Ep 119 - Jim Cokonis and Justin Allen | Most Technicians Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

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Mike Allen, Bryan Pollock, Jim Cokonis and Justin Allen sit down on the ASTA Expo floor for a conversation about one of the biggest problems in automotive repair: technicians and service advisors often don’t know what they don’t know. They dig into how bad information gets passed from technician to technician, why years of experience don’t automatically mean someone is doing the job correctly, and why training has to teach people how to think instead of simply memorize answers. The conversation covers tire sales, diagnostic strategy, technician education, young tech development, alignment and ADAS calibration, repair standards and some of the unbelievable things trainers still see happening inside real shops. They also debate whether shops are wasting technologically savvy young technicians by sticking them on oil changes for years instead of identifying their natural strengths early. And somewhere along the way, Mike takes a technical quiz, Bryan explains why someone can be wrong for 25 straight years, and everybody gets distracted by chicken wings.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Tire Sales Should Be This Simple
01:17 – Live From ASTA: How Good Are Shops, Really?
05:30 – How Bad Information Gets Passed Down
09:50 – Teaching Technicians How to Think
15:10 – Mike Takes the Technical Quiz
21:18 – Why Aftermarket Training Matters
28:05 – What Service Advisors Need to Know
29:41 – Stop Overcomplicating Tire Sales
34:14 – What Trainers Actually See Inside Shops
40:32 – “You’ve Been Doing It Wrong for 25 Years”
42:21 – Why Aren’t Technicians Training?
46:11 – Are We Wasting Young Technicians?
50:00 – Meet Justin Allen from Hunter
52:00 – Every Shop Needs an ADAS Strategy
57:38 – When a Customer Refuses Required Work
1:00:08 – How Do We Raise the Industry Standard?
1:03:40 – Can Five Minutes of Training Actually Work?
1:10:11 – Training the Next Generation of Trainers