Raising the Standards & Respect for the Repair Industry

So let's band together, let's share that information,

let's enable the next generation of people,

because then they're gonna be out there like,

you know, I learned from this guy that I worked with

and he really made a positive influence in my career.

Beyond the Wrench with J. Gannon from Wrenchway.

Welcome back to Beyond the Wrench, my name is J. Gannon,

and I am your host.

Today I'm excited to be joined by Ryan Coyman.

Ryan has spent his career supporting technician development

and helping shops improve through training,

education, and industry collaboration.

We're going to talk through his journey,

the work he's involved in today,

and the trends he's seeing a couple of years ago.

So let's get started.

Welcome back to Beyond the Wrench,

my name is J. Gannon and I am your host.

Today I'm excited to be joined by Ryan Coyman.

Ryan has spent his career supporting

and he's seeing across the industry,

especially when it comes to technician career paths

and how they continue to evolve.

Ryan brings a great perspective on what's happening

in the bays and how both techs and shop leaders

can continue to grow.

Ryan, thanks for being on the show.

How are you?

Fantastic, thanks for having me, J.

I think between both of our last names,

there's a contest in there to see who can pronounce

them a little.

It's a lot of vowels, a lot of vowels in both.

Yeah, yeah, I always tell people if I'm on their podcast

or if they're introducing me to speak somewhere,

like don't worry about my last name,

just say J from Wrenchway and then we'll get there.

But great to see you.

We are coming off maybe, I think two out of three weeks

we are able to see each other in person

and had a chance to walk the SEMA show with you.

That was pretty cool, wasn't it?

That was awesome.

I was just out there wandering and for the audience,

J and I are both lovers of the 60s era C-10 trucks

and I'm walking through SEMA looking and also I find one,

I'm taking some pictures and lo and behold,

here's J on the other side, taking pictures too.

So it was a great afternoon, got to wander and catch up

and share some stories about our own vehicles there too.

So that's fantastic.

It's such a cool show in that it brings,

we spent a lot of time on the APEC side, right?

But being able to take some time,

that, it was my last afternoon down there

and I think it was yours as well,

but you find it kind of carve out maybe a couple hours

to run through the show and see the cool stuff and man,

just seeing, we were watching those dirt bikes

for Nitro Circus going up in the air,

just some crazy stuff,

but for a couple of car guys down there,

it doesn't get much better than that.

No, it doesn't.

And to your point, I've been staying on my feet all week,

been out there for five days already,

close to 20,000 steps a day

and I continually remind myself,

like the me of 20 years ago would be a kid in a candy

store and this stuff and quite frankly, I still am

and we're blessed a lot of our technician friends

want to go to SEMA someday and we're there, right?

And we use terms like I have to go again.

So I remind myself of, this is pretty cool

and it's fun to just go wander

and see all the new stuff out there.

I couldn't agree more.

Well, let's talk about Ryan from 20 years ago.

We love you here.

Love you.

See, how did, like what got you into the industry?

I love the origin story.

I love talking about this.

How did you get into this?

Well, much like yourself,

my father is to blame for a lot of this.

My dad was a heavy equipment mechanic

and covered Northern Michigan.

I live in West Michigan here

but he would hop in the service truck usually on Mondays

and drive up out of the stone quarries

and work on Terrics and Grove brand equipment

and then come home on Thursdays or something.

Then before I was a teenager,

then he was working more locally

but so I grew up working with him.

Detroit Diesels, Caterpillars Commons

were a big part of my life growing up.

And then so it was only kind of natural

when I was in high school.

One of my first jobs was doing lawn care in the summer

but in the winter time, I worked at a shop

and then eventually I enjoyed the shop more

and saw more of a future there.

I went to community college for a while

to get into engineering

and they have some math programs there

and it quickly separates the men from the boys

and gets people like me out of their program.

So I ended up back in the shop and I enjoyed it

and made a great life or a living for my family and I

and then spent 16 years in aftermarket shops

and then it was the vision conference out in Kansas City.

I believe it was 2002, 2003 timeframe.

I met Jeff Masterman,

manager of development for state and motor products

pro training programs.

He was sitting in the back of a class

and Jim Linder was teaching it

and Jim and I have been friends for a while

and I was asking some comments, et cetera.

And Jeff caught me afterwards and he's like,

man, you have a lot of really intelligent questions.

I don't know what that means, but I'm curious.

And so I started working with standard on a contract basis,

doing some content development, a lot of case studies.

All of the training classes standard

include approximately 10 case studies

which are not created in the lab.

There are true stories from the technicians.

And so I started doing that.

Started writing some classes in 2010.

I started working full time for standard

as a content developer.

And I guess we'll call those the good old days.

I had six months to research and write a class.

I still have the keys to eight different shops

here in West Michigan.

So I'm friends with a lot of shop owners

and a lot of access to stuff.

We joke, I'm kind of the big foot

or Sasquatch in the area

and not just because I'm big and hairy,

but there's evidence I've been there

but nobody's ever seen me.

You know, I'll snoop around these friend shops at night

and go, oh, that's cool.

We were looking for one of these, you know,

and get some data or whatever.

So I guess I wasn't a good developer

because they moved me to management very shortly

and, you know, find myself here today 15 years later

overseeing the pro training team

where we reach about 70,000 technicians a year.

And then we have in-house training,

360 photo studio for our catalog content team,

tech line services, and then engineering test facility.

So that's one of the programs

I'm probably more proud of today

is as an aftermarket manufacturer,

when we get done developing something in a lab,

we install it on a vehicle.

And then we have to put between 1,000

and 3,000 miles on it to verify it.

And something I don't think a lot

of our competitors do today,

but it's interesting how things have come full circle.

I wanted to be an engineer

and I've got a team of engineers working under me here.

So, isn't that crazy?

Anything's possible, right?

Yeah, well, I wanna go back to your mindset early on

because you not only were a technician,

you were a pretty decorated technician, right?

You had the credentials,

you had some pretty big awards we should talk about.

And I think where I always get interested,

especially with somebody that was so good technically

is, wow, how did you get there?

I mean, you talked about the curiosity

and you're asking questions in that class

and asking some questions that probably showed

that you were thinking about this

at a little deeper level.

I'm just, has that been something

that was ingrained in you from an early age

or did this develop over time?

Probably developed a little bit over time.

I remember a couple of clear defining moments.

And so in high school, I was probably living paycheck

to paycheck and make some money

and buy a new snowmobile or a newer truck

and having the toys.

But a friend of mine now who's passed away,

Jeremy Muellenberg, owned a pretty large painting

and into your decorating company.

But back in high school, all of a sudden,

he's building a new house right out of high school

and getting married and supporting a family right away.

I'm like, Jer, he's like, well, I've been saving

and working hard for this stuff.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

I should probably get on that program.

That seems more fun.

Yeah, Dave Ramsey would be proud of Jer,

my mindset at that point.

But so that was one thing,

but then I quickly adopted the mentality

of there's nobody behind me, right?

The car stops here.

And so it's unacceptable in my mindset to go,

I don't know.

And that's probably a pride thing, an ego thing.

Drivability technicians are always accused

of being the prima donna in the shop.

But I just had that mindset of like,

this car, we can't kick it to the dealer

and hope that they fix it or send it to another shop.

And so that created kind of a hunger

to start looking for stuff.

I think back to the late 90s when I was working in the shop,

we had a cast machine, they were talking about IM240

coming to Michigan and we bought this thing

and it was doing stuff I didn't really appreciate

till 10 years later, like relative cranking compression

and KV snap throttle and sniffing the tailpipe

and just a lot of tests there.

So I got me intrigued in training and classes.

And then so I'd go to any class I could get my hands on.

I don't care if it was about how to install an oil filter

or something, there's probably something

to be learned out of this that would make me more

proficient in my job and make a better paycheck.

So I started going to all these different classes

and then ran into a gentleman, John Thornton.

I don't want to be the name dropper here

but he'd come to Grand Rapids area several times a year

and so I started going to his classes

and networking both through John

but also hanging out with the guys after class

and talking and we'd share some stories.

We didn't view each other as competitors.

We viewed each other as brothers in the same fight.

And then my area, you and I are on opposite sides

of Lake Michigan here, but factory scan tools

and Jay Myring was my VTronix sales rep

and he was phenomenal and he was highly decorated himself.

And so he started the master tech club

and everybody bought the old VTronix master tech

you'd meet once a month and have these discussions.

And finally he started propping me up

in front of the group.

That's really where I got my first attempt at training

is working with these guys.

In the audience there, many of them

are still good friends today

and share a lot of great discussions

but Thornton then turned me on to Linda Tech

and then Vision and so I went there

and met guys, Matt Fonzlo, Paul Suter, Mike Miller,

just a lot of guys I've become friends with, Harvey Chan,

then we had a Skype group

and so we always challenge each other with stuff

and just by networking continued to scratch that itch

I guess and these guys added a lot of the same questions

and we just fed off each other with that.

And probably one more influence was a gentleman

by the name Pat O'Neill owned O'Neill's transmissions.

Good friends with his grandsons,

Sean and Craig O'Neill today yet

but Pat sought me out as a young technician

and said, you know, you're different

and I've assembled a group of guys

I'm gonna take them to the SA World Congress in Detroit

in a couple of weeks.

Would you like to go with us?

And that was just out of my wheelhouse

but that shifted me maybe into a little more

of a professional atmosphere and straightened up

and just exposed me to a whole different world of stuff there.

So I think what you just said there

and you're walking through all of these really kind of

I'd consider industry Titans, right?

Of really this aftermarket world

and I think there's that curiosity

and that want to get better in the best.

I have a book behind me called Growth Mindset

and I always think about that

and how you're always pushing yourself

and at times technicians might shy away

from going to a conference or doing something

that might be out of their comfort zone

but it just opens the world to so many opportunities

and you look at Fonslow now just with his progression

and having a podcast and doing all of these things

on top of being one of the best techs in the country.

There's so much opportunity out there

if you've got a mindset that you're willing

to make yourself a little bit uncomfortable,

you are maybe going to put yourself in situations

where you're amongst the best, right?

I think a lot of times if say you're

that best technician in your shop,

you could get bored, right?

Or maybe you're frustrated with those around you

that aren't operating at that higher level

and seeking out opportunities like you did,

I think is so game changing for a great technician

that when you put yourself in an environment

where you're surrounded by others

that are at the top of their game,

just like athletics, right?

Like if you're an athlete

and you can put yourself amongst the best

and really just, I don't know,

it's this different mentality,

it's a different mindset, I think.

I think it's so easy for us in the industry

for technicians, especially young technicians,

to go out and look at a Facebook group

and see all the negative that's out there.

But when you've kind of choose to put yourself

in a situation where you're surrounding yourself

with great people, it can't do anything but help, right?

Correct, correct.

Yeah, I mean, even today,

I'd like to make sure I'm not the smartest guy

in the room, that's pretty easy in some days here,

but there's always something to learn from somebody, right?

And today, already this morning,

I had a meeting with a dozen guys

and I took away a lot from just the discussions there

and then I had a breakfast meeting with a friend

who owns multiple turkey farms

and I've learned a lot here today

and even in our preamble discussions, you know?

And so everybody's got something to offer

and that's one thing I've learned as a leader

and just as a human being, everybody's got a story.

Everybody's got something that you can take away

from that conversation.

So being an active listener

and sometimes seeking out those conversations,

you brought up a fantastic point

and something I talk about with my children.

I've done graduation speeches at schools

and other presentation coaching stuff at schools.

Being comfortable with an uncomfortable situation

will serve you well throughout the rest of your life.

Getting up and standing in front of an audience

or I've been involved in negotiations at this point

and court proceedings, you know, different stuff,

the more you can remain calm and comfortable

in those situations, the better off you're gonna be.

Your mind is still strategically playing the chess game here

and then that goes into auto repair.

Thinking ahead through the process, you know,

not just going to one bolt at a time

but working your way through the system,

you know, that car comes in, there's a lot of struggle.

My mindset still today is there's a front bumper

and a back bumper.

The problem's right here.

It's not somewhere else in the universe.

It's right here, right in front of me.

I just gotta track it down

and, you know, methodically work through things.

How do you balance that?

And I'll transition a little bit to technicians as a whole.

I hear this maybe more on the dealer side

but you hear some of it on the aftermarket side as well,

like balancing the curiosity

and wanting to fix complex things

with something like flat rate

or like with something where there's so much more pressure

it feels like now on a technician to be profitable

and understanding, you know,

hey, if I want to get paid more, I need to produce more.

And there's this weird balance where I think, you know,

I've been, I'll mention Josh Arnold

who is a really good friend of the podcast recently

just actually hosted the podcast and interviewed me

which was very awkward to be on the other side.

Fun to flip the script, yep.

Yeah, but he had talked about how he embraced flat rate

when he was young tech

and he had a different perspective on it.

And he said, I had a good understanding with my boss

and the dealership he was at was open hours

that were over and above his hours that he worked there.

And so if he was doing an engine job,

he would go to his supervisor and say, hey, listen,

this calls for 10 hours.

It's going to take me double that.

So do you mind if I stay after hours to work on this?

And his whole intent was like,

I want to learn how to do this the right way

even though it's going to cost me some time right now.

It was just one of those similar mindset to you, right?

Where it was just so mind blowing to me

that somebody would have that mindset

and really truly want to learn the craft

and learn how to do it.

And I'm like, how refreshing is that?

It's not just somebody that's mad

because they got $50 less on their paycheck this week.

He was truly trying to learn.

Correct.

Yeah, and I think that's where a lot of that curiosity

or that personal investment

maybe is a better way to look at it

of a lot of late nights, a lot of Saturdays,

a lot of early mornings, early on in my career

to just research.

You know, I was getting into lab scope

and I wrote probably one of the industry's

first engine mechanical classes

with electronic testing methods.

You know, I'm certainly not the inventor of it,

but just learning better stuff

with vacuum transducers and in-cylinder pressure stuff

and fine-tuning some of that.

And how can we use this?

How can it, you know, I go back to some of the discussions

with my service writer back at that time.

You know, I would do a test and say,

okay, it's got a leaking valve.

And he's like, well, is it intake or exhaust?

Like, it doesn't matter.

The cylinder head's coming off one way or the other,

right?

And so, even some of this stuff in check, you know,

because guys today will learn something new.

I mean, had case studies where it was an ABS fault,

the guys sending us in-cylinder pressure captures

and stuff like, why did you do that, right?

Let's keep it simple with a lot of this stuff too

and keep it in check.

But you brought up a fantastic point too

about everybody wants to learn all the drivability stuff,

not everybody, but some guys really want to dive in

down that path and that's fantastic.

We need those drivability technicians,

but at the end of the day,

probably the guy pounding ball joints in

is making the shop more money

because he's selling parts and labor at that point.

Whereas I know a lot of time when I was just doing,

you know, the tough diagnosis or something like that,

I'm selling labor.

Now, obviously today there's multiple labor rates

and the shop business side of it,

has evolved significantly, certainly in our careers.

And you see the difference of just one size fits

all labor rate and here's what it is, bring it in.

People are way more in tune to numbers today,

but again, I think at the end of the day,

let's not get too consumed with the numbers

and customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction

come in to play.

Everybody talks about technician shortage.

I would almost argue that there's a good shop shortage

more so than technician shortage, right?

Could not agree more, could not agree more.

And I do think some of that is,

if we were to take fault or blame as an industry,

I think a lot of it comes from maybe us as an industry

not preparing shop leaders as far in advance, right?

Like my dad was one of those guys that started in the shop

and really almost by default ended up as a leader, right?

And it took him a lot of a long time

to kind of come to terms with the fact that,

you can't have your buddies coming to the shop

and doing their own work in your shop.

And like you have to, like it was such a,

such a, you know, he was a really young guy

when he started the shop.

But I think you look at this and you're like, okay,

where can we as an industry, as we're moving forward,

get better?

Well, I do think there's some level of leadership style

training.

I think we're getting more and more of that.

I do think podcasts like this or any other podcast,

there's so many great podcasts in our industry

to listen to.

Arnell's great, Karm's great.

Like we've got so many great ones out there.

And like for those that want to move in that direction,

do yourself a favor.

Like if you're early on in your career,

start consuming that as well, right?

Like you were talking about the technical side

and that's super, super important,

especially for an early, early technician.

Like get your nose in a book and understand systems.

So you'll be way better off.

Same thing with like as you're starting to progress

in your career, like get to know leadership

and show leadership in your shop,

be a leader in your shop.

And some of that's not rocket science.

It's show up 15 minutes early to work

and have your bay ready to go.

Like there's so much stuff that you can do

at an early age that will help drive that.

But I think there's a huge opportunity there.

But then I also think we could do a better job

at helping technicians understand

the business of running a shop

and making sure that they understand,

I've pointed to this example multiple times,

but it's probably the best meeting I've ever been in,

which was at a dealership in South Carolina,

this guy comes in, writes a number on the board

and says, can anybody guess what that number is?

And everybody's kind of like, I don't know.

Like that's the amount of money

we have to make per month to break even.

And everybody's eyes are like, oh my goodness.

And so it's one of those things where transparency,

I think would drive a lot of this communication

and would drive a lot of things to go better

and helping techs try to truly understand

the business a little bit.

Well, and I'm a huge fan of salary with incentives

or hourly with incentives,

but I spent 90% of my career as a flat rate tech

even in shop management and ownership,

then moved to the salary portion.

But it was, I appreciated flat rate

because I knew what this job paid

and what I had to do to be profitable for me

and for the business then too.

This fuel pump's gonna pay 3.5 hours

and a half hour to do a fuel filter with it.

Okay, well, that means I gotta get it done in two hours.

And my internal competitiveness took over,

but if it's an hourly technician

and they have no idea what that job is,

is a 12 hour job or a two hour job,

I think that drives their motivation

on a little bit as well.

One other thing you kind of touched in

and as I've been invited to do several

after dinner discussions about the industry,

we all grew up in a time where you walk in the shop,

all right, go bust tires and go change oil.

Very important services.

You can probably screw up a car faster

by doing an oil change incorrectly than anything else.

But as we talk about today's technicians

coming out of school, they have a different skill set

than we did or as our fathers did

when they came into the industry.

So a lot of kids are very proficient with typing,

with computer skills, maybe even better communicators

and so, or worse, but they're familiar with that now.

Depending on the type of communication.

That's right, in that chat, that's communication.

They're amazing at that.

So, as a challenging shop owner,

it's like, how many of you do an ADOS calibration?

Is it like, eh, not yet?

Or module programming, no, not yet.

Well, if you're not doing it

and you don't know anything about it,

this kid coming in, that's probably

really easy stuff for him.

And so, maybe you break him in

doing some of that type of stuff.

It opens up a new market for you, new possibilities.

And, yeah, it's undeniable you need to know

the basics of how stuff works and whatever,

but let's not berate people, you know,

the shop pranks and pick on the new guy

and do all this stuff, you know,

we've been doing that for 50 years

and then we stay in here wondering,

I don't know why nobody wants to stick around

and do this.

Who do you want to hang out with us anymore?

Well, no kidding.

Right, right.

Well, no kidding, I was having a discussion

in Greenville, South Carolina

with a well-known industry person

and they were talking about that.

Like, well, what are the shops around here paying?

He's like, eh, 12 to 14 bucks an hour for starting.

I'm like, turn around and look,

you know, there's Bass Pro shops

right behind with a big banner

starting at 25 bucks an hour

plus 20% discount on whatever you want to buy there.

No kidding, and no wonder why nobody

will work over here.

Yeah, yeah, it is, that's a battle.

I think I've had with our industry for a long time

is just, and I'm guilty of this at some level of,

like, you have to be profitable

to be able to pay your people what you need to pay them

and offer them the benefits.

Like just to have good people coming in

and people struggle to get their hands around that.

And I think, you know, there's some that struggle

and then there's some that are probably too far the other way

where they're making good profit

but not paying their people

and that one's as frustrating or more frustrating.

But, you know, you're absolutely right.

I think when we talk about shop culture,

especially at a young age,

like I've talked to several others about this,

like we grew up in the industry

when wrenches were being thrown across the shop, right?

Pretty consistently, and I don't think we can do that.

For me is a gentleman who I still remember it clearly.

We got our new shop coats around this time of year,

you know, around Thanksgiving time,

new winter coats for the shop

and the ASC logo was printed as red.

And the guy's like, you're so stupid.

You wouldn't even know what blue seal means

and all that stuff.

And yeah, you'll never be, you know, ASC certified.

And I'm like, okay.

And I still look today.

I respect the gentleman.

He's a fantastic GM dealer tech today,

but whether he knows it or not,

you know, he is a motivated factor in my career path too.

Well, and I think my hope would be,

maybe we take different ways to motivate young techs, right?

Like maybe not that

because I think I heard a lot of that same stuff.

And it is when you're young

and you're getting your butt kicked by cars

and trying to figure things out.

And there is some level of, you know,

regardless of where you start in the industry,

you go through this grind a little bit of like

trying to figure this stuff out.

And it can be very demotivating

for a young tech to come into a shop

and then just have maybe that old tech in their ear

just kind of constantly harping on, you know,

especially right now, we hear all the time

like some of the older techs saying,

like, you shouldn't come into this industry.

Don't come in.

Like this is, you're gonna end up in bad shape.

And I'm like, at some level,

that person's going to be miserable

regardless of what industry they were in, right?

Like it's, and I've worked with some of them

and I know they'd be miserable

with whatever industry they were in.

They'd complain about whatever it is that they do.

And so, you know, I get frustrated

at times with our industry internally

with some of our cultures.

And some of it is, you know, it's in our DNA.

That's the way it's been for a long time

and it's gonna take a while to get some of that cleaned up.

But I do think it's necessary

for this next generation of technician

that we're going to need.

We need a more professional technician.

And as you see, you know, we talk about AI all the time,

right?

And like how AI is taking jobs

and now all of a sudden skilled trades

are kind of that sexy thing again

and everybody's looking at it.

These cars are getting more complicated by that second.

And we need very, very skilled, very talented people

to be able to work on these and to be able to train up.

But if we had that shop from the 70s or 80s,

or you know, like if we have that mentality,

it's gonna be hard to attract that level of talent

that we're gonna need in this industry.

And that's something that I think

we've got to figure out how to change.

Correct, correct.

Yeah, and so I've been involved with many schools

much like yourself, obviously.

And so it's always interesting to hear

the influx of students coming in every year,

what skills they possess, what they don't possess.

You know, you and I, blessed or cursed,

whatever day it is of growing up with our dads.

You know, so we had a good feel for how to do this stuff.

My sons are both now entering into the trade.

You know, yours may or may not as well.

And so it's been interesting as a parent to look at this

and what my boys do.

You know, we've got the shop here at home

with a hoist and everything.

And I think our record so far is five vehicles

coming in, going in one week.

The two of them, my 15 year old, 19 year old sons

have bought and sold a given a week

and do some stuff to it.

So it's been eye-opening for me.

And that certainly influenced my thought process

as an educator or a leading of a training entity,

how we approach these people.

And it's really helped me understand

like my now 19 year old sons worked

in a shop full-time for two years.

And his boss is somebody I've mentored

or have known since the guy was four years old.

So the first week there is that here's a 64 GTO,

pull the engine out, reseal every gasket,

paint the engine and transmission, put it back together

and then change the gears and rear end,

call me if you need help.

And the next was doing an LS swap on a 55 Chevy.

And so he jumped right into that.

But I've seen him now go from bolt by bolt

to thinking four steps ahead

and how can I be more efficient in this?

And so he's become really a very proficient R and R guy.

And now we're kind of making the transition into systems,

as you mentioned earlier,

and understanding how it all kind of comes together.

You know, when you turn the ignition switch

or you push the button on the dash,

all these things have to happen in a certain sequence

to get the starter to engage

and understand that and do diagnostics.

You know, he bought his own scan tool a couple months ago

and you know, pulling codes and going through that part,

but getting him disciplined to look up the trouble code,

what are the set criteria, you know,

and spend more time behind the screen doing the research

in less time poking and hoping under the dash

or underneath the hood.

So.

That is where that off hours training comes in

so handy too, right?

Like if you're, I think the best texts I've ever met

are the ones that, you know,

they'll go home and read about something or, you know,

maybe watch Scanner Dan or watch some of this other content

that's out there that is informative and accessible, right?

And I think the more they view it as like,

this is my craft, I'm going to get really good at this.

And then you understand those systems.

That is one of the things where I often say

that if I could go back and tell my young self something,

it would be, you know,

when they're trying to teach you theory in schools,

they're not doing it for the fun of it.

Like you should, like you should listen.

And I don't think I listened very good.

I think we, I was automatically like,

oh, you know, I want to be a diag tech.

And you're like, no, you like,

you have to really understand how systems work first.

And you know, if you're not fully aware

of how a sensor operates or works,

or if you're not fully aware of the communication

that happens in a vehicle and just, you know,

how often do you see,

and this would be a good one for you just in general,

like just something as simple as a voltage drop test.

Like that can be very hard for somebody

to wrap their head around.

And it's pretty essential for a lot of the stuff

you're going to do in your career.

How much do technicians really make?

At Wrenchway, we work with some of the best shops

and dealerships across the country.

And we've discovered that technicians often earn more

than what some online sources suggest.

For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports

that technicians make an average of $47,000 per year.

But we know that's not reflective

of the true earning potential of technicians.

We've teamed up with ASC to create

an online technician pay tool,

a free, easy to use resource for both aspiring technicians

and those already in the automotive and diesel industries.

This tool lets you explore real pay data

with customizable searches by industry,

shop type, location, and experience level.

Check it out at wrenchway.com slash pay

or follow the link in the show notes.

We also encourage current technicians

to anonymously submit their own pay data

to help make the tool even better for everyone.

Lastly, thank you for your continued support

as we work to promote and improve careers

in automotive and diesel.

We couldn't do it without you.

So one of my favorite stories with that one, Jay,

is our shop was a 28,000 square foot shop.

We had a 20,000 square foot Napa store built into it,

like on the side.

And so we were viewed as a competitor

by the auto value or the parts plus type part stores in town,

even though obviously we always bought from them as well,

but one of them brought one of their delivery trucks,

the late 90s Chevy S10 or early 2000s S10

that had 18 different fuel pumps installed in it

over the past year plus.

And like, I don't care what brand

of fuel pump you're putting in.

They don't go by that.

They ain't the fuel pump.

And they're like, well, you're the guy,

we got to bring it to you.

And so I'm like, well, thanks, I'm honored.

And I'll get a hold of you by the end of the day.

And they're like, ah, just keep it.

Well, to your point, doing a voltage drop test,

there was a eight volt drop to the chassis.

So there's this fuel running on like maybe six volts

and just eating itself to death.

And honestly, one of the keys was the guy

that dropped it off said, you know,

sometimes we have to hit the parking brake

to make the fuel pump run.

And I'm like, hmm, that was my clue.

Like what would that do?

Well, it's now grounding through that cable

because there's no body ground or chassis ground.

And so by doing that quickly,

I found the negative battery cable

go into the chassis, rod it off,

clean it up and solder new in on it, put it on, test it.

And hey, we've got B plus back at the fuel pump again.

We're good.

And so the guy, the store manager

wasn't even back at the store and we're calling him,

all right, you can come pick up your truck.

He's like, you're kidding me.

And it's, you know, explain it to him.

And it's like, you know,

it's a relatively basic concept, right?

I mean, I'm not gonna replace the fuel pump

unless I've got good powers and grounds there.

And this is part of it.

So by doing a relatively elementary test,

which way too many people overlook, you know,

that's part of it.

And so, yeah, I never went to school for auto repair.

So I missed some of those electronics classes

and had to, to your point, do a little more research

and find some of those books back at the library.

You know, we didn't have YouTube.

We didn't have Amazon at that point.

So took a little bit of additional effort,

but it certainly paid off.

And I remind my own kids of that now of like,

my chemistry teacher tried to teach me

about carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, NOX, hydrocarbons,

all this stuff that I didn't pay attention to.

20 years later, I'm trying to retrain myself

on this stuff and go, man, you're an idiot.

You know, why do you always take the hard way?

And I do that and my kids seem to be following

that same path of, I'm the dumbest guy they've ever met.

You know, so what would I?

Well, I think that struggle at times

is really where you do learn.

And I will say some of the less-than-friendly,

older texts that I had grown up with

were kind of telling me that,

but maybe their style of telling me that

wasn't the greatest.

It was more, they would always kind of say,

well, yeah, I had to learn the hard way.

You need to do the same thing.

And I think maybe they just changed the way they said that

and it would make such an impact on young texts

because at some level, you do have to go through that.

They had to say it louder because there's that tribal

knowledge and guys going, eh,

I had to find out the hard way you should too.

No, let's not give a silver bullet per se,

but let's explain the theory

and walk the young technician through it

and let's make him proficient on year two of their career.

You know, I say very often there's technicians

in this industry that are in their 10th year,

but they're repeating year one nine times over at this point.

I hadn't heard that, that makes a lot of sense.

You know, so let's band together,

let's share that information,

let's enable the next generation of people

because then they're gonna be out there like,

you know, I learned from this guy that I worked with

and he really made a positive influence in my career

not the eh, I had to learn the hard way you should too.

You say that, like I still point to my mentors,

I have one of mine, his business card is on a frame here

and just people that meant a lot to me growing up

and I think, you know, for that tech

that's listening, that's in a shop right now,

like there's a lot of so much value

in how you treat somebody

and how you treat somebody working next to you

and I totally understand that sometimes

in the flat rate environment you're in

or if you're, you know, you feel those pressures to produce,

like sometimes it helps just to take a breath

and try to help somebody else for a little bit

and you know, I think you can have

such a big positive influence on other people

if you just take a step back and you know,

if you show them a quicker way of doing something

or you know, hey, somebody's getting their butt kicked

by we're in the North, the rusty bolt that broke off

and now they're way behind, you know,

maybe go offer helping hand with it.

It means the world to that young technician

that's out there.

Exactly.

Yeah, I'll never forget the, you know,

I couldn't get the drain plug out of a rear differential

and the older guy that shows me how to heat it up,

like, well, isn't that gonna make it tighter

and then he's like, nope, you take a water bottle

and you hit it with cold water

and you shrink it and that thing came out

by finger at that point, you know.

It's those type of lessons that you don't learn in a textbook.

No, you don't.

And I think there's, going back to the example you had

of using voltage drop to figure something out,

I think where a lot of technicians could learn there,

even experienced technicians is in a lot of cases

we're trying to get to that troubleshooting tree

as fast as possible and really have something

tell us what to do.

Whereas if you just take a second

and like think through a problem and it feels like,

you know, I know early in my career,

if I wasn't moving a million miles a minute,

I was worried I was gonna get in trouble, right?

Like by my boss.

And so, you know, I do see this more

with younger technicians now where they might sit down

and, you know, they're, you know,

writing some stuff down, getting it out of their head

or maybe they are going through a schematic

and being able to understand something.

And for me as a young technician,

I would have been terrified to do that.

And now they're, you know, they are getting a little bit more

of that understanding of like, okay, I do,

like give me a second to sit down here

and just kind of be able to map out what I'm thinking

and get it out of my head.

And I think that's what the true professional techs

are able to do maybe better than anybody else.

My guys, when I was still in the shop,

gave me a hard time all the time.

Like, all you do is sit in front of the computer

and like call it lazy, call it smart, whatever,

but I'm not moving until I have a game plan, right?

And so I need to understand how the system works,

what affects it, why that code's set.

So I'm getting off my stool and walking in the car

with a clear game plan of what I need to look at.

If this, then that, if this, then that.

And, you know, where I'm gonna go with it.

And in pinpoint, but, you know,

you guys are just ripping and pulling

and tearing stuff apart and hoping you stumble across it.

You know, that doesn't nobody hit any good with that.

And so it's just think through it.

I'm kind of a list guy as well.

So, you know, I'm looking at what's, you know,

we teach that very frequently in our classes,

like differential diagnosis.

Let's look at the data here.

The engines lean on one bank

and not lean on the other bank.

Well, we've got one mass air flow

that's common to both banks.

It's probably not gonna be the mass air flow.

We've got one fuel pump.

It's gonna be common to both banks, right?

So now we're looking at a vacuum leak or an injector.

What's affecting this, you know,

so, you know, again, I'm checking off components.

It's not that, it's not that, it's not that.

And I'm left with, you know, kind of like an ASE question.

Two of these are definitely not the answer.

No, I'm 50-50.

And so now I need to hone in on those areas.

That was such great advice right there.

I hope that needs to be a clip on how to approach things

just because it is so true.

And that's not, I mean, you take that principle

to any aspect of your life and maybe sit back

and, you know, have a game plan

and be thoughtful on how you're going to attack something.

Can, I think there's the common theme

of like go slow to go fast, right?

Or like talking through that.

And that just helps organize your thoughts.

You're not in that chaotic mode in your brain

where everything feels unorganized and just a mess.

Like if you can just take a few minutes,

and even if it does take more than a few minutes,

like you've got a plan ironed out.

And I understand it, there's pressures on a tech

to produce and so if that perception is you're sitting down,

but like don't worry about that.

Worry about how you're going to solve these problems

and thinking through that is, in my opinion,

probably always the best way to go about it.

That's probably like your race car days.

You know, you had to learn how to make a fast lap

and it's not just foot to the floor

or take the inside of the track.

You know, you're systematically attacking it differently.

And so your qualifying lap is different

than your race lap, right?

And yeah, it's like you said,

sometimes you got to go slow to go fast.

This is good.

One thing I've got to pull out of there

is you had mentioned ASC and you and I

both have a pretty big passion for ASC

and all the great things they're doing.

And kind of even the recent years,

I feel like the evolution in general.

Yeah, you're an ASC board member

and this is something where it's not new to you

that you love ASC.

This has been something

that's been a part of your life for a long time.

We hear at times the, you know, the negative side of it.

Well, just because they can pass a test

doesn't mean that they can work on a car.

And goes back to that kind of negative mindset

that I was talking about earlier from a lot of folks

that, you know, there's this fight against it

for whatever reason by some folks.

But then when you look at what that represents

and why, in my opinion, we need ASC

to be strong in our industry,

I truly feel that we have to have some level

of professionalism to justify

where the labor rates are going on this stuff.

And the labor rates have to go that way

just like we talked about before

because we need different levels

of professionals on these things.

And so talk to me a little bit about your feelings there

and, you know, maybe the need for it

and maybe the way people should be looking

at that certification in general.

Yeah, no, I'm with you over the last 10 years

seemed to be the, yeah, just cause you passed the test

doesn't mean you can fix a ham sandwich, right?

And even I felt that in the shop

when I became a master tech

passed the automatic transmission test

and the transmission guy that worked

in the two bays next to me

could not pass it to save his life.

You know, and he's like,

you don't even know what check ball goes in this cat.

I'm like, I don't, but I can read, I can understand.

You know, I'm not memorizing this stuff.

And so one reason I'm very passionate about ASC

is it's industry regulating industry.

And so it's kind of the, if not us, then who?

I don't think any of us want the government to come in

and start regulating this stuff

and creating certifications themselves.

It's gonna be a hundred times worse than what we have.

And so, you know, my history with ASC is

as a young technician, as I talked about earlier,

the other guys in the shop had it and I didn't.

And so that was something to strive for to,

you know, shut up guys, I can do this

or I viewed them as some of my heroes per se

and respect, I guess, right?

And so, give me something to strive for.

And so then once I got it, and I still say this today,

walking on Fridays, we'd all go to the local cafe, diner,

you know, and have lunch together

and there'd be eight to 10 of us sitting around a table.

I've got the master badges and L1 on my shoulder

and four or five other guys have no certifications.

Who do you think Joe Blow and the diner

is gonna come up and ask a question to?

They're gonna see the guy with the certifications

and the well-decorated technician.

And so that's who gets that attention, if you will.

You know, driving through back roads,

even yesterday, I was driving across town

in Grand Rapids in, oh, there's a new shop

and they've got a big,

we employ ASC certified professionals here.

So whether that shop believes it or not,

they're trying to gain credibility

by hanging the ASC logo out front.

And so ASC admittedly has probably not done the best job

of advertising to consumers over the past decade,

but recognizing so.

You know, so back to starting as a technician,

become a master certified,

I got involved as a subject matter expert.

I've got a ton of different plaques

and I'm a counter behind me here

of all the different workshops I've been involved with

as an SME in impact networking,

made a lot of great friends,

met a lot of great people

and came up with a true appreciation

for how the ASC exams are assembled by industry peers.

You know, there's a Honda guy there that's going,

oh, my technicians don't use mass airflow sensors.

So, you know, and then in the Chrysler guys are like,

yeah, mine either, but everybody else says,

well, it's part of the vehicles.

And so they need to understand

and we need to test on that.

But just great representation of OE manufacturers,

aftermarket technicians, tool specialists, educators,

et cetera, and coming together to write

and validate all the questions.

So it's truly a exam written by your peers

in putting that together,

understanding that process,

appreciating that process

and understanding now how other industries

are emulating what ASC does for their own industries

and then having the chance to serve on the board.

I started as a board of governors a couple of years ago

and then moved to the board of directors,

kind of inner circle, if you will, last year and this year

and just so appreciative of the people

that are involved with that.

Again, the mix of OE representation there,

aftermarket people, you know,

we just had our board meeting last week

in Savannah in the closed door session.

It was just, we all left like,

man, I'm so glad that this person's here for that.

This person's here for that.

Just the mix of the different people in the room

and we're all here for one thing.

And it's to raise the standards

and the respect level of the repair industry,

whether it's dealership levels or aftermarket.

That's as well summarized as I could ask for.

That was really, really good.

And you can tell it's from the heart.

And I just echo everything that you're saying there

in terms of seeing all the people in a room

that do truly care about the industry

and from all walks of life,

wanting to see the industry in a better place.

I think there's a lot of value in that.

And so hopefully that continues to grow.

I really, I think you're seeing maybe a change in attitude

regarding ASC, I think as a whole.

And you'll still have your detractors,

but I don't care what it is that you're doing,

you're going to have detractors.

And so I think it's gaining a lot more steam

and it's just to your point,

like you really want to don't,

you don't want the government being the ones dictating

how successful somebody is.

We've seen how they work and it doesn't go well.

So I...

You can't get your head down.

Yeah, right.

I think Dave has been a breath of fresh air.

He comes in as a technician, a farm boy,

a Ford employee with global implications

and coming in with new relationships, new ideas,

people like yourself as industry allies,

Chris from Endeavour, Jim from Babcox.

We're all working to make ASC cool again.

That was a charge from our outgoing chairman,

Jason Rainey.

But again, it was awesome after the meeting.

We're sitting at the airport all ready to fly home

and just a conversation between Jason Rainey

with Napa AutoCare and Brad Marshall from Bridgestone

in Louise from Subaru.

And we're just sitting there magnifying

about the quality of people there,

but also kind of the weight that we bear with this

and understand that people respect this

and people, it's a big deal.

We got to honor 56 industry professionals last week

and give them kudos for their stuff.

And these are people, this is a major lifetime achievement.

They're stopping us at the airport too.

So cool to meet you guys.

And it's something we don't take lightly either.

And so it's an honor to represent the industry.

Well, you and I sat with a couple and their son

at dinner the first night

and it was so cool to just see it through their eyes, right?

And see the experience through their eyes.

And similar to what you said about SEMA,

it was one of those moments where you do kind of pinch

yourself and say, I can't believe I'm here, right?

Like this is really, really cool.

Yeah.

To tell the 18 year old version of me

that this is where it'd be today.

It's like, wow, that's cool.

And so I have to remind myself of that on some days.

You know, like, you asked for this pale, but...

All right.

Well, we've got some hard hitting questions here

from our marketing team.

Rapid Fire, we should dim the lights

and put the spotlight on right now.

Yeah, I'm certain what.

No, just a few fun questions for you.

The first one, if you weren't doing this job,

what would you be doing?

You know, when I sit back in Daydream

and look out the window, I think that guy

that mows the grass on the side of the highway,

that's a pretty good gig.

You know, he sees somewhere different every single day.

He's not in the same thing.

I don't think his stress level's that high.

No phone.

Right, he's listening to the radio.

You know, he pulls over and sits underneath

the shade tree and eats his ham sandwich for lunch.

Like, that's not a bad gig.

So that might be it.

I might have that same dream some days.

What was your first job?

So my first job was doing long care.

I did long care and that might lead

into my career aspirations here yet.

You know, I did long care in middle school at our church

and then ran and eventually owned part

of a long care company throughout my summers.

And again, it was cool.

You're somewhere different every hour

and, you know, you're outside and riding around on equipment.

And so, yeah, that was a good job.

I think that for a kid teaches so much good work ethic.

And so it teaches you so much about life,

I feel like with long care and even how to properly maintain

your equipment, right?

Or how to, you know, how to every morning

you do the maintenance, you replace the string on the trim

or you fuel stuff up, get everything ready to go, you know,

and then off season you do the maintenance.

And so back to the previous question too, a farmer

is one of the things that would probably be, you know,

today as I've moved up the pay scale,

I can almost afford to be a farmer.

Forty acres of corn and in some beef cattle,

you know, we raise steer here, show them a 4-H.

My daughter's been more successful and married to dairy farmer.

So, you know, we can afford this stuff.

Isn't that funny?

I think I'd be in the same boat there too.

And so I grew up showing cattle, beef cattle.

And same thing with like the work ethic side, right?

Like learning how to work on a calf and and and just seeing

some of my buddy's kids showing now so much goes into it.

And I don't think people understand the time commitment.

Every single day when I was a kid, we'd bathe shampoo.

Trim them.

Blow dry them.

Yeah.

My kids learned about spreadsheets because I was not that

parent that just bought it all for them.

So they had to understand what the input costs were.

And then, you know, the profits and some of that kind of stuff.

So great life lessons with with a shovel and manure.

I get another similarity between us.

I feel like last question, what time do you get up in the morning?

Who? So this morning I was up at five after five.

Eastern time.

And so this morning I joined a group of guys for Bible study.

Older guys, a lot of life lessons I get from those guys.

And, you know, almost like fatherly advice, then breakfast

with another friend and then in my office by seven thirty.

I still get at home that I need to drive to school on days

when I'm home, you know, I'm on the road a lot.

But from home, I get to bring them to school.

So we're out the door by seven o'clock on those days.

And then back in the office.

So. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, that's cool.

You know, I've transitioned from a night owl to the early bird here.

And that's not a bad thing. I don't know.

I, you know what, though?

I think you probably start to value your time a little bit differently, too.

And how, like, you know, rather than going and hanging out at a bar,

like if you can get up and have coffee with some people that can feed you

some wisdom, like, that's probably not a bad thing.

And the phone's not ringing yet.

The emails aren't coming in.

I do have a team in China, you know, so there's some late night

and early morning stuff with them.

But just the peaceful time in the morning, sunrise, you know, nothing better.

Oh, I couldn't agree more.

Now, Ryan, where can people find you and everything you're doing?

Really find out about what you're doing at Standard Motor Products.

So standardbrandtraining.com they they can look there.

We always update our different classes, follow us on LinkedIn,

both standard brand SMP or myself, Ryan Coyman.

You know, in standard brand as well.

You we've got YouTube videos.

If you ever go, man, that guy, you know, that guy's ugly.

And I am sick of listening to him.

You can find me on YouTube on our standard brand

or four seasons channels as well, sharing some more knowledge.

So I would encourage everybody to do it.

Ryan's doing some just insanely cool things in the industry.

He has over the course of his entire career, another example of somebody

starting off as a technician and working their way up through.

I love these stories because there are so many out there that have done this.

And, you know, I feel like we left a lot on the table in terms of stuff

we should have been talking about or could have talked about.

But it was such a fun conversation, as always.

And hopefully hopefully we can get you we can convince you to come back on again.

I love it, Jay.

Always a pleasure talking to you.

You know, we share a lot of the same passions and we're going to leave

this thing better than what we found it, right?

So absolutely.

Well, I appreciate that.

And always looking forward to talking to you and we'll do it again here

sometime soon. Thanks, Jay.

That wraps up another episode of Beyond the Wrench.

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Raising the Standards & Respect for the Repair Industry

Chevrolet C10

Master Tech

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