Putting the "Right" in Right to Repair: A Distributor's Perspective

Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome to Auto Care On Air, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Stacey Miller, Vice President of Communications at the Auto Care Association, and this is Traction Control, where we chat about recent news from the global to the local level and what it may mean to the industry, featuring guests on the front lines. Let's roll. I'm here with Jerry Bender, who's vice president of Midwest Wheel Companies. Welcome, Jerry.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Thank you, appreciate it, I'm so happy to have you. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 0:42

And you're here doing a fly-in and you're advocating on behalf of Right to Repair right I am.

Speaker 2: 0:48

Yep, We've been meeting with mostly members of the Senate for this trip since the bill's in the Senate Just had a lunch with our Iowa congresswoman, but most of our meetings were at the Senate this week.

Speaker 1: 1:01

Yeah, tell me a little bit about your day and what that process was like for you.

Speaker 2: 1:08

I think this is not your first time doing that, right? No, no, I actually got into this heavy. A year ago at this event. The president of our company, mike Callison, got asked by Tina Hubbard from HDA if he would like to attend this event and he said well, that's not really my cup of tea or my bag, he says, but I got the perfect guy to send out and he asked me if I would come out. And I just, I don't know, I just got the bug and have really enjoyed it. You know, growing up in Iowa, you are around a lot of politicians. You know, being the first to caucus, well, if we haven't messed that up, but you know you're just around it a lot and it's fun. And you know you can get real close. You can get a lot closer to the politicians than people think. All you got to do is ask, ask for meetings and they'll usually give you the time.

Speaker 1: 1:53

So I mean, tell me a little bit more about that, because I think there's a lot of trepidation around talking to a politician and what that's like, and one of the things I like to remind people is that just that they're people.

Speaker 2: 2:08

They're just like you and I are.

Speaker 1: 2:10

So when you say get close to a politician, it's not even really you talking politics, right? Like what were your conversations with the congresswoman?

Speaker 2: 2:18

like so with congressman was very good. She shared a story about she got to go to the first mass that the Pope Leo gave, and so that was a really fun story to hear. But you know, I actually live in Congresswoman Miller-Meeks District and it's a very tight district. I think one election she only won by like six votes. It's very tough. So you know, just, you know people that, know people there. You know we're a rural state, it's small, it's a small state, so it's really easy to connect the dots really quick to find common interest or common people. That you know and we definitely did that.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Today I was in a lunch with her that had to do with the PAC people that had donated through PAC funds. So we didn't talk a lot of policy today you can't really do that in those but we just visited. She gave us an update of what she's doing and then afterwards we had a nice chat because I met with her several times and offered up to host an event at our place for her campaign. And you know they do that all around the state. They'll go to people's homes and then have little town halls or whatever. So we invited her to our place to do that.

Speaker 2: 3:30

And yeah, she's just, she's really really neat person, had a great time and this morning we met with our Senator. Well, we didn't meet with Senator Ernst, we met with one of her staffers. But I was out here a month ago with Iowa Motor Truck Association and we met with her. I couldn't really talk about the Right to Repair Act, it really wasn't on ATA's agenda. But we've just met Senator several times. You just kind of get to know who your politicians are in Iowa for some reason. I don't know how better to explain it.

Speaker 1: 4:01

Yeah, it's like your friends. It's like your buddies it really is. They're involved in the community. It's a small town, like you said, and you kind of have that opportunity in it. I think you told me a story about there's a there's a barbershop involved. Yeah, and you're a little bit more involved in politics Tell me.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Well, it's actually my wife, my wife Amanda. She ran a barbershop in Pleasantville, iowa. It's a little small town and about 1,500 people. It's like 25 miles southeast of Des Moines and you know, during the caucus season every presidential candidate's in Iowa for months and it almost gets daunting how many events there are. But you know she's met a lot of great politicians and presidential candidates. They stop and they like to go to the barbershops and talk to people or the coffee shops right across the road. They love they just love being in that setting, in that rural setting. So we've met a lot of them over the years.

Speaker 2: 4:58

I think politicians overall get a pretty bad rap. You know, no matter what side you're on, you've always got people who think politicians are bad or they're this or that. I think deep down most of them are really good and they mean well and they're trying to do good things, whether you agree with them or not. And you know there's bad ones. You know there's people out there that don't have good intentions, but I think most of the politicians Politicians are good people. He's trying to do things for us.

Speaker 1: 5:23

So every politician gets their haircut? Yeah, just like you and I.

Speaker 2: 5:27

They do, or they go at least visit the barbershops and they, you know they're just around, you see them everywhere. They try to visit all 99 counties in Iowa and they make several trips through all of them Especially. You know we're close enough to Des Moines, you know to where a lot of them would say that you know you get a lot of traffic from them in our area.

Speaker 1: 5:46

I love that and it's just. It's such a relatable story because we all live somewhere, we all have officials who are in charge of, you know, making changes to what's happening in our local towns, and it's our job to speak up and let them know what are our concerns. So when you boil it down to just that and having a conversation, having a beer at the bar with your buddy, I mean why should it be any different than talking to a politician.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Yeah, exactly, Tell me a little bit about you growing up and where you grew up and how you even got involved in the heavy duty industry, because I think it's a really interesting story.

Speaker 2: 6:22

So you know, I grew up in the same community I'm talking about Pleasantville Graduated with like a class of 49 people. I, you know, dabbled and you know thought I'd go to school. I really wanted to be a carpenter, to be honest, and then at that time the union carpenters at work was slow. I ended up going to work at a dairy. And carpenters that work was slow, I ended up going to work at a dairy and somehow I've worked my way into a truck, the truck shop and a maintenance apprentice job and it wasn't a very good mechanic but I gravitated towards managing the parts room and I like doing all that. And then a couple of years later I ended up being the fleet manager and I one of our suppliers is Midwest wheel companies, who I work for now, and I one of our suppliers is Midwest Wheel Companies, who I work for now. And so I done business with Midwest Wheel for several years and, just you know, loved what I was doing. I went back to school at night and really got into HR. I was handling employee and labor relations stuff with the Teamsters for the dairy and, you know, really enjoying that. And then I got asked. I got the president of Midwest Wheels, john Minor at the time reached out to me. I don't know if I'd be interested in being the branch manager at their store at their Des Moines location and I loved their company and I'd worked at AE Dairy for 20 years so I was ready to try something new. So I went there and kind of progressed there, kind of moved up the chain. Midwest wheel got really involved in Iowa Motor Truck Association, imta really like dealing on that. I'm on the board there now and, and you know we come out here they'll call on Washington, like I said a month ago.

Speaker 2: 8:09

But really just got into that. You know I wasn't really good at selling parts or none of that. You know Midwestville sells parts but I wasn't good at that. I was more on the people managing side and operations. But then you know this thing I'd been hearing about right to repair for every year since I'd started Midwest Wheel for the last 12 years. Wow, there were people like Mark Caron. You know he was a guy that I listened to all the time at the annual meetings how hard they were fighting for this. And there was, you know, people like that and Tina Hubbard and Edward Kuo from CVSN and I really at that time didn't know much about auto care. I didn't know who they were and how that fell in until a couple of years ago.

Speaker 2: 8:49

And then I just, you know, I came to this event last year and I just really liked it. I liked the people. I met Bill Hanby. I really liked him. I liked Lisa, I just, you know, mcnardelli, I just met all these people and I was like, man, this, this is cool, I just like doing this, I don't like to lose. So who does? Yeah? So I was like I'm we're gonna get sponsors and it's, you know, I want to help finish this thing off for all the hard work people did before. So, and our customers is, you know, customers part. We like to call them partners, but, um, you know they're, they're fixing trucks, they're running their own businesses fixing trucks and they don't have the time to come out to DC and do this to where I do on their behalf. So that's who we're fighting for. So all of our independent repair shops can continue repairing whatever vehicle they want to repair or have the ability to repair. That's right, yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:41

And right to repair. It sounds like it really crept up in your business, so you started hearing about it the past 12 years, which is really interesting because we've been at this for quite some time. You know we call it right to repair 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, right. She started so long ago and the laws have kept evolving and we've had to evolve along with it.

Speaker 2: 10:02

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:03

So, you know, I really appreciate the fact that you heard it, you noticed it and you decided that, hey, you were going to be a part of it and want to do something about it.

Speaker 2: 10:11

Well, and I was trying to find my own place in our company. Like I said, I'm in our companies. We distribute truck parts and we're really good at it. We've been in business 114 years. You know, our fifth generation family owned and 40% of our company's owned by the employees and an ESOP. And we had, a few years ago, worked on our mission statement and one of the sentences in our mission statement was we support the industry.

Speaker 2: 10:37

You know, and that finally clicked with me Like this is something that I can do. You know where you know, like our VP of with me. Like this is something that I can do. You know where you know, like our VP of purchasing, he's dealing with our suppliers and you know, we have our finance department. Anyway, this is just kind of like this is something that I can do and to where nobody else has to do any heavy lifting.

Speaker 2: 10:55

I can take this role on, and our president of our company, mike Callison Jr, is so supportive, like I'm. Like, are you okay if I do all this traveling? He's like absolutely, that's what I want. I want the people on my staff to be involved and it doesn't mean it has to be a Midwest Oil event, it's just an industry event. I want you involved and he's supported this 100%. He's on the board of HDA truck pride, who's heavily involved in this, and with Tina Hubbard, and Tina and Mike talked about it and yeah, they just they're like you're all in, just you know, work hard at it. You know, do your best Wow.

Speaker 1: 11:36

What, how. We are so grateful for the support that your company brings, for the support that HDA truck pride brings, because it only takes one person with one of these contagious ideas to say, hey, I want to help and I want to spread the message because this, this fight, you know, it's not about dollars as much as people think it is. It's about voices, right, and it's about the voice of the driver, the voice of the consumer, the voice of the people that this actually affects. Right Like this is at its core what politics really is.

Speaker 1: 12:07

And you know there's a story that you told me about. You know you're really working to educate people within your company too about this right. So you're an advocate and you're working to create other advocates in your company and you were sharing with me. You know one of the things that we do here at AutoCare is a letter campaign to elected officials saying, hey, we need you to support right, to repair, and we ask people who are contacts in our member companies to please send this letter. It's pre-populated but you can edit it and say you know what you really feel about it and how it affects you. And you kind of took that campaign and you were advocating that with your employee base, right, yeah, so yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2: 12:47

You know, I talked with a lot of our main members of our Iowa Motor Truck Association, because they're all large fleet owners. But then within our let's say what I call our delivery network, you know we have a lot of repair shops. That's who this really affects. And you know, being rural, rural Iowa, you don't want to have to send a truck 40 miles to Des Moines to get it fixed. And so I started reaching out to our bigger repair shops first and I was telling them. Some of them didn't know that this was going on.

Speaker 2: 13:17

So you know, I reached out and I had. You know one in particular, I won't mention their name, but I said, hey, would you be willing to write a letter? And I knew we had to form a letter and stuff, but I was like I like the personal side of it more, like write my own letter. And this particular owner in this company said, hey, I'd love to. He says, but I fix trucks, that's what I do, and would you be willing to help me out with that of that. So then I helped him out and I made sure I understood the history of his company and I wrote a nice little thing, sent it to him to sign off, and then he sent it on to his Congress officials. So yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:49

And then just today I got a commitment from Lisa Fauché to attend our fall sales meeting and we're going to have her be one of the keynote speakers talking to our outside sales team on how to educate their customers on right to repair so that they really know what's going on, so then they can get them on board with reaching out to the politicians in their district. So yeah, so Lisa just committed that today, so that was a big win for us, you know having her Because you know we got 50-some salesmen on the street and they're calling on all these repair shops every day, so they have a big voice.

Speaker 1: 14:23

What a great opportunity, and I think it's. It's just a really simple way I love that you share like this wasn't a huge commitment on your behalf. Right Like, you're talking to your employees about it, you're sharing information about it, giving them the opportunity to engage where they can, you know, but you're not forcing it on them at all. Right Like it, this issue resonates with a lot of people and normally, once we start sharing information about it, it has this visceral, visceral response and people get really amped up about it. And we're lucky in that because, you know, sometimes it takes people to realize that, in order to act, right Like, like, what is the thing that makes you feel okay? Well, maybe you should act upon it.

Speaker 2: 15:32

I've been explaining it to, like some of our employees, you know, because they ask so you're in DC again, what's going on? I tell them and they say, so what is this? What's the right? You know, like I'm talking maybe warehouse employees or people on our sales counter and I say, well, it's kind of like this how would you like to be told you couldn't go see Dr Johnson? You had to go see Dr Jones Because that was the rules and they're like no, I want to go see my own doctor. I said that's what right to repair is. You want to go get your truck fixed.

Speaker 2: 16:02

Where you want to get your truck fixed, you trust the repair shop and, to be honest, most of the independent repair shops, a lot of them, are better, more qualified, I feel, than some of the dealerships, and you know they go through a lot of training and there's, you know, a lot of they're just disqualified, and so that's how I try to explain it to them. It's like we're taking away a choice for that for our customer on what they can do. We're taking away a choice for that for our customer on what they can do, and it's driving business now away from them to the dealerships, which and the dealerships have their place. I mean, the dealerships are great, they do great work, they have great service. You know great parts, supply everything. But there's also other choices.

Speaker 2: 16:44

That's right, and that's the message.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Yeah, and I'm trying to explain to like like people in my circle is on how to talk about it. Like how do you explain to your family what you do? You know it can be complex and you know my brother called me the other day and he says, hey, I had to change the brakes on you know my car, it was a Toyota Camry and like I had to go to the dealer for some reason because something about the part and this and that and it was really expensive and I was like no-transcript. We're so thrilled and so lucky about that. So one of the other things I wanted to briefly touch upon was you're really consistent in your advocacy. So this is not the first time that you've been to Washington DC and I find that so admirable, because Congress, people change right, there's a changing of a guard every so often.

Speaker 1: 18:21

And you know we host a legislative summit every other year where we come and we go to Capitol Hill, we talk to our legislators, but this advocacy where you're coming into DC every so often in between those visits, to help keep that top of mind, I mean that is a commitment but it is something that we appreciate because that helps that continue that drumbeat of that of that bill Right.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Yeah, and DC is a fun place to visit because in your free time you get to go. You know, everything that you should do while you're in DC is free, you know, and everything you know. You can spend days and never really truly appreciate what's here. My wife and I had a few hours yesterday and we went back to the National History Smithsonian. We've been there probably three or four times and we still have it, you know. So, yeah, I mean people should come here more and you should try to meet with them in your district. You know I tried to. You know, go to set up meetings in some of the senators offices, you know, yeah, and they have most of them have rural district offices, two or three. And yeah, I just try to get involved and meet with them, tell them who you are and what you're about. You know we've had a lot of good history with Senator Ernst in particular. She actually endorsed my daughter to be a possible candidate for the Naval Academy when she was 18 years old.

Speaker 2: 19:42

So we come out then and met with Senator, you know, several years ago and yeah you should use your politicians. That's what they want, that's what you're there for. Most people think you can't get to them. Well, you can.

Speaker 2: 19:54

I mean it's very easy. The only thing what frustrates me is how long it takes to make decisions, sometimes, like I want to have a meeting right now and then an hour later I want you to email me saying, hey, I'm going to co-sponsor that. It doesn't work like that, which I'm struggling I. I'm learning that right now. I'm in that learning process. It's been nice being around Lisa and McNardelli, like you know. They're giving you good advice. They've been at this a lot of years and they give you. You know, don't be impatient. You know, just be, or be patient and keep doing what you're doing and you'll get the results. So I can kind of see that happening. I mean, the bill's now in the House and the Senate. It's never been there.

Speaker 1: 20:34

So yeah, scott, we got to be getting close want to continue the drumbeat that we're doing here at AutoCare and with all of our partners to make sure that we're championing that bill on the Hill, we're getting more people educated, we're sending more letters and we're documenting examples where we can't repair the vehicles and the effect that it has on our communities. This is such a tremendous, tremendous issue.

Speaker 2: 21:09

I talked to one of our repair shops it's probably a 50-mile drive from Des Moines and I called because I wanted to know like is this really happening? So I called these guys and they're full-service repair. They do everything from engine overhauls down to brake jobs, right. And I called them and I said how often are you running into an issue where you have to send the truck to a dealer because you can't access it? And I was told now that's up to four to six times a month. You're kidding, yeah, and that's a lot. Yeah, I mean that just costs that customer or that farmer or you know whoever, that dump truck driver a fortune hauling that truck and it's just not fair, it's not right.

Speaker 1: 22:17

Right, it's not fair. Like I said, it shouldn't be like you should be able to choose your own doctor. You know, and yeah, so it's happening. More really start to wonder, like, if you can't fix these in the right amount of time, the downstream effects, the delays what does that mean? For me, it's huge.

Speaker 2: 22:33

Right.

Speaker 1: 22:33

Yeah, am I going to get my groceries.

Speaker 2: 22:36

Yeah, Am I going to get my water or your medicine? Right, yeah, like Tina Hubbard loves the slogan and if you bought it, a truck brought it. That's right. Love hearing that and it's a fact, and we need to keep them moving no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 23:15

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