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Transitioning Careers: Elijah McMillan from Construction to Second Mile Repair
Transitioning Careers: Elijah McMillan from Construction to Second Mile Repair
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About this episode
Elijah McMillan shares his journey from construction to owning Second Mile Repair, a shop he started in 2022. He discusses the challenges of transitioning careers, the importance of effective pricing, and the lessons learned from working on various vehicles, especially hybrids like the Prius. Elijah emphasizes the value of community among shop owners, the significance of continuous learning through podcasts and networking, and his aspirations for future growth in the automotive industry. His positive outlook and commitment to quality service highlight the potential for change in the industry.
Topics:
career transition
hybrid vehicles
business growth
community support
effective pricing
continuous learning
customer relationships
shop management
diagnostic challenges
networking
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In this episode, we're digging into the nuts and bolts of diesel and hybrid vehicles. Elijah McMillan, owner of Second Mile Repair, reflects on his experiences with the formidable Cummins engine, the nuances of Duramax repairs, and his foray into the world of hybrid repairs, including the trusty Prius and the challenging Ford CMax hybrid.
We'll ride down the road of Elijah's career, from his roots repairing vehicles at a young age under the influence of his father's Toyota affinity to his bold leap into opening his shop in June 2022. Our guest doesn't hesitate to discuss the difficulties of flat-rate work, the importance of safety measures in handling high-voltage systems, and the rewarding yet complex nature of flipping cars for profit.
Elijah credits podcasts for enhancing his knowledge of business practices, from KPIs to effective labor rates. We're taking a detour to touch on industry-wide issues and the importance of collaborative improvement, working with knowledgeable technicians, and upholding moral standards towards employees and customers alike.
Join us as we explore the challenging technical aspects, the dedication to customer service, and the universal quest for unity in the automotive repair industry. It's a conversation filled with sparks of wisdom, lessons learned, and the ever-present drive to innovate and excel. So, tighten those lug nuts, and let's get into gear with Elijah McMillan on The Jaded Mechanic.
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Toyota Prius
"...l situation, changing a motor or head gasket on a prius. We still do a lot of diesel stuff, working on di..."
Car
Toyota 80S Toyota
"...ke, I'm probably 48 soon. Do you remember the mid 80s Toyota vans? You ever seen pictures of those? I haven't,..."
Car
Toyota Previa
"They looked like. They looked awful. The previa looked awful. The engines underneath the driver's..."
Car
Ford Cmax
"...he Ford flow charts, which I don't blame him. The CMax energy is there was probably more than a few hund..."
Car
Chevrolet Volt
"...he same as the 2023 Prius prime or the 2011 Chevy Volt is basically a copy of the new Bolt, only it does..."
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I am my own worst enemy. Like, I am the person that deals with flat rate. I'm the person that writes the ticket with flat rate and then gets beat up by the ticket that I wrote with flat rate. And it sucks being even though, yeah, you can be the shop owner, you have all this freedom, all this stuff at the end of the month, you make nothing because you didn't write the ticket properly and it was flat rate. So, like, even without being underneath someone else's scrutiny on that, I hook myself with, you know, I want my checks to appreciate me and whatever that mean, you know, we're going to charge enough for that to happen. And if we don't charge enough, that's our fault, not the tech's fault.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to another exciting, thought provoking episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. My name is 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. Support yourself, a strong coffee, or grab a cold canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation. Who you just heard tonight is a young man, a new friend of mine named Elijah McMillan. And Elijah McMillan. Sorry, that's a hard two names for me to say it together. Owns a shop called Second Mile Repair.
And Elijah. We're sitting here at AST 2023. And is this your first time at AsT?
This is.
This is. How do you like it so far?
I am very happy to be here. I'm excited to be able to get away from the shop for a few days. I don't miss that at all to be here. It's really great to network, meet a lot of the people in the industry that I look up to and see a lot of the excitement and the good side of the industry that we all give a lot of our time to, a lot of our lives to.
So tell us about second mile auto repair.
So I started second mile repair in June 2022.
So new.
I was in a construction trade for a while, and since I was a teenager, I wanted to be a mechanic. But when I looked at the industry, gave it a good, hard look, and I looked at other people and their level of satisfaction as technicians, I just said, I can't do this. This is not going to work for me.
Right.
And at that point, I laid it aside for three or four years. I had some tools some nice tools that I had bought. But I went into construction, and I did construction for a couple of years. I did digital marketing for a year or two, and when I got kind of through with the construction, I was still not satisfied with my life. And I was like, you know what? I don't know. I had a shop that was available, and I've always had the skill. Not the skill, maybe, but, like, the determination to fix whatever.
Right?
And at the time, one of my friends had a dermax with the cab had been flooded, so the wiring was just a situation. And I just told him, I said, hey, it's going to be a certain amount per hour, and we're going to charge you for every hour that it takes. We'll fix it. I'll fix it. And I did it. I think I billed close to ten grand on that truck.
Wow.
And the truck is still on the road. They're super happy with it, and they bring all their stuff to me. And I've not stopped working on vehicles since that time in June of 2022. And it kind of all came after that. It was like, now we need to get an LLC, we need to get a business license, we need to get all the certifications.
Do it the right way. Yes.
And now I have all of that, and it's just about continuing to grow and learn. But it's been like, fixing things has always been a passion of mine.
Right.
At two years old, I was sitting with my. I almost faintly remember this, and the washing machine broke.
Okay.
And I heard that it was broken. And in my two year old English, I made everyone know that it was broken, and it crapped out on that load, and the next day, the guy had to come out and fix it. And that's just kind of, like, been natural for me. I can think of kitchenaid mixers that I've torn apart and not been able to put back together for people that probably weren't too happy that their broken kitchenaid mixer is now a pile of parts. But that's how I learned. I was homeschooled. I would work all my school out halfway through the week, and then I was allowed to just go out in the shop and tinker on motors, and I would just take all these junk, small motors, and fix them and mostly just break them, really.
Right.
There were some expensive mistakes that were made there, but that's what got me to here. And now I don't break bolts, hardly ever.
So you didn't feel in the construction trade like they were being fulfilled then?
I've always liked a good hard day's work, right? And in construction, you get that. You're up at five in the morning, you're home at late at night, you work your butt off all week. And the one boss that I worked for, he always had to have all our tools on our body, which is like 30 pounds and climbing around on roofs. And you'd get home at night and you'd like, sit down and every bone in your body aches. And I was like, this is just not even a life, right? And then another construction boss that I work for, we poured concrete in the wintertime outside.
How is that?
It makes a man out of you? I mean, a 16 foot two x six coated in concrete from the last 20 times that it's been used, throwing it up out of a basement hole. I don't regret it because it's those things that make me. So I can push through a difficult diagnostic or maybe say I get back from AST and I have a backlog of work, I can work long hours, whatever. I can move heavier things. It really makes a man out of you. But it's brutal. Yeah, that's just brutal. There's no other way to find.
Thank God. The most that I've ever done for construction trade is a little bit of cleanup at a site after the fact. And as a kid, I had jobs like working on farms, throwing hay bales around, building fence, clearing brush. I ran some fence rows one summer for a construction company. So, I mean, I haven't done it. I don't like heights, so you're never going to see me on a roof. I'd stay on the bottom and if I had to, I'd do whatever cleanup at the bottom if I was forced to do it. But I'm not going to be the guy on the roof.
I'm not comfortable there.
Yeah.
So you said you took the Duramax job. That was your first kind of job then as you're opening the shop.
So if I go back a little further. When I was in those later years of tinkering on small engines, there was a Honda motor that really played into this whole thing for me. And it was a family friend that needed his Honda motor changed. And that's what his other mechanic told him. And you learned so much after the fact. And it took me like a week and a half to do 8 hours of book time. Right. And I didn't put loctate on the flywheel bolts.
And the spec said that you should and one came out anyway. But what I learned from that is a lot of things. One is it never needed an engine. Once you get the engine out of it, you're going to put the new one in. But I didn't know how to diag things. I didn't know anything.
Right.
And I didn't have pro demand or anything like that. I just used a Haynes repair manual. But definitely at the end of that, I was like, well, I can actually do this because before that, it was like changing a motor was something that was so far out know. And I did this without any equipment at the time, except for a cherry picker. No lift, no. And the service information would say to remove the cradle and the transmission. And I worked around all that. I guess that was the first major job, but that wasn't when I was in business.
That was just me. But yeah, the droomax was the first job. By the time I was through with that, I was like, this is what I like doing with my life, and I'm just plowing ahead with this. And I started building my business at that.
Right, right. And when did you find Asog?
I was working on this fleet of trucks. It's not a huge fleet, but they're always broken down. And I got a Facebook ad for another podcast, automotive podcast. I won't mention the name, but. And I binge listened to that. And what I took away was there's a lot of people like me started where I started and they found success. But when I ran through all those episodes, I don't know if I searched automotive podcast. I think I did.
And I found the ASOG podcast and I was like, oh, wow, there's 121 episodes here. I've been missing out. And I hit episode one and I would mention on these calls and listening, and they're talking about not giving quotes over the phone. And I'm like, boom, this makes sense. And the next day I'm implementing it and I'm not giving quotes over the phone. Right, right. And stuff about accounting, talk about being engaged in a technical situation, changing a motor or head gasket on a prius. We still do a lot of diesel stuff, working on diesels.
And just with the podcast on, and it's just like, you get your mind, I mean, there's so much good, just like best practices, shop advice, even in the first episodes of that. And it's not like some of these other podcasts that are like, come join our coaching company. Because at someone at my stage in the game back then, you're kind of paying for yourself to go to work. So you're not hiring a coaching company, right? The mistakes, the level of profit was not there. When it's just one hand and the other hand. And the way that the money situation is, it's really hard to know if you're profitable. I didn't know what a KPI was. And when they started talking about KPIs, I'm like, still don't know what a KPI is.
And using quickbooks to write estimates, it was better than the paper ones, but not much.
So you learned about effective labor rate. Like you said, you heard somebody talk about KPI. He talked about people, their margins and all that kind of stuff. I'm the same way. I used to always, like, when I be into a job, it could be a brake job. It could be a control arm. It could be a set of front struts or something. I used to always have my little dewalt portable speaker Bluetooth running.
And then I'd sometimes have my phone and be propped up on the side, and I'd be watching a video on YouTube, or I'd be listening to a podcast or something like that. Because music bores me, right? To have the radio playing just doesn't put me in a different mood. And everybody's like, well, how can you listen to a podcast at work? Because it's just background, right? Just like music is. Yes, but sometimes it's the key points. Or you hear the timber in somebody's voice change and you think, okay, David's going to say something, right? You can feel that. And then stopped working. But my ear kind of perked up a little more, and I paid a little more attention. Maybe I paused it and backed up and played it again.
Maybe I turned the volume up so I could hear what I was saying. So when people are like, but so many people come to me, Elijah, and they're like, dude, I was just listening to you on the car on the way over here. Like, when I'm driving, I'm listening to music. I'm not listening to podcasts. But so many people put a podcast on now, and they'll make, like a drive. They'll drive from. Where are you driving from?
Michigan. I'm from central Michigan. It's about 13 hours.
Yeah.
Get a lot of episodes.
Exactly right. So you can put that in and just drive across the country and listen to David and Lucas, or you can listen to myself, right? So when everybody said to me, they're like, are you sure you want to do a podcast? Yeah. Because I listen to a ton of the podcasts, right? That's why I hold myself to such a high standard is because there's David and Lucas's and then there's so many other ones. And it's like, for a while before my phone started getting so busy with my own content, I was listening to them all. And I take different things out of all of them in terms of this is what I like and this is what I don't. There's some that they're only 1520 minutes long.
Right.
And every third word is like, f this and f that, to me is like, I could read that. I don't have to listen to it.
Right.
I've seen that in threads in different Facebook groups. I've seen that. I've been in those threads. I've read that. I don't need to hear it. But when David and Lucas have a guest on or they talk about something that really piques my interest up, makes you. Yeah, yeah. So you used to put them on and just go to work, and you'd hear little things and key things of what they'd be talking about.
That was your coaching?
Yes.
Isn't that not cool?
That's incredible. It made a massive amount of difference. I should do this just for an exercise. Go back a year and pull all the KPIs week by week. Because I lose my mind looking at. Because I'm sure there was probably months of pretty much negative there, but I've always been someone who will see something through. So I flipped a lot of priuses in the first and the first few months. Once I hired my bookkeeper, the income was coming in from the flipped cars, not from the.
And I flipped them successfully. I mean, you buy a car for $900 and sell it for seven grand, there's some profit there. You throw a head gasket on as quickly as possible, button the thing up. And it hasn't been until recently that I've gotten actually to the point where it's more profitable to work on customers cards. And that's a good feeling, because before, it was like, I need the next deal, and we got to get it sold as quickly as possible, and we're waiting on it to sell. And everything relies on that.
Right.
But it worked out great at the beginning.
Right.
And the first Prius that I flipped, I bought at an auction, and the whole thing was just. I learned so many lessons. Bought an engine from a scammer, con artist, junkyard guy. I have customers all the time asking about used engines, and I tell them, I said, I get them from one place and I warranty them and I inspect them and I say salvage yards are often licensed scammers. So, yes, you think you're going to get it cheaper somewhere else, but no, we're not going to deal with it, because I experienced that firsthand. I mean, I took the COVID off of that engine, it's full of rust inside. And I'm like, I just brought this back from where? And I paid how much for it? So just so many things was learned with the flip cars, and it kept me from having to learn on customers. Customers.
And now when we get a customer's Prius, I mean, we can diagnose it rather quickly and be accurate, and they love it.
How many of the flipped Priuses that you've sold to people, how many of those developed into current customers that you still have?
I'm not sure that any of them did, really? Because we're in a remote location.
Okay.
And some of these people buying come from an hour, 2 hours away.
Right.
And the Prius is something that holds a lot of value, even with 200 plus thousand miles on it. And so when there's a good deal, someone's going to drive across the state or a couple of states over. Yeah. So I've had people at least from Chicago, Illinois, which is four and a half hours, so they're probably not going to bring it to me if it breaks down.
Right.
I've never had one break down on the way home. Nothing crazy like that, because you would hear about that. But on the flip side, I had one come for an engine replacement from 165 miles away. That was a funny story.
Now, did they come to you because your price was better or did they come to you because of trust? Of what you.
In the early days of my business, it was more price.
Yeah.
Now, most of those clients don't come right? And I'm not saying they never will. I've had those outlier situations. But now that we're charging effectively, the amount of whole motor jobs that you sell for the Prius is pretty low because it's an expensive job. I mean, it really is. And you have to love your car. But at the same point, I'm not going to ever change another Prius motor for $1,500. I will not do that. That's bad for my industry.
That's bad for me. And I can't put a warranty on that. And if we charge effectively, we can put a warranty that's as good as the Toyota factory warranty. We can do that. We can afford to do that because.
You were saying earlier, we were talking. They're known for head gasket issues.
Yes.
And then they're also known for some oil.
Yes.
Yeah. So if you end up with an engine failure in one, it's because it was neglected. Right. Otherwise, you said it's just a lot of. It is a head gasket thing. And I'm not a Prius expert, but I know that a lot of them, because the people don't necessarily even realize sometimes when it's running on the ev side versus running on the engine side, they don't necessarily even know sometimes when it's got a little bit of a misfire or they don't necessarily even notice maybe, that it's overheating because it's not always running on that. You know what I mean?
Well, the 1.8 Prius engine, like the classic head gasket failure, is like a hard, heavy, hammering misfire upon startup.
Yes.
Once it warms up, goes run smooth, and there's a lot of coil packs and spark plugs that get changed to try to fix that. They always have new coil packs, new spark plugs, and new fuel injectors in them when they come in. And the failure point then is usually bent rods, which leads to broken rods.
Okay.
So a lot of times we'll take the head off one and there's a rod that's not as same length as the other rods.
Right.
And I tell people going in, like, if that's the case, we're going to have to talk about more major repairs because either we're going to take the bottom side of the engine apart and do a repair, but we probably should replace the whole engine at that point because you're kind of risking a lot when it comes to warranty when you.
Have an engine that's known to burn oil, too, right?
Yeah.
How do you get your ring seal back? If you take that out and slam.
A new piston, you don't get a good ring seal back.
You'd. We're not in the old days where you run a ball, hone down through there with some soapy water and you get your hone back. It doesn't work that way. Those rings are never going to. If it burned a little bit of.
Oil before going to burn a lot.
It'S going to be burning a lot when it's done. So what made you, like, did you have an immediate affection for the Prius or how did you get to. You said you bought your first one at the auction for $900.
So I'm going all over the place here.
That's okay.
I'll go back. Let's see.
You've done so many, it's hard to remember.
I'm trying to get my thoughts together here, but my dad would always buy Toyotas.
Okay.
Vans mostly.
What a terrible van they were, too, eh?
Well, I mean, they're reliable, though.
Do you remember the old vans?
We had a trivia 1994 supercharged, all wheel drive. That thing was bad to the bone. You could pull a truck with it.
So I'm old, right? I'm old, like, I'm probably 48 soon. Do you remember the mid 80s Toyota vans? You ever seen pictures of those?
I haven't, no.
They looked like.
They looked awful. The previa looked awful. The engines underneath the driver's seat to check the oil. You lift the driver's sheet up. I remember. How do you check the oil on this thing? And I was going to change a valve cover gasket once, and it's like a nightmare, the engine sitting sideways like a Subaru down there. But it was incredible with the supercharger so powerful, and a four cylinder in a minivan. I mean, they still do that in third world places.
There's a lot of minivans that are made new in honduras that have four cylinders in them. But we don't do it here because you don't get the power that you need.
Right. So your dad always drove Toyota.
Yeah. And so I'm going to make this short, but the last vehicle he bought before he passed away was a Toyota Sienna.
Okay.
And that was the best investment ever. Pre owned Toyota. It lasted forever. But anyway, we needed to replace that at some point. And, I don't know, we needed a car for mom and I found this Prius on Craigslist. I don't know, I was probably 15 years old something, and it was $500, and it was like, needs a battery, blah, blah, blah. It was ugly. It was just not a great car.
But we bought it from them for $475, and I took the battery out, put it on a bench, disassembled it, tested all the cells, found a couple of bad ones, put them in the car, didn't work. Pulled it out again.
Wow.
Tested all the cells. And then I learned about battery balancing.
Yes.
And I balanced them, put them back in, and the car worked. So that was actually my first Prius. That was what kind of started me down that road with it.
So you were 16 years old?
Yeah. Right. In that range. I'd have to look at a calendar, but, yes, it might have been a little younger than that. It's been a while. But I did that and I was, like, pretty proud of the fact. And that was her car. And she took it to our family mechanic.
She didn't trust me. She's like, I need to know this thing is good. And he inspected it and was like, it's cool. He checked everything, did his. I don't think he did it as comprehensive at his inspection as a lot of people do. But he gave her peace of mind. In 20,000 miles or so, it failed again. The battery did.
And that's something with the Prius battery, we don't rebuild them anymore as a shop. There's no way to warranty that. There's no way to tell if it will fail tomorrow. When a cell goes bad, the whole battery needs to be replaced. And that's how I would do it now. But then, I mean, chucks. We had hooking a driving Prius, 50 miles per gallon for $600 total. And it wasn't like we were short on cash, but we were still pretty proud of the fact that.
And at that time as well, I had gotten together some money and some different people had contributed and I had gotten a snap on various, the original various. And I just thought that was the best scan tool, I guess, because I watched Paul Danner use it and I had to have one. And I got that kind of in mind for fixing this. Anyway, I guess that's what kind of got me working on the Prius and then realizing that it is a specialty. The orange cables scare a lot of people. And I would say to a lot of technicians, definitely do the safety stuff, but you shouldn't be afraid of orange cables just as much. It's the same thing. And like recently at the shop, we had the first Tesla and I was a little bit like, whatever about that car.
But I drove it down the road and I'm listening to it, I'm like, okay, there's a bad wheel bearing. It's in the front, right? Pull it in. Pull the Brembo caliper off. Turn the wheel. There's a wheel bearing bad. It's all the same. I think, as much as it kind of helps me that everyone is afraid of them because we can work on them. It's still like.
It's something I've never been afraid of. I've also been shocked by a Prius battery.
Right?
And so to anyone who's listening, who are your high voltage gloves, do something small. Don't do what I did. I'll just tell that story. I had a Prius battery halfway out, Prius battery sits underneath the back seat. And I had it halfway out, turned sideways. I had the covers all off the bus barge. And I was changing the bms harness because it was corroded up and I had the disconnect pulled, of course. And you can sit in certain hybrid classes and they'll tell you that the battery is safe with the disconnect pulled.
And if you leave all the coverage on, I guess you could say that it is.
Yeah. But you have the covers off.
If you have the coverage off and the disconnect is pulled, you have a 208 volts battery, depending on the amount of charge. 220 some volts, and it's divided in half, which is still enough to kill you. And all I know is that definitely put the fear of God in me. And I was working with one hand, which is like the electrician. Move one hand in your back pocket. I don't even know why I was working with one hand, but I didn't complete a circuit. But talk about feeling like you've been curling weights with your arm and it doesn't stop like ac does.
Yeah. Does it feel like you grabbed the electric fence as a kid? Have you ever been around like a. Oh, yeah.
Yes we have.
Does it feel like that? Only like, amplified extensively.
Constant.
It's constant.
I feel like the big difference is with alternating current, you have a pulse and it's almost like you get a chance to let go in between pulses. Even though it's 60 hz or with an electric fence, it's slow, like an electric fence, you could literally do like this and you could grab it and you could time it and not get shocked. Right, well, it probably has a capacitor. I don't know the answer to that, but that definitely scared me pretty bad because I was just being careless.
Yeah.
Even if I would have just pulled the battery out and put it on a bench, there's no way I would have touched two terminals at the same time.
So did it knock you to the ground?
No, I pulled away from it. Yeah, but just the fear of like, what if I had both hands in there? That might be the last hybrid vehicle that I work on.
There was nobody there with a hook to pull you away from it?
No, that's the thing. I mean, starting from scratch, it's me, myself, and I like. And that's something that kind of still scares me a little bit. I don't do a ton of battery work, but if something were to happen in the shop, even in a vehicle falling off the lift or something, there's security camera footage, but there's no one that's going to know.
Right.
And I definitely am very careful the way that I set my lift because I enjoy life. I'm not interested in checking out early, if you know what I mean.
No, I think you got a lot still to offer, so we don't want to see that happen. Right. Safety is a huge thing, especially. And like you said with the orange cables. Right. I can remember when that first came out, and I haven't worked on a lot of them and I haven't had to do any kind of the voltage repairs, but I can remember all the way they came out was like, if you see an orange cable, you stay away from it. It's the same as the way you airbag. If you see a yellow fuse, you stay away from that connector.
That's airbag. You don't touch that you could blow the car up with. We all know that. There's only really a couple of things that you can do. You're going to blow all the airbags at once. Right. If you grab that module and the key is on and the battery is still hooked up, and you start moving that occupant restraint module around. Yeah.
You're going to blow all this freaking curtains out of it. Right. But to the idea that don't touch the yellow for airbag was like, well, I've had a thousand clock springs out of caravans in my life. If I've had one out, because I used to recall them, I used to do out in the parking lot. I've done Nissan airbag recall. I've done a thousand of them. Right. So you don't even think about it.
It becomes so routine. But when you're talking about evs, you got to not ever let it be routine. Right.
Right.
The safety thing, you just can't take that chance.
Yeah, 100%. I think that was a good experience for me, though. I think sometimes, especially as a young, invincible man, you have to get something to kick you a little bit before you start thinking, seriously.
Pull you back into reality.
That's probably the best way it could have gone. Definitely try to keep the craziness to a minimum.
Yeah. So with your business now, do you call yourself specialized?
Because of my rural location, I still do a fair amount of just general repair. If it wasn't for Ford, I don't think we'd be in business. Because the Prius is a pretty solid vehicle.
Right.
They have their issues, but usually they come in at over 200,000 miles with the issues.
Right.
And then does the customer want to spend the money to replace some major drivetrain component? Generally they're not rusty even in the rust belt at that age. So it's generally worth it. But it's not worth it according to the blue book.
Right.
And a lot of people are looking at that, too. So I would love my two favorite vehicles to work on would be the Toyota Prius and any Chevy Durgamax.
Okay?
But those two together, there's weeks when they don't come in.
Right?
And so we advertise for that. But it's also general repair, and you have to do the general repair and the maintenance and there's some neat stuff that you get to work on and it's growing, I would say, like with those more specialized customers. But you make one happy previous customer and they're not going to be back for six months unless they.
Because they don't really need to be. Right.
Unless they use us for oil changes. And there's a lot of customers out there with the mentality that they don't want to pay the extra or whatever for an oil change because we're not going to try to compete with the local quickly. But oil change, we're going to do a 69 point digital vehicle inspection, use synthetic oil and a good filter, torque everything, and put anti tamper paint on the bolt so that if it comes so it takes a little extra time. And some people just don't see the value in that. They're going to bring their car to me for hybrid service, but they're going to take it somewhere else for an oil change. And I haven't really tried to be a hard selling oil changes because especially in a small shop, I was just going to say, really hard to turn any money on them anyway. But I would do them for routine customers, but there just isn't a lot of those. So you fix the Prius, you say you do a head gasket or an engine, it's good for 100,000 miles.
And if you're being smart, you're doing an inspection and you do your brakes and suspension, whatever needs to be done, get that thing back up to par, and then it's just going to go and go and go. And an abs module might fail those. Fail. Do a lot of those. But aside from that, there's really nothing to fail.
Right? And the Duramax thing, why the Duramax? Because we all know, and I'm not ripping on the brand, but we all know how many more Ford were out there than the Duramax, right? Like the 60 was.
It's not that I wouldn't take a Ford diesel in the shop. I've never had one.
Right.
I've never had a Cummins. My mailers say diesel service on them. But the Duramaxes that I get are usually referral from someone else that had a positive experience with the Duramax. And yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. It's a sucky platform. But there's something about it. When you're all done, you put the cab back on and you stirred it up and you go rip down the road and then you see that truck on the road every day for the next. It's a local small community.
I mean it's either on the road or it's not. And you know type of thing.
You're going to hear about it.
Yeah. And just. I don't know. I have pictures on my phone of earlier on in this. Pulling a cab off and doing a head gasket job. And I amazed myself when that thing was all done. And I knew I could do it. But it was like first time in and 30 hours book time.
And you better really be hoofing if you're doing it in 30 hours. I don't know where as far as. Like I said, I must just be a glutton for punishment because probably easier to work on a Cummins. I don't know, it seems like it would be.
So you know me as an old dodge guy from way back. I'll tell you the real easy answer is they never break the Cummins. So that's why they don't come in for anything. Which is a little bit of a sarcasm there, right? They break the old.
Yeah.
But I love the Cummins. I always have the Ford. I just think that there's so many people now that have got kind of cut their teeth on them, right. The 60. And thank God most of the six Fords are gone because they were trash. Right. The six liter people, for whatever nostalgic reason or something, will still fix them again. I don't know why the 67 seems to have finally gotten that kind of heavy duty diesel.
A lot of the bugs worked out of it. It's still an expensive platform, man. It is really. Diesel trucks are something that I've worked on enough of them, but I've always worked on them when they were owned by the wrong customer.
Yeah.
You know what I mean? Back diesel was cheaper than gas per gallon. That's why I buy one now. It's like even if the price was the same for fuel, the cost of. Just the cost of an oil change.
It'S like 200 and some dollars where.
I'm from, you're pushing closer to three by the time you buy some good stuff and pay some labor. Right. Whereas an oil change for your Chevy half ton 2500 with a six liter in it, $60.
Right. You can do it for the price of your standard oil change.
And people don't get that. And then they go, well, I worked that truck. You look at that truck, it's never towed a damn thing in its life. Right? That ain't a work truck.
No wonder the after treatment system is.
Plugged up exactly right. What are you working it with? Well, it idles in the drive through every morning. And then I jump on the highway and I go down one exit and I get off and I shut the key off and I go into my.
Office, gets the chance to Regen.
Yeah. And then I put the boat on in the weekend, and we make a 40 minutes drive down the lake and we put the boat in. And that's it. You don't need a diesel truck. Right.
I tell people that. Yeah, I really do. I would love a diesel truck. But there's a reason I don't own a truck at all. Because I have relationships built where if I need a truck and trailer, I can have one now, and I'll keep it full of diesel when I bring it back and everyone's happy and I'll fix it if I break it. And they know that. And so that, to me is there's something about having a truck. There really is.
It just makes you feel like a better person. But I don't have one because it's just not a frugal decision.
No.
And working on them, I can say, like, the minimum repair bill on a diesel coming in for anything is probably going to be $1,000.
Yeah.
I mean, we do injector pigtails on the l five P and stuff, and you end up doing the inspection on the vehicle and finding other things wrong with it. And like you said, it's not a cheap platform, but there's something about the real working man in his diesel where he understands that it's like his horse from the old days. You're not getting from point a to point b without it.
Right.
And in some ways, those customers are easier to deal with than the hybrid EV sector because it's not about can they. It's just when is it going to be done?
Right?
And I got to say, even on some older, nasty, rusty, like, you really don't regret it. Or even it's like, so you break a bolt. And in Michigan, I charge unashamedly. If a bolt breaks and I'm using all my precautions and it still breaks, that is not on you. Yeah, I will charge some sort of rust fee if I break something. Being stupid, I know the difference. I'm very forthright with the customer with that. But if that happens, I'm like, okay, it's a Michigan rusty truck.
And the customer is like, I understand there's something about farmers, tradesmen. If they really need a diesel truck, they're hauling cattle. They're okay with getting it fixed. And there's one customer I can think of, and he comes an hour and a half to bring his diesel truck to me, and I put a transmission in it, and it came back with limp mode. Not from the transmission, an engine related limp mode. And it ended up needing injectors. And, like, a transmission and injectors are two of the most expensive jobs on a Duramax truck, for sure. But he's like, well, we need the truck.
So we put injectors in it, and while we add it, fan clutch was bad, brake booster was bad, put a lift pump on it. And he's an ex amish guy, and I told him we have a real good relationship. I said, there's something about you guys. You're used to driving horses and you don't listen to your truck when it's crying. So this thing's really been beat. So I change all these things, and when I get done, he calls me a random matter of blue one day, and he's like, you're right. He said this thing drives completely differently. Obviously, this was broken.
He's like, every time I came up this one hill, it would overheat. And now it doesn't overheat anymore. And I'm just laughing. I'm like, see, look what I said. And it's so fun, because if you know someone that well, you can talk that way and just say, hey, maybe listen to your truck a little bit so it doesn't cost, like, $10,000 to get it back up on the road. But that was a really fun experience. And the coolest part about something like that is that say I need to change injectors. I'm new enough in the industry that I'm really strict with the diagnostics.
I'm not someone that drives the diesel pickup trucks and says to put injectors in it. So, like, on his truck, I charged him for a full return rate test, which is a lot of time on that year of truck. I took all the readings. And when I called him and said, we need to do injectors, ultimately, if that truck would have still went in limp mode after the new injectors, I still knew without the shadow of a doubt that all eight injectors failed the test GM specified. And to me, that's just great because otherwise, being someone with a conscience, I would have to give him those injectors if I were just slapping them in. And so it's like, it's a double giving thing for a shop owner and for the customer because I charged for that diagram and we called the part, right? And then getting feedback later, the same customer was talking with me and he said that someone asked him where he was taking his truck and he told him it was an hour and a half away. And the guy says, well, he must be cheaper. And this customer says, well, actually, I don't think so, but I know he won't lie to me.
And that to me was like the best way you could advertise for me because I don't want to be the guy that's cheaper, but I want to be the guy that's honest. And I will eat the cost of a part if I mischange it.
Yeah, no, I read something interesting in one of the groups. I can't remember, we were talking about a comment or something like that. Something came up and somebody said to you, well, you're already smarter about a shop than a lot of shop owners. You know, the comment I'm speaking, I can't remember who said it. Do you owe all that to ASOG and to the changing industry? Or you have a network, I guess, of other people that you can reach out to and they talk to you about how to do business.
There is so many things. A big one is ASOG. But my brother is excellent businessman, contracting, and he's one of those guys that set the example. We didn't lost my dad at eight, okay? But my brother went into construction, $10 an hour, came home at night and studied and got the license to be a general contractor. And he's just killing it. And we talk about KPIs and stuff, and now I'm teaching him about KPIs and he's like, we need to talk about this more. It's the greatest thing because he made me know that I could do it. And so there was that first and then getting to know, I guess the first connection to other industry people would have been the Autowars Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is real small regional expo, still a good size expo.
I met G. Twillia.
Okay.
And sat through his hybrid class and he talked about all the things that I had run into in the real world. And I was mean. I have so many notes from that class that it was like all this stuff was falling into place for why it was what it was, even though I kind of knew how to fix it. It was like understanding it at a, a deeper y level. And I sat through lunch with him there at that autoboards expo. And that opened me up to this whole idea of other shop owners and technicians sharing and going to different training. And then there's local shop owners that I've gotten to know. Now we have, well, there's like four of us that just meet every month or every six weeks for lunch.
And I'm honored to be involved with those guys because they've done it for so long. They have so much wisdom as shop owners and as technicians that, I don't know, I'll take a two, three hour lunch break that day and whatever. I mean, I'll just shut stuff down because it's worth it to grow as a shop owner.
Any of that group, did they come here to ast as.
Yeah. So Eric Merchant.
Okay. I was going to mention him. I didn't know if you knew him or not.
He's awesome. He's just really helping build the industry and I've learned a lot from him. And then there's one from my local area that he says he's bringing his whole shop next year. I'm going to hold him to it because he didn't bring his shop this year.
Right.
And then the other owner guy, he's got his whole team here, I think. But he's not here because it's his anniversary weekend.
Right.
So he can't be. But yeah, they're definitely involved.
So that's pretty good then, because like you said, you're not in that big of. You're more of a rural area.
Yes.
So that little pocket of where it is you are in Michigan, you've got that group of network that support one another, help one another, and then are coming to this kind of show because somebody else made a comment tonight and you, I think, agree no one out there is your. That's just some customers are a better fit for that shop, whether it's by location or price or how you do business or how backlogged you might be. Right. That they can get me in. We need to rethink in this industry that the shop next door to me, around the block from me, across the road from me, the other side of town is my competition. They're not, right? There's more cars. Our budy Lucas says all the time there is more cars than we are ever going to be able to fix.
Right.
And it's not about fixing all the cars, is it? It's about making that money. Whatever that KPI that you need to make. That's all. It's. We don't. This shouldn't be about a competition of. I want to keep my door rate so low so that I can get a higher car count in than the guy across the street.
Count is nothing.
It's not a barometer of much, is it?
I've done three cars a week and.
$9,000.03 cars a week.
I've literally done that. And I've done eight cars and done half the dollar amount. Code count is nothing.
Right. Do you know how many would panic if they only had three in a day? Right? Three cars in a day. They'd panic.
That's part of where the specialty comes in.
Yeah.
And just with, like you mentioned, the community, like the other shop owners, I will say we're spread out like, we're driving an hour plus.
Right.
But I wouldn't miss it. You tell me what day to be there and I'll be there for lunch and I'll take a phone call or two or do what I have to do, whatever. But we're shutting down. And this last time they drove up to my. And it's just super know, one week, one guy pays for lunch and whatever. Just real great. You know, we're all from Michigan, and we all have similar values as shop owners and being honest, being fourth rate, learning to pay text. Well, I don't have text, but I will and may as well learn know.
For me, the next step would be trying to get into a bigger.
And we talked earlier. I sat down with Chris and Chris Enright and his lovely wife Marissa. You guys are kind of headed in the same place at about the same time. You want to get a bigger facility, he needs to get a bigger right. And he. What I love about both of you is that you're like, I need to have all of this figured out my numbers in order before I can get there so that I can hire the person that I need and pay them what they need to be able to make the business work. Too many guys are like, I got the building. I don't have staff yet.
Right.
I don't have a clue how to run it. But I got that building. I need those cars, right? And YouTube. Both of you have figured it out that I got to have all of this in line before I bring in that person.
The thing is, there's, the two sides of that one is for your shop to pay a technician properly, needs to have KPIs in order. And then the second one is on a moral standing. What about that technician? What about his family? And where is he going with his life? And if you're actually thinking, like, some of these guys don't know what they should be asking about, and if you're actually thinking that, you're just going to get the best deal. I just don't do business that. I mean, I will say if it's Amazon, I'll just get the cheapest thing. That's just Amazon. I don't care about Jeff Bezos. They have no more obligation to him.
But when it comes to my local equipment guy versus the nationwide guy, I will tell the local guy. The other day, he called me about an air compressor pump because my air compressor pump's going out. And he told me what it was and he was expecting me to say, I'll think about that and call you next week. And I said, when can it be here? I'm not going to go shop around.
Right.
And I want that technician to know that he's going to be taken care of because that's what I want and that's what the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's hard to do that sometimes, but it's worth it. And when it comes to your people, I've walked into shops where the employees are all about my age and they're happy and they have little young families and first babies on the way. And then you walk into a shop where everyone's grumpy. No one wants to do their DVI. And it's like, what's the difference here? Because I want to spend time eating lunch with the guy who's got those technicians, not because I need his exact technicians, but if I duplicate what he's doing, those technicians will just come to me. They'll find my ad, right? And that's who I want to be whatever it needs to be.
If they need to be paid that much more, if they need this benefit, if they need whatever. It's not all about me. Because like you said, in five minutes when. When somebody else wins, you win. One of my good shop owner friends, I had the opportunity to connect him with a really good coach, with actually Cecil at the institute, and it's changed his thing so much that he's buying shop number two. And there's a little bit of me that's like, man, I wish that was me. The other part of me says, you know what? Our whole industry now is starting to talk. Like, in our area, there's less of those $70 an hour guys.
He was at 95 to 130, and he's absolutely worth it.
What a jump, though.
I think it was in two moves, but he was just living in fear of it. And when he did it, he talked to me, and he's like, elijah, all the rusty cars are out of my parking lot. We have plenty of work. Everyone's happier. And so just seeing that transformation, it's like, ultimately, his winning is my winning. I know it is. And it's the same with the technicians. As shop owners.
If we have technicians that win, we win. If our vendors win, we win.
Right?
Like last year, end of year, there's this business in that makes fancy cakes, and I got a fancy cake for every one of my points vendors. And I'd spent a day driving from parts vendor to points vendor and delivered all these fancy cakes. I figured the cake is good. So even if you hate me, that's brownie points for me, right? It's a little selfish, but at the same point, I tell the points people every time they show up that I appreciate them, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart. As soon as they stop showing up, everything goes away fast. And I know it's like, oh, we forgot that. And, oh, we did that. I want that person to be on the ball with me.
And again, just treating them with that, just as I would want to be treated. And I'm not always good. Like, if a poach guy fails twice to get me the right point, it's really hard to be nice to them. But I try to look past it and say, hey, there's systems involved. There's other people involved. And try not to put it on the one person that made the phone call. But this year, I'm thinking about doing the cakes again. There's going to be a lot more cakes that we have to do, but I think it pays back dividends because those poach people, I think a lot of times don't feel appreciated, especially poach drivers.
I mean, it's kind of the bottom of the barrel job. It just isn't a very nice job. No, but they always want to talk for two minutes about this call or that car, and I just say, hey, I really appreciate you guys. I don't know. Maybe it doesn't do any good. And I think it does.
They're good word of mouth advertising, too, right? The parts drivers. Yeah, they really are. Because, for instance, I just started my new job, and one of my established customers at the last shop is a parts driver for one of the local vendors around here. So of course he didn't know where I went. And all of a sudden, he pulls into the parking lot and he looks at me, and I look at him and he smiles, and I go, bob, it's good to see you again. He's like, you're here. Yeah. He's like, that's awesome, man.
I'm so happy that you're here. What a great place for you to wind up. That's cool. He's like, can I tell the other people that are asking what happened to you where you are? And I'm like, sure, absolutely. Of course. That makes me feel good. You know what I mean? It's because we sometimes talk about, and I don't want to talk all the time about the owner versus a technician. I don't want to be the owner.
One versus the other. Right. We're a team.
Exactly.
But it feels good when you haven't been necessarily treated the best way and you have a customer that finds you and says, you're the reason that I kept going there. You're the reason that I had success with what I needed done. Right. I will follow you to here. They don't ask what the door rate is, right. They know that I cost more now where I am than where I'd been. They don't even think about that.
Right.
We get so wrapped up in price, right. Price is such a small factor in what determines where the customer is going to choose. And I know we say, well, google reviews this and price is a fact. I'm not saying price isn't a factor, but I think sometimes we put too much weight on it.
We do. Especially as, I feel like as technicians that turned into owners, if you will. I'm a little bit different because I kind of did the owner and the technician thing at the same time. But still, I can emotionally discount things. And something I've learned is if I'm actually going to be able to help when help is needed, I need to be profitable when it's not and when it's someone crying. I mean, I've had people come out and just tell me, well, if you could get it to me for this price. And I just go to whoever can, and I say, this is why we do it this way. This way it's warranty, whatever.
And I learned this from Lucas. I've even said if I could do it for you any cheaper and still be profitable, I would. And that's very helpful to me. But the topic of the poach driver, it's interesting. Like, the whole community that gets built around the poach driver. I'm sure they gossip about us behind your back. Oh, for sure. And sometimes I wonder the things that I tell my poach driver if I should maybe be a little more shush with it.
But funny story here, or not really so funny. But I get a call on the shop line from this lady, and she asks me if my name is such and such, and I say no, and blah, blah, blah. And she starts to tell me her story. And her husband or sister's husband had dropped a car off at a shop in our area, and he got in a fatal car accident days after. And this is his family calling. And they don't know where the car is. And they're kind of like, going through, I think the wife was involved in the accident, too. She's in critical care.
And they're kind of like, we kind of need our car. We're down on our luck. I'm sure we're down on their money. Just terrible situation. And I'm like, we definitely don't have his car here. But I was like, let me ask my parts driver. So we get a hold of the parts people, because this other shop, if he's really a shop, he's some shade tree guy. But anyway, still knows the parts driver, right? And anyway, they ended up finding the lady a car.
It just made her day. She'll never probably be my customer, but that situation was terrible for them. And the network between us and the parts driver made it a little bit better. And that's worth it. That's kind of what we're in business for, is really like, even at 22 years old, I could die tomorrow, and I don't get to take any of my success with me. My business can sit there. There's no one to run it. It will just stay closed if I die on the way home tomorrow or Sunday.
And that may be a and startling thing for someone in my place to say, but if I live today in a way that I'm treating the parts driver right, having compassion for the customer that just lost their husband, connecting them to whatever. And not to brag myself up, but they're just opportunities that come across, and it's a blessing if I do, like, those are the things that last past, now and here.
Paul Danner made a very key statement a couple of times that he's been here to different people and it always pops up is he says, none of this really truly does matter, though.
He said that to me today.
Yeah.
I was like, wow. Amen.
Exactly. Because this is the first you met Paul.
It is, yeah. We've talked online a little. Just like, if I had to put my success as a technician on one person, it would be just the don't be a part changer thing just got me because I've always been upset about part a as someone fixing a lawnmower as a boy. It's like I changed a part and it didn't fix it. And that sucks. And watching him on YouTube, I wasn't a premium member or anything at the beginning, but there was that whole don't be a part changer, get it right the first time. And just his humility about it and then different things. He had a video way back of him down in, I don't know where he was, Guatemala or something, and he was using his vantage to troubleshoot this lady's car.
And I was like, this is so because me, I've been to some of those places and people need help there and being able to take some of those tech skills, there's some really good mechanics down there, but they don't have the high tech tooling that we have. They're kind of just making do. And so I saw that and I was like, man, this guy's just like my kind of guy.
And I remember that video. And he talked about, he wasn't sure at first if he should be so forward with his faith. Yeah, right. Because you know how that can be. Are you going to put that on the Internet and everybody's going to call you everything from a quack to, yeah, he does not care.
Right.
And as we in the community, our industry, have supported him with that. You have seen Paul even come out even more where he shares a lot of bible verses. Paul and I will share music and we'll share some songs. And once in a and because Paul's got a really eclectic taste in music, he likes some really heavy stuff. And then he also likes some country stuff, too. And I'll share with him some songs with a biblical backtext to the song and it's country. And he'll be like, dude, that is so powerful. That makes me feel something today that is such a small way that I can repay him for everything that he has done is just be able to share that and say, here's a song, Paul.
I don't know if you've ever heard it, man, because it's in a different genre, but just listen to what the dude's saying, and then he'll message back and he's like, I got goosebumps from that. Yeah.
Music is so powerful. And with Paul reading even some of his recent stuff on Facebook about his time growing up and stuff and just seeing God in his life is like, talk about getting goosebumps. And to think, mean, there's a lot of bad rap on our industry, but there's also a lot of people that really mean well in our just. I don't mean. I've always kind of felt like Paul is my friend, and meeting him today was just kind of an extension of that.
I count myself so lucky. Like I said to you earlier tonight, right, the two people that have put me where I am in my life is Paul. And, you know, that's incredible. And I don't mean to exclude David, but it's just like I've known Paul and Lucas almost the same amount of time the friend for a long time, and they've seen me go through the things that I've gone through. They've seen me change to where I'm not the angry person that I am anymore. I'm still opinionated as heck, and I'm still fighting and advocating for a guy like yourself and a guy like me and a guy like anybody here. But it's not back to the US versus them. It's not the owner versus the tech so much of the time now anymore.
It's just we have to, all of us, do better.
And that's how we actually change the industry. And it's powerful to see and be able to listen to your podcast and changing the industry. I think of, I don't know, six or eight weeks back, there's a big Facebook thing that can of worms that kind of got opened up between some different groups and different people. And I was just reading through that. I wasn't involved. I got this weird spot because I'm not really an owner or a tech, right? I am an owner and a tech, and I really want to try to get inside that tech head a little bit, which I think helps me to see myself as the guy who's writing the flat rate tickets and kicking my own butt by writing them wrong, because I've done that many times. But watching all that unfold and then watching some of the really, I feel like smart diplomacy come from Lucas, and I would be the same way. If you have a problem with me, I want you to talk to me.
And if you wanted to talk about that in a public forum so that we could solve the issue on a large scale, let's do it. And I try to be that way. And I saw some of that coming from Lucas. I was like, dude. And I didn't see that coming from other sources. We have to be that way. We have to get to the bottom of the issue. It's killing everyone.
It's hurting the like when technicians are excited about being good technicians and going to training and racing go carts and having three days off and everyone's winning. And I think we have examples of guys here that are bringing their whole shop. And the only person that's really crying at that point is like the five customers that didn't get their car fixed that week and they'll be okay. There's a drop off box.
And not only that, if you made them aware exactly that you were going to be gone, shop was going to be closed. I don't know how many posts I saw on Facebook from my friends within the industry that there's their post saying, we are going to be closing the shop on Wednesday or Thursday, whatever, depending on how far they have to travel. Don't book, we're not going to be there. It's important. And they don't just say closing for holidays. They say, because I'm taking the group for a training exercise. The customer, I think, is like, I wanted to get in there and get that brake squeak looked at, or I wanted to get that clunk noise right. The fact that you are proud to say, I'm taking them to training, I think it's an energy pillow for the customer to swallow because they're like, wow, it really does take some dedication in this industry to get to the level of where they're at.
What they've been able to offer me as a service didn't come easy. None of us are born knowing how to do this.
No.
I have worked with a ton of techs and I've seen some people with some awesome skills, but I have never seen a Natural yet.
No.
Right? Definitely not a natural. I've seen some people that have that photographic memory. The people that have, they could do Rubik's cube puzzles and jigsaws and all that kind of stuff. They had that kind of ability.
Right?
But nobody was a natural. This stuff doesn't. You just won't walk up to it and it tells you how it works. Oh, no, we have to take it apart to see how it works. Right. So at the expense of when we're not doing it to the customer, we have to be training, right.
And I can think of just this past week two customers that did a fair amount of work on their vehicles. And some of these vehicles come in with so many issues that you do a DVI and you do all this stuff and on the first test drive there's still things wrong with it and it needs like a second pass through because it hasn't been worked on in like five years other than an oil change. And that happened on a couple of cars. And I told them, I said, I am leaving for training. And they said, okay, well, how about I just bring the car back next week when you get back? And we're not talking about major safety issues, we're talking about. And I was like, absolutely great. And they totally understand. They're like, we'll schedule it in next week.
And that kind of understanding from the customer too. Like you said, it's kind of hard to. Unless you're just a bad person, it's kind of hard to have a problem with that because they want us to be good at what we're doing. Going to training is how we get.
Going to say that. It would have to be a pretty irrational person if they were to say, that's BS, that you guys are gone when I need you there, right? I'm going to the competitor. You didn't lose anything. If that person can't see and you're being upfront with them, honest going, we're not sitting on a beach somewhere. We're in a classroom learning how to do what we need to learn better to service you. If that customer still gets jilted about that, my goodness, let them be somebody.
Else'S customer and you'll have more peace in your life because of it. That's the thing. I care about my customers and one bad customer will kind of throw you. It's like the review that Lucas shared on changing the industry a few weeks back. I haven't got one of those. This, I don't have my CRM up and running yet for the shop. And I don't ask the customers that I know are. I hardly ever have a bad customer, but occasionally you get one that's like ticked off about price and if you ask that customer for review, you're probably going to get a one star.
So you just don't ask them, right? Which I think is fine and fair because then again, if I get a one star review and it honestly just states that the price was too expensive, that's probably a good for me. But I've had customers say he definitely wasn't the cheapest, but the quality was good and stuff like that. And it's still a five star review because you can't argue with that quality. But when a customer is ticked about something or you feel like you've miscommunicated, that really grates on me because I know my reputation is pretty good and you don't want to tarnish that. But a customer that is just prone to that is better off somewhere else. That's the thing. There's customers that are prone to that. With everything.
It's like on one podcast recently, they were talking about the guy that had like 13 negative reviews for all the other businesses. Like, if you go in his profile and he has all the negative reviews, you're just not going to help him.
He's not going to be.
He's miserable with himself. If there was an option for him to leave himself a review, it would be one star, you know what I mean? He wakes up and looks in the mirror and says, I hate myself, whether or not he says it or not. But that's what he thinks. And at that point, I met him a little bit sorry for him because it's like there's times when, as a technician, especially where I just can't live with myself because. Especially not getting something fixed right. I bought a car this week that another shop owner that I know was involved in, and he asked me to help with a hybrid. And I still don't have the solution for it, but I bought it so that I can have the solution.
What a commitment that is, Elijah. It's just eating at you at a level that you just can't let it go.
And I know I can eventually get it fixed.
Oh, I believe you can.
It might take six months.
Yeah. Is it an intermittent thing you're chasing on it?
Okay, so what happened is the battery control module on a Ford plug in hybrid, right? And originally, when the first tech worked on it, he followed the Ford flow charts, which I don't blame him. The CMax energy is there was probably more than a few hundred made, but there wasn't many made. Like, you almost never see a plug in CMax in 2013.
Right?
So the data that's there, even in SI through Ford, is not very good.
Right?
So he followed those charts and we came to replacing that module, and they flashed it through Opus IVs, the drew tech remote. And then it threw other codes and led him to changing another module and blah, blah, blah. And by the time they called me, this was back when I used to do a little bit more mobile because I couldn't keep the shop busy.
Right.
And they called me and I went and worked on it. And it's a programming issue. All the modules talk can bus looks okay. It won't go into ready. And there's two modules that continuously say that they need to be programmed, like with the Ford ids on it. It'll program all the modules and say you need to program the transmission control module and one other module to complete the process. You hit program and it goes through a loop and comes back to that. And are those modules not taking programming for some reason? Do they need to be programmed on a bench? Did one module get the wrong configuration put in it while they were changing modules? Probably.
And it's got a gateway module, which makes it a little harder to look at the can bus. But I probably spent three, 4 hours, which I didn't charge for because I didn't solve it on that. And then the other tech didn't solve it. And part of how I've gotten into hybrids is by buying broken ones. And so to me, like an early Ford plug in hybrid will build a foundation for the maqui. There will be things on that that will be the same as the Maqui. Just like things on the Prius are going to be the same as the 2023 Prius prime or the 2011 Chevy Volt is basically a copy of the new Bolt, only it doesn't have an engine, but there's so much similarity. And you learn that architecture of that vehicle.
And I'm not saying they're copied exactly. So to me it's worth the financial risk. It's just like paying for training.
Exactly. I was just going to say that. Right? Yes. It's a pride thing to be able to get. I can't not know what's going to fix that car. I'm going to take it and eventually you're going to get to. Like you said, it could be six months, could be a year, Elijah.
Right.
Depending on what parts availability and so on and so forth. Right. We don't know what's happening right now with where it's.
Might have to use the EPROM class that I'm having right now to get it fixed. But the other thing that's really cool about this particular car is there's another shop owner in Michigan that's doing training at his shop every month. Pretty much. And he invites all the other guys from all the other shop. None of them ever come. If they ever listen to this, they should come. None of them ever come. I go, and to me it's like, great, because there's always something to be learned, even in the most basic of training classes, because there's a trainer guy there who knows everything about whatever platform he's teaching about.
And even if you don't learn anything from the content, you can go and ask him questions. So they're looking for problem cars for case studies for this next class that's coming up in November. And this is a perfect candidate. Like, I'll put it on a trailer and take it down there and we will train on it live and maybe we'll solve it. If not, it'll give me something to do on Saturdays.
But you give that group maybe way more exposure to a hybrid than they.
Exactly. And it's not like I feel like it's almost unfair to teach hybrids on a Prius. Maybe that's just because that's where my experience is. But the Prius is by far the easiest hybrid that I've ever worked on, right? So it's kind of like, I don't know, I guess I know the nuances of them, but I feel like the Ford and the Chevy of the same era are much harder.
Right?
Like the volt, it's one of those things, like if you sneeze the wrong way, a volt is broken down with reduced proportion and they won't charge and they won't this and they won't start. And it's just one thing after another. And by looking at the CMax, I'm kind of seeing the same thing with the Toyota. It's like if it doesn't start or doesn't stay running, it's like generally it's like a battery, a mass airflow sensor. Those go bad a lot. And they emulate a crank nose. Well, they emulate the engine running for like 2 seconds.
Okay.
And it's super confusing to your average mechanic because it cranks over at 1100 rpms, so it acts like it's running. And I had one recently where they ran the battery dead testing it, the high voltage battery. And there's no real good way to charge that.
Until you get the engine running again. Right.
And with that car, the battery was degraded anyway, so we ended up changing it. And the customer was pretty shocked. But I said, you got 3 volts of variance between your cells, like your battery shot. Anyway, put a battery in it and did the mass airflow and the car had been sitting for years, sent the car down the road. I mean, it needs some suspension and some stuff, brake work done. But the key piece of information was that on that particular car, mass airflow sensor will cause another start, and it will on a lot of cars. But apparently whoever check worked on it, tried to start it so many times, which is a lot of times that he ran that hybrid battery to zero. And I've never seen a hybrid battery at zero until I saw this car.
They read by percentage, it said like 1%. Usually they're like dead at like 25, right? I have no idea how it got that low. Probably some sitting involved, but there was lots of cranking involved for sure. Those kind of things. I feel like the CMAX is a better platform to learn hybrids on almost because the creases are everywhere and they're.
Just a lot more reliable.
They're a lot more reliable, and they're not prone to break. And the issues with them are kind of known. Like on the newer ones, it's just water pumps all the time. I mean, car goes into limp mode, throws the hybrid light. No other issues. It drives okay when it's cold. It's like classic water pump failure. They're still pumping water, they just don't work as well as they used to.
Electric water pump, and sometimes they stop pumping water. But a lot of times it's just a motor that's.
Yeah. So what do you see? What's the future for Elijah? In a year from now, when you come back to Aste, what are you going to be able to update me on? What are you going to be able to fill me in on?
I said at the beginning of 2023 that I wanted to have a shot by the end of the year. I think now that might have been ambitious, but I would certainly hope that by the end of 2024, or AST 2024, I would either be renting. That's the thing is, if you're profitable, renting a shop is not a big expense, right? So in some ways, I think that's more likely, because with the price of real estate the way it is, it's going to be hard to buy something. So that's where I'd like to be. As far as business goes. There's a lot of things I'd like to move ahead in otherwise, but just business wise, just getting to having a. I have this constant battle in my mind right now, like, who would I hire first when I get my building, I don't really care for being an advisor.
Right.
I'd rather be a tech. But you can't just hire anybody to be an advisor either, because if they don't know cars, they're going to end up having to ask you for everything anyway. An advisor almost has to have been a tech or taken advisor training.
I was just going to say. You've heard me say that conversation as I wish that more techs, as we get to that age, we think about doing it. The stereotype used to be, no way, they're too grouchy, they're too great, too jaded, they're not going to be able to do it. I think that as the industry improves.
Yes.
And some of us have maybe the last ten years of our time on the bench in the industry is our best ten. Right. We're all of a sudden, the attitude when we come to work is we're happy to come to work and we still age out and we hurt.
Yes.
But if all of a sudden I don't have that chip on my shoulder about what the industry did to me, I could stand there and be an advisor all day.
Yeah. There's an example, I think, of, of a guy, an advisor from a local shop in my area. He worked for one of my close buddy shop owners, and he's probably managed that office for three to five years. And recently, when they lost the tech and the demand for work went up, and this guy, bless his heart, he said to his boss, he's like, honestly, I want to go back in the back. His attitude is just right about the whole thing, and he's killing it as a tech in the new era with DVis. And his boss says his shelf is always full of parts. And the other techs that don't want to do the DVis are fighting the system. And they were like, where's my next car? And the funny thing is, he made such a good advisor and then he was like, I'm kind of getting bored doing this.
And he's a little older now, but he's like killing it in the back. And so multifaceted. I mean, great employee to have the buy in there is just 100%. But I was really inspired by that because I'm pretty close with that shop owner, so you see how things are going. And I was shocked almost, because, I mean, he was such a good advisor, such a good guy on the phone, and he's absolutely as good in the back. Super neat to watch that.
Lucky to have. Well, I want to thank you for coming on tonight. This has been a lot of fun. I'd never met you before until today. Till really, a few hours ago.
Yeah.
And I'm impressed. To hell with what you're doing with your story. Because what I love is the fact that at a young age, you decided, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for me. Right? And you didn't have that chip on your shoulder from working for somebody else and being treated that way. You come in with such a fresh perspective that this is a bonus that I got to meet you and to get to know this story because I didn't know it. You know what I mean? But it's so cool that I wish more come in like you and just see the pathway, which is just like, I don't have to be somebody's employee, right? I'm going to take that. And it's a hard road it is, of going right from being a technician and an owner at the same time.
But I think it's refreshing because you just have such a positive outlook about it, because you're not all jaded like, I was right. You're just like, I have to be good at fixing the car, but I know that I also have to be profitable fixing the car. There's a million of us that are good at fixing the car, but we don't have the other side. Right? And it's so awesome to see you that you have both of it. Right?
I'd say I have a lot to learn, but there's so many people that have come alongside to help me. Listening to your podcast, listening to Lucas and David, I mean, I have a texting thread, Facebook messenger thread with Lucas. And I've saved myself some awful situations just with even some one word answers. Sometimes you're in the middle of a workday, you need something. Now, you might send out a question to a couple people and you might get a couple of different answers, but you can pretty much discern that it's better than no answers. And I still do that a lot. So I'm really thankful to meet you, too, because it's really cool to see the traction of progress in the industry and to see a man like yourself that's getting behind a solution. There's groups online.
We all know where they are. It's just this and this about the owner and this and this and this and this. And it's like, especially as someone who stands in both of those places, I just want to see there be peace and to see the whole industry grow and ultimately to have happy customers, too, and safe vehicles. That's what we all want. Tech and owners, safe vehicles, happy customers, and then of course, profitability so we can have our families and whatever goes on.
I have friends all over. I have friends that are in that group.
Oh, yeah, me too.
I don't take sides. No, I mean, I'm in that group. I know where my alliance lies. Right. I know who has picked me up and given me this platform, but I know at the end of the day who I'm advocating for. I'm advocating for text in that group, text on that side of the line. Not that there's a line, but you know what I mean.
I know what you mean.
I'm advocating for them regardless. I still want to see it better for them than it already was for me. I don't care. Lucas is my person. Right. Lucas is my person that gave me this. They have their person that gives them a voice, who gives them motivation, who gives them guidance. I don't think less of them because of that.
Right. I'm still, at the end of the day, I'm doing this for all of us, not just one side of the line, and there isn't really a line, but you know what I mean.
I know what you mean. I think the mentality that there doesn't have to be a loser in order for there to be winners. And I know some people would say, oh, that's whatever. That's modern thinking. But in general, when it comes to this industry, I think that mentality is 100% correct. And I like what you're saying because even anyone who's willing to listen and learn, you can help. And this coming week, I have a couple of them, a mobile mechanic and another shop owner that I'm going to sit down and talk with. And I'm no coach, but I can share with them what I've learned.
And if they listen, it'll bring them into a place of understanding KPIs and stuff, and then they can grow from there. Just inviting them to the Asaw group and inviting them to changing the industry and helping them understand. And to me, that is a little bit that I can do too, in my area to bring the Industry up. So I'm encouraged by that from you because like you said, the people from the other group or whatever, they're not our enemies. No, they want the same thing at the end of the day. And realizing that is probably one of the most powerful realizations that anyone's had on the subject.
Yeah, that's how we get to where we get to the change. Division has always been there.
Yes.
We don't want Division anymore. We want a united front. Yes. Man, I appreciate you. I'm going to look for you next year. I mean, we'll talk before then, obviously. Yes, but I mean, please come back next year when we're both sitting here and I want to get a fill in from you next year. What have you done? How is it going? How does it look? Right? I want to know if you manage to get into a bigger facility, a.
Bigger building, I'll be sending you a message before next year.
There'll be nobody cheering louder than me, man.
Thank you for that.
I appreciate you. We'll talk to you again soon. Okay?
Thank you so much for having me.
You're very welcome. 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 partner in the ASA group and to the changing the industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing ten millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
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