Episode 349: You Can Call Me AI

On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes down the AI Rabbit hole with some of the most pressing causes of the technician shortage. Weirdly, Gemini has apparently been an avid listener of grease the wheels, because the last few episodes were often referenced! However, where it completely excels is in the numbers, specifically looking at the aging population of auto mechanics with mid-60% being over the age of 45 years old. Apparently Millenials avoided the industry all together, but might be coming into the skilled trades as the aforementioned AI takes their office jobs! The real focus needs to be on Gen Z and more importantly how to keep them in the shop, to which Gemini actually has some very solid ideas. We also get into the idea of institutional knowledge drain.
 
 Also Uncle Jimmy catches a wave listening to Dick Dale as a proud member of, “The Silver Tsunami”

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access!  

Transcript

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All right, boys and girls, back on track. It's your Uncle Jimmy here with your weekly technician podcast coming from the rock and roll garage. The pie hole of your Uncle Jimmy comes Grease the Wheels, your automotive technician-oriented podcast. Which kind of helps you out, holds you up. Thanks you very much for what you do. And by the way, thank you very much for what you do. Thank you very much for what you do, everybody out there who is doing things that causes you to use tools, break a sweat, and basically get shit fixed, built, repaired, done, broken, damaged, destroyed, whatever you're doing, man. Keep up the good fucking work. I'm serious, too. I really mean that sincerely, as sincerely as I can say. All right, now I'm gonna bring you a crazy, crazy podcast today. And uh I'll tell let me give you the the root origins of this one, okay? I couldn't come up with anything. I I was uh I had I had nothing for you. And I felt bad about it. And then I was like, you know, I really want to get this done uh on Sunday so that I can give Eric some time, which I haven't done lately, to uh get this thing edited, get all the farting and the snorting and the nose picking and whatever else I'm doing, scratching my ass off the uh podcast. He has to do quite a bit of work to get that shit out of there because I'm actually a wild animal, uh, loose in the uh in the loose in the workforce. Okay. So what I did was I pressed a little button at the very top of my Google screen, and that button says Ask Gemini. And uh I haven't really ever used AI too much before. I know what it's for, I know what it can do. And uh so I thought I'd give it a shot and see what it comes up with for us. You and I, the uh automotive technicians of the world, really, because I I know some of you guys are out there listening in other countries, and I want to say uh thank you very much for listening, especially you uh you guys down there in Australia. I know you're uh probably coming out of summer right now and going into winter, and I don't remember you because sometimes it's brutal. It wasn't too bad for me here, but back home where I'm from in western New York, those people suffered big time this winter. Uh it's not funny. Yes, it is. Because I I live through a fairly mellow winter here in Texas. So uh anyway, uh if you have to deal with weather of any kind, I feel bad for you. But for you folks down in Australia, I know that you guys are tougher than nails down there. So uh hats off to you guys, okay? Uh what I wanted to do here is uh I threw some fucking very basic questions at Gemini. And you know, some of the responses came back and were uh astonishing. And in typical grease the wheels fashion, I would just like to kind of go through and and give you the long and the short of what it gave me. And I put some questions to it that I didn't think it was gonna like, and yet it just fucking spit out an answer. And I was pretty I was pretty impressed, I gotta say. The first question I threw at it was, what does the automotive technician shortage look like today? And this is the answer that comes back from now. This is artificial intelligence, okay? So these answers for some reason make fucking sense because you ask other people who are in the industry and really at whatever level they're at, and you're not gonna get answers this clear. This is what it said, and I'm gonna read it verbatim because I really can't do it any justice. It says here the automotive technician shortage has reached a critical point in 2026, driven by a widening gap between a retiring veteran workforce like your Uncle Jimmy and a declining pipeline of new graduates. Modern vehicles have essentially become computers on wheels, yeah, sorta. Uh, shifting the role from traditional mechanical work to high-tech software diagnosis. Yes, it is somewhat true. Uh, I find it still, I find it right at about 50-50. Uh, if you are driving your fucking great big massive fucking SUV and you drive over a curb and you bend the rims, there's not a single computer in your car that's gonna give a fuck about that. So there's still quite a bit quite a bit of mechanical shit going on there. And a lot of people do drive over and run over shit and smash into stuff with their fucking vehicles and wreck the fuck out of the suspension and the tires and the rims and wear out the tires and the brakes and all the other shit. So, you know, we're not gonna have to get we're not gonna get too far away from mechanical work. But yes, there is some high-tech software in the cars, and it's a it's becoming excruciating, but it's still pretty much, uh, in my opinion, 50-50 as far as what's going on mechanically and high-tech software-wise. Okay. Uh, it says here the numbers, a growing deficit. The industry is currently facing a massive shortfall, and this is AI's words, a massive shortfall as the demand for repairs outpaces the arrival of new talent. Now, it's not it's not really outpacing the arrival of new talent at the shop I'm in, but I think that we're an anomaly just because we're new. Nobody really knows where we're at exactly just yet. And our customer base is extremely young, and uh, we have been suffering through a a period of very, very low uh appointments. So, but I I suspect that that will uh it will turn around. It just takes a bit of time, and our patience is uh is being ground down very slowly as technicians, anyway. Here's what it says here annual shortfall. While about 39,000 new technicians graduate from technical programs each year, the industry needs to replace roughly 76,000 annually to keep up just with retirements and growth in the industry. So that's pretty much double because 39,000 is close to 40,000 and 76,000 is close to 80. And uh one of the things that they didn't mention here is that a lot of times you get 39,000 new technical graduates from technical programs, and only about half of them last more than two years. About half. Now, I've you know I've talked to you about this before. A lot of the guys I went to tech school with are absolutely not in the automotive industry, and I may be one of the few, actually, and even then even now after such a long time of being out of tech school. Total openings. Experts project that approximately 67 to 70,000 positions will need to be filled every year through 2033. Uh, I think that that's exceptionally low, but uh AI is looking through a lot of stuff and pulling those numbers right straight pretty much off the internet. So those are figures that came from somewhere, uh, I don't know where. I think that they're low uh just because really kids are not getting into this field. Uh they've been steered away from it. Uh you you know, we just talked about that quite a bit, actually. And also too, the cars are getting harder to work on, and so it overwhelms them when they do come into the dealership. The the tools that they need to have, that bill, that that expense that overwhelms them. I think that uh the uh total openings is going to uh expand massively over 67 and to 70,000 and even higher. Uh what it says here also is aging workforce, myself included, roughly 31% of the current technician workforce is aged 55 or older. 31%. That's one third. Okay, that means that you go and you meet three technicians, one of them's gonna be over the age of 55, meaning that a massive exit of institutional knowledge is coming down the turnpike for you. You're not gonna have us old motherfuckers that kick around forever, people. So take advantage of what we know and our experience and what we can parlay to you while we're there. Because if you call me up at home after I've uh retired and you say, hey man, how did you do this? I'll say fuck off and hang up on you. Seriously, don't break my balls after I'm gone, okay? I don't suspect any of you will anyway. Core drivers, this this really, I gotta tell you, these these questions really brought a real cornucopia of information. And I I was glad to see it. And uh I was not blown away by it, but I was uh enlightened. Let me put it this way, okay? Core drivers of the so of the shortage, and this is still on the first question, okay. Several factors have converged to create this perfect storm, okay? So it's a perfect storm. The technology gap, vehicles now require expertise in high voltage engineering, robotics, and software literacy. This has created a skills gap where traditional mechanical training is no longer sufficient. What that means is that if you go to a technical school and they just teach you Ohm's law and how to adjust a carburetor, yeah, they've left you kind of uh short sheeted at the doorstep of a of a career as an automotive technician. There's a hell of a lot more to it. And uh, I don't know exactly what the curriculum or even the uh the syllabus of an automotive technical program looks like anymore. I don't know. Uh are they teaching you how to program a car? Are they teaching you how to reset the software? Are they teaching you how to really analyze what's going on with a with an electrical system? Uh I don't know. I I gotta be honest with you. My training in in electrical repairs was basic, but thorough, but dated. Okay. So there was not a real lot of this whole input, output, and wiring kind of mentality. I know that that's how it works. I mean, that is as simple as it gets, and that's how I'm able to remember it, folks. It's just if you take anything at all and you break it down into its simplest form, you can understand it and then you can repair it when it's not working because you'll understand how it works. Uh, educational stigma. It says here there is persistent pressure on younger generations to pursue four-year degrees rather than trade careers. Yeah, and guess what? AI is fucking stabbing those motherfuckers right in the heart because it's taking all those jobs. You know, you have a machine or some software that can do things that you normally used to have to pay a hundred grand for some kid to do in his spare time, you know. I mean, some kid who's a computer genius but hasn't showered in four months. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna go with AI. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming in. And by the way, man, you stink. Uh, seriously, uh, furthermore, many high schools have eliminated shop classes, reducing early exposure to the field. I've talked about that before. I called it passion. Uh you start messing around with cars and you see what they do and you see how you how you can manipulate them and fix them and even modify them, you gain a respect for them and you gain a passion for them. That's what happened to me. That's that's the only thing that on some days really literally that's the only thing that drives me. Okay, because it's not the money anymore. It's just the the the need to do the job and to uh feed my passion for what I do. And some of you might even laugh at that and go, what the fuck are you talking about, Uncle Jimmy? Passion? I don't have passion for this job, jobs sucks. And I'm with you there. Uh, there's many days where I walk out of the dealership and decide, yeah, I might not come back. The next thing up here says high barrier to entry. New technicians are often faced with a significant initial investment, often requiring at least$3,000 just to get started with basic tools. Can't disagree with that. I mean, if you buy quality tools and if you need to buy a toolbox, a quality toolbox, three grand isn't even going to get you really started, honestly, not in today's world. And uh, you're gonna end up in debt to the Snap on guy or to the MatGo guy or Mac or Cornwell or whatever other tool companies are out there, and you don't even know if you're gonna want to do this job. You're not even familiar with the fact that you know you might want to keep doing this job for more than a couple of years. You don't even know. They're asking you to make an investment in tools, and they might end up sitting in the back of your garage or possibly even repossessed if you don't pay and never being used properly or for what their intended use was for. So uh I think something needs to happen there. And then and even AI goes on to suggest what could happen. It didn't do that right here, but it will. Uh also it says here retention issues. Yeah, here's a biggie for you, folks. Turnover rates at some dealership service centers exceeded 30%, often due to frustration with OEM warranty reimbursement rates and the physical demands of the job. Yes, indeed. Didn't we just talk about that? Yeah, we sure did. The physical demands of the job. Oi, this is, and this is still on the same question, okay? And the question, let me just go back to it. What does the automotive technician shortage look like today? Here is the impact on customers or consumers, whichever you prefer. Impact on customers. For the average driver, the shortage translates into tangible inconveniences. Number one, longer wait times. Service delays are increasingly common as shops struggle with service bay constraints. Number two, it says rising cost. Hell yeah. As skilled labor becomes rarer, labor rates naturally escalate, leading to higher repair bills. Really? Skilled labor becomes rarer, labor rates naturally naturally escalate. Well, so should the skilled labor paycheck. But uh number three, aging fleet, the average vehicle on the road has now reached a record high of 12.5 years. Folks, that's gonna get a hell of a lot higher. But I'll tell you something, uh, and this is not something that they ever tell you when they talk about the average age of the vehicles on the road, uh, it is by area. It is by and when I say it's by area in the south, they can certainly drive cars for 12 and a half years really without much much problems. Okay, but if you're in the north where I'm from, because of the uh slathering of a salty brine mixture onto the highways from the uh end of October until the beginning of April, uh your your your fleet doesn't get a chance to age to 12 and a half years. It rots to death in about eight. And so uh that actually the fact that your car is just just disintegrates beneath your feet, that actually drives the uh uh average age of vehicles down and significantly, okay? Because you I mean, I'm telling you right now, I have a vehicle down here that I bought when I was in New York, and I drove it for six years up there, and then moved down here to Texas. And if I had not moved down here to Texas with that vehicle, that vehicle would have rotted right out from underneath me about four years ago, would have been completely fucking useless. So when they talk about the average age of the cars on the road, it's longer in the south and the southeast. It's longer in other areas where they don't spread salt on the highways. It's a lot shorter in areas where that are called the rust spelt. And if you average it, it doesn't really work out. It doesn't really work out for any market other than the the original one that you're in, and then it should be adjusted, okay? So an aging fleet, yeah. Here in Texas, our the fleets are aged, baby, big time. Okay, routinely see stuff that's 20 years old, 20 plus years old, routinely, and some of it's still in great shape. I'm not gonna lie to you. The same car, if it was in the north its whole life and was driven through the winter, that thing's in a pick and pole, crumbling and and rusting itself right into the fucking ground. They're gonna come along in a couple of weeks and just sweep it up and throw it away. I'm not even making that up. Industry response, okay, to the uh technician shortage to combat this. Manufacturers like Ford are launching new apprenticeship programs to bridge the gap. Now, I want to make a statement right now, and I don't know as if this is actually 100% true, but I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it is. Um, if you have someone in your family, a son, a nephew, whatever, and they're thinking about going into an automotive tech school of some sort, there's probably a million fucking people out there who will give you a scholarship to do that. Even if you're just a really even if you're just a moron, even if you have a low IQ and you do poorly on tests, they'll give you the money, okay, because that's how dire the fucking shortage is, is that there's there is money out there available from any number of groups to send you to school. And if you if you work those scholarships hard enough, they might even pay for housing, they might even pay for tools, who knows? Because that's how uh that's how excessive the demand and the shortage is for automotive technicians. So, you know, if you know somebody who is looking for uh work as a technician and wants to go to tech school, have them do a deep dive on the internet for scholarships, and you will be surprised there is hundreds of thousands of dollars out there uh being thrown at this problem. And if you indicate a desire to go to a tech school, they will throw those hundreds of thousands of dollars your way, at least a little bit of it, okay? Um, and it is not unheard of to get paid to go to school. It's not not not unheard of. It happened to me, actually. So uh if it can happen to me, it can certainly happen to you, okay? Now, I wanted to find out, and and I got basically some of the same stuff as an answer back when I entered this question, got some of the same information back. What is the major cause for the automotive technician shortage? And it says the automotive technician shortage in 2026 is not the result of a single issue. Absolutely, it's not. And we talked about that when we did the four-part series. There's several issues, and and there's a bunch of ancillary issues, which I didn't even touch on. Uh, and you all have your own issues. So, like I said before, there's not one single problem why there's a technician shortage. There's hundreds of them, there's hundreds of thousands of them. There's a different one for everybody who is in the business, and there's a different one for everybody who got the fuck out of the business. They're not, they're like fingerprints. They're none of them are the same, okay? Here's what they go on to say it's not the result of a single issue, but rather a perfect storm of structural, educational, and technological shifts. Okay. Well, that just sounds all fine and dandy here, but uh what they didn't mention there is financial shifts, okay? Because the the pay is the pay really, and then we talked about this honestly back in the series, the technician shortage series. The pay is probably number one with the vast majority of the technicians in this field. Everything else is just an ancillary issue to them, how society feels about them, I don't give a fuck, you know, and and all the bullshit that goes on in the dealership, eh, they could they could live through that. But if the pay sucks, they're not gonna put up with any of that shit. And and even getting hurt, it's like, yeah, you know, we get hurt sometimes, and sometimes it's severe, but for the most part, it's the pay. Now, here's what they say here. It says while the industry needs to replace approximately 76,000 technicians annually and only 39,000 graduate from tech schools, that leads to a uh persistent shortfall of roughly 37,000. I'm gonna I'm just gonna round it up and call it 40,000 trained professionals. Having a shortage of 40,000 people, fucking people, that's an army. That's a whole entire fucking army of people that are basically just missing. They're they're missing, they're gone, they've gone missing. Okay, they're not there. And what's going on here is and they they they they put a couple, let me see, was it four different uh things they were causing this? And of course, number one uh addresses me. It says, number one is called, and I I love this because this is AI. It's not trying to insult me, it just worked out that way. Number one, the silver tsunami, and in parentheses, aging workforce. The primary driver is the massive exit of veteran talent. Yeah, uh I I work with a lot of young guys. How's that really not possible? I mean, obviously, but uh it says here retirement rates, a significant portion of the workforce is reaching retirement age. Currently, over sixty-eight percent of technicians are over the age of 45, and nearly 31% are 55 or older. Folks, the silver tsunami is going to empty what it sounds like is all of your fucking shops out there. It's 68%. 68% that is more than half and almost two-thirds. It's actually over two-thirds. They're over the age of 45, which means they could they could quit, they could retire at any moment, and if they're young enough, they can start doing something else. And even if they aren't young enough, they can still start doing something else. It's always a possibility, especially if you're older and you have really just gotten sick of the bullshit. Folks, this is this is a trapdoor. If it opens up, you're all you're not if you don't let me put it, let me just put it this way: you should go to technician school to learn to just fix your own car. Because if this is true and 68% of technicians are over the age of 45, there isn't gonna be anybody out there to fix your car. You're gonna have to fucking fix it yourself. And that's really the just about really literally the only advantage to being an automotive technician is you're never gonna have to pay some dumb fuck to fix your car. You are gonna be the dumb fuck who fixes your car. All right. And but yeah, and a lot of you, and I just want to say this real quick. If you don't mind, a lot of you don't see that, you don't you don't experience that advantage. I experience it all the time. I buy cars from people all the time that are fucked up and they don't know why, and they can't fix them, and so they sell them cheap, and then I get my hands on them and fucking whatever they gotta have, bang, just do it and get it done. And now I got a good runner-driving car and I sell it to somebody else, or maybe I drive it myself. That's happened too, you know. Don't think of your skills as not being negligible, or as being negligible, I should say, because you have a very definite skill that a lot of people are gonna seek out. Trust me, you'll find out, okay. And if you haven't already, but 68% of technicians are over the age of 45, folks. That's phenomenal. And that when they call it a tsunami, really it's it's it's just this if the tsunami comes in and washes away 68% of your technicians. Where the fuck are you all gonna get your cars fixed? What the fuck? You know? Ugh, that's it's a that's a big deal. That is a super big deal. And I've seen some of the kids now. We've got this group of kids in our shop, and I just don't see them working much more than three or four years at the most. I mean, the the statistics say it's two years for 41% of them. I say after three years, it's more like 50 60% of them. And after five years, I I the percentage drops down into a single digit, really. I so something something major, something major has got to happen here. Now it says here knowledge loss, obviously, when these senior technicians like myself, decades of institutional knowledge and diagnostic expertise leave the shop when We retire, creating a void that entry-level workers just cannot fill immediately or ever. And I I'm experiencing this now because if somebody pulls in a car, and I like I said, I've been doing this uh professionally for 23 years, and I PDI'd a lot of cars that are that I see, PDI a lot of cars that I now see in pick and poles. So uh they're considered old. They're a couple, two, three generations removed from what we have now. And when they come in, the the new kids just look at them and go, Oh, I don't know anything about that. I don't want to work on that. And they say something that I find stunning. Oh, you know, if if they actually pull one of these cars and have to work on it and they find uh, you know, I don't know, some kind of problem with it, they'll say, Well, I don't you want to work on this? And I'll be like, uh yeah, I can work on that. Why? Well, I don't feel comfortable working on it. I go, really? You know, do you think I always felt comfortable working on them? I didn't. I figured it out. What the fuck, you goddamn idiot. If that's what it's gonna come down to, people not feeling comfortable about working on something, we're all in fucking trouble because there's a whole lot of shit that I've had to do that I didn't feel comfortable about doing the first time. But you know what? I dove in head fucking first, and sometimes I hit my head on shit. But you know what? A lot of times I just emerged with the knowledge that the next time I'm gonna do it, I can fucking bang it right out. But these kids, they don't, oh, I don't feel comfortable with it. The fuck out of here. What kind of new age bullshit is that? Fucking man up and grow a pair, baby. Get the wrenches out and fucking figure it out. There's probably detailed repair instructions on it. And if not, I'm three bays down or four bays down. Just come and say, hey, what would you do here? Well, I wouldn't have done what you did, but oh shit. That's what's getting out of tech schools, boys and girls. Kids who don't want to feel uncomfortable working on cars. We're all in fucking trouble. Well, not me, not you and me, not the ones of us who have the wrenches and the wherewithal to fix our shit, but all the other fucking people who don't, they're fucked. They're basically fucked. And and and you know what? There's only really one group of people who can unfuck it. Okay, and we're gonna get to that here. But here was number two on their list here for the question of uh what is the major cause, and that is the growing skills gap. Vehicles have transitioned from purely mechanical machines to complex computers on wheels. Yeah, sure. Uh high tech requirements, modern cars require expertise in software coding, high voltage system, and digital diagnostics. Yeah, yeah, but you know what? A lot of the testers out there really do a lot of the work for you. So, you know what? Don't feel uncomfortable. Ask the tester what to do, ask AI what to do. What the fuck? It seems to have a lot of great answers, right? And and use all of your all of your all of your information and all of the things that you can use to fix something. If you can Google something, fucking Google it. Don't sit there and go, oh, I shouldn't Google it. That's bullshit. You know, I do it all the fucking time. I go, I got a Facebook page of guys that that work on the same brand of cars that I work on, and every once in a while I'll drop a question on them. Hey, what'd you do with this? Or where did you find this information? Or how did you do this? Those guys have fucking answers, bro. Use your available equipment and knowledge and databases and everything you can to get these things fixed, okay? It's just gonna help you out in the long run. I've learned a lot of shit. I fixed one of my one of my favorite stories is I'll give it to you real quick. Had a problem with a uh dynamic stability control uh concern. And when I Googled it, I found this crazy ass Russian video where this guy took the goddamn unit apart and redid the brushes in the motor because they had failed, and he got the same faults I got. Now I didn't fucking fix it the way some Russian hack job would, but I knew what I had to fix, and so I was able to get it done. But this was after I don't want to say shooting from the hip, but this was when I didn't have any information at all other than this Russian video, and I didn't know what was wrong. And now I see I saw those faults again. That was about, I want to say that was about 10 years ago when I saw that, but then about two years ago, maybe even last year, I think it was just last year, I saw those faults again in a car in the shop I'm in now. And I told the kid, I said, Yeah, what you need is the whole fucking thing, not just the module. You need the whole thing. And he said, Are you sure? I said, dude, I couldn't be more sure if if I was a Russian hack. So, and we didn't end up doing that job, but we did that we did give them the proper diagnosis. So if they took it somewhere else and they said, Oh, really? That's what they said. Oh, that's not what's wrong with it. And then when they finally got it fixed, they said, Yeah, I guess that was really what was wrong with it. Uh, here's here's what it said after that outdated curricula, many vocational programs still focused on traditional wrench turning, leaving graduates unprepared for advanced electronics found in 2026 vehicles. Let me tell you something. The advanced electronics found in a 2026 vehicle are also beyond the technicians in the shops who are repairing them because they don't get the proper training in many cases from the uh dealer or the brand that built that goddamn car. They're coming out with shit every fucking year, and every year when it breaks or fucks up, I gotta figure out what the fuck it is, how it works, why it works, and then why it doesn't. It happens to me all the fucking time. The latest was, and I I I spelled it out for you guys because you're gonna see it, was the uh diesel style GPF for catalytic converters to clear the ash out of the exhaust stream that comes out of a car that has direct injection. Had to find out all of that shit all on my own. There was no training for that. There was no, as far as I I saw, there was no bulletins, there was no service information, there was no round tables, there was nothing. I had to dig for that information myself, which I can certainly do. Okay, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here, but what I'm telling you is that you're gonna have to do the same fucking thing. All right, moving on here. Number three, it says societal and academic pressure. This is a big one, and we did talk about this. A persistent cultural stigma against trade careers continues to thin the talent pipeline. You bet your ass it does. The College for All narrative, guidance counselors and parents often push students towards four-year degrees and corporate desk jobs. Yes, of course. Would you watch your kid working in a pit beneath a car doing lube jobs and oil changes? No, you wouldn't want that. And obviously, that's an antiquated vision of what happens in a repair shop. But some people have that vision, as stupid and as ridiculous as it might seem. And it's it's perpetuated by those instant oil change places where they throw a kid in a hole and drive a car over them. Uh but these people view automotive work as dirty and or unprofessional, and and that you're hitting the nail right on the head there. They don't, like I said before, they don't have a good, a good idea of what we're like. They have a terrible, we have a terrible reputation that was completely unearned. Okay. And one of the things that I I gotta say, I enjoy more than anything is when uh a company decides it's going to adopt AI to do some of its coding, some of its accounting, some of its other fucking bullshit that it needs to do, that it normally has a whole group of people sitting in cubicles to do, and then it sends those people on their fucking way with a severance check. Then I think, ah, bet you wish you went to fucking automotive tech school now, don't you? Dickhead. Yep. Trade your fucking French, your uh Italian shoes in and your your fucking Armani suit for a fucking pair of coveralls and a set of shitty steel-toed boots and get some fucking tools, motherfucker. Because we're the only ones you're gonna be hiring. Everybody else is gonna switch, flip the switch, turn all their shit over to AI and say, Cyanar, Bendehall. Serious, that's what's gonna happen. Elimination of shop classes, that's the next thing it says here. Many high schools have cut vocational programs, removing the early exposure that typically sparks interest in the field. Yeah, well, I didn't have an automotive shop class, but I had uh a great many sparks of interest in the field just because I lived in the middle of nowhere and uh had a subscription to Hot Rod and Carcraft and definitely wanted to build cars all like some of those fucking people did. So the passion was ingrained early. And the elimination of shop classes, it doesn't allow anybody to even experience uh what an automotive program would be like, and so there's no chance to uh catch the passion for automobiles like I have, or like maybe you have, maybe you have it, maybe you don't. Maybe it's gone now. It never went away for me, and I always expected it to, and it never did. It it's too late now. I mean, if I said I don't care anymore, I would be like, really? Why'd it take you so fucking long? Number four here. It says high barrier to entry and return retention issues. Even for those interested in the field, the startup and stay-in costs are high, and yes, they are. You all recognize these tool investment. Yeah, new technicians are often expected to provide their own tools, which can cost upwards of three to five thousand dollars just to get an entry-level position. Yep, that's not that uncommon. Um, I would like myself personally for the shops to put together, and this is just a you know, this is something that they could do, they're not gonna do it, but they could do it, put together a toolkit for new guys to start out with. And and even on top of that, you know, because that then they could figure out what they're gonna need right away and get it. Now, I had the advantage, I had the advantage of going to a uh training that was offered by the brand I work for, and the tools that they had were basic, really just basic tools. There weren't a lot of extracurricular tools that were necessary to work on those cars, and I learned that right away before I got out into the field. So when I went out into the field, I got pretty much just what I needed, and I had pretty much just what I needed and was able to put together uh the tools that I have now in a slower and uh a more uh economically friendly manner, if you will, so that the tool set I have now, which is pretty comprehensive now, but this has been built over 23 years, and there was no real hardcore, uh hard to bite the bullet kind of uh startup cost for me. I used a toolbox, which I actually still have, but it's a little tiny craftsman rollaro toolbox. I kept the bare minimum tools in it, and I was able to get the job done and added tools slowly and surely as I went along, and now I have uh a pretty healthy set of tools. Uh, I could do probably 98% of my job with those tools. I very rarely have to borrow one. And uh then, of course, the uh dealership provides the real specialty tools, okay? But the tool investment is a tough one. Uh, I've also said too, and this is a little off topic, but uh, you know, if if you have uh, you know, if you let's say you're 18 years old and you're gonna go to a technical school and maybe it's in another town or even in another state, and you're gonna go to it and you get some money to go there and to pay for housing and maybe uh help, you know, kind of finance your whole life, maybe keep you alive and give you a little money for food and a little money for gas. What you're gonna want to do is decide once you're away from home, if being away from home is okay for you, if it's something that you can deal with without too much homesickness, you might want to consider looking all the way around the country and meet maybe even across the planet for a job after you get out of tech school. Because I can tell you right now, and I got out of tech school, I went back to where I'm from, which is Western New York, and the wages were artificially low. And I suspect highly that these all of the shops up there, all the dealerships up there, colluded with each other to keep the uh technicians' pay in that area down to a bare minimum. They all got together in a smoke-filled room and said, We're not gonna pay technicians more than X amount of money an hour. And it was low. And then at one point I just said, you know what, then go fuck yourself. And I left the state and went to another state where I almost immediately started making double. So pick where you're gonna work. And if you're young and you haven't thrown down any roots and you don't mind being away from mom and dad for months on end, and you don't, you know, your friends are cool with it, and maybe you don't have any fucking friends sometimes. I mean, I really don't have a whole lot of friends anyway, but I mean, you know, it it's if you have friends that are cool, or if you don't have very many friends, go somewhere else and and and do what you do in a in a location where it's more lucrative. Drives me wild too when I when I talk about this or when I think about this. My friends that are I actually do have friends, uh I don't make me try to prove it, god damn it, because they won't up to they won't own up to it. But I have friends who are technicians up north, and they have to deal with some of the most outrageous shit that you that would make you literally break down onto your knees and cry. Bolts that have rusted away so much they don't even look like bolts anymore, and there's no way to make them loose. There's no way. All you can do is heat them up and hope that they just crumble. I mean, it's really difficult sometimes to do some of the work you need to do where I'm from because the rust is just so fucking prevalent. And do dealers or shops pay you more for dealing with that? Yeah, probably not. Not usually, no. They're just like, hey, deal with it, fuck you, you know. But then you come down to a place like Texas where every nut and bolt and screw seems to just come loose if you look at it properly. It's really ridiculous. It's not uncommon for me to throw a car on the alignment rack and be out from underneath it in less than five minutes, having made all the adjustments I need to make. That's there's no fucking way that happens up north. And yet I'm making way, way, way fucking more than I ever did when I was up north. So something's gotta give. Something's gotta give. And uh, and that's that's the next uh subject here for this question compensation versus stress. Entry-level pay is frequently cited as garbage compared to, and this is AI calling it garbage, okay? Garbage compared to the high pressure environment of the flat rate pay system and the rising cost of living. Now, I had an incident where I asked a service manager in front of all the other technicians, by the way. So I really was kind of trying to embarrass him a little bit, but uh none of them wanted to ask him for a race, but inflation had gone fucking berserk, it was when Biden was uh president. And I said, you know, uh the the cost of living and inflation is really kicking our ass. We all really need raises. And he just he just responded in a 19th century or a 20th century way and said, Oh, we don't give raises because of inflation. And I don't know, I I didn't come back with it, but I should have probably said, you know, it's one of those deals where you think of what you should have said later. I'll admit it, it was what I should have said later. And then I actually did say it to him later. I said, I said, inflation is the exact fucking reason for giving people raises. Dick. I didn't call him a dick because he didn't deserve that, but it was a dick answer. And he, you know, and I told him, I said, you know, these guys aren't going to ask you for a race. They're passive, aggressive, they do the job, they need more money, they complain to each other, but they're not gonna say anything to you. I'm the one who's gonna step up and say, Listen, these guys need a race. They won't tell you they need a race, but they do. Why don't you come through? And instead of getting an answer, you know, and it really literally any answer would have been great, you know, like I'll look into it, or or let me know what you're thinking as far as a raise or or or you know how what your situation looks like, or you know, we'll talk anything. But no, we don't give raises because of inflation. Yeah, you fucking should, asshole. Uh anyway, uh moving on here. Churn. Okay, this is what it says, churn. The industry-wide turnover rate is roughly 16.5%. That's a tough one. Uh, lots of places. Uh, the place I was working uh before a couple years ago, we had a pretty high turnover rate. It was like we had a revolving door on the back of the shop. People came, people went. And it was it was outrageous. And then finally, what slowed it down was that we got a general manager who uh got the checkbook out, started paying us a little more. And that's why I came up with the bullshit factor because it was kind of, you know, every shop has a chaos level, a level of chaos and a bullshit factor. And for a lot of the guys that were working there, it wasn't worth it to put up with either one of those. He came in, he made the wages higher, he made the techs happier, and and a lot of them from that era, myself excluded, but I mean I'd still be there if I didn't have a newer opportunity within the same company. But a lot of the guys that were there then are still there now, where they probably would not have been if things had gone on uh status quo. Here's then there's a summary here, uh, a little summary table. It's factor and then impact on the industry, retirements. Uh 76,000 positions open up due to retirement technology, shift to EVs and uh automatic driving uh systems requires skills that many veterans don't. Well, I I have them, but uh yeah, I think a lot of veterans are probably eschewed that stuff. Education 31% of Gen Z feel pressured to skip trades for traditional university. That sounds about right, and it probably actually is a little higher. I mean, I can't, I I haven't run into a whole lot of people who feel like this is the kind of job for them and and they're itching to get into it. And then investment, high personal tool costs, low entry-level wages that deter, it's always going to deter new talent. Okay. So that was the end of that particular answer. And this was only the second question, and we're quite a ways through this here. Here was the next question for me to Gemini. Who is to blame for the automotive technician shortage? And I wanted I wanted this AI to say flat out who it was causing the fucking problem. And I wanted it to say the accountants, but it it never did. Uh, here is what it said, though. It said the automotive technician shortage is widely viewed by experts as failure of many fathers, which means there's a lot of fucking people who got their dirty little fingers in that pie. There isn't one person or entity to blame. Rather, it's a systemic breakdown involving the industry, the educational system, and even consumer expectations. Uh I I gotta disagree with that answer because the education system doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the job sucks and that pay sucks. The educational system is doing what they can to stick new technicians into the system. But if the industry chews them up and spits them out, the educational system can't can't help them. There needs to be a lot of different things that the industry has to do to get our people to get into the into that field, into this field, into our field. And then there's a lot of things that the industry has to do to fucking keep us in the field, and they're not doing them. Okay, the educational system really, I don't feel like it's to blame for that. Yeah, maybe they'll go, well, you know, they don't graduate enough students. They go, well, if you didn't fucking eat them like fucking cannibals, you piece of shit. You know? And then the answers, the answers, as far as I'm concerned, come back. Uh I think there's two of them. I think there's two real answers is a real, honest to God wage that is uh, I would call it first class, a first class wage, where you can actually afford to be a goddamn human being, you know. Maybe in the beginning it's not so great, but it's gotta it's gotta have steps to it like a ladder. That's why we came up with the K-Plan. The K-Plan really authors that whole system whereby uh somebody comes in and starts working in your shop and is offered the opportunity to climb that ladder called the K Plan and reach the pinnacle and then retire with uh a healthy retirement. You know, they'll be able they'll be able to put money away, they'll have money to pay for things they want, vacations and cars and houses and kids, and all they have to do is just fix the cars. It's pretty fucking simple. And and the and you know, shops and dealerships would tell you, oh, we don't have the money. Fuck you. Fuck you, you don't have the money, suck my dick. I I can do math, goddammit. You might think I'm stupid, but I see what your labor rate is, and then I see what you're paying me, and then I see how many hours you're selling. Don't fucking tell me you ain't got no goddamn money. What the fuck? And then even consumer expectations, it says here, uh, well, the consumers don't want to spend money, and I get that part of it, but you know, uh an educated consumer will pay just as much as they need to pay to get the systems on their vehicles repaired if they know or if they feel like they're not being ripped off. And that's and that's something that we've all we've all got to deal with that, the industry and even the educational system, we gotta deal with that. We have a terrible reputation. I've talked about some crazy ass ways to fucking improve it. One of the best ways is through the videos that we do. I think that they need to be more than 30 or 45 or 90 seconds long, and they need to involve showing the customer what's right with their car and what's good with it. And if by chance something is wrong, just say, hey, you know, everything else is good, you just gotta have this. You just gotta have this. Here's what else it goes on to say here is how the blame is distributed across the landscape in 2026. And number one on the list here is automotive industry, service centers, and dealers. Okay, they get to take the hit. Many analysts point to the industry's own historical practices as a primary cause. Now, you guys know if you've listened to this for any length of time, that I like to hearken back to 1972 and sh and count that as the turning point where the whole fucking thing went off the rails. It's where the whole thing went off the rails, where service centers and dealers and shop owners went nuts trying to keep all the fucking money and pay as little as possible to technicians. Because before that, it was a fairly lucrative occupation. It was something that you did, you were highly regarded. You know, I mean, we talked about the the neighborhood gas station where the the guy who runs the shop is somebody your father goes bowling with every week. Wednesday night and he's been over for dinner and you know his kids. I mean, that shit's gone. But it fucking should be. Should it? Could you have a personal relationship with a customer? You certainly could. It would probably start with your service advisors if they weren't such a bunch of fucking shitheads. But you can have a personal relationship with your customers. Sometimes it becomes uncomfortable when they want to talk and they don't want to shut the fuck up. But you can also fucking, you know, use your own brain and say, listen, sir, you know, I would Dave, I would love to talk to you all day about your car, but I've got to go talk to about 10 other people about their car. So if you don't mind, I'd like to cut it short and get to work. Boom. And here again, Uncle Jimmy makes it sound so simple, right? Uh here's some here's some problems that they point to, though. And they they call it out number one here, the flat rate pay trap. For decades, technicians have been paid by the job, not the hour. If a technician is efficient, they win. If a bolt is rusted or a diagnostic is complex, they essentially work for free. This is going on in my shop right now as we speak. We're offering because we're new and we're trying to build a clientele, and it has been very arduous lately, we're doing a lot of one-hour free diagnostics. And we have about a dozen, maybe two dozen customers who are taking extreme advantage of that. They come in and they get our absolute best professional diagnostic work and go home and either fix the car themselves or have somebody fix it for a lot cheaper. And then when it doesn't fucking work, guess where they come back to? Yep, to us for another hour of free diagnosis. I'm telling you folks, there has to be a line in the fucking sand. But so far we haven't found one yet. So, and I don't know who's in charge of that. And even if I did know, they wouldn't fucking listen to me. So there's part of the fucking problem, too. It says here that this unpredictable income has driven thousands of skilled workers into more stable trades like HVAC or plumbing. This next one is lack of investment. Until recently, many shops viewed technicians as a cost center rather than an asset. And that is wrong. That is wrong. Your technicians are an investment and they pay off handsomely when they are when they have all of the recommendations that they make on an MPI when they have all of those sold. They create labor out of thin fucking air. And if you don't realize that as a service manager or as a shop owner or a dealership owner, then you're just a dumb fuck. Because everybody else in the building is selling something you had to buy. You had to buy it. Technicians are the only people in the whole building creating a commodity out of thin motherfucking air. Think about that one, you cheap cocksuckers. It says here, too, that also too that a lot of times uh your uh lack of investment in the building results in poor working conditions, no air conditioning and outdated equipment, and also too, on top of that, a lack of clear career paths. Now, folks, this is just AI. This isn't even a person. This is AI pulling the shit off the internet and barfing it out here on my screen to me so I can barf it through a microphone to you. You get what I'm trying to say here? Anyone could look this shit up and see what the fucking problems are and how to fucking solve them. And it drives me wild, and it should drive you wild too, as a technician who is routinely required to solve problems, and typically with a batting average of a thousand. Seriously, because we're supposed to fix stuff, that's what we do, and I'd say a good many of us, very many of us, maybe even all of us, are really good at it and get the job done correctly every time. Yeah, there's fuck-ups every once in a while, and nobody's re nobody's perfect. But for Christ's sakes, folks, solving problems is not that tough if if that's what you do, if that's what your job is. Problem is it seems to stop in the shop. It never goes any any farther forward than the door to the service area where the advisors are. Also, two here, tool costs. The industry is one of the few where the employees expect it to provide their own infrastructure, is what it says, often spending thousands of dollars on tools. Yes, we know that. Number two, the educational system. Now, this is uh who to blame for the automotive technician shortage. And like I said, I don't believe the educational system really can be blamed. They're doing what they can and and they're not hampering the whole system by any any means whatsoever. They're just not doing it. The College for All movement is frequently blamed for starving the trades of talent. Okay, yeah. Yeah, if you have somebody who's you know fairly good at math, maybe he's uh interested in science uh but doesn't have the money or whatever, they they they rope him into an enormous uh school loan, a student loan, and they go to some college and they get a degree in who even knows what, in some STEM program, and they're not hiring. What are you gonna do then? You're gonna work at Starbucks as a barista? You're gonna go to McDonald's and sling sling Big Macs. I don't know. You go to a tech school, A, it's gonna cost you less, if anything at all. Trust me, there's numerous scholarships out there. And then you're gonna be out in the field and you could be, you could work your way into a reasonable salary within a couple of years. Easy. And if you're smart, you can figure out how to do it. And you know what? If you don't like it, it is always a great backup plan for you. You could you could actually go to school at night to become really literally whatever you wanted to become while you work on cars during the day. And you could even support a family if you've got some experience and training working as a mechanic, and it's always something to fall back on. It says here, uh, this is what it says about all of that. Uh, College for All movement, frequently blamed for starving the trades. Guidance counselors, uh, they have a bias towards trade schools, and sure, why wouldn't they? I mean, they know they know about the societal uh uh implications of being a fucking automotive mechanic. I think a lot of parents would come into the school and slap the guidance counselor right across the fucking head if he told their student, their their son, or their daughter, even, that they should be an automotive mechanic. It's basically like saying, why don't you go learn how to clean porta parties, you fucking piece of shit. It's bad. It's bad. You guys, you guys, I know you guys know it. And I'm sorry. I I've I I do what I can. I there's not much I can't do. I can just make some suggestions and everybody can laugh and fucking say, what an asshole. Defunding shop classes, that's another thing that goes on in the educational system. Yeah, sure. I like I said, I didn't have an automotive program in my high school. Sure, we worked on cars in the parking lot, you know, and some of the kids had hot rods and stuff, but all I did was fuel a passion to do that myself to my own shit, which I didn't even have my own shit at the time. So I had to get some shit so I could I could do shit to my shit. Uh get a little carried away because getting late. And then it says number three here, manufacturers, and in parentheses, it says OEMs, obviously. Technicians often blame car manufacturers for making the job increasingly difficult and less profitable because of ding ding ding ding ding warranty reimbursement. Yeah, warranty reimbursement sucks dick. And I'd like to fucking have a little chat with Mr. Farley about that and say, look, you know, if you send one of your fucking expert pro fucking mechanics in with a handset uh hand hand tools to do a job on a car and it takes him two hours, that doesn't mean that everybody out in the field is going to be able to do it in two hours, okay? Because in some cases that Ford F-150 that comes in for a recall was just out in a field and got stuck and got pulled out by a tractor and it's jam-packed full of fucking mud. Let's see your fucking white trench coat wearing fucking perfectly clean, sterile technician with his perfectly aligned toolkit and all the lights he could possibly have and all the, you know, and a brand new clean F-150 in a in a in a sterile shop. Let's see him do that fucking job in a car that is packed full of fucking mud and dead animals and fucking rodent feces. Let's see him do that. Let's see him fucking do that and see how long it takes him. Huh? Let's see him not get let's see him get fucking dirty. Let's see him bang a knuckle on that sharp piece of shit that some motherfucker put in the wrong spot. Let's see them fucking do that and then determine what the warranty reimbursement should be. And then once they do do that, don't fucking chop the time. What the fuck is that all about? You know, as Americans, we're known to innovate like motherfuckers. In fact, what is it they say? Necessity is a mother of invention? Well, necessity is a American mother that gets banged in the ass and there's your necessity, okay? Seriously, we will figure out how to do something faster. And you should just let that shit go. You should actually hold people up and say, hey, thanks for finding a better way to do that. We're not gonna chop the time because what that does is that stifles that creativity, that innovation. It stifles it. Okay, because there may be other jobs where somebody goes, you know, there's gotta be a better way to do this. But you know what? Since they chop the fucking time, they can suck my dick. I'm just gonna fucking do it the old way. Yeah, it it's what here's what it says. Technicians frequently find that a job taking three hours only pays for one, which crushes morale and retention, and that's AI talking about morale and retention. Ugh, fuck. It's a short supply sometimes, folks. Manufacturers need to fucking learn how to fucking corral that fucking warranty chopping, chopping warranty time bullshit. Here's another thing that the manufacturers are in charge of technologically comp technological, let me learn to say it even. Technological complexity. Yeah. Try that one three times real fast. By turning cars into computers on wheels, manufacturers have created a skills chasm. Right? Look that one up in your dictionary. Veterans who are masters of engines are suddenly expected to be masters of software, often without the necessary paid training to keep up. Often without the necessary paid training to keep up. Like I said, sometimes I gotta figure out how it works all on my own before I can figure out why the fuck it doesn't. Okay. And then number four here, and this is the last one, society and consumers, public perception has played a subtle but powerful role in the shortage. Absolutely. AI has fucking nailed that one right on the head. It says here, it's called the they what they called it here is the grease monkey stigma. The persistent image of the technician as a low-skilled, dirty worker ignores the reality that modern techs must understand robotics, coding, high voltage electricity. And it says here this lack of respect makes it a hard sell for Gen Z. They're not even worried about millennials anymore. It's Gen Z, the calling of shots. We need Gen Zers to go to technical schools and to fill the ranks where we're all disappearing from. And millennials it's way too late for it's way too late for millennials. Okay. So um, but uh it it and the gap is gonna have to be filled by millennials. I mean, who's who's there in between? Price sensitivity, consumers often complain about high labor rates while simultaneously expecting lightning fast service. Yeah, yeah, monkey. I'm telling you, I I I can't even begin to tell you guys how much I rail against waiters. I it pisses me off more than anything, really. Because how can some dumb fuck pull in who doesn't know even how to put gas in his car properly and say, oh, uh, I only have half an hour. Can you can you diagnose my car? And they want to wait. It's like, what the fuck? You can't wait for some of this shit. I tell the advisors that all the fucking time. I'll go up there and they'll have a five, six, seven line RO, and they'll need this, this, this, and this, and this diagnosed and that diagnosed, and it'll say right on it, customer waiting. And I'll be like, this guy cannot wait for this shit. Well, he said he wants to wait. I go, you have to discourage these fucking people from waiting. You have to, and then everybody looks at me cross-eyed like they don't know what the fuck I'm talking about when I say this, but they have no idea how to lower the customer's expectations. You know, you're up there writing an RO and it suddenly becomes five and six and seven lines, and they say they want to wait. I said, sir, you're gonna be here all goddamn day. Okay, can you wait all day? Well, well, no, I don't want to wait all day. I only want to wait like an hour and a half. Then, sir, I'm gonna either figure out how I'm gonna get somebody to take you home, or you can call somebody to come and get you, or I mean see if I can find a loaner, maybe. I I'm, you know, usually they're fucking all out of them. But this fucking dickhead can't wait for me to look at his car because what that does is it causes me to take shortcuts that I should not take. It causes me to draw conclusions that I shouldn't draw, it causes me to overlook systems that I should not overlook. It causes fucking problems. Nobody seems to understand it. Nobody knows how to lower the customer's expectations. I'm being driven fucking right out of my mind by it. And pretty soon I'm not gonna give a fuck. Because when I tell you I'm old and I, you know, I I claim that I'm the old guy, I really am. I'm close to retirement age. There's no need for me to keep working if it's not gonna fix itself or get better, if somebody's not gonna do something about it. You know? I mean, I'm not even gonna probably do the podcast after a while here, you know. I mean, I've said everything there is to say, some of it three, four, and five fucking times, and it's not getting through to anybody. Hopefully it's helping some of you. Hopefully. That's all I can hope for. And I'm not getting paid for it, and I don't expect to get paid for it. I have a very significant uh card in the game, honestly, but I'm like I would like for the high tide of what I'm trying to do to raise all of our boats to find everything gets better for all of us. The pay, the pay plans, the shops, the managers, the service advisors, and even maybe the customers. If the customers decide they want to listen, they can say, holy shit, I do that. Should I stop doing that? The answer is fucking yes. Do not fucking wait for services and diagnosis. Services you can wait for, sure. If it's just an oil change, but if it's a fucking valve adjustment or a fucking connecting rod bearing replacement job, you can't fucking wait for that. And the advisor knows that, but he's not going to tell you because he doesn't want to talk to you any more than he has to. Here's a summary table. It says entity the blame, dealerships for keeping outdated flat rate pay models and poor shop environments, manufacturers for suppressing warranty labor times and rapid tech changes without support. That's what I'm running into. High schools for removing trade programs and stigmatizing vocational education. Yeah, it was definitely a stigma when I was there. And customers for demanding low prices that prevent shops from paying competitive wages. The next question was, and this was along the line of talking about pay, because I feel like this was happening uh back in New York when I was there. I don't think it's happening here in Texas because the pay has been really good here. And if if they are colluding to keep the pay high, I'm all for that. But up north they were colluding to keep it low. That was at least my thought. But uh, the next question that I put to AI, and then we'll end a podcast when this is when this is over, because there's there's so much other stuff here. It's just it's incredible. And you should try it yourself. Ask it the questions I'm asking it, ask them the questions that you have. Let AI give you the information that it finds on the internet, okay? And and realize that this information is available for everybody, including your owners, your service managers, and your accountants for your dealership or your shop. This question was Are shops and dealers keeping the wages artificially low for automotive technicians? Here's the answer. The question of whether wages are being artificially kept low is a point of heated debate in 2026. While most shops aren't conspiring to suppress pay, many industry veterans and analysts argue that the traditional compensation structures and specifically the flat rate system function as a ceiling that prevents wages from keeping pace with the complexity of modern vehicles. Absolutely. 100% on the fucking money. They get tougher to work on, it takes longer, and the flat rate system does not reward you whatsoever. It can re oh it can only reward you if you're fast. And if you're fast, typically you're overlooking something and you're throwing parts at a car, but that's the only way you can really make money, isn't it? Now and it's not good. It's not good. Your car comes back two, three, four times for the same fucking thing, and you finally get it fixed because you ran out of things that it could be. As of early 2026, only 58% of technicians believe they are being paid fairly. And I'd like to have a chat with the other 42% who feel like they are being paid fairly. Okay, well, actually I'm one of them. So I'm being paid fairly, but I think it's a it's an anomaly. I honestly do. Here's what the problem is the flat rate ceiling, the most common accusation of wage suppression centers on the flat rate pay model, where technicians are paid a set number of hours for a specific task, regardless of how long it takes. Now, between you and me as technicians, we know we quote a job like a water pump for three hours, it's only going to take us half an hour, 45 minutes, maybe an hour. Yeah, that's how it works. Here's what they have to say about that warranty math. Manufacturers often set the time for warranty repairs. Technicians frequently report that a job taking three actual hours might only pay 1.5 hours flat rate. In this case, the technician is effectively working for half pay, which many see as an artificial suppression of their earning power. Guys, that's not happening that often, but it can happen. I find, and I think it's the same for a lot of you, you do a job for the first time, and their appearance structures are no good, and you you take off shit and you find out later you didn't need to take it off. And so it maybe it was a one and a half hour job and it took you three hours. But how long is it going to take you the next time? Yeah, well, you know you don't got that you don't gotta take off even a quarter of the shit that you did. And also, too, you might have modified a tool to get a bolt out that was hiding behind something that you were supposed to take off, and now guess what? You don't have to fucking take that part off. Guess what? Yeah, one of the best situations I heard of, and this was from an instructor back at my uh tech school, he said that this one job paid like 12 hours because you were supposed to remove the intake manifold on a V8 engine to remove the lifters because the lifters needed to be replaced because they were uh they were failing uh prematurely. Well, one of the technicians went in with a magnet, left the intake manifold in place, and pulled the lifters out with the magnet and then replaced them, and he did the whole job in about an hour and got paid for 12. And what he did wrong was not fixed the car. That wasn't wrong. As a matter of fact, I applaud mightily his uh his skill and his intuition and his ability to innovate. But what I don't applaud is the fact that he only ran two hours on the RO or something along those lines and went on to do something else, which is exactly what you would do as a flat rate technician. But then when Mish when this company got their hands on this RO and saw that they only ran two hours, they started asking questions. Why did he only punch in and out for two hours to do this job? It takes 12. He claimed that he did everything that we say he needed to do, but it only took him two hours, and they look into it and then they figure out why. And then they chop it down to two hours. That's how it works, and it sucks. And and and honestly, guys, it's our fault. If we do a job that's supposed to pay eight hours, you're gonna have to run at least four, four and a half, five hours, even if you did the job in 10 minutes. You got to run time. Go to lunch, work on something else as customer pay, but run an appropriate amount of time for that job. And none of us are gonna do that. We're not gonna do that. I mean, we can't, we can make honestly. I know I've done it before. We can make 10, 12, 15, almost 20 hours a day by doing something that pays 10 hours that only takes us two. Are we gonna run five hours on that? Probably not. Not if we've got a full, full slate of fucking shit to work on and make money on. That's why a lot of times, you guys all know this. A lot of times you get a customer paid job, you run one tenth on it, and call it done. Because it ain't warranty. But you got to go back and make sure you put enough time on a warranty job, or else you're gonna fuck yourself and the rest of us too, by the way. But and I'm not gonna blame you, okay? I'm not gonna sit here and and tell you that you're the bad guy for doing it real fast and not running time. It's just something that's gonna happen, and they're gonna take advantage of it and they're gonna chop the times, and it sucks fucking balls, but it's gonna happen every time. And that, my friends, is not ever gonna go away. Sorry. It's just not. If they could pay, if they can get away with chopping a time down to two hours and you could still do it an hour, what did they really do? You know, I mean, yeah, they took money out of your wallet, but you were taking money out of theirs, so I don't know. It's fair, it's all fair in love and war, right? When it comes to money, people just want to keep it. That's all there is to it. The diagnostic gap. This is what it says about that. Modern cars require hours of software diagnostics that don't always have a clear flat rate labor code. Yeah, monkey, I I've run into this quite a bit lately, where I know in my heart that a program to program the vehicle, reprogram it with fresh, newer software will fix the problem. But I have to find a specific diagnostic routine that says I should program the car. And a lot of times I just give up and say, fuck it. I'm gonna program it, I'm gonna fix the car, I'm gonna write a job story saying I did this, this, and this, and hope I can get paid as much as I can for that. And it'll cover the fact that I actually just programmed the car. Besides, honestly, programming the car takes five minutes of my time. The rest of the time I'm just watching it program. If I got something else to do, I'll go ahead and do that. So I can make up for it, but it's not really how it should work. And then also to the shifting, it says you're shifting risk. The flat rate system shifts the financial risk of a slow day or rusted bolt, rusted bolt, or rusted boat if you're working on boats. A rusted bolt from the business owner to the employee. That's right. I've said that all along. If there's lots of work, everybody wins. If there's no work, the business still wins, but the technician loses. If the shop is slow, the technician's paycheck shrinks. Even if they were there, present and ready to work for 40 hours. This, folks, I'm going to tell you right now, as a technician, get ready for this to never, ever, ever fucking change. Because it is this is clearly 100% in favor of the businesses, in favor of the dealer, in favor of the shop, in favor of the shop owner, the business owner. It's in their favor to have you work in a flat rate system. Because when there's plenty of work, you're going to break your ass to do all of it. And when there's no work, they're not going to have to pay you. It is a win-win for them in every single case. And they are never, ever, ever going to release the reins of it. They're not ever going to do it. They will complain about everything about the technician shortage up and down, backwards and forwards. They will never, ever change that. That will never go away. That works just too fucking well for them, for them to go away from it. Sorry. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. They will cry and moan and complain about every other thing that has anything to do with a technician shortage, but they will not own up to that being part of it. And they are certainly not going to own up to fixing it. They're not going to do it. They will complain that tech schools aren't putting out enough enough technicians, enough, enough tech, you know, graduates. It's their fault. No, it's fucking not. You're the one who grinds them up and spits them out, you fucking asshole, with your fucking stupid fucking flat rate system, which favors you and your accountant. Until it changes, it's until that, until one of them owns up and says that that's the fucking reason, it's not going to change. And folks, it's not going to change. Okay? I'm just I'm calling it right now. It's never going to change. Market factors, this is what it goes on to say. Market factors versus intentional suppression. While technicians feel the squeeze, shop owners often point to external pressures that limit their ability to raise wages. Like I said earlier, the math doesn't work. Take your labor rate, your door labor rate, and the late rate that you're getting paid, and then count up the hours, and you'll see the difference. You could use your year-end paycheck to do it. How much money did I make my company? Well, guess what? How much money you made times how much money they made is the difference between what you get paid and what they get paid. It's not hard to figure out. It takes about fucking 15 seconds with a calculator. And when you find out how much they made off of you, and then they tell you you can't have a raise, it pisses me off when I do it. I try not to do it because it does. It pisses me off. And if you do it, it'll piss you off. You might have made$100,000. Your fucking garage or your shop probably made seven or eight hundred thousand dollars off of you alone. And then they're like, oh, we don't have enough money to buy you a new AC machine. Well, go fuck yourself. Get one. Or I'm going to a shop where they have one that works. Asshole. Here's some of the stuff that they like to say is causing the problem. Insurance and consumer resistance. Body shops and dealers are often locked into labor rates negotiated with insurance companies. Yeah, that needs to come to a screeching fucking halt right now. No insurance company anywhere on the planet should dictate to you what your labor is. Okay, I don't give a fuck what fucking Mitchell manual or all data manual that they fucking use. I don't care. They don't set the price. We set the fucking price. And if they don't like it, then the customer can pay the difference. And if the customer doesn't like it, give them the name of the person at the insurance company who said they were only going to pay$28 an hour when your labor rate is$35. Or they're only going to pay$35 when it's supposed to be$50. Will you tell the customers you're going to have to make up the difference? Here's the phone number you call to raise hell about it. That's what should happen. Insurance companies should never dictate to you how much to pay for something. Never. Especially when you kick open the Forbes, 500 top companies in the world, and they're all within the first hundred. All insurance companies. Fuck them. Get their fucking money. Make them pay. You pay a premium. Guess what they should pay? A fucking premium. God damn it. I'm tired of insurance companies fucking trying to control every nickel and fucking dime. Pisses me off. Okay. Also, too, you are limited by what local customers are willing to pay. Sure, sure. You know, if a guy's been going to an independent shop for years and they only charge$75 an hour, and then you try to tell them that you're$90 an hour, they're going to fucking moan and complain. But you can just point to the door and say, well, then get the fuck out of here. Our technicians are better. But you know what? All you care about is money. Go fuck yourself. Good work isn't cheap and cheap work isn't good. God damn it. Go by. If a shop raises labor rates to$200 an hour to pay techs more, they risk losing business to cheaper competition. Well, it's still got to be done. It's still got to be done. If you are presenting a God's honest value, if your technicians are an honest to God, worthwhile value in the repair work that they do, then make your labor rate whatever you feel like you need to make it. Don't let fucking Joe Blow auto down the street tell you what you should fucking pay. They've got booger eating morons who can't fix a sandwich. Don't try to match their fucking labor rate. Fuck them. Let people go to them, let them fuck their car up, and then bring it back to you and go, ah, now you see the value of a technician who knows what he's doing, who doesn't have his head stuck permanently up his ass, right? Dick. Rising overhead was one of the other things that says the cost of specialized diagnostic equipment and EV safety gear is skyrocketed. Yeah, everything's skyrocketed. Thank you, Uncle Joe. Some owners argue that this tech tax eats into margins and that would otherwise go towards payroll. That it's fucking horseshit. Technician payroll and payroll of any kind should really come first. Okay. Obviously you have to pay the bills, but I mean, unless you're running a deficit, unless you haven't got the money, you should be paying a reasonable wage for your technician because, as I said before, they're the ones creating the commodity that you sell. It says here, and in addition to that, is the tide turning? And this is what it said. Now remember, remember, this is AI talking. This isn't a person. This, I mean, well, obviously I'm a person, but this isn't a person who put this out there for me to give to you. Okay. This is this is a computer's idea of what the fucking problems are, and this is a computer's idea of what solving them would look like. And here it is, is the tide turning? Because of the sh because the shortage is so severe, the market is finally forcing wages upward, regardless of old structures. So I'm always talking about 20th century people with 20th century tactics and 20th century raises. Real wage growth. Between February 2025 and February 2026, nominal wages in the automotive sector grew by 4.1%, outpacing inflation, which sat at 2.4%. Thank you, Uncle Donald. Uh, then there's a move to salary to attract Gen Z workers, which is really what they've got to do. They've got to attract these people. They've got to find a way because otherwise they're just going to go, yeah, fuck you and your job. To attract Gen Z workers who value stability, more shops are moving towards base salaries plus performance bonuses rather than pure flat rate pay. Show me one. I don't think it's happening. Like I said, the flat rate pay, I said it a thousand times already. I'm just one more time. Not something they're going to want to get away from. They're going to have they're going to have to really think long and hard about that one. And if their shortage is just so absolutely gods on a severe, then that's the only way that it could conceivably move away from that. But it's just not likely. Here's the breakdown on it, and then we'll then we'll call it an evening. All right. Summary systematic versus artificial argument for artificial low pay, warranty times, tool cost, flat rate model, consumer pricing, and equipment cost and performance incentives. Yeah. Warranty times gotta stop being pieces of shit. Tool costs need to be kept down to a bare minimum, and possibly uh tool reimbursements need to happen. Flat rate model needs to go away. It's not gonna, but it should. Consumer pricing, shops can't pay more than the local market, or insurance will support. Insurance should just fucking support whatever you want them to pay. And the local market, you really can't, you really can't match the local market. You have to decide what the value is of the work and the uh technicians that you have and the repairs that you make, you have to decide what the value is. You can't let the local market do that. Equipment costs, shops are spending record amounts on scanners and EV structure. No, they're really not. Uh, if there's a shop, if there's an aftermarket shop out there that's working on EVs, well then uh more power to them, but there just isn't a whole lot of them. Most of them are going back to the brand manufacturer because they have invested in those tools, they have invested in those cars, and uh the information necessary to fix them is usually held on to by it by those people with a fucking death grip, okay? Performance incentives, skilled fast techs can still make six figures under flat rate. Absolutely, absolutely. I know a lot of you guys out there kill it under flat rate. If there's lots of work and it's all work you can get done quickly and efficiently, boom. Making killer, killer dinero. But it's an anomaly, really. And are you skipping stuff? Yeah, you are. I know you are. Are you filling up the are you filling up the tires? Are you filling up the topping off the fluids? No. You know, say it with me loud and proud. I don't get paid for that. I don't get paid for that. I've seen I've seen it. I've seen it. You you flat rate guys who just murder it. You're not doing all the little stuff that you probably should do. I'm not gonna scream and holler about it anymore. I've given up on that shit. Uh, I do it. I wouldn't expect anybody else to do it. I I don't see a lot of other technicians myself personally doing it. Uh sometimes I do, uh, but it's not uncommon for me to get a car in that was just worked on maybe a week ago or maybe even two weeks ago. And when I check the tire pressures, because I always do, I find that they were a lot lower than they should have been considering it was just here. So, but anyway, that's uh that's a whole nother point that doesn't need to be ashed out. All right. So um I'm gonna do some more of this in the future here. Uh, the next question I had was, and I'm not gonna go into it because I've been talking too long already. Why don't shops and dealers see the shitty pay as a major concern when dealing with the automotive technician shortage? And let me just read this one real quick and then we'll call it done. While it may seem like shops and dealers are ignoring the shitty pay problem, from their perspective, they are often trapped in a business model that makes rising wages difficult without fundamental changes. Okay, yeah, but you know what? Fuck you. Figure out what those changes are, you know, because if you have a skilled technician and you're not paying them enough money, that's it's a simple, that's a simple thing for them to do, folks. It's a simple thing for them to do, and it's a simple thing for you to do if the pay is not up to snuff. You can certainly grease the wheels. Sound familiar? Yeah. And as the guy who makes grease the wheels, your Uncle Jimmy, I'm gonna get off of here right now. We're gonna do some more of this next week, maybe, because this this is I thought it was pretty interesting that AI came up with all of this, and really nobody in our field has yet figured out what the real fucking problem is. And here it is, right here. Uh, all you gotta do is ask Gemini. So uh I asked Gemini what I should do here at the end, and it said, see ya.