From Racing Go-Karts to Machining Parts for Peterbilt Trucks
Learn how listening to your customers talk about their problems is the key to innovation.
Episode 332: What happens when a passion for racing go-karts evolves into a career in the machining industry? Our featured guest Alan Speyrer, owner of AES Machine, transformed a love for problem-solving and machining into a successful business. Discover how a simple conversation about Peterbilt hood hinges led to him engineering superior machine parts.
We also discuss how important it is to really listen to your customers and then care enough to help them come up with solutions. In our That’s Not Heavy Duty segment, our host Jamie Irvine tells a story of flight delays and cancellations which underscores the need for having good customer service.
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Sponsors of this Episode
Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation: Find out how many “fault codes” your heavy-duty parts business has. Meet with us today. Visit HeavyDutyConsulting.com
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine:
You are listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people.
Welcome to another episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. In this episode, we are going to talk about how listening to customers talk about their problems is a great way to identify innovative products and solutions that will solve their problems and challenge the status quo.
We’re going to see an example of how one machinist solved a common problem with Peterbilt’s, and we’re going to talk about how we need to avoid looking at things through the lens of what is convenient and easy for us and our employees and look at things through the lens of what is easy and convenient for our customers, doing the hard things well for them, and how that really impacts your business.
We’ve got a lot to talk about in this episode. Let’s get started. At the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation. When we work with our clients, one of the first things that we do is we often do a pre-canned evaluation.
This is where we ask a lot of questions and we just listen to the customer as they talk. We often will have a very extended conversation as we listen to what they’ve done, where they’ve been, what they’re trying to accomplish, the problems they’ve had in the different aspects of their business by listening to the customer talk about their problems.
This gives us the basis of bringing forth strategies that will help them improve their business.
Now, if you’ve been following what we’ve been doing at the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation, you’ll know that not only do we do a pre-scan at the beginning of our consulting engagement, but we now do a post scan at the end where we demonstrate the amount of fault codes we’ve cleared for the business by listening to their problems, helping them develop a strategy and then guiding them as they execute on the implementation of that strategy.
Now, if you sell products or if you provide services, you can do this too. So if you’re a repair shop or you’re a parts distributor, especially if you’re a parts manufacturer, that voice of customer is so critical to really finding and pioneering innovative solutions that challenge the status quo.
All too often we accept what has just been provided to us and we don’t really challenge that, and therefore we miss out on these great opportunities and I see this over and over again and that’s why I wanted to have my featured guest on this episode because I think my featured guest has just an excellent example of how listening to people’s problems has led him to developing innovative solutions.
And principally, I think we can all benefit from seeing this example. So we’re going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and when we’re back from our sponsors, we are going to listen my interview with this machinist who came up with an innovative solution to a problem on Peterbilt’s.
We’ll be right back.
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HDA Truck Pride is the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit heavydutypartsreport.com/hdatruckpride today to find a location near you.
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We’re back from the break. Before the break, we were talking about the importance of listening to your customer and identifying what problems they are encountering and how we can use that information to develop innovative products and solutions.
My guest this week is one such individual who makes a living doing this. My guest today is Alan Speyrer, Owner of a AES Machine. Now Alan is a machinist in west Texas with over 20 years of machining and manufacturing experience. He manufactures parts for various industries including the trucking industry. Alan, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Alan Speyrer:
Thanks, glad to be here.
Jamie Irvine:
So I’d like you to tell me the story of how you started a AES machine. What was the motivator behind that? What were you hoping to accomplish when you started this company?
Alan Speyrer:
So started racing go-karts around my 15, 16 years of age, and some of the veteran go-kart racers were machinists. So I just fell in that whole machining thing and watched them machine parts and had the machine parts for me and just really fell in love with machining. And then I got to thinking a lot of the big Penske and Yates and all those big NASCAR IndyCar companies.
Well, they also manufacture parts for their particular racing industry and that fuels their team and pays for racing.
I thought, well, that would be great. So I got into machining doing that, went to a community college for machining and just started machining and racing and that just kind of snowballed. Still makes some parts for go-kart racing for a company in Arizona, but I haven’t raced in a decade.
Jamie Irvine:
So that takes me back. I remember when I started off in remanufacturing for heavy duty parts and I went to college as well, learned how to use a mill machine and a lathe. I didn’t go into CNC. Did you take training for CNC? Yes. Okay.
So back when I was taking that training, it was all conventional machines, but it’s so funny how your passions when you’re young will often fuel the direction of your career to a degree. I mean, I was making parts for motorcycles and for mustangs and anything I could do to save a few bucks because when you’re that age, you don’t have a lot of money.
So you raced competitively. That was kind of how you got into it. Talk to me a little bit about the role of mentorship with some of those older racers. How important was that to guide you on your career?
Alan Speyrer:
Yeah, it was great. I mean, I don’t think I would’ve been interested in machining had I not been around those guys. And you go to their shop and hey, can you bore out this cylinder here? We need to rebuild this engine.
And okay, yeah, they can do it. And they got all the tools and you watch the process and you’re just like, wow, he really did that and it didn’t take long and that really works. So I’d like to do that. Just get exposed to those things and lights a fire. And you just passionate about that.
Jamie Irvine:
Absolutely. I remember when I machined a set of Ford controls and a set of horns to go on the windscreen of my motorcycle, when I installed it, I took a step back. I remember the excitement of I did that, that was in my head and I figured out a way to make it and now look at it, it’s done.
I can imagine you had the same thing when you were out on the racetrack and your engine was performing and you were winning and you were like, yeah, I did that.
Alan Speyrer:
Yeah, just look at things a different way and think about it. I’ll just draw something on a piece of paper or now on the computer and think about it and then you machine it and well, maybe it didn’t always work the way you wanted it to initially, so you got to tweak this and tweak that.
But just because you can draw something on a piece of paper doesn’t mean it’s going to function the way you want it to function.
Jamie Irvine:
Yeah, a hundred percent. So did you come from a family with a lot of people that have mechanical background or are you kind of the first in your family to get involved in this?
Alan Speyrer:
Yeah, mother’s a nurse, father’s a pharmacist, so…
Jamie Irvine:
Not really.
Alan Speyrer:
Grandfather, he worked for Johnson, Evan Root and OMC outboards. All three of those outboards were made on the same assembly line. And so he was the head mechanic when back in the late seventies, early eighties when you had the bass boat tournaments you see on tv, he was the guy that was there that was working on Roland Martin and Bill Dance’s bass boats for the tournament.
Jamie Irvine:
So now let’s fast forward to where you are today. You’ve been running a AES Machine now for over 20 years. So walk me through your process for discovering opportunities to manufacture innovative parts. How does that usually come about?
Alan Speyrer:
It usually comes about when you just meet somebody or you connect with somebody through social media and they just get to talking about this and you just got to listen and say, where are they going with this? What exactly do they want out of this conversation? Are they asking for a solution to a certain thing or what is it? And sometimes it leads to something. Sometimes it’s just a couple of guys talking.
Jamie Irvine:
Listening for the problem, so once you start to hear, hey, I’m hearing this problem and I think maybe I could do a solution, let’s talk about what happened. Tell me the story of how you discovered there was a problem with Peterbilt hood hinges and tell us how you came about to discover that problem, what you did about it.
Alan Speyrer:
I owe that credit to my brother-in-Law who owns a trucking company about an hour away. All his trucks were Peterbilt trucks and he had bought a brand new hood hinge bolt kit and put it on the truck and well, you can still move the hood up and down. It’s still rattles, it still vibrates it, brand new kit. So he’s like, hey, could you make these and could you make ’em better?
He’s like, look at this. So I was over there, went over to his house, measured everything, micrometers, calipers, made a drawing and thought, okay, yeah, we can take this three piece kit, make it into a two piece kit, add a grease fitting, make it greasable. It took a little trial and error, but it works. It works really good.
Jamie Irvine:
So once you figured out the solution, what was the benefit that now customers who buy this kit get over the original equipment or aftermarket that’s traditionally been available?
Alan Speyrer:
So the original part is either made in China or Taiwan not to knock those countries. I think manufacturers can get the part they want from those countries or they can just get average parts. If you want a really good quality part, it costs some money and it can be made anywhere, but the parts you get from the factory is not that good. Machining tolerances are plus or minus a 32nd of an inch.
So no matter how hard you tighten down on the factory kit, the bolt and the bushing, it doesn’t fit good. There’s too much slop there. It’s going to rattle.
The bushings are polyurethane, they’re real cheap and they won’t last. They wear out prematurely. So CNC, a better quality bushing and a better quality bolt, adding a grease fitting in there, allow just enough room for grease around these two components. So you get a good quality part and it works and it’ll last many times longer.
Jamie Irvine:
What happens to the assembly and the hood? If there’s too much movement, too much vibration, and you’re using that lower quality part, as they say, you rarely get more than you pay for. So what would happen if you had that cheaper part on and everything wears out?
Alan Speyrer:
Over time those polyurethane bushings, they just wear out against that steel sleeve that’s put over the factory bolt and then it starts wearing into the hood hinge brackets, which are aluminum. Now you got to replace all of it.
Jamie Irvine:
The whole assembly.
Alan Speyrer:
Yeah.
Jamie Irvine:
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Alan Speyrer:
And I think some oversized bushings for another trucker who had used a factory component and didn’t get it done in time and had some wear. So we had to make some oversized bushings because he didn’t want to replace the factory hinges, the factory brackets, it works and he’s happy with it, so it should last him a long time like that.
Jamie Irvine:
So your brother-in-law gave you the idea, you figured out and kind of tested the solution with him. You got it figured out and now you’ve started to sell it. I understand that you’re selling these to dealerships, you’re selling them to aftermarket parts, people and others.
When you really think about bringing these solutions to market, what feeling does that give you as someone who’s providing a real quality solution?
Alan Speyrer:
I don’t know. It is just a great feeling. It is kind of like back when you’re a teenager and you’re starting to get into this and back to racing and stuff and you’re like, okay, we’re going to make this. We’re going to modify this, we’re going to change. We’re going to machine this and we hope it functions this way. And when it does, then you’re like, all right, this is really good. This is really, I don’t know. It is thrilling.
And to think that I can improve a product and it’s going to support the trucking industry and those customers going down the road day in and day out, it’s just a good feeling. I imagine maybe Henry Ford felt the same way when he invented his first car or his first dozen cars and got to see them ride up and down the streets. It’s just an exciting thing. So I just love machinery parts.
Jamie Irvine:
Making a difference one part at a time.
Alan Speyrer:
I do. Yeah, it’s good.
Jamie Irvine:
You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and we’ve been speaking with Alan Speyrer, Owner of a AES machine. If you want to learn more about AES Machine and if you want to look at these Peterbilt parts, go over to aesmachinellc.com. Alan, thank you so much for being on The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I really appreciate your time.
Alan Speyrer:
Thank you. Having Jamie.
Jamie Irvine:
Well, I hope you enjoyed my interview with Alan Speyrer from AES machine. Make sure you go over and check out his website, and by all means, if you sell to people who have Peterbilt’s or if you own a Peterbilt, check out his website, buy that product that he has developed, I think that it is an excellent solution to a real problem. Okay, so now it’s time for That’s Not Heavy Duty. In this edition of That’s Not Heavy Duty.
What I wanted to talk about is I wanted to talk about my most recent experience traveling to South Carolina to do field work for one of our clients. As you may have heard, there has been some big time problems with flights over the last few weeks because of a computer update that went bad and really messed up the system.
And as I flew down to South Carolina, I heard horror stories of people who had been on four different flights over two different days just trying to get from Texas to LA.
I’ve heard one woman who had come from Peru, and she was being sent all the way back to South America because her ticket had disappeared in their system. And so I considered it kind of fortunate that I only had to spend 18 hours flying from Edmonton to South Carolina on my way down.
At least I made it to my destination on the same day. Now, when I was flying back, there were more problems. One of my flights from Atlanta to Edmonton was canceled, and I was rebooked on a flight to Calgary, which is only about a three hour drive away from Edmonton, but they wanted me to wait in Calgary for over nine hours.
So I called the airline and then I went down to the actual airport to talk to the agents, and then I had to call again and stay on hold for a couple hours, and I got it all sorted out.
And so I was able to be moved to another flight so that I was able to fly into Calgary, have a short layover, get on the next flight to Edmonton and meet my family there who were coming in from Vancouver, we’re all supposed to meet at the same time, roughly the same time.
What happened? I couldn’t get that third flight. I couldn’t get a boarding pass. They kept telling me it’s not a problem, but they couldn’t provide me with a boarding pass.
And when I finally did get to Calgary, there was only about 45 minutes before the flight left and I was told by the one airline, the Canadian side of the airline, WestJet, that they couldn’t help me. I had to talk to Delta. I went to talk to Delta and told me they couldn’t help me because it was within the window of 45 minutes before the flight left.
Now, at this point, I had no knowledge that they had kept my original flight. Nine hours later, the way that they communicated with me, it sounded like I had been moved to that flight and then I had been removed from that flight.
So I ended up taking an Uber and my family met me halfway. It cost me over $300 to Uber. We met up and then we drove home. A few hours later, I’m home and I’m getting a message on my phone that my flight’s been canceled and delayed, that the nine hour layover was going to be 10, then it was 11, then it was going to be a 12 hour layover.
So the whole system obviously broke down in this case, but it made me think, and the reason I’m telling you this story is it made me think of times where from a consultant’s perspective, I’ve been working with clients of ours and some of the people working at some of our clients tend to have this attitude of like, well, this customer-centric policy that is being proposed to be put forward is going to generate a lot of work on our end.
And so we don’t want to do it. And so that’s really a problem. We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make it easy for our customers. And one of the problems with the flight that I had, it wasn’t so much that it got messed up.
I understand that there’s this major update issue, and these things do happen. If you travel as much as I do, you just learn to deal with it. But what upset me was the attitude of the employees. They really weren’t interested in helping me.
They kind of had a bit of a dismissive attitude and like, well, sorry, man, what do you want us to do kind of attitude. And certainly if we’re heavy-duty people and we understand the role we play in society as the backbone of society, we would never want to have that attitude.
So yes, sometimes to get the customer what they need, it requires extra effort on our part. Sometimes it requires us to do the hard thing on their behalf, but that is the heavy-duty way.
So having a dismissive attitude or being more concerned about how much effort it’s going to require on our part to provide a great customer experience, that’s not the heavy-duty way. Understanding our why, understanding what we do is so important and doing everything we can to make sure our customers in trucking have what they need to be successful.
That’s the heavy-duty way, and that’s what we all need to do. And obviously none of us are perfect. We all at times may slip into that attitude because we’re tired, we’re overworked, we’re frustrated. I get that those things happen, but this is a good reminder for all of us, and we really do need to do our part and really give it our all as much as possible.
And after you’re hearing this, if you think of things that you could personally improve on or if your department could make some improvements, or if you’re a leader of a company, your company could make improvements.
I think it’s worth it to take that effort and do what we can. Okay, so thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. I just wanted to remind you that next week is Brake Safety Week. It starts on August 25th, goes to August 31st, 2024, and we’re going to have a special episode next week dedicated to Brake Safety Week.
We already had one a few weeks ago to help people prepare. So make sure that you go over to heavydutypartsreport.com. Sign up to our weekly email so you never miss out on any of our content. If you like listening to the podcast on a podcast player, hit the follow button for free.
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