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Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer.  In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
Mike Allen [00:01:33]:
Most people don't understand how great topo chico is, but once you break into the world of free diagon miatas.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:44]:
Nice.
Mike Allen [00:01:44]:
You learn.
Tommy Markham [00:01:46]:
Oh, that's excellent.
Mike Allen [00:01:48]:
So good. Super smooth. Ye. It also goes. You can drink it down about about a third of the way and then slam a lime in there and top it up with vodka. You walk around, everybody thinks that you're just having a topo chico and you're really having a great afternoon. Right.
Tommy Markham [00:02:08]:
I think in order to finish the bottom two third of that, I may end up having to do that.
Mike Allen [00:02:15]:
So you're saying you're not a fan?
Bryan Pollock [00:02:17]:
We need a bottle of Grey Goose stat.
Tommy Markham [00:02:19]:
Man. I don't want to complain about a free drink, you know?
Mike Allen [00:02:21]:
Yeah. People have been bringing us bottles of booze.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:24]:
Speaking of, this came from Braxton, who works for Mike. And it is.
Mike Allen [00:02:31]:
It didn't come from Braxton.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:32]:
Huh?
Mike Allen [00:02:33]:
Didn't come from Braxton. Came from the other redhead.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:36]:
Xander.
Mike Allen [00:02:36]:
Yeah. I mean, they look the same. They all look the same.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:41]:
It's chicken cock. So I haven't drank yet at Asta, but I'm probably gonna have to now. There's some guy filming my.
Tommy Markham [00:02:51]:
I'll tell you, I'm getting a little uneasy. You guys give me some part.
Mike Allen [00:02:54]:
What's up, man?
Tommy Markham [00:02:55]:
Fuzzy drink with chicken cock.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:57]:
Would you like some of my chicken?
Tommy Markham [00:02:58]:
Why did I get lured in here? What's going on?
Mike Allen [00:03:00]:
You want to top up your fuzzy drink with some Suburban?
Bryan Pollock [00:03:03]:
So what is it, 40? Probably.
Mike Allen [00:03:05]:
Probably?
Bryan Pollock [00:03:06]:
Isn't that the rule of bourbon?
Mike Allen [00:03:08]:
This is just like the recording you did a minute ago, right?
Tommy Markham [00:03:11]:
Same vibes. Exactly the same. Yeah, yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:14]:
Same structure.
Tommy Markham [00:03:14]:
Yeah, basically.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:15]:
And I have. Just in case I don't like this, I do have the old trusty mixer.
Tommy Markham [00:03:19]:
Here, so you can have zero with it. Yeah, There you go.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:23]:
Now we're talking.
Mike Allen [00:03:25]:
I almost took it too far there.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:27]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:03:28]:
Reel it back in.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:29]:
Reel it back in. Still president for two more months.
Mike Allen [00:03:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I. We have been in talks about the fact that this is my last year as ASTA President, this is my last ASTA Expo as president, and there's been a certain awareness of the responsibility that I'm representing more than just myself in the podcast. Right. And so try to control it a little bit on the things I talk about and the opinions that we shared.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:57]:
Try pretty loosely.
Mike Allen [00:03:59]:
I mean, you don't know what it's like when I'm not the ASDA president.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:02]:
That's true.
Mike Allen [00:04:03]:
So, I mean, starting in January, man, we might have to switch to satellite radio, only we probably won't be able to do be on FM anymore.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:12]:
Probably. They'll probably censor the microphone cord.
Tommy Markham [00:04:15]:
You're coming back, though, right, even though you're not president?
Mike Allen [00:04:17]:
Oh, yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:04:18]:
Okay, good.
Mike Allen [00:04:19]:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've. I've been coming to this show since I was 20 years old. You know, it was not this show, but the annual North Carolina Trade show, which is now grown into this. But no, I came here with my dad when I was. When I really did not care. And I was just here because it was a way to get paid to not be at work. Them was the days.
Mike Allen [00:04:41]:
There are some young kids that are here right now for the same reason.
Tommy Markham [00:04:45]:
To get out of getting or going to work.
Mike Allen [00:04:47]:
They're getting paid to not be at work. Yeah. And they heard that there was free beer in one of the rooms.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:52]:
Nice.
Tommy Markham [00:04:53]:
So cubicle, if you will.
Mike Allen [00:04:55]:
Not here. We don't have to.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:57]:
We have the hospitality suite.
Mike Allen [00:04:59]:
Yeah. Okay.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:01]:
They loaded the. They loaded the hooch and the beer into there today.
Mike Allen [00:05:05]:
So, Tommy, you've been a big proponent of. You followed the conversations that we've been having and the Friday night shenanigans and everything else, and you've been a big proponent of this new free diag thing that we've been talking about for the last year, and I believe what you said was. Huh, Allow me to retort. Was effectively what it was. Can you share with our listeners and viewers what the wheel chalk is and how you use it effectively?
Tommy Markham [00:05:34]:
Well, the wheel chock is what your wallet looks like when you actually are just up front and honest and charge the diag that you're worth. But you have to be able to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And it doubles on the aligner as a wheel chock. So you only actually need one wheel chock because you use your wallet for the other one because you were charging appropriately for diagnostics.
Mike Allen [00:05:56]:
And you have sent me multiple pictures of your wallet stopping a car from rolling back on the aligner. You know, when you're.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:02]:
Yes, it's a legit wheelchair.
Tommy Markham [00:06:04]:
It is, yeah. It's a. You know, it's a wheelchair.
Mike Allen [00:06:06]:
All of these are folded over. This is diag cash.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:10]:
I know where Tommy's from. I'm pretty sure that he had all the actual paper cash in Tug hill that day. There was no. There was no more actual paper cash. Paper tender.
Mike Allen [00:06:25]:
He cornered the market on sea bills.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:27]:
Yeah, yeah, right. Cornered the market.
Tommy Markham [00:06:30]:
Yeah. We cleaned everybody out that day and worked out great because I couldn't find that other wheel chock. So.
Mike Allen [00:06:36]:
So do you. Do you charge a different labor rate or a different multiplier on diag than you do on regular repairs?
Tommy Markham [00:06:44]:
Yes, I do.
Mike Allen [00:06:45]:
Tell me about that.
Tommy Markham [00:06:47]:
So diag. But of course, it is situational. It depends on what it is. If I have to get a scan tool on a car, get service information out, and then begin testing with some form of meter and using critical thinking, that's 200 bucks an hour. All right, if it's. I mean, I mean, I'm probably going to get torched for this, but if it's a. A purge valve on a GM and it takes me three minutes to prove that it's bad, they're not getting hit that 200 bucks. I mean, I do have a little bit of a heart left, but at the same time, I have to make money, too.
Mike Allen [00:07:22]:
So how much do you charge for that purge valve? The diag on it depends on mood.
Tommy Markham [00:07:29]:
Yeah. Like, if it's. If it's under five minutes and it's something I've seen 12,000 times, it's like 50 bucks just because I actually did my due diligence of proving the problem.
Mike Allen [00:07:40]:
So that's $600 an hour. So you're really them in that situation, Right? Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:07:49]:
No, I mean, it's like, there's got to be a minimum fee for you getting in there. And tell me more about this.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:53]:
I love this place.
Tommy Markham [00:07:56]:
Yeah, you just. You have to. You have to make money, right? You have to.
Mike Allen [00:08:01]:
So in that instance, and I believe wholeheartedly in this, you are being paid for your knowledge and experience, as well you should, because it costs you a lot to gain that knowledge and experience. On the flip side, let's say you get one that's kicking your ass and you need to sell another three hours because you gotta learn how the fucking system operates and learn how to execute on the test and get the results that you need or whatever it might be. How do you bill for that?
Tommy Markham [00:08:30]:
I've become very good at judging my own pitfalls. If I know that it was on me that it took me three hours to do something that took an hour, they get that $200 charge. If I am confident that it was my fault, okay. If I'm confident that it was not my fault. The clock runs, the price runs.
Mike Allen [00:08:51]:
So does the customer need to pay for the time that you spend learning on a new system that you've not been exposed to yet?
Bryan Pollock [00:09:00]:
Not typically.
Tommy Markham [00:09:01]:
Not really.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:01]:
He's like me. He does a lot of reading at night.
Mike Allen [00:09:04]:
Contact shared there?
Tommy Markham [00:09:06]:
Well, not really, no. I. I don't feel comfortable. Comfortable charging a customer for me not knowing what I'm doing basically, or not seeing their system. I do a lot at night, so I very rarely get into that situation, to be honest with you, or I'll pre game if I have something coming in that I know that I'm not familiar with that that evening. I'm pregaming service.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:30]:
And as soon as you're out of your element on the thing you're working on, it'll go outside, you'll work on other stuff, and when you go home.
Tommy Markham [00:09:35]:
At night, you'll read it exactly. Like, I'm not gonna sit there and battle a car for four hours when I know that I can just walk away, go home pregame, and come back.
Mike Allen [00:09:45]:
So all these questions are like baseline, establishing your opinion on things. Because then we get to the conversation about does the technician get paid for the results or for their time or. How did you phrase that debate?
Bryan Pollock [00:10:00]:
Are you charged? Everybody. Everybody wants to. I can't remember how it goes. I. We charge for results, we charge for outcome.
Mike Allen [00:10:09]:
Not so. So it's like, if I'm super efficient and this job, you know, book times four hours, and I can get it done in 45 minutes, I'm getting paid four hours.
Tommy Markham [00:10:19]:
Great.
Mike Allen [00:10:19]:
Awesome. If I've got to learn the system and I've got to do research and I've got to do this and that and it takes me seven hours. They need to pay me for my time learning.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:29]:
I'm. I'm doing.
Mike Allen [00:10:30]:
Can't be both.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:30]:
I have a car right now.
Mike Allen [00:10:31]:
Both. You're a hypocrite.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:32]:
I have a car right now that I said $500, you know. You know, $500 in. In experience. Right. Not including the part that I had to get and everything else for the programming and all this stuff on this ancient vehicle. $500. I'll make this thing go again. I'm.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:49]:
Right now I'm upside down on that. 500 bucks. I made it. I made a bad call telling them 500 bucks. But they're not gonna pay me more money because I decided that I made a call and I gotta, you know, I'm gonna.
Mike Allen [00:11:01]:
Is the mistake there. I mean, nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. But is the mistake one of the mistakes there hundred dollars in your car will run again because you don't know the answer yet.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:11]:
Well, no, no. $500 to do this. $500 to install, you know, to install this PCM and make it programmed on this car. That an orphan European car that doesn't. In a company that doesn't exist anymore. And I've run into some roadblocks with software and stuff. And I'm not going to charge the customer more.
Mike Allen [00:11:30]:
I have surprise there are any SOBs left in upstate New York.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:34]:
It's a sob story, man.
Mike Allen [00:11:36]:
Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:11:36]:
Unfortunately, there's very few if it SOB.
Mike Allen [00:11:39]:
With joy the day you get rid of your sob.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:41]:
Yeah. So, yeah, I have many hours of laptop time punching keys, trying to make things work. And I finally gave up and called for actual help from somebody that can actually fix my problem. And he's shipping me what I need to fix my problem.
Mike Allen [00:11:58]:
It's good to have good friends.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:59]:
It's good to have good friends.
Tommy Markham [00:12:01]:
Agreed. Yeah, I'm probably gonna get hated on for my stance on that, but I don't really think necessarily you should be getting PA if you're learning something on a car. But I'm looking at it from the lead tech owner of the place's position as well.
Mike Allen [00:12:17]:
Well, the money that you make fixing the car in the future is how you get paid for the learning time. Customer pays for everybody that's here getting technical training.
Bryan Pollock [00:12:25]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:12:26]:
The customer. Customer pays for the plane tickets to get here. They, you know, all that stuff. But the way in which you choose to bill the customer for that is variable across the industry. Like the customer pays for their diagnostic fees or their diagnostic time that I pay to my team. But it's just built into the process. It's just like ASTA is built into your labor rate at your business. If you bring your team to asta.
Tommy Markham [00:12:53]:
Yeah, I agree. I agree. The customer pays either way. I guess I was making it very, very specific that if myself and I can only speak on my own behalf if I take two hours on.
Mike Allen [00:13:02]:
No, no, no. Make broad generalized statements very confidently.
Tommy Markham [00:13:07]:
Okay, Broad generalized statement. I, I think water's wet. I. You almost can't though, because it's so situational. Right. It depends on who it is, how experienced they are, if they should have been putting that role in the first place. Yeah, it's hard to blanket it.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:26]:
You know, every job has a value. The value of the job I'm doing on the PCM installation and the programming is 500 do. I lacked the knowledge and I thought I had the equipment, but I did not to do the job. Is it the customer's fault that I agreed to do. The value of the job is only 500. It's not more because I didn't have the knowledge and I, I didn't. I sucked at the knowledge and didn't have the equipment. The value of the job doesn't go up because I sucked at it.
Mike Allen [00:13:53]:
So the next time that you have a sob that needs a PCM programmed.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:57]:
It will still be $500 and it's going to take me 12 minutes because.
Mike Allen [00:14:01]:
Then you'll know how.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:01]:
What are they going to do?
Mike Allen [00:14:03]:
Can't go to the dealer.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:05]:
Oh yeah. What shop are you going to go to? Up. And I know you're not familiar with western New York. Where are you going to go in the Tri county area? Nobody. Nobody's going to fix this car in the next three counties.
Mike Allen [00:14:15]:
Nobody in these three counties wants to work on a sub. And we don't have Rush.
Tommy Markham [00:14:19]:
Probably nobody in Lewis county does either. For the record, throwing that out.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:25]:
There's probably 200 people in the country that are going to fix this car that care enough to fix it. There's way more that could. Let's get that straight. That's not. There's way more that could. There's 200 that want to be bothered in the entire country, probably.
Tommy Markham [00:14:38]:
Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:39]:
So it's worth 500 as compared to a standard $200 programming fee. Right. Because it's a scarcity deal. Right. But it's not worth a thousand because it Took me longer because I didn't have my shit together. So it's just not. I'm sorry.
Mike Allen [00:14:54]:
That begs a question about choosing what battles you want to fight. And Wendy's like, I know that my organization can get to the bottom of that and get that vehicle fixed eventually, but probably not profitably. So I don't want to do it.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:10]:
That's the, that's the discussion we've always had since the beginning of the podcast about retainer diagnostic, right? If you have a BMW that doesn't key on and the carpet's wet, $4,000.
Mike Allen [00:15:19]:
Do you get to give. But the retainer. Retainer is non refundable.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:24]:
Yeah, the retainer is the wrong word. I learned that because I had the definition retainer wrong. It's not a retainer. You're just going to pay me 4,000. Retainer implies that if it only takes me four hours, I'm going to give you money back. That's not how that's going to go.
Mike Allen [00:15:37]:
So if you got a $4,000 and.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:39]:
That'S not going to happen anyways, dude.
Mike Allen [00:15:40]:
If you got a $4,000 down payment on a 5 Series with water issues and you got it sorted in one day, they're paying you $4,000. You're what's wrong with this industry, Brian.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:56]:
Yeah, I would probably. They would get money back the 4,000. I'm like, okay. Because like, you know certain things, right? You know, like half of these in our area, most of these things are all wheel drive. You know, if it's got water intrusion, it needs an all wheel drive module. At bare minimum, it's under the passenger floor. So you got one module on a BMW and programming it needs a reefing truck which is the TPMS controller, which is conveniently, yeah, it's conveniently located behind the right rear wheel. It's a great place for it outside the vehicle.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:24]:
So you know, it needs one of those, which is a $500 deal, right? So you're in an into. Into a BMW that won't key on for an all wheel drive module. You're in it for a TPMS module. You have to fix the wiper cowling. Because some hack shop that only knows how, some euro hack shop that only knows how to do pattern failures did a valve cover and spark plugs and didn't put the wiper cowling back together, right? And that's what caused the water intrusion. So you'd have to fix that, which you might have to get parts, you might not, whatever. And you know, half the Time. It's gonna need the fuse block on the firewall up front.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:00]:
So it's not like you're charging them five or $4,000 to do eight minutes worth of work. Like you're gonna go through. You already know that you're gonna be. This is how much realistically we're gonna need in parts. Because every one of these things needs this. When it has water intrusion. This is what we're going to be at.
Mike Allen [00:17:15]:
So when you get to the point where you've. You're going to eclipse $4,000 and they're going to need to approve more. What's the documentation and communication process like to take that next swing?
Bryan Pollock [00:17:28]:
I've never been there. I'm one of those.
Tommy Markham [00:17:33]:
I think it's a learned skill too. Right. The part of you're paying for your education, part of your skill set is knowing to tell them up front because you know all this is going to happen.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:42]:
Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:17:42]:
Yo bro, you're looking at four fish to get the ball rolling on this thing.
Mike Allen [00:17:46]:
You know how much of that mentality that you guys are describing comes from being in a market where you are the big dog in your market. And there are no. There are 100% of very few strong players in your market or not.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:59]:
There's a couple strong players in the market where we're at. They're just not willing to take it on.
Mike Allen [00:18:04]:
Not enough guys. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:05]:
Right off top of my head. That could fix that car.
Mike Allen [00:18:08]:
But they. Well, so. And, and here's the next question. They're not.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:10]:
They're not going.
Mike Allen [00:18:11]:
It's not because you don't care or whatever else is. You're fucking busy with profitable work and you're booked out one of your stores you can't get an appointment at unless you're a pre existing customer.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:21]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:18:22]:
So that's really unusual to be like a. A doctor's office that's not accepting new patients. Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:31]:
It's actually kind of common around. I don't know about you.
Tommy Markham [00:18:33]:
I'm pretty common. Truthfully. If you call my conversation. I have all the time saying it's.
Mike Allen [00:18:38]:
Really unusual for an auto repair shop.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:40]:
To be like that. Oh, gotcha.
Mike Allen [00:18:41]:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:18:42]:
Well, I think it is unusual, but I think in our area, the situation that you just spoke about, like being a top dog. I'm humble. I don't consider myself top anything anywhere, anytime.
Mike Allen [00:18:56]:
He's humble, but he sends pictures of people with his giant fat wallet full of cash as a wheelchair, 10 large.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:02]:
In his wallet charged diagnosis week.
Tommy Markham [00:19:05]:
Humble meaning I'm not going to run around telling everybody that I'm the world's best because I'm not. But I have a skill set that a lot of people do not possess. I have tooling that a lot of people do not possess. And it took me until about a, about a year ago is when I acquired. The last part of the skill set is to either simply say no or sorry, sir, to get the ball rolling on this car, you're looking at XYZ dollars. Otherwise I'm not wasting my time.
Mike Allen [00:19:34]:
So you think that your thought process and your mentality would be different if you were in a metro area that had a decent volume of competent competition?
Tommy Markham [00:19:45]:
I absolutely think it may change that, yes.
Mike Allen [00:19:48]:
You absolutely think it might change.
Tommy Markham [00:19:50]:
I didn't want to say yes because I didn't want to give you the satisfaction. Should I run for office with all.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:59]:
That stuff him and I are talking about? That's all built off experience. I didn't freaking. We didn't open up shop and say every BMW with water intrusion is 4,000 bucks.
Tommy Markham [00:20:07]:
Yeah, it is all experience based burn.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:09]:
Enough times to realize, yeah, you realize, oh, do this.
Tommy Markham [00:20:11]:
But I do think so.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:13]:
Now it's like, well, at least I can tell them up front instead of disappointing the customer and being like, oh, it needs this VTG module because it's floating in water. Water. So we're going to replace this. Your car is going to run again and then it doesn't like, oh man, you're not going to believe this. This thing's been sitting a while. The freaking TPMS module has broccoli in it. We got to replace this. But your car will run after.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:34]:
And then it doesn't because it was broke three ways from water intrusion and it's been sitting nine months while other shops couldn't fix the first issue. None of the other issues, none of.
Mike Allen [00:20:45]:
The things you just described included actually fixing the water intrusion. The cause of the water.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:49]:
No, no, I told you. We're gonna fix the wiper cow.
Mike Allen [00:20:51]:
Okay.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:53]:
But that's how you learn that. It's, it's, it's no different than everybody learned. You can't just put a CP4 in a truck and you got to put the injectors in because everybody, everybody that put a freaking fuel injection pump and then the thing wouldn't run because you need all the injectors in because the shit goes everywhere. Right. It's the same. It's all.
Mike Allen [00:21:08]:
We're right back at talking about TEMU again.
Tommy Markham [00:21:12]:
To answer your question correctly, yes, I do think that if I was in a major metro area with actual competent competition, all these things would have to be in place then yes, my strategy may change however. I'm very hard headed and prideful and it took me a long time to get however skill set. And I don't like saying I'm gonna give that to you.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:34]:
However you started that situation with if.
Tommy Markham [00:21:36]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:37]:
You know, if the dog hadn't stopped to in the woods it had caught the rabbit.
Tommy Markham [00:21:40]:
Well another thing too is if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass every time he hopped.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:44]:
Yeah. So yeah, along with mites. Did you know mites are on a chicken's ass?
Tommy Markham [00:21:51]:
That just got way derailed.
Mike Allen [00:21:54]:
Back to competency based questioning. We've been trying for a year to get Jim Kokonis and Justin Allen from Hunter in to record. We've tried and failed three times I think with at least twice. Yeah, we've had them together. We had a full episode that was spectacular and the dude it was file corrupted.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:17]:
And the file corrupted.
Mike Allen [00:22:19]:
Then we had another time when one of them was having technical difficulties and couldn't get their bandwidth up and running. Yeah, it was Jim while he was between homes when he was moving to town.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:29]:
He was literally homeless.
Mike Allen [00:22:30]:
So yeah, he was, he was in a hotel and the hotel had McDonald's.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:34]:
Wi Fi or something.
Mike Allen [00:22:36]:
But one of the conversations that we had in that spectacular episode that, that Braxton up the recording. But I don't know. You're talking about a torque wire. We're talking about. How many shops do you think are actually doing alignments, ADAs, wheel balance, any of that shit that they're selling for, you know, $100,000 polos. How many of them are actually doing it the way it's supposed to be done?
Tommy Markham [00:23:09]:
And it's hard to get percentage about one.
Mike Allen [00:23:12]:
Yeah. Well so you know Justin is his job is to represent that and the tools will do the job properly. If used properly you can have the best pico out there. If you don't know what the you're doing, it doesn't matter. Right.
Tommy Markham [00:23:28]:
I think a lot of them don't even have the tooling. So I in my neck of the woods which is woodchuck haven't I believe there is two somewhat local body shops to me now doing their own ADAS calibrations but they will not do them for outside customers because they're busy. As far as I know in a 35 mile drive from me, I am the only facility that has the capability to reset a safety system period. So at this point, I'm the only one that can even do it correctly.
Mike Allen [00:24:01]:
So I was in a meeting in Michigan last week and there were 25, 30 shop owners from around the country all in the room. And this conversation came up and I said, everybody stop real quick, quick show of hands. How many of you have invested, you believe properly to be equipped to do ADAS calibrations on most of the cars that come through your shop? And six or seven people raised their.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:27]:
Hand out of how many?
Mike Allen [00:24:29]:
25. Okay.
Tommy Markham [00:24:30]:
More than I thought.
Mike Allen [00:24:32]:
Well, it's a pretty progressive group of shop owners, right? And then I said, how many of you have been able to get a return on investment and get it to the positive on your adas equipment? And one person had their hand up. And then I asked the facilitator who goes around the country and does these meetings all year long, right? And so he's got hundreds of shops that he does this with. And I said, how many shops do you know that are making a profit on customer pay ados calibration, not doing sub work for other shops or body shops? And he said, less than 10.
Tommy Markham [00:25:07]:
I, I agree with that.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:09]:
And yeah, you have to do stuff for body shops.
Tommy Markham [00:25:12]:
Well, yeah, you do have to if you want to be profitable. Whether you have to do stuff for body shops.
Mike Allen [00:25:16]:
Well, what's the point of doing it if you're not going to be profitable?
Tommy Markham [00:25:18]:
Jesus.
Mike Allen [00:25:18]:
It's not a charity.
Tommy Markham [00:25:19]:
It's not because I'm good looking, being able to be the guy that says, yes, I can properly repair your automobile. And that is marketing.
Mike Allen [00:25:27]:
But why would you do that at a loss?
Bryan Pollock [00:25:31]:
Why would you pay somebody to send mailers out?
Mike Allen [00:25:34]:
Mailers?
Tommy Markham [00:25:35]:
It's marketing. I, I think it's marketing.
Mike Allen [00:25:37]:
We just talked about that.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:38]:
Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:25:38]:
With Zeb a few minutes ago. I am not going to get rich on my ADA setup.
Mike Allen [00:25:43]:
Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:25:44]:
But one thing I am going to do is now I'm going to get every alignment from that body shop, every programming event, every steering angle reset, every single calibration, any diag work that they need done that just write the check and it gets done. It's. And the local people see that. Oh my God. You know, Tommy Markham's got this unbelievable alignment machine. It's all marketing. And that marketing costs money. Am I going to get rich specifically on the return on investment on that ADA stuff? No, no.
Tommy Markham [00:26:14]:
But I'm gonna get other work that I wouldn't get otherwise.
Mike Allen [00:26:20]:
So I don't know.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:21]:
I'm just immeasurable. It's another immeasurable which is why so many people have a problem that you can't measure it.
Tommy Markham [00:26:27]:
You can't measure it that are doing.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:29]:
Millions of dollars a year and don't spend a single penny on marketing. Like you gotta kind of maybe you can't measure something, but maybe you got to use common sense and put two things together and realize what the hell's going on here. You know what I mean?
Tommy Markham [00:26:42]:
I think different markets are different 100 again with that. Like it's going to be harder for you to use that as a marketing tool than it is for me. It's easy for me to use that as marketing.
Mike Allen [00:26:52]:
Well, I, I asked a question of Matt fans low. He did a presentation on adas at Napa now in Vegas earlier this year. And I asked a question. I think he thought I was trying to have a gotcha moment or something. And I absolutely was not.
Tommy Markham [00:27:06]:
It was.
Mike Allen [00:27:08]:
How do we educate our customers and say, well, the service information from the manufacturer says that when I do this I have to recalibrate these three systems and it's going to be $700 to do that. And then they call the dealership and the dealership service advisor who doesn't fucking know and doesn't fucking care sees an opportunity to throw us under the bus. And maybe he even believes it. He says those guys are out of their mind. They're ripping you off. We've got a coupon. I can do it for $129.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:43]:
The advice the advisor of the dealership doesn't know what's required.
Mike Allen [00:27:46]:
Doesn't know. And they believe that we genuinely are ripping them off and they're saving that customer from us.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:51]:
And the tech doesn't know at the dealership either because I can, I can provide you endless amounts of documentation where technicians at the dealership didn't read their own sign service information. So I can detect didn't know.
Tommy Markham [00:28:02]:
Yeah, that's definitely going to be a hurdle. Educating the public, that's going to be the hardest part. I will say this. My local body shops, of course I was friends with them anyway prior to getting into this. But I had one of the employees of of body shop come up to me and said discuss how they had all been talking. My God, he, he does know more than the dealers because they had never heard and any of the times they took a calibration to a dealer that the fuel had to be. Fuel tank had to be full. Not every car is that way.
Tommy Markham [00:28:35]:
But you have to read service information. And I was attaching pictures of the cluster with a full tank of Fuel prior to the calibration that they were getting them back from the dealers with whatever gas they took there. They weren't aligning the cars. Which step one to align the calibration is.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:52]:
Yeah. Perform the pre alignment checks, align the vehicle. Right.
Tommy Markham [00:28:55]:
Kind of the marketing thing. I mean, I know that they aren't the general customers, they're body shops, but they are now trained that oh, this guy actually cares and he understands how to read service information, do the job correctly and then they tell somebody and then they tell somebody, you know. But again, it's Woodchuckville, not Raleigh, so it makes a difference.
Mike Allen [00:29:16]:
Well, I'm at a point where I know I'm gonna have to invest a lot of money to be able to do the job right in equipment and training. And it just pisses me off because I know I'm not going to make any money doing it.
Tommy Markham [00:29:31]:
Yeah, I, I agree. I mean, you guys know, I mean I talked to Brian extensively before I did this. I legit was bruxing my teeth together at night. I was so stressed out, like I was getting ready to drop $5 million on this thing. But I just had paid my shop off and I'm like, oh, you know, lights at the end of the tunnel and I'm diving in for another six figure purchase for something that may not necessarily be the ROI you'd hoped for, but now that I have it and I'm doing it, I wouldn't go back, I'd do it again.
Mike Allen [00:29:57]:
Did you get ultimate ADAs or did you get the Altel set up? What are you getting?
Tommy Markham [00:30:00]:
I got the hunter ultimate ADAs.
Mike Allen [00:30:02]:
Okay. Why are you smiling at me like that?
Tommy Markham [00:30:05]:
I feel like you already knew the answer. Yeah, everybody, the whole world hates me now because I wanted to keep my six figure purchase in the United States of America. So I'm a bad guy for that, I guess.
Mike Allen [00:30:20]:
There are starving children in China who need you to buy Chinese who need.
Bryan Pollock [00:30:24]:
To solder components on for pennies a day. Oh wait, pennies a day? Is that what it takes to take care of. I can't remember how it works.
Tommy Markham [00:30:34]:
So for, for the haters, if I was not married and did not have a child in my house, I would take a sleep sack and sleep on my aligner just for that. I love my piece of quality USA made steel that's sitting in the floor.
Bryan Pollock [00:30:49]:
I have gotten messages from Tommy where he drives to a shop at night and he just takes a picture of it with the lights dimmed and he's like, look at that thing.
Mike Allen [00:30:56]:
Boys, when it's dark and the lights are all on the shop and it's.
Tommy Markham [00:30:59]:
Shining like a jewel, the cameras are on standby. So it's almost like a romantic disco. Glittering and it's all nice red. Hunter red.
Mike Allen [00:31:09]:
What do you say? Almost like a romantic what?
Tommy Markham [00:31:12]:
Disco. Disco.
Mike Allen [00:31:14]:
I heard romantic disc golf and I was like. And I was like, are you.
Tommy Markham [00:31:19]:
Are you.
Mike Allen [00:31:19]:
Are you flirting with Braxton?
Tommy Markham [00:31:21]:
I am almost Canadian, eh? You know, talking about. Got an accent.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:25]:
Hog.
Tommy Markham [00:31:26]:
Hog.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:26]:
Hog.
Tommy Markham [00:31:26]:
Yeah, we talked about that.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:27]:
Hog and Susie are talking about these hogs last night.
Mike Allen [00:31:30]:
Hog.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:31]:
Hog. Hog. I'm like, what's that? You like pig?
Mike Allen [00:31:34]:
H A W G Hag.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:36]:
Yeah, we have a W in coffee.
Tommy Markham [00:31:38]:
Coffee.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:38]:
Coffee.
Mike Allen [00:31:40]:
What's the abbreviation for Tim Hortons that y' all use?
Bryan Pollock [00:31:43]:
Timmy's or hoes compared to Stewart's is.
Tommy Markham [00:31:46]:
G A R, B A G E. I think is the abbreviation Tim Hortons.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:49]:
Stewart's coffee is quality stuff. You can't beat a quality gas station coffee.
Tommy Markham [00:31:55]:
Yeah, Especially Stewart's.
Mike Allen [00:31:56]:
I. I would argue that you can absolutely beat gas station coffee.
Tommy Markham [00:32:02]:
You haven't had a Stewart's coffee. Clearly. Clearly. So when we get you to upstate, we're gonna have to take them for coffee, I guess. Simple as that. When you. You are coming snowmobile with us, right?
Mike Allen [00:32:13]:
Oh, I heard that it's cold when you go snowmobiling.
Bryan Pollock [00:32:16]:
It's. It's just a little.
Mike Allen [00:32:18]:
Can I get the plug in? Electric suit. So that's a nice and testy seats. All right. No, no, not seat and handlebars. I want the suit that keeps me a nice. Like you don't need like a 70 trails.
Tommy Markham [00:32:29]:
Yeah, we'll just. You're gonna be sweating so bad.
Bryan Pollock [00:32:31]:
We'll just take you in the twisties. You'll be sweating so bad, you'd be taking your.
Tommy Markham [00:32:33]:
Be the first time in your life.
Bryan Pollock [00:32:34]:
Yeah, you'll be de rolling sweating when it's negative 8 degrees outside.
Tommy Markham [00:32:39]:
It's true story.
Mike Allen [00:32:40]:
And then if you stop moving, the sweat starts to freeze.
Tommy Markham [00:32:43]:
Right. Then you just start going again. It's simple.
Mike Allen [00:32:45]:
Yeah. So it would appear that word has gotten out that we have a cooler full of ice beverages in the podcast studio.
Bryan Pollock [00:32:50]:
The executive director. Director of ASTA point to our beer cooler. We are stepchild of podcasts, but we're the coolest one because we have a beer.
Tommy Markham [00:32:59]:
I can't help it that all those.
Mike Allen [00:33:00]:
Other don't bring refreshments for their guests.
Tommy Markham [00:33:03]:
I'm just glad he didn't see the chicken and start judging us.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:06]:
Oh, they can see that.
Mike Allen [00:33:07]:
Oh, yeah. Presidency ended today. Braxton says that I am going to be ending my term as president.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:14]:
You know, my favorite part about the beer cooler is the sticker that we've added to it.
Mike Allen [00:33:19]:
Yeah, we agree. We need to collect stickers all over.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:24]:
I had all these plans. I had, like, five T shirts and stickers I was going to bring, and the whole shit went to hell in a handbasket when I hurt myself.
Mike Allen [00:33:31]:
Send me stickers for the podcast beer cooler, please. I want to cover it in stickers. Shop stickers from around the country for the podcast beer cooler. If I have one of your stickers, next time I see you, you can have one of my beers.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:46]:
That's a good idea.
Tommy Markham [00:33:48]:
I need to do some stickers. I've never done that. Never had.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:51]:
I've never done corpic stickers. Really?
Mike Allen [00:33:53]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:55]:
We have small ones about the size of your cell phone. Then I had some bigger ones made. I got a big one, I don't know, like, this big on the back of my truck. So when I'm driving like an. Everybody knows who's doing it.
Mike Allen [00:34:04]:
Yeah. That's one thing that we've noticed. So we've got. Our loaner cars are. They're all 2022 Toyota Camrys and then got wrapped with the logo and the phone number and everything else. And like, once a month, we get a phone call from somebody who's like, your fucking employee just cut me off. Driving like a crazy person. I'm like, I'm going to fire him.
Mike Allen [00:34:24]:
Ma', am. Thank you for letting me know. Because it's a customer. Right, Right. And then you text the shop and you're like, hey, loaner car number seven. Somebody's driving like a bat. Like, they're batshit. But that totally happens on a regular basis.
Mike Allen [00:34:37]:
So.
Tommy Markham [00:34:42]:
So are you gonna go on record and let the cat out of the bag who sent that package to the shop today?
Bryan Pollock [00:34:47]:
No, no, I'm not. I'm not going to.
Tommy Markham [00:34:50]:
Well, I know.
Mike Allen [00:34:51]:
What package did you send to the shop?
Bryan Pollock [00:34:52]:
I did not send. Okay, first thing, I will go on record.
Tommy Markham [00:34:55]:
You might as well tell them, Ryan, because I know. You know what it says.
Mike Allen [00:34:58]:
He probably has a picture of it already. He knows who did it.
Tommy Markham [00:35:00]:
Yeah, exactly.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:02]:
I did not. I did not send. Well, Tommy, I think according to Tommy, because I didn't know this.
Mike Allen [00:35:08]:
Allegedly.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:09]:
Allegedly. There's a package that showed up at the shop, at Tommy's shop that said number one.
Tommy Markham [00:35:16]:
Number one, Closet Bills Tommy. Tommy Closet Bills fan is who. It was addressed Tommy Closet Bills Fan.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:22]:
Because we all know that even though Tommy acts like he likes the Dolphins, nobody in the right mind could even like the Dolphins right now.
Mike Allen [00:35:30]:
I don't think the ball over.
Tommy Markham [00:35:31]:
Turn the ball over. Yeah, it's a love hate thing. I mean, it's all Dan Marino's fault. Everybody knows that.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:36]:
Laces out.
Tommy Markham [00:35:37]:
Laces out. Yeah, I've been soft sprinkle.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:40]:
Anyways.
Tommy Markham [00:35:41]:
Yeah. So these. I got Buffalo shop owners heckling me via USPS now.
Mike Allen [00:35:47]:
How the are you in upstate New York and you're a Miami fan?
Tommy Markham [00:35:51]:
I just got roped into really liking watching Dan Marino play football when I was a kid, and I didn't want to be a bandwagon. So I'm still on the ship going down with it.
Mike Allen [00:35:59]:
Well, when. Marina, when, when. When Mar. Was. Was riding high. I mean, was anyone a Bills fan at that point?
Tommy Markham [00:36:05]:
Right. That's what I'm thinking. I mean, they kind of were.
Mike Allen [00:36:08]:
Wait, was that the time when they went to the super bowl three years in a row and lost every time? Four years in a row and lost every time?
Tommy Markham [00:36:13]:
I don't want to. I don't want to talk too much because the Dolphins haven't won a playoff game in this century.
Mike Allen [00:36:19]:
I don't think.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:19]:
I'm just. I'm just letting you know that that's all fine and cool here. If you said that on Allen street in Buffalo.
Tommy Markham [00:36:25]:
Oh, yeah. You get worked over.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:27]:
Oh, for sure.
Mike Allen [00:36:28]:
It's a statement of fact. They played in the super bowl four years in a row and lost every time.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:31]:
You would die. You would die. They would kill you.
Mike Allen [00:36:33]:
What I should say is in the greatness when they had four consecutive AFC championships in the.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:38]:
Still.
Mike Allen [00:36:38]:
Great.
Tommy Markham [00:36:39]:
That's how you need to word that in Buffalo.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:40]:
Yes.
Tommy Markham [00:36:41]:
Yeah, yeah. They still might get upset because you're alluding to it.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:46]:
We have. We have. I. I was somewhere, I saw a bartender that had a picture of Josh Allen when he bit into that turkey leg tattooed on his arm. This is the type of what we're talking about here.
Mike Allen [00:36:59]:
Hey, did you know that there's a tattoo convention going on?
Tommy Markham [00:37:01]:
I did see that. I did see that. So they timed that just right because a lot of technicians are tattoo people. So I wonder if they kind of did that on purpose.
Mike Allen [00:37:08]:
There's some kismet there. Is that the word kissment? Maybe. I don't know. That's a word you would know. Yeah. Okay.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:15]:
Where's Dutch? Where's Dutch?
Tommy Markham [00:37:16]:
Maybe we'll just call it coincidence.
Mike Allen [00:37:19]:
Where is Dutch? I haven't seen him yet.
Tommy Markham [00:37:21]:
I Seen him last night, but I seen him yesterday.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:23]:
He. He was walking around with a sport coat and New Balances. I snapped a picture of his feet, as usual. You know, feet are kind of my thing.
Mike Allen [00:37:30]:
He's got to own a Corvette secretly, right?
Tommy Markham [00:37:33]:
Ah, I think he's a Ford dude. He's got that old Ford truck that he's got, like, obs.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:38]:
I think he dailies a Porsche Cayenne, but not a nice one. Janky one.
Mike Allen [00:37:41]:
Yeah, like one that he bought.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:42]:
I hope he listens to this. I hope he listens to this.
Mike Allen [00:37:44]:
He doesn't listen to our. Are you kidding me? Yeah, he's got no patience. He's got no patience for my.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:49]:
Could you imagine? That was the most ridiculous suggestion there's.
Mike Allen [00:37:54]:
I love it.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:55]:
I took a picture of Dutch in his New Balances yesterday. Just his feet. Just his New Balances.
Mike Allen [00:38:01]:
Should just text it to him right now.
Tommy Markham [00:38:02]:
There's a few people I actually get to meet in person that I've been Facebook friends with for, like, six or seven years.
Mike Allen [00:38:07]:
Who you been looking out for?
Tommy Markham [00:38:09]:
Well, Dodge. I mean, I've talked to him extensively. I have yet to actually shake the man's hand in person.
Mike Allen [00:38:13]:
He's such a good dude. He's.
Tommy Markham [00:38:15]:
Yeah, I seen him last night, but he was busy. I didn't want to bother him. And Matt Skundri.
Mike Allen [00:38:19]:
Garbage.
Tommy Markham [00:38:19]:
He's got me out of 10 jams over the years, calls me, helps me out. I have yet to meet him in person. So he's supposedly here, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:38:27]:
Yeah, I think he's getting in a little bit late.
Mike Allen [00:38:31]:
I know that he's on the attendee list.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:33]:
Yeah, yeah, he's getting in a little bit late today, but, yeah, he's.
Tommy Markham [00:38:36]:
Yeah, I definitely got to meet him. It's funny about him. Everybody's like, oh, he's. He's pretty abrasive. But, you know, guys like him make it better, I think. Like, he forces you to.
Mike Allen [00:38:45]:
He.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:45]:
He knows.
Tommy Markham [00:38:46]:
He forces you to, like, go read.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:48]:
He knows what he knows. He knows what he. He doesn't know. He knows what he knows, and he realizes that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. So when somebody argues with him about something that he absolutely knows, he doesn't have time for nonsense. So he gets super abrasive. He's like.
Tommy Markham [00:39:00]:
Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:39:00]:
Quippy and dumb.
Tommy Markham [00:39:02]:
Right. And I don't have a problem with that, really.
Mike Allen [00:39:04]:
So the big difference between Skundrich and I is that I'm abrasive like that and act like that when I don't Have a fucking clue what I'm talking about. Yes, I just act like I knew.
Bryan Pollock [00:39:13]:
He won't be like that if he doesn't know something. But if he like knows something, he'll just be like, dude, you're an idiot. And I hope you go out of business.
Mike Allen [00:39:26]:
Say, I wish you all the success you deserve. Yeah. All the success and happiness.
Bryan Pollock [00:39:29]:
I hope you Enjoy your next 24 hours, Michael.
Tommy Markham [00:39:32]:
I like that. I'm using that from now. Happiness and success that you deserve.
Mike Allen [00:39:38]:
That is great. I'm going to start talking about how. How mundane it is to say have a nice day. Hey, Tommy. Your name's Tommy on your shirt. Hey, Tommy, have a nice day, man. As opposed to Tommy. I hope you Enjoy the next 24 hours.
Tommy Markham [00:39:55]:
I like that.
Mike Allen [00:39:55]:
That's amazing. Because it went from small talk that nobody really hears to serial killer threat. Yeah, yeah, right.
Tommy Markham [00:40:06]:
I like it. I like. I think I'll use that.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:07]:
I think I'll use that.
Tommy Markham [00:40:09]:
That was awesome.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:10]:
We always talk about things that you can say that are normal but uncomfortable at the same time. Right. That's where that came from anyway.
Tommy Markham [00:40:18]:
Well, we gotta about anything else or.
Mike Allen [00:40:21]:
No. Well, I was gonna say you finally got the shop paid off and then you spent $7.2 million on Hunter equipment.
Tommy Markham [00:40:29]:
Give or take six bucks. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:40:31]:
And then you decided to not even charge for diag. How are you gonna dig out of this ditch?
Tommy Markham [00:40:37]:
When did I say I wasn't charging for diag? What? How?
Mike Allen [00:40:41]:
Did you do the math? Or did you do the math or you just didn't care? You wanted the nice stuff to determine your ROI on that investment.
Tommy Markham [00:40:49]:
I wanted the Hunter aligner regardless. And you got an in ground with.
Mike Allen [00:40:54]:
The scissor lift and wasn't going to.
Tommy Markham [00:40:55]:
Do that at first until I decided to go the ADAS route. And it just makes it way easier to do surround view calibrations and stuff. At first I was just going to buy a surface mounted rack with a Hunter Hawkeye Elite. Then the more I thought about it and the more pressure I got from my local body shops, it's like, man, I'm going to have to be able to perform these calibrations for myself at some point.
Mike Allen [00:41:21]:
What was the initial investment for you to dig out the space to put in that just the concrete work?
Tommy Markham [00:41:30]:
About five grand.
Mike Allen [00:41:31]:
Oh, that's not that bad.
Tommy Markham [00:41:32]:
Then another two grand for the epoxy. But the epoxy. My wife's brother in law, he did it. Kind of a little horse trading. That's what us woodchucks do. So it wasn't like I called this company in and like, hey, can you epoxy my floor? It was, hey dj, you want to help me epoxy my floor?
Mike Allen [00:41:46]:
Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:41:47]:
And he was happy to do it. So it's a total, total investment currently and I still have to add a few targets with the floor and everything. About 140.
Mike Allen [00:42:04]:
It makes me sad.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:05]:
That just pained Mike. It makes me sad he's in physical pain.
Mike Allen [00:42:10]:
I mean I bought a lot of. I bought a Hawkeye Elite last year, right. And a couple of 12,000 pound scissor lifts. They're great equipment. And we got the road force balancers and the tire machine, all that at the same time. The ados man the next. Because I'm yank.
Tommy Markham [00:42:28]:
Yeah, well, it's damned if you do and damned if you don't. I mean, there was a lot of things that went on in my head when I leading up to deciding that, okay, I'm 41 years old at the time I made this decision, I just had my first child. Clearly retirement is not on the horizon for me. So what am I going to do for 20 more years? Sorry, sir, I can't fix your car. I can't properly. What am I going to do?
Mike Allen [00:42:50]:
You know, set the toe, let it go, collect the dough, baby. That's what you're doing.
Tommy Markham [00:42:54]:
That's not how I rol.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:56]:
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Mike Allen [00:42:58]:
Sell more tires that way too.
Tommy Markham [00:43:00]:
It's just this. The stuff could be done right and I have at least another 20 years dealer right there.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:06]:
The dealer life. The drive by alignments I saw, I saw a lot of drive by alignments. When a part would get changed under warranty and warranty paid for an alignment, but the car really didn't need one. If you actually knew how worked.
Mike Allen [00:43:16]:
You see a dude just cranking on it with a pry bar and say, hit print. Hit print.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:20]:
No, the drive by alignment is when the part you changed didn't change. Didn't change any alignment angle. So you drive right by the alignment rack. That's a drive by.
Tommy Markham [00:43:30]:
I like that one either.
Mike Allen [00:43:32]:
Most efficient alignment ever.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:35]:
Efficient 0.7 ever.
Tommy Markham [00:43:37]:
I think maybe that's what we'll do. We'll hang up a sign out front that says we fix 79.99 alignments.
Mike Allen [00:43:44]:
You hang that sign up for other shop owners to feel good. Right? That's. That's an ego sign. And I get it. I've got an ego.
Tommy Markham [00:43:54]:
Really? I hadn't noticed.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:56]:
You got freaking Miata energy.
Mike Allen [00:43:58]:
That's I got Big me out of energy.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:00]:
Big me out of energy. Subcompact. Energy.
Mike Allen [00:44:02]:
Subcompact, baby.
Tommy Markham [00:44:03]:
Where is the chicken?
Mike Allen [00:44:05]:
Anywhere.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:06]:
We have the thrones in the, in the hospital.
Mike Allen [00:44:09]:
Yeah, we got a throne. Yeah, it is. Oh yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:11]:
It's not as fancy as that one. It's pretty nice though.
Mike Allen [00:44:13]:
Well, so those thrones are like cheap plasticky, just painted gold. I got like a real like heavy mahogany throne with like the red. Oh yeah, it's nice.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:24]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:44:25]:
Smells of rich mahogany. I've got lots of leather bound books. I feel like whiskey and a cigar in that. And essentially I can pass laws with my word, you know.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:36]:
Nice.
Tommy Markham [00:44:37]:
Speaking of smells, that, that hotel shampoo. Does my hair smell as good as Zeb's looks?
Mike Allen [00:44:46]:
Diesel Jesus is hard to pass up. I mean, it's got a big floral bouquet though, so that's good.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:53]:
Yeah, we're not on the same. I didn't bring my own shampoo. I'm relying on the hotel.
Tommy Markham [00:44:57]:
Yeah, me too.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:58]:
I know.
Tommy Markham [00:44:58]:
It smells like a weird lemon or something.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:00]:
Yeah. Zeb brought a whole skew a haircut.
Tommy Markham [00:45:03]:
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure he brought a whole cat.
Mike Allen [00:45:05]:
Is it. Does it weird you out that a lot of business hotels now, they don't have the individual shampoos, they have the little wall mounted thing that they refill and you're like, what is other people.
Tommy Markham [00:45:13]:
Putting on the shower?
Bryan Pollock [00:45:14]:
I'm like this trying to read it because I don't need conditioner.
Tommy Markham [00:45:17]:
I thought about that when I was in there. It makes me feel a little bit crazy. It is a little weird that they're refilling them. I mean, it's great for them of course, right? But for the end, use like 55.
Mike Allen [00:45:26]:
Gallon drums of brake clean.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:27]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:45:33]:
So I, I actually do bring like Walgreens that have the little row with the $1 things that you just get. And they're all air, you know, TSA compliant sizes. So I bring my own shampoo.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:43]:
I packed my TSA compliant toothpaste size wise, right? Because what is it, like 3.2 ounces or something like that? So I packed my little toothpaste and I was kind of, you know, wasn't in the best shape the past few days. So I've just been kind of barely getting along and I packed it and I went to brush my teeth this morning and bubblegum pet kids kids crust.
Mike Allen [00:46:04]:
Oops, that's so gross. Oh, TSA compliance. I gotta tell you this. Leaving my elite meeting last week in Michigan, I had rented a grand Wagoneer.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:15]:
Oh, yeah. Such a piece of such a piece.
Mike Allen [00:46:17]:
But anyway, in the casino parking lot, somebody had bumped me and I didn't realize it. And so the right front bumper cover was popped out. And I get to the Enterprise, check in at the airport, and they're like, hey, was this here? And I was like, oh, yeah, I was totally there before. Like, did you take pictures? And I was like, no. But I told the guy about it and I told him about the scratch on the driver's door also. Let me come show you that. And I had told him about a scratch on the driver's door and he had documented. So I told him just to document them both.
Mike Allen [00:46:47]:
And I said, do I need to take pictures? And he said no. And I could tell that they were about to call the manager. And we had been given an 11 ounce jar of local honey from a local honey producer or whatever. And I knew that I couldn't take it through TSA because it was more than 8 ounces. And I was like, hey, does anybody want some fresh local honey that was given to me when I was over in Jackson this week. I know I can't take it with TSA with me. It looks so good, but I can't have it. And they're like, oh, that's awesome.
Mike Allen [00:47:15]:
Okay, you can go, sir. And I'm like, yes, I fucked up your car and I denied all of the insurances and all the coverages and everything else.
Tommy Markham [00:47:24]:
And so I think if I hit anything in that rental car that I currently have, I'm probably going to lose my life. What, driving in Mitsubishi? About the size of this table?
Mike Allen [00:47:34]:
Do they even sell Mitsubishi anymore?
Tommy Markham [00:47:36]:
Yeah, I, I seriously want.
Mike Allen [00:47:37]:
We talked about this.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:38]:
We just talked about. I talked about last night. I said if I had won the 1.8 billion, I would have bought Mitsubishi went in as CEO and shut it down. Sent everyone home. We're done. We're done, boys. I'd have bought. I'd have stopped at like Spencer's and bought a neon closed stuff sign on the way in.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:56]:
Fred threw it up right on the door of Mitsubishi.
Tommy Markham [00:47:58]:
We're done. Makes me sad though, Is there, there's human beings that go to Mitsubishi dealerships and sign paperwork to pay payments on one of those things.
Mike Allen [00:48:08]:
Can you imagine being six years into your Mitsubishi payment?
Bryan Pollock [00:48:12]:
It wouldn't be, it wouldn't still be.
Tommy Markham [00:48:14]:
Around, like this car. Literally this car.
Mike Allen [00:48:15]:
I, the payment would still be around the car.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:17]:
My payment would still be their cars.
Tommy Markham [00:48:19]:
I would not pay a th000 bucks cash for that. Car brand new. I would not, I wouldn't pay a thousand bucks.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:26]:
Tommy would enter one tenth of his wheel chock on a Friday afternoon. I would not do a whole ass Mitsubishi.
Tommy Markham [00:48:31]:
I would not even insult my wheelchock by taking it to a Mitsubishi.
Mike Allen [00:48:35]:
There are Ultimas driving around downtown Raleigh right now that have eight year notes on them. The dealership here is advertising. Did you say Mitsubishi's Nissan Altima?
Bryan Pollock [00:48:45]:
I just had a conversation with somebody just the other day and he said, you know, he said there should be a law with new cars because you know the whole finance game with the manufacturer having the financing so they can get it, you know under points there should be a law that whatever the manufacturer offers for financing there needs to.
Mike Allen [00:49:02]:
Be a warranty that lasts that long.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:05]:
That lasts that long. So if they want to offer these people a seven year note at freaking.
Mike Allen [00:49:11]:
8:18 or whatever it is. Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:14]:
I don't know. I haven't bought a car in a long time. I don't know what it's anymore. They should have to warranty the car for that long.
Tommy Markham [00:49:22]:
It's insane. I, I flipped up the sun visor on this thing almost when it hit this. The roof of the car go. You're literally driving a 10 box, 10 box of death down the road. The people sign up and pay interest for that garbage. It just, it saddens me. You think my aligner saddens you? That saddens me. Makes me sad.
Mike Allen [00:49:44]:
What's the ADOS calibration like on a Mitsubishi these days?
Tommy Markham [00:49:48]:
They use the Nissan Targets, basically pull.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:52]:
It out to the garbage cans on garbage day and hope the freaking garbage truck.
Tommy Markham [00:49:55]:
Here's the story is that we have a Mitsubishi dealer.
Mike Allen [00:49:59]:
It looks like he's in so much pain.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:00]:
Rome David's not moving pretty good.
Tommy Markham [00:50:02]:
Oh is he? Yeah, he's pretty heard he was but yeah. We have a somewhat local Mitsubishi dealer to me in Rome, New York and people buy that garbage so Actually quite a few of the calibrations I've done for the body shops have been on that dog. It's their, their scan tool software is even horrible. Brian can second that. The Mitsubishi MUT3 is like playing the Oregon Trail.
Mike Allen [00:50:29]:
You'Ve died of disinterested.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:30]:
I was programming some keys one time and I tried to ford the river and I freaking. We went down. Yeah we were not doing good.
Tommy Markham [00:50:37]:
I didn't know how to do it. Michael Bercolo actually called me one night.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:41]:
And the mutt three.
Tommy Markham [00:50:42]:
Yeah and he's awesome man. That guy is just. Yeah, I Don't get to tell people much, but Michael Bercolo is just a solid dude.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:49]:
The part 3 mut.
Tommy Markham [00:50:51]:
Mut. 3. Like Roman numeral 3. That's the name of their software.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:56]:
So you log in. So the first thing you have to do when you log in is you have to log in again.
Mike Allen [00:51:01]:
Yeah, you just log in and log in.
Tommy Markham [00:51:03]:
It's a weird tweet. So he's like, okay, when. When your son goes to bed, I'm going back to my shop. You go back to yours. I'll help you. So in order for me to complete that, I had to do it. So he's team View order me at midnight one night, and I'm expecting this great thing for the time involved. And I hook it to the car.
Tommy Markham [00:51:21]:
I'm like, what the hell is this? It's got like all these unbelievable.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:24]:
It's got like all these big buttons.
Tommy Markham [00:51:26]:
Yeah, big buttons.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:27]:
Big buttons on this screen.
Tommy Markham [00:51:28]:
Yeah, that's almost like the font from Atari that Atari games.
Mike Allen [00:51:32]:
Like, it's all eight bit stuff.
Tommy Markham [00:51:33]:
This is a 2024 Mitsubishi Outlander. And I'm using 1980 video game software to program the radar. You know, it's stupid.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:42]:
Pretty scary.
Tommy Markham [00:51:43]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:51:43]:
It's not working. You take the cartridge out and blow in it, right?
Tommy Markham [00:51:47]:
Yeah, pretty much.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:48]:
When you have a problem, they don't give a. I have a case. I have a case study on programming Mitsubishi training. It's terrible.
Mike Allen [00:51:54]:
Yeah, they don't give it. They're like, you bought a Mitsubishi? What did you expect?
Bryan Pollock [00:51:57]:
Yeah, they're like, exactly. They're like, it's not broke. You send them screenshots, they're like, it's not broke. You send them more screenshots, they're like, oh, yeah, that looks broke, but it's probably not broke. I'm like, the freaking software don't work, bro.
Tommy Markham [00:52:09]:
Yeah, it is horrible. And it's really.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:12]:
They got my nasty account locked out. They freaking.
Tommy Markham [00:52:15]:
I. Oh, Mitsubishi did that?
Bryan Pollock [00:52:16]:
Yeah, because I went to get some key data to program a module, and so they were supposed to transfer the secret key into the tool. And then Mitsubishi didn't actually have the data because they lose. That's the thing that happens. They lose shit. Like, sometimes you enter. Mitsubishi doesn't have files for certain cars that they're supposed to have files for. So they'll be like, nope, there's no engine control module on that car. I'm like, well, I drove it in here.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:41]:
Like, there is, I promise. And so they'll lose files, Right? So they lost this file. They didn't have the key data. I'm like, you know what, I'll just use aftermarket tool. I'll just do my thing with aftermarket tools. I go to use my nasty account, like two weeks later, I'm locked out. Says your account suspended. It opened a D1.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:57]:
I'm like, I email the people. I'm like, okay, I understand that. Open a D1. They never, they didn't have the file. I never got anything from them. They're like, oh, well, they auto generated a D1. I'm like, I don't, I didn't receive any security.
Mike Allen [00:53:09]:
What's a D1?
Bryan Pollock [00:53:10]:
The, the form would ask if, when you get secure data, whether it's a key code or whether it's to program a module where you've proven that you've, you've looked at the ownership of the vehicle and you verified the ownership of the vehicle. So you're not, you're not essentially programming a key for somebody to steal a car. Yeah, yeah. Well, it auto populated. Do you want. I never got any information. There was no.
Mike Allen [00:53:33]:
So it was all blank.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:34]:
It was all, yeah, it just said file not available. So I'm like, okay, I got no information. Whatever. I emailed them, they said it's not broke, blah, blah. Finally they said, yep, it's broke. We don't know what do to tell you. We can't come up with it. So I go, okay, I want aftermarket tools.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:48]:
That was the last interaction I had with Mitsubishi. Well, their system Auto populated a D1 on my NASA dashboard. I never went to go look for it because why would I go look for it? I never got any secured key data. I didn't have anything to enter. And then the NASDAQ people were like, well, that's why you should verify the ownership. I go, well, turns out I still have the pictures of the license and I did not verify the ownership before I did it. I didn't think it was going to open one.
Tommy Markham [00:54:12]:
You know, I actually had mine locked out for D1. That was just because I flat out forgot to do it. So then next time I needed it three months later, I'm like, why is it not working? But we're getting all in the weeds here on technical stuff, Mike. Here's Mike Glass. Do you want to talk about how I switched to techmetric? Would that make you happy?
Mike Allen [00:54:29]:
You have the greatest software in all of the automotive aftermarket.
Tommy Markham [00:54:34]:
I do what? Two months ago, I. My average repair order is up. And I'm not saying it was all tech metric, but I'm 100% saying I couldn't have done it without it.
Mike Allen [00:54:43]:
He's not saying it wasn't all Tech Metric either.
Tommy Markham [00:54:47]:
No, actually, we're really enjoying that too. You know the weird thing, me being a technician, shop owner, I didn't switch to TechMetric for the revenue side of it. I switched because it was easier to attach ADAS files to body shop cars. And then that just followed suit with it. And it's probably the. One of the best things I've ever done, honestly.
Mike Allen [00:55:07]:
Clip that, Braxton. Clip it. I'm gonna send that to Sunil tonight.
Tommy Markham [00:55:12]:
Yeah, it was all Mike Allen. It was. That's why I did it. It was Mike One cut out.
Mike Allen [00:55:18]:
Me saying clip it and then clip it again and slice them together.
Bryan Pollock [00:55:20]:
Yes. Copy and paste.
Tommy Markham [00:55:26]:
It's awesome. And you know, the weird thing about that is too, some of my customers that I had never in a million years would have suspected would give two shits about what I'm. How I bill them. A farmer that I coyote hunt his land. Last person in the world that I thought would care. I sent him the invoice and he paid with the link. He come to pick this truck up, he's like, oh, that's. That's awesome.
Tommy Markham [00:55:49]:
That's like the best thing you've ever done.
Mike Allen [00:55:50]:
The customer experience with Tech Metric is amazing.
Tommy Markham [00:55:54]:
Yeah. I couldn't believe it. Like, some of the people, I would have never thought, and they're just like, oh, man, why didn't you do that? Long time. This is amazing. Seriously. Like, you really like it that much? I just do it because it's easier now.
Mike Allen [00:56:06]:
Well, and I'm sure that some of the other ones are good too. But I've been on two of the biggest legacy softwares in my career. I've been on our writer and been on Mitchell and had a little bit with Protractor. And they're all softwares that have their benefits and their limitations. Right. But the customer user experience.
Bryan Pollock [00:56:23]:
Yeah. The user interface is not complicated. Jerk.
Tommy Markham [00:56:26]:
Yeah, I. I will say this. It was tough for me to decide between that and Shopware. And Monique herself did the, did the, the demo. Yeah. And she, she was amazing. As far as the presentation was concerned. She was better, hands down.
Tommy Markham [00:56:43]:
But the thing, there are a couple things that kind of hung me up between the two. One of them being that they did not integrate with all data. And if I got rid of Napa Tracks, I was going to ditch Pro to man because I. I have, you know, five different service informations and I hardly ever Use Mitchell service info. So why would I. It just didn't make sense.
Bryan Pollock [00:57:02]:
Yeah, right.
Mike Allen [00:57:03]:
Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:57:03]:
I think shopware was okay too, but I just liked Tech Metric a little bit better.
Mike Allen [00:57:08]:
Good job. Welcome. Welcome to the side of good and right. Okay.
Bryan Pollock [00:57:13]:
So welcome to the Borg.
Tommy Markham [00:57:15]:
Yeah. We talk about something, you know, that didn't bore you to death. We won't talk about programming with the Oregon Trail anymore.
Mike Allen [00:57:23]:
I mean, you know, if you want to talk about, hey, this. This program makes you die of dysentery. I mean, I can think of some programs that make me want to dive Dysentery.
Tommy Markham [00:57:34]:
After using it for 10 minutes, I thought about actually climbing up on the top of my shop and jumping off head first. I don't think that's dysentery, but the.
Mike Allen [00:57:43]:
Old Oregon Trail, some flat rate mentality. If you got to go, man, that was very efficient. That's a very efficient way to go, right?
Tommy Markham [00:57:49]:
It is. Yeah. Exactly.
Mike Allen [00:57:51]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:57:51]:
The covered wagon's tricky.
Mike Allen [00:57:53]:
You. Do you have any. You a one man show or do you have other guys in the organization with you?
Tommy Markham [00:57:58]:
I just have my nephew and I will actually. I. I just recently brought my youngest sister on as my front man. Okay. And she's. I'm thinking of all the things I can have her do because she can do them.
Mike Allen [00:58:10]:
Are they here?
Tommy Markham [00:58:11]:
No, they're not here. I'm gonna have her start doing some of the DBI stuff. Like, we're not gonna go full blown.
Mike Allen [00:58:17]:
I'm not gonna get her out there and get her own speed, lift, and a presentation.
Tommy Markham [00:58:22]:
We're not going rack, Tammy. This car needs brakes and it needs tie rod ends and ball joints. Snap some pictures of that stuff that's broken and attach it to the. To the ro. I'm not gonna. We're not rack attackers. We got way too much to do with two of us as it is.
Mike Allen [00:58:39]:
Yeah.
Tommy Markham [00:58:39]:
We're going to fix what's broken and.
Mike Allen [00:58:41]:
Just be, you know, how to make it a little bit more efficient and increase your throughput a little bit. There would be pure flat rate. And we're done.
Bryan Pollock [00:58:52]:
Whoa. Hard cut clips. Done.