On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the “20 Most Common Automotive Scams”. Right off the bat, “scams” is a relative term here because the author thinks we’re still using freon. Half of them are fixed with paperwork - which you should always do, and the other half can be covered easily by video. There is no doubt that the overall public image of mechanics is not good, but this level of ignorance seems to underscore the need for more intensive (often high-definition) documenta...
Jun 13, 2024•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 293
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get a little off topic with various developmental psychology articles. We’ve all heard the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and we’re not sure how many people came right out and said, “mechanic!” Turns out even asking this question is actually not the best thing in the world, because it can put undue burden on developing brains that think that they have to live up to this expectation. Answering with “mechanic” might be a growing...
Jun 07, 2024•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 292
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes full boomer and talks about some statistics involving cell phone use in the workplace. We get into just how much time we’re wasting, how we’re wasting it, and the incredible stats involving how likely we are to mess up after using our phones at work. There are some major streamlined processes in the automotive industry that have gotten incredibly advanced when it comes to workflows that directly involve the phone but Uncle Jimmy just ...
May 30, 2024•53 min•Ep. 291
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy dissects the most shortchanged part of the entire automotive industry - Human Resources! Hiring anyone who has tools and can fog a mirror is one way to fill your shop with bodies, but not paying attention to the shop chemistry can be extremely detrimental to the bottom line. When you hire the right people, the right things happen. Productivity increases, friendly competition can cause even more profit, and the shop is overall a loud but harmoniou...
May 23, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 290
On this week’s Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets introspective about some of the main thesis points of the podcast in contrast with industry trends in the six years we’ve been barking into a microphone. Not a lot of podcasts age well, and some of our certainly haven't. We still don't have talking tool boxes but there are more important things at play than S4B. The pay has definitely gone up, and it has to keep going up as people get more and more trained and certified to work on the crazy stuf...
May 16, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 289
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy suggests dissociating from yourself to better analyze your job performance! Sargent Peppers was a genuinely cool album, showcasing the intrinsic creativity of the Beatles, but if you think about in work terms you get things like “Customer Service Voice” The better you can analyze your performance, the better you can do your job. Sometimes when your heart just isn’t in it that day your coworkers can make it instantly better or worse. We als...
May 09, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 288
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy talks about bad management practices. Bad management was the hallmark of the former Soviet Republics, but it also rears its ugly head often in the Automotive Industry. We get into some of the practices that make for bad management as well as relevant examples that are probably happening in your shop right now. From poor communication, to unmet or unwritten expectations - the automotive industry is often hampered by its own lack of interper...
May 02, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 287
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy shows the flip side of the coin when it comes to customers. While all customers deserve a base level of respect and empathy, there are some situations where they are going to try to turn the tables. We also get into some genuinely useful customer service tips for the customer facing technicians, or anyone doing side work. Good customer service is a huge market differentiator and can often make long-term customers that you make a lot of mon...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 286
On this week's episode of Grease the wheels we get to the ethos of the automotive industry - making people mobile. As the people who keep the cars running, we play an absolutely vital part of this ecosystem. We also take a look at emerging automotive trends, which is hilarious because most of the stuff they're soothsaying in the articles has been the standard for 20+ years. The automotive industry is more a slow and steady march rather than a series of massive leaps. Sure, there have been massiv...
Apr 11, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 285
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about the much maligned doldrums of the flat rate pay system. When the shop isn’t making money - you aren’t making money. Whether it is a market adjustment to raising your door labor rate, to full blown economic meltdowns that make people put maintenance on the back burner - it is an incredibly cyclical beast. We also get into some of the various shop management theories that are floating around out there, as well as some of the end game syste...
Apr 04, 2024•53 min•Ep. 284
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Jimmy hacks up a lung and explores the line where you should go into work and where you should call in. This is obviously a personal question with personal answers, but it’s important for the 90% of the audience that wouldn’t call in short of missing a limb. Also, if your employer doesn’t give you sick days, that is a pretty good sign to grease the wheels, unless there is some prior understanding to not commit acts of bio warfare on your coworkers. We...
Mar 28, 2024•35 min•Ep. 283
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets into what gets people into the automotive industry in the first place: passion. From your first car, to the first thing you fix, the seeds of passion are planted. For some of us, this culminates in a lifelong passion for certain makes and models. For others, it ends in compulsive hoarding. The best balance is a happy medium. Every make and model seemingly has its own subculture, from the Jeep Rubber Duckie thing, to the Subaru Merit B...
Mar 21, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 282
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about complaining. There are right ways to complain and wrong ways to complain, and we go into both as well as some of the resolutions that get the best results. We also get into the gamesmanship and merits of taking intershop complaints directly to the person you are having them with instead of involving management. We also talk about productive complaints, malicious complaints, and chronic complaints and who in your shop fits each of these m...
Mar 13, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 281
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy explores the explosion of mobile mechanics in the city of Austin. There are a lot of different ways to fix cars, and getting the job done on the side of the road has really never stopped any of us before but actually making a living with it can be tough. There are big parts of the country where it would be a major undertaking with the elements making life incredibly difficult. We also get into the idea of subletting out jobs that you don't...
Mar 12, 2024•51 min•Ep. 280
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the nitty gritty when it comes to test driving customers' vehicles. Any manager who says that you should blindly test drive a vehicle before putting it up on a lift to see if it is structurally sound should listen to this episode. The aforementioned pitch can be a seriously bad idea, especially if that vehicle has serious problems. We have all seen the “just rolled into the shop” posts where a vehicle shouldn’t have even made it into the s...
Feb 29, 2024•1 hr 10 min
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the transient nature of the automotive industry, just how bad the technician shortage has gotten, and the insane attrition rate of your new guys. In 2020 the reported technician shortage was around 178,000, now extrapolated out to 2025, which is right around the corner, they are projecting almost 800,000 want ads going unfilled in shops across the country. We get into why that is, but more importantly we get into some of the nitty gritty o...
Feb 22, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 278
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we do our own version of ‘how to make friends and influence people.’ Helping to hang a set of exhaust is always going to be appreciated, but being forthcoming with helping other people will signify you as someone who can be depended on in the shop. We also talk about some of the karmic ramifications of tool loaning and just helping people out in general without the expectation of something in return. When all else fails, feeding people is an awesome w...
Feb 16, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 277
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about overwork and burnout. If your employer has you turning enough hours that you are seemingly working 8 days a week, that is one thing. If you’re doing it because you love money, that is quite another. The latter is ok, while the former will quickly remove any passion you have for the industry. Overwork can lead to a ton of bad things, so it is important to draw boundaries between your personal life and professional lives. Sometimes that lo...
Feb 09, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 276
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a break from the political rhetoric and talks about chicken farming. Shops and dealerships need to have the people who are creating the labor out of thin air in optimal conditions to create as much labor as possible. Whether that is having good service advisors and parts guys, to having the right number of lifts and bays per technician, shop optimization is a real thing. This needs to be communicated with the management in charge, an...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 275
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels Uncle Tuck-er-we-mean-Jimmy gets angry, political, and straight to the point. You don’t need a Masters in Physics to know that batteries don’t work as well in the cold, but apparently a lot of people in Chicago and the Midwest didn’t get the memo. NY’ers did, because they don’t buy them in droves unless they need the EV tax write off. Even with temps dipping down into the 30’s in the incredibly EV heavy market of Austin, people aren’t really impressed ...
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 274
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into how to deal with anger while working in the automotive industry. Right off the bat, as previously chronicled in the 272 preceding episodes, there are a lot of things that can set automotive technicians off. From the low pay, to the incredibly complicated cars, to sometimes hostile work environments - keeping your cool can be hard. Luckily there are things such as identifying what makes you mad, working out, and even percussive therapy on i...
Jan 18, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 273
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into things that make mechanics mad - although judging by the article these people were pretty loose with the job descriptions between mechanic and service advisor. We talk about Customers who insist that they know what is wrong with the car, which is annoying but easily overcome. We also get into the idea that quoting ETA’s for completed repairs is basically sending Murphy’s Law a DM on whatever it is you’re working on. It is 100% possible tha...
Jan 12, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 272
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we bid adieu to a tumultuous 2023; but the world kept on spinning because of you wrench twisting bastards. Because of this we set the bar at, “don’t let me down” because asking for much more sounds like tempting fate. In this episode we lay out some of the expectations that customers, Service Advisors and Management would have of their technicians especially as the Automotive Technician Shortage worsens. We also get into the ways that the parts depart...
Jan 04, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 271
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets absolutely medieval on aftermarket warranty companies. I could probably end the episode synopsis there, and customers, service advisors, and tech’s will all still tune in - but this one is fun! The market analysis of aftermarket warranty companies is “bad” and “worse”, with some notable exceptions coming from Carvana and other internet automotive retailers that would rather pay for us to fix it after they sell it to you, than fix it r...
Dec 28, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 270
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take a brief look ahead to what people in chairs think is coming down the pike for us wrench turning folk in 2024. The one thing we see more of on the horizon is the russian infantry tactics of filing the shop with whatever bodies can hold the wrenches and look busy. However, further analysis will prove that having your best technicians with two available lifts or bays will increase the specific output of that bay over an inexperienced new hire. Es...
Dec 22, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 269
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy is talking about ways to keep your hard days from turning into hard nights wheen it comes to stress. Folks, there is enough stress in the automotive industry to go around, so being able to deal with it is key to being effective at your job. From new systems in cars that are broken in new and interesting ways, to customers with unreasonable expectations, more often than not the answer is simply to not sign for the stress and let the system ...
Dec 07, 2023•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 268
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we have blisters on our fingers from all of the chaos that has been coming down the chute. The sources of chaos in the automotive industry, at all levels, are actually pretty consistent. We are problem solvers in our role as automotive mechanics, so naturally for us most of the chaos starts and ends with the customers. We also get deep into the idea that as a team that solves problems, the support stuff needs to not make a ton of problems on top of th...
Nov 27, 2023•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 267
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we continue the theme of Beatles B Sides, and the theme of not getting enough love from our employers. We have an interesting conversation about “things you shouldn’t say to technicians”, as well as an examination of the stupidity of repair line items as the warranty comes closer to being done. It’s a rip roaring episode of grease the wheels, and if you hear any of these sayings on the regular from your management- it might be time to polish up the re...
Nov 16, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 266
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about the intersection of manufacturers, technology and image spin control for the profession in general. From inside the shop between service and management, to the manufacturers themselves - there isn’t a whole lot of love going around to the people who fix them. Luckily, there’s this podcast. Not getting love from the manufacturers is real: from making the vehicles more difficult to do simple tasks, to slashing warranty times in an effort t...
Nov 09, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 265
O n this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we title it after where we were last week, nowhere to be found! Sorry about that, we needed a week to get back to the grind. This brings us to the theme of today’s episode, where we go deeper into some of the crazy stuff that is coming down the pike and the relative rate of advancement in the automotive industry over the last 20 years versus the previous 50. A “Nowhere Man” in this case is a technician who’s skills and training cannot keep up with th...
Nov 02, 2023•47 min•Ep. 264
