, thankfully that's kind of some of the knowledge that I've brought to them to say, let's, you know, let's do this. Some of the, you know, crush washers for drain plugs and push clips, it's like, hey, I've found all of these elsewhere for cheap. Let's stop buying these little help Dorman packs. Let's buy these this way. Yeah. And they've been pretty receptive to that, but Chasing parts is the big thing.
Um, I've done this for so long, like, we've turned a couple of things away that, you know, they came to me and it was like, could I do it? Yeah. Does it make sense to do it? No. Yeah. And thankfully, you know, they, they listen to me because they have just as much at stake as I do. Yep. Um, but yeah, I really enjoy the challenge of waking up in the morning going, man, I— oh my God, I had to put a starter in a Lexus LS 460. Paid like 9 hours to put a starter in. It was like up behind the exhaust.
It was a mess. And I, I was in that thing like 80% of the— 90% of the teardown before I even saw the starter.
Yeah.
And I called a buddy that works on Toyotas and I was like, is this as awful as it looks? And he goes, man, it's either going to come apart like a dream or it's going to kick your ass. And when I was looking the estimate up, the all-wheel drive version pays like $20. I guess I don't got to pull the motor, I guess. And so there's always that, you know, that sort of unease where it's like, all right, I'm pretty sure this is what's wrong with it, let's sit down and see what I got to do to get to it. And know that, like, you know, I did an oil pan gasket on a Hemi Jeep the other day where you got to pull the motor up out of the frame to get the oil pan off and stuff like and, you know, you don't have the muscle memory because that's like the first one of those I've ever done. But thankfully, you know, I've got a lot of experience and I have a ton of tools. And so it's really nice to be like, man, if I just had this funky thing, I could get to that bolt. Oh, I do.
As a matter of fact, one of the, the lady I work with came out the other day and I think I had like 11 drawers of my toolbox open. Yeah, she was like, what in the world? And I'm like, look, I'm gonna get this out if kills me. And we did, you know. And, and, and I think they're, you know, we're still kind of in the honeymoon phase, so I think they're enjoying watching me work. I had a parasitic draw car, and I'm out there with a, uh, with a thermal camera, you know, looking for what's hot. And they were just like, oh my God, this is the coolest thing. And I'm like, look, see that relay? That relay is 122 degrees, and this car's been off for 20 minutes. Yeah, there's your problem, you know.
And so it's, it's rewarding to me because I feel like, you know, I can finally sort of use some of what I know in a manner that, that they appreciate. And the guys I work with appreciate it, you know. It's like, what are you doing over here? Let me— oh, this? Yeah. And so that's been nice. I'm sure there's going to be something. I'm sure I'm gonna message you about some Chrysler product at some point and be like, what in God's name? But I'm fortunate that I try not to burn my bridges with people, so I have a network, you know, because it's not— sometimes it's not what you.
Know, it's who you know. 100%. You just have to, you know, and that's the thing I, I said it with Sherwood off the air, you know, I think a lot of us would benefit a lot if we bought a few more parts every month from the dealer because it could open up that channel that I remember when I was at the dealer, and you probably remember it too, where a really good customer that was a, like, a parts customer might call you up and say, let me talk to Dave for a second. I, you know, I run the shop and, you know, uh, and I got one here that's kicking my butt and can I just talk to Dave for a second? Or can I, you know, in my case it was, can I talk to Jeff for a second? Um, I didn't want to do that for everybody, but if the, if the parts guy came to me, parts manager Dean said, you know, this customer buys a lot from me every month and he's got one— I can still remember, he's like, we got this Caravan that when you hit the brakes the radio changes, you know, shuts off. And I went, yeah, there's a splice in floor pan. And he's like, really? And I'm like, yeah, I just fixed one last week. Like, it's a rotten splice, it's backfeeding the ground. And he just kind of looked at me because he's like, because, you know, they already put a radio in it last week.
And I'm like, I, I know, I almost did too, right?
Like, I've done that too.
I, I essentially did because I grabbed the radio out of the van in the bay next to me and I plugged it in. That was still doing the same damn thing. So it's not the radio. But like, I wouldn't do that for everybody. But I mean, so when we And I didn't mind because he bought the radio from us. He wasn't trying to send it back, you know, he wasn't bringing it. It was just like he needed help and I was there to help him. Um, that's why I defend the dealer guys, because I know the kind of skill that you have and I know the skill I have.
And when people get on and start running dealers guys down about they can't do this and they can't do that—.
I don't know, some of those guys are brilliant. I mean, really, just tons of knowledge. And, you know, a specialization, there's nothing wrong with it. That. No, you know, if you're the best rocket scientist, you probably don't know shit about fixing a washing machine, you know. But why would you? But yeah, no, I agree. And I like that with, with, you know, the social media and the TikToks and all, you know, it's almost like— and I'm sure some of these guys just get inundated with it— but I feel like, you know, meeting you and talking to, to some of the other people I've connected with, I've reached out and been like, I had a Nissan that was kicking my ass, and I messaged a dude that I watch all the time do Nissan Huh?
Did you message Fluffy?
No, not Fluffy. I should have messaged Fluffy. No, this was just some random dude on TikTok that posts all these Nissan stuff. And I said, look, man, I watch your stuff all the time. I got a question. If you don't want to answer me because everyone asks you questions, I get it. Yeah, I've been in tech for a long time. I'm a Honda master.
Like, if you ever need a Honda thing, I got you. But here's my problem. And he messaged me back immediately and was like, yep, I know exactly what it is, it's this. And I was like, dude, you are the man. And then like 2 weeks later, he sends me a message and said, I've got an '08 Honda Accord, have you ever seen this? And I'm like, yep, it's this. Yeah. And he's like, dude, awesome. And there's a ton of people that think your knowledge should be theirs for free, and it's important to, to, for self-preservation, for that not to be the case.
But there's such a network of, of people that know so much, and if you can control that and disseminate it in a way that makes sense, we could do all of us a huge favor.
Oh, it's, it's going to be the secret sauce to unlock this industry for for sure.
A lot of those guys have group texts and group chats, and, and it's just like, hey, when the independent I worked at prior has a bunch of locations, and we had like a foreman group text, and you— that's what you do. You'd be like, hey, one of my guys has this, I'm not real familiar with this, but I know, you know, dude at the other store had 5 years at that shop. Like, you know, and it's helpful. Like, there's a million different cars on the road, you can't be expected to know everything about all of them, but I think being able to, to acquire the information is just as important. But you also— it can't be a one-way street, you know. I can't ask you for help and then when you text me ignore it, because that's just a douche thing to do. Yeah. So I think all that's super important.
Well, I want to thank you for being on here.
Um, I don't want to keep your time. Always a joy.
You're going to be back for sure. We have a lot more that we have to dig into. And it's the same thing, like going into— I keep saying, and going into 2024 26, you're going to see a lot more kind of the known guests that have been really made a big impact and impactful and got a lot to say are going to be coming back because it's just, you know, there's certain people that it just clicks. There's good chemistry and they have a lot to say and a lot to offer. And I mean, you know, it doesn't make my job— I don't do it because it's easier, but it's just because it's certain, it just resonates, right? And that's what I want.
And I think you got— it's a lot like therapy, you know, there's something to be had with sharing conversation with someone that's, that's in the same trenches as you are, you know, makes the day a little better sometimes.
It makes me so proud that like you being on my podcast gave you the power to look at yourself in the mirror and, and realize that, you know, it was time to make a move. And I mean, and that's, you know, I catch shit because people are like, oh, you keep telling mechanics to quit. No, no, I don't tell them to quit. Sometimes I tell them to quit, but most of the time I say that.
Sometimes they need to quit.
But there are— but I do tell them, there's a lot of them, it's like there's other options. And that's what I say, there's a lot of other options out there. So everybody, thank you for listening to David and I. Um, David's going to be back. Uh, you know, if you're in the middle of Snowmageddon right now, and, uh, you know, just please be safe, be, uh, be good to one another. You know, if you're, uh, a tech, like I said, we're shooting for 1% better tomorrow, boys. And, um, you know, if you're Advisor, I love you. I do.
Sometimes it seems like I'm picking on you. I'm not. I just believe because I see the potential there that I need you guys to just listen a little bit to what the technicians are saying and give their thoughts some real perspective because it takes a team and it takes a village. And I think if we all bridge that gap a little bit better and learn communicate with each other a little bit better, um, will really, really solve a lot of these problems. So I love you all, thank you for listening as always, and I'll see you again real 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 please join us again next week on this journey of change.
Thank you to my partners in the ASAR 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.
About this episode
David Kline shares his journey of leaving a dealership job after feeling unfulfilled and pressured. He reflects on the impact of a previous podcast appearance that prompted him to reassess his career and mental health. The conversation delves into the challenges technicians face in the industry, the importance of honest discussions about work conditions, and the discrepancies between industry claims and reality. Kline emphasizes the need for transparency and support among mechanics, highlighting the struggles many face despite the perception of lucrative job opportunities.
Original notes
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In this episode, Jeff welcomes David Kline back to talk about his transition from dealer tech to independent. David shares what it was like sticking with a job that wasn’t fulfilling and what finally pushed him to make a change. They dive into the ups and downs of flat rate pay, why shop culture makes a big difference, and how open communication and continuous learning can really shape your career.
Timestamps:
00:00 "Speaking Out Without Boundaries"
20:41 "Finding Joy in Connection"
25:32 "Frustrations of Senior Techs"
41:28 "Matco Boxes Prove Durable"
49:38 "Collaborating in a Family Business"
54:06 Dealership Team Dynamics and Impact
01:10:48 "Effective Management and Workplace Challenges"
01:13:41 "Warranty Pay vs. Retail Time"
01:33:34 "Value, Pricing, and Customer Trust"
01:43:13 "Service Delays and Training Issues"
01:48:54 "Inspection Ownership and Miscommunication"
02:02:17 "The Humility of Learning"
02:10:08 Balancing Integrity and Corporate Influence
02:24:08 "Mechanic's Challenges and Tools"
02:26:03 "It's Who You Know"
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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
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