The Intersection of Culinary and Automotive Creativity With Jonathan Vermeer

Swell AI Transcript: Vermeer.mp3
00:08 - 00:42 SPEAKER01 Food is a lot like fixing cars in some ways, like you just have a creativity. Custom vehicle work, you can put culinary work in that. If you think about how you approach a vehicle, what repair you're going to do, whether you've done it a million times or done it one time, you look for ways to make things better, mostly for you, but you're still getting the job done. If you put that in the culinary mindset, You're trying to make a dish that seems great to you and seems great to the customer. And you're getting your job done because the customer likes it. They're happy with what you did for them.

00:48 - 01:49 SPEAKER00 Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to another exciting thought-provoking episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast. My name's Jeff and I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and insight into the toils and triumphs of a career in automotive repair. After more than 20 years of skin, knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspectives and hear other people's thoughts about our industry. So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation. With me tonight is a really good friend of mine, Mr. Jonathan Vernier. Jonathan and I have been friends on Facebook for a really, really long time. One of the originators of the people that got me into Facebook, on the groups, talking shit to people. And here we are now because all that talking shit got me my own podcast. So Jonathan, how are you, buddy? Not too bad, man.

01:49 - 01:50 SPEAKER01 How about you?

01:50 - 02:14 SPEAKER00 Oh, I'm living life, man. I'm doing well. It's hot up here today. Like, we've had a couple cooler days, but the last three hours now, we've got that mugginess coming back in. And then, you know, I can say this, the forest fires thing or whatever's going on in Quebec that everybody was so mad at me about seems to have subsided. The skies are pretty clear. Can you see that where you are?

02:15 - 02:31 SPEAKER01 Oh, it was terrible. Yeah. I mean, the not last week, the week before, one entire day, it looked like it was just foggy out the whole day. I mean, you could smell it, you could feel it in your, in your lungs. It was terrible.

02:31 - 02:32 SPEAKER00 You're in Iowa.

02:32 - 02:39 SPEAKER01 Yes. So of course, you got Iowa humidity and heat mixing with that at 90 degrees and 90%. It was a great time.

02:39 - 03:04 SPEAKER00 Thanks. I have to because it's weird. Like, I want to say probably two weeks ago, the skies around here were a little hazy, but it wasn't like as bad as what some of the people like stateside were messing with. Like New York got it really bad, right? Like New York was, you know, they couldn't see the bridge and they're just all mad at us. And I mean, I get it, you know, it's whatever, but New Yorkers are always mad.

03:04 - 03:05 SPEAKER01 It's very true.

03:07 - 03:28 SPEAKER00 Shout out to Bill Marino, but I mean, yeah, it was people were messing me like what what are you doing up there? I'm like, first of all, that's Quebec. I'm in Ontario. Like I can't I can't just you know, have I been to Quebec before? Oh, yeah, I spent all kinds of time there. Do we click? No, they're very different people for me. So but tell us what is Iowa like?

03:28 - 04:04 SPEAKER01 Well, it was hot as balls last week. It was probably late. high nineties, low one hundreds without humidity all week last week. Yeah. And that was pretty fun. We're in mid eighties this week. It's been raining all day today. Yeah. That's kind of helped, but that's pretty much summer in Iowa right there. And then pretty soon we'll, uh, skip fall and hop right into ice and snow and 40 below wind chills. And it's a great time.

04:04 - 04:06 SPEAKER00 Where are you working right now, John?

04:06 - 04:12 SPEAKER01 I'm actually working for the Mercedes. Oh, okay. Just started there in April.

04:12 - 04:20 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Cause you, you and I have kind of had similar, I don't want to say you did a stint at Chrysler for quite a while, right?

04:20 - 04:25 SPEAKER01 About two and a half years, but that was over 10 years ago.

04:25 - 04:28 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Cause you and I always use a talk about similar vintages, right?

04:28 - 04:34 SPEAKER01 That we'd always worked on the same kind of like the day more days and all that fun stuff.

04:35 - 05:16 SPEAKER00 So we had a 2006 caravan in the shop today. Actually, it's been there all day, all week, because we're trying to find a tip them for it, right? Yeah, of course. 2006, it probably should have had three by now on my count. But the thing, it's rot, right? There's no body left. Somebody's done a creative job with the duct tape to hold the doors together. You can't. And I'm just looking at this thing, you know, oil pans leaking, intakes leaking, valve covers leaking, check engine lights on for misfires, oil pressure sensors bad. Like, and I'm just like, can we fix this or what? Like, I mean, you know, this is one I can make time on. Like I used to do those in my sleep, but.

05:16 - 05:18 SPEAKER01 Oh look, it's a minivan.

05:18 - 05:23 SPEAKER00 Pretty much. How do you find, so how do you find Mercedes?

05:23 - 05:26 SPEAKER01 They actually found, you, uh, are you part of Wrench Way at all?

05:27 - 05:48 SPEAKER00 So I watched Jay's, some of his TikTok content and some of his videos once in a while. Like he, Wrench Way, they've got their own podcast too, Jay Gannon. Okay. I watch it once in a while, but I don't follow follow. You know what I mean? In terms of like, I'm not up to date. You would know more, way more of what's going on with them than I would.

05:48 - 07:41 SPEAKER01 I was, I was, I don't even know how I got into it, but I was a part of that since its inception. Okay. Like, and. So I was working for an independent shop up until August, essentially of last year. And I got let go from there. And I went five weeks without a full-time job. I had a part-time job at a restaurant. And so I was pulling as many hours out of there as I could. Inevitably, I ended up going back to the Ford dealership I was at. And during that time, Wrench Way had a reverse application sort of deal. So you put your what you're looking for out there and stuff like that, money, you know, shop hours, this, that, whatsoever, you know, what you're looking for in a shop, you're anonymous completely. And then shops will come at you and say, you know, this is the boxes I can check. Can we meet up for this? And Mercedes popped up, Chrysler dealership I had worked at popped up, but I was not really feeling that. I was like, you know what, this might be something to try. And so I went and had an interview, I mean, and I went there on a Saturday and talked to the service manager. I was there for two and a half hours and more or less we were just bullshit. And the more I thought about it, it's like, yes, it's something different. It's not totally different because it's not out of my wheelhouse. I have worked on Mercedes vehicles before, but as much shit as I had going on in the past almost year now, it's like maybe something different is what I I mean, granted, it is an hour drive from where I live and stuff like that, but if it's fitting for me and I'm making the right kind of money, then that's what I need to do. So I took that, and I haven't looked back. I mean, I've only been there since April, and I absolutely love it.

07:41 - 08:33 SPEAKER00 Yeah. I know, because when I first talked to you a few months ago and you said you were there, I was really surprised, because I mean, I guess I kind of always had you pegged for it. Maybe that's wrong to say, because I mean, once we reach a certain level in this industry, I think it doesn't really matter, right? Like, it's all assholes. Yes. And Right? Like, I was going to say, like, I would have had you pegged for more of a domestic guy, but I mean, because, but I'm starting to learn more people don't despise Euro as much as I do. Right? Like I just flat out refuse to work on them. I don't want to, I don't like it. I don't like the customers, I don't like the cars. I'm going to kind of hush on that because it's not very politically correct, but I don't like the customers. So I don't want to work on the cars. I get it. You'd been at Ford a while too, right?

08:33 - 08:42 SPEAKER01 Yep, yep. I had essentially all together communicated about eight years, nine years with Ford. One class away from seeing your master.

08:42 - 08:51 SPEAKER00 Wow. How'd you get into this? Because you said you had a restaurant job, but I think you'd done that in the past too, right?

08:52 - 09:33 SPEAKER01 Yeah, I had restaurant work and stuff like that. I, I had been at that restaurant. I left there when I came here because an hour drive that just, I don't have the time and it just wouldn't be money ahead for me or worthwhile to them for me to only be there for two hours per se, you know? And, uh, but I had been there essentially since 2019. So I had been there for quite a while as a part-time job and stuff like So, but culinary, ironically, I was actually going to go to school for culinary before I started changing oil at a BP station. Here we are, 20 years later.

09:33 - 10:55 SPEAKER00 I, I, I joke. Cause for me, culinary is like such a difference from fixing cars, right? You can actually be creative, you know, you can kind of deviate from the plan. That's what was always appealing to me. But I'm just the way I'm wired too. I've joked and people said like the first time that somebody tried to send something back to the kitchen, I'd lose my, I'd lose my mind, right? Like I'd be like a Gordon Ramsay, like, you know, I just, I think like, yeah, you know what I mean? Cause it's just sometimes people want to be that way. or they really don't know how it's supposed to taste, and it doesn't taste like what they're used to, and they think there's something wrong with it. I don't have the patience to handle that kind of stuff, especially on culinary. And I would take it be more sensitive, right? It's different when somebody says, when my car is still not fixed and you can explain why it's still not fixed, it's still not fixed because you didn't want X, Y and Z fixed, you only wanted X and Y fixed, right? But when it's culinary, I would take that to be much, I would, it would hurt my feelings more because I would be creating something and I would be like really, I don't want to say really trying, but I'd be creating, I'd be putting myself out there, right? Versus just fixing a car. You're not really emotionally putting yourself out there. I guess maybe some people do. I don't. It's just, you know, fixing the car. But so why?

10:55 - 11:45 SPEAKER01 Food is a lot like fixing cars in some ways. Like you just have a creativity like like custom vehicle work. I mean, you can, you know, put culinary work in that. I mean, obviously that's far out of both of our wheelhouses, but yeah, that's If you think about how you approach a vehicle, what repair you're going to do, whether you've done it a million times or done it one time, you look for ways to make things better. I mean, mostly for you, but you're still getting the job done. If you put that in the culinary mindset, you're trying to make a dish that seems great to you and seems great to the customer. You know, and you're getting your job done because the customer likes it. They're happy with what you did for them.

11:45 - 11:46 SPEAKER02 Yeah.

11:46 - 11:52 SPEAKER00 So how did you start out? Like you said, you started out at a BP station changing oil.

11:52 - 12:10 SPEAKER01 How long ago was that? That was the summer between my junior and senior year. So that would have been 2004. Wow. Yeah. I don't look it, I know that.

12:10 - 12:21 SPEAKER00 It's probably the hair. I'm not cutting it because there'll be nothing. There'll be a landing strip right down the center of my forehead if I cut it off. I get it. I get it.

12:21 - 12:28 SPEAKER01 There's still some here. I mean, of course I have to hit everywhere here, but you'd think the padding would help around here.

12:28 - 12:36 SPEAKER00 So when you took that job, you weren't thinking that that was going to be a career. You were just like taking the job. You probably were going to go into culinary.

12:36 - 12:38 SPEAKER01 Yep. I was. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

12:39 - 13:04 SPEAKER00 Did it, so what steer, I was just gonna ask you, what steered you to that? Did you have a knack for it or did you just like, you know, cause we talk how you'll see some guys and it's like, oh, I, you know, I really enjoyed the cars or I really enjoyed, you know, driving the Mustangs around as an example, right? Like, or performance cars or whatever, right? If they were coming in, did, why did you make that change? Did it just seem like you had a knack or?

13:04 - 13:48 SPEAKER01 Essentially, I mean, I took it just as another part-time job. I did a school to work program. So I was working for an electrical company over that summer and stuff. And then I was going to do the school to work program, spend half my day working there and then more money. Might as well go work this part-time job, you know, from four to seven, you know, nothing crazy. And then on Saturdays I'll help change oil and stuff like that. And just kind of snowballed into, you know, I went to do summer help at Vermeer manufacturing. I don't know if you've seen. the implement like excavators and stuff like that. Big yellow machines. Yeah. They are based here in Pella.

13:48 - 13:49 SPEAKER02 Okay.

13:49 - 14:19 SPEAKER01 So I went to do a summer program after I graduated with them and I was in the fleet shop cause I had automotive experience and stuff like that essentially. And after that, uh, the Ford dealership was hiring a loop tech and I went there and I was just going to take a year off. And I've taken almost 20 years off now. I'm going to tell you in the blink of an eye, here I am.

14:19 - 14:47 SPEAKER00 It goes fast, doesn't it? When I think about it, it seems like only a couple of years ago and I was just starting to hang out on Facebook and talk to people and meet people like yourself. And we mentioned Bill and all that kind of crew. And then I, something popped up on my feed the other day and I was looking at it again on my old profile. It was eight years ago, right? One of those posts and one of the groups and that was like eight years.

14:47 - 14:50 SPEAKER01 It's probably been almost a solid 10 years that we've known each other.

14:50 - 17:36 SPEAKER00 Yeah. It goes so, it goes so fast. Cause I mean, and you know, I've said it all before, right? If it wasn't for those groups and the friendships you make in that, I don't think a lot of us, not just myself, but I think a lot of us maybe would have, washed out isn't the right word, but we would have maybe transitioned into something else, right? Because it's just, there was such a need, I think, back then. to just be able to vent more about the frustrations or get help on navigating a repair or, you know, like I'm sure you've had it too where people, you know, DM message you about, hey, I got a Dakota in my bay and it's got, you know, this fault and I've tried this, that and the other thing and it's like, you can walk them through it because like I've worked on millions of Dakotas, right? And I've seen that and you can kind of, you know, where to look. That kind of camaraderie of being able to just, but it wasn't just about fixing the car, right? It's like talking about, you know, the difficulties we've all had in the industry. And then even, you know, the personal stuff outside of the industry, right? The relationships and ups and downs and, you know, life just never stops. And I'm thankful for that, that I had that opportunity. And, you know, we've You know, there was a lot of people that, you know, didn't get it was all about or, or, you know, and some people still don't, but I'm, I'm thankful for those, those connections. Right. I think it, it really, I know if I hadn't met the connections that I'd made, I wouldn't still be doing this. I'd be doing something completely different. What that would be. I don't know, but I would've, I would've gone a completely different path because, you know, it was, it was tough. I was trying to, I was trying to make the dealership environment better. And then I was trying to make the independent shop experience better. And I realized that I wasn't making it better by always bitching about it or talking about it, or in the sense that it changed the industry. But it made it better for me that I could realize that other people are going through the same thing, right? And I could survive it. It gave me resolve to go in and do it tomorrow because it's like, oh, I'm dealing with this problem, but you know, I talked to Jonathan, he's got a way worse job waiting for him than I do. He's working on a six liter tomorrow, like I don't have to do that. I'll take six liters all day, that's for sure. You can have them. We hardly see any of them anymore. They're all rotted away. Even the six fours are almost all gone up here. They're rotten, gone.

17:36 - 17:56 SPEAKER01 see way more six four or six liters than I do six fours. I mean, six fours are a dime a dozen. I mean, that's not even the right wording. I see one out of, yeah, six liters are a dime a dozen. Six fours, I've worked on two in the last probably four years.

17:57 - 18:07 SPEAKER00 But weren't they, from the standpoint of a lot of guys at the dealer, when they broke, they were like pretty much terminal breakage, right? Like they weren't, people didn't fix them.

18:07 - 18:19 SPEAKER01 Essentially. I mean, it's the six liter except worse. Yeah. People still dump money in those things sometimes, though. It's ridiculous.

18:19 - 18:57 SPEAKER00 Well, I mean, I can understand if you're going to dump money in a 6-liter because, like, it's kind of been established now what you have to do to them to make them work, right? And that the aftermarket support has gotten there, right? Lucas loves the freaking things. The 6.7, I think, is a better engine. But it's in a more expensive truck, right? If you're looking at the market, people are going to do, right? Like, you know, a six liters, what, 20 years old. A lot of people, they can afford that truck. The 6.7, it could still be a $40,000, $50,000 truck, right?

18:57 - 19:05 SPEAKER01 The way the market is today, it's absolutely insane. Absolutely insane what some of these trucks give out.

19:05 - 19:07 SPEAKER00 So when you're at Mercedes, do you miss working on trucks?

19:09 - 19:52 SPEAKER01 Sometimes, sometimes I miss swinging the hammer, but I mean, like right now, we have a Ford Flex and 11 with 160,000 miles they sold and blooming smoke out the exhaust. Mike probably needs turbos. I didn't look at it. And so now all of a sudden this week, Shaw Foreman comes up and he's like, so what's it going to take to put those turbos in that Flex? I was like, And so here I am, got the turbos out, and I'm waiting on more parts than it needs, and I won't see them until the end of the week, so I'm down to pay. Makes me feel right at home.

19:52 - 20:16 SPEAKER00 Well, I was trying to think of what, oh, we had something last week too, and it was the same thing. Ford has gotten really bad on parts availability. Like, it's ridiculous. And it's, I'm trying to think, What the heck was it? It's like a strut or something, like a shock, and it was just dumb, and you're like, how can you not have this?

20:16 - 20:19 SPEAKER01 Strut for an Explorer or an Edge, possibly?

20:19 - 20:22 SPEAKER00 Yeah, might have been something like that.

20:22 - 20:30 SPEAKER01 Because the strut mounts are probably making noise, and you're probably going to want to get the whole assembly, and that's been made of unobtainium for like four years.

20:32 - 22:41 SPEAKER00 I don't know what the solution is really for that. I mean, we've hired a couple of new people in the last month at our shop and one guy, he had worked at a recycling yard, a wrecking yard. So he's actually reminded us that sometimes that's not a bad option to get some parts, right? Because traditionally at our shop, we try to stay away from it because we got burned a lot with the quality, right? And you don't necessarily always want to attract that customer, right? That wants a used part. But I mean, You'll try and find a tip them for 2006 caravan in two 23. It isn't happening. They don't have one. Right. And like the guy said, well, I think dealer trade on them. $1,000. And I'm like, this van's not worth like 400 bucks, right? Like you wouldn't put an OE, I mean, you should probably put an OE one, because the backstory is, so we get the tip, because it's an intermittent no start. So we trace it down. Shocker, right? Flip the tip over, it's full of green goo coming out the bottom of it, right? There's your connector, right? Full of corrosion. Cool. Pins will break off. You know how that goes. You've been there. So we're like, okay, so we get, we could have used tip them, they ship it over like, okay, a hundred bucks for the used tip them. We figure out we'll mark it up to whatever. He goes and puts that tip him in. It's not even an intermittent no start. It's, it's dead, dead. Like it's totally dead. He takes the other one back off. It's five minutes swap, right? Plugs it all back in, comes back to your life. Okay. phone that up. So we don't know how long we're going to go before they can get us another one. Like that was Monday that we went through that. Today, sorry, that was Tuesday morning. As of today, they still haven't sent us another one. So I think they've got to go to the yard and try and find it. But I'm just like, I'm thinking like, these are $900 and they're obsolete. Like, to me, it just seems like yesterday I was putting in like three of them a week and there was all kinds of them available and well, like, So, you know, I didn't, I didn't change as many of them as people did. I, I always seemed to, it just ended up being connection issues, right? Those connectors on the bottom of them were just one of the worst designs ever.

22:41 - 22:51 SPEAKER01 But wouldn't that, uh, wouldn't that be the, uh, uh, wouldn't be a tip of, if it was a 06, it would have been a front control module.

22:52 - 23:07 SPEAKER00 Well, so the way I always called it was the front control was the chrome little box of the four screws that went through into the, so yes, front control module, fuse box, but yeah. And just cause totally integrated module was when it was totally integrated, right?

23:07 - 23:14 SPEAKER01 Like you couldn't, couldn't set that whole, that whole thing was inside the fuse block at that point.

23:14 - 23:45 SPEAKER00 So still junk. Um, They never really fixed these changes in design five times. But I just laugh now because it's like… You know, I can remember that seemed like yesterday when we were going down that road and fighting those things all the time. And I mean, it wasn't really fighting. We got to know that we made good money on it because you had a good one out your toolbox all the time, right? Like you always had one good one on your bench that you knew, okay, the wipers don't work, but everything else works, right? You just plugged it in and bang, there you go, driving around. Clock springs.

23:45 - 23:48 SPEAKER01 You always kept a clock spring on your toolbox because you're doing at least two a day.

23:51 - 24:44 SPEAKER00 I mean, I miss, I joke, but I mean, I miss those simple vehicles. Back then, they didn't, like, we didn't think they were simple, right? I guess what I'm trying to say is everybody thought like a 1995 was simple. And then in 2005, that was really complex. Now in 2023, like, I look at this van and I'm just like, you know, no wonder I'm like, so stupid. I relate to so much what's going on to this, and it's like my learning curve stopped there. I never saw the point to go past. It's so basic. It's so simple, right? Like, yes, there was some freaky stuff that went on. You'd see weird things once in a while. But, I mean, I'm looking at it going, I love these vans. I don't know why they had to stop building them. They were so good. I made so much money.

24:44 - 24:47 SPEAKER01 They really weren't terrible vans in all reality.

24:48 - 25:05 SPEAKER00 And you always had a parking lot of known good parts. Like you always had a parking lot of, I mean, it was just, it was great. You could jump into any one of them, take the customer for a drive, show them that it shifts the same as yours, makes the same noise. Like, you know, it's just, unfortunately that's a $20,000 van, right?

25:05 - 25:10 SPEAKER01 Like, you know, so how do you find that? Yeah. So many steering gears.

25:11 - 25:14 SPEAKER00 They were, you know, they paid so good.

25:14 - 25:32 SPEAKER01 Oh, they paid, what was it? I think it was like two and a half hours including tow under warranty and paid like four and a half hours outside of warranty without the alignment. Yeah. I mean, I did a solid gold dance every time I got a freaking customer pay one.

25:32 - 25:49 SPEAKER00 I'd see guys fist fight for them, like literally. You know, power steering, give it to me, right? Like, you know, because they're, It might just need a reservoir, but if it was under warranty, it was getting a rack and a reservoir, right? Because, I mean, the rack paid. The cooler?

25:49 - 25:53 SPEAKER01 Yeah. For the vibration? Yeah, yeah.

25:53 - 25:58 SPEAKER00 The one that didn't have the cooler? That was so stupid.

25:58 - 26:03 SPEAKER01 Let's get rid of this metal line and give you three feet of hose. That'll take care of your vibration.

26:04 - 27:19 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Oh, and, but don't get the snow on it because then, like, look out, that sucker's gonna, like, you'll be towing it in because it'll blow the thing apart. I can remember the first one, then they came in and those hoses would split on that cooler, and you're like, what is doing this? And you'd put those two stupid ones in that they gave you for that first recall, and you'd change them out all day long. We'd do six, seven of them by lunch. Then, you know, bleed the air out of it, blah, blah, blah, ship it down the road, come back in three months later, those same hoses put again. They're like, okay, so now you got to put this big long loop. Junkie system, right? It was all, I swear, I said it all the time is because when they switch from power steering fluid to ATF, when that's in the cold climates, it doesn't like it, right? It's not the best power steering fluid. And it's funny because now as I've started to work on some GM's equinoxes trains and stuff, I've seen similar issues with their power steering. when they're running ATF in it, when it's cold, it gets noisy, it wants to blow the lines off. And I remember the first time I was running one, I'm like, oh, this is like deja vu all over again, right? It's cold temperatures, ATF, and blown up power steering, it was great.

27:19 - 27:28 SPEAKER01 I don't remember GMs ever having actual ATF. They had the clear fluid, but I don't think that was actual ATF viscosity.

27:30 - 28:00 SPEAKER00 Trying to think of the terrain I had that I just went through. They actually introduced us. There's a bulletin for colder weather power steering fluid, and they want you to take out essentially what's the ATF and put in this other power steering fluid, which looks more like traditional power steering. But yeah, what was in there at least, which for my, now again, I don't know, we're not the original owners of it, but it looked like it had never been. Hatcher Service, it had some type of ATF in the power steering. Could have been wrong.

28:00 - 28:05 SPEAKER01 I mean, before you get an up north thing for you too, because of the temperatures.

28:05 - 28:06 SPEAKER02 Yeah.

28:06 - 28:32 SPEAKER00 Yeah. I just think about it. You know, I like, give me an old Saginaw pump with like the, this one on the back that used to rot out right on the caravans, but they never, always just changed because they're rusted and leaking. And then they went to that damn aluminum thing and it was, it was just junk. How do you find, um, So Mercedes, electrically, how's that to work on?

28:32 - 29:33 SPEAKER01 Not too bad. Their wiring diagram took a little getting used to, but once you understand how it works, it's not like that track style, but when you're actually in star wiring is what they call it, it's actually really, really kind of cool. Cause you can look up, so their scan tool, the Zentry, Basically, you do all your guided tests with that scan tool. If you have some sort of issue, fault code, you do the test with that Sentry and it tells you step by step what to do. If you need to take apart anything, stuff like that, you can go to the wiring diagram and they give you, like, Y110 is this component. You go to the wiring diagram, drop down, go to Y110, and then you can find out where that component is, connect reviews sometimes for it, and, like, It's actually pretty cool now that I've gotten used to it a little bit. It was a little overwhelming the first week or two.

29:33 - 30:16 SPEAKER00 I've heard people say that it's almost like they built their whole idea of the service information around the scan tool. You know what I mean? In terms of the scan tool as a platform is taking the place of your laptop and it's kind of syncing everything together. I mean, everything is tablet-based, sure, like even your Snap-on scanner. But I talked to some of the guys that work on a lot of that Euro stuff, and they're like, yeah, you really, if you're not using a Zentry, you're really behind with how fast you can get some of this stuff navigated. You'll still find the information, but you're at a disadvantage. Because you hear some people talk about, like, the Mercedes wiring being really, you know, lots of problem areas, but you're not seeing a lot of it? Problem areas?

30:16 - 30:52 SPEAKER01 Probably in the older stuff. And I don't see a whole heck of a lot of the older stuff. I mean, the oldest thing I've worked on is a 2000 E-class that looks like, I just, I just finished it up Monday and it looks like it sat for five years and they drug it straight out of the farmyard and brought it to us. And, uh, uh, now it's back of course, because the radio quit working after the service that we did to it, even though All I did was an oil change and charge the AC and put brakes on it.

30:52 - 31:00 SPEAKER00 But now the radio stopped. That's a comeback. Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course it's a comeback. Of course. Yeah. Can you still get a radio for it?

31:00 - 31:12 SPEAKER01 I don't know. I haven't looked at it yet. It's back burner for me at this point. You want to whine about your 23 year old vehicle that looks like it sat for six years. It's going to take a minute for me to look at it.

31:12 - 31:15 SPEAKER00 Yeah. How is this shop? Is it a big shop?

31:17 - 31:39 SPEAKER01 About 20 some odd bays. Ooh, that is big. Most of them are all in ground. There's two drive-on lifts for the sprinters, 15K two-post for the sprinter, and then we have the alignment rack. Otherwise, everything's all in ground. My other lift is the EV lift.

31:39 - 31:40 SPEAKER02 Oh, okay.

31:40 - 31:47 SPEAKER01 Because apparently we had to have at least one lift that was certified with Mercedes to do EQ batteries and stuff.

31:48 - 31:50 SPEAKER00 How do you like the sprinters?

31:50 - 31:51 SPEAKER01 I don't mess with the sprinters.

31:51 - 31:52 SPEAKER02 No way.

31:52 - 32:07 SPEAKER01 Nope. This dealership, everybody I've talked to, we have two sprinter techs there and they are actually, from what I've been told, they are one of the top five, top three sprinter techs in the U.S.

32:13 - 32:21 SPEAKER00 I can remember one of them, like you can probably remember too, the Sprinter days when they were with Dodge, right? With Chrysler. Mm-hmm.

32:21 - 32:24 SPEAKER01 Freightliner and Ram Sprinter and all that fun stuff.

32:25 - 33:20 SPEAKER00 I hated those stupid things. I went on one training course for those and I was like, and they were pretty, I want to say that was probably 2008 when I was on the course, and I was in the classroom and it was like, I hadn't hardly worked on them because I'd just changed dealerships and the dealership I'd left, we didn't have the Sprinter franchise. The one I'd moved to, we did. So they sent me on this course and I'm sitting there and these guys are talking about all these, you know, blah, blah, what they fix on them. This thing's a turd. Like, I mean, the one that I'd seen back in our shop, the wiring diagram wasn't even correct. Like it was not accurate at all. It was, it was a nightmare back in the day. It's probably better now, but they always said it was because what they actually got into production versus what got published was like, there was a big lag there, I guess. Right. But I didn't, I didn't stay at that dealership long enough to get really proficient at it. I was just like, I didn't, I,

33:21 - 33:39 SPEAKER01 We have two Chrysler dealers in the Des Moines area and they flat-out refuse to work on Sprinters. They all get sent to us. Yeah. So, I mean, our stuff hooks right up to it because it's just a Mercedes platform with Dodge badging on it.

33:39 - 34:43 SPEAKER00 Yeah, yeah. The last one I saw was a Sprinter RV that came into when I worked at the spring truck shop and it had a transmission issue and they went over to the Dodge dealer and the Dodge dealer looked at it and went they said oh it won't fit on our hoist it would fit on the hoist but the guy didn't want to work on it because it was an RV and then so they wound up at the Mercedes dealer and the Mercedes dealer took care of them with I can't remember if it It called back, I don't know if it needed a complete transmission or it might have just needed that plug, right, that always… Oh, yeah. Right? And the customer was happy, but I'm just thinking back then, it's like, to be that mechanic and to be able to say, I don't want to work on it because it's an RV, like, I've worked on a ton of RVs. Do I like it? No. But that's not even, to me, that's like, that's like a bus, you can't even call it an RV, it's just a little thing, right? You know, we get, we have giant buses at my shop. So when people say like, I don't want to work on RVs, I'm like, you should see the buses we work on. They're huge.

34:43 - 35:13 SPEAKER01 So the Ford dealership I was at last time I was there before this last time I did all RVs and stuff and the bigger stuff. Cause everybody refused. I'm the, I was the only one that knew how to use the alignment rack and use it on the truck lift aside from the alignment rack and stuff. And after I left there, I, come to find out that they were refusing to work on any alignment or front end stuff with RVs because they couldn't align it because they had nobody to do it, because nobody else wanted to do it.

35:13 - 35:24 SPEAKER00 That was going to be my next question at this Mercedes dealer. Are you guys going through the same, you know, we hear it all the time, technician storage. Like, are you at full capacity? Like you say, you got 20 days.

35:24 - 36:08 SPEAKER01 We've got, we've got, let me count in my head real quick. We've got eight, We have nine techs, including the mobile tech and then the two Sprinter techs. One of them's a hourly guy. And so he does most of the little oil changes, like the ones that don't want the A and B services and stuff like that to change the oil and get me the hell out of here. Or, you know, you don't lift yet. the giant corporation, that's what owns us. So you buy this iLife package, it's a lifetime oil change package and stuff like that. So those vehicles that come in for the whole three-tenths free oil change, they go to hemp.

36:08 - 38:11 SPEAKER00 Essentially. That Nissan dealer that I was at, He built his, or he tried to build, really what he did was he tied a rope around his neck and threw it in the lake with it because it killed him. He tried to patent that, was the lifetime oil change thing. And I was like, I remember doing the interview, and I remember sitting there, and it was a weird interview because it was a long interview. And I had the service manager, the fixed operations manager, the general manager, and I think the sales guy walked in at some point as well. And I'm looking at them all, and it's this big shiny oak table, you know, the only person that's there that's not is the owner. And I'm like, so how does this free oil change for life thing work? Does it really make you any money? Or I said, because I would think it would attract the worst clientele that you would want on any product line, high end or not, right? You start selling people the idea that something should be free, it's going to be really hard to ever get them to pay for anything ever again. And they're like, oh, no, it's great. It's driving sales. And it didn't drive nothing. It drove him right out of business. We had so many disgruntled customers. Now, I'll get to why that is. We had so many disgruntled customers inside of the two years that I worked there that he essentially lost it all. He couldn't afford to. Because what he would do is he would write up his own contract. It wasn't from Nissan. It was his own contract that said, The oil change is free if you perform other maintenance. That was the part that nobody ever read, right, when they're buying the car, the sales agreement. They never read it. The salesman, of course, they didn't fully disclose that, right? They're just, all your maintenance is all covered, your oil change is free, right? What would happen, John, is they'd come in and it's like, OK, so it's 40,000 kilometers on your little Versa here. You need a brake service. And Nissan was great. They tried to sell you a brake fluid flush every 20,000 K. Because it's DOT 4, right? It's much more hydroscopic. You've got to flush it.

38:11 - 38:13 SPEAKER01 Mercedes is the exact same way.

38:13 - 40:16 SPEAKER00 Right? So you'd get customers come in that's like, oh, I thought all my maintenance was free. No, your oil change is free. Okay. Well, I just want to do the oil change. So after they were like in for like four times and they tried to sell them other work and they didn't get it and they, you know how that would go. Cause they, the customer would be like, no, I got a guy that does everything else. I've just, just changed the oil. Dirk quad. He would, he would void the contract because it was a contract that they signed it when they bought the car. Well, we wound up on the news. It was, it was, it's, it's no. if you like just if you want to go fire up the old interweb and look up the google machine kingston nissan oil changes for life you'll get some pretty interesting reddit has had a wicked thread forever but yeah we made the news it was that people were that po'd And it cost him everything, it really did. So when you said they got the free oil changes for life, it was the same thing. He rolled it into the price of the car, but then he would void the contract if he didn't. So the funny thing is we'd have people come in that's like, Well, what do I need to buy to get my next oil change for free? Because they're starting to get upset, right? Well, you need to buy an air filter. Well, how much is an air filter? $18. OK. All right. I'll buy the air filter. Well, John, the next time they came in and got another oil change, they bought another air filter. So we'd take them out. They'd only been in there, like, 5,000 kilometers, like, six months. In the trash it would go. Brand new Nissan air filter in there. Customer keeps their oil change for life. This went on for, like, five years at that dealership, two that I was working on it. I just, like, I'm no dealer owner, but I've been seeing some things. I've been around some places. This can't possibly work. And it didn't work. It did not work. Between that and the warranties that he would write up and sell that were his own third-party warranty, it was terrible. It was awful.

40:16 - 40:23 SPEAKER01 Did you guys up there have the lifetime powertrain warranty with Chrysler when they were doing that?

40:24 - 40:56 SPEAKER00 And I would talk to people back in the day and they would talk about how I heard how it was in the States for Chrysler. Guys hated it. We didn't. I don't know if they said it was because of the weather or something like we're extreme climate now in Alaska, I would think is more extreme than us. And that's the US and they would have got lifetime oil changes. or lifetime warranty, powertrain. But how did it work? Was it just like an extended warranty and after so many miles, you still had to pay deductible or no?

40:56 - 41:03 SPEAKER01 Lifetime. You bought that lifetime powertrain warranty when you bought that vehicle brand new?

41:03 - 41:04 SPEAKER02 Yeah.

41:04 - 41:24 SPEAKER01 Lifetime. There was a guy that had an 04, not 04, 09 RAM when they were still doing the lifetime. And the last independent shop I was at, he came in for services and stuff like that. He had just had an engine put in it the year before, under a lifetime powertrain.

41:24 - 41:52 SPEAKER00 I mean, I guess if corporate keeps paying them, right, the dealership, then I guess it's okay. It's good for the customer. But I mean, imagine an engine and 09 RAM to change and say, you know, let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say 2015. It's not the same labor that's changing it in 2022, right? There's substantially more stuff, shenanigans.

41:52 - 42:18 SPEAKER01 I don't know if the guy had to pay for, like, manifolds, because I guarantee manifolds probably roached out of it, if not already been replaced, but yeah. And that's a Chrysler thing, though, at that point in time. I mean, it's not like these little dealers and stuff are doing stuff like that. It was a corporate thing. So you're kind of hard-pressed to get away from not being able to adhere to those rules.

42:18 - 42:25 SPEAKER00 So you were there, right? Were you working at Chrysler when that was going through as well?

42:25 - 42:45 SPEAKER01 When the Lifetime was going through? Yes. Essentially, end of 2009 was when I left. permanently from Chrysler. And that was about six months after Fiat bought them. Yeah. The Pentastar was just coming out and all that fun stuff.

42:45 - 46:02 SPEAKER00 Yeah. I want to see, I probably left around, I didn't want to say probably 2009, about the same time I was starting to get out. And it's because Like I'd made that change from Ottawa to Kingston to come down to this dealer that had promised me the world. And uh, it was not the world. It was not promised. It wasn't what it seemed, right? Like the grass is definitely greener cause it grew right over the septic tank as my friend, Brian Pollock likes to remind me. It was bad, really bad. Like it was, it was a complete snow job and you know. Oh yeah, you're going to come down here and you're going to do X, Y, and Z. And oh, we got a guy that does that, but he's slipping. So we need you here. Well, then when his hours took a major hit, because all of a sudden there was two of us doing what he did. Yeah. We're sorry. You're not going to be able to get those labor ops anymore. You're, you're killing it. You're making great money and the, and the cars aren't coming back. But like he's, he's complaining to the owner and, uh, Yeah. And see, so why he complained to the owner was because the dealership had been unionized at one point. And he was one of the four that crossed the picket line every day. So it really did not matter who came in to manage the dealership, who ran what. He was untouchable. And not a good mechanic. That was the reality of it. He was not good at what he did. But he was looked after. So I didn't last there, so I'd given up everything, a really good position at the dealer I'd been in Ottawa, you know, moved back home to be with family, which was still the main reason to come down here. But it was, you know, you promised the sun, right? You promised the world. And then you realize you get into the dynamics of how a dealer that had gone through that, the union, because what had happened is the union had come in, When they brought the union in, it was voted in. It was brought in because everybody was fed up with how they were being treated. And I'm not pro-union, just for the record. So, the union came in. A lot of the guys benefited from the union coming in. They actually got some paid holidays and they got some hoists. Most of them were working on the ground still in like 2000. They just weren't buying equipment. It was just a very crappy run, greedy cesspool, from what I hear allegedly. And so what really irked me was that, so the people that had crossed the picket line still reaped the benefits when the union came in and got them paid holidays and they went from making like $12 an hour to like $20 something. But they still got looked after, the four people that went across the picket line every day, right, for how many times it was out there. So, long story short, they finally got enough of them to vote the union out. And they started with a whole, you know, employ me, employ me, employ me. employee benefits plan, profit sharing, there was a whole HR department formed and, you know, a manual for as an employee and all that kind of stuff, handbook because, and it was always about, you know, we really want to look after you here because you're vital and, you know, what it really was saying is we don't want the union back so, you know, please sign the book and be happy because, you know, it cost them over, apparently it cost them over a million to get the union out in terms of what they had to do.

46:04 - 46:17 SPEAKER01 I can see the union being a good idea to weed out the little shit dealers that make everything look bad, but then you have the dealers that over-utilize unionization.

46:21 - 46:36 SPEAKER00 I mean, up here, it's not a thing. Like, that's the only dealer that I've seen and heard of. And like I said, by the time I worked there, it was already gone, but it was still like this cloud that hung over the place like it had been there, right? They were famous for it. But there's other states that have it, right?

46:36 - 47:07 SPEAKER01 California for sure has all their… California's got their own bullshit in general, but I think they're all union. I think that's just required, but I'm not 100% on that. I know that everybody's, there's no flat rate in California, period. But other states, I don't, I know there's a few of them out there that like offer union, but it's not required and stuff like that. So you can, so that can't be a thing in certain states, but it doesn't have to be.

47:07 - 47:21 SPEAKER00 When you've heard people talk in the industry forever, like in the groups that you and I have been in and running, Do you think it's a, what is, I get the sense that you don't think it's going to fix anything or make it better or really you're not pro-union, I don't think.

47:21 - 48:09 SPEAKER01 I'm not. I feel like, I feel like the person that hired you should be the one that should be making sure you're doing everything correctly, you know, to the, to your job. But in the end, you got to make sure that you're doing everything to the best of your ability. You know, if they, if they promise you the world, you got to try and give them the world. If they don't give you the world, then that's, that's on them. And that's when you got to sit down and hash it out. I don't, I don't feel like we need some sort of lawyer outside to come in and do that for us. That's, I think that's going to be kind of where the problem lies with how the industry is right now with the tech forges and stuff like that. Everybody's looking for somebody to talk for them instead of them talking, but.

48:10 - 48:14 SPEAKER00 You get, yeah, for sure. I mean, and that's, go ahead.

48:14 - 49:41 SPEAKER01 You get like, I don't know, you see a lot of like people that work for corporate dealers and stuff like that. Um, their biggest complaint is, you know, it's all, it's corporate, it's lithia, this or auto nation and blah, blah, blah, blah. Personally, I, I've, I've only been with lithia since April. I mean, yeah, there's corporate things there, but in the end it's all management. Like my service manager is awesome. Um, my shop foreman's awesome. He's cool as hell. He's more than he's been there for like 15 years since before lithium owned them. And I mean, they just, everybody works well together. And the general manager, he's always in the shop talking to people and stuff like that. He's, He's like, this is what we have to do to make everything good. Like, then we'll spend the money to make, make it good. He said in our last shop meeting, the one that we've had that since I've been there, he's like, personally, he's like, I think we're doing great as a dealership, but you know, this is what Mercedes wants. This is what Lithia wants. This is what we got to do. Yeah. I mean, but he's not like, you know, digging it into our skulls. This is what we got to do. Like, You guys are doing your job. We think you're doing it great, you know, but this is what they want. This is what we got to give them. And maybe it's just the Mercedes mentality. I don't know. Cause this is the first corporate, well, not the first corporate, but it's the first big time corporate deal I've ever worked for.

49:41 - 51:59 SPEAKER00 Up here. It's so different, right? Because I can't say that any of them are corporate. Like it's more about certain dealer groups within the province, you know, own a lot of dealers. And, um, But they tend to let the dealers operate still as their own entities, right? Like they'll have a management team that'll come in and when one gets acquired, we'll tend to bring this team in, coach everybody on what's new, what stayed the same, what's different, and do some of the hiring and the firing through that process. But they tend to leave them alone. Like if it was working good before they took it over, they'd just leave it alone. Because it was obviously working right. It's about the people that are there are making it work. There's like you said, there's a relationship. Somebody's been there 15 years. They've got a rapport with everyone else that's working there, right? The customers are familiar with that person. But I have heard some nightmares. I've seen some nightmares too when they get bought where like all of the management is gone. And you know, That's been what I've seen a lot of the time is the techs are normally the safest people in that when it happens. I'm not, you see all the time guys talk about the industry needs a union and I would have said probably five or six years ago I would have been, you probably could have swayed me to be that. Now as I've started to network with more people and especially the industry is not going to have a union from the sense that there's such a divide between, not a divide but The dealers are going to operate one way and the independent shops are going to operate another, right? And I think that you just try and get a union that would work in both pretty hard. But I see that the union is not necessarily the fix, but more of these groups of people that are starting to say, okay, you know, this is how you make it better. This is how you charge. This is how we, you know, get on board with the newest tech. That's going to be, I think, a way better option for a lot of us than the union is. Most of the time, when I was at that dealer, they used to say, and you'd ask questions, and if somebody was brave enough to talk about it, because it was a very hush-hush word, they'd be like, all I ever did was keep the people that shouldn't have been here employed. But yeah, you'd go around the whole room and everybody would say that. So, if everybody said the same thing, who was the people that shouldn't have been kept? I must have talked to them at some point, right? Like, they're still here.

52:00 - 52:04 SPEAKER01 We're all fired. We're just here because we can be.

52:04 - 52:25 SPEAKER00 Yeah. It was, um, I don't know. It was a toxic, toxic place to work. So there's been a lot of them that have been toxic. I don't know if it's me or what. Right? It might be. You know what they say after so many times, right? The common denominator is you. It could be you. I, um, like, have you ever worked in an independent? I can't remember.

52:25 - 52:37 SPEAKER01 Yes. Yeah. When we first met essentially in AT and stuff, I was working for a franchised independent shop. I had worked there for probably about five years.

52:37 - 52:41 SPEAKER00 Okay, because I thought it was and then it was like… I was in management with them too.

52:41 - 53:02 SPEAKER01 I was running stores for them too, which sucked. Never again. I've always told anybody that says, well, if you want to be a service manager, I said, You give me $125,000 a year plus commission, I'll talk about it. Probably still going to be a no, but I might think about it.

53:02 - 53:05 SPEAKER00 You don't want to hear all the grievances of all the techs all day long.

53:05 - 53:36 SPEAKER01 You know what? Going up front means I have to talk to people. And you know what? I've talked to enough people running stores. And I have to be the guy that has to listen to their grumblings and try to put those stupid stories in there. I'm out. I just can't do it anymore. I had a hatred for the human race before I went into management. I didn't realize there was a new level, and I found that level very quickly.

53:36 - 53:53 SPEAKER00 And that's what strikes me as so funny, then, that you work on Mercedes, because, like, I'll go back to it. That type of customer in me just doesn't click, right? I have nothing in common with them, and it's very hard to see where they're coming from, right? So you have very little contact with them?

53:54 - 54:40 SPEAKER01 No, I don't talk to him at all. In some situations, I probably should, but I had a ticket before the end of the day that I took and I was like, I really don't want to stay here for half an hour doing this update, but I get paid three tenths for it, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I looked at the next ticket, it was two pages long with the dumbest little, it was all warranty lines on it. And it was like a GLE, it was a 23 GLE with like 9,000 miles on it and it was a 10K service. Something about the lights, something about when the kinetics in their seats turn on, the whole seat shakes, this, that, and that, and this. I showed my forearm, I'm like, you see this ticket? He's like, yeah, I saw that bullshit. Don't do that one. Like, I was not planning.

54:43 - 54:45 SPEAKER00 So they have a guy that they're going to give that ticket to though.

54:45 - 54:54 SPEAKER01 Somebody's going to take it. It wasn't going to be me. I already got a 23 year old E-class on my shelf that I got to look at. I'm not about to deal with that.

54:54 - 58:50 SPEAKER00 Yeah, I know. We were talking about this today, how Because one of the guys that worked with me, it's a mix. Some of them have a dealer background and some don't, right? So sometimes when you talk about you've done the dealership thing, they look at you like, well, is it really like what they say? Is it really as bad as what they say? And I tell them, it just depends. And I think sometimes people in the group, when they see some of the disgruntled people, like the episode that dropped on Tuesday with Colin, right? They look at that and go, well, that's just a disgruntled dealer tech. Well, no. He's done both, right? He's worked in both. He's just disgruntled about how he's been treated at both, right? And it was poignant for me, some of the stuff he said. But people have this fascination that they've never worked flat rate or they've never been in a dealer. And I can't really say that it's all bad. I've had good experiences at them. It's just eventually it seems like you, there's a trajectory to it. You come in and I don't know whether they give you some really good work so you get your feet wet, you get your confidence up and then you start to get that, you know, really stuff that doesn't pay, not effective. And I don't know if that's what always sours me or if it's just the politics of realizing that there's always going to be good work and bad work. But when they start to give you more of the bad than the good, it can really kill any enthusiasm you have to come to work that day, right? And that's the thing. I think people, if you've never seen the politics side of it or the unfair dispatch side of it, you don't really know. You just look at it, the numbers, right? But I say it all the time. It's like, oh, well, I had a great week. I had 80 hours. OK. There's some guys that 80 hours is a great week. There's other guys that 40 hours is a great week. It all depends on what everybody else in the shop is making. And that's what pisses people off when you talk about it because it's like, well, you shouldn't matter what everybody else, you shouldn't be worried about what everyone else is. If I have to be here six days to make 50 because I'm doing high, low diag, and he turned 80 and just because he did flushes and breaks all day long, And that's the other thing. And we're all paid the same hourly wage when you reach whatever certain level. That's a very different thing. That screws with your, you know, that's political BS is what it is. And that's what I, when people say, well, I don't, you know, I think it's all disgruntled. And why would you be unhappy if you made 50 or what? Well, because if he made 80 and he didn't have to even, you know, think about it. right, just like hook some machines up, flush some fluids. That's a different mental drain on you when you've been like, you know, like that ticket you just talked about. Two pages long of 9,000 miles on the car, two pages long of squeaks and rattles and, you know, lighting issues and stuff like that. And they all could be legit concerns. They could all require, you know, substantial time to go in, duplicate, figure out what's wrong, contact tech line, what needs to be done. Where if you just so, if you dupe them into thinking you're really stupid and you're not going to be able to solve that stuff, they're always going to just push some other lower skilled labor at that guy. And if, you know, you turn the hours out, look at, he's a great producer. That's the politics that I can't stand about the dealer and why I won't go back to one. Cause it doesn't matter what brand I've been on that always seems to come up. And, uh, You know, I think that's incentivized pay is always going to do that. They're always going to be able to manipulate the system some way. So, you know, I just, but I could, I can't imagine. Oh, I, I, I don't know. I couldn't imagine doing the Mercedes thing. It just, those cars are cool, but.

58:50 - 59:19 SPEAKER01 You'd be surprised, man. It's actually, I mean, you get to some of the older stuff. Like it just, it just dings in your head. Cause you're like, you're seeing the stuff like, Oh, I know this. I know this transmission back, you know, the LX days, you know, that, that, that nag transmission, the rear ends and stuff. That's all Mercedes. Mercedes is what introduced Canbus to Chrysler. Crossfire, which we probably shouldn't talk about anyways, but.

59:19 - 59:37 SPEAKER00 I was just going to say that. I can remember the first time I ever got in one, worked on one, drove one. I was like. This is such a Mercedes, right? Like the, what was it, the door locks or the latches or something that was, what was that way back when it was like, it was air, air power? Thinking of, right?

59:37 - 59:49 SPEAKER01 Like it was- On the Crossfires? No. Nothing was air power on the Crossfires. Well, maybe the SRTs had the air shocks, maybe.

59:49 - 59:58 SPEAKER00 I don't remember for sure. And I was just like, that is a goofiest, Like, how they could ever, and then somebody's like, no, that's a Mercedes thing. Oh, okay. That makes sense.

59:58 - 01:00:23 SPEAKER01 They took after, they took after the SLK, which, or it could be the active body control, the hydraulic suspension. I don't think Crossfire's ever had them though. That's cool. I will not deny that, that ABC system and those SLKs and SLs and stuff. It's, it's crazy cool. It's a pain in the ass to fix, but when you're bleeding it, it's actually really cool to sit there and watch.

01:00:24 - 01:00:33 SPEAKER00 You're speaking a completely different language to me, I have no idea. I've seen them go by in traffic, never ever got exposed to them.

01:00:33 - 01:00:50 SPEAKER01 Go do your YouGoogle tubing sometime and look up SL rodeo mode. It's the bleeding procedure for the active body control suspension, which is all hydraulic. It runs off the power steering pump. It's cool to watch when you set it up.

01:00:50 - 01:00:56 SPEAKER00 Do you find that the labor times are pretty good? Like for what?

01:00:56 - 01:02:37 SPEAKER01 For the most part, yeah. I mean, it hasn't been real terrible by any means. Uh, warranty wise, of course, customer pay is all data or Mitchell. We have all data. Uh, so of course I, if I'm thinking something's not quite right, then I'll look up our warranty time and, uh, you know, one and a half times it. If that's about the same as all data, cool. If not, I'm going to want to half times it. Yeah. I set up, I set up the hours for that ticket. We have a, you ever heard of auto point from Solera? No. It's, it's a, it's like a ticket management system that works with our DMS also. So you go in there and you put your ticket number in there, your RO or your tag number, and then you can assign yourself to that ticket. Or if it's actually working correctly, if you clock into that ticket in your DMS, it'll automatically assign you to it. And then you can change your status on there to tech working. And then you go in there, you do your inspection through there. You added your recommendations and then, you know, parts, you know, availability on front pads and rotors. Save that. My dealership pays two hours per axle to do brakes. It's always pads and rotors. Put your two hours in there, add that rack, complete it. And then you just go and change it to parts price and availability, and then parts gets it. They put all that stuff in there. And it was an estimate. It goes to the advisor, advisor, all that email it, text it, call the customer, whatever. And then they can either go in there and click approve or not do this, do that. And then off we go. It's kind of cool, but it's a job.

01:02:39 - 01:02:46 SPEAKER00 I, I'm, well, I'm still doing paper written work orders in my shop. Holy crap. We still do it that way. Yep. Yeah.

01:02:46 - 01:02:52 SPEAKER01 So we're still getting paper, but yeah, cause you have to, you have to have a hard copy.

01:02:52 - 01:03:41 SPEAKER00 Oh, I, I still, write it all down. We don't have a, we don't have a system in place where, you know, I write in Rex and my handwriting sucks and it always is gonna suck. So I end up getting like a couple pages and writing it all out. And I, you know, I like to be detailed about what I'm, what it needs and why. And it's a lot. I didn't realize it until I started to think about it. Cause I've been at the dealership where we had a similar system and you just, you know, type it in, hit send, gone, right? Put the car back outside, get another car. this thing of the handwriting stuff and looking up the parts and everything it adds a substantial amount of time i never realized it until now how much yeah it's it's uh i remember doing the handwriting days i i wish i wish that i wish they'd get a system

01:03:42 - 01:03:45 SPEAKER01 That got out of point. I don't know how much it costs.

01:03:45 - 01:05:31 SPEAKER00 Yeah, so the paper writing thing and the looking up parts thing, I never appreciated how much time that added to the actual job now when I have to do it. versus before. I mean, we had it down at the dealer, you probably did too, where even when it was handwritten, it was kind of handwritten or send an email up, and then we were putting the car outside as we were waiting for approval, right? We'd go get another car. With my situation here where we only have two hoists and they're one in front of the other, we have to be very strategic about what do we put in the front and what do we put in the back, because you put a truck in the front and it's not driving out underneath anything. You put a little car in the front, you can drive it out underneath the truck on the back hoist. But it adds another ripple of like, how do I schedule my day, right? Like, and then, you know, when you order parts and you take it apart and it's the wrong part, that can screw you. Like we had that on a Volkswagen last week, pulled the struts out of it. And of course they were wrong. So that was a mad scramble. So we ended up having to call the customer with a car that was in the front and go, okay, like, we can't get yours out. They're cool. They didn't mind. We have, we've got like five loaners. So, I mean, that really helps to, you know, people like, cool, it's all right. I'm driving around with a loaner. The loaners are nothing nice. They're like 2005, 2006, like Camrys. Right. I mean, their Toyotas are reliable. The AC's cold. You know, the brakes work good. The radio works. They're happy. That's why I, you know, when, People turn their nose up and you try to give them a loaner car and they're like, you're giving me what? We've only had one person that came in and they complained because everything that we had in our loaner fleet didn't have like iLink. They couldn't link their iPhone to it. Their daughter was very upset with the loner and I'm just like, well, that's a first world problem.

01:05:31 - 01:05:43 SPEAKER01 I worked for an independent shop that had loners and they were all shit boxes. I mean, they were piles of crap. They ran, they ran. I mean, they paid to make them run, but they looked like dog shit.

01:05:45 - 01:06:04 SPEAKER00 Ours are, we keep ours clean and they don't have any dents or anything like that. And then like, there's no panel written off the side of it or the, the bumper's not held on with, you know, tie straps or anything, but I mean, they're not, they're faded paint Camrys, right? Like they, they are what they are. What, uh, what do you guys, when you got a loaner for Mercedes, what do you get?

01:06:04 - 01:06:10 SPEAKER01 A lot of like GLAs and GLBs. Cause everybody's all about the SUVs and stuff like that.

01:06:10 - 01:06:10 SPEAKER02 Yeah.

01:06:11 - 01:06:59 SPEAKER01 Of course, I think all three advisors have an S-class for the S-class owners, but I'm not entirely sure. We also sell Maybox here and there. Oh. It's essentially an S-class with a whole bunch of fancier shit. We had one that came in a few weeks ago and it got traded. his 21 Maybach for this one. It was actually a V12 too. So, I mean, it was a $275,000 car. Came with a wine cooler in the back seat and center part and champagne flutes, like crystal champagne flutes. I mean, it's insane.

01:06:59 - 01:07:01 SPEAKER02 Wow.

01:07:01 - 01:07:06 SPEAKER01 And yeah, it's cool to see them.

01:07:06 - 01:07:06 SPEAKER00 Right.

01:07:07 - 01:07:46 SPEAKER01 But it's like, dear God, I had a S550 that I did a service on and had to do a recall on. And I just got all the parts for the recall today. And they drive great. But dear Christ, everything in the car in the interior was white. Yeah. And And you could tell the guy really doesn't care because it's like fancy carpeting and it's a little brown from your shoes. There's scuff marks all over the door panel from getting in and out of it and stuff. I mean, it's a $200,000 car. You could just see scuff marks all over it. And I'm like, I could never end my life.

01:07:47 - 01:08:17 SPEAKER00 I know there's a reason I drive a jeep because like I don't mind if I you know if I because I mean I jump into the lunchtime and drive to lunch and I'll have the same work boots on that I've had on all day right and I don't stress if there's a little bit of oil on the work boot that gets on the floor mat heaven forbid that's the point of the floor mat I can't even imagine $250,000 car What I would have to do this, like, I just, yeah, I don't, the stress of that would get to me, you know?

01:08:17 - 01:08:21 SPEAKER01 That's one cheap. Those G wagons are insane too.

01:08:21 - 01:08:24 SPEAKER00 I was going to ask you the next thing, like, what is that like to drive?

01:08:24 - 01:08:59 SPEAKER01 They drive like dog shit. I'd rather drive a Wrangler. Swear to God. I, I, like my first week there, Chris, one of the techs that I was shadowing, he's like, you got a G wagon, a G 63 to look at. So it's like the top end. 200 some thousand dollar freaking Jeep and he's like go take it for a quick test drive and warm it up because we're gonna do a service on it and stuff and Brought it in. I He was like, so what do you think? I'm like this thing rides like shit. Do they all do like this and they're like welcome to G wagon

01:09:02 - 01:09:12 SPEAKER00 Well, if you say it rides worse than the Jeep, then that's pretty friggin' terrible, because I own a 2015 Wrangler and I think it drives pretty good. I like it.

01:09:12 - 01:09:35 SPEAKER01 Yeah, I mean, you expect a Jeep to drive like a Wrangler, you know? You don't expect a $200-some-thousand Jeep. I mean, they look just like Wranglers, essentially. Maybe that's just my mindset and they just ride. Apparently that's what they were, was military vehicles, just like the Wranglers were.

01:09:35 - 01:09:38 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Kim Kardashian had one. It can't be all that bad, right? I mean, that girl knows.

01:09:38 - 01:09:41 SPEAKER01 I think she owns every single Mercedes out there.

01:09:41 - 01:09:46 SPEAKER00 She knows what's good for sure.

01:09:46 - 01:09:50 SPEAKER01 If you got the money to blow, I guess do it. Yeah.

01:09:51 - 01:10:16 SPEAKER00 I, I, I would like the, the, the opportunity again to, to, you know, that's what I like. That was one of the kicks, right? Is you get in when something's a brand new model and you get to drive it right and feel what it's like for the first time and compare it and all that kind of stuff. I missed that from, from a dealership scenario, but I don't miss the other political thing that goes on.

01:10:16 - 01:10:25 SPEAKER01 You know, honest to God. The, the politics with Mercedes, like, you know, Mercedes wise compared to like Ford and Chrysler.

01:10:25 - 01:10:26 SPEAKER02 Yeah.

01:10:26 - 01:11:09 SPEAKER01 Exponentially different. Unless I'm overseeing some bullshit. It's just, this is what they pay. This is what they don't pay. Get it in, get it out, figure it out. This is what kind of test tells you to do. Put that on. If it doesn't fix it, then we'll just keep going on. And there's no like engines blown up, engines blown up. They'll tell you if they want you to tear it down, if it's a new enough engine or something like that. Um, they don't, you don't have to go through tech line. The last thing they want to do is start a case with Mercedes tech line because they just, they want you to like microscopically look at every single thing. A lot of you. And so it's like, they're just like, get it done.

01:11:09 - 01:11:15 SPEAKER00 Do you find like, are you guys trying to hire and are you impacted by this shortage? Would you say in your shop?

01:11:16 - 01:11:47 SPEAKER01 Honestly, I mean, uh, Chris, the guy I mentioned beforehand, he's been there for eight years. I want to say he's a year younger than me and he even left for a couple of years to work for Audi. So he's been there for a while. Yeah. Jasmine, he essentially moved, came from Bosnia and started working there and then left to go work someplace else and has been there back for 11 years now. A couple other guys have been there for about seven, eight years. So, I mean, I'm the newest guy, obviously.

01:11:47 - 01:13:17 SPEAKER00 Yeah. So, not the kind of typical turnover that you and I were used to back in the day of the domestic theater, right? Where it seemed like you having a new guy. Back then, it was weird. It seemed like you were having a new guy like every six months. And it was a Washington thing. And I think that has to do with the fact that now there's the shortage. I think people are just kind of, I think it's more patience on both sides. I think that there's more patience of keeping the people that they have and investing some training in them. Because the one post today, they're talking about, oh, you take an X amount of unpaid sick days, not even sick, just scheduled days off. And what would you do? Would you fire them? I mean, yeah, I made the comment. It's like, well, you could fire him, but you already said that he's reliable. Otherwise, like he doesn't miss a day unless he's telling you he's going to miss it. And he does good work. Go fire him. See what you get. And, you know, like we were joking in another chat about, well, at least he's letting you know he's not coming in. Right. Like, I mean, You know, I'm, I'm, as I get older like that, I'm to the point where I'm looking at my weather forecast for the next day in the summertime. I'm like, it's going to be a prime fishing day. I'm looking at the schedule and I'm already telling you, you know, tomorrow might be a sick day. Cause you want to see how sick I am going to my socials. If I'm holding up a fish, it was a sick day. Like it was really sick.

01:13:17 - 01:13:21 SPEAKER01 I mean, that's just me coughing on the fish. Yeah.

01:13:22 - 01:13:45 SPEAKER00 I mean, people have got to understand that the new generation is, I mean, we don't live to work, right? We work to live. It's funny. Do you have any words of advice for the young people that are coming in? For somebody like you and myself that have that have been around and, like, if you could go back, would you do anything different, John, is what I'm asking? And then any words of advice?

01:13:45 - 01:14:46 SPEAKER01 Honestly, fine. If you, if this is something you want to do, the biggest thing is to find a place that has somebody that will take you under their wing and show you not just throw you to the wolves. I don't think any, I never really thought this beforehand, especially now. I don't think the schools are fully teaching these kids how things work nowadays. And it's, You need to find yourself a place that can give you an apprenticeship, essentially. Start out as a lube tech that you could be under somebody or work next to somebody that can show you how to do the basic things or the more things that create knowledge. Because anything, anything nowadays, it's just beyond, it's out of the box. There's no plain, simple diagnosis to anything anymore. And you gotta have that out-of-the-box learning, and I don't feel like the schools teach that, or even implicate that in any sort of way.

01:14:46 - 01:15:26 SPEAKER00 No, I think it's so different now, right? Like, I think they're trying to make… You could go down a real wormhole there if you were to say that they're not even necessarily trying to teach them how to learn anymore, right? They're just trying to pass them through. Do you regret, I guess you can't say you've moved around a ton, but do you regret moving as many shops as you've moved through? Yeah, so like, I guess what I'm saying is, do you regret that maybe you just, do you feel like if you'd have just stuck it out at one of them a little longer, it might have paid off? Or do you feel like it's been to your benefit to try the different brands that you've tried and get the exposure?

01:15:26 - 01:17:05 SPEAKER01 Do I regret some of the jumps that I have done? Absolutely. I mean, like I said, I worked for the one independent uh, for five years, but that was off and on because they just run me ragged. I get sick of it and then go someplace else. And one of the shops I went to was a buddy of mine started and he ended up messing it all away. And I ended up shutting that shop down. And of course that shop called me the day I was taking, I was closing up everything, pulling everything out. And they're like, you want to come back? Okay. You know, and then, uh, It was like with Ford dealer, I was just at new management. I mean, my hours got almost cut half that I was making. I was the top earner in that shop. And the owner was even asking the service manager, why is his hours so shitty? And he's asking me, well, A, you hired a guy to take all the oil change up sales and do all the flushes, which we never really did. The oil change guys did the flush, brakes, tire on ends, tires. You got one guy doing all that stuff. And then I was doing all the alignments because nobody really wanted to do them except for one other guy. And now that guy's doing all the alignments and then I'm stuck doing warranty alignments. I'm like, do you not see? And he's like, well, I'm not going to change anything. Okay. And then finally I got fed up. you them out. Was it me? What'd I do? Do you want your alignments back? I'm like, seriously?

01:17:05 - 01:17:10 SPEAKER00 Why are you asking when I've already given you my notice?

01:17:10 - 01:17:35 SPEAKER01 We can't talk this out? No. What are you going to get? I said, essentially, if everything goes right, I'm going to get this amount an hour. Well, I could do that, but we can't tier you like everybody else if I'm going to give you that. No. I mean, I'm not, that's, that pay was not top pay. They were, Mercedes was happy to give me that. I'll probably, probably,

01:17:41 - 01:20:34 SPEAKER00 Yeah, we talk about that a lot, right? And it seems to always come up, and I was just actually talking to my friend Noah before I logged in with you. It's such a different, what is a good amount varies so much across the country, right? From state to state, and even community to community, sometimes within the same state, you know? You see guys and, you know, everybody's popping up like, podcast to drop Collins made like you know six figures you know he talks about he made six figures there's a lot more texts that are saying now oh yeah I make six figures I you and I can remember back in the day when the group started well that was like if somebody said they made six figures you were like BS right like you might hit 75 you didn't hit those six right? But now it's a lot more, you know, people are hitting it and I think it's a combination of a couple things. I think that some of the work is getting, I don't want to say easier, but there's more of the work that you can really turn the hours out with, right? And then I think that some of the diag, I think Some of the day has gotten better in terms of paying better, or if it doesn't pay at all, it's maybe faster the process to get it right. I think what I noticed my last tenure is that the dealers were better about now, if the customer came to you and said it was intermittent, they didn't make you waste a bunch of time trying to duplicate it. I can remember my day in the advisor where if the customer came in and said it was intermittent, you were still expected to try and dab a part on it that you thought might be it, or spend a bunch of time trying to drive it around. And now, I don't see them doing that. And I think it's just because as they've cracked down on restrictions for parts, or knocking a paint if it doesn't fix it, that claim. I think it's just been more understanding, dealers have been more understanding, like, well, if we're not going to get paid the claim, as much as we'd like to help Mrs. Smith out, we're not going to do it because it's a lose-lose, right? Nobody's going to be happy. Well, Mrs. Smith's going to be unhappy. I just, I think, and then that's the other thing we don't talk about is the part shortage is really, I think, helping. We can almost someplace, I think you're using that as an excuse to go, we might not even be able to get to the bottom of what's going on here with your vehicle, man, because Like, you know, electrical parts are impossible to get. Yeah. So I think people are just accepting it now with this, this post COVID thing that, uh, you know, you might have a supply chain issues for your vehicle and we're not saying there isn't a legitimate complaint that you have. We just don't know if we can get the part to fix it. So, yeah. Any advice for the, for the young people coming in? Learn how to get through school and stuff like that or? Like tooling and you know, how do you approach that?

01:20:34 - 01:21:16 SPEAKER01 If you're in the dealer environment, figure out what the basics are that you need. If you're an independent and you're new, get the basics for oil changes, brakes and stuff like that through the big three, I would say for sure, you know, but you're going to have to have torques and allens regardless at this point in time anymore. Tooling, if you're with a dealer, know what your basics you know, sockets, wrenches, stuff that you're going to need because that's basically all you're going to really need. Independent wise, there's a reason why I have an 84 inch Epic with a locker. I mean, you acquire a lot of things over time.

01:21:16 - 01:21:18 SPEAKER00 Have you got your own scan tool?

01:21:18 - 01:21:20 SPEAKER01 I did. I lost the dongle.

01:21:20 - 01:21:21 SPEAKER02 Okay.

01:21:21 - 01:21:25 SPEAKER01 So now I'm in the market for another one because I can't get a dongle for it.

01:21:27 - 01:21:40 SPEAKER00 I, um, cause the reason I asked is I just talked to a young tech today, um, tonight, actually, before getting online. She just bought a soulless legend, I guess, some snap-on.

01:21:40 - 01:21:48 SPEAKER01 The legend would probably be the last of the soulless line. Yeah. I think it's Apollo now or some stupid shit. Yeah.

01:21:49 - 01:22:09 SPEAKER00 Zeus Plus and Apollo, yeah, because I have my own Zeus now, which doesn't get the use it should, but whatever. But she went on her own scan tool, and she works at a Chrysler dealer, and I'm like, are you not getting training on whatever their scan tool is at the time? I couldn't even tell you what the name of it is. Y-Tech. Is it still Y-Tech?

01:22:09 - 01:22:10 SPEAKER01 It's still Y-Tech.

01:22:13 - 01:22:53 SPEAKER00 I said, you're not going to train that? She said, not a lot. But she says, I also, you know, there's some off-brand stuff. She doesn't own a Chrysler, right? She's got a, what did she say? I think she's got a Hyundai and a Camaro. So she needed a tool. So she got the tool. It's a lot of money, though, to sign up from Snap-on Credit at such a young age. I wish I hadn't done that when I was way, way, way back in the nineties and walked on the truck the first time. Spent $3,000, walked off the truck, like, you know, signed up Snap-on credit, right? Impact gun, impact sockets, screwdrivers, wrenches. You know, it was, it was, I could do it all over again.

01:22:53 - 01:23:44 SPEAKER01 Some of the most used stuff I definitely buy Snap-on. I do buy Madco here and there, but. My Mako guy I had here, he retired. And then we got a new guy after six or eight months of waiting, and then he gave up. And so we got, I got a kid at this dealership and stuff, but he really is like, he's probably five years younger than me. He's been doing it for a few years, but it's like, that almost seems like just a storm waiting to happen. That bad shit's going to happen and I can't rely on him type of thing. So who do you typically have anywhere to snap on? It's kind of GearWrench. You can go GearWrench. The parts stores will warranty that out for you. But it's on my stuff slowly turning into GearWrench that I don't want to spend a million dollars on.

01:23:44 - 01:24:01 SPEAKER00 I say all the time, you guys in the States, you don't know how lucky you are that you have Harbor Freight. And I know people are going to roll their eyes, but I mean, like I was just, when I, when I came back from, from, uh, Lucas's at the beginning, well for the fourth, I was down there drinking moonshine and watching fireworks. Remember when I called you?

01:24:03 - 01:24:12 SPEAKER01 I remember the 20,000 voice texts that I had.

01:24:12 - 01:24:23 SPEAKER00 When I came back, I stopped in Syracuse, stopped in Watertown. It was the first time I'd seen the ICON stuff from Harbor Freight in person. I actually put my hands on it.

01:24:24 - 01:24:32 SPEAKER01 It's good stuff. Really good. It does seem like very good stuff. I know a few people that use a lot of their wrenches and ratchets and stuff like that. They seem to like them quite a bit. Yeah.

01:24:32 - 01:24:43 SPEAKER00 It was, um, that was the moonshine that had me rambling. That's what I'm going to, that's my official story. I was, oh dude, I was, I was feeling no pain that night. That was a good night.

01:24:43 - 01:24:46 SPEAKER01 Did you try smuggling some moonshine over the border?

01:24:46 - 01:26:34 SPEAKER00 So they told me how to do it, but I didn't try it. I'll tell you what I did have. Up here, we can't, so you know Black Rifle Coffee, right? Yes. So up here under my fantastic Prime Minister, Justin, shout out to Justin Trudeau. Dick. Black Rifle Coffee is a prohibited thing up here because it's Black Rifle, right? It's an assault rifle. So you can't get Black Rifle Coffee. Well, while I was down there, Lucas's tech, Eric Sprague, good buddy of mine, says, oh, you got to try this coffee. So he ends up giving me, I figure like, okay, he'll give me a bag of coffee. He gave me four bags of their AK Espresso. Stuff is the best coffee I've ever drank in my life. And I love coffee. I drank a lot of coffee. So I had four more bags, like I had, I had weight in my suitcase coming back that I hadn't intended to have. Right. So then they're like, I'm like, how do I get this coffee through? And I'm thinking that moonshine was really good. Like I could probably get some before I come back. And then, you know, a couple of water bottles, right. Dump the water out, pour the shine. And you can't tell the difference. Let's just shake the shit up. And then I thought. No, you don't want to be pissing around with TSA and then decide why is he, why are you bringing four liters of water bottle back in your suitcase? Like they might've thought that was pretty, yeah, it was good stuff. It was really good. Really good. Like he had some good stuff on the table to drink and that was, that was the best thing I drank that night by far. And he had some really good bourbon on the table and that was the best stuff on the table for me to drink anyway. Like it was, it was delicious. If you ever get a chance to try it, try it. Because it's, uh… Oh, I've had moonshine.

01:26:34 - 01:26:41 SPEAKER01 I've had Tennessee moonshine before. It'll put you on your ass real quick, fast, and in a hurry.

01:26:41 - 01:26:54 SPEAKER00 I didn't… It's… I don't know. Like, I mean, you gotta remember, by the time I was talking to you that night, I'd had quite a bit. Now, quite a bit for me, they all talk like, oh, we drank a quart a night, right? That's how they talk.

01:26:54 - 01:26:54 SPEAKER02 Yeah.

01:26:54 - 01:27:12 SPEAKER00 But for, you know, a Canadian virgin to this stuff, Yeah, it had me on my ass. The room was spinning. I was feeling pretty good. It's a good time. If you could ever get to AST, you should really come down and do it. If you could get away, because it's a blast.

01:27:12 - 01:27:27 SPEAKER01 I would like to try some of that, to do that sometime. Wrenchway is doing some big thing, but I think the closest one is in Minnesota. I thought about talking to my service manager, see if he was going to go do that. See if maybe I could take along or something.

01:27:30 - 01:28:15 SPEAKER00 When I went last year, it was literally like, and that was the first thing I'd ever done anything like that in my life, right? And it's so cool. It's literally life-changing to be around those people that think like that and do what they do. It's one thing to sit in the classroom and take the class. I sat through a class with Brenda Steckler, sat through one with Keith Perkins, like genius level, right? And then what, to meet all the people, Like, I met Scanner Danner, I met Paul, right? You and I have been talking to Paul for a long time, right? And I met everything else, but to meet him in person, coolest thing ever. Super Mario, met him. The coolest people, man. The coolest people.

01:28:15 - 01:28:29 SPEAKER01 The sweeps, the TTG, the thing there, the giveaway they were doing for the year of Scanner Danner premium, and the gift card, I was actually one of the recipients of that. We're all right on.

01:28:29 - 01:28:30 SPEAKER00 Good for you, man.

01:28:30 - 01:28:39 SPEAKER01 I used to crap out of that. And then I got busy and I didn't utilize it near as much towards the end as I should have. But, I mean, still great stuff regardless.

01:28:39 - 01:28:55 SPEAKER00 Amazing. And he's such a, he's such a funny guy when you sit there and, and shoot the bowl with him and everything else. And a ton of stories too, eh? Great guy for that. Like he's just, you know, it's a blast, man. I wish you could make it, but no, hopefully someday, hopefully someday.

01:28:55 - 01:29:44 SPEAKER01 Years ago, me and Sean Miller were talking about vision in Kansas city and the shop, they wanted to go and stuff and they want to try and get, see who wanted to go and such, but it was only going to be on the weekend. So when I was looking at all the classes, all the classes were like not beneficial to, and I'm like, well, what would you guys pay if I went the whole entire Thursday, Friday, Saturday and everything? They're like, well, yeah, but we're not going to go till, You know, Friday, we're not gonna leave till Friday. I'm like, I'll drive up there and I'll get my own hotel room and everything. I said, if you guys are willing to pay for the whole, the whole spiel and me and Miller talked about just splitting a hotel room and going for the whole weekend. It just never came to fruition on either one of our ends.

01:29:44 - 01:29:51 SPEAKER00 He said, I was talking to him in the chat today. He's super busy.

01:29:51 - 01:29:52 SPEAKER01 He's always busy.

01:29:52 - 01:30:56 SPEAKER00 He's killing it, right? Like he's doing so well. But I mean, yeah, he, he, he stays busy. I mean, I, and that's the thing I'd love to get him to, I keep saying, you know, if I go, if I go and get surgery on something, then I have to take like time away from work. I'm just going to jump in the Jeep and throw a tent in the back of it. And I'm just going to hit the road. I'm just going to travel everywhere. You know, I'm going to be like, okay, I'm going to camp in, in your driveway for a couple of nights. Then I'm going to go somewhere else and hang out with this person for a while. Cause. You know, there's been so many people that I've got this relationship now with, like you and Sean and Eric and David and Bill and like so many people, right? That, you know, Dave and Sean and I could spend a year. you know, live out of the back of my Jeep, just hanging out, getting to know these people, see what they do day-to-day, right? Because that's a fascinating thing. Like, we've all talked for so long, we all know each other, I think, pretty good. But it'd be so cool to just see the day-to-day, you know what I mean?

01:30:56 - 01:31:02 SPEAKER01 Plus, you could probably sneak moonshine over across customs instead of TSA a lot easier.

01:31:02 - 01:31:13 SPEAKER00 Well, think about the different states I could sample it. Wow, yeah. Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina. Kentucky probably has some moonshine somewhere.

01:31:13 - 01:31:18 SPEAKER01 You'd probably be so drunk you're happy you got your first OWI in Kansas.

01:31:18 - 01:32:03 SPEAKER00 Pull him over and he's got Ontario license plates on his Jeep. We don't have to worry about him. He's probably not going to shoot us. Holy crap is he drunk as hell. Look at him. 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. Thank you to my partners in the ASOG group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always 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.