Is Flat Rate Driving Young Technicians Out of the Trade? with Tanner Watters

0:07We'll talk, we'll ask everybody else in the group if somebody's having a problem in their stump and just run it by everybody else. Like, it's— our shop culture is phenomenal. Like, we had so many guys from inside the store apply for the service manager job just to make sure nobody from the outside came in and screwed up. I'm very blessed to work in a very good culture.

0:32Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaden McKennie Podcast. It's a kind of a balmy Saturday night here, um, and, uh, your, your boy had a tough day of fishing. So if you see me like, um, you know, wince in pain every once in a while, my shoulder's a little jacked up from a lot of casting today, but that's kind of typical.

0:56Um, somebody reached out to me, a new friend of mine, Mr. Tanner Waters. From Saco, Montana, and he wanted to kind of talk to me about, you know, kind of his thoughts on the industry. And he kind of talked a little bit about the different age brackets that we find when we're working in this industry. And, you know, he wanted to kind of share his thoughts on that.

1:19So obviously, me as somebody that's like getting to be one of them kind of elder senior guys within the industry, which is hard to believe at 50, but, you know, I thought, shit, yeah, I got some insight on that. So, Tanner, brother, how are you tonight, man? Oh, not so bad. Yeah, spent the whole day with the kids. Finally, finally had a day off from harvest.

1:44So, see, guys, Tanner's in Montana, and then he was telling me before we got on about how, like, so again, I learned a ton from my guests is that he's looking forward to the upcoming ice fishing season, which like, I don't immediately think Montana and ice fishing, you know what I mean? Like, I think about— when I think of Montana and fishing, I think more like fly fishing.

2:05But he's like, no, they're building an ice shack this year to spear northern pike, which I'm like, I'd be down with that because I hate those things. They're slimy little snots. But, uh, yeah. Um, and you came from Chicago originally? Uh, close. Like, it was like 3 hours south of Chicago. Okay, so I grew up in a little town of 90 people in central Illinois.

2:27Wow. So I've kind of been small town my whole life. Really? Yeah, because you're saying like it's like a 2-hour drive to you for a Walmart, and I'm like, wow. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty bitchin', man. Um, so how did you get into this? So I started, uh, first vehicle I ever worked on was my uncle's '77 Corvette. I was like 10 years old, and then he was restoring it.

2:58Yeah. And then my mom met my stepdad and they had a trucking company, so then I got into working on, on Kenworths that way, changing oil, tires. Yeah. And then went to high school and kind of just worked on all my buddies' vehicles. Then one day I finally got an apprenticeship opportunity through a local John Deere dealer up here about 3 years ago, and I jumped on it and haven't looked back.

3:23Very cool. My— you say '77 Corvette. A guy I used to work with at the dealer way back when, Bob was his name. We all called him Uncle Bob. He was— he'd be an elder guy by now for sure. Retired military, took a job in the parts department. I don't know why he would because we were miserable back then, but he had a '77 Corvette and It was kind of a fun car because it wasn't at all like any kind of numbers matching or worth anything, right?

3:52So the wrong engine in it, you know, all that stuff. But it was like, I don't know what you remember about the '77s, but they were like rated for like 150 horsepower, right? They were dogs. And this one had a warmed over one small block Chevy in it that somebody had tuned up. So it was a lot more fun to drive and it was like He didn't get too, you know, bent out of shape about all the other things about it.

4:16Like the AC didn't work inside. He didn't care. He just wanted to have a Corvette, right? So I remember him, he'd be in the shop kind of monkeying around on Saturday mornings when we were in there working and we'd rib him about it a little bit because it was like he wasn't a mechanic, but he was handy. And we're like, oh, that thing's not even fast anyway, right?

4:35And it was like, you go out in the parking lot and do Big smoking burnout and it was like, oh yeah, cool, you know? And then of course back then, you know, one of the Hemi cars would still spank it, right? Like they were— oh yeah, they were something. They were just nice looking cars. Yeah. I mean, I can still remember that when the first, like, you know, 300C came off the lot with a Hemi in it and we all drove it and we were just like, holy crap.

5:00Like, not because, like, we'd driven Vipers. And I mean, that's a different experience altogether, right? But the Hemi C, for what it was, for what cost back then, was we knew something was changing within Chrysler, right? Because it was like, that was the first time a lot of us had had, you know, a rear-wheel drive V8 car that you could enjoy driving, you know.

5:26Um, and it was, it was pretty cool when they'd come in. The customers back then, they weren't like, they weren't pretentious, you know. They were just— it was a fun car to drive. Um, I really like— I mean, I've always— I'm a little sick in the head. I've always liked the Chrysler stuff, so, you know. But, um, yeah, I finally just dipped my toe into, into Mopar.

5:46So yeah, what'd you get? I bought a Jeep. I got it. Yeah, yeah. What year? 2012. 2012. Yeah, everybody says it was the worst year too. I mean, I've already done the oil cooler. That one already, that one already crapped out. So yeah, I did, I did, uh, I did one on a 2015 Cherokee Trailhawk yesterday. I mean, they're super common, right?

6:16And, um, a gravy job. And what did you, did you put a Dorman one in it, or— I put a Mishimoto in it. Mishimoto, okay. Still aluminum housing though. Yeah, I, you know, I've never used that particular brand, but like I've put in dozens of the Dorman ones at this point. Right. And I did have one where it leaked after. Now, again, we're not even sure it was a legit Dorman because it was a customer-supplied part, not my choice.

6:45And I kind of had a talk with my, with my advisor slash manager after because like You know, she paid way more labor because there was no labor. She provided it. Um, and but it was— it didn't matter what we did, it wouldn't leak or it wouldn't stop leaking. Um, we changed the seals twice in it and, you know, the whole thing, and it still would, would puke oil out of it.

7:11So, um, it puked oil out of it worse than the one we changed. Mine was just puking coolant. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it was so bad it completely rotted the knock sensor connector. And yeah, I let it go way too long. I let it go way too long. I was trying to be cheap and yeah, so I ended up splicing in a new connector and yeah, it's— but it's— I mean, it's an easy job, you know, it's not— it's, it's like, you know, you see all the guys talk online about how You know, they cuss that and I'm like, I don't know why.

7:45Like, it was most of the guys I knew at the dealer did them within the warranty time after like the second time they did one. And the retail time is gravy, you know? Like, I think I did mine in like 2.5, 3 hours. Like, it's not hard, not difficult. So what did you drive before you got the Wrangler? I had a Ford 2012 Ford Fusion.

8:06Okay. And loved that car. Hate that I totaled it on a deer, but loved that car. Yeah, I missed the gas mileage. Yes, especially when you got to drive 100 miles round trip every day for work. Yeah, I missed the mileage. Oh, so you're that far? Yeah. Wow, man. Yeah, that's the closest decent-sized town I would say is the town I work in with real job opportunities.

8:36So you get some, you get some seat time where you get to listen to the podcast then, right? And just kind of like, yeah. Yep. And be a field tech. I do too. So what is that like? Because you mentioned like Kenworth, is that who employs you now or not? Kenworth, excuse me. John Deere. Yep. I work for a John Deere dealership.

8:56So I'm a field tech for them. Well, field and shop. We all, all of us techs kind of do field and shop work. But, uh, nope. So we get a lot of seat time. I mean, I drive— it's not uncommon for me to drive 200-300 miles in a day and even be 120 miles away from the shop. It's just so spread out out here.

9:19Yeah. What's, what's a lot of the calls? What's it involved? It's right now it's a lot of combines. Okay. I'm more the hay equipment guy. For our dealership. So this last— so July and beginning of August been really busy for me working on balers and the tractors that pull them. But, um, right now we're really heavy into combines, uh, any big tractor pulling grain carts.

9:47Lately it's kind of seems like it's been transmission problems with some of the tractors. So really, yeah, I'm getting ready to split a tractor once I can get splitting stands from another store. Wow. See, that's, that's something I've never done. I've never, I've never yanked apart a piece of farm equipment. It's— I've watched my stepfather. I couldn't remember what it was. It's a New Holland, I think.

10:14And he split his a couple of years ago to fix an oil leak or something. And I remember, like, you know, a lot of guys that do it, like you say, the stands, he had blocks of wood jimmied up all over the place. And I'm like, I want no part of that. Like, This one's a little different because I don't have to take the cab off or anything.

10:33I actually take the whole rear differential and the transmission and just slide it out from underneath the tractor with the rear axles. So I'm ready for it. I just need the stands now. So I'm gonna assume you guys are probably doing that 12 months of the year, right? Yep. Yep. Whether it's we're out in the field Whether it's 30 below or 105.

10:58God bless you, man. God bless you. I can remember, I can remember road service, like on highway trucks when I did that stint. And yeah, I can remember it seemed like in my memories it was more, more winter days than summer days. I don't know what was— whether the shit just didn't break as much or people were getting it towed. But I can remember a couple of hot days on the side of the highway for you know, a few minutes, like putting a starter in.

11:26Well, that's a lot of what it was, right? Starter, alternator belts, batteries, you know, stuff like that. We didn't get to too much where, you know, we didn't— we couldn't get it going that way. They kind of— we were lucky. But man, like, you know, it was— we didn't— we didn't have to go to too many people and do too much involved, you know, at the site.

11:49Thank God, because, um, yeah, I don't, I don't love the cold. Wintertime's actually normally pretty easy for us in the field. It's mostly just, uh, or aftertreatment issues is what the wintertime mostly is for guys that are out feeding cows, because they can't comprehend the idea of letting a tractor regen, letting it run long enough to regen, and then they wonder why their exhaust filter's plugged.

12:18Then you'll get some guys that idle— they'll idle their tractor all night long just that way it starts in the next morning, and then they wonder why the exhaust system's plugged. Yeah, I don't, I don't understand that because I want to think that sometimes it's just a situation of people think they're saving money by like not replacing the 5-year-old batteries, right? Or, you know, I went out and I boosted, I let it run for 8 hours, like, because you know, to heck with it, right?

12:48I get fuel pretty cheap is what they might think. And I'm like, you're just like, it's not, it's not designed to do that anymore, unfortunately. And, you know, I'm not necessarily a big fan of all the, the diesel emission stuff in terms of does it really have any kind of positive net effect? I'm really not for it on farm equipment. I think if you're running non-taxable fuel, then you shouldn't have to have emissions.

13:17Yeah, is my belief. But as a representative for John Deere, I have to— I can't, you know, I can't encourage people to delete their machines. But no, that's just how I feel, is that if it's non-taxable fuel, you shouldn't, shouldn't have to have the exhaust treatment. Yeah. Now tell me how you got to go from Kenworth over to Deere? Like, how did that— what was that transition like?

13:42So I grew up like an hour from Moline, Illinois, which is Deere's headquarters. So I've always been around Deere and I've piddled with it, but I've always wanted to be a technician for Deere. And when I moved up here, every year I'd apply for the apprenticeship. And finally, after applying for it for 4 years, I finally got it. Nice. So, no, just— well, in my stepfamily for the trucking company, we also had an old 4020 John Deere, so I got to wrench on that and run it and do some mowing with it in the summertime.

14:20So I was already familiar slightly with how the systems worked, right? But that was— I do miss working on Kenworths though. I do miss working on KWs. Yeah, I always thought they were a cool truck when I got to work on them. And again, it was one of that, that old brand, right, that some of the really, you know, when I say it all the time, like the Slash owner operators up here, like they're almost a— they're a dying breed.

14:46Like everybody now is a company driver, right? And you drive a company truck and whether it's a Volvo or, you know, an International or something like it's— there's no— there's no cool trucks anymore. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that you don't see a nice truck once in a while. You still do. But it's like they're all, you know, exactly what I'm talking about.

15:06They've all kind of gone that, you know, plastic-clad aerodynamic, you know, modern junk. And then you'll see somebody, you know, it seems to be more in the construction guy stuff. He's hauling, you know, a big cat behind him on a loader or something like that. And they've got around here, it's the bull haulers. Yeah, guys hauling cattle pots. They're all 379s and W900s.

15:31Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, yeah. And so we don't, we don't see that as much around here anymore, like the old stuff as we used to. I can remember, you know, 2001, it seemed like everybody was still running an old Pete or an old K-Wopper or, you know, or an International Eagle. And it was a nice truck. And now, like, it's like all of a sudden everybody was like, all you could buy was a Volvo.

15:59Them old International Eagles don't get the love they should either. Those are, those are cool trucks. I worked for a feed mill just in the town to the west of us, and they had one that I was driving around to feed the feed mill, you know, for, for grain. It's just an old straight truck, but man, was that thing cool. Yeah. Yeah.

16:17Just a fun truck to drive. Yeah. And I can remember they used to always rip on everybody that had an International like it was a, as if it was a lesser truck. But I mean, I remember seeing them and it was like It's all about the power plant. Yeah, it was, it was a good truck, you know what I mean? It really was.

16:36And, um, but yeah, Zeb Beard, he's got an old Kenworth too and he loves it. Like, he just— they ride like a Cadillac. Yeah. Oh yeah, it's so good. Way better than an old cabover. Oh, we had one when I was growing up. Yeah, we had a— we had in my fleet, we had, uh, a couple of, um, Freightliner cabovers because I worked for The shop I worked for, we had the local Kimco steel fleet and they'd haul steel up and down and they had a couple Freightliner cabovers.

17:07And I can still remember, you know, the guy not having his TV secured in the back. And he, you know, we tilt the box, the bed, the cab up to service it. And I could still remember hearing that TV hit the windshield. The worst part was the passenger seat, especially in the old ones, because they weren't air ride back in the day.

17:27Oh, those were rough. Yeah. Oh, look at trucks. But oh, and these guys almost never had a passenger, you know what I mean? Like almost never. So they didn't care. But like, I can still remember that TV bouncing around and calling the boss because I thought I was going to be in shit. And I called the boss up and he's like, nope, don't worry about it.

17:48They're not supposed to leave it in the, in the truck. And I'm like, okay, I didn't— it's on them. It's on the driver. Yeah. So, you know, I don't think the driver probably got anything more than like a stern talking to because it was a, it was a tough company to haul for. Like hauling steel was like a heavy load, big load.

18:06And, you know, but they had a hard time always hiring drivers. It seemed everywhere, everybody. So back then, and I think it's even worse now, there was a real shortage of them too. But what What was it like to come into John Deere as an apprentice? Um, so luckily the group of guys in my shop are fantastic, absolutely fantastic guys. And, um, they've always really helped me.

18:33Um, I was smart enough. I went to Harbor Freight and bought probably $2,000 worth of tools. Yeah. And then our dealership does a nice program where when you join the apprenticeship, you can get $7,500 worth of John Deere tools and toolboxes. So I got all that. So I really wasn't in it for very much for tools, and I just— they just threw me to work, kind of just threw me to the wolves.

19:01And, um, did one— my first big project I did with our master tech in the shop was a head job on a 9530 and did that with him. I pretty— I mostly did— I did most of it. He was just kind of there over my shoulder the whole time. Yeah, it came out good. But no, it's, it's been a, it was a really easy transition into it.

19:25I find that that's sometimes like, and we were talking before we got on, you know, last week, you and I back and forth a little bit about text, you know, through text, excuse me. And I think a lot of that, the older generation used to be We judge them like your tool investment kind of showed how serious you were, right? Yep. Like, and I can relate to that because I can remember, like I joked, you know, we had lots of apprentices that had, you know, a Snap-on toolbox and nothing in it.

19:57No tools, no vice grips, no hammer. Like, you know, and I made the old-fashioned rule for myself. If I have to borrow it more than twice, I'm going to buy it. And So that's what I did. Any time the Snap-on truck would come, which is once a month at the time. Now we have 2 tool trucks come, but I'd get on there and buy whatever I could afford that I was borrowing.

20:19Yeah. Now we have Cornwell, so it's a little bit cheaper as well. But yeah, we see we don't get Cornwell up here. I've often— I would like to see some of their stuff up close just to, to see what it's like. And I can remember seeing it, you know, on the, on the Saturday morning hot rod shows. It seemed like at some point some— they were sponsored— Cornwell was sponsoring somebody.

20:41Um, but I've never had one of their tools in my hand ever in my life. I'd like to, to just try out one ratchet. Well, I have 2 ratchets from Cornwell and I like my Snap-ons better. I, I like, I like how the head feels better. Toolbox-wise, I like Cornwell's looks better. Sorry to interrupt, but I have to share something really quick with everybody.

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21:42So 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. Really? Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot right now up here in my area. There's a lot of Matco toolboxes. A lot. Like, those are very good toolboxes.

22:03Very expensive toolboxes. Yeah. And I've got an old school Maximizer top and bottom from '98. It's a Jeff Gordon commemorative. Not that I'm a Jeff Gordon fan. It was a used box, was a trade-in. And for me it was a lot of storage for a good price. That's why I bought it. And, you know, and again, shoot, it's been paid off probably 15 years, right?

22:31And it's to the point now where it's crammed. Like there's a Harbor Freight roll cart, the one that we all buy, right? Like you see all over the place. And it really, I should have 2 lockers for the Maximizer, but I'm like looking at it going, you got less than 10 years left to go probably. Like, do you really wanna buy 2 lockers?

22:50And I'm like, I really don't want to. It would help organize the mess for sure. But, you know, it's already heavy enough that I just ordered a toolbox from Cornwell. Okay. It's limited edition for America's 250th. It's just a, it's just a roll cart. But it doesn't make sense for me to go out and spend $20,000, $30,000 because all of my tools are in a truck all the time.

23:17The only time my tools come out of my truck is when it's got to go get maintenance done. Yeah, so it's, it's tough for me to justify the investment. This one I'm just getting a crazy good deal on and I'm not going to say no to it. So, and it's a cool box to have, but yeah, yeah, we don't, we don't— it's a hard investment for me to make.

23:41I think it's getting to be a hard investment for all of us to make, honestly. You know, I, I, and I, I I've said it before, you know, I'm so, I'm so thankful that I see so many more tool buying options for the young guys that are coming in now because coming up, I didn't have that, you know, like we never had a Harbor Freight here.

24:00We still don't. We had, you know, I talk about we had a company called Princess Auto. Yeah, I've heard from a Canadian YouTuber that I watch. Yeah. Which YouTuber is that? Zip Ties and Bias Supplies. Okay. I know him. Yeah. Yeah, I've watched him. He's— yeah, yeah, he's hilarious. Yeah. And there's another guy. Oh, what do they call him? The dangler guy or whatever.

24:28The snowmobile guy that everybody— yeah, yeah. He's kind of a famous one at this point. He's made it pretty big doing all the jumps in a denim, like a Levi's denim jacket, helmet on an old something, old two-stroke. But yeah, it's Their quality has gotten so much better in the last 5 years too. Like Princess Auto, it used to be— it used to be junk.

24:53Like, it used to be even the guys for DIY didn't buy it. They went to everything, bought it was Canadian Tire Mastercraft. But Princess Auto's really stepped their game up in the last 5 years. So Harbor Freight— me and my buddy are talking about going to Canada just to go to Princess Auto just because the zip ties and bias supplies, because he talks about it all the time.

25:12Well, and then my, my buddy, um, Tobatech, Mark Elliott, um, he filmed a little short at the new one that opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is like— Winnipeg, Manitoba is ground zero for Princess Auto. That's where it all started, is in Winnipeg. So they built this new giant store and even sell outdoor stuff, like, so hunting and fishing and archery and all this kind of stuff in the store.

25:35And he did a little walk through the store and I was like, holy crap, like Makes me want to get on a flight and go to Winnipeg. And there's not too much that makes me want to go to Winnipeg other than Mark and this new store. So I don't think I'm that far from Winnipeg. You're probably not. Honestly, you're probably a lot closer.

25:52What one's above me? I think I'm decently close to Regina. This Saskatchewan? Yeah. So, yeah, you're not— you're close. You're substantially closer than me. It's— it'd be— my brother did My brother is a former pro MMA fighter and he, he flew in. Yeah, he flew into Winnipeg for his last fight. This is going back 10 years ago at least now. And I think it was winter.

26:18Yeah, it was. Landed, you know, went to this hotel, had the fight the next night. And he's like— I'm like, so what was Winnipeg like? He's like, I don't know. I didn't see much of it. Like, he's like, I saw the tarmac at the airport. It was snow. We went to the hotel, snow. Went and saw a movie the night before the fight.

26:38Snowy. And then he's like, we came home. So he, he beat the guy in the 3rd round and then came home. So yeah, he was— yeah. And that's— so that's the farthest any of us in my family have been, like, flight-wise, you know. My parents have taken some road trips and gone to the East Coast but never going anywhere west. And I'm like, that's the only time my brother's ever been on a flight was that one flight, and, uh, hasn't been back since.

27:10So yeah, no, we have our newest apprentice in the shop's doing MMA. Really? He's trying to go pro in it. Yeah, it's, uh, it's a lot different now than, than even when my brother was coming through. Like, um, he'll tell you that like the guys that we grew up around, um, the amateurs now are, are better than the pros were when we were coming up.

27:36Like, they're just— they're so well-rounded. So, so, you know, because back then it was like, you know, it was a guy that did one thing. Like, maybe he was a wrestler and it was like Matt Hughes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. My, my cousins have met Matt Hughes a few times. They're really big wrestlers. Yeah. He's— Matt's Yeah, my brother's met him. I've met him at an open wrestling meet down in southern Illinois when I was with my cousins.

28:04Yeah, well, he's from that area, right? Yeah, he's from southern Illinois. Yeah, yeah. Um, super nice guy. Yeah. Uh, and then he had a— he had an accident on the farm there. He was, uh— he also got hit by a train. That's— yeah, that happened. Um, and he's made a like he wasn't supposed to live. No, by all intents and accounts, and he was not supposed to walk again, and he wasn't supposed to speak again.

28:28Like, he— they thought he was going to be like bedridden for the rest of his life. And, um, what he's been able to do is pretty friggin incredible. A lot of that is like he, he can go— he goes to Mexico, I think, almost once every 2 months for stem cell treatment, which is a big part of how he's been able to come back from it all.

28:50But yeah, an incredible, incredible recovery. Yeah. Or on his way to recovery. Like, he'll never be the same as he was. But he was wrestling with Jon Jones the other day. I don't know if you saw that. I did. Those guys were wrestling around. I was like, man, it is incredible that he's even alive. Yeah. Unbelievable. Let alone doing that. Mm-hmm. And it's, you know, he, he was, he was known to rub a lot of people the wrong way, the way his, his demeanor was.

29:23Yeah. The way he acted. And yeah, he's said that to me and my cousins, like after he got hit by a train, he kind of learned that he needed to treat a lot of people better. And see, as a Canadian, see, I'm going to love this conversation because as a Canadian, right, like the big rivalry was him and George St-Pierre, right? So it was like, you can't live in Canada And not like George St-Pierre, you're not allowed.

29:48It's like sacrilegious, right? And I can remember when, when he fought Matt the first time, George, a lot of people still didn't know really who George was. And then Matt, Matt beat him and like, you know, caught him with 2 seconds to go. And Matt, you know, and George submitted. Well, then when he came back, it was like you saw that transition within a year and George GSP was just on a whole other level.

30:16Like he'd hit that platform where he was like he was untouchable. I mean, you know, and then that was kind of the changing of the guard. Like Matt was on his way out then after that and GSP just kept going up and up and up. And I mean, I've met George a couple of times. He's a pretty cool cat too. He's a good guy.

30:37But, you know, When I met Hughes, he was just kind of like, he was friendly, but he's— he was all about, you know, the competition, right? Like, I think he was a guy that just super competitive. Yeah, very uber. And again, you know, people ask like, why is that? And it's like, Matt's got a twin brother, Mark, and my brother's my twin.

31:00So when I see people that like talk about the kind of the way he is, I know exactly why he's that way. Like it was when my brother and I came up, coming up as kids, every— we competed against each other nonstop. That's how me and my brother still are to this day, even though he's 1,000 miles away. We— I'll call him and just be like, hey, can you name these 4 guys that were on the New York Yankees in 1972?

31:26Yeah. And I know there's no way he's going to be able to do it, but it's just We'll— we find ways to compete still. What does he do? Uh, my brother just got promoted to, uh, he's one step below a store manager at a Walmart back home. Okay. So he just got promoted to that. Yeah, right on. Not— so he's not any kind of mechanic at all?

31:49No, no, far from it. Me and him are polar opposites. Yeah, if we were standing next to each other, he wouldn't even know if we were brothers. Yeah, your auto repair shop doesn't slow down, and neither should your tools. When diagnostics get more advanced, systems get smarter, and vehicles get more complex, one name keeps shops moving forward: Launch Tech USA. From powerful diagnostic tools to ADAS calibrations, wheel alignments, TPMS service, even heavy-duty solutions, Launch Tech USA delivers speed Accuracy and control where it matters most.

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33:00Um, so how old are you in this industry? Like, how many years you got in? Um, so in November it'll be 3 years. Okay. Turning wrenches professionally. Yeah. So I started when I was 25. Yeah, 25 I started. Yeah. So you're a young guy then? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about that? Like when you— what's the age brackets in your, in your shop right now?

33:25So right now our shop has 4 apprentices. Mm-hmm. Me. Well, I'm getting ready to graduate here in like a month, so we'll have 3 apprentices. I, I'm like middle of the pack. There's 4 guys younger than me and 3 guys older than me. So I'm kind of middle. But the 3 guys that are older than me are way older than me. Yeah.

33:52You know, so they're 40s, 50s. Yeah. Because you kind of said something like there was like a 10-year gap you kind of found in your, your experience, right? Like it would seem like the guys that are that age group, like there's nothing from 30 to 40, there's 40 and up, which I can completely relate to because, you know, most of the guys that I run with now are 40 to 50.

34:19And then, you know, I'm seeing brand new young and I'm not seeing a whole lot of like— it's like around here, the 20 to 30s, we lost them, you know, or I'll say the 25s to 35s. And now you're seeing flat rate has something to do with that. I think like, so we're hourly is how we are. Like, you couldn't flat rate what we do.

34:41But do you think it has something to do with that? I think it's, I think it's a huge— so I think there's a great question, by the way. I think there's 2 things going on. I think that like, and people have heard me talk about it, and a lot of the listeners don't like it. But the reality is, is like, there's no kind of what an independent shop looks like on this corner, there'll be another one down the street and it's a completely different environment, you know what I mean?

35:07From the way they do things to the appearance to how it's set up to tooling, what kind of jobs they do. So I mean, it's like a lot of the young people, I think they don't know how to— how do I say this without sounding like a dick? They don't know how to, to get into the right kind of aftermarket shop. So a lot of them get plucked off by the dealer.

35:32And then again, the dealers, all of them still here around here playing flat rate. And, you know, when you're starting out, they don't necessarily pay them flat rate. But by the time they get them to where they've got 3 years in and they're doing their Canadian apprenticeship here, they want to get them flat rate because, and, you know, it's the old line is, oh, you'll make so much more money.

35:55Well, no, you don't. Because like, if you, you know, like, it's like your head job that you're talking about. For instance, when you started, like, our guys will come in and they probably won't get to touch that until like year 3, year 4. And, you know, so they're doing a lot of tire changes, a lot of tires, a lot of oil changes, a lot of like, if we could teach them how to do the next shitty recall that comes out, Like, that's the thing in Canada.

36:23We seem to get them on recalls fast. And I don't know because it's so funny. Like, I talked to other guys that have been like dealer master certified and they're like, oh yeah, like I had to do this recall because I was the only one certified to do it. I've never seen a recall yet up here that, you know, they couldn't give to anybody.

36:43Like it just went to all of us. And I think that's why recalls in our industry, our recalls are a little different. They— we don't call them recalls, we call them PIPs. Makes it sound better. Product Improvement Program is what they call it. Yeah. And yeah, you don't have to be certified here for it either. It's— it's— and most of them are stupid, honestly.

37:04Well, I think a lot of it is just like little things that they maybe missed and they found it in engineering, right? And to prevent a warranty claim, like, go and do this now. We get that. But like, do a brake pedal We had to change a park brake pedal. Yeah. And like, it's just silly things like that. Granted, it's a safety concern.

37:22Sure. On John Deere Gators anyway, is what it was for. So it was definitely a safety concern. But I guess I didn't understand why they put it out like, oh, I never ran into one that didn't function. Mm-hmm. So they, they never really said what it was for. At least I never read what it was for. But yeah. Our guys, he's got to be certified.

37:43Our guys, it was like, you know, they did a pile of the door latch recalls. Like I say, our guys, like up in Canada, they did a bunch of the Ford door latch recalls. They did a bunch of the, you know, um, everybody was doing Takata airbag recalls. It seemed it didn't matter what car brand, like somebody put a Takata airbag in it.

38:01And then it was like, I can remember at Nissan, like everybody was doing them. Um, so a lot of the young guys You know, going back to the flat rate thing, by the time they come up in the dealer, a lot of them, I think as soon as they go completely flat rate and then they see that what I've talked about, those lean months where there's no work coming in.

38:22And I mean, and it's like everything else, all the conversations, all the, you know, comments are like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. Like I make routinely 10 to 12 hours a day flat rate. They're the outliers, man. There's so many more that work in dealerships or shops that like 8 hours is a good day, like that's enough work that came in that they hit 8.

38:43And most of the time, a lot of them, it's like, no, it's 6, you know. So, and it can be 6 easy hours, but there's not enough cars, or it could be 6 really hard hours of like diag or something like that that you lost your butt on. And, uh, it's easy to see why you put a young person through that for 2, 3 years and they're trying to build a family or trying to paid tools, trying to buy a house, whatever.

39:09And they go, no, man, I'm going over to HVAC. So it happens a lot. Like, going back to what you're asking me about, like, there's that, there's that window I keep talking in my area. So many went to work at the Goodyear tire plant, it wasn't even funny. Like, there's got to be 50 at this point now licensed, top, like, trained technicians from the automotive shops around my area that are now working at the Goodyear tire plant.

39:36Because they just, they'd had enough, you know, and they didn't all come from dealers. Like there was the last guy that I heard make the shift. He worked at a tire store that I used to work at. Oh, but it was like, and the tire store was busy, but it did by far didn't pay top wages in the city. And you know, it's a tire store.

39:56You're not going to get exposed to like a constant steady diet of ever-changing challenging stuff. Like it's a tire store. You're gonna get twice a year feast or famine, fat, famine, blah, you know, tire work. And then you're going to hope that there's enough work coming in the rest of the year to keep you. And, and he left. He's like, I'll make more money starting at the Goodyear plant and I won't have to bring nearly as many tools in with me.

40:25And, you know, pension, it's, yeah, it's rotating shifts, it's nights, it's weekends, it's hot. Um, but it isn't like, you know, you're not getting dripped on by cars for an oil change at 8 in the morning, you know. Yeah. So I think that's been a big part. Flat rate is why the young people have not jumped onto our industry. And, uh, you know, I've had a lot of different content guys and creators and stuff on, lots of conversations with them, and, you know, they all want to talk about how it worked for them, or they agree that it's not optimal, but everybody's talking about it, but nobody is making the changes.

41:09You know, you still have these guys that like they interview like Jim Farley or somebody like that. And it's like that, that one has such legs on it because it's like Jim Farley's numbers are a little off. He doesn't have that many $106,000 a year jobs waiting, 6-figure jobs. But the reality is, like, we in the industry all know why he can't fill them, and it's because guys have left and they're not coming back, you know.

41:35Um, and I think that that's what we need to really— if we're going to look at what— if we save this industry, um, the problem is staring everybody right in the face. And it's just going to take somebody to, you know— I don't know who's going to be the first to do it. Um, I can tell you that, like, One of the big wins was— I don't know if you've seen it discussed.

41:57Guys will talk about in certain states now there is no warranty time. Like they have to pay you the book time even if the car is under warranty. Oh, that's, that's set down by the labor laws in that particular state. And that's been a big plus for a lot of guys, which is good. I think it should have probably always been that way.

42:16I think a lot of people don't wake up and realize that like, well, wait a minute, All of a sudden, like, they can pay you that way. And yet we know that the OE is not paying them the full time, but you're paying out as the employer and they're not going bankrupt. So you got to wake up and go, well, they always had that money.

42:36Why didn't I get it? You know? And there's a big talk right now, Tanner, where everybody's like, we're going to price ourselves right out of the industry if we keep— the prices keep going up. You know, I'm not sure about that. You know, I mean, like, I don't know anything about what— but what's it cost at your shop for to get a tractor worked on?

43:00It's $175 an hour in the shop and then $200 in the field. Yeah. What's the typical— like if you had an average, like we hear the ARO, average repair order. How many hours does most of the stuff start out at? It all depends. Like, I got a really good service manager. He gives us 3 hours diag time for pretty much everything. It's like that's standard, especially like, especially in the field.

43:27It's 3 hours diag time is pretty much standard. If it's in the shop, maybe an hour, maybe 2, depending on the issue, you know? All right. But I just lost my train of thought. And see, so in the field, that's, that's kind of 3 hours diag time plus they're paying a service call, right? Yep, they're paying service call, they're paying mileage, and that 3 hours diag time doesn't even count my drive time.

43:52Yeah, so there's, there's some places I'll drive an hour and a half, 2 hours to go to. Well, that doesn't count towards my, towards my efficiency because that's kind of how our— that's, that's how we run our whole shop is based on tech efficiency. Right. So yeah, so drive time isn't included. I get to the machine, I have 3 hours to diag it.

44:14If I figure if it's just— if I'm just chasing my tail, then eventually it like if I get to an hour and a half, 2 hours, I just get a hold of Mother Deer, as we call it. And actually we have our own thing called DTAC, Dealer Technical Assistance Center, and each John Deere dealership dealer group is required to have their own detag guys to filter through, try to help, and then if they can't figure it out, send it to Deere.

44:41So basically, if I hit 2 hours and I haven't figured it out, I send it straight to those guys and then I can get that. Then I basically have an hour to kind of save my efficiency. If we still can't get it figured out, then we can obviously bill the extra time. Yeah, but we're very heavily efficiency-based, but, um, still paid hourly.

45:03And I think everybody like thinks as soon as, you know, a technician is paid hourly that they're not going to be efficient. And I mean, I just— that's how we get raises. Like, we have certain tech levels in our dealership. So it starts at a— some guys started at tech— like, if I started out as a Tech 1, but you can go all the way up to a Tech 8, which would be a master tech.

45:26Right. So right now I'm a Tech 3, just getting out of my apprenticeship program. Yeah. But yeah, efficiency's all what— how I get my raises. If I don't get my training done, then that's obviously— if my manager hasn't given me the time to do it, then that's on him. But, but yeah, my, my raises are mostly efficiency-based on a rolling 12 basis.

45:51And see, that's the thing. Like, I always looked at it so much and it's like, Efficiency tells to me tells way more than production, right? Like if you look at going back to say your oil cooler job on your own car, like your own Jeep, if we started looking at how often, how fast some of the guys eventually do that job, well, that shows that they're efficient at the job.

46:12It's the production-based idea. There's so many more variables that come into can you actually produce or not? Because everybody makes the assumption that there's, there's perfect workflow coming in that they can produce hours on. It's not. It's not. There's some jobs that are coming in that like going back to recalls or going back to diag, you just like, you're lucky to be, you know, at 100% efficiency on that recall number because the price is the price.

46:39The time is just ridiculous. You know, I hear guys talking at the Chrysler store or Stellantis or whatever they want to call it. I had a guy on a couple of months ago and he talked about the curtain airbag recall and I don't even know what it was on. I'm thinking Pacificas, Caravans, stuff like that. Um, like it was enough to make him quit.

46:59The time was just absolutely ridiculous. And he's like, yeah, it didn't matter how many times you did it, you weren't gonna hit the time. You had to drop the headliner and the damn thing. Like, it's just, you know, so think about that from a production standpoint. Like, if you walk in and that's one of your first jobs of the day, right, and it sucks and you get it done, and then the next thing you might go to the tower dispatch is another one.

47:21Like, how many times do you think that's going to happen before you're going to be like, I can't produce? Yeah. You know, I'm really lucky. My— we just got a new service manager. My old one, he went to actually be our parts manager in the same store. But our new one, he used to be a tech. He was working in the shop with me when I first started.

47:41So he knows, like, he knows how to filter through what is bullshit when it comes to looking at a work order and looking at the notes and looking what someone did. And seeing if they were actually, you know, screwing around or if all of that time is most definitely justifiable and then get all of that time billed. Yeah. So it is. It really saves us as techs, you know, especially having him in there.

48:11Nothing against my old service manager. He's really good. Really good dude. Really good manager. But he liked— he enjoyed parts more. Do you guys get a lot of tractors though that have kind of been like through the wringer or somebody else trying to fix something and then it comes in? Or, um, so there's a few independent guys in our area and the customers that typically choose to use them, those guys are really good, um, and they can figure it out for the most part.

48:40So we really don't deal with anything from independent guys. Right. We really don't even do any— hardly any oil changes either. Hmm. Most guys just do it themselves. Like a combine, labor-wise, to do a full service on is 9 hours. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't— like I said, you couldn't flat rate what I do. I mean, you couldn't flat rate an oil change that way.

49:03Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's so funny, right? We look at like how cars are built now. And it still makes me laugh about how we're still doing oil changes for half an hour. And it's like, you know, they've got a cartridge air filter on the top and 3 skid plates or shielding that you've got to take off from underneath just to get at the oil drain plug.

49:25Right. And then all the bolts up here, like they bolts, those bolts break off. And then it's like you always— the joke is like, you know, I was driving down the road and my, my under-shield fell off. And they're like, how does that happen? Well, it happens because it's 3 years old and it's like all the, you know, it used to have 20 bolts that held it in and now, you know, 10 of those bolts are snapped off in there.

49:50So people are getting creative with tie straps, putting them back on and everything. And then it's like they fly off because somebody's yelling at that technician to get that oil change done on that 3-year-old, 4-year-old, 5-year-old car. And he's trying to figure out how to get the skid plate, you know, the undershield back on creatively with tie straps because nobody's going to pay to drill out screws and, you know, all this kind of stuff.

50:13Right. And then we go, well, shit, they can't even do an oil change, right? And it's like, no, they're— we're, we're tasking them with jobs that take more and more time, but we're so scared to friggin charge to do an oil change properly in this industry that we have shit like that coming off. And then the customer says, I'm never coming back there because my under— body thing blew off, and, you know, I, I, I'm post-traumatic stress disorder because of the, you know, thing flying down the highway.

50:40And it's like, first of all, but, you know, if you were like— and if you had a good service manager who understood, and like in my case, like, say that happened to me on a John Deere Gator, like, I can— I could get all of that billed. Yeah. And just be like, look, this is what I had to do. I had to do 2 hours dicking around, drilling out holes, rethreading the holes, getting bolts and doing all that.

51:07Like, maybe not exactly 2 hours, but, but up here it'd be the customers waiting. What's taking so long to get that undercover back on? Just get it. And, you know, it's that famous word, just get it on, get it out, and then it blows off and they're like, how did you let that happen? Like, that's what this industry does to its young people.

51:26And again, You know, they criticize too heavily on the mistakes and not make them teachable moments. Man, that's what you just said is powerful there. That's, that's exactly what it is. And I mean, if we could slow down a little bit, there'd be so many more teachable moments every day in the shop with the young people that are like, I understand, you know, workload and pace is this, but like, this is what has to— we just have to stop, you know?

51:53And it You know what it is? It's too many young people, like, weren't— they weren't like me where they just said, like, yeah, I really don't care that she's in a hurry and she's like, it's got to be— this is where we are and this is what's got to be done, right? And it's going to leave so that I know that it's not going to fly off on her.

52:13And, and too many, like, they just don't have that, you know, willingness necessarily to talk back. And, um, I'm not saying everybody should, but I think that that's where we're at now, is the, the younger generation isn't like me, where maybe they— like, I wasn't a, I wasn't a hard-ass, or I wasn't a, a jerk, but I mean, like, if I knew it was going to take me another half hour to do the job right, I didn't flipping care if the thing was on fire.

52:42Yeah, come see me in 30 minutes. Like, I don't— and don't bother me at 29, or you're We're going to have a problem. And, you know, a lot of the young ones now, I think it's just like that overwhelms them and then they don't know how to— and it stresses them out. Me, I could flick it off and the next day come back in and everything was like, let's do it again.

53:02You know, it didn't— I didn't take it to heart. I didn't, like, worry that he didn't like me or she didn't like— I didn't care. Like, it was part of the job had to be done and we're just doing the job as best we can and that's all we can do. Yep. And I think now everybody gets into their— they get into their numbers too much, Tanner.

53:21Yeah. And I think that that's like the numbers are overshadowing the, the growth of, of our people. And, um, I don't necessarily know what the fix is. Everybody thinks that like I'm anti-flat rate, and I'm not anti-flat rate. I'm just like, when you start to peel back the layers and you look at Most places, I don't think, are run well enough and are qualified to be able to actually pay flat rate.

53:50They're like, what do you mean? We've been paying flat rate forever. Yeah. And what's your attrition rate? What's your turnover rate? Well, it's not good. Okay, so maybe there's a whole lot of things in your processes that are inefficient, ineffective, and it's costing you people. You've got to fix that first, you know. Um, it's, you know, I, man, I get some of the service writers pretty mad, um, because what I say, but it's the truth.

54:19A lot of them, it's like they come in and their primary focus, I think, Tanner, was like they had to be good customer service reps and the customers had to really like them. Okay, that's fair. They might be terrible, inefficient, like, you know, forgetful, like, and And everybody just kind of looks past them and goes, the customers love them. Well, in the back, if all of a sudden that's killing the whole shop production, I don't give a flip how much the customers love them.

54:48You have to address that. We can't go any faster in the back if you can't remember to find the wheel lock key, or you can't remember to get good notes from the customer, or if you, you know, forget to phone them. Like, we can't, we can't be any more efficient. Right? We're waiting. Parts is the same. Parts are— they get a brunt of it too.

55:09And their job is hard because I know that sometimes you punch it in. We had just a set of brake rotors yesterday on a Nissan Qashqai, which they don't call it a Qashqai in the States. They call it something else, a Kicks, whatever, or something. I don't know. I can't remember. But the parts fiche is wrong. So literally, like, he— by VIN, I should have these rotors.

55:32So he orders these rotors. Well, they're not right. So now it's, it's a 20-minute wait for Jeff to get 2 more rotors sent over. It's not the end of the world, but frig, like, if you're in a shop that, like, doesn't get serviced that fast, or is like you, could be an hour away, you might have just screwed the morning because the parts is wrong.

55:55Like your whole flow for the morning on that bay, because that's what it is, it's a bay-by-bay flow thing, you might have just screwed it. So everybody sits there and goes like, it's like Zeb's famous for that. Zeb has an incredible system because he's got so much room for everybody that there's no shortage of work, there's no shortage of space, you know, everything is run like a finely oiled machine.

56:21And it's like, okay, well, we're waiting for parts to go. Take your toolbox over there and get on that job. Like, everybody wants to go one tech per bay. Okay, it can work if everything else is working right. But when we start to see shops and it's like, it works really good when our— my techs have got 3 bays. Well, I would argue that maybe you don't have the support team in place for the amount of bays that you have.

56:48And that's why they're— they need 3 bays is because there's all these times where the wheels are falling off the cart, literally. And, you know, they're able to roll on to the next one. How big are you guys set up? Like, what's— what's a typical thing when you bring a machine in at your place? Do you know kind of when it gets there what it's going to need or— So sometimes it's somebody went out into the field and diagged it.

57:16Um, like me and another guy, our master tech, I went out into the field with him 2 weeks ago to pull a rotor drive gear case off of a combine. Got the gear case off, looked in there, we got to pull the whole rotor out. It's the whole main guts of a combine, got to pull it out. So it's, it's mostly stuff like that, and most of the time everything's diagged in the field.

57:41For the most part. Yeah, um, you'll get some of these cowboys out here that are just like, well, it's broke, fix it. I don't, I don't really care. I need the tractor back. Just fix it. So, you know, for the most part, that's how that goes. It's diag's all done in the field. Yeah. Um, the one thing I will add to what you said, um, we, all of us techs in our shop, we pretty much sell our own work.

58:07We make the calls directly to the customer. Um, and for me, like, when it comes to balers, that's kind of my main thing is round balers. I'll quote the work order and put all parts on, build the quote. I will call the customer and go through it with him over the phone. I think that is a way more efficient way, which sucks for— like, we don't have really a service writer.

58:32Okay. We have a position in our store. It's— we're getting ready to hire somebody. But ever since I've been there, they've never actually done like a service writer job. It's always just been on us as techs. And I kind of like it that way better because it kind of cuts out the middleman. And I feel like it's more personable that way. And you can answer the customer's questions right away.

58:57I guess if you're— but I'll challenge you with what if your personality type is a type that you don't want to talk to a customer. You just want to fix the machine. See, we don't really have any guys in the shop like that, really. So that's what's, that's what's pretty nice. We're all, we all get along with all the customers really well.

59:17You know, half of the customers, they'll come walk back into the shop with a cup of coffee in their hand and they'll bullshit with us for 20 minutes in the mornings and we'll all get to work after that and So yeah, we have really good relationships with our customers. See, I think, I think going back to the whole pay thing and everything, you know, because we hear them, you know, so many shop owners in the groups have said like, I would never want my mechanic talking to the customer.

59:45Like, they're, they're so abrasive and they're so mad and angry and whatever. Right. It's a joke. And, and, you know, I have to keep them in the corner where they don't mess with anybody. I wonder if the pay way we've always been paid or the way we've been evaluated and judged and, you know, the whole things, if that hadn't been the case, if a lot more of us would be just comfortable talking with people, you know?

1:00:10Like, if I wasn't— if I didn't think like every 6 minutes that I spent talking to a customer was costing me money, I probably would have talked a lot more. Like, I'll talk their ear off and I've been always one of those technicians, like, if the customer— like, if the advisor needed me to talk to a customer, I would come out and do it.

1:00:31Now, it had to really depend on the customer, right? And, and they kind of knew, yeah, Jeff's not going to gel with this one, don't have him talk to him. Um, but, you know, I spent a lot of time on the phone sometimes with the customer trying to get, okay, what's it actually doing? What are you here for? Because, like, you say it runs rough, but it runs great right now, right?

1:00:51Like, what's What's happening? What are you doing? Yeah, I need more than just it runs rough. Like, I need, I need condition. What, what, you know, what, what's the barometric pressure outside when it's running rough? You know, like, you need, you need more details than just it's running rough. Yeah. And our customers are just as bad. They won't tell you the full story until you're 4 hours into a diag.

1:01:15And then they're like, oh, well, I was, I was pulling a hill when it started throwing turbo actuator codes. And then it goes away once I'm on flat ground. It's like you could have just said that other than, well, I have code showing up. Yeah, it's, it's cheaper on you for you to just tell me the whole story, whether you did it and it was an accident.

1:01:39I'm not going to judge you, dude. I'm here to fix it and get your machine back up and going as fast as possible. Yeah, I don't know. Why they do what they do sometimes where they fail to— like, I can remember so many times it was like, car has brake noise and then you rack it and it's got new brakes on it.

1:02:00Okay. Like, how did this happen? Like, what, what's going on here? Right? What, what's, you know, because then it's from a flat rate standpoint, it's a real slam dunk at that point. Like, it's got new brakes that we didn't put on and they're noisy. So like, I know that if I do my process, which is put my parts on it and do the way I always do, it should be good.

1:02:22Has that already been preauthorized by the customer? Well, no. Okay, well, why didn't we have that conversation at the counter? And they look at you like, I don't know. Like, to me, it's always so simple. It's like, hi, Mrs. Smith, like, how can I help you today? My, my car's got brake noise. Okay, do you know how old your brakes are? Like, how long ago has it been since you had brake work done?

1:02:46And if Mrs. Smith says, well, I just had it done last week at whatever, another location or another franchise, whatever. Oh, okay. Um, the next question becomes, what did they do? Why are you not going back there? And what would you like me to do? Because like, a brake job in my facility looks like this price. Blah, blah, blah. All that shit can happen before it's ever dispatched to a tech.

1:03:12It should never be dispatched to a tech unless the tech has an idea about what they— what's the end goal. Install new brakes on this because they bought cheap junk or who knows what, or they just don't want to go back there. That makes my process so efficient and streamlined, it's not even flipping funny. But we don't have that routinely happening. Because people are just like, it's a brake noise, check it out.

1:03:36Okay, I checked it out. Yep, it's brake noise. It's got shit parts on there. What do you want to do here? Now then it stops and we have to make the phone call. Like there's so many things that it's, man, I've said it before. There's so much we could do if we just like preauthorize a lot more at the counter. You know, my, I don't know.

1:03:59Transmission isn't a good example because we're getting— we're talking tens of thousands of dollars now. But I mean, let's, let's just play, you know, devil's advocate here. Somebody calls you up with a Chevy Silverado out of warranty and they've got a transmission complaint. Like, you could probably get— that's going to be a fair bit of money. Like, we're talking thousands. Like, you know, because it's a 460LE.

1:04:24Yeah. 6L80, like anything. Yeah. Yeah. 8L80, 6L80, whatever the, you know, 6 and up. Like if you want to talk about them, you're probably into several thousand dollars. Like, so the conversation becomes what's the history on the truck? Like, that's all they should have knowledge of before it ever gets dispatched to the technician. And because like, what, what's the tech expected to do, drive it and scan it?

1:04:50Yeah, it's He's driven them before. Like, it's got another torque converter that's coming out of it or the tranny's shot. Like, what do you want to do here? That's kind of one of those things where it's like we can really save a lot of time if we start getting some kind of confirmation from the customer that, yeah, they're in it to fix it, not just like, what's this going to— what's this going to look like?

1:05:12It's going to look bad, you know, and, you know, we can probably save a lot of time if we don't, uh, I'm not saying don't evaluate it, but like make sure the customer's on board to realize this isn't a flash is going to fix this, a flush is not going to fix this. Like, you know, be prepared. It's going to require to— or it's going to require to tear down the transmission, figure out what exactly is wrong.

1:05:37Yep. Yeah. Um, I always thought brakes could have been handled the same way. Check engine light eval, Yeah, it should have been, you know, check engine light on. Okay. And then I always had question mark, question mark, question mark. Does it run fine? Does it run terrible? Like, or am I looking at an EVAP problem here? Am I looking at a misfire?

1:05:57Right. There's 2 different things. And they never asked that. They just wanted to stamp it and get on to the next customer. That part always frustrated the heck out of me. And people just assume, oh, you can see the code, you know exactly what's wrong. Put that part on. It's not always that easy. Well, no, and, and, you know, it used to be— I joke all the time, like, when I worked for Chrysler way back when, you never hardly saw an injector go bad.

1:06:24It was not a thing. Now they're way more common. Like, you're going back to your Jeep, my Jeep, like 3.6s and 3.2s, the Pentastars, way more common for injector problems than anybody ever thought, I think, there would be a thing. And, um, is it always injector? Hell no, it's not. Is it always a camshaft though? No, it's not either. Um, and again, it's one of these things where something that seems simple like a misfire is now taking a lot longer to, to flesh out and diagnose properly so that we're not, you know, putting 4 cams in it and 16, you know, rockers to find out that the injector was the problem.

1:07:06Like, we shouldn't have to do that, but it could take a lot more time now than it used to to determine what's actually causing the misfire, you know. And, and yet, you know, diag should take an hour. Like, that just drives me nuts. Yeah, that's— that one shocks me that everybody's like, oh, diag's an hour. It's like, no, it's, it's not that simple, especially for the stuff like that I work on.

1:07:29Even cars, it's not that simple. Yeah, you could be hunting a wire that's barely rubbed through and touching the frame rail somewhere that you are never going to find. Yeah. And, you know, I, I've talked so many times about like I've seen, especially intermittence, because intermittence bit you a lot because it was like we had lots of software updates, right, that were supposed to address intermittent things.

1:07:57And so you would go maybe drive the car for 10 minutes and it didn't— it felt fine. Do you go down the road of like updating the software? Well, that's how we got trained way back when, is that that's what Chrysler told us. That's the first thing you do, update the software and then retest, reevaluate. That's what we're told. Yeah, that's a pretty good telltale though, because if it fails, then you pretty much know it's either a controller or wiring.

1:08:19Mm-hmm. For us anyway. Yeah, but we got, we got tasked with so much. It was like the, the no-code stuff is what I always said was the hard stuff like the customers, you know, rough idle but no code, like, you know, shift sag but no code. Like that was always then it's like, well, yeah, it's getting software update every time no matter what.

1:08:42And then the customer can drive it, monitor it for themselves if it comes back and everybody goes, that's a comeback. Nope, that's the first step of a process. Thank you. You know, and it's, it's the maybe frustrating for the customer, maybe hard to show value because like they paid $180 for an update. And it didn't, you know, there's still something going on in the machine or the, you know, the ghost in the machine that we have to flesh out.

1:09:07But if it didn't work more than 50% of the time, we wouldn't be doing it. Like, the process wouldn't be a process because it does work a lot of the time. Um, you know, now I'm not saying that like if you have an oxygen sensor heater fault and, you know, you're going in there and flashing for you know, misfire, is it going to fix it?

1:09:28No, it's not, right? But guys are, are trained now to always make sure the software is up to date, and I'm all about it. I think it's the right thing to do. I think that too many times people get down a, a rabbit hole of diag because they're, they're ignoring that. You know, I worked with lots of technicians that didn't look at TSBs.

1:09:51You've probably seen them too. And then it's like the car comes back and you walk over and you do the TSB for an update after it was tuned up. And all of a sudden it finally runs right the way it was supposed to. Or that's another one, you put a battery in it or you take it on extended test drive or it sits and idles a long time and then you watch the battery voltage start to drop off because the alternator can't keep up.

1:10:16And then you finally fix what the customer was complaining about, which was Not going to be fixed with, you know, a throttle body cleaning and a tune-up. It just took some time to get the— to exorcise the demon in the machine, I guess you could say. And, you know, people think that that's like, oh my God, that took forever. No, but it took a lot longer than an hour, you know.

1:10:40And it's again, everybody with these prices going where it is, everybody's scared to sell. And I think it's like we have to have a real talk in this industry with our front counter and our customer about what is real expectations here. You know, do you want it fixed right or what do you want? Like, there's, there's 2 ways to do things. There's the right way and the wrong way.

1:11:03Yeah. Or you can say the right way or again, like it's depending on the scenario. Like it's— yeah. Or you can just have to realize You can be very upfront with the customer and say like, you know, do you want to update your maintenance because you've never done any? Like going back to the transmission thing, people come in and it's like, I want a transmission flush.

1:11:25Oh, why? You know, why, why, why? And sometimes they just say, well, it's not that high mileage and, you know, higher mileage and it's 5 years old and I just want it done for peace of mind. Cool. But you and I know a lot of the time there's something going on there that they didn't bother to share. Or somebody going into 3rd or something like that.

1:11:46Yeah. And, and it's like, you might not have caught it with the test drive, right? Because again, transmission services are not sold with diagnostic time. They're just a transmission service. So everybody's like, you didn't catch that? No, because you didn't tell me to go after looking for a problem, you know. And that's one of them things where the customer doesn't give all the information because they're scared We're immediately going to sell an overhaul when it might— when they just want to try, try a flush.

1:12:16Well, I have no problem if you want to try a flush. Sure. Okay. Do I think it's going to be successful? Probably not. But, you know, if we come in with every time they come in wanting a transmission service, there's communication that has to happen there where they have to say, okay, so why are you, are you experiencing something? No. Okay. That's— you're not experiencing anything.

1:12:41I can breathe a little bit. I can go do the service that, you know, be $200 and $300, whatever it costs now. I guess like if you're talking to Silverados, like they're— that flush that they do now is a lot of money because they're pumping like 18 liters of OE fluid through it. And it's, it's a lot, you know, close to, close to $1,000.

1:13:01But, you know, as soon as you start to interrogate the customer and ask them, why are you doing it? Well, now we have to move away from that. Well, shucks, I might be talking them out of doing some service here because I'm selling some diag time. And that goes to that when we get to that free diag thing, that's where this industry is still so wide open on that.

1:13:21And I'm not sitting here saying it's, it's all wrong and shouldn't be happening because You know, there's, there's, there's some gray area there, and there's some people that are saying, yeah, I do free diag. You do a free inspection, you do a free evaluation of maybe up to an hour, but I'm gonna pull codes on it, tell you what the codes are, what the most likely things are, and then that's it.

1:13:46That'd be one thing. It'd be one thing to say like, we do free code reading. Yeah, but Diag is a whole separate thing, in my opinion. Yeah. And see, we use those terms interchangeably, right? Like, we use— diag is even not a really popular term anymore, um, you know, but everybody, it's the buzzword. I, I like that, you know, we'll do a free evaluation, we'll do a free inspection, but I don't like it when we say we do free diag because that means, like, the customer's eyes, I'm going to bring you a communication CAN network problem And you're going to diagnose it for free, right?

1:14:21Good luck. And you're going to go to your Star Connector if it's a Chrysler and you're going to— no, nobody's doing that for free. Like, my diag that I'm giving you for free is maybe I'm going to go out and scan it, pull a topology on it, print a report, look at all the modules that are not online, or look at all the stored codes.

1:14:38And then we're going to start to maybe assess and figure out a plan of attack here. That's not completed diag. That's an evaluation. Yep. You know, I definitely think the term needs to change in the auto industry when it comes to free diag. It needs to be, we will evaluate. Yeah. Yeah, I like that too, because, you know, like, was there a lot of stuff that I could diagnose in 20 minutes?

1:15:02Oh yeah, all the time. Constantly. Still, still. You know, I had somebody reach out to me yesterday about an AC problem and like, My brain is so now where it's like they go, my high side says zero. Well, where does it say zero? Are you saying on the scan tool it says zero? Are you saying on the gauges it says zero? Which, which is it?

1:15:24Like, there's so many— when people ask me a question now, excuse me, I have so many questions for them that I think they just want to stop asking me because it's like, but no, it matters, right? Excuse me. And, you know, and it's— that's the frustrating part, you know, from a communication standpoint to an advisor or to another tech. Well, where does it do it?

1:15:47How does it do it? Like, it's, you know, because a lot of the stuff, if you slow down and back up and give people more information, they can help you better. But it's like, it's, it's reading 0 PSI. That doesn't show me anything. It doesn't help me at all. You didn't answer the rest of my question, right? You know, going back to like your customers saying, well, it's like it's throwing turbo actuation codes.

1:16:11Well, when did this happen? 3 months ago, you know, and it's been fine since. Yeah. So what were you doing 3 months ago? Oh, we had the RV, you know, we had a trailer on the fifth wheel and we were on a road trip and it was 4 hours into the trip. I can still remember Paul Danner put up a video years ago and he showed how he was on a long trip And, uh, I can't even remember what it was.

1:16:35I don't know if it was a turbo fault or not, but it was like in his own vehicle and it was super intermittent, took forever to duplicate. That— not that he shotgunned a part in it, but he went like it was— he pretty much shotgunned a part in it. And sometimes that's just gonna be like the reality. We have to ask the customer, what were you doing?

1:16:54Oh, it's a pretty extreme situation where This happened. Okay. Now, so it's requiring a lot of power. The vanes are getting stuck wide open. Mm-hmm. Like it's— yeah. So do you want to fix it or do you want to leave it till, you know, it might happen next year when you take the trip again? What do you want to do here? Right.

1:17:16Because like with the parts quality, the way things are, we're also backing ourselves into a corner because we could go and hang a turbo on that thing because the actuation fault. And everything seemed good for 6 months. And then they go on the next year's annual road trip to Grandma's, right? And they go pulling up through the, the mountains or something, and the same thing happens again.

1:17:38And then it's like, did you diagnose it wrong? No, you probably did diagnose it right, but maybe your part's letting you down. Like, do you guys— I'm thinking probably with John Deere, you probably don't see a lot of parts issues the way we are rife with in the aftermarket right now. Um, not really. Don't really have a lot of parts quality issues.

1:17:58Yeah. Um, but like with a turbo actuator, I can— it's so easy to diag. It's— you look at it, if it's throwing the code, like, okay, go look at the wiring, test the wiring. If that tests fine, your actuator's messed up. And with a John Deere, you never just change the actuator, you just change the whole turbo. Because 9 times out of 10, the actuator is not actually bad.

1:18:23It's the vanes on a VGT anyway. Yeah, it's carboned up. Yeah. Yep. And there's nothing you can do. Like, that's what I was out diagnosing one the other day and I got there. The code wasn't active. I told the customer, I said, go run it, go pull the hill because he was trying to bale. Go, go up that hill while you're baling because that should be enough if it's truly a problem to trip it.

1:18:47Never did. I told him, I said, call me if it starts doing it again. Yeah, like, it's, it's not worth me standing here chasing my tail for something that just might be some intermittent sticking right now. Just, it could have been a vibration of the machine, you know, wiggles the pin loose, right? Like, I— that used to never be a thing, and now it's like become such a part of my process where it's like I'm unplugging it like I always used to do and look for corrosion But now I'm unplugging it, checking pin drag and plugging it back in.

1:19:18Like, that's just now one more step that I have to do because the pins got smaller. And then again, like, I know enough about equipment, like the vibration that they— those machines put out is— it's crazy what it'll do to electronic stuff sometimes. Like, it's nuts. I, you know, there's so many things that I never thought I would say, oh yeah, that's a problem now.

1:19:42I joke all the time. Nissan was— I never saw so many, you know, poor pin fitment issues till I started to work at Nissan. Never saw so many bad grounds till I worked at Hyundai. Like, it just was a thing. Now Chrysler has a lot of bad grounds too, but it's like you can see they're bad. Hyundai was like— the bad ground was, it was like on painted factory paint, but they didn't— it didn't— oh yeah, it was, it was junk.

1:20:08They'd come in and the horn would be weak. And you're like, the horn's weak. And, you know, some— somebody put horns on it, still the exact same weak horn. You go just take the bolt out, buff the paint off, and put it back on. It was always— and it hadn't been touched from factory, but it was just whatever was their screws and the way they were putting it on it, it didn't— it didn't work.

1:20:29Um, it was weird shit like that, you know. I saw so much that way. Um, the engine stuff now is where guys are getting into a lot of problems. Somebody was just talking about that new, um, it's not that new, but the Tornado, the 4-cylinder in the Jeeps, and it's in like the Renegade right now, and it's got an oil leak coming out of the back of the block because there's a port there with a, with a fitting, and they don't put enough sealant around the pipe plug.

1:20:59So now they're yanking trannies out of Renegades to reseal this stupid pipe plug that doesn't have enough sealant in it. Like, that kind of nonsense would drive me crazy, you know, if it was like— it wasn't as common when I worked there. Now, if I knew it was like, holy crap, like, it— the build quality has to improve. I think if that's the other thing, if we're going to get young people to come into this is because like the build quality is worse than I've ever seen it.

1:21:27And then now we're still trying to pay them flat rate and it's like They're not going to stick around for that, you know, and we're certainly not going to be able to fix it at the factory level in terms of holding them accountable. They're— they, they've got their own issue to try and solve. So I think like if we're going to get ahead of this thing, the, the way we pay our people has to be reevaluated so that they just go back to fixing the car.

1:21:51I know it sounds all the time like every week I'm saying it's a craftsman thing, but it really is. Like, if you just want to go to work every day like you do and, and put out a really, really, really high-quality repair, that's all that we should all be trying to do every day. That's it. And when you bring in the pay structure conversations to it, we compromise that.

1:22:13And that's another thing I like about being hourly is I don't— I care about my efficiency, but I care more about the quality of the work that I do. So if my— if I screw up my efficiency for one job, but yet that tractor is running better than it was even when it was brand new at times, yeah, like that's, that's more important to me than, than my numbers at the end of the day.

1:22:36Granted, because I know I'm still getting paid no matter what. But no, I think that's also another part of it is people get lazy too on on flat rate. Some people, younger people. So you, you and I kind of wanted to talk about that. How do you find the young people coming in now? Um, I'll tell you what, I have— there's one apprentice that started a year ago.

1:23:02This kid grew up on a farm, and this kid is— he's gonna go places. He is fantastic. He's had plenty of experience. The other kid, the one I was telling you about, the kid who's trying to go pro in MMA. Yeah, he's, he's pretty green to it, but he's really willing to learn. And you have to have that willingness to learn. And he takes criticism very well.

1:23:26But at the same time, I also let him make mistakes. Yeah, granted, I'm not going to let him make a major mistake. Yeah, but you have to let— sometimes you have to let somebody make a mistake to see what they should do. Like, I will, I will guide them. I will give them a direction to go, but I won't give them directions.

1:23:54Yeah. Because, I mean, you just can't do it. You're never going to teach a young guy that way if you're just telling them exactly how to do it all the time. They have to learn their own process. Yep. Do you find that some of them don't take criticism well? Um, so we had a former tech in our shop. He was a little person and he was— granted, he was really handy, but he wasn't necessarily willing to learn.

1:24:25And there towards the end, before he got fired, he just didn't care. Like, I've never seen somebody take a pair of Knipex pliers and a rag to a camshaft to torque it. And when he went and told— when he went and told the master tech that, that was the funniest reaction I have ever seen out of him. And I won't say it on the podcast, but God, it was funny.

1:24:53What was this? What was the thinking, though, on why he would use that instead of the proper tool? I do not know. Yeah, like truthfully, I don't know. Like, he's a nice kid. I still talk to him to this day, but he wasn't— they couldn't take him off of lawn mowers and Gators because he just would not improve. Yeah. And he didn't seem like he had a willingness.

1:25:20Yeah. And that's funny because it's like I don't know. I don't know. Some people, like, you show them, you know, you show them the path up the mountain and you go, at the top of the mountain is like, that's the place to be. You know, it's the best pay. It's, you know, all the accolades, all that stuff. And, you know, see this path up the mountain that somebody else has already, like, you know, built a stairway and put up signs.

1:25:47You just got to go up that mountain that way. And I think— I don't know if it's some people look at it and go, that's just too much. I know I can't ever see myself getting there, or I don't want to put the work in. But there's really— there's only 2 things there is I don't want to do the work or I can't see myself there.

1:26:05If you say to me, I don't want to do the work, the conversation is done. We don't— like, I can— you've— you fill this role perfectly good. We're done. We don't have to talk about— it's the same old thing with technicians that, you know, guys like, I got A techs, I got B techs, I got C techs. That's so wide, the perspective there.

1:26:25But like, guys are always like, how do I get my B-tech to become an A-tech? How do you even know your B-tech wants to be an A-tech? You know, like, what, what does that look like? They might be just happy doing what they're doing. You know, they're good at whatever it is and they don't want to become an A-tech. Like, they see what they're at.

1:26:46Yeah, they see what the ATEC goes through and they go, that ain't for me. Like, I like working on cars, but I don't want to be, you know, laptop in hand 6 days a week, all day long, pulling my hair out, stressing myself, looking at data, analyzing. I don't want to do that. I want to come in and, you know, knock some ball joints out or knock some brakes apart and throw some struts in a car or do a steering rack, or I want to do heavy line, you know, and then I want to go home.

1:27:13And that's where I think, again, everybody has this idea that it's like a shop has to look like this to be successful and it doesn't. But you have to have people that like, if they want to be— get to the top of the mountain, you have to be committed to them together then to get to the top of the mountain. You can't— I expect you to want to be there.

1:27:39No, he doesn't want to go to the top of the mountain. Like, he's good. Like, his view from here is fine. He doesn't want to be up there. Um, and I think that that's something that we need to start looking at too when we look at so much turnover in this industry, is like, we're trying to sometimes push them into the realm of this industry that they don't even want to be in.

1:28:00Like, they just want to come in. And I, I worked with a guy at Nissan, and he had been like 15 years he was just doing tires and oil changes, and he had no interest in becoming a mechanic. And I was like, I don't understand how anybody— like, that's good enough. But for him, it was good enough, you know? And I'm like, I would— I would— he had a little Ford Ranger, and I would do some jobs on it for him, help him out.

1:28:32And he wasn't interested in learning. You know, how I did his thermostat, you know, that housing that always leaked on those. He wasn't interested in learning how I did it so fast or whatever. He just was like, thank you. You know, he didn't want to become a superstar tech. He was in a role that he was good at. He filled the role at the shop and they left, left him to be.

1:28:55And I think that's, that's sometimes a lot of us are trying to, you know, we're trying to push the rope, we're trying to make a fish fly. And I don't think it's, it's healthy for all of us. No, it's not. Yeah. Some people— what about— go up? What do you see the future looking for? What looking like at your shop? The future looks— the future looks really good.

1:29:18We do have a hard time finding techs to hire when we're looking, but typically management. So we don't have a very high turnover rate at all. We had one guy that got hired a week after me. He left because his wife was really homesick from living in the mountains. So he left. He left on good terms. And then we had the guy I just told you about.

1:29:45Those are the only 2 people leave the shop or leave the company, uh, specifically not counting my current service manager when he stepped out of the tech role. He went to a different role before this one. But, um, no, we don't have a high turnover rate at all. Like, we're in a really good spot. We're treated pretty well. Of those 2 that you've left— lost, excuse me— it's probably fair to say one's gonna probably gonna stay in the industry, whereas the other one probably won't make it.

1:30:14Yep, yep. So the one that left on good terms and went back to the mountains, he works for another deer dealer over there. Um, and then yeah, the other one, he ended up going to be a laborer for an electrician, and I think now he's working at a tire shop last I talked to him. So he's kind of still in it, but not in the same industry that I'm in really.

1:30:39It's kind of two different worlds, still turning wrenches, but two different worlds. Yeah, and maybe You know, maybe equipment's not for him. Maybe automotive would be better suited to him or something. And it could be. And if it is, good for him. I just hope he has the, the care that he, he didn't have when he was working with us. And that's tough, right?

1:31:05Because if you're like— I look at that and it's like, if you're already— like I say it all the time, we talk about where I work, like nobody's looking at my production except me. You know, if I have to do a major job on one of our cars and say I put an engine in a Nissan a couple of months ago, like, I know how long it took me and I know how long the book paid and I did great on that job.

1:31:26But like nobody else even knew what the, what the time was supposed to be, right? In terms of like, so nobody cared. But I was hard on myself going, I want to get this done within this time frame. If we're already in a situation where we're not paying them on a, on a, you know, you got to be 100% efficient type thing, and they're still not taking care, and they're still not like— that's, that's a, it's a huge red flag for me, you know, because if they're, if they're, if they're just paid to show up and do good work and they seem like they don't care enough to do good work, I don't see a

1:32:04fix for that. I really don't. I think it's like I think that's probably more a young person that is trying to find their way in life and doesn't know where they want to go, but they know that like this isn't for them. They just haven't found their way out. And I think that we need to have a real conversation at some point in this industry about like, what does that actually look like and how do we handle it?

1:32:29You know, the quick to hire Or slow to hire, quick to fire. You know, people shout that from the rooftops in some conversations. It's not that simple. You know, people, you need to really look at their motivation. You got to lead them. It's, it's leadership's the buzzword, but you really got to lead them. You know what? We've had great leadership at our shop.

1:32:56Who is the leader of yours? So we have our master tech. He's the one, the master tech, so the highest tech, and then our service manager now. Um, everybody, if we got a problem, we bounce back and forth depending on piece of equipment. Like if the apprentice that's under me, he doesn't work directly under me, but he's gonna— I'm training him to be the next or the other baler guy.

1:33:21He'll come straight to me for that. I have even my service manager straight to me for that. The only other person, if I can't figure it out, I go straight to the master tech and he can typically get me— he can typically at least get me pointed in the right direction or get his opinion on what I'm maybe missing seeing. But yeah, we've— our leadership is fantastic.

1:33:45Now, does, does Deere make it almost like mandatory that they have to have a master on staff? No. No, no, no. He's just— he's been doing this for 20, 25 years now. So he's— and he's super smart. He, he could go run his own independent and make a killing. Granted, he makes pretty, pretty good money now. Yeah, but, um, no, he's, he's great.

1:34:13Great to have around. Deer doesn't require it. Okay, that's good to know. You know, because I think like that's, that's the— sometimes I think when we talk about what goes on in the automotive side, in the dealer side especially, sometimes that master certified tech, they can become really toxic and get away with murder because they need them just to, to go back to earlier in our conversation, a certain recall or a certain, you know, um warranty, you know, there's the only, only certified EV guy or, you know, hybrid guy.

1:34:51Gotta have them. Yep. Now he does have a certification that we have to have to sell a certain type of equipment for our area, for our dealer area. But, um, other than that, no. Like Deere does. So Deere has 3 tech levels and then the company I work for has their own. Based for pay. Like, I'm a certified Deere technician, right? But I don't have— I'm not— I don't have a master specialty completed yet.

1:35:25I got to go off to Arizona at some point to do my hay equipment. But like, our master tech in the shop, our Tech 8, he's fully qualified for— they call it See and Spray technology for sprayers. Where it sees a weed out in the field and it sprays just that weed and that's it. Yeah, he had to have that qualification for us to be able to sell them.

1:35:47So that's pretty specialized tech. It is. Yeah, it is. Is there, is there any tech coming down the, the line that you guys see coming into the, the, the agricultural stuff that makes you just kind of shake your head, or this scares you, or, you know I'm scared of the— I'm worried about the autonomy. I think it's a great idea. It's all right.

1:36:13Well, autonomy is already here, right? It's already being used. I'm just nervous about it as well as, uh, electric. I see certain applications. I, I see a way where it can work, like Edison Motor Company. If you have a diesel engine driving a generator, I think that would work for an ag implication or up there for application. Yeah, you mentioned Edison Motors, and that's kind of cool because they're like, they're another Canadian company that's doing some pretty neat stuff.

1:36:42But, and I did see somebody talk about the autonomous, um, combine somewhere, how that was— they thought it was going to be pretty easy to implement in, in farming because like you can literally grid out, you know, the whole thing and then it goes just does it right by itself. I don't— that amount of technology that that's going in for, I'll say it, to try and save on just the cost of the operator, I don't know if it's worth it.

1:37:13Talking with and knowing our customers and knowing farmers in general, I think they would be really, really, really hesitant for autonomy in combines. Especially up here because, I mean, the risk of fires because there's so many rocks out in the field and we're all wheat. So, well, we're all wheat and canola, all that stuff. So it catches on fire real easy compared to like corn, soybeans in the Midwest that guys would just be really, really nervous, you know.

1:37:45Yeah, like you got 20,000-acre farmers up here and bigger that I don't think would ever do it. Um, the Midwest, I think autonomy works for tillage. I think that works great. It's, it's pretty dummy-proof. I mean, you just tell the tractor to go. I think it works good for that. Um, and the other thing I was saying I was worried about is, like I said, the electric— or the electric tractors.

1:38:11Yeah, I think, like I said, mentioned in Edison, you could make it work in like a sprayer application because it's already a hydrostatic system with 4 wheel motors. So all you'd have to do is, I mean, just put 4 electric wheel motors on it and a generator on the back of a 9-liter John Deere, and there you pretty much have your electric sprayer.

1:38:34You do it in the way Edison does it. That to me makes the most sense. But anything fully electric, I am very, very, very hesitant intent on, and the autonomy. Those are the two that I really worry about technology-wise. Yeah. Like, and, you know, it's— I think, like, I think EV should be more pushed in some of the industrial applications than it should necessarily be pushed in the automotive sector.

1:39:05You know what I mean? Like, I think it's an easier Like what Edison showed, like Edison Motors, is that like they really could bring about a lot more efficient trucks without having to completely like throw away the playbook. You know what I mean? He's saying we have existing technology that's already been here and using existing power plants and existing retrofitting older trucks.

1:39:30Yep. And it works and it makes more power. Yeah, more power, more torque. Like, that, that to me is the most logical way to do an EV. Yeah. And it's how, like, if you look at mining, that's how most of their equipment's been built for years. Like, it's not like a straight, you know, uh, all— not all of them, but a lot of them are using that the diesel engine's just firing a generator, which is electric static steer all 4 independent wheels, being able to do whatever it does underground.

1:40:03You know, even the haul trucks— like, I remember my guest, Lee— like, they've got haul trucks that are fully autonomous that'll drive themselves. I think that's Cat that's doing that. Yeah. So I mean, and I think they even make electric ones now too, fully. Yeah. You know, anyway, and I think it's the same design. I'm not exactly sure. I'd have to get a hold of my buddies that work at Caterpillar back home, but Yeah, but the, the idea of going full EV on a car, I think, is just like— I think it's, it's— are we there?

1:40:34That— oh, obviously we're, we're already here. We've proven that we can make it somewhat work. But I mean, it's like, you know, I, I joke all the time about people can't even get in a Tesla and really drive it, you know. And somebody will probably correct me, and I say you can't even drive it 200 miles without you know, charging the damn thing again.

1:40:54Somebody's gonna say, oh, listen, it goes 220. Okay, I get it. It would never work. Like, it would never work where I live. No, it's too cold in the wintertime. Yeah. And it's, it's too rural out here. Like, I think the closest Tesla charger to me is 4, 5 hours away. Yeah. Granted, I know there's guys that live in the town that I work in that have Teslas, they don't ever take it out of town.

1:41:21Yeah, they just use it to drive around town because they don't have to pay for gas. That's right. Maybe they'll take it 2 towns over or whatever, because once you start headed east, it gets a little bit less rural— well, less— there's more towns the further east you head. Yeah, easiest way to say that. Um, but yeah, like, I've even thought about getting a Tesla just for driving back and forth to work because Jeeps are about as aerodynamic as a cow.

1:41:52And yeah, I mean, I only get 15 miles a gallon. Same. And then once I take the tops off, then it's down to 12. Like, it— yeah, especially running 70 miles an hour like the speed limit is here. Like, it I've thought about it, but it's just I still don't trust it. And, you know, 50 below with wind chills feeling like it's 70 to get me to work and home from work on a single charge.

1:42:21Yeah, it— and, you know, I see every week I'm seeing more and more on the Jeep thing that the hybrid Jeeps or even some of the EV Wranglers up here. And I just, I just shake my head because like There's so much weight in that friggin thing now. That just doesn't seem like a Jeep to have it be a hybrid or an EV.

1:42:43Yeah. That's like the EV Hummer. There's a doctor in our town that has one and it looks cool, but it just doesn't feel like a Hummer. Even the EV Mustang. Like, look at that thing. Yeah, that thing is hideous. That's a Ford Escape. I'm sorry. Why would you call it a Mustang? Because it sells. Yeah, you know, that's a, that's a flipping Ford Escape EV is what that is.

1:43:13Yeah, body-wise, the whole thing. It's not a— it's, it's a joke to call that a Mustang. It's not a Mustang. It would have been one thing if they would have left the body the same. Yeah, but well, they basically turned it into a hatchback. It's like they tried to recreate the Fox Body and it just didn't work. Yeah, look at— and again, there's me waving the Mopar flag again, but look at the Charger EV.

1:43:34Like, at least it looks kind of like the Charger did. That is— I will give Dodge credit with the Challenger. That is the best modern muscle car. It actually looks like a muscle car. Yeah. To me, they ruined the Charger by making it a 4-door. The Camaro is hideous. Yeah. The Mustang, it just looks too modern. Like, I like the boxy design of a Challenger.

1:44:00Yeah, I, yeah, I mean, I, you know, that's the end goal for Jeff is to someday be able to have like, you know, just one of the SRT8 cars or Scat Pack or something or Demon. I'm probably 20 years away from being able to afford it. But I mean, by, by then they'll be, you know, by then they'll be a dime a dozen.

1:44:22Yeah, they're going to be so overly priced that it's ridiculous. Yeah. Like the Dodge Super Bee was back in the day. Yeah. But I'll then be able to buy like a Hemi car and put all the parts on it and tune it and it'll do the same thing. It'll cost me 1/3, you know what I mean? That'll probably how I'll get there is because like, do I give a shit if it's a numbers magic car?

1:44:44Hell no. You know what I want is the performance out of it. And, you know, if it can look like it and sound like it, for 1/3 the price, I'm all about that. You know, I don't— it's like I was talking about, we had a guy bring to us to sublet sell a Demon and a TRX truck, right? Because he's, he's using us to kind of get it in front of more people that will see it.

1:45:09And I think we sold the TRX truck, but the Demon still hasn't gone. And that's the one I was talking about a couple of weeks ago that The Demon has not even 1,000 miles on it. Right. And the TRX truck has got, I think, 6,000 miles on it. Right. So, and they're both a couple of years old and, you know, they'll probably make money on selling the two of them.

1:45:33Maybe. I don't know. But I just like, I'm not somebody that like is when you come into me and you go, oh yeah, I got this car collection. I don't immediately go, oh, you're cool. Yeah, right. I, I like the guy that comes in and it's like, um, you know, I got a Demon, but like, I was at the track and, you know, something happened.

1:45:55Like, you're my people then, right? Like, yeah, like, it's like you're using the car for its intended purpose. Like, you're not just letting it sit there and you're spit shining it every 2 weeks because it got dust on it. And that's, that's why I like the Jeep people, you know what I mean? Like, and I know I got a lot more ducks on my Jeep than I used to have.

1:46:14And, you know, it's a running joke. I took them all out. I took them all out. I couldn't do it anymore. I had a buddy I work with. He was giving me so much hell for it. It's like, dude, I will take them out just for you. It helps that he's my best friend. But it was— and I joked about it. And then again, I caught some crap, but my boss gave me a Trump duck.

1:46:36And of course that had to go on my dash. Oh yeah. And then my, my friend, she gave me, um, one that's Optimus Prime. Oh, really? From Transformers. And one that's Bumblebee from Transformers. Oh, that's cool. And I was like, okay, so now like, you know, I'm up to like 5 just generic ducks and then I've got these really cool characters. Everybody gives me orange ducks.

1:47:01Because mine is bright orange. Yeah, mine's a bright orange Rubicon. Like, it's— and then my other buddy I work with, he has like the neon green Jeep. So yeah, I haven't always driven it, but yeah, I have an olive drab one. So I mean, it's pretty drab, but I mean, like, you know, it's, it's kind of a— I don't know, I just— they're my kind of people for the most part.

1:47:29Like, I still get it. Like, I genuinely enjoy the community of Jeep people, you know. Um, it's, it's neat to be driving one and somebody just give you the wave or the salute or whatever. I think that's pretty cool. Um, it's the same with motorcycle guys. It's the exact same, you know. And I don't know, like, that's the most fun I've had is having the top off the Jeep.

1:47:53I did it for the first time this summer. I've had it 2 years a little over a year now, almost 2 years. It'll be 2 years in February. And this summer was the first summer I took the top off and the doors. Oh man, I wish I could leave them off all the time. That is so much fun. It's— I'm— people are gonna hate on me now and my comments will blow up, but I've had mine 4 years.

1:48:16I've never pulled the top off. Really? No, I don't want the water leaks that are going to come after. Honestly, we just got 2, 3 inches of rain right before, right after I put the top back on. Never had an issue. Yeah. And I, I'm probably completely paranoid and, and, you know, have nothing to worry about. Everybody— that's what everybody told me too.

1:48:35And I'm like, you know what, I have a Jeep and Jeeps are made to take the top off. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do it. And if it leaks, then I'll figure out a way to fix it and I'll never do it again. Yeah. And I probably don't— do you have the T-tops? Yeah. You ever take those out? No, no, no. I've never taken— that's how I got my start in taking the tops off.

1:49:00I like last summer, that's all I ever took off was the T-tops because it takes 4 seconds to do. Yeah. And they have always sealed right up. Yeah. Yeah. And it's probably because I can remember when they first brought— when they first redid the Wrangler. And they came out with— I can remember they called it the Freedom Top back then. Every flipping one we sold leaked.

1:49:22Yeah. And now, so we're going back to like, what is it, 2007, 2008? You know, was when they started the JK. Yeah. Was that '09? Something like that. It was— it's like '07 to '09 or something like that was the start of the JK. Yeah. And they're probably a lot better now, and I probably have nothing to worry about. But I can remember my service manager bought one of the first JKs back then.

1:49:51It was red, and we were fixing the top on that thing every stinking week. And he didn't even take the top off. It just leaked water like it was a submarine. It was ridiculous. And I think that's where the whole thing comes in with the JKs, with the top, was the early ones, I think. The later ones are a lot better. I was, like I said, I was plum nervous about it, taking the full top off.

1:50:13But after this major rain we had, yeah, I'm not even worried about it. Yeah. And I probably shouldn't, like, I probably should just get over it. But I'm also like, you know what, I made it through. It's almost the end of August and I haven't had to take them off. So I, I tell myself that like when the AC stops working, it's probably when I'll get really good at like fixing the top leak because It's, uh, it's not 134, it's 1234.

1:50:38So like it's a little more expensive to, to service versus the old 134. Um, yours is probably 134 still. Yeah, yeah, it should be. It was a '12. Yeah, because 1234 didn't come out in the auto side until '17. So for some manufacturers, I think it was in '14 It was Chrysler started to embrace it, you know, by '14. So because I thought for sure when I bought my '15 it was going to be 134, and then I get under the hood when I bought it, I'm like, well, it's 1234.

1:51:14Oh well. And Deere's going to 1234 here in the next few years. And yeah, I think by 2030 it'll all be 1234 for us. And see, they're talking in the automotive side. Where we're going to roll into something else, and they think in the next 2, 3 years. Oh, I'm sure it's, it's always something, and it's probably going to be something that's going to be stupid high.

1:51:38It's going to be higher pressure than the 1234. Sure will. Yeah, like we're already doing way more evaps than we ever used to do because they just— it can't contain it, you know. The, the leaks are a lot smaller, harder to find. The molecules are molecularly— they're smaller, you know, more involved testing. Again, it goes back to that again where it's like AC is one of them things like I'm not good at, I don't like to do.

1:52:02And everybody goes, right. It's like, it's not that I don't understand the concepts, I do, but I've watched so many people again, like everything's at a pain in the ass spot to fix too. Yeah. And it's, you know, you come in and the customer's got like a system that's not performing well. And then you go and you evaluate it and it's like, it's low.

1:52:25Okay, so it obviously had a leak. Well, you go and you go and pull the refrigerant out of it and you address where the leak is in terms of you let them know and they say, okay, I don't want to fix that. Uh, it's got rear, rear heat, rear, you know, rear evap and the caravan's leaking. A couple thousand dollars to fix that.

1:52:45Okay, I don't want to do it. What they want you to do is put the refrigerant back in the car so that at least they had what they had. You're not allowed to, by law, to do that up here. Yeah. Once you've condemned a system as having a leak, you can't pump Freon into it. Well, now your customer's pissed off, right? Because you, you like the— you ripped me off.

1:53:07Like, I had a somewhat working system and now I've got it completely— like, my kids are sweating. You know, um, and that's why to me it was just never worth to have the conversation over and over and over again, right? Like, I've watched, and I know a lot of shops up here make a lot of money like doing an eval in June and saying that, you know, it passed the leak test and they can't find the leak, so they throw a full charge in it, and by Labor Day it's, you know, some of it's leaked out again, but the customer's happy because they got through Labor Day.

1:53:38Yep. And then next year maybe we do it again. And then they make a lot of money doing that. I don't want any part of that. Yeah, that's just— it's just gambling. And it's not from an environmental standpoint. Like, I— you— I'm not so sure that you can convince me that that stuff leaking out in the atmosphere, uh, is causing polar bears to lose their ice floes or what.

1:53:59I'm not sold on that technology yet. Um, but it's just the It's the conversation I'm having to the customer, right? Like, when I go and fix a misfire, right, I fix the car. Yep. When I go and do an AC repair, to me it always seemed like a temporary Band-Aid thing, and it, and it strains the relationship between me and the customer.

1:54:21I didn't want that, you know. It's so hard to guarantee an AC fix. Yeah. Like, luckily, I don't know about you guys, but like all of our All of the refrigerant we get at the shop is dyed with UV dye. Yeah. So that, that does help. And I always like— I just bought a brand new Coast flashlight that's got the UV light in it.

1:54:44And yeah, I will go through a whole system after I fix it and charge it and check it. But I still just, I still just have something in my stomach telling me that it's still messed up. Do you— are Are some of the, the customers, the farmers, are they the type that they'll go and buy a can of that stuff themselves and put it in their machine?

1:55:04Yeah, I had an issue with that this summer, and I tell everybody I know, do not touch that stuff with a 10-foot pole. Yeah, because they overcharge the hell out of their system, and we're like, well, why isn't it working? We keep putting it in, it's leaking out. It's like, well, maybe you were a tad low. But now you've just overcharged the system.

1:55:26Yeah. So now I have to come out, recover the whole system. Yeah. And then fill it back up. Well, I have to go out there. I have to obviously recover it, vac the system, make sure there's not a leak, and then fill it back up. And it's like, just, just stay away from them. Mm-hmm. Yes, that's a dangerous game. I— and I don't understand how we can have all this legislation and everything.

1:55:58This is a conversation for another time. Somebody smarter than me can probably answer why we can have all this legislation that says, you know, you must— like, you got to buy it and you got to go through this process. And then somebody can take something that's mostly propane and blend it with something else and put it in a tiny little can and sell it at AutoZone for $20 and tell everybody It's perfectly fine to buy, purchase, and put in the car.

1:56:20But I don't think you can do it for your own home though. No. Yeah, you have to be certified HVAC technician to, to touch a, you know, a central air unit. But for a vehicle, it's plumb fine. And I know some states are probably a little bit different in the sense you probably can go and buy it somehow. Um, I just, I don't see them marketing it.

1:56:40Like, I wouldn't even begin to tell you If I needed to buy home refrigerant, where I would go buy the gas, I couldn't even begin to tell you. I don't know where all my friends that do HVAC, I don't know where they buy it, but they must go to some distributor and I think they show them, up here we call it our ozone depletion card, and they show them that certification that says they took the stupid test that how not to vent it to the atmosphere.

1:57:08And then they get to buy all the cans here. Like, I'm supposed to have that when I buy refrigerant 1234 from the parts store, but I can call any parts store in my area and say drop it off to this shop and they'll drop it off. And then not once do they ask for any paperwork. It's just, it's like the whole right to repair.

1:57:29Like, I can't work on my home AC unit. Yeah, but I can go buy a little can of it and put it in my car. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like right to repair should really stem to a whole bunch of other things other than the automotive and ag side. That's a whole nother topic. Well, and then you see how, you know, like people don't even want to necessarily talk about certification in our industry.

1:57:59Like they're, they're so scared of the government coming in and demanding that we all be passed some tests and show some basic level of competency. Everybody doesn't even want that. They're like, I don't want the government involved in it. And it's like, I don't want the government involved in it either, but it's going to happen. I am certified through John Deere and that's all John Deere cares about.

1:58:19Yeah, I'm certified to do all work on a John Deere machine in John Deere's eyes. Yeah. Through my dealership's eyes, there's some other stuff I have to do, obviously, because there's— they have more tiers of tech levels. But through John Deere, I have a whole plaque and everything saying I'm a certified John Deere technician. But yet in the automotive side, like, everybody wants to be able to buy all the tools and do all the things, you know, all the refrigerants, all the chemicals, you know.

1:58:50Uh, if they decide that, you know, they want to start doing ADAS, then, you know, you can buy some targets and, and a laptop, and all of a sudden now you're, you're perfectly fine to go do ADAS. And, and like, part of me is like, okay, I appreciate anybody's— like, there shouldn't be obstacles if people want to improve their business, improve their skill set.

1:59:19But at the same time How do we know that they know what they're doing? Yep. That's, that's what concerns me. I don't know if you've seen the whole lawsuit thing with John Deere and the right to repair. So I've been hearing things about it for years. Uh, so it just got settled. Yeah. Okay. In court and customers can now have access to software, which John Deere's reasoning, I get both sides of the spectrum.

1:59:48I— we have John Deere tractors here on our ranch, um, but John Deere said— was trying to say that they owned the software, not the customer, right? Which to me, I— there's a part of me that agrees, part of me that doesn't. But there's some software bundles that we have that have to be installed in a certain order. If not, you can fuck shit up.

2:00:14Mm-hmm. And that's, that's my biggest worry on the customer side is like they're just going to start just throwing random software in it at a time and mess something up, which as a tech, it's like, oh great, I get to go out and fix it. Yeah. But at the same time, it's like this wouldn't have happened had they not had access to it.

2:00:37And there's other reasons I think that it shouldn't be out there, and I understand Deer's reasonings. I get both sides. It's, it's a give and take. I don't disagree with the court ruling. I don't agree with it. It's easier just to stay neutral. But I remember seeing Vice TV did a documentary on it, right, years ago, and it was on YouTube. And Vice TV was a pretty big deal at the time for them to, to catch notice of it, right?

2:01:04And, and, you know, they made the argument about how like there's so many farmers out there that necessarily, like they've fixed the machine all the time themselves. They don't even go to your facility, right? Or they don't have you come out, they fix it. They want to be able to like, they want to be able to log in, get a pass-through device, get the software, put it in the machine, fix the machine.

2:01:27And, and now I can send software from the shop. I don't even have to go out there. If it's a new enough machine, I can just say, hip, send to equipment, tell them to go turn the key on, put a battery charger on it if it's a big update and hit start installation and walk away. So we have the ability to do that now, which most, most people up here aren't going to buy.

2:01:53I haven't talked to anybody around here who has bought the Diag software. Yeah, the dealer that we have is a dealership to fix their own stuff. People just— farmers just don't want to mess with it anymore. I heard of a lot of people talking about on the Deere stuff, like there was guys were getting, you know, hacked programs and, and, you know, um, was— did you run into that, ever see it, or— No, I never saw that.

2:02:20Yeah, no. And there's ways, like on a TopDon, or is it TopDon or TopCon? No, it's TopDon. So TopDon's one company. Yep. Yeah, I think TopDon you can have Deere software on it if you pay for it, and I think you can on Autel's, and there's another one out there. My Core Vault dealer has it, but my Launch Tool, my X431HD, I'm pretty sure there's John Deere software in it too.

2:02:49Yep. I just have never— like, again, I mean, I have the tool, but like, I don't know, you're never gonna use it. I don't even know who's got a, a John Deere within my local area. I mean, they're allowed, but I don't know anybody that's got a modern one, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just— I don't run in that circle.

2:03:06Yeah, but I'm pretty sure my launch tool has it. Yeah, yeah, most do. And they can't do everything that I can do as a dealer or as a dealer technician. But, you know, it's the whole right to repair thing is I'm on the fence. I'm— I get both sides of the aisle on that one. I think the bigger issue facing our industry isn't the right to repair.

2:03:27I think it's the technician shortage and the— I think so too. And shop culture than right to repair. I think right to repair is like— I'm not worried about losing business over it. It's just a topic that people don't like to talk about. Yeah, because I think, I think it's even going to end up in the auto industry eventually with software. Oh, you know, when, when like the guy from Hendrix and somebody else went to see Trump last month, right?

2:03:54And kind of, you know, Daddy Trump told them, you know, kind of shook their head and laughed and said, no, you know, we're not taking the citizens' ability to fix their own car away from them as much as like Maybe everybody thinks that that's a good thing in the industry. I'm not for that. No, no. But, you know, it's a situation of we— it's not the biggest issue facing our, our industry is access to information.

2:04:25It's, it's the lack of people that even want to, to do the work is the bigger telling thing, you know. We got talking last week about, uh, uh, in my last— there's so many more updates that we should be pushing that can be done over air, like the way you do it, you know. Um, because these people come in, you know, and, and like they're coming in and some of the recalls or the bulletins or whatever are taking a technician like hours because it's got to stage the car and it's a big one and all that kind of shit.

2:04:56If we can just, you know, and it's easy to the EV because it's already plugged in anyway, so the battery ain't gonna go dead. If we just like tell the customer, okay, plug it in and tonight you're gonna receive a software update. Like I got into— what the hell was it— a little Equinox thing the other day, and as soon as I get into it, it's telling me that there's updates that can come via, you know, over the air.

2:05:21Do I want to allow them to happen or not? And I go, I click off no because I just want to drive the damn thing for a road test for a breakdown. He's like, I ain't looking for, you know, updating software. But I mean, that tech is already there. So I like that idea that we can get less of that stuff in the bay.

2:05:37And, you know, it can be done without having to come to the facility. I like that. I don't think it should be in vehicles. Like, I get it on the ag side, because the amount of technology and precision stuff that goes into ag is absolutely ridiculous. Like GPS technology and the ag, especially deers, is ridiculous. They have sub-inch accuracy going for 10 years right now on the same line that somebody made.

2:06:06It's, it's accurate within an inch of what it was when it was first made. Like, it's absolutely incredible. That's nuts. They have, um, they have cameras on combines nowadays just to see the crop. Yeah, it's— and, you know, we, we talk about, you know, lane change cameras and, and, you know, ADAS and smart cruise and all this kind of stuff, and it's like the technology is so neat to see it trickle down to everywhere, right?

2:06:32Like, I like that. Yeah. But I mean, at the same time, like, we're probably going to see a real shift pretty soon in the automotive sector where people are going to get into a revolt and say, I just want a basic flipping car. Yeah. And I think we've already got past the point of where we can necessarily are allowed to sell them a basic flipping car.

2:06:51You know, uh, it scares me when the amount of people— like, we were joking, you know, Tesla self-driving. Well, if you go around for 4 months and the car drives itself, and all of a sudden you decide you're not paying for, you know, self-driving anymore, are you as good a driver as you were 4 months ago? No, you're not. You're out of practice.

2:07:08Yeah, you know, but Now that's, that's a whole nother thing, was a subscription thing for self-driving. Yeah. Like, I think if you order the car, you either pay for it when you order it with self-driving or without it, whether that's a $10,000 option or $20,000 option, so be it. But I don't think it should be based on a subscription thing. That just seems kind of— yeah, I don't like it because I think if the hardware is already in the car, for whatever feature you want it to work.

2:07:40I think when they buy it is how it should be that way. You know, I don't, I don't believe that this subscription idea shouldn't go— to me, shouldn't go past the radio. That's it. You know, I think it's, it's, you know, heated seats or remote start or— I don't like this self-driving idea at all. But I mean, the very real reality is like with the amount of cars that are continually— we're putting more and more people on the same roads.

2:08:05Every day and they're not driving as good as they used to, they're driving worse because they're distracted. Self-driving is going to become a very real thing and it's going to be that situation. I mean, we're already building highways up here with that intentionally in mind when we're putting the concrete in, we're putting the markers in and everything that allow the car to self-drive.

2:08:26Because, you know, if we're going to continue to start sending thousands of people home on the same stretch of highway every night at 5:00, and they're distracted and they're not paying attention, we might as well let the car drive because it can probably drive better than most of them. It's just, it scares me when we can't even get people to fix an ABS fault on some cars.

2:08:45They'll just keep driving. How all of a sudden they expect that they can drive on that highway and the car doesn't accurately self-drive anymore because they're too cheap to pay a $500 repair for an ABS fault. You know, like it just— or or TPMS or something like that. If it were up to me, the thing shouldn't self-drive if it's, if it's got a tire fault or an ABS fault, it shouldn't.

2:09:09It should be disallowed. But I'm sure that, you know, I don't know enough about Tesla, but I'm pretty sure if it's got a low tire, it'll still self-drive. I've never really been around with Tesla, especially living where I live. I've just seen a couple of them in the town I work in. It's not a very big town. It's like 3,000 people. But no, I've— they're, they're cool to ride in, but I, I don't, I don't enjoy working on them.

2:09:33I just— it's a really, really, really cool concept of modern engineering. The concept is cool, but it's just not feasible to make every vehicle electric. No, the grid doesn't support it. Not yet anyway. So I don't know if it ever will. Well, that's, that's a whole other conversation. Tanner, I won't keep you any longer, man. I appreciate you having come on and, you know, spending your Saturday night with us.

2:10:03It's been a good time. No problem. Anytime. But any closing thoughts? Just— I don't have any. It's been fun. What do you— how do you guys like— I mean, like we talk about Asta and the different, you know, shows that I get to go to and the events and all that kind of stuff. Does that happen for you guys in ag? Um, like there's the National Farm Machinery Show that takes place.

2:10:31It alternates every other year between a spot in Iowa and Illinois, but we really— it's kind of at a crappy time for us. It's typically going on right about now. Okay. So it's hard for me to leave this area during harvest. Yeah. But other than that, no, we really don't have anything buy a casta or anything like that. Yeah. Have you— are you— you feel like you can finish your career out with deer?

2:10:56I think so. I, I like it enough. Yeah, it's good. Something I've always wanted to do. I enjoy it as long as I— as long as the shop culture stays what it is. And, you know, by the time— even if it does change in 10, 15 years, by that time I'll be making enough money that I really don't care either way. Yeah, you know, it's like I work with my best friend and all of my coworkers are pretty— we're all pretty close.

2:11:26We, we stay after work, have a couple of drinks in the shop, and we, we all do a lot together. So that's— yeah, that's important. You know what I mean? That's when you truly get to the whole where you're a team, like, you know what I mean? And I think if we can kind of find that again in more of the automotive stuff or go back to it, I think we can really start to make some headway.

2:11:51And then I think like the young people are going to want to come in and see that, you know, because I think it looks really cool if like all of a sudden, like, I know I worked at a Bobcat dealer a long, long, long time ago, early in my career. And yeah, every Friday night we all went to the same bar after work.

2:12:09And, you know, had some chicken wings, shot some pool and drank some, some pints and talked about the week, you know. And it was— everybody got along together pretty good in the shop and, you know, would help one another. And, you know, it was kind of— we had like a whole fleet of road service guys because, again, Bobcats were like in Toronto, were all over at all kinds of job sites.

2:12:31So again, seat time and going from here to here. It was sometimes the only time we would see them other than like 10 minutes before 8 in the morning when they went to the parts department and walked out with like armloads of parts for their day. You didn't see them. So it was kind of cool to see them Friday night and, you know, talk about like, oh, I was at this site and this guy tore up this machine this way and like, yeah, I'll be back to fix it next week or stuff like that.

2:12:56Like it was, it was cool, but it was, it was neat because they were seeing some of the first like failures in the field right away. And then we would see it in the shop like a couple months later, right? Like they were already— because they were, they were some of the first people to get the machines out and see them fail in certain ways.

2:13:19But they saw some of the first failures of the machine. And then so it was like, it was cool to sit there on a Friday night with them and say, oh yeah, this 853 just like Your guys are gonna see this. That's what he'd say. And, um, it was, it was a good time. I genuinely enjoyed it. I don't know, we do a morning meeting every morning.

2:13:38We're supposed to start work at 8, but we— everybody gets there at 7:50. Okay, morning meeting, talk about what we're gonna do today. And if our plans change, service advisor or the service manager will be like, hey, instead of doing this, you're gonna go here this morning, or I need you to jump on this right away this morning. Yeah, customer needs his machine back.

2:13:57But no, we, we talk about what all— and we'll talk, we'll ask everybody else in the group if somebody's having a problem and they're stumped and just run it by everybody else. Like, it's— our shop culture is phenomenal. Like, we had so many guys from inside the store apply for the service manager job just to make sure nobody from the outside came in and screwed up.

2:14:20Shop culture. That's like— we— I'm very blessed to work in a very good culture and inside that shop. I think, yeah, I think that's pretty cool. It says something very powerful when you said like so many people applied within to not screw it up by bringing an outside person in. I think that that's— a lot of us have to think that way, right?

2:14:43And maybe, maybe we take an older technician and, you know, when they're starting to hurt or slow down or whatever, we, we do look at how it can move them into a leadership role because they've already got the respect. The respect's already there, you know what I mean? The employees and the customers alone. Yeah, respect, like in my field of work. Yeah, like we, we even had a guy tell the vice president of the company that's why he applied for it, was to keep somebody from the outside coming in and screwing it up.

2:15:15Yeah. And they listen. So, and the vice president, he, he already knew we had a really good culture in the shop. He's a really good dude. He comes around once every 6 months. Really good dude. It's good to see, man. I think there's— I think we need to get more of that. So, well, everybody, I won't keep Tanner any longer. I thank you for all listening, as always.

2:15:42We're probably— by the time you— some of you might hear this, well, I'll either be at Asta or I'll be just getting on a flight to go. So, um, you know, Asta just released again. It's, it's still got a— there's, um, some discounts out there if you want to get to Asta right now. Um, you know, you can log in. Uh, I hope to see everybody there.

2:16:03Um, I understand I'm not going to see Tanner there, but that's okay. Um, but there'll be a lot of other people going. Um, you know, if you cannot make Asta, the next time I'll be going will be, uh, Apex in Las Vegas. Um, that's— everybody should see that once. It's pretty amazing. And then, you know, I don't know where I'm gonna be in 2027, but, you know, hopefully I'll be seeing more and more people.

2:16:29Um, you know, and then going forward, as always, everybody, I love you and Thank you to Launch Tech USA, and thank you to TechMetric for sponsoring the podcast and making me, you know, able to do what I can do for everybody. And, um, you know, as always, anybody you want to have a conversation, reach out to me just like Tanner did, and, and, you know, um, we'll discuss, you know, the important stuff that has to be discussed.

2:16:54And, um, Tanner, you know, as always, I hope I can have you back on at some point. Thank you. Just let me know anytime. And I love, I love to hear how, you know, you're, you're happy where you are and you've got a good culture. I think that that's like people in my industry that are listening to, you know, that's not by accident.

2:17:13That happens because they want it to happen that way. There's no gatekeeping in our shop. You know, it just because it's an ag doesn't— an ag shop doesn't mean it can't work in yours. So listen to what he's talked about tonight. And, you know, think about what it's going to take to, to make the culture better where you are. Sometimes it starts with you yourself, you know?

2:17:35And yeah, if you're one of those people that are gatekeeping, try not to do that. Okay. So, and everybody, I love you. Have a great weekend and I'll talk to you all later. Tanner, thank you, brother. No problem. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning.

2:18:01As 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. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10mm, and we'll see you all again next time.