The Numbers Every Repair Shop Should Be Tracking
Josh Ross of Truck Genius explains how repair shops can use data, AI, and performance metrics to increase profitability, improve accountability, and eliminate costly inefficiencies.
Episode 372: In this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report, host Jamie Irvine speaks with Josh Ross, CEO of Truck Genius, about how repair shops can turn operational data into profit.
Josh explains how Truck Genius helps shops unlock valuable insights from Fullbay data, making it easier to track key performance indicators, improve accountability, and identify profit leaks.
The discussion explores the growing role of AI in analyzing repair shop data, highlighting how tools can surface actionable recommendations, monitor technician performance, optimize inventory management, and automate routine tasks. Josh emphasizes that metrics such as gross profit per hour can have a significant impact on profitability and shares examples of shops improving financial performance simply by measuring and managing the right numbers.
Both Jamie and Josh agree that the future belongs to repair shops that embrace data-driven decision-making, leverage AI, and focus on proactive management rather than constantly reacting to problems.
Links
Sponsors of this Episode
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Fullbay: Fullbay is built for the heavy-duty world, giving your operation the tools to keep your fleet or independent repair shop running. Features like streamlined scheduling, real-time inventory tracking, technician efficiency insights, and detailed reports are how Fullbay helps shops reduce downtime and keep your vehicles on the road where they belong. Check out Fullbay.com/power to maximize your shop’s productivity.
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Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy Duty Parts Report may receive a commission.
Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine
Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and in this episode we’re going to talk about how you can turn data at a repair shop into profit. And to help me with that, my guest today is Josh Ross, CEO of Truck Genius. Josh, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Josh Ross
Hey, thanks. Happy to be here. It’s going to be a blast.
Jamie Irvine
So normally I’m wearing a different attire for this episode, but since we met at Diesel Connect, I thought I’d rock the Diesel Connect t-shirt from 2026 that they gave us. So yeah, it’s good to have you on the show and to talk to you about this. I think for repair shop owners, this is an important subject. Leaking profit was actually one of the subjects I covered on the main stage at Diesel Connect. I saw you guys were also a sponsor like the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation. I stopped by the booth and I was intrigued. So I got a bunch of questions for you. Let’s get into it. First of all, what was the moment you realized you were going to get involved in the trucking industry and try to tackle this issue of repair shops and the data that they have.
Josh Ross
So I think for us, so a little context on where Truck Genius came from. Previously, my team and I were doing custom software. Eventually, we got tapped by a repair shop in Detroit, said, hey, we want to get better data visualization out of Fullbay. And we came in and frankly, the moment that I knew that this is a problem that we could solve and scale, is the moment that I tried to pull a report down out of Fullbay. I don’t know how much you’ve touched that software, but the folks that do will know that it is a lunch break type of task to get reports out of there. And so everything’s kind of rolled downhill since that first time we talked to the shop in Detroit, Kerry Bros Truckle.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, so at Diesel Connect this year, Fullbay announced their big changes coming up. And, you know, I think they are obviously listening to their customers. They’ve got old infrastructure that they need to fix. So talk me through how you say that the reporting was challenging. I think that is something any Fullbay user would agree with you on. But maybe walk me through in a little more detail how they’re using the system now and what was actually missing.
Josh Ross
Exactly, yeah. So the data’s there. There’s just a barrier to get to it, right? And that’s kind of what I’m talking about with it being frustrating. Like it all exists. It’s all in there. And frankly, I think what started us with them is, I mean, in today’s day and age, like data runs business, data drives business. But you need to know your numbers, to hold your team accountable, to hold your shops accountable, and to grow your organization. But if I don’t have access to those things, if I’m not able to easily access what my revenue by shop, by customer, how are my service advisors are doing, what’s my efficiency utilization, that barrier to get to that data causes problems when it’s time to hold my team accountable. If I don’t have a solid source of truth, that is one number of if they’re above the line or below it, it makes it really hard to have those conversations. And so for us, it was how can we make that easier? How can we make accountability easier? How can we make measurement easier? And so that turned into us taking all that data, talking to shop owners like the folks at Kerry Bros and some of our other customers to figure out, hey, I mean, what numbers are important to you? What metrics do you want to track every single day? And making those two clicks away rather than a little bit of a more difficult process that it was previously to get that out of the shop management system.
Jamie Irvine
It’s funny if you go back in the way back time machine and most shops were pen and paper, or at best, they were like Excel and Word right at one time. I don’t think people truly understand how much data a repair shop could create. And once you have a shop management system in place like Fullbay, then all of a sudden you are creating that data. But that’s the age-old question, right? If all of a sudden we create all this data, how on earth do you get to like you said, the actual information that will really move the needle for your business. I’m assuming since your website is dot AI, that AI is part of this. That’s a buzzword. You know, AI, I don’t even know that most people know what that means. Some people’s level of interaction with it is just ChatGPT. Other people have really figured out how to leverage it. So talk to me a little bit about what AI actually does inside of Truck Genius and how that helps people get to that information quicker.
Josh Ross
A thousand percent, because I think you touched on it a second ago. I mean, there are just a ton of numbers. There’s a ton of data that we’re extracting. And so a lot of that is separating some of that signal from noise because there is just a lot of noise in some of those numbers. And that is where AI can be really useful. So within Truck Genius sense, what our AI does right now is, first of all, it goes into Fullbay and it helps make that data accessible, so it’ll actually get the reports for you. What we’re actually rolling out in the next 30 days here is an assistant to go alongside all of this data as that system of record to be able to tell you, if you ask a question, hey, here’s the data that we have in our database. Here’s the data that is from Fullbay, but here’s what’s important and here’s why. So if I have a question for my team, say, I talked to this assistant, hey, I’m having a problem with John Smith. He’s not pulling in numbers, but he’s asking for a raise. And like, how do I help him? How do I help build out a structure to allow him to continue to grow within our organization, but tie it to things that I could measure. And so that would be a situation where our assistant could say, it’s not going to do your job for you because we absolutely don’t want that. I mean, an assistant is a tool and AI is a tool, but it’ll tell you, hey, you want to measure, utilization is the number that means that he’s doing a great job, or gross profit per hour is the number that means that he’s doing a great job. Here’s where it exists in Fullbay, here’s where it exists in our system, and here’s how you can measure how that’s trending as well as creating visualizations. I think for us, what AI means and how it’s useful is being able to almost be like almost be like a sieve, be able to sift through all of that data, tell you what’s important to the situation that you’re in, and then make that process of digging through all of those numbers a lot simpler than going top to bottom.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, so extraction, analysis, but I like that component of being able to ask the AI to provide recommendations on certain criteria. So, then it can analyze the data from a different angle, let’s say. I think one of the things that I run into with my clients a lot of time, if we’re looking at their technicians, like unutilized tech time, that is really important because just because you’re 100% efficient, if you’re only working 50% of the time, you’re still missing a lot of opportunity for revenue and profit. But another issue that comes up quite a bit, and I think this would help, is let’s say we have a technician who is just an awesome technician, but maybe that means that they also get tasked with some of the most difficult jobs. Would this rollout of this new assistant be able to help you kind of understand the data and identify that?
Josh Ross
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, everything here is case by case. This is all the data is case by case. But yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, for us, we can drill into all the SOs that each tech is clocking into. We can see how long they’re clocked into a job. We can see how complex that job is. You can view the record. From our side, yeah, we would be able to surface what those actual line items are that they’re clocked into and what those work items are that they’re clocked into, and what the hour associated with those items are too. If you have a situation like you just mentioned where one of my techs is on a four or five-hour job, I can see that with the actual records that are being pulled out of Fullbay to visualize right. Yeah.
Jamie Irvine
I think that’s such an important piece. You know what’s coming to mind is also now, if with Truck Genius in the future, you’re going to be able to ask the AI as an assistant to do certain things and analyze data in a certain way. People have to learn how to develop prompts, right? How to ask the right questions. I’m finding more and more I get more and more out of the AIs I use by developing my ability to ask better questions and even asking the AI, like what am I not asking or what am I not thinking about? It’s an interesting exercise.
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We’re back from our break. Make sure you go and check out the links in our show notes to all of our sponsors. OK, let’s get back to this episode.
So Josh, what are two or three metrics that every shop should be looking at that are really important? Maybe these are not the most obvious metrics. What are a couple of them that maybe aren’t obvious, but people should be paying more attention to them?
Josh Ross
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve got one that is an absolute. So the one that we have found the most value out of for our clients that are using this is that gross profit per hour number. So flat out by location, how much are we doing an hour, by component, by job? How much are we making an hour on every single job, by tech? How much are they bringing in per hour on every single job, and what is that doing to the business? Because I think with all of this data, it’s really important to get down to one number that tells us, yes, this is good for the company or no, this is not. So if I can look at like what am I making per hour on a on any sort of action that my company is doing or my team is doing, I can have a really I can come up with a really good kind of hierarchy of here’s what we want to prioritize for our team. Because if I know that we make $250 profit per hour on this component job that I’m going to push our guys to prioritize it. I’m going to do more of that job. And if I know that one tech is pulling in $210 or plus $50 gross profit dollars per hour over the rest of the team, I’m going to do my very best to make sure he’s out and we’re getting the most out of him because that one number will tell me directly how that implicates the business. So that gross profit per hour and measuring that is something that we’ve seen growth in. So I mean, just from a case study perspective. So we had a shop that really had the idea of pushing this number but couldn’t measure it. And so we got them on, added this metric to be able to show what their gross profit per hour dollars were. And within three months of tracking that and holding his team accountable to that scorecard number of gross profit per hour, we’re actually able to save $140,000 over three months by just maximizing what his team was working. So major, major ROI there just from measuring that one metric. So from our side, that is, I mean, a gold standard number and one that I don’t think gets talked about enough.
Jamie Irvine
And I mean, what comes to mind as you’re describing that for me is maybe we learn from one of our technicians, you know, hey, wow, their gross margin number is higher than everybody else. Why get into it? Right? What are they doing? Could we teach that to other techs? But also then also job mix. And job mix is so important. I look, when I talk to some of my clients and we get into the details on job mix, we often find that they’re giving the same priority to a lot of different customers and they’re not really maximizing their time with their ideal customer profile. Now they’ve identified that, but they’re not taking that next step. It’s a little scary sometimes to turn away work, but man, can it make a difference to the bottom line if you’re prioritizing the work that you can make the most money on. Let’s talk about profit leaks. I know I’ve got some opinions on that. I just gave a presentation about it. From your perspective, reading the data on all the shops you deal with, where are shops leaking the most profit?
Josh Ross
Number one causation of missed revenue, of leaking profit, is just measurement of the business. I think that, and this kind of goes back to what we just started, what we started talking about, measuring numbers and measuring metrics. But I think that, I mean, there’s two sides to this coin. What you measure grows. and what you don’t measure doesn’t, right? So a lot of shops right now are going by feel and not by numbers. And so you’re leaving money on the table simply because you don’t know what the exact dollar implication of what each action that you’re approaching, it does for the business. So from our side, being able to measure those numbers, they grow just by looking at them and just by holding your team accountable to them. And there’s so much data that proves that this is true. Just by having that number be measured and trackable, that number goes up. So if I’m not doing that, I’m leaving money on the table by not being able to grow those metrics, that mean my business is growing, by operating off a field and not data. And I don’t remember if you talked about this in your session, but I’m sure that’s something you harp on as well. It’s like, we need to be measuring what’s important to us. And because at the end of the day, what you measure grows and what you don’t doesn’t.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, I don’t remember if this was Peter Drucker or Zig Ziglar, but the quote was, ‘what gets measured gets managed’. And I think that’s so important to manage these things, have your goals that you’ve set and understand, hey, we made this change and we moved closer to our goal. We made that change, it moved us farther away. And if you don’t do that, instead of being proactive, you become very reactive. And I think that’s the way a lot of businesses operate is very reactive. One of the reasons, especially in the repair shop environment, is the owner is usually still pretty involved in operations and they are building the business as they are working in the business. And so they’re just kind of dealing with whatever comes up every day. And it is hard sometimes to get proactive and get ahead of things. I like that. Yeah, I think you and I are aligned in that for sure.
Josh Ross
Yeah, a thousand percent. And I think that kind of expanding on that a little bit, everybody claims that, and this is actually a quote from a guy named, a guy named Steven Lopez, who I really respect. He’s actually in a completely different industry. He’s in manufacturing, but he had a quote that I love and I shamelessly steal.
Jamie Irvine
Well, you’ve given accreditation a couple times, so it’s yours now.
Josh Ross
Well, I’ve got to add the citation at the bottom. But so he said that everyone says that they are problem solvers and everyone wants to be problem solvers. But really, most people are firefighters, right? They’re doing exactly what you talked about. They’re being reactive, not proactive. And so when I’m just chasing fires, I’m not growing the business. I’m just I’m just staying alive, right? I’m being a caretaker, not a CEO, not a CRO, growth-minded leader. So I think the one side of that is, hey, you can be proactive with numbers, but I think that kind of another part that we talked about briefly is AI allows us, and AI is going to continue to allow us, to start to automate some of those processes that we’re very reactive in by having to do over and over again and fight those fires every single day. But with that technology and with automating some of the processes that we’re already doing right now with Truck Genius and with other tools that are phenomenal, while I’m able to take a step back because that level one is handled and actually be proactive and actually take action on those numbers, because I think that’s what transitions you from a problem solver and a dynamic individual, which every single person in the workforce wants.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, Josh, let’s make a new quote. Firefighters put out fires. Problem solvers stop the fire from ever getting started.
Josh Ross
There you come on. There you go. Take a 100 percent credit for that. I love it.
Jamie Irvine
All right, so you could just give me credit once and then be like, hey, it was on The Heavy Duty Parts Report. And then after that, it’s yours. Okay, so this is The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m a parts guy. That’s where I started. I’m working more and more with repair shops all the time now. But let’s talk about the relationship between the repair work that gets done, the parts that have to be purchased. How does your system enable more visibility on parts and service, you know, using the tools that you’ve developed?
Josh Ross
I think that it levels the playing field. I think that from a like parts to shop or parts vendor to a shop relationship perspective, if you’re able to have data of what we sold or what we bought parts at previously, what those orders looked like, and then what we sold them for on our side, we’re able to have a very straightforward discussion of like, hey, here’s where we’ve been at previously. Here’s where our margins were on that part. I mean, maybe I don’t share that, but like here’s where our margins were on that part. So we can make decisions and have conversations about our relationship in ordering parts in a very accountable way, in an analytical way. by knowing exactly how we operated in the past, rather than doing that by feel and trying to come in and have a new proposition every time you sell a part, you can know exactly what I bought it for previously, exactly what it was sold for previously, and then make that decision off of that. So I think ultimately, numbers give you visibility, and visibility levels the playing field, whether that’s from a customer-to-shop perspective or a shop-to-vendor perspective, I think both of those are key, and they really, I think, will ultimately end up in a more beneficial end up with a more beneficial situation for both sides of the table.
Jamie Irvine
Unfortunately, one of the complaints a lot of my clients have on the repair shop level is they aren’t really great at managing their inventory oftentimes. And so they may have an established relationship with a vendor where they can buy a part at a very good discount and make really good margin on it. But because they’re not managing their inventory, they often don’t have that part in stock and maybe the vendor’s too far away. So they end up going down the street, buying it from a dealership or something like that and making a much smaller margin. In addition to that, it also can cause variance in what they sell it for, which then really is a detractor from the overall customer buying experience from their fleets and their owner operators who are, you know, engaging them for service and parts and repair.
Josh Ross
Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. I agree. And that’s one thing that we’re pushing on as well. We just brought on a customer that I’m not going to name just yet, but has a phenomenal internal system for parts and inventory reporting. And so that, I mean, that is a big solve for a lot of these shops is we just need visibility into what we have when we need to order things ahead of time. And so that’s one thing that without plugging our thing too much. That’s one thing that we’re working on as well is we want to give visibility into that. And then we roll out this assistant, maybe there’s a notification that your AI gives that, hey, you usually order this part at this quantity when you get to, say, 20% inventory, you’re at that. You should get ready to order right now so you can stay on top of that. And exactly like you said, the customer doesn’t get screwed over at the end of the deal because we’re operating at a high level and not being reactive to some of those orders.
Jamie Irvine
It’s all great. Sounds awesome. I’m convinced, but people are people. You inevitably get a little bit of pushback when you do any kind of change in an organization. So just looking at the experience, a lot of the shops who have used Truck Genius have had, where does that resistance or that pushback come from?
Josh Ross
That’s a great question. I think that transitioning to a numbers-oriented organization is new and it is a big change. And so, like you said, people are just resistant to change. And so for us, it’s been making sure that we work with the leadership that signs on to help them architect this in a way to where it’s advantageous both to them from a management perspective, but also to their team, right? Because yeah, I’m measuring numbers and that I get that, that creates accountability, that creates a new dynamic. But on the other side of that, if I’m doing a great job as a technician, and my CEO is measuring numbers, and I pull in a phenomenal month, they have absolutely no reason not to reward me for that because they have visibility into that the same way I do. So really, I think from our side, or from their side, it allows them to say, hey, I’m doing a great job. Here’s what my numbers look like. And that is a absolute binary, yes, this is a win. So for us, it’s about shifting the perspective from, hey, we’re using numbers to manage you, but to, hey, we’re using numbers to help us all become better and reward you for the success that you’re having out on the floor and out in the office.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, I’ve been saying for years now that the companies that make their employees more productive through technology, but in addition to that, those employees then are able to leverage the technology to make their customers more productive, are the companies that are going to win. And I think that’s playing out in real time now. That makes a lot of sense. Let’s get out your crystal ball and let’s look to the future. What does it look like even just three years from now? Where are we all going with all of this technology? What do you see coming?
Josh Ross
So I think the closer you are to that, the kind of freakier it becomes because like this is moving extraordinarily fast. And it’s kind of one of those trains where if you don’t catch it soon, you’re going to fall behind and the cost of jumping on is just getting higher and higher. I think that a big paradigm shift with AI and with agents nowadays, and this is one thing I’m really pushing our guys to move forward hard on, and we have a little of this already, is AI allows us to shift our technology from really being systems of record, which means databases, your shop management system is a system of record, helps you keep track of everything that’s going on, to a system of action, to a system that can take that data and actually do things about it and do things that you don’t have to do. So from our side and from a shop side, what that means is when I think about maybe like, absolutely, we track really well utilization and efficiency for our guys on the floor, but what about how are we utilizing and how efficient is our team in the office? And so what these agents would allow our team to do is eliminate that work, that reactive stuff that they’re doing every single day and be able to focus on what they’re really good at, what they’re, I’m a big, I forget what book this is from, but they’re unique, it’s an entrepreneurship book. I’ve remembered now, but their unique value, like what they’re really good at and the things that really drive the bottom line for the company and what they actually enjoy doing, they’re able to focus and spend more of their time on that. Then the ROI from that is immense. So to bring it all together, I mean, what that means and where I think we are, not three years, not two years, but frankly, one year from now, is a system that has all this data and does the level one things that you don’t want to do, like entering all your invoices, doing all your third party billing, managing orders for you, sending updates to your customers for you. We’re seeing these tools roll out, and I think the breadth of those solves is going to expand where our team can all be leaders rather than being operators. And I think that’s what everybody wants to do within an organization.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, it’s real. I mean, I have I restructured my business at the, just past the midway point of 2025. And the stuff that I’m able to accomplish today with a much smaller team is really things that we could only dream of even just five years ago. And my team was much larger a few years ago than it is today. And our output is actually higher now. And our margins have really grown as well. So I think that’s, it’s a little easier for me to do that in a office environment that was already operating completely virtually, these brick-and-mortar companies, they now are the ones who are going to be able to really leverage a lot of this and take advantage of that. So that is exciting. We’re coming to the conclusion of our conversation. I end every conversation with this question, if there’s just one thing you want everyone to remember from our conversation today, what’s that one thing?
Josh Ross
I think that if we can look back on this conversation, I think that it’s measuring your numbers matter. I think measuring your numbers runs your business and it will even more over the next five to 10 years. I mean, AI is here and it is here to stay. And so I think stepping into that starts with being numbers driven and really being future forward on that will allow you to compete at scale three, five, 10 years down the road, whether it’s Truck Genius or someone else. I think take that first step on what does it mean for us to adopt AI, what does it mean for us to adopt a numbers-based, accountability-based system and that’s going to pay dividends down the road.
Jamie Irvine
You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and we’ve been speaking with Josh Ross, CEO at Truck Genius. To learn more about Truck Genius, head over to TruckGenius.ai. Links are in the show notes. Josh, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Josh Ross
Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.
Jamie Irvine
And for all those who’ve listened right to the end, thank you so much. If you haven’t already, follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. We’ve got great episodes coming up, some new guests that we haven’t had before, as well as some returning ones. And the information that I’m looking forward to sharing with you, I think will be beneficial to your organization. As always, I want to encourage you to be heavy duty.
