You Don’t Know What You’re Worth (Until You’re Wrong) | Jeremiah Hiatt

0:07So it depends on the customer. I have some that's like, okay, they know exactly what they're doing, and if they call me, it's because they already know it's over their head and they're not going to do it. I have one that scares me. He'll get torn partway into it, and when I get there, it's a mess. I'm trying to figure out where this pile of bolts in a coffee can go.

0:33Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast. I've got somebody here who's another fishing nut like myself. And if you all know me and follow my socials for a while, you know that between talking about the automotive repair side of the industry and its frustrations and whatnot, The other passion you see me probably more even, my content around photos, it's not of cars anymore.

1:03It's about me holding up fish. So, you know, it's one of those things where I think it's just, you know, what you do for your leisure time, I guess, is really truly kind of more important, I think, as we age out than what you really choose to do with your career. So I got a new friend. He's a fellow fisherman too. Jeremiah Hyatt from Belt, Montana.

1:33I hope I said that right. You did, sir. Yeah. How are you today, man? I'm great. Good, good. Taking the weekend off, watching some snowfall out the window. Yeah, just a normal day. Yeah, we had it. We had a good dumping here. Um, I guess it'd be Thursday, uh,, and we actually had some flurries yesterday, but it's— our temps now have gotten where it's mild enough that even if we get a downfall, it doesn't really stay, right?

1:58It's, it's kind of like, it's just like we still have a little bit of snow on the ground this week, but it's not anything like, you know, we're having to run the snow blower or shovel or anything like that. So I have seen— I've seen snow up here right into May, um, in terms of flurries, but we're, we're normally over our big accumulation by now.

2:19We'll still get a maybe an ice storm, uh, in April, but we're all pretty much done for snow. The lakes are starting to soften up now where you can't walk on them. So, you know, guys that are fishing still, they're kind of the diehards. They're not, they're not somebody I follow out. So, but, um, yeah, what, uh, what's your favorite What's your favorite species?

2:45Like, I'm gonna assume probably, uh, in Montana you got a lot of more like streams and rivers versus me that's got lakes, right? Yes. So I prefer trout. Yeah, we have bass and pike, walleye, but I just— I like the streams and rivers mostly. Fly fish. Yeah, my grandfather was a die-hard fly fisherman and he got me into it. And so it's hard for me to drop that habit.

3:14It's, it's something I've never picked up yet, but I know I've talked to— because I'm predominantly a bass guy, right? Like, I'll chase musky twice a year, um, but mostly bass. And I know the guys that have been fly fishing forever tell me that it's like, if you get into some bigger smallmouth on a fly rod, it's absolutely incredible what they do, right?

3:34So I've heard that too, and I just I haven't found anybody to really— I figure be taught, have someone experienced show me how to do it rather than just go and try and do it myself. And yeah, failure is an option, but I prefer to have someone show me how to succeed and then fail after that. Well, and you never really fail.

3:54That's the beauty of fishing. You never really fail, you know what I mean? We all tell ourselves that like even if I went out and, you know, didn't— they didn't bite, it was still a good day because it was beautiful out, or I got to you know, just come back to the simpler things. But I mean, you don't ever really fail. So kind of, you kind of reached out to me and kind of shared some of your story.

4:17You kind of started out similar to me. You started out in the heavy truck side of things. So yeah, I started out heavy truck. Well, while I was in high school, I kind of worked as a lube tech at a Ford Dodge dealership. The mechanics there reached out to me and said, hey, if you want to make money, you need to get an education.

4:37Yeah. So the closest school was in Missoula, Montana, uh, Vo-Tech. Okay. And they did diesel technology. So I went and I did, did that, uh, went into working at a truck shop. Probably midway through the 2-year degree do a night shift. Yeah. Uh, got laid off. That was 2008, 2009 timeframe. So of course, housing market, everything was going down. So I applied for some government jobs because I was a part of the National Guard.

5:12Okay. Got hired on as a federal tech. So I was a wheeled vehicle mechanic. Got hired on, worked there for 10 years. Uh, I got bored with it, seeing the same walls, seeing the same stuff coming through, the same military vehicles. And so I felt— by then I was married. I was like, oh, you know what, I want to be a rancher.

5:34I've helped my father-in-law, went out there, did that for 4 years. But while I was there, it wasn't like I just stopped turning wrench. It's a— when people find you just have a skill, yep, why not use it? Yeah. So I was working on my father-in-law's equipment, stuff that was not so computerized because his older equipment. Yeah. Because he's not going to buy the scan tools and everything.

5:59And I didn't have the money to buy scan tools. So I was working on his older 4840 John Deeres and stuff like that. And neighbors were calling up. It was like, hey, do you mind if he comes over? And so I started doing that. And found out after 4 years I don't like working with cows. I want them on my plate, medium rare, ready to go.

6:23Yeah, that's— and I, uh, use immobilization as a reason to get out of it and kind of recoup some money. So I went to Kuwait, uh, while I was over there. I— when I came back, I bought a service truck, and that was 3 and a half years ago. And been working on agriculture equipment since. Wow. But, uh, that's a quick overview of 20 years of turning wrench.

6:48Now, what's— what was it like? I don't want to— because, so, was Kuwait still considered a war zone when you were there? Was it— no. So that MOAB was, uh, '21 through '22, so it wasn't considered a war zone. Yeah, it was, uh, and you hurt some people's feelings, others don't. I consider mobilization not a deployment because there wasn't any worry of attack, right?

7:20Ah, but while I was over there, and this is the funny part, while I was over there, I was actually in armament repair, so I repaired weapons, not vehicles. Wow. How much of that transfers over? You know, some of it does, but not a lot because you're dealing with more roll pins and not a whole lot of nuts and bolts. Yeah, like I said, so I started out as a wheeled mechanic and moved into— some people might know what a Bradley Fighting Vehicle is, but it's a tracked vehicle.

7:52Yeah. And then went into being a warrant officer in the armament repair side of things. And it was fun. I mean, I enjoyed it. Uh, a lot of it was— I'm not afraid to take a hammer and knock a roll pin out harder than what some of the guys are. So sorry to cut in everyone, but this is really important. As a tech, I've seen firsthand how frustrating it'd be to work in a shop bogged down by outdated systems and inefficiencies.

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9:04Tekmetric isn't just managing shops, it's transforming them. Measure up by every measure with Tekmetric. Hit the link in the show notes below for more. I figured things could be repaired. Well, that comes from, that comes from back from the background of being in a truck shop or being on the ranch, right? Is sometimes like, you know, you just have no choice but to get forceful with it, right?

9:25And yeah, you know, they say sometimes you have to break something to fix it. Yeah, sometimes we lack polish, but we make up with it. So, but, um, I've heard Kuwait can be nice, like pretty, you know, when it, when it's not upside down like that, you know what I mean? It can be, it can be. The area I was at was just strictly desert, but we went in You go into the city and it is amazing, very highly populated, but a beautiful area.

9:55For me being in the mountains, I can say, yeah, it has its perks. Yeah, very cool. Hot, I imagine. Oh yeah. So when we left, 5 o'clock in the morning, we'd wake up to go to the gym and work out and it would already be 90 degrees at 5 o'clock in the morning. So yeah, I don't do well with that. No, sir.

10:16No, I'm much more cold-blooded. I prefer, I prefer it cool. I don't, I don't like it hot like that. It's just not even— like, even when I go visit my friends in South— in like North Carolina, South Carolina, it's, it's, you know, I wasn't ready for that, that humidity that, that I get when it's July and you're in, you know, Charlotte. If it's just— yeah, you know, I, I agree.

10:37Uh, and that's one reason why I went National Guard was because I want— I liked Montana. I like the weather. Yeah, our winters can suck, but I like the fact that I can wear a t-shirt and jeans if I have to. If I'm being a mobile mechanic, you're fully jeaned up and shirted up, coveralls, and it's hot, but it's not, you know, in the summer we average 75 to 80.

11:04Sometimes we'll hit hotter, but it's not for very long. So you came back from Kuwait and bought a service truck? Yeah, yeah. I wasn't going to do it either. I had toyed with the idea. My wife was telling me I needed to do it. Uh, good friend that I mobilized with was telling me I should do it, and I was worried. I'm like, I can't make it work.

11:29I— most of it would be agriculture. It's not my strong background, right? No way I could do it. So I actually wrote out my entire resume. I was ready to start applying at truck shops and just go. Sent it to my wife and she's like, I don't know why you sent me this. We're going to do this. I'm like, well, fine. I'll have somebody else review it.

11:46So I had my buddy review it and I handed it to him. He looks at me, crumbles it up in the trash can. Wow. Like, dude, he goes, no, you're going to start your own truck. Like, it doesn't make sense. He goes, no, you're going to do it. He's like, you're just afraid. Just, you got to step out and do it. That's pretty cool that your peer group has got that much faith and sees your talent, right?

12:11Because sometimes I think that's the biggest obstacle of a lot of us of why we haven't— we don't go into our own thing, you know, is because we just look at it as, yeah, I fixed the car, I fixed the vehicle, right? But it's— and there's more to it than that, obviously, you know what I mean? Like, you know, the second side of it, it's not just fixing the vehicle or the piece of equipment, it's managing to make making the relationships work so people want you back to do it and then making the business side of it work.

12:38But that's pretty cool that you had such a good support group there to get going. That's awesome. Oh, it's been great. My wife says I have imposter syndrome, which I never heard of until all this. And she's like, you second-guess yourself more than anybody else in the world. And I'm like, honey, I think a lot of mechanics do. Yeah, I guess everything is.

13:02As a matter of fact, like today I got a text from a customer that I worked on their, uh, '15 Ram, and the first thing I did was— it was a similar problem, but I haven't proven that it's anything I did, but it's been a month and the same issue came back. You're like, oh, what did I do wrong? She's like, why do you think you automatically did something wrong?

13:22It's just part of it, honey. Yeah, the first thing It's what did I do? Yeah, it's the way our brains are worked because we're— and I'm starting to see what the way this new stuff is and the failures that are kind of coming out of the new stuff and the technology. Like, we were traditionally taught that a lot of this stuff, like, if you did the maintenance on it and you, you put everything back the way it was supposed to be, that it would live on and it would live on the way it was, right?

13:49And now they're, they're showing us how this stuff just wears out, you know what I mean? Like, you can go in and correct a coil for a misfire, right? And, and next month the camshaft lobe finally flattens up enough that the customer hears it or the check engine light comes on, right? And then all of a sudden, but it's the same thing, they call you up and go, hey, it's doing that same thing again.

14:12Well, we know that an ignition misfire feels very much different than a valve misfire from feel alone.. But to the customer, it's still got a miss, right? And they call us up. And so yeah, we immediately jump to that. What did I forget to do? Or did the part let me down? Or, you know, has there always been this ghost in machine that I didn't even, you know, exercise last time and now it's finally here?

14:36Like, I was just talking with a friend this weekend and they went down the road with a way down a rabbit hole on a mass airflow problem on a Ford. And they, you know, they end up being— it's like, well, I even put a Ford mass airflow in it and then it generated all these codes that weren't there before, you know. And then there's, there's a fluid leak issue on a connector, and maybe that's what— it's the wrong part.

14:58Wrong part. But absolutely. Um, I don't know how many times I've gone and worked on something, fixed an issue, just to turn around and find either another issue or, hey, we fixed this issue, but it was covering up these 6 other issues that we have to address. Otherwise, it's just gonna— everything's gonna go right back to the way it was. Yeah, it's better, but what do we have to do to fix it?

15:24They're not 100% the right way. How do you find it when it's your type of customer from a service standpoint, right, your customer, versus sometimes when you— when you worked in the truck shop, you know, and it was just dealing with a lot of the time, I'm going to assume, and it'll probably be accurate, that it was a fleet customer, you know what I mean?

15:44And, and, you know, it was in and they just kind of were a little more understanding because you're already there looking at it and you notice something and you, you address it then, and then something pops up. So what I liked about the truck shop is a lot of, like you said, fleet, you see that vehicle all the time. Launch Tech USA has established itself as a trusted leader in automotive diagnostics and aftermarket solutions by delivering cutting-edge technology and reliable level support to the North American market.

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17:10Yep. What I'm finding now with what I'm doing is I, uh, I'd say probably 95% of my customers right now are all repeats, which is great. Yeah. So I'm learning their equipment, but I still may only see them 2, 3 times a year. So I don't know, I don't— some of them had me do their oil changes. Some of them are very good about, hey, every spring right before hay season, we're gonna do all the oil, all the fluids, do a full check.

17:40And then at the end of the fall, others aren't. So I might only see them once a year when something really breaks, because they're going to baby the lawn, try and make it work. Yeah. And so it makes it harder because it's like, okay, well, you're saying this thing won't move Oh, hey, look, you're low on hydraulic oil. That's why it's not moving.

18:01Let's address these 6 leaks. Oh, well, let's just deal with these big ones. We'll leave these little ones. Well, the little ones are going to develop. Yeah, I'm going to be back out here in 6 months, a year. What's it going to be? Yeah, do we fix it right or do we keep going? And you, you and I know that that's where the, the value and the quality of your operator can really save a lot of that unexpected and keep things moving, right?

18:25'Cause if you've got an operator, you know, and that's the beauty of most farmers that I've ever met is they know how to pour fluid in a vehicle, right? Like they know how to keep oil in an engine most of the time. And they know how to certainly like what if something's overheating, they know what to do, so on and so forth.

18:42You know, they're just, they're a little bit more in tune. 'Cause a lot of it is, it's just like truck drivers, right? I always, I learned very early on when the truck driver tells you that the truck's actually doing something, that you respect them because they live in the darn thing. Like they are in that seat 12 hours a day minimum. You know, back in the day, even longer, right?

19:04They drove way longer. So, you know, when they tell you something's not right, you just, you don't sit there and go, oh gee, I wonder, you know, no, they completely know something. They know that truck. Yeah, that's the beauty of getting to know the equipment, like you said. And they tend to be able to keep a lot of things mobile and operating because they know just the basics.

19:28You've seen that, that they hire a driver and the piece of equipment's supposed to be greased every day and fluid checks and a logbook filled out. And you know when the guys are not doing it, right? Like they've got the logbook filled out, but You're like, this hood hasn't been open in 5 days 'cause you'd have seen, you know, the nest that's built on top of the valve cover.

19:48Oh yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah, and that's the big thing. And it's fun because I get to see so much different piece of equipment that I can see the ranchers in my area that really care about their equipment and they take care of it and they grease it, they do everything that they're supposed to do. Then you see the others like, yeah, we greased this.

20:12We don't know why this pin is hollowed out like this. Like, yeah, have you greased it in the last century? Yeah. Or that guy that's wiping the grease on the grease nipple, but the grease nipple hasn't taken grease, you know, in forever. And they're just going through their circle check, you know, Brent. Absolutely. Yeah, we had lots of them too where they would write stuff down in my history and then it was up to the fleet manager to decide whether they're fixing it or not.

20:43And then all of a sudden the fleet manager seemed to get selective memory loss with, I don't remember you ever telling us about that. And then you go back and pull the logbook and you pull back the wrecks and it's like, nope, see, we put 3 grease nipples in that thing in the last month trying to get that pin to take grease and it won't.

21:00It needs a pin. Oh, I mean, yeah, you just didn't want to take it out of the, rotation to get it addressed. That's— that was always the rub with me. So with Fleetwork, you know, fleet manager, all the difference. I've always found that the owner of the equipment always does better than anybody else. With the ranchers, you can't fire family, and family seems to be the hardest on the tractors, any sort of truck.

21:26Yeah. And hired hands are next in line for the hardest on it. But they get fired if they get caught running it too hard. Family, I mean, how do you fire your daughter or son who's running the tractor and just decides to Baja through a field? And so let's be real, who do they learn it from, right? They learn it from, you know, yeah, they learned it from Dad because Dad did it.

21:48But then he started paying the bills and he realized, oh, run this tractor, mock Jesus through a field is what's breaking this pin. Yeah, I'll slow down. Because I don't want to pay another $5,000 to have it repaired again. Yeah. So when you— was it like you already had your reputation and it was pretty much all you had to do was like start the truck and the phone started ringing, or how did you kind of start off?

22:12So the first few months were really slow. Like, I had a reputation, everybody knew my in-laws because it was— that family ranch has been in operation since 1890. Wow. So there was a reputation. I had already worked with some neighbors, so they knew me. It was really a matter of getting everybody else to trust me and going to those neighbors saying, hey, tell your friends, tell your other neighbors, like, hey, I'm out here, I'm willing to do this.

22:41So the first— I'd say the first 2 months, I was lucky if I had a job a week. Wow. And it was tough. And then I started out in September, and so of course that's when everybody's shutting down their hayin' season. So of course they're trying to sell their calves, get their bank loans paid. Maintenance is the last thing on their mind.

23:02Yeah. So it was really slow. And then by March, April, I started getting the phone calls, and then by June it was every day 2 or 3 phone calls. Hey, you worked on so-and-so's stuff, I need you out here now. Yeah. And things just started rocking. And now if I have a day where I'm not doing anything, it's because the weather's so bad I can't drive the old tool drive truck.

23:33Wow, it's that busy. It is. As a matter of fact, not joking, you probably have another 2 private guys out here and everybody would have enough work. To work straight through the week and not have to worry about what's going on. Yeah, wow, I wouldn't have thought. So yeah, so is— are the, are the jobs kind of spaced pretty close together, or do you spend a lot of time seeing that beautiful country driving around?

24:00So I, I actually work— my average drive is probably 30 miles one way. Uh, I do have a couple that— I have one customer that is probably a good hour and a half drive from me. But for the most part, I, I'm on the road for maybe 30 minutes, 45 minutes. Uh, not, not long. A lot of it's just county roads, so that's what really slows you down.

24:27Yeah, that's terrible then. No, no, I'm glad because I, I've thought about that too, is, oh God, I don't want to spend 2, 3 hours just to get there. Yeah. And oh, hey, look, now I got this fixed and it's 3 hours back. It's kind of a pain. Or yeah, if you're away and you need parts, like, that's the other thing that was always so fascinating to me was how, you know, these guys with service trucks managed to set them up with parts, you know what I mean?

24:58Like, one thing, filters and stuff, right? But another, the kind of key breakdown stuff, you know what I mean? Like, you can't carry in generator and a starter for everything, you know. No, and I definitely don't. The most I carry is electrical components, uh, you know, stuff, just splices, solder, uh, fuses. I bought a huge fuse kit, so I have almost every fuse that you could ask for.

25:25Nice. Uh, things I could fix easily, uh, fuel lines, because I just the size of truck you'd need to have all that. And then I work on everything from John Deere, uh, Case IH, right, New Holland, Ford New Holland. I just, I couldn't hold it all in my truck. Yeah, uh, it does suck when I have to drive because Great Falls is where all the dealerships are.

25:49Yeah, so you kind of have to know when you're going out there what you're going to be taking, you know what I mean? You kind of have to have a pretty good idea, which again comes back to that a lot of the, the typical operator is, is, and certainly farmer or owner, you know, a lot more when they call up and they say, yeah, you know, um, I've got a situation, it's not charging, I've had to boost the damn thing 3 times, right?

26:13They're kind of— you can walk them through some of the basic checks to look at and then, you know, show up and know I'm probably looking at an alternator problem here, you know what I mean? So how do you— like, is it— you talked about being there some nights till midnight and 11 o'clock. That's a long day. Is it a situation of like you can kind of go a few days a week and then kind of catch up, or is it like you have a month that's just absolute chaos and then it becomes normal?

26:42Because like going back to like we were talking about fishing, like how do you find time then if you're at the site till midnight, you know, or making those long days? Like do you do 6 days a week like that when it's busy? So it really depends on the, the time of year. The summers when they're haying, yeah, it's a 6-day week.

27:05When I first started out, it was— I was going 7 days a week, wearing myself out. I'm 41 now, so 3 and a half years ago, 30, 39, 38, it's still old enough where it's like, okay, this isn't healthy, but I'm trying to get this business running. Yeah. Now I actually force the time off and thanks to my wife, I definitely enforce it because before it was to the point where I was charging normal business rate and she said, no, you are going to be charging an after-hours weekend rate.

27:41The dealerships would do it. Any other shop would do it. We can't be any different. If they don't want to pay it, then they don't get up and running on a weekend. They don't get up and running after 5 o'clock. Now, what, what makes her so insightful, so smart about this? Like, has she got any kind of similar background or just an advocate for you?

28:00So her grandparents on her mom's side started several businesses. They ran a Taco John's, they started the A&W in Great Falls. Uh, so she got to learn from them growing up, and then of course her parents running the ranch that they never saw the mechanic side of things. They hired, they hired the dealerships, you know, to work on their stuff. But they— so she saw both.

28:27She saw that end of it. But her big thing is, why are you working yourself to the bone for what you should be making more? And you're spending time away from the family. And so she's been I say I have a heart of stone. She says I don't. She says I'm a softie and she's probably right because I feel bad when I was like, oh, we need to get this up and going.

28:51We need to do this. And instead of saying, hey, I'm going to bill it. If you want me to do this, it's going to be X amount of dollars more an hour. I just worked through it and just charged normal. And so she was the advocate of, hey, you need to do this for you and the family. If not for you, at least do it for your kids.

29:09Like that extra money is money that could go to them for not spending time with us. Well, yeah, you just said you got to go on a Disney cruise and whatnot, right? Like there's so many shop owners we talk to and technicians that like they brag and they flex about how busy they are. And it's like, it's good to be busy and it's good to be, you know, in demand for sure.

29:30But you can't, you know, you can't put the glass back in the hour, the sand back in the hourglass, right? You cannot do it. And if you keep missing, you know, even if it's like you're one of those and it's like, well, you know, Dutch talked about like, I didn't see every one of his daughter's recitals and stuff like that. Like he made a sacrifice, but you gotta have that goal that, okay, by the time then, you know, they're 25 or whatever, I'm at this age, I wanna be able to be away a lot more and see a lot more and do a lot more and get away.

30:04You have to have that as a goal. Otherwise it's like, We just stack cash in the bank account and go, "Look at this. I achieved this level of growth." Growth is great, but if we're not doing something with the funds from the growth, there's really no point in doing it, in my opinion. The end goal for me is I want a nicer boat and more time to be able to use it.

30:29That's it. Absolutely. And it took me a while to realize it, because I was putting everything back into the business. I was buying all these extra tools and all this extra, and it wasn't going— it wasn't padding my bank account, it wasn't padding my retirement, right? And it took a lot of talks, it took a lot. I'm thick-headed, and so it took a lot for my wife to tell me like, hey, if we don't start putting money to our kids, to these goals, are you gonna be running this truck past your 60s?

31:04Yeah, it's hard on your body. She goes, I see it now. You're— it's like, you're young by most standards, and you say in 20 years you want to retire, but you're not billing people appropriately. And that's what it came down to. And listen to your podcast, that's what I was learning, that, hey, I'm trying to help people. Yeah, I want to be there for the ranchers.

31:26Save them a bit of money off of the dealership because I know what a couple of dealerships are charging here. And my— I'm charging less, one, because capabilities. There's capabilities they have that I'm not going to have, special tooling. So I understand that, but that doesn't mean I need to be taken and not bill for my worth and not make a profit so I can work towards that.

31:51And it's listening to your podcast and of course Changing the Industry podcast says taught me that, to not sell myself short. Yeah, well, and you know, we, you know, it always comes down to like, we look at who's around us and what they charge, right? And, and we kind of set our value up that based on, and it's like, oh, and then the overhead thing comes into it, right?

32:17And it's like, well, they don't have, I don't have their overhead, right? Like, I'm just a service truck, so I don't have a big waiting room and I don't have a million dollars in inventory and all. I can operate, you know, less. Less, you know, cheaper. I hate the word cheaper, trying to avoid using it. But the reality is, is that like, just because we have a lot lower overhead doesn't mean we have to be— you froze up again— grossly undercharging compared to what they do, right?

32:44Like, we can— friggin' froze again, man. Oh, there you are. I can hear you, but now we're back. We're back. Yeah, yeah. So we don't have to charge so grossly less than what, you know, our competition, our neighbor shop, our other person in another service truck do, just because— to the point of where it— we go without, we sacrifice because, like— and you say you got the hardest stone.

33:15I think I'm still the most hard, you know, stone-hearted person I've talked to because, like, I really don't— to me, that just rings more bells of opportunity then. Like how, how, where I can operate, what I can charge, all that kind of stuff. That's just, to me, it's always just seems common sense, right? If the dealer can be $180, well, shoot, even if I operate with a lot less overhead, I want to be pretty close to $180.

33:41That's just where my brain thinks. Is that— and other people like, that's nuts, you're just ripping people off. No, I'm not really, you know, because maybe the dealer sees himself being there 100 years. Hypothetically 50 years, 20 years. Maybe I'm in this for just 10, right? Maybe I'm starting this at 35 and I want it at 55. Your trajectory is very different.

34:01Your planning, your billing, your growth has a very different look to it than theirs. It's not necessarily that it's not playing long ball, but it's not playing the way they are. And that's where I think in this industry we've screwed up for so long because People immediately look at a dealer and they look at an independent and they go, I have to be cheaper.

34:26Let's count just department for department. They have a sales department and they have a parts department. That's just the two. Sometimes now we get into the rental department of, of, you know, especially equipment. You have three departments there that are bringing profit into one entity. And so we're just comparing, you know, price to price. We shouldn't be, because those three can sometimes help out the service side.

34:51You're operating just as a service department, and in some cases in a shop you get a little bit of parts margin, right? You're supposed to be charging that. We shouldn't even be thinking we need to charge less. We should be charging at least what the dealer does, if not more, because we don't have one other department or two other departments, three other departments to prop us up.

35:11Just seems compli— it's to me, it seems so simple to be able to say it. I would tell everybody tomorrow if I was in my own, well, the dealer charges $180, I'm going to charge $190. Why? Well, they have sales to carry them along, and most of our customers would accept that, understand it, and say no more. But we're always like, oh shoot, if they're $180, man, I got to start at $120.

35:34My God, think about the growth that you got to do to get $60 more. In the customer's eyes. It's crazy. Oh, absolutely. And I started out, I thought I was being smart and I wasn't. That first year I started out at $100 an hour. Wow. And at the end of that year, like, nope, this isn't going to work. So we bumped it up to $125, and then this year we bumped it up to $140.

36:02And so I'm climbing, but I've also felt my capabilities are coming up. Okay, and so I've got OEM software now. I still don't have full access to all their software updates to do stuff like that. And for me right now, that's fine, because if I could come out, diagnose something within an hour, and then say, hey, there's a software— we need to see if there's a software update.

36:26And I've got a good relationship with most of the service departments for the dealerships I deal with., and I could call them and say, hey, is there a service, an update, software update for this? They say, yep, we've seen this problem. You're telling my diagnostic process. Okay, cool. I'll have my customer contact you to get you out here to software update for him.

36:46Nice. Nice. My goal though is to get to the point where I can have access to that and start performing it myself. Now, Jeremiah, I gotta ask you, when you talked about making your jump in rates, Did you have any kind of pushback? Any kind of people, you know, say, oh my God, why? Or, oh my God, no. Or did they just kind of— They haven't said a word.

37:07Yeah. I just mark it up. I just start billing that and they don't say a word. No. It's even funnier when I talk to some shop owners now, Jeremiah, and they go, the customers look at me and they go, well, I was wondering when you were gonna. Or yes, you definitely have been worth that. And then it's like, why have I, you know, what was— it's all— what I'm trying to say is it's all in here and in here that tells us we can't, right?

37:34That's the biggest thing. Oh, absolutely. And that was my biggest thing with even that first going from 100 to 125, that I was like, this is gonna hurt me. And it was— I had a customer come, I was talking to on the phone like, hey, I'm 3 weeks out, I'm not gonna be able to get you I said, he goes, well, you know, there's a reason why we all wait on you.

37:55And I was like, that hit. No, like, I'm not that good. And I told him that. I'm like, I don't know if I'm that good. I just, I've been blessed enough to be able to solve the problems you've had to this day. I said, there's gonna be a day where I'm not gonna be able to solve your problem because I may not have seen it, or I just get in such a fog or a lane that you just miss it.

38:16But I love that humility because that, that to me is the, is the earmarker of somebody right there, Jeremiah, that is like, I'm always going to expect, you know, improvement from because that's, that's the secret thing to unlock is the reality that like, I don't know it all. And, you know, there's still so much ahead of me that I need to learn.

38:40If you have that and you just accept it and you make peace with it, man, there's, there's no ceiling on that, right? Exactly. So you say the customer is like, oh, I've just been fortunate enough at— to this— up to this point to be able to solve what you've needed me to solve. No, man, it's not that. It's like you got to puff your chest out sometimes and go, no, I'm very good at what I do, and I'm able to be an awesome asset to you, and I'm going to continue to do, and I'm going to charge for that.

39:08Yeah, you say that. It's funny because I had a customer— my— we had a cold snap and I didn't put anti-gel in my truck, right? So of course I gelled up, and it was right after we came back from vacation. So I'm calling around trying to find fuel filters for myself. Nobody has them, so I have to wait for the next day.

39:28Customer calls me, hey, my tractor gelled, I need you out here. I said, well, good news, I'm gelled up too. I'm not going to be up and running until tomorrow. He goes, how did my mechanic gel up? And I just told him on the phone, like, I never said I was a good one. You're just, your assumptions are what's hurting us now.

39:47Well, and you're human just like they are. That's the whole thing. Like, it's like thinking that, you know, because you're a mechanic, you know, you're never gonna get a flat tire or you're never gonna have brakes that squeal. It's just life. It's part of what we do. It's these machines that we operate on. Yeah, they're gonna have the same failure. We're not exclusive.

40:08Yeah, you could have put, gel in. But I mean, we all have 100 other things we're trying to do at the end of the week, right? We're all trying to, you know, make those— yeah. And our winter here this year has been so crazy. We've been averaging 40-degree days, and normally we're down below the 30s. It's— and so when we left for vacation, like, there's no reason to anti-gel this thing.

40:32It's— we've been in the 40s. The next 10-day forecast is the 40s. And then of course The weather was wrong and we hit that cold snap and the rest is history. Yeah. What's, um, so when you talk about like, you know, it's, it's you don't have access to everything, um, are you locked out by the OEs? Because I, I'm sure you've probably seen it.

40:52I think there was a, maybe it was a Vice TV on YouTube did something I'm talking about. John Deere was really not playing fair in terms of access to information and all that kind of stuff. Is that what it is for you? Is it's not available even if you could pay for it, or is it just like, so no, it's available. I could get with John Deere, I could get with New Holland.

41:11It's right now I'm looking at costs, so I'm using like, I'm using diesel laptops right now. Okay. And got every service group page you go on Facebook, there's don't use diesel laptops. I've had good luck with it. The thing is they just don't have access to that OEM side of things for the software updates. But I could do calibrations with certain calibrations.

41:33There's certain things I can do. Yeah, but it's like, as we all know, there's software updates that just need to be done, and they found, oh well, whatever needs to be within this variance, here's software update so the computer knows this variance. Yeah, I can't do that. I could go put on a new part, calibrate a steering sensor, stuff like that, but it's just getting ready to do that next investment level.

42:02Well, it's good at least that it's, it's, it's available to you because I mean, the way that, you know, I've, I've heard the scuttlebutt is like, oh, it's all this is locked out. And I think it's similar to, to the automotive side too, right? Because it's like everybody says, I can't do this, it's not available to me. And I know it sucks, but pretty much as long as they've made it so that you can buy the OE software and the OE scan tool, or the, or the software that now operates on a laptop, which is an emulator, the same damn thing.

42:36You can do it. Yeah. And so, Joe, yeah, it's a really prohibitive sometimes cost-wise. Yes. That's when, again, you, you learn to, to pick your battles. You learn to choose your— vet your customer, choose your work. Sorry, I cut you off there. No, you're all right. So like, yeah, John Deere, you can go on and you could buy their software two different ways.

42:58You could buy it for just the serial number of one tractor, or you can buy a fleet software. Yeah. So there's ways to do it. It's just a matter of, I'm trying to do this business as smart as I can. I could go out and buy— I love Snap-on. I love Mac. I could buy all those tools. I have a Harbor Freight.

43:20A 30-minute drive away from me. I would rather break a Harbor Freight tool or bend one and know I can just hand it to my wife, say, here, replace this. She can run in because being mobile, trying to meet up with Snap-on is a headache. Oh, and I'll say it again, you, you know, my American friends, you do not know how lucky you are to have a Harbor Freight, you know, in, in an hour's drive away from you.

43:51Like mine, the closest is 90 minutes and I cross the international border, you know. Um, because I feel I'm the same way. If I want to take a wrench and heat it up to be able to get at something, I don't want to grab my Snap-on wrench. I don't want to do it. I want to grab the cheapest wrench I can find.

44:08Um, you know, and that's field service. That is what it is. Like, there have been so many times that I lugged a bag of tools out that had really weird, cheap-looking stuff in it because like it was already made to do the job, or I could sacrifice it right there because I couldn't, like you said, I couldn't just call my Snap-on dealer and say, hey, I gotta meet you, because it normally meant an hour drive minimum, uh, you know, and that's assuming it's during a daytime call.

44:40It's a nighttime call No, you're not even going to a local department store to buy what you need. You're, you're making do with what you have. And that was the whole thing of, you know, cheap tools are, are great for that. It gets you out of a bind. So, and you can't just— when you're out in a field by yourself, you can't just walk over to the bay next to you and say, hey buddy, you have this special tool or you have this, I don't have— and you can't just borrow it.

45:08You have to like make do. I don't know how many— I have a whole drawer of stuff that I've welded, bent, and they're the ugliest looking things in the world, but I got jobs done. Yeah, I got them done right. Yeah. What, um, so the software thing, how, how going forward do you find yourself— like, does it limit, um, the brands, or does it limit the scope of the job?

45:39It limits the scope. So like Diesel Laptops, I have everything from over-the-road truck through agriculture, any— and, uh, Bobcats, because they're the small construction equipment. Yeah. Uh, it really just limits scope. So I can't clone ECMs, ECUs, stuff like that. Uh, there's certain— there's calibrate— I could do most of the calibrations, code read live data, all that. It's nice, but it's just, it's really those software updates where they change parameters that I can't change.

46:17Yeah, uh, I had a customer, I went and I worked on a skid steer, uh, see it, Case IH skid steer, and it was popping a code for 5-volt reference. Okay, well, I By this troubleshooting, you know, you go through all the grounds, you check all your everything until you get to the computer itself and test 5 volts out. Well, it was reading wrong.

46:41It was putting 5 volts out, but it was saying it was over voltage. Yeah. And I told myself, there's two things that need to happen. I said, it needs to go to the dealer, and they're either going to replace the entire computer or they're gonna do a software flash on it and it's going to correct the problem. And he ended up taking it to the dealer and it was just a flash and done.

47:06But yeah, it limited me because he was an hour and a half from town, and so he paid for me to come out, diagnose it down that far, to then have to load it on a trailer and take it to town. Yeah, so that's where I'm really trying to get better and get to a point where I feel comfortable. It's really, do I feel comfortable spending the money to do this and make that jump?

47:32Yeah, because you want to show value, right? And I know that's like, there's still all that stigma in the industry, right? Where it's like, because I know I do it, I do it several times a week where at my job I look at it and it's like, this thing's a 2024, you know what I mean? And it's like, it's not that, and it could be out of warranty based on, um, time.

47:55Well, I know that I don't have access to the software to make this work, but I do know that here's this bulletin, or here's this, this suspicion, uh, it's got to go over there regardless because we, you know, today it's a Volkswagen, tomorrow could be a Mercedes. Like, we just cannot keep buying all this different software to, to address every little thing.

48:15It's, it's cost per— it's cost prohibitive. So I don't— I'm not bothered anymore when I have to say to them, this is what I've been get to so far, and, and now it's got to go to the dealer. And I tell everybody in our industry, don't feel bad when you're able to give that answer, because you're still giving an answer, right? It's the, it's the things that I eliminate, it's the things that I rule out.

48:36There's still value in that, right? Um, if you— it's the same as you go out and you, um, check a no-start and it has fuel pressure, and it has fuel pressure in spec, and, uh, you go out and you do a relative compression test and it's, and it's not misfiring, and you go out and you do, you know, a timing check and you find that the timing is out without having to tear the engine down.

49:00Those checks that prove that the fuel pump is working good and that it's not misfiring, it's just out of time, they're not worth zero, right? You're giving your customer information back. And that's what we have to sometimes realize is when we hit a roadblock that is equipment or software, don't throw it away and discount it and zero it out because you couldn't give them the fix.

49:24You're giving them what they asked you to do, which was a— you're giving them a diag, essentially. You know, it just means that I can't execute the complete final repair because I don't have the software. We've got to be a little more— give each other a little more grace when we're not able to do that, because it's just at some point, whether we get locked out or become so prohibitive cost-wise, right, Jeremiah, that you're just going to have to do more and more of that.

49:49So, well, and the way I see it, you could Oh, there's a lot of successful guys running their own thing, but you'll go under quick if you just overspend on tooling. Yeah, because you could put all this money into tooling, and what I've told guys is, hey, this tractor needs to be split to do this. It takes these special tools. If you want me to do it, you need to pay for half the tool because I don't know if I'll ever do this job again.

50:18That's right. I can't justify buying $3,000 worth of tools for a $1,500 job. Yeah. And I'm not going to use those tools again. They're going to collect dust. It's a waste of time and money for me. I also try to, when I do diagnose something, whether it's electronic or mechanical, I am very cognizant and try to explain it to the customer in as simple terms as they can, can, that for them to understand.

50:47Because if they understand why electronically or mechanically it's failed, they're more apt to understand why it needs to be repaired and why the cost is going to be so much and what tooling and why the tooling is needed to do it. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Like, I mean, and that's— I don't even, you know, you have the argument, oh, I just— all these newfangled whatever, right?

51:07And all this new technology. I'm not even getting that kind of gripe and grievance anymore from a lot of my customers when I explain what's happening. Because I think now it's a generational thing, or they love the tech that's there, right? They just, I think they accept that with it comes a different level of unreliability, right? You, you know, you deal with farmers, they'd love when you would have been able to fix it with, you know, some wire and, and a, and a boost and away they go again.

51:34Now I think they understand that for all this stuff to work, it takes a lot of wire, communication, and, and software. And unfortunately The software sometimes does just suck and crap and go to, you know, go away. And it's just part of it now. You know, you can think of it as like that going out and putting updated software is going is the same as going out and, and tweaking a carburetor, you know what I mean?

52:01We had to do it in order to make the thing work again, you know? Oh, absolutely. And that's one conversation when I first started out was having guys, especially the older generation, say, well, can you just make it work so I can get through? Yeah, I can. However, I won't. This is gonna have my name on it, and these systems were put in here either for safety of the machine or for your safety, and I'm not going to be the reason why your quarter of a million dollar tractor burns to the ground.

52:35Yeah, that— so if you want to make it work, that's fine. I'm going to put it back together You could tear it back apart and do what you want, but my name will not be on that repair. And see, you know, we have those conversations, right, where, you know, there's safety systems on farm equipment for sure. I can remember the old Bobcats, you know, if there wasn't a weight in the seat, they wouldn't move, the hydrostatic wouldn't engage, right?

53:04Great system, very easily to bypass though. Oh, absolutely. That's the thing. When we keep talking now in the modern things and whether it's a TPMS or, you know, an airbag or a seatbelt reminder or something like that, there's always— every time this subject comes up, there's always these people that pop up and go, listen, the customer ultimately is in charge. If they tell me to bypass it or hack it, I'm going to do it.

53:29And it isn't for me to say that's wrong. I just— when I advocate for why I don't, and I think maybe from a professional standpoint, we don't There's that reason because not all money's good money, as people say. And I don't want it on my conscience that something that could have prevented it as an accident or a failure, breakdown, failure, accident, whatever, loss, it doesn't always have to go that far.

53:58I don't want that on me if I could have prevented it by just saying, we just have to wait, unfortunately. That's just the way it goes, you know. I agree. I'd rather fix it right and the way the manufacturer originally had it intended than to do it any other way. Yeah. And unless parts are unavailable, which there's automotive, it's different, but yeah, in agriculture, yeah, there's some tractors that you just can't get parts for anymore.

54:27And guys are still running them. They love the old tractors primarily because they don't have all the electronics. Yeah, and sometimes you have to get creative, but I will not go creative to the point where it makes the machine unsafe or anything like that. There are plenty of salvage yards for agriculture equipment that you can find a lot— some of the parts, and others you can't, but that's where you really need to get in touch with a good, uh, machinist.

54:58Well, I was— machine shops are a godsend. I was just gonna say that because my background in the heavy equipment and, and the trucking way back when is like, yeah, there's a hydraulic valve that's not working, but there was always a rebuild kit, you know what I mean? Or, uh, hydraulic cylinders. Like, we've all taken— well, not all of us, forget that, but you've probably rebuilt a hydraulic cylinder once or twice, you know.

55:25I've done my share of them. So, I mean, it's like, you know, it's not the same as sitting there and saying, uh, I can't get a module, you know what I mean? Um, it's saying like, I can take that hydraulic valve out. Now here's the beauty of this: there's a lot of labor here because like I'm, I'm doing this and it isn't available.

55:46That's when you get one of them jobs where you can kind of set your price. And that's what I keep coming back to, is your, your skills as we develop them in this, in this industry, your skills kind of allow you to go past the posted labor guide. And I know, you know, you guys and where you operate, that's not the same thing, but it allows you to get past that where it's just a, I need it done and what's the cost.

56:11That's the beauty in this. That's when you get real profit and real growth. I've had that talk with customers. These will ask me, well, is it worth putting this time and money in? I don't know. This is your tractor. This is your operation. You tell me what it's worth. You tell me if you only want to put $1,000 in this thing, then I'll go right up to that point and we stop and we wait and see if you want to go further.

56:33This is not— it's not my money. And when I tell, like, when I'm doing a repair, it's not my money I'm spending, it's your money I'm spending. And that's why I've tried to make sure they know that I will not replace a part unless I am 90% and I know that 10% is still a big variance, but unless I'm 90% sure that that part's going to fix the problem, I will not put a part on that vehicle.

56:56Mm-hmm. I love how you said that it's, it's your money or it's their money, not mine, because that's a headspace that we need to get out of in here. Like, we immediately think, I wouldn't spend that, so there's no possible way I can even table that as an option to them. And we might be sitting in a completely different place in life where, you know, it doesn't seem to us to make sense to put $5,000 into that truck because, you know, it's whatever, it's this old, it's in this condition.

57:25That might be the last truck they think they're going to buy in their career, in their life, whatever. And they, uh, they might be thinking, you know, like me, I'm not going to fix that Jeep, you know, because like in 5 more years I want to be driving a truck instead of a Jeep that tows my boat. Or maybe I want to buy an RV in 2 years when I finally retire.

57:46They'll put that $1,000 in it to keep it moving. Because I say $1,000, it's probably close to $5,000 now, because that's their window. We cannot put ourselves into their wallet when we're tabling what the repair should be. We cannot do that. So when they say, "Would I?" It's whatever you think is going to serve you. I love that. We have to have those conversations more when it's like, What would you rebuild that engine or would you replace that engine?

58:21Um, it all depends on what the end goal is for you, you know. Um, I can tell you right now that the engine needs to be replaced. I'm not going to go in— I'm not of the, of the good idea that we should try and Band-Aid it. I hate that. So yes, I think the engine should be replaced. Now, you know, if you want to rush your hand and force your hand to make a decision You wanted 2 more years out of this car.

58:44It's now terminal. What do you want to do? I— that sucks for you, but we cannot compromise our way of doing things or what is the best way for us to be in business because of their situation. Oh yeah, I've told customers before, like, hey, I'll put $10 grand in this easy. I just want— you're okay, you need to be okay with it.

59:05Is it $10 grand is good for you because you don't have to pay $250,000 for a new tractor, or is it not okay for you because you can't financially do it right now? Which means you can't do both ways. You've got to make that decision. What's best, a one-time payment, or you're gonna go into 6 years of payments? And I've had a couple say, well, I'll just tow it out to the North 40, let it rot, I'm good.

59:32Yeah. And I've had others go How much money do you need up front for the parts? Okay, let me price it. Yeah. Now, do you, in your business, do you kind of run accounts then with your, your customers where if they're good enough that, you know, you're, you're allowing them to pay at end of month? Yes. And then I have others that are, I won't tighten this bolt, this last bolt, until you're here ready to sign the check.

1:00:03Right, because you have some that they're really good about, you know, as soon as they get the invoice in the mail, that check is out the door. And then others, uh, everybody could probably tell horror stories. I had a guy that went 60 days and then refused to pay the late fees. And so my wife, she's public— was public affairs in the military— she sent a nice worded letter, a lot nicer than I would have, saying you didn't pay the late fees.

1:00:31If you want us to work with you, you'll pay the late fees immediately. And, uh, from now on, job will not be complete until you finish the repair, until you're there to sign the check. Yeah. So yeah, I try to, uh, but like I said, you have good customers, you have bad. And I, I have a couple business owners I've talked to, other guys who run their own businesses, and they just told me like, hey, the best way to get rid of them outprice yourself from them and make yourself too busy for them.

1:01:02Yeah. Or just say no. Like, there's, there's so many things that you're saying that my side of the industry needs to hear, right? It's so much of that, Jeremiah. Like, because your, your accounts— like, if you're going to the local dealer and buying parts and they allow you to have them for 30, 60 days, at day 61, if you're late paying, they don't scrap the things and go, oh, that's Jeremiah, he's a good guy.

1:01:27Like, no. I still don't pay. Yeah, it goes on there and they're expected that you will pay it. We got to stop that. Like, you know, it still blows my mind when I, when I see a shop owner post and they're like, yeah, you know, I got to put them in collections because I let them, you know, we put this transmission in their truck and I, I let them pay me $200 a week and he was there for the first 2 weeks and I got $400.

1:01:54And now I'm on the hook for $5,000 and I don't know, like, how do I, how do I get that money? And you're just like, oh, you never, you never go down that road anymore. It's learn from other people's mistakes, right? Thank God we're now in a world where we're sharing enough that people will be like, don't do that. This is what I did.

1:02:12Don't do what I did. But it's just that, it's that emotional thing that comes in. It's like, oh yeah, no, he won't burn me. It's not that people are running around trying to burn people. I mean, there are a collective that do, Uh, there are people that manage to somehow always stay doing that, and it's disgusting. But what happens is life happens, you know.

1:02:36Um, I know from my own, um, people hate making payments on something that's broken. Yeah, I don't say that. So like, they maybe let it go into repo, or maybe they just stop paying because they can't use it anyway. Well, Unfortunately, life sucks, and, you know, whether it's broken and you can't use it or not, you're still obligated to pay. So, you know, when we, when we keep patching together this old junk for people, this is what ultimately ends up happening.

1:03:06You know, go back to, like you said, price yourself out of that customer demographic. Yep. Thank you. The other thing that drives me nuts, and I see it a lot on Facebook with the field guys is, well, what's book time for this? I'm sorry, you're in the field. There is no book time. It is when you get it done. You cannot— you're not— you don't have the special tools around.

1:03:28You don't have— you're out in the middle of nowhere sometimes. And yeah, things are gonna go wrong. Sorry it took me 3 hours to get an hour and a half job done. Yep. I'm, I'm in the middle of nowhere working on my back. And not without a lift, without anything. Pay the time, charge the time you put, and if they don't like it, they should already know what your hourly rate is.

1:03:52They should know what your drive time, everything. So if it's going to be too much, they shouldn't have called you in the first place, right? Yeah. And there are some jobs, like, I'll admit it, there's some jobs that, you know, should have taken 3 hours, it took me 6. I'll cut some time off, but I'm not going to cut it down to the 3-hour book time, I might cut an hour off, maybe half my mileage, something to make it as fair as I can.

1:04:19But it better be on me. If it's because I had to drill out and extract 6 rusted bolts, that's not on me. But if it's I overtightened something and I broke those bolts, I did it, okay, that's on me. That's not your time to pay me to fix my screw-up. That's, and that's, that's what I love about the labor matrix because there's so many people go, you can't do that, that's ripping them off.

1:04:44Wrong right there. Because we know that there's things that as the vehicle ages, or if it has, let's even go a different route. If we're dealing on a lot of modified stuff, which is what you worked on, what I've worked on, that labor time is based on the idea that I don't have to disassemble 5 other things on the dash to be able to get the dash out.

1:05:07Right, or access this component because it's got all this other stuff wired in. If I now have to find a different method to get to the end result, throw the friggin labor number away and start clocking them on. I'm looking at this and this is, you know, do you want me to start? Yes or no? I don't know what the end time looks like.

1:05:27I know that I have to go from here, this point to this point. I don't know how long it's going to take me to get there. Are we in this together or not? Have that very real conversation with the customer, because I know there's certain things that, like, if I'm gonna go and take an alternator out of a car, just an example, and everybody goes, oh, I just dropped the subframe down, that's cool.

1:05:49Except if it's a Transit van, as an example, and you have to drop the subframe and it's in Canada, you have now opened up a whole can of worms. Because, like, I have a friend and he's in North Carolina and he's showing me how even the bolts there are rotting into the subframe and you can't subframe to drop down. So all of a sudden, if it's like I'm putting cats in something and I have to drop the subframe, except that I can't because it's going to mean probably the end of the usable life of the car, I have to find a different way.

1:06:18And then take the labor and throw it out. Just— you're back to that Craftsman level of where it's like, uh, I don't know because this has never been done before. And that's the very real thing, is it— like, there's a lot of things that we're still going to do that have never been done before because we're doing it. I don't care that somebody else somewhere else has done it.

1:06:41They're not in the room with us. Oh, I agree. I'm, I'm all for like, hey, if the starter is sitting on tractors, a lot of them are just sitting right there in front. Yeah, it shouldn't take more than an hour to do. Perfect. Pulled in, pull up. But if it's, okay, well now I have to take off all this extra stuff, I have to take off all this paneling, I have to take off all this, these bolts broke, that's something you can't control.

1:07:09You've got to charge for it. If you spend 6 hours on a 1-hour job because rust and broken bolts, and you charge an hour, you just lost a full day's worth of work and income, which means you're taking food and money out of your family's hands, your own. Yeah, yeah. Uh, look at, look at trucks. Look at when they run— I can remember bunk heaters, and they ran extra hoses, bunk heater, and they ran the hoses right on top of, say, where you're accessing the turbo.

1:07:40Yeah. Now that's a whole other thing now of like, not only can I necessarily— because can I remove them? Sure. Is it a big— oh yeah, it's a big deal. Um, can I work around it? Yes. Can it take longer because I have to work around it? Oh, for sure. Now then, the, the posted labor guide— and here's the reality people forget— there's a very likely— it's very likely that it's in your bay and not where the first place that they had it estimated at is because they said we can't do it for that time.

1:08:10So if all of a sudden they're in your shop with this knowledge of this labor, what all it should be, there's a reason why somebody else said no. And it wasn't just always the door rate. It's because, no, I'm not, I can't do it in that labor time. You know, that's outfitted vehicles, ambulances, buses, cabs, taxis, you know, all of that stuff that all adds in.

1:08:34Start charging for that, guys. Don't let it beat you. You know, with my customers, with the people I work with, I always overestimate my time. They say, well, what do you think it's going to take? Oh, in my mind I'm like, well, it should take an hour. It's gonna take me 3 hours. And then when I bill them an hour, they're like, oh man, look, you came in a lot under.

1:08:54They're happy. If I overestimate, they're much happier when I come in under than when I come in over. And I'm just realistic with them. And if I start fighting it, I'll call them up like, hey, I know you're busy swatting this other field, but this baler, uh, you need to come out if you give me a minute so I could walk you through why this is going to take me another couple hours.

1:09:19And I'll ask you this question, Jeremiah. When you call them up and you say that, you say, okay, so my initial eval or my initial inspection was off and I need more time or this is not going to be done— have you ever had one pull the plug on you? No, absolutely not. Most of the time they're just happy I warned them instead, instead of just sending them another $1,000 bill saying, oh, sorry, it was $1,000 over there.

1:09:41Yeah. Oh, thanks for letting me know. And most of the ranchers, they try to work on stuff on their own, so they already know that, hey, things 90% of the time don't go the way they're planned. Well, and we have to— coming back to the automotive side, you know, we're so scared because, I mean, and you are going to have the people that are going to go, oh, you're just trying to upcharge me now, you're just trying to rip me off.

1:10:02I understand we're going to have that difficult conversation, but if you are upfront and frank and, and truthful and, you know, professional, they're probably not going to pull it out of your bay. They're probably not going to. I'm not advocating saying we go in and always under so that we can do this, but don't be so scared to have a conversation with a customer and say, hey, there's bolts broken here.

1:10:28I've worked for so many people that when you went in, you said, I'm taking this off and I wasn't doing anything wrong. You know, I have a feel for this, and the bolt's broke. They don't even think to call the customer and start saying, hey, we're under a broken bolt problem now. They did it for a whole many years of, well, we're just gonna have to eat that.

1:10:48I— that, that just drove me crazy because it's like, I didn't go in there all ham-fisted and break it off. It's 12, 15 years old. It's rusted. It's Canada. It's salt. I didn't— if you think you're gonna you're doing anybody a favor by not charging for that. You're not. The only person you're doing a favor for is the customer. And I— so if, if you want to live and die on that, give her.

1:11:16I don't think as an industry anymore, as professionals, that we aren't allowed to say the unexpected happened and I need to charge more. I don't think that's wrong, right? Oh, absolutely not. I also, when I quote anything, I quote any extra part. You know, exhaust manifolds, I always get new studs, nuts, anything, anything that I think could break when I'm coming apart, I order it, I have it on hand.

1:11:43And if I don't have to use it, great, I'll take it back. Even if I have to, it'll come down, I'll put it on, I'll put it in my labor somehow. But if there's a restocking fee, which I've only had one restocking fee, a special order part. Yeah, I just— I'll eat it. Or hey, I'll just add 15 minutes worth more labor.

1:12:07It pays the $20 restocking fee and I move on. But at least I have all these parts here. So if the unknown happens, great, I have the parts. He was already expect— they were already expecting that upcharge in parts. If not, they're happy I didn't use them all. And they don't get charged for it. Well, it's— yeah, I had us— I had a conversation with a good friend and they talked about it was an injector fault on a vehicle and they went in there and, you know, injectors buried, right?

1:12:34So they give the customer the, the thing of the, well, we're gonna have to go in there and do an injector. Cool. So they get in there and they find out that it's actually just a pin fitment right at the injector, not the actual injector themselves. Now, you know, I can see both sides to where— what do you do? Do you just fix the pin fitment, or say you put a connector on for $20, or do you put the injector in?

1:12:56That is a weird spot for me because I'm going to tell you that right now, if you sold it as an injector, right, and you get in there, you put the damn injector in, and you, you buy the connector. If you either want to be upfront with the customer and tell them, you know, it was another $20, we did the connector while they're there, most customers will understand.

1:13:15But if you just put the $20 connector in and 1 year, 2 years, 3 years later the ejector finally dies, they're gonna wish when you initially had said it was an ejector that you had put it in. Oh, absolutely. So, you know, build your estimates, people, so that like you have wiggle room, you have a buffer. And I know for some people I'm not telling them anything complicated here, but think about that from the other side where if you just go in and you think you're being the hero because you just put the connector in and then all of a sudden, you know, 6 months, 8 months, you're looking at having to go do rework.

1:13:55That's not good. That's not good at all. Oh, and I've done— I've gone in, you know, pull something apart and there's 4 sets. You have to pull a component off, there's sensors underneath it. Tell like, hey, while we're here, let's just replace the sensors. They're $20 each. We just unscrew them, put them in, put everything back together again with the main component.

1:14:15You're not gonna have to worry about the sensors. And I've had it where customer said, nope, just do this part. Okay, great. And within 6 months they were calling me with a code and, hey, look, this sensor faulted out. Yeah, I'll pull everything apart again just to replace a simple sensor. That's like, we could have done this while it was here. It was an extra $20.

1:14:34We could have moved on., and now you're down for 3 days. I saw something similar. The last kind of scenario I can think of this was, um, glow plugs on a newer Duramax, a baby Duramax. And I talked to all kinds of people and they said, you know, uh, the harness is a really known issue. Um, you can test the harness, you know, you probably will find that when you unplug them off the back because it's a round single barrel kind of connector on it, um, you better change that harness when you're in there doing a glow plug.

1:15:03And I'm like, so should I do them all? And they're like, is it a warranty? I'm like, yep. They're like, we would, we would quote them all because they're all the same agent. And we ended up doing the one and we did the harness and it didn't come back. But again, I don't work there now, so it wouldn't surprise me if that truck now, um, you know, 30,000 miles later now needs another glow plug.

1:15:25And now what do you do? Because the labor on something like, it's like anything else, half the one side's really easy to get at, not terrible. The other half, not so much. You talk to these guys that like, they went through that with injectors on 6 liters. They don't ever just do one injector anymore. They're doing them all, you know, because they had too many customers.

1:15:43It's the same coils on Fords way back when, right? Tritons. You don't just do one. I mean, you can, but the right way to do it is because they're going to go bad one by one afterwards. My buddy Benji Burris is going to hate me, but I mean, come on, it's a Ford. Like, we're going to put all 8 into eventually while we own this thing.

1:16:02Let's just do all 8 in one shot, like, and done with it. And, and, you know, you can have a happy customer— all as happy as you're going to be driving a Ford, right, Benji? Um, for another $150,000 until it needs another set of coils. Like, let's, let's do it the right way, people. But ultimately, you got to be flexible. Um, what's, what's the kind of customer— like you said, you know, these people will work on it themselves sometimes.

1:16:27Does that make you, like, cringe when they call you up and say, or do you kind that just doesn't really bother you? So it, it depends on the customer. I have some that's like, okay, they know exactly what they're doing, and if they call me, it's because they already know it's over their head and they're not going to do it. I have one that scares me.

1:16:46He'll get torn partway into it, and when I get there, it's a mess. I'm trying to figure out where this pile of bolts and a coffee can go, and it's not organized. He And you find out, oh, you didn't really need to tear all this off. You could have done this one giant assembly, pulled it off, and been done with 4 bolts.

1:17:07Now I have 20 I have to find a home for. Uh, did you take pictures? No, you didn't take pictures. No. My wife and I laugh because most my pictures are nothing but things I've torn apart. And I tell her, I was It's not that I love the equipment more than you and the kids, just my phone can only hold so many pictures.

1:17:28I know, I know, but I, I— go ahead, go ahead there. No, I was just gonna say, you know, the new thing with this DVIs is there's all these technicians walking around now with these photo galleries of just, you know, failed stuff on a DVI. Like, I had to learn to go every week now and dump those out of my phone or else my phone would fill up with like Stuff that had no significance to anyone else but me, but it was bald tires and wire braid and tires and frayed, you know, drive belts.

1:18:00It was ridiculous. What do they— what, when you're talking to the customers, what's the thing that kind of has them like— because we, I guess on the on-road truck side of things, when we talk about the diesel, say, It's the emissions things that has everybody so frustrated. It's the same for you guys too? It is, it is. Uh, most my customers, they, they want deletes.

1:18:28I'm not gonna go into that software. I don't want it. It's against the law. I don't want to even be on it. Montana doesn't do any testing. They don't look at it. But I don't, I don't want to be involved in that because it's just One day it's just gonna be a no-go. Just like most states it is. If you get caught doing it, we've seen people prosecuted for it.

1:18:52I don't want to be a part of that. So I don't even— they ask you, will you delete this? Nope. I'll fix it the way it's supposed to be. Yeah. And the sad thing is I had one guy got a brand new tractor and it had all the emission stuff on it. He's like, yeah, this is great. And I said, yeah, I guarantee you'll have emissions faults if I scan it.

1:19:10Nope, nope, it's brand new, won't. Picked it up, yep, here they are. They're all inactive, but they're there. And I told her, I said, yeah, every tractor, doesn't matter, everyone I scan has— they're— if they're inactive, great, they might be active, but they're there. And it's a system that we have to live with. Did you, did you go through the shortage of— was it, was it DEF injectors, or was Pyro's temperature sensors, I can't remember.

1:19:41And everybody kind of rewrote their software to stop putting them in derate until the parts chain could catch up. Were you, were you part of that? I was not a part of that. I heard about it, but I was not a part of that. It— yeah, and I'm kind of out by now, but I know I talked to enough people that were like, oh yeah, all of a sudden, you know, finally the software could come out where it wouldn't derate the truck because of a temperature sensor that went skewed or a DEF nozzle all of a sudden, you know, uh, I think it was quality— DEF quality sensors is what the biggest problem was.

1:20:14And, you know, I, I understand what people are talking about with that system because it does seem absolutely asinine to take urea and dump it into an engine to try and make the engine run cleaner. I think it's absolutely ridiculous from a standpoint of like, there has to be a better way. But then what really is the better way. I don't think necessarily watching these trucks run down the road and all this black soot rolling out of them, you know, that, that triggers some people, is naturally the better way.

1:20:46But there has to be— I, I can't believe that we can't build these systems, I guess is what I'm trying to say, to be a little more, um, durable than what they are, you know. Yeah. And from what I've seen in Montana, our biggest thing is just cold because it freezes. And so the guys that don't plug in or they don't have a place to store their tractor, that's where I've been seeing the biggest problem is it's just getting cold.

1:21:13The cold weather in the summertime when— and they don't run them a lot in the wintertime. If it is, it's the feed and it's for half hour a day. It's not enough to get a load on that engine for that system to work properly. Yeah, in the summertime when they're running them on their fields they're running full bore. Hey, it's not an issue a lot of times, but the wintertime it is, and in the summertime it's a, we got to get this fixed because the hay's burning up, we gotta go.

1:21:42And you know, a lot of it is like that. And again, I'm not a— I'm not an engineer. The idea that, you know, the DEF line needs a heater in it so that it doesn't crystallize and stop essentially the flow When we stand here on the outside and we look at that, we go, that's just ridiculous. And they're right. But there is no really, you know, another way at the moment that I can think of to be able to get it there.

1:22:07Like, they're not just putting the heater in because they want to have fun. It has to work. Like, it has to be there for a reason. And it sucks. It's an engineering, you know, it's an engineering obstacle for sure. It's a puzzle. And, you know, deleting it doesn't— does it make the problem go away? Sure it does, but it creates a different problem that, like you said, if somebody was to find out— or let's just talk for a minute, you know, you have this machine in this state and you delete it and nobody cares because they don't inspect it.

1:22:39Say you go and sell that machine to somebody in the next state over, and all of a sudden that machine is, is a liability to them. Or it isn't worth anything because like all this stuff would have to be put back on it to make it work. That's, that's something we don't even think about, you know, going back to when you patch things or cobble things up for somebody, you think you're doing them a favor.

1:23:04Well, what about dealers? Some of them won't touch it. I know Caterpillar here, if they find out it's deleted, they won't touch that piece of equipment. So some of the guys that have deleted stuff are stuck with just me. And for me, that's not a bad thing business-wise. Oh, I'm stuck with this construction customer because I work on— so I have two customers that work construction area that I service their equipment as well.

1:23:27And it's like, great, that's good for me. But if I'm out in the middle of a field working on a tractor, how am I gonna get to your excavator? Yeah. And so you're down on a construction site for how long Uh, I don't know if John Deere or any of the tractor dealerships have got to that point here where they won't touch it, but I know if you're not careful with it, some of these newer tractors that receive software updates via satellite connection— yeah, they'll, they'll delete that, uh, delete flash, and you're going to have a whole world of problems with that engine now.

1:24:03So you got to be very careful, make sure all of it's incapacitated that system. How do you feel about that with the idea of the, the over-the-air updates being able to be a thing now? I actually, I think it's great. However, like, even when you see it on some of the swathers, I've seen it for John Deere, it tells you track, it can't be running, make sure the battery's charged.

1:24:30So that's where I see the issue is you got to get these guys find a way to keep that battery charged. One, either start putting, I guess, solar panels on the top of it as a battery tender so that it can do this. But those ranchers and farmers got to realize they, they might want a battery tender. If they see an update before they initiate it, make sure there's a charger on it so that it can charge it.

1:24:53Yeah, that's the big thing. I haven't run into a situation yet. I know I've gotten into some of the new Chevy trucks and they've given me prompts in the dash saying an update, you know, is available, an update may come. But I don't, I don't do anything more than that. Like, I just let somebody know and that's, it's up to them after that, right?

1:25:10Like, I'm not of the, I don't have that much control over where I work. Um, people have been getting on me, it's like, oh, you know, when I talked about selling some of the, the hybrids and the EVs that we sell, I've, I've got to make people, you know, remind them that I, I'm not in control of what people do with the vehicle.

1:25:30Right. I can only advocate and say that thing needs this or that thing has to go here because we don't have tooling. And that's it. That's all I can do. I'm not going to go and spend thousands of dollars on, you know, hybrid and EV tooling as an example, or software or anything else like this to fix because it's not my business.

1:25:54And everybody goes, well, then you shouldn't work for people like that. But here's the very real reality, okay, is that if you want to survive in this industry, you have to learn to pick your battles. And that means who you work for, who you pick as customers. It's all this fine balancing act of learning how to get along to go along, is I guess what I'm trying to say.

1:26:22You know, I don't always love what every employer that I've ever had does, or every customer I've ever had makes the choices. But life is about balance, and you just have to learn to, you know, see the positive is what I've been very good at in the last little while. So, oh, absolutely. And the whole— going back to the over-the-air thing, I think it'd be great, especially for some of these tractors, because what better way— if I go out just to call a dealer, I'm already diagnosing this, call a dealer, hey, does this have a software update?

1:26:54Yeah, well, this tractor, it wasn't pushed on. Or can you send it? Let's see, let's reflash it real quick and see what happens. I'm going to put my generator and a battery charger on this. Let's do this and save the customer some money because then they're not sending two techs out. Yeah, um, I, I think it's a benefit, but I can also see the headache of it because when you have guys who want to modify their equipment and all of a sudden they push a software update that eliminates that, you're going to have an unhappy customer.

1:27:29Yeah, I— and you know, it's funny, right? Because it's, it's— I think now to how well cars run, and like, I can, I can run a car in my shop, and if I don't have the exhaust hose on it, I have real no oil effects. You know what I mean? We don't. That's progress. Now everybody sits there and says, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:27:55The continuation of progress is going to continue to bring good and bad. It's just the way it goes. You know, I like that I can, I can have the car running and it's not, you know, a real huge risk to my health if I don't have the hose on it right away. I like that versus the cars my parents and our parents drove.

1:28:16You didn't dare think about doing that. Like you had an effect in a very short period of time. You didn't feel good, right? You know, I'm feeling a little woozy here now. We don't have that. That's progress. Oh, absolutely. My dad told me when I first started, decided I was going to be a mechanic, he's like, you're coming in at a good time because technology is changing so fast and you're coming at a good time to learn it..

1:28:39And now I'm looking at it, it's going, God, it's changing so fast. How do I keep up? Now, was your dad a mechanic? Uh, I'm third generation, actually. Wow. Very cool. So, and it's funny because my whole goal when I first became a mechanic was I'm going to be better than my dad. Yep. And then I realized I can't be better than he is.

1:29:00And the reason is, is I have technology at my hands he didn't have. I have tools that back then they probably would have called specialty tools and he may not be able to afford. That makes my life so much easier. And really what I've come down to is I can only be better than what I was yesterday. And that's my goal. Well, and you know, I'll say it.

1:29:25When my dad was coming up and my dad was an auto body guy, he didn't have a DVOM in his toolbox. Right? He had an old analog. And maybe, you know, a DVOM in the '80s was considered still, for a lot of technicians, a specialized tool, you know. Now I would argue that every technician has at least one, if not two or three DVOMs, right?

1:29:50Or we got a DVOM, we've got a, a, an amp clamp, we've got— how many technicians have their own scan tool now? Like a lot, right? Even if It's not just like a lot of technicians have a coder here. They have a very basic, you know, Launch Tech. I don't know their number, but, you know, a sub-$2,000 tool. That is where progress is happening.

1:30:14And again, you know, I don't look at the old generation and go, we're better than they are. Mm-mm-mm. There was something about what they faced every day that was just more feel and intuition and, you know, uh, senses-driven. Now they, they look at us and they go, well, you, you guys, you need to be told what to do, you know. If you don't have data, you can't fix it.

1:30:39Sometimes they're not wrong, you know, um, but it's, it's just, it's, it's a changing art, you know. It really is. It's, it's an evolution. Um, so your dad, your third generation then? Yes, my grandfather, dad's side, was mechanic as well. And he actually, when he was working, he was working with loggers, so he'd be up in the mountains and— wow— working on equipment there.

1:31:02So field. And, uh, yeah, my dad used to tell me that my grandfather was so good, he could walk up to a diesel engine and tell you which cylinder was missing. Yeah, like, that's impressive. Yeah, on the old mechanical stuff. Yeah, I mean I can remember, uh, somebody telling me his uncle showed him how he would set carburetors and distributors with a glass of water on the engine, right?

1:31:28That's how they were tuning them, was nice and smooth. We've all seen that. Um, and, and now we don't do anything like that. We have so much control, um, at our fingertips, or it's doing so much of the control that we can't manipulate it, that, you know, people look at it and go, oh, those were the good old days. I don't know, man.

1:31:50I, I kind of like the horsepower and the, and the mileage that we're getting in these days. I, I agree. I, I love the new technology. I love being able to look at it and go, oh man, look, I'm lean here, I'm rich here, this is what my mass airflow sensor is doing. So I love looking at all the data. I won't lie though, I have a couple guys, I have some, I will go work on some old Ford 8N tractors, carbureted, updraft.

1:32:20Yeah. And it's great to go out and pull a set of points off and regap them. And it's fun for me because there's a lot of guys in the shit. I asked one guy, like, how many guys do you think work at John Deere could still set a set of points? None. And that's what he says, like, the fact that I can do it, they're like, it's surprising.

1:32:44I'm like, dude, I learned how— my dad taught me how to set points on a '70s Ford. So he taught me how to keep it up. And my dad didn't want me to be a mechanic. Like, you talked about your dad. I've heard you say several times your dad did what? Told you not to do it. My dad told me, why do you want to be a knucklebuster?

1:33:05Yeah. Well, because it's just— yeah, I know why. It's because like when you're a lot like them, you kind of see that path, you know what I mean? It's like, you know, and we had an interesting conversation this morning. I think it's because some of the people that run businesses, there's two plans, there's two things. I think if you have children that want to go into the business and they run around and they hang around.

1:33:33There's two ways that goes. They either want no part of it or they're absolutely— my friend Tommy Markham, they're absolutely enamored with it, right? They can't see themselves as being anything other than a tech like their father, you know, and having a shop. And then the other side of it is like, I think they're building a business that they want. I don't want to use the word scalable, but I mean, they're trying to build this, this, this thing that somebody else will come along and want to buy because they have no succession plan that is within the family.

1:34:05They still have a succession plan, but it's not a succession plan that's within the family. I think that's then two very different trajectories that those two companies make and a very different growth plan that those two— and we're going down a completely different rabbit hole. That's where some of that people say, you know, Oh, that won't work where you are, or that won't work for— you're doing it wrong because of— it's, it's so vast now you can't say that, right?

1:34:34If I'm carrying my parents' name in a business, it looks very different how I conduct that business every day if I see my son is one day gonna— or daughter— is going to carry that. Whereas if I'm just building something that in— when I walk away from it, I hand the keys and I— the bank account suddenly has all these zeros in it and I'm free and clear.

1:34:58That's a different thing. And, you know, we have to respect both people on both sides of that. You kind of talked about, you know, the points thing and the technology. How does one in your field get training? So that I'm still trying to figure out. Uh, I do a lot of reading. Okay. So I have a Kindle, I download books, injectors, emission systems.

1:35:28I try to find as many YouTube videos, anything I can to keep myself up. Right. But I definitely realized that with new technology coming out, I'm going to fall behind because it's going to be harder for me to keep up on that. One of these days when I just, when I make the time, it's not when I find the time, I have to make the time.

1:35:47I want to actually go talk to the dealers and just say, hey, is there anything you know of? And I understand they, they might see me as competition, they may not. Uh, I've talked to service advisors and the managers at the stores and haven't had an issue to date, right? But I'd like to find out if there is any training they know I could sign up for, because I'd be willing to pay for it just to better myself.

1:36:09Yeah, but right now it's as much internet research as I can do and as much reading as I can do on various topics. Is there somebody out there that's kind of like, you know, because I keep throwing the name Scanderdanner around, but is there anybody out there in the, in the, the, the construction equipment, farm equipment, ag equipment realm that's kind of similar to him?

1:36:33I haven't found him yet, if there is. Okay. I, I often— I have a buddy I talk to a lot. He worked for John Deere, he worked for, uh, Torgeson's here. It's a dealership in Montana. And, but he went out on his own, so I've picked his brain on a lot of things. And, and he is, he is bright. Yeah, I, I've taught— just left a quick message of, hey man, I've done these tests, I'm stuck.

1:37:06And of course he's busy, and he'll call me up half hour later, have you tried this? Like, yeah, I just did it, it was right. Just by just a little short message. And it's like, man, I hate the fact that your brain can do that. Like, here's the reality, old Jeremiah, your brain did it too. You know what I mean? Like, it just— and that's where sometimes, like, I, I catch a lot of flack for this too, where I say, like, everybody keeps saying, you know, these technicians are not that, you know, they're not what— they're not, they're not able to do what I used to be able to do.

1:37:37Oh my God. We're, we're still trying to do what you used to do with twice as much tech in the same amount of time. And I, you know, I'm a big proponent of the idea that a lot of these technicians are a lot smarter than we think. We just, when we put them in that survival mode, if you gotta know by this time, you're gonna have a compromise.

1:37:58And, and it goes back to, um, you know, your dad used to just walk out, your grandpa used to walk out and there was nothing to plug in, right? It was just walk out, put your hands on the machine, drive it around maybe a little bit, watch what it did, listen to it, smell it, and you knew. Think about now, if we go out to a car and how many times have we gone out and the DLC doesn't communicate because the fuse is blown, right?

1:38:22Well, that becomes now a, uh, it can be anywhere from a 10-minute to a half an hour ordeal just to get the damn thing. Which fuse is powering up my DLC, right? Or guess what, it ain't the fuse. We're still asking these young people, I feel, to give them an answer inside of an hour. And I think that that's completely unrealistic now.

1:38:45I think that most of the time, the hour is some kind of search for common failures, pattern failures, technical bulletins, recalls, basic checks. And then the real diag, I think, starts after the hour. That's how I just— I want to look at it as like, you know, people, you heard the conversations, don't use the word diag. Okay, well then let's do the first hour as an evaluation and the second hour starts the testing.

1:39:17And that's how we should be approaching this, I think, at the counter with our customers, is it's not going to be an hour of diag anymore, it's going to be an hour of evaluation. And maybe some of that evaluation shows up on the DVIs that we do. Maybe we see the damn problem when we're inspecting the car, right? We love that. See, and I'm not afraid to use the word diagnostic or diag when I'm talking to my customers.

1:39:42Uh, did I just lose you? Yeah, you're back, you're back. Okay, so I, I tell them I'm gonna diagnose it and I'm gonna start with scanning for codes and I'm gonna go through the appropriate testing. Yeah. But like I said, 90% of my customers now know when I say I'm going to diag, there's tests. If it's, uh, diagging the hydraulic system, it means I'm checking for codes because it's all, most of it's electronic valves now.

1:40:09Yeah. And then I'm going to go through fluid checks, make sure everything's up to snuff, connectors are tight, pin fitment, all that, voltages. I'm just going to go through the steps in these tests.. So I, I can see where using some ways telling people, hey, there's these tests, because I've heard on your podcast or others, oh well, AutoZone does the diag. Yeah.

1:40:35And it drives me nuts because it's like, no, I've had that conversation, is a code scan and a diag are two different things. You want me to come out and code scan, I'll come out and code scan. It's an hour minimum for my time to put the computer up. Yeah, I'm there for 2 minutes to do it. But if you want further information and what's actually wrong, we're diagnosing the vehicle.

1:41:00Yeah. And because you can get to it where, again, it's that counter person. And man, they— they're— I'm sure there's going to be, you know, t-shirts made that, you know, have my face with the, you know, bullseye written on it because like I come after them hard. But I mean, There's so much more that they have to do when the customer says, you know, I got a check engine light on.

1:41:19Okay, next question. Have you had the car scanned recently? And if they say yes, okay, cool. What did this— what did the scan show? Ah, the scan showed I got a misfire. My advisor should be pretty familiar with what my next— if they're reading, this is the other thing. So they don't flip and read sometimes, and then they get in there and it's like like, okay, so last time we had a misfire fault in the shop, uh, every test ran— every tech ran a relative compression test, every tech ran a test drive monitoring live data to look at when the cylinder's misfiring, so on and so on and so on.

1:41:57They should be able to now confront that with the customer and say, okay, so if you had a misfire, our, our standard operating process looks like we perform a relative compression test. We, you know, we go for a road test and we look at scan data. We got to start having more conversation where it's not just we're pulling codes. Okay, we're gonna have to come in and pull the code.

1:42:19God, I hate that. They can pull the code for $50 themselves if they want, right? Go buy a cheap code reader and pull the damn code. What we need to be doing is having the conversation with the customer that this is going to be probably not something simple. Um, in their eyes, um, and it could be simple for us. And there's gonna be time spent.

1:42:41That's what we're selling here. We're not selling— we're selling time, we're selling repairs, we're selling knowledge. Oh, absolutely. I worked on a skid steer, had long crank, and they were— the owner pulled up the code off the screen that said it was the crankshaft position sensor. Oh yeah. And so he had one. He's like, come out here, replace it for me. So I show up and it's tucked down.

1:43:08So I reach my hand down and I'm like, well, that feels weird. And I push on it just slightly and the connector goes click. Yeah. Like, oh, let's try it now. Code's gone. Starts right up. No long crank. We're good. Like, okay, well, take your sensor back. Well, and that's it. And we work for people or we've talked to people that would have walked out there and said, there's no value in that, I'm not charging for that.

1:43:36Oh my God, let's think about this for a minute here. The customer was willing to pay for the value of the part and maybe had a clue as to what the labor was going to be to replace that part without even being pitched it. So if I go out to it, reach in, push on it and it snaps in place. I'm not trying to say we need to charge them at least whatever they were ready to pay for, but it doesn't need to be free.

1:44:04Not even close, right? They could have— no, absolutely— done it themselves, and they didn't. Maybe they're the ones that left it loose. Well, you know, yeah. So for me, it was just— I did it. He looked at me, he goes, Well, this sucks. Like, not so bad, just an hour minimum in my mileage. Yeah, yeah, is it there? We're done. I said, I'm gonna go to my next job.

1:44:30Too easy. I've had lots of crank sensors I had to use a torch to get out of the engine block. Lots of them. So that's cool. I mean, uh, some of them are behind the starter motor and you have to remove the starter to get at them. That's pretty cool that all I could do was reach in and plug it in and I fixed the car.

1:44:47That doesn't need to be free, is what I'm trying to say. You know, we have to start valuing what we do because the reality is, is like, we all didn't grow up and all our customers didn't grow up with mechanics in the family that taught them how to do this stuff. No, absolutely. The time it takes to know where to look and what to do is worth something.

1:45:14You put time into it. We put time into the knowledge, time into education. Whether you went to a college of technology or you were just an apprentice on a shop floor. Yeah, you went through time, you put time and effort to learn a trade, learn this trade. That knowledge is worth something. Yeah. Um, so what's the next 5-year plan look like for Jeremiah?

1:45:40Because you said to me you didn't ever see yourself maybe as being like a multi-truck, uh, having an employee type situation. I remember you, you, one of your first emails you sent to me is you didn't see yourself being that. Why is that? So honestly, it's just kind of laziness on my part. I don't want to have to deal with the, uh, taxes, benefits, Insurance on multiple trucks.

1:46:07Uh, I don't want to have to worry about one guy ruining a name that I've built, right? I'm willing to stay— I'm willing to turn down jobs because I don't have time to get to them. And the customers I have, some of them are willing to wait. Sometimes they can't. But unless they're lying to me, I've been told that I'm the first person they call to see if they can get to it.

1:46:31So I don't see a need to hire somebody else, right? Um, 5 years from now, I'm hopefully gonna— I should— I'm gonna be getting OEM software for sure so I can start programming. I can start doing that kind of stuff. Uh, but other than that, hopefully get a nicer truck. Of course, I bought used, trying to save as much money as I could going in.

1:46:59I don't ever want to own a new truck. Nope. But I will hopefully have a bigger truck, something that can carry more tools, because toolboxes always fill up. Yeah. The truck was half empty when I started, and now it's full. So, uh, but I just— I— my, my future plan is just keep growing, keep getting my, uh, capabilities, just increase those capabilities, make myself more of a value to this area that I'm in.

1:47:30Amen. That's what I say. That's— it doesn't matter whether you're trying to be more valuable to your local customers or whether you're trying to be more valuable to your employer. Uh, I've said everything else. Sometimes that's the only leg up you have on your fellow employee is your ability being better than theirs. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying go around being a braggart, but if you pour into yourself that way, it will come back to you in this industry no matter what.

1:47:56There is no better investment you can make in yourself than training. Thing. None. Zero. It is the best thing you can do. And that's, like I said, that's what I'm working on, is trying to find where I can go. Because you could teach yourself, you can read books. However, there's value in having somebody else show you a skill and then developing it further from there.

1:48:19Yeah. And so I definitely see the value in getting myself to an in-person training somehow, some way. Any other future, both my boys say they don't want to be mechanics, but they're 10 and 5, so God only knows what they're going to decide in the end. Yeah, I just need to get to the point where I can retire. Like I said, whether that— my wife, and she knows me probably better than I know myself, I can't sit stagnant.

1:48:48Okay, so like even before this interview, I was out helping pull old railroad ties for garden beds out and I can't sit. I have to do something. So I'll probably do something part-time, but I always tell people, like, it'll be whether I'm doing the field or I have a shop. I've toyed with the idea of finding some property and getting a shop built so I can do stuff easier in the wintertime.

1:49:12Yeah, but toyed with the idea of having people call me, say, hey, we need you to come do this. Ah, you know, doing a starter's too heavy today. I'll pass. Yeah, but I'll come and change your oil if you need it. Or like me, I mean, in a perfect world, although it wouldn't really be all that perfect, I guess I'd want to work 6 months and I'd want to be like the winter months, if I was going to be mobile, the winter months I'd be somewhere warm and I'd be fishing.

1:49:39And then I would have to come back up here when it was warm and then I would work. Problem being is that when I'm up here and it's warm, I still want to fish. So I don't think if I can ever dial it back because I'm not one of these people, like I like to stay busy, but I'm comfortable now with just sitting and napping.

1:49:58And I'm certainly comfortable, I'm comfortable on the bow of a boat running a trolling motor 8, 10 hours a day chasing stupid little fish around. I can do that long into the sunset. It's not gonna bother me at all. Not even close. See, when I'm doing stuff like that, I'm good. I, I've— yeah, I— we already have our camping set, our camping days scheduled out on the calendar.

1:50:20Good for you, man. Uh, I've— all I have to do is buy some cigars and get the camper hooked up and go. Yeah, that's Brian Pawlik. Like, that's his thing, you know. He goes, he hooks the RV up to the, to the Ford, and, uh, yeah, he'll be mad at me for making fun of Ford too, but he hooks the RV up to the Ford, and then every morning is like he's smoking something starting at about 4 in the morning.

1:50:44And, you know, the smoker's running nonstop, and that's his getaway. That's his unplug. That's his reset. And, you know, he'll send me pictures of the fish that he caught and all that kind of stuff. And we keep saying we're going to get together sometime because he's not that far away, and I'm going to take him fishing up where he is. But I mean, that's just the whole thing.

1:51:03I keep telling people, this is about balance. You know, you don't want to If you love to work and your whole dream is to work until your last day, there's nothing wrong with that. But do it because you want to do it, not because you have to do it, right? That's the difference. Because, you know, the, the, you know, the— you can't pour that, you can't pour that sand back in.

1:51:29And, you know, I, I— it hurts me, it breaks my heart to see some people figuring it out too late. You know, they missed out on this and they missed out on that. And you know, now they're in a situation where they're having to work longer than they should because they weren't, they didn't get it when they were starting out. And that's just it.

1:51:51You've gotta know where to put your customers and where you put your family. And— See, now— Go ahead. I was gonna say, uh, I'm glad my wife got me to that point because the first year, year and a half of this business, I was working myself into the grave to show nothing for it. No family time, no enjoying it. And then we got the camper, and it's work phone stays home.

1:52:16What's your wife's name, Jeremiah? Brittany. Brittany. Well, thank you, Brittany, if you're going to listen to this. Maybe you will, maybe you won't, I don't know. That's, you know, there's so many people like that that don't listen to what your wife was saying, you know, and or it takes longer than a couple of years to get it. And, you know, I'm not out here trying to be everybody's Britney, but I'm trying to— when I say know where your customers are and where your family is, don't get those two of them mixed up because it's not the same thing.

1:52:51It really is not. And, you know, if you want to think of your customers as family, That's fine. But don't sacrifice your people for your customers. Don't ever do that, people, because this is why we're kind of in the pickle that we are in this industry, is because I think we just did it for too long because we didn't know any better.

1:53:10It wasn't that it was malice. We just didn't know any better. And now with things like this podcast and people like Jeremiah sharing what they're— what they've been through, what they're doing, how they're doing it, there's really no excuse for it anymore, you know. Well, with customers, if you were to die tomorrow, they're gonna just go find another mechanic. They're gonna find somebody else to work on their stuff.

1:53:34Your family is never going to be able to replace you. They can't just go to the Ford dealership and go, there's a bald guy that looks like Dad, come on, you're with us. Yeah, there's a lot of bald guys walking around, but you're, you know, there's only one bald guy that's Dad. Yeah. And that's, you're exactly right, Jeremiah. What you said is that as much as you leave a hole when we go, for our customers, they will survive.

1:54:04They do. They find somebody else begrudgingly, maybe more costly, but they manage. You cannot, I'm going to say it again, you can't put that sand back in and you can't take it with you when you go.. So, you know, if you want to, if you want to ride off into the sunset and chase fish your whole life, you know, at some point make a, make a goal as to when you know that that's going to happen for you and then work towards that goal.

1:54:34It's just like my sister Tanika talking about, you know, what Rick was teaching in one of his classes about how every time— it's with Brittany Knox— every time you want to give the customer a discount now you know, take it out of their savings account. Well, now in turn, she calls everything like the Disney account, and now that money that they used to give away as a discount is now a trip for their kids to Disney, like what you were able to do.

1:55:02So I mean, Jeremiah, thank you, man, for being here today. People, you know, I want to have more— I want to— like, it was Jeremiah and we were talking— I want to have more exposure to people that rent wrench, but don't wrench in a traditional— what we know them to be, you know, the automotive sector. So if you're listening to this and you, you know, if you're into— you wrench on airplanes, you know, if you wrench on, I don't know, forklifts, uh, you know, weird farm equipment, weird— if you wrench on a battleship somewhere, get a hold of me, man.

1:55:38I would love to hear about that kind of shit because I just I think it's fascinating because this is, this is not about, you know, we all have a perspective we can talk about based on, on the automotive side, but there's so much more here that we can all learn from each other. So, Jeremiah, any closing thoughts, man? No, sir, we covered it.

1:56:00I appreciate the chance to talk with you. I've listened to every one of your podcasts. Took me a few months but got through them and They're all interesting in their own right. I've enjoyed them. Well, that's the time. I'll send you the— yeah, that's what it is. When there's nothing else to listen to on the radio, just turn to me and I'll send you the check.

1:56:19Thank you. Um, but yeah, I mean, and that's why we do it, man. It's just because, you know, I want people to know that you're not an island and, and, you know, everybody has gone through some stuff to be where we are. And, um, and that's what makes— you know, like we talked about in the beginning, like what makes us tick, what makes us weird the way we are, it's because we're just destined to do it.

1:56:44You know, what is seen as an ailment, like I can't let it, turn it off, that can be a superpower. But learn how to turn it off and focus on what's really important, and that's, you know, Brittany and the kids. And everything else. People are listening, you know, I don't do this for the money. I don't do this because, you know, I want people to be like, you know, in awe.

1:57:11I do this because I want people to know that you're not alone. And what I went through and what we're all going through is not the end. It is just part of the journey. And you get to where you're supposed to be if you pour into yourself. That is it. You do the work. You keep training, you keep learning, and this is a very, very rewarding, fruitful career.

1:57:34You know, I don't think Jeremiah regrets, you know, any of the choices he's made. Do you? No, no. The only thing, if I said I regretted anything, it'd be not taking advantage of training earlier in my career. 20 years in and I'm just starting to go, okay, I'm fallen behind. I should have been pushing for training a lot earlier, but it's, it's never too late.

1:57:59That's the beauty of it, guys. So Jeremiah, we'll have you back at some point, man. Thank you for coming and sharing with us. This was really cool, really cool. Thank you, sir. I enjoyed it. Yeah, well, um, I'm gonna reach out to some people that know a lot more about the fly fishing thing up here than I do, and, uh, maybe I can get you on to some ideas for, for the smallmouth on a fly rod, because like I said, what I've I've never caught— I've never caught trout on anything but spinning gear, so I can't really relate to the fly rod thing.

1:58:28But from the way people tell me, the fly rod with trout or with smallmouth, you have to try that. So I'll reach out to them, Jeremiah, and I'll see if I can get you some stuff, some ideas, what to look for, setups, all that kind of stuff. And then hopefully, you know, you can share with me, um, some of the fishing that you've been doing, because I mean As much as I love to talk about this, I love to talk about fishing.

1:58:53So everybody— sounds like a plan. So thank you very much, Jeremiah. All the best to you. We'll talk to you again soon. Um, everybody, if you're thinking about going to a training event, then we've got one coming up in Pennsylvania. It's, uh, Tools. Um, it's about— depending on when this comes out, it's the end of April, uh, last weekend in April. Everybody should be there.

1:59:16It's at Hershey, Pennsylvania, supposedly, if you love chocolate like me. We've got some very cool things coming up with Launch Tech USA. We'll be doing some demos with their equipment, and we'll be hopefully sharing a lot more of their stuff going forward. We're really excited. And as always, everybody that makes this possible, my friends at TechMetric, my friends at Promotive, Thank you for making this, you know, allowing me to be able to share with everybody, um, what it is we're trying to do.

1:59:49We're just trying to make this industry better. So Jeremiah, brother, we'll talk to you soon, man. Thank you very much, everybody. I love you. As always, try to just be 1% better tomorrow than you were today. Be nice to everybody if you can. Be understanding. And we'll talk to you all again soon. Thanks, guys. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on, and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it.

2:00:15And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASAR Group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say: In this industry, you get what you pay for.

2:00:37Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10mm, and we'll see you all again next time.