Grease The Wheels Podcast
By: Grease The Wheels
Language: en-us
Categories: Leisure, Automotive, Business, Management, Education
A Master Technician, a microphone, 30 years of experience in the Automotive Industry: buckle up! Come along as we take a look at the current state of the automotive industry from the point of view of the guys and gals turning the wrenches. So no matter what you fix, how you fix it, or how many tools you have to fix it with: welcome to the Grease the Wheels Nation. Also once in a while we take a look at the makes and models of cars we work on through the lenses of history, economics, politics, our own personal experiences and...
Episodes
Episode 337: Video Kills Part II
Jan 08, 2026Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy follows up part one about Video being a tool for mechanics with part 2 about Service Advisors. When a Service Advisor has technicians doing the video, or in some rare instances is doing the video themselves, they have an undeniable advantage over a fixed ops department where there are no video MPI’s performed. This is why it is infuriating when service advisors fail to leverage the high definition evidence of work or maintenances that need to be done. There is not much more...
Duration: 01:13:54Episode 336: Video Kills Part 1
Jan 03, 2026Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over some of the finer points of the Video Multi-Point Inspection; more specifically all of the very valid reasons that technicians do not want to do them! From being camera shy to not being the “loquacious type” and tons of background noise and poor lighting, there are a myriad of reasons for technicians to want to shirk this responsibility overall. We haven’t even mentioned that the vast majority of shops are not paying technicians for the time that they spend on these, but th...
Duration: 01:08:55Episode 335: Wish List
Dec 24, 2025Send us a text
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy makes a comprehensive wish list of things that we would like to see in the automotive industry. This list doesn’t leave anyone out either, with special focus on customers to start it off, and special callouts for management and ownership that does it right. We also get into the wishlists for our fellow technicians, and our wishes for parts people. The most pivotal wish that Uncle Jimmy has this year is for service advisors to simply ask for the sale and for th...
Duration: 01:15:08Episode 334: End of Year Stats
Dec 19, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over some very interesting survey results from inside the automotive industry from WrenchWay. They asked a lot of the right questions when it comes to things like job satisfaction, training opportunities, and how well their facilities are kept — but there are a handful of things that we feel like might be actually 100% in agreement across the board. There were points of major agreement, and a few that surprised us!
Also Uncle Jimmy carries on his favorite holiday tradition of breaking down aut...
Duration: 01:42:54Episode 333: Diag Rehash
Dec 04, 2025Send us a text
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over an oldie-but-a-goodie with his 10 thesis on automotive diagnosis. With modern automobiles becoming more and more complex, checking batteries (especially when there are tons of weird or seemingly unrelated problems) is always a good Bet. Things like Visual Inspections and Scanning the vehicle for faults seem to be a given, but can be complicated when an advisor is diagnosing from the chair. Any time that you have access to a vehicles repair history or CarFax report is a good thing, especially when...
Duration: 00:57:18Episode 332: Monetary Abuse
Nov 26, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy outlines all of the ways that flat rate technicians lose time and money to the inefficiencies of the dealership system itself. Support staff and Service Advisors are key culprits, between not separating items on repair orders, repair orders that are poorly written or feature hand written add-ons, and not going over cars to check and see what else is wrong with them such as check engine lights. This problem is massively amplified with porters and lot personelle when they do not follow proper procedures...
Duration: 01:02:47Episode 331: Unreasonable
Nov 13, 2025Send us a text
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy talks about the nature of customers. No one likes having to pay for their car to be fixed, except some of weirdo’s who can tell when we are running the right gas or not. No, most customers will actively chafe when we recommend repairs to their vehicle, no matter how badly they are needed! This becomes compounded when you do a video explaining what is wrong with their vehicle and the service advisor fails to mention a single recommendation from that video an...
Duration: 01:07:05Episode 330: AI Revolution
Nov 06, 2025Send us a text
On this weeks episode of Grease the wheels, Uncle Jimmy dreams of electric sheep - er, service advisors! Ai is filtering it’s way into dealerships more and more. Some of the immediate casualties of this are going to be in sales, as a well put together data set and website are coming straight for the heads of your underperforming sales people. Getting it into the service department will also completely cull the industry of underperforming service advisors, because an AI will never NOT ask for the sale (which has become a huge pr...
Duration: 00:56:15EpIsode 329: Tug of War
Oct 29, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about some of the pull factors that are in fact causing the tech shortage. This is a significant problem in the industry, and thankfully some seriously high up people are actually talking about it. To illustrate this, we talk about the massive tug of war that happens regarding the money in the industry, and how to fix this massive problem that is causing people to leave the industry or more likely avoid it all together. The shop and dealership owners that are feeling the...
Duration: 01:17:28Episode 328: Gentlemen, Check Your Engines
Oct 16, 2025Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes to task a newsfeed article that stumbled across his unnamed homepage (it was probably AOL) regarding the common warning lights in cars and what they mean — according to someone who has never worked on a car. These ones are always fun, from the teapot of doom and the drunk robot, to more obscure and abstract examples — people really have no idea how their cars work and when the car tries to tell them something this is compounded. The real takeaway that is mis...
Duration: 01:47:23Episode 327: Then & Now
Oct 10, 2025Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy watches the interview with Jim Farley, who unsurprisingly completely misses the point of why there is a technician shortage. He does mention that there is one, so that actually gives him a ton of credit in our book. To hammer the point home, Jimmy winds back the clock to the mid-50’s to the time of duck and cover drills, unprecedented economic prosperity, and Edsel’s. In this era, the average earnings of a mechanic was significantly higher as a percentage of the la...
Duration: 01:02:26Episode 326: From the Files
Oct 02, 2025Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we look through the archives at some of the hits and misses of the previous 325 episodes of the podcast. We have undoubtedly had some ridiculous fun so far, including pondering children’s programming aiming to get more kids into the trades with incredible titles such as Mr. Rogers Dyno Room and Sesame Street Outlaws. We also get into some of the early episodes where we talk shop dynamics, how not to get on your coworkers nerves, and how to fit in, to more recent epis...
Duration: 01:11:37Episode 325: More New Guy and “NOS” Guy Survival Kit
Sep 25, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy follows up last week’s episode with all of the stuff that he forgot — it happens, because as a new guy there is a ton of things to learn in a short period of time and sometimes the people teaching you the ropes will themselves forget things. We also get into the idea of changing jobs and becoming a “NOS” New/Old Service when you have a bit of experience and are changing venues. There are a lot of things to navigate with this includin...
Duration: 01:04:04Episode 324: New Guy Survival Kit
Sep 18, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, we have some serious words of wisdom (and rants) for the new guys. If you have new guys in the shop, this is probably a good one to start them out with, because it should theoretically cut about 90% of the BS if they actually listen! From inherent mechanical curiosity to becoming a master technician, the road for a mechanic is a long one that is fraught with difficulty. Choosing the right tech school is a big part of getting yourself ahead and learning many of the...
Duration: 01:11:37Episode 323: Life From The Fence
Aug 14, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes in depth on the pros and cons of being an auto mechanic. Despite some of our previous episodes, there are many pros to being an auto mechanic. The cars have gotten safer, the shops in many cases have gotten better, and more often than not the shops have come a long way from some of their humble roots. Not to mention that as mechanics, there are tons of ways that we can keep our own cars on the road longer and even occasionally...
Duration: 01:39:19Episode 322: Caution: TOXIC
Jul 31, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes down the rabbit hole of toxic management. We go into some of the specifics for what makes a manager or boss toxic: such as unrealistic expectations, nepotism, and much, much more! The good news is that skilled tradesmen of all types, and especially auto mechanics and technicians have ample opportunity to jump ship, because the demand far outweighs the supply. We also go over some of the possible remedies to these conflicts, which mostly revolve \around good communication and documentation of your grievances...
Duration: 01:18:07Episode 321: The New Frontier
Jul 10, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy is back in the OG Rock and Roll Garage after a Homeric odyssey to get to New York from Texas. As a result, Erik the Producer is in studio to talk about some of the digital tools that we have been working on to help make your lives easier, and make you more money! We are talking Video MPI Training, a fully flushed out K-Plan with some help from our friends in academia, ASE Test Prep, and so much more! We also talk about...
Duration: 01:37:59Episode 320: You Know You’re Effed Part IV
Jun 18, 2025Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy rounds out the “you’re e’ffed” saga with part four. As it turns out there are tons of portents of doom when cars roll into your shop. Some vehicle’s even have multiple of these automotive red flags, while others can be false flags. We hit the ever favorite, “gimp mask in the trunk” and raise it with tons of other examples that we have seen throughout the years. What is your favorite? What is one that we didn’t hit on the podcast (ed...
Duration: 00:59:44Episode 319: Why Am I The Bad Guy?
Jun 11, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes into some of the backend programming of our customers in regards to what the media has made our profession out to be for the last 50+ years. As a profession, few trades have been maligned to the extent of the automotive trades, and this is especially true in media depictions. Let’s be clear, we have seen some criminals in this trade -- but it is actually a lot more rare than you would think. However, more often than not the line is a lo...
Duration: 01:10:44Episode 318: What I Would Like for You to Know
May 22, 2025Send us a text
On this much delayed episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a look at the entire strata of the typical dealership and informs them of at least one major thing that they should take into consideration in order to make the process seamless. For ownership and boards of directors, it is very hard to get an accurate picture of a dealership’s overall functionality just by the numbers. The numbers can tell you a lot, but it is sometimes hard to put toxic shops or bad processes into numbers. Working the way do...
Duration: 01:16:27Episode 317: Emotional Waste
Apr 07, 2025Send us a text
On this fairly-sporadic episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy wades into the terminally unhinged forum of LinkedIn to find a concept that everyone deals with in this industry. The term “Emotional Waste” is the concept of negative emotions creating undue stress and occupying an inordinate amount of someone’s time. We all see this, and some of the best people in the industry have the exact opposite going on - Emotional Intelligence. This is the ability to regulate and utilize your emotional states, as well as being able to effectively read a room o...
Duration: 01:12:43Episode 316: Safety…Last!
Mar 21, 2025Send us a text
On this week’s Episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a look at some of the real world ramifications of Texas discontinuing their state vehicle safety inspections. The first thing that stood out to us was that it was in fact similar to those in New York, and in fact throughout most of the Rust Belt where we know they are a really good idea. Entropy is the name of the game here, and if something is too rotten to be safe, or tires are too bald to provide adequate traction — they...
Duration: 00:48:07Episode 315: You Know you’re Eff’d: Part 3
Feb 27, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes for the trilogy of things that you see roll into your shop that spell doom, because you know you’re eff’d. From poorly done wraps, to harlequin models of cars that are not 90s Golf’s, and underbody lights, there are a lot of things that we see that spell doom and gloom for our profit margin. Seeing an old car that is still being daily driven darkening your door is somehow more of an omen of impending doom than the banshee’s howl...
Duration: 01:19:05Episode 314: Location, Location, Location!
Feb 14, 2025Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy comes up with a list of interview questions for mechanics to observe and take into account when they are looking to move to a new shop. Is there enough parking, are there enough bathrooms, and where exactly did all of these dead and abandoned cars come from? There are tons of criteria that we use when evaluating where we are going to work, but this episode brings a lot of them to life with some of the most insane examples you’ve ever...
Duration: 01:05:38Episode 313: It’s a New Year
Jan 30, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes to practical goal building mode for 2025. Getting better isn’t going to be negotiable in 2025, as the pace of technological change in the cars is continuing at break-neck speed. Look at the year end total for your W-2, divide it by your hourly rate and that gets you near how many hours you worked. This of course isn’t taking into effect all of the house that you turned but didn’t get paid for! It also doesn’t get into the amount of hours...
Duration: 00:53:01Episode 312: You Know You’re Eff’d When…Part Deux
Jan 17, 2025Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy revisits some of the common signs and portents of things that you know are going to result in a rough day in the shop. From bullet holes and hypodermic needles, to an entire goodwill inventory of clothes in a trunk where you need to replace a battery, there is little limit to the chaos and carnage that customer roll in on a daily basis. We also go into a scientific breakdown for an answer to every single complaint about a sunroof.
Duration: 01:02:01
Episode 311: Special K Plan
Dec 12, 2024Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy lifts the cover off of one of the truly weird and genuinely innovative technician/mechanic development programs: The K-Plan. Developed with the help of people way smarter than us, the K-Plan lays out all of the areas of knowledge that someone will need to be successful as a mechanic, with tailored resources for that particular shop. It utilizes technician development bonuses to encourage institutional and brand specific knowledge in order to lead to more developed technicians that can make you more money. Long story...
Duration: 00:59:37Episode 310: You Know You’re Eff’d When…Part 1
Nov 27, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets back to proper form and takes customers to task. Every area has that one shop that when you see a car roll in with their plate frames, you know you’re (more specifically the customer) are eff’d. Dozens of bumperstickers, turning your interior into a series of various claymore landmines and much, much more! This series literally wrote itself, but if you have some specific examples please let us know over on the Facebook page.
Also Un...
Duration: 00:59:31Episode 309: School Dayz
Nov 14, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy unveils the K-Plan. This is a system that shops and dealerships can use to basically build a farm system for their new technicians while rewarding the technicians that train them to a level of autonomous productivity. It benchmarks what people know against what the new people have to learn, providing clear expectations for knowledge and how a shop wants things done. We also get into the Master-Apprentice relationship and what that needs to be like for long term success. We have been wo...
Duration: 00:58:43Episode 308: Mean Disposition
Oct 30, 2024Send us a text
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets into how to get along with your coworkers better. As the weather begins to cool, yes even in Texas, the doors of the shop are going to stay closed more often and you’ll be working in closer quarters. The better that you all get along determines the overall vibe in the back of the house as well, so try to be helpful and courteous. Creating a cohesive atmosphere in the shop is important to getting along, which can make you more mo...
Duration: 01:14:54Episode 307: Calm, Cool, and Collected
Oct 17, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy wades into the foggy, brutal game that is internet reviews. In many ways reviews are one of the most important parts of your business, often taking massive precedence in the way that your company appears through search results. This allows customers to quickly form an opinion on your company, with huge potential upsides when you treat customers right. However, in the situation of many auto repair shops, the customer comes with preloaded anxiety about how long their car is going to be...
Duration: 01:18:39Episode 306: Emotional Rescue
Oct 09, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a serious look at mental health with way more F-Bombs than Dr. Phil could ever muster. Due to the potentially disturbing nature of this show, we are actually going to put up a content warning for marked discussions on Suicide, while putting a link to the relevant people below. This is a big deal in this industry, worldwide and since the pandemic specifically. We as an industry don’t talk about mental health very often, and when we do it is m...
Duration: 01:00:18Episode 305: Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
Oct 03, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy weaves between the extremely specific and the bigger picture when it comes to diagnosis. Having the right tools, being able to read things like wiring diagrams, and having an understanding of suspension components are all going to aid your diagnosis of vehicles - but one of the most overlooked ones is the new systems training. As the products that the manufacturers turn out become more and more complex, the people who need to fix these systems when the inevitably break need to...
Duration: 01:16:42Episode 304: Beast of Burden
Sep 27, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the wheels, Uncle Jimmy enters the nebulous and often fantastical realm of warranty labor times. There are a host of problems with this system, mainly that no one can agree EXACTLY how the labor time is produced. The secondary problem with this is that the manufacturer is trying to pay their dealerships as little as humanly possible for what is often an error in quality control or a third party vendor. Then we get to aftermarket warranties - and Uncle Jimmy absolutely empties the clip. We...
Duration: 01:12:49Episode 303: Worried About You
Sep 19, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about the absolute basics that people should know about their cars in a revisit on the concept of “Automotive Kindergarten” . We exist because the vast majority of people who own a car today have no idea how they work. They just know that when they dont - it is going to cost them time and money. Where the misconception comes in is that we as the technicians are not ripping them off, but we have covered that one before. We get into t...
Duration: 01:11:27Episode 302: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Sep 12, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the wheels, we apply some “yang” to last week’s “ying” of putting Service Advisors and Service Managers to the rack. The episode title comes from the customers in this case, which we make readily apparent. We go over some of the dumbest, most out of line, and most dramatically overblown customer reactions as well as some of their less than reasonable moments for calling a shop. From using quarter clutch and getting mad at the technician, to calling the manufacturer because your phone got stuck - Serv...
Duration: 01:03:05Episode 301: Turd on the Run
Sep 06, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy comes off of summer break and gets medieval on Service Advisors. If you can see the cords hanging out of a set of tires, you really don’t need a tire gauge to tell you they are smoked. All we are asking for is that you ask for the sale, don’t avoid customers, and make sense with the repair order. That’s it! We get into some of the ways that a service advisor can be great, but a lot of them...
Duration: 01:09:49Episode 300: I Can’t Be Satisfied
Aug 22, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s (on time!) episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a look at last week’s episode through a new set of parameters with a little more of a preservation minded end. There are a lot of reasons why people do not want to become automotive technicians, but the ones who do need to be properly developed. We can’t be chasing them out of the building with massive tool debts and little to no professional development. The rear rub here is with management trying to keep wages stagna...
Duration: 01:08:18Episode 299: No Satisfaction
Aug 14, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy makes some of his own lists as to why people are not joining the automotive trades, although the current slate of youngsters is picking it up more than the millennials and Gen X did. There are tons of reasons both internal to the shop and external that cause people to leave the automotive profession. Societal pressures for 4 year degrees, lack of access, and even a lack of passion for vehicles have caused the ranks to dwindle - but the real carnage ha...
Duration: 01:27:24Episode 298: Stop Breaking Down
Aug 01, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes into what the internet thinks is the top 10 causes of cars breaking down. Some of these haven’t been relevant in almost 30 years, while some of these we have never seen once in our wrenching careers - this is a bit dated so we have a fair bit of fun with it. In a weird semantic sort of argument, a lot of these are more “reasons why your car isn’t working in the first place” rather than the cause of mid-tri...
Duration: 01:58:14Episode 297: All About You
Jul 22, 2024Send us a text
In this week’s heavily delayed episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy talks about the people who think the world revolves around them. We also do a seriously deep dive on the differences between being confident and being arrogant - turns out it's a pretty fine line dictated entirely by how you treat people! You can have tons of knowledge and use it for all the right reasons, but the minute you can’t back it up, or problems are suddenly not you daily - you’ve made the switch. Confidence isn’t...
Duration: 01:28:03Episode 296: Respectable
Jul 04, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes aim at the divide that exists in many dealerships between the sales and fixed ops departments. It has been noted by several sources that while many techs could sell a car in a pinch - almost no one in your sales department could do anything if they needed to prep a car for delivery, or fix something that was going wrong with it. With the way that the internet is going they really shouldn’t act too big for their brit...
Duration: 00:57:01Episode 295: Get Off of My Cloud
Jun 27, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the wheels, Uncle Jimmy ventures into pseudo actual journalism talking about the recent cyber attack and ransomware woes of CDK. This one was a big one- big ransome and big outage. This has completely crippled thousands of shops and dealerships across the country being locked out of the software that they use to run the business both front and back, as the articles seemed to have forgotten about the back of the house. Being a solutions oriented person like all of you are, we knew th...
Duration: 00:51:05Episode 294: Pain in my Heart
Jun 20, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we go into some easy ways to avoid a coronary - taking your vacation! Studies have proven that people who actually take their vacation tend to experience a myriad of positive effects when they are out of the office, and this is especially true when your office is a shop. Too many techs take their days off in the form of a check, and this isn’t always the best thing. Taking a day off here and a day off there is a good...
Duration: 00:59:01Episode 293: You Better Move On
Jun 13, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the “20 Most Common Automotive Scams”. Right off the bat, “scams” is a relative term here because the author thinks we’re still using freon. Half of them are fixed with paperwork - which you should always do, and the other half can be covered easily by video. There is no doubt that the overall public image of mechanics is not good, but this level of ignorance seems to underscore the need for more intensive (often high-definition) documentation of problems with customers' vehicles. S...
Duration: 01:35:06Episode 292: Grown Up All Wrong
Jun 07, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get a little off topic with various developmental psychology articles. We’ve all heard the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and we’re not sure how many people came right out and said, “mechanic!” Turns out even asking this question is actually not the best thing in the world, because it can put undue burden on developing brains that think that they have to live up to this expectation. Answering with “mechanic” might be a growing trend though, as G...
Duration: 01:28:35Episode 291: Off The Hook
May 30, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes full boomer and talks about some statistics involving cell phone use in the workplace. We get into just how much time we’re wasting, how we’re wasting it, and the incredible stats involving how likely we are to mess up after using our phones at work. There are some major streamlined processes in the automotive industry that have gotten incredibly advanced when it comes to workflows that directly involve the phone but Uncle Jimmy just wishes that he didn't have t...
Duration: 00:54:28Episode 290: I Wanna Be Your Man
May 23, 2024Send us a text
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy dissects the most shortchanged part of the entire automotive industry - Human Resources! Hiring anyone who has tools and can fog a mirror is one way to fill your shop with bodies, but not paying attention to the shop chemistry can be extremely detrimental to the bottom line. When you hire the right people, the right things happen. Productivity increases, friendly competition can cause even more profit, and the shop is overall a loud but harmonious place. The inverse is also 100% true. When...
Duration: 01:41:00Episode 289: Time Is On My Side
May 16, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets introspective about some of the main thesis points of the podcast in contrast with industry trends in the six years we’ve been barking into a microphone. Not a lot of podcasts age well, and some of our certainly haven't. We still don't have talking tool boxes but there are more important things at play than S4B. The pay has definitely gone up, and it has to keep going up as people get more and more trained and certified to work on t...
Duration: 01:13:27Episode 288: Sgt. Peppers Lonely Shop Club Band
May 09, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy suggests dissociating from yourself to better analyze your job performance! Sargent Peppers was a genuinely cool album, showcasing the intrinsic creativity of the Beatles, but if you think about in work terms you get things like “Customer Service Voice” The better you can analyze your performance, the better you can do your job. Sometimes when your heart just isn’t in it that day your coworkers can make it instantly better or worse. We also get into some of the bigger ideas of bein...
Duration: 01:15:08Episode 287: Back in the USSR
May 02, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy talks about bad management practices. Bad management was the hallmark of the former Soviet Republics, but it also rears its ugly head often in the Automotive Industry. We get into some of the practices that make for bad management as well as relevant examples that are probably happening in your shop right now. From poor communication, to unmet or unwritten expectations - the automotive industry is often hampered by its own lack of interpersonal communication skills in the shops and dealerships th...
Duration: 01:25:19Episode 286: I Should Have Known Better
Apr 23, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy shows the flip side of the coin when it comes to customers. While all customers deserve a base level of respect and empathy, there are some situations where they are going to try to turn the tables. We also get into some genuinely useful customer service tips for the customer facing technicians, or anyone doing side work. Good customer service is a huge market differentiator and can often make long-term customers that you make a lot of money off of while solving...
Duration: 01:18:56Episode 285: Get Back
Apr 11, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the wheels we get to the ethos of the automotive industry - making people mobile. As the people who keep the cars running, we play an absolutely vital part of this ecosystem. We also take a look at emerging automotive trends, which is hilarious because most of the stuff they're soothsaying in the articles has been the standard for 20+ years. The automotive industry is more a slow and steady march rather than a series of massive leaps. Sure, there have been massive leap moments which have...
Duration: 01:09:49Episode 284: Day Tripper
Apr 04, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about the much maligned doldrums of the flat rate pay system. When the shop isn’t making money - you aren’t making money. Whether it is a market adjustment to raising your door labor rate, to full blown economic meltdowns that make people put maintenance on the back burner - it is an incredibly cyclical beast. We also get into some of the various shop management theories that are floating around out there, as well as some of the end game syst...
Duration: 00:54:01Episode 283: I Feel Fine
Mar 28, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Jimmy hacks up a lung and explores the line where you should go into work and where you should call in. This is obviously a personal question with personal answers, but it’s important for the 90% of the audience that wouldn’t call in short of missing a limb. Also, if your employer doesn’t give you sick days, that is a pretty good sign to grease the wheels, unless there is some prior understanding to not commit acts of bio warfare on your cow...
Duration: 00:36:05Episode 282: Ticket to Ride
Mar 21, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets into what gets people into the automotive industry in the first place: passion. From your first car, to the first thing you fix, the seeds of passion are planted. For some of us, this culminates in a lifelong passion for certain makes and models. For others, it ends in compulsive hoarding. The best balance is a happy medium. Every make and model seemingly has its own subculture, from the Jeep Rubber Duckie thing, to the Subaru Merit Badges. These serve as...
Duration: 01:07:53Episode 281: We Can Work it Out
Mar 13, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about complaining. There are right ways to complain and wrong ways to complain, and we go into both as well as some of the resolutions that get the best results. We also get into the gamesmanship and merits of taking intershop complaints directly to the person you are having them with instead of involving management. We also talk about productive complaints, malicious complaints, and chronic complaints and who in your shop fits each of these monikers. At the end of the day...
Duration: 01:08:47Episode 280: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road
Mar 12, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy explores the explosion of mobile mechanics in the city of Austin. There are a lot of different ways to fix cars, and getting the job done on the side of the road has really never stopped any of us before but actually making a living with it can be tough. There are big parts of the country where it would be a major undertaking with the elements making life incredibly difficult. We also get into the idea of subletting out jobs th...
Duration: 00:51:54Episode 279: Drive My Car!
Feb 29, 2024Send us a text
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the nitty gritty when it comes to test driving customers' vehicles. Any manager who says that you should blindly test drive a vehicle before putting it up on a lift to see if it is structurally sound should listen to this episode. The aforementioned pitch can be a seriously bad idea, especially if that vehicle has serious problems. We have all seen the “just rolled into the shop” posts where a vehicle shouldn’t have even made it into the shop, and we...
Duration: 01:10:38Episode 278: Hello, Goodbye
Feb 22, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the transient nature of the automotive industry, just how bad the technician shortage has gotten, and the insane attrition rate of your new guys. In 2020 the reported technician shortage was around 178,000, now extrapolated out to 2025, which is right around the corner, they are projecting almost 800,000 want ads going unfilled in shops across the country. We get into why that is, but more importantly we get into some of the nitty gritty on what the articles aren’t talking about. Automotive jour...
Duration: 01:17:18Episode 277: All My Lovin'
Feb 16, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we do our own version of ‘how to make friends and influence people.’ Helping to hang a set of exhaust is always going to be appreciated, but being forthcoming with helping other people will signify you as someone who can be depended on in the shop. We also talk about some of the karmic ramifications of tool loaning and just helping people out in general without the expectation of something in return. When all else fails, feeding people is an awesome way to get pe...
Duration: 01:14:10Episode 276: Eight Days a Week
Feb 09, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about overwork and burnout. If your employer has you turning enough hours that you are seemingly working 8 days a week, that is one thing. If you’re doing it because you love money, that is quite another. The latter is ok, while the former will quickly remove any passion you have for the industry. Overwork can lead to a ton of bad things, so it is important to draw boundaries between your personal life and professional lives. Sometimes that looks like leav...
Duration: 01:25:19Episode 275: Come Together
Feb 01, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a break from the political rhetoric and talks about chicken farming. Shops and dealerships need to have the people who are creating the labor out of thin air in optimal conditions to create as much labor as possible. Whether that is having good service advisors and parts guys, to having the right number of lifts and bays per technician, shop optimization is a real thing. This needs to be communicated with the management in charge, and labor rates really need to...
Duration: 01:11:05Episode 274: Revolution #9: The EV Beatdown
Jan 25, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels Uncle Tuck-er-we-mean-Jimmy gets angry, political, and straight to the point. You don’t need a Masters in Physics to know that batteries don’t work as well in the cold, but apparently a lot of people in Chicago and the Midwest didn’t get the memo. NY’ers did, because they don’t buy them in droves unless they need the EV tax write off. Even with temps dipping down into the 30’s in the incredibly EV heavy market of Austin, people aren’t really impress...
Duration: 01:13:56Episode 273: Twist & Shout
Jan 18, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into how to deal with anger while working in the automotive industry. Right off the bat, as previously chronicled in the 272 preceding episodes, there are a lot of things that can set automotive technicians off. From the low pay, to the incredibly complicated cars, to sometimes hostile work environments - keeping your cool can be hard. Luckily there are things such as identifying what makes you mad, working out, and even percussive therapy on inanimate objects to quell the anger. We al...
Duration: 01:16:05Episode 272: A Day In The Life
Jan 12, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into things that make mechanics mad - although judging by the article these people were pretty loose with the job descriptions between mechanic and service advisor. We talk about Customers who insist that they know what is wrong with the car, which is annoying but easily overcome. We also get into the idea that quoting ETA’s for completed repairs is basically sending Murphy’s Law a DM on whatever it is you’re working on. It is 100% possible that on any given...
Duration: 01:24:49Episode 271: Don’t Let Me Down
Jan 04, 2024Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we bid adieu to a tumultuous 2023; but the world kept on spinning because of you wrench twisting bastards. Because of this we set the bar at, “don’t let me down” because asking for much more sounds like tempting fate. In this episode we lay out some of the expectations that customers, Service Advisors and Management would have of their technicians especially as the Automotive Technician Shortage worsens. We also get into the ways that the parts department and lot rats let us down, an...
Duration: 01:09:27Episode 270: Magical Mystery Tour
Dec 28, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets absolutely medieval on aftermarket warranty companies. I could probably end the episode synopsis there, and customers, service advisors, and tech’s will all still tune in - but this one is fun! The market analysis of aftermarket warranty companies is “bad” and “worse”, with some notable exceptions coming from Carvana and other internet automotive retailers that would rather pay for us to fix it after they sell it to you, than fix it right in the first place. The bottom line, having...
Duration: 01:06:36Episode 269: Tomorrow Never Knows
Dec 22, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take a brief look ahead to what people in chairs think is coming down the pike for us wrench turning folk in 2024. The one thing we see more of on the horizon is the russian infantry tactics of filing the shop with whatever bodies can hold the wrenches and look busy. However, further analysis will prove that having your best technicians with two available lifts or bays will increase the specific output of that bay over an inexperienced new hire. Estimates put th...
Duration: 01:03:15Episode 268: Hard Day’s Night
Dec 07, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy is talking about ways to keep your hard days from turning into hard nights wheen it comes to stress. Folks, there is enough stress in the automotive industry to go around, so being able to deal with it is key to being effective at your job. From new systems in cars that are broken in new and interesting ways, to customers with unreasonable expectations, more often than not the answer is simply to not sign for the stress and let the sy...
Duration: 01:47:29Episode 267: Helter Skelter
Nov 27, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we have blisters on our fingers from all of the chaos that has been coming down the chute. The sources of chaos in the automotive industry, at all levels, are actually pretty consistent. We are problem solvers in our role as automotive mechanics, so naturally for us most of the chaos starts and ends with the customers. We also get deep into the idea that as a team that solves problems, the support stuff needs to not make a ton of problems on to...
Duration: 01:34:32Episode 266: You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away
Nov 16, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we continue the theme of Beatles B Sides, and the theme of not getting enough love from our employers. We have an interesting conversation about “things you shouldn’t say to technicians”, as well as an examination of the stupidity of repair line items as the warranty comes closer to being done. It’s a rip roaring episode of grease the wheels, and if you hear any of these sayings on the regular from your management- it might be time to polish up the resume...
Duration: 01:08:24Episode 265: Can't Buy Me Love
Nov 09, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about the intersection of manufacturers, technology and image spin control for the profession in general. From inside the shop between service and management, to the manufacturers themselves - there isn’t a whole lot of love going around to the people who fix them. Luckily, there’s this podcast. Not getting love from the manufacturers is real: from making the vehicles more difficult to do simple tasks, to slashing warranty times in an effort to save profit margin. The real only bastion...
Duration: 01:26:29Episode 264: Nowhere Man
Nov 02, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we title it after where we were last week, nowhere to be found! Sorry about that, we needed a week to get back to the grind. This brings us to the theme of today’s episode, where we go deeper into some of the crazy stuff that is coming down the pike and the relative rate of advancement in the automotive industry over the last 20 years versus the previous 50. A “Nowhere Man” in this case is a technician who’s skills and training c...
Duration: 00:47:58Episode 263: What’s Next?
Oct 21, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we look at an article about coming trends in the automotive industry from connectivity, to automated driving and electrification, and even some of Jimmy’s better conspiracies. This is a wild one where we look into the future from the recent past and compare notes to how it’s going. When it comes to connectivity, the leaps and bounds have been extreme since Jimmy entered the industry. From a few cars having bluetooth to full Apple Carplay and Android Auto streaming literally everything (includ...
Duration: 01:25:13Episode 262: Hold the Door
Oct 12, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy pulls an article from Identafix talking about the burgeoning opportunities for techs in the $60 Billion per year Automotive Industry. We talk about this in the context of other episodes, but the main focus of this episode is dumb things that customers do. We ponder if technicians make good service advisors, even though they are typically more educated than the people selling the work or the products themselves. Being a service advisor is an easy way to make 6-figures without a college de...
Duration: 01:06:36Episode 261: No More Help Wanted
Oct 07, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s only slightly late episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes another swing at the problems we can fix - only this time it is the people in your building. We also examine whether the switch to EV’s is going to decrease the number of help wanted signs seen around shops. For some reason, the author of this article seems to think that EV’s are immune to the universal law of entropy and will never need any form of repairs and maintenance. Because of this, the author...
Duration: 01:03:52Episode 260: People as the Problem
Sep 28, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy swaps diagnosing problems with cars, to diagnosing problems with people. The source of 100% of the problems that a shop will run into in a given day is driven by the customers. If there was nothing to fix, there would be no problems. However, where problems become even bigger problems is the gulf between the perception of modern auto repair and the reality. Cars are a lot more complicated now than people think they are. Yes, they work better and last longer, bu...
Duration: 00:50:49Episode 259: Idiocy
Sep 21, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy is back on form and shredding internet articles. Looking for a spark of lunacy, he delves into an article titled “20: Ways to Tell if your Mechanic is an Idiot” This is one of the more ridiculous lists we’ve seen as it actively counteracts things that we are telling our service advisors to do. It also completely discounts the thousands of absolutely fantastic technicians who have never even taken an ASE test. We also get into some of the ridiculous sounds that cust...
Duration: 01:29:17Episode 258: Forward Thinking
Sep 14, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, WE ARE BACK! This week we are talking about the differences between the forward thinkers and the reactive thinkers in the automotive industry. Often times vehicles can be described as “forward thinking”, but rarely can the same be said of management in this industry. The difference is being able to anticipate where the proverbial puck is going instead of focusing on where it has been. One of the major areas that is going to stress test forward thinking managers in the next few years...
Duration: 01:18:57Family matters
Aug 20, 2023Send us a text
Okay, so this is how this shit works! This is actually Uncle Jimmy , Erik the Producer has been in a bad car accident . He and his significant other have both sustained some serous injuries. We are told they will be okay , but it is pretty bad as of right now. So if you have some prayers and well wishes you can send to Erik and Caitlyn that would be greatly appreciated. Since Erik really does all of the back breaking editing work ( I'm still not sure how he makes me sound good) we...
Duration: 00:05:27Episode 257: Ya Tool!
Aug 03, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy hits one of our collective nerves: tools. From the tools that we use every single day and would be lost without, to the tools that get relegated to the back of the bottom drawer once a particular recall is done - we can’t get the job done without them. We also talk about the level of mechanical genius often found in some of the ways that we modify tools to do certain jobs better, or look at a tool designed to d...
Duration: 01:25:44Episode 256: Get Out Now
Jul 27, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy dives into an article about alternative career paths for automotive technicians - written by people who know nothing about being an auto technician and even less about some of these other jobs. We’ll give them the easy ones like building maintenance technician, Parts Manager, HVAC maintenance, and even shop foreman and shop owner for those who age out of being an auto mechanic, but that is about it. If you had a hard time working on cars, we do not want...
Duration: 01:29:35Episode 255: What Are You Talking About?
Jul 20, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy starts off with an innocuous enough question and rapidly descends the rabbit hole of what people who don’t know about cars think about car repair. The question is, “how hard is it to change an engine?” Simple enough right? Not for these folks! There are plenty of jobs that are more mechanically difficult or arduous than changing an engine. Sometimes changing the entire engine is a completely preferable alternative to the massive amounts of intricate work that rebuilding one can require...
Duration: 01:10:48Episode 254: Flip the Script
Jul 13, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a look at some of the reasons why you should stay at your current job. We know we have spent the last 250+ episodes telling you why you should leave, but there are often serious pull factors such as not having to look for a job, and being stable financially to some degree. There are also people that make the job worth it sometimes, and many times these people get genuinely close to you due to the amount of time you sp...
Duration: 01:18:23Episode 253: Independence Day
Jul 06, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s holiday episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy breaks down just how many job openings there are on Indeed.com for every brand of car manufacturer. We really like Indeed, and they didn’t pay us to say that because it allowed us to break down the national demand for wrench twisting folks quickly and efficiently. Likewise, we see that national demand for technicians at independent shops is almost equal that of dealerships. The wildest part is that most jobs get filled before they're ever...
Duration: 01:36:32Episode 252: Thank You
Jun 29, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy endeavors to extend his thanks to the rest of the world that fixes things - by bringing you content created from people who need things fixed, but can’t. This is a good one folks. Anyone who seeks out information is already ahead of the game in some ways, but some of the responses you get on the internet can be dubious. In this episode we see responses that run the gambit from: “learn from the ground-up how to fix and shred...
Duration: 01:23:13Episode 251: Drivers Seat
Jun 22, 2023Send us a text
Duration: 00:52:48Episode 250: Ask for the Sale
Jun 15, 2023Send us a text
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets back to good old fire and brimstone with the service advisors. Anytime you can start off an episode with the prompt, “you couldn’t sell an AC repair to a woman in June, in Texas” as a statement of fact instead of a murderous burn - you know we’re in for a good one. In this episode we explore how the customer service arm of the service department can and often does drop the ball when it comes to customer interact...
Duration: 01:30:28Episode 249: DIY Land Ahead
Jun 08, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a look at the Automotive DIY Market. This is one of those countercyclical industries that really kicks in when the economy gets bad - and in the past that wasn’t the worst thing in the world because cars were exponentially simpler. Today, depending on the make, model, and Russian YouTuber whose video you find - the results can be a lot more mixed. We go into an article about jobs that the internet thinks that people can do themselves - an...
Duration: 01:53:01Episode 248: Find Em Wherever
Jun 01, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes further down the “talent acquisition” rabbit hole and finesses some good ideas out of mediocre ones. Establishing relationships with tech schools, colleges with automotive programs, and even some high school trades are a good start - but they need to be catered to the objective reality that the applicants are facing that cars are getting harder to work on every single day. We also get into the idea of hiring both the formerly incarcerated and homeless veterans to fill the ranks...
Duration: 01:24:09Episode 247: The Wall
May 25, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy further explores the generational divide in the dealership. When it comes to Gen Z, they are getting driver’s licenses at an even slower rate than the Millenials did at that point. However, as the economy improved for millennials and needs eclipsed public transit options, they started getting their licenses. It has yet to be seen if this trend will replicate itself with Gen Z, mainly because the economy is still firmly in the sh*tter. However, the bigger issue comes with...
Duration: 00:39:09Episode 246: Put it Off
May 18, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy examines the pendulum-like market forces of auto repair. The basic idea here is that when the economy slows down, people hold onto their money - especially when it comes to their cars. However, because a pendulum swings back, when people put off certain repairs for too long they become a LOT more expensive. We also talk about the generational shift going on with Gen Z not getting their driver’s licenses - but that pendulum will swing back too as public tran...
Duration: 01:01:03Episode 245: Time Bandits
May 11, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes into some of the biggest time sucks in western civilization - which gets compounded when you’re working flat-rate. There are a whole lot of things that can waste your time in the shop, and some of them are completely unavoidable. Is there ever such a thing as an actual quick question, NO! Industry wide, talking is one of the biggest time wasters there is - unavoidable really. We also get into the corporate time wastes from improper or poorly thou...
Duration: 01:10:14Episode 244: GTW Code of Ethics
May 04, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy channels Aristotle to the tune of Charlie Manson and comes up with a much more nuanced 10 point code of ethics for technicians. “Thou shall know what you’re doing, thou shall not rip people off blindly,” that kind of thing. We also get the rest of the service department involved and come up with codes of ethics for Service Advisors and Service Managers alike! This one basically comes down to, “do your job!”, or the burning bush will be arson instead of the almig...
Duration: 01:26:34243: Ethics, Schmethics
Apr 27, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets into the constant corporate kerfuffle of ethics. Specifically this week we examined the ASE’s technician code of ethics and found that it was really pretty hard to find! We get what they are going for here, but we don’t agree with the orthodoxy that “in order to be a good tech, you must be ASE certified”, because quite frankly we know brilliant technicians who just don’t test well. The meaning of this article is well, but we actually wis...
Duration: 01:07:14Episode 242: Stupid is as Stupid Writes
Apr 20, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes aim at another batch of misconceptions spread by corporate entities when it comes to the direction of the automotive industry. Unless the good folks at Area 51 have come up with some new types of fasteners that use nano-bots and electricity to hold stuff together - we’re still going to need toolboxes! Seriously, some of the ideas being peddled by this article are not even close to where the industry is going, so at least it is good for a laug...
Duration: 01:11:45Episode 241: Warranty A-Hole
Apr 13, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes down the angst-inducing rabbit hole of aftermarket warranty companies and adjusters. First point of contention, just because you “used to be a mechanic” does not give you carte blanche to be an asshole - we’re not on the same team anymore because it is literally your job to not pay us. Second point of contention, do not accuse Uncle Jimmy of not performing work on a vehicle just because it is clean - this will earn you a short drop and...
Duration: 00:55:36Episode 240: 3mta3 Team
Apr 06, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy cues the John Barry and suggests that one of the best ways to fix a shop or dealership is to send in a tech undercover to find out all of its strengths and weaknesses. It’s benevolent corporate espionage with just a hint of Grease the Wheels HR methodology. In terms of finding out how a shop either works or doesn’t work, a technician with a set checklist of things to figure out could be a ruthlessly efficient way to skunk...
Duration: 01:15:19Episode 239: The K Plan
Mar 30, 2023Send us a text
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes into his K Plan for onboarding new hires and setting them up for success in your repair shop. The first part of this is having a deep understanding of the flow and chemistry of the shop, because if they are going to spoil this chemistry- you might want to back off on hiring them. The goal is to reduce the massive attrition amongst new hires in the auto industry - and we think this could definitely work. The K Pl...
Duration: 01:43:03