Grease The Wheels Podcast

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Episode 168: The Numbers Nov 10, 2021

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into some of the astounding numbers of the automotive industry. Turns out there is a hell of a lot of money to be made in this industry, from the parts end to the wholesale end, to the retail end, to the service end. Everyone is trying to carve out their niche, but if they don’t have a good e-commerce game they are completely obsolete. Those numbers get even more insane when you look at dealership groups that own between 200-300 dealerships. The odds for financial success in this industry are actually fairly high, due to a myriad of market conditions- the biggest one being that no one is getting into this industry to replace the people leaving, so the people who can do it are going to go up in value. Bottom line, keep getting smarter, keep getting better, and keep making yourself more valuable- because we have something that is going to blow your mind. An e-commerce marketplace to sell your services as a mechanic.
Also Uncle Jimmy gives his spin on “Death of (all) Salesmen” and references his favorite movie.
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 167: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly Nov 03, 2021

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get to the long awaited sequel in our ongoing series about service advisors. Now right off the bat, as we have said before and will continue to stand by, this has got to be one of the worst jobs in the entire automotive industry- and quite possibly ranks among the worst jobs on the entire planet! This is one of the things that makes their job ugly. One of the things that separates the good from the bad when it comes to Service Advisors is how they handle promise times on repairs. The good ones typically leave it open ended and put the point of contact on themselves. The bad ones just quote one without taking what else is coming into the shop or parts into account, thus inviting Murphy’s law to take center stage and tank a customer’s experience with your shop. Also we discuss “diagnosing from the drive on”, which is a big no-no, because it can get you into a lot of trouble when it comes to customer expectations. Also Uncle Jimmy gives you a major hack for what to do when you get a car you don't want to work on: hit them with an estimate that gives them whiplash! It’s a greatest hits album on service advisors as we do a read along of an article called “10 Reasons Why Service Advisors Fail”
Also Uncle Jimmy has ‘nam flashbacks about working in parts stores and rewrites Dante’s Inferno to include irrational people with broken cars with- “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you” being the new “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” We want to hear your irrationally bad CSI horror stories!
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. Also make sure you follow Curien from a look live from SEMA!

Episode 166: Garage of Horrors Oct 27, 2021

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy completely debunks an article called “20 Urban Legends That Mechanics Don’t Want to Admit Are True” but we’re not going to link it because of its poor structure and truth content. Seriously, this thing reads like a press release from the White House. This is one of the most ridiculous articles that we have ever read because we don’t know why a mechanic would ever deny any of these things being a possibility when it comes to the incredible chaos of the automotive service industry. We don’t think the person who wrote this article has ever even met a mechanic. Also Uncle Jimmy gives the sparknotes of Christine. At the end of the day possibly the scariest thing is that this article was probably approved by a social media fact checker!
We want to hear you automotive horror stories: haunted garage? Possessed car or tools? Spooky roadside sightings? Let us know!
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 165: Changes Oct 20, 2021

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about making some changes. The only constant in this world is change, so being well prepared for it will allow you to exploit it when it happens. We talk about the changing automotive landscape as well as some of the changes that people make as they go through this industry. When you seek a change choose your confidants carefully, because at the end of the day the decision to change something in your life comes down to you and you alone. We also go into the funny similarities between pimps and dealership owners. One of the other tips explored in the article that Uncle Jimmy takes apart is the idea of cutting up goals into smaller and more manageable sets, which helps big goals become a series of steps on your way to success.
Also Uncle Jimmy threatens the vending machine and comes up with the solution to the coin shortage- using it to pay your weekly or monthly tool bills.
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 164: Rambling Mess Oct 13, 2021

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On This Week’s Episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets a bit of perspective written by a woman who went into the automotive industry about the pros and cons of being an auto mechanic. It rings pretty true with the existing discography of GTW, and this kinda bums us out that her experience was also that technicians typically don’t make a lot of money. We like to think that we have our bases pretty well covered on that front by constantly pushing you guys to get trained so that you’re worth more money because you can do more jobs. However the pros and cons must be weighed against how much passion you have for the cars that you work on, because if you don’t have the passion often the days can really drag. The decision to become a mechanic has many different outcomes, but you often get out what you put in. This becomes even more essential if you go out on your own and start your own shop!
Also Uncle Jimmy talks about Russian’s fixing cars on YouTube.

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 163: Mock Interview Oct 06, 2021

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On this week’s Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy and Erik the Producer sit down and go over some tips and tricks for the interview process! First we cover the ground work when it comes to scoping out your new job: sites like GlassDoor and Reputation, as well as just their page on Google will have tons of reviews on their company. From here you can spot the potential red flags, or possibly figure out if your hire is part of some larger restructuring.
From here we talk about how to tune your resume to work on the internet, by including all of the training you have as well as any ASE’s, and what systems of the car you are proficient in. Odds are if you see certain keywords in the job listing, odds are those are keywords that they want to see on the resume. Although a lot of times these job descriptions are going to be so vague it will be hard to tell what they are actually looking for.

Finally Uncle Jimmy goes over everything not to say in a mock interview that even grades the questions that get asked. When it comes to interviewing, we really like the idea of a foreman or other experienced technicians sitting in on the interview process to be a technical translator for the interviewer: and give verdict to whether or not that interviewee knows what they are talking about. Also, this will keep people honest about what they can and cannot do, because the possibility of instant negative feedback is very high if they try to BS a tech!

Episode 162: What I Wish Customers Knew Sep 29, 2021

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes aim and touches a few hot ones off at the customers! There are a lot of things that we wish customers knew, but one of the first ones that comes to mind is that manners are not optional. If you want to get your car fixed, sometimes it behooves you to be polite. We know that it is a major inconvenience, but odds are that we didn’t cause the problem that caused your car to stop working. That is unless of course it’s a comeback, but even then customers should know that because of the way that these cars are built, wired, and integrated- they can mess up for any and all reasons! This means that sometimes what seems like it could be a simple fix leads you down the rabbit hole into a nightmare repair bill. This is nothing to say of the current supply constraints that are leaving parts rooms everywhere missing vital components- and folks, this one isn’t going to be letting up for a while. Also we give customers a handy guide to whether or not their car problem is covered under warranty: “was it caused by a defect in the manufacture or materials by the manufacturer of your car?” If no, then the repair will not be covered under warranty, might want to check insurance instead!
Also Uncle Jimmy pitches “CSI: Mechanic” and wants to know: “What do you wish customers knew?”

Episode 161: Paradigm Shift Sep 22, 2021

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we actually explore several paradigm shifts that are all happening in the automotive industry at the same time. First off, and probably the one that we are most happy about, salesmen are going extinct. Seriously, the internet is the most brutally efficient salesman on the planet, they figured out how to sell polished wholesale units with an incredible warranty! Secondly, the idea of the mechanic being a blue collar job is also kind of going away as well, and this can only bode well for us as our numbers continue to dwindle and our ranks continue to remain unfilled. Make no mistake, we need to get more people into the industry, but the industry needs to make itself more attractive to new talent.

Also Uncle Jimmy talks about having “two dads”, but it's more Jekyll and Hyde than Modern Family.

Episode 160: The Games We Play Sep 15, 2021

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On this week’s Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy reimagines some popular games to be more on brand with technicians and people who fix things for a living. There’s probably a good 2/3rds of you reading this right now who are playing “Trash Jenga” (we want to see who has the tallest!) but what other games are out there? From the classics: “Battleship”, “Operation” and “Monopoly” we get to imagine the ultimate pick and pull and come face to face with some of the harsh realities of the industry.
Thankfully though there are games like Cards Against Humanity, that allow normal people a brief window into normal everyday shop talk! We also come up with some genuine originals that are going to be a massive hit at your next party such as “F*** That Car!” Finally, we wrap it all up with a fairly serious dive into media portrayal/consumption and branding entire occupations, in regards to a possible solution to the massive technician shortage.

Also Uncle Jimmy has very clearly never played Risk.

Episode 159: Can You See the Real Me? Sep 08, 2021

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On this week’s Grease the Wheels we get into some of the things that the “people of the chair” don't see about your average technician working in the automotive industry today. Doctors have a hard job, but typically people don’t evolve as fast as automobiles- otherwise we should really have bluetooth by now! We also take a deep dive into the way that technicians are paid and explore a particular instance where pooling hours not only worked out fantastically for all of the techs working there, but also improved shop workflow dramatically- by having specialized technicians work on the things that they were good at, while the rest of the shop killed it on maintenances. We also propose an addendum to the pooling of hours for a service department: taking the lowest guy and highest guy and paying them what they turn, and having the rest of the technicians in the shop paid on all of the other hours turned. This way the high performers are not penalized, and the people who can’t pull their own weight are not taking advantage of a high performing shop. One thing is clear, flat rate is not going anywhere but if it worked a little bit better that could stop the bleeding of technicians industry wide. Or they could go to salary like the manufacturers would prefer, but let’s be real, that’s not going to happen!

Also Uncle Jimmy picks the pile for E65’s and not one person complains about it.

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