Sherwood II Says We MUST Find Better Ways to Recruit Talented Techs
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Car
Jeep Cherokee
The Jeep Cherokee is a tough-looking SUV that can handle rough roads and off-road adventures. It's popular because it can be used for everyday driving and also for exploring nature.
Term
tire removal
Tire removal is when you take a tire off a car's wheel. It's something that mechanics do when they need to change or repair tires.
Car
Toyota Prius
The Toyota Prius is a special kind of car that uses both gas and electricity to help save fuel and reduce pollution. It's well-known for being very good on gas, which means you can drive it a long way without needing to fill up often.
Car
Honda That Honda
The Honda That's is a small car that is very good at saving space and fuel, making it easy to drive around in busy cities. It's not as common outside of Japan, but people like it for its clever design.
Term
CVT
A CVT, or Continuously Variable Transmission, is a type of car transmission that doesn't shift gears like a regular automatic. Instead, it smoothly changes to give you the best power and efficiency while driving.
Brand
Kia
Kia is a car brand from South Korea that makes affordable cars and SUVs. They are known for their stylish designs and good warranties.
Brand
Hyundai
Hyundai is a car company from South Korea that makes many different types of vehicles, including sedans and SUVs. They are known for providing good value for the price.
Term
engine
An engine is what makes a car go. It takes fuel and turns it into power to move the vehicle.
Part
direct injection
Direct injection is a way of getting fuel into the engine that helps it run better and use less gas. It makes the car more efficient and cleaner for the environment.
Part
low tension oil rings
Low tension oil rings are parts in the engine that help keep oil where it needs to be without using too much. This helps the engine run better and use less fuel.
Part
piston rings
Piston rings are metal rings that fit around the pistons in an engine. They help keep the fuel and air mixture inside the engine and prevent oil from leaking out, which helps the engine run better and more efficiently.
Term
emissions
Emissions are the gases that cars release into the air when they burn fuel. These can be harmful to the environment and people's health, so there are rules to keep them low.
Company
Felpro
Felpro makes parts that help seal engines and other components in cars. They are trusted by many mechanics and have been around for a long time, which means their products are generally reliable.
Part
timing chain
A timing chain helps keep the engine's parts moving in sync. If it fails, the engine can have serious problems, so it's important to keep it in good shape.
Term
OE parts
OE parts are the same parts that were originally used when the car was made. They are meant to fit and work just like the original ones.
Term
OBD2
OBD2 is a system in cars that helps check for problems. It started being used in cars from 1996, making it easier for mechanics to find out what's wrong with a vehicle.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Chevrolet Camaro is a cool, sporty car that many people love because it looks great and goes really fast. It's like a modern version of the classic cars from the 1960s that people still talk about today.
Term
ABS
ABS is a system in cars that helps prevent the wheels from stopping too quickly when you brake, which helps you steer better and avoid accidents.
Term
Tipham
Tipham is a part in some Chrysler cars that helps control how the engine starts and runs. If it breaks, the car might not start or work properly.
Car
Jeep Wrangler
The 2008 Jeep Wrangler is a tough SUV that can drive on rough roads and trails. It's a favorite for people who like outdoor adventures and off-roading.
Company
BMW
BMW is a famous car company from Germany that makes luxury cars. They are known for their sporty and high-quality vehicles.
Car
BMW 5 Series
The BMW 5 Series is a luxury car that is known for being comfortable and fun to drive. The models from 1999 and 2000 are part of a specific version called the E39.
Term
3D printer
A 3D printer makes objects by stacking layers of material, like plastic or metal, based on a computer design. This technology can help make car parts faster and sometimes cheaper than traditional methods.
Term
spare parts
Spare parts are extra pieces that can be used to fix cars when something breaks. They help keep cars running well for a long time.
Brand
Mercedes
Mercedes is another car company from Germany that makes luxury vehicles. They are known for their advanced technology and comfortable rides.
Term
used parts
Used parts are car parts that have been taken from another vehicle. They can be cheaper than new parts and are often used to save money on repairs.
Part
transmission control module
The transmission control module is like the brain for the car's transmission system. It helps decide when to change gears for better performance and fuel efficiency.
Term
software
Software in cars helps control different parts of the vehicle, like navigation and engine performance. It's like the computer programs that make everything work smoothly.
Part
high pressure fuel pump
A high pressure fuel pump helps send fuel from the gas tank to the engine. It's important because modern engines need fuel delivered at the right pressure to run well.
Term
brake job
A brake job is when a mechanic fixes or replaces parts of a car's brakes. This can include changing the brake pads or other parts to make sure the car stops safely.
LIVE
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You know, there's a legacy in this industry that we have to preserve,
but at the same time, we have to do better every day. So I keep saying, you know,
just shoot to be 1% better tomorrow than you were today. You're not going to do it every day,
but at the end of the month, if you're 10% better at something, 10% is incredible.
That's a major milestone.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to another exciting episode of the Jada mechanic podcast.
We are running right into the Christmas break. And you know, I've got, I worked really hard
yesterday and I got all my work done. And I was able to like take a day. So we're recording this on
the 23rd of December. And I'm sitting here with somebody that everybody will probably recognize
by now. He's repeat guest, very, very popular individual, very the kind of people we need in
the industry. Mr. Sherwood Cook, how are you this morning, Sherwood? I'm doing fantastic. How are
you? How are you doing? You ready for Christmas? I'd be lying if I said I'm ready now. Are we ever
ready until the morning of? I haven't even put my tree up yet. So I mean, I'm gonna, no, I know,
I know. My wife does all that. So
now when I say I put it up, it's a pre lit little four foot tree. I just live with myself and my
little dog, right? So she, she's totally good. And that's pretty much all I do. And then I'll
travel to my folks when I say travel, it's only like a 20 minute drive. I'll be there for a place
Christmas morning and do the whole prison's thing and all that kind of stuff. And they'll probably,
we're not sure yet whether I'm going to cook Christmas dinner or they're going to cook Christmas
dinner, but we'll do breakfast at one location and dinner at another. It just depends on how,
how active I feel about cooking. So nice. And then pretty, it's a small get together. We don't,
you know, I don't travel anymore. It used to be when I lived away in Ottawa. The Christmas holidays
were a lot because it was always like we were traveling two hours to, I mean, I drove an old
Cherokee through some white out blizzards to get home and to get back. So I mean, it was pretty
cool. Now I don't miss those days. Yeah, I imagine it's you've been up here for a couple of Canadian
winters for every once or twice. And you know, it's well, I've been up there. What I would consider
winter, but you guys consider it spring. I was in there in April and driving in snow storms,
right? Going up from Toronto to Berry. And yeah, I guess there's a snow line right there or something
or something that they say is the snow line. We're above it, which Berry is above it and
Toronto's below it. Yeah. Yeah, I hit that. And it's like, yeah, I just know everywhere in April
and I'm thinking April, man, we're at the beach. What is this? So yeah, it was, it was, it was
different. And we had it, we had a ton of snow like two weeks ago, and then we got a warm spell
here and it all melted. Yet, you know, you drive over to like just over to New York State, and
they're sitting in, in deep, deep snow banks still. It's, we're so close to the Lake Ontario
right here that it has a real effect on how our, how much snow we get and then how long it lasts.
We just take a one little light, you know, warm spell and it all just goes away. It's, it's pretty
good. So I fixed my, I fixed my coworker snowblower for him and he got to use it one time and now
it's like put away again. So, you know, it might figure out how plenty of use for it up there.
Um, so we saw it, you guys talking, you had your, your tech, your junior technicians night,
which is now, I want to say probably the second or third time we've kind of shared that with us
on the, on the internet. And I mean, it's, this year was a huge turnout for it, wasn't it?
Yeah, I want to say it was our eighth or ninth year doing it. We had 125 kids sign it up and we
had 88 show up, which always happens, right? And, um, we were supposed to cap it at a hundred,
but, um, my, my daughter, I think it was my daughter, like Sherwood. So I think, I think
Sherwood blamed it on his wife. It's like, we can't figure out how to turn it off,
how to turn the sign up, the registration off. So we had 125, which worked out fine.
And, uh, yeah, it was, it was, we actually added some, uh, some stations. We had a,
we had to say one station, one station, maybe two stations. We added a tire removal. So aren't
our tire, uh, you know, dismounting and mounting actually, we added three stations. We added a
station where they took them, took it off the car. Yeah. And, uh, so they took the tire off,
they were jacked the car up, took the car, the tire off, put it back on. We volunteered,
Sherwood's Prius for that. And he's like, well, we'll see how many, how many, uh,
lug studs he's going to have to have later. But that was a good station. And then we
had the tire dismount, mount balance. And then we had Tom, you know, you know, Tom,
he did an electrical station and we had a, um, and actually a tech that flew in,
she flew in from Arizona to help us with it. And she did the electrical station with Tom.
So it was really, really cool. And it was, it was the kids like that. I did an electrical station,
I think it was a first year. It was first year and had the scope and was showing on the scope
and all kinds of stuff. Yeah. They had zero interest in that. Tom and I kind of put our heads
together and went, how can we make them like see it and like it? And so we had them actually
build a circuit. We had the battery there and, you know, just have, they just had to connect
the wires up. And some of the older ones that the, um, the teenagers we were, because we did have
some that were middle school age, we're supposed to stop at 12. We had some older ones, but they
were really into what, cause we had a, for a fuse, we had a, um, load light place of the
fuse. We, we did this last minute, literally my handyman guy was here and we're like, Hey,
we need a wooden table. And he built that wooden table in 45 minutes, literally went to Lowe's,
got the stuff, came back, built the table so that we could put this, because otherwise
they're going to be sitting on the floor, right? And so, uh, we had a load light in a place of
the fuse. And so the kids were really asking real good questions like, well, why is that light lit
up? And why isn't this light lit up bright? And, you know, so they were, they were basically asking
why, why we had a voltage drop. They didn't know that, you know, but it was really, really cool
because, uh, it shows that they're thinking, you know, they're, they're, they want to know. So
yeah, sometimes before they even know the terminology, they know they can spot that there
is a problem, but they don't know necessarily even how to vocalize it. Like I see that that
probably is not the way this is working. Why is it not? You know, and that's the coolest thing. If
we can sometimes just get the, the terminology out of the way and just go, what's, what's the end
result you want to see happen here? And what are you seeing? It makes it so much easier. You know,
I know I struggled a lot with just the language on some of this stuff of when I was first starting
out of trying to learn it. Like I knew I needed to turn a light bulb on, but I'm like, oh, like,
you know, it's, it's a lot for kids, man. And, and there's so a lot for me. We're talking about
if anything, I think that might be one of the reasons people like me is because I try to,
listen, it's got to be simple for this brain to process it. And so I just simplify everything
that I possibly can. I don't try to be, you know, more than I am capable of. I gotta ask,
what's the volume level like on junior tech night in the shop? Does it get pretty
loud? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you watch the live, but I mean, when I do, when I say,
so it comes over the intercom, we have somebody timing it. We have a client, he loves coming
out here and he times it, right? But he couldn't make it this year. So we had one of one of my
girls inside the intercom time to switch. And I got to go into hockey coach mode. And it's like,
and I forgot I had the mic on the first time. Yeah. And so we're live on Facebook. And I'm like,
so it's like, Mike, Mike, some computer speakers or something there. But no, it's,
it gets very loud. I mean, it's, you know, you imagine that's, you know, roughly 90 kids,
not just the children though, because parents are there. So it's 88 kids plus all the parents
that are following the kids around, right? Yeah. And it's, it's, there's a lot of people
in the building, a lot of people in the building. Did you, did you see any future superstars this
time? So we did something different this time, because we had Matko got involved and sent us
some cool prizes to give away. They sent a remote control car and they sent two really cool little
Nerf guns that looked like impacts. Oh, nice. That was pretty cool. But we had a subscriber
that sent us five fully stocked craftsmen tool kits. It had a value of like 847 bucks. I don't
know what they were selling for, but I mean, a lot of full of tools. So we had five of those
stacked up. And so we had eight, eight, what we call big gifts to give away. We gave a whole
bunch of other stuff. I mean, Matko gave us a bunch of yo-yos and I mean, you know, just
and grip edge gave us a bunch of stuff. I mean, of course, Harbor Freight gives us a bunch of
stuff. So the kids were just leaving with booty, right? They had all kinds of stuff they were
leaving away, right? But we had, I went around and I had some stickers, right? And I said,
we talked about it beforehand and talked to the tech said, if you see, you know, anybody that's
really standing out, I was like, really paying attention that looks like they're engaged,
then let us know. And so Tyler, one of our younger techs actually, he was like, oh,
he actually pulled me over like two or three times, like, this kid's really, you know,
and so we went around and we gave those stickers to those eight kids. Actually,
a little funny story with this, I gave eight stickers out. Let me say that. I gave eight
stickers out. Understand, there's 88 kids in here. It's a madhouse, all right? And we know
it every year. It's like, I always tell everybody, all right, we're 10 minutes, this place is going
to be, you know, a madhouse. And then, and then it just like, when it's done, it's like, you know,
but I mean, it's fun. But when it's when everybody's out, it's like, you got to take a breath,
you know, because you're going steady for that whole time. But we had eight stickers. I gave eight
come and we told them, save the sticker. We had a little star on the back of it. Don't peel it,
don't stick it somewhere because the star was on the peel part, right? And we're like, and don't
leave early. Make sure you hang around. And so those eight kids came over and we had a giveaway.
Well, it wasn't eight kids. It was seven kids. I gave one kid two stickers. I literally went
up to one kid and twice, two times independently. And it's so crazy. I didn't even remember it was
the same kid, right? That's how, you know, your brain's going. And so, but luckily, right before
I figured that out, we had a mom and a young girl come over and she said, can he, you know,
the mom said, can she get a picture with you? Because this is, I think was her third year or
something like that. And she just absolutely loves working on stuff. And she's doing great.
Well, she didn't get a sticker for some reason. So we, you know, she fell through the cracks,
it happens, right? And so she was leaving. And I found out the kid said, oh, I said,
why do you have two stickers? Oh, you gave me two different stickers. And I'm like, oh, perfect.
I took one, I ran out the door and grabbed that girl and said, get back in here, right?
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Cool. And so, and then we ended up doing a drawing for the, you know, eight gifts.
And it was hilarious. It was one of the funniest moments of the night was,
of course, the remote control car. A lot of them wanted that, right?
And the one kid really wanted that one. The Nerf guns, they were cool, but these kids are the ones
that want to work, they want to work with their hands, right? They wanted the tools.
And so, the tools and the remote control car were the two big ones. Well, the two oldest kids,
they were the teenagers. I was actually in my wife's middle school. My wife knew them from
lunch room and middle school. Won the two Nerf guns. And they were like, oh, and they were
already, they were the two first gifts we gave out. And they were already trying to say, oh,
who wants to trade? Come on. You know, they're trying to make trades right there. And then we
gave out the, I think the remote control car was next. And it went, the kid that was thinking
about trading for a Nerf gun, he was like, oh, on the fence, like, well, maybe I'll trade for the
Nerf gun if I, he won the remote control car and he's the one that wanted the car. He's like, oh,
literally the instant that he wanted, he's like, trade deals are off, right? It was hilarious
listening to these, to these, you know, kids that are just like talking like adults, right?
And negotiating. And then the five kids that won the, the toolboxes, the older kids were like,
come on, you want to trade? You want to trade? And they, they were like, nope, all of them,
like almost in unison. Nope. And then one by one, this was not scripted. One by one,
they walked over and the boxes were sitting there. And they literally each, each grabbed the handle,
boop, walk, boop, walk, boop. I'm like watching this, like, you could not, there's no director in
the world that could have done that and made that any better than what that just was. And literally
walked out with these two kids holding the Nerf guns, like, come on guys. So, but it was fantastic
that we were able to do that. And it was a little different, like I say, than we normally would do,
but I loved it because it, I'm hoping that some of those kids down the road, you know,
they'll take this stuff home and they'll work on stuff and they'll, you know, they'll piddle around.
That's how I got in. It was piddling around. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing like,
we forget sometimes that like our previous generations, there was always a set of tools
somewhere in just about every house, like there's always a basic hand tool set. Now you don't see
that, right? Like a lot of people, you know, maybe live in an apartment, don't even, if you go
underneath their sink, there's nothing there. You know, there's no tools or a junk drawer.
A junk drawer. A junk drawer that had like a claw hammer and maybe some slip joint pliers
and a couple of screwdrivers and that's when whatever the dryer needed to be fixed to the
lawnmower or, you know, you had to go whack on your starter in the morning, you know,
you always had that stuff. And now the modern day is being lost by that. Like we have all this
information, but we don't necessarily have the hardware to get some of these basic problems.
And that's what gives people confidence is just being able to say like, hey, I fixed my dryer
or hey, I fixed, you know, I put a new spark plug in my lawnmower and now it runs better.
Like it's that little stuff is being lost on people. And I think it, you know,
I think the desire, yeah, I think the desire from people just general. And listen, there's a good
side to this and there's a bad side to this, right? The good side is to what I'm about to say,
I kind of need to finish the thought, I guess, or is that, you know, there's, there's a loss of
wanting to do things like that, right? We pushed people, kids to begin with and then they become
adults is we've pushed them so far away from wanting to work with their hands that they don't
want to do anything. Not only do they, and then because they don't want to do anything when they're
kid, right? They're, they're, you know, playing video games or doing anything other than, than
working on stuff, right? And, you know, I don't know, I haven't, I haven't seen a kid build a fort
in forever, right? I mean, I'm out there with back in the day with, you know, sheets of wood and
whatever I find anywhere and building a fort together, you know, I built a submarine one time
where we had a hatch going down the top of, I mean, it was, you know, but, you know, you don't see
it anymore. Now I'm starting to see some kids across my street. I have a big field next to a
church and there's a nice tree for climbing and stuff over there. And I've lived in this house
for 26 years and very rarely do you see kids over there. And here recently, I'm seeing kids over
there. I saw, I see a kid with a little dirt bike over there. I haven't seen somebody riding on a
dirt bike and, you know, a little tiny dirt bike, you know, like we used to have. So it's coming
back around, but we lost it. And so these, a lot of people don't have even the, the skills to, to
maneuver their hands in a way to even use tools, right? And the good side of it is that it brings
a lot of work into the shop because nobody's out there. Very few people are out there working
on their own car, you know, you know, but which is fine. But the downside is like, where are we
going to find people to do this stuff, you know, and it's becoming a, it's becoming a big problem.
I mean, we've always been able to hire and stuff. And it is becoming, you know, you're up against,
at least for us, we have a, we need you to be good at what you do. But we also need you to
understand what we're trying to do, which is make people's lives easier, you know, and that might
mean not just fixing a car, you might have to do some other things that are involved in this stuff.
And, and, you know, generally speaking, technicians are, you know, we're not built like
that. We're built to fix things, you know. And so it's a really hard find to, to get, there's
lots of great guys out there that are super smart, but they just don't have the, we don't,
a lot of us don't have people skills, right? We fix cars, you know, and so I think that
um, this is going to be a bigger problem, I feel like,
not just in the automotive world, I'm talking about in the trades period.
Yeah. This is going to be a far, far bigger problem than, and I'm not a doom and gloomer guy,
you know, but this particular thing, I think is going to be a big problem coming, you know,
coming up. Well, look at your, your little, your little shorts that you did on your chat,
well, they weren't shorts, but your chat TTP and your AI using it to actually,
you know, you did a couple of videos or shared where you showed how, how it walks through the
process of, of what would be, you know, causing this Honda nut to start, right? Or, um, and I,
I sit back and I watch that and I think, okay, so that's a really neat tool, maybe for a customer
to understand better, but what's going on when they just ask the question. But I don't think it's
ever going to take over the way, you know, some people are saying, oh, AI is going to fix everything
for everybody. Like they're going to be able to go and get a toolbox and, and it's going to walk
them through. I don't believe that is, we're going to see that in my lifetime ever.
You're not, I don't know. You, you might see that when, I mean, when they, when the AI starts
building the robots, right? Maybe at some point, right? I mean, which will happen eventually, I guess.
Wow. I mean, I'm a firm believer. I listen, I watch Terminator, read it very, you know, pretty
young. I thought that's what I believe is going to happen. That's just me, right? But, but until then,
we can enjoy the benefits of AI until it figures out that we don't, they don't need us anymore.
But no, I, you know, I was having a discussion actually with somebody the other day
and he said that he had watched a video with one of the creators of AI
and one, that that person had said the only jobs that are going to be
secure, that are, that people are going to need are going to be mechanics, plumbers,
electricians, right? Framers, carpenters. You know, he said everything else,
a lot of everything else is going to be AI. You're not going to need a CPA. This was him,
not me. You're not going to need a CPA. That stuff can all be dumped into an AI model and be,
and be done in, in literally a minute, right? You're not going to need lawyers. You know,
it can all be dumped in an AI. A lot of the lawyers are actually, somewhere lawyers have
gotten in trouble because they actually let the AI build their, their briefs or whatever, you know?
So, I mean, if they're doing it already, clearly AI can do it. So you might need somebody to sit
there and argue it, but it's just what the AI has come up with. So, but nobody, yeah, that Honda,
I'll say AI fixed it, right? But it actually didn't, it missed a step. Now, it didn't,
in that particular instance, the step didn't matter because it got us to the problem. But,
but for me, as a human being, technician, knowing is like, there was another one more step we
should have done before we just put the part on it, right? And that was the thing is like, well,
potentially somebody could have put that ignition switch on there and it not fixed the vehicle.
And then what would you have done? Well, you go back to the AI and go, didn't fix it, right?
And then I wouldn't know what, what it would have done then. But now the other one was a BMW
and it failed miserably on that one, right? But I do, this is another thing that I'm, that, you
know, I think for the future, and we may have a hump that we have to get over, we may have this,
this, you know, no availability of technicians in a certain age range, right? In a certain
generation, we'll call it. But then I think that we will, because I think, I think we're starting
to see a little bit of it now, where we don't all have to be like, you know, college and,
and go and want to work in an office job, right? We, the trades are a viable option.
I think what we're going to find in the future is, I think that we're going to see technicians
and, and, and, you know, other trades making the money that, that a lot of lawyers and, and,
and other people are making today, right? You know, because, because you're going to have
such a shortfall of personnel to do it. And you're going to, and the demand isn't going
anywhere, right? I mean, the demand's not going down. The cars, honestly, for me, the cars are,
I hate to say this, again, I feel like I do a doomer, gloomer on this. I mean,
it's right before Christmas, what's going on? You know, but to me, the cars are getting worse.
Yeah, they are. The ideas that we've come in with the, the idea of increased efficiency and,
you know, more horsepower and smoother drivability, you know, you don't even feel a car shift anymore,
right? Because technically really, you know, CBT doesn't really shift. But it's all been
out of compromise of, of what I say is longevity. And, you know, we have to remember a lot of time,
like, you know, our old small block Chevy's, they used to get flooded so much like a caused
engine wear. But I mean, if you knew what you were doing, you could always get it to start and
still go, you know, you could make it to work. Now, the stuff that people are being told, yeah,
you can go 10, 12,000 miles and never change the oil in it until then. And yes, you got to lift
the hood constantly and add oil to it. But that's perfectly normal. Don't worry about it.
That's not progress for people. Because I mean, if we haven't, you look at the typical motorist out
there that wouldn't even be able to find a dipstick on a car, or the car doesn't even have a dipstick,
and you're being told, yes, but you need to pull one in every week. They're not, they're not, we're,
we're selling something to people that's less maintenance and easier to operate.
But it's not a shortened lifespan. You know, these cars are not going to be worth, look,
I mean, let's put the name out there. A lot of Hyundai's and Kia's, especially up where I am,
they're not worth putting an engine in from the standpoint of, you know, what the rest of the
car and condition wise is, we've got two of them sitting on my lot right now, both need that engine,
both are not being covered under the recall, both junk, gone, you know, they're not rotted away yet,
they're not, but they're just constantly not feasible, not viable to put a motor in.
And it's, we look at this, you know, direct injection and low tension oil rings and all
this lower emissions when it first starts. That's the kicker right there. You named the one that
was the kicker right there. Yeah. And the oil rings are the big one. I think that should be like,
we really need to look into our, what do we really do into the customer when we sell that as a,
this is, you know, greener for the environment, but at the cost of the car, no, no, it's not,
sure would you know. I mean, and listen, I don't want to get, we're not, I'm not going to get
political on here at all, right? But let's just talk about just a pure, let's just, you know,
like I always say on the, on our channel, we just give facts, you know, I give my opinion
on some stuff, but we're just going to stick to facts here. If, if we have low tension oil rings,
so that we have a better, better gas mileage, I mean, we all know that works, right? We, yeah,
of course, because the ring is just scraping against the cylinder wall. Of course, if you have
high tension, when you remember back in the day, we, I tell people all the time, we put pistons
back in the day, rings on, you're tapping that thing down with a hammer and it, it ain't wanting
to move, right? I mean, it took some, today you've put them in there and just, you know, right? So,
I mean, the things, you got to catch them from hitting the bottom, right? So, I mean, it's, it's,
but that we understand that gets better gas mileage, but then at the same time, because of that same
improvement, we have to add oil to it all the time. I don't understand the logic of
we, we are getting better gas mileage. We're keeping, we have obviously better emissions,
but we're using, we're dumping oil into the atmosphere through the tailpipe, you know,
and we're having to use extra oil that we wouldn't need to. I, I just feel like we're just playing
a numbers game. It's just like, oh, we're, all we care about is a number that we can come up with
in the beginning. We don't care about the ramifications. And then yeah, on the, the long
term is we're dumping a bunch, we're getting rid of a bunch, a whole bunch of vehicles that in the
previous, you know, lifespans would, would last a long time. So, you wouldn't have to buy a car
all the time. That's right. Now you've got all these cars ending up in the, in the junkyards
or being crushed or whatever it is. It's still waste, right? And you can't recycle. You can
recycle a lot of it. There's a lot of computers in those cars. Yeah. And, you know, that's,
that's, that's stuff right there is tough to recycle. And I just don't know. To me, the
again, I'm a very simple, simplistic, you know, person. I just try to make things make sense
and some of it just doesn't. Now I wanted to touch on, you know, because we talked about
this a little bit, the, the parts issues, because I know that that's, I go back to that Nissan that
you had, right? Where AI is not going to fix that car no matter what anybody thinks it's not
going to happen, right? Like if it takes you that long to track it down, flush it out and finally
get it resolved, there's not an AI program built that's going to even come close. But
what are you seeing? Because I know that the, you know, we know that certain brands and certain
names and kind of stuff, but are you seeing a lot of the dealership parts even having
like a lot more of the quality down?
I have, I want to say this right. There's been for a long time, there's been a lot of talk in
this industry about you need to use only OE parts, only OE parts. I mean, you've got,
you've got a lot of guys that just like, they just, you know, they've been beating that drum for,
I mean, quite honestly, more than a decade, right? And I was never a part of that, right? I was like,
listen, these other companies are not out there building stuff that are going to fail quickly
and staying in business, right? I mean, you know, I'll mention one name, Felpro.
They've been around for a very long time, right? And I've used it, I mean, my gosh, I would never
even know the number how many times I've used it, thousands and thousands of times, right?
And no problems. I was, you know,
I am, you know, on the boat, moving across to the island of, you know,
of the gotta use the OE parts, you know, you know, stand over there because
we are just seeing so and we do a five year 50,000 mile warranty. I gotta be sure that we're
doing something that's going to last that long. And I'll give you a perfect example.
There's a manufacturer of timing chain components that again, I've used my entire career, we won't
mention the name here, right? I don't know how that works on how you want to do that. I'll be
careful. But they've been around a very long time. I've used them countless times. And the
forward timing chain is just it's we've had about four or five of them that the tensioners have failed
and have cost us dearly. We didn't we've done many, many of them, right? But we can't have five
failures. If we've done 50 of them, five failures is a way too big of a number, right? So we are
gonna, we're at this point, replacing every one of those with OE parts. So far, we have had some
failures with OE parts. I will tell you in the beginning of my career, you just really never
saw an OE part. I mean, if it was defective out of the box, like it was broken, the box was damaged,
and it was, you know, something damaged, that's what you saw with that, right?
Once it was on the car, I can't, I can't remember putting an OE part pulling out of the OE box,
putting on the car and it being a problem. I'm sure I did at some point, right? But
today, I can name a few of them, you know, it is happening. And I think again, we are
we're in this race to see, you know, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, just build it cheap. And I don't
care what the manufacturer is. I don't care who is the badge on the front of that car. They're
all in that, in that same, some of them are better than others as far as trying to keep a quality.
But none, I don't think, and listen, you know, who knows, they might come after me for this one,
the manufacturers, but I don't think any one of them is really looking at can we make a car last
a long time? Yeah, I just don't think that that's even, I don't think that that's honestly even in
their thoughts anymore. I think it's can we get the car out of warranty, right? And then get them
in another car. It used to be, it used to be, can we get it to 100,000 miles without big issues?
Because that was the magic number, right? And then the 100,000 mile number just went away for me.
I mean, it's like, shoot, I bought a car with 90,000, 90,000 miles on a good car, right? The 90s
cars seem to be pretty decent. Like late midnight, it was OBD2, 96, 97, 98, 99. Good 2000, you know,
up to the 2000s, 10s, 11s. Now, it's like, I mean, yeah, it's, it's like something changed. You
know what I mean? Like it's after 15 something changed, like I see the last 10 years of where
we are in this industry. And I look at 2015, anything 2015 caravan, I go, oh, like so many,
you know, weird, wonky electrical things in it and hard to get parts for now. Somebody was just
talking to me and they're like, they're trying to get an electrical part for a car. And it's
eight years old. And it's in its phase that like, oh, no, I can't be because I thought it used to
be the mandate had to be there to support for 10 years. That's not true anymore. They're not doing
Did you let somebody fact check this? I'm not saying this is a fact. I'm going to say this. I
heard this. Somebody told me that and now obviously you're in Canada. So I don't know how it affects
you. It's going to affect everybody. Honestly, I'm sure because but somebody told me that when
they did the cash for clunkers back, and that was back when Obama was in there. So that was
probably his first term, I think first. So 2000 was at 10. Yeah, eight, 10, something like that.
Um, somewhere in that legislation was again, what I heard was that that manufacturers don't
have to support the vehicle after seven years. Yeah. Now, I don't know if that's accurate or not,
but that's what somebody, well, if somebody told me that and then I can see that stuff like this
happens, you know, and I was talking to them, I'm like, yeah, I had a 68 Camaro was was one of my,
you know, cars that when I was growing up, right? And, um, and I wish I had that 68 Camaro today,
but, you know, this was back in the in the 80s late, you know, mid late 80s. And I could go over
to the Ford dealership and buy window crank bushings and anything you want to pull the
microfish up and it's in stock in the building, right? 20 year old vehicle and they got it today.
I mean, you're lucky. Chrysler and they're unlike ABS models. I mean, if you got an
ABS model for a 2012 Chrysler product, you, you're not going to have ABS. You're just going to be
either going to park the car or you're going to drive with no ABS on. It's just that simple,
right? You're not getting one. Not that we've seen anyway. Yeah. We can't find anybody that
can fix them or clone them. I was left with somebody to tell me that they can.
My brain just did an immediate check and I'm like, can, and I'm like, no, I don't think he
can do ABS modules yet. I know he's had some luck being able to do the ECMs and stuff like that.
It's the same as the Tipham thing. We talk about Chrysler all the time about Tiphams and Tiphams.
I just saw, so here's the thing, 2008 Jeep Wrangler for sale on Kajiji Facebook marketplace,
$3,000. Now, like everybody's going, well, that's not that expensive. I mean, in the pictures,
it doesn't look all that terrible. And then it says been parked for two years. It's not running.
Somebody diagnoses a Tipham, can't find a Tipham for it. Now we know that you can,
but it's an aftermarket Tipham. So then what's the, you know, under the people are there,
but I'm thinking there's something that essentially was working one day and then all of a sudden it
doesn't work for somebody and they parked it for two years. Now up here, that thing's destroyed.
And once it's been parked that long, it's rusted. You're not, you're going to be in the,
probably fixing the frame and all that jazz, but I can remember changing Tiphams when they were
cost 200 bucks and we had 10 of them on the shelf and the dealership and they were that
problematic. I was doing five, six a week for different complaints. Now it's BS to me that
they've been completely phased out from the manufacturer and we have all these cars that
essentially are working great otherwise, but now they just, this module can't be repaired,
can't be replaced. I think that's crap. I think it's terrible, you know.
So I was talking to a, I guess I can say this, I don't want anyone to get in trouble. It would
be hard for them to find this person, I guess. I was talking to, we've dealt with the same
BMW dealership for forever, right? And the parts guy there has been around for,
he's been there the whole time I've been using the place.
Right. Long time.
And one day we called, we had a guy, actually the guy who likes to do the junior tech night to
talk on the mic to say switch, right? He's got a 99, 99 or 2000 BMW five series, right?
He loves the car. I know a lot of people just went, oh my God. Yeah, I know, but, but he loves
this car. He takes care of this car. So he needed a bezel and a knob for his headlight switch.
All right. And this goes back several years ago, not tons of years ago, but several years ago.
And so we called BMW to get a price on those parts. And, you know, you could see in the,
in the thing online, the whatever the, we weren't on ISTA, we were on whatever one of those generic
BMW deals. And you could see the original price on them. They were like 20 something bucks and
30 something bucks, right? Okay. So we called the dealer. We're like, we didn't talk to our guy.
We talked to another guy there. And, and he's like, yeah, I can get them. And they're $250 for
one and 300 something dollars for another one. This is a bezel, plastic bezel, right? And no,
you know what I'm talking about. And so I just thought, oh, the guy, the guy looked up something
wrong. I mean, guy clearly has got to be. And I jumped on the phone. And of course, my guy
sees the call coming in and answers it immediately. And he goes, I knew you'd be calling me.
And I'm like, okay, yeah, man. I was like, is he off? And he goes, no, he said, I checked it.
It's right. And I said, you're kidding me. And I said, how is that even possible? And then he
explained to me for the first time, how this works. The car is made. So let's say they make,
you know, a half a million of a car just on a number out there.
He said, they'll make 750,000 parts. They have whatever, different parts. He said,
that way they have 250,000 spare parts. Right. Well, those are made when the run of the car is made.
So 500,000 of those parts went into building the cars, 250,000 went into inventory. Right.
And he said, so clearly, those are way made, those are way cheaper. Because they made them,
when they made 750,000 of those bezels, he said, but when they run out at this time,
now this has been several years ago, he said, when they run out, BMW still wants to be able
to service those vehicles. And so what they do is they go and they do them in small batches.
Small batches are exponentially more expensive, but you still can get the part. Right.
Okay. Well, that's great. And it worked for a long time. And if you want, you know, now our guy
opted not to purchase that. And in a lot of cases, a 3D printer, something could come along and
somebody could do that, you know, that technology has gotten to the point back then it wasn't
available. Yeah. But now I'm wondering if that still holds true today with the spare parts
amount, right, with who's calculating the number of spare parts that they're going to build.
And then I don't think, I don't know about BMW and Mercedes. I mean, those cars,
they, those are manufacturers that tend to want to be able to service their,
they don't like their people to buy the cars when they're third owners and all that kind of stuff.
But they also know they turn into classics at some point. So maybe they want to parts to be
available, whatever. But I don't think that anybody else is doing a small batch run on anything.
I think that's dead and gone probably from everybody. And I don't think that they're doing
very many spare parts, right? So then it becomes, and then here's the kicker. Here's when it goes
real south. Something's bad. Something just sucks. It just, your tip-ums, right? And then
they're, and then they're like, you know, trying to figure out, well, how can we make them? We need
to fix them. We need to make them. How many do we need to make? How many can we get away with?
And they'll, they'll run out of warranty. How many do we, are we going to end up replacing,
right? And how many do we really want to put in so that people can buy them later? Because,
yeah, at some point, they're going to fail. Let's just say they fail on everyone, right?
I mean, like the old Nissan CVT transmission, it wasn't, it wasn't about, you know, if it was
about when, right? So how many are we going to have? And then at some point, they don't have it
anymore. And then the car, unless an aftermarket, and that's, here's the thing, that people bash
aftermarket companies, I get it, I'm on that boat. But if an aftermarket company does not pick it up
and say, well, we can build it, you're tip them, right? Well, at least there's an option. It may
not be a good option, or a great option. But your other option is to park the vehicle and let it
just literally rot into the ground. So it's becoming a, if you would have told me in 2000,
that in 2025, your hardest thing is going to be parts, I would have laughed in your face.
Yeah, we don't all said no, it's going to be right to repair and access to information. And
that was the always the biggest obstacle I always saw. Oh, it's going to be tough, man. Like, you
know, the, the service information now, a lot of time is written is even wrong, writing diagrams
are full of mistakes and all kinds of stuff. But it's going to be like, that's going to be the
biggest struggle. IAT and everybody's right to repair, right to repair, you know, it's going
to be hard to get this access you're going to need. Now we look at it and it's like, well, the
dyke's done. And I can't get the part I need for my customer. Like, and then we still have to make
that phone call, you know, and yeah, that's the, that's the, that's the tough part because they're,
they're disconnected from our reality. Like they don't realize they just assume that, you know,
you just don't want to try and find it for me. No, that's not the case at all, man. Like, it's
just doesn't, what'll happen is it'll be something that because here, okay, let's put the other,
let's lay another brick on top of this wall that's going against us, right? Okay, they're trying to
make everything, you know, a theft related part, right? So, okay, so now if everything's going
to be a TRP, you see, you can't use a used one, and you're not going to supply a new one, right,
that we can, well, listen, I have no problem going to a client and say, hey, it needs a module and
it's going to be whatever the number it is, the number is what it is. I mean, I don't control
that, right? So, I don't mind doing that, at least it's an option for them. I feel bad sometimes
because it's like, well, you need a $5,000 repair on something that's a module, you know, but,
and if we could get a used one, if it would work, it would be a tenth of the price, perhaps,
whatever, I'm throwing some numbers out there, but, you know, the problem is that they make those
things, you know, where we can't, you put a used one in it, and then if nobody can figure out,
like the Chrysler Analyze Brake module, if nobody can figure out how to break that,
and so we can do it, again, you literally don't have a car, you're down, and so not only are
they not making the parts, but they're making the parts where you can't put a used part in it,
and that's getting to be more parts that are becoming, I mean, what a lot of even technicians
don't understand is that could be a headlight, that could literally be a headlight assembly,
right? You don't think that's just an engine control module or a transmission control module
or a BCM, yeah, those have been around, they've been doing that for a little while, now BCMs,
they've been doing that forever, right, and now they've just started going, oh, well, you know,
and so, but now they're starting to do a lot of stuff, and it is, again, you got some crazy smart
people out there trying to, trying to, you know, hack into these things to figure out how we can
make them where we can put them in used, but I don't know that they're going to be able to do
everything, you know, and then sometimes the hacking part of it takes so long,
now we've priced it out of doing the job too, I mean, hacking the module and getting it to where
we could do something to make a use when work will take so much time that it would have been cheaper
to buy the brand new stinking module and begin with it, they would offer it. And I don't mean to
throw shade, but a lot of those people that figure out the hack, they keep it so closely guarded to
themselves that it never really gets out there to have the effect that we hope that it would have
anyway, like if you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, he managed to hack it, but that's,
we're talking like in very tight-knit circles that we run in, you know, we know of a guy that might
be able to do that, but it's such a small scale, sure, that they can't get it out there to all the
people. And then what was the point then to begin with, you know, like, congratulations, you fixed
three cars. I can, I've mixed feelings on this, because, I mean, you know, you know a lot of
these guys that do this stuff, I know a lot of these guys that do this stuff, and they spend an
inordinate amount of time doing this. This is way more effort than people think sometimes,
because once the solution is found, that solution, not always was like I just said,
sometimes the solution is extremely intensive, right? But a lot of times the solution is quicker,
you know, it's fairly quick, you know, an hour or two hours, maybe three if you've got to pull,
you know, but the finding of the solution might have taken somebody weeks of work, weeks and
weeks and weeks and countless hours, right? How do they recoup their money if they just
immediately turn around and go, oh, well, post it on a forum or something and say, here's how you
do it, right? And, you know, it's like, I won't, you'll see me do things like with a Mercedes,
with the steering, you know, lock, steering column, you know, lock. Yeah, I've shown how to do that,
right? But in reality, you still have to buy the tool, you still got to buy the software,
and all that kind of stuff to do it. But, you know, that's been around for a very long time,
nobody's losing sleep over that. But I would never honestly, I mean, I want to share a lot of
stuff with a lot of people, but I'm not taking somebody else's hard work that they've then
been kind enough to show to me on how to get into this thing and do this. I'm not putting that out
there just for anybody and everybody to do that, because that's not fair to that person, you know,
because they need to make their money back on it. But then like you said, at the same time, I said,
well, we want to take care of people, how do we do that? I think that the only way to do that would
be, and I think this will turn into something, I mean, listen, what happened with COVID happened?
You couldn't get modules. It became really big, really quick to be able to do these, you know,
eProming and things like that, right? And it's now it's died off again. But I think it's going to
come back and I think that's going to kind of be its own, it could literally be its own industry,
its own sect of this industry, right? Where you got guys that just, I'm just going to do that.
And people like you and me who just don't want to, I mean, this whole room is full of these
kind of tools to do this with, right? And quite honestly, every single time I pull one out,
it's just a pain. I don't do it every day all day. So I got to relearn it, you know, I got to,
oh, that's right, you know, what's tool do I got to use for what? Because you know, there are only
400 tools, you know, so it's like, you know, to me, if I knew, like an entity that I trusted
that I could go, I'm just going to send you this thing, just do it. Here's two models, just do it.
I'm just passing that on to the client. And it's just probably going to be easier for everybody
anyway, right? But yeah, and those guys need to, the problem is that not only do those guys not
share, they share with me, I'm not saying anything bad about them, because I got a lot of them that,
you know, are great guys, great friends that share stuff with me. But a lot of times they
don't share with each other, right? They know that that company will start doing it and they want
to be able, but I mean, how much can you, if you're one guy in your house, doing this in your garage,
how many can you physically do, you know? So it's, you know, it's a thing there, you know,
I don't know. I had a really good conversation with a group chat that I'm in and we get talking
about the real value of a job, you know what I mean? And everybody decides they're starting to
step away, show it from the idea that it's this amount of labor hours and this amount of parts
margin. And they're just going, if I'm doing this, you know, high pressure fuel pump in this diesel,
it's going to have a value of this. And that's when we're going to sell the value for it. It's
just because of the what it ties up and all that kind of jazz. We have to get, I think in going
forward, when this becomes a much more specialized and craftsman level, you know, repair versus
just a job, we have to start thinking about the, what's the real value? And it's not like we're
trying to gouge the customer, but like there's some things there that if you're the only one that
can do it, it makes me crazy when somebody says, well, that's not worth a thousand bucks. Excuse me,
like you took a module that you can't buy and you took one from a car and you made it work again.
And I can't, I'm not smart enough to decide what it should cost, but I know that pretty much whatever
it will support people will pay is where it should start. You know, that's the true value
then of that. And people don't like to, to have that conversation because it's like, oh, you're
taking advantage of the customer. But I mean, ultimately it's still a free, a free market.
And if somebody is willing to pay, it's like a break job, right? If somebody's willing to pay
$2,000 for a break job, then then it's not to say that somebody won't pay 2,500 and 2,800 and 3,200.
We're all just talking about what do they really want? You know, is there a market out there still
for a $500 break job? Sure there is. But I mean, it doesn't mean that we're not comparing 500 to 35
as being the same thing anymore. There's very different levels to this. The true value I think
is what we have to learn how to sell and really show the customer what you're truly getting, you
know? Let me, I love that you just brought this up. Yeah. We have a lot of different people that
follow us on social media, right? I mean, a lot of different people. And I'm sorry I keep looking
up, but we're having some electricity thing, the lights are flickering, my backup power supplies
beeping like crazy. So, as long as we don't go out, we don't go out. So, I mean, we have,
I've had two 80-year-old women, one of them, the son said, can you, well, both of them, the son,
one sent me a letter, said, can you call my 80-year-old mom? She loves your, you're, you know,
watching you. And we just had one with a, one of my service providers walked in and said, we've
got a rear request, you know, this guy called and said his mom's 80th birthday is in a few days.
He'd love for you to just be able to do a little video and so, so he can send it to her, right?
Not me do a video and post it, but like, success to her, right? And, and I'm like, yeah, yeah,
of course we'll do that, right? But we have a lot of different people that watch. And then,
of course, we have technicians and we have shop owners and, you know, but so, so,
yeah, I want to teach technicians how to fix cars. I love the fact that they watch and they go,
oh, I see those techniques and I see the, you know, here's what you do and here's what a
vultures drop is or here's how you test a can network or here's, you know, how do you use a
scope? What are all this good stuff? I love that stuff. Yeah. I love being able to educate clients
in, you know, what, what, what happens in a repair shop, what happens behind the wall, right?
You know, it's not just plugging something in and telling you what's wrong with it. I love
educating that, you know, here's the thing that, that I will tell you that I have seen
and I was guilty of it, with the exception of corporate run shops and with the exception of
dealerships, most small shops are opened by former technicians who are still technicians and they're
just, now they're just got a job in their own shop, right? Yeah. And we as a group do not value
what we do. Period. Yeah. Right. I have had so many guys tell me, you know, when I say, listen,
you know, and we won't go in the numbers here, but, you know, I tell them that you can charge this,
you know, you're not, man, nobody's going to want to pay that. You know, we've got two guys here in
town. I love them to death. They've been, they, they, their shop is in the part store that I first
started in in like 1984. Okay. It looks like a junkyard, you can't get in the property, right?
You know, they work outside, they don't go inside the, you can't get in the building,
it's just full of junk, right? We have torrential downpours here every June through August,
torrential downpours every afternoon, they've got a little pop up, little like tent things,
you know, there's skeletons of those everywhere because the fabric wears off, so they just buy
new ones, right? Yeah. I love them. They're great guys. They were 75 bucks an hour up until fairly
recently. And I had a conversation when they bring me cars all the time for me to fix, right?
And it's like, and I send them clients all the time because people who want something inexpensive,
I know they won't take advantage of them. Yes. But I told them that you guys can charge more.
Oh, sure. Would you have your customers and we have ours? And that, you know, ours won't pay that.
I said, they will. They like you. I see online, they rave about you guys. They like you. Yeah,
you're cheap. You think that you charge more and they won't come to you. They will. And honestly,
you guys could go up a lot and not be anywhere near where everybody else is around here, right?
So don't think you're taking advantage of people. I've had guys say, well, you can't charge that
much for a spark plug, right? They don't want to mark up a spark plug because they see it as,
well, I can go buy that spark plug for this much. Well, the person can walk in and buy the spark
plug for this much. They are not in your building because they want to go down to O'Reilly's and
buy a spark plug and put in there. They're in your building because they want the convenience of
having you do it, right? And there's costs involved in that. There's the phone call or
being on the computer to order it. There's the getting it delivered and working out the paperwork
and all that, paying the bill later. I mean, at some point, you've got to balance your books
and pay your bills and that's the time that you're sitting somewhere doing that, right? So you've
got to do that. That all has to be factored in. And as a group, we just don't value all that time.
We just think, oh, well, somebody else, they could do it themselves and it wouldn't be that
much. They don't do you. I don't want to do my plumbing, right? If a plumber's coming to my house,
I'm like, dude, I don't care. You got to dig that pipe, the drain. I mean, maybe the intake, okay,
but the drain, yeah, dude, whatever. I don't care what it costs. I don't want to be in that, right?
So that person can tell me a number and if I've got the wherewithal to do the number,
I'm just going to let that guy do it, you know, or girl do it. But, you know, we as a group,
and I hear it all the time, oh, we're treated worse. You hear this all the time. As a trade,
we're treated worse than plumbers. We're treated worse than electricians. We're treated worse than
everybody, right? Guess what? Electricians value their time. They don't give it away. Plumbers
value their time. They're charging you for the moment. Their butt hits the seat in the van to
come to your house, not when they get in your driveway, right? So they value their time. And
we don't. And we don't value the fact that you can mark up the parts. It is part of the repair.
You mark it up appropriately. That's what's going to get us to the point where we can then
start making a change and a shift. You're not ripping people off. You're not ripping people
off. It's a quality craftsman work. You said it a minute ago, we need to be craftsmen. No,
actually, you said when this, what we do becomes somewhere where people think of themselves as
craftsmen. You just said something very similar to that, right? Okay. We should already be craftsmen.
I tell that to my guys all the time. I don't care if you're doing an oil service. Be a craftsman,
right? Make sure everything is just right. It should just be part of who we are internally,
right? Once we do that, and everybody gets into that process,
yeah, the price is not going to be the factor. People spend $80,000 on a car. Are they not?
Yeah. $100,000 for a pickup truck. You know what I mean?
But we can't charge $200 an hour to work on them. Come on, man. That doesn't even make sense.
Here's the thing. What about some of the people that said the reason that we've had this obstacle
in getting into this is because of the fact that we always used to close that toolbox at
five o'clock and I'd go home and then I would work till nine, 10 o'clock at night on my clientele.
I've always felt that, listen, I've done it. I have done side work in order to make a little
extra money to when I had a lean week at the month of the dealership or I had to put some
money into my own car and I was already strapped. I would do it. But I look at that and I'm like,
that comes right back to the idea of value or something because one minute,
royalty auto service has got a door rate of whatever, $150 an hour, just hypothetically
round numbers. And all of a sudden then you've got somebody that goes into their caves and somebody
goes, I work, here's my Facebook marketplace ad. I work for $50 an hour. And all of a sudden,
everybody goes, well, why is $150 and $50? We're talking completely different overhead.
It's the fact that we've always done that as an industry, I think, has been a major obstacle
for us. But yet you cannot convince so many people that it's wrong because they go, listen,
that's how I built my business. I built my clientele on that side work that I did.
I know I got you thinking, I'm sorry.
I love that. I always, I just, I love just seeing everybody's different sides of things
because everybody's usually got some kernel of something in there that's good.
First of all, you get a lot of shop owners that will just absolutely say, no, I'm not
going to allow you to do side work. You can't do side work if you work for me. And I look at that
and go, well, you don't really have a say because that's that human being's personal time. If that
person wants to go jump on trampolines for the next 12 hours until he comes back to work,
that's his deal. If he wants to work on a car or she wants to work on a car, that's their deal.
Where you would draw the line is you can't take clientele from your shop. If somebody walks in
the shop says something and then all of a sudden they're like, Hey, man, here's my car. Give me a
car and I can do it cheaper. Okay, well, that's dishonest. That's not real. We don't do that,
right? And it can turn into that, you see, because there's where the problem is, is like, well,
once people find out that that person is the same one that works in the shop and then he's got a
little thing over at his garage or maybe he's got a little, down here, they use mini storage
places, right? They use little storage facilities and there's shops just all over the place,
like Jacksonville is just filled with shops inside storage facilities. And then that becomes a
problem because they're coming to you but they would come to us. It's a problem, right? Now,
as far as from the technician side, first of all, I don't want my technicians to have to do that.
Right. You know, I want them to make enough money. You know, think about this. Should the surgeon,
you know, like he works at the hospital for four days a week and then, you know, he's like,
well, you know, I need to let me make a side cash. If you need that hernia done, I can do that over
my, got a little clinic set up over here. I can do that. I mean, you know, it's not a thing, right?
I mean, but it's common here and it's because part of it, listen, you're always going to have guys
that are going to do it. There's guys that make $200,000 a year and they want to go work on stuff
on the side, right? And make $230,000 a year, right? I mean, I have no beef with that whatsoever.
If you're just, you're that hungry and you just need that money, you go make that money, right?
But majority of people are just trying to make a certain level of money. You know, and
they should, that should happen in the shop. That should happen in the building where they're
employed, right? And then, you know, they wouldn't need to go do that. They could go spend time
doing other things, whether it be family or hobbies or whatever it might be, right? And
I just, it does, again, it's their own business to do, but it does kind of
lessen the value of what the shop does, but what people don't understand is like,
like you said, there's less overhead. Yeah, yeah, that's 100%. I mean, we all know that if you're
doing it out of your garage at your house, it's basically zero overhead, you're paying for the
mortgage and everything anyway, and you used to always hear that, right? You know, oh, yeah, if
you just work out of your garage, you know, zero overhead, you know, it's like most municipalities
are not really keen on you doing that, first of all, right? But getting us away from that,
it's like, now people are going to come to your house. And I've literally had it happen, right?
They don't know boundaries. They will show up there at two o'clock in the morning,
they'll show up there whenever they feel like it. And here's the kicker. Here's where it goes
real south. Yeah, the overhead is less. The value is less. And I just had, you just had a whole
bunch of guys, and when I'm doing the same job, and they're doing it right, they're saying it
right now, hold on. When that vehicle, because it's inevitably going to happen, none of us are
perfect. When there is a deficiency in that repair, whatever caused it, parts, labor, whatever,
you cannot, as a side work tech working out of your house or storage unit, you cannot provide
the service that the shop can provide. Yeah, because you're not available in that, in all
of those times, right? The shop is pretty much available. I mean, if they call, we can get the
call, we can, you know, they can leave a message, we'll check, we can have something happen, even
if we can't fix it, we can get them a tow, we can get them, you know, something can happen
pretty much right away, right? Whereas that guy's got to wait or girl's got to wait till they get
off work. And then what if they already have something scheduled, because they're only one man,
what if they already have something scheduled for that night, but now you got to come back?
What happens to that person? So there is a less value for that. There's, there's, it's far less
value. Yeah. And, and yeah, there's no insurance. What happens if your car gets damaged while the
person has it? Where is that, you know, we all heard those horror stories, you know,
building burns, you know, cars lost. Yeah. Yeah. Who's going to pay for it? Because the insurance
for the car is going to be like, well, you had it in this, you know, well, wait a minute now,
that they're not dumb, they're going to try to figure out how to get out of it, right?
And the guy's homeowner's insurance, he ain't paying for that. Well, you were doing work on the
work, you know, on the professional work and you're, oh, no, this wasn't a commercial
situation. This is your personal house. I mean, and then who's, you know, somebody's got to come
out of pocket with cash. Does that, does that guy got the pot that got the money in his bank
to buy you a 30, $40,000 vehicle? I mean, maybe, but yeah, you know that that's probably not going
to happen. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a tough one there. I mean, you brought that, you kind of
got me on the out there. Because when, when I, when you mentioned your, your local shop that
you know that you've, you know, known forever and they're 75 were just recently $75 an hour.
The industry has always had a place for, for a shop like that, right? There's a,
there's a market for them. There's a customer for that type of customer. But when you look at them,
Sherwood, what's some of the advice or things that you, if you could just
say, here's three nuggets, these three nuggets can turn your business to the next, I don't want to
say turn it around, but go to the next level. What's those three things Sherwood parts mark up?
You know, because some of the coaching companies will say,
well, to turn the corner, you got to go, you know, flat rate pay or, you know, you have to,
what's some of the other things you have to spend X amount of dollars in marketing. You
at least one thing because you asked me for three. Yeah. We'll start with one. The number one thing,
the number one thing is give great value for what you do. You know, you can't,
I think I told you in the first, maybe when we were talking some point or maybe in the,
in the first time we did an interview, I've been with a lot of coaching companies over the year
and they've all helped me in some way, shape or form.
But I figured something out. Thank God, very early, which was you can't just,
should you have the proper parts margins? Absolutely. What the proper parts margins are,
that's fluid, right? I mean, it's definitely changed since I've been doing this, you know,
and but, but you 100% should have the proper parts margins. You know, I just said a minute ago,
you know, we can't charge $200 an hour. I'm not saying that shops need to charge $200 an hour.
You might be somewhere in a, in a, in a community that will not support $200 an hour, but you need
to know what your community will support. And you do need to be not just giving it away. You need
to be, your, your labor needs, again, you need to have the proper labor margins, which means that
you've got to make a certain amount of money. And as much as technicians don't want to hear it,
I can't give a technician flat, you know, a pay of half of what we sell. That doesn't work in
today's business. It worked 30 years ago, right? It doesn't work today, not with everything that
goes with it. Because by the time you add in all the other stuff that goes with it, it does get
up there pretty high. It's just unfortunately, because of all the things that we have to pay that
goes with it, the tech doesn't see the half, right? Yeah. But, but you have to start with
giving value to your clients, giving value to your vehicle owners. Number one,
if you charge $1,000 an hour, just make sure that that $1,000 an hour comes with a lot of value.
What are you giving for that $1,000 an hour, right? If you can make your clients desire your work
because they value it, and then you can make a price that's commensurate with that level of value,
they'll be more than happy to pay you, right? The numbers are the numbers. The numbers are
different for every, it's why when I hear these cookie cutter things like, oh, you should be $150
an hour, you should be, you know, you should be 60% parts margin, or you should be whatever the
number might be, right? It's like, well, okay, well, if you live, if you work on cars that you're
going back to the dealership for a lot of your parts, how in the world could you ever be 60%
parts margin? That just doesn't work, right? You know, if that'd be, I mean, that'd be fantastic
if we could do that, but now you're, you're going to be way more expensive than the dealership is.
And okay, I'm, in cases, we are more expensive than the dealership. What we do give some value
that they don't get, we get a 5 or 50,000 mile warranty, they don't, right? We have a very personal
relationship with people, most don't. Okay, but from a shop standpoint, somebody that you, you
asked me, what would be one of the things you do? Give good value. Lots of ways to do that.
Lots of ways to do that. So, so many different avenues you can go down. I mean, I can sit here
for an hour talking about just that, right? Well, I think that would be the first one.
You know, when I liken it to this, because I know you guys wash every car when it leaves,
right? It's always going out clean. Are you still there?
Yep. What happened? Are you still there? Yeah, we're back. We're locked down. Yeah.
But I noticed like, you guys, you know, you do it as part of your young, young tech night and
everything, but I mean, every car that comes into royalty leaves washed, right? And that's just
something that you've always done. And I worked at the, my tenure at the Nissan dealer, that was
their policy. Every car didn't matter what it came in for always. And at the time it was like,
man, it was really backing up the workflow in the shop because they were washing them in the shop.
It wasn't a separate thing. And it, you know, sometimes you had to wait for the car to be
cleaned before you could drive out to get your next car into your bay. It was, it was a, it was a
pain. But that little thing of five minutes of just spraying the car off, running it over with a,
you know, some soap, clean it up, shine the tires, like it was worth so much more in retention
back to the customer. Cause like for some of them, they came in and the car ran fine, you know,
how to check engine light on and it left with a check engine light on, but or off, excuse me,
but it never changed how it ran. But man, they were just glad to get into that car and it was
clean again. You know what I mean? Like it was up here with the salt, everything right now,
all over the roads, man, they will come in and be like, big deal, you know, huge thing. It was
investment.
I think so. If I were going to give like just the, the tiny footnote version of
some value, right? Okay. Number one, before we get into that, you got to fix the car.
You got to fix the car. Okay. I mean, that's, that's, that's a given. You, for us,
again, for us personally, it's an ethical thing. We got to look the whole car over and we have to
present everything. We don't have purchase sale, anybody for anything, but we have to present
everything, right? So that they can make an educated decision, the vehicle owner on whether I want
to put anything in it, right? They might say, well, I don't want to spend that much on this car and
I know I'm going to have to at some point, so I'm done. Now there's ways to make sure that they
understand the value of the vehicle and the kind of stuff I can't get. That's, that's a long
conversation. But, you know, we got to fix the car. We got to look it over, but value stuff,
pick up and delivery, make it, make it easy for them, right? Go pick up the car, bring it into
your shop. I don't care if it's an oil service, go pick it up, bring it up, do the oil service,
do the other stuff, take it back, right? I mean, the mom that's sitting at home with her four kids,
she don't want to pile them four kids into the van to bring it to your house, right? Anybody who
had kids in the, in the, in the car seats, right? You know, it's a, it's not like a two minute thing
to get in the car and go, okay? All right. So that's, that's convenience. Yes, washing the car
is a convenience thing. Let me footnote that with something though, because I had a technician come
in here and we were talking, doesn't, you know, from another shop. And we were talking about
washing cars and he said, yeah, the shop I'm at, they want the tech to wash the car. And, and that's
your shop owner out there, you want to wash cars, unless you're going to pay that tech,
which I will tell you is probably not a real smart thing to do financially, unless you want to pay
that tech to wash that car. Don't, you need to hire a car washer, right? If you're going to hand
wash them, hire a car washer, okay? And, and I would highly recommend hand washing them because
you start running them through the machines and all of a sudden, something gets scratched or
whatever it might be, and that's a big deal, right? So we hand wash. We don't detail. We wash the,
we wash the outside, we vacuum the inside, we do the windows, and people absolutely love it,
right? Okay, car wash is a value. If you can give loaner cars, it's a value. We had a big
issue with that, won't get into that, but you know, it's a big, big added value.
We do a rose at the end of the, when a car is picked up, it gets a rose on the dashboard,
on the instrument cluster and on the dashboard, on the instrument cluster. So a nice wrapped
rose. It didn't start all like that. It started off with just literally a rose, right? Then it was
a rose with a water bottle, then it was a rose with a water bottle with a little, you know,
little tag on it that had our name on it. Then it was, then it was wrapped and it was baby's breath,
right? And I mean, so we build the roses here. We buy the roses locally and then we,
and then we put them together with the wrap and the baby's breath and all that stuff on it.
But this is evolved, right? I mean, this is 20, this will be our 30th year on July 26th of 26th,
right? And this is all evolved over time. You know, you can do this in a smaller way if you're
smaller shop. But understand this, there's two arenas to play in, in my opinion. There's the arena
of price. I'm just going to be, I'm going to, I'm going to position myself as the price leader,
whatever you want to call it, right? And so I'm going to be the least expensive or at least I'm
going to play in that. I might, maybe I won't be the least expensive, but that's who I'm going
against, right? I might be a little bit more, but I'm going to tell them I do quality work or
whatever, but you're still in that price arena, right? That arena is huge and full. And then there's
the arena of I'm going to do craftsmanship, quality work, take care of, make sure I diagnose it
properly the first time, not charge for things that we don't do, make sure that we're doing this
stuff ethical, right? We're going to look the whole car over, we're going to have conversations,
we're going to create relationships with our clients, right? These are all things that are
much harder to do, right? It's way easier to tell somebody, I can do your break job for
$99 bucks, all four wheels, and then they're going to just be, oh, man, okay. I mean,
nobody else is going to tell me that price, right? And it is to go, yeah, the break job is like you
said, $2,000, you know, they go, oh, let me, you know, let's go over the features and benefits
before you give them the price, honestly. But, but, you know, that arena is small and,
and not very populated, right? And, and to me, if you, if you have an area where it will support
it, okay? And I think everywhere will support that arena, just the price that you can charge
will be different, right? But, but if the price has got to be lower, guess what else is lower?
Usually your, your costs are lower, you know, you're, you're, you're, you could hire a car washer
for less than I can. I mean, I pay my car washers, it's, it's a large amount of money
because otherwise I can't, they won't come to work for me, right? So, but that's fine.
I mean, it's just part of the, part of doing it. And don't be afraid to make money. You know,
it's like, don't apologize for making money. A lot of us have spent many, and even if,
let's say even the business five or six, seven, eight years, right? And, and you know,
you open your shop up, and you've only been in business for two years. And people all,
you see all these different companies that are like, oh, you need to do loss leaders on
oil services, and you need to bring in these cheap oil services. And so it's like, to me,
it's like you're already inviting in, to me, the wrong clientele, right? I want the word to get
out there that we're good. They're good, right? But I think that shop, when, when guys are in that
range, five, six, seven years, and they're just open their shop up, and they're scared.
They're scared to charge, right? And think about this. Let's say that, let's go back to that lawyer.
Went all the way through regular school, graduated high school, went to law school,
right? So you went to, went to college, went to law school, he's got, I don't know how many years
a lawyer has to go, four, five, six, whatever it might be, six, seven years, I don't know. I mean,
I know doctors got to go a lot longer and do a lot more than that. But I mean, I'm pretty sure
the lawyers come out of their 25, 26, 27 years old, you know, and they're, and they're lawyers,
they're lawyers. And those law firms that they go to work for, don't mind charging a lot of money,
if they go to work for some prestigious law firm, they charge a lot of money for that, right?
Yeah. You have the same amount of education. If you've done it right, as that, as that guy does,
right? And they're not afraid to charge and you are. Yeah. You just have to get your mind right
on, what are you actually providing? Yeah, you're providing a fixed vehicle, but you're
providing convenience for people. Yeah. And people don't mind paying for convenience.
They really don't. I hate hearing, I mean, honestly, there was a guy that,
it's auto shop owners hang out on Facebook. I haven't seen that one. I'm in there. I posted
on there yesterday. Did you see the post yesterday? He posted on there that he was test driving a
vehicle and that there was no front plate on it, I guess. And I guess he's in a state,
we got to have a front plate. Did you see it? Yes, I did. And he got pulled over and the vehicle
got towed and well, got impounded and he's like, he told the customer that that was his responsibility
and he got blasted. He got completely blasted, right? And of course, a hundred percent he was
wrong. I mean, you got the car got towed because your license was suspended. Yes. And you had,
you not had your license suspended the cop because they gave my ride back to a shop
for an hour. I can tell you right now in this town, which I know the police here,
but they're not going to go, oh, Mr. Shop owner, you had a suspended license,
we're going to tow the car, we're going to give you a ride. They're going to be like,
he got somebody who can give you a ride, man. Because we're just going to leave you stay,
you know, you're just going to be sitting here, right? So clearly the police probably would have
went, all right, tell your vehicle owner to put a tag on that thing. The reason that got towed
was because of his license. Yeah. And you know, I reached out to him, I messaged him and I've
talked to him a little bit, but here's the kicker on that. He's a young shop owner. I hate to see
it. I'm broke. Yeah. The money made him make an immoral decision. I don't, I've watched,
I looked at his, I went to his shop, looked it up on Google, five stars, you only got seven reviews,
but he's got five stars. And not only does he have five stars, but he got five raving stars,
because people are actually writing a bunch of stuff about him, right? So he let money make
him make a decision that he wouldn't probably know, had he had the money, he would never
made that decision, right? And it really bothers me because it's like, this is clearly a person who
who is just struggling in this industry, not because he doesn't can't do good work, because I
can see from his reviews, he can do good work. It's because he can't, he doesn't know how to run the
business, right? Yeah. And that's the one thing that I think that if I could say anything to
anybody, you know, you said three things, be valuable, you know, give value, charge appropriately
for that, whatever that looks like in your area, right? And don't let somebody tell you you have
to charge this or have to charge that you figure out what your numbers, you know, there's plenty
of stuff online for you to go figure that out, go figure out what your numbers are, what's your
overhead, what do you look, how much do you do you want to make, right? Now that might need to be a
little lower in your beginning years, you know, if you're overhead low in your shop and keep your
personal overhead low, right? And, and I mean, for a long time, don't be oh man, I had a great
year, I'm gonna go buy a boat, let's slow that down a little bit, right? And, and just, just treat
people right, treat your employees right that you hire, take care of them, take it, and it will work,
but but the key to that is give value and charge appropriately for it. Yeah. Really? Love it. How
what's the goals for 2026 Sherwood?
And I'll tell you right now,
about the, we talked about it yesterday about four years ago, three or four years ago, I was trying
to retire, I actually wasn't even wearing work clothes to work anymore. I'm like, yeah, I help
my guys a little bit here and there as a back and I felt really good, you know, and then Sherwood
put a camera in front of me one day and all of a sudden I've got more of a job now than I've had
in the long time. Yeah, it's work. It's a lot of work. I would say, you know, obviously we want to,
we want all of our social media to grow our big goal, our biggest goal, which we underestimated
massively last year is to have our training website up. Yeah. And that is
a massive, massive undertaking. And I do see why a lot of places charge as much as they do to have,
you know, for those training access to those websites, because the amount of work that's
going to go into this is just, yeah, it's a lot. It's just a lot because I think a lot of other
stuff is happening too, right? Because you got to do all this. You got to keep doing what you're
doing. Yeah. Right. And then you got to, it's just another plate, you know, we're spinning plates.
Yeah. Right. So it's got a lot of spinning plates going right now. But that's our big number one goal
is that, you know, and I hope that we can get up to, you know, five or 600,000 on YouTube,
that would be fantastic. I think we'll do that. What's the next event you're headed to? Somebody
was asking me yesterday, the Canadian contingent was asking me if you guys were going to make the
the tour show in Pennsylvania in, I believe it's April. And that's in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And
I'm like, I'm not sure if they come up that far north or not. But like you came to Aston, you came
to Apex, but do you? In the summertime? Sure. I come up north all the time. But you know,
because that white stuff is on the ground, I know I have no interest, you know, although I will be in
Indiana in January. Wow. Yeah. That happened. But yeah, I got to go out there and do some stuff.
You know, this was the first year that we didn't go to vision.
Do you want my honest opinion on this? The scuttlebutt is that a lot of people,
I'll just say this, a lot of people that I talked to didn't make the trip to vision. And a lot of
people that I talked to don't see themselves making the trip, I guess is the most politically
correct way I can, I can put it without, you know, throwing shade at people, which I don't want to do.
I'm not ever throwing shade at anybody. I think it's vision is a wonderfully fantastic event.
I think that the, the level that that has gotten to is, I mean, unbelievable. I love it, right?
I'll say, here, I'll tell you this. So in Jacksonville, when there's training in Jacksonville,
which there hasn't been in forever, right? It's the same 20 guys in the room every single time,
right? You'll get the onesies and the twosies that come in for one or two here, they're right.
But the same 20 guys. Okay. I think that has happened with vision. You know, we've gone every
single year for, I don't even know how long, a very long time, right? And it's fantastic. It's
great. It's the, but there's only, there's only so, I love Bernie, but there's only so many times I
can be in Bernie's scope class, right? I mean, and there's, but, but here's the deal. It's like,
what's Bernie going to do? I mean, it's not like they can, it's like John Thornton,
John Thornton is obviously brilliant, right? And, and, you know, he tries to come up with a lot of
new stuff and good stuff. But you know, it's like, you've been to a GDI class, you know,
literally 10 times, it's like, well, okay, there's another GDI class. What, and I always say, it's
worth it. If you get a nugget, one thing out of each class, it's worth it, right? But it's getting
harder and harder just, just because it's hard for, for instructors. I mean, I am one, right? It's
hard to come up with new stuff, you know, and, and I think that that's kind of hurting. And,
and on top of that, you've got other events that are growing, right? You've got the North Carolina
one that we went to, you've got Apex that's been around for a long time, but it's trying to push
itself out there and grow. And so you've got options for people that, you know, that don't
have to travel. And to, to Kansas in March, right? It's like, you know, it's not the, you know,
but I think that I think they tried it to do it in Mexico, didn't they one year? Wasn't that
something that Vision did one year? Yeah. I don't know how well that went over. But,
yeah, I think it's a great event. I think all of them are great events. I just feel like we need
to get more, you know, the 20, the 20 guys can't keep supporting, you know, the, the, the, however
many go up there, you know, you can't, you need new, new, new, new, we need new, and we, where's
the new coming from? You know, that's the kicker. And I'll be honest with you, the, the, the, some
people that I've talked to, which I'll be able to talk about later and maybe in a few months.
Okay. I can't do it right now, but I will tell you that a lot of people have no idea Vision exists.
Yeah. That's the big, big part of it is, you know, like, and I go to these shows. I had a
conversation right up here in Ontario, Canada, right in Toronto. There's a show held every year,
and it's held like two weeks right before, you know, Asta in North Carolina. So it's a conflict
interest to sometimes for me to be able to make both shows. I could make it work if I had to,
but you wouldn't believe the amount of people in my own province. It's essentially the largest show
in Canada. Don't even know it exists. It's the vision of Canada. Nobody knows it's there.
And, you know, they bring up, uh, Linda tech used to come up, right? Like some Brendan
secular has come up, like some great people have come up and, and, and taught. Nobody even knows
about it. So people of your listening and, and you run one of these kind of events,
when you think you're doing enough to, to promote the event, you need to do like five
times as much. And I don't know how to do it or how to get it into those channels,
reach out to the parts vendors or something and, and work out a deal. Because if it's not hanging
on a poster in the parts store, they're never going to hear about it because the tool guys don't
seem to mention it. I do everything I can do to talk about the events that are coming up because
I think it's pivotal, pivotal that everybody attends at least one event like that in their
life because it changes your, it changes your complete outlook. But if we're not the people
that are putting them on or just lackadaisal, like, yeah, you know, we got a thousand more
members attending last year than we had the year before. That's not it. And it ain't going to work.
It's not going to survive. Okay. You say you have a thousand more new people coming,
but how many did you lose? Right? You know, that's the key is like, okay,
did the numbers actually grow overall? Or did we just get a lot of new, new people? What would
be great, you know, if we had new people, that's what you kind of need, right? But we also need to
kind of keep some of the other people. Yeah. I think that, and I'm not saying this from a standpoint
of, of, you know, trying to promote myself here. But I mean, I think the easiest channel for a lot
of these companies and a lot of them get it. And a lot of them just don't. Yeah. The easiest channels
and the least expensive channels, quite honestly, to reach a lot of people is social media. And it's
not your social media. You know, it's not, you know, of course, the vision social media, the
people that go to vision, no vision social media, they're on there, they're on their stuff. They've
already been there. They already know you exist. You need new people. So people like, you know,
Eric with a million subscribers, yeah, I understand that a million followers are not,
not all technicians, right? But a lot of them are, you know, and, and, you know, Pine Hollow and,
you know, just all of them, right? Just, just name them, just reach out to them. Because most of
the time, you know, they don't mind. Now, I'm not going to speak for them. I don't mind we don't do
sponsored stuff, right? We do, we do for Apex. Apex, we're fine with that because we believe in it.
Um, I would certainly do something, you know, if they reached out, you know, for, for Asta or,
or your vision or if, if everything aligned, if we could, you know, I'm not going to just put it
out there. I'll be more than happy to, if everything aligned, right, we could all come to an agreement
on how the, because we're not going to change how we do things, right? I'm not doing a corporate
video, you know, I'll do it how we do it, which is if we like the product, if we like the event,
of course we want people to know about it. That's how we do everything in this building. If I use
the thing, I'm going to show you that I use the thing so you can, again, like we just said, people
don't know what exists. People don't know how these tools exist, right? So we'll 100% do that,
and I'm sure other, other people will, I'm not speaking for them, but, but I think that that's
one of the biggest ones because, you know, part stores throw flyers on the counter on a weekly
basis, right? And 99% of them are right in the, you know, in the dumpster, you know, I mean,
it's just, I don't, who's got time, you know, but we've got to get them excited about wanting to
get training. We need to get this. So again, going back to the craftsman thing, how do we get
technicians, first of all, to know that training exists, right? Because it's incredible to me that
I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, and I'm like, what do you,
do you know who John Thornton is? Do you know who Bernie Thompson is? Do you know who Brandon
Stack was? And no, no, no, I never heard of them. And I'm just like,
do you know what vision is? No, I don't know. I never heard of that. It's like,
you know, and it just, it's mind bending to me because it's like, I would not be where I am today
if it not, we're not for those people, right? And how do we get that in front of people? And
then once it is in front of them, how do we get them excited about wanting to go there? Because
once you go, like you said, you know, you said you should go once in your lifetime. Well, I think
if you go once, you're going to go back many, many times, right? You know, we got to get them
in the door. And I don't know what that looks like from their standpoint. I don't know what,
again, what is their overhead? What happens there? How do we make it? But you can't just
be status quo. We got to get these, we got to get these people who have never been to training
and don't even know what the training looks like to get them in the building, right? You know,
maybe that scholarships or something, man, I don't know, we need to all kind of get together
and go, you know, I mean, because there's some really smart young
I say more and more on social media and guys that are just putting up little,
you know, little six minute videos, and they're showing their diagnostic process and something,
and I'm like, you're 22 years old, and I was not as good as you are at 22, you know, and they're
smart. Oh, and it's, I thank the internet for that. I really do. And I take pride in the fact
that if I could just be 1% responsible for somebody finding a Bernie Thompson or John Thornton or
Brandon Stegler, Paul Dan or Sherwood, you know, if I can be responsible for somebody finding that,
I'm good, man. I've had the effect that I want to have, you know what I mean? Because
it was only an algorithm that ever showed it to me. You know what I mean? It was just by fluke,
you know, I hung around an ITN, but I didn't get on the social media side of it until I was just
sitting there bored scrolling and a repair video pops up with Paul Danner. If I'd have never seen
that, I wouldn't have been where I am right now. There's no possible way. It wasn't going to happen
otherwise. I wasn't getting exposed. It wasn't getting trained. It wasn't none of that.
So if we can reach just 5% more people, these young people on social media to show them,
go back to the value of training, the value of education, the value of what it is really you
bring, bring that career mindset, bring that, I want to be that craftsman again, then we're
going to solve so many of these problems in the industry. It's not even going to be funny. We're
not going to be talking and arguing about. That should be charged and you can't charge that much.
We're going to have all these other issues already solved. It's going to be,
it's going to take care of itself. Also, there are a lot of options online.
Keith Perkins, the L1 training. Of course, I know Keith and I mean,
incredibly smart individual, right? I keep missing his Monday night things because I'm like,
I said, we're talking about this thing and then we're talking about it. I don't forget where we
were. Maybe we were at SEMA or Apex, wherever. We were talking and he was saying he had this
thing and I'm like, oh, and so I went on and I'm like, oh, I'm actually already signed up for the
thing. Oh, but I didn't, but I'm not in the paid version of it, right? So I signed up for the paid
version of it and then I want to get on this thing, but it's super inexpensive and some great
information on just the things that I've gone in there and looked at. What guys need to understand
is young guys will, gosh, I want to make sure I say this right because I actually had a knockdown,
drag out fight with a girl in a class, live class because I said something that her mentor,
her lead tech, did not believe in, right? I'll tell you what it is. I said, you need to take
the bleeder loose when you're squeezing in the brake caliper, right? And she said, absolutely
not. He's done that thousands of times. He told me that's a waste of time. Don't ever do that.
And he's never had a problem. But she did come back to me at lunch and she's like,
I'm really sorry. I'm like, no, I love your passion and I love the fact that you so respect
that that person, right, that you're willing to almost go to blows with me, you know, but, you
know, what that lead tech, you know, what I would say to him is, I know you've been doing
the long time. I know you're smart and know you got a lot of good skills and a lot of good techniques
that doesn't mean that you know everything and you have every skill and you have every
technique. It doesn't mean that everything that you've done your whole career still holds true
today or that it was ever true to be quite honest with you. Maybe it wasn't the best
practice and you just didn't know it, you know, never stop learning, never stop taking classes,
never stop, whatever it might be, never stop. Because I mean, as long as I'm doing this,
I'm going to be learning from people, right? And you have to be. I think I cannot, I cannot
stress that enough for guys, you know. I don't think we're going to see you go anywhere for
quite a while. I don't think the industry is going to let you go right away, sure would son.
I mean, I know you want to dial it back a little bit in 2026, but I think I think we're going to
be seeing just as much of you. So, which is not a bad thing. So I'm good with it.
I'm going to get to play golf. I'm going to get to play golf, you know, a couple of days a week.
I'm, you know, Friday and Saturdays, you know, that's it. I mean, everybody should be on a four
day work week by now at the shops. Like I said, that's not true. I think it's a really good thing.
Yeah. Everybody, I just, this is my Christmas present to everybody. You're going to hear it
now after Christmas, unfortunately, but I mean, that's just, I wanted to do this. And, you know,
this is, sure would somebody that I have so much respect for, and I've been very lucky to be able
to meet the man in person and shake his hand and consider him a friend. And I can't say enough about
how cool their family is and what they're truly doing and where their heart lies for this industry.
And, you know, we all have to do not more, but we all have to think about,
we all have a responsibility when we, every day, when we go in and do this as a career,
about how deep that responsibility actually really runs. And, you know, there's a legacy
in this industry that we have to preserve, but at the same time, we have to do better every day.
So I keep saying, you know, just shoot to be 1% better tomorrow than you were today.
And, you know, if you're not going to do it every day, but at the end of the month,
if you're 10% better at something, 10% is incredible. That's a major milestone.
Right. So just always keep pushing for that. Cause I mean,
Sherwood's a guy that is still like he just finished saying is never stopped learning.
And that's the, that's the secret power. That's the superpower to this guys.
You know, your body's going to change and slow down and things are going to start to hurt.
But as long as you keep developing your brain and your skills,
you can, you can do this as long as you want. And it is a rewarding, fulfilling career.
And that's the whole thing is just approach it like that.
Try to be a craftsman tomorrow guys and girls. So anyway, Sherwood,
Merry Christmas, buddy. It's always a good time to talk to you. So, you know,
go ahead.
Yeah, there's a seat here for you anytime you want to be here. Say hi to Sherwood for us.
I'm sorry he's feeling under the weather, but a lot of us are trying to kick that right now.
So, you know, and thank you for everything you do, Sherwood. We really appreciate it.
Absolutely. Hey, I appreciate you. Everything you do.
Thank you, man. We'll talk to you all soon. I love you all. Bye.
Bye.
Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.
About this episode
Jeff and Sherwood Cook dive into the pressing issue of recruiting talented technicians in the automotive industry. They discuss the importance of providing value to employees, including better pay, training, and work conditions. Sherwood shares insights from a recent junior technician night event, emphasizing the need for hands-on experience and mentorship for the next generation of mechanics. The conversation also touches on the challenges of parts availability, the impact of AI on the industry, and the importance of valuing craftsmanship in automotive work. This episode is packed with practical advice and a call to action for improving the future of automotive service.
Original notes
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In this episode, Jeff welcomes back Sherwood Cook II of Royalty Auto. Sherwood talks about the challenges he's had with technician recruitment and stresses the importance of inspiring young techs through programs like their Junior Technician Night. Jeff and Sherwood also talk about industry-wide issues with parts quality, availability, and the increasing difficulty of repairs. Their conversation highlights how these factors impact shops and customers.
Timestamps:
00:00 Preserving the Legacy & Striving for Excellence
00:33 Christmas Break & Personal Reflections
02:21 Surviving Canadian Winters: Funny Stories
03:30 Junior Tech Night: Growing the Next Generation
04:48 New Stations & Engaging Kids in the Trades
05:55 Making Electrical Training Fun for Kids
07:19 Spotting Future Superstars at Tech Night
09:03 Giveaway Stories: Toolkits, Nerf Guns & Kids Negotiations
13:00 The Decline of Hands-on Skills & Why It Matters
16:20 Trades Skills Shortages: Opportunities and Concerns
18:41 The Role of AI: Is It Replacing Technicians?
20:14 Shop Pricing, Value, and Why Craftsmen Stand Out
27:04 OE vs. Aftermarket Parts: Quality and Supply Issues
32:06 Parts Availability Crisis: ABS Modules & TipM Odds
36:17 Aftermarket Solutions: Salvaging Unrepairable Cars
42:08 TRP Parts: Challenges with Used Components
46:32 The Hackers Behind Module Repairs: Sharing Knowledge
51:11 True Value in the Repair Industry: Pricing Your Work
54:39 Learning to Charge Appropriately for Your Service
59:11 Side Work: Garage Repairs vs. Shop Experience
1:01:46 Shop Insurance & Customer Protections
1:03:17 Nuggets for Shop Owners: Value, Markup, & Relationships
1:08:06 Building Value: Pickup, Washes, Roses & More
1:11:42 Price vs. Craftsmanship: Which Arena Will You Play In?
1:18:14 Goals for 2026 & Launching a Training Website
1:20:11 Training Events: Vision, Asta, and Promotion Strategies
1:29:22 Social Media’s Role: Reaching the Next Wave of Techs
1:33:20 Never Stop Learning: Lessons for Young and Veteran Techs
1:34:57 Final Messages: Legacy, Responsibility, and Growth
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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
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