The Fleet Success Show Episode 177: When Outsourcing Fails: Fleet Maintenance or Fleeced Maintenance

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I am Mark Canton, your host today, and I am joined by my good friend and colleague Steve Salzgiver, the one and only, the Fleet Whisperer, the Hall of Fame fleet manager. How are you, Steve?

Doing great today, as always.

As always is right, Mr. Positivity. Steve, I brought you on the show today and I was hoping you could be my sounding board, or, you know, I need a venting session here and, you know, maybe we can turn it into something interesting for our loyal listeners about fleet. but I am freaking frustrated with OEM service center. I just feel like, and I don't want to pick on anybody, but it's just always a hassle, you know. Um, for one, I'm tired of service writers, so-called service writers. I don't think people— I don't think in fleet we would call what they call a service writer, service writer. I'm tired of trying to be upsold. On everything, things I don't need. And it makes me cringe when I think about, you know, what if my mom or, or someone else who doesn't know anything about vehicles went in there, my family, and they said, yeah, okay, out of pure trust. And some of the things I see that they try to sell you, um, like, you know, 30,000-mile, uh, you know, you know, differential changes when you— clear as day on your service record you either don't need it because you're not doing heavy duty, or you just did it the last time around, sort of a thing, right? So that's one thing, uh, and then another thing is comeback rate doesn't hurt them. So I find myself going back for the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and it's like they don't care. Oh, we don't have the part. Well, I called to check if you have the part. You called me and told me you did have the part. Yeah, well, we had the part for one side but not for the other side. Yeah, but you knew both sides needed the work, you know. Um, and it's just lately I feel like this is my experience. I think, you know, I'm sure they're struggling with a lot of the issues that fleet is, uh, so it's hard to get good help. So they got people interacting who really don't understand the vehicles, don't understand the tech. And I don't think this is like, um, for a specific brand. I think this is an industry thing. And so I'm bringing you on because, um, You know, you have a lot of experience in this world. You actually sold cars. That's a part of your career that we skip sometimes when we talk about all the stops you had. Am I crazy?

Yeah, I did that for almost a year.

Yeah.

So, so you know, I think, I think if you were to do a survey of a lot of fleet managers, I think you'd find the same issues out there. I mean, I can tell you about instances that I've had, but you're absolutely right on comeback rates. I've taken, I mentioned before the podcast, we were talking a little bit about one of my frustrations with a dealer and I had to take a vehicle in several times because I had recalls. And I would take it in, I'd schedule an appointment, take it in, they didn't have the part. So then I'd take it home, you know, and then I had one, I had to wait up to 6 months just to get the part and get the recall done. Well, as you know, safety recall, they're safety, right? So I mean, you're really taking a liability on your own. To have that vehicle and they're operating for 6 months because they can't fix it and they don't care. You know, it's not like they're going to rush to give you a loaner for 6 months, right?

So especially on the recalls, they probably see that as corporate.

It's a huge issue.

Yeah.

Yeah, probably. They're a manufacturer.

Yeah.

It wasn't their fault, right? They just sold the car to you. Yeah. But same thing. I have the same issues, you know, when it comes to my family. I basically have taken on that responsibility in my household. I even do my sister-in-law's car. I take it to get it lubed and everything else because the upselling's a huge problem. And to go even farther than that, I mean, we're working with people on, we've got a couple of consulting projects right now because they don't trust their vendors. And so we're going out there and we're auditing all those transactions and we're finding things like, you know, they've replaced, 3 air filters in a year, or 2 starters in a year, or 2 sets of tires in a year. I mean, that's, if you know anything about maintenance, that's like impossible. Unless you're putting 100,000 miles on a car in a year, right? So they don't check, they don't, you know, I mean, they don't keep any good records, and they're obviously upselling, you know. We saw one where they had 4 sets of wiper blades in one year. Wow. You know, and there's those little things add up if you're trying to manage the fleet.

Sure.

You know, that's, that's a problem. But, uh, I, I remember I posted something a while back. Yeah, you're right. I posted something on LinkedIn a while back for one of my vehicles, and I mean, I literally took it in just to get the oil changed, and I had— I think I had a rate, maybe a couple of recalls too. Anyway, but long story short, this thing is still under drivetrain warranty. It's 2 years old and they want me to pay $6,000. I'm going, that's unacceptable. I'm not paying that. I had less than 30,000 miles on this vehicle. You know, and so I'm going roundabout with these people. I'm a maintenance guy. I've been doing this a long time. And I'm a maintenance guy, so I'm yelling and screaming and arguing and negotiating and everything else. Long story short, I got all kinds of goodwill. I walked out of there with $1,500, $1,000 bill instead of $6,000. But who's going to do that? Your spouse is not going to do that. Our family and friends are not going to do that. And just think about all the money they're making on all these unsuspecting people that know nothing about maintenance.

That's what gets at me, man. You know, like you said, you know, most folks listening know I moved to the Phoenix area. A little over a year ago. But when I was back home with the family, just like you, you know, I took my sister's car, I took my brother's car, I took my cousins, my aunts, my uncle, anyone. And, um, you know, when I was, when I was managing a fleet for 20 years there, thankfully I had built up relationships and we were a purely outsourcing group. So I learned early on how to, how to kind of put pressure on vendors and, you know, how to, how to leverage SLAs and, and how to, um, you know kind of get the most out of folks and make it worth their while too, right? And so thankfully I had relationships where I had built up folks that I could trust. Then, you know, even they would tell me, yeah, don't, don't bring it in through the front door, basically, right? Bring it into the back. And I said, what? Not that they were going to do something cheap, but they just didn't want me to have to go through the service writer experience, um, you know. And, and I feel bad to pick on them because it's not fair. That's their job. That's what they're trained and taught to do, right? But there's something wrong about it. And, you know, for those fleets out there that are utterly dependent on OEM service centers, you really, you really ought to have a— to your point, someone who's really, you know, experienced in maintenance and repair and who's very diligent about going through the records and making sure that, you know, the right work got done, that the work was logical, that you're not getting double billed, that you're measuring comeback rates. I mean, it's actually much easier to measure comeback with a vendor than it is your own techs. In most shops, you know what I'm saying?

So I think we're seeing a lot of symptoms in the market now that we probably haven't seen for some time. I mean, you know, since the COVID debacle that we went through, all that supply chain issues, all those things have really impacted. I mean, the downtime is off the charts now. If you take it to a vendor, it'll sit in their lot, you know, unless you've got some special arrangement, you're just one of many and you can sit in their lot for 2 weeks. That's affecting your vehicle availability, everything else. So, I mean, we used to always say, you know, the right balance of outsource versus in-house, if you're running a shop, is somewhere between 10 to 25% you want to send out. And a lot of that was most of the time be specialty work. Now, you know, what we're seeing in the industry, which you and I coined years ago, along with a bunch of consultants at another operation or firm, was, you know, the perfect storm hit us. You know, we're losing a lot of institutional knowledge in fleet management. And that institutional knowledge, if you go back to what I just said about negotiating, that's what's being lost. You know, they just take it at face value. Well, those guys are the experts. They told me I needed a new starter. They told me, you know, I needed a new widget. I mean, they could tell you anything. You wouldn't know if you didn't have the knowledge, right?

That's a great point. You have folks coming over from tangent industries. And to their credit, you know, they have oftentimes good business sense. They can leverage data, but they don't have fleet context. And they're prime meat for some of these service centers, quite frankly, to be taken advantage of. That's a really good point.

The recent consultant study last year, the fleet manager actually came from the IT industry. You know, I mean, He was a good manager, good people guy, didn't know anything about vehicle maintenance. You know, he'd never worked on a car. I think that perfunctory knowledge that we used to have, I mean, you think about me, you know, I'm a senior citizen now, I guess, for all intents and purposes. But you know, I grew up fixing cars in the backyard with my dad, handing him tools. He taught me the ropes. I went to a shop class in high school. I went through an apprenticeship program to learn diesel mechanics. You know, those are the kind of things, they're not around like that anymore. I mean, you can go to a, you know, like a tech school maybe and learn some of that. But nowadays that perfunctory knowledge, that hands-on is few and far between, right? And a lot of fleet managers don't do it unless they've come up through the ranks of the shop, which, you know, that still does happen occasionally. But we're having a hard time because it's hard to hire those people anymore.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. You know, that sort of that, you know, what the baseline knowledge and baseline experience working on automotive technology is just, it's just not there anymore. The skills have left, the knowledge has left, and it creates a hole.

And plus it's got very complex.

Yeah, that's true too, right? I was laughing with someone. We were onboarding a bunch of folks here at RTA this week. And, uh, you know, I was telling them there are plenty of vehicles out there on the road that don't have a driveshaft. And then I explained to them what that is, and, you know, and they're, they're shocked, you know, like it's like driving a video game out there. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's an interesting time in that regard. And, you know, what, what strikes me about— and I want to be clear, like, there are such— I, I, I'm— I, I believe that there are great OEM service centers out there. I, I don't— again, I know I started off strong And I stand by what I said, to be honest with you. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as a good one or a great one. I'm sure they're out there. If you find them, hold on to them. But I think that they're having similar challenges as the fleet management industry, and, and that's starting to show up on their quality of service, right? They have the same challenges getting good technicians and getting good quality folks that the rest of us are. And to your point, it's, it's also because the skills have left, because the education has left, right? And the, and that standard cultural knowledge is it's just been lost. Um, you know, and, and so I think, I think one of the reasons I wanted to bring this up, kind of thinking forward in terms of some of our listeners and our Fleet listeners, there are some folks out there who have some great programs that their entire M&R is run via outsourcing. So again, it's doable, it's doable. We've talked on this show about some of the best ways to make sure you're doing it well. And yet at the same time, I think, I, I think I would argue that if you have an in-house shop and you're struggling and you're thinking, you know, man, I've had these two tech positions vacant for, you know, 4 months or whatever. I mean, right? I mean, every fleet you walk into has vacant positions right now. Is that fair? I haven't come across one that didn't have at least a couple techs vacant, you know. And so I get it, people throw their hands up, they're being forced to outsource more than maybe they want to otherwise. And they're probably starting to think to themselves, well, you know, maybe we should abandon this and just go all outsource. And I guess I would, I would say Hold on on that. Hold on on that because there's a lot of really good reasons to, to have an in-house shop if you can have an in-house shop. And, um, so I wanted to pick your brain on that a little bit. You know, one of them is, I think, is priority. You just mentioned it before, right? You bring it to, to a service center, you know, they may bring you in right away, they may not. Even with a good relationship, even with a good SLA, they can sometimes have caveats in there, you know, where they get a piece of judgment, which is understandable. It's their business. But you certainly are not the master of your own domain, right? You cannot prioritize. You cannot schedule. You could not reschedule your whole fleet program around what your, you know, your fleet users' needs are, for example. Right. What are your service hours? So I think that's a really big piece to kind of roll one off, right? It's that control. And it's not because of, you know, territory. It's because of the ability to provide service when you need it and, you know, and kind of prioritize accordingly. So that's one that kind of jumps off my head. What are some other ideas? You know, what thoughts do you have? Why would you advocate for an in-house shop?

I think you hit the nail on the head with SLAs or service level agreements. The other thing too is, you know, establish relationships with vendors that you can, you know, give them the lion's share of the work. I think that helps.

Yeah. If you're going to outsource, you got to do that.

That trust comes, right? Right. Yeah. Make sure you're not just sending it all over the place to people that don't know who you are. You know, if you're a city and you have a local dealership in your city, you know, that's a good person to get a contract with because that's a relationship where both of you have the same interests in mind and to make the city better, right? Or, you know, or have local business, you know, in that operation. So those are some things you can do to make that happen. Certainly in-house shops are becoming much more important because of downtime, I think now, because of priority, more so than ever. You know, and that changes, it's cyclical, you know, but right now, you know, with the things we've seen, the supply chains, both getting vehicles and getting parts, that means you have to be able to respond quicker. You know, I mean, I never in my life would have ever recommended to anybody to cannibalize anything, but now, I mean, we're seeing that because people have to have parts they can't get, you know. And so, you know, there's a number of different practices you're engaging yourself into that you may not have in the past, you know. And I don't encourage it in the future either. And once we get out of this supply chain issue, hopefully that passes, but just a number of things to think about. I mean, the quality is not there either, you know. I mean, you've mentioned comebacks, the quality is not there. You can control the quality, you know, internally, maybe a little better. And certainly you're not expending the shuttle time back and forth, right?

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So talk a little bit about that because you're kind of going where I'm thinking. How do you control quality? A bunch of ways. You have a good QA/QC program, you train for what your needs are, right? So again, that comes back to that control a little bit where it's like, hey, these are, this is the, these are the kinds of jobs we're doing all the time. This is the work, this is the kinds of equipment we're working on. You can develop a training curriculum that orients to the precise needs of what you're working on, as one example of, of the kind of thing you can do about quality, right? And then the other thing I think, Steve, is, is again that vehicle type, right? When you very rarely these days is a fleet, um, you know, there's usually standardization, but it's very rarely a one-trick pony unless maybe it's a vocational fleet, right? Like in other words, you're gonna have Fords and Chevys and Rams and all kinds of other things, right? Um, so you, you know, if you, you might have a great service provider in one in your town and not a great one in the other, you know, what do you control there? Uh, that gets a little challenging. And then I also think last but not least is some of the medium duty and heavy duty stuff, like, you know, outside of your shop, I don't know how people get training for that or exposure to that. It's, it's growing more and more difficult. It's certainly not getting that exposure in most cases over on that OEM side. So there's that— there's a diversity of skills that happens from working in the shop that gets lost, I think, uh, if you're, if you're overly dependent on the outside.

What are your thoughts? We actually met with a client earlier this week, and that was one of the questions that came up, you know, how are you standardizing your fleet and how is that working out for you? Because they only had— they had a— I think in their town they had a Chevy dealer, that was it. And they had tried to standardize on that, but now they're having problems because the supply chain issues. They have to go to lots and buy vehicles, and sometimes they can't get Chevys, so they gotta go Fords and Rams and, you know, whatever, Toyotas, whatever the options are. So that's becoming a bigger issue right now at this time. You know, that'll change. But down the road, if you were standardizing and then you have this little blip of 4 years, where you had to go to different models, that's certainly going to affect your cost models, you know, things like that. Your mechanic training, your parts supply, everything that, that really gets impacted by the lack of standardization in your shop.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. Well, I don't know, I mean, there's all kinds of things too you can do if you're thinking about maybe outsourcing more or bringing in-house a little bit more, right? Tell me a little bit about some of the things you've participated in over the years to help organizations, uh, you know, kind of determine what's the right balance for them or whether or not they should insource. I remember, if I recall, where I think you were involved once in like a competition between, uh, and now— is that right? Am I ringing a bell where like an outside group essentially competed with the in-house shop for a period of time and you kind of figured out who performed better both from a cost and an efficacy? Is that something— was that you, or was that— I'm remembering that a different colleague on that.

It wasn't me specifically, but it was one— it was one of our projects in the consulting.

Okay, okay, got it. All right. Right.

Outsource feasibility study.

Sure.

What do we call it? Outsource competition. Competitive analysis.

It was interesting.

But, you know, I mean, that's the one thing you got to think about. If you're going to work with a vendor, there's nothing to prohibit you from getting a contract in place, a written contract, not verbal. There's nothing that prohibits you from asking questions about how their mechanics are trained, how they measure quality control. How they schedule. I mean, there's a myriad of questions you want to ask, you know, to make sure you're not just, they're not just winging it, right? Yeah. And then, and then put some metrics to it. You know, if I bring a vehicle to you for a brake or an oil change or whatever it is, I expect it out by one day or within 24 hours. Or, you know, if they don't meet it, then put punitive measures to it, right? That always motivates people. Okay, you give me a 50% discount if I— if you don't get it out in one day. So those are the things you can build into the contracts. They want your business, they'll work with you.

Exactly. So, well, but let's, let's put it all together now, taking some of the tips you said and kind of create the full picture. So you've done some analysis, you figured out how much work is going to get done, you approach your vendor or vendors, and you, you can basically promise them this amount of work. Hey, this is, this is how many repairs, this is what we think it's worth to you if we give you this business. You now leverage that to say, hey, I want some level of priority, I want some level of guarantee of what my turn times on my work orders are going to be, when I'm going to get in, uh, etc., etc. You also put in a KPI into this agreement about comebacks, um, you know, making sure that there's only a certain percentage. And as you said, if it goes over than that, you get some sign of financial gain. And if they outperform what your minimum standards are, maybe even throw in some financial gain for them because you want them to be motivated to do better. So we call that— we often refer to that as a performance-based contract or performance-based SLA, right? And actually naming what the KPI points are is really the key to managing that properly. This way it's not judgment, it's not he said, she said, it's no surprises, it's not fighting. You do have to build into there how are you going to— how are you going to manage that? Hey, if there is a disagreement, what do we do? How do we arbitrate that, right? We sit down, and we have a conversation around that. And I think your overall point is ask. Most folks aren't asking. They're not trying to do any of this. They just accept what they get and they're not really taking, um, what's the word, they're not involving themselves into what these dealers are doing. As you mentioned, what is their training, what is their background? You have a right to actually demand you want certain levels of training, for example, for the folks who are working on your vehicle.

They basically work for you. They're your employee. You have lots of leverage. And then on their side, they're going to be more motivated if on volume. So if you're going to be bringing, you know, they want to know that you're going to bring stuff to them. So it's a good partnership if you do it right.

Right. And you could even monitor, again, pay attention to the KPIs. Okay, it's waiting. Why is it waiting? It's waiting on parts. I remember negotiating with some folks, hey, I'm going to require you keep a certain amount of these on hand. We're going through them all the time. And, you know, I'm constantly waiting on that to get in and I'm losing my vehicle for it. Why aren't you stocking them yet? Right. So the idea here is if for those who are paying attention to us, it's really a lot like managing your own shop, right? In the sense of you're measuring the performance of the techs, you're measuring the performance of the parts supply chain, etc., etc. And then you're doing something about it and, and you're leveraging your buying power.

Fundamentally, I've seen even some of our clients that actually supply parts to vendors because they have them in stock and the vendor doesn't have them in stock, and they basically sell them that part to put on their car, or they give them that part and get the discount, right?

So funny.

So I've seen all kinds of different iterations of this. Oh man.

All right, I'm going to end on why I'm so frustrated right now with my OEM vendors here, if that's all right. Okay, I'm going to tell you my story. If you want, you can tell me yours, but then we'll call it a day. I won't name the company because, to be honest with you, I got to tell you, I think the people over there are really good, kind-hearted people who mean well, but I've just grown frustrated. So I have a tire— tire originally had a nail or something in it. It was a specialty tire, couldn't— it couldn't— wasn't easily fixed, let's say that. Supposedly fix it, get it back, still losing air. Bring it back. Oh, we fixed it. Get it back. Still losing air. Bring it back. Oh, we fixed it. I mean, and this literally happened 4 times. And I said, something's wrong here. I check it out myself, and sure enough, the valve stem is shot. So bring it in. Oh yeah, the valve stem is shot. This is now the 5th time, and I've told them what's wrong with it. So, and for me, because of my schedule, what I basically do, Steve, is I'll bring it in. Like, if I'm actually going to bring it in tonight and I bring it in and then, you know, they'll work on it tomorrow and then they'll call me late in the day and I'll go grab it. Or I'll say leave it with sales and I'll grab it on Sunday, right? So I'm losing the weekend with the vehicle essentially, and, um, for a valve stem so far. And it's, it's, it went in 7 times, and then I brought it in, oh, we got the wrong valve stem. How do you order the wrong valve stem? Or whoever sent it to you, whoever made the mistake, I don't know and I don't care. I'm now 7 visits on the shop. Okay. At visit number 5 or 6, I said, hey, I think I'm seeing the same problem with the other tire, the left passenger tire now, right? Please take a look at it for me. All right, we'll take a look at it for you. Okay. Get it back number 6 time. Oh yeah, nope, there's nothing wrong with that other tire. It's fine. We think we fixed the first one though. Guess what? They didn't fix the first or the second tire. Rode it back. On the 7th time, I go to pick it up, and sure enough, the original tire is fixed. And I go to check the second tire, and it's not fixed. So I'm now frustrated, and I'm calling, and I can't get anybody on the phone, which is so freaking typical. I can't, can't get anybody on the horn. If I didn't force the service writers to give me their cell phones to have a text message with them, I would never get anybody on the phone. Uh, so I can't get the manager. I can't— next thing I know, I'm talking to the sales manager. It's like, this is crazy. I feel like I'm a tattletale or something like that. I want to talk directly with the folks. Uh, having all kinds of trouble leaving messages for the general manager. Finally, the original, uh, service writer calls me, says, well, I know you want to talk with my boss, but he's not in, and I don't want you to think we're not getting back to you. I said, okay, that's a good move. So he calls me in. I said, you know, what is going on here? And he says, well, yeah, we got the one valve stem but not the other, and I said, gosh darn it, go out there and order 8 valve stems. I will pay for them if I have to. Keep them in stock and just have the darn valve stems on hand. Like, at some point, just, you know, okay, okay. And contact me when they're in. Contact me when they're in. And sure enough, I'll be, I'll be dropping the vehicle off tonight for this valve. And it's a very specialty tire. And so it's not like something that's easy to get. You can only get it from the OEM. Sure enough, because I had to go out and have a fancy 21-inch rim. And, you know, so in any event, I'm just—

Well, you made a very— you made one very good point among all the points that you made that I really related to, and that was get the name of the service writer and the person that's servicing your vehicle. In the case I mentioned a little bit earlier on the podcast, I had the guy's name, I had his email, I had his text. I was texting him and emailing back and forth. And when you do that, you make it personal, right? And you can express some of your feelings. And this guy, you know, even though I had frustration, even though I was a little irritated, he could sense that, but he took care of it, took care of me, mitigated my feelings, you know. And so I think, you know, make sure you're working with people. Not, not entities, right? Yeah. Get a, get a one-on-one with somebody that— because most people, to your point earlier, they're good people. They really do want to help you.

You know, you hit the nail on the head. This young man, once he heard it from me and he, and he understood what— like, for him, at first it was just one thing at a time. And when I put the whole story together for him, he just said, wow, you know, I, I didn't realize it. I appreciate it. It's got to be crazy. And I told him, I said, I like you, and I like some of the guys there a whole lot. I just don't want to keep seeing you every weekend, man. And he said, I understood. And he was, you know, he was, he was good about it, to your point. Exactly. So I guess that's part of the moral of the story too, right? Talk, make it with people, and usually, usually they'll get it done. And maybe I'm being unfair. I certainly— Josh would accuse me of recency bias, Steve, and he would be right. He would be right. Uh, I'm frustrated, but, you know, the next day after, uh, picking it up the 6th time, I dropped my other vehicle off at a completely different dealership, completely different make and model. It was only for an oil change, and they texted me back saying, we recommend work that's for $3,500. And I went, what the heck? And I went through it line by line, and nothing was necessary but the oil change. And, you know, I just said, man, these dealers. So that's my— that was my week a couple weeks ago. That's where I'm—

uh, you're making a good point. If you're a fleet, you need to be able, before you take that in for whatever service work particularly if it's for preventative maintenance, you better have read the OEM manual so you know what the interval really requires, because they're going to give you a list, right? Because that's, that's the way those manuals are set up.

Yeah, they're going to give you everything that's on that interval and anything close, you know. If it's on an interval that just passed or is coming up soon, they're going to put it on you there.

Uh, oh yeah.

And you know what, you may—

well, they're going to assume you never took it.

Yes, that's what it is. That's what it is. They're going to assume— meanwhile, they can see in the computer full well everything that you've done to the vehicle or not, right? And, and let me just— let me— okay, because I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little more here. Here's the, the Canton rant. This is the Canton rant episode here. But on this other one, right, so I said, make sure you do a full inspection. You're, you know, I'm entitled to my multi-point inspection, whatever. And the last time they hadn't done it, no problem. I come back, and let's just say this is a very large SUV, and there are a few large SUVs out there that have air suspensions on the rear. They're auto-leveling. So I come back, and I had mentioned, I said, you know, I'm not sure, I think I'm sitting a little low, I think I'm sagging. Pick up the key, and my vehicle is parked across the way, and we look at it, and I said to service writer, I said, hey, uh, what do you think about the car? You know, does it look right to you? The, the tires basically touching the top of the wheel well. And he said, yeah, you're right, uh, that's not— I said, you have the inspection? Pulls up the inspection. I said, where is it? Nobody noticed this? Well, that's not on one of the points on the multi-point inspection. It's like, what are we talking about? They don't get paid to do any more than they have to. All right, but that— I said, okay, well, I guess next time, because I just needed to go away at that point. All right, folks, hopefully my ranting was entertaining for you. Hopefully Steve's advice is very, very helpful and useful to you. If you are doing outsourced work, whether it's, you know, you know, what you're mostly depending on outsourced, or if you're just doing a portion, it's really important to have those SLAs. It's very important to have them performance-based, meaning write KPIs into that contract. Don't forget to ask because you don't know what you're going to get if you ask. And you got to follow through. You got to read the work. You got to be looking at the invoices. You got to be measuring. Otherwise, you leave yourself open to groups who maybe don't really care about you, don't have your best interests in mind, and are happy to take advantage. Again, that doesn't mean that everyone out there is doing that, but there's enough out there and you don't want to be the victim of that. So Uh, really important stuff.

I, I know that we don't want to particularly sell on this, but if you need people to help you write SLAs, right, or if you need people to intervene and help you negotiate, we, we have, yeah, fleets experts to do that.

That's a great point, Steve. You know, we got— if we're being honest, fleet managers, right, right. You know, fleet managers are out there putting out fires every day trying to get from one problem to the next. And there's, there's nothing wrong with that. That's absolutely right. Um, actually, some of the most successful fleets we've seen, they have someone like us or someone else, maybe one of our competitors, but they have a consultant on their Rolodex who they call when they have special projects and other needs. And I think that's a really good practice. They know— it's called knowing when you need help, and there's nothing wrong with that. So yeah, to your point, if we can help you with that, uh, we even have some drafts and samples. Steve will share them with you. You know, maybe, maybe marketing will get us to put it up as an artifact on the, on the website here soon. But if you need help negotiating a contract or doing a search for something or writing an SLA or see what one looks like, you know, certainly hit us up. podcast@rtafleet.com. And yeah, with that, we're going to call it a week. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Steve, it's a pleasure. It's always a pleasure. And I hope you all have a great week. See you guys next time.

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