Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer. In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
Zeb Beard [00:00:00]:
Well, you hear all these guys are always complaining about their production. Man, I don't know what to do. My guys can't get 100%. If my guys only get 100%, I'm looking, only trying to figure out what the problem. I'm wanting them to get 150%. I'm not shooting for 100. I'm shooting for 150 or 200. That's where their problem.
Zeb Beard [00:00:17]:
They're. They're running around there bumping dicks, one
Bryan Pollock [00:00:21]:
bay per tick, playing grab ass.
Zeb Beard [00:00:23]:
Playing grab.
Bryan Pollock [00:00:24]:
Playing grab ass.
Zeb Beard [00:00:25]:
Well, what it is. And some bitches off at these conventions playing grab ass instead of running their shops. What's happening? The following is a special edition of the show. Don't worry, today's episode still features doofuses
Bryan Pollock [00:00:37]:
talking about the aftermarket. This one just doesn't include my dad, so it's probably better than normal.
Zeb Beard [00:00:43]:
The stuff said on this show does
Bryan Pollock [00:00:45]:
not necessarily represent the views or opinions of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have.
Zeb Beard [00:00:53]:
Chances are there may be some spicy
Bryan Pollock [00:00:55]:
language in this show.
Zeb Beard [00:00:56]:
So if you're sensitive to that, you
Bryan Pollock [00:00:58]:
should probably move along. Without further ado, here's your special host, Brian Pollock with Confessions of a Shop
Zeb Beard [00:01:06]:
Owner presented by techmetric.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:08]:
The best thing to happen to the
Zeb Beard [00:01:10]:
world of personal transportation since the advent
Bryan Pollock [00:01:13]:
of internal combustion engines.
Zeb Beard [00:01:18]:
Me and you both got on him. He was talking about just pulling the head off to inspect it or something.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:24]:
Yeah, I go, pull the head off. I go. That took him three and a half minutes. Yeah, we talking about pulling a cylinder head. Yeah, yeah. People are crazy, man. People. People went nuts.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:34]:
And everybody like, nobody, nobody does any research was like, it's not hard. Like my daughter, it's so funny. My daughter will search. My daughter will search names in Google. So my 11 year old has figured out how that her dad co hosts a podcast. So an 11 year old. So like when these people are like, who is this guy? He doesn't work on cars. And then like, talk about, start talking about performance.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:59]:
Shop does not take serious extreme diagnostic skills to figure out who I am. If you actually type the name into Google, it pops up like, you know, it'll pop up like a YouTube video or something like that. Like on the confessions. YouTube. Like, it's not hard. Yeah, it's not hard to figure out. Right? But I mean, you know all about that. You used to post an ad for a diagtech and not have your address and people would ask you for the address, phone number, address.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:27]:
Like if you're a Dtech. You can hunt Zeb down. You'll figure out how to get a hold of you.
Zeb Beard [00:02:31]:
Yeah, yeah. That's ridiculous. I do that on purpose. I'll put. When I post an ad for a job, I purposely leave information out so
Bryan Pollock [00:02:41]:
that they have to. They have to show you that they can at least use Google to find some information.
Zeb Beard [00:02:46]:
Located.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:46]:
Yeah. Where are you located?
Zeb Beard [00:02:48]:
You. You've. You failed automatically.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:52]:
I do that all the time, though. I'll. I'll cut to, like, the easy thing. And I just did it the other day with Mike and Braxton because we were testing out something that wasn't working. Mike was like, can you. Can you test this for me? I go, okay, yeah. Where's the sign up at? And I'm like, well, that was a dumb question. I can probably figure this out in two seconds.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:08]:
I did. And by the time Braxton responded, I'm like, oh, yeah, I already ran it through. It's all good. And I'm like. I'm like, it was a stupid question. I figured shit out for a living. I should have never even asked the question because it took me, like, a minute and a half to do the whole thing. You know what I mean? Like.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:23]:
But yeah, that's. Isn't that funny. Up here, people are so used to getting handed the answer that they can't be bothered to. And, like, whenever you're posting that help ad, it's. It's usually not under your personal page. It's usually under Stroker's Diesel. Right? But they can't even figure out how to get in touch with Stroker's Diesel
Zeb Beard [00:03:42]:
and don't even know where it is. Where are you located?
Bryan Pollock [00:03:44]:
Like, how can they not just Google it?
Zeb Beard [00:03:46]:
And usually my. Usually I tag my location in everything I post.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:51]:
And, like, probably if they click Stroker's Diesel, it probably takes them to your Facebook page, which probably has your location
Zeb Beard [00:03:58]:
right where it takes you.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:59]:
It probably has contact info. Probably has all sorts of stuff. Can't make it happen.
Zeb Beard [00:04:07]:
Can't work here, bud.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:08]:
Can't work here. If you can't find me, if you have to ask me where I'm at, you're not allowed to work here.
Zeb Beard [00:04:13]:
That's right.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:14]:
You don't have the problem solving skills required to work here.
Zeb Beard [00:04:17]:
We. Nope.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:18]:
Because so many parents have coddled their children.
Zeb Beard [00:04:21]:
Uhhuh.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:22]:
And now children don't know how to figure things out. I have. I have this conversation all the time with people, and I. I just had. I just had it with my. My really good friend Phil Cuz. Phil. Phil, kind of.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:33]:
He's. I look up to him. He's. He's really done some stuff with his life at his a. Unbelievable things that I'll never accomplish. He's running this huge. He's running this huge AI construction projects. A 5 billion dollar construction project for this big AI company that's like actually like kind of got their crap together.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:54]:
They're not like a. They're not like a little shadow in the wind or whatever. Like, they're. They're a big deal, this terror wolf. And you know, like, they're. They're publicly traded. They're not like some stupid little startup that's using other people's money. You know what I mean? They're publicly traded.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:07]:
They're. They're a legit company. Anyways, but him and I were having a conversation last Friday night on the phone. We talked for about an hour on the phone, just, just going. We hadn't talked to each other in a couple months. Just going through how life's going for everybody and stuff, you know, and him and I were talking and he goes, you know, we were talking about how people with their kids are. They coddle their kids a lot. And I said, phil, I say, and you're absolutely right, Phil.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:30]:
I go, here's the deal. I said, this is going to be tough. And I got to tell you this. When you raise your kids to be independent at a young age, in this day and age, in our current culture, and you raising them to be independent will be looked at as dangerous by other people.
Zeb Beard [00:05:47]:
Oh, yeah, there'll be kings. Because my independent.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:51]:
Well, just like you right now, they look at you as in you're putting your kids in some sort of danger by teaching.
Zeb Beard [00:05:57]:
Oh, yeah, that too. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:58]:
Like, my kids get off the bus an hour before I get home. Right. My kids get off. People, people really frown upon that. Yeah, not all of them. And they don't always say it to your face, but people frown upon that. They're like, you mean you have three kids home alone? I'm like, yeah, yeah. The oldest one's 11.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:19]:
She's had the New York State babysitter course. You know, like, they have. We have three kids home alone. The school. The school would not drop my youngest off at the house. I had to take phone calls from the school the first two weeks this year, multiple times. We're at the house and there's nobody there. I'm like, my daughter's on the porch.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:37]:
We can't see her. The house is almost 400 foot off the road, first thing, I'm like. I'm like, what's the solution here? I go. It's winter in Western Europe. I go, I go. My daughter got to stand at the end of the driveway when it's 0 degrees out and 20 mile an hour winds all winter to make sure, brother, like, send the kid in the house. The house is unlocked. It's safe in the house.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:54]:
The dog's in the house, the cats in the house. The kid will be fine in the house. The dog loves the kid. Nobody else coming in the house when the dog's there. You know what I mean? But yeah, I was telling my buddy Phil, man, society has turned in such a way if you raise your kids to be independent, like, yeah, go ahead, you can cook that. I don't need to be there for you to cook that. I trust you to get that cooked. Oh, you want to go do this with your friends? Yeah, I don't have to babysit this whole thing.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:22]:
Go do this with your friends. Check in with me. I mean, they got more. They have mo. They have more contact with us than I had. I mean, my daughter's got a cell phone and my. And my oldest son's got a cell phone. Like, I can get a hold of them anytime.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:34]:
People like you and I, we were out freaking ramming the roads with no contact from our parents. Be in when it gets dark.
Zeb Beard [00:07:40]:
Yeah. We had. We lived on a 1600 acre cow ranch.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:43]:
Right. And you were just out doing whatever
Zeb Beard [00:07:45]:
you got all day. Morning, you went outside and you. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:48]:
And if you stayed inside open. If you stayed inside, somebody beat your ass for being in the way.
Zeb Beard [00:07:53]:
Right? Yeah. You get out there and go play. Go do something.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:55]:
But now it's just. It's so crazy. I just had that conversation. I said, phil, I go. People will look at you. And the way you raise your kids to be independent as dangerous. And that is. I just.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:09]:
It's bizarre. And I wonder, you know, it always makes you wonder, like, how much that translates into our industry, you know? And I always think about, like, some of the content you create. Like, people are just like, oh, you can't do that. Everybody's. Everybody's too used to using the can't word. But you just kind of keep on trucking along. Right?
Zeb Beard [00:08:26]:
That's my favorite thing. Can't is when somebody tells me, I can't. That's. You're just gonna go do it. Yeah. Especially if I had the idea first, and then they tell me, I can't, I'm gonna go do it.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:36]:
Somehow we should probably tell everybody. Everybody probably knows who you are, but we have probably. Dude, we have Zeb Beard on here. Round two at Tools in Pennsylvania. How was your flight into here? Was it good?
Zeb Beard [00:08:49]:
It was pretty good. It was kind of. Kind of got scared at first. Our plane at Little Rock. We left Little Rock and go to Atlanta and then from Atlanta to Harrisburg, where our plane coming into Little Rock was late. So about the time it tells us it's late, then we get a notification that the plane in Atlanta is early. So we know how big the Atlanta airport is, you know, and all that stuff and Hot Lana. Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:09:14]:
So it was. It was touch and go, but we ended up. We made it okay. It worked out perfect. We walked. When we walked up to the gate, we walked right on the plane.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:22]:
Oh, really? That's cool.
Zeb Beard [00:09:24]:
So we didn't miss it. I think it was Asta two years ago. I missed my plane. I remember that I got hung in the airport. It wasn't my fault. It was the plane. My connecting flight was late.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:36]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:09:38]:
And I was mad and I was ready to go buy my own plane after that.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:41]:
I remember you. I remember you produced a picture like really fast.
Zeb Beard [00:09:46]:
No, I had that picture.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:47]:
Oh, you already had.
Zeb Beard [00:09:47]:
That was the picture for years.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:49]:
Yeah. Of a plane with a stroke or something. Like a Learjet or something. With a stroke or something.
Zeb Beard [00:09:53]:
I think it was a G6.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:56]:
You had it all picked out.
Zeb Beard [00:09:58]:
I'm really big on this visualizing stuff.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:00]:
I know you are.
Zeb Beard [00:10:02]:
So I'll take. I'll take something that I'm really like way outside of my realm that I.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:08]:
Most people will say is illogical and you can't get.
Zeb Beard [00:10:10]:
Yeah. And I put my logo on it. And then a lot of times it turns out you got it like a 62,000 square foot shop.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:16]:
Right. I remember even the. Don't you tell. The chicken. The chicken plant. Yeah, the chicken plant. You even had done that. You'd even had taken pictures.
Zeb Beard [00:10:25]:
Yeah. Drive by the thing and I had pictures on my phone. I had my logo on the side of it and I had it all mapped out how I wanted to put my business in there and everything. And then.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:34]:
Unreal.
Zeb Beard [00:10:35]:
And then instead of getting that one, I got one better. I got a brand new one.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:38]:
Oh my gosh.
Zeb Beard [00:10:39]:
That wasn't a chicken plant before.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:42]:
That's awesome.
Zeb Beard [00:10:43]:
So I'm big on that visual the first time. First when you first hear stuff like it, you think, bullshit, ain't no way that's going to happen.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:50]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:10:50]:
You know, ain't no way that works, but it does put yourself in a place where you want to be, and you. Sometimes you get surprised you'll end up there.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:58]:
That's awesome. How do you. How do you think? You know, something I was thinking about the other day was a lot of the videos you've been doing with your meta glasses, that's really taken off. That's like a whole series. Yeah, People love it back at the shop. Jim, Jim, text me a screenshot of you. You were following Susie through the shop, and there was a. A man lift there, and he's like, we're buying one of these.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:24]:
They're just a random mail. If he's like, we're buying this mail. I mean, is that. Do you think that affects. Is that affecting any of them? You think you got any business off that, doing your social media?
Zeb Beard [00:11:35]:
Yes.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:35]:
Like, what do you think the exposure's been like, for, like.
Zeb Beard [00:11:38]:
Well, it. The. The road reports started during the ice. We had the big ice storm. You remember when we had that? Oh, right.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:45]:
And you were doing it with the grader.
Zeb Beard [00:11:47]:
Yes.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:47]:
That's why everybody who didn't own a grader told you you were running your grader.
Zeb Beard [00:11:50]:
Yeah, I was doing it wrong.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:51]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:11:51]:
So that started. The road report started. Because I was the ice off the public highways. The Arkansas highway department hires private graders sometimes to help out. And so they hired me. This isn't the first time I did it. I've done it a couple of years before that. About every three years, two or three years, we have a big storm and they'll do that.
Zeb Beard [00:12:14]:
So I had got those glasses for Christmas and been playing with them, and I was on that grader, and of course, everybody was. People that knew that I was out there have been texting me things. What are the roads like? What are this?
Bryan Pollock [00:12:27]:
So I said, man, I'm just going to call it.
Zeb Beard [00:12:29]:
I'm just going to do a report on this road today because everybody's wanting to know about it. So I said, the glasses are perfect because when you run that thing, you have to have both hands on. Yeah, I had the glasses on, and I hit the button and recorded. And I said, well, I'll just use a hashtag road report. So that thing took off. Everybody shared it. Everybody loved it. So then I kind of started putting some comedy in them, you know, because you know me, I'm always going to be.
Zeb Beard [00:12:54]:
You're going to have some trolls. And I love it. I love feeding. I'll feed the trolls. I want the trolls.
Bryan Pollock [00:12:59]:
You got to put something in there for the haters.
Zeb Beard [00:13:01]:
Yeah. So that took off. So then the ice storm was over. It lasted four or five days, something like that. So I remember making the last one. I remember just like it was yesterday. I made the last one. I said, this will probably be the last road report.
Zeb Beard [00:13:16]:
And then I did the report. And after that I was kind of sad, you know, and a lot of people were. A lot of the people commenting on it were sad, too. So it went on a couple days after the ice storm, and I said, you know what? I'm just going to bring the road report back.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:30]:
Just keep doing it.
Zeb Beard [00:13:31]:
Yeah. And you know me, I like to do things the opposite. So my page, I don't hardly ever post any automotive content.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:38]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:13:39]:
So I did the opposite. I just started just doing regular everyday stuff. People like our cooking shows that we do.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:45]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:13:46]:
Because we got the big nice kitchen and all in the shop. And me and Susie enjoy cooking. I'm not that great of a cook, but I run a grill pretty good. She's always in there cooking, and I'm always messing with her and making fun of her and stuff like that. So I started putting those in there. And I'll be honest, for the first time in history, the shop had been kind of slow. 2025 was kind of slow. And at the very end of it, it got really slow as far as work coming in.
Zeb Beard [00:14:12]:
Well, after I started doing those things, the shop got really busy again. Like, okay, we hadn't been that busy in years, so. And then everybody that came in the shop wanted to talk about it. And if I go out in public, I was always popular around anyway.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:27]:
Sure.
Zeb Beard [00:14:28]:
But it's even worse now. Everybody knows me. Everybody talks about the road report videos that I put out.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:35]:
My favorite miniseries is Will Kenzie Eat It?
Zeb Beard [00:14:37]:
Will Kinsey Start a new. Start a new one with Kinsey.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:41]:
I'm like, I can do that. My dog, I got a yellow lab. That thing will eat anything.
Zeb Beard [00:14:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. So what? Mackenzie and I started a new one last week. It's called Messing with Susie.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:51]:
I love those two.
Zeb Beard [00:14:51]:
I pull pranks on Susie. That's becoming pretty popular.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:54]:
The snake, the air horn. I saw the air.
Zeb Beard [00:14:57]:
Yeah. Did air horn Yesterday. She was asleep on the plane like this. I stuck my finger nose. It scared. She's really jumpy. So scaring her is. Is pretty fun, you know?
Bryan Pollock [00:15:08]:
Yeah, that's awesome.
Zeb Beard [00:15:09]:
People love the fishing. Believe it or not, they love the fishing videos. So we don't. We don't put out much automotive content because, man, I mean, seriously, automotive content
Bryan Pollock [00:15:17]:
is Tough because everybody in the comment, we, we see this whether, whether it's you do post a little bit of automotive content or Chris posts some content. I mean this is a comment that, this is something that comes up in our group chat all the time. When you post automotive content, there's so many mouth breathers out there that don't know what they're doing. It just creates almost a headache. Like if you, like, if you're, like if you're feeling down, you need a bunch of idiot trolls to comment on your stuff. Well then yeah, post something automotive that, where you're doing a test that they don't have the ability to understand and it's perfect. We see that with Chris all the time where he posts, he posts some automotive content. You know, I'm testing this, I'm doing, you know, whatever.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:58]:
Just show them what they do and what separates them from John Q Hobbyist Diesel shop. Right. Because we all know, oh yeah, there's a ton of them guys out there who are just, you know, reading cones and praying. That's what they're doing. They're reading the code and they're trying to fix it.
Zeb Beard [00:16:11]:
They bought us, they bought a sawzall and a easy link box and they think they're Mr. Diesel now. I didn't come up with that quote. Somebody may have been. Chris posted that a couple of weeks ago. When I saw that, that was the most true thing I've ever seen.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:24]:
They bought a Sawzall. They're going to, they got, they got the solution to all your after treatment problems.
Zeb Beard [00:16:28]:
Yep.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:28]:
Every solution is 3500 bucks and it's a sawzall and a delete.
Zeb Beard [00:16:33]:
Yeah. And they put it, they put an injector in a six zero one time and it fixed it. And they think they're experts.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:38]:
Six zero mechanic. That was, that was one of my favorite ones. As soon as somebody says as a six zero mechanic, oh my God, somebody killed six.
Zeb Beard [00:16:46]:
Oh. Hasn't been relevant in.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:48]:
They ain't made them 20 years.
Zeb Beard [00:16:49]:
Well, they ain't been relevant 10 years. We figured we figured them out in 05 06. Yeah, it's, it's not new information now. Every, every once in a while we run into something new like what they'll deal with. Chris. Last week, the deal with the injection short, that was something I haven't seen before and I've been working on them since.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:08]:
I've not seen it cause that problem. I've seen shorted injectors, but I've not
Zeb Beard [00:17:11]:
seen it cause that I haven't seen cause that specific problem.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:14]:
If I had, I would have told
Zeb Beard [00:17:15]:
them to check for a shorter injector. I'll sit here and be honest, straight honest with you. I've been working on them since 05. That problem would have run me through the ringer.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:23]:
Oh, my gosh.
Zeb Beard [00:17:24]:
I wouldn't have figured it out right away.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:26]:
No. I'd have been on that for a couple days.
Zeb Beard [00:17:28]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:28]:
All day long.
Zeb Beard [00:17:29]:
So.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:30]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:17:30]:
But it's. It's. Six O's are a magnet for those type people. And a lot of. Like, you were saying, that's what you were getting to. Automotive content is a magnet. Terrible DIY guys, they just shade trees,
Bryan Pollock [00:17:43]:
talking about, like, just. They all know everything, right? And it's weird because it's like, what, like you, you'll just like every once a while you click on somebody, he like, he like, works maintenance at a freaking fruit packing factory, and it's like, what. What do you even know about that?
Zeb Beard [00:18:02]:
Or it's no workplaces to show. At my shop, we do this and we do that. Click on, well, what's your shop? Where's your shop? Then no workplaces to show.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:10]:
Yeah, no workplaces show. Yeah. Because you want to talk about storage.
Zeb Beard [00:18:14]:
That's why I don't post much automotive content. Because how is it going to grow my shop to get a bunch of DIYs and no. Now the only thing it does do, if I get in there and start beating up on them, then that. People love that.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:27]:
Is that one of your favorite pastimes?
Zeb Beard [00:18:29]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:30]:
Oh, my gosh, I love it.
Zeb Beard [00:18:32]:
And they all say, well, you're, you know, you're an Internet warrior and all this. No, I do that for fun. That's. That is fun for me.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:40]:
It's part of the game.
Zeb Beard [00:18:41]:
It's not that I get mad.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:42]:
It's part of the game.
Zeb Beard [00:18:43]:
Yeah, it's part of the game. It's fun for me.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:46]:
I love watching. I take. I take so many screenshots of this stuff and send it to so many people because it's hilarious.
Zeb Beard [00:18:53]:
And my customers love it, actually. And watch them say, oh, you're unprofessional. Maybe to the DIY guy that I'm never gonna get.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:01]:
Yeah. That you don't want anyway.
Zeb Beard [00:19:03]:
Yeah. The people that you don't want, the people that will use me to work on their vehicle actually love that about me.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:08]:
Right? So that's awesome. I love it. I love watching it. I love. I just. It's just so funny to watch the whole thing unfold and they're like, oh, he probably doesn't actually do anything in that shop because you never post automotive content.
Zeb Beard [00:19:21]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:22]:
Meanwhile. Meanwhile, like the day before, you're like, you know why these 68? It was like, like somebody, somebody said something like, that guy obviously doesn't actually do anything in that shop or whatever. Like the day before, you like sent us a video to the group chat of why the 68 RFES burn up the reverse so easy. Because you got one apart on the bench, you're like, it's only. You got these two clutches holding this whole thing together. Right. Like it was.
Zeb Beard [00:19:43]:
Yep.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:44]:
It's, it's so funny. The dynamic of social media, right. Social media has made everybody an expert on anything and they hide behind the cloud because just like you said, when you want to know, okay, maybe this person, maybe I'm confused. What's this person do? No workplace they even proud enough to put where they're at.
Zeb Beard [00:20:04]:
Well, you know, all the heavy hitters in our industry, if you go to their personal page, it's going to be their shop's going to be posted somewhere if it's not at the very top or at least going to be in their workplace, you know. Yeah, but your average consumer that's going to use your shop, they don't really want to see you changing a set of brake pads. No, they're not interested in that.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:28]:
Even though honestly, that in itself has gotten a little crazy now just, just putting brakes on, like if you don't follow the procedure can get pretty crazy now. Right. You can have all the warning light, the thing, limited 43 miles an hour. I've taken the phone call a million times, you know, but yeah, they don't want to see none of that. They don't want to see you doing that. I mean, do they even really care? I mean, some of these guys have, they have social media pages where they're whipping transmissions together really fast and people think that's cool or whatever. And it's just like, well, it's.
Zeb Beard [00:20:53]:
Well, if you've seen it one time, I mean, it's all right every two or three months to put something like that. Sure, it might get a little attention, but people don't see that every day.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:02]:
No.
Zeb Beard [00:21:02]:
Oh, today we're changing oil in this Honda Accord. Big deal.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:08]:
Big deal.
Zeb Beard [00:21:08]:
They do that at Walmart 100 times an hour, you know, at Walmart. So I mean, I'll post if it's something, something pretty cool that I haven't seen before. Yeah, I'll put it in. I'LL put it some automotive content out there, but.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:24]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:21:25]:
Pretty much my page from here on out is gonna be fishing road graders messing with Susie.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:31]:
Will Kenzie eat it?
Zeb Beard [00:21:32]:
Will kids eat it? Building big buildings and stuff like that.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:36]:
Awesome.
Zeb Beard [00:21:37]:
I probably didn't take as much advantage of that as I needed to when that building was going up.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:42]:
As far as getting footage of what were you doing? Maybe.
Zeb Beard [00:21:45]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:45]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:21:46]:
And I was overwhelmed at that time. It was. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:48]:
You were running.
Zeb Beard [00:21:49]:
Yeah. It was tough. It's a big. That's a big deal. I didn't realize. I don't get stressed. But you were like, for me, that's.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:58]:
You were on the rev limiter.
Zeb Beard [00:22:00]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:00]:
You had a rate on the rev limiter.
Zeb Beard [00:22:01]:
Yeah. She was in the red.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:02]:
She was wound out.
Zeb Beard [00:22:03]:
Yeah. That's all my red line at fourth gear.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:06]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:22:07]:
Once again.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:07]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:22:08]:
Did they ever figure out that guy's name?
Bryan Pollock [00:22:09]:
I don't know.
Zeb Beard [00:22:10]:
The Chevy spark guy. You know what I'm talking about?
Bryan Pollock [00:22:13]:
Yeah. We were actually. It's funny, Jim had texted me a guy, a seven, three motor with the training, the ecm, everything this morning. And I go, oh man, we gotta find something. Put that in. And he goes, I was. He goes, I was thinking of Chevy's park, but they make all this power with this high flow oil. He freaking texted to me this morning.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:29]:
I'm like, oh my God. The power of social. So you, you kind of like slowed down and just the road report, you feel like kind of helped you start turning the corner. The social media help you start turning the corner.
Zeb Beard [00:22:41]:
It helped business quite a bit.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:43]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:22:43]:
And I kept it up for a while. Made one every day for a while. I've kind of slacked off lately because it's just. If I'm not in the mood to do it, I just don't do it.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:52]:
Or sometimes you just. If a business is picked up, you're busy, right?
Zeb Beard [00:22:56]:
Yeah. If I'm busy. If I just don't. If I. If I'm just not feeling, I just ain't gonna make it. Because if it's not, I'm not just gonna do it just to do it. All these creators, they say, oh, you got to do two or three videos a day. I'm not gonna do it just to do it.
Zeb Beard [00:23:10]:
If I don't feel like. If I don't feel like it's a masterpiece, I'm not gonna put.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:14]:
People got like times figured out when to post stuff and I get it. Like if, if social media content is a big part of your business or like I Get it. I get it. But it's a lot. Like, people are. People are real into it, and I'm just. I'm not either.
Zeb Beard [00:23:29]:
You.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:29]:
Like, I never post anything. I don't really post that much technical content either. Like, I'm just like, I. I don't. And I don't know what it is. I don't know if it just gets old after a while.
Zeb Beard [00:23:40]:
Well, and you're probably like, me. I'll. I'll. I'll make a video, a technical video, have all the stuff, and then I'll watch it before I post it. And I'm like, I messed that up right there, that little bit of data. I missed that.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:55]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:23:56]:
And somebody's going to see it, you know, and think.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:58]:
Or when you talked about it, like, maybe you didn't phrase something right.
Zeb Beard [00:24:01]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:02]:
Like, you're like, that's not going to go good. Somebody's gonna be like, yes, guy. I don't know what he's talking about.
Zeb Beard [00:24:06]:
You're, like, learned leaving error in there. It's hard for me to do because I'm a perfectionist when it comes that kind of. Yeah, but if you leave an error in there, it'll carry it so much further.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:17]:
Oh, the amount of views and stuff like that.
Zeb Beard [00:24:19]:
Like, I had one with a clutch that went nuts with a clutch on a big truck. And the guy that I learned about clutches from, he called it a. He called it a. Now my mind's going blank. What he called it. It's called a clutch break, but he called it a stop clutch. That's what he called a stop clutch. And it's a little bit of wrong terminology.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:42]:
Sure.
Zeb Beard [00:24:43]:
But I use that in the video just because that's who taught me about it.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:47]:
And that's what you've always called it.
Zeb Beard [00:24:48]:
And it. I had a bunch of people correcting me, so it carried that video every time.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:53]:
Yeah. It's the algorithm deal. Right. Every time somebody Comments are like.
Zeb Beard [00:24:56]:
But I can't. I can't purposely make an error to get.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:00]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:25:00]:
I can't be fake. Like, yeah, I got to be real.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:03]:
Yeah, I hear you. Braxton does a really good job at editing what Mike or I says on a podcast. Oh, my gosh. Some of the comments. I'm still. I gotta. I gotta. Like you said, I gotta get my bag of potato chips because I don't.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:18]:
I don't fix anything. I sit there with my potato chips all day and I eat my potato chips. That's all I do all day is eat my potato. Let me look in the camera. I eat my potato chips all day and never fix the car. Never want to fix another one. It's no problem. I wish I could get the life.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:30]:
Some of these people. Ah, you just sit at your desk. I freaking desk.
Zeb Beard [00:25:35]:
Who? Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:36]:
What desk? It's. Social media is so funny.
Zeb Beard [00:25:41]:
It is.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:41]:
They just. But it's got the power to push stuff along. Right. I mean, arguably, maybe without social media, maybe you'd be a little bit behind where you are now. Like, who knows?
Zeb Beard [00:25:50]:
Oh, absolutely.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:51]:
You know what I mean?
Zeb Beard [00:25:52]:
Absolutely. I'm thankful for it. I love it. It's my realm. I'm. I'm a phone addict. I have my phone out way too much.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:59]:
Me too.
Zeb Beard [00:26:01]:
But me too. I admit it. I'm a social media addict.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:05]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:26:06]:
So I'm just about like everything else. If I'm. I'm gonna take one of my flaws and run with it and use it to my advantage.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:13]:
You're gonna maximize.
Zeb Beard [00:26:14]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:14]:
Gonna maximize. What's. What's on the horizon for Stroker's Diesel next?
Zeb Beard [00:26:20]:
I don't know. See, that's the problem now.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:22]:
I grew, got this big shop.
Zeb Beard [00:26:24]:
Yeah. That's. That's my deal now. I'm trying to. I'm trying to grow into my skin. There.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:30]:
Gotcha.
Zeb Beard [00:26:31]:
Before I moved.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:32]:
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Zeb Beard [00:26:34]:
I had done all you could do,
Bryan Pollock [00:26:37]:
had maximized what you had.
Zeb Beard [00:26:38]:
Money was just stacking up and it was easy and couldn't do anything wrong. And the economy was different then.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:46]:
Sure.
Zeb Beard [00:26:46]:
You know, nobody was saying no engine jobs were super. Any. Anything was an easy sale, but. And then we had a pretty good run in 2024. It's pretty easy.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:56]:
Yep.
Zeb Beard [00:26:57]:
We moved into the new building, but we were still just on cruise control. It was. It wasn't a problem. And 25 or people that know me is going to get tired of me talking about 2025. But it was it real meat grinder. Yeah. It was a suck fest.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:13]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:27:14]:
And I'm hoping we come out of that. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm not. This is one of the few times I'm not in growth mode. I'm not trying to. I am in growth mode. I'm trying to grow into my skin that I have. It's kind of like.
Zeb Beard [00:27:27]:
Kind of like the hermit crab. When he gets him a new shell, he has to grow into that new shell. And that's where I'm at now.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:33]:
Huge adjustments, big shop. Obviously going through what everybody else goes through, which is like finding talented people.
Zeb Beard [00:27:40]:
Yep.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:41]:
You Can't. You've been down that road. You can't. Nobody wants to be out there. Apparently.
Zeb Beard [00:27:47]:
It's tough. Yeah, it's tough to get people to come to my area to work for me because, I mean, if you're used to a big metropolitan area or a place with a big city nearby and you come down there to where I'm at, it's. It's a big adjustment.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:00]:
Pretty remote.
Zeb Beard [00:28:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. And we have some cities, but they're not.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:04]:
Not big cities.
Zeb Beard [00:28:05]:
Not big cities at all. Like, the city that I'm in, I think it's 8,000 people.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:11]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:28:11]:
And it's one of the biggest in south Arkansas.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:14]:
Really?
Zeb Beard [00:28:14]:
So 8,000, 8,000 people? Yeah, I think it's 8 to 10 somewhere in there.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:21]:
I think the town I'm in, it's called. It's a town. It's 2700.
Zeb Beard [00:28:26]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:26]:
8,000 people. That's a city.
Zeb Beard [00:28:29]:
That's a city. That's a city I came from. The other one I came from, it was like 4, 500, 5,000, something like that, really. And. But the city I'm in now, it's a little better. We actually have a Walmart. So the other city I was in didn't have a Walmart, and it was kind of in a big decline. It's been going down for years.
Zeb Beard [00:28:50]:
But the city I moved to, which is not that far, it's 15 miles down the road, but it's. It's the only one around in that area that's kind of growing a little bit.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:57]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:28:58]:
We have a college. It's a very small college, but we do have a college. We have a Walmart and things like that, but we don't have. We don't have a Chick Fil A.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:10]:
Neither do I.
Zeb Beard [00:29:11]:
Neither do I. I say that we got one in the college, but it's like a. Oh, it's like a team
Bryan Pollock [00:29:17]:
you version of a Chick Fil?
Zeb Beard [00:29:18]:
A. Yeah, it's like a. Like a Chick Fil? A light or something.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:21]:
Chick Fil?
Zeb Beard [00:29:22]:
A light. They, like, have three things on the menu, something like that. You have to drive into the college to get to it.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:27]:
It's not a real Chick Fil A.
Zeb Beard [00:29:28]:
Yeah, it only really can.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:30]:
I have to drive all the way down to Buffalo for a Chick Fil A, which is too far for me. I don't. Everybody I have. There's like a set of railroad tracks next to the shop. And that's, like, always been the joke with me. They're like. They're like, oh, do you ever Go here. Do you ever go there? Like, people stop and ask for directions.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:44]:
It's so funny when people, random people stop at the shop and ask for direction, you know, which with our layout, happens with yours. Probably doesn't happen as often, but people ask and they'll be headed south. And I think they think that I'm being like a smart ass. And I'm saying, I don't. I don't drive that way. I don't go south of the tracks. I think now it's like a joke. I'm like, no, you don't understand.
Bryan Pollock [00:30:08]:
You understand. I drive. I have to drive south of my house to here, and that's too far. You know what I mean? So I get it. I get it. The rural living. I kind of. That's.
Zeb Beard [00:30:17]:
I wouldn't trade it, though. I see my. My lake house is in Hot Springs, which is. Which is a pretty big city for Arkansas. You know, it's pretty popular. It's a tourist area. And. Yeah, you know, it's a great place.
Zeb Beard [00:30:30]:
I love it there. It's got a lake right through the middle of the city, you know, and wonderful. And then one of the big. The actually the biggest lake in Arkansas is just north of there. It's connected to the lake that my house is on.
Bryan Pollock [00:30:42]:
Oh, really? They're connected.
Zeb Beard [00:30:43]:
Yeah. And so we kind of had a. It didn't take long to make the decision, but we were at a crossroads. When I wanted to build a new shop, I, you know, I considered putting it in Hot Springs, but really I didn't. I don't like the clientele as much there. And there's not really much farmers or loggers up there.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:04]:
And if. Yeah, and if you're in the. If you're in the diesel repair, if you don't have the farmers and the loggers, that's a huge.
Zeb Beard [00:31:12]:
And I've had.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:13]:
What are you working on?
Zeb Beard [00:31:13]:
Yeah, I had a few customers from there that came to my shop, and I'm like, I remember those customers and not your speed. Yeah, I just didn't for the most part. They were not your kind of people. I'm gonna build my new shop here, down here where I'm used to stay there and I'll just travel to two and a half hours to my lake house.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:34]:
You know, I think a lot of. I think, you know, I always try to compare, like, what we're doing to what everybody else is doing. So I think, like, I think late 20, 25 and early 26 was soft for a lot of people. And I think I've come to the con. Not, not. I think I've come to the conclusion, I've been told by people who know this better than I do that we. Like where I'm at. It's a little bit of an anomaly.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:57]:
There's no, there's a couple decent shops in the area, but like there's a shop up the road from us that, that's, that's in, in Lockport. That's good. But like, if you haven't been a client of theirs, you're, you're probably not going to get in there. They're like, they're almost like they're so busy and they're so overwhelmed and the two guys that are partners in that shop have been doing this so long and they do, they do a good job. They do a great job and they're honest guys and they know how to fix the cars and they have a crew on board, but they're so overwhelmed with their volume. It's almost like going to a doctor that's not taking new patients. Like which people would go nuts if they've seen that. But like, I always try to compare.
Bryan Pollock [00:32:41]:
And the other thing that I think that we've done for years is our, and I've talked to this, talk to you about this, about our facility. Our facility is undersized for the amount of volume that we do, which naturally puts us understaffed because if you only got so many bays, you can only have so many techs, right? And so what happens to us is even if, even if it gets a little soft, even if the economy gets a little soft, you know, we're finishing the work at the end of the day as compared to it going over, guys working overtime, so on and so forth, you know, like, so, like, like I always say, oh, we didn't really slow down. We didn't really slow down. Like, well, we slowed down, but we slowed down to a 45 or 47 hour work week from a 55 hour week. You know what I mean? Yep, that's what it is for us. Like I always look at, I'm like, oh, we haven't slowed down. What are you talking about? Like, then you start looking, you're like, well, yeah, we did slow down. Guys are working 47 hours instead of working 55 hours.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:45]:
You know, we, we did slow down and I, I've even noticed that. And I mean it's, it's a bizarre time right now. It's a bizarre time and there's, you know, people blame it on all sorts of thing and it's. And it's the. You know, a lot of people blame it on the president or war, which doesn't matter. I've. I've done the research and I won't get political, but every president since 1981 has bombed the Middle East. So you can't.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:07]:
You can't. Like, it's just. It's a product of the situation we're in. It doesn't matter who's in charge. It's the product situation and finding solutions around that. Because, like, us, like, sometimes our car count doesn't drop, but the approval rates drop. Right. Like, it's harder to get people to say yes.
Zeb Beard [00:34:25]:
Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:26]:
And we're not. We're not real pressure anyways. We probably, like, run. Like, you, like, listen, this is what you need. This is how much it is to fix it. Or you can go tell me to F off. I'm not putting that money in the vehicle. Like, I'm not.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:37]:
I don't pressure people. I'm not calling them back with a different pro. We're not. We don't do that, dude. Like, we just. This is what we got to get to do the job. Yeah. You know what I mean? Roundabouts.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:48]:
Yes or no. And, man, a lot of people are taken to social media to. And I think for you, it happened naturally. You didn't set out. You're like, oh, my shop. So I'm going to try to solve this problem. You were just doing road reports. But it's interesting to see and for you to connect those dots that.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:05]:
Oh, yeah, it's made my shop busier. People want to come in and talk about it. People want to come and talk about it. They're bringing the stuff, they're watching the stuff. And I think a lot of people appreciate you keeping it real.
Zeb Beard [00:35:18]:
Yeah. But that's something interesting. You just said. It made me kind of realize it, that that's. That's really what happened. We, mine and your shops both, for years, we've been exponentially better doing more than what we should be doing. And really.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:37]:
Yeah. Hours we had available.
Zeb Beard [00:35:40]:
Yeah, we. We view it as. It's slow when we just get back down close to what normal should be.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:45]:
Right. When you're. When all of a sudden you're getting the jobs finished when they should be finished, all of a sudden you're slow. Right?
Zeb Beard [00:35:52]:
When you have to go around and look and say, what are we going to do next?
Bryan Pollock [00:35:55]:
Instead of when somebody. And I mean, I mean, I'm. I say we're slow, and I use that term Very, very loosely because I'm gonna just, I have to hop on my phone here. I'm gonna pull up my Google calendar because we're ancient. Like, this is, this is our Monday at the Sanborn Shop. You know, I mean, we ain't. We there. There's.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:12]:
There's 30 something cars on there. It's not, it's not.
Zeb Beard [00:36:15]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:15]:
Slow, like we're not, we're not like, nobody's like standing around staring at the wall.
Zeb Beard [00:36:20]:
Yeah, yeah. My text went from turning like 80 and 90 hours a week. I like our slowest week. Yeah, our slowest week, they got like 40, you know.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:29]:
Right, right. So it's like slow. It's just not. You get in a position in this business where you get so used to how everything's going and when it changes, all of a sudden you're like, oh. But you're like, maybe it's not really as bad as I think it is. Right.
Zeb Beard [00:36:46]:
And it's. It's like on a 10 year cycle, you can.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:49]:
Is that what you feel like? You've been in this a while.
Zeb Beard [00:36:51]:
You've been in this a lot. My friend Kevin told me that years ago. He told me. So this stuff's like on a 10 year cycle and I've been in. This is my 20. My 21st year. Yeah, it's my 21st year. I didn't make a big fanfare about my 20th year.
Zeb Beard [00:37:05]:
Like I was going to. Just something happened and it came and went and I was like, hell, I didn't talk about our 20th year. But so. So it's kind of in a 10 year cycle. I started in 05.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:17]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:37:19]:
But I didn't notice a slowdown in 2015 because that's about the time I started figuring things out.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:25]:
Right. Okay. Gotcha.
Zeb Beard [00:37:27]:
So now we're back to the 10. We're back to the next 10 years. And I hit it at the wrong time. We just moved into the new shop, so I saw the 10 year dip. So I think we're on our way back up.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:39]:
You think you're on your way back up?
Zeb Beard [00:37:40]:
It don't take long to come back up. It comes, it comes back.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:44]:
Once you start getting a little momentum, you feel like it just.
Zeb Beard [00:37:47]:
Yeah, but I'm talking about the whole 10 year cycle of the auto repair industry. It goes up and down and it seems to pick up quicker than it drops. It drops off kind of slow.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:57]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:37:58]:
And then it'll hit. Watch and see if it don't pan out. Like I'm talking about. Yeah, I'm Gonna say, this time next year, we're gonna be back to Katie, bar the door. We're gonna be back to be. Instead of. Because I did. I got 21, 22.
Zeb Beard [00:38:17]:
I got too mean. I mean, customers were coming in and
Bryan Pollock [00:38:21]:
I was like, I've had this conversation with multiple people.
Zeb Beard [00:38:24]:
I was like, really rude. I don't care whether they left it or not. We had so much work. I did not care.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:29]:
And it's almost like you're burnt out on problem solving.
Zeb Beard [00:38:33]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:33]:
And that brings in a great conversation of should you. When you're in that mood, you need to be as far from the counter as possible. And I, and I catch myself, I've caught myself at the shop. Somebody will come in and they'll be saying, and it's not necessarily the customer's bad. They don't know what questions to ask. They're not the, they don't know.
Zeb Beard [00:38:52]:
No. None of these people that I was mean to, none of them, most of them did not deserve, did not deserve it.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:58]:
And it's just you're irritated because they're, you're like, how does this person not realize. Well, they don't do this. So they just don't know. They don't know what question to ask. Right. It's always like they come in and they, they have their, their diagnostic printout or whatever and it's like, well, they're, they're doing that because they don't know. They, the car, the light came out on. Nobody else is open.
Bryan Pollock [00:39:20]:
They went to AutoZone, got the thing printed out. Like, I don't know, like I don't know what else to do. What else are they gonna do? My light came on. I was buying AutoZone, I had it scanned, right. And I've, it's funny, I just, I had a conversation with, with Jim at the shop the other day that I was, I was like, man, I was, I was up front the counter. This one guy comes in and starts talking about this, this car that hadn't been fixed. So, you know, of course my ears up because I know I'm gonna deal with the car, right. It's been through, it's been through a couple shops hadn't been fixed.
Bryan Pollock [00:39:45]:
I know. And he starts, he starts saying things that in my opinion, like all the, like, like telling, telling the guys like where we're going to start testing this, that and the other thing. It's like I, I, I always, and it seems arrogant, but it's just logic. I've always had the opinion. I don't care what the person who couldn't fix it has to say about it. If they were. If they were that knowledgeable on the subject, they wouldn't be. The car would be fixed.
Zeb Beard [00:40:12]:
Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:12]:
Right. And it sounds arrogant, but it's. It's part of lodge. It's part of, like, logical and like, black and white things, which makes, like. Like, if you're a very black and white person, it makes it very easy to fix cars because, you know, things either test better, they test good.
Zeb Beard [00:40:26]:
Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:26]:
Makes your job it. So that's how I am. And I've learned very. Like, this guy started saying this stuff, and usually I just started chirping a little bit, like, I. I'd slipped one in there. Like, how's that working out for you?
Zeb Beard [00:40:37]:
Yeah, right.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:39]:
And I've caught myself lately, like, when I catch that in the office and I'm up there, I just like. And they're not engaged with me, which most of the time they're not, because I got two guys at the counter there in Sanborn. I just, like, turn around and walk out of the office, and I think it's the best thing I can do for them. I. I don't think I make the service writer's job easier being up there. I. I think it. I think it arguably puts me in a better mood not having to listen to all the.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:00]:
That's going to come out of their mouth, which isn't their fault because they don't know. I think it makes everybody's job easier. So I. I know and I have this conversation a lot with other competent shop owners that are, like, you said, like, you're like, you're borderline just getting mean to people sometimes. You're like. You're like. And you realize that, like, okay, some people just, like, need to be straightened out. Other times you're like, they just don't know.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:30]:
Like, I just got to get away from the. And I don't end up up there a lot, so it's not a huge deal. But from time to time, you know, I'm up there and I'm just like, I start walking away now, and I've been doing that for a while, and it's put me in a better mood.
Zeb Beard [00:41:43]:
Yeah. Brian, I'm gonna tell you, it got real bad for me. I mean, it got to the point where if I looked out the window, if I was talking to him and I looked out the window and they had parked wrong, I was mean to him over that. And that's too. That's too much.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:57]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:41:58]:
It's really I fixed it. I've got it all fixed now. That was in the old shop, so now I've got it all fixed. Susie runs the front. My area that I work in, in the shop most of the time is almost 300ft from the front counter, so I have to walk.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:15]:
You can't even overhear a conversation.
Zeb Beard [00:42:17]:
Oh, no, that's not. If I wanted to now I got my ring.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:19]:
And unless somebody starts yelling at Susie, which, if that happens, you need to be up there anyway. If somebody's yelling at her, you need to be up there anyways.
Zeb Beard [00:42:27]:
But she handles the front counter.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:28]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:42:29]:
I can't even see the parking lot from where I'm at. I can't see what's going on.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:33]:
Solved all your problem. She.
Zeb Beard [00:42:34]:
She handles all the phone calls.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:35]:
It's like putting the blinders on the Clydesdale. Just do your work. Right.
Zeb Beard [00:42:38]:
Y.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:39]:
It's just do.
Zeb Beard [00:42:40]:
Nobody calls my cell phone anymore. They used to. Everybody called my cell phone.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:44]:
You got that habit broke.
Zeb Beard [00:42:45]:
Well, if you see my old stickers, they had my cell phone number on them.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:49]:
Oh, that's right. I remember that now.
Zeb Beard [00:42:51]:
It's because I have some.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:52]:
I have some of your original shirt.
Zeb Beard [00:42:53]:
I got a bunch. I got a bunch of those stickers with me. I need to hand them out because I still got a bunch of them. But nobody calls my cell phone much anymore. There's a few that do. And. And then it's so far the front counter. I'm not up there much.
Zeb Beard [00:43:05]:
And Susie handles that. And then we got William that does the inspection.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:09]:
The DVIs, right.
Zeb Beard [00:43:10]:
Yeah. So we have fixed that problem. And the biggest thing that helped that problem was the year 2025. Being soft humbled me.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:20]:
Humbled you a little bit and said,
Zeb Beard [00:43:22]:
hey, you need to be nice to these people.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:23]:
You don't have to be nice to everybody. But if they're going to be your customer, you gotta be nice to them.
Zeb Beard [00:43:26]:
Right. Don't be mean to them for no reason now. If they deserve it. Yeah, right. But it's 2025. Was. Was. It was bad for me and good for me at the same time.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:37]:
You got. You got an education. Yeah, that happens. It's just like. It's just like getting your ass beat by a car sometimes.
Zeb Beard [00:43:42]:
You get a little bit of education.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:44]:
Yep. And I love. I love that you brought up William, because I totally forgot about. That's one of the things I want to dive into. Dedicated dvi.
Zeb Beard [00:43:53]:
That's all he does.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:54]:
That's all he does all day now.
Zeb Beard [00:43:55]:
He feels in, like, right now he's filling in front counter.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:58]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:43:58]:
He's getting better at that. He's still not.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:01]:
He can get somebody written up and get it. Get it going.
Zeb Beard [00:44:04]:
Yeah. And he answers the phone. But his normal job, every day when he comes in, it's nothing but DVs. That is all he does. Every vehicle gets a DVI and it's. It's not only for just selling the work. Yeah, we sell a lot of work because of it that we normally wouldn't sell. Because, you know, like, me and you, our job is to get the vehicle fixed and get it back on the road.
Zeb Beard [00:44:28]:
So we're not. We're not interested in. We just want to.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:31]:
Blinders.
Zeb Beard [00:44:32]:
It came in. It came in for this Misfire. We got 10 other blinders. Skit this misfire fixed and get this thing away from here. Williams job is not for that. William's job is to find all the
Bryan Pollock [00:44:42]:
conversation with Jim the other day. I go, I get so hyper focused on the problem. Like, so what we've done for a while now is because I'll get so hyper focused on the problem with the car. Like, I won't check the car. It'll go. Somebody else have somebody fresh inspect the vehicle. Right. Because I'll get so hyper focused.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:01]:
I told him one day, I go, dude, I go, that thing could be missing a windshield and two of the tires, and I'd still be under the hood trying to figure out where the misfire is, not even realizing the windshield's gone. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes you get, like, so dialed in.
Zeb Beard [00:45:13]:
Well, you look at vehicle and you think, this customer didn't bring it for that. This vehicle's wore out.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:19]:
You make a.
Zeb Beard [00:45:20]:
He don't want. He don't want to fix this. He just wants this misfire fixed.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:23]:
You start making decisions for the customer instead of doing what you should do, doing the whole deal and letting everybody else handle their part of the job in that process.
Zeb Beard [00:45:35]:
That's exactly right.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:36]:
Yep. It's your job to figure out the stuff that's. That's difficult, or I'm not going to say difficult, not the other person's specialty. That is your job. You've got your. You're working in your shop, and your specialty, among, among other things, is you can figure out what's making the car broke. It's your job to figure out what's making the car broke. You figure out what the car.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:58]:
What's making the car broke. It's not your job to make the decision whether the customer wants to do the ball Joint wants to take care of the curly crew. Brake, hose, whatever it is. Right. I'm terrible at the same thing.
Zeb Beard [00:46:11]:
And I'll tell you something else I figured out, like, my text. I'm the diagnostic tech. You know how my shop runs? I'm the diagnostic guy. I figure out what's wrong, and then I have the. Both the nuts and bolts and bolts guys.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:21]:
Both.
Zeb Beard [00:46:21]:
I call them. They don't want to do DVIs either. I don't like doing DVs. They don't. I figured out they don't like it either. They don't want to do it.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:28]:
They just want to do it.
Zeb Beard [00:46:28]:
We're doing. Yeah, yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:31]:
They just want to Wrench.
Zeb Beard [00:46:32]:
So I figured this out. At first, I was like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna do the DVs, and then I did them for a couple of weeks, and I was like, I don't do DBs. I ain't got time for it. 1. But I don't like it.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:43]:
You're like. And because you don't like it, it's. You're not good at it. Because, you know, because you're not willing to.
Zeb Beard [00:46:48]:
Because I look at one, I'll say, I'm not doing a DVI on this one. This guy, because I know all the customers. He don't want no dvi. Let's just fix this misfire. This oil they can get on with.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:57]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:46:57]:
But William don't know that.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:59]:
Yep.
Zeb Beard [00:47:00]:
He knows that this truck is here.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:01]:
He goes and he does the same thorough inspection on every vehicle.
Zeb Beard [00:47:07]:
And then we go back. Me and Susie go back, and we look at it. We look at it. We see what you know. And we don't. We don't estimate every single thing.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:17]:
Right. Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:47:17]:
Because we kind of know our customers. We kind of make some assumptions.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:20]:
You're realistic.
Zeb Beard [00:47:21]:
But we'll send that. We'll send the DV out to the customer, and if they. They say, hey, I want to know how much to fix this, or, I don't care about that.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:29]:
Then you'll get them a price on whatever. Sure.
Zeb Beard [00:47:32]:
You know, I see it in the groups every time I post about my ARO. You know, my arrow is up there. 3500, 4000. Well, you're just diesel. That doesn't matter. We sell. Like, for instance, we sold seventy six hundred dollars worth of chassis, front end, that kind of stuff on it. On a F150 here the other day.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:53]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:47:54]:
$7,000 worth on a gas burner. F150. So it's not. If you do that DVI right. It brings that aro way up, and
Bryan Pollock [00:48:04]:
the sale's easier because, like, if the people are, like, if they. If they have any question whatsoever as to whether what's wrong, it's done deal.
Zeb Beard [00:48:13]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:14]:
Like, it's. It's in the. It's in the video. Yeah, it's in the video.
Zeb Beard [00:48:17]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:17]:
How.
Zeb Beard [00:48:17]:
How.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:19]:
How complex is the template that he's using?
Zeb Beard [00:48:21]:
It's pretty complex. I can run through it myself. I can do it in 30 minutes.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:30]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:48:31]:
It takes him depending up. Sometimes he can do it in an hour, sometimes two hours, sometimes three hours, but I don't care.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:39]:
Depending on how long.
Zeb Beard [00:48:40]:
I told him we. We got real busy. It was back, like pre 23 days a couple of months ago. We got, like, super busy. We had, like, 75 vehicles on the lot. And so he had, like. I don't know, he probably had 20 DVIs piled up that he was trying to get done. And he kind of got.
Zeb Beard [00:49:00]:
He got in a hurry and missed some stuff. And I had to sit him down and say, look, your job is not to get through. You treat each one like it's.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:08]:
The fact that I put 75 cars in a lot is my problem.
Zeb Beard [00:49:11]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:12]:
I don't have to be thorough with your job. Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:49:14]:
So he, He. Because that was his first taste of what strokers normally is, what it's like to be busy. Yeah. And so he. He's. He's got it now. I said, look, I'm not. I'm never going to get on to you about being slow.
Zeb Beard [00:49:26]:
I just want you to be thorough.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:27]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:49:28]:
Because that's why you're here. If we were going to rush through it. Yeah, I can rush.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:33]:
I was already doing that. I don't need you here. So I've already mastered rushing.
Zeb Beard [00:49:37]:
He's doing really good, and I'm so proud of William. I want to talk about him on this show because he is. It's hard to find somebody that wants to be on the team.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:49]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:49:49]:
Like, he's. He's strokers.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:52]:
He's fired up.
Zeb Beard [00:49:53]:
Yeah. Like, when I pulled him in for the. The very first interview, I told him, I said, and I may have just did this in emails, I said, all right, I'm going to bring you in for a test. Because you remember I put him through a test.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:04]:
Yeah, I remember that.
Zeb Beard [00:50:05]:
I said, here's two things that you can do to enhance your chances of getting this job. I said, you go study TechMetric. I said, there's a software program called TechMetric. You go study that. And at the Time we had auto vitals for a dvi. I said, you go study those two things. I said, it's on YouTube. You can study on this stuff.
Zeb Beard [00:50:28]:
If you know some things about that when you come in for the interview, it's going to boost your success way up. Or your chance of success. So when he came in for the interview, he knew. He told me. He said. He said, that's all I did. He said, I sat and watched videos and studied and learned. And so now he's the same way, man.
Zeb Beard [00:50:46]:
He. He is a team player. So I'm really proud of William. And he's not. He's not an automotive guy at all.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:53]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:50:54]:
Like, when he came his first day, I don't think he knew what a ball joint was like. Really. He didn't know.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:01]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:51:01]:
But he learned. He's using AI on his own to write. Write his descriptions of what he finds. He figured out how to do that on his own. And I'm not really a good instructor. Like, I'm gonna throw it down. I'm gonna say, here you go. Figure it out.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:17]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:51:17]:
And he did it. He figured out a lot of it on his own.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:19]:
And I think he said he's been making his own modifications to the. To the DVI a little bit in some spots. Do some stuff that makes some more sense or creating maybe a new category.
Zeb Beard [00:51:29]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:30]:
For something he's seeing a lot.
Zeb Beard [00:51:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. He's really good at that. If he sees a component on a vehicle he doesn't know about, he will come ask me sometimes. But he'll research on his own.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:41]:
He'll try to figure out.
Zeb Beard [00:51:41]:
He'll find out what that component is and what kind of fluids in it and why it looks like it's.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:45]:
You're not trying to do any more business without William. You got a guy? Yeah. You like? Yeah, he's good.
Zeb Beard [00:51:50]:
I'd be lost without him.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:52]:
Yeah, that's really cool.
Zeb Beard [00:51:53]:
He's really good. And then we hired the cleanup guy.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:56]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:51:56]:
We got a cleanup guy. He's the same way. He applied for the DBI position.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:01]:
Okay.
Zeb Beard [00:52:01]:
And it was super tough because I liked them both. I like William and David both, and David is the cleanup guy's name. And I hate to call him a cleanup guy, because that sounds like a.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:13]:
A low position.
Zeb Beard [00:52:14]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:14]:
Sounds like a degrading term.
Zeb Beard [00:52:16]:
Yeah. There you go. But it's not. It's a very important position in the shop, because if the shop's dirty, it's not good. We don't work. We don't work well, when the shop's dirty, it's depressing. You can't. You can't find nothing.
Zeb Beard [00:52:29]:
You're stepping in dirt and oil and grease, and it's just bad. And he keeps all that done. And so I hate to call him a cleanup guy, because that's what everybody thinks. Well, he's just a floor sweeper, but he's much more.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:43]:
He's a morale booster.
Zeb Beard [00:52:44]:
Yeah. So by running a DVI guy and a cleanup guy, that's how we do as much work we do with only two techs. You know, I'm a tech, too, but I'm mostly a diagnostic tech.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:57]:
Yeah.
Zeb Beard [00:52:58]:
So that's another key to the puzzle. We only got two guys that actually replace parts.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:02]:
Yeah. You're like, whatever it takes to not have to.
Zeb Beard [00:53:04]:
So if I didn't have the DVI guy and the cleanup guy, I would probably have to have three more techs to do the same amount of work,
Bryan Pollock [00:53:12]:
because they'd be stuck doing DVIs. And now you got guys that are skilled. You got guys that are skilled in the nuts and bolts. What. What primarily you bill for. Right.
Zeb Beard [00:53:21]:
Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:22]:
Do you bill for a little diagnostic work? Absolutely. You built. You bill for diagnostic work. Whatever. You know, some people don't. Some people. Mike doesn't charge for dag, but most normal people charge for diag. So you build a little diagnosis, but most of your money's made bread and butters.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:36]:
Right there with this truck. Needs a fuel system. Put it on. Right. That's where. That's where your money or whatever. Whatever the job is, that's where your money's made.
Zeb Beard [00:53:45]:
And they can gain so much on time. Because now we estimate every job, so. So we get the money approved first. Well, then it's up to us to beat that time.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:57]:
Yep.
Zeb Beard [00:53:57]:
So when them. When them two nuts and bolts guys, they don't have to sweep the floor. They don't have to test drive. They don't have to do DVIs. All they do, the trucks or cars or whatever it is, is sitting in the bay. That's another thing. We got 10 bays at least 10 bays per ticket. Them vehicles are sitting there with the parts ready to go.
Zeb Beard [00:54:15]:
All them guys got to do it, is go in there and put the parts. Put the parts on.
Bryan Pollock [00:54:19]:
And that's a discussion that's come up recently. I think Lucas had a video on it, talking about one bay per second. I feel like that's one of those things where there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Zeb Beard [00:54:31]:
It really is. But, man, I've done it all kinds of ways. I don't see it. I mean, I did it when I was a shade tree working behind my house. I had one bay. You couldn't get nothing done. You get to a point on the car. Well, I got to go to the parts store now.
Bryan Pollock [00:54:48]:
Yep. Something. Something unexpected comes up during disassembly or whatever.
Zeb Beard [00:54:51]:
And even with 80 base, my shop probably has 80 bays. I don't know how many cars it'll hold. Probably 80, maybe more. We usually keep about 50 in there. And you can still drive around without 10,000 pound telehandler in there and turn it around.
Bryan Pollock [00:55:06]:
Right.
Zeb Beard [00:55:06]:
But what I'm saying is if you pull that vehicle Lucas was talking about. Well, it's when you got all them bays, they just sit there and you don't finish them because you got room to work on it. No, it's the opposite of that. If you pull that, you know as well as I do, if you. If you look at that vehicle and pull it outside, it's hard to get that thing back in. You're gonna find some. Well, let's run that one in here and put this alternator on right quick before we put that one back in. All right, we got this alternator done, man.
Zeb Beard [00:55:35]:
There's a set of brakes. Let's do that set of brakes right quick and then we'll push this other one in. Then you get ready to push it in. Well, man, that guy, he's over doing a transmission. He's tied up right now. The other guy's in the bathroom. Pull that other car in here and let's work on it till they get out of the bathroom or whatever. That car will sit out there for a week before you can get it back in.
Bryan Pollock [00:55:54]:
That's tricky.
Zeb Beard [00:55:55]:
If it's sitting there with the parts, you'll get on it a lot quicker. And them guys, like, they get ready to go home in the evening. They look and they say, man, I got three hours sitting right there that I'm already halfway through. I got it all took apart and I'm halfway back together.
Bryan Pollock [00:56:09]:
They're ready to go home. All of a sudden they see the
Zeb Beard [00:56:11]:
three hours and they're like, at three
Bryan Pollock [00:56:12]:
hours, watch like I can make my three hours and only be an hour later.
Zeb Beard [00:56:17]:
Sitting outside and it's raining and you
Bryan Pollock [00:56:20]:
can't get it in. Now they ain't bringing it in. Yeah, I see both sides. I mean, it's. Man, it is it. Bay management is tricky for us. I mean, we're at. We're at a point where we're, we're.
Bryan Pollock [00:56:30]:
We're one guy per bay. And I wish I had twice as many lifts. Yeah, that's, that's where, that's where I'm at. It's, it's, you know, the idea people say, oh, you just, you just bolt the wheels on and push it out. You just bolt the wheels on, push it out. When you find something unexpected on a car, when you have the subframe out of the car, you don't just bolt the wheels on and push it out and then push it where? Right?
Zeb Beard [00:56:56]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:56:56]:
Like you have a tele handler. Not everybody has a tele handler.
Zeb Beard [00:56:58]:
It's easy for me now, but how
Bryan Pollock [00:57:00]:
do you handle a car that's like this now? You got to put skateboards under the car. You can only move it on your paved lot. So now I have so much volume. I have. We have like a concrete apron around the shop and then blacktop. Well, I'm reserving that area for customers dropping cars off and picking them up. I'm not. We have, we have acres of parking behind us that have puddles and everything else.
Bryan Pollock [00:57:22]:
But when some school teacher gets off of work and she's got her nice shoes on and nice clothes, I don't want the school teacher walking through the puddles. So now we're pushing these cars out. Now it's taking up prime. Like, I got one right now. I got one with a, with a wrecked engine I had to push out. It's in prime parking because it's too much of a pain in the neck to move. I wish I had more than one bay per tech.
Zeb Beard [00:57:44]:
Well, he says he's done the math on it. I've done the math on it too. When I was working by my. My original shop was 4,000ft, right? So I was working there by myself. I started figuring out the front part of the shop, Getting the management figured out how to build, how to do all this. I started making money, but I was moving vehicles in and out all the time. I had one lift, right Back in them days, we was doing a lot of cab offs. Pick the cab, that's the other thing.
Zeb Beard [00:58:11]:
Pull the engine out, let the cab back down, pull the truck out, you get another. While I was building, I'd tear the engine down, order all the parts, sell the job. Then I had to work on another while I was waiting on all that stuff, right. So it come time, I was doing pretty good. I was, I was, you know, I was figuring it out. I was doing, you know, 50, 60 hours by myself and running the Front of the shop. So that's pretty good for a one man show every single week. So I got thinking.
Zeb Beard [00:58:41]:
I mean, I think I could build another shop and pay for it. So I kind of did some rough math on it because I was going to get a business plan together for a bank.
Bryan Pollock [00:58:49]:
Sure.
Zeb Beard [00:58:50]:
So I kind of figured it up and I figured up how much I actually did it. I figured up how much time I monitored, I tracked it. I saw how much time I was spending moving vehicles in and out every week. So I wrote out the business plan for my bank and everything. And it was like it would make the payments on it really just on paper. So I turned it in. That bank's like, oh, yeah, get started whenever, as quick as you can. So I built the addition.
Zeb Beard [00:59:18]:
It actually did more than that.
Bryan Pollock [00:59:20]:
It really, like it did better than you had calculated it would.
Zeb Beard [00:59:23]:
Oh, way better. More than doubled my production. I mean, I went up there, I went. I was up there doing hundreds of hours a week by myself.
Bryan Pollock [00:59:30]:
You know, I just recorded with Chris Ganey and he's four bays and he had four techs and it's so wild. Two of the text end up not with the business anymore. And he didn't replace them and their production's up.
Zeb Beard [00:59:47]:
I tried to tell him that. He was talking about, he was like, man, this guy, I said, fire him. Get rid of him. Make it. If he quits, whatever he does, I'm telling you, those two guys, when they leave, you'll do more with them gone than they were there. I said, don't hire nobody else. Just try it and see how it goes. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [01:00:04]:
And he said, that's exactly because I've
Zeb Beard [01:00:05]:
done it so many times, man.
Bryan Pollock [01:00:10]:
It's been a pleasure. Round two. You got, you got me thinking a lot about base protect. My gears are turning, man.
Zeb Beard [01:00:18]:
I'm telling you, that one bay protect thing, even with an oil change, I don't see how it works. Say you do nothing but oil change. The easiest, most menial job that it is. If you got two bays, one tech doing oil changes, what does he do? He pulls two cars in there, Drains all out of one, drains all out of the other. One goes. Puts a drain plug. Puts a drain plug. Puts oil filter.
Zeb Beard [01:00:39]:
Puts oil filter. You're waiting. Air conditioner work? Air conditioner works. The biggest one. What is the first thing you do on air? You got to evacuate it. Start evacuating this one. Go over here to this one. Start draining the cooling system.
Zeb Beard [01:00:50]:
Work on two at a time. Yep, two bays per tech is minimum
Bryan Pollock [01:00:56]:
in my opinion, I'm thinking all the times we've had a cab off of a diesel truck and then you find something that you didn't expect to see. Right.
Zeb Beard [01:01:03]:
Every time. When does it not happen?
Bryan Pollock [01:01:05]:
You pull the head and it's cracked. You're just gonna send the head out and have it surfaced and put it back on. You pull the head, the head's cracked. Now what? Yeah, cabs off. You just shove it outside real quick.
Zeb Beard [01:01:16]:
No, it's some gonna be a month coming back in even if you get an approval tomorrow.
Bryan Pollock [01:01:21]:
I've done it. I've had it happen. You're absolutely right.
Zeb Beard [01:01:25]:
And really, base. Base is cheap for most places.
Bryan Pollock [01:01:31]:
Yeah, right? Yeah.
Zeb Beard [01:01:31]:
If you're not, it's way cheaper than a tech.
Bryan Pollock [01:01:33]:
Yeah. If you're not in New York City or Los Angeles, base space probably is not.
Zeb Beard [01:01:39]:
Well, you hear all these guys are always complaining about their production, man, I don't know what to do. My guys can't get 100%. If my guys only get 100%, I'm looking only trying to figure out what the problem. I'm wanting them to get 150%. I'm not shooting for 100. I'm shooting for 150 or 200. That's where their problem. They're.
Zeb Beard [01:02:02]:
They're running around there bumping dicks. One bay per take.
Bryan Pollock [01:02:07]:
Playing grab ass.
Zeb Beard [01:02:08]:
Playing grab, grab ass. Well, what it is if some bitches off at these conventions playing grab ass instead of running their shops. What's happening?
Bryan Pollock [01:02:17]:
Brags that you like that one. That's the quote from this episode. On that bombshell, it's been a pleasure, man. I'm happy to do that.
Zeb Beard [01:02:27]:
I love. I could do this every day. We do it every day.
Bryan Pollock [01:02:30]:
Really, we do.
Zeb Beard [01:02:31]:
Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out.
Bryan Pollock [01:02:34]:
The good, the bad, and sometimes the super messed up.
Zeb Beard [01:02:37]:
I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink? You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover? Or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email Mike Confessions of a shop owner.com or call and leave a message. The number 704 Confess.
Bryan Pollock [01:02:57]:
That's 704-266-3377.
Zeb Beard [01:03:01]:
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to, like, subscribe or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership.
Bryan Pollock [01:03:08]:
I'll see you on the next episode.