Developing Scale and Offering Without Private Equity’s Help

Carey Brothers Truck Repair has grown from a small family-run garage in Detroit into a rapidly expanding fleet maintenance platform with five locations and more than 100 employees. In this episode of Know to Grow: A Light to Heavy Duty Podcast, Bill Carey shares how operational discipline, culture-first leadership, technology adoption, and customer service helped fuel the company’s growth. From scaling through acquisitions to building proprietary fleet management tools, Bill offers practical insights on modernizing truck repair businesses, developing technicians, and staying competitive in a rapidly evolving industry.

Chandler Kohn: Welcome back everybody to another episode of Know to Grow a Light to Heavy Duty podcast. I’m Chandler Kohn with FOCUS Investment Banking and today I have on Bill Carey with Carey Brothers Truck Repair. Welcome Bill. Thanks for joining the show. Super excited to have you on. Tell us a little bit about your company and what you do and kind of how you’re playing in the industry.

Bill Kerry: Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It’s been great to get to know you and love what you’re doing for the space and you know, the more information we can get out there to people that, you know, they’re not alone as repair facility owners. And it’s, there’s a lot that goes into it. So, you know, we started as a family 1985. We, my dad and my uncle rented a horse and buggy garage and this building that was built in 1905. And they started them and you know, three brothers really in a garage fixing trucks. And they had a really, really solid rep. They had some pretty loyal customers that we still have today, you know, 41 years later. And you know, they were able to grow with those customers. And I came back into the business in 2014 actually after working for one of their biggest customers. Got a pretty world class education in business and management and you know, seeing the world of what was out there and how things worked. And I came back in and I was employee number six, Learned to be a master level technician and bought my dad out in 2015. And we slowly started to scale. And what we found was, is we couldn’t handle all of the work that was pouring in the door. I was saying no on a weekly basis to great customers just because we didn’t have the capacity. Started getting the idea of if we build it, they will come, right? So we started knocking walls down and you know, grew into 80,000 square foot facility right here in downtown Detroit. And you know, we kept everybody’s numbers and said, hey listen, I’ll call you when you know, we’ve got plans. We’re knocking this wall down, we got to raise that ceiling, right? And you know, we, we saved numbers, we started calling people back and you know, even now we still are getting new customers on, you know, weekly to monthly basis as ref referrals from other customers. So it’s been, it’s been a really great opportunity to kind of expand our services and really find a way to be, you know, one throat to choke for our customers. So in 23, my partner retired and we closed the year with 20 employees and one location. And you know, as of April first of this year, we’ve got five locations and 100 employees and we’ve got a new location that we’re green housing 20,000 square foot facility in the next couple of weeks and, you know, looking to add two more facilities in Michigan by the end of the year. So.

Chandler Kohn: That’s fantastic, man. 5X and employees in 3 years is really great. Let’s hop into some of this origin story here. Going back, I think you were in commodity sales when kind of younger in your career, when your dad still owned the company. Is that right? What, what made you jump to. To a family business and trying to grow that.

Bill Kerry: So, yeah, commodity sales is a riot, right? You’re trading. I was trading fresh meat, you know, across the country, globe. And it was a ton of fun. But I was a really bad employer, right. I was a bowl in a china shop. I don’t take no for an answer. You know, I don’t play well with others. So I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur and try, you know, running my own business. So I was looking at a couple of different business avenues to go in and had a conversation with my cousin who was my best friend, who had just bought his father out of the truck repair and said, hey, man, you know, this is what I’m thinking. What do you think? He’s like, come work with me. What are you talking about? This is crazy. Why would you go do anything else? Like, your dad’s getting ready to retire. Just buy him out and we’ll do this together. And it was. It was fantastic, right? It was a real eye opener, man. I hadn’t worked on trucks since I was a kid. You know, my dad fired me when I had graduated high school, worked here for the summer, was going to night school at Wayne State. And, you know, he came in one day and he’s like, hey, get. Get your shit. You’re fired. I’m like, what do you mean, dad? He’s like, this place will always be here, man. You got to go try something else and see if, you know, there’s something else out there for you. I can appreciate that. Right. It gave me a real opportunity to learn a lot of real life skills and business skills that I don’t think I would have had the same opportunity staying in the family business then.

Chandler Kohn: That’s fantastic, man. It’s a good takeover story. And I’m sure your dad is super proud of you. You know, obviously, taking over a business is, is. Can be daunting. You have to, you know, pay back your investment, then you have to grow it, so you can, you know, kind of control your own destiny. What were some of the operational and financial challenges in, in the early years 2015?

Bill Kerry: I mean, everything right, you know, you’re making a monthly payment. Unfortunately, you know, my dad financed me, but wasn’t anything more favorable than I would have got from a bank, right? So yeah, you got a payment, it was due everything early mornings and late nights, right. I mean, when I came in, they were still green paper ledgers for accounting and handwritten invoices, right. So brought in, implemented QuickBooks and brought in Mitchell as a software and you know, we didn’t have any tracking for inventory and it was just, it was really a lot of hard work, right? It was, I, you know, he was older and his brother were older, so they weren’t willing to put the 80 hour weeks in anymore. And we were able to make money just, you know, as, as lead tech in your own shop with a couple of helpers. You know, you can get a lot of shit done, right? So it was, it was, it was off to the races and, you know, we knew we couldn’t fail. And thank God my wife is as patient as she is. I had three little kids at home and, you know, I’m getting here at 4 o’ clock every morning and getting home by 9 o’ clock at night, right. Lost a lot of weight and gotten really good shape. But yeah, it’s a struggle, man. I think every business owner has probably got, you know, the same story of just grinding and, you know, you can’t take, can’t take no for an answer.

Chandler Kohn: Did you, did you ever grow too fast? Starting out?

Bill Kerry: Starting out? No, starting out, it was very, very slow growth, very meticulous. We wanted to really control the quality of service and the product. And you know, we were taking one guy here, there, right? I mean, we didn’t, we grew from 6 to 20, from 2015 to 2023, right? So it was. And all those people are still with us. So really the key to our growth after that was, hey, we found the right people to train to do the right job. And now if I was able to train four of those people, every one of those people can train four more, right? And it really was, it was hard. It was hard to adjust when we took the best technicians and turned them into trainers, right? And it was, it was a J curve, 100 J curve, right? To go from, you know, 20 to 40 people in, I mean, probably 90 days, right? We were just, I was hiring anybody with a pulse, like, yeah, showed up for the Interview. You showed up on time. You want to start? Yeah. Do you want to start today? You’re in, man. You know, and we found people that, you know, we’re, we’re really just searching for cultural fit. So it was, you know, just being honest with people, you know, from, from the interview level. And we still are. Hey, this isn’t for everybody, man. This is hard. We have high expectations. It’s long hours, it’s tough, it’s dirty, it’s cold, it’s hot. But we’re going to have fun while we do it and hopefully we can all make, you know, some good money together.

Chandler Kohn: When you were transitioning the, the business to kind of, you know, an updated business model where it’s, you know, not as paper based or you’re using like an updated shop management software, you’re, you’re placing parts orders over the computer versus by phone. Like what, what were some of the challenges to get the business from, you know, kind of point A to point B? I know these cycles can take some time, right? What did that look like for you?

Bill Kerry: I mean, I think in any system you implement, whether it be a new phone system, right. It is a struggle. And if people have been doing the same thing for a long time, it is even harder to get them to adjust. Yeah, I think the easiest part of growth in regards to systems is you bring somebody new in and then that’s all they know. So you’re like, hey, this is how you do it, this is what you do. And then that person becomes the trainer to the older people on some of what those systems are. Right. So I think there’s a lot of value in coming up with that. Right. Kind of onboarding for people to really help everybody else learn what it is that you’re trying to get pushed through the entire organization.

Chandler Kohn: And that’s a really good point because the way I see it, this change management piece from the M A side is that there’s a lot of buyers out there that won’t, that they almost require shops to already be, you know, doing some of these low hanging fruit things. Right. Like, you know, they have a shop management software. They’re not, they’re not taking invoices on paper, that type of thing. But they essentially don’t want to assist with the transition piece and getting the business up to speed, even though slow hanging fruit. But it’s a really great point to make a hire, bring that person in, modernize the business and kind of disseminate the new operating model throughout the organization. So good piece there. I Want to talk about the way the business is structured, kind of the growth engine, the acquisitions piece you run, I believe, an entrepreneurial operating system. That’s kind of vague. It seems like everybody does that, right? But I know this term was coined by a guy named Gino Wickman. And it’s a set of practical tools and concepts to help, you know, your leadership small to mid sized businesses gain traction, achieve their business. There’s, there’s a framework to vision, people, data issues that arise in the organization processes and traction. What is the single best thing you changed in the business when kind of following this more professionalized framework, if you will.

Bill Kerry: Yeah. So eos, if, if anybody who’s listening isn’t familiar, I. And you’re an entrepreneur. I, I bought a hundred copies of Traction, right? I read it and my mind was just blown, I think, I don’t think. I was on vacation with my family and it was right after I had bought my, my partner’s shares out. And I’m reading this thing and like my wife and kids are like, can you put the book down? I’m like, no, no, no, I, I can’t. This is talking to me, right? Like, it was just, it was mind blowing. And you know, I didn’t have a formal, you know, collegiate business education, right. I went to school for supply chain management. So it wasn’t really, you know, a lot of those same classes in business management and things like that. So it really opened my eyes to like how accountability works, right. And what accountability is. And then the tools are just so basic. Gino kind of stole all these different tools and insights from all these other authors that wrote all these business books. And he just put it in something that was easy to understand and easy to follow. And it was all just based around accountability. And if people don’t know what their expectations are, then it’s really hard to hold them accountable to what it is they’re supposed to be doing. You know, there’s some great tools. We’re not live and die EOS people. We’re just, hey, let’s use it as an outline. Let’s use some of these tools. You know, the idea of we need an organizational chart was like, how many people can sit in the same seat or in different seats, right? You know, you start looking at, at that point, you know, I was still in probably 20 seats, right? You know, accounting, IT, HR service advisor, lead technician, sales, right? So it’s like purchasing, you know, you’re, you’re like, man, I got to replace myself. So for me, it was like we had to grow in order to finance all of the people that I realized I needed to put into key positions.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, and this is theoretically pretty simple concepts. I mean, stuff that you learn in kind of like a 102, 103 business course. But you know, I think the key for you and for anybody listening to this is, you know, do you have it on the whiteboard or are you looking at these concepts every day and sticking to kind of the process or plan? So, you know, thanks for sharing a little bit about the eos. I know you’ve had a fractional CFO at some point. I’m not sure if you have one now. The fractional CFO, I believe came out of the eos. You had an entrepreneurial operating meeting at some point. Your partner past. We like the fractional CFO model. We, we recommend it to folks, you know, once they hit a certain point in business. Having a good fractional CFO could be a key thing for a business. Tell me a little bit about the role of the fractional CFO in terms of your growth.

Bill Kerry: Yeah, so actually I became a member of eo, which is entrepreneurs organization. So it’s a global organization for entrepreneurs and it’s blue collar to startups, to anything else. So really finding a peer group of other business owners to be able to ask a lot of questions to that I really didn’t have access to. Right. I was in my own world. I came to work every day, I worked hard. I had some friends that might have been customers, but you know, I never really had somebody to like, really talk to about some of the higher level business stuff. And somebody recommended a fractional cfo. I’m like, dude, that sounds expensive. Right? And it is expensive, but the bringing somebody in. And she was a veteran in business and ran some really, really successful companies and thought she was going to retire and said maybe I’ll try this out. And we met and she’s like, yes. And she came in with a whole world of experience, you know, a lifetime of experience and other businesses, struggles, operations. Right. Not even just on the finance side. Right. The majority of the value she brought was she wasn’t afraid to tell me no. Right. And she’s like, no, that’s a terrible idea. We’re not doing that. Right. You know, hey, you’re growing too fast. You’re not going to be able afford this. You’re going to have to make some cuts. Right. Like, you know, and it was, it was, it was an eye opener to what the capabilities of somebody in that role could bring to a business because you know, coming from being a technician in a small business and yeah, I’ve got money in the bank account and what are my payables, what are my receivables, I’m okay, right? That’s all I got to know. And for somebody to come in and be like, hey, we should build a budget, we should build an outline and let’s see what this looks like. And really bringing some high level guidance to everything from benefits and things you don’t look at, right. And things you don’t understand. And it was a massive, massive learning experience for me. And since then we have hired a full time CFO who you know, is leveled up our business in a big way, right.

Chandler Kohn: And there’s a reason why larger organizations have a CEO focused on product or service strategy and you know, the CFO focused on the financial aspect of the business. And both of those subjects need to talk to each other, right? And you know, if I had to guess in the heavy duty space, you know, when you would need one would be, you know, maybe when you’re at 6 to 7 million in revenue or, or you know, two to three locations, whichever one of those comes first, what would you recommend to somebody that’s growing, that may be considering hiring a fractional cfo? Like what, what size do you really need to, to be at?

Bill Kerry: I mean, I’d say anything over $3 million, right? You can have three, you can have somebody come in for four hours a week and teach you basic bookkeeping that is beyond what you’re normally doing, right? Even just from the ramifications of inventory and cash and turnover and learning things like DSO and dpo. And why are you doing this? It’s just, I think it’s an immediate payback on anybody coming in and being able to really consult your bookkeeper or controller, whatever it is that you have. Especially if, you know, if you’re a small, 2, 3 million dollar, 4 million dollar business, your wife is your bookkeeper or your, you know, in my case it was my aunt, right? And you know, we only know what we’ve been doing and to have somebody come in who’s a professional in this, it’s, you know, same way if you would look at your truck repair, right? If you’ve never rebuilt a transmission before, you’re not gonna just take the damn thing apart and start doing it. If you had access to somebody who’s rebuilt a million transmissions, you know, you’re gonna have them come look over your shoulder and say, hey, do this, do this, do this. And now you know what you’re doing, right? So huge, huge impact.

Chandler Kohn: Awesome. Let’s jump into to the business model a little bit. You’re, you know, I look at the logo on your screen right now, it says Cary Brothers Truck Repair Complete fleet maintenance. Right? But you’re, but you’re doing some other stuff. You expanded into this like used truck dealership offering. You know, most repair shops don’t do that. I know a couple that do it. What was the case for becoming a dealer?

Bill Kerry: You know, really it was, my customers would call me and be like, hey, what do you think of this unit? Can you go inspect it? Yeah. I’m like, you don’t want this, right? You’re wasting my time. You’re wasting your time. You know, and it would happen over and over again and be like, man, listen, how about I just go find you a truck, right? Like, I know what you need. Tell me more about what your routes are. What are you going to use this for? What’s the life expectancy of this asset? You know, what driver are you going to put in this truck? Right. If I’m intimate in the fleet, I know what they need better than they do. Right. So we started, you know, we started just kind of like brokering trucks for people and you know, realize that like, hey, I got to get a dealer’s license in order to do this. And I’d say last year we probably bought and sold 60 trucks and trailers. And you know, we’re, we’re able to really dial it in and then, you know, if I have a customer who has a little bit of a higher opex capex budget, I can find them some really nice used equipment and then, you know, their stuff. Still got a few years life left on it maybe. I’ve got a customer that’s a startup and I can move the truck from this guy into that customer and you know, it’s a win, win for everybody. Right. I don’t need to get rich on it. It’s, you know, we want to make, you know, a few hundred bucks on a transaction to be able to keep the guy happy. Right?

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. How many, how many full time employees do you have on that business?

Bill Kerry: Just me… one.

Chandler Kohn: Okay, got it, got it. You also have a parts division, so I think you run Michigan Bus Parts, you run an entity called Fleet Trust Parts that I believe you sell to your parts to other independents. Tell, tell the listeners about these businesses and why they’re, they’re part of Cary Brothers.

Bill Kerry: So Michigan Bus Parts was in an acquisition we purchased down River Bus and Truck in October of last year. And he had, at one point he had three full time people in his parts department and he specialized in school buses. So all things, so tons and tons of inventory, had the Michigan bus parts and we continued to kind of get that back off the ground and really focus on some of the things he had direct access to. And even the specialties of knowing what the parts are to be able to service school buses and fleet trust parts came about in really sitting back and looking and saying, man, like, hey, we’re going to have all of these locations, right? And for us the biggest thing is like, okay, let’s imagine we have 10 locations. That’s 10, you know, businesses to have payable statements to 100 different vendors, right? So who is, how the hell are we going to do all that? We need to at least have one vendor source for all of our locations and really clean up the back office accounting and transactional purpose of that. And then with that we can consolidate our buying power and you know, leverage very specific inventories to distribute back to each of our branches so that we don’t have stale inventory in every branch. And you know, we can really have one distribution house and run steady shuttles. And then, you know, through the time we’ve made, made some really good relationships with some guys that are very, very strong in turbochargers and turbo and fuel. So we’ve picked up some pretty cool equipment to make and remanufacture turbochargers and then do some customization at turbochargers that we ship all across the country.

Chandler Kohn: That’s cool, man. And then, you know, I know there’s, you know, a good amount of folks in the industry that just go directly to the manufacturer and you know, either they’re, they’re close by or they just, you know, do drop shipping from the manufacturer and kind of eliminate the, the distribution middleman. Where is the industry in terms of kind of distribution in the space? I, I don’t know if you have an opinion on that, if you’ve seen things change, but just, I mean, you.

Bill Kerry: Know, possessions, nine tenths of the law, right? So it’s. Most people don’t want to wait a day, two days to order something to get it. They want their truck back on the road. And in our space, service in the parts side is, it’s not, it’s not a thing, right? In the automotive space, it’s. I can go online and I can order from any of six different, you know, vendors in the area and get a delivery within A couple hours. And it’s easy to look up parts based on a van of an automotive vehicle. But in the heavy duty space, the cataloging is, I don’t think really ever going to be up to where they are in the automotive space. Just because there’s so many upfits and bodies and you know, you can pull a slack adjuster off what the OEM put on and put anything on that fits, right? So it’s, you know, and then you go to take that off and then they send you one from the OEM and you’re looking at the sample, you’re looking at this, you’re like, these aren’t the same, right? So yeah, it’s. It’s a different movie. And we just really wanted to focus on what is it we needed and what have we wanted from heavy duty parts vendor is service, right? It’s not all about price. It’s just I need somebody to come in and stock my shelves, right? I want somebody to come in and say, well, why are you buying all of these from these five other people? Let me go to work on, you know, getting you the price you need to just buy everything from me. And really that’s where, you know, the parts side of our business is starting to go to.

Chandler Kohn: That’s awesome. Appreciate the overview there. Let’s hop into kind of telematics and dashboards, right? You know, most independents, you know, resell other folks telematics offerings. You built your own customer dashboard. Why did you do that? Why was there an investment made here? Really curious about this.

Bill Kerry: So we look at it from the perspective of, you know, that one throat to choke, right? And if, you know, anybody’s ever tried to get a hold of these telematics companies is they have an issue with a camera or a cord or a connection. It’s like you’re offshore to somebody that doesn’t understand what you’re doing. You can’t get service. You can’t get any customer service whatsoever. And then from a fleet manager standpoint, I’m sitting in their shoes. I’m like, okay, I have my telematics dashboard and then I have a dashboard for this and my routing system and I have a dashboard to. To look at the assets and the health of those. And you know, we just said, hey man, we gotta be able to put all this stuff into one place. And how can a fleet manager go to one spot? Look at all of their fuel drivers, incidents, health reports, truck repair history. You know, we wanted to give them something that they could go to one single spot. And then we could provide the service to help them. Right. So we brought some developers in and built out some pretty cool stuff that we’re allowed to. That we supply to customers.

Chandler Kohn: Are these just fleets based in Detroit that only do business with you?

Bill Kerry: Yeah, we were expanding the model, but really right now we’re just only focused on the people that are our everyday customers that we do, you know, everything for. Even guys that have, you know, units stationed in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Flint, you know, we have all of that stuff in one. And then, you know, aside from something simple breakdown, they still shuttle it back to us to fix it.

Chandler Kohn: Are there any other regional players or national players in the space that are kind of doing this, kind of competing with you in terms of an offering?

Bill Kerry: I mean, the only ones that I’d even be, you know, it’d be on my radar. Be like somebody like an enterprise who comes in or element. You know, they’re going to come in and they take kind of the role of the fleet admin. And I think they do just a massive disservice. Holman, right. Auto integrate. Right.

I just think they do a massive disservice to their customers. And I understand it’s a need, right? It’s absolutely. If I’m a, you know, a national fleet of Brinks armored trucks, let’s say, right, I have to have something that I can look at all of my units across the country and have one point of contact that can all run. Of course I get that. But yeah, you know, the same time you’re being charged for a per unit or per revenue or however it works on the back end to the customer. And then the independent shops have to pay to get their invoices submitted. And it just slows the entire process down. Right. Because you’re. You’re not dealing with the actual fleet. Admin is like, man, I need my truck on the road tomorrow. I’m like, oh, sorry, it’s a bit of the estimate and they’ve gotta call your boss. And then three days later I get an okay when I could add the truck, fix them back to you. Right? Yeah. So we just tried to bring all that into, you know, very vertically integrated platform.

Chandler Kohn: That’s great, man. That’s really cool. Workforce and industry outlook. I have some questions here that I want to cover. I know we don’t have a whole lot of time left, but you’ve grown from 20 or 30 employees to over 100. What’s working in recruiting and retention? What’s not.

Bill Kerry: So dollars don’t work for recruiting, right? You know, yeah, you have to be competitive to where somebody left for them to come to you. But really for us, it’s been all about the culture, right? You know, we do, we just do fun shit all the time, right? Like today we had a giant barbecue out in the street. Invited the fire departments and police departments and all the people in the neighborhood to come get some free burgers and ice cream and, you know, send shit out to all the branches and we do games and we do, you know, this year’s Christmas party, we rented out this, you know, big giant venue and invited everybody’s families. So it’s bring your wives and kids. We had a Santa, a face painter, you know, we gave away. Everybody who came left with a pretty sweet gift. We gave away a car, we gave away 75 inch TVs, you know, electric scooters, vacations, you know, in the summer, the entire company comes to my house in my backyard for, you know, team building for about an hour. And then, you know, I’m kicking people out at 4 o’ clock in the morning. You know, everybody gets an Uber gift card, so nobody’s driving, you know, golf outings and, you know, it’s just, we keep it fun, right? We do games in the shops every week.

Chandler Kohn: That’s awesome. So, you know, I asked you that because Full Bay, you know, Full Bay’s report said that the number one driver of technician satisfaction is, is culture at 49 and pay is at kind of 36%. Is it, is it because the, the, the technician looks at this as a lifestyle, rather a job where they’re trying to generate income? I mean, why is that culture so important? You know, I’m surprised it beats pay, to be honest with you.

Bill Kerry: Yeah, I mean, I really always make the military analogy. I’m not, I’m not saying anything of what we do is even close to the men and women that put their lives at risk. These guys are in the trenches next to each other all day, right? Yeah, they are dirty and sweaty and freezing and they get to celebrate the wins and, and they get to work with each other to try and diagnose a problem, right? So it really builds that camaraderie amongst, you know, the individuals where these guys are hanging out on the weekends together, right? Like, you know, every one of our shops, these guys are, you know, when they go out with their buddies or they go out to get a beer, they’re going to a game or something, they’re going together with other employees. So it’s really about just like family is our number one core value, right? Like, it’s, it’s, we always say we want to build a place your mother would want to work. And in our case, like, we have a ton of people who have brought family members into the organization. Right. So, you know, it’s, it’s really just about, you know, we have to bleed together and we have to listen. If one of us makes a mistake and blows a $50,000 engine, we’re all paying for it. Right. You know, so it’s, it’s got to be that level of accountability to each other. And then these guys care, right? Like, they just, hey, you need help? Do you not know what you’re doing? Hey, let me help you, right? Like, so we really had to build that culture into our business.

Chandler Kohn: Interesting. So talking about training and upskilling in the context of the explosion of diagnostic complexity, what are you doing there to make sure your techs are ready to go with some of these, you know, newer trucks with complex diagnostics?

Bill Kerry: I mean, lots, Right. I mean, not even from the technician standpoint. The whole organization. Right. We do, we’re doing it weekly. We kind of moved it to monthly, and we do a weekly or monthly leadership training. Right. So 6:30 in the morning, there’s a different volunteer to do a leadership training. And, you know, it’s, we do paid training time off. Right. So everybody gets 40 hours of paid training time. So we utilize a lot of the resources that are out there. Hda, you know, other things that these guys get paid to go do certifications. And then we built out a pretty extensive technician training ladder. Right. So if, if you, we have six tiers of technicians, you can start at $18 an hour and not know which end of a screwdriver to hold and get to $45 an hour if you put the work in. Right. So we’ve really invested heavily in getting these guys the tools to be able to train.

Chandler Kohn: Awesome. Mobile. Mobile. Mobile. You know, I’m hearing this so much, particularly from, you know, all the folks that are looking to make acquisitions, those that are looking to, you know, invest in a platform or getting to the industry from a kind of a, a buyout or M A standpoint is mo. What do you think about mobile? Is, is the industry overcorrecting on mobile a little bit? You know, I want to know the truth.

Bill Kerry: Yeah, I, I, we don’t do mobile. So, like, I, I, there’s a reason for that, right? I mean, yeah, I don’t think I could have the quality. I don’t think I could have the technician accountability. I can’t even imagine a guy doing an oil change in a parking lot. Like, to me, like, that doesn’t even make sense. Dirt and rain and snow and the technician be miserable. I just, for us, it’s, I’d rather go pick it up and deliver it for free. Right. If you’re really that short on time. We have a fleet of loaner vehicles that we give people to drive back. Like, we, I get emergency. Right. We’ll do, we do a lot of emergency for our customers. They get a blown airbag, blow tire, whatever. Liftgate doesn’t work. You know, we’ll go out and service those guys to get them through their route. But like mobile, going to your yard and doing work in your yard, I, I, we don’t do it. I couldn’t imagine. And God bless the guys that do. Right. I hear it’s, I hear it’s a good business to do. If you get the right technician and everything else, I think we would lose a lot of our culture.

And it’s all about safety for us and making sure these guys go home with all their limbs. So, yeah, we don’t let anybody work in the shop by themselves. You know, I couldn’t have that on my conscious of a guy dropping something or, you know, he’s in the middle of a job and he smashes his finger and then what? This guy, my customer’s got his truck sitting on a jack stand. I gotta send somebody else out there. It’s just not something that we are interested in at all.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. And I’ve heard some numbers start around where a truck can bring in 4 or $500,000 a year in revenue. And EBITDA is 20 to 30%, which is a hundred thousand dollars, basically free cash flow. I mean, it seems like a good model. Are your customers not really demanding mobile so much because of your offering to go and essentially get the truck, bring it in the shop, fix it. Probably some of this has to do with, you know, your geography within Detroit in the area. Maybe the way, you know, I don’t know, just different fleets are structured. But want to understand that a little bit more.

Bill Kerry: Yeah. Our customers don’t have, you know, and people have asked, right, hey, can you come do this in the yard? Like, no, but we’ll just come pick it up. Right? Like it’s no problem. Right. Like, we have five guys with CDL licenses that all they do are shuttle vehicles around the city. And my answer is always, listen, if I send a guy out there, there’s one guy on this job, right. And I’m limited to his abilities. So if it comes in my shop, I have eight people touching that truck. Right. I know that my quality is done. Right. I know that that guy, every single nut and bolt that he touched has been double checked. You know, every single aspect is, is, is looked over. Because I’m not going to put my name on something that I have a guy out there that might be having a bad day and you know, forgets to do something and God forbid a set of wheels fall off like.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, it’s good, good, good point there. Let’s talk about your fleet service agreements. I think you’re kind of no walk inside for Cary Brothers. Mostly fleets, only predictable monthly pricing. Seems like there’s kind of this subscription model. Is that what you’re doing at Carrie Bros? Across the board?

Bill Kerry: No, not across the board. We’ve really been honing that ability and you know, there’s a lot of pros and cons to it. And you know, our, we’re essentially selling an insurance package. Right. That streamlines it. So there’s some different offerings, but for us it’s really just like I tell every customer, man, if you’re going to go somewhere else, don’t call me. Like, you know, like our, our, our ability for road service and jump starts and, and going out and getting your guy. Like our tow truck driver will go hook up to a produce truck that might have broke down and he’ll tell him the 15 stops and unload the whole damn load with the guy. Right? Like, so you will not get any of our other services if you go anywhere else, period. So yeah, you know, those are the demands we make and you know, and those are the, and if, if you’re one of the guys that just want to send us certain things that you know, you want us to do, okay, you’re going to pay more and it’s not coming in today, right. Like it’s, you’re not getting the drive up service. You’re not getting all the added benefits of what we do.

Chandler Kohn: Cool. Last question here on the industry. You know, if you, if you’re looking out, you know, eight to ten years from now, carry bros in the Detroit region, where do you need to be in the future to continue to be relevant and continue to grow?

Bill Kerry: Amazing question. That is the biggest reason that I saw that we had to expand rapidly. And the window that I saw maybe two years ago or a year ago was, okay, we have five to 10 years to really gather market share and geography because the Penske’s and the riders and the leasing companies of the world are a no brainer for most people. Right. If I’m an average fleet and they don’t have somebody like us, it’s, you know, I’ve got a suspension guy, an engine guy, I got to take it to the dealer. I got a body guy, I got a tire guy, I got a road service guy, I got a towing guy. Right. It’s impossible to manage on a small fleet. It makes, it’s a, it’s a complete no brainer for them to go to a leasing company and once they’re there, they’re never going to come back out. Right. So for me it was like, I’m battling that. And now with the private equity, you know, interest in our space, it’s like, okay, that window just shrunk in a big way. So you know, we’re, we’re just trying to really hone our processes so that we can continue to, you know, onboard new locations as fast as we can.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. And for anybody that’s listening that doesn’t understand the private equity approach, it’s you know, folks with money that are trying to piece, you know, specialists with tire with, you know, electronics independence together and make them one solid platform. That’s what you’ve already done at Carrybros organically.

Bill Kerry: Right.

Chandler Kohn: Versus inorganically, which is really the private equity approach. Diesel connect in Phoenix May 19th through the 21st. I’m super excited about going. Tons of folks speaking with in terms of M and A which is, is quite, quite fun for me and this what I do. But I also go to learn. Right. And you’re presenting at Diesel Connect on shop reporting. So what’s the story behind the reason you’re doing this? And let’s jump into this concept a little bit about shop reporting.

Bill Kerry: So we’re, I’m really excited for that. Right. Like we, we found that, you know, fullbay was an amazing tool at, you know, shop running the shop management workflow. But it was a struggle to really pull a lot of reports and then get a clear picture of a dashboard. So yep, I had a developer on staff that was working on some stuff in Power bi and then like man, AI is the way of the future. So we brought in a couple of independent consultants, one of them being a sophomore in college who was my kids swim coach and said, and he’s like, man, I want to handle this project. Right. And I’m, you know, I’m not going to charge you for it because if you have these issues, I think other people will too. And if you’re okay with me building this for, you know, the rest of the industry, then, you know, you guys can have this for free. Like, hell yeah, man. Go to work. So he came up with this truck genius platform that, you know, he’s getting some real traction on and he’s built a, an amazing tool that as an owner, I live in this thing and it’s all I need to look at to know what’s happening in my business. And we make a ton and tons of decisions on the data that’s in those dashboards to run our company. Right. Not only with some of the auto invoicing through Holman, that saved a ton of time here, really having a way to focus on what the individual KPIs are and then assigning them in accountability eos, really using the scorecard to be able to hold people accountable. The results have been astonishing. Like, there’s aha moments every time we start looking into this. Like, oh, now we can focus on this and we can give, you know, this utilization. KPI is the only thing we’re going to focus on for the next 90 days. And all of a sudden you just see it go higher and higher and higher and those missed revenue numbers go lower and lower and lower. Right. So it’s, it’s really, it’s been a crazy, crazy ride for us. And it’s been, how do we know when we can onboard a new location or how is it performing? What practices do we have at this location that are doing better than this one? And then it highlights them so we can cross train.

Chandler Kohn: That’s interesting. And I’ve had Fabian Bonjean on here with Foothills Group in Canada and he started Shop View. How does that solution compare to Shop View? They’re basically both trying to simplify, kind of full Bayes complexity, if you will.

Bill Kerry: So Shop Music Shop use a competitor of fullbay. Right. So it’s a different complete shop management software. Truck Genius is a plugin to fullbay. So something that directly pulls your information out of fullbay and gives you complete visibility over any minute detail that you want to dive down. Right. And a very easy ability to spot trends and patterns and then work through them.

Chandler Kohn: And then during your talk, right, at Diesel Connect, you know, obviously you’re gonna talk about, you know, reports and what owners should be looking at. What are kind of the, the two major KPIs or the, the one or two reports that every shop owner should be looking at, you know, daily or.

Bill Kerry: Weekly, as long as it doesn’t turn off all the people that are gonna come to the presentation. But really the biggest one for us was like, gross, right? It was, how do we find out what jobs are the most profitable for us? Which customers are the hardest ones to make money on, right? And what, down to what vehicle, right? Like, if I want to dive in and comb through the data, I can look and find out, you know, hey, we’re good at this vehicle. We’re not great at that. We’re good at this service. We’re not great at this service. And, you know, asking the questions of, is it a people problem? Is it a training problem? Is it, you know, come to find out, oh, man, we just really don’t have the, you know, OEM software for Volvo. Well, then, guys, get Tech Tool. Like, what are we doing? Like, you know, I mean, you know, you’re able to make, you know, better decisions as a business to justify it. Or you say, we don’t work on that many Volvos. Why am I going to pay all this money to go get tech tool? Just stop working on Volvos. Right?

Chandler Kohn: Awesome. And then let’s wrap it up today. You know, we’re 53 minutes into it. For anybody that’s listening to this podcast, always try to have kind of one piece of wisdom at the end. What is the key piece of advice that you would give to any owner looking to professionalize and grow their business and take it to the next level?

Bill Kerry: Man, service. Service. Service. Service is everything, right? It is the way that you can increase margin. It’s the way that you’re going to get sticky revenue of people depending on you. It is just doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it. And saying that you don’t know the answer, but you’ll get back to them is totally acceptable, right? It is really just, you know, don’t nickel and dime people and, you know, put your cost all up front. Like, you know, we don’t do mileage charges and all the other shit. It’s just, dude, this is what we charge hourly, right? Yeah, it’s right out in front of them.

Chandler Kohn: Fantastic. It was great having you on, Bill. Really enjoyed it. Love what Carrie Brothers doing in the. The truck repair business and now dealership and, you know, parts and everything else that you’re working on. So thank you again for joining and I look forward to connecting with you at Diesel Connect here in a few weeks.

Bill Kerry: Can’t wait to see you, man. Appreciate it.