Grease The Wheels Podcast

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Episode 346: The Technician Shortage Part II: Money Mar 18, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy comes down hard on one of the major contributing factors of the technician shortage - the money. From warranty times that keep getting slashed to an abysmally low starting average pay, there is no wonder why the attrition rate is so high amongst young technicians. Throughout the industry, keeping talent is a problem - for some! For others who run a business well and understand that skilled labor isn’t cheap, there is no technician shortage. We also get into the weeds on a concept called “The Bullshit Factor” which will either compound or allow more leeway with what it is going to cost you to keep working there. There are many contributing factors to the technician shortage, but it is highly dependent on the attitudes and compensation of talent throughout the industry.
Also Uncle Jimmy blows up old Porsches.

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access!

Episode 345: Society’s Problem Mar 11, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle jimmy starts in on a series that is addressing the technician shortage. Throughout the history of media that has included cars, mechanics (and their modern iteration of technicians) have been unduly vilified as grifters, cheats, and scumbags. While there are some bad actors in the field, the same can be said for literally other occupation on earth (most notably, the ones that actually deal with the customers and complete the transactions in our industry!) We challenge this notion in it’s entirety, as many of the technicians that we know and love, especially the ones that listen to this podcast, are some of the best people that we have ever met. So how do we go about changing this societal view on an entire profession - media. While this media might not be a good example! But between the small screen in a customers pocket that is showing them a perfect video MPI on their vehicle, to larger scale scripted media, we are working to change customers perspective of the fixed operations department, one interaction at a time.

Also Uncle Jimmy quotes last week’s episode write up!

Episode 344: Greasy Heads & Hands Mar 04, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a common problem and solves it in the most insane way that he possibly can! We have all seen manuals, repair instructions, and bulletins that seem to be written by someone who has never turned a wrench in anger, but sometimes they are egregious enough to actually be a problem. Such as the one that attempted to have Uncle Jimmy start messing around with battery connections on a live battery - pro tip; don’t do this! So we decided to reimagine these forms of literature in the forms of common children’s stories - some for technicians, some for other techs, and even some for customers to get the point across in a simple and digestible way. The practical application of this comes from the definitely-non-children author, H.P. Lovecraft who famously said, “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” The more that we help both professionals in the field and the customers that use the products that we keep running every single day understand what is going on, the less fear there well be overall.

Also Uncle Jimmy drops a positively millennial/gen-z hot take, “don’t die at work, that means work wins!”

Episode 343: Full Metal Service Advisors Feb 18, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy outlines the service advisor boot camp that will break your service advisors of all of their bad habits, and build them back up with all of the right ones. All it will take is sheer psychological torture for a few days, weeks, or months! The real idea here though is to make Service Advisors do the job the way that everyone wants them to do it. From actually walking around the customers car and possibly pre-selling the repairs right in the drive on, to watching the video to gather the evidence they need for their followup conversations, to utilizing the proper communication method for where that customer is at in the building — the service advisor boot camp will make monsters out of even the most slovenly examples that the industry puts forward. We also get deeper into the idea that going with a blank slate, and even service advisors that don’t know anything about cars can be a good tactical choice when it comes to choosing them, because you get to indoctrinate them the way that your shop wants them to get the job done.

Also Uncle Jimmy keeps it under a dozen quotes from the eternal R. Lee Ermey.

Episode 342: Batter Up Feb 12, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we delve into the world of statistics, and come up with some genuinely novel applications of baseball numbers and terminology to help your shop run better. RBI for service advisors, Errors also mostly for service advisors, and techs having to bat 1.000. There area already hundreds of datapoint for shops to utilize to make better decisions, but more often than not we find that the data is being underutilized, and no one really knows what it is. There are many reasons for this, but it leads to one of the most pressing concepts in the automotive industry today, a takeoff of the stat line WAR from baseball that we named Repairs Against Replacement. Are the new guys able to actually turn the hours with the accuracy of the people that they are replacing - more often than not. Will your shop have the payroll to effectively replace high performing techs who decide to grease the wheels - also probably not.

Also Uncle Jimmy is still salty about the Bills and has used the time between football and baseball season to binge some Ken Burns.

Episode 341: Schrodinger’s Management Feb 05, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we go over some of the highlights and lowlights of automotive management. One of the main things that we have noticed is that in the rise of the corporate owned, multi-location dealership group era, there are a lot less nepo-hires in management. It still happens, especially at smaller family owned dealerships, but on a whole the quality of management in the automotive space has actually gotten significantly better in the last 20+ years! There are still ineffective, and poorly trained management in this space, but many of them are a lot easier to get rid of when they aren’t going to show up at family parties. We go over some of the hallmarks of what makes managers successful in this space full of good examples, ideas, tips, and tricks. Bottom line, good management can make a good shop great, and bad management can make a bad shop infinitely worse.
Also Uncle Jimmy knows that he cannot govern the ungovernable!

Episode 340: B.O.B. Jan 28, 2026

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On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, we answer a question that absolutely no one asked: what if the safety systems in your car could be funny? To do this, we use the framework of our personal favorite retired New York State Trooper, Jimmy’s brother Bob! This is a natural fit because Bob did the nitty gritty work of crash scene reconstructions and even taught it at the Trooper Academy for years. Needless to say he knows pretty much all of the ways that things can go wrong on the road and their direct consequences first hand. However, our OBDII program B.O.B would use those inputs to give you feedback — some gentile and caring, and some hilariously unhinged. There would be other inputs as well, from Bluetooth jamming people lollygagging in the left lane, to some other, much grosser applications. Either way, Bob/B.O.B. is there to keep you alive and quite possibly make you wet yourself laughing!

Also Uncle Jimmy casually calls out some of the bad driving and car borrowing habits of Erik the Producer, while thankfully leaving out that real Bob has gotten both of us out of enough tickets to fund the NYS Government for a whole 12 seconds. Thanks, Bob!

Episode 339: Video Kills (The Customers) Part IV Jan 21, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we close out our anthology on the Video MultiPoint Inspection, DVI, vMPI, etc -- with the most important part of the equation: the customers. Taking a step back, part of the reason why our customers are so unreasonable at times when it comes to our recommendations when it comes to facing or maintaining their cars is the immense amount of anxiety that they have about it. It is a known fact that the less you understand about a situation, the more the lizard parts of your brain are likely to overreact, over correct, and get defensive. When it comes to modern car owners, they really have never understood less! This is why they are so anxious, and why the Video MPI does so much heavy lifting when executed right. Even in short form, you can have a customer understand on even a rudimentary level what is going on with their car, why the recommendations that you made are accurate and factual, and why we do them in the first place. Quite simply put, the better that you can hold the customers hand and make them feel that they are making the right decision, the better your outcomes will be every single time! Also, this is something that folks with our skillsets rarely face, because we purposely go out and look for cars that are messed up when it is time for a new daily!

Also Uncle Jimmy writes a modern country classic, goes 2 for two without a single bit of help from the service advisor (on a Saturday) and gets an incredibly well-timed email from someone on the other side of the MPI Equation (hint, it’s Kalil’s Mom making her second appearance in consecutive weeks!)

Episode 338: Video Kills (The Managers) Part III Jan 14, 2026

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On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy loosely defines the roles of the management staff when it comes to doing Video MultiPoint Inspections. The main part of the management role in video MPI adoption is to properly incentivize their technicians on doing them, setting them up for success, and getting the right training into the shop to make it effective - insert shameless plug here- However, often times the management of a shop is a direct hindrance to getting quality video MPI’s out to their customers. By adding their own critiques while failing to incentivize techs for doing them well, they are setting the entire digital transformation of their fixed ops departments up for failure, every single time! There are tons of ways that shop management can properly incentives this, but they often miss the easy ones! There is a silver lining here, also we come up with the true end-goal terminology for video MPI - Peace of Mind Inspections!
Also Uncle Jimmy gives a shoutout to Kalil’s Mom!

Episode 337: Video Kills (The Service Advisors) Part II Jan 07, 2026

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy follows up part one about Video being a tool for mechanics with part 2 about Service Advisors. When a Service Advisor has technicians doing the video, or in some rare instances is doing the video themselves, they have an undeniable advantage over a fixed ops department where there are no video MPI’s performed. This is why it is infuriating when service advisors fail to leverage the high definition evidence of work or maintenances that need to be done. There is not much more else that a tech or ‘designated hitter’ can do to make that service advisors life easier, yet often times they are squandering opportunities left and right when they do not use the Video MPI as a sales tool. Smart Advisors use every tool in the kit to make sales and make the fixed ops department more money. However there is a glut of service advisors that do not fit this parameter. Any customer facing job is a difficult one, brought with all sorts of personalities, mood swings, and financial situations — however a failure to ask for the sale and a lack of attempting to overcome the customers objections are the hallmarks of useless personnel that are easily replaced by AI.

Also Uncle Jimmy hits us with some real tangible rage.

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