Throughput That Prints Profit - James Huard - Painters Collision Centers

Hey guys, welcome to Operational Intelligence. This week I'm interviewing a longtime friend of mine and former client of my marketing agency, Jim Heward. He has been in the industry a very long time, and he was an owner of 3 locations, and most recently 3 locations that he sold to Classic about a year or 2 ago. And when I first was coming up with this idea, this podcast, Jim was one of the first people I had in mind because he's the kind of— he embodies the kind of the person that I want to have as a guest on the show, like somebody who really excels at an area that I think other shops can learn a lot from. And so I was very excited to finally get Jim on this episode. So today we're going to talk about throughput, cycle time, and scheduling. It's a big challenge for shops, no matter whether the car count is light or not, you still have scheduling challenges. And Jim's one of those guys that like a conductor, an orchestra conductor, was just out there in the morning just conducting traffic and getting this car to here and here and just setting up the day. And I think shops can learn a lot from how Jim Hewitt had to do things at his shop. And so we cover that pretty extensively in this episode. So I think you're going to learn a lot and I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did in shooting it with Jim. Welcome to my podcast, Operational Intelligence. I'm Thomas Zoebelein. I spent 15 years running a marketing agency in the collision industry. I sold it and now I build AI tools at the Hero Group to help shops run better. My favorite part of my agency was never discussing marketing, but it was spending time with the shop owners on the phone and on the shop floor, learning what they were dialed in on and what they tried and what they failed and what finally worked. The world does not need another collision podcast full of generic industry talk, so I'm doing this one my way. It's all about owners teaching owners. One episode, one topic, and one operational lesson that you can take back to your shop and use. And seriously, what is it with all these marketing people turned podcast hosts anyway? Alright, so we'll just start here. So, so Jim, give us a, you know, give us a little bit background on yourself, like who you are and, you know, how you got into this collision business.

Alright, well, my name is James Heward. I started in the industry at my father's shop at the age of 15, you know, coming in on summers, sweeping floors, washing cars, and I began to have this love and affinity for what I was seeing. My dad was a body man until he was 40, then he took over the family business. But watching my father as a tech was amazing. He was probably one of the best I had ever seen. So I asked him, I said, "Hey man, I would really like to do this." He says, "No, we don't want you in this industry, period. I want you to be a doctor, I want you to be a lawyer, I want to pay for an education for you." And when I heard that, I just went south. I'm like, "No." So I did as bad as I could in school and got in as much trouble as I could so I could stay in that industry. Now I'm not saying that industry doesn't have intelligent people, it does. I consider myself to be very intelligent, um, so much so that I've achieved quite a bit in the collision repair industry. But that's where I started. It was amazing. I stayed with my dad, um, as a car detailer, paint prepper. Started in paint. I did not like it. Chemicals were just killing me. So I apprenticed as a body man for a couple of years, then I became a tech. I teched for 2 years, and then that's when everything changed. I would get incredibly frustrated not being able to make the money I wanted to make. When I would look at the industry as an open checkbook, I'm like, hey, I'm a journeyman. I can produce, I can make as much money as I want to make. But I quickly realized the shops are what holds people back. Their lack of organization, their lack of understanding what they're doing. So it was interesting, I finally convinced my dad, I said, "Man, can I just run production?" He goes, "What do you think you are, some kind of genius?" I said, well, Dad, you're, you're a DRP. He was— my father was the first DRP shop in the nation. He was the beta test for Allstate when Allstate came out with the Allstate Pro program. So he was the first one, and they would still run it like a traditional shop. Car would come in, they would write an estimate, they would park the car, preorder the part, assign it to the tech, tech disassembles it, parks the car again, they do the supplement. I'm like, what are we doing? And he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, this isn't what you're supposed to do. I go, the DRP was created for one estimate. That's it. Bring the car in, disassemble the vehicle, write the estimate, repair it, ship to paint, get it back, put together, ship the car. I mean, a lot more complexities in there, but in essence, that's simple.

So what year was that about? Like, what time?

That was 79.

79. Okay, I didn't realize my father—

my grandpa was actually running for my dad. Um, they got that DRP in 1978 is when they brought it to, to the shops. My grandfather was— he was a, um, you know, very iconic guy in the collision repair industry. He was, you know, one of the first guys to become very insurance friendly. He saw what was happening, that everything was shifting, you know, that the carriers wanted more efficiency, they wanted to put more trust in the shops. So he rose his hand and said, "I'll do it." And everybody hated him for it, but he did it. And it was an interesting time. I mean, from 1979 through 1986 is where we really learned, we really became process-oriented. I took my father's shop from about— gosh, they thought $200 grand was a good month— to producing right around $1 million by 1986, 1987. We're doing about $1 million a month in top-line revenue, which was pretty much unheard of at that time. We had some big articles done. DuPont thought we were just the bee's knees, and we had every other insurance carrier want to partner with with us. I mean, 20th Century, AAA, they all came. The only one we didn't partner with was State Farm, which I thought was unusual for my dad. My dad's like, I don't know, that's too big. That might be too much for us.

I remember you telling me a story that, that, you know, like you mentioned that your dad kind of fought you on, on running the shop and then he went away for a period of time or something, went on like a long trip or vacation or a sabbatical or something. And then he came back to you running the shop and transforming that. Is that, is that— am I right?

Yeah, that's kind of what happens, you know. He, he was just very antiquated, you know. So here, Allstate, at the time we were handwriting everything, Polaroids. It was, it was tough. So EasyEst comes to market and Allstate went with EasyEst with CCC, and they said, look, you have to automate or we're going to pull the program. And back in those days, we were doing over $200,000 a month with Allstate alone. And I told my father, I'm like, "What are you doing?" "I'm not doing any of that." I'm like, "Okay, well then we're gonna lose." He was getting ready to go on a trip to the UK with DuPont to go look at other stores to see how they do things. He was going on a 30-day trip. So I'm like, hmm, this is opportunity. So as soon as he left, I went in that following week, I contacted my people over at CCC, I had them come in. We put 14 workstations in, we got all automated. I put in my production system that I had invented while I was a body man, which basically I called it TAP, Teardown Assembly Production. Worked well. Then I actually, you know, I enhanced it over time. But that's what I did. So he comes back after this 30-day sabbatical, as you put it. He goes, what'd you do? And where are all the cars? Because my dad was that guy that would come into your stall. He had this big beach cruiser. He'd ride a nice Schwinn. He'd sit in front of your stall and go, look how good we're doing. And he'd point at all the cars that were parked. And I go, well, my stall's empty. I go, so what? But he could ride. He goes, where are all the cars? I'm like, they're up front, done. They're being delivered. I go, why don't you go talk to Vicki, that was his bookkeeper, and see where you're at for sales, pops. He comes back to my stall and he's like, we're sitting at $500,000? I'm like, yeah, we still got a week and a half to go. I go, so I'm predicting about $800K for the month. He goes, well, what have you been doing? I go, I've been running production. He goes, you haven't been fixing cars in between running production? He's like, wow. I'm like, yeah, I can have the production manager's job now, please. Yeah, no, you got to be an estimator first and then you'll be a production manager. Okay, well, that's what I did. So I started writing estimates for him. I actually took the Allstate account for him and I cranked that up. I'd write upwards of 25 to 30 sheets a day, all handwritten. I got Allstate up to about $300,000 a month and I was still running production while I was writing. It was pretty cool. So he finally decided to let me run the full thing, and I did that for, gosh, not very much longer because I was being recruited by this guy Warren Person that wanted me to come and run his shop and his dealer. So I left my dad at 24 to go do that. I stayed with Caliber for 10 years, you know, had a great time. And then Eric Bickett He owned FixAuto USA, and he also owned a couple of corporate stores inside of his network. He was asking me to join him, and I was a little reluctant. I didn't know Eric really. Then of course David Goldstein was like, "Yeah, you don't want to join him." And you know, of course, wanted to put as much— how do I say this right? He wanted to put as much in my head to make me think twice. Let's say that.

Yeah.

But, uh, Eric is a good guy, as intelligent as they come. Met with me numerous times, and he offered me one of those Steve Jobs packages. I don't know if you ever heard what Steve Jobs would do.

No.

His executives, he would, he would overpay you, give you the world, and lock you down. So when I looked at this offering, I'm like You serious, dude? If I were just to turn it down, I'd be a moron, Tom.

Just a moron. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

And I was at my endgame, you know, Calvary. I was tired. I mean, I did a lot for them. And I wanted to move up, and they didn't want me to be in a polished position. I'm not a very polished guy, especially at that time. You know, I'm pretty rough around the edges, as you know. You've seen me in action. It took me a long time to become a polished presidential type of guy. Eric is the one that made me that guy. So I left. I did. I left David, and that was kind of a— it was not the best divorce. It could have been better. Dave and I, I would say we both had tall confidence and personalities, you know, so he wasn't really enchanted with me leaving. And I did. Some people left and came with me against my will. They came. I didn't solicit. I didn't Offered them anything. They just picked up phones, "We want to join you." So they came and he didn't like that. And I don't blame him. He got pissed about it. But I came in at the same time that Eric was bringing in Paul Gange. He brought Paul in to be his CEO of the network of the franchise operation. And Paul brought a gentleman with him, Tim Clark, that was with USAA. That had left USAA. And Paul was able to get our first insurance contract through USAA, and then they brought me in as their operations guru to run the corporate side. So we took Eric's— I think he had 2 at the time— we grew that to 10 corporate locations. We were generating a little over $40+ million a year in revenue. It was a great time. That's when I really got to put all my processes into play. I was the vice president of operations working right next to Eric and Paul for our stuff. Eric and Paul would ask me to go help independent owners. That was fun. We were literally probably one of the best regional MSOs within FIX in the US. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was quite a journey. So I did that. I stayed with Eric for a decade. It was another 10 years. Then Eric wanted to sell. He was getting to that age. He's like, I'm gonna retire now, man. It's time. He didn't retire. He's back at the business course. Yeah. We sold out, that was right at 2020. Yeah. So at that time I was like, what am I gonna do next? I was pretty set, you know, I was like, should I retire? What should I do? My wife's like, no way, no way. So that's when I reached out to the industry and I contacted some friends, I contacted Exalta, PPG, and my insurance partners. Where do you guys need a good operator? And the big guy said, Queen Creek, Arizona. It's the fastest growing city in America. No one can keep up, and there's zero performance. None. They pound their chest in Arizona. It's the Wild Wild West here. We do what we want, and take it or leave it. We want somebody that's insurance compliant, insurance friendly, that'll go and do what we need you to do.

Mm-hmm.

I'm like, okay. So a gentleman by the name of Dennis Keneally He was with Exalta at the time. He knew a gentleman by the name of Bruce Painter that was getting ready to shut his shop down. He wasn't even selling, just shutting it down. He was going to lease it to an off-road company. He got me in contact with Bruce in the nick of time, and Bruce's son Jesse Painter, just a phenomenal young man, badass collision repair tech, one of the best I've ever worked with in my life. Still see Jesse to this day. We connected, we loved them. We all three just fell in love. All of our stories were the same, you know, third-generation collision repairers, our dads. It was amazing what happened.

Yeah.

So they sold this body shop to me at a price that most people just scratch their head. What? Yeah, they gave me the cheapest rent under the sun so I'd be successful. Within— well, we renamed it Painter's Autobody to Painter's Collision Center, right? With the intent to grow to multiples. Well, you were part of that time.

Yeah, that's when I enter the equation.

Yeah. You know, you were our guy. I mean, what you did for us was just phenomenal with Stratosphere and your organization. Just between bringing on my big partners State Farm and GEICO and everybody joined us immediately. Well, State Farm made me wait 90 days, but with the promise they would come. They didn't want any turnover. And then with your marketing strategies, that company was producing— we were doing $300,000 a month in the first 3 months. Within 6, it was doing $450,000. Within 8, we were doing $500,000. The average sale turned out at $600K. It did $600K for the— into perpetuity in the next 3 years like it was nothing. Then we bought the second store, Chandler. Then we bought Apache Junction. Then we created our ADOS hub. We were generating close to $20 million a year in revenue, and we had some of the highest EBITDAs. I hate that term. I think EBITDA is bullshit, but our net numbers were 23%. Yeah, that's good. Best KPIs in the industry. There's nobody better than Painter's. No one across the nation could touch us, and I'm not bragging. I'm just saying that's what happened. Yeah, my processes are solid. I've learned from some of the best in class. Um, yeah, so we sold out the Classic Collision January 12th, 2024, and I miss it. I genuinely miss it. Yeah, I've been doing some other things in motorsports, dabbling with all of that, but that's where I'm at, you know. And yeah, Tom, I never— you know, I want to thank you on this podcast. I hope it gets out there because you were instrumental in what you did for painters.

Thanks.

Phenomenal.

I really enjoyed working with you, and because you You were a guy that like tries stuff, you know, some, you know, not everyone's like that, you know, not, you know, as long as it worked, you know, you trusted it. And then the next thing I handed you, it's like, hey, we want to do this video. We want to do this, do that. You're like, bring it, let's do it. You know? And so I loved coming out to your shops. I loved watching you in action. I loved learning from you. I learned so much from all the, like all the things I'm doing now. Come from the time spent with guys like you and coming out to your shops and sitting there and watching and observing and asking the questions and sitting in your office and asking the techs and all that stuff. So, which is a good transition now to the topic at hand, which is, you know, the purpose of this podcast is to, like I was telling you, I'm just sort of the conduit. It's owner to owner. So something that I saw that, that an owner really excelled at. And I have a very strong vision. I'll tell you in just a second. But like something that an owner really excelled at, that they were passionate about, that they were just super talented at, that they could see around the corners that other people just can't— other owners just can't see the way you can see it. And so I want to focus on that topic and that topic alone, and we just dive deep in it so the next guy can learn. Like we've, we've covered close ratio, we've covered, you know, company culture, we've covered, you know, how to be the only independent amongst DRPs, all these kinds of things. But for you, I've been dying to get to this topic, which is throughput, which is something that I'm passionate about being in the AI space because I think AI can really give owners a leg up on this because AI can see around the corners. But this image that I always have of you is one of these days I was out there doing a video shoot at your shop and, you know, like I'm setting up the camera angles and I'm walking the camera guys. We're like, we're gonna shoot here, we're gonna do this, we're gonna, you know, and all this stuff. As I'm doing that, you're out there in the— so to understand your shop, so being in Arizona, you have like these, um, these like awning areas. Like it's kind of a unique thing in Arizona when you can have a shop without a shop, right? You can have like open-air spaces. So your shop, you had your shop shop, and then you had like these awning places, and there your parts was over there, and you had your parts guy was there, and cars came in from the left. And parked all the way at the end of this long strip. And you're standing there in the middle of both areas and you're like a traffic cop. You're directing traffic. You're like quarterbacking this thing. And to watch you do it, I wish I had gotten that on video. Maybe I do have it on video, but just, it was like this, this like, I don't know, orchestra conductor. You're just sort of like waving your baton and then you step away, right? And then, and then the, just the, the day happens and you're up in your office, you're doing this and that, you know, and you know, you, you later on you're having tacos with the guys, you know, and it's just like, so that's what I wanna focus on is your mastery of throughput all these years and all these shops that you've worked at, this, this craft that you've honed. Let's dive in. Let's dive into that. So, um, so I, I guess my first question on that is, um, You know, why, why throughput, I guess? Why, why is that the thing that you kind of excel at? Like, what, what is it about that, like, that you've learned over the years that this is what matters the most?

Well, I met this owner. His name is Tim Beale. I don't know if you know who Tim Beale is. He owns his collision repair up in Prescott, Arizona.

Yeah, I know. I— Bill Beale's was a client of ours. Yeah.

Tim's a good guy.

I never met Tim, but I met his wife. So she was our— our client.

It's funny because he said something to me years back. He says, "Jim, the man with the biggest net is the most successful owner." And I thought, that's interesting, really? So you're saying the guy with the biggest profit is the most successful? He's like, "Absolutely." He goes, "Why are you doing this?" Yeah. "Well, I want to make a living." He's like, "Well, what's your net, Jim?" And I told him. He goes, "Well, you win." "But how?" I go, "Throughput." He's like, throughput, Michael. Yeah, I go, so let's— I go, I'll get— can I just get— I'll get really real here, is that okay?

I just—

yeah, I'll just lay it out.

That's what it's all about, this podcast.

I'm tired of, you know, I'm still in the industry to this day. Well, I don't own currently, I do own a motorsports organization, but I'm not a collision repair owner right now. I will be soon, okay? I'm going back in, I'm going to go hard again. Yeah, but I'm still involved. I still talk to corporate leaders. I have hundreds of independent friends and owners, and I tell them this every day. I'm on a call at least daily with one of them. I say, I don't understand, why do you think length of rental and key-to-key is so important for the carrier? Why do you care? Well, that's our cycle time. They'll give us more volume. I'm like, yeah, they will. Absolutely. I go, "But if you're doing it just for them, you're doing it for the wrong reason." They're like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Look, throughput is what creates your profitability." Simply put. That's it. The reason why I wanted to become a master at throughput is so I could have the most profitability. I wanted to be able to make enough money to where— Well, let me back that up. I wanted my stores to generate enough revenue to overpay So all my technicians were overpaid. I'm tired of hearing that too. Oh, we don't— can't make any money. Technicians are this. No, it's not. It's all relevant to your top line revenue at the end of the day.

So when we were— when you mentioned throughput, I think some people would assume that throughput means car count. It means cycle time and things like that. But what you mean— what— when you mean— when you say throughput, exactly what do you mean by that? Like the dollar throughput, like the dollars going through the shop, not the car count. Is that— is that—

the car count is the dollars. Right? So those are one. Those are all in one at the end of the day. But how much revenue can I push through? How many times can I turn my whip in a month's time?

Okay.

That's key. It really is. That's what's going to generate my profit. If my breakeven is $100,000, what do I need to do? Turn my whip once to generate $100,000 so I break even with no profitability? Or do I turn that 2 times? Let's say on a minimum. Now I generated $200,000 in revenue. My expense does go up a little bit, right? But not that much. Your operating expenses do not change that much. What fluctuates is gonna be your top line. Your technicians are always gonna pay for themselves. Materials will change, things will change. However, your profitability will double.

Well, your expenses go up, but it goes up in relation to the sales, right? The percentages should be about the same, right? Parts about 50% of the bill. You know, paint materials. So one car, 100 cars, it should still scale, right? Or does it— or do the economics change? Yeah, okay, exactly.

Yeah, I actually did a class. There's another gentleman out there, his name is Jim House. Jim is a brilliant operator. I mean, Jim just started his own company, does a lot of accounting for body shops now. We had Jim at Fix Auto for quite some time, and Jim and I did a class for one of the Fix Auto conferences based on throughput. We'd show a store that would turn their WIP 1 to 1.5 times, literally making 0.8 tenths net. Then going over to a shop like mine that turned their WIP 6 times in a month, but 23% net. And then we'd show them cost structures and how it all works. That a technician is static, it's always the same cost no matter what. No matter what. But it does go up, of course, because they're making more money as we generate more money. Okay. Right? So the throughput model that you have in place is what will make you the profits you need at the end of the day, right? And how did we do that? And everybody says, well, you know, you got to do this. It's all about how you process the car.

Okay.

You know, people would say, well, Jim, there's no way that you could produce a 5-day key-to-key at a 9-hour-a-day touch time and produce quality. I'm like, that's not true. I used to fight with some people in the industry that you know as well that would argue with me that no matter what you do under the DRP blanket, you're not fixing cars correctly. And I'm like, bull— loney. I am too. And I would offer you to come in and audit a car anytime.

And they did.

Yeah. But it came down to how we would process them. So I had 3 categories of repair. Cat 1, Cat 2, and Cat 3.

Right.

That's it.

So a Cat 1, small bumper job, let's just call it that, right? Small hit. Cat 2 is a drivable but bigger hit. And a Cat 3 is the quote unquote train wreck, right? Is that, or was it by hours? Like how would you define a Cat 1, 2, 3 in your—

I could do it by both. You know, it was, I simplified it by dollars is what I did. Now things changed as ADOS became more and more prevalent. I had to change up the dollar amount a little bit. In my first days when I worked with a gentleman by the name of Ron Kuen, and Ron's another genius.

Yes.

Him and I worked on these processes together, then we put cycle time composites behind it with all the data. I actually have data to prove it all, is when it— when we really were able to hone this in. So back in the day, a $1,500 or less job was a Cat 1. A Category 2 was 1,500 to 5,500, and a Category 3 was 5,500 or greater. Now, we changed that as things evolved. The Category 1 became 2,500 or less, and then upward. So that's how we would process them.

Okay.

And we were adamant about it. We'd never deviated.

And so you categorize them, that's fairly easy thing to do. But then what happens next is the magic, which is how you fit them into the schedule, right? Is that, was that the, and then, yeah, tell me more about that. So, cause I actually, I know, I know Ron's, yeah, I know Ron's kind of model. I used a lot of his advice in building my AI scheduler, but, but let's, you know, let's, I want to hear it in your words, like what you did.

Well, people would argue with me, you know, I, And I will always argue back that with management is key. A shop can only handle so many Category 3s at a time.

Mm-hmm.

So we had our sets where we take 10 Cat 3s a month.

Mm-hmm.

It's really it. That's when we were at capacity. We couldn't take any more of those or they would just sit.

Mm-hmm.

Now, as I added more locations, I just load leveled them, right? But prior to that, I would send them up the street to Caliber. I send them to Crash Champions, and people thought I was crazy. They're like, you're losing all that work. I'm like, I'm not losing anything. I lose nothing. As a matter of fact, I keep a lean, mean, efficient operation that way. I go, Caliber's not mad, they want the work. Crash isn't mad, they want to work. And my partners are happy because I'm not trying to hoard it. Yeah, and say, oh, I can take it, and then I create a downswing in LOR, a downswing in CSI. What does the insurance carrier want? Insurance company wants retention of their insured. Simply put, they don't want to lose their customers. But they lose customers when body shops don't perform. So with management is key. So I was very adamant with that. I'd sit with my partner leaders and I'd say, hey Tom, I'm only gonna take in from your company probably 3, maybe 4 4 major hits a month. And my 4 top players, I would take 3 to— 2 to 3 per player. Then the rest were Cat 2s and Cat 1s. Yeah, so, but they—

so you had like a literally a set number on any given week, right? You do— would you look at it weekly, daily? Like how would you determine when to stack, like, your model for like 1s, 2s, and 3s?

We never, never turned away a 1 or a 2 ever.

Yeah, we take those. You grabbed every one of them. Okay.

Every single one. It just didn't matter. Sometimes we wouldn't even schedule. That's how efficient we were, right? Because as soon as that Cat 1 would come in and the way I set up my technicians, so I had one big team and then I had 3 other independent operators in the store. So I had 3 individual techs, then I had a team of 5.

Okay.

So the tech team of 5, Those guys were the animals of that shop. Now, all my shops have the same setup, though. Every single one, I had the same adoption in there and how we bring them in. So the cat— the team of 5 were literally handling all Cat 1s. Okay, it was insane. They would handle about 20% of the Category 2s, and then they would handle almost every single Category 3 as well.

Okay.

Now, when that team got to a point where they were too loaded up, we would move some of the Category 1s over to the other 3 guys. But the other 3 guys were— the majority of what they were doing were Category 2s.

Okay.

That's how that worked. Now, the team of 5, the Cat 1s were such quick work, they had one guy, that's all he did. And he was prepared all day, every day. I did the same thing with Caliber Collision. In Santa Monica, had a team of 3 guys, and that's all they did was the Category 1s. Nobody else could touch them. Did it create friction in the shop to start? A little bit. But once everybody saw what it did for the shop, now they could process a Category 2 and even process Category 3 faster because they weren't as distracted. It just seemed to work very well. So the big argument was the pool. Pulling people off. So for example, if I have my team focused on, let's say there's no Category 1s that day, it's 10 o'clock in the morning, they're all focused on Cat 2s, Cat 3s, if a Category 1 came in, very rare would I schedule it. We'd just take it. Tom, drop it right now, give us your keys, we'll have it in production in 30 minutes. We had time standards to everything. Now it sounds chaotic, I know, but it really wasn't. We honed it in really tight. So a car would get dropped off, it would be with that team within 30 minutes of arrival. That Category 1 tech would jump off what he was doing on those Cat 2s and Cat 3s, and he would just hit that car hard, get it disassembled. Now remember, a Category 1 repair is 5 parts to 0 parts. And what do those parts look like? A headlight, maybe a fender bumper, but the majority of it was repair. Our repair-to-replace ratio was 74%. Repair versus replace. We repair as much as we possibly could. You know, in the time of the repairable tech, they're not around like they used to be. And if you have a guy that can repair anything, hold him close to you and keep him as long as you can and have him train people. But that's how we did it, and it just worked phenomenally.

So you had a set ratio of like category 3s And the same for 2s, but not 1s. It would just take all the 1s you can get. But did the 2s, did you have a number of 2s, like say 20 2s in a week or something like that? Or did, because I know Ron, like Ron, what Ron told me is that you come up with this, this sort of number of this many 3s, this many 2s, this many 1s. And then that's, you try to always achieve stasis of that. So Like, you know, if you're, if you can take 10 twos and you got 8, you need to be trying to get those other 2 in there. That, that, that, that, that's at least what I got from Ron. Maybe I'm saying it wrong, but that was what I was kind of my big takeaway. It was like, you've got, like, if these are jars and you're trying to always keep the jars full and that's how you determine what comes in and, and that's, that's what keeps that throughput always moving. Properly. Is that, is that right? Do I have that right?

You do. That, that was a big piece of it, you know. We did, we had to keep our thumb on it tight because sometimes we would overload, and overloading the shop, you know, that gets— so we were very, very cautious on bringing those in as well. But we could average, we could probably do 20 to 30 Category 2s a week easily, easily. Now remember the internal throughput of the shop, I mean teardown, assembly, production, and how we would do it. It was quite remarkable. These Category 1s were painted the same day they arrived, right? So if that car got in at 7 in the morning, that car was painted that night and was built the next morning. Category 2, when it hit the paint shop at 3 o'clock in the afternoon— and people would always argue with me, but I would do a lot of batch priming. Yeah, like, ah, no, no. And I'm like, no, this works. Why? Because I'm going to have everything primed at the same time. Then all these cars will be prepped, bagged, painted tomorrow morning. They'll all be back in for reassembly tomorrow afternoon about 1 to 2 o'clock.

And because you repaired so much, parts wasn't an issue then, like parts and timing, parts delays?

Yeah, so we were during the COVID thing, we kicked ass.

Yeah, so did you use like the flatliner systems and stuff and you had all that equipment to repair. And, um, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that— do you think that was probably one of the big unlocks to your throughput, was it was to be able to— to like a high repair versus replace? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because parts is, you know, somebody listening to this may be asking themselves, yeah, but what about parts? Like, I can't, you know, maybe I can't get parts in that festival. Why can't you?

Little shops, they struggle. You know, a lot of my shops are right in the metro areas. You know, I've got all the Earnhards, all the Penskys. I got everybody around me.

Yeah, you're in a big metro, so that helped a lot too.

Yeah. And then California market, the processes were incredibly successful. I order parts, I have them in 2 hours.

Yeah.

So that was huge.

And then, so your techs, the other thing I see a lot of shops do is like the guy gets a car, he stays on that car, but you would pull people off. You would somebody would maybe start a car, but another guy would finish it. Do you think that— no, that's not the case, or that is the case?

Same type of thing. I just pull them off the job to do a teardown or do an assembly. So teardown, assembly, production— that's what Ron and I would argue about that a lot. He's like, well, if you don't have all the parts, why are you starting a job? I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, if I don't have a quarter panel, all I need is a cut sheet. I can pull it, I can cut the quarter off, I can get all my metal flat, cleaned up and prepped and ready to go. You mean down that quarter panel lands, I'll have the thing welded on and in the paint shop in 4 hours of the panel arriving.

Versus what? What's the alternative to that?

Versus just let the car sit there until all the parts arrive. Okay, so then what's happening while you're doing that? Your whip is stacking. Yeah, now you have a car that's delayed. It doesn't make any sense to me. So everybody would argue with me.

So who is in your shop? Was that you doing that quarterbacking, you determining, hey, we're going to do this, or was that— did you still have your production manager? It was Marvin, right? Was that your production manager?

That Marvin was a— was one of my lighter men. Rob Collins was my— that's right, my right hand. So I trained Rob. It brought Rob with me here to Arizona. Rob was a very skilled estimator, um, but he just had a great big personality too. I trained him So Rob became my regional manager and he oversaw all my locations, but he was my guy. I mean, him and I think alike, we have the same personalities. He's like me, he's highly driven, up early, bed early, he likes to make money. So, guys, so he was able to take my process and really wrap it around his brain. He understood it. So for example, you're a technician for me, you're a standalone tech, You're currently working on 2 Category 2s, 1 Category 3. My team of 5 is packed, they can't take another Cat 1. Cat 1 comes in. Tom, I need you to stop on this Category 2 and this Cat 3 for the next 25-30 minutes. I need this car disassembled. Please organize all the parts in the parts racks properly. As soon as you're done, let the writer know, he'll be right out. Okay. It's not how easy that was. They come, they'd stop, disassemble that car, have it all ready to go. Writer comes out, tech goes back, he's still working on the car. Questions are asked, he answers the questions, goes back, finalizes the estimate, start the repair, Mr. Tech. Mr. Tech goes over there, fixes the car based on trust and the communication they had. You get 2 hours for this, 4 hours for that, blah blah blah, get it into paint. Okay, tech would do it. Now there's one key thing and one key metric that everybody has to understand. That cycle time is an average. It's an average. It's 1-day job, a 3-day job, a 5-day job, a 10-day, a 15, a 30-day, all combined into 1, all the days, and divided by the repair order. It's a very, very simple mathematical equation, but most people don't even understand that part, Tom. They're just going through, oh, and they don't even know what cycle time truly looks like. So the category 3, if it's going to be in my shop for 30 days, it's going to be there for 30 days. What do I care? At that point, I don't care anymore. What I care about is everything below it. So if I have 10 Category 3s that stay in my shop for 30 days, but I can generate a cycle time below that of 2 to 3, my offset is now 5.

So that's a good, that's a good tip right there. So don't take cycle time as the number, take it as one of three numbers, or at least one of two numbers. So you have a CAT 3 cycle time and then you got a shop cycle time, essentially.

Essentially, that's, that's per category that create your overall cycle time. Yeah, right. It's averages. It's like I always try to say to everybody, there's this another gentleman in the industry, he may have retired by now, Robert Tavares, there's this guy that was with Caliber Collision that was an absolute genius. He was one of the guys that sat on the backside of everything and would teach everybody, "No, this is what you do, this is what you do." Well, I got to sit with Robert one day and he goes, "Jim," he goes, "Do you even understand the cycle time formula and what it is?" I'm like, my ego got in the way for a second. I'm like, "No, I don't know." He taught me. And it was so— and once he did, I'm like, really? This is easy, easy. There was a time in my Velvet Hammer shop I would do bumper jobs on Mondays only. They would all be pre-painted over the weekend. I had my painter come in, he'd come in and paint 30 bumpers, and we saw all bumpers on a Monday. And all those cars had an average of 10 hours labor on them or more. And they'd all be produced in one day. So bring in 30 cars, 10 hours of labor on each one, all produced in the day. The time you drop your car off at 7:30 in the morning, you got your car back at 4 in the afternoon, right? Just creative things like that. However, that kind of died out. It just wasn't that much bumper work available.

Yeah.

Um, so that's how we looked at it, by the average. So if I have a car that comes in, it can be in and out in a day, or I have one that comes in, it's 2 days, or if I have several. So if I have 5 or 6 cars per week that are in there for 2 days, I have 10 that are in there for 3 days, my cycle time or my OOR or my overall throughput is going to be remarkable in comparison to industry. People say there's too much management, Jim. I'm like, no, it's not. It takes 3 months. 3 months of discipline, and diligence, and then the team does it on their own. Why? Because the technicians make more money than they have ever made, the estimators make more money than they have ever made, and so is the manager.

So they self-police after that.

Absolutely.

Yeah, they get—

I'm in the game to make money. I'm not in this game to sit here and bitch about what I don't get. Yeah, if I don't get it, it's on me. It's on me. It's not on anyone else. Yeah, it's, it's remarkable how it works. I could do the, the cycle time formula. It's just interesting how it works. I'm just gonna do this and put it up on the screen real quick.

Okay, I'll add it to the show notes too here. I'll—

that'd be cool. This may not be the best example, but for example, what I'm doing is I'm just taking the days. So 1 day, a 2-day, a 4-day, a 5-day. I'm adding all those up to get my total days, and each one of these numbers represents the repair order. So I didn't add up the days. Let's say this is 60 days in total divided by 11 repair orders. That would be 5.45 days.

So each one of those numbers represents how many days in the shop that car would be?

Yeah, so 1 day, 2 day, a 4 day, a 5 day, 6 day. The 7 day, I would say, doesn't need to be there for 7 days. Probably 5. Why 7? That's an estimator that didn't do his job, right? So I would go back to my guy Rob and say, hey Rob, that 7-day, get it done by Friday, please don't let it go over the weekend. Okay, no problem. And we got it done every single time, by the way, right? So yeah, that's— so let's just tick that to a 5, right? That's a 3, a 9, a 15, another 2, and another 30-day job. But that 30-day job, it stayed in there for 30 days and I think everybody's starting to understand what I'm saying now. That stayed in there for 30 days, it didn't matter because I still produced a 5.45-day CT based on these numbers here.

Right.

The real caveats are the 1s, the 2s, the 4s, the 5s, the 3s, and the 2s.

Right? Yeah. It's real simple. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. So, and then parts delays, I know a lot of people are gonna be listening to this and be like, well, what about parts and that? 'Cause I know, Well, they always use parts for the excuse. Yeah, parts and then insurance, you know, pushback. So my question is, so now let's say, so you're, that's, that's a DRP. What happens if you're an independent? Does it make a difference? Like if you're an independent? Absolutely. And two things, either you don't have the luxury of being able to pick and choose all those different cars and things like that, because you've got to kind of take what comes your way. And if you are more of a, like more of a repair— sorry, replace versus repair shop. How does, how do these formulas need to change for a guy like that that might be listening to this?

That's a great question. It really is. You know, you can apply the same type of cycle time formulas or throughput formulas to non-DRP— you can— or part-heavy replacement shops. It comes down to how you're stacking it and how you're bringing it in. But you did say something key here. You said, what about the ones that don't have the opportunities like the DRPs do with all the smaller work.

That's difficult.

It is. And that's when you have to get super smart on what are you repairing versus what you're replacing, what type of technicians you have in the building, and how you're equipped. That's when having repair techs are vital. We're vital.

So, so then estimating must then be a key piece to that, right? So your estimator needs to be able to make those decisions, who is not only conscious of what does the car need, but what does the production need, right? Did you connect those dots in your shop so that the estimators knew what the production needs were? How did you do that? Was that a daily meeting?

They understood category 1, 2, and 3. They knew that no matter what they were doing, it did not matter. If they're writing a category 2, they stop everything. It stops. Everything goes into freeze. And that Category 1 is literally— I used to call it party time. You probably heard me say that. Party time! I'd say it on our radios. Category 1, party time! And that started— I had my CSRs doing that. Category 1 just dropped, boom, everything stops. Category 1, boom. I always ran with 3 riders, so I always had somebody that was probably available. But that's how we did it, and they understood the process at a very high level.

So did they have any kind of metric? Like, so let's say I'm one of your estimators and I, and I get— it doesn't matter, 2, 3, 1, doesn't matter— and I'm writing this car and I'm thinking about this both as a DRP and if I'm an independent and I really need to kind of like think about repair versus replace and things like that. Um, was there a number where I was looking at to know we need this for, for here and even to be able to schedule it in on these days?

Like, well, yeah, that's where things get a little complex. Yeah. So you would see me out there, um, I called my production drop line. You saw me out there coordinating, you know, earlier in the mornings before we would have our actual production meetings. Well, production meeting would start at 7 AM, right? And we have our key techs and our writers, everybody's in that room. We had 3 a day. So the first one started at 7 AM. Now that was a full-blown leadership meeting, KPIs, Sales, gross margins, and then every single car was looked at, right? So we would go through, we say, okay, we're ready, we can take in 4 Category 1s today, we can take in 2 Category 2s based on what's being delivered. Okay, that's how we did it. So out and out and— yeah, we would deliver an average of 15 cars a day. Okay, every single day like clockwork. Right. You didn't see me doing a hockey stick production at the end of the month. You're going here and that's not how it was. Our production was very consistent. Right. Yep. Right. But that's how— that's a— I'm glad you brought that part up. So everybody's probably going, well, how did— what? Yeah, it all— those production meetings were key. Yeah.

So that goes back to that jar principle, right? So you would always tell everybody what— how low the jars were getting every day.

Yes.

You did that. So yeah. So I think that must be key. So. So not only the understanding your cycle time by category, understanding how many categories the shop can successfully handle, and I want to get back to that and just kind of ask you how do you get to that number, but then also being able to communicate that daily upstream or downstream, whatever you want to call it, to the estimator so as they're writing these things, they're writing it not only like they're thinking about when do I bring this car in, when does, you know, and all that kind of stuff so that they're kind of controlling the beat of that drum. So Jim, I do wanna get back to this. How do you determine, this was a question I always wanted to ask Ron, how do you determine the number? Like you said, 5 Cat 3s. If you were to go in, if you were to just, you know, visit some guy in Gary, Indiana and you're looking at his shop, and he's like, "Jim, I need your help with throughput. I love this category thing. How do I know how many are in my shop?" What would you tell that guy so that he knows?

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Let's print it out right now, let's walk the shop, let's see what you got, let's get you acclimated to what's here at the shop. Understand how many you have, and now let's start with managing intake on category 3s. Let's determine a number that your shop can handle, and let's only bring in that many Category 3s per month.

So how do you determine that? Is there a number that you look at?

That's going to be skill set. That's going to be location. Are you rural? Are you metro? I mean, where are you, right? Parts availability, like you mentioned a minute ago, that's key.

Yeah, right.

The skill set of the journeyman, that's key, right? Um, square footage. How much space do you have? I mean, there's a lot of key metrics there, but ultimately it's gonna come down to what that technician can truly produce in a month's time on top of a category 3, maybe 2. How many can he do? Each individual technician has a certain plateau of what they can and cannot do. How many times can they be disrupted in a day before they actually get a bad attitude or whatever? The ones that I've worked with and the ones I bring in, I teach them that up front. You're going to be interrupted throughout a day. You know, you probably will not have any peace in the day until 3 in the afternoon, and that's when you can laser focus on whatever you want to focus on. But the majority of the day is going to be disassembly first in the morning, secondary is going to be assembly, and third is going to be production.

Okay. Right.

So today We're delivering— each tech is delivering 2 Category 1s, 2 Category 2s, and are actually gonna get rid of 3 Category 3s today. So tomorrow we can bring in 6 Category 2s, 6 Category 1s, and 1 Category 3. Did I say that right?

I try, you know, if I go back and find the—

read the numbers, I might have my number on there, but that's kind of how we did it.

Yeah, but you get—

there was no true, like, there's not a formulated science to it. It came down to literally day-to-day operations, and then once you do that consistently, it becomes the fiber of the shop. Yeah, and that was the beauty of it. I do have a lot of this documented in black and white. But like I said, it's always the argument out there. Even corporate America would argue with me about it. They say it's too much management, we have to figure out how to make it simpler. I'm like, okay, WIP manage Category 3 and take everything else in and just deal with it. That's up to you guys. Or do you guys want to do it based on hours you can produce in a week's time? How many hours can a tech produce? What can you really do? But I got to guess what, a tech's ability to produce hours is going to be strictly dependent on how quickly they can write the sheet, how fast they can procure the parts. Yeah, they're dependent on that. They're only as good as the people around them, and that's a key thing as well. Yeah, you go and you go interview most technicians, and the biggest thing they're going to say is estimators are disorganized. I once talked to this gentleman, his name is William. I'll never forget William. He owned a shop in Oregon. He asked me to come up and consult. He has one tech has 20 jobs assigned to him. 20.

That's a lot. That's insane.

One of the jobs is a bumper job that had been in the facility for 15 days.

Oh my God.

And he had several bumper jobs in the facility for 15 days. So I grabbed the tech and I grabbed Will and I go into their office and I'm like, so tech, explain to me how you feel right now. I feel overwhelmed. I can't manage any of this. I look at Will, I'm like, who's managing production? Who's telling this guy right here what he needs to do today? So that said, you got a list every day, Tom, what you have to produce, what needs to go to paint, what's being shipped that day. And teardowns were done as they came. But you literally, you know how CCC works. I could give each technician their own production document. And have every single car assigned to them. 1, 2, 3, 4. We'd itemize it out that way. Same with paint, same with everything. Yeah, everything was numbered out, processed out. It worked beautifully. It's hard to really sit here and go through— if I had some whiteboards and I had a day's worth of time, I could sit in front of a group and I could really, really hone this in and really get it to work in your brain. Yeah, some people are going to listen to this and go, oh, I get what Jim's saying. Somebody's gonna say, "That sounds like a cluster F." Somebody says, "Too much disruption in a day." And I'm gonna say, "Well, my numbers prove you're all wrong." Right, I mean, and shop after shop and group after group, you know, Fix Auto, Caliber, like these are not unknown shops, right?

You know, you've proven this as a turnaround formula.

Yeah, no, the management teams in the regionals, once they learned this, they were blown away. They would go and implement it. Like, I'd have a group of regional managers working for me I put them in rooms. I'd find one shop, then we'd go into the big conference rooms and the whiteboards, and I'd use that shop as my training ground. And I'd say, this is how you do it, and this is the view. They're like, what? I go, yeah. Right, today I get asked by leaders of MSOs all the time, well, you can't do this in scale. I go, absolutely can. Well, how? I go, it starts in a room. It starts with your VP, and it starts with all your regional people in one room. And everybody has to learn this via these boards and everything we're doing with and then they have to go implement it, and then they have to hold their general managers accountable to it. But how do they get their general managers? They bring their general managers into one room and they teach that group. Now, if you have 1,500 shops and each regional manager is assigned 7 to 10, it seems to me like it can be done over a period of time. Some of the smaller regional MSOs— there's one here in Arizona, I just love them, I think they're awesome, and I think their leadership is amazing, and they're really starting to make a change. That's Kaizen Collision, and Vince Brock is amazing. He owned Pro Care that he sold to Classic. I think that was the name. Vince is a genius, very, very smart. He's got small locations, right? 48 stores. If I was able to work, I'd go to work for Vince tomorrow. Yeah, and I would work with him and Sam Winters, his COO, and Sam's an amazing guy. I would go work with those guys and we could get this implemented to all 48 of their stores within a year, then they would have the best performing locations in the nation. I can promise you that.

But your classic non-compete is why you can't work right now.

So unfortunately, I'm telling Classic I'll do that for them, but they just kind of ignore me. So whatever. Yeah, that's their thing. I'm not bragging. There's nothing perfect.

Yeah, yeah, right. No, that's definitely— but this is teaching. The whole point of this podcast is to teach and learn from people that I think do something really well and teach those that might be struggling. That's my hope is that they find it, they find the answers in this.

Yeah, I get really excited about it. Sometimes I talk too fast or I talk too long or talk too much, you know, but it's really finite. There's a lot involved and it's very multilayered. Yeah. It's like this mechanical industry I decided to jump into. It's very complex. I, I don't, I don't like it very much.

Yeah.

Closure repair is action-based. There's lots to do, but, and it's multilayered and it's just understanding each one of those layers to get your outcome. But I want to encourage all owners to really focus on throughput for themselves, not for the carrier.

Mm-hmm.

No, do it for you. And if you do it for you, the carrier is gonna get the result, so— and they're just gonna keep making you busier.

So explain that a little bit. What do you mean by do it for you? Like the numbers that work for you, you mean, right?

The dollar— the dollar— creating a throughput model to create the best cycle times you can. Because that's where the owner of the body shop is going to make the most money. Owners make— I won't get into that because it's huge and I don't want everybody to get mad, right?

But if you—

like for me, for example, if I ended my month with $100,000, I turn it a minimum of 4 times. If I ended at $150,000, I turn it 4 times. If I ended at $200,000, I turn it 4 times.

Wait, ended what? You're saying that's your— okay.

Yeah. So if I end the month at $100 grand in revenue turning into the next month, I have to turn out a minimum of 4 times to be as profitable as I want to be. So I'd have to be at $400,000 at the end of the month.

Okay.

If I landed at $150, I'd want to turn that $150 4 times. $600.

Wait, so let me make sure I'm understanding when you say landing at. So you're saying like if you were to, if you were to take your first month of, of like, like just like, what does that mean? What do you mean by landed? Explain that to me.

Um, if I did, let's say I ended my month at $400,000 with $100,000 left over, that's called a work in process.

Oh, okay. $100,000 left over. Okay.

In WIP. So turning $100,000 in WIP into the next month, I need to turn out a minimum of 4 times to get my top line sale of $400K and to get the profitability I want. Most body shops can't even turn their whip 2 times.

Yeah, so okay, I get what you're saying now. I wasn't understanding by the, that it was the whip that you're talking about. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't even, like in the commercial truck world, they don't even whip adjust, like big chain shops. They don't even do whip adjustments in their numbers.

That's another P&L issue. They're not getting true numbers. Yeah, their numbers are skewed on their P&Ls monthly and they chew it up at the end of the year and that's a huge hit. Yeah, I recommend doing WIP adjustments monthly, having an accounting team that is excellent to your business, and administration has to keep up. Administration cycle time has to be just as fast as the car is moving. Yeah, that's a key piece. Ron Kuhn will say that all day long.

Yeah, it's key. Like, I always ask this question, like, if you were to teach a master class in this, You know, so is there anything we left off? Like, is there anything— like, if you were to teach this to the next shop owner, whether it's an independent, a DRP shop, an MSO, doesn't matter, is there anything that we didn't cover that should be— Absolutely. Okay. People.

The people.

People.

The right people. Okay. You know, hire slow, fire fast. It's a big thing. Corporate America was so afraid of me because of that thinking. I'm a big believer upgrading. You know, Collision Repair is like a Super Bowl football team. I mean, either you're the best or you're not. You know what I mean? And people are everything. You know, everybody says, well, Jim, how did you create these cultures? You know, I'm so tired of hearing culture, culture, culture. What's your culture? Is it a soft pat-your-ass culture, or is it what are you guys here for? So I would teach people that. I'm like, what are you here for? Are you here to make money or complain all day? I'm here to make money. I go, awesome! So you're gonna come to work for Painters, Collision Centers, or Fix Auto, or Caliber, and you're gonna grind all day, right? I'm not gonna hear a bunch of whining all day. Nope, I'm here to make money. I'm like, okay. I'm like, what do you think you should make per flat rate hour? I don't know, what's fair? What I want, Jim, is ours. Load your shop, get the best people. It's about the people. The people will create your cultures through your dedication to them. Me being an ex-tech, that's how I did it all. I created my cultures by saying, hey Tom, I got one for you. What? There's dignity in labor. You'll make more money doing this than you will getting your college degree. You're going to make more money than you've ever made in your life. If you just follow my way, follow my way.

Be a leader.

Lead people to it. Make them understand. Hire the right ones and ask the right questions. Accountability, genuinity are key. And tell those people when you're interviewing them, everything you said today, Tom, if it's not true, less than a month from now you'll be back up in this office having this conversation with me and you'll probably be unemployed if it's not. True. Yeah, I don't care what you say.

Another thing too that you did, I saw personally firsthand, was some of your young techs, when they started making some real money, you would mentor them on what to do with it so then they weren't stupid with their money. And I think that was a really key piece. So speaking of the leadership of it, like, they, you know, you set an example not just how to make the money but how to build wealth. With it, you know, and I thought I always admired that, you know, with you.

So I think it's important, Tom, you know, I always tell everybody, look, I'm an ex-tech. I just happen to have this brain for logistics, moving pieces and people, you know. So I tell everybody, you want to create the best collision repair facilities, get the best people. Now, they don't have to be highly trained. They don't, as long as they have an open mind. And they want to learn. Look at— you saw what I did. I still have one of them now, works for me. His name is Ian. Ian's great. He's joined me when he was 18 years old. This kid couldn't even put on his shoes correctly, and he was scared of everything. He became one of my best journeyman techs. Yeah, they just follow me everywhere I go. My son— I got tons of them. But these young people made, made the show. But I also had A-plus journeyman techs. Yeah, but I recruited them through A+ techs because A+ techs know A+ techs. That's the way that works. Yeah. However, first thing, Tom, first part of the interview: so, Tom, you're an A+ tech? Yep. All right, so do you know everything? And if they said yes, I did not hire them.

There you go.

And I would always ask them, be careful how you answer that. And they'd be like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Let's just go. Do you think you know everything?" And most techs, "No, I learn daily." I'm like, "Okay, awesome. And you have an open mind, you're willing to do whatever it takes, and you want to make as much money as possible?" "I do." "Okay, you want to be part of leadership, you want to be in our leadership meetings, blah blah blah?" "I do." "Okay, awesome, great. We're transparent." They got to see every single number all the way down to profitability. Yeah, big deal. And I mentioned 3 meetings a day: the big production meeting in the morning, another release meeting at 10, it took 15 minutes, another one at 2. Because we had a daily go list, and if one of those cars was going to drop off, that customer had to be notified. Because those customers were notified 3 days in advance that their car was going to be done on a Wednesday at 2. That's how finite we would get. Those cars, when they're done, they left. That's how we were able to bring in the Cat 2s and the cat ones because we were so diligent and strict about it. Yeah, discipline was off the charts. Yeah, but people, Tom, to answer your question on that— sorry, I could go forever on this stuff.

Yeah, I almost kind of want to have you back on when we talk about whip. We might do that because like the whip one is a good one. That's it, that's a whip adjustment, whip adjusting. But Jim, I want to thank you for coming on here, and I think, I think maybe we schedule another one we talk about some of these other things that we kind of didn't get to on this podcast. There's gonna be a lot of editing to get this to fit a timestamp. Yeah, well, but, uh, but I, you know, again, always, as always, thank you for jumping on here.