Grease The Wheels Podcast
A Master Technician, a microphone, 30 years of experience in the Automotive Industry: buckle up! Come along as we take a look at the current state of the automotive industry from the point of view of the guys and gals turning the wrenches. So no matter what you fix, how you fix it, or how many tools you have to fix it with: welcome to the Grease the Wheels Nation. Also once in a while we take a look at the makes and models of cars we work on through the lenses of history, economics, politics, our own personal experiences and the experiences of our listeners. Special thanks to The Wrenching Network, Curien, Surfwrench, and Murray the dog.
Episodes
352 episodes
Episode 346: The Technician Shortage Part II: Money
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy comes down hard on one of the major contributing factors of the technician shortage - the money. From warranty times that keep getting slashed to an abysmally low starting average pay, th...
•
Episode 346
•
1:05:35
Episode 345: Society’s Problem
On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle jimmy starts in on a series that is addressing the technician shortage. Throughout the history of media that has included cars, mechanics (and their modern iteration of technicians) have been u...
•
Episode 345
•
1:08:32
Episode 344: Greasy Heads & Hands
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a common problem and solves it in the most insane way that he possibly can! We have all seen manuals, repair instructions, and bulletins that seem to be written by someone who has n...
•
45:47
Episode 343: Full Metal Service Advisors
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy outlines the service advisor boot camp that will break your service advisors of all of their bad habits, and build them back up with all of the right ones. All it will take is sheer psych...
•
Episode 343
•
1:16:15
Episode 342: Batter Up
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we delve into the world of statistics, and come up with some genuinely novel applications of baseball numbers and terminology to help your shop run better. RBI for service advisors, Errors also mostl...
•
Episode 342
•
1:08:34
Episode 341: Schrodinger’s Management
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we go over some of the highlights and lowlights of automotive management. One of the main things that we have noticed is that in the rise of the corporate owned, multi-location dealership group era, ...
•
Episode 341
•
1:16:08
Episode 340: B.O.B.
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, we answer a question that absolutely no one asked: what if the safety systems in your car could be funny? To do this, we use the framework of our personal favorite retired New York State Trooper, Jimm...
•
Episode 340
•
1:05:00
Episode 339: Video Kills (The Customers) Part IV
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we close out our anthology on the Video MultiPoint Inspection, DVI, vMPI, etc -- with the most important part of the equation: the customers. Taking a step back, part of the reason why our customers ...
•
Episode 339
•
1:02:35
Episode 338: Video Kills (The Managers) Part III
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy loosely defines the roles of the management staff when it comes to doing Video MultiPoint Inspections. The main part of the management role in video MPI adoption is to properly i...
•
Episode 338
•
1:04:58
Episode 337: Video Kills (The Service Advisors) Part II
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy follows up part one about Video being a tool for mechanics with part 2 about Service Advisors. When a Service Advisor has technicians doing the video, or in some rare instances is doing t...
•
Episode 337
•
1:12:52
Episode 336: Video Kills (The Techs) Part 1
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over some of the finer points of the Video Multi-Point Inspection; more specifically all of the very valid reasons that technicians do not want to do them! From being camera shy to not bein...
•
Episode 336
•
1:07:53
Episode 335: Wish List
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy makes a comprehensive wish list of things that we would like to see in the automotive industry. This list doesn’t leave anyone out either, with special focus on customers to start it off, ...
•
Episode 335
•
1:14:06
Episode 334: End of Year Stats
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over some very interesting survey results from inside the automotive industry from WrenchWay. They asked a lot of the right questions when it comes to things like job satisfaction, training...
•
Episode 334
•
1:41:52
Episode 333: Diag Rehash
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over an oldie-but-a-goodie with his 10 thesis on automotive diagnosis. With modern automobiles becoming more and more complex, checking batteries (especially when there are tons of we...
•
Episode 333
•
56:16
Episode 332: Monetary Abuse
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy outlines all of the ways that flat rate technicians lose time and money to the inefficiencies of the dealership system itself. Support staff and Service Advisors are key culprits, between not se...
•
Episode 332
•
1:01:44
Episode 331: Unreasonable
On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy talks about the nature of customers. No one likes having to pay for their car to be fixed, except some of weirdo’s who can tell when we are running the right gas or not. No, most customers...
•
Episode 331
•
1:06:03
Episode 330: AI Revolution
On this weeks episode of Grease the wheels, Uncle Jimmy dreams of electric sheep - er, service advisors! Ai is filtering it’s way into dealerships more and more. Some of the immediate casualties of this are going to be in sales, as a well put t...
•
Episode 330
•
55:12
EpIsode 329: Tug of War
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about some of the pull factors that are in fact causing the tech shortage. This is a significant problem in the industry, and thankfully some seriously high up people are actually talking about it. ...
•
Episode 329
•
1:16:26
Episode 328: Gentlemen, Check Your Engines
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes to task a newsfeed article that stumbled across his unnamed homepage (it was probably AOL) regarding the common warning lights in cars and what they mean — according to someone who ...
•
Episode 328
•
1:46:21
Episode 327: Then & Now
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy watches the interview with Jim Farley, who unsurprisingly completely misses the point of why there is a technician shortage. He does mention that there is one, so that actually gives him ...
•
Episode 327
•
1:01:24
Episode 326: From the Files
On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we look through the archives at some of the hits and misses of the previous 325 episodes of the podcast. We have undoubtedly had some ridiculous fun so far, including pondering children’s programming...
•
Episode 326
•
1:11:37
Episode 325: More New Guy and “NOS” Guy Survival Kit
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy follows up last week’s episode with all of the stuff that he forgot — it happens, because as a new guy there is a ton of things to learn in a short period of time and sometimes the people teachi...
•
Episode 325
•
1:03:02
Episode 324: New Guy Survival Kit
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, we have some serious words of wisdom (and rants) for the new guys. If you have new guys in the shop, this is probably a good one to start them out with, because it should theoretically cut about 90% of the ...
•
Episode 324
•
1:10:35
Episode 323: Life From The Fence
On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes in depth on the pros and cons of being an auto mechanic. Despite some of our previous episodes, there are many pros to being an auto mechanic. The cars have gotten safer, the shops in many ...
•
Episode 323
•
1:38:16