Grease The Wheels Podcast

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s (correctly uploaded) episode of Grease the Wheels, we dive into improving the work environment in the shop. At the top of all mechanics lists: having working equipment - lifts, tire machines, alignment racks, that stuff! The first article we examine is “20 ways to improve your work environment from Indeed, and in reality only about 4 of them work for us as Auto Mech...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about one of the major discrepancies in the automotive industry: the difference between managers and leaders. Managers are appointed, Leaders are ordained by the people they work with. When they are the same person, things can be great - when they are one or the other it can lead to conflict. We also do a deep dive on intergener...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take aim at another one of the omniscient themes that runs through our industry; conflict. Anytime you have people with broken things, you are going to get a level of conflict. This week’s butchered white collar article is “How to Handle Workplace Conflict”, and buddy there isn’t enough space in the margin for even the expletives inv...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we dive into one of the hallmarks of dysfunction when it comes to the automotive industry: communication. Whether it is customers being extremely vague when it comes to explaining their problems to Service Advisors, to Service Advisors telling customers the wrong thing (or even worse a promise time), to how the parts departments get par...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, it’s time for some good old fashioned rants as we take a look at all of the stupid things that are going on in the automotive industry. From people in a tizzy about BMW’s heated seat subscription, to the customers in general- there is a genuine lack of understanding between consumers, companies, and the middlemen. We also take a very re...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take a look at “10 Repairs You Should Never Try to Do Yourself”, of course that really only applies if you’re not a mechanic. Right away, the marketing concept that people can fix their own cars is objectively wrong in most cases.  Bodywork is number one for a good reason, a lot of people think that they can paint a car, but the amou...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy watches a video from CNBC on the automotive technician shortage and actually agrees with most of it. There is however, one big thing that they kinda skimmed over that we wanted to elaborate on: passion. Having passion for cars and having the passion to fix them for a living are two different things. With the sheer number of...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we embrace the meaning of that term and take an article from Indeed called “15 Ways to Become Indispensable at Work” If you are one of the people who solves problem for a living, you are already indispensable- especially if you do it with tools. There are some good points in this article that work well for our profession, but sometimes...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode we delve into the churning gears of capitalism and talk about the Grind. The Grind begins the moment your feet hit the floor, and with the sheer amount of knowledge that we have to do our job, it doesn’t stop until our heads hit the pillow. This week we are going over the article, “Five Common Traits of Savvy People Who Escape the Rate Race” and straight awa...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the wheels, we take a look at, ‘9 Things that Service Managers Should Do”. Right off the bat, the problems have not changed in the 10 years since this article was written, and in some points it is weirdly prophetic. Overall, this article pitches a lot of pretty solid things such as: regularly reviewing the calls that service advisors make in order...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get to the bread of the complement sandwich with Service Advisors and give them some serious tips and tricks on how to do their job better. This of course comes with the underlying message that if you find yourself seriously deficient in any of these categories, you may want to exit the business. You have to have the right personalit...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over what complaints customers have about Service Advisors on an industry wide basis. Turns out customers and technicians are in agreement on a lot of this list! From diagnosing from the chair and being wrong, to not getting the entire story on upcoming issues and incomprehensible promise times - the rift in the percept...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy dives into the disgusting swamps of the forums to find out what customers really think about us as automotive mechanics. In the process, he ends up making the case that typically the most ignorant voice their opinions the loudest on the internet, often with flimsy reasoning or dubious evidence. Some of the negative expe...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy thanks all of our fallen service members in addition to all of the wrench twisting folks who keep the world moving, However, we are still very much in the throes of “The Great Resignation”, so we are talking about some of the scientific reasons why people quit their jobs. Most of them are complete no-brainers, such as not ge...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets into some of the cold hard economics of the current automotive technician labor market and talks about how to get a raise. When techs can’t afford to live in the city that they work in, you are going to have major personnel problems- you don't have to be JD Rockefeller to figure that one out. When you throw the ram...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over a laundry list of things that you shouldn’t say to your manager in a while collar setting, that more often than not you SHOULD say to your manager in a blue collar setting. Reminding your manager of “The Great Resignation” works well in a white collar setting, but in the trades it punches just that little bit harde...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy fires up the Delorean and goes back to the magical time of 1972 to figure out if technicians were better off then or now. The most shocking thing that we uncovered is the concept of “Flat Rate Percentage” which is an awesome way to get paid that desperately needs to make a comeback (and never, EVER will!). As far as the cars...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets into the weeds on some of the perceptions that the general public has about various factions of the automotive repair industry. For good or for ill, your reputation as a mechanic is tied directly to your shop’s reputation, and as this survey suggests, having that reputation being well represented in the form of glowing...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes aim at some of the glaring fallacies of articles running down mechanics on the internet. This article states that saying a phrase like “I wouldn’t drive that very far” as a mechanic should disqualify them from servicing a customer’s car. However, this fails to take into account whether or not cords are hanging out of t...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about how we respond to the naturally chaotic and often perpetual stupidity that we deal with on a daily basis. The natural response to this is anger, but if you’re in Texas like Uncle Jimmy, they will kill you if you kill someone- even if they are stupid! Instead we talk about some of the more practical ways to not get old spar...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we deal with the image the public has when it comes to the people who fix their cars: they think we’re scumbags! Are we dirty? We definitely can be; when you’re dealing with things as gross as other people’s cars you can get really dirty! As far as looking the part, point taken but the second part of being a scumbag lies in how you trea...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy doesn’t skimp on the praise as we talk about how employers can appreciate their employees, and tailor it more to the automotive industry. Appreciation is best shown in the Automotive Industry through paying well and trying to make the job as bearable as possible. Balanced feedback prevents managing from the negative, which c...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels we take a look back at some of the finer points of the origins of this show: how little auto mechanics are paid and why. The numbers are pretty pathetic and for a lot of us wouldn’t even get us to return an employer’s calls if they offered us a job at that wage. This of course has precipitated a disastrous drop in the amount of people do...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we look at the final bit of the employment process- the point where you have had enough or circumstances change and you need a new job. There are a lot of really good reasons to quit your job as an auto mechanic: partner gets a better job somewhere else - go with them, cars break everywhere! Wanting to go back to school is usually a pre...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we are talking about happiness in the workplace. Seems like a bit of an oxymoron in the automotive industry, but Uncle Jimmy is co-opting articles written for cubicle workers for Auto Mechanics again, so hilarity ensues. The key to being happy at work is in maintaining a good work-life balance and there is a lot to unpack there. Some of...