Derek Amodio Was a Chef but Now He’s a Technician?

0:07When I first started at this dealership, I didn't know much about flat rate. I hadn't been in the industry for a long time. Everywhere I worked before was, was hourly, um, so I didn't know much about it. But I went around asking, you know, the techs there on my first day, you know, how long have you been working here? And I— many of the techs were there 5 years, 10 years, 20 years.

0:24One guy was there over 30 years. I'm like, yeah, you're not staying at a job that long unless things are pretty good, you know. You'd have to be a real masochist to stay there for that long if things were that bad. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast. Um, getting ready to roll into tools, and somebody had reached out to me a couple weeks ago that's actually from Pennsylvania and, um, had a kind of an interesting story to tell me about their, you know, their foray into the industry and that kind of stuff.

0:57And unfortunately, he's not gonna be able to meet me at Tools, and he— yet he's in Pennsylvania. So we're already talking about making plans for him to make it there next year. So, Derek Amedio, how are you, man? I'm doing well, Jeff. How about yourself? Very good, very good. For a Sunday night, it's nice. We had snow here this morning. Did you guys— did you really?

1:16That still— we didn't. It's actually been a really nice week here. Now tonight and tomorrow night are supposed to get cold again. There's a freeze warning. So anyone who started their gardens early around here, probably kicking themselves. They're out there wrapping up their plants. And that's the thing, I did a pile of snow tires last week, taking them off, right? And I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't know why you're doing that.

1:35Like, I normally— it sounds crazy, but I mean, even when I ran snows on my own vehicle, and we're going back a few years now, um, I didn't take them off till May 1st. That was kind of my deadline, right? Because I've— and I've seen it snow in May. Now when I say it snows, it's like we get a flurry and it melts, kind of like what we had this morning.

1:54Okay. We're still getting enough cold nights that, like, we had a bunch of rain last week, but if we got the right mixture, we'd have some ice for sure. So everybody that's in a big rush, you know, just pump your brakes, give it another couple weeks. There's no— that old adage that you're gonna tear up your tires driving them around is, is for the most part a myth.

2:14You know, your car, you're gonna wear your tires anyway. So, uh, Derek, kind of tell us, um, You said to me that you, you kind of were in the industry after high school, and then you kind of took a break and you're back in it. So kind of share with us kind of what that— how did you get into it? Why? You know, what all that kind of story is about.

2:34Sure. So, uh, when I was in high school, I kind of had no direction in life, didn't know what I was going to do. A couple of buddies of mine took auto shop in high school, so my senior year of high school I took auto shop. I started really enjoying it. I had a really good auto shop teacher, and I know I hear a lot of terrible stories about people's auto shop experiences in high school, but we had a pretty good teacher.

2:58He was a longtime, uh, Chevy tech. Okay. And, uh, he was obsessed with GM. Everything he owned was GM— all his clothes, his cars. Um, so he would bring his Chevy van in and we'd learn to do brakes on that and oil changes, and we'd detail it for him. And he pretty much used this as his personal workhorses, but learned a lot from him.

3:19Um, you know, loved it. I was supposed to go to tech school a couple states away from where I was living at the time. I grew up in New York. Oh cool. Um, yeah, like right on the border of Long Island and New York City. Okay. On the Long Island side, but it wasn't like all beaches and rich people. It was a little more suburb, you know, between the city and the, the upscale area.

3:41Not, not like the nice place where the Sopranos live. Not there. Yeah, no, I think that was Jersey. Yeah. But, uh, but yeah, no, it wasn't like that. It wasn't like Montauk and all the things you see on TV for Long Island. It was, it was a little more city-ish, but kind of suburb. Right on. Um, so I was supposed to go to tech school in Connecticut.

4:01Um, then my grandfather got sick my senior year of high school. I ended up staying home to help my mom take care of him. I'm like, I'm just gonna get to work in the industry and, you know, see how I like it. If I want to go to tech school in a year or two, I could do that, whatever. Uh, so I did it for 2, 3 years.

4:18I worked in a couple small independent shops, and when I say small, I mean like 2 or 3 bays. Yeah, I think each of them had 3 bays, but 2 bays had lifts. One was just a floor bay where we did some interior work and stuff like that. When I turned 18, because I graduated high school, I was 17. When I turned 18, uh, a buddy of mine's father was a store manager for a local, uh, major chain tire store.

4:45Okay. And, uh, stupidly I was excited to go work for him, and that kind of, I think, was probably the downfall of me in this career at the time. Um, I started working there and I was making decent money. Um, you know, I was learning as much as I could there, but it was all just, you know, tires, some oil changes. Yeah.

5:06Uh, occasional brake job, front end or suspension work, nothing too crazy. I kind of plateaued there real quick, um, and nothing against people that work there and enjoy it, just the place I was at, just, it wasn't where I was going to further my career to where I wanted to go. Um, then long story short, I ended up moving to New Jersey, getting involved in the food industry, and was actually a chef for about 15 years.

5:32That's— see, that's an interesting— that's an interesting transition because I have another friend that's kind of like He's gone back and forth and sometimes he'll even moonlight with a chef job in some pretty good restaurants. He's pretty skilled at it. Yeah, I worked in some upscale restaurants and actually, I moved around a little bit. I went from New York to New Jersey, back to New York, ended up meeting my wife.

5:57She was actually a waitress at a restaurant I worked at the time. And, we've been together, I think we're going on 13, 14 years now. But, And we moved to Connecticut. I was a chef there. And then, when we first got married, I kind of decided I didn't want to work nights, weekends, and holidays anymore. I was working, can't tell you how many times I worked Christmas Day, New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, Thanksgiving Day, Easter Sunday.

6:26So, I knew starting a family, that just wasn't the life I wanted. So, I actually ended up getting a job working for FedEx in a FedEx warehouse, which was impeccable timing because that was right before the pandemic started. And I'm sure as you know, the restaurant industry got flipped upside down during the pandemic as most industries did. It never really recovered, did it, in a lot of ways?

6:52No, I mean, from what I see, the price of ingredients that these restaurants are paying is astronomical compared to what it was. And same thing with automotive industry. I mean, Car parts are ridiculous. Car prices are ridiculous since the pandemic, and nothing really went fully back to normal. I think there's a collective group of people though, Eric, that once that pandemic hit, whereas they might have eaten out, say, 3 nights a week, and I'm not talking upscale 3 nights a week anywhere.

7:21Yeah. I think that once that hit, they stay now home, and that's when Uber and Uber Eats and everything and DoorDash just became huge because they didn't want to leave the house. Yeah, and they were having the food brought to them, and it's like, you know, they're paying these exorbitant amounts of money for delivery service of food that is not as good as eating in a restaurant, let's be real.

7:41Yeah, you know. Yeah, I can't wrap my head around it. So yeah, no, listen, I hear you. So you go on FedEx. Now, when you're kind of dabbling— I don't want— dabbling is not the right word. When you're in your, your tenure as a chef, cook, whatever. Yeah. Are you still kind of in and out sometimes on the jobs? Like, are you still fixing your own car, kind of monkeying around with some other friends, or— So a little bit, not a ton.

8:14I mean, I've actually been blessed with vehicles where I haven't had too many issues. My wife's got commitment issues when it comes to cars. Within 2, 3 years, she always ends up trading it in for something else. Not because she's having issues with it, she just wants something, you know, newer or fancier. Or different, whatever the case may be. Sorry to interrupt, but I have to share something really quick with everybody.

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9:15So if you're ready to supercharge your shop's efficiency and make every job smoother, it's time to check out the TechMetric mobile app. Measure up by every measure with TechMetric. Hit up the show link below for all the information you'll need. Me, myself, I usually tend to keep my cars a little bit longer than that, but I would, I would do things like oil changes most of the time, brakes, and then if it was anything more, I mean, that at the time was pretty much the extent of my knowledge on cars anyway.

9:44Okay. Since learned a lot, but Yeah, so, so I would dabble a little bit but not too much. I didn't have a ton of tools. I didn't have a ton of time to, to be bothered working on cars, and luckily didn't have any cars that needed anything too, right, too major. Um, so I was working for FedEx, uh, we were in Connecticut at the time, ended up moving to Pennsylvania about 3 years ago where I live now, you know, a little bit outside of Philly.

10:15Um, and I figured I'd do what I know. Um, you know, go back to work for FedEx. It was that or a restaurant, you know, at the time. So I went, went to FedEx, got hired pretty much immediately because at that point I had had 2, 3 years experience driving for FedEx. Um, and when I got hired here, the route I was put on was just in this rural area.

10:38Now let me take a second to explain FedEx Ground delivery drivers— FedEx Express is a little different— but FedEx Ground delivery drivers actually operate on kind of a flat rate system. Okay. Um, so each of the routes is owned by an independent contractor that you work for that contractor, and I was making $1.45 per delivery. Whether I deliver one package or 100 packages to a house, I get $1.45, right?

11:06When I lived in Connecticut, I was in pretty busy town, my route. And, uh, during the pandemic I was doing like 200 to 300 deliveries a day. Yeah, um, it was killing me, but it was great money. Um, once the pandemic kind of slowed down, I was down to probably averaging about 150, 180 stops a day, which is still pretty, pretty decent and definitely a lot more manageable, a lot less wear and tear on my body.

11:29Yeah. Um, and then when I moved here to Pennsylvania and got hired here, I was in such a rural town, my— I was doing maybe 40, 50, 60 deliveries a day. My stops were 10 miles apart. It was— there was a huge Amish population where I was, which surprisingly, they actually do order things that get delivered FedEx. I don't ask me how they order their stuff, I don't know.

11:53They always surprise me, man. It really— they really do. Yeah, they operate a lot of dog kennels, so they were constantly ordering Chewy. Yeah, you know, the Chewy dog food company and stuff. So I was delivering a ton of Chewy out there, but just The money was terrible. My route was like an hour away from, from the warehouse I was operating out of.

12:13So on top of a day where I'm not making much money, I'm driving, you know, to the warehouse, which was like 40, 45 minutes from my house, then another hour to my route, and then an hour back after my deliveries. And it was, I was just miserable. Mm-hmm. Um, so every day on my way to my route from the warehouse, I would pass by store location of the major tire chain I had worked for back in the day, right?

12:38So I don't know where and how, I kind of just was like, hey, I wonder, you know, if they'd ever hire me back out here. So I put in an application and they'd— I'd gotten a call back from a regional manager who got some information from me, you know, asked me where I had worked for this company before, um, you know, how long I worked there, that kind of stuff.

12:59Yeah. So I told them, never heard back from them, but I was like, yeah, let me go on Indeed and just start applying to different garages and see what happens. So I found this Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership about a year and a half ago. They, they called me right away, interviewed me, hired me on the spot. I went out because I didn't have any real tools, bought like $1,000 worth of tools from Lowe's, a bunch of Craftsman stuff and a Cobalt tool cart to work out of.

13:24And yeah, that's where I've been for the last year and a half, and I actually love it. See, that's awesome because, you know, everybody sometimes thinks like it's like the wrong move to make for a lot of young people is, is the dealership. And, you know, I've told my story enough times that like, and I say this, if I hadn't made that move to the dealership early in my career, I wouldn't be in this industry because I wasn't— and it wasn't like they were holding me back.

13:51I don't want to say that. But there was more opportunity at the dealer. Um, it was a situation where you're working on much newer cars, uh, much newer technology, a different type of budget for repair is, I guess, the most appropriate way I could put it. And, um, training. Yes, and, and training. Now, back then, so much— it wasn't— we were just getting into the idea of online training.

14:18Okay. But the on-the-job training was, was way different, you know. Like, my independent tenure was like you know, here's another oil change, here's a set of tires, uh, we're gonna safety this rusty old car, so I need you to put it on the rack and get the wheels off and get the brakes apart so that the senior tech can look at it because he's the one that's going to decide what it needs for his safety.

14:38And you know, you might get to do some other pair of stuff like that. Once I got to the dealer, it was like wide open. Here's a scan tool, here's a service information system. Because at my tenure at the little shop that was at the Independent they didn't even have a computer that you went over and looked at service information. Like, he worked in one that he didn't even have it.

14:58He would get wiring diagrams faxed down from the shop down the street. Oh wow. And so that's the shop down the street, you know, probably, or down the street was probably $75, $80 an hour door rate, and he was $60. Okay. And I don't know how they worked out the relationship that, you know, he would send them that kind of stuff, because to me Even back then, I'm like, you're, you know, he's allowing you to undercut him.

15:24So if I hadn't gone to the dealer, I'd have starved because there was lots of weeks that I spent half of my earnings just on tools that I needed to do the job. It was ridiculous. Oh yeah. So yeah, see, you roll into the dealership, what do they start you with, Derek? Uh, so it was mostly oil changes, tire rotations, uh, a couple smaller like mileage services.

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16:48And then I think the first time I was probably there, maybe a month, the first kind of bigger job that they gave me was an oil cooler on a 3.6 liter. Um, and it took me damn near 8 hours to do it. Now I could do them in like an hour and a half, 2 hours, but, but yeah, that was the first thing they started me off on.

17:09Um, But aside from that, like, I think assigned me a mentor who— I say mentor, he's a few years younger than me. I'm 37 years old now. Um, so they signed me a mentor, and really everyone in the shop is great. If I have any questions, I've needed a little bit of guidance, a little bit of help with something, they've all been great about, you know, stepping up, helping me.

17:30That's good. Um, so I can't, you know, sing their praises enough. I've gotten really lucky with, with where I landed. Service manager is great. Um, but yeah, from— I did that oil cooler, next thing I know I'm doing a heater core on, I think it was a 2017 Ram, maybe a couple weeks after that. And none of the flat rate guys wanted to touch it.

17:53I started off hourly, and at that point I'm getting paid hourly and I want to learn. Um, you know, I have a family. I couldn't— I— taking this jump, going back into the automotive industry after taking almost a 20-year break from it, yeah, was a leap of faith., but I have a family. I have no real option to fail. So I'm going to learn whatever I can, soak up whatever information I can.

18:15Um, you know, when I first started out, I was, and even now, you know, I was online every night on YouTube when, you know, I should be going to sleep. I wake up early for work the next morning. I'm on YouTube watching Scanner Danner videos, Check Engine Chuck, all those things. Uh, listening to your podcast, listening to a couple other podcasts, automotive podcasts.

18:39Uh, watching Royalty Automotive's videos are great. They're awesome. Sherwood's just a kind soul. I feel like I've never, never met the guy. I hope to one day. He's just, just seems like a legitimately good dude. I, I know you've had him on the show a couple times, and I met him in person. The first time I met him, he was exactly like he is on TV.

18:58There was— or TV, dated myself— exactly how he is online. It's not, uh, it's not some kind of, you know, show or act. He is just a very humble, positive, um, enthusiastic person to be around. He's just great. The whole family's like that, you know. It's one of those people where you hear, hear or see people bash him online, you just— not even having met the guy or know the guy personally, I'm like, that can't be true.

19:25And Sherwood wouldn't do that. Sherwood wouldn't say that. And he laughs at it. He thinks it's hilarious. Like when the cracks that he got about the Snap-on belt, you know, and the cracks about the ponytail and stuff like that. Like what that is is jealousy. I mean, yeah, guy's in his 50s and can still grow a head of hair like that. Like, I mean, listen, I'm jealous.

19:45I'm jealous as hell, you know, like it's, so it's always the same thing. You're always going to have your detractors. I had them. If you put yourself out there, Paul Nanner has it, you know. Paul and I have long conversations about that because it's— I heard him on your show, and him too, he's, you know, seems like he's a good person. He wants to, you know, do all this stuff for charity.

20:06Him and his wife both seem like good, genuine people. They're amazing. They're amazing. And you can tell it from, from, you know, their content, from, from Sherwood's content. He, he's making this content, started making this content just to help people. It wasn't to You know, especially Paul Danner wasn't saying, hey, I want to go viral. There was no viral back then. You know, he was doing it since God knows, you know, YouTube first started.

20:30Yeah, no one expected YouTube to blow up like that. Yeah, so you do your, you do your homework, like I'm always, you know, attesting that every, every technician needs to. And, and did it kind of help fast-track your, your job, you know, during the day? Definitely. Um, you know, there's been quite a few things I've seen that have helped me, you know, diagnose cars.

20:55Especially electrical has always been my kind of weakness, electrical diag and stuff. So those Scanner Danner videos and Check Engine Chuck videos have been great. And I know my mentor at my job is a huge Paul Danner fan. He's got a sticker on his toolbox and he told me when I first started there, he's like, you know, watch, watch Scanner Danner videos.

21:14He's like, I learned a lot of what I know from him and He's, he's a master tech. He's really kind of a whiz with at least Chrysler products. I haven't really seen him work on too many off-brand stuff, but, you know, he could— there's been cars where I'm kind of stuck on something and I ask him for help, and within 3 seconds he makes me feel like an idiot.

21:36But, uh, some, some just have the touch, right? And then it's like, back in the day when I was at Chrysler, I was, I was that guy. Like, I had so much knowledge of, of the spots to look, the way it was all linked together. I just had that, that ability to seem to make it look really simple. And, you know, some of it wasn't all that terribly difficult once you kind of learned the recipe, but there was a lot of ones that still kicked my butt, right?

22:05But, you know, you, you develop your process. The first one kicks your can, and then if you're good and stay focused on the sense of trying to remember things. If you can store it in that memory bank, or I tell, like, back in the day I used to write notebooks every night, you know, what I did, because some of it was for writing my stories for warranty pay, and some of it was to try and remember back later on.

22:32What did we have that van that was doing that weird airbag fault? Oh yeah, splice, you know, 207, you know, corroded. And go back and check splice 207. Like, I would do little things like that, and it's I lost those notebooks. I wish I still had them because they'd be so cool to look back on now and just, you know, think about them.

22:53But I threw them away. Smart. Yeah, that's smart. And that never dawned on me, and that may be another practice I adopt now is to start taking notes when— especially on some more of the— some of the more problematic vehicles. Yeah, eventually you get to the answer, and it'd be good to have those notes to remind yourself. And the other secret weapon You know, um, it's like I can remember my last kick when I was at Nissan.

23:17Um, I joined the Nissan Facebook, the Nissan Tech Facebook group, and that was really helpful because you start to network with a lot of guys. Now they'll bust your balls, like if you haven't done the research or you're not even— you're just getting in there looking for the answer, they're not going to really be all that helpful. Yeah, but if you, you know, if you just— like I say, like when IATN, when I was on that way back when, if you just sit and lurk you can pick a lot of things up just by hanging out.

23:44Oh yeah. And not asking a bunch of questions, just listening to what the conversation is. And now I think that that's kind of taken some of the place of some of those journals that I used to keep, because I still— I'm in one for Mopar techs, and I don't know if any of them listen to this or, you know, uh, throw me out, but I mean, I'm not a Mopar tech in a sense anymore.

24:10But it's kind of neat to see and, and still see, oh yeah, they're working on a, you know, 2026 and a 2025 and a 2024, like, and getting into some of the problems. I work on those cars too, but I'm doing really basic stuff, getting them ready where I work, right? Yeah, they're in there tackling these problems and it's like, okay, that's cool, that's really neat.

24:30So that's taking with a place, um So you, you start at the dealer, you're out just on an hourly pay, and you take jobs like the heater core and everything. How was that first heater core? Uh, I think it took me about 3 days. Yeah. Um, but I got it done, you know, the repair fixed the concern, and yeah, that was about it.

24:52Yeah, I learned a lot. I was nervous as hell that I was gonna break some of those interior panels or on those lines. But I, you know, went slow and, and kind of paid attention to what I was doing and got through it. And I've done several of them since. Yeah. And how was your— how's your time now? Uh, probably get done in about one full day.

25:13Yeah, good for you, man. Yeah, it's not an easy job. I mean, I know guys are like, oh, I do them in 4 hours. And you learn the shortcuts, like, you know, don't take as much of the dash apart, kind of like, you know, unbolt it, pull it back. Slide the box out, that kind of jazz. But I mean, it's still a big deal.

25:29I mean, I remember I did a Durango a few years ago because that was like this tape or something in the box would heat up and melt and then it would jam the motors up. And it was essentially screw up the blend door. And you had to buy the whole box. It would just melt down. And I started it the one day and I got it apart.

25:50And then we had a rush of bunch of stuff that I had to get ready. I was working in a fleet shop. And I didn't get back to it for like a week. So trying to remember where every connector and every screw and everything that was like, I did not break any records doing that. It went together fine. It all worked when it was done, but it was like it was slow because it was a week.

26:11It's actually more than a week. I think it was like 10 days before I got back to it to start putting them back together. And that was like, wow, you know, but, you know, and that's be different if it'd been like, you know, a steering rack or an engine in an older van or something like that. But it was like, it was the first EVAP I'd ever— dash pull I'd ever done in one of those older Durangos.

26:31So I didn't have a ton of them out in the past, you know. It was like, how does this go again? Like, it was tricky. So did you ever make the jump to flat rate? I did. So I just went flat rate about 2 months ago. Okay. Uh, first they put me on— so I started the dealership, I want to say it was mid-September of— what are we in now, 2026?

26:56So 2024. So mid-September of 2024. Okay. By that January, they put me on a hybrid pay system, so I made a certain amount hourly and then a certain amount for every hour I flagged. And just about 2 months ago, they, they moved me up to flat rate. Right, good. And it's going well then? It's going well, it's going pretty well. I mean, you know, some weeks better than others.

27:18That's the nature of the beast. Um, It's definitely an added level of stress, even when I know I've pretty much been okay since I went flat rate. But it definitely adds in that extra level of stress if you're having one bad day. Now, especially if it's a Monday and you're like, oh my God, yes, whole week's gonna be shit. And then, yeah, you know, next day you go, you turn it around, you get a good job or something that you make great time on, you're like, okay, bounces out.

27:43And yeah, but every, every time you have even not even necessarily a bad day, but one bad job where you end up chasing your tail, you It can mess with you. Yeah, you want to get those crap jobs on Thursday or Friday, right? Friday's even better because even if it's not your Saturday to work, I'd come in and finish those jobs, or, you know, going and beat my head against the wall when I could focus a little better, right?

28:04Like, it was not, uh, um, yeah, but I was the same. Like, if, if I got into a butt kicker on a Monday, I had to really, really, really, uh, work to keep my attitude from like completely having the wheels fall off, you know? Like, it was It was something that I had to consciously like tell myself, don't let this, don't let this screw up your whole week.

28:24Don't let this screw up your whole week. And I was, I didn't, I wasn't always successful at it. Yeah. So, you know, it is, it's an added stress and it's, you know, we talk about the mental health thing and with technicians and, and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it's not just dealer techs, it's anyone that's paid on kind of that incentivized system is that we forget sometimes that You know, the really good weeks are really good, but when it's that lean, uncertain time of the year or week or day or month, um, it's really hard to tell yourself that it's all going to be okay.

29:03Yeah, sometimes. And if you get too many days like that or they make a change— that's the big thing I always saw is like everybody was always like really happy, they're making good money, And then they make a change. Somebody in management moves, or a really good advisor, say, moves or retires, and customers leave, or customers come in and all of a sudden, you know, Mike the service advisor they dealt with is no longer there and they don't trust the new person.

29:30You can really see the hours come down. Hours come down, everybody's just like, oh well, you know, it'll all turn around eventually, and oh gee, or you're not hustling enough, or No, man, it's got nothing to do with that. It's got to do with a change happened that is really affecting everybody's pay. And when you affect your pay, you affect your morale.

29:51And when you affect your morale, you really affect the business. Yeah. And that's what I think is that uncertainty is what I'm trying to always not keep hitting the hammer on the nail over and over again, but just reminding people that like on paper, flat rate looks great. Until it's not working, and then the fallout is way more than just financial. So I guess what I'm trying to say— so yeah, yeah.

30:19So how do you— because you hear the conversation sometimes, Derek, and we'll say like mechanics are terrible with money, we don't plan. Um, do you have anything that you do to kind of even it out for the lean times, or do you just kind of put your head down and keep hustling? Pretty much just put my head down and keep hustling. Um, we do, we do get paid for, for to do, you know, training, um, whether that's the training we get sent to the training center for or some of the web-based training.

30:52Um, so the couple weeks I've had where I've been, you know, a little bit lower on hours, I've been able to kind of make up for it with some of the web-based training. I am getting to a point where I'm running out of the web-based training though. I only have training center training left. Excuse me, my allergies are killing me tonight with the weather warming up here.

31:11Yeah. Um, but yeah, no, the training's definitely helped with that, but I need to, you know, pick it up a little bit where I can because training's going to run out. I won't have that crutch anymore. And that's something to think about for people that are, you know, the people in management and owners or whatever that are listening. You know, training's important for all kinds of reasons.

31:32Obviously we talked about it before, but think of what Derek's just talking about there is the fact that like He's using that as sometimes as that slack time. He's using it productively. He's bettering himself, and he's relying on that pay that comes from that training to even out the, the low weeks that he's not responsible for them being low weeks, right? So people that don't want to pay your techs for training, man, I struggle with that still because, you know, it just to me it doesn't make sense.

32:02It's, it's It's an investment, and if you're not going to pay to invest, why are you in business? Like, it just doesn't make sense to me. So good on you for doing it, man. It's good. Probably one of, one of the biggest perks I've seen to working in dealership, because I obviously have worked in independent shops, and I mean, I was still very, very green when I worked in those independent shops, but, uh, you know, probably one of the biggest perks has been the training, um, and Some of the training is just kind of monotonous and boring and you don't really learn a ton, or it's hard to follow because, you know, they have— especially

32:37with the web-based training, you can't stop and ask questions. Yeah, the in-person training's a little bit better. You have the instructors, uh, you know, our— I'm half an hour away from our, our training center here. Okay. Um, and there are two instructors there right now and both of them are great. Um, you know, great at keeping things interesting, answering questions. They're knowledgeable, so that helps.

33:01You do the web-based training again, it's hit or miss. Some of them are actually pretty good, and then some of them you can get lost in it because you already don't know what they're talking about from the beginning. And by the time you get to the end, you're like, hey, I got questions from the beginning that I can't ask. And, you know, I can go, I can ask people at work about it when I get there the next day, but if I'm doing it at home the night before, I like I said, you can't pause it and ask a question.

33:24Yeah. Um, but you know, part of it, you gotta, you gotta move through the ranks with the training and whether it's good or bad. Yeah. And, and I always found like the web-based stuff is like, you can't ask the question, but oftentimes it's like you don't even have the vehicle in front of you. Yeah. And I can remember like the few times that I went to in-class, they'd be teaching— I'm gonna really date myself— like, you know, 2006 Caravan.

33:51And they actually have one in the, in this, in the center so they can say, okay, so this is the new architecture, and see, here's, you know, a bus bar, and here's where it's located. And, you know, they give you little tips in there. That was good. When I sit there and look at— and again, it's hard for me now even at home to take a lot of training because even when I'm watching a YouTube video, I'm looking at my phone, you know, whereas the in-class stuff, you know, I don't, I don't sit there and stare at my phone when somebody's doing it in class.

34:20I'm a lot more tuned into what they're doing. So, you know, it's hard. That's always been a distraction for me. I'm also very much a hands-on learner. Like, if I, you know, give me service library and the car in front of me, and I can figure it out for the most part. Tear it down, put it back together. Um, you know, you, you show me something on the internet, and a lot of the web-based training isn't even videos of them, you know, performing a repair, showing a picture here and, you know, this and that.

34:48And I'm not going to learn from that. I'm not going to remember it 10 minutes after I watch it. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of us in this industry are hands-on learners, and that's part of how we got into this industry to begin with. 100%. And I find like the, the toughest thing for me always was that monthly, whatever they called it, Master Tech training that you had to do.

35:09And you know, you had to get like, you had to watch the 45-minute video and then there was a 10-question test at the end. And everybody, like, the— he's feeding you the answers, your service manager or whatever's feeding you your answers, you're eating the pizza and you just— and you knew like they didn't care if you got anything out of the damn class.

35:25It's just they had to have everybody complete it, submit the results, you know, get the score, and that was it. It wasn't— they didn't really care if you learned anything. Our job doesn't do that. We got to do that on our own time, or if it's slow in the shop that day and you want to do some training, they'll let you do that.

35:38But do it all together. They don't feed us the answers. I actually like some of the MasterTech presentations. They give you kind of some small tidbits here and there sometimes that help with the, the newer vehicles that you haven't really seen a lot of yet. Like, you know, there are certain things about like the, the hybrid Dodge Hornets, you know, the BEVs, where if you disconnect the battery, you have to leave it disconnected for 15 minutes before you reconnect it.

36:03Otherwise, one of the coolant pumps is going to keep running and it's going to drain the battery. And so little, little things like that, you know, you get those tidbits of information from that which you may, may accidentally skip over when reading a procedure in service library. Or if you're changing a 12-volt battery on a car, you're probably not even going to look in service library, you know.

36:22You're like, pop the negative cable off, pop the positive cable off, throw the new battery in. Yeah, so it's nice that, you know, sometimes they give us those little tidbits that, that help. And I always found like Chrysler, when I look back now, Chrysler service information for me still has been the best I've ever seen. In terms of like how it's the architecture of it, how it's set up.

36:44The wiring diagrams are, when they were accurate, because there were some of them back in the day that were not, it was just very easy to navigate. And it wasn't just because of my time experience with it. Like I talk all the time and throw Nissan under the bus. The way they split it up was terrible. They would put the connector pictures in a completely different section of the service information from the electrical.

37:07It was ridiculous. Where Chrysler has always been so good that like literally drag and click and there's your connector, right? And it was just, it was fantastic. I was always wishing, you know, more people in the OE side of things took a cue out of the, out of the Chrysler book and did it that way. I mean, they were the first really to bring topology on a scan tool to the scan tool, showing you what's actually on the, on the network and all kind of stuff.

37:35Now everybody's scan tool does that. Yeah, and yet they were the first to bring that, and everybody just knew that, you know. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was groundbreaking at the time. Like, I'm gonna, uh, YTEC was one of the first ones that did that way back then, you know. And, uh, I remember seeing it the first time and I'm like, oh, that's cool, because like the DRB3, it wouldn't show you that if you had to just go in, and if you couldn't, it just would say no communication, whereas like YTEC would show you that it's supposed to be there, but the line, the line going to it's not lit up, it's off the connection.

38:10You know, you don't have to— I've used the DRB3 a couple times on some older vehicles that came into the dealership, and it's, it's great for reading codes, but you know, when it comes to anything outside of that, I'm kind of lost on it. I, I could, uh, yeah, I could take a couple hours and probably teach a bunch of you guys in your shop the, the power of that tool.

38:28It's incredible what it would do back in the day, like, especially once you start to learn it. Uh, I watched one guy actually used to come with oscilloscope attachment to it. And I watched one tech actually, in all my years, that had actually used it and knew how to use it. Um, the rest of us, like, we didn't use a lap scope.

38:45Um, and he actually knew how to set it all up and, and use it. It was, it was pretty impressive. But that tool was— that was a pretty cool tool back in the day. It was, it was something special. I made a lot of money with that tool. And once you learned the little tricks of it It was efficient, man. It was really good.

39:04So, you know, I think I used it once to diagnose like a knock sensor on an '02 Chrysler Sebring or something. Yeah. And then I think one other time on something else, I don't remember, but that's about the extent of, uh, my experience with the DRV3. It was great for a lot of the body stuff, like if you wanted to turn on— like, I still remember how cool it was because like a lot of what you day-to-day you could do with a code reader and a basic data pad if you were just doing check engine lights.

39:33But man, if you could speed up so much of your diag and the body stuff— I can still remember, like, you know, power windows and power locks, uh, kind of problems, how much info you could get from the DRB3 from what it was doing that you didn't necessarily have to tear the door panel off, right? You could save yourself some time. It was good that way.

39:52And now we all take that advantage for— excuse me, we take that for granted.. But back in the day, like, that was a big deal for a lot of us, was like, you'd see the old school guys that didn't know what the tool could do, and they would just start ripping things apart— not ripping, taking things apart— and starting to pin out stuff.

40:10And I'd go over the tool and hook the tool up and go, no, I don't need to do that test because I can make it blow the horn or turn the wipers on or something like that, right? Like, it really sped up my diag. It was, it was handy for that, man. It really was. Why Tech just Recently got the capability to check lights on the vehicle with, yeah, some prompts.

40:32I mean, WiTECH's a great tool too. It has been as long as I've been working for Chrysler, which obviously only been a year and a half. But yeah, it was, I think, just about 6 months ago or so they added the feature where you can turn on all the front lights, you know, turn signals, rear lights, brake lights. So if you're doing an inspection, I don't know where you live, if you guys have inspection, but we have a state safety inspection here and all your lights have to work.

40:53And sometimes everyone's too busy to to get behind you and give you a light check. So now you just plug in your pod and you can— yeah, you know, actuate all the lights in the back, the front, and make sure everything's working. So how, how big is your dealership, Derek? Uh, I think we have about 14 or 15 bays. Nice. Um, yeah, it's a pretty sizable, sizable shop.

41:18You know, one of, one of the bays is, is strictly for trucks. It's a 4-post lift. We put 2500s and up on there, the Rams, um, you know, Promasters. Yeah, upfitted Promasters and trucks, that kind of stuff. We have 2 bays that are dedicated just to the regular Promaster cargo vans. You know, they have enough clearance to go all the way up on them and an alignment rack.

41:43And then the rest are just regular tech bays. Um, we probably have about 10 to 12 techs, maybe counting myself. Um, we had a few more— 2 guys recently just left. Oh, okay. Why did they leave? One of them moved and just to go work at a Chrysler dealership closer to, to his new house. Okay. Um, the other one, uh, got switched from hourly to hybrid and kind of freaked out.

42:16Yeah, it was probably for the better that he left. He wasn't— wasn't, you know, I think his— nothing against him. He's a nice enough guy and everything, but I think the place he went to is an independent shop. I think it was just a little bit better suited for his skill set. Yeah. Yeah, it happens. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a— it scares a lot of guys.

42:38I know the first time I went to flat rate or somebody even talked about it because like, again, when I'd been at the little shop, Everybody's like, oh, it's terrible. You're going to starve. And I went, well, I can't really starve anymore than what I'm at. It's $5 more an hour. And it was the best move I ever made. I went from making $10 an hour straight time to, at the time, like $16 flat rate.

43:05And I never had a problem turning. I always took home more money at the end of the day than I had at that regular shop, always. Nice. Never not. So yeah, I think I, I work— I'm physically in the building about 38 to 39 hours a week, and I usually end up flagging over 40 hours. I mean, I'm not— our dealership's not the type of place where any of our guys are flagging like 80, 90 hours a week.

43:30Yeah. Um, you know, if, if I'm billing more hours than I'm there, I'm doing all right. Yeah, yeah. I, I always looked at like, if, you know, and again, I'll— this will be a great soundbite for the trolls, but if I covered my time when I was there, I was never really disappointed in myself, you know. Yeah, no, same here. Now, if, if the guy down 3 days down, you know, hit 60 and you watched and you knew he wasn't doing half the work, or like he was really aggressive with the pen, um, that would crank you up.

44:03But like, I knew what I was working on, and I knew what I was doing, and I knew what my work stood for, that You know, if I was there 44 hours and I billed 44, I was happy. You know, I didn't look at it and go— because there's lots of days where I could still get like a 90-minute lunch in, you know what I mean, and still make my 8 hours.

44:20It wasn't like I had to, you know, um, skip lunch and all that kind of stuff. There was days I did. If there was days that I had a lot of work piled up and I could, you know, I was going to hit 16 that day, I'd skip lunch, no problem. Yeah, that's what coffee's for. But I never— it wasn't routinely like, oh my God, I'm going to make $20,000, I'm going to make $20,000, I'm going to make $20,000, and I'm going to skip lunch and live on Monster or coffee.

44:49That wasn't the vibe in the shop. So it wasn't set up like that. There was probably too many— I want to think back then there was probably too many techs to really have days like that. My best day ever was a Saturday because there was only 2 of us there and we had a fantastic advisor that day and everything just— all the stars aligned.

45:11It was a fantastic day. It was 28 hours. It was incredible. Saturdays, we work one Saturday a month. We're on a rotation. Saturdays usually end up being pretty good day. Sometimes they're hit or miss. There are some Saturdays where you'll bill like 7 hours by lunch and then have nothing after lunch. Yeah. And then there are Saturdays where, you know, I build 18, 19 hours.

45:35Uh, you know, you get all our Saturdays are a big inspection day. We don't do any diag on Saturdays, really. We're not supposed to. If it's a slow Saturday and some people call up, make appointments for diag, they'll take them. But for the most part, it's inspections, oil changes, mileage services. So it's a day set up to be able to make to make money.

45:54That's good. Uh, I didn't work for anybody that ever had that foresight to, you know, they just always, if the customer said Saturday was a day I could bring it in, oh, bring it in, you know. Yeah. And if it's a good customer and we had that situation, you know, I'm sure they would, they would make those accommodations for that customer. If it's been a few times I've done diag on Saturdays, or someone comes in for an oil change, you realize an oil cooler is leaking and you're, you're like, hey, I'll throw that in, it's a pretty slow day.

46:20Or you say, hey, you're gonna have to wait till Monday because I don't have a couple extra hours to throw that in for you today. Um, but you know, or I see a radiator leaking while I'm doing an oil change or something like that, I'm gonna obviously tell the customer, get it priced out for them whether or not I, I do that repair.

46:36Like, I worked yesterday and lady came in for an inspection. She was like, hey, I had to add half a gallon of coolant to my car yesterday. She has a Grand Cherokee with a 5.7 Hemi. Yeah. Um, She's— I'm like, yeah, I'll take a look at that for you. I guess we had recently changed the water pump. She thought maybe there could have been an air pocket, whatever.

46:53Coolant settled. I look over, it's just the whole left side of the radiator is covered in coolant. Something like— yeah, that's common. It needs, needs a radiator. I'm not going to have the time to do it today because it was a busy day, so she's cool with waiting till Monday. But yeah, yeah, they're— I, I was unfortunate. A lot of my advisors would just book like if they had some— how do I say it— some customers that they didn't really want to deal with, they would book them on a Saturday, or the recalls always seem to get booked on a Saturday.

47:23Yeah. And, um, you know, it was like— what even made it more frustrating is like in Ottawa, not every dealer was open Saturday. So you would see these people that like you'd never seen the car before and you knew you weren't seeing it again, but they were there because they wanted that recall done on Saturday. Yeah. And I'm like, oh man. And then child seat anchor bolts.

47:44I remember putting so many of them in on Saturdays. Like they would, 'cause back then, way back in the day, they were all done free. You didn't charge the customer. They didn't pay for the part, they didn't pay for labor. It was just so that it was done properly. And some Saturdays it seemed like I did 4 of them by lunch, you know?

48:00And everybody goes, oh, it's no big deal. It's not a big deal until you're putting it in the caravan and you gotta clean out the back of the caravan and then you lay your little, we called it a map and you laid it over top of the, carpet and it showed you where, based on the floor pan, where you're allowed to drill the holes.

48:15And you drilled it down through and you put your seat bolt-ins and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, so it was no charge to the customer, and I think they paid us like half an hour a bolt or something. So, you know, sometimes you did okay and sometimes you lost your butt cleaning, depending on how much you cleaned the van.

48:31Because back then they would never say, oh, excuse me, Mrs. Smith, like, you'll have to make another appointment because, you know, you've got You look like you live in this and you need to clean it out. Like, the customer doesn't know, they just think it, you know, it takes 2 minutes, right? And then, no, it's always, always people who need interior work done that have the most stuff packed into their car.

48:50We recently had a recall we were doing on Saturdays. I don't know if you heard about the, the, uh, Jeep 4xe 68C recalls where there's some software updates. So I guess they get the, the hybrid batteries for the 4xe from Samsung and they were having issues with, some of the cells splitting in the, the battery can become a fire hazard. So there was some software updates for the PPCM to monitor the battery pack and inform you, or, you know, the PCM, if the, the cell starts to split.

49:26Yeah. Um, everyone in my dealership hated doing them, and we were getting them on Saturdays because some customers, it's only day they could come in, and, you know, there just overwhelmed with the amount of, of Wrangler 4xEs coming in for this recall. It was all just software updates, and some of them needed a drive cycle depending what level of software the PCM had on it previously.

49:46It was updating the HCP, the AHCP, which are the, the hybrid control processors, the battery pack control module. I think the IDCM and the PCM are part of it also. It was like an hour and a half worth of software flashes, and then if it needed the drive cycle when you were done, it was like an extra 0.3 Yeah, I was like, I'll take all those recalls.

50:06People wouldn't read the service bulletin and they'd have issues doing the software flashes with, you know, the car not starting afterwards. The service bulletin for the recall would tell you you have to update the modules in a specific order. Yeah, people weren't doing that. They were having issues with it. You were supposed to do a battery analysis prior to any of the updates, so they would tell you if you need to do a drive cycle.

50:27So people were automatically having to do the drive cycle every time they did it because they would wait till after the flashes. To do the battery analysis. And like I said, it's supposed to do it before any of the flashes and then after all the flashes, and then it would tell you if you had to do a drive cycle. So I'm like, I'll take all of them.

50:45I can bang out these software flashes if they're also getting an oil change and inspection. You know, run the emissions inspection first and put it up, you know, plug WiTECH in, start doing the software flashes, you know, drain the oil, do all that. Next thing I know, I'm, you know, I gotta 3, 4-hour ticket on something I was able to do in an hour and a half.

51:04Yeah, yeah. And then we ended up replacing a whole bunch of hybrid batteries in those, which was actually not, not a terrible job. But I haven't seen too many of the, the hybrid Wranglers yet. Um, okay, we see a ton of them over here. See, that's funny to me because it just— and I, I get why people buy them, right? I really do.

51:27But it's really hard for me because I drive a Wrangler. It's really hard for me to see that a lot of those people that are like diehard Jeep people would think that like the hybrid Wrangler is the right thing to go. So I don't think it's a lot of the, the hardcore Jeep people who are buying them. I think it's the people who want a Wrangler.

51:44They got a better price point because here in the US we're getting big tax credits for buying hybrids. Yeah. Um, you know, cheaper price point now, especially buying them used because since they've been plagued with recalls since they came out. Um, and the value of them has kind of plummeted, especially after, after that last hybrid battery recall. You know, Samsung's making the batteries.

52:08As far as anyone knows, they're still putting the same batteries back in that are still just as likely to have the same issues. Stellantis is, is, uh, giving them like lifetime warranties on the hybrid batteries to try and make up for it. Um, but the value, from what I've heard, has plummeted. But I'm in a a Jeep 4xe owners group on Facebook, just kind of for market research, just to see what people are saying about them.

52:32I don't, don't actually own one, um, but people still seem to love them. People are still willing to buy them. They're, they're happy that the value plummeted because now they're going buying a second one, or people who didn't have or had a regular Wrangler want to trade it in, you know, make some of their money back and get a 4xe for cheaper.

52:48And hey, you know, I'll keep fixing them as long as people keep buying them. So And I think, as crazy as it sounds, I think like if there's a, you know, kind of a grassroots, you know, revolution later on that finds a fix for that, or, you know, I want to say like can all of a sudden, you know, make a better battery out of something else, say, you know, some Prius cells or something, and put it into the Wrangler.

53:18I think it'll be the Jeep people that eventually figure out how to do it. It's just Yeah, it's, it's funny in the idea for me that I like somebody thinks they should buy a 4xe and then, you know, go run Moab in it or something like that, right? Or make it into a rock crawler because like, well, wait a minute here, what are we thinking about?

53:34Like, if people, people do it, I see some of them come in and they're, they're lifted and they got all the light bars on them and all that fun stuff. You want to just have a thermal meltdown as soon as you get high centered, right? Like, that's just what I want. Like, it's funny, when I first got hired at the dealership, one of my biggest fears was working on electric cars, hybrid cars.

53:53Because last time I worked on a car was, you know, 2008, 2009. Priuses were kind of just becoming popular. Teslas didn't exist. Yeah, you didn't have electric cars, you didn't have plug-in hybrids. But now I actually kind of enjoy working on the plug-in hybrids, the Jeep 4xe, the Grand Cherokee 4xe, because I've worked on quite a few of them and gotten comfortable with them, and I actually kind of enjoy working on them.

54:17Well, that's good. That's the right attitude because I mean And I kind of had a neat— the Hornets are a nightmare. Dodge Hornets, whether it's the gasser or the hybrid, those are just a nightmare. They come in, they got 64 DTCs, and trying to figure out which one's the tornado engine or the little tornado engine. And the Hornets are just terrible. They hate Chrysler for that.

54:40Or Stellantis, right? Um, I had an interesting thing this weekend. Where it was like we had a Tesla in the shop and we didn't have time to really get to it this week. So we ended up sending it out. And Tesla, when you go to ProDemand, there's no service information, right? Like there's zero, not even a wheel nut torque, nothing. And so it ended up going to another shop to get done because we were pretty backed up.

55:04And so this weekend then I kind of had, as I'm sitting here mulling over, I'm like, because I tell everybody, like, I don't want to work on EV. I don't. Not because of the— I'm not scared of the technology. I don't like the political behind it. It's in a nutshell, really simple. Yeah. But I got thinking, you know, there's going to be a time when I'm going to be forced to do it, so I might as well start.

55:26So I spent the better part of a weekend just looking online at Tesla training, you know what I mean? Yeah. Watching what I could, learning what I could. And, um, it's not that terrible. It's really not that bad. You know, it's like anything else, you know, the service information, it's just another car, you know. I don't want to work on them, but I'll be a lot more prepared now this week when I'm sure I'm gonna have to look at another one.

55:53Um, it won't freak me out so much. Not that it freaked me out, I just was like, I was all up in my head. It was a Monday, you know, it was promised way sooner than we were going to be able to get it done, and I'm like, yeah, I don't want any part of this. But yeah. It's a Tesla too. And that's the thing, I could even get onto the— I always liked the Priuses.

56:12I always thought that was a cool thing, but there's just something different about a Tesla. The people are different that buy a Tesla than buy definitely a 4xe for sure. Yeah. So it was just a Monday thing and we'd overpromised the expectation of the time of the car. And I got all up in my feelings about it and it was like,, and end up having to go out because we had too much other stuff to do.

56:35And it's a good thing that it did because the other shop that's looking at it— this Tesla, it's a Model X 2019, um, had already had a battery replaced at Tesla. And I guess when they put the battery in, they put some bolts in the wrong direction. And now it's over there getting some control arms done, and they have to cut the bolts off because the bolts go through.

56:57And now they can't because the battery is blocking the ability to pull the bolt out for the control arm, having to cut them. And have to order new bolts and we'll get here till Wednesday. So the car is going to be a week behind delivery promise date and way over budget. So, you know, it's probably good that it went there instead of something I'm pretty familiar with in the dealership.

57:14You see that happen more often than any one of us would like, I'm sure. Yeah. So, you know, it's funny because it's like, well, the guys at Tesla like got the battery issue fixed, but maybe he was new that day too when he was putting the battery in. He didn't realize like when you put the bolts in that way, Yeah, it happens, right?

57:34So yeah, they're human just like us. Um, what's your favorite thing to work on when you're at the dealer? Um, I've replaced quite a few transmissions in Promasters and some of the older Grand Caravans. They're pretty much pretty similar, you know, the Grand Caravan's on a much smaller scale than the Promaster, but I kind of enjoy doing that, swinging the transmission out and back in.

58:00Something, you know, I know, you know, sell that job, my, my day is pretty much taken care of, and I could just put some music on and rock out and get it done. I haven't had a chance to work on a ton of Promasters. I worked on more Transits. I hate doing most things on them, but the transmissions aren't too bad. The hardest part about doing the transmissions on the Promasters is probably getting the lower ball joint off and then back in when you're done.

58:25They can be a a little bit of a bitch sometimes. Yeah. And the other one I struggle with getting those is, um, Compasses. Yeah, to pry down that control arm and get that ball joint stud back down through. Yeah, I fought one that had a— they put some spacers on the core, on the strut to push down the spindles. This goofy little strut, uh, lift kit.

58:49And man, did it ever make that angle hard. And the lift kit on a Compass Yeah, well, I guess up there, you know, parts of Quebec, parts of Canada, in Quebec they do weird stuff. I'll just say, I think that's anywhere. I mean, if you go out into the city over here into Philly, I'm sure you'll see a lot more weird crap.

59:08But it was causing the CV axle to fail over and over again, like it would just— because the angle was just chewing the CV boot. To be expected. Yeah, so we— I removed the front lift kit this past week and just said enough's enough. We're not going to keep warrantying axles in the stupid thing. Um, but I did a lot of— I did a lot of cooling fans in Promasters.

59:27I found that they would come in and, um, either have an AC complaint or have an overheat complaint depending on the time of year. And, um, always that one fan of the two fans, one would not be working right. There's actually a recall on the 2025 and maybe 2026 cooling fans also. Yeah, something about the they put, I think, a 60-amp fuse to it, and it was too much.

59:51So there, I guess it became a fire hazard with the electrical system. So they're having you replace the cooling fan and put in a 40-amp fuse instead of the 60-amp fuse. Yeah. Oh, some things they stay the same for Chrysler. Good for them, because I can remember, I can remember cooling fan recalls in like old Grand Cherokees, like 2002s, 2003s, like, and they sucked.

1:00:15They didn't pay worth a damn. It was a cooling fan recall, I think, in the Promaster. Probably pays like— I think it was sub-2 hours, so 1.7, 1.8, something like that. Definitely takes a little longer than that to do it because you gotta take the whole front fascia and everything apart, take the headlights out, and do all that fun stuff. Um, do you definitely— probably like a 3-hour job if it were customer pay.

1:00:43Yeah. Do you still see any of the, like, the Hemi cars come in, or are they kind of all phased out pretty much? Like the Hellcats and the SRTs and stuff like that? Yeah, we still get— not a ton of Hellcats. I see a decent amount of Scat Packs come in, which have the 6.4 naturally aspirated. And then every once in a while you'll see, you'll see a Hellcat come in with the 6.2 supercharged.

1:01:07Those are always fun. Oh, fun to work on, fun to drive. Then you get disappointed when you, when you look in that window and you see an automatic transmission. Yeah, you see one that's manual, that's me. I got— I have more respect for the 5.7 in manual than I do in the Scat Pack or the Hellcat when it's an automatic. Yeah, I drove an old— one of the last cars I ever PDI for Chrysler was an SRT8 Challenger with a stick.

1:01:32Nice. I remember it was yellow and, uh, That was the coolest car I'd ever driven at the time. Um, because I never got— all the years I worked at Chrysler, I never got to drive a Viper. I mean, not— did I get to drive it? Yeah, I drove it in from the parking lot into the bay and drove it back, but I never got to road test it.

1:01:49Because we have a Viper that comes in once a year for his inspection and oil change. I haven't worked on it or driven it yet. I'm not even sure I would fit in the damn thing, to be honest with you. I'm 260 pounds. I know. 5'10". Yeah, be a tight fit. I mean, the guy who owns it is probably about close to the same size as me, so yeah, he probably doesn't drive it much.

1:02:09But no, that was my dream car as a kid. It's probably part of the reason I was excited to work at Chrysler to start with. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing, like, I love, I love the brand and everything it stood for. And, um, you know, that's kind of why I guess I still hold on to the Jeep thing, because I think it's like the last It and the Ram is the last remnants of what I remember the brand being, you know.

1:02:36Yeah. And, um, it's— now they're talking they're going to bring the Hemi back, right? So I mean, I think that's— they did bring it back. They did bring it back this year, the 2026. Yeah. So, and they're still putting Hurricanes in a lot of the Rams, but yeah, put it in the Charger, which kind of irks me a little bit. Now what is— what's the Hurricane?

1:02:53Is that little 4-cylinder turbo? No, no, that's the, the straight-6, uh, twin turbo. Yeah, yeah, it's a cool motor, you know, for the pain in the ass to work on, but it's a cool motor for like the Wagoneers, for like the soccer moms that don't want a minivan and stuff. But to see it in the Charger is a little disappointing. To see it in the Rams is a little disappointing also, in my opinion.

1:03:18Yeah, I, you know, what's— what about your, your Hemi camshafts? You do a bunch of them? Have you done them? I've done one so far. Yeah. Um, and it was just about 2 weeks ago, actually. Okay. Um, yeah, I've done— I've done lifters a couple times. I did lifters and a cam for the first time a couple weeks ago. Um, took me like 2 days.

1:03:38Um, I— the way I am is the first time I do a job, I do it pretty slow. I pace myself. I like to learn from it. I want to remember how everything goes back together. Then once I do it once, the second second, third time I do it, I'm doing it in like half the time. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it was— I enjoyed doing it, actually.

1:03:56I think I'm kind of looking forward to the next one I have to do because I know I can do it quicker and I won't have to chase my tail on it. Um, but no, I, I enjoy doing engine work and mechanical stuff. I, like I said, the electronics have never been my— I've gotten pretty okay at diagnosing some electronic issues and stuff like that, but I still much prefer working on the mechanical stuff.

1:04:16Yeah, it— I And I, I want to say that the way you approach it, like you were just talking about, about, you know, not being in a hurry the first time you do anything, that's just— that's the secret recipe to being, you know, you got to slow down to go fast. I say that, right? Especially the first time you're doing something, like, pay attention.

1:04:33Smooth is fast. Yeah, smooth is fast for sure, bro, because it, it's so— you make it up so quick. The next 3, 4 you do, you're all of a sudden you're like you're knocking it out in 1/3 the time and everybody's like, holy crap. And then there are sometimes I do things a bunch of times and I'm doing them faster and then I make mistakes.

1:04:51Yeah, I just had issues timing a Wrangler with a 3.6 a few weeks ago. That was totally my own fault. I was doing head gaskets on it. I'd done it a few times and I was all cocky when I was timing it. And it was like my second week flat rate to, you know, did the head gaskets, timed it, put everything back together.

1:05:10Timing codes. Like, crap, I never, never double-checked that it was in top dead center before I timed it. When I tore it down, it was in top dead center. Must have slipped at some point along the way. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I looked at one of the guys I work with and like, I, I needed that to humble me because I was getting too cocky.

1:05:28I had my first week or two flat rate, I did great, and I was like, oh, this, this is, this is easy, I got this. And I had that and it, you know chased my tail on that one, and it humbled me. And I'm like, I really, I really needed that. And, you know, it was a reminder to slow things down and pay attention to what I'm doing, because, you know, if I, if I speed through every job and then I got to do it 2 times, it's going to slow me down, versus if I slow it down a little bit, do it right the first time.

1:05:56Yeah, yeah. So like I said, I needed that. It humbled me. It was a learning experience. Everyone makes mistakes. You just gotta learn from them, right? Yeah. I don't think you— because I've never worked with a perfect tech— I don't think you've got one in your shop either. No. So, you They don't, they don't exist. I mean, oh God, I know some really, really smart guys and they all just laugh and share the horror stories of the cars that have kicked their butt or the mistakes they made.

1:06:20Right. Like, it just— you have to. And I'm not talking going in there all ham-fisted and breaking a bunch of shit for the customer. But I mean, you are going to go and get the— you're going to get the diag wrong. You're going to go down rabbit holes. You're going to, like you said, forget to do things. You know, you're going to go on a road test and forget to plug in something and it's going to give you a code as soon as you go around the corner.

1:06:40Right. And the better thing is that it happens before you go back to the customer. That's the worst part. You know, that's what you want, is it to happen when you're doing your quality control, not the customer to do the quality control for you. But, you know, it's— you just have to be like transparent, honest, learn about it, you know, don't get mad.

1:07:00I mean, you can get a little upset with yourself, but don't beat yourself up too much because if you're with the right group of people, they're gonna just kind of laugh at you and maybe give you a little bit of ribbing, but they're going to share all the stories that they've done too. Yeah, when I, when I went through all that with the timing on that 3.6, one of the senior techs, you know, he's like, listen, we've all done it.

1:07:19He's like, don't, don't beat yourself up. Don't beat yourself up over it. We've all done it. Yeah, and it's true. Yeah. Do you did a lot of head gaskets on those? Uh, quite a few. Yeah, yeah. See, I got one and I'm dreading the day that I have to do it. Not that it's leaking yet or overheating or anything, it's not. It's just honestly, the 3.6 gets such a bad rap.

1:07:40Yeah, you know, I see it on the forums online day in and day out, but the ones I see come in with the oil leaks, with overheating, with the head gaskets, you look at their oil change sticker, they're 10,000 miles overdue for an oil change. Yeah, you know, they were here a few weeks ago getting whatever done, and you recommended this and that, they declined all the work, and now their oil cooler leak turned into oil cooler valve cover gaskets and a timing cover.

1:08:04Yeah, you know, and then they decline that work, and then next thing you know, they need a head gasket. So it's, it's self-inflicted a lot of the time. And I think, you know, for some reason it seems like Wrangler owners tend to be the ones that don't want to maintain their vehicles. I don't know if it's young people buying them and they're— they can't afford the maintenance on it I think that that's part of the problem sometimes.

1:08:24And I think some of the other times maybe, I don't know, living busy lifestyles, they don't think about it. They think they don't have to maintain their vehicles. Well, I think, I don't know, with the Pentastar, it gets a bad rap because like everybody follows that oil life monitor and I don't, right? Like I, I go 5,000 kilometers, so I go 3,000 miles and I change the oil and that's it.

1:08:45That's as long as I'll push it, right? Because I'm smart enough to know that like it won't hurt anything to do it. And everybody's like, it's not going to prevent the lifters from failing anyway. It may not, but I guarantee that it'll prolong it before I have to do it, you know? And then it's the same thing, like, I'm meticulous about making sure that I don't have any coolant leaks.

1:09:07And if I do, I keep topping them up, I keep topping up, I keep topping up, because I don't want to have to pull the heads on it. Like, I really don't. Um, could I do it? Yeah, I could, but I just, I don't want to if I can avoid it. It's 10 years old, it's 2015. It works good. It's, you know, not having given me any issues.

1:09:24No, it's not misfiring. It's not— I got my first check engine light. I don't even know how to turn the light on. I got the code for the vacuum pump and that's it. Like, that's the first code that the thing has thrown at me, is the vacuum pump that's up at the front. So, um, you know, you maintain it well. And like I said, it— I heard we have a bunch of customers who come in who maintain their vehicles very well, and I hardly ever see one of those customers come in with any sort of a major issue.

1:09:50Yeah, it's— I drive a 2014 Ford F-150 with a 5.0 liter, and like you, I change my oil every 3,000 miles, maybe 4,000. Um, if I knew I was doing mostly local driving, I'll keep it towards the 3,000. If I'm doing more highway driving, I may be like, all right, it can go 4,000. But thing, I've had it a little over 2 years now, and I've never had an issue with it.

1:10:13I'd run, uh, 5W-30 in it instead of the 5W-20 that it calls for. And every time I go to NAPA or AutoZone to get my oil, they look at me like I'm crazy when they look at my oil filter and they go, you know, that's not the right oil for your car. I'm like, it runs quieter and smoother when I put this stuff in it.

1:10:28Yeah, yeah, screw the EPA, right? And I'm gonna switch from 5W-20 in mine to 5W-30 in my Pentastar because I was talking to my friend that he's a master tech at Chrysler, and he's actually an old apprentice of mine, and he's like, you know, he's got $200,000 and some on his Caravan with a 3.6, and, and, uh, I don't know, at least that on his Hemi truck, and he's only ever run 5.30, not 5.20, and he's never had to open up either one of them yet.

1:10:56So yeah, when I bought my truck, I looked on, you know, joined some groups on Facebook and looked at forums. A lot of people said they were running 5.30 and And, you know, I did a little bit of research and 2013 F-150 called for 5.30. The 2014 F-150 with the 5.0 calls for 5.20. There are no engineering differences whatsoever in the engine for those two years.

1:11:18Yeah, it was just the EPA telling them, you know, you want to switch to 5.20 for whatever reason. And when I first bought the truck and had 5.20, there was a little valve noise up top and, you know, nothing crazy, nothing I was concerned about. But I switched to 5.30 and it runs so much quieter. Yeah, yeah. And now look at the Wranglers that are running 0.20.

1:11:36Like, it wouldn't matter to me if I bought one tomorrow, I still wouldn't be running that crap in it. No, like, I just— not at all. It, it's the same thing as like my buddy was saying, he's like, they haven't changed one thing inside that engine that would— they have Hemi's running 0.20 now, and it baffles me. I'm like, of course you're gonna have issues with lifters and cams and what— you're running 0.20 in a truck that should be running 0.40 if anything like— and you're pushing that interval way out past where that oil is breaking down, you know what I mean?

1:12:07I, I just— I'm not telling people, yeah, don't change the oil until you hit 10,000 miles. Yeah, it's with the water that you call it. Now, what was the choice, you know, and I'm not judging, to go with a Ford truck when you work at Chrysler? Or— sorry, I bought it before I started working for Chrysler, and I, I said to my wife as soon as I got the job, like, you know, if I knew that, I would have bought a Ram instead.

1:12:28And now if, uh, you know, if and when time comes where I go to get rid of the truck, I'll probably look into like a Wrangler or Gladiator or something because I like working on the 3.6s and I'm getting pretty, pretty good at it. And, you know, I have all the resources I need, assuming I still work there, which I think I will for the foreseeable future, you know, as long as everything stays the same with management and, you know, the, the culture we have at the shop I'm at, then I'm happy staying there long term.

1:12:53And see, that's key, isn't it, Derek? Because like, you just, you just touched on something really, you know, that, that doesn't get discussed enough on here. And it's like, I talked to so many people and they're like, they left the dealer or they left the shop that they're at. And so much of this isn't about even the pay schedule, it's the culture, you know what I mean?

1:13:12Like, I'm at a shop right now where I could go and make more money working somewhere else, but I stay there because like, it is so cool, so laid back, everybody's so friendly to one another. Like Everybody calls each other just bro, you know what I mean? And then we cut up all day long, and it just is like, that's worth something to me that's not money, you know what I mean?

1:13:34That, that, that feeling that like everybody is getting along and nobody's like, nobody's competing against each other for hours, or like, that's worth a lot to me. Oh, absolutely. Culture's not something that, you know, we should be looking at more so than just, what's this job pay? Like, no, our, our shop culture is great. And at my job, we're broken up into teams.

1:13:56There's, uh, 3 service advisors, 3 different teams, um, and then the express team. But our, our team specifically, everyone just gels really nicely. We all get along really well. We all often have lunch together. Um, you know, a lot of us come in early before the shop opens and we're, you know, drinking our coffee, just bullshitting with each other. And yeah, You know, even management has told us, like, I wish every team we had ran as smoothly and as well as your guys' team.

1:14:22And the other teams know it. They know, like, you know, we just have that kind of friendship between us and we're always, you know, happy to help each other. You know, an hourly kid in the bay next to me is on my team, tells me, you know, he's still a young kid, like 19. He's like, hey, I got to push a car in.

1:14:38You know, I'm in the middle of working on something else, even if I'm losing my ass on this job or, you know, working on something warranty, I'm trying to get it done quickly, I'll still take the 5 minutes to stop what I'm doing, go help him push something in. Or if he's got a question about diag or something, to stop what I'm doing and help him for 5-10 minutes.

1:14:56Like, yeah, you know, you need that because then at some point I'm gonna need help and he's helped me countless times push something in. Or, you know, I'm old, if I'm having trouble prying a ball joint out of a— you know, he'll, he'll come over, he'll, he'll give me a hand. And, you know, it's one hand washes the other and you need that.

1:15:10That kind of culture, because it makes everyone's day go smoother, everyone's day go by less aggravating. Yeah, it's one, one less stress that you have to worry about when you know everyone you're working with has your back and you have theirs. I can still remember, you know, it was a big thing for me, like tire season, we'd be lined up, right? So 8 o'clock in the morning, you'd have 6 customers waiting for tire changeover, and they're all waiting at 8 o'clock in the morning.

1:15:36And it's like none of the advisors would get together and space them out and go, okay, like, you know, we have one set of machines instead of going 8, 9, 10, you know, everybody's got the appointment at 8, they're all waiting. And I can remember, like, it— you would just line up over there and somebody would start doing changing them out, somebody would balance them, right?

1:15:55It didn't matter. And you walk them over and, like, you just— it was a team thing to get them done. You just wanted to get that part of your day done, you know. Now, if you had other things on the ticket that you could do, you could wait, but if it was— you just helped one another. And then I've seen other shops where it's like A guy would stand there and drink coffee and wait for your machine to be done, and then he would do his 4, and then he would be balancing.

1:16:19And I'm just like, it's so different, you know? Like, teamwork makes the dream work. Yeah. And, and I, I've seen the guy that like never helped push a car in. Yeah. When he had to push one in, he was pushing it by himself. Yeah. And, and, you know, like, that always to me was You know, you don't want to see that kind of culture.

1:16:42Yeah, but I understood one guy who was like, they, you know, he was actually one of the guys who had recently left my shop, but he was— you ever asked him for help with anything, borrow a tool, give me a hand with this for a second, help me push a car, never wanted to help you. But he was always the first person to ask everyone when he needed help.

1:16:59Yeah, you know, and help with the dumbest things too, things he probably could have done without any help, but he was always the first to ask for help and never wanted to give it to anybody else. And it got to a point no one ever wanted to help him with anything, and sat there wondering why. It's like, well, you know, you gotta, you gotta give a little to get a little in life, you know.

1:17:16It's not just a shop thing, just in life. That's how life works. Um, and you know, and, and that's the thing. I think that it's like, you know, we, we talk now about guys when they're going in to apply for a job, you know, kind of accepted that you probably already have the job when they, when they call you. But go in and interview them.

1:17:37Don't let them necessarily interview you. And talk to the other guys that are in the shop. They'll be with you. They'll tell you exactly what it's like. Go in and say, are you guys making hours or not? Well, yeah, we're doing really good, or no, we're not. Like, what do they tell you, right? It's like, yeah, that's the most important thing because that's the real culture.

1:17:54You're not going to get the real culture from the people that are most of the time doing the interview. You get the real culture from the techs in the back. Yeah, absolutely. You'll feel it, you know. Like, when I first started at this dealership, I didn't know much about flat rate. I hadn't been in the industry for a long time. Everywhere I worked before was was, was hourly other than the tire shop I worked at, which was hourly, but then we got a little bit of a commission for every tire we changed and whatnot.

1:18:17Yeah. Um, so I didn't know much about it, but I went around asking, you know, the techs there, you know, on my first day, you know, how long have you been working here? And I— many of the techs were there 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. One guy was there over 30 years. I'm like, yeah, you're not staying at a job that long unless things are pretty good, you know.

1:18:34You'd have to be a real masochist to stay there for for, uh, a long— that long if things were that bad, you know. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not the grumbly one like everybody thinks. It's just like, oh, you're the Jada McCann, he grumbles. But, you know, there's always one in every store that just like grumbles, this sucks and this sucks and that sucks.

1:18:54And yeah, we got one of those too. And, you know, the reality is, is like, they're not so much mad at their situation as they're mad at themselves. Because if it was really all that flippin' terrible, they would have left. Yeah, I know it's themselves, but they still, you know, because they don't have any other opportunities, you know, and they don't say my dealership's perfect, you know, not by— there's always things that can be improved upon, but the overall majority of things is pretty good.

1:19:21Yeah, yeah, I— it's the same. I don't, I don't tell any technician if they ask me, you know, should I go here or should I go there, I go, you got to go where it's best for you, man. And I can't sit there and say The dealer is the last place is the devil. I don't ever say that because of my history.

1:19:40I do see a lot of things, the conversations that are going on on socials right now, and it kind of starts to stick in my craw after a while because a lot of people are talking about why the technician shortage is there and why it's happening. And they're talking about it's a culture and it's a leadership problem. And they're not wrong, but they're only talking about it.

1:20:01They're not really talking about what the fix is. And we know what the fix is, and that's like, you know, you have to have a pay plan that works. And I'm not trying to say that flat rate needs to be abolished, but you have to have a pay plan for the technician that's there for you that works for them. It's not going to be what works for you anymore because you won't have a technician.

1:20:21And I see all these content creators as of late, and they're defending You know, it's funny, they're defending flat rate and then the next month when they have like 3 bad weeks in a row, all of a sudden they're like crying into the microphone wondering if they're cut out for this, if they made the right choice. And I'm just sitting here back going, I remember my first 5 years in the industry.

1:20:42Like, yeah, you are going to have some months where it just kicks you. And, you know, I don't know if it's better now Well, I'm almost sure it's not better now than when I was in. But people are talking about it like, "Oh, it's not all that terrible." For some it's not. For a lot of us though, it's bad. And talking about how to— it's a culture and a leadership problem.

1:21:14It's a pay problem. Guys are just frankly not making enough money. Under warranty for some of the repairs that they do and what they're expected to do. And the dealers have a very easy— well, easy is relative— the dealers have a solution that just means that they're going to have to pay for the time that it takes to do the job. Now, if you have to get that money from the customer, or you have to get it from warranty, or you have to take it out of the vault and pay the tech, the tech has to get paid.

1:21:44That's it in a nutshell. If you're not going to pay the tech, you're not going to have a tech, and the work's not going to get done, and then you're going to make any money. So what's the solution here? You know, I know there, there are a lot of states over here— Pennsylvania is not one of them, but quite a few states— that are starting to mandate that the, the manufacturers pay all data time or initial time.

1:22:05You know, I think that's only fair. If a customer— if, if your car is just out of warranty and this part breaks on your car, say it's a leaking oil cooler, your oil cooler leaks, customer's got to pay depending on the car, 3.2 hours for that. Why does the manufacturer only have to pay 1.7? It's not— and I get there, there are certain arguments the manufacturer can make.

1:22:27Well, we know the car is not going to be rusted when there's only 2,000 miles on it, and you know, every bolt should come out as much easier than on one, you know, no one else has touched it before, you know, things are going to be in the right place. I understand that. So cut it down by 0.4, 0.5. Don't cut it more than in half, you know, or in half, you know.

1:22:50They're, they're heater core jobs under warranty that are paying $3.7. There's nobody, no matter how new the car is, who's not taking some crazy shortcuts to do a heater core in 3.7 hours. Yeah, it's not happening. Yeah. And I don't care. I saw something interesting. I forget what I was doing. It was some warranty job, and I had to, uh, I had to evacuate the AC system and recharge it.

1:23:15So I was talking to my service advisor after the job was done, telling him I had to do that. He's getting the labor op. He's like, okay, that's an additional hour. He's like, wait, wait, it was a powertrain repair, so it's only 0.9. I'm like, how does that make any sense? If I was, if I was servicing the AC system, it pays 1 hour, but because I was servicing the powertrain system, it pays 0.9.

1:23:34Yeah. Yeah. Explain that one to me. It takes me 6 minutes less to do it because I was doing a different repair. Yeah. Still the same process, still the same machine I'm using. Yeah. And I don't know if this maybe was— it's probably before your time, but there used to be a rash of heater cores would plug up in the Chrysler 200s.

1:23:56And this is after my time at the dealer, but I know about it because I know lots of friends that are still there. And the warranty time was terrible to change them out. And, um, everybody all of a sudden then started to beat the warranty time. They figured out how they were doing it because they were not actually changing the whole part of the heater core.

1:24:13They were leaving the tubes in the firewall and they were uncrimping the tubes from the heater core and sliding the heater core off the tubes, and then they were recrimping the new core onto the tubes. And it saved having to take a lot of the dash apart to be able to slide that out. Now, did they all— did it work? Yeah, it worked.

1:24:30But that wasn't how it was intended to be done to fit the time, you know what I mean? And that's the part that always makes me kind of laugh, but at the same time is like how we get into these— when people are talking online and they're going, I just had this repair done under warranty and look at the poor quality. And I always stand up for the technician because it's like the warranty time doesn't cover enough time to take that dash out and do it the right way, so they're going to do it this way.

1:24:57Now think about that for a minute. If you went to work tomorrow and you're going to be there 8 hours, I'm going to tell you, you're only going to get paid 4. Would you take a shortcut? Sure you would. Everybody would, you know, because to not is crazy. So when they, when they make us, force us to do things like that, and then they stand back and go, I can't believe that's happening, like, what do you mean you can't believe it's happening?

1:25:22You knew it was going to happen. They're going to find a way. Technicians will find a friggin' way. They'll find several friggin' ways. And don't sit there and go, I can't believe it. Like, be part of the solution, which means go to your OE and do your time studies and say, no, we need more time for this. Yeah. And you know, the people that are in charge at the dealership, if your techs are losing, the right thing for you to do is to help them out.

1:25:52Yeah, pay the difference, you know, because that legislation of saying, you know, the transmission job under All that it said is just pay 12 hours, warranty pays 6. And now legislation comes through and says that's illegal to do that, you must pay them 12. That's great, I love that. Here's the reality: the Diag technicians— and I harp on this all the time— they're still getting screwed because there is no set labor time that says it can only take— never should take more than 3 hours to find a parasitic drain in a, in a car.

1:26:25Well, that's horseshit. Yeah, I've had ones take me several days to chase down a parasitic draw, right? Granted, you don't always have to sit there babysitting the car. Sometimes, you know, you're working on it and then you accidentally wake it up and you got to let it fall back asleep. Yeah, I get that. But yeah, no, definitely tie— if nothing else, it's tying up your bay for days on end, even if you're not sitting there physically working on it the entire time.

1:26:49Yeah. So this idea that the solution is legislation that makes them pay you the full time for the job is a help,. But there are still points where you are going to lose and you're going to be punished under this pay system. And that's why I'm not necessarily an advocate for the pay system. I'm an advocate for a hybrid plan. A straight flat rate, I think— I really like the hybrid plan at my dealership.

1:27:12I knew it was temporary. I knew it was kind of a stepping stone between hourly and flat rate. I wish it could have lasted a little longer, but I did like the system. And you know what, if they're doing everything right for you, Derek, it's not going to make a whole lot difference, right? Like, you're still going to get your hours. Yeah, and they're good about— like, if I go up to my service manager and I say, hey, it's been a really— you know, say it's Thursday or it's Friday, it's been a really tough week, I'm having trouble making hours this week, he'll feed me some new vehicle preps and stuff like that to get

1:27:45my hours up. Or if he has anything else I can work on to get a little more, he'll, he'll, he'll help us out. Up, you know, in that way. Um, if he sees that you're at least trying to produce and stuff, there's only so much he can do. He can't make hours where they don't exist. I mean, I guess theoretically he could, but you can't really make hours where they don't exist.

1:28:02And, you know, he does what he can to help us out, which I appreciate. I've worked jobs— I'm older, I'm not one of these 22-year-old guys who think every job should be, you know, people just handing stuff to you. Yeah, I've worked some really shitty jobs in the past for some really shitty people, especially in the restaurant industry. I mean, there are so many restaurant owners, restaurant managers that are just really bad people.

1:28:28And there's some great people too. And you have bad people in every industry. I got that. But the restaurant industry does seem to be plagued with drug addicts, you know, just people who will steal the shirt off their own mother's back given the chance. And, you know, I've worked for some of those people, and you know, when you have someone who is willing to, to go to bat for their employees or to help out their employees, to listen to you, it means a lot.

1:28:54And it's, you know, getting rarer and rarer to find people like that. So yeah, you know, he may not be perfect, my service manager, but like I said, he, he tries. He— as long as you're, you're good to him, you're honest with him about stuff, you know, you, you— he knows that you have his back, he'll have yours, and he'll He'll help you out where you can.

1:29:11Yeah. Now, um, in kind of closing up, probably by the time this one gets released, uh, I'll be at Tools, or you'll be, you know, or it'll be even— I'll be back home from Tools because it's probably 2 to 3 weeks maybe before this gets released. So you're not able to make Tools this year, but being that you're in Pennsylvania, um, you know, if you want to come by, I'm going to be there..

1:29:35And I'll be doing a meet and greet on Friday night. And you know, you're an hour away or whatever, like you said. So if you wanted to drive by, I'd probably, you know, get a chance to meet and buy you a beer. You know, and if you can't make it this year, let's try and get you there next year somehow. You know, because it's like, you know, even if you come up for a day and take some classes or something like that, like reach out to me and I can make that happen for you.

1:30:01'Cause I think you'd really enjoy it. Always all for bettering myself in any way I can, learning as much as I can. I've got a kind of a late start to this industry. I mean, I know I started when I was much younger, but yeah, kind of a restart. And you know, I'm trying to make up for it as much as I can, as quickly as I can, and retain.

1:30:19So I'd be happy to go to one of those things. And if I can't, I'll try to make it this year. I can't make any promises, but when I have more advanced— and I told you kind of a little bit about my story when I first started messaging you about why I couldn't make it, um, but when I have more advanced notice for things like that, it makes it a little be easier.

1:30:35Yeah. So I will— we'll definitely see what I can do to, to try and make it next year. Yeah, I think— and, and I want to say that I, I really appreciate, you know, your attitude and everything, because like you said, you get on here and you tell me, you know, like, I'm learning from these people, and, you know, I get on and I do my homework every day.

1:30:52Like, that's the kind of thing that I could just— you're 37, I'm 50. I remember when I was at the dealer at 37, and like, I I thought I was good and I was good, but I thought I'd like— I'd peaked. And I realized now that I wasn't even close to being— I'm not even— I'm not even halfway where I should be.

1:31:14I always tell people— sorry, and I don't mean to cut you off— I always tell people if I would have started in a dealership with the same culture that I have now when I first started when I was younger, that I probably would have stayed in the industry. And then I think about it, I'm like, that might not be true because I was a different person back then.

1:31:31I wasn't doing my homework the way I am now. Granted, I didn't have as many— there weren't as many resources back then as there are now. The internet wasn't so prevalent, you know. There wasn't— there was YouTube, but it was still kind of new, and there wasn't a whole wealth of knowledge at your fingertips on YouTube. There were maybe some, like, uh, what were those things called before we had podcasts and stuff like that?

1:31:52Uh, forums and— yeah. Yeah, like there were the forums and, you know, the little like online diaries that certain people— you could find it if you dug deep enough. But A, I wasn't as motivated to look for it, and B, it wasn't as readily available. Yeah. So I think the timing was right when I entered the industry this time. I had the right, just, uh, you know, the right formula of my motivation, which is mainly my family.

1:32:18I went into this industry now knowing that I can't afford to fall flat on my face. I have to— and my wife has a great job and, you know, she makes great money, but I still have to pull my weight. And, you know, sure, we have a kid and we own our house here and, you know, we have a mortgage. And so I took the leap of faith knowing I couldn't fail.

1:32:38And I, you know, that's a lot of my motivation to be up late at night on YouTube looking up these videos and driving to and from work with your podcast on. My son's in the back half the time when I'm driving him to and from school listening to your podcast also. And he loves anything with an engine. So I think he's gotten into— he's big into monster trucks right now.

1:32:59So we've been to Monster Jam several times. Nice. And, you know, and that's what I like to hear is I like to hear the success stories as well, the guys that have been in the dealer and, you know, like they, they're enjoying it, you know, and they're doing well and they found a good one because there are good ones out there. 100%.

1:33:17There are, there are good dealerships to work at. Yeah. Um, you just sometimes— it's, it's like any shop, it's any job, period. You're sometimes— they're gonna, they're gonna be tough, and other times you're just gonna feel like you fit, you know. And that's, and that's the whole thing. It can change, and you got to be ready to take your skills somewhere else.

1:33:36It does. Absolutely. But I mean, if you bring yourself, your best self every day, and you bring your skills and you try to treat everybody nice and good and, and, you know, be, be a team player and be a positive role model, um, a lot of places would be better for a lot of us. You know, it's— we can do a lot more is what I'm trying to say.

1:33:58So, Derek, I'm gonna let you go. It's getting late. Yeah, I want to thank you for coming on here. Um, thanks for having me. Yeah, man, I appreciate all what you're doing and Yeah, you're helping people more than you realize, I think, and it's a great thing. Like I said before we got on, I don't like— it's— I love doing this, you know, but I don't like— I don't— I feel like, you know, others have come before me and have kind of like laid the groundwork of all that is all that I'm doing.

1:34:28And, you know, my hat's off to the guests because it's, it's very easy when you get the right guests to, to do this. It's not hard at all. Um, aside from, you know, what you're doing for the industry, just— you, you have— your podcast just has the right mix of information and entertainment. So you keep things interesting enough to keep listening, and you throw out those tidbits of information, all the while, you know, doing what you can for the industry and trying to turn things around.

1:34:55Yeah, so that we all have a better future in the industry. And like I said, I think it helps people more than you realize. Yeah, I just want everybody to know that you're not alone. That's the main thing, right? Whenever you think it's getting tough, realize that's all people need. Yeah. You know, somebody else has already been through it, you know, and they came out on the other end and they managed.

1:35:16So, you know, reach out to me, reach out to them. We talk all the time about leaders and your bay mates and stuff like that. Reach out to them, you know, when you're having a tough day. Yeah. Don't bring the negative in. Let somebody know that you're having a tough day and they'll probably be the type to hand you to extend a hand out and help you get through it because that's the only way we do it.

1:35:38Share your knowledge, share your ability, teach somebody how to do something and this industry will improve regardless of how we're paid or regardless of what the hourly rate is. None of that will matter. The industry will improve. We'll bring a better culture to the industry and it will have no choice but to get better because it just— it's at that point now where it's on the tipping point, and I'm just gonna give it a little shove once in a while and, uh, and see what happens.

1:36:07So everybody, thank you for joining Derek and I tonight. Um, you know, like I always tell everybody, just try to be 1% better tomorrow than you were today. You know, um, thank you to my family, you know, all the sponsors— Promotive, Techmetric, Launch Tech USA, Thank you to all of them for that support. You know, it means a lot. It really empowers me and enables me to do things, you know, to meet people and, you know, have these conversations.

1:36:34Without you guys, I wouldn't be able to do it. So thank you for that. And thank you for Derek for coming on, man. This is a great conversation. And thanks again for having me. Yeah, it makes me feel so good to talk to somebody that's got a positive experience going to work at a Chrysler dealer because like Talk to me in 10 years, see if it's still the same.

1:36:55No, I'm kidding. But, uh, you know, yeah, no, I— listen, like I said, nothing's perfect. No job is perfect. But you've been around the block long enough, you worked with some really crappy people in some really crappy places, and you start to appreciate things a little bit more when you know that you have it pretty good. That's the secret sauce, guys, is like once you get around a little bit, you realize that like what you thought was really bad was, you know, okay.

1:37:22And then, you know, you, you take what you learn and you pass it on. So everybody, thank you very much. Love you all. We'll talk to you later. Derek, thank you, man. Have a great week. Have a great day tomorrow. We'll talk to you again. All right, sounds good. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on, and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it.

1:37:45And please most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASAR Group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say: in this industry, you get what you pay for.

1:38:07Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10mm, and we'll see you all again next time.