Grease The Wheels Podcast

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into the imaging of the mechanical trades. What do owners think of mechanics? What about our families and friends? This is mostly a vibes podcast and Uncle Jimmy completely ignores the entire life work of Edward Bernays.  GTW MERCH: greasethewheels.store This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surf...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s meandering episode of Grease the Wheels, we sick AI onto some of the big ideas when it comes to automotive fixed operations. One of the best questions anyone has asked an AI in a long time is “what is the NADA, and what do they do?” The real meat of the episode revolves around Service Advisors, and the often woeful sink or swim training that they receive from dealer...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we take on one of the hot button topics of the industry - ThatYotaGuy. We are a big fan of Austin’s work in the freedom of speech category, and refusing to yield when major corporations are telling you to take down media that you created and feel strongly about takes a tremendous amount of balls. We also get in an obligatory amount of A...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy does a deep, AI Driven Dive into the Cash For Clunkers Program. This is, what the economists called at the time, “pump priming” economic stimulus with some environmental goals attached. We also get into the metrics, what got taken off the road, and what was it replaced by. Lots of small SUV’s got turned into Toyota Corolla’s and Ho...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about the polar opposite of the Great Replacement Theory that is going on across shops all over this country. Quite Simply put, there is real hard evidence and thousands of anecdotes that tell us that Gen Z might not have the cognitive skills, mechanical aptitude, or overall gumption (to borrow an insanely Boomer term) to get th...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy has a sit-down with Gemini to get to the heart of the Technician shortage. We also get into some more nefarious ideas of price fixing when it comes to technician wages, which it wouldn’t give us an answer to, which became a major league red flag. The nuts and bolts of the technician shortage are stark and simple. The industr...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, we talk about one of the major unsung heroes of the entire industry - the men and women who teach us seemingly un-teachable lot what’s going on. Weather you are an associate professor at a small state school, to a hyper-focused product expert working for a manufacturer, the knowledge that you have and your ability to parlay that knowled...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we get into some of the statistics of the “should technicians get paid for Video MPI’s” debate — and if this were an election, they would call it a landslide. Even the majority of Management and instructors are on the side of “pay the technicians for Video MPI’s”. When it comes right down to it, the foreword thinking management that wan...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle Jimmy starts a proper war on LinkedIn. We love LinkedIn, from the endless networking with people who want to sell us stuff, to some of the most ludicrous and overhyped job titles we have ever seen. Everyone is an expert, a guru, a wizard, or mogul - at least in their own head! What started as a post about not wanting to pay techni...

Send us Fan Mail On this weeks episode of Grease the wheels ,we talk about one of the very real threats that dealerships and their staffs face on a daily basis: security. For some reason, the criminal element loves car dealerships. It’s probably the tens of millions of dollars of inventory sitting on the lot or the fact that their harbor freight saws-all’s are simultaneously cheap and effective an...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes a bit deeper on the way that the Slate Electric Truck company is setting up shop. We get deeper into the idea that different levels of shop certification mean different types of work getting funneled to those shops. We also get into some of the broader market ramifications as well as how AI thinks this is going to go. T...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Grease The Wheels, we address the 800 LB gorilla in the room with the arrival of a sub $25,000 old school Mini-Truck style EV called Slate. This is one of the coolest things out there, and not only because it comes in Uncle Jimmy’s preferred cab layout, having the correct amount of doors for a pickup truck. As a product, it is deeply interesting, and we would lo...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy does a deep dive on the WrenchWay 2026 Voice of the Technician Survey — and man, does it should like a synopsis of Grease the Wheels! This time though, none of the numbers are made up, although admittedly Uncle Jimmy was a lot closer to the mark than we really want to admit. There are deep, structural issues within the automotive i...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy gets in depth with all of the things that tech schools DO NOT teach their students. There is a real disconnect between what techs know when they finish a program and when they enter the workforce. There really isn’t any type of instruction that can adequately prepare a student for the chaos of a modern auto shop. We also get...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we use AI to be introspective and ask it what it thinks of the podcast. Overall, it mirrors many of the opinions of our listeners, which is kinda spooky. It also goes into some of our ongoing projects, which is even spookier! Moving to a multimedia format would be difficult with the way that the content is produced, but we do have some...

Send us Fan Mail On this weeks episode of Grease The Wheels, we ask Gemini why customers are the way they are. There is a good portion of the customer base who knows that their cars are going to break, knows that they can’t fix them, and trusts you to make the right call when it comes to diagnosing and fixing the problems that they have to get back on the road. There is another segment of the cust...

Send us Fan Mail On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes into some of the deepest professional fantasies of ownership, management, and everything in between. Ownership wants a business that essentially runs itself, but to do that they have to empower their management to make the right decisions and give the dealership a level of autonomy. This is something that many owners hav...

Send us Fan Mail On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes hard in the paint when it comes to finding a new place to work — or if you are a new guy, a first place to work. There are a lot of questions that need to be asked when doing this, some of which are simple and extremely specific to who you are as a person, and the rest are a bit more hands on when it comes to site visits...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over some ways that you could *theoretically* sabotage the shop, and some of the ways to fix it. The conclusion that he comes to however, is one of the coldest lines in this entire series of podcasts - mainly that most shops are sabotaging themselves! From poor management to ineffective service advisors, when times get...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes down the AI Rabbit hole with some of the most pressing causes of the technician shortage. Weirdly, Gemini has apparently been an avid listener of grease the wheels, because the last few episodes were often referenced! However, where it completely excels is in the numbers, specifically looking at the aging population of...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle jimmy concludes his symposium on the technician shortage with the simple fact that the job is dangerous, and it will hurt you at some point. There are a million and a half ways to get hurt at work, from the cars to the equipment, to not properly using either. There are also a millions ways that the job can kill you, such as trying...

Send us Fan Mail On this weeks episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle Jimmy expands on the concept of “The Bullsh*t Factor” Quite simply put, this is anything that makes your job as a technician more difficult. This can from the environment, such as shops that are not properly climate controlled for the climate that they are in. It can also come from management and other support staff, being either t...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy comes down hard on one of the major contributing factors of the technician shortage - the money. From warranty times that keep getting slashed to an abysmally low starting average pay, there is no wonder why the attrition rate is so high amongst young technicians. Throughout the industry, keeping talent is a problem - for so...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle jimmy starts in on a series that is addressing the technician shortage. Throughout the history of media that has included cars, mechanics (and their modern iteration of technicians) have been unduly vilified as grifters, cheats, and scumbags. While there are some bad actors in the field, the same can be said for literally other oc...

Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes a common problem and solves it in the most insane way that he possibly can! We have all seen manuals, repair instructions, and bulletins that seem to be written by someone who has never turned a wrench in anger, but sometimes they are egregious enough to actually be a problem. Such as the one that attempted to have Unc...