Evolving and growing means our businesses and the industry may advance, but at our core, we are still very much the same.
By Jake Nawrocki
If you are any sort of a gear head, you probably remember fondly working on an old diesel engine. Those things were so simple, weren’t they? Mechanical injection, no electronics required at all, they were a marvel of simplicity and reliability. Have a misfire? All you had to do was loosen an injector line to see if that particular cylinder was the one not pulling its weight. Once you found the offending cylinder, it was pretty easy to determine if that injector was not working or if cylinder pressure was down.
If the truck or tractor was a manual transmission, it didn’t even matter if the battery was completely dead. All you had to do was get it rolling a little down a hill and pop the clutch and away you go. They did have drawbacks: If it got too cold, they didn’t like to start, they smell terrible, and for some reason no matter how hard you tried there was just no way of not getting completely filthy when you did the simplest of work on it.
Now truth be told, what started me thinking about this was the other day our oldest loader jelled its fuel. We hardly ever need to touch this machine as it has been very reliable. It is small and old (I’ve had it longer than I’ve had my adult children), but for what we use it for, it keeps on doing the job. Since I hadn’t changed the fuel filters in a decade or so, we did that, and began the process of bleeding the air out of the injectors and getting it back in action. No scan tool, no relearn process, just a 17mm wrench. Any problems you have with it running are incredibly easy to diagnose, and relatively inexpensive to repair.
If the truck or tractor was a manual transmission, it didn’t even matter if the battery was completely dead. All you had to do was get it rolling a little down a hill and pop the clutch and away you go.
It’s a lot like our business. Things used to be simple. Thirty years ago, we didn’t have an entire suite of business management tools just to buy a car, let alone track sales, improve work processes, manage employees, or handle inventory.
We didn’t have a dozen pictures of every part, bar code scanners, or websites. We didn’t have VIN decoders and online forums. We had a few really big books and a card catalog.
I am in no way implying that all these things are bad, in fact they have made huge improvements not only in the way we do things, but in the bottom line as well. They can be complicated though. Many of us on the smaller end of the auto recycling spectrum never would have dreamed that we would be hiring someone just to manage all the doodads and keep them working. We never could have imagined taking six to sixteen photos of every single part in our inventory. Yet here we are. The cost of all the tools and new processes alone is staggering, but the benefits are proven.
Something else that has gotten a little more complicated is people. Like the diesel engine, it pretty much is not a changed thing, yet it is. The engine management has become more complex with electronic injection, emissions controls, and measures that are intended to improve fuel efficiency. Likewise, people have gone from something simple, to more complex. Where it used to be that a customer called looking for a fender or a rim, it has evolved so that the customer has now searched and found a handful of different options and they are now calling to order or try to negotiate a lower price. Seldom is the phone call placed to find a part. Seldom is there a phone call, even. Where the customer interaction used to be a “take it or leave it” affair, we now present people with many options in hopes that one of them will be appealing enough to get them to hand over the money rather than call a competitor.
Customer expectations have also changed. While I really don’t feel all of this is bad, I can say with certainty that it has made things a lot more complicated and difficult sometimes. When I was a kid working in the family business, my dad quite easily achieved a zero percent return rate. The customer wasn’t always totally satisfied, but they had paid cash and there was a pretty clear no return policy in place. If we tried that on today’s customer, we wouldn’t be here too long. Today, we accept a return rate of eight or nine percent and feel we can work with that. I know many of you have a rate higher than that and can make it work.
Add to all this the changes in our culture and the way it carries over into our personal lives and into the relationship with our coworkers, vendors, and communities and you have all sorts of ways that progress has changed. Yet at the core, we are still much the same as we have always been. As the engine still requires compression and fuel to run, so humanity still has the same basic needs for physical life, and the need for community. Our needs haven’t changed, but the method that satisfies the need has. This doesn’t mean that we are worse or better off than we have been, just different.
Our industry can be as simple or as complicated as we want it to be. While my preference will always tend towards keeping it as simple as possible, there are times when we will try to maximize a process or a revenue stream to improve our bottom line. In the last five years at our yard, we find ourselves eliminating processes and even some services to simplify, and thus grow, profits. We no longer offer certain services and have channeled that effort into better managing inventory. We no longer purchase scrap metal commodities so that we can better recycle the cars we purchase at auction.
One last thing: Don’t be afraid to try something. If it doesn’t work, you can always change back. Few of the mistakes we make are permanent. Every few years there are changes in our industry that we must make just to stay relevant. By practicing change you just may find yourself with the perfect combination of practices that make you an industry leader.
Now go crack open a couple of injector lines and figure out where that misfire is coming from.
Jake Nawrocki, with sister Katy Joles, own and operate Rocki Top Auto Recyclers in Glen Flora, Wisconsin. The company was formed in 1988, and Jake and Katy took over operations in 2009. Since that time, they have been working both in and on the company, in a region that is economically challenged. “Our goal is to make Rocki Top Auto a destination.” Contact Jake at 715-322-5774 or rockitopauto.com.
