Dealership or Independent Shop: Which Is Better? | Eric Schoenberger

0:11Like I said, I'm glad I made the jump to being an independent. Just growing different atmosphere, but I think in the grand scheme of things, it's really, it's working out for the best, and I don't regret it. At times it's tempting to want to go back to the dealer, but it's like, nope, I'm more calm. I'm not ready to bite somebody's head off.

0:39Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast. It's a long weekend up here in beautiful sunny Ontario, Canada, and it's still freaking cold in May. Um, it's our— I guess you'd call it— we used to just call it May 24th, but it's our Victoria Day weekend, which is some queen from way back in the monarchy that I don't even know why we still acknowledge it, but it's mostly just an excuse to drink some beer here and, uh, and have a long weekend.

1:06So, but, uh, it gives me some time to, to do some recordings and meet some new friends. So I have a friend that he's from Kansas today, and Eric Schoenberger, how are you this morning, brother? Oh, doing all right. Yeah, you said it's nice and warm there. Yep, about 95 degrees. Nice. Yeah, so, um, whereabouts in Kansas are you? Oh, central Kansas.

1:29Central Kansas, right in the middle. Yeah, I'm not sure. So our, our buddy David Roman, he's in Kansas. Uh, yeah, he's, uh, on the eastern side. Yeah, near Kansas City. Yeah, he, um— do you ever go to Vision? Oh yes, I went this year and last year. How is it? It's very good. Yeah, that's what everybody raves about it. They say it's the, the event, right?

1:54It's kind of the groundbreaking one, the, the most established one, the kind of the ones that all the other ones want to be. So I've heard that. Never been yet. I'm hoping to go one year. It just, it seems to be a schedule or a budget thing always. So, but yeah. What, kind of give us a little bit of an introduction. Give us the name of your shop.

2:13Kind of, you know, let us get to know you. Well, I work for Holt Motor Company. Okay. We're an independent shop. Kinda do a little of everything. I've grown up in a dealer. My dad was a Chrysler tech for 35 years. Nice. And I worked with him for— beside him for 10, and Chrysler's pretty much all I've known. I did work for an independent in high school and part of college before I went into the dealer world, and I just finally got tired of the typical headaches.

2:50Yeah, it's, it's— yeah, I— and that's the— like, I, I always, you know, I still think fondly of my my turn at the dealer because I learned so much, right? Right. You get to really polish your craft, right? You know what it's like. You know what's probably wrong with it when they write the work order and put it in front of you, right?

3:08You kind of know what to do. Oh yeah. And that always makes you feel good, right? Gives you confidence. Yeah. You've mastered the brand, so to speak. Yeah. But it's that political thing. What did you really like about the brand? I just always been a Chrysler guy. Liked what they did. It was always something different. I mean, I don't got nothing against Chevy or Ford, but it just, Chrysler was always kind of my go-to.

3:36And that's the way it was with my dad. I always liked them because they kind of seem to be like, you know, people have heard me say it almost unapologetically, like about the horsepower, right? Yeah. Or performance. Even like, you know, people would be like, Jeff. And I'm like, no, but seriously, think about what they did with like the PT Cruiser with the turbo or, you know, the SRT-4 Neon way back in the day.

4:00A day, right? Or even back before that, think about the front-wheel drive cars from the late '80s, early '90s, like the Lee Iacocca days. Like, that was— it was something different within the domestic trio, right? And I always thought that just like people used to say, well, they used to build really ugly cars and paint them funny colors. But I mean, you know, when you look at the Challengers and the Chargers and the— I can still remember the first 300C I drove.

4:29The rear-wheel drive, like that LX car when it came out, I was like absolutely floored with how cool that was. Oh yeah. Building a V8 Hemi rear-wheel drive, kind of a throwback to what we, some of us in a certain generation, maybe grown up riding around in the back of, right? And there's this 4-door sedan with a V8 that, that has that feel still of like, you know, a rear-wheel drive, you know, kick the ass and do kind of car.

4:56And I, I just thought it was really cool. And then the trucks for me I say it all the time, like, you drive back in the day, especially when the Hemi first hit, you drove a Hemi truck and then you drove anything else and it just didn't feel the same. Like, the pedal, the throttle response was so much different, better, you know.

5:15Jim, I— and I grew up in a house of Chevrolet, like, you didn't park anything but that in the driveway. But, you know, when I went to, when I went to the dealer and started driving those trucks, I was like Yeah, okay, I get it now. Because they had weird wonky stuff, right? And I mean, Caravans were Caravans, you know, but they were a cool little car.

5:36Like, I look at a Neon and then I look at a Cavalier and I'm like, what's the real— why does everybody say one is so much better than the other? They both had head gasket problems. They both, you know, at least the Cavalier for longer, you could get a two-door. I always thought that that kind of killed the Neon was making it only a four-door car.

5:55That was, to me, was stupid. Yeah, they originally had the two-door, but it didn't last. Yeah. And yeah, I remember seeing one American Club Racer ACR Neon, the two-door, which is really cool because that had manual steering and, you know, um, just, you know, twin cam stick, like, you know, upgraded everything. It was just a really cool little car, but they didn't sell a lot.

6:20And I thought, that's pretty neat, you know, that they were still thinking about that. And, you know, early 2000s, whereas everybody was just like in a completely different thing. Now, I'm not talking about the Asian market, right? But, you know, Ford didn't really— I didn't feel had anything that compared to, to that. You know, an Escort, in my opinion, didn't compare to a Neon.

6:41No. Um, so what, uh, your dad was a tech? Yes. Yeah. So is that kind of why you picked this, or just, it just became natural? Yeah, I did. Um, Like growing up, I'd always pay attention to what he did. And like, he'd go to class, come back, I'd read the books. Just right, you know, I just had that yearning to learn and just kind of wanted to do it.

7:06Yeah. And he was— so was he a dealer tech? You said he worked there? Yeah, he worked at Chrysler store for 35 years. Wow, he did, uh, drivability and trans— automatic transmissions. Yeah, like the 604s he was good at and all that. So he would have been a pretty important person in the dealership then. He would have been one of their, you know, their kind of top talent kind of people.

7:30Yeah, that's a good, that's a good influence to have on you, right, as a young technician. That's pretty cool. So, you know, um, he loved the brand too, I'm gonna assume. Oh yeah, that's all he drove and owned. And then after he got done with it, he started driving other stuff and I'd have to fix it for him. But yeah, but he's still a Chrysler guy at heart.

7:56Yeah. Is he still with you? Uh, no, he's retired. He lives in, uh, he lives about 80 miles from me now. Okay, but you still have— yeah, that's cool. Well, I worked with him for 10 years and I enjoyed it, but it was one of them deals, I want to see what else was out there. Mhm. And so I went to another Chrysler dealer on my own, and, um, luckily I had another good tech to work with that I'm still friends with.

8:27Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I moved up, you know, moved about 80 miles away, and like I said, I worked for another, oh, about 3 other Chrysler dealers. And it just, like I said, this last one, it just kind of got to the point the typical politics and scraping and clawing for to make flat rate. Yeah, the Pacifica side curtain airbags, what did me in.

8:55They only paid 1.8 for the recall, but it was 4 hours under regular warranty pay. Yeah, and 6 hours under customer pay. Yeah, which all of a sudden there's no more customer pay ones ever. Yeah. And you know, you get the young guys that, oh, I can make that time. It's like, well, go ahead. I'm not gonna work 100 miles an hour and suffer quality for it.

9:20Well, and that's it. Think about, you know, and again, so I've never done one, so I don't, I couldn't tell you the steps, but I mean, anytime it's like, from my experience with side curtain, you're up into around the, you know, headliner type area, right? And that's something that I always never thought should be rushed because people, when they start, especially when you start talking about a recall, they get like super, super methodical about how they inspect their headliner, you know, and it could have all prints and scratches in it before you did the recall, but you'd be buying, you know, you'll be buying them a headliner.

9:56And then like, think about how a lot of us, you know, one minute you're doing a weight or oil change and then you do a recall and you get a fingerprint on it, right? And then people are, oh yeah, That, like, I just— yeah. And those are real, real particular because where the rear AC controls are in the headliner, there's some mean metal clips, and it's a two-man job.

10:19And, um, just carefully bring it down. Yeah, you don't want to crease it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, I— and again, you know, I mean, I can remember way back in the day doing all the clock spring recalls, like you probably can, and I can remember, you know, the impact sensors on the front bumper on the Caravans. Like, you probably did a pilot.

10:39That was in the connector that went with it. And I mean, that was all I can remember doing. I can remember doing seat weight sensors in the LX cars when they first came out. Like, yeah, I touched a lot of it from the airbag side. Um, you know, OCMs, there were splices on the floor pan I used to fix on the Caravans that would cause the OCM to go offline.

11:01Like, all that kind of stuff, because up here we would get so much salt in our harness from like water. And, um, it would, it would— those stupid splices that were taped with like tape and not even heat shrink, right? Those do funny things, right? It was just, it was the weirdest thing. But, you know, the, the idea that like the— and I did again a ton of Takata airbag recalls for Nissan— but the idea that, that, that they go from it used to be 6 hours down to less than one-third To me, it's just, you know, we talk about why technicians or dealer people especially talk about why, you know, what's his name, Farley's

11:43famous quote, while, you know, I got— oh yeah, like they wonder why, and it's— they, they shouldn't have to wonder. They do it to themselves, you know. It shouldn't be any kind of mystery as to why technicians won't pick the job, you know. And that could be like— and everybody goes, well, it's just one job. Yeah, but when those recalls get released, sometimes you'll get 2, 3 of them in a day.

12:04And what then, think about that. It used to be you would've made 18 hours and now you make 6. Right. Of course it's gonna kill your morale. You know, like it's just a given, all these things, you know. And then everybody's like that legislation. I don't know, do they have it in Kansas, Eric? No, they don't. 'Cause we're a right-to-work state, so we don't have that.

12:28And I don't think that that's, and people love that idea. So what we're talking about, people, is the idea that like in some states, I think it's Detroit, California, whatever. Illinois is one of them. Whatever is supposed to pay retail is what they— they're by law, they're not allowed to change it. There is no warranty time. And everybody goes, oh, that's so much better for the technicians.

12:50Sure it is. You're right, it is. But here's the reality of it. We're talking labor-op type jobs, right? If you're still into the problem solving, you know, every car problem is a one-off until you find it, you're still losing your butt. And it doesn't matter because warranty's only got, you know, uh, if they say, well, there's every wiring problem can be solved in 2 hours and that's all they're going to pay, that legislation doesn't really help you, is my, my argument back to them.

13:23I think it's a step in the right direction, but you know, there's that holdout of technicians that are like, I want flat rate no matter what. Well, Most of the guys that I talk to that want that, they're not tackling a ton of diet. Now I know I'm going to get a lot of comments and a lot of hate for that, but that's a very real reality.

13:40I mean, you know, well, and also I don't see manufacturers sitting there idly by watching that, you know, having to pay out that stuff, that I look for them to possibly buy into those labor guide comp because I've noticed, yes, with all data, some of the times are starting to come down a little bit. And yeah, that's— we saw that in another pop, that conversation pop up and again, and everybody I think is in it.

14:07It's a pretty cruel, disgusting thing that they would do then if that's how, you know, how much they'll invest and focus on backroom deals to make that happen instead of just building the friggin stuff properly so that it doesn't have to be recalled. Yeah, I mean, like, that would be the way better way to do it. I, and I, again, you know, I tell people all the time, I remind them, like, the OE doesn't tell the dealer that they have to pay you flat rate.

14:33Nowhere does the OE tell them, send it down, that that's how they must pay. It's just like a warranty— it's warranty job— it's just like an estimate for a body shop for their insurance. They say, we're only going to pay this amount of labor to do the repair on the, on the car. No big deal. Cool. But when you go over, it's not the OE that's not paying you the time.

14:53It's your person that you work for. It's your employer that's choosing not to pay you that, right? And you'll hear the argument, well, they can't, the money's not there. Okay, the money is there, people. Um, they're just, they want to buy a second dealer, a third dealer, a fifth dealer, whatever, instead of paying you for it. So you have to draw the line in the sand and decide what is my limit on what I'm going to actually believe on that, you know?

15:19And I'm, I mean, if the job should take you 10 and you go 20 repeatedly, it might be a you problem, right? But if you can hit that recall time and do it without damaging something or having to come back or really making it look hacky, um, who's to blame? Well, at some point then I blame it back on the people that own the dealer because they could have a very real conversation with the people and say, I realize that it's only going to pay 1.8 This is what we— this is the way we want it turned out, and we're going to pay you for it because we feel that it's not your fault that

15:58the time got slashed because of their defect. But nobody's willing to have those kind of conversations. And that's where I guess for me, you know, and I'm the same as you, I got tired of it. Like, and it wasn't a situation of a warranty job that, that irked me. It was the way, you know, advisors would just expect you to do things for free.

16:17Salesman, service manager would expect you to, you know, I'll make it up on the next one. You know, yeah, that car never shows up or goes to the wrong tech. It gets dispatched to the guy across the bay from you. Yeah. Oh shoot. Like, I'm sorry, I didn't see those notes in there. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. I didn't know it was you that worked on it.

16:35Yeah, I looked at it. You're like, you know, you friggin jerk. I've got the part, you know, the plate number written in my, in my logbook. Did you keep a notebook like I did? Yes, I did. Yeah. Kind of a key important thing I tell a lot of young techs. I kept— well, at first what I would do is if it was somebody's comeback, I'd photocopy the original work order or I'd print it out, and I kept that file, right?

17:02So I started to build my own file of cars that were problematic within our dealer. And when the cars were fixed, I had this file, this book of stuff that I'd solved and how I did it. And, you know, but we all made a notebook of like at least our work order numbers and, uh, what the job was supposed to pay when we were done.

17:22Um, and then if we did make one that had a lot of wrecks on it, we were told, yeah, they're gonna reschedule. Um, we made sure to write that all down because otherwise you— because unfortunately, the amount of car count that was coming in, sometimes, you know this, Eric, it does slip by the advisor. It just happens, right? Oh yeah. So I mean, they're human too, but processes in place should be when the appointment's made, they should be able to pull the history, look at it, and go, okay, those wrecks were done by, you know, Tech 11270.

17:52That was my old tech number. And it should be in the queue waiting for me to do, you know, not like, oh, they're here, we got to give it to anybody. Like, that's not how that's supposed to work. So yeah, what's, um, when you look back, what are some of the stuff that you really like to do? When you're at the dealer?

18:12Uh, of course, drivability. Yeah. Um, I liked electrical. Um, recalls when they used to pay good. Um, did you go transmissions like your dad, or— No, I didn't. The dealer I was at with him didn't want to risk me going through a learning curve on it. Um, I would do some transmission work, but not a rebuild, right? Like put a valve body in, or, you know, maybe put a torque converter in, something like that, but not a complete rebuild.

18:45He did— they had him for front-wheel drive and another guy for rear-wheel drive. Okay. Because we had such a big amount of transmissions coming in back in the late '90s, early 2000s. Sorry to cut in everyone, but this is really important. As a tech, I've seen firsthand how frustrating it can be to work in a shop bogged down by outdated systems and inefficiencies.

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19:52TechMetric isn't just managing shops.. It's transforming them. Measure up by every measure with TechMetric. Hit the link in the show notes below for more. Yeah, they were pretty problematic back in the day for sure. I mean, which, you know, kind of a lot of people's— it's not that they were the only people with transmission issues. I can remember my buddy at the same time, Nissan had an extended campaign where they were going in and changing, you know, because it wouldn't go in reverse when it was cold.

20:20And they were, they were, every tech in the building was doing that at his dealer anyway. They could all do it. And I'm thinking, so that's like, but they had it down to a science where it was like they knew when it came in, this is just the parts you put in. It seemed with Chrysler like it didn't matter what the complaint was, um, they all seem to get like a full overhaul.

20:42Yeah, when they were, when they were out of warranty and when they were within warranty. They only seem to get like, you know, one set of clutches or, you know, maybe a valve body like you said. And we would see these keep coming back and coming back and coming back. And it's like, why, why are we putting a valve body in when it's, you know, obviously a slip in overdrive, which we knew on the trucks why that was happening, right?

21:06Those little cooler lines would burn out the planetary for the overdrive, right? Like it was just— well, I remember Dad getting frustrated. He'd build one back when they didn't wouldn't have good programming and it would just destroy them. He said, I'm— I build it, it's going to come back. And yeah, then finally Chrysler realized, you know, change the software and you put a TCM in them.

21:29Yeah, yeah. And I can remember I saw more than one come in before they had a separate TCM and they would have rebuild. This is like front-wheel drive car, like say the old Shadows, you know, the, the kind of the— and they'd have like new overdrives in them and they'd be back and limp again. And they're like, it was just overhauled, why'd it be limp?

21:53Be a wiring problem, right? Like it was, you know. And, and so that was always really, you know, it was weird to me because it was like trying to get them sometimes, you know how it is, to act up intermittently before you can say yes, okay, it's an electrical problem, or yes, it's a it's, um, you know, uh, needs an overhaul. Like, you and I remember the input and output speed sensors that would go bad all the time, but that became pretty straightforward.

22:22Like, you just— oh yeah, the, the— yeah, the '99, 2000. Yep. And, you know, that got to be where it was like everybody could, could diagnose that. But if you had one like in limp or not communicating, then it was like kicked to somebody a little more you know, specialized. Or that wiring harness going to the, to the, you know, um, valve— not the valve body, the, the block that sat on top of the transmission.

22:49Solenoid pack. Solenoid packs that used to leak. And, you know, like, we all did solenoid packs, all of us. Oh yeah. But I can remember after you do the solenoid pack and half of them would come back with this weird electrical problem, it's because you just disturbed that harness that wasn't very well. And all of a sudden now you're tearing that sucker open again, right?

23:07Yeah, or I had a lot of round pin terminals on input— well, vehicle speed sensor when they used to put them on there. I had a Dynasty. You, when the speedometer quit working, listen for the door locks to kick in. If it didn't, it's out there. If they did, you had a speedo head. Very cool. I'm old enough too, I can remember when, you know, you used to get like a a speed sensor fault and you take it out and you— they didn't give you a new gear.

23:38You took the old gear off the old one, put it back in, and it was like same sensor and a whole bunch of different gears, right? Little plastic. I can remember more than one guy going, um, my speedo's not working. I'm like, did you put the gear in? He's like, oh shoot, sitting on the old part right on my bench. Like, they just— you get rushed, right?

23:55You forget to put the gear. Oh yeah. Uh, it was funny that way. I enjoyed the product, like I really did. You know, I love, I loved Caravans. I loved, I didn't do a lot of Nissan or Nissan Neon head gaskets. I did a bunch of them. Yeah, probably pretty quick at them, eh? Oh yeah, yeah. It got frustrating in the beginning, all the different design changes, and when they went to MLS, that took care of it.

24:22Yeah, yeah. And that was the thing, like everybody's like, oh, it's leaking again. I'm like, We'd see them and they didn't always leak again, you know, like it wasn't— that gasket seemed to fix a lot of the problems. You'd see the rear main leak a lot after that. We know why that happened. Guys would pound the balancer on, right, instead of pressing it on.

24:41Yeah, uh, the thrust bearing right out. But, you know, I can remember the 2.7 being— when they first rolled, how big a turd they were if they weren't neglect— like if they weren't— oh yeah. The maintenance wasn't done, but you know, a 2.7 chain job in a Sebring was the probably the worst job that I ever did. Like, I hated that. Yeah, I did a few of them.

25:03I didn't care for it. And the PT Cruiser timing belt, I never liked that either. I know guys do them and they like it, but I hated it. Though you thought you were going to break something, you had to jack that sucker up so high to, you know, line your marks up that it was just like, never again. So And they were weird, right?

25:20Yeah, I just did power steering lines on a Turbo Cruiser a couple weeks ago, and I'm like, yeah, I don't miss them. Well, I still see them around, and I'm like, holy crap, people are still driving a PT Cruiser, eh? Like, it just— yeah, I can remember the— when they first hit, and the— in Detroit at the— probably it was a Chrysler Building, how they had one look like it was driving right out of the Chrysler Building, right?

25:46Like, you know, 100 stories up, and how everybody How they flocked to the dealer to buy that car and paid way above sticker because they wanted to have it. Oh yeah, that's the way the dealer was I was at at the time. It's like, that's insane. Now you can give them away. And then you get in, you drive it, and it's like, eh, it's, it's not that appealing.

26:08Like, it's, you know, I did like you're sitting higher up in it, like, compared to a car. But yeah, yeah, uh, I had a Good customer, a young lady. Well, she wasn't so— she wouldn't be so young now. Um, that the reason she— and she hated everything else about the car, but she had some back issues, and it was the way the seat was.

26:28And like you said, the way you sat in the car, it was the most comfortable car for her she ever drove. So she threw good money after bad at that thing because she, she just— she didn't want to get a car that would hurt her back, you know. Yeah, I had a few customers like that with them, that, that was the only small car they could drive.

26:46Yeah, yeah. And the turbo ones were fun to drive, but I mean, like, I, I hated the— it was a blind spot, like, which every Chrysler comes with a free blind spot, at least one. And, um, but I, I hated the way they looked and sounded. That stupid— we called the Watts link at the back that would hit on the axle when it was worn out.

27:05And oh yes, start banging. Yep. Control arm bushings, like they're going out of style, like We just, uh, just, oh yeah, just gross. But I like the support Chrysler had back then for like training and, yeah, you know, tech advisors that actually knew what they were doing rather than just authorize you a parts replacement. Yeah, well, I can still— the part number, or part number, the phone number for Chrysler Techline used to have like, you'd get a sticker and it was stuck on your, um, work cabinet over 1-800-361-2702, right?

27:43And you pumped in your dealer plate number and to somebody. And I still remember, and everybody's like, holy crap, Jeff, you must have called them a lot. I did. I worked for the 9 years. I did call them a lot. I didn't have to call them on every car, but it just became part of the routine that when it was like a month old and sitting there with some weird problem, you called them.

28:05Because I'm sure you know, Eric, and experienced it, you'd be able to call them up and say, I got one doing this, but I can't get it to happen all the time. And they'd be like, yeah, we've had 5 cases of that. And, you know, 3 technicians found this, go check there. Now, I don't know what it's like now because it's been a long time since I've been at Chrysler, but now I know if it's anything like Nissan, you're not talking to people anymore.

28:30You're just saying it's AI. The first response is AI-generated, and they just regurgitate the book to you. I can read the book, right? Yeah, yeah. I remember you would talk to them and you'd call them up, and, uh, I still— my buddy Mike is better remembering their names because he, he went to training with a lot of them up here in the Canadian side.

28:52And it was like they would say, oh, you check the wiring? Yeah, check the wiring. Then they'd say, how'd you check it? You go, what do you mean, how did I check it? Oh, like, how'd you check your powers? And then they— that's where the first, like, people started talking to me about— it was like part of their process was loaded power check, loaded ground, you know.

29:13They'd say, go get yourself an old 904 bulb, you know, and like, if it'll— if it'll light up that, you need a fuel pump. They'd say stuff like that. And I'm just like, how come that's not in the book? Yeah. You know, like the guys at Techline all know. Why is it not? So what, um, so when you say the political thing, when you're talking about that particular, um, recall was enough to kind of the final straw, I'll say, Eric, what, what did a typical day look like for you?

29:48Well, I, I would get a lot of the, you know, more diagnostic stuff. And the recall bit, once we had a guy start bragging he could make that time, then they started pushing them over to him. But I just— I finally got tired of warranty, not getting paid properly for tickets because they had an outside firm doing it. Really? Um, you know, and then they like the younger guys.

30:19It was like, I friend of mine still works there. He's got 3 years left to go and he's gonna retire for good. And he's been a Chrysler tech all of his life and he's just hanging in there. And I told him, I said, I, you know, I'm 50 years old. Yeah. It's time to do it or I never will. Yeah. But yeah, just, and the service manager not holding anybody accountable, you know, that typical stuff.

30:46But I enjoyed working next to my friend, you know, because we would help each other out, you know. And that was one thing really worthwhile. The first couple years there at that dealership were nice, and then they started adding more and more people. Well, we'll drive the total shop count up. Yeah, man, that brings individuals down. Launch Tech USA has established itself as a trusted leader in automotive diagnostics and aftermarket solutions by delivering cutting-edge technology and reliable support to the North American market.

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31:53Our commitment to innovation is unwavering. Focus drives our precision. Innovation fuels our progress. Together, they set us apart. Launch Tech USA is driving the future of automotive diagnostics. To find out more about Launch Tech USA, visit our website at www.launchtechusa.com. Tell them the Jada Mechanic sent you. Yeah, for sure. And You know, I talked, I've talked lots. There was a core group of us, like 4 of us, that got a lot of the diag and drivability dispatched to us, right?

32:22So we all were very good at sharing and helping one another, right? Because it's, that's just the only way you're going to survive it is if you see something, somebody comes over, your bay mate, right, and says, hey, did you not have this last week? And you're like, oh yeah, I know exactly. And you'd walk over and pull the carpet up and say, see that right there?

32:39That's what mine was, right? Or I can, I can still remember that when the tip-ins got bad and the The wiring connected underneath the tip of them. Like, the— it was bad. Front control modules on the old Caravans, like, oh, you know, we all had a known good front control module, and the first thing you did was just take the 4 screws out, swap it, you know, cycle your key, see would it change.

33:00If it didn't change anything else, then you unbolted the box, plug the new box in. You probably, when you turned your box over, saw the corrosion coming out of it, and you just, you know, changed it. And then you proceeded on with your day and you do that 3, 4 times a day. I liked it because it was just enough of a variety to keep me interested, but it was like you could kind of come in and if you were having an off day, you could skate by and there was always enough good work on the cars that you could make a good living.

33:35I never was a $100 an hour every 2 weeks kind of guy. I was always a $40 to $50 guy consistently. Yeah. Always been. The guys that were— say they make $100, I never saw anybody at Krauser hit $100 in a week. I heard about a guy that— but to say that he wasn't doing the work would be— yeah, would be saying it too nicely.

34:05He was really bad for not not doing the whole ticket, I guess, is the right way to say it. Yeah, the highest I ever hit was about $85 a week, and that was when I was doing 12-hour days in the shop. Yes. And I was living in there, and I finally got— I was like, that's enough for that. There's more to life than this.

34:26And I, I would do that a lot too, and I would do it same as probably you had to sometimes, just to keep— to catch up to where the other guys were. Because, right, like, if you're doing the die egg Under warranty, maybe the best you could get would be straight time. Um, you know, like the retail diag, once you knew the pattern failures, was pretty good.

34:44Um, a lot of customers, like, if it wasn't a pattern failure, it was something weird, they got scared away right away with like the 3 hours to start, you know. And that was hard for an advisor back then. I can remember when the door rate was $110, and it was really hard for the advisor to sell, you know, 2 hours of diag to start.

35:03Like, 2 hours of diag? Like, that's crazy. Like, can't sell that. And I'm like, you know, this thing only acts up every 2 weeks and you have to hit a certain bump in the road and get it to happen. Like, you're gonna need at least 2 hours to duplicate. Yeah, or you got to tear down something to get where you need to be.

35:20Oh, and that was the thing. Do you remember when the— some of the Caravans, and you probably remember the 3.5s more so in the Magnums and the LX cars, but the valves would burn and they would hit. Yeah, I remember that. And it was like the first— because, you know, the Caravans would do it too, the 3.3s and the 3.8s, but not as common.

35:38But, uh, until they came to the Pentastar, and then they— yeah, valves were big. But, um, I can remember the first Magnum I had that had that misfire that would sometimes be there and sometimes wouldn't be. And I remember tearing that down, and I was like, look at this. This is crazy. Like, you wouldn't think in a modern car that we get pitted valves like that, but it was just, you know, the way they drove them.

36:03I used to say it was always a Magnum because just that extra weight that the 300 didn't have, they didn't— they got into the throttle even less. And then for the people that aren't familiar, they revised the valve, the keepers, so that the valves would rotate a little more and keep the carbon from burning the valve. But I remember the first couple I did, I was like, this is, you know, because they would come back Somebody else tuned it up and it was still multiple cylinder misfire.

36:29And you'd sit there and look at your data and it'd be jumping all over, but your fuel trims would be perfect. You're like, what's going on? And it wouldn't show up always on a vacuum gauge. That's, everybody's like, oh, a vacuum gauge would've showed you that. Nope, not always. I got in the habit of watching the misfire counter. If it clocked at an idle and quit above it, usually your valve was junk.

36:49And that's key. And that still holds so true, right? Even now on the Pentastar, you see guys posting and they're like, Oh, I got, you know, this miss at idle. It's like, miss at idle on a Chrysler is a valve, you know. It could be the other, you know, an injector, but it's 98% of the time it's a valve. Don't overthink this, like, you know, find another way to go in and check it.

37:11Like, and back in the day you couldn't buy a borescope the way you could now for the price, right? You can remember an expensive tool, and now Every technician, I'd argue, probably that does any kind of dies got at least one, you know. Um, and it makes that a lot easier. When I think about the ones that trip me up that if I'd had a working borescope, I could have just jammed down in the hole and known in 2 seconds.

37:35Yeah, very valuable tool. Or LabScope relative compression nowadays, that's, that's a game changer. Well, and do you remember, you remember the DRB3? Uh-huh. Do you remember the lab scope kit that came with it? Oh yes, I used it a few times. See, I watched one guy in my whole career that actually know how to set that up and use it, which was incredible to me.

37:58Like, but he again, he had been at a dealer, uh, Colin was his name. He'd been at a dealer that was straight time, so Colin learned how to use it and he still didn't have to pull it out a lot of the time to use it, but he was the only one that I'd seen. And I can remember it was like All the other guys that have been in the dealer like as long as him, but a different dealer, are like, what are you doing?

38:17And they're coming over and what— hey, like asking all these questions. And I'm like, I was so green, I didn't even know what an oscilloscope was. And now when I think about how much we do with an oscilloscope now, it's just— it's amazing to me that the dealers haven't embraced that in the sense that like they make it an essential tool and tell you to use it, but they're not paying the techs to use it.

38:37And they're still not getting them. Yeah, yeah, because they supply a Pico now, but they don't pay you very well to use it. No, I think I've only looked at a couple of cars ever with it, just because why would you— you're not going to get paid for it. Yeah, yeah, you know, and you know what it is, like, we, you know, we know.

38:58I can remember when the Chryslers had— or Chryslers, the Caravans had issues with the coils. And I can remember when, you know, the PT Cruiser and the Neon, that generation had issues with spark plug boots and the ignition wires. Like, you could drive it and you knew your feeling, what you knew what it was, come back and write your estimate, right? And, um, it just became, you know, until the Pentastar came along, I always felt they were pretty simple to diagnose.

39:25And then not that the Pentastar is hard, but the Pentastar is hard from the sense of like you're always kind of in the dealer, I think, maybe you can confirm, you're always kind of patching that thing together unless you do it the right way, you know what I mean? Because it's— they're so— yeah, and different diagnostics, like variable cam timing. The early ones had the phaser knock.

39:47Yeah. Um, then you got the oil pump ones. It just— the cylinder head, I, I like them. I actually did pretty good with those. Pull them with the timing cover still on there and slam it in there. My buddy, he loves them. He'll do one a day, you know. Sometimes he'll start at 8 in the morning, it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon, he's— it's, you know, it's running again, and he's— and he took a 30-minute break for lunch, you know.

40:12Like, he's, he's fast at him, but he's done well into the hundreds of them at this point, right? You know, there's the head gasket, cam, or like— he's just— and then you see now I don't know if you've seen the guys when they're doing the cams, they're leaving the chain right on and they're backing the cam off the phaser. Yeah, because the chain won't fall due to the way the timing cover's designed.

40:35Yeah. Which I think that's cool. Right? But it's like, you know, at first when I bought my Jeep, I was like, oh, you hear all these problems with Pentastar, right? And then it's like, once you start talking to some guys in the know, they're like, no, what are you talking about? I do all the lifters in like 2 hours. I'm like, how do you do all that?

40:53And they're like, oh, well I just lift it up and cheat and slide it out and all that. Yeah. You know, um, I love mine. Mine's been so good to me. Um, every Jeep, every Chrysler I've ever had honestly has been good to me, really. Yeah, you know, like I had a— at an '86, uh, 600. Oh yeah, love that little thing, little two-door car.

41:15Um, '91, uh, LeBaron Turbo, love that car. After that, it was all Jeep. After that, I got a little— yeah, I got a 4-liter Jeep. That's enough. Yeah, yeah. I see they rot so bad up here now, right? Like, you see them once in a while. I saw one the other day, it was in good shape. And once in a while you'll see one pop up in Facebook Marketplace and they want like $5,000 and it's not rusted, you know, and it's low mileage.

41:45And I'm like, I'm almost tempted to go buy that. And I'm like, for what? Like, to get worse fuel mileage than my 3.6 gets, right? Like, to— yeah, you know, yes, it's way easier to fix, but I mean, I, I— two of my Cherokees I did head gaskets in. Like, the 4-liter would get a head gasket problem if you drove it long enough.

42:02Now I'm talking like, yeah, up over 300,000 kilometers, so well up over 200,000 miles when it happens. Yeah, but, uh, you know, such an easy one to do too, right? Like, I never saw I saw one 4-liter failed terminally ever in all my years at Chrysler, and I had a window in the block. They punched the hole right through it. And he punched the hole right through it because he, um, he treated it like a submarine.

42:28Oh yeah, water. And then they drug it up on the bank and didn't pull the plugs and just started cranking her over. And you know how that goes. But otherwise, press liquid, we never saw, you know, them come in for bearing issues in the bottom end or cranks or nothing. They just, you know, head gaskets and valves and that was it. You know, noisy lifters.

42:50Wow. They were great, that 4-liter. When they— yeah, when they brought the 3.7 in the Liberty, it was like we knew it was, you know, not long for this world for the Cherokee. We're like, this is such a letdown compared to— oh yeah, Cherokee. Like, it was such a letdown. So, but yeah, the 3.6, they got their problems, but I think maintenance is a big deal because I got a friend that's got a Charger with 300K on it, no rocker arm issues.

43:20He changes his oil religiously, does the maintenance. He's put an oil pump in it. That's about the only major thing he's done. Yeah, yeah. I've got a '15, so I don't even know— God, I can't remember if it's got that variable output oil pump in it or not? They all do. Yeah, okay. So that's— but I've got— I've had no issues with it.

43:41No faults, no, no nothing, you know. No codes, no— I just changed my oil every 3,000 miles, you know, Pennzoil Platinum, and zero issues. Zero, zero noises, zero check engine light, like none of that. That's all good, you know. I gotta check engine light for thermostat being bad, but I mean, what Pentastar doesn't need? Yeah, that's, that's a piece of cake. Did you get into the— find one?

44:08Yeah, that's backorder day. Did you get into the diesel stuff, Eric? Uh, very little. Um, when I moved away from the dealer I was at with Dad, I got into them a little bit because the place I was at with him, we had a separate truck shop. Okay. And they did all the diesel work. I only would might program one or do a fuel filter, but other than that, I've changed an injector here and there, but I'm not real strong in diesel.

44:38Yeah, yeah. Um, replaced a few EcoDiesels. Oh, they were a turd. Oh my God. Grand Cherokee was actually easier than I thought it was going to be doing one of them. Yeah, drop it out the bottom. I can remember when that Mercedes first hit in the Grand Cherokees, and they were showing us how if you had one, it was like 5 years old and you need to put a long block in it.

45:04You exceeded the value of the car, the Grand Cherokee, by just buying the engine. Just buying the part exceeded the value before you ever even paid for labor. It was ridiculous, you know. And I felt bad for the people that bought them because they were turds. And then they, of course, you know, that engine hangs in there right until Stellantis comes along and it's like, How did that engine that was such a turd last so long?

45:28You know, I mean, I can remember guys were trying to figure out how to take one out of a Sprinter and make it work in a Grand Cherokee because there's a lot of different parts that go into it. But essentially it's like, oh, it's the same block. Yeah, but it's— there's a lot of things that change to make it work in a Sprinter versus working in a Grand Cherokee.

45:44But like anything else, somebody found out something, figured out a way. That crank reluctor on the back of them, that was the Oh yes. That was a brilliant design. Yeah, I did a few of them. And then remember Jeep Liberty Diesel? Yes. Oh, great. Worked on a few of them. That stupid EGR valve, which, well, you know, I had an EGR valve and it was just like, and I, oh, I just, what a turd that thing was.

46:10In theory, very cool, right? And I know I talked to way back in the day that were like, in Europe they sold really well. And people love them. And it would have been if it hadn't had the— like everything else, if it hadn't had the emissions crap on it that we had to run here, like you could sell them like they're going out of style.

46:27Like it would have been an amazing little, little car, like a little SUV. But no, of course we had to use that. And each— uh, just, yeah, I can remember EGR and, uh, turbo problems. And I can remember like, you know, software updates that were supposedly going to fix it, and it was just junk. Yeah, ball joint recall paid good. I like doing them.

46:51Yeah, but, and, uh, same with the Dakota upper ball joint recall. That was a great recall. Yeah, love those. Yeah, paid well. Hands from the air hammer, but I mean, yeah, it paid good, you know. Um, God, what else, man? Rollover valves on Ram trucks. I love that recall. I didn't get to do one of those. I remember, God, we'd go back to the PT Cruiser, that one where you would drop the fuel tank and put the foam on top of the— yes, so sop up the fuel leak.

47:31That was such— that paid well. Um, yeah, I could remember the, the Caravans when they still had a fuel filter. Those paid really good. They were so easy to do. It was— they weren't hard to make money on, man. EGR valves, when they first came out, like, they were— oh yeah, I noticed that in the parking lot, right? Like, you just— it was never— everybody jokes, but it was never anything but the valve.

47:53It always was the valve, you know? Yeah, never saw it be anything but. Um, and it would really trip you up when it wasn't— like, they didn't have a code for it, but it was doing other things. I, I remember I had one and it was like It would throw a MAP sensor fault and intermittently she'd say, I have no throttle. And I'm coming in, I'm looking at MAP sensor, MAP sensor, and then of course the light bulb and you're like, oh, dumbass, it's EGR valve, right?

48:19But you know, first one I ever did where I blocked off the flow, right? Make a gasket, stop the EGR from flowing and drive it. Holy crap, do they ever ping without an EGR valve. Yep. Like, it was like, you know, you didn't think a modern car would still rely on it that much, but holy crap, I can just remember just off idle, it sounded like, you know, gravel in a coffee can.

48:42Like, it was crazy, man. But I remember when 5259 Rams, they— when they did away with EGR '98, yeah, how they had pinging and you had to reroute the plug wires and all that crap. Do you remember the— the— and then the intake plenum gasket would blow up? Did a lot of them. That was a gravy job. I loved it. Put a steel one in it with new bolts and send it down the road.

49:06And I saw— I still remember the first customer that I saw one that I had to do. We'd done an oil change on it. Not me, it had been done on our drive-through, uh, because we had a time at a Quick Lube. And he was gone 3 weeks and he come back in and the engine was like ticking away. He's like, you guys didn't put any oil in my engine.

49:23They're like, come on, it's in the drive-through. Like, you know, we had on camera, you can see the guy pouring. Well, there's no oil on dipstick. Sure enough, no oil on dipstick. We're like— and I remember they looked that car over, that truck, for like, where did the oil go? Of course, you call Techline, they're like, um, pull the throttle body off, shine a light down in there and see.

49:42And yeah, sure enough, oil right up in that intake. And you're like, oh, that's what— and then of course comes back for cat fault later, right? But oh yeah. Because it was— it burned. But yeah, once you got those, man, they were such a good paying job. That was the best way to do the tune-up for the cap motor. Oh yeah, you already had it off, just do it at the same time, you know.

50:04But no, like, like, like now, like the Hurricane engine, oh, I've done some phasers. Yeah, um, thermostats are a big issue with them on the straight-6. Yeah, they run a little door that moves and it's piggyback to the water pump, so you gotta take the water pump out to do it. Of course, of course. Done a bunch of them and that's one of them.

50:30Yeah, I lose my ass on every one of them, but I'd rather do that than, you know, tear myself up or whatever. Yeah, suck the AC down so you take the compressor completely out and then Then you got your air ride tank because usually they were Wagoneers that had that problem. Yeah, yeah, that's a turd, the Wagoneer. Yeah, I mean, the Hurricane runs good, the numbers, I mean, but it's not as service friendly as a Hemi.

50:59No, no. And I've talked to more than one diehard Chrysler guy, he's like, why couldn't they just brought the 4-liter back to stick in that thing, you know? And it's like, well, yeah. Never meet the emissions that, you know, that thing is supposed to be able to do. But when you think about inlines, like, that was just like they— the 2.5 and the 4-liter were the best inline I ever saw.

51:22Maybe you could argue the old Slant-6 was better, but nah, I would say no. That 4-liter— the 2.5 always ran rough, the inline, a little, because I mean, yeah, never designed to be that way. But that, like, that 4-liter was just so bulletproof. Was so simple. Oh yeah, they run forever. They— the 3-liter, I mean, they're smooth, they sound refined, but you're just asking an awful lot.

51:49Yeah, out of a small— like the 2-liter, uh, Evo engine now. Yeah, um, yeah, they run great, but you got to run the right oil, and that's usually what happens with them, and they'll start scoring cylinder walls and get a cold engine noise. Do you touch any of the hybrid or EV stuff when you were there? Yes. Yep, I've done some battery packs.

52:12Yeah, um, a lot of heaters. Yep. Yeah, they'll fail. Um, I see up here a lot more of the, um, the 4xe Wranglers, the hybrid. I'm just like, thank God I don't have one of them, because, you know, it'd be cool to get some mileage back A little bit. I don't want to buy it when it's, when it's broken, you know. I don't want to fix it when it's broken.

52:39Now I had to do a battery pack on one shortly before I left the dealer, and you take the straps off the door. They take, take the rear doors out. I just fold them forward and you take a cherry picker and pull them out. Yeah, because it's just so heavy. Yeah, it would be, eh, for sure. I mean, I like the idea that they put it there instead of putting it on the bottom of the car.

53:01Where it's a lot more, you know, um, I think that that's something that maybe we need to start thinking about when we're building these modern EVs and whatnot, is that we maybe think about getting the battery pack up a little bit farther away from the ground. Um, Sherwood at Royalty just did a video on a Camry hybrid that the, the customer had hit something on the road and it punctured the fuel tank.

53:27And how it didn't puncture the battery pack, I don't know, because like it, it hit it caused a leak in the transmission. Like, they wrote the car off, $15,000. But like, I've seen it, like, you know, I've talked about that, uh, Hyundai Ioniq that was made the headlines here. Uh, customer drove over something, caused a strike to the battery. They went to the dealer, they checked it, they condemned the car, wrote it off because the battery pack was going to cost more than the car was worth.

53:54Yeah, I'm just like, you know, that, that's not That's not progress. So no, and then nobody's really rebuilding those batteries, so they're just stacking up somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen the BYD cars that we talk about? The— No, I've read about them, but that's about it. Pretty impressive little car. Yeah. I think you can buy them up there, can't you? Well, or not yet.

54:22I think we're going to be like the first out of the gate with them. I have a feeling because of some of the backroom deals that my government has done up here, they've kind of made it very easy for them to get here. Now, I don't know if they're going to be here by '27, but probably by '28 they're going to be here.

54:42And then, you know, I've had people talk that like I had a guest on, he'd been to Vietnam on a trip and drove them. And he says like, you're just amazed at how that car performs for the price of it. Now, that being said, You know, without the product support, you know, and it's such a cheap car, I'm scared in 6, 7 years we're going to have a bunch of them sitting around in our, you know, land waste yards, landfills, whatever you want to call them.

55:09Yeah. Batteries that nobody wants, you know, um, or not fixing. And then that's— does it really— faster, just waste. Yeah. Does it really serve our purpose? Um, what did— like, kind of share with me, when you left the dealer, what did they— what did they say? What did they think? Did they care at all? Did they say anything? Nothing. I said, I said, I'm— I'm— this— today's my last day.

55:36And because I didn't give him any notice because I wanted to keep my benefits intact because I knew they'd kick him out from under me, right? And, uh, the service manager goes, oh, okay. And then, uh, that was a Friday night. So then Saturday morning I came in to get my toolbox and all that, and he only wanted to go through like 4 drawers.

56:00Usually I don't allow that because legally they can't, but just to get out of there, he goes, I don't know what I'm looking for. And I said, all right. And he goes, you got anything at the shop? Said, oh yeah, I got 2 rolls of toilet paper. Got some coffee cups. Yeah, well, my locker, I keep an extra roll of toilet paper and paper towels because in the bathroom they forget to restock.

56:28Well, I get salesmen raid my locker, and so I got to the point I put in my tool cart, but now they— he didn't care. And then That Saturday, the general manager crossed paths with me in the parking lot and he really just, he just said, well, you know, we'll see you later. I mean, no, what can we do, you know, to keep you?

56:53What's the problem? Yeah. Yep. And so how long have you been at that dealer? 4 years. 4 years. Yeah. Yeah. I was at 2 Chrysler dealers for 10 years apiece. And then I was at one for a year and a half just because it went out of business. And then, uh, I know for a couple years because— so one that I was at for 10 got bought out and I stuck around for 2 years.

57:23Now, Eric, when they— you know, when you kind of— we joke, but it's kind of sad at the same time— when, when they don't do anything or say much when they know you're leaving, do you think it's because like they've just kind of accepted that they can't do anything about making it better, or do you think it's like they're still holding out, you know, that they don't want to?

57:45I think it's a matter they don't know what to do. Um, the service manager knows he's only limited by the general manager, and the general manager, he just, he don't know what to do about it. Yeah, he just sees it as you're being ungrateful for not wanting to work for him anymore. And it's— that's not it. I mean, it's just a matter of, you know, hey, you know, and I've told him, you know, I've had meetings with them about, you know, what's going on in that shop.

58:14And he just— then he flipped and he spins it on me. Yeah, well, like, like ours, well, you need to upsell, upsell, upsell. Well, that works to an extent, but you're going to scare customers off. Or make them mad. Yeah. And again, you know, like, I see all these guys, the content creators and stuff, and even, you know, the non-content creators that are talking about the DVI process and all that and how it's such a powerful tool.

58:42It is. But like, you and I know you can do one hell of a DVI at the dealer, like absolutely stellar. And they then have an estimate, you know, if we follow that 300% rule in this video, and, and it goes to a shop with a door rate that's $20 less and say way cheaper parts, and all that work gets done there.

59:04Yeah, you know what I mean? And that's— so for me, like, we knew, you started to know by looking at the history, because I'm sure you're like me, you look at the history on almost most of the cars you're working on and you start to see it right in there. I called it a profile that like all the wrecks went somewhere else.

59:23It came in with, you know, brakes on it from Midas and all that jazz, and they were shopping around for trying to save $100 or $50 back in the day. And I get it and I understand it, but like when all of a sudden we keep saying now, you know, all you dealer techs have got to do this DVI when we used to just do an MPI and used to pencil whip it because you were looking at your history to see what was due and what was done.

59:47We're, we're in a lot of ways, all we're doing is wasting people's time and we're prepping these amazing estimates that are going to our competition and getting the work done. You know, because— and then I also had problems with service advisors dropping the ball and not sending it onward either. That was kind of, yeah, just as much of a problem, um, because you go up there, hey, did you run it through?

1:00:13Oh, I forgot. Or they don't want to do it anyways, and we'll try. Yeah, like, how do they not know that, like, And I mean, they know. It's not a case that they don't know, but you've heard me in some of my past episodes and I talk all the time about there's so many places that don't hold the advisor to the same level of expectation that they hold the tech.

1:00:39They say to the tech, "Oh, you got to upsell more. You got to find more hours. You got to hustle more." But we know there's certain advisors that are underperforming every month. Because they don't want to have the hard conversations. They don't have the knack for it. They're not that motivated. And then all of a sudden they're part of the interior makeup of the dealer after 2 years because they've been underperforming for 2 years and they're still there.

1:01:11And then people are like, "Oh, I can't get rid of them now because they have a client base." And maybe they got a couple CSI scores that made them look like they were great, which again, if you did the repair for free, a lot of people just gave you a great fucking CSI review because they didn't have to pay nothing. Didn't really matter, right?

1:01:33That's always the part that just yanked me around with the whole lack of motivation from advisors is because it's just terrible how some of them could be so mediocre and they kept their job. I got a friend. They kept getting the paychecks. He's a really good one. Um, he looks at it as when he calls them up, only one of two things will happen.

1:01:54Either gonna fix it or you're not. There's no bargaining, no cutting it down, you know, take it or leave it. And he sold, yeah, he sold a lot of service work. Just don't take it personal. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, right? And this is not just in the dealer, this is any advisor, period. Don't take it personal and realize that like if you set the precedence by saying, I can find $200 to remove from the bill this time, they're going to want at least $200 next time and every time that, right?

1:02:29Whereas if you start out and it's just like, nope, unfortunately, Mrs. Smith, we can't do that. You know, I'm already maxed out at what I can. I found you all the overlap, like I— all that, you know, I got— you're, you're you're just opening up a can of worms by allowing them to drive the ship because they're just going to continue to expect that.

1:02:49And then when you don't that one time and finally you got to knuckle down and say no, that's when they'll destroy you on the survey right there. It's because you always used to be able to give it to me and now you can't. It's going down the wrong way. And I joke about this, but I had an advisor who he was not that motivated to sell.

1:03:12Because his alimony check to his ex-wife would just go up exponentially if he started actually really pumping work out. And we're sitting here going like, "Dude, that's a you problem. That ain't a me problem." I'll take it out on them. Yeah. Give your ticket then to the other advisor. That's who I want to handle it because he was a shark. He just like— That kind of stuff and to be allowed to stay when that is their attitude, I just never understood that.

1:03:42That was daft to me that they were, you know, could, could perform like that. Not that he was a guy, I'm not saying that, it's just the directive was not there. Well, and then like, like where I came from, the last place, um, you get a good one while that other one's bad habits, it— they'll either quit or they just become the same person.

1:04:04And then, then you got two, you know, horrible advisors to deal with, because that was starting to happen when I was leaving, was they had a really good one out of the gate and yeah, her attitude just went downward. Like, oh no. Now, who trained— who trained the advisors when they would come on? Like, the senior advisor, uh, the service manager would train a little bit and then he'd let them kind of fend for themselves.

1:04:35Yeah. How did you think that worked? Badly. Yeah. Yeah. I saw them take kids that we'd hired and we worked in the quick lube, so the drive-up oil change bay. And if they were polite and smiled at the customer, they'd make them a service writer in a very short bit. I'm not talking after a year, I'm talking after 3 months. And I'm like, are you serious right now?

1:05:03Like, that's, that, that's not the right thing to do because last week they're changing oil and this week they're, they're selling $4,000 transmission overhauls. Like, it's— how do you— how do they learn to do that? Oh, sales is sales. Like, no, selling a $10 air filter isn't the same as selling a $4,000 transmission. It doesn't work like that. I still think the less they know about— they need to know a little bit about cars, but not much, because then you get the brainiac that wants to tell you what he thinks and like, no, why are they here?

1:05:39Yeah, yeah. And that's— did you see a lot of service writers that were— how do I say that— maybe washouts as techs? Uh, a few, not very many. Yeah, I was an advisor for 4 months at the dealer I was with Dad. That's how I got into the company. They had no tech opening, and the owner goes, well, you might like it better than ranching.

1:06:05He gave me a 6-month trial run. I only made it 4 months, and he's seen the writing on the wall and put me on the line. Oh, it was okay. We're still doing handwritten tickets, but it. I just didn't like it. The senior advisor I learned a lot from, he could take, he can get his butt chewed something fierce and let it roll off.

1:06:28He did it for so long, he could do it. And it just wasn't me. And the dealer owner knew that. And then I became a line tech. Do you think that ability to let it just kind of roll off your back, do you think that's lost now as a Do I say skill? But I'm, I'm not so sure necessarily, Eric, the younger generation has got that ability.

1:06:50I don't think so either. I mean, because I, uh, I'm not gonna knock them, but a lot of them want to feel special and don't want, you know, they think, you know, if a customer's getting mad at them, you know, it's personal, and it's not. Like, we got, like, there was a young one there at the last place I was at, um I had an old farmer.

1:07:12Well, he was in his, he's in his mid-60s and it would really tear him up. He never nailed him on a survey, but when he'd walk in the door, the guy go, hey dude, what's up? Instead of, you know, Bernie, how you doing today? Or sir, how are you? And he'd come in the shop and talk to me and that friend of mine.

1:07:32Cause he like, he said, you three techs, there's another older one back there. He goes, that's the only reason why I come in here. I can't stand the rest of it. Up there. And I said, yeah, but no formal, you know, he said, I don't need to be, you know, have my butt kissed, but, you know, just a little formal. Yeah. Hey dude, what's up is probably not how you greet your customer.

1:08:01Oh, maybe at the bar if you're a bartender, I could see that. Yeah, but in a dealership or even just in a repair shop, you know, you really don't want to do that. No. Um, what, uh, what other kind of qualities do you think make a good advisor? Oh, be able to multitask. Um, that was one thing we kind of ran into was they would— we felt they'd take on enough work that they could handle and it would hurt the shop because we weren't, you know, we'd run out of work.

1:08:38They could only take on what they would. Yeah, multitask and just a good personality, a little bit of knowledge about cars, just, just a little. You don't need to be an expert on it. Yeah, because, you know, I had, well, what I had an advisor that she told the customer that the coolant flush wasn't all that important. Because it doesn't really move that far through the car.

1:09:05However she determined that to be, I don't know. I think she was comparing it to— I don't know, she thought like the engine oil was way more important, which you could make the argument. I think it probably would be. But like, just how that got in her head that she was going to say something like that, I was just like— I'm standing there like trying not to like let the cat out of the bag that you just put a size 14 right in your mouth.

1:09:33You can't say stuff like that. I had a few moments like that with advisors. You just stand there going, "What?" Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's not about knowing all the answers. It's about if you don't know the answer, like, "Okay, let me go talk to the resident expert professional and he'll give me the answer or she will give me the answer," or ask AI or Ask the advisor that's got more seniority next to you if they've ever— let's just don't, you know.

1:10:04And we would know a lot of the time, like, some advisors, like, and again, because we're all flat rate, all 100% incentivized, you'd have them come out and say to the customer, like, oh, I know it says in the owner's manual, you know, you should change your brake fluid now, but like, I've been driving this car I got in the parking lot and I've never changed it and I've never had a problem.

1:10:23Like, If you're my advisor and you say that, you'll be kicking your lunch bill down the road in front of you. Like, it's about what you do with your car. It's about, especially when the customer is asking the question, should I? The answer is yeah. You know, if the OE recommends it, yes. You know, you should always at least do the minimum maintenance is what the OE recommends.

1:10:50There's worse. You know, we've had that conversation. There's more maintenance that needs to be done sometimes than what even the OE is recommending. Understanding, but like you never talk them out of doing something. It— if you're talking them out of doing a repair because you don't think it's going to fix the car, then that's a bigger problem, which is probably then who was it dispatched to, or that technician, you know, all that kind of stuff.

1:11:12But never tell them that no, they don't need to change a fluid because your own car, uh, you've never done that. Now if it's a car with a ton of miles on, they want a transmission exchange service. No, leave it alone. Yeah, yeah. As I was going to ask you, because like that's, that's a hot button topic with some pretty big content creators lately.

1:11:36And it's like, you'll see, you know, Sherwood talk about at Royalty, they, they will do it. Um, but their process is very involved, more so than what a lot of us would spend, where it's like it's, it's evaluated pretty good before they agree to doing the service. Because like, and they, they have that open conversation with the customer. This is not a guarantee this is going to fix it, and if it still has a shutter after we do the fluid in it, you're not getting your money back.

1:12:03This is a, a service that should have been done, you know. Um, we don't think we necessarily need to replace the torque converter yet, but the fluid is definitely degraded. Um, you know, the torque converter isn't going to get worse by changing the fluid.. But most of us don't have that conversation enough. And then we get a customer comes in and they just want a transmission tune and you've never seen them before and you never ask why and you dump the tranny fluid out of it and you change the filter and then you send it down the road and they're back a month later with it like missing gears and you're like, what happened?

1:12:37I can't believe it. And it's like, did you, did you know this was happening beforehand? Customer's going to say never. Right? But people don't just come in and ask for a transmission service unless there's something wrong. And, you know, so then you go down that road of like, did we cause it? No, you didn't cause it. The customer caused it by not doing the service in time.

1:13:01But how do you navigate that? Well, I guess maybe you take whatever, you know, and look at, look at what a Trans Tune costs now in a Chevrolet, in a Silverado. It's like $1,000 up here, right? You buy that much fluid that Mobil 1 fluid for it, you're, you're $1,000. Chrysler 8-speed, you get— you to get the filter on some of them, you got to buy a pan, the plastic ones, and then that fluid isn't cheap.

1:13:26Yep. Yeah. So when people— you're trying to sell, you know, what do you think about flushing versus doing it if it's got a serviceable filter? Because you'll see, I believe in just doing the serviceable filter because I had an 8-speed I did a flush on. They told me transmission had never been touched, 100,000, and the valve body goofed up on it about a few weeks later.

1:13:49And the service manager got the customer to pay for it, not have a problem with it, but she's wanting to get rid of the truck. And, um, I put a valve body in, she kept it for another couple years. But yeah, that— and I told him, I said, that's why I don't I'm the only one that did the exchanges in the Chrysler shop there because the other guys wouldn't.

1:14:10I'm like, I don't agree with it, but you know, it's a paycheck at that point. And but I would ask questions before I would just, you know, see the RO and go ahead and do it because yeah, you have to. And then I remember way back when a guy talking about how, um, Kirk Robinson up here in Ontario, he talks about how the way they had addressed in his shop was if it's got a serviceable filter, they're both servicing the filter and doing the flush.

1:14:40And he would break it down as like, the first thing we do is we drop the pan off, remove that filter, clean that magnet so we're not pushing that material through, and then we flush it. Well, it was an expensive service way back then, but he says like, we almost have no issues after the fact because that's the whole argument, right? If you go and flush that, are you going to push that metal and that dirt?

1:14:59You had all the hubs, clutch packs, and everything else. Yeah. But again, we're into look at what were the price of these, you know, transmission. People still come in thinking a transmission exchange is $200, you know, and some of the quick lubes are probably still doing them for $300, you know, and it's like it's all fluid in it and that causes problems.

1:15:20Isn't it the best? I used to— oh, I had an advisor, again my favorite advisor, he, he'd call me at least once a week up to the front to do a relearn on a Caravan because it had been at one of the dump and pumps and they, and they did a transmission flush and now the thing is bump shifting and everything else, right?

1:15:39And you had to do your relearn. And of course, you know how that goes. You can do it in like, what, 4 minutes in the drive-through, right? It's hot. And they'd sit there and watch it and he never charged them. And I'm like, you know, they would stop going there if you'd start charging them for this because, you know, they, whatever they saved by having them do it versus us, they would've lost that now by paying us to do the relearn.

1:16:02And you know, 'cause the Quick Replace doesn't have the faculty to do the relearn. He's like, yeah, but like they just went there and got taken advantage of. Like it's not their fault. And I'm like, okay, so you have a customer that's already showing you that they're not even gonna come here for an oil change and then they don't even have the trust in you to call you up and say, hey, They're trying to sell me this.

1:16:25Should I do it here? Now all of a sudden we're supposed to have sympathy for them that like they've, you know, messed up their van and now we have to fix it? No, we don't have to feel sorry for them. They've shown you that they're not loyal. Now just keep it as business and fix the damn car, you know. But this emotional— I was talking to a good friend of mine, she's like, because we, you know, emotional wallet, right?

1:16:49We talk about that all the time. She's like, I don't have an emotional wallet, I have an emotional suitcase. And I'm like, well then that's going to be your fall, sister, because, you know, Lindsay, if you're listening, stop that shit. Like, just let it go there. You know, when you do the job properly and charge for it, they're not going to be upset about the price.

1:17:08If they are, they were never going to be— they were never going to be right with it regardless. Yeah, it's a customer you don't want. The price isn't going to matter, is it, Eric? It could be $100. You would still wonder if they could get it for $85. Yeah. Um, so when you left the dealer, were you scared about making that change to go into, you know, a general— yeah, you know, call it— yeah, I was.

1:17:35Um, but I got to thinking, I have been doing aftermarket training for the past 3 or 4 years in addition to dealer training. It went downhill. And seeing the support online with like you and, you know, Lucas— like, I talked to him at Vision, kind of gave me a pep talk. All the support out there for the independent world that used to not be there, I— that's what kind of helped push me in.

1:18:11And I, you know, kind of like, I've always worked on other stuff here and there and the variety, and that's what kind of helped me make the decision. Plus, I wouldn't be flat rate anymore, um, you know, just kind of make a more comfortable living. And that friend of mine I worked with, he set me up with the shop owner because I never knew the guy before, and he was a dealer tech for 30 years before he went to independent.

1:18:43So so he understood. And yeah, I— and I, like I said, I told him, I said, if I don't do it, I never will. And yeah, it's scary. Um, it's getting better, kind of like Lucas said. The theory is all the same, just because I was trying to master it like the dealer world, and you can't do that. No, you can't. You have to rely.

1:19:12That's the thing. Like, it sounds counterintuitive, but like, when I walked into the dealer, I had to rely on service information a whole lot more. A whole lot. Because same as me, you know how to get them apart without reading the service information, right? Like, you know, and your visual and your repetition and your pattern failure and your tech line helps you get through to kind of know where the, the, the trends and the weak points are.

1:19:36But man, when you start working on everything and anything, you're I have my head glued to that thing all the time. We don't have Identifix where I work, but I mean, at the previous, we used it nonstop. It was constant. Not to give you the bullet, but to know, I keep saying it isn't about getting a bullet, it's about knowing. Things to test.

1:19:57Yeah. If there's a real common thing, don't sit there and go, "Ah, it's not going to be that." No, you better start with trying to prove. But it's not, um, because otherwise— yeah, that's it. And then I felt bad for a little while that I would spend more time at the computer reading how to diagnose it and tear it apart. And then, like, I had a Cadillac.

1:20:21I think I spent half an hour at the computer and then 5 minutes on the car, figured it out, replaced the part. You know, and it's, it's go, it's slow, it's getting better about that. It's just, yeah, you, you know, that dealer mindset of, you know, you want to, you know it, master it, and be done. Yeah. But your boss probably doesn't have a problem with you doing that, does he?

1:20:48Yeah. So gotta get in her own head, you know? Yeah. Because Alex, I'll call, I work in a separate shop where 4 we have two buildings, they're four blocks apart, but we're connected, intercom and all that. But I'll call him up and I'll tell him, hey, I tested this and it tested like, you know, I got this result. And all right, go ahead and fix it.

1:21:12You know, he's pretty cool about it. You know, he don't want you just call him up, well, it needs this, and then that, you leave it at that. I'll actually tell him, you know, why, and it, it helps him ease his mind. Yeah, sure. Yep. Yeah. Is there— do you guys take in anything, or is there brands that you don't touch? Uh, they basically take on anything— Euro, Asian.

1:21:41Um, we got a military Deuce and a Half outside right now that I'm not working on. It, um, we got a part-timer comes in, does that. Yeah, is that somebody's fun project, that kind of— yeah, farm toy. Yeah. Um, oh, about a month ago I rebuilt an '84 Chrysler Fifth Avenue, only had 40,000 miles on it. What did it need? Oh, belts, hoses, um, the HVAC wasn't working right, and I got to where it blow cold air, but that it needs an actuator for the blend air.

1:22:21And oh, adjust the carburetor. Um, just right. Oh, it had sat for a while and the guy wanted to drive. I said, um, fix the doors. And I told the guy, do not turn this into your daily driver. I had, I had one about 2 years ago at the shop I worked in. The guy brought one, a Fifth Avenue, in, and it was the older you know, rear-wheel drive boat kind of thing there.

1:22:51And we did some work on it, but what were we trying to find? I can't remember what it was. Something under the hood we were trying to find, and it took forever. And then when we got the part, it wasn't exactly right, but we got it. Oh, it was a window regulator. That was it. Yeah, it's like, you know, we made it work, but I was like, you know, what is that?

1:23:13Like, why do you want this car? Like, to And, you know, but he'd had it forever and he loved it and he wanted to drive it around. And I think it was a convertible too. So it was like that probably was what made it harder to get parts for. But like that old stuff and he like normally we wouldn't allow customer-supplied parts, but he, because of what it was and, you know, he had friends that like were in the Mopar Club, right?

1:23:37And they're telling them where to find these parts and, you know, they've been tested out and somebody else has put the same thing in and it works fine. So we allow, we made the exception to the rule for him, but I can still remember like working on this car and thinking, my God, like I'm so glad I wasn't, this is Chrysler era before my era because like I remember doing a water pump and belts and hoses on one of the front, an old, old, like, you know, 318 as we call it.

1:24:08And I still never forgotten how many stupid belts and spacers and brackets. Bolt different, yeah, brackets. Like, it was— I was early in my career and I was an apprentice. I'm like, this is the stupidest, yep, engineered piece of junk I've ever seen in my life. There was an air pump, there was a power steering pump, there was an alternator, there was an AC compressor, all on different belts, different spacers, different brackets.

1:24:30I'm like, this is stupid. Oh yeah, put belts on it. I was like, wow, I don't miss this. Yeah, thank God a serpentine belt came and fixed so many issues. I They were cool cars, but man, they were just like, nah, you know, I just know. And the weird— when they would talk to you, the Cruisers, when they would talk to you, that was a trip.

1:24:54And I can remember the early Grand Cherokees when they would tell you that the light bulb was out, but then it really wasn't out, you know, that would drive people nuts. And it's like, yeah, you know, we joke about it now. Yeah, working on the old stuff like that now, it's just it's frustrating trying to find the parts and, you know, be careful because everything's so brittle, you know, because I tear dash apart a little bit.

1:25:18And yeah, it just— you're just— it's not much of a moneymaker, but it's kind of fun. But at the same time, I'd rather work on later model stuff. Well, you're getting into that, you know, where now you're doing an enthusiast. Yes. Car or into the rest— you're dipping your toe in the restoration realm versus just the regular everyday, you know, in and out type of routine, right, of what we're actually supposed to be doing in this industry.

1:25:47And, you know, I hate to tell anybody, but the reality is, is like a lot of these stuff, what their expectations are really don't line up with what it actually takes now to do it. Like you said, to do some of these jobs without breaking the plastic or, you know, yeah. So you take out the, you know, heater core maybe isn't a good example because they come out a lot easier in the old stuff than you do in the new stuff.

1:26:13But you go in there and it's like, oh, wait a minute, it doesn't fit. Yep. Now I've got this car half apart, right? What do I do? You know, you drive it outside and it sits there at the end of the lot for, you know, 2 weeks until we try something that does fit. But I just— I cringe at a Dodge truck when they want one done in the dash.

1:26:29You look at it wrong, It'll crumble on you. Yeah. And yeah, right. Because we all know the cheat for that, but it's still the cheat is like, you know, you're pulling the dash ahead. You're not doing it the way they used to, but you still, you're taking a lot of that plastic apart and it's like you breathe on it wrong and it's cracking.

1:26:48Like you're, you just, Chevrolet's the same way though. It doesn't really matter. I mean, any of this junk now when it's 10 years old is, is brittle and fragile. Did you do a bunch of dash work? Oh yes, I did a lot of evaporator cores, heater cores, actuators. Yeah, I did, I did, I did actuators, I did a couple cores. I didn't have to do a ton of dash work.

1:27:11I, I managed to— I was out before the— so when all the casting sand was winding up in your cores. Yeah, 200s, Avengers, I did a ton of them where you put radiator, heater core, Oil cooler for a 3.6, flush her out. I remember, yeah, and I remember I didn't understand. Guys were like, oh, I love doing those heater cores. I'm like, why?

1:27:34And then you, you figure out the cheat code that they were doing, which is they were not— they were uncrimping the pipes out of the core and just sliding the core on, right? Yeah, leaving the pipes in here. And I was amazed that so many of them didn't leak. I think probably a lot of them did leak, but you know, we didn't see it.

1:27:50And I remember we had a caravan when I was at Nissan, and they sold it. Of course, it plugged up, and, uh, they put 3 cores in it and it kept plugging. And finally they changed the engine in it, and I was like, what are you putting in for an engine? Oh, used one. I'm like, um, you think that's gonna fix the problem?

1:28:10Yeah. But it was, it was ridiculous. He got down to where he was doing them pretty fast, like he'd do them 2 hours. He'd do that core, and he was doing it the same way 'cause somebody at the dealer told him this is the cheat for it. But like the idea that they bought that car and then put an engine in it instead of just buying it back and auctioning it, I was like, this is ridiculous, you know?

1:28:31Yeah, that's why I'm not a car salesman. I just, I'd want, I would, I got a conscience or I want to do it a certain way. There's no money in it the way I want to do it. Well, that's it. And you know, I work at a used car lot, so that's a daily struggle to be like— because again, you know, if you, if you rebuilt the car though, which is what they're telling the customer it is, and it's not, you know, versus just doing what it is to make it legal to sell and safe and reliable, there's no money.

1:29:05There's zero money. You don't make any. The margin's so freaking stretched as it. But customers will come back and be like, "I bought it 9 months ago and the AC's not cold." And you're like, "Yeah, AC, it worked when we sold it to you, but it's not part of the safety." And then they're flipping out, right? They're like, "Oh my God." And then you start giving them the quote now on what it costs to fix air conditioning now.

1:29:33And they're like, "I'm trading the car in." Okay. You're probably gonna buy something else, and then next year won't have air conditioning working either because it's just, you know, 1234 is the— it's a joke. Like, it won't, it won't stay in the system. And I imagine up there, um, how many rear evaporator cores have you done on Caravan? And they probably suck up there with all the corrosion.

1:29:58So I'll tell you right now, Eric, most of what the guys do is, um, not Dorman. There's another company, I want to say it's called CSI, and they specialize in like fuel line repair, coolant line repair, AC line repair, and they make a block-off kit. Okay, right, because— and that was, that was what a lot of them got because it was, it was literally just like, it was like a furl that you'd put on and then you'd like screw it.

1:30:26It's like a compression fitting, that's all it is. And it would seal up and block the lines off to the back because how many people bought a Caravan and 90% of the time, if they've still got it now, nobody's riding in the back of the damn thing anyway, right? And then so it's like, I get it, the few times you put the kids in there and the AC's cold in the front but not in the back, they're going to whine.

1:30:47But you're talking a lot of money. I remember the Caravans when they had that rear heat line that would always rot off on the firewall there just underneath. And we would do them so fast and make your head spin. They paid great too. And then, yeah, the rear EVAPs would start to rot out. The rear lines running to the back would rot out, and guys would just lick their lips because it's like you'd put that rear EVAP and that line in, and 2 years— and you tell the customer, now listen, no undercoat this.

1:31:15They wouldn't. 2 years later, rotten again, you know. And it's just like, what do I do now? Well, now I would probably cap because, you know, Like, you also need rear brakes that are seized. Yeah, rear caliper, not on every caravan. Um, yeah, it just— we did a lot of them. I did a lot. I got an '03, uh, Town and Country.

1:31:36I'd run it through an undercar car wash a lot, keep the— because we don't have a whole lot of problems with road salt here until you go further north. But yeah, keep the dirt because around here dirt and grime will kill them. Yeah. Oh, for us it— and even I say undercoating, Neil, I've still pulled lots of them apart that have been undercoated and it's still rotten.

1:31:58It's still swell. Like it was such a stupid design in the sense that it was, it was exposed. And again, their AC is another funny thing when you're having customer, you know, conversations is because like you can run back there with a sniffer and you know you're going to find it leaking. You're going to find it. You're going to. But it ain't the only leak in the car.

1:32:18Not even close. Right. And then so you, maybe they do fix it and they put lines in it and they put the rear EVAP in and then you're like, mm, 6 months later, you know, it needs an EVAP under the dash. And then look, you know, we might as well do the whole box while we're here because that's the right way to do a Chrysler because you get a new core, you get the box, the actuator, the blend doors, the whole problematic junk.

1:32:44And people are like, my God, I spent $6,000 in HVAC on this turd. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Comfort's not cheap. The only reason I scrapped my last Cherokee is because I was coming up on summer and the compressor had seized up the year before and I'd put a bypass pulley on it when you could still buy one. And I wasn't going to buy a compressor to put on it.

1:33:12You know, it already didn't have floor pans really that were worth a shoot. So it was like, I'm like, no, I'm not gonna buy a compressor and a receiver dryer for this. I'm just gonna, you know, drive it to the junkyard. But I mean, it— that was the only reason. That was the only reason I got rid of that Cherokee, because otherwise I'd still be driving if it had cold air.

1:33:29But I just wasn't gonna, you know, fix the air. Wasn't worth it. But not like heater cores anymore. The ones I see are '09 to '18 Rams plug up. Well, even the newest current body style, they're starting to have the same issue too. Do you think that's got to do with how they— because some people show how they run, like Chrysler run the passages the other way, right?

1:33:53Like, I think that's got a big part of the reason why they plug up is because, you know, and why they don't fix that, or somebody in the aftermarket hasn't come up with a way. I don't know, because like you've seen it, you take them out and they're full of— they're full again, that casting sand, right? And then it's like I've watched Eric, oh, you know, try to fix a couple of them with like, you know, CLR and a pressure blast through the hoses and he gets some heat back.

1:34:22But I also know I've had a bunch that like, you know, my 4-liter, my Wrangler or my last Cherokee, it was starting to get like that where, you know, I was flushing it every year, blowing through and it was getting the heat back. But you knew that it was just like there was so much sediment in it that eventually it was gonna be, you know, a summer-only buggy if I kept it up.

1:34:44I had a '93 Acclaim like that. The only reason why I did that was it still had R-12 and the AC system didn't leak. And I'm like, I'm not putting a heater core in it and lose the R-12. Yeah, it was such a, such a better refrigerator. Yeah, like in terms of, and not yet, but progress. Yeah. Um, what do you hate to see come into your shop now?

1:35:10Anything? Oh, nothing really yet. Just, it's a learning curve. Um, I'll, I'll figure out about anything really. Um, right. Like yesterday I was helping out a friend of mine back home and worked on an Audi. He goes, you want to put a compressor in one? I'm like, yeah, why not? Torx bolts delight. Yeah, I know. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's an Audi.

1:35:42I mean, it's not a— some are not terrible and some absolutely suck. I think it's just a frame of mind. Um, when you talked about you went to vision, is that something your whole shop does? No, just me. Unfortunately, where I'm at, they don't invest in training. He told me that when I was interviewed, and I kind of just, okay, because I've, you know, I've always kind of trained regardless, and, and, you know, get used to some people, you know, why, why waste your time, you know, kind of beat on you.

1:36:14And I thought, I can live with this. And no, I got a friend that I help out on Saturdays every now and then, and okay. In return for working some, we went to Vision together and he took care of it. Very cool. Yeah, that's kind of nice. And I went the full 4 days this year and it was really nice. Last year I went 2 days to get a feel of it, and I— like I said, it, it was really cool.

1:36:45I got to meet David Roman and Lucas Underwood. And, uh, Brandon Steckler I had for an instructor. He's amazing, isn't he? Yeah, he's absolutely— I just saw him a couple weeks ago in Pennsylvania at Tools, and I mean, now it's like, you know, we see each other, I give him a hug, you know, and he's, he's just a— he's so— how do I say it— he's so professional, you know what I mean?

1:37:13Like He'll share his opinion, but he does it in a way that doesn't really offend anybody or, you know, it's just the guy's a genius. He's just, that's the only way you can say it. He's a genius. And I've enjoyed every class I've ever taken of his. And what was cool this year is like I took a class with Keith Perkins. Yeah, I got to meet him.

1:37:38And Brandon. Yeah. Another genius. Like, the two of them feel the— almost like when the two of them are in the same room, it kind of gets all of a sudden very crowded because there's just no freaking way that much IQ can be in, in that room together. Like, they're just together. But it was so cool to have him in the class with Keith because— not that he's challenging Keith, but like, he's asking questions and, and you see the gears are turning in these two guys' heads and you're like, man, I'm— we're in such an amazing place in the industry right now because Like, if you want to talk to people like that, you literally

1:38:11just have to like send them, shoot them a message and they'll answer back. Like, it's incredible. I'm so fortunate that I consider them my friends now. Like, it's amazing because for me, I was just, I was a dealer guy that found them online and was amazed what they were doing, right? And it just became, so now 15, 20 years later from when I first started to see them, I'm amazed.

1:38:38I pinch myself still all the time that I'm sitting there across the table from them drinking a beer, talking about the industry. Like, it just blows my mind, you know. It just, it makes me— I, I can't— I have to pinch myself some days because I'm, I'm definitely a duck out of water with those guys. Yeah, I mean, it just was amazing.

1:38:56Yeah, Steckler, just how he teaches and, you know, pick up stuff. And then I can't remember the other instructor I had. He was a shop owner in Kentucky, Eric. I think it was the last— Eric Schaefer? No, can't remember his name. Eric— not, um, Ziegler? Is that— is that right? Oh, trying to think here. Eric Walker. Walker. Yeah, I just pulled that up.

1:39:25Yeah, I like— I, I really enjoyed his classes. I took two of his. Um, oh, Adam Robertson, took one of his classes. That, that guy's something else. Uh, Richard Falco, you ever taken one of his? Jim Wilson, that's another one. I've taken his classes. Yeah. Um, yeah, but yeah, I, I'm a big believer in continuous education. That's kind of what 'Cause my friend told this shop owner, you know, hey, he, you know, and then when I met him, he goes, yeah, we kind of train as we, you know, learn as we go.

1:40:03And I said, well, I'm gonna keep doing my education. And he's like, that's fine. I do lunch and learns every, whenever they come on. Those are really good. And Fisher just did one last week. Yeah. Another brilliant, brilliant, brilliant guy. Like it just— And Peter Coombs, that's another good one. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it just— we could, we could talk for an hour on just the— The support's amazing.

1:40:36Yeah. And that's what I love about this industry. Like, we, we get all wrapped up sometimes in the negative of it, right? And even I do, because it's so much of what I do is people like yourself that are reaching out to me to talk about it. Right. And, you know, you're talking about the good and the bad. And I wish that, like, I had more positive sometimes to say.

1:40:57Um, but it, you know, we don't, we don't get the problem solved if we don't talk about the problem. But I should really learn to kind of highlight more of the people that are, you know, really making the difference in terms of our education. Yeah. Well, like with you, you know, when I got referred to start, you know, listening, I, it made me feel I'm not alone.

1:41:19You know, I always thought I was alone and no one hearing others. I mean, you hear about it when you went to dealer classes and stuff. Stuff, but it's just kind of not the same, you know, because everybody's still out for themselves. Yeah, well, and that's, that's it. Like, it— I, you know, even my co-workers, like, I wanted to help them and, and make sure that they weren't struggling, but I mean, it was still very clicky in the sense of, like, I go back to the 4 of us that did a lot of the die-in and, you know, electrical.

1:41:52We'd help one another. But if, like, if we saw another guy struggling sometimes that we didn't really, like, necessarily agree all the time with how he did things, we didn't rush over to, like, you know, throw him a life preserver, like, around a little bit, you know, put our foot on his head a little bit for a little while, right? Until you kind of go over there and go, okay, what's going on?

1:42:13Or if you— if it came back and it got dispatched to you, that's when shit got ugly. That's stuff got really bad because now, you know, now you've got people that are angry because the car's back. And you know why the car's back? Because we dispatched it to the wrong person. And then you can make every excuse in the world why we did that.

1:42:33And some of them are valid excuses. Sure they are. Customer didn't want to wait, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you got to give them the reality of, you know, don't just BS them. Yeah. Like, I, you know, I say it all the time, don't give me, you know, air conditioning jobs that are super complicated because I'm not your guy for that.

1:42:54You know, I'm not, I'm not comfortable with the diag side of it. I'm not. I can— I get it done. Yeah, but I'm slow as hell at it and I'm meticulous about it. And like, I never think that even though— and here's the other thing, I think the very reality is like we do know that like like, even when we get it together and sealed up, it doesn't stay sealed up.

1:43:14So that's always where, like, I, I missed something. We didn't miss something. It, you know, pressure is pressure. Today it was— stayed behind, you know, the seal. 10 more heat cycles and all of a sudden the seal won't hold it. Yeah, you got a system that holds under vacuum, but as soon as you put a little pressure on it— do you do nitrogen leak testing?

1:43:36That's kind of the preferred way that a lot of us up here want it done. Now, I'll tell you that that's not always the— how do I say it? Customers get really yanked when they have an AC system that's like— because so how the mandate works for the government up here, because again, it's government controlled, is that if the system is like low, And say you, so you back the system, you take out their 1 pound of refrigerant that's in there, it's supposed to be 2 pound system, you know, and you throw nitrogen in it and you find the leak and you give them the bill and they say, I don't want to fix it.

1:44:22Technically, I'm not supposed to put refrigerant back in that car because it's a known leaking system, right? So it's being And Mr. Wall, you want to see some customers get angry. You, you know, they get angry when they had a somewhat working system and now they have a completely empty, not working system because you took out their 1-pound refrigerant, you put it in the waste tank.

1:44:45They get pretty pissed. So that's— I'll tell you why a lot of places don't use nitrogen is because they want to leave whatever's in the system and try to find the leak with that. You and I know that like a lot of it, when you're looking at it, it don't— it doesn't work because it's empty. So what's the first step? Well, you hook up, and if there's anything in it, you evacuate it.

1:45:06And then, you know, uh, you put a tracer dye in. This is— I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but this is how most do it. You put tracer dye in, you charge the system, you start looking for leak. You charge the system with refrigerant, and maybe you find some leaks, maybe you don't. Yeah, right. We all know that there's a lot of evaps that have always been leaking that we don't find.

1:45:27Find. Sometimes because they don't want to find them, and sometimes because until we got to this where we started to actually maybe look for the UV dye dripping out of the hose, like the vent, um, or till we got some of the sniffers that get really good and being able to find them way up in the dash, uh, we didn't find it, you know.

1:45:48So then the customers drive along and next year they come back in again and they get another charge, and you know So that's why nitrogen isn't really like— I don't want to say it's not popular, but it's not— every shop out there is not making it the way to do it, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Now, that friend I helped out, he does it, but where I'm at, we don't.

1:46:10It's just, yeah, charge it up and, you know, see where the dye comes out, or if you're lucky, see where, you know, you've seen where it's leaking beforehand. Yeah, and the 1234 is such an expensive refrigerant now. It's, it's having to change sometimes, I think, the way that we actually, um, charge double troubleshoot. Like, uh, my friend Josh is talking about like a 1234 system to eval at his shop.

1:46:39He's in North Carolina. It's $500, you know. And I can remember working at a shop 2 years ago that like it was $250. To eval a 1234 system, you know. Uh, so because again, the price of refrigerant's gone up in price. Uh, now you look at what 134 costs and it's starting to creep up from where it was because again, they're not moving as much of it.

1:47:03And, um, and then, you know, you talk to other people and they're like, I retrofitted a bunch of 1234s to 134, and you're like, not really supposed to do that. But at least there's an identifier on the 1234A 12-34 machine. Yeah, yeah. Which again though, that identifier, you've seen the conversations there, that, that oxygen sensor that's in there is, is pretty problematic.

1:47:27It don't last. And then guys are buying, you know, an $800 oxygen sensor to put in their 2-year-old machine and they're, they're cranked right up, right? They're, they're irritated. So I see both sides. I mean, like, I'll tell you, if I was in my shop right now, we don't have a working air conditioning machine, so we sublet it all out. And I asked a friend of mine Ben, I'm like, what do you think about, like, how would I go about this in my shop?

1:47:52And he's like, well, lots of guys that he talks to, they're buying, you know, a standalone pump and a standalone gauge set, and, um, and they're doing 1234 with no identifier. And, um, you know, they're, they're finding the leaks and sealing the system and putting them back together. And, um, you know, I think that that may be in the name of progress, unfortunately has made some of these cars become, you know, they go to the junkyard because people don't want to pay for fixing air conditioning.

1:48:22And that's sad. Again, that's just like, to me, it's just the same as the EV battery argument, right? It's going to the junkyard because the repair exceeds the value of the vehicle, you know. And that's pretty pathetic that what's essentially still a creature comfort, um, you know, means that the car isn't worth repairing. I mean, we get— we're lucky in Canada. We don't— like, I haven't turned my air conditioning on yet, um, except for this weekend.

1:48:49That's the first time. And, um, so it's May, and I'll probably turn it off probably by September, you know. Like, it's a shorter season, you know. All people down in Florida and, you know, uh, Georgia and Alabama and, you know, Vegas, Arizona, they're running it, you know, 12 months of the year. They're running their air conditioning, and it's It's definitely adding to the cost.

1:49:13So I don't know, I, I don't like, I don't like some of the progress that's been made and what it's costing our customers. But at the same time, we had a conversation today, um, you see it all the time and you probably have heard David talk about it, Eric. You know, a lot of us are living above our means, right? And I think that that's when we haven't necessarily prioritized auto repair.

1:49:38So I said to somebody this morning, we've got people walk in wearing $300 sneakers and holding on to a $1,000 iPhone and drinking a $9 cup of coffee from Starbucks and they want a brake job done for $400. Their priorities are backwards. And that's where I think we've got to really start to, if we're going to fix this industry or survive it or whatever you want to say, We're gonna have to learn how to start having real tough conversations.

1:50:08Oh yeah, you know, yeah, a guy like David, he goes, yeah, they'll wait 3 hours or so for an iPhone and won't fix their car. But well, like car quality, I mean, like I had to talk with a friend of mine, I used to work with dealer, he goes, a new car today, what one would you buy to last you 10 to 20 years?

1:50:27They're few and far between. I don't, I don't know if anything's made now with even intending to get it to last 20, you know. I mean, 7 years for parts support on them. Yeah, and they're sticking to that real bad now. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, look at the ABS modules that you can't get for a Chrysler, right? That's just one, you know.

1:50:51Um, thousands of those things are parked because the ABS light's on or the modules, like, and, and you can't get them. Them. And then, you know, some you can make a used one work, other ones you can't. There's workarounds, obviously. Um, that's just nuts to me that— because I can remember, like, in the early days of Chrysler, those freaking things lasted way longer.

1:51:12Like, you didn't, you didn't see them fail nearly as often as you do now. Not nearly as often. So what did they change that made them fail now? Well, right, we found it better. Yeah, exactly. COVID chips all of a sudden are going in. And then, you know, the fact that they can't make a workaround that says, okay, because you know it can be done.

1:51:34All it takes is software thing to say, okay, we realize these aren't being supported, but we're going to go in and do a software tweak so that you can make a used one work. I mean, if they can make an EcoDiesel run without the crank sensor, yeah, they can fix a lot of these modules just with programming. Let's think about that. They took a car, a truck that like Okay, we can lose the reluctor and the thing will still start and run.

1:51:58If we can do that, we can certainly go in and with a patch, or like we did with the— when you couldn't get DEF quality sensors, all of a sudden now we release software that says it's not going to derate the truck anymore. You know, we know that you got a DEF problem, but until we can get you apart, you're going to be able to drive your truck.

1:52:16It's as simple. And I don't like the fact that they're holding back But people vote with their wallets, and if they continue to keep buying new cars and then complain about the quality of the new car, what are you really saying? Like, you know, you got to draw a line in the sand at some point. Yeah, you got— yeah, instead of feeding the machine.

1:52:37That's right, exactly. I drive a 2015. You know, people would look at that and go, well, you're driving a 10-year-old car, because I normally used to always drive, you know, uh, almost 20-year-old cars. You know, I was driving— well, 4 years ago I got rid of my '96 Jeep, so do the math on that. In 2021, I got rid of a '96.

1:52:59You know, how old was that? Like, it was almost 20. I'm keeping more stuff closer to 20 years than I'm keeping it to 10. That's how I am. I used to drive stuff, you know, less than 10 years old. And of course, I was back when stuff was, you know, a lot more solid. You knew it was going to work. Now it's like, yeah, take a gamble.

1:53:19I can remember buying 10-year-old Shadows for— I joke all the time, I bought one for $250 because somebody told me they need a head gasket and they needed a distributor. And like, I sold that car, I drove it for 3 months and I sold it to somebody and I doubled my money because they needed the tranny out of it. But I mean, I sold it and safety did.

1:53:39I— it needed nothing and it was, it was already 10 years old at that point. And it wasn't all rusted out. You look at stuff now that's 10 years old and in different climates, it's not worth fixing because it's so rusted. It's just a metal point. Yeah. And you look at even kind of the way the coil springs are breaking now on 5 and 6-year-old cars.

1:54:00It's ridiculous. Like the metal that were being made, you know, that we're buying from China and retooling back into parts is not the same as, as virgin metal. And, um, yeah, you know, it just makes everybody angry. And I don't know, that's the part that I struggle with when people are angry at my industry. Like, you can be angry at the, the OE, but we're not the OE.

1:54:25We didn't build it. Even when you know this, when you work in the dealer, you're not the OE. Like, you, you move their product for them, but you have no input hardly at all on how that product's built. Or marketed or what it costs. None. You get zero, you know. And that's— and again, everybody's like, well, if all the dealers— because I hate that these dealer mechanics can't do this and dealer mechanics can't do that.

1:54:54Yeah, some are pretty bad. But the reality is, is like nobody, if you're not going to pay them to do the job properly, is going to do the job right. Nobody. Like this idea that like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it right even though I'm not getting paid, that's a bunch of BS. You're gonna do that maybe for a little while. If you do your whole career, you're— I feel for you because you just got, you, you got taken advantage of.

1:55:21You shouldn't do it, you know. Um, it's like, it's the same as I tell, you know, I don't want to advocate for, you know, revolt and revolution, but we had lots of conversations back in the day where if they gave us something and the time wasn't going to be enough, we didn't do it. And it wasn't just like one of us wouldn't do it.

1:55:47We all, you'd see that worker come back out and they'd try to get another and everybody would stand fast and say, "No, not doing it." Yeah. They give it to an hourly guy or they'd figure something out to help the— yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where, you know, you've got to, you've got to learn how to make yourself indispensable. Because if you're— if you don't have anything to offer, um, your employer and you take that attitude, they're just gonna— you'll be kicking your lunch bill down the road.

1:56:19But if you are— if you've done like you do and, and take the training and, and make yourself, you know, a little more valuable to them, above average, whatever you want to call it, um, they'll listen at least. Sometimes they maybe even compromise. They don't like to do it, but they will do it. Um, but if you're not making yourself indispensable, you're just, you're at their mercy.

1:56:44And I don't like to be at anybody's mercy. That's why I don't work flat rate. I don't, I don't want to be at somebody else's mercy to what defines my paycheck. I want my paycheck to be defined by— and everybody goes, "Well, how hard you work defines your paycheck." No, it doesn't because we've all seen where people don't market properly, we don't dispatch properly, we don't charge properly, and you're not making the kind of work that you used to make, your hours, your pay, whatever you want to call it.

1:57:14And that's not then me not doing the work. That's them not accounting for their shortcomings, their bottlenecks. I always felt like we're the only industry, the more you know, the less you make. It feels like. Yeah. Did you have, when you started to get, before you got out of the dealer, did you find that the young people coming in just wanted to coast?

1:57:38Yep. Pretty much. Yeah. They couldn't dieguito to one of the older guys. And then they just want to do the grunt work. Now, when you were there, how did pay work? Because I mean, we all talk about like pay works from the standpoint of like your hours, but I know for me, like, hours weren't it. Because once we all— in Canada, once you all had your license, every dealer I ever worked at, you all got paid the same per hour, and then you just had to sell more hours if you wanted to earn more pay.

1:58:10Um, Did you guys— or they— it varies on your certifications and your experience. Um, one dealer— two dealers I've ever worked at, we were all the same. The first one, um, it was a percentage of the labor rate, and you only got a raise when the labor rate went up. The second time, um, we were all masters anyways, and they paid us all the same.

1:58:37But no, the last dealership, it varied based on experience. And like, one guy did all the like Ram 45, 5500, Promaster. He got the most, and he can have that. Yeah, he had the work area for it and everything. But yeah, and then the younger guys, um, it was an hourly slash how many— how much work you kicked out, a performance bonus.

1:59:07So they would go after like services, like BG stuff, um, yeah, eat breaks, easier stuff to get their performance, uh, bonus. And yeah, that's how— that's the dealer I worked at. We all grabbed the low-hanging fruit. That's what you— that's what you're looking for with every, every MPI that you did. You were hoping to, you know, sell the service because the, the thing that they were there for didn't pay worth a damn.

1:59:36Even if it was like a seasonal oil change and tire rotation, a brake inspection, it paid you $0.80. You were out. That was coming to the shop and not to the quick lube up front because they wanted you to find work on it, right? And yeah, you'd find a tie rod that was bad, you find control arm bushings that were bad, but like you saw so many guys that like they made a career out of never learning how to diagnose a basic electrical system, but they could sell 50 hours a week.

2:00:03Because they could do all the front end and all the flushes like they were masters at it. You know, I have a picture of my Facebook of me at the Nissan dealer, and I'm not, you know, and I've got 3 flush machines going at one time. I've got a brake flush, a coolant flush, and a fuel system service going, you know. And, uh, it was a high enough mileage on the car, and the car customer came in requesting all, we did it.

2:00:28But I mean, that's not real skill at that point. Like, it's just, you know, it's putting reps in. It's not the same. Yeah. It's not what, what the customer really needs. They need problem solving. Oh yeah. You know, you get a car, you're doing all them services and you find a wheel that's loose and you know, you're like, you could have moved that money over to that.

2:00:48Yeah. Well, that's the thing. You see it all the time. That's the big argument that comes up in a lot of the, the owner groups is the customer comes in for, you know, these pre-sold jobs or they come in wanting this. And you don't do the DBI, you start immediately doing the, you know, services. And then you find out that it's like, oh shoot, like she's here for a transmission flush, a brake flush, and, you know, tune-up.

2:01:13And then you're like, well shoot, the left rear tire's bald, the right rear tire's got braid coming through it, and it needs brakes and a tie rod and alignment all the way around. And because you've already started on the gravy You got to call her up and sell her more work. And then she's going, well, can I hold off on doing the gravy and get the safety?

2:01:35No, unfortunately we've already started on that. Well, shoot. How do you look to the customer now? You don't look like an advocate. You look like a— We took your money. You look like a— Yeah, right? Because they were— And again, the customer's just trying to look after their investment, but we're supposed to be advocating for their safety. Safety first, their longevity and reliability second.

2:02:00And we don't do that when we're coached or taught to find one thing, get them out of the dealership or get them out of the shop and then look the car over. I got a problem with that. So I don't believe that that's the right way to make this industry better, but What would I know? You know, I don't have a private jet.

2:02:23So, uh, it's, it's a funny conversation to me because like even back in the day I just learned when I was writing the estimate and it could have been a neglected turd, right, Eric? And you'd be like, you knew how to write it where it prioritized. And you know, yeah, the customer's there for an AC complaint on their caravan and the, you know, rear EVAP and lines is going to pay good, but there's no rear brakes left, the tires are shot, tie rod's bad, steering rack's leaking.

2:02:54Like, you know, all that stuff that should be done before the AC is addressed. They have the right to know everything that's wrong with it. I like Sherwood's, you know, you hold back and then they're mad that every time they come in it's $1,000, $2,000, you know. Yeah. Yeah. If it needs $6,000 of work the first time you see it, you better tell them that it needs $6,000 worth of work first time you see it.

2:03:20It doesn't mean that they're going to do all 6 right then, but they're not going to get a surprise next month when it's another $1,000, another $1,000, another $1,000, until you're at $6,000. I saw advisors that tried to do that. They would have this whole plan laid out with their customer, and then they would say, go on vacation. And the customer would come in, make the appointment, and the other advisor get it, and all that work would get done in one shot.

2:03:50And you're like, hmm, that's pretty cool. Yeah, like, and that goes back to what I, again, you know, and people hear me say it all the time, like, you, you gotta have the conversation, but you gotta realize that, like, They have— most the customers have the means to fix this stuff. If you don't— and this is, this is going to blow up when Braxton does this— is a short— this is real.

2:04:13There's going to be— my comments are going to go. Um, most of the customers have the freaking money. If they don't, they don't even bring it in. Like, they don't have— if they don't— if it comes in on a tow truck, they've got money. Uh, if it comes into the bay, they've got money. Now, do they necessarily have all the money? That depends.

2:04:30Can they find the rest of it? Almost always, yes. The cars that they can't afford it, they're sitting in the driveway. We know the ones when we see them when you drive by because the tires are flat and it hasn't moved in a year. That's the customer that doesn't have the money. If they're in front of you right now, they've got the money.

2:04:49That's what you have to tell yourself. So, you know, it doesn't mean that you go and empty their— you don't fleece them, you don't empty their pockets on what they want done. Safety comes first though, always. Um, any closing thoughts, Eric? It's kind of been a— kind of hit the 2-hour mark here and could be going for a lot longer. Nothing really.

2:05:12Like I said, it's, it's like I said, I'm, I'm glad I made the jump to being an independent. Um, like I said, it just— you growing, you know, different, different atmosphere, but I think in the grand scheme of things, it's really— it's working out for the best, and I don't regret it. I, you know, at times it's tempting to want to go back to the dealer, but it's like, nope, I don't.

2:05:37I'm too— I'm more calm. I'm not ready to bite somebody's head off, that, you know, that sort of thing. So yeah, you seem pretty calm to me. You don't seem like the type that got— I'll get fired up every now and then. I did. I was that guy. Like, you know, I was the guy that had a storm cloud over my head most of the days.

2:06:00You know, it was just what it did to me. I mean, it was— and I was an arrogant cuss too. I was because I worked really hard at it and I expected everyone else to work as hard as I was. And when I felt like everybody wasn't, yeah, you could see me coming. You'd know about it because I was I held them to a standard, which is not— David jokes that he's unemployable.

2:06:26I'm not there yet, but I'm very close to there. I'm very lucky that my current employer, he's very understanding of how I expect things that should be done and just the way I see things, what we can handle and what we can't. Pick your battles. If we're not tooled up, I'm not even interested in trying to, you know, impress anybody anymore. If we don't have the tooling, we don't have the info, send it out to somebody that does.

2:06:54Yeah, the only thing I put the woe on is diesel. And luckily my boss, he'll go— like, I had— I've had a couple Duramax and I'm like, you know that I don't— he goes, give it a shot, check engine light. If it's something beyond what you want to mess with, then we'll, we'll have somebody else work on it. And I, you know, and that's fine because there's times where that's the only thing you got to work on, you know.

2:07:18And at least he's cool about that rather than shove it down my throat. I'm married to it and, you know, everything else. Because that's the part I always hated is you— and I was— I'm good at that. I'll give them warning, go, hey, I'm not strong at this, or hey, there's some special tools that we're going to need to if we get into this.

2:07:37And if we get into it, we need to see the way out, which is going to be, are you willing to do that? We had it just with the Tesla. And, you know, he's like, no, I get it. Okay, we'll send it to somebody that's, you know, more familiar. It's these jobs that go sideways and everybody gave them notice that it could.

2:07:59And then when it's all said and done, they're not pointing the finger back at them that made the decisions. They're pointing the finger at you. And I can only do what I can do with what I have, which is A, the tooling, or B, the training. And, you know, if you give me neither, like, do you want to see a magic show?

2:08:15Go to friggin Las Vegas. Like, that's where they are. I'm not working magic here anymore. Like, it just doesn't, you know, it doesn't happen that way. I mean, sometimes, yes, you can find the way and workaround. Sometimes that's the right thing to do because it's the only thing to do. We don't need to fix every friggin' car. That's such a— Yeah, you can't fix all the world's cars.

2:08:37No, there's more friggin' cars than we can all get through. And if more of us would stay in our damn lane, we wouldn't have such a shit reputation with the motoring public because we wouldn't seem like we didn't know what we were doing. We would've been upfront and honest and said, "Hey, I'm not your guy for this." Yeah. My strengths and weaknesses.

2:08:59I mean, because I don't want to, you know, cost the customer or the company, you know. Yeah, yeah. And again, when you're the dealer and it's under warranty, you know how we do it, right? Sometimes you go and grab the part out of the one in the bay next to you and you put it in and it didn't work. Good, you're done, you know.

2:09:19Like, uh, or, or it did work and your day is done, you know. In the aftermarket, we don't have that luxury too often. It can happen, but we don't have that luxury. You gotta be more accurate on your diagnosis 'cause you can't just swing a part at it for nothing under warranty. Yeah, I tell the story, we had a Nissan Titan with a diesel and it was gonna get ready and go on a Christmas parade, Santa Claus parade.

2:09:48So they go out and fire it up and all of a sudden it's running like a bag of hammers and barely no power, dash lights up.. So let's put this at, say, the end of November is when we're getting this ready for this parade route. Well, they don't take the truck, they don't put it on the parade. Monday morning, technician looks at it, he finds a bunch of corrosion in the ECM and a bunch of corrosion ECM connectors.

2:10:12It's under warranty, call up Nissan. Nissan sends them a harness and an ECM. He puts the harness and ECM in. Actually, he doesn't do it. By now. He's so swamped when it finally comes in like 2 months later, goes to another tech. The other tech puts it in, truck runs exactly the same. Well, it ended up being a shorted fan clutch, right?

2:10:34If you've worked on any of the old Cummins diesels, you remember that those fan clutches would do the exact same thing. Now, when you're dealing with shit under warranty, you make 2 claims. You go and write up another VIN number for for a fan clutch and you put a fan clutch in it and you solve your problem, right? You become one hell of a story writer.

2:10:57Yeah, not advocating for that, but this is— I'm, I'm giving some of the secret sauce out. Um, but the reality is when we're in the aftermarket, we can't do that. It doesn't fly. And, um, so that's why sometimes when we go to them and go, hey, like, I'm gonna need 3 hours to get to the problem here, we can't roll our eyes and go, what, do you not know what you're doing?

2:11:19No, I, I really don't know what I'm doing. And he— I'm trying to avoid, you know, doing it the way we used to do it. Yeah. Um, when there were a lot less money and a lot more interchangeable and a lot more common, you know. Um, I remember working in shops where they always had a set of Ford coils ready to go for the Tritons because they all needed a coil eventually.

2:11:40And, uh, I can remember having, you know, a leak detection pump on my box or an ESIM on my cart for, you know, every Chrysler. Oh yeah, plug it in and run the bay test and done, right? I— we, we all know that when you're in the aftermarket, it changes your process. And, um, if we're not— if we're still trying to charge what the dealer charges for diag, um, realize that the dealer's got an advantage on you, and you probably should be charging more than them.

2:12:12Them. And it's not me running the dealer down. God knows by now, if anybody has listened to me, I'm the last person you're going to hear running that down because that's my history. I don't throw my people under the bus. I'm proud of what I have accomplished in the dealer world. Yeah, me too. Me too. I tell the story, and God, we're getting long-winded today.

2:12:32I tell the story, if it hadn't been for the dealer job that I took in 2000— no, actually it was '99. If I hadn't have taken that dealer job, I wouldn't be in the industry because I was going broke working at that little shop buying tools. I was not getting exposed to anything but C-level tech. And if I hadn't taken that job, that job at the dealer for $5 more an hour, hourly, and got handed a DRB3 way back in the day and said, "Here, Jeff, go figure this out.

2:13:03Here's the service information. There's a recall." call, there's a bulletin that tells you how to update this module. It's part of a recall. We're doing like 10 a day now. Go learn how to do that. I wouldn't be sitting here. So I have no hate for the dealers on— Me neither. That's my roots and what made me who I am. Yeah. Eric, you got a succession plan going out, man, to get out of this industry?

2:13:29Or how many more years you think you got? I'm hoping for another 10. Yeah, okay. My body's still decent. You're 53 now? 50? You're the same age? I'll actually be 50 in December. Yeah, I'm young. I'll be 51. I'll be 51. Um, well, that's— yeah, if you think you got another 10 years, I, I'm hoping out for you, man. It's, uh, I think you can do it if you keep You know, I wish I'd have taken better care of my knees and my back when I was younger, but I'm pretty lucky.

2:14:07I work with guys that their knees and back are worse than mine. If, if I couldn't, I wouldn't mind teaching. Like I said, doing like what they do at Vision, stuff like that. I, I would enjoy that. I don't think I could do voc— like vo-tech or high school. I don't think I got the patience for that. Yeah, that's a different obstacle, eh?

2:14:28That's a different challenge. Yeah, I think that would be my only— because I, I love the industry and what it's provided despite the frustrations. I mean, but talking about it helps a bunch. I mean, yeah, it really does, eh? It's, um, you know, like you said when you, you said to me, you know, you didn't feel like you were alone anymore. I, I get that almost every week, somebody telling me that, and it's hard for me to still like grasp what they're saying because like I feel like I'm just out here talking and, you know, um, but I realize how many people feel the same way and don't feel like they're being listened to.

2:15:09And, you know, much more that needed to reach out. Like that latest change in the industry, how few people in the automotive world watch them guys, less than 1%. Yep. Yeah. And that's why I get frustrated sometimes because I get frustrated with techs when it's like, how do you not know who Paul Danner is by now? Like, how do you not? I've been online for over 10 years talking about him.

2:15:34You all should know. That's in my narrow brain what I think. And then it's like when you see shop owners talking and they're struggling, I'm like, how are you still making this mistake? Like, you know, you got Lucas and David who've been talking online for for 6 years about how not to let customers leave without paying the bill. But yet I remember that like less than 5% of us even know who the hell Lucas and David are, who the hell I am.

2:15:59It's like Vision, um, Sherwood saying the same people going to it every year. It hadn't expanded out. And then don't you guys have something similar to it up there and your turnout's kind of similar? We have an event in Toronto, which Toronto is the largest city in the country, and there's enough shops in Toronto that could send their people to that show and they would break the capacity of the show.

2:16:24They wouldn't be able to— like, they would have— and I could call up 100 people in Toronto that are in the industry. I could call them up and they wouldn't even know the show's going on. And I'm not throwing mud at anybody. I'm not throwing shade. It's just the fact is all these events that have said for years, and I'm all of them, all of them have so much work still to do in getting their name and exposure and date and prices out there.

2:16:58They haven't even scratched the surface. And it's ludicrous to me when they think that a Facebook page is enough. You have to get everybody— like, so when you have all these people that are coming to the expo and they're trying to sell their product, those are your people that you need to be empowering to be able to sell the event to the people that want to come to it.

2:17:22And maybe you got to work out something where it's like you give them a— I don't— and again, I'm not an economics guy— maybe you got to get some kind of incentive so that they come but they talk about where they're going to be, or, or you need to be here. Like, all of these events are a you need to be here event, and yet, like the one in Toronto, nobody freaking knows when it's happening or what it's going to be.

2:17:45Going to a car show, like in my area, you walk around cars, you'll see flyers for other car shows. Look, kind of do something like that, you know, for some of these other trade shows, you know. Or put them in magazines like Motor Age, you know. Yeah, how many shops get, you know, those publications? Well, and see, the thing is, like, you know, Ratchet and Wrench and all those magazines, like, I don't know because I can't— I don't— Ratchet and Wrench is hard to get in Canada.

2:18:15But like, you should be pulling a print ad every month for your show for the year. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it should be to— like, they— then there's no excuse. And that's the excuse then becomes is, well, what if they don't read the magazine? Okay, that's where then social media comes in. That's when it becomes like they shouldn't be able to walk into a parts store, or every time the parts store makes a delivery, there's a flyer from your event with the stack of rotors till they're piling up and they don't want to look at it.

2:18:46Like, you can't tell me you've done everything that you can to make these shows people aware of them if you haven't done those things yet. And I understand, listen, it all costs money. I get it. And maybe, maybe the future isn't for these destination events because of the cost. And maybe then that means that people like are going to shift to, you know, more online training and more bringing the trainer in.

2:19:15But here's the beauty of these events. We keep saying it, it isn't what you learn in the classroom, it's the people that you meet when you're networking around the pub. Around the bar, when you're having dinner, that is really empowering you to change your business. And, and in turn, when you change your business, you change the industry. So you can sit there and go, it costs too much to go for training.

2:19:32No, it doesn't. And, and these events, they need to start seeing— instead of seeing each event as an opponent or as a, uh, competitor, they need to start working together to be like— if I was at ASTA. And, you know, ASTA and Tools, we've got kind of the same, uh, a lot of the same people attend those two shows because they have the same kind of vibe.

2:19:57But there's a lot of people that attend Vision, right? There's a lot of people that attended Tectonic. I'm not saying everybody needs to go to every event, but holy frig, it'd be pretty cool. It'd be pretty cool if, like, once you're at Vision, somebody could be handing out flyers for Tools. Or somebody could be handing out flyers for Tectonic. Somebody could be handing out flyers for Asta and onward and onward and onward.

2:20:24Like, because it's only so much that— like, we're all inundated with information now and advertising and Facebook that there's a lot coming across that we don't even notice. But if somebody hands you a flyer and goes, hey, did you know that, you know, you're here at Super Saturday, but Tools is going to happen, you know, 5 months from now? Would you be interested in coming back down this way?

2:20:45Oh yeah, I would love to. Well, shit, that's— that was a small investment to make that happen. And that's why, as long as I can be on here, I'm going to continue to tell everybody about the events that I know that are going on and the events that I've been to. Now, if I've never been to Vision, so I can't tell anybody what it's like because I ain't been there, but I can tell you that, like, people rave about it and people rave about every event.

2:21:11So, yeah, like, the next one I want to try to go to is Vegas, the one out there. Yes. Just 'cause SEMA show's also going on too. So I'll tell you, Eric, I went for the first time 2 years ago, right? And everybody knows that story. I've been wanting to go to SEMA since before I had a driver's license. And Vegas is, I mean, it's an expensive city to be in, but it's incredible.

2:21:39It changed my life to be able to walk around SEMA. Now I'll tell you, ASTA for me is a work. Work. Like, I'm working, I am doing interviews, but to be able to walk around SEMA and get my batteries recharged on the inspiration that you see there as a gearhead, um, I think everybody needs to seriously make that trip. And I think everybody, I think, still needs to make the trip to Vision.

2:22:04I hope to get there one day. I hope they help me out in getting there. Um, ASTA has a feel like it, it just feels different. Tools has got the exact same thing. I'm still on a high from coming home from Tools, and I've been home 2 weeks from it. Like, You know, you meet people. I met so many former guests and future guests, you know, people that, uh, you know, I never got to meet in person.

2:22:29I only talked to them on here, and all of a sudden they come to Tools or they come to Austin. I finally get to give them a hug and, and shake their hand. Like, that's life-changing stuff, you know. That's, it's where that next level of connection happens. That's one way to do it, is actual real life. Life, you know, connection, not just through a webinar or whatever.

2:22:49Yeah. Well, Eric, I don't want to keep any more of your time. We got to let you go. All right. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Oh dude, we'll do this again for sure. I would love to have more conversation, more, you know, more kind of share with us what you're doing at the shop and tell us about that.

2:23:10Because I mean, you kind of touched on the dealer thing, but I mean, that'll be always interesting. Um, so we'll have you back on at some point for sure. Everyone, I just want to say thank you. Like he said, you know, you're not alone, so reach out to me if you feel like you are. Uh, to my family at, you know, Promotive and, uh, Launch Tech, you know, uh, Techmetric, I, I can't do this without you guys, so thank you for everything that you provide me the ability to do.

2:23:38Um, you know, I try not to let you down. Um, so everybody, you know, try to be just 1% better tomorrow than you were today and love one another. Give your service riders a little more grace. Service riders, pick your game up. Yep. Uh, and collectively we'll all change this industry. So thank you everybody, I love you. We'll talk to you all soon.

2:24:00Thank you. 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.

2:24:22Thank you to my partners in the ASAR 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 10mm, and we'll see you all again next time.