Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Gearbox Podcast brings on industry professionals to explore the day-to-day operations of owning and operating a shop. From common frustrations to industry-wide shifts, this podcast covers it with fun and insightful conversations.
Jimmy Purdy 0:00
All right, let's do this thing. So we're calling the scene the gearbox. I don't think I've said that enough in the other episodes, but gearbox the gearbox, getting into it, getting into it. That's
Tyler Henry 0:08
a good stuff.
Jimmy Purdy 0:10
All right, Tyler. Mr. What are we doing service advisor tech
Tyler Henry 0:16
events coordinator off road and action extraordinaire,
Jimmy Purdy 0:19
enthusiast. All of it, all of it. Yeah, whatever's got wheels.
Tyler Henry 0:23
There's a motor involved. I mean, that's pretty much what it is.
Jimmy Purdy 0:27
Yeah, you had an interesting King hammers experience you're just telling me about very interesting,
Tyler Henry 0:31
decided to show up and I had a whole week planned out. I was like, I'm going from Saturday to Saturday. We're gonna have a great time. First time going staying in hammer town. And we get there on hook the trailer, which I pulled a 10 foot pop up tent trailer with my jeep, my jail and drove the jail out there, you know, was like, I'm not going to get too wild. But you know, I'll try some stuff. And unhook head out the famous
Jimmy Purdy 0:57
words.
Tyler Henry 0:58
Yeah, I said, Every time I say that, and so we head out. And you know, we're like, let's go check out chocolate thunder. that's apparently where all the action is this year. Yeah. So we show up. And I think we were sitting there for maybe 30 minutes watching, you know, all these crazy rigs go up and everything, but he's just making it look like butter. The first 30 minutes were there. I don't see a single break. Everybody's getting right up. I kind of see a couple lines. I hadn't gotten down and walked it either. And I'm like, I'm gonna send it. I can do that. Yeah, I can do that. On 138. Yeah, I'm good. And my buddies like, don't do it. Don't do it. We just got here. You can try it later. And I'm like, I could try it today. We've been here for three hours. It's long enough.
Jimmy Purdy 1:41
So I'm gonna turn it watching. I know it really is.
Tyler Henry 1:44
And so yeah, make my way up and I picked the left line, the right line just look like body damage central for a full sized jail with a tarp on and I go up, I get up off onto the first rock ledge and I'm like, Alright, we got we got some more making it. Give it a little bit go up. And now I'm kind of on two sets of rocks. So each wheel is essentially on a rock with a drop on either side. And I kind of start sliding backwards. I give it a little bit more beans, and it keeps sliding backwards. And that's when I fall basically in my front driver wheel pops up. My rear passenger goes down into this hole grabs traction by itself. And I was still I was moving backwards and my wheels were moving forward. So as soon as that back tire and all the weight, grab that rear passenger snap. I'm like, Okay, some broke, locker lights are flashing, something's wrong. Let's see if we can limp our way up. You know, I still got three other drives. Hopefully it's just one axle that's broken. I'm locked in. I can't go anywhere. So ended up getting winched out, pulled it out and it was driving obviously in limp mode, not giving me any power doesn't really want to go anywhere. But we limpid back to camp, the only thing we could see was gear oil outside of the wheel. That's always a good sign. That's a great sign. When you get that outside of the wheel. Nothing you know something's off. Yeah. And it's kind of making some funny noises but doesn't quite sound like rocks in a blender. Get back to camp. Wait till the next day and take it over to BF Goodrich. Because they'll they'll work on your vehicle for free out there. They'll do trail repair. They pull the axle out. And of course it's completely broken wheel bearings fried. And so we know we're where we need an axle, pop off the diff cover and the gears are junked. And I'm like, okay, so head over to Yukon. Yukon hooks it up with a set of a gear, gears, axle, and we head back to BF Goodrich. And they're all kind of standing around the jeep and it hasn't changed at all. And I'm like, I can feel something else is wrong here. Yeah. And so they tell me they're like, well, your shaft is broken in your locker knew that much but where it broke there was not enough to grab it. So it stuck with about a quarter inch of shaft hanging out of the locker which means I can't get the the broken locker out of the housing. So now I had to find a whole locker or a whole whole housing Dana 44 assembly.
Jimmy Purdy 4:25
Found one for a great deal out in the middle of Johnson Valley.
Tyler Henry 4:28
I'm in the middle of Johnson Valley. This is Monday. And unlike Okay, well so hit up every every vendor in hammer town and nobody could find the thing. Right, which was pretty shocking for me that Dana showed up but they had a 44 display but none in the truck. And I mean, I figured four wheel parts off road warehouse. I mean, somebody's got to have a 44 Somebody's gotta have a 44 is like the most common rear end. Yeah, next to a Dana 60 Which probably should consider those. Nobody had anything so I start hitting up Facebook, Craigslist, everything. I get a referral or tagged in a post. And guide supposedly owns a Jeep shop and has a bunch of takeoff stuff. So he's like I got, you know, I hit him up on this one that was for sale for like 1500 bucks whole rear end and I'm like, sweet, let's do it. And he's like, Oh, that one's sold. But I have another one. And I'm like, okay, cool, whatever, yeah, whatever. And I'm like, I can be there, you know, tomorrow morning with cash. And he's like, Well, I have a couple people hitting me up. And can you send a deposit? And I'm like, sure, whatever, you know, I'm cool with that. I understand business. And so I give him my credit card number. And I'm like, okay, you know, he gives me the pickup
Jimmy Purdy 5:40
artists on Embed. Yeah, I
Tyler Henry 5:42
know, that. I had a sneaking suspicion. But, you know, at that point, I had to try all my office. Yeah. And I was continuing to find other leads. He gives me an address. And on my Is there anything else you need? Because once I leave hammer town, I don't have service. I'm at the Wi Fi 10. Yeah. He's like a billing zip code or whatever. And I'm like, so I send that to them. And I'm like, Okay, I'll see you tomorrow. 10am. At the address you gave me, boom, we're good. So I'm like, sweet, I got a rear end. And Alright, that just gave me was two hours from hammer town. So we're on our way, about an hour away, I get a message from him saying, We can't do it. I had an emergency my daughter's in the hospital. And your card didn't go through. So I need you to send an Amazon gift card. And I'll ship it to tomorrow at no cost. And I'm like, Okay, there's like 19 Different things wrong there in that statement.
Jimmy Purdy 6:38
That's red flag city. Yeah.
Tyler Henry 6:40
And I'm like, my response was, I have cash, I'm showing up to the address you gave me the parts better be there. I don't care if it's your mother, your brother, your aunt, your uncle, your neighbor, somebody should be at the location to make this exchange. And it just keeps going back and forth. And I show up and this nice young lady answers and has no idea who I am. Or anything about Jeep parts. So he's sent me to some random address two hours away. For a scam, I mean, it was somebody probably gave him some some amazon gift cards because somebody needed parts and hammer down. And,
Jimmy Purdy 7:18
and that right, there is the exact problem with the automotive industry of everybody thinking we're all a bunch of crooks, right? Yeah. I mean, damn.
Tyler Henry 7:29
It was impossible. And I don't even know, I can't even tell you how many leads I went through of, maybe I can get these maybe I can get this. And it was just one after the other. I mean, finally, the last one, I ended up, I ended up getting the axles, or the whole rear end Thursday night at 6pm. And I was supposed to leave Saturday grazing. And I still had to do the work. Right. So I had a battle up against me. But the way I got it, I found another guy that was selling a pair of a pair front rear. And I hit him up on my Hey, would you be willing to sell the rear? And he's like, Yeah, I'll sell it, you know, 2200 bucks. And I'm like, that's, that's fair. Let's do it. He's like, but I have one other person on the way. And, you know, first races on first come first serve. And I'm like, This guy's like, three hours from here. I can't. And I'm like, Okay, well, how far away is he? He's like, 15 minutes. I'm like, Well, let me know how it goes. If it's still available. I'll make the trip out. The guy shows up. And he's like, yeah, he's gonna buy them. And I'm like, Well, tomorrow I'm looking at a tow truck. Yeah. And another 20 minutes goes by and he goes, What's delivery worth to you? And I'm like, Oh, we got an out. White House. 500 bucks. Yeah. And he's like, the guy wants three grand plus gas money. And I'm like, ooh, so I'm spending 1000 bucks on delivery. Basically, this guy's gonna make gas money and 800 bucks on this like that. And I'm like, You know what? I gotta pay the price. I don't have any options. At this point. He was basically him. I went through about 10 other scenarios, right. And the guy goes, but I wanted to pause it. Perfect. I don't think so. But yeah, this guy wants to know you're committed. He at least wants 200 bucks for gas. And I'm like, How do you know who is this guy? Like, you're not even you're not even selling it to me and me. You're being a middleman for somebody else. Right? How do you know him? He's like, he's bought other parts off from me. He runs a parts business. And he's willing to do and I'm like, so you have dealt with this? Is he trustworthy? Like, and he's like, yes. So I'm assuming one guy that I've never met is trustworthy. And the other guy I've never met is also trustworthy. I've met about 10 untrustworthy people right before this, right? Yeah. So I'm like, you know, at this point, I don't got nothing. I got no option. So I sent him 200 bucks. And I'm like, I if I send you this, I want to screenshot every 30 minutes of where you are on. Yes.
Jimmy Purdy 9:57
And you're like, What is with this guy? Yeah, why is it not? Like not trust us.
Tyler Henry 10:01
And 30 minutes goes by and I get a screenshot another 30 minutes and I get a screenshot.
Jimmy Purdy 10:07
That's nice. And and that's the other side of the automotive industry is how much everyone's willing to help each other. It's so black and white. You know, there's
Tyler Henry 10:13
there was a lot of people willing to help. The problem is there's so many unknowns. Yeah. And you just got to keep fighting. I mean, it's next to impossible to figure out over media who is who's who. Yeah, I mean, you never know that the first page was a page that had been up for two years posting Gee parts. Wow. So who knows how many people this guy's scammed and got no money from but yeah, at the end of the day, I found a great business that does, you know, good work and is willing to go three hours out of the way to deliver parts to somebody in the middle of the desert. You know, I'll help them and I'm gonna, I'm gonna put their name out there. And I want to take care of them as much as I can, you know, they're all the way in San Diego. And they run parts basically from LA to Mexico. It's pretty sweet. Yeah, that is cool. So we fix it drove it home. Yeah, at 40 miles an hour, though, there was a little caveat at flatland I had lint mode, after we put it all together wouldn't wouldn't go over really 40 It was only given me about 10% throttle. And, you know, you do all that I did a whole rear end swapping the trailer on in five hours on Friday and tested it and it was driving, which is as much as I wanted. And going forward, and we're going backwards. Backwards was a little bit harder. But we were going forwards. We had to do make sure we went through drive through gas stations, and I got all the way home and was like, alright, you know, I'm going through, I'm checking everything. Again, I'm checking all the modules, I'm checking all the connectors, I'm making sure no wires got snagged. And, you know, I bring it in, I work at Mulay here at the Jeep dealership in Paso and so I bring it in on Monday after everything's happened and give it to my tech and about an hour and a half, he brings me out a fuse.
Jimmy Purdy 11:54
I always check your fuses.
Tyler Henry 11:55
And I want to slap that fuse across the room so bad. Then simplest thing, man, you know, and you know, many times I've tell told people to check fuse fuse. After you get through all this complicated mechanical work, you know, last thing it could be was a fuse, right? It's always
Jimmy Purdy 12:09
it's always your own stuff, because you just don't realize how worked up you get, you know, and I think that's in our industry too. When we get someone comes in and they're like kind of riled up a little bit and you're like, dude, calm down, like, and then once it happens to you, you're like, right to that, that animal instinct of like, I just gotta get home, I was gonna break in, you're just a you get yourself out of your own diagnostic procedures. I mean, I have the kiss procedure everywhere here, right? Like, keep it simple, stupid, like, always check the simple stuff. But when it's your own, it's so hard to like wrap your mind around that, you know, like you said, You did all like, what is it, I can't, the whole thing's fried like something like, you just go to the worst case scenario of possibly could be like, I'm not going to take the time to check the fuses, because that's just wasting my time right on and next time I could just be driving to get home, you know,
Tyler Henry 12:56
I got you know, it was a problem with the transfer case was the was the code that we are getting was, you know, lost communication, essentially, with the transfer case that so, you know, the main culprit for those is usually the module. But the module was fine. I mean, it had power it had ground, it wasn't damaged it with the connectors were on their solid, and, you know, and that the actually the fuse for that system, controls the front, rear lockers and the transfer case. So my lockers were still kind of acting weird. So I ended up disabling those with a programmer with a taser. So it wasn't reading the lockers. I was thinking if I had a locker problem still for some reason, or a sensor issue, or that if I just made it think that it didn't have on the note would resolve the issue with the transfer case, and it didn't and, you know, we had a timeline to get home and so going uphill at 19 miles an hour over the hatchapee Kraid. It took me about nine and a half hours to get from King of the hammers all the way back to pass out which is about 200 and some miles 250 miles. Yeah, we're
Jimmy Purdy 14:01
right here on the coast in San Luis Obispo County. And the password was in the middle. So yeah, I mean, it's a long drive going to Spain. Like I said, I had the similar situation towing my trailer back and I had lost my one of my booths lines on my Duramax and I did the same thing going over to hatchapee pass like 19 or 20 miles an hour. Yeah, just just eaten fuel and I finally get up to the top of the I gotta check this out. Awesome. And that's about the time my mind had settled down enough to be like, Okay, I'm out of the desert. Yeah, cuz it seems like every time you go to King hammers, it's like that and it's just such a mine. You're just so worked out so much stuff going on so much stuff and and you're like finally settle a little bit. No, okay. Let me look at this. Take a breath here. Let me go through and I didn't find in my cooler line was blown off the intercooler. So
Tyler Henry 14:49
it's like working in an off road warzone. Like that's how you would describe like, everything is covered in the silt dust that is just everywhere. You hear mortars Going off fireworks 24/7 Doesn't matter if it's day or night you're struggling to find your location or where you are, you know, can't see through the dust and it's just finding parts of the other night and I have to say that the coolest thing about King of the hammers that people you meet you meet outstanding people there. UConn who was the only people that really were wanting to help me I mean, they actually put time and effort in to help me and they didn't even have a vendor booth. They were just raise support. So I knew Edwin who was driving for ultra for class out there and I I got in touch with him and ended up posting about a week before some pictures of him and tagging Yukon is who's one of his sponsors. And they're like, Hey, can we have these pictures? And I'm like, Yeah, trade me for some axles. This is a week before King of the hammers. Yeah. And they're like, Cool. We'll put it on Edwin's tab to see Edwin, you know, like, the king of the hammers. And like he was, you know, joking. So I sent him the pictures. And then so then I showed the king of the
Jimmy Purdy 16:00
hammers. So I'm like, I'm gonna go home need those axles.
Tyler Henry 16:04
Hey, belt, that joke I made last week, I kind of do need those. And they're like, oh, yeah, we could definitely help you. Just go see Brian and Gus out at the you content. And I'm like, really? Because everybody else told me no. And I mean, it wasn't even like, we can't get it. I went to Off Road warehouse and four wheel parts warehouse. Both of them was a hey, can you guys get jail axles without looking at a computer checking inventory? It was no. Well, I don't. I know customers. I'm in customer service. I deal with parts every day. Looking something? I mean, I know certain parts are backordered. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to look and see if I can't get it from another dealer or another warehouse. You know, especially when people are down and out of luck. You want to you want to that's when customer service can excel. Yeah. Yukon didn't have a booth. They weren't there as a vendor. And they still stopped, made calls and got me parts overnight into the middle of the desert. Yeah, they're great people, man. I'll be a Yukon customer for ever. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy 17:06
Yeah, you cones top line. I mean, yeah, you can do Richmond. Richmond is always nice, too. But yeah, we run a lot of Yukon stuff here at the shop. Yeah, we have a Yukon master installer employed here. And yeah, it's I mean, second to none for customer service man
Tyler Henry 17:21
that it'll, it'll earn a lifetime customer every day. Well, speaking of
Jimmy Purdy 17:25
customer services, get into your dailies here. Oh, yeah. So you got some stories? Because you run the front of a dealership? Yeah,
Tyler Henry 17:34
I'm a Sales Advisor. I'll lay here and I mean, we see everything. dealerships get the best of the best. I think when it comes to the unique scenarios, you know, a lot of time, you have to figure it out, you know, you don't it comes on under warranty and whether or not it's going to continue to be under warranty. You got to spend the time and the effort. A lot of times we're the ones with the special tools.
Jimmy Purdy 17:55
Yeah. So I think, to dive into this thing, a lot of the poll of an independent shop is that you walk in and you you basically talk to the owner at the front counter. And so that's kind of the big service draw that is used as a selling point for a lot of a lot of independent shops, okay, you know, you don't go to the dealership, come to the independent shop, because you're gonna talk to the owner, like we're here. We're family, we're, you know, how would you dispute that in a way? I mean, as you've run in the front, you know what I'm saying like as a customer service, do Can you beat the fact of having an owner at the front counter because like I said, that's one of the sales pitches like you know, don't go to the air come here, cuz you're gonna talking to you have a problem. You come back and talk to the guy that runs the place, you know, and with dealerships Of course, they're run from people. So everyone's run a little differently. But how would you like you hear that? How does that make you think or what's your your? Yeah, my dispute to that?
Tyler Henry 18:53
My first thought is yeah, there's there's a big difference between an independent shop and a dealership now while we're every dealership is an independent franchise, and some of the ways they run can vary from dealer to dealer. It also is very black and white, in terms of a brand will give a dealership us a rulebook that they have to abide by in terms of customer service, amenities, tools, they're required to do certain things a certain way. So it's much more black and white. Now, you can get to the owner of a dealership or maybe not, depending on the size of the dealership group. You know, if it's a small dealership group that only owns three to five dealerships, you know, there's a chance you could probably find the owner there at one of the dealerships at some point. If you are approaching trying to get to an owner of a group that owns 30 to 40. dealerships, you're not going to talk to that guy right. Now that may or may not be a good thing. It kind of depends on the scenario. The benefit I see from from independent shop is a personalized service. Now Where I can, I can also give personalized service and I do at the front desk of my dealership, you're you're not going to get kind of the back and forth that you get in an independent shop. And partially is the time restriction. You know, we see 20 to 40 customers per day. You are also working on the cars and you're at the front desk, you're available, somebody can come in and talk to you about what they're doing or the problem they're having. And you as a technician can give certain advice. I'm mechanically inclined, but I'm by no means a technician. I can do a lot, but I don't understand the intricacies. I can put the Legos together, but I don't I can't tell you the specifications of how they work.
Jimmy Purdy 20:43
Yeah, I mean, it's more just your that's just not your my wheelhouse. It's not your job, you're there to advise, you know, and move that work into the service bay. Right. So it's not the daily thing. It's not like, what I'm here to do, you know, but obviously, you still have access to the same information that we all do, you know, like, you can make recommendations based on the code, right? Okay, there's, you know, and you're gonna get the same questions, hey, I got this code. What do I need to do?
Tyler Henry 21:12
Right? Like my scenario, I had a code for the transfer case. But at the end of the day, it kind of had almost nothing to do with the transfer case. Right? Always. I mean, so. So you know, people call in and I've got, you know, this code and this code and this code, and I'm like, That's great. That doesn't really, I mean, it doesn't tell me anything. I mean, it tells me something, there's something wrong with that system. But at the end of the day, there's there's nothing I can really do with just a code,
Jimmy Purdy 21:38
right? I mean, that nobody can do anything with it. No. And I've said that before, too. And I find it as like, maybe a good thing that that's the situation because with Leon running the front, that's what she does. She's smart, she can run the office. She's not mechanically inclined. She's not out there. Rebuilding natural swapping, axles, rebuilding transmissions, like that's, I mean, that's not what she's going to be doing, right. And so it's nice to have that because they come in, they ask, like, Okay, what I can do is schedule you, you're going to pay some money, and then we're going to tell you what we think needs to happen, where if I'm in the office, I'm like, Oh, well, I've seen a 2015 Chevy with that code before, it usually ends up being a, b, and c, and we need to do this. And it usually ends up being this much and, and that's not what should be happening.
Tyler Henry 22:22
Sometimes you'll shoot yourself in the foot that way? Absolutely. I definitely have you know, sometimes you you want to spend more time and explain to a customer more. But at the end of the day, sometimes that doesn't help.
Jimmy Purdy 22:32
Yeah, you feel like you feel like you're doing the right thing. Because you're, you're empowering them with your knowledge and you're selling because you're such a smart individual. And it usually is not the right thing to do.
Tyler Henry 22:42
Right? It just it almost always goes a weird way. You know, anytime somebody calls me with codes over the phone, I just, I'm like, I just need to hear I just I need your car here. And I need to spend some time on it. And unfortunately, I have to charge for that time because it's a job. You're you're taking away somebody's day. Yeah, you know, and the other thing I hear a lot is well, let me just talk to the technician. That just that creates all kinds of issues for multitudes of reasons. One, he's, he's backed up. I'm not I don't have technicians just sitting around hanging out. Waiting to take a phone call. Yeah, I'm booking a week out right now. Yeah, you know, I'm almost done with next week. I don't even like if you need me to get some done next week. I can give you hopes and dreams. But I don't know if I can make any promises. And it's hard to pull. You know, it's only gonna take 510 minutes. I get 10 of those calls a day. Yeah, you know, that's an hour. We've we call it five minutes, which never takes five minutes. Oh, no, no, it's 1015 20 minutes stuck on the phone. And you don't want to be rude. You want to help but at the end of the day, it doesn't solve anything over the phone going over scenarios that maybe should have Coulda, Woulda, you know, happen. Yeah, versus getting it in and finding out yes, you're going to have to pay some money, but you're gonna have an answer. And you got to pay for answers to this world. Nothing comes for free. I'm sorry. You don't work for free. I don't work for free. Nobody works for free. At the end of the day, my house doesn't get paid based on how many people I help.
Jimmy Purdy 24:08
Yeah. Those 10 to 15 minute phone calls don't pay the bills. They don't for those second hour and you only got eight out eight of those in a day. Yeah. It goes by real quick. Yeah, that's my biggest problem as running an independent shop is they want to talk to me. And you know, I got to do that. But also I got to realize that I only have so many of those I can hand out per day because I also am looking at an eight hour day that as an owner operator, I have to be out on the floor, you know, and there's a lot of shops that don't run like that they got to you know, they can be an owner and they can walk in and they can spend the time like they need to or want to with the client and sell them and it's tough in that in the situation with a lot of shops, a lot of independent shops or owner operators. There isn't a lot of absentee owner shops. And so with a dealership that basically is an absentee owner, shop if you really wanted to strip the layers away from it, right? Correct. They just got the people in the place to do the thing. And you're the face of it, you take it in, and then you deliver. And any problems along the way, you're dealing with that. It doesn't go to a higher person, right? No, you're in. Yeah, in
Tyler Henry 25:14
terms of dealing with the, the shop and the work it. It's me in this the tech, that's, that's it, you know, the service manager oversees operations. And then you have your general manager who oversees both sales and service, and then you have the owner. So you've got two people, between you and the owner. And nobody, when it comes down to it, the service manager is not watching like over your shoulder, he's got a lot of other things that he's running. So yeah, it's, it's me, and it's the customer. And it can be good because we're pretty darn efficient at what we do. But it also can have a negative effect, because you don't quite get that that owner experience, which is outstanding, you know, you don't you just you don't get that I do great customer service. I've always prided myself in excellent customer service. But at the end of the day, there's things that I can't do, because of the limits of the way the dealership runs. Right. And that's just inherent of a dealership, you know,
Jimmy Purdy 26:12
well, a lot of independent shops, too, are taking a lot of cues from the dealership and trying to incorporate that into their shops. I mean, we do the same thing. You know, when it comes to parts margins and labor margins and not discounting, you know, if you don't have the power to discount, then you're not going to discount, I have the power to discount, which is a good and a bad thing. It's more of a bad thing than a good thing. Because there's emotional discounting. There's a lot of things that come into play, and you look at the numbers at the end of the year. And I'm like, Oh my God, why am I why is my parts margin so low? I run a run a 65 or 70%. GP? How come I the start looking through the discounts? And you're like, oh, yeah, I remember that guy. Remember that guy? I remember helping that guy out and like, Oh, my God, I wish I had a way of like, telling myself I'm not allowed to discount, right?
Tyler Henry 26:55
I mean, for me, it's like, there's a discount box in my program. And that box only goes so high. I can't click it above X percentage, you know, if I put in 30% discount is going like, no, they're just telling me no, that's it? I can't do it. Well, let me do it. Right. You know, and, and that's part of the ways that we run, you know, there's so many different extra expenses that we have, and that's part of the reason we charge more. But also, there's a lot of promises that we make based on that. Yeah. And it's, it's hard, like, you know, we got we have certain warranty parts warranties that, that we get paid back, whereas your make that that's an expense for you. Right, nobody's gonna pay you back for that time that it takes you to do it.
Jimmy Purdy 27:38
Well, yeah. I mean, there's there's aftermarket parts programs that we're involved with in our shop personally, we that we can we get paid for our parts and labor on warranty jobs. So yeah, the aftermarket has definitely come a long ways to take care of the independent shops. In that sense. Of course, I guess it's corporate in a way, but I wanted to get to back to the to the charging. So what's your opinion on having a dealership labor rate and an independent labor rate? Do you feel the dealer should always be the leading edge as when it comes to labor rate? Or do you think the independent shop should actually be leading the way in a labor? Wage war? Do you want to call it that? Right? And everybody bases off their dealership? Hey, all the dealerships are charging 250 an hour. So I want to bump mine up to 200. Right? You know, everybody's always following the dealer. And I've been really looking at that, like, you know, we should be charging more than the dealer, they should be a little bit more efficient, they should be able to keep their costs down. They're doing a specific vehicle. Of course, they're not. I mean, I'm sure you pull in all the colors of the rainbow when it comes to cars, you're not just only doing Dodge and Chrysler, right. But you would think if they're that if they're just doing Dodge, and they're specializing in that, and they're that efficient, and they have you know, these people, you would think that would lower the cost. I mean, if you thought about it from like a manufacturing standpoint,
Tyler Henry 28:58
it probably comes down to the cost per hour of work. Yeah, I would almost guarantee that a dealership has a better profit margin.
Jimmy Purdy 29:10
But I mean, to quote out or have like a posted labor this was go to posted labor rate, even though I hate that will go straight to post, like a posted labor rate of like 200 or 210 or 20, whatever. And then all the independents are like kind of following that coattail and saying, Okay, I'm going to be 181 I need 200 Then, and it's like, I feel like that should kind of the rules maybe shouldn't be reversed. But what's your opinion on that, as far as having like a dealer be more per hour than an independent shop?
Tyler Henry 29:34
I would say depends on the independent shop. And I'll explain if it's a specialty shop. It should have specialty pricing. You work mostly on your specialize in transmissions. Correct. Right. That's a specialty service. It should probably be more than what I'm charging because not that many people do it. Yeah. Now if you're a guy that does everything, you're an everything guy which everybody knows if you're if you do everything If you're not great at any one thing, yeah, you know you can
Jimmy Purdy 30:02
master of none is exactly,
Tyler Henry 30:04
exactly. So those those type of shops and all I'll say Jiffy Lube, because I have a huge gripe with them. They should be way less because they provide way less quality of work. And they're not quite independent, but I'm just using them because they're big. And I know there's a lot of little great shops around here. But yes, specialty shops should probably be charging more because there's more specialized we don't even work on transmissions, we replaced them, right? Like, we're our shop rate is 170, which is fairly low in terms of today's market. Yeah, if you go into San Luis, it's almost minimum 200, right, we're talking about for Honda's, you know, you want to go to Mercedes or BMW, you're going to be paying 250 plus an hour and labor all day, all day. So, you know, if I'm charging 170, I wouldn't say it would be out of line for you to be charging 181 9200 For that specialized service. Yeah. Because you also are getting a more one on one experience, you know, if you go to any chain chains are usually less expensive than smaller shops. Right, right, you know, in any industry. And so I think that is kind of off in the automotive industry where, but also the customer base. Certain shops draw certain customer bases, if you are only drawn if you're just trying to be the price Gouger and you're just getting one and people get in because you got the cheapest prices anywhere and you're not specializing in your work. Yeah, you're going to be less. But you should go away. You should go away. But I just don't like to everything guys know, you know, yeah, that's my biggest gripe is, and I see the why I don't like him as I see so many comebacks and I see people wasting so much money. Yeah,
Jimmy Purdy 31:50
apart the parts swappers the parts, the parts changers Don't be a part changer.
Tyler Henry 31:54
Like, you know, oh, there's a problem with the fuel system. So I'm going to start with the pump that didn't fix it. So I'm gonna go to the injectors. Oh, that didn't fix it. So I'm gonna go to this. I'm gonna go to the module.
Jimmy Purdy 32:04
And now I'm gonna go on YouTube. Yeah. And eventually,
Tyler Henry 32:06
it'll get fixed. But did you need those four other fixes to find out that one fixed. Now you could have paid me 187 bucks, or you could have paid Jimmy whatever his diag is right and probably figured it out quicker than the guy who doesn't charge for diagnose not
Jimmy Purdy 32:21
only that, but you would have supported an independent or a local owner, local owner, local shop local people, and pay for their skill and pay for their education moving forward. And I've said this so many times, it's like, you can put a bunch of parts on a car, and you'll probably get it fixed. And maybe you spend $1,000 on parts, and it fixes it. Or you spend $100 For someone to properly assess and diagnose it. And then you spend $100 on a part, right? The bills the same, right? You spend $1,000 to fix car, which way was right? And it's Who do you want to support? Do you want to support doorman in their $1,000 with a ports doorman? Or do you want to support $100 to the local shop and the local Tech's there? Yeah, you know, to support a local business and it's like, and then the next time around, when you have a problem, they're there for you. You know, and that's the biggest problem is everyone tries to fix it themselves until they can't. And then they wonder why they can't get into a shop. And it's two, three weeks out, we're three weeks out, like, I got two guys that work for me. I can't find any more. Work, I can't find the people.
Tyler Henry 33:26
I think we're we're we're down to like 13 We lost two texts in the past couple months. And yeah, finding replacements is a nightmare. You can't find good technicians anywhere. People don't want to work that hard anymore, right? It's a specialized work, it takes really good training to do it. Right. And if you don't do it, right, it cost endless amounts of money to keep you employed. So it's, it's interesting. I mean, and with 13 technicians were still booked out a week, right. And I think another big thing is creating a relationship with a shop, you're going to, you know, don't see shop a for all of your stuff. And then when you need something else go see this guy, other guy, right? Because the other guy is gonna go, what do you what are you doing? Like, you know, where's Where's all this other work? You know, I could maybe I could have solved this problem way before it exacerbated.
Jimmy Purdy 34:20
See. And that's when when you brought the comment about the kind of everything shops, it is tough because you're trying to retain a client and take care of everything they need. And it's really, really difficult to put a system in place because I'm all about that, too. I like to make sure we stay in our lane. We do what we do best. And sometimes that is maybe working on a client's daughter's car, and she decided to buy a Volvo. Right? Right. And it's like, I don't work on Vogel's. But I like you, right? And it's like we worked for you for a long time. So just bring it in and we'll do what we can. And then And then something major comes up and he's at a time and cover Yeah, replace your valve. It's going to the shop. Yeah, like, Well, I'm not I'm not going to do that, like I just that just crosses line, we'll inspect it for you. But hey, I recommend this shop. And I feel like the independent networking there and those kinds of shops is is is kind of another step forward towards the independence in a sense because we built relationships with their shops, I have European shops that I use, like, hey, you know what? We're not for you. We're shop is not for your Volvo. It's not for your BMW, we'll look at it because we like you, we've built a relationship you trust what our assessment is going to be? My assessment is that it needs major repairs. We don't do that here go to this shop. I know these people personally. Is that something in the dealership that you have as well? Or is that like each service advisor has their own kind of or is that just like not even not even thought about? You? Just like know, we'll take care of it? Or? I mean, how does that process work on like that side?
Tyler Henry 35:55
It's similar. I mean, we have a lot of different shot like we don't do body work. So we have shops, we have relationships that we sublet that body workout, if it's an off brand car, and you know, we'll probably send it will recommend it goes to another dealer. Usually, if there's not another dealer president, most of this is liability when it comes to a dealership perspective, whereas people love to sue dealerships for everything. It's a big secret. But they think that most, if not for everybody, and I don't want to say this too harshly. But a lot of customers are super entitled. And they think just because they bought the car, everything else should be taken care of.
Jimmy Purdy 36:39
Right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Tyler Henry 36:41
People have lost the mindset of lost their mind. Yeah, yeah. Just being able to take care of things that cost you money,
Jimmy Purdy 36:50
like you bought you bought it. You own it. Yeah. So take care of it. Right. Yeah.
Tyler Henry 36:55
And you know, what? Things like wear and tear items, you know, brakes, tires, spark plugs, you know, all these things that you as an owner need to know consumables?
Jimmy Purdy 37:06
Yeah, I'm not putting gas in your car. Right. So where are you drawing this line in your mind? Because that's a consumable, right? Yeah, your car
Tyler Henry 37:15
comes with some gas in it, but it runs out just like your brakes and every other wear item, right. But people think that oh, you know, that's that I shouldn't have I spent $60,000 on this car. Why isn't that covered? And my response is usually, you can go spend a million dollars on a Bugatti and guess what brakes costs a lot more than a couple 1000 oil changes, like 10 grands. Yeah. But I spent a million dollars on it. Why isn't it free? Right? You know, go buy a Ferrari it nothing's free. Like it's cost way, way, way more. And you have to understand that it's your responsibility as an owner, to make sure that your vehicle is that operating conditions. Yeah, that means when I grew up, my dad taught me to every time you left, go kick the tires. Look at the oil. You know, at minimum, two things you had to do was check the tire pressure and check the oil. That was the absolute minimum you had to do before leaving your house. Yeah. So every day on my 73 ranchero, when I woke up and went to school, oh, go check the oil, go kick the tires, you know, make sure that there's air in the tire because there was no tire pressure monitoring system back then. You know, and people now just go, Oh, my lights on. I need to take it to the shop and fix it. That was when I grew up. I didn't take somebody to air out my tires. Yeah, I figured out you just did it. Because that's part of owner responsibility.
Jimmy Purdy 38:35
Yeah. There's that divide of like, wanting to be in the industry and wanting nothing to do with it. And just thinking that we're just a bunch of grease monkeys and hair here monkey fix my thing? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't think so. You know, and you got that attitude. Like you said, the mindset is just all wrong. Like, I'm here providing a service for you. I'm sorry, it was not what you expected. But I'm not trying to rip you off. You know, I mean, I tried to fire a client yesterday over something like that. It's like, look, we're going through the process here. Okay, we have an oil leak and we're trying to isolate the situation. And I'm going to stand behind it. But look, there's there's things that are out of our we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know what's next. Yeah, we did. We did a repair on it a year ago. And now you need a repair again, like Yeah, it wasn't notated on the first inspection because it wasn't a problem. Then. I had the same thing happened. Same thing. It's going around right now in this town, I think but yeah, it was it was a knock sensor
Tyler Henry 39:29
we replaced three months ago, you know, downstream NOx sensor went out. We replaced it. And customer goes calls in I'm having the exact same problem. My check engine lights on the exact same Well, no, the check engine light is not the same problem. It's the same icon. It means there's somewhere in your entire vehicle. There's a problem right now when we tested it, it had a similar code for the upstream and we call them Oh, you need another knock sensor. I thought I just worked Ah that well, there's more than one. And well, why didn't we replace it? Why didn't we do both? Yeah, well, sir, it wasn't broken, then. Well, didn't you check it? No, because it wasn't broken. And we don't check.
Jimmy Purdy 40:12
Did you want to? You want to pay me to check something that wasn't broken? Yeah, you definitely would have said no. Yeah.
Tyler Henry 40:18
And I was like, sir, if that's your mindset, I'm going to recommend you replace the engine immediately. And he's like, Well, how much is that? I was like, $20,000. And he's like, Well, why would I do that? I was like, well, cuz it's gonna break. And he's like, when and I'm like, Well, that's what I don't know, just like your NOx sensor. Now we can replace it preventatively your whole entire engine, because eventually it will break. Or we can wait until a component fails and address it then. Yeah. And you know, the other thing is just keeping up on it. You know, we had a gal tell you this scenario, had 70,000 miles on her ex five, and brought it in for a ticking noise. So the first thing I noticed was her oil change was 17,000 miles past due. Now, BMW oil changes are every 10,000 miles, which is already a pretty wide stretch for anything. So she went 10,000 miles, and then another 17,000. We'll call it twice overdue, well, almost three times 27,000 miles since her last oil change. Okay, 27 27,000. So it went to 10. And then it went another 17 in the hole at 70,000 miles. That was going to be her third oil change on a high performance saving money engine. And she didn't bring it in for the oil change. She brought it in for the ticking noise It was making. And it was ticking because it the oil had gotten so thick, it was no longer lubricating the engine properly. And so she needed a new engine because there was metal shavings in her oil, it looked like glitter, right. And so I recommended to her the $37,000 engine that that car needs. And she gave me a bad review and told me I was just trying to rip off. Yeah. And that's that's the frustration that we have is people think it's our fault that their car broke, right? And my response is, I didn't maintain your car, you choose when to bring it in, and I do what you tell me to do or what I recommend. But if I recommend you a bunch of stuff, and you say no, don't get mad at me down the line when you're spending more money.
Jimmy Purdy 42:29
Or you take that situation and you know, you know what, we'll change your oil. So then you charge 250 $300, whatever it is for the BMW oil change, and then she's back in a month later with the same noise. Hey, you fix my car, but I was making the same noise again. Yep. So do you recommend that engine off front or I feel like doing the oil change is actually ripping them off. But in their mindset. They're doing them a favor, just like the damn free code scans. Oh, it's free. I can go get it scan for free. I like that guys. Yeah, like, Oh, you're gonna you're gonna, you're gonna charge me to inspect my vehicle? Yes, we have an inspection fee. It covers a DVI. It covers our time we talk to you, we smile we pay for we're excited to see you. So yes, we charge for all that. Yes, there's other shops that don't do that you can pull up and they'll jump right on it and, and go take a drive with you and tell you what they think it is. And they won't charge you a dime. They're ripping you off, they're probably wrong. 50% of the time, at least well, and those are the shops that are ripping the clients off. Because at the end of the day, they're charging you for that. When they do the work, when wrong work. If you think you're not being charged for that you're definitely your last because there's just no way. If you work for somebody, and you went out and did something without charging, you'd probably get fired, right? You don't do free work on on your boss's dime. If you ran your own shop, if your annual business, you're not going to go do something for a client and not charging for that.
Tyler Henry 43:54
Right? Nobody works for free. Nobody works for free, right?
Jimmy Purdy 43:57
And whether you want to be upfront about and say, hey, my quote, come out to your house is it's a $75 charge for me drive out there and take a look. Do a proposal, right? Or you can give them a price over the phone. That's your free estimate. Yeah, we can all do that. That's a free estimate. If you're driving somewhere, you're probably going to charge them for a proposal fee, or you're going to sell that job, you're going to hard sell that job and then you're gonna throw it $75 on the end of the bill. You have to or you're not going to last.
Tyler Henry 44:25
I mean, I always tell people, does the doctor's office look at you for free, right? Do they say oh yeah, just come on in whenever you want. Just walk in, you know, and well yeah, well, we'll take a look. We'll tell you what we think is wrong with you. And you're we're not going to charge you you know, nobody in the right mind or schedule an appointment. No canceled appointments. Those are my biggest gripe because yeah people love to Miss Miss You know, reschedule or, you know, my frustration is you're taking time away from somebody else that I could have gotten in, right you booked in advance? Yes. And I've Hold 100 other people know to that day and time for you because you were supposed to come in and check something out. Yep. Or people that think something's broken because they haven't read the manual. I had two of those yesterday, two appointments scheduled, where now I made nothing. I didn't, I didn't make anything on that appointment. So that's two last appointments. One was for a window lock, you know, saying the window lock wasn't working. And I mean, they could have spent three minutes in the manual. And read the section on the window lock and knew exactly how
Jimmy Purdy 45:35
to but it's a it's that emotional freakout. It's like, just like scared, I don't know what to do. I'm gonna call the dealer, this should be taken care of because I bought this car from these people. And it should just work.
Tyler Henry 45:44
Yep. What, nobody likes the instructions. I love instructions, there might save you a lot of money saves me a lot of time. A lot of time. If I go through and I read how to put the box together before I try to put the box together, I'll probably save 30 minutes of trying to figure out how the box goes together. Yeah,
Jimmy Purdy 46:02
even though it's so much fun to try to figure it out. It is, isn't it?
Tyler Henry 46:05
But I want to I glanced through those. Do I need help? Do I not need help?
Jimmy Purdy 46:09
I don't have time for that. I'm just gonna go ahead and read through this real quick. Yeah, yeah.
Tyler Henry 46:14
Because nine times out of 10 It'll say it will save you time. Right. You know,
Jimmy Purdy 46:17
so on the on the service advisor side, how is your is that a commission base for like scheduling appointments.
Tyler Henry 46:25
We, we only get the appointments, we schedule and it works different at every dealership. So when I worked at BMW, we had a receptionist that scheduled all our appointments. And it was just whoever grabbed the appointment. So whoever said hi, when they walked in that done, and it just, that's how it went. Over here, you schedule all the appointments. So if you don't answer the phone, you don't set appointments, and you don't get paid. And it we get paid on every ticket. So if it's warranty or customer pay, I get paid. A lot of people think that dealerships have a problem doing warranty work. And that's it's not a problem to do warranty work. The problem is, if you come in with a problem that you think is warranty, and say one we don't find a problem, we just spend all that time and get paid nothing. Because we can't charge if your car is on a brand new New Car Warranty, not your extended warranty, that's different. But if you're under New Car Warranty, and you bring it in because there's a squeak, and we can't find the squeak, or it's a normal squeak or whatever. We didn't get paid anything. My technician spent time for free, I spent time for free, all of that was free. Now, when you don't have warranty, that's a diagnosis fee, right. So people are usually less hesitant to bring it in with all their little gripes and problems when it's not under warranty because they know they're gonna get charged. Yeah, so it's a different mindset. Now, there's also a fight going on to increase what we call warranty time. Yeah, you know what warranty time is or book time for a job. It's really an interesting concept that most people probably have no idea exists. Because I don't know where else it exists in the world. Like in terms of an industry, you know, when I worked in interior designer furniture, there was just just set pricing, there wasn't different pricing for different things. So the way it works is, let's just call it a battery, changing a battery. So if your battery goes bad, you know, you change it. Normally that takes you 1520 minutes or whatever. If want if you ask warranty, how much time you're gonna get paid for that battery, they'll pay you like point to where it really takes. I mean, if you calculate everything, like from the time you pull the car into your bay, you run the test, you figure out, it's a battery, you go to the parts department, you get the bad or you go back, you swap it out, you take the car back to the parks department, you go back to the car, you check it, you take a test drive, and then you take it back up to me and you tell me it's done. So I can give it back to the customer. That takes I can tell you minimum an hour.
Jimmy Purdy 49:06
You know, it's not depending on the size of the facility, but yeah, right, you
Tyler Henry 49:09
know, but to do all those little things, but warranty only pays you.
Jimmy Purdy 49:14
It's like they got a stopwatch and they're like, hey, the batteries in your hand ready to go. That's what they pay both terminals tighten stop. Yeah, really. So the hood is not even shut.
Tyler Henry 49:25
Right. And you know, they're probably not going to pay you a diagnostic time. You know, under warranty. They very rarely, certain brands don't pay much diagnostic time. Chrysler hates paying diagnostic time as a brand. I can see that whereas BMW, Will. They have a different opinion. They want their customers to bring it in. They want us to spend the time so they will pay the technician even if there's no problem found. Oh, that's nice. That's really nice, you know, but also there's a very, very different expectation from BMW as far as service than there is of Chrysler.
Jimmy Purdy 49:59
The expectation You should be across the industry. That's what
Tyler Henry 50:03
a lot of dealerships are fighting for now is raising that warranty rate to make it a universal rate. Because book time, like, if you look at it pro demand or something will be two hours and then warranties like will pay 1.1. But it really takes maybe about two and a half, three hours to do the job.
Jimmy Purdy 50:23
Yeah. Not quite half. But yeah, right.
Tyler Henry 50:27
It's it warranty pays a little less than half usually. And what reality is, is more than book time, unless you have done that repair 100 times and you can remember it by memory, and you have all the parts waiting in front of you. And the cars clean. It almost never takes warranty time. Yeah, I can promise you that.
Jimmy Purdy 50:46
Um, unless you're and this is another part of the equation, the level of the skill of the tech, you could be an A level tech working for dodge or Chrysler, your whole life, you know, jeeps you know, Ram pickups, like the back your hand, specialty shop your transmission. Does it take us three hours to pull transmission out? No, absolutely not. I've done more than I could probably count. But I'm not going to charge 45 minutes to pull transmission out. Because I've just used the last 10 years of my life. Yeah, so pull them out in 45 minutes. So sorry, you're taking you're paying for my experience, not my time. You know, and yeah, I specialize in that. But that's why we specialize in it. Because we're going to charge just like any other shop would or any other book time but we do it a lot faster. But in a dealership you have so many different Tech's have different backgrounds and different, you know, skill levels? How are you going to give a warranty job of, say, an alternator of a 2.2 alternator, you're gonna give a B or C level tech an hour to do an alternator and you're expecting that job to go out with quality? Yeah, what do you think he's going to do? Is he going to do it for money? Or is he going to do it because he's not gonna he's he wants to, like cut his own paycheck and do it for quality. I mean, we have the mindset that we want to do the right thing and we want but after a couple of years of that, you need to get paid. And you can't help but think what is his tech going to do is you're going to shortcut something, because it's going to make him more money. I hope not. But you're that's what you're breeding.
Tyler Henry 52:17
And I mean, over time, you're really skilled technicians figure out not shortcomings, but shortcuts of how to get a job done. They figured out, oh, I don't, I don't have to remove the entire subframe. I can just drop this one side, support it and then I can get it out. So I can save 30 minutes of this time. But it took him five years to figure that out. Yeah, there was 100 jobs he did where he ran five hours on a three hour job. And then now that he's in his, you know, sixth year, he can do that job in two and a half hours, right? He's not going to keep losing money and rightly
Jimmy Purdy 52:49
charge what I'll do less for you. Because I've learned how to do better. Why are you Why would you give anybody that discount for that? Yeah. And that also comes with like what I like to call a knack or a hack. Right? Right. It's a very fine line between a knack and a hack knock sensors. Like you said, That's a good one. So on a Toyota pickup, you got to pull the intake manifold off to get down to the knock sensors. You could also build a plate and mount knock sensors externally, and then just connect them onto there. Is that not an agri hack? You know, they're not going exactly where they're supposed to go. Of course, nobody's really doing that. But it's your own vehicle, you might be looking up on YouTube on a Toyota and you're like, I'm not pulling the damn intake manifold up. Or I can just build a plate and weld some nuts on the screw my knock sensors into that on the side of the block. I mean, it's gonna work about the same. It's on the engine. And you just did that in, say, 30 minutes. I think that's more of a hack than an act. But I mean, you get what I'm getting. Some sometimes you can finagle stuff that's not exactly in the procedure. That's not it's still politically correct. Let's put it that way. Right, then you got otherwise I'm gonna cut this hole in the side of this fender to access the alternator. That's more of a hack, you know, that's like, so it's very difficult to say what the right thing is to do. But the main point is is like when you got these B and C level techs and a level techs, you're getting all the good stuff. I'm sure they don't get a lot of the warranty stuff. Well, I don't know. That's another question too. Because in dealerships, if you have a warranty come in, are you sending it to an eighth level tech? Are you saying? Yeah, so as you get better, you get worse jobs.
Tyler Henry 54:21
You know? Yeah, that's the other you know, and it just it's got to go for for me, we have also different dealerships run it differently. Chrysler has specialty techs, you know, so there's eight levels of certification based on what you can do. I have an h fat guy, I've got a transmission guy, I've got electrical guy, I've got a diesel guy. I've got everything guy which is pretty much the shop foreman. So you know, if you get to the top, you got to deal with everything. Yeah, and that means you kind of lose your ass on a lot of stuff because you just can't. You get all the complicated things that you know you got to spend four or five hours figuring out on warranty, and they're gonna pay you maybe a half hour or an hour for diagnosis. But you spent a day on it. Yeah, so you just made, we'll call it $35 To work eight hours to figure out a problem. And then now you got to do the repair in two and a half hours, when is probably going to take it three or four. So, you know, two days worth of work and you made 100 some bucks.
Jimmy Purdy 55:29
Awesome, you know, and those with your 15 years of experience, 20 years of experience $40,000 and
Tyler Henry 55:35
tools that you have to own and take payments on. And so you know, you're paying for a lot for a lot of different reasons. Yeah. And I think the warranty time is yeah, it's got to improve. It's just it's BMW has a good model. I think more manufacturers should adopt that. Which is, if a tech spending time on it, why isn't he getting paid?
Jimmy Purdy 55:55
Right? No matter what. Industry? Yeah. What?
Tyler Henry 55:58
Why would I spend time on something if I'm not gonna get paid on it? You know, and then that's also why Tech's are hesitant to lean on you, they get an ARO with this crazy issue that sounds like it's nothing. They're like, Man, I'm just gonna push that off. Because I got this other guy that wants to pay me to do brakes and transmission flush and all this stuff. Maybe I can spend three hours checking out a problem that I'm not gonna get paid for. Or maybe there's not even a problem. Yeah. So I think we should, you know, BMWs got a great point, pay a guy every time he looks at a car, regardless of what the outcome is, right? Because guess what, it's work. Yeah, it means that he's he's working on it. And it's, it's not plug and play anymore? Oh, no,
Jimmy Purdy 56:37
I don't think it ever really was. But in this day, and age is definitely far, far from that far from just plugging away a little plug, plug your little thing in, and then it just tells you the code and then you use and then you just order the part and replace it right? Yeah. What what did you just say to me?
Tyler Henry 56:54
And then like, yeah, electronics now newer cars. I don't know what, how new of cars you work on. But they are getting crazy complicated.
Jimmy Purdy 57:03
Yeah, well, I mean, just just like the the security links on the Chrysler's is something I'm sure you deal with. And so as an independent shop, we have to pay a subscription, through snap on and you know, there's a big thing with auto right now. And they're trying to make it so that no other scan tool manufacturer can access the security link. And then you got to go through the auto lab and pay their auto can't remember the name. But the there's the third party, you got to go through to get the security link to match up with the snap on account. And the whole thing there. And that's just to clear a code. Yeah, like just just so I can access the information to do a region on the ecodiesel is is a big one I get a lot of people want you to clear that code for free. Yeah, clinic killer was like not only was a scan tool, almost $10,000. And I have three of them. But I have to pay a subscription for all three of them. Yeah, with two different corporations. And then I got to pay my tech, which also now isn't a level Tech with ASU that he's got $40,000 and tools to walk out there for just 10 minutes to clear code. And it's like, Well, for one, I'm just going to do that. Like, I'll just grab the scan tool and do it if that if that's the situation I'm in. But there's there's certain circumstances where, you know, I may do that for a good client, but not as a whole as a policy? Absolutely not that needs to come in. And that needs to be part of maybe another service. Yeah, we'll check the code. But we're also going to do a full vehicle inspection with you to know what's going on with that code. Yeah, I want to I want to set the code and then I want to look underneath the car, if it's got an oxygen sensor code, well, I want to look up at the harness, I'm going to just do a full visual inspection and then just charge for all that as a whole, right? Not just do like, a maybe a coat. And the problem is, is having a code assessment fee, because then they say, you're charging me just to check the code. Yeah, you know, and so it's like, Okay, what I'm going to do is, we're just going to do a full hour, you're gonna pay me an hour and pay my text and our time, we'll just check the code. But then we'll also put it on my $10,000 lift, and we'll lift it up in the air. And that for some reason, changes at the tone, oh, well, I don't have one of those. And I don't want to buy a lift. So that'd be cool to get it up in the air and look underneath, right? And then all of a sudden, it's like the lift is my selling point and not my technology for the scan tool. Because it's so unknown. Like you said, it's so new. They don't understand how much technology is in these cars and what it takes. They just see someone walk out there with this little computer and it just tells them what's wrong. Oh, that was so quick. Like Well, it's it's even faster for me to live to put a car on a rack. Yeah, I can do that a lot faster than scanning a car. But for some reason, that's what sells it. I just don't understand that the mindset behind that but
Tyler Henry 59:45
well, and then some of the I mean, when you're getting into the 20 Plus cars 2021 2223 certain manufacturers, we can't even access their computers. Right, you know, a good example is when I worked at BMW We had a client who has a Rolls Royce. Same brand, right? Same, same same, just like Mini Cooper, BMW rolls, they all kind of in the,
Jimmy Purdy 1:00:10
the armor and the Lantis. And owner, you know, all that stuff. So people
Tyler Henry 1:00:14
say, Oh, it's the same brand, I just bring it in. Well, when we plug that thing in to read, and it was just to reset the battery reset, because when those cars you cannot change the battery BMWs and rolls without telling the car that you change the battery. Yeah. And just changing the battery doesn't do that. So you have to get in with a tool, a computer and you have to tell the car, the battery has been changed so it acts properly. Rolls Royce wouldn't let us in with our BMW computers
Jimmy Purdy 1:00:44
need their tool?
Tyler Henry 1:00:47
So you know, it's some and that's a battery change. We're not even talking about complicated stuff. We're not talking about relearning transmissions. We're not talking about software updates anything just to reset the battery, the same ownership group BMW rolls which even use some of the same software roll says no, you need to bring this to us. Yeah, and Mini is the same way. A lot of the BMW computers won't work with many and almost everything else Volvo
Jimmy Purdy 1:01:16
Hyundai and Kia Hyundai Kia fitted in Nissan, they're just close enough but not
Tyler Henry 1:01:22
it doesn't even have to be the expensive cars. I mean, even the cheaper ones now. Just there's there's 20 computers in a frickin Kia now now Honda, you know, the
Jimmy Purdy 1:01:30
the ram the Ram trucks are the same way. You know, they make a security link for what? What am I like? It's just so it's one more determined? Yeah, you know, and then they make it accessible. Okay, well, you can get it, but you gotta get these, you know, jump through all these hoops for us and then use like, you know what, it's not worth it. And then they just goes to the dealer. Yeah, most independent shops are like, you know, I got enough work to do. I'm not going to deal with this fancy fandangled electronic stuff, just go to the dealership. And that's what they're hoping the conversation is, is like, well, you know what, I'm gonna stay on top of it, because this is the new age. But there's a lot of shop owners that don't want to deal with it. They just, I don't want to deal with all this stuff.
Tyler Henry 1:02:09
It's, it's becoming that. And I mean, don't even get started on the electric cars. But you know, you need a guy who's a technician and you need an engineer and a programmer. Yeah, I mean, that's what it is a lot of the newer cars, guess what, they just need some programming and some software updates, just like your cell phone or your computer that needs them all the time. Yeah. How often does your phone update? Yeah, I mean, all the time compare. So when people like they come in, and they're like, oh, something's wrong with my car, I don't need a software update. And they're surprised every time and like, your car has 10 MacBooks in it running it. And they need to be updated at some point. Yeah, at some point, your computer updates, your phone updates technology needs an update. And yeah, that's I mean, that's, I would say a good 30% of like problems update around New New Era cars and that will solve it, you know, it's running rough because XYZ needs you know, the spark isn't at the right time or or your transmission is not running right it just needs to relearn all the time,
Jimmy Purdy 1:03:12
I've always found is usually the parameters so they program the the module to allow the spark plugs a certain amount of where the transmission frictions to accept a certain amount of wear but once they have exceeded that capacity, once your your clutch tolerances have gone gone from say 20,000 to 30,000, then the computer no longer knows how to deal with that play in a sense in quotes, right? So then you got to update it to the next thing. That's what I found with a lot of the updates but speaking of tools like in the dealership, that's another kind of a hot topic. So like consumables in the dealership for text so the text walking with tools on the independent side, it's all over the place. Like we have specialty tools they use their you know required to have hand tools, but we take care of gloves and brake clean and zip ties and all those consumables. Yeah, I just eat that stuff. Like let me know if you use an excessive amount. Use your best judgment if you use 10 cans like I need to know use the freaking case of brake clean on this repair. Yeah, otherwise if you use a car if you use we can and I'm gonna go ahead and just eat that like I'm not too worried about it but on the dealership side, how does that work?
Tyler Henry 1:04:19
It's it's kind of similar. You know, for each repair you're allotted something you know you get gloves are provided, but a lot of my text over here don't use gloves. Yeah, you know, it's that's definitely a big personal preference, but BMW requires it. So interesting, you know, so they're provided, but there was at some point some texts were just like, they're thrown away every time they take them off their hands and it was like, hey, these boxes cost 20 bucks and you got to slow down. We can't be going through a box a day like that's crazy. Protect eaten. Yeah. And a lot of Tech's will will save excess fluids and stuff when they give them to so you know, if you have six and a half quarts or whatever and you get a bottle, seven bottles, you got to have For cord leftover, they're not just gonna trash that they keep that in a stash. And then when a customer needs it, hey, I've got a big stash if you only need a little top off, cool, then that somebody paid for that kind of. Okay,
Jimmy Purdy 1:05:11
so it's like a pay for kind of Yeah.
Tyler Henry 1:05:13
So we don't, and we don't necessarily build a customer for that that goes into the shop, you know, we only billed for six and a half quarts, but you can't get a half a quart bottle, you know. So there's, there's excess here and there. And that goes into just the shop running costs,
Jimmy Purdy 1:05:27
right? And I guess beyond like the that kind of stuff like as a tech. And like specialty tools are there. There's a tool room,
Tyler Henry 1:05:37
we have a tool room with specialty tools. So there's Yeah, you you only need your your basic set of quote, quote, basic basic is still like 20 to $30,000 with the tools, you know, and then there's all the different specialty tools so like your AC evacuated, and you know, that's a shop tool. You're
Jimmy Purdy 1:05:59
like polar stuff, all joint presses. Yeah, because I've seen a lot of texts at the dealership have their own kind of personal cache of like, like the DCT tools for like the the dual clutch transmissions, I've noticed a lot of texts are have their own. But then is that like, expected of them? Or is it
Tyler Henry 1:06:18
anything that's a specialty tool for the brand is usually provided by the dealership? If it's not a specialty tool that it's but also that's the difference between how technician gets paid? Are they an hourly guy, or are they flat rate? Oh, interesting. So certain, you can get paid hourly, if the shop provides you tools. And there's also there's a lot of different rates and things. But basically, if you bring your own tools, you can be flat rate if the shop provides you tools, and they're only going to pay you hourly. So like lube techs, a lot of the time the shop provides the tools and they're just an hourly guy, they work eight hours they get paid for eight hours doesn't matter how much work they do. But a technician he provides his own tools. And so they will pay him whatever he flags. Now that can work in his benefit or not. If you aren't good and you don't get a lot of work, or you get a lot of warranty work or you get a lot of warranty work unless you get really good at those warranty jobs. And you're you may not be making as much as you're working. You know, if you if it takes you two days to get 10 hour job done, say two full days to and that's usually a 10 hour workday about you, you lost half your day. So your effective rate goes down. If you did it really well, then then you'd use less time, then you're winning, you get paid 16 hours for 10 hour day, you're doing really good
Jimmy Purdy 1:07:50
on a personal side of it. So you have certain texts, obviously you have your your little niches as far as what you're going to send to one of the big gripes for dealer taxes, the service advisor and what they give this right? drama, drama. So how does that work for you? Is that something that you've seen happen? Maybe other service advisors there? Is that something that you do when Tech's? If you get into it? I mean, how does that how how's the relationship there,
Tyler Henry 1:08:23
I try to be I try to have a relationship with every technician. So you know, I try to see them when I'm, I don't need anything. I don't like to be the guy that shows up all the time, just when he needs stuff. You know, I don't want to only talk to you when I need a favor. So that's where I start is I want to have a relationship with every technician. I've seen advisors that only talk to text when they need something and texts usually aren't real ecstatic when they call Yeah. You know, if you a Jim Can you can you come up front? I got it. I got a guy. I'm working on a frickin alignment. Dude, what do you want? Yeah, what do I gotta come up there for and then the technician spends 20 minutes up there because they called the technician up to talk to the customer and
Jimmy Purdy 1:09:10
to do their job like why am I doing your job? Exactly.
Tyler Henry 1:09:14
And so it def there's there's definitely a lot of drama when it comes to that. And What work are you giving to what people you know, why is Hey, Hey, Tyler, why? Why did you give this guy you know, all this work? And my response is usually because it's not a problem when I give him work. If I have a problem with a tech and not with him personally, I usually don't care about how I feel about somebody personally. It's about your quality of work. Yeah. If I give you a job, and it comes back with issues, I can't trust that this relationship is going to work. Yeah. And ultimately it comes down to is because it's my face with the customer. Yeah, I get the bad survey. I get all the heat. And if you I can't trust the tech to give me a good To repair, that I can put my stamp on my face on and tell the customer I believe this will fix your problem and you're good to go, then I'm probably not going to give him work. And he's probably not going to like me very much. Yeah. And I've had that happen a multitude of times. And a lot of times, it does get pretty heated. And I have to have a conversation with the tech and I said, Look, if you can't promise me and give me quality work, then I can't give you work. Because it all comes down to me. You know it as much as it doesn't. It does I get the
Jimmy Purdy 1:10:35
changes your whole sales pitch like you can't sell $2,000 diagnostic assessment. If you're not if like the last three he handed you were wrong, right? I can't keep having these conversations. Man. I don't have You're killing me right now.
Tyler Henry 1:10:52
I'm not, I don't have time. I don't have that much time to spend time going back and forth like that. Right. And so yeah, I do give texts that I trust, way more work than text that I don't. Or if a guy just wants to be a specialty guy, and I don't get any of that work that week. Sorry. Maybe you should do more. Other stuff training.
Jimmy Purdy 1:11:14
I don't know, I am more training training. You gotta you gotta train. I haven't
Tyler Henry 1:11:18
done this before. And I'm like, last one way to figure it out, do it. You know, when I hadn't. I've never swapped a rear end before. But guess what I did when I was in the middle of the desert, and it didn't make it happen. I learned real quick figure it out. You know, adversity letters just quickly, you know, if we don't get a bunch of alignments, and you're just an alignment guy. Maybe you should branch out? You know, because tire shops are hard to compete with. And those alignments are cheap. And maybe they're not always right. But they're cheap. And customers, usually toward my shop. Yeah,
Jimmy Purdy 1:11:48
yeah. What's the price? And
Tyler Henry 1:11:49
so yeah, there's quite a bit of drama. You have dealerships have certification levels. So sometimes you are or are not allowed to give certain texts. Like when it goes warranty. I can't have a lube tech, do a recall. I can't have a lube tech do anything under warranty. Because he in Chrysler's mind, he's not certified to do any of that work. So they aren't willing to warranty work for a guy that's not certified in that field. And it's becoming, I mean, you need to be able to do everything when it comes down to it a dealership. That's what we think, you know, we take all brands, because guess what, when a used car comes in, if we get a used Chevy truck in, we're not going to send it to Chevy to do the recon work on it. Yeah, we're gonna do the weight cut. So you kind of have to be able to do it all at same point. Nobody can do it all but you need to what I mean is do it all work on all parts of a vehicle.
Jimmy Purdy 1:12:43
Yeah, it's gray. It's, you know, you try to stay in your lane, but the lane is gray, you know. And it's just all about trying to not go out into the weeds in a sense, like, like, stay in your lane, don't go out, you know, don't be don't be hitting the shoulder and hitting the weeds. But how wide your lane is, is just how skilled and educated everybody in the shop is. Yeah, if you're not real educated. Your lane is pretty narrow. But you know what I mean? No, like, as you start, you start expanding your horizons and your lane can get a little bit wider. And you can start taking on a little bit more stuff. But But like you said, there's, there's there's the new one that's always around the corner, the 10 speeds, you know, 10 speeds are new for me, am I going to say no, I'm not going to rebuild the next 10 speed that comes in? No, I got to figure this out. Because they're everywhere. And they're in everything. So yeah.
Tyler Henry 1:13:34
For the dealership, techs, they need to be able to look at everything. Nobody can do everything going back to what we've said before. Yeah, but I don't need just an alignment guy. I don't need just an AC guy. Those are those aren't that it's not a specialty at work. Right? You know, when it comes down to it. Going into transmissions going into engines taking those things apart. That's more specialized. Yeah, there are guys that will do that stuff. Yeah, but as a dealership technician, you need to be able to take any vehicle and at least perform the diagnosis with a smile with a smile. And how do you how do you like to get in the ticket? And they're like, but then you know, are you going to turn it over to somebody else? Did you just do that diagnostic time and then now you got to give it over to some Tom because Tom need is the transmission guy or Tom's the the engine guy and those guys can do everything my engine guy can do everything he you know, he can look at any point of a vehicle and does he want to do transmissions? Not always. But will he do him if that's what he diagnosis? Absolutely. He's not going to give that workup right that's that's his paycheck. You know if he can get that done, he needs to figure it out. And at the end of the day, that's what it comes down to is how much are you willing to do to earn your paycheck as a technician and
Jimmy Purdy 1:14:53
there's a mentality it's a mentality of like what you want to take, I just can't stand like human the job and then it's like, another one of the like, we're What's with the attitude? Man work? You probably deal with that right? Yes. Yeah. What's with the drama queen? Like,
Tyler Henry 1:15:08
all the time? What?
Jimmy Purdy 1:15:10
Isn't this why you're here right now? What do you so what is it that you want? Right? Why don't want to stand around? But I don't want to do that right? I don't know, man, I don't think this is for you.
Tyler Henry 1:15:20
Yeah, I mean, it just it gets crazy frustrating sometimes, you know, especially when you're, you're talented guys are booked for like two weeks. And then you've got a guy that you can't trust to give work open, and you're like, I could give this job. But it might not work out for me. Or he's just gonna lag on it. Because he doesn't want to do it. And then it's like, and then you have a customer saying what's taking so long? It's like, Well, Tom doesn't really like doing this work. So yeah, it's taken him twice as long to figure it out for you. And then once again, it's my face on it. It's you having to you know, are you going, Hey, I got a customer wait. And if we can take a peek at this and at least figure out a route. Is this gonna take a long time or short time? You know, I don't need a complete answer right away. I need an answer right away. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy 1:16:09
I mean, vacation. Yeah, transparency. You know, where are we at? Within the
Tyler Henry 1:16:13
first couple hours of a car showing up? I need to have an idea of what direction this is going to go. And by that? I mean, I didn't know Hey, do I have to take stuff apart? To figure this out? Right? Is it already figured out? Is it a real easy cut and dry? You know,
Jimmy Purdy 1:16:27
are they picking it up today? Are we keeping it? Yeah.
Tyler Henry 1:16:30
Or am I going to have to take the whole head off to figure this out? Yeah. Like where are we going with this? Is this going to be here? Two days, three days, four days? Or is this a Oh, it's got a restricted airflow, because they haven't changed their air filter and 50,000 miles, swap the air filter and send them on their day, that shouldn't take more than an hour and a half to figure out all sudden told. But if you let it sit, because you don't like diagnosing stuff for three hours, and then I got a pissed off customer. That's where the drama starts. I could
Jimmy Purdy 1:16:58
see that. Yeah, sure. I mean, it sounds like kind of my day. It's so so I guess as far as the responsibility, though, that you're that you've signed up for? I don't know if that really encapsulates tech management. Because it's not really your tech in a sense, right? Like, you're not, you're not writing his paycheck. So why is that your responsibility to deal with that? Like we're, you know, and it's like, where's the actual guy who's supposed to be managing these texts and be like, Look, man, if you don't want to be here, you should probably go,
Tyler Henry 1:17:34
honestly, should be the foreman. Yeah, you know,
Jimmy Purdy 1:17:37
but how do they how do they manage that? Do you go like tattletale? Are you the snitch that's like, hey, so every time I hand this text, something like, so then you bring in a whole different culture, you know, it's like, that's such a difficult situation to manage.
Tyler Henry 1:17:51
I don't, I try not to go to higher up unless I need to, like, you know, if I'm really up against a wall, and this guy's just not listening to me. Yeah. But
Jimmy Purdy 1:18:01
it's like, you like, for me, I try to stop that stuff. Like, way, early way early, and I can't because I'm on the owner, I write their check. And I work right next to him every day. It's like, Hey, don't do that, like, hey, and I can monitor I can see what jobs are doing. I looked through the efficiencies, I'm like, okay, obviously, I'm not handing him those jobs anymore. You know, like, and it's just like, an untold, and I just keep cycling it, and then I start handing them a little bit more. And then I'm like, hey, maybe you should do this training on, you know, whatever the job that they're having difficulties with, and I can start feeding them training and, and build them up that way. And it's a much more personalized, but like, how would you even manage that on the tech side of it? Without the tech being proactive? You know?
Tyler Henry 1:18:38
Yeah, I start with having conversations with them. You know, just a dude, what's, what's going on? You know, and that's part of me. See,
Jimmy Purdy 1:18:46
that's just you. That's just you, though, personally, that's not your job title. No, that's not what the dealerships telling you to do. They're not like, hey, so if your text like, down and out, you need to go have a talk with them. Right? You want what? I'm a therapist now? Yeah, for your text. What are you talking about right now? All
Tyler Henry 1:19:02
day? And then I mean, if I if I'm not getting anywhere with them, then they're gonna figure it out when they don't get any work. Yeah, that's how they're gonna if they don't listen to what I'm talking. They're gonna learn by my actions. Yeah. And that's what it comes down to is how, how much are you willing to understand and help the customer? Yeah. Because at the end of the day, that's all we're doing. I'm not coming at you asking you for favors for fun. I don't want to just, you know, I'm not coming back. And hey, when is this job going to be done? Because I don't because you want to know, yeah, I don't just want to know, like, I have usually somebody's calling me five times a day. Hey, Tyler, I know, I know. You said the parts were coming in. And I want to see if they're done and
Jimmy Purdy 1:19:41
Yeah, well, I think the issue is it's not the first time they've called like you said, like, and that's probably what it is. They don't see all the known times have you? They will add the customer strapping distracting the customer. Yeah, before I go ask the tech. Right, right. That's what I mean. And they don't know about all the other calls and all the other excuses. I don't want to call them excuses. But you know what it is? Yeah, it's customer service. Hey, you know, this is happening. He's working on it. I don't want to interrupt him, whatever it is that your sales pitches to, to steer that conversation from you having to go out there and bother them. Right, right. And it's like that one, too. Okay, I need to go. No, I just I need information. Yes. Like, I'm, I'm out of I'm out of bullshit. Right now. I need some actual something to grab onto. So I can tell them and it's like, a lot of texts don't realize that because they didn't go from the server side. Yeah, you know, and it's like, Look, man, it'll be done. When it's done. It's like, I understand your frustration with the vehicle. And with me here right now, but I need you to communicate with me. So we can all get paid? Yes. You know, are you in the car right now? No, no,
Tyler Henry 1:20:47
and, or like, warranty, you know, calling stuff into extended warranty is a nightmare. You know, you're going to spend, probably, if everything went perfect, maybe 30 minutes, and I'm talking about perfect. Everything is if the tech store is lined up, I got the codes, I got the parts, and there's no issue, I'm going to spend 30 minutes minimum for a warranty call. Frequently, it's more than an hour, anything submitted to warranty because I gotta read through the story, I got to check the parts, I got to make sure they're available. I gotta, you know, get a hold of us get a hold of the cost. I don't answer the first few times, I got to wait on hold, I got to you know, go back and forth with the warranty admin, I have to explain why the parts broke and make sure that there's no problem other problems. And then they have to type it all in, I have to read every single part number to the customer to the warranty admin or administrator, I have to tell them what the labor times are where I got the labor times where the car is. I mean, it's a it's a big list. And customers want to just show up and think it's going to be fixed in an hour. Like that. And I'm like,
Jimmy Purdy 1:21:55
already read online with part it is and it says it only takes 10 minutes, replace a part.
Tyler Henry 1:22:00
Go for it. Go for it. You got it. You got it, you already looked it up the bars,
Jimmy Purdy 1:22:04
the parts departments are there, if you want to do it yourself, but if you want it done for free, there's a process.
Tyler Henry 1:22:10
I mean, how many times have you ordered something online and it says 20 minute assembly? And you're there for two hours? No, every time you know, that's every job we get? Yeah, every job instructions, say A and we don't get it
Jimmy Purdy 1:22:21
well, and going back to the tech, you know, the techs, now, there's just not a lot of a level techs left, a lot of them are retired out, a lot of them just aren't getting into the field, a lot of them aren't doing the education that they should be because they think if they get up against a wall with a repair, they can just check it out on YouTube, right? So I don't need to do this education. I don't need to do these seminars, I don't need to watch scanner Danner, I don't need to worry about it. Because if I have a problem, I'll just look it up on YouTube real quick. And I'll find a video and do it like that. Like that's your education, that's where you're basing yourself. And then that puts them at an Echelon that seems or makes them appear to be a much higher level tech than they really are. Because that's not based knowledge. It's just learning on the fly, which isn't bad. I'm okay with that. But when you start basing your whole career around that and you've been in it two or three years, and you don't have any certifications, I mean, the ASE certifications are there for a reason. Are they the almighty everything? You become a master checking, you know, everything? Absolutely not. But it's a good base knowledge.
Tyler Henry 1:23:21
It's kind of like college. Yeah, I
Jimmy Purdy 1:23:23
mean, yeah, it's like, cool.
Tyler Henry 1:23:24
I mean, can you just about do any job without going to school for it? Yeah. Yeah. Does that school help you? Yeah,
Jimmy Purdy 1:23:33
well prove that you can show up on time. So more for you know, for one
Tyler Henry 1:23:37
waste a whole bunch of money. We're gonna get started on that road. But yeah, I mean, schools a good outline for you know, a lot of things when it comes to just showing up on time, you know, getting in a workflow, getting a good basis, educating yourself. Yeah, and you're not done there. I mean, you're never done. But it gives you the foundation that you need to learn things. I mean, you're just never, you're never going to pick up an ohm meter and just know how to test, you know, voltages and all this other stuff that you know, you're just never going to figure that out. But
Jimmy Purdy 1:24:12
you can watch a video and follow along with someone online. Yes, doing the test that you're doing with that same meter, and all of a sudden appears that you know what you're doing, but do you understand how that Do you understand anything of what you're doing right now? I
Tyler Henry 1:24:25
can see okay, I'm getting 14 volts. Okay, cool. That's good. That's what I'm supposed to as well. So it says yes. Okay, I'm getting six volts here.
Jimmy Purdy 1:24:34
Why now? What
Tyler Henry 1:24:35
now? What?
Jimmy Purdy 1:24:36
Yeah. Are they in between you watch a video and it shows you know, 14 and and then you get the six and it's like, Well, mine's at nine volts. Yeah, the video doesn't show us wrong if it's at nine volts and not six is like this because you don't understand what you're doing. You don't have no concept of, of electric in this case electricity or how the charging system works. So yeah, you got to have a foundation of knowledge and it's like, that makes it so hard to to deliver certain repairs to certain tags, and I'm sure for you it takes a very long time to build a relationship. Right? Yeah, with texts and knowing what you can ship them. Because every single day for a year, you're going to have a different repair comin, you know, you're not gonna have the same repair twice. I mean, maybe you go through a lot of cars, but it starts with the same scenario. Yeah, but 4040 to 60 cars in a month. For six months, you probably won't see the same repair twice. Right? You know, you're like, so you're trying to like, hey, how, what is this tech good at? And if he's just like jumping online, which isn't wrong, he's getting the job done. He's fixing it. But if he's just jumping online every time he gets a different repair. Yeah, he's smart enough to figure it out that way. But is that really what he's good at? Or did he just get lucky with the right video? Yeah, so like,
Tyler Henry 1:25:45
here's a good example, we just had a new Dodge 2500 total. And because it was hydro locked, he went through a puddle during the storm. Gotta love puddles. Nice. Now, you know, those four foot pedal sense of pedal. It's $37,000. Pedal. But so hydralic engine, you need a new engine, right need new block. My tech goes order started to. And I was like, why is that? Because I can promise you the starters burned. He knows this from experience. That smartphone 90% of the time, if you have a locked up engine, somebody probably tried to start it way too many times. And fried that starter. Now, does your testing your diagram, your repair procedure or anything? Tell you to replace that starter? Right? No. But did I just save the customer a month of time? Yes. Because I could have got through that entire engine repair. And guess what started? Yeah, or it goes on backorder. Or it's two or three weeks out or something. But if you don't have the experience and the training, and you've been through this enough times, yeah, that's what you're paying specialty shops. Absolutely. They've seen scenarios, they know how to work through these scenarios, they can save you time and money in the long run. Because time is money. If that repair took another three weeks, this guy doesn't have his truck for three weeks. And he's not doing truck things for three weeks. And most anybody who has a heavy duty truck is usually making money with it in some way, shape, or form. Almost nobody's just driving a one ton for fun, right? Like, it doesn't drive as good as an F 150 or 1500. Like you can get a better drive out of a smaller truck. So unless you need that heavy duty truck, and time is money you're making takes the more time it's down, the less you're not, the less you're doing with it.
Jimmy Purdy 1:27:34
Right. And the same with the I mean, with the dealer or for the shop. I mean, it's once once you turn the key and it fires up and it runs, you're getting paid. Yeah, you know, if it don't start, have you don't leave the shop, you don't get paid? No. So yeah, I mean, it's a good call. And it's a call that on this, he did a video and was like, Hey, if you gotta lock the engine, you should place your starter because, you know, you probably burned it up trying to start it too many times. Oh, that makes sense. Right? But in the process of it, are you gonna sit there and test and it's like that goes back to the customer. service side of it. Right? It gets down. And now you're having a conversation? Oh, well, you know, we went to start it, we found the starters. But why didn't you test that?
Tyler Henry 1:28:13
Because it was like, all truck was dead? What do you mean? Like
Jimmy Purdy 1:28:17
why me? Yeah, like, Well, you didn't test that. I figured I assumed you would, why wouldn't you test that? Like, don't make me look like an idiot right now? Because all of a sudden, we know something that we didn't know, then, you know? And that's how everyone jumps in and just latches on to that. Like, what do you mean you didn't you? Why wouldn't you test that? You wouldn't think it would be bad? Like,
Tyler Henry 1:28:32
no, you don't test things that are working. Right? Like, like, how often do you check the water pump in your fridge?
Jimmy Purdy 1:28:40
Why didn't you tell them? You try to start it 1000 times after? What? Why did you tell me that? You know, like how I'm just not the All Knowing I can only address and fix a situation that's presented in front of me. I can't do that's more stuff until I you know, it's like the trying to get a river to flow down a hill, you take the first dam out, and then you got to see where the water stops. And then you take the next dam out, you don't comb the whole frickin Hill, right? To make the water flow away. No, you just wait to see where the water stops and you get that next break. And that's how you deal with the assessment or repair in any situation. You know, you have to just wait to see what comes up, unfortunately. And sometimes that it's like a repair like, Hey, I got an intermittent fault. Like I'm sorry, like, you can either pay us a whole day of diagnosis to try to get this thing to act up or you just gonna have to wait for it to break. I don't know, I don't know how to handle that
Tyler Henry 1:29:31
old cars that you know when you fix one thing it finds the next weakness. Oh, yeah, that's, you know, I tell a lot of people if you got over 150,000 lines, like check engine lights. Yeah, you know, you're gonna fix one thing and guess what? It's gonna find the next you replace one old coolant hose that cracked Guess what? There's probably going to be another crack coolant hose really near near future on an old car. Yeah. Now do you want to replace it all? When it's not broken? Cool. Let's do that. Spend those texts.
Jimmy Purdy 1:29:58
And that's just the communication. Yeah. And that's where the tech, like you said with the starter here. That's their call. Is that your call as a service advisor? Or is that called their calls a tech? Hey, this is a 1991. Honda. It's got about 1000. Cool. Yeah. This one's got a pin hole in it. Does he recommend the one? Or does he recommend all of them? Right? And that's the knowledge side of it. That's, that's the main difference between an A level and a sea level tech, you know, and it's not the patches is not the master tech certification. It's that information, that education to be able to say, hey, this has failed. And I guarantee the rest of them, hey, this front wheel bearings out, we should do both. Right. Well, I
Tyler Henry 1:30:36
injectors, you know, same thing with injectors, you know, I haven't got one worn out, why would you just do one, right? You know, I can save you time and effort now to do them all at the same time. Or we can play this the one out of the time game, and you can come see me the next six times this goes wrong.
Jimmy Purdy 1:30:50
Just keep pulling this manifold off for hours upon doing Yeah, I'm happy
Tyler Henry 1:30:53
to do that, please just do that. Yeah, and you're gonna be angry every time he talks now.
Jimmy Purdy 1:30:59
And that's the thing when you're trying to do a client a favor, I'm gonna try to save you $100 Because these are $200 injectors or whatever. I'm just gonna, just one failed. So we'll pull them out of here, we'll do the one I'm gonna save you a bunch of money, right? But then the next one fails, and you got to do the job over again. And you're like, but I was trying to do you a favor? No, you're ripping the client off. And that's where the free code scans come in. And it's like, you're number six.
Tyler Henry 1:31:22
Yeah, just just the misfire for number six, I only need the number six injector, right? Guess what? Number five? Number four. Number three, number two, number one are all going to fail in the near future. I usually say within 12 months. Yeah. And almost I've been right 99% of the time when I say that,
Jimmy Purdy 1:31:39
and it's another $500 pulled them out in full every time. Yep. And there was no extra labor to replace all those other injectors. So what makes you think you were doing the client any sort of service by just doing the one because you saved the money up front, you know, and you lost them time in the future? You lost them in the future? And now they gotta bring it back to you. You know, nonetheless, another died on another is like, no, no, it's like, and I hate those shops are like, Oh, they recommended all the service work. And I get that a lot from from like, other shops that hear a car coming from a dealer. And then they're like, Oh, the dealer as usual, they recommended all these services is like, easy there cowboy. Like, come on now. Like we're trying to, we're trying to do the client service here. And I, I like a lot of what the dealership does as far as their management processes and taking those kinds of steps. And like, look, you're here now, we're not going to do a time we will not the water pump. That's a given. We're going to do time, but waterphone same time. So why isn't that like, in the same situation? We're going to do one coil. Let's do all the coils. Sure. It's not that much time to do one individually every time you come back. But it's your time you got to come back here. Yep. And then it's my time I got to talk to you. Not that I don't mind it, because I'm gonna charge you for it. But
Tyler Henry 1:32:51
it's how much you know, do you want to do this? Right? A lot of back and forth. How many more times you want to come back here, you know? Or like, you routine maintenance is my favorite one. You people call anything I need, whatever it needs. And I hear whatever it needs, like I see 1000s of dollars in my head. And I'm like, okay, and I'm like, Are you saying you just want an oil change and a rotate? Or do you want everything that the manufacturer recommends at this interval? Yeah, well, whatever it needs, okay. And then they show up, and I have a laundry list, because they haven't done anything in the past 50,000 miles. So here's a $1,500 quote, and they go What the hell. And as your words, we're doing all I want everything that it like, and then they freak out. Because
Jimmy Purdy 1:33:34
we're like, I don't care what it costs, get it done. Well, I'm gonna go ahead send you a quote. Don't worry about the quote, I had this happen. Just go ahead and get it done.
Tyler Henry 1:33:41
I had a guy come in big flex in with his 392 Durango, which needed brakes. And he goes, Yeah, I just ordered them to get them done. And I'm like, do you want to quote first or, like, whatever it takes? Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's fine. And I'm like, I come out and how much could ever really be Yeah, I'm gonna let you know for right. And so I go back and I'm like, hey, yeah, you need pads and rotors, and that's going to be like 5200 bucks. He's like, Yeah, that's fine. And then I'm like, Okay, I'll play someone order but it's gonna take me about a week to get them. Okay. Three days later, he calls a How about that, quote? What are you doing for that price? Pads, rotors sensors and replacing them? Well, I didn't ask for rotors. I didn't. I mean,
Jimmy Purdy 1:34:33
this is the brake job.
Tyler Henry 1:34:34
Yeah, this is what it requires. I'm like you have dropped, drilled and slotted rotors. I can't mill them. And they're due because you have a
Jimmy Purdy 1:34:43
problem. You use lip and I'm probably way under the specification in its service, not
Tyler Henry 1:34:48
through car with 400 horsepower that weighs 7000 pounds. Like it takes energy to stop that every single time and go for it. Go for the cheap brand. I'm sure they'll work out great. But you said do it, whatever it cost and I, you know, happened he canceled, cancel anytime they say do whatever, every time every time it's done that Yeah. And I don't know if it's just lack of knowledge or what it is but or just not wanting to know not caring. But yeah, people don't understand their vehicles anymore. They don't look at the manual, they don't even peek at it. They don't even look at the Quickstart one, that little 10 page one. If you just look at your maintenance interval, you probably could learn a lot. What? And then you know, when a dealership or a shop is lying to you? Yeah, that's
Jimmy Purdy 1:35:37
true. self education, client education, right? I mean, it's important. Do you have
Tyler Henry 1:35:41
an open checkbook? Because there's, you can either be smart, and rich, or smart and poor or dumb and rich? I mean, if you don't want to know anything, you can pay for it. But if you know everything, then you'll probably save some money. Because you could either do it yourself like an air filter, how hard is that cabin air filter, or an engineer filter to do? You know, for us, it cost about 15 or 20 bucks and labor plus the part? Do you want to pay that $35 For us to change him? Or do you want to save 35 bucks and do it yourself right now? And the oil change? I'll
Jimmy Purdy 1:36:11
do them all day long. I mean, right? I'll take it.
Tyler Henry 1:36:12
I'll take it easy, easy. Easy.
Jimmy Purdy 1:36:15
I'll take all those all day long.
Tyler Henry 1:36:16
Oil changes, like we charge $20 in labor for an oil change. Do you want to climb onto your car for 20 bucks? Or do you want me to do it for 20? bucks? Yeah, I mean, it, the price of the oil is the price of oil. I can't change that. Right. But for 20 bucks, I'm probably going to give somebody else 20 bucks to do my auto change it for me my time and effort and crawling up under there and draining the oil and oil. Like, is that worth 20 bucks? Hell yeah. It's worth 20 bucks.
Jimmy Purdy 1:36:42
Yeah. I mean, it's obviously the price where they put it there. I mean, it makes me want to send all my cars over there. And I'll just take another 20 bucks on and call customers I
Tyler Henry 1:36:51
tell them you know, do you want to if you want to save money, get your own oil and filter. I'm not gonna guarantee that it's good oil or good filter, and bring it to me and pay me $20 To change your oil.
Jimmy Purdy 1:37:02
Yeah. Yeah. So on the dealership side, the the bring your own parts?
Tyler Henry 1:37:07
That's an interesting one. You do a lot of that. Not a lot. We frown upon it. Because we can't I mean,
Jimmy Purdy 1:37:13
that's got to be an absolute no for you how to do the ship? I would assume it's for us our policies, like we just don't know more. Like unless it's a custom part. And I know that like the aftermarket parts company, Holly, something like that. Sure. Yukon, whatever. Yeah, like, Sure, I'll put those in. But most of the time, like even gears I'm getting like, No, I want it for my my supplier, so I can warranty him.
Tyler Henry 1:37:34
It's it's highly, highly frowned upon. But I will make it abundantly clear. If a customer wants to go to that route that you're gonna pay me if there's a problem with this a lot of labor to figure it out. Like I'm not I'm not warranting any part of this. There's no part of this that's warranty like, it's because we warranty all our work. And that's why we supply all our parts for the most part. But if you want to bring in a part, you're gonna pay me to do a job regardless of if it fixes it or not. Because I'm gonna have to re diagnose what's going on right after this part to figure out okay, is it something else? Or is it this part? Right. And most of the time, it's not worth it. Like we just had a guy who provided his own engine for a repair.
Jimmy Purdy 1:38:16
Wow. And I just had no idea of the dealership would even even like, think about having that as an option.
Tyler Henry 1:38:23
i It wasn't my ticket. I wouldn't have done it. I would put
Jimmy Purdy 1:38:27
that that's a service advisors own personal call. Yeah, if you want and that guy. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah,
Tyler Henry 1:38:35
I mean, it varies. dealership dealership, right, of
Jimmy Purdy 1:38:37
course. But I just assumed all dealerships would have like a policy in place is like step one, as your first day as a service advisor line one item on your like we responsibilities. No customer parts. Yes. Assume that would be like the number one thing on the line item now you
Tyler Henry 1:38:53
can bring your own parts. Now this guy has this tech advisor that dealt with this one has spent an insane amount of time since that one was done several months ago, because it has come back repeatedly. Oh, my forte. Ridiculous. That engine ended up being bad. So we got another engine, he paid us a second time to do the engine replacement. And that one has had more problems. I mean, we could have provided an engine and at this point, he would have spent less on the engine we provide typically how that goes Yeah. Then he's spent more money on redoing gaskets, and he's had to do a starter and he's had to do this and he had to do that. And if you add it all up, he probably is paid way more than it would have just been for our original quote, and still with no warranty and still has no warranty. And our engines come with you know, like a three year 100,000 mile warranty or something. Right? So it's like, yeah, you you thought you save money but you don't.
Jimmy Purdy 1:39:58
I mean, just pay someone for this year. was paying for the service and I think stand behind it.
Tyler Henry 1:40:03
A good common one is like intake manifolds. It seems to be people think they're easy enough. So they ordered just whatever aftermarket intake manifold, and it either doesn't fit right? Or it cracks because they didn't look up the torque specs and they just I'm just gonna cinch this down to my impact on this plastic intake manifold and the Olga Doug has, yeah, that that's been a common one is like cracked intake manifolds, aftermarket intake manifolds that don't seal or, like when we've, you know, we'll give sometimes if we can't get the OEM one will offer an aftermarket one. And then if it comes in and doesn't work, guess what? You don't pay for it. Right. You know, that's that's the dealership promise.
Jimmy Purdy 1:40:42
Right? And that's kind of like this, how the whole service industry should be in this industry is like, it's
Tyler Henry 1:40:46
because we provided the parts, right? If we recommend it, and it doesn't work, you don't pay for it. Right? If you bring us something and it doesn't work, you're going to pay both sides of that.
Jimmy Purdy 1:40:55
Right. Yeah. And then I think that's pretty. That's standard. I mean, that's how it should be, you know, and that's the problem. I think a lot of other shops get into they think they're all just gonna be Mr. Fixit and bring your own parts to me. And I'll just do the labor and then they get stuck in these situations. And it's like, why did you put yourself in that situation?
Tyler Henry 1:41:12
Amazon has ruined so many things, but also been so great. Like, there's pretty surprising how many manufacturers have parts stores on Amazon with actual OEM parts? Absolutely. No problem is that that one sponsored one that's right above the Mopar store that says Mopar is not Mopar. Yeah. And, you know, people click the wrong one keys. Keys never work, don't buy aftermarket keys. On new cars, the security just doesn't work at some universal key, and it'll work with your 90s Honda, or whatever. But the new cars with the security just aftermarket keys don't work. You're gonna pay me 170 bucks to program a key, and it doesn't work. And then you're gonna pay me another 170 bucks to program the other key. So you just that 50 bucks, we're gonna save. You now spend an extra 170?
Jimmy Purdy 1:42:09
Yeah. Yeah. And I wish there was a way of encapsulating exactly what you should and shouldn't buy. But man, is that ever so gray? Yeah, no, like, there's just so we could talk about that for hours as far as trying to figure out what you should and shouldn't buy. I think the main takeaway, just take it. It's too professional.
Tyler Henry 1:42:30
Yeah. And that's where the experience comes down to, like, you know, how many times have we ordered parts from somebody and figured out if they're good or not? Right? You know, how many times that I reach out to that scam guy, you know, are different scammer? Yeah, it just comes down to experience you learn where the quality is and where it isn't. And I can tell you most of the time, it's not on the internet. Like just what you first find if you dig hard enough. But once again, experience if you spend a whole week researching something, was it worth your time? Or was it worth an hour of my time to pay me 170 bucks? Well, you're there
Jimmy Purdy 1:43:05
to do that. And it's like you have the experience you've been in this long enough to know better, and it still still got you right? And not to say there's anything you necessarily did wrong, but it's just that's how good they are. How is somebody without the decades of experience of being in the front of a dealership or running a shop? If they can't tell the difference? How you're going to tell the difference if you don't even have that experience? Right? So it's like, why are you even trying? Why are you even trying to save a couple $100 If you're even going to save a couple $100 You might have got a one once a win once or twice doing that. But that's it like that, you can't keep doing that, like eventually it's going to turn around and bite you and all that you've saved before. gone done, you know you're gonna get it's just happening. There's too many scammers. There's too many people trying to make the auto industry look bad trying to capitalize on because when you have a nice experience with a shop, it changes your entire perspective in the industry, right? And you're like, wow, these are super helpful people. How would anybody in this industry ever try to rip somebody off because you meet someone that is nice, it's helpful, that takes care of you. And these are the scammers that take advantage of that situation.
Tyler Henry 1:44:11
And I think it comes down to people, you got to do a little bit of research and I don't mean, necessarily on the internet. I mean, ask knowledgeable people. Yeah, where they're taking there. Yeah, the internet is not the No, go on Facebook and ask Where should I take my car? Yeah, no, no, just don't do that. Find a mechanic create a relationship. Find somebody who knows about cars, ask them where to take it. Yeah. Because there's good and there's bad with everything, you know, and it's not as easy as one of the Google reviews. It's not as easy as that, unfortunately, because there's bad voices are a lot louder than good voices.
Jimmy Purdy 1:44:52
Yeah. When it comes down to it and when you're asking for recommendations, the ones that are scamming are usually the first couple ones would be recommended, right? Because it's like they're hurting for Work peope Yeah,
Tyler Henry 1:45:01
yeah, they're like, oh, yeah, bring it in right away. I got it. I got you. Whenever I hear bring it in right away. Like, I'm always hesitant. I'm like, Well, how open is his schedule?
Jimmy Purdy 1:45:10
Yeah, that's not good right now. Now in this day and age, you should be waiting at least three days. Yeah, three days minimum. I don't know, any shop around here right now, that's less than three days. And unless it's a simple service or something like that, most of the stuffs I mean, I mean, you know, a week
Tyler Henry 1:45:23
out for an oil change. Yeah. Like that's, and then people are mad when they call him the day before? Because they waited, you know, and they're 2000 Miles overdue. Yeah. And, you know, my, usually my response to almost anyone is, this is my next appointment. You're welcome to drop it off before. I don't know if I'll get to it before. So if you want to be without your vehicle for extra time, you can drop it off. I might be able to get it in early. But I don't want to make a promise till next Friday when my next appointment is Yeah. You know, I had a guy on Friday that was traveling and I'm like, hey, my appointment, my next appointment is Thursday. Like, I understand you're out of luck, drop it off. I'll do my best to try to take a peek at it. But it just depends on how much work it takes me to diagnose it. If I get an answer quick. I'm going to get you an answer quick. And I tell my tech that hey, I know you've got 25 other jobs in line. I've got a guy who's traveling, if you could spend 20 minutes on this today for me, just 20 minutes, don't don't do everything. Yeah, we'll try to get this guy's somewhat of an answer. Can he have this taken somewhere? We'll get him rolling. You know, we ended up figuring it out pretty quick, and we're gonna get it fixed Monday for him. But that was a perfect scenario. It doesn't always go perfect. I've had way too many things where they get really complicated, or they tried to fix it themselves. And they don't tell you that. And then you're fighting a stripped bolt. And it just goes all kinds of ways. And that's why I always prep. This is my next appointment, you can bring it in. I'm not making promises. I don't promise anything in the shop. Because I've seen I've never seen everything. But I've seen everything you know, I've seen every way it goes wrong. And there will always be a new way it goes wrong. That's true. But that's why we don't make promises is because we're not in control of anything. I don't control the shipping. I don't control the car. I didn't make the car. And
Jimmy Purdy 1:47:10
yeah, I didn't buy it. I didn't build it. And I didn't break it. Yeah, so don't bitch at me.
Tyler Henry 1:47:14
Right. You know, I'll give you a phone number. I got all kinds of phone numbers you can complain to Yeah. But at the end of the day, you know, I'm just here to help you. So biting my head off is not going to do you any good.
Jimmy Purdy 1:47:24
Right? Yeah, that's the biggest. The biggest problem right now. Client client advocacy. Yeah. I mean, as a service writer, you got the you got to deal with that day in and day and all
Tyler Henry 1:47:35
of it, you know, and it's it's a lot of the, the calling in and just the wanting it right away. And believe me, I would if I could, but even with 13 technicians, they're still a week out. Yeah, like, and when you come in and you want something right away. You're basically telling all the other people that booked an appointment to eff off. Right? Yeah, it, it may not feel like that on your end. But 20 to 30 people a day. I've promised an appointment time, right? That's my problem is that you can show up and drop your car off then. Yeah. But after that it changes. And when you want to get in the same day, and you want it done right away? Well, I got to tell 40 other people that their car got delayed. Yeah. And those aren't good conversations. And I have to have those conversations every day. But it's selfish people's were there. Yeah, it's understand, sorry, it's your cars important. But there's 70 other cars that are also very important. And I want to help every one of them in a timely fashion. They
Jimmy Purdy 1:48:37
all took the time to make an appointment with me right or not bugged
Tyler Henry 1:48:41
me twice a day. Love those calls. Hey, I know it's been three hours. But what's happened? Yeah. Now what now? What? What can you tell me what else you've done? I'm still waiting on the parser. I will call you when it shows up. Trust me. Four hours later. Is that part there? No, it's eta, if I tell you an ETA, I'm going to be wrong. And then you're going to call me a liar. Because how many times the package got delayed from UPS coming to your house? Right? Well, we have about 100. Some packages show up a day, right? They all get delayed. Every one of them every single time go through that. Every single time or the inventory counts off. It says there's three in LA in the warehouse. And what it doesn't tell you is five other people ordered it today. And they only had one and not three. Perfect. Oh, I told you it was gonna be here tomorrow. And now it's three weeks out. Yeah. So I usually don't, hey, it could be a week. It could be three months, three months? Well, I don't know. And I'm just trying to
Jimmy Purdy 1:49:47
draw a habit that's in my possession. I'll let you know.
Tyler Henry 1:49:51
And I heard the guy next to me for the past month. This this these torsion bolts that were waiting on ETS February 9, didn't show up. Now it shows the 12. Okay, now shows the 16 Every single time, he tells him the date, and it just the date kept getting moved three days out. That's the word. And so every three days, this guy would call and call Him a liar. You told me he'll be here? Well, I didn't pick up the part and deliver it. So I'm sorry. But you kind of have to call ups. Like, here's the tracking number. If we even get one a lot, we don't get it till it ships usually. Yeah, that's true. And so and even then add a couple days. If it says overnight, I'm gonna say 14 hours. If it says three days, I'm going to tell you a week, you know, and that's just because I've seen it before. And I don't want to promise you something that I don't control. You know, a lot that a lot of things just you can't control. And that's why we're in the service industry. Oh, yeah.
Jimmy Purdy 1:50:46
And then part service industry in the automotive industry in 2023.
Tyler Henry 1:50:52
That I'm so tired of hearing the word delay. Yeah. Oh, well, and it's over backorder or not available? Or, and just because there's, say there's a quantity out there, I look up and it says zero distributor zero at supplier, you know, 400 on order 700 at other dealers. What are the chances you think one of those dealers is going to sell them to me, right? You may think we're all friendly. But the guy that's got 10 in stock, when I call him and ask him to have four of them. And he looks on the inventory. And he sees that there's zero at the supplier. And there's 400 orders placed. What if he needs it, he's not going to give that up. Because he knows he can't get any for the next two months, right. So when people say I'll just call another dealer. Unfortunately, that doesn't work all the time, although it will work sometimes. But it usually only works. If the parts of
Jimmy Purdy 1:51:55
a odds are I'm not going to waste my time even making the phone call, right. And you know, if you've
Tyler Henry 1:51:59
ever tried to call a parts department, they're busy. They're they've got 100 customers that are there at the store. And I by that, I mean, the cars that are there, the customers that are there. And those ones all come first. And if you're calling in to try to find a part, you're probably going to be on hold and you're probably going to be waiting a while. It's the same thing. When I call another dealer, I don't get straight to the guy and on a walkie talkie. And he's just like, oh, yeah, I'll send it right over right now. Like, where's the inside line? Oh, I'm just another customer. Like when it comes down to it when I call another dealership unless we own that dealership, which we don't own any other dodge dealerships. It's, I'm not getting that part. And even if I did own them, the guy that's running the shop, the GM is probably going to be like, No, I want this part because I'm gonna need it for my customer that shows up next. Yeah, yeah. And so back orders are something we're dealing with now. And it's the supply chain is not even near as fixed as it could be. Right? It's it is I don't know if it's going to return. I mean, I think Americans need to start making more parts. And, you know, we need to simplify stuff. And it just keeps getting more complicated and more electronic. And we're stuck in a hard place,
Jimmy Purdy 1:53:05
just more parts that are specific as a problem. You know, parts that are like, one for every 30 cars or 40 cars or 100 cars, it's every car is unique, right? You have to have a special unique part for every unique vehicle for every unique person, right?
Tyler Henry 1:53:23
I used to be able to go I need the brake rotors for a 70 Chevy. Chances are you know, there's like three options. It's like, yeah, you know, and how they fit 1000 different cars, right? And you could have a Datsun or as some or whatever, whatever. But now it's like, no, I have like, like BMWs got like 15 Different size brake rotors, just for one model year.
Jimmy Purdy 1:53:47
How are you supposed to supply that stuff?
Tyler Henry 1:53:49
How do you keep that in stock? Right? Because you're not just dealing with the current model year you're dealing with like 10 model years back usually, usually dealership, I'd say 90% of the service is for the last four to five model years. And then like the last 10%, you can extend out to like 10 model year. So you 2012 And up is 90% of our work. Usually Anything older, we're not It's not that we won't work on it. They're just not bringing it into us. And you're most of it is nothing older than I'd say 17 and up is now what we're dealing with, you know, that's just what's coming into the dealership. I'm not stocking parts for your 2005 PT Cruiser. I
Unknown Speaker 1:54:33
can't I don't
Tyler Henry 1:54:36
I just don't. I'm not going to I'm not going to let a part waste space on a shelf for three years. For the one time you come in for a PT Cruiser. Okay, at least I get I get those calls quite a bit. Yeah, I want to see if you had any parts for my 2002 pt Nope.
Jimmy Purdy 1:54:52
Here's your nope, no. Hard No. Yeah,
Tyler Henry 1:54:55
yeah, no extra No.
Jimmy Purdy 1:54:58
Well, this has all been good info. Yeah, it's fun. I
Tyler Henry 1:55:01
mean, it's I love working at the dealership, you meet so many great people. Yeah. Just like every industry, every job, you have adversity. And how you deal with that is how well you will succeed. Creating the relationships and just letting people understand honesty, to me is the biggest thing is I'm super transparent with my customers, when he calls in, and he's like, Hey, I know you got the parts yesterday, because you called me and told me, what's the status? Sir? I haven't touched the vehicle. Yeah, you want you want it? The honest answer I have for the racks that are full. I need one of those jobs to come off to get yours in. And then it yes, it's a three hour job. But that's if he works on it for three hours straight. So that one day repair, I'm going to quote for two days, once it comes in, I'll let you know where I'm at. When I'm, you know, you can call and check anytime. And I'll tell you exactly what's going on. And I'm going to be transparent about it. Because the last thing I want to do is make you think it took me five days to fix a three hour job,
Jimmy Purdy 1:56:00
or don't tell them it's on the rack and have them show up and it's not on the right. Oh god, I've
Tyler Henry 1:56:03
seen that happen with people who mislead people and it's doesn't work out. No, I've had customers show up so many times, unannounced. And, um, that's not the way I run my life. You know, I want people to try to understand that I'm trying to help them. Yeah. And the minute that you lie to them, that's gone.
Jimmy Purdy 1:56:24
They know, they know, that's gone. We're all we're all smart. We can all tell. You know,
Tyler Henry 1:56:28
and I hear a lot of it from other shops, other recommendations that people make that are just just wrong. You know, like this, the shop that told the lady that her upper control arm was cracked, she didn't have an upper control arm in that location. It just had one control arm right on it, you know? So it's like, how much was that lady going to pay that shop? To do one? To fix a part that didn't exist on that car? Yes, they had a rear upper control arm, but there was no front passenger upper control arm. You know? Yeah. And so you know, she, she could have paid this guy, maybe 100 bucks? Who knows? Who knows what? To fix something that wasn't broken. That didn't even exist on the car. Yeah. And so it's stuff like that, that hurts the industry and that we try to get away from but it's something you got to battle with every day.
Jimmy Purdy 1:57:14
Yeah. You know, it's good to know, though. Some fighting at the dealership for the the better the industry for sure.
Tyler Henry 1:57:21
We try. I try. I can't speak for everybody, but it comes down to just talk to people, you know, meet people find out who's knowledgeable in whatever field you're looking at, you know, if you want expertise on gardening, find somebody local, who's doing a good job and, and talk to them, you know, you I'd say bring it down to local, you know, stop going on the internet. Internet's a great tool, but there's way too much fluff. And you need to meet somebody go out, you know, how hard is it to meet people now? It's, it's harder, but you can do it. Yeah, you know, I'll flag somebody down. I'll spark up a conversation in a parking lot. I'll go to a business mixer or, you know, just networking and figuring out people is how I run my life because I figure out who's the expert and I learned from them.
Jimmy Purdy 1:58:05
Yeah, you know, get a part time job with somebody and work for them on the weekends or a couple days a week and that's just get right into it. You know, I mean, it's hard as an entry level to get into an automotive field but the dealerships a great place to start.
Tyler Henry 1:58:17
Use the internet as a reference not not not the final book. Absolutely. There's a lot of good stuff on the internet. When you know how to decipher it. Yeah, you know,
Jimmy Purdy 1:58:29
we'll leave that as a as an as an ending. Cap there. Yes. No good info. Appreciate you coming in.
Tyler Henry 1:58:36
Yeah, and if you guys curious you can follow me on Instagram, Papa, Smurf Wrangler, Facebook. I have an off road group Central Coast campers and crawlers. And if you need service, you can see me Emily.
Jimmy Purdy 1:58:45
There it is. Thanks, buddy. Absolutely.