On this week’s Grease the Wheels Uncle Jimmy weaves a Dickensian tale about a miserly shop owner and his much more HR-oriented son. As we go, we examine how these businesses got their start, what happens when the second generation actually knows what they’re doing when it comes to the automotive industry, and the attitudes that each brings to bear in the running of day to day operations. We have all worked for a Jack Hoff - but not all of us have worked for a Ripp. That is typically because well...
Dec 30, 2021•50 min•Ep. 174
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels we take a look at all of the points in your daily routine as an auto mechanic where communication breaks down. There are a hell of a lot of them. Any time you have angry people trying to communicate what is wrong with their car you are probably not going to get the whole story. By the time it gets filtered through the Service Advisor the story has changed. It is the age old game of telephone on an industrial level, and it affects your paycheck. That is...
Dec 23, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 173
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take a look at an internet article that has almost nothing to do with us: how to treat your employees better. This isn’t because the industry is actively looking to make things worse, more because it was written more for office work in mind. Because let’s be real, casual Friday is pretty much every day when you’re ripping transmissions out of Silverado’s. The overall message of the article though is pretty good- employers should try to make their w...
Dec 16, 2021•1 hr 5 min
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about those jobs that used to be easy- until the engineers got involved! The problem that this industry has is it’s blistering rate of change, and nowhere is that more evident in some of the insane ways that engineers have packaged these vehicles to resemble 10lbs of manure in a 2lb sack! Exhibit A: Changing the spark plugs on a N55 powered BMW X3. Exhibit B: Same thing, but a 5.4L Ford V8. Jobs that could have taken 10 minutes on the right ve...
Dec 09, 2021•57 min•Ep. 172
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take a dive into the median salary for auto technicians by state. The worst part of this is that the highest median income actually comes from the District of Columbia which isn’t even a state, and all of the other highest median incomes come in states where the cost of living is outrageous to the point where people are fleeing (looking at you California). At the end of the day we all heard it in tech school: “you can earn 100k as an auto technicia...
Dec 02, 2021•45 min•Ep. 171
On this week’s episode of Grease the wheels, Uncle Jimmy dives into “11 Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Technician” with the resounding thud of “wow, only 11?” What are the things that no one tells you about before going into the automotive industry? Some of this is a bit redundant, because how could you not know some of these things. Do your training- yea, how is that not possible with the rate of technological change in the cars that we work on. The learning curve of this occupation is ...
Nov 25, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 170
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we take aim at more automotive misinformation from the ill-informed passing themselves off as someone who knows about cars on the internet. So gather round boys and girls, customers and service advisors, techs of all types: this is one where we get to shred someone for being a moron! After all, the holidays are coming up, right? A little peace-on-earth at the expense of the stupid is a great way to raise shop morale. Check your sources especially when...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 169
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. Th...
Nov 10, 2021•54 min•Ep. 168
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 ...
Nov 04, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 167
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 ...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 166
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 al...
Oct 21, 2021•54 min•Ep. 165
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...
Oct 14, 2021•50 min•Ep. 164
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 t...
Oct 07, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 163
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 eve...
Sep 30, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 162
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 we...
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 161
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. Thank...
Sep 16, 2021•54 min•Ep. 160
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, bu...
Sep 09, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 159
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into some of the laws and legal things to keep in mind when it comes to our occupation, and we don’t even get to OSHA! Uncle Jimmy finds some of the laws and guidelines for the State of Texas when it comes to auto repair from a consumer's perspective. The too long didn’t read for this entire episode is, “get everything in writing” as well as the helpful tidbit that repair orders are in fact legal documents! This is the helpful law episode to he...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 158
On this week’s Grease the Wheels we get out of self-reflective introspective mode and go straight for the jugular: asking the pointed question “who are you?” to everyone else in the building! We know what we are there for, but a lot of these other bit part players can have nebulous or extremely vague job duties which lead them to have a variety of motivations (or lack thereof). Obviously, the owner or the board of directors is there to make the place as profitable as possible. What is cool about...
Aug 26, 2021•49 min•Ep. 157
In this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get introspective with asking ourselves some questions when it comes to our own happiness. Yea, we’re wading into the murky waters of mental health! We found a site called “Positive Psychology” for self reflective questions to ask yourself, and decided it was perfect fodder for a podcast. When you look in the mirror what do you see? Many of us see the major roles that we play in our lives in culmination with what we do for a living. You need to giv...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 156
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, we detail the amazing journey of being an automotive technician in true Uncle Jimmy fashion. From being a mechanically adept or interested youngster with a POS car, to making the leap into tech school and eventually becoming a skilled journeyman, to eventually exiting the industry either on a gurney or through a rage quit - there is only one constant. Everyone’s occupational journey is different. Sometimes there are different challenges and different l...
Aug 12, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 155
On this week’s Grease the Wheels, we talk about the massive technician shortage and some of the brilliant fixed ops plans to fix it. We talk at length about an article we found on LinkedIn where they address all but one of the major causes for why shops are having problems keeping technicians. The one they missed though pretty much invalidates the rest of the article, but there are some fairly good points when it comes to how to keep technicians such as giving them a path of advancement, giving ...
Aug 05, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 154
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy puts on his prophecy hat and talks about some of the things that we can see coming down the pike for the automotive industry. It is not a secret that the automotive industry is very slow to adapt with some things, the fact that they still employ salesmen when we have internet sales pretty sorted out is a testament to that. However, we also get into the nitty gritty when it comes to the propulsion systems of the future. Fact is, EV’s are no...
Jul 29, 2021•54 min•Ep. 153
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy falls asleep on the couch and wakes up at 4AM to record a podcast. Most technicians are a straight up bargain. From the amount of things that we have to know to what the shops that employ us charge, we know that there is a real disconnect between the rate at which we receive raises to the rate at which our jobs get more difficult. As a result many shops are stacked up with work weeks in advance, and they are constrained by the ability to g...
Jul 22, 2021•53 min•Ep. 152
On this week’s Grease the Wheels, we see how many times Uncle Jimmy can say the phrase, “don’t be a dick!” This is another one of those infamous, extra-spicy, “weekday night” episodes compounded with the fact that he is fresh off vacation. So When Uncle Jimmy gets back to the shop and it is a s***show, he goes off a bit and threatens corporal punishment for people who leave wheel machines looking like a war-zone! In a solid rant about shop cleanliness, we talk about how the trick to finding a lo...
Jul 15, 2021•40 min•Ep. 151
On this week's Grease the Wheels we talk about the new guys that are attempting to put a dent in the 650,000 mechanic and technician job vacancies nationwide. We all have a million “new guy stories”, and let’s be clear we want to hear every single one of them! Obviously they are not set to replace us right now, but given time and space to develop some of these new guys are going to make very good technicians, if they don’t use their brains and GTFO of the industry! Realistically though in a macr...
Jul 08, 2021•47 min•Ep. 150
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels we give you some of the right tools for, well, greasing the wheels! Right now people are looking for jobs in tons of different industries, but in our case the tables are tilted a bit more in our favor because of the technician shortage. No employer is going to advertise the things about their shop that sucks, so it is up to you to find it out. Sometimes you get to find it out the easy way by looking around at a shop full of broken equipment that is hal...
Jul 01, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 149
On this week’s completely off-the-rails episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gives a literal voice to some of the tools and equipment in your shop. What would happen if tools could talk? What if your wheel balancer, alignment machine, and tire machine could scream at you with the voice of your good old Uncle Jimmy when they’re being operated improperly? Odds are that it would keep them working longer! We also discuss the phenomenon of “warranty-itis” where a car will have all sorts of phant...
Jun 24, 2021•54 min•Ep. 148
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we are talking about a bunch of things that Uncle Jimmy can’t explain about the automotive industry. We go in depth into things that we can’t explain as technicians in regards to some of the higher up’s not having a good grasp on what is going on in their own shops and the industry in general. We also go into some of the bigger questions that we can’t explain, like why fixing cars for people in a pinch always feels just a little bit better. We also do...
Jun 17, 2021•55 min•Ep. 147
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels we talk about indies, mobile techs, and “rogue techs” who are working out of their home garages. Because we work in a dealership, this podcast often revolves around working for a dealership as a mechanic, but there are many modern alternatives that have been gaining traction as the business has evolved. Indy shops are truly a mixed bag: with some of them being well run, mom and pop shops where the staff genuinely feels like a family and others that are...
Jun 10, 2021•55 min•Ep. 146
