The Heavy Duty Parts Report
In each episode, Jamie Irvine and his guests have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. They discuss tips, tools, and technology that help heavy-duty parts manufacturers and distributors sell the right parts to fleets, repair shops, and truck operators.
The Heavy Duty Parts Report
What Do Diesel Technicians Need in 2023?
Episode 281: What’s going on with diesel repair technicians in 2023? This episode features Tyler Robertson from Diesel Laptops as he explains the challenges diesel techs face and the opportunities ahead. We'll discuss why there are fewer technicians due to early retirements and the pandemic, and how the trucking industry fosters stable and lucrative new careers. We'll also tell you about programs like American Diesel Training Centers and WyoTech.
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You're listening to the heavy duty parts report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy duty people. Welcome to an episode of the heavy duty parts report. If you are watching right now, you're gonna say wait a minute, that's not the heavy duty parts report studio. I've got with me Tyler Robertson, returning guests from diesel laptops. I am on the road right now. We were just doing an interview and episode with and back there you're gonna hear that now we're down the road at your studio. Tyler, thank you for opening up the DL studio and letting us record an episode for the heavy duty parts report.
Speaker 2:When I heard you're doing a South Carolina road show, like obviously make sense to have you come in here and do this right. And next time you come we're gonna make you visit our new training center over in Columbia because Steve Majors behind the senior is another studio set up over there as well Awesome, so we're all in we're all in the studio. What's the weird thing? We saw diagnostic tools. We got studios all over the place. Yeah, that's right that's right.
Speaker 1:That's right. So in today's conversation, what I really wanted to focus on you know that the heavy duty parts were always concerned with talking about parts and talking about. You know how that impacts the trucking industry. But the reality is, if you don't have someone there to install the part and diagnose the problem, you're not gonna really sell any parts, are you? So technicians talking about that is the subject of today's conversation. So first of all, tyler, let's just start with a little bit of an overview. Right now we're recording. It's the end of June twenty twenty three. What's the state of things for the diesel repair technician?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean we can tell you unemployment or employment first right or jobs that people are looking for. So it got really bad there. Like during the peak of covid it went up to like on just indeed alone there were like eighty thousand job postings and that's just indeed so. People post on other websites and every job post sometimes they want multiple hires. Yeah, right now that numbers. And what also happened with covid is a lot of people left early.
Speaker 1:So when we left entered covid and left covid there was a net loss diesel technician so when you say they left early, you mean they were kind of on the bubble of retirement and then the covid hit and they just thought you know what?
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna hang up yeah you had that happen I mean it happened across the country right, a lot of jobs, they retired early, or people that had dual income houses went to one income house like get to care the kids, like a lot of variables went in there, but you end up with less and all the schools are kind of cutting back to do like programs either, right, so the gaps been getting worse and worse and worse for a lot of years. It's really frustrated me because I go to all these, like you know, conventions and organizations and they always have the same stupid ideas. They're always like oh, we're gonna go talk to high schoolers and then we're gonna talk to great schoolers.
Speaker 1:Let's go talk to preschoolers.
Speaker 2:I heard the great school thing from somebody like, oh my god, like there is no freaking way. First of all, there is no way you're taking a high school kid who's at 18 years of like you're going to college, beat in his head, yeah, and go into a one hour show and tell him to be like I'm gonna be a diesel tech, like that is that is not happening at all.
Speaker 2:So to me it's it's when there's a big problem, it takes a lot more solutions, and the examples I always get is I know like there's a couple of them doing it right now, but it really started with American Diesel Training Centers. We're not going to send people to two year degrees and spend forty thousand dollars and then kick them over to a dealership. We're gonna go put him in a twelve week class, teach him how to change oil and do the basics and then they can go train up from there. And we're not going to go find high school and college kids. We're gonna go find people in their 20s and 30s who probably weren't the best students. They might pay attention in class. All of a sudden they got reality of life. They got spouse, maybe got a kid or two and they have to have a solid career, not just a job. They need a career to go make money and better their lives.
Speaker 1:Right and then, like we were at Wiotek in Laramie, wyoming, a couple months ago and the heavy duty parts report is proud to sponsor one student a year starting this October. Their approach is very interesting because it's a nine month course and it takes people and puts them into that working position instead of going to a two year program where they have to take unrelated course material just to get their degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wiotek's one of my podcasts as well. They do a terrific job. You also see a polytechnic out west. What they're doing out there with high schoolers like unbelievable the amount of funding they get to build those things. But they're getting at least. They have a nice building, they're getting kids interested in it and the parents are starting to accept like, oh wait, wait, my son doesn't have to go to two years, or daughter and they can make 100 grand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like what the heck? They make more than one idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly 30, like it's insane, on Melissa the diesel queen. She obviously works with us. She's been on your podcast, I mean. I think she bought a house when she was 23. Right, 22, something ridiculous right. And the story she gives is her mom has like three or four degrees and Melissa makes more money than her mom does and then didn't go through all that. So it's really unfortunate all the reasons we got here, but it is a problem that still needs to live more solutions.
Speaker 1:We're gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsors will be right back. This episode of the Heavy Duty Parts Report is brought to you by Find it Parts, your ultimate destination for Heavy Duty Truck and Trailer Parts. Discover a vast range of parts at FindItPartscom. Don't spend hours a day looking for parts. Instead, visit FindItPartscom and get them right away.
Speaker 1:Parts availability and quality have a big influence on fleets and owner operators' total cost of operation. If they can't find a part, it means more downtime. If they install a low-quality part and it fails, it means even more costs like tow bills, hotels, meals for the driver and lost revenue. That's why we recommend Sampa. They manufacture a wide range of advanced parts for commercial vehicles. Their website has an intelligent product search engine and broad coverage of suspension, steering and fifth-wheel components. Expect more. Expect Sampa. Visit Sampacom today. Yeah, okay, so that's what I want to talk about. So we know that we have to keep working at recruiting and retaining people in the industry, but there's got to be a technological solution that goes along with that effort. So let's move the conversation to that. One of the things that I see from the parts perspective all the time is the parts people. They're trying to get the parts into the hands of the repair technicians. They're trying to do that as efficient as possible, but there's barriers that put undue pressure both on the parts counter and on the repair shop.
Speaker 2:So you're absolutely right. It's the same thing we say over here. When there's a complex problem, it means there needs to be multiple solutions to solve the problem. Number one is definitely talking about the problem. Influencers like Melissa and Macy all these people are talking about it and saying this is a pretty cool thing. Hey, women can do this job. That's one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is well, wait, what if we made all existing quarter million diesel technicians 10% more efficient? That's 25,000 jobs. So why do we focus on technology solutions to do that? And where can we save technicians time in that repair process? Because today there's a problem. Shops are book logged for weeks and, for the audience that doesn't know this, shops love that Because their technicians are busy, they're flat rate, they can touch whatever they want and they're all making money and bonuses.
Speaker 2:I was a service manager for years. I promise you this is the mentality. So the question is how do you make it more efficient? I think the journey with diesel laptops has been part of that and at first it was well, we need tools to hook up to do a bunch of things, to all make all models regardless, and we kind of checked that box. But what we quickly found out was well, once we had to teach them how to use the tool. And then we quickly found out they needed to repair information. So we had to go build that. But then they didn't know how to do it. So it'd be like, well, I'm not connecting. Like well, go check your can bus. Do you have voltage? Like do I have what when? How do I do that? You're like okay, and what that leads to is really they don't.
Speaker 2:Most technicians, the majority and I hate to say it's a service field, but it's the truth Most of them don't know how to properly diagnose and troubleshoot common systems. Right, they do it old school, or they do the parts cannon at it or they just kind of kind of wing it right. And it's really unfortunate that that's where we end up in and we see it all the time. So an example I can give you is we have a couple of really big clients of ours that buy hundreds or thousands of these laptop kits from us and they pay us. We send trainers to their sites pretty much every day of the week and do training.
Speaker 2:And I've asked my guys, like what do you do when you get there? Because you don't have equipment. You're like on an airplane, like he's like, oh, he goes. Every time we go there we go like where's the things you can't fix? And they always have them. And they're like that's what we're working on today. And they're like well, that's been to three dealers and blah, blah, blah. And this dealer's pointing at that dealer because it's one's the manufacturer, the engine, one's the trainer, you know like we don't care, let's get hooked up to it. And every time, without fail, our guys have that thing figured out.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, you know and it's not because they lack the tool. They had the tool, yeah. And it's not because the place they sent it to had the lack. It was just they don't know how to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not even the lack of desire. They don't want to fix it, they just don't know how. Nobody, they don't know how. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So a good example Mark Lapinski. He's one of our trainers. He was at this big mine up in Elko, nevada, and these are these like quarter million rock trucks, right, and they had four of them parked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they have a full time guy, a280c or something. Yeah, just big ones yeah.
Speaker 2:And they had a full time employee from Caterpillar on site and a full time employee from Cummins on site, like that's what they employ because they have just massive amounts of equipment, and they were like those things have been sitting for two weeks. Mark got all four of them running up that day, right. And they were like it's cheaper to call you to come out and train us than actually have a diesel technician here that can't fix it anyway. So, because we're going to come back for more training here at the end of the season, it's hard to go upscale people and it's really tough. And that's the unfortunate thing. And the other unfortunate thing is a lot of companies, especially small ones, are like I can't afford it. Like what do you mean? It's not that expensive. Like no, no, no, we're booked up for three weeks. I only got four texts, right. I'm getting nothing done, I'm not making any money. What am I going to do? And it's like they're caught in that game of cat and mouse. What do I do?
Speaker 1:Right, they've got a bunch of urgent things that need to be done this week, and yet this important thing of doing ongoing training continuously gets put to the back burner. So then it never happens.
Speaker 2:So what this comes down to is training. It comes down to making diagnostic tools stupid, easy and quick for people to solve the problems. So the one big innovation that we're unleashing here in July. It's never been done before and we're super excited about it and I've showed it to you.
Speaker 1:Like I've been talking about it for years.
Speaker 2:That's one of the reasons I'm here. It took years to put it together and what it is? It's fault code, department number, because today's process for people in the repair process is a technician hooks one tool up to a piece of equipment, gets the fault code, then goes to a completely separate system and looks up the repair information and then goes to a completely separate system or department to figure out what part number needs to buy to fix it after you diagnosed it and usually go to a forced system actually put the order in. You're like in that process.
Speaker 2:We've asked people, have you asked the average time it takes to look up a part? We know from when we've talked to customers just that process of going from fault code to part number minimum an hour, usually more, and that's when somebody has it in stock. If they don't have it in stock and they're making the phone calls and trying to find alternatives, that's a whole other thing and what we built is basically in the tools itself, even like our little tool coming out where we use a phone to go from. I plug my tool in. Here's the part number I need to buy to fix my truck and all the other aftermarket alternatives in less than three minutes, and to us that's a huge game changer which saves a lot of time for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. And then if you can then have the ability to go to a parts distributor who has a really good, robust e-commerce platform that has all of the data in there, they can just put that part number in, they can order it and the part number they know when it's coming it's going to be delivered. They can then book that vehicle to be fixed. I mean, it just streamlines the whole thing. And the reality is, unless we can end to end solve some of those issues where we have a lack of efficiency right now, we're never going to hire enough people to solve the problem. We can't throw enough people at the problem because it's an issue of inefficiency.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I've been in shops most of my life adult life, right and I was a service manager. We had 30 technicians. I've been in all these shops and there's companies you can hire. Come in and help you with your fixed ops and efficiencies, and one of the things they do in a shop this is key advisors. The one line he always gives me is and he gives us some new customers like I will bet you everything on my wallet and a nice bottle of whatever when I walk through that shop.
Speaker 2:Not even 75% of your technicians are actually touching a truck, right, and they're always like no way he goes. I have not lost the bet yet Because they're doing something else. They're doing paperwork. They're standing at the parts counter. They're waiting for something. They're waiting for something sweeping the floor, waiting for the next truck. They're doing something besides working on the truck and they start looking at like, well, why is that? Okay, maybe they don't need to walk to the parts counter. Have the parts counter walk to them.
Speaker 2:Those guys are cheaper than the technician, right? Yeah, Technician charge 150 an hour. Parts guide doesn't cost that much. And they start looking at doing all these things to improve efficiency. So there's processes in your repair environment. There's technology solutions that are here today and there's more that are coming, and again that knowledge gap and it's all those things need to happen. And, by the way, those all lead to another word. You mentioned retention. Yeah, right, and the more they're happy, the better they execute. You know, all of a sudden, another dollar an hour doesn't look that great somewhere, yeah, and people people want to win right.
Speaker 1:So if they're working in a winning environment where they feel like they're doing a great job and getting things done, that's hugely attractive to most people it is, it is it's.
Speaker 2:You know there's always the challenge now of you know a lot of especially small businesses. They work In their business and on their business. Yeah, and injecting new processes and New technology into a business, like that can be, can be troublesome at best, unless it's a big headache. I even sound like our diagnostic tools are top tier stuff. That was like pulling teeth in the beginning. Why would I do that? I'm like you don't want one thing that hooks up to everything with no required annual fees. What I want that I got this thing that's got 20 different programs on it. Yeah, okay, they all come around eventually. Right, it takes it takes time. There's a learning curve there. But technology, technology training, it's all coming, it's helping already.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I wanted to talk about was we've highlighted this on the show before, but I love your diesel decoder because I think that that's a tool that every parts counter should have, because then when you have guys pulling up and they got a code, you could run out, plug it in, check the code and now, with fault code to part number, you can run back in and give the person the part. Like every parts counter in North America should have at least one at the counter, maybe multiple.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, cuz you can walk up to the truck and plug it in like here's the party to sell you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah 100% agree, so that the backstory on this little tool is Is I? I was so frustrated at it when COVID happened. We were like over budget, no clear direction. Yeah, wasn't happy with who was lead. I was like I hate this thing.
Speaker 2:And then COVID happened. I'm like this is a great excuse to kill it. So why didn't you? I? Well, you know what happened is we actually work a lot with Dorman and I. I was like and they were willing to distribution for us. I'm like guys, I'm gonna kill this, like no, we see what this is like. Let's figure some things out. We'll help you guys, because we could.
Speaker 2:We're not set up. Diesel is not set up to go sell 10,000 of one thing. Right, we're geared up to go sell a handful of $10,000 tools. Yeah, so what happened in that is they really convinced me? They said nope, we'll give you a PO for a bunch of them. Oh, you have to build up that guy. Your attention. Yeah, I was like well, I'm gonna pee. Oh, yes, I gotta go do it now.
Speaker 2:But you know, I look at that tool and today it really is amazing. I mean literally, it's a little bit like a half dollar size Mm-hmm, 350 bucks. That tool will hook up, read codes, clear codes. We now have it doing and it'll do fault code depart number very shortly here, yeah, and then it does two other really cool things. One we added a bunch of the DPF regions and reset commands to it. Right, so now you can really do a regen from your phone or ice re-insulting DPF or Nils resets.
Speaker 2:And the other thing we've done is we've included we call diesel health, which is a basically the ability to do a pre and post scan on a vehicle and have all that information go to a website when you can log in and see every truck you've ever connected to in every scan. So it's, it's amazing what a little three inch dollar tool does, and One of our other reasons for wanting to kill it we were like, well, this is gonna take away sales in the $10,000 tools, because the things were added to this are the exact same questions people are calling about on the $10,000 tool and we were really concerned about, you know, kind of eating our own lunch a little bit. But we just said, well, if it's not us, it'll be somebody else, so we might as well do this and figure it out well, and things are always evolving right, and so you've got to be able to meet the need where the need is.
Speaker 1:So I applaud you for doing that. I really can't emphasize this enough. Every parts counter should have at least one. You know drivers, you should have one in your glove box repair shops. You want to take that $10,000 tool out in the rain to the yard? Or do you want to just take diesel decoder to go out and do a quick check on a truck before you bring it into your shop like this? This has so many applications, so you gotta buy.
Speaker 2:It does, and I can tell you it's to. There's some private label additions that thing coming out now as well, because what we found is that to actually works a lot about highway permit. Okay. So now because they use standard protocols and there's a nine pin so that that tool without market it like this way. So it's like the audience here. But but really a little work in jondere it'll hook up the code, do all the things. So Lot more coming with that little and earth. A three hundred fifty dollar tool, be like something excited about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's but I'm there now so yeah, it is on a lot of parts counters. I don't have it on hd truck price locations have it. There's another distributor that have it out there as well. But a great little tool that if it doesn't save you three hundred fifty bucks like cheese, yeah, nothing's gonna help you yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for opening up your studio, letting us record this interview with you, tyler, so great to see you again and welcome back on the show. If people want to follow your show, the dl, where's the best place for them find?
Speaker 2:yeah, just go to our website, go to the learn section. They'll see the link to the dl. I'm on linkedin. I still post on there quite a bit. I love linkedin. I love connecting with people. You build the best relationships in this business, that is.
Speaker 1:That is the best and free Networking tool that I've ever used for bdb okay, so quick story for those who maybe are a little skeptical of the power of social media. So how did the tyler and I meet? Well, I did an episode, so I made content about diesel emissions systems and I asked a question, purposely to try to illicit people's responses. So I said you know, should you delete your diesel emissions system from your truck? And tyler, basically on linkedin message and said no, you illegal. And then I messaged back and said, well, now we're talking and that's why I asked the question. He's like good point, well done, good. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that all of a sudden you come on the show, we make some more content together, and that was episode thirteen, the first time you're on the heavy parts report and like the rest is history. We've had this long Business relationship ever since and like I'm just so happy that I took that step. So if you're questioning whether or not this works, it absolutely does. You just have to kind of lead with a good intention, try to do your best to put out something of quality and I'm not even talking production, I just mean the quality of the content. You put out what you know and people respond and you never know where it's gonna lead you yeah, people ask me how do you get how many views you do?
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh, super easy. You suppose relevant traffic like three times a week for the next five years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, just five years. Well, you've been listening to the heavy duty parts report. I'm your host, jay mierven. We are on location in south carolina at the diesel laptop studio. Thank you so much again for opening the studio. If you want to find out more about everything that diesel laptops does, go to diesel laptops dot com. As always, I want you to keep being heavy duty. Thank you for watching and don't forget, if you want to subscribe to our show, head over to heavy duty parts report dot com. You can follow the show for free there. Check us out on youtube. You can also follow the show for free wherever you get your podcast. Be heavy duty, people talk to you soon.