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Mechanic Retention and Industry Struggles with Codey Taggart, Part 1
Mechanic Retention and Industry Struggles with Codey Taggart, Part 1
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About this episode
Cody Taggart shares his experiences and challenges in the automotive repair industry, focusing on mechanic retention and the struggles of running a small shop. He discusses the difficulties of managing customer expectations, the importance of having trustworthy staff, and the emotional toll of discounting work. The conversation dives into the dynamics of working with family, the challenges of hiring skilled technicians, and the impact of poor management on shop morale. Cody's insights reveal the complexities of the industry and the need for better practices to retain talent and improve working conditions.
Topics:
mechanic retention
shop management
customer expectations
emotional discounting
hiring challenges
family dynamics in business
workplace morale
industry struggles
diagnostic challenges
small shop operations
In this episode, Jeff Compton is joined by Codey Taggart, who sheds light on the challenges within the automotive repair industry. Codey discusses the impact of mechanics' attitudes on job satisfaction and retention in shops. He shares his observations on seasoned mechanics feeling stuck due to limited options and the negative influence of cost-cutting measures by management.
00:00 Trying to fix things in the old building.
07:13 Avoid discounting problems by considering family connections.
10:35 Ensure you're paid for work unrelated to you.
19:40 Multiple repairs, issues with wiring and identification.
23:17 Cost cutting leads to lazy, chaotic work.
28:10 Adapt to best processes, create efficiency.
33:38 Nissan and Ford stores combine, diluting talent.
37:44 Frustration with leadership and long-term employees.
43:29 Focusing on real stories instead of distractions.
51:44 Need to hire for efficient automotive shop.
57:21 Unable to move due to the housing market.
58:58 Issues scheduling installation of a second-floor lift.
01:04:23 Prioritize facility improvements to retain technicians effectively.
01:10:23 Loyalty in automotive shops despite poor conditions.
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Chevrolet Spark
"...ys needed the carburetor cleaned tune up, because spark plugs only lasted 30,000 miles in those trucks ba..."
Car
Tesla Semi
"...we just didn't have the correct equipment for the semi trucks. We didn't have scan tools that would work..."
Car
Dodge Charger
"...isses Smith's car real quick, you know, we're not charger. They don't remember that. Six months, three mont..."
Trying to fix things in the old building.
Avoid discounting problems by considering family connections.
Ensure you're paid for work unrelated to you.
Multiple repairs, issues with wiring and identification.
Cost cutting leads to lazy, chaotic work.
Adapt to best processes, create efficiency.
Nissan and Ford stores combine, diluting talent.
Frustration with leadership and long-term employees.
Focusing on real stories instead of distractions.
Need to hire for efficient automotive shop.
Unable to move due to the housing market.
Issues scheduling installation of a second-floor lift.
Prioritize facility improvements to retain technicians effectively.
Loyalty in automotive shops despite poor conditions.
Select text to request an explanation
I love electrical work. I love figuring stuff out. I love the challenge of it, and I absolutely hated doing that type of work. It was like, it was right up my alley. And also, it was everything that I hated about working on a vehicle at the same exact time. It's a really weird situation, and I absolutely hated it. But, I mean, another part of the reason I hated it, though, is we just didn't have the correct equipment for the semi trucks.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Change Mechanic podcast. And I'm sitting here with a good friend of mine, Cody Taggart.
I was trying to get some stuff done around the house. I was trying to get some stuff done here at the shop this morning, which I made it in here a little bit late, but. So I've got a bunch of stuff I wanted to fix. We got some flickering lights and stuff in here that I've been trying to fix for a while. I need new ballast and a couple of lights. This is a really, really old building, and. And I don't own it, so I'm a little bit hesitant on the type of repair work that I do in here until I get kind of a. Like an approval for certain things from the landlord and, you know, hey, how much of this can I do? And once we get to a certain monetary value, I want to, you know, make sure that, hey, if we're going to put this much money into this building, I need to have a contract for ten years or 20 years or something like that.
And we're only. I'm not even three, four years into this business yet. So at the same time, it's like, do I want to be here for that long to begin with? Is this going to be a good place for me to kind of put that kind of effort into as far as a building and a location?
So, Phil, fill us all in. Where are you located?
I am in Wheeling, West Virginia.
West Virginia. Nice.
So, yeah, we are. It's actually, the city itself is a. It's not a big city, but we are kind of like the middle ground between Columbus and Pittsburgh. We're about an hour out of Pittsburgh, maybe a little bit short of an hour. If you can get right on the interstate without traffic, it's an easy 40 minutes drive. But Pittsburgh traffic is an absolute disaster. So there's no such thing as no Pittsburgh traffic. But, yeah, we're in between quite a few big cities.
We're a little less than 3 hours out of Cleveland also, so we see a lot of through traffic. I mean, most of the traffic that comes through this way are from out of town here, and we actually see a lot of that in the business here as well. And I try really hard not to work on it because it's never. It's never easy dealing with an out of town customer. They're always on their way somewhere. They've got timeframes that they're trying to meet, and you can never win if you're trying to be the hero and get them back on the road. Yeah, unfortunately.
How big a shop?
My shop's tiny. It's just me. One man's shop here. I do have a secretary, which is actually my mother. She was a secretary at a shop that I managed years and years ago, and she went on to do her thing, and I went on to work for other shops after that as a mechanic. Managed another shop after that as well. But ultimately, she was looking for another job at one point, or at least accepting the offer for another job at the same time that I opened the shop here. And about six months after I opened, burnout on the paperwork and bookkeeping and everything and trying to do the work, we ended up.
I talked her and talked to her and she. I mean, she dropped everything and came and she's been my secretary and bookkeeper, office manager and everything ever since. But other than that, it's just me. Shop space is only 600 sqft, so it's just a little two bay garage. We actually have almost as much office space around me here as I do shop space, so. But there's a little bit of room for improvement and growth. I'm actually on the second floor of this building as well. Okay.
It's one of those situations where the. The main road going past the building is, you know, at a certain height, and then it drops down around the back of the building to the. To the bottom floor there. And below us is a massive garage. I mean, I could work on semi trucks down there if I wanted to. Not. Not full trailers or anything, but at least the trucks and everything. Huge, huge garage, massive ceilings.
My ultimate goal, at least for this location, if I stay at this location, is to rent out the whole building and turn the whole thing into a shop as we grow, potentially and preferably buy the shop at some point. The owners never expressed a willingness to sell, but we'll see how that goes in five or ten years down the road.
Yeah. So I always joked with my mom that if I was ever going to step off, and, you know, lots of people told me ten years ago, you know, go and do your own thing. Stop being an employee because you're so burnt out on being somebody's employee that you need to probably start your own. And I used to always joke I'd have to get my mother to be able to work with me because that would be the only, I think, person that could tolerate me in that kind of environment. And I would probably, and, you know, my mom is amazing, but she can be a lot to be around, too. And so, you know, it probably never came to fruition. It probably never will, and that's perfectly fine. But, I mean, it's, it'd be an interesting dynamic.
I'm sure. I'm sure nobody would look out for you as well as mom.
Yeah. That is one of the things, one of the key things that, that worried me a lot when I first started thinking about hiring somebody. Come in and keep the boot books and keep track of the money and everything is, you know, if it wasn't going to be my mother, who could I even begin to trust? Because, I mean, I listen to a lot of content on everything imaginable. I mean, if it piques my curiosity for even a moment, I'm, I'm knee deep in it, just going through it and stuff. And because of that, I've come across so many stories in all different industries of people's managers or bookkeepers or accountants or something, stealing money from them, hiding money from them, stuff like that. I mean, it's, I couldn't even imagine having somebody that I didn't know, you know, without a doubt, that I can trust. And, you know, and we do butt heads. We have our, you know, we have our issues.
You know, I grew up a mama's boy, so we're extremely close. But at the same time, she's, she's just like me. It's, it's really difficult to, to be, you know, working besides somebody who's just like you all the time, every single day. You know, we, we kind of, we have our, you know, our everything. Every flaw that I have, she also has, you know, whether it be our arrogance, how much we, we think we know everything type of deal, always think we're right, you know, I mean, that type of stuff. So when you have somebody like that, that's just like you and you, you disagree on something, the disagreement can be very, very strong and a little bit aggressive from time to time. So we don't fight, we don't argue the way, you know, like, like a bad married couple would or anything like that. But, you know, we, we, we bicker.
And then at the end of it, we're usually making fun of each other or laughing or something like that, but. But, yeah, there's. There's a lot going on there that's. That makes it an interesting dynamic, but.
I think it'd be awesome. I always say, like, I always thought anyway, that that would get away from some of the emotional discounting problems that some. Because, you know, when, when it's family up there with you, hopefully they understand that every time I do something like that, you know, shave time, whatever, knock it down, I'm hurting somebody. So, you know, connected to me. I think sometimes in a traditional business role where they're not related, you know, all the time in the groups, they talk about, you know, advisors will shave time, labor, give away this and that and the other thing to sell the job, not realizing that the end, what it can do to the shop owner, which, in your case, you know, I would hope. I would see that as the benefit. When I always joked with my mom about it is because she would want me to succeed more than I would want myself to succeed. So I would feel like.
And she's a very empathetic person. She's very tuned in, but I get that she would, if I put the price down at this, she wouldn't go back and discount it just because of the empathy for her. She would realize that, like, number one priority is him, you know, not the stranger at the counter. So I. That was always my goal anyway. If it ever happened and it didn't happen, it's fine, but, yeah, and she's.
Actually the voice, not so much the voice of reason, but an ally to kind of fall back on and ask those type of questions to. She understands the business. She understands how everything works. She. My father actually owned a trucking company years ago, just a couple of trucks, but. And she ran all the books for it and everything. And this was way back before I even went to tech school. In fact, he was getting out of it when I was getting into tech school, coming out of high school and stuff, because that's when we saw that first crazy fuel spikes and everything with the war going on in Afghanistan and everything at the time, back in early two thousands.
But, you know, there's a lot of times where I'll, you know, I'll bounce something off of her where, you know, I'm feeling that, you know, that emotional discount coming on, and I'm like, hey, here's what's on my mind, you know, and I'll explain the situation to her, and, you know, and I see both sides of it. So. Well, obviously, because, you know, I'm intimately, you know, versed in the whole situation, and I'll explain everything to her. And she just, you know, she's always got my back on that. Like, hey, you know, you can't help that something like that has happened. You can't help that that part was broken when you got there. You can't help that, you know, that you, engine died or something, you know, battery died while you, while it was here. Just anything like that.
You know, any of those things that we all see, you know, in the shop every day. You know, this stuff happens on a regular basis, you know, as mechanics. We see it nonstop. We all know that it happens so often and customers don't. And you just kind of have to, you know, suck it up and learn how to talk to the customer to explain that to them and stuff. But, you know, and sometimes I do want to pull back on that and kind of do something for him. You know, just take care of it and give it before we give it back to him so we don't have a complaint or anything like that. And she's kind of the one who's like, hey, you know, you still have to look out for you.
You still have to make sure that you're getting paid for the work that you did, and whatever that was had nothing to do with you. And, you know, how to explain that to them so they understand that it had nothing to do with you. Do what you already know is right. Do what you already know how to do and make it happen. And, you know, if they, if they still have a problem with it, it is what it is. It's, you know, it sucks, but, you know, you can't, can't keep putting yourself in a hole for, for somebody else when they bring you, you know, a 20 year old vehicle that's got a nine year old battery in it or, you know, it's got the original starter on it at 220,000 miles, and, you know, you got in it and started it up and, you know, it clicked twice, and then it started, and then when you test drove it and never started again, that's not your fault. You know, she's just, she's, she's really, really a good person to have around for those type of conversations.
That little bit of just confidence that we all need, right? To sometimes do this business.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's. I mean, that kind of support goes a long way just to have somebody who sees the situation, knows everything about it that, you know, and, and she's not being biased towards me because I'm her son. She is just seeing it the same way that I am, and that, that helps a lot. You know, um, if nothing else, it saves me from being one of the ones who get on, on AsOG and ask those questions that we all already know the answer to, but we want to hear somebody else tell us, you know, I have heard it to be here and, you know, help me reasonably make those decisions without, without having to reach out to a bunch of more or less strangers that, you know, I feel like I know a lot of people from ASOC really well, but at the same time, there are still some people I see online once in a while.
Yeah. So as your dad owned a trucking company, is that kind of how did you kind of grow up around working on the trucks, or was that something that you kind of started out as? Because that's kind of my background. Not that my dad owned a trucking company, but I did. I worked a long time on rigs. Right. So is that kind of, that's kind of your background, too, then?
To a certain extent. The, the semi trucks actually came afterwards. So I grew up, my, my dad, he's actually my stepdad, but he came in when I was very young. I was around five years old, four or five years old. And, you know, we've just always, since I was a little kid, we've always been extremely close. You know, my brother is not like me at all. He's, he's sports, and he's, you know, he hangs out with his friends, and he does sports, and that's pretty much his thing. Me and my dad, we went fishing, we went hunting, very outdoors, you know, and he owned several 1970s pickup trucks, Ford pickup trucks, and I was absolutely in love with them growing up.
Um, they were loud, they're obnoxious, they were rough rides. Um, you know, you got bounced around as a big bench seat as a kid. I don't know if any kids born after my generation are ever going to understand or really get to experience. Um, I don't know what it is about the bench seat, but it's just, it's a whole different experience in a vehicle. Sitting in a bench seat, sitting in the middle, right next to your dad, right next to your. If I'm from riding with my, both my parents, you know, be able to sit there with them. Um, they were always a manual transmission, so I always got to shift gears when I was old enough. You know what I mean? I mean, there's a whole different way of growing up.
And I was absolutely in love with those trucks. And then he bought a 78 Chevy dump truck to do work with just around the house and stuff. We had a wood burner, so we were always cutting wood and stuff. So he bought that for hauling wood and stuff. And those trucks always needed work. They always needed the carburetor cleaned tune up, because spark plugs only lasted 30,000 miles in those trucks back then. Old copper spark plugs, you know, they always needed some kind of work. They always needed, you know, the wheel bearings, you know, repacked on them or different things like that.
You know, there's just nonstop work being done in that type of stuff. And growing up, I was always just around for it as a kid. And then eventually, you know, as I was in high school and stuff, then it got to the point where I was, I was, if not helping, at least being there, where I was able to really see the intricacies of it and learn and, you know, watching my dad adjust the valves on an engine or stuff like that. And he was never a mechanic, but he was always him and his father. That's what they did. I mean, they had, they had old trucks and they, they built fast cars and big trucks, but so he was very, very mechanically inclined. And the funny thing is, I've so far surpassed him in terms of mechanical knowledge. Uh, we, we had a lot of battles there for a long, long time trying to work on.
He'd asked me for help on a vehicle, and I'd go up and I'd be, you know, trying to explain to him how to do it. And, you know, his, his go to was always the same thing. I hear, you know, a 50 year old mechanic in a shop somewhere, I've been doing this for 2030 years, and I'm like, yeah, but I've done a thousand of those in the last ten years, and you've only done five in those 30 years, you know. So, yeah, I mean, that, that kind of stuff, you know, it's, it's, it's odd to see that that happen and to be, you know, part of that type of situation, but that's really where it came from. And then he went into the semis and, you know, we maintained him. We really didn't do any of the work on him. But, you know, I mean, he was. Those semis, they see so many miles and hours and stuff.
We were changing the oil and grease and everything. Every single weekend when he was in town, we'd go up to his father's garage and go through the whole maintenance program every weekend. So I didn't really get to work on any of them or anything like that. But we did. We did a massive amount of the maintenance. And, yeah, that's, that's, that's pretty much where it all started. I can.
I can remember the moment when I eclipsed my father. My father wasn't attack, he was a body man. But I was like, it was so funny because it was like he, we fixed everything ourselves around the house. Even though he was a body man, he could still, you know, I remember changing an engine out in like a 1983 Pontiac something when we were just. Because it blew up and he wasn't going to pay a mechanic. We called a mechanic. He had a mechanic friend, obviously, came over, we did it a Saturday and done, you know, and I can remember I was probably only ten years in, and it was like a situation that he was just dropping the keys off to me and saying, here, go through this thing for me and fix it, and, you know, drop. Let me know what it costs.
And fine. And it was, it was a funny dynamic, right? Because it was like, you go, but it's one of them things, you do it every day versus somebody that just does it occasionally. Right. Or as, versus. As a profession. And, yeah, you really develop those skills fast. It was, it was pretty cool, the trucking thing. I spent so many Friday nights and one of my first jobs greasing trucks and trailers for years that I was just like, I could still probably dump on a creeper and knock it out in such a fast time because I just, I've done so many, you know, they were cool.
I liked working on, on them. It's a young man's job. It's heavy, but absolutely. I wax nostalgic a lot about the trucking industry and what it's become. And I miss the old trucks. I really do. And I miss the, you know, the way the drivers were and, you know, it's just different. It's.
It's different now, and it's going in a place that probably, it'll never get back to, you know, that kind of way. It was a lot more, you know, owner operators now versus. There's almost no operate owner operators up here. It's all, you know, company drivers. And it's a different thing and it's a different way of doing business. And I'm not saying that it's wrong. It's just different. And I miss the old trucks with all the old chrome and the way they sounded and the way they smelled and, you know, it's just a different type of person.
And it was pretty cool. I was on the, on the end of it, I guess you could say in terms of owner operators, we had a lot of customers that were owner operators. It really said something because you, if you were an owner operator, you had a lot of them as customers, it's because your reputation was good.
Yeah.
If a lot of company, it was because you were cheap.
Yeah, that definitely makes sense.
And, and that was the difference. And the shop that I worked in, we had both, we had good fleet accounts and we had a lot of owner operators. And that really said a lot about my boss's ability to actually do the job well. But, you know, I would I go back to it. No, I wouldn't go back to it now. It's too much lifting. It's too hard on the body.
But, yeah, it's my biggest issue with the semi trucks is I didn't really get into the, repairing them until recently. Like I said, when I went into the oil field, that was a large portion of my fleet. We were, I was working on Frac pumps. I was working on a lot of oil field equipment. But I also had up here in Ohio, where the shop was located, we had something like 60 or 80 Ford pickup trucks of various different models f all the way up to like, f stuff. But the semi trucks we had, they were all upfitted. They were all a little bit older. They've been rewired a dozen times already.
They've been worked on a dozen times already. And everything that I put my hands on, I had to figure out what the last couple guys did first and then how to fix that because it was. So many of the issues were an electrical problem that was wiring that had already been fixed before. And I don't know if it was like this on the older ones that you might have been working on, but a lot of the ones that I seen, all the wires are also the same color. You know, you have to find the tag on that harness if it's still there, because the truck might be 1015 years old, that tag might be gone. You had to find the tag on the wire. You know, if you're looking at something under the dash, you've got a dozen clusters of wires that you're trying to figure out where. Where something goes.
So you can test to see if it's got power or whatever. It was an absolute disaster. I love electrical work. I love figuring stuff out. I love the challenge of it. And I absolutely hated doing that. That type of work, it was, it was like it was right up my alley. And also, it was everything that I hated about working on a vehicle at the same, same exact time.
It's a really weird situation, and I absolutely hated it. But, I mean, another part of the reason I hated it, though, is we just didn't have the correct equipment for the semi trucks. We didn't have scan tools that would work on them. And they talked about buying a new scan tool for our shop up here because the company I worked for was out of, well, the company I'm talking about right now, anyway, it was out of Texas. Another company I work for was out from out of Oklahoma, and neither of them had the equipment. The one company had a scanner for some of their semi trucks down in Texas, and. But that was it. We had no way to scan anything up here.
So a lot of stuff was, you know, I'd call the towing company that also does heavy duty work, and they'd come out and they'd scan it just so I can get the codes and the information out of it. And then I'd go to work trying to figure it out. And then if there's something I couldn't figure out, it would go, go to the other truck, uh, truck shop. But, um.
Oh, so sorry to cut you off. How did you transition out of working on cars to work going to the oil field? Because that we kind of talked a little bit. Was there, like, was it, was it just frustrations with the automotive side? And you're like, I gotta wash my hands of this. I've had enough, or.
That is where the jaded mechanic comes in. Yes. Um, when I heard you first calling yourself the jaded mechanic, uh, actually, I think, uh, I heard Lucas call you the jaded mechanic, or at least make, make reference to you're so jaded with the automotive industry, and, you know, talking about how you were ready to just walk away and everything, and after being, I think you went to vision or something along those lines with those guys. Something along those lines is what kind of brought you back. And this is all. This is all when I first heard who you were and everything before, long before the jaded mechanic podcast and stuff, and that's exactly the way I felt. I was so jaded on the whole situation. I have worked for over a dozen shops, and most of them have been absolutely terrible.
And the couple that weren't terrible very quickly became terrible because they got to a point where they'd, like, maxed out their potential for that place. And the only thing they could do is charge more money and cut costs, and they try to do both. And every time they start to cut costs, it comes with a management change. It comes with process changes, it comes with cutting out certain things, limiting how many gloves you can use a day, limiting how many rags you can use a day, getting rid of certain equipment that they had that they were using for certain things. Scanner, aftermarket scanners. So you couldn't work on used cars, which luckily, I always had my own. Yeah, it comes with so many cost cutting strategies. It slows down your work so drastically.
And then it's not even just the cost cutting stuff either. It's everybody getting lazy behind the front counter, too. You know, for a good example is one of the shops I worked at, the best shop that I ever worked at in terms of how much money you can make and how clean and organized and smooth the workflow was. They bought another dealership, and instead of hiring another management set to go kind of take over this other failing dealership and turn it into something better, they just took all of our guys and sent them down there and brought in all new people to our shop. So all of the procedures went completely out the window. Everything, you know, we had, our worst mechanics in the shop were turning 50, 60 hours easily in a week, and it just all went to hell literally overnight. You know, simple, simple procedures. Like when you get a job approved, you know, all the details are on the back of the repair order.
When you get it approved, it's highlighted and okayed, and then that goes to the parts department. Parts are ordered, and then that goes to the mechanic. When the parts are here. That went out the window. Then it was just the service writer to walk back with a work order that had ten estimates on it, you know, 510 estimates on it. However many, only two things would be approved. And they just hand it to you and tell you what to go ahead and do. Nothing's marked, nothing's okay.
Nothing's highlighted. And then you're in the middle of another job. You got to stop. When you finish that job, you got to go back up to the service department, ask them what's been approved because it was an hour ago, you don't remember 2 hours ago, and then they don't remember because they didn't mark anything. They got to go back into their system, their notes, and figure out what was approved. And, you know, are the parts ordered yet? No. You order the parts. Well, I didn't order the parts because you just brought me back a paste paper and said, go ahead and do it.
So. So then you got to go in the parts department and have that stuff done, and then it turned into such a shit show. And that was one shop, and I've seen that happen, or very similar situation happen a couple times before I even went to that shop. So I saw all of this happening, and I saw it. I saw it before it even started to happen. The moment they took our management away and they brought in. A lot of it has to do with the business consultants they bring in, not, not coaches. It's a whole different thing.
Whole different consultants they bring in. It's all about how much money can you make, how. How many pennies can you make off of every dollar that a customer or customer spends. And that's where all the cost cutting comes in. That's where all the procedure cutting comes in. That's where it comes to. Let's pass everything down onto the mechanics because we don't have to pay them for that because that's not a job.
That's right.
That's not something we're selling to the customer. That's, you know, that's. We can have them do that. We don't need to hire. We don't need to have this hourly guy do all that stuff. We can have the mechanic do that, you know, and it'll only take them 1015 minutes. What's ten or 15 minutes from eight different, ten different techs? You know, six, seven, eight times a day? That's a lot of money the place is losing. And then a year down the road, they have no clue why they're just hemorrhaging money.
And it's because they. They've ruined such a good thing that they had, and then, you know, they can't keep the mechanics anymore. They, you know, this. This particular place had guys that worked there for years and years, and a couple of them still work there, but most of them are gone. You know, they worked there for years, and within a year to year and a half after this all happening, you know, everybody just scattered. They, you know, they saw it wasn't coming back. There's no way for them to. To keep making what they used to make.
I'd love to be the fly on the wall in some of the meetings when it's like they start to see the turnover numbers go up and they do nothing about it because it is the biggest red flag now. You're always. When you bring in a new manager or whatever, you're always going to have. Sometimes some people are going to be like. Because they were I had it really good, and I know that that's coming to an end, so I'm gonna move on down the road, see guy after guy or gal after gal, come in and be like, well, this is my notice. I'm done. Like, you obviously broke, if you want to call it the gravy train or whatever, you obviously, obviously broke it. And I'm not saying that change can't happen.
That's just. That's a. That's a myth. You know, it has to happen. Things have to improve. Change is inevitable. But, like, the turnover thing, I almost thought, I used to joke, it's like, if you bring in a management personnel, you almost have to have them set up where it's like, if you have three mechanics quit, they don't get to keep their job. And people look at me like, that's crazy talk.
Not really. You know, if. Because if you were at a certain level with those three and they quit because of a leadership thing, what, did you have a contingency plan in place and kind of know that they were going to quit and it was going to have to get bad before it would get good. That's a different thing. But if you bring them in and three of your top people just walk out, you probably made a mistake in who you picked to put in that role. And I'm not trying to say tech should go unchecked, but it's not what I'm trying to say. But it's like, if you don't have that contingency and accept that, okay, I'm going to bring this new manager in. He's going to be, you know, knuckling down.
Some people are going to box, some people are going to go. If you don't have that in a contingency and you sit there with a shocked look on your face with some really good people walk out, you're probably in the wrong business. Because we're easy to understand, right? Like you said, I'm a stickler in process, too, you know, like, because for so many years of getting hammered with the flat rate idea and the production and the time that I'm. I forced myself to be that way in about production. I'm not production based processes, anything like that, outside of anything else in my life. You know, like, when I do anything else in my life, I don't focus on the process, but as soon as I walk into the job, it's like a switch flicks, and I'm all about the process, and people go, well, you don't follow your process. No what I follow is your process. But if it's not the most efficient way, I tend to come up with my own.
And sometimes it drives people nuts. But it's about efficiency for me. You judge on my efficiency and my ability to then produce. That's why if your process doesn't work, I'm not necessarily going to grab onto it so tight and, you know, uh, blind allegiance to it, because it doesn't work. And I'll show you that it doesn't work. And it just. The jaded thing. Yeah, Lucas came up with that, um, and just rolled with.
I mean, I was the one that said I'm jaded after so many years, but, I mean, I can remember a good manager I had years ago said to me, he said, as soon as you have a tech that works for you become disgruntled, you might as well end that relationship. Because once they're disgruntled, you can't get them back.
Oh, 100%.
And I am.
I've been a perfect example of that. I mean, there's. I've told people before, you know, the moment that I decide that I'm going looking, it's already done. You can't get me back. It doesn't matter if you offer me double the money, I'm. No matter what you offer me, I know that situation is going to come back eventually. It doesn't matter how much money you offer, it doesn't matter how many promises you make about change. You were that way for a reason.
And after however long time, if I stick around, you're going to get back to that way. At some point, whether it be shorting people on hours or shorting people on money or, you know, I mean, I could talk for hours and hours about the. The type of stuff that I've seen in shops, ways that they swindled money out of, flat rate text. I mean, it's been. It's been absolutely outrageous. And I've actually. I had that conversation with somebody that. That I worked for one time, and he asked me, you know, what it was going to take to get me to stay.
And I said, nothing. There's nothing you could do, because no matter what you do, you've already shown your cards, you've already shown exactly the type of person you are and exactly the type of thing you do. And if I stay, even if you can't do things that way, you're gonna find another way to screw me out of my money. That's right, because that's what you're here to do.
So it's the only method they know is to trim cost, right? It's trim cost. Trim cost, trim cost. Get the technician to do more for free or more for less. It's like I can remember. So the last truck shop I ever worked at, I put my resignation in to go work at the Nissan dealer. That's how bad it was. And three years, I'd asked for a raise. Couldn't get a raise.
Couldn't get a raise. Watched all the other people around me kind of get brought up their family and get raises. And it's like you're going behind these people fixing their stuff or still having to do the hardest, you know, the skilled labor versus the muscle labor, and you're watching them get paid more, and you're like, this is. This is B's. Like, I solved the problem. Yeah, they could put the part in, but I solved the problem. We wouldn't even know what to do if it wasn't for me. And I watched it.
So when I gave them my notice, I said, I wish you'd come to us. And told us. I said, excuse me. We've been in the same office three times in the last two years, and I felt like I've said to you, and then you go a little bit, you know, or not at all. You tell me, maybe in six months, and I would go back to work. Well, here it is. And now this is my answer, and I'm done. And they'd say, well, what would what? Same as you.
Well, what would it keep? What would it cost to get you stay? There is no money at that point. There's no money amount, because I know that. And this is for something for text to consider. If you do a negotiation like that and they come up with a figure, realize you just drew a great big target on your back, because you now get under the microscope, mister, way more than anyone else, because it's going to. They take it as an ego blow, right, Cody? And it's like, look at what that guy, you know, swindled us into doing. I'm going to. They're going to needle down at. They're going to drive you.
And I saw it happen. I saw it happen at that same shop. I saw. I've seen it happen at other shops. It's such a stupid way to do business. It really is. I don't. I don't understand it, but, you know, I.
The turnover thing's such a red flag, you know, if you've got people that you bring in a management role, and I saw there's dealer groups, literally, that operate where they have a management team, they buy a new dealership, they bring that whole team in, dunk them in there, do whatever it is they do, bring it up, and then they take that team and they go on to the next one. I saw it happen in Ottawa, the early two thousands. That's how they were doing it. And it, it works because that management team comes with the processes that, you know, the Sops and everything that make it work. They want that dealer to run just like the other dealer. Doesn't matter if it's order work, it.
Works for that new dealership, and that's the only one that works for. And everybody else hurts.
But I saw that when I was at the last, the Nissan store. They brought it all over to this people all over from the Ford store that they don't, and brought them into the Nissan store. And, well, that forged store didn't continue to do what it used to do. Maybe it kept up, you know, to where there was, but it just, you're taking all your talent and you're spreading it too thin, you know, build that talent. And why is it not happened? Because I think a lot of people when they go to a second location or a second dealer or whatever, they don't really know. Like they always go, it was just a combination of people and the chemistry that, you know. Yep, that's some of it. But there's also that you're not, you're not looking at the processes that made it successful.
And sometimes it's not transferable to the next one. It really is not. It's just a chemistry, it's a location thing. But if you can needle down to what the processes are, yeah, you can take it and replicate it, but a lot of time they can't because they don't pay enough attention. And the people, the keep, the people are key. The person that came up with process, that's a key person, right? You can steal the idea, they can move on, whatever, but if you don't make it your process, you're, you're foolish. You're absolutely foolish.
And that's where, that's where a lot of the problem comes in too, is when they start moving those people around, you've got people who know the process. Some of them came up with the process, they know the process works. They're okay with doing the process. You move them to somewhere else. Even if you keep the processes at the previous place, you have to make sure that you put people in there who can learn the process, who understand the process and who are willing to do the process. That's the other thing that I've seen that's failed over and over again is some places just don't enforce the processes. They'll tell you over and over to do it. I worked at a place that here local that has their own.
They own a half a dozen dealerships. And as the general manager of all the dealerships, when he would come in to our dealership that I worked for, everybody would be like, all right, we have to do this. And this. We just got to get through these next two days while so and so is here. And then when he's gone, we can go right back to doing. It's like that's. We're doing it this way because it actually works. That's why the man wants it to happen that way.
Because all these other dealerships that they own are extremely successful, except for this place that they bought. They bought this other dealership that I ended up working for. They bought that dealership because it was a failing dealership. And they hired me, and they hired a sales manager, and that's the only other people they put in this. In this dealership. They didn't fire anybody except for the sales manager. They didn't get rid of anybody else. It was all the same mechanics is the whole same service department that ran this place into the ground.
It was everybody except for the sales manager. And I was a new tech they added on, and that was it. And, you know, two years probably. Well, it's longer than that now, but, I mean, I was there for over six months and nothing changed. It was the same place that it was when it was struggling to survive. All they did is raise their prices a little bit, so they weren't struggling to survive anymore, but people still weren't showing up. People were still going there and buying the vehicle and then driving 15 miles to the other Chrysler dealership to get the work done because their service department was so much better.
Yeah, I was in the opposite. For me, we couldn't sell a car, but in Ottawa, we had people from the other side of Ottawa. We're talking like 40 miles down the highway, the other side. And a million people between then and there, you know, four other dealerships who drove to our dealership because our service department was so good, they would go and buy it way over there because the prices, you know, their sales staff actually wanted to move units. We had a sales manager that had his head up his butt and he's like, or actually fixed up, and sales manager both had their heads up, maybe each other's butts. But it was a situation of they kept looking at, I can't sell it for that. I don't make any money on it if I sell it for that. Meanwhile, the bank is reaping interest every minute on this inventory.
And that's all being shared by everybody, right? That's the part that drove me crazy. So sales didn't have to move it until eventually it was like the numbers got, you know, because you go to the well so many times, and then it's like the numbers just tank. And that dealership got sold or bought out. And then again, ten years later, after I left, bought again, you know, because it's the leadership, a lot of the leadership that I was when I was there, they stayed. And then they wondered why, under this new owner, it's like, I'm wondering why that's not happening. There's your sign right there. It's because the people that you have that have been there 20 years, and I always laughed because it was like, sometimes it's just a situation of up here, when we get rid of a long term employee, you got to pay them severance unless they do something that's like, really, I'll even say illegal, you've got to pay them severance for. If you terminate them.
It's part of the labor laws. So I saw guys that once they had ten years in it, they almost. You couldn't do anything about them, especially in management, because to pay them out, ten years severance, you might almost pay them a year's salary. I can remember my service manager after, like, 24 years, something like that. Punted and, of course, tried to get not paying him severance. Well, he took him to court and he got his money. And he deserved it. He deserved it.
Cause he'd started as, like, a tech, gone through an ownership change, another ownership change. Worked his way up to service manager position. He was a good service manager. And then, of course, but he would be the first to tell the sales staff, you guys are incompetent. We need to be moving vehicles. They didn't like to hear that.
Oh, yeah.
And then. So it just was like, no, let's get him gone. Well, he got what he was owed, and it was good for him that he did, because he deserved it. But, man, you know, you see all the other kind of people, like his successor still there. His successor I've seen run off countless texts, you know, and still there now, maybe in the people above it, look at him and go, oh, he's doing a good job. Talk to your people on the floor. Really see what their, what their opinion of that person is a, that leader. Like, this is what's so good about these conversations in the, in the groups is we're starting to see a lot more people, you and I, before we caught on, we're starting to see a lot more people kind of be a little more forthcoming about what they really think of the opinion of a lot of leaders in the industry are.
And it's not painting the great picture. Right. And that's, there is a culture change that's happening. A lot more people are seeing that. It's not being a boss, it's being a leader. But there's, like the post yesterday, you know, somebody asleep in a class, you know, like, it's not a good look.
Well, I mean, one of the issues we, that I see anyway, with, with the ASOG group anyway, is, you know, and I think you might even made a comment about it that I was talking to you about in one of the posts on a group is a lot of those owners have been fantastic owners, and maybe they've never worked for a place that wasn't a good shop. So you have that coupled with, you know, a lot of the people, at least the active members of that group, are really stepping up and they're really becoming, you know, what we want to see the whole industry become. They, they keep forgetting that they're only three to 5% of the shops in the United States, never mind the whole world, Canada and everywhere else. You know, that's, that's something that I have no issue reminding people of. You know, I see those comments. Come on. Well, you know, I don't think it was like that. That seems a little bit far fetched.
And I'm like, you know, I make my comment about. No, like, you guys have no clue how bad it actually is out there. Like, I've worked for over a dozen different shops, and as I said earlier, most of them were that way. Most of them. All of the problems that I had at the worst shop that I ever worked for were the same problems that I had at all the other shops I worked for.
It's just the address changes.
Yeah, that's it.
You know, and you're right, and I have some good friends that are shop owners, and we talk a lot in a group, and sometimes they get probably a little sick of me talking all the time, and they go, well, that's not how I run my business. I get that. Yes, you're right. It's not how you run your business. But just like you didn't realize that the common thing used to be with flat rate Texas. I'll get you on the next one. You'd never heard that because you didn't run your shop that way doesn't mean that a million other techs that I haven't talked to in the last ten years, they'll all put their hand up and go, yep, that's common. Happens every day in their little bubble.
It didn't happen because they had better processes, a better culture, better procedures in place. It didn't happen. They were much more about. But, you know, we had that conversation this morning. Techs are sacrificed nonstop for marketing. They're sacrificed for numbers, they're sacrificed for profits. And they go, well, I can't understand why you'd ever want to shave labor. Because we're all making less profit.
I know, but it happens every day. If it gets the job. Right. Because then we fall into that toilet bowl race of car count and do whatever it can to get the job.
Yeah.
And he goes, I don't understand why these mechanics are so disgruntled.
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah. I mean, and there's. I told you this before where, you know, I have issues listening to your podcast, not because an issue with your podcast, but because I can't listen to it and catch everything. Because I've lived through so many things that I hear guys on your podcast say. And when they bring it up, you know, I don't talk about this stuff to other people. So when. When I hear it on your podcast, it's the first time I've really thought about it very much since the last time I experienced it. So my mind just goes.
And I. And I'm thinking about that time that this happened, or I'm thinking about that other time that this other thing happened, you know, and then I have to shit, you know, go back through and rewind your podcast because I just missed three minutes of it because my mind's thinking about my own experiences. Yeah, you don't get that. And then have somebody tell you that that's not the way it is. You know what I mean? When you know how it is, you're talking to these people, they're not getting these stories from other people on your podcast. These are these people's actual stories. And you're not hand picking these people out of a group of, you know, it's. This is not a Facebook group.
You're going to. And saying, hey, I want the most angry, disgruntled, jaded people in this group to come on my podcast? No, these are just. These are good techs who've been taken advantage of for their whole career. And they've. They're, you know, whether it's because they're the ones who are the only ones in the. In that shop that would stand up and talk about it. So they had issues with management or, uh, they're just that good of a tech, and they were always taken advantage of. You know, one of my biggest issues was I was the only guy or one of the only guys who could diagnose anything.
So I got everybody's comebacks. You know, I got everybody's mess ups. I got all the problem vehicles. You know, they were never selling diag. I was constantly doing stuff for free on other people's comebacks and stuff like that. And it was always all, we'll get you on the next one, or here's a stack of ten pdis for you to do so you have five more hours of work to do tonight to make up that time we didn't pay you for. That's how we're going to take care of you. You know, stuff like that.
You know, these guys have all lived through the exact same thing. That's, you know, we're hearing the same stories from all these different people. And if you're hearing that many stories from that many people on this one podcast, guess how many people all across the world, all across the nation, and all across Canada and United States everywhere have experienced that exact same thing. I've seen that. I've seen that in a dozen different shops that I've worked for in three states.
You know, even the. It's not like, think about the people that don't listen to the podcast aren't in ASAg, aren't in changing the industry that don't even know these kind of conversations are not happening.
Yeah.
Just going down nose to the grindstone every day, hating this industry. Right. And I'm not putting all this out there to try and trigger people's PTSD's. I'm not. There isn't a script that says, okay, when you got to get on here, you got to tell me this story, because we got to reiterate how you got screwed, because otherwise, there's no. There's no platform. That's the furthest thing from the truth. As soon as I started telling my story, I'm bombarded with people that want to share.
And I, like, I talked about it just yesterday, and I talk about it all the time. It's so therapeutic for me to come from where I came from. Like, if it wasn't for the podcast, I still wouldn't be wrenching on cars. I was so done, right. I had to get out just like you. I was so done, I would have done anything else, taking a massive pay cut just to get away from it, because I was. I was fed up. I couldn't do it.
I. I hadn't peaked in terms of my ability, but I saw no end in sight about the more that I invested in myself, that it was going to reward me in any way, shape or form, and I was. That I'm done. This is what you get. This is the. This is the level of tech that you get for what you're willing to pay for.
Yeah.
And it's still a motto I still live by, is you get what you pay for if there's no. And it's so hard because even now, when I'm not paid on a flat rate system, I'm paid just hourly, right? Even now, I get triggered when I see that there's no labor on the line. They just want it done because immediately my head goes to. I'm still judged on my production. Right. They don't remember that they had just check out misses Smith's car real quick, you know, we're not charger. They don't remember that. Six months, three months.
Whenever your evaluation comes up that they did that, it's not documented. So that's the whole thing for me was, it's like, the commission based idea is such a scam. It's such a. It's not a scam. It's a rigged game, is what has.
Become a scam because of the people who are in charge of it. Yeah, it used to be fantastic. I used to love flat rate. I worked at a couple of places that, like I said, they were so smooth, you. You wouldn't want to work any other way. You know, what you could accomplish in a 40 hours workweek at a very well organized shop is you can't make that kind of money any other way unless you were working for one of those shops that paid you with the expectation of turning those kind of hours, and then they were paying you like $15, $18 an hour because, hey, you're turning 60 hours a week. You're making good money. You know, work that out for how many hours you work.
That's how much you're actually making an hour. Like, no, that's not how it works. That's not how. That's not how that pay works. You know, you're, you're still, you're taking my, you're scamming me out of money on, on the hourly rate at that point, rather than cutting my hours to sell a job. You know, it's, you're still taking money from me in some way or another.
Yeah, they're rigging the game and, and I understand why it has to happen and there's a balance and act and all that kind of. I get it. I totally understand. There's a whole bunch of expenses that come into running the business. And that's the thing they say, well, technicians don't understand the, you know, what it takes to run a business from the expense reports. No, we don't. You're right, I don't. You know, we don't remember every time that the lady that answered the phones, she has a, she has to get paid, you know, all this kind of stuff, you know, but at the end of the day, we're simple creatures.
We know that if the job is supposed to take an hour and supposed to pay an hour and we can do it within an hour, that's what it's supposed to pay. We can't. All of a sudden, it's like I can remember the last, you know, moving to the last dealership and they're like, oh, you know, alignments are going to come down in price for payout. They're going to go up in price to the customer because we got you a new machine and you can do them faster. Wait a minute. The machine still doesn't do really anything different for me in terms of speeding up the process. I still have to do it, you know, it still takes the same amount of time. I still have to go and get the torch and heat up the tie rod nut to be able to adjust it.
I still have to do all that. Don't tell me that, like, oh, there's little things that come on, like, and then you realize that it's like they're not buying equipment to make us more efficient. They're cutting our time to pay for the equipment. Yeah, it isn't my equipment, it's yours. So I finance that for you. It's no different. I say it all the time. In marketing, if we're known as a shop, you see it all the time.
People are like, I love this shop, right? They check out my car all the time. They don't charge me. Guess what? That technician is the one that's doing your marketing, right? And it's shop owners. Like, what a crazy thing to say. No, it's not. You talk to how many shops that say, I do no marketing. All. It's all word of mouth.
Right? It's just reputation. Cool. Why is that? Well, because, you know, we don't beat them for this and we don't hammer them for that. That's all your techs that are doing that for you. I mean, it's your techs, your advisors, everything else, but it's. It's a conscious decision then that we're going to do some things that we're not going to charge people for. It all has to be agreed upon. I have no problem with that.
If everybody's on board with, this is the process, this is the culture. Cool. But I'm never going to be about, well, you know, the job says it was supposed to pay 3.5. We did it for three to get the job. I'll never be about that at that point because I'm either judged on my production and my efficiency, or I'm paid on my production, my efficiency. You can't doctor that number, right? You can give the parts away, then it costs. Nobody ever wants to do that, right? They never parts markup, ever.
Oh, that'll mess up my numbers on the back end. Well, it's messing up my numbers on the front end when you cut the labor off.
Exactly.
It. So when I get a paycheck that's only so big, I can't afford to take that pay cut. You guys are getting a paycheck based on everybody's hours in the shop and, yeah, the shop might only make a small percentage of that. But change your numbers and stop cutting my labor, because I can't afford that pay cut.
Yeah. So you don't have an employee right now?
No, I really want to hire. I really need to hire. I'm in a position right now where we've got, we've got tons of work, and every time anything slows me down, the whole shop comes to a complete halt. You know what I mean? If it's a part that doesn't show up or a part that's wrong for some reason, or, you know, like I said, I stepped out of the industry for five years, and even though I'm three years back into it now, owning my own shop, there are things that come up still that I need to go, and I need to make sure that whatever parts I'm putting on the estimate are a quality part that I'm not going to have to warranty out in six months or a year or two years, because I do a three year, 36,000 miles warranty, which I'm actually in a couple years, if the warranty stays as low as it is right now, which is almost nothing, I'm going to bump that up to five years and at least 50,000 miles because we're using almost exclusively OEM parts. Most of the stuff that I get bad is bad. When I install it or within a few months of installing it, three years in, I've had nothing go bad that was like a year or two or like, just before the warranty ended or anything like that. So if we continue to see that kind of pattern of, you know, as long as I'm using denso parts for electronic stuff and it keeps holding up, you know what I mean? That type of stuff. As long as our brakes keep holding up, as long as I'm, you know, I'm thorough and do everything I need to do to make sure that the brakes are going to hold up for 50, 60,000 miles without any issues whatsoever.
Using, you know, good quality and the parts suppliers don't cut their quality back, you know, we'll be able to just keep stepping that up and stepping it up and just have more and more to offer to the customers. But, yeah, I really need to hire somebody because when everything slows down, I don't have anybody back in a shop that's still getting stuff done. And I've still got cars, you know, to do. I've got. I've got a big enough parking lot to fit 16 vehicles, and it frequently goes from four vehicles to 16 vehicles because something holds me up, and that one hold up is it can cost me two days of work sometimes, you know, as. As, uh, you know, as a one man shop.
Yeah.
If I work an eight hour day, I might only get 4 hours of work done that day because the rest of my time, it's a good rule of thumb. It's not 100% accurate, but it's my rule of thumb. Every hour of work I accomplish in the shop costs me 1 hour of clerical work of some sort, whether it be writing estimates, ordering parts, looking stuff up, you know, uh, any kind of. You're looking up work procedures. If it's a job I haven't done in a long time or have never done on a particular vehicle, stuff like that. Talking to the customer. My conversations with the customers are relatively long on a regular basis because we go through such a long process of explaining exactly what's happening, talking to them about the videos and the pictures that we took and things of that nature. The communication on that end is such a massive time sink.
And at some point, I would like to be the guy who only does that and just guides my technicians through, making sure they're doing everything properly, and then eventually just be the guy who runs the business and makes sure everybody's doing their job properly but have other people in place to do those jobs. I'm getting to be a lot better owner than I. Than I ever was a tech, or at least than I am a tech now. I'm so slow compared to what I used to be, and I'm only. I'm 38 years old, or I'm going to be 38 here in a couple months anyway. It's not that my body is given out. My back hurts a lot more, my shoulders hurt a lot more, and stuff like that. But the issue is just that I put too much thought into things where I get distracted too easily.
Now, where it used to be, you know, if I got a repair order and I got a car to fix, I just go fix the car. It's so much smoother and faster to do that than to have to stop to answer phones, you know, stop to call customer. I looked at this car, you know, we diagnosed it. Now I got to go take all the notes and, you know, put the pictures on repair order and then send that to the customer, then talk to the customer. Now I got to go work on this other vehicle, but I still got that last car in my mind. All this type of stuff or, you know, things I should have said to a customer or thinking about how to explain something to a customer. It slows everything down so drastically. I'm getting a lot better at doing all that and getting a lot worse at being a mechanic.
I can still fix the cars perfectly fine. It just takes me a lot longer to do it. Yeah. So I really need to start finding some people to fill that role.
What's the. What's the main obstacle in finding a tech? The shortage.
Or two things. One is the shortage. Now, there's a couple people that I know that I would hire in a heartbeat. The majority of them are too far away. They will not make the drive to where we are there at least an hour away. One of them is one of my very best friends. I've worked with him for years and years. I got him hired at a couple of places I worked.
He got me hired at a couple places he worked. We went to high school together. We went to tech school together. Fantastic mechanic. He's every bit as good as or better than I am, and we worked really well together because he has seen a lot and has learned a lot and has studied a lot that I have not. So when we worked together, it was just such a great team, and we worked together at that dealership in Pittsburgh that used to be a really good dealership, and then went down the shitter when they bought another dealership and moved the management. He worked with me there when I left. He stayed there for a little while because he had just bought a house right up the road from that dealership.
So he was in a position where it's like, go take a job with the devil, I don't know, or stick around at this place. I know what's happening here. I know how things go. As a Chrysler dealer, we'd worked for Chrysler for a couple years by a few years by that point. So he knew the processes, he knew the pattern failures and stuff. So he stuck around there for a little while, and he just watched the fireworks happen. He was texting me on a regular basis, hey, it's like this is happening exactly the way you said it was. Because, like I said, I had seen all this happen.
I'd seen the writing on the wall. Um, but because he owns that house up there, and the housing market has gone to such shit since then, he's, he cannot afford to sell that house and buy a new house and come down here, and he's got a family and he's got dogs and stuff, so he can't make an hour drive and work, you know, 8 hours, and then make the hour drive back, especially through Pittsburgh traffic, because it's going to turn into an hour, 20 minutes, hour and a half drive, because he's on the other side, or at least a little. Little ways on the other side is not all the way, but a couple other guys I would hire. The biggest issue I have with that is they're not up to speed on like, the diagnostic and stuff like that. So I'd still have to be full in myself on that stuff, which I have no issue with. Yeah, I could still use them. I could still, you know, everything would be perfectly fine. But those gentlemen are also a little bit older.
Um, I don't have my lift installed yet. It's been sitting here just waiting to be installed for over two years now. Uh, because when we bought it, the company we bought it from came in, and they didn't really look at anything. They didn't pay attention to the floors or anything like that. They just came in and looked and said, yeah, we could put a lift there and left and then we bought the lift and then they sent their people to install it. And those people were like, we can't install this lift here because the floors are all messed up and we had to do a bunch of work to the floors. So we've got all that stuff sorted out now and for the last year, so it's just been, I just don't have time. I don't have the ability to pull that, that bay down for, you know, for any length of time to have a, or to close the shop for, you know, more than on weekdays anyway.
They're not coming down on a weekend to put that lift in and they want double the money to do it because of the way it has to be installed now because we're, again, we're on a second floor of a building. So there's, there's a different process that they have to do to put the lift in here safely, which I'm all for. I also have no issues paying them, but at the same time, I have an inability to schedule that because I don't know when it's able to be done. You know, at some point I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and say, okay, no matter what happens, we just got to close these two days and have these people come down and do it. Another issue with that is I thought it was a local company that was installing it. Turns out they're from like 5 hours away. So that's a big scheduling conflict there as well. Uh, and then, you know, I just, I just can't, I'm never, ever going to ask somebody to work on the floor the way that I do here, you know, and I don't have, I have an issue with it, but I make do with it because I got to make do with it.
I'm not going to ask somebody else to do it, especially somebody. As much as my body hurts at 38 years old, I'm not going to do it, you know, to somebody who's, you know, 50, you know, 48, something like that. So we saw that post last week.
Where the young, I want to say, I shouldn't say younger, newer shop owner. Right. Was trying to ask.
Yeah, I did see this post. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.
It's like, do I pay them flat rate or do I pay them hourly? And we have no hoists.
Yeah. And I think it was you who said you, you have to get a hoist first before you even think about hiring somebody. And that's exactly where I am. Yeah.
None of us that said the same thing. It's not, it's, I hate to use the word fair, but I mean, let's, let's be real. Most of the times, contrived or contrived? Contrived labor times, based on the fact that you have a working hoist. So if you don't, it's, it's, uh. And, you know, people are gonna be like, listen, I can do some things faster underground. I know you can. I get it. Yes, you're right.
I might be able to put a tire on, on the ground faster than whatever. Cool. But you, there's a window there, then of what your body was, will tolerate in my frustrations. Because again, I, when I worked on the rig, we hard on, on rigs, we hardly lifted anything, right? I mean, you had to pull the wheels off, but you didn't lift it to do an oil change. You didn't lift it to do half the suspension stuff. The wheel stayed on the ground, you know, like tie rods or whatever. We never lifted the wheels off the ground. Took tie rod out.
Right. Turned it off, put it back in. Wheel stayed exactly where it was. On cars, it's different. And then the idea that it's just like, it was such an example to me of the disconnect. Sometimes that scares me in this industry, between the owner and the technician or the employer and the employee. It's that level of, I'm going to bring a person in and I'm going to flat rate them. Work in a condition like that.
I can't even think of the hourly number you'd have to pay me to get me to take that job.
Yeah.
Huge. Be a lot. Way more than what anyone else is paying because of the inconvenience of doing it, of what it's going to do to my body, you know? And I'm sure that the, some of the old heads are like, well, these kids today, you know, pansies don't know how to work. Come on. Right there. It's the, the industry standard gets to a certain place, but whatever we do, whatever we charge, there's an industry standard. It's a very wide amount, but it's still there. If you all of a sudden, I want to come in under that and expect people to do it and work for you, the number has to be up high.
Yeah. To make, to offset. That's just, that's free enterprise. That's the way it works. Supply and demand. That's how it goes. I felt bad for the guy that posted that because I think the post either got pulled or it just blew up. But again, these are these conversations that sometimes need to happen because we need to sometimes grab people and shake them back into reality and go, you're seriously asking what.
And he was a guy that started mobile, got some really good fleet contracts, had gotten a building to bring back, you know, that he was going to be working in. And, you know, work is piling up, right, as we all do. We probably don't charge enough and work piles in. We get all these contracts and then it's like, okay, I need someone. Yes, you do. But you need a facility that is respectable for a person to work in that's safe, well lit, clean, warm. I worked in some shops that were cold and it drove me crazy. I hate to be cold.
I don't want to ever have to put a jacket on inside the shop in the wintertime unless it's because I'm walking outside to get a car. There's. And I worked for a couple shops that were like that. It's like, you know, you know, just as long as you work, you'll stay warm. Well, you know, that's all fine and dandy, but in the wintertime, a lot of times you're not working nearly as hard because works a little bit slower. But, yeah, I've worked with a couple places where you were walking around in a heavy coat because it was. And they kept the heat on. 55 to keep the bill down.
Yeah, exactly. And I just was like with, with the shop that the door is always opening, it's not even 55 in there. That's what you got to set.
Yeah, and that's the thing. Yeah. If that 55 goes away really, really fast when you're pulling a car in, you know, even if it's only every hour, you're letting all the heat out. All the heat goes.
And if you get wet at 08:00 in the morning, you don't dry and you don't warm back up and you stay cold all day. Cold and damp.
I hate standing on wet with snow dripping on them concrete floors all day, probably with steel toe boots on, at least back in the day because composite toes are, you know, somewhat new anyway. I mean, I, I couldn't tell you how many times I couldn't feel my feet halfway through the day, you know, all the time.
I used to keep us, like, I used to change coveralls at lunchtime and put on a different set of boots dry because it would be like they would bring the truck in the car in, the snow will come off of it and the snow would lay on the ground, it didn't melt. You'd be walking in it off and whatever, but you're still, your feet are damp all day long. So, you know, I don't think it was crazy for that conversation to come up and people just to take that guy to task and go, whoa, you need to build your facility a little bit before you bring somebody in. This is why these conversations are so important. It's not a case of I hate that everybody sometimes thinks Asag or changing industry is so divisive between owners and techs. It's the last thing that when it was created was what it was meant to do is divide. And I don't, you know, I'm not out here trying to run dealers or owners and leaders into a situation where they have to comply, you know, and do we have them at a pretty good advantage right now? Yes, we do. The shortage of technicians has put us in a very advantageous place.
But I'm not out trying to divide, all right? I'm trying to just have the conversations like we're having right now. And yes, when I see something like that, I'm going to call them out on it because it's not a case of, I'm trying to say, hey, you're a jerk. I'm simply trying to say, dude, really, like you expect somebody because I just want to save them some time. You're going to put an ad up, you're going to do ten interviews. You're going to bring the person in. The person's going to walk in and go, there's no hoist if they're smart. Yes. And Cody, I'm not trying to run you down.
Don't, don't, please don't take it that way. Right. It's just a situation of, you know, where your situation is right now. It's, it's a disadvantage. That person just completely thought you could tell by the, how the post read. Yeah, we thought that somebody would be quite willing to come in.
No, no idea that there was an issue with it. And that's, yeah, that's what I said. You know, I take no offense to that whatsoever. I mean, I know exactly that situation. And like I said, I'm not going to ask somebody to do that. I do it every day. And like I said, I have a problem with it. I do it out of necessity.
I'm not going to ask somebody to come in and do that. But then, I mean, one of the issues that, that I've noticed as well, and as I said, you know, if they're smart, they'll go in and they'll take a tour of the shop and, you know, they'll see there's no lifts or anything like that. I was not smart one time, and I didn't take a tour of a shop that I went to work for, and. And I moved over an hour to take a job at this shop, which, fortunately for me, I was actually moving home from another shop I was working at, at a distant location. That was probably the only thing that got me out of that shop very, very quickly. If I. If I had moved away for that, you know, away from my hometown, it would have been a whole different situation. But.
But I moved back home to take a job at this particular shop, and I didn't take a tour of the place. And they put me on an alignment rack that the front of the alignment rack had only just enough room for the machine. And the gap that they needed, that was required, per the machine's instructions, for it to read properly. And the right side of the four post lift was up against the wall. So that was my. I wasn't the alignment guy. I was just a normal mechanic there. That was my lift.
I couldn't. I could take tires off, but I had to take them off and, like, shimmy them to the side and drop them on and roll them under the lift because there's no room to even get a tire between the lift and the wall. How they even got a lift there to begin with, because I'm sure most places would say, you can't put that next to a wall like that. It has to be six inches or whatever the case may be. But, yeah, you. You couldn't even walk between the wall and the post on this lift. They were up against the wall. You literally had to walk over the lift or under the lift to.
To get to the other side of it. And I didn't know that until I was dropping my toolboxes off. And I was. Six weeks is as long as I was there for other reasons as well. It was a very, very bad shop, but it was a brand new shop. It was a very clean shop. When I interviewed, everybody was clean cut. Everybody was very well spoken.
It was a family owned shop. I thought it was going to be a great place to work. It was a relatively small shop. They only had four mechanics working there in five bays. It turned out to be an absolute joke. It was absolutely terrible. But as I was saying, some people, when I get the opportunity to talk to mechanics who are looking for jobs, that's one of the things that I always mention toward the place. Absolutely.
Take a look at the place. Don't go by anybody. Don't go by what they say. Don't just walk in the office, have an interview, shake hands, and walk out. Even if they won't take you through on a tour. Go get permission to go back and walk through the shop. Look at the mannerisms of the other texts that are working. You know, listen for the yells and screams and the mother f's and everything else that you might catch, you know, see.
See what kind of condition those mechanics are in, what kind of attitudes they have, because there, that's what's going to show you whether or not you want to have that, have a job there. And it's not always either just about, you know, the equipment, or, um, you know, sometimes. Sometimes the attitude of the mechanics isn't even enough. I've worked at places, and this is something that. That I've said a couple of times, where the only places that a mechanic will stay is a really bad shop or a really good shop. If you have a really bad shop that's been bad for a really long time, what they end up with is a bunch of really bad mechanics who know that they can't make any more money anywhere else because they're really bad. So they'll stay there forever. And I've worked with those people before.
It doesn't matter how bad you treat them, they'll be there forever because that's the most money they've ever made, and they're not looking for anything more than that. They might live in a mobile home somewhere or low income housing or something like that. They don't give a shit about the paycheck because what they're getting is more than enough for them. You know, nothing against any of that. I lived in a mobile home. I lived in assisted living housing at one point. You know, um, when you make enough money to pay for what you got, some people just don't care anymore after that. So those people will stay at a bad shop because they're making more money than they were making at the shop before that and the shop before that.
And then at a good shop, you've got, you know, people will stay at a good shop no matter, you know, no matter how bad they might be, they'll stay there as long as the shop will have them. Um, it's a weird dynamic you have there, where you have those two places where you might talk to a place and everybody in there is like, oh, I've been here for three years. I've been here for five years. And you don't realize it's because it's a bunch of old tire change guys who are making decent money now to shotgun parts at cars every day. And that's the reason that they've been there that long, and the place is actually a really terrible place to work. They just. They stick it out because it's better than everything, anything they've had. And especially when all the other shops you've worked at are equally bad, you get to a point where, to go back to what you were saying earlier about, you know, people who've been in the industry for 10, 15, 20 years, and they've seen the same thing over and over again.
At some point, they either stop where they're at and they just stay there forever, or they leave the industry. All right, that's Cody Taggart on this week's episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. Thanks for listening. That's just part one, though. Next week, we'll continue the conversation with Jeff and Cody as they continue to talk about the repair industry and why shops sometimes will hire techs when they're already hurting for hours for their current techs. That's part two of the Jaded Mechanic podcast with Cody Taggart next week. Hope you can listen.
Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the 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 ten millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
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