Why Is There An Auto Tech Shortage? | SDR #209

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. I'm Chris Collins, and this is Chris Chung.

Hello, everyone.

We have an exciting topic for you today. How are we going to find the missing 642,000 technicians that are disappearing right in front of our eyes? The news. Some exciting stuff in the news and much, much more coming up right now on this edition of Service Drive Revol.

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. We have an exciting topic today that we're going to kind of go deep on.

Yes. Edge of the seat kind of stuff.

Edge of the seat. We're also going to go through the news. What I'm excited about is later today, Christian and I are going to find ourselves in. In the company of our coaching team.

Yes.

And the purpose of that meeting, which will be virtual. It will be in the webisphere.

Yes. The zoom variety, typically will be a.

Book report of a book that we assigned everybody to read. Something that we do sometimes. Yes.

I'm going to pre warn you they're overachieving this week.

They should.

Yes. I also wanted to apologize.

I'd be disappointed if they weren't overachieving.

Yeah, of course I wanted to apologize. I was a little late getting over to filming here. It's because I know. I know how important it is for you to kind of give back to the community. But I heard a ring at the door, so I went and I answered it. And it was a guy. He's asking for donations for the local pool, so I gave him a bottle of water.

Very kind of you. Thank you. Did you tell him it was from Chris Collins, Inc.

He didn't.

Did you get something so we can deduct it on our taxi?

Yeah. He was speechless.

I feel like that's shenanigans. I don't think you really did that. I think you're lying about it.

I am. It was funny.

But I'm excited about the book report. And.

What we do is we assign. Well, Christian assigns everybody a chapter, and then they come and do a book report on their chapter, and by the end, it's. It's as if everybody read the book. The thing with, like you said, we have a bunch of overachievers. Most of them read the whole book anyways because it's a good book. But I'm worried about who you assigned to do the first chapter.

Why?

Because you took the person who was least prepared last time and gave them like. It's like. Have you ever played golf?

Couple times.

Have you ever been the first group to lead off in the morning?

Yes.

The sun's coming up, and you're like, you set the pace for the whole day.

Yep.

That's what's gonna happen is he's gonna set the pace for the whole day.

That's right.

Okay, we'll see. But I'm excited. What is the book? They don't care about the book.

Yeah, good one.

It's a good book.

So I thought this was interesting because we've had a conversation about this before, but with a different brand of car.

GM will limit warranty transfers and ban buyers from flipping the old Hummer. Eve, I've seen a couple of these bad boys on the road.

Yeah.

So what do you think about that?

You know. You know where I saw one was in New York. I also saw the new Land Rover there.

Did we see the same Hummer EV then?

Yeah, we pointed it out.

That's right. It's funny. But yeah.

You know who else has done that is Ferrari for a long time.

Right. Because remember, Bieber got in trouble because he painted it, which I thought his Ferrari looked pretty cool. But, yeah, it's a no no on that. But they're gonna do that. Also to the new Escalades and also the Z06 Corvette, where essentially you get rid of the car, it loses its warranty, which.

Is saying, hold on to it. No flipping.

What are the chances that when you're done with this hot rod you're driving right now that you would be in the electric Corvette?

Oh, I think that's cool. So 50. 50.

I would do that. I don't know that it would work for you. I'd worry about your comfort.

I love, love, love, love my Rover.

Yes.

That's driving a couch.

That thing fits you. You look comfortable in it. So many cars I see. I get in with you because we drive a lot of rental cars, so I observe. Chris has this thing.

We should explain something, bro, because this is. This happened a lot recently where I meet people and they go, oh, my God, you're so much taller than I thought.

Yeah.

So I guess when you're. When you're on the show or whatever, the camera makes you look taller if you're short. Like Tom Cruise is really short.

Yes.

But also, if you're tall, it makes you look shorter because people are surprised how tall I am.

Yeah. So to give everybody a little bit of context, Kevin, if you go back to Chris. So I come up. If I'm sitting in that chair, my head doesn't go over the back part. Chris's head goes well above.

So if you're listening to this and not watching. I don't know. My head's 3ft above the chair.

Yeah. Roughly about 2.6ft above the chair. But Chris is definitely tall.

Yeah. So I'm tall. And.

So just giving context when. Sometimes when I get into a car like your car, I'm kind of wedging myself in there.

Yeah. And he looks so uncomfortable. However, when you're driving that Range Rover, that thing, it's not cockpit built in the front. You've got a little bit of room. The way that your arms kind of rest on the sides.

The greatest.

It's just built for you. It's really, really good.

I think I would be uncomfortable in a Corvette. So that's your point.

Yes.

Is that I might not be in the market for a Corvette because I'm too big.

I believe you really like driving the Land Rover because it fits and I.

Don'T need to go fast.

Yeah. That's more me. Yeah.

Because, you know, that's what we want is fast bad drivers.

Fast drivers and bad drivers combined make news stories.

Weird.

That good drivers drive slow.

Also that good drivers like fast cars.

And then don't go fast, you know.

Yeah. Whenever I've had fast cars, they're wasted on me because maybe one time driving to Vegas, I'll get up to 100, but I'm not crazy. Okay. What else is in the news?

That is. That's really about it. Because I think.

Let's get to the real subject.

Then we're going to spend the majority of our time. The genesis for this discussion is out of CBT news.

The genesis.

Yeah. The start.

The beginning of heaven and earth.

Yeah. That first book of the Bible thing.

Yeah. This is the beginning of this conversation.

That's right. Well done. Good context. But the article is called How Car Dealers can navigate the Ongoing Auto Tech shortage, which we probably haven't talked about this yet, but there seems to be more tech jobs than techs available right now industry wide. So this is kind of piggybacking off of a study that was done by the Wrenchway. And they're predicting that by 2024. I'm going to have you guess this number. How short are we going to be on technicians by 2024?

150,000.

That is way off. 642,000. 642. That's. That's over half a million text short.

Mamacita.

Yes.

What are we gonna do?

Oh, we've got ideas.

We're have to learn how to wrench Christian.

I feel like that would be worse.

Than that you'd have a lot of comebacks.

Yeah, for sure. I never remember like where to put stuff after I take it apart.

Like you'd have extra parts.

Always have extra parts.

Yeah, that'd be bad.

All right, so in the same, the same study, I'm going to ask you this question. What percentage of technicians have thought about leaving the field.

Out of this group of techs that was surveyed?

So I'm going to draw.

Inspiration from the book.

I wrote about gamification. And it's something like.

65% of people either don't like their job or are looking for another job. So I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say it's over 50%.

Yeah, good job. 79%. So four out of four out of five.

80%.

Well, you said you're in the book. That's industry wide. Is 65, like not just our industry, but all over the place with 65. And I think it wouldn't be a far jump to think that they're a disgruntled group. Right. Just in general, 79% of technicians have thought about leaving the field. And then this one's almost just as bad. What percentage of technicians reported having at least some sort of burnout?

Is it like the same, the same stat? 70 something percent.

69%. Wow.

A crisis.

Yeah. Then they'd also in this article talked about reasons why technicians are unhappy. I guess there's four of them in total and you are happy. And I think you'll get all four of them.

Oh really?

I do.

So they don't like their boss.

So I'm going to put that in with, with respect. They don't get respect.

That their boss doesn't respect them is.

That they don't get respect or their boss doesn't respect them because they don't get respect. To just be, you know when you're like single and you're at a bar and a pretty girl goes, hey, what do you do? And you're like, I'm a technician. And they then they feel like the reason why the girl didn't give them.

Their number talks to somebody else.

Not because their joke wasn't funny, it was because they were attacking. But does it say boss specifically?

No.

Okay, so I mean, I could be wrong there then. So it's just the stigma of the job.

Yeah. That they're not getting any response.

It's like a lot, a lot of kids that when we were young would have been technicians now are programmers or working with computers or, you know, they're same sort of thing. They're fixing stuff, they're working with their hands. But maybe the.

Stigma is different.

Well, I think you have to remember too is that's the technician is the beautiful blend of a kinesthetic person working with the hands. But you understand they also have the aptitude of lawyers and doctors.

Right.

So they're really smart and they're really good with their hands. So they're kind of a unicorn of a human. Right, Right. Okay.

What about. Is one of them money?

Yes.

What's it say about money that they're.

Concerned about compensation for the difficulty of the job?

Concerned or it doesn't line up.

It doesn't line up that they're not getting paid enough.

So we got money. We got the stigma of the job itself.

Yes.

Money.

Career path, well done.

So they called it. Lack of professional development, but career path. Yeah, exactly. Right. They don't know where they're headed. They're just going to change oil on the express lube for seven years.

Can you give me a hint about the fourth one?

If you're in Florida working in a shop, what would the most important thing to you be?

Amenities.

Yes.

Working conditions, Air conditioning.

You got it.

Lunchroom.

So working conditions, it is interesting.

Like if you're listening to this and you're struggling getting techs sometimes just stand up and walk out into the lunchroom where the techs are and look around and.

Ask yourself this question. Does this lunchroom look like technicians are the most important part of our business?

That's a great test.

Most of the time the answer is going to be not so much.

It looks like we put the leftover microwave there.

Yeah. And it hasn't been painted in.

Forever. And it's hot. It's hotter than Hades. The refrigerator doesn't work.

It leaks all over the floor. And the TVs. A tube TV from 1983.

Yeah. And so amenities too. Like if you think about.

Where programmers work, they'll have foosball, they'll have ping pong, they'll have snacks, right?

Yep.

So we know people that do that for their techs.

They have like a game room.

Yep. I was just at a shop in Virginia. They had like a free water slash drink vending machine in their shop. And they also have ice cream cooler, which I thought was really cool.

Free ice cream.

Yes.

Yeah. And what did the lunchroom look like?

Clean. Like I ate in there.

Like somebody caring.

Yes.

Yeah.

And the shop was clean, well lit, the whole thing. It was neat.

Yeah. So it's probably time that we. We start. We Start working on that. Like, you know.

If you're a kid growing up and you can. You can be an IT guy and go work even at Best Buy there. What is. What are the kids from Best Buy called? Like the something geeks.

Yeah, Geek Squad.

Geek Squad. Like the Geek Squad at least gets a cool car to drive around. They look like the, you know, nerd version of the A team.

Right.

Still cooler than most of the lunchroom. You know, what we're doing for technicians. And then I would think about the.

Google campus and work backwards like some of the cool stuff they do for their people.

Yeah.

Just that it's a hip place to go.

We. We definitely have a challenge. I would love to see in the comments or, you know, send us some, some emails too, at Info at Chris Collins. But I would love to see what you guys think about how we could not only change the stigma of people wanting to come into our industry as techs, but. But also how are we going to get younger kids, and by younger kids, I mean, like 10 or 11, to see our industry in a different way. And there's a lot of things that used to happen to us psychologically that I don't think we were conscious of. But most of the time we had posters on our wall of cool cars. Right. Like you'd have a poster of a Corvette or you'd have a poster of a Mustang or a truck or a monster truck.

Right.

Remember I used to go watch the monster trucks and how cool that was. Race cars, Bigfoot.

We really don't. We don't do that in the sense that there's a lot of kids out there that are into Fast and the Furious and that sort of thing. But from an industry, we're losing that nostalgia. We're handing that to the movie industry. But those kids that are into Fast and Furious attribute that thing to the movie, into a lifestyle, not to being a tech. Yeah, there's a separation there that we're losing.

In the association where they don't associate tuning of the cars with actually being the tech.

Yeah, that's interesting.

They don't have a poster and they're not like a lot of the. A lot of the guys that we have working for us that started off as tax, I've done this. Like you ask them, like when you were 15.

And the answer is, oh, yeah, I rebuilt a Chevy Nova, whatever.

Yeah, before they could drive, they were.

Rebuilding, building an engine or, you know, working on something mechanical. There be a tractor or a car or something. But they were tearing stuff apart and Putting it back together. And there's a feeling of accomplishment that comes with that, that then you attach your identity to that. These kids are. They're watching it in a movie, but they're not associating it with us as an industry.

They all remember the first project. So that makes me think, right, like, what could we do? Could we reach out to the high schools and could we teach it.

You know, could we teach a group of high school kids how to. How to upfit a car with nitro? You know what I mean?

There's so many things we could do to try to piggyback off of some of the pop culture popularity.

I think that we should be going into the junior highs almost and having contests.

Oh.

To see who's creating scenarios where they can tune, modify, work on, or even code for a car and then give away a big prize. And then they're, you know, they get their picture taken with somebody important. And we're doing that nationally where then there's an overall national thing, like, you know, a spelling bee gets more attention than anything we do.

Pretty sure the spelling bee is on ESPN now. Yeah.

And the spelling bee, really, there's no back end to it.

Right.

But there could be a back end. We have to change the way they feel. I think about this story in the book Culture Code. There's a couple books named Culture Code, unfortunately, but this is the good one that he's written by a French guy, Kublai Blue. Blue something.

Oh, yeah, got him.

And his thing was he developed this way of getting into people's minds.

Treating autistic kids.

And he was, you know, he was doing a series of.

I don't know how you would explain it, but he was putting people through a series of experiences that then would kind of show you what their real motivation was. And he had a neighbor who was the president of Nestle. And the neighbor said, hey, Julie. Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue, whatever his name is, could you go to Japan and figure out why they don't drink coffee? And so he goes over there and he does his. His thing on people all over Japan trying to figure out what is their. Their deep inner rooted.

Feeling about coffee.

Probably that they like tea.

Yeah. You read the book?

I might have, yeah.

They don't have a feeling for coffee. They have a thing for tea because, I don't know, the English got there first. And so he came back and he said, hey, neighbor, thanks for hiring me to do that.

But.

There'S no go. This is a no go situation. My advice to you would be get them young, start making coffee, candy, coffee popsicles, coffee ice cream, and make it readily available to kids. And then those kids, when they grow up, will have a certain, you know, nostalgia towards coffee. And that's what they did. And it worked. Yeah, but we gotta start getting the kids young to feel different about our industry than they do now. So I'd be very curious about your ideas. We got a lot of very smart, important people listening to this show. And I would be curious what you guys think. How can we get the younger kids? Think about spelling bees, think about things that kids do. Sports. The World or World Series, Mini League.

World Series, Little League World Series.

Little League World Series. Like all those things have a huge following with kids.