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This podcast is dedicated to changing the automotive industry for the better, one conversation at a time.
Whether you're a technician, vendor, business owner, or car enthusiast, we hope to inspire you to improve for your customers, your careers, your businesses, and your families.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:01]:
David is a repair shop owner in Kansas City. And so right outside of Kansas City, and he's got a small shop out there, actually has two shops. One of them has become a podcast studio. Because Ados calibrations just aren't thing at this point.
David Roman [00:00:19]:
Well, it's because. I don't know, I'm doing something wrong. There's an Ados calibration center about a half mile south of me.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:29]:
Are they busy or are they.
David Roman [00:00:31]:
I don't know. They could be. I think they're called Ados smart. Something like that. I'll take a picture of it. I drive by it every day. Very cool.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:41]:
Very cool.
David Roman [00:00:42]:
It's not cool at all. I wanted to be the only one. And they have an entire center there of just.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:49]:
If you had advertised beforehand and got the business before they opened, it would have helped.
David Roman [00:00:56]:
I just want the customers to show up. I don't want to have to do anything.
David Macholz [00:01:00]:
How does that.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:00]:
Okay, I'll remember.
David Roman [00:01:02]:
Apparently it doesn't. It doesn't work at all. But if you just do good work, if you just do good work and you're just fair with customers, they show up. Yeah, that's how that works. Yeah, that's what I get told all the time. I don't know that on Facebook.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:21]:
Dave, introduce yourself. Dude, I've known you for a while. Big Toyota guy. We're huge Toyota fans here. Except for David. He's not a fan of anything. But go ahead and introduce yourself.
David Macholz [00:01:32]:
Sure. So Dave mockholds. Let's see, many hats that I wear. Currently assistant dean for transportation programs at Suffolk County Community College on Long Island, New York. We have eight different Oe programs there. Probably one of the largest amount of OE programs under one roof in the country. We had a 9th, which was Tesla for a while until they physically outgrew our space. So I've been with the college for about ten years.
David Macholz [00:02:02]:
Actually a little more than that now, but also in my travels. I'm a technical trainer and technical training manager for Worldpac and on a part time basis oversee the asian market training program. Brought some familiar names to that organization, such as Mr. Steckler. Quite a few years ago. He started out with us actually doing some Honda classes and whatnot. But yeah, built some great programs both on the public side for schools and also working with Worldpack has been fantastic. And then when I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and when I grew up, I decided to go back and get a master's in higher education administration, thinking who knows what the future held for me at the college, but would allow me a little bit of flexibility.
David Macholz [00:02:50]:
So did a master's in that and then decided to go further. Enrolled in a PhD program at Bold Dominion University down in Norfolk, Virginia, and studying automotive certifications as a dissertation topic. So when I saw your conversation a few weeks ago with Mike Cleary and hearing some of the feedback, I was like, oh, man, I got to reach out to these guys and let them know what I've been up to and kind of continue that dialogue and see where we could go with that's. Those are the things that are keeping me busy. Most recently, I started a company called Advanced Vehicle Technology Group, and that organization is essentially meeting the need for electric vehicle training and fleets municipalities, independent repair shops, to a certain extent. Teachers that are looking to implement electric vehicle training into their curricula, which, believe it or not, is many right now, and helping them facilitate that. Like, what does curriculum look like and how do they implement it? What do they need to teach? What do they physically need in terms of tools and components and whatnot? So some exciting stuff happening for sure.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:07]:
You were one of the first people who ever really convinced me that OE tools were worth the investment, right. And that was with Techstream. And some of the things that you showed within that product were like, holy cow, right. And one of the things that I found, especially with OE tools, especially in the aftermarket, sometimes we don't use them to their full capabilities. And I will never forget some of the historical data that you were able to show with a Toyota with that product. I was like, holy cow, dude. I need some oe tools, especially on the brands that I work on. So I'll never forget that.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:41]:
Man, that was absolutely awesome.
David Macholz [00:04:43]:
Oh, that's awesome. That's great to hear. That's such a key component to every class, is making sure that somebody has a takeaway that's positive, that helps them. And my whole philosophy is sort of empathic instructional design where you have to put yourself in folks shoes that are in your classes to try to give them the best experience. But I'm so happy to hear that and glad it worked out.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:06]:
Yeah, it really did. I'm a good friend with Jim Coconis, and that was one of the things that I always appreciated about Jim, was because Jim focused on how do we learn to learn, right? Because if we're not hungry for the knowledge and we're not reaching out to get the knowledge, then there's a good chance that we're not going to truly retain that knowledge. And we're not going to be able to utilize it in our own know, talking about curriculums. Right. I think that's a great kickoff spot for this. I've had a lot of talks with college folks. Right. And I sent you a video of where a college instructor who had been involved with NateF accreditations shared their perspective and some of their things.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:51]:
What do you think of the curriculum where we're at right now, especially when it comes to Natef? Are we hitting the marks that we should be if we're trying to educate the students that are in high schools and community colleges for the next generation?
David Macholz [00:06:05]:
I think that the long answer to that is probably, well, the short answer really is it depends. It's really highly dependent on what the program is doing, what their resources are, who's supporting them. We've been extraordinarily lucky to work with, really the top three, I would say, training programs for Oe, which would be Toyota, t ten, Honda, Pact and GMA, Sep. Those programs are well supported cars, tools, materials, I mean, alignment to the workplace and things of that nature. So those programs are pretty universally across the board, like equally structured to support curriculum that results in skills. Right. Like skills based competencies. Right.
David Macholz [00:06:48]:
But if you look at most general programs and you look at the task list for ASE, well, first of all, the first thing that you notice is the task list is impossible to do. Right. So even if you have 1200 hours in your program, there's no way that you're going to see, let's say you have a class of 24 students. There's no way that you're going to see every single one of those students do every single one of those tasks. And quite frankly, any school that tells you that they are, it's probably lying. Yeah, definitely.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:16]:
I've heard that from more than one person.
David Macholz [00:07:21]:
And here's where we go from that. What do you do now with ados? What do you do now with electric vehicle? And to a certain extent, some of these things can be reincorporated to replace older systems, but then we have to replace older systems. Right. So do we really need a manual transmission, ase exam or ase content? What's the percentage of vehicles today that's made with a manual transmission?
Lucas Underwood [00:07:45]:
Very small. I think there was a list posted the other day, and it only had like 14 or 15 vehicles in that list.
David Macholz [00:07:51]:
So how many evs do what? How many evs are there plenty higher percentage than manual transmission?
Lucas Underwood [00:08:01]:
Yes.
David Macholz [00:08:02]:
You see what I'm after.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:04]:
Absolutely.
David Macholz [00:08:05]:
We're kind of at a critical point I think in my perspective, in terms of we have an opportunity to kind of reinvent what we do in this industry right now because there is so much technological advancement. If we're willing to adapt what we're doing. And I think that's kind of a key piece of this whole puzzle right now, is, do we have the system to adapt as well?
David Roman [00:08:29]:
Why are we holding ASC as the standard?
David Macholz [00:08:32]:
Well, I think right now, because it's the only standard that's out know other than know. So from looking from a know in our program at Suffolk, if we didn't have the OE support, we wouldn't have any cars. Right. And then where do you get the budget to buy those cars? So the OES provide a huge amount of structure for a lot of secondary and post secondary programs, but ASE is really the only accrediting body in the automotive industry. So it's the only thing that we really have that we can hang our hat on right now.
David Roman [00:09:07]:
If the consumer doesn't care, though, what difference does it make? I mean, I understand it from an educational standpoint, from an educator standpoint, like, hey, we have to structure it around something. It's like, okay, that's fine.
David Macholz [00:09:19]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:09:20]:
The consumer doesn't care. So in the aftermarket, as an independent repair shop, I don't care about ASE. It doesn't make a bit of difference to me. It doesn't help my technicians. It doesn't help my customers. It doesn't help me, as a shop owner, operate the business more efficiently. I can't properly assess if the technician is proficient in a particular system just off an ASE certification. So it becomes an irrelevant standard at that point.
David Roman [00:09:51]:
Right? Yeah.
David Macholz [00:09:52]:
I think to that point, the customer cares about getting their car fixed. Right. So if we can't say that aSE certification supports fixing a car. Right, then your point is valid. Right. Because it's not really doing anything for the consumer at that point other than essentially in education. There's a theory that supports certification. It's called signaling and screening theory.
David Macholz [00:10:25]:
Basically what it means, sort of like, in just nondescript terms, is employers screen employees based on their credentials, right? So it should act as at least a signal to help someone get a job. So it probably does that. But the problem is, I think the thing that I think that was being talked about when Mike Cleary was on was that it's not doing enough to really show skill because it's not really measuring skill. Right. It's measuring cognitive ability to a certain extent that's related to content area, which I think is one level that you have to cover. But basically what I heard from that conversation, I think you guys could probably support this fact, is that it's not measuring skill, it's not measuring what somebody can do. And therefore to the consumer, if that doesn't relate to how that person fixes their vehicle or doesn't fix their vehicle, then what does it mean?
Lucas Underwood [00:11:20]:
I think in some ways that's exactly it. And part of the concern has been, and I've heard this from multiple different folks within that organization and different schools and other shops who say, well, but if we lower the standard, right, if we lower the standard, and nobody in their right mind is going to look at any standard and say, oh, I see evidence for lowering it. Right. And I think there was even a comment in that thread talking about doctors saying we should probably lower the standard. And someone said there was a valid argument. For know, I think one of the concerns that was presented was a, if we create certifications that are easier for other people to pass. So I can now call my shop ase certified, right? Because now my GS tech doesn't have to take the same certifications that they used to have to take to be aSE certified. So they hold the same weight as a master level technician.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:17]:
Because whether or not I have master technicians on staff, I can still stuff that aSE certified badge up on my website and everything else, even though they're just GS certified technicians. And so I feel like shops and many feel like that removes the weight or devalues the certification. Now, I don't have a problem with people being certified, especially entry level guys having an opportunity to get certified, I think that's awesome. But when we look at this and we're saying, okay, well, we don't have a competency measure as far as hands on, actual skills owned vehicles. Right? I'm going to be honest with you. If somebody came to me and they brought me that Toyota book where I went to your class, or they brought me a scanner Danner book, I would say, you know what? They're invested in themselves. They've been doing research. They're learning about how to fix cars.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:10]:
They've invested in themselves. Whereas if they come in with an asE certification, I'm automatically thinking, hey, an employer has required them to have this. I have hired ASE master certified technicians in the past who could not display that knowledge in a way that was concurrent with repairing vehicles. They could rattle what the book said all day long, but they did not have the common sense or the physical ability to fix the. So to me, that creates a problem. If we're saying this is a, I don't want to say governing body, but a credentialing body. And look, of all the arguments that we had about Ase and the credentials, here's my biggest argument, and David's going to disagree with me on this, so I'm just going to kick the hornets nest and get it over with. I know a lot of people are saying that ASe should not be responsible for marketing the value of their certifications and not putting that certification on the wall.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:08]:
As far as, hey, Mr. Consumer, here's what we do and here's why Ase is important. Hey, Mr. Shop, this is why it's important. I get it 100%. I get why they say they should not be responsible for that. I am 100% convinced there is no way anyone else can market ASe except for Ase because they're the only ones who can develop a standardized message. And then you can give that out to your shops and you can give that out to industry and say, hey, go help us promote this.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:39]:
But they have a responsibility to promote themselves.
David Macholz [00:14:42]:
Yeah, I think you're right to a certain extent. I think one of the factors is, to your point, though, what are they telling the consumer? Right.
David Roman [00:14:53]:
I don't think I'm the consumer anything.
David Macholz [00:14:56]:
Well, I mean, if they did, what's the message?
David Roman [00:14:59]:
Well, the message is don't go to a shop. That doesn't, the message is don't go to that shop unless you see the seal. That's it. That's the message. There you go. Blast that all over everywhere.
David Macholz [00:15:11]:
But to your point earlier, it also has to have meaning. Right? So if we're saying, and this is kind of my argument that I think that I was posting on sort of the follow up chat, right. We're telling ase, hey, you have to have this message. But we're also saying from the other side, like, well, it doesn't really have a meaning. It doesn't mean you can fix a car. Right.
David Roman [00:15:32]:
Well, hold on now.
David Macholz [00:15:34]:
There's more of a problem there than just the communication. And I agree.
David Roman [00:15:38]:
I don't think that extends past the messaging, because if somebody shows up to me, to my shop, with all these certifications, I know at the very least they can read.
David Macholz [00:15:51]:
Right?
David Roman [00:15:52]:
They can read, they can understand, and they can disseminate the information. Now, I'm not being facetious here. Look at the process within a shop. I need them to pick up the ticket, read the ticket, understand what the customer concern is be able to then replicate the problem, then be able to articulate the fix for it. Right. And then when I give them the repair, they've got to be able to sit down, read through the service information, look to see what is relevant to them, that, hey, this is unique to this repair. Right. And then decide, okay, there are no tricks here.
David Roman [00:16:30]:
I'm going to have to take this part out, lower the subframe, I'm going to have to replace these bolts. The fact that they were able to sit down and take those tests tells me that they should be able to do that. The same mechanics in the repair process. I have confidence in that.
David Macholz [00:16:49]:
I agree. And that's half of it. Right. Because I think the other half that we're all after and that sort of dialogue was, okay, well, we know they can take the test. We know they can read, we know they can write. We know that they can somewhat critically think when they're reading through, hopefully service information to make the decisions that they need to make, but can they do the job right? And I think that seems to also be part of the missing component.
David Roman [00:17:13]:
At least that comes with time, though, from a pragmatic standpoint here. Are they going to, just by taking the test and being able to do all the cognitive stuff, are they going to be able to know what it feels like when you've rounded out a bolt or when it's about to break because you were over tightening it or whatever? Are they going to know that? No, that takes experience. They have to know what that feels like. Okay, well, that comes with time. So if they come to me again, there was a time component to the certification. Two years in a shop, which back in the day used to be able to work at a parts store and get the okay or the write off that needs to go away entirely. Right. So it has to be at an accredited shop.
David Roman [00:18:00]:
The accredited shop has to have mostly AC certified technicians working in the shop. The, hey, this is a blue seal shop. Has to mean something. Right. So that shop's been vetted properly, not like the repair pal vetting, which is like, hey, do you exist? No, I'm talking like a real vetting process that says that shop has everything in place to make sure that their systems and processes will ensure a quality product for the most part. Right. You're not going to be 100%, but 80% of the vehicles that leave there are going to be of a good quality repair. Okay, fine.
David Roman [00:18:40]:
That shop gets blue seal certified. Therefore, you have to have two years in that type of shop or in that shop for you to be eligible for certification, what is that going to do? Well, all of a sudden every single shop is going to be chasing blue seal certification because, hey, I want to have those people that can take and pass the test come to me for the two years and then I want to be able to keep them. Right. So then after two years, yeah, now they've gotten enough time to know what it feels like. That, yeah, that's actually tight. Or, hey, that wheel is fully seated. I know the uggadugas are saying that, but you don't have that fully seated. That's rust build up behind there.
David Roman [00:19:20]:
You got to know what that feels like, the difference. And so once you have that experience, then, hey, here's your ASC certification. But it all starts with the messaging. The demand has to be there. The demand and the exclusivity has to be there.
David Macholz [00:19:38]:
So to your point, and this is one of the things that always comes up for me. I know over the years ase has done some Advertising, but it's usually advertising that gets put back on the shops to, hey, here's a banner you can put on your website or a social media or something along those lines, and they do put it back on the shops. But in your guys mind, and this is something that was curious to me that I had an interest in knowing from your perspective as shop owners, what do you think the messaging should be? Is it an ad on the Super bowl? What does that look like?
David Roman [00:20:15]:
All of it. Look at Toyota. What is Toyota doing right now? We had a whole video on it, Lucas, at ETR last year.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:24]:
I don't know if you've seen that video where.
David Macholz [00:20:28]:
We should.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:28]:
We should be careful about who we talk about at Toyota, right? We're not talking about necessarily Toyota's engineering division, just so we don't hurt any feelings. We're talking about Toyota dealership and fixed op sales, right? And they're basically showing this grease monkey who's out here and can't even fix a tire. And wasn't he duct taping it or something, David?
David Roman [00:20:50]:
I can't remember. That's not the only ad I've seen ads recently with Jan talking about, hey, you need to go to a shop or to Toyota because they have Toyota certified technicians. Jeez, is it that hard with a 32nd ad?
Lucas Underwood [00:21:07]:
Well, let's take a step back. Right? So they're a 501, ase is. And so their numbers are out there for God and everybody to see. And so all I'm going to say is that an average business, right, like if you want your business to grow and be relevant, they say that you should spend 10% of your desired income in advertising and marketing. Right. I'm going to tell you ase spent less than a quarter of a percent on marketing. Right. Like itty bitty, tiny, tiny amount of money goes to marketing.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:39]:
And so what would I want to see? I would want to see them sharing and saying, hey, we're automotive service excellence. And here's what this means for you. If you want to go to a shop, make sure they're ase certified because here's what we help verify in this process. Does that make sense further than that to the consumer? To the consumer, be responsible for the messaging. Right. The shops, because the shops are not going to be out marketing themselves. They're doing all they can just to market. Since that came up, I've asked over 100 consumers, do you know what ASE certification is? Not one of them has said yes, and I've had to explain it to every single one what ase means.
David Macholz [00:22:23]:
Well, herein lies the problem, right. Because how are you going know, from my perspective, from the college perspective, getting people into the business, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:31]:
Yeah.
David Macholz [00:22:32]:
If we're not viewed as a professional profession.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:37]:
Absolutely.
David Macholz [00:22:39]:
It becomes a non starter. For a lot of know, we live in an area that is sort of mixed but has a lot of affluent communities. I'm right on the border of the Hamptons on Long island, which try to convince some of those parents that their son or daughter should go into a trade. Right. Or the automotive industry. That's a tough ask. You're 100% right to me. I have a commitment to and a passion for professionalization of our industry.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:07]:
Amen.
David Macholz [00:23:08]:
And what does that look like and how do we do it? And right now I'm listening a lot, but I find myself in an interesting position. Right. Because I've had some interesting lived experiences that have brought me to sort of this doctoral study that I was telling you about before where I'm looking at the effective certification on income. Done a little bit with wrenchway and actually collaborated with them a little bit on their most recent survey. They were looking at income earnings for technicians and they were looking at median salary. But this all goes back into this sort of conversation of the perception of our industry. And if the industry group that's professionalizing our industry is a not telling the story, right. Sure, that's an issue.
David Macholz [00:23:53]:
But if it's also not fully professionalizing the industry, then that's another conversation too. So to that .1 of the things that comes up and not to kind of go off topic, but to tell you a little bit about what I'm doing, one of the things that glaringly sticks out to me is, like, median salary for technicians, right? So we got into this over on wrenchway on a couple of threads that were posted recently about Bureau of Labor Statistics data and Information. Well, if you look at our current industry, median salary, and the numbers are accurate, but it's how it's portrayed, that's probably not accurate. It's like $47,000, $48,000 a year median salary. Right. Median is middle. Right. So if there's 800,000 people in this, 400,000 or more are below $48,000 a year.
David Macholz [00:24:45]:
To me, where I live, that's not a living wage. Right. So that's not problem number one that jumps out at me. So my goal with sort of looking at certification and professionalization was do certified technicians make more money? Right. Because if they do, then we need as an industry to sort of rally around that idea of let's articulate a pathway for technicians. What does it look like? What does the entry level look like? What's the next step? What does continuing education look like, and what's the framework to sort of adapt to that? But some things really just kind of stick out of me and kind of catch me right away. Like one, ASE was created in 1972 to prevent licensing, right? Essentially, yes.
David Roman [00:25:31]:
Correct.
David Macholz [00:25:31]:
Nada was very involved in that. In fact, the president of NADA right now is his dad is the founder of ASE. Kind of an interesting aside, but long story short, one of the concerns there was, okay, well, licensing is too expensive. It's going to prevent people from going into the industry. Well, does anybody know what the national cost to get a license is, aside from school?
Lucas Underwood [00:25:55]:
Not right off.
David Macholz [00:25:56]:
No. I can tell you it's just about $300. Right? So you go, all right, $300 from.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:03]:
Getting in the industry, baby.
David Macholz [00:26:06]:
Well, what is the cost? Right. And when you look at the cost of education for our industry, and take that into account, too, the cost of tools and the cost of certification. Kid that walks out of UTI after one year, how much has that kid spent? Average cost of attendance right now published on UTI's website, if you're living there for their AOS degree, is $61,500. Right. Tools add tools to that mix. Right? So you guys see what I'm after, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:26:38]:
Exactly.
David Roman [00:26:40]:
Hold on.
David Macholz [00:26:41]:
How do we build a better mousetrap to get a student into the industry succeed, right.
David Roman [00:26:47]:
That pathway is what is most prevalent that's what's pushed out there, that pathway there. You know who I blame? Those stupid tv shows back in the day. You know what? The power block. Powerblock tv. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Those shows were sponsored by the schools. And so you would think, hey, for me to become Stacey David, I have to go to Wyotech. Is Wyotech even still around? I think they went out of business.
David Macholz [00:27:19]:
It went out of business, but it came back and it's under new ownership, from what I understand. They're actually doing a really nice job, from what I understand.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:26]:
Yeah, they are.
David Roman [00:27:27]:
Sure. They're doing wonderful. My point is that. Hold on now. My point is that the pathway has never been that. It's not that now, especially with the Internet. You kidding me? I tell this to everybody that calls and says, hey, I want to get into being a mechanic. It's like, okay, great, go get yourself a $99 subscription to Scandinav Premium, watch every single flipping video, test absolutely everything on a $200 uscope, and spend maybe $1,000 on tools.
David Roman [00:28:01]:
That's it. That's it. $1,500 and a year of poking everything on a car will get you immediately into a shop. Who's going to deny that person an opportunity? Well, any shop that's worth their. Like it has any sense is going to go, yeah, you're hired. You're hired right now. What do you want as a salary? And they will throw money.
David Macholz [00:28:28]:
Get worse. You ready for this one? Here's how it could get worse. Imagine you spent all that money and you came out and you didn't have the skills to show for it.
David Roman [00:28:35]:
They don't. I've hired uti people.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:38]:
Yeah. And that video that I sent you, that's what they were talking about. And that's been the main problem. Right. Is that they're out here spending millions of dollars on budget. Right. And so let's talk community college for a minute, because this is really near and dear to my heart. Okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:55]:
I think the community colleges around the country have the ability to educate students for much less than a four year college. Right. Four year colleges are picking up the skilled trades.
David Roman [00:29:05]:
Okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:06]:
I don't know if you've noticed that the IMR reports show that the skilled trades as a whole have a pretty bad reputation. It's not just automotive. And so the skilled trades are not bringing people in at the rate that they were. I'm sure you know that the attendance of women in a community college or a four year degree is up substantially. Young men are not going to school. I heard a president of a community college the other day say, I couldn't tell you where the young men are at. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, they're not going to school, and they're not going to work. They're not in a four year school.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:44]:
They're not in a community college. So I couldn't tell you. Right. Like, here's the data that I have available.
David Roman [00:29:50]:
And watching twitch, what they're doing, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:29:53]:
And so I know that we're seeing a shift, right? I think the community college has got a perfect system to be able to educate the next generation of skilled trades worker, be it a mason, be it a mechanic, be it a plumber, be it HVAC, whatever. I think we've got a perfect system. I think they've got a perfect system to develop continuing education, right? So that when they get out, we have a set program that we bring them back, and we can develop additional income for the school to keep the program going and fund the program well. And I would much rather see them come out of that with a certification from that community college, as I would just like the firefighters and the paramedics and everybody else. You have to have CE credits. Okay.
David Macholz [00:30:32]:
I am so happy that you're saying this, because part of my doctoral studies, too many roles. Doctoral fellow at Old Dominion University, but through the ECMC foundation, which supports post secondary community college completion and research. And the community college system has an unbelievable mission in the United States. Right. They have the ability to help people that cannot afford to go to school or have other issues preventing them an entryway into education that's going to hopefully better their lives by offering basically subsidized education. I always tell students that are looking at our program in Suffolk, we literally are, like, less than $15,000 for two years, right? 65% of our students are on federal aid. Many of our students get scholarships. They work a paid, cooperative experience for 640 hours.
David Macholz [00:31:29]:
When they're with us, they graduate. They're making decent money, pretty good money, comparatively, to what I hear from other schools. But here's the key component to that. I've been in my role for eight years at the college. When I started in that role, I went out, I was visiting a Honda dealership, and I ran into the service director there. He says, dave, he sees I had a Suffolk community college shirt on. He goes, you work there? I'm like, yeah. He goes, I got to talk to you.
David Macholz [00:32:03]:
He's like, I've had some students from your program, and they suck. And I was like, holy crap. This is literally, I've been in there for five minutes, and this is like my job. I just started there. And I care about my reputation, and I don't want somebody thinking the students that I have going out are not capable because that means my program is not doing a damn thing for those kids. So I'm like, let's talk. I'm like, what's happening and why? So what it came down to was there was no skills validation in the program, right. Even though we were master ase accredited, there was no point in time that really, in any class, it was required for a professor to say, show me that you can rack that car, do a multipoint inspection, find problems with that vehicle, that if you're not capable of that, you're going to bring either to your mentor, whoever it is that you're working with at the repair facility, and show me that you can actually do this stuff.
David Macholz [00:33:01]:
So as a gateway to the rest of our program, and this is where I think the key lies to this entire conversation. We measured students skills, right. Bottom line. Because if we put out as an educational institution students that cannot do a particular job, what did we do that for? Right? And to make it worse, if they paid a tremendous amount of money for that education, if they didn't go through us, God help it. God help them. Because at this point, now you've got student loan debt. Right. It's no wonder that the numbers that I'm coming up with research wise are like 40% to 60% attrition in the first three years of employment across the industry.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:43]:
Yeah, well, I mean, look, dude, that's what that video is about, right? I'll be completely transparent. That was NASCAR tech in that video that I sent you. And they say to the NATEFA creditor that comes in to inspect the school, we have an agreement with ASE, and you don't have to worry about it because we don't have to meet those requirements. And he said, look, all I'm telling you is these are go no go standards for safety. And I don't care what Ase says. If you can pass and you have safety problems, I have a problem with that. That's not okay. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:22]:
And so if we're even overlooking safety concerns in an organization, are we devaluing a program like ASE and Natef? I know it's ASe Education foundation now. Right. But are we devaluing it because they're willing to pay more money? And I have a problem with that right now. I have hired people from NASCAR Tech, and I have seen a lot of people, friends of mine went to NASCAR Tech because when they were really popular in their heyday was when, you know, in school, and we're seeing these guys come out, and they don't even have base knowledge. Now, I'm not trying to throw one particular school under the bus, right? But let's talk about community college and high school, because Eric Mortensen and Roy Jennings are really good friends of mine. And so we have students in both programs that come to the shop, and Eric says, okay, lucas, here's where I'm working with that student right now. Let's get them in the shop, and let's talk about where they're at. And I want you to watch and see if they're proficient.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:21]:
Are they picking up what I'm putting down? And Roy says, hey, listen, your apprentice is in my class, and here's what we're working on right now. Can you put him with a technician? And he works with that technician, and let's figure out where the holes in the knowledge he's getting are. Right?
David Macholz [00:35:36]:
Yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:37]:
I think the community college system provides much more of a dynamic ability to educate people where they need to be educated, how they need to be educated affordably. Yet we see certification bodies throwing all their weight behind these big. And I think you're right. I think Wyotech. I know some people that work for Wyotech. I hear that it is a tremendous change. It's not even the same organization. It was.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:03]:
They're doing a really good job. But then we see organizations like UTI, and I have heard the stories about the instructors who just basically shove the kids in a room. And it is literally, they are given KPI metrics that say, get the kid through the program. We don't care how you get them through. We don't care if they fail this. We don't care if they actually know it or not. Your job is to get them through the program so we can get paid. While I've got a college instructor and a high school instructor saying, hey, man, I really care about teaching this person because these are life skills.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:38]:
This isn't about even just a career. These are life skills and the number of kids coming out of school that don't even know how to check their oil. Look, we're highly involved with the high school and CTE in our county and in the surrounding districts, right? And I went to one of the CTE functions. Put it to you this way. Our high school has 250 people show up for the advisory council meetings, right?
David Macholz [00:37:03]:
Amazing.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:04]:
Tell me how many schools you see that get that type of feedback? And so we go in and 99% of that is because the instructor is passionate and fired up. And the guy who did the engineering for the shop that we just built, like the landscaping and how much room I had and what I had to do and when I had to do it, right, he's there and he comes over and he grabs me on the shoulder and he said, lucas, he said, I got to tell you about this. And I said, what? He said, my daughter is in this automotive program and you need to tell the instructor what a difference it's made in her life. And I said, what do you mean? He said, she says this is her favorite class because Mr. Mortensen is teaching her how to live life, that this is not just about fixing cars, this is about deductive reasoning and thought process and quality decision making. Right?
David Macholz [00:37:54]:
Yeah. Let me stop you there for a second because I want to kind of weigh in on two things that you said. The first thing that you said, you mentioned the teacher that you're just talking about. He's teaching more to, hey, this is what this career is all about. He's not necessarily teaching off a list of tasks. Right? One thing that cracked me up, right. I grew up in the independent repair world. My grandfather worked for snap on for 25 years.
David Macholz [00:38:20]:
I grew up on a snap on tool truck when I was a kid. Actually, my grandfather was the first and the last of the tech guys when they bought out sun equipment. So I was driving around with him, with the counselor two and selling equipment to guys in Brooklyn at like twelve years old, which was insane. But anyhow, it's a story for another day. But my point is, when I walked into a high school automotive shop and there were four instructors and each of those four instructors had two areas of ase. And I'm like, wait a second, how long is this program? They're like, it's two years long, right? And essentially every six months is two areas of ase. And I'm like, so you're doing like full on engine repair, full on transmission repair with 16 and 17 year olds who don't even know if they want to do this as a career yet. And they're like, well, yeah.
David Macholz [00:39:15]:
And I'm like, why? Right? And they're like, well, because our accreditation with Ase says we need to cover this 1200 hours of material. And I'm like, oh my God. I'm like, does anybody ever put a car up in the air for six months? Well, no, we're taking engines and transmissions apart on the bench. I'm like, so your advisory board is okay with this? Well, we don't really have an advisory board, but we kind of do. It's connected to the overall advisory board for the whole technical school. And I'm like, all right, my point in saying this is I look at one of the major issues that we have in training in the automotive industry is that we are not differentiating between secondary and post secondary instruction. Right. So essentially the same task list goes to both groups and you can differentiate.
David Macholz [00:40:07]:
You could be an MLR program, which means you have less hours. But to me, like the guy that you mentioned sounds like he's doing an amazing job. If we miss teaching these kids some of the competencies, they need to be skillful on day one and survive day one on their job and replace that information with things that they're probably not going to use for two, three, four years into their career. Are we really doing the service or we're doing them an injustice at that point? Right. So that was one thing I picked up. The other thing I wanted to mention, when you're talking about the schools, I think you're going to start to see a little bit of a change across the board. There's some federal funding changes coming, especially for profit, where they're going to have to start measuring their employment outcomes. So that's going to be a pretty pivotal moment.
David Macholz [00:40:54]:
But it's also, I think, a moment for us to kind of realize in education. Well, if we're looking at employment outcomes, remember the conversation I had with the guy at Honda? Our programs need to look like that. What do employers need for a student to have a pathway to success? Right. And to me, it's probably not 1200 hours worth of everything. It's probably, hey, let's make sure they have the competencies in specific areas to be able to build off those competencies, whether it's reading comprehension or any student should be able to take a problem and be like, well, these are my six steps to solving this problem because I've learned that as a process, as a competency, not because they learned a skill. So I'll get off my soapbox, but I just kind of want to put that in there, dude.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:38]:
I absolutely love that. I think that we've got, especially in the community colleges, especially in the high schools, I think we have a better chance of getting extremely passionate instructors who are fired up and interested in making people's lives better. Right. And the number of instructors that I know at that level, right. Because they ain't doing it for the money. Let's be real. If you're doing that for the money, budy, I hate it for you.
David Macholz [00:42:05]:
Yeah, I know I keep interrupting you, but to that point, too, one of the things that we're looking at in CTE research across the board is we have a shortage of instructors. Yes, very much. And it's a real problem, right? So if I'm a technician that makes 150 grand a year, I'm going to go and I'm going to take 50 a year to teach. We have to do something about that. And that's a part of this underlying issue of education, too, is like to get the right people, we need to look at how do we get the right people? How do we incentivize them, and how do we make sure they're the right people to train the future generation know?
Lucas Underwood [00:42:42]:
Because we have a UTI facility in our area, right. It's a couple of hours from me, and one of my frustrations is I've watched what happens with that facility. And so in North Carolina, and I don't know about where you're at, but in north Carolina, the community colleges cannot market across county lines. They're not allowed to. They're not allowed to go over here to this county and say, hey, we offer this program. Oh, by the way, it's dual enrollment. You can have high school students in this. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:12]:
And because we're unable to tell each other about that, the word doesn't get across county lines. Guess what? Uti does. UTI targets the areas that those community colleges and those schools are in. And they talk about in their marketing how this is better. They don't come right out and say that the community college program is inferior or the high school programs are inferior, but they infer that this quality of education is. And look, to get back to what we were supposed to be talking about, they all tout ase as the golden standard, that you will leave here an ASE certified technician. And when the instructors who have been teaching to get students ase certified for 25 years say, I think this shit's pointless. Right? What does it say to you?
David Macholz [00:44:11]:
Well, I think it says that we need to reinvent ourselves. And I think the positive conversation that we take from this is to start to talk about what does that look like? What's the basis and what's the groundwork? To talk about the advocacy side for the consumer, right? What consumer wouldn't want to know. Like, hey, this is the place I should take my shop, because these people invest in their people. They hired certified people. They've committed to continuing education. I think those are the things that we need to talk about, is what does it look like and how do we get know?
Lucas Underwood [00:44:44]:
It's interesting you bring that up. I had a conversation with one of the clients that I asked about ase, and he said, lucas, he said, until I found your shop, and I make mistakes, too, let's not even go there. But he said, until I found your shop, he said, I never thought that certifications made a difference. And he said, I never thought that a big, nice shop or you training your people or any of those things made any difference at all. And I had really got to the point in my life that I believed the primary objective was to get the cheapest car repair I could, because it wasn't going to be right. Whether I took it to the dealer, whether I took it to an independent, whether I took it to a chain store, I was going to have a bad experience and I was going to have problems.
David Macholz [00:45:24]:
And.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:25]:
And that is a fairly common perception that we have in the automotive know it'll take a lot to fix that, right? Let's just say it'll take a lot to fix that. It's going to take years to fix that. And I just don't know if ase has it in them to be part of the change that has to happen, that has to fix this.
David Macholz [00:45:50]:
Well, it's a big change. You look at the technological advancements, as I mentioned earlier, look at EV, look at Ados, look at hydrogen, look at all these different technologies that we're starting to kind of see on the periphery. But evs, we sold 1.2 million evs in the US last year, which is way more than manual transmission vehicles. But there's no EV course that's allowed to replace transmissions in a master certified program. Right. So there's no flexibility. Right now we're at a critical juncture. Right.
David Macholz [00:46:26]:
We have a decision to make. Are we going to have people to fix the technologically advanced automobiles that we have right now, let alone ten years down the line, whatever that looks like, with the system we have in place? And I'll leave the answer of that up to you guys. But I think I already know what the answer is from that. Yeah, it's a critical point in time. One of the things that I'm doing with my new company is going out and training teachers on electric vehicles, trying to provide them with curriculum, trying to provide them with a framework for what that looks like in their programs of study, because, quite frankly, there's so many state agencies like New York state in particular. We're one of the states where we've mandated every government agency by 2025, literally next year, to purchase nothing but electric light duty vehicles. So, like New York City, David, regardless of what the opinion is on it, right. And I always say I don't take a political stance on this.
David Macholz [00:47:28]:
I take a technician supportive stance. Right? So there's 5600 vehicles in New York City in the fleets, right? So those technicians need help in order to work safely around the cars. Not just that, but how do you use a milliometer? How do you use a megometer? What does that mean? If we had issues with electrical diagnostics before, this is compounded now, and it's like a crazy calculus right, to now get into the weeds on fixing some of these vehicles. And by the way, they do break. A few of the classes that I've done so far was just up in Maine back in November. I had a guy who had just had a Proterra bus apart motor issue, and also they had an interlock circuit issue and a battery issue all in the same bus. Now it's a million dollar bus. Right? Do you think they want that thing sitting around? Well, now, here's the bigger problem.
David Macholz [00:48:23]:
So call Protera. They're three days away. My point in saying all of this is we are facing an unprecedented technological change in our industry, and I think we need to completely reinvent how we're doing things. I'm just going to put that out there.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:40]:
So let me ask you this. You spent a ton of time and a ton of effort and a ton of research in this concept of credentialing and certification. Is there a way, a feasible way, to have at least some idea of practical knowledge and the ability to implement said practical knowledge, actual ability? Right. Is there a way to do that with credentials and certifications?
David Macholz [00:49:11]:
Absolutely. And I think there are many industries that do it all to a different degree. But I think you kind of have to move from a task based approach to a competency based approach where I'm not really concerned. If somebody can do 800 tasks, I really want to know that the way that they did those 800 tasks, that they thought about the process from an intellectual standpoint, read what they needed to read to get to the answer of what they needed to do in order to do that, have the skills, competencies to use the tools that they need to be able to perform that repair, and have enough from a competence perspective to say, let's go back and check the work, confirm I did what I needed to do. And there are ways to embed that in programs, but I think it takes a complete reinvention of where we're at. Another part of my research is looking at comparative models around the world. Up north of us is Canada. They have a system that's pretty interesting.
David Macholz [00:50:11]:
The UK has IMi, which is pretty interesting. And so if you start to look at what people are doing internationally and also realizing that a lot of those bodies tend to include educators into the process, a whole lot more than I think we have with our current industry model. Right. Not to say that education hasn't been involved. Education has been the facilitation of industry standards. But if you think about industry standards, one of the things that you'll always hear at advisory boards is, well, what does the industry say? But there's never ever really a conversation about what can a school really do and what can a school not do, right? And I think we've always been like, well, we need to take everything that industry says and we need to do all of it. Nonsense, right? We need to have a school that works in concert with the industry to prepare folks, get them into a job, get them mentored. And David's point earlier, they don't really necessarily need the idea of a traditional formalized degree or program of study in order to do that.
David Macholz [00:51:13]:
It just has to be, there has to be a framework that goes from a starting point but takes them throughout the lifetime of their career. So those are all things that I'm researching that I'm putting information together on, and I'm very interested in finding answers to this industry problem. But I think another thing that's going to be really hard is, okay, there's a new model. How do you get broad industry buy in? And that's something I would ask you guys. What do you think? Well, what would it take for everybody to go, what, you know, what we need to professionalize, and other than legislation coming in and saying licensing, which is a whole nother story, right. How do we do it?
Lucas Underwood [00:51:54]:
Think that. I've been sitting here thinking about this the entire time you were talking about this.
David Roman [00:51:59]:
I was listening, by the way. I was listening intently. I wasn't just thinking about what.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:03]:
David never listened. You'll learn that licensing is never the.
David Roman [00:52:08]:
Fix, by the way, because it didn't work in Michigan, it didn't work in Canada. They have.
David Macholz [00:52:13]:
Well, that's because the government board just took it on its own, right, and said this is the standard without saying, like well, how do we then measure that competency? Right. So I think that's always the backwards end, is like the legislation from the top down, never seems to work, but from the bottom up, what percentage of people hold certification through ase, by the way, of our population, if you look at it, I think they say 200,000. Well, there's 800,000.
David Roman [00:52:36]:
Right.
David Macholz [00:52:36]:
So it's 25% or less of our workforce is certified. So is that effective? I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:44]:
Well, when we had dirk on the last time, and we were talking about Germany and we're talking about electric vehicles, and he said the point in Germany was that you would not be insured because there was a government insurance. And if you didn't have certified people and somebody got hurt in your shop and they weren't certified to do the job that they were doing, you were no longer in business. Right. And I think, in so many ways, there has been no consequence. Right now, I'm not asking the federal government to come in and apply a consequence, and that's what Ase was supposed to prevent. Right. Ase was supposed to prevent this massive consequence and government oversight. That's completely blind.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:25]:
I mean, you see the decisions they make about other things. They have no clue what's really happening and what's really going on right to that point.
David Macholz [00:53:34]:
And I'm sorry to interrupt you again, but I got to put this out. There we are like one electric vehicle burning down a senator's house away from having that mandated on us, whether we.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:45]:
Like it or not. I know. Right? And so I think Dirk had this beautiful plan and this idea of how it works there. Now, I get that it would be very difficult now to implement here, but I'm going to tell you something. I've talked to a lot of insurance companies, and they're screaming about loss ratios. They're screaming about loss ratios in auto repair shops, usually collision shops, more so than mechanical shops, but they're always upset about these loss ratios. If there's a party that's more motivated to fix the auto repair industry than us, it's the insurance companies. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:22]:
And it might be that those are the friendly foes that we need to begin to kind of turn a corner on this. I don't like the idea of regulation. I don't like the idea of mandatory certifications, if you will, that's ran by a government agency. But I know that if we don't develop some type of professionalism and some type of competency based scoring system, we've got way bigger problems ahead of us than what we have right now. And I think we're going to see a decrease in the number of competent shops because some of these older guys are saying, I can't get help. You look at a Mike buyer. Now, Mike's got a absolute competent shop full of really elite guys, but Mike's up there in years and says, guys, I don't know that I want to do this again. I don't know that I want to go through this whole task of finding more people to refill this shop if something happens to these guys.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:19]:
And then I have to find these new guys who know this new technology, and Mike's the technology guy in the shop. So now what does he say? He says, do I really feel like relearning and developing a new skill on completely different type of technology? When these guys start getting older and they start getting tired, is that going to leave a hole? Maybe more so in the independent market, but I don't even know that it's the dealers.
David Macholz [00:55:44]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:45]:
We're hearing some of the stories coming from the dealers. I had a conversation with a guy the other day, I'm not going to name the brand, but really great conversation. And he said, I am held hostage by a master level technician in my shop who has cried and screamed to the point that all he gets is gravy. Nobody else will work here, but I can't terminate him because the OE says I have to have him, or at least somebody like him. There's nobody to replace him. So what am I to do? I'm going to sit here with this guy who is an absolute toxic nightmare, can't fix cars to save his life, but he's a master certified technician. What's the answer?
David Macholz [00:56:26]:
Yeah, to that point, I go back to the churn in our business, right? The 40% to 60% in the first three years that are leaving the relatively low number of people entering the industry. But that's not entirely true. Tech force has some stuff out there where they're like, well, we need 70,000 people a year. If you looked at how many people took the ase entry level tests and how many students are in the pipeline, there's like 70,000 students in the pipeline every year. So if that's the case, we don't necessarily have a technician shortage. We have a technician retention problem. Right. And part of that retention problem is, again, going back to this whole idea of certification, a technician that's coming into this field that has no ability to.
David Macholz [00:57:12]:
Okay, what's the next step? How does that look, what does that result in? In pay on average? And how do I continue to advance myself other than just going to a testing center that's 2 hours from my house and taking a test and showing a piece of paper that my boss goes, well, that's nice, son. Still doesn't mean that you could do that break job outside, but you invested in yourself, so I'll give you a 50 cent an hour bump. It's reinventing the way that we look at professionalizing our industry that shows a framework and a lattice work to young people to what the pathway for continual advancement is. And I think that's where we're falling short.
David Roman [00:57:50]:
I know you can't say this because the positions that you hold, but the retention problem is entirely the dealerships. That's who's causing all of the people to leave when you shove these kids right out of school onto the lube rack. And hey, you're going to be on this lube rack for the next six to eight years. And all we're going to have you do is just pump out 55 oil changes every Saturday for forever in perpetuity until old man Bob, who has the master level certification, either quits or dies. Then we might slide you into an actual technician's role. And by the way, because we have to replace airbags on these 8 million vehicles, you're going to be doing airbags all day long, too. So at Hyundai, the lube guy is doing engine swaps. The lube guy, who isn't getting paid like a regular technician, has his work looked over by an actual technician.
David Roman [00:58:50]:
He's a lube guy. He's making $18 an hour. That's it. And that $18 an hour, he has to swap out engines all day long on a Saturday. That guy's going to get pretty tired of doing that and going, hey, that guy next to me is making 30. He is just overlooking my work. I have to do the work and I'm getting paid 18. And you're telling me it's going to be six to eight years before I can move into his role? That's some BS.
David Roman [00:59:13]:
I'm out. I can go get an HVAC job or go do duct cleaning for more money and not have to deal with any of this BS. Those are entirely dealership problems. They are taking all of those 70,000 technicians are going to the dealerships. The dealership chews up and spits out 40% to 60% of them. And whoever gets left over either becomes the line tech and the ones that get tired of it then they trickle off into the independent repair shop. Also technology accelerating will help, like everybody. Why? Because the technicians, the few shops that want to invest in their technicians, invest in technology, invest in continuous education, they're going to do just fine.
David Roman [00:59:53]:
And the 80% of shops that are going, we'll see. I still work on TBI. It's like, great, okay, keep working on TBI. Those cars are all gone. They're all gone. And I get you don't want to learn relearn or whatever. You've decided you made yourself obsolete. Congratulations.
David Roman [01:00:09]:
And so it's not a technician shortage. Those shops just need to go away. All of them. Do they need to go away? Yeah.
David Macholz [01:00:14]:
And to your point, David, you're spot on about potentially people at the dealers leaving. But to me I also have another reason that I think that's occurring right. In what other industry do I say, hey, I want to advance. Do I need to go to my boss and beg him to send me to a class? Right. Usually I can go externally and I can be like, hey, I want to go take this class to learn how to do electrical diagonal. We do that in the automotive industry, independent side all the time. Right. But at an oe I have to go to the next GM class.
David Macholz [01:00:47]:
Well, there's 40 guys in my shop. They're going to go on a rotation to GM school. And in order for me to move up in certification level, I'm looking at it and I'm like, well, this guy hasn't gone for two years. This guy over here went six months ago. When's my turn? And how am I ever supposed to make any.
David Roman [01:01:03]:
You can't blame that on the dealership. You can't blame that on the dealership because a lot of times what they will do is they will give you sit down classes or courses you have to take on the computer. And before you invest, hold up, hold up. Not all of them, but a lot of them do. A lot of them will put together and say, hey, you've got to complete these eight computer courses that will take you six to 8 hours. You can do it home or whatever. Well, I get that, but I'm saying if you're new in the dealership, you get hired on, you're on the lubric, fine, you're doing fine. But if you want to get sent to the class where they have to pay for your hotel and your airfare and yada yada and all that thing, if they want to do that, you've got to show us some initiative.
David Roman [01:01:45]:
And what do these guys, do they just assume you should be sending me, hey, you haven't finished those classes online. Yeah, I'm going to get to it.
David Macholz [01:01:53]:
Well, David, I think that's part of it. But to my point, my point was that I can't self advocate for myself to say, hold on, I'm going to take next week off and I'm going to go to the training center. You don't have to pay me, I'm just going to go. So there's no forward mobility in that way. When people start to look, it's going to take me five to seven years to get master certified. They go, no, I want to move. How do I get through this education, right? So I think that's one effect, but the other effect is what happens now if I'm in this brand x pathway and all of a sudden my experience with that brand is so terrible that I go to leave and I go to the next brand, and the next brand puts me in this labyrinth of, well, you better start over and do these 18,000 electrical modules before we're going to send you. And you go, but no, I have electrical certification.
David Macholz [01:02:46]:
Well, no, we don't honor that because it's a domestic and we're a European. So what I'm saying is the pathway or the lattice work for people to move in a positive direction continually seems to me to be missing. And I get that a lot of times people impede their own progress by not advocating and helping themselves. But even when they do, there's still somebody that's in control of their fate, whether it is they want to move to somewhere else in advance, or if they want to move up through that brand in advance, they always have a manager or somebody that's looking at, well, no, you can't do that. As opposed to where I decide I want to move up in my job, I go to school right after work, I can enroll myself in something, I can advance, and I have control of my destiny. Where I feel a lot of times folks, specifically in a dealer role, a lot of times don't have that luxury.
David Roman [01:03:40]:
That's why if they get to a certain point within a dealership that they want to learn and they're not getting the support that they should, they need to just leave and they need to go independent. And what you see, very talented, excited and motivated individuals afraid to jump into the independent world. They've been, hey, I've been at Toyota for five years. It's like, okay, great, if you can fix a Toyota, you can fix a Ford. They just break more often, which is great for you. Right? Everybody should be making money on a Ford because they break so often. You should be making less on a Toyota. And so you shouldn't be afraid to go work on it at an independent repair shop.
David Roman [01:04:20]:
But they're afraid to. So what do they do? They just go to another dealership like, oh, I just went from Toyota to Lexus, like, what are you doing? You're just going back into the machine. Like, the machine is chewing you up and spitting you out. Don't go back in there.
David Macholz [01:04:35]:
So if we had a certification model that actually made sense, where folks could recognize that that independent shop maintained a similar or a higher level of standard, maybe that would be an easier move for them to make, too.
David Roman [01:04:49]:
It would be, but I'm going to give that to you right now. I'm going to give that to you right now. I'm going to give it to you right now. Yes. By the way, the certification, the standardization, the professional ism, all that stuff there, it needs to be driven by the consumer, entirely by the consumer. If the consumer demands it, the shops are going to pivot towards it. The shops don't, because the consumer doesn't know. The consumer doesn't know.
David Roman [01:05:11]:
They don't know. They're like, it's fixed. It's not making that clicking noise anymore. You have no idea. That shoddy part got installed. It was improperly, and it's going to take three years for it to break again. Even though the first one lasted ten, the next one will only last three years. But you don't put two and two together for whatever God forsaken reason.
David Roman [01:05:29]:
You don't. And so you just let it go. And you're like, yeah, it's fine. That shop doesn't even in business anymore anyway. I fixed it three years ago, now it's broken. Why didn't it last ten? The original one lasted ten. Anyway, here's how you know. This is how you tell you want to go to an independent repair shop.
David Roman [01:05:42]:
First thing you ask is, are you open on weekends? And if they say yes, move on. Move on. Do not go there. Do not go there. The second question is, what are your hours? If they're like, we're open seven to seven, move on. You're not going to go there. They're a trash shop. I don't care what they put on the flipping wall.
David Roman [01:06:03]:
I don't care what it says. World class, whatever. I don't care. They are a trash shop. Trash organization. They will chew you up. They will spit you out. Don't go there.
David Roman [01:06:13]:
Then the third thing is, how do you pay if it's purely commission run? That's it? That's it. Those three things. Are you open on weekends? Yes. Great. I can't have a normal life. The only thing you'll care about is that I can make you money, and the minute that I can't, you're going to ship me out. So that's all it is? That's all it is. Making money here.
David Roman [01:06:34]:
Great. I can't have a normal life. I work as part of a team here, and we all make good money and we can support our families and we can have vacations and all this other garbage that's out the window. All you care about is making money. And then if they tell you some stupid hours, seven to seven, get the flip out of here. Seven to seven. So I don't have kids to take to school? Is that how this is? Apparently I have daycare all the way to 07:00 p.m. That's the thing.
David Roman [01:07:03]:
Oh, are you telling me I can't have kids? So the only people you hire are like, early 20 year olds that can keep up with the pace? That's it. I'm 40. I'm 43 years old. You can't hire me because I got two kids, I got to be able to take them to school. Whatever. No, that's not going to fit. Yeah, okay, great. Don't go work there.
David Roman [01:07:21]:
Don't go work there. And then if it's just commission, obviously it's like, great. We don't want to pay you if you can't hack it.
David Macholz [01:07:30]:
I get that.
David Roman [01:07:31]:
But then they're not doing high level work, are they? Are they, Dave? They're not doing high level work. They're not fixing that. Whatever. They're not fixing that bus, are they? They're not finding the electrical problem on that.
Lucas Underwood [01:07:48]:
Hey, hey. On this subject, okay, I was in a meeting yesterday, and these people work in dealership organizations. They're heavily involved in fixed ops. And she was sharing with me that every service advisor position she ever had. And then when she went to apply to be a service manager, every one of them asked if she planned to have children. And they said, if you have children, this is not the job for you. Right? Literally, they turned her down for a service manager position because she would not say that she did not have intentions to have children at some point in her life. Right? That's illegal and that's crazy to me.
David Roman [01:08:28]:
I'm pretty sure that's illegal. I'm just telling you that's illegal. They can ask this. The schedule is 65 hours a week and you have to work from these hours a week, hours including weekends. If you can't work that schedule, we can't hire you. And obviously if you got kids, a family and a normal life, you're just trying to live a normal life. That's not going to fly. And so you tell them, I can't meet that schedule on a consistent basis for forever in perpetuity.
David Roman [01:08:55]:
Yes, that's how it is. Well, I can't do that. Well, then you're not eligible to have this job. It's illegal for them to say like, hey, you got kids.
Lucas Underwood [01:09:02]:
I'm just telling you what this person. Let's, let's dig in a little bit because I think it's important to bring this up. One of the biggest schools in North Carolina has a lot of dealership names all over the inside of it. Right. And so I've talked to some of those instructors and this is an unpopular opinion. And they literally say, I cannot say this inside the school, I can't talk about this inside the school. But they'll talk outside the school and they'll say, if you knew the number of gifts that we've been showered with and the things that we're given, that is saying that we have to meet a quota of number of students that go to work for specific dealerships. And so it's our job to encourage specific students to go to specific dealerships and encourage them to go to specific programs, and then they go to work for that dealership.
Lucas Underwood [01:09:57]:
Okay. And that dealership employs an older gentleman who can no longer turn wrenches. And do you know what his job is? His job is to pass the manufacturer certification test on the computer so they can keep working. Okay, that's kind of broken. Right? And so they go to work for this dealership, and just like David says, they work for years and years and years. And so some of these models, and I'm not going to say it's all these shops, but these chain stores and some of these dealership models, they recognize that we can have a lower paid employee, we can do tires and we can do brakes and really light stuff, and it's very high gp per hour. So the whole goal would be to keep them very low paid and in that low skill position for as long as possible and not get them to a point that we're training them and raising them up. Mark Allen from know, one of the things that he's always said is, hey, what I'm interested in is that the aftermarket can properly repair an automobile, right? Because at the end of the day, it still says Audi on the front of it.
Lucas Underwood [01:11:04]:
It's still my car. And so if it says Audi on the front of it and my Audi consumers driving it, my reputation's on the line, just like your reputation's on the line. And I want to make sure it's safe. I want to make sure it's reliable. Because at the end of the day, when they think Audi, they think me. And I thought, man, that's a really cool way to look at it, mark, great. Help us train the aftermarket. Help us train independence.
Lucas Underwood [01:11:28]:
And there's some dealers that are working on that, right? There's training available. But I'm just saying, like, hey, help us create a system that these guys can have a continuing education. Oes, I get that you want to support your dealers. Help us train the aftermarket and build a workforce up that can work on OE vehicles with OE credentials, right? There's got to be a shift in the way that we're looking at this. So much of what's happening between the OES, the OES hate their dealers. Okay? Like, I don't get it. The dealers hate independents and chain stores. The chain stores hate dealers and independents, and the independents hate everybody.
Lucas Underwood [01:12:06]:
Right? That's just how we are. We're grouchy old farts. If we could work together to create an educational system, and these people who are in this realm that say, hey, he's taking my certifications for me, I don't get to go into any training. I'm going to tell the OES right now, you need to make a certification system and a training system that they can access whenever the hell they want to, right?
David Macholz [01:12:31]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [01:12:32]:
And then they need to offer it to us, too, and let us pay for it. Let us pay to train them.
David Macholz [01:12:37]:
I think this has always been a tricky wicket, right, because the OE doesn't want to train their competition and then have the dealers upset with them about that, right? So, hey, you guys created an amazing shop down the street from my dealership. Thank you for that. But in a way, it would make the dealers better. However, the dealers counsel every time they meet, I'm sure would give the oes an earful, which is why we never really seem to make much movement in that regard. Just going back to sort of this whole conversation, one of the things that I've always thought is that, and I know you guys are shop owners and you guys are shop owners that are in the minority, I think, for the most part and like to see more shop owners like you guys. But my point is, it's always seemed to me that no one has really looked out for the technician, right? No one's really looked out for the woman who walked in, who wanted to better herself, who was asked, well, you're not going to have kids, are you? Are you kidding me? How is that? And where in the world other than the automotive industry would that be a, allowed and b, tolerated? There would be no tolerate. I mean, I work at a public community college. Do you know what would happen if someone said something? It's like, unbelievable.
David Macholz [01:13:58]:
So I guess my point is, whatever it is that we come up with to improve our industry, it has to be based on the idea that workers are not just this replaceable commodity, right? Especially ones that have skill, that have demonstrated a value and investment in themselves by paying for their own education, paying for their own training, many times paying for a certification through this idea of, like, human capital, where if I invest in myself, that just in itself is a representation of, hey, I care, I want to do this, I want to learn, but we have to figure out how to reward that. And it can't be, well, you have to go through this labyrinth, and if you leave here, you can't take that with you because it's ours. And if you go to the competition, then you're going to help them and not us. And that's not serving any worker in this environment. The other thing is, I work at a community college where we have a ton of trade programs, and there are some amazing trades out there right now that pay extraordinarily well and would not tolerate the stuff like that that goes on. And I think that needs to be a part of this conversation. And when I say professionalization, I use that word with a very broad brush. Right.
David Macholz [01:15:10]:
It's looking at our industry in a different way to support technicians, to support the workforce. And in doing so, I think we're supporting employers in the long run, whether they realize it or not, the amount of money that dealers spend in retraining and reinvestment. Right. Same thing with the aftermarket. If we're losing people the money that we spend in retraining, why don't we just use that more wisely and invest in the people that we have? And yes, some of them are going to leave, like, every single field and every single job that you guys have ever had, too, you left. Right. But we still wanted people to invest in us as workers and have a professional model that we could grow ourselves in. And I think if nothing else, we leave this conversation today.
David Macholz [01:15:55]:
It's looking at education, looking at training, looking at professionalization through the lens of let's help technicians and let's help the overall workforce by helping those technicians reach their career goals.
Lucas Underwood [01:16:09]:
I'll end with this. If you look at your business and you come to your business and it continually is on the decline, right, and it's losing money hand over fist, day after day, week after week, month after month, eventually you're going to look at it and say, this is not going to work, this is not sustainable. And if it's growing, you say, what are we doing that's working and why is it working and how can we duplicate this, how can we make this work? And there is zero doubt that if you look at the american worker and the skilled trades as a whole, let's even just drop some of these other trades in there with it, not just automotive. The american skilled trades worker is not coming into the workforce like they were. The automotive worker is leaving in force right now. And if that is the case, we absolutely have to look at this and say we've got massive attrition, something's happening, we're not doing something right, we're not hitting the target, and it's time to quit. There's so many people talking about all these little ideas and these things that we can do and ways we can change a little here, a little there. It's not enough because it's not changing it.
Lucas Underwood [01:17:18]:
And so I think as an industry, we have to take a step back and say we got to do something different here.
David Macholz [01:17:23]:
No doubt. Well, I'm glad you guys are having this conversation. And I think this is a conversation that really just, I mean, it continues to keep me awake at night. The more I look into this and ways that we can start to progress, I have some good ideas. I want to keep that conversation going because I think there are things that we can do to make improvements on where we are right now.
Lucas Underwood [01:17:51]:
Agreed, sir, thank you for being here.
David Macholz [01:17:53]:
Thank you guys. Appreciate get the opportunity. Dave, sorry we set you off there for a little.
Lucas Underwood [01:17:58]:
That's, that's his natural state when he clicks in.