Drive It Home! With Charley, Episode 1

Hey everyone, welcome to the first episode of Driving Home with Charlie. So, this first episode is really going to be a test of whether my microphone works, and whether my bag is not foldable and won't just float up with the entire trip despite all this stuff. So, it's a test, we'll see how it works. So, what is Driving Home with Charlie? This is me on my new home, or to use the word, where I get to talk about stuff that I want to talk about. And what I want to talk about today is fleets versus dealerships. Because a lot of the young kids and dads, a lot of students that get to school, they're still kind of up in the air about what it is they want to do. And what really happens a lot of times is that young people that are looking to enter the industry are letting opportunity drive their choices instead of choosing what opportunity to pursue. So, what that means is that they might get into a dealership operation and be completely unhappy with that type of setup and the way dealerships operate, but they wouldn't think much happier working for a business or in an environment. The opposite can also occur. Someone might get into a fleet operation or a fleet environment and be completely unhappy with the way that part of the industry works. And then what happens is that we prove those people in the industry, because they're unsatisfied, they're unhappy with the way things are going, and they end up just completely pushing the industry altogether and end up becoming an accountant or something to those. Because the industry can't afford to lose career techs, because we talked about the technician shortage, and the shortage really isn't so much as new people entering the field. There's a lot of those available at different points of training that employers require. The problem with the industry right now is those experienced guys, those guys that have five-plus years of experience working at that student center, working at that fleet, working on certain equipment, they can then make or train those younger guys. And that's the area where we're training them. We've got the older people that are reaching retirement age, maybe. We've got the section that I already talked about, those guys that are keeping the industry, because they entered an area where they weren't comfortable or happy. And that's shrinking that talent pool of experienced people in jobs that can make or train and help young people entering the industry. So what I would recommend to any young person who is thinking about joining the industry is to research, right? Find out why this life works for you. Talk to people that work for SWIFT or work for Walmart or work in a municipal city school district or a county maintenance yard and find out what it's like to work in the fleet. Get on LinkedIn and make some friends with the fleet mechanics that are comfortable answering questions about what they do, how they like it, what they do and don't like. And then do the same thing with the stewardship side. Get on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great resource where you can basically talk to just about anybody and find out more about a certain career field. There are lots of service managers and stewardships that are on LinkedIn that are perfectly apt to answer questions regarding the industry. There are mechanics that work in stewardship that are visible on LinkedIn and willing to help you out, learn more about it. So do some research and kind of get, like I said, let your goals guide what opportunities you pursue because there's opportunities for both sides to pursue. If you are looking for technicians like me, you are certainly looking for technicians like me. And you can go on either side of the fence, but if you do a little bit of research ahead of time, you are way more likely to find what you're looking for and be comfortable in that position with your life there because they are two very different worlds. I mean, there are similarities in where a technician is very simple and we still care about quality in the world, just like the stewards should care about quality for their customers. And the people do have customers too, but they're often the coworkers, right? They're the operators, the operations people. But you don't want to put a technician in a community and a guy that just goes to work on their equipment, right? So there are similarities between the two, but then you've got differences like a structure, hours, availability, things like that that change from side to side. So that was one of the first things I wanted to talk about on that side-to-side relationship If you enter the workforce in a position where you're active, you're more likely to stay in that career field. And as a technician, as a trained technician, the state of the industry, we need people to stay in that are knowledgeable and more trained. And I'm not talking about like what I do in school. I'm talking about the guys in the shop doing the hard job of mentoring and teaching young technicians how to be a professional and how to do things the right way. It's more of that, right? Marshall Sheldon, my old friend of mine, I was going to go and meet him. I looked up Marshall Sheldon. He sent me a connection request. He is possibly both a great boss and an absolutely good mentor, absolutely good trainer. Joshua Taylor, also a good choice in the stewardship world. He always posts content. He has a lot of podcasts about stewardship life and stuff like that. So a lot of options out there to learn more about your career field of lead or stewardship. All right, so let's talk about another topic. Topic number two for this video is why the hell do people in Arizona drive so fast? Holy crap. I've lived all over the world. When I was at the airports, I lived in the Middle East. I lived in Korea. I lived up in Alaska. I lived in Central America. And there's a crazy driving that goes on in all those places. But here in Arizona, it's like people in Arizona pick up the worst habits that everybody has in all these different regions and combine them into one driving style here in Arizona. Like I'm sitting here at the intersection watching people make a left-hand turn in front of me. I've watched 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 cars now make this left-hand turn. All but one of them pulled straight into the white lane, right? Is this something that's just not taught in driver's ed or is it you don't give a crap personality that they have where nobody turns into the red lane? Nobody can make the right turn on red or turn to left if they trust people turning to their own lane. And it's one of the most basic concepts that I do not get. The other concept I do not get is that people here in Arizona do not understand what the left-hand lane is for. The left-hand lane is for turning left and passing someone. So why the hell would you get in the left-hand lane and do 4 to 5 and just park there and drive for miles and miles making everybody get in the right-hand lane to go around you? And why don't the cops do anything about that? It's insane. Like I pass more people in the right lane than I do in the left lane and that's not the way it's designed to work, right? So, yeah, I have traffic issues. I get angry at people. If you're on a road race, you're going to honk at them or yell at them or do anything else silly that's going to get you shot or make you want to shoot someone. That's never going to happen. But I sit here and quietly shoot them in my car like, why are you stupid? But they're not stupid. They never got trained. They've never had a driver's ed course. They don't have the driver's license. They have to make the left-hand turn. They use the rules. They do a left-hand turn. They do a driver's test. That was the last time I took a driver's license. And so, the other thing that really is weird about this place is, you know, I grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. I'm a big fan of traffic on the road. If there's one single car coming my way, I'm going to wait a little bit of extra time, let that car go by, and then pull out onto the road. But here in Arizona, that doesn't seem to matter. I can be the only car going down the street and this guy's pulling out of the convenience store. Instead of waiting for the two seconds for me to go by, even though there's no one behind me, he's going to pull out in front of me. And then that same person is the person that was in such a hurry to get on the road but then is going to drive five miles an hour and see people in front of him. That's irritating. And then those same people are the ones that will be in the left lane. They decide they need to make the right-hand turn and instead of just slowing down a little bit, getting behind to make the right-hand turn, they speed up, jump in front of you, slam on the brakes to make the right-hand turn. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Get it? That ain't going to work that way. All right? So I hope you liked this episode of Driving Home with Charlie. I'll try to do one or two even deeper driving reports and come up with a topic related to the technician industry Right now I'm just doing my side hustle. You guys have side hustles? So here's the thing. I love doing what I do. I love teaching people. I love it. It's fun. I like meeting people who have never experienced it before and having to learn. It's a really interesting experience. But to be honest with you, if you're interested in something that's a diesel educator or automotive instructor, there's a very, very, very, very good chance that you're not going to make nearly as much money teaching as you're doing. All right? So I could make probably a lot more money out in the field right now. And because of my background, training, and education, I could probably even find a fleet maintenance director who can take advantage of positions that pay me probably $30,000, $40,000 more than what I make now. But I've tried that. I've lived that world. But I didn't enjoy it as much as what I do now. So I've taken a little bit of a break that I can do something that I enjoy. But that also means that I've been looking for ways to increase what I make by doing side hustles. My side hustle is you're watching one of them now, right? So I do YouTube videos. The goal is to spread news about diesel and education and things like that. That's the main part. But there's always the side note that if it's in this channel, it's going to be possible to start making a little bit of money. So that's one side hustle I do. The other side hustle I do is I go online to auctions. And I buy things at auctions and then try to sell them on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, things like that. Try to make a profit. So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm running a roll. I'm going to grab a couple of items that people want to buy from me. But, yeah, you can make some money that way. I buy, say, an engine cooling fan assembly for $9, $10 at the auction. These things cost over $100 brand new. There's nothing wrong with them at the auction. A lot of people order parts. They order the wrong thing. They return it. And then because the fan is so iconic, they don't resell it. So it makes up more of the auction. So I always test the stuff before I sell it, of course. But I can buy it for $90 and sell it for $40. And I have a $30 profit per fan that I buy. The other big seller, the other thing I've got a big success with is Dogland. Baby cage, things like that. Yeah, it goes pretty quick on Facebook Marketplace. And that's why you see all these boxed stuff behind the back of the truck, all the stuff that I bought at auctions that I'm trying to sell. And then the other thing I do is I have a couple different categories. It's that most of the purses at the auction warehouse I go to are Amazon purses. And what I'll do is not only will I buy the product at the auction and then try to sell it, I also have an Amazon affiliate. So what I'll do as an Amazon affiliate is I'll make a video about the product that is available for purchase on Amazon. And then I'll make the shopping video as an Amazon affiliate about that product. And then I get paid commission free if I can watch my things going by the product. So I kind of make money off it since I buy at auctions. It's two different ways. So if you're looking for a sign up, that's a pretty good one. It's not going to be rich, but it's definitely something that you can make money off of. It can help out. It pays bills. It can do a lot of things for you. So if you guys have questions about how I do that or how to get involved in it, just let me know. It would be a favor to check out the link that I'm going to post in the description of the video. It's in the comments. I'll post one of the Amazon links that I have. It's a good thing to look at. You don't have to buy it. Just if I get clicks, a lot of clicks, the links, then people will see those links and it will drive more people to actually search me out and actually save me a lot of money as well, which is one of the things I'm going to be doing later today. I have a couple of students at school that they want me to do a YouTube video on, so I'm going to try that out throughout the day and make a video about it. But, yeah, if you guys click on the link, that would really help me. And then thank you for liking the product that I posted. It's my favorite, so that was really nice. Remember, you guys can also find me on Snapchat. I'm going to say I'm famous on doing it. I do make great content. You guys can click on the link to find me, so that's fine. Thank you for watching this episode of Subscribing to Oprah Carley. I almost forgot what I was going to name this podcast, Subscribing to Oprah Carley. I really appreciate all my subscribers, all my viewers. If you haven't subscribed yet, please hit that subscribe button, like the video. Thank you. Bye.