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Should the Auto Repair Industry Take Notes from the Heavy Duty Trucking Industry? | Mathieu Patenaude
Should the Auto Repair Industry Take Notes from the Heavy Duty Trucking Industry? | Mathieu Patenaude
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About this episode
Mathieu Patenaude, a mobile technician from Ottawa, shares his journey in the automotive repair industry, discussing the challenges and opportunities within the heavy-duty trucking sector. He emphasizes the importance of proper diagnostics, the need for technicians to adapt to evolving technology, and the impact of flat-rate pay on quality of work. The conversation also touches on the differences between automotive and trucking repairs, the significance of thorough inspections, and the necessity for effective communication between technicians and customers. Mathieu's insights provide a unique perspective on the future of the industry and the importance of mentorship.
Topics:
mobile diagnostics
flat rate pay
heavy-duty trucking
diagnostic challenges
inspections
mentorship
technician training
customer communication
industry evolution
workplace culture
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In this episode, Jeff is joined by Mathieu Patenaude, a mobile heavy truck technician from the Ottawa area. Mathieu shares his journey from working for a school bus company to running his own mobile diagnostic business, explaining the challenges of adapting to rapidly changing truck technology and industry standards. They both talk about the challenges of working in harsh Ottawa winters, the unique demands of fleet maintenance, and the importance of thorough diagnostics and road-testing in the trucking world.
Timestamps:
00:00 Ottawa Business Overview with Matthew
06:08 Old School Car Troubleshooting
13:03 Ottawa's Troubled Transit Project
16:57 Parking Lot Truck Challenges
21:34 Trailer Safety Overload Experience
26:20 Renting Trucks vs. Specialized Equipment
35:11 Pursuing a Career with Mercedes?
37:16 "Tech Diagnostics: Knowledge Builds Over Time"
43:47 Rising Door Rates in Canada
47:29 "Shop Pranks with FUE Cans"
56:12 "Rethinking Trade Apprenticeships"
58:15 "Encouraging Thoughtful Problem Solving"
01:08:05 Importance of Failure Analysis
01:08:43 Incomplete Failure Analysis Practices
01:15:40 Procrastinating Vehicle Maintenance Woes
01:20:54 Changing Car Culture Impacting Youth
01:25:32 Paving His Own Path
01:30:48 Tech Distractions in the Workplace
01:39:01 Transmission Fluid Level Check Process
01:45:46 Handle Both Car Batteries
01:47:07 Critiquing from an Ivory Tower
01:51:39 Hidden Car Defects Dilemma
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Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Jeep Cherokee
"...then I went out on my own, I worked out of a Jeep Cherokee in 1988. That's how I started,"
Ottawa Business Overview with Matthew
Old School Car Troubleshooting
Ottawa's Troubled Transit Project
Parking Lot Truck Challenges
Trailer Safety Overload Experience
Renting Trucks vs. Specialized Equipment
Pursuing a Career with Mercedes?
"Tech Diagnostics: Knowledge Builds Over Time"
Rising Door Rates in Canada
"Shop Pranks with FUE Cans"
"Rethinking Trade Apprenticeships"
"Encouraging Thoughtful Problem Solving"
Importance of Failure Analysis
Incomplete Failure Analysis Practices
Procrastinating Vehicle Maintenance Woes
Changing Car Culture Impacting Youth
Paving His Own Path
Tech Distractions in the Workplace
Transmission Fluid Level Check Process
Handle Both Car Batteries
Critiquing from an Ivory Tower
Hidden Car Defects Dilemma
Select text to request an explanation
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I sound like I'm constantly waving a flag to a ballish flat rate,
but I'm not.
People have to appreciate more what the techs,
the obstacles that's in place for them when they're paid that way,
and then adjust accordingly.
I think that's what it is.
Do you think in your opinion
that it was something that was set up
for back more like in the 80s and 90s
where everything was more uniform and easily?
I think it was probably optimized for the 60s.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen,
to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic Podcast.
It's a nice Saturday night.
We're finally out of the heat wave,
and your boy was fishing today,
so that's always a good day.
But what I wanted to share with everybody tonight
is somebody that I just got the pleasure
of getting to know a little bit recently,
again, through the podcast,
and we have some,
we've probably driven some of the same crappy stretches
of highway.
Mr. Matthew Patinode from the Ottawa area,
which is, I'll call that by second home,
is a mobile technician,
mobile diagnostic and programming.
So, Matthew, how are you doing, brother?
I'm good, yourself?
Very good.
Very good.
Little steps from fishing, but other than that.
Well, that's a good day then.
It is.
We had frost, actually, first thing this morning
in my area.
Oh, really?
We were out in my area, so,
and the fingers got a little numb by,
so about 10, 30, 11 o'clock,
we're like, well, the fish are not,
we're not hammering them,
so let's like, let's call it a day,
because we were up,
we were there before the sun was up, so,
you know, six o'clock,
we were getting the first fish in the boat.
So, I mean, it's by 10 or 11,
if they start to heat her out,
I don't need to stay out there all day
when my hands are cold, so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, what about yourself?
Doing anything fun today?
Not really.
Worked.
Worked.
In the shop, yeah.
That's pretty much all we did today.
Right on.
Yeah, nothing exciting.
So, tell us kind of a little bit about yourself
and your business and whatnot.
He's from the Ottawa area, folks,
which is like where I spent a big portion
of my career working
before coming back home to Kingston area.
Ottawa is a really cool,
really cool city,
a really cool area,
beautiful part of the country.
It's in for a lot of American listeners.
It's in Ontario, Canada.
So, it's two hours away from me.
Our nation's capital,
kind of like your Washington,
I guess you'd say,
and a very eclectic mix of people
who are in Ottawa.
And that's what I was talking with
Matthew before.
What is that going to be like
to be doing mobile in that kind of area?
So, Matt, you give us the kind of the rundown
on how you started it
and all that jazz.
Well, the way I started this was
I started my career professionally
working for a school bus firm, actually,
and I worked there for,
I would say about seven years,
loved it,
but I started doing this
nights and weekends,
you know, like most of the guys do
after hours,
and eventually it got to the point
where I got so busy
that it was kind of
interrupting with both the work
and also my business.
So, at one point,
I had to make the decision
what do I do,
and that's when I decided
I'm going to go on my own
and that was back in 2002.
So, then I went out on my own,
I worked out of a Jeep Cherokee in 1988.
That's how I started,
I'm very good or not.
And then from there,
I went to a truck and trailer setup,
you know, to do the
and I actually used to pull my toolbox
in the back of that trailer,
believe it or not,
every night
and that got scary.
Yeah.
You know,
because then every
I'd have to get up early
to go back to the shop
and load my toolbox,
I can do my day
and then, you know,
just load it back up at night
and we're not,
we're talking like a snap on
2003 series,
not a little mastercraft.
And yeah, so it just,
it grew from there
and I just started
getting more and more work
and then, yeah,
I just expanded and expanded
and it's been going on
for 23 years now.
So when you started out
on doing kind of the,
I'll call it the side hustle,
did you focus on
like doing dyag and stuff
or were you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where did you do that?
That's basically what
like, I don't know
if your listeners will know
like I do more heavy,
like I'm truck and heavy equipment.
That's that's my,
that's my thing.
I don't do automotive.
Okay.
So I've always been like big
into the the dyag.
That's my that's my thing.
That's the thing I love the most.
Yeah.
I do a lot of dyag
and I go and dyag stuff at night
and then do some,
some obviously you got to do
some general repairs.
You can't just,
you know,
live on just dyag.
Kind of like what
Chuck is doing right now,
actually,
how he started doing everything.
And then,
you know,
and then he figured out that
maybe,
you know,
I need to pick my battles here,
you know,
because
and,
yeah.
So,
because you know what
the trucking market could be
right?
Like,
especially in the big cities,
you can get into some real,
I'll say that challenging
modified jobs that
like,
even sound simple
when you hear it over the phone
and you get out there
and you see how modified it is
or.
Well, that's it.
Yeah.
Toad and mud
or how rusted or,
you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you can never
get like a straight answer
from,
from the people,
right?
So,
you know,
it's a no start.
Well, does it turn over?
Well, what do you mean?
Yeah.
Well, does the end,
is it just clicking
or just turning on like,
you know,
like you can't get
now I'm to the point
where sometimes
they don't even know
what engines in it
because I need to know
sometimes,
like if I get a service call,
I need to know,
well,
what am I bringing
preemptively?
And like,
like,
so now I go by color.
Well,
just open the hood,
what color is it?
And then we'll go from there,
right?
Like it,
it were,
that's where we're at now.
It's unfortunately,
but you know,
so we do a lot of,
we do a lot of that,
a lot of service calls,
like to get the roadside
and on stuff like that.
Yeah.
And I've done that not at
the degree of like
having to go out
and do a ton of dye.
I've had to go once
in a while
and do like,
they kind of have a suspicion
that it's a starter.
So you mean you might go
and like,
you know,
check it out
and yeah,
it needs a starter.
And then it becomes a situation
of like,
okay,
like,
can I get this going
by hitting it with a hammer?
You know,
and like,
everybody,
this cringe is what you say
that,
right?
But us old school heads,
we know
it's not,
you can save a lot
of diagnostic time.
And if you can get it going
again,
I mean,
as long as you never
shuts it off again,
he can probably get to
where he has to be
even if you,
you know,
cross the border into the U.S.,
right?
Like as long as he,
just,
you know,
nobody makes the truck driver
most of the time shut it off
on their fueling,
right?
And on like a car.
So,
yeah,
except a lot of fleets
now,
they'll have them
time shut down the timer.
That's a problem.
It is.
So,
you know,
and it's not so bad now
because most of the trucks
are automatic also.
So there's less chances
of them like stalling
the truck,
you know what I mean?
So they can,
but yeah,
like nine times out of 10,
though,
it's not a starter.
It's usually a broken wire
right between those,
the relay and the solenoid
on the new 39MTs
and stuff like that.
So,
but I go and get lots of them
and it's like,
okay,
now I got to figure out
which trucks,
you know,
center
has one in stock
and then go get it
and then bring it back
and,
you know,
start the process of
taking it off
and then deliver the car
after the fact or whatever.
Like that was,
that was my fun days.
And the thing too,
that's changed in the industry
from when I've started to now,
I've noticed a lot of the
trucks back when I started in this.
A lot of stuff was,
was uniform,
you know,
the alternators,
you can get away with having
one or two alternators,
same with starters.
Yeah.
You can change the,
the cone on it,
the index it,
you know,
you can,
you can get away.
Now, though,
there's like actual specific,
like brand.
Oh, yes.
You know,
like specific parts
that they may not have in stock.
So,
you know,
20 years ago,
I can,
I can confidently say
I can get your truck going
or, you know,
there's a good chance
I'll get it going.
But now it's,
that's changed over the years.
And I remember we used to go out
and just change the mag switch,
you know,
on the back of the starter,
the big,
you know,
I used to keep them in stock.
Yeah.
And for people that don't know,
like a lot of the heavier trucks
have a mag switch mounted up
and then a solenoid
still on the starter
because of the amount
of amperage that we're drawing,
right.
And the mag switches will go bad
a lot more frequently
than the solenoid
because the solenoid
will get really heavy,
but the mag switch is mounted remotely.
And it kind of like,
think of it as,
it's just another relay.
It's all it is.
And,
but I've,
I've seen instances
where we've been able to get it going
by,
you know,
putting on a starter
that wasn't meant to have a mag switch,
but we could use that starter
because it would bolt up
like Matthew was talking about
and get the truck going again,
right.
Like it was good.
Now he's exactly right.
Like,
and we're getting into,
you know,
more of the things
where it used to be
just the old school stuff
you went in
and pushed the button
or went down
to jump the relay
and the truck would crank.
Now it's,
they're just like cars.
They've got way more and more interlocks
and stuff that's stopping you
cranking the truck up.
So,
yeah.
Yeah.
Frustrating.
It is.
It's harder to,
to plan your,
your service calls.
Now the one thing
that is helping me a lot
lately is the,
all the,
like the geotabs and all the,
I can,
I can remotely access the trucks
from here before I leave.
So if a driver says,
well, I'm derated,
well that could be
so many things.
Most of the time it's low coolant.
Yeah.
And it's just the engine protection
that kicks in.
Yeah.
Then you get there
and you're adding a jug of coolant
and then you have to call his boss
and say,
well,
it just needed a
a leader of coolant,
you know.
But sometimes,
sometimes it's after treatment stuff
and I can preemptively
figure out what I need
before I,
so I can stop in at,
at the parts house
or the,
the dealer
and get whatever component I need,
you know,
that I think I need
and then
diagnose it from there.
So in,
in the Ottawa area,
how far,
like,
do you travel?
I'm assuming you stay
like on this side of the,
the Gatineau border,
right?
The,
you stay on the Ottawa side
or will you go?
No, I'll go,
I'll go all the way up to
Manitick or,
or Manny Walkie.
I'll go,
I'll go up north if I have to.
Over the years,
I have shrunk down the area.
Like I used to go to Kingston
like often.
Yeah.
It's,
now it's just,
I don't need to
and I'm also 47 years old
and I don't feel like driving
for three hours to go,
you know,
so at the times of change.
But yeah,
I do about 150 kilometer
as a crow flies from YRM.
Very cool.
You know,
but then again,
I have,
I have good clients
that if,
like if they were broken down
in Toronto,
well,
and they really need me to go
down there,
I wouldn't,
like if,
that's,
that's not an issue, but.
Yeah.
What do you think of the Ottawa
winters for working?
Horrible.
Yeah.
It's horrible.
And they don't get better at age.
They really don't.
I'm telling you.
God.
And,
and I grew up in Kingston.
I can still remember my first
winter in Ottawa
and everybody kind of joked
about it.
They said,
because Kingston,
we're right on the shore of the
lake.
So we get the lake effect.
So when it does get cold
from the lake,
you're staked cold.
But it takes a lot longer
to get cold.
I remember my first year
in Ottawa,
we're standing outside of the
Rideau Center,
waiting to catch a bus.
Yeah.
It was freezing.
And I mean,
we weren't dressed well.
I didn't have a car in Ottawa yet.
This was like my second year
going to school up there.
And like we're standing there,
not dressed for.
And everybody else was just
laughing because we're in park,
they're in parkas
and big winter boots.
And just to get on and off the
bus.
Yeah.
They're sneakers, right?
In like
December
and freezing.
And people are just laughing
at me.
And I think about it now
because it's,
Ottawa isn't a valley people.
So it like literally gets a
a cold air funnel
almost all the time.
Yeah.
It's a really cool part of the
world,
but it is cold in wintertime.
Cold and damp.
Cold and damp.
The streets suck to try and
drive around,
you know,
in the wintertime,
especially like they don't do
snow removal like they do
here.
Much or else,
no removals worse again
than Ottawa,
but it's pretty damn close.
Like they,
Yes.
You know,
there's a reason they don't
allow you to park on the
streets because they don't
intend to hardly do the
sidewalk.
So they barely like
they let the cars keep the
snow off the road.
That's actually true.
Yeah.
That's pretty much how they do
it.
Yeah.
So they rely on the fact
that cars drive to melt the
snow.
And the OC transport buses,
you've probably seen them
right?
They've stuck the OC
transport buses sometimes.
All the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All the time.
And now I can't wait to see
how this train's going to
because I hear it's
getting stuck too,
because they went and put
hills on it and it's just
I'm laughing people because
what he's talking about is
called the O-Train was like
was supposed to be a five-year
project that took like
15 years to get built
it didn't really go
anywhere that anybody was
going.
But again, government
infrastructure is like,
well, eventually it's going
to run all the way
from the West end to the
East end,
which is a big,
big feat to achieve
in Ottawa
because there's a logistically
it's,
it's different.
Yeah.
And it is been,
I don't know how many
billions of dollars over
budget and how many years
behind schedule
and it still has
like they,
the week they rolled it out
the very next week
I remember reading in the news
here,
there was like they have
all kinds of issues
with just randomly shutting
down and all this kind of
stuff.
So.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
It's,
it's a terror tonight.
I can still remember
seeing the
the OC transport buses
on the snow
because they all run
snow tires up here.
They'd be stuck on the
off-ramps
when they're,
you know,
trying to go around
and then you want to see
traffic back up
and it was crazy.
Especially the,
there are accordion buses.
Yes.
It gets,
it gets pushed from the rear
of the unit.
Well, what do you think is
going to happen?
You're pushing a rope up a
hill.
You're going to get stuck.
Just like,
I don't know.
Yeah.
I'm waxing nostalgic.
You're making me miss that
city.
What is like
kind of get me
when you first started at
what was kind of like
a typical
typical call
for you
when you were starting out?
Anything, I guess.
Anything.
That's the thing.
I was young and gung-ho
and I take anything.
If I didn't,
if I didn't know,
I'd figure it out.
I'd learn and then I just,
I go through the process
and then figure it out and
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I've done a lot of things
you know,
over the years.
Now then
as I,
as I,
the business grew
and then I,
I had a fixed location
that I could do stuff in.
So then it,
then it became
parsed into two different
there's the road calls.
So the road call is like
get you going,
get you,
you know,
but I'm not gonna,
I'm not gonna drop a
transmission,
let's say for example,
or you know,
on,
on.
Now I have done engine work
in other people's shop
and I do work
in other people's shop that
have,
if they're well equipped and
you know,
I know that
the whatever I'm working on
isn't gonna get disturbed
by,
by other people,
you know,
like I'll do it
in another shop,
but for the most part,
I can't.
Yeah.
And,
but now all the bigger stuff
like the in frames
and the,
the clutch work
and all that,
that's all done
in house here.
Yeah.
You bring it to your own location.
That's right.
Yeah.
You kind of have to
A for quality control.
That's exactly why.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's trying to do it
at somebody else's place.
Like you said,
it can be
not saying there's a bunch of
people that go out
and throw a bunch of extra
bolts in the side of the
engine to sabotage you,
but I mean,
it's,
it's one of those things where
it's your work area,
you keep it clean,
you keep it organized,
you keep a stitch of that one.
Well,
and a lot of times it's not even
the,
it's the people that just don't
understand
like I was doing a head gasket job
on an MBE 900 Mercedes
engine at one point
and,
and you know,
they were grinding,
grinding beside it.
And I'm like,
guys, like,
Yeah.
You can't do that.
I got an open engine here,
like,
you know,
and then a lot of customers
sometimes they don't,
they don't understand that.
And I'm like,
they're like,
well,
why can't you do that here?
Well, I'm not,
I'm not going to
open your engine
outside in your yard,
you know,
your dusty yard,
you know,
like it has to be some control.
Like I want to have some control
over the
stuff like that,
but
and I'll do like,
I'll do suspension work on site.
If I have to,
like I've done another
that enough of that,
you know,
I'll do air bags
or driveline,
you know,
stuff like that.
I'll do brakes too,
like if you need,
you need
any kind of like drums
or shoes or whatever.
That's not an issue.
Yeah.
I used to do a pile of them
right in our parking lot
when I worked at the truck shop
years ago,
like right inside in the summertime,
especially it wasn't a bad job
out in the summer.
In the wintertime,
like we didn't even try it.
We would drag it into the shop
and it wasn't a big shop.
So it was,
it was,
that was a
manipulant like a kind of
challenge to get two trailers.
You could fit two trailers
side by side,
but the door was really only
wide enough to bring one in.
So you kind of had to bring one in,
use a forklift to shove it over
and right.
Yeah.
Get the wheels off,
like the duals up against the wall,
that was
and it would get it.
Yeah.
You know, and you may do like,
that's the thing about the
the trucking thing is,
you know,
and everybody goes,
Oh, it's so it's so,
you know,
it's exactly the same.
No, it's so different
because like every scenario,
almost to where you're working on
adds so many layers of time
that nobody's thinking about like,
the job only pays this.
They're thinking about like,
he's going to be on the job
for two days.
I'm paying him for two days.
Yeah.
Let's travel to get there.
That's how the
the mentality works.
Right.
So when we hear about the big prices,
that's a lot to do with it is like,
if I'm coming to you,
especially like the little obstacles
that you're not set up for
and I got to run out and do this
or I got to go and find this tool
or make do because you don't have
a working whatever.
That's all adding to the bill.
People just pay it.
You know,
we can work a lot in the automotive
side from that,
that aspect,
you know,
it's I miss it,
man.
Some days I miss it.
And then I think about like beating
kingpins out like when I was younger.
And I'm like,
I don't miss that for a minute.
I am actively looking at a good
kingpin press at this point
because I did a set there a couple
of weeks ago and I'm like,
well, boy,
to be swinging sledges at the,
you know,
like all all day long to get those.
You know,
it's not like down south where they
pull the lock pin and then use
a little hammer that comes out.
Yeah, that doesn't happen out here,
guys.
I'm sorry.
It does not.
I probably,
I bet you in my career,
50% of cut it with a torch.
You know,
Oh, yeah.
And that too,
are you just,
they just or a lance.
Yeah.
They do not come out any other
stupid way.
And, you know,
you know,
you and I know that if you've had to
put that much heat into that
axle end to get that kingpin out,
like it's not.
I don't like doing that.
I really don't.
But sometimes you like,
you got to,
you got to apply a little bit of
heat and
science to get it out.
Right.
You would do it.
And then you'd see it next year.
That kingpin was Waller Day again.
You know what I mean?
I just think we've changed that
metallurgy so much that like,
even when you put a new kingpin
in the bearings and the customer
greases it every day,
like there's,
it's still,
you've wallered it.
You know,
there's no round it.
And you got to look at it and go,
it's an old truck.
Like this is maybe what you're
going to have to do now.
Every couple of years you're
putting the kingpin in it
because,
you know,
that's right.
We didn't,
we didn't,
you let it go too long the
first time.
Right.
So.
Yeah.
And a lot of guys don't
specter trucks correctly also.
That's another problem.
A huge problem.
Right.
It's a huge problem.
I mean,
you got a 12,000 pound
front end,
you know,
what did you expect?
You're going to go through
kingpins, right?
Like it's,
or liquid load is a whole other
thing that like when I talk to
automotive techs
and you start talking about
like liquid load,
that's a completely different
the way it,
it breaks stuff
is so different.
You know what I mean?
Cause every time you hit the
brakes,
you're completely shifting a
whole lot more weight.
Oh, yeah.
It's just a static load
and people are like,
oh, I never thought about
that.
Like it,
you know,
liquid loads would burn the
front brakes off constantly.
And they're like,
I don't understand this.
Like my drivers and it's like,
it's the driver's
problem.
He's breaking too hard,
too late.
Yeah, too late.
Yeah.
And I had a service call once
like that one,
a little single axle
with air ride.
And the service call was for,
it was riding rough
and he thought the air,
the suspension wasn't airing
up.
And I get there
and I'm looking at the tires.
I'm like,
those seem pretty bulged for,
you know.
And then I look at the airbags.
Oh no, there,
there is air in your airbags
and open the door.
And he was hauling
cream for ice cream
from front to back.
And that is heavy.
Like that is heavy, heavy.
And I'm like, yeah,
you're going to have to unload
this too.
If you like,
this is nothing I can do here.
Yeah.
So I tell the story all the
time I got,
I used to,
years ago we had the Kim,
we had a contract with Kimco
Steel in Kingston,
which you probably are aware
of Kimco Steel.
Yeah.
And we will go down to,
to grease the trailers on a
Friday night.
That was our routine.
And then we all parked in
the yard and some of them
would be loaded with a load of
steel.
And you get down there to grease it
and you'd see that the
wheel seal was leaking.
Okay, no big deal.
There was a wheel seal in the
truck and all that stuff.
We would start doing it.
Well, I don't know how many
trailers I started to jack up
and not steel load would shift.
And you'd start to see the,
the pump jacks start to like
sink into the mud.
Yeah.
It was a, you know,
a dirt parking lot.
Yeah.
And I would call the boss
and like put it back down on
the ground, leave it alone.
Don't get underneath it.
Like, you know,
they'll unload the trailer.
They'll just have to offload
that load on another one.
We'll fix trailer later.
Like I was very lucky.
I never had a boss say,
just get it done.
I don't care about your safety.
You know, that was,
that was key.
Oh, yeah.
I know.
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I'm, I'm keen on,
I'm big on that.
I won't work on loaded trucks.
I won't load on that.
Like it takes two minutes
to unload a truck.
And if you,
like if you don't care
about my safety,
well, I mean,
it is what it is, right?
Yeah.
It is, yeah.
Especially liquid loads.
Yeah.
So can I ask,
with your business,
are you still just kind of like a
loan operator?
Do you have some people
helping you out or?
Right now, I'm,
I'm, I'm a one man wrecking crew.
Yeah.
I have a friend
that gives me a hand occasionally
like to help me out.
He's another 310T guy.
Great guy.
But right now,
we're in the midst of
right now expanding.
So we are looking
at a fixed location
and we are,
we are going to be looking for
some,
some techs.
Yeah.
Soon enough.
Very cool.
Is there a shortage in Ottawa?
Like there is?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I was going to say,
it doesn't seem to matter
who I talk to,
where it's always the same.
You know,
I can remember
when I lived there,
a lot like OC Transport
was snapping up a lot of talent.
You know, a lot of guys,
OC to, to,
to, I mean,
it's shift work
and unionized.
And you know,
there's,
there's drawbacks
and politics
and all that kind of stuff.
But I can remember like
several guys I knew
went to work at OC Transport.
Yeah.
Just like,
stay in their lane,
do their one thing.
Like they were,
you know,
I can remember when they were paying
the guys to wash the buses,
we're getting paid higher
than a lot of the techs in the city.
You know what I mean?
I think it was crazy
and all you did was wash the bus.
That was it.
And wash the buses all night long.
Yeah.
Your biggest hurdle was
cleaning puke at one point
because somebody puked on the bus.
That was your,
the low light of your day.
I'm like, wow.
Okay.
It's not like,
you know,
getting under a garbage truck
or, you know,
all that kind of fun stuff
that I've done in my past.
Do you work on garbage trucks?
No.
No.
And it's not because
I haven't been approached to do so.
It's just, yeah, it's,
they, uh,
no, I don't do garbage trucks.
I'm pretty,
I'm pretty,
right now I have a good,
a good,
like good clients,
like good set of clients
that I,
that I tend to and,
so no,
but I could just imagine,
can you imagine working on?
Now that being said,
though,
I did have the contract
at a local municipality
and I did have to take care
of the equipment
at the,
the landfill.
That was not fun.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
That sucks.
The summers,
summers.
I'll say this about garbage trucks.
You'd rather work on them
in the wintertime
than the summer.
Yes.
They don't smell as bad.
Yeah.
I remember this,
this one call I got.
They,
they ran over a mattress
and the mattress wrapped
around the dryer shaft
of the loader
and ripped all the hydraulic lines.
And it was stuck
where it was stuck.
And it was like 30 degrees
that day
and just
prudely hot.
And I was like
doing all I could
just hold my lunch
to be able to finish
the friggin job
and get this,
this thing back
and running.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I,
I found on my two though
that they're,
they,
the customer sometimes
in the trucking side
of things
are a lot more appreciative.
You know what I mean?
Like that's true.
Yes.
Really get the,
because that's,
I've talked about it before.
They,
that's how they make
their money, right?
That's right.
Yeah.
Get back to them working.
They're so happy.
Like, I mean,
yeah, sometimes they get the
bill like at the end
of the month
they're all like,
frig.
You know, I didn't think.
Yeah.
But that truck
probably produced
four times
whatever that bill
was.
So at the end of the day.
Yeah.
So what's that?
Go ahead.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
And it's,
it's funny you say that
because I listened
to your podcast
and because I'm,
I'm a little detached
from the automotive side
and I listened to the struggles
on,
and especially with Lucas
and David's side,
and they're like,
well, I don't have that kind of
issue because for me,
it's more about like,
the truck needs to go.
Like it needs to work.
And especially
when it's a specialty truck,
like a,
like a concrete pump,
like say,
for example,
or something,
you can't just go to budget
and rent the truck for the day.
You know,
that truck needs to work.
So that the dynamics
is a little different
when it comes to that.
You know,
so yeah.
And that's the specialized
stuff is it almost like
it's like a license
for money.
It's the same thing.
You know,
like,
I've seen the car haulers
like those guys
when they pull in
and they're broke.
Oh yeah.
They're like,
because it's just like
as you said,
you can go to enterprise
and rent a truck.
You can go to budget
and rent a truck.
You can go to a surgeon
or,
you know,
any of these places.
And if your truck is down,
they'll lease you another
truck for a month.
No problem.
They're glad to do it.
And you hook up to your
trailer and you go back
down the highway,
right?
Like it's no big deal.
Program your phone.
Done.
When you have a specialized
piece of equipment,
it's a completely
different thing.
They're talking like,
they're losing money
so fast it could,
you know,
they could lose their whole
quarter in a matter of week
if that truck is out.
So it's a big difference.
And that's what I keep saying
from the automotive side.
Like everybody thinks,
oh, my customer doesn't have
the money.
My customer doesn't have
the money.
The customers all,
I'm going to say it,
they might not even have
the money,
but they probably all value
their,
their transportation
to the same level
that we have been,
Matthew and I have been
used to dealing with people
that use a car
or truck for a piece of
business.
They're,
the reliance is the same.
Right.
The function that it serves
is a little different.
One is making money
and one's just costing us money.
But it's the same,
their priority is still the
same.
I need my vehicle.
So when we say,
oh, they can't afford that,
they can,
they can.
We just have to make it
feasible for them,
show them why,
you know.
So my brother's without a
vehicle right now.
And,
you know,
he talks to me every day
about how frustrating that
is to not have a car.
And I go,
yeah,
but you know,
we kind of,
he had a 2012
ranger that we finally scrapped
it with your rotten and
was not worth putting tires on,
was not worth putting brakes on.
And that's the thing.
And it's now the market has
changed so much from 2012
when he bought that.
He's in a situation right now
where he's like,
oh my god,
even look at the price of the
used stuff.
And I'm like,
yeah,
it's bad,
you know.
Yeah.
So our customers can't afford it.
Don't,
don't tell yourself for a second
that they can't.
They will,
they will find the means
100%.
So it'll might suck,
but they'll find the means.
Yeah.
So what,
so this new kind of going
forward,
what do you,
what are you hoping to build?
What are you hoping to?
Well, it's going to be a fixed
location that's,
we're actually acquiring
another business that's
more on the hydraulic side.
Okay.
Going to be,
because we also do hydraulics
right now.
So we would be adding the,
like that business,
what our business and merging
those two together.
So I'm hoping it's going to
do something,
something pretty good.
And you know,
like eventually grow it to,
because eventually what I,
what I want to do,
my ultimate goal is,
I want to be able to teach
and show.
And,
and this location
that we're getting
actually has like a whole
conference room that,
like,
that we could actually host
like,
like training seminars and stuff.
So hopefully like,
like I would love to,
to be able to do that.
That's the ultimate goal
at the end of the day.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Kind of neat.
Well,
whereabouts in the area?
Can I ask?
It's,
well, it's going to be more,
more east towards,
towards Hawksbury area.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That isn't Orleans forever.
Like I said,
you,
we were talking once you,
you bought a truck from the
dealer that I used to work at
way back.
Well, it's the,
it is the truck I'm still
using to this day.
I bought that Ram in,
in 2008.
And it is my,
my flagship vehicle.
Yeah.
People rip it off me that like,
Dodge doesn't build a good product.
And that's like,
I don't know, 2008.
You're still driving it.
Oh, that's,
so my first one was a no three
Dakota.
Yeah.
That was pulling a trailer.
And it's to this day,
still operational.
I sold it to a friend of mine
that uses it to plow his yard.
So she was a good,
she was a good unit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You guys know what I keep saying.
Oh no, they're terrible,
but they just need maintenance.
Is that kind of thing else?
You know, but yeah.
Yeah, but they're,
they're serviceable.
That's the thing I like about
the Mopar products is
they're serviceable.
Like,
like there's not really any job
that on the,
on any of them,
like we own like three of them.
And you know,
I can't think of anything that
I'm like dreading doing.
You know what I mean?
Like,
and, and you know,
you hear the car guys,
the automotive side talking about,
oh, there's so many electrical
problems in Chrysler.
But I mean,
coming from the heavy truck side of
things that I did as well as you do,
we don't even look at as like,
as one brand as like
right full of electrical problems,
right?
We just look at it as like,
it's just another electrical
problem on another truck.
Like it's just what it is.
You know, some of it is
human error,
upfitting does a lot of damage
to a lot of trucks.
Like when they add on things
that are they need on there,
it causes issues with
what should be a simple thing
to access.
And all of a sudden,
like a nightmare,
like you just,
you know,
I adapt and overcome.
That's how you do it.
But I mean,
I love the product.
I think it's great.
Like I always have.
I just,
it's something about it clicked
with me.
And it was like,
yeah, the build quality sometimes
was like, what?
You know, they take a
place together with no heat
shrink.
Like it's just taped with hockey
tape and stuffed under a carpet.
Like that's not good.
But then we remember.
But have you ever worked on Hino?
Oh, yes.
There's no,
there's no,
absolutely no weather proofing
of all the electrical connectors.
So they get a little bit of salt
because we get a lot of salt out
here.
It doesn't take much to
throw a wrench in that gear.
But see,
Hino's are built for Japanese
climate.
Right.
So yeah,
it's like,
they don't,
they don't have the kind of
weather that we have in Japan.
Like it's,
no,
you know,
it's wet there,
but not wet and salty.
Wet and salty is a completely
different chemical.
It's just cool.
Oh, it's just,
I worked on a lot of Hino's.
I worked when I worked at the
Benson's Grash here.
They were a Hino affiliate.
So I mean,
like we had a lot of them come in.
I didn't get into too much.
Like we had one technician
that was
a really trained high up on Hino
and he was phenomenal on the
product.
But I would look at that product
and it was like,
it was just weird.
Hey,
like it was the way it was first
put together.
And then during COVID,
they had a whole thing
where,
you know,
they stopped essentially being
able to get engines
to put in these trucks or
anything.
Yes.
And apparently,
Hino USA doesn't
talk to Hino Canada.
So there might,
there might not be inventory in
in the country,
but there is in the States,
but they have no way of checking
or knowing.
So it's just,
Yeah.
Yeah.
They build a really good truck
for what it's intended for.
I'll say that.
But it's hard
because the customer support,
product support's not there yet
the way it really should be,
which is too bad because,
and like some of them,
they went and put a little
Cummins engine in it
and they're great.
There's a whole learning curve
when the Cummins gets in
and it replaces the Hino
and there's a whole other
operating software system
and all this kind of stuff.
Like it was,
my buddy still works for,
you know,
a Hino affiliate
and there's a whole learning curve
that you had to go through
to learn,
you know,
the Cummins things.
And then you're talking to
people at Techline at Cummins
and it's brand new to them
because this engine
was never in this platform before.
Like,
you're familiar,
you know,
you just have to go back
to your basics, right?
You got to go back.
Yeah.
You got to be patient
and go back to your basics
and then just,
you can reverse engineer it.
You can figure it out.
That's right.
Yeah.
But again,
trucks are all,
they're Lego pieces.
They're all a bunch of parts
put together
and make,
put into a frame of whatever.
So once you get to know
all the different platforms
that are put together,
you can figure it out
pretty quickly.
Yeah, 100%.
100%.
What makes you really want to teach?
I like teaching.
Yeah.
I like,
yeah, I like,
I think we need,
honestly, this is what got me
interested in you
because you really push out
the industry
and what it's like
and the shortage
and the fact that people
don't seem to want to teach anymore
and don't want to show
to the next generation.
Yeah.
I've always liked to teach
as long as you're willing to learn.
As I have a son,
he's an apprentice 310S right now.
Okay.
Good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he's actually stuck in the flat rate thing,
which I know not much about.
So I actually,
every time you have a topic
on flat rate,
I forward him your show
and said,
listen to this,
he knows,
because it's a different world,
but yeah,
but I like to teach,
I like to show him the basics,
you know,
like just the,
and he wants to get into diet too.
So he worked at a Mercedes
dealership for a while
and he really liked it
to diagnosing in that
getting deep into the,
so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just going to ask you,
what brand was he,
was he pursuing?
You know,
because like for people listening,
when you say,
you know,
apprentice in flat rate
up here in Canada,
you can almost always assume
that's a dealership
because a lot of people
don't put flat rate
inter independence
up here in Canada
that has been my experience
and not in least
until their license,
right?
So if he's,
if he's going after Mercedes,
man, he's,
he's,
he's in for some challenges.
He's,
he'd become a very good tech
because,
you know,
this was a learn
and I'm sure you've been able to
really get his fundamentals
down for him,
right?
Because he's,
you know,
but yeah,
I,
those cars,
man,
it's,
it's not the car for me,
it's the customer.
It really is.
Like I got it,
I almost have to change my head
space when I'm working on it
to think about like,
you know,
what they,
the level of what they expect
is what I'm trying to say.
Not that they're,
they're crazy in what they expect,
but it's like,
it is a very hard level to,
to talk,
to hit every day.
Like even I,
my friend was a service manager,
the
Jag Land Rover,
you know,
dealership in Ottawa for
quite a while,
and it burned him out.
It burned him out.
Oh really?
Yeah.
Because he had worked with me
in Orleans.
The Chrysler type,
phenomenal technician
can fix anything.
You know,
did a standard O.C. Transpo,
spin service manager,
Ben Technation,
gone back,
worked at a little,
essentially a restoration shop,
like he can do it all.
And he still said that,
like the demand that those
customers have for that vehicle,
the way they want it,
burned him out.
Burned him out.
I can imagine.
Because it's,
it's,
you know,
the,
it's,
they,
it's a lot of money,
but they know it's a lot of
money and for that money,
they expect like,
and it's nothing,
it's just,
the car intermittently
has a problem.
Nobody at Mercedes knows the
solution yet.
Nobody knows,
like,
what are you supposed to do,
chair of the car,
all apart looking for it?
Well, that's what the customer
expects you to do.
Yeah.
That's not feasible.
It's not realistic.
And I,
it's frustrating,
but I mean,
I'm a big believer that
eventually,
you know,
when it's one of those things,
a lot of the time,
it does get figured out what it
is.
And,
and O.E. will tell you,
you've seen it.
It's not just a TSP.
There's,
there's so many levels now
to the information that we can
get.
That it's not,
it's tech tips and,
and
fast response transmittals and
stuff like this.
And it's like,
little things that they're always
telling you,
hey,
did you have one that do this?
Yeah.
Go look here.
Because we had a case study
somewhere,
other side of the world.
Same thing happened,
same code,
same,
same connector,
blah,
blah, blah.
That's not what you're
always going to find in TSP's.
That's like,
inside level,
you know,
knowledge.
That gets taught to you
eventually or,
or passed down to you
if you stick around with long
enough with it.
Yeah.
And that's what a lot of
these people is just like,
they're frustrated,
but there's,
there's a process that it takes
to find them out.
And now,
man,
I'm old enough to remember
like when you had the phone
Chrysler tech line,
you were talking to a person.
Now,
it's your,
it's an email chain
back and forth,
back and forth.
And you know how that can go
like that's me.
Like I,
I joke,
I could still,
I memorized the phone number
from Chrysler.
Not that I told it a lot,
but it was,
it would hang out
about everybody's toolbox.
There was a sticker
that had the number.
Well,
you look at it a million times
it's in grains in your brain.
Yeah.
But like,
I can't even,
when I was at Nissan,
it was an email thread,
and it would take forever.
Sometimes they'd respond back
to you in 30 minutes,
sometimes be the next day.
And the car.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
That would be annoying.
Imagine sitting on the side
of the road
and waiting for somebody
to email you back.
I'm sorry.
I'm gonna wait for an email
for you.
The frustrating part is
because the car's under warranty.
It's an intermittent,
you know, you're asking,
you're getting,
it's almost like you're not even
asking,
you're getting permission
to where to go next.
Because like,
you know,
it's the kind of thing like,
you're trying to chase,
chase down this intermittent.
Where do you want me to go?
Because if I go in the wrong
dress
and you're not paying
the dealership for my time,
which means I'm not gonna
date,
which means I'm not gonna do it.
You know,
it's,
yeah,
it's,
I sound like,
you know,
I'm constantly waving a flag
to a ballish flat rate,
but I'm not.
But I just like,
I think that it has to,
people have to appreciate more
what the text,
the obstacles that's in place
for them when they're paid
that way.
And then adjust accordingly.
I think that's what it is.
Do you think in your opinion
that it was something that was
set up for back more,
like in the 80s and 90s,
where everything was more
uniform and in easily?
Oh, I,
or is it like,
because it's,
I mean the cars are,
the evolution of the cars is just
astronomical compared to you.
I think it was probably
optimized for the 60s.
You know what I mean?
When it was
Not far back.
Okay.
Oh,
shit.
Yeah.
When they had maybe like,
you had an inline six
and you had a small block V8
and you had a big block V8
and you put them in the whole
platform,
you know,
it either had a two-barrel
carburetor that was this
part number or four-barrel
carburetor.
Yeah.
And,
and a distributor that was
shared to each
and you just fixed the car
all day long.
Like you,
you know,
and people go,
well,
how did you diagnose the car?
Well,
there was 10,
Eric,
Ivan from Pine Hollow today is
working on a
an 89 Dodge 250,
D250.
And you get some of the dash
because it's got it so
it gets called out for,
it won't start.
And it's a wiring from the
ASD relay.
So you still use an ASD relay,
but essentially all it did
was turn a coil on because
it's,
you know,
it's probably injected
with a car,
with a distributor.
Yeah.
And so he,
he diagnosis that
in half an hour and then
it's like,
you know,
parasitic drain
because there's an add-on,
it's a plow truck
in,
in upstate Pennsylvania.
So it's
sort of Canada.
There's an add-on that's
backfeeding,
keeping the fuse
key switch alive.
So there's a parasitic drain.
Like it was,
and he's joking,
but he's literally like,
there's 10,
there's 10 fuses in a fuse box.
Like back then,
when flat rate would work
is because like
if you were having to
solve an electrical problem,
I say it all the time.
It was a one hour,
two hour ordeal
tops.
Yeah.
Run the wire from
front to back and
an overlay
in no time.
You know,
eliminate the short
or eliminate whatever.
Now,
you could be an hour
just to update software
before you can figure out
the next step of,
you know,
my diagnostic process,
right?
It's because like
a lot of us,
when you're in the dealer
thing,
the first step
to tell you
is update the software.
You know,
there's a flash
through the flash
then go back and
road test the car again.
Did it fix it?
No.
Okay.
Cool.
We don't even,
so flat rate doesn't work for that
because,
you know,
if it didn't fix it,
they don't want to pay you for that.
Well, that's BS
because that's literally their process.
And it just goes
and goes and goes and goes.
So I think
flat rate worked really well
when cars
didn't have
electronic parking brakes,
didn't have,
you know,
all this stuff
that takes longer to use.
I think it can still be done
in the sense that like,
you're going to do a transmission
overhaul.
Cool.
No problem.
You know,
you got a heavy line guy.
He gets them in and out.
He beats the time.
But when it comes down to the
determining what
the car is going to need
and if it's a diagnostic kind of
heavy
repair,
I don't think flat rate has any place in it.
I just think it's always
then a compromise on the technician.
And it's a compromise for the customer.
They do not get as good a repair.
100%.
100%.
If you're looking,
I know even as me,
I'm always looking,
even when I was doing Diage,
I was always looking at like,
what else can I sell
on this car?
Like we were doing
very good inspections
before DVI was a big thing
because you're looking for the maintenance
that has to get done
because I'm trying to offset
the time that I lost on my Diage.
I'm hoping I get the break job.
I'm hoping I get the flushes.
When we,
when we pay our people that way
and everybody thinks it's good
because it's,
you got hustle.
We're,
if it's there for just the problem
that the customer wanted fixed,
we're going to compromise that
because we're trying to find the other work
that needs to get done.
And that's where I think this industry
has kind of got to
not abolish it,
but like stop for a minute,
really look at what's happening
and the challenges
and then
think about it,
revamp it.
I think it can work.
It still can,
but it's going to cost a lot of people
a lot more money,
a lot more.
You know,
door rates are almost 200 bucks an hour.
In Ottawa,
there's lots of $200 an hour
to door rates.
Lots of them.
My area,
there's lots of $150 an hour
door rates.
I can remember coming into Ottawa
when I first moved there,
110 was a high door rate.
You know what I mean?
Like,
so when we think about that now
and it's like,
so if you move away from flat rate
and go to everybody on an hour
or an hour earlier salary,
your door rates are going to be 300 bucks
to make it work.
Lots of people right now in Canada
can't afford a $300 an hour door rate.
I guarantee they can't.
So it's something's going to give way
that when it's going to be the,
the jobs are not going to get done
correctly.
And we're already seeing it now.
Well, I see it in my industry anyway.
Is it so?
Yeah, yeah.
And,
you know,
not to get political,
but I mean, we have,
I've had several people reach out
to me or not to you and about
a lot of the young people
coming into the trade in Canada
are from other countries.
They're international students
that are coming in and that kind of stuff.
And they have,
they have the work attitude,
but they're so like,
English is not their first language.
Yeah, that's a barrier.
It's not their first language.
Like the way they fix trucks
in foreign countries
is very different
than how the trucks have to be fixed
in Canada.
Like there is a huge
and I find that,
like when we are,
I think people in the apprenticeships
in Canada think
that the immigration thing
is going to fix the problem.
And it won't,
not for a while yet.
You know,
there's too much language barrier.
There's too much culture barrier.
Like it's,
it's a very different thing.
Well, if you can't read a service,
a service information correctly
and follow the steps and procedures,
you know, like,
and it's,
it's a detriment
also to the apprentice, right?
Because he's,
he's also not learning correctly.
Like it's,
yeah, it's a,
it's a lose-lose on that one.
Yeah.
I was always amazed
Matthew about like
so many technicians
that I worked with,
French was their first language.
Right.
Being that they,
a lot of them came from,
like I worked with guys
that would drive over from Gatineau
to work in Orleans.
I worked with guys that would drive over from Gatineau
to work in downtown Ottawa.
Oh yeah.
And it amazed me that like,
you knew their English wasn't very great,
but they could read it well enough
to get through the service.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm like,
if I ever went to Colbeck
or, you know,
the,
the cruiser dealers over in Hall
and tried,
I'd be screwed.
I couldn't have the same manual in French.
I'd have been fucked.
It's happened to me
or I've had to order parts.
I'm Francophone
and I'll order parts in Quebec
and I'm like,
what is this part in French?
French again.
And it's like,
how is that?
Because I can remember sometimes
I joke all the time,
but in the,
in Orleans,
literally it was like one side of the shop
is was France.
Yeah.
It was English, right?
And,
and everybody got along,
but it was very different.
Like if you walked across the shop
Hey, what are you doing here?
You know,
it was that way.
Like it was,
it was all fun and games,
but like,
you know,
it's all,
is it still probably more animated
on the French side too?
I would assume me.
Oh yeah.
Like I had God bless him.
I had a guy,
I used to just joke with him all the time
and it just used to drive him nuts.
But I mean,
Gilo Tess was his name
and he's our transmission guy
and he's 60.
God, what did they say?
He's 68 and he's still working at
Orleans Dodge.
And I just saw a picture from the other day.
He looks good for 68.
He had a heart attack last year.
You know,
he missed a few months.
Like he was off recovery
but he came back.
Like he just,
he loves the job
and he's not doing so much heavy
transmission now.
He's doing a lot more dyke.
But I used to just,
I used to joke with him
because we're always again,
pushing to make the most hours.
And my baby was across from him
and so every time I would get a
fuel system cleaning service
and I would dump the can in the
machine,
I would throw the can across the
shop at his bank.
So he knew I was doing another one.
When we went away on holidays,
I kept all the cans and I put them
on his bench and on top of his
toolbox.
So when he come back after a week,
like he had to open the lid and you
know,
yeah,
man I should say,
and it was just like,
yeah, I miss those guys.
It was good times.
So it,
it,
we all got along.
Like even for all the differences,
you know,
and it's a very divided country
right now.
We all got along.
And I think that was just part
of it was like,
you had to rely on your friends.
You had to rely on your
co-workers, you know,
like you had to.
I think that's something that needs
to be taught a lot more too.
Hey,
how to get along with people.
Yes.
You know,
and I think the flat rate thing
is,
is makes that difficult,
you know,
to,
to sometimes learn how to really
make the team strong.
If you don't want to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, yeah,
because there's no incentive for
people to help each other.
They're too focused on getting
their hours and their,
their jobs done.
Yeah.
Like, and,
you know,
they talk all the time,
one bad apple, right?
Ruins the whole thing,
but it really does.
And, you know,
it's,
it's not a situation.
A lot of that stuff
sometimes sorts itself out,
but I'm also seeing like shops
where the bad apple
becomes very protected
because they look at what
the bad apple produces
and they go,
I can't see the shop
operating without that.
And then then you're in a
very problematic
because,
you know,
if they see that,
that becomes a norm.
How he or she acts
as a technician.
Yeah.
That becomes the allowed
level.
Yeah.
And it's not always good.
It's not always good.
So, yeah.
I have seen that.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah.
What,
what's the young people
that you have coming in,
what do you see the weaknesses
like when you see other
technicians,
where do you see their
weaknesses?
Just learning,
just, just take the time
to read and learn.
There's a lot of problems
that I've noticed that I've,
that I've like
taken over to solve
that was like
an example.
I got one recently.
I had a truck towed out of,
of a dealer
that came to my shop
because they,
they, they claim they couldn't
figure it out.
I don't know what the story
was, but long story short,
all it needed,
all it needed was to do a,
forced regen
to complete the repair.
I'm like,
well, it's,
it's right there
in the service information.
It's the last line.
Like if they would have read
that last line,
they would have seen,
oh, then do a forced regen.
And then it brings everything
inactive.
And then you can clear the code,
road test,
to make sure it's good.
And road test guys,
come on guys, road test.
Like you guys have to road test.
That's something that I,
like,
I don't know why,
I guess it's because
of this flat rate thing.
They don't want a road test
and to confirm the repair,
but you have to make sure
that your repair is,
is, is correct.
And that you can,
you know,
but yeah, and
yeah,
that's just one of the,
just pay attention
and,
and they come in
and I find they,
that I know it all attitude,
but they don't want to learn.
Yeah.
Like, you know,
and it's,
I know the,
the road testing is very,
like I didn't really,
from when I left the dealership
to start to go into the
independent side,
I learned that it was much
more important
to do a better road test
after the fact that I had been.
Like it wasn't like I had
cars coming back because of it,
but I mean like,
when you actually look at
how you're supposed to set
in the set of breaks,
bed them in,
that's a process in itself.
That's just no,
no dealership guy is doing it
at all.
They're not.
And so
do you have to make,
you know,
like,
I forget what they used to
want us to do
was like 30 stops
at 30 miles an hour
with like,
you know,
five seconds in between
stops.
So when you do the math
and that does,
you're out there for an hour.
Yeah.
It's necessary to do that.
But you can't just drive it
out of your bay
and park it in the parking lot
and send it home to the customer
without ever driving it
to bed them in.
You know,
I'm not talking like,
if you have a clip rattling
or scraping
or loose bolts
it's going to come up.
I'm talking about like,
you haven't even got those
breaks hot
and glazed in yet
and you're expecting a customer
to do that.
I know I remember
I had lots of customers
come in,
not my customers,
but other,
and it was like,
oh,
when I first drove it home,
the brakes felt terrible
for the first,
yeah,
they were brand new,
shiny,
you know,
fingerprints all over
it takes a while to get them off.
I found that I learned
to do a better
quality check
and road test
because no company
is going to send out a driver.
Like this is the other thing
that in Matthew's line of work,
they're not going to send
a driver over
to go and drive this truck
because like they're,
you're telling them it's finished.
He comes,
the driver comes
and picks it up.
He leaves,
puts a load on it.
He gets out
in an hour out of town.
Truck's broken again.
Doing the exact same thing,
derated or whatever.
Guess what?
If you'd have been done
doing your road test,
you could have saved
that phone call
and that customers,
because now we're into
a lot of time
because we've paid that driver
for a shift
and he spent half the shift
sitting in the truck
waiting to get towed back.
You know,
it's
and the product didn't get
delivered and it's
it becomes a whole thing.
That's the other thing.
Yeah, we didn't even
think about that.
You got sometimes
perishable load on.
That's right.
It's like,
how do we get that off?
And somewhere like,
we're talking thousands of
dollars,
like comebacks
in Matthew's side of the game
are not hundreds of dollars.
There's thousands of dollars
that people are like losing.
It's a big deal.
I found with the young people
like that I've worked for now,
it's not that they don't
seem like they don't want to learn.
I just find that it's like
it can go.
You can overwhelm them
really fast.
Yes.
The thing that they have to know.
It's crazy.
Like it was a lot
when I was coming up
and it's now
it's even more.
But they need to
I think they need to do it
in small increments
instead of like looking at the
learn one thing,
one task.
If you want to do
dyag, learn dyag.
And you mentioned
something in your podcast
once where
it becomes an intuition
as text.
Like you just know,
you have a feeling
you'll get those intuitions
up.
And then once you get good
at that then you,
but I think it's they want to
they want to do everything.
They want to learn everything
and it takes time.
That's another thing
too.
You won't become
an ATAC in
five, six years.
It could take a longer
than that.
Depending on what you do.
I'm sure you and I
have our 10,000 hours
in no time.
A lot.
I had double the hours
I needed by the time
I wrote the test.
Yeah, same here.
First I sat back
and I'm like,
I don't know if I'm going
to pass that, man.
Like I feel like I need
a little more of this
and I need a little
more of that.
It all it did at the end
was cost me money
because like in the
dealership world,
license texts were at this
third year or final year
were at that till you wrote
the you didn't level up
and pay until you wrote
the damn test.
Yeah, I was like that's
so stupid because
at the end of the day
in the dealership world
that I see yours is
hanging on the back wall.
Your your license
is hanging on the
in your on your wall.
I haven't done my tattoo
on my arm.
Yeah, there you go.
All you need for
in a dealership
is to be able to sign
the safety on the car.
There's only one guy
in a lot of dealerships
doing you's cars.
He's the only one signing
the safety.
So it didn't
it didn't mean a
fucking thing.
Right.
I was fixing guys
that had
20 years longer
on the product than me.
I was doing their comebacks.
I was doing their
diag for them
because I couldn't get to
I didn't need that
CFQ for that.
Yeah, I couldn't get paid
what he was going to do.
I got it.
You know,
that's the
that's the rub
I have with this
and then
you know,
everybody
my good friends
talk all the time
in the group.
You've probably seen this too.
A lot of guys right now
there's there's a mystique
about doing drivability.
I want to be
a drivability tech.
Okay.
And a lot of what I find
is Matthew is like
some can
I believe everybody
can learn to do it.
But what the really
high functioning people
that I know that do it
like they're just
there's something about
them that makes them
better at it.
Yes.
Yeah.
An intuition or something
like that.
Yeah.
Too many times
I think in the industry
we're steering these people
into roles
that they're not necessarily
because they have to learn it.
You know what I mean?
It's like they're forced to
learn it.
Yeah.
I don't necessarily believe
that's right from the
from the apprenticeship line.
I think we have to take the
trade and break it down
a little more
where it's like
do you ever want to work
on air condition?
Nope.
Okay.
Then I'm not going to make you
sit through months and months
and months and months and months
at the classroom level.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of learning and air conditioning.
It can be a separate
a supplement maybe
you go back and take it.
But here's what I want you to
know.
I want you to really learn
you know the basics
of fundamentals electrical
and so that you can go out
because everything is going to
operate on electricity pretty
soon.
You know Edison's building
trucks that are
you know hybrids like
that's going to be the thing.
How many trucks do you go out
and look in the AC
still doesn't work?
You know they don't care.
Yeah.
Right.
So all that time that maybe
that that technician spent
learning how to do air conditioning
and then he gets himself
into or she into a business where
you know the priority is
making the truck work
not have cold air.
Yeah.
All of that time spent
or that money spent is
and they're struggling somewhere
else.
Yeah.
To that that's what I'm
trying to say.
So when we when we keep pushing
all these texts to be like
I wrote them to be all
diagnostic texts.
Yeah.
You're pushing a lot of them
out of the industry
because like they get to it
and they're they're handed a
ticket and they have no process
yet on how to even approach this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The process is the thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then the senior technician
maybe is not very helpful.
Doesn't want to teach them
or you know like can
oh go over here
and it's always this
connector underneath this seat.
They didn't there was no process
taught there.
You just gave them the answer.
So that's that's funny you say
that because I get that a lot.
I get phone calls from people
looking for advice you know
and other texts and
which I love doing by the way
but they're like
they're looking for the answer.
They're looking for me to tell
them go look at that connector
and it's probably
and so my approach
what I'm trying to do is like
well let's let's walk it back
and just try and come up
to how we could figure this
out you know like
using the process so that
I can get him to think
or her to think about
what where we're going
with this you know
instead of just giving them
the answer but I find
a lot of people now
just want the answer
they'll go on you
because I'm sure you hear it too.
A lot of people go on YouTube
and yeah but there's a lot of
misleading information on YouTube
it could be like
you know it's
so you gotta
you gotta kind of have
figure it out
you know have a knack for it
and not only that like
if I was ever stuck
where it was like
I was asking somebody for
like a tip or a bullet
it was because I didn't have
access to the service information
especially the truck side
because like
I don't know how much you
subscribe to so many different
information systems
for the different
you know Cummins
Navistar
Yeah
Volvo
you know
Wobco
for the
for the brake systems
all that kind of stuff
like
people that aren't familiar
with the trucking industry
like you're not so much
going in and going
punching a van in
and going okay
this is everything
now that truck was built
you're punching a van in
and you're getting a very basic
of this is the basic
that was in the truck
all these other systems
have been added on
and you don't have to know
the the
the suffixes of those systems
that's right
and then interrogating
that system
independently of the
truck
and then trying to figure out
how it's talking to the truck
like it
so when people in the
in the trucking side are going
I have this truck
and I have no idea where to go
it's because they don't have
access maybe to
Wobco
they have access to Cummins
they don't have access
to the brake side of the truck
that's right
yeah right
so they're getting these codes
but it was like
what does it mean
the regen stuff was terrible
we had an old
I'm trying to think of
what the scan tool was
it was a laptop base
like a J something
J pro or gel test
J pro
and it was so out of
date
and like that
you didn't get half the codes
that were in the truck
you couldn't force it to do anything
you had no bilateral controls
and it's like
why are we looking at a regen
problem on a truck when
but it was again
the personal employer
that I worked for
couldn't see the value in
in keeping subscriptions
up to date
paying for them
a new scan
not because
so why are we just telling this
customer like
just tell them what we are
we're a front end shop
we're not going to look at your
you know
yes
yeah
regen problem
but they wouldn't do that
yeah because
when any after treatment issue
is expensive
like there's no cheap
unless it's a wiring
or a leaking
death line
or something simple
which is
never really is
any call you make
you got to be pretty sure of
your shot
because it's
everything's expensive
like if you know
if you got a call
a one box on the DD15
you're looking at $20,000
up here you know
like it's
you better be sure of
that of your
diag in that case
you know like
so
I only use dealer level stuff
because I
this the aftermarket stuff
terrible
while in the trucks
because of because of like
what you said
right like
it seems like
because there's Cummins
there's Wabco
there's Eaton
there's like
and everything
everything talks to each other
on the can bus system
right so
and then you
got to you got to learn
how to
to navigate through
because
you know when you see a
can bus
issue
it could be
just a
a power issue
of one of the modules
not talking
and everything talks
through the can bus
like every knock
sensor on
on the natural treatment
talks to can bus
well
it could just be
a broken wire
a rubbed wire somewhere
you know what I mean
like
but
yeah
I've been had like
so I run
I have a snap
on the edge
and the
in the truck
as
because it's just
the
their hardware
is pretty
pretty solid
like they
they can live
through the cold
but
I will pull codes
up on
on
let's say the snap on
platform
and then
plug it into insight
and oh look at this
there's four more codes
that this
this
this
snap on
didn't show me
right
so
and that's the huge
things because it's
normally
it's those four codes
which are the
I don't want to say
the smoking gun
but those four codes
that you couldn't get
from this
from the J pro
like I remember
yeah
it'll go next door
to the
to the
dealer over there
that had
you know
come Zoe
and it's
they spit back
three more codes to you
and you're like
that right there
that's exactly what I
needed to know
that makes sense
yeah
yeah
all of a sudden
it's like
yeah okay
I need a dozer
no big deal
right like
that's right
but it's
or it's a
heat thermostat
rationale
you're getting that
from the common side
that you think
well there's why
I won't
regen
to
friggin thing
is too cold
to like
that
all that
is is not always
accurate
and the refresh rate
on the J pro
was so slow
that you knew
like you were at
190
Fahrenheit
and yet it was still
telling you at 170
it was so slowly
creep up
it was very
yeah
I hated it
I hated anything
like that
that it was just like
nope
and they're like
I thought you could do
dyke
yeah I can
see that car
over there
no problem
see this truck
with this
archaic
laptop
get it
the hell away from me
like
you go
take it to the dealer
you tell them
diagnose it
I'll come back
for the pardon
no big deal
I've done my visual
I don't know
have a nice day
like that
wasn't me a case
of looking for a bullet
it's just
I'm not spending
hours and hours
and hours
and hours
on some
ego trip
because somebody won't pay
for software
I just won't do it
yeah
you know
yeah
it doesn't
and at the end of the day
it doesn't make me look good
and it doesn't make my
business look good
my company
that I work for
for my business
I mean that
well you're
you know
you work for me
to do what I'm told
yeah
you know
I'm not
I'm not here to make myself
look worse
because you can't
accept what I'm telling you
we're not
yeah
to do this
you know
I can remember
I had a technician
I worked with
and it was like
they were sending them on
Ford power stroke
six liter class
he didn't even want to go
did not want to go to the class
and I'm like
I put my hand up
I'm like
can I go to that class
now you haven't been here
long enough
wait a minute
like I've worked on
way more Ford trucks
Ford trucks than he has
let alone 60
kind of have an idea
what's going on
but while he's our senior
tacking it
let me
he doesn't even want to go
yeah I send him
if he doesn't want to go
yeah
because that was the
that was the politics
that went on at that
particular
you know employer
which is fine
he got nothing out of the class
he would still call me
if he's stuck on a six liter
and I'm like
I'm not a six liter expert
but he knows that
I know a lot of people that are
yeah
so
like
and I'm just
it's
it's those kind of things
at the end of the day
that in this industry
is where sometimes
I think we drop the ball
it's again
it's the young people
and then when we
we're not
we're not
we're not honest
enough with ourselves
on where our strengths are
as a business
or as a technician
like
is there anything that you won't touch
tires
tires
tires
I don't do tires
yeah
there's tire companies for that
I'm
I'm
I don't even do my own anymore
but
but uh
no
uh
like as far as like
platforms mean
like as far as
not really
I like a challenge
I'm that kind of guy
I mean
if I can
if I can't get any information
at all
and I'll advise like
the client
well
I'm gonna have to reverse engineer
some of this
or whatever
you know
like
but as far as like
I've taken on jobs
like
like
knowing I'm
I might lose money
just because I want the
the experience sometimes
or the
yeah
like I've done some
pretty
pretty wild stuff
over the years
I think that's what we
we forget sometimes
when they
we say the young people
don't want to work
or they don't want to try
when we put
again going back
to that money thing
well
how much financially
should they donate
for the learning
you know
and it's
that's when incentivized
pay comes into it again
right
if you're flat rate
like I always joked
like if you sold an hour
die
you get an hour die
egg
you know
if I didn't know
at the end of the hour
I could sleep
that night
not knowing
like it didn't
bother me
you know
um
now if I sold something
and it was wrong
yeah
I'm fixing the car
100%
no question about it right
like I have to make it right
but you know
customers that didn't want to pay
for die egg
or advisors that didn't want to
pay for me for die egg
no problem
I'll put the car back outside
I don't need to know
you know
it's just another cars
there's other work
when we get into the
incentivized side
I think that's what happens
as they say too much
it's like the young people
don't want to learn
but when we cap it at like
okay you're young
but you're only going to get
an hour to figure this out
even if it's an intermittent
even if it's especially in the
dealers
your son's going to run into this
well
this is why sometimes we take
guesses
we take chances
you know
yeah
yeah
we try known good parts
because like
it's faster
you know
and then again
my big thing too
is like failure analysis
I want to know what failed
yeah
but exactly just
my mom has a 16 patriot
and the the throttle
the throttle valve
like that famous issue
but I want to know
what caused that failure
so I opened up the
the board and it's full of engine oil
in there
so I guess it's getting sucked in
through that shaft seal
so now okay
I can sleep tonight
because I know
I know I fixed it
because I diagated correctly
but also
okay now I know why
you know
like it just
air valves
you know
like pulling air valve apart
like what
why did it fail
you know
or why is it
I'm I'm
I'm big into that
and that's something
I noticed
with the younger generation
is like whatever
just toss it in
well you're not
you're not at all curious
like
like
you know like
but I get in the incentivized pay
I can see that being a
really big problem
because it's on to the next
on to the next
on to the next
it's all about production
right
yeah
and you make a good point
because the failure analysis
is exactly how
like it's the person
that actually did
the failure analysis
to determine
what maybe was the
improved part
or the improved service
procedure
or something to avoid
that happening again
yeah
I can think of like
what can I think of
I can think of like
PCV lines
and evap lines
that were changed
and and updated
so that
condensation didn't
collect in certain spots
and got the vent to freeze
stuff like that
right
that's all for
exactly what you said
from failure analysis
if you just hang the
keep hanging the vent valve
on and don't even think
about what it is
why it fails
you're never going to
become better
but like
it's only
it's been my experience
the only task
maybe one tech
in a lot of shops
with the time
to do the failure analysis
or when we have
a customer come back
that's when we actually might
do
you know
failure analysis
this thing
went through a transmission
inside of a year
why did that training fail
like you know
he does good rebuilds
he doesn't ever come back
oh look
the cooler lines
are plugged up
or like you know
the fan doesn't come on
so that's running too hot
you know that's why
stuff like that
that's not part of the
failure analysis
like it should be
when we do our thorough
inspections
like nobody
I ever saw do a
transmission overhaul
ever checked to see
if the lines were plugged
before they hung the
tranny in front of it
like it wasn't part of it
you know
yeah
do other guys
and it's like
I sell the lines
with every transmission
I do
yep
you know
I either replace them
or I flush them
and I've had zero luck
with flushing
so I replace them
every time
well then we get into that
why do they cost more
somebody has done
some failure analysis
at some point
in their career
and figured out that like
the right correct
proper repair
involves more steps
and that's where we get
into the whole
onion of
why does it cost
so much more money
you know
yeah
because somebody's
on failure analysis
it's
it's
I love
I love my time
with the truck thing
because
in my career
because it taught me
about that kind of stuff
but it also like
you know
when you come
into the automotive side
there isn't the time for it
they don't want you
to spend the time
no I've noticed
that it's
it's two different worlds
I find it so
yeah
even like modules
you see that
where it's like
you put a module in
and the module fails again
put a module in
module fails again
what's going on
oh the alternator's charging
too high
or it has a coil
that's going down
and smoking a driver out of it
nobody caught that
you know
I've been bit
by that way
early in my career too
like it
you know
so many things
look at the grounds
on the car
sometimes we're fixing
stuff that's so
rusted you know
or you know
there's like
yeah
like
gee
what do I do here
like
sell them a new car
no
fix what's there
like it
yeah
was a compromise
what
that's another thing
with your trucks too
like you can sell them
in another car
but
a $330,000 tri axle
is a little bit hard
of a sell
you know
like so
a $60,000 engine
doesn't seem like
such a big
lump
when it's a $330,000
truck
yeah
you know what I mean
like and
we're
people that are
listening to the
automotive side
they're like
what
like we just got
talking in a group chat
in a couple years
up here
especially in
in Canada already
most like
if you want to buy
you know
an F-250
with a power stroke
it's a $100,000 truck
you know what I mean
oh yeah
a Cummins big horn
it's a $100,000 truck
like
you're buying
a $100,000
what people used to pay
for homes now
they're paying for
trucks
the trucks
yeah
like
I can't charge $200
for an oil change
on that truck
or I can't charge
$3,000 for a break job
you most certainly can
it's a $100,000 truck
you mean I can't
charge $4,000 to put
brakes on it
of course I can
yeah
now I'm not talking like
$4,000 and using
the cheapest stuff
that's not what I'm
trying to say
for the people
listening
they're gonna call
me everything under the sun
I'm talking about
using like
old parts
old procedure
all the time
to do it properly
complete calipers
flush the fluid
all it comes
if you think
on a $1,000 truck
$100,000 truck
you can't get $4,000
you're nuts
you're thinking
you're thinking too small
is what I'm trying to say
it's
my friend
Cecil Bollard
says it's stinking thinking
stop thinking like that
yeah
you know
just do the math
4%
like
it's easy
easy
that's true
yeah
don't look at that
because they have
in their mind still
Midas did breaks
for $150
in you know
1983
yeah
well
yeah
you know
it's a lot different now
and in my
in my field
everything
takes an hour
because they're
like they
think that
anything takes an hour
all you can get that done
in an hour
I'm like
no
this is a three hour job
you know
it's just
and it's all because
they don't want to have to
you know
reconfigure the routes
and then
I get it
like they're pressed like
okay
I'm like
instead of spending time
pushing me
to get the job done quicker
how about you
I will fix your truck
it's going to get done correctly
in
in about two to three hours
and you know
while you
reconfigure runs
to
to work around
it's like
I didn't break your truck
it broke itself
so
you know what I mean
like it's
it's another problem
when it's been giving you
warnings
and you keep using it
you know
the
truck driver's been
hitting regen
you know
the whole time
yes
the
or
the
the latest one I've been
getting a lot
is the
the
regen inhibit
yes
it can stop
it stops it
and they leave them
while we
and their excuses
well I
I gotta get the truck unloaded
I don't have time to wait for a
regen
well now you're stuck on the side
of the road
because the truck's completely
derated now
you and I are both sitting here
for an hour
well this thing
that's the first regen
so how did you save time
exactly
you know
yeah
you didn't
and
so where does that come from
some a lot Matthew
where it's like
our
is it the way they're paying
the drivers
yeah
yeah
see
big problem
it's pretty
a lot I've
a lot of them I think are paid
for the run
yeah
so they want to get back home
as soon as they can
I think that's pretty much
a lot of it
because there's no excuse for it
because if they be paid for the
hour
they
oh that too
and the ELD's changed
the game a lot
because now they're all
electronically logged
so they
they're
they're very strict on
and some
some companies
as soon as they hit their
their hours
that's it
the truck stops
like it will live
if it's you're stuck on the
401
that's where you're pulling
over
then they have to send
somebody
another driver
that's got fresh hours
to bring the truck back
to the yard
or whatever
right so
so they get
they're pushed
and pushed
and pushed
right so
yeah
and
we know the old school guys
used to just sleep
in the truck then
and while they waited
for the truck to be built
or fixed
I worked on so many trucks
where the driver
was asleep in the cab
you know
while I worked on it
and everybody's like
well how can you sleep
man when they retired
they could sleep
oh then no sleep
yeah
and they would go to sleep
now it doesn't matter
like he could catch three hours
of sleep
while he's waiting for you
to show up on a service call
that the ALD doesn't allow that
he has to be pulled
from the truck and go
so there's
pluses and minuses to it both
I
the thing with the trucking side
is like
there's always so
if especially if it's a good driver
there's warning signs
coming up
that this thing needs work
right
oh yeah
you know
and and
it's not like cars
that we see driving around
that you hear the brakes
and they're driving around
and they hear them too
but they're like
well you know
next week I get paid
and that's when I'm fixing my brakes
the truck thing is like
there's been warning lights
coming on
and they know
that it's got to come in
and
you know it was supposed to have a
valve adjustment
20,000 kilometers ago
and that wasn't done
and and all this kind of stuff
and it's
10,000 overdue for its service
I'm trying to get it in all
at once
you know that they keep using
that truck
until it will not work
and then they take
all that stuff done at once
and then they complain
about how long it's taken
and what it costs
dude you knew it was going to
break down
it was telling you
it's giving all the
that's what I
I respect a lot more
of the managers
that I had in the truck stations
because they were just very
point blank
you knew it was going to happen
your driver was telling you about
we would see the
the daily inspections
on some of the fleets that we had
and it was written up
you know
derated three times today
they just put it in service
tomorrow like
no one's going to go
I can't believe it's broken
it's in his log book saying
it isn't right
we're talking again
we're talking about businesses
where it's
it's all part of their operating
budget and
you know
people forget sometimes the fleets
like
the last fleet run that I had
if we pulled a bus on them
or it didn't get done in time
it wasn't a big deal
you had another bus in the yard
yeah we don't have spares anymore
that's something you don't see anymore
yeah
yeah I agree
when I first started in this
lot of the companies I worked for
usually that
the way it worked is the older you and it got
got to be the spare
they bought a new truck
and so if I couldn't get it fixed
in a timely manner
they'd just jump in this pair
but now
if it's got wheels
it's got a turn
that's the way they see it now
they just keep them running
right and it just doesn't stop
how much of your day to day
you're dealing with like fleet managers
fleet managers
yes
so you're not necessarily dealing with
like the owner operator
or the
you know
the person that necessarily even
owns the company
you're just dealing with this fleet manager
who is like essentially just another
accountant in the building
and is like
maybe never worked on a truck
but has to know
it's a 50-50 split
I'd say
you know
the way usually it works
is like the manager
or foreman
depending on what kind of business it is
they'll call me
you know
and then
if it's a big call
like if it's something that I have
like I called like that's
a higher ticket item
then I'll call the owner directly and say
hey like
are we doing this are we not
you know like
because
yeah for the most part
yeah I'd say about 50-50 or so
you know
I'm gonna ask you because it was
it was a pretty good topic that
in Tuesday's episode of Marshall Sheldon
and Marshall's a heavy equipment tech
as well
what do you look for when you're
looking at younger hires
what do you kind of
where do you find them
what do you want to see them come
from like
does it matter
all scopes or
I want to see
like that you're into it
and that you're really like
passionate about what you want to do
you know
do you work on your own stuff
or do you do side jobs
do you do like
you
are you interested in this
or is this just a job for you
because my experience has been like
if it's just a job for you
then it's just a job
and they don't seem to
you know they
they don't have that drive
I used to say farm
got farm kids
yeah
I used to say farm kids now it's
the thing
I do work for some farms
the bigger farms out here
but they're
they're so
they're
the families run the farms now
they don't
outside much anymore
so now it's a
it's a big family business
so I don't
I don't get to see very many of those
yeah
I find a lot of the farming thing
has gone to where it's
it's it's become
just like you said a business
so the farm kid
now is just like
not a whole lot different from like
maybe
how do I say this the right way
they might have had the same kind of
level of entitlement
and maybe the silver spoon dilemma
yeah
kid never had
and now I'm finding that
it's it's just the same generational thing
it didn't matter whether
they grew up on a farm or not
they always like
didn't have to work that hard
for them for money
or opportunity
it was just going to be it was a given
your last name is this
and you're going to inherit this
yes
they don't
so they don't have that
I was up with that at six in the morning
till eight at night working and
you know the next generation is just like
we had a guy come in and fix this
and they came in and fix the tractor
and they have no interest in learning
how to fix the tractor
because like
they were looking at spreadsheets
and somebody came in and fixed the tractor
that kind of example
that's exactly it yeah
yeah and I find that that's
that's not just a farm kid thing anymore
that's I think
well when I talked to like
you know
anyone they go
my dad was really good with cars
like he wasn't a mechanic
but he was very good with cars
he always fixed the family car
yep
we don't have that anymore
so
guys that are coming in now
they maybe
they certainly probably don't have a father
that worked on the family car
so they got a little bit exposure
in high school maybe
or you know
through a friend that had a fast car
and they started maybe tankering on it
and they
wow I really like this
it's not the same now
so they're not getting the
exposure
so I find that when we get the young people in
sometimes and they go
all the attrition rate is terrible
like they leave after two three years
that's because they didn't know
what the reality of this was
that's right
until they were on the job
whereas like when they used to say
when I worked with my dad
on the family car
or saw him do it
I knew the reality
before I ever decided to take it on as a career
I knew what it was
because he did it
he was a body guy
so I was around it my whole life
I knew what it was going to be like
right
I wasn't prepared for the political side
in the pay side
but I knew it was going to be dirty
hard on the body
you know breathing a lot of crappy stuff
buying a lot of tools
like you know
struggling skin and your knuckles
I knew all that
but these
is now
it's also rewarding though
that's the thing I like it
when you figure that problem out and
it it runs and it's
I don't know
that's that's the addiction
that for me anyways
that's the way I see it
and it's
I can remember getting down here
when I was working in a truck shop
and we'd get those ice storms
that would come through
you remember them like
some of the ones that hit
like 20 years ago
remember they were bad right
hydro was down for whatever
I remember we'd have trucks lined up
waiting to go and us
and you'd be all day
and you were in
you were in your snow suit
and you're in your big boots
and the whole thing
and the service truck never shut off
you just went from one truck to another
hooked up
start charging his batteries
you know
refill his fuel filters
add a bunch of de-icer
you finally got the truck run
it was so rewarding every time
to get that truck going
even though you had five more to do
that day
or or whatever you could get through
before shift done
you just
it was so rewarding every time
to finally get that guy
back on the road
because he was happy to be headed
you know
like we said
this is before yieldies
he'd been asleep in the bunk
or he'd been standing there
maybe watching you for three hours
and you finally get him going
he's just happy
that's
that was the addictive part
is like there's
there's no
your hands are numb
you're frozen
but the reward is
is that you've actually achieved something
that's right man
it's not like it's
it went beyond just
you know
putting a break job on a car
it went to
something like you said
somebody's food
groceries were going to get delivered
somebody
there's there's
we're at another level here
like it's
it's serious stuff
the trucking thing
I wish more young people
would go to it
instead of the automotive side
because I think
yeah it's hard
it's a hard sell though
and I don't understand why
but yeah it's a hard sell
I think that's a hard sell
because the
we've made all the glory
in the last couple years
about fast cars and technology
and yeah
we share the same technology
now in the trucking thing
but the
the trucking industry is doing
a terrible job of
they're having a hard enough time
now getting good truckers
drivers
let alone getting technicians
right
so that's the other obstacle too
and the trucking industry
has got some obstacles
in front of it
but I think like
they really need to step their game
up and say
we need young people
because let's be real
if you're listening
the trucking stuff
right now to start
pays a little bit better
than the automotive side
so if you
if if you're just about the money
look at the trucking industry
because you'll
you'll start out making
a little bit better money I think
and you just
you're paid a different way
right from the
right from the jump
they're in a whole lot of
flat rate in the
trucking industry
so if you're
definitely against it
I don't know how you would
build it
to be honest with you because
you can't
you can't like
too much modifications
too many
yeah
it started out as a
two two frame rails
three axles
and an engine
and a transmission
and some tail lights
and then they added
something to it
that's right
we don't flat rate
all that other added stuff
because there is not
in a book somewhere
yeah right
it doesn't work that way
so if you're that kind of
young technician
that like
wants to problem solve
and and and can
put behind you the
time constraint
and just go and fix the truck
go into it
don't even look at
the automotive side
why
why does your son
go to the automotive
and not follow
you cannot
exactly what you just said
he likes fast cars
he's big into
the Mercedes and BMWs
and
and uh
he wants to
pave his own way
and he wants to
you know
like he wants to do it all
all by himself and
and
he's more interested in cars
and he's intimidated by trucks
I mean he's seen
he's seen the dark side
growing up and
seeing me do it
so like
you know
he's seen me wake up at three in the morning
to go start trucks
or go diagnose stuff
and come back
like work 18 20-hour days
that's not a
and it's a seven day a week
like I haven't had a week
long holiday
since 2008
it was the last time
I had a full week of holiday
you know
and that's
that's my it's
it's my doing
but it's just like
still like
he's seen it so
I think that's what
he just
kind of wanted to do his own
you know
carve his own path
and he wanted
he likes working on cars
and working in fast cars
and
and he's good at it
that's the thing
he's good at
especially diagnosing
and
and stuff
so he wants to
he was big into the EVs
for a while too
he wanted to get into the EV
side of things
because he knows
that it's eventually
going to come
so we actually went to the
truck show in Toronto
two three years ago
okay
the last time it was in
Toronto in Missaga
and we went
him and I went there
for the
for the show
and
we went to go look at all
the EV trucks
and how it's coming up
in the industry
and I tried this
so he's like
see it's
it's going to happen
in the trucks too
so
you know
that might be a
an avenue
that you might want to
consider right
and
he may come back around
he may come back around
you know
yeah
well he's
he's
he's still an apprentice now
so he's still like
salaried
so he's not
I think he'll be
okay for now
but at the end of the day
when the
he sees how the older
techs are
some of them
are struggling right
and
yeah
that's going to be that thing too
or if he comes along
and he's strong
at that kind of
dyag
and stuff like that
that adds another ripple
sometimes
of
getting your spot
in the dealership right
because
true
people have heard me talk about it
there's always the old wood
that you know
has
paid their dues
and done their time
and
shouldn't be taken care of
but a lot of times
the young people
that are really
on the cutting edge
of the tech
they struggle to make money
because it's like
you know we
we have
these guys
that we give good work to
as they should
they should deserve it
and then we have
these young guys
who are absolutely
burning them out on the
really problematic cars
because they have the
knack to do it
but they're not making
the money that
the
the established people
are
and they get resentment towards that
I was that way
you know
I talk all the time
I fix stuff
that the guys
have worked
and not product line
for
10 years
20 years
and I was fixing the
you know
2006 caravan
that they couldn't figure out
like
you know
yeah
yeah
and and
they're still there
and they're still being
looked after
and yet
that
when we compare 2006
to a 2026
like
think of the difference
there
in technology
and yet
they're still there
being taken care of
looked after
whatever
it's a national evolution
but I don't necessarily
again it's
it's a caveat
for why
I think flat rate
doesn't work
I just think that you
you you
you get paid
on your ability
not to produce
but to actually like
solve
because then
if you start to trickle down
in your old age
where you're not solving
you're not an obstacle
for the pay
for other people
that are
that's my point
yeah
it's
it's tough man
I wish there's
I was just
there was some magic
you know
saying this is a solution
for it
it's
the only way
we get to it
is we keep having
the conversations
about like
and ask them
how do you want to
I was just having a
conversation with my friend
he's like
I'll pay them anyway
they want to get paid
they want to get paid
flat rate
I'll pay them flat rate
if they want to get paid
hourly
I'll pay them hourly
he says
it's a dollar a minute
he says
I'll sit on a stool
I'll hand them ones
every minute
he said
I'll hand them singles
every minute
like he says
whatever they want
he says
I'll make it work
I just
I need them
to be able to come in
and do the job
that I need done
yeah
you know and
and that's it
he says like
my friend Zeb
that works at
Strokers
his biggest thing is
getting guys
that either like
are reliable
or I can remember
he says to tighten
all the F and bolts
he says so many of them
that they can't
tighten all the F and bolts
and
you know
do you find
that's a bigger problem
now
like just going back
and reviewing
your work
and
who's bolt
and forgetting
to tighten stuff
or is it like
I
I think in the
younger's
potential process
I think it's like
well here's
the other thing
the young people are so distracted
now with that
cell phone
and I think it's like
you know
that that
and again
in the dealership
when we're allowing them
to use their cell phone
say to use
to do the DBI
okay so it's like
okay we're gonna let you
use your cell phone
because it's part of the
process now
of
you're taking pictures
with your cell phone
of the car
right
where we give you a tablet
and you've got your
tablet hooked up
so that you're watching
the YouTube video
or you're streaming
your Spotify
on the same tablet
you're going around
I think it's distracting
so I think what happens is
like my cell phone
doesn't distract me
but if I am doing something
and some advisor comes up
and starts talking to me
about the car
that I'm either working on
or
like a car that's coming in
I have to now
consciously put my tools down
and and and
walk away from the car
and have the conversation
because if I'm standing
there trying to talk
and I'm tightening this
I'll miss that third bolt
on that way
and then it's like
or I forget to plug this in
and then I go back
and I put a bunch of other things
in the way
and I don't have that connector
plugged in
and then I go and hit the switch
and the car doesn't start
because I forgot to plug
the starter motor in
and I put the manifold on
over top of it
and all that jazz
and everything
it's off
because I'm trying to get
that five minutes back
yeah
that I had a conversation
with somebody
so
the young people
when we find them
doing things like that
some of it is
they're too distracted
by their damn phone
then you maybe have to
make sense
you have to make a policy
that says okay
you can't be on your phone
and we hate
that right
like we shop owners
that are
they're on the phone
all the time
yeah
is there a shop
with that
that has that policy
have you heard that
or
shop owners
that yeah
they're trying to
to
if they could
they would say
you're not allowed
on your phone
while you're being paid
now here's the caveat
if I'm paid flat rate
I can do anything I want
yeah
in the sense that like
because
you know
if if I only turn six hours
because it's been two hours
on my
the day on my phone
that's on me
right
if I
make 10 hours for you
in in eight hours
and I was on my phone all day
that's on me too
that's like
is the phone really the issue then
but when you start having
comebacks all the time
because you're distracted
you know
and and
you're forgetting things
you're not doing anything
but like listen
I've known lots of older
technicians
that when they were going
through stuff
domestically
like housewives
and and all that kind of stuff
they didn't have cell phones yet
and they were on the phone all the time
you know
they're on the shop phone
that was in the
lunch room
calling
you know
going through this
yeah
what do you mean I got to go
pick up my kids
that you know
it was your turn to pick up the kids
so distractions period
really I think are
what leads to
poor workmanship
is distractions
I really think it is
I think everybody
for the most part
when they come in
they want to do a
really good job
and not forget that kind of stuff
but if we're distracting them
with asking them about
the car they're working on
when it ain't even done yet
or what are we going to do
if we don't get it done by five
well oh my god
like all these scenarios
right
or remember the car
that's coming in tomorrow
remember the car last week
and we're trying to
focus on this
that's how they have
missed bolts
if we're trying to rush them
because that's how they're
fucking paid
yeah
it's gonna
you're gonna have loose bolts
I hate to say it
but you're gonna have it
and it sucks
and I understand
we're gonna go listen
that's not the pay plan
you are right it's not
if a good tech is gonna
want to make sure
they're gonna do
the quality control regardless
but if I have to do
a ton of quality control
and I'm already
right on the cusp of
like going over on the job
every time
for time wise
because either
we didn't bill it properly
we didn't estimate it
properly all these
kind of things
then I
either have to make
a conscious choice
that I'm gonna donate
time and money
for a good quality control
or I'm gonna shirk
on the quality control
then what do you think
most technicians are gonna do
we're gonna shirk
on the quality control
that's why we have it man
I think anyway
that's my own theory
what do you think
I think that's
you're absolutely right
I think the distraction
the only reason I brought it up
is because I feel like
years ago
I'm going back 20 years ago
it wasn't as much of a problem
as it seems to be now
like I hear stories about
all these little things
that you know
like forgetting
these little things
I had a case recently
where they
they mistimed
a next 15
you know
because it's
there's no
key way
it's all
press fit
and you have to lock
the cams in
and you know
so you gotta
take your time
you gotta do it properly
and I double
triple
and when I
my policies
and when I start
a procedure
like that
is I lock the door
I lock
close the door
lock the shop
turn my phone off
and whatever it is
when I'm done
I'm done
and then I'm
sure I'm not distracted
so
that could
yeah
now they're
they're
like what about these
dvi's
like is
because that's something that
just another added thing
and added stress to the tech
that they
gotta
yeah
what are your thoughts on those
so
they're a very powerful tool
because and I didn't believe it
because when I was at the dealer
I always did inspections
right but
the inspection was like
going over and look at what hadn't
been done to the car
so I could know what to sell
right
because again
flat rate you want to sell as much
as you can
maintenance wise
right
while the car is in for something
else
oh it's due for transmission flush
it's due for
yeah the
you know
I would test drive
every car
brakes were
howling
brakes were pulsating
it always got recorded
noted that it needed
some kind of brake inspection
or brake work
so I was always good at doing
inspections
once they started doing the dvi's
yes it really showed me the power
of that
but again
even though I worked in an hourly shop
he never put down the actual time
he never stated it
how long it should actually take you
to do this long dvi
because then he would have looked at
his time for his oil change allotted
time for his dvi
and realized that it was like
his effective labor rate on that job
was in the toilet
it was terrible
because he didn't he wasn't charging
enough to get the dvi done
okay okay
the problem then with the dvi
getting done
is that
it gets done
customer doesn't get anything
you don't convert anything off the dvi
like an upsell
what was the point of doing it
yeah
zero
what's the point in doing it
if the customer is only there
so this is what happens in a dealer
they have them trained now to do these
big dvi's
your customer is just there for warranty
complaint
right
they have a technician like yourself
for myself
maybe that works somewhere else
I don't care what you found on the car
if it's not under warranty
I'm not doing it here
so I don't even
like they're telling them at the counter
that
well there's no point in doing a dvi
trying to find an upsell
yeah yeah yeah
you're not gonna get the work anyway
so we have to look at the dvi thing
from
you have to have top-notch people on the
counter to convert
what you find into sales
otherwise it's pointless
if I do a dvi I've said it before
on mrs smith's car
and six months later mrs smith
back for an oil change again
and all the work that we recommend
on the last dvi didn't get done
if we haven't prepped mrs smith
before she even makes her appointment
that we are going to tell her again
and she says not again
there's no point in doing the dvi again
do mrs smith's oil change
and then get rid of mrs smith
period
end of like it's
it's it's
I hate to tell you that
but there's a lot of shops that do that
every day
they get rid of mrs smith
if she's only there for an oil change
because it's
we're not in the oil change business
we're in the car repair business
we're in the car maintenance business
so shops that are
being sold that the dvi is a
a fix all a cure all
it's not your
super killers on the front counter
that can convert
inspections into work
that's your ticket
you need the product to sell
which is the dvi
but if it's really worth a whole lot
pay your damn technicians for doing it
and I don't mean even in the hourly shops
give them the proper time to do it
right
and here's the thing
we all know like
this new stuff
there isn't a dipstick for half of these fluids
in these engines
yeah
so we're not like
if you look at the actual process of
okay get the transmission fluid up
to x amount of temperature
well you're on a scan tool then
you're road testing to get it up
and
you want the level checked
go find the special tool
it's an hour 45 minute process
that's not part of everybody's
oil change dvi on that particular thing
if the technician comes to you and says
it's leaking fluid
the next question to the customer
to the technician is
well is the level okay
that shouldn't be the next question
because I don't know if the level is okay
well it's not part of the process for this
well yeah
I'm doing that check
well she's going to ask me that
the question customer can ask me that
you tell the customer be transparent
no it's not because it's leaking out
how low is it I don't know
because when we allow them to come in and say
was it low enough to need to fix right away
or can it wait
the answer is no it can't wait
right because if I tell them that can wait
and they don't fix it
and they blow their tranny up
I didn't do them any favors
so now if we want to say well what's the
what's it how long does it take to check the transmission level
you have to build them more time
as soon as you say to them
I'm going to bill you more time to check the level
they know so time will just say just fix it
because you're going to bill me that time
next time additional to check it again
I might better fix it
the cooler lines or whatever is leaking
yeah
advisors don't have this concept in their head
because we've forever we've just spoiled the advisors
with doing things for free
and then we turn around and we do it for the customers
we spoil the customers
if your technician is flat raider incentivize
guess what they're all tired of doing shit for free
so every little thing that's not on the dvi
that has to be done additional
somebody's going to pay for that
yeah
and even in an hourly shop
where everybody's just paid to show up
when we talking in about production
if all this stuff was done every week
add up all the things that we did
15 minutes here 15 minutes there
15 minutes there
if we do 15 minute freeze
if we do them four of them a day
that's an hour we threw away
it's an hour I threw away yeah
the end of the week that's five hours
times how many texts in the shop
four
you want to throw 20 hours of labor away a week
let's do the math on that
round numbers 50 150 bucks
20 hours I can do the math
right how many how many thousands of dollars
do we waste by not charging the customer
but you're talking you're saying
you can't afford to pay your text
but you'll throw away $6,000 a week
come on
this is not complicated stuff
but it's if you're a technician
that has worked flat rate
or incentivize like I have
and then you see all the stuff
that doesn't get charged for
to me it's why it doesn't work period
doesn't work period
whereas you and I know
if somebody just says
Matthew I need you to go get that truck started
and you punch the clock
you get into your service truck you go
you come back four hours later
the service truck is with the service truck
that truck is started fixed
they're going to build at least four hours
at least
you mean to tell me in the automotive side
we can't make that work
of course we can make it work
we're just scared to
it's not hard
it's not hard this is easy easy stuff
it's just
it's it's changing your your thought process
right
and everybody's so scared to
to seem too expensive
or to burn out their customers
if you're the best tech around
you're the best shop around
you're not gonna come back
you'll come back
yeah 100%
you've had I'm sure
you've had customers that
stop using you
and then use you again
right
same thing
right I've been in the dealer game
long enough that I saw customers
that we didn't see for a year
and then they came back
they came back yeah
their car was really f'd up
they had tried the cheaper stuff
and yeah
they were great
because they were just
in my world you're
you're you're going back and fixing all the
the little hiccups that
yeah they tried to
and what I'm seeing too
is they'll try and fix it themselves too
to try and save money
and then I'm like
well how much money do you say
now you're gonna have to pay me
a whole week's worth of work
to just getting back up to par
in order for you know like
every light's on in the dash
there's no ABA
every like you know like it's just
yeah it's coming up
it's coming up on its annual safety
inspection people like commercial trucks
are done twice annual
every six months
every year yeah annual year
some fleets they do them every six
every six yeah
it just depends on the fleet
but it's mandatory at least once a year
the thing is gotta be safety inspected
which means when they've been using the cheap guy
and leaving everything to the last minute
the truck ends up out of service much longer
than they wanted it to be
and it costs much more
than what they wanted it to cost
because they kept putting it off
and you know what it is
about you to go back to loose bolts and things
probably a lot of what you find is like
when they've been doing it themselves
you're using somebody cheaper
just a lot of loose bolts
a lot of loose bolts and yeah
you know yeah
and you get
and every going back to the safety thing
every safety when you get the truck
all it's it's it doesn't need anything
it doesn't need anything
it doesn't need anything
it's it's all good until you get into it
and then they go oh my god
jack it up and the kingpin's going like this
or you know like
I'm the same like I roll underneath
and and I talk about like
I would pound on the brake chambers
and I could hear the spring rattle
yep okay
needs a brake chamber
right
or you go underneath and you see one wheel
so it's wet
okay now you're into
and then you pull them off
and it's like okay they're wet
and they're not that worn
because they they're wet
you pull the right off
now you're into at least probably a four axle
or excuse me a two axle
four hub brake drum
that's right yeah
you're into you know
couple thousand bucks there
labor all that kind of jazz
if you do one axle
you might as well do both on a truck
because like it's going to roll through
inspection somewhere
and like all this kind of stuff
you know
it's like
you go out there and you test
here's an example of people
there might be four batteries
sitting in the battery box
underneath the cab
you go out there and you test
one battery is bad
yep
guess what
it's getting all three or all four
it's not getting one
because
you know
that's that's how this works so
to bring it back to the
automotive side of things
when you have a customer come in
and it's like they've got
two batteries in their car
they've got a main battery
an auxiliary battery
and you've you test the main
battery and it's junk
why are you leaving that auxiliary in there
if you want them to have a failure
on it
which is going to cause a different
bunch of symptoms
and all this kind of stuff
six months from now
do it both
oh it costs so much money
i'm sorry did you sell them the car
no
did you design the car
no
did they do any kind of research
to know that when
they need a battery now
and they're Cherokee
and their Cherokee uses two batteries
that it's going to be a thousand
dollars instead of three
you they didn't do that research
it's not your problem
it's not your problem
prep the estimate
sell it to the customer
on to the next car
it's it's how flat rate texts think
yeah hard
you know it's
where we screwed this industry up is
because we've always expected
that the flat rate producing
technicians to think one way
but the people on the counter
always wanted to think a different way
and we always used to say
well they have to think that way
so we have business tomorrow
nope
the technician in the back knows
that like
if i keep doing my job well
i'll always have work
this is where we screwed it up people
sorry it's a bit of a rant
but you're absolutely right
yeah
that's what i think anyway
for my you know
ivory tower sitting here
you know
telling shop owners every week
what they do wrong
that's how i see it
and you know
i'm not right all the time
but there is some truth
to what i say
because i watch it and see it
and i've watched it
since my earliest days
i've always watched how the business side
of this business was done
and some people tell me
i maybe i had no business looking at it
it wasn't my place to
it wasn't my
and i wasn't telling them how
i was just watching
watching you
listening
and learning
so when i would see things that
you know
that customer can certainly afford
that repair they just won't want to
they drove up in a Mercedes
like you're not showing them value
and your value is you
your value is what math
you can do what i can do
if you're not showing them that
because you don't have confidence
in what you are
you're no longer on the work
you're never going to last
well
Matthew when we had the new safety
systems come into place
in in Ontario
this is a funny story
one of the guys that i
apprenticed under way back when
before the
1999
i worked for him
as soon as that new system came
into place
man he shut his shop down
i've heard there's
i've heard dozens of stories of that
i don't know why
i don't understand why but
i don't because i mean
as long as i worked with him
he never bent on the rules of like
what should be done
in terms of a safety
like he wasn't the type that would go
you know and sign it
and and not look at it and
and keep the guy on the road
because like he's a good customer
he didn't like to do that
but as soon as they came through
with the new system
he shut he shuttered it
i think it's just people got
intimidated by it
but really it's
now on our side
it's frustrating though
like trying to take a picture
of the brake stroke
and you're
i'm like
come on guys like
and give
and why
why couldn't they give us a
separate camera
what why do you have to use the
tablet like
yeah
i don't understand that part
you know like
that's
and and like my shop
that i work in now
the lighting is terrible
yes
my boss is probably going to
listen and i'll say it again
call your buddy
and get your
fucking estimate for the lights
because we've been hearing about
this for two months now
but anyway
like it's
so trying to hold the light
the tablet
and the measuring tool
to get everything
focus and to where you can see it
it's it's
i do them pretty fast
but it frustrates the hell out
of me
you know yes
and then like
you know they want the tire
pressures and kpa
instead of psi
because canada is metric
and yeah
like if i say to anybody that has
practice
you know
metric all their lives
and i say your tire has 255 kpa
in it they have no
couldn't tell you what that is
but if i say it's got 35 psi
in it they go
oh good
but i think that's our generation
though because
i feel like we were raised
like half of metric
and half imperial and
yeah like i measure in psi
you know
but the funniest one is temperature
like i
80 degrees in my pool
i know what that is
i couldn't tell you what that was in
celsius but
for the outside
it's 20 degrees outside
and i'm like oh i know what that is
so we're so like
i alluded to 180 degree thermostat
or i want a 195
yes oh yeah the thermostats yes
but but i was looking in celsius
i have no idea
i couldn't tell you though
doing some cheap conversion
and getting my phone
but yet i'm supposed to put
the tire pressure down now
in kpa come on
kpa yes
i'm allowed to do things like that
it's
i like this system
because there's a little more
there's a little more documentation
there's a little more
a lot of cars that we would have
passed now
when they finally rewrote it
they rewrote it to say
okay rocker panels that are rusted
don't pass
not
oh there's still a fix to either end
so that passes maybe
like it's up to your discretion
there's no more of that
like if it's rusted rockers
we don't pass it
somebody else can buy the car
and pass it we don't
where i work we just don't
do you find that helps a lot for
like arguing and like the customers
that try to argue
oh no that should pass
and whatever now it's more
where i have the problems are like
the salesman that is like
wanting to sell the car
and it's like
because i work at a used car lot now
but it was the same thing
even when i worked at
the last shop i was at
and used car lots
would bring their cars in
and you would say
that doesn't pass because
you like you would look up in the back
and the bumper brace is all rotten
it's all rotted
like the rockers were good
but the bumper brace is rotten
well that's a fail
but you can't even see that on
you know
no you can't from the outside of the car
you can't see it
but i know that it's rotten
yeah
well that's not a cheap repair to do
people think that it's not that much
it's a cheap
it's an expensive repair
then you start looking at the rest of the car
and it's like i'm sorry
we're failing this
based on the condition of rust
and they get really pissed
we had a 2012
GMC terrain
low miles like 130,000 kilometers
ran great
i condemned it
because it was too rusted
when i started to lift it
from the rockers that the pinch blinch
were supposed to
you could hear it creaking and cracking
and and rust is starting to fall out
on the ground
yeah
the rest of the cars there's no holes yet
but that car fails
100% fails all day long
in the old way of doing this
because there was no photos
those cars passed all the time
yeah it was a mechanic
he was looking at your tires
looked at your brakes
looked at your suspension
and he passed the car
so i like that
the salesman problem
is they still think everything is like
everything passes
yeah four tires
still only cost 200 bucks
and brakes still only cost 150 and yeah
every car should only take a thousand bucks
and you're like
wait now it's got an eight-ass problem
and they're like
a what problem
eight-ass problem
what's that going to cost thousands
yeah
shit
we had a 2015
Mazda 3
that they gave the customer
$8,600 for they bought the car from them
we looked at the car
and i went this thing needs
$7,000 worth of work
well do the math you paid 86
and it needs seven
it's the most expensive
11-year-old Mazda 3 in Ontario now
and once the auction
they lost a little huge on it
because at the auction
they're not going to get their $8,600 back
no
they'll get $3,600
but that again is where
again in this industry
we let the salesman throw money away
all day long
or we let service advisors
dictate all these kind of decisions
that cost us all kinds of money
and then we hold the technicians
to such a high standard
of production in order to get paid
that never
that never made sense with me
I would watch salesmen do screw-ups
like that or service advisors
all day long cost the business
thousands at the end of the week
and a technician
we couldn't pay for another 15 minutes
yeah
it's those kind of things
Matoo that made me the way I am
yeah
jaded or whatever
pissed off angry
you know
yeah
I love those kind of that way of thinking
and when I talk to people
they look at it and they go
a lot of what he says makes sense
is he's not
he's not wrong
he's not thinking wacky
but it's the way it was always done
and I think that if we want to get ahead
of so many problems in this industry
we have to really look at that
and go
we might better listen to them a little bit more
even if it's just on
how long is this going to take you
listen to them
and then charge for that
yeah
do it again
and again
and again
and then I think we start to get back
some of this industry
where the customer is not holding all the power
we as a collective
not the technicians have holding all the power
but we in the repair industry
have a lot more of the power back
so yeah
I agree
I think we can get there
so
I think so too
I don't want to keep you any longer
it's been uh
it's been
a couple hours and you know
geez already
I know it goes fast man
that's wild
right so
anything you want to add
anything you want to say
what
where do you hope to be in a year
two years
well in two years
hopefully we have this new fixed location
up and running and
if uh
is there any text in the Ottawa
310 t-text looking for a job
hit me up on uh
on the facebook and
yeah
yeah
yeah
and that's
near Hawksbury
it's going to be near Hawksbury yeah
yeah right on
right on
well if I'm ever back in that area
I'll pop try and pop in on you
oh absolutely for sure
yeah
yeah
so I still go see my friends in uh
I have a friend near Limoge
and I have some friends near
Orlean still
okay yeah yeah
that's all near us
yeah
yeah you know
Hawksbury I didn't spend a whole lot of time
I think I drove through a couple times
but I didn't spend a whole lot of time there
every time I go back to Ottawa now
it looks so different right
from
when I was
it changes every
every week I find that's
yeah
like when I first
when I first came
I lived in the peon
and by the time I was done
I was in Rockland
so to think about how I crossed the city
as I kept moving
you know
different opportunities for two jobs
and a relationship that ended
and all that kind of stuff
like I
I moved all the way from
one point I lived in a bar even
you know
yeah
I've done
I've done the stretch you know
yeah
when I drive out 17 now
you know what I mean
past the split
yep
look different now
I can remember all those like
before they built the college
down the cross from the
from plaster or leans
like I can remember all those fields
you know
I can remember
oh yeah
I can remember Peter Allen
when there was nothing there
yeah
you know
and now it's
it's all houses now past
past the trim row
and it's all
it's all houses now it's
I lived off a trim
yeah
yeah
and now it's so different right
so
yeah
it's it's a changing world
so anybody
if if you're
in the Ottawa area
and you want to
you want to set something up with
my two
get a hold of me
and hold me
I'll make it happen
I'll help you out so
I think he'd be
a fantastic guy to learn from
and you know
I think he's doing it right
so
I want to thank you
for coming on tonight man
so thanks for having me
this has been a lot of fun
thank you for listening
that always won't say that enough
but I mean it's
it's pretty cool to talk about
my kind of my
my beginning steps in this
industry and where it took me
and I don't think I'll ever
make it back to the truck thing
I'm too old
I'll be
50 next month
so
yeah
yeah
yeah well
I'll be turning 50
this is a little sidebar
I'll be in Las Vegas, Nevada
for SEMA Apex
for our giveaway
and I'll be turning 50 in
in Las Vegas so
oh perfect
yeah that worked out
look for me on the internet
somewhere
Beardy Canadian rested
you know
three in the morning
on Fremont Street for
you know
yeah
oh there's Jeff
there's me
yeah
so that's awesome
thank you
Mathew
thank you
Merci Monchon
thank you
so uh
anybody get a hold of me
get a hold of Mathew
love to talk to you guys again
so
thank you everyone
hey if you could do me a favor
real quick
and like comment on
and share this episode
I'd really appreciate it
and please
most importantly
set the podcast to
automatically download
every Tuesday morning
as always I'd like to thank
our amazing guest
for their perspectives and
expertise
and I hope that you'll
please join us again
next week on
this journey of change
you thank you to my
partners in the ASA group
and to the change
in the industry podcast
remember what I always say
in this industry
you get what you pay for
here's hoping everyone
finds their missing 10
millimeter
and we'll see you all
again next time
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