Zach Cypert | Why Does Everyone Get So Upset Online?
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If they want to talk about, you know, what's expected of you. Well, did you give them an outline of their job duties when you hired them? Because if that wasn't in writing, then I'm sorry, but that your expectations aren't. Are nothing if you didn't give them that up front.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaden Mechanic podcast. I am just sitting here with a good friend of mine from L1 Diagnostics. Some people are maybe familiar. He's one of the other known to be Zachs. So, Mr. Zack Cipher, how are you bud?
Oh, doing pretty good today.
What's, what's your day to day like? Are you one of the lucky ones that's out.
You're doing mobile too, so. Not anymore. I was mobile for the first two years that I worked for L1. Right. Just out doing the daily run around. And when Kreider other Zach parted with us for a little bit, I ended up going back to the shop.
Right.
And then he came back. Now he's on the road so we kind of just traded places. Yeah.
Yeah. When he went to the world domination of Ottawa.
Yes.
Years.
Yeah.
Diesel.
Stroker's diesel. Yeah.
Right on. So what. Let's get your some of your background story. Like how did you. You guys, just before we started recording, you said it was kind of a neat like you're very blessed to be there. And a neat like you kind of said it was almost like fate. Let.
Yeah.
Explain that to me.
Well, I guess if we want to start from the beginning, I, I really didn't. Automotive wasn't like a. I wanted to jump into it kind of thing. I, I was going to I T school originally and I hated that the whole time. But I just trying to, you know, truck through it. Yeah. And while I was in IT school I worked at O'Reilly selling parts like you know, every other technician starts out, I guess. Yeah.
And I had a buddy that worked there that knew a guy that had a shop and a. I ended up working for that guy after, after work doing you know, whatever piddly stuff he had that he didn't want to do. And then that guy knew another guy that had a shop or was starting a shop who was friends with him because this guy worked at the GM dealer. A couple like shade tree type shops. And then I got to my first actual shop that I worked for and we were kind of a day to day maintenance slash performance shop. We did a lot of LS swap work and 7 swap type stuff.
But break down for Me what you define as like a shade tree shop. Like just like.
I guess I wouldn't say shade tree. I say that term because I still kind of do work like that at home, you know. But it. It was just some dude with a barn out back of his house doing work, you know, and he needed help and he worked at the dealer during the day. So we.
Okay.
Worked on stuff at his place while he was at work, and then he'd come home and work on stuff. And then it was just kind of an unorganized mess.
Right. Decent though.
It. Not really. It was. I think I was making like 10 bucks an hour, flat rate. Whatever. Whatever per job he wanted to pay me. And it was 1099, so it was, you know, just whatever. And then there wasn't a whole lot of work.
So it was just kind of hit and miss.
Right.
Obviously, because it's out the back of his house. It wasn't like it was a steady flow.
Seems funny to me though, that he'd have enough workload on that he would think somebody in.
Well, he. It was. I. I realized what it was, was he was taking the work in, but he really wasn't working on him. He was paying us really like nothing. Yeah. And then making money off of us basically is all he was doing. Which is granted that, you know, that that's kind of business.
You know, you don't own the business, you make money off of it. That's how it works.
But you think though, that him being a dealer tech. Right. During the daytime and then coming home and that was like he gotten to where he thought that that made sense. I don't, I don't.
Yeah, it was weird. I don't know. Yeah, he was more or less just a lube tech. I found out later he wasn't really a actual, you know, maintenance tech, just a oil change guy mostly.
Right. He couldn't really teach you a ton about.
No, not really. I didn't. What I learned, I. I learned a lot of my stuff, nut and bolt wise, if you will. Just tinkering on stuff from when I was a kid till now. I used to take stuff apart and never put it back together or just figure out how it works kind of thing, you know? Yeah, the. That kind of mindset. And then started out from there, went to the performance shop, if you will, and we did a lot of that.
We did a lot of car lot work at that shop. So we had a lot of those buy here, pay here places that just sent us a bunch of work.
Yeah.
And then we did a lot of engine swap stuff into old iron, you know, updated 5, 3, 4, 8 type stuff and you know, 70s, 50s, 60, 70s rides nice. And then I, I didn't really. I mean I learned a lot there. I did for sure. Not really from the owner or anybody working there other than one old man. I did work with an old guy named Glenn. I did learn a lot from Glenn. He probably will say he, he didn't teach me anything, but he did.
I learned some stuff from him. Yeah. And then I wanted to do some training because we didn't have anybody at the shop that really knew anything diag wise. And I was originally an I T. School student and I was really interested in, you know, the electronics and how everything works. And so I did like a lot of other guys do, you know Scanner Danner. Yeah. Pine Hollow watching Ivan and bought Scanner Danner's book, you know, go through it and apply what you're reading.
And my, I needed a scope so I had to go buy a scope because shop owner was like we don't need a scope. You know, he brought me like a, a handheld single channel Mac and like an old Mac that ran on D cell batteries like it was, it did things.
Yeah.
But it wasn't, it really wasn't useful. So I just, you know, started out, bought a 8 channel hand tech for whatever they went for at 100 bucks or whatever and. Right. Kind of taught myself from there. But I did a lot of ATG training so bought a lot of ATG books and then watch their webinars and they're another.
An avenue that doesn't get discussed enough unfortunately. Right. And I really.
Oh yeah, Yeah. I love ATG. I mean I've got like I don't know, 15, 20 other manuals back here. I'd keep all of my manuals. I've got like a bookcase of automotive manuals and so I kind of just had to figure it out because I didn't have anybody that knew anything about it. So it's kind of, you know, car came in, they're like you got to fix it. So just. And I've never been flat rate per se other than at the behind the house barn shop.
Right, right.
I was hourly. I. When I was going to school I decided I didn't want to do it anymore. And I started at the automotive program here in Okmulgee was just south of where I live. They have a state, it's Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology. So Osuit and they have some pretty in depth automotive programs. Several of them are branded programs so like Ford asset, Toyota T10 and Chrysler and all that. I went to their independent program per se.
It's called Pro Tech but it's a, is a two year program trimesters. So you're on for eight weeks, I think it was, and then you're off for like three or four and then back on. I got my associates in automotive for whatever that's worth. But did that had to learn some stuff. I convinced the shop owner at the, the last shop I was at to know pay me my 40 hours a week even though I was only at the shop 20. And I'm grateful for that. He did pay me for that. It's not like it was, you know, a completely crap hole of a shop, if you will.
It was, it was a decent shop. It was managed kind of poorly. And then I got stuck trying to run the dang thing for a year and a half while I, I was managing it, ordering parts, talking to customers, wrenching. I was basically like, I own the place but not getting paid for that. Right. It was an hourly gig. Not really, you know, no overtime or anything, just whatever. Mostly it was just salary.
Nobody ever clocked in. They just paid us 40 hours a week and we went home.
So when you were coming up, what can you remember? Like for instance, a. A specific car that taught you specific lesson with a specific.
Trying to think like, you know, man, all of them. There was, there was one that I remember specifically from that last shop that it really kicked my butt. It was. It was like a 12 or 13 equinox. I put a heater core in it, or not a heater core. I put a, an H vac box in it because something was. The doors were broken, the H vac box. I just bought a whole box and put it in.
And like any Chevy dash job, you know, it comes out piece by piece all the way down to the frame. And I put it back together and the radio wouldn't work. And I was like, ah, it's got touchscreen. Wouldn't light up, no lights, no nothing. Backup camera wouldn't work, anything like that. I spent like, man, I feel like it was like two weeks trying to figure out what was wrong with that stinking radio. And this was when I was like maybe a year and a half in. Okay.
Something like that. I think maybe two years. I still was super green. I trying to do diag on something like that with, you know, no prior knowledge. It was.
Right.
It was rough. I took the whole car back apart, dash and everything. Came out like three or four times trying to figure out what connector I missed, you know, what was going on. Whatever ended up being that there was, it was like an Audi, I think it was kind of like a Fakra style audio cable or whatever. Okay. Ended up pinching it between the, the dash frame and the firewall somehow. I don't even know how that cable reached it. Didn't make sense to me.
As far as diag goes, I guess it really wasn't much of a diag. It was a bunch of me chasing my tail. But that kind of got me really interested, more into it because I was like, what the world is this cable? Like, I don't know how to. It's not just a wire, you know, you can't just go checking it. And it was, it was more of a how does it work? Kind of thing. How do I figure this out?
Yeah.
And the whole time, you know, I didn't really have any help from anybody or the owner had his things he's got to do and none of the texts in the shop, they were. All the other techs were flat. Right. I was the only hourly guy. So everybody despised me anyway. Right. And so nobody, nobody wanted to really help because they weren't going to get paid for it. And I, I get that, you know, but they wouldn't.
That job that you were in the middle of anyway.
No, no, they didn't want it. Nobody wanted to touch that. If some kid come in here and took it apart and put it back together, now it doesn't work, man, I wouldn't want to touch it either now.
Yeah.
You know, doing, doing what we do. Half this stuff is. It's stinking nightmares. No, I mean, not really. It. It is in, in the moment sometimes, but when you're done, you're like, oh, that was, that was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, you know? Yeah. You always psych yourself out.
I still do that, man. All the time.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, God. Right?
Yeah.
Like you just shut up, get out of your own head.
Right?
And an hour later you're so close to the end, or you. The hour later, you already got it. You're like.
Yep, for sure. It's like, I don't know, sometimes I wonder how we figure out some of the stuff that we do. It's like, I don't. You know, most, most shops won't go into that kind of stuff and they just ship them to us.
Right.
And, and you know, it kind of makes sense per se, their, their workflow. If They've got, you know, some tech stuck on a car for three days. You know, they're not making any money on that guy. He's just burning time.
Yeah.
It's cheaper to just ship it over to us and pay the bill and have that guy making money the whole time. Which, which is generally what happens. That's why we get a lot of the cars, we do shops.
So what do you. A lot of it, like. Because I know, you know, the, the standard thing is everybody goes, oh, you know, how many other attacks are like, you know, how many times I go in and it's a misinfused.
Oh, yeah.
But I mean, it's not that. That's not every day for you guys, right?
Like, no, maybe. And I joke about it being like, you know, 80%. It's not. It's like, maybe. I want to say maybe a couple a week or a couple every two, three weeks. You know, it. It just depends on the month, really. And, and a lot of it kind of depends on the shop the car came from.
Right.
You know, if it comes from, you know, there's a couple shops I know. It's like, if it comes in from them, I'm like, well, we're, you know, we're going to check the basics here because, you know, they generally did something simple and with our customer base, you know, we service, you know, a thousand shops around Tulsa and surrounding areas, and we kind of have good relationships with most of them. And they're pretty good about telling us, you know, what they've done down to, you know, what they thought was wrong. You know, they like to explain everything like, oh, we thought it was this or whatever, but they'll. There'll be pretty detailed about it. And a lot of times you can do like a visual and just once do a once over on it. And then, oh, well, they left this ground loose or they put this ground over a painted bracket or something.
And so I was going to ask is that where a lot of this stuff happens is after a major component change that customers think of the call or. Because we always think it's like they bought it at an auction and they went to town on it and they couldn't get it and now they call you or is it like. Like, because I saw. I don't. You probably follow Sherwood and Royalty.
Yeah.
That video, right, where they're talking about it had been at the dealer. The dealer replaced an engine and.
Oh, that one. I just watched that one too.
Right. And I'm looking at that one. Okay. First, that's really embarrassing for the industry that, you know, the guy didn't catch that. It's. And it's something really simple. I don't want to ruin the surprise for everybody. It's something really simple and would have found it in probably half an hour for to just, like we said, step back.
But I can also understand from that standpoint of whatever I want to, in my heart of hearts feel that like that technician just kind of like went well, hey, you guys are going to pay me to put another engine in this thing, but you're not necessarily going to pay me to diagnose it. So I'm going to do the engine thing and then it finally winds up. I'm not excusing that, but I mean, you probably see scenarios like that all the time where we'd have just paid the technician, you know, a little bit more time to go and find the problem.
Right?
Probably could find it, you know, actually.
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean there, there's. It. I won't say that that has happened to us in, in the way that that went down, but we have cars come in, whether it's a customer or a shop and you know, we, we give them an around about starting point of what it's going to cost to diagnose the vehicle up front. Like you're, Every car that comes through gets a minimum of $400 approval up front. Now if it, it depends on what the issue is. Now if it comes into the shop and I'm looking at it, it's a dead, no calm problem. We're immediately making a phone call like, hey, sorry guys, this, you know, this is going to be more, more than what we initially told you and what we tell them on the phone or, or when they drop them off isn't necessarily what it's going to end up being.
It might be less the, you know, if it's just a simple me coming in with a test light and poking and prodding find some stuff. Usually that's about 300 is what we do. Right? But we have people come in and I got off topic a little bit. We have people come in, they get the, the upfront, you know, 400 minimum approval. And then they're like, oh, well, that's just to look at it like, well, I'm not just gonna walk outside and go, yep, there it is. You know, it just, you know, it's, it's there looking at it and they think that like everybody else, you know, with their diag charges per se, that we're just gonna hook up the. The big scan tool and, you know, pull the code and go, yep, you need a brain box, you know, and then they. But they see the price and they take it somewhere else.
They're like, well, I got a buddy that can go cheaper.
Cool.
You know, that's fine. And then they end up coming back. And that's generally what happens is a lot of these will come in, they'll kind of balk at the price. They'll leave, they'll come back after cheaper guy up the road, buddy, friend, whatever. Put, you know, who knows how many parts on the car.
Yeah.
And then, you know, it. I don't know, it just turns into a headache on most of those cars because they've already replaced all these parts with jump parts and.
Yeah. Put in a module that will not work or, you know, so on and so forth.
And then. Right. And now you're sifting through the weeds trying to figure out, you know, what was the main problem. Like, they just installed all these other crap parts. Is it, you know, am I chasing the problem now from one of these, or am I actually looking at the main issue that they came in with for originally? Yeah, but we don't see a lot of, like. Well, I don't know. I won't say a lot of. But.
But most of the cars that come to us are generally just, hey, it's been doing this for a long time and nobody can figure it out or whatever. We do get a percentage of them that just had major work done and now it has a problem.
Right.
But that. That amount of work is less than generally just the normal everyday stuff we do. And we do get some auction work too, like you're talking about, you know, and I wanted.
I want to think that when a shop. Certain interrupt. I want to think a lot of shop out there when they go in and do like a transmission replacement or an engine replacement or something. And then one week, one month, you know, two weeks, three weeks goes by, three months goes by, and the customer has this, you know, weird electrical problem. I want to think that a lot of shops don't immediately like, slam the door in their face and say, hey, it's been three months. Sorry. You know, I believe that most of them do tend to take like a. The opportunity to look at it.
I think where they might drop the ball, though, and I want to hope on, like Sherwood's example, is that, you know, they bring it in, but they don't pay the tech. And then. Or, you know, we're going back to the flat rate conversation. Right. Or, you know, what is it? Well, it's not even happening right now. How much time do I spend on that?
Right.
So like. Because that we can. For when you watch the video, you're going to see. It wasn't a completely all the time thing. It was a pretty relatively common thing to happen. But to necessarily catch the cause. God, I don't want to give it away, but it should. And people.
You know what I mean? It's one of those things. So it's like I always want to feel like it's not. People are slamming the door in the face of the customer going, sorry, we only did this. And there's no way that that can happen because you and I know that like the weirdest, wonkiest things that you can put an engine in and then the radio not work is a very real scenario. Right. You can touch something doing that.
That.
Yeah, it's absolutely.
Yeah. We. Most of the, like, we get a lot of referrals from other shops. Like they just want to wash their hands of it and then they give the customer our info and they make it to us. And a lot of those are, you know, they had this problem. They took it to the shop. Shop put, you know, they replaced all the things. They replaced the plugs, the coils, the.
Yeah, the plug wires. They, you know, they put an engine in it or whatever, you know, and they couldn't fix it. And so they come to us and then it, you know, sometimes it ends up being something simple.
Yeah.
And a lot of times, if it's a shop that I have a decent relationship with that I know won't be kind of crabby, if I call them, I'll just call them and let them know, like, hey, man, you know, this is what was wrong with it. And we kind of. I like to keep them in the loop because if it was me and the car left.
Yeah.
And I don't know what's wrong with it. I like to find out, you know, I don't.
Sure.
I don't like being in the dark sometime. Most of the time. There's. There's times where the car comes in. I just. I just don't really care about this car. I want this thing to go away and that happens. But, you know, they got.
We got to fix them, you know, Right. If they're paying customer, they got to be fixed. They want their car fixed. And.
Yeah. Now we were talking earlier about our friend Jeff and you know, obviously Zach and Liz, how much of these. Some of the more Difficult ones. Is it a team effort? Like, are you guys gonna. Can you talk with each other and kind of say, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?
Like, right, so we. So we actually have a. Not like an internal L1 chat, but we do have a Facebook group chat of all the L1 guys and then a bunch of our industry profession, our peers, the Midwest technicians, group chat. And if we get something weird that we're struggling on, we kind of just throw it up there. And then the other 15 guys in the group kind of just, you know, peer in on it and tell us what they may have experience with or something to check that we didn't think too, because we have those blinders on, you know, for sure. And. But that does happen a lot. Not like, not.
I don't know, it's maybe. Maybe a couple cars a week that I get one in that. I'm like, man, I don't. I don't really know what to do past what I've already done. Because, you know, we. We don't know everything. There's.
There's not.
There's not some knowledge base of just everything that everybody knows that you can just plug in and download, you know. Yeah. But yeah, that. That does happen, and it's great that, that, that it works that way because otherwise I don't know how some of these cars would get fixed.
I think it's a tool that more shops need to. Because where I just started working at, the two gentlemen that I work with both came from another shop and they had that kind of chat all the time, which was between advisors and everything else. I'm not so sure that I'd be the best person to be in a chat with on somebody like them. Right. Because I'm not. Could be petty enough that I would like, you know, shut the hell. Like.
Right.
Why is the advisor in the chat when it's the technicians? You know? You know what I mean? But I think it's something that. I think more people need to think about going forward, using that chat function in. In tackling any issue within the shop day to day. Because I think it's just. It's such an efficient, effective.
Yeah.
Manner that instead of going out when somebody's got a phone to their ear and going, hey, what up, blah?
Right.
Like, do that. It's. And it's documented, it's recorded, you know, I mean, you can say, hey, I did mention this.
We. We. I like it for the guys on the road. Jeff and others at Kreider are Both on the road and I mean, you're out there on the road, you, you're kind of in the mindset of I got to get this done because I've got five other cars I got to go do and drive time and, you know, takes a lot of time doing mobile. And if you get stuck on one, you either have to say, hey, you know, I've got to come back, we've got to reschedule, or if someone in the group, you know, has seen this issue before, which, you know, or has a better testing method for some problem and you can find that, you know, within a couple minutes by posting that up. It's, it's, I mean, it's super valuable that way. You can just, you know, get done with the job and move on to the next one. And because a lot of these shops, they don't, they don't want you to reschedule, they really want you to fix it when you're there and we show up to look at the car, you know, they already know what they're looking at for, you know, service call and everything.
And if we have to come back out, I mean, it's just understood that if we have to come back out, you know, it's, it's not going to be the same price, it's going to be more. And in that role, it, you know, it's kind of hard to have that discussion because they're like, well, you couldn't figure it out. I'm like, well, you couldn't either. And I'm, I'm here as a consultant and that's, you know, granted, yes, we're diagnosing the car, but technically, if you, you know, if you couldn't fix it and we're struggling with it or there's something going on there, then it's just, that's just what it is. It, you know, it takes time. We gotta drive back out here. It's gas, it's, you know. Yeah, she gets stuck in traffic, you know, for Jeff, Jeff's in, he does like four hours of drive time a day, maybe more sometimes because the traffic in his area is outrageous.
Yeah, that's what he always says to me.
Yeah, yeah. He'll be stuck in traffic for 45 minutes, sending us voice messages that are half hour long. You got to sit there and put them on, you know, ultra speed so you can listen to the whole thing.
But he tells me lots of times, like he'll share with me, you know, he'll, in one of his rants, he'll be like, you wouldn't believe the shop that I just went into.
Like, do you.
Does it run the whole gamut or can you say, you know, Zach, that there's a particularly type of shop that you go to a lot?
Man, it just depends. We've got, we've got both ends of the spectrum. Like, we've got some shops that are just like the shops. The, the shop is clean. Like there's this transmission shop that we service in Tulsa that their floors are immaculate, the walls are clean. The owner put signs on the walls. This. They, they just, they literally say, your hands are dirty.
Do not touch the walls. And he just. His dude, his shop is, is super clean. He's got, you know, he's got good techs working there. They're all, there's, there's like one dyag guy or two diag guys that work there. The rest of them are all RNR techs and they've got a couple guys that look at cars and then the rest of them just fix them. And you know, they've got all the state of the art equipment, keep the, you know, they got a floor scrubber and they've got all these hot flush machines and all kinds of equipment to just do the best that they can. And then we've got shops that are just.
I had one shop that I swore the door, the floor was dirt because like the, the, the floor literally looked like I just walked into the horse barn.
Yeah.
Like I was, I was amazed. And then that shop sold and I came back in after it sold and the floor was concrete and I was like, wow. So confused. Yeah, because there was actually concrete under the dirt and there's a spectrum. There's some that you just don't want to work on cars in the shop and they're just. I just. When I was mobile there were some shops I just refused to touch a car in their shop. Like you got to put it in the parking lot, you know.
Right.
I'm not working in that mess.
And any like the dealers call you guys?
Yeah, yeah, we quite, quite often. Yeah, we get. I'm not mobile anymore so I don't get to see all the mobile calls, but we do get quite a few dealer calls. Not a lot of them are diag work. Some of them are. Most of them are programming or ados cows.
Right.
Because a lot of the dealers do their used car side, you know, and so they'll call us out to come update a module on a, a line that they don't service and, and then we do A lot of Ados cows for specifically a couple dealerships that do a lot of glass work and so we get a lot of Ados cows for them. But it's, you know, Ados again is pretty particular. So it's kind of. You got to pick and choose what you can do there. Because I like my floors to be level. I like everything to be. Everything to be perfect. Which granted a lot of times, you know, they have to be.
Yeah. In, in 99.9 of the case, you know, they're. If you have an issue mobile, it's usually your environment. We do have some issues that aren't environmental problems. They're, you know, the car's broke or we show up and there's a module not plugged in or whatever.
Yeah.
But yeah, we do get a lot of dealerships that call us.
So when you're, when you're at the shop here, everything's brought to you. Right. Like you guys. How do I ask that? So there's a lot of stuff that are local. Local and they just, they drop it off and expect it back. And well, so you see like Ivan for instance, like stuff will get told in from out of state.
Yeah, yeah, we, we've have, we've had some stuff come in from out of state, some stuff from Kansas and they'll come down here. But for the most part it is, it's mostly local stuff. We do some, some module work. So we have some stuff mailed in for module work. But primarily the car drop off stuff is local.
Yeah.
At least local to Oklahoma. I mean we get some stuff from our two hours away. They'll tow them in. But that's not super often. It's, you know, maybe once every three, four months we'll get one towed from, you know, two, three hours away.
Like Jeff always says. He talks about like there's so many shops in Oklahoma and yet most of them don't seem to be good places to work. You know what I mean? Which is he says is really adding to this kind of this, this enterprise that, that Keith has been able to.
Right.
Do you think what's, is there a fundamental reason for why that is? Like, is it just an attitude thing or.
Honestly, I don't really know. I'm not, I. Most of the shops, I don't know. There's a lot of text that we see around when we, when I was mobile that would bounce shops a lot. So it's kind of hard to say if it's actually the shop or the tech. Right. But most of the texts that I see when I was mobile anyway, weren't, you know, they weren't. I don't know, I, I compare myself to other diet guys, but there's great R R guys.
There's wonderful R R guys. And I don't want to say that they weren't great techs because they were probably phenomenal R R guys. But I'm not sure on how to answer that question really, because they're. There's a lot of shops that I wouldn't work at. A lot of it is just some of those shops are just management, if you will.
Okay. That's kind of what I was getting at. Right.
Yeah.
It seems to be like the trend is nobody will pay except for a flat rate. Right. And there's. I know we've talked about it. There's just me as a technician. I'll never go back to that. For, for any month in the world, you could pay me a hundred dollars. And I still believe that it's, it's counterintuitive to where this industry should go and counterintuitive to my mental well being.
I could make more money and I would still that way of making me feel like right. There was a TikTok. So he's how many days into the new year and he only has 14 hours logged and he's at a dealer and it's like he just says, you know, and of course he's mad because it's going back to what we were talking about. He's mad because customers are bringing in with these complaints that they can't, you know, don't always happen and can't do kind of stuff. And I'm like, okay, I can sympathize with that frustration that you want to lash into the customers. I've been there. But here's the reality. It's the process of where you work in the policy that says that they're just, you're going down these rabbit holes or, you know, you're donating your time unpaid because you're choosing to put your foot down and say, I start in 2025.
I'm not going to. And watch what happens now. You might get kicked, you know, right at the door. But I mean, imagine, Zach, if like everybody put their hand up on the first day of 2025 at the shop and said, and you're flat rate and said, no, I'm not doing that for that. Yeah, what are they gonna do? Fire all of us? Like we know. And you. There's one tech, you know, one shop out of 10 that the reality is they're not right. And that's how process changes, that's how things start to change is it takes a unified, you know, collective.
No, I accept that. You know.
Right.
My, my heart breaks for those guys. I'll never do it again.
I know exactly where they come from. Yeah. If I had to leave L1, I mean I'd go work at union job somewhere or something. Like I'd go work for the American Airlines. They're always hiring over here. You know, I got a buddy that works American American and he, you know, they're. It's insane the stuff that they put up with and get paid for what they're doing.
Right.
You know, and all he works on is ground equipment. He don't even work on cars anymore. He just works on tugs and stuff. Yeah. And they're all diesel, mechanical injected, whatever. You know, it's all nut and bolt. You don't really. I mean, yeah, there's some diagnosed but electronic shut off solenoid or something like the linkage doesn't go forward far enough to shut the engine off or golf carts.
The metering valve isn't opening far enough. Like I, you know, I don't know. Yeah, there's. I don't know. I, I wouldn't work flat rate ever. I mean I've never been flat rate. I've worked with a lot of guys that were and just listen to and complain. I mean it, that's just the, the gist of the whole problem I think is nobody's, nobody's really happy flat rate.
I mean I know some guys that are and it's because they're just turning burning hours and it's because they're just fed constantly and that, that can work that way. If you are literally just like Zeb does, sets the car in front of you, you work on the car, the car, the next one shows up next to it, you work on that car. They clean up from your last one. You don't have to clean the shop, you just work on the car.
Yeah.
And you're not, you know, you're not doing anything else but turning wrench.
Yeah.
And that would work. And it does obviously because, you know, we've seen the success that Zeb has.
Yeah. My, my biggest is like when we were talking when I was talking with Cecil and Cecil was kept, you know, talking and it merely made some sense. Too many shops think that the, the flat rate thing works but they don't realize how many bricks they're putting up to really make it work, you know. Like, it works a little bit, but it works at the expense of the tech.
Right.
And all of a sudden, if you start to see somebo Zeb or. Or other people talk about, oh, ha, I make it work because I remove all these bricks. I do so much more that other shops would expect the tech to do. I do it right. The tech is only putting tools on the car or truck. That's it. You know?
You know, and if you look at it from the top view down the. The techs are the ones turning all the money in there. You know, if those techs are not turning a wrench, they're not really making any money for anybody.
Yeah.
So if you can keep them fed, then great. You know, it works. And then they've got a bunch of work and they're happy. And if. But if they're, you know, like. Was it the complaint that me and Jeff were seeing on the. I think it was the hangout page the other day. Somebody was talking about their techs not cleaning the shop or whatever.
Yeah. And I'm like, man, I mean, I get it. I'm hourly. I clean the shop. You know, that's my job. I clean the shop. I'm paid to clean the shop, you know, and they. The, you know, I can't remember this, the actual wording, but.
Well, you know, the flat rate covers them cleaning their. Their shop or whatever. I'm like, I don't. Where does that breakdown at in. In the book? Like, all data doesn't have a line item for clean shop at three tenths or whatever.
Exactly. And that, that's. That's. I mean, it's the same thing saying, like, you know, they used to laugh, they used to get mad at us when the. At the dealership, when we do all these CVT's, right?
Yeah.
Literally put it back in the crate and shove it to the end of your bay. And that's where it stood.
Right.
And they said, no, you got to drag that. And I don't have to drag that down to. That's not in the book, you know. Well, it's just expected it. Okay, well, that guy over there, he's got three of them piled up, and you're still him. Another job to pull in.
Right.
I think we're all gonna try and do that. Right. And then, of course, you got a big mess and everything else. It. The whole. That conversation just made me. Just made me laugh. Well, if you're doing it right, you can hire somebody then to just go behind them and clean them up.
And then that's the thing goes, why should I have to? Because you've decided to pay them this way. That's why you have to. It's that in a nutshell. I hate it. You know.
Yeah, they're not going to lose money either way as long as they're, you know, they're billing what they need to be profitable. Yeah. If, you know, if their labor rate is 65 an hour, then yeah, I see, I see why they're complaining about it. You know, and I don't, I don't know. I, these, they like to complain about that, but, you know, doesn't make any sense. You know, I, I don't get it. But you know, I, I also, we also work in a little bit of a different shop environment, but granted, you know, I see that. And if they want to talk about, you know, what's expected of you, well, did you give them an outline of their job duties when you hired them? Because if that wasn't in writing, then I'm sorry, but that your expectations aren't, are nothing if you didn't give them that up front.
Like I at L1, we all have, we all have. And I got them laminated because I wanted to make sure that, you know, it's, it's, you know, available if I need to double check things. But we have our outline job duties. You know, like this is, this is my position. This is what my job entails. Granted, you know, we all, there's, you know, it's, it's me and Josh in the shop and we just do whatever we got to do to keep the shop clean and cars rolling in and out. But we've got everything in writing. Like, I, I need to know what you want of me if I'm going to work here and, and if you have expectations that I don't know about, you know, that's gonna have to be talked about.
So you need to sit down and, and discuss this kind of stuff. And a lot of all these guys just hired higher techs all willy nilly like, you know, they either call the last shop they were at or they call the shop that the tech put down as a reference. That wasn't the last shop because it didn't work out well over there.
That's right.
And, and, or they don't call at all. They just hire them and then that's it. Like you're making, this is what you're making. Here's your flat, your flagsheet book. You fill this out, you turn it in at the end of the week and that's what you get paid.
Yeah.
And nobody ever sits down and talks about, you know, expected duties in. In. Right. You know.
Yeah.
You're a technician. What's expected of you? Well, if that, you know, if that was expected of me, it'd be nice to know.
Right. We expect you here 15 minutes before, you know, 8:00.
Right.
Okay. That's not written down. How's that working out for pay? Right. Like, and everybody goes, what? That's such a. 15 minutes a day times how many days at the end of the week that you're unpaid? We can, any tech out there can do their math. That's over an hour right there. An hour paying 35 bucks. That's 35 I gave you.
Like, let's just keep it real, you know, like, how does that work out to get paid? Like, and everybody wants to just sit there and go, it's because I said so. Well, I can tell you that that's a young kid. It never worked for me. I was just too, too mouthy or whatever. Where it's like, okay, give me another reason than that one. Because it doesn't work. We're renting impasse here. Let's talk about it.
A suggestion that doesn't have. Then, you know, anything written down is, let's have the referendum. Then that, that puts it into processes to be what's expected. Otherwise, it's just a suggestion to me. It's not an expectation.
Right, Right.
You can say you can expect it, but really you're only suggesting it to me until we make it policy.
Yeah. How life works and yeah, people a lot, you know, that's, that's the complaint is, you know, they get these posts on the, on the pages and well, it's. What are your policies? You know, nobody has policies. They just run a shop because that's all they've ever known. You just run the shop like, well, this isn't 1950 anymore. Everybody's, you know. Yeah, we're not, we're not working on points and condensers and.
Right. And I'm not, There's a lot of.
Processes that need to be discussed.
I'm not a dirty tech. Like, I try to keep pretty clean and all that kind of stuff. Like, I'm not one of those guys that, like, you know, will open up the drain and not have the drain bucket there. I can tell you that. I worked with guys that did.
Right.
Because they just were like, so fast. It's like they didn't care that went on the floor. It was, it was the new stuff was sold. Turn the water on, you know, done one less thing they had to do.
Yeah.
So I'm not. I'm not trying to say, but so everybody that goes, oh, they're all pigs. I could show you, you know, some pigs. And it's like I challenged that guy when he said, oh, the guy that turns the most hours is also the cleanest in the shop. Okay.
Yeah. I got a hard time believing that, to be honest.
I do too. Right. Because if you're gonna be like, I don't. I try to make it a habit. Is like before, you know, I pull the car out. Like, I get the, the rotor boxes out of the way, I get the, the trash off the floor. We don't have a lot of room.
Right.
But I mean, you know, if. If they're sitting there in front of my toolbox till the end of day and that's driving somebody crazy, pick them up. You know, I got another car to bring in. Like, yeah, just. Yeah, time. So we all do it. But this idea that it's like if you tried to tell me before you drink that cup of coffee, Mr. Flat Rate Guy, and I have no word for you, pick that up.
I'd be like, I'll pick it up when I feel like picking it up.
Yeah. I don't blame you. I'm gonna be honest. I'm not the cleanest tech. You know, I. I have my moments.
Yeah.
You know, I just pick all my tools up and I sit them on the cart and we'll just go one by one and clean them up, put them away when I'm done. But, you know, but I get paid to, to clean the shop now, so just, you know, that's. I don't. I don't get the, the argument. It's flat rates expected.
What's some of the other things that you see when we talk about the shop owners and they seem to be hitting impasses with their technicians, like, not just the clean cleanness, but you and I kind of joke back and forth about some of the stuff that gets posted, and Jeff is fantastic with her.
Oh, man, Jeff's great.
What are some of the other topics of interest that you see? Like, where is it? How do we meld some of these topics, conversations to where they're. They're resolved?
That's a good question.
Like, punctuality is another one that I see.
Yeah, they have a problem with that. But if they're flat rate, I'm sorry, I just, you know, show up when the doors are open. You know, I don't, I don't see the argument there. I'm, I get it. Be there when work is there and the doors are open and be ready to work. You know, if they're a couple minutes late, I'm sorry, whatever. They're, you know, they're not flagging an hour for the six minutes they were later. That's right.
But yeah, I don't know. I, I don't own the shop, so I don't, I don't have a problem with punctuality really as a major issue. Unless you're like, man, half hour, hour late every day, then we'll have a discussion. But you know, 10 minutes here and there. I'm not, I don't, I don't get, I don't, I don't know how to fix that. I don't see their arguments. There's no way for me to say anything that's going to change anybody's mind on that one.
You wear earbuds.
I, I don't. Mostly because me and Josh listen to the same music. Okay. There are no customers in our shop and our doors are shut all the time and it's air conditioned. So I just, we turn the radio on and that's where it's at. If the radio is so loud that you can't hear me from hollering at you from across the shop, you know, it will turn it down. But Josh, he likes his earbuds. Even if, you know, if he's, if he's pull an engine apart and like trying to put everything back together and concentrate, he'll put his earbuds in and.
Right.
And work. Generally it's one, I don't sometimes two. But he's, he's got these open air buds that, you know, you can, you can hear the surroundings and if I just, I can say his name and he'll hear me.
Yeah. See, I found the last place I worked. And again, I'm not like where I walk in and it's immediately like we're going to listen to what I want to listen to because otherwise, you know, like, I don't come in the old man and go, it's, you know, two types of music, Western and that's it. Right, right. The young generation seems to be where they can have some really loud music going on and they can still function well and it starts to become a real distraction and then I have to like, then I have to have that conversation where it's like, okay, your music at that volume is really starting to make it hard for me to concentrate on what I'm trying to look at on this car. Can. Can we come to an impasse or something about. Can we turn that down? Have I threatened to smash speakers before? Yep.
Because warnings that, like, your music sucks. Whatever's coming over the lyrics suck the beat sucks, whatever. And I think you should share it with no one and keep it.
That happens.
I had that conversation, right. And it's like, I'm not trying to be the heavy, but I was just listening, watching that conversation. It's like, I don't want to work where there's no music and only shot noise.
Yeah.
But I mean, I want to be. If we can't get to a. You like classic rock and you like country and western and you like, you know, gangster rap, we're going to have to probably look at an earbud policy, because I think at the end of the day, everybody's got to be productive.
Yeah.
And getting along, you know. Is it a safety thing? It can be, you know, for sure.
Yeah. I think it depends on the shop. If you're doing, like, a lot of heavy line or something and someone's lifted an engine and, you know, with sketchy work ethic, if you will, you know, that might be a problem. But I don't know. We. We don't. In our shop, it's. It's never been.
It's never been an issue. Safety wise. We don't do enough of any work that would put you in a position that would be unsafe. Having earbuds in. I don't.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
That. That conversation that popped up, how the guy crushed something when he was lifting an engine job. Both earbuds and people trying to holler at him. He's not paying attention anyway, you know.
Yeah, I get it. If you're, like, pulling. Putting engines in transmission, something like that, you might. You might want to take them out, be a little more attentive. But, you know, I. I don't know. That's. That's just me, I guess.
A lot of these. A lot of these shops, I see the. The owners complaining. They're just. They don't want a period and. And some of them don't even want music. Yeah. They want the radio on.
I'm like, you must be a peach to work for. I don't know. I don't know how those morning meetings go, but that'd be. That'd be an interesting one.
It'd be nice to know, like, I should. Dave's shop on Tik Tok Wonder what his policy would be on music. So when you, when we talk about the online thing, are there some, you know, because he's been pretty popular as of late. What's some of the online stuff that you, you look at and you really enjoy and then one of the other ones you kind of watch and you're like, oh, like that just makes me.
Really, man, I'm a cynic. So I try not to watch a lot of that stuff. I, I watched Tried and True, man. I got Scanner Danner, I got Eric Hope, South Main Auto, and I got Ivan and I watched those three. If I'm gonna watch anything at all, I don't, I, you know, I, I do watch some stuff, but like the Tick Tock stuff, man, I, I, there's so much like shade being thrown around that I'm not even gonna put myself in there because it, it just, I make mistakes like everybody else and if I go calling somebody out on it, you know, they're gonna find something that I did wrong and, and you know, drag me down or whatever. So I just, I don't, you know, you know, but they're, I don't know, per se. A lot of the online stuff that I wouldn't agree with, I don't, I don't know because I just don't watch them.
And that's the thing, we get into that conversation about what's actually misinformation, you know, like, I mean, there's certain things.
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of misinformation that goes around and I don't think that, I don't think that a lot of it is like, with malice intent. I think a lot of it is just ignorance. Like they, and they, and a lot of those guys that, you know, they may say something that's wrong or that we disagree with, but a lot of them, they think like that because that's how they were taught and they looked up to somebody that taught them how to do it that way or that this was, you know, how things worked or whatever and they never actually got set down and explained to them how, you know, that's, that's not correct or whatever.
Yeah.
And so unless you're just blatantly out there trying to, you know, spread some misinformation on purpose or, you know, trying to drag somebody through the mud over something like that, then, you know, there might be, there might be some issues with that. I may make a comment or two, but I don't, again though, I don't, I don't post on the online videos or stuff, other than on my Facebook. So I don't. Yeah, I'm not gonna put myself out there for someone to try and drag me down through that crap because I made mistakes too, you know, and that's.
Like, we have to be very careful because, I mean, like, when I keep thinking of, like, what Keith is, some of the comments that are popping over that, that, you know, airbag one as an example.
Yeah.
Also some of the Nasta stuff, like, what do you think about that? The Nastif thing?
I'm gonna be honest, I don't really have a problem with it. I know that there is a subset of people that, that disagree with it and they're entitled to an opinion, and that's cool. I get it. We use OEM tooling for everything. So, I mean, I, I don't really have a problem with it because I don't have issues with that stuff. If I have an issue trying to program something, it's because the servers down at for TLC or. Yeah. Or Ford did a massive update and now I have my hard drive's nuked and I've got to send it over to Keith to get him to fix it.
But I know there's a lot of opinions back and forth on it. I won't dig too deep into that because, you know, the cost is prohibitive.
Right. For a lot of people to say, I, you know, well, I just do it with oe. Well, oh, he's really expensive to be able to get out there and say, oh, I can do anything and everything, because, you know, yeah, it can be.
And I get that. Granted, I don't, I don't pay for any of that. And we bill enough for what we do that it pays for itself.
I think that's the main thing that people.
I, I think a lot of it is people think that their consumer won't pay to have that job done because of the cost of it. I'm like, well, have you actually sat down and quantified how much it costs or how many jobs you have to do? Like, if you're, if you're at a point where it's too expensive to program a Chevrolet, then you don't do enough Chevrolet to make it worth it in the beginning. Like, I don't, you know, but you're, you're a business. If they, if they don't want to pay it, then I'm sorry, you're not my customer. And that's just the way I see it. Like, I, I. So I diag pretty Much everything that comes through the shop. I, I do feed diags to Josh because I need him to, to be learning constantly like everybody else.
And he primarily does our R R work but you know, we gotta, gotta keep him learning. And I write all the tickets and if I write a ticket up for $6,000 worth of work, you know, I, it's because I meticulously went over the car and I need $6,000 worth of work.
Right.
I get it that your budget doesn't fit that and that's cool. But you know, I can't not tell you what's wrong with your car. But a lot of these folks, if, you know it's a budget thing, I think and nobody's billing enough to make it worth what it costs to do it, you know, I don't, I don't.
Think a lot of people realize you guys just don't like, only say like you'll do, you'll touch cars and check them out and sell the other work that it needs. Right. You're not just, you know, if it's not a broken wire or a diag, we don't do it. You guys do everything at that.
Yeah, we do, we do everything. We've got tire machines like, you know, we, you know, we, we do everything that everybody else does. We are a little more meticulous with it. And if there's an OEM replacement part available, that's all we will install. And that's where a lot of our customer base gets upset because they want to pay for the, they don't want to pay for the OEM part. But we, we sell a lot of work. You know, just between the two of us, we, we do quite a bit of mechanical work here at the shop. But a lot of it is, you know, I, I put this module in my car.
I need it programmed. Cool. You know, if it's a, if it's a car from another shop, I don't do inspections on them.
Right.
I only do inspections on them if they're a customer. Like a walk in or referral.
Right.
And even at that, if it's a customer that, I mean you can kind of fill out your customers, you know that they're not gonna, they don't want you to work on their car. They just want you to do the program, the module they installed. Yeah. I'm not going to do an inspection on that car because they're not a customer. They're just, they're just here for the programming and then they're going to bounce. Yeah. And you Know it. But yeah, we, we do.
We write up a lot. Most of the cars come through. I mean, they get brought up pretty hard and it's not for stuff that they don't need. It's, it's, it's all, and it's all maintenance related stuff. I do a lot of mileage based maintenance write ups without knowing what their history is on their car because they're a new customer or their referral. It's kind of hard to sell some of that stuff because like, oh, well, I already had that done. Like, okay, cool. You know, I didn't know that, but that's cool.
You don't have to, you know, you don't have to get your car repaired. With us, we'll, we'll do it if you want to, but.
And I, I find that that's such a fear thing that people. And it's like, I even talked to advisors and it's like they don't want to sell this and they want to sell that in case the customer said, oh, I already had it done.
Right.
Like, let's be real, some of these, you know, transmission fluids, right. Just to get a sample is a bit of a work. Right. So if I don't see anything wrong with saying to the customer, hey, you got a hundred thousand miles on it. Like, you should probably think about changing transmission fluid. If they say, oh, thanks mister, but I've already had it done. Yeah, I don't have a problem. Like, I, I can't think it's all that difficult to say.
Okay, sorry. We're just letting you know based on mileage. You know, we, truthfully, we, you know, it's. Yours is difficult to check. It doesn't have a dipstick. There's. We're just letting you know based on mileage. It's something you should do.
We're not trying to rip you off. You know, people, people just need to be a little bit more forthcoming with saying those exact words. Yeah.
You know, I think customers have it so ingrained. I don't know where it started or where this began, but I think a lot of customers still think that everybody is just trying to write their car up for every little thing because, you know, we're shop and we're there to rip them off. And I, I get that not every shop is, is intent to take your money, you know, just for stuff you don't need. And, and a lot of the stuff that gets reared up is rode up. Like for me, you know, based on mileage, you know, like you're talking about transmission fluid stuff, I write up Most, most newer six speeds and up. I'll write them up at 50k for train service.
Sure.
You know, 40, 50k. And if, if they haven't brought it in, if we catch them at that, you know, great. If they're, if they're higher, I get kind of, kind of iffy with them because, you know, floating clutch material in your fluid and stuff can keep things alive even though they're already damaged and yeah, for sure. Keeps us, you know, the whole. Back in the day. Don't ever service your transmission because it'll, it'll go out and like. Well, it was already done for. It just, it just had some, you know, particulate matter in it keeping it alive.
But yeah, we write up, we write up everything based on, on mileage intervals and obviously visual inspection is a lot of it. You know, we, we get a lot of work from, or a lot of referrals from other shops that have had work done and either they weren't inspected real well or the work that was done was subpar or whatever. I'll, I'll write it up again for the same job. I don't care. Yeah, you know, if, if I, if I can see it and there's something wrong with the work that was done, then it's, you know, it's going to get rode up and. But we do pictures of everything. We, we kind of do a DVI process and, and the, so basically the car comes in, I, I do the inspections and the diag work and then sell the jobs or don't sell the jobs or whatever and then ship it to Josh. And if it's programming or something, if I'm not working on something else, I'll do the programming events just so he can continue on doing his mechanical work.
Josh. Now Josh was mobile with us for a while, so everything that I know, he's right. He's still learning diag stuff. He, you know, he's, he didn't get a lot of experience doing diet work at the shop he came from and so trying to, I guess not trying to get him filled in. He was a classmate of mine. Josh is very, very smart. He knows everything that I know. He just.
The hands on part of it is right still. He needs to get some more of the diag hands on. Yeah, he's, he's, you know, very intelligent and so we just write them all up and then if they buy it, they buy it. If they don't, they don't. I'm not, you know, it doesn't upset me. It. I guess. I don't know.
It's because I'm hourly.
No, I gotta ask. Yeah, get a customer and they bring you, like. So you get one that comes in and then it says, you know, install this module. And you go through in the process and it's like, you're like, I can't, you know, do this module. It's not.
Right. Whatever. Right.
Does that go? What's the sequence?
Like you call. We won't install anything unless we provide it. So they'll, they'll come in, they'll drive the car to us. And I'm like, you know, you're going to have to put that in for. We'll program it and they'll go out in the parking lot and disable the car because they want a module program that. That will keep them from starting or whatever. And so they'll. They'll put their modules in, we'll program them.
If there's a. If there's an issue with it, I just stop and then I'll write it up for diagnosis.
Right.
Well, testing. And it's not diagnosis. That's autozone. We do. We do testing and analysis. Right. So right. Up for testing.
Analysis. You know, again, you know, 400 minimum, depending on what it is. If it's a comm issue, it depends on what it is. I'll write them up for a little more. If they're a communication problem, sometimes we'll do a 600 minimum for that. But it just depends. Depends on the scenario and what the car is and what the problem is.
Right.
It's a single module. Yeah, it's fine. We'll figure it out. But if it's more, if it's more than one module, it's generally, you know, something's wrong with the car. Not just that. And so it'll be. It'll be more. But yeah, we, we just write it up for testing and then it depends on who's free.
I don't generally call. I don't generally talk to customers unless it's absolutely requested. Generally. Leave that up to John. He's our service advisor.
Okay.
And I'll. What I'll do is I'll just fill out the ticket. We use shopware. So I just transfer it to John and then he'll call and have a discussion with them and they'll either say yes or no. And if they say no, then, you know, we push car out and that's the end of it. They'll pay us for what we've done. And we don't we don't do anything for free. You bring me the car for a programming event, you're going to pay for a minimum of programming event.
Right, Right.
Whether the car is broke or not, when it shows up, it doesn't.
Are still a lot of people surprised when it's not like, you know, the programmer didn't fix it or is it starting to get.
Yeah, yeah. Some, some of them. We get a lot of hey, my buddy told me I needed this. So we put this in and then they bring it to us and it doesn't fix it or, or it's no calm or whatever. And then yeah, like, oh, that didn't fix it. No. You know, it. Some.
It needs diagnosed and.
Yeah, because I can remember like doing. I used to do hundreds of software updates. Right. But they'd be an update on a car that was like two years old.
Right.
Once in a while you'd see a car come in that was like 4 years old and it had a, an update might fix it. But I mean that had been broke from that code for a long, long time.
Yeah.
It's like saying all of a sudden the car's 10 years old. All of a sudden it's got an oxygen sensor fault and it needs. We'll get an oxygen sensor software update. That is not going to fix the car.
No, no. And I, I'm gonna be honest. It's not, it's not my problem to explain that to them. They know what they want when they bring them in. So the, the office staff talks with them. They'll. They bring it in for a programming. I get it and it's a 2005, you know, Chevrolet or whatever for a software update.
And I'm like, okay, that's. It'd be rare. And I actually had this happen at a dealership and I, I don't, I'm not a people person so I kind of just tell them how it is and you know, nobody likes that. But yeah, yeah, this one, this one car is kind of the same example. This car was a mobile job for a dealership. Used car a lot. It was, it was a big dealership, but they're used car side and they had like a 06 explorer sport track for a pcm update for like a purge valve complaint or something. And I'm like, okay, cool, whatever.
I'll go update their 06 Sport track. And I get out there and there's no update available because it's already been updated and it's got, it's had like six purge valves thrown at it or whatever. And so I go in there, it's a dealership. I try to, you know, be nice, but if you're a shop calling us, generally, I'm not as nice. Just being honest. Just, it's different. And I just told him, like, hey, there's no update available. Here's your bill.
And they just, you know, they're, they're kind of taken back by it sometimes. Like, you're, you're charging me, like, yeah, I drove out here and I hit the buttons and I mean, you go to update a Ford, you're dang near going through the whole update process to find out there's not an update.
That's Right.
And so they're, you know, and that happens. They're. They get a little. I guess they can get kind of testy sometimes, but there's not any different procedure for that really.
Right.
We just do what they ask and it either fixes it or it doesn't. They pay us either way.
The last Ford I, I saw it wasn't me co worker, same thing. It was about, what's that valve? Like map? I can't remember, but there's a valve.
For the new Mavericks.
It was, I want to say, like a newer escape kind of thing. One of those ecoboosts that had. Okay, one of those. It looks like a purge solenoid.
One of those valves boost solenoid for the. Yeah, yep.
Yeah, yeah. Like went through the whole thing and all. There's a software update. And so of course we didn't. We're not programmed through Ford. We were programmed through the snap on wrap and it was a big to do to get that to work and all that kind of stuff. And for them to go through and go, oh, yep, that's the most up to date that is charged us.
Right.
People at RAP still charge us, of course. Like, yeah, you're gonna go charge. You know, the fact that you go to the dealer. I mean, I know it's probably the same as when I was at the dealer. Like, you can, you can find the software number and you can punch it in somewhere and they'll tell you if there's anything after that.
Yeah, yeah, we.
That's just an oversight on their side.
We don't, I mean, we don't look anything up before we go out unless it's. Unless it's like something that we absolutely have never done before.
Okay.
Or something we've never heard of just to make sure we have the tooling on the van, you know. Yeah, we'll look it up. But for the most part, everything that we need is ready to go. We just go out there and punch buttons. And I don't, you know, we don't check Cal IDs or anything. Like, it's a GM, you know, they can do that, but they don't. They. They just.
I don't know if it. Most of it is just ignorance. They just don't know, you know.
And is there cars that will come to your shop for, like, programming or whatever that you guys will look at from a safety standpoint and go, no, we're not even interested in touching that because you see that kind of conversation pop up once in a while. I know your shop's a little bit different, but.
Yeah, so. Well, so we're in Oklahoma. We don't have inspections. We don't have any kind of government overreach on automobiles. The. The, the cars come in. You know, if it looks sketchy to me, I probably just won't drive it. But, you know, I'll do whatever they want us to do.
I don't really care. We're just. We're just here to facilitate what they want done. If it requires me driving the car, though, and I know it's just not safe, I'm just. I'm just not gonna drive it.
Right.
We'll call and be like, hey, you know, this, this is the state that your car's in. We just. We don't feel comfortable driving your vehicle. I understand that you are comfortable driving your vehicle, but we are not. And we just move on to the next one. And if it's. If it just comes in for like a programming or something, that's fine, whatever. We'll just program it and ship it.
We don't. I don't test drive cars if they come in for a programming. I just program it. And we take so well. So we take before and after photos when cars come in, so they show up before we even move the car. We take exterior picks, mileage, vin, all that stuff, put them in the ticket. We'll move the car, bring the car in, do the job. If it's just a programming job, I'll just take my exit picks, send them to John.
John will call the customer, like, hey, car's done. Because we, if, if we didn't diagnose it, I'm not spending the time to make sure it fixed your car. It's not my problem. That's. That's. It's on you.
That's fair. That's fair.
You know, if they want to, if they Want to bring the car to us, pay us to diagnose the issue. You know, we'll, we'll do the repair and we'll verify that it's fixed when it's done, as with what you should be doing anyway. If you're, if you're working on cars, make sure they're fixed before they leave, and we'll do that. But I don't know. I'm not. I've driven a lot of sketchy stuff. I own a lot of sketchy stuff. So I'm just kind of, you know, my, you know, I, my truck that I still drive today is 79 square body.
It's. I, I put a five, three in it like eight years ago. That's, it's my all over the state, drive it wherever truck. And my newest car is an 09 Lucerne. So I don't, I don't, I don't have a problem with sketchy stuff unless I'm like, I know I'm gonna die driving this thing. Like straight up death trap. Yeah, that's, that's different. But I work on a lot of old stuff.
They're all sketchy.
What's, what's 20, 25 looking for you. Then going forward, you gotta. Did you make some resolutions or do you have some goals or.
I don't know. I don't. I made resolutions last year. I met. Well, I don't remember what they were, to be honest. I, I, I wanted to be. Personally, I wanted to be debt free. Other than my mortgage, I did not achieve that.
However, I'm almost there. I've got a little bit left. As far as everything else goes. I've not really, I don't really have anything. I've, you know, I've got projects that I need to finish that have been not finished for a few years, but that's about it.
But the truck is done.
Oh, that's, that's, yeah, that truck's been. I've been daily driving that truck for. Well, I don't daily anymore because L1 gave me a company vehicle. But okay, I daily. That truck, man. I bought it from my wife's grandpa when me and her first started dating in high school.
That's cool as hell.
I, that was, that was 2012, I think. I've had that thing since 2012. I've been driving it ever since. I don't, I used to drive it all over. I drove that thing like, I don't know, it was 80 miles, 90 miles a day when I was going to college and when I first started L1, I drove it from my house to Collinsville every day, back and forth until we got. Until I got a van. You know, my. I had a 90 day probationary period, so I.
Okay, I drove for a while and then now that I've got a company vehicle, I just. They pay for my gas and.
Not great on fuel, that thing probably.
Actually, it depends on how fast you're driving. I, you know, it gets about 18 to 20 if. I mean, that truck's a lot lighter than, than an 05 Tahoe or Suburban was. I just, I took the gears out of the back of a 98342 rear gear set, dropped it in that 10 volt that was in the truck, and then, okay, a 4L65 3 swap. Just, I mean, they just bolt right in. They don't really have to do anything, but it does. It gets about, gets about 20 if you're doing the speed limit. I don't, I don't know.
I don't really drive speed limit that often, but I, I do a lot of hunting and you know, during hunting season, that truck goes everywhere. That's my hunt truck. I threw a camper on it. We just started. No, it's two wheel drive.
Yeah, see.
Yep. Just take it wherever and. Actually, I hadn't done any maintenance on it in like forever. Well, yeah, since, since I swapped the engine into it, other than just oil changes. And the other day I, Well, I've been driving the thing around with one shock on the back because one fell off when I was hunting last year and I ain't put one back on it. And I, I, I put, I put, I put another shock, actually. I put two shocks on the back of it because we're getting fancy. But yeah, I did some maintenance on it.
It's back up to par. I, I didn't realize how neglected it has been. I just been driving it, you know, and I've got a bunch of other old stuff and I just. Everything else just, you know, it's cool as hell, man. I get fired up.
I got a. I tell Everybody in like 2004, my daily was an 80 GMC half ton.
Yeah.
You know, now it was rotten as hell and I should not have been driving it.
Well, it's a little different up there than down here, you know, this thing, my truck, it doesn't really have. I mean, it's got some, it's got some rust in it, but not nothing like y'all get. We don't have salted roads or whatever y'all Use and we are, you know, aside from the normal spots that dirt sticks in the, in the, you know, quarter pan or the fenders and the, the bedsides. That's about it.
Yeah. Zeb. Zeb shows me pictures of stuff he buys like his old CJ and. And it's just a lucky mother.
Oh yeah. And things are like, they're like fresh. They're mint. Yeah. It's insane. I've got a, I've got a 56F250 that I bought from my wife's grandpa about three years ago. And I mean it doesn't have a liquor rust in it. It's.
It's solid. It was a Kansas truck and he bought it back in the 90s and drove it home. It, it set forever. He never did anything with it because it was a, it was an F250 long box. And he, you know, he's got a bunch of those 50s. Well the 53 to 56 Ford trucks and that one being a long bed, three quarter ton. You didn't really do anything with it, just set. Yeah, I got it and it's been a, an ongoing project.
I ripped the motor out to have it rebuilt. My machine shop just kind of, I guess forgot about me or something. So we reverted course and I got a, I bought an RV off a friend that's got a 460 in it and I'm just gonna, you know, get.
LS swap the Ford.
No, I like my LS's. I got you know, two cores and you know, I got another one over at John, my service advisor's house. He's got one sitting over there that I'm getting off of him. But. Yeah, no, I, I don't. I try to keep them somewhat in the family. You know. I've got a, you know, my father in law is a Ford guy and he doesn't really do the whole fuel injection thing and it's kind of sacrilege to him to yeah.
Do anything like that. He was, he thought I was crazy. And I went to put the fuel injection in my square body.
Even though he's, you know, but 20 miles a gallon.
No, no. And he doesn't drive his like I do. I drive the crap out of my cars. They don't really sit, they just, they just go. But yeah, you know, 460 and a C6 and I'm just going to drop it in there and nice. See what happens. I rewired it front to back and most of the interiors kind of done but very cool. I don't know.
I like old stuff.
Yeah. What's, what's L1 looking to do for 20, 25?
Oh, work, I guess. I don't know. I'm not sure what Keith and Liz's aspirations are for the year, but we're, we're outfitting another van. We're looking for a service advisor because John wants, John wants to get back in the shop. He's not a. He's not, he's. Service advisor isn't really his chosen role. It was kind of just.
He kind of meandered into it. But he wants to wrench on stuff again and so we're looking for somebody to fill service advisor spot so he can get back in the shop and then. I don't know. I don't know what we're gonna do. I guess keep trucking on fixing stuff.
Because I'll be sure to reach out to anybody I know that's in your area that's looking for like an advisor role because I think it would be a fantastic spot to end up, you know.
Yeah, great place to work. I mean we're not, you know, we're not flat rate. We're all, we're all hourly and everybody has a company car and you know, we just kind of show up, do work and.
Yeah, I think it'd be an awesome spot. So I'm hoping to get Liz and Keith on in the very near future. So.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they'd love to talk about it. They're always stinking busy. Oh, it's as busy as they are. Yeah, that's the hard part, getting them free of whatever they're doing. Keith, Keith does a lot at the shop. Just doing module work and yeah, he, you know, doing his thing and I'm doing the shop work and. Yeah, yeah, everybody's staying busy.
So what's in closing out. What kind of advice have you got out there for the technicians and the shop owners? Just a little bit of things to. From the mind of Zach that make it easier.
Stay accountable, own up to your mistakes. Don't. Don't try to fix your shop with flat rate. It doesn't work. No, the, you know, RF blocking paint in the bathrooms. I don't, I don't know. Yeah, I don't. I don't know if that helps either.
But you know, I, I guess if that's what you're into. Yeah, just. I don't know, I guess like everybody else, just learn, you know, keep learning. Learn something every day and if you're struggling, you know, kind of Build, build a friend base of your peers because that, that greatly helps a lot.
Networking's key man in 100. I wouldn't be half the tech that I am and I'm nobody, Right?
Yeah.
Or my friends that, you know, we can bounce ideas off and stuff like that. Like, I, I'm no dummy, but I like, as soon as I even think like I'm the smartest guy in the conversation, I probably leave the conversation because I just.
Right.
I'm going to steer somebody in the wrong direction or give it a different perspective that I shouldn't.
Then yeah, I, I give disclaimers with everything I say because I, you know, I may have thought that I heard something, but it may not be right. So just kind of take it, you know, and you try it out, see what works. If it don't, don't blame me because I don't, I don't know how to explain that else to you. But yeah, I think a lot of texts, they, they get kind of nobody's humble anymore. We're all kind of, yeah, that's fair. We're all hard headed and think we know what we're doing, but you don't know.
I had the, I had the strangest thing. A listener reached out to me and he's like, I've got a young tech in the shop that's starting to get this kind of like rock star superstar attitude. And he's 24 years old and how do I get him back down to, you know, a more humble state? And I said, I'm not sure you should ask me because I'm not like I'm, I'm all for a lot more text. Even a young one's walking around with their chest puffed out, right?
Like that's if, if you want to humble somebody, go short a network on a, on a newer vehicle and let them figure it out because there's, there's, there's a lot to be learned on these new cars. You know, once you think you know everything, you get your butt kicked on the next one.
And, and that's what I said to me. You kind of. Unfortunately, it's going to take some jobs that you're going to have to like throw them into the deep end and let them drown.
Yeah, don't help him, just make him figure it out. And don't starve him. Don't starve me that you got to pay him for that. Yeah, they're wanting to learn, you know, pay them.
But we're all hourly, so I mean, it'll work.
Oh yeah.
You might have to take the idea of a big profit on this job and just flush it because you might have to pull them down a peg.
Yeah.
I mean, and don't get, if no one in the shop can solve it, don't take it in the first place. That's really fun.
Oh, for sure.
If he, you know, if he wants that two hours to give up and you know that two more hours he might be there, don't, don't take it from him. Put him back on, you know.
Right. Yeah.
You got to do that more. Like when I think about some of those other shops I've been in, sometimes it's just going to take tough love to say, listen, if you want to walk away from that job, you can walk away from it. But tomorrow morning if you walk back in here. So I'm going to be sitting there for you. Right. And until we come to an impasse about what it is that what you really want to do here, you know?
Right. Yeah. And there, yeah, there's a lot to be said for that because you only learn a few ways and I feel like one of the best ways is to get in there and, and try and figure it out. If you can't figure it out, you know, find somebody that knows what they're doing and learn from them. Don't, don't, don't think your don't stink and that's right. And learn something because if you've got.
Your fundamentals, you'll get it.
Yeah, yeah. You're not gonna, you're, you just won't get anywhere without humbling yourself I think is a big part of it. I, I, I'm humbled every day. You know, I work on a lot of pain cars and I don't, I don't know, I don't know how I figure some of them out. Again, like some, some of these are, I, I don't know if I just happen stance onto the problem or, you know, I know we have a pretty solid process, but.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you have a process and you work the process and I think you're, you're, I think you're smart enough that you're going to get through it. It's just like you're like me. I think you, you know, you look at you like, oh man, I'm not ready for that. The reality is, is we are, we just, you know, as soon as you remove the time cushion away from it, it's just like we are ready for it. You know, that's the biggest thing.
You never know until you get in there and try it.
That's right. Well, man, I want to thank you for coming on here today.
No problem.
That was a lot of fun. You know, like I said, I hope to be able to sometime meet up with you in an event somewhere, and we'll sit down and, you know, do another one of these, because it's. It's a lot of fun in person. So, you know, 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 Change in the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for.
Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
About this episode
Zach Cypert shares his journey from IT to automotive diagnostics, discussing the challenges and learning experiences he's faced along the way. He reflects on the importance of accountability in the industry, the pitfalls of flat-rate pay, and the value of networking among technicians. The conversation also touches on the dynamics of shop environments, the significance of clear communication, and the need for continuous learning. Cypert emphasizes the importance of humility in the profession and offers insights into the evolving landscape of automotive repair.
Original notes
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In this episode of The Jaded Mechanic podcast, Jeff Compton is joined by Zach Cypert from L1 Diagnostics. Today, he and Jeff talk about the outrageous things people say in popular Facebook groups, and share stories about misdiagnosed or improperly repaired jobs.
00:00 Journey to Automotive Shop Career
08:03 Pro Tech Program Experience
13:53 Shop Communication and Inspection Practices
16:47 Diagnostic Charges Misunderstood
24:06 Efficient Roadside Auto Service Solutions
32:12 Workplace Frustration and Unpaid Labor
37:39 Complaints and Profitability Concerns
38:28 Documenting Job Duties and Expectations
48:20 Avoiding Online Drama
52:09 Cost Assessment in Business Decision-Making
57:30 Comprehensive Vehicle Inspection Process
01:02:36 Dealership Encounter: PCM Update Challenge
01:07:39 Auto Repair and Diagnostics Offer
01:10:20 Truck Fuel Efficiency Insight
01:17:41 Cautious Communication and Humility
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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
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