Podcast

State of Heavy-Duty Repair

Learn about the first State of Heavy-Duty Repair report published by Fullbay and TMC.

Episode 107: In this episode, we discuss a report about the state of heavy-duty repair released by Fullbay and TMC. Jacob Findlay talks about why the report was created, the many important findings uncovered in this report, and the effect they are having on the industry. Jacob is a returning guest; you can learn about his journey as a founder and what problems his company is striving to solve for repair shops by listening to episode 21.

Watch the Video

Creating the State of Heavy-Duty Repair Report 

“We believe the industry needs more visibility… it’s the backbone of the economy,” said Findlay.

Download the report: State of Heavy-Duty Repair 

• Fullbay partnered with TMC (Technology and Maintenance Council) to carry out this report.
• Brings more visibility to repair shops about TMC and makes repair shops more visible to TMC.
• Shines a light on the heavy-duty repair industry.
• Fullbay is in a unique position to be able to produce this report with TMC.
• Fullbay focuses exclusively on commercial repair and has the largest collection of real-time repair information in North America.
• This report is very beneficial for repair shops.
• The industry is best served when companies work together and collaborate.

Importance of Small Repair Shops

“The majority of work done on commercial equipment in Canada and the USA are done by small repair shops… take those away and our economy comes to a halt,” said Findlay.

• Most people don’t understand how essential small independent shops are to the trucking industry.
• Some small fleets may have repair shops, but their repair capabilities are capped.
• Small repair shops are needed to take care of the necessary work that fleets can’t do themselves.

A Surprise in the Report

“Probably the biggest thing that surprised me was the gender gap,” explained Findlay.

• Very few technicians are female.
• 27% of shop employees are female.
• Only 1% of technicians are female though.
• There are perceptions of what women can or cannot do in a repair shop, but the truth is that we live in a time where there is a lack of technicians. Having female technicians helps solves that problem.
• Huge opportunity for the industry to bring in more people to become technicians.
• By clearing out old traditional views that being a technician is a “man’s” job, there is an opportunity to close the wage gap in the industry.

Wage Inflation

“They say the solution to high prices is high prices,” said Findlay.

• A well-run shop should be targeting a certain profit margin.
• If you need to increase wages to bring technicians in, you need to charge more for shop rates.
• Efficiency bonuses aren’t the best option.  Shops are better off paying technicians more upfront.
• Unless shops are willing to raise their prices, they’re going to feel the squeeze of the technician shortage.
• Shops also need to ensure their technicians are busy and have steady work, and that they don’t have technicians sitting around. If shops have technicians standing around, the technicians are unhappy, and the shop is making less money.

Complete Transcript of Episode:

Jamie Irvine:

You’re listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. And this is the show where you get expert advice about the heavy-duty parts you buy and sell, and keep you informed about what’s happening in the industry. What is the state of heavy-duty repair? We’ve got a special report to review with you that is provided by Fullbay and TMC. Jacob Findlay is the founder and CEO of Full Bay, and they are a leading provider of heavy-duty shop management software. Jacob is also a returning guest. If you’d like to go back and listen to the origin story of Fullbay, how the company got started, the services that they provide, go back and listen to episode 21, the links are in the show notes. So let’s get Jacob back on the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. Jacob, my friend, welcome back to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I’m so glad to have you here again.

Jacob Findlay:

Thank you, Jamie. It’s great to be back.

Jamie Irvine:

What I saw this report that you had put out, I really wanted to talk to you about it because I think it’s an important subject. And I was really curious about why you decided to partner with TMC to really put this report out and make it available to the industry.

Jacob Findlay:

We believe that the industry needs more visibility. It’s part of the backbone of our economy. And so we can play role with that, but we’ve been building a stronger and stronger relationship with TMC over the past few years and I love the work that they do. We love the work they do, and they’re largely run by volunteers too. Right? So anything that any one of us can do to pitch in to kind of further that mission help. So they’re in a great position also to kind of raise the visibility of the commercial repair industry, not only to the general public, but also among their membership, which is typically mostly fleet members, not a lot on the independent repair side. So we felt like it was a win-win. We could provide more visibility to TMC across the independent repair shops, and then we could provide more visibility of the independent repair shops to TMC. So we want more shops to be aware of TMC, and we want more TMC members to be aware of this commercial space. And then beyond that, we want to also as much as we can shine a light on this industry across the general public. So people appreciate the key role that the commercial repair industry plays in our economy.

Jamie Irvine:

I was a moderator on a webinar, not that long ago where we had Ruan transportation. And, you know, they talked about the importance of the independent service channel to them. Yes, they have deep relationships with, you know, truck OEs because they’re buying trucks and they have national repair contracts and parts contracts and things like that in place, but they still need the independent service channel because those trucks have to go and sometimes they need to bring that independent service channel to help them. So it’s such an important partnership really in our industry. And for those of you who may not know the TMC stands for Technology and Maintenance Council, and it is absolutely the go-to place for fleets for great information, but Fullbay is kind of in a unique position. And I’d like you to explain to us a little bit about how your company actually, because of its unique position, was able to partner with TMC and produce this great report that we’re going to talk about today.

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah. So we’re a shop management platform that we are unique in that we focus exclusively on commercial repair. So that’s B to B repair, which is what we’re talking about, right? So when we’re talking about fleets of any size and of any equipment type, where they send their equipment to be repaired, those shops are what we focus on. So we’re not, we don’t deal with small retail repair shops where maybe people take their personal vehicle to get repaired. So because of that focus, we’ve really been able to roll up a good chunk of the commercial repair space and we’re growing fast and growth is accelerating. So with that, we have the largest collection of real-time repair information for fleets in North America by far. And so with that information comes responsibility and we also have a lot of requests from our customers to be able to benchmark themselves against in an anonymized way, the industry. So there is that right? So we, we kind of have an obligation to the industry to share what we can and share what insights we can, which we are very glad to do because it just furthers the cause. I think there’s a lot of problems to be solved in the industry and we’re much better off collaborating as much as we possibly can versus guarding information like that. So we felt like it was an obligation of ours to do this. And we also felt like shop owners deserved it. And they also deserve any kind of additional visibility that we can give to the industry, like I mentioned earlier. So what we did was, you mentioned like how do we pull the data together? So certainly some of it is anonymized data from our users that they gave us permission to use. And then beyond that, we wanted to make sure that we kind of mitigate any bias toward Fullbay customers because there’s certain benchmarks, key metrics that would be skewed if you were just to look at our customer base. So what we did was in addition to taking that anonymized data set, we also did a full market study of non-customers to gather the same benchmark data, to make sure we could kind of attenuate that bias. So it’s when we’re talking about efficiency, we can clearly see in the data that the shops that are using our software have much higher efficiency than the general market. So we need to make sure that that’s not skewed. So we have a good understanding of what the true efficiency rate across the market is not just among Fullbay customers. So the market study was part of that. So two-pronged approach, anonymized data from our large collection and then market study to attenuate any bias.

Jamie Irvine:

And is that kind of the role that TMC stepped in to help with was that market research. I see, from your perspective as being the software provider, you’ve got the data, but when it comes to the market research, is that where TMC stepped up and helped you?

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah, they were super helpful in not just that. I mean, we have an incredible store of market data ourselves too, not just in our customers to key focus of ours, but TMC was able to help us formulate the questions and determine what kind of the key, because this was the first of what we hope to be many of these reports. So what are the benchmarks that we want to look at? What are the kind of qualitative questions that we want to address and so forth? So, yeah, they were helpful there. They were also helpful in designing the study and also helpful in looking at ways to get the market study distributed and so forth.

Jamie Irvine:

How many independent repair shops are we talking about in the U.S.?

Jacob Findlay:

There’s a lot Jamie, do you know how many there are Jamie?

Jamie Irvine:

I don’t know off the top of my head. I do know from some work I’ve done on the mobile side, that there could be as many as 80,000 mobile repair organizations when it comes to independent repair shops. I really don’t know. I was hoping you could answer.

Jacob Findlay:

Depending on who you ask, you’re gonna get a wide range of opinions on that. And I’ll let you know when I know for sure, Jamie.

Jamie Irvine:

But it is in the tens of thousands. No doubt about that.

Jacob Findlay:

It’s a bigger number than we originally thought going in which is very gratifying for us because, and for me personally, because, you know, in starting Fullbay, it was a big risk and I was willing to take that risk based on the number that I believed existed. And it turns out it’s much bigger than that.

Jamie Irvine:

Wow, that’s awesome. The things I’m thinking about as you’re describing this process that you went through to pull together this first State of the Repair report, I was thinking when there’s so many different repair shops and they are working in so many different geographical areas, so they have different vocations and different industries surrounding them, and so you’re going to have a lot of variation. I can see how TMC and, and you coming together to collaborate would strengthen the quality of the questions asked and the data there’s so much of it, I’m sure on the software side, it’s, it’s like which data is important.

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah, absolutely. That just underscores the need for members of this industry to collaborate with each other, because this is the way I think of it. We view ourselves at Fullbay as kind of like a Switzerland, right? I believe that the walled garden approach of only having a couple partners and kind of hunching together and not sharing information is the wrong approach, hands down, the right approach. And it’s something that’s enabled through more modern APIs. And I think it’s something that people expect in this day and age is to cooperate, collaborate within reason, right? There is need-to-know information and so forth. So that was the approach taken with TMC as we deepen our relationship with them. And then I would also encourage anybody else out there who is looking to solve similar problems to this, to be more open and collaborative because the company next to you doesn’t have to fail in order for you to win. I really believe in the concept of synergy where two plus two can equal five or more when we are open, honest work together and so forth. So in economics, there’s this principle called the law of comparative advantage, which basically talks about how there’s a reason why countries trade with each other because of every single country was trying to build everything ever in their country by their design and so forth. Just imagine if every country is trying to build their own version of an iPhone, for example, right? We’re better off in trading with each other. Some countries get good at one thing, others get good at another thing. And so I think the industry is very well-served through collaboration and executing on that principle of comparative advantage where it makes and err on the side of collaboration. So TMC is a great partner and I think there’s a lot of that can be done in this space in raising visibility in the industry. And that was our hope in involving partners.

Jamie Irvine:

We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. Would you like to advertise on the Heavy-Duty Parts Report? Head over to heavydutypartsreport.com/contact and fill out the form. Spots are limited and on a first come first serve basis. We’re back from our break, and before the break, we were talking about how Fullbay and TMC came together to create this new report called The State of Repair. And it’s all about the state of repair in heavy-duty. And so I wanted to talk a little bit more about the data. You used a couple of words in our first segment where you were talking about qualitative and quantitative. And could you really explain the difference between qualitative information and quantitative information?

Jacob Findlay:

Absolutely. So quantitative information tends to be things like numbers, things that could be measured objectively. So like efficiency rates, pay rates, shop revenue numbers, profitability numbers, that would be like a quantity of quantitative metrics.

Jamie Irvine:

Right? So, like for example, I’m a technician with five years’ experience and I’m getting paid $32 an hour. And in this shop, the same technician with five years’ experience is getting paid $33 an hour. There is a quantitative measurement where there’s a noticeable difference.

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah, exactly. It’s something that you could, you could input that into a spreadsheet, sort, the columns run a calculation, quantitative data. The other thing would be qualitative data. And this is the kind of thing that’s more gleaned through interviews or qualitative questions like, you know, what are your biggest challenges as a shop or, you know, how do you go about solving morale issues or counting inventory and, and so forth. So there’s that aspect. So you can never just have the one, the quantitative is important and is more and more important in this day and age because of our ability to collect data. But the qualitative helps to color that and helps answer some of the, some of the why questions and the what questions.

Jamie Irvine:

So it seems to me like the qualitative data gives us context and helps us to put the quantitative data, the stuff that’s on the spreadsheet into a narrative that makes sense.

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah exactly. If you think about the repair process, it’s similar to the whole complaint cost correction thing, right? Somebody comes in potentially with a commentary, there’s a complaint. And then you do diagnostic work and get some objective measurement data to color that also. So altogether then you can use that to diagnose what the underlying issue is. Same thing goes at a macro level when you’re looking at the industry, you want to mix the quantitative with the qualitative to help solve these problems.

Jamie Irvine:

So when we were in our first segment, we were talking about this partnership between you and TMC and how TMC is so focused on fleets, but fleets do a lot of their own repair work. So I kind of want to get your perspective as you pulled together this information, how important is small, independently owned repair shops to the trucking industry?

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah, you’re right. A lot of fleets do their own repair work. But as we know, the fleet side of things is extremely fragmented. So whether you call a FedEx or a Knight-Swift, the number one in the space, those super large fleets are few and far between, the vast majority of, especially if we’re talking over the road, but also companies hauling their own product, the vast majority of this stuff is done by smaller fleets. Many of whom are not big enough to have an internal shop or a significant internal operation. So I would say the majority of work that is done on commercial equipment in the U.S. and Canada is done by essentially small mom and pop shops who are under 10 employees and take those out of the equation and a huge chunk of our economy grinds to a halt. There’s a lot of reliance on small businesses to keep these trucks running. Until 15 years ago, I had never heard of the commercial repair industry. I just didn’t grow up in it. And the more I got to know it, the more I realized how important it is. But I think that hasn’t really changed, when you talk to people outside of the industry, they don’t really understand what it is and what it means and how critical a role it plays. They don’t even think of it at all. It doesn’t even cross their minds. So I think raising the profile with TMC, even because a lot of times the focus there is just on the fleets, it’s not necessarily on the independent shops. There is a lot of work being done around internal fleet maintenance, but as far as the independents go, there’s a lot of growth potential there among TMC to get these independents in the door. So that’s part of the purpose.

Jamie Irvine:

I’m never looking for places to agree or disagree with my guests. I’m always just listening and as you say, these things, you know, certain things come to mind. I know my own experience working in a small community the last few years when I was a sales account manager for Truck Pros Canadian division. And, you know, we have a town of about 8,500 people and there’s a lot of industry around us, so there’s logging, oil field work and also mining, a lot of industry. And in our little town of 8,500 people, we’ve got a lot of independently owned fleets that have repair shops, but you said something very important that their repair capabilities are kind of capped. And so in this small town of 8,500 people, we have at least four independently owned repair shops that does all the work that those fleets can’t do themselves. So while the fleet might handle things like oil changes and filter changes and maybe breaks and things like that, regular inspections and larger, more complex work where there’s more of a need for diagnostics, is all done at these independently owned repair shops that provide those services to the fleets. So that’s just in our little town, 8,500 people. Now think about it across all of Canada, across all of the United States, how important of a role these shops are actually playing.

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah, exactly right. And that’s a great point. So if we’re talking about light maintenance, you know quick fixes, from a pre-trip and post-trip inspection, you will see fleets that have a mechanic on staff, but they’re not necessarily taking care of the whole thing. And it’s not necessarily encompassing kind of a comprehensive preventive maintenance program because the number one concern for these fleets is avoiding downtime. And so absolutely.

Jamie Irvine:

Yes, it’s more reactionary. It’s more reactive than proactive. That’s like, oh, there’s a tail light out or we’ve got a dragging wheel. We have to fix that because that truck has to go in a couple hours, it’s all reactive.

Jacob Findlay:

Right. And if you look at the size of the fleet, they have a mechanic on staff, but given the size of the fleet, you have people wearing multiple hats. So there might be somebody who is in charge of keeping a track of certain files for DOT compliance and so forth. But I tell you, you get to a certain critical mass, there’s just not the headcount available to really dedicate to solving that. And I know that’s kind of a different subject, we should talk about that. There’s a lot of interesting issues at play in there.

Jamie Irvine:

Okay. Well, before we get into that, I was really curious, you did this report, you pulled all this information together. Was there something that really jumped out at you that really surprised you, that you didn’t see coming? I mean, you’ve already talked about the number of independent repair shops out there was much larger than you ever imagined. Was there anything else that really got your attention?

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah. I mean a couple of things. I mean, first of all we started this project and the data collection before COVID hit and then COVID hits in the middle of it. So it creates this unique kind of juxtaposition of, you know, what was the pre-COVID and then during COVID, and then as we start to see waves and then potentially coming out. So seeing the impact of COVID on the industry, whether by sector, so in your Canadian town, a lot of reliance and extraction oil and gas, mining, and so forth, how were they affected versus other sectors? Right. So sector by sector impact and then regional impact, you know, how has the Midwest impacted versus Southwest and then across the board, and we’re talking things like shop revenue year over year growth. So that’s all inside the report. So that was, that was interesting and interesting timing to be able to show that impact. And probably the biggest thing that surprised me though, was, I mean, it shouldn’t be surprising because, you know, we’ve all been in shops. We’ve seen how these things, things operate, but it would be the gender gap. So when you look at gender among shops, we know that very few technicians are female. A lot of times you’ll see females working in the front office or the back office. So according to our data, it’s about 27% of shop employees are female, which is, you know, the population contains, I don’t know if you know this Jamie, and you can disagree with me on this one too, but it’s about 50-50, right? 50% male, 50% female.

Jamie Irvine:

We are not getting into identity politics at gender too much, but I will agree with you that roughly speaking, it’s 50-50.

Jacob Findlay:

Yeah. It’s 50-50. So 27% of shop employees, that’s not a huge surprise, but when you really dig into the data, like we know there’s not a lot of female technicians, but when you dig into it, it’s less than 1% of technicians are female, which is mind blowing. And for several years, I mean, it’s not really a surprise because you know, there’s traditional ideas about what males and females can do. There’s a lot of heavy lifting, there’s different things that go on in a technician’s life, but there are perceptions of what females can and can’t do. And typically people will look at a technician’s role and say, you know, it’s better for a man to be in there. There’s factors in play. But I think that there’s two major trends that bode well for this. And this is in a world where people can’t find technicians.

Jamie Irvine:

That’s I was just thinking that I’m like, this is the biggest opportunity for the industry because we have a shortage of technicians and we have this basically completely wide open opportunity to bring in and attract a whole new group of, of highly intelligent and often articulate and very, very conscientious people who can become technicians. So to me, this is like, I’m hearing music and everything is a party now it’s like, wow, this is a real opportunity to solve one of the major problems in the industry.

Jacob Findlay:

It absolutely is. And when you think about the increasing role of diagnostic technicians and the needs there, a good diagnostic technician helps prevent your shop from becoming just a parts changing operation. You want to get to the root of the issue and not just swap out parts and think it’s going to solve the problem. And a good diagnostic technician does that. Why can’t we have more females in as diagnostic technicians? They’re not necessarily doing in frames and lifting super heavy things. There is diagnostic things involved with actually pulling things apart. But if we’re talking about the bulk of the diagnostic work, thinking like a troubleshooter, so on and so forth, why can’t we have more females doing that? Why can’t we take half of the population and try to bring them in as technicians? Why can’t females do this? And then I think the second trend is electrification, right? When we’re yanking out the engine and the transmission, and potentially the absolute bulk of the drive train, there are now way fewer heavy parts involved. And that could eliminate some of the traditional barriers that people have seen for women. So I think the representation of women among the shops, the 27% metric is interesting, but it’s the less than 1% thing that is shocking and does seem in a shortage of technicians to, there’s something there, there’s an opportunity there.

Jamie Irvine:

We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. Don’t have a heavy-duty part number and need to look up a part? Diesel Parts is a cross-reference and parts look-up tool that makes it easier to identify heavy-duty parts than ever before. Go to parts.diesellaptops.com or download the app on Apple or Android to create your free account. Before the break, we were talking about the exciting opportunities that really are represented in one of the surprising outcomes of this State of Repair Report. And Jacob was talking to us about how there are 27% of all shop employees are female, but only 1% are in the role of technician. And so we were talking about how awesome of an opportunity that is for the industry. Jacob, Steve Jobs once said, I’m not going to get a perfect quote here, but it was something along the lines of death is a gift because it clears away the old and makes room for the new. And he was talking about that as he was facing cancer and as he was facing potentially the end of his life but what he was really trying to say is that sometimes in order for things to change, we have to clear away some of the old ways of doing things and we have to adopt new ways of doing things. We’re talking about the opportunity to include more women in our industry. And certainly if we can clear away some of those old traditional views, that it’s a man’s job or that women aren’t going to be physically capable of doing it, and we can just look at the real opportunity there. This is an opportunity to probably close some of the wage gap as well, because I mean, technicians get paid really, really well. So if more women can work in the industry and can get access to that, those higher paying wages, this helps close the wage gap. I’m excited about that. But what other information did you learn about wages when you were studying all of the data?

Jacob Findlay:

It’s in the report, there’s I believe we go in and we break it up by region and we see that, but there’s no question that we’re seeing wage inflation among technicians, because they say the solution to high prices is high prices, right? So in order to find technicians, shops are being forced to pay them more. And what we tell shops is that you need to make sure that your, sounds crass, but you need to make sure that you’re passing those costs on to your customers. So a well-run shop should be targeting a certain profit margin on the labor side. And if you’re having to increase your wages to bring technicians in, it’s appropriate to therefore increase your hourly rate that you charge your customers, if that makes sense. So we’re definitely seeing that and the shops that are willing to pay more, have a leg up on recruiting. You know, you hear anecdotal stories of technicians who were leaving for 25 cents an hour, which is a little bit surprising, but it’s the reality. And what I would counsel a shop owner who is facing this is that I thought a lot about things like efficiency, bonuses, and so forth in the past. But when you read up more on the psychology of things, it’s much better to just pay people more upfront and then get them engaged in a vision for what you’re trying to do versus kind of the carrot and stick approach that there’s a lot of nuance to this. And we could go into this too, just like the fleet shop count and so forth, but we’re definitely seeing wage inflation and less shops are willing to raise their prices. They’re going to feel the squeeze on that.

Jamie Irvine:

Yeah. Man, we could be here for about six more hours to unpack everything that you just said because I’m thinking about, you know the costs get passed onto the fleet, then that gets passed on to their customers and eventually society has to pay for that. So there’s the inflation there. But then also when you think about attracting people to the industry the high cost of tools to get into the industry there’s more than one way to add value to the total package. You’re offering a technician. It’s not just wages, right? Help them with their tools, help them with their education, get them into the industry, right? Treat them really well. And that idea of having a larger purpose, you used language that I like to use about the way I feel about the industry, the trucking industry is the backbone of society. We live in this free society. We have lots of problems, but we are by far the historically wealthiest people who have ever lived in all history, we have the most opportunities. We have all of this freedom. You don’t get what we have without the trucking industry supporting society. And it is almost invisible because we do it really well, but there’s still lots of room for improvement. So when I hear you talk about all of this, I think when it comes to the independent service channel, you know, there is a lot of competition with the OES as well. And one of the things I talk to a lot of people about is the fact that the independent service channel is not as well supported as the technicians who work for, let’s say a truck dealership. And so there’s lots of room for improvement here, but from all the data that you’ve reviewed, where do you see the biggest opportunity for the independent service channel going?

Jacob Findlay:

I think we have to recognize reality by far in the survey results, finding technicians, once again is the number one problem for the industry. So if you are a shop that is not making the absolute best use of the technicians that you have, you need to solve that problem first because finding customers, and this varies by geographic location, but for the most part, finding customers is not the issue. It’s finding enough technicians, there’s more work there to be done, then technicians to be found. And so if you have technicians that are standing around and technicians don’t like that either. I mean, if you want technicians to stick around, people work as a spiritual necessity, right? It feels good to do a good day’s work and then go home and spend time with family and loved ones. So you need to be enabling that. So it’s a win-win. So if you have technicians who, and you see this all the time in shops, right? If you have technicians who are having to stand around waiting to be assigned something or waiting for a part or the wrong part, got ordered or waiting for a job to get authorized, if they’re standing around and they’re not being productive, they’re not happy and you’re making a lot less money. So if you are hungry for more technicians, which I imagine every shop owner almost without exception is, look inward to make sure that you don’t have your technicians standing around. It makes them less happy, and it makes you a lot less productive than you otherwise could be. So I think, I think that’s the biggest opportunity we’re in 2021 now, and the tools are available to make that a reality. So you should be solving that problem. And then once you have that problem solved, you can start looking at scaling your business. And typically one of the reasons so many of the shops are small mom and pop shops is because it takes so much mental power to keep this thing going. Which was one of the reasons we found a lot of success because we stepped in essentially with an operating system for a shop that takes it out of the owner’s brain and bakes it into processes and algorithms inside the software. So it frees you to grow and scale, and we see that among our customers where they’re starting to grow. So it depends at the shop level to answer your question, it depends on what the owner of the shop wants. Do you want to build a lifestyle business that is getting you a good income and is allowing you to spend time with your family, with your loved ones now, your personal development, if that’s what you’re going after, then maybe you keep it at one location and just really turn that thing into a well-oiled machine. If you want to make a run at it and become a consolidator and kind of a regional, if not national player, I think it’s the same path. It’s just a matter of now you open that second, third location, put in the exact same processes, systems and so forth, and you’re able to. So I think that’s the solution, the operators that do that are going to have the money to pay the technicians more and are going to start pulling technicians from the shops that don’t do that. As far as an industry goes, I think we have to be prepared for electrification, which, you know, getting outside of our industry is sometimes it can feel like, oh man, maybe I’m a horse and buggy manufacturer in 1915 and cars are evil, right? And we need to realize that society is moving forward, go test drive a Tesla if you haven’t see what it’s like, electric is the future. We need to recognize that we will see a convergence of technology where the battery mass and so forth gets to the point where it could even be applied to long haul applications, heavy applications. So that’s coming. Make sure that you’re running a lean and mean operation and you’re going to have work and there’s still maintenance to be done on even electrified vehicles. And so don’t worry too much about that. Possibly the keyword for the future, there is diversity of drive train, just keep doing what we’re doing. I think to keep the economy running and to make sure that you are as strong as possible and that you are taking time for yourself and having a good personal life outside of the shop. I think that’s the best thing.

Jamie Irvine:

You’ve been listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. And we’ve been speaking with Jacob Findlay, founder, and CEO of Fullbay. If you want to read this report that they’ve pulled together, go to heavydutyreport.com. Jacob, thank you so much for being on the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I appreciate you coming back on.

Jacob Findlay:

Absolutely Jamie. Hey, one more thing for the shops. Count your inventory, it’s not fun but just do it. You’ll make more money. I’m done, Jamie.

Jamie Irvine:

All right. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that last-minute piece of advice and I’m sure people will be listening to this episode one or two or maybe three times just to catch all the awesome value that was packed into it, but head over to heavydutyreport.com to download your free copy of this State of Repair Report. Thank you so much for tuning into this week’s episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. And I just like to remind everyone to focus on cost per mile and let’s keep those trucks and trailers rolling.

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