From Washing Trucks to 15-Year Veteran Mechanic - Overhauled S1E4 is now on your favorite podcast app!

Want to be a guest on Overhauled? - https://www.shopdiesellaptops.com/pages/podcast-guests

In this podcast your host Melissa Petersmann (The Diesel Queen) discusses diesel technicians, trucks, the diesel economy at large, and many more interesting topics in a style that only she can bring - raw and unfiltered. 

Melissa is joined today by Marshall, a 15-year veteran mechanic. Marshall’s journey began as a truck washer for a fleet shop. He didn’t even know how to change a battery. But, through determination, hard work, and a desire to learn everything he could, he rose through the ranks bettering himself, his career, and his finances. Marshall shows you a way to join the industry without attending college or a trade school.

As always, thank you for watching and listening!

Transcript for From Washing Trucks to 15-Year Veteran Mechanic - Overhauled S1E4

Melissa:

Hey guys, it's the Diesel Queen. Welcome to my Overhauled Podcast. I have to make an apology to you guys. My first few podcasts were a little screwed up. Long story short, it had to be kind of cropped down a little bit because I am technologically challenged back to how I am a heavy equipment mechanic, not a professional YouTuber or a podcaster. So please bear with my fuck-ups and enjoy these podcasts. Again, I apologize. I'm a heavy equipment mechanic trying to make podcasts, so bear with me. This is Melissa back with another episode of Overhauled with the Diesel Queen. I have Marshall here with me today. He is a current mechanic at Kenworth. So Marshall, why don't you introduce yourself and kind of give us a background on your experience, where you work, how you got into the industry, et cetera.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, so my name is Marshall Sheldon. I work at a Kenworth dealer. I've been a diesel mechanic for about 15 years. I specialize in Cummins mainly, but I just like most diesel mechanics, kind of I'll work on whatever they ask us to work on.

Melissa:

Yeah, I feel that.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, and before I worked for Kenworth, I worked for a Volvo dealer and before that, I worked at a fleet shop, but the fleet shop was all Kenworth. So it was a pretty easy transition for me to come to Kenworth because I was pretty familiar with the chassis.

Melissa:

I have here that you did not take the route of going to a trade school. You started washing trucks and that's how you got into it.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, 100% so I got out the Marine Corps and I was in the Marine Corps before that, but when I got out, I kind of just took me a break and then, I went to work at that fleet shop and the foreman ... I met up with the foreman. They had an ad in the newspaper, like phones aren't like they are now but back then, you know. I've seen an ad in the newspaper and then, I went over there and talked to the foreman and they were looking for a wash hand. I think it was like $12.50 cents an hour is what it was paying. I just needed a job, so he did the normal, "Can you do this and can you weld or can you do anything like that?" I'm like, "Dude, I don't even know how to change a battery." So he was like, dude ... I was like, "But dude, if you hire me on, I'll work my guts out for you. I promise you that."

So he hired me on and yeah, I just washed trucks and whenever ... I was pretty motivated to make more money like most people are and the way to make more money in the field is to learn more stuff. So the more stuff you know, the more money you can make.

Melissa:

Knowledge is like gold.

Marshall Sheldon:

That's right. So, just whenever I saw the mechanics doing something, I tried to get the jack stands out, they were trying to take a wheel off or something. I've seen them jacking something up or I could see that they were clearly going to change a flat tire or something there. I would grab the jack stands if I wasn't washing a truck and try to help them out. They would teach me stuff along the way. This is what we torque the lug nuts to, that kind of stuff. So, I just cruised right along and just tried to learn anything and everything I could along the way, washing parts like, "Hey, can I wash this part? What is this part called? What does this part do?" They would always just ... because I was helping them out, they'd always just teach me stuff.

Melissa:

And you feel like they were more than willing to share knowledge with you then?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. So I think it's because it was a two-way street because they could see that I was trying and I wanted to help. I think that was the key thing because now, that we're senior mechanics, you and I, we can say that there's a lot of times where a big job, you have it blow load apart, you have stuff everywhere and it can be a little overwhelming even for us to have done ... even if you've done that job 100 times, sometimes you can look back at all that stuff that ocean aparts that you've just blown apart and be like, "Golly, I got to put all that crap back together." So I think when I would jump in there and be like, "Hey, can I do these little things," that add up to a lot when you're doing a big job like that washing all the skiers and washing all this stuff, they were willing to reciprocate, giving me some knowledge that I was asking for.

Melissa:

Yeah, and so from there, when did you or how did you transition from being a helper/wash hand to being hired on as a full-time mechanic?

Marshall Sheldon:

Right, so I was pretty fortunate. Like I said, that fleet shop really was the key I think to my whole career, really, because that foreman that I had was pretty cool and his name is Nate Nielsen, shout out. He was pretty cool because he could see that you were trying and then, he would push you into something that he knew that you couldn't do or that you would struggle through, but that you could eventually figure it out. So he would put you on ... he'd put me on an alternator or something like that. Then, once I got pretty good at doing something like that, he would just kind of work me in and then, he just ... one day, he's like, "Hey, congratulations, I just promoted you to loop tech and that comes with a pay rate. So on this next check you are going to see your pay raise on there. Just keep doing what you're doing and just stay after it and be hungry."

So, that's what I did. I just kept pushing on it and then, eventually, it kind of worked out to where Nate ... Nate ended up going to Kenworth there in town and one of our senior guys that we had, he also went to Kenworth at the same time within two weeks.

Melissa:

I've seen that in shops happen a lot. Once one person leave, it's kind of a rolling hill of a bunch of people following him, as long as they were not the guy that everybody despised.

Marshall Sheldon:

Right, and Nate was really the leader. So when one guy left, they all ... the two of them, they kind of followed with him. So I was there but Nate, without really paying it, knowing it, but Nate trained me how to run the shop. So he taught me how to order all the parts, who we order what parts from. So I kind of filled that role for quite a while as the foreman in the shop. I hired on several hands and just worked through it. That's pretty much how it transitioned to being full mechanic mode.

Melissa:

So you've been doing this for five years now?

Marshall Sheldon:

15.

Melissa:

15, okay, she had that written down around 15 years. So what big differences did you notice going from a fleet mechanic to a dealer ... that Kenworth shop you worked at was a dealership, correct?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa:

So what differences did you notice going from ... especially, enlighten me because I've only worked at dealerships, so enlighten me on the difference between working in a fleet shop versus working in a dealership.

Marshall Sheldon:

So I feel like most diesel shops in general, I would say a large percentage of them are already hourly. So that's quite a bit different than a lot of the automotive stuff. The biggest difference I would say is that in a fleet shop, you have a truck come in, for instance and the truck would come in and it's got to get fixed right now and then, it's got to go back on the road. In the dealer, you can ... I feel like you can put it off a little bit more because you're not as in much of a rush because you don't have so much in it, you're not so invested because that's ... when you're in the fleet, that's your truck.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

Of course, when you're in a dealer you want to get all the trucks out as quickly as you can, obviously. It doesn't mean as much to you personally.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

Because you don't know that person, and I knew every one of those drivers, I knew all of their names, I knew which truck they drove, I knew what was going on with that truck because I saw it all the time. That's also a major difference is you know each truck, you have a mental note of what you've done to that truck, what components have been changed. So it's kind of nice because you have a thorough understanding of that personal piece of equipment because you've seen it all the time. So I think that's pretty good, and then also, you do a lot more fixing and a lot less replacing.

Melissa:

At a fleet?

Marshall Sheldon:

A fleet shop.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

So you might pull a turbo apart and actually rebuild that turbo and put it back on the truck.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

Whereas at a dealer, the liability of that going cross-country is a lot more. So, we need to be able to give our customers a warrantable repair that they can take, go down the road and if they go to another Cummins distributor, if it's a Cummins engine say, and then, they can just get that part swapped out, if it's under warranty still, whereas-

Melissa:

Truck dealer, I'm assuming ... so enlighten me, correct me if I'm wrong, but at John Deere, at our dealerships, it wasn't just the pricing of the labor and the parts. It was also exactly what you just talked about, was the warranty, right? So engine rebuilds, for an example. I have done a couple professional full-on, and I'm not just talking long block, a lot of people mistake, "Oh I did an engine rebuild." No, you bolted a head on to an already built short block or you bolted a bunch of parts back onto an already assembled engine. That's not really a rebuild. So I've done a couple full-on, you replace the liners, replace the pistons, cam bushings. I've done a couple actual rebuilds for a dealership, but the problem that we came down to a lot was customers wanted that two-year warranty on that engine from John Deere, right?

That fully completed or long block, short block, whatever, mostly long blocks and complete engines. The warranty for that engine shipped from John Deere as a reman or a new one, depending on ... when COVID happened, it was really hard to get reman engines. So you had to buy a lot of new ones. That to the customer is worth more than, okay an actual rebuild was going to cost a lot less, but I only get 90 days of ... obviously, the parts warranties are two years but I only get 90 days of the labor warranty. So in a sense, dealerships have created it to where you're not doing component rebuilds just like you did. Like what you were saying, obviously, we did a lot of transmission tear downs. We did a lot of that stuff, because for an example, a John Deere backhoe transmission, their J-series had problems with the K2 clutch pack inside their transmissions.

Warranty actually had you, and we still do this today as a repair for clutch packs a lot of times, is we tear that transmission apart, split it, replace that clutch pack and then, put it back together. It's only specific ones though, like the K2 clutch pack, you can just do it as an assembly, you can buy the assembly clutch pack and you just split it, you plop it in there because it's got ... their transmissions in these backhoes have hydraulic clutch packs inside of them and then they're gears. So you can just take a clutch pack out. I mean, sometimes you got to take three of them in a group out and then, put them back in, but it was cost effective because you didn't have to tear that clutch pack apart, on top of taking the transmission apart.

You just had to plop it back in. Now, you have another clutch pack fail, which I've done this a million times too, is let's say you have the forward clutch pack fail, where you actually have to take that whole clutch pack apart and rebuild it, if that's what you choose to do. You can't just buy it as an assembly. In that case, we would put a reman transmission in that, because the labor, the extra labor it would cost, would not be ... it wouldn't be cost effective for the customer at all. What you're telling me, which is kind of what I already assumed is in fleet, the fleet is paying you your hourly rate.

Marshall Sheldon:

Right.

Melissa:

At a dealership, the customer is getting charged the dealership hourly rate, not your hourly rate.

Marshall Sheldon:

That's right.

Melissa:

And it's a big difference. The engine rebuild that I did do on an 8310R tractor for a John Deere dealership, that was the dealership rental tractor. So in the grand scheme of things, at the end of the day, the cost of that rebuild was my hourly rate because it was their fleet tractor. As far as customers go, it usually is a lot more cost effective to just replace stuff. We still do a lot of component tear downs and rebuilds, engines are a big thing that for warranty sometimes we'll tear it down and see what's actually wrong with it. Sometimes a customer will want us to tear it down because if it's only one cylinder and one jug that we can replace, we do that, but for the most part you are correct, it is much more cost effective for the customer to just replace the whole thing.

Marshall Sheldon:

I think it would kind of depend on the engine manufacturer for heavy-duty trucks because Cummins, I can do a now overhaul, which is ... it's a more in depth overhaul where everything is measured. You should measure everything anyway, but these are ... a lot of things have to be recorded for Cummins and then, the customer can purchase additional warranty. I believe that's how it works. It's been a few years since I've done one because not a lot of people opt for it, but there is an option from Cummins at least, where you can purchase an additional warranty on a rebuild like if I do a full overhaul because I am now certified from Cummins, but that technician has to have that certification.

Melissa:

The certification.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, and I'm not sure that a lot of the facilities probably are now certified, if that makes sense.

Melissa:

Yeah, and every manufacturer does all of ... like you just said, everything differently. At John Deere, we had a bunch of certifications, we had what we call capstones and obviously, we're not dealing with multiple ... well that's a lie. We do deal with some different engine manufacturers. We do have Cummins in our big Forage harvesters and our big 9R tractors. We have the QSX 15 in those and then, we have Yanmar in some of our skid steerers and little Mini Xs. Then we have a Isuzu actually in a lot of the excavators because excavators ... John Deere excavators, up until recently, they dropped the contract with Hitachi just this year, but up until recently, most John Deere excavators were actually ... they're actually Hitachi excavators. So Hitachi uses Isuzu.

You have a Hitachi excavator, it's going to have Isuzu in it. You buy a John Deere excavator, which is pretty much a Hitachi with yellow paint, you can get a John Deere engine in that. Most of them had Isuzu. We never had really ... So I also worked at a dealership that sold cranes, grove cranes, Manitowoc. They run a lot of Cummins in their stuff and WIRTGEN is the paving equipment manufacturer that John Deere bought out not too long ago. They have different engines in them. I never really worked on the paving equipment that much, so I'm not going to pretend to know what engines they have in them. It is just dealing with the difference between Isuzu warranty.

I've had to deal with Isuzu warranty before versus John Deere warranty and it is a whole different ballpark. Even though their company is working together, you have to go through John Deere DTAC and you have to go through the John Deere engineers and you have to go through the John Deere warranty people and they actually have to contact Isuzu and Hitachi and then, rely it back to you. So it's kind of the pain in the ass.

Marshall Sheldon:

There's a lot for the technicians, people don't realize that we ... which it sounds like you do too. I pretty much specialize not only in building a Cummins engine but also, working my way through a Cummins warranty, and it sounds like you do the same thing with yours. I was going to add a point that I do carry all of the QSX engine certifications and the specific John Deere Cummins certifications, which is actually pretty cool because I haven't actually had the opportunity to work on a Cummins and a John Deere, but if the opportunity arise, I'd be ready to go.

Melissa:

As you were saying, Cummins required certifications to work on their engines, especially warranty work, which is what our capstones on John Deere do. All they do is allow you to have your time to be paid for the equipment that you're working on, but the specific Cummins you have to have that, like you can have a 9R tractor. Well, to get the 9R tractor capstone for scraper tractors or 9570s and the 9670s are the ones that came with ... let's see, I think I had that right, 9570 and a 9620 maybe. They made you go through the Cummins certification specifically for Cummins to even get that capstone because Cummins requires you to have that training, and I'll tell you what, that Cummins class that I took was the best capstone class or the best certification class I had ever gone to and I've been through to a million John Deere training classes.

That one put on by Cummins was the best. I mean were re-timing the front gear case. We were taking injectors out, tearing all kinds of shit apart. It was cool spot.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, Cummins puts on some pretty bitching training stuff, like I'm in the South now. I think you're up in the Midwest somewhere now. When I was in Wyoming, I went to Salt Lake for Cummins training and those were equally as awesome because those training facilities have all the mining equipment, all the mining engines and stuff like that. Then, the ones down here in the south, I noticed at Cummins Power South they have all the marine stuff. So when I put a Cummins training, there would be a whole class there also doing marine controls and stuff like that. It's pretty intense stuff but I'm with you. I like how hands-on, you have to pass a hands-on course and you have to pass a written course-

Melissa:

What you do with John Deere too, their capstones, they have it written in a hands-on but their hands-on is all like, "We bugged this machine. You got to figure out what we bugged." With the exception of the ... So every single John Deere dealer or capstone I've gone to, you can prove what they bugged because you can find the bugs. I did go to their mid-size excavator capstone and you cannot. They were doing shit like swapping out little relief valves in the pilot manifold for their excavators, all kinds of sneaky ass shit, and there's no way you could figure that out unless you looked at the hydraulic schematic and you draw your little lines, tracing everything as to where the oil would go with this and that and then, you have to figure out, "Okay, if this relief valve or this check valve, oh it was by chance, oh removed and had a hole drilled through it and then put back in," that's where the oil would be going.

That was the hardest capstone training I ever did was the mid-size excavator capstone training for John Deere, but the Cummins engine class that I did, I loved because John Deere does not usually have you tear anything down. None of their capstones are tearing stuff down. All of their capstones is like, we're going to go through every single hydraulic schematic on this machine. We're going to go through every single electric schematic on this machine. We're going to learn the theory of operation on all this shit and then, we're going to ... here's your tests, which is good. You learn a lot of shit, and a lot of the capstones that I did, especially through Hanin, which was my first dealership, they had in-house trainers and a lot of their in-house trainers were old field mechanics.

So when they would teach, you'd be like, "Oh here's a schematic. Here's what can go wrong because I've seen this and this is what it creates." That was pretty cool, but the Cummins one, their hands-on was not a find a bug in the engine. Their hands-on was you had to run fuel tests, you had to run DEF tests and you actually had to run the tests, you had to hook up the hoses. A lot of the shit that mechanics will ... a lot of mechanics will try to skip over and do that last because it's a pain in the ass to hook everything up, they made you do in those tests and it was good. I got a lot out of that Cummins training class, which is something I did want to touch on in this podcast series, is the value of training your mechanics.

Even after they've been hired on with you and after they've been through trade school or not trade school, the value of continuing the training for your mechanics and the value that it is worth, in my mind, it is worth the price you pay to send your technicians to these classes, to get a lot of this knowledge. Obviously, there's ... I'm sure you've known and seen there's mechanics that go to these trainings that view it as a little vacation and they don't take it seriously at all.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

Obviously, there's those of us out there that do. I told a story on one of my last podcasts of, I went to a greater capstone when I first started into the dealership for John Deere. I think at most, I'd replace batteries on graders, maybe done the circle side shift adjustments and shit like that. I did not know that much about graders. I went to this capstone, knowing I did not know what the fuck I was doing. I don't know what the fuck I'm looking at. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm here to learn because I don't know what I'm doing. There was an older gentleman in that class that he was one of those mechanics that, "I already know everything. I've been working on these since I was 12," that kind of shit, those people.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

I slaughtered him, slaughtered him in that fucking test. I got a 98% in that greater capstone, which was actually the highest grade in that class, and this older gentleman that claimed he knew everything and didn't need to be in this class, he barely passed, barely passed. He had kids in there that were 20. I was 19, he had kids in there that were kids to him that completely fucking slaughtered him.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

That's kind of the thing I've been touching on here and there in my podcast series, is the value and the benefit of the training and obviously hands-on training is valuable. Correct?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

And you can't learn everything from looking at a book and reading schematics, but when it comes down to learning, what I find the value in a lot of these trainings is learning ... you can't properly diagnose anything unless you understand how it works. Sometimes the manual and the book doesn't quite get you there to fully ... and theory of operations sometimes don't quite get you into that full understanding of how a system works. I went through WyoTech, so I had to learn all the air brake systems that you work on and the transmissions and how the power flows through the transmissions and stuff like that. I feel like there are mechanics out there, especially the older generation that take that for granted, especially with the new electronic systems, which I'm sure you run into a bunch of it on semis, it's really important to understand how the system works before you try to dive into a diagnostic scenario of that.

Marshall Sheldon:

I feel like, to circle back on that, is a lot of that comes down to confidence because I mentor junior technicians pretty exclusively here at the dealer that I work at. What I find that the junior technicians have the hardest time, and I feel like I've put a lot of focus in, is building their confidence. They get that training, you're getting them the OEM training that they need and it's all up in their heads and they're trying to transfer that down to their hands, is the best way to describe it for me. So, they remembered learning this thing and now, they're trying to use the tool and they're down there trying to do it and they just ... it's like they give up quickly or something like that. I find that they just struggle a lot with building their confidence. So, sometimes a senior tech, and we're out there with them and we help them along, just enough to get them to where they needed to be with that tool.

And then, you've got to kind of celebrate that small win with them because that builds that technician's confidence and we used to grind through and just figure it out, and the newer hands that are coming in, they're not built like that. They hate to stay coddled because ... I don't really feel like it's coddling, but they need a little help building their confidence.

Melissa:

Yeah, that's a good point to bring up about, because part of this series is to try and help these not only just bullshit about turning wrenches and the experiences, and try to help other new technicians understand what they can expect out of the industry, but it's also to kind of help these companies that are shorthanded as fuck and need technicians, what can they do better or what can they incorporate in their trainings and their company, into the way they run, to help not only get mechanics hired on, but keep these young mechanics because that's ... I'm trying to get people's opinion on that and especially, people that started from nothing. I just spoke with a gentleman last time that he had no background at all in this industry and he's thriving in it, but he tries really hard. He wants to learn and he wants to do good.

Those qualities ... I think a lot of young technicians start with those qualities, but I've seen it crushed. I've seen or heard that be crushed, whether it's by the asshole they work next to, another mechanic in the shop, a foreman. I've seen that crushed by people and it is sad to see that some people obviously, just don't have that quality. So I'm trying to help. In your opinion, what is something that dealerships or shops in general, can do better to try to help these young technicians want to stay into the industry?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, and even I struggle with that because like I said, I mentor a new technician about every eight months, six to eight months. Sometimes you get in it 90 days and you realize, "Hey, this person may not be a good fit to be a mechanic," and I would say that's probably about 20% because if you are doing a good job at hiring them on, that you should be able to get some of that out and then, what to do to try to keep them in? It's kind of individualized. Some of these techs really want the training. They want the opportunity to go learn, and I feel like a lot of the shops don't send their technicians to the amount of training that they are trying to get. I feel like even as a senior technician sometimes I run into that at dealers, where I felt like they didn't want to put in as much as I'm putting in.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

I feel like it's pretty important that they contribute as much as I feel like I'm contributing, and that might be some communication with your management team because if you go to your management team as a technician and you're like, "Hey, I don't feel like I'm getting a proper opportunity for training." I've done everything that I can do from my end and I want to go to whatever training hands-on course like we were talking about and they still don't want to send you, then maybe that's not a good place for you, because if you're one of those people that thrive on the training, then evidently that's not a place for you, because they don't put a high value on training.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

Then the other thing is the junior techs out there, especially right now, with the way the world is, money is really important.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

We got to make enough money to live and then, on top of that we have to spend ... I don't know what you spend, but I would say I probably spend ... I'm trying to think of a percentage, but maybe 15, 20% of my pay goes right back into buying tooling that I need in the field. I'm at a point in my career with some of that stuff I bought at year five. I have to replace it now. So three quarter impacts that I keep in my service truck. I have two half inch air impacts. I just bought another one because I had to send the other one out, the very first one I ever bought. I had to send it out to get rebuilt and I couldn't be without it. So I just bought another one while the other one was getting rebuilt. So now, I have two, but the same with my three quarter I'm going to have to send it out and a new one is $900.

That's a lot of money. So junior tech, obviously, we're not expecting them to have a thousand dollars tool like that, but we have to be, dealers and shops need to understand that these technicians are spending a lot of money out of their pockets-

Melissa:

Especially, when you're new. Yeah, especially when you're new. I had ... My first year in the industry, I had $10,000 worth of fucking tool bills to claim on taxes the next day. It's like 10 or 12 grand. The next year, it was like eight and then, the next year it was six. Now, I get away with, I think the last two years it was only four grand-ish, five grand. That took me seven years to get to the point where I was finally, I don't need to buy a bunch of shit every week. Obviously, every technician has a problem where they're like, "Oh my god, Snap-on has new green pry bars and mine are not green and I want green," and then they buy it. The tooling thing, it's ... you hear online that people are like, "Oh well you know, shouldn't be able to claim tools on taxes."

It's like, I have to have that to do my job and you have to, and every dealer in every shop has a certain requirement of tools that you have to have. Most of the time you have to have up through half inch drive and they have up through a certain size wrench, things like that, but every shop is different. I worked at an international dealership for four months when I first started in the industry, then I jumped right into John Deere because they were like ... they didn't have any work and they were cutting everybody's hours and I had a 40-hour paycheck of two weeks and I couldn't afford that. I'm like, "Yeah, fuck that." So the only people actually that would hire me on, I interviewed with tons of truck dealerships and truck shops. The only people that would hire me was the John Deere dealership that I happened to just decide to go talk to them on a whim.

That was a whole nother ballgame going from the truck world to the equipment world and the tooling and what you're required to do, but long story short, I've worked at a bunch of different John Deere shops within the same company. I move locations, whatever and even within the same companies or within John Deere, themselves, they all have different tool requirements. There is a shop that I worked at one point in time where they're specialty tools. I started buying some of the specialty tools from John Deere because I got tired of going to the fucking tool room and looking for the little tiny fueler gauges we used for our 13.5 Valve adjustments and the cam timing pins, and I got tired of fucking trying to find those because they were never in there, so I just fucking bought my own.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

Then, sometimes you go to dealerships and they're super fucking organized. They got a checkout sheet, they know what they have.

Marshall Sheldon:

Dude, point me in the direction. Point me in the direction of that one. You know what I mean, because those facilities, I've been in some of those facilities. The dealer that I work for has some of those facilities that are like that. They got sweet checkout boxes where you got to check it out of a little box and it's all illuminated in there and it's like some kind of heavenly sound when you open the door. Point me in the direction of that shop because I'm down. I'm in the same boat as you, like for Cummins, like I said, I consider myself more of a Cummins specialist just with my specialty is mainly Cummins. So I have all kinds of Cummins specialty tools, front and rear main installers, cam wedges like you were talking about, timing stuff that you know go to get it in the shop and it's not just ... it's every shop I've worked at has been like that. You go in there to get it and it's gone. Somebody-

Melissa:

You got to spend an hour figuring out who has it and then, the person that has it has got to look through their giant pile of shit on their workbench to try and find it. Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

That's right.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

So it's like I do the same thing. All my normal everyday specialty tooling that I use, I own my own because it's just so much easier for me, even though it's hourly and my paycheck is the same, whether I do it in 40 hours or I do it in 35 hours, I want to get onto the next project. I'm not trying to sit on the same project.

Melissa:

Did you ever work in a shop that your bonus system was based on your performance proficiency and efficiency numbers?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, so I did work at a dealer when I first came down here to the south that had a bonus incentive program like that. It was actually pretty good. I got a pretty good bonus pretty regularly because they also paid a mentorship bonus.

Melissa:

That's nice.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, so I trained two ... I mentored two apprentices while I was working there and I got a bonus for that. They paid biweekly. So every biweekly I got a couple hundred bucks for training these apprentices and then, I also got an efficiency bonus and a proficiency bonus, which I always hit and it ramped up, but then it capped at like 110%. So I would run my numbers to 112 and then, I'd just vibe right there.

Melissa:

That brings up a good point. There's a big controversy with the bonus systems and having bonus is based off efficiency proficiency numbers. There's a big controversy with that. I've worked under a bonus system like that, which I did really well on, actually. We actually didn't have a cap. There was people making extra thousand dollars a month sometimes. That was at one of my John Deere dealerships I worked at, but I made an extra $600, I think was my best month that which was fucking nice. That's $300 a paycheck of extra money, but there's a controversy with that. There's a controversy of is this going to make it so technicians rush too much through something? Because we all know the saying of technicians, it's better to do it right the first time and take longer than it is to do it twice fast, right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

So there's some people and there's some controversy that having a bonus system set up like that creates lazy mechanics that are fast. Which I've always had the idea that every really good mechanic is in some way, shape or form lazy. We're trying to find the easiest way to do something, the smartest way to do it, right? We all know there's that technician that will struggle their way through everything because they just work harder, not smarter sometimes. So what is your opinion on the bonus system? Because in some ways, it makes people want to ... they want to make time, they want to ... and especially, nowadays with the younger technicians, sometimes it's hard to give them something to want to make time.

Marshall Sheldon:

Right.

Melissa:

So what's your opinion on a bonus system set up like that and the pros and cons to it?

Marshall Sheldon:

I feel like there is some pros to it for sure, and if you put the right things in place to look over the work that's being performed by your technicians, that the system can be pretty good. If trucks are being properly ... or trucks or equipment, whatever it is, if that stuff is being properly QCed after the repair is complete, then you can track problems with the technician before it gets to your customer-

Melissa:

Exactly. Exactly.

Marshall Sheldon:

So I feel like if you put something in place like that where every job is quality controlled by say, the foreman or a lead in the shop and they got some sort of checklist where it can be ... there's a check and a balance and that person can be held accountable, then I feel like that would work out great, but we both know that that probably wouldn't be followed very well. Sometimes it can be and sometimes it can't be. All of that stuff is a tossup.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

I feel like if you have something like that in place, you could successfully do that. The flat rate shops do it all the time and there's some really successful companies out there that only work flat rate with no guarantee. Then, there are techs like one through three or whatever levels are on an hourly guaranteed. So I mean, it must work sometimes or part of the time or 60% of the time, otherwise, other people wouldn't do it. I did want to add something in there, when I was a junior technician, one of the old hands at that fleet shop used to tell me, "Hey, you're not going to work here forever. It'd be awesome if you did, but you're not going to work here forever." And he used to tell me all the time, "You'll never get fired for being too slow, but you'll get fired for fucking shit up."

Melissa:

Yup. Yup.

Marshall Sheldon:

So I always just ... I just got a speed, man. I put that cruise control on and get done as quickly as I can, but I'll try to do the best job every time.

Melissa:

Well, and we all know as young mechanics, that first year and a half is rough.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

You feel like you fuck up everything you touch, right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

It's rough. I actually had a young lady on my first episode and she's wanting to be a mechanic and I've talked to her before in person. She actually came up to see me when I worked in a shop and her whole thing is she's scared. She's scared to fuck shit up. She's scared to not do good enough because she wants ... she's got that drive and that hunger that she just wants to be good at it and she wants to be good at everything, and how do you handle it when you're fucking shit up? It's like, "Well, the only fuck up is when you do it twice," right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

The only true mistake you make is if you do it twice. Obviously, as you know and what you just covered, sometimes mistakes are made almost intentionally or you're like, "I think I can get away with this because you're trying to make time," which is not a correct way to approach a job. The other thing with the bonus system is sometimes I've seen ... I've heard of shops having this problem. The shops that I've worked at with bonus systems, I've always worked in a shop that everybody is willing to help everybody. It's a great environment. Everybody is willing to help everybody. They had it to where if you're helping me, let's say, some technician help ... a technician is helping me, they clock onto my job so they're not racking up time on theirs, right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Right.

Melissa:

So it's racking up time on mine. That's fair. I believe that's fair. In some shops they don't do that. So people are less likely to help each other or want to help each other because they know it's going to cut into their time, which is cutting into their bonus.

Marshall Sheldon:

Right, I think another thing to add to that too would be that say, Melissa is really good at that particular job and I'm not as good at it. I'm like, "Hey Melissa, how do you do this as fast as you do it?" You're not incentivized to teach me how to do that as quickly because you would not make as much money, if I can do it as fast as you can do it, and they're feeding you that work constantly because they know that Melissa is really, really fast at that particular type of job, so they're going to keep feeding that work to you. If I can do it-

Melissa:

That was in a backhoe transmissions.

Marshall Sheldon:

If they're going to feed that to me too, that's less of that gravy train work for you that I'm kind of feed spooning some of that off.

Melissa:

I mean I've always been fine with that. I've always loved helping people. I've always loved teaching people. I've never been one to be like, "I'm going to hold out my secrets in this box and not telling anybody."

Marshall Sheldon:

Me neither. Yeah.

Melissa:

I've met technicians like that though. They're actually kind of few and far between, but I've met technicians that, that are kind of like ... actually, the only problem I've ever had with a male technician was an older gentleman that was working at an ag dealership I started at and at the time, he was getting all the construction work, even though they weren't ... it was the only John Deere dealership in that area, and even though they were technically green, they did take on some of the yellow equipment from farmers. He was primarily the construction technician, and I showed up coming from a construction dealership and the boss ... not only did this man fuck up everything he touched and had some really major problems with the work that he did, but I also had the actual ... the dealership experience on that equipment. I mean, I'm not going to say I'm perfect, I fuck shit up too.

For the most part, I did okay. So, I was fed a lot of that work and he was insanely mad at me for a long time. He actually got fired back to your ... you only get fired if you fuck up a lot, not if you take too long. He got fired because he fucked up a bunch of shit, like major, major shit, like $20,000 backhoe transmissions and stuff like that, but I actually had to finish his last job for him. That's the only time I've really ever run into somebody like that, is because he felt like I was taking his work from him.

Marshall Sheldon:

Honestly, I haven't run into too much of it myself. I feel like if you're a senior in your shop and you see somebody acting like that, that you should probably square them away or let somebody that has more power than you square it away, but if you're truly a senior, you should be a fairly respected and as a leader in your facility. If you're like, "Hey, knock that crap off," then typically, it'll kind of self square itself away. I think that there's a lot of power that senior technicians have and they're afraid to speak up or afraid to ruffle any feathers but listen, we're all out here to make money. I'm the same way as you are. I'm an open book. If there's something I know and you want to know it, I will drop everything to show you how to do it the same way I do it.

Melissa:

Yeah. Well, and obviously, there's some technicians that are ... especially, when you're training ... I was this way even. I think everybody went through this phase when they were a young technician, where they're like, "No, I'm going to do it by myself because I'm an independent technician. I don't need no help," right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

We all went through that where they're like, "We can do this." Sometimes, and I watched ... I distinctly remember my technicians, I work next to, doing this to me and I've done it to other technicians were, I'm like, "Hey, if you try it this way, it might work a little bit better for you because I can see you're struggling." And they were like, "No, I'm going to do it my way." Okay, have fun with that. Let me know when you're about two hours in and you still can't figure it out. Then come get me later then, I'll be happy to show you.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, yeah.

Melissa:

I think all of us are a little bit stubborn at times. I kind of learned over the years that ... and even at year seven, I still needed help sometimes. You still need help sometimes, and what I learned is if it's going to take 15 minutes to ask a guy next to you to run a machine to help you line up a coupler or a bucket and line up pins on something or do whatever it is, if it's going to take 15 minutes, if they help you or if it's going to take three hours, if you try to do it by yourself, what's more cost effective to the customer? At that point, your pride doesn't fucking matter.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

Your customer is paying $145 an hour for you to work on this. I'm pretty sure they're going to be fine with another technician putting their time on it and having 30 minutes worth of time on that job than three hours of your time because you wanted to do it by yourself and you were being stubborn.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, ultimately ... Yeah, you're right and ultimately, when we're working on things, we need to be customer minded, I think is a good way to put it. We got to be thinking of our customers. Yeah, and thinking of our customer's best interest because I feel like there is a bit of a negative stigma on mechanics, that we're out to rip them off.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

There's plenty of that out there and we don't need to add or fuel to that idea. We need to let them know that we're here to help, we want to help them. We don't come into work to fuck somebody's stuff up or rip them off. We just come in to fix stuff.

Melissa:

Yup, so I was always big on ... obviously, you got to be a little careful in helping customers over the phone, right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. Yeah. You learn that real early. That's another thing you learn, when you train.

Melissa:

If you've got a customer and all they want is for you to look up a code, look up the fucking code for them.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

Because guess what, when they can't figure it out, who are they going to call?

Marshall Sheldon:

That's right.

Melissa:

The person that was willing to help them, I learned that ... I actually ran one of the shops I worked in while they were in between hiring bosses for about three months, and I did all of the ... and I scheduled the field work, I scheduled the shop work, I talked to customers and I learned a lot about ... especially in this shop, this particular shop, I was a secondhand man to the boss the whole time. Anyways, I mean, we helped set the shop up. Actually, this is a brand new shop. I set up the entire tool room, right? I did all of that shit. So, I kind of had an emotional investment into the shop and when I started, it was small. We were a small crew. I wasn't just a mechanic, I was a shop mechanic. I was the boss when my boss was out, I was answering the phones when he was busy doing other things.

I was helping with the checking machines in and out of the yard, and we were actually a pretty decent team because we all worked together to ... we had to work together because we didn't have enough people to fill all these positions. We were small, we were just starting, and I learned a lot about interacting with customers in that shop especially, and that's a pretty important skill I believe that all technicians should have is how to interact with customers and how to interact with them properly.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, 100%, one thing that I do since I'm in the field and I'm face to face with my customers all the time, literally every call I go to, I'm face to face with a customer, we do all of ... I have an apprentice with me 50 hours a week. So they are there right by my side learning and seeing just a child. Just raising a kid, to be honest with you, I'm teaching them everything that I literally know and they're watching me interact with customers. How do I talk to them? How do I talk to them on the phone? How do I talk to them face to face, the value of a handshake, all of those type of things. You come to a customer and you tell them you're going to do something and you better mean it.

Melissa:

Yeah. Respect and have respect for them.

Marshall Sheldon:

Every customer, I try to tell these junior technicians, every customer, I'm trying to make a customer for life every single time, and when you go to another dealer, they will continue to call you. Where are you working at now? They're trying to still come to you because they want you ... it's what you bring to the table. It's not always necessarily the dealer or the independent that you work at. They're trying to come to you.

Melissa:

I've definitely had customers, that I've worked on their stuff before, and this is over the course of the last seven years. I've had a few customers that will specifically ask for me, which just makes me feel good, right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

I actually had a customer drive his log skidder all the way from mid-Colorado, all the way up to the Fort River shop I worked at in Northern Colorado, just so I would work on it. Well, I mean, I kind of give props to my dad for that because my dad is a logger. He knew the guy for years. The guy is like, "I want to take this thing to a dealership, I want it done. Who do I call?" My dad's like, "Well, my fucking daughter is working in Fort River, so fucking send it to her. She'll be all over it." And I do because especially machines like that, I have a personal investment in that machine. Even at dealerships. Trucks, maybe not so much because trucks are going all over the country, but at equipment dealerships, a lot of the machines stay in those areas.

So you really do, you get to know the customers really well, you get to know the machines, and there is a point in time where you reach that if some of these customers in these machines, you have almost a personal vendetta to do good or make this customer happy because they've always been good to you or you work on this machine a lot. So you know the machine, you know the kinks, you know the course it's got.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

It's pretty rewarding work, actually.

Marshall Sheldon:

That's right. The more invested you are in, the more rewarding it feels, and that just goes to show you, when you go the extra mile for every job, there's going to be a couple of times where you do a job for a customer and you go the extra mile and it screws you and you can't-

Melissa:

Or you fuck it up, right?

Marshall Sheldon:

Right.

Melissa:

And it gets fucked up.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, and you can't let that one get you, you got to go to the next job and you got to carry on and try to do it the same way that you would've done it anyway. You can't let those couple of bad jobs sour your whole deal. A lot of people that work with me directly, they joke around. They call me Picasso and all kinds of stupid stuff like that because I paint everything.

Melissa:

I do too.

Marshall Sheldon:

I will do a turbo job.

Melissa:

Water pumps, turbos. Yup, I paint all that shit, all that shit. It's a pride deal. You gone into ... you bought a new turbo. I want it to look like you bought a new turbo.

Marshall Sheldon:

That's what I'm saying.

Melissa:

Engines, there's a lot of people that will slap ... you had long blocks for an example. Those are slap all that old shit on onto the black block, right? Then, ship it out. I'm like, "No, motherfucker, that dude paid fucking 30 grand for me to do this, 20 grand for me to do this. I want it to look like he paid 20 grand. I don't know how long the paint is going to last, but it's going to look fucking pretty when it leaves here." I never make time on long blocks for that exact reason because I fucking paint all the parts and I paint it as I go, right? So, there's ... yeah, yeah. I'm the same way.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, that stuff me pisses me off to no end. So, that's what I do all the time. I did some teeth on a bucket. I don't remember what the brand was at ... this customer that I work at, they have John Deeres and loaders and they have CAT loaders and multiple different brands, but they're all fairly new. I put scraper blades on them and teeth and I'll weld new stubs on them. They got some backhoes and I'll weld stubs on those and put new teeth on them, stuff like that. Anyway, I put some teeth on a backhoe bucket the other day and I backed it up, put it on the down line for him, and the operator came to get it and he was checking it all over, make sure it was all good. Then, he come back to their foreman or whatever and then, he came back to me and he is like, "Did you paint that whole bucket?"

I was like, "Well, yeah. I mean, that's like my trademark dude. I paint everything." I'm like, "That's why I've been coming and working for you for 30, 40 hours a week for two years." That customer I go work 30 hours a week for him at his shop, and that's just the type of work that I do each and every time. I was like, "Dude, you knew what to expect. What'd you think I was going to do?"

Melissa:

Yeah, it's a pride deal, and I do the same thing with welding, actually. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm some star fucking welder, okay? I've been doing it for a long fucking time, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm a master welder. I'm decent at it. I can do a decent job on the occasion that I have a shit weld come out, I will grind that motherfucker off and re-weld it as many times as it takes to make it look good, right? That's even including root passes. I do not like to have a shit root pass.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

I had one instance where I was trying to weld ... we had to put a thumb on an excavator and it was typical salesman job. The thumb was not actually for that machine, but instead of buying the right thumb, we had to make it work. So we had a company air lens out the pin bosses for that thumb where it bolts to the arm and we had to center it and then re-weld it. Well, that was my job. So I got all that shit going. I welded all my root passes and this is thick metal, so you got to preheat all of it with the torch, right? I got all my root passes done. I was so proud of it. I don't blame my job for having somebody else do the cover passes on that because I was actually traveling at the time to ... I had some family stuff happen at the time and I had to leave town last minute.

I had some family shit I had going on and I had to leave and the mechanic that ... I was really hoping they would just leave it because me and my dad were going to do this thing. It was only going to be a short few days. I'm like, "Dude, leave it until I come back on Monday. I'll weld all the cover passes." That didn't happen. Another kid welded the cover passes and this kid is a great kid and he knows he's not like a star welder. He was just doing what he was told, but it did not look the way I wanted that machine to leave. I was not happy about it. Like I said, I'm the person that if I weld something wrong and it doesn't look good, I will grind it off and re-weld it as many times as it takes to make it look good.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. One thing I did learn about heavy equipment for ... because I do a lot of heavy equipment work for that customer, is that like, "Dude, I am welding all the time."

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

Fabricating random crap that I've tried to order it from CAT and I can't get it for 900 years. I'm like, "Dude, I pull it down, I put it on, I find another piece of metal, the same thickness of steel and I'll use a plasma cutter and cut out that spacer that I need." I can't remember what they called it, a boss?

Melissa:

Yeah, like a pin boss?

Marshall Sheldon:

No. It was like a threaded boss and it welds to one of the arms and yeah, yeah, pin boss because the pin slides over that boss and then your bolt goes through it and holds it in.

Melissa:

Pin goes inside it. Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

Well, this one was on the outside and there's a little bolt that threads into it and it holds the pin from coming out.

Melissa:

Yeah, yeah. Pin retainer.

Marshall Sheldon:

Anyway. Yeah, and it was broke off and I called all over hell and then, some random old timer that was down the road at a welding shop was like, "Oh, yeah, I got to pull out of those. Come over and I'll get you a couple." So I went over there and got them and cut it off and welded that joker on, but it seems like it's a lot of welding. It's just a ton of welding. I'm a good welder, but yeah, It's just a lot of welding.

Melissa:

Welding is such an important skill to have in this industry. It is such an important skill to have and people don't realize it, especially, in heavy equipment or even shop ... you know how much tools and shit I've had to build with a welder or down to the things like bearing races.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

I weld those out or-

Marshall Sheldon:

I do the thing, yeah.

Melissa:

You got a pin stuck or a bolt that you're trying to get out and you fucking have to tack weld something onto there to try, and I've had to use ... for an example, I was working on, I don't remember if it was a 7R or a 6R tractor. It was a long time ago. Anyways, the oscillation pin for the front axle was seized in there. So what I ended up doing was welding the fuck out of this giant threaded, all thread rod. Welded the fuck out of that thing onto the front of that pin and then, I actually took a front main seal installer and put that over the pin because it fit over the pin and then, I could tighten the nut down and pull that pin out it.

Marshall Sheldon:

Right.

Melissa:

It's just little things like that even though you're not fabricating, maybe you're not building shit, you're putting a fucking auxiliary hydraulic kit on an excavator. Guess what, you have to weld on every single bracket for that. It's the little things and if welding ... having that skill for welding goes a long way and torch work.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah, torch. You know how many apprentices I get that can't turn on a torch?

Melissa:

That blows my mind.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah.

Melissa:

That actually leads me to one of the main questions, I'm trying to wrap this up a little bit here.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa:

One of my main questions is, do you feel like schooling would have benefited you, and if you were going to give advice to another young mechanic going into this industry, would you have them follow the similar path that you did or would you have them try a trade school?

Marshall Sheldon:

Well, I feel like if you can get ... so money is the biggest driving factor. So, if you can get into a tech school, I feel like, that's really reasonable, then I say go for it because I feel like that will give you a little bit of a leg up compared to say, an apprentice that comes in, that we interview and you're interviewing side by side with somebody who has zero knowledge, you are going to get an opportunity before that person would.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

So I would say that for sure, but if you're going to go spend 40,000 on a school, I feel like unless they have a specialty school that you're trying to go to, maybe Volvo for instance, you're trying to go work for a Volvo dealer and they've got a Volvo specific training like, I don't know if they still have date over at the school that you went to. They used to have date, the date program for Volvo over there.

Melissa:

They changed ownerships, I don't know if you're familiar with the fact that they changed ownerships.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa:

When I went, they had the date program. Now, they actually have, believe it or not, WyoTech has a heavy equipment side.

Marshall Sheldon:

Bitching.

Melissa:

Yeah, and they've got companies that have been donating or giving to or take their machines exclusively to WyoTech for work.

Marshall Sheldon:

That's pretty dope.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. So I feel like if you ... Yeah, if you can go to a school that has ... if you're going to spend a bunch of money, go to one that has the specialty stuff that you're trying to get to, because a lot of the-

Melissa:

So, what if you don't know what you want to work on yet? Do you think a general trade school is a decent idea?

Marshall Sheldon:

Yeah. So say you just go to a general community college that has a reputable diesel program, then you might go there and spend six, $10,000 and realize, "Hey, this shit ain't for me."

Melissa:

Yeah.

Marshall Sheldon:

And then, you're not out 40 grand or whatever. So I feel like that's kind of where I stand on schooling as far as that goes. Now, the way mechanics are right now, the shortage, the way it is, I feel like if you could get into a fleet and get ... a lot of these fleets are offering OEM training now in the truck side. So I think Ryder and Penske and a lot of those big names like that, they offer legitimate OEM Cummins training that you could work on there for a few years, get some good experience and then, go right to a dealer and just get some crazy money. So I feel like if I were to do it all over again, that's the way the route that I would go, is I would go to a fleet that offers OEM training.

I would tough it out there and learn as much as I could and then, I'd still probably end up at a dealer because the OEM training, after having a taste of it, that is pretty much the standard and I feel like as mechanics like we are, what's the ultimate level of a mechanic? We have the masters. You can be an OEM master, but I feel like to be a rep, you got the district service managers, which are for the OEM and they're technical, they're highly technical, highly skilled. They've done all of the possible OEM training that's out there. I feel like that's the top tier that you could ever be as a mechanic. So I guess you just kind of have to figure out where your goals are, but right off the rip, I feel like if I had to do it all over again, I'd still end up at a fleet and I would go with one that offers OEM type of training.

Melissa:

Yeah. Well, that answers that question. Well, I appreciate you coming on here and giving your opinions on stuff and talking about what companies can help do to help the younger technicians and then, we talked about younger technicians in their path that they could take.

Marshall Sheldon:

I got to be a hundred ... I was pleasantly surprised with your technical aspects that you have. I didn't come in thinking any otherwise, but it was a pleasure to have a conversation with you.

Melissa:

Thank you.