Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
My name is Jeff, and I'd like to welcome you on a journey of reflection and insight into the tolls and triumphs of a career in automotive repair.
After more than 20 years of skinned knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspective and hear other people's thoughts about our industry.
So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.
[00:00:00] Dustin Stutzman: I learned an entire brand and everything with not having a single mentor at all, right? And so I just had to organically learn all the information. And because of that, I will know not only what failed, but I know why it- But whenever you get into a dealership setting and you're basically taking a flat rate technician, there's so many things, processes, and tests that I'm doing multiple, like there's multiple tests involved in this one test, and I'm gathering all of that data for all of those tests at one time, and you're trying to teach this to, you know, a kid effectively.
[00:00:37] Dustin Stutzman: He's not processing all of the data that you're actually collecting
[00:00:47] Dustin Stutzman: All right, um, well, uh, Dustin Stutzman. Um, I, uh, actually got my start, I guess if you will. Um, I was an engineer. Uh, I, I had a full-ride scholarship to be an engineer. Um, and after two years and talking to a bunch of engineers, I figured out that that was not gonna be something I wanted to do. So even though I had straight As and a scholarship, I transferred to automotive.
[00:01:16] Dustin Stutzman: Um-
[00:01:17] Jeff Compton: Did you find it boring?
[00:01:19] Dustin Stutzman: So I found I knew it was going to be so t- that I was going to have at a five-year minimum, if not more, before I was into a interesting, well-paying field type position.
[00:01:35] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:36] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and I also found that, and I have a lot of engineering buddies, a lot of engineering. I was s- I was second in my class.
[00:01:45] Dustin Stutzman: My-- the valedictorian was my best friend. He's an engineer. He works for Riot Games, uh, League of Legends. Okay. And, uh, and I knew from talking to engineers that, like, the ability to work after hours and to, and to kinda grind, and that's just what it was. They were like, "You're gonna have to move to a big city.
[00:02:05] Dustin Stutzman: You're gonna be probably stuck in a cubicle for 60, 70 hours a week." Ooh. "And you're gonna make 60 grand a year." That's just what it is.
[00:02:13] Jeff Compton: Sign me up.
[00:02:15] Dustin Stutzman: And I'm like, "Yeah, that's... I'm, I'm not doing that." I-- 'cause that's, that's one of the things I've always, I've always known that, like, I'm gonna work my 40-
[00:02:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:02:24] Dustin Stutzman: and it's going to be a hard 40, and then I'm gonna go home.
[00:02:29] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:30] Dustin Stutzman: And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, like... And, like, I've done maybe 20 or 30 hours of moonlighting in my entire career.
[00:02:40] Jeff Compton: Wow. Yeah.
[00:02:41] Dustin Stutzman: Because I, I, I want to be 100% at work, and I wanna be paid well enough that I'm not-- I don't need to moonlight. And I told myself, and I s- and I felt like that someone with my level of s- physical skills and intellect could do really well and should do really well-
[00:03:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:03:01] Dustin Stutzman: in the automotive industry.
[00:03:02] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:03:03] Dustin Stutzman: Um, because the cars are getting more complicated, and it moves well, meaning I can go, I can do this at a high level and be, and be paid well in California- Mm-hmm ... in Podunk, you know, Illinois, where I live.
[00:03:18] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:03:18] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and so that's, that's inevitably why I went down that path.
[00:03:22] Dustin Stutzman: And, uh, I mean, honestly, it actually, from a pay perspective, it's done me better than engineering ever would.
[00:03:33] Jeff Compton: Wow.
[00:03:33] Dustin Stutzman: Um, I, I have, I have- So that engineering buddy that I, that I, that I was talking about earlier, um, he worked in Chicago, inner city Chicago, lived in Chicago for an engineering firm
[00:03:48] Jeff Compton: Oh
[00:03:48] Dustin Stutzman: He worked there for 10 years.
[00:03:51] Dustin Stutzman: He never made more money than I did-
[00:03:53] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:03:53] Dustin Stutzman: ever.
[00:03:54] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:03:55] Dustin Stutzman: And this was straight out of college, right? So I had already... I'd been in the dealership for probably two or three years at that point. Um, and h- he luckily, he ended up-- the only time he started making actually more money is when he got his job in California in Santa Monica, and at that point, he was paying three grand a month just to liv- rent a one-bedroom apartment, so it didn't really matter.
[00:04:19] Dustin Stutzman: Um-
[00:04:20] Jeff Compton: I was gonna say, yeah, cost of living would obviously in Chicago or California isn't great. I think, you know, Chicago is probably less, but it's, I mean, you're in Chicago, no offense- Right ... to anyone who listens in Chicago. Right. It's not-- It has its, it has its flaws, I guess you could say, as does anywhere you're living.
[00:04:35] Jeff Compton: But California, I wouldn't, like... That to me, I don't-- how is that not at this point just a vacation state and not some place that people actively-
[00:04:42] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah ...
[00:04:43] Jeff Compton: seek to live?
[00:04:45] Dustin Stutzman: And now he lives, he actually lives in Seattle now working for the same company, obviously, and, uh, but... And, and right now he tells me all the time, he's like, with AI and all that stuff, he's like, "It's, it's, it's a, it's a slaughterhouse.
[00:04:58] Dustin Stutzman: It's, it's crazy." That whole industry, I have, um, another buddy who's actually, uh, NVIDIA certified with AI, um, te- and he always telling me about the latest, you know, AI innovations and stuff, and, uh, it's crazy the, the gap of where pe- where C-suite guys think AI is and where actually AI is. Yeah. And it's turned into, uh, like bo- all of them that I know are literally just fixing the AI garbage, basically.
[00:05:34] Dustin Stutzman: That's their job now.
[00:05:36] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And- Y- you see that, you know, 'cause it's a hot button topic now, right? And I mean, I- It is ... somebody post about, um, you know, somebody made the comment, "AI's gonna replace service writers," and everybody said, "No, it's not." And they said, "Actually, I think in time it, it, it will..." Because I remember somebody speaking with me once and they said they've literally, their AI can do up to a 10-minute phone call question and answer based- Yeah
[00:06:02] Jeff Compton: somebody trying to get placed in a job placement, right?
[00:06:05] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:06:05] Jeff Compton: So when you figure the amount of tech that's already there that they can do the 10-minute, which most of the time fields 90% of their phone calls, they don't have to go past that. They get all of the stuff booked and billed and, and all- Mm-hmm
[00:06:18] Jeff Compton: that's incredible. So- Yeah ... the idea that people think that we can't replace an advisor with it eventually- Right ... to me is ludicrous, in the sense that, the traditional sense of what we think an advisor does. Now it's- Yes ... y- y- different roles and different shops, you know, it looks very different. Some it looks more like a concierge, some it looks like a receptionist, right?
[00:06:40] Jeff Compton: It just depends. But I mean, right now when you see how you can punch this stuff in and it pulls labor orders-
[00:06:46] Dustin Stutzman: Yep ...
[00:06:46] Jeff Compton: uh, you know, uh, finds it, it, it, it, yes, very much, and then makes a phone call, an automated phone call. Right. A lot of that can be streamlined from the traditional, quote-unquote- Yes ... service writer's role.
[00:07:00] Jeff Compton: And, um, I'm all for it. I think it's gonna really help because I think then if we're gonna get back to the idea of serving the customer, Dustin, I think it's going to improve that because it'll free up some, uh-
[00:07:12] Dustin Stutzman: People ...
[00:07:12] Jeff Compton: time and people, yes.
[00:07:14] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah, for sure.
[00:07:15] Jeff Compton: More, because-
[00:07:15] Dustin Stutzman: I can-
[00:07:16] Jeff Compton: Go ahead.
[00:07:16] Dustin Stutzman: I can definitely see that, and that was actually, whenever, whenever we started first discussing video multi-points- Mm-hmm
[00:07:25] Dustin Stutzman: I literally went to my director and said A, you're gonna need to pay the technician, 'cause literally all you're doing-
[00:07:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:07:35] Dustin Stutzman: is you're turning the technicians into the service writer to be able to replace... So, so now even if you exclude AI, all you're doing is creating the, a situation where service writers can now service more technicians because the technicians are doing most of your job for you.
[00:07:56] Dustin Stutzman: And- And obviously, which, and the other- my point with video multi-points in that specific argument was, 'cause he still, we still are... It was new. He's like, "Well, I haven't really decided on how, what we're gonna do for pay and everything." And I, and I told him, and he said, he said to me, he's like, "Well, you know the metrics.
[00:08:13] Dustin Stutzman: Like, you've seen the metrics for the, for how much the upsells are improved with video multi-points and all that thing." And I'm like, "What you're saying is not wrong. I don't disagree that you're going to sell more, but I've been two to three weeks out for six years."
[00:08:28] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:08:29] Dustin Stutzman: So me taking more time out of my day to, to, to sell more work whenever I can't get the three-week backlog done-
[00:08:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:08:39] Dustin Stutzman: it's irrelevant. So y- I, I, I have to get paid, right? Mm-hmm. And, and that's, and, and that's what... And inevitably, we basically got to a situation where we, I, we don't really do video multi-points because, I mean, we're three weeks out. So, like, so, uh, w- uh, I, we don't necessarily need to sell. I als- I still send pictures.
[00:08:58] Dustin Stutzman: Like, I have... My phone is obviously full. Yes. Like, I'm, every car that comes in gets six, seven, eight pictures of, of, "Well, here's the, where the mouse chewed through this. Here's the leak. Here's the whatever," right? And, uh, that's all uploaded through our, we have a software, um, it's called Text2Drive, and, uh, it uploads directly to the ticket, so every time they come in, it's gonna be, "Hey, here's that leak you ignored last time.
[00:09:24] Dustin Stutzman: Do you wanna deal with it?" Whatever. Um, but yeah. That, that's, that's, uh-
[00:09:30] Jeff Compton: And you and I are old enough to remember when, like working in the dealership especially, uh, but even s- it happens in the small shops probably even more, is that, like, you'll see the advisor walk the customer out underneath the car, point them to something- Uh-huh.
[00:09:42] Jeff Compton: Yep ... show them and say, 'cause the, you know, customer wants to be informed, goes, "I, I don't really understand. Show that to me." Now when we have all this visual evidence and the, and the technician's literally filming a mini movie showing them-
[00:09:53] Dustin Stutzman: Yes ... "
[00:09:53] Jeff Compton: This is your car. See? There's your license plate. There's your leaking axle," you know, all that stuff.
[00:09:59] Jeff Compton: "There's your loose tie rod. There's your chopped tires," blah, blah, blah. It, they don't have to be walked out and see that now. They don't even have- No ... to be in the building. Nope. So the idea that we're like, "I'm not gonna pay the technician now to go into more of that detail and film it," is to me is just- Right
[00:10:13] Jeff Compton: ridiculous because did I used to inspect the cars? All the time. I used to just write everything down, hit send on the estimate, right?
[00:10:20] Dustin Stutzman: Yep.
[00:10:20] Jeff Compton: I was going out and getting another set of keys. I wasn't filming anything 'cause you know how it is. We can walk under a car and go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
[00:10:29] Dustin Stutzman: Yes.
[00:10:29] Jeff Compton: You know, and then tabulate the estimate.
[00:10:32] Jeff Compton: And, and we're off to the next car. Now when I have to slow down, pull out my tablet or pull up my phone and start documenting tread depths, tread, you know, tire- Yep ... depth.
[00:10:41] Dustin Stutzman: It's a setup.
[00:10:42] Jeff Compton: It's, it's 100% a much more involved inspection- Mm-hmm ... process, but yet we don't wanna pay anybody for it. 'Cause why? Well, we still wanna run this loss leader oil change game that we run throughout the industry.
[00:10:53] Jeff Compton: Yep. I'm not saying it's good or bad, hit or- Right ... right or wrong. Right. But when we add the inspection to it and we're trying to sell the value of the inspection, I think it becomes our front counters and our, our service writer, customer facing, whatever you wanna call them, to say, "This is what we're gonna do today on your car.
[00:11:09] Jeff Compton: It has a value. If you do not want it done, simply say you're not interested. I could tell you the thing's gonna catch on fire, you're not even gonna listen. Dump and- Right ... and out it goes." Right. But if we, if we s- tell the customer we're gonna do this free comprehensive inspection and, you know, it's gonna give you all this information back and a 300% rule and all this good stuff, by God, you gotta pay the person doing it because the time-
[00:11:32] Dustin Stutzman: Absolutely
[00:11:33] Jeff Compton: and if it's so responsible, obviously, for generating repairs, generating profit, it has a value which means then that the person doing it should be paid. They
[00:11:41] Dustin Stutzman: sh- should be paid. Yeah. Yes, you should be paid.
[00:11:45] Jeff Compton: So run me kinda through, like you were talking about earlier before we got on, you kinda come in in the morning, you said you diagnose five cars.
[00:11:53] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:11:53] Dustin Stutzman: Yep. And- So every day I come in, I usually diagnose about five cars, sometimes more, sometimes less. Um, so I'm actually our shop foreman. Okay. Um, and the way my sys- structure works is I have ... It's a flat foreman bonus every month. Mm-hmm. Right? Um, and it works out approximately, um, with efficiency and everything, I get about 23 hours a week-
[00:12:21] Jeff Compton: Okay
[00:12:21] Dustin Stutzman: um, that I can be a foreman effectively.
[00:12:25] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:12:25] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and then, uh, 90, it's about 92 to 93% of my pay is flat rate technician.
[00:12:33] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:33] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and so even with that diag number, um, being what it is, um, I usually run at, uh, about s- um, 100, between 150 and 170% efficiency.
[00:12:52] Jeff Compton: Good for you.
[00:12:53] Dustin Stutzman: Um, but that being said, I, I, I tell this to management all the time, I tell this to every time we talk to, we try to, um, train new technicians, whatever, I don't expect literally anyone to do what I do.
[00:13:12] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:13:13] Dustin Stutzman: Um, I, I am f- fully of the opinion that we should- We should be able to take a guy who wants to do, you know, brakes and, and, and, and shocks and, and throw in a transmission every now and then, and let him do that and pay him to the max level of what that means, and not try to force him into learning electrical.
[00:13:37] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:13:37] Dustin Stutzman: And, and that has always been... I, I just don't get it. Like, why are, why are so many places tr- they're like, "Well, we need to, you know, he needs to get... y- keep getting trained, he needs to keep getting learned up, he needs to figure out electrical, he needs to diag, he needs to..." And it's like, dude, you're, you...
[00:13:52] Dustin Stutzman: There are not that many people out there that can, that can rebuild an eight-speed and then go over to a hybrid and replace the internal batteries and, like, that's, that's not something that's just normal. Those people are, are honestly very rare.
[00:14:06] Jeff Compton: They're the unicorn. And
[00:14:06] Dustin Stutzman: so...
[00:14:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah, and- And we, we do that because, I'll tell you exactly why.
[00:14:10] Jeff Compton: You kinda, you know, and I'm gonna say it anyway. It's 'cause it's a logist- logistical nightmare if we all of a sudden say that there's really only one person in the shop that can- Mm-hmm ... determine what repair needs to be done, but I have 11 people that can get the repair done, right? Right. And that becomes a logistical nightmare that means that- Yeah
[00:14:26] Jeff Compton: everybody doesn't know how to dispatch, and then all of a sudden, it was like I made the comment this morning with Lucas' post, when we don't dispatch properly on the front counter, in the front counter left hand- Yep ... talking to right hand, we're dispatching, you know, tires to our A tech unicorn, and we're having the, this GS go out and pull codes in the parking lot- Right
[00:14:46] Jeff Compton: because that parking lot diag is, is a waiter, you know, s-
[00:14:50] Dustin Stutzman: Whatever, right ...
[00:14:51] Jeff Compton: long and it's gonna be picked up in an hour, and you've got your highest paid, which kills your ELR, or ELR, um, out there doing tires. Like, it makes-
[00:15:00] Dustin Stutzman: Right, that doesn't make sense. And it- It doesn't make- Why? It makes zero sense. So our...
[00:15:04] Dustin Stutzman: We actually have that, and actually, actually that writer that I was discussing who was manager, um, he does dispatch, and he works with me directly on dispatch. Um, and, and I tell him, and there's not, again, there's not very many people that are like this, um, but I tell him every, all the time, "Dude-" That's gonna be a tough diag.
[00:15:25] Dustin Stutzman: Give, give that to me-
[00:15:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:15:28] Dustin Stutzman: and I'll figure that out.
[00:15:29] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:15:30] Dustin Stutzman: And give, you know, uh, give that, you know, f- flush or whatever to... He needs hours. Go give it to him. Mm. Or, or, or, and, and knowing, and he knows all the time, you know, where everyone's hours are. Yeah. Um, and if anyone's low or anyone's whatever, uh, well, I'm gonna throw some flushes his way.
[00:15:47] Dustin Stutzman: I'm gonna throw... And, and honestly, I, I've always been of the opinion, I don't want... Like, there's no reason to have me with my skillset doing- Yeah ... uh, a s- bunch of tires and, and, uh, you know, a bunch of flushes or wha- I'll, I'll sell all those flushes that you want. I'll sell all that work that you want, but I am going to give that away.
[00:16:12] Dustin Stutzman: I'm gonna say, "Someone else can make a day and have money." And the thing is, is that when you give that, when you give, like, the diag stuff and, uh, and the harder stuff to someone who struggles with it- It's a lose for everyone because-
[00:16:26] Jeff Compton: Oh, s- yeah. 'Cause-
[00:16:27] Dustin Stutzman: I could have, I could have gone over there and figured that out, plus figured out their other problem, and told them all this other stuff that was wrong with their car, and I could have s- sold all of that stuff.
[00:16:41] Dustin Stutzman: And I, because I've been doing it for so long, um, I know what I need to sell and how I need to sell it, and what an hour is worth, if you will. Mm-hmm. So I, I can go to the writer and say, and, and there's no question, I'll be like, "Hey, this is where we're at. This is the data we've gathered in, in the initial diagnosis.
[00:17:00] Dustin Stutzman: We need more time for X, Y, whatever test." And it's easy, it's simple. I, I didn't take me much time to figure that out. It didn't take them much time to, to call and say, "Okay, this is where we're at. This is all the data. We've done, you know, relative compression. We've done injector analysis. We've pulled, he's pulled out the scope, he's done this.
[00:17:17] Dustin Stutzman: Uh, all right. This is where we're at. We gotta take this apart." And instead they have, I mean, I have... We had a car, so this was it, it went to basically the technician who's b- directly beneath me. Mm-hmm. Um, after a technician had already... I mean, he put... So it came in with a converter completely melted. The inside of the converter's gone.
[00:17:43] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:17:43] Dustin Stutzman: And it's all melted. And I wa- I, I, I, he, he was told to ask me about it.
[00:17:49] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:17:50] Dustin Stutzman: And he didn't. But I happened to walk by and I- I was like, "Yo, what are you doing?" Uh, 'cause it, it would seem kind of odd. Um, and he's like, "Oh, this converter's trash, man. It's completely melted all the way through." And I said, I said, "You, you realize that that's a symptom, right?"
[00:18:06] Dustin Stutzman: "That's not the actual problem."
[00:18:08] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:18:08] Dustin Stutzman: And he's like, "Well, I mean, I, I gotta start here, you know?" I'm like, "I, I, I'm, I'm not saying that you do or don't, but I am saying that that is not the problem."
[00:18:16] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. "
[00:18:16] Dustin Stutzman: You understand that?"
[00:18:17] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:18] Dustin Stutzman: And he ended up, so it ended up getting that, got the converter, and of course, it still, you know, didn't run right, did all this other stuff, and, um, it ended up, he comes to me and he...
[00:18:32] Dustin Stutzman: And that's another problem I have with, um, helping, um, is that you can't, you can't flat rate teach.
[00:18:41] Jeff Compton: Nope.
[00:18:43] Dustin Stutzman: And so if I, if I'm a flat rate technician, if 90% of my, my pay structure is flat rate- I will help. I have a certain allotment to help, but I am not going to do. Yeah. If I g- if I get into doing, I'm getting paid.
[00:18:59] Dustin Stutzman: That's how, that's how it works.
[00:19:00] Jeff Compton: I used to say that all the time, right? Like, I'll go over and, and give them a bullet once in a while or say like, "Hey, you know, I see a lot more of these kind of complaints than you do, right? You're normally a transmission guy, but there's no-" Mm-hmm. "transmissions. I give you that.
[00:19:13] Jeff Compton: Here's something I saw last time." Right. But if I got to get in there and start, A, lending you tools to do it, for instance, like- Right ... I remember a guy used to wanna borrow my compression gauge all the time. Right. Nope. Like, uh, just put the n- my number on the ticket. You don't have the tool, and I'll go over- Yep
[00:19:27] Jeff Compton: and I'll come- Yep ... and you can have the car back for the rest of it. I don't even care. Right. And they, you know, they would get upset. But if I have to go- Yeah ... and start doing tests for you, um- Yeah ... just give me the ticket because it's, it's, I'm now spending time I'm not.
[00:19:41] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:19:42] Jeff Compton: It's, it's different if he comes over to you and says, "Hey, Dustin, like this converter's melted and I have, uh, these fuel trims, or I have this code that came up."
[00:19:49] Jeff Compton: Yes. "What, what do you think about that?" And you can go, "Eh, I'd probably look at whether an injector is shot," you know? Or I'd- Yep ... look for a, a stuck O2 that's over fueling or something like that. Yep. I'm not gonna get in there and go, "Okay, let me have the scanner and let me go drive it for 20 minutes and come back and tell you what to do next."
[00:20:05] Jeff Compton: Like, that's- Right ... dispatch wrong. Right,
[00:20:08] Dustin Stutzman: right.
[00:20:09] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:20:09] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah, yeah. And that, and that car in specifically ended up, so it ended up going to that other technician after he couldn't really figure anything out, and he put a, he put a PCM in it. He put a new set of spark plugs in it. He put a, um, obviously the converter in it, and then so they're like, "Well, it should probably go to Dustin."
[00:20:28] Dustin Stutzman: And they're like, but, and then they were like, "Well, he's the highest paid, so we really don't want to 'cause we've already lost on this car."
[00:20:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah, sure.
[00:20:36] Dustin Stutzman: And I'm like, and, and I, I stayed out of it. I said, "I can figure it out. There's no, there's no question that, that I'll be... I can figure it out. It's just gonna take time, and I'm gonna charge you for that time."
[00:20:45] Dustin Stutzman: And so they ended up giving it to the other tech, and he messes around, and, uh, his familiarity with scope is not that high. Um, so he ends up actually creating a case with the manufacturer, like what they sh- told him to do and, and he was kind of thinking maybe timing or whatever, 'cause what was happening is it wouldn't- cold at all.
[00:21:07] Dustin Stutzman: It wouldn't start cold, like, at all. And then once it got up to a certain temperature, ambient-
[00:21:13] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:21:14] Dustin Stutzman: it would start. Hm. Um, and it would, it would just sit there and crank, crank. And then when it did start, fuel trims absurdly rich.
[00:21:23] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Dustin Stutzman: And then it would drive fine, and eventually everything would clear itself.
[00:21:28] Dustin Stutzman: The fuel trims would come back down, and it would be fine. But then you let it sit overnight and come back the next day, it's not gonna start.
[00:21:33] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:21:34] Dustin Stutzman: Every time. So he in- in, uh, I think he ended up maybe putting a fuel pump in it, and eventually it got... He basically got to a point and he, he basically bowed out, right?
[00:21:43] Jeff Compton: Sure.
[00:21:43] Dustin Stutzman: Um, he said, "Dude, I, I'm, um, I, I don't know what else to try, really. Um, they're talking about scope, and realistically you're gonna be the best for that anyways, so, you know, uh, that's where, this is where we're at." And then the m- manager came over and said, "We need to figure this out. This customer's already spent this much money.
[00:22:01] Dustin Stutzman: Like, y- you're, you're gonna have to figure it out." I'm like, uh, I said, "Okay, so what, what am I getting paid?" Right. And they said, "Well, just, just keep track of your time. We'll figure it out." I said, "Okay, fine. Uh, I will keep track of all my time, and then I will get paid that amount." Mm-hmm. And I got started. So after, obviously, boatloads of testing, whatever, I figured out that what was happening was- The reason it wouldn't start is because it was still in cold start.
[00:22:34] Jeff Compton: In
[00:22:34] Dustin Stutzman: re- Um-
[00:22:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah. A-
[00:22:35] Dustin Stutzman: and so it was, it was, this is firing the injectors and holding them open a little longer, which is, which is obviously completely normal. Like, right? Like, that's completely normal. But what was happening is they had aftermarket coils.
[00:22:46] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[00:22:46] Dustin Stutzman: And these aftermarket coils were collapsing and firing in such a way that it would cause a second firing of the injector during startup, so it was just overfueling.
[00:22:57] Dustin Stutzman: We ended up putting a f- set of factory coils in it, and it fixed the car.
[00:23:01] Jeff Compton: Crazy. Crazy.
[00:23:02] Dustin Stutzman: And so, a- and, and I have the scope captures, I have all the information. Obviously, I did leak down, relative compression, timing analysis. Like, I, 'cause, you know, y- you don't know, right? And so I come to them and I say, "Hey, you know, these are all the tests."
[00:23:15] Dustin Stutzman: And I gave them a play-by-play, like an update every so many hours. I'd be like, "Hey, this is what I've tested, this is what I've done, this is what... And, you know, I got it started here, and I ch- monitored the fuel trims here, and I did this, I did..." Whatever. Like, I did all of that and I said, "All, all in, you're looking at about 10 hours for the fix, for everything."
[00:23:31] Dustin Stutzman: And they just said, "Well, um-"
[00:23:33] Jeff Compton: We can pay you for the fix, Dustin.
[00:23:35] Dustin Stutzman: They said, "Well, uh, I mean, you're, you're, you, you do get a, y- you do have a, a thing set up, a bonus." And I'm like, "Okay, but that wasn't, that wasn't for that." And I was like... And they're like, "Well, we'll have to, we'll have to discuss it." Inevitably, after discussing it and me telling them everything I sa- I said, I told them, I said, "You had two technicians spend upwards of 15, 20 hours and thousands of dollars of, in repairs, and I was, I'm able to fix it for a set of coils and that labor number."
[00:24:09] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:10] Dustin Stutzman: I think that's pretty cheap, if you ask me.
[00:24:13] Jeff Compton: Bargain. It's a bargain.
[00:24:15] Dustin Stutzman: And, and inevitably they, they did end up a- agreeing with me, if you will, um, and they paid me, but, like, it's, it's, ah, it's such a fight and I, I just-
[00:24:26] Jeff Compton: It's a- I just
[00:24:26] Dustin Stutzman: hate ...
[00:24:27] Jeff Compton: it's when they, and I don't mean to interrupt, but it's when they begrudgingly do it, right?
[00:24:30] Jeff Compton: And that's the thing that has so shaped my attitude, 'cause it's not just about, like- Right ... I get it. I, I, I got paid. Like, I- Right ... I took the high ground, I stood my ground, and I, and you paid me. But man, that, that fight- Yep ... acknowledged and appreciated and it-
[00:24:46] Dustin Stutzman: Yep. So- ...
[00:24:48] Jeff Compton: commented is what wears me down.
[00:24:49] Dustin Stutzman: It does.
[00:24:50] Dustin Stutzman: And so that's actually... And it's funny that you say that because, so th- we've onl- I've only been with this group for, for now a couple years, and before that it was an individually owned owner.
[00:25:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:25:00] Dustin Stutzman: And he kind of always had that policy of like, "You know, if you're the top techs, you, you, my, my office is always open."
[00:25:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Dustin Stutzman: And when we'd have a situation like this, right? He would come out and he'd be like, "Hey, I know that, you know, we're not gonna charge the customer for this, right?"
[00:25:20] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:20] Dustin Stutzman: He said... He's like, "J- just tell me a number and I will gladly pay you it." I literally, for him, and I, and I've, and I've gone through this with, with my director and every time I've discussed pay and all that stuff, I said, when it was him, my, my monthly bonus, I wrote a number on a piece of paper and walked up to the office and said, "This is how much you owe me this month and for my bonus."
[00:25:43] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Dustin Stutzman: And he said, "Yeah, okay. Here you go." He writes a check and he hands it to me, and that's- That's why I work where I work. That's why I got there. Yeah. But then inevitably, they got bought out, bigger dealer group, and they don't... This, it's, it's, it's, it's a little more, um, obviously corporate, right? Um, and they don't see it that way.
[00:26:02] Dustin Stutzman: And I, and, and they, they think more or less that I'm just overpaid.
[00:26:07] Jeff Compton: But see, and it, and I always talked about, and I've heard other people do it, and I don't know whether it's all that effective or not, and I guess it would depend on the individual. But, like, say I'm working for a dealer owner and they say, "You know, I can't necessarily bonus you for this, but here is, h- here's an SRT for a demo for the weekend," right?
[00:26:26] Dustin Stutzman: Sure.
[00:26:26] Jeff Compton: Or, "I've got, you know, box seats at the, for the hockey game." Mm-hmm. "Here are my tickets for tonight," right? "I appreciate you. Thank you. You know, I can't go and lay $1,000 cash on the desk every time, but here's something to, to acknowledge that you saved us, you saved me." Right. And that is the value and, and, you know.
[00:26:47] Jeff Compton: But they don't wanna do that anymore. No, no. And, and I, I sit there and look at it and it's like, we have, at a dealer special, we have all these cars that sit there, and some people would just love to be able to, like, I don't know, drive it- Drive it. Sure ... you know, drive it home for the weekend or, you know.
[00:27:02] Jeff Compton: And, and I'm not talking tear it up or damage it or whatever.
[00:27:05] Dustin Stutzman: No, just, just take it for a weekend.
[00:27:06] Jeff Compton: Yeah. But do we allow them? No. No. Do we ever throw them a, $100... And I know shops do. But say it's like, "Okay, here's a h- you know, $100 gift for, you know, Outback Steakhouse or whatever, you know, St. Chris or whatever.
[00:27:21] Jeff Compton: Like, just go enjoy your thank you for that." That's worth so much more m- to me sometimes than- Mm-hmm ... the dollar amount. The dollar amount I'm just gonna spend on fishing gear or, you know. Sure. Right? Sure. Sure. Whereas if I, if you give me something that is a memory that, that counteracts that negative that I had to fight, man- Yeah
[00:27:41] Jeff Compton: that's worth so much more than just money that I'm gonna spend on, on toys and frivolous stuff, right?
[00:27:46] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. I mean, uh, my, and I go back to that, that same owner, I... And I told the, this, whenever we got bought out or whatever, I told them, I was like, "I never, literally never asked for a raise." Mm-hmm. He just came out and said, "Hey-
[00:28:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:28:00] Dustin Stutzman: uh, I don't want you to leave, uh, so here's a dollar amount." Or I would present a problem, right? Like I would say, "Hey, I'm doing this," right? Like, "This is what I'm doing, um, and this is going to equate to most likely a little bit of a change in the hour number or whatever. Um, my producti- my efficiency's gonna go down because of the way that this is structured."
[00:28:20] Dustin Stutzman: And he would look at me and go, "Well, how about I just give you more money?" I'm like, "Yeah, that'll fix it." He's like, "Okay, then I'll just give you more money." And, and that's, that's it. Like I, I had never had to ask for a raise from him. No. And again- That, that's why, that's why I... That's literally why I work where I work.
[00:28:36] Dustin Stutzman: And then now that it's more, it, it's... I, and I knew it was going to be this way, right? Like, it, it is, it's part, it's the nature of it. Um, and they've, they said many times, like, uh, "Everybody's a number, everybody's replaceable, everybody's..." You know? And it's like-
[00:28:51] Jeff Compton: Ugh ...
[00:28:52] Dustin Stutzman: it's like, dude, I understand that, but my thing has always been, like, when I talk, when another dealership tries to poach me or another, another repair facility, whatever-
[00:29:01] Jeff Compton: Mm
[00:29:02] Dustin Stutzman: I literally, whenever I came up, when I came here to the dealership I'm at, um, I had another dealership shortly thereafter try to poach me, and when I told him the number that it took me to, to get me to where I was, he literally goes, "Yeah. No. Yeah. No. Yeah. No. I, I, that's just not, that's not... I mean, good for you-
[00:29:25] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:29:26] Dustin Stutzman: but, yeah, we can't do that here."
[00:29:28] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:29:29] Dustin Stutzman: And, and you wanna know what? He was, so he was an individual dealership. He hated the dealer group meetings and the... Like, he didn't go to any of those. He didn't talk to other dealerships. He said, he said, uh, his... He's like, "I don't necessarily care about how many cars we sell.
[00:29:47] Dustin Stutzman: I just want my service department to be so good-
[00:29:50] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:29:51] Dustin Stutzman: that I can hand them anything and I know it's gonna get fixed, I know it's gonna be done right." Right. And, and that's, and that's why I came.
[00:30:00] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:00] Dustin Stutzman: He, he... And, and whenever, uh... And I remember, so if I go back to the, to the dealership I worked at before that, I was foreman there as well, um, and it was a, it was a, it was a sales-oriented dealership, right?
[00:30:12] Dustin Stutzman: Yes. Um, so much so that, like, 80% of our work at that dealership was internal. Mm-hmm. Um, and an 80% internal number is bananas- Yes ... in my book, but that's what it was. And, uh, I ca- and, and car sales were down, whatever. Um, and so I ca- and so I looked at my... We was, we was the end of the first quarter, and at that time, I think I had made, this is, this is seven, eight years ago, nine years ago now probably, I made, um- maybe like 75K a year that year.
[00:30:49] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm. Um, and I was looking at my first quarter numbers year over year, and I was like, "Dude, if this trend continues, I'm gonna lose 20 to $30,000 this year because we're not selling cars."
[00:31:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:31:01] Dustin Stutzman: And so I went into, it was a meeting with my manager and the owner's son basically, um, and they were discussing whatever, and I said, "Hey, can I, can I talk to you guys for a minute?"
[00:31:11] Dustin Stutzman: They're like, "Yeah, sure." And he's like... I was like, "So, you know, um, all of our numbers are down." Like, "Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're just, you know, really not selling cars right now." And I'm like, "Okay. Cool. Um, but, like, if this trend currently that is happening right now continues, I'm slated to lose about $30,000 this year."
[00:31:29] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:30] Dustin Stutzman: And he's like, "Oh, well, I mean, you know how it is, man. I mean, you know, if we c- if we can just sell some more cars we'll be great." And I'm like, "Yeah, I get that, but I'm telling you I am not going to lose 30,000. That's not gonna happen. Like, that's, that's not... Like, I didn't do anything different. This is not my fault, so I'm not going to lose that money, so what are you gonna do about it?"
[00:31:49] Jeff Compton: How are you in service responsible for car sales?
[00:31:52] Dustin Stutzman: Right. And he said, "Well, I mean, you know our internal numbers so high, um, that's gonna take a big hit, so if we can just sell some more cars then, then it'll, it'll turn itself around and it'll get fixed, and blah, blah, blah." And I was like... And I said, "Okay. So that's, that's, that's wh- that's your stance?
[00:32:09] Dustin Stutzman: That's what you... That's the fix?" He's like, "I mean, realistically that's all we can do is just try to sell more." I'm like, "Okay. That's fine." I literally left that meeting and walked out to my toolbox- Mm ... and put up my resume. And li... the, so the owner I was just discussing about, um, in less than 20 minutes he says, he c- he calls me directly and he said, "I'm looking for someone.
[00:32:33] Dustin Stutzman: If you are who you say you are, I got a job for you." And I'm like, "Okay, well, what do you, what do you, what do you mean? You got..." Like, what, th- this is... I said, I said, "You're a little bit far away," 'cause at the time it was gonna be, like, a 50-minute to an hour drive one way, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and I was like, "That's..."
[00:32:50] Dustin Stutzman: And I was like, "I don't want you to waste your time. I'm not trying..." Like, I, I... This is going, th- this is... Whatever I do land on, it's just, it's gonna be significant. Like, I know what I can do, I know what I'm pr- like... And he's like, "Listen, if you can do everything that you said you can do and you are who you say you are, um, the only question you're gonna have is if you can make the drive.
[00:33:12] Dustin Stutzman: Money will never be an, a problem."
[00:33:14] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:33:15] Dustin Stutzman: And I s- I was like, "Oh, th- I, that's, that's great." And he said, "And, and if you, even if you're not who you say you are, you know you're a, you know, fully certified..." I'm s- so I'm fully GM certified, I'm fully Chrysler certified.
[00:33:28] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[00:33:29] Dustin Stutzman: And he's like, "You can, you can pretty much go wherever you wanna go.
[00:33:32] Dustin Stutzman: If this doesn't work out," he said, "listen, we're gonna s- we'll set up basically a 90-day... This is how much you're gonna make for 90 days. And after that 90 days, go where you want."
[00:33:45] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[00:33:45] Dustin Stutzman: You, you can, you, we can, we can negotiate, we can set it up." And I think at the time, what was that? The 90-day number was, uh, 30,000, 35,000, I think, um, for 90 days.
[00:34:00] Dustin Stutzman: He said, "After that, we'll, we'll, we'll negotiate however you wanna negotiate, 'cause you'll have an understanding of what this, what you can do here, and then we'll move forward."
[00:34:11] Jeff Compton: Wow.
[00:34:11] Dustin Stutzman: And, uh, after that... And that wa- a- and then needless to say, the rest is history. I, I never went anywhere else. I worked with him for six years, and I never had to ask for a raise.
[00:34:23] Dustin Stutzman: And every time that another dealership tried to talk to me, I told them what I was making, and they'd just go, "Ugh, yeah, no, we can't do that. Uh, we, the maximum we ever pay any technician ever is this number." And I'm like, "Oh, okay. Well, then sorry. Why, why are you talking to me?"
[00:34:39] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Now the manager and the manager's son that you left, or the owner and the owner's son that you left, excuse me, whatever happened to them?
[00:34:44] Jeff Compton: Where, where did they wind up?
[00:34:46] Dustin Stutzman: So, so they owned, um, two, three, three dealerships, um, on top of a power stor- power sports store. And, um, then they also had- Uh, car washes.
[00:35:06] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:35:06] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and so the problem with that situation specifically was we were the lost store.
[00:35:13] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:35:14] Dustin Stutzman: And so I, I had meetings with the owner and, um, 'cause my new owner effectively was actually interested in buying something in that location, and, uh, his exact words were...
[00:35:30] Dustin Stutzman: 'Cause I, I, I was, I was, I was at the point at that dealership, um, where the only way I was gonna make more money was if I-- we did some sort of profit sharing. So I was actually looking at, like, profit numbers. And every single time we posted a profit, let's say it was 100 bucks-
[00:35:46] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:35:47] Dustin Stutzman: our fixed ops would go up 150.
[00:35:49] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:51] Dustin Stutzman: And, and, and so I g- it got, obviously it got to a point where I was just like, "This is, this is, this is very clearly, you know, this is not working." But either way, and whenever we discussed, like, actually selling and potentially buying the store, he, he basically said, he said, "I mean, I will entertain a number obviously, like everything's for sale per se."
[00:36:10] Dustin Stutzman: He said, "But I will say that store is doing exactly what it's supposed to do."
[00:36:15] Jeff Compton: And I-- Oh man, you just touched on something really cool there because I have a friend that got really high up in a dealer group here, and they just bought the local GM dealer that, or Chevrolet dealer that had been family-owned for- Yeah
[00:36:28] Jeff Compton: 50 years, right?
[00:36:30] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah.
[00:36:30] Jeff Compton: And he came in and bought it and he said to me, he said, "A lot of these dealer groups keep some low performers on intentionally- Uh-huh ...
[00:36:38] Dustin Stutzman: to
[00:36:38] Jeff Compton: play with the curve and drive the number down and- Yep ... and all that kind of stuff." And he said, "Some of it is just a situation of it is the location is what it is, the market is the market, and they're never going to, for instance, like where I live, they're not gonna put up the kind of numbers that you put up in a major city like Ottawa.
[00:36:54] Jeff Compton: Just can't happen." Yeah.
[00:36:55] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. It just-- Exactly.
[00:36:56] Jeff Compton: But it, it brings the average down and, and, and makes everybody goes, "Well, you know, you just gotta keep hustling, man. Like we, we think you guys can hit the numbers that, you know, Ottawa's hitting. So keep pushing and, and maybe next year, you know, you'll get-" Yep.
[00:37:09] Jeff Compton: two dollar bump." Meanwhile, it's, it's never gonna happen. My Mac Tool dealer told me a really cool thing. He's like, "In your area right now," or my city I'm in, "there's like 250 approximately shops." Okay. And he talks about, like- The one up the road from me, 30 minutes, little town, hardly any people live there.
[00:37:28] Jeff Compton: Not even 10% of my population. It's probably, like, 3%. And he's going, "There, there's almost 50 shops." So he says, "Do the math." He says, "It just waters down the market-
[00:37:40] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm ...
[00:37:40] Jeff Compton: because it's all these people." And he says, "That's legit places." Everybody he says, "We know that they come in, somebody gives an estimate, and the person walks out of there, goes to the parts store, buys the parts, and they're at some backyard place getting those customer-supplied parts installed by somebody that's- Yep
[00:37:56] Jeff Compton: charging for $80, $60, $50 an hour."
[00:37:59] Dustin Stutzman: Yep.
[00:37:59] Jeff Compton: Some markets just suck, and I believe that the dealer groups are intentionally playing that game now.
[00:38:04] Dustin Stutzman: They are.
[00:38:04] Jeff Compton: Uh, I know that some shops, uh, hang on, multi-store owners hang on to one for that very reason. Not because they wanna see it bleed money, but because it, it keeps, like, at the end of the day, maybe the real estate's worth more than whatever it's gonna turn as a business, and I'm just waiting- Right
[00:38:20] Jeff Compton: for, you know, a development to come along and then I'm gonna offload that.
[00:38:23] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. And I know, I know that shop specifically, all major purchases went through that shop.
[00:38:29] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:29] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. Every single major purchase, whether it was a, whether it was a, a skid steer, whether it was a... It didn't matter. That shop bought it all.
[00:38:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:38:39] Dustin Stutzman: And I'm like, it, it was inevitably, obviously that, that was a, that was the situation, and it was, it was a sm- it was exactly like you said. It was a smaller market. It was a town of, you know, 5,000 people, 6,000 people, and it was just a dealership. They were, they, they... Like he said, he's like, "It w- it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do."
[00:38:57] Dustin Stutzman: And I'm like, "That's..." I mean, I get it. I understand. I, I do, but man, it's frustrating to be in that situation. And inevitably, uh, the move was probably the best thing that I could have done anyways, 'cause I w- I was inevitably, I, I had pretty much outgrown that situation overall. Like, I, I did, I did pretty much everything, right?
[00:39:16] Dustin Stutzman: Like, I was the IT guy. I was the, um... You know, and I, to this day, I still, I-- there is not a, uh, person in our dealer group. So we, I think we have four Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram dealerships.
[00:39:29] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:29] Dustin Stutzman: Um, there is not another person in the dealer group that knows, um, labor operations as well as I do. Right. That knows the parts catalog as well as I do.
[00:39:42] Dustin Stutzman: And then obviously from the, the rep- actual repair side, um, there's, there's no one there either. So, like, I, I, I've been-- Because I was in that smaller store, it allowed me to... And then another thing, and this is gonna be, this is kind of a tangent, I guess, um, that I kind of- I feel like when it comes to teaching, um, so I didn't, like, specifically, uh, Chrysler.
[00:40:10] Dustin Stutzman: The reason I am a Chrysler Dodge Jeep certified technician is because one didn't exist.
[00:40:17] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:40:18] Dustin Stutzman: Like, the guy that they... So they bought out a Chrysler store, um, that was just down the street, and we all moved to Chrysler and GM, and I had most of my GM certification at that time, and I was young, right? And, uh, they were like, "Well, we got one senior, senior Chrysler tech and we have a younger Chrysler tech, but he's older than you are."
[00:40:37] Dustin Stutzman: And the younger one, he left immediately. The older guy, it was like six months and he's like, "I'm, I've been in this too long. I'm going to a fleet. Um, I'm out of here." Yeah. "This is, this... I, I can't do this." 'Cause, well, and it... The biggest reason is because he was paid basically a salary plus bonus system, and when the new dealership came in, they were like, "No, no, no, everybody's flat rate."
[00:41:01] Dustin Stutzman: And so he was like, "I can't..." Obviously this guy was, I mean, he was, he was probably 50, 52, 53, and he's like, "I'm, I'm not... This isn't... I'm not doing this." Yeah. Right? Like, a whole life of pretty much no flat rate and then you're dumped on flat rate at 50 whatever. Like, that's... He's like, "Nah, this isn't, this isn't for me.
[00:41:18] Dustin Stutzman: I'm out." And so then they... This was actually right around the time that, uh... And now you, obviously you probably were familiar with it, um, where Chrysler was... So they had just been bought out by Fiat- Mm-hmm ... and they were doing, going away from the five-star program- Yeah ... like five-star, uh, teaching or whatever, and they were turning it into the levels, right?
[00:41:36] Dustin Stutzman: And they, and you had to have a certain level technician in order to do repairs, right? And they were like, "Well, we don't have anyone."
[00:41:43] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:44] Dustin Stutzman: Um, "So we need someone. Um, how about..." Well, you know, they asked me, they were like, "Will you do it? And this will be, you know, this is... We're, we're looking for someone who's gonna do the training and get it done as basically flat rate training."
[00:41:56] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:41:56] Dustin Stutzman: And so I went from zero, level zero, no Chrysler certifications, not even an SID login- ... to Chrysler master certified in under a year.
[00:42:06] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:42:07] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and, and I was still doing my GM training at the time too. Um, and so I had... I remember I had a, I had a one-day class, um, in Des Moines, Iowa, which is like a six and a half, seven-hour drive.
[00:42:23] Dustin Stutzman: I made it a one-day class. I left at 1:00 AM, I got to class at like 8:00, had the course, and then left and drove back home because I, I was just t- training so much that I, I just... And I would do the web-based trainings in my hotel-
[00:42:39] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:42:40] Dustin Stutzman: while I was waiting for the next day of class. And I had, I had train... I had trainings all over the Midwest effectively, um, that I was just, uh, all the time.
[00:42:49] Dustin Stutzman: There was a year, there was a, a solid six-month stint that I spent like two weeks in the dealership. Um, and I, but I got, I, obviously I got all my trainings done and I've maintained all those trainings ever since. Um, but I am primarily, and that's why I ended up going to only a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram dealer is because, um...
[00:43:13] Dustin Stutzman: Well, actually, what it came down to was the only reason that I worked on GM products while I was at that dealership, the, um, was if it was a problem car, right? Like, if it was a really goofy, like they're like, "Hey, nobody else can fix this. We need someone," whatever. I was like, "Yeah, yeah, you know, whatever.
[00:43:28] Dustin Stutzman: That's fine." Um, and I had one, and this is the reason I will not work... And I, and I actually advise... There is, there is one car brand that I will tell people to not buy and that's General Motors. Wow. Um, b- and it's purely because of the technician side, and I legitimately, I don't even have a technician to reference people.
[00:43:50] Dustin Stutzman: Like I, I can tell you, like if someone comes up to me and they say, "Hey, I've got a Toyota. Um, who should I take it to?"
[00:43:55] Jeff Compton: Yeah, and
[00:43:55] Dustin Stutzman: you- I'm like, "Actually, I know a guy. He works here," blah, blah, blah. I do not have that GM reference because every single one of them... I, I worked with a guy that had a Chevy bow tie tattooed to his chest, and he works at a Ford store.
[00:44:09] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:44:10] Dustin Stutzman: Like, I'm not even joking. This guy has, has four big block Chevys-
[00:44:16] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:44:16] Dustin Stutzman: in a Chevelle, a Nova, an, a '80s box truck, and like he, he, he won't, he doesn't do it anymore. And it's purely because of the way GM pays, and I... GM is the only one that I've ever had do this. They had a... It was, so it was right around the era that GM was introducing their, they just had gotten into diesel exhaust fluid, diesel emissions.
[00:44:38] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. And, uh, they were having a heck of a time with their, um, NOX sensors and like getting them to read appropriately and actually get them to pass their, their SCR efficiency tests.
[00:44:50] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:44:51] Dustin Stutzman: And so obviously I had one. I was the guy that was in charge of this, and so I, I, I had to work directly with field- uh, with a, uh, field service engineer and talk to GM about what to do, and they literally told me, they said, "Hey, this is what you're gonna have to do.
[00:45:08] Dustin Stutzman: You're gonna have to do the stationary test, then you're gonna have to do a stationary region, then you're gonna have to go drive it. And then if the light comes back on, you basically have to redo that sequence. And then you keep doing that sequence until it passes." And I was like, "Okay, so how, how long is this gonna take?
[00:45:28] Dustin Stutzman: Like, what, what are we talking here?" And they said, "Oh, this can take upwards of four to five hours."
[00:45:33] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[00:45:34] Dustin Stutzman: And I'm like, "Okay. Well, I guess if that's the case, then, then that's the case. You know, I, I nee- I gotta fix this car." Um, and that's always, and that's kind of always been my mindset when you're, when you're at a dealership, which is honestly one of the things I like, is like, this is your brand.
[00:45:47] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. You have to fix it. They're... You have all the tools, you have all the resources. Mm-hmm. Fix the car. Um, and so I, I clocked in. I c- I have, I have, I have notes that are, that are, that are multiple pages long of every step of the process, right? And So it ends up being like six hours of doing these tests, doing regens, doing calibrations, going and driving it.
[00:46:14] Dustin Stutzman: I have the total mileage in and out. I have receipts from the amount of diesel fuel I used.
[00:46:19] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:46:20] Dustin Stutzman: And we submit all this, right? And I submit all the time, I submit the story, I submit everything. And, uh, my manager at the time comes out and he says, "Hey, uh, they're only gonna pay you two hours." Hmm. And I said, "No.
[00:46:34] Dustin Stutzman: No, they're not. I, I have literally clock time of six hours." And he said, "I, I do. I'm fighting. I'm, I'm doing everything I can." And I... And so we ended up escalating the case as high as we could within the structure, right? And so this is a GM guy, and he, and exact words were, "We know it takes that much time, but the maximum we will ever pay you for that repair is two hours."
[00:47:02] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:47:02] Dustin Stutzman: Ever.
[00:47:03] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:47:03] Dustin Stutzman: And, and so I looked at, I looked at my manager and I said, "Buddy, if I'm working on a GM product, you are paying me whatever I tell you, you are paying me." And- "I don't care what it is. I don't care what you get paid. I am getting my time."
[00:47:20] Jeff Compton: Well, and I've had that so... I've had that conversation 100 times with people on my comment threads and, you know, in conversations like this, if I've had it once.
[00:47:29] Jeff Compton: You don't work for the OE, right? So when they come to you and say, "I can only pay you this," what they mean to say is, "They're only paying us this amount." This, right. And I have to come good for the difference. That's the second half of the- Mm-hmm ... of the conversation. We're gonna come up with the other four, Dustin.
[00:47:46] Dustin Stutzman: Right,
[00:47:46] Jeff Compton: right. Not, not, do not expect... We're not gonna hang you out here and go too much. But see, people... And I'm almost frustrated to the point where it's like I don't wanna hear it anymore because it's like the, the, the go-to answer I'm telling everybody, and there's some truth to it, but there's also some caveats, is you're ex- standing and accepting it, which means that they will do it to you over and over again.
[00:48:06] Jeff Compton: You have to sit there and politely say to them, "No, I understand, and this is, it's all documented just like you just did." Right. You know? Or, it boomeranged around the shop and nobody else fixed it, and I fixed it. Yep. I don't care that you paid out blah, blah, blah, blah, blah to those- That's
[00:48:20] Dustin Stutzman: irrelevant ...
[00:48:21] Jeff Compton: this is...
[00:48:22] Jeff Compton: Yeah. My time on it is four hours, you're paying me four hours. That's it. Yep. That's it. It's o- it's not, it's not up for discussion. I don't work for the OE. I work for- Right. And let's cut, let's just round numbers. 50 bucks, right? Right. 50 bucks, four hours labor, $200. If that person in the dealership that owns the dealer is coming down from the head office or whatever office says they can't find $200, F off with that.
[00:48:46] Jeff Compton: Go sell some- Yep ... hats in the parts department. Right. Best market of, margin of anything in there. Right. And, and get me my money.
[00:48:53] Dustin Stutzman: Right.
[00:48:53] Jeff Compton: It's as simple as that. And it sounds terrible to say that, but that's really where we are- No ... in this industry at this point.
[00:49:00] Dustin Stutzman: That, that is 100% where we are in the industry.
[00:49:02] Dustin Stutzman: And that's always... And, and I go back, so my big thing that I... And I ke- and I preach it to the technicians all the ti- time, and this is with anything, is- You get it on the front
[00:49:14] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[00:49:14] Dustin Stutzman: I get it. Like, I tell... Like, before I touch the car, before I take the keys- Yeah ... I ask, "Hey, how am I getting paid for this?" I just did, I just had another situation, actually just last, just this last week.
[00:49:27] Dustin Stutzman: Another technician did- Two alignments in totaling of six hours worth of work
[00:49:34] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[00:49:35] Dustin Stutzman: And he couldn't, and he couldn't get this car to drive straight
[00:49:38] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:49:39] Dustin Stutzman: And I, uh, and so the, the guy comes back, and obviously the guy's frustrated, and obviously they're frustrated because the alignment, that's a menu item, right?
[00:49:47] Dustin Stutzman: Like, they're only paying an hour to do this. And they hand me the keys and say, "Hey, this guy's, you know, mad. We need someone who can actually, you know, do a real alignment on this." And I'm like, "Okay, fine. I'll d- I'll do it." And I said, I said, "But before I do this, how am I getting paid?" And he, he goes, "We already talked about it.
[00:50:06] Dustin Stutzman: You're getting paid whatever you ask to get paid for." Mm. I'm like, "Okay." I grab the keys, and I go do the alignment. And he ended up, so he ended up having it so badly messed up that I effectively had to do two alignments. I had to adjust everything and then recompensate and then readjust everything. Um, and so I charged for two full alignments at book time.
[00:50:24] Dustin Stutzman: And the menu time, the menu item, the, all that, I don't care. That's, that, that doesn't, that doesn't matter. Like a- again, I go back to we are, y- you are effectively a contractor. That is how much it pays. If you wanna figure out how you're gonna pay that, that's fine, but that's not my problem.
[00:50:44] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Real, real world time is real world time, and that's, like, if I take the real world time to fix the car, you owe me the real world time.
[00:50:52] Jeff Compton: Right. Not, you know, the, uh, you know, because let's be real, it's like any labor study, whether we call it menu pricing or labor study for a warranty or whatever. Right. Fix enough of them that eventually... Like, I was talking with somebody the other day, and it's like people are forgetting in this industry that most of these people, I watch them, and after they do the repair two, three times, they can normally hit the time.
[00:51:11] Jeff Compton: Warranty- Right ... right? Right. And so yes, they get cranked when it's like the job pays this much retail, but all of a sudden it goes warranty. We're not arguing now oftentimes that it's like, "I lost my shirt." We're arguing because it's like the job has a stated value of 18 hours, say, to re- Right ... and repair a transmission or engine, excuse me, and all of a sudden now I'm doing it for 9.
[00:51:31] Jeff Compton: Right. I could get done in nine.
[00:51:33] Dustin Stutzman: That's not the point.
[00:51:34] Jeff Compton: But you took nine hours away from me because that's how I'm technically paid. If we're all paid just to show up and fix cars- Right.
[00:51:41] Dustin Stutzman: It doesn't matter anymore
[00:51:42] Jeff Compton: I don't care. I'm not arguing with you, right? Right. Man, they just, they have to stick to that because it's, if it works for them, they want it.
[00:51:49] Jeff Compton: Right. But when you stand up for what is yours- Right ... what's deserved, and you fight them on it, then it becomes this big, big to-do. It
[00:51:57] Dustin Stutzman: does. It does.
[00:51:57] Jeff Compton: You're Jake
[00:51:58] Dustin Stutzman: the
[00:51:58] Jeff Compton: asshole. You're, you're argumentative. You got, you're toxic, whatever.
[00:52:02] Dustin Stutzman: I know. I, I, yep, I have those conversations e- every single day. It's hard. I, I, I mean, whether it's extended warranty, whether it's whatever.
[00:52:10] Dustin Stutzman: I'm like, I don't... It is, I, we didn't sell the warranty We didn't sell the car
[00:52:16] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[00:52:16] Dustin Stutzman: We are just telling them what it's gonna take to fix the car. And, and that's another, that's, uh, that's another big thing that I talk about when, you know, when I say you get it up front. The best and the best paid technicians are the ones that are able to predict the failures of the car and the failures of the repair-
[00:52:36] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:52:37] Dustin Stutzman: before they happen.
[00:52:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:52:38] Dustin Stutzman: And, and I do it, I do it every, I do it almost every day where I s- where I, I tell someone, "Hey"- I need four hours upfront. Mm-hmm. And if I only use two of those hours, that's fine, I'm only gonna charge you two hours.
[00:52:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:52:53] Dustin Stutzman: But I don't want to be two hours deep and then you say, and then I say, "I need more time," and then you say, "Well, we can't afford more."
[00:53:00] Dustin Stutzman: So n- and now your car is just kind of half torn apart- Mm-hmm ... and I'm, you know, halfway into diagnosing your harness brake.
[00:53:08] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:53:09] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and, and that's... You get it upfront. Like, I, I, I w- if you think a bolt's gonna break, you get it upfront. 'Cause i- if, if you go in and everything comes apart great, that's fine, they get a cheaper bill.
[00:53:21] Dustin Stutzman: That's perfectly fine.
[00:53:23] Jeff Compton: I'm not- But- I- I'm not pulling seats and part of the dash out to look for a CAN problem, right? Like, just- Right ... the, the, the splice pack or the, you know, di- Right ... comb or whatever, you know. And then all of a sudden it's like you say, "No, I can't go any further than this." Because now I've got it terminated, I've got, say, eight modules eliminated as being the problem.
[00:53:41] Jeff Compton: There's, I don't know, 10 more to do, but I've got eight, and you say, "I don't wanna put any more money into this." Right. The real conversation has to be is that this could be, like this could be a butt-chewer, and it- Yeah ... could be, you know, terrible. And are you committed, yes or no? And this is, you know, we're probably not gonna need 10 hours, but- Right
[00:54:00] Jeff Compton: it's probably gonna be five minimum.
[00:54:02] Dustin Stutzman: Right.
[00:54:02] Jeff Compton: Right. Instead of doing this like one hour, two hours, call again for another two.
[00:54:06] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. And, and, and that, the, the nickel and diming part of a lot of things... And, and, and technicians do it all the time on, on normal repairs, right? Like, they, they're like, "Oh, I, I didn't for- I didn't remember the, the, these bolts," or, "I didn't," you know, or like, "I didn't see that this was, you know, I didn't actually look and see if this was rusted like this, and so I'm actually gonna need more time for this."
[00:54:26] Dustin Stutzman: And, and like, it's like, dude, you should have-
[00:54:30] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:54:31] Dustin Stutzman: figured all that out upfront, man. If you would've figured it out all upfront. Because when you come from the back end, every single person loses. Mm-hmm. 'Cause now we're discounting the labor, we're discounting the parts, and what was a, a good ticket turns into a loser-
[00:54:46] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[00:54:46] Dustin Stutzman: that quick.
[00:54:47] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:54:47] Dustin Stutzman: Like, w- the margins aren't really that great to be like, "Oh yeah, it's fine. Just throw another 1,000 at it. It's, it's, you're good. No, it's no big deal." And, and, and if you can get it upfront, that's what... And it also, the other thing is, is it prepares the customer, right? Like- Mm-hmm ... so when you do tell them, "Hey, that bolt that we told you was gonna break, well, it broke."
[00:55:08] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and they go, "Yeah, I mean, it's, it is what it is. Go ahead and get it fixed. We're, we're good," you know? But whenever you come back, when you're like, "Hey, this is gonna fix your car-" And then you call 'em back and say, "Actually..." Now the, the, the, it flips. Everything's flipped. They're like, "Wait, I thought my car was gonna be fixed for 2,500 bucks."
[00:55:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[00:55:28] Dustin Stutzman: You're, you're telling me I need a five... another 500. Well, wait, wait, so this is..." N- and now their, their mind immediately goes to like, "Okay, so how deep am I gonna go? Do I need another 500? Like, well, are we gonna be four grand deep before my car is fixed?"
[00:55:40] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:55:40] Dustin Stutzman: But if you prepare them upfront, I do it... Uh, one of the, uh, repairs I, I use as a great example for this is, uh, is, uh, uh, turbo actuators- Mm
[00:55:49] Dustin Stutzman: on, on like the 6.7 Cummins or whatever.
[00:55:51] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:55:51] Dustin Stutzman: Like, I tell every single time I do one, I'm like, "Hey, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna move your, the vanes in your turbo, and I'm gonna make sure that everything is mechanically sound when I'm in there. And if it's not, you're gonna buy a turbo."
[00:56:05] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:56:05] Dustin Stutzman: And that turns...
[00:56:06] Dustin Stutzman: So it takes what is already like a $2,000 repair and turns it into, heck, sometimes a 10, 11, $12,000 repair. And so I quote both upfront, and I say, like, this, I'm, I, I am, I will gladly do the cheaper repair, and that's what we, that's what we're going to try. But let... This is a try, 'cause if this happens, this is the outcome.
[00:56:30] Dustin Stutzman: And if you're able to do that on almost every single repair, A, you're gonna sell more, the customers are gonna be happier, and you also get the situations where you come in looking like a hero because they had in their head, you know, this was might cost 10 grand, and it ended up only being two.
[00:56:48] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And that's where it's so important that your advisors actually are reading the tickets.
[00:56:53] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm.
[00:56:54] Jeff Compton: What did the cust- what did the technician finally do to fix the car? Right. Oh, sh- you know, that's the third 6.7 I've seen come in this quarter that, you know, has a turbo actuation fault. Uh, we went in there, started doing the turbo actuation, figured out the vanes are stuck, or, you know- Right ... play in the impeller wheel, and it's getting a whole turbo.
[00:57:13] Jeff Compton: Like, they should be able to, after they read two or three- Yeah ... be prefacing the customer when it comes- Yep ... one of those trucks going, "Hey, this is how this could very well go." Yeah. And if you do that, then, you know, we don't have the conversation on the back end with the technician where it's like, "Uh, I can't-" Customer.
[00:57:31] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:57:31] Dustin Stutzman: Right.
[00:57:32] Jeff Compton: Or now we're going to parts and going, "I know list on that turbo, you know, you guys should be getting seven for it. Uh, we gotta ship it out at cost because- Right ... well, it, it, uh, we, we F'd up." We didn't F up. I mean, as a, as a collective department, we F'd up. But really, it's who F'd up?
[00:57:49] Dustin Stutzman: Speaking
[00:57:50] Jeff Compton: Not you.
[00:57:51] Jeff Compton: Well, uh, dealing with the customer.
[00:57:53] Dustin Stutzman: Speak- speaking on, on the, the whole department, that's another thing that, um- ... that, uh, uh, it gets me. Uh, because, 'cause again, I go back to the, the corporate stuff, 'cause before we weren't, and now that we are, every department is a different department. And it's infuriating to me because I want the, the entire service department to be on what I call Team Fix Car.
[00:58:20] Jeff Compton: Right.
[00:58:21] Dustin Stutzman: And we have it now structured in such a way that parts is in parts.
[00:58:27] Jeff Compton: Sure.
[00:58:27] Dustin Stutzman: And they are very much like, "Nah." Yeah. Like, "Hey, that, that wasn't our mistake. We're not eating it," basically. And it's like, wait, wait, wait, this customer just spent, with you guys, $5,000 and, you know, this happened, and you, and you're not going to, like, wh- or what, what?
[00:58:47] Dustin Stutzman: How?
[00:58:48] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:58:48] Dustin Stutzman: Like, h- how? They're like, "Well, I mean..." Or like we've had situations where we'll be like, "Hey, a customer approved this. Why is this not here?" "Oh, well, we ordered it and it went to back order." And it's like, "Okay." So, so what happened? Well, I mean, if we, if we, if we do any special handling or anything, that's gonna cost us more money, and we're not, we're not gonna just eat that.
[00:59:08] Dustin Stutzman: It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That wasn't the customer's fault, and again, they just spent this much money. You just made $3,000 in parts.
[00:59:19] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:59:19] Dustin Stutzman: And you're not going to... And, and it's like, why are we... Again, I, I... Every single person in, and, and this is a, this is a big dealership problem, is everybody has what, basically competing pay structures.
[00:59:32] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. And it's like, dude, why don't we all get on the same, like, if a car comes in and gets fixed, we all make money. Like, why is that not the way it is?
[00:59:42] Jeff Compton: Because you've got so many people on commission that it's all of a sudden it's like it, it, nothing... And I'm sure it infuriates you too, when it's like you know that the part's sitting at the depot.
[00:59:51] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm. But
[00:59:51] Jeff Compton: it's like they're not gonna ship it, it's Monday. It's Monday, I need a, you know, I need a steering rack for this, for this truck. And you know it's sitting there at the depot, but they don't put it on overnight order.
[01:00:04] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm.
[01:00:04] Jeff Compton: We have our stock order coming in on Thursday. I'm gonna put it on that so I don't pay extra shipping.
[01:00:09] Jeff Compton: Hello, you're gonna... I now have to call my customer and tell him he's gonna- Right ... be without his vehicle three extra days because we don't want to, like-
[01:00:19] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah ... we
[01:00:20] Jeff Compton: wanna maximize the profit on the part- Yes ... but keep him in his, in a loaner, keep him in a loaner, so we're paying- Right ... eating that cost, but that's okay 'cause service is eating that cost, not parts.
[01:00:29] Dustin Stutzman: Right. That-
[01:00:30] Jeff Compton: We're pissing the customer off, and- That ... do you wanna ship it on a, on a stock order? That should be... If I had a s- parts manager say that to me, he'd be, he'd be gone. The, the, the general manager should be terminating that guy. But I know why they do it. Because it's like, "Listen, you guys are, inventory's killing me here.
[01:00:46] Jeff Compton: Like, you know, I want-" Yeah. "... this." You know how it is. General managers- Yeah ... would love it if everybody would just wait one week and the part would come in on stock order and never had to pay additional shipping. They're like, "Do you know how much I paid in shipping last month?"
[01:00:57] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. Right. Exactly.
[01:00:59] Jeff Compton: Yeah, 'cause that's what your margin's supposed to be, right?
[01:01:01] Jeff Compton: Right.
[01:01:02] Dustin Stutzman: Right.
[01:01:03] Jeff Compton: No, they don't wanna do that, and that, that just drives me frigging crazy because it's like CSI score. Oh, they kept my car five days. Right. Kept the car five days. Part wasn't back ordered. Oh, they, they probably... That's got nothing to do with service. Yep. It has- Yep ... everything to do with the logistics of how parts was handled, and yet who gets the shaft?
[01:01:23] Jeff Compton: Well, the whole- Yep ... dealership, but who's responsible for getting the shaft? Parts. I- Man, I, I was such a, you know, I talk about I, I grabbed a parts guy by the collar, dragged him across the counter one day. Yeah. Because I just my buddy Dean's gonna laugh. Um, 'cause I can remember when I kept saying to them, "Your job is to serve us, the techs."
[01:01:45] Jeff Compton: Yes. "That's what you are there for. We are your biggest customer, and I-"
[01:01:48] Dustin Stutzman: Yes, 100%.
[01:01:49] Jeff Compton: You're gonna fill up with hate, and it's like, uh, I don't w- you know. But the reality is, is especially, like, when you look at collision parts especially, they're making so much money selling body panels to, to body shops sometimes- Mm-hmm
[01:02:01] Jeff Compton: they don't even care if they have to order in all the ESIMs or all the recall parts for the, for the service part 'cause they're making their nut on body shop stuff. Sure. They don't care. Even though they do it for a discount 'cause it's insurance work, blah, blah, blah, they don't care. They're moving all these units.
[01:02:17] Jeff Compton: They don't give a crap about the service department, yet the people came and bought the car from us- Mm-hmm ... and us to be able to fix their damn car in a reasonable amount of time, and I can't because, uh, we don't have tires. It used to drive me nuts. Customers come in, 5,000 miles on their car, blown-out tire, and it's like, what's the right thing to do?
[01:02:36] Jeff Compton: Put an exact matching tire on that car.
[01:02:39] Dustin Stutzman: Right.
[01:02:40] Jeff Compton: Then we have to wait for that, sometimes three, four, five days for it to come in. Why? Right. Why can't we have one for everything that we sell? Or- Sure ... I'm not saying have a full set, although that would work. Right. But let's have one for each car. Let's, if, if I'm selling a Ram with 18s, I wanna have that Bridgestone in 18 sitting in my parts for when the guy has a blowout, I can put on a matching tire.
[01:03:02] Jeff Compton: Good, simple, in and out, quick turnaround, done. None of this drove it in, put the spare on, put it back out, three days later, you know, I gotta get that turned around 'cause the advisor promised it'd be done by 10:00. It's now 9:45 and it hasn't hit the bay. None of that shit.
[01:03:18] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm.
[01:03:18] Jeff Compton: None of that. Mm-hmm. You know?
[01:03:20] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah.
[01:03:21] Jeff Compton: But it's, it's... You, you said something earlier too that I wanted to touch on, how it's team fix the car, because when you're at the dealer, you cannot get out of fixing the car. And now the comments are gonna blow up on this 'cause everybody's gonna go, like, "I took my car into..." And, you know, my friends are gonna be like, "I
[01:03:40] Dustin Stutzman: w-" Yeah, that's another, that's another...
[01:03:41] Dustin Stutzman: I, I want... Now that you're s- saying that too, um- I always talk about, uh, and I tell this to, like, family members and whoever, like, you can have a really great experience at a dealership-
[01:03:55] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[01:03:56] Dustin Stutzman: and you can go to that exact same dealership and have a completely terrible experience, and it was, could literally be just the technician you got that day.
[01:04:05] Jeff Compton: 100%. How was, who's it dispatched to?
[01:04:07] Dustin Stutzman: Huh? Who's it dispatched to? Like, that's gonna be the, uh, uh, who was your writer, who was it dispatched to, and you can have people who are like, "Man, I always take it to this guy. He does this, and it's great, and my, and everything's perfect." And then someone else comes to that dealership, and they can tell you about some of the ter- And I mean, and, and I obviously I've worked in the industry long enough, and you can see the technicians, and you know-
[01:04:28] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[01:04:29] Dustin Stutzman: like, "Uh, that's not gonna go well. This, that whole repair process is just not gonna go well." Oh. And-
[01:04:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah. I used to do it, too. I'd be s- like- You're, you're giving that to him?
[01:04:40] Dustin Stutzman: Right. Yes.
[01:04:41] Jeff Compton: And I, and I would be that way, like I was that asshole where I'd be-
[01:04:44] Dustin Stutzman: Oh yeah. No, I do. I- trust me, I do. I- I'm gonna ... I- ...
[01:04:47] Jeff Compton: next month, right?
[01:04:48] Jeff Compton: Or next week when it's, when it's towed back in again-
[01:04:51] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah ...
[01:04:52] Jeff Compton: and it won't start, it's gonna... Just, just let me have it now.
[01:04:55] Dustin Stutzman: Just let me have it. Exactly. And that's, and that's always been, like especially when it comes to diag stuff, like they'll be like, "Oh, well, we're gonna let him, you know, try to diag." And I'm like, "Dude, you're literally just wasting his time and mine because I'm gonna get involved in it sideways first-
[01:05:12] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[01:05:12] Dustin Stutzman: and then I'm actually gonna come at it from the front." Yeah. And that's one of my, oh, it's one of my biggest pet peeves whenever I'm helping people, is like you come in and you say, you'll s- you'll say, "Oh yeah, I checked this, this, this, this, this, this, this." And I'm like, "Oh, okay. So cool. So what was your number for this?
[01:05:28] Dustin Stutzman: Or what was the compression? Or what was the ohm reading? Or what was the..." And they're just like, "I mean, it was good."
[01:05:33] Jeff Compton: The grounds are good, they're tight.
[01:05:34] Dustin Stutzman: The ground, ground g- it was good. O- okay, what was, what was leak down? "I mean, it was good."
[01:05:39] Jeff Compton: What's fuel trims? They're good.
[01:05:41] Dustin Stutzman: It's like w- w- what was the number?
[01:05:44] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. What was the actual... I- give me the data. I had, I had one and then he got, he got, honestly he got really frustrated with me 'cause he c- he asked for my help, and it was a, it was one of our newer brands. And so obviously you're familiar with Chrysler, we haven't done... We don't do... We haven't done mass airflow in, you know, God.
[01:06:03] Dustin Stutzman: Well, so now we have twin turbo, direct injection, we have mass airflow, we have... And so all these people who aren't familiar with mass airflow, they don't have a clue because they've grown up on Chrysler without... And, and obviously I, coming from GM and then also diesel world, um, I'm, you know, I'm pretty familiar with it.
[01:06:19] Dustin Stutzman: So I, either way, that to be said, I know how big of a deal it is to have a messed up air filter, to have a whatever, right? Mm-hmm. And we, we had one of our new ones come in and, uh, it's, you know, dying at idle, running weird, whatever, and it's only got 5,000 miles on- or yeah, 6,000 miles on it. Yeah. And technician comes over and he's like, "Dude, this is a weird one.
[01:06:39] Dustin Stutzman: You can feel it," blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, "Did you read all the bulletins?" 'Cause there's a bulletin on this, obviously.
[01:06:44] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:44] Dustin Stutzman: Um, and he's like, "Yeah. Yeah. I, I read the bulletins." I'm like, "Okay. Cool. Um, so, uh, what all have you checked?" He's like, "Oh, well, so I looked at this, I looked at the, looked at the air box.
[01:06:53] Dustin Stutzman: Didn't really see anything," blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, "Oh, oh, okay. So what did the air filter look like?" Well, I mean, it, you know, it's there. And I'm like, "Okay. What did it look like?"
[01:07:05] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:07:05] Dustin Stutzman: He's like, "Oh," and I, so- Is it orange? So I said, "Give me a wrench," popped up the box. I see an aftermarket air filter folded in and laying down in the bottom.
[01:07:17] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. And I said, "Put a factory air filter in it and put it in there correctly and it'll be fixed." And I walk up to this... I said, "Who's the writer?" And he told me. And so I walked up to the writer and I said, "Hey, I get half that time, that diag. That- that's- that's half, at least half mine." And he ended up getting mad about it.
[01:07:36] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:07:36] Dustin Stutzman: And, uh, he- he ended up being like, "Well," I mean, he's, he, you know, he's- he's foreman. He, he sh- should be helping, whatever. And I'm like, "Buddy-
[01:07:44] Jeff Compton: I did
[01:07:45] Dustin Stutzman: it ... I, and I- I- I walked up to that advisor after they came back to me and were like, "He's- he's upset about you taking half the diag." And I said, "That's fine.
[01:07:53] Dustin Stutzman: If he wants to play that game, I'll take all the diag."
[01:07:56] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It'll-
[01:07:57] Dustin Stutzman: I think half is more than fair-
[01:07:58] Jeff Compton: It'll
[01:07:59] Dustin Stutzman: just- ... for- for- for teaching him what I taught him and telling... 'Cause I- I, before I even did that, I was like, "Did you look at the bulletins? Did you look at..." And I, and then I said, "What about this air box?"
[01:08:08] Dustin Stutzman: And I looked at the air box, immediately saw an aftermarket screw.
[01:08:12] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:08:13] Dustin Stutzman: And I was like, "This is a brand-new car with an aftermarket screw." I'm like, "Guaranteed it's a crappy air filter, probably not installed correctly, and-" Lo and behold, there it was. That was the problem. Puts, puts the factory air filter in it, fixes the car, and then he's mad because he lost half the diag.
[01:08:30] Jeff Compton: But see, and, and when he says, "Well, you're supposed to be helping me," this is where I've always had these conversations where it's like, I'm not, I'm not helping people by giving them the bullet. I mean, I am, because it can help you get that car out of your bay. But there's some of them life lessons that kind of smacks you in the head where it's like you're gonna have to slow down and, and start to look at what the data look, is telling you.
[01:08:51] Dustin Stutzman: Yes.
[01:08:51] Jeff Compton: Do the testing, do your observations- Yes ... do your inspections, and you'll probably fix the flipping car. Yep. But you run over and go, "Daddy, help me. Bail me out of this-" Mm-hmm ... then yeah, daddy should get paid something, if not all of it. Because- Right ... I got to be where I would take the hard line and go, "Okay, I'm just gonna stand over there and watch the circus unfold," right?
[01:09:10] Jeff Compton: I enjoy, monkeys in the cage are, are, you know- Sure ... entertaining to me. And then when it comes back, then I'm going to really... A, when it comes back, I'm not gonna hustle. That's the other thing we don't talk about and it, and, and, you know, it's a very real thing. When it's your problem now, it comes back and it's on you because you dispatched it wrong, I'm not kicking it down into overdrive and going as fast as possible to help you out.
[01:09:33] Jeff Compton: Sure. I'm gonna be diligent. I'm gonna be relaxed. I'm gonna be slow. I'm gonna laugh a little bit about how you guys keep failing to learn this lesson that I'm watching unfold over and over again. Right. And that's where I get that, that militant attitude that, "Oh, he's so toxic." I'm not. But the reality is, is like I'm old enough and you're old enough to remember when, you know, the dealer had to be the one to fix it.
[01:09:59] Jeff Compton: They were the last resort.
[01:10:00] Dustin Stutzman: Yep.
[01:10:01] Jeff Compton: And, and we all worked there, and it was like we'd see these cars 'cause in a bigger city, yeah, it'll go over to Smith's Chrysler, but it'll come back to Capital Chrysler because Smith couldn't fix it. Yep. Yep. So you think you fixed it. Yep. This is what we tell shop owners all the time, and they get mad at me for saying that.
[01:10:18] Jeff Compton: You think you fixed it, and then it rolls out of here. Well- Yep ... the reality is, is lots of us are in the know, and we talk to people all over the continent and they go, "I had this car come in." And all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, I remember that car."
[01:10:33] Dustin Stutzman: Yep. "
[01:10:33] Jeff Compton: I worked on it. It went somewhere else." Just because somebody doesn't come back in your face-
[01:10:38] Dustin Stutzman: Doesn't mean you fixed it
[01:10:38] Jeff Compton: yelling and demanding a refund does not mean- And,
[01:10:41] Dustin Stutzman: and, and, and in fact, most people-
[01:10:44] Jeff Compton: Do not ...
[01:10:45] Dustin Stutzman: do not. Most people say, "That didn't work."
[01:10:48] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. "
[01:10:48] Dustin Stutzman: I'm moving on." Yeah. 'Cause it takes a specific type of person to actually come in and confront and be like, "You guys did this." Yeah. "You guys didn't repair it. You guys need to fix it."
[01:10:59] Dustin Stutzman: So most people just go, and I mean, we obviously, and every, and every dealership has, and every shop has these stories about it's been to five different dealerships, been to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, um- We fixed it, you know? We were the ones. We blah, blah, blah. And, and like, and e- every- I'm sure every technician has those stories, but the only way you actually know is if it, if it does come back, but not for that problem.
[01:11:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Well, and that's it. You and I have seen it where you do the pin drag, right? You find the, you find the loose terminals. Yep. You're chasing your mitten. You tighten the terminals up, you swap the connector, you do whatever, and it's gone three months, and y- it's completely out of your mind. You're like, "Man, I feel good."
[01:11:38] Jeff Compton: You've broke your arm from patting yourself on the back. Sure. All of a sudden then it comes towing on a tow truck again, or it comes in and there's- Yep ... there's that flipping correlation fault, right? And you're like- Yep ... uh. I, I can remember, you know, early, early on, the old, old Dodges, you remember this too, and the alternator would put a ripple through and it would cause TPS faults.
[01:11:56] Jeff Compton: Yep. Yep. I can remember the first time I ever saw that, and I say that because at the time nobody knew what was happening. They- Right ... in another RAM with a Cummins, and they started, they hooked up a fuel line, jumped the fuel line from that truck to that truck. Like, they were swapping- Yeah ... everything, and nobody caught that the TPS...
[01:12:15] Jeff Compton: Because you wouldn't have caught it without a scope, and I, I talk about that all the time. The guy back then, we only had one guy in the shop that knew how to use a DRB3. There, I'm dating my- Yep. Uh, uh, uh,
[01:12:24] Dustin Stutzman: I've, I've got the emulator, trust me. I, I'm, I'm all... I'm, I'm the only guy that works on anything that comes in that's, that's DRB.
[01:12:31] Jeff Compton: So there was only one guy that knew how to use the scope function on that, and they didn't hook it to that car. And-
[01:12:35] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah ...
[01:12:36] Jeff Compton: it was after I'd left that dealer and a couple years later when somebody all of a sudden started talking about this, and I'm going, "That's what was wrong with that truck that no- Mm-hmm
[01:12:44] Jeff Compton: we never fixed." I think they ended up buying it back from the customer because they couldn't fix it. You know? It was, it was-
[01:12:50] Dustin Stutzman: This was, this was an old Cummins, and I actually have a funny old Cummins story very similar, where it was basically it would, it would, it was, it was like a, it was effectively like a torque converter shutter- Mm
[01:13:00] Dustin Stutzman: intermittent that was caused by RFI on, on the, the cam sensor or something like that. And I ended up isolating the alternator power f- feed- Yeah ... from the harness.
[01:13:14] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:13:14] Dustin Stutzman: And, and I told the guy, I actually told the customer, I was like, "Dude, I understand." Because he, he loved the truck, didn't wanna get rid of the truck, and it was, obviously, it was super old at that time, and he's like...
[01:13:25] Dustin Stutzman: And I was like, "Listen, I've done a lot of research, and I think we should try this. I'm going to dissect your loom-
[01:13:32] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[01:13:32] Dustin Stutzman: and I'm going to separate this out, and I'm gonna wrap it in basically HVAC tape to try to get some of that interference away. And we're not gonna charge you." And we it was, it was...
[01:13:43] Dustin Stutzman: Again, this was a small dealership. Mm-hmm. I was like, "We won't charge you. But if it fixes it, come back in six months and pay your bill."
[01:13:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah. He,
[01:13:53] Dustin Stutzman: he, he came back in six months, paid his bill.
[01:13:56] Jeff Compton: See, that, I got a story for you. So- And I think I've told this before, but if not, so I remember we had a first gen Neon and that- Oh, yeah.
[01:14:06] Jeff Compton: Right? Yeah. Yeah. And this little lady comes in and she says, "I have a squeak. I have a squeak." Okay. And, and, and everybody had driven it, and, you know, put a... Well, it had two sets of control arms probably put in by that, and there's, you know, couples maybe- Yep ... you know, some sway bar end links and bushings on.
[01:14:21] Jeff Compton: And the squeak was still not there. And my foreman at the time had come from a straight time dealer. And he- Okay ... gets in and he goes for a drive with the customer and he hears it and he's like, "Oh, I know what that squeak is. It's coming from the cushion of the seat."
[01:14:35] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm.
[01:14:35] Jeff Compton: Now, you and I and everybody else would go, "Okay, the seat's just gonna have to wear in before the squeak noise went away."
[01:14:42] Jeff Compton: Colin, God bless him, takes the seat out, takes the seat- Mm-hmm ... apart, takes the seat cover off- Yep ... pulls a plastic bag over the seat cov- the foam, puts it back together, fixes the noise for the customer. Now, you and I know there is no labor op that pays for that.
[01:14:56] Dustin Stutzman: So you say that. You say that. So this is, this is, this is another reason I work for, I work for Chrysler.
[01:15:03] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm. I, and I'm not joking when I say this. I have multiple straight clock times where I've fixed what would be what even Chrysler considered- Yeah ... a normal concern.
[01:15:17] Jeff Compton: Yes.
[01:15:19] Dustin Stutzman: I have, I have one specifically. I got paid, Chrysler paid me, and this paid because I made sure it paid, um, they paid me almost 40 hours to fix a s- a, a rattle in a dash.
[01:15:35] Dustin Stutzman: They ca- that they, the, so the customer comes in, and he's like, "I've got this rattle in my dash," whatever, "and I can duplicate it." And so that was kind of the big key, right? Is he could duplicate it. He said s- so he goes up to his dash, and he kind of just punches it a little bit, and there's like this really faint little rattle, right?
[01:15:52] Dustin Stutzman: And, uh, he's like, "Man, uh," and, and it really annoys me. I'm like, "Okay. Well, let me kind of do some digging," whatever. And so I, I, you know, I'm like, it's... I can kind of hear what he's talking about, whatever. And then so I go, and I grab... It was a brand-new truck, brand-new Laramie Ram, whatever. Mm-hmm. And so I go out to another, I go out to every single Laramie Ram.
[01:16:10] Dustin Stutzman: Same noise, same noise, same noise, same noise. And he's like... So we tell him, you know, we're like, "Sorry, sir. The, uh, we've done our, everything we can. There's, there's literally nothing we can do. We can order you a brand-new part, and it's not gonna fix your rattle, right?" Like, it's irrelevant. And he's like, "Man, that's..."
[01:16:26] Dustin Stutzman: So eventually he ends up calling cares and Chrysler and all this stuff. Yeah. And, uh, one day I get a phone call from the field service technician, and he's like, "Hey, do you, what do you know about this Ram?" or whatever. I was like, "Oh, yeah, I know about it." He's like, uh, so he's, he... The customer's really concerned about it, 'cause I guess this customer, he lived on a brick road.
[01:16:45] Jeff Compton: Hmm.
[01:16:46] Dustin Stutzman: And every single time he drove down this brick road for, for f- it was six, seven blocks of brick road, it just... It was the perfect resonating frequency, and it just rattled. And it annoy- this is, you know, at the time an 85, $90,000 truck, and he was just so mad. He said, "Every single day I wake up getting mad because I'm getting in my truck, and every single night I go home mad at my truck."
[01:17:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:17:08] Dustin Stutzman: And so he had ke- uh, obviously, he had escalated it to the point where obv- this guy's calling me, and he's like, "Hey, so-" You know the noise, right? I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I can duplicate the noise. I know exactly what it is." Uh, like, "I, I know where it's at and I can duplicate it regularly." He's like, "So Chrysler's asking, do you think you can fix it?"
[01:17:26] Dustin Stutzman: I said, "Well, I mean, I can duplicate it." Okay. "So, I mean, I can disassemble everything and I can probably fix it."
[01:17:31] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:17:32] Dustin Stutzman: And they said, Chrysler said, "Well, um, you've got one shot. That's it. One attempt." And they told the customer, they were like, "Well, you have one time. You drop your truck off, it will be with them for..."
[01:17:46] Dustin Stutzman: You know, it ended up being there for, like, two weeks. Um, "And he's going to fix your truck. This is the attempt. If it's not fixed, we are never addressing this concern with you ever again." Right. "Fixed or not."
[01:17:58] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:17:58] Dustin Stutzman: And so I kept, obviously, detailed notes. I, I did every- So I ended up basically disassembling this guy's entire dash down to, to, to, to the bare.
[01:18:06] Dustin Stutzman: And what it ended up being was, so it, uh, the defrost ducting was injection molded- Yep ... to the IP, and between the vent of the duct and the IP was a void. And there were little... Where the injection molding clamp cr- where, where it ended up getting fabricated together, there was little bits of plastic that were still there, right?
[01:18:31] Jeff Compton: Oh.
[01:18:31] Dustin Stutzman: But they would flutter, right? Like, so they'd just sit there and chhh, and flutter. And so I filled all the voids with great stuff.
[01:18:39] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:18:40] Dustin Stutzman: And I f- every void. And so I, it got to the point where I, you know, I'd tap on the da- after I filled it all up, I tap on the dash, noise is gone. So I obviously at that point, I put the dash back together, and we went and did several extended test drives, made sure that nothing came back, made sure that everything looked right, made sure, you know, all the stuff.
[01:18:59] Dustin Stutzman: And, uh, that customer, so I ended up getting paid almost 40 hours for that job from Chrysler, and that customer drove a new Laramie Ram every year for the next three years, and every single one of them had the noise, and so he brought it back to and got in his truck. And he, every single time we saw him in service, he was like, "You know, my truck is literally..."
[01:19:20] Dustin Stutzman: He said, "I have friends with the same truck. My truck's the only truck that exists that doesn't make that noise."
[01:19:24] Jeff Compton: Yep. Yeah.
[01:19:25] Dustin Stutzman: And that was... And so, th- and you put that, that same... So, and, and I... If talking about Chrysler, I, honestly, to this day, I still believe Fiat was the best thing to happen to them.
[01:19:36] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[01:19:37] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah.
[01:19:37] Dustin Stutzman: Like, it's not even close. Like, they, they created, they created WiTech, which is hands down, like, it's, it's won... WiTech software has won PC level awards- Mm-hmm ... right? Like, for how good it is. Like, I come from GM world, where, like, GDI, oh my, the, the GDS or whatever, it was, it was a nightmare. I spent so many hours reinstalling different, like, backdating my Java, and just, like, oh my gosh, I, I...
[01:20:09] Dustin Stutzman: It's such a struggle. Every time I ever had to use GDS, I... And, and it, and GDS is so bad that to this day, GM technicians still, they're like, "Oh, I just go grab the Snap-on I-Scope. I don't, I don't even touch GDS if I don't have to."
[01:20:21] Jeff Compton: You hear them talk- And- ... how many times, like, people go to log in on a Monday and, and wanna flash on the t- and the GM site's down.
[01:20:29] Jeff Compton: Like, that- That- ... is the site, not the, the- Yep ... software. I, I, I brag about Chrysler all the time because it's like, who was putting topology in a scan tool before the WiTech? No one. No- Nobody. Wi- And everybody in the industry, if you don't put it in your scan tool, they don't wanna buy your scan tool. So people rip on Chrysler, but I mean, like, why?
[01:20:48] Jeff Compton: 'Cause the, the, the Hemi cams go flat? 'Cause the 360 cams go flat? Uh, the LS-
[01:20:52] Dustin Stutzman: So y- honestly, and then, and the thing is, is you go, it, you talk about that, and I've had, I've had, I've had builders talk to me and I, and I, and, and I, and I tell them the same thing. I'm like- So, and this is honestly, this is... And I've, and I have, uh, other senior technicians that I've discussed this.
[01:21:09] Dustin Stutzman: I fully believe that about 90% of repairs wouldn't even be repairs if you maintained your vehicle the way you were supposed to and you had people who knew what they were doing working on it.
[01:21:22] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:21:22] Dustin Stutzman: Like, like you go, go to the Pentastar. If you have, if you have someone who knows what a torque spec is-
[01:21:30] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[01:21:30] Dustin Stutzman: take off and install your, your oil filter. Yeah. I've seen those plastic adapter housings go 400, 500,000 miles without ever being, needing to be replaced. But then you'd go to one, you know, down the street lube place and you're grabbing a breaker bar.
[01:21:48] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:21:48] Dustin Stutzman: And it's like, uh, that... It's done. It's plastic. It's done.
[01:21:51] Dustin Stutzman: It's over. It doesn't matter if it only had 50,000 miles on it, that adapter housing's gone. It's, it's over.
[01:21:57] Jeff Compton: My fi-
[01:21:57] Dustin Stutzman: And like-
[01:21:58] Jeff Compton: Yeah. My '15 Wrangler has the original filter housing still in it. Yep.
[01:22:02] Dustin Stutzman: My, so my '16, my '16 Caravan has the original filter housing and it's at 200,000 miles, and I, I... As, as long as I'm the one doing the oil change, I...
[01:22:12] Dustin Stutzman: And the, and the same thing with oil, with drain plugs, right? Like- Yes ... d- and I tell, I tell, uh, lube techs all the time, if you ever get the first oil change on a car, pay close attention to how easy that filter and that drain plug came off.
[01:22:28] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:22:28] Dustin Stutzman: Like, that's how it should be basically every time.
[01:22:32] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[01:22:34] Dustin Stutzman: And you go and you talk about the Hemi.
[01:22:36] Dustin Stutzman: Uh, yes, uh, I mean, there, there are problems with MDS systems and, and... But i- if you change your oil the way that I, what I would say you're supposed to, um, and that's the, that's another, uh, t- I mean, it's a hot, it's been a hot button topic for a long time, right? Yeah. Like 'cause, 'cause inevitably the manufacturer...
[01:22:56] Dustin Stutzman: So, so you have to, you have to put yourself in the, in the, in through the lens of the manufacturer. They, they're trying to do two things. They're trying to sell a car new, and they're trying to sell you a new car as soon as possible.
[01:23:10] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:23:11] Dustin Stutzman: Right? So like, if you, if you use that as your, as your lens to look at their, their intervals, all of their intervals, I, I say, I, like, my rule of thumb is every one of the intervals are wrong by at least half.
[01:23:24] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[01:23:25] Dustin Stutzman: Like, if you actually... Like, like I use, I use oil change frequency, right? Sure. Like, so when someone asks me, I'm like, "Well, first off, what's your intent? Like, what are you doing with this car? Are, are you, are you going to drive this car till it's basically out of warranty and then get rid of it? 'Cause if you're gonna do that, just listen to what the manufacturer says."
[01:23:45] Dustin Stutzman: And you, and I mean, realistically, you will be fine. The next owner's not gonna be great. Um, and, and I don't prescribe to that 'cause I'm, I'm... I mean, being in this industry, being just that mindset, right? Like, you're like, "I wanna make everything last as long as I possibly can."
[01:23:58] Jeff Compton: Hmm.
[01:24:00] Dustin Stutzman: That's you. That's what that, uh, from a cost analysis perspective, that's gonna be your best option.
[01:24:05] Dustin Stutzman: But if you're trying to make this vehicle work and work well for you, u- use the oil life monitor because it is a monitor that actually accurately depicts your driving But change your oil at 50%. That's the number It, it, and see, in
[01:24:19] Jeff Compton: 2005 they told us 3,000 miles, 5,000 kilometers was still what you were supposed to be doing. And you and I can remember when the 2.7s would come in, right? Yep. Yep And they were fleets especially, so they got extended oil change interval. Yep A lot of idle time. They were all gummed up, sludged up. Yep. Now, we can talk all we want about advancements in engines and all this kind of stuff that have happened since 2020, 2005- Right
[01:24:42] Jeff Compton: years later. Oil has not kept up, I feel, with the technology of the engine. And what it does is it puts more emphasis on good, clean- On- ... oil ...
[01:24:52] Dustin Stutzman: yes. That's exactly what it does. That's, it's 100% what it does. It's true. And, and the big thing is, is like, like oil... Like so the, the other thing that I don't get when I see, you know, whatever, these influencers, these whatever saying, you know, "You don't have to change it."
[01:25:06] Dustin Stutzman: Like, some people are like, "You don't even have to change your oil. What are you talking about?" Blah, blah. And I'm like, "Dude, oil, we don't make money on oil changes. We literally lose money when you change your oil." So it is not, it is... And not only that, and I told this, actually this is a funny story. It's my, uh, my mother-in-law.
[01:25:21] Dustin Stutzman: She had like a, a, an Ecotec GM whatever, um, the 2.4 Ecotec. Yes And I honestly still to this day, I believe that was a perfectly good engine and just nobody changed the oil.
[01:25:32] Jeff Compton: That's right.
[01:25:32] Dustin Stutzman: Their owners as a whole didn't change the oil. And she, so I told her before she even bought it, I was like, "Hey, you know, honestly, as long as you, as long as you change your oil, you'll be fine.
[01:25:42] Dustin Stutzman: You know, listen to the oil ch- to what I tell you to change your oil and you're not gonna have a problem." Well, inevitably, she did a lot of highway driving and there were multiple times where she'd be like, "Hey, I know you're gonna be a little upset, but I think I went over on my oil change." I'm like, "What do you mean?"
[01:25:55] Dustin Stutzman: "Oh, well, the oil light's been on for the last week and I just haven't gotten in." And I'm like, and, and she's like, "So are you mad at me?" And I, I, I told her, I'm like, "Listen, I am giving you advice-"
[01:26:06] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ... "
[01:26:06] Dustin Stutzman: for your car. I don't care. I will make more money if you don't listen to me."
[01:26:12] Jeff Compton: That's right.
[01:26:12] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah "Because you're gonna pay me to put an engine in it, so I don't care."
[01:26:16] Jeff Compton: Right "
[01:26:17] Dustin Stutzman: Like, I don't wanna change your oil." Like it's- From- And, and so when I'm telling you this, it's literally just to save you money. And guess what happened? She did that so many times, and at like 130,000 mile the engine went out. And I, she ended up paying me to put an engine in it.
[01:26:34] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[01:26:34] Dustin Stutzman: And that's what, when I, when I explain that to people, it's like, it, it's like I'm not making any...
[01:26:41] Dustin Stutzman: Like it is, it is actually against my best interest to tell you to change your oil more often. 'Cause I lose money when that oil change happens, and you're not gonna come in for some crazy repair because you changed your oil.
[01:26:53] Jeff Compton: Yeah, I'm not putting cams in a Pentastar because- Right ... it's not-
[01:26:57] Dustin Stutzman: Right. And that, like you, exactly that.
[01:26:59] Dustin Stutzman: Like cams in a Pentastar. I've seen, I've seen some of these g- some guys go 3, 400,000 miles without ever putting a lifter.
[01:27:06] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:27:06] Dustin Stutzman: One lifter. Yeah. No failures. And like, and, and I see it all the time. I tell, I, I, obviously I talk to a bunch of other shops and like- You can s- like I go into, I'll go into an engine to do, you know, like a, a timing cover reseal, whatever, and it'll be at like 50,000 miles, and everything inside the engine is com- already starting to tarnish and, and has that, has that browning varnish all over it.
[01:27:29] Dustin Stutzman: And, and this is a 50,000-mile car.
[01:27:31] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:27:32] Dustin Stutzman: And then me- in the inverse, I, I'll work on a car that does regular oil changes at, you know, 4,000 or 5,000 miles, and I'll go in at 200,000 miles and be like, "This thing looks brand new. There, there's, there's nothing wrong here. This is, this is all great." And, and, and that's the other...
[01:27:47] Dustin Stutzman: And there's also, like cascading benefits, right? Like you're gonna do less gaskets, you're gonna have less leaks, you're gonna have less PCV problems. You're gonna have... And that's another big, big one- Interesting ... is PCV. Like, people just kinda ignore it.
[01:28:02] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:28:02] Dustin Stutzman: I'm like, "No, actually, that... If you, if you just keep up on that maintenance, you're actually gonna save so much, and you're not gonna consume.
[01:28:09] Dustin Stutzman: Like, you're, you're gonna have higher, better oil levels." I mean, I personally, I drive a 2Far- 2.4 MultiAir. Like, I've got 200,000 miles on mine. Uh, it doesn't use oil.
[01:28:19] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:28:19] Dustin Stutzman: And I've done th- It has been the cheapest car that I could possibly... I paid, I paid 16 grand for it when it was, it was one year old, and I've owned it, and it was used obviously, uh, and it had 30,000 miles.
[01:28:33] Dustin Stutzman: And I put all of those miles on it, and I've literally, I've done one oil pressure sensor, one set of brakes, tires, and oil changes. That is the repair history, the entire repair history. And I average 31, 32, 33 miles to the gallon, and it's been a phenomenal car.
[01:28:53] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[01:28:53] Dustin Stutzman: But it gets dumpstered on because of the oil change f- Oh
[01:28:57] Dustin Stutzman: like what they advise. Everybody. Like what they, what they say to do. And, and if you look at it through the lens, they're just trying to sell more cars.
[01:29:04] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:29:04] Dustin Stutzman: So why, why listen to them? They have a vested interest in you not taking care of your car. You get it out of warranty, and then it dies. That's the, that's what they want.
[01:29:15] Jeff Compton: That's the end
[01:29:15] Dustin Stutzman: goal. So when they say filled for life, or they say... Th- th- th- that's, the life of a car is a relative term, believe it or not, right? Like, like the life of a car is in their terms when, when basically it leaves warranty.
[01:29:30] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:29:32] Dustin Stutzman: And if, when you're talking to a, a, a, a normal person, the life of the car is as long as it could possibly go.
[01:29:39] Dustin Stutzman: Well, those are, those are two very different lenses, and, and you need to recognize that, and a lot of people don't.
[01:29:45] Jeff Compton: So can we talk for a minute kind of to shift the... When you see the young people coming in or they're coming into your dealership, and what's the biggest obstacle you see in terms of like...
[01:29:55] Jeff Compton: 'Cause you hear us talk all the time, Dustin, about the, the technician shortage and the, and the- Yep ... rate and all that kind of stuff. Where do you see it, it failing? Or why are they failing? So
[01:30:05] Dustin Stutzman: I, I think honestly, the, they get pushed too far too fast. Mm-hmm. And the other thing is, i- and I, and I go back to one of my previous comments, is that you can't flat rate teaching.
[01:30:21] Jeff Compton: Right.
[01:30:21] Dustin Stutzman: And so you stick them next to a flat rate tech, and honestly, I, I feel like that's another, that I, I go back to kind of the way I learned literally not having a technician. So like I learned an entire brand and everything with not having a single mentor at all, right? And so I just had to organically learn all the information, and because of that I will know not only what failed, but I know why it failed.
[01:30:46] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:30:46] Dustin Stutzman: And but whenever you get into a dealership setting and you're basically taking a flat rate technician that, and I've actually, I've heard you talk about it, there's so many things, processes, and tests that I'm doing multiple... Like, there's multiple tests involved in this one test, and I'm gathering all of that data for all of those tests at one time, and you're trying to teach this to, you know, a kid effectively.
[01:31:09] Dustin Stutzman: He's not processing all of the data that you're actually collecting at that one... You just show him, "Well, I'm looking at this, this, and this, and they're this number, and so it needs a blah. You know, it needs a, it needs a, it needs an oxygen sensor." They're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How did you get there?"
[01:31:22] Dustin Stutzman: I, you know, "I'm flat rate, I don't have time to tell you that. Just put an oxygen sensor in it." And so that's how they learn. I've seen so many junior guys going to dealerships and they, you know, they basically are like, "Well, I mean, when it has that code, we put it, we put this in it." Mm-hmm. It's like, but, but, but that's not, that's...
[01:31:37] Dustin Stutzman: You, you, what?
[01:31:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:31:39] Dustin Stutzman: W- w- like, that's not a thing. You can't do that. And like, again, you're, you're throwing flat rate technicians out there and saying, like, just because you're a really good tech, that doesn't make you a really good teacher. And, and even if you are a really good tech, you can't be a tech, a really good tech while being a teacher.
[01:31:57] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:31:57] Dustin Stutzman: Like, the, the two... Like, you're not go- like, no person, especially starting off, and I don't even... Most people who work in the dealership around me are, uh, like even the, the seasoned veterans are, are not able to keep up when I'm full speed diagging, right?
[01:32:15] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[01:32:15] Dustin Stutzman: And so expecting a kid to come in who has, doesn't even know what I...
[01:32:20] Dustin Stutzman: Like, he doesn't even... Like, I'm, all, I, I can talk about emissions, right? And like, I, they'll come get me about, about trying to help them with an emissions test and I, and I'll be like, "Okay, so what did you do?" And one of the first things that almost always gets told to me, "Well, you know, I kind of walked back there and, you know, I got to the gas cap and, and I opened it up and twisted it and it was a little off, so maybe that might have been..."
[01:32:39] Dustin Stutzman: I'm like, "You already messed up."
[01:32:41] Jeff Compton: Yeah, yeah.
[01:32:41] Dustin Stutzman: You al- you already screwed up. Like, you, you messed up before you even started. Mm-hmm. Like, what... And, and you try to explain why they messed up, and you try to explain what they should have done, and you try to explain how now your test data is, is may- maybe not wrong, but it's inaccurate.
[01:32:57] Dustin Stutzman: And, and like, uh, and it just, again, it just goes whoop. A- and but, but you're trying to... During all that, you're still trying to turn hours. You're still trying to make a paycheck. You're still trying to, you know, get cars fixed. You still have a waiter over there that's, that's a diag for... It, it's, the environment is not conducive.
[01:33:18] Dustin Stutzman: And then y- the other side of it is most places don't actually have a real-
[01:33:23] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[01:33:24] Dustin Stutzman: what, what, what I would say is a path to success, right? Like, they don't say, "Hey, you can do this training, and once you reach this level, you're gonna reach this pay structure, and once you do this, and what..." It's like, "Hey, do all these trainings, and when you're done, we'll talk about it."
[01:33:40] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:33:41] Dustin Stutzman: It's like, okay, so, so what's, what's the carrot? Like, you, you, you said there's a... You basically implied that there's a carrot, but I don't actually know what the carrot is. And so they spend, you know, a year or two years, maybe even three years, and they're just like, "I, I, I don't know. All my buddies are working at Costco making more than me, and I'm dealing with, you know, waders.
[01:34:01] Dustin Stutzman: I'm dealing with this. I'm dealing..." Like, what, what, what's the point? Like- Well,
[01:34:06] Jeff Compton: because, and you and I know, like, they can sit there and take all the online training they want, all the, the, the dealer pro- Yep.
[01:34:13] Dustin Stutzman: Yep ...
[01:34:13] Jeff Compton: pressure provided. It doesn't help them break down a process to, uh, interrogate a wiring problem better, right?
[01:34:21] Jeff Compton: Right. It's all this Ohm's law and basic circuitry, which is fine, but it's like, until they can look at it and go, "If I remove that relay- Yep ... I generate all of these codes." Yep. Or, "If I just cut this one leg off, I generate- Right ... these codes." That doesn't click for them until they- No ... pay solving problems.
[01:34:39] Dustin Stutzman: I, I use, I use, uh, I use welding a lot as, as an example, is you can be...
[01:34:45] Dustin Stutzman: Like, you can literally have every single welding book read. You can know what it should look like, the temperatures, the, the, the amount of gas, every, every numerical, everything that you could possibly know about welding, you could have, you know, all stored. It's all right there. It's all fresh. That, that doesn't mean you're a welder No.
[01:35:05] Dustin Stutzman: 'Cause go-
[01:35:07] Jeff Compton: Like- ... go climb underneath the machine, cramp your body up into that situation. Now- Right ... imagine a headwind blowing across the thing.
[01:35:13] Dustin Stutzman: Right. And go- And your gas is blowing away. Like, all of those... Again, I, and, and I, and I'll be the first to say, I'm, I, I don't classify myself as a welder. Can I put two pieces of metal together and it's gonna hold?
[01:35:24] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah, probably. But I'm, I, I'm not a welder. And, and, and I, and I've done a significant amount of welding, and I've also done research on welding, but I'm not a welder. And it's the same for cars. Just because you have the information, just because you can say the right things, doesn't mean you can just drop a car off with them and, and it's gonna get diagnosed properly, and it's gonna get fixed, and the customer's...
[01:35:46] Dustin Stutzman: and all of these things. And that's the parts. And, and trying to inevitably teach that, like you have to have someone who's pay is not reliant on them still fixing cars
[01:36:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah. 'Cause you have- And- ... to be able to, I don't mean to interrupt you, but you have to be able, if there's a pivotable moment in their teaching right there, you have to be able to go over there and work with them until you see that light bulb go off.
[01:36:13] Jeff Compton: Then you're done. That's that particular incidence, that's, it's done, the lesson's been taught, and you can go back over to what you were doing. We can't be in a situation that it's this environment where it's like, "Okay, gotta go. No, go over here, like, look at this, and touch that, and see how that feels."
[01:36:28] Jeff Compton: That's, that's not it. We have to be going, "Watch this. Slow down. This is what the scan tool- Yep ... means for you. Let's go over and pull this page up on the service information. See how that's written there? This is how- Yep ... we attack this." If we don't have time to do that in any shop, dealership, independent shop, it doesn't matter, we can't bring up the next generation.
[01:36:48] Jeff Compton: And- Right ... you know, it goes back to if everybody's running around doing these DVIs for free or these oil changes for .3 or .4 or whatever, we're not harboring a culture where everybody can slow down, help one another, teach one another-
[01:37:03] Dustin Stutzman: That- ...
[01:37:04] Jeff Compton: one another up. We're not doing that. That- We're, we're- ... not ... it's against each other, dog eat dog.
[01:37:08] Dustin Stutzman: It's 100%. That's ex- And that's when you talk about bringing up the next generation, it's just, it's just like... And, and I know it's been, obviously, it's been discussed so much, and it's just like, dude, you're, you're asking, let's say, an 18-year-old kid, "Hey, you've got a, a $20,000 buy-in-
[01:37:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:37:27] Dustin Stutzman: to make basically, you know, less than you can make at pretty much any warehouse, any factory, any, you know, whatever.
[01:37:35] Dustin Stutzman: Like, all your buddies are gonna be making more than you for probably the next five to six years, and this, all of that investment is so that you can eventually get to a point where you can make it. And the other side of that is too, is you, in order, in my experience, and honestly, I, more people I've talked to that are successful, um, is you, in this industry specific- And when this is, I would say it's all industries, but this industry specifically, you have to not only be good, but you have to self-advocate so hard.
[01:38:04] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[01:38:05] Dustin Stutzman: Like, you have to prove how good you are in not only in the day in, day out, but you have to prove it in the numbers. You have to present. Like, I, I used to, I still do it. Like, every single year, I initiate the, the, the interview to the analysis to the bonus to the, to the pay, to the... Like, and I bring all of the numbers.
[01:38:25] Dustin Stutzman: And you're asking, again, I mean, for most part, technicians. Like, I'm not, and I'm not- I don't wanna put t- technicians in a box, but, like, when you're asking a technician to more or less be confrontational, like to go up to a bigwig and be like, "Hey, you know, I know that your name's on the building, but, uh, these are all of the, this, the..."
[01:38:44] Dustin Stutzman: And then you're a- asking them to not only be able to understand all the numbers and the metrics inside the dealership or the repair facility, but then able to be able to put into perspective what they bring in that, in that number, in that subset, and then advocate for themselves for this number based on, you know, total- Yep
[01:39:06] Dustin Stutzman: United States market analysis. Like, that's a big ask.
[01:39:11] Jeff Compton: And, and I'll tell you, I think you're a lot like me, because what did it for me was, like, when I was the hourly guy and they handed me everybody else's comebacks, and I told- Mm-hmm ... this story before. I started keeping a logbook with the photocopies of the original work order, what it came in for, how many times it came in after that, and my notes that showed what I actually did to fix the damn car.
[01:39:33] Jeff Compton: And- Right ... 'cause when I would go to them and say, "This is why I'm worth more," or, "This-" Right "... raise went through the shop, and you left me out of it because you gave the raise to the flat rate guys, but you didn't give it to me. This is why I'm worth at least what the raise was," because I had that evidence.
[01:39:47] Jeff Compton: I had that information. Yep. It was... You couldn't argue it. It could- Right ... not be disputed that I was worth at least what they were, and I was worth more than w- like, what I was getting paid and worth what I was asking because I had it. If you don't have it, and you just sit there and go, um- "I
[01:40:02] Dustin Stutzman: know I do these things, but I can't really prove it.
[01:40:06] Dustin Stutzman: I just know that I'm worth more." It... They, they just kind of look at you and go, "Hey, sorry. Based on your, you know, your level and your age and the market, you're evenly paid. We don't have time for... You know, we don't, we don't have money in the budget for..." And that's the big thing, especially now that I'm with a corporation more so, is like they're, they're big into, like, "Well, you're paid above market, so I mean, you're, you're..."
[01:40:28] Dustin Stutzman: And it's just like, but you don't understand. Like, I bring... This is the level, like- Like, you, you obviously, and I, and I, in my last performance interview, I brought all those numbers, and they inevitably they said, "But based on, you know, the market, um, it's still, um, you're paid well enough basically." Hmm. And, uh, and I was just like, "All right, well, all, all..."
[01:40:49] Dustin Stutzman: And I told them this actually. I was like, "Well, literally all you're doing is you're opening the door for a competitor, and if that's what you want to do- Mm-hmm ... that is fine. I'm not going to lower my productivity, my efficiency, my repair strategy. Like, I, I'm going to keep performing 'cause that's just what I've done my, you know, basically my whole life.
[01:41:08] Dustin Stutzman: But, like, all you're doing is allowing someone else to come in." But that's also, when you talk about dealer groups and stuff like that, is that's kind of their thing is like, "Well, if we own all the dealerships-
[01:41:19] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[01:41:19] Dustin Stutzman: you're not doing it here."
[01:41:20] Jeff Compton: Well, and that's... Oh man, you just... We're running out of time here, and you touched on something, because that's how you get blacklisted, right?
[01:41:27] Dustin Stutzman: Yep.
[01:41:27] Jeff Compton: Might find yourself a better fit on a better brand with a better manager, right? Yep. In the group. And that's why, but like, uh, man, I have a friend that I worked with at Nissan, and he talks about how it is out in the province that he moved to. You've got essentially two dealer groups that control everything.
[01:41:42] Dustin Stutzman: Everything,
[01:41:43] Jeff Compton: yep. Buy a car in that province, it, it's through that group. And he said it does not matter. Like, that's why he finally got out of the dealer rat race and went to... What's he fix now, ladies and gentlemen? He fixes forklifts 'cause he- Yep ... heard of it.
[01:41:55] Dustin Stutzman: I, I've, I've got several, I've got several buddies that they fix forklifts, they fix school buses.
[01:42:01] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah. They fix, like, because they're just like, "I'm t- I was so tired of, of the," I mean, inevitably the dealer politics, the, the constant like, well, what, you know, basically what they're saying. And, and I know that's what... And, and they're, and the thing is, is they're not technically wrong, right? He's basically saying, "Find something else."
[01:42:19] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[01:42:19] Dustin Stutzman: Good luck." And I, and I know based on what I make that all, what I would have to do in order to make more is I would have to basically make a lateral shift to another dealership and promise them my capabilities, and then whenever I produce that, they would have to back pay me the amount that I spec- basically made them- Wow
[01:42:40] Dustin Stutzman: because I was who I said I was. And relying on a dealership to not weasel out of that money, um, that, that's probably unrealistic. And so obviously with whatever, if, if and when the move happens, and I've, I've said for years I've, when I hit, when I hit 40, um, I would really like to... I'm almost there. Um, but when I hit 40, I'd really like to pivot- Yeah
[01:43:03] Dustin Stutzman: because the, like- Working at the efficiency that I said with the numbers that I said, um, I mean, it's just hard, it's just hard on the body, right? Like, I mean, you know, you know just as well, obviously, you know just as well as I do, man. It's just I, I really don't wanna be that grumpy old tech, and it's tough not to be that grumpy old tech sometimes, and it's only getting tougher, you know?
[01:43:24] Dustin Stutzman: Like, every time I... The amount... I, I sat down an advisor the other day, um, 'cause he did kinda what we were talking about the ear- earlier, where, like, he, you know, he hands me the ticket that I already quoted a whole bunch of stuff on, and he said, "Hey, it's aftermarket warranty, got it all approved." I'm like, "You got all of it approved?"
[01:43:40] Dustin Stutzman: He's like, "Yep." And I'm like, "Okay. Uh, good." So I worked, did the job, and I'm then the next day I look at my stub and it's- Yeah ... two hours short.
[01:43:49] Jeff Compton: Two hours.
[01:43:49] Dustin Stutzman: And I'm just like... Uh, so I walk up there and I'm like, "Hey, what, what happened here?" "Oh, so yeah, they said the, the warranty said that, you know, this is all they're gonna pay," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[01:43:57] Dustin Stutzman: And I said, "You don't get to do that."
[01:44:01] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:44:01] Dustin Stutzman: I said, "That is not how this works." I said, "If this is what you're going to do, I am not going to work on your cars, the cars for your customers, until I know the dollar amount and you're going to pay me that."
[01:44:13] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:44:13] Dustin Stutzman: Like, this is not how this works. And, like, that just g- it, it wears on you, right?
[01:44:19] Dustin Stutzman: Like, it just, it-
[01:44:19] Jeff Compton: Sure. Because here's the thing. He calls up Mrs. Smith then, and Mrs- says, "Mrs. Smith, they covered 18 out of the 20 hours." Right. "Your bill for this repair- Right ... is gonna be 160 bucks."
[01:44:31] Dustin Stutzman: Right. "
[01:44:31] Jeff Compton: Mrs. Smith," uh, or 300 bucks, whatever, you know, whatever it is times two. And Mrs. Smith goes, "Well, that's not really what they said when they sold me the warranty, but-" Right.
[01:44:41] Jeff Compton: Like, and, and again, I understand it's not the technician's job to have the conversation, but we shouldn't even have to ask that anymore. It should be- Right ... Mrs. Smith's gonna be on the hook for the difference. Right. 'Cause the job has a value, the technician- Right ... has a value, everybody's gonna get paid their value.
[01:44:56] Jeff Compton: Uh, I wanted to s- you know, going back to what you were saying, and then we gotta, I gotta let you go. That's fine. Uh, people are talking about, you know, in the dealer group, and they go, "Well, you're above market value," right? And, and, and, and, and, you know, "I, I don't need to do anything." You do need to do something right now because they're vacating the dealerships- That
[01:45:14] Jeff Compton: vacating the shops- That ... vacating the industry- That's- ... in a rapid, rapid- Yep ... exit. So-
[01:45:20] Dustin Stutzman: That's, that's, that's... So when they said that to my face, right, like they said, you know, "Well, you're, you're already above market."
[01:45:26] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:45:27] Dustin Stutzman: And I said But the market's wrong.
[01:45:29] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:45:30] Dustin Stutzman: People are leaving in droves. And I said, I said, "There are going to be a million empty bays in the next year or two."
[01:45:38] Dustin Stutzman: Yeah.
[01:45:39] Jeff Compton: Yeah,
[01:45:39] Dustin Stutzman: Jim Farley- And, and we've gotta figure out a way to fix that. And-
[01:45:41] Jeff Compton: Ford's got 100,000, if you believe Jim Farley.
[01:45:45] Dustin Stutzman: Right. And, and I was like, "And, and we have to fix that problem. And part... And the big... One of the biggest parts of that problem is the pay. So you telling me," I was like, "As the market, whatever, uh, frankly, I don't care 'cause it's wrong."
[01:45:59] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:46:00] Dustin Stutzman: And, you know, and basically he just said, "Well, I mean, at this time that's, that's just where it's at." And I'm just like, "Okay, that's- And- ... they, whatever ...
[01:46:07] Jeff Compton: make it make sense to me then where it turns around and I lose technicians because I don't wanna pay them another $10,000 a year, but then I'm gonna take corporate money and I'm gonna dump $100,000 into a high school pro- program or a college program.
[01:46:21] Jeff Compton: Right. Tell me how that makes sense.
[01:46:23] Dustin Stutzman: Right. 'Cause
[01:46:24] Jeff Compton: everyone that signs up in that is not a slam dunk gonna catch, you know-
[01:46:28] Dustin Stutzman: No. Yeah. Most are not. I mean, if you went through, if you went through the high school program or a college program or whatever, I, I, I know, I know the numbers on my college class. My graduating class of, of 35 kids through the program when we graduated, um, there are two technicians.
[01:46:46] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:46:47] Dustin Stutzman: And only one of them is actually working on cars. The other one's working on forklifts. Every other one is in some tangential HVAC, um, a family business, uh, you know, whatever, right? And, and so it's like, so if we're missing out on 95% of the kids that come through anyways, like that, that... Like, and the thing is, is like people talk, right?
[01:47:10] Dustin Stutzman: Like we talk. Like, uh, a- and so when you talk about, "Actually, I'm making a lot of money, and I'm doing really well, and the, and the, and everyone around me's happy, and we're all, you know, we're all on the same team, and this is great." And if you're saying stuff like that, well, all of a sudden people are like, "Hey, maybe I wanna go do that.
[01:47:26] Dustin Stutzman: Maybe that sounds..." But when people a- come and ask me, like, "Should I go work on cars?" I, I give them a list of all the reasons that- Or potential downfalls basically, right? Yeah. Like I'm like, "Dude, this is how it's gonna be, and I'm not saying it's right, and I'm s- but you're, you're gonna have to advocate."
[01:47:45] Dustin Stutzman: There's gonna be a point probably year three where you're gonna look around and you're gonna be like, "I'm worth way more."
[01:47:50] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:47:50] Dustin Stutzman: And you're gonna go to your, your p- your whoever, your dealer principle, your manager, whatever, and he's gonna decide right there if you're gonna be in the industry or you're not.
[01:47:58] Jeff Compton: Yeah. '
[01:47:58] Dustin Stutzman: Cause if you're good, he's gonna go, "Yeah, you're right. We've been underpaying you for the last three years. Here's a little bump." Or he's gonna be like, "I mean, you haven't... You've made a little progress, but you're not really there." Yeah. "Uh, sorry, we can't really do it right now." And then you're gonna pack up your box, you're gonna leave.
[01:48:15] Dustin Stutzman: And that happens time and time and time and time and time again. And there's so many just mis- like there's, there's, there's so many missed opportunities in that. And it's just, it is, it is just frustrating. And, um, and I mean, it's... And l- I, I go back to the engineering thing. It's not just this industry.
[01:48:32] Dustin Stutzman: It's a lot of-
[01:48:33] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:48:34] Dustin Stutzman: It's a... There are a lot of industries that, that are struggling in that, 'cause I mean, I mean, it's Kind of the nature of where things are right now, right? I mean, we have super billionaires, and inevitably that wealth comes from somewhere. But it's just, man, the, the boots on the ground, the day by day guys, it's, it's just, it's, it's only gotten more difficult.
[01:48:53] Jeff Compton: 100%. Um, we're gonna have to come back and do a part two, Dustin.
[01:48:58] Dustin Stutzman: All right. All right. Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I've, I've been, I've been doing this a long time, and I, I, I talk a lot, so.
[01:49:03] Jeff Compton: Is there any chance you can make it to one of the destination events that we
[01:49:07] Dustin Stutzman: talked about? Uh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I could, I could definitely make it to one of the destination events.
[01:49:11] Dustin Stutzman: I'm, I'm, I could definitely make that work. Um, yeah. Yeah. I've, I've, like I said, I've, I've done this a long time, and I'm pretty integrated into all the systems, and I know a lot of numbers.
[01:49:20] Jeff Compton: Well, the n- the next two coming up are, um, ASTA in September in Rock- Okay ... Carolina. And then of course, like, I'll be at Apex SEMA in Vegas, which is, you know, every car guy should see that once.
[01:49:33] Dustin Stutzman: Okay.
[01:49:33] Jeff Compton: So, I mean- Sure ... but it, it, you know, there's gonna be something closer to you if you can't make it one of them. And you know, you and I'll talk probably before then if we're not talking- Yeah ... for those two events, and, and we gotta get you to one of these because I, I keep bringing on, you know, the, the dealer guys and, and I'm sure it's probably some of my audience is like, "We don't care.
[01:49:53] Jeff Compton: They can't fix anything anyway." I have to keep having this conversation because I hope at some point somebody in one of these big dealer groups hears my show and- Mm-hmm ... understands what the boots on the ground people are talking about, the very real problems that they're facing. So when you're sitting there going, "You know, we've run an ad for six months and we can't hire a technician, and there's no, there's no techs in my town that'll come work here," or they can't...
[01:50:16] Jeff Compton: Man, they're, they're out there. There's technicians all over the place. But they're- There are ... they're not gonna play the game anymore. And-
[01:50:22] Dustin Stutzman: Right. They're tired of it. They're tired of the game. They're tired of the politics. They're tired of... It, it's... And, and I said, like I go back to my previous owner, like, I didn't have to do any of that.
[01:50:32] Dustin Stutzman: Mm-hmm. Like, he just gave me raises- Yeah ... and said, "Hey, man, I genuinely appreciate you." Then, I mean, I remember having a conversation during COVID and he was just like, "I don't want you to leave. You're too good, and-" is will this number keep you? And I'm like, and I said, I, I told him, I was like, "Man, I will tell you this.
[01:50:51] Dustin Stutzman: You have been nothing but good to me, and at the end of the day, if there was ever a situation that I would be leaving, I would 100% give you the opportunity to make it better."
[01:51:02] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:51:03] Dustin Stutzman: And, and that's, and, and, and that's it. That's all. But, but when you go back to dealer groups and they talk about all the time, "You're just a number.
[01:51:11] Dustin Stutzman: You're replaceable. You, you know, you, you'll leave and we'll just, we'll just find someone else." And it's like, brother, no, you won't. It's not, like you don't... You, again, you don't understand, and it's-
[01:51:22] Jeff Compton: They won't, they won't hit the numbers. When they let a tech like you leave, they won't hit the numbers. So whatever-
[01:51:26] Dustin Stutzman: No
[01:51:26] Jeff Compton: you think they're saving by not giving the-
[01:51:29] Dustin Stutzman: No ...
[01:51:29] Jeff Compton: bump in pay, you're not making up- So- ... to you all of a sudden ...
[01:51:32] Dustin Stutzman: so, uh, obviously we get numbers all the time, right? Like, uh, every week, every day, all the time. And like I... So just labor alone, I'm doing about 60 grand a month in labor. Just my stalls, just me And that's on top of all the other duties.
[01:51:50] Dustin Stutzman: Like, that's on top of going to the parts counter every single time and showing them the parts I need- Right ... because they can't do their job. Like-
[01:51:58] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[01:51:58] Dustin Stutzman: I, uh, so, like, when they tell me... Like, I literally have to help them with, with, with leg- I go back to labor operations and getting stuff paid, and they come to me and they say, "Well, I don't think that's gonna work."
[01:52:08] Dustin Stutzman: And I say, "Listen, submit it. I know it will work. I have the story. I have the punch. I have all the stuff. I know it works."
[01:52:16] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:52:16] Dustin Stutzman: And then they're like, "Okay, yeah, it paid. Good. Wow, that's great. I've never seen that pay before." And I'm like, "Trust me, I know the game. I know all of these things."
[01:52:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:52:24] Dustin Stutzman: And they, again, and like you said, they, they just don't s- they...
[01:52:28] Dustin Stutzman: It's, there's so many things that are not measurable for my value on, on a, on a spreadsheet.
[01:52:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:52:35] Dustin Stutzman: But when you talk to the people that I work with, right, like, like the writers and stuff, they know that if I'm gone for a week-
[01:52:41] Jeff Compton: Mm ...
[01:52:41] Dustin Stutzman: they're gonna lose $30,000 in labor. Like, that's just, that's just how. That's go- or, or, or, or two weeks or whatever.
[01:52:48] Dustin Stutzman: Like, they're, th- that's a $15,000 go- hit for, in labor alone for one week o- going on vacation, right? Yep. And if, if I look at, so if I look at parts and labor sold on my tickets, I'm at, like, 1.2 to $1.3 million a year. And they're like, "You're overpaid." And I'm like, "Okay, sure."
[01:53:06] Jeff Compton: But how dare you want $12,000 more next year?
[01:53:10] Jeff Compton: Right. How dare you?
[01:53:11] Dustin Stutzman: Right. I, I, uh, that's above market, right? And I'm like, "Okay, cool."
[01:53:16] Jeff Compton: Dustin.
[01:53:18] Dustin Stutzman: Yep.
[01:53:18] Jeff Compton: Thank you, brother, for being here.
[01:53:20] Dustin Stutzman: Yep.
[01:53:20] Jeff Compton: Everybody, um, you know, this has been a fun one, and, uh, he'll be back. I like these- ... like this. Um, I'll see everybody at Asta. I'll see everybody at Apex. Um, you know, everybody, thank you for people that make this possible, Launch Tech USA, Tech Metric, you know, all my friends.
[01:53:39] Jeff Compton: Um, I can't, I can't say enough about how important it is that I represent you guys and, and speak for you. So as always, people, like, I love yous all. If you wanna have a conversation, reach out to me, get ahold of me. Um, you know, you don't have to record it. If you just need to bend an ear and be heard and, and, and get over something, just get ahold of me.
[01:53:59] Jeff Compton: Don't, don't suffer without having a conversation. I will always be here for you guys. So everybody, thank you. I love you. We'll talk to y'all soon. Dustin, brother, thank you very much, man. I can't wait to do this again.
[01:54:10] Dustin Stutzman: Yep. Had fun. Let me know, man. Hit me up.
[01:54:12] Jeff Compton: For sure Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on, and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it.
[01:54:21] Jeff Compton: And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASAP Group and to the Change in the Industry podcast.
[01:54:39] Jeff Compton: Remember what I always say, "In this industry, you get what you pay for." Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.