U-R-G On the Go
An informative podcast for the United Recyclers Group. Each week we will feature an entertaining guest that will share their knowledge and information with you, providing you with tips and tools to help you become a more profitable business.
U-R-G On the Go
Profit Margins in Crisis: A Recycler's Guide to Survival
The automotive recycling industry has hit a challenging period, and JC Cahill doesn't sugarcoat it. As he shares with URG On The Go hosts, recyclers across the country are experiencing significant margin compression - with parts prices dropping roughly 30% while vehicle acquisition costs remain stubbornly high.
This financial squeeze marks a stark reversal from the pandemic-era boom when supply chain disruptions made recycled parts more valuable than ever. Now, as manufacturers have restored their production capabilities and aftermarket companies have restocked their warehouses, recyclers are feeling the pinch from multiple directions: labor costs rising, insurance premiums increasing, and customers expecting lower prices.
Drawing from his experience consulting with recycling businesses nationwide, Cahill offers tactical advice for weathering this storm. He emphasizes practical approaches to cost management without sacrificing quality or service - from implementing performance-based compensation systems to critically examining every expense line for necessity. Small changes, like controlling tool distribution or reconsidering vendor relationships, can yield surprising savings.
Perhaps most intriguing is Cahill's perspective on recruitment. Together with Beth from Phoenix Auto Parts, he's challenging the industry's conventional wisdom about hiring. Rather than limiting searches to people with auto recycling experience, he advocates looking for transferable skills and characteristics that align with specific positions. The best future dismantler might currently be working in an entirely different industry.
Looking ahead, Cahill believes we may be approaching the bottom of this market correction, with better days on the horizon. He hints at exciting developments coming to the industry that will particularly benefit forward-thinking recyclers. Catch him at the upcoming URG Conference in Orlando (April 10-12) to learn more about recruitment strategies, market conditions, and how to position your business for the industry's next phase.
Welcome one and all to URG On the Go podcast. This is your podcast. It's the true voice of the automobile recycling industry. It was for the pros that are on the go that have a need to know your co-host. But the real co-host of this program is the talented amanda morrison from the urg. She is the member director of member and vendor relations. So, amanda, how are you this beautiful day?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. We're having some great weather here in texas. Didn't uh, didn't see a whole lot of winter, so it's been good. I'm nervous for the summertime, though. Holy moly, we're going to have some hot weather. How are you?
Speaker 1:You're supposed to have winds. We have a little overcast right now in Georgia and of course we're going to be talking to a great guest who's in beautiful sunny Florida.
Speaker 2:you know where we both should be exactly where we'll all be here in in about a month, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, through the 12th in beautiful orlando, florida. Amanda, I'll turn it over to you so you can introduce. Now you know what we should do before we even have our guest on, we should tell them listeners. We are right now between 8,000, 8,500 regular listeners. When we get up to 10,000 listeners that hit the like button and the review button, we will be in the 1% bracket where everybody tells everybody listen to URG on the go. So we're not too far apart. So when you get up to 10,000, we actually have you know Spotify and iTunes will actually send us out a certificate of being in the 1% market. We have 1% of you know. Those are up there with all the podcasts from Fox television and all those people. It's incredible, dj.
Speaker 2:You've done an incredible job. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Amanda, we were doing good, but when you got on board, boom. And of course having our guests on helps a bunch, so I'll turn it over to you so you can tell our listeners about our wonderful guests for this episode awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, dj. Yes, we've been getting lots of traction on here and we appreciate all of our listeners and we love having guests on, like our JC Cahill that we have on today, industry expert and Lina Vinbatch, pro over there. Jc, thank you so much for being on today.
Speaker 3:Amanda and DJ, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be on the podcast with you guys today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So we wanted to dig in and hear what you've been up to and what you're seeing in the industry, you know, with your consulting business, and what you're seeing out there that's going on. Can you give us a little detail?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. First of all, congratulations. The URG show is right around the corner and we're very excited to be there. I believe that we are a gold or platinum sponsor this year, so we're very excited to be there. With VidMatch Pro, we've got some new products coming out and some new things to see. So stop and see us at our booth.
Speaker 3:But really quickly, taking a step back for the last probably since last time we've talked, it's been a tough six months. I'm not going to lie. Recyclers have had some interesting bumps in the road. We've had quite a bit of margin compression. The price of vehicles have not dropped like we'd hoped, but the price of parts have. So we've seen a significant reduction in part prices about 30% in the last give or take year. We've seen some margin compression. Cost of labor is actually up, which we all know is to get good people. It's been expensive. Insurance has been up. All alternate expenses to the industry has been a little bit of a challenge and the people that.
Speaker 3:So I work with about 20 clients quarterly and about 10 clients monthly and I review their financials. We set goals. We do individual coaching. We do a lot of personal development with them within their business. So I work within fathers and sons, husbands and wives, husbands, wives and sons and daughters that are coming up into the business. So I have a very nice diverse clientele and what I found is that, regardless of the size, in the past six months or so we've seen some really difficult, difficult times.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to say it's been really rosy, it's been. It hasn't been devastating, but it hasn't been the years in past. You know, a few years ago, with the pandemic, that was one of our most positive time. It's the first time in our industry we saw parts prices increasing. We actually saw parts prices increase because we had such supply chain deficiencies and we had such a degradation in supply chain management that the recycled part became a much more viable product for us and our customers were more open-minded because the supply just wasn't there. Now we're going to the post, now we're going to the, you know, like any up and down market. If you ever look at the market of you know, hey, as the market goes up, it's got to come down and I truly believe that we're starting to see the very bottom of this, or maybe even on the uptick. It's hard to say, but I can tell you the last six months have been a challenge for some very good recyclers in the space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so kind of just the cost of the vehicles you're thinking is kind of attributed to that and just being able to get the parts essentially.
Speaker 3:More in the fact that the part prices that originally, when we had one, the pandemic that went up caused us to be able to pay more for the vehicles.
Speaker 3:And then, as the manufacturers have created less vehicles and interest rates being high, people are not replacing their vehicle. So the new car business has been difficult also. So a combination of slow new car sales will then increase, then keeps the kind of used car values up which then, in train, makes the used parts business stay at a higher level. Well, what happened on the other side of that is the manufacturers have reproduced their OE parts and their supply chains have come back to normalization. Aftermarket companies that during the pandemic couldn't get their products in now have doubled down and their product, their shelves are full and there's full warehouses full of aftermarket product that they've got price and pressure to sell. And then we come back and say, hey, we don't have as many vehicles to buy and the price? So because there's less vehicles to buy, the price of the vehicle still stays high. But we have to stay part.
Speaker 3:Our parts are not necessarily directly tied to the cost of the car, they're tied to the market, so as a price of a hood. This happens all the time in the industry and I'm going to give it just a quick snippet. If we get a backorder situation where Ford, gm, chrysler, any of the manufacturers have a part that's unavailable. We as recyclers feel that very fast because a dealer, a repair shop and customer calls us and says I need this part. I can't get it to fix my car. And then we have it on a vehicle that we have purchased and we sell it off. We see that because when the parts start to sell faster, we raise our prices. When we raise our prices, the component goes up and then we can obviously pay more for the vehicle. Well, now we've seen the reverse of that Part prices have dropped and in theory the price of the vehicle should drop, but because there's been a lesser amount of vehicles available to our industry, we're feeling some of that pain industry.
Speaker 2:We're feeling some of that pain, okay, and how do you advise your yards to kind of handle that and overcome that hurdle?
Speaker 3:So the first thing I tell them to do is really look at start with do I need it? Go through their expense lines, go through. A lot of times when we're running these businesses we sign up for everything. You know we need this and this and this and this and this. And you know, and we're even our, even our product. We say, you know if you don't need it. You know we're really passionate about making sure we bring enough value that our product is involved in the, in the, in the response to the customer every day.
Speaker 3:But looking around, there are always little things in your business that you can kind of cut back on, and I don't want to say cut back on buying cars. I'm talking about looking at overtime. First and foremost is labor. Looking at all the people that you work with, looking at labor, looking at their overtime, looking at commission plans, and is your a variable? A lot of guys think that their labor is unvariable. Labor is very variable. It's just how you choose to do it. Are you paying them hourly? Are you paying them on performance-based plans? Are you watching all of your labor lines and making sure that you know you're maximizing labor? You're not just paying people overtime to kind of stand around and drink coffee.
Speaker 3:That's number one. Number two look at your expense lines, really dig into your financials and say, you know, is every expense that I have, is it benefiting my company and what is the benefit to my company? And we have a lot of these expenses out there that are they're marginally beneficial. And you know, what I'm saying to people is, do you really need it and does it really matter? And they say, well, every once in a while it does. And I'm asking can you, can you live without it? That's, that's really the second line. And then the third piece is maximizing. You know, really looking at your business and looking at it from all angles and saying, okay, we're, you know, if I, if I, if I'm flat in sales, and what I've seen mostly is most people haven't really had a reduction in sales. They've had kind of a flattening of sales. Their sales are the same as they were last year or quarter over quarter or year over year, quarter over quarter.
Speaker 3:They're seeing the same revenue numbers but they're not seeing the same end profit. And the third piece is shop your insurance. Shop your opportunities. Like if you're looking around and you have a hauler that moves your cars and he's charging you $200 to move a vehicle. Make sure that that's the best price. Shop all of your vendors. Really really dig in and say am I getting the best price? Am I getting the best opportunity? Am I maximizing this so that I'm using it? And then the last piece is look at all your supplies. This so that I'm using it. And then last piece is look at all your supplies, look at everything that you're using and think you know, can we? By simple, I'll give you a really good example Over the years saw blades that you cut the quarter panels with and cut cali converters with and cut different parts of the components of the car with.
Speaker 3:Each one of my parts, pullers and dismantlers had a sawzall and each one of those blades they're called fire blades. They're very expensive and they come from different people and I'm not trying to pick a brand, it was just a brand that we used. But the blades run anywhere from $5 all the way up to $25. And we would buy them in bulks of 50 and 100. And a guy would go out to go cut a quarter pan or whatever and he'd grab a handful of blades. So he'd grab a handful of blades, so he grabbed three or four or five blades and he'd run out and cut the car and guess what, for whatever reason all those blades were just gone and if he would and they were just gone, they just just never came home and did he really need all five blades?
Speaker 3:or or is it something that if you gave him one blade and we did this with with paint markers when they gave us the empty paint marker we gave them a new paint marker. So we had a trade-in process and just little. There are little things that you can do as a recycler to start to minimize some of your costs, some of your expenses, some of your overtime. I've found in most of the places I'm working with I can find anywhere from one to 5% in a savings within a company and not change the level of service, the level of people you know, performance of my people. I'm not chopping people's pay, I'm not doing anything, I'm just being frugal. And that's my old. You know my old mom who I grew up in Vermont. She was a frugal Vermonter. She made sure she used every bit of that toothpaste.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm talking about. Definitely, yeah, and evaluating, like you were saying. That third piece was evaluating your vendors and also so that's something that I'm kind of honing in on with. A lot of my members is going through all these benefits and a lot of people are using different platforms for data feeds where they're paying for it, whereas it comes with your URG member benefits, like PartsTrader. That's a big one that potentially you might be paying someone to integrate and getting your inventory feed where you can actually feed that to URG through URG to PartsTrader and you can eliminate that fee. So that's kind of a huge-.
Speaker 3:That's a perfect example, and I can name 10 other URG benefits that are out there that are just really good things that in the membership of the group of being a member of URG, these are the value propositions that you get the core program, some of the website stuff.
Speaker 3:I mean you guys have so many things that are one, reasonably priced for the recycler. Two, I mean even your warranty. You guys have done such a beautiful job on your warranty group that you've made it so it's affordable for even the small recycler. And I'm mentoring I'm mentoring and I say small recycler below $500,000 a month or less, and I'm mentoring somebody right now and we're talking about putting that program in play with you guys, because you guys have made a program that's good for even the small recycler and people are like well, why would I do that?
Speaker 3:I've got time and I can talk the guy through it. And it really comes down to trust. When you start trading within networks and you start trading on the trailer systems and you start trading within groups, people want to trust that you're going to help make sure that their components follow the same process or follow some process to make sure that it was installed correctly.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, 100%. Yeah, that warranty program has really helped a lot of yards take away the time from their salespeople. You know salespeople want to sit there and sell. They don't want to have to. You know, try to decide whether or not to replace an engine or, you know, see what's actually wrong if it was an install issue or whatnot. And that's the nice part is that you know we have people that will help kind of facilitate all of that and take the headaches away from you and your sales team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you guys have done an excellent job with it and the follow through and the communication and even the savings. As much as we all think we're omnipotent and we know exactly what goes on with these units, you guys find out that there's a speed sensor on whatever and if they replace that speed sensor the transmission is good. It only takes one claim to pay for that service for almost a year, like really one. If you save one claim and we joke with VinMatch Pro, it takes one wrong part order to pay for VinMatch Pro. It takes one claim savings with you guys to pay for that whole service for a year.
Speaker 2:Yep, 100%, yep, exactly. This is all such good information, dj. I think we might be ready for a break.
Speaker 1:You got it, girl. Let's take a break, folks, and we'll be right back. It's great JC K Hold tight, you got it, girl. Let's take a break, folks, and we'll be right back with the great JC Cable Hold tight, we'll be right back.
Speaker 4:Urg can help you streamline your business for maximum efficiency and increased profits. Access powerful software and unique tools. Receive top-level training with industry experts. Network with hundreds of recyclers. Employ e-commerce solutions to boost business. Receive support, resources and discounts Starting at just $150 a month. It's the smartest investment you will make for your business this year. Go to u-r-gcom and click on Become a Member. Your path to a profitable future is just a click away. That's you-r-gcom.
Speaker 1:Welcome back listeners. Of course you know you're listening to URG on the Go Podcast, the number one podcast in the auto recycling industry. I want all of you to know. I know you know your business, but URG helps you grow your business. We are available on Spotify, itunes, pandora, stitcher, iheartmedia, amazon or wherever you get your podcasts. Now JC Cahill is speaking at URG along with I'm going to tell, I'm just going to name one or two others Dan Snyder, the great, daylon Zartman, the number one guy for EV vehicles, ryan Falco, mike Conkle, rob Rainwater all of these people, if you went to listen to them, you'd pay thousands of dollars. And to get a chance to listen to J Cahill at the conference, you need to be there April 10th through the 12th and, without further ado, I'll hand it over to you, amanda.
Speaker 2:Thank you, dj. You're so good at those tagline. Seriously, they do a good job, jc.
Speaker 3:I love well, I could have DJ talk to me all night long. The thing is, I find something it'd be like an infomercial at night. I'd be like, oh, $19.95, and then there's more. I agree.
Speaker 2:He knows what he's doing. I love it. Thank you, DJ. Yeah, so, JC, you're going to be speaking at the conference. Kind of give us a little bit what you're thinking about, what you're going to be speaking at the conference. Kind of give us a little bit what you're thinking about, what you're going to be speaking on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's a couple. I think I'm speaking twice. One of them is obviously an industry one about Vimesh Pro and some stuff there. That's pretty standard with us. We'll come see our booth and we'll kind of talk to you about that. The second one we're talking about is, you know, finding, recruiting and developing people. You know the struggle that we hear all the time is it's hard to find people in our industry that do our job. But what we've really been able to hone down and I'm working with, actually, beth from Phoenix Auto Parts, so Beth is their training. She's either a vice president or a training director and she manages and controls all the training for all of Phoenix, which is, I think, about over 500 people.
Speaker 3:And we both have known each other for years and we have very similar outlooks on, you know, looking outside of the industry to find the best people that fit our business. And you sit there and say to yourself, well, why does that matter? I want people with industry experience. And you come to find that some of my best people weren't from the industry. We just looked at their characteristics of the job that they have and we taught them the way we wanted them to learn and a lot of times I hear people say, well, I want to hire this guy from this place and this guy from this place, and they bring and I joke around, it's a dog with new fleas. They bring their own positive and negative habits that they were taught. They bring their positive and negative experiences that they've learned and a lot of times the business that you're building or the culture that you're creating isn't where they came from. That's why they left and now they're bringing some of those bad habits and possibly good habits to your business.
Speaker 3:But more times than not it can make it more difficult. Now, professional salespeople, professional dismantlers, professional parts pullers, professional admin they're all professionals out there. The question is is how do I find the right people to fit my business and how do I find the characteristics and the qualifications? And then where would I go? Look Like that was the question that really we both kind of said is you know what positions? Or where would I go find a great salesperson that wasn't a salesperson? Where would I go find a great dismantler that wasn't a dismantler? Where would I go find a great delivery driver that wasn't a delivery driver?
Speaker 3:And you know, the exciting part is, I don't want to give away the goods until the conference, but we've got some really exciting ideas and some really 100% proven tactics to get some great people read through the resume debacle and start thinking outside of the industry, to really start changing your business. Because if you're only fishing in the same industry pond, you're only going to get the same type of people that are in our industry. But when you start to really look outside of that, you can really uptick your business. There's some exciting people out there. There's some exciting young people out there that really they work a little different. But as long as you're willing to think outside the box and you're willing to work with them, there is some brilliant, fun, interesting, hardworking, genuine people. And everybody says people don't want to work. Today I completely disagree. I believe that there are people out there that you may have to change how you, as an employee, work with them, but doesn't mean they don't want to work. It's just their expectations are higher and different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so working with them and kind of meeting them halfway, and yeah, I completely agree with you. You know, looking outside of the industry I know I was talking to Lance over at BYOT. He says he carries his cards everywhere because you know waitresses are some of the best. You know people that you can kind of see their attitude and see what they bring to work and if they're willing to be there and put a smile on their face, you know they potentially could be a really good employee for you and being able to kind of identify that when you're out in the wild, right.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And yeah, don't steal all my thunder, miss. Yeah, that's absolutely right. There are some job characteristics out there that when you start looking and you start thinking about these things and even some of the jobs that I can tell you from my consulting side, the two jobs that are the most difficult to recruit for today are a parts puller and a dismantler, bar none hardest jobs. And it's not necessarily because the jobs are undoable or that the people aren't out there. It's that the days of auto shop and the days of BOCES and things like that that that did automotive repair are limited.
Speaker 3:And there is those programs aren't as, as those programs aren't as uh, you know, it's like, it's like the, it's like the, the 4-H and some of the, some of those blue collar programs aren't as prevalent as they used to be and so, with the reduction of those programs, the kids that would do those jobs or I say kids, the young men or women that would do those jobs, necessarily just haven't been taught.
Speaker 3:So the question is is how do you find and build and I'm going to go back, you know, and DJ, I'm going to date you a little bit apprenticeships, right, how do you build a qualified apprenticeship with a young man or woman to work with you and give them a goal and an opportunity and obstacle to get there? I mean, we had and this was about four years ago when we were running New England Auto and Truck we had some of those people, some of our dismantlers and parts pullers because of our pay programs, and they were very qualified, they did a really good job, make close to six figure income because they, because they worked very efficient, very hard and they were just great people and they did a good job. And if you, I'm going to tell you today, those positions have been some of the most difficult to recruit. But the guys that have it right have no problem finding the right people, just right and then they find those lifers right, the ones that last for 40 years.
Speaker 3:Well, they do. I mean, there's always, there's always a good old boy that wants to, just just. He's just happy with what he's doing and he's happy with the job he has and he just wants to show up to work and drink his mountain dew and you know he's just he's just as happy as can be yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So what other things have you kind of of been in and talking to the yards about? Are there any other kind of issues that have arose or any kind of cool information that you have that you want to share?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean there's kind of been, you know, in the last four or five, or even you know I'm going to say it's four or five years. You know, data tiering has been really important, but that story is starting to change a little bit because there is, you know, everybody's representing each person's data and I think that's kind of hit a high. There's some things that are on, you know, kind of on the precipice of our industry that I think I don't know if they're going to hit this year, but I think they're going to hit next year maybe or the year after. I mean, I know, and I don't want to speak out for other companies, but I know some people are working on some pretty significant changes in, you know, the 800 pound gorilla. Out there is Carpart.
Speaker 3:Obviously they have a lot of say and a lot of the parts and movement of parts happen through Carpart and I think Jeff I know Jeff and Roger have talked about some significant changes in the future that could be really powerful for our business. So I'm excited to see what those entail. You know, hybrid and EV, battery and stuff that super story. It seems like it's not that it's sailed, it's just not as exciting as it is. The guys I see today that seem to be consistently doing well are looking at their business objectively. They're not emotional about the vehicles. They're buying boxes of parts, they're taking them apart the most efficiently and best way they can, they're actively pricing their inventory, they're servicing their customers correctly and they're doing good business. And the guys that do good business seem to do more business. And the guys that get caught up I was working with a client the other day and they just joined the PRP trailer system and they were selling, they're shipping out parts and they were getting parts back and they didn't know why they came back and they were just having a real tough time with it, like we sent out this engine.
Speaker 3:It just came back and it wasn't when they were struggling with the process and I said listen, I want you to take a deep breath. I said what do you mean? I said, well, do you have any other truck route that you own that you sell? You know, and I'm going to say I think, to the whole network they were selling $300,000 or $400, dollars a month, one hundred thousand dollars a week too, and they pay you every month. So your best customer is that truck line, whether it's independent yards or whatever, it's part of that system.
Speaker 3:And yes, there's some bad actors on those systems, like anything else, and you have to weed those out. But the majority of the people on those on those, on those on that system, are really good. Ninety, eight, ninety nine percent of the yards on there are really decent, hardworking, genuine, want to do good business. They just want to sell parts and they're great. And these guys and they just struggled with the return part of it and I'm like get over yourself.
Speaker 3:It's part of the process, it's part of what it is and be okay with it. And guys that have been working with that more and literally, because we have this as recyclers, this fear of getting taken advantage of. Right, we have a component, we bought this, we bought this box of parts. We know the components worth this. We're already selling it at a fair discount. Customer says it's OK and then and then we want more cleanup or we want this and it just seems to be. We get whether it's hypersensitive or just downright overwhelmed by people just kind of poking at us that we get. We make bad business decisions and I see it all the time. I see people say I'm never going to do this because one time in band camp it happened.
Speaker 3:And I'm like hold on bud.
Speaker 2:How many?
Speaker 3:times has that happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's never happened before, never, ever, ever. So, okay, so one time this guy did this situation and now you're now you're upset about it and you're gonna make, you're gonna, you're gonna cause five sets of rules and you're gonna have, uh, tell everybody in the world why this isn't a good thing, and you're gonna ruin everybody's day over it. And and and. People are like, oh, that makes sense. I'm like listen, let's run our business by the numbers. And the numbers are if I have a 20% credit return rate or less, it's okay.
Speaker 2:If I have.
Speaker 3:If I have margins in my brokered parts of 33 to 35%, I'm in margin. If I have a cost of goods depending on the 35%, I'm in margin. If I have a cost of goods depending on the type of vehicles I buy between 40, 50, and even 60% if I'm buying high-dollar cars I look at my business as a whole and as long as it's working within those train tracks, don't go off the rails. Just drive down the tracks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like emotions kind of get involved sometimes when it comes to that kind of stuff. Because, yeah, I agree Kind of quick to be on the defense about the parts and I agree with you there you know, if you're within, you know your percentage, that you want to be in, then it shouldn't be something that you just completely cut off Right when I feel like that can definitely happen with this industry.
Speaker 3:I think there's bad actors out there and we get caught up in a bad actor. If you have a bad customer and you can't seem to work with them and they always return the parts and they always wear you out and they're always a problem. Fire them.
Speaker 2:It's okay.
Speaker 3:Surprisingly enough, it's like a bad girlfriend that you just don't want to date anymore, like once she's out of my life, I feel like a whole new person. Well, customers can be the same way Find the next better customer. Or you know and I say this all the time to people how many times have you called your customers and known that they buy from other people and how to make you the number one supplier? And I just worked with that with someone recently and I said you know, they're part of it. A lot of these customers now are part of groups and part of other groups. And I said you know, they're part of it. A lot of these customers now are part of groups and part of other groups. And I say you know the guys say, well, I can't sell to them because of this. I'm like hold on, you know this guy, who knows this guy? Who knows this guy? You're selling to these guys? Aren't they part of the same group that these guys are part of and the same group that these guys are part of? And they go oh yeah, they help you to sell this guy.
Speaker 3:And start thinking about this instead of singular. Start thinking this instead of an I and make it a we. If you start working on the we programs, we can work with you, we can help you, we can help grow your business, we can help lower your costs. We can help fix some of the supply chain issues you have. We can solve some of these recycled parts issues that you have or parts that are unavailable issues, and everybody wants the big hit.
Speaker 3:But it'd be funny. Some of my best customers have started with a bolt and they've called me with something that was out of the ordinary, not necessarily something I wanted to do, not something I wanted to tackle, but because I was willing to be open-minded, I thought about who the customer was and I thought about the opportunity that I could create. With that problem solved is what got me in the front door, and I really think that sometimes we don't let our salespeople or our companies work within those boundaries and start to really think about how do I help this customer this time and then how do I benefit from helping that customer through other opportunities.
Speaker 2:Right, just thinking outside the box, like you were saying Exactly, how can we actually get this done? I love that Awesome. All right, dj, are we time for another break?
Speaker 1:Yes, let's do a break and we'll come right back with our guide. Speaker of speakers, jason Taylor. Keep tight, we'll be right back. Yes, he can Excited to be right back.
Speaker 4:The URG Scholarship Foundation was founded in 2014 in honor of individuals who give their talent, time and, very often, their own finances to ensure the growth and success of the automotive recycling industry. We understand college is not for everyone, so each year the foundation offers substantial financial scholarships to auto recycling employees and the children of employees that are attending four-year and technical or trade schools, to assist with their education. Don't leave money on the table if you have a child or if you're interested in attending their education. Don't leave money on the table If you have a child or if you're interested in attending continuing education. This money is available to you. Go to u-r-gcom and click on the Scholarship Foundation tab. Urg keeping our industry strong through education.
Speaker 1:Welcome back listeners. Of course, this is URG on the go. Remember to like, review and share everywhere. And if you want to hear another industry expert like a JC Cahill, by all means dial 706-409-5603, which goes right here to the podcast center. And all of you, and especially some of you listeners they're in terrible weather this week. It's going to be beautiful sunny, april 10th through the 12th at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in beautiful Orlando, florida. So make sure you're there and you can hear guys like JC Cahill, who really is an asset to our industry, and I cannot thank him enough for everything he's done to help us with Tunnel to Towers. Jc, I'm going to tell you verbally thank you very much to make Tunnel to Towers so successful. On April 11th, we're giving two vans away and JC Cahill was a big part of that. So, amanda, I'll turn it over to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for reminding me about that. That was a huge help, jc, that you were involved with with the Tunnel to Towers and helping DJ get all that set up. So thank you so much again for all of that. That was phenomenal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, let's not forget the people that donated. There was quite a few people and we're going to make sure that we there was four or five different independent recyclers that sent the money to pay for the vans and we just facilitated the process and found the van and all the work. But at the end of the day, dj was passionate about it. Amanda, you were passionate about it, and it's the right thing to do. So you know we're just going to do the right thing, you know, even when nobody else is looking, but we want to make sure we want to thank the people that actually took the money out of their own wallets to donate for this. So I hope we make sure we get our time, when we do donate these vans, to make sure to highlight those people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely will. We'll be shouting all those guys out, for sure. Dj, did you want to say something?
Speaker 1:yes, what I wanted to ask all our listeners. I want you to know when you come to urg jc he's so kind here, he is the speaker. I brought people over to jc in the middle of the aisle and he'll say, as he did last year, he goes. Are you guys ready to go eat lunch? All right, come on, we'll all eat lunch together. And he took my two guys that wanted to ask him some questions. He took them to lunch with him at the URG and that's where you find some of these answers. So, amanda, I'm going to ask you you know you and JC talk about that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, JC, yeah, you definitely have, you know, obviously, been to the conferences many years in a row and, have you know, helped a ton of recyclers. What are some of the best you know things about the conference and what do you suggest for our recyclers that are attending this year?
Speaker 3:your first year. Take it very seriously, it's. It's one of those things where you have an opportunity to have a good time and see new people and have a couple of drinks, but try to plan out the sessions you want to see and really I always I never miss the keynote and I and I and I never miss the kind of beginning address. There's some interesting stuff. Ron and ron sturgeon and bill tobler are kind of talking about how your g came about, but how, how the company was started and all those things, and I think that that's always a good start to the conference.
Speaker 3:The second thing is just take a look at the list of speakers and come with a couple of questions. You have a couple of things you're struggling with your business about. You may not find it in the speakers, but you may find it in the social hour, you may find it here or ask one of your vendors. If you have a question that you're like I'm really struggling with this, ask a vendor and if the vendor doesn't know the answer, ask the vendor if they know a yard that can solve the answer and you'll be surprised. People in this industry are very to their direct competitors. They're not super forthcoming, but someone that's on the East Coast helping somebody on the West Coast, they'll tell them the keys to the castle and you'll be very surprised.
Speaker 3:Amanda Morrison, you know, over the years we've become dear friends and you've watched me speak and work with recyclers all over the country and at the end of the day I say the same thing. You know we have to do right by it. We have to take care of people that take care of us, do the right thing, all those things. But you also see me just help people, just to help them, because it really didn't. It comes back to you in this business.
Speaker 2:It is a truly karmic business and you can cut that any way you want, but it it, the cars that we sell produces the karma that we, that we create in our, in what we do 100% Yep and and you know, just just the after hours events to you know, making sure and, like you said, going to these sessions with you know intention and having and having an intentional question that you're going to ask or you know that you're going to get involved in these sessions. You know, ask questions during during the sessions, get involved. You know most speakers want to hear feedback. You know and want to be have the crowd involved too. So you know, don't be shy, don't be afraid to ask questions. No question's a dumb question in this industry. You know everyone's learning and wanting to know more. So I think that's key. But yeah, even networking outside of it, I think, is it's huge, like what DJ was saying. Bringing those two guys in with your lunch and just having them be a part of the conversation is key as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and most people come to that conference and you have some industry experts, you have some yard owners that are just really forthcoming about their information, and then you have people out there that are just good guys, that want to share information. Just the only thing that I ask is ask when someone gives you a qualified answer, ask them how they know that. And they say well, my yard, I do this, I do this, I do this Every once in a while and I see it and I think the forum's a great opportunity for us to voice our words. But I see people speak on the forum that I don't think necessarily have the answers that they say, an answer that they think people want to hear, not necessarily the answer that they need to hear. And so just be cautious about, sometimes, the information you get.
Speaker 3:Very few people in this industry are out to steer you in the wrong direction but, depending on the size of the yard, can depend on the next opportunity or obstacle you're dealing with. And I'll give you an example what works for somebody that has a yard that does, let's say, $300,000 a month and 50 cars a month is very different than the guy that does 300 cars a month and does 3 million a month. They're different facilities, they have different obstacles, different opportunities and they've run differently compared to that facility, the one that's the consolidator, that has 10 yards, and they do things differently. And I hear all the time well, why do they do it that way? Because as you get bigger, in certain situations you have to make things a little more generic and they're not as customizable and they're not as intricate as they are when you're smaller. And I hear people raffle off these scenarios and they tell me well, this works for me. And I'm like, yeah, it works for you because you do 10 cars a day.
Speaker 2:This guy's doing a hundred cars a day. It's a totally different style, yeah, completely different beast. Yeah, it makes sense. So what? What are, um, some of the key things that you know that you would highlight for for people and to make sure that they are, you know, participating in at the conferences?
Speaker 3:I would, 100 percent. I would. First thing I would do is take that. You guys have the. I believe you have an app for it this year.
Speaker 3:And yeah, url, yep, yeah, so you have a URL for it. I would roll through the speakers and look and see what I would. You know, look at the presentations and which one, or pick a speaker that you like. Sometimes the presentation, sometimes the title doesn't always, doesn't always bring out what the speech is going to be about. I've spoken about a bunch of different things and I didn't have a very good title. But people came back to me and said it was a great speech, and I've had great titles and poor speeches. Just try to pick the speaker that you like or that you enjoy. I know my friend Rob is always people. He's very enjoyable. I know that some other people that we. Mike Kunkel is very enjoyable. There's quite a few people that are out there that are enjoyable to see speak and, regardless of the information, they enjoy the presentation. The other part that I would say is bring a problem or two that you have, and then the other. The last thing is go see your vendors walk out. Walk through the vendors and if you're struggling with something or you have positive or negative feedback about the product you work with them, tell them.
Speaker 3:One of the biggest things that we've had with VinMatch Pro recently is we've been really pushing our vendors.
Speaker 3:You know we're servicing about 900 facility or 900 yards and you know we're running quite a few bins every month and the information is it's not perfect, it's information that's consolidated and we try to make it as perfect as we can and we tell our customers.
Speaker 3:If you can help us fix anything, you see, let us know and we have, we have and this is a shout out to Shannon Nordstrom and his and his team you know we work with them on a regular basis. They have some of the best inventory people in the country and they find little glitches and not even glitches, just communicate about how we represented the information and how they're interpreting the information. So the example being is what we're creating in the build sheet or what we're creating in the information that we're representing doesn't necessarily speak what Holland or Pinnacle or Checkmate is describing and it can be misleading. And we've had people say this isn't this because of this, and we found that it really it is the information, but it's how it's communicated and how it's interpreted is what makes a difference, and they've done an outstanding job of helping us find some of those little glitches in the matrix.
Speaker 2:I would say, and you know that's the only way we're going to improve right is by getting that kind of feedback and working closely with these people that are utilizing those products. We're the same way. You know we don't know necessarily. If there is, you know we're not using. You know we're not connected to a yard management system. So if it's not working for someone, then we need to know and be aware of that issue. And sometimes I feel like people are like, oh, they'll fix it, but you know, some people just don't let us know.
Speaker 3:And then you know it gets unresolved, and so that's a key piece too, right? Well, I mean the idea that you don't know what you don't know right.
Speaker 3:And you guys build a program and it seems to be all good and then when you hit some vehicle or some problem, it just doesn't work and no one's ever told you. It's not something that happens all the time and you don't want to let your customers down and people will start complaining about something without giving feedback. Give them the feedback, let the customer, let the vendor have a chance to fix it or or work on it, and then come back to them later on and you'll be surprised. 99% of the people that you work with in this industry want to make their company better, their process better or better for the customer that's working, or they'll give you a bit of information that you may not know, and it happens to us all the time. In Vimatch Pro we have customers say it doesn't tell me this and I go it does. You just have to look here, here and here, and it's just not how they're traditionally conditioned to look for this information.
Speaker 2:So we've tried to work through some opportunities and obstacles to make it easier for them. Yeah, and you know the vendors that are attending these conferences and are spending the money to come and see the recyclers and really hear from them, that's you know. These are the ones that are going to want to do the best by you, right? So, going and talking to the vendors, like VinMatch Pro and all the other vendors that'll be at the conference, that's a key piece, and you know, learning new products that are coming out. We're, you know, developing technology daily at this point, you know, and so are all the other vendors, and we only know how to improve and hear your pain points if you're telling us, you know. I think that's that's a key piece too, and these conferences are just a great place for them to do that.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate you saying that, because there is there is there's some level of. I see, I see discussions on the forum and I see other things people telling, talking about different things that they do and they forget that there's people like myself, and you know that we we attend a lot of conferences, we spend a lot of money within the state associations, we spend a lot of money back to our customers and you know we're active owners in this industry and we're active members in this industry, we're active URG members, and that's a big difference between supporting the people that are supporting our industry or supporting some one-off willy-dilly that doesn't care about us. And you know, and and that's something that's that's I take to heart, because you know we vote with our wallets. I mean the, the urg conference this year. I mean I love you guys, but you and christy aren't a cheap date.
Speaker 2:It costs money to run these things yeah, it's a. It's a big thing to kind of put together and to get everyone there and get all the food paid for and all the different events paid for. So all these vendors are helping support these conferences and making them happen. So that's something you can do is just go to each vendor and thank them for being there and learn a little bit, and maybe you'll even benefit from it and get a new product out of it and that'll end up creating some ROI for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just looking at it from a simple fact that you're supporting vendors that are supporting the industry, you're in not supporting vendors that aren't there, don't spend money in it, don't have any involvement in it and really aren't out for our success.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, and we're here to kind of listen and and and improved along with you guys. So yeah, I think that's huge, huge piece. Um dj, did you have any ending comments that you wanted to ask?
Speaker 1:my ending comment is if I was a listener right now, jck hill, how could I get a hold of you so that maybe you could be a consultant for our company? How is the best way for somebody to get a hold of?
Speaker 3:JC A couple of ways. So it's really simply it's jc at vinmatchprocom. That's the easiest way to get a hold of me. Or if you want to give me a phone call, text or email. But I'm going to give you a phone number. It's 253-495-3423. Again, 253-495-3423. You can either give me a call or shoot me an email. Either one works well for me.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And I cannot do enough. Jc. You are so hard to get a hold of because you're so busy and I think, for you coming on this episode, you're very, very kind and I thank you for everything you've done for our industry.
Speaker 3:Well, I want to thank both you and Amanda. I mean, amanda is just a dear friend, dj you're a dear friend and we've been fortunate to work together and really hopefully change this industry and get get away from where we were and really see the future of recycling. I think there's some. I think that there is some super exciting things coming in in the next year or two that are really going to change how we trade the. You know the professional recycler has a leg up in the in the near future. I think right now we're just struggling with a market and uh, and the markets change and things change, but I believe that we're really going to see some exciting, exciting stuff in the near future and I completely agree with you, yep.
Speaker 2:And so I just have one last parting shot to. March 8th is the early bird deadline for you to get registered for the conference to get that discounted rate. So that's's coming up. I believe that's Saturday this week. So if you're not registered, we're making some calls out to yards right now to see who's going to be registering here. We've got lots of registrants already, but we're wanting to make sure people are getting signed up for that early bird rate. And then, don't forget to reserve your hotel rooms either. Those are definitely filling up quickly. If you haven't reserved your hotel, make sure to do that this week as well.
Speaker 1:You got it. This was a great one, Amanda. You and JC did an excellent job.
Speaker 2:Thank you, we'll see you, guys next time you.