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We actually have been successful recovery of cars being stolen from dealerships quicker and from the consumer.
Sam D'Arc:Welcome, everyone, to the driving vision podcast brought to you by the Zigler Auto Group. I'm your host, Sam Dark. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Like it if you do, and leave a comment. Hey, everybody.
Sam D'Arc:Welcome to the car dealership guy industry spotlight. I'm your host, Sam Dark. And today, I'm joined by president and CEO of Ziegler Auto Group, Aaron Ziegler. Melissa High will come to you in a moment. Detective Josh Fallows, Carrie Anne Thomas, and NASCAR race car driver, Carson Hocevar, will come to you in a moment to discuss the challenges that are auto theft in America today.
Sam D'Arc:Today's episode is brought to you by LoJack. Now let's go into the episode. So Aaron Ziegler, president and CEO of Ziegler Auto Group. Over 1,000,000 vehicles were stolen in 2023 according to the NICB at a cost of over $8,000,000,000 to Americans. How does this impact your business and, more importantly, your customers?
Aaron Zeigler:Yeah. It's become a huge issue out there, in the industry and and really in the nation. So we had 72 cars stolen in 6 months that we did not get back before before we started using LoJack. That number went down to almost nothing after using LoJack. But it was over $4,000,000 cost to us, and it was gonna put us out of business if we we kept going.
Aaron Zeigler:So we had to come up with something to combat that, and LoJack has been a, a wonderful product for that.
Sam D'Arc:So you have to you have to implement creative solutions to big problems to find solutions. How did you how did you come across this as a solution?
Aaron Zeigler:Well, I didn't have the expertise to figure out how to, to stop the stuff problem, so I just hired Carrie Anne. And
Carson Hocevar:Yeah.
Aaron Zeigler:She was she's the foremost expert in the world. I'm auto theft. And, she you know, so it was really her that came up with with LoJack and the other, processes that we put in place.
Sam D'Arc:So Carrie Ann Thomas, head of security, Ziegler Auto Group, who was police chief in Kalamazoo, Aaron Ziegler came to you and said, hey. We want you to join the Ziegler Auto Group and help us out with this. What were your thoughts in that moment?
Karianne Thomas:My thoughts are, you know, I'd like to stay retired, but I'll try to help you out. And his instructions to me were fix it. And, you know, we jumped right in and looked at all the solutions because it's layers of solutions. Right? Yeah.
Karianne Thomas:But one of the biggest things is lot management, knowing where our cars are all the time. And in partnering with LoJack, we are able to do that on a daily basis, which then, you know, leads our customers being able to do the same thing, always knowing where your car is, making sure you're in possession and not the bad guys.
Sam D'Arc:So Melissa High VP LoJack, it's interesting. Carrie Anne mentioned Aaron set up the problem. It is a problem of theft. Carrie Anne reinforces it's a problem. What is the trend line?
Sam D'Arc:Is it getting worse? Is it getting better?
Melissa High:So it's still very strong of a situation. Right? We're still seeing high theft across the nation, even into Canada, even into international. Right? A lot of vehicles stolen off lots or stolen from the consumer, right, stolen from our customers.
Melissa High:So it is a big issue, across the country, and that's where we have really invested into our law enforcement partners, because they are instrumental partners to us serving our dealers and their customers enrolled in LoJack when it comes to aiding and recovery. So we invested into LoJack for law enforcement which is a data driven insight technology that we put all the insights of those vehicles that are reported stolen in the palms of the hands of LoJack nationally. It allows them to cross jurisdictionally communicate, tag these vehicles for safety, see real time movements, directional insights of where the vehicle's been, all the trip history. So it's really since February of this year, we have made that investment as a company, and we're gonna continue to further enhance those features.
Sam D'Arc:So before we go into that, because we do wanna talk about this, this is this is an interesting feature that you have that probably few others have. Before we go there, detective Alice, you're here in Florida, and we're gonna talk about why we're here near Homestead Raceway in just a minute, but that that's you. Here's what I don't get. We live in the most amazing time technologically. Technology is available in every single car that we as an auto group sell right now.
Sam D'Arc:The manufacturers can know where every car is at every moment. I don't understand why, given that fact, if I am driving down the road, somebody carjacks my car, steals it out of a hotel, I call the police, why can't you just go after that car?
Detective Valles:So one of one of the main things is the, bad guys out there, they learn as much as the manufacturers where the tracking systems that the manufacturers place on the vehicle. Ah. So as soon as they steal the car, the first thing that they go to attack is the antenna system, the infotainment system, defeating the OEM's features in the vehicle to be able to steal it and not be recovered. So through one of the organizations that I'm part of, the International Association of Auto Theft investigators, Not only are we not for profit, but we also educate law enforcement in trying to defeat that. So one of our partners that, LoJack has not only joined us so that we could grid, bridge that gap between law enforcement and the theft, trying to help the consumer, trying to help the dealerships try to recover the cars faster using another tool that's out there that's we actually have been successful in recovering cars being stolen from dealerships quicker and from the consumers.
Sam D'Arc:So bad guy steals the car, they take it off the lot, they rip that stuff out. Let's say they don't rip the stuff out. Do you have an easy pipeline into communicating with manufacturers?
Detective Valles:So Austin, there is obstacles. You're gonna call that your 1-eight hundred number, and trying to get that car recovered quicker. If the car hasn't been entered into, let's say, the NCIC, the National Criminal Information Center, and the car is not actively stolen, there is a gap between that. Other tools out there, like LoJack, automatically, we have representatives available. We're able to call them, trying to track that car through now the law enforcement app, and we could physically see the car, try to get them recovered quicker.
Sam D'Arc:Carrie Anne, you've had that problem. You've made phone calls when vehicles have been stolen, and you would think it'd be easy because everybody knows where that car is. Let's say that the the device is left in the vehicle. It's not always that easy to get access to.
Karianne Thomas:No. And I think, like the detective said, right, you're calling a 1 800 number. Every manufacturer has a different system they have set up. It there's no uniformity. So if you have a couple of vehicles stolen out of your driveway, right, and they're different manufacturers, the response is going to be totally different.
Karianne Thomas:And the more time that elapses, the less chance of recovery.
Sam D'Arc:So who came up with this idea at LoJack to create this? If I understand it right, what you said, you've got, like, a a single system, a single database that you're making available to law enforcement where if I'm law enforcement, I can log in and I can see every vehicle that's stolen currently on LoJack, and I can see it across the country.
Melissa High:Right? Yes. So knowing that stolen vehicles are becoming a major issue, right, for our dealers, it's costly too. It's extremely costly. So and then instilling peace of mind and really being a complement to the connected car technology that the OEMs are installing at the factory.
Melissa High:Right? Mhmm. So what did we need to do? We needed to develop something that created efficiency and speed because as Kerian and detective Velez said, the faster that law enforcement has line of sight to the vehicle that's reported stolen and in the NCIC database as a valid stolen vehicle, the faster they get that information, the more probable it is to recover that vehicle. So in looking at what we needed to do to be to serve as corporate responsibility, social responsibility, to do our due diligence for our dealer partners and then the customers enrolling in LoJack was okay how do we take the data that we have and really get it into the palms of the hands of law enforcement as soon as possible and as efficient as possible?
Melissa High:Also
Sam D'Arc:In fact, NICB would say if it's reported within 24 hours and there's access to tracking on it, so it hasn't been ripped out, there's communication with whoever has the tracking, the the likelihood of recovering that grows to 34%. Aaron, is 34% a good number? No. That's horrible. We're like 98%.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah.
Aaron Zeigler:But you when when a car is stolen, you have minutes, not hours. Yeah. So 24 hours, it's gone.
Sam D'Arc:It's gone.
Aaron Zeigler:That car is already overseas. Like and we've actually got some cars that we had tracked that were in shipping containers, so we got them back. Yeah.
Sam D'Arc:Because as
Aaron Zeigler:soon as they go overseas, they're gone.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. So the 20 the 24 hour metric is ridiculous. 34% success rate, detective. No. It is not.
Sam D'Arc:That's not success. You wouldn't take a 34% bit No.
Aaron Zeigler:That'll get 34% of any business gets fired or bankrupt. Right?
Sam D'Arc:And a 34% on NASCAR is not good.
Carson Hocevar:Yeah. It's not good.
Aaron Zeigler:Hey, Sonny.
Carson Hocevar:What percentage may be okay, but
Melissa High:No. And one thing to that point, Sam, is we spent about and huge thank you to Carrie Ann, the Ziegler Organization, as well as the Effective Elijah's unit, as well as many other units out there, but they've been instrumental, you all have been instrumental in getting us in front of the law enforcement agencies across the country to tell us what we needed to put in this app, right. We didn't just say, oh, we're going to design this and put it in the hands of law enforcement and then realize, oh, we made this investment and it's not something that's powerful enough to aid them, right. So that's where we spent about a year and a half going around and actually speaking with law enforcement agencies, subject matter experts such as Carrie Ann, Ziegler, you know, organization, true partners of ours that we can then say okay, this is what we need to invest in and then scale from here. So since we've launched it in February, it was our soft launch, we have over 5,000 officers and it's growing rapidly by the day and we're investing the time to say okay, what else do you need in this app?
Melissa High:Because one thing we all know about law enforcement, resources are tight, budgets are tight. So anything we can do to aid them, they're instrumental to the success for all of us.
Sam D'Arc:Why aren't there more tools like this? Like, there's nothing crazy proprietary unique about this. It's just that you did it. Right? You created this tool.
Sam D'Arc:What are the biggest obstacles to this existing elsewhere, detective? Like, why doesn't this already exist? Like, it's crazy to me.
Detective Valles:It's definitely a growing trend. Yeah. Things get old. Different techniques of how to steal a car, get older. Yeah.
Detective Valles:The same way that they're developing new ideas on how to protect a vehicle from being stolen. Yeah. These guys are out there to defeat. Yeah. The bad guys are out there trying to defeat that.
Detective Valles:So you have to keep on evolving and trying to develop a better product. Definitely, you know, LoJack is on the right on the right track, and there's other manufacturers need to step up their, game on that side to prevent to be able to prevent those deaths. Yeah.
Karianne Thomas:And, Sam, I just wanna add, like, our law enforcement officers, they're crime fighters. They wanna go find these stolen cars. Right? They wanna solve crimes. That's in their DNA.
Karianne Thomas:Yeah. And when you give them a tool to do that, they're gonna be looking all the time because they have the correct tool. Right? And there just hasn't been one easy tool that has allowed them to do that.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. What would you say, detective, to people out there that see this crime and say, well, you know what? It's a police problem. They just don't really wanna go find the bad guys. Well,
Detective Valles:to express to the consumers out there, on the law enforcement side, especially the the things that I do on a daily basis, networking is big on ourselves, not only for the consumer, but also for the private sector. Expressing to the dealerships what the new trends are, what to look for to prevent those thefts. So if there's no communication from both sides, from the consumer, from the victims out there, and us in law enforcement relating it through our training, We do continuous training throughout the year trying to give the those law enforcement officers from uniform to investigators the tools needed to be able to solve these crimes and prevent them. Nothing would nothing would work. So
Sam D'Arc:So, Melissa, somebody watching this podcast is part of law enforcement. They're like, hey. That's a cool idea. I'd like to figure out how to be able to utilize this service. What, how do they find out more information?
Sam D'Arc:Where do they get more information about this tool?
Melissa High:So we have they could reach out to our LoJack support number, and there's a link I can have you add to the podcast. But, basically, they go through the process of being vetted. We do vet all law enforcement officers just to make sure they're actively, you know, affiliated to a government agency. We make sure the chief of police or the sergeant of the unit is aware and we have 3 team members in LoJack. They are LoJack law enforcement liaisons.
Melissa High:So their specialty, they're all former law enforcement and their specialty is not only vetting and getting our law enforcement officers enrolled, but also escalations. So they are heavily involved with subpoenas, warrants, escalated cases that are under surveillance or the FBI or special task force units are involved in. That's their level of expertise. Like, that's where they come into play a big instrumental role in bridging that gap even from, let's say, my broader account management team serving the dealers to where then it crosses over to that fine line of, like, okay, we have to fall and on the side of the law. Right?
Melissa High:So we, by all mean basically, they reach out to our customer support team. We then bridge it over to our liaisons, and they're vetted, and then they're onboarded.
Sam D'Arc:So so Aaron gave a couple of really interesting examples of these vehicles that were stolen, got put into containers. Mhmm. The system activated. Law enforcement was activated. They went and got them.
Sam D'Arc:You must have multiple stories like that on a regular basis. Like Yeah. Like, is there ever one that just shocks you and you're like, I can't believe we recovered that. Right?
Melissa High:So we we had one recent story that actually was right after the release of LoJack Elle. The vehicle was stolen out of Minnetonka and Jersey State Police identified it in the app, saw that the vehicle was coming up, the turnpike headed into New York, was able to communicate to NYPD and they recovered it going over the bridge. I mean, that's how quick and efficient
Sam D'Arc:That's the way it should be.
Melissa High:Yes. Totally. Yes.
Sam D'Arc:That's my drama too.
Melissa High:We've seen, I mean, how many times we see vehicles stolen in in, like, parking garages Yeah. Where if you didn't have the tool and have an understanding of how LoJack functions or how LoJack LE works and the insights that are shown there, you would think, oh, I'm never gonna recover this vehicle, right? But by us having this technology and this second layer of protection and saying okay no this device is pinging, it's in the hands of law enforcement, they'll do their due diligence and then go aid in the recovery and you know know how to identify like it's it's containers, same thing, once the container starts moving we're gonna see that. We had one case, I was working with the detectives till all hours, it went on for days and I was pleading please we have to recover and he would say calm down, calm down, we're gonna recover but we needed to cross, we needed to cross over into the port line because we're gonna pull the container. In that container was not only our vehicles recovered
Sam D'Arc:for the dealers Others.
Karianne Thomas:But a
Melissa High:lot of others.
Carson Hocevar:Yeah.
Melissa High:So we're aiding in also recovery of vehicles that weren't equipped with low jobs.
Sam D'Arc:You're taking back some of that $8,000,000,000 Yes. Annual loss. I think what's interesting is I think, Erin, when we first heard of the word LoJack, what did we think of? Like, there's that LoJack device way back from decades ago was that bar. Right?
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. Exactly. This is completely different new technology.
Aaron Zeigler:They use the same name because the brand Yeah. Name is
Sam D'Arc:Oh, by Solar.
Aaron Zeigler:Is strong.
Karianne Thomas:Yeah.
Aaron Zeigler:Yeah. But but Solera, it's Solera's product, and and, it's worked very well
Sam D'Arc:for us. As a company, you've innovated, and you've come a long way. Aaron often talks about how most people make the mistake of not being aggressive enough. The auto group, Sigler Auto Group doesn't make that mistake. It's great that you've evolved a product over time, which brings us the reason why this guy's here with us today.
Sam D'Arc:So we're here in Florida near Homestead, the raceway. Tomorrow, you're going to take the track here at Homestead, number 77 Spire, race car. And two names will be on that. The Ziegler name, which has been on many, cars this year, and then LoJack's part of the co primary sponsorship. Two questions for you.
Sam D'Arc:You've just heard Melissa describe the law enforcement app. Could you steal a car given your, your your, your driving, capability
Carson Hocevar:Go ahead. Straight
Karianne Thomas:out. People is supposed to say you, Kirk?
Carson Hocevar:Is it is it low, Jack, or is it you? Well, the surprise factor is completely gone. Oh, okay. So, Aries got a car outside.
Sam D'Arc:Let's put this thing to a test. I
Aaron Zeigler:feel like this
Sam D'Arc:should be a YouTube video. The
Carson Hocevar:problem well, the problem is the car that I would wanna steal from the Zingo Auto Group if I was to ever steal 1 is gonna say 77 on it. It's the Camaro. So it would be very, very difficult to hide that in plain sides.
Sam D'Arc:Does anyone ever try to steal a NASCAR? I mean, they're very expensive cars. I mean
Carson Hocevar:There's been people not mine or anybody that I know of, but there's been times that people have stolen race cars, and it's been by accident.
Sam D'Arc:Someone gotten us a pace car once or once. Well, yeah. Around.
Carson Hocevar:Yeah. But they've they've stolen race cars by accident because they wanna steal the trailer
Sam D'Arc:or Yeah.
Carson Hocevar:They get down the road. They get wherever they're going, and then they open it to see what they got. And they realize, oh, there's a race car in here. So there's been a lot of stories of a race car just on the side of the road somewhere, you know, 30, 40 miles down the road, because, you know, that resale value. Number 1, it'd be easy to come across.
Carson Hocevar:I don't normally find a race car on marketplace. And number 2, it pretty much says the name and then exactly who you took it from. So It's a unique Every time somebody ever has taken a race car, it's always by accident, and they wanna give it back as soon as possible.
Sam D'Arc:So the LoJack app provides detective anything you have to add
Detective Valles:to that. Right? Correct. Not a big marker provider.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. What would you see if you saw an abandoned NASCAR on the side of the
Detective Valles:road? Somebody picked up, stole the wrong trailer.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. So, your car and your team provide you a ton of analytics, some of which are similar to what LoJack provides. LoJack in the app, you have speed. You can put speed alerts. You have geofencing.
Sam D'Arc:You can say when a vehicle goes outside that that geofence. How important is the data analytics that you get to being a NASCAR driver into winning?
Carson Hocevar:Yeah. For us, I mean, it's the it's why everybody's so good now really is, you if somebody, you know, has a certain technique that they've been super good at this racetrack, it's now no secret. Like, if they're on the throttle 50 feet before you, you can know that within them doing, like, live. It it's live. So, that's why qualifying is so important and everybody's so tied is the second you it's why it's such a disadvantage to go early in qualifying now because the second you run wide open a 100% throttle, the next 10 guys run wide open.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah.
Carson Hocevar:And they instantly know where it used to be, oh, you know, like, we always used to drivers hate analytics because there's a difference between driver wide open and analytic wide open. That not that 98% that we'd lift 2% instantly, our engineers are saying, we didn't run wide open. You didn't run a 100%, where 10, 15 years ago, they were able to get away with that. Yeah. It was wide open.
Carson Hocevar:Yeah. That was easy. Oh, yeah. So Yeah. For us and me, like, being super new and everything that it's I mean, you could see my steering trace.
Carson Hocevar:You could see the GPS. They have GPSs, and they show exactly where we are. We can compare everybody in the field's, throttle, brake, lateral g. I mean, just I think if I sneezed in there, you'd probably know it. But for us, I mean, it's super crucial and important.
Carson Hocevar:And for us as a team growing, it's even more important for us because we can look at the better cars, and they can know what adjustments to make. They can develop year to year from, you know, when we come back in the spring. They could compare our car to, you know, the best cars here, but we can actually download their data, go to the simulator, upload their driving characteristics to the sim. We could and then when I'm in the simulator, it will show a comparison, like, I'm on the racetrack, like, it would, you know, my lap compared to Kyle Larson's lap or whoever that it would have the lap to lap. Well, now I'm doing it in the simulator, and now I can see his throttle trace.
Carson Hocevar:I can see his Wow. Steering. I could see everything. And when I first started driving cup cars in the simulator, I drove a cup car in the sim for a year in advance before ever driving 1 in real life. And my job was literally just to match the drivers.
Carson Hocevar:Like, it wasn't to make the car better, it was to match the cup drivers. So then my feedback in the sim was the same as theirs on the racetrack. So, I mean, for a year, they just taught me how to How to drive. How to match a cup driver. So
Sam D'Arc:So those data, those analytics delivered to you quickly, timely so you can learn from them, have put you in a spot as we near the end of this year where you're on the verge of winning a pretty cool accolade. You mentioned yourself being a brand new driver. Tell us about rookie of the year and how close you are to to closing that out.
Carson Hocevar:Yeah. So Go jinx yourself, though. Well, I mean, it'd be really an play on Aaron. Well, for us to lose it right now, it'd be really difficult. Oh, don't say that.
Carson Hocevar:Well, we have 99 point lead right now. As long as we get 18 points more than the 4, we lock up. Oh, yeah. But even too as he would have to basically win both stages and win the race in the next 2 but you'd have to win he'd have to max out, and we'd have to, like, max fail, basically, To, you know, we'd have to have both ends of the spectrum for the next 2 races. But, yeah, every all signs point to to being pretty good.
Carson Hocevar:But one thing that I just thought of about the data and everything is Jeff Dickerson, our owner at Spire, he laughed, saying if he had a a data analytic or you anything, he'd probably be a race car driver instead of a owner because he laughed. He said he saw one one, you know, dirt spring car, whatever, and they finally put data on the thing. And, you know, 2 or 3 years ago, he's looking at all this data because it was so new, and it's it's pretty new technology we have. And he just looked. He goes, that right there is why I did not make it as a race car tracker.
Carson Hocevar:He's like, I was one one look at SMT comparing myself to just realize, man, I was doing that all wrong.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. You know what's so interesting is you talk about that and and, again, the importance of data, analytics, going back to this, going back to the business, Aaron's business, like, having that information is so crucial to being successful in business, to listening to it, to getting it, quickly. So, detective, what what has it meant to you in your battle as we wrap up here to fight crime, to stop crime, to stop vehicle theft, to have some of these different tools? And is there anything else you need, that the public, that the business world could give you and law enforcement that would help you to be even more successful in in getting these stolen vehicles back? And by the way, thank you for doing that.
Sam D'Arc:It means all the difference to the business world and to the consumer world, the peace of mind.
Detective Valles:Well, I think the most important thing is networking. Yeah. Just Just supporting, you know, having the support from the the community, having the support from the private sector, and, supporting law enforcement itself. I can tell you on our part, we do, like like I said, mentioned before, continuous education, our networking ourselves, the group that I'm part of, I have connections. I could call somebody in New York if I needed a copy of a police report
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. Or if I
Detective Valles:had a vehicle stolen in Miami or in South Florida, and it's gonna, I could have it recovered, up there, or if they needed the same thing, they have our contacts on here. So networking supported each other, having that open dialogue with the consumer, the private sector, and and working together. At the end of the day, we're trying to make it safer on the road, on the streets, and also protecting the the, the businesses, trying to help the consumer. So working back and forth.
Sam D'Arc:Yeah. Aaron, what does it mean to you to know that you've got, police between Carrie Ann and detective and other law enforcement agencies happening?
Aaron Zeigler:Yeah. I was gonna say, you know, detective, thanks for what you do. Carrie Ann, thanks for what you do. And really to all the law enforcement out there, nationwide, thanks for keeping us safe. Thanks for protecting our businesses because if you don't have, protection and you don't have law and order, you don't have a a country and you can't have a business.
Aaron Zeigler:So it's it's absolutely crucial what these guys do, and there are the unsung heroes, out there. And everybody loves a NASCAR driver, but these are the 2 heroes down here. So
Sam D'Arc:Well, as we wrap up, everybody, again, thank you for being here. We'll put in the show notes if you want more information on the LoJack law enforcement, app. You can get that there. It contacts the different agencies. And then as we, Carrie, anything you wanna leave as we walk out before I
Karianne Thomas:think, Josh, and I just wanna tell Carson, you know, drive it like you stole it.
Sam D'Arc:I was gonna say, we were we are now listen. This this will be a podcast first. We're gonna give, Carson about a quarter second head start because now after you share the analytics, we know that. But good luck tomorrow. We're all gonna be there, at the at the racetrack, Rick said, to cheer you on as potentially you get a a huge finish and you'll lock up the rookie of the year.
Aaron Zeigler:Yep. We won there last year.
Sam D'Arc:So Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Detective Valles:Yeah. Yeah.
Sam D'Arc:Which was pretty cool. So alright. Thanks, everybody. A special thanks to all who contributed to this week's podcast. Until next week, how are you driving vision today?