How to Maximize Efficiency in Your Diesel Repair Shop

Episode 294: What if you could boost your repair shop's efficiency and thrive no matter what the market does? Patrick McKittrick, CEO of Fullbay lifts the hood on the diesel repair shop industry. He stresses the immense benefits of automating your invoicing and data tracking and reveals how doing so can significantly increase efficiency, and bolster your cash flow.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:38

I'm in Las Vegas at Apex 2023. It is so good to be back here at this show. This is a show where manufacturers from all over the world come to talk about automotive and heavy duty parts. We're gonna be interviewing some of the exhibitors and we're going to be showing you the sites at Apex 2023. So I hope you enjoy not only the interviews but also getting to see what this show is all about.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Hi, I'm Patrick McKintrick, CEO of Full Bay.

Speaker 1: 1:04

We're at Apex in Las Vegas. It has been a great day. We've been able to talk to a lot of different people. Full Bay is a returning guest. The company has been on our program a couple times. The last time, though, it's been a while. Jacob was on in July of 2021. And so I'm excited to have the opportunity to talk to you today, patrick, to learn about what's gone on in the last couple of years, talk to us a little bit about the trends, of what it's like at a repair shop these days. So we've got a lot to talk about, so let's get into it. So, first of all, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. It was great to see you. It's great to be here at Apex. It's the show is hopping for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Absolutely Okay. So let's talk a little bit about just the trends at the diesel repair shop level. What have you been seeing in the last couple of years? What's changing? What do we need to know?

Speaker 2: 1:55

Yeah, but you go back two years. So many things have happened. Right, the parts shortage has come and it's gone and come back a little bit. Technician shortage has come and not really gone. And then the last few months or a year or so, right, the economy has slowed down a little bit. Trucking has really taken a hit the spot rates have come down, contract rates are down and eventually that trickles down to the repair shops, the internal shops and the independent guys. So a lot has been going on and with interest rates continuing to be much higher than people would like them to be, all sorts of operational efficiency becomes more and more important.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Yeah, that makes total sense and I know from the parts perspective you're trying to support a repair shop and you want them to buy more from you. But if they don't have the trucks in the bay to fix then there's not much they can do and it's not like you want them going out there manufacturing reasons to repair a vehicle. Right, right you?

Speaker 2: 2:52

want them well maintained. That's right, not over maintained.

Speaker 1: 2:55

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, when it comes to how an owner or an operator of a repair shop needs to cope with all of these changing things like, what is your advice to them? When you talk about operational efficiency, sometimes, when these changes happen, it's the perfect time to change something. What do you think they should be looking at right now in their business?

Speaker 2: 3:16

Yeah, I mean that's a great point and it is a lot of times you need a trigger to kind of incentivize change, because people get used to the way they've done things and said well, it's always worked, jamie, why do I need to change it? And now, as people have seen, like, evolve or die, you will go away if you don't evolve your business. And one of the biggest things we try to focus shops in on is efficiency. Right, and that has many layers to it. But ultimately, if you can't run a more efficient business, every year you're gonna get people are gonna catch up to you, pass you and your customer is gonna become your competitor's customer at some point, whether it's because they're doing things more efficiently so they can do it cheaper, more efficiently, so they can get the truck back on the road quicker or, in general, easier to work with.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Okay. So let's break that down, cause one of the things I heard a lot of people say, especially at the shop level, as they said look, we were too busy. Before you know, we had a shortage of people with every person was booked all the time. We couldn't stop to make the changes. Neither we couldn't stop to train, we just were too flat out. So if things have gotten a little softer, not quite as busy, let's talk about two or three of those specific areas that they should look at. That would make a big impact on operational efficiency. Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2: 4:32

You can start off with some really basic things, just the basic process of invoicing. That seems so basic. And in 2023, I'm saying, to use something that Jacob probably said to you two years ago which is, man, you'd be amazed how many shops manually create and send invoices. And you might have a shop that has customers on net 30 terms. Yep, 30 days doesn't start until the day they get their invoice right, right? So if I take another week or two after I do the work to send the invoice, now, all of a sudden I'm floating for 45 days, maybe on a net 30 term.

Speaker 2: 5:06

So, trying to automate something as simple as creating an invoice, yeah, and then you can back it up into the repair process, right, if I'm going to automate creating the invoice, well, that means the data has to be put into a system To create the invoice automatically. And when the data is put into a system and tracked, well then I don't forget to build things, right? How many shops are out there that look up and they're doing their cycle counts and they're always low on inventory but they haven't built all these parts? Well, that's because they forgot to build, yeah, and how many hours did they forget to build along with those parts. How many shop supply fees did they forget to build? And when you can automate things, you just don't have the chance to forget, right, yeah, and that's a big area for people to improve.

Speaker 1: 5:48

And this has a big impact on the cash flow of the business, because if you're artificially elongating how long it takes for you to get paid right, you're extending it because of this inefficiency. Then that has that direct impact on how much cash you have available, which impacts how you manage and run your business.

Speaker 2: 6:05

It absolutely does, and it's just an area that a lot of shop owners don't focus on, because they're focused on let's turn the wrench as many times as we can, which is great, and we need efficiency at the technician level, but we need to run efficient businesses and it's critical for the country that the independent shops thrive, because they, flat out, the dealer network cannot support all the maintenance. That has to happen. Internal fleets a lot of them do their own maintenance. A lot of them do some of their own maintenance. Right, right. The internal the fleets that have internal shops still rely on the independent guys and we need those businesses to be strong and if you're not running a financially strong business, it's going to go away.

Speaker 1: 6:47

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Speaker 2: 7:57

So it's tech, I mean I'll say technician efficiency, but in general, getting people to spend their time doing their job, not waiting around, right, not doing other low-value tasks. But if I have a master mechanic who I'm paying $50 an hour, $60 an hour, two in some cases Do I really want him walking over to the parts window Waiting around pestering the parts manager? For, hey, did you order that? When's it gonna get here? He can do all that from his, from his bank, right, yeah, and that's where you're eliminating some of the Superfueless activities that these guys are doing, yeah, and focusing them on what you're paying them to do. So that's a good one for technician efficiency.

Speaker 1: 8:39

But that makes perfect else the parts manager same thing.

Speaker 2: 8:42

He doesn't need to be running back and forth to the base. It needs to be able to clearly get from the tech what's needed when it's needed and he can go off and do his quoting and ordering and get the parts.

Speaker 1: 8:53

Yeah, so, like as I said, it's been a couple years since you've been on the show. I know that a lot has changed at full bay. Let's talk a little bit about some of the new things that you're offering repair shops.

Speaker 2: 9:03

Yeah, I mean a lot has changed right in here, so I'm new. Obviously, jacob, our founder, was with you last time and Jacob still with us. He's. He's my boss, he's the chairman of the board, so he got the promotion from CEO.

Speaker 2: 9:15

But as a company, we've evolved right. If you look back in 2021, we were probably around 50 to 60 employees, you know, probably getting close to a thousand customers. We have almost 200 employees today. We were 4,000 customers. So we've really grown and we've done that because we focus in on heavy-duty repair. Yeah, we want to be good at one thing and really, really work at it, so we spent a lot of time and money investing in the product. So you know a couple of new things. We have integrated a payments offering into the platform. Okay, so now you know a customer can, or a shop can, take payment from their customer directly in full-day.

Speaker 2: 9:53

So that kind of takes that automation from invoicing right through to payment exactly, yeah, if the shop is storing the credit card, they can, with authorization, just ding the card or they can physically swipe a card. Or, even better, a A customer of a shop can go into their portal, see all the service history of their vehicle and any open invoices and just pay their invoices right up right there. Fantastic, yeah. So what else is new? So we've worked really hard on some of the communication between the shops and their customers. So a lot more messaging triggers and opportunities. We've introduced more text messaging. We'll have coming out here pretty shortly two-way text messaging, so a customer can actually respond to the SMS message, and that's been really helpful. And then another big one we made an acquisition last April of a company called dieselmatic. So full bay and dieselmatic join forces. Dieselmatic focuses on driving Digital marketing just for heavy-duty shops, and full bay had started out offering some basic websites for customers because there was a need.

Speaker 2: 10:55

Yeah, there was a lot of customers who didn't have a website.

Speaker 1: 10:57

Well, they're focused on running their shop, not on being a marketing company, right?

Speaker 2: 11:01

And you know we could offer them a website. That was better than not having a website, but we weren't professional digital marketing, you know folks. So we acquired dieselmatic and this team is wholly focused on not just creating awesome websites for customers but helping manage their SEO and SCM All of their content creation. Right, you as a shop, you don't want to have somebody writing articles and blogs. Dieselmatic does that for you and as you can build your brand, it certainly helps them to attract new customers, but even today it helps attract employees. Employer branding is Dramatically undervalued. You know everyone talks about the tech shortage but then they kind of forget Wow, I need to market to candidates. So the dieselmatic crew has been incredible. That business has grown really really well the past year and a half and so we're excited because Full Bay helps you optimize the way you manage the business you already have. Dieselmatic helps you get more business to then optimize and run really well.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Yeah. So you, you have to have that critical first step to get your business organized Well, make it efficient, and then you can scale. Yeah, exactly exactly so that's fantastic. Well, congratulations and all your success. Thank you for taking some time to visit with us and talk to our audience.

Speaker 2: 12:19

If people want to learn more, they should go to full Bay comm yep, full Bay comm on the top right corner in request a demo, and we're really good at getting back to you quickly on that. So, yeah, you hit that button and we will reach out very shortly, fantastic, well, thank you again.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's good to see you. What a great week that we've had here in Las Vegas. This is such an excellent show, where manufacturers of automotive and heavy-duty parts come together to talk about the real issues. We've had some great conversations that I'm anxious to share with you. It was a good week. We can't wait to come back next year. If you haven't followed the show yet, head over to heavy-duty parts report comm. You can follow the show for free, or you can subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Either way, don't forget to follow the show so you never miss out on any of the great content that we're putting out, including interviews from apex 23 in Las Vegas.