Grease The Wheels Podcast

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Episode 276: Eight Days a Week Feb 08, 2024

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about overwork and burnout. If your employer has you turning enough hours that you are seemingly working 8 days a week, that is one thing. If you’re doing it because you love money, that is quite another. The latter is ok, while the former will quickly remove any passion you have for the industry. Overwork can lead to a ton of bad things, so it is important to draw boundaries between your personal life and professional lives. Sometimes that looks like leaving at exactly 5:01, sometimes it is not working on your family’s cars. Overwork can make you important where you work, but if it comes at the expense of personal relationships that can be short lived. Burnout is something that, in this industry in particular, happens the minute the passion is gone.

Also Uncle Jimmy talks auto repair karma in a way that makes way more sense than it probably should and the universal nature of the french fry under the seat.

This episode is distributed by The Wrenching Network. Whether you're a technician, a mechanic, or someone who just loves the car scene, The Wrenching Network is a place that you have to check out. They have all sorts of great content, gear, and snacks to keep you turning wrenches in whatever capacity you do it. Also if you see us over there, make sure you say hi and leave a comment with what you think about the episode!

Episode 275: Come Together Jan 31, 2024

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a break from the political rhetoric and talks about chicken farming. Shops and dealerships need to have the people who are creating the labor out of thin air in optimal conditions to create as much labor as possible. Whether that is having good service advisors and parts guys, to having the right number of lifts and bays per technician, shop optimization is a real thing. This needs to be communicated with the management in charge, and labor rates really need to be on a fluid scale based on technicians qualifications and workload. Much like the geese who lay the golden eggs in a children's story, you want your technicians to be able to make you as much money as humanly possible.

Also "Three-Eyes" the evil goose makes a cameo.

Episode 274: Revolution #9: The EV Beatdown Jan 24, 2024

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels Uncle Tuck-er-we-mean-Jimmy gets angry, political, and straight to the point. You don’t need a Masters in Physics to know that batteries don’t work as well in the cold, but apparently a lot of people in Chicago and the Midwest didn’t get the memo. NY’ers did, because they don’t buy them in droves unless they need the EV tax write off. Even with temps dipping down into the 30’s in the incredibly EV heavy market of Austin, people aren’t really impressed with their EV purchases. We go into everything from Range Anxiety, to how the Nords deal with their cold-weather EV’s, and get into some of the American motoring culture’s inherent abhorrence to the concept. There are genuinely good hybrid cars at this point in the game, so pushing for full EV hegemony by an arbitrary date seems not only counter-productive, but completely undoable given the nature of automotive development/ product life cycles. The fact that more advanced biofuels and hydrogen developments paired with the first generations of EV’s getting real-world miles underscore one of the other major issues at the heart of EV consumption: recycling. As American’s there is also that underlying fact that we don’t really like being told what to do, how far we can go, and what we can buy. This is a wild one: think, it’s not illegal yet!

Also Uncle Jimmy pitches Frankenstein-ing half a dozen X6’s into one good one over buying an X6 Hybrid.

Episode 273: Twist & Shout Jan 17, 2024

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into how to deal with anger while working in the automotive industry. Right off the bat, as previously chronicled in the 272 preceding episodes, there are a lot of things that can set automotive technicians off. From the low pay, to the incredibly complicated cars, to sometimes hostile work environments - keeping your cool can be hard. Luckily there are things such as identifying what makes you mad, working out, and even percussive therapy on inanimate objects to quell the anger. We also get into some fairly in-depth analysis of what causes us to be angry, with some of the solutions to deal with them. Bottom Line, being able to successfully navigate and even harness your anger will put you ahead in the long run, and any threats or physical violence gets you a meeting with HR- so avoid that! But the alternative is simple and concise, don’t let your job make you angry - just Grease the Wheels!

Also Uncle Jimmy ranks the angriest members of his immediate family.

Episode 272: A Day In The Life Jan 11, 2024

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into things that make mechanics mad - although judging by the article these people were pretty loose with the job descriptions between mechanic and service advisor. We talk about Customers who insist that they know what is wrong with the car, which is annoying but easily overcome. We also get into the idea that quoting ETA’s for completed repairs is basically sending Murphy’s Law a DM on whatever it is you’re working on. It is 100% possible that on any given really bad day, everything in this episode could happen to you, and if it has, we want to hear about it!

Also Uncle Jimmy waits an entire 5 minutes to run down service advisors and celebrates a milestone in car buying.

Episode 271: Don’t Let Me Down Jan 03, 2024

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we bid adieu to a tumultuous 2023; but the world kept on spinning because of you wrench twisting bastards. Because of this we set the bar at, “don’t let me down” because asking for much more sounds like tempting fate. In this episode we lay out some of the expectations that customers, Service Advisors and Management would have of their technicians especially as the Automotive Technician Shortage worsens. We also get into the ways that the parts department and lot rats let us down, and in some cases it is because of the incredibly expendable view that HR has of these folks. Either way, with the age of cars steadily rising and used vehicle prices still elevated - people will be holding onto their cars longer and relying on you to keep them going! The future's looking bright, we just hope that it is’t “Decline-All’-d”.

Also Uncle Jimmy explores the concept of an empty bay being more productive than one filled with an idiot.

Episode 270: Magical Mystery Tour Dec 27, 2023

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets absolutely medieval on aftermarket warranty companies. I could probably end the episode synopsis there, and customers, service advisors, and tech’s will all still tune in - but this one is fun! The market analysis of aftermarket warranty companies is “bad” and “worse”, with some notable exceptions coming from Carvana and other internet automotive retailers that would rather pay for us to fix it after they sell it to you, than fix it right in the first place. The bottom line, having procedures in place to properly deal with cars that have aftermarket warranties is the key to keeping that stuff out of your way while you do something actually profitable. For the customers, the biggest thing that you are going to lose with an aftermarket warranty in most cases is time, so hope that your dealership actually has a loaner car available.

Also Uncle Jimmy shatters eardrums.

Episode 269: Tomorrow Never Knows Dec 22, 2023

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take a brief look ahead to what people in chairs think is coming down the pike for us wrench turning folk in 2024. The one thing we see more of on the horizon is the russian infantry tactics of filing the shop with whatever bodies can hold the wrenches and look busy. However, further analysis will prove that having your best technicians with two available lifts or bays will increase the specific output of that bay over an inexperienced new hire. Estimates put the number of new hires needed across the board at 100,000 per year until 2026 to counteract the shortage, but we know that number should be closer to 200k because of the near 50% 2-year attrition rate among new hires. We also talk a little bit about the K-Plan as a path to employee retention with regular skill checks, but the fact remains that if these new hires are going to need in shop instruction - we are going to have to get paid for it! We also briefly touch on the idea of more modular cars that are easier to work on, but they are having too much fun right now making them harder to work on so we don’t expect that until sometime around 2050.

Also Uncle Jimmy introduces E39 Yoga and blows up on a bank teller over the phone that turned out to be a good friend.

Episode 268: Hard Day’s Night Dec 06, 2023

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy is talking about ways to keep your hard days from turning into hard nights wheen it comes to stress. Folks, there is enough stress in the automotive industry to go around, so being able to deal with it is key to being effective at your job. From new systems in cars that are broken in new and interesting ways, to customers with unreasonable expectations, more often than not the answer is simply to not sign for the stress and let the system do it’s job. When the system is not working it can be pivotal to emotionally detach yourself with phrases like, “it’s not my car”. Being able to do this effectively will let you keep your stress at work where it belongs and keep it from infiltrating your home life. We also go over some of the causes and symptoms of being overworked, which is one of the leading causes of burnout in the automotive industry as a whole. Performance punishment is a real thing in our industry, and being able to put up effective safeguards will keep this from being a problem for you.

Also uncle Jimmy has no idea what consumption is.

Episode 267: Helter Skelter Nov 26, 2023

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we have blisters on our fingers from all of the chaos that has been coming down the chute. The sources of chaos in the automotive industry, at all levels, are actually pretty consistent. We are problem solvers in our role as automotive mechanics, so naturally for us most of the chaos starts and ends with the customers. We also get deep into the idea that as a team that solves problems, the support stuff needs to not make a ton of problems on top of the problems that we get paid to fix. We also go into a great way to preemptively strike at “warranty-itis”, by outlining that any repairs that we do that are not because of a defect in the manufacturer of the car- they are on the hook for at the door labor rate, and watch a car with 49,623 miles and 16 lines of complaints, go to two lines. And we get another visit from the parable of, “the gimp mask in the trunk”

Also Uncle Jimmy get's into warranty-itis with the line, “chaos is like an open faced sandwich, there isn't a lot of bread” and makes it a full 3:58 before mentioning the Manson family.

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