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The Gearbox Podcast brings on industry professionals to explore the day-to-day operations of owning and operating a shop. From common frustrations to industry-wide shifts, this podcast covers it with fun and insightful conversations.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:00]:
Oh, cool, man. I appreciate you hanging out. I know it's probably getting late over there.
Jeremy Hossler [00:00:04]:
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:05]:
Okay. Where are you at exactly?
Jeremy Hossler [00:00:08]:
Goshen, Indiana.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:09]:
Oh, right on. Okay.
Jeremy Hossler [00:00:10]:
St notre Dame.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's always interesting to me hearing how different auto shops function in different parts of the country because kind of all the same, but different average our hourly labor rates. But it's not as much as the housing is differently. Right. You look at the cost of housing, the cost of living, it's like our labor rate doesn't reflect that much differently across the country. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:47]:
We're maybe 20 or $30 more on average. But the average house is a couple of hundred thousand dollars more. You got a lot of catching up to do.
Jeremy Hossler [00:00:56]:
I actually looked at comparables in your city, and for what you guys are getting, for 800,000, I can buy for 250.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:06]:
Right.
Jeremy Hossler [00:01:06]:
And four years ago, that same house was 100,000 here. So it's nuts.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:14]:
Yeah. So it's doubled for you, but it's still not high.
Jeremy Hossler [00:01:20]:
A third of what you are.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:22]:
Right. And then for your income, what's, like your average repair order?
Jeremy Hossler [00:01:29]:
Right now, we are just strictly American and Asian. No European, nothing like that. Our average repair order has been right at $500.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:40]:
Okay.
Jeremy Hossler [00:01:41]:
So it's not bad.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:43]:
Right. In the grand scheme of things, they said the ratio between what you can get paid to live where you're at versus out in California, there's such a huge divide. Yeah. You're making a couple of $100 less, say, per average repair order, but the cost of housing is a couple of hundred thousand less. So it's amazing.
Jeremy Hossler [00:02:11]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:02:11]:
I love it here, but it's definitely hard to look at the numbers and realize, like, oh, man, it is expensive. And then trying to hire technicians and then pay them enough so they can actually live here, that's it's a challenge.
Jeremy Hossler [00:02:23]:
One thing I thought was kind of weird, I got some friends in La. And when I went out and visited, because I did the drive or management success back in the day, so I had some friends out there. So I was checking out auto shops and what everybody paid and their $600,000 house. I'm like, Dude, I just paid 80 grand for the same thing. But the guys out there aren't making any more money than we are.
Jimmy Purdy [00:02:48]:
Right.
Jeremy Hossler [00:02:49]:
And he said the way they do the loans out there, they make it to where his house payment was. Mine was like 900. His was only like, 1100. I don't get that.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:00]:
Yeah, the interest, it was weird. Definitely interesting. Well, starting off, do the introduction. I'm pretty bad at that. So let's start by giving yourself an introduction.
Jeremy Hossler [00:03:12]:
My name is Jeremy Hossler. Been an auto tech since, we'll say, the mid 90s. Been working on cars since the early 90s. I've owned two shops, built them up, sold them both. Right now, I'm shop forming over at another shop here in town, and like most people, I got frustrated a couple of times and took some time off from the auto biz for a while. But it's just a passion. You just can't get away from it. I just love it too much.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:40]:
Yeah, it keeps pulling you back in. Let's get into that. How did the starting go? Where did you kind of get started with in kind of the industry?
Jeremy Hossler [00:03:50]:
My first official job, I actually was in 1994 at a Little Tire not a Little Tire store. It's a big tire store around here. But I started busting tires. Just a monkey making $4.35 an hour and tried to work my way up. Did tires for two years, tried to get in the service department. Back then, it was hard.
Jimmy Purdy [00:04:14]:
Was that what you always kind of wanted to get to, was up into the service department?
Jeremy Hossler [00:04:18]:
Yeah, it's been my work on cars. I'm what you call a car guy. I live, breathe, eat cars. I have, like, 13 of them. Half of them are junk, but I just love cars.
Jimmy Purdy [00:04:31]:
They don't all run, right?
Jeremy Hossler [00:04:32]:
No, right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:04:35]:
We're all there.
Jeremy Hossler [00:04:37]:
If I had time and money, I could make some really nice stuff, but things are kind of hard to come across.
Jimmy Purdy [00:04:42]:
Yeah, that's true. That was kind of like your goal is to get in and get into the service department.
Jeremy Hossler [00:04:49]:
Oh, yeah. In my mind, I thought I was pretty decent. I mean, I've been changing engines since I was 13. I did swaps every weekend. That's all I did. And then I remember the boss in the service department one day. I'm like, hey, I want to go back there. He's like, hey, do some brakes.
Jeremy Hossler [00:05:05]:
Show me you can do them. I'm like, oh, heck yeah. I had an 83 Firebird with a 406 down in it. So I pull it in, and I throw some brake pads on there, and I'm done in, like, 15 minutes. He comes over, he looks at it. He says, I never hire you.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:19]:
Wow.
Jeremy Hossler [00:05:19]:
What? Look how fast I did it. He's like, no, we don't do fast. So it took me almost a year to convince him to put me on the lube rack and then go back and slowly do a couple little things. And then I went from there to Northwestern University in Lime, Ohio. Did the automotive training, the business training, and all that. And then when I went back, he gave me a shot on the alignment rack. So I had two alignment racks and just an alignment flunky. Couldn't change no parts, just alignments.
Jeremy Hossler [00:05:56]:
But the guy was OCD so bad. Like, everything had to be exactly perfect, but it ended up being the best thing for me because every alignment had to be dead on.
Jimmy Purdy [00:06:09]:
I feel like a lot of people get in the industry, whether you're young or middle aged or old, get in the industry, and that pushes a lot of people away. Having someone stand over them and say, hey, that can't leave like that. That can't be like, that. What? I can't just do whatever I want? I think it sets a good standard of where to start from, but it also is crucial in how to stay in the industry because you're going to get beat. You're going to get beat up a lot, right? You're going to get stuff that's not right. You're going to have misdiagnosis. And it's like when you have a starting point like that where someone's constantly I don't know what the word for it is. Micromanaging.
Jimmy Purdy [00:06:56]:
I don't call it micromanaging, but just showing you the right way, saying, hey, that's not right, do it again. And I think a lot of people just like, I don't want to deal with this. This is too hard. If you can get through that, you're going to be in it for the rest of your life.
Jeremy Hossler [00:07:10]:
Yeah, it was hard because I had two racks, but he wouldn't let me go. You're going to master this and then you're going to move up. Then you're going to master that, then you're going to move up. So I would pull it in, check it out. These tie rods need something else. When the other guys come down, bust the parts on, I'd align it. Back then, the record was 3000 a month. That's all the alignment rack made.
Jeremy Hossler [00:07:33]:
It was almost a loser.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:34]:
Wow.
Jeremy Hossler [00:07:35]:
So I was making $7 an hour. And he's like, if you want to raise to $9, you got to really up it, right? I busted my butt. I was 1315 alignments a day. And this is 39 95 alignment specials. So it got to where I was doing $11,000 in alignments. It's like, I made $9 an hour. Like, yay. And then he let me from there.
Jeremy Hossler [00:07:59]:
It was like, all right, now you're going to learn how to do a brake job. Now you're going to learn how to use a torch. He taught me all the basics. I thought he was kind of a prick, but in the end, it took me about a year to realize it. But he's probably one of the best teachers I ever had.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:16]:
Yeah, it sounds like it probably the best thing now.
Jeremy Hossler [00:08:20]:
The guys I have now, they don't like it because I'm so anal about alignments. Like, no, green isn't green. It's got to be, right? We're going to wear tires out.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:31]:
Yeah. Just because the spec is like, seven to 13 doesn't mean you send it at 13. Right.
Jeremy Hossler [00:08:37]:
Three negative. Like, no, you can. It's going to eat the see, the tires are already worn off on the inside. Quit. Yeah, we did that. I did that for a while, slowly got moved up. They had some big management changes and some other things, and it was like, I couldn't take it no more. They come down pretty hard on the tech, so they had a bunch of guys leave.
Jeremy Hossler [00:09:02]:
I actually left the industry for a little bit, went actually wiring houses for a short bit. So I still worked there in the tire department after my trailer factory job because I'd be off at 930 10:00. So I would get 40 hours part time at the tire store. So I had two paychecks going, and when they changed all the management, I got right back in. It was there forever after that. It was quite a long time.
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:29]:
Yeah, I think there's a good correlation of techs that end up going into the construction industry because I think we're all kind of plastic in that way and pretty hands on, especially electrical. I mean, if you can't wire a house, I don't know if you should be messing with an electric car. Nonetheless, just anything 2010 or newer, right? You should have a pretty good concept of AC DC voltage. Maybe not full on wirehouse, but you should be able to put an outlet in or a light switch. You should know what positive and negative is, right? And that's pretty easy to correlate from that tire shop. Did you move into owning a shop or you stuck it out as, like, kind of a manager role there?
Jeremy Hossler [00:10:11]:
Well, I stayed there, and then September 11 happened, and at that time, I was back in the service department. I went back full time. I was on track. I had a contract with them to make 52,000 a year, which was the $100,000 number. Now 52 grand in 2001, you made it. So I was only at like 29, 30,000 come that September. So the boss was looking at writing me a pretty good check at the end of the year. Didn't come up.
Jeremy Hossler [00:10:45]:
And then when that happened, I was actually writing service, too, on my own and for another guy in the shop. And when that happened, business just dropped. I mean, it hit the floor for us. We went from having a record month to two days later. We didn't work on a single car for almost seven days.
Jimmy Purdy [00:11:06]:
Wow.
Jeremy Hossler [00:11:06]:
It was bad. So at that point, it got kind of rough, and another shop kind of headhunted me, so I went over there, did that for a while, and me and the that's where I learned the finer side of the diag. So we had a Master Tech 5200 lab scope, and I learned ignition patterns, the hard stuff. So it was full time diag there. And then me and the boss had a falling out one day at lunch. I'd went to lunch. I'd already turned like, 13 hours by lunch, I was killing it. But I left at lunch at 1230, come back at 115, and oh, man, you don't get out of that time.
Jeremy Hossler [00:11:51]:
So we got in a little argument, and I said, I'll do it myself. I'll start my own shop. So I walked out, and three weeks later, I bought another shop that had been in town forever that had closed down, he had retired. So I got it and started from the ground up. Empty building and an air compressor. So that was probably not the smartest.
Jimmy Purdy [00:12:13]:
Thing to do because I thought, take some cajonas.
Jeremy Hossler [00:12:18]:
I wrote service, I know all the numbers. I know how to run a business. This is easy.
Jimmy Purdy [00:12:24]:
Well, if you don't think of it like that, you probably would never have done it, right? We all think it's easy. Otherwise you don't even start it.
Jeremy Hossler [00:12:35]:
Yeah, that was a rough one. So I started out, and I done run pretty much everything in two weeks out. Like all my friends, all my family, I had done tapped everybody out. Didn't have advertising budget. The shop was not even on a main road. We're talking behind a couple stores off the main road. No advertising. Google couldn't find it.
Jeremy Hossler [00:13:00]:
There wasn't really internet popular back then. So I started it. And then one of the guys that was the head diagtech where I was at, I convinced him like, hey, let's be partners. Let's move in. You can be the diag tech. I'll run the office, bust out the hard stuff. And that's how it started. And within the first month, we almost went under.
Jeremy Hossler [00:13:22]:
I mean, it was burnt through. All the money I had saved up, because you think, oh, I got money. This will last. And then you see shiny things like, oh, wow, look at that tool. Oh, we need this tool, we need that tool. Oh, we need stock, we need this. And I just spent my way to where I just didn't have anything. I was broke, and all the cars, we pretty much burn up.
Jeremy Hossler [00:13:46]:
But then I just started reading everything I could about advertising and marketing, and I was putting flyers on people's cars. I was handing out business cards. I was going door to door. And then I got the newspaper to do an article on us with the old owner as kind of a handing over the business, that kind of thing. And then we yeah, that's smart from there. Yeah, it was instantly we were busy. We were busy for two years.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:11]:
So the owner before you, I guess he was well established in the community then.
Jeremy Hossler [00:14:15]:
His family had been in this town doing something since the 40s. They'd always own gas station service.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:25]:
Yeah, that's a pretty good pivot there. That's pretty smart. I don't think a lot of people think of something like that. But you're looking for like a billboard, right, or like the banner on the back of a plane, right, or like a big radio ad or a TV commercial. And it's like it's amazing how something like that just a newspaper article, right, with a little bit of community support, and that's all it took. And it's like, it's amazing how the small things like that just make the biggest difference, especially with marketing. It's very interesting because I thought I.
Jeremy Hossler [00:14:54]:
Knew, but I was completely wrong on marketing. I was so far out of I.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:00]:
Think we're all wrong every month. Oh, that's not working anymore. Yeah.
Jeremy Hossler [00:15:07]:
Like, oh, yeah, this is great. And then you do all these things, and then you get so busy that you just stop handing out flyers. You stop going door to door. You quit the BNI group? You quit the Business development group. You stop all these things because I'm too busy for that.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:22]:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Hossler [00:15:23]:
Three months later, you're going, oh, crap. What do I do? And you try to do it all over again. Oh, this doesn't work. That doesn't work. Then three months down the road, it finally catches back up. It was hard lesson for me to learn to just get your foot in it, keep it down, pedal the metal, keep the marketing going, because if not, you make your own highs and lows.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:45]:
I think I hear that so much. Like, people ask me, hey, what do you do from how much do you spend? And I'm so busy, I don't need to do any of that. The slow time is coming. It's not a matter of if, but when, right? And it's like some of us hit it a little harder than others, but it's just amazing to me, exactly what you said is like, oh, I'm so busy. I don't need to do that anymore. The Chamber of Commerce meetings, we still go to them, and we see other shops in the area. We never see you guys at the Commerce. You know, they give out free beer and food for one.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:23]:
That's a positive. I don't need a market. I'm so busy. I know everybody is like, well, you're either not charging enough, or you're on a house of cards, because it's just a matter of time. And it's funny you brought that up.
Jeremy Hossler [00:16:36]:
One of my biggest mistakes was the phone book guy come in, did the whole spiel with the phone book, and it's like, you know what? The newspaper article worked good. The phone book is what everybody's using. So I had spent $100,000, signed his big contract with them, full page. We got one phone call. One. That was it. That was a hard check to write every month for this thing where it's like, one call that about broke us.
Jimmy Purdy [00:17:12]:
The phone book. I forgot about that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:17:15]:
Oh, yeah, that was a big thing. I mean, the Internet wasn't really right. It just wasn't there yet. Different time. And I tried to phone book, and we did some radio ads, and we did some other things, and it's like it just wasn't quite there. And then we were struggling. It was back to the basics. I took a card, and I hand out two cards to everybody.
Jeremy Hossler [00:17:37]:
Like, boom. Here, please hand it. Give it to somebody, you know, that needs something, and slowly worked it back up. But it was rough.
Jimmy Purdy [00:17:46]:
Yeah. You look at any marketing books from, like, I don't know, maybe ten years ago, maybe 15 years ago. And step one, phone book ad. That was Marketing 101. Get yourself in the phone book, your business, AA.
Jeremy Hossler [00:18:00]:
Something like that, right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:18:04]:
The old marketing tactics that don't work anymore. And it's like we started out with talking about marketing. It's like you do these things and then you stop, then you go back to how you started, and it's like, that don't work anymore. That was four years ago. You can't do that anymore. That doesn't work. Get out of the phone book. Don't waste your money.
Jimmy Purdy [00:18:22]:
Print advertising still. It's coming back. It's big. It's not it's so hard to say where to put your money when you're talking about marketing, when you're first opening a shop. But obviously the best is the word of mouth, right? So I'm assuming you probably built up a pretty good clientele after that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:18:36]:
Yeah, it was a lot of word of mouth flyers, handing stuff out. Now, the management companies that we got with the first one was management Success. I don't know if you want me to say their names on the oh, I don't care. On the pocket. Okay.
Jimmy Purdy [00:18:50]:
Yeah, drop names, because that's what helps people out if they're starting out or looking for somebody different or new, and.
Jeremy Hossler [00:18:58]:
Went out there, did their training, really, from that point on, we doubled. I mean, it was great, it was fantastic. But it just come a time where after so long, it's almost like we outgrew them and we knew everything they knew. And then us being still younger, oh, yeah, we know it all. We can do this all ourselves. And then took the foot off the pedal, let it ride for a while, and then dropped them. Did okay for a while, and then eight hit and just destroyed everything in our business again. Our town had a 24% unemployment rate.
Jeremy Hossler [00:19:36]:
Everything went down, and first thing we do is pull back advertising, pull back marketing, pull back all that stuff, trying to save money. And that was pretty dumb thinking about it now, but back then it was rough. I got to work in third shift for another friend, plus doing the shop so I wouldn't have to take a paycheck, so I wouldn't have to lay anybody off. It got a little scary there.
Jimmy Purdy [00:20:04]:
So at this time you had some technicians and some staff?
Jeremy Hossler [00:20:07]:
Yes, there was two of us in the front, three technicians. Bays were full, but we had guys that were driving quite a distance, so the gas went up, just wasn't worth it. So we ended up losing our main old guy, the guy that could fix anything. Not the fastest, but there was no comebacks. He was great. Ended up losing him. But luckily I'm a big efficiency guy, so the shop was running 125% efficient when we had the work. So luckily our BTech could just crank out 60 hours, 70 hours a week, no problem.
Jeremy Hossler [00:20:52]:
And then I could always turn a bunch of hours. So it kind of helped. I mean, there was a lot of times I was working till two, three, four in the morning, taking a nap in a car, getting up, doing it again just so we didn't lose it. Wow, it was a struggle.
Jimmy Purdy [00:21:07]:
Yeah, really rough. I feel like that probably hits home for a lot of people because they're probably in that situation right now. You don't really go looking for help until you're really drowning, right. No one advertises when you're busy, right. So no one looks for help when it seems like everything's going well. But it's very relatable, I think, to everybody in that kind of situation. And in a sense, you're still just kind of digging yourself a hole, right, because the business isn't building, you're just sustaining, you're just surviving. It's a tough situation to be in, man.
Jeremy Hossler [00:21:41]:
Yeah, it was rough and then went to another coaching company. It's like, man, I had already set once, my shutdown date once before. It was like, dude, we're done after this date, I'm closing down on the 16th. It was like the 14th. Some of the things I had done just started working with the marketing and then boom, we were back up. And I was down to that point again where we just got to close the doors. Here we got a business that's doing $700,000 with a three bay and we're barely making it. So it was back to another coaching company, which they again doubled once more.
Jeremy Hossler [00:22:21]:
Just sometimes having that coach or somebody to just give you that push to do that thing that you're uncomfortable with, but I know you're broke, but you need to do this advertising and you need to charge more. Because at the time, I was one of the highest shops in town, but it still wasn't quite enough. And somebody to tell you, hey, I know you're the highest, you need to go up more, you need to start charging a little bit more, doing a little bit more for your customers. And it was the little things we were missing out on, like follow up calls and scheduling out appointments for later down the road. It was amazing with just dumb little things you don't think of, oh, that'll never work here. And yeah, it works. These coaches, they've seen hundreds or thousands of shops, they've been in every situation, they've seen this. Sometimes it was swallowing pride.
Jeremy Hossler [00:23:23]:
Quit being stupid and listen.
Jimmy Purdy [00:23:25]:
Yeah, lifting your head up a little bit, because I think when you're in that mode or in that survival phase, you just got your head down and you're just grinding and it's like until you look up. And they call it the 30,000 foot view, when you got to step back and look back a little bit and it's like you could almost coach yourself out of that situation if you could take a step back, but you can't. That's why to have a coach step back and say, hey, look, dummy, it's right in front of your face. And you're like, oh, wow. Was that easy? Just like you said, it's just the little tweaks. And it's like the little things. It's amazing that you said about being the highest priced, but you still need to charge more because I think that's critical too. And I think the funny thing is, as you start making less money and you start getting more and more to the point of losing it, that's the time you start charging less and less.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:16]:
And it's so strange how your mind works that way, but it just happens as soon as you get slow, as soon as the money stops rolling in, you start charging less. And it's just like this perpetual cycle of going backwards. But I do it. I mean, I'm still guilty of it. We all do it. And it's just amazing you say that because it's like that is such a huge connection of like, yes. And then when you get busy, you start throwing these big numbers out because you're trying to scare the clients away. You're like, I don't want to do this job.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:43]:
So you throw this massive number on it, and then they're like, yeah, let's do it. And you're like, oh, my God. It's just amazing how it works that way. Yeah, it's just amazing. It's like you make less, so then you want to charge less, but you make more and you start charging more. The divide. It's amazing to me how that works out.
Jeremy Hossler [00:25:02]:
Yeah, it was kind of rough because one of the things we did there for a while was we did something called a guaranteed diagnosis. Labor rates in our area were like $70. We charged $180. Like, you bring your car in, we guarantee that we will diagnose the problem that runs rough, the check, engine, light, all that stuff. It's guaranteed. It's $180. We'll guarantee you that we will be 100% correct or you don't pay.
Jimmy Purdy [00:25:28]:
I like that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:25:29]:
It was a good idea, except for it brought in all the problem cars. Within a short time, we had the dealerships bringing us cars going, hey, we can't figure this out. And then you're three, four, 5 hours where before you're hour, hour and a half in, you're figuring it out, and then you get some real butt kickers. And it was like, maybe we got to dial this back down and start going to charge an hour by the hour for what we do. Guaranteed diagnosis was a pretty decent thing, but we didn't have can bus issues. You don't have GDI. You don't have so many different things that you do now. It would be hard to do, but if somebody's really good, I think you could do it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:26:16]:
Yeah, I like how you provided the quality behind that service. I think the wording behind it, I'm not 100% behind, like, the guaranteed anything and the diagnostics I've never been a fan of I'm all advanced assessments. Let's do an inspection. I'm not diagnosing it. We're just doing some tests and procedures to verify what's wrong. Right? But backing what you're doing with that quality assurance is what I liked about that. Of like, hey, bring it in. And yeah, we're twice as much as anybody in the area, but we're going to provide you a service.
Jimmy Purdy [00:26:49]:
We're not just going to throw guesses and a parts cannon at it. And that's another thing where it's like, if you just maybe throttled into that for this vehicle because it's coming from the dealership, and you guys are supposed to be the experts here, it's going to be like $360. You know what I mean? And it's like, how many shops has it been to? Okay, so it's 180 for each other shop. It's been we're starting at, like, $500 for me to look at this thing, and it's like, you just got to step into that and just keep going forward. But it's always tough to say you're guaranteeing anybody anything, especially on a diagnostic, but it's a good pivot to try to bring in that quality because you don't want this. The what's the other side of that equation? You get just the oil changes and the people that you do these inspections and all the stuff that they work, they need done, and they don't want to do any of it. It's like, no, I want the ones that are willing to spend some money to fix their car. Right?
Jeremy Hossler [00:27:42]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:43]:
And of course, there's that problem, too.
Jeremy Hossler [00:27:46]:
Back then, 2000s, there wasn't a whole lot of DVIs. I mean, ours wasn't digital, but everything was on paper. I had a sheet. Everything checked out. And we did things that customers didn't see, like, hey, come on out, take a look. Things that we take for granted now, but back then, nobody was doing that. Nobody's doing, like, every day. I got fuel pump waveform.
Jeremy Hossler [00:28:07]:
I got a relative compression test, battery test, alternator test. Like, all these papers, we'd give them, like, a small booklet with the repair. Like, here's what you paid for. And it built a lot of trust and built a lot of long time, very reliable.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:24]:
So on that, what's your thought process? So I like that jumping in the fuel pump waveform, right? You put a new fuel pump in, you spend the time to do the waveform. You print out, you hand it to them. They look at it. They're like, what are these squiggles? Why are you handing this? Right? And so a lot of guys are like, why do you spend the time doing that? Just put the fuel pump in. It's got a warranty. If it fails, just have them come back in. And it's like you're stamping it with your quality assurance. Like, look, we put a delphi fuel pump in.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:50]:
This is the difference. And you can show know the cheap, eco, whatever. Fuel pump versus the Delphi. You're like, look at the waveform, see how much better that is. But I feel like a lot of people know when they bring the vehicle, and they don't know they're not technicians. So what's kind of your thought process behind that?
Jeremy Hossler [00:29:09]:
Back then, nobody was doing it, so I was trying to push technology and stuff like that. It was just I could show them.
Jimmy Purdy [00:29:18]:
Here'S the did you get a lot of good positive results out of it? Like, speaking to a client that way?
Jeremy Hossler [00:29:22]:
They liked because, you know, back then, every GM needed a fuel pump. I don't care if you drove it in, it probably needed a fuel pump anyways, so it didn't matter what it came in for. We were doing a fuel pump wave pattern. Like, look, this thing's drawing freaking 30 amps. Your pump is going to die. It's on the way out. And even something as simple as a blower motor, when you show them a waveform, here's the commutator here, you should have eight Humps. See that one? That's like 40 miles higher than the other ones.
Jeremy Hossler [00:29:52]:
It was just a good way to sell things, I thought. Yeah, now I don't see as many fuel pumps. So doing a fuel pump waveform stuff kind of went by the wayside. Little different than what it used to be, but back then it was a good thing to get into.
Jimmy Purdy [00:30:08]:
Oh, yeah, I can still see that being, I mean, rolling right into like, EVs and hybrids. Now you got electric motors. It's important to understand these waveforms for anybody that's not technically savvy when it comes to using a scope, but being able to relay that to the client and say, hey, look, I know you're going on a big trip. Your fuel pumps got maybe six months left, right? Or your blower motor or whatever, it's a smart way to market that quality assurance. And it's easy with a scope and an amp clamp.
Jeremy Hossler [00:30:42]:
Yeah, little jumper wire underneath the fuel pump fuse right there. Put your amp clamp on there. 5 seconds. It's fast. Of course, they're a little bit easier to get to some things back then.
Jimmy Purdy [00:30:54]:
But we still see the cars from the lot of people are thinking and here in our town, maybe just California in general, especially, I'm in a small rural town, so we got a pretty good community here. But everyone doesn't want to buy a new vehicle. They want to keep their old ones. A lot of ranchers around here, a lot of cattle trucks, old trucks. And so buying a new vehicle, buying a new truck is like, not an option. So they're dumping $10,000 into these older vehicles, 2000, 2005 vehicles that are 10, 15, 20 years old because they don't want to buy a new one, and they don't want all that fancy new stuff. I don't want $10,000 of other stuff to break on the vehicle besides the engine and transmission. Yeah, they don't want it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:31:40]:
I'd rather just invest my money and keep this old one on the road. But, yeah, it just lends back to the fact of as these vehicles get older and get more miles on them, starting to see problems that we've never seen before. Well, this vehicle is just now turning 30 years. There hasn't been this vehicle on the road in 30 years because now it is 30 years old. So we're going to see problems that we've never seen before. So, I mean, that's a good way of marketing, too. That's just a good way of promoting that extra bit of inspection process, too. I like that a lot.
Jimmy Purdy [00:32:14]:
That's pretty clever to go through and show them that. I just was curious if clients picked up on it or if they're like, what is this voodoo stuff? What are you showing me these squigglies for? Did you got good feedback from the clients, too, on it? They understood it, yeah, because I always.
Jeremy Hossler [00:32:33]:
Did the original and then after we would replace it, you'd do another one. So you'd have two and you compare them like, hey, here's this one. This one's running at 18 amps, this one's at six. You can see the really bad spot on the fuel pump. That's why it quit running. And we had to smack the gas tank to get it to go. So it actually worked out really good. I love that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:32:57]:
I love a DVI. That's probably my favorite thing on the planet, because I write out books, I write out stories to customers and they can read it and they make it to where they can understand it. And I get good pictures. Videos like my DVIs will have 1520 pictures, four or five videos, and they can't dispute, hey, yeah, you're right. That rim is bent, that tie rod is loose, and just makes them feel a little bit better. Like, hey, I've never seen that before.
Jimmy Purdy [00:33:27]:
Right? Yeah, no one's done that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:33:29]:
He's not doing a DVI. They are missing out on the greatest thing since an oscilloscope.
Jimmy Purdy [00:33:35]:
Oh, yeah. It's the easiest way of building trust and building I mean, that's what it is, is transparency. You don't get more transparent than, hey, your tie rod is bad. Why do you say that? Look at this video. Clunk, clunk, clunk.
Jeremy Hossler [00:33:48]:
I took it to this shop and they said it was tight. No, show them the video and see.
Jimmy Purdy [00:33:54]:
I'm not saying anybody's lying, but here's the video. You can make it for yourself. Come up to your own conclusion when it comes to that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:34:02]:
See the brake gauge? It says 2 mm. It's in the red.
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:06]:
It's not good. So with the shop after that, how did the rest of that go after eight? Were you able to climb back out of that? Or how did that end up climbing out of it?
Jeremy Hossler [00:34:17]:
But the stress, everything else. Father in law ended up with cancer. I was starting to have to be gone from the shop. We climbed back out. It was a little rough, but I was just burnout. I almost died. Bleeding ulcer in my stomach from the stress. And I was like, yeah, I just got to quit.
Jeremy Hossler [00:34:41]:
I got to get out and do something else for a while. So I lasted a little while after that. Ended up selling out to my partners, helped another friend at his shop, did that for a while, but no stress. I didn't know nothing. I just came in, I fixed cars, I talked to customers, I sold jobs, I went home. It was great. Then the wonderful IRS bill came for selling out and all that other stuff, because I didn't know when you sell a shop, yeah, you got to pay taxes on all that money. So I ended up trying to start another shop.
Jeremy Hossler [00:35:20]:
Stupid mistake. My heart wasn't in it. And if you're trying to start a shop, you have to want to do it. You have to love to do it. You can't just do it just because, yes, I'm going to start a shop. I want to make a bunch of money. And my heart wasn't in it. I just gave up before I really started.
Jeremy Hossler [00:35:40]:
I ran it for a while. Somebody came in, maybe another offer. I was out again. Just went to something completely different. I did garage doors, I did all kinds of different things there for a short bit. And then where I'm at now, he called, says, hey, I need a tech. You want to come in? So I came in, seen his shop, loved where it was at, but I seen so much potential because I love taking shops and taking them to the next level. So I started there and within four months I was shop foreman.
Jeremy Hossler [00:36:16]:
And we just doubled and doubled and doubled and just went to the moon with it. That's awesome. So I was back in that again, so that was kind of good. I had this new love for automotive again. Just got to actually fix cars and help customers and teach them how to schedule and change the way they did things. That was great. The guys were working till five, six night on Fridays because they'd get everything in the week and then they try to get it all done on Friday and it's like, no, we got to quit that. So I ended up getting that shop up in the 120% efficiency range again.
Jeremy Hossler [00:36:58]:
Everybody was happy. It was great. And then I got COVID. That was brutal. COVID took a lot out of me. I had some serious memory loss, man. I couldn't remember song titles, lyrics, nothing. I forgot how to use a lab scope.
Jeremy Hossler [00:37:21]:
I just felt stupid for a long time. I'm still struggling with it a little bit, but I'm trying to get back in and learn, but it feels like I got a slight learning disability now, so it's a little harder to get back in the game where for me to pick up lab scope. Oh, man. I love doing ignition patterns now. I'm kind of struggling with it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:42]:
Wow. Took a huge step back.
Jeremy Hossler [00:37:45]:
Yeah, it did feel like a little I lost a good bit of me when that happened.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:52]:
Wow.
Jeremy Hossler [00:37:53]:
Tasting the smell.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:56]:
I want to go back to getting into the fixing of the shop. Kind of take me through that process. When you get in there, what do you look at first? How did you manage that shop to get it to that point of where you have it now? How do you look at that? That's the big one. You get into a shop, you buy one, maybe you're taking one over, or maybe you're just looking at your own. And like, where do I start? And once you start, it gets easy after that. But it's like, what's your first step? When you started with your friend shop there and you wanted to start turning the tables for them, you start looking at the text first. You start looking at the scheduling first. How does that work for you, anyway?
Jeremy Hossler [00:38:38]:
When I come in, I look for efficiency things. Things you could do to make it more efficient. What can we do that takes less steps? I like what I call penny parts. They were calling for a cotter pin. They were calling for a drain plug, like, little bitty penny parts that I think every shop should have on hand. You shouldn't have to walk all the way across the shop to get a cotter pin. So first thing I do is things to make the text a little bit more efficient. I make everybody a fluids bucket.
Jeremy Hossler [00:39:17]:
It's got your antiseize, your loctite, your brake lubes. Everybody has all the lubes and everything they need in a box on their cart or in their toolbox. I'm a big cart guy, so you can just wheel it around. Walking back and forth to your toolbox every time, it's just not efficient. So I worked on that part of efficiency, making the guys that helped out a lot. I like setting shelves up above every text bay so it has their oil drain, their anaphyze container, their washer, solvent, rags, all the lubricants. Instead of having everything in one central location, everybody has it right there. So at the end of the day, one guy can go around with a cart, load it up, stock all the shelves.
Jeremy Hossler [00:40:06]:
Nobody has to walk away from their bay to do anything. Now, it wasn't my idea, but the owner ended up putting two screens and a computer in everybody's toolbox. So you had two screens, you look up your own parts. That was something else we implemented. The techs look up their own parts and build their own estimates. So that way we had a lot of problems with the wrong parts. It was 145 inch wheel base instead of 157 inch wheel base. It was twelve inch rotors instead of eleven inch rotors.
Jeremy Hossler [00:40:44]:
When the tech start doing that, they don't make that mistake. They see that there's two options and they go find out what it is or they pull it back in. So they did their own estimates. They're 100% right. And when the tech takes that up, all the service writers got to do is real quick, fast, look at it, make sure the prices are right. They set the prices, call the customer. Within five minutes, you're getting an approval before the tech even has it out of his bay. So you can start ripping stuff apart or you're moving on.
Jeremy Hossler [00:41:15]:
And then the other thing was getting the guys to pull it in, do all the inspections, first thing in the morning, check them out and get them out. Don't wait on the guys up front. It's going to take you two minutes to set it back down, drive it out, grab the next one. If it takes that guy five minutes, you just lost three minutes. So why lose three minutes? Because you're going to do that five times a day. So one of the other things was they just yes, for everything. Bring the car in, bring the car in, bring the car in. So you would spend four days inspecting all these cars, and then you had guys would be at 1012 hours on Thursday, and then they would try to do 25, 30 hours on Friday to make up.
Jeremy Hossler [00:42:01]:
And they got all these cars promised, but they didn't slow down and schedule the cars. So everything piled up and it got really hectic. There was no schedule. Everything came in and it was like a big pile and just here, just go. It's like yeah, sometimes you got to slow down to make it fast.
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:26]:
Yeah. I like starting with the tech efficiency and then the schedule. I feel like that would fix 90% of the shops out there. They just learn to just be religious about the schedule. Be okay with having one slow day because you scheduled a little light, but it increases your efficiency. Right? Yeah. You can't have your technicians thinking about five other cars while they're working on one. Nobody likes that.
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:55]:
I don't like that. Nobody likes that. Except, I don't know if you're the shop owner looking at your shop from your phone and you're like, oh, we're so busy. Look at all the cars in the lot. That's not good. That's not what you want to see.
Jeremy Hossler [00:43:11]:
Let's get them out of here. Let's get them in, get them out. And that was the other thing. When they're done, call. When you get an estimate, you call. My thing is, I want to see five minutes from the time the tech hands that up, I want to call. Try to get that soul. When the car gets done, call immediately, get it out of here.
Jeremy Hossler [00:43:32]:
Don't let these cars sit here and wait till the end of the day and then try to call 15 people all at once. Then you get this big huge pile of people all at once and then ask people to drop them off. Quit telling them, oh, yeah, I got an appointment at eight. I got something at nine. I got something at ten. Like, hey, I can look at it today or tomorrow. If you drop it off, most people are glad we got a dropbox. Drop it off anytime you want.
Jeremy Hossler [00:43:57]:
You could do it at midnight if you want. Most people try to drop it off at eight. Drop it off at nine. No, drop it off at 130 in the morning. I don't care. It's here. My guy's going to start on it. I don't have to wait.
Jeremy Hossler [00:44:11]:
And the other thing is, they wouldn't have anything ready for the guys. It'd be 839 o'clock before the guys would get their tickets because you got 1520 people up front and they're trying to check them in and everything and nothing's ready. It's just chaotic. So it was, let's make all the tickets up the night before, have everything ready, and then have the key tags to where, when the customer comes in, all you got to do is take your tag and tile, put your key tag on it, boom, tech's gone. You don't have to do anything. Don't wait and greet all 15 before you get something to do. Like just grab the one, walk out, grab the key tag, boom. Tech knows it's here.
Jeremy Hossler [00:44:54]:
Go.
Jimmy Purdy [00:44:55]:
And that's huge too, because that allows the service advisors to spend time with the client versus trying to rush them to get to the next one so they can get the tech busy, right?
Jeremy Hossler [00:45:05]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:05]:
You got someone sitting there like, hey, can you just, like, I just need your keys so I can get this guy going? Like, no, like you said, get it ready the night before. You know what's coming in, what should be coming in. And it goes like the follow up text, like you said, follow up. We'll follow up the day before. Hey, are you coming in tomorrow? I sure am. All right, everything's done. And it's like when they get there in the morning, here's what you're working on. Where's the car? It'll be here any minute.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:25]:
And as soon as it is, I'll hand you the keys and you're off and running.
Jeremy Hossler [00:45:30]:
830 in the morning. Like, you need to be calling these people that ain't here yet. Are you coming? Are you not coming? Let's get the no shows figured out right off the gate because most people won't call till 04:00. Oh, man, I got to reschedule. I got busy today and you already forgot about it. Now you're pissed off at them so they can sense that. So call them in the morning, get them at 830 in the morning. Like, get the guys going.
Jeremy Hossler [00:45:52]:
For any shop owner, if you walk out in your shop and it's 815, and your guys ain't working, you got some processes you need to work on.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:00]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And whether it's getting more vehicles in or just dispatching them properly. I like what you said with the tech efficiency about having the buckets you give them and the baskets, because we have meetings, and maybe a lot of other people do, hey, what can we do to improve efficiency? And they all look at you with stars in their eyes, like, I don't know. Everything's great, so it's really tough to even ask them or know. And, I mean, that's a good insight, because it's something simple, and it's all about those simple things. What do they spend time looking for? Well, once they're done looking for it, they're not thinking about it again. So you ask them at the end of the week, hey, anything we can move around or change to make you a little more efficient? They're like, no, week went fine.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:43]:
They know they spend an hour every day searching for a can of brake clean or disc brake lube or whatever. The small $5 thing that just cost the shop $80 that week.
Jeremy Hossler [00:46:55]:
One of the things that they did that they didn't have any buckets or drain pans, like, literally brake flush was open the bleeders, pump it up, throw it on the ground, throw some floor dry down. I mean, we would go through pallets of floor dry a month.
Jimmy Purdy [00:47:12]:
Wow.
Jeremy Hossler [00:47:13]:
Like, $1,700 worth of floor dry over this stuff. I'm like, you realize a $4 pan, and these guys are doing this. The floor is cleaner all of a sudden, the shop's cleaner. These guys are a lot more efficient. Like, hey, this is nice. I don't have to drag brake fluid all the way through the shop. They take a water pump loose. They smack it with a hammer.
Jeremy Hossler [00:47:34]:
There goes three gallons on the floor. Just throw some floor dry down. Like, no, let's catch this stuff. Come on, guys. Break clean. It was brutal for a while, just getting the right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:47:48]:
Yeah, I can see that. I'm definitely getting the visual. That kitty litter stuff, I hate it. We had a shop a long time ago that I was at, and it was just like that. It was, like, everywhere. It's like, you open one bag of that, and it's there for the rest of the year because you'll pull crumbs of it from your socks and from around the floor jacks and the lifts, and it's like, how does it's everywhere?
Jeremy Hossler [00:48:14]:
Yeah. And then as soon as the air compressor kicks on, it shakes the walls a little bit. It looks like it's snowing. Like, it's just little things like that, like finding the shop in the shop. I like to take a start to finish on a job. Like, from the time the service rider gets it, where does he go? Where the tech has to walk up to get the keys out to the car. Test drive, pull it in his bay. If he's doing an oil change, does he got to walk over here and here and here? You can write some of these down and follow a path to each job and go, oh, man, that is so stupid.
Jeremy Hossler [00:48:52]:
If we move that barrel to the other side of the shop, I'm cutting 30 seconds at a time out, and I'm taking guys that were turning 32 hours. All of a sudden, they're 50 hours. Guys like, oh, yeah, you're a rock star. No, you're just not wasting any time. So it's efficiency, I think, is probably the biggest killer of anything. Everybody says, raise your rates, raise your rates. If you get your efficiency up, that's 90% of your problem. It ain't always your rates.
Jeremy Hossler [00:49:23]:
It's being the most efficient.
Jimmy Purdy [00:49:25]:
Yeah, I mean, raising your rates definitely changes your percentage of efficiency, right? So if you pay your tech a certain amount, you need to make a certain amount to have your ratio be correct, your percentage being incorrect. So you can either get more dollar per hour out of every hour he's there or she's there, or you raise your rate, and then the ratio stays the same. But like you said, if you can correct a few things just by moving a barrel or moving a drum, that sounds a lot easier than trying to squeeze another $90 or $120 out of a five hour job, end up losing it to the guy down the street or something like that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:50:02]:
It's just all about efficiency. Work on efficiencies, first standard operating procedures, man, they're just so fantastic. If everybody knows what you're supposed to do and you do the same thing every time, it's so much easier. I had them, but I never wrote them down. So to work at a shop that we're still working on them, I'm still working on them, getting them wrote down, job descriptions big thing. Knowing what is your job? What do you expect of that guy? You can't be mad at that guy because he turned you 47 hours when you think he should do 50. If you expect 50, tell him you expect 50. But don't be mad at him because he's only doing 47.
Jeremy Hossler [00:50:47]:
He thinks it should be 40.
Jimmy Purdy [00:50:49]:
Yeah, that's a good way to put it, too. He feels like he's excelling, and you're upset and talk about breeding a bad culture. He's happy in that situation. Why are you so mad at me, man? I'm doing better than I should be. And it's like, well, you should be doing better than that. Says who? You never told me that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:51:11]:
I remember the first time we had 132% efficient week. I mean, it was a fantastic week. And they're coming out, oh, you know, this number could be better. That number could be better. And I'm like, dude, we gave you everything. We left nothing on the table. There's no giving anymore. So sometimes it's just all right.
Jeremy Hossler [00:51:32]:
They gave everything they give. Yeah. Something might not be where it is. Let it slide. Just let it go, you know, when it's good, but don't expect 150% when you're already getting 130. That can be a little tough, too. A little difficult.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:51]:
Well, getting down to the end of this thing, as far as now, you said you've taken the role of the manager, and obviously it's a lot less stress. Obviously it's tough to stay out of the industry, right?
Jeremy Hossler [00:52:06]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:07]:
You can't not do anything. I mean, you seem like you're pretty well.
Jeremy Hossler [00:52:12]:
It's hard to stay out of it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:15]:
What drives you the most, though? What keeps pulling you back in? If there's one thing.
Jeremy Hossler [00:52:23]:
I like the customers, but I don't like the customer side of it. I'm a talker to them. If customers pissed off, normally they're coming at me. I can normally calm them down, get them back on my side. For me, it was efficiency. Like, I like doing an eight hour job in 4 hours where it used to be. Oh, man, I got a tough diag. I knocked it out of the park anymore.
Jeremy Hossler [00:52:52]:
I don't care. Like, if it's a really tough can bus, I got to give it to somebody else because he's going to do it faster. I don't need to be the hero. But you give me that 10 hours worth of brake and suspension work and I knock it out in 2 hours. I don't know. I still get a high off that when I pull an alignment in and I just cambered caster, and I get it done in seven minutes. Like, oh, yeah, that's my jam right there. I love that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:53:20]:
I pull a tranny out in, like, 30 minutes. Heck yeah. I did that on my lunch.
Jimmy Purdy [00:53:24]:
Yeah, no problem. We started this with you really wanting to get into the transmission field. We're talking about when we first started here. What draws you into that? Because I don't know. I wouldn't put that evil on anybody, but when you're talking about building transmissions, man, oh, man. It's a love hate relationship. But I don't know what draws you towards that.
Jeremy Hossler [00:53:50]:
In the was like voodoo. Like, the tranny guys were the guys that were 50, 60 years old sitting behind a bench smoking cigarettes. They just slamming out trannies. I mean, they're busting a turbo 350 out in two and a half hours. It's like, man, that's like 8 hours. That is just so awesome. It's one after another. Just watching how it worked and the gears and the planetaries.
Jeremy Hossler [00:54:20]:
The tolerance have to be just right. It could let my OCD just go insane with we ain't doing 37,000, dude. That's 35. It's on money. We're micing things. Just something I've always wanted to do. I've built a few, done a few. I was really good at tranny DIAC back in the day.
Jeremy Hossler [00:54:40]:
I mean, you give me an 1870 code on an old silhouette, man. Oh, yeah, I know. What PIDS I'm looking at. I could tell you where this converter the TCC solenoid. Like, yeah, I love that stuff. And it was just sitting there and taking something and being able to build it and start from scratch, just put it all back together. With so many moving parts, building engines, building trannies, them guys were the king of the crop in my eyes. Like, the guys that built the trannies back in the day, they were the guys that we all looked up to in the industry.
Jeremy Hossler [00:55:18]:
That just man.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:22]:
It'S a dying read to say the less. Nowadays, with everything out there, 8910 speeds, it's almost unrebuildable to an extent. I mean, you can but I'm with you. And I took that road and I took that challenge on, and I'm like, I am going to be that guy. I know exactly what you're talking about. I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to be that guy. I was a smog tech for a long time.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:46]:
I was like, no, if I'm going to build transmissions, because that's the top, that's the hierarchy. Yeah. And then and then now it's like now it's all gone. All those four speeds, three speeds that were easy, and it's all these 8910 speeds. It's like, man, I can't build these things and be cost. Like you said, you pull the transmission out in 30 minutes, but you don't get charged. You don't get billed for 30 minutes. You get built for your time.
Jimmy Purdy [00:56:08]:
But nowadays, with these transmissions, if I looked at building it and then look at the cost of just getting it remanufactured, it's like, I can get the Remand for less cost than it takes me to build a client. For sure, I make my time building it right, so there's that profit margin. But if you look at the percentages, at the end of the day, it's like, wow, I'm only really suffering, like, a 20% loss selling them or Remanufactured, and I don't have to do anything. It's so hard to as a tech and as a builder and then take it as a shop owner, I got to do the right thing. I can't have these guys waiting on me to build this thing. And it's like only to suffer a 20% loss. You know what I mean?
Jeremy Hossler [00:56:49]:
That's why I got out of rebuilding rear ends. It's like, man, it's just so I buy one, it's there 3 hours, it's in, it's done. Versus me. I'm meticulous I'm spending six to 8 hours on one and all the parts and little things that go into it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:57:04]:
Yeah, running your paint mark four or five times is like, oh, man, it took all day.
Jeremy Hossler [00:57:09]:
Yeah. And then you're buying bearings just to make set up bearings, and you're going through a bunch of different stuff, and then you get it done. You find out your brand new gear set makes noise. So aggravating training guys, like, when you're in. Building, the training, it's a 20% loss. But then I look at, okay, but I got that 9 hours back. That guy can do two of them. So it's no longer a 20% loss because I can do twice as many, correct?
Jimmy Purdy [00:57:35]:
Absolutely, yeah.
Jeremy Hossler [00:57:37]:
We don't go in them anymore. I do a bunch of the Chrysler valve bodies and stuff like that, shift.
Jimmy Purdy [00:57:44]:
Kits and stuff like that. We had to have three techs out on the floor and they're all waiting on me to build them all a unit when they could all have one being installing it. Yeah, it's nothing. But what am I doing back here wasting my time when I could just have upsold a remand and had them putting it back in? It'll make no damn sense at all. What am I doing? And it's all pride like, no, I can get it done. And then one out of the three ends up with a leak or a problem and it's like, great, pull it back out. And then you got to pay your tech to pull it back out for something you screwed up on. It's like, yeah, if I could find a builder, I would love to.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:20]:
Then you can have two builders. But it's like there's nobody building anymore. And it's just because just the same thought we just had right now is like, well, there's no money in it. Unless you're a huge shop and you're building units takeaway and you're building them for us to buy, to install, then it doesn't make any damn sense. It's a dying breed.
Jeremy Hossler [00:58:42]:
$3,000 for parts to do one of the new eight speeds. Wow. Come on. And you're making, what, $800 on it? It's a lot of liability to have a drum take a crap or one.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:56]:
Part be wrong because the parts guys don't know anything about these units either. It's not like you got the good old boy you call a part store on a turbo 350 and it's like, hey man, I'm going to need a rebuild on this. Okay, got you. And it's like they don't just send you the friction module, they send you the bushings you need and the thrust washers. And it's like they know what you're going to need to rebuild it nowadays. Hey, can I get a rebuild kit? Do you want the California kit or do you want the banner kit? Or do you have like a standard thing that you can send me that replaces everything? A what?
Jeremy Hossler [00:59:25]:
I guess everything kit?
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:26]:
Yeah, the everything. I used to have guys like that, I'd call and they're like, oh, hey, do you want the TCC valve to do the repair for the 1870 code on a 460? It's like, oh yeah, I do need that. Thanks for letting me know. I totally forgot about that. I have 1000 other things I'm thinking about. Thanks for being a salesperson. Because then you get it and it's like, oh, I forgot to order that stupid reaming kit. And then you got to wait another day.
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:49]:
And that's happening now. It's like you order the stuff for an eight or nine speed and it's like, hey, this didn't come with a filter. Your rebuild kits don't come with a freaking filter. No. Okay, can you send me a filter? Because I'm going to need that. And it's a ten speed, so you can't just buy one locally. It's like, you know what?
Jeremy Hossler [01:00:06]:
Yeah. I learned a long time ago that pride, you just got to pride or money. Which one do you want? The thrill of fixing the unfixable is nice, but for me, comes with a cost money in my wallet. My wife would rather go out to eat. My kids would rather have nice bicycles. So sometimes it's giving up the pride to get the dollar.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:34]:
Yeah, let that one problem child go. And the vehicle that's just kicking your butt, it's like, you know what? I got to let this thing go.
Jeremy Hossler [01:00:44]:
Yeah, that was another thing. That was a big difference, too. Was after a while, I just told them, like, look, some of these cars need to go through me before we don't do anything. 2000 in doubt. We're in the Rust Belt. Everything's crap here. We got 2012 that we send to the junkyard. They're so rusted out.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:02]:
Wow.
Jeremy Hossler [01:01:02]:
So for us, it's like anything 2000 and older, I got to let them know, like, you need to talk to me first because we're probably not going to want to work on this. And I don't have a problem kicking a car down the road if it's not going to be a good job.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:18]:
Right.
Jeremy Hossler [01:01:18]:
Oh, I'm sorry. I've been to seven shops. Nobody can figure this out. Yeah. I'm not that guy.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:24]:
Yeah, we're going to be number eight. I'm sorry.
Jeremy Hossler [01:01:26]:
Yeah. Let's just be honest. You just need to take it straight to the dealer and drop it off and have them call you in three months.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:34]:
Yeah. Unfortunately, if you want to run a successful or profitable at least business, because you get the problem trials and they're magnetized to each other. So you get the one, you get three more right after it.
Jeremy Hossler [01:01:51]:
We're slow. I let one Volvo in the door. Next thing you know, there's 47 in the parking lot. You're going, what the heck? We just worked on this guy. Just worked on this guy's. Like, no, we're done.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:01]:
They're repopulating out there. What's going on here?
Jeremy Hossler [01:02:04]:
Oh, yeah. And I keep telling the guys, one of the best things you could do to get a certain car in there. I love subarus. So for me, when we get a Subaru, it's parked in the corner out by the road. Like, I want Subaru owners to see that and five or six is going to pop in in the next two days, they see a Subaru there. Subaru owners are just, oh, yeah, hey, I found my shop. And just boom, go for it the little things, man.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:31]:
Those are the little things that just maybe a lot do think of it, but I think a lot miss is the easy stuff like that work on.
Jeremy Hossler [01:02:40]:
Out by the road, advertise them to let everybody see that you want to work on this. And everybody's like, they show pictures of their shop, and they got a Corvette or a hot rod, and they don't even work on them. Like, no, we have an odyssey and outback. That's the pictures of the stuff you want and advertise to your customers.
Jimmy Purdy [01:03:00]:
Yeah, I'm pretty guilty of that. We get some classic cars in here. We have a classic car division, and I like putting them out front and taking a picture of the shop, and I'm pretty guilty of that because it's like, I don't really want a whole shop full of classic cars, right? But it makes a good picture. I'm guilty of that for sure.
Jeremy Hossler [01:03:21]:
I might park it out by the sign, underneath the sign with the top down. You'll got the wheels turned a certain way. Buddy's got his 44. We park them to get people's attention because right beside that is an Odyssey.
Jimmy Purdy [01:03:36]:
Yeah, there you go.
Jeremy Hossler [01:03:37]:
Like, come on, mom. Yeah, this is cool. Your kids are all young, yelling, hey, mom. Hey, mom.
Jimmy Purdy [01:03:42]:
Yeah, but we don't work on those, just so you know. That was just to get you here. That was clickbait, I think they call it.
Jeremy Hossler [01:03:49]:
That's my clickbait. I've seen your website. I'm looking at all these cars going, oh, my God, I'm in love. But I don't want to do that every day.
Jimmy Purdy [01:03:58]:
Yeah, it's a love hate relationship. Sometimes we do pretty well with them, and sometimes they kick your butt a little bit. But, I mean, you can get a 2022 in 2021, and it kicks your butt, too. So I kind of look at it that way, too. I get plenty of new vehicles that are just a big of a pain to get parts for and to figure out versus a 1960. It's hard to get parts for. It's not so hard to figure out. There's not a whole lot to go wrong with it, but you get my point.
Jimmy Purdy [01:04:24]:
I mean, it's like the same but different. It's like parts are just as hard to get with these newer cars. Now I can't get a warranty on them from the dealer, and the aftermarkets don't have the parts yet, so it's the same as the classics. Well, I can't get a warranty on the parts, but I can get them from Summit Racing the next day, so I don't know. And then usually the clients, the owners of the cars are a little more forgiving and they're just willing to spend money. They don't need this car. They want it, and they want it to be nice, and they want these disc brakes, and they want all this extra stuff. So it's tough to say no to it because it's, for the most part, pretty easy money.
Jimmy Purdy [01:05:01]:
And it's cool and I like it.
Jeremy Hossler [01:05:05]:
That's my problem. That's my passion. I got a 56 Pine Star Chief. I'm doing an LS one swap in for a friend.
Jimmy Purdy [01:05:11]:
Nice.
Jeremy Hossler [01:05:11]:
Within that, I have, like, five of them lined up. It's like, oh, my God. For the next two years, I'll be doing LS swaps on all these weird vintage cars. But it's my love and my passion. But it's what I do at the house, is what I bought this shop for. It's fun thing.
Jimmy Purdy [01:05:28]:
It's nice when they're done.
Jeremy Hossler [01:05:30]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [01:05:31]:
When you get that swap done, that's what when you first start it and then when it's done. But in the middle there, it's like, oh, why am I doing this?
Jeremy Hossler [01:05:41]:
Yeah, it seems like I get all the odd ones. Like, nobody's ever done swap in a Pontiac like this, so there's no kits, so everything's custom. And it snowballed into, like, I just want to make it a nice driver to crap. Now. We're going to put 30 grand in this thing. It's going to be a show car.
Jimmy Purdy [01:05:59]:
Yeah. That's the biggest problem, I think, with the classics, is the ends. Hey, since you're doing that, let's also do that. No, you came in for the disc brake conversion, and we're going to do that, and then you're going to leave, and then we're going to reschedule you for this other fancy stuff you want to do. We're not doing it all the same time. I just got roped into one, doing that same thing as LS swap and a 65 Pontiac. And it was the same. It was just kind of like, hey, let's throw some carpet kit in it.
Jimmy Purdy [01:06:25]:
Hey, I want to do a floor shifter. Hey, let's do rims and tires. Hey, let's do it. It's like, how did this happen? I'm not restoring your car, but I am. How did this happen?
Jeremy Hossler [01:06:36]:
It's funny you say that, because I got a 64 Tempest. It was supposed to be just a disc brake conversion, and we ended up recovering the seats and putting carpet in. It was a bunch of wiring. And he's like, oh, what about swapping this? And I convinced him like, no, let's leave the original engine, original power glide. I'll make it run good. And he got to drive it. And I convinced him to just leave it. Stock six cylinder so you can cruise it, right? Yeah.
Jeremy Hossler [01:07:02]:
It snowballed into this big, huge project. Ended up in my shop for, like, a month and a half. It's like, oh, I just wanted to go home. I want my shop back.
Jimmy Purdy [01:07:14]:
Yeah, these custom fab guys that have cars for a year on in, and it's like, I just can't. How do you get there and just stare at the same damn car for a year? I don't know, man. I just can't do it. Like, six months go by. It's like, this thing's got to go, this thing's got to get out of here. Whatever it takes for it to just so I don't have to look at it every day I get here, I can't do it anymore. Yeah. OCD.
Jimmy Purdy [01:07:41]:
That way.
Jeremy Hossler [01:07:42]:
Yeah. That's the fun stuff, though. That's kind of what gets me going. But I know doing that for a business, it's hard. Guys that want to work on old stuff during regular business hours sorry. Instead of that disc brake conversion, I can do two regular brake jobs, be done in 2 hours, make just as much money. Yeah, that's 810 hours of running brake lines and modifying pedals and doing all this other stuff. Take the stuff that makes you money, find your specialty and run with it.
Jimmy Purdy [01:08:12]:
Or just course correct. I mean, I've made my mistakes when it came to some of those, too. And it's like, yeah, our early rates higher for classics. That is what it is. It's like $50 an hour more. And then whatever we think it's going to be, we just double that. And it's like you said, you got to look at it like, well, if you're going to do that work, because you like those cars like I do, and you want to keep doing it and make it part of the shop, like you said, what can you do in that time frame? So if you're running a 90 or 100% efficient shop, then you need to be able to say, okay, well, if I'm going to be working on this car all day for 8 hours, what's my potential loss if I just lined up brake job? So that's how I've looked at it, and that's how we quote them out, and it works out. I mean, sometimes, like I said, you don't always win, but you don't always win with a brake job, either.
Jimmy Purdy [01:09:02]:
You always have that one that comes back with a squeak, or they overheat the rotors, and it's like, we'll take care of it for you. We understand you were driving with 2ft for the last 200 miles, but that's all right. We'll just warranty your rotor anyway. It's okay.
Jeremy Hossler [01:09:17]:
You lose some, but it's an easier one to lose there.
Jimmy Purdy [01:09:19]:
Yeah, it's true. Well, this has been good, man. I'm glad you came on. It's good to meet you.
Jeremy Hossler [01:09:25]:
This is fun. Yeah. I was supposed to do another podcast for another guy, and I didn't know if my setup was going to work, so I bought these expensive headphones and mics and all this other stuff. The mic just sounded reverberating. It sounded really weird.
Jimmy Purdy [01:09:40]:
No, the quality sounds good. I can hear you good. And, yeah, I think it's working out good for you. You doing any training events this year?
Jeremy Hossler [01:09:49]:
I was trying to go to ASTE, but with the shop I'm at, we started another shop last year about October, so they moved me in January this year. So it's just getting a shot from nothing built up to really good numbers.
Jimmy Purdy [01:10:08]:
Nice.
Jeremy Hossler [01:10:09]:
So I've been a little busy.
Jimmy Purdy [01:10:11]:
Yeah, I can see that.
Jeremy Hossler [01:10:13]:
During COVID my special needs daughter kind of she was going to O'Reilly's Children's Hospital, and they kind of forgot about her for a while. So we're just now back into all the therapies and stuff. So it's got me moving. Twenty four seven. I mean, there's seven, eight doctors a week now. So I'm going to miss ASTE Apex is just too much at this point. But I want to try to do Vision next year. I want to try to do I love training.
Jeremy Hossler [01:10:47]:
John Thornton, Bill Fulton, all them guys, like 170 different classes. I love training. So hopefully I'm going to hit up Apex, ASD and Vision next year.
Jimmy Purdy [01:11:00]:
Cool. Yeah, I'll be at Apex here at the end of the month, so I don't know if I'd run into it or not, but we'll just have to catch up next year. I'm going to try to do Vision next year. I don't know if I'll make it.
Jeremy Hossler [01:11:10]:
But yeah, Vision was my first big show like that. I'd never done anything like that. I read about it in Ratchet Wrench, but you don't really know what it is from that advertising till you go. It is life changing. It's radical life changing.
Jimmy Purdy [01:11:29]:
I'm excited to check that out.
Jeremy Hossler [01:11:32]:
It reinvigorated me. That's all I do all day. I put in one earbud, 8 hours of podcasts all day. I mean, that's all I do. I am training. Twenty four seven, it seems like.
Jimmy Purdy [01:11:45]:
Yeah, you have to. It's mainly stay on top of the game. You have to.
Jeremy Hossler [01:11:50]:
And I feel so dumb sometimes because I listen to guys like Banslo and Mario and all these guys. It's like, dude, I am so dumb. But they're the cream of the crop. These guys that teach us stuff and talk about it. They're on another level. It's so much better, so much better than I would ever expect to be.
Jimmy Purdy [01:12:15]:
Well, in this industry, it goes so many different directions that you can't know everything, but you get specialized in one area, and yeah, you might be smarter there, but did you know this? And it's like, we all learn so much off of each other. That's where the camaraderie is so important. And to be like, hey, did you ever hear this? Then you learn stuff.
Jeremy Hossler [01:12:33]:
Yeah, I loved it for the networking point, just meeting all these guys that I hear and listen to, and it's like, okay, now I can finally put a face to The Voice. That's kind of cool. I met Hawk and Light. I don't know why. I was like, fangirling so big when I got to meet him at Vision. That dude is just so smart. I don't see electricity like these guys do. I have to think about it, right?
Jimmy Purdy [01:13:00]:
Yeah, I don't think anybody does. They're definitely on their own level there. Yeah, for sure.
Jeremy Hossler [01:13:06]:
I can fix it. It's going to take a while. These guys, they see it, and they just can picture this stuff. I'm, like, out with my little magic marker, like, following lines, and I got to think about all this stuff and redraw it. So it's nice knowing there's guys out there that's helping the industry, which 20 years ago, there wasn't nothing. Everybody was a competitor. You didn't do anything to help the guy down the street. Now, the way these podcasts are and what you're doing is so nice just to be able to listen and go, hey, I've been where that guy's been, and look at him now.
Jeremy Hossler [01:13:43]:
Look how far he's come. It's just a huge kick in the butt for guys to go, all right, cool. I can do this. I've been there. I've been down. This sucks. I've been on the bottom. I've been on the top.
Jeremy Hossler [01:14:00]:
I did the magic billion dollar number. Everybody wants to go a little three bay, but I've also been at the bottom where I didn't take a paycheck for a month or two. So it's nice that guys like you are letting other people tell their story and give hope to the little guy.
Jimmy Purdy [01:14:21]:
I think that's the most important thing. I mean it's for me anyway, because I'm the same way as you. I just listen to podcasts, and you feel like you're on your own island, and you feel like no one else is going through what you're going through. And then once you realize everybody is, all I want to do is feed that information back to the ones that are starting out, make them, because the sooner you realize there's guys going through the same or girls going through the same stuff that you're going through, it's the quicker you get your feet back underneath you. You know what I mean?
Jeremy Hossler [01:14:49]:
Yeah. I love going online and just going on all these things, and guys got a question. Boom. Here, do this. Here, do this. I love helping people. I love changing the industry. I help everybody.
Jeremy Hossler [01:15:01]:
I don't have a competitor in my mind. I don't think anybody should be a competitor. You run it your way, I run it my way. Hey, it's all good at the end.
Jimmy Purdy [01:15:10]:
At the end of the day, our job is to keep these cars on the road.
Jeremy Hossler [01:15:14]:
Yes.
Jimmy Purdy [01:15:14]:
That's it.
Jeremy Hossler [01:15:16]:
Bottom line is your customer, but your customer. Treat them right. Treat them right.
Jimmy Purdy [01:15:23]:
Well, this has been good, man. I appreciate you coming on.
Jeremy Hossler [01:15:26]:
Hey, thanks. I absolutely love this. I was so nervous, fan girling and stuff here for a while.
Jimmy Purdy [01:15:34]:
Hopefully we can catch up soon, and I look forward to hearing you on the Jaded mechanic. Right? We'll see you on Jeffrey's. Yes. Okay.
Jeremy Hossler [01:15:45]:
We had something somewhat set up, and then he just blew up, but I'm a small fry. I wouldn't expect him to get to me for a long time. Now, you and him have voices that just, like, soothing and calming and jeff's.
Jimmy Purdy [01:15:59]:
Like, Jeff's very he's I talked to him at ASTE, and I told him, like, man, you really have, like, a vibe about, like, we talked for, like, almost 2 hours. I was like, It's been 2 hours? Holy moly. You got a vibe about you, man. That Canadian.
Jeremy Hossler [01:16:17]:
I remember posting a few things. Like, people would ask questions about, what's this? What's this in your shop? And I'd put it on there, and, dude, he would rip into me like it's no tomorrow. Like, Dude, it's not my shop. I'm just telling guys what they want to hear. He doesn't care. He'll let you have it. And I love that. Him and Dutch.
Jeremy Hossler [01:16:36]:
Like, Dude, just get straight to it. I'm a straight shooter. If something sucks, say it. Something stupid, say it. But he does that and then gives you a way to fix something. So it's really cool. Just something about the guy, man. I feel like we could be best friends.
Jimmy Purdy [01:16:56]:
I think it's because he's Canadian. They're very polite people.
Jeremy Hossler [01:17:02]:
He's so blunt and so straightforward. It in your face, but yet so polite about it.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:07]:
Yeah.
Jeremy Hossler [01:17:07]:
Politely tell you, that's stupid. Don't do that.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:10]:
And then let's have a beer.
Jeremy Hossler [01:17:11]:
Yeah, have a beer.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:15]:
Cool, man. Well, have a good night and look forward to seeing you soon.
Jeremy Hossler [01:17:18]:
All right, cool.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:19]:
We'll see you.
Jeremy Hossler [01:17:19]:
If I'm ever out that way, I'll definitely stop by and say hi.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:22]:
Look me up, man.
Jeremy Hossler [01:17:24]:
Heck, yeah. Thanks, Purdy.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:26]:
Good night.
Jeremy Hossler [01:17:27]:
See you.