Changing The Industry Podcast

Eric Merchant 0:00
Like, I need a picture for the podcast, or for Yeah.

David Roman 0:04
For the gram, I gotta take a picture of the gram. Well, let's say I don't gram that good.

Eric Merchant 0:12
See, I probably should.

David Roman 0:14
I don't know, I don't use it. So leave us.

Eric Merchant 0:17
We get both of us taking a picture of both areas.

Nice. That'll work out pretty cool.

Maybe too far away to see who I'm taking a picture of.

David Roman 0:32
Have you seen that video of the girl doing tick tock dances in the middle of Costco? While people people are trying to shop and there's a somebody, the mom like sets up the phone. And she's like, zooming in and out while her daughter is just like flailing because she's like doing this hardcore Tiktok pain

Eric Merchant 0:56
so I can purpose or this was planned.

David Roman 0:59
Yeah, in the middle of Costco, like she starts playing the music and the daughter is doing the choreographed dance in the mom's video in the dance. And she's like, she's she's doing all of the cinematography. Right there with the phone in the middle of the aisle at Costco. While people are just trying to shop they're trying to live there like walking around them and stuff. See, I'm so somebody's caught the whole, the whole thing. And so they're standing back there videoing the mom videoing the girl doing the TIC tock dance. And of course the Tick Tock looks interesting. It's like the mom zooming in and she's doing this crazy dance. She's a good dancer. And the music's like hopping, it looks fancy. But if you take all that out of context, and you're just watching this girl, flailing her arms, like she's possessed in the Hmong through this thing with their phone, they look ridiculous. Well, and people walking around trying to shop and they're like, they'll just looking at him when they're putting

Eric Merchant 1:58
something and that's the thing is like, I've all those those huge YouTube Creators talk about that as like, Hey, I don't like you can not be embarrassed and do this. Because if you're gonna go out and get B roll and all this stuff, people are going to be looking at you. And Justin man, Justin will be like, he'll be he'll grab his his phone, put it on the gimbal and he'll be walking down the street talking and people are passing it and you pay attention. Like everybody's doing this. Yeah, like, What's this guy doing? You know? Or he'll stop in the middle of the store. Like me, I'm about the convenience factor. Like I really want people to, you know, I don't want them to be inconvenienced by me.

I don't like being the center of attention. Yeah, I'm not being a good center of attention.

Yeah, exactly. That's a that's that's a thing for me too.

If people look at you, and they can't decide if they should call the police or an ambulance.

Yeah. David, does that happen? You often

David Roman 2:51
know what are you talking about? You don't want to be the center of attention. I'm sure you don't desire but you always are the center of attention.

Eric Merchant 2:57
Seriously? Yeah, I'm

David Roman 2:59
curious to hear was smirking like me to he No.

Eric Merchant 3:06
It's not intentional.

Well, you make it look good. Well, that's good. Fake Book good. Yeah. Good with being fake. Like somebody tripping out in the middle of a Costco? Yeah.

David Roman 3:17
You're the girl dancing in the tick tock.

Eric Merchant 3:21
Hey, look, if I look on her girl dancing tic tock I'm just good at it.

David Roman 3:27
I didn't see she was attractive. She was rough.

Eric Merchant 3:34
It was Costco so at least had a membership required.

David Roman 3:39
Yeah, I'd be I'd be mad I paid for my my fee and I show up and there's some girl doing a tick tock and I'll put my free samples in my a five wagyu

Eric Merchant 3:51
sounds like he got some free samples.

They got a five wagon. They do at Costco. Yeah, the JAYLEE we don't have a cost goes like that Sam's Club.

David Roman 4:02
That's no Sam's clubs. Not the same. I don't know what the deal is. I got a I got a year membership at Sam's Club because they were doing some crazy deal. And you're like you got extra points if you bought it with your credit card. So I signed up for the year we went three or four times what it was like the the selection was not nearly as good it was just it wasn't even as good as Walmart like I prefer just go to a Walmart I'm not getting that good a deal on the selection is terrible. Yeah. at Costco though. Like they have some legit meat. They have legit like in the selections much better. Get a giant thing of garlic powder. You're good for the year

Eric Merchant 4:41
had to check it out. That's always handy. Can you get out of there under 200 bucks? No. Now you can I go for dog food and milk,

dog food and milk and is 200 bucks.

David Roman 4:50
Yeah, but see that used to you. If you wanted to spend less you would do just go to the grocery store. That's not the case any longer. Thank you go to the grocery store and you're like, okay 175 Or go to Costco. It's for 200. What's the difference?

Eric Merchant 5:06
You know, but I think we got to introduce everybody to our guest. Right? Like, we got to do that. But I'm still offended about the Facebook message thing. And so I think I have to tell the story, but do you

know how fast I respond to you now?

Lucas Underwood 5:20
That are right.

Eric Merchant 5:22
I mean, within 10 minutes,

David Roman 5:23
I just want you to understand Eric merchant from merchant automotive and diesel

Eric Merchant 5:29
specialists. Listen, I don't think you I don't think you grasp this. You don't have to say like his whole name. You just say Eric merchant. Everybody already knows what you're talking about. Like, I don't think you understand how popular the dude is.

David Roman 5:41
I'm sure he is

Eric Merchant 5:42
awkward. Just even reads it like that. Listen, no matter what very weird, because he's staring at me funny. Like he's trying to focus on my badge. And I don't know if he's looking for more.

David Roman 6:02
Googling me is looking for your state over now. Have

Eric Merchant 6:07
you ever felt like you've been looked at Bing Google searched at the same

time? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I've alluded to it, but just so everybody knows, like,

David Roman 6:21
no, no, you know, everybody doesn't need to know. Okay, it was what happens. Eric, this is like your third or fourth time here in the story?

Eric Merchant 6:27
Yes. Oh, at least you know, every day I send him messages every day. You remember that one time? You remember that? Once you really? Yeah, every single

David Roman 6:35
day. At Shopware wasn't the first time you had heard him tell that story?

Eric Merchant 6:40
No, I don't remember where the first time was, which. I feel like that's all that

I had for I had completely forgotten about it. Right until you sent me a message.

i That's when I remembered it. Right.

It completely like

messenger holds no secrets, or holds all secrets. Yeah. Or something. If you get a new phone, it's just gone. But if you use messenger, it's there for life forever.

The internet is forever. There's a lot of people in this world that need to know the internet's forever. The things on the internet, they don't go away. You take

dance is gonna be there forever. Yeah.

You put that up there. They'll shut

David Roman 7:18
down tick tock sofa. Yeah,

Eric Merchant 7:19
but that video still there somewhere? Yeah,

it'll be inside site. Yeah.

No tick tock dances, David.

David Roman 7:28
We need to do some tick tock dances.

Eric Merchant 7:30
Aries nail. Do we even know what a tick tock dance is? Like? Is there a training class for that?

David Roman 7:35
There is training classes for tick tock dances. I'm afraid what we do is YouTube, how to do a tick tock dance. And there are YouTube videos about tick tock.

Eric Merchant 7:46
How cliche is that? You can't tick tock how

to do the Tick Tock dance,

right because that would chant

David Roman 7:51
tick tock how to do the Tick Tock dance. I don't think you can get a full tutorial. But YouTube will show you how to do the Tick Tock dance. I mean, you can do the Tick Tock things file that

Eric Merchant 7:59
in my

business, the new merchant automotive marketing strategy. Talk cancels. Yeah.

It hasn't started yet. But maybe check back in a bit we'll see.

Well, because the main like the forums are dead now. Servers are dead. We got some groups we got

dead. The guy said Well, I I haven't been on him and a handful of years

David Roman 8:19
then they just moved to Facebook groups,

Eric Merchant 8:22
I think so turn into Facebook groups diesel place diesel place still has a little bit activity. Just a little bit. Not much. Not like it was but I mean, there's still activity there.

I haven't been there in quite a while. Yeah, I don't ever go. But I mean, like I think I was like remember number 120 of that. Yeah,

I believe you're right. Somewhere in there. But I mean, like it was diesel bombers Cummins forum. Like all of them. Right.

There was a bunch of them. Yeah. Now you hear it? It's like, Oh, yeah. I remember that. Yeah, those were the days man. Back when you knew people by their screen name. Yeah. Their forum handle I guess it was called. Yeah, exactly.

David Roman 8:59
So that that moved to the it moved to Facebook groups, but I think Facebook is really just older millennials and up. So what are the what are the younger kids go to discord? Servers?

Eric Merchant 9:15
I don't know. I mean, I don't think we know where they're at.

David Roman 9:18
They're somewhere they're not congregating. I don't know. No, no, I heard this there was younger. Zoomers like Amy 1820 21 and younger.

Eric Merchant 9:34
What's my

David Roman 9:37
were you about to say my spirit?

Eric Merchant 9:39
I was I was about the same amount of space. What's the new Snapchat? I know I know her on Snapchat. Yeah.

David Roman 9:45
Snapchat, but it's not. It's not the it's not where they're congregating as a group. Like they'll message back and forth on Snapchat. They'll use Snapchat like we use messenger. Yeah. So they'll they'll send each other snaps but It's not the same as as a Facebook group or a forum used to be back in the day.

Lucas Underwood 10:06
So, you know,

David Roman 10:09
I think they're all on Discord. I'm gonna say discord that I'm putting my hat in discord not even sure what Discord is. It's forums. But on a central website. Isn't that Reddit? If Yeah, there are a little bit on Reddit too, I think, yeah, this read it's kind of niche. It's, it's not even niche. It's

Eric Merchant 10:27
really, like, here's, here's the thing is it all feels very odd, because like, what we're talking about was a group of people in a very, very specific topic area. Right. So diesel place was all Derma axes, right? There were some six, two and six, five cylinders and older stuff in there. Yeah. But I mean, it was all Chevrolet pickups, right. And a lot of ways it was stuff like that, that built your brand. Oh, absolutely. You know, and so, same thing with Gus pharma, and Cummins forum and right, like all of those people, they, they would get into that group. And it was such a niche market, that they could get in there. And you could build a business around the people in that group. And I mean, they would build hype, and the people in the group could build hype for you. And you wouldn't do that call Facebook groups now. Yeah, but I mean, dude, it was super effective at the time, it's different to

different kinds of something. Now, I don't know how to describe it, because I

David Roman 11:24
think the only difference now is that there's more stuff pulling your attention. So I could before it was like a want to be part of this community, you got on there. And then it was, it was descending by time, who posted and you got to see everything, where now Facebook is like, hey, there's 85 Other things pulling your attention, this one thing that you're super, super interested in, only if you're actively engaged as the algorithm is gonna push the thing in front of you, you may not even see, for example, the our Facebook group, if you're not actively engaged in that Facebook group, you're not going to see the Facebook group, and you're like, oh, there's no activity on the Facebook group sector, it's because you haven't commented or like many of those posts, you're not gonna see any of them in the Facebook wall squash that you just don't get any movement, any activity in the

Eric Merchant 12:15
forum stuff was more conversational based, so there'd be a thread. And you could just keep going back to that thread, as a conversational piece and get your notifications when somebody else commented, and it turned into some sort of discussion, searchable, that type of thing. And Facebook, those those threads that that format isn't really the same. No, it's

Lucas Underwood 12:37
not you'll have

Eric Merchant 12:38
I mean, we all as far as searching toddlers, nobody wants to search. And then you just get repeat after repeat after repeat. Which nature of the beast? Yeah, like you said, if you're not active, you won't see any of that stuff, you'll have to I don't know, make their algorithm give it to you.

You know, and maybe the forums were kind of the same way to the right, because like, if, if you go out and you search, let's say you search GM transfer cases, right? You're going to find information about merchant automotive, right, eventually, you're going to find that information. The thing was, is that back in the day, only the Diesel Performance shops or the guys that were in the Duramax niche when you first started doing that knew about it, right? It wasn't general repair shops necessarily that we're finding out about. Right. Right. Whereas now it's broader. Right? You don't you end up with more people who have access to that, but they have to know exactly what they're searching for. Right. Whereas, like in those forums, they didn't have to know exactly what they were searching for. Was there was so much content related around one tiny subject that it was there.

They could search within that forum. Right. And I think like some of the some of the Google type stuff will pick up for them. Yeah, right. Well, but it doesn't, it won't pick up any social media stuff. Yeah, that's true. That's very true. me a lot of information that might be out there on social media, but you can't find it in there. And Google,

David Roman 14:05
like Facebook wants you to be part of Facebook, in searching within Facebook. So they keep that pretty gated. We're on a forum, which was the website. Discord servers are the same way to they're just it's very conversational. It's it's like a giant chat group.

Eric Merchant 14:23
But they won't take your money from the inside.

David Roman 14:26
Yeah. And they don't know how this court makes money. They got bought out by Amazon and yeah, it was on Discord. It used to be a group for gamers like that's where if everybody wanted to talk about a specific game, and they were following a particular Twitch streamer, they would get on the discord server, and they would have this conversation back and forth. But then they kind of expand it out. So you'll see some YouTubers will say, Hey, you can chat with me on the discord server. Yeah. And it becomes a giant group chat where you can interact with absolutely anybody, everybody that watches that YouTube channel and the YouTube content creator are all in there together just going back and forth.

Eric Merchant 15:05
Oh, people probably love that they can hang out with their, with their Creator heroes. Yeah,

David Roman 15:11
sure. But I mean rose, but Well,

Eric Merchant 15:14
well, but I mean, that was the same thing in the forums writers,

David Roman 15:17
if that was theirs Yeah,

Eric Merchant 15:18
that was the same thing in the forums. Right. It's like they saw you doing everything you were doing. They saw all these other guys going to truck pools, right? They saw all of that and they enjoyed that ability to communicate with somebody. Right? It

was it was the it was the way everybody knew people without knowing who they were. Yeah. Before all that social media. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Feel like you grow. Or you feel like you learn somebody or know somebody or I don't know. Without really knowing who they are.

Lucas Underwood 15:48
Right? Yeah,

David Roman 15:50
we get that though. It's a weird feeling.

Eric Merchant 15:53
It's it's weird, too. Because you guys have yourself out there all the time. Yeah, like it seems weird for me to know. Weird things about you guys just by listening to a podcast. Yeah, right. It's creepy if I was you. I'm not gonna lie. Like I was excited to see the minivan I just thought it was a fool. And then you jump in the minivan and I say oh my god, people are now just like, should I should I go live in here?

David Roman 16:20
Was there was an OG minivan. There was an OG minivan scenario just No, I would never look as much crap as I talk on Ford's why on God's green earth would I buy a Ford never afford the Windstar

Eric Merchant 16:35
that's

David Roman 16:39
never afford. I drive an astro van before.

Eric Merchant 16:43
Astro vans are badass. You can get them an all wheel drive. They will go anywhere. You can't kill it for three. You can tear the ions out of them.

David Roman 16:50
I had a lady who killed the four three she killed the crap out of it. She freaked out call me. I ended up putting heads on that for three for her. Yeah, because again, I don't want to wrong anybody. So I dropped her. And I ended up putting heads on this fourth anyway. Anyway, now there was an OG van was a lady little lady who had this cherry 2000 Town and Country with the pearl paint, leather. Everything was limited. I mean, loaded. Loaded. Limited. That means you got heated seats

Eric Merchant 17:26
that you got the fold in the floor deal or is that pre this

David Roman 17:30
was pre that Okay, so this is old school. You got the three eight with 160 horses. It was Pepe.

Eric Merchant 17:41
I don't think he knows what you work.

Like I'm listening to a car brochure.

David Roman 17:48
I'm saying that facetiously this thing was uttered it was terrible the drive it handled poorly. But Oh man you could like stack I moved a dresser set from this lady's house. I just took the seats out. And then everything fit in the back of the van and I drove down this I love minivans are great. So anyway, pickup. Pickup, but you could also like not get rained on in the back. Okay. Yeah. So that was my OG van. And so yeah, I drove that until the headliners sort of come down on me and then that was it. The AC kicked off, but I could fix a scene. I'm like, okay, whatever. When the headliner started coming down to the fix for it is to drop absolutely everything. Rip it out. I don't know if it would have come out or there would have to pull the windshield to get the headliner out. And then fix it and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm done. So you don't

Eric Merchant 18:43
use up over a headline.

David Roman 18:44
I headliner did me in dude,

Eric Merchant 18:46
you dump the entire bitch and van.

David Roman 18:50
Over headliner. Yeah, oh, fabric hanging down. There were little things there were little things like that we're breaking because it's an old van. I'm stuck in the miles on it. And I'm like,

Eric Merchant 18:56
the headliner was the breaking point.

David Roman 18:59
Yeah, that that point there my drawer handles. Old.

Eric Merchant 19:05
You know, it was probably that it was probably the headliner regains

David Roman 19:09
sort of, that's exactly what it was. Like, I get it. And I'm like, no. Oh, dun, dun that weekend. I found the white minivan. I have no idea how long ago was this? 17 No, no, no, no. 20 Right before COVID Did you did you

Eric Merchant 19:25
hear this story? I don't remember. Do you ever hear the story about the Kansas City when? And the accident?

David Roman 19:33
Well, Momo, I've told the story. Are you bringing up old stories?

Eric Merchant 19:37
I'm not I've just I think he should

David Roman 19:39
you don't want I smashed into a lady because it was. Oh,

Eric Merchant 19:42
yeah. Here this one. Yeah. He was yelling at his kids. The kid in the back or something. And

David Roman 19:46
I was I was lecturing. I wasn't yelling at him. Well, let's do anything wrong. He's a good kid. The paints are holding up on the on the front end.

Eric Merchant 19:56
It's because it's chipping off or Yeah. To another car.

David Roman 20:02
little chips on the paint. The paint was was soft. They didn't do a good job. And I went back to the to the Dodge dealership like I took it down to the local Dodge dealership because I'm like, Hey, Dodge dealership, I want you to fix it. Because you're a Dodge dealership. I want my stuff all dodged up. And yeah, they did a terrible job.

Eric Merchant 20:23
So Amish Patel, Midwest, auto body, I think it was him telling me and I may have brought this up at some point. But like all of the plastic body components, like you bomb from the bomb from one of these cheap providers, they've got a coating on the plastic. And so they will come in and they'll take these markers. And they'll like write something on it like it's a P O number this or it's this part number. And they're like, well, it's gonna be painted anyway, and they've got to prep it, and they've got to wipe all that off, right? It may not have been Amish, but somebody was telling me that if they do that, like you can't paint it, you have to send the bumper back. Everybody's like, why you're taking a prep and you're cleaning it and it's getting all that stuff off there. And he starts like flipping through his phone, he's like the problem is, is that if you put that bumper on the car, you paint it, you clear it you do all this work. The first time they go through the carwash there's going to be a black spot where they wrote whatever on that body part, because it's going to wash off because the paint doesn't truly adhere to that area. So they'll go through the carwash and they'll come out and they'll have something written on the front of their car and the paint in that one spots completely go. This was me it's something about a certain kind of bumper it's a certain kind of plastic that it takes that chemical from a grease pan and it sucks it down into the paint wanted here anymore. Sounds shouldn't buy cheap body parts.

David Roman 21:46
Is it that it's cheap body parts, it's like sort of fit stuff.

Eric Merchant 21:50
May not old milk jugs

That's exactly right.

David Roman 22:03
You know, I bought a bumper from from sort of fit to fix for this lady. It was it was supposed to be a black, a black bumper. That's what I ordered. I ordered a black bumper, it had the same OE part number I put it in there sort of it was like 90 bucks. I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna slap this bumper on the back of this lady. If the factory bumper is a painted black, clean plastic, it shows up and it's like weird gray. And I call them up on like, hey, this was supposed to be a black bumper and they're like, you get it how you get it painted. If you don't like the color painting this. I'm not a body shop. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Susan, in the back of my shop. What do you do? So sitting there? Well, I

Eric Merchant 22:46
know. But I mean, did you get a different bumper?

David Roman 22:48
Well, I had, we had to call the dealer and this was like mid COVID. So we called them up and we're like, hey, how long do you get these bumper? So like, there's no date on the back border. I'm like, Okay. And Honda when they say when the honda says there's no date. There's no date. You get it when you get it might be a couple of years.

Eric Merchant 23:07
So by then you forgot you

ordered it. Yeah. So you sell a bunch of like OE parts, right? Like and I was thinking about this the other day, I think it's lb seven fuel lines. I can't get lb seven fuel lines from the dealer. Right? They don't have them. So I will

David Roman 23:21
hook you up when I had an OB seven. It's the

Eric Merchant 23:24
first generation of Duramax that if you

David Roman 23:27
short years

Eric Merchant 23:28
2001 to early four. Yep. Yeah, that's

David Roman 23:32
that's way obsolete the dealer. People truck I get that people still drive them. But I'm saying in the dealer world, and it's outside of the

Eric Merchant 23:43
realm things are obsoleting quicker and quicker.

David Roman 23:45
Oh, yeah. I Ford was the worst the Ford that like five years in. They're done. They're done five years. So you're like, hey, this is it an 18th? And they're like, Yeah, we don't have that discontinued.

Eric Merchant 23:58
When it's stuff that we'll have to mark. It's not going to support or hasn't like, Body Control Module or something. It's not a brake liner, or I don't know, just something dumb that anybody can pick up. Yeah, we've noticed that with with the GM side. And, and high. I mean, I don't know if they're high failure rate, or if they all the sudden seem like they are because they're on. They're on collector. Yeah. Well, yeah, they are. They're just just just continuing. There's there's some of that stuff that

David Roman 24:28
if they have a pretty high failure rate, but it's like it fails at 200,000 miles, it fails

Eric Merchant 24:33
long after

David Roman 24:37
a reasonable service. Yeah.

Eric Merchant 24:39
Right. We're talking, you know, almost 20 years for an LL y. Yeah. ficam. Yep. Those things are starting to drop. And here yeah, we're, what? Yeah, 19 years later, and the aftermarket doesn't support it. Then you're relying on some of the electronics repair module fix

it yeah. Yeah, because I mean, you can't get them and like, they're still super valuable drugs, right? Like, you can't really just turn your back on it and get rid of it. Oh, and

it's a, it's a one and a half year. Part. If there's a one and a half model year, I don't know how many were actually built. But there's a ton of them drugs out there and without it.

There is nothing. It's nothing. Right? And so like, how do you like, because you've got a lot of stuff, right? Like, you've got anything you could want for a Duramax? How do you like, how has this all affected you?

Some of the, like, the electronic side? It's just a matter of if they're fixable, who can fix them? How well can they be fixed? Are they reliable fix and some of the stuff I I'm still scratching my head on some of them? Yeah, like, obviously, there's a demand for it. I've never been a electronics person, as far as understanding a lot of the circuit board and things like that,

right? The EEPROM side of it, yeah, you know,

the makeup of it. I mean, it. We've done a bunch of, you know, crack solder joints on various modules or cluster issues on all the GM trucks, oh, three to seven, where they all just just broken solder joints will reflow boards all the time, do some do some stepper motor repairs, things like that. But if it's into something deeper than that, that's, you know, there's the shops that do that there's, there's module shops and I know what's been talked about in the past most shops that are getting into that module repair.

David Roman 26:37
I think some of the problem, those are some of those, the the companies that make a living off of that have a system or a process. They're not, they're not pulling, like our Louis Rossmann. Like we're the guys looking up the schematics and saying, Okay, if I don't have half a volt here, that means if I need to scroll up here, and this particular, whatever diode is failed, or this capacitor is blown up, because I don't have, you know, two and a half volts here, they're, they're not breaking it down to that level. They're going through what's the most common failure on these things. So they're checking the for, for crack solders, they're looking for something that's obviously broken, or this chip always always fails, these three capacities blow up, they're just replacing that and then throwing it on the shelf, and then somebody buys it. They're not looking as in depth on the circuit board, as you sometimes would need them to.

Eric Merchant 27:38
And a lot of that, you probably wouldn't be able to find that schematic.

David Roman 27:41
Yeah, I mean, I don't know where they get the OGIS aren't releasing it? No, no, they don't support it any longer.

Eric Merchant 27:46
I don't even know that they have it. Because they buy a lot of this stuff like it's it's troubling.

David Roman 27:51
If they're buying the the module from Bosch, Bosch, you would think would have the information on it the engineering schematic behind the circuit board, and you would think they would want to release it or it's a hey, there's still demand for this. You guys are refusing to make it whatever, fine. Put it up there for public domain, like let anybody get on there. And that way, you can then now order the circuit board the bill drop modules. Do

Eric Merchant 28:17
you think there's an advantage to them, though, by saying like, Hey, we're not going to release that. Because, you know, that's the thing is, like, we see a lot of the older trucks, right? I mean, you work on some older stuff like that. And so the thing is, is those trucks will run forever if you maintain them. You know, I mean, unless it's like a broke crank or something. And that even still,

that's all fixable. Up by us, we just get into the salt belt. Yeah, you know, that the rest of the truck falls apart around everything else that still runs good,

right? And but I mean, even then, if they maintain it, and they put crown on it, or whatever, and they wash it and they take care of it. For the most part, you still got a pretty decent truck. Is that a that's almost a problem for the manufacturer at some point because now here we are, we've we've got this, this truck, and they're not buying another one because that one still runs just fine.

Or they don't want to spend that kind of money. Yeah. A new a new GM. The 20 fours they just released the Denali ultimate, you build it all up. It's it's 100. Plus, yeah. And Fords have been over 100 For a long time,

David Roman 29:23
almost over 100 for a while,

Eric Merchant 29:25
but they just, they just, I mean, I guess everything's going up. But that's a big pill to swallow. And if a guy's got a good run and took 20 years old, and I don't know how many people we see come in and we talked to so be the last truck I ever buy. Yeah, and I don't know how well that holds true long term. I wish I wrote all that people down and I call him 20 years.

Well, you know, and I remember and I may have said this before, but I remember when we were doing performance work, it seemed like every single week there was a 16 to 19 year old boy who had gone out and bought a truck that was 7080 $90,000 and financed it for like 20 years, right? 19% interest 20% interest 25% Interest just to get this draw, and then they go and they spend, you know, $10,000 on it, they tear it all the pieces, like, Dude, you're gonna be paying for that for the rest of your life at this point, you know, like, that's crazy.

And it's if that's what they want to do, Hey, who are we to say, you know, older or whatever, but that isn't that's a huge investment at that age. Yeah. I mean, I, I can see. I remember being that age, and we all want something cool. Or, you know, something? Yeah. And I couldn't imagine swinging that kind of overhead. No matter how much hustle they have. You know, it's just, that's a lot. That's it is. It's 13 $1,400 payments. Yeah, just for the truck. Not counting the insurance on a on a 17 1819 year old.

Yeah. And like, what are you gonna do with that? That makes money like he's not gonna make money?

You're gonna take pictures of it and put it on social media. He put some Instagram handles sticker on it. That's right. I think down everybody you guys they just dropped the asset down.

That's it. So you can all you can seize the stars. Right. That's what you're really shooting for

David Roman 31:11
make them illegal.

Eric Merchant 31:13
Still doing really like the special I'm over and write him a ticket and everything? I don't know.

It's, it's I think it's just a fad. I think I don't know what else to attribute it to that or they're, you know, after all that work, putting the lift kit on the front, like, man, these lift blocks are gonna suck. I started

I'll get to the rest lay down. Never get to

Tigers fit the hint, robins Screw it.

How did you go from general repair? Because that's kind of how you started? What? How'd you get into this whole performance thing? Like it? It blew up? How did that happen?

The performance. The performance thing also tended to I think was a fad looking backwards. Yeah. So so early on. There just wasn't that many people doing it? Because, you know, the Duramax comes out in everybody. I mean, the comments was well established the power strokes were well established. And in the Duramax was, you know, that was common rail just goes a whole new thing. And as all that stuff became I don't say available, but it just it was it made it so much easier to to drop a laptop in the seat and you could download 100 Whatever horsepower. Yeah. Before that, it was all the you know, inline boxes and just just plug and play stuff. Yeah. And then that leads to Well, now you need a transmission to hold it. Yeah. Which was no different than any other platform but so real early on, we got into the Allison game doing installs and rebuilds and things like that and again, that for probably a year just What about oh three maybe I spent most of my weekends doing that and I had an arrangement with a local hotel. And I would do to a weekend for the longest time Holy Cow I have usually and I had literally people from east of the Mississippi It was not uncommon to have people drive up that's it we've had some people out of Florida that I've gotten to meet some East Coast people and they would you know it turned into an event so it was only my transmission bill I want to go somewhere and there just wasn't that many people doing it me right maybe six or eight around the country at that time that were that were internet known. I guess you could say

what was see Inglewood cowshed. Who else would make rat was building some transmissions, what Nick rat

was up there. Big Dipper, they, you know, screenname up in the up in the Northeast? There was probably some others that

right? I mean, there wasn't a lot. Right. But like, how did your because your name kinda like went out in front of everybody else's all of a sudden, do you think it was the orange a or what it was? What

was the forums? Yeah, at that time, it was the forums. It's just I was I was active on them. And it's it's funny to hear all the stuff here at vision. They talk about marketing, and it's consistency. Well, I was consistently on the forum. So your name was always out there. And it was way different type of marketing than what we do nowadays. But it wasn't even intentional at the time. It was yeah, I'm an enthusiast. I see these other enthusiasts and they have questions and I'm like, Oh, I can help you with that. Or sometimes I was learning but or could have been just general conversation. It didn't even have to be truck related. You start to build that weird you know, Internet friendship. Yeah. Before that sounded like a weird thing to say. But it was just it was just being active. And there wasn't a whole lot of other people doing it doing it. So yeah, I guess that was all it was that maybe there was more to it. I don't know, there might be 100 things I'm not thinking of.

Lucas Underwood 35:24
Right. Right. But

Eric Merchant 35:27
the magazine, the actual print magazines that we just don't see nowadays. Yeah. Just through the forums you gets, you get to be able to connect with some of those people. And if they wanted to do an article or or some type of editorial content, if you know, if you could, if you could get in front of that, where somebody's doing editorial content, shooting an article on some type of repair, or some type of product that you're releasing, that was a lot of pretty inexpensive press. And a lot of it just came from the mingling side of things. You know, you typically magazines at that time, they'll look through there, whoever's got an ad in the back of the magazine or spending money and then reach out to them when they want to do that editorial content. But so was fortunate enough to get into some of that. And at the time, it probably didn't make good sense. Because when you're doing all that you're donating everything. Yeah, your supply and material, your supply and labor, you're doing everything. But that was we're not profitable. sessions at all. Right? Big picture. Yeah, it

worked out? Well, you

can't take that away. Right, you get a couple pages of editorial in a magazine that's, again, over and over. It just helps those I still have all that stuff hanging on the wall. And the showroom

is crazy will say like, you know, now we look back, right? And I've always looked up to us a diesel shop, you know what I'm saying? And so here we are, we look back, and you reached out a while back and said like, hey, I want to be more involved. I want to learn more about the business side of this. And I mean, I was blown away. What like what created that need for more, more knowledge on the service side?

I didn't know when I didn't know with service that I am the cliche, technician turned owner. Yeah, person and all the things that everybody says why tech doesn't make a good owner, I literally modeled myself after that checklist existed, I fit it to a tee. Everything owner should be on the service counter might go up, I do all that stuff. They're talking about you. And I just the service was definitely where I started. And over the years, it grew into E commerce into manufacturing or that type of thing. And that seemed to take over a lot of the focus. And for a handful of years, we actually shut the driving service down. And what I realized is, I wasn't I didn't have any idea on these newer trucks. Like I literally wasn't sure where to check the oil. Right? I had to look for the oil for the dipstick, and it just like okay, and I don't like being that disconnected from something that I was always, you know, intimately involved, or passionate? Oh, yeah. It was nothing to go just tear something down for the sake of learning about it. And I haven't done that. And, and quite a while because I, I am I okay, I feel like I'm being pulled in a bunch of different directions. But what I also am very slow to learn. I'm the problem. I'm in my own way. I'm the I'm the bottleneck in the decision processes. I feel like I want to micromanage or be involved. I don't really want to but I want to be confident and letting go of that. Yeah, to do the things that I should be doing. Which certainly is not sitting at a computer, or trying to do repair, or I'm sorry, trying to do website improvements, or learning a new ERP system software that we use that I did it out of because I thought that's what I needed to do. And now I'm so wrapped up in non essential things that somebody else could definitely do. It's going to, I need to figure out how to get out of that hole.

Well, you know, I remember a conversation that Rick and I had one time and I was like, you know it's lunchtime one day and I'm mowing the grass, right? And he's like, What are you doing? mowing the yard? He's like, you've got so many other really important things you could do it Wouldn't you just pay somebody 60 or 100 bucks to do that? Will go 60 or 100 bucks is a lot of money. He's like, Yeah, but you're what you're taking away from your business is probably three to $4,000 from you not being doing this, right. And you're looking at it like it's this huge deal that you're the one that does this. Wouldn't it make more sense just to pay somebody? I mean, he's like me and you talking about the bookkeeping thing, right? Like, why would you not just pay somebody a couple 100 bucks a month, when you could be over here managing the business and, and watching the numbers and making sure the processes and policies are doing what the business is supposed to do? Being the leader? You know, I mean, how do you make that decision, David? Like when, like, you know, he's got task.

David Roman 40:41
You know, who Larry Bird, how Larry Bird hurt his back.

Eric Merchant 40:46
I wasn't playing basketball, I'm sure you're gonna say she was

David Roman 40:49
mowing those moms long. That sucks. Yeah, he was mowing his lawn, hit something, whatever, tweak this back. And he was never the same again.

Eric Merchant 41:02
What's the moral of the story?

David Roman 41:04
Don't mow your lawn, hire somebody? Well, but I mean, like, we were just talking about.

Eric Merchant 41:12
I feel like I want to pay somebody to do that. And I think part of that, to us to use this example. I don't want to go a find somebody. Because I don't like to call. I don't want to call and find somebody. But I don't want to go through this negotiation process of what it's going to cost to mow the yard. And then, if I did all that, I'm not gonna like the way they mowed it. Because I like to be a perfectionist, even though I'm not. Right. I wasn't gonna

David Roman 41:46
let all that go. Oh, like Eliot totally. So like, I don't call, I don't call, right. I get some online inquiry or whatever I have, but I have a number in my head. So long as it doesn't blow that number out of the water. So I'm like, it should cost I don't know, 50 bucks to do this Dylon. And they come in and they're like, 52, done. Go. Negotiate and Jack

Eric Merchant 42:08
Welch. That and that would be apt to like, I wouldn't even have a number in my head because I have no idea what it would cost because I've been too cheap to figure it out. Yeah. Or too lazy to wanna mess with it. If somebody says, hey, I'll take care of it. It's x dollars. Oh, well, yeah, I

David Roman 42:20
do. Have you read The Four Hour Workweek? I don't believe I've read that. You might want to check that one out. Now, it doesn't apply one to one. But the guy goes through his story of figuring out how to unload absolutely everything from his life and business to somebody else. So he could focus on doing whatever the hell you wanted to do. And like he'll, he'll, he talks about how, hey, I wanted to learn how to how to dance the tango. And where do you learn how to dance the tango, he was found out that there was a fantastic school instructor in Argentina. So I needed to move to Argentina. Why don't you get up and move to Argentina just on a whim? I figured it out. And he tells a little story of how he figured out he was gonna go live for six months in Argentina so you can learn how to tango? That's what he did. He just happened, did it? Well, how do you unload this aspect of the business and who's gonna watch this and who's going to take care of that, and every aspect of his life was unloaded to somebody somehow somewhere some way. And he also figured out how to leverage whatever spending he didn't have to do into free stuff. So he could, for example, our discussion with Brandon deals this morning. He's telling me oh, yeah, they ran my debit card, my business debit card, will want to have a business debit card. He's like, I don't know, I probably should have a business credit card. Well, yeah, you shouldn't have a business credit card. Because Lucas over here at 200,000 points hits, premium elite super platinum ultra mega status on his American Airlines points. And at that point, he's got access to the Ambassador Club, and he gets lots of free luggage. So he doesn't have to check everything or pay and he will save. How much was it? $18,000 a year,

Eric Merchant 44:10
right at 18,000. He

David Roman 44:11
will say he'll save $18,000 a year on luggage costs. If he hits this level. Well, how does he hit that level? It's not gonna fly that much. No, he spends it on the credit card on parts. We spend that on parts sort of $1,000 on parts and what maybe eight, nine months toward the 1000s gone. We have to spend the money anyway. So let's leverage on what we spent anyway. That's what he does. Through the whole book. It's an interesting read. And it does expand your thinking on Do I really need to take care of this? No, probably there's a cheaper faster, easier way to make this process more efficient.

Eric Merchant 44:49
You know, so demony Yesterday, we interviewed a friend of mine Dhoni and and I think back about her situation, right? Like she there was a time when she couldn't work in the business. And I don't think we ever think About that, like we, we look at, I'm going to be here, I'm going to be doing this, I'm going to be the one things can happen, then one day, you're not that we can. And now the business is not sustainable. There's no succession plan, there's nothing that makes this business work. So as opposed to being a benefit to our family, right, last night, we talked about generational wealth, right? The purpose of business generational wealth, well, like, if I leave them a burden, instead of a benefit, you know what I mean? Like if my wife has to take over, and all of a sudden she is burdened by trying to run the business? What was the frickin point of this? Right? Why would I have done that? And I think we get so stuck in our heads like, I'm going to be here, I'm going to do this. And we're, we're, we're, you know, we're so zoomed in. We're like, looking at the day to day operation in the thing that we've got to do in the business. We're not thinking about the long term consequence of not building a system and a team that does it for us. You know,

that's goes back to that letting go to the book that that David brought up. I've sorry about that, at that, oh, I have read and been through a lot of different things, that all have that basis of delegate, let it go, let somebody else do it, you know, hold accountable. But it, what it does is it comes back to me not allowing myself to do that. And I've done it for longer than I realize. And that's probably my biggest hurdle. I know. And I know that about me, now, I've learned that I'm still learning how to fix it, or to not have to be the one that's involved in it. And there's a lot of times, I don't want to decide, I don't want to make that decision. But I also feel like I have input. And I and I need to at least get my input heard, because of a mistake that I might have made making this situational decision in that same scenario? Well, because of how I am, I think my my staff is leery like, if I give input, they might take that as is I'm wanting them to make a decision that way. And, and my wife is very clear and telling me that I am the problem. And I'm not only is she clear, she's very clear, right? extremely clear. And I'm very slow to learn that lesson. That is, yeah, I'm in the way. And it's not just ownership beyond the service counter. Get the hell out of the way, let somebody else do it. And I just I have to learn to let go of that stuff and be okay with somebody else tried, maybe, maybe something didn't go as planned, but at least they tried. And Bright Boy, that's for me. That's a tough thing.

It's been really tough for me too. Because like, I we talked about this yesterday.

David Roman 47:55
Let's try to figure out why though. Let's try and figure out why it's tough. For me, in my mind, it's because there is no system or process in place. To unload. I'm just winging it. I get in there. I know what I know. I know what I need to do. And I just, I just do it. I'm not even thinking about it. I just do it, I get it done. Now you're wanting me to just hand it over to somebody else. That person's not me. Right? They don't know what I know. And they haven't had the experiences that I've had. Now they might come at it at a different angle. And it's not the way I would do it. And that feels uncomfortable. But what if I had a process or a system in place? This is the way we do it. We do we you know, this is how we build an estimate. This was the the way we would deal with these particular situations in the estimating process. And then this lead of them to do the job that you taught them to do. All of a sudden, it's not as uncomfortable because you essentially taught them your process, because you were able to articulate it.

Eric Merchant 49:08
And that probably is also a struggle point me articulating it. Yeah. Yeah. Because we've, we've we've spent as a company we've spent probably a couple of years ago now, I found EOS and I know some of the people out there probably have heard of it. Some of them haven't. But the concept of Eos for me was what I thought was the like the best thing ever like like it described me to a tee i I portray myself as a visionary in that world and you know, big picture thinking and industry relationships and and always look into the future. But I found myself situationally and maybe not situationally, maybe this excuse to trying to take on other roles and not just grasping well Where I where I should be. And we went through all that stuff the the accountability side of things and scorecards and putting processes in place and systems. And ultimately I feel that system didn't fail, I think I failed that system and probably prevented the whole company from being able to fully embrace it. But knowing the concepts are pretty generic. It's not like, it's, it's not like it's doing anything that's unique to Eos, or only EOS talks about it. I mean, you know, listener to Cecil in class or listening to, you know, all these things, those concepts have been around forever, it just simplifies it. I think it makes it, you know, 123 English, but the systematic side, and then sticking with those systems.

David Roman 50:57
What were you finding that you were stepping outside of the system? Or trying to? How did you undermine?

Eric Merchant 51:06
I was in the way, not what, how.

David Roman 51:09
So if you if you set the system that, hey, we answer the phone, on the third ring in this manner, were you waiting till the fourth ring and then just picking it up in a different manner?

Eric Merchant 51:20
No. And honestly, we didn't get that granular with it as far as the issues. Not getting out of the way, is where is where I struggled. Just and I've had some situations over the last handful of years where we went into something as a project. And I tried to stay out of the way. And things didn't go, how I had hoped that were considerable expense, considerable downtime. And in my head, I'm thinking, Oh, if I'd have just done it myself, yeah, I could have. So you've entered all this, you

you reaffirm the belief that I have to be there, I have to do this

in my in my head. Yes.

And, you know, the thing is, is that if if you if you see a failure like that, right? And you don't back up and understand, right, because we can't always be the solution. Right? Right. If we plant place our shelf as the solution every single time, what's going to happen, we're eventually going to be to the point that, that we're overloaded, that we're not happy with what we're doing. We're not we're not growing to our potential, because we're the bottleneck because everything has to go through us.

And that is, that is to a tee. And that's, it's not good for anybody. No, you know, it's not good for anybody. It's not good to have to be funneling through you. Because now you're you're the bottleneck. You're preventing everybody else on the team from wanting to make a decision, because they're scared of might be the wrong decision.

Then you can build resentment, and you can damage business culture.

And, frankly, I I think anybody in that position doesn't want to have to be the one to make the decision. Yeah, just

David Roman 53:18
now they do in the zone.

Eric Merchant 53:20
Well, you don't want it you don't want it to be overburdening. Like it just feels overburdening. But yet, I made that situation the way it was. Not even sure how we went down this road, this is deep. It is it is but you must not listen

David Roman 53:39
to the podcast. We do I do. Or not?

Eric Merchant 53:49
So you sit through Cecil's class yesterday. Right. And so for me personally, one of the things that that the problem was is I was trying to run and trying to control everything. And, and I've said this before, I would give myself an excuse, because I didn't really know how it was supposed to be done. So I give myself an excuse for set mistake, right? And I was unwilling to give that excuse to anybody else. But I didn't really know how it was supposed to be done. So if it didn't turn out the way that I thought it was supposed to turn out, it was just well, it is what it is. Right? I didn't look at them that way. Right? I didn't look at them in a way I could give them grace for the mistake. So you sit in Cecil's class yesterday, and you got some information, right? And you listen to what he had to say. Did you find weak spots in your knowledge of the service side? That might give you the tools you need to go and put that in place for them and say this is the way it's supposed to work? Do you feel like it was something like that where you didn't have that granular knowledge of a specific process or system or do you feel like it was the need for control? Yes, yes. Yes.

So one of the things that I will have it 100% Admit, and this comes back to owner, I'm sorry, tech turned owner, and never figuring it out outside of what I thought it was supposed to be. So it's been a minute, 18 years, and you fix the car, you take care of the guy who you you know, it with the diesel side. And I'm not saying that diesel is different than gas, it's, I mean, it's still essentially the same process, but it always the tickets are a lot bigger. It's a lot bigger relationship. Yeah, you know, 2020 tickets a month versus, you know, some shops are 300, I guess, again, I couldn't even imagine trying to keep all that organized. But the process what I thought was, you know, you diagnose it, you make sure it's right. And if you didn't really know what was wrong with it, and I, boy, I'm gonna, I'm learning my lesson on this, like, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm going to spend an extra hour or two for my own education on this and not charge that guy. Because I want to figure out what's wrong with it for next time. Well, that just turns into every time. Yeah, it exactly. Never come. So next time never comes because it's something new. Yep. And yeah, we need to learn and we all need to be educated. But boy, I don't know how much money I haven't collected because of doing that. Yeah, it's probably good that I don't, and even the labor rates of the last three months have been very eye opening. And it all started one of my guys in the back was he was picked up on the podcast, and he told me about it. And I listened to a few and I that's how I don't have to reach out to you Lucas. And and it was just so weird that I start going in this group, and then, you know, start here and these names that I've never I don't know who these people are I just it was all new to me. And who's who scanner Danner, right? I had no idea who he was. I mean, I the only YouTube mechanic I knew was was Scotty Kilmer. And every time I watched him, my Wait, was was the guy that talks about toys. We can't say names.

But I never, I never really knew how to be profitable in service. I still don't, but I've learned a lot more about it. Now. Just going through some of that stuff. Charge your time. Make sure your labor rates right.

Well, I you know, I said this to Paul A while back. And, you know, Paul, Paul posted some stuff about it. And he caught a bunch of flack. And you know, one of the things that I said to Paul was is like, you're elite, right? You You are an elite operation, right? You have the ability to do things nobody else in the country has the ability to do same with you, you know, Duramax like nobody else in the country, you have abilities that nobody else has. That's worth something, right? But But I see you guys out here and you're not charging what you're worth, and you're not charging the hours that you need to find the problem. And if you can't find it, I know it's an advanced problem. You know what I'm saying? And, you know, I think that so many people took what Paul said, and they said, Wait a minute, you're charging me for r&d, you're charging me for learning about the car. We're not talking about a base level diagnostician, we're talking about someone who is truly elite at their trade. They are, you know, think of it like this, you go to the doctor's office, you go to your general physician, what is your general physician? Well, you know, maybe they're 250 bucks an hour, maybe they're whatever it is. But you know that that bill is going up when they say, Hey, I need you to go see a specialist. Oh, yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, that just got expensive, and insurance might pay for it. But you know, it's not the same thing. And so you guys are out here providing knowledge and support in a way that nobody else can do. But you're not getting paid for. No. And so like I just man, i i For the longest time, the old 12 house and the 24 outros. That's what I was. And I would solve problems. And I would deal with issues and I would find electrical issues that nobody else could find. And I taught myself to find those. And I'd spent all this time and energy doing it. But it never did anything for me. It didn't pay my family's bills, I was subsidizing what it would cost to truly own that truck. Right. And now Now I think it's changed, right? Because you're you're talking about the structure 94,000 to $124,000. Now, when I fix that truck, guess what we're talking about a different deal. We're talking about a much bigger investment. $5,000 is not that big of a deal. $10,000 Now they might say it is. And we all don't. I mean, nobody wants to have to drop $10,000 on something. But we sat at dinner last night, we went to dinner with Cecil, and Nate and Kevin, David and I, you. And, and I could see, when Cecil started rattling off what the numbers should be. I could see in your Nate's face both like, ooh, when

it goes, it's 100%. And Nate and I are in very similar businesses. And it's, boy, we are not even close to. I don't want to say where we should be, because that's how subjective but where we need to be to be profitable now. Yeah, the difference and maybe it could be looked at and excuse services is maybe 10%. Of of my sales, maybe 12%. At best, overall. But I still think that the service is got the most potential to be the highest profit and accompany Yep. Because with everything else, we do ecommerce, and E commerce, we're competing with the internet. Yeah, Amazon's eBay is the other websites. We manufacture manufacturing, you're always going to have knockoffs or something, somebody else's got it. And then, you know, we're all trying to sell the same tennis ball, what brands the best. Yeah. And you can do, you know, branding, marketing and, and sell your value, that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, nobody's ever going to be able to knock off or reproduce or duplicate the technical ability, yeah, of what's coming in the door. And because it hasn't been a huge percentage of the business, frankly, hasn't got a huge amount of attention to be focused on making it that way of obviously, I, I'm the type that's always prided myself on fixing something that somebody else couldn't. And I've heard that come up before. And other people saying, knowing when to just turn the job down. Yeah. And I'm thinking, historically, we've been the place that those jobs came to when somebody else turned it down or didn't fix it. Right. And now, frankly, my ego gets in the way, because if it comes in the door, I want to know, I want to know we fixed it, right? Well, that ego gets in the way. And most I'd say 98% of the time we we can fix that issue. Sometimes it's an eventually thing. But I we lost our rear end on every single one of them, because I'm now learning that ego got in the way. So yeah, we fixed it, but I didn't, they didn't put you know, food on the table.

You know, the the two things that come to mind is is Tim chi says, you know, he defines ego. And he said, there's two different types of ego. There's a strong ego, and a big ego. And he said, a big ego is about you. The strong ego is about everybody else and helping other people, right. And so one of the things that I think about is, as you say that I'll use something you relate, you'll relate to anybody who's ever done a set of injectors and LB seven Duramax knows that every single bolt in that top cover is going to strip out when you got to take it out, there's no way around it, you're going to put a set of bolts in it, you might spend some time getting them out. But once you get, get it down, it's a pretty easy job, it's not a big deal. But eventually, in your career, you will put a set of injectors in a truck, and it'll be seven, and you will fire that bad boy up and you will have not known about pressure testing or return lines, you'll fire that bad boy up and it will fill the crankcase full of fuel. And you can have done the best job that you could possibly have tried to do. You could do all of the research in the world, you could do everything right. But it still cost you 13 hours to fix it and make it right now at that point, whose fault is it? It's our fault. There's no way around it, it is our fault. That is our responsibility to fix it make it right.

Even if it was there before you misdiagnosed it, or you create an issue or missed an issue.

Exactly, exactly. And so now here we are, we've got this truck and we're in a situation where we've got to fix it. Well, these guys out here saying, Well, gosh, 13 hours is a lot of time on that job. I can actually get it done and seven. But what about the one time something goes wrong? Right? Because you You shot yourself in the foot? Well, I probably shouldn't be charging that much an hour. Well, I'm charging that much an hour. So if it does go wrong. Like I'm not I'm not going in the red to fix the truck and get the truck back on the road.

David Roman 1:04:45
That's why I was asking. I don't understand how you guys are going off a book time. You see what I'm saying? It doesn't make any sense. So we had it was a Duramax I called you maybe was water Pump. And I called him and I said, Hey, I got this Duramax in here, like, what am I looking at on this, I did the same thing on a power stroke, needed needed heads, and he goes, You should be around 16,000. At that point, the conversation moves away from well, it's you got to charge about 16 hours book time. He just went through, like, Hey, you got a rehearsal cooler, you need this tool, but I can hook you up with the tool. But you're gonna need this tool, right? And you're gonna need this, that the other and this other thing once you get the, the knowledge that this is what it's going to look like to do this repair properly. The all all that factors in then is the the cost. And you see what I'm saying? Like, it's now the price to do this repair is $16,000. The end, you know, we saw this and whether it takes 10 hours, or five, or 20. We now know the process that encompasses 80% of the repairs.

Eric Merchant 1:06:10
It's like, it's Steve Roberts does a bunch of sex work. And one of the things that he's brought up and talked about before is, is like, if I'm going in there, what am I gonna do, I'm gonna put rockers in the motor, right 606 for either one of you, if you go in, you're putting rockers in it. If the rockers are worn, you're putting lifters in it, you might as well go ahead and put lifters anyway because I lose needle bearings in the rollers. By the time you get the head surface or check, there's a chance that one of them's going to be cracked. And you could have a cup that leak. So you need heads. By the time it's said and done. You're looking at a big job. And what does the client do? The client comes in and says, Well, such and such down the road, I'll do it for 3500 hours. No, I don't think you understand. They're not doing the job I'm doing for 3500 hours, you can't do that. They can't do it for 5000. And it's just like the they can

David Roman 1:06:57
do for 5000. There's just not gonna last right?

Eric Merchant 1:06:59
The irony of that is sitting here today. I know. We don't charge appropriately. But so so we're not charging enough. And it's funny, because how many times we'll get vehicles in or we don't lose a ton of jobs. From from $1 standpoint historically, but they got it done cheaper somewhere else, and I'm already too cheap. Yeah. And I've just like why, why are we undervaluing ourself? And especially when you when you do you look at the numbers if I if I break out service department numbers, it it flat doesn't sustain itself? Yeah, it will not survive. And I'm not even accounting into that rent for the space that it occupies in the building. I have I just look at payroll numbers on what it on the people involved in it. It it doesn't pay for itself. That's kind of that's and I'm like this, this is just ridiculous.

David Roman 1:08:02
John Anderson owns a shop, owned a shop. Now he lives on a boat on the Bahamas, but he owned a shop down the street here. And he he was online one time he goes, there's no there are no bad jobs, just improperly build jobs. And if it was pulled down or was saying that you mentioned this, I might have been texting you goes. Now when the car comes in, it's upfront flat fee this much just just to start, it's going to be like this moving forward. Because we know that if we're getting this car, it's already a problem child. And I'm not going to lose my shirt on this and we might figure it out in 10 minutes. But guess what? Luck of the draw. Most of the time 80% of the time this is going to be a minimum of this much time invested in this vehicle and that's going to cost carry this level of cost to it. So it's it's not a matter of i Hey, I'm gonna say no we say no to vehicles because we don't want to put the time and effort in but you as a Durham mask Duramax Allison specialist, you sort of have to take on that's how you build yourself. You see what I'm saying? Like the brand carries a we will fix anything Duramax and Allison related? Okay, that's nothing wrong with that. If you take absolutely a reader maximum Ellison on you need to start looking at every single diagnostic process. It carries on average, a, whatever four hour time, that's what is that going to cost. If I factor in my gross profit number needed. That means it's going to be 1000 bucks for me to even touch this vehicle for me to make any money on average now on you mate that covers 80% of the vehicle. So that's what you ended up having to factor in 80% of the vehicles. I will make profit on $1,000 If it's of upfront charge, and that's, that's what it turns into. Dude, village auto diagnostics, you see him post someone there. Here's a, here's a 22 inch monitor, when you walk in the, in the shop, it's just a hits you right there. And if this vehicle is 2010 and newer, it's 160 an hour. If it's 2010 and older, it's 175 an hour, no free diagnostics. And that's it.

Eric Merchant 1:10:28
Well, and you know, so I think there's, there's a few aspects of this right, that we got to talk about. And one is, is there is a certain level of salesmanship is not the right word, but a certain level of explaining on the front counter to convey to them, right, and his owners, when somebody comes in and says, You're too expensive, man, it hurts. But the problem is, is when you start going up in you don't realize this until you get it where you need to be in your charge what you need to charge. Those are not the clients that need to be in the shop anyway, those are not the clients that are

David Roman 1:11:00
that's not even a client thing. It's a he's gonna get every Duramax and Allison owner, and it's the cost of owning the truck. Yeah, we have a slightly different deal that we can, we can say no to things. It's that's and that he's in a corner, he can't, he can't leave that corner. He's stuck there

Eric Merchant 1:11:21
that that's been some of the conversations that there's so there's a handful of other guys in the we'll call it in the diesel industry that are here. And a lot of this discussion and training and everything else is based on general automotive, which is perfectly fine. But we all find ourselves having these little conversations off to the side, I'm like, Well, how does that apply to us? Because, quote, unquote, we're so different. Our average ticket is substantially higher than the industry. But our obviously our current count is way less. Our jobs are bigger, our carryover is bigger, we can't just schedule excuse me one second. Four trucks or four vehicles a day per tech, like I've heard a lot of people do and I might, man, would that be easier. And I don't know how we would get around that.

Here's the thing, though, is that that it works the exact same way. Right now you the deal is you might find your your gross profit margin a little bit lower in some of the parts we talked about, you know, you sell a set of eight injectors in a Duramax, right, we probably need to come down a little bit, because we're gonna have so much gross profit in the amount of time it takes gross profit per hour is going to be so high, if we put them at 60%. Like we're going to be substantially higher than anybody else, right. But in the same respect, you got to have a higher labor rate. Right? So that makes up for some of that. We still need to be able to prepare that job or warranty that job, no matter what happens. Like that doesn't change because we're a diesel shop. Right. And you know, I've talked about parking lot scheduling parking lot, scheduling is the exact same thing for a diesel shop as it is for a general repair shop. Right? I scheduled my diesel jobs the same way, it's that my average hour per aro for a diesel job is eggs. For me, it's about six and a half hours. So I know that if my diesel guys on the job, that his tickets are six and a half hours, how many six and a half hours? Tickets can he do in a day? He can do two, right? It may be that it's a day and a half whatever. But the point is, is he typically is on that that 2.2 job a day ticket, right? And so we just look at our hours per row and we say hey, listen, this is a this is a higher our ticket. So I have to schedule accordingly. And then I have to have this many dollars per that scheduling. Right. My average ticket for this is this. Watch my GP per hour and it works. And it's

and that right there all them specifics and knowing all that information by 1,000% struggle right there.

David Roman 1:14:01
And you know why? Because it was all gobbly gook. Well, let me tell you a little bit of all gobbly gook because it was good. Sorry. Sorry. It's it sounds good, though, because he's got that southern accent. Well, anyway, it makes sense. What? With you being a specialist, though, you've got a leg up. You've got a huge leg up in that all of a sudden it's managing expectations. It's not a How many do I schedule? Get them all in? Yeah, every phone call. They're calling you because you are the Duramax Allison specialist. That's it. Now, when you show up to a specialist, the whole hey, I need to get in for a quick oil change is out the window. Now you're waiting for my time and expertise. I'm sorry, the right now our inspections are two to three days out. I'm just letting you know our inspection You can drop it off, you need to drop it off here because we'll put it in the queue. Once it's here, it's usually two to three to turn around to get your inspection back. Okay, what happens after that? Then we present you the estimate, you forgot what you need to do. And All Hallows long does a repair take? It depends on what we're doing on the vehicle. But it could be two to three weeks. Absolutely. Okay. Now, they don't have to come back to you. But understand that if you want the Duramax Allison specialist, that's what it's gonna take. And at that point, that removes a whole conversation of how many cars you take a wall, you take every in that two to three day turnaround, maybe a week now, because you just have a car sitting there.

Eric Merchant 1:15:39
I think, though, I guess the thing is, is that I don't want him to go back and say, Well, that won't work here, because I'm a diesel shop. Right? I don't want him to say, well, I can't charge that, because I'm a diesel shop and our tickets are bigger, so we can't charge that much for that. Right? We hear that so much, I can't do that here that won't work here. You don't understand my situation. And

David Roman 1:16:02
like, at some point, I think I think you've come to the realization that that's totally not not a conversation you need to have.

Eric Merchant 1:16:09
It's just that excuse generated thing in your head. So maybe three weeks ago, I raised the labor rate, our shop rate or door rate 22 and some odd change. Because I went to I went to an office number, I'm like, we were flat 125 bucks. And every time you quote

David Roman 1:16:31
Duramax analysis specialists was 125 an hour, I told you, I'm not very smart. That is cheap. That's a good deal.

Eric Merchant 1:16:39
start shipping them up.

Because like, Hey, you got a water pump.

Bring it on. But my rageous went up

Shippings or 250 an hour.

David Roman 1:16:54
I think what's most important though, if this were me, and I'm completely out of the loop, like it doesn't matter to me, right? Like, I'm not affected by it. But if I were to sit down and look at the situation, I would calculate out what my overhead is going to be my fixed expenses, my variable expenses, and then build build in the profit. And then now you have a decent budget to go off of and go, what's realistically, the amount of hours I can I can get out of this shop. Assuming decently efficient processes. And then now you have a number and now you just whatever the labor rate has to be the labor rate is it may not be 147 and change. It might be that, hey, I need to be at 211 52. And then I can still run a 35% parts GP. And we need to target a 35% parts GP knowing that I'm going to be a two to one parts of labor ratio. And the numbers of them end up working out profitably for you without having to necessarily do any other work. Or get any more vehicles through. If the if if it legit is the problem that ends up skewing everything is that your build hours look artificially low.

Eric Merchant 1:18:15
Oh, they and they genuinely are alright. But

David Roman 1:18:19
that's not necessarily a mic is not fast enough. It's a

Eric Merchant 1:18:25
we undercharged Well, we

David Roman 1:18:26
weigh under charge. Yeah, that that should have been a 32 hour job, not a 16 hour job. And it's because we did 32 hours worth of work. But just like you were saying, You got to add the bolts and you got to do the pressure tests on the return line and all of those little nuances have to be billed and they're not being billed because you're just looking at r&r injectors 16 hours, and then that's what you're pushing through. Yeah, well,

Eric Merchant 1:18:49
we'll we have a we have a lot of kits, or things like that if we do that injector job. Yeah. 98% 99% of what we're going to need do from a from a rusty truck thing. We can predict that we can put all that in front of course there's always the miscellaneous and and I treat shop supplies probably not. I mean, yeah, I think our tickets max at 50 bucks, hold shops.

David Roman 1:19:18
But just like Cecil was saying last night that needs to be gloves and some rags. So

Eric Merchant 1:19:24
right now we

David Roman 1:19:25
we save the squiggly right

Eric Merchant 1:19:26
off a lot of stuff to shop supplies. From a lazy standpoint, oh no, that's that's the biggest thing. And is that justifiable? No, because it does add up. It does. All that stuff does add up. And then another struggle that

I call a struggle could be called excuse. We have an E commerce site. We're putting the parts on a guy's truck that we sell on our E commerce site. He can look at our E commerce site. So I can, why are you selling it to me at a higher rate? And currently, we don't have the ability in our SMS to be able to hide all that information. I've learned a lot about what SMS looks like nowadays. And clearly what system

David Roman 1:20:15
was using?

Eric Merchant 1:20:21
Probably, I'll tell you after the show, it's not common,

they will guarantee they're not listening. And they're cool. I mean,

David Roman 1:20:32
it's all if it's old, it's like when works or something like that, like, really? Oh, it's older. It's older than when works French. It's French Canadian. lancar, who lancar I ran lancar for a while they were Canadian lows.

Eric Merchant 1:20:48
And maybe it's the same thing. Let's just say it in French.

He does everything for the French ladies. Well,

David Roman 1:20:56
I do the van. She wasn't, she was a great voice. That's all.

Eric Merchant 1:21:02
But the system we have now I've had for a long time. I didn't know what I didn't know until I started realizing that Oh, like, like, we can text people in it. But I can't get text authorizations, my DVI is don't integrate at all, yeah, into it. So my DVI is a completely standalone thing. And I'm bouncing back and forth. And, and I and I. I don't want to say that SMS is the reason we're not profitable. But I can't even figure out how to run reports on half the stuff in it. And then, you know, last night at dinner, we pull out a phone. And we're looking at numbers around a round table. And I'm thinking I'll be over here guys, sneezing, scrolling Facebook, because I don't see any of that I have to log into your desktop. And so you got

David Roman 1:21:51
to look at the dealership though the dealership, somebody goes into service at the dealership, and they need some breaks or whatever the price that they're paying for those brake parts are not the same costs of what they would go into the and most dealerships. Now some dealerships are sketchy, but they're just doubling the build hours, that's a different deal. But for the most part, they're paying $150 for the brakes. Well, they could go and buy those brakes for 65 bucks across the counter at the retail parts place. That's not your problem. Well, and that's, that's your job. I'll be happy to sell you these parts of this cost, sir. But we're not putting them in putting them in and they're not carrying my warranty. Do you want this to do the service work? Yeah, it's like, okay, well, then the parts are going to cost this much. But it's even that it's like parts of material, it's like, it's the full service costs this much to do.

Eric Merchant 1:22:44
And that's and that's, that's where I need to approach it as, because again, it's the owner on the service counter thing. Like, I can't charge him that much money. But why not. And I And again, the last 90 days have been eye opening for me in a lot of that stuff, you know, the company as a whole is profitable. But if I look at service department, it's yeah, it's, it should be the most, most profitable, and it's not dragging the rest of the company down. But it takes a tremendous amount of resource and attention, pulling away from other parts of the pump company. Whereas it should be the, it should be the leader, in my opinion, or my new opinion or my feeling. And that service department is what generates the items that we sell the products that we develop. We've always I've always done the factory flaw type fix approach. So never really had a lot of performance type parts. Like here's a factory flaw it's a known issue, here's how we we can make it better. Now we have an improved version of a stock piece or upgraded or something doesn't necessarily mean it's a race product. It just means this was a common issue. Here's how we can fix it or at least are

well I was I was telling him about the transfer case deal last night right because a lot of those transfer cases got just scrapped and replaced and got to remain unit put in tell us a little bit about that because I think that's I was trying to explain to him I suck to explain it so

David Roman 1:24:18
explain the fine so geeking out on your website last night by the way you like Yeah,

Eric Merchant 1:24:23
I know I I seen some notifications come through Yeah, I spent all my money. So GM New Venture transfer cases would have been the 246 that that two piece housing magnesium housing case, not the earlier stuff that the bolt on tailpipe tail cone, but all those transfer cases 98 207 Anything GM four wheel drive, except an all wheel drive was notorious for the pump rubbing through the housing, and probably everybody Have you seen it or heard of it or dealt with it was exactly what it is. And we would see those. And I'm thinking, Okay, why is this happening? Well, this shape sharp little aluminum pump housings floating around in this softer magnesium housing and, and it just happens over time. And I remember, shortly after I started the company sitting there, I'm like, Oh, if we could just make this wider. So I took the stock plate over to the to a shop across the street that did did welding. So he took some, you know, aluminum and built up that for me that I went back and filed it all down and put some surface area to it, or rubs, I'm like, Ah, it works pretty good. I'm like, this is not going to be cost effective to be doing this. So that turned into the process of okay, how can I take this part to getting it produced, and getting it drawn up? I'm not a CAD guy. So in the first, I bought 10 of them. And it cost me what felt like as much as my house to get 10 of these made. So I had to charge not near enough, but enough to get those sold. And then. But basically, what that's doing is it's fixing that transfer case, I can take that plate, retrofitted into any any case, even if it's got somewhere started and keep it from happening in the future. And the only issue with those transfer cases, or for the most part was the fluid at all come out of them. And if and like we always tell people in our company transfer case is the Forgotten beast, there's no, there's no dipstick, there's no warning light, there's no, there's nothing that says, make sure you double check the transfer case. So if you keep fluid in the thing, it's probably going to last. That little pinhole the way it sits there, the way it wears in there. It's above the fluid level at arrest. So it's only going to leak going down the road. And it's only a pinhole. So you might get a few spots on a tailgate, it's the only thing you're going to know until it's just run itself, pull them out of fluid. So that plate was just, I don't want to say an accident. But it wasn't me sitting there thinking today, I'm going to come up with something new, what's it going to be looking around the room, it was just oh, we see this repeat failure. Let's turn that into something. Let's do that to production, let's have a walk. Because of the challenges of outsourcing that and dealing with outside lead times, brought machines in house. So then we start CNC and those ourselves and then I have to see and see it that I need the material. So I bought a saw to cut the material. So that turns into this whole manufacturing side of the company. And I'm sure my numbers are gonna be wrong. Because I haven't looked in a while. But I dare say over the years, we've probably done 25,000 of those plates. And it sounds like a lot until you realize how many of them vehicles are on the road? We didn't we didn't even scratch the surface.

Yeah, well. And so I asked you to tell that story for tell the right part of the story, because I know you got it. And so I asked you to tell that for one specific reason. It's that what you don't realize is is because you look at that plate and you say I'm selling this phone line for this, right? But you go in your shop and you do that service, you just saved them. 4500 bucks. Yeah. Right. And you're saying well, but the part doesn't cost me about this much to make. And I've sold a bunch of them. So I've already made my money back. So it's not you say that that has worked that has value that repairs X amount of dollars, you accomplish something for them that they they couldn't have accomplished otherwise. You know what I'm saying?

David Roman 1:28:46
Like so just got cut recommended a slip just a maintenance item.

Eric Merchant 1:28:49
It's it's a lot. Okay, let me rephrase that. I don't, because it only fits 207 The sales have dropped on him, those trucks are getting older. And there's frankly, there's some knockoffs that are on Amazon, I've seen that same thing that are, you know, copied, can't compete with the Chinese, but it's fine. It used it was easier in the in the older days, 568 years ago to recommend that as a recommended service or a maintenance item. But probably what it was, is we did, again, learning what I'm learning recently, we might have not had the confidence in portraying it to the customer that hey, we can go in there and do this and we can save you a bunch of money down the road. Because it's not I struggled with because well it's not guaranteed it's gonna happen. It could if we pulled the transmission out of the truck, which we did a lot of those houses and builds. That was just part of the job. I'm gonna drain that fluid out of that transfer case regardless, because time and time again, we see a transmission issue. That really is a transfer case. problem. Yeah, if the transfer case isn't working, right, throwing the speed sensor off at the transmission needs that speed sensor. So we've been able to catch that. And also, if we go into the transfer case, maybe you know, a I can sell on the fluid be I know he's getting fresh fluid. So at least we inspected it, I'll open it up, put the plate in. And then usually there was maybe the blocking rings were worn, it was grinding going into gear, so we can up so a little bit on that regard. So that that transfer case wasn't going to be an issue for him for that, and I knew the transmission was going to last, or at least it wasn't going to have an issue because of a transfer case. So it was that kind of like you talked about doing the rockers on the sixth? Yeah, it was doing this is going to be an issue we're going to make sure it's not is long is, and again, this is where I was the owner on the service counter. I didn't like selling people stuff that they didn't need. And I'm not talking about fluid maintenance in general maintenance. But I don't always have the confidence to say you should do this. It's $4,000 to prevent this from happening, which is $10,000. Yeah, it's a that's where a good service writer don't have that confidence. And he could do that job because his heart's not in it. Or Okay, or what's

David Roman 1:31:24
he wallets? Not spending his own money? Yeah.

Eric Merchant 1:31:27
Well, and, look, I mean, I went through the same thing, and I even being back on the counter a little bit here recently, I catch myself doing it. You know, I'm backing stuff down, or I'm saying like, you know, and it's probably going to be a problem eventually, but it'll be okay. Right. And I think the thing is, is for

David Roman 1:31:46
the first time, it's not exactly and you screwed that customer over, you should have said something.

Eric Merchant 1:31:51
And so I think the thing is, is is what I have learned, the thing that I do is a I'm flexible, right? I'm not trying to set a hard line in the sand that says, we have to do this. This is the only way to do this. This is the right way and the only way I try and be flexible and I try and educate them. I try and be their advocate. I try and give them information so they can make an informed decision. My job is to educate them. It is their job to decide how they want to spend their money. So as always tell

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