Grease The Wheels Podcast

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Episode 217: Spot the Incompetent Oct 26, 2022

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On this week’s pre-hallows eve episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy lays out the Malleus Maleficarum for bad technicians instead of witches. Embracing your co-workers incompetence isn’t really on the table if they are sending unsafe cars out the door, so here are the broadstroke points and you'll fill in the blanks when you look around your shop. 1. They never seem to do any work. 2. Listening to others is not essential to them. 3. Taking the initiative is not something that they do. 4. They fail to follow through. 5. They negatively affect other people’s work. 6. They make mistakes frequently. The rough translation: you can tell pretty easily if someone is incompetent by the numbers, but there are of other external x-factors that can aid in your decision making process as to weather or not someone is empirically incompetent. What makes your coworkers incompetent? Let us know over on facebook.

Also Uncle Jimmy recounts a car porter damaging a vehicle and blaming it on the foreman.

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 216: For Hire Oct 19, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy actually does his homework and brings us some in depth analysis on an article called, “The Five Most Common Hiring Mistakes for Shops.” Right off the bat, we like the title because it really does transcend whether you are working for a manufacturer brand dealership or an indy shop. So in that case, here are the five most common hiring mistakes for shops:

1. “They are afraid to pay top buck” Top performers straight up produce, that’s why they command top dollar. This is something that a lot of the industry struggles with, good number one Mr. Cooper! Average employees that get paid average wages produce average results, and average employees will never take you to the top.

2. “They are afraid to provide a respectable guarantee.” If you're afraid of this you need to spend more time working on your interview process- because you should be able to weed out the bad candidates before they roll their toolbox into the shop. Having a small one says you're cheap, having a big one says, “hey, I trust you to make money”. This can also be a tremendous goal setting tool.

3. “They use the wrong criteria when making their employment selections.” Most shop owners hire mechanics and service advisors based on experience, but attitude should factor in as well because not all experience is good. You can know how to do a job the wrong way and it can create anarchy.

4. “They don’t look beyond the candidate.” The shop owners that hire superstars know that when they hire them, they also have lives at home that will need to be balanced so they can be as effective as possible. This becomes especially important when the discussion swings around to benefits, health insurance, and 401k stuff.

5. “They forget that the superstars will be interviewing them.” In today's occupational environment where technicians really have the power in the hiring process you're interviewing that Service Manager just as much as they're interviewing you. When they don’t answer questions like, “how do we get dead cars into the shop?'' or “is the tire machine always broken?” in satisfactory ways - you could disqualify them as a place to work faster than they disqualify you to work there.

Also Uncle Jimmy sneaks in paying $100/hr for the third week in a row which is as close as we have ever gotten to a theme.

Episode 215: Building Relationships, Then Sinking Them Oct 12, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy dies of the plague live on air. JK, he’s fine. But clearly with a bit of NyQuil influence, he found an article called “How Mechanics can Build Relationships with their Managers/Owners”. Overall, there is some pretty good stuff in here, but it needs to be reciprocated back with said managers and owners for it to really work in harmony. Taking initiative and being innovative - how much do your managers love it when you make a tool to do a job and it saves them thousands of dollars? Yea, it happens all the time! We also dive into why technicians are rarely promoted to Service Advisor - even though it can be a really good idea if they have that technician has the right people skills. The older you get in this industry, the better you get at covering your own ass when it comes to things that are going to get broken during the repair process, and this is where having good open lines of communication and mutual trust and respect with your service advisor becomes worth it’s weight in gold. Finally we deal with the idea of not fighting the shitty day’s when they come, just let them happen because they happen to everyone in this industry. The key operational question then becomes how fast are you able to turn it around?
Also Uncle Jimmy pitches the “Team of Rivals” bonus method.

Episode 214: Really - $100 an Hour Oct 05, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels we take a more thoughtful look at the idea of techs being paid $100 dollars an hour. Some of the ramifications of this could be profound, especially in taking this job deeper into the skilled trade territory in terms of paycheck heft. Obviously this wouldn’t work for a lot of shops - but if the employee retention is that much of a problem and they could afford it it might just be the way to keep the best and motivate/replace the rest. This is completely neglecting to mention the massive influx of resumes from extremely qualified technicians that you would see if you paid your employees that much. Word about stuff like that gets spread around the shops of an area fast because everyone knows someone somewhere else. However, we know that the paradigm is entrenched, so we’re deciding to flank it! While getting an employer to pay you $100/hr might be impossible, getting the customer who you just found through Surfwrench to pay you $100/hr is very, very doable.
Also Uncle Jimmy hits us with such gems as, “I don’t think anyone thinks I’m lower class, but they’d probably be f***ing right” and confuses ritual suicide for a late-great Cubs announcer.

Episode 213: $100 Dollars Sep 28, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy quickly grenades the article that he found for this week and then moves on to a hypothetical that could be a model for how to completely disrupt the industry on a local level. The article is about the average price of repairs, which is something that varies so drastically that the calculus to quantify it hasn’t been thoroughly done. Add to this the unyielding variables of make, model, year, and the problems that are actually going on and you have something that becomes even harder to track. So we disantle that and talk about a hypothetical shop that corners a local technician marketplace by offering ridiculously high wages to the relatively few techs who work in the building. We also go over why raising your labor rate is a good thing, and why those changes need to directly correspond to changes in technicians wages.
Also Uncle Jimmy makes up some more numbers.

Episode 212: More Video Sep 21, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get to the nuts and bolts of all of the stuff nobody covered when they asked us to start doing Service Walk-around Videos. In this episode, we cover Uncle Jimmy’s transformation from complete neophyte to honest to god master of the Service Video Walk-around. Right off the bat, we were not in favor of them in the beginning because there was just no information out there on how to do this. Most of this research was based on feedback from customers as well as good old trial-and-error. However, we go over some of the things to say, and often more importantly some of the things not to say when it comes to the verbal communication part of the Service Video. There is a certain philosophy behind the way that we do our videos that can be summed up by a simple fact, “people don't want to hear bad things about their cars.” So our approach is to tell them what’s good, tell them what’s not good, and ask for the sale. If a car is obviously unsafe - by all means tell them! Keeping away from being accusatory is going to help you sell more service, because it keeps the customer out of the wrong and offers them a clear solution to making the situation right again by performing the repair. If safety items are bad, don’t beat around the bush you let them know they are bad and it might just save you from a lawsuit. When it comes to things like oil and coolant leaks, it is best to qualify them on a 1 to10 scale of severity.

Also Uncle Jimmy channels his inner Jordan Belfort, by way of Hannibal Lector - but with cars.

Episode 211: Everybody Out! Sep 14, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we look at some of the post-mechanic career options for mechanics. In the wake of last week’s episode about Electric Cars, we have noted that the rise of Electric cars could be the push factor that causes the technician shortage to spiral out of control. Simply put, electrification is going to mean the end of a lot of shops and dealerships- with Buick going so far as to offer franchise buyouts to dealers that don’t want to go electric. Bottom Line: problem solvers are employable, but this article from Monster puts it into clearer focus:

Customer Service: In the wild customer service probably is not the best idea, but in the automotive industry technicians can be uniquely qualified to be service advisors if they possess good communication skills.

Management: We think that in a lot of cases technicians can make excellent Fixed Ops managers - it just doesn’t happen nearly enough to make up for the people who have no qualifications to have the job.

Sales: One of the key tenets of being a good salesman is knowing what you’re selling - and a technician would certainly be at the forefront of that. However, technicians are sometimes too honest when it comes to their assessments of certain vehicles (imagine Uncle Jimmy trying to sell an E65 745!) and this can backfire tremendously on the bottom line. The sales department also has to deal with the grim reaper that is e-commerce.

Teacher: At a vocational school or in a million other industry applications there need to be technical experts who can teach new techs or train existing technicians in new skillsets. However, they way oversell how interesting the job is, and this would really only become an option if rendered physically incapable of doing the job anymore. This is also easily the most rewarding of the options because you get to help make the next generation of technicians successful.
Also Uncle Jimmy is getting recruited to be “Professor Jimmy” and coins the phrase, “I need the praise and the raise” for a Seussean appeal to your bosses.

Episode 210: Electric Jimmyland Sep 07, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we discuss the fence between the forces of the government advocating and (in the case of California) insisting on banning the sale of ICE vehicles, and the general buying public that prefers said ICE vehicles. On the topic of California, we have a weird feeling that this 2035 ICE ban is about to make any tech in that state that knows how to work on EV’s worth roughly their weight in palladium. Because no one is moving in, they all seem to be coming to Texas. We are genuinely on the fence about EV’s because of there pretty clean driving in some areas of the world that derive their power from hydro-electric or nuclear power is being massively offset by the incredible environmental damage caused by creating their batteries. Are they the end all be all, no - but they are a decent stop gap. Is Hydrogen ICE going to be the final answer? We don’t know, but we know that they are going to need people who can fix them. Bottom line, be proactive with your training and be able to fix anything that can come in the door - you will be extremely valuable!

Also Uncle Jimmy coins a new GreenPeace slogan; “plant a tree, asshole!” and gives some free airtime to Buck-ee’s to keep the scales balanced.

Episode 209: Improving Your Work Environment Aug 31, 2022

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On this week’s (correctly uploaded) episode of Grease the Wheels, we dive into improving the work environment in the shop. At the top of all mechanics lists: having working equipment - lifts, tire machines, alignment racks, that stuff! The first article we examine is “20 ways to improve your work environment from Indeed, and in reality only about 4 of them work for us as Auto Mechanics. Obviously climate controls matter way more when you are up and moving, so where you shop is and what climate controls they have make a big difference. How does music affect the work environment in your shop? Does ritualizing your routines help you get into work flows faster? Is there such a thing as too much light in a shop? We also get into the D.I.N. or otherwise known as why personal injury lawyer’s aren’t a thing in Germany.

Also Uncle Jimmy accidentally re-enacts Delroy Lindo’s monologue from ‘Da 5 Bloods’ while describing the smell of a shop.

Episode 208: Management Vs. Leadership Aug 24, 2022

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about one of the major discrepancies in the automotive industry: the difference between managers and leaders. Managers are appointed, Leaders are ordained by the people they work with. When they are the same person, things can be great - when they are one or the other it can lead to conflict. We also do a deep dive on intergenerational differences in work, management, and even leadership that we see on a daily basis and some of the ramifications of not meeting your employees needs. This episode has more information than the entirety of some Business Communications classes and it is specifically tuned for the Automotive Industry - with just the right amount of Uncle Jimmy zest and 4-letter words.

Also Uncle Jimmy comes up with the “direct deposit theory”, and it tracks REALLY well. (Updated the episode, sorry for the confusion!)

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