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Tim Winkeler is the President and CEO of VIP Tires & Service. He is a people-focused leader whose teams are high-performing, with a track record of exceeding expectations. Tim advocates for “right to repair” legislation, which is vital to the continued success of the tire and auto repair industry.
In this episode…
When your car inevitably needs something fixed, where are you going to take it for repair? Is there a preferred location or do you prefer to fix it yourself? What if you couldn’t choose where and who can fix your vehicle and your only option was to take it to the dealership or the manufacturer?
According to Tim Winkeler, the President and CEO of VIP Tires & Service, the modern technology in newer cars makes it possible that you’ll no longer have the opportunity to make that decision — putting your ability to fix your own car and many small independent repair shops at risk. If this sounds concerning to you, be sure to listen to this episode of Gain Traction!
On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge is joined by Tim to discuss important legislation in the automotive industry called right to repair. Tim is advocating for any repair shop, no matter how small or independent, or any car owner to be able to repair any car. Don’t miss this important episode!
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Tim Winkeler explains the right to repair legislation he advocates for
- How Tim got involved with advocating for right to repair
- Why the right to repair affects multiple industries besides the automotive industry
- The potential consequences for the consumer if right to repair is not enacted
- How to get involved in the right to repair issue
- Why there is an urgency to act now
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Transcription
Announcer:
Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.
Mike Edge:
Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, Mike Edge here, I am the host of Gain Traction, where I talk with top automotive business leaders about their personal experiences in the tire and auto repair industry, as well as extract some words of wisdom. In this program, I’d like to give a little shout out to Michael McGregor, a new friend of mine, the author of the book, “Buy, Build, Fix, Sell “, that can be found on Amazon. Michael is also managing director at Focus Investment Banking and a columnist for Modern Tire Dealer. The book is a great read for any tire shop or repair shop that wants to grow their business or even get it ready to sell some time down the road in the future. This episode is brought to you by Tread Partners in the Retread program. Tread Partners has a theory that your best audience to acquire additional revenue from this month or this month, are customers that you have already sold to.
Tread Partners has designed a product called Retread that is a full-scale customer re-engagement program to win back a shop’s best-lost customers. It’s a one-time 90-day program that generates a guaranteed 10 to one return on investment. That’s correct, a 10 to one guaranteed ROI, no tricks or gimmicks. These are customers that are already in your POS right now. So if you invest $10,000 today, we’re saying that you’ll get a return of a $100,000 in 90 days. We think our 10 to one is better than any shop can do internally for themselves. What’s the risk? Just email us at [email protected] to learn more or visit treadpartners.com.
Today’s guest is Tim Winkeler, President and CEO of VIP Tires and Service with 63 locations in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. We had Tim as a guest about a year ago. Tim is my second returning guest ever, because he is advocating for something very important to the tire and auto repair industry called, “Right to Repair legislation.” Tim is primarily involved on the state level in Maine, Right to Repair legislation is being considered in many states legislatures now as well as in Washington DC for national legislation and it is vital to our industry as well as to other industries. Tim, welcome back to Gain Traction.
Tim:
Thanks Mike. I appreciate being here, and one quick note, in the last year we’ve opened up three locations, so we’re now 66, not 60…
Mike:
Fabulous.
Tim:
… Locations. So we’ve got two more in Vermont and one more in New Hampshire.
Mike:
Fantastic. So let’s talk about Right to Repair. What is it?
Tim:
It is protecting consumer choice. It is making sure that consumers and the driving public across America have the ability to continue to take their vehicle to any repair shop that they choose, or in the case of do-it-yourselfers, it is really protecting vehicle owners ability to work on their own vehicles and there’s a lot of modern technology that threatens that freedom today.
Mike:
And where is that? Is that threat primarily coming from manufacturers trying to protect or corral the repair work, or trying to monopolize it in some fashion? Is that what’s going on?
Tim:
Mike, to say they’re trying to monopolize it? I don’t want to try to speak for intent for them. They’ve embraced technology as we all have in all facets of our lives. So our phones are walking computers, our phones produce all kinds of data. And today what’s happened is the modern car is literally a computer, it’s a technology device on wheels. And so the days of all of the data that a car produces, residing on the vehicle, are gone. And so that’s really, if you boil all this down, there’s a whole lot of details around it.
But if you boil this down, it really comes down to the fact that remote repairs, remote diagnostic, the data that these vehicles are producing, much of it is wireless and much of it gets transmitted. It’s called telematics. A lot of people aren’t familiar with the term telematics. I know you are, but telematics data that gets transmitted back to the manufacturers, that’s how a lot of the more modern vehicles are managed and updates are made and everything. And we believe when somebody buys a car, that data should be theirs and they should be able to decide who gets it. And it shouldn’t just always go back to the manufacturers.
Speaker 3:
Tim, I think that’s a great explanation. I guess my initial impulse is that could be some monopolizing, but that makes all the sense in the world. But it is our data. I mean if you bought the car, you should have a right to repair it. And I don’t mean to golf on a tangent, but this isn’t just affecting our industry, it’s affecting multiple industries from my understanding, on Right to Repair?
Tim:
Yeah, here in the state of Maine, we’ve gotten approval to collect signatures, but when we first announced our intent to get a Citizen’s initiative on our ballot up here in Maine, it got covered by the Portland Press Herald, the largest distribution newspaper in the state of Maine. And there were literally thousands and thousands of comments on that article in the Portland Press Herald. And it ranged all industries. There were a whole lot that had to do with their vehicle. But people were talking about cell phones, they were talking about heavy ag equipment, I guess John Deere and Caterpillar and others have done the same with a lot of big equipment, industry equipment. So this does span across many, many industries, but obviously to everyday people, the place where it hits them the most, is in the car.
Mike:
Oh, absolutely. And it’s a fundamental piece of legislation. If you think about it from just a legislative standpoint, I mean this thing really sets a precedent, and due to technology, the way you described it, and this is for our listeners, if we don’t pass this, we change the course of a lot of business in United States.
Tim:
We put a lot of small businesses at risk. You think about any town, any city people live in, you see automotive repair shops up and down the street, and people can learn the trade and make a great career in the trade. But imagine a day when you buy a vehicle and the only place you can take it is back to the manufacturer’s car dealership locations. And you start to really put at risk all these small independent repair shops who need to have access to tools to do repairs. And if the future of cars is wireless data, then all those independent repair shops have to be able to access the wireless data that the car produces to be able to diagnose and repair it.
Speaker 3:
And that should be fair for anybody, and it is fair for anybody. So how do you suggest that, let’s say most of our audience is tire dealers, auto repair shops. We’ve grown in an audience quite a bit in the last year. So what can they do to participate or assist in seeing this legislative process through whether it’s at their state level or their national level?
Tim:
Yeah, I guess the first thing I would suggest is get yourself educated on the topic. I’ve had to go get myself very educated on the topic in the last few months. I always knew the right to repair was out there as a quick history, if you will, in 2013. I had been here at VIP just a few years in Massachusetts. Our industry led by the Autocare Association, got a ballot initiative in 2013, passed with 80% of voter approval in the state of Massachusetts, when that happened on the original Right to Repair legislation. Because a lot of people say, Oh, we’ve already fought that battle and we won.
And the fact is, in 2013 we got the ballot initiative passed in Massachusetts. When that happened, the car manufacturers all came to the negotiation table. I can assume they didn’t want 50 different states with 50 different laws that they had to deal with. So they came to the table and they negotiated a memorandum of understanding it was called, which made clear, and they agreed, to build a system such that independent repair shops and technicians could access all the data that they needed that resided on the vehicles. So the O B D two and all the scan tools and everything that our people in our industry use today, that all was enabled by that decision between the car manufacturers and the Autocare Association nine years ago.
Mike:
Okay.
Tim:
That’s the first piece of history to understand what happened was, telematics data and wireless data, was not part of that agreement. So here we get to today when telematics data and wireless data are so prevalent on new cars, that that memorandum of understanding no longer applies to that data. And so now shops like us and many across the country are starting to see these new 2022 vehicles. We had a Tesla come in the other day, that had a traction light on, we had no way to see why that traction light came on and no way to help that customer. And the customer said, “You mean I got to go back down to Boston to get this thing diagnosed?” He was looking for a state inspection sticker, where it’s a brand new car with 1500 miles, and we can’t give you a state inspection sticker because you got a dash light on. And we don’t have the tools to be able to diagnose that for you.
Speaker 3:
No, and you give a great example there of just how it hits you. You’re not the only one out there I’m sure. So man, that really puts it in perspective right there. And I appreciate you giving the long history. I did not know that. I was trying to get myself educated here recently, but I’m looking at just a few years back, but seeing where it originated, seeing how that memorandum is outdated, and now we’re racing to get this legislation so that you don’t run into those and other shops like you, don’t run into those problems, like you did with the Tesla. So yeah, how fast do you see it happening in Maine?
Tim:
Well, we’re working right now to get on the ballot for 2023. So really we’ve got a signature collection, the petition drive just started this week and we’ve got 90 days to collect about 70,000 signatures. So mid-January is our goal to get those 70,000 signatures. I think we’ll blow way past that. And if we are able to successfully get those signatures, then our Right to Repair Bill, in the state of Maine, will be on the ballot in 2023 for citizens to vote. So that’s what we’re doing in Maine and that’s all part of the Autocare Association’s efforts to now spread this across multiple states so that the car manufacturers understand that. So here’s a little bit more history. Two years ago, November 2020, we passed another updated Right to Repair Bill in the state of Massachusetts. Again, 75% voter approval. The car manufacturers have held that one up in the courts for two years.
Speaker 3:
Oh man.
Tim:
So it’s been two years since we got it passed in Massachusetts, the phase two right to Repair. And so for two years, because it’s been held up in the courts, our Autocare Association has essentially decided, “Okay, we’re going to start knocking them down state by state.” And so that’s why in Maine we chose to be the second state, and I chose to be the lead applicant to the Secretary of State to get this Citizen’s initiative onto our ballots in November 2023. Related to this and parallel to this, there’s a federal bill, the Repair Act. And you mentioned that actually when you and I talked about preparing for the podcast here, there is a federal bill out there called the Repair Act that I believe is bipartisan and it has a lot of the same goals.
It aims to solve the same problem. I don’t know what the chances of that ultimately being successful are. So I believe that what we’re doing in Maine and what maybe some of your other listeners, in other states could potentially organize similar activities in other states across our country. But we have to attack this in as many different fronts as possible so that we can ultimately get what is required, which is a standardized way to access the repair data that these vehicles are producing.
Speaker 3:
And to all our listeners, there is an urgency to this. We need to act now and you need to contact your local legislators, your state legislators, senate, as well as house, and then contact your US representatives as well as US senators and push it from both sides. And let’s just get this thing across the finish line, because it is vital to not only our industry and our livelihoods, but a lot of other industries that you don’t want to lose that data and the right to repair your own equipment, a car, vehicles, et cetera.
Tim:
Yeah, yeah. And in Massachusetts, two years ago when they did get this passed, we were outspent by vast amounts of money and the car manufacturers ran a campaign on television ads, showing all kinds of perceived safety risks that your data that your car is producing is somehow opened up to others, besides the car manufacturers. It showed somebody opening a garage door, because they were able to get that data from the car that opens the garage door, and just they preyed on people’s fears and thankfully the voters in Massachusetts didn’t buy it, and they vote for the Right to Repair.
Speaker 3:
And Tim, you might not want to go there, but that’s where I felt like what I read, it just, that’s the monopolizing of the information. A little bit of sinisterism in there, maybe wrong intentions when you’re doing that because they very well know that the data that we’re looking for is the data to repair the vehicle, and don’t act like that’s some secret recipe that’s going to destroy the world if you let that out.
Yeah, that frustrates me a little bit. But I really appreciate you coming on so quickly. I emailed you yesterday and then you responded, but I felt like there was an urgency and then when I found out through our mutual contact that you were battling this issue and going after it in Maine, I just thought, “Man, I’m going to reach out to him because I’d like to do a podcast on this.” And we’re going to title it Right to Repair, the podcast, and just get it out there and hopefully it helps spread the word. And if you think of anything else that you might want to say to the audience right now, please let me know or let us know.
Tim:
I think you mentioned it, I think anybody who contact your local representatives, the Autocare Association has a part of their website called yourcaryourdata.org. Anybody can go to yourcaryourdata.org and educate themselves about the importance of this issue. I think all of us shop owners, and leaders within the tire industry, and the auto repair industry need to also be very vocal about it, and not just to our representatives, but whether that’s LinkedIn, Facebook, social channels, we need to be talking about this. We need to make a big deal about this in Vegas at Apex and Sema. I think our industry is massive and we power this country and we power the freedom that Americans have to get in their car and go where they want to go. And part of that freedom is being able to get my car repaired where I want to get it repaired. And everybody needs to make sure that they themselves are educated on the issue, and that they educate all their employees and their customers on the issue.
Speaker 3:
You couldn’t have said it better. Tim, thank you very much for being on the Gain Traction podcast a second time in addressing this important issue Right to Repair. To all the listeners, thank you for being part of the Gain Traction podcast. Please do your part, get educated on Right to Repair and contact your local national representatives to make sure Right to Repair is passed everywhere. Until next time, have a great day.
Announcer:
Thanks for listening to the Gain Traction podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
Transcript
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