On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we go into the weeds on how employers can show their employees appreciation. Right off the bat it is never going to be a bad idea to feed your employees regularly, especially when you want their attention. Showing your appreciation can be a matter of shop morale, but even more importantly it can be an important tool to reduce turnover- which is a massive problem in this industry. Happy employees can also do things to your brand reputation that you can’t buy - see exhibit A. Wegman's. When you listen to your employees you can also see innovation coming from the people who have been implementing it and found better ways to do their jobs- see exhibit B. Eastman Kodak. However, Uncle Jimmy has broken down “The Art of Appreciation” for the technicians in your shop into the borderline Stalinist slogan: “Food, Fun, and Money” while also railing against overpriced vending machines.

Also Uncle Jimmy goes off on the “end-of-month sales department chaos-blitzkrieg” waged in shops all over the world on the 28th-31st of every month and promotes feral hog hunting as an “unique incentive”.

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! 

On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we return to form by dissecting some of the insane things that our customers say. When a customer genuinely understands what is going wrong with their car they are usually pretty capable of communicating it effectively. When they don’t, chaos can ensure with lines that would make the guys from “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” proud. Apologies for how poorly this article is written, but it illustrates just how little people outside of the service side of the industry actually understand how the process works. Very few places even allow customers into the shop - let alone let them watch a mechanic perform repairs. That is the job of video which is probably coming to a bay near you at multiple angles and aspect ratios. We also discuss the very real merits of using “easiness” as the ascending way to diagnose a problem, and reiterate the simple mantra “time is money”.

Also Uncle Jimmy’s blood pressure gets audibly higher and we get a call back to the door pocket burrito!

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!  

On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the weeds of what makes businesses tick and examine the keys to their success and failure. There are a whole lot of ways that your auto repair business could be leaking cash. One of the major ones that we are going to focus on here is not selling repairs; where there are systemic failures to sell, there can be thousands in lost profits - simply because the Service advisor made an incorrect judgment call. We also go into “6 ways to Increase your Shop’s Profitability” to balance out the success side of the “Keys to Success and Failure”. To be successful auto repair shops need to continually invest in their people, processes, and equipment to stay on top of the game. Treating your customers like family doesn’t hurt either, as we give a series of callbacks to how The Little Speed Shop in Rochester NY does it right!    

Also Uncle Jimmy misattributes a Wayne Gretzky quote to Kobe Bryant, we pitch “The Blind Service Advisor,'' and recount the near universal experience of flipping cars that were completely written off by someone. 

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!  

On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we annihilate an article about the pros and cons of being an automotive technician. Right off the bat, if you think that $36-48k/year is “an exceptional salary” you are categorically wrong. Being able to work in a variety of environments isn’t always a good thing - because some of those environments will remind you of the third world. Fast paced workdays, being fast paced and chaotic is a bad combination especially when peoples safety is involved. The Potential to work outside - not all automotive jobs allow you to work outside -LIKE THAT’S GOOD THING! Job stability, hey we finally found an actual pro! The technician shortage has given people a lot of mobility, especially when they are extremely well trained. No College Education being needed: this is a plus, but it definitely helps if you’ve got some experience and want to get a further understanding of some of the specific systems. Being able to fix your own car is definitely a pro, and really the only relevant part of the article. You get to meet new people - who will only come to you when they have a problem with their car! The cons list was pretty spot on but done with such a glancing blow that they still warrant criticism. Bottom line is that the pros and cons list for every technician in every shop in the world is going to be slightly different, but if you’re considering a career change this can be a valuable tool to aid your decision. 

Also Uncle Jimmy introduces the slap test for people who want to become auto mechanics and we have a new winner for longest duration DIY brake job.

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!  

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!  

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. 

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! 

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.

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!

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. 

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! 

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. 

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!