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The Father-Son Dynamic in a Family-Run Auto Shop With Justin Porter - Part I
The Father-Son Dynamic in a Family-Run Auto Shop With Justin Porter - Part I
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About this episode
Justin Porter returns to discuss the complexities of working in a family-run auto shop, sharing his experiences with his stepdad and the unique father-son dynamic. The conversation dives into the challenges of balancing personal and professional relationships, the expectations placed on family members, and the generational differences in the automotive industry. Justin reflects on his own growth as a technician and the pressures of proving oneself in a family business. The episode also touches on broader industry issues, including technician shortages and the importance of effective communication in shops.
Topics:
father-son dynamic
family business challenges
generational differences
technician shortages
work-life balance
communication in shops
personal growth
industry expectations
In this thought-provoking episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast, host Jeff welcomes back OG guest Justin Porter for a candid conversation that delves into the realities of the automotive repair industry.
With over 20 years of experience, Jeff reflects on the challenges and victories that come with a career in auto repair. They discuss the financial aspects of the trade, emphasizing the importance of not just technical skills but also the business acumen needed to be profitable, such as listening to Dutch and understanding the cycle of the industry.
They ponder whether it is possible to reach the lower percentage of technicians who may be great individuals but fall short in technical expertise or business ownership. Join Jeff and Justin as they share their insights and anecdotes, all starting with a casual chat about fishing. Grab your favorite beverage and tune in for an engaging episode that combines professional wisdom with the camaraderie of old friends.
[00:00:00] Pride and technical skills.
[00:05:07] Some techs leaving the industry.
[00:11:05] Burden of running the shop.
[00:12:51] Gambling addiction and family dynamics.
[00:18:20] Family dynamics and racing.
[00:21:56] Expanding skills and career growth.
[00:27:49] Dad's role in the shop.
[00:29:40] Tire work and its challenges.
[00:31:27] TPMS light and tire pressure.
[00:33:30] TPMS implementation frustrations.
[00:37:50] Heated and cooled seats.
[00:43:08] Starving technicians out of industry.
[00:45:09] Pay discrepancies and job expectations.
[00:49:52] Technician shortage and pay.
[00:53:04] Not every car at the auction is junk.
[00:58:00] The bottom 50% talking.
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Subaru Brat
"...ng and I had shit to do. Mm-hmm probably being at brat of You guys get a leave but I gotta stay here and..."
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Hyundai Accent
"...as doing a rear wheel bearing on a little Hyundai Accent, probably a 21, maybe a 16 Accent. The customer w..."
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Lucid Air
"... point, you just put four in a piece of PVC pipe, air it up to what it needs to be and throw it in a gl..."
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"...m I going to live without my heated seats? My old Cherokee, my 96 Cherokee that I sent to the scrap yard. I ..."
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"... working. I We had, um, when I was at Nissan, the pathfinders for their climate controlled seats, not just the ..."
Select text to request an explanation
Pride doesn't pay your light bill. I can fix anything, right? You drop it off, I'll fix it. Sometimes that doesn't pay the bill. You make more money if, like if you're like Chuck E. Chuck or Mobile Guy, you're going to make more money if you listen to Dutch. You've got to learn how to do that side of it. Yeah, it's just a cycle. We talk about it, it's always been a problem. AST is coming up, right? Top 2 to 5% of the techs and the teachers, they'll all be there, right? But what the hell is the bottom 50% talking about? What the hell is the other 80% talking about? What are they doing, right? Will we ever reach those guys? Lucas says yes. I beg to differ, guys. I know some of these 80%, right? They're great guys, but they're horrible techs.
They're horrible owners. Good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to another exciting, thought-provoking episode of the Jada Mechanic Podcast. My name's Jeff, and I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and insight into the toils and triumphs of a career in automotive repair. After more than 20 years of skin, knuckles, and tool debt, I want to share my perspectives and hear other people's thoughts about our industry. So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to another exciting episode of the Jada Mechanic podcast. I've got one of our OG guests back with us tonight. I got Justin Porter. Justin Porter and I were just spent probably the last 30 minutes talking about fishing and.
30, 45, whatever. Yeah.
We didn't want to bore you with all that talk. So we finally said, well, let's get down to the subject matter. So here we are. Justin, how are you, man? I'm good i'm good how are you i'm i'm a lot better we kind of talked off air about my my new development and i'll uh i'll release that pretty quick but i'm excited i'm a little uh i'm a little um well what we talked about right it's it's a family-run kind of shop and that's i guess why i wanted to talk to you a bit because that's You work with your stepdad, like we talked about in our first episode you and I recorded. I guess what I've always wanted to know from the standpoint of what is it like when it's the father-son dynamic working together? Because sometimes I've been the outsider in a shop like that, and I see it being one way, but I just, what do you think?
First question, how does the son? Because I think that matters.
I'm going to put him at about mid-20s, early 20s.
See, when I was mid-20s, I was pretty hard-headed, extremely mouthy, and what I thought was really good at my job, and probably wasn't anywhere close to what I thought I was. My stepdad, we had some not-so-great conversations at times in the shot. But it was never, yeah, a lot of times it was at work, but it's a lot, right? I mean, you work with a guy eight, 10 hours a day. Yeah. And, uh, I didn't live at home at that point. Not by much, probably moved out in a year or so. Yeah. It's, it's interesting, right? Cause you, uh, you have two different relationships. You have work and you have home. Right. And you, Humans struggle separating that, like I know I do still at times. It's the greatest and worst thing all wrapped up into one at times. When I was in my mid-twenties, I'm not sure too many shops would have put up with my attitude. I showed up to work. I worked while I was supposed to do. I threw things. I cussed.
Yeah. You were a mechanic. Yeah.
Right. I mean, I grew up in the shop too. Right. My mom married him whenever I was eight. So I've been whatever, what they call the kids call it today, bullied by the gear heads that hung out in the shop. You know, they, whatever made me a very quick witted and a smart ass is what they done.
Yeah, they send you looking for the left-handed screwdrivers, you know.
Yeah. I mean, I used to, uh, we would poke holes in the Freon tanks to throw them in the dumpster. Don't know if we had, I used to use a chisel and a hammer. So they threw firecrackers at me cause I thought I was scared of it. Right. I didn't know any better.
I can tell you now that I don't jump like, people I try to get me to jump, I just try to look at them. You can't do anything to me at this point in my life that hasn't been done to me in a shop. Right. And some of that, I mean, and that's a whole nother conversation. Maybe that's why some of our techs don't stick around in this industry at times. You know, but I also think some of these new kids are soft.
My experience when I was starting in, so way, way, way back in my career, I worked in a truck shop. And when I got hired, it was the father, his nephew. So his nephew probably would have been late, maybe early 30s, probably late 20s. Because I was just a young kid. I was 19. So I would have put him at maybe, yeah, so mid twenties and then his son who was 18 and still live in a home. And then his mom worked in the office with his dad. His dad was the, his dad was still one of the best mechanics I've ever worked with. Super smart. Predominantly a truck shop, 18 wheelers, trailers, stuff like that. Well, what really I saw from working there was that we all got in shit because his dad was not an easy guy to work for. He wanted things done a certain way. He said, you know, he would outwork any of us. He wasn't kidding. And he was just a small little wiry guy, but he like, You know, he just, you didn't mess with him. He was something to be respected. He wasn't a bully. He wasn't, he just was blunt straight to the point. You know, he didn't worry if you got your feelings hurt a little bit, he was going to say it. So you understood what he was trying to say. And that was it. There was no room for niceties. What we found was we all got in shit, but his son, I think it always seemed like his son got in more shit. I mean, if the son did something wrong, I'm sure he got in shit, but he didn't get in shit in front of us too often.
You know what I mean? I coached baseball, right? We just discussed that in the first one. I coached my boy and me and him have had this conversation because I tell him I can't be dad on the baseball diamond at times. Like, right. We gotta, we gotta, we gotta kind of have this deal. And uh, We always get in the truck afterwards and he's like, Hey, why did you hit me? Ground balls harder than everybody else. Why did you make me do this? Well, I said, because I can't, I'm not going to show favoritism. You have to be better than everybody. I kind of felt that in the shop. I felt like I had to be better than everybody else. I didn't want to be the guy that was the son that just rode the coattail or whatever. Right. I didn't want to be that guy. Don't know when I figured that out. I'm not sure 20s 30s 40s. I don't know. I really don't know when that really truly hit me but I've always Said my wanted I had a baseball coach tell me I blew my knee out my senior year Playing basketball, but my one of my baseball coaches told me if I'd have been in the weight room That wouldn't have happened Because I had skipped I had skipped baseball weights because I was lazy, you know, I and he. That stuck with me like he sort of was right, it was it wasn't about me not coming to weights, it was you're not putting the work in that this deserves. So you said I got what you deserved. It's kind of what I mean. That was kind of how I took it. But that stuck with me. You kind of get out of it what you put in it. Yeah.
I, I found with, with that is that towards the end of my tenure with him at that shop, it just became more and more frustrating because, so you work afternoon shift, right? And you'd be there, just be him and I, and you'd be there and you'd start at like two in the afternoon, you'd work till 10 and you'd close up and whatever you got done, you got done, whatever didn't get done. You started at two the next day and you were expected to be there about one 30 to clock in. And he would probably give you shit for the half an hour that you were there, um, before you were on the clock about what didn't get done. He'd give you the rundown on what had to get done that night. And I can remember like getting in so much shit and his son wasn't even there yet about the stuff that hadn't been done. And when I worked there, his son was older than more experienced than me. and knew what was going on, he had the experience and whatnot. So I would be there getting in shit, and I'm like, I just did whatever I was told to do, man. So that was always the dynamic that I was just like, well, this fucking sucks. This proverbial golden child is not getting in any shit, and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, according to him, but I'm now getting my ass chewed. What I probably realized later on is that probably when he went home that night, his dad was probably still waiting up for him. His dad probably had a few glasses of scotch. And then probably before he could go to bed was asked, what did he get done at the shop? What did he not get done? What kind of problems did he run into? And then he probably got his ass chewed before he went to bed.
So now I think the son, uh, took burden of the shop home with him. Well, so.
Yeah. So here's the story. The rest of it, the rest of the story is Paul Harvey used to say he, the son had only ever worked at that shop. He'd come up through, he got his license. He learned that his dad's knee, just similar to your situation. They went and bought a second shop and he went and ran that shop. How'd he do? It did so much to their, apparently, now I've kind of lost touch with the family, but this is as you bump into people and they tell you what, you know, how's this person, that person. It got to be so bad, I guess, with how he was running that shop that never satisfied his father, that one day he just walked away from that other business. He left the keys in the door and he called his dad and said, I'm done. This is, this is killing me. This is killing us. I guess they patched it up now and I'm not sure if he's back working with his dad or, but it was it for a long time there, I guess they didn't have a relationship, the father and the son.
And I understand now what we've never been there.
Yeah. The father was just trying to set him up for success. He's just trying to, to build something and leave it to him. But. From what I understand, man, it was bad, really bad. So but we always I always looked at it as like because again, so he had his nephew who was older than both of us and his son and his nephew was he he liked to gamble and he liked to drink. He didn't do well on Mondays. He almost never worked.
Don't pay him early on a Friday because he won't come back for lunch.
Don't pay him on Thursday night, because he'll be there Friday. And so he would gamble all weekend. So he would drive an hour from where I live up towards Ottawa. And before there was a casino, there was a racetrack for horses, and they had slot machines. And he'd sit there and just pull the slots for hours. If he won some money, he'd go to a store up here, what they call princess auto, which princess auto is like Harbor Freight, but not as good a quality. And he'd come back with a bunch of tools because he was forever. having to work out of his uncle's toolbox. And it drove his uncle nuts because he wouldn't buy tools. He'd lose half of his uncle's tools. And then it was like, okay, well, you lost that screwdriver in mind. You're going to have to replace the screwdrivers. Well, he'd come back. He would have lost his uncle's like snap on screwdriver. He'd come back with some $10 set of drivers that you use at once. And I mean, we're using a screwdriver as a pry bar, right? Let's be real. We all do it. Right. Look like a swizzle stick when it was done. And it would drive him nuts. And so finally it got so bad he fired his nephew. But I mean, I saw his nephew and his son get way more chances than I ever got to screw up.
But I think that's common in the whole family thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's one thing I never really wanted. I know I never wanted. I never wanted the guys that worked here to think I was getting everything handed to me. Maybe I did when I was younger. I don't know. I was young and dumb and it was 23 years ago, so I don't know. Yeah, I don't think so, but maybe.
I mean, I don't say that they didn't work for it, but they just had so many extra chances. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, okay, you could screw that up and your safety net, you know, is, is going to be there now. His, he's still fired his nephew. He still had to fire him.
It was just like, you're, you know, and, but you got to do what's best for everybody else there too.
And the nephew did go on and get another job somewhere else. And I don't know what their relationship is since I haven't seen him in shit, 10 years.
I'll just text my mom and tell her that she needs to fix whatever the problem is.
Yeah, it couldn't have been. It couldn't have been easy, I guess, but I just looked at it and Brian and I were talking the other day and I said it's just because I mean, it's almost like it seems like some of them just have a safety net. If you just stay above that line of don't screw up to this level. You're going to ride this eventually and it's going to be yours, right? It's right. You know, family doesn't always get fired as well as what I've seen now.
I know there's exceptions to that, but, uh, so I do work for a, uh, local car sales place. Um, and they have a little bit of that. They have some grumble at the bottom side of, Hey, the boys don't do this. They don't do that. They're lazy. I don't know if it's outside perspective or if it's really true. I'm not there enough to know.
Yeah.
I think sometimes as the prince of the auto repair shop or whatever, you know, the next in line, whatever you want to call him, I think they're held to a higher standard. Uh, I'm not against it. I don't think I would, uh, I don't think I would be, as good a tech without that attitude of, Hey, I got to be better than this. Right. I mean, but I've always had that attitude of wanting to be number one, I guess. I don't want to, I don't like get beat. Yeah. You got a competitive spirit, but, uh, it's, it's tough. It's so my stepdad, um, obviously has the last name different than mine. Right. So, there was a lot of people that didn't even know, like they just didn't know that he was my stepdad. There's, you know, we would go to the racetrack and my mom would yell at somebody and they'd be like, lady, what do you even have to do with that? And she's like, well, that's my son. And they're like, well, you have a different last name. And she goes, that still can be my son. So it, I never was really associated with them, I guess at times. Right. And at the shop, some people do. I mean, we're a small town, right? I mean, we got two stoplights at Dairy Queen, so most people know. Yeah. But there was times where people didn't. I've had some people think he was my real dad, which I got no problem with. I don't argue that. I tell him, I know I don't act any different. Yeah. But it's, I mean, there is a story of me hanging off the side of a race car. Holler screaming at them as they were leaving to go to the racetrack one day. I don't remember what it was even over. I just remember hanging on the side of the trucks, giving up my opinion or whatever it was.
Well, why have a little bit of it? You weren't going to the race.
You weren't, no, I was staying at working. I didn't race on Friday nights. They would race. They would race on Friday afternoons. And I just wasn't my thing. I was probably mad because they were leaving and I had shit to do. Mm-hmm probably being at brat of You guys get a leave but I gotta stay here and work. Yeah Yeah You know, it's We have a pro. I mean I I think I spoke in the first podcast I get To buy what I want here for the most part. I Have I bought some cloning tools for PCM's here in the last couple weeks. I I'm not even sure that Dutch would probably yell at me. I'm not sure the return investments out there right now. So I know it was more of an addiction by, and it's get my ass out of trouble is what it is, right? It's one of them tools that sometimes you just need to make something work.
Well, Brian was talking, I think used ECM for a Dodge the other day. And I don't know if he went in and like, right. Or whether he just cloned it. I can't remember what he did. You can ask him. He'll tell you. He probably already has told you. And he said that it was like he bought the unit for like a hundred bucks. It took him an hour or two hours or whatever. And he made, it was to the shop, charged them like 700 bucks. Right. And that module to buy it, if they could get it. Which I guess is like intergalactic back order. Nobody can tell them when. Was it a diesel PCM? I'm not sure. It was like, it was going to be 1100 bucks anyway. So he did the job for half. Right. It's a car turned around for the customer at the dealership. And so what you're saying about, well, you're not Dutch would be, I don't know. Cause I mean the way it's going, I think that this is going to be
Oh, I think it's, I think it's coming more and more.
I think it's going to be more lucrative than ADOS. I really do.
You know, I got an ADOS job in the morning. Oh yeah. That's the first thing I got to do. So we'll see the typical body shop. It showed up. They just told me I had a windshield put in it. That's all he told me. And, uh, I scan it and it has a failed alignment for the, uh, radar. Okay, and I caught on like hey, what the heck have you guys done to this? Oh, we had to bumper off of it and all kinds of stuff and They didn't tell me they just know we had a windshield put in it so so Speaking of given scutty shit. I had to call him and just say hey, this is my game playing with this and he said I don't even know why you called me because You sound like you've already figured it out. I Hope he's having fun cutting his boards or whatever the hell he's doing. I
Oh, I I'm happy. I mean, it sucks that, you know, that state's getting another blast of weather, right? But I mean, I'm happy that he's he's doing his kitchen. It looks pretty good.
He's such a Buddha ever thought he was good at stuff like that.
I I mean, you've seen that artwork he's done with the saw and and that kind of stuff. I mean, It's his. Is it his father or stepfather that was the building inspector that he was telling us all about? Shoot, I don't know.
Sometimes I zone him out because I can't. He just rambles on and his own brother, right?
Is. Yeah, he's running a truck for him, but he'd done that kind of work before he came to us.
Yeah, that's why he that's why he had talked about Ados, because he was good with measuring and angles and all that good stuff.
So I'm happy, honestly, to see him starting to get, you know, expanding. And because I think he's done such a I just try not to let too many people know I know him.
Right.
Because they immediately. Yeah, they are. You know, they assume you're one way to read the app and service information, you know?
Yeah. Did you read SI? Hell no. I don't even know what SI is, Matt. Could you service information? Oh, shit. No, but I will. So when I called him, when I called him today on this high on day, I really just wanted, I was looking for field advice. I'm sure he had seen this, right? So I had just called to kind of make sure I was looking at the right way. And so I had service information pulled up on my computer and I read it to him line for line and said, I read, this is what service information says. And then I told him my plan and he goes, I don't even know why you called me. You already got it figured out.
I think Dutch 20 years ago would have been Matthew.
Oh, I think so. I think so. It just wasn't the technology to get him out there whenever he was that way.
They would have been very similar approach to it, right? Like, uh, they just would have been very cut and dried to the point, you know?
Yeah, but I'm okay with that. I'm that way too.
Yeah, I'm not bothered by it. I mean, it's kind of, people who have known me a while have known how I tend to talk and how I tend to conduct myself. And, you know, it's been good. Some people I think are starting to come around. They're understanding that it's not, it's just the way I talk. It doesn't, you know, I'm not a bad person. I mean, it's just the way I talk. If they had to work with some of the people I work with, you know, they might understand because it's just,
You know, how much of it's a generation gap? Well, I mean, I'm, yeah, we talked, right. Like we just had that conversation, how I grew up in a shop. So that's why I asked how old, you know, you asked about the sun and how old, I mean, a 20 year old in a shop right now could be interesting if he's depending, it's all depending on how he was raised though. Right.
I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm excited. I, I, I got a good vibe off of it. It didn't seem, you know, how, cause sometimes you might think, oh, well, the, the owner of this, the son, you know, might have this big shiny toolbox and no tools in it or, and I didn't, I didn't see any of that going on.
You know, I didn't see like, I have that big shiny toolbox, but Zach, the does our front end is a drive train. He's good tech. Uh, he uses out of it more than I do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have a crash cart. I caught my crash cart. It's got my power probe, my quarter inch sockets and, uh, wire strippers. Yeah. So, uh, he, uh, we, uh, we just, I told him when he started this here, dude, this, if it's in here, you can, you can use it.
Yeah. Yeah. They have a, they had a pretty good, they've got the, whatever that number is for the hotel, the big, big hotel, the ultra or the nine 19. Yeah, I think it's a 919 to the ultra. One of those two with the scope and the, you know, the whole big thing, which I've never used one. We'd got one demoed. So I'm excited to have that to try. And then he's got a Zeus plus, which I have my own Zeus. So, I mean, that's kind of, we'll be familiar, but it'll be nice to, to get the. So does the boy turn riches in this shop? Yup. When I was leaving tonight, he was doing a rear wheel bearing on a little Hyundai Accent, probably a 21, maybe a 16 Accent. The customer was actually coming through and she was driving down the highway. So she was about 45 minutes out. And it was after five because they work four days a week, seven to seven. So I guess she found on Google that there was still a shop open. So they called, uh, she called before five and they said, can you get it in? And he said, let me check and see. So they pulled this car in real quick. She was going to sleep in the car. Otherwise the overnight for them to fix it tomorrow morning or whatever. And they found a wheel bearing got the wheel bearing sent over and he was changing that as I was leaving at Like 620 tonight and that's just a bang in like it's just a bolt in wheel bearing in the back, you know 0.8 later to change it So he seemed to be doing Canada.
Nothing's no wheel bearings just to bang in bang out. Is it?
Well this one thank God driven it for so long so it's literally like The hub fell it already it already had the heat applied Yes. And then it was just a situation of like, he got the four bolts, of course, are starting to round pretty good on the inside. He got the four bolts out of the thing. And then it was just some smacks with a hammer and it came out right. So.
So what does dad do in this shop? Does he run the office?
So dad kind of handles the the diag. in the shop and the, some of the office, some of the, you know, customers come in and, you know, a quick check to see if it's, can they drive it or can they leave it? You know, what is that kind of thing? He does that kind of stuff. And then, um, yeah, I mean, they, they're down a tech already because there's a guy with a broken foot and then they were, they're starting to ramp up and expand. So they needed another guy. So that's how. That's not the opportunity.
Are you going to have to do tires at this shop? Because that sounds awful up there.
Well, he's got. One of the brand new hunters.
The one that does it itself.
The one down from that one. So you still have to do it, but it's and I've never used this machine, but I'm pretty sure I think that it comes with a. So that's not the one, because the one that does it for itself. On the screen of the machine, you can play a demo mode. It'll show you how to set the machine and walk away from it. This one, I don't believe had a screen on it, but it's still very forward thinking. So. And I told him flat out, I said, I'll, I'll, I'll do my best to learn that machine. They've kept their old coats machine. That's just a traditional machine over in the corner. And I said, but you know, if I feel like I'm falling behind getting this done, I'll just go over and use that machine. He's like, that's fine. So they got a brand new, uh, Hunter road force balancer, which I really like because I first used a road force like 10 years ago. at the dealership and then you start to go to some of these other shops that don't have a road force and you realize how much better a job the road force does.
That's what I've heard. We don't have one, but I try not to sell tires. I got too much other stuff to do.
This is it. But I mean, up here we've talked about it. It's such a, it's such a seasonal moneymaker, right? That you're, you kind of, The industry kind of pushes it that way. Like you get a lot of your customers. Now we've got them trained. You need a set of winter tires and you need to come in twice a year and get them swapped over and you know, you got TPMS.
So, I mean, it's, it does go south until that shit stopped.
I don't like, I don't like tire work and you know, cause it's heavy and it's like, backbreaking and it's dirty and it, the margins suck in terms of labor. But I mean, it, you know, you're there to get the break job that it needs at the same time.
So do you flat rate tires? I've not been a flat rate guy and I know you guys do a lot of tires at a flat rate thing.
So what drove me nuts was when I was at the dealer, most of the dealers were still doing four tires for 1.2 in like 2006, which was a reasonably good time. 1.2, because we didn't have a ton of TPMS yet. Right. If you could slam and bang and go, if you did have a TPMS, the first gen trisers, you could literally set them by turning the key on and walking around the wheel with a speaker magnet. That was like, it was, it was fast. It was easy. And then what happened is I'd started to go to other shops after I left there and they were still doing them for only an hour. And I'm like, okay, well, that's even, you know, like 0.2 sounds like not much, but 0.2 times, if you do 10 in that day, which it wasn't uncommon for us to do 10 tire jobs in a day. If that's for that three week mad rush, that's a substantial amount of money at the end of the week, the difference of 0.2, but then they're still doing them out for an hour and then they're still doing them. Now you've got TPMS. So like. it has to be retrained.
Some of these TPMS, hell, it's a 15-minute job. Yep.
And where I always got pissed right off was because the car would come in and the TPMS light's already on. But the customer tires, like they're there for the tire swap. The TPMS is already on. So you might go around and like who checks the tire pressure before you pull the wheel off. If you're going to be changing the tire anyway. Well, not many flat rate texts do. Why would you, you're changing the tire for that, right? So then you put the, you put the thing back on, you go to do your retrain. You got a dead sensor. Well, did you kill the sensor when you did the tire, you greasy, you know, Russian like hack of a, of a flat rate mechanic? No, I didn't kill the sensor. It was probably already dead before we got to, well, the customer says the light wasn't on before. Wait a minute, hold up. Customer says the light wasn't on before I wrote it right here on my work order that the tire pressure light was already on before I started. Well, yeah, but. They thought the sensor was working. Their other guy told him the sensor was working. It was just down in pressure. So who buys the sensor at that point? Who's doing the programming? Who's done it? You've already spent how many minutes trying to relearn the thing? It won't relearn.
See, at that point, you just put four in a piece of PVC pipe, air it up to what it needs to be and throw it in a glove box. They would ever have that problem again. Very systems.
I remember reading about it in the trade magazine back in 2003, they took a little implement tire, like a tractor tire off a wheelbarrow or something, put a ball in there and throw it with the truck. I'm not against TPMS.
Like I'm not, I think it's a great, it saved me a tire and the service truck one day. I got off the side of the road and if it wasn't for that, I would have just ate it up. So yeah, it's a good thing.
What drove me crazy was shops not charging for it properly. And then our government up here, if you went and sold a customer winter tires and winter tire rims, you tried to sell them. So this is early on before the aftermarket really stepped up with aftermarket sensors, right? So you were probably sending them to the dealership, even if you bought the sensors from the dealer, you might not have had the programmability. So even if you bought the sensors, you're trying to do the right job. You're sending the customer to the dealer to get their new sensors programmed. Well, that's not like the customer. Of course, when you get there, it's going to be like, gee, Mrs. Smith, we have tire promos too. What did you pay for these? Oh, they put that brand on. Oh, we wouldn't have put that brand on Mrs. Smith. We would have had, you know, we'd have put a premium tire on for not much more money. And Mrs. Smith, you wouldn't even need to, you wouldn't be going to two places to get, you know, blah, blah, blah. We have to program your tires is what it works. So, you know, for the longest time, when the tire thing hit big here and TPMS was starting in its infancy. The Canadian government said, well, you don't have to put a sensor in it. And we're like, what do you mean you don't have to put a sensor in it? Well, it's legal. Yeah. Well, the light's going to be on. Yeah. Well, didn't we disable the safety systems in the car? Nope. If the light's on, that's telling the customer they need to check their tire pressure. And I'm like, you gotta be freaking kidding me. I just can't believe the amount of people that bought a used car or a new car, got tire pressure sensors, or got a winter tire package. The salesman puts it together at the quoted price, no sensor. They leave the lights on. What's that light about? Oh, well, it just means, you know, you've got your tires on, there's no sensors in there. Well, I didn't want that. I wanted sensors. Well, how much is sensors going to cost? 300 bucks. Oh, I'm not paying $300 more. You've got to be kidding me. I mean, I like the system, but I hated how it was implemented up here. And that's so people get mad at me because sometimes I'll say when I say like ADAS is just is one more thing that the customer is not going to fix.
I was just thinking about that today.
Yeah, they're all going to fix it. Why? How many times have we seen an old ship come in and the, and the, the impact sensors are rotted right off the front bumper and they're driving around and they know what's wrong with it. And they'll want to fix it. Paul Danner put a video up, right? Paul's his own truck. He drove around, had an airbag light on for two years because of a corroded fuse. Like just because it's there doesn't mean everybody's going to fix it. And that's why when I look at something as inexpensive now as a tire pressure sensor. And half of my customers are a lot of, and I'll say half the customers, maybe the industry don't see the value in buying one. I don't see how ADAS is going to be something that suddenly all the customers are just going to be like, Oh, I'm definitely going to fix that. I, you know, I want that to work. It's important.
We'll know in another couple of three or four years, how that's going to go.
Yeah. Like for me, I guess if I couldn't have cruise control. without getting a calibrated. I probably, cause I like cruise cause it keeps me from getting speeding tickets.
And then you got, they'll start taking away remote start and stuff like that. So people will, people will be highly, I fixed a lot of check engine lights that I never thought people would fix because they need that remote start. Yep. I've had a lot of converters because people wanted the remote start to work. That's something they. Yes, they're like I can't do without my remote start. It's twelve hundred dollars. Just fix it I had a I've had people spend six seven hundred dollars on heated seats Yeah, well, I mean I Remember why I put a new one in my wife's car because it wasn't working. I
We had, um, when I was at Nissan, the pathfinders for their climate controlled seats, not just the heated, but the heated and cooled ones. They're having an issue with the seat covers were, um, failing and, uh, they would burn up the contact. And you had to replace a whole cover. And there was, you had to, it was all updated, updated harness, updated cooling fan, updated. It was the last one I think I priced out was like 1500 bucks and it wasn't a replacement seat. It was like two covers and the cooling fans and the heating elements and the harness updated because again, wires too small, draw too much current. And everybody looked at me cause it always made it out of warranty. And then they looked at me like, and it's like, how much? 1700 bucks. Oh, I'm not fixing that. I don't blame you. I wouldn't fix it either. Well, how am I going to live without my heated seats? My old Cherokee, my 96 Cherokee that I sent to the scrap yard. I went to Canadian tire up here and I bought one of those seat covers that plug into your cigarette lighter that had the best heated seat of anything I've ever sat in in my life. And it was 20 bucks and people. And that's what I told customers.
That's how I fix it.
Like if you want to spend 1700 bucks, cool. I'm just, you know, they just traded it. That's what they do. I mean, it is a nice feature. I admit my mom has it in her car. It's a nice feature.
Yeah, I like the air conditioning seats. My truck has it. Yeah, I don't. So this shop, does mom work in this shop?
Yes, so mom works in the shop. The daughter works on the counter with mom as well.
Holy cow, that's twice as bad. I don't have that here.
They seem to be all good, like. She's pretty new. To the whole thing, so like what he explained to me is that like. Bring them out like do your digital vehicle inspection, then bring them out and show them. The part on the car that's, you know, the ball joints loose or the wheel bearings loose short, because that way they learn. Cause that's, and then if the customer, they've got no objections to bringing the customer and showing them. Right. So, I mean, yeah, I'm cool with that. I mean, I'm not, I'm not worried. It, it feels like a good fit for me. So, I mean, I'm kind of excited. The money is substantially better, substantially better. Like where that's good. Yeah. So what I take from this, and again, I was, so here's the thing we can kind of go on a tangent on this. I have a young friend, she's a female tech. She just started at a Chrysler dealer last month and she was talking, she's, I don't know if she's hourly with some kind of bonus on production or not. But she was telling me, she's like, she's only made like four hours a day for the last two weeks. And, um, I said, well, you know, it's kind of a slow time, I guess, you know, hard to say. What kind of work is she getting? Well, so one day she had, uh, I don't know if it was an SRT8 or if it was just a Hemi, but somebody ordered a fuel rail for it. So she got to put the fuel rail in. Once in a while, I guess she's done like an oil cooler and one of the three sixes. I mean, what? Three six doesn't have a leaky oil cooler. Mine doesn't. Right. All of them. Yeah. But mine did not listen. Don't go jinxing me because mine's not leaking yet. So I don't know what she's getting to do, but she says to me, she says, well, like we're only getting, I'm only really getting a lot of oil changes. I'm like, well, you can make money on oil changes. Like, no. It only pays like 0.15. And I mean, what do you mean it only pays 0.15? I said, it pays you 0.15. I said, I've never seen that in my life. Like I said, we used to get 0.3 or 0.4, but 0.15. I said, that's like 15 minutes. That's kind of like, how do they do that? She's like, no, it's not 15 minutes. I'm like, what is it? Nine minutes, nine minutes for an oil change.
Hell, it takes me that long to drink my coffee before I get going.
I don't know. I'm and I understand when we, when we have these conversations and sometimes people listen to this go, Oh, well that's a dealership. Okay. We keep having to go back to what are some of the business practices that are being coached? in the independent section now sector, the same thing.
We don't have a coach. We have a basketball coach here.
Does that count? But you know what I mean? Just like the business coaching, right? That some are teaching is they're just teaching old dealership tactics that I saw use 10 years ago, but
Point nine, like nine. We're going to starve this girl out of the industry is what we're going to do. She's going to go do something else and make better money.
And see, she's in, she's in Virginia. She's got her Virginia state inspector's license, which she sold.
She could be a coal miner in Virginia and make 120 a year, probably.
Maybe, but you're right. We're going to starve her out of this industry. And then at my good friend.
Yeah, and then she's gonna be pissed off and she's gonna tell everybody she knows her age don't go do this because it's stupid awful and We don't do a good job, which we've all talked about that which I don't know what Brian's trying to do on the Facebook, but he's trying to piss off everybody that's on Facebook the last two days But I Can tell you the story on that he had a There was a tech that in the shop that has some issues and he was given a job and whatever. He didn't like the job and he just left at noon. Comes in the next day and I guess he thought he could leave at noon and somebody would finish the job for him. The job was some cooler lines on a Ford truck and he was waiting on him when he come back. No, I think Brian finished the job, but he came in the next Stuff's got to get done, right? You got to promise time. It's got to be upheld. So he comes in the next day and I guess he, I don't know how it's dispatched there, but he goes to work. Well, something got said and there was quite a, an argument between the owner and this tech and the tech was fired rightfully so. Um, so that's what brought that on with Brian. And then of course, Brian. because he's going to be neutral. He then says today, right?
And I know what he was doing today.
Yeah. And I'm just like, I'm not even going to read that cause I'm sure it's going to blow right up and it probably has 400 and some comments on it by now. And I haven't got through the first 10 of them and I'm just too overwhelmed.
So I commented twice.
You're right though. We haven't done a good job and this is the, My second story is another good friend of mine, Taylor. Taylor left a tire store that he'd been at a month ago because it was a really toxic place to work. And he, he saw a job posting for the local Chevrolet dealer and he took it. Now Taylor has his license, like us Canadians need. And he goes into the dealership and they're like, we need a license tech. So they hire him. And they say, we pay you $38 an hour flat rate. He's like, man, that's great. I was only getting, you know, 35 at the tire store straight time. They're like 38 hour flat rate. Cool. So he goes to work and then he starts the next day and they tell him, Oh, it's not 38 for every flat rate hour. If you're doing service work. So not a designated repair. So if you're doing tires, brakes, flushes, oil changes, inspections, it's not 38, it's 28. And he's like, Hmm. Okay. Well, but see, if you're under warranty and you're still doing like a repair, like the first week he was there, they had him do a F a complete frame for a collision job in a S in a silver auto. I think he probably got 38 per hour for that. That's not service work. That's repair job. But then like today he texted me like 11 o'clock this morning. He was 11. He'd been there since 80. Hadn't got a job yet. So he's sitting there.
With no work with no work. So I don't know. I don't understand the whole no work thing like I don't think I've ever come to work and not had any work.
I have been in a dealer. Lots of times. And even, you know, to say that it's not just a deal, that's not true. The tire store that I worked at here, there was lots of days where I went home at noon in the months of January and February.
So do they just have too many employees and not enough work? I mean, yeah, they don't want anybody to wait too long. So they just have more employees than work most of the time.
That's, that's the business model and that's, what's being, that's, what's being taught in some of these, these groups.
We have the other problem. We have too much work, not enough help.
Yeah. But see, they, they think like nobody should have to end. So right now, if you call, for instance, like if you call Subaru in Kingston here and you want to make an appointment, so call it for all intents and purposes. So first of September, if you call Subaru now, You're not going to get in, in the month of September, it's going to be midway through October before they can fit you in. It doesn't matter what you're coming in for. It doesn't matter if it's an oil chain. It doesn't matter if an airbag is, it doesn't matter if the wheel's going to fall off because of a bearing and it's under warranty. You're not getting in there.
That was because they, is it because they have that much work or not enough texts?
They've been running an ad trying to get a tech for the last two months. So that's the shortage is definitely real. Now. I don't know. It's been a long time since I've been inside that dealership. It's not a particularly big dealer. I think they're starting to sell more Subarus than they used to. So it's adding to the backlog, but the shortage is affecting this. And then what I can't understand is when there's such a shortage, why is there so many people still waiting so long? to fill the job, right? And you go, well, that doesn't well, there's a shortage. That's why they can't fill the job. There's tax, there's tax working. I was one of those tax working in a place that if somebody had to come to me and said, do you want to make $42 an hour for an eight hour shift? I would have run out of there like my pants were on fire.
So I listened to the podcast this week. John, he said the same thing. Yeah, it was John said, uh, there's not a tech shortage. We just pretty much don't pay them. Right. I mean, that's pretty much what he said.
Yeah.
And then my good friend guys are under 30.
And then my good friend, Joshua Taylor from the wrench turns podcast, him and I were talking last week and he says, there's not a technician shortage. He says there's a sale shortage. And I go, Josh, that don't make no sense, man. He's like, no, if there was more work being sold, we would have more techs. So he, Josh predominantly is like a fixed ops guy for dealerships. He's teaching them how to maximize their efficiency in the service drives, how to make more per RO, all that kind of stuff. His episode will be coming up soon. What he feels is that we have dropped the ball too often as a service drive for too many years of selling what the car needs, not just the warranty repair, but the recommended maintenance that all the stuff that's supposed to be done. We haven't done a good enough job because the dealers for too long. Well, the cars are coming back for warranty. They're, you know, we do the MPI on it and, and, and we give the customer, you know, one out of those five MPIs winds up with a brake flush. That's not going to fix the problem. So what Josh feels is that it's a situation of more has to be done in the service drive to sell more work, to get more work being done, to bring more people back into working in the dealers. And he's not wrong. I mean, there's a perfect example. My friend Taylor sitting there till 11 o'clock. I called him and I said, so he's like, well, I got some work in the afternoon. He said it kind of, kind of made some money in the afternoon, but I don't think he took eight hours home today.
I worked on one, two, three, six cars today. I took a vacation into July. I've spent all of August digging myself out of a hole for the most part. Now, a lot of it's been jobs that have kicked my ass or just intermittents that I could spend a time on and then stuff like that. But we don't have a problem with lack of work. Mm hmm. But I don't know, and nobody around here does either for the most part, or at least the shops I talked to. We have a lot of like one or two bay shops. We have three to four techs if you count my stepdad. The biggest shop in our county probably has one, two, three, four, five. They have maybe six, but they also do car sales. They use used cars. So half of those guys are used cars guys and half of them are customer pay guys. So they have 20 to 30 cars on the lot at times that need fixed. So I'm sure that takes a lot. I don't think I can do that whole work on used cars daily. Seems rough because everything they buy at the auction has the oddest problems or cracked pistons or right. I mean, that's where everybody dumps their junk.
Well, that's who is the one guy that said not every car that comes from the auction. How did he say that? Not every car that goes to the auction is junk. as something like that, something about not every car that comes from the auction is garbage, but every car that was junk winds up at the auction. This is, I think, is how the line, I remember who said it. And, uh, the one guy I follow on, on tick tock check engine Chuck. Um, he's going to be an up guest as well. That dude, that's all he does now. It seems as he's going to one car lot after another.
Um, so you have to condition those car lot guys from what I've learned.
Um, Cause they'll try to beat you up, right? Cause every hundred dollars is coming off their profit, right? And we tried the, we sold used cars when I was a kid and I don't think the profits there per per car now. So now you, instead of having to sell 20 cars every two months, you got to sell a hundred to make the same profit. That seems, I don't, and I'm sure those numbers are skewed, but you have to be honest with those guys. Hey, look, I wouldn't give you a really good product and I'm not going to be wrong. but you're going to pay me. I'm not, I'm not checking your check engine light. That's been to the auction, been on for six months with six other problems for 50 bucks. Yeah. Like most get it most and I've had some that just use me when they have to, right. It's their guys have been through it. It's got four bad new parts plus the two original problems that started with. Yeah.
Like I was, he was on one for a Mercedes today with some kind of key, like it won't start. And you know, it's through this whole thing. Yeah. And I'm looking, he's pulling some tool out that can read the key and read the security chip in the key and test the key and all this kind of stuff. But even it's acting weird and I'm sitting there watching this little three minute video going, man, I hope you're charging well, because like, I, I, I wouldn't even entertain the notion of like, do I even know if I have the tooling that can go over there and help me get to what is wrong with this, you know? And he's not showing up with the Otis or Opus or whatever that Mercedes. Oh yeah. That tool. He's not showing up with that. He's showing up with like, I think he had a, a launch. And he's got a lot of tooling, but I mean, he's got a launch there and then he's got these other key tools and security tools and all this kind of stuff. And I'm just like, no, because they were going to call a locksmith in because at first they thought there was in the locksmith, it was going to be 300 bucks for two keys. And Chuck went there and he's just like, that sounds cheap for that kind of car. It does. It does. And Chuck's like, but I didn't want to see them spend 300 bucks if he wasn't 100% convinced it was the keys. So he's back there. He said he's back there the second day with more tooling. He's now not charging him for the second call because he has to know, right? He has to. And I'm just shaking my head going.
You all are right. Pride doesn't pay your light bill. I have that problem. I can fix anything, right? Yeah. Drop it off. I'll fix it. Sometimes that doesn't pay the bill You almost have to like I do a lot of studying on Facebook and I still watch Danner and I you know But You make more money if like if you're like check engine Chuck or mobile guy, you're gonna make more money if you listen to Dutch Mm-hmm more than you will Danner after a certain point, right? I mean, you've got to learn how to do that side of it. You can't, I mean, we, we have not done a great job at that at times, but that's been our problem with this industry for the, I mean, it's obvious it's repeat, right? Wash and repeat with this industry.
No, a lot on that, how you, I mean, not just in the way that we're, cause you talked earlier about my young friend, we're going to drive right out of the industry, but like elaborate on that for me, what you mean by wash and repeat? Like it's, I understand you're saying the cycle keeps going through.
Yeah. It's just a cycle. Like we, we talk about it like, right. I mean, it's always been a problem and we talk about it on Facebook and we talk about it in podcasts and we, okay. We, uh, AST is coming up. Right. Yeah. Uh, the top, what, two to 5% of the texts and the teachers and I'll be there, right? We all talk about it, but what the hell is the bottom 50% talking about?
They're just talking about what they're going to fix. Well, we're the two days that we're going to be at AST, but what are these guys?
I mean, you know, us top, okay, let's say Facebook and some of the messengers that I'm in and. everything, the guys that seek out the knowledge, right? Let's say it's 15 percent. Or we'll just make it 20. What the hell is the other 80 percent talking about? What are they doing? Right. Will we ever reach those guys? Lucas says, yes, I beg to differ at times. I know some of these 80 percent, right? They don't know. They they're great guys, but they're horrible techs. They're horrible owners.
I mean, right. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.
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