The Jaded Mechanic Podcast

Lance Mechanics [00:00:07]:
Prices get really high. Every dealership experiences no starts. It's because what happens is the people in my area start buying fuel from the reserve and it's full of water. So always within a week or two of gas prices skyrocketing and then boom, no starts across every single brand. And then you're pulling them in and it's a tough thing to diagnose if they're not used to it. They're calling fuel pumps, they're calling injectors, they're doing weird things and they'll get the car running on someone's dime, but it's usually just bad fuel.

Jeff Compton [00:00:42]:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to an exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic podcast. So you all know I'm like heavily addicted into the social media content creation, online, people in the automotive realm. And, you know, I've been there a long, long time and it's my really only vice. I gave up all the other ones and I recently found somebody online that. His very first video. I was like, wow, this is like hearing myself talk back to me about his attitude about the, the industry and all that kind of stuff. He's a very jaded individual too, and I've watched his channel really blow up in the last three, four months.

Jeff Compton [00:01:26]:
He's gotten really big on tick tock almost, it seems like overnight, but he's really pushing there. So anyway, enough about me. My guest tonight is Lance Mechanics, everybody. Lance, how's it going, brother?

Lance Mechanics [00:01:38]:
Good. Yourself?

Jeff Compton [00:01:39]:
Very good, man. Very good. We're. Lance and I had some technical difficulties getting on, but I, I think we've got that all squared away. So, yeah, we just, we do. When all else fails us technicians, we just start pushing buttons and that works. So well done, Lance, on the button pushing. So Lance, kind of tell everybody a little bit about yourself real quick.

Lance Mechanics [00:02:03]:
All right. So a tinkerer play around with toys. I came into this industry pretty late, believe it or not.

Jeff Compton [00:02:10]:
So how did. So like, how long you been on YouTube?

Lance Mechanics [00:02:15]:
About a year and a half now, I think. So last April?

Jeff Compton [00:02:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. And you kind of went on there and like I said, I saw some of your first videos and you, you kind of started off, you pull no punches about what you really think about the automotive industry and what it was like for you to be an automotive technician. And you're still a technician, but you kind of went like our friend Lee forget. You kind of went into the mining side of stuff. Right.

Lance Mechanics [00:02:41]:
It's a familiar, familiar name. Yeah. I went underground and it was the best decision of my Life, like we talked about earlier, I thought I was smart until I went underground. No, absolutely not. Some of the smartest techs I've ever worked with in my life.

Jeff Compton [00:02:56]:
Yeah. Like we were talking before we got on the air, like, my, my short tenure with some of the guys that in the heavy duty construction side of things, they're just absolute masters at making it work. Right. Getting the job done. Because I think it's like, you know, everybody thinks it's like it's a, you know, a $5,000 transmission job on somebody's car is a big deal. We forget when these are like mining contracts worth millions and millions and millions of dollars and downtime, you know, is thousands of dollars a minute. The guy that can go there with a bucket of tools or a box of tools and get the thing going. There's a argyle.

Jeff Compton [00:03:32]:
Excuse me. There's a real, real. You think you're good until you get there with some of those guys that are like, they, they just have. It seems like an innate ability to, you know, cut through the bs, Know what it's not going to be. Go right to what it is and make it work, you know, and that's. We were talking before we got on air. I've worked with some guys that have that ability, and it just, it never fails to. To impress me.

Jeff Compton [00:03:57]:
And it's not always the old guys is at Lance. Some of the, the young people just have that too. Right. Like, it's just, they, they just, you know, they just cut through the crap and get it going. So you, you talked about you used to work in an independent shop before you went to the dealer, and you kind of felt like the dealer was. How do I say this? Because without offending some people, you kind of felt like if you really wanted to hit the top level in the industry, you thought that that's where you had to go as a dealership. Right.

Lance Mechanics [00:04:32]:
100%. At least in my city, everybody's situation could be different. I always try and point that out, but, you know, they'll pick and choose their information.

Jeff Compton [00:04:39]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:04:40]:
100. So like, I capped out at 86, 000. I said in the private garage. And there's no going nowhere, no going higher than that, at least at that time, like 10 years ago. And the dealer was the next step. And within like a month there, I already doubled my paycheck, so.

Jeff Compton [00:04:55]:
Wow. Yeah. And you just took off. It was Honda store, was it?

Lance Mechanics [00:04:59]:
Yeah, A Honda.

Jeff Compton [00:05:01]:
Yeah. And they're. You like that brand to work on?

Lance Mechanics [00:05:05]:
No, absolutely not. The customer base, like I started out at Ikea. I thought they complained. Honda owners are another breed. I, I honestly think they're going off. They're. What do you call that? Not quality. Maybe 20 years ago, they're going off the reputation.

Lance Mechanics [00:05:25]:
I don't think Honda is anywhere near what it used to be, 100.

Jeff Compton [00:05:29]:
You're exactly right. The, the reliable, you know, running out of oil and it would still like, you know, you could put oil back in and it was quiet and that nothing ever happened those days for that. And you know, in fairness, with the technology and stuff that we've got going on now, you know, any of those engines are a little more. Tolerances are tighter and you know, all that jazz. But I mean, yes, Toyota is the same Toyota. I say the same thing and people I know that have worked on the brand for like 20 years say the same thing. It is not our parents, Toyota, in terms of reliability and good engineering. It is just, you know, it suffers the same myriad of mess that we're all used to.

Jeff Compton [00:06:09]:
Right. It doesn't really matter the brand. I think that's got to do with something like, because you see more and more of common parts in these cars, you know, and certainly not even just the parts, the common technology. Everybody's sharing the same tech, you know. So I mean, if, if one developer gets it wrong and they sell it to four other manufacturers to use, guess what? Right? You got a piece of crap. So.

Lance Mechanics [00:06:31]:
But, well, it's like I tell everybody, the lane keep and departure and ads and blind spots. It's really only a couple companies on it. It's not like every manufacturer went out and designed their own system. No, they just bought it off the shelf.

Jeff Compton [00:06:44]:
Yeah, well, and that's even like I can remember. And you could probably remember too, the, the, the earlier hybrid systems like Ford was using the Toyota system, right? To the, to the parts and everything. Like, I mean it was so, oh, groundbreaking. No, you're not. You just went and paid for it, right? You're, you're a bunch of money when you talked about going to the dealer and the red flags in the first week kind of fill us in on what those, what, what was really shocking to you right away. The first thing that you can remember, like I talk about, you know, I made this job change in the first job that they gave me was like four warranty rims on a Dodge Charger. Like that'll be edged in my brain forever, right? Like, here's this diagnostic tech that had just started, you know, on the first job they give me four, you Know, chrome peeling rims on a charger. Like it was.

Jeff Compton [00:07:30]:
What did you have that kind of was like, what the heck did I do?

Lance Mechanics [00:07:35]:
So their system was. They kind of had a tower that didn't really dispense stuff. He just kind of directed stuff. So you went to your computer in the morning and you hit locate. First job I locate was a 2013 cross tour. Re ring the rings. I was like, oh, okay.

Jeff Compton [00:07:54]:
I guess.

Lance Mechanics [00:07:55]:
We'Re going full at this.

Jeff Compton [00:07:57]:
Which was a big tsb. And I can remember I didn't work on it, but I can remember, like people have been talking about it forever, right, that bulletin. And so they just kind of. And I had automated dispatch. Loved it some days, learned to manipulate it like we all did. Because. And everybody's like, what do you mean by manipulate? Well, the advisors would manipulate it. We had codes where it was like, you know, if you put it down as a waiter, it trumped no matter what, it dispatched anybody.

Jeff Compton [00:08:22]:
Right. You're nodding, going, yeah, your guys played the same game. Doesn't matter if it's a diag. Doesn't matter. Put it down as a waiter. Anybody can flag it, you know. And then you go out to the advisor, like, can I go for a road test with this customer? They're waiting. I need to hear this noise that she's hearing.

Jeff Compton [00:08:38]:
Oh, well, they're waiting at home. Mother Effortless. That's not the waiter. So how'd the re ring job go?

Lance Mechanics [00:08:46]:
Pretty good. It took me like two days. Like I say, two days, 14 hours. It paid 11 and a half warranties. So it wasn't really that bad.

Jeff Compton [00:08:54]:
No, nothing wrong with that.

Lance Mechanics [00:08:56]:
Just built engines all my life. So it's just like, oh, well, this is interesting. You know, they had a little tool there cleaning off the carbon, and I was like, okay, whatever.

Jeff Compton [00:09:05]:
And then did it like. So the automated dispatch thing, and we were talking about learning manipulate it. Do you what was the biggest detractor for you for that system? Because I'll, I'll share some of mine.

Lance Mechanics [00:09:22]:
So because I came from the private garage, it's going to take a few parts to get through this.

Jeff Compton [00:09:29]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:09:30]:
I learned within the first day that all the waiters are obviously in the queue first. Those are the first things you're gonna locate. You see technicians standing around looking around, seeing who was locating first, and then they'd wait till everybody went and got keys and then you'd locate. Yeah, I learned very quickly to locate instantly because it. I got all the off brands. Not the Hun, Hondas or the Hyundai's and all that are sorry, Hondas. And those tended to pay very well because these guys, they were at Honda so long, they were just scared of anything that didn't have the H on it. And all these jobs that located were gravy.

Lance Mechanics [00:10:04]:
So I'm like, okay, so I'm going the complete opposite way here. I'd get in in the morning and hit locate as fast as I could.

Jeff Compton [00:10:10]:
Huh? Yeah. Now I know what I saw. And sometimes as I saw some guys and you hear the stories, right, of like I had a guest on and he talked about how he had guys that would come in like an hour early and scoop up like a bunch of PDIs, right? And a bunch of other. And. And then put it all on hold and then start pulling the work in at 8, right? And they'd have all these other sheets for then the afternoon. And then I saw guys, I don't know if you saw this too. We had a couple guys where I worked that would walk in like if, if you started at 8 in the morning, they walked in around 8:30, 8:40. And by then the waiters were all done.

Jeff Compton [00:10:48]:
Like they were all dispatched, right? And then they would pull a really good ticket right away. The one guy did it intentionally and then the other guy did it because they both said they had a really long commute. But it just. And that was kind of like a real sour note for a lot of guys in the shop because they're looking at going like, you know, not that there wouldn't necessarily be a waiter at nine, but we also had a lot of guys that was like, if you located and it was junk, they threw it on hold right away and grabbed another job. And that was. Or if it was like, if it was start as a comeback and it'd be like, you know, so you're, you know, I give you an example. Say you did your ring job and then next week it had brake noise. They'd start that as a comeback while anybody that I worked with, they would have immediately threw that hold and grabbed the next job.

Jeff Compton [00:11:39]:
Because instead of going out to the advisor and ripping his head off or you know, it's obviously. How do you cause a brake noise? You know, by doing an engine job. They would just. Because we didn't always have a ton of good tickets in the morning or we didn't always have even enough tickets for the amount of texts that were there. So if you played the, the game straight and took what was, you know, what should have been somebody else's comeback or something like that. You might have missed out on your one and only chance that day for a day's worth of work. So.

Lance Mechanics [00:12:11]:
Wow.

Jeff Compton [00:12:12]:
Yeah, we saw that happen a lot, you know, because we had, I mean some days we were busy like tire season. You're familiar with that as a Canadian, you know, right. You can you. There's no shortage of work. But other times, you know, we had 16 texts there might be 10 jobs in the queue at 8 o' clock in the morning. Right.

Lance Mechanics [00:12:32]:
I've never experienced that bad. Maybe Christmas Eve or.

Jeff Compton [00:12:37]:
I. I made a vow a long time ago I wasn't working Christmas Eve anymore. That was. I can still remember a gentleman brought a caravan in and I'm So this would be like say 2004, 94 caravan he brings in, I don't know, we close the doors at 4, he shows up at 1:30, he wants a break insp. Action done. His cultural culture doesn't celebrate Christmas. So to him it was just a Tuesday. And we prepped the aspect for a break job.

Jeff Compton [00:13:04]:
And he drives off. This is no, you're too much money for me. I go somewhere. I just went over to Canadian Tire and I was just like never again. I'm never working Christmas Eve again. Because it was like my first opportunity at a halfways decent job that day. The rest was like some tires and you know, oil changes and you know, even people the bad news that like yeah, you're leaving in two hours for to drive to Thunder Bay on Christmas and guess what? You know, you need $2,000 worth of work if you think this thing's gonna get there. Right.

Jeff Compton [00:13:34]:
Like it was bad. So I said never again. So you liked working on the off brand stuff obviously at the dealer?

Lance Mechanics [00:13:42]:
Yeah, everything. Because so ah. I'm used to writing down points and going bouncing around there but. So one of the things I noticed when I was in the dealership is how clicky it was in that back, back garage. There were people thing with Honda is there were people who were there 10, 15, 20 years and they definitely wore Honda branded underwear. So they're. And I thought they'd be a little more giving in information. Heck no.

Lance Mechanics [00:14:14]:
So I got that. Whereas the private garage it was like everybody was willing to help you and get through problems the. The dealer until they were told to help you. It was just kind of you're on your own.

Jeff Compton [00:14:25]:
Yeah. Lots of gatekeeping now. Do you think Lancet because of how they're paid at a dealer. Like you think flat rate's got something to do with that?

Lance Mechanics [00:14:37]:
Maybe. I've heard about that in private garages too. A lot of technicians holding back on information.

Jeff Compton [00:14:43]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:14:43]:
But it definitely has to be more prevalent in a dealership setting.

Jeff Compton [00:14:47]:
I. I can kind of see both sides of it, Right. Because it's like I've always been the guy that was given the diagonal electrical jobs to do. Right. And. And you know how that is. When it's brand new, it's under warranty, it's an intermittent thing. I can still remember, you know, splices I talk about.

Jeff Compton [00:15:03]:
That would rot and corrode, and it would do wonky, weird stuff, right? Including like you'd hit the brakes in a radio, would change stations. I can remember that one. The first time I had to find that. Took me, you know, several hours to find it. And then the next one came in, I knew exactly where to go. Right. I always kind of kept those cards. Like, I didn't necessarily just.

Jeff Compton [00:15:23]:
If somebody walked over to me and said, hey, I got a caravan. And when I hit the brakes, the radios changes stations. Like, as an example, I didn't. I was always on the fence about, do I give that to that person? Because, like, I lost my ass finding it the first time. Right. But now, if it I was able to find it, that guy, maybe that I'm giving him the answer, he's never would have found it ever. Right. So who's the.

Jeff Compton [00:15:47]:
Who's to blame there, who they dispatched it to or him for not doing the hard work at finding it? What do you think?

Lance Mechanics [00:15:56]:
That's a tough one. That is a tough one. You don't want to see anybody struggle. Like, if that was a busy day, hell, I'm sure anybody would walk over and tell them the answer. But if, you know, things are really slow and nobody has any work, I'm sure you could put in the effort and learn.

Jeff Compton [00:16:12]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:16:13]:
Like there. There is the flip side to this because a lot of. I noticed a lot of apprentices, they want the answer, but they don't want to do the footwork to get there and build their skills. So, yeah, you got to be a little unforgiving that way. I think you still have to let them grow. At least apprentices, if it's a senior technician, I'd be like, yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:16:33]:
And, you know, because. And that's the thing. Like the. The young people get a bum rap. And. And some of it is. Is because I think the way the education system kind of did it different. Right.

Jeff Compton [00:16:43]:
Like when I was coming up, we had to read the page before the guy would then go over what was on the board. Right. Read the page in front of you. Now it's just like they're kind of like giving the answers. And then it's like, okay, you answer back to me like a parrot so that I know you're actually awake. And that seems to be the gist of education. So when they hit the dealership, they want to know what part to install to fix this code or you know, what, like, what fuse causes this to not work as an example. They're not great examples.

Jeff Compton [00:17:15]:
And. And it's like all that answer is in the service information. Right. You just have to go and navigate the service information. And I find that that's one of the weaknesses. They don't know how to navigate the service information. They don't learn the system inside and out to find the answer, because the answers are all there. And like you said.

Jeff Compton [00:17:31]:
Yeah, they want to come over and, you know, we're supposed to be mentoring them, but they just want to be. You tell me where to go under that carpet and find that so that I can get paid for this job. And I see that you're as deep and, you know, a shit job yourself, but this one's retail. And I'm going to go over and do this and you know, like, thank you for finding it when it was under warranty, but now it's retail and I'm going to make a quick two hours. Can you tell me where that is? That was kind of always like, I was that one guy that was sometimes would be like, no, go get the keys back to the tower and I'll get to it. That's kind of how I was. And it, you know, maybe that wasn't the right way to be. But that, at the time, it seemed like it was just survival Lance, you.

Lance Mechanics [00:18:13]:
Know, now you gotta do what you got to do. I always jumped in head first when I was in the private garage. No starts, weird troubleshooting. Same with the dealership, surprisingly. I love that stuff.

Jeff Compton [00:18:24]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:18:25]:
Came to the point where I was the only one that would touch sunroofs. Nobody else touched them.

Jeff Compton [00:18:28]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:18:29]:
So like, they're like, oh, how are you doing them so quick? It pays like 4.5 hours and you got them done in an hour. I'm like, repetitiveness. You just do it and you get better. And some guys just don't. They. They want to win on every job. You're not going to win on every job. You gotta trip and fall a few times and then get better again.

Jeff Compton [00:18:45]:
Yeah, I. I suck it. I suck at when. At sunroofs. I I think I've done two my whole career. And it wasn't because I avoided them. It's just I didn't. I didn't get the opportunity.

Jeff Compton [00:18:55]:
And then when I. Now when I get one, I get really, like, you know, nervous about am I gonna, like, put a crease in the headline or like that. Right.

Lance Mechanics [00:19:06]:
Yep.

Jeff Compton [00:19:06]:
You know, stuff that you shouldn't be worried about, stuff that you should be just worried about, like, you know, fixing it. But you're always. You know how customers are. Right. They're so particular.

Lance Mechanics [00:19:19]:
Like, you know, they notice everything afterwards.

Jeff Compton [00:19:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. I. So sunder and me, wind noises and I. Yeah, not. Not a fan. I've. I've had some wind noises that kick my butt and I.

Jeff Compton [00:19:35]:
And I hated it now. And now they're. They're not too bad. And I think it's just because, you know, when I'm out of the flat rate situation, I slow down a bit. I don't stress out when I'm flat rate. That was always the thing that was playing in my. Playing in my head was, what the hell is this job going to pay? You know, because, you know, rewires your brain.

Lance Mechanics [00:19:55]:
People don't realize it. It's taken me years to get out of that mentality. Even when I. When I was building wind turbines, I'm like, let's flat rate this. And they said, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's by the tower, not the hour, Lancer. I'm like, okay, okay, just slow down.

Jeff Compton [00:20:08]:
Building wind turbines. What was that?

Lance Mechanics [00:20:09]:
Like, incredible.

Jeff Compton [00:20:11]:
Yeah, yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:20:12]:
Like, just picking up. Was it Ontario? Just said, hell with it. Went to Alberta, got a wind turbine job, started climbing the next day, landing components. Everybody was very surprised why I was there. And then I explained what the industry was like, and they're like, oh, well, that makes more sense.

Jeff Compton [00:20:29]:
Yeah. Do you find that too? Because, I mean. And you get it. Like, we're kind of sometimes in our own little world where. Where we put ourselves out there. And a lot of people, you know, that come to talk to us on our socials are familiar with the industry. Right. But you probably have had it too, where it's like you go and you meet people that don't, like, I can think of, like, getting my haircut and talking to the hairdresser about how technicians work and how they get paid.

Jeff Compton [00:20:55]:
Because, you know, everybody. Lance, has got a terrible. You know, they can't fix my car story. Right. And then me, I remember going to Christmas parties with my ex and all this kind of stuff, and everybody would just, oh, you're a mechanic. And I'd be like, oh, here it comes. And then you have this conversation with them, Lance, about how you're paid and how it works and all this kind of stuff. And they would look at you like with these big eyes and their mouths hung up like they couldn't, couldn't believe that we worked in those kind of places.

Jeff Compton [00:21:20]:
And that's how they got paid. They're like, you get paid how? Yeah, flat rate. We get paid like that. Why? Well, some days it's really good. Every day? Well, no, not every day. Nope. Did you have conversations like that all the time?

Lance Mechanics [00:21:37]:
And that's what I'm trying to push through on these YouTube videos, because for every one comment, the person understands there's like 30 or 40 who still think we're paid by the hour.

Jeff Compton [00:21:46]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:21:46]:
I'm like, well, and they think we're paid the door rate.

Jeff Compton [00:21:48]:
Yeah. Isn't that. Oh, man, it doesn't seem to matter, right? Like, I, I see it at least once a day. Somebody says, it's, the door rate's $240 an hour. You guys are getting way paid way too much. And it's like, holy. Like there's $240 an hour door rates. And the guys may be getting paid 40 bucks.

Jeff Compton [00:22:09]:
Let's do the math on it. That's 1/6 the door rate percent or. Yeah, 1/6 y, you know, is going to the technician, like, and I understand it's overhead and profit and all that, it's cool. But you think like, look at me. Do I look like somebody that's getting paid $240 an hour? No, I don't. I look like a blue collar guy, right? Blue collar people traditionally don't make the whole damn door rate. It's the same as like, you know, the guy that shows up to put in your air conditioning unit, you know, if they're charging 300 an hour, he's not getting paid 300 an hour, you know, but people just, they just, they just. I don't know.

Jeff Compton [00:22:49]:
Where does it come from, Lance? Why, why is it there? Why is it so prevalent?

Lance Mechanics [00:22:53]:
I don't know. I feel like. Because maybe people feel like they can work on their car. They can't justify the price. Whereas a H Vac or electrician comes in and it's all magic to them and fairies and pixies that they'll pay it. But when it comes to a car, it's like, well, I can open the door, I can add washer fluid. I don't think they're Worth that.

Jeff Compton [00:23:11]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:23:12]:
So.

Jeff Compton [00:23:13]:
But you and I know the, the majority of the DIYers and the majority of all, I think I'll say it. Also the majority of people following a lot of the automotive content creators. I don't think you're all that handy at actually fixing your stuff. Like when you hear the guy and he talks about I'm a superstar, like, I fixed my old truck and it's like, well, what's your truck? Oh, it's a 78, you know, square body chef. Wow, that's some high tech stuff you got going on there. Right. Like let's, let's step into a 2018 then, Mr. Like 50 years later.

Jeff Compton [00:23:42]:
See how. Oh, you're not interested. Exactly. It's like, it's like comparing a paper airplane to a space shuttle, you know. Pardon me. Like they're. Just because they both fly doesn't mean it's the same thing. Like, it doesn't.

Jeff Compton [00:23:56]:
I find that that's the thing that really gets under my nerves about the online people that are chirping back at online creators. Sorry.

Lance Mechanics [00:24:04]:
Oh, no, I'm going on a tangent now. I've been thinking about that a lot in YouTube videos lately, how all these content creators are going, oh, you need to go to the mid 2000s. These are the best vehicles. I'm like, on this flip note, it's because they can't repair anything else, right?

Jeff Compton [00:24:18]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:24:19]:
It's literally like 2009 seems to be the cutoff for a lot of these content creators. Anything after that's just too complicated for them.

Jeff Compton [00:24:25]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:24:26]:
And I'm like, well, those vehicles are drying up and it's like early YouTube when everybody was into the 12 valve Cummings and the Hondas with like 10 wires, like, yeah, you know, things are getting more complicated now and you see sponsors and stuff, sending them out to get ECU done and all this other crazy stuff that the average person is just not going to be able to do.

Jeff Compton [00:24:45]:
No. And you and I know like all these, you know, trucks and stuff. I saw a guy posted a video this morning and he suggested that somebody go and buy like, I think it was like a 2004 Chevy truck. He's like, go ahead, put an engine and transmission or not and keep driving it because it would be way more reliable. He's in Georgia. There's no rust. Right. Like, how many good 2004 Chevy trucks do you see in your neighborhood? That.

Lance Mechanics [00:25:10]:
None.

Jeff Compton [00:25:11]:
Exactly. Right. It doesn't work. So unfortunately the, the reality has become as, as we would all love to have very basic, you Know, simplified vehicles to work on. Owners operate all that kind of jazz. They don't last up here in our climate. They don't even last down there either. I don't care what anybody says.

Jeff Compton [00:25:32]:
Like, you know, if they were so. If that was so lucrative, why are so many people still buying 2021s, 23s, 24s, 25s, if there's all this rust free 2000, mid 2000 stuff driving around? Because they don't want it. They want all that luxury and, and amenities until it effing breaks. And then they're mad because they have to go to their local dealership who, hey, like, I see that you're here. Cool. All right. We documented this. We're gonna do a diag.

Jeff Compton [00:26:05]:
Yeah. It could be like a month before, you know, the part shows up. It could be six weeks before we get to you in the queue because, like, you know, we have no technicians in the back. Like our, all our master techs quit or retired or died. And, you know, we don't have anybody that we can give this to them. And I'm sorry. And you're sitting there going, well, I have a warranty. Cool story, bro.

Jeff Compton [00:26:25]:
Like, you know, it. Those kind of things, people just want to get online and yell at you or I and go, it's not fair. Where's your old car? Why aren't you driving it if it was so good? You know, like what, what, what's kind of the. So we kind of talked about at the dealer, was there a job that you didn't like? Like that you absolutely hated.

Lance Mechanics [00:26:54]:
Honda Odyssey floor harnesses because they were throwing airbag lights.

Jeff Compton [00:26:58]:
Okay.

Lance Mechanics [00:26:58]:
And it's just because I hated my dog's knocking on the door, because I hated how incredibly overly complicated the dash is on those to pull apart.

Jeff Compton [00:27:07]:
Right, Right.

Lance Mechanics [00:27:09]:
And even then, I didn't really hate the job, but it was, it was a full eight hours. You weren't stopping, you weren't taking breaks. It was. If you wanted to stay ahead, you had to finish it that day. And it was. You almost needed two bays because of how much plastic is in those crappy things.

Jeff Compton [00:27:23]:
Right.

Lance Mechanics [00:27:24]:
Like, the amount of space was unbelievable. And for people who don't know, you can't just throw this on the concrete floor, it's going to leave scratches and they're going to notice.

Jeff Compton [00:27:32]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:27:33]:
So space becomes an issue with those.

Jeff Compton [00:27:35]:
Yeah, well. And that's it. Like, I, I've seen customers walk through shops and they see spare parts on the roof of their car or a car, and they're like, why is it up there? Have you noticed how we tend to jam? You know, you were talking this morning in one of your videos about how, you know, if they've got room for 20 hoists, they've got 20 hoists and 20 tacks. Like, there's no, there's no space between them. You know, you could take your parts and lay it on the floor or keep it nice and organized. There's no room for that. They don't allow that. You know, it's pickup trucks.

Jeff Compton [00:28:03]:
Everybody loves that because they just start heaving stuff into the back of the truck, you know, and then the engine cab goes up, you know, all those parts, cab comes down, parts come out of the truck. Like, it's like it. You think they almost engineered it that way. But you know, people, when they. It's the little things like that that they just don't understand about what we face every day. You know, that's the part that I'm always trying to with this is have people on that have been there and are there and doing it, because if you don't know, you don't know. And there's so much hate directed towards the automotive people and online, it, It. I, I struggle.

Jeff Compton [00:28:40]:
It's the number one struggle I struggle with now is the way they talk to. The way they'll talk to Paul, Dan, or the way they'll talk to Ivan sometimes. Well, yeah, Ivan and Eric, you know, they, they, they get a lot of love, and rightfully so, they deserve it. But I'll see some guys talk to check engine Chuck or Rich or, you know, some of the other guys in this room, and I'm like, do you not realize if, like, if you were in the room with us, you would never say that to us because we would hung out of your head. Right? Like, why do you think that is?

Lance Mechanics [00:29:13]:
I don't know. Makes them feel big. It's funny you mentioned that. I commented on a royalty automotive video there, and a lot of my followers are following it. And one guy commented, you're not a real technician. You shouldn't comment on this. And the amount of people defending me was hilarious. I'm like, I'm just.

Lance Mechanics [00:29:26]:
I just said I'm a backyard or I don't have a clue what I'm doing.

Jeff Compton [00:29:29]:
Yeah. And the hate that those guys get Royalty. Like, oh, he didn't. Man bun, ponytail. Like, oh, my God. Sherwood's one of the sharpest guys you'll see online and has been for a very long time. Before he was online. Like, he's Not.

Jeff Compton [00:29:45]:
He's been teaching other technicians how to solve complicated stuff for a very long time. So, you know, and I like, they hit the ground running and are doing an amazing job of showcasing themselves as professionals. There's the puppy. Hey. She is.

Lance Mechanics [00:30:00]:
Yeah, she's gonna one up now.

Jeff Compton [00:30:02]:
No, that's.

Lance Mechanics [00:30:03]:
Oh, it's all good.

Jeff Compton [00:30:04]:
What's her name?

Lance Mechanics [00:30:05]:
Lola.

Jeff Compton [00:30:06]:
Lola. Hi, Lola.

Lance Mechanics [00:30:08]:
Yeah, she's a big, sucky baby.

Jeff Compton [00:30:10]:
Yeah. And that's what. So, you know, the guys that, like, I have to. I have to work really hard. That when I'm seeing people, you know, disrespect, you know, kind of people, I have a lot of respect for what I'd almost call friends. I. I work really hard to censor myself because it's like, you know, there's no reason. Like, where are they coming from, Lance? Where they're so mad.

Jeff Compton [00:30:34]:
They just want to lash into the guy. Like, Sherwood. Like, I don't know.

Lance Mechanics [00:30:41]:
I don't know. Like, he's. I. I'd love to spend some time with him and learn from him, but these people are not mechanically inclined to know how nice of a guy he is or. Oh, it froze. Okay, perfect.

Jeff Compton [00:31:00]:
I thought Lola stepped on your cord there for me.

Lance Mechanics [00:31:03]:
Yeah. Where was I going there? Like, from his first video, I noticed, like, I'm like, holy crap. Like, people don't realize who this guy is or what he is. Like, I don't know. They'll just. On anything. People are putting YouTube to such high standards now. And I'm like, it's YouTube.

Lance Mechanics [00:31:21]:
Like, we're gonna make mistakes. We're not going to be 100 fact. And there's always a fact checker in the comments who wants to get their 10 seconds of glory and a thousand likes. And.

Jeff Compton [00:31:31]:
Yeah, I never. I never understood that. Especially, like, the topics that I'll stay away from intentionally is like, oil, engine oil. Because somebody is always a better expert. You know, it doesn't matter, right? Like, if you. If you say that you put in the. The OE recommended. Oh, you're a dummy.

Jeff Compton [00:31:48]:
You shouldn't be doing that. And then it's like, oh, my God, this brand is better than this brand. And this brand is like, come on, man. The reason the engines are blowing up is not because of the oil. It's because we're leaving the oil in it too long. That's for starters. You know, and then we're putting the wrong oil in because of EPA mandates. Not because, you know, the.

Jeff Compton [00:32:08]:
I have to think the OEs know that there's a better Oil to put in the engine. It's just. They're forced to put it in to get a few better tenths of mileage, you know, and light off the cats faster because the oil's thinner, like. Like that. Look at the new Six2 recall. Right there's perfect example right there.

Lance Mechanics [00:32:25]:
Oh, boy.

Jeff Compton [00:32:25]:
You know. Did you see Brandon Sloan put a video up. One of the blocks has got a window now right where, you know, you're supposed to put. He put up one video, and it showed where you're supposed to actually mount the. The microphone to call it a mic for the oscilloscope, to pick up the bearing, you know, frequency. And then there's again looking through the same fender well on another truck, there's a hole right there in the block. So obviously that one, you know, for that inspection, doesn't need to have the oscilloscope hooked up. She's dicked.

Lance Mechanics [00:32:59]:
No, like, no one warranty. They probably want to see it for sure.

Jeff Compton [00:33:05]:
What?

Lance Mechanics [00:33:08]:
What?

Jeff Compton [00:33:09]:
So you enjoy the. The diagnostic challenge.

Lance Mechanics [00:33:12]:
I've always loved that. There's some days when I regret saying that, but. Yeah, like, it's the thrill. Like, it's. I like chasing that high when you finally succeed and you know the answer. Doing brakes and suspension parts. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. It pays the bills.

Lance Mechanics [00:33:27]:
But, you know, dime a dozen, you can do those every day. You're not going to tell me finding a transmission issue because of a rear tail light ground is not thrilling. Yes.

Jeff Compton [00:33:39]:
Yeah. And that's the first time. The first time you find it, right? And then you see it get. You know, you go say to a training event, you know, OE training, and you share it with some of the guys in the room and go, hey, ever seen this? You know, and nobody puts their hand up and you're like. But they're looking at you like, all of a sudden, like. Like you're a God, right? And then they share something really cool with them. That was always the. The thing with me with training, the very little OE training that I got.

Jeff Compton [00:34:07]:
That was the best part, was the networking with the other guys. What are you seeing, right? Because I can remember, like, going. And here I was in Kingston, and I'm going up to Toronto, and I'm. I'm seeing these guys that, like, their Chrysler dealers have a whole fleet of sprinter vans. And, like, they're. He's like, all I work on is sprinters. And I'm like, you must hate your life. He's like, no, man.

Jeff Compton [00:34:27]:
Like, I got him down to an art Like I have all the tools and you know, they come apart really easy for me and I make tons of money. Whereas because back home where I. I think we had like three Sprinters in the whole city. This is when Sprinters were brand new at Chrysler, right. So it was like. But in Toronto, he's like, he had them just waiting for him, the first gen Sprinters when they hit Chrysler. And I'd be like, we had, we sold three. Like, you know, and so we didn't get a lot of it.

Jeff Compton [00:34:53]:
And the stuff he would tell me, I was like, we haven't even seen that yet. And then you would come back and talk to another guy and he was like. And then six months, eight months later, you might finally see it. And for him it's old news. You know, he's done them all, fixed them all. But we're seeing the first time that was what was really cool for me with networking.

Lance Mechanics [00:35:12]:
So I would like. The networking thing is people realize as vehicles fail in different ways in different regions. So there was a few years back here where between Quebec, North Bay and Ontario, Honda had something with their heat riser valves where they all failed simultaneously across this region and never happened anywhere else on the planet. Engineers were brought in from Toyota and they hit the whole area figuring out what's going on. And it's funny, when we, we talk about stuff, people always be like, well that's never happened to my vehicle. I'm like, because you've never been to the environments we've been or vice versa. We see failures across the board or in different regions. And that's really hard as a technician because you learn something from these people, but you may never see it in your lifetime.

Jeff Compton [00:35:54]:
Yeah, yeah. And that was always weird to me because I was like, I can remember calling techline for Chrysler and a lot of the time you were talking to somebody in Georgia and you know, like they don't get the kind of weather that we get up here, right. So it's like. And then you would hear other things. I could remember still 2001, we had a bunch of. For some reason it only did it in the Intrepids and it only held. It happened with Shell Winter Gas and it was like this rash of cars Intrepids from a, from a rental company Enterprise Rent a car and they all bought like Shell gasoline because that's I guess was their agreed thing. And it was just when they were changing over to winter gas at this time of year, well, it caused.

Jeff Compton [00:36:38]:
It would gel in the tank. So all of A sudden we're getting all these intrepids coming in to have no fuel pressure. And at first we're like, okay, putting the pump in it. Well, then once we started to actually get in there and they. We didn't catch it because all gas smelt the same. Didn't see anything wrong with the fuel. They're like, before you change the pump, just put a bunch of de icer in it and we're like, de icer? Yeah, try it. It ended up being this whole thing where Shell ended up, like, paying Chrysler a bunch of money back.

Jeff Compton [00:37:05]:
But, like, that was only happening in, like, one particular model over a very short window, like a month and a half, that it was really rampant. And then it was fixed. It was weird. It was like their first blend that they hit in the tank. Didn't. Didn't. It would just yell. It was.

Jeff Compton [00:37:21]:
It was weird. People like, if you don't talk and you don't network, you may never learn that train of thought to think something different. Right. Like now I see countless times where it's bad fuel, but you'll talk to some technicians and it's like bad fuel will still completely stump them in their diagnostic process, you know what I mean? Because maybe they've never been exposed to it.

Lance Mechanics [00:37:43]:
I got a good one when. Because of where I'm in, where I am. When fuel prices get really high, every dealership experiences no starts. Because what happens is the people in my area start buying fuel from the reserve and it's full of water.

Jeff Compton [00:37:59]:
Really? Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:38:00]:
It's always within a week or two of gas prices skyrocketing. And then boom. No starts across every single brand. And then you're pulling them in. And guys, it's a tough thing to diagnose if they're not used to it. They're calling fuel pumps, they're calling injectors. They're doing weird things and they'll. They'll get the car running on someone's dime, but it's usually just bad fuel.

Jeff Compton [00:38:21]:
Yeah, see, we're. We're lucky down here. Like, I. I admit it. I go to the res quite a bit and buy my gas because it's tax free. And I'm not. I haven't had a bad batch yet. But I mean, I'm also.

Jeff Compton [00:38:33]:
I fill up at the one station that I know, like, is always busy, always lined up. And I think that's, like half the battle is. Is, you know, it doesn't have a chance to get sediment. And have you heard that old superstition if you See them? The tanker truck at the. At the gas station don't fill up when he's there because, you know, when he's pumping it into the ground. Yeah. Sternal. Do you believe that or no? No.

Lance Mechanics [00:38:59]:
If you. That's probably a good time to get an oil change. If they're pumping a new oil into a tote, though, and stirs up all the sediment, you get all the benefits.

Jeff Compton [00:39:08]:
Exactly. What's some other weird things that you can think of that are, like, geographically challenging for you or, like, special?

Lance Mechanics [00:39:20]:
It could be the area fuel complaints, fuel mileage complaints.

Jeff Compton [00:39:26]:
Okay.

Lance Mechanics [00:39:27]:
That could be anywhere. But we live in a really cold and rocky and hilly city, and everything's 45 minutes away. And if you're an American viewer, that's hundreds of kilometers or 50, 60 miles.

Jeff Compton [00:39:38]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:39:39]:
We measure everything in time. So when people don't get their fuel economy what's advertised, unfortunately, they complain. And here it's. Nothing's getting what's advertised. So.

Jeff Compton [00:39:54]:
Yeah, not even close. Not even close.

Lance Mechanics [00:39:56]:
Or we're kind of landlocked by rock, so I don't think there's enough highway driving. So, like, I feel like it's more in my city than others because until I went to Honda, I never dealt with so many fuel complaints in my life. It was like, twice a day.

Jeff Compton [00:40:10]:
Yeah. And I get it, too. You probably have seen it enough times where people seem to think that when they use the remote starter, that it must run on air or magic. And then they go, you know, I did. I lost 100km to my tank, you know. Well, how many times did you use your remote starter last week? Well, every morning. How long did you let it run? 15 minutes. Okay, so let's do the math on this here.

Jeff Compton [00:40:34]:
15 minutes times five. Wow. Let's think about this for a sec, Sally, you ran your car an extra hour last, you know, at idle. Do you think that might account for the fuel? And they look at you like you're crazy. Like, it. It. It runs on fuel. I'm sorry.

Jeff Compton [00:40:50]:
And it's the especially. I'll say this. I've always been a believer that, like the fuel map, when it's running at idle on a remote start isn't probably the most optimized. Now, I understand the oxygen sensor still in play and all that kind of jazz, but you know where I'm going with this, right? It's. It's gonna run pretty rich for. For quite a while to. To warm on the car up, because that's what you're supposed to be doing. Not Sitting in there for 15 minutes because you know you only have.

Jeff Compton [00:41:19]:
What makes me laugh is people like only have like I only have a 10 minute commute.

Lance Mechanics [00:41:24]:
Oh God.

Jeff Compton [00:41:25]:
And you let it run for 15 minutes to make a 10 minute commute. Yeah, well, I wanted it warm when I get in there. Okay.

Lance Mechanics [00:41:33]:
Shouldn't say fuel economy. Now you're thinking about it. I'm sure even in southern Ontario they might have had these problems. Honda's 1.5 liter does not generate heat. You can drive that thing for 45 minutes to an hour and it's still kind of mildly warm.

Jeff Compton [00:41:50]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:41:51]:
And maybe the further south you go it's not a problem. But here it's like the updates we did, I find.

Jeff Compton [00:41:59]:
Yeah. And I don't know how familiar you are with Nissan. Nissan build one of the worst cars for Canadian climate in terms of getting heat. Like it is terrible. Like I can remember having old Dodge trucks that would cook you in the cab. Right. But yet like a Nissan, if you're like, windshield is clear, it's pretty much working about as good as it's going to get. And they do, they would revamp like how they would run the CVT fluid through the cooler and all this kind of jazz and like.

Jeff Compton [00:42:29]:
But we put on lots of. At the Nissan, we put on lots of like preheater kits because it just. Otherwise it wouldn't like people be like, I leave, you know, and I, I have a 25 minute commute and the car is cold the whole way. There must be something wrong with it. You're like, nope, that's just the way they are. There was so much latent error around the thing that it was like, I think it, you could have taken a rat out of it. In the wintertime the Nissan will run just fine and it won't get hot. Like it's.

Jeff Compton [00:42:57]:
They're crazy, man. They just. So much of the heat is taken away from the. Well, the fact that it's -35 and that it's like all this air space around pulls the heat right out of the engine is terrible. They're junk funny you did that update.

Lance Mechanics [00:43:11]:
We're doing them on the 16 and up CRVs. We were installing something called a DEPA heater and there's this one time and people don't know. The average person who buys a CRV is not a soccer mom. They're like 50, 60, 70, they're retired. They can't handle the cold. So there's a complaint. There will be a complaint yearly. So we installed these defi heater Pre heater kits, they plugged in 120 volts.

Lance Mechanics [00:43:37]:
They were controlled by your phone. So I went through the whole process. They installed it. I go up to the front, I'm going to show the customer. I'm like, hey, can I see your phone? And he's like, I don't have a phone. I'm like one minute. I went to the back and laughed so hard I couldn't keep a straight face. Went to the service manager, I'm like, you deal with this.

Lance Mechanics [00:43:52]:
I can't, I can't do this. And I'm like, because all that was pointless.

Jeff Compton [00:43:58]:
Well how are they going to control it now?

Lance Mechanics [00:43:59]:
They can't. It was all wirelessly controlled.

Jeff Compton [00:44:07]:
Here's your bill for your.

Lance Mechanics [00:44:09]:
It was free, but it was useless. Extra two power cords coming out of your vehicle and all this stuff. And drilled holes in a firewall for nothing.

Jeff Compton [00:44:18]:
Yeah, right. So they can plug. Oh my God, that's frustrating. I. Phones are one of those things where again people come in and say I can't get my phone to link, you know, and it's like. And they pull out a flip phone. Like yeah, there's probably why.

Lance Mechanics [00:44:32]:
Yeah, that was a. I did a video on that. And people treat their phones like a kid. And I, I always tell people, why are you this thousand dollar phone in your $60,000 car? Why are you. Why is the, why is the car the problem? Why isn't it your phone? And don't get me started on Apple users.

Jeff Compton [00:44:54]:
Not a fan, Lance.

Lance Mechanics [00:44:55]:
Not a fan of them in cars. Oh, they're the worst.

Jeff Compton [00:45:00]:
Yeah. So kind of are you steadfast telling people not to become a mechanic for automotive or are you just trying like is your goal kind of to make them aware as it is mine, what the reality really is?

Lance Mechanics [00:45:24]:
Both. I'm telling every one of them, go. Heavy equipment. Semi trucks isn't exactly a great industry here too. Heavy equipment, fleet work. Don't waste your time in automotive. You want the skills. Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:45:36]:
Get the four years, do your tour of duty. You won't regret it it but have a plan to get out. It's not a long term career I think at least here in Ontario and it's starting to sound like all North America really.

Jeff Compton [00:45:50]:
It truly is. I mean like I network you. You talk to a lot of people from all over too. And I do too like on the shop owner side and the technician side and there's a lot of change happening but like I tell people and it's funny right, because like I, I've shared my Story If I'd have never gone into a dealership, taking a dealership job, I'd have never made it in this industry because like the independent shop was at, I was going to starve, go broke, be bankrupt, everything. I was going to get repossessed because they weren't paying. And they, not only were they not paying, they weren't training, they weren't teaching me, they weren't giving me any opportunities. I was like an oil change kid and like a tire kid. And you know, he's going to do a bunch of work for the safety.

Jeff Compton [00:46:31]:
You're going to go do the work and he's going to sign off and you're not going to learn. They would take like diagnostics and it'd be like a three hour ordeal to condemn like that the oxygen sensor was bad. And I'm thinking this must be amazing, like this snap on tool. You must have to be really smart to navigate and all this kind of stuff. And then I went to the dealer and they threw me at anything I wanted to touch. And I was knocking out diags and stuff and I'm like, this ain't hard and I'm like, and I'm making, you know, I went still because I hadn't written my coq yet, they hadn't put me flat rate, I was making $6 more an hour and tackling anything they want to do software updates like, you know, here's a toy and no start, same as you. Right. That kind of stuff.

Jeff Compton [00:47:11]:
And I left a shop where they're going to pay me $11 an hour. So if I never gone to a dealer, I wouldn't have gotten the, the exposure and the skill set that I now take with me everywhere. But you're exactly right that like the dealer from a culture standpoint for future, there's no future there. And my friend Joshua Taylor from Wrench Turners, he's going to hate to hear me say that, but it's the truth. I don't think the dealer owners right now have got their heads out of their asses far enough to see exactly how bad the problem is. They're saying, oh, we can't hire techs. Yeah. Because they don't want to work for you.

Jeff Compton [00:47:48]:
Because you're not changing your culture. Right. You know, I mean, you're a sharp guy, you always were, obviously. And yet, you know, you landed there and in no time. How long did you last.

Lance Mechanics [00:48:02]:
Frig? Three or four years.

Jeff Compton [00:48:05]:
So not, not really long in the greater scheme of things in terms of like some of the other Lifers that you'd seen, right, that have been there 20 years.

Lance Mechanics [00:48:12]:
Yeah, it kind of blows people's mind here. I'm 35. I've only really been a licensed mechanic for six years, and before that, I only turned wrenches for three. So I came into this industry pretty damn late just on a whim.

Jeff Compton [00:48:24]:
So, yeah, I started when I was 20, but I didn't get my CFQ until I was like, 30. I took a long time after I'd finished my last intake because, like, a lot of people I worked with, I'm like, I don't know if I can pass that. Like, I mean, you know, I'm not sure. I didn't have the confidence. I didn't have a lot of other people giving me the confidence, telling me that I, you know, and it's funny, it took one person to say something in my mind, and I'm like, you know what? F you. I'm to going. And I. I got like a 96 on it.

Jeff Compton [00:49:00]:
So I was like, sitting there, my service manager's like, do you know how much money you lost by not having it? And I'm like, I don't even want to think about that, Don. Like, I just, you know, he was right. But I'm not. I'm not all about money, you know? Like, it doesn't. It's not my. My. My end all and be all of what I choose to find as a good workplace. I'm more about challenging and being challenged and, like, being appreciated.

Jeff Compton [00:49:27]:
That goes farther than being really well paid, you know, well, pay is good, but, like, it was the culture of the dealer that always killed me, you know, because even if you made 12 hours or 15 hours or 18 hours, if the guy that you didn't have any respect for was consistently hitting 20, you felt like you were getting screwed. Right? And that, That I think, is what plays into us and the dealers, Lance. You know, it. They pit each other. They pit you against each other.

Lance Mechanics [00:49:57]:
Oh, 100. You know, this is bad. Like, I'm sure when the apprentice, there's a lot of technicians who work with me, and so we did a tool talk in the morning, and it would. She'd do something called right south, right sell hours. And it was all there in the open. People knew exactly how much customer pay hours I was pulling in a day. And when they seen 12, 20, 30 hours on some, they're like, holy. Like, what.

Lance Mechanics [00:50:22]:
What am I doing? I'm like, well, I'm not working on Hondas, but, you know, yeah. And that would breed Competition. But more than anything it was resentment from the other guys. So.

Jeff Compton [00:50:33]:
But they didn't want, they didn't want the jobs you were doing anyway. No, they didn't want to touch the upper and stuff.

Lance Mechanics [00:50:37]:
And well, towards the end when they realized how good it was, they started, you know, fighting for it. But I was already on my way out at that point. But yeah, like they don't want to touch it.

Jeff Compton [00:50:47]:
You don't want to learn.

Lance Mechanics [00:50:48]:
Like they're not. They're Honda. They were born and bred Honda. They're not going to know what to do with a Ford.

Jeff Compton [00:50:53]:
So yeah, now that operand stuff, was it coming in because it was like you'd sold it as a used car at the dealers.

Lance Mechanics [00:50:59]:
Cars they sold a lot and they offered was it tri, tri core, extended core or whatever. All those freaking shitty aftermarket warranty things. And we basically raped them. So.

Jeff Compton [00:51:10]:
Huh.

Lance Mechanics [00:51:11]:
But usually you had to do a video so it wasn't dishonest. It's just, well, you know, like play here, play there. Your tires are worn. And it was pretty damn easy at the end of the day, especially on Dodge products.

Jeff Compton [00:51:22]:
Yeah. Dodge and front end. I, I have some friends that made a ton of money on Dodge. Front end a ton. They loved it. And I mean we all did. We were all kind of front end at the Dodge dealer was like, we all were good at it. We were all good at it.

Jeff Compton [00:51:38]:
Like we knew the squeaks and the rattles and you know, like how fast can you do sway bar bushings? Well, 12 minutes. You, I mean we were, we were rocking. But it was like, you know, the engine stuff, we could all navigate that pretty good. But the electrical and drivability, like I can remember, for me it just seemed very easy because I knew there, I knew where the spots were. They rotted. The wires were rotten all the time. Everybody's like, I put a tip them in and it still like doesn't work. And I'm like, yeah, because it's not the tip of them this time.

Jeff Compton [00:52:06]:
I know it can be. I mean we all had a known good tip them on our cabinet that we plugged in if you were really stuck. But they never knew that like just, just down from the connector the wires were rotten right there.

Lance Mechanics [00:52:19]:
That's you know, many AC complaints with the tip them. And I, I found you mentioned Rod and I started to think is more as I became a technician troubleshoot shot is half the stuff you see out of warranty is from a dealership tech poking and prodding for issues unrelated to that that somebody pays for down the line.

Jeff Compton [00:52:37]:
Yeah. So it still makes me cringe when I see guys grab a razor knife and go to the side of a harness and run down the harness. That still makes me cringe because, hey, before I knew better, I did it. And then I had a car that I did it to. It come back to me, like, two years later, and it was a mess. And it took me forever to get all the gremlins out of that. Out of that harness, out of that van that I created. And I.

Jeff Compton [00:53:03]:
I. So I learned, you know, so Erico, sometimes guys chirp him. Oh, you need to use a seam ripper. They're not wrong. But I mean, like, if you don't know, you don't know. It's the thing with test lights. I still, like, I love, love it. But when I see a guy take it and jab it into the front of a connector, I want to, like, pistol whip them right there in the bay.

Jeff Compton [00:53:27]:
Because it's just like, I've. I've gone after so many guys after that, and, like, they've spread the terminals out because they don't buy a terminal kit or, you know, whatever. Just create something. Don't buy a t pin. They just. Just, oh, the meter probe is fine. I can jam it in there and try to hold it, and it's like, you just ruined it face. Like, now that's gonna be bump the speedo stops.

Jeff Compton [00:53:49]:
Why is that? Well, over here. Sorry. No, no, I get it.

Lance Mechanics [00:53:54]:
It's funny. Like I say, I love test lights. I. I bought one recently. I've never used it in my entire career. I just found better ways to do it. Like you said, spreading terminals. That some poor, poor person's gonna pay for that down the road.

Lance Mechanics [00:54:07]:
And diagnostic fees.

Jeff Compton [00:54:09]:
So are you a power probe guy?

Lance Mechanics [00:54:12]:
I am, but I always tell people this is, like, a last resort, But I do like seeing my positives, my grounds, and. But my multimeter is my favorite tool. Like, generally, I don't find I have to supply power to something. You can usually see what's going on. To, like, supply power is like a last resort for me.

Jeff Compton [00:54:30]:
Yeah. I. And because my, like, very first tenure with doing diagnosis was at a truck and trailer shop, where a lot of the times you were fixing trailer lights, so it just became like your test light was the best now. And I'm talking. They hadn't built the power probe yet. Like, we're talking pre 2000, so we didn't have one. So it was like, I'm old. I'm old.

Jeff Compton [00:54:51]:
Lance I'm old, so my. My. I can still. My first main boss took my DVOM away, gave me a test lamp and said, I'll give you the dvo. I'm back when I think you know what you're doing. And he gave it back to me in a short order. But I really understood then because it was like, hey, this light should turn on. It's got 12 volts and it's got a ground.

Jeff Compton [00:55:12]:
But no, it doesn't, because when I touch it with my test light, you know, it won't carry the load. He was, he was fundamental in teaching me that. And now actually, he's not even into the business anymore. He closed the shop down and called it quits. He retired, so got out alive. Yeah, he. Lance, I don't know. Maybe it's happening where you are.

Jeff Compton [00:55:34]:
When they brought out this new safety testing system, we had, like, we had four shops around me shut down, just pull the plug, not doing anymore. They said, that's it. F this gone. You see that where you are?

Lance Mechanics [00:55:48]:
No, because they all. They. They're charging more for safeties. But the guys figured out unless you call something, you don't have to take a video of it or pictures. So weirdy. Safeties are just. Is still the same. It's just, you know, mechanics hate change.

Lance Mechanics [00:56:01]:
I'm like, well, coming from the dealership, we're doing this stuff with videos anyways. Like, I just went to the garage I used to be at. They're just down the road for me, and I stop in all the time and they're like, yeah, this. This is BS and this and that. Like, you're just taking pictures of the brakes, loading it. It's not hard.

Jeff Compton [00:56:16]:
I do probably two safeties a day now at my new job because of, like, it's a used car lot. And like, I don't understand what all the fuss is about, but it really is not that hard, you know. And like, for me, I get it from the customer standpoint, you know, that it takes a little bit longer to do. But for me, like, I don't ever shoot the video until the car is reconditioned, ready to go. So all my videos look the same. They look like there's new tires, new brakes, or there's possible tires, possible brakes. And the video all looks the same. The idea that we're shooting a video and failing the car and then presenting to the customer, the estimate to me is still backwards.

Jeff Compton [00:56:52]:
Like, the shop should be like, okay, we're going to inspect the car, go through it, just as if you would. Don't turn the tablet on. Document everything. Take the video like we have been with cell phones or whatever, Upload it for your dvi, show them and then go. This is why we're not passing your car today. This is your estimate to do your repairs. Would you like your car to, you know, be repaired? Yes or no? Done. That's how we were handling it before I got to this job where it's like somebody bought a car and they wanted safety.

Jeff Compton [00:57:18]:
We didn't run it through the MTO until it was like, good, you know, because what are you doing? Like, you're, you're putting it up there and you're failing something. Now, me, I gotta go back. When I fix it, log back into tablet again, shoot another video, get them involved. It takes, it takes way too long. And I don't know whether that was the reason that so many guys didn't want to do it. I think a lot of shops didn't want to do it because they were letting some sketchy stuff go that they knew they weren't going to be able to hide on the car. You know, I'm not a little timid.

Lance Mechanics [00:57:52]:
Information to anybody here. If you're in Ontario and you're behind a car that has a T sticker on the back license plate, I'd get a few more car lengths behind that.

Jeff Compton [00:58:00]:
Yes. Yeah. T for temporary. Yeah. You've seen some junk, have you?

Lance Mechanics [00:58:07]:
Oh, geez. Ah, everybody's seen junk. Pulling freaking four to where they focuses and, you know, someone had put a piece of sheet metal on the car on the front subframe to try and make it pass. I'm like, oh, my God. And it peeled it back or Honda's no better. Like, everybody thinks it's quality, but they have recalls every year or two where we're going in there and rebuilding the rear frames on CRVs ridgelines, and they rot out just like any other car. Yeah, probably worse. Unibodies, man.

Jeff Compton [00:58:39]:
Oh, it's every, every Focus, that seam I saw had no rocker panels left. Like, guys used to joke about, like, Cavaliers and cobalts and stuff. And they were bad too, but, man, Focuses just seemed to rot from that front wheel right to the back. In like five years, they were just gone. It's like you'd already put two trannies in it. Now it needs a set of rocker panels. Like, you know, how much do you love your focus? Right? Like, yeah, f this I'll trade it in and buy a Honda. I, I, I think that the new system is good, but it Gets really, you know, it's hard.

Jeff Compton [00:59:15]:
I'll say this. It's hard on the truck guys. The most, it seems like that's where we're seeing the biggest thing.

Lance Mechanics [00:59:19]:
Yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:59:20]:
Is the frames on the trucks are shot.

Lance Mechanics [00:59:22]:
So you're in Ontario, what was it, 20, 15 or 16 bob of the head of the MTO or whatever his name was, went around and did this little show and tell for every mechanic in Ontario.

Jeff Compton [00:59:32]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [00:59:32]:
I remember him saying, a true safety will take you four to six hours. You're never gonna do it. I'm like, well then why would you do that to us? He's like, nah, whatever. I'm retiring. Screw you guys. Go a cow. You know, like that's our government.

Jeff Compton [00:59:46]:
Oh. And. And he's not wrong. But to me, it's like if I have to pull the dial indicator out to know whether it's got enough play to fail, fails no play. Because if it's not play now, it's gonna have more play tomorrow. And if I drive it down a certain street and hit a bunch of potholes, it's gonna have a whole lot more play in an hour. There's no point. And that's what he.

Jeff Compton [01:00:13]:
I think he was getting at. He says it should take four to six hours. Listen, it's me signing at the end of the day. I'm not gonna. If I'm not comfortable signing it at 3 millimeter on your tire. And we just. I had, I had Mike on from 3D Auto and we just had a. The episode actually just dropped on Tuesday.

Jeff Compton [01:00:32]:
We talked about this and I said I don't care that 3 mil is on the tire passes. I don't pass tires with three mil. Five is my cut off. Right. If it's under five, it's getting tires. That's just the way it is. I got a. The one I pulled in, pulled in a 2018 Durango Hemi RT.

Jeff Compton [01:00:50]:
Love it. Love driving. It's fun. And it comes from Toronto. It's down here. We bought it at an auction. We're getting ready to recertified. It's got two of one type of tire on the left hand side and two of one type of tire on the right hand side.

Jeff Compton [01:01:04]:
It's got bridge owns on one side and happy longs on the other side. Toronto, right. It's an Indian tire and it's getting four because it's like six, six, five, four. It's getting four new tires and that's their 20 stars. It's not gonna be cheap. Oh, well, you know, like it's they pass? Sure. Am I gonna put my name on that? No. Does it make the company look good when we put stuff like that into the lot? No, it does not.

Lance Mechanics [01:01:30]:
No. It's a comeback.

Jeff Compton [01:01:32]:
Yeah, it's a comeback waiting to happen. Like. And that's where you know these people with their safeties and it's like I went and bought this car and now I need it safetied. You know, I, I feel for them, them, I really do because they haven't clued in yet and I don't know if they're ever gonna that if it didn't need anything that person A would still be driving it or B, they would just go ahead and safety it for you because they'll get way more money when they sell it safety than when they sell it not safety. So there's a reason it's not safetied and it's probably rotten.

Lance Mechanics [01:02:07]:
You know, it's funny you mentioned that. The one thing I see in like Kijiji ads is selling you know, 10 grand or 11, 000 certified. I'm like, well safety doesn't cost that much. They're using that as a deterrent because it probably needs more than that. And in between the lines, right, we'd.

Jeff Compton [01:02:25]:
Finished off a 2014 Jetta today and just to get it. So again just to get it. Like it needed struts, tires, brakes, blower motor, blower motor, resistor AC still doesn't work all that. We're up over five grand into this car just to get it like. And again, you know, the salesman's flipping, he's like oh my God. I'm not like there's gonna be nothing leftist. Hey, what did you think when people, when they bring you a 14 volt Jetta and they. And here's the thing for me, there's a reason they didn't take it to the dealer and trade it in on the new Jetta.

Jeff Compton [01:03:03]:
They bought because they knew it was fucked and they knew that the dealer wasn't going to give them squat for it. You gave them more. That's on you. That's not on me. I still have to make it what it needs to be to go out for sale. Hey, you know when some lose some, right? Get you on the next one, bro.

Lance Mechanics [01:03:19]:
So does.

Jeff Compton [01:03:19]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:03:20]:
Does your car lot or wherever you are do a pre inspection like most dealers now they'll do. They'll pay a mechanic just to go over it for that reason and then they'll come back harder on the poor customer.

Jeff Compton [01:03:30]:
We don't, we're only two bays, so we don't have the room. So the big thing we have to do, Lance, is like, and I didn't know this was a thing. When we take delivery of it, we have 48 hours. If we see something, drive something that wasn't disclosed when we picked it up at auction, we have 48 hours to get rid of it and no penalty to us. Right. We. It's mediated or whatever. And we did.

Jeff Compton [01:03:56]:
I drove a caravan and arrived eight in the morning yesterday. I drove it an hour later. Transmission was condemned, gone. No penalty if we keep it more than 48 hours. When we take it to the auction to get flagged it again, we now have to disclose. And of course we're going to lose money on it because whatever we paid for it, we won't get back when we go to get rid of the auction when we know as a transmission issue. So I didn't know that was a thing. So we really wish that the salesman would all be like, hey, stop what you're doing.

Jeff Compton [01:04:30]:
Go find that spare hoist, throw this vehicle that this customer's thinking about trading on it, and let's look at it. It does happen once in a while, Lance, but most of the time we're so slammed trying to get the, the stuff out that we don't have the room to do it. So it's like I tell the salesman, if it's got a check engine light on, if it's got bald tires, start adding lots of money to take off of what you're going to give it to them. Because check engine light is not going to be a gas cap thing. You know, bald tires mean that it's a really neglected vehicle. Right. Because between behind bald tires are probably bad brakes. And just on and on and turn the air conditioning on.

Jeff Compton [01:05:09]:
If that don't work either, don't buy it from them because that's your three big hits right there. You know, especially with the, the new refrigerant. Like, we don't even have a machine that services it yet at this shop. So it's like everything, everything we do that's 1234 is. Is sent out and they're not, they're not gracious to us when we. They charge. Check it out. Right.

Jeff Compton [01:05:29]:
Like it's 200 bucks. No.

Lance Mechanics [01:05:30]:
@ least.

Jeff Compton [01:05:31]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:05:32]:
That sucks to tell them invest in the machine. But the good news is it's flipping back around. Our 134 is coming back in.

Jeff Compton [01:05:38]:
Yeah. And thank God. Thank God, because I think what. And again, I. I don't I don't want to put anybody in blaster wrap, my fellow people in the industry, but I have talked to guys that have converted 1234s to 134 and the car works fine, you know. So is this surprise anybody that's coming back? No, because like the 1234 thing doesn't work. I hear. Maybe you can attest to this.

Jeff Compton [01:06:08]:
I think it's the reason a lot of the evaps are getting done in Hondas right now. Yeah. So in convention. Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:06:13]:
So southern states. I didn't know of something called Black Death in AC systems. I've never seen it or experienced it this far north. Yeah, they get it. The thing I noticed with Honda is R1234 or YF or whatever is such a small molecule is it'll leach through the aluminum and not leave any dye, but you may get a residue. And you know, we're always trained to look for residue, but I mean like a little dot will bleed the entire system out and that could just be a bug juice. You never know. You gotta really look at it.

Jeff Compton [01:06:44]:
So. Yeah, yeah, Sherwood from World, he was just talking about that and he was talking about how. And I saw another post where it's like some of the condensers are made out of such thin metal now that they're just getting these porous looking holes and everybody's like, well, that looks like somebody poked a hole in that. We're having it right now. We've got four in our rental fleet caravans and we sent them all back to the dealer and they don't want to put condensers in them because they say, oh, it looks like somebody. It's a rock chip, come on. They know we know what that is. Yeah, that's a point as well.

Jeff Compton [01:07:13]:
They just, they don't want to do it for us because we're not like going to send them any other cars. We're just a fleet company, you know, of rental fleets and they hate doing them. Oh, well, sucks to you. Right. Like so. I hate having to play that game. What, what's your tooling situation like at the new job or this job versus the dealership?

Lance Mechanics [01:07:35]:
Supplied. Everything's supplied.

Jeff Compton [01:07:37]:
Yeah, yeah. You don't.

Lance Mechanics [01:07:39]:
I bring, I bring down my beat bag underground. I got my, my OEM tools I go down with. They give us a tool allowance of 500 a year. That may not sound like much, but this little crescent is the only thing I've replaced this year. So I'm not really digging too deep into that thing. So maybe I'll buy a fluke multimeter and add it to the collection. Like. No, it's awesome.

Lance Mechanics [01:08:04]:
I'm. I'm mainly dealing with electrical stuff now. There's other people who take on the more electricity, more mechanical side there. But tools underground are generally supplied by everybody. It's nice.

Jeff Compton [01:08:16]:
That's pretty cool. Pretty cool. Do you get to weld at all?

Lance Mechanics [01:08:20]:
Yes. Yeah. As long as there's a fire suppression system underground you need a hot work permit and yeah, everybody welds underground. It's mostly stick now. MIG is like what's a MiG? You know?

Jeff Compton [01:08:32]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of good welders in the heavy duty side. What, so what's your, do you have like a, like what's, what's Lance's ten year plan look like?

Lance Mechanics [01:08:45]:
I don't know. So the. I'm not gonna tell anybody what company I'm with, but the company I'm with, I don't think you'll see this in automotive for sure. Most of the guys are five, 10, 30 years. All the management are licensed mechanics are electricians. Everybody in that building is, is hired within and they're all tradesmen. So I don't think I'm going anywhere ever. I'd have to really screw up to leave that place.

Jeff Compton [01:09:14]:
Right.

Lance Mechanics [01:09:15]:
So like YouTube's fun but I'm sticking here.

Jeff Compton [01:09:18]:
Yeah, yeah. And what's the kind of, kind of the same kind of question. What's the goal for the YouTube channel and the social media content?

Lance Mechanics [01:09:25]:
Oh maybe just the life goal. Hit a hundred thousand subs and see what happens. I have got a lot of people out of the industry like and, and I say to them, they're like no, we needed the push. I'm like, they just need the push to leave the industry. And so far it seems they're happy. And I'm getting a lot of interesting tick tock emails and YouTube messages. And it's mostly people from Ontario because the algorithms pushing Canada, but it's mostly Ontario and it's employers holding people hostage with their hours. But you know, with the changes, the College of Trades on April, it's all you need is a record of employment.

Lance Mechanics [01:10:00]:
You don't even need their permission anymore. You can challenge it. So I'm giving them this information saying listen, you're not handcuffed anymore, you can go out and get your license.

Jeff Compton [01:10:11]:
And that always pissed me off because you would see how the government would subsidize their wages. Right. Which was already meant that like we could keep them on the lubrack forever and actually make it cost effective because like, you know, we're getting 25% of their wages covered as an apprentice. And then now you see, it's like, oh, if you leave, I'm, you know, fu. You're not going to be able to go. Right. Thank God. I.

Jeff Compton [01:10:35]:
So the, the young people that you're talking to that you've kind of given them this push, are they going into like the, the heavy duty side or are they leaving like wrenching all together?

Lance Mechanics [01:10:44]:
They're not leaving wrenching all together. A few of the people said they found fleet work immediately. They didn't even have to. They didn't even have to wait like they were hired on the spot. And I'm like, oh, wow. I didn't think it would be that easy. The other ones are, are looking into mining. But yeah, it seems like fleet's the number one where people are just getting gobbled up like that.

Jeff Compton [01:11:01]:
Yeah, yeah, it is. Because I mean like I did my stand at fleet and I didn't mind it. It was, you know, it was kind of had some of the pluses of you got to know the vehicle well. So it was like it kind of became routine and then, you know, they. You weren't doing the dealer culture flat rate. You know, that's what I loved about it. Like I just showed up, fix what had to be fixed, fix it as fast as I could because it. They needed it.

Jeff Compton [01:11:26]:
Like they needed it now and, and that was it, you know? No, no problems. No. I wonder if I'm gonna make any money today because like we, you know, it's Christmas Eve and like how many cars were here, but how many cars are really going to come in? Right? Like that kind of my, my goal for me is just like, I think it's the same as yours is to always keep having the conversations and the technicians realize I'm not saying get out of the industry, but like I can't wave the flag as like a dealer is a great place for a technician to go start at. I, I can't say that it is. I really can't. Now, as bad as my independent side was to start in, there's. Most of them are not as bad as that one was. And it wasn't bad in the sense that like I didn't learn stuff.

Jeff Compton [01:12:12]:
I just like he was, he was $60 an hour door rate in 2000. Like, I mean he was paying me $10 an hour. Like I come from two years working on trucks and stuff where I'd done alternators. And starters and. And rewire trailers, and he's paying me $10 an hour like I was getting screwed, you know. So the young people, I try to tell you is like, I'm not gonna tell you. You should go to the dealer. Because, like, I see the culture that it is for the young people.

Jeff Compton [01:12:42]:
I've watched so many wash out and. And got out of the industry. Like, they didn't, unfortunately, when they hit the dealer and they were green and they didn't make it the dealer, they didn't go a lot of them to the independent and succeed. They just went to a completely different line of work. And because I think the dealer is, as much as they claim, they're trying to get ahead of the problem, they're not. To get ahead of the problem means they're gonna have to completely revamp the culture of most dealerships. And they're not ready to do that because the dealer principals and the owners don't want to see what the bottom line is going to look like when they have to do that. And it's going to suck for them.

Jeff Compton [01:13:17]:
It really is. Like, they'll fix the problem, but they're not going to have a yacht down in the harbor and three dealerships to their name. And, you know, like, their kids aren't all going to drive, like, demo cars. It's going to really suck. They're gonna have to pay technicians, like, $200,000 a year. They're gonna have to start the young people at 70,000 a year and like, supplement their tools, do all kinds of stuff that they've never had to do before. Because these young people coming in won't do it. They will not do it for that.

Jeff Compton [01:13:45]:
They will not come in and work flat rate on a whim. They won't. They don't trust it. It's. The word's gotten out.

Lance Mechanics [01:13:53]:
It's gonna.

Jeff Compton [01:13:53]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:13:54]:
Oh, yeah.

Jeff Compton [01:13:55]:
I don't know if Lance and I are the reason the words got doubt, but I mean, the word is out there that it's like all the red flags as Lance talked about that we all knew about. Like, I'm sure when you were at the independent shop, Lance, and talked with other technicians and tool truck drivers and all that kind of stuff, they all probably told you, well, this is what happens at the dealer. That's what you got to watch out for. Flat rates, the devil and all that jazz. I heard all that and I went to the dealer anyway, and it was a good step for me, but I was already pretty. Like, I kind of had an idea What I was doing, like, I could go in there and, you know, get parts done and I could diagnose. And these guys that don't maybe have the little bit of experience I had before I got or some of the maybe app aptitude, they're not learning. They're going into the dealer and they're getting every door latch recall and every recall and then they're doing a lot of oil change, a lot of tires, and then eventually they do a brake job.

Jeff Compton [01:14:50]:
And then like they're not, they're not getting, they're not getting mentored the way they should, is what I'm trying to say. And I don't think the dealers know how to mentor the young people. I really don't think they do. No.

Lance Mechanics [01:15:02]:
There's a lot of points to hit on that. I seen a bunch of apprentices come up through the Honda and yeah, they're technicians, they can fix the vehicle, but they know what the issues are. They don't really know the troubleshooting, they just know how to fix it, which is great. But if you were to that take them from that dealership and put them in the independent garage, it'd be like a newborn calf all over again. Yes, they can fix things, but they don't know how it works. They just know the symptoms and the causes from repetitiveness. So they, they be, they'd be struggling. Like you said, like when they leave the dealership, they go into another field or they try the independent for a while and either they'll get momentum again or they'll just fall out of the industry.

Jeff Compton [01:15:50]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:15:51]:
So, yeah.

Jeff Compton [01:15:52]:
And that, that's why your guys, I'm sure that you worked with, were reluctant to touch the off brand stuff, right?

Lance Mechanics [01:15:56]:
Yeah. Because now it's out of their comfort zone. They're already out of their comfort zone. Being an apprentice now, you're just kind of like, woof, you know?

Jeff Compton [01:16:04]:
Yeah. Which that's kind of why I always steered myself towards drive building, electrical, because it's like, even if I don't know how that transmission in that Nissan works versus in a Honda, I can tell you how the oxygen sensor and all the fuel injection system works. I can fix that. You know what I mean? I might not be able to rebuild the training, but I don't want to rebuild the training. Right. I just want to make the car start and run and on to the next one. And then I take that and apply it throughout the industry. This is my little niche.

Jeff Compton [01:16:31]:
This is where I'm comfortable. And, and I think more of them need to, to approach it that way. Like, I need to learn what all this stuff has in common instead of what makes it different. And then get really good at fixing the common stuff stuff. And you'll be okay. You will make it. But you know, if you get into a dealer where two years later all you've done is some recalls, they're not. And they're not, they're not mentoring you in the right way, where you're going to be a successful technician for them, you'll get cars fixed for them.

Jeff Compton [01:17:01]:
But I always, like, I've been around dealers and seen them go like, change owners because they went out of business. Essentially, they go out of business. Dealers never really go to business owners, right. And I was always scared what happens, right? If all of a sudden like we're a Honda store and all of a sudden like, or a niece, this is a better one. We're a Nissan store and all of a sudden like they pull the dealer rights and we can't sell Nissans anymore. What are we going to be? Oh, you'll be a used car lot is what you'll be. And you'll work on anything and everything. I worked with a lot of cats that were like awesome at fixing Nissans.

Jeff Compton [01:17:37]:
But if you gave them a Chevy truck, truck that like the tranny was in limp, they were screwed. Like it was their own truck and they had no idea. And I'm like, oh, I know. Ron needs an ignition switch. And like, huh, how can I need an ignition switch? And it's like, look at the wiring diagram.

Lance Mechanics [01:17:52]:
Oh, wow.

Jeff Compton [01:17:53]:
Yeah. How'd you know that? Because it's like a, it's an eight year old Chevy truck. I fixed it eight years ago when it did that. Like, that's how I know that. But the answer is there for you too. And the service information, you just have to look for it. That's what scared me is like, if they ever completely lost the boat, what would happen to me? So I, I was always like, I'm gonna focus on what I can do and make it apply to everything I work on. That's a little tidbit that I can offer.

Jeff Compton [01:18:19]:
The young people are listening. You know, some of Lance listeners find what you really like to do and make it so that you can apply it to everything that you work on. And then you'll have your, your, your skill set that you'll take with you. Like, because Lance is good electrical, you know, and what, what Lance could do, he can apply his fundamentals that he learned a long, long time ago on mining Equipment, Right. If Lance had just been a transmission re and re guy at Honda. Oh, geez. Might not be very good in a mine right now, would you, Lane?

Lance Mechanics [01:18:51]:
They don't use transmissions like they.

Jeff Compton [01:18:53]:
You think so that's, that's something to think about. Guys and gals that are listening is like, that's why I keep advocating to push yourself to be a diagnostic tech and every. Like, we've had some conversations as of late on here, but like we glorify those guys too much or girls that, that do that. Well, yeah, we do, but the reason is because, like, they can, no matter where we throw them, they can land on their feet. You know, the guy that just did heavy line, he's gonna have a tougher time. If all of a sudden he has to make a lateral shift like Lance did it, you know, it's gonna have a tough time. He could make it. You'll have a tough time.

Jeff Compton [01:19:28]:
But if you understand Ohm's law and, and you know, Kershaw's and all, you're good, you're good. Just apply it. Make it work for you. Lance, any closing thoughts other than like, you know, people don't hate on Lance because he's telling people to get out of the industry. It's not really what he's telling them. He's just telling them to get away from the automotive side of it for a while or even more so the dealer side of it for a while. So closing, would you like.

Lance Mechanics [01:20:00]:
Oh my God, we need three hours for this.

Jeff Compton [01:20:04]:
Well, take as much time as you want. You're not on a schedule.

Lance Mechanics [01:20:07]:
Oh no, I got all night. But there's so many points I still want to hit on there, but man, it's mostly related to Ontario, but I'm going back there a little bit there, the whole dealership, trying to catch up with apprentices and help the industry. I already know they're using AI models and efficiency charts and they're doing everything they can to squeeze out everything they can from a tech. And the next step is to get less experienced techs in there, as crazy as this sounds, so they can get more profit per hour on the warranty and the customer pay jobs. So I don't personally think they're ever going to try and change that model. They'll go on the news, say we need technicians and all this and there's a shortage of, we want guys with electrical, but we don't want to pay them for their experience. I said, I don't think that's ever going to change. And especially with these super dealership owners, there's probably maybe 11 across Ontario.

Lance Mechanics [01:21:02]:
They basically all own the same dealerships. So generally when you get blacklisted from one, you're kind of pushing yourself out of the market, especially in a large city.

Jeff Compton [01:21:14]:
Yeah. And it's. I can tell you I have a friend that, like, I worked with him here in Kingston, Ontario, and he moved to Nova Scotia. And there's a dealer group out there that. It's even worse than what we've seen Ontario. Like, if you work in one of their dealers and quit, you might get a chance to go to another one. But if, like, if you don't make it at two, you're not working in a dealership in that province because they own them all and it don't matter the brand. And, and like, there's some big names in Ontario, right.

Jeff Compton [01:21:40]:
We can throw them around. There's, you know, we don't. I'm not gonna name them because I don't need that headache. Lance, you've seen the same thing, right? Like, eventually if you. I saw it in Ottawa because a lot of the groups started there. If you worked at the Chevy store and then you went. Worked at the Ford store, you weren't going to work at their Dodge store. And I saw that when, like, when our Nissan dealer got bought here in Kingston, there was one.

Jeff Compton [01:22:05]:
They took all of us except for one tech that had worked at the Ford store before they bought the Nissan store. And when they saw him working for us, they're like, we don't want him. They already knew what he was like. He had some issues, but he could have been fine for them to fix cars, but they didn't want any part of him. So it's something to think about, guys. Like, he's, he's not wrong. The, the AI thing is interesting because I, you know, I've talked about it. I can't remember if it's Volkswagen or Mercedes or BMW somebody.

Jeff Compton [01:22:41]:
Now they're going to. Yes, the who VR helmet.

Lance Mechanics [01:22:46]:
They were pro. They were pro. Or advertising that in 2012 it was gonna be the next big thing. The BMW glasses highlighting where you should do and do what.

Jeff Compton [01:22:55]:
Yeah. So, yeah, they literally will want somebody that has no clue what they're really doing. But it'd be just like us doing our safety inspections with the tablet. Okay, shine a light over there now. All right, I want take this wrench and part number, blah, blah, blah, install it in this hole. Click. Did you hear it click? Good. Now the repair is done.

Jeff Compton [01:23:15]:
Oh, look, you were too long on that because the timer is going, you know, try to go faster next. And that's how it's going to be for these guys. You know, going back to what we're talking at the beginning, guys, I could just go out and make it work, get it done. The dealers don't want any part of that. No, they don't want any part of it.

Lance Mechanics [01:23:32]:
So, yeah, it's, it's tough. It's gonna be tough there for the next couple years. And like in my area, the private garage's wages are going up flat rate. Still a great way to make money. I can't deny it. I made a killing on it. And I won't deny that when I left the private garage, my skills went up at the dealership because I built that base and now I was tackling things I've never seen or I was. I'm probably never ever going to see in a private garage.

Lance Mechanics [01:23:59]:
I always tell people, dealership techs eliminate 99 of the problems you're going to see in the field. And the ones that do escape, escape end up at a garage and the guys are banging their head against the wall. And a lot of time it's just updates or weird routing and things you can't comprehend. Who would have ever known if you told me a few years ago that to get rid of an evap light, you had to put a little piece of tape in the right rear corner of a harness on a freaking crv that will get rid of your evap light. Things you'll never, ever see. But if it does make it out into the field, you're going to be replacing entire components.

Jeff Compton [01:24:32]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you touched on something right there, which is a really unpopular opinion. But I used to say it all the time. And dealer techs get a rough wrap. They really do. Some of it is really deserved, but, like, the stuff that when I worked at the dealer that I would see come to me from the independent shop, like, I had it to my guy and he can't figure it out. And I'm like, are you serious right now? You couldn't figure this out? Like, and, and that's not me bragging or trying to run them down. It's just like.

Jeff Compton [01:25:04]:
And again, I, at the, you know, I didn't have to know all the other makes and models and how to fix them. But I mean, like, I remember a Nissan that had, like, the interior was gutted, it had three ECMs on the seat, it had the fuel pump was like half hanging out. Like he was trying to this other Shop was trying to fix this, no start for like, three weeks. And finally they towed it into the dealer, and they were convinced that, like, you know, they couldn't get an ECM to work for. And I cranked it out in the parking lot, and it sounded off when it was cranking, and I knew it was off. It sounded off, and it had no codes, and the battery kept going dead. It was, you know, just a cluster of a car. And I unplugged the cam sensor and started it, drove it in.

Jeff Compton [01:25:44]:
And they're like, the guy is still the. The shop owner dropped the car off, was still there, and he's like, what the. What did he do? I said, I unplug camp sensor. And he's like, what does that mean? I was like, well, it either means that the cam sensor's bad. It can't be bad. I put one in it. Or I said, are the engines of time? And he looks at me and he goes, well, I don't have a code for engine at a time ago. Okay, it's not enough time, then.

Jeff Compton [01:26:05]:
That'll be a hundred bucks. Thanks. You know, that was my hour diag that was authorized, and that's what it was like. It was the first time he'd heard the car run in three weeks. Like, do you mean to tell me that me as a dealer tech, like, that's not more value than all the. That he tried? Of course it is.

Lance Mechanics [01:26:22]:
Is.

Jeff Compton [01:26:22]:
Of course it is. Did I. Is. Had I done that trick on that car before? No, but I had done that trick on other cars, other makes and models, and it makes the car run. And they're like. And all the other guys in the shop again, because they're mostly Were like that brand, they never thought to do that. They would have gone through the whole thing of, you know, whatever, testing it out. And, yeah, cam sensor must not be bad.

Jeff Compton [01:26:47]:
So it's gotta be. And I'm just like, let me try this, because I've done it for Dodges for years. And so when they say, you know, the dealer tech is. Is just this or just that, we. We fix some stuff that like. Like Lance was saying, never even the aftermarket, never even sees. And sometimes it's like, it's handed down from engineering. We don't even necessarily know why it works.

Jeff Compton [01:27:11]:
We just know it works. But it doesn't mean that we're dumb. You know, it just means that, like, we get in our own little. We get. We get put in a little pigeonhole. And, you know, you do the same thing over and over again. Repetition. You get really good at it.

Jeff Compton [01:27:26]:
And then unfortunately, sometimes that gets stagnant or we go somewhere else, and all of a sudden somebody thinks, oh, you're not that good at what you do. My brothers and sisters, I've worked on the dealer, they're all. There's been some bad apples, sure, but they were all really good at fixing that car line, buying. Really good at it, you know, And I think that's value for some. A lot of shop owners out there that are not really looking at. They just paint us all with a broad brush and think we got a bad attitude or we're sloppy or we're not, man, you pay us the right way, you know, we'll be. We'll be golden for you. It's just, you know, like you said, like Lance said, sometimes you get it in your head too, right? Like you're.

Jeff Compton [01:28:05]:
You're thinking all the time about time. I still struggle with that. I still watch what I'm. How long it's taken me to do something where I'm working right now. Nobody gives a flip. They don't care, you know, but it's hard, isn't it, Lance, to unprogram yourself?

Lance Mechanics [01:28:20]:
It starts following you in your everyday life, and you're like, oh, why is this deck taking so long? You know, it's like 3,000 square feet. I can't get it done in three hours. What's going on? Do I suck at what I'm doing? Like.

Jeff Compton [01:28:32]:
Yeah, the guy that builds decks for a living, you know, he'll have it done in four hours. Why can't. Yeah, because again, he's an expert at that. What was I gonna say? Is there. Is there opportunity for you to move up from where you are? Yeah, yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:28:55]:
100.

Jeff Compton [01:28:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. Is that something that you see in the future? Like, do you miss? Do you get any kind of opportunity to mentor people where you're at that.

Lance Mechanics [01:29:04]:
Oh, well, because. Because I'm an oem. There's other mechanics there under contract. I'm going to teach them what I know on the machines. And I love giving out information. I never held that back. Like, passing on what you know, is. Gives people a positive experience, like, oh, he might know the answer.

Lance Mechanics [01:29:20]:
Yes. There's certain things you can give the answer to, but if you know they need to learn, let them struggle a little bit. But generally, in mining, I don't want to see the machine down on the ramp. So I'm going to give them the damn answer, you know?

Jeff Compton [01:29:31]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As far as your channel going forward, what, what do you have planned for it? Anything different or.

Lance Mechanics [01:29:37]:
I don't know, I'm kind of going all over the place. I see what works and what doesn't work in channels there and just kind of playing around. And I generally just want to teach. And you know, the first half of it's been like, oh yeah, dealership life sucks. And you know, it did. Now I want to teach people what I know and simple things and doesn't have to be 100% right because, you know, you got the keyboard warriors and, and go from there. There's little things I know. Like, man, there's so much you forget as a technician.

Lance Mechanics [01:30:05]:
Like the other day I was trying to say, what the hell's an AGM battery? I'm like, oh, I'm putting all this information out of my head for all the new stuff I'm learning and you know, I just, I'll teach. I'll just continue to teach.

Jeff Compton [01:30:17]:
Yeah. And do you look at your analytics a lot for your channel?

Lance Mechanics [01:30:20]:
I try to avoid it. You go down that rabbit hole and then you're looking at your phone all day. It's not fun. And, and yeah, like, and people don't know. I got to teach at the college for a lot. A little bit. I didn't say a lot, but I loved it. That was like one of the best experiences I had.

Lance Mechanics [01:30:35]:
Like teaching, you don't realize, either have it or you don't.

Jeff Compton [01:30:38]:
So yeah, I think, I think it makes you a better technician when you start to teach what you know to others, but because it reinforces the fundamentals. Right? Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:30:47]:
And it's funny, I went through the college, that's why they, they hired me to do it. But the teacher basically said you. He's like, I didn't understand what I was saying until I started teaching it. And I was like, oh, you know, we can regurgitate info, read system descriptions and how it works, but do you really know how it works?

Jeff Compton [01:31:08]:
Yeah, now. And I, it's the same thing. Like I, I've wanted to teach at some point. I think it'd be really cool. I joked like, I would love to go back to the high school, do it and now and say like as a 50 year old mechanic, you know, that started when I was 21, you know, and this is where I'm now, like. And three years ago, me, I would have never done it because I would have never said I would have, I would have told everyone, don't you effing dare think about this as a career. Don't it sucks. It's poison.

Jeff Compton [01:31:40]:
Now I think I could go in there and go like, okay, here's the stuff that they probably wouldn't let me do at a college class because the college class have got all the investors, you know, the, the, the, the people on the board and they give money and you know, there's had this guy in Ottawa was like that. And you can't say that it's terrible because you know the. But I could go to the high school and go, okay, look it, if you want to be a mechanic, this is the route you go. Because if you go here, all these dealers in our local area that you've heard about, maybe your mommy and daddy take their cars there. You don't want to work there because this is why. But if you do want to be a mechanic, this is how you go about doing it and surviving it. I would love to have that conversation not going and necessarily say, this is how to volt drop a circuit. This is how to find a bad ground.

Jeff Compton [01:32:24]:
This is how to, you know, this is how, you know, VVT works. I don't want to teach any of that. I want to teach them how to survive the, the industry. That's my, this whole platform for me is teaching people my telling stories, your story, my story. And then giving them perspective. Be like, hey, you know, Lance was a sharp guy, top of where he was and wasn't happy. And he went and made, found something that made him happy. And that's what we all have to learn to do is like you have a, we have a wonderful skill set.

Jeff Compton [01:32:56]:
We have an ability that like 1 in 20 probably can do and that's probably being generous. It's probably not even 1 in 20. So if you have that and you think that you can't apply it elsewhere in, in the, in the world and make a amazing living at it, you're crazy. But you have to. It's like the guy that I talked to a couple weeks ago, you know, he's up in like near London and he's. The pay sucks and it's terrible. He's in a shop. I'm like, I hate to tell you, you might have to move to Windsor to start making good money because nobody is going to pay you what you're truly worth where you are and certainly not in the shop that you're at.

Jeff Compton [01:33:34]:
That because he is such an old school shop owner. No disrespect to the man. He's not seeing the growth he is right now. He's in it, living in this quagmire of. He's done it this way forever. He's made a meager living out of it. And. But there's no growth there.

Jeff Compton [01:33:51]:
There's no succession, you know, and. And everybody around him, it's the same. As I talked to Frank and Frank's like, yeah, most of the shops around me are 100 bucks an hour. Like, I'm like, my God, I live in a cesspool of underpay for the amount of people in capita that are in Kingston. And it's still not as bad as that. So I tell people all the time, you may have to move and it's gonna suck, but if you want to make decent money, you had to move. Lance. Right.

Lance Mechanics [01:34:21]:
Yeah. Well, that was the turbine things there. But I was just. I was, I was going for it. So.

Jeff Compton [01:34:27]:
Yeah, yeah. Don't be scared to move, guys. Gals. Anything else, Lance?

Lance Mechanics [01:34:33]:
Oh, geez. Hours and hours of stuff there. Every topic I can think of. 10 situations. Or the school thing. So it's funny you mentioned the school teacher thing. That's probably what gave me the kickstart in the drive. My teacher was.

Lance Mechanics [01:34:48]:
His name was George and he said, go in the shop, do what you want. I will teach you whatever you want to do. You want to know? I'm not going to sit here and teach you. Like you said, circuit dropping stuff. You got to get good with your hands and you're going to want to do stuff. And he left a mark on me. And funny thing he said too is he's like, normally the schools, they. They have this mentality about mechanics that were uneducated, were stupid.

Lance Mechanics [01:35:15]:
He's like, they would put people in my course that didn't want to be here. Like, it was an elective in high school. It was like a place for every other course or every other spot in the school to jump dump kids. And it shouldn't be like that. Like. And there's still that stigma. I'm really trying to fight with YouTube and everything. Like, everybody thinks it's grease monkeys.

Lance Mechanics [01:35:34]:
Uneducated. I'm like, oh, my goodness. When you open your door on your car and you see that dome light come on, you don't know the process that just happened. Like, you think it just. Door open, light comes on. I'm like, you know, the amount of modules, door switches, programming logic gates, it has to go through. Through. Like.

Jeff Compton [01:35:50]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:35:51]:
And all they see is that light didn't work when their car came on. You know, they opened the door. That's all they see. Why is it. Why isn't it fixed?

Jeff Compton [01:35:59]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:35:59]:
So it's like it's education. It's going to take some time. I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime. Hopefully things get better. Like electric, that's a whole other subject. But I, I don't think electric's any worse or better than our current vehicles. And you still need people to fix them and just you won't be doing brakes. Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:36:17]:
Breaks your suspension as often.

Jeff Compton [01:36:19]:
Yeah. And, and well, suspension. Tesla's wear suspension out a lot and they wear tires out a lot. But I mean, and, and the thing is for me is like people going back to that dome light thing, everybody still thinks it should be like, you know, 15 minutes to tell me why the dome light doesn't come on or, you know, or I shouldn't have to pay for you to hook up a scan tool to maybe tell me why the dome light doesn't come on. And it's like there's such a stigma attached to diag, you know. And it's been a really interesting conversation going back and forth a lot in the network because people are like, well I don't charge for it.

Lance Mechanics [01:36:57]:
They're done right there.

Jeff Compton [01:36:58]:
Yep. I have to specify ones that say they don't charge for are picking the very low hanging fruit that we call dyag. Right. Like to you and I or anybody in it diet could be like it was towed in and it has no gas in it because the gas, gas, you know, filler neck or filler neck sender is inaccurate and we pour gas in the car starts, needs a sender. That's diag. That's low hanging fruit. It doesn't start because the fuel pump won't turn on because the cans corrupted. Now the shops that say they don't do that, they do free diag.

Jeff Compton [01:37:32]:
They're not taking that second example, I'll tell you that right now. Or if they are, they're phoning the customer up and still getting diag approved and they're getting paid for what they're saying is my customer will call and say I have a check engine light and they'll say bring it on down, we'll look at it for you. That's not really diag anymore. Right. Diag to me is like it's been to four other places and it's still not running. Right. That's diag. Right.

Jeff Compton [01:37:57]:
And, and we're splitting hairs. But when people say I do it for free, you're not tackling the really complicated ones for free. I know that for a fact. And I'm not saying you have to. Right. We watch, check engine Chuck. And he goes out there and gets in some nightmare cars, right. Gets through them.

Jeff Compton [01:38:15]:
Sometimes he doesn't. It's okay. That kind of diag level you have to charge for. But every to the customer, it always must be simple. I open the door, the dome light doesn't turn on. It's probably just the bulb. What is one that's not the bulb? What? It's like when you said when there's a logic problem here, you know what happens when the transmission won't shift? Right. Because there's a bad taillight Ground.

Jeff Compton [01:38:43]:
Yep. Hello. You know what do you think you put three trannies in and it still doesn't shift. Right. Do you think it's still a transmission problem? No, probably not. Who's gonna find that? Somebody really strong at diag. That's going to cost you a lot of money, that's who. So this, this free thing, it goes back to.

Jeff Compton [01:39:03]:
We're trying to. One minute in one hand, we're saying we're trying to value the, the industry, we're trying to value ourselves. And then in the next minute we're saying, in my area, it works better to give away. I don't believe it. I just think it's easy out is what it is. And I think it's. You're just taking it and you can do the math and say that, you know, it's cheaper and more efficient and more effective to market this way than that. Okay, okay, but what's it.

Jeff Compton [01:39:33]:
The cost of doing it? What's it really costing the industry? Is it holding the industry back? Maybe not. Is it pushing the industry as where it needs to go as fast as it, it could be going there? No, it's not. So I'm not going to say you're holding it back, but you're not helping it.

Lance Mechanics [01:39:49]:
So I've always been under the belief, charge for everything. You got to train your customer. If you give them freebies, they, they expect it and you devalue yourself. So all that education, all your tools, your business, everything, you just kind of gave them the door to walk all over you. And it seems very petty, but you set that right there at the first time you meet them, and you can expect that same interaction with them every time.

Jeff Compton [01:40:14]:
I gotta ask you, do you miss service advisors?

Lance Mechanics [01:40:16]:
No, I started out as one, believe it or not. Like the worst, worst brand possible, Hyundai. Nobody's happy when they own a Hyundai. And no, they're so cheap to begin with that they don't even have money to do friggin oil changes. So that is a. I could write a book on that topic. So my goodness. And yeah let's not get into that.

Lance Mechanics [01:40:39]:
It's gonna go on all night. Service advisors the pay gap there. I'll mention this to people who don't know is service advisors are paid bonuses on work sold. So when they have have six or seven mechanics they're getting all that. It's not like a flat thing they're getting combined thing and go to the waiter thing we said early in the video I think I hope it's on there is when they change a locate system to a waiter it's because they're trying to get you to locate it so they get more bonus.

Jeff Compton [01:41:07]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:41:08]:
So like it's. I know one of the kids I worked with he said he went to Toyota and he was getting 13 on warranty. So when a battery failed on these hybrids or these electric vehicles he was ecstatic. I'm like why are they getting that on the warranty? Like he's like yeah, I made fourteen hundred dollars on one quote I did. I'm like what? I don't know how true this is but he never lied to me on other stuff so I'm taking his word for it.

Jeff Compton [01:41:35]:
It's probably true though. It probably is right. I tell the story. I remember we had a really eager service advisor and he hit bonus selling tires he sold. It seemed like every customer he had incoming that month he managed to sell him a set of tires. He was rocking it and he hit his bonus and then they rewrote the policy so next month tires didn't count towards his bonus. Nice.

Lance Mechanics [01:41:58]:
He broke the system but yeah they don't want you to get ahead even them.

Jeff Compton [01:42:01]:
No. And then after that he never tried to sell tires again.

Lance Mechanics [01:42:05]:
Good for him. So you could go to him and.

Jeff Compton [01:42:06]:
Say hey these this car needs tires. He goes I don't care. Like it it was again you know it went back to the culture killed the enthusiasm that the person had and the ambition on and it's we're not talking killed it for attack. He killed it for the advisor. Why? Greed. Greed. It's always they don't want to see service. Yeah greedy dealer owner.

Jeff Compton [01:42:30]:
I find that the conversations always a lot of what's misdirected at us going back to like the. The Internet talk. They hate us. Guys are paid too much and you can't get your car in. A lot of that is the. The advisors dropping the ball. And Chris Craig, you know him On Tick Tock, right? You've seen him. Him and I have had some great conversations.

Jeff Compton [01:42:50]:
I think he's an awesome dude, he's doing an amazing thing. But we are so far apart, him and I. We are not peas and carrots, him and I, at all. Because it's like, I just look at it and I understand what he's doing and he's doing it for the betterment. He's, he's teaching them. But there's, we're still so far apart, him and I, on so many groundbreaking issues. Like, it's, it's. Well, they're not groundbreaking issues, but key, key issues.

Jeff Compton [01:43:15]:
I just like, look at it and it's just like, no, I, I, I, I can never be where he is on some topics because I just, it's too wrong. It's too wrong for me. From my perspective, it's too wrong. And, and you know, I can challenge them. Say, hey, maybe, you know, if you'd been a tech as long as me, you might understand. And he goes, well, I wasn't tech once. Once, yeah, but once. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [01:43:36]:
And then you went into advisor and not talking, you know, you left that, now you're doing your thing. It's cool. I just, the advisor thing for me is like, they used to joke when I say they're going to be replaced with kiosks. They are, I'm not kidding. They're going to be 100% car salesmen are going to be replaced with kiosks. Carvana already proved that it can be done and it does it well. Carvana didn't go bankrupt because of the kiosks idea or their vending machine idea. It's.

Jeff Compton [01:44:06]:
They, it was how they handled their money that they went bankrupt. Wasn't nothing to do with the policy. The pro, the, the idea worked wonderful. People don't. If you have all these people right now that don't want to talk to people and they want a DBI result and then they want to click yes and do it. Do you really think you need the advisor in this role anymore? No, you don't. The technician built the dbi. The technician can hit send, the technician can read the thing coming back.

Jeff Compton [01:44:34]:
What do we really need the advisor for? Because. Yeah, and I'm not against advisors, but I've worked for a lot of them. They're either unmotivated or too motivated or in the small shops, the independent side, too emotionally invested in that customer's problems. And not like I just, I said to my friend Lucas just an hour ago, we all talk about the skill gap in technicians right now, oh, it's so huge. They can't do. I'm sorry. I've seen some advisors that. It's like if you were to remove them from the family lineage, they would never be able to get hired as a service advisor somewhere else.

Jeff Compton [01:45:14]:
Do you know what I mean? 100. They are the, the detriment of so many shops out there right now because they're too emotionally involved. You think you're doing the right thing. You think you are. Did you ever write service before? Nope. You and your husband set out there, you started your own shop, married a guy like Lance, good looking, smart. Lance goes outside, the wife goes out and writes service. All of a sudden it's not going where it's supposed to go.

Jeff Compton [01:45:43]:
Why? Because this person that has no idea what they're doing and is really emotionally involved in every customer that comes in, they're their friends. Now that you're serving the community, you are hamstringing the business. Step away from it. Let somebody that's impartial come in and do it. Because that technician will come to you with an estimate and say this car needs $3,000 worth of work. You already know that person's mother is going to go into an old folks home or whatever or like some blah blah blah, some life thing happening and you think they can't possibly have $3,000. I gotta make it 22. Yep.

Jeff Compton [01:46:22]:
You just, I don't care. I don't care if the tires fall off the car when it leaves. From a technician standpoint, I mean I care. But who was really worse for the business right then? The one that found 800 that didn't need to be done or the one that has a comeback. Let's really talk about this now for a second. Second. To me, technicians do not have a comeback. But frig.

Jeff Compton [01:46:47]:
If you're not selling all the work that needs to be sold, who's really worse for the industry? You know, this is why some of us in the dealer, I think, why we just stay in the deal our whole lives. Because we go out there and we're like, listen, if I only do the warranty work, at least I can figure out I can make a paycheck. And there's no arguing with what I had to do. I just, just, I fixed the car. Now we go into an independent shop and it's like, car needs $4,000. They don't have four. Okay, cool. On to the next car.

Lance Mechanics [01:47:20]:
Yep.

Jeff Compton [01:47:21]:
But if you flat. Yeah, if you flat rate me there, guess what? Now we have a problem. Because if you keep failing to overturn, convert whatever you want to call it, those customers into sold hours, you're now taking money out of my pocket. Yeah, and that's a big no.

Lance Mechanics [01:47:40]:
You hit a lot there. Like I said, there's so many things we talk about. I always sat down with the business owners, got to know them, listen to them and took courses. And great thing about being a service advisor is when I did that training is you have to sell yourself within 10 seconds. If they don't like you, it doesn't matter how good the person behind your tech is, the estimate, they're not to going, not gonna buy it, they're not gonna go for it.

Jeff Compton [01:48:02]:
Yeah.

Lance Mechanics [01:48:03]:
And that's the shitty thing with the having a service advisor is you on the back end, don't see what's going on. Your service advisor could be having a bad day or they're just not feeling it and they just don't want to sell it. I seen that way too often, like in the private garage. I used to three four thousand dollar estimates and the service would be like.

Jeff Compton [01:48:20]:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Lance Mechanics [01:48:20]:
I'm like, listen, this is what the car needs. I don't give a crap about the person's feelings, Give them the full estimate. If you got to break it up over a week or a month or whatever, let's do the most important safety items first and we'll go from there. But don't go in with preconception or whatever because you're just gonna lose it for us. And most of the time after I straighten them out, we got the work, like, yeah, talk to them, break it up. And a lot of the time they didn't break it up, they did it all at once.

Jeff Compton [01:48:49]:
Or they, I, I've caught a lot of flack for this. People don't like me necessarily. They don't want to have the rough conversations. Like you need to be somebody that can stand there all day long and give bad news after bad news after bad news and be able to go home at the end of the day with a paycheck and be able to leave it at the shop. If you can't do that, you have no business writing service. I don't care if it's for your dad's shop, I don't care if it's for your husband's shop, you shouldn't be doing it. It just, you don't have it. And it's okay, it's okay, you don't have it.

Jeff Compton [01:49:24]:
But here's the reality. Can you learn it. Yes, But I think just like we text learn how to fix cars by flat rate, and it's like if you, hey, if you don't fix that rate, you don't get paid. I think advisors have to be taken to that same school. Listen, you don't sell this work, you don't convert this, you don't get paid. Everybody's mind gets blown. They go, that's not fair.

Lance Mechanics [01:49:46]:
It's us. Yep.

Jeff Compton [01:49:49]:
Hey, what, I don't know what to tell you on that. What's, what's fair, what's not. This is why I said it for years. I said it 10 years ago. People told me I was nuts. The technicians should be on the salary and the Advisor should be 100 commission.

Lance Mechanics [01:50:04]:
Oh yeah, they'd be gung ho to get it. And somebody said something to me recently. Have you ever seen a customer happy to go to the dealership and oh, my car's broken. Here's a thousand dollars. Automotive is repair. No one's happy. You gotta prep these service advisors for that. Like, listen, no one's gonna be happy to come in for a service.

Lance Mechanics [01:50:22]:
Even if there's nothing wrong with the car. Nobody likes paying, like you're not there to make their day happy. They want in, they want out, continue on with life.

Jeff Compton [01:50:32]:
The only reason that they jumped on this years ago, this idea of extending the warranties out farther and farther, was to get people in when the car was broken to sell them the other stuff. So if you're one of these advisors, it's just like, I don't want to sell them anything. I just want to shake hands and hug babies and like, you know, be their friend. And I'm going to get by on my salary and I'm not counting on my bonus because it's a dangling carrot and I can't head it anyway, and that's okay. I'll live on this meager. And the people like me and I can sleep at night because I didn't sell them and they didn't need horseshit. You need to be selling what the, the technicians is telling you. Now, I'm not advocating for ripping people off that before we get down that road, people.

Jeff Compton [01:51:18]:
No, but if the technician comes to out to you and, or has pictures, pictures from the DVI or whatever of something that needs to get done. If you don't mention it to the customer because you feel like they can't afford it or they don't want to hear it, or they got too much going on in their life and you don't want to make it worse? Take your lunch pail and walk out the door. Go find another lot of work. Go cut hair or something. Because that's the what. That's what this job is, unfortunately, is people hate it. You're selling things and you're giving people bad news. People come into the dealer for two reasons.

Jeff Compton [01:51:53]:
To get something fixed or there's nothing broke. But they're there to complain. That's the two reasons they come into a dealer. Something's broke, or they're there to complain about what they think is broken, which is perfectly normal for the car. Oh, yeah, and they're on in the sales. Sales experience was less than stellar or whatever, and now they're just unhappy. Buyer regret. So if we can't do anything about buyer regret, that's the sales department's problem.

Jeff Compton [01:52:24]:
But the fixing the car thing, we can do that. We have to do that. So if you're dropping the ball and not converting not. It's the same as. Are you gonna get me on a rant here?

Lance Mechanics [01:52:37]:
Sorry.

Jeff Compton [01:52:37]:
This 300 rule and DVI thing, it used to drive me nuts to do a dvi. The work didn't sell. The customer comes back four months later, three months later, for a next oil change, we do another dvi. All the same, we find, fill out the DVI again. Are you gonna sell it this time? I don't know. Did you. When the customer phoned and made the appointment, did you pull up the last work order and tell the customer, hey, when you were in last time, we found X, Y, and Z. Did you get that done yet? No.

Jeff Compton [01:53:10]:
Are you interested in getting that done? No. Okay. Guess what? If it's no and no, you don't have to do a DBI again. It's crazy, isn't it? Oh, my God. You can't say that. I most certainly can't. That person just wants a oil change and they want to live in that dreamland, that their peace of mind is perfectly good? Yes. Write it down.

Jeff Compton [01:53:30]:
Tie rod about to kill somebody. Yep.

Lance Mechanics [01:53:32]:
Cover your ass.

Jeff Compton [01:53:34]:
Tie rod's about to kill someone. Cover your ass. But don't go through the nonsense of making the technician, like, wait and fill out all that again for. For the customer. That's not appreciating it. You're not selling value at that point. You're letting the customer drive the ship. And they're not to be driving the ship.

Jeff Compton [01:53:52]:
We drive the ship. It's our ship, not theirs.

Lance Mechanics [01:53:56]:
So there's an interesting thing there mentioned for the viewers is in Ontario, if you As a mechanic deem a vehicle unsafe, you can't hold it hostage. You got to let that vehicle go. But what you can do is call the cops. But the problem with that is any garage or mechanic who does that, you are committing suicide for your business.

Jeff Compton [01:54:16]:
Yes. So 100.

Lance Mechanics [01:54:18]:
You do it. You, this person, they're gonna know it was you. You were just in there. And they are gonna run you through on social media, word of mouth, even though you may have just saved a life, but in their mind, you didn't. So.

Jeff Compton [01:54:32]:
And here's. Here's the worst part of that scenario, because we all know what those cars are like, right? We're all gonna get under that car and we're gonna be like, holy, the subframe's rotten. The brake lines look like they're about to blow up. The control arm bushings are separated. And the cops are going to go over there, see that thing? They're going to take it to another garage and that other garage is going to look at and go, those brake lanes aren't that bad. Those ball joints aren't that bad. And that. And that's why we don't have.

Jeff Compton [01:55:04]:
I wish I said that. I wish we had the power to be able to pull plates off cars.

Lance Mechanics [01:55:10]:
Then have somebody investigate. A third party. And unbiased.

Jeff Compton [01:55:13]:
Yeah. Say, sorry, you can't drive out of here. Somebody from MTO will show up tomorrow. We'll look at your car, we'll deem it and whatever. MTO will be the final verdict. If MTO steps on my ruling and says that you can drive it. Cool. I did my due diligence.

Lance Mechanics [01:55:29]:
I got an MTO story here. Local garage did a safety on a 2002 Honda Civic and floors rot out all the time. Person came in like the lady thought she had a good car. They safety did it. Maybe they did her a favor. Maybe she was lying. We get here, we call the mto. They show up.

Lance Mechanics [01:55:46]:
Yeah, there's a hole in the floor. Carpet will keep the exhaust out. Walks away. I can't even give you the name. That guy's retired now.

Jeff Compton [01:55:57]:
Some of the. Some of the. Yeah, some of those guys. I don't know how. I don't. I want to. I want to know. At what point did they give up? Up Alance.

Jeff Compton [01:56:12]:
What point did they stop actually believing what they were doing was the right thing? And how did they get there? That'd be an interesting story. How did you get to where you just don't give an F anymore? And what put you there? Did you ever give an F, because like, if you tell me, well, the carpet will keep the exhaust out, I would think that would be the last thing you'd ever have to say in that career. And then you should probably be removed, moved, because you're not, you're like, what are you else are you letting go by? Yeah, these are the people that are like, inspecting cars. You know, it's, it's, there's good cops and bad cops. Right. Like, there are. But that to me is like, what's the whole point of having any kind of regulations? Just like Frank and I were talking. What's the whole point then if it's not being held up? You know, like, it's the same as, like I, when I sat down with my mto, my famous director story, he says, well, you could fail that.

Jeff Compton [01:57:06]:
And I back you, but you can let it go. And I'd back you too.

Lance Mechanics [01:57:10]:
Give me. The gray area is pretty freaking big.

Jeff Compton [01:57:13]:
It's all gray right until the core and gonna say until the tires come and cords coming out of the tire. But, like, you know, these conversations we keep having, like, is, well, date marks on tires. I don't fail tires immediately on the age of the tire. I look at the tire, do a.

Lance Mechanics [01:57:34]:
Visual too, know, like, yeah, it could be expired after six years. You grab the rubber, it's good to go, no cracks. It's, it's going to pass the safety that day. No doubt.

Jeff Compton [01:57:45]:
Yeah. Because I'd be a hypocrite then if I said that every tire that was more than six years old, I stopped running because I've ran lots of tires that were more than six years old on my own stuff. Who has it? Come on, put your hands up then show me. Some rich people. Yeah, but I mean, like, we've all done that. So I would be a hypocrite if all of a sudden I was to say, but like, the person that is representing the people that write the rules shouldn't be saying something like, the carpet will keep the exhaust out.

Lance Mechanics [01:58:14]:
No, but if you remember that guy who did the, the big thing in 2016, I gotta get my dates up there. The head of the MTO was just going around saying, I'm retiring, I don't care. You know, that was his big spiel. He's like, I pull a car over, I test the park brake, the park brake fails, and pulling the plates off, that's my job up.

Jeff Compton [01:58:34]:
Like you didn't want. Stupid. That's the stupidest thing in the world. Absolutely stupid. I, I, I never understood the park break thing. Oh, my goodness. The people at West Saskatchewan, where there's hardly any incline at all. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [01:58:54]:
No.

Lance Mechanics [01:58:54]:
You see, for 300 kilometers straight, the biggest freaking hill out there is the one they made.

Jeff Compton [01:58:59]:
That's right. It's a snow pile. Right. Like, what's. Why is the car. I need my parking break. Now. That kind of was like, the parking brake was the last thing to me that they should be looking at.

Jeff Compton [01:59:07]:
But I think it was the one thing that they were trained that was a go or a no go or they knew they would catch most of the cars because who uses it? I use mine, but I use it because I want to keep it moving so that I don't have to with it later on. That's the only reason I move it. It's not like I hook my boat up and all of a sudden I start using my parking brake brake. Right? Like. And. And the thing is, what people don't like to. To. To admit, if you have a set of wheel chocks in your car, you're perfectly legal.

Jeff Compton [01:59:34]:
Perfectly legal. If you put the wheel chock in, you're good, you know. Did you. Did you stop doing what you're. Yeah, There you go. Like it. It. Oh, I hate that.

Jeff Compton [01:59:45]:
I hate that. There's like a horn. Cars with the mirror hanging off the side of the door. But they walk up and go, put your parking brake on, please, man. And then they'll tell you to put your foot on the gas and see if the car will screw. Play. I've driven lots of stuff. That it had enough power that it didn't matter how good the parking brake was, it was going to drag the wheels.

Jeff Compton [02:00:03]:
Yep. Like, you know what I mean?

Lance Mechanics [02:00:05]:
Cops doing bad inspections. It's supposed to hold the weight of the vehicle, not under power. And they say, put it in drive. It's like, go fly a kite, buddy.

Jeff Compton [02:00:12]:
Yeah, yeah. I've seen them do that. One time, I was driving past and a guy, a young kid with a loud truck, obviously. I remember seeing the cop go to the trunk, get the coveralls out of the trunk, put them on, get his little, you know, mat. And he laid under the truck and was looking for catalytic converters. And like, I wanted to yell out as I was going by, the cats won't be way down there. Dumb, dumb. They'll be up that.

Jeff Compton [02:00:39]:
But I didn't say anything.

Lance Mechanics [02:00:41]:
He'll be getting you next.

Jeff Compton [02:00:46]:
Well, Lance, I want to let you go because I've got two hours of your time taken. And we could talk all night, but we'll have to come back for part two.

Lance Mechanics [02:00:53]:
Oh, heck yeah. So yeah, we didn't touch on. It's like, ah, it could branch off.

Jeff Compton [02:00:59]:
And you're a notes kind of guy. I'm kind of like a fly by the thing. So make a bunch of notes up and I'll let you run the. The controls next.

Lance Mechanics [02:01:09]:
Maybe I'll just be staring like a deer in headlights.

Jeff Compton [02:01:11]:
Oh, what's going on? Squirrel. You can drive it anyway. Yeah, you can drive it any way you want, Lance. Where can Everybody find you?

Lance Mechanics [02:01:20]:
YouTube, sir. Lance Mechanics. Tick Tock. Yeah, that's a mess. So, yeah.

Jeff Compton [02:01:27]:
Are you on Instagram?

Lance Mechanics [02:01:28]:
No, no, I'm not. Tik Tok's an experiment there and YouTube's just kind of a pet project and see how it goes. Like I said, goal in life 100k subs. That's something impressive of.

Jeff Compton [02:01:40]:
Yeah, that's the goal. That's my goal too. I'd like to get there as well. So I'd like to be. I think I'm a few years away from that still. Because you know how it goes, right? If you bump the algorithm by putting out like repair videos, you get there really quick. If you don't put out repair videos, it takes a long time to get.

Lance Mechanics [02:01:57]:
It takes some time. And the. The videos I see that are gaining traction is not the content. I want to go down and like I did that little talk about the 6.2 liters. I don't ever want to do a video like that again. There's channels for that. I've seen one guy, he completely flipped his approach. Now he's just doing tsps.

Lance Mechanics [02:02:15]:
Well, he had two hits and now everything's really boring. You alienated your base. You don't want to do that. Like engage with your viewers, get them to talk.

Jeff Compton [02:02:24]:
Have fun. Yeah, well, so that people, is where you can find Lance. Tik Tok. I know people don't like Tik Tok. That's okay. You find him on YouTube. I watch him almost every day now. He's got.

Jeff Compton [02:02:37]:
He's really pumping the content out. So if you haven't seen Lance's videos yet, be sure to go by and watch them. They're gonna be a little familiar because he's kind of sounds a lot like me some days he's Canadian accent, he says, some we talk similar. And he's got kind of the same attitude sometimes as me, but he's a super good guy and he's got some really cool stuff to share and talk about. So. Lance, I want to thank you for being on here on a Friday night with us.

Lance Mechanics [02:03:04]:
Friday.

Jeff Compton [02:03:04]:
This is pretty.

Lance Mechanics [02:03:05]:
I'm on underground time, man. I don't even know what time of day it is or what day of the week.

Jeff Compton [02:03:10]:
It's. It's Friday. It's the weekend.

Lance Mechanics [02:03:11]:
Oh, my God. Sorry for taking your Friday then, dude.

Jeff Compton [02:03:15]:
You don't ever apologize for that. It was. I'm. I'm just. Like I said, I'll. I want to fit people in whenever I can, so whatever works, I'll make it happen. So. And everybody, you know where to find me.

Jeff Compton [02:03:27]:
I'm all over the place. You know, you'll see Lance and I talking back and forth on Tick Tock and you see us talking back and forth on YouTube, and if you want to join in on conversation, join in. And if, you know, if you didn't like something Lance said, I'm sure you're gonna let him know. And if you didn't like something I said, please let me know. I love it when you don't like something I say. Just. It keeps pushing the conversation. That's how we have change.

Jeff Compton [02:03:52]:
So, Lance, thank you, buddy. We'll talk to you soon, everybody. Love you. Talk to you soon. Send me all the hate you can. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change.

Jeff Compton [02:04:22]:
Thank you to my partners in the AESAW group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, say in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.