Category: Episodes

On this week’s episode of GTW, we are talking that lovely universal force that binds us all together: chaos. No matter where you sit in the automotive world, you are guaranteed some measurable amount of chaos. Often times it is driven by people who don’t know any better. Sometimes it comes down to the unknable roll of the dice that comes with not knowing what is going to roll or get flat bedded into your shop that day. Sometimes it comes in the form of a vague or cryptic repair order. Either way, this knowing that there is the unknown factors in to making our jobs some of the most chaotic on earth. Additionally, we see that competent help and having a staff of people that solve problems instead of making them are some of the easiest ways to lower the amount of chaos in our day to day lives.

Also, Uncle Jimmy Pipe dreams about everyone in your building doing their job exactly how they are supposed to and gives a Cliffnotes review of Hogan’s Heroes.

On this week’s GTW we talk about how to solve the shortage of technicians. The causes of the tech shortage are pretty obvious- it doesn’t pay, but we talk about making a system where it can be extremely lucrative. The first place to look to ending the tech shortage is promoting and training from within. If you think that you are going to get techs from the outside you are thinking in the old way, because no one puts in anything about money or advancement in their job descriptions. The second, and possibly the most important part is putting together a scale for how these people are going to advance. Expertise and training that make the individual techs more valuable, both as individuals and assets to the companies they work for.

Also, Uncle Jimmy talks about how mind-blowing it is having people listen to him all over the world, considering his parents never listened to him.

On this week’s episode of GTW we are talking about work uniforms, but mostly we’re ranting about the uniform shirts that have collars. Some modern technician uniforms don’t make a lot of sense in this regard, because we can’t think of a single instance where wearing a tie in a shop would end in anything other than decapitation. One often cited cause for this is that when there are changes in management, they want new uniforms to reflect his regime change- you know, instead of fixing the actual problems that the shop might have. Also we talk about the simple beauty of having uniform shirts that have little pockets on the breast and how handy that is. Realistically, technician’s productivity can be tied directly to how comfortable they are on the job, which is why it is great when indy shops supply tee shirts to their techs because there is less to think about and get in their way.

Also Uncle Jimmy talks about why he washes his own work trousers, and naming stars after his favorite thing to say to impatient customers.

On today’s episode of Grease The Wheels, we are talking about working for the man and all that it entails. There are many corporate entities in the automotive industry such as auto groups, corporate repair shops, tire shops, etc. These are companies with a LOT of employees, and oftentimes a big number of them have nothing to do with the end products. Corporate owned dealerships have multiple levels of management that run these places, meaning that there are a lot of people in these companies that dont fix the cars. There are some major fundamental differences between the office folk and the car fixing folk that extends far beyond what they actually do for a living. Because of this there are rules being made by people who have no idea what the culture is like for the people that those rules are being applied to. At the end of the day being an auto mechanic is being in a brotherhood, and this is something that they really can’t understand. This leads to one of the major advantages that indy shops have over their corporate competition, and might just be enough to make you want to work for the indy instead of the man. Let’s be clear, there are a lot of excellent things about working for a corporation, but there are a lot of tradeoffs with things like personal liberties and the amount of times that you can say “fuck” without getting fired.

Also, Uncle Jimmy talks white collar v. blue collar responses to the zombie apocalypse, the “offended culture” and how it doesn’t play well with this listenership, and details his candidate for “The Worst Car Ever Made!”

Good Tool guys are hard to find and much like us technicians, they all have different personalities and levels of commitment to their job. First off, it is hard work and no one is getting rich selling tools off of a tool truck. Then you get to add the tremendous cost of doing business and constantly having issues with their trucks (insert joke about fixing it for $50/week for 20 years) As a technicians we should support the good ones and help them out a bit. Also we get into an interesting theory about brand loyalty- that it shouldn’t be an umbrella loyalty to all things (your tool brand here) but rather to the actual tools that do the job every single time. We also recount some of the awkward times when the stuff that comes off the tool truck is better than the tools the manufacturer gives you to do the job.

Uncle Jimmy talks about what tool guys and techs have in common: dogs, guns, and beer and gives a lesson in metallurgy when it comes to cheap brake line benders.

It is a simple and pretty well established fact that there are a lot more jobs available for mechanics, technicians, and every other assorted automotive service worker than there are people to fill them. Because of that there are a LOT of job postings, but often times there are a lot of reasons why they have so many openings. This gets compounded when we are talking about job postings at indy’s, because you’re going to be working on EVERYTHING. With that being said, even if you like you job you should ALWAYS be looking for a better one- because we are in very short supply and the demand is very high. Yet, somehow, no one talks about the elephant in the room- what they are going to pay you.

Also Uncle Jimmy talks about accidentally setting up a co-worker with a competitor that has an almost perfect pay scale for their factory trained technicians and gives a mechanics view on the breakdown of “cost of living”.

In one way or another, all of us have some form of a dispatcher who doles out what we’re working on for the day. Human dispatchers have human downsides such as playing favorites and are at the mercy of customers. However good dispatchers can read a shops technicians skill levels and keep the work flowing efficiently. Make yourself available to the dispatcher for the stuff that needs to get done that no one wants to do- they will throw you a bone. On the other side of the dispatcher equation, you would think that an electronic RO system would be harder to mess with, however experience would say that there even easier to fuck with than the human kind. Also, Uncle Jimmy explains spontaneous human combustion and price fixing collusion by dealers.

As the title would suggest, this is an episode for the new guys, instead of about the new guys, so if you’re just starting out you might want to pay attention here. First off, as much as a good tech school can teach you about fixing cars, it really can’t teach you a lot about how to get along with the other people who are going to be in your shop also fixing cars. One good rule of thumb is to have a solid attitude, because without fail you can learn SOMETHING from just about everyone in your shop. Some of the tips, tricks, shortcuts you can pick up from your fellow techs can make your life easier and make it possible to turn way more hours, thus making you more money. Also, no matter how much you know you need to be ready for a certain amount of hazing, and how you respond to this will go a long way to shaping your fellow techs perception of you. However, don’t let anyone give you a hard time about tools because as you grow as a technician and get put on more complicated jobs you will undoubtedly build up a sizable and well rounded toolbox.

Also Uncle Jimmy talks snowflakes, and blowing 30k on the tool truck as a lube tech being only a slightly worse investment than a Greek accountant.

A simple show of hands will tell that many of us someday wish to own our own shop. This is a very solid and attainable goal for many of us as we move through our careers- because it doesn’t take 30 years in the field to realize that whatever the shop charges is usually several times the labor rate that they are paying you. However, while it can be very lucrative, especially if you find a profitable niche market early on, you will find that you are quickly doing less of the ‘fixing of cars’, and more of the ‘everything else besides fixing cars’. In this episode we outline some of the things that skilled techs should take into consideration before you pull the trigger on going out on your own. Partnering with people who can help you run things will let you do more work in the shop and drastically increase your chances of success. At the end of the day, as technicians we are not afraid of hard work, so going out on our own is a pretty damn good option.

Also, we don’t really have a funny Uncle Jimmy one liner because this is actually a fairly straightforward and helpful episode…for once. Weird.

In an industry such as ours, reputation is almost everything. Your ability and attitude from the first day you roll into a shop determines your reputation, and it really is entirely up to you to foster. The goldilocks zone for your reputation is being a decent human being who can fix cars well. The worst case is being an asshole that can’t fix a sandwich. The grey areas are being a good tech that is an asshole, and a nice guy who isn’t a good tech. Additionally, your reputation as a technician can be determined by the quality of the technicians around you- if a shop has bad technicians, the shop becomes a sub-par shop. As we have seen countless times, shops hiring bad technicians to replace good ones is the fastest way for that shop to grenade their reputation. This is because of the simple fact that no one operates in a vacuum anymore, as customers will check reviews of shops before taking their cars to them. With the high turnover rates of some shops, your reputation can spread a lot further than you might want it to, and might be a major asset when it comes time to Grease the Wheels.

Also Uncle Jimmy talks about getting cockblocked by Manny, Moe and Jack.