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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.
Steve Blanchard Full Audio
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[00:00:00] Steve Blanchard: Good management should always figure out a way to reward the people that wanna produce, right? So no matter if you're flat rate or paid by the hour, whatever it is, you can still create those incentives for the guys that want to do more without penalizing the guys that, you know, they need to get home because they wanna get back to their family.
[00:00:25] Steve Blanchard: Everybody has different values, right? You'll still get the young guys that are gung ho and they wanna make more hours, give them the opportunity.
[00:00:31] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:00:31] Steve Blanchard: Right? They don't have to be on flat rate to do that. It's the way I see it, you know? It gives the technician a little bit more power to feel that they're in control of what they're doing
[00:00:46] Jeff Compton: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to another s- exciting episode of the J&McKenny Podcast. Uh, bonjour, mon amis, for my, uh, French friends that listen once in a while. Um, today's really special. Um, I have a friend, a new friend, um, Mr. Steve Blanchard, who reached out to me. Um, and Steve is Quebecois, um, Canadian, so that's, uh, the kind of the first one that we'll ever have on here.
[00:01:09] Jeff Compton: He's not 100% Quebecois. He explained that to me. He was in the army, got moved around. But he... We s- we drove some of the same roads and, and worked in some of the same areas. He, uh, is from Ottawa. We're currently living in Ottawa, Ontario, which is my old stomping grounds. And, um, so we have reminisced quite a bit before we just hit record now.
[00:01:27] Jeff Compton: And, um, he wants to share with me kind of his, uh, background in how he kinda come up on the Quebec side of things, which I don't... I didn't know a whole lot about. And I find it fascinating because you've heard me talk about the differences that I saw in Quebec versus Ontario technicians and shops and all this door rates and pay and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:01:48] Jeff Compton: Um, so Steve reached out to me to kind of, like, share some of that. So welcome, Steve. How are you today, man?
[00:01:53] Steve Blanchard: Thank you. I'm very good. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:01:56] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Uh, part of my French is not great, so you know, I, I'm, I'm just a squarehead Englishman, right, so I don't do well.
[00:02:05] Steve Blanchard: Well, you know, my language is broken in both French and English now, so it's kind of a mess.
[00:02:10] Steve Blanchard: Well- I try to do my best.
[00:02:11] Jeff Compton: Yeah. So you're kind of, you've been doing this quite a while now. You're kind of an older gentleman like myself and got quite a few experience. How many years in are you?
[00:02:20] Steve Blanchard: So it's 30... It'd be, like, 30 to 32nd year.
[00:02:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Long
[00:02:25] Steve Blanchard: time. So it's quite, quite a long time. Yeah.
[00:02:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And originally from...
[00:02:28] Jeff Compton: You s- said to me kind of started out in Quebec, um, Quebec City, Quebec.
[00:02:34] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, that's right. Uh, so, so to, uh... My, my background is bit-- I come from a military family, so I moved around a lot.
[00:02:41] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:02:42] Steve Blanchard: Uh, basically every four years, we jump from one place to another. So I was born in Quebec, which was, uh, Lower Ville at the time.
[00:02:49] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Like,
[00:02:50] Steve Blanchard: and, um, I moved to New Brunswick for four years, and then I moved to Germany- Wow ... in Europe for another four years. And in '89, we basically moved back to Quebec because my parents' family were, were all there. So-
[00:03:06] Jeff Compton: Mm ...
[00:03:07] Steve Blanchard: that's when I ended up, uh, completing my, uh, my high school and then looking for, you know, what, what avenue kind of interests me.
[00:03:16] Steve Blanchard: And I applied in a lot of different places, but anything mechanical was a passion of mine. Like-
[00:03:22] Jeff Compton: Okay ...
[00:03:22] Steve Blanchard: ever since I was a little kid, you know, I'd tear up my parents', like, lawnmower just to- Yeah ... see how the thing worked. And, you know, as one of those kids that just needed some kind of engine to-
[00:03:31] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[00:03:32] Steve Blanchard: mess around with, so I had this, this really big interest in that.
[00:03:35] Steve Blanchard: And, uh, automotive in my mind was a sure thing 'cause I was like, "Everybody needs transportation, and it'll never go out of, you know- I'll never be out of work. Yes. Um, so it was kind of my, my reasoning at the time, so I, I joined, um... There was a college program in Quebec City at the it was called.
[00:03:55] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:03:56] Steve Blanchard: And, uh, it was like a year and a half of general mechanics, and then you could do six months back-to-back of specialty, like in electrical alignments, air conditioning, things like that.
[00:04:07] Steve Blanchard: Mm-hmm. So I did the full program. Um, so from that point on, I was lucky enough to get hired. I was the first apprentice to ever get hired in a 35-year history of L'oeil Pontech Buick. It's, like, I can name them 'cause they don't exist anymore. They-
[00:04:22] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:04:23] Steve Blanchard: they got cut in 2008 with all the other giant, you know, GM-
[00:04:26] Jeff Compton: Pontiac
[00:04:27] Steve Blanchard: dealerships.
[00:04:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:04:28] Steve Blanchard: But it was a great place, um, in terms of, you know, everybody there was friendly, they were all very competent. Um, I learned a lot from those guys. Uh, it, it kind of nurtured, you know, my sort of passion for, for working on, on vehicles and, and from a very early stage, I, I had interest in electrical systems.
[00:04:52] Steve Blanchard: And the guys that were doing the specialty stuff, just 'cause, I don't know, I, I have a personality that seems to feed off of, uh, working with my mind over-
[00:05:02] Jeff Compton: A challenge ...
[00:05:03] Steve Blanchard: doing repetitive stuff, you know? So I, I sort of gravitated towards that and, and they gave me the opportunity to train at GM and, uh, specialize.
[00:05:12] Steve Blanchard: 'Cause back then everyone had- Yes ... specialties, right?
[00:05:15] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:05:15] Steve Blanchard: Guys did engines, powertrains or whatever, like transmissions.
[00:05:19] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:05:19] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. So I was the electrical, you know, AC guy over there and, you know, did all my training to become a grand master tech, which-
[00:05:27] Jeff Compton: Uh-huh ...
[00:05:27] Steve Blanchard: which... So th- this, from an early stage, I think I was spoiled in the sense that- I had no knowledge of the outside world beside where I was, right?
[00:05:39] Steve Blanchard: So to me it was, it was great, and the only downside was that because we were being paid by the hour there, um, they were basically tracking metrics of hours produced per hoist.
[00:05:54] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:05:55] Steve Blanchard: And the moment they saw the hours drag down below 40, they would basically put a little notice in everybody's paycheck every week to tell you, "Hey, maybe next week we might not need you."
[00:06:07] Steve Blanchard: 'Cause by law they needed two weeks' notice, so every paycheck you had a note. Which meant that at any time they could just say, "Hey, next week you're not coming in."
[00:06:15] Jeff Compton: You're laid off. Yeah.
[00:06:16] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was difficult being at the bottom of the totem pole. Mm-hmm. And the moment, you know, the work went down, they're like, "Okay, well next week you're not coming in."
[00:06:26] Steve Blanchard: But I was like, "Okay, well what do I do?" You know, I... And I-
[00:06:29] Jeff Compton: How did they, how did they justify that, Steve? Because like back in the day, like you said, everybody specialized, but like, you know, uh, in the wintertime a lot of people don't come in to get their air conditioning fixed, right? And then in the summertime, or, you know, in the summer it seems like everybody, we're doing a little bit more front end, we're doing a little bit more air conditioning.
[00:06:48] Jeff Compton: You know, like we're seeing people driving more, potholes, springtime's busy, right? Fall's busy, that kind of stuff. How did they justify that though, that the hours are gonna dip, and all of a sudden they're gonna say, "Oh, you stay home because the kind of work that you might be doing is not very common right now, and so you stay home"?
[00:07:05] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Like, I don't understand how they just... Like what... Like you talked to me before we started talking about how you would, maybe they would lay you off and you would get another job somewhere else for a couple of weeks, and then they would call you back.
[00:07:18] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Jeff Compton: Like, did a lot of people come back, or did they lose technicians a lot that way?
[00:07:22] Steve Blanchard: No, because it was very rare that they needed to lay off, like maybe it was two or three people-
[00:07:29] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:07:29] Steve Blanchard: at a time.
[00:07:30] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:07:30] Steve Blanchard: You know, in a low dip. And then as soon as it would pick back up, all of a sudden you get the phone call and you go back. So there was never like many, many people laid off at the same time, and it was always, you know, the new people coming in at the bottom.
[00:07:43] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And you said the pay was so much better at the dealer, it was just a slam dunk that you, if you were at Canadian Tire or something like that for a month and they called you back, you just immediately went back because the- Yeah ... pay was much better.
[00:07:55] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, exactly.
[00:07:56] Jeff Compton: Fascinating
[00:07:57] Steve Blanchard: to me. So, so it's a bit of a rough ride.
[00:08:00] Jeff Compton: I never got, I never, I never saw a guy get laid off from the dealer. I saw the guys get fired. Yeah. Um, and I even saw some of them get hired back. You know, that was always the you would see- Yeah ... uh, you probably saw that too. You would see management move around from dealer to dealer, and sometimes, like, a new manager would come in, and then, like, two technicians would go, and two technicians would show up that had followed that manager, and it was just...
[00:08:23] Jeff Compton: It was wacky. I, I- Yeah ... never understood that. I mean, a- and sometimes it was a package deal that was a good package, and a lot of times it was not. It was, um, didn't always work out very well for us.
[00:08:36] Steve Blanchard: So for myself, I was very young and really didn't understand the dynamics of, you know, managing a business. I, I would just put blinders and just do my job, right?
[00:08:44] Jeff Compton: Just fix the car. Sure. Yeah.
[00:08:45] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, just fix the car. So it's, you know, I, I was raised, like I said, you know, by military family.
[00:08:53] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:54] Steve Blanchard: And everything was black and white to me, you know? Yes.
[00:08:56] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:08:58] Steve Blanchard: So, you know, when you, when we're talking about gray areas and you let my... Like, you know, you, you let a person as young as I was try and figure things out, you know, it's a gray area.
[00:09:11] Steve Blanchard: Do I do it this way, that way?
[00:09:13] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:13] Steve Blanchard: Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, right? So I didn't have the judgment or the maturity to do those, you know, to have that, you know- Yeah ... that proper judgment. So I sort of stuck to what I knew and, you know, they called me up, they told me to do a job, I'd fix it, you know, clock out and go home and
[00:09:30] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:09:30] Steve Blanchard: you know, let's see what t- tomorrow brings. You know, it's, it's, it was- So was- ... a day for day thing ...
[00:09:36] Jeff Compton: what were they kind of expecting how many hours? Like 50 in a weeks? Was that kind of the, the, the, the bare minimum marker that they wanted to see, or 40 or-
[00:09:46] Steve Blanchard: It must have been 40. Like, I'd never... Of course, you know, I would never been shown those metrics, but-
[00:09:51] Jeff Compton: Mm
[00:09:51] Steve Blanchard: I, I, I, I knew about the system just because, you know, when you go in the lunchroom and you have the accountants and all there and they're talking about it, you'd hear them like, "Oh, I didn't know it worked that way." "Yeah, yeah." They're like, "Yeah, we see, you know, every hoist needs to produce a certain amount of hours- Yeah
[00:10:05] Steve Blanchard: and once it drops off, and that's how it..." So I was like, "Oh." You know, your, your curiosity gets piqued, and then you start asking questions and you're like, "Holy geez, like, this is like some serious, uh..." And then you kind of un- start understanding.
[00:10:18] Jeff Compton: So they would lay you off, but you never really knew how many hours you produced.
[00:10:22] Steve Blanchard: Well, you, you knew it on paper. They, like, they had... So, so the first GM dealership I worked at-
[00:10:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:10:28] Steve Blanchard: it was called, um, I think ADP. Okay. You know the,
[00:10:31] Jeff Compton: uh- I know ADP, yeah.
[00:10:32] Steve Blanchard: So ADP really tracks everything very well, right?
[00:10:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Steve Blanchard: Like, w- we clock on a job, clock off. They knew all the hours, the time spent, what the job paid, and everything.
[00:10:42] Steve Blanchard: But of course, being paid by the hour, I never knew what a job particularly paid- Yeah ... unless I grossly went over, and then someone would walk to my bay and say, "Hey."
[00:10:53] Jeff Compton: Uh-huh.
[00:10:54] Steve Blanchard: Okay. You know, "It shouldn't take you three hours to change an alternator on this car." And I'd be like, "Oh," it's like, "sorry, I..." You know?
[00:11:00] Jeff Compton: Sorry.
[00:11:01] Steve Blanchard: So-
[00:11:02] Jeff Compton: Cultural, yeah.
[00:11:03] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, that's the kinda, the way it works. So we never really knew how much we'd be, could we produce, but-
[00:11:09] Jeff Compton: It's fascinating to me. That is-
[00:11:10] Steve Blanchard: It was very, it was very, um, how do I say? Like, you would literally, we would stand in line at 7:55, and we'd all clunk, clunk, like, punch our cards.
[00:11:22] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:23] Steve Blanchard: Start working, you know. We'd locate ourselves on ADP, grab a job.
[00:11:26] Jeff Compton: So you guys would just clock in, like I, how you used to do, uh, and locate on ADP, and then you just took your job, and that's how your day started, yeah? Yeah,
[00:11:35] Steve Blanchard: you went about your day, yeah.
[00:11:36] Jeff Compton: And not so, not a lot of the politics then so much that w- you've heard me talk about with- Mm
[00:11:42] Jeff Compton: uh, some people getting easier work, harder work, better work, you know.
[00:11:47] Steve Blanchard: Less- Well, the thing is it didn't really matter- Right ... because we're all paid by the hour. So it was, so this is the big difference, right?
[00:11:54] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:11:54] Steve Blanchard: Like, so I felt when I was working there that we were all a team. Mm-hmm. If I struggled, someone would come and help me.
[00:12:01] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:12:02] Steve Blanchard: You know, and, you know, as I got experience, I, I rendered the same service to other- Yeah ... people. If I could come in and help out, if someone was scratching their head on some electrical problem, I'd come in and say, "Oh, yeah, let me have a look."
[00:12:14] Jeff Compton: Uh-huh.
[00:12:14] Steve Blanchard: You know, everybody would help each other, and it, it, it-
[00:12:20] Steve Blanchard: It was a v- I mean, from my personal experience, it was very different from flat rate, which by the way, at that time I didn't even know existed
[00:12:28] Jeff Compton: Right. 'Cause you were telling me before we started that this is all set down in Quebec Um, under the policy or the... You, you have to... I, I can't pronounce it- Yeah
[00:12:40] Jeff Compton: I'll leave it, pronounce it. Um- ... 'cause again, my French, uh, is terrible. Yeah. Um, but it, it, that was like a mandate. That was essentially set down that that's how they had to pay you, was that way of hourly, no flat rate. That's right. Except for you said, um... So what's the name of the, the, the organization that set this down for you?
[00:12:59] Steve Blanchard: So it's French, it's called Le Comité Paritaire.
[00:13:01] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:13:02] Steve Blanchard: So I- as of right now, I don't know if it's still- Still in operation ... in operation or-
[00:13:08] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:13:08] Steve Blanchard: but basically this organization kind of was kinda like a union for technicians.
[00:13:13] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:13:14] Steve Blanchard: So they're the ones who were in charge of, um, your competency.
[00:13:19] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:13:20] Steve Blanchard: They did your cre- So creating the exams and the classifications and the salaries related to those classifications.
[00:13:26] Steve Blanchard: Right. Right? But they also made flat rate illegal in the entire province of Quebec- Yes ... except for Hull and Gatineau.
[00:13:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah, which you and I shared because was, is... So for people that aren't familiar with my little corner of the world, Hull and Gatineau is literally like on the other side of the river, uh, into Ontario.
[00:13:45] Jeff Compton: That's our provincial kind of, it's part of a essentially a provincial border. So there's a large contingency of people in Ottawa that travel across to work in, in what is now called Gatineau, but when the, back when, then we called it Hull. Um, and then they would sometimes, they come over and work in Ontario, vice versa.
[00:14:01] Jeff Compton: There's a lot of traffic and a lot of people going back and forth. That's kind of the beauty of that area is because it's very multicultural. Um, that's why so many of us are, are bilingual and, and, you know, we kind of have friendly ribbing back and forth and talk about the hockey game and all that kind of stuff because, you know.
[00:14:18] Jeff Compton: Um, and that's, so that's been that way forever in O- in Ottawa. That's just, it's very much that the person sitting next to you could be French and, and you'd be on the Ontario side, and it's just that way. It's beautiful. Um, but there was a lot of people that moved back and forth every day is what I'm trying to say, to work.
[00:14:35] Jeff Compton: So, um, and you were sharing with me how that particular geographical region of Quebec is the only way place in the province that they suspend the mandate set down by the committee- Yeah. Yeah ... and, and allow them to operate essentially as we do in Ontario, which is, you know, uh, we can pay you flat rate.
[00:14:58] Jeff Compton: That's right. I thought that was so fascinating 'cause I, in all my years of living in Ottawa, nobody had ever shared that with me that, like, this particular pocket was, uh, you know, um, immune to the, to the regulations. I'd never known.
[00:15:12] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. '
[00:15:12] Jeff Compton: Cause I know, like, the dealers that were, I'll say some of the Chrysler dealers that I knew on the Quebec side, uh, Colbeck, City, Gatineau, um, of the Chrysler dealers, 'cause we would sometimes get with them on training when we would go- Um, well, I knew they were all flat rate, and I just assumed, like in my simple brain, that everybody in Quebec operated the same way as us, right?
[00:15:33] Steve Blanchard: No. But
[00:15:33] Jeff Compton: Quebec is not. It's very different, so.
[00:15:35] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:36] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:15:36] Steve Blanchard: So it's kind of a strange, uh, uh, like geographical area in the sense that if I go there-
[00:15:44] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:15:44] Steve Blanchard: you know, wanting to work in a dealership, and I show them my Comité Paritaire Class A card-
[00:15:50] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:15:50] Steve Blanchard: they look at me, you know, sideways going, "We don't know what that is.
[00:15:52] Steve Blanchard: We don't care." Uh-huh. And then if I pull out my Red Seal Ontario interprovincial license-
[00:15:58] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[00:15:58] Steve Blanchard: they're also like, "Well, we don't care about that." They know what it is.
[00:16:01] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:16:02] Steve Blanchard: But they're not under any, like, umbrella or obligation to- Yeah ... to have a technician with those certifications to work in their shop.
[00:16:10] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:16:10] Jeff Compton: You were saying in the Quebec and Hull, or not, Hull and, and Gatineau area, they can... You don't have to have any kind of training official. You can walk in with a bucket of tools, and if you can get the work done, they put you to work. S- And then you, you fight for your, you know, hourly, hourly pay based on whatever pay scale they wanna do, whereas in Ontario and other parts of Quebec, it's, you know, um, they recognize it as a certain level, as a certain level of pay, and, and you, you work up and train up and all that jazz, right, certified, so.
[00:16:42] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:16:42] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Yeah. So when did you leave... Because eventually you did get to the Ottawa side. How did that happen?
[00:16:48] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. So in 2002, my girlfriend at the time had finished her college.
[00:16:54] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:54] Steve Blanchard: And there was, I mean, there was no work for her in the Quebec region.
[00:16:59] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:17:00] Steve Blanchard: And she tried, like, we, for almost a year, uh, you know, from 2001, I think, from, into 2002, she was looking for a job, couldn't find any.
[00:17:08] Steve Blanchard: And at the time, because I'm from a military family, my sister-
[00:17:12] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:17:12] Steve Blanchard: was an officer, you know, in the Canadian Forces and posted here in Ottawa.
[00:17:17] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:17:17] Steve Blanchard: So she already had, uh, a home here, a condo, which was quite large, had, like, three or four rooms.
[00:17:23] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[00:17:24] Steve Blanchard: Um, so one of the rooms was, was vacant and, uh, my sister ended up inviting my girlfriend, saying, "Hey, why don't you come down a weekend in Ottawa and see- Yeah
[00:17:33] Steve Blanchard: if there's work here for you?" So she did that. She came down and immediately found work, right? Nice. So my sister said, "Well, you know, I can offer you the room." Mm-hmm. "You know, just give us a little bit for rent or whatever." And so I was in a predicament, right?
[00:17:49] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:17:50] Steve Blanchard: I'm in Quebec in a GM dealership still playing this yo-yo- Right?
[00:17:55] Steve Blanchard: Right. I love, I loved working at that GM dealership, but I was like, "I can work in any GM dealership, right? I don't know what it's like in Ontario."
[00:18:03] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:18:03] Steve Blanchard: So I came down a weekend, and so this is how it went down. Really strange, right? So my sister lived in the Alta Vista Towers. I don't know if you know that, that sort of...
[00:18:14] Steve Blanchard: It's, um, kind of near the St. Laurent Shopping Mall.
[00:18:18] Jeff Compton: Yes, yes.
[00:18:19] Steve Blanchard: And, um, what I did is basically, you know, you, you pull out a map and you say, "Well, what are the closest GM dealerships?" So I put pegs. I picked the three-
[00:18:28] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:18:29] Steve Blanchard: that were the closest, and on a Saturday morning, I got up early and drove to all three.
[00:18:34] Steve Blanchard: And so this, this is where it starts getting really weird. All three were clawing to have me work for them.
[00:18:42] Jeff Compton: Sure, yeah.
[00:18:42] Steve Blanchard: They're like, "Oh, uh, we need you," like, 'cause I was the electrical and AC guy.
[00:18:47] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:18:48] Steve Blanchard: So in my ignorance
[00:18:53] Steve Blanchard: Not knowing about flat rate
[00:18:55] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:18:57] Steve Blanchard: this was the caveat, right? It's they're having obviously trouble maintaining technicians that wanted to do that type of work.
[00:19:05] Jeff Compton: Right. Yes.
[00:19:06] Steve Blanchard: Because on flat rate, you know, like everybody- Yeah, it's not ... all technicians know that when you start getting into diags and electrical work, it's hard to get the pay- Yes
[00:19:16] Steve Blanchard: or the hours, the flag the hours on flat rate. But here's the thing is they never talked about flat rate in these interviews.
[00:19:23] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:23] Steve Blanchard: They're like, "Oh, you're from Quebec. We'll pay you, uh, you know, 20 bucks an hour," whatever. Like, they were... I got different offers.
[00:19:29] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:19:30] Steve Blanchard: So I'm like, "Well, it's a no-brainer."
[00:19:32] Jeff Compton: Take that.
[00:19:32] Jeff Compton: I'm
[00:19:32] Steve Blanchard: done. I'm- You know, they're like, "We got plenty of work." And- Yeah ... and I thought, "Boom, this is an opportunity to get out of, uh, this yo-yo of-
[00:19:42] Jeff Compton: Mm ...
[00:19:42] Steve Blanchard: of sometimes being sent home," and you know, you can't live like that. You don't know. You live in not knowing, you know, if you'll be able to pay your mortgage or whatever.
[00:19:50] Steve Blanchard: I didn't buy a house at the time, but-
[00:19:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:19:52] Steve Blanchard: you know, you can't even think of those things when you're on that, that rollercoaster of a ride. So, um, I accepted the closest dealership that was to my sister's place- Mm-hmm ... and, um, basically moved my box and everything over into my sister's room with my girlfriend at the time and started working in this dealership, and it was, it was a really an eye-opener in, in the sense that for one, you know, shop cleanliness and all that stuff was-
[00:20:20] Jeff Compton: Yeah, different
[00:20:21] Steve Blanchard: a real shock to me. Like, I, I never even thought... You know, there was literally, like, sludge on the floor that you could scrape-
[00:20:28] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[00:20:29] Steve Blanchard: because everybody being on flat rate, they don't clean their floors, and they don't, you know.
[00:20:33] Jeff Compton: Don't
[00:20:34] Steve Blanchard: take that.
[00:20:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:20:34] Steve Blanchard: And, uh, I was just wasn't used to that, so it was a bit of a shocker to me.
[00:20:38] Steve Blanchard: And then, you know, as you're working, even though it was paid by the hour, you start learning about everybody else that's play- paid on this, this flat rate system and-
[00:20:46] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:20:47] Steve Blanchard: you know, it's, uh, it was on a percentage-
[00:20:50] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:20:51] Steve Blanchard: of that, you know, the door rate.
[00:20:53] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:20:53] Steve Blanchard: And I never even thought that subject would come up in, in my case 'cause I thought, you know, the electrical guys may be just paid by the hour.
[00:21:03] Steve Blanchard: So I gathered up, um, you know, all the paperwork that I needed to pass that Red Seal Ontario-
[00:21:10] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:21:10] Steve Blanchard: um, license, and when I got it all done and went and wrote my exam and got my license, I get, got called in the office. They're like, "Congratulations," uh, and then they tell me, "Okay, we're gonna put you on flat rate now."
[00:21:23] Steve Blanchard: And I was like, "Whoa, excuse me?"
[00:21:25] Jeff Compton: What is that?
[00:21:28] Steve Blanchard: What is this flat rate business you're- Yeah ... that you're talking about? So- They were trying to, you know, smooth the idea on me, trying to tell me, "You know, we're gonna guarantee you got- you get the hours and this and that."
[00:21:47] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:21:48] Steve Blanchard: And of course, again, in my ignorance, I...
[00:21:51] Steve Blanchard: What am I gonna do? You know, I'm young. I'm-
[00:21:54] Jeff Compton: So that's pretty tough for you because at that time, that's the only brand that you've ever really worked on, right, in a, in a professional standpoint, and you come in and you write... So what everybody's saying, what I'm saying, everyone, is that he wrote the, what I call the 310S trade exam.
[00:22:09] Jeff Compton: Uh, we used to call it back a, back, back then Class A license essentially, which is not an easy test to pass. It's not. Uh, it's a rather long, substantial, multi-point, uh, printed question. But what Steve shared with me, which again I did not know, is when you would take accreditation testing in Quebec, it was more in a classroom setting with an instructor on an actual component, right?
[00:22:36] Jeff Compton: Like, you would have to, like you said, you would set up gear ring and pinion backlash. The instructor would inspect it, tell you whether it was right or wrong. You had to open the service manual. Like, that must have been a shock for you when all of a sudden it's just here's a printout of paper and some pictures in it.
[00:22:52] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. That, that's, that's right. That's a... You know, a lot of people don't know about this, but the way they set up their, their, their exams in, in Quebec is you basically go and you're, and you're, you know, you're giving it your best, and what they do is they have maybe, I think it was four or five different stations.
[00:23:10] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:11] Steve Blanchard: Could have been more. You know, it's been a long time.
[00:23:13] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:23:14] Steve Blanchard: But there's a Class A technician in every one of them. So there's, you know, powertrain, engines, um, all sorts of different, you know, categories like brakes, things like that, right? And, um, not only do you write an exam that's similar to what, uh, the interprovincial like Red Seal 310S, uh, license is, but- These instructors basically are asking you questions.
[00:23:41] Steve Blanchard: Right. So you have to answer them in the best of your knowledge, you know? They could say, uh, you know, "What do you do if, uh, you need to remove, I don't know, the shoes on this drum brake system?" And-
[00:23:50] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:23:51] Steve Blanchard: you know. Uh, or like I said, like as an example, the backlash on a differential. So you have a bench, you could have gears all over the place.
[00:24:01] Steve Blanchard: You basically need to open the book. You have to find the specs, and you tell the instructor, "This is where I would start."
[00:24:06] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:24:06] Steve Blanchard: You know, "This is how I'd set up my thing. Here are the tools I'd use." And you basically demonstrate, you assemble and demonstrate something. I mean, the, even the transmission part of it, um, like the standard transmission, you have an input/output shaft, and they would tell you, "Okay, show me what the, you know, uh, the third gear-
[00:24:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:24:25] Steve Blanchard: is on this", you know? And you basically, just by knowledge, you need to know, uh, looking at the different sizes of gear, well, that's your third, you know?
[00:24:32] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:24:32] Steve Blanchard: And then they'll say, "Okay, assemble it now on the shaft." So you gotta open the book. And you're so like...
[00:24:36] Jeff Compton: Oh.
[00:24:37] Steve Blanchard: So, so it's quite challenging in the sense that you really need to know...
[00:24:41] Steve Blanchard: You, you, you need to be both good hands-on-
[00:24:44] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[00:24:45] Steve Blanchard: and also-
[00:24:46] Jeff Compton: Knowledgeable, yeah ...
[00:24:47] Steve Blanchard: uh, very knowledgeable, right? Um, what I experienced early on, um, you know, when I was working in Ontario was that there were, uh, some of my colleagues that were working were very book smart. Mm-hmm. You know, they had their license.
[00:25:04] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:25:05] Steve Blanchard: But in a strange way, they struggle doing the hands-on work, right? So they would know how to replace, you know, an alternator, let's say, something simple.
[00:25:15] Jeff Compton: Yeah, yeah
[00:25:17] Steve Blanchard: But to actually do the job on the vehicle would take them much longer than someone else. They'd struggle. They'd use the wrong tools. They, they're just not as, you know, manually handy.
[00:25:28] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:25:28] Steve Blanchard: Right? So, you know, in my mind I'm like, it seems that the interprovincial license is somewhat lacking on that side of, of qualifications, if you know what I mean, compared to what I had to go through in Quebec.
[00:25:42] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:25:42] Steve Blanchard: So it's, it's a weird, it's an interesting kind of dynamic. Right? And you can have the opposite as well.
[00:25:47] Steve Blanchard: You have the guys that, oh my gosh, they'll, you know, they'll replace a transmission in no time, and-
[00:25:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:25:52] Steve Blanchard: we've all seen it on YouTube videos. You watch this Ford Tech just assemble a transmission. Like, you're like, "Holy shit, that's no way I would do." You know?
[00:26:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:26:01] Steve Blanchard: You have those guys that are absolutely extremely skillful, you know, manual wise, but you would ask him to diagnose something, you know, electrical on a vehicle, and they're like- Yeah
[00:26:12] Steve Blanchard: oh man, they're totally lost, right? So everybody has their strong points and weak points, so it's a-
[00:26:16] Jeff Compton: I'll say that- It's an
[00:26:16] Steve Blanchard: interesting-
[00:26:17] Jeff Compton: A lot of the technicians, and, and please nobody take offense to this, but a lot of the technicians that I, I worked with in the Ottawa side that had come from the, um, Ottawa Hall region, uh, Gatineau region, I would say they were weak on the electrical and diag side of things because I think a lot of them, uh, had started out in that particular, just like you said, in Hall and Gatineau, where you didn't have to have any certs to get in the, into the door of the shop They just were-- They were what we would refer to like as, as C-techs, B-techs.
[00:26:48] Jeff Compton: The brake jobs, front end, they were all okay. Um, you know, they could take apart out. Nuts and bolts stuff was easy for them. But the, the diag and the electrical, they were weak on. It seemed like they had never gotten training in the, the ones that I had seen that had come from Holland got. And it was a very funny thing.
[00:27:06] Jeff Compton: Um, not that they were dumb, it was just they were weak at it, uh, compared to us that had been on the Ontario side and we had had to have at least our basic three ten class A, you know, um, automotive training to get us to where that was. There was a lot of guys I think that had been on the Ottawa side that had just started out working maybe on a tractor and then gone to, you know, a minivan and a truck and so on and so forth.
[00:27:33] Jeff Compton: Like, they, they could work on everything, but the diag and electrical seemed to be a little weak for them. No, no offense to any of them that are listening. I don't mean that in any disregard.
[00:27:41] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Everybody has their-
[00:27:43] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:27:43] Steve Blanchard: strong suits and yeah .
[00:27:44] Jeff Compton: So- I have a- When you... Tell me about your first couple, you know, months flat rate at, at that dealer.
[00:27:52] Jeff Compton: 'Cause I think I know which dealer it was, but we won't say their name. But I think I kinda know if in that area. I can think of two for sure in that area. The one name eludes me on that one, but I remember they were a Cadillac dealer, and then I remember the other one was a, a, a big Pontiac, uh, Chevrolet dealer, and I remember them.
[00:28:10] Jeff Compton: Um, what was it like to all of a sudden see you kinda jump in with both feet on flat rate? Did you-- Was it tough or did you-
[00:28:18] Steve Blanchard: So I would say that unfortunately the sort of drive and passion I had for repairing vehicles-
[00:28:29] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:28:30] Steve Blanchard: started-
[00:28:31] Jeff Compton: To decline. Wow.
[00:28:32] Steve Blanchard: Started to decline for th- just because of the simple fact that every time I needed some diagnostic time, I had an uncertainty of getting paid or not.
[00:28:43] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:28:44] Steve Blanchard: And I had to go through hoops to find the shop foreman-
[00:28:47] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[00:28:48] Steve Blanchard: to get the authorization to get the extra time, and the shop foreman was trained to clamp down and not just willy-nilly offer, you know? Mm-hmm. And, and it, it was sort of arbitrary. Like, he... Like, how do you analyze a problem on a, on a vehicle and say, "Well, I don't think it should take you an hour to diag this."
[00:29:08] Jeff Compton: Yes. "
[00:29:08] Steve Blanchard: So I'm gonna give you half an hour." And it's like, really? It's like you have no idea. I, I have no idea-
[00:29:14] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:29:14] Steve Blanchard: what the problem is. I need to, you know, do my due diligence. So believe it or not, my, unfortunately, I, like, I'll take full responsibility, but my attitude started-
[00:29:27] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:29:27] Steve Blanchard: taking a nosedive. And, um, it got to the point where it was so frustrating, I recall building myself, you're gonna laugh, but I built myself a cube out of foam blocks that we had on PDIs.
[00:29:42] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:29:43] Steve Blanchard: Yes. And I wrote on them oxygen sensor, mass airflow- Yes ... like all these different parts, and I literally went to the shop foreman, and then when he was trying to pinch me on diag time, I'd look at him and say, "Tell you what, I'm rolling my diag dice."
[00:29:58] Jeff Compton: Yes. "
[00:29:58] Steve Blanchard: And I'm throwing a part at this car."
[00:30:00] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:30:00] Steve Blanchard: You know?
[00:30:01] Steve Blanchard: Because, like, I've had enough of this. Like-
[00:30:04] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:30:04] Steve Blanchard: You know, it gets to that point. It's unfortunate. It's- But things, things got really sour, you know?
[00:30:10] Jeff Compton: Like- And isn't that amazing? 'Cause what you're... So what you're really sharing s- you know, Steve, with us is something that, like, we talk about all the time But you have a neat perspective because you started out in a, in a, at the beginning where that wasn't even allowed to be implemented in a way that you could be paid.
[00:30:28] Jeff Compton: So you just had-- So you came to work, and everybody worked together and took pride and, and had a teamwork, and you, you know, you loved what you did. And then you get into a situation of this pay scale that in the industry has so many of its detractors and then so many people that love it, and you admit that it started to change your attitude and started to kill your passion for the industry.
[00:30:51] Jeff Compton: And I relate to that so much because it was like, I have never not loved working on cars. I have loved it from the first time on my first car when I learned to do something and, and it, you know, I took a broken thing and I made it whole again. That was an addiction. But it was the fight and scratch and, and, and argue to get paid under flat rate that killed my-- And it has the effect on my attitude to this day that I still, I'm not working flat rate, but I'm not-- I know That because I did work flat rate, it affected my attitude in a long-term effect that will never be undone, if you know what I mean.
[00:31:31] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. It's crazy, isn't it? It's just- Yeah. Yeah ... it's so wacky when we talk about it in this industry, how we have so many people like yourself with a similar story, and yet we still hold onto it like it is the way that it has to be done. Yeah. Yeah. I can't, I can't wrap my head around the, the, the reasoning anymore.
[00:31:47] Jeff Compton: I cannot. It's just, I know why it's done. It's done 'cause it's simple.
[00:31:52] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:31:52] Jeff Compton: You know, and it takes the, it takes a lot of the liability off of the employer and puts it onto the employee. But it's- Yeah ... killing the industry.
[00:32:00] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. And, and you know, you know the guys that are working beside you as well.
[00:32:06] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:07] Steve Blanchard: You know, I bring in a vehicle with this, you know, I could be searching a couple of hours to find, you know, some green on a terminal inside- Yes ... you know- Yes ... some module somewhere. Meanwhile, the guy next to me is banging brake jobs and flushes.
[00:32:21] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:32:22] Steve Blanchard: And at the end of the day is walking with double my hours.
[00:32:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:32:25] Steve Blanchard: And I had to go to school, I had to train, I have to do continuous training to keep up my grand master. Like, it, it was completely devastating to me, you know, how I was treated. And I, and, you know, I ended up thinking, you know, dealerships don't care about me at all. Yeah. I felt like GM, the company itself, cared about technicians.
[00:32:48] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:32:48] Steve Blanchard: Because they had training. They had, oh my gosh, like I could show you, I have beautiful plaques with, you know, these antique cars and-
[00:32:56] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:32:57] Steve Blanchard: you know, congratulations for your grand... You know, I love that. I felt like, I felt valued-
[00:33:02] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:33:03] Steve Blanchard: by the company, by GM, but not by the dealership and where I worked.
[00:33:08] Steve Blanchard: It's, it's,
[00:33:09] Jeff Compton: it's- It's almost backwards, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's almost backwards. Like, you would think that your employer would value you and your manufacturer that you work for indirectly would just be, "Okay, you're just a number within the system." And it's, it's crazy that you feel more like the OE manufacturer is concerned about your growth and your ability than the people that sign your paycheck.
[00:33:36] Jeff Compton: Yeah. That's nuts to me. It's yeah. Absolutely asinine. It's ridiculous. I know where you're coming from, though, 100%. 100%, you know? Yeah. So what, um- Did you-- How did the conversations go when you would talk to the management and say, "Here I am doing, you know, I'm finding these," I call them the ghosts in the machine or the intermittent problems, or like you said, the corrosion on the terminal, "And I'm actually repairing the car, diagnosing, troubleshooting, you know, fixing the car, and my pay is sucking because the guy next to me is just doing, uh, let's, let's just say it, you know, intake gaskets on a, on a, on a V6," you know, on the old anything that Cri- GM ever built, right?
[00:34:18] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Leaking. Those guys, you saw how fast they do them. Uh, Cavalier head gaskets, you know, the old two-two, like how fast they would do those, right?
[00:34:25] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:34:25] Jeff Compton: And you would see these guys do these jobs all day long, and it's like you're over there trying to solve the early network problems and the early diagnostics and fuel injection and OBD1, and they're just banging out money left and right.
[00:34:38] Jeff Compton: Right. How did you handle that conversation with the management?
[00:34:41] Steve Blanchard: So it's funny that you talk about that because another sort of aspect that I was noticing, you know, in my workplace is that the guys that were producing a lot of hours, no matter if they were good techs or not-
[00:34:56] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:34:56] Steve Blanchard: they were valued for producing those hours.
[00:34:59] Steve Blanchard: Amen. So even though they would get comebacks every day-
[00:35:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:35:02] Steve Blanchard: they turned a blind eye to it because they were producing so many hours.
[00:35:06] Jeff Compton: Sure. Yeah.
[00:35:07] Steve Blanchard: Wh- which I was like, how are you encouraging... Like, it was so backwards.
[00:35:12] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:35:12] Steve Blanchard: I-
[00:35:14] Jeff Compton: And they're not-- Like Steve, it's not even real numbers because if they remove the comeback from their production sheet, they didn't really produce eight hours or ten hours or twelve hours or whatever the number would be, 'cause we have to remove the numbers that they created when we have to do the work over again, right?
[00:35:32] Jeff Compton: Right. So say they, they put an intake on and pinch a harness and it comes back and there's a, a, all of a sudden the car misfires so the injector doesn't turn on, and you being the electrical guy, you get it and you go in and find it, and they go, "Oh, well, you know, he did that inject- in- Yeah ... intake job in seven hours, and Steve had to spend two hours to go fix the wire," he's still got his seven hours, and we internal the two that we paid to Steve to fix what, you know, Bob caused.
[00:36:02] Jeff Compton: And then they go, "Steve, your production is not as good as Bob's."
[00:36:09] Steve Blanchard: I know it's
[00:36:10] Jeff Compton: We just keep playing the game, right? Like that, that producer, we can't be without that production
[00:36:14] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:15] Jeff Compton: It's not true production,
[00:36:18] Steve Blanchard: right? So here's... Like, I gotta talk about this, 'cause this is- Yeah ... really... So that- that's, you know, on the technician side. So when you have a conscience as a technician to do a good job- Mm-hmm
[00:36:30] Steve Blanchard: you know, to, to-
[00:36:31] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:36:31] Steve Blanchard: to serve the customer, to do a good job on their vehicle, this is how it goes down. I remember very well, uh, Astros, you know, the, the, I think they were called the M Van bodies- Yes ... uh, the ones with, you know, the, there's a cap over the engine and they're quite hard to work on. Well, these V6s were also plagued with intake leaks, right?
[00:36:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:36:53] Steve Blanchard: So it would take, like for me, I remember it was a six-hour job to do it properly, one of these intakes. Mm-hmm. The flat rate from GM paid half that time, three hours.
[00:37:07] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:37:08] Steve Blanchard: Right? So this is the situation that happens. You bring in a vehicle, one of those vehicles for an oil change, you see coolant, a puddle of coolant in the V of the intake.
[00:37:18] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:37:18] Steve Blanchard: What do you think the flat rate technician does?
[00:37:21] Jeff Compton: He must-
[00:37:22] Steve Blanchard: Does he say, "Hey, you know, we need to fix this intake. I'm gonna lose three hours"?
[00:37:26] Jeff Compton: Yeah. No.
[00:37:27] Steve Blanchard: Or does he turn a blind eye, put some brake cleaner, wipe it, do the oil change and see you later?
[00:37:32] Jeff Compton: Top up the coolant, yep, ships it
[00:37:33] Steve Blanchard: back. So, so to me, I was like, this is absolutely horrid-
[00:37:41] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[00:37:42] Steve Blanchard: that, you know, this customer bought this vehicle, it's still under warranty, and- Yeah ... guys are turning a blind eye to fixing it just because it, they know they're gonna lose their shirt doing that repair.
[00:37:55] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:37:55] Steve Blanchard: It's com- like that, that is the worst of the worst in my opinion. It's, it's like- It
[00:38:02] Jeff Compton: is, 'cause we're-
[00:38:04] Jeff Compton: we're screwing two people at that point. We're screwing the customer, and if the tech does the job, he's still getting screwed on the job time, right? That's right. And that, you know, I, that was one of the main reasons I always said we just need to drop flat rate because then you just go in and you get handed the ticket, you inspect the car, you see that one needs to be done, you get approval, and you do it.
[00:38:23] Jeff Compton: And when you go home at the end of the day, you know what you're gonna get paid. And everybody advocates for the customer. Everybody wants to do a good job. Everybody takes pride. Everybody h- handles their own comebacks. There isn't a competition with the bay mate next to you on he's m- he's flagging 12 and you're at 6 and, "No, I don't wanna...
[00:38:41] Jeff Compton: You know, F that guy. I'm not gonna help him. I'm gonna sit there and watch him struggle when he gets-" Yeah ... something that he can't do. Like, that's, that's the attitude, the culture that that pay system, I believe, is so responsible for.
[00:38:53] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:38:53] Jeff Compton: Right? I don't wanna s- if my, if the guy next to me is at 12 and I'm at 6 and he's struggling, I can't- Find the time, a lot of the time to go bail him out if I can do it.
[00:39:05] Jeff Compton: Because I'm, I'm, I'm half where he needs to be, right? Yeah. He can give up six and learn his mistake and fix his mistake or, or go through the lesson, and I will just keep plugging along and hopefully that at the end of the week we won't look so far apart.
[00:39:20] Steve Blanchard: Exactly, yeah.
[00:39:21] Jeff Compton: You know?
[00:39:21] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. And that, that's the whole, you know, team sort of environment that I experienced in Quebec versus-
[00:39:28] Jeff Compton: Yes
[00:39:29] Steve Blanchard: now and, and like, like I personally tried not to think about it this way, but the guy working next to you has now become your competition.
[00:39:37] Jeff Compton: Oh, 100%.
[00:39:37] Steve Blanchard: Like how in the world does that... Like that makes... You know, it doesn't make sense to me. We should be helping each other out. We should- And
[00:39:44] Jeff Compton: Steve, if you start to help him, you're training your replacement.
[00:39:47] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:48] Jeff Compton: You know? He's younger, faster, you know, uh, he doesn't ever, maybe he just never takes lunch. Maybe he comes in an hour early and stays two hours late, and you're teaching him all the little secrets and ti- yeah, you trained your replacement. Yeah. You know?
[00:40:02] Steve Blanchard: Because- Or, or, or let's say you're willing to sacrifice some of your time.
[00:40:07] Steve Blanchard: So I was like that. I, if I had a repeated operation of doing some kind of repair-
[00:40:12] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:40:12] Steve Blanchard: I was analyzing what I was doing, and in my mind I was like, "Is there a quicker or faster way of me doing this-
[00:40:19] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:40:20] Steve Blanchard: so I can make gain time?"
[00:40:21] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:40:21] Steve Blanchard: And if that meant me buying a special tool- Or sacrificing an hour, an hour or so to try it a different way.
[00:40:29] Steve Blanchard: And maybe I hit a wall and go, "Ah, that didn't work. I just lost my shirt." Yeah. I have to go back and try. So as you experience this and finally figure out a system where you're saving time, and then the guy next to you goes, "Hey, uh, how are you- How'd you do that?" ... how are you doing that intake in an hour instead of three?"
[00:40:46] Steve Blanchard: And now you're thinking, "Well, geez, like, you know, I sacrificed a lot-
[00:40:51] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:40:52] Steve Blanchard: to get this knowledge, and now if I just tell him, now this guy's gonna be banging them out and taking ..." It's like, and it's kinda silly, and you don't wanna think that way, but it like-
[00:41:02] Jeff Compton: Well, we
[00:41:02] Steve Blanchard: call it- ... crosses your mind, and y- you're like, "It shouldn't be that way.
[00:41:05] Steve Blanchard: I shouldn't-" That,
[00:41:06] Jeff Compton: that conversation- You know? ... has come up, we call that gatekeeping. You know? Which... And, and everybody is, is, "Oh, there's never a justification to do that. That's a terrible thing. That's the reason that young techs are, are, are washing out of the industry is because it's, we're gatekeeping knowledge."
[00:41:23] Jeff Compton: And I have always put my hand up and go, "Wait a minute. I used to do that, and there was a reason why I did it, and this was the reason." Am I proud of it? No. But the, the system made me do it. I was self-preservation, you know? Yes, sir. Uh, and eventually you can't, you can't hide it forever. People, you know, f- people learn it.
[00:41:40] Jeff Compton: People, people talk. People show each other. It's like you've heard it, you know, guys go off to training, and they sit around in training before the class starts, and they start telling their tricks to the other guy from the other dealer. "How do you get that dash out so fast?" Yeah, exactly. "Oh, you don't have to take all this out.
[00:41:55] Jeff Compton: You reach up here with this little thing, and you do that, and then boom, you know, it's done." Exactly. "And it comes out." And everybody's like, "Oh, well..." So nothing we can keep guarded, we can't keep it guarded forever. But man, I don't like... There was a handful of guys that I knew that if I'd found a trick or if I found something, I could share with them 'cause they would share with me.
[00:42:17] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:42:17] Jeff Compton: But people that I hadn't vetted or felt that they were, they would be able to reciprocate, I didn't bother to show them. Yeah. I would just wait till they handed me their work order, and then I would go fix it
[00:42:31] Steve Blanchard: It's brutal, eh?
[00:42:32] Jeff Compton: It is
[00:42:32] Steve Blanchard: s- Especially when, like i- in, in that particular GM dealership, if we were out of work, we had to go to the dispatch tower and tell them, "Hey, I'm out of work."
[00:42:41] Steve Blanchard: They'd write your number down, and you're... You'd be in line for a job, right? But here is the kicker.
[00:42:48] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:42:49] Steve Blanchard: Because let's say I'm specialized in electrical, I may be waiting two hours, you know, to get a job.
[00:42:56] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:42:57] Steve Blanchard: And, you know, my number is slowly creeping forward, but let's say we're 10 out of work, and I'm halfway after two hours, I'm number five.
[00:43:05] Steve Blanchard: Some customer comes in with a pickup truck, tells the advisor, "You know, when I put my truck in reverse, my mirrors move."
[00:43:12] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:43:13] Steve Blanchard: So the... So this is a normal feature of a GM, but the advisor writes up the ticket anyway. The tower gets it and says, "Oh, this has gotta be electrical. We're gonna fast-track that to Steve."
[00:43:24] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:25] Steve Blanchard: I pick up the work order and go, "What the hell? This is a normal feature of the vehicle."
[00:43:30] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:43:30] Steve Blanchard: Right? But I still have to check it- Yes ... in case there's something wrong. So I bring the vehicle in, I do all the systems check. I'm like, "It's a normal feature." I write up my story. I go back to the tower and I go, "That car, like, there was no repair needed."
[00:43:43] Steve Blanchard: And he's like- Yeah ... "Okay, I'll put your number back at the end of the line."
[00:43:47] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:43:50] Steve Blanchard: So I'm like, "Are you..." So, so those... So really th- this is like a grind, right? Mm-hmm. So all these little things just take a chunk out of you every day, you know?
[00:44:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:44:02] Steve Blanchard: And it got to the point where I started threatening him, like, "I'm gonna leave."
[00:44:06] Steve Blanchard: I told him, I said, "I'm looking, I'm gonna actively start looking for a job somewhere else."
[00:44:10] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:44:10] Steve Blanchard: And, uh, you know, they get all, you know- Out there ... huff and puffy, and then they're trying to figure out a different system to pay me. And, like, I won't go into detail with that, but they tried something, and it was absolutely...
[00:44:22] Steve Blanchard: It was actually worse than what it was before. Sure. And then-
[00:44:25] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:44:26] Steve Blanchard: um, I heard of another de- dealership opening up under the same group, but it was a different brand, right?
[00:44:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:44:34] Steve Blanchard: And they didn't have specialties. Mm-hmm. They didn't have, you know, engine guys or whatever. So I volunteered to hop to that dealership because they needed techs to open up.
[00:44:45] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:44:45] Steve Blanchard: That's how I got out of that whole situation. It was the only... I thought it was my only way out, so-
[00:44:50] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[00:44:51] Steve Blanchard: you know.
[00:44:52] Jeff Compton: What
[00:44:52] Steve Blanchard: was it- So I ended up leaving GM, which was after 10 years, you know, like-
[00:44:55] Jeff Compton: And to start on a brand-new brand.
[00:44:57] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, brand-new brand.
[00:44:58] Jeff Compton: An Asian brand?
[00:44:59] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, yeah,
[00:45:00] Jeff Compton: yeah.
[00:45:00] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. That's- Hyundai and Kia, yeah.
[00:45:02] Jeff Compton: Yeah. That's different, eh?
[00:45:03] Steve Blanchard: Oh, yeah.
[00:45:06] Jeff Compton: That's,
[00:45:06] Steve Blanchard: I'm- But easier. Like, in my opinion, it was, like, way easier.
[00:45:10] Jeff Compton: I, when, when I walked into Hyundai the first time and I started there, I was like, "There's no trucks." You know? They have a minivan, but hardly sell any va- minivans. Like, we would never see them come in. It was all little, tiny four-cylinder, you know-
[00:45:26] Steve Blanchard: Yeah
[00:45:27] Jeff Compton: occasionally, you know, or a V6.
[00:45:29] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, they don't have 10 different engines like GM.
[00:45:32] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And I was like- It's not like- ... and the, the, the, the scan tool was pretty easy to navigate, the software was pretty easy. You know, the service information, they were really, really prone to the same pattern failure after another.
[00:45:44] Jeff Compton: Every front cover leaked, you know. Like, it was just that's what we would do. Yeah. I was there before the two liters got really common for, for failure. Yeah. So, uh, I did one of the first ones that was done in the province. And at the time it had, uh, like 35,000 kilometers on it, and he was from out of town, and he couldn't produce any service records.
[00:46:03] Jeff Compton: So we thought it was failed because of neglect. Well, no, and then we started to see more and more of them, and then we would see, we would see failures on the V6s too. Fill up with engine, like, metal particles, you know, all through the engine, plugging up the VVT solenoids and the oil passages. 40,000 kilometers.
[00:46:20] Jeff Compton: Like, they were just, the engines... And then by then I was done. I was like, "Enough of this." You know, I... Uh, the electrical side I found with Hyundai was very much a lot of bad grounds, uh, right from the factory. Like, the grou- they would paint and then put the ground on, and it was never a good ground. Yeah. Um, and, and connectors- Corrosion
[00:46:39] Steve Blanchard: in connectors as well.
[00:46:41] Jeff Compton: That was quite common. Oh, the connector scene was really bad. Um, other than that, I didn't find it hard to fix at all. It was a very easy brand to work on.
[00:46:49] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:46:49] Jeff Compton: But, you know, the politics again in that shop that I went to were not great, and that's why I didn't stay, so, you know.
[00:46:56] Steve Blanchard: You probably don't see this anymore, but we were actually, like, I was installing entire air conditioning systems on certain vehicles.
[00:47:04] Steve Blanchard: They came in from factory without AC- Yeah ... and you could buy a kit and install it on the car if the customer wanted it.
[00:47:11] Jeff Compton: Yeah, I remember- Which- I remember hearing about, about that. I didn't have to do it. But I like a little Accent or, uh, you know, some of those cars, they would, they would option them, buy them all up.
[00:47:22] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:47:22] Jeff Compton: No air conditioning.
[00:47:22] Steve Blanchard: Tiberons. Yeah.
[00:47:23] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And then, yes, and then it'd be like, "Oh, the customer wants AC." "Oh, that's okay. That's just another $1,500."
[00:47:30] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:47:30] Jeff Compton: You know, or whatever the number would be. And you would order the kit from the parts department, and you would put it on and do a little programming to the engine or whatever, uh, software, and it worked.
[00:47:40] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:47:40] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And, and but I heard of other people trying to do that on other brands. They tried to do that on Chrysler a couple times, and it did not go well. A lot of... Like, 'cause when you think about it, right? What's the air box look like in a, in a, and I'll say, like, an old Wrangler. Like, if you had to put air, AC in it, it wasn't terrible.
[00:47:59] Jeff Compton: But if you ever bought, like, something else and thought, "Oh, I wanna upgrade," no, it was... You better- Yeah ... trade that vehicle in, you know. It was bad. Yeah. And a- again, I saw them. We had a guy, a Nissan dealer here, um, he'd got into the idea if you bought a Titan truck, he would give you a Nissan Versa for free, and everybody thought that was a great deal.
[00:48:20] Jeff Compton: And you would buy a Nissan Titan, which was not a great truck. Uh, let's just be real. Yeah. But the Versa that you got, no air conditioning, no cruise control. And then he would be like-
[00:48:31] Steve Blanchard: It's- ... "
[00:48:31] Jeff Compton: Oh, that's okay. Like, I'll go to the parts department and see what it would, you know, cost to put it together to add AC to this car."
[00:48:37] Jeff Compton: And the parts guy would just laugh at him and go, "You, you don't know, do you? This, this, this can't be done." And then all of a sudden that deal fell through because- Yeah ... wait a minute. In 2014 I'm buying a car without air conditioning in Canada, why would I ever do that?
[00:48:51] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, exactly.
[00:48:51] Jeff Compton: Well, it was a free car.
[00:48:53] Jeff Compton: Nah. Uh, thanks, I'll buy my Titan somewhere else. So you kind of, what was the, starting in at the new shop, you know, the brand new place, brand new guy, was the culture a better fit for you, Steve?
[00:49:08] Steve Blanchard: You're talking about when I moved out of GM? Yeah.
[00:49:11] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:49:12] Steve Blanchard: So, um, for one, you know, the vehicles were a lot easier to work on, so I enjoyed that.
[00:49:19] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:49:20] Steve Blanchard: Uh, I enjoyed being able to work on all the systems of the car, right?
[00:49:25] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:49:25] Steve Blanchard: Even though like, you know, eventually the electrical side of things is what I was being given, right?
[00:49:31] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:49:31] Steve Blanchard: Which again, ties back into this... So, so some managers treat flat rate as their tool to reward or punish technicians.
[00:49:43] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. I don't know if you've seen that in your- Oh. So, right, some guy gets a-
[00:49:47] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:49:48] Steve Blanchard: gets a comeback, and all of a sudden he ain't getting PDIs for the next week.
[00:49:52] Jeff Compton: That's right.
[00:49:53] Steve Blanchard: And once again, I'm like, morally, how could a human being, like everybody makes mistakes, we're human.
[00:50:02] Jeff Compton: Sure. Yeah.
[00:50:03] Steve Blanchard: Why are you using flat rate to punish a technician?
[00:50:07] Steve Blanchard: So literally, I would have to watch a guy sitting on his toolbox- Yeah ... dangling his legs while everyone else in the shop is doing PDIs, just because a service manager thought, "I'm gonna teach him a lesson and not give him hours." Yeah. And I'm like, "What right do you have?" That guy has maybe a family to feed.
[00:50:27] Steve Blanchard: He's got the same bills as everyone else.
[00:50:29] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[00:50:30] Steve Blanchard: Okay. He made a mistake, you know. How about having some kind of review system and having a discussion about it, and maybe ensuring that it, it's not repeated-
[00:50:40] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:50:40] Steve Blanchard: versus what you're doing right now, which is to me-
[00:50:45] Jeff Compton: Starving ...
[00:50:45] Steve Blanchard: total misuse of your, of power of-
[00:50:47] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:50:48] Steve Blanchard: you know? Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's- I, I got into this, this ... I really had a hard time finding any positives in the flat rate system, right? Everywhere I went, there was always something, you know, to, uh, to basically break me down and rethink, what the hell am I doing here?
[00:51:13] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:51:14] Steve Blanchard: Like, how did I get into this
[00:51:15] Steve Blanchard: You know, it really made me regret ever making the move from Quebec to Ontario. You know, it got to that point.
[00:51:20] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:51:21] Steve Blanchard: So then you think, you know, "What's the point of hopping to another shop?" Because it's just gonna be the same somewhere else.
[00:51:28] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:51:28] Steve Blanchard: I mean, uh, might as well just hack it and deal with it and-
[00:51:32] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:51:32] Jeff Compton: It's a new address, a new
[00:51:34] Steve Blanchard: T-shirt But then, you know, more stuff arises and, you know, it gets to a point where they burn you so many times that enough's enough. I mean, I could tell you a s- a story to this day that has affected me so much that, like, uh, when I was working at Hyundai, um, that it was one of the reasons I left, just because we had...
[00:51:55] Steve Blanchard: So believe it or not, this dealership was, had inherited a whole bunch of tooling from another dealership that closed down, and they had everything to refurbish like a machine shop-
[00:52:05] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:52:05] Steve Blanchard: like say a head cylinder. So they had the grinding tools. You could, you could put angles on the valve seats. They had all the tools there, and I knew how to use them because of what I learned in school, and I wasn't afraid to, like, it's not that complicated to me anyway.
[00:52:21] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:52:21] Steve Blanchard: And, but what they were doing is always sending heads out to machine shops.
[00:52:26] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:52:26] Steve Blanchard: And then they'd be getting bills, you know, 8- 800, 1,000 bucks to refurbish and check this head and all that, and, um, I, in my opinion, I was like, "We're losing money. Like, I, I could be making hours off of this job."
[00:52:40] Jeff Compton: So you go to them and say, "We have all of this machine shop equipment."
[00:52:45] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. "
[00:52:46] Jeff Compton: Why don't we start using it?" And what do they say to you?
[00:52:49] Steve Blanchard: So my manager at the time says, "Well, it sounds like a good idea. I mean, if we can get some hours, like give, give you some more hours," and I was like, "Perfect," right? So, you know, I, that particular engine that I was repairing-
[00:53:04] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:53:05] Steve Blanchard: um, I seated 24 like new valves in there.
[00:53:09] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:53:09] Steve Blanchard: You know, made sure they were all s- you know how you got to-
[00:53:12] Jeff Compton: Lap '
[00:53:12] Steve Blanchard: em ... the whole process, you know? Everything beautifully sealed. I reassemble this engine. It runs, like, beautifully. You know, whole thing fixed. Customer leaves with the car, but this is a warranty claim, right?
[00:53:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:53:27] Steve Blanchard: So I don't see it flagged on my sheet.
[00:53:30] Steve Blanchard: You know, it takes... This is another ridiculous thing. Sometimes it would take a month. Mm-hmm. You know, if they're battling it out with the manufacturer, I don't know what the hell's going on. But finally, and this was probably a few weeks later, I get the ticket with the, the, with the time for that job, and it's like half the time that I spent on it.
[00:53:50] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And
[00:53:51] Steve Blanchard: I'm like, "What the hell is this?" And I see that no time was given-
[00:53:54] Jeff Compton: For, yeah ...
[00:53:54] Steve Blanchard: to, to refurbish this head. So I immediately walk into the manager's office, and I'm like, "What is this?" He's like, "Oh, yeah, warranty, uh, warranty couldn't pay you the, uh, you know, the, the, the refurbishing of the head." And I'm like, "But I walked in here, we discussed this.
[00:54:11] Steve Blanchard: You gave me the go-ahead. I did the work."
[00:54:13] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[00:54:14] Steve Blanchard: Did a great job, and now you're not paying me?" So it got heated in the office, right? I started raising my voice, and I was trying to-
[00:54:20] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:54:21] Steve Blanchard: you know, the steam was coming out of my ears, right? So I left his office, and I went straight to the parts department, and I asked the parts department, "What machine shop are you dealing with?"
[00:54:32] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:32] Steve Blanchard: And he told me, and he's like, "Give me the phone. Dial them up." So, you know, I end up calling the machine shop, and I said, "This particular engine, what do you charge our dealership to refurbish, to replace 24 valve on it?" So he's like, "Oh, that's easy. It's $800." So I'm like, "$800, eh? Okay." Right? So I walked back in the manager's office.
[00:54:53] Steve Blanchard: I said, I said, "If you would've sent this head out, right, we would've... The, for one, the car would've been jammed here-
[00:54:59] Jeff Compton: Right ... for
[00:55:00] Steve Blanchard: who knows how long. We would've lost hours and all this stuff. I got the job done. You would've had an $800 bill, you know, to pay." But I guess the warranty process, which maybe he wasn't aware of, but- They had to submit that claim-
[00:55:16] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[00:55:16] Steve Blanchard: right, to get, to get it paid. But since they declined it because I did it, they didn't wanna pay me. So the dealership doesn't wanna pay me. Like, s- so I'm walking out of there having you know, maybe worked all day on an engine-
[00:55:30] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:55:31] Steve Blanchard: and having half the hours for it- Right ... for trying to help out the-
[00:55:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:55:36] Steve Blanchard: You know, I- it's like you can't burn me more than that.
[00:55:41] Steve Blanchard: Like, I completely lost trust. Like, I don't, even to this day, like, I can't trust any-
[00:55:46] Jeff Compton: And y- and they wonder why we get so toxicity, you know what I mean? I know. They wonder why we don't ever want to... 'Cause then you can understand why I don't wanna clean the bay, I don't wanna take out the trash. I don't wanna do anything that they will not pay me to do because they've taken...
[00:56:05] Jeff Compton: That's just one, they take $800 of value from me. That's just one job. You pile that up by, you know, it's like somebody, the conversation popped up, do you put wiper blades on for free or not, and all this kind of ju- Well, just say, y- you know, it takes me six minutes to put two wiper blades on, and it's 0.1, and I do 10.
[00:56:24] Jeff Compton: That's an hour, okay? That's an hour. That's say I do an hour every day. At the end of the week, I gave you five hours. Yeah. At the end of the year, how many hours did I give you? That I just, we didn't bill. Now that's, that's fine. You don't wanna charge the customer, I totally get it. But I gave you then five hours that week.
[00:56:46] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:56:46] Jeff Compton: At whatever my dollar amount is that you're paying me, I gave you that.
[00:56:50] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:56:50] Jeff Compton: But then you turn around and you say to me, "I'm not gonna pay you for this thing under warranty, or that thing under retail," or, "I, I expect you to do this and there's no pay for that." They wonder why we tell them to go, you know- Yeah
[00:57:04] Jeff Compton: get fucked, like, because that's why. You treat us like that, and then you turn around and say, "Hey, show some, show some initiative. Show some care for the customer, advocate for your customer, and do that for free" No. No, no, no, no, no. No.
[00:57:17] Steve Blanchard: But how is that burden our responsibility?
[00:57:21] Jeff Compton: It's
[00:57:21] Steve Blanchard: not. It's-
[00:57:21] Jeff Compton: No.
[00:57:22] Steve Blanchard: It's like we gave you a value.
[00:57:24] Steve Blanchard: You, you, you got-- Now you have a satisfied customer. Yes. You may have customer retention because of this free work that I just gave you. I, I, you know.
[00:57:33] Jeff Compton: It's terrible, and, and, you know, you and I have seen it where the dealerships that have the reputation for being able to actually fix the car, not just make a bunch of money and service a bunch of cars, not just do a bunch of oil changes or flushes or whatever, but actually are known in the city of Ottawa, this dealer has strong techs and ability to, you know, get the transmission fixed or, or solve the AC problem or solve the drivability problem.
[00:57:58] Jeff Compton: Those dealerships are always having people come in, always. They come-- They bought it at... We, I worked on so many cars when I worked at Capital Dodge, downtown Ottawa on Carling Avenue. We had so many cars that came in from Colbeck and City, right? The two, the two Chrysler dealers over there, 'cause they had been there, and they had bought the car there, but for whatever reason they, it was just, they weren't finding what was wrong.
[00:58:22] Jeff Compton: And I, and they would come to us and say, and we would find it. Did we always get that customer back? A lot of the customers then s- that Capital Dodge was now their dealership. They would drive across the river in the morning, drop their car off. We would shuttle them to work in Quebec, take them to work, right?
[00:58:40] Jeff Compton: Pick their vehicle up. We did crazy things at Capital for customer service, and they stayed loyal. Not everyone, 'cause it's just an inconvenience of, uh, like I live in Hall. It's a lot, you know, I'm driving past three other dealerships to come to Capital, but some people did stay loyal for fixing the car.
[00:58:56] Jeff Compton: Uh, finding what nobody else had been able to find, you found it, you kept that customer. Well, when you don't then have a technician that you reward them and you appreciate them for finding the ghost in the machine, it's no wonder that they show no loyalty to their employer and no loyalty to the customer, no loyalty to the brand, no loyalty period.
[00:59:18] Jeff Compton: It's not, for me, it's so easy to understand why the attitude in the, in the industry is the way it is. You just have to look at the way they treat us. That should make sense then as to why the attitude is there. Why am I called jaded? That's why. Right?
[00:59:35] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[00:59:36] Jeff Compton: So-
[00:59:36] Steve Blanchard: It's, it's, you know, it's, it's a bit of a, you know...
[00:59:40] Steve Blanchard: You know, when we first chatted about, like, doing this interview, I, I had thoughts on like, you know, I don't wanna... I'm not here like this, like, I don't wanna like smear the entire industry, you know? And, um, but my ignorance when I was young getting into it, you know, I may, I may have f- You know, my decisions might have been different if I had the knowledge that I know now, and I think putting it out there is not a bad thing.
[01:00:10] Jeff Compton: No.
[01:00:10] Steve Blanchard: Because at least, at least you're educated, and if you get in it, you know, be prepared to, you know, have thick skin and-
[01:00:20] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[01:00:20] Steve Blanchard: you know, bas- basically
[01:00:23] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:00:23] Steve Blanchard: You know, it's not an e- it's not an easy trade.
[01:00:25] Jeff Compton: You, you learn that there's a game, and you learn how to play the game, right? And for me, ultimately, with all the conversations that I've had, and I've had my detractors say, "You shouldn't be talking so negative, and you shouldn't be...
[01:00:35] Jeff Compton: People are not gonna want to do this because of what you say." Here's the thing. What I want in this industry is people that love, love to solve problems and fix cars. That's what I want. I don't want people that just wanna pick this as a job, right? So because I think that the most of us, what makes us, we're a little sick in the head, as you'd say, is because of that love of, of that, that, that I have to know what's wrong.
[01:01:02] Jeff Compton: I have to know. And, and you will donate your time, and you will d- you, you g- like you said, you'll give up an hour to, to learn. That's the people that we need in this industry. That's ultimately that's going forward, is gonna solve the problems and keep the cars fixed and keep us viable. Here's the thing.
[01:01:21] Jeff Compton: If the people that make the decisions don't start to recognize that that is the key player, the person that can solve the problem, not the person that produces the hours, if they don't grasp this concept, they're, they're-- it's only a matter of time. Jim Farley, if Jim Farley doesn't figure out, the CEO of Ford, that he has all these empty bays that he keeps talking about- Mm
[01:01:44] Jeff Compton: if he doesn't understand that the culture at the dealership level, that he doesn't work in the dealerships, if he doesn't understand why that's the bays are empty, they're, they're doomed. And he can go to Mr. Trump, and he can say, "I need you to write in this legislation to protect, prevents people from working on their own car."
[01:02:00] Jeff Compton: It... That's not gonna happen either. So we need a very big people to start looking at what's actually going on at the dealership floor every day, not about the money, not about the pay, but how they're actually treating us. And when they do that- Then some of this stuff will start to turn the corner. I feel in my heart that's where I feel this is going, but I could be a bit of an optimist, so
[01:02:26] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:02:27] Jeff Compton: What
[01:02:27] Steve Blanchard: do you- We're, we're probably, we're probably the only trade that-- So, so think about this. Let's say my furnace breaks down. Mm-hmm. Like to me, it's dead simple, like, like compared to what I w- you know, work on cars.
[01:02:39] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:02:40] Steve Blanchard: I wanna fix, let's say, changing like the, the, the heat blower on it. I go to some plumbing place and I say, "I want this particular blower."
[01:02:48] Steve Blanchard: He goes, "Well, show me your HVAC license."
[01:02:50] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:02:50] Steve Blanchard: I'm like, "Well, I don't have one." "Well, we're not selling you the part."
[01:02:53] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:02:53] Steve Blanchard: I'm like, "Hold on here. This is like, this is ridiculous." But anybody can go to Canadian Tire- Yes ... over the counter and say, "I want a starter, I want brakes, I want..." And they just shove everything over the counter.
[01:03:04] Steve Blanchard: I
[01:03:04] Jeff Compton: want my
[01:03:04] Steve Blanchard: shocks,
[01:03:06] Jeff Compton: flex lines, and my brake pads, and my calipers, and I wanna put the caliper on upside down and never get the brake fluid to bleed out and the pedal will stick. And I wanna put the pads in backwards and slide through the next intersections. That's all my right as a citizen to be able to do that.
[01:03:21] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah. But
[01:03:22] Jeff Compton: because we have natural gas in your furnace, and you need a valve, the government says, "No, you have to pass certification before you can buy that valve."
[01:03:33] Steve Blanchard: Okay.
[01:03:34] Jeff Compton: So, 'cause I might blow up my own house, but I can slide through an intersection and kill 10 people. Yeah.
[01:03:41] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, yeah.
[01:03:42] Jeff Compton: Make
[01:03:43] Steve Blanchard: it- I recently, I recently helped out my neighbor that tried to do his, uh, rear brakes on his, uh, Toyota in his driveway.
[01:03:49] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:03:49] Steve Blanchard: And it's got, you know, the electric E brake.
[01:03:51] Jeff Compton: Sure. Yep.
[01:03:52] Steve Blanchard: And, uh, I guess it actuated while he was doing the repairs. He didn't know it. The pistons popped out, the, the oil leaked in his driveway and I'm-- You know, I walked over there, like shaking my head and I'm like, "Dude."
[01:04:02] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Congratulations. Like,
[01:04:04] Steve Blanchard: what are you doing?
[01:04:04] Jeff Compton: What are you doing? You just
[01:04:05] Steve Blanchard: made,
[01:04:05] Jeff Compton: you just made this substantially more expensive. I was-- So I was standing next door in line up at the parts store yesterday. No, yesterday was Saturday, Jeff, so that wasn't yesterday. Thursday morning, I'm standing at the parts store right next door to my dealership to get a wiper blade that we didn't have in stock, a rear wiper blade.
[01:04:22] Jeff Compton: And the guy in front of me is buying pads and rotors front and rear for a '21 Chevrolet Trail Boss. And, uh, so he's buying pads and rotors. I'm like, "Oh, very cool. You got par-- electronic parking brake?" "Yeah." I said, "Oh, okay. Um, you might wanna just go and Google actually some of the warning steps that you have to do with that truck in order," because I said, you know, if you leave the cap on the master cylinder and push the brake caliper back, you could corrupt the ABS module.
[01:04:50] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:04:51] Jeff Compton: And he looks at me and he goes, "I don't believe that for one second." And I, me, 'cause I hadn't had a lot of coffee at that day, and I was like really sore, my arm was sore. I said, "Yeah, what the F would I know? Never mind."
[01:05:05] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:05:08] Jeff Compton: I mean, and, and there's the parts store, they're just laughing at me, right? They're just laughing. Yeah. 'Cause they all listen to the podcast and, you know, they, they cut up. We cut up all the time. But, like, I'm not there to, to, to tell you, "Hey, you shouldn't be allowed to buy that." I'm giving you a tidbit here that's gonna prevent you from really breaking your truck and saving you some money, and you don't wanna, like, you just think I'm being an asshole.
[01:05:34] Jeff Compton: I just- Yeah. Yeah. And that's... So again, at 50, maybe by 60 I'll just shut up and not say anything. But obviously- ... I like to talk and I like to engage with people. That's why I do this.
[01:05:47] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:05:47] Jeff Compton: You know? And, and, and when this comes out, somebody's gonna tell me in the comment section that they did their brake job on their Chevy truck and they had no problem.
[01:05:55] Jeff Compton: I-
[01:05:56] Steve Blanchard: Yeah
[01:05:58] Jeff Compton: C'est bon ca. Congratulations, you meathead. I don't care. It doesn't matter, right? Yeah.
[01:06:03] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, yeah.
[01:06:04] Jeff Compton: So what, what do you do to, or what did you do, or, or how did you come to find peace with doing this? Or have you found peace with the, the way the, the industry is for you, Steve?
[01:06:17] Steve Blanchard: Uh, so the only side of things that I hadn't explored was working for an electrical vehicle manufacturer.
[01:06:28] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:28] Steve Blanchard: Which to me, I was thinking this could be different because now we're not dealing with flushes, and we're not- Right ... necessarily dealing all the time with brakes, and-
[01:06:38] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[01:06:39] Steve Blanchard: the dynamic or culture might be different around it. And, um, it piqued my interest. Uh-huh. Especially like some, like some big companies like Rivian, Tesla and all that are kind of like coming up in the woodworks.
[01:06:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:06:52] Steve Blanchard: I was like, you know, I could give it a shot at working on those and see how it is. So I, you know- And the tech- Eventually I, I ended up making the hop there as well.
[01:07:03] Jeff Compton: And- And the t- the tech to you, I would have to think, would be very interesting. Like, you would be very keen to wanna work on an EV.
[01:07:09] Jeff Compton: You're that type of guy, right? Yeah. You embrace the new technology and all that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. And you and I kind of shared before we started talking how I, I've worked on some Teslas and, uh, you know, some Priuses and some different EV things, and I, it's not my jam. I don't like it. Um, not because it's hard to fix.
[01:07:28] Jeff Compton: I don't find it hard at all. It's very, you know, straightforward. You follow service information, you fix the car. Yeah. It's the customer for me that is very different, you know. Yeah. Very different. Yeah. Which I shared that story of the, the guy with the, the Model X that was self-driving, tailgating the truck, and drove over the dead deer in the road because he wasn't even looking at out the window.
[01:07:48] Jeff Compton: He was looking at his phone.
[01:07:49] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:07:50] Jeff Compton: Um, that scares me that there's a bunch of people out there driving around now like that. And I get it, the technology is going to ... It's, it's here. That's going to, for the most part, is gonna operate reasonably safe, right? Yeah. Until it's not safe, and until somebody, um, has a whole lot of bad habits from driving.
[01:08:12] Jeff Compton: Say they, the car used to self-drive, and they used to always be going everywhere. They were on their phone. This car is self-driving. And now the car suffers some kind of, you know, breakdown, failure, and it no longer will self-drive. How good a driver are they gonna be now, still driving that same car around, but they have to rely on their in- their instincts and their tr- and you know.
[01:08:36] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:08:36] Jeff Compton: That's what scares me. They're not gonna be good drivers.
[01:08:39] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:08:40] Jeff Compton: And that's what scares me about it. Yeah. I think that we've crossed that line of what is actually smart.
[01:08:45] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. I've, I've ... I was fortunate to actually see the progression of full self-driving and, um, it, it, it's gone Like, it's gotten better in s- like, the learning curve that these companies are using to, to update the firmware and all that and make it- Yeah
[01:09:06] Steve Blanchard: better is quite astonishing.
[01:09:08] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:09:08] Steve Blanchard: Like, I remember my car couldn't negotiate a roundabout in the beginning.
[01:09:12] Jeff Compton: Right.
[01:09:12] Steve Blanchard: Like, it would, "Eh, eh, eh," and warning, like, "Pick up the steering," you know? Like- And now it just, like, goes through it like it's nothing. Sure. Right? Yeah. So that's, that's an example. But what's, what's really intriguing is the creative methods they're using to implement safety, right?
[01:09:28] Steve Blanchard: So, so, like, I don't know all the different brands. I know some of them. Yeah. And, and, like, the one that, um, that I've seen, they're even using an inside camera to basically track your retinas.
[01:09:41] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:09:42] Steve Blanchard: Right? So to see if you're actually looking through the windshield.
[01:09:45] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:09:45] Steve Blanchard: And if you're looking down at, at, let's say the, the, the, the user interface, the screen, or, or you reach down to grab your phone- Yeah
[01:09:54] Steve Blanchard: "Eh, eh, eh," the warnings will go off, like, "Take control," or whatever, right?
[01:09:57] Jeff Compton: I, I drove a Mazda the other day that did that to me.
[01:09:59] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:09:59] Jeff Compton: I, I looked over away from the... I looked away from the, the pop-up display to look over at my phone for a second, and it immediately, the steering wheel shakes and, and tells me, "Hey, you've taken your eyes off the road."
[01:10:12] Jeff Compton: Right.
[01:10:12] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. And- And what these vehicles do as well is they log these alerts.
[01:10:16] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:10:16] Steve Blanchard: So you get into a fender bender, you know, you can pull the logs, and if they see on that one drive you got, like, five warnings 'cause you keep- Yeah ... grabbing your phone, and now you hit a person-
[01:10:28] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[01:10:28] Steve Blanchard: well, sorry there, buddy, but you're responsible for this accident, you know?
[01:10:33] Jeff Compton: See, Steve, they're- It's- ... they're taking all that information and they're compiling it, and that's gonna determine your insurance rate.
[01:10:39] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah. You
[01:10:40] Jeff Compton: know what I mean? They're selling that information to the insurance companies. Allegedly they're not. Um- Yeah. To determine how much you pay as an insurance rate.
[01:10:51] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:10:52] Jeff Compton: Like, that- Do, did we cross the line there, Steve, maybe on- Yeah ... you know, like, uh, George Orwell, 1984, you know, Big Brother is watching, right? That's a- Yeah,
[01:11:02] Steve Blanchard: yeah.
[01:11:02] Jeff Compton: Not to get political here. We don't wanna do that on this
[01:11:05] Steve Blanchard: podcast. But- You wouldn't believe the level of tracking that these vehicles...
[01:11:10] Steve Blanchard: They're computer on the wheels, right? Yes. So if, like the ve- the vehicle, if you look at the logs, will actually know which side of the vehicle you approached.
[01:11:19] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:11:20] Steve Blanchard: Right? How you opened the door, when you sat down, the exact time when you buckled in.
[01:11:26] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:11:26] Steve Blanchard: If you touched a button on the UI, everything is tracked to the T, right?
[01:11:31] Steve Blanchard: So what that does, in a way, is when you're looking at an electrical vehicle with someone that has a problem, you have a lot of information to look at, right?
[01:11:41] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:11:41] Steve Blanchard: And what's interesting about it is, you know, you get a lot of customers that like to say, "Oh, no, you know, wait." You know, let's say your, your full self-driving isn't engaging, right?
[01:11:53] Jeff Compton: Right.
[01:11:53] Steve Blanchard: Right? But you look at the warnings and it says, "Oh, you know, your seatbelt wasn't buckled." So then you ask the customer, "Do you buckle your seatbelt?" "Of course I do. I buckle my seatbelt every time." Well, it's like, "Well, I'm looking at your log right now-
[01:12:06] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[01:12:07] Steve Blanchard: and you're not buckling your seatbelt, therefore you can't engage your full self-driving."
[01:12:11] Jeff Compton: Right.
[01:12:12] Steve Blanchard: Like, you know, you can't lie anymore, you know that.
[01:12:14] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:12:16] Steve Blanchard: So it- it's very intrusive in this, in a sense, right? How, how much data is out there. It- it's, it's absolutely crazy. Yeah, I mean, you can, you can literally analyze an accident- To the percentage of application either on your brake pedal or, or the throttle
[01:12:32] Jeff Compton: Right
[01:12:33] Steve Blanchard: Um, how you reacted if, if you hit the brake or not before you hit, you know, like that deer.
[01:12:38] Steve Blanchard: You could have pulled like data like you wouldn't believe- Mm-hmm ... just to see what happened, you know, in that, in that particular instance. So it's, it's quite sophisticated in terms of-
[01:12:47] Jeff Compton: Yeah ... of what can be
[01:12:47] Steve Blanchard: done. I, I mean, and
[01:12:49] Jeff Compton: I never even thought about it. Like it was like he said, "Oh, I drove over a deer on the road," and I didn't think because the old me thinks like, "Well, yeah, that can happen."
[01:12:58] Jeff Compton: And then I remember that, wait a minute, he was... He could have been self-driving, so how does that happen? And it's like, oh, yeah. And then he's like, "He showed the video to my service, uh, advisor," my service advisor like, "Oh, yeah, he's got the video. He's tailgating the truck. The truck swerves. Uh, he- the car reacts.
[01:13:15] Jeff Compton: The car doesn't react in time, and it tries to avoid hitting the truck and goes right over the deer."
[01:13:21] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:13:21] Jeff Compton: And I'm thinking it's got air suspension. I'm thinking, does it lift high enough? Like and I'm thinking how fast that car must have adjusted everything, Steve, to be able to, to not absolutely destroy itself, but somehow make it over the deer.
[01:13:37] Jeff Compton: Like, I don't know what part of the deer it hit. I didn't look at the video.
[01:13:40] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:13:40] Jeff Compton: But it's just amazing to me that the technology's there to do it. I don't like the fact that they track where we eat, where we shop, and we sell all that information. I don't like that. That's, uh... I believe that those companies, like, should have to figure out that the way we do, which is like they track it the other way.
[01:14:00] Jeff Compton: I don't like that it's now being information gathered by the OE that's being sold to everyone else, the Amazon playlist and, and, you know, Spotify playlist and all. I, I'm not good with that. Yeah. It's my business, mine.
[01:14:12] Steve Blanchard: Exactly.
[01:14:13] Jeff Compton: But it's like Sherwood from Royalty, they released their video this week and talked about, 'cause the, the meeting with Trump and, you know, he says like, uh, "Well, do you actually own the whole car, or is the software in the car belong to the OE?"
[01:14:28] Jeff Compton: And it's... He got talking about how, you know, features within the car, we can turn it on and off remotely and, you know, you want heated seats this month. Next month you don't want heated seats, or you didn't pay for heated seats, we shut heated seats off. Yeah. I don't like that either. Yeah. The way I bought the car optioned, the way I bought it, it should stay that for the life of the car.
[01:14:49] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Because otherwise now what becomes the process when I start selling cars to people and I say it has this option and that option, and then I find out that it's like, well, it has that option if they turn it on, but then when they turn it on and it has a hardware failure that keeps it from working, they're still mad at me What am I supposed to do, add up the whole option list and tell everybody and make it all work before I sell it to them?
[01:15:12] Jeff Compton: I can't do that. It's completely un- unreasonable. But here we go again, right? When everybody's just like, "I paid my subscription, my seat should work."
[01:15:21] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:15:22] Jeff Compton: It's-
[01:15:23] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, a lot of, uh, business models are, are, are, are really leaning towards that kind of-
[01:15:29] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:15:30] Steve Blanchard: you know, if you can get a monthly payment from a particular person, you know, whether it's $10 a month or whatever, then they got you hooked for a very long time, and it's-
[01:15:40] Jeff Compton: Sure.
[01:15:41] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:15:41] Steve Blanchard: it seems to be the way that, like, if they can find ways of, you know, even, you know, Tesla you gotta, you gotta be connected to their network, right? So you buy the vehicle and all of a sudden they tell you, "Oh, no, if you want, if you want, like, your full mapping system and all that, you have to pay $15 a month to- Yeah
[01:15:58] Steve Blanchard: It's like, oh man.
[01:16:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:16:00] Steve Blanchard: Just got looped into another like $15 here. Uh, like, you know, like it's never ending. So this is what they're doing now with options on vehicles.
[01:16:08] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:16:08] Steve Blanchard: The cars come with the hardware-
[01:16:10] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:16:11] Steve Blanchard: but you need to pay to activate it, right? So I, as far as I know, like this is the way they wanna, they wanna head with full self-driving, is that they're not gonna allow customers to fully purchase this, you know, off the bat.
[01:16:24] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:16:24] Steve Blanchard: They wanna sell, just kinda sell it monthly. So if you plan on going on a trip or whatever, you go on your little, you know, account and you basically, "Okay, I want full self-driving for this month," and then you, let's say you pay $200.
[01:16:37] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:16:38] Steve Blanchard: You got it for a month. You know, if you wanna keep paying, you keep paying it.
[01:16:42] Steve Blanchard: So they, they'll probably get more... 'Cause initially the, like when I initially, you know, when I looked at full self-driving, it was like $20,000.
[01:16:51] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:16:51] Steve Blanchard: Like, are you kidding me? That's a lot of money to put into software that's already on my vehicle, you know? So not a lot of people were willing to take that leap, and that's why, you know, these companies, their prices are fluctuating.
[01:17:04] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. And it's frustrating on the customer side because you're like, "Well, I paid 18,000, you know, when I got my car. Now it's 10,000."
[01:17:11] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:17:11] Steve Blanchard: You know? Like why are people paying less now for the same thing that I... You know, it gets frustrating, so.
[01:17:17] Jeff Compton: Well, now-
[01:17:18] Steve Blanchard: But they're probably gonna hook in more people to try it out with a subscription-based thing than, rather than having to dish out like, you know, 10 grand at a time or whatever.
[01:17:28] Steve Blanchard: So
[01:17:28] Jeff Compton: what do you think of that little truck that's being sold by Slate? Um, I call it a truck, but they can essentially put the different body on essentially the same- Yeah, yeah.
[01:17:36] Steve Blanchard: It's a... Yeah, yeah. I heard about
[01:17:37] Jeff Compton: that. And then, and it's, it's being marketed as it's gonna be like a $30,000 truck. Um, you know, very basic amenities, all that kinda jazz.
[01:17:46] Jeff Compton: Um, I like that idea because I think that there's, like if EV is gonna go forward and completely take over, which I'm still not convinced that that's going to happen, there has to be a market for people that can't afford $100,000 EV and, um, need reliable, simple, you know, can be fixed multiple places transportation.
[01:18:11] Jeff Compton: Um, you know, whereas- You know, some of the other brands, a lot of people, it's like, "Oh, we'll send somebody to fix that for you," right? We don't-- Or you can bring it if you live in a major metropolitan area. You can come by and drop it off, and we'll give you another one, a loaner. I like the idea that, like, some of the Rivian and Slate and whatever BYD is going to be, um, that they can be more-- I wanna think that they'll be aftermarket shop friendly, where they'll be like, "Yes, we want you to be able to get this service just about anywhere you go, and we're gonna release it."
[01:18:44] Jeff Compton: Um, 'cause I'll tell you, last year when I was in Vegas, I think I rode in more electronic cars than I've ever ridden in my life. Um, they had the Tesla Loop that's underneath. That's fascinating. That's incredible what that, that technology and that, that stuff does. But everything, like, every Uber driver and every, uh, taxi was all either a hybrid or an EV, straight EV, didn't matter.
[01:19:07] Jeff Compton: I didn't know Volvo had an EV like I drove in or rode in. Like, it was, it was really interesting to me. So I think it's just a situation of, like, certain markets will become saturated, and then other markets I don't think are gonna-- will fight it hand and, and foot. Um.
[01:19:24] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:19:25] Jeff Compton: Yeah. You know, I don't think it-- 'cause I don't think it's about the grid thing.
[01:19:29] Jeff Compton: I think that it's, like, the grid, they'll build the grid to make it work. Yeah. But it has to be they're sitting there going, "Who's gonna build it? Who's gonna build it?" Like, I don't wanna outlay the money. Like, you know, Elon already pumped a bunch of money into the economy to, to start the grid, but I don't think he wants to be responsible for building it all- Yeah
[01:19:48] Jeff Compton: so that everybody, his competition, can use it, you know? Um, to me, it's just a very impractical car. Like, if my old boss had a Y, and if he left Kingston, he couldn't even drive to Pearson Airport in Toronto without having to pull over and charge. Uh, and, and, uh, to me it was like, so how long did he-- Well, he'd pull over and charge for fifteen, twenty minutes and then, you know, he could go to the airport.
[01:20:16] Jeff Compton: He had to stop on the airport and port open the way back, charge another fifteen, twenty minutes- Yeah ... and then he'd go home. Well, I can fill up my car maybe in five minutes, and maybe I walk in and get a coffee or I don't, so it's a fifty-minute thing. But like when we see these people and they're stuck waiting for forty-five minutes to charge.
[01:20:35] Jeff Compton: Say the car now, and this is-- I, I follow Rich Rebuilds on YouTube, and Rich talks about, uh, you know, how some of these cars are great until you're locked out of fast-charging, and then the car becomes very inconvenient to, to sit there and charge for multiple hours and, you know, a l- this level charger won't work and, uh, like I just sit there and look and go, "Why would you ever want one of these things?"
[01:20:59] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:20:59] Jeff Compton: Why?
[01:21:00] Steve Blanchard: Well, so to touch on that point, so insurance and liability is a huge thing. It governs everything, right? So, so if you're a manufacturer of an electric vehicle, and of course it's got a lithium-ion battery, which has its dangers, right? It's, it's not friendly when it comes in contact with water.
[01:21:16] Steve Blanchard: It's prone to fires and all this stuff. When, you know, your vehicle gets into an accident and it's deemed that, uh, you know, it's basically a write-off 'cause it costs too much to repair it or something. So manufacturers have implemented ways of locking them out. So let's say the car did have supercharging.
[01:21:36] Steve Blanchard: Mm-hmm. And now it's like Rich Rebuild, he-- that's what he does, right? He loves to grab like a wrecked car and, "I'm gonna fix it," which is great, you know.
[01:21:42] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:21:42] Steve Blanchard: But the problem is, is that car, if it's, if, if it has been locked out by the manufacturer- They did that for liability reasons because they don't wanna be responsible.
[01:21:53] Steve Blanchard: They, they don't want the image of their vehicle being on the road all of a sudden catching fire. Right. And the public's gonna look at it and see the problem, right? Not every, the backstory behind it, right? So that some guy bought, you know, a wrecked car and tried to fix it, right? So, so now people are trying to circumvent these lockouts to try...
[01:22:11] Steve Blanchard: And I, and I, I totally agree that a competent person can fix up a car and make it safe. But from the liability side of the manufacturer, I understand why they want that ability to be able to lock you out.
[01:22:25] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:22:25] Steve Blanchard: Like, this VIN number is no longer, you know, being supported by us, like by, for a charging network or whatever, right?
[01:22:33] Steve Blanchard: So that's, that's kinda where that comes from, right, so. But
[01:22:37] Jeff Compton: we, we also, you could make the argument we've been for years have been allowing people to buy fuel line or rubber hose to patch up-
[01:22:43] Steve Blanchard: Sold again.
[01:22:44] Jeff Compton: And, and it, it didn't matter if it sprayed all over the exhaust system as they drove down the road. If the car started and drove again, they drove down the road.
[01:22:52] Jeff Compton: And then if it caught fire, it was like, "What happened here? Oh, he fixed his own fuel line and caught himself on fire. Oh, well, you know, it's not like the next day somebody says, 'Okay, we don't sell fuel line or fuel pumps or, or, or, you know, copper line or rubber hoses,' or we just keep right on going. Yeah.
[01:23:08] Jeff Compton: So why did that liability all of a sudden trump the... I don't, shouldn't have used that word. But, uh, why did it trump that ability that, you know, we can say, "Oh no, you're not allowed to do this because you might hurt yourself"? Freedom says I should be able to assume the risk and the responsibility You know, it's, it's a funny world we live in 'cause I mean, the, the, they don't want the sight of the car catching on fire all over the news, but let's be real.
[01:23:37] Jeff Compton: If they have a flood, they're all parked in a field somewhere so many meters apart from one another, and then they'll spontaneously combust anyway.
[01:23:45] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:23:46] Jeff Compton: Because of their compromise from being in a flood.
[01:23:48] Steve Blanchard: I, I, I, you know, I... It's not just the automotive industry. So like, like I have-- like I'm an instructor for scuba diving and all that.
[01:23:57] Steve Blanchard: Right. And I, I actually repair underwater propulsion vehicles.
[01:24:00] Jeff Compton: Okay, cool.
[01:24:01] Steve Blanchard: And they also have very large lithium-ion batteries, right? Packs are, that are $5,000, right? They're very expensive, and they're, they're built in Europe like in Italy.
[01:24:10] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Right?
[01:24:11] Steve Blanchard: So for, for this particular brand. So it's extremely basic to me compared to a vehicle because all it is, is cells.
[01:24:19] Steve Blanchard: Sure. And you put a BMS in there, and they program it, and you put it in your scooter and but, you know, maybe, maybe it has 50 lithium-ion cells in it. So what happens when one or two, the like cells don't balance or they, or they short out? So I have the b-- the customer comes in, I have the battery, which costs $5,000, and I could easily open the cap, open the pack, test the cells, replace the ones that are broken, put it back together, put it back in.
[01:24:47] Steve Blanchard: So, you know, I reach out to our Italian friends, and I tell them, you know, like, "I could easily like fix this." They're like, "No." He goes, "We don't want you opening up this battery pack. Do not touch it." Because of liability again, right?
[01:25:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:25:01] Steve Blanchard: But now you're telling me that I have to tell my customer that he has to buy a $5,000 battery that I could open in ten minutes and pull some cells out and fix it.
[01:25:11] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:25:12] Steve Blanchard: I mean, it's h- it's horrible to me. Like that's-
[01:25:14] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:25:14] Steve Blanchard: Like you should, you should have some kind of, you know, whether, whether the manufacturer wants to give training or whatever, to have some kind of certification to do it.
[01:25:24] Jeff Compton: Well, I-
[01:25:24] Steve Blanchard: That's, that's the world we live in now. Like lithium ion is a big like, ugh, you know, the, the-
[01:25:30] Jeff Compton: You've seen the arguments then, Steve, where it's like when we start to talk about mandatory certification in the industry, there's a big pushback, right?
[01:25:38] Jeff Compton: "Oh, I don't want, I don't wanna subject myself to that. That's not fair. Don't involve the government." You know, "I, I, I've been doing this fifty years. I know how to do it. I, I, I c- I can take..." How many people have taken apart a Prius battery pack on YouTube and, uh, you know, changed some cells out and rebalanced it, charged it up and got, you know, a working Prius again?
[01:25:59] Jeff Compton: We've seen Ivan out Pine Hollow attempt it. Yeah. I've seen Shack Hangs and Chuck do it. They didn't have Toyota level OE specific training. They went in there and, and how does this work? And they fix it. Yeah. We should do that. But all of a sudden now, like if the EV thing is gonna come along, they're gonna make us be certified before I can touch the battery pack.
[01:26:22] Jeff Compton: Like I'm not a half in sometimes kind of guy. Either put certification across the whole industry and say, like us in Canada, you have to have some basic level or else remove it all and let it be what it is. Let natural selection, Darwin, right? Um, and, and, and be what it is.
[01:26:43] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:26:44] Jeff Compton: You know? I, uh, I, I think it's coming.
[01:26:47] Jeff Compton: I think mandatory certification is gonna arrive whether the industry likes it or not, because I think as we keep going, the, the insurance and the parts people, the vendors are not gonna allow us. Maybe the government in- after Trump leaves will say, "No, I don't want people to be able to work on their own EV without," you know.
[01:27:07] Jeff Compton: And, and maybe that's what happens. I don't know. I don't like that. It's one more reason why I don't like the idea that... My big thing with the, with the EV thing is I don't like the idea that maybe tomorrow something, someone somewhere decides I'm not allowed to charge my EV, and now it becomes a dead paperweight in my driveway- Yeah
[01:27:30] Jeff Compton: because maybe something, uh, I re- I've-- my credit rating drops below a certain amount, my social credit score, I'm not supposed to say that, and, and all of a sudden they won't allow me to charge my car. This is a very real thing that is happening- Yeah ... and can happen in other countries where EV is already a thing, like BYD.
[01:27:50] Jeff Compton: They-- Do you think they're not gonna shut your car off on you? Of course, they can. They already know how to do it. They already could do it in some cars. Yeah. The technology's already there. It scares me then when it's least... If I know- And again, it sounds ridiculous 'cause the fuel thing, if they wanna shut it down electrically, it won't matter what engine is propulsioning it, I won't be able to get to the fuel.
[01:28:11] Jeff Compton: But, you know, it was like when, when Sherwood's people were gonna respond to his video and they're like, "Well, I'm just gonna go disconnect that," and he just laughs and he goes, "It's not gonna be so simple like that. It's gonna be a network and a password and a, a gateway."
[01:28:23] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:28:25] Jeff Compton: Yeah. So my, my basic redneck brain says that I don't like that because I don't like the idea that they can shut down the car remotely.
[01:28:33] Steve Blanchard: It's true.
[01:28:33] Jeff Compton: But I mean-
[01:28:34] Steve Blanchard: I mean, we used to joke like, you know, full self-driving is
[01:28:38] Jeff Compton: But you were saying how, you know, the self-driving thing and, and the, we were talking about the, the shutting them down remotely. Yeah. You know? That's what scared me.
[01:28:49] Steve Blanchard: They're, they're gonna make the cars, like, drive back to the...
[01:28:54] Steve Blanchard: You know? You're gonna watch it out your window and you'll see your car drive away. I'm gonna say, "You didn't make your payments."
[01:29:01] Jeff Compton: You didn't make your payment. I sh- Does that scare you, too?
[01:29:06] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, the technology is there, right?
[01:29:09] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:29:10] Steve Blanchard: It's just, like, you know, the s- like this whole privacy act thing.
[01:29:17] Steve Blanchard: We're s- we're, we're kept so much in the dark. Like you said, we know that the data is there.
[01:29:22] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:29:23] Steve Blanchard: How do we really know what they're doing with it?
[01:29:25] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:29:26] Steve Blanchard: And I understand some companies need that data to improve their systems.
[01:29:30] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:29:31] Steve Blanchard: So they, they, they need it to, to, to, like, in, in that aspect. But, you know, we, we know that there are data leaks everywhere.
[01:29:42] Steve Blanchard: Like-
[01:29:42] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:29:43] Steve Blanchard: you know, who's to say that your insurance company can't request, you know, "Hey, is this driver actually following the speed limit? Like, we'd like to see." And all of a sudden they get the logs of your car.
[01:29:53] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:29:54] Steve Blanchard: And they're like, "This guy's driving 150 kilometers an hour, like, every mor-," you know?
[01:29:58] Steve Blanchard: And all of a sudden you get the phone call and your-
[01:30:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:30:01] Steve Blanchard: you know, your insurance rate's, like, going through the Say, "Whoa. What the hell just happened?" You know? But who knows?
[01:30:06] Jeff Compton: You, you, yeah. You never got a speeding ticket. You never were in an accident, but the car snitches on you and tells you that, like, "Hey, Jeff habitually drives down the 401 highway at, you know, 30 kilometers over the speed limit.
[01:30:18] Jeff Compton: Let's, uh, pump up Jeff's insurance rate." That's not fair to Jeff. Jeff hasn't been in an accident. Yes, did he break the law? Yes, he did. So Steve, with, does the, the future of the industry then kind of make you apprehensive?
[01:30:35] Steve Blanchard: Uh, like in my opinion, I think, uh, things need to change. Like something's gonna have to happen because I mean, it can't just keep going on because I, uh, I haven't seen any improvement in terms of, you know, any benefits or whatever Um, operating with a flat rate system.
[01:30:55] Steve Blanchard: I mean, a- and don't get me wrong, I understand some techs absolutely love it. They make tons of money on it. But for many of other different reasons that we discussed, you know, whether it's, it's, it's benefiting the customer, or the way management uses it to operate their business, or, you know, there's, there's, there's...
[01:31:16] Steve Blanchard: To me, in my opinion, there are far more, um, um, how would I say, disadvantages to sustaining something like that.
[01:31:29] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:31:30] Steve Blanchard: And, and, and, and totally understand how difficult it would be for dealerships to adapt. But I've always said I've experienced both.
[01:31:38] Jeff Compton: Yes. Yeah.
[01:31:39] Steve Blanchard: And the systems that track are the way we work, the time we spent on jobs, the, the, the, the, the labor rates, you know, tied to those jobs are all monitored and tracked, right?
[01:31:53] Steve Blanchard: So whether you're paid by the hour or flat rate, if you fall behind, 'cause th- th- that's the reason all the dealerships tell you, like, "Oh, no. We're not gonna put you by the hour. You're just gonna sit there and do nothing." It's like, well, no, you're still gonna see my metrics.
[01:32:07] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:32:07] Steve Blanchard: So if, if you're falling way behind on your peers, then you walk in, you get this little warning telling you, "Hey, pick up your feet," or, you know, "It's not gonna work for you here."
[01:32:17] Steve Blanchard: A- and it's as simple as that, right?
[01:32:18] Jeff Compton: But that's, that's what it comes down to, that, that thing that the buzz topic all the time now in the industry and in the r- circles is leadership. And I've, I've said that forever, that the reason that they can't implement salary and make it work everywhere is because we don't have leadership.
[01:32:34] Jeff Compton: Like, when I think of some of the service managers that I've worked for, there's a reason that it wouldn't have worked any way but flat rate, because they had no clue how to motivate, how to manage their people. They weren't managers. There were other technicians that maybe used to produce a bunch of hours, that had some s- familiarity with the brand, and they thought that was the person that was gonna lead everybody.
[01:32:57] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And it doesn't always work that way, because you know and I know how we can be. I don't have the best people skills after a while, right? It's the same as looking at a lot of 45 and 50-year-old technicians look at a 20-year-old technician and go, "They don't wanna work." Mm. Well, that person with that attitude is no kind of leader, right?
[01:33:14] Jeff Compton: I genuinely believe lots of techs go to work every day and want to fix cars. They genuinely enjoy it. They wanna do it. If it was their job, they, they get off on it. But if you're finding somebody that's slacking, and you say, "Oh, they're just gonna ride the, the pay or whatever," well, that becomes a management problem of what are you gonna do to lead that person to better?
[01:33:33] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And are they always fit? No, they're not. But it comes down to where we have to start thinking what actually is a good employee, what does it actually look like? And you and I said, "Oh, the guy that could turn 16 hours in an eight-hour day, but eight of it, four of it, five of it had to be redone- That was always their, their, their model.
[01:33:55] Jeff Compton: Well, that's not what is working for culture, it's not working for longevity, it's not working for customer retention, customer satisfaction. It's not working for any of that. Yeah. But yet we seem to get them to understand this true model that you wanna build is the steady eddy, the consistent low comeback, high skill, problem-solving ability technician.
[01:34:16] Jeff Compton: That's what you build is a whole crew of that. Exactly. And when
[01:34:19] Steve Blanchard: it
[01:34:19] Jeff Compton: starts to deviate from that, they take shortcuts. They-- To try and... Why-- Ask them, "Why are you trying to rush through this job?" Yeah. Well, if I take the money away from it, what's the incentive to rush through the job? We would just all-- We would work like we were working on airplanes.
[01:34:34] Jeff Compton: You don't rush anything. Everything is following a process. Every bolt has a torque, every s- process has a service, uh, sequence that it has to be followed. Yeah. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. It's done that way every flipping time. That's how this stuff... And again, with the technology going forward, people that design these electric cars, I think for the most part, think that that's how it should be implemented.
[01:34:57] Jeff Compton: I publish a service manual because I want a service performed this way. Well, all of a sudden, we put in a pay incentive that says, "Hey, cut all the corners that you can to become as fast as you can, and as long as it still drives out the bay, win." Well, that's not what we should have always been doing, right?
[01:35:17] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. To be true craftsmen, to hold ourselves to a standard that everybody thought they were getting when they went and paid for the highest door rate that they could at the dealership, that's what they assumed they were getting, the highest level of skill, the highest level of care. Did we ever give that to them?
[01:35:31] Jeff Compton: Eh. Yeah. Not consistently, not across the whole board.
[01:35:35] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:35:36] Jeff Compton: That's kind of a rant right there. Wow. Um- But I think that that's going forward. With the technology, Steve, what scares me is- The technology should actually force out f- flat rate. It should be like there should be... We're dealing with, you know, lithium ion battery cells and the, a very real potential that we could burn this sucker down or kill these people, the kind of voltage are going through the car.
[01:35:57] Jeff Compton: There should be no shortcuts.
[01:35:59] Steve Blanchard: Mm-hmm.
[01:35:59] Jeff Compton: Yet, I don't think it doesn't matter what we put in technology into the car, the industry will still drag its feet and kick and scream to hold onto that pay system. Yeah. It's gonna be the same way.
[01:36:13] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. That's, that's, that's the big, you know, debate. I, I... Like, good management should, um, always figure out a way to reward the people that wanna produce, right?
[01:36:29] Steve Blanchard: So no matter if you're flat rate or paid by the hour, whatever it is, you can still create those incentives for the guys that want to do more, right? Without penalizing the guys that, you know, they need to get home because they wanna get back to their family. Everybody has different values, right? Um, you'll still get the young guys that are gung ho and they wanna make more hours, give them the opportunity.
[01:36:49] Steve Blanchard: Mm-hmm. Right? They don't have to be on flat rate to do that. It's the way I see it, you know. Um, and at the same time, it gives you, it gives the technician a little bit more power to feel that they're in control of what they're doing, right? Where on flat rate, you know there's favoritism, you know.
[01:37:08] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:37:09] Steve Blanchard: One morning a technician brings a coffee to a service advisor, and next thing you know he's doing gravy for like, you know, the rest of the day.
[01:37:15] Steve Blanchard: Is it... Like, it shouldn't be that way. Mm-hmm. And, and, and, and, and you would eliminate this independency, like, you know, the, the viewing your neighbor as a competitor.
[01:37:26] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:37:27] Steve Blanchard: And you would start creating a team where everybody starts sharing their knowledge.
[01:37:32] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:37:32] Steve Blanchard: And then you would watch your shop grow- Yes ... the skill level, you know, to a, to a point where, you know, bring on anything through the door, we're gonna get through it.
[01:37:43] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:37:44] Steve Blanchard: You know, if, if I can't figure it out, I know my buddy's there to back me up and come and help me out, and we'll get it done, you know? And that's the sort of attitude I think it would bring, you know. But, but it's such a hard, hard thing to change. I, I've had this conversation, you know, I don't know how many times throughout my career with different people and, you know, I always get the same answer from management, you know, "Oh no, we can't do that.
[01:38:09] Steve Blanchard: You're just gonna drag your feet and not do any work." And I'm like, how? I, I don't understand how you... That's, that's the first thing that comes to your mind when we talk about being paid by the hour. It just makes no sense to me.
[01:38:22] Jeff Compton: But look at how many times they can have a top-notch service advisor, sells a bunch of work, great with the customers, and they leave.
[01:38:30] Jeff Compton: And somebody else comes in and they take the job, and they're not as good And do they ever do a damn thing about that? No. Nope. They just, "Well," you know. And, and y- you know, we've seen it, the service advisor that plays on their phone or Candy Crush on their, on their... And I, I, I tell the story, I didn't work with him personally, but I did have a friend who worked at the thing, and he had the laziest service advisor that he'd ever seen, and he wasn't on any kind of incentivized thing at all.
[01:38:59] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:38:59] Jeff Compton: Uh, if he didn't feel like phoning the customer that day, you could carry out the estimate to the car, for the car, to the advisor, and the advisor wouldn't even look at it. He'd go, "No, the customer said he was only gonna do an oil change today." Never even picked up the phone and called the customer.
[01:39:13] Steve Blanchard: That's funny. And it
[01:39:14] Jeff Compton: came back because the customer would, next month, is in for a recall or whatever, right? Part that came in. Yeah. And another advisor gets the car and, and per- tables the estimate. And he goes, "I never knew I needed all of this stuff." Well, in this industry, we just sit there and go, "It's always a technician issue.
[01:39:34] Jeff Compton: It's always a technician issue. Production is always a technician." No, really, what the technician is responsible for is how fast or how slow they are at getting a particular task performed.
[01:39:45] Steve Blanchard: Hmm. How
[01:39:45] Jeff Compton: many tasks that get sold to the customer is strictly on the quality of inspection that we do, but it-- You can do a great inspection in the world, if you have an unmotivated person who can't sell the work, it doesn't convert to shit.
[01:40:01] Steve Blanchard: Exactly.
[01:40:02] Jeff Compton: Shinola. Pardon my French. So it-- Again, I, I'm starting to see where the spotlight is being shone on, now on the service writer to actually be able to be motivated, perform, advocate for the customer at a level that's never been there before. We keep talking about the technician shortage. I think the technician shortage fixes itself, but I think we really now need to look at what is the failure of service writers.
[01:40:29] Jeff Compton: And I'm not just talking in dealerships, I'm talking in shops now too, because we see small independent shops that operate never doing inspections, only fixing when it's a broke down. "I don't ever wanna be a salesman to my customer." Yeah. And, and then a customer all of a sudden has a six-year-old car, and it needs six thousand dollars worth of work, and nobody ever gave them any notice because, you know, all they ever did was oil changes, and they did one brake job and maybe plugged a tire.
[01:40:57] Jeff Compton: And all of a sudden, it needs six thousand dollars worth of work because the AC doesn't work, the shocks are shot, the tires are bald, the brakes are bad, there's corrosion, and all of a sudden everybody goes, "Nobody told me about this kind of stuff." Transmission's slipping, blah, blah, blah. Right? We could go on for hours.
[01:41:15] Jeff Compton: Yeah. So this advocacy of the customer and their car is what's important. But if we do not have people that convert that into sales, I don't give a crap about the technician's production. The whole team is not producing what it should be because somebody that can just come in and sit there and, and smile and play nice and, and give only the good news-
[01:41:44] Steve Blanchard: Yeah
[01:41:44] Jeff Compton: and it, and it screws the whole backside of the building. And I have a real big problem with that because I know I could, I could have several customers that... And you've seen it in the dealer. You could take an estimate out to one advisor, and he sold it just like that. And another one looked at it and got really emotionally involved and said, "Oh, gee, I don't know if Mrs.
[01:42:03] Jeff Compton: Smith's gonna be able to afford that. She was just telling me her mom's going into hospice." None of it matters. The reality- Yeah ... is, is this And, and if somebody that doesn't wanna sell this, they're a liability now, way more than the technician that takes too long to do a job.
[01:42:21] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:42:23] Jeff Compton: Absolutely. It goes back to leading.
[01:42:26] Jeff Compton: Can I lead my advisors? No. We've got people that run shops that can't even lead the advisors, let alone lead the technicians. Well, then, what's, what are we expecting? We're just going through the motions at this point.
[01:42:38] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah. We're
[01:42:39] Jeff Compton: just reacting. We're not proactive. The car needs an alternator, we put an alternator on it.
[01:42:44] Jeff Compton: Write up a bill, get paid.
[01:42:46] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:42:46] Jeff Compton: We don't truly think about what we're trying to do here. And then you say all the other opinions of like, "Well, this isn't about sales. This is about service." And listen, when they walk into the restaurant, you still have to sell them the food.
[01:43:02] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:43:02] Jeff Compton: You know? Yeah. What, uh ... Do you have an exit strategy out, Steve?
[01:43:06] Jeff Compton: Not just of the interview, but of the, of the industry?
[01:43:09] Steve Blanchard: Ah, well, I mean, I'd love to retire, but, you know, I, I've, I'll always, you know, tinker. My, my dream is to actually be able to move into a place that's more rural and have my own shop.
[01:43:22] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:43:23] Steve Blanchard: Right? So I could just tinker things on my own, you know, time. As a, as a personal enjoyment or that, I mean, you know, not necessarily making a business out of it.
[01:43:33] Jeff Compton: Uh-huh.
[01:43:33] Steve Blanchard: So, so I mean, that's sort of my vision. But for the moment I'm, uh, I'm awfully tempted to, uh, throw myself into technology and maybe changing, even changing my career at, even at this point in my life just to- Just 'cause, you know, I've... My, my bucket's pretty full.
[01:43:56] Jeff Compton: Could you, could you- Oh ... have you built yourself a business ba- making, like, uh, scuba diving scooters?
[01:44:01] Jeff Compton: 'Cause you-
[01:44:01] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, yeah. I've, uh... So that's a long story that I could unbox, but I basically opened up a, a, a dive shop for a while. Good for you. Um, yeah. But I had, you know, a workplace injury that restricted a lot of things that I could do. Um, so I've been in rehabilitation, going to physio, and-
[01:44:21] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:44:21] Steve Blanchard: you know, seeing specialists and all that.
[01:44:23] Steve Blanchard: So I'm working through that, and it's, it's also one of the reasons why I'm probably gonna back out of working, you know, for someone else, like working on cars, 'cause I just don't have the physical capacity anymore to keep lifting heavy loads every day, and-
[01:44:40] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:44:41] Steve Blanchard: in and out. So, so yeah, that's kind of where my, my future's heading.
[01:44:45] Steve Blanchard: But, you know, you were talking about, uh, service writers, and I, I, I mean, I... You know, at some point we need to unbox. 'Cause I had experiences in the EV world which, you know, the preparation to a customer coming for a visit-
[01:45:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:45:02] Steve Blanchard: when you think... Like I've never thought about it throughout my career, but how far you can take it- Yes
[01:45:09] Steve Blanchard: of prepping someone-
[01:45:10] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[01:45:10] Steve Blanchard: you know, before they come in, making sure the parts are there, or, or, you know, looking at their concerns, even digging into it a little bit before they even show up at the counter, and being prepared to make things go smooth so that the result of that is less wasted time on the tech side.
[01:45:28] Steve Blanchard: You know, you're waiting for parts, you're waiting for your estimate, you're waiting for this and that, you know, which is not our fault. Like, why are we paying for it, right?
[01:45:36] Jeff Compton: Yeah. If, if they- So- You and I have probably walked the same couple bays where it's like the customer made the appointment to come in, and they said they had a brake complaint.
[01:45:45] Jeff Compton: Now, how many different brake jobs can you put together at a Hyundai Kia store price-wise? Not a bunch, right? And you can probably table that to the customer when they make the damn phone call- Okay, so Mrs. Smith, minimum like, uh, you think you're hearing some brake noise from the front. Uh, I have done, oh, ten accident brake jobs in the last week, and they all cost five hundred and twenty-six dollars to five hundred and ninety-six dollars.
[01:46:12] Jeff Compton: If your car needs that, would you be interested in doing that? And if Mrs. Smith says no, well then, what's Mrs. Smith need to come by for? Just an oil change maybe or whatever, right? Um, you know, and I can see both sides of the argument for that, but to think that we-- every time we have to go through the same thing of inspect the car, right?
[01:46:32] Jeff Compton: And, and I'm not advocating we don't inspect the car, but the advisor have to go through the whole headache of like, "What do the parts cost again? What's the labor cost again?" You should have that customer not primed, not on the hook. That sounds bad. But they shouldn't be completely shocked when you call them and say, "Yes, the brakes are shot.
[01:46:50] Jeff Compton: Yes, it's gonna be seven hundred dollars." They should have known when they were dropping off what to maybe expect.
[01:46:57] Steve Blanchard: Exactly, yeah.
[01:46:57] Jeff Compton: Shock is less, right? But we have all these cars that it's like, how many times do you do it? You table it and they go, "Oh, the customer wasn't expecting that much. Put the wheels on and put it outside."
[01:47:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Why does that happen, right? What were they expecting us to do? Yeah. And I'm not saying that we do-- we put on cheap parts. I'm not saying we start pad slapping everything to make the job go. But the, the nonsense that we sit there and wait for the customer to get called over a brake job or over the transmission flush or of an oil change or a coolant flush or a tune-up or a battery.
[01:47:29] Jeff Compton: I never understood that having to wait thing. Not that- Yeah ... everybody should have a menu board, but your advisor should be pretty familiar with the flipping s- maintenance schedule on the car. So customers come, Mrs. Smith is making appointments. She's got 80,000 kilometers on the car. What's their Caravan due at 80,000 kilometers?
[01:47:46] Jeff Compton: Well, it's due for, it's due for a transmission service. When they're making the appointment, if they're incentivized and want to make some flipping money and do their damn job- Yeah ... they should be getting Mrs. Smith saying, "Hey, are you aware of the fact that at 80 these two services should be done?"
[01:48:02] Jeff Compton: Exactly. If say then, "I'm not interested in doing it, I'm getting rid of this next month," no problem. We just do the oil change- Yeah ... and we do the basic inspection. I don't have to sit there and tell the advis- the technician doesn't have to write the estimate. None of that has to happen. Yeah. But the fact that they just answer the phone and then wait for the technician to tell them what the car should get done- Exactly
[01:48:24] Jeff Compton: and then table it, I never understood that. It has to work together. We should already be like, "Yes, I had her expecting. Yes, go a-" You've, you've got those tickets where you go up to the buyer- Mm-hmm ... and he said, "Oh yeah, they said if it needed brakes just go ahead and do it." Well, write that on the flipping ticket.
[01:48:40] Jeff Compton: And I save myself one walk up to the desk. I just go to the parts counter now and get it, assuming it needs it. I'm not trying to say we just like run, run amok, and we start bolting parts on the cars it's not needing. I'm not trying to say that. But if it's already been communicated that they're good with it, just write down that they're good with it and we can carry on.
[01:48:58] Jeff Compton: We can flip a couple more cars. Everybody wants to turn and burn in the base, that's how you start to do that, people. Make your advisors take that next step, that next- Yeah ... 10% of effort. Yeah. And this will start to speed up production. Hey, crazy thought. We'll- How about,
[01:49:14] Steve Blanchard: yeah, how about taking a minute to look at history?
[01:49:17] Jeff Compton: Oh.
[01:49:17] Steve Blanchard: You know?
[01:49:18] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:49:19] Steve Blanchard: You- You know how, how, how many people come in, they, they, they, they book an appointment to replace their tires, but you know, six months ago when you swapped them, you wrote that they were at, you know, they're, there's- Oh ... summer tires were at three mil. You open the... Like, you bring the car in, you're like, "Woo-doo-doo."
[01:49:32] Steve Blanchard: You open the trunk and you're like, "These tires are worn out." Yeah. The hell? But it's wr- it was written on the previous RO.
[01:49:38] Jeff Compton: Or you charged them $100 to store them for the last six months. When you put them away, they had 230 seconds on them, so they should've been in the scrap pile- Yeah ... and nobody tabled it to the customer then.
[01:49:50] Jeff Compton: Yeah. So now we pull 'em out, we put 'em on the car, and we wait. Oh shit, these aren't even. We're putting it on the car. What do I do? Now I scramble and I call the customer and say, "Hey, you need $1,600 worth of tires." Yeah.
[01:50:01] Steve Blanchard: And we, and we don't have 'em in stock.
[01:50:03] Jeff Compton: We don't have 'em in stock. That's fine. Here's what we've done.
[01:50:06] Jeff Compton: We've paid the technician to put them on the And you're gonna drive away, and a week later you're gonna come back and get your tires done. And what do I do? I, I guess I charge you an hour labor again? Or what do I do? I eat the hour of labor? What do I do? Oh, it's just- Like-
[01:50:20] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:50:21] Jeff Compton: Oh, it, it- Yeah. I'm having my PTSD scum flaring up.
[01:50:25] Jeff Compton: Thanks
[01:50:26] Steve Blanchard: for- Exactly. Yes.
[01:50:28] Jeff Compton: Absolutely.
[01:50:28] Steve Blanchard: You know, like six months ago we told you your brakes are at 4 mil. Yeah. You know, you probably need brakes now. Yes. Like, I w- I don't even... If I was advisory, I'd open, I'd look at the work order, I'm like, "Yeah." So as soon as, you know, you pick up the phone, call the customer, "You know, we wrote you're probably gonna need brakes.
[01:50:44] Steve Blanchard: We can order them for you, have 'em in stock when you come in." Boom, the job is sold before the car, before the customer even shows up.
[01:50:50] Jeff Compton: And exactly- You know ... the customer says, so the next question, 'cause I love this part of it, is the customer said, "Oh, okay, so Mrs. Smith, we told you last time that your brakes were getting low.
[01:50:58] Jeff Compton: Um, are you interested in getting your brakes done?" And Mrs. Smith says, "No. Well, I had them done over at, say, the Midas." Not picking on Midas. "And, and, and they're noisy." "Okay, Mrs. Smith, um, Midas normally has a warranty. Have you been back to Midas to have this checked out?" Oh, no, I don't wanna go there. Okay, so what-
[01:51:15] Jeff Compton: when you come into my shop on Monday morning at 8:00, how do you want us to proceed with this? Okay. Because I can fix your problem, but it's going to cost a brake job that's gonna be more money than what you spend at Midas. Are you okay with that? Yes, yes, that's what I w- super-duper. Yeah. But if they bother to flip and ask, like, it's like- Yeah
[01:51:35] Jeff Compton: I mean, I don't have a whole lot of faith in them 'cause they can't even ask where the wheel lock key is half the time, right? So how are they gonna ask that kind of shit? But if the overlords, thank God, bring down the AI, you know, stuff, maybe we won't have to Some of this happen as much, Steve. Yeah. Maybe I take the appointment, it's just gonna be like, "Okay, Mrs.
[01:51:54] Jeff Compton: Smith, thank you. So your appointment's for 8:00, uh, you know, at Orleans Dodge, and, and, um, please have your- Yeah ... wheel lock key ready, and, um, you know, we'll- can't wait to see you." You know, coffee and- Yeah ... that's how it- this shit could work.
[01:52:08] Steve Blanchard: Exactly. You could eliminate half the problems by creating a standard operating procedures for s- service writers, right?
[01:52:14] Steve Blanchard: When you're booking an appointment, make sure you go down this list. Have you checked this, checked this, checked this, check... And right there, you'd eliminate so many problems in the shop, like so many. '
[01:52:25] Jeff Compton: Cause we have-
[01:52:25] Steve Blanchard: Amazing.
[01:52:26] Jeff Compton: Yeah. We have SOPs for technicians running out our yin-yang, right? Yeah. How do you lo- how do you test a battery?
[01:52:31] Jeff Compton: How do you approach a no start? There's all kinds of SOPs for that. Yeah. But for the advisors, hardly any. They just kind of call them up there and go let them do their thing, let them work their magic. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna tell you, a lot of them didn't work magic. Oh, yeah. They skated by on their, on their, you know-
[01:52:48] Steve Blanchard: Yeah
[01:52:48] Jeff Compton: natural joie de vivre, and then-
[01:52:53] Steve Blanchard: Yeah ...
[01:52:53] Jeff Compton: what's that get us? Somebody that- Yeah ... the customer really likes, and we never made any flipping money.
[01:52:58] Steve Blanchard: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:52:59] Jeff Compton: Wow, Steve, I didn't expect you- You
[01:53:01] Steve Blanchard: have a lot ...
[01:53:02] Jeff Compton: I didn't ex- you're gonna get me so worked up, but that's good. It's good. Lots of flashbacks, lots of PTSD from the dealership days.
[01:53:09] Jeff Compton: It's all good. Um-
[01:53:11] Steve Blanchard: Yeah.
[01:53:14] Jeff Compton: Will you stay in Ottawa, you think?
[01:53:17] Steve Blanchard: I, I, I mean, I like it here. It's ... I, huh, I mean, I, I, I, I can do all my activities. I can do scuba diving, can play hockey, I can golf, you know, it's ... I, I, the climate is starting to bug me as I age, you know, but, uh-
[01:53:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:53:38] Steve Blanchard: you know. I, I, I'm, I don't think I
[01:53:41] Steve Blanchard: Like, I, I'm not a person that loves to live in very urban areas. Like, I, I wouldn't be downtown Ottawa or Toronto. That, that, that even frightens me just thinking about it. Like, I, I ... Yeah, you know, so. But moving out-
[01:53:55] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[01:53:55] Steve Blanchard: someplace more rural where I'd have more land and be able to have a big shop, oh, that'd be-
[01:54:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[01:54:01] Steve Blanchard: that'd be a little dream. Maybe get a, you know, a muscle car to-
[01:54:04] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:54:06] Steve Blanchard: You know, to, to have a little project to work on, you know, in my retirement days. It's, uh-
[01:54:10] Jeff Compton: Yeah, we could go to the cruise night at Place d'Orleans on Thursday night. I don't know if they still do that. You know, I remember going there all the time, and there was a lot of people that came from the Quebec side that were for that cruise night, so that was always fun.
[01:54:21] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:54:22] Steve Blanchard: Um- Yeah, those things still happen, yeah.
[01:54:23] Jeff Compton: They have, uh, they have a lot of good dive sites right around Kingston if you're ever in the, in the, in the area. Yeah. Into some of them. There's some pretty amazing stuff. Even if you go out Bay of Quinte towards Picton, you can kinda see where the Arrow, the, the plane, some of them got dropped into the
[01:54:38] Jeff Compton: and there's a couple of those pieces- Yeah ... still on them. Yeah. So, I mean, it's pretty ... Not that I, I don't, I don't dive. Uh, when I was a kid, I thought I would really like to do that, but I never got into it, but, um, I know
[01:54:49] Steve Blanchard: a lot- There's a lot, there's a lot of wrecks in Lake Ontario, I'll tell you that.
[01:54:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:54:52] Jeff Compton: Oh, yeah. For sure. So, um- ... water's cold, I'll tell you that. It's flipping cold. Um- Yeah. And I know right off of Michigan there's a lot of really good wrecks, too, and some of them are in a lot more shallower water, like 20 feet down and you find old, old boats, so. Yeah. Um, I wanna thank you for coming on. I really enjoyed this.
[01:55:10] Jeff Compton: There was ... It really taught me a lot about what in Quebec, 'cause I had a lot of preconceived notions that I didn't, I didn't know there was a license kind of certification in Quebec period, because of my little exposure to my corner of the world. I thought it was-
[01:55:25] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, yeah ...
[01:55:25] Jeff Compton: that way. So thank you for sharing that with me.
[01:55:28] Jeff Compton: Um, I definitely wanna have you come back on. We need to talk about, you know, the more of where it's going and where you see yourself going a- and the- Yeah ... the, the dealership, you know, struggles because a lot of my listeners are de- are dealership techs. A lot of them are, and that's a lot of when we see the comments of people that are really frustrated in the industry- Yeah
[01:55:47] Jeff Compton: it's a lot of the dealership guys and girls. And, you know, people just like, the answer immediately is like, "Oh, well, just leave the dealer." It's not so simple. Yeah. If everybody just left the dealer tomorrow, there's not enough employment opportunities outside the dealer network for every technician out there.
[01:56:03] Jeff Compton: It just doesn't happen. Um, and I have said it before and I'll say it again, a lot of places that if you were to leave the dealer and go to just the wild, wild west of some of the independents, you're jumping out of the really hot pan into a fire in some of them, in terms of tooling and training and pay and whatever conditions, whatever you wanna talk about.
[01:56:22] Jeff Compton: That's not all of them But it's a lot of them. Yeah. So,
[01:56:27] Steve Blanchard: uh,
[01:56:28] Jeff Compton: closing thoughts, Steve?
[01:56:29] Steve Blanchard: Well, I, I really appreciate you, uh, giving me the opportunity to, to come on your, uh, podcast, and, uh, keep doing what you do because a lot of us out there that are in the trade really enjoy watching your podcast, and we learn a lot from it.
[01:56:44] Steve Blanchard: So keep pushing 'cause it's, it's much appreciated.
[01:56:48] Jeff Compton: Uh, it's a lot of fun, it really is, honestly. And I mean, it, it... I love the fact that, like, you and I have probably driven down some of the same streets and, and, you know, probably not worked on the same cars, but you never know, right? And I mean, and I think that's just cool, cool as hell.
[01:57:02] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Because, you know, as big this, as this world is, I have a real soft spot in that area, right? Like, the Ottawa, Outaouais kind of area, I just absolutely love, and I think it's absolutely cool that, you know, you reached out to me. And anyone else that's listening, listening to... I don't really care where you live, you know, if you listen and w- and wanna have a conversation, please get ahold of me, and, you know, and, and share with me your thoughts and perspectives and experiences and, and all that jazz 'cause I just love it.
[01:57:30] Jeff Compton: I love hearing it. I think it, it... We all have something to offer, and I think that we only improve this if we start sharing, you know, the s- the struggles. That's it. It's not to run the industry down. It's just to share, like, Steve's obstacles and perspectives and what he's felt, what the industry's done to his passion- Mm-hmm
[01:57:49] Jeff Compton: and how he's still managed to conserve that passion. That says a lot, and I think that we, if we're gonna fix anything, we need to really look at that as being just the tip of that iceberg that we talk about with mental health with so many of us, you know, because it's a grind. And we knew it's a grind when we got into it, and we know it's a grind after we've been in a while and we stay with it, but that doesn't mean that because it's a grind, we can't make it better.
[01:58:13] Jeff Compton: And I think at some point now we have to really look at what's going on and make it better. So as always, thank you to my friends at LaunchTech USA for the sponsorship. My family at TechMetric, thank you. Um, you guys, I can't do it without you. You make everything possible here. Um, the merch store is up. We had another...
[01:58:33] Jeff Compton: Riley Spence had his little young daughter with our onesie on, so- ... I need to rep in the merch store and tell you guys to remind everybody that the merch store is just trying to raise funds to send people to training. That's what it is. Uh, Jeff's not buying a new bass boat with the merch funds, you know, it's just we're trying to give back with that.
[01:58:50] Jeff Compton: So, you know, if you feel like you wanna look at my mug on a, on a coffee mug, or you wanna see my ugly face on a, on a hat, then run over to the merch store and, you know, mind the tariffs, and, uh- ... snag. So Steve, thank you for coming on, man. Um- Thank
[01:59:07] Steve Blanchard: you ...
[01:59:08] Jeff Compton: I'm gonna look you up next time I'm in Ottawa, okay?
[01:59:10] Steve Blanchard: All right.
[01:59:11] Steve Blanchard: Yeah, please do.
[01:59:12] Jeff Compton: We'll grab a beer- ... and some chicken wings or something and, uh- Awesome ... and shoot the bull when we don't have to record it. So
[01:59:18] Steve Blanchard: everybody- All right ... I love you. Thank you all
[01:59:22] Jeff Compton: 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.
[01:59:34] Jeff Compton: 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 ASAP Group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for.
[01:59:51] Jeff Compton: Here's hoping everyone finds their missing ten millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time