Marketing Your Equipment: Service Capabilities and Technical Recruiting

In this episode of Know to Grow: A Light to Heavy Duty Podcast, Chandler Kohn sits down with Stephen Dawson of Hunter Engineering to discuss how equipment, technology, and process improvements are reshaping the medium and heavy-duty aftermarket. They explore capital investment strategy, shop productivity, technician retention, alignment and suspension growth opportunities, and the growing role of ADAS in fleet maintenance. A must-listen for shop owners focused on scaling efficiently and staying ahead of industry change.

Chandler Kohn: Welcome back to know to grow a light to heavy duty podcast everybody. Today leading up to heavy duty aftermarket week, I have my friend and peer on Stephen Dawson with Hunter engineering. Stephen, introduce yourself and then we’ll jump into it. I know you have a unique perspective on things and the auto medium and heavy duty space.

Stephen Dawson: Absolutely. Thanks, Chandler. Yeah, so I’ve had a lot of years in the automotive experience from the time I was 16 all the way up through now, working in various aspects of the industry. One of the areas that I love is that heavy duty space and working on those commercial trucks, larger scale trucks. I’ve had a lot of, a lot of experience with working through that industry and being a part of shops that, that are repairing and rebuilding those trucks. And I think the industry has changed a lot over the years from a heavy rebuild, rebuild engines, you know, every half a million miles, million miles down the road to an industry that is far more closer to the automotive industry where we’re looking for those finite changes that have a huge impact in the, in the long run.

Chandler Kohn: Helpful. And you know, most of our listeners are going to know what Hunter sells, but can you give a hierarchical category of some of the products?

Stephen Dawson: Great. Yep. So we’re in the wheel service business. So that is basically anything along chassis and wheels for alignment, for tires changing, for balancing brake lays, that sort of thing. Even inspection for being able to at a, you know, over a few seconds be able to inspect if it’s a vehicle, a car or a heavy truck with its trailer and everything. We’re able to measure all of those alignment angles. So we’re, we’re heavily in the wheel service business. We’re a U S built company, so we’re, we’re privately held, we’re based out of St. Louis and we manufacture a large majority of our products in Mississippi and a little bit of it in, in, in Missouri, still in St. Louis. So we’re, we focus very heavily on that wheel service side of the industry and don’t really deviate too far from that.

Chandler Kohn: Good, good. Thank you. So we’ll start today off by talking about the state of the equipment industry. Then following that, we’ll talk about shop productivity and growth in the fleet maintenance space as far as the, the state of the equipment industry goes. Let’s talk about some of the complexity of repair and moving more towards Autonomy of repair ADAs, that type of thing. You’ve seen a lot change over your career. You know, now we’re in 2026. From your standpoint on the equipment side, you know, let’s, let’s talk about that for a few minutes.

Stephen Dawson: So technology has just massively grown. If you look at the vehicles and the trucks that we’re working on today, where everything was mechanical years ago is now gone to electronic. Same with our equipment. Technology is that same way. And as the adas and autonomy comes into the, if it’s a trucking industry or automotive industry, it requires a significant level of complexity of repair as well as complexity of equipment to do those repairs in making sure that we’re either getting the right angles or that we’re placing a target or, or a mat in the right place so that a repair can be done completely and actually work and, and go out on the road and actually perform well for the.

Chandler Kohn: Driver as far as buying cycles go. Maybe go back to, I don’t know, 2010 and just kind of, you know, tell, tell the listeners where we are in terms of kind of these broad buying cycles.

Stephen Dawson: So it’s, you know, there is a big change in the industry of that technology over that period of time. And you know, I like to say that we’ve always been kind of the leader in the alignment side of the business. So there was a lot of brand recognition that way and continues to be that way. But there’s also that, that kind of layer over of that technology. And, and is that is, you know, is our tool the right tool for that technology that you’re working on and that particular vehicle that you’re working on and making sure that it’s, it’s the right equipment? It is a much more detailed process where before it was kind of a measurement’s a measurement and as long as we’re getting a measurement, we’re good. In today’s world, it’s a whole lot more about not only are we kind of the, the measurement side of it is the, the, the minimum of doing business now it’s the how does this tool actually impact my business and positively grow profit margin, positively have an impact on the drivers that are operating the vehicles after we’re done doing the repair. So it’s a lot more of the, of the smaller, smaller details than it was, you know, 10, 12, 15 years ago. It was far more of we just need something that’s going to read those angles. And in our case now, we’re not only reading those angles, but providing the tools for somebody to be really efficient.

Chandler Kohn: Good. And we’ll go, we’ll jump into some of those questions here in a few minutes. Yeah, yeah. I recently put together a report in the space talking about Growth in the industry and kind of a macroeconomic backdrop. And one of the things I came across was the one big beautiful bill is bringing back full expensing of capital investments, which is called bonus depreciation. So I think in it was gonna basically drop down to 20% in 2026, extended to a hundred percent of expensing most of those qualifying capital investments. That actually starts the 19th. So a week from today, next Monday. Do you, do you see anybody that are, you know, or do you guys forecast a pop of orders coming in, in Q1, or do you have any kind of experience or thoughts around that?

Stephen Dawson: So it’s the challenge with it is that a lot of us in this industry are not planners. So we don’t look at it going, we’re, you know, January 19th, January 20th. If I invest in a piece of equipment today, we what can I do for profitability down the line? For the most part, most of our shops are very reactive in that we’re at the end of the year and the accountant says, hey, you’ve made too much this year and we need some depreciation. Now the fact that this is, is locked in, it gives, you know, my reps out on the road, you know, another talking point and really something else for a shop to think about when they’re making a capital improvement. Not only is it, you know, a capital improvement on, we’re buying this and we’re going to write it off, but what kind of profitability can that drive throughout the year? So it’s, it lends itself very well to being able to say, look, I’m going to make a hundred thousand dollar investment in my shop, buy this piece of equipment here in January. And I know that I’m going to need that write off because we’re going to generate two or three hundred thousand dollars worth of business with that, that one piece of equipment. And the challenge with it, when people wait to react to it, is they buy that piece of equipment the last day of the year, they write it off for the previous year. Now they’re going to have 365 days of making money with that tool and are going to have to kind of look at it again and go, all right, now I got to buy another piece of, of something at the end of that year to be able to, to cover up that as opposed to making it kind of a one for one that hey, we’re buying this one now with the idea that it’s going to drive our profitability, we’re going to protect ourselves from the tax implications of it.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. So my takeaway would be talk with your cpa, your tax advisor, to really kind of think through new equipment. Obviously, you know, equipment doesn’t last forever and starting the 19th, it could be, could be a good opportunity to invest. So. And there’s more. Yeah.

Stephen Dawson: That, that lends Right. To making sure that when you’re looking at that equipment, what was again, before just looking for basic functionality, making sure that you’re talking with whoever, whoever’s selling you a piece of equipment and saying, hey, what is the ROI that I can expect from this tool? So that when you’re meeting with that CPA and accountant, you can say, okay, not only am I going to have this expenditure, however, we’re also anticipating it having this amount of return throughout this year so that we can start planning for our taxes in January instead of reacting to our tax, you know, our tax implication at the end of December when it’s difficult to do things.

Chandler Kohn: Excellent. And then when you feel, what do you feel like the process. And I know you just touched on a little bit, but what do you think the process should look like for making a decision for a capital purchase for a shop? I mean, think about a, you know, a shop with six or seven locations. Obviously that equipment’s expensive, so maybe walk us through the process a little bit more.

Stephen Dawson: So I think the best thing for a shop to do is kind of sit down and think about what are those minimum requirements that we need to have and make sure, kind of narrow the field that, all right, these are the tools that are going to, that are going to be meet those requirements. And I think one of the things in today’s day and age that has to be a big part of that is what is the support for that piece of equipment. So by and large, you know, the, the equipment themselves and what it can do. But then by and large, the equipment is, is really what’s pivotal in it is the ability for it to be supported and having uptime throughout its normal process. So really kind of identifying those pieces, those, those minimum requirements, then looking at what is that service level that I’m going to get provided from the, the, either the manufacturer, the provider, whatever that happens to be. And it may be, you know, how do I help market this going forward? How do I support it to make sure that it. I get the most uptime? And then the other one that I think is a big one is how do I train my team to, to actually operate this as efficiently as possible? And, and in that do I have to change my processes for it and really kind of drilling down through that because as we look at a lot of these, a lot of what we’re changing in the industry right now is requiring a process if that’s on the collision space, where we’re dealing with, with the alignment process. If it is moving a heavy duty truck shop that’s been primarily in the engine overhaul, transmission overhaul, rear axle overhaul business to I need another revenue stream because motors are lasting longer, they’re more efficient in what they’re doing. I need to add another revenue stream which means I need to change my processes in my, in my location. Sure. That I’m incorporating all of that, that equipment.

Chandler Kohn: It’s very insightful and obviously, you know, I know you’re in the D.C. area but you know, you spend a lot of your time, you know, you’ve been in tons of shops. Right. You know, a lot of owners. So you see it firsthand. Right. I mean your experience, you know, has equipped you to be able to tell the story here. Shop productivity. How do good shops increase their productivity with, you know, you know, with regards to equipment.

Stephen Dawson: So it’s, it’s really about footsteps and that was something that was drilled into me at a young age with, in a dealership world that every footstep that a technician takes out of their bay is costing us productivity, costing us what we have to sell. And, and the, the inventory of a shop is really the time of the day for the amount of technicians. And the more that those technicians are out of their bay and are doing something else, the more that it’s costing us in productivity. So how can we reduce their footsteps, make sure that they’re more efficient at it? You know, things like our racks have what we call power slide on them so they lock and unlock the turn plate. So a technician doesn’t have to be pulling pins to be able to adjust a vehicle. You know, on a heavy truck we could put sensors on three axles and roll it in one one process. So in, in probably two or three minutes, four minutes to have all the heads on a truck and then roll it forward the, the 18 to 24 inches that it’s going to roll. We’re ready to do numbers, so. Or we’re ready to make adjustments. I’m sorry, we have our numbers to be able to make our adjustments. So all of those things are ways to reduce that amount of footsteps, reduce that amount of time to get something that’s say a non productive task done so that we can make it far more lucrative, you know, in the productive work that we’re doing good.

Chandler Kohn: Helpful as a regional sales manager. You know, I know that, you know, sometimes, you know, maybe a, you know, just, I guess kind of more of that blue collar shop. Right. It’s just, you know, some, sometimes the sales pitch, maybe the best way to put it is if you have an experience, inexperienced salesman.

Stephen Dawson: Right.

Chandler Kohn: You know, they could just come to the market and say, hey, we’re selling lifts. But you need to talk in terms of KPIs to shop owners. You know, one location, multi locations. Obviously footsteps is one of them. What other kind of KPIs are you talking about? I mean a lot of shop owners don’t track, don’t track them. I’ve had a lot of conversation on this podcast about KPIs and the importance of them and how shop owners have been able to dig in and turn their businesses around. Actually, I had Fabian Bonjean on last week with four locations up in Canada and he said when they implemented them, it’s his cash flow turned around. So talk about some of the other KPIs besides, you know, footsteps and wasting productivity.

Stephen Dawson: Right. Well, the other side of that is, you know, what are we bringing in for, for vehicles and then are we really taking the time on those vehicles to identify everything that’s, that’s available for it? So that, let’s say hours per repair orders, jobs per repair orders are critically important. So it’s about being able to identify those things. We don’t want to be over repairing a vehicle or doing repairs that aren’t necessarily. We want to make sure that when a vehicle shop goes in, especially in the, in the commercial space, that we’re identifying everything that truck needs. Because if that truck comes in today, we repair it and send it back down on the road and it breaks down later on, you know, it comes back on us and comes back on our customer. So making sure that we’re taking the time and looking at the, the, you know, each stop has their own KPIs, what’s important to them. But the big ones that we see are, you know, the amount of vehicles coming in in a day. And that’s where an ownership and leadership is there to, to do that marketing. Maybe a sales team is out trying to generate that fleet business coming in. But even with that, they can only bring in so much if the service department doesn’t take great care of it when it’s there. So it’s, it’s making sure that we’re looking at every single thing. If that’s some kind of a pre inspection process. To be able to determine what’s going on and then looking at those items, that can be expected, that can be a huge value to a customer going down the road as to what’s going to impact their business. You know, the end consumer, the end, the end driver, the end fleet. What’s going to impact their business the most? You know, most of the shops that I, that I run across, they’re looking for, for how many hours per power order they’re running or how many, how many jobs per ticket that they’re doing. Are they being as efficient as they can? What is that efficiency level? You know, looking at technician to technician, do we have an efficiency level where it’s, it’s, you know, if we’re an hourly shop but we’re still tracking our flat rate hours, are we running a technician that is, you know, running 40 or 50 hours of, you know, compared to 45 or 50 flat rate hours and then the next one is doing, you know, in 40 or 50 hours, is doing 20 or 25 hours, you know, where is that disparaging difference? And then is it something that we can overcome either with training or with repositioning the jobs in the shop, make sure that we’re giving the, say the right job to the right technician to be as efficient as possible in what they’re doing. And it’s one of the nice things with a lot of the services that we provide and the way that our equipment is, is it makes it very easy for even the entry level technician that maybe is, is struggling to do some of the more complex repairs and be as efficient as one of the other technicians are. Our equipment starts to become a level playing field for them where an experienced technician and an inexperienced technician can really kind of follow the steps on the screen, read the, read the screen, as we would say, and, and take care of that, that vehicle very efficiently and effectively.

Chandler Kohn: Good. When it comes to like shop looking at a variety equipment. Right. Let’s just say they service auto, they do heavy duty, medium duty, whatever it is. Is there a way for you guys to kind of model out those returns for owners that are really thinking about boosting their efficiency? I mean, obviously case studies are always great, right? You can say this shop did it and you know, they grew their gross margin by, you know, 3 or 4%, whatever that number is. But can you kind of like model that out for shops and give them some kind of comfort knowing that if they make a big capex investment like this, they can get a return?

Stephen Dawson: Yeah, so we regularly model out that way. We we work very, very tightly with ROIs and everything that we’re doing. And in a lot of the cases that’s going to be again, part of that. What makes the difference between one supplier or another. When, when our reps are coming in, they’re going to ask a whole bunch of questions and they’re going to better understand what’s, what’s driving that, that customer in that location. And they’re going to build that based on their numbers, the amount of trucks that they have coming in, what are they seeing failing. They might even bring in a piece of equipment and say, hey, let’s, let’s check a bunch of these and see what that opportunity is coming in throughout the day so that we can extrapolate it out using your numbers and your traffic coming through so that you can feel confident that, all right, this is, this is easily done. I remember way back when I first really kind of heavy duty or it was a medium duty, heavy duty combo system. So our alignment systems can do. We call Kia to Kenworth, Volvo to Volvo. We can build the system so that it will do. Do everything with, with one machine when it comes on the alignment side. And I had a customer that was on the fence about moving forward. And I bet it had probably been six months that he’d been hanging out on the fence. And I think what finally kicked him over was I just took that ROI and put it down in a check form and made a, you know, made it kind of one of those play oversized checks for him and wrote it out what he would, what he would have had in sales had he had that equipment on day one. When we talked about it, yeah, it was a rude awakening when he looked at it, went, oh my God, I’m, you know, that’s half the cost of the equipment. Why am I waiting? Why am I dragging my feet? Let’s go and let’s do this right now.

Chandler Kohn: And then regarding the labor shortage and you know, hiring good technicians and so forth, finding them and retaining them. What, what does a shop with good or newer equipment, capable equipment, have to do with retention and attraction?

Stephen Dawson: Yeah, well, that’s one of the things that, that I find in being a former technician. You know, you go to a shop that’s investing in the equipment that you’re going to use as a technician, you feel pretty confident that, all right, I can come here and I can make some money. I can hustle and, and get trucks in and out the door when it’s run down. Old equipment that you’re constantly having to fix to be able to use it or it doesn’t work very efficiently, you know, or it’s older technology and it doesn’t match up to today’s vehicles can get extremely frustrating. And I see it where shops have said, you know, technicians have kind of banded together and said, hey, if we’re not upgrading this stuff, we’re out. We’re going to go find somewhere else to go because we just can’t function in a, you know, in old equipment that isn’t working and that sort of thing. And then the other side of that is if you’ve already got that technician and you’re bringing in new equipment, you’re bringing them into that process, that decision process that puts them in a position where why am I going to leave, why am I going to go somewhere else when I have, you know, a company that values my opinion and that they give me all the tools that I can succeed with? You know, I don’t know where I’m going to go, where I’m going to get those kind of tools and the ability to, to support, you know, to support my own earnings as a technician. So I think it’s critically important that, that shops look at what you have for equipment and technology within the shop. If that’s wheel service equipment or AC equipment or diagnostic equipment, I think that’s a critical piece. And we, we do a lot at, with Hunter with that to help customers really retain the other side of that is like in our world, we do a lot of training. So between our 63 training centers across the country and our online Hunter University, we offer a lot of tools for a shop to offer to their technicians for training. And again, that same thing. As a technician, I feel more valued if my owner is investing in me and I’m less likely to go, leave and go somewhere else. You know, I want to, I want to be with that company that has invested in me and, and has helped me grow as an individual and move to the next level or be more efficient at what I’m doing. So I think that all kind of hand in hand, you know, as we talked earlier about deciding what equipment that we get, I think there’s a lot of pieces that need to be put into that equation because it’s no longer just a, just a tool. There’s a lot more involved in it.

Chandler Kohn: Do you, what, what percentage of shops roughly do you see are kind of behind the bell curve on updating their equipment? Obviously you can’t update it every year, and that’s fine. That doesn’t mean you’re Behind. But you know, is there a number? Is it 10, is it 5%?

Stephen Dawson: I mean, you know, each segment is a little bit different and you know, in the, in the heavy truck space, it’s probably a little bit, a little bit slower. And, and one of the things we often say is, you know, we are our best competitor because there’s a lot of the times our equipment can be, you know, 15, 20 or 30 years old and still work like it did 15 or 20 or 30 years ago. The challenge with it is technology has changed. So you know, those, sometimes the update process has to happen a little bit quicker because technology is changing and the information that needs to be in there is a little bit faster. But I would say on a percentage base and a heavy duty truck space, it’s probably pretty close to a 50, 50. I’d say about 50% of the time. You got shops that are like right on it. I want to have the latest and greatest and I’m going to do whatever I need to do to make sure that my techs have the tools that make them successful. And then the other half figure I’m going to try and ride it out as long as I can. And usually they end up having a little bit more heartache and headache and when it comes to if it’s staffing of leaving or downtime and repairs that need to be done and that sort of thing. Because if, if you’re in a fast moving shop, you’re using this equipment pretty hard.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, makes sense. So this podcast is all growth and scalability. Talk about, you know, fleet maintenance growth, you know, obviously from an equipment standpoint and what the equipment can enable a shop to do in terms of offering new products and services. You know, you mentioned that you can grow your business with suspension and alignment repairs. You know, I know suspension, for example, can be complex work. You don’t necessarily, you know, learn it overnight. Talk to us about that. Want to understand that a little bit more.

Stephen Dawson: Yep. So the, the beauty in the heavy duty space is that most of these trucks, the, the are extremely adjustable to make sure that, that there’s, that the wheels are going in the right direction. However, there is also a, let’s say a misnome of the industry in that the, the belief is that it’s not adjustable, that it’s straight axles on the back of a truck and I can’t do anything about, about adjusting them and all I’ve got to do is set toe on my front wheels and I got solid axles and I’m good to go. And the reality is that’s not the case. You know, in, in a car, we’re very concerned about the front end. In a tractor trailer or a dump truck, that sort of thing, the front end is important, but really the rear axles are what. What causes us or what causes the fleet owner the most amount of cost. If that’s tires or fuel, that’s typically where. Where the majority of things are lost is in those rear wheels. So when you got a shop that is, let’s say, historically been heavy on doing the, you know, doing mechanical work, on doing engines, transmissions, that sort of thing, this is a great suspension and, and steering work is a great way to. To draw, add that revenue stream into the shop, but also drive results for your end consumer, your fleet operator, and in that maintenance, because we’re going to help reduce their number one and number two expense. In the trucking industry, it’s fuel and tires, and the challenge with it, what we see a lot is that the rear axles, and we call it scrub angles. So our rear axles, when they’re mounted in a truck, they’re actually all, in most cases, fairly adjustable. And if those axles are either offset side to side to each other through a track bar or they’re. They’re at an angle, I don’t know if I can put it on the screen. Kind of cockeyed to each other. As they’re going straight down the road, they’re actually dragging and adding friction to the tire, wearing the tire out prematurely, making unusual tire tread patterns on it, as well as costing more fuel to actually press that throttle down harder, to drag the truck forward. So it’s a, you know, it’s one of those things where if we add that revenue stream, not only are we adding a revenue stream for the shop, we’re also adding in a huge amount of value when it comes to the fleet side of it in reducing those tires and, and fuel costs. And the one thing that, that is probably less, you know, less top of knowledge, top of the mind kind of thing is the driver fatigue. If you imagine driving a truck, especially a trailer, where you got a trailer that’s misaligned, and we’ve probably all seen them where you’re driving down the road and you can almost read one side of the trailer because it’s a little bit off to an angle behind a tractor, that driver is constantly working that wheel to keep that trailer in the lane and keep it off the jersey barriers. And they’re really just kind of slowly sawing at the wheel all the Time. And it’s fatiguing to a driver. Not to mention that we in the industry, you know, steering wheels being centered in our car and being. Being perfectly straight when we’re driving down the highway. Straight has been a norm for decades. Right. Everybody looks for that straight steering wheel. And if it’s a little crooked, that’s reason to go right into the dealership to get it, to get it straightened in the heavy truck space. There’s a lot of them that it’s way off right from the beginning, right from when they got the machine or got the truck, and they don’t know any better. And it is a huge impact to be able to center that steering wheel and square that steering wheel up to a truck and have it go straight down the road just like your car is going down. Yeah, it’s a lot less out of the driver as they’re, as they’re operating.

Chandler Kohn: It’s a good point, because I bet if, you know, if you had, you know, on a tractor and trailer and, you know, had a couple wheels off even one degree, the, the client wouldn’t notice it. I mean, the customer would probably be satisfied.

Stephen Dawson: Right.

Chandler Kohn: But, you know, one degree or half a degree or a quarter of a degree or 15, 000 miles, you know, that’s, that’s extra tread, you know, that’s extra diesel fuel.

Stephen Dawson: The other, the other thing we see too is, is the, the duallys where they’re mounted on the rear wheels, two mounted together. And I was at a shop not too long ago. They were running some garbage trucks, and they had a, you know, the garbage truck had clipped the curb and ripped the outside tire off or ripped the hole in the outside tire. They slapped the new tire on it. Well, there was about an inch difference or three quarters of an inch maybe from the. Basically the diameter of the outer tire to the inner tire, because the inner tire had a bunch of miles on the road. And we have two wheels now bolted together because their, their circumference is different. As the truck is rolling down the road, it’s running at the circumference of the big wheel. And that small wheel is constantly dragging to catch up. Yeah, we, we regularly hear from customers say, man, I just keep tearing up inside tires or I’m tearing up my inside tire, and then I’m. I’m putting my outside on my inside and putting a new outside on, and then I’m tearing it up again. And it’s usually because they’re Mismatched. And like with our system, as the tire gets on a, on a wheel balancer, we identify that, that diameter and that circumference of the, of the wheel, so that when we’re matching them up on a dually, we’re not, we’re not having that same problem, which means that we’re getting far more miles out of that tire. And I think it was an English study of emissions from a truck, and it was somewhere close to a thousand times more emissions harmful to the environment came off of the tire tread wear and the heat generated from tires and the little bits of rubber that get worn off than it was from the exhaust pipe and that, that all of that rubber that gets worn off of it goes into the road, gets washed away with rain, ends up in our storm drains, ends up in our oceans. And the better we can align our trucks, the better we can keep those tires mounted together so that they’re getting the most amount of tire life out of them. Not only does it save us cost of tires and fuel, it also helps the environment a little bit as well.

Chandler Kohn: Do you see shops using this as a competitive angle and talking about this to folks or is it, or is it more of an opportunity for them to do this?

Stephen Dawson: I think it’s more of an opportunity. I think there’s a select few that are, that are heavily engaged in this and really try and get this out for their customers. Yeah, but I, I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s industry wide as of yet. I think there’s a, a huge amount of opportunity and you know, for your listeners that, that want to say, hey, I want to be different in the truck space than everybody else. It is a phenomenal way to do that and to really drive that message home. And, and that’s one of the nice things. Like with Hunter, we have a number of marketing materials and things to help help shop convey that message to a, you know, a fleet manager and that sort of thing so that they understand why they’re doing those repairs. And I know I’ve never done it before kind of responses that they get. You know, we want to have those tools to be able to help them answer that question.

Chandler Kohn: And this is suspension and alignment related, right? I mean, this is kind of what.

Stephen Dawson: So yeah, alignment, suspension and, and really even tire balancing, tire changing, tire balancing.

Chandler Kohn: Got it. Adas. So obviously this is, you know, becoming a very big space. From, from an m A standpoint, what I’m seeing, you know, we, we, we know folks I met with Somebody recently, you know, doing $8 million in EBITDA, you know, you know, growing business. You know, the ability to get into every state is obtainable. You know, a lot of these new cars, you know, have level two ADAs in them and it’s just a big, big market. In terms of medium and heavy duty are we seeing now and what do we expect to see in terms of ADAs?

Stephen Dawson: So I would venture to say that long haul wise, like highway long haul and actually I had heard from somebody at the NTSB at a presentation I was at that they believe that long haul was going to end up being autonomous, approved autonomous more nationwide than in, in the heavy truck space, than in cars. It’ll be sooner in the heavy truck space and there’s already a lot of companies that are out there going through that process. The technology is there to do it, but it’s, it needs a lot of refining still. And I think one of the companies that does it, you know, every single time the truck goes out on the road, they recalibrate all the sensors to make sure that it’s going to be as accurate as possible. And what we found on the light duty side is that we periodically will have some drift where you know, a perfectly calibrated vehicle over time will start to vary in how it operates. And that could be from you know, suspension damage or suspension wear and tear and that sort of thing or just the, you know, the computer’s trying to learn a little bit more and maybe not, not learning completely right now in the heavy duty space there is, there’s probably more autonomous functions in the heavy duty space even than in a lot of the light duty space. Just because they’ve been doing it for, for a little bit longer, it’s going to be, you know, the nice thing with it is that the majority of it is what we call a dynamic calibration. So a shop today can have the right scan tool to be able to communicate with a Peterbilt or Kenworth or, or International and get it into that calibration mode and then drive it through that drive cycle to get it recalibrated. So if you’re in that space and you’re not looking at, at how do I fit into calibration and fit into the ADAS space, I think it’s, it’s leaving money on the table, number one. And it’s going to mean that it’s going to be a chaotic catch up time that the more progressive shops are going to blow right past things because it’s, it’s a You know, big challenge. And you know, you look at companies like, like FedEx and UPS, they’ve had for 10 plus years in their contract to buy a truck that it has to have automatic braking and that it has to have some of those safety systems as their bare minimum. And they’re not alone in it. I think they’re the large majority of the major fleet. Fleet companies want to have those systems because they know that there is potential for driver fatigue and, and things where the computer, as long as everything is, is set right and is built right, computer doesn’t take a day off. It doesn’t, you know, shut down for a couple hours. It doesn’t get drowsy. It just continues to operate and keep everybody on the road safe. So like I say, if you’re not in that space today, it, I would definitely take the time to learn. There is a ton of opportunities for education when it comes to adas. Take the opportunity to learn and how it impacts your customers. And if you’re running a shop that’s managing a number of fleets, I would absolutely look at making sure that if they’re running automatic braking system trucks and that sort of thing that you’re understanding what they’re putting in their build specs when they’re buying new trucks. So that number one you’re capable of continuing to service it and number two that when you are servicing it, you know, I liken a lot of these repairs to, you know, if you put you know, three brake shoes on instead of all four, you know, you’re liable for that repair and making sure that it, the, the truck goes out on the road safe. If you’re doing a repair that requires you to recalibrate it afterwards and you’re saying, eh, I never learned anything about it. We’re just, I’m just sending it. That’s tantamount to, to putting on three brake shoes instead of all four. Yeah, we know that that would be ugly for a customer.

Chandler Kohn: So you mentioned dynamic calibration. Right now the industry is focused on static, right? So you have to, it’s my understanding you have to bring the vehicle in the shop. You have to have a perfectly flat floor, zero degree angle. There’s nothing really in there once you get in there besides, you know, kind of a black and white screen for the laser to, to kind of align and hit it properly. You know, as we, you know, obviously there’s always going to be, you know, a vehicle can’t dynamically calibrate after it’s been in a collision. You actually have to Replace the camera radar. But from a dynamic standpoint. Is Hunter investing in this? Well, investing in static calibration as the industry move kind of moves toward more of a dynamic calibration where the vehicle can do it itself.

Stephen Dawson: So there’s a, there’s a couple fold with that one. So, yeah, we do. We, we as a managed measurement company, all target setting is for static calibration is setting targets using measurements from the vehicle where it’s at, and setting a target at a known distance square and center to the front of the car at a known height, you know, or at a prescribed height from the oem. So, yes, we have all of that equipment and, and I see a lot of the manufacturers will offer dynamic. You know, I would say some of them are dynamic only, some of them are static only, and more and more of them are going to the dynamic slash static. So you can do it either way. Yeah, the. As a, you know, as some shops, I hear all the time saying, hey, I want everything to go dynamic. Hopefully everything goes dynamic. Then I don’t have to worry about having space in my shop. I can, I can calibrate everything. Well, that’s great. Other than that, when it’s snowing or it’s raining and you have those kind of conditions, maybe it’s even, you know, traffic conditions where you got to go 25 to 45 miles an hour in a straight line for 10 to 30 minutes that, you know, you might be in an area, you know, here in the D.C. area to find a place where you can go, you know, 25 to 45 miles an hour with lines on both sides of the road for 20 to 30 minutes straight. Pretty rare. You’re running into a lot of traffic and that sort of thing for a shop owner, too. If you wanted to go out, if you were going to do dynamic for everything, now that’s trusting your technician to go take a car for a, an undisclosed amount of time. So it’s got to drive for 10 to 30 minutes. Now I have customers that have to drive 20 minutes to a location where they can drive that 10 to 30 minutes to do the static calibration. And do you want to have a technician leaving your shop to go do all of that driving, or do we want to do it statically where I can do a time study as to how quickly I can park that car, set that target, tell it to calibrate, and on top of that, I’ve got confirmation that my target was correct and that my car calibrated correctly and I was able to control the time. And I can do it all day long, any day of the week because I have a set out space to be able to do that in.

So it’s, you know, there’s, there’s a double edged sword with it when it comes to I don’t have any space. But the reality is in the maintenance side of the business, we don’t necessarily need a massive amount of space. The collision space needs a little bit more of a space or we need to be creative with our space. So it might not be that I’ve got to have a dedicated, you know, whitewashed room to be able to do this in, but it might mean that I’m only going to do these three calibrations at the end of the day when I can clear out the main section of the shop and have enough space to do those calibrations. But all throughout the day I can do those other ones that don’t require as much space.

So, and we help a lot of customers with that. That’s one of the other things when you think about as, as purchasing equipment is do you have a vendor that can come in and help you say yes, this is the right space to do this in, or here’s the changes that I would suggest or maybe even map it out and put it together on a design. So you could say, all right, if we move this lift over here, we can open this space up and have that amount of room. You know, do you have a vendor that’s, that’s actually getting involved with what you have in the shop and how can you make it all work?

Chandler Kohn: And for our shop owners know, you know, it is an extremely profitable service to offer. I was in an ADAS calibration shop in the, kind of the Rocky Mountain region last year and you know, rivian had what, 18 cameras on it and I think the bill was two or $3,000 and fairly quick turnaround. So, you know, something to strongly consider and differentiate yourself. So we’re really bullish on the space. I, I think there’s going to be some consolidation here. That happens pretty quickly, but the market’s still trying to figure itself out. So Stephen, I, I think that’s, you know, kind of the bulk of this podcast. Is there anything, you know, one owner should kind of leave with today as they’ve been watching your podcast on how to scale, how to grow kind of with an emphasis on equipment?

Stephen Dawson: Well, if you’re, if you’re a heavy duty truck shop and you’re not in the, you know, the, the kingpin suspension kind of business. You should absolutely be looking at that because as time goes on that is going to be far more profitable. Nobody wants to have a truck down for three weeks getting a motor rebuilt. They want to have something they can get in and out the door and send the invoice to the to the customer and have them be much happier with with how the vehicle operates. And if you’re really looking to grow your heavy duty space, I think that’s a critical piece. And then to our last conversation is if you’re not familiar with adas and how it affects the vehicles you’re working on, make sure to take a class, get involved. There’s a lot of different programs. I know I’m doing three or four things this year. I know there’s several of my counterparts within Hunter doing different events. There’s plenty of opportunity for training. I would absolutely jump on that training and really understand that 8s space and how it affects your market.

Chandler Kohn: Excellent. Stephen Dawson, Hunter Engineering thank you so much for joining. Know to grow a Light to Heavy Duty podcast and we’ll definitely be in touch.