A Huge Thank You to the Heavy-Duty Parts Industry

Episode 350: Our host, Jamie Irvine announces that this will be the Series Finale of The Heavy Duty Parts Report. After 5 ½ years and 350 episodes, the podcast will discontinue making new content but will still be available to listen to. Why is the show ending? What is next? Listen to find out more!

Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.

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

Hengst Filtration: There's a new premium filter option for fleets. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst filters will save you. But you've got to go to HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/Hengst to find out how much.

Diesel Laptops: Diesel Laptops is so much more than just a provider of diagnostic tools. They’re your shop efficiency solution company. Learn more about everything Diesel Laptops can do for you today by visiting DieselLaptops.com today.

HDA Truck Pride: They’re 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.

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. 

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Transcript

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 The Heavy Duty Parts Report. This is episode 350 and we have an announcement to make. This will be the final episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report. Why am I bringing The Heavy Duty Parts Report to a conclusion and what is my final message to the heavy-duty parts industry on this podcast? Let's get into it. First, I'd like to recap what we accomplished at the show. The Heavy Duty Parts Report has aired now for 2033 days. The first episodes were dropped on June 1st, 2019, and this final episode drops on December 23rd, 2024. Now, in that time, we've aired 350 podcast episodes and over 70 lives. In addition to that, we've done webinars and we've moderated a number of industry events, so we've made a lot of content as well as all the trade shows that we attended.
Now, the podcast has generated over 25 and a half million impressions, which is just amazing to think about. I remember when I launched the show wondering to myself, would anybody listen to a show about heavy-duty parts? Well, the answer is a resounding yes. The podcast players have generated 200,000 downloads themselves, never mind the website, the social, YouTube, and other platforms that we use to distribute the content. The podcast is truly a global show. We've had listeners from all of the continents, with the exception of Antarctica. So not bad, a truly global reach. Now, that's some of the statistics around the show. For me, one of the most important things that came from the show was all the relationships that were developed in the last five and a half years. It's been an amazing personal experience for me to travel all over North America to visit with heavy-duty people at trade shows, at their specific locations onsite.
It's just been awesome to be able to develop all of these relationships both virtually and in person. I'd like to really give a shout out to the employees of The Heavy Duty Parts Report. There's been quite a few over the years, but one person in particular I want to give a special shout to and a big, huge thank you from the bottom of my heart, and that's Taron Hohensinn. Taron was our first employee, and he's our last. He's been with us the entire time. He is the person who edits this podcast and makes me look as good as he can and has just such a phenomenal job. So Taron, thank you so much to the other employees of the podcast, couldn't have done it without you, so thank you to you as well. Now, I also want to just give a huge thank you to the hundreds of guests that have been on the show.
I remember when I started the show, it was hard to get people to even come on, and then eventually we didn't even have to ask. People were reaching out to us, but in either case, I still felt very, very privileged to be able to have all of these wonderful people come on the show and have them share their extensive experience with the industry. It wouldn't have been much of a podcast without all of those guests. Pretty hard to be a host and an interviewer if you don't have any guests. So to the guests thank you. To the sponsors who gave us the financial ability to produce the show, we couldn't have done it without you as well. And so to all of the sponsors, we want to say thank you, but really the lifeblood of any podcast is the thousands of listeners who regularly listen to the show, who were fans of the show, people who would come up to me at trade shows and give me a hug or say hello.
I just can't tell you how much I appreciate all of the support that we got from the entire industry. Without the listeners, the show would never have been able to do what it has done. The podcast has empowered me to fulfill part of my why, my personal and professional why, which is to help heavy-duty people thrive. You've heard me say it hundreds of times. The trucking industry is the backbone of society and without it our way of life and people's lives hang in the balance. And so heavy-duty people are essential to keeping our way of life going and to really holding up all of society. And so I've taken it upon myself to do everything I possibly can on a personal and professional level to try to help heavy-duty people thrive. And it's been such an honor to provide the heavy-duty parts industry with valuable information and to share the knowledge from some of our industry titans, from really innovative people who are thinking outside of the box, from people who are on the front lines of our industry and for those up and coming stars.
All of you helped me to fulfill this mission that I'm on to try to help heavy-duty people thrive. And so that has just been one of the great honors of my career. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. Are you deferring maintenance because of filter cost or availability or worse yet, are you trading down to no name filters to try to save a few bucks? Either way, your rolling the dice. The good news, there's a new premium filter option for fleets, Hengst Filtration. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst Filters will save you, but you've got to go to heavydutypartsreport.com/hengst to find out more. That's heavydutypartsreport.com/hengst, head there now. At Diesel Laptops, they go way beyond diagnostic tools. They are your complete shop efficiency partner from diesel technician training to complete repair information, parts lookup tools and robust technical support.
They are there to support you every step of the way. Learn more and download your free starter pack today by visiting diesellaptops.com. That's diesellaptops.com. 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. Again, that's heavydutypartsreport.com/hdatruckpride and let the heart of the independent service channel take care of your commercial equipment. So with all of that, you might be thinking to yourself, why on earth would you be ending the show then? Well, let's talk about the details because as they say, the devil is in the details. The reality is, is that the cost of producing the show and sponsorship revenue are both going in the wrong direction.
Historically, it costs us over $2,000 per episode to produce the show, which that means that I've spent over $700,000 in the last five and a half years producing this podcast. And right now, costs are spiraling out of control. I'll give you a couple examples. Our software costs, just the software that we use to do all the things we need to do to make the show a reality, has gone up anywhere from 50 to a hundred percent in the last 12 months alone on top of other increases that have happened year over year. In addition to that, when I go to a trade show, for example, or when I hire a filming crew, it used to cost me $1,500 a day. I could get eight hours of filming. I could get two people, an audio and a video person come in and it was 1500 bucks a day and we could knock out a whole bunch of videos.
Today it's anywhere from $2,500 to $4,000 a day. It's just unbelievable where the cost of that has gone. On the other side of that equation, sponsorship revenue is in steep decline, not just for our show, but for all podcasters. Let me give you an example. Entrepreneurs on Fire, John Lee Dumas, a real inspiration to me to get into the podcasting game. When you look at the numbers for his show that he actually puts on his website publicly, he's down 75% in revenue from their peak. Another very successful podcaster is Jordan Harbinger, and he's talked publicly about his struggles with getting enough sponsorship revenue. So it's not just us and we are down 80% going into 2025. Our revenue prospects are down 80% from our peak. So like other podcasters, it's pretty tough when you lose that much revenue and your costs are going up. And eventually you get to this decision where you have to ask yourself, is the show viable?
Now, we've always been willing to subsidize a percentage of the costs of the show because we had a consulting business and we got a lot of consulting business from people who saw the show got introduced to me, would reach out to us, and then we would consult with them. And that was a large percentage of our revenue as well. So we were always willing to subsidize a portion of the show. We never really were making a lot of profit off of the sponsorship revenue, but it was helping to pay the bills. And so some people might say, well, couldn't you fix this by lowering your costs? And the reality is, is that if we were to lower the cost of the show, we'd have to lower the production value of the show, which would drop the quality of the show. And this just starts a tailspin or a chain reaction that ultimately brings us below what I feel is a viable, minimum viable level.
And I think in business, you have to know where your minimum viable level is. If you fall below that, then you have tough decisions to make, which is exactly where we're at right now. So I will make a note here. Despite the fact that we are not going to be producing new episodes after this series finale, the show itself is going to remain live for the foreseeable future, which means people will be able to continue to find it and benefit from all of the interviews and video content that we put out there. Our YouTube channel will stay up. The podcast players will continue to have the show available. Our website will stay heavydutypartsreport.com with all of the content on it. So it's not like we're just shutting the show off, we're just not going to be producing any new episodes and at least for the foreseeable future, but right now, this is an indefinite end to the show.
So that's where we are at. Now, the next logical question is, okay, if the show is ending, Jamie, what comes next? Well, this chapter of our journey together is ending, and that does make me sad, but I want to assure you that for me, I'm going to continue in my mission to try to help heavy-duty people thrive. So I'm going to continue to be working in the heavy-duty industry, and I want to continue to be as much service to that industry as possible because I really genuinely believe that heavy-duty people have to thrive in order for us as a society to succeed. And so that's going to continue to be my mission, to work in the industry and to help people thrive. Now, I want you to know that I'm very, very grateful to every one of you who supported this show.
It's been five and a half years since we launched, and the support from the industry and from individual people has been tremendous. I could start listing names, but it would be a very long episode because we'd have to literally list hundreds of people. I'll never forget the support that you gave me, and each one of you who know me, who we've worked together, who you've played a role in the show, I'm talking to you specifically right now. I will never forget the support that you gave me, and I genuinely appreciate the support that you gave me in a way that's really hard for me to communicate because I don't think words would really do it justice. But just know from the bottom of my heart how much I appreciate each and every one of you. So this means that we've come to the end, and I'm going to conclude this episode in the way that for so many episodes, I've concluded it because I think it's the message that really represents what The Heavy Duty Parts Report was all about. And I'm going to encourage you in my final message of this show, as I've done so many times before, to Be Heavy Duty.