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My name is Jeff, and I'd like to welcome you on a journey of reflection and insight into the tolls and triumphs of a career in automotive repair.
After more than 20 years of skinned knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspective and hear other people's thoughts about our industry.
So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.
Jeff Compton [00:00:06]:
I think, honestly, Marshall, what's happening is the industry is trending towards. They're going to eliminate the advisor position. Lance agrees.
Marshall Sheldon [00:00:12]:
100. 100.
Jeff Compton [00:00:14]:
They are going to do this with this industry, whether we like it or not. It's already been happening. At the Nissan dealer I was at, we had a kiosk.
Marshall Sheldon [00:00:27]:
Oh.
Jeff Compton [00:00:27]:
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic podcast. Know I've got a friend of mine here that in some circles is very well known, and then in other circles, not so much. And, you know, we're gonna break the trend and we're gonna have an American on, because it seems like lately we've had a lot of Canadians, and then we have some Americans and back and forth. And, you know, being that we want to keep things nice and even because, you know, we're still holding out to be the 51st state. Right? According to the Donald. So, Marshall Sheldon, brother, how are you tonight, buddy?
Marshall Sheldon [00:01:05]:
Hey, we're living it. You know what I mean? We're doing great.
Jeff Compton [00:01:09]:
Yeah, man. Now, Marshall reached out to me. I've known Marshall about it, I guess about a year, because our good friend, our mutual friend, Mr. Joshua Taylor from the Wrench Turns podcast kept raving about Marshall. Marshall's this. Can I call you heavy equipment tech? Is that fair to say?
Marshall Sheldon [00:01:28]:
Yeah, because I kind of work on anything bigger than F250. You know what I mean? Anything. Anything bigger than that, I'm down, so.
Jeff Compton [00:01:36]:
And we've had a lot of guys on lately, like, episode that just came out Tuesday. Lance mechanics. Lance works at the mining field. Former guest Lee forget. He kind of works in the mining thing. Goes back and forth. We've had a few guys in the heavy equipment. And it's funny, Marshall more and more are reaching out to me every week.
Jeff Compton [00:01:57]:
Want to know, hey, can I be on? And I'm like, man, like, I don't have any problem with, you know, I don't care if you work on a motorcycle. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, wheels. And you're a technician. Let's. Let's have a conversation. I'm. I'm not ready to say, like, I want to talk to the H VAC guys or anything like that. Right.
Marshall Sheldon [00:02:14]:
Because, I mean, that's a different trade, though. That's totally different. We're talking nuts and bolts. You know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [00:02:19]:
They're sitting on a pile of money, right? They don't need to come on. It's pretty cool, Marshall, that the. The. I'll say this, the heavy equipment side is even more varied scope, you know what I mean, Compared to the stuff like. And we were just talking about that before we turned on about a PTO that failure and a young man that you're working with. And I was going to say, I think I shimmed up the last PTO I ever shimmed up in. Oh, crap, 1999.
Marshall Sheldon [00:02:50]:
Oh, nice.
Jeff Compton [00:02:52]:
Last time I've ever touched one. So. Other than to like take the drive shaft off going to it, you know. But I mean, yeah. And you got a young man with you that's working with you, that is you're putting a brand new Allison in a truck and this PTO had a failure and essentially caused the transmission to fail.
Marshall Sheldon [00:03:16]:
Yeah. So like we were talking before is, you know, this thing, these, some of these, you know, you have a couple of different ways that the PTO can come online. So they have like an air shift one. Back in the day they had a cable one, you know, that would shift it. And then the newer ones on the auto transmissions, they're clutched inside kind of like a micro transmission. And then, and then what they do is the way they come online is they come online with transmission fluid pressure.
Jeff Compton [00:03:48]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:03:49]:
So when you, when you flip, when you flip the PTO switch on, opens a solenoid. It already has the pressure up against that solenoid. So then that pressure, that solenoid opens. Boom. It kicks that PTO on. And so this one, the case had cracked and then when, you know, the drivers were utilizing it, they were just pumping the transmission fluid out of it until it said no more and. And then it wouldn't shift. And that's when they finally, finally brought it in.
Marshall Sheldon [00:04:17]:
They run that joker till she burned down to the ground.
Jeff Compton [00:04:20]:
So is there no. No low warning fluid system on it or. Because I can remember like obviously there used to be way back in the day. I can remember when the PTO was engaged, right. You get some kind of indicator on in the dash light up. But I guess a really smart guy might put in like some kind of fail safe so that.
Marshall Sheldon [00:04:38]:
Well, a lot of those transmissions do, you know, I think, I don't know for sure, so don't quote me that I think they can set up that way. I don't know if they're all specked with it automatically and then it's just a programming situation or what have you. But these ones definitely don't because they burn them jokers down the ground.
Jeff Compton [00:04:57]:
And you were saying this is a local county to you, right? Yeah, it's a town, essentially. What up here in Canada we call a township truck and it's used for.
Marshall Sheldon [00:05:06]:
Yeah. Refuse and stuff.
Jeff Compton [00:05:08]:
Yeah. And, and how they always spec them as cheap as possible. Right. Low bid and the whole thing.
Marshall Sheldon [00:05:13]:
Yeah. All the cities is like that, you know, and it's basically like they, they, they, when they build them, they just build them with really low spec PTOs. They're just. So that they can win the bid. And then two years down the road they're needing a, a real expensive PTO or worst case a PTO and a transmission, you know, because you said with.
Jeff Compton [00:05:34]:
You'Re up to $13,000 just in the PTO and the transmission. Yeah, they were. On top of that, we said, well it'll be a $20,000, it's going to be expensive.
Marshall Sheldon [00:05:44]:
Yeah. Unfortunate.
Jeff Compton [00:05:48]:
So your young guy, he's doing pretty well then?
Marshall Sheldon [00:05:51]:
Yeah. So it's kind of a crazy deal. Like we've talked about it briefly I think in passing in the past. But like I, so basically I one on one apprentices for six months.
Jeff Compton [00:06:02]:
Right. I remember.
Marshall Sheldon [00:06:02]:
And then, and then they kind of peel off, I take the next one and then it becomes a more of a mentorship after that where you know, they don't need their hands hold it at that point. You know, they've, they've got, we have a very aggressive training program for them and then you know, all their online OEM trainings and then, and then on top of that they're working with me every single day, 50 hours a week. Boom, boom, boom. You know, they, they, it's like drinking from a fire hose. They, they do pretty well though. It's that six month mark. They're, they're doing pretty solid by then and then they can kind of start getting that independence and then I'm taking on the next guy and then they're working in a bay right next to me or whatever. So they're close at hand.
Marshall Sheldon [00:06:45]:
So if they need help they can, they can ask. So it's not, they're not just getting kicked off and having to figure it out themselves, you know, and I think.
Jeff Compton [00:06:53]:
That'S where in the industry, especially on the car side, I think the ball gets dropped so much. Right. Because like I can remember like when I walked into the independent shop way back when I was set up next to a senior technician, like an old guy and he kind of, I was over his shoulder, he was over mine all day long. Right. And, and it was good. Provided of course that that person is good. Right. In terms of their, their work habits and all that kind of stuff.
Marshall Sheldon [00:07:21]:
Right.
Jeff Compton [00:07:21]:
He was a funny. He was a funny guy. He was the kind of guy. So people that are familiar kind of with my area, this is when I worked in Ottawa and he lived over in what we called hall or Gatineau. So he had like an hour commute every morning to get to work.
Marshall Sheldon [00:07:38]:
And.
Jeff Compton [00:07:39]:
And he was a funny guy. He hated to drive in traffic. So he would tend to drive over from Hull to Ottawa in the morning at like 5 in the morning. And then it didn't matter what time, like what time of year it was winter, summer. You'd find him asleep when I'd come to work at 8 in his car. Yeah, it was running to have the AC going in the summertime or it was running to keep him from freezing. And he'd sit there and then wait. So you go and knock on the window.
Jeff Compton [00:08:06]:
That was my first job every morning is go and knock on Paul's window and wake pa. And everybody thought, well, okay, Paul will be in, you know, five minutes after Jeff knocks on the whip. No, he would. Then there was a Harvey's right next door to the shop. And he would walk over, he would get breakfast, he'd start work around nine. Yeah, funny guy, you know, very good technician. But I can remember I'd be leaving at 5 and it'd be like I'd drive past the shop, 6:30, 7 o'. Clock, he'd still be working.
Jeff Compton [00:08:38]:
The boss would be waiting for him to like finish up, you know. And so when I joke about the guys, it was maybe, maybe think of him. The last week we had a discussion. It's like, how do I get my technicians to come in on time? Like they're caught.
Marshall Sheldon [00:08:51]:
Oh yes.
Jeff Compton [00:08:52]:
Five minutes, ten minutes late. And I never started following his habits of, you know, just setting my own schedule. But he could kind of get away with that, Marshall, because like he was the best tech that my employer at the time could find and could hire. And he kind of had to put up with that. And I'm not saying that it's right, but sometimes that's part of the package deal. Right. Like you get.
Marshall Sheldon [00:09:18]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:09:18]:
To get those kind of videos, syncrasies. You're young guys. Do you find that they're like, how do you adjust to when they're different personalities like that?
Marshall Sheldon [00:09:28]:
You know, I. One thing I figured out early on, because I've been doing this for. I've been trained in apprentices for a long while, probably a little over 10 years. And so I figured out pretty quick that like, I have to be part of the. It starts at the. I have to choose the apprentice too. Like, so when we're recruiting, like, I'm like, yeah, I like this one. I like that one.
Marshall Sheldon [00:09:51]:
I like this one. You guys can pick whichever, but, like, these are the three that I like. And I've never had a problem not having the options of apprentices. We usually have a pretty good selection. And then I kind of go off to the personality. I think about the team that I already have and then also myself, because they're going to work with me. And I'm like, I don't know if this guy's going to be able to handle my ways or are we going to mesh well or he's also got to mesh well with the team once he breaks free, you know, So I think a lot about those things. But over time, I kind of just developed the ability to kind of see if they're going to work out with, you know, mesh well.
Marshall Sheldon [00:10:34]:
And then once I got that kind of down, then it, you know, I studied. I read a lot about how people learn and, you know, things like that, that really helped out a lot because then I would try to implement things into my teaching. So, like, you know, obviously, I kind of had an idea that a lot of people in our industry learn by touching feeling.
Jeff Compton [00:10:57]:
Yes.
Marshall Sheldon [00:10:58]:
Doing right. But, you know, if you want a successful apprenticeship, you've really got to hit all the bases as often as possible. So I will show them, okay, this is how we do it. This is the. I'll get out the repair instruction. Read it out, have them read it out. I make them take notes. Some guys remember stuff by making their own notes.
Marshall Sheldon [00:11:22]:
So I'll say, hey, get out your pocketbook. I. All my apprentices, I give them one little pocketbooks they can put in their teeth, their shirts. And I hey, write this down. Write these steps down. And, you know, I usually do steps like that first before I start bringing out the manual, because I want to know if, like, they're gonna remember steps and remember things that I asked them to do in particular. So I'll start with, like, three steps. Do this and this and this.
Marshall Sheldon [00:11:46]:
Come get me when you're done. Yeah, do this and this and this and this. And I just build it up. I keep adding ad and adding, adding. And then I also keep track in my mind, like, okay, he's already done this job once before. And then I'll go over there and we'll pull the vehicle in and we'll say, okay, walk me through the process. You know, what are we going to do this, you know, how are we going to do it? And see if they see how much they retained. And then we just build on it and build on it and build on it, you know, that's pretty.
Marshall Sheldon [00:12:12]:
And so that's kind of the approach that I take because it seems to work no matter what kind of person they are, because, you know, I hit all the bases every time. And they typically. It works every time pretty much.
Jeff Compton [00:12:28]:
So what's something that when somebody is, is applying and you see it in the resume or in the recruitment side of it that they're coming from a background that you go, oh, that one's gonna be a good one. Like, because people have heard me talk about you. Like, I had a service manager and actually I've even had other multiple employers that, you know, 20 years ago they used to find, try to find kids that grew up on farms. You know what I mean?
Marshall Sheldon [00:12:51]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:12:51]:
Oh, they, they just, and it wasn't like they all, they know how to work, you know what I mean? It was like they'd be handy because lots of kids from my generation didn't grow up on farms, but they knew how to work. Like, they were, they were, you know, they had ambition. I'm not saying young people don't. But what's, what's it when you see that, you go, oh yeah, like, does it have to be second generation technician or like farm kid or.
Marshall Sheldon [00:13:17]:
You know, honestly, usually the second generation techs are the worst. Not that they're bad with their hands, but they think they're better than they are because my dad was a mechanic, right. I'm like, dude, I don't give a crap about your dad. Nothing personal. But like, I'm dad now, you know what I'm saying? You know, I'm dad now, you know what I mean? But I would say like one thing that I really, I'm looking at resumes, sure. But like, I just want them all to come in.
Jeff Compton [00:13:48]:
Okay.
Marshall Sheldon [00:13:49]:
I'd rather meet them, talk to them. What I'm looking for, me personally is like, I don't want a guy that's just like, oh, like I want them to kind of open up sometimes I've had them where they don't really open up when it's like the GM and service manager and me and we're all in a room and we're asking questions. Yeah. So like, I like to kind of walk them around a little bit, you know, walk around the yard and talk and just see, I, I like a personality. So if I got a guy, I don't need a Chatty Cathy, but I don't mind one. But I don't need one. And so what I, I look for is somebody that's personable, right? I can teach anybody how to fix trucks. So I don't care if they know anything.
Marshall Sheldon [00:14:30]:
I don't care if they have any tools. I don't care about any of that stuff because all that stuff comes with learning and doing it and all those things. They'll buy tools. I'm worried about that. But, you know, are they cool? Can you get along with them? Does it seem like you're cut from the same cloth? You know, kind of thing?
Jeff Compton [00:14:47]:
Yeah, you want some confidence, right, that they, they, you know, and again, like I've, I've talked to some that they have stories of like jobs they tried and went south, right? Like, I'd like to hear that story because then it's like I can probably go, oh yeah, I remember the first one. Or you can kind of pick out like from what they're telling you is like, oh, I know, I know exactly what you're talking about. If you'd have just done this, yeah. They go, oh yeah. Like, I eventually got there, right?
Marshall Sheldon [00:15:12]:
Like I figured, right?
Jeff Compton [00:15:13]:
That's the kind of confidence that I like, is that they, they've got enough. Like my friend Brian Pollock says, like, they, I've broke more than most guys are ever going to fix is what he's famous for saying. And it's like, it's true though, right? Like, I want the guy that. I don't want somebody that's ham fisted and Smashy Bear, but I want somebody that like, is. Will go in there and try, you know, like you break a bolt off, whoop dee doo. We'll get it out, right? There's another skill. We're in there, grab the welder and we're gonna get it out. Like, stuff like that.
Jeff Compton [00:15:43]:
I don't, I don't want to see anybody get hurt and I don't want to see like a really expensive mistake happen. But I mean, too often I think in this industry we, you know, a, we're not mentoring them properly or well. But like, I just talked to a guy the other day. He had this technician, young apprentice like yourself that you've had working for like a year. And the guy had given his notice and was going to quit because like, the guy wasn't moving him up. And I said, why didn't you move him up? And he says, well, he never came and asked to be moved up. And I said, well, was he doing well? Oh, yeah. I could give him wheel bearings and brakes and, you know, some.
Jeff Compton [00:16:21]:
He was doing all the services and flush is fine, but he was. This young man was going to leave and go be an advisor because he felt like. And I'm sitting there going like, and this is a shop owner. I don't know that well. It's just in a conversation, right. He's reaching out to me and I'm like, we do this all the time in the industry. And I said, well, did you, like, want him to leave? No, I didn't want him to leave. Okay, so why did he leave? Well, it wasn't just about the money.
Jeff Compton [00:16:48]:
Like, he. But he felt like he wasn't moving ahead. And this shop owner, I don't know that well, but I said, see, this is the problem, this industry sometimes, like. And, you know, I used to think it was like they didn't want to move guys up because they didn't want to pay them more. Right. That was the old. It was like, I, you know.
Marshall Sheldon [00:17:04]:
Right, right.
Jeff Compton [00:17:05]:
But he just genuinely. I'm like, why did you not move him ahead? He's like, well, you never asked. I'm like, never asked. These people came under this industry. Now, I guess maybe I'm. I'm still funny that way. And I think. I think when they come in and they start doing this, I think they think they want to do it for their whole career.
Jeff Compton [00:17:23]:
Right. Like, so he shouldn't have to come to you or she and say, move me up to more jobs. I think if they're doing them well, we have to. We have a responsibility to make sure that we have a plan in place of evolving skills. Right. Like, give them bigger and bigger tasks, more responsibilities, more complex repairs. It just struck me funny and, you know, it was a good conversation to have with the shop owner. But, like, this is the problem.
Jeff Compton [00:17:51]:
This happens every day. Technicians. And I think even before they. They find another job, you know how they're up here, Sheldon, and they might have.
Marshall Sheldon [00:18:00]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:18:01]:
I think that has to drop because. Not because their attitude got bad, but because they felt like maybe they'd plateaued in the eyes of the employer. And what do I do? So just, you know, I don't give 100 anymore. Right. I give 80.
Marshall Sheldon [00:18:14]:
Well, and, you know, it's too much stick sometimes and not enough carrot, too, you know where. And that doesn't mean necessarily to your point that, like, they needed the money, they wanted more money. Of course they wanted more money. But, you know, it's not always that. To me, I Don't think, you know, my guys, I, I take a varied approach. We have, like, where I work, we have a pretty structured, like I said, we have a pretty structured situation. But they want to go to the training classes. You know, they do all their online prereqs and then they get to go to a class.
Marshall Sheldon [00:18:48]:
They're looking to go to those classes.
Jeff Compton [00:18:50]:
Right.
Marshall Sheldon [00:18:51]:
You know, they're looking for their structured reviews and if they're due for, they hit all their metrics, you know, they want their pay raises, of course, but they're also looking forward, to your point, that next step. And that next step sometimes is this training that they need for the next level to get to that next, that next point in their, in their technician careers. Or if you talk to your guys, sometimes they're like, is there any management training that I can do? Is there any service writer training I can do? Is there any. They might be interested in other things that we have the ability to support, and I'm all about that. If, if I have the ability to give it. And I, I will fight for my guys too, because I don't want to invest all that time into an apprentice just to give them to somebody else.
Jeff Compton [00:19:45]:
Exactly. Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:19:46]:
I'm going to go to the management team and I'm going to say, hey, y' all got to do whatever you got to do. I don't really know what that looks like, but I've talked to the, the technician. The technician is like, hey, why didn't I get to go to training? I see everybody else going to training around me, you know, I, I'd like to think I do a pretty good job of keeping an eye on that, keeping track of it and, and really trying to fight for my guys and make sure, like, I'm in the ear of the, the management team saying, hey, my technicians need training, my technicians need raises, my technicians need this because I'm, I've got all this invested. They don't have as much invested as I do because it's, it's, it's my legacy that I pour into these apprentices and, you know, to them, sometimes not necessarily my direct management, but we're talking industry, you know, in the, in the industry, they're thinking, I would just get another one. You can train that one too, you know, we'll just get you another one. Don't worry about it. You know what I mean? It's like, no, that's not how this works. I train apprentice.
Marshall Sheldon [00:20:48]:
You guys retain them.
Jeff Compton [00:20:49]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:20:50]:
You know, it's my job to train them. You Asked me for killers. I'm going to give you killers. It's your job to keep them. And if I've got a fight for him, if I've got to put my stuff on the line, I go right down the street and get a $5 raise. I don't. That I'm not worried about. About that for me, but I'm in a good place where my management supports what I do, and they got my back when I ask them to.
Marshall Sheldon [00:21:12]:
So, like, I don't want to be put in those positions. Luckily, they. They don't really put me in those positions right now, you know, but program.
Jeff Compton [00:21:20]:
Is obviously working right for you guys.
Marshall Sheldon [00:21:23]:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, they see the money. You know what I mean? That's how they get paid. They get paid off the financials and all those things, and they're incentivized for us to make money. And if I'm put. If I have a program that's put together and that's built off of their program and it works and they're making money, they ain't gonna say nothing. They're gonna keep letting me do what I want to do.
Jeff Compton [00:21:43]:
Yeah. It always struck me as funny where, like, you would walk in and, you know, after you've been at a new shop for a while, and, like, Lord knows, I've moved around more than most texts ever have or should. But there's always story, you know, every shop I've ever been at, they always talk about this apprentice. And, you know, they talk about them two ways. They talk about them like, oh, my God, like, he. Thank God he got out and he went somewhere else. Right. He went to H Vacol or something like that.
Jeff Compton [00:22:07]:
And then they'll. They'll talk about, you know, the other guys that were like. Like I've said around here, yeah, he was really good. And he left to go work at the Goodyear Tire factory. You know, that's a common story around where I. Where I. And, you know, they're like, why did. Why did they leave? Money was better.
Jeff Compton [00:22:25]:
You know, hours were better.
Marshall Sheldon [00:22:28]:
They ain't got to work Saturdays. They. The paychecks were steady. I mean, we just poke all kinds of holes in this. You know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [00:22:34]:
Like, when they go to the Goodyear factory, they're going to work shift work, but they go on to shift work with a shift bonus for being nights and weekends. They don't buy a damn tool at all. They walk in with almost no tools. They get a tool allowance every month. Work boots, the whole thing. Every. Every piece of, you know, safety equipment, personal, all covered. Like they literally have.
Jeff Compton [00:22:59]:
It's so funny I think of it, it's like, you know, I can remember having to go and like ask for shop supplies at the dealership and they'd be like, okay, here's your thing of like brake lube, you know, you better not. Or a can of brake clean. Don't ask for another one till the end of the week. Yeah, they have vending machines where it.
Marshall Sheldon [00:23:13]:
Literally like, yes, I've seen those.
Jeff Compton [00:23:17]:
You put your card in and whatever you want comes into the vending machine. And it's not like anybody's looking at how much you're using, it's just like they're tracking. Okay, it's, it's a valid card. Good. He gets his little thing of anti. Seize, whatever like that is to me is so more efficient than think about like, okay, get the guy from parts to come over, grab a can of brake clean, here's a can of break. Like it's so stupid. And then we get into this whole conversation we've always had about inefficiencies and technician production and it's like, why would you not just want to have everything that they might ever need right on the bench behind them or in a service truck or an example and they not have to go get it and then, hey, maybe put somebody in charge of making sure that stuff stays stocked up.
Jeff Compton [00:24:04]:
Well, because my God, at the, at the end of the year we might have used $10,000 worth of brake clean instead of seven. Oh, well, like, yeah, it's all getting billed anyway. What's the friggin problem? Like, sorry, it's just little stuff like that that they, that we don't seem to do. So it's like there's an example of why people sometimes leave is it's, it's not about always the money, it's about a better, better way of being treated. And, and I always felt it was a weird conversation because I was like, part of me is like, when am I coming into this job if they're telling me about these guys that left? Because, you know, it's, it's funny, you know, the, the guys that leave for other trades, I totally get why they do it, but man, when they, when they leave for another shop, I always feel like if a shop owner should look at it as like if you had a tech that left, you need to really look at why they left, not if you fired them. That's obviously, you know why.
Marshall Sheldon [00:25:00]:
Right, Right.
Jeff Compton [00:25:01]:
If you got to really delve into why they left. I think that tells a lot, you know?
Marshall Sheldon [00:25:06]:
Yeah. 100. You know, it's kind of a testament, but, like, I've had one or two leave, but both of them came back. Yeah, Right. I always teach my guys, like, this is how you're supposed to leave a facility. If you. If you're gonna, hey, you've got to go out there, sell your roots. I get it.
Marshall Sheldon [00:25:25]:
You may not work here forever. I'm not under any illusion that you're going to. But, you know, I've been out there, and I know what it's like out there now. I don't say it to scare him off or to scare them or try to, you know, gaslight them in the stand. You know, I. I like. I write all my guys, as soon as they complete my apprenticeship, I write them all a letter of character reference as if they're leaving.
Jeff Compton [00:25:52]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:25:54]:
But so, you know, it's. I don't. I want them to know, though, that, you know, you're in a good spot. And a lot of times, you know, they'll say to me directly, well, you're still here. There's a reason you're here. You could go anywhere you want to work. You know, I have all the experience, all the certs, all the things I need to go out. I could go somewhere else, and I know I could go somewhere else, like I mentioned earlier, and make more money.
Jeff Compton [00:26:16]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:26:16]:
But I have freedoms that I would have to earn back all over again.
Jeff Compton [00:26:21]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:26:22]:
And you. Honestly, I'm kind of at that point in my career where I'm not really, you know, I make enough money, and I'm not really trying to be. Do all that crap. I would if I had to, but I really don't want to. You know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [00:26:35]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:26:35]:
Like.
Jeff Compton [00:26:36]:
And, you know, everybody keeps thinking it's about the money and a lot of texts. You know, this. Well, Josh, I think, did it. One of his surveys, and he showed that it's not even in the top three that they leave because. Right. I don't even know if it's in the top five. And that's really telling because, like, I know I left. Well, I mean, I left the first, essentially, job I had as an.
Jeff Compton [00:27:00]:
As an automotive apprentice for more money because there was no way I could. I couldn't stay there.
Marshall Sheldon [00:27:05]:
Right.
Jeff Compton [00:27:06]:
In 2000, I couldn't stay at $10 an hour. I was going broke, buying the tools that I needed every day to go to work.
Marshall Sheldon [00:27:13]:
I think you see that more like, in five years or less. Right. You see a Lot more movement in that five years or less area. I mean, I know it's a little different for you guys because of your, you know, logistics as far as how you guys become mechanics there and how you get your tickets and stuff, but. Sidebar. I have been working on getting my journeyman ticket through the Yukon because I want to see what it's like, what you have to go through. Now I have to present twice as much experience.
Jeff Compton [00:27:46]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:27:46]:
And I have to. There's a bunch of stuff I have to provide to prove that, which I have all that. So it's not gonna be a big deal, but it's something I've been working on because I think it's cool. And I actually like the prestige of being able to say you're you. I mean, real talk. Like, I think it's cool that you guys have this. I'm a ticketed journeyman mechanic. Right.
Jeff Compton [00:28:08]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:28:08]:
And. And I will soon be one also. And I also have some things in the work to. I found a province that will take my. That accepts my ticket that I can go sit for my red seal. So eventually, if Daddy Trump lets me go up there to the, the big national park.
Jeff Compton [00:28:26]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:28:26]:
I might be able to come up there and sit for my red seal. And I've already been taking a bunch of the practice tests.
Jeff Compton [00:28:31]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:28:31]:
And, and I passed all of the practice tests that I've taken. So I'm feeling pretty hopeful that I can go there, sit, get my red seal, and then boy be red seal. You know what I'm saying?
Jeff Compton [00:28:43]:
And that's, and, and it's, it's funny because, like, right above the, the computer that I'm sitting here looking at right now, you can't see it on the camera, but if I was to spin the camera the other way, mine hangs there all the time. My cfq, my certificate of qualification. And you know, it's. It's the third version that they've sent out to me because it changes every time. You know, you renew it and you get a different one, but essentially your, Your number stays the. And there's still the red, red steel right on the front of it. Red. And I, I look at that and I go, you know what I can remember now when I look at that? How long and how many hours it took me I had to put in to put into that.
Jeff Compton [00:29:19]:
And the places that I worked while I was getting it and the, the obstacles that those jobs came with. And like I said, going back, super cool, dude.
Marshall Sheldon [00:29:28]:
I think it holds so much prestige. I think you should Be proud of it. I think all y' all that have gone through got your red seal. I think you should be proud of it because I think it's cool stuff. I. I wish we had something similar. I don't like the barriers of entry that it creates for apprentices. Like, I pick my apprentices, like we talked about, from all walks of life.
Marshall Sheldon [00:29:46]:
They. Some come from college, some come from the restaurant. I meet them at the restaurant. I give my business card. I like the way they talk. I like the way they are. And I'll give my business card. Say, hey, when you're ready to make some real money, holler at your boy.
Jeff Compton [00:29:56]:
Yeah, well. And it's. It's so funny. Like, I think about, like, my good friend Lucas from changing the industry. His. One of his best technicians that he has right now, and he's. I would call him past the apprenticeship level. You know, he's getting very close to being pretty much an A tech.
Jeff Compton [00:30:13]:
He worked in a restaurant before he came to work for Lucas.
Marshall Sheldon [00:30:16]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:30:17]:
You know what I mean? And it's like. But he. He just has that. Like, he's very good with process. He's very good with detail. Like, and he worked in the restaurant as a cook. He wasn't, like, you know, just a waiter. Not.
Jeff Compton [00:30:28]:
I don't mean waiter.
Marshall Sheldon [00:30:30]:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:30:30]:
Like, he worked in the kitchen staff, so he understands process. He understands, like, stress, he understands deadlines, volume, all that.
Marshall Sheldon [00:30:39]:
Yeah, yeah. Busy times. And.
Jeff Compton [00:30:42]:
Yeah. And he's. And he's just killing it. Like, Lucas adores kid. He's. He's.
Marshall Sheldon [00:30:46]:
I love it.
Jeff Compton [00:30:47]:
So, I mean, this whole thing of, like, oh, let's try and find farm kids.
Marshall Sheldon [00:30:53]:
Yeah. That's why I was trying to kind of bring it back around to that, because it's. You know, I. I've. I've got them from butcher shops, I've got them from restaurants, I've got them from colleges, prestigious colleges in the United States. And I will tell you a small secret about getting them from a prestigious college. They'd been bought out 900 times and had gone privatized. And then it was all about pushing, you know, pushing these kids through.
Marshall Sheldon [00:31:24]:
So I stopped looking at the grades, and I stopped looking at. I started looking at the attendance.
Jeff Compton [00:31:28]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:31:29]:
And so I. I take a C average with a kid that showed up every day over a kid with an A that showed up half the time.
Jeff Compton [00:31:37]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:31:37]:
You know, those are a couple of things there. And to be honest with you, one out of ten. One out of ten was worth putting the time into. And I don't really like those odds when I could just find one at the place I'm eating lunch at. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's. It's crazy.
Jeff Compton [00:31:56]:
Or my friend Brian Pollock talks around like he walks around now when he goes to Harbor Freight, he's always got business cards from the shop in his pocket because every, every young person at Harbor Freight, he's handing him a card. Oh, you technician. No, I just work on my own. Oh, okay. Well, here's a card anyway, right. Bring it by when you screw it up. Oh, you are a technician. Where are you working? And then in Brian's little corner of the world, he knows every shop around, so he knows who they work for.
Jeff Compton [00:32:23]:
And he can say, well, what's it like to work for Bob? Or whatever, you know, and then, well, if you ever decide to move, here's a. And it. And it's working for him. Right? Like that kind of stuff is like you don't always need a, a recruitment company like, like promotive that I love my family there, but there's so much more that we can do. Like you said, pay attention when you're getting your lunch and the person at the, you know, be on the other side of the counter has got some good skills in terms of people or seems to be with it and enthusiastic. Ask them, make up, make a conversation, you know.
Marshall Sheldon [00:32:57]:
Yeah, might be a good tech, might be a good advisor, might be a good parts person. We're looking for them, all right. We struggle for, to get all of those type of people and you know, I know, you know, I, I've never worked at an independent shop, so I, I worked at a fleet shop and everything else has been dealers. So I would, I know that they've got, you know, one or two advisors, you know, but I've seen, I've been to some of these Taj Mahals around here and they got 60 bays and 900 freaking advisors. And you know what I'm saying? Like, it's crazy. And you know, those people have got to be looking for people all the time, you know, so the turnover is probably ridiculous. So yeah, it's, it's wild work out there. But hey, let's, let's.
Marshall Sheldon [00:33:43]:
Let's jump into. I've seen that what prompted all this was I seen a TikTok that you made about guarantees and how you get paid on a kind of a guarantee situation. And it has been crazy for me here recently because I'm an hourly tech. I support that type of pay plan. I like the. I would Prefer if there was some incentives, a little more carrot. But I'm cool with hourly as long as the hourly pay rate is makes sense, right? Because like I hire quite a few automotive technicians to, to heavy duty. And it's really easy, it's so easy to poke holes in everything that they try to try to hit you with because they'll hit you with, well, well, this is what I make.
Marshall Sheldon [00:34:37]:
Flat rate hour. And I'm like, okay, what'd you make last year? Yeah, right. And they said, Well, I made 100,000. Right. And you're like, okay, cool, what'd you make the year before that? Well, I made 98,000. You're like, okay, so you got a dollar raise last year and you build the same amount of hours probably. And then I'm thinking in my head, okay, I'm breaking it down, okay, how, how would you like to work 40 hours a week and still make 100,000, right? Because I know you, I know you. I know you worked more than 40 hours a week to flag enough hours, right.
Marshall Sheldon [00:35:08]:
To get your 100k. Right. It's, it just, that's the way it is. And you had to work every other Saturday. How about no Saturdays? You can work Monday through Friday. If you want to work four tens, that's cool. If you want to work four, eight or five eights, that's cool too. I'm good with either one.
Marshall Sheldon [00:35:25]:
And you're still going to make a hundred thousand. And if you want to work a little more, you're going to get paid time and a half.
Jeff Compton [00:35:31]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:35:32]:
So if you're, if you're hungry for a little more money and we get paid weekly. So how about you can, it's always a week behind. Your paycheck is always a week behind. So if you know you got a big bill coming up, you can work some overtime. We, we're allowed to work 60 hours a week if we want to. That's how we work. For safety reasons, we don't work more than 60.
Jeff Compton [00:35:50]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:35:50]:
And so how's that sound? You know, and I can sell that all day. I can sell that all day, every day. And I have zero problems recruiting flat rate technicians.
Jeff Compton [00:36:02]:
And, and that's the thing. Like everybody, we always gets into the conversation of like, because again, it started with the one guy saying, and again he reached out to me in a DM and we got talking and, and he was against guarantee because he found that or he thought his perception was the guys that were at his dealership, they're on a guarantee, were lazy. He's like they weren't really. They didn't seem to be all that hustle anymore. And I'm like, let's back it up a minute though. You're a bit younger guy, you're going into kind of a leadership role within this dealership. These are kind of, we'll call them the little older heads in the shop. Maybe they are at a point now where like they're comfortable and they're riding, you know what I mean? And there's nothing wrong because he's like, well, they're gonna guarantee because they're given, you know, the more complex, the harder cars, the boomerangs as we call them, you know what they're like, right? The.
Jeff Compton [00:36:52]:
Yes. And they handle it. And I'm like, so what's the problem then? Like, that to me is a very valuable person to have if they always get through it. And well, but you know, I'm paying them for 40 and sometimes they're not putting 40 out. Okay, I know how that.
Marshall Sheldon [00:37:10]:
That's a cost of doing business, brother. That's why their name's not on top of the, on top of the building and somebody else's is. That's a cost of doing business.
Jeff Compton [00:37:18]:
And I know how those numbers can be manipulated because like I keep coming back to my first kick at a dealer. I was a straight time guy and I had everybody's comebacks and all the boomerang cars and all the nightmare shit that nobody else wanted to do. And I'm not talking like one recall after another. I'm talking about like it left at 2 in the afternoon with a check engine light diag supposedly done. And because I was on second shift, it showed back up at seven at night. Yeah, it went to me. And the next morning I was still working on it, you know what I mean? When I came in at 2, it was in the bay and the tech would walk in and the car that he thought had fixed was sitting back in Jeff's bay, right? And then I would come in on second shift and finish it. And when, when they would flag my hours I didn't make because they didn't take the hours back from them the first because that's a whole other can of worms.
Jeff Compton [00:38:08]:
They didn't charge the customer again, so it was just like all unapplied. So to me, the whole hours thing is like, who cares? Like gives a flip. And I understand to do business we have to have some kind of metric to be able to track.
Marshall Sheldon [00:38:22]:
I get it, yes, yeah, 100%.
Jeff Compton [00:38:24]:
But those numbers get skewed Marshall. When it's like, when we're not really. When we're looking at the unapplied, and then it's like, what do we do? How does, how do we fix that?
Marshall Sheldon [00:38:33]:
Yeah. And I think, though, that it breeds that type of environment, though, like. And what you just described is exactly what 80% of the other flight rate techs out there are dealing with. We. We do this deal where we're like, well, these 20% of the technicians are making it work, so the rest of everybody else should be able to do it.
Jeff Compton [00:38:52]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:38:53]:
You know what I mean? And that's, that's the, that's the problem. And you know, from my perspective, the way I see it and the way that in an hourly situation is we do track it. Right. So if I have one of my guys messes something up. Right. It's bound to happen if you put your hands on enough trucks. And what I always tell my guys, if you don't mess anything up, you're not putting your hands on enough trucks.
Jeff Compton [00:39:14]:
That's right.
Marshall Sheldon [00:39:14]:
You're going to mess stuff up. We build that into our business plan. We know that you're going to mess things up. I know that it hurts your feelings that when you mess something up, it's part of the deal. We're going to mess stuff up. I mess stuff up. I messed up up all the time. It's part of the, it's part of the deal.
Marshall Sheldon [00:39:31]:
I've just got to the point in my, in my career that when I mess stuff up, I mess it up, barely. It's easy to fix it, right?
Jeff Compton [00:39:38]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:39:39]:
So I don't make big mistakes. I make little mistakes. And they're easy to fix, you know, and that's where we want to be. But so when one of my guys messes something up, we add a line to the ticket and then I take that in as a policy and then we, we eat that. If it's parts, we put it on there. If there's labor, we put it on there. And we take that to policy. And that is at cost.
Marshall Sheldon [00:40:03]:
And that cost is what I pay the technician and we move on with our lives. Right now, when the technician gets the review, that policy is going to be brought up like, hey, you had X amount of policy this quarter. You know, company standard. We have one. It's X. You're only supposed to be here, but somehow, you know, you're up here. So we need to, we need to work on policy this, this quarter. I would have loved to give you a raise, but sorry.
Marshall Sheldon [00:40:30]:
About it.
Jeff Compton [00:40:30]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:40:31]:
You know what I mean? You need to, you need to get your shit together, whatever, you know, so for them to say like, but that's the business's responsibility, you know what I'm saying? That's not the technician's responsibility to. Otherwise they just go start their own shop. If they wanted to take it in, take it every time. Right?
Jeff Compton [00:40:51]:
And that's. And they cry about that, Marshall. Like the, the, the shop owners that I talk to all the time, they're like, they, they, they're not frustrated. But you all talk, you talk to them all right? And Josh can attest to this too. For the. When he's talking to the guys in the aftermarket versus the guys in the dealer network. All guys that were fed up with how they were treated. Right.
Jeff Compton [00:41:11]:
And they went and started their own because they're like it. I make the same amount of money in my own business as I did as my own employee. But you know what, it's all on me. I take all the risk, liability, I get all the glory, right. For them, sometimes they don't have to make any more money. To me, it doesn't make much sense. I'd rather like make a little bit more or a lot more because of all the liability and the risk. But for some of them it's just, that's enough.
Marshall Sheldon [00:41:34]:
You know, it just the liability parts of it. I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Flat Rate puts all the liability on the technician. And then the management teams like to throw it in our faces, gaslight the crap out of us. The ones that still stick up for Flat Rate, the technicians still stick up for flat weight, are working in high volume shops and they are making a killing.
Jeff Compton [00:41:53]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:41:54]:
And those are the only ones that stick up for it. Like I said, that's that 20 or less that's out there. And they're the only ones that are still fighting. Good fight. And you know what? Go for them. If they're out there making 200k at a high volume store, hey, I applaud them for it.
Jeff Compton [00:42:11]:
And Marshall, you know what, I'm gonna say it right now. It's gonna offend some of them. They're gonna call me a liar and it's gonna blow up. I think they cherry picked the work.
Marshall Sheldon [00:42:20]:
I like it because you and I both know, you know what I'm saying, It's like, yeah, I think cherry picking should be reserved to technicians that are training apprentices because I need to pick certain jobs on purpose so that I can Train an apprentice properly. So sometimes I need to go, okay, that's a clutch job. I need that because I need my apprentice to learn this particular skill.
Jeff Compton [00:42:45]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:42:45]:
That, that's this type of job. This a time and change job. I need this apprentice to learn that job. This is a, whatever job, you know what I'm saying? I need to be able to cherry pick jobs in order to train my apprentices properly. Give them a, a bumper to bumper experience.
Jeff Compton [00:42:59]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:42:59]:
And those technicians that are out there fighting a good fight and bringing more prodigy into the, into the business, into the industry, plot them. And if you're not able to have that ability, you need it because you will make a more well rounded apprentice by having that ability.
Jeff Compton [00:43:18]:
You know, a lot of the guys I think that you know, defend the flat rate thing are like they're on that heavy line muscle memory, you know, repeatable, rinse, wash and repeat. Like I'm doing another camshaft and another LS engine, right. Or I'm doing, I'm doing another cab off on a power stroke, right. I've got them where the Cab's off in 45 minutes. Like they're defending it. And I'm not saying that they're not good technicians and I'm not saying that they, they're only nuts and bolts sack. I'm not trying to say that. But like it's different than the kind of technician that is always just inherently slower, looks at, reads all the service information, right.
Jeff Compton [00:43:55]:
Thinks outside the box and they go, Marshall, you know, we had that car that had been bounced around her trucks and mounts around everybody and, and Marshall picked it up and he had it knocked out in an afternoon, right. He went and found the breaking office or something like that. That kind of technician is never on the metric of production that's going to look as valuable, right. I'll argue it until my final day. It's the kind of guy that can do that kind of work and then repeat it over with another nightmare car and another and not come on crazy and not come unglued and not go nuts. That kind of tech keeps the, the business looking viable. Because when the car, the difficult car comes in or truck or piece will come or whatever, it's solved, right. And then you get all the other work.
Jeff Compton [00:44:42]:
You, you, you retain that customer because you fix the problem. That's what it is. It's not about production. This is, this is an industry about fixing problems.
Marshall Sheldon [00:44:51]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:44:52]:
Thing is a, is a that crazy a problem, right? Like a lot of this is rinse, washer, beat Muscle memory, Right. It's another bad. Here we take the cab off, but it's these weird ones that if you've got a guy over there and you guarantee him and he gets all those cars done, if you can't figure out how to build his salary. Keyword salary.
Marshall Sheldon [00:45:12]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:45:13]:
Into your business expense, then you probably don't have any business being in business because you haven't figured out how to make it work.
Marshall Sheldon [00:45:19]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:45:20]:
Build it into the cost. You need that person. What are you going to do if they leave? Just start handing all those nightmares. Everybody watch them go. No fault found. Kick it outside.
Marshall Sheldon [00:45:30]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:45:31]:
All the kind of guys in the shop that are the no fault found guys, right? They got the three flush machines at the beginning of their shop, at the beginning of their bay every morning, right. They do a break job, man. You never see their customers get noisy breaks because they're doing the pads early. You know, like we, we know those kind of texts, the no fault.
Marshall Sheldon [00:45:50]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:45:50]:
But the guy in the back, that's like, here's a comeback. Yeah. You know, like they just, they just get it done. Build it into the operating cost of the business, make it.
Marshall Sheldon [00:46:00]:
I mean, it's, it's all there in the B plan. It's pretty easy to have a portion of your, you know, your business plan to have those costs. And, you know, it should be like 2% of your GP. It's, it's pretty standard and if you. They just don't want to pay it. You know what I mean? They just don't want to pay it. They, they'd rather the technician pay for it.
Jeff Compton [00:46:26]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:46:26]:
And the technician pays for it by not getting paid. And it's, it's jacked up, dude. It's. I always joke around and call it slavery because that's what it is.
Jeff Compton [00:46:36]:
It is. And it's so much more than just slavery because eventually you take somebody and you poison them. Right? Like they used to be this young, noble, you know, viable, excited mechanic, you know, young apprentice.
Marshall Sheldon [00:46:52]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:46:53]:
And then they, they go through 3, 4, 5, 10 years of being like ground down and, and charged back for like that. And all of a sudden they're a jaded mechanic. There are somebody that's like hating the industry. They're hard on any young person that comes in. They're telling get the out of this industry crazy. And then all of a sudden we wonder why the culture the other trade is, is. Well, there's why. Because we took somebody that had so much potential and we poisoned them.
Jeff Compton [00:47:22]:
Ah, it's. Listen, it's always been that way. It's always been on you. It's going to be you. You reserve the liability. And they go, well, like why? You know why? Why? And again, I had a conversation with somebody last night. We were talking about, well, if I, if they put a rear main seal in and it starts leaking later, they're gonna get paid to put it in. But it doesn't go towards their bonus plan.
Jeff Compton [00:47:46]:
He pays on incentivized plan. I'm going, great. But I said, what about the guys that work in a shop where they're handed a ticket and it says, go put a rear main in this car. He goes and puts the remain in the car, say the car's an Audi Marshall.
Marshall Sheldon [00:47:59]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:47:59]:
And it turns out that the, the PCV system is, is Right, right.
Marshall Sheldon [00:48:04]:
And it's building too much crankage pressure.
Jeff Compton [00:48:06]:
Blows the rear main out of it in another month. He was not handed a ticket that said, hey, check this for PCV malfunction.
Marshall Sheldon [00:48:15]:
Right.
Jeff Compton [00:48:16]:
He's handed a ticket saying, rear main sealed when leaking. Diagnosed somewhere else. Install rear main seal. You mean to tell me you're going to make that technician warranty that seal out? I'd roll my friggin toolbox. Sorry.
Marshall Sheldon [00:48:30]:
Yeah, yeah, like I didn't diag it, you know what I mean? And that's somebody else's problem again.
Jeff Compton [00:48:37]:
You know, how many times did we always have to look for when we saw a rear main leaking on a car? Always have to assume that the PCV system was bad. No, but now it's a new thing, right? We know the common players, Audis, Mercedes, you know, a lot of the Euro stuff, Chevy cruises, Chevy equinoxes, you know, like.
Marshall Sheldon [00:48:57]:
Yeah, yeah, anything turbo, basically Coopers.
Jeff Compton [00:49:03]:
But like it wasn't like that 10 years ago that you just, you could get handed that ticket. I don't think it's fair. And you know, yeah, if you like Brian Pollock was talking about, if you get handed a car, check engine light on, you put the oxygen sensor in the wrong bank and the car comes back. You're crazy if you think you should be working. Like if you're on some kind of incentivized. I would think that you would be like really ashamed that you did it wrong, screwed up and you wouldn't expect some kind of bonus for having to do rework. Right? Let's call it like that. I'm not saying they should work for free, but you shouldn't expect rework.
Jeff Compton [00:49:46]:
But if you legit, you know, have an intermittent lean dtc, and you say this is my scan capture. And the oxygen sensors seem to be flatlined right now. And you know, I think we should do an oxygen sensor and the customer agrees to it and everybody's on board. This is not necessarily a guarantee. And that car comes back, that car that everybody was up front and on board.
Marshall Sheldon [00:50:11]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:50:11]:
He shouldn't be continuing to work on diag on that for free now. And go, hey, sorry. Like, you got your one shot at this. You guess what, you owe us now. That's crap. You know, if I thought about all the cars that I didn't get the diag right the first time, if I remember them all, I'd go crazy. Yeah, lots of them. And it was sometimes intermittent, sometimes it was like, oh, you know, never big problems.
Jeff Compton [00:50:37]:
Like I'd be like, I can remember putting a leak detection pump in and a broken wire to it, you know, thing like, why did I put the LDP in? Because I done five that week that were all the LDP same code.
Marshall Sheldon [00:50:51]:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:50:52]:
One time that I don't check power ground. It's broken wire. I. I stayed late and fixed it. Nobody paid me extra for that. That was on. But my God, like, you know, we beat these people up with this idea that, you know, flat rate, you have to be your reproduction is this. And then the guys, I, I still challenge the guys that say, you know, they turn 200 every two weeks.
Jeff Compton [00:51:17]:
Like, man, you must be some kind of unicorn or you must be really hard to work with in the shop. That's what I think.
Marshall Sheldon [00:51:24]:
Yeah, it's like I said, it's just, it's. They're so far and few between. And the technicians have just been gaslit for so long that they've, they've almost like believe it themselves now. It's like, yeah, if you don't work flat rate, you're crap. You know, Only. Only flat rate techs are fast at what they do. No, they're not. We're.
Marshall Sheldon [00:51:49]:
We're held to a, an efficiency standard. We're held to a productivity standard, which is being clocked on ros and not idle, Right?
Jeff Compton [00:51:59]:
Yep.
Marshall Sheldon [00:51:59]:
And we're held to those standards. If we don't meet those standards, we get rode up. We get rode up three times, we are fired.
Jeff Compton [00:52:06]:
Yep.
Marshall Sheldon [00:52:06]:
So it doesn't pay to be a slow hourly technician either because we want raises. If I'm quick at what I do, I'm efficient at what I do and I get them fixed most of the time. Every time, you know, as often as possible. Obviously I'm going to get a raise. If I do my training, I'm going to get a raise. I know I'm going to, right? And I'm going to get a paycheck every freaking week. And it's not going to be for 20 hours. It's going to be for what I put in.
Jeff Compton [00:52:41]:
That's right, right.
Marshall Sheldon [00:52:42]:
I want to get paid for at least what I put in, you know what I mean? Like if I worked 50 hours, I want to be paid for 50 hours. It's not my shop. Otherwise I'd go. If I wanted to run myself ragged for a barely a paycheck, I'll go buy a service truck and run my own mobile business, you know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [00:53:00]:
And, and you hit on a really key point there. Like you want to take the training and you want to be paid for the training. I think this is something that again, like, and I know the people that listen to us in our channels and stuff, right? For the most part they're doing a writing marshall. Like they're, they're paying. Yeah, yeah, but there's still so many guys that are like all they can do. I go back to the low hanging fruit, that's all they can do. Well, did you provide them a training to do anything more than that? No, no, I didn't, I didn't send them. They didn't seem that interested.
Marshall Sheldon [00:53:29]:
They didn't ask. They didn't ask. They didn't ask for training?
Jeff Compton [00:53:35]:
Well, we look at it as a training, as a cost. Oh my God, like, you know, you mean I gotta send these guys to the napa classes or the world pack classes after hours? You know what that costs? Each got like, that's like a hundred and fifty each person I send, you know, and, and the sons of, they want to get paid now when they go after work, like, how dare they.
Marshall Sheldon [00:53:59]:
You know, if training your technicians, it is a cost, but here's the thing. If, if it's a good technician, they're gonna fix more things, right. The first time, the more we train them. Right. So if we're not getting that as an investment return on our investment, then we need to take a hard look at that technician and ourselves. Because if we're not holding them accountable, then that's on us, right?
Jeff Compton [00:54:22]:
And goes back to building it into the cost of expense. Right. If I'm sending them for.
Marshall Sheldon [00:54:28]:
Training, training should be in your B plan. It's simple.
Jeff Compton [00:54:31]:
10. If I'm sending them to 10 hours of training a month, 10 hours hypothetical easy math and it costs X amount. Okay? That's, that's that's got to go right into the plan, like you said, of what it's going to cost me to run this business this month. I've got to pay training. And then that means that maybe I put my door right up. Maybe, you know, the, the check engine light scan that, you know, I charge the customer an hour for and the tech walks out in 25 minutes and he knows exactly what it is. Instead of knocking it to a half an hour, leave it at an hour. That's how I pay for it.
Jeff Compton [00:55:03]:
Yes, rocket science, guys. But everybody comes back to marshall that idea like, oh, I can make that customer really happy though by doing it in 30 minutes. I look really good. I look really good.
Marshall Sheldon [00:55:15]:
I fixed it.
Jeff Compton [00:55:17]:
I fixed it. That's all I care about is fixing the car. I don't care how I look with the price. I don't, I don't give a. Doesn't matter to me. And that's why I'm not in business, because I don't care. Show me.
Marshall Sheldon [00:55:29]:
The customers chose you for the value that you bring. You, you have good technicians that fix cars right. The first time, every time, whatever, and they do good quality work. That's why they chose you. They didn't choose you because of your price. If they did, then it's too cheap.
Jeff Compton [00:55:44]:
Yeah. And I see it now with Google all the time. Like you'll see the shops, all the shops that are known to be really good at fixing cars. There's also detractors in that Google review thread, right, that say they're really expensive. They've obviously read it. If they're here, if they found about you from Google and they're in your shop, they've obviously read that you're expensive.
Marshall Sheldon [00:56:05]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:56:06]:
Right. You don't have to try and convince them that you're not.
Marshall Sheldon [00:56:09]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:56:09]:
You just fulfill the obligation and live up to the reputation that you're competent. You can fix the car 100%. That's what they want.
Marshall Sheldon [00:56:18]:
That's all it is. That's all. Like you said, it ain't rocket science. This is easy. They, they make it out more, you know. Let me hit you with something too.
Jeff Compton [00:56:27]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:56:27]:
I've been getting beat up online right now about video multi point inspections.
Jeff Compton [00:56:35]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [00:56:36]:
So I say technicians should be paid for doing a video inspection. Right. So here's the deal. Here's my, here's my spiel. I bring my customer's car in, I put it on a lift, I walk around it, I do my inspection, right. Oh, this is bad. This is bad. Based on Mileage, we're getting close to the timing belt, whatever this tires are here, yada, yada.
Marshall Sheldon [00:57:02]:
Brakes is good, yada, yada. Okay, cool. Now I get my camera out, right? That's what that took me, eight minutes. Walk around, do a decent little quick inspection. Now I'm gonna get my camera out, and I'm gonna record me, me, my likeness, my voice, my personality. I'm gonna sell this work.
Jeff Compton [00:57:21]:
Yep.
Marshall Sheldon [00:57:22]:
I'm gonna show my customer, hey, I did a thorough inspection. This is the stuff I found. This can wait. This is good. And you know what I mean? Every time you tell a customer, this is all right right now, but next visit, maybe the visit after that, you're gonna need brakes, you're gonna need tires, yada, yada. Nine times out of 10, they want you to do the stuff that you're like, I ain't got to do it right now. Right. I digress.
Marshall Sheldon [00:57:45]:
But so I'm selling that. My service writer did not sell any of that. All they did was push a button and send my video to the customer. And then the customer says, yep, go ahead. Because they may have put up the quote together. They may have put the quote together, but let's be honest, nine times out of 10, they don't do that either. We put all the parts, we find all the parts, we put all that together, then we send our quote and our video to the writer, and all they did was send. And then that customer isn't even here because they're not a waiter anymore.
Marshall Sheldon [00:58:18]:
Mostly. And I don't know about that, but when we bring our car to the dealer, we drop that joker off, and I take my wife and we leave, right? So I sold that whole job.
Jeff Compton [00:58:31]:
Yep.
Marshall Sheldon [00:58:31]:
I sold that whole job. And now that writer is gonna get paid on gross or whatever they net or whatever they're paying them on off of my back. I'm the one who. Not only did I do all the work, Yep. I sold that with my salesmanship, my personality, all of those things. And I take pride and make my quality videos because I know I'm gonna flag more hours. Well, the managers out here are saying, well, you. You got paid for that with the additional hours.
Marshall Sheldon [00:59:00]:
Okay? But I still did the work, and I still didn't get paid for it. Forget all the hours, because if I didn't sell any of that, I would have pulled the next car in, and I would have got paid.
Jeff Compton [00:59:11]:
Yep.
Marshall Sheldon [00:59:12]:
Right? So. And I did the math on it, right? It's so say we round it to eight minutes, but we know it took Longer than that. But let's just say it's eight minutes. I figured it all up. How many minutes it is a year, how much. How much lost money that I lost out on. And say I do five a day, right. At eight minutes.
Marshall Sheldon [00:59:32]:
And I work five days a week, you know, and I. Anybody can do the math, right?
Jeff Compton [00:59:38]:
Yep.
Marshall Sheldon [00:59:38]:
It's a. It's like a 167 hours. I got a LinkedIn post on. Comes out to like 167 hours. And you multiply that by the industry average, right? And it's like $4,000. So you're telling me that a dealership that's working at 80 plus percent gross profit percentage can't pay me four grand, and I'm averaging 65,000 on my upsells for my video. You're telling me you can't cut me a slice on that? Of course they can. If they made 70% on that 65,000.
Marshall Sheldon [01:00:14]:
Right. We could wing out a number and call it 50,000. And you're telling me that we couldn't. I couldn't get a slice of that. And then they'll say, well, what about Oliver? We have all these expenses that you guys don't have. Well, here's the thing. I upsold all that. That was free money.
Marshall Sheldon [01:00:33]:
Stop. Stop trying to say that. That's part of. We. We need all. We need that money to cover all our expenses. You were paying all those expenses before.
Jeff Compton [01:00:40]:
Exactly.
Marshall Sheldon [01:00:41]:
I started doing all those upsells. This is free money to y'. All.
Jeff Compton [01:00:44]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:00:44]:
Cut me a slice.
Jeff Compton [01:00:45]:
The Internet in the waiting room, the coffee in the waiting room. It was already all there, right? Yeah. So now we have these technicians that are doing. And. And. And they hate it when I say it. The advisor's job. Right? Because we can remember, like, I can remember being out there and the car was on the rack, and the advisor would bring the customer.
Jeff Compton [01:01:02]:
I would go off somewhere because I didn't want. I didn't want the customer asking me questions. You asked the advisor. That's why. And he would show them what I had shown him or told him about, and you know, all that kind of stuff.
Marshall Sheldon [01:01:13]:
Right.
Jeff Compton [01:01:14]:
The hell out of the way. Now if I'm filming it and creating a file and sending it to the customer, and the customer is approving it, just like you said. We're eliminating a lot of the steps of the advisor. Eliminating a lot of them. I think, honestly, Marshall, what's happening is the industry is trending towards. They're going to eliminate the advisor position. Lance agrees.
Marshall Sheldon [01:01:34]:
100100 other people say no.
Jeff Compton [01:01:37]:
And I get it. There's always going to be these little shops that are going to be hold out and you're going to, you know, people want to talk to a customer. It's the same. I. If I can walk up to the. To the counter and order my McDonald's versus walking to the kiosk, I do. Because here's my silly brain, the way it works. I'll use the kiosk if they give me a discount for using the kiosk.
Marshall Sheldon [01:01:58]:
Right. 100. I knew you were going there. I knew you're doing it.
Jeff Compton [01:02:04]:
They give me a discount if they don't f you. You're gonna. You're gonna ring my through because that's your job.
Marshall Sheldon [01:02:10]:
Yeah. 100.
Jeff Compton [01:02:11]:
You gave me 5% off my, my 150 grocery bill. I. Listen, I'd rank you. I would be cashier of the week. Like, yeah, because I'm like, I'm saving money. They are gonna do this with this industry, whether we like it or not. It's already been happening. At the Nissan dealer I was at, we had a kiosk.
Jeff Compton [01:02:31]:
Now, our clientele didn't like it, so we got rid of it and it didn't really work. But, I mean, I'm not necessarily saying the kiosk is going to be the thing, but with this DVI thing, the way the texts are getting onto it, yeah, it's going to eliminate a lot of advisor positions within and what I.
Marshall Sheldon [01:02:48]:
Think is cool about it, right? I think it's cool, for one. Like, I know that there's going to be guys that don't want to do it, and I'm cool with that. I ain't saying everybody's got to do it, but if you're a guy that's like a young guy, a lot of the young guys really dig it, right. Because they're out there creating their own brands out here. You know what I'm saying? I got. You got a customer that calls and says, hey, I need to make an appointment with David next week. He always works on my car. You know, just like your barber.
Marshall Sheldon [01:03:15]:
You go to the same barber every time you go get your haircut. I know I do. I got the same lady. I always go to her because I like the way she does my hair. You know, my wife has the same lady she goes to all the time to dye her hair. You know, that's what you're going to get. You're going to get that you're out there creating your personal brand. You should get paid for that, you.
Jeff Compton [01:03:33]:
Know, and I'm, I've made the argument that the dealerships that say you've got to do it in order to generate hours sold, first of all, that's horseshit. B, it's illegal. I, if it ain't illegal in some states it is. I know it is for a fact. Because if you're tasked with a job that has to be done, they have to pay for it.
Marshall Sheldon [01:03:49]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:03:50]:
There's a labor line that says perform dvi. There has to be some kind of pay time next to that line. If you, if you've been duped into doing them for free, stop, stop tomorrow and say it's worth 2, 10, 3 10, whatever. I, I miss them now at the shop that I'm out, we don't have to do them. I miss them because it really helped my efficiency. Now there is caveats to it though, because I've, I've said it before, right. If I do the same DVI next time the car's in and all this recommended work wasn't done, we've already up at the front counter and we don't need to keep doing the dvi. The customer's not interested in really being a customer.
Jeff Compton [01:04:27]:
They're only interested in getting an oil change done and a false sense of security because we don't tell them that there's anything wrong. They feel like their car is still very good. You know.
Marshall Sheldon [01:04:36]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:04:37]:
If your tires are at 3:30 seconds and they come in now three months later and at 2:30 seconds and you didn't have the money or an interest in buying them at three to make me go through the same video again. Pisses me right off. It should be hand by. Here's what we have advisors for now. This is my mind blowing.
Marshall Sheldon [01:04:55]:
Yes.
Jeff Compton [01:04:56]:
Is they take all the wrecks from last time and when they're taking the phone call for Mrs. Smith to make the appointment. Mrs. Smith, last time we're in, your tires were at 2:30 seconds. Like are you interested in us having a set of tires shipped over before you even get here? Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith says yes.
Jeff Compton [01:05:10]:
Great. That's what an advisor now should be doing. Right. And I'm to the now the car is dispatched to me, I do the four tires on it. I do another DVI if they have not even bothered and just expect me to do another DBI and do the. This time the tires are at 2:30 seconds. This time the, the oil leak that was in yellow last time is red. Now it's gushing in the bay.
Jeff Compton [01:05:31]:
If you want Me to do all that and you're dropping the ball. I ain't doing it. I'm not doing it because at some point the wheels fall off the cart and we're just, we're just spinning. We're not, we're not making headway. That's what an advisor's role now should be. Not sit there. And I can't, I can't call her until your DVI is finished. Well, she's not even here for dvi.
Jeff Compton [01:05:51]:
This is another thing that drives me nuts. She's here for a check engine light on, and we're giving her a complimentary diag or complimentary dvi. Excuse me, I need some questions answered about this. You know what? When this check engine light popped on, what was she doing? Okay, well, as soon as you have the DBI done, I'll call her and ask of the chair, the phone. I'll call her myself. Like, yeah, it's just little like that. That would drive me crazy. Or you would say, I've talked about this shell or Marshall multiple times.
Jeff Compton [01:06:22]:
Customer comes in, it's got a timing fault, it's low on engine oil. It's overdue for an oil change, right? Okay. It needs an oil change before I can continue with the diag. Okay, well, they're not here for an oil change. No friggin. So you don't want. Well, is the oil change gonna fix it? What's the first step? Make sure there's enough oil in the engine. Make sure it's good oil in the engine.
Jeff Compton [01:06:44]:
Okay, yeah. If you, if, if I have to split hairs with you about that in a dvi, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna walk out. I'm just gonna be done.
Marshall Sheldon [01:06:52]:
You know, I call that part of the diag on those type of deals where it's like I run into those on the big trucks. Something similar is that. It'll come in with fuel codes, right? It'll be like low, high pressure, fuel pressure. And I'm like, okay, cool. I just go get me a filter and put it on. If y' all can't sell a filter to this customer, that ain't on me. I'm here to diagnose this truck. I put a filter on it.
Marshall Sheldon [01:07:17]:
I took a measurement of the restriction on that filter. It was high. I put a filter on it. It fixed it. If you can't sell a filter to this customer and my hour diag, you need to get the heck out of here. Because I'll call this customer right now and I'll Sell this?
Jeff Compton [01:07:31]:
Yeah, yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:07:31]:
Same. Same type of deal. You know, go ahead.
Jeff Compton [01:07:35]:
So what do we do, Marshall, to kind of bring up the, the, the advisors that we're going to keep in the meantime before we completely face them out? I want that kind of stuff. How do we bring them up to where that's not happening? Like, you and I are just the two examples you're talking about. Like, do they have to be. I, I don't want to think that they have to have been text themselves, but it's, it's the pushback that I've gotten where it's like, well, I don't want to make that phone call or I don't want to have that conversation. And I say listen all the time. Like, you signed up to have tough conversations all day long, every day in this. Yes. If you're trying to be a service, and I know it sucks, and it's much easier to give good news than bad news, but the reality is when it's good news, they're.
Jeff Compton [01:08:17]:
They're not even in your shop. Right. It's bad news, things broken. That's why they're there. So get used to having hard conversations. It becomes easier. Right. And there's a process to it.
Jeff Compton [01:08:29]:
How do we get them up to speed on that, Marshall?
Marshall Sheldon [01:08:32]:
You know, they just, I think it's kind of trial by fire because they just, they have to. Like you said, you have to have those tough conversations. You got to get used to it. You know, I. So since I'm in a service truck, right. And all, all my guys that work with me, we're all in service trucks, right? So we have our own customers, we set our own schedules, we make ourselves available to our customers, and we do our own quotes, we look up our own parts, we bill all our ros. We close all our own ros. We are our own service writers.
Marshall Sheldon [01:09:04]:
We don't have a service writer. Right. So when I'm talking to a customer, I have to have conversations with a customer that I know sometimes has been having a lot of problems with their truck. This is how they make their money. And I am about to tell them that this engine needs replaced and it's $55,000. Right. And then my labor is another five or six thousand to replace this engine. Right.
Marshall Sheldon [01:09:31]:
So I'm about to tell this customer they need to come up with 60 plus thousand dollars.
Jeff Compton [01:09:35]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:09:36]:
It's not easy. And I think if you don't have any empathy, then you're not going to be able to have that conversation correctly with that customer. So It, I think it's a good sign that a writer would say, man, it hurts when I have to tell a customer this, right? And I get that. But you still have to do it, right? Not doing it doesn't help anybody, Kurt. You know, selling around it doesn't help anybody. Yeah, you have to sell it. Like that's the deal.
Jeff Compton [01:10:11]:
Reducing the price doesn't help. No, the opposite. We did that forever. It's like the transmission we started the conversation with, right? Imagine that you're calling them up, telling them that their choice on using a two thousand dollar PTO versus a four thousand dollar PTO cost them a twenty thousand dollar transmission. Right? Yeah, like that's not an easy conversation to have because it's going to be met with really? I'm not sure. I don't believe that I heard that. You know, blah, blah, blah, we could.
Marshall Sheldon [01:10:39]:
Go on and we run into that too. You know, you have to sell through it. You have to, you have to be prepared. And you. Sometimes I talk that conversation in my head, like, how's this gonna go? I walk it through in my head, okay, I'm gonna tell this guy this is what's going on. And I found that it's always better to just rip the band aid off, right? Just hit him with it right off the rip. And I like to do the crap sandwich. I hit him with some good, hit him with the bad, and then I hit him with some good.
Marshall Sheldon [01:11:07]:
But here's the good news. You're going to get a warranty with this engine, right? It's going to be covered from the OEM for three years. You know, I know that it's going to be hard to come up with this money in the situation right now. But listen, if we can just, if we can come up with it and then we get this engine installed, you're going to have a good warranty. It's nationwide, so you're not going to have any problems going forward for the next three years. As long as you do your maintenance properly, there shouldn't be any issues. And then, you know, you hit him with the good stuff at the end. Like you, you know, that's part of the deal though.
Marshall Sheldon [01:11:39]:
You know what I mean? It does hurt though. And like I said, if it doesn't hurt, then I don't feel like you can sell real well, you know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [01:11:47]:
And I had an interesting conversation with an episode that'll come out and I think in about two weeks time with Curtis Gardner. And Curtis mentioned how like he's been trained on his DBIs, where it's like. And I've heard the same thing. I've sat through coaches, and they tell the same thing. You got to make sure to show them the good stuff, too, right? And. And I kind of always laugh at that because I have worked on some. A lot of cars in my career that there was more bad than good, you know, he would say. So the good stuff would be like, okay, so the tires are at 7, 30 seconds.
Jeff Compton [01:12:19]:
That's a good tire. Unfortunately, the other three are bad blowout and you put one new one on.
Marshall Sheldon [01:12:27]:
Or.
Jeff Compton [01:12:27]:
Unfortunately, they're winters and this is August. And they're, you know, they're. They're noisy and they're. And they're peeling right off real bad because, you know, wrong compound. Unfortunately, you had to, you know, local tire store who didn't check anything, and that's great. You got four new tires on there, but you have a broken coil spring and a bad ball joint. And, you know, the car's got a rust hole through the subframe. And, you know, maybe it wasn't even worth the four tires.
Jeff Compton [01:12:54]:
That's reality for a lot of us. You know what I mean? This whole idea of, well, you got to show the good, too. I don't necessarily believe that they're all that concerned with the good. Like, I know we can overwhelm them with, like, everything is bad. Everything is. You can overwhelm customer for sure. But if it's all well documented and it's legit stuff, like, yeah, you can see that this car is really rusted. You can see that your brake rotors are really grooved and really rotted over.
Jeff Compton [01:13:26]:
You know, we didn't Drive it at 60 miles an hour on the highway, but I bet you when you hit the brake, it probably shakes a little bit, and they're like, yeah, it kind of does. Like, I don't have to give them all the good. I just have to focus on what, you know, a, what they're there for, B, the other stuff that they didn't know about. I have to make them aware to go and make them aware and go. All the wipers are good. Or, oh, the cabin air filter doesn't need to be changed this time. Or, oh, the engine air filter is nice and clean. Like, I.
Jeff Compton [01:13:57]:
I just, you know. Yeah, the battery passes. Of course the battery passes. The car started today, and there's no warning light on, like, a course that's in their mind. Right. That kind of stuff is. Is important. But I don't believe in that nonsense that we have to like show them the good with the bad.
Jeff Compton [01:14:16]:
I think we just have to advocate for them. Document, document, document and present. You know, it goes back to the 300 rule. Like, you know, do you, in your line of work, do you follow that at all? Are you, you're familiar with it, right? 300 rule?
Marshall Sheldon [01:14:33]:
No, hit me with it.
Jeff Compton [01:14:34]:
So the 300 rule is that you, you inspect 100 of the cars that come in. Now that gets into. Because like I've seen guys, customer comes in, just needs a set of wiper blades. They do a full blown inspection, they rack it, they shake it down, they look for leaks. Like that's a little overkill. But essentially you inspect 100 of the cars, you document 100 of the required work and services and you present 100 of the required conservative. That's the 300 rule. It's met with a lot of people that are on the fence about it right now, Marshall.
Jeff Compton [01:15:08]:
Some people have adopted it and they absolutely love it and it's worked. It's, it's one of them tools, Marshall, that can turn a shop around from being. Just fix what the customer is asking for to start, get into that profit level of like we're started to eliminate some breakdowns. We're starting to prolong the life of these cars because we've got them thinking about, you know, proactive. But there's a lot of people, Marshall, that like they.
Marshall Sheldon [01:15:34]:
They feel, kind of feels. Yeah, it kind of feels like to me that you're beating every customer over the head, to be honest. You know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [01:15:42]:
But in your line of work, like your customers, when they have a car or a, a truck that they make a living with. Right. It's, it's a, it's a.
Marshall Sheldon [01:15:50]:
Right.
Jeff Compton [01:15:50]:
You know, I think that you just instinctively tell them everything that the car, the truck needs because.
Marshall Sheldon [01:15:57]:
Right. Well, that's literally how they make their money. Right. And so like what I do is I do inspect every, every truck that I look at. Right. Because I'm the last one that touched it. And the liabilities are on a different scale. So like when I look at a big truck, I need to make sure that all the safety requirements are met.
Marshall Sheldon [01:16:22]:
Right. All the doors have to open and close because if there's emergency, the driver needs to be get out. There's all the DOT requirements. Right. So I, I do a quick walk around and I've been doing it so long that I know things that I definitely have to check every time, you know, the deal.
Jeff Compton [01:16:38]:
Sure.
Marshall Sheldon [01:16:38]:
And so there's certain things that I want to check every single time. And I train my apprentices this way. Put your hands on absolutely everything, because one time you're gonna grab something, even if you don't know what it is, and you're gonna go, that's not right. They don't normally do that. I don't know what that thing is, but I'm gonna go get my mentor and I'm gonna say, hey, what is going on here? Because when I normally grab this, it doesn't normally move, right. You're gonna grab something, it's gonna flop around, it's gonna do something weird. And so I teach my guys, you put your hands on everything, especially steering components, brake components, drive shaft component, drivetrain components. You put your hands on everything, right? You grab the steering wheel, I grab it around, I move it around, I grab the shifter, I make sure the shifter isn't extra floppy.
Marshall Sheldon [01:17:25]:
Or you put your hands on everything, and one day you're gonna grab something, you're gonna go, oh, that ain't right.
Jeff Compton [01:17:30]:
I was, I was taught early on when I was working in my truck shop, early, early on in my career, we would get on a creeper and we'd grease a truck, right? We didn't have a pit.
Marshall Sheldon [01:17:38]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:17:38]:
Everything was in group. And my mentor taught me, marshall, every time you see a brake chamber, you hit it with your fist. You're listening for that ting, ting, ting. You're listening for that spring. And, and, and now I haven't been under a truck on a creeper in 20 years, but it would be instinctively that if I rolled through, I would still be going like this, you know?
Marshall Sheldon [01:17:57]:
Yeah, yeah, well, it's the same deal, you know, you're gonna smack something one day, and it's just. You're gonna go, oh, there's something wrong with that. You know what I mean? It's the same kind of concept. And, you know, so we do safeties on. I call it a safety. You know, I do a safety on every truck I look at because, you know, the liabilities are so large that if that truck leaves and I didn't let my customer know that there was a safety related thing and they get in an accident, we, I. This is a term. I don't know if you guys use it in light duty, but in automotive.
Marshall Sheldon [01:18:31]:
But we like to say the proverbial school bus full of nuns, right? That thing's gonna leave, the brakes are gonna fail, it's gonna hit a school bus full of nuns. And then, you know, and I say a school bus full of pregnant nuns. Yeah, it's gonna hit a school bus full of pregnant nuns and you're gonna go to prison because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter which. Yeah, it don't matter which cus what business you're working for. If you're working on a truck and it leaves there and it gets in an accident and there's a fatality, you are probably going to go to prison if your documentation is not up to snuff.
Jeff Compton [01:19:11]:
Yeah. And see that's the thing with this red seal. Like everybody talks about it and you know, I was for the long time I was on the fence about like I think you should have to research and I still think you should up here in Canada. But here's the thing with the red seal. If you should do something like that, that causes you to. And it's not so much like accidents happen. The guys have had the red seal, they've had tires fall off, they didn't lose the red seal. But when you safety a car to sell up here and MTO ministry Transport of Ontario checks it over and they find a gross negligence multiple times on multiple cars.
Jeff Compton [01:19:48]:
I talked about a couple weeks ago, there was a lady, she bought a car, it was a Hyundai product, she had it five weeks, the engine failed. Who would have thought?
Marshall Sheldon [01:19:59]:
Yeah, pretty standard.
Jeff Compton [01:20:00]:
So she takes it to her regular guy to get the engine put in and the regular guy looks at goes this car should have never been safetied and sold. There's holes in the subframe and everything else. Now it had been safety that a Canadian Tire up here, which is Canadian Tire Josh, is probably filled in. They're the biggest industry up here, right? Like they. Yeah, yeah, it's. Well Canadian tire gave her $5,000 because that was what she paid for the car. And then that they lost their ability to write safeties for two months slap on the wrist. I don't know, it didn't say what happened to that technician that wrote that Safety.
Jeff Compton [01:20:37]:
I'm gonna bet that probably he maybe lost his job but I bet you he kept his coq. We are all up here in Canada, if you're not, you should be. But a lot of us I talk to all the time, like we take it very serious where I work, what I write on safety. Because if MTO decides to get involved, the first thing you're going to want to do is take my license from me.
Marshall Sheldon [01:20:57]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:20:57]:
And without that license I'm unemployable. And it's so weird Marshall, because it's like I'm as smart As I was the day before. But all of a sudden that coq. I'm not going to get hired anywhere because I'm a liability. I can't work for them. So in some ways, like you guys don't have it down in the States. But here's the other plus to this. It is something I think that once you have it, you truly really value your integrities will just, I don't want to say a little bit better, but you value your, your liability a little bit more.
Jeff Compton [01:21:28]:
I guess.
Marshall Sheldon [01:21:29]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:21:30]:
Like you don't let go. That shouldn't go for anybody. I've had, I've had employers that wanted to fire me because I wouldn't sign safeties because they felt that it was like. And I'm like, you sign it then oh wait, you don't have it.
Marshall Sheldon [01:21:44]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:21:44]:
100 then guess that, guess who has the power here? Me. And it's a shitty way to have to deal with people sometimes, right? But it's the way it goes because take it from me, I'll never get it back. They will me. They'll never let me re qualify. They'll never let me take the test again. I'm done. I'm done. I am now cutting hair or dancing or something.
Jeff Compton [01:22:04]:
Right? Like, yeah, different, you know, different line of work altogether. It's, it's a serious thing. It really is.
Marshall Sheldon [01:22:12]:
You know, you, you know, like I said, I, I tell my guys all the time, like you have to take this stuff serious. What we do is very serious in nature. We get paid well and we get paid in a fashion that there is absolutely no reason why we should let a vehicle go that is unsafe. At least, at least in a manner that it's from us, you know what I'm saying? Of a poor quality repair because you, you get, you get paid by the hour, buddy. You know what I mean? Like you get paid to do a quality job. I don't care if that's a five hour job and it takes you 10. It will leave here perfect. Your job will be perfect.
Jeff Compton [01:22:57]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:22:58]:
And, and that is an important thing that I think to your point. Like sometimes the flat rate stuff misses out on.
Jeff Compton [01:23:07]:
Yeah. And here's the thing, the flat rate thing is, is to come back to.
Marshall Sheldon [01:23:11]:
That.
Jeff Compton [01:23:13]:
You can have a couple jobs go bad and you're flat rate tech and all of a sudden then that job that should be jammed for you and you would take a little bit of care for, you're going to rush it through, right? Because you're trying to make up right? That's the one that bites you. That's the one you're always.
Marshall Sheldon [01:23:30]:
You're always chasing. You're always chasing.
Jeff Compton [01:23:33]:
Yeah, and that's, that's why with me, I just don't like. I don't like who I am when I work flat rate anymore because I get to be very or even flower even. Incentivized, right? Incentivized to me is the same thing. Hourly with a bone, it's the same thing. I'm still chasing a number, and I don't like that because I'm chasing the number because I immediately become more critical of everyone and everything that might have slowed the process down. This is something we really should talk about more in the industry. That's why. Why is there such a distaste for parts guys, Marshall? Well, because they can slow the process down.
Jeff Compton [01:24:06]:
Why such a distaste for advisors? Well, because sometimes not only do they give the labor away, but like there's scatterbrain sometimes and they forget to do that. Slows the process down. If I'm always chasing a number, I am looking instead of looking within me, I'm looking at all the other people that are holding me back from that number. It's just human nature. It's way worse. Whereas if I'm just tasked with doing a quality repair, I only have to focus on doing a quality repair. That's it.
Marshall Sheldon [01:24:34]:
We owe that to our customers. We owe that each and every time. You know, when I pay for something, I want to get what I paid for. Yeah, right. And when I send my wife over with the car to get it worked on, I expect a quality repair because I'm going to put my wife in that car. I'm going to put my kids in that car. This is real talk. I expect a quality repair that I can trust my family with.
Marshall Sheldon [01:25:01]:
You know what I mean? Otherwise, I'd have done that myself. I wouldn't have sent it to you. You know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [01:25:05]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:25:06]:
And so go ahead. That's. That's just the reality of it, you know, Would you put your wife in that car? You know what I mean?
Jeff Compton [01:25:14]:
Are you finding it? You're having a hard time getting good quality where you are.
Marshall Sheldon [01:25:19]:
You know, I've been pretty. We just recently purchased a new car. And because my wife's a nurse and she just passed her nursing school, she's working in the NICU and working with little micro babies and cool. You know, we had. I had been the only person working because I was paying for my wife's college and paying our Mortgage, Trying to do everything myself. Now she's contributing, which is awesome. And so she just bought herself her first car. It's her second car, but she's bought a new car for herself.
Marshall Sheldon [01:25:55]:
And our cars have been long paid off. And both of our cars were new in 2012. And so I had a. I have a GMC terrain, and I got a Mini Cooper because my wife loves a Mini Cooper. And it's the all wheel drive one. They're both all wheel drive because we came from Wyoming. Right. I have put transfer cases in both of those cars.
Marshall Sheldon [01:26:15]:
And I'm on the third Mini Cooper transfer case. Yeah, three. Once a year, I'm putting a transfer kit that I hate Mini Coopers. But anyway, it's a cool, fun little car. But it's a race car, right? Race cars, you. You have to work on them all the time. It's just the nature of it. So because of the financial burdens, I have had to work on my cars all the time.
Marshall Sheldon [01:26:37]:
So I told my wife, I said, I don't care what you get. Go pick a new car, buy it, because I don't want to work on it anymore. I don't want to work on our cars. And then I said, after you buy your car, probably six months after that, I'm gonna buy a new car because I don't want to work on my cars anymore. I want somebody else to work on them. And I'm going to trade them in for the warranties out. I'm gonna buy another new car.
Jeff Compton [01:27:04]:
Yeah, I. And I'm the same. Like, right now, I should be flushing the. Like, I should be. I should be servicing the Jeep. The transmission should be. And I. I started out first thing in the morning now, and I feel a little misfire for, like the first, you know, 10 seconds.
Jeff Compton [01:27:19]:
And now everybody's gonna comment. It's gonna be like, oh, it's a Pedestar. It needs head gaskets. Shut up. It doesn't need head gaskets. That's not why.
Marshall Sheldon [01:27:25]:
I gotta ask you a personal question. Do you still believe in mopar?
Jeff Compton [01:27:29]:
Oh, yeah. 100.
Marshall Sheldon [01:27:30]:
Okay.
Jeff Compton [01:27:31]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:27:32]:
You'd be proud of me. You'd be proud of me. Then we got a Jeep.
Jeff Compton [01:27:36]:
Hey, congratulations. Right on.
Marshall Sheldon [01:27:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. She got her Grand Cherokee L, which, you know, when she went there, she asked them like, hey, can we see your guys's shop? And they said, oh, yeah, of course. So they walked around the shop, and she said, okay, I don't want a Jeep Wagoneer.
Jeff Compton [01:27:53]:
Right?
Marshall Sheldon [01:27:54]:
Because she said the shop was slap full of brand new Jeep Wagoneer. So she said I'm glad I walked through there because I was looking at those or the Grand Cherokee.
Jeff Compton [01:28:03]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:28:03]:
And she said I didn't see a single Grand Cherokee in there. So I said I'm going with a group Jeep Grand Cherokee because I didn't see any in the shop.
Jeff Compton [01:28:11]:
Now I love the way the Wagoneer looks. Call me crazy, but I just.
Marshall Sheldon [01:28:15]:
Dude, I do too. We love it. But.
Jeff Compton [01:28:18]:
But I hear so many nightmare stories on Tick Tock and guys are posting videos up like they are. It's like you said, they're constantly working on.
Marshall Sheldon [01:28:26]:
Yeah, she said the shop was slammed full of them. It's like a Kia, you know, or a Hyundai. They're just trash.
Jeff Compton [01:28:32]:
And apparently it's all electrical problems. Like all is electrical. And that just scared like. Does electrical problems scare me? Not. It doesn't scare me, but like the thinking that like I would own that and in five years when it's out of warranty, I would keep it is. Is. No.
Marshall Sheldon [01:28:50]:
Yes.
Jeff Compton [01:28:51]:
Like when it's got 50 modules in it and five different networks and all. Dude, I don't want it in my climate.
Marshall Sheldon [01:28:57]:
Hell no, no, no. I'm totally with you. I have. Okay, so like totally off base, but like. So one of my municipalities, they want us to work on all their white vehicles. So. And we, we call the white vehicles F250s and below all the chargers that they use for police cars, we work on all of those. I have a technician that is dedicated to light duty.
Marshall Sheldon [01:29:20]:
He works there every single day. He's got a lift that the customer supplies him, a bay, a lift, everything. He keeps a toolbox there. It's a whole deal. Well, so I, he. That's my apprentice that I was talking about earlier, you know, my almost two year guy. So he's been doing tons of light duty stuff and I figured out that he has an ability and affinity to the light duty work. So who am I to keep the man from making money? So I let him do his thing.
Marshall Sheldon [01:29:47]:
So he's been doing primarily a lot of light duty work. I haven't forgot about him. So I'm making sure that's why we're doing this transmission because I don't want him to fall behind in his OEM training and things like that. So. But he enjoys the light duty work. So like I said, who am I to stand in his way? So I let him do it. And. But that being said is you and I both know apprentices can't go out and just buy a ten Thousand dollar scanner or eight thousand or even a thousand dollar scanner, you know.
Marshall Sheldon [01:30:15]:
So I, I had to buy all of the automotive stuff that I would need for him to do his job. You know, the, I didn't have to, I'm sure the shop would have. But it's nice to just have your own stuff, you know the deal.
Jeff Compton [01:30:27]:
Yeah. And I mean I got my own Zeus and everybody thinks I'm nuts and I, you know, as I use it less and less, I, I think I'm nuts too because it's like I hooked it up to 2022 Volvo XC90 or something last week to see about if I could put the parking brake, you know, retracted.
Marshall Sheldon [01:30:46]:
Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I had to buy a scanner was for those freaking park brake things. Dude, what the hell?
Jeff Compton [01:30:52]:
Somebody said. And you know, of course it comes up and says oh no, you need to buy this additional cable or. Which is essentially a different dongle. And I'm like. So I asked the snap on dealer, I'm like, how much is that dongle? And she's like a thousand bucks.
Marshall Sheldon [01:31:03]:
Oh my gosh.
Jeff Compton [01:31:04]:
And I'm like, autel does, you know this 500 autel tool doesn't need a secondary dongle to do what the snap on my own zoo. So like I'm paying 300amonth for subscription and payment on a used Zeus. I've got two years left, I think to pay it off. And like the thing gathers more and more dust every day because I'm, I'm getting by with generic data and, and a code code reader. And then if I can't back up the brake calipers through it, you know, I'm doing it the old school way. I'm shooting power and ground to that back in the thing. Dude, I won't car like I'm scared to death to do it on a Euro, but I've done it on Hyundai's, I do it on Toyotas. And then I see other guys.
Jeff Compton [01:31:51]:
There's like a guy Tick Tock is like, you know, electronic parking brake guy or something. He's built a little tool with some switches and some leads and.
Marshall Sheldon [01:31:58]:
Yeah, I've seen that guy too. Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:32:00]:
So I probably shouldn't be that scared, but I, it's, it goes against my training that I, you know, that way. That's all I'm frustrated with the, the. Here's a plug for Chrysler. Chrysler. A lot of them. You do it right through the radio cluster, right through the control. Like Ford does that too. It's all These other stinking cars are.
Jeff Compton [01:32:21]:
Now they're putting it behind the. You need an auto subscription behind the.
Marshall Sheldon [01:32:26]:
Sc, which I was. Yeah, I was about to just mention that. So I just had to get that. I ordered this cable for the auto that is to bypass that. And it's behind the radio. It was a Dodge Ram. So my, my apprentice was working a Dodge Ram the other day and it had that deal where. What do they call it?
Jeff Compton [01:32:45]:
The secure gateway.
Marshall Sheldon [01:32:47]:
Yeah, secure gateway. And he was like, I can't clear these codes. I just made the repairs. And I feel confident that the repairs fixed it, but I, I can't clear the codes. And we're, you know, the customers that we did to work for is like, well, we can just send it over to Dodge. They'll do it quick for us, you know. And I was like, no, we should be able to do that. So then I reached out to a buddy of mine, Richard, and I was like, hey, how do I do this? Because I don't have a freaking clue.
Marshall Sheldon [01:33:11]:
And he's like, okay, so if you have this cable, you can, you can plug it in behind the radio. You unplug the gateway module and you plug the two things in and then it'll hook right up. And I have a, an Autel Maxisys like Elite Pro or something, I don't know. But it does a lot of crap. And it will program too. And that's why I got it for program those restraint modules and stuff, right. Because I was doing a lot of those in the Fords when we first started doing a light duty work for this customer. Well, my apprentice was.
Marshall Sheldon [01:33:40]:
And so anyway, long story short is I ended up getting the auto off like at the beginning of the week because it was the same deal. I needed to do this. And I was like, you know what, it's only 50 bucks a year or something like that. Let's just go ahead and do it. And it actually makes a lot. We don't have to go plug in and do all that crazy stuff. The Ottawa thing, it's like, it just made sense and you know, but yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy.
Jeff Compton [01:34:06]:
And you know, part of me is like, I understand why they do it. And then the other part of me is like the, the idea that they hide the parking brake behind that to me is just. It's just. It's just completely should be against the right to repair act. Because anybody that's going in to just do a simple brake job. I'm not trying to download your song list or get all your info out of your car. You know what I mean? Yeah, I care. I'm not trying to steal that information that everybody's trying to.
Jeff Compton [01:34:33]:
I just want to do your. Going back to it. I want to do your job properly, safely, you know, effectively as fast as possible and efficient. I can't do that if you lock it out. And.
Marshall Sheldon [01:34:43]:
Yes.
Jeff Compton [01:34:44]:
And here's the other thing we're talking about. It's in the auto auth. Cool. It's in the auto off. Great. What if the DLC doesn't communicate? And now I've got to spend extra minutes and tell the customer, hey, I want to do your brake job, but your DLC is all effed up and it's not communicating. And now I can't do your rear brakes. Like, they're gonna look at you like you're crazy.
Jeff Compton [01:35:06]:
Like they're not gonna be here.
Marshall Sheldon [01:35:08]:
You should be able to do all those from the dash.
Jeff Compton [01:35:10]:
Yeah. 100, I think a sequence or whatever. And, you know, like the. Like the Chryslers, you can hear them back up. And then I can shut the key off. I can back. I pull up on the switch twice. When I'm done, it recalibrates.
Jeff Compton [01:35:24]:
Done. Beautiful.
Marshall Sheldon [01:35:25]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:35:26]:
That's why I love Chrysler, man. I. I just have always been. And it's not just because the brand, it's familiar with. It's like, guys go, oh, well, the. The Hemi trucks, You know, the Hemis that got this failure.
Marshall Sheldon [01:35:40]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:35:40]:
Seen the news? GM trucks like the engines. Oh, I know Toyota's got a recall on their. On their engines now. Like, I was watching a guy this morning on Tick Tock. Like, I'm sorry, but people. People that call Chrysler crap, like, they're not perfect. But I. You can't tell me that Ford or GM in the domestic market.
Jeff Compton [01:36:02]:
And I don't talk about the other stuff because I don't know enough. Is all that better? You can't tell me that they're all that better than Chrysler. You can't.
Marshall Sheldon [01:36:09]:
Well, and that's like, you know, my wife and I was talking about her going to your car is. Was the same deal. You know, she was worried. She loves the Tahoes, but she was like, I don't. I'm worried about the engine. She's like, you told me the engines are bad, And I was like, they are bad, and I really don't want to worry about that. And their fix was just put another. Change the oil and put another oil cap on it like that.
Marshall Sheldon [01:36:31]:
Come on, guys. You know what I mean? So I Was telling her, like, yeah, let's try to stay away from that. But other than that, you know, I mean, they're all, they all got their problems, you know, and we were going to buy something under warranty, so, you know.
Jeff Compton [01:36:43]:
Yeah. And the thing that scares me about the pentastars that are out there right now is the fact that the camshafts are like 400,000 back ordered. That's what scares me.
Marshall Sheldon [01:36:53]:
Right.
Jeff Compton [01:36:54]:
Everybody's like, well, you're driving one, Jeff. You know, you're gonna need a camshaft eventually. And I keep telling myself, knock on wood, you know, I'm gonna keep changing my oil at 3,000 miles, which is like not even half the oil life that, you know, it's still 60%. And that's gonna keep it. I'm knocking on wood here that that's gonna keep it from like, you know, ever needing a camshaft. My buddy at the dealership, he laughs at me and he says it won't matter anyway. But I, you know, he was my apprentice sales. Still say that.
Jeff Compton [01:37:23]:
Yeah, yeah, it's just finding the time anymore to work on my own stuff. That's, that's the kicker. I would rather fish than my own, you know.
Marshall Sheldon [01:37:31]:
Dude, I like, I like watching yalls fishing stuff that you post on tick tock every once in a while. Yeah, you know, we've been doing this little side quest and we do this mentorship with other mechanics. And so I've got a couple people that have been in the industry for, you know, 25 plus years. One guy, Ray Hernandez, I'll shout him out. And Jean Rydelbach is the other one and she's awesome. Amazing lady. And Ray, awesome in his own right, you know, like platform director, you know, started from the bottom, now we're here kind of guy and just has a lot of advice to give. And so, you know, it'll be four or five of us and we're all in the, in a little meeting together.
Marshall Sheldon [01:38:16]:
We try to do it like a couple times a month and then we just talk to him about problems that we're having in a dealership and you know, things, you know, and he gives us good advice on how to overcome things and, you know, how to be successful. And you know, sometimes we have meetings about financials where we talk about like. Because a lot of the guys that I hang out with are, you know, prospects. They're looking to be service managers or, or they're already foreman or they're looking to be a foreman. Those are the kind of people I like to Surround myself with. So it's really good to have someone like that that you can ask questions about, like, yeah, how does the financial work and how does this affect that? And you know, why is my service manager asking me about this? And you know, things like that where he can kind of pull that curtain back and say, hey, this is why typically somebody would make a choice about fixing that particular lift or replacing that lift because this is how the dealership pays for that and this is how the, you know, so then it's not, they don't, for some reason, service managers and GMs and stuff, they don't like to explain that to us. They just say no. Yeah, you know, they just say no.
Marshall Sheldon [01:39:28]:
And then we're like, okay, well f me. You know what I mean? We just see all the money that we're, they're making off our backs and we don't understand why they make the choices we make that they make.
Jeff Compton [01:39:37]:
And, and that's why I need to reach out more. I've been, Summer's busy for me. But like, that's to give a shout out to our mutual friend Josh Taylor. Like, he has been such a, a great insight into so much more of the understanding behind the record of the dealer that I don't understand now. Sometimes we're not always like peas and carrots, him and I, because like, you know, he, we're not always on the same page. I guess what I'm trying to say where I think how the, how the tech should be paid and you know, he said like the dbi, they should want to do it because it generates work. You know where I am on that, completely against it. But I mean, like, I have so much respect for Josh because he's, there isn't much in the dealer that he hasn't done, you know what I mean to it, that I don't have.
Jeff Compton [01:40:25]:
I only have it from a very jaded, very, not a very like, you know, underappreciated position, whereas he has had to sit in all the different chairs and he knows comes with every chair. I guess what I'm trying to say, I have so much respect for him. I, I, I'm, I'm. We keep saying, you know, the summer we got to get together through the summer and here we are halfway through August and I haven't done even try to say, because he was like, you.
Marshall Sheldon [01:40:52]:
Know, he put, he put this little group together. You know, there's a, they're just folks from his podcast and you know, we have our little 10 mil group that we do our little podcast stuff with. With Josh. And so it kind of started with the 10 mil group. And then as he created this other group with people from his podcast, we started kind of pulling some of them ones in. The ones that we, you know, they're all fantastic, so don't get me wrong. But there was just ones that mesh with our thought processes and things like that. So we kind of just started kind of bringing them into our little fold.
Marshall Sheldon [01:41:24]:
And then, you know, I got to thinking, well, it'd be cool if we had somebody we could talk to about crazy stuff, you know, and so that's how it all kind of started. And then, you know, the guys in our. And. And we have a little group chat, and they be throwing stuff in the group chat, like, hey, how did. How do you deal with, you know, this? Or how do you deal with that? Or, you know, my baymate, I have a baymate that is into other dudes, you know, and I don't know how to talk to him about it. Right. Yeah, like, real talk. Like, that's some real stuff, you know, and that might be something that another technician is dealing with or.
Marshall Sheldon [01:41:59]:
Or my baymate is transitioning. And they. It's really hard to talk to them because I've known them as John and now they're Jane, and they get mad at me when I call them John because I've been working with them for 10 years and, you know, how do I go about having a real conversation with that person and things like that? And so, you know, we lean. We lean a lot on Gene for that type of stuff because her soft skills are just so insane that, you know, she can really walk you through a whole. If you tell her the whole deal and just be honest about, like, this is the way it makes me feel. I am having a difficult time talking to my baymaid about that or talking to my manager about that. How should I talk to that person? You know, and she is so fantastic about just giving you. And you will write it down.
Marshall Sheldon [01:42:47]:
You will write it down because you're like, dude, I'm using that tomorrow. You know, I'm gonna talk about that with that person tomorrow in this way. And it's this. She does this too. Whenever she starts the meeting, she'll say, I want everybody to give me a win from today. Just one. Just one win, right? And so now in our group chat, like every other day, somebody will jump in there and say, hey, everybody post their wins from today. Post, give me one win.
Marshall Sheldon [01:43:15]:
And sometimes you have to dig for it. Like, I Know, I do. Sometimes I'm like, dude, today freaking sucked. But my apprentice, that I had overcame an obstacle that he had in a repair. And you know what? It made me feel really good because, you know, when they got it done, they had that smile on their face and they was pumped up about it, and I was jazzed up for them. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, you know, sometimes you have to dig deep for that win. But I think that that is a pretty powerful little tool that she.
Marshall Sheldon [01:43:44]:
She just gave us, you know, for free.
Jeff Compton [01:43:48]:
I. I have to think about that too, because, like, I had a day yesterday where it just was like, tires that were supposed to be delivered didn't get delivered. So I had literally the car sat on my hoist because I'd already taken the tires off the rims before I went home the night before. Yeah, I was just dead. Just dead. And we only have two hoists, two text, two hoists. That's it. That's all we got.
Jeff Compton [01:44:07]:
Right. Because we use car lot. We're only reconditioned. And I'm sitting here going like, well, how many cars can I kind of, like, test drive to get an idea about what they're going to need, how they're going to drive and start making notes, like, so I can get ahead of this thing. But really, there's not a whole lot I can do. All I can do is drive them and then go up. Brakes feel good, or brakes feel like, you know, and. And start to look at the tires and stuff, do the basic checks on the safety that I can.
Jeff Compton [01:44:30]:
And then I'm. I'm on hold again because I'm waiting for these tires. And by noon, it was starting to really mess with my mind. Like, I was like, I'd had the. The morning from hell. I was so irritable because the old bees, like, I'm not making any stinking hours. This sucks. Production for today.
Jeff Compton [01:44:46]:
And. And then I snapped out of it in the afternoon. I'm like, why do I care? Like, they're not looking at that. They've already told us all, we don't look at your production. We just need these cars to be fixed properly sold to these customers so that they leave the. The car lot happy with what they purchased. You know, nothing's falling off. They're.
Jeff Compton [01:45:05]:
They're working the way they're supposed to. That's it. We understand their used cars. Like, I've got a Grand Cherokee. I got a Cherokee of 15. Then we sold it. And then all of a sudden, this electrical problem Came out of nowhere. Right.
Jeff Compton [01:45:19]:
That is obviously the reason it was at the friggin auction.
Marshall Sheldon [01:45:22]:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:45:24]:
You know, it would happen very intermittently. And I fixed a render overlay to the left front wheel speed sensor for a wheel speed fold. That was the last time I touched the car. And then it came back with all this other. And when I had done the overlay, I had seen that there had been a mouse nest under the hood. And I'm like, oh, right. So I fixed all around. And then of course when this happens, my brain goes, it must be that mouse nest again.
Jeff Compton [01:45:52]:
But I'm backed up with like all these cars that have to get done by month end and they're like, what do you want to do with this Jeep, Jeff? And I'm like, do you think we can send to the dealer? Because honestly I said I think my Zeus is missing codes that are coming up that I can't get because you know, security stuff. And I said like, honestly, it's so intermittent I don't know where to go because I don't have a loss of communication fault. They shipped it. The guy at the dealer had it one day and he looks at, he goes, oh yeah, we, we see this all the time. There's two modules under the rear bumper. It's the parking brake module and the transfer case module. They fill up with water. Cause all kinds of shit.
Jeff Compton [01:46:28]:
Yeah, it's 2500 bucks for two modules and some jumper harnesses be fixed next week. Here I am playing with my brain going, it's the last thing you touch, Jeff.
Marshall Sheldon [01:46:38]:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:46:39]:
And all that kind of stuff. And then I find out it's like nothing that to do with me. Ghost in the machine Marshall that's been there for probably since the last owner of that car. Right. And then it went off. Of course we bought it. So do I feel good that it's fixed for the customer? Yes. The old me would have been beat up, beating myself up.
Jeff Compton [01:46:59]:
Right. I'd be worried about the cost of it, all that kind of stuff. The new me is just like, it is what it is, man. We're dealing with machinery and we're dealing with used cars and we just keep laughing. The joke is it was at the auction for a reason.
Marshall Sheldon [01:47:12]:
Yeah, 100. 100.
Jeff Compton [01:47:14]:
Yeah, the little win thing. I gotta reach out and thank, you know, Josh for that and thank you for it because some days I forget to even do that, you know what I mean? And, and Lucas is on me time to think about it. But this podcast keeps me so busy anymore. And then so, you know, all the other things that come along with it, the conversations that are happening behind the scenes like you and I have, and it's just like, it's hard to keep up. But I gotta remember the little wins. So I want to thank you for coming on tonight. This was a lot of fun.
Marshall Sheldon [01:47:46]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [01:47:47]:
I'm sorry we had so much technical problems, but.
Marshall Sheldon [01:47:50]:
No, I mean, if we do another one, I'll double, triple check that I'm in a good. I normally am out here on the patio and I never have any problems.
Jeff Compton [01:47:59]:
We went 70 minutes now and it didn't. And I know. So it's. I can't blame your Wi Fi. I just, I'm gonna blame Zenka, so. But where can anybody find you, Marshall?
Marshall Sheldon [01:48:11]:
Well, I'm Most active on LinkedIn. I do a little bit on, like, if you look up Marshall Sheldon on Instagram, you can see me.
Jeff Compton [01:48:19]:
Yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:48:20]:
But I do most of my real deal content is on LinkedIn, mainly because I prefer the professional side of the things because my goal is to show people how professional we are as technicians. Right. So that's why I lean a little harder there. Because if you want to go see funny stuff about mechanic stuff, you can see it on TikTok and Instagram and all those places. But if you want to see how professional we can be, that's where that LinkedIn stuff comes in. You know, I talk about industry problems, things that are kind of hot buttons I'm intermittent, intermingled with a lot hot. You know, lots of management folks are there, so I try my best to highlight those industry problems that we're dealing with from the technician level. And honestly, I feel like I'm been getting a lot of traction where, you know, people are listening.
Jeff Compton [01:49:16]:
Yeah. You know, that's the biggest thing I find that, you know, in the last year this has really taken off and my phone, my phone's beeping constantly with like some of the shorts that I've done with Josh and some of the shorts that I've done with some of the other guests where people are commenting, they're going on six months old and they're still like people commenting every day. Like, it, it is, it is so cool to see that a little conversation that I have with you or a little conversation that I have with Josh is touching thousands of people. It's crazy.
Marshall Sheldon [01:49:47]:
And that's what it's about, you know?
Jeff Compton [01:49:49]:
Yeah. That's how we're changing this industry. I don't, I don't. Anybody that says it's, it's the Same as what it was five years ago. You're not paying attention because it is really changed in the last five years. And. And I haven't even been doing this five years. It's been like two and a bit.
Jeff Compton [01:50:02]:
But I started to see it five years ago, and then it's like. It's like a rocket ship now, the way that things are going. Like, the way. Yeah. When I talk to young people and they go, oh, I. I know of. You know, I know of Scander Danner now, or I know, like, Ivan at Pine hall five years ago, nobody hardly, except for a nerd group, knew about those guys. And now, like, all these young people are.
Jeff Compton [01:50:26]:
Are knowing about this. So, I mean, I joke that, like, if. If I could walk into a shop one day and I see one of my decals on somebody's toolbox, I didn't give it to them. That's gonna be pretty wolf. So, yeah. Thank you, brother, for being on here tonight. As always, I enjoy the conversations we have, and I'd love to have you back again. Yeah, yeah.
Marshall Sheldon [01:50:46]:
You just gotta tell me when I'll be there.
Jeff Compton [01:50:48]:
Well, definitely do it then. Everybody, as always, I love you all. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you soon. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the AESAW group and to the Changing the Industry podcast.
Jeff Compton [01:51:19]:
Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
Marshall Sheldon [01:51:27]:
It.