Grease The Wheels Podcast

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the wheels, we are talking about people thinking that they can do our job. It’s basic human nature to think that you can do something because you have seen someone else do it. However, “monkey see, monkey do” technicians often cause catastrophic failures. Because these technicians are paid next to nothing, they don't get fired despite finding...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels were talking about some of the horrible things we do to cars. Sure, customers are great at doing terrible things to cars but often times when we do terrible things to cars it's completely on purpose. We don't have any qualms about this because at the end of the day cars are consumer products: you buy them, you use them, an...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we have a message for the service managers and shop owners out there. They're thinking, “god I hate uncle jimmy. He keeps telling techs that they are worth something and they should be paid well!” If you're in charge of the things that happen to technicians in your shop, these are the things that you need to know to keep them....

Send us Fan Mail On this Week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we acknowledge that a lot of people who are not auto technicians listen to this podcast. In the spirit of this newfound information, we’re taking a few minutes to fill in the people who are not techs on what it's like. First off, not everyone's experiences are the same but there are a lot of things that most of us have in comm...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of GTW, we’re talking about the law. The laws of man, the laws of physics and even Murphy's law, which isn’t necessarily a real thing, but sometimes as a mechanic it feels just as real as the other two. The laws of physics are really kind of important to know as an automotive technician, because they are absolute. They happen 100% of the time. Things like pres...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s Grease the Wheels, we are finding out what we should know about new guys before they get hired. From actual knowledge, personality, or sense of humor you are going to want to hire people that fit the environment that already exists in your shop. Now it’s not a secret that fewer and fewer people are entering this trade, and it’s not a coincidence that the attrition r...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, we’re talking complainers and complaining and we’re going to separate the two of them and get to the root of the matter. We have all worked with complainers, some of them are completely validated and others are just insufferable. As mechanics though, depending on where you work there is a lot of completely justifiable stuff to comp...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we’re talking about animals in cars. Some animals, like dogs, are welcome guests in our cars. Eventhough it usually ends up with dog hair strewn from one end of the car to the other, which makes the car smell like that dog. We’ve even seen evap cores full of dog hair, that was dyed bright green because of the dye tests that had been don...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of GTW, we’re talking about the shop foreman. First off, not every shop has a foreman but some dealer’s brand’s demand that the shop have a foreman. From where we’re sitting, this makes a lot of sense because cars are getting more and more complex, with more models entering the lineup every single year. Foremen exist to help the other technicians with some o...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s GTW were talking about what the customer thinks is wrong with their car. Sometimes what people think is wrong is actually wrong, but most of the time people who think what is wrong are wrong themselves in their guess. Either way, there are hoping that it is going to be a cheap and easy repair: a $12 radiator hose versus a $1200 or $12000 engine. One of our personal...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s GTW were talking about those times at work when you seem to be doing the same things over and over and over again. In all professions, people get into certain grooves and want to do the same things because they have figured out the shortcuts and ways to make the job easier. This gets complicated in the automotive field though because they keep making different kinds...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, we are talking about when customers come into the shop for free repairs, because the manufacturer didn't make something right. Sometimes they are service actions, sometimes they are full blown recalls, either way the customer isn’t going to be paying for it. Some techs hate recalls because they don't pay well, but other techs...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's episode of GTW, we are talking about one of the internet's favorite punching bags: The Millennials. Now the first question that always comes up when it comes to Millennials and our industry is, “how come there aren't many millennial mechanics?” Well turns out, that's on us. When they ask what it's like to be a mechanic, we tell them about it...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's episode of GTW, we are talking about the tech shortage. We know that we’ve talked about this in previous episodes, but this time we’re bringing some cold hard numbers into the argument. First off, everything we read about the shortage of technicians comes from fixed ops people. Now here comes the real dilemma: either they know how to fix the problem with staffi...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s GTW we are talking about some of the major differences between professionals and DIY’ers, because sometimes we make our job look so easy that other people think they can do it. First off, a lot of non technicians listen to this podcast, which is perfectly ok because this is America goddamnit. Here’s the tale of the tape though: professionals often times have signifi...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s GTW, we are going back down the rabbit hole of stupid things that customers do. We all hate it when customers bring you a car with no gasoline in it because there is really no good reason to do that. When customers take their car to one shop for diagnosis and take it to another one to get fixed there is a good chance that mistakes are going to be made and things are...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s GTW, we are talking about talking. Yea, little bit meta for a holiday consisting of day-drinking and explosives, but hear us out. We know that a lot of information gets transferred through this most convenient form of communication, but a lot of times at work it can be counterproductive. We talk about talking to superiors, customers, and fellow technicians as well a...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of GTW, we are talking that lovely universal force that binds us all together: chaos. No matter where you sit in the automotive world, you are guaranteed some measurable amount of chaos. Often times it is driven by people who don’t know any better. Sometimes it comes down to the unknable roll of the dice that comes with not knowing what is going to roll or g...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s GTW we talk about how to solve the shortage of technicians. The causes of the tech shortage are pretty obvious- it doesn’t pay, but we talk about making a system where it can be extremely lucrative. The first place to look to ending the tech shortage is promoting and training from within. If you think that you are going to get techs from the outside you are thinking...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's episode of GTW we are talking about work uniforms, but mostly we’re ranting about the uniform shirts that have collars. Some modern technician uniforms don’t make a lot of sense in this regard, because we can't think of a single instance where wearing a tie in a shop would end in anything other than decapitation. One often cited cause for this is that when...

Send us Fan Mail On today’s episode of Grease The Wheels, we are talking about working for the man and all that it entails. There are many corporate entities in the automotive industry such as auto groups, corporate repair shops, tire shops, etc. These are companies with a LOT of employees, and oftentimes a big number of them have nothing to do with the end products. Corporate owned dealerships ha...

Send us Fan Mail Good Tool guys are hard to find and much like us technicians, they all have different personalities and levels of commitment to their job. First off, it is hard work and no one is getting rich selling tools off of a tool truck. Then you get to add the tremendous cost of doing business and constantly having issues with their trucks (insert joke about fixing it for $50/week for 20 y...

Send us Fan Mail It is a simple and pretty well established fact that there are a lot more jobs available for mechanics, technicians, and every other assorted automotive service worker than there are people to fill them. Because of that there are a LOT of job postings, but often times there are a lot of reasons why they have so many openings. This gets compounded when we are talking about job post...

Send us Fan Mail In one way or another, all of us have some form of a dispatcher who doles out what we're working on for the day. Human dispatchers have human downsides such as playing favorites and are at the mercy of customers. However good dispatchers can read a shops technicians skill levels and keep the work flowing efficiently. Make yourself available to the dispatcher for the stuff tha...

Send us Fan Mail As the title would suggest, this is an episode for the new guys, instead of about the new guys, so if you’re just starting out you might want to pay attention here. First off, as much as a good tech school can teach you about fixing cars, it really can’t teach you a lot about how to get along with the other people who are going to be in your shop also fixing cars. One good rule of...