Episode 356: What Should You Say

On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy does a deep dive on the WrenchWay 2026 Voice of the Technician Survey — and man, does it should like a synopsis of Grease the Wheels! This time though, none of the numbers are made up, although admittedly Uncle Jimmy was a lot closer to the mark than we really want to admit. There are deep, structural issues within the automotive industry, and this is coming from across the board. Incredible stats from pay, to getting new technicians involved in the industry and supporting trade schools, to an absolutely abysmal promotion rate amongst people actually in the industry. Techs are burned out, over worked, under paid, and between management and warranty times, it is not getting better. However, things usually have to get pretty bad before stuff changes, and that is the silver lining. The shops that adapt will thrive, the ones that don’t are dead on arrival! Let us know what you think! 

iAlso Uncle Jimmy goes back to the drawing boards after an honest-to-god production meeting!
 
 is 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

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome once again to Grease of Wheels. This is your Uncle Jimmy with your hopelessly random podcast, your technique, your automotive technician podcast, coming to you from the rock and roll garage here. Hey, I want to say my uh real quick uh honest thank you for everybody out there listening, working, doing what you do, all you blue-collar sons of guns. Man, I uh really appreciate what you guys do. I appreciate that the lights work and that the AC's on and uh the roads get fixed and buildings get built and cars get built and uh things that get fucked up and broken get fixed. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work. Now I want to uh come to you this week because I did not come to you last week, and then I will tell you why. And it's because your Uncle Jimmy's kind of a piece of shit. Here it is. Uh I attempted to do a podcast last week, and you know, as uh and I I debated how to tell you about this, but let me just jump right into it feet first and sink right to the bottom. Whenever you do something like this, whenever you create something, or whether you're, you know, and I hate to use this term to describe myself, but whenever you're when you're an artist, when you create something, uh a lot of times you're not really very happy with it. And uh gotta tell you, honestly, uh 350 plus episodes, and I very rarely am I happy with the outcome. And it's only because of the magic fingers uh of Eric the producer that the podcast ever makes any kind of sense whatsoever. And last week uh I had uh delivered him uh an hour and 45 minutes of fucking sheer garbage, just junk, just this shitty, wonky, uh disconnected uh podcast. And he was in despite his uh despite his skill and his talent, he was unable to make anything legible or audible out of it. And so there was no podcast last week because your Uncle Jimmy, I didn't really phone it in. I kind of made an effort, but uh it was terrible. And uh I was I expected I expect this actually every week, but but then this was the first time. I mean, I've sent him a couple of other podcasts that were fucking serious horseshit, and uh, I didn't expect them to go anywhere, and so they never they never got uh published or broadcast or anything like that. But uh the one last week was just a rambly jumble of shit and uh would have been roundly criticized by everybody who would who heard it. So it got trashed and it ended up on the cutting room floor, locked stock and barrel. Now, the subject that it was about, however, I feel was extremely important, and uh I had uh not really read through the entire uh it's a report, and let me just fill you in on what it is here in a second, but I had not really read through the entire thing so I could make a cogent uh response to it. Okay, I thought that I could just go through and organically belch out some bullshit and have that work as a podcast, and uh, that was a fail on my part, okay? Let me just tell you something. I have enough self-respect to know uh that I do good work sometimes, but sometimes I do not. And so that's what happened last week. And if you missed it and you were looking for it, I apologize. But uh I would like to try to make up for it this week, but I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to, but we'll give it a shot anyway, and we'll see what happens. Um, what I was talking about last week, and then what I'm gonna reiterate this week and hopefully do a better job of informing you about is a company called Wrenchway. And these people, I don't think they've actually been doing what they're doing as long as I've been doing this podcast. They came about, and it does, it doesn't have a date into which they started. I'm sure I could Google it and find out, but they've been around about five years, as near as I can tell. And what they do is they put out every year a uh survey towards the end of the year, November to December, and they ask for input from technicians. And apparently last year, uh at the end of 2025, they had 5,500 responses. Now, these responses are coming from, let me just give you an idea who the responses are coming from. Uh obviously, automotive technicians and diesel technicians, students, which and I'm not sure what kind of input you're gonna get from students, but there it is. And then also uh management and owners. Okay, so that's valid, or at least it can be valid, or it should be valid, and maybe it's not. Uh, and then also to automotive instructors, instructors at automotive uh technical schools, schools that train kids and people, women, ladies, men, boys, uh, whoever, the old, the young, whatever your status is, they train you to become an auto mechanic. Okay. And so, andor probably even diesel mechanics, a lot of shops uh are not just one-trick ponies. They'll they'll train anybody they can. And uh they and I want to say that in my experience, they do a pretty good job. Uh, one of the things that they can't really uh train students for is the absolute and sheer and utter fucking chaos that we have going on in some of the shops out there, and also to some of the attitudes from some of the technicians they're gonna run into out there. They can't really train them for that. I think that they probably should find a way to try, but it's also one of those things that's counterproductive to what an automotive tech school is trying to do. They're trying to build you up, give you all the information you need, possibly uh fill you in on what kind of tools you're gonna need, maybe send you off, send you off with a pad on the back and a and a hearty thank you for you know paying us to train you to do this job, which you're probably gonna hate and quit in two years. But uh it is what it is. I mean, and and these instructors that I've run into out there, and really almost all of them, have a pretty good head on their shoulders. They know what they're up to. So uh inviting them to join in on this survey, I think, is a really good thing now. Uh, let me just give you an idea of what Renchway is about, and and this is what it says here on the website. Okay, it says a National Institute for an ASC is involved with them as well. And I'm sure that a lot of you are familiar with what ASC is, and some of you may even cringe at the sound of the letters ASC because it requ it is a testing regiment. It is a company that tests technicians and certifies them based on whether or not they can pass a test, which uh I'm a little on the fence about and always really have been. Uh I was on the I was not on the fence uh a long time ago. I was not, I was a detractor big time as far as ASC goes. But what they do does serve a purpose, and it's an important purpose uh because if you talk to not uh people who are not, you know, they're uh lay people that don't know anything about cars, and you say, Oh yeah, I'm an ASC certified, you know, this, that, or the other thing, or master, uh ASC master tech, they've heard of ASC, so it's important, okay? And they have teamed up with these people at Runchway, and the people at Runchway are uh definitely trying to correlate information in a very usable manner for everybody involved, mostly owners and management, in my opinion. Okay, because what they're doing is they're taking honest to God complaints, really, and that's basically what the survey is about, and uh putting the data together and showing people that, yeah, these are the problems that you need to address. And management and shop owners can choose to look at these uh these uh sections of data that come straight from technicians and decide what they want to do. And if they have a uh technician shortage problem in their shop, the answers really honestly, the answers are right there. I'm not shitting you. It's it's it's probably as good, if not better, than AI, uh, because this is ob obviously real-world information that is coming from real people working in your shops, working in your dealerships. And AI is just a machine that has collected data from the internet, more than likely. And even though even though the results are very similar, as you've heard in the past here, that doesn't carry a lot of weight with it. The weight that that this particular company, Renchway, uh, carries uh should be sufficient to call certain people into action. And uh it remains to be seen whether or not these people who need to be called into action actually perform. Now, it was suggested to me, and I'm open to suggestions all the time. And one of the things I want to say before I get started here on this particular podcast is that I don't get feedback. So if I borrow Runchway's feedback, I I want to apologize now if they don't like it. I'm I'm truly sorry if you don't want me to expound you on your work, uh what you have done. It looks like you have spent a good deal of time and energy and probably money as well putting this report together to try to make this situation better for those of us out there in the fields with the tools out there, out in the field. I fought for my meals with tools and wrenches and screwdrivers and that sort of thing. And uh, and you have come to our rescue to try to point out and hold us up and say, here, here's what the problem is. And I I want to say it, I thank you very much for helping me try to get through to the people who need to make the changes, whether or not it works or not, I I don't know. But uh all the ammunition that you can give me, I will use it, I will take it, and I will fight the good fight. But this that what we have going on here with the work with uh Runchway is that uh this this is the feedback I'm really actually honestly looking for. So I'll take it from wherever I can get it, okay? Now, one of the things that was pointed out to me by Eric, the producer, was that this report makes a lot more sense if you read it backwards. And I'm always open to new new styles and new ways of doing things. So we're gonna we're gonna start at the bottom and work our way to the top. And uh, I'm going to try to give you the Cliff Notes version on some stuff. I want to leave some of my experiences out of the dialogue. You'll hear some of the stories, maybe, and some of the things that uh I've experienced. And and and hopefully you haven't experienced some of the bad things I've experienced, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of you have. Um, and uh, if I bring to you something that happened to me, chances are it either did or could happen to you. So that's the only reason why I would even say anything about it at all. I would invite myself into the dialogue here, okay? Now we're gonna start here at the end, and this is sort of says here this is the conclusion. The conclusion of the report. And it and you can starting here is actually a pretty good idea because it gives you an idea of what they found, and then we can go through and and point out some of the important things that they found. Uh, and they do this every year at the end of the year, and uh, what I want to do too, before I get too far here, is in November or December, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make a podcast where I let you know that this survey is out there, and I want you to take it. Okay, it takes probably about 10 minutes. I want you to clear your mind if you if you're doing it after work, just try to put anything that might have happened to you that was shitty that day, put it behind you and give a clear uh indication of what's going on in your particular case and what you like and what you don't like and what needs to change and what doesn't need to change. And I will let you know because I would really like to see more technicians involved with this particular survey so that we can get an even truer account of what's going on and also what needs to happen for these folks to help us out. Okay. This is definitely a good thing. It's and I like I like I said, I appreciate that they do this. And if I can uh become like a champion for them or you know, a cheerleader even, I would do that. I I definitely would like to see some of you who haven't responded to this respond to it next year. Okay. Here is the conclusion. This is at the end of the report, and like I said, we're gonna work backwards just because your Uncle Jimmy's an obnoxious asshole. Uh the 2026 Voice of the Technician Report paints a clear and increasingly urgent picture of the technician workforce. Absolutely. Across pay benefits, career development, workplace conditions, and industry perception. Technicians are sending a consistent message that expectations are rising, but employer performance is not keeping our pace. Folks, that is it in a nutshell. The problems that we have are pay, benefits, career development, workplace conditions, and industry perception. I have said previously, and I've been on a rant about this for about the last two or three months, and it was pointed out to me by Eric, that a lot of these things I have mentioned and talked about at Infinitum recently, but it's the same, same shit over and over and over again. You know, 350 plus episodes of the podcast have been about all of those things right there in that statement. What at one time or another. Every once in a while, I'll bring you something goofy where I talk about uh tools that you could you could make, uh things that can make your life easier, maybe how to make the shop run a little better, maybe how to clean it up or something. But but that's been the message, okay? The problems we have are pay, benefits, career development, workplace conditions, and industry perception. I have I have, in my opinion, felt that in industry perception has been a big one. Uh, you guys didn't feel that way at all. You guys thought that that was like 10% of you thought, yeah, that's kind of a big deal. And and and a lot of people just said, that's not the problem. But I I gotta I gotta take a little bit of umbrage with that because uh a lot of our customers, and maybe you don't deal with them. I get it. If you don't deal with them, that's fine. I'm not asking you to, but a lot of the customers that our service advisors have to deal with have a very shitty perception of our industry, they have a very shitty perception of us. They think we're trying to rip them off. I mean, this isn't news to anybody, right? So it's always going to be difficult to get people to uh okay recommendations for services and maintenance and repairs because they think we're trying to fuck them in the ass. And for the most part, we're really not. So industry perception for me is a lot higher. I'm probably put it down as 60 or 70 percent. Those of many of you out there, a lot less, and they're not worried about it. And I I get it, and that's probably okay to not worry about it, but I believe that it's the roots of the tree that is causing a lot of the problems for us in the workplace. Now, pay obviously, pay is I mean, when I see that the median pay is you know forty-five thousand dollars for for technicians, it makes me want to fucking dry heave. It really does, because that means that there's people making less than that, and there's people making more than that, and I make a way, way, way more than that. And so that means that somebody makes way, way less than that to balance it out at 45k. That's a terrible, that's a terrible thing for me. I can't deal with that. And maybe, maybe there's a lot of guys out there who don't deserve to be paid even that much, but I don't feel like that's true at all. I think if you have endeavored to work in the automotive industry as a technician, then you should be given every opportunity to succeed, and you should be given pay, commensurate with your skill and your your uh tenacity and your training, and then you should be roundly incentivized to continue with training and roundly incentivized to get better every day. Okay, and I was talking to one of our uh some of our technicians the other day, and these are kids that sit around when they're not busy looking at their phone, you know, looking at cat videos. I told them, I said, listen, the way cars are going these days, training has to nearly be constant. And they all agreed, oh yeah, yeah, they're getting harder and harder to work on every day. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about, they have no idea. They have no idea. You talk to an old guy like me who rebuilt carburetors and set points and adjusted drum brakes, because you fuckers, you you you kids who are out there in the in the working world as a technician for two, three, five years, you don't have any idea what it used to be like. Used to be way simpler, and every day it gets harder and harder. And some shit that's coming down the pike is gonna make it even harder. Here's what it goes on to say here in the conclusion technicians are clear about what they want from an employer. Yes, yes, we are. Paid time off, retirement benefits, proper equipment, paid training, predictable schedules, defined career paths. You gotta have them. These are baseline expectations, it says here. Satisfaction data shows that many shops and dealerships are struggling to meet even these fundamental expectations. Fewer than half of the technicians are satisfied with their benefits, even less are probably satisfied with their career paths, performance feedback, or tool support, or willingness to recommend one's employer continues to decline. This disconnect between the expectations and the reality is a major driver of dissatisfaction, disengagement, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, turnover. Compensation. It shouldn't be, it shouldn't be a surprise to any of you that compensation remains the most urgent issue facing the industry. Now, let me let me go into some of the statistics here. I don't want to make an hour and a half or two-hour podcast. I'd just like for it to be informative and kind of come to you in a neat little package that can be maybe simply edited, hopefully, and get get right to the point. One of the last, one of the things they talked about right before they got to the conclusion were the technician schools and how they need support from us at the dealers, at our independent shops, and some of the diesel shops. It talked about partnerships between industry and schools and some of the things that they need. And most of the things that are needed by tech schools that might be in your neighborhood or in your town or in your city are things that really are going to need to be provided by management and your business and the business you work for. And they're honestly, they're not that interested in it. They don't feel like it's helpful for them. They don't want to do it. Maybe if they're asked in a proper manner, they might offer an internship or uh allow a student to come in and work half a day in your shop. But this uh most of the shops I've worked in, this ends up being a shit show. You bring in a new kid and he's gonna watch a master tech put an engine in a car. What's he gonna do? He's gonna get in the way, he's gonna ask questions, he's gonna bother that guy. That guy's not gonna want to do that. And are you gonna pay that technician more as a manager or a shop owner because he's got an intern there breaking his balls? Wait, why are you doing that? What's that for? What's this to? It's not gonna happen, is it? No, it's not gonna happen. Your man, your management, your ownership, the people who run your shops, they're not gonna want to pay you extra to help bring somebody into the field. You're gonna end up yelling at that kid. Why don't you just shut the fuck up, kid? I'm not an instructor and I'm not a a mentor. I'm trying to do a fucking job here. You're pissing me off and slowing me down. I don't I don't need that. But that's exactly what needs to happen. So as a as a seasoned veteran technician like myself and most of you, we need to somehow be available to answer some of these kids' questions and work with some of the interns, some of the part-timers, maybe let them just shadow us. Okay, and we need to be helpful, we need to engage with them. But are we going to be compensated for it? No, there it is again. The money. We could help local schools. I could certainly, I could certainly spend half a day at a local technical school and talk to the kids about what's going on in the shop. But honestly, you know what would happen if I did that? It would shock the fucking shit out of them. They'd be like, oh, what's it like to work in your shop? It sucks. Every day. Waiters, waiters, waiters, waiters, waiters. You know? Oh no, what's a waiter? A waiter is somebody who brings you food at a restaurant. No, no. A waiter is somebody who comes in and thinks that whatever you're gonna do to their car is gonna take 20 fucking minutes and they're gonna sit up front for 20 minutes while you do it. In the meantime, it takes the advisor 20 minutes just to write the fucking thing up, and then you're you need 45 minutes to do an oil change and an air filter and maybe a microfilter and some wiper blades, okay, because that takes time. It takes time to do all that shit. Then you got to nowadays you gotta do a video. If they were to ask me at a tech school what goes on in a shop, they would not like the fucking answer, would they? They would not, they would not like the answer because I think a lot of kids are shocked at what goes on in a shop when they get out of technical school. So would it be a good thing for them to come into the shop and see what goes on? Well, if they were can if they were allowed to have a mentor who was compensated for helping them out, that would definitely be a very, very good thing. But our shop owners and managers, shop managers and service managers, are they gonna do that? Fuck no, they're not. They're just not gonna do that. They're not gonna do that, they're not doing that now. Why would they pay you extra to talk to some kid from some tech school in town that might work for you when he gets out of school to a to a manager, to an accountant, especially to a general manager or an owner? That's just throwing money right down the fucking, right down the drain. They don't want to do that. And I'm not treating, I'm not here trying to pick apart this report. Okay. I think this report is solid as a rock and it shows real, honest to God, things that are going in the shop that the technicians are going through and provides information that allows service managers and owners to make the proper decisions. But the one big, huge obstacle, the roadblock is the shops managers, the owners, and the accountants. It's money. It's it's always going to be money. It's all about money. That's all it is. A lot of this the survey is really predicated on pay. It's it's mostly about pay. And I would love to be able to tell. Take this particular report and dissect it into little sections and bring it to you and tell you that everything's going to be all right, that these people are on the job, and they're trying to show the people who need this information what they need to do and that they're going to start doing it. But folks, that's that's kind of a fairy tale. Now, sometimes schools, it says here, need equipment and funding. Uh here again, it's going to require an investment in uh a financial investment. And some shops are smart enough really to go ahead and make some sort of a financial contribution to the local tech schools. Because if a kid lives literally a block away from your dealership and he's going to this school, he's going to want to work for a dealership that is a block away from his house. And if by sponsoring some of the equipment in the tech school and having them, you know, having your name there is like, hey, you know, uh, this was provided by Joe Blow Automotive, uh, this this alignment rack, this tire machine, so you can figure out how it works, and so you'll be better trained and better able to get a job. I think that that would be great. And then when he comes to talk to you about working at your dealership, he'll be like, oh yeah, you guys donated to our school. Yeah. And then and then maybe because he lives so close, he could get an internship and come in and see what's going on in your in your shop. And hopefully, and I hope, you know, I I hate to be negative about this, and I and I I think that Eric's probably even gonna get upset with me for being somewhat negative about this. All right. But I'm my hope is is that everybody responds the way they should. You know, that a technician in the shop takes the kid under his wing and starts showing him stuff and saying, listen, this is what you're gonna need for tools. You don't need all these tools, you just need a few basics. Uh, this is how this goes, this is what we're looking for here, this is how this goes. This is the the the Joe Blow uh automotive way of doing things. Uh, you want to make sure that this is done and that's done. Uh, maybe they commiserate on how to do a video. Maybe, maybe some of the schools that are near your dealership are trying to train their uh students how to do videos. That's one of the things that we're trying to do is is have uh these tech schools contact us so that we can teach them here, you know, at Grease the Wheels and Surf Wrench Digital, that we could teach them how to do a very good video that actually bypasses the uh the limitations of your service advisors and sells repairs, maintenance, and uh uh services. We're trying to do that. And if you can get out into the field and see how uh a 10-year master tech does it, or even a five-year associate tech does it, or a uh journeyman does it, and and he join enjoys success doing it, maybe doesn't like to do it. I'm gonna tell you right now they don't like to do it, but but you can learn how to do a video before you even have to really start doing them. As if you're just gonna be an intern or maybe just come in and shadow a technician for a day or a week or a month. So engaging with the schools can be a good idea, okay? But it has to be it has to be fostered properly. You have to foster the proper individuals. Your Uncle Jimmy might not be a good one, although I can tone it down, I really can. And I don't want to drive anybody out of the business. I'm definitely not trying to do that at all. I'm trying to make the business better for all of us. It just doesn't seem to be fucking working. Sorry, guys. It's as much as I try, as much as I rail against the powers that be that are making our jobs suck. I can't change their minds about it. Now, uh that's that's the the deal with schools and tech schools, and that is is really your business should make some attempt to be involved with them. And what I saw from the responses was that they don't they're they're not interested in it because it involves them having to do work, it involves them having to make an effort. And they and what here's what it says, and I always would bring this to you real quick here. Ways shops and dealerships supported schools in the last year. Respondents were asked to check all that apply, and the figures don't really add up to 100%. They uh they don't they just don't add up to 100%. Uh, but here's what it says here hired students for internships or part-time roles, 39% of dealerships did that, that responded, hosted a job shadow or a shop tour, 23% did that, spoke to a class. Now that could be a manager, or that could be a technician, or it could even be a general manager or an owner, 17% did that. Uh served on an advisory committee. That's uh people who kind of indicate what needs to be learned in the schools, 13%. Oh, and this is why it's not 100%. Donated tools, parts, or equipment. Uh, that could be it could have been any one of those. 13% did that. And then out of that, there were people who did nothing. There were they had no contact with any of the schools whatsoever. I mean, they just didn't. They didn't think about it, they didn't think it was necessary, didn't think it was a good thing to do, and just never crossed their mind. And that was 32%. So a third of the respondents just said, Yeah, I don't mess around with the schools in our neighborhood or in our city at all. And then another 21% said, uh, I don't know, which is exactly the same as saying none. Uh, I don't know to me translates into I don't want to be bothered. That's what it means to me. Now let me just move on here. Going backwards, of course. We're gonna stop right here at this little thing called career outlook. And here's what this says. We asked technicians whether they see themselves staying in the industry over the next five years. And the majority of the respondents, majority of the people who responded who were technicians, 62% still plan to remain in the industry, which I thought was a little high, but it's okay. But then that means that 43% indicated they will probably remain in the industry, and 19% indicated they will definitely remain in the industry. Okay, so we're kind of on the fence about wanting to remain in the industry, but for the most part, we probably will. And then here's what it says. However, long-term stability is far from guaranteed. Nearly one in five technicians, which is about 21%, said they will probably leave the industry, and another 17% expect to retire. Pencil your Uncle Jimmy under that one, okay? Uh, he's closing in on the uh retirement age, so uh you can expect that within uh a couple, two, three years. When paired with earlier findings, that only 23% of technicians believe the industry is improving, these results underscore a critical challenge. The industry needs to ensure that today's workforce does not shift into the likely to leave category. And here's what some of the stats and figures look like. Will technicians stay working in the industry for the next five years? And 17% said probably not, they'll be retiring. 21% said probably not, they're gonna leave the industry. 43% said probably in five years they'll still be doing it. And then definitely about 20%. So, and that's encouraging, it really is. 62% have said that they will either definitely or probably continue to be automotive technicians and then also diesel technicians. But when they broke it down, when they split automotive and diesel, they found that diesel technicians are more likely to want to remain employed than automotive technicians. In fact, automotive technicians scored really low on this. They said, like, uh, are they definitely staying 17%, probably 44%? So that was uh that was right around 62%, but probably not, and leaving the industry 23%, uh, and probably not. They're gonna retire 16%. Automotive did not score as well as diesel. Diesel technicians, for some reason, they're a different breed than automotive technician, and they like what they're doing. And I I I kind of tried to figure out in my mind why, and I this is what I came up with. Most of the time, diesel technicians are working on diesel, obviously, diesel trucks and diesel equipment, and that their customers are a completely different breed of people than automotive customers. Diesel customers, customers who need their diesel, whatever they have worked on, are pretty much depending on that machine to do what it does. And so they're not likely to harass or fuck with or put down or just generally think badly of a technician who's fixing a piece of equipment for them that they need. And so you don't have that whole industry perception that diesel technicians are a bunch of thieves and they're they're doing it wrong and they're selling you stuff you don't need. There's that perception is not there because the customer is way, way, way smarter. Way smarter, knows what he needs, knows who's gonna do it, and doesn't sit there and go, oh, that guy's that guy's trying to rip me off. It doesn't do that. Whereas in the automotive sector, we have to deal with what people think, and a lot of times those fucking people don't think, or they think what other people have told them to think. And it's bad news. It's bad news. And it makes me want to quit when people say, oh, technicians are just a bunch of scumbags who are trying to rip us off. And it's fuck them. That's not true. Okay, I don't like to think of any of you, no matter what you do in the automotive industry. I don't want to think of any of you as scumbags, it's just not fair and it's not right. Now, moving backwards here, industry improvement. I wanted to kind of touch on that here. And this is a big problem. This is where there's a big problem. This year, which is you know, last year, 2025, 2026 is the year it's this is this is called out as. It says this year we added a question to ask technicians whether they believe the industry is improving overall. The majority expressed a pessimistic outlook, with 77% indicating that they do not believe the industry is improving. Folks, that's over three quarters of technicians. Three quarters of us do not believe that the industry is improving. Okay, you have to think about where that comes from. Are we seeing things getting better? Three-quarters of us said no, it's not getting better. Here is how that broke down industry improvement by shop type. Independent shops, uh, 34% of people who work in independent shops thought that it was getting better. 66% said eh mobile, mobile mechanics, yeah. 32% of them said, yeah, it's getting better. And 68% said eh. And then fleet, there was 30% who thought it was uh improving, 70% said no. And then franchise change, you know, tires and uh, you know, uh your Midas, your Monroe, your brake check, your dun tire, whatever you have. 30% of those technicians working in those joints said that it's not, it says that they feel like it is improving, and 70%, just like fleet mechanics, 70% thought, yeah, not improving. And then we get to the creme de la creme, the top where the cherry is. Dealerships. 16% of dealership technicians felt like their situation is improving, and 84% said, nope, no, it's not, folks. That's that's where I come from. That's where I'm at. Is it improving where I am? No, not really. Uh, what can happen to improve it? I think there's a few things that need to happen. I have some opinions. A lot of times they just get shot down or or dismissed for being bullshit. And I think that that's happening to a lot of you. In my opinion, I uh I point the finger at management and ownership. That's just me. Now I'm not trying to tell you that where I work sucks, but it could stand to enjoy some improvement. Now, the next issue was industry issues, and it says here we asked technicians and students to rank a list of industry issues based on urgency, prioritizing which challenges must be addressed first to help alleviate the technician shortage. Yeah. What do the technicians think that you need to do to alleviate the technician shortage? Have you ever bothered to fucking ask them? Well, here it is in black and fucking white. The chart below reflects the percentage of respondents who ranked each issue as a one or a two indicating the most urgent areas for action. Uh, 84% of us that responded to the voice of the technician wrenchway survey. And I was one of them. I was one of them. And I hope to God that you were one of them, really, because this is how change comes about. It's going to require input from you, feedback from you. And then when they look at it in the aggregate all together and shown the big picture, hey, you got to start doing some fucking shit. You got things you got to do here. The most urgent issue was higher pay at 84%, better pay structure at 71%. That's the uh pay structure, is uh what we were talking about not too long ago. Flat rate, salary, salary with production bonus, hourly, uh, and even pooling hours. I talked about that a little bit. Uh pooling pooling of the hours. I don't think you can really do that anymore because of the types of complaints that we get, and also to how different you really run the gambit of how much experience all the technicians in the shop have. And it's not fair for a master tech who spends six hours uh diagnosing an engine problem and then has to spend another six hours fixing it. He's not gonna want to share the hours that he's made with somebody who just sat around and waited for parts to show up or was looking at their phone. They're just not gonna want to do it. So it's not it's not really not really something that can that happens anymore is pooling hours. It just doesn't happen. Uh, one of the more urgent issues after pay and pay structure was better management, 15%, better benefits at 13%, warranty work at 11%. There's a lot of work that needs to happen there. You and I know if you're working at a dealership, you know that warranty work sucks because the goddamn manufacturers figured out to the fucking absolute most infinite minutiae how long it's supposed to take to fix something. And it's usually they usually cut it right to the bone. You know, the times that they have for some of these things that you're going to be doing has been figured out by somebody who is an absolute stone cold professional and works as fast as he can and has all the tools laid out and all the parts laid out and doesn't have to deal with any of the fucking horseshit that you do while you're trying to do warranty work. Okay, he doesn't have to fucking clean clean a car out with garbage up to the fucking door handles. He doesn't have to wash off 65, 80, 90 pounds of mud before he can get to the engine and any of the fasteners on it. He doesn't have to, he doesn't have to do he's working on a brand new fucking car with brand new fucking tools in a shiny white lab coat, and he can do it in 2.1 hours and it takes you three and four hours. And when and when that happens, uh, you know, these people in the warning department don't seem to know this. I mean, if they do, there's nothing they can do about it, and all they can do is chop the times. But if you figure out a way to make a job pay, sooner or later they're gonna figure it out and they're gonna they're gonna chop the time. It sucks. It's a very terrible thing, and I think it needs more work than 11% of you say, okay. Uh shops pay for tools or provide adequate tool allowance. That was 11%. That's an urgent issue. Uh tools, obviously, if you've been doing this a while like I have, you just have the tools you have. Uh maybe you picked them up from all over the place, like I did. Some of my tools are from little, I'm serious when I say it. Some of them are from AutoZone, some of them are from Harbor Freight. A lot of them are from Snap On. Uh, I've gotten Gear Ranch stuff, Cornwell stuff. I got stuff from everywhere. When I need something and the guy's right there, I don't give a shit whose name is on it. If I can use that tool to make money, there it is. You know, more respect for the industry was 10%. That's an industry issue. I think it's uh I'm gonna say it one more time. I think it's it's more important than you think. Because what the general public thinks of us bleeds over into management and ownership and helps to keep our pay low because they're like, oh yeah, everybody thinks you're a scumbag. So do I. And I'm just not gonna pay scumbags very much money. And it sucks. And I I I apologize. I know I'm not trying to call any of you a scumbag, but there are people out there who have used that term to describe us, and I don't like it at all. And I'll tell you honestly, you know, I'm I'm at the point now where if somebody tries to put me down right in front of me, right to my face, I might just get physical with them. I mean, it's it's getting to the point where that's that's gonna happen. I feel like it. You know, if somebody says to me, Oh, you're just trying to rip me off, I'm not trying to rip you off, and then just punch them right in the face as hard as I can and go, there, there you go. Now I'm fired to go fuck yourself. So I'm not gonna do that, but maybe it's just a maybe that's just a fantasy, and maybe Eric will probably just chop that part out of there. It doesn't fit into what we're trying to say here. So, and he's right. All right, and then here it says shops providing paid training. Uh, 7%. I can't really see a shop uh purposely throttling uh any training that any of the technicians might want to get. It's it's something that's always going to make your technicians more valuable to themselves and to you and to your customers if you decide you want to show off how well trained your customers are, which I definitely think you should do. And then there was 5% that said that they need to improve the physicality of the job and the mental demand of the work that is done on uh I would say especially diesel, but automotive as well. Uh, it's a physically and mentally demanding job. And lots of people don't realize it. They think it's easy and that we make too much money, and it's just not true. Okay. Now let's move on here to, and this is this was the part that really I think Eric was uh especially interested in this part, and I think you will be too. Uh, but I don't think it's going to be a surprise to any of you that actually have a toolbox and might be listening to this through your AirPods or maybe on your Bluetooth speaker, recommending the technician profession. And they've got a fancy name for it called Net Promoter Score. And what it is is, and uh let me just read this here because that they do describe it. To better understand technicians' sentiment towards the profession as a whole, we ask respondents to rate on a scale of one to ten how likely they would be to recommend their career to a friend. This framework is known as Net Promoter Score and helps gauge overall industry health and long-term growth potential. Now, what it also goes on to say here, and this is because this is important, using standard NPS methodology, and then this is, you know, I think a lot of you are probably familiar with this NPS net promoter score that your dealerships or your brands use the same sort of setup to decide whether or not you're running a successful business. Net promoter score. The surveys that our customers get at the brand I work for ask two questions, and from that they determine a net promoter score. And so it's just not really that intricate. And in this particular case, it's also not that intricate intricate. Okay. It says here using standard NPS methodology, respondents who rated their likelihood as a nine or ten are categorized as promoters. I'm gonna learn how to speak one of these days. Sorry about that. While those who rated six or lower are considered detractors, okay, and it's detractors? How are you gonna how are you gonna cut the grass in the field with detractors? The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Any score below zero indicates that detractors outnumber promoters. Okay, did you catch that? Okay, in other words, if you run the business down, if you run the profession down, you're a detractor. But if you say, oh, it's a great job and you should go ahead and try to do it and go to school and learn how to do it, and you promote the occupation, you are a promoter. Over the past three years, technician NPS has remained firmly, firmly negative and has declined every year. In 2024, the net promoter score was a minus 24, which sounds pretty bad. So, what that works out to is that in 2024, the net promoter score for the technician profession, as technicians see it, was minus 24, which means that there were 45% of us that were detractors, and there were 21% of us that were promoters, and 34% of us were like, eh, whatever. But then in 2025, that jumped up a hell of a lot for the detractors. In 2025, the net promoter score ended up being a minus 52, which is which is really, really high for a net promoter score for anything. Uh 64% of us said, Yeah, fuck this job, fuck this occupation. And 12% said, no, it's it's okay, it's good. And then 24% said, Yeah, whatever. And then we get to 2026 and it got worse. Yes, and it gets worse. In 2026, which was obviously for actually for 2025, but calculated for 2026. 70% of us responding to this survey said that we are detractors and would not recommend this particular occupation to anyone. And that I've been saying that for eight fucking years, folks. This is not a job for anybody. People hate us, society hates us, management can't manage us properly, there's no money in it, and we're asked to do all kinds of physical and mental fucking bodybuilding and weight lifting, and we're getting shit on and we're not getting paid properly. And the net promoter score for promoters was 10%. So it's getting worse because in the eyes of the People who are doing this job, it is bad. It is not a good job to have. It is not a good job to seek. Okay. And this is why, honestly, if schools, technical schools, and automotive tech schools out there aren't getting people from car dealerships or even independent shops to come into their school and help out and maybe talk to the students or maybe have them as uh apprentices or or interns, it's maybe a good thing that a lot of them aren't doing it because we're all negative nellies out there. You know, it's like, and I've said this on a few times on the podcast that, you know, if a guy came up to me and said, you know, hey, my son was thinking about becoming a uh an automotive technician, what would you say? And I would say, go home and slap the fucking shit out of that kid. Just tell him that's not a fucking job for somebody who wants to earn money and have a good life. It's not. It can be really, really fucking crappy. And what makes it really, really fucking crappy is the pay and the treatment that you're gonna get from your owners, your service managers, and the customers. And they have to fix both of those fucking issues before this net promoter score is gonna start to fucking shift back over and have more promoters and detractors. But it's not going that way, okay? It and lots of times people will tell you, oh, it's we can't just throw money at the problem. Yeah, well, you could certainly fucking try it. It might work. You can also try treating your technicians like people, like human beings, cutting them slack, giving them more time off, maybe increasing their benefits. I don't know. Treating them like you would want to be treated. Holy fucking shit, right? Yeah, the net promoter score. Uh Eric found that that was very, very informative. Uh, I knew it was like this. I did. I have always known it was like this. I've heard many, many stories of people who have come up to other people that I work with and said, Yeah, there this guy came up to me the other day. I've known him for a few years, and he said, Oh, my kid wants to become a mechanic. And I said, You honestly, you should just slap the fucking shit out of him and and have him do anything but. And this is this is a pretty common, common story. It's it happens in a lot of places. Now, uh the next, and I'm like I said, I'm going backwards here. So, where it ends up here, and I want to kind of try to make this a little shorter of a podcast. I've gone already about an hour, so I'm gonna try to wind it down as best I can. Uh, but I'm not really very good at that, so just ask Eric, he'll tell you. The fucking guy can ramble on for hours and not say a fucking thing. And I'm serious. But hey, you know what? It's my podcast, and I can fucking go as long as I want. And I'm not getting paid, so you can't fucking demote me or take my wages away. The next part on this particular survey, working backwards to front, technician satisfaction. Understanding technician satisfaction provides insights into how individuals feel about their employer, their career, and the industry as a whole. In this section, we explore how satisfied technicians are with their current employer, their likelihood to recommend their workplace, and the key challenges and opportunities shaping the industry today. And then it continues on here and says we also examine perceptions around industry improvement and long-term career outlook to better understand what influences retention, engagement, and confidence in the future of the profession. Confidence in the future of the profession. Yikes. Overall satisfaction with current employers remains low and in many cases declined from last year, highlighting ongoing challenges in technician retention and workplace experience. Yeah, you know, seriously, if you work somewhere, and this this is the reason that the podcast is called Grease the Wheels, folks, because if you don't like where you work and it doesn't pay you well, and you can't stand the people who are in charge, and they can't stand you, and they give you shit, and they never give you the benefit of the doubt, and they never give you uh uh any kind of appreciation and never show you or tell you that you're doing a good job. You just can't kind of have to wonder. By all means, folks, grease the fucking wheels. Get the fuck out of there. The technician shortage has gotten worse every year since I started doing this eight years ago, and it was already bad then. It is getting worse. All right, now I like to I like to I don't like to bring it up, but I bring it up all the time that in this particular genre of occupation as automotive technicians, 68% of the technicians doing this job right now, 68%. It's over two-thirds, folks. Two-thirds of us at 68% are 45 years of age or older, including myself. What does that mean? What does that say to you that in 10 years that 68% is gonna drop right off a cliff and become 10% because there's we're just all gonna be gone. We're all gonna go away, and we're gonna leave behind all of the kids behind us who may or may not be up to the task. And oh, by the way, as time marches on, as improvements come along in automobiles and in combustion technology and in electric car technology and in hydrogen technology, these things are gonna get harder and harder and harder to work on. And honestly, I don't want to put anybody down, I don't want to berate anybody's generation, but I'm not seeing the kids that are in the shop now holding up under the under the scrutiny of some of the stuff that's coming. I don't see them being able to handle it. There's a lot of people, folks, that are gonna be in a world of shit when they bring their car in and for some reason it's all fucked up, and the dealer goes, Yeah, we can't find anything wrong with it, or we can't even get it in. And then when they get it in, they're like, Oh, we don't know how to fix it. We're gonna have to send it off somewhere. What? You have technicians that work in your building, right? Yeah, but none of them are trained to work on that car. And even if we did have a guy that was trained to work on that car, he probably couldn't fix it anyway. Am I being too harsh? I don't know. I don't know. I would, I, I honestly, I would love to tell you that I think I'm gonna be wrong, but it remains to be seen. I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna come out and say that the kids that are coming out of tech schools now are idiots. I'm not gonna say that. I don't think that they are. I think that and I and I actually applaud them for going into this particular uh taking this particular career path. I applaud them. But the training that they're gonna need to be effective, to be master technicians, to be uh even just be a journeyman, it's gonna be excruciating for them. And if they're not up to the challenge, they're gonna fall by the wayside. And I think that falling by the wayside is gonna be the default for a lot of technicians. It already kind of is. The same people that made this survey uh in the survey last year said that 41% of technicians that start working in an automotive dealer or in an independent shop, 41% of them are gone after two years. That is that's a fucking terrible rate of retention. That's a lot of turnover, boys and girls. And it's not all on the management or the shop or the dealerships, not all on them. Some of those kids were not meant to be not meant to be technicians. They tried it, they didn't like it, they got the F out. Technician satisfaction with a current employer. Uh, there was a lot of different things here, and I would I would like to give you a real broad stroke on it. They uh they marked this off in five steps here. Strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree. There are several categories here. Let me just plow through them real quickly for you, okay? Because it gives you an idea of what it is uh that kind of irks the shit out of technicians, basically. That's what it comes down to. The satisfaction with with their current employers. This is for your current employer, the shop you're in now, not the one you were in two years ago. The shop provides adequate paid training. 13% of you strongly disagree with that. 11% of you disagree with that, and the rest are either neutral or agree. The shop provides the equipment I need to get my job done. Uh, that's actually I like this number because it's low. It says 7% strongly disagree. It means that some many shops are stepping up to get the equipment and the tools that you need. Uh, that's a good thing. Uh, 15% just still disagreed with that. So the number is still a little higher than I like, but then the rest 2030 and 25%. So mostly uh you agree that that's okay. The shop provides fair compensation. 10% strongly disagree, 13% disagree. The rest feel like it's okay. All right, sure. I feel valued and respected by management. Yeah, 20% of you strongly disagree. Uh, I can tell you that I know a lot of people who fall into that 20%, 15% disagree. So that's a whopping 35% of the respondents to this particular survey feel that they're not valued and or respected by management. That is a lot of where your problem comes from. They, if you feel like they don't respect you, even if they do, you don't feel like they do. It means that they're not engaging with you. And maybe they don't want to engage with you. Maybe you're an obnoxious cocksucker like your Uncle Jimmy. But they still have to, they still have to let you know that you're valued, even if they don't respect you, or vice versa. Maybe they don't value, but they respect the effort you put in. I mean, it's kind of a double-edged sword. Both sides of it could cut you wide open. I would recommend this shop to a friend. Uh, 18% of you strongly disagree. That is a terribly high number. That is not good. And 10% of you agree, disagree. So there's uh 28% of you would not recommend your shop to a friend. That's not good. I mean, it I mean, obviously, if you work there and you're talking to a friend of yours and he said, Oh, should I bring my car to your shop? And you 28% of you would say, Fuck no, go to a shop where they're gonna fix it, not my shop, which is which is a very terrible number to have at all. It should should be zeros. Uh management in a shop like that one has a lot of fucking work to do. The shop provides good benefits. 13% disagreed completely, or strongly disagreed, and 15% disagreed. That is 28%. Also, that's not so good. Uh benefits, that's a tough one because if you have a small shop, benefits can be very expensive to provide for a small group of people. If you have a really, really big shop, like some auto groups, uh, the auto group that I'm a part of, they provide free uh healthcare. And it that's kind of amazing. But I mean, there's so many of us, and it just works out. And it's definitely a very, very good selling point for working for the company I work for. It's definitely one of the big things, one of the big factors. Now, obviously, you know, if you have a wife and nine kids, there's going to be a cost to that. They can't just give you free health care on uh, you know, the Waltons, you know. Can't just cover everybody. What the hell? Here's another, here's another one that is terribly, terribly high. And these numbers start to go really out of control as you go down this list here. Shop management communicates well. 27% of you strongly disagree. And I've I've run into that myself. 19% of you just straight up disagree. Now that adds up pretty freaking high. That is 46%. That means almost half of you say shop management doesn't communicate well. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. And I've talked about this in the past. Shop management, shop, shop uh, you know, service advisors and shop management. Sometimes these people, a lot of times, they aren't technicians. So even if they could communicate, they're not going to understand what the fuck you're talking about. And after a while, they're not going to care. And if you have complaints, really honestly, nobody ever wants to hear that shit. Okay. I think a smart manager, somebody who knows what he's doing and provides real honest to God leadership, will listen to whatever complaints you have and sort them out and maybe tell you, hey, look, I really can't do anything about that, but I'm going to work on this or that. And at least you got something that you can you can get corrected. But if they don't communicate well at all and they can't get through to you and they're not listening to you, then that's why it's 46 fucking percent. It's bad. It's bad. They need to pick it up. It says here the shop has a well-laid out career path that I can follow. Again, this one is uh three points less at 43%. I think a lot of you, and I've talked about this a lot lately, and uh I think a lot of you will probably upset with me that I would say something like this, but there's no room for advancement in the shop. The career path is just to be a technician and get better at being a technician. Sure. And I say the same thing every time. Here it comes again for like the millionth time. You could become a foreman, you could become a team leader, but all that does is put make you responsible for the shit that the other technicians can't do or won't do or do wrong. And that's not what you want. That's not any kind of career path, that's not advancement in the shop. Advancement in the shop should involve you reaching higher levels of training, reaching higher levels, going from an apprentice to a journeyman to a master and to whatever else they have after that. That's it. Getting more money and getting and getting more experience. That's all you're really going to get as far as your career path goes. Now, is that a good career path? I think it should be adequate for a lot of us. Because the only career path really is out of the shop. And I don't think a lot of you want to do that. I don't think a lot of you would pref would want to get into management. I don't think a lot of you would want to be a service advisor. I don't think a lot of you would want to move into parts. I don't, I just everywhere that you can advance, it's somewhere where, you know, if you like being a technician or if you're good at it, or both, you're not going to want to do it. The shop provides thorough and consistent performance reviews. That was real big. That was uh 52%. Uh, I I've worked in a lot of places where they didn't do it. Uh, where I work now, they really make an effort to do it. It never seems to involve a raise, which is fine. I guess. I don't know. You know, can I complain about what I make? I can. I'm not going to. You know, I that's the thing I tell people all the time personally, I don't ever ask for raises. I just get them. You know, I do my job, I come in and I just I bang away like a fucking jackhammer. I get the job done and I go home. If they want to give me more money, okay, cool. But I'm not going to go up to and go, uh, I need more money. But you know what? If I was making that median 44K a year, I'd fucking be compli I'd be asking for a raise a lot, especially with the inflation that we're we're experiencing right now. The next one is the shop does a good job teaching new techs and compensating mentors. I can't believe any of you agreed with any of that because I have not seen that. I have not ever seen that. There's nowhere I've ever seen that. 33% of you come strongly disagreed with 19 of you just disagreeing in a regular manner. Uh, that is a uh, let's put that together and add it all up. 52%, over half of you, know that you're not gonna get any kind of compensation for helping a new guy, helping an intern, helping somebody figure out how to do the job, helping the new guy out in any way. It's gonna cost you money. And I got I I have one technician in my shop who is a team leader, and so he gets harassed literally all day long by a couple of the technicians on his team that don't seem to be able to want to think, or they can't comprehend what's got to happen, or they they just can't do the job, or they don't do the job very well, whatever the case may be. And I'm not personally familiar with it. These are good kids who work hard, but they're the their grasp of what they have to do and what needs to happen and how to figure out what's going wrong with the vehicle, how to diagnose, they just don't have a good grasp on it. And so they're driving this guy kind of crazy. Next up here on the list is uh the shop helps out local schools. I gotta be honest with you here, helping out the local schools, I think it could very easily be a good thing, but it can also go terribly, terribly wrong. It depends on who's helping who with what. If they need if they need some sort of of financial help to buy equipment, or maybe you know you donate something to them, that could always be really, really good as far as having maybe some of your technicians go in and talk to the kids. That could conceivably be a bad thing. A lot of you felt that that that's not happening. You disagreed, 31% of you strongly disagreed, and 11% of you just regularly disagreed with that adding up to 42% of you, so almost half. Uh helping out the local schools, yeah. I think I think it should be a great thing, but uh I'm not I'm not sure what the benefits are. Are you gonna get a lot of kids from those schools? Uh, I don't know. You know, it depends. It depends on a lot of different things. There's a lot of factors to it. So whether or not that works out for you, that's it's a tough one. And then the very last item here, it says here the shop provides an adequate tool allowance or reimbursement. Well, shops got their ass beat on this one. 61% of you strongly disagreed with that. Now, my shop and none of the shops I've ever worked in offered me a fucking nickel of tool allowance or reimbursement. It was all on me. So uh I would have to say I strongly disagree. But some of the newer kids do get tool allowances and and have reimbursement on some of their tools. Does it seem fair to me? I don't know. I'm past it. I'm past it. I have I've had my tools, a good chunk of my tools. I've had it well over 20 years, they've long been paid for. Uh the Snap-on guy just walks by me. Do you need anything? No, see ya. I just don't need anything. Got everything I need. Did anybody help me buy it? Fuck no. A lot of times I had one dealer who would buy me special tools because I was doing specific jobs a lot. And if somebody else was using this the special tool you needed for that job and you had to wait, that was not good. So they bought me quite a few different tools, special tools from the brand I work for. And when I left that particular dealership, I gave them all back to them. I mailed them back. It's kind of weird, I know, but I took all the tools that they had given me, and I I felt an obligation to get them back in their hands. And I sent them back to them. All right. Yeah, 61% strongly disagreed, and 10% more disagreed, so that was 71%. So that's a lot of people who didn't get any kind of money to help reimburse them for the tools they needed to do the motherfucking job. Now there were some other categories here, such as the commute, maximum commute. Uh a lot of you did not want to drive for over an hour. 51% of you, it's too far away at if it takes an hour to get there. Another factor here was 40-hour work week. This was this was a really interesting one, too. Let me just touch on it real quick here. There were three categories here. The three categories are either way as long as there are no weekends, and then there was the four-day, 10-hour day, or the five-day, eight-hour day. Just to give you a little insight as to my day. Uh, I'm expected to work nine hours, so I don't fit into that. And I typically work 10 and sometimes 11 just because I want to be done with what I'm working on so I can start fresh in the morning. And sometimes it involves working till seven or eight o'clock at night. Here's how it broke down because diesel technicians and st and automotive technicians were vastly different. Automotive technicians, 40% of them did not want to work weekends, and I can pencil myself in on that one. I fucking hate working weekends. It's bullshit. And especially the very last weekend that I worked, last I worked not this last Saturday, the one before it. Everybody who had an appointment that day from eight o'clock to noon all showed up at one time, noon. We had 16 waiters for like a five-man uh waiter, uh, five-man crew, 16 waiters at noon, which, oh, by the way, corresponds perfectly with lunchtime. I gotta tell you, it makes me hot. I think if somebody has an appointment at 8 o'clock and they show up at noon, you tell them to get the fuck out of Dodge. Get the fuck out of here. Can't show up on time, go fuck yourself. And and we we had to we had a mad ass fucking scramble. And for some of the technicians that work on the team that I'm on, making them work fast is definitely not a good thing. It's how mistakes are made. So that's not good. Okay, so I don't want to work weekends. Weekends suck dick. And automotive technicians said 40% of them said, yeah, weekends suck dick. Diesel technicians said 28%. So apparently diesel technicians don't really care too much about the weekend. I mean, it's not almost 50%, it's just a quarter, almost a quarter. Uh the four-day work week with 10-hour days, that was preferred by 34% of automotive technicians, but 42% of diesel technicians. Now, I think I can understand that because I think being a diesel technician is is probably exponentially more difficult than being an automotive technician just because of the size. And with diesel technicians, you have to deal with a lot of dirty shit. Because we have, as an automotive technician, I worked on diesels as well because we had cars that were diesels, and everything that goes on with them is just fucking filthy. You pull a valve cover off on a A diesel and it is just packed with goo. I mean, at least in my experience, maybe they're not supposed to be like that. I don't know. They put they put oil in them that's like a special oil, and then when you drain it out, it is as black as anything you've ever seen that's black. It is nuts how shitty that oil looks when you change it. And I don't like to fuck with it because it stains the fucking shit out of everything it touches. It stains the shit out of it and it smells bad. So if if a diesel technician wants to work four days and get 10 hour days out of it and not have to do it for three days, I think that that's probably the reason why. It's just kind of a crappy thing to have to do. Uh diesel technicians, I think they're happier because their customers are smarter and they don't make unrealistic demands and they don't think that they're trying to rip them off. And they would like to get as much work as they can get done in four days and have three days off. To me, that makes diesel mechanics smarter than automotive mechanics. They probably are. I don't know. We can, I mean, I'm not trying to start a war, be a war of uh, you know, uh not trying to start an intellectual war with uh diesel technicians because I'm an automotive technician. I just feel like it's possible they are smarter than us. The five-day work week came in at 26% for automotive technicians and 30% for diesel technicians. So most of us, it looks like we would prefer either one of those four-day or the five-day schedules as long as we don't have to fucking work Saturday or Sunday for that, for Christ's sake. Probably some dealers somewhere that are open on Sundays, too, because we are all capitalists, right? We have to make money. There might be somebody who needs something done in their car on Sunday, so we got to be open. There was a lot of other stuff to this thing. I I recommend that you go in and you uh search for Runchway, voice of the technician report for 2026 and look it over yourselves. Okay. Here is uh here's the last point I want to get to, and then I want to get off. But the last part of this is basically what technicians want, okay? And here is a way this chart breaks down. Uh what technicians want and what what technicians and students look for in employers, okay. And here's another list. And it's this is broken down into threes as far as uh what you want, and the three categories are not important, nice to have, and must have. Uh, at the very top of the list, at 87%, the shop must have proper equipment in the shop. 87% of us thought that that was definitely important, no question about it. Uh, nice to have 13%. That was all of it. Nobody thought it wasn't important at all. Everybody thought it was important at least a little bit. Paid vacation, of course, 87% of us again thought it's a must-have. And I feel like it's a must-have because if I don't get out of the shop for uh a couple of days or a week every few months, I'm gonna fucking murder somebody. That's that's basically what it comes down to. Uh 12% said it's nice to have, and there was even a uh 1% said somehow 1% of you out there said it's not important. Trust me, it is. Retirement fund. Now, here's where this gets interesting, okay, because I think it's interesting that anybody who is up to and including the age of 50 in this particular occupation, if you're worried about a retirement fund and you think you can keep working into your 60s, I'm gonna tell you right now, it's tough. Okay, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, and I I've slowed down quite a bit, and I have to double check my work a little bit more. Sometimes I get down to put the lift under the car and I have a little trouble getting back up because the knees are not so good. Um, so if you are worried about a retirement fund or you think it's a must-have at 73%, that's extremely optimistic for a lot of you, okay? I would definitely love to see a lot of you, and I mean a lot, lot, a lot of you retire from some other occupation. Okay. This one, this one will, this one, it's not as bad as being a running back in the NFL, but this particular occupation will hurt you. It will ruin your back, it will ruin your fingers, your toes, your knees, and even your head if you're not careful. I like to think of myself as somebody who's tough. I go to work, I get up in the morning, I feel great, I feel really good. I come home, I'm a little sore, but it's good. It means that everything's still working. Uh retirement fund, it's important, yeah, if you think you're gonna keep doing it for a long, long time, okay? So 73% of you think it's a good thing. It's a must-have. Your employer must have some sort of retirement fund for you. Paid training came in at 66%. Paid training is uh, I I feel like for myself personally, pay training is is absolute must-have at 66%, no question about it. You pay training helps you keep up with what's going on because you can fall behind real, real quick. Okay, there's some crazy shit coming out, and there's been some stuff that I've had to learn all on my own that nobody has endeavored to train me. A lot of times, what I'm finding is that uh dealerships and shops don't want to send people to training because it means that they're not earning the company any money. Well, that's a fucking horribly capitalistic way to think about it. Getting paid training for your employees makes it more valuable to you and to themselves, and it's a good thing. And 66% of you said that it's definitely something you have to have from your employer. 32% of you said it's nice to have. And adding those two together, 2% of you said, and it's not important at all. And I guess 2% of you think you fucking know it all already. No weekends, 50% of us said, yeah, uh, that's a must-have. Obviously, if you're looking for a job and maybe you're one of these, you're uh uh somebody who is uh a member of a certain religion where you're not allowed to work on Saturdays. I don't want to name them off. There's a few everything from being Jewish to being Rastafarian. No weekends, yeah. You know, who wants to work Saturdays? 50% of us say I don't want to work Saturdays. 43% say it's nice to have, nice to not work Saturdays. 7% of you said they don't give a fuck. Okay, fine. Uh well-documented career path. Here's the one that I had a little concern with. Well-documented career path. We have come up with uh a way of having a career path, but it does not involve real any real honest to God sort of uh goals as far as becoming a team leader or a foreman or anything like that. That's not really what the K plan was about. We came up with the K plan to help you earn more money and get training and see a light at the end of the tunnel. And by the time you you actually do retire, if you decide to continue to do this into your 50s and even your 60s, and you retire from it and you've made enough money to do that, you're still a technician at the end. Unless you got the fuck out of the shop. You could be a team leader, you're still a technician. You could be a foreman, you're still a technician. The only real advancement, the only real career path for you is just to earn more money. 50 46% of you said that that's a must-have. We'll install the K-Plan and we'll show you what we're gonna do for you from the beginning of your career until the very end. And there's gonna be goals and milestones, and there's gonna be raises, and there's gonna be uh different uh certifications, different titles, different job titles. You can go from being a uh member to an associate to certified to a master to a master elite. That's what we have. It's what I am. I find it a little pretentious, but hey, it works. Whatever, they can call me whatever they want, as long as they as long as they pay me. It was worth a raise when they did it. I didn't even have to do anything. Kind of funny. Thorough and consistent performance reviews. Yeah, 31% of you said, yeah, we definitely got to have that. Uh 56, 55% of you, they they broke this one down uh quite a bit. 55.6% of you said it would be nice to have that. 13.1% of you said, yeah, fuck it. I don't need that shit. And then at the end here, adequate tool allowance or reimbursement. And this goes against what we were just talking about in the previous section. 12% of you said you gotta have it. 74% of you said it would be nice to have. And then there was 14% of you said, yeah, fuck it. I bought them already. I'm not gonna cry over spilled milk. These are all things, also too. All of these things, and this is why I want you to look at this. I want you to call this up and look at it. And then when they come out with the survey in the fall, in the late fall and early winter, I want you to respond to it because people are starting to look at this stuff to try to figure out why we get into the business and then pretty quickly we get right the fuck back out again. And the the answers are here. But for you as a technician or as a potential technician, as a student, or as somebody who wants to get into this field, these are the questions you want to ask. And you need to decide how important they are to you, not to everybody else. That's one of the things that that this is this is really sorted out is that this is, you know, proper equipment in a shop. 87% of people said it's a big deal. Well, maybe you don't need proper equipment. Maybe you're so handy and and you can, you know, you can improvise and adapt and overcome to the point where they don't have the equipment, you'll still get the job done. You have to decide what each one of these things means to you, how important it is to you. And then when you interview with shops or dealerships, then you have to decide for yourself which of these is the most important thing to look for in that shop. Is the pay good? Is the paid vacation good? Is the retirement fund in place? Is there paid training? Do you have to work weekends? All these things on this particular report are things that you need to consider, and you need to consider them before you go and you talk to these service managers or the HR people at these places where you're attempting to work. It's important because the last thing you want to have happen is to be shocked and surprised by something that they do after they hire you. You know, they say, Oh, you only get one week of paid vacation for the first five years. You're like, wait a fuck a minute. We talked about this. You said two weeks. Don't make me quit on day two. I'm sure it's happened. I'm sure it's happened. Now, there were a lot of other facts and figures and things that they went on about here. And I really I suggest that if you want to do a deep dive on this, you could certainly do that. Uh this particular uh report, it was pointed out to me by Eric. This report is extremely professional and also uh detailed in its analytics, much more than the report from last year. The report from last year was a little more glamorous and had less information in it. It still got the point across, or at least it seemed to. And a lot of the uh a lot of the factors that they're that they're looking at have gone backwards. And and what that means is in plain English is the technician shortage is going to continue to get worse. And this is your Uncle Jimmy's take on it. Certain people, and a lot of them don't know who they are, they don't know that I'm addressing them, but there's a lot of people out there who need to fucking pull their head out of their ass. And as their head comes out of their ass, they need to grab their wallet and they need to fork over. Otherwise, this problem is just going to continue to get worse, and eventually you will end up with empty, empty shops. And that because that's where it's headed right now. And as I've said before, a lot of this stuff I've been talking about for a long time, some of it sounds so completely and utterly redundant that it might even make some of you puke because you've heard it so often. But the technician shortage is going to get worse and worse and worse until the pay becomes commensurate with the work. The respect comes in from everybody who deals with us, not just the service managers, not just the owners, but from the customers and the advisors and the parts department and the car porters and everybody else we have to deal with. Do we deserve respect? I say a resounding yes. If you're out there breaking your ass, buying your own tools, fixing people's cars, making them safe, making them run right, then yes, god damn it, you deserve respect. A little appreciation thrown in there on the top, like a little salt and pepper, a little Italian seasoning on that would be just fucking fine and dandy with all of us, wouldn't it? Yeah. But if you work for some of these people who just don't see the forest for the trees, they're not gonna, they're not gonna make your life easier, they're not gonna make your life better, they're not gonna listen to you, they're not gonna help you out, they're not gonna pay you. Folks, it's called grease the wheels for a reason. They're not talking about it very much. I say this all the time. They're not talking about it as much as they used to, simply because when you when you shout from the highest hilltop that there's a technician shortage, technicians hear that and realize that we're in the driver's seat. We are in charge of what happens to us. And you treat us like shit, you're as a shop manager or a shop owner, you're just fucking yourself. And if you're one of these pieces of shit who think that we're pieces of shit, I hope that your customers have to wait two and three months to get their cars in the shop because you don't have any technicians. All right. Listen, uh I hated to be a negative Nelly on this, and I I think that a lot of this information should speak to a lot of people, and I think a lot of people, it they're not listening. That's unfortunate. I hate that uh because it just keeps it just seems to be getting worse and worse. We've tried to I've personally have tried to spell out how to make it better. Uh, I've come up with with programs. Eric and I have come up with programs to try to make it better all the way around. We've come up with the K plan. We've developed uh a foolproof and awesome and and really the the standard of the industry as far as doing videos. I know you don't want to do videos, but the more the more you do videos and the better videos you make, they're going to help you earn more money regardless of what else is going on in your shop. So we're trying to help you with the solution. We're trying to get people to respect us. We're trying to get people to treat us better. Runchway's trying to help too. All of us are out there trying to help you. We just need uh, well, we need to hear a pop and a s and a s. All right. Listen, that's enough of me beating everybody up about what they do and what they don't do and what's good and what's bad. And I want to say it once again here at the end of the podcast. Thank you very much to Runchway and even ASC for bringing us this information and bringing it to us in in this particular manner that shows that this is a real honest God problem that they need to address in a lot of different places. Thank you. Thank you very much for what you do. Thank you very much for what all of you do. And in order for me to thank you and show you my appreciation, I'm just gonna go see ya.