Parts Cost Trends at the VMRS System Level

Episode 322: Tracking parts cost trends is vital in the heavy-duty parts industry. The last 6 months of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 were flat or even down for many heavy-duty parts companies as the freight recession affected the industry. Encouragingly, there seems to be an uptick in activity over April and May which gives us hope of better months ahead.

Our featured guests are Dick Hyatt, CEO and President, and Nick Pittinger, Director of Data Services, at Decisiv. They discuss the need for accurate data about parts costs, especially at the VMRS level, and compile reports on this data to help the rest of the industry better understand the trends.

Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.

Sponsors of this Episode

Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation: Find out how many “fault codes” your heavy-duty parts business has. Meet with us today. Visit HeavyDutyConsulting.com

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Diesel Laptops: Diesel Laptops is so much more than just a provider of diagnostic tools. They’re your shop efficiency solution company. Learn more about everything Diesel Laptops can do for you today by visiting DieselLaptops.com today.

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Transcript

Jamie Irvine: 0:39

You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. Welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin. In this episode, we are going to talk about the sales trends that we have seen with heavy-duty parts over approximately the last nine months. We're going to talk about, for fleets, why it's so important to understand what's going on with the cost of parts and to bring that right down to the VMRS level, and we're going to conclude the episode by talking about why it's so important to have the right information when ordering parts.

Jamie Irvine: 1:21

Let's get started At the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation. We have been working with manufacturers and distributors throughout this what we would call a freight recession, and it definitely has had an impact on the volume of parts that are being ordered by fleets, repair shops and owner-operators. If you were to look at the last six months of 2023, we saw declining sales revenue for most manufacturers and distributors. When you talk to people, there was a little bit of nervous energy. When you talk to them, they would say things like well, we're pretty flat or well, we're down a little bit. But if you look behind the let's say those responses and actually looked at the numbers, what we found with our clients is that most people were down anywhere from 5% to 25% in the second half of 2023. Now, the first quarter of Q1 wasn't much better. When I talked to people at a lot of the trade shows like HDAW, like at TMC's annual meeting or HDA Truck Pride's annual meeting, even at the beginning of April there was very little optimism. But somewhere around the very end of March into the first part of April and into, let's say, the first part of May, when I attended Diesel Connect in Phoenix, all of a sudden things started to change. We noticed it at the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation. We signed a number of new clients. There was a significant uptick in people willing to spend money and invest in their business and we heard from our clients that at the manufacturing and distribution level and even all the way down to the repair shop level, volumes in April and May were definitely much stronger than they had been in a long time, with some companies actually having record months in April and May. So we definitely feel like we are coming to the end of the classic truckload cycle. We've definitely been kind of bumping along the bottom of that cycle for a number of months now, and although it might be a little too early to officially say the freight recession is over, the impacts of it seem to have flattened out and we may even start to see a curve upwards.

Jamie Irvine: 3:40

Now, keeping track of these trends is very important because you have to make strategic decisions accordingly. The reality is we know that there isn't going to be a big boom in the next couple of years. At very best, economists are calling for modest GDP growth. We know there's going to be a lot of activity in infrastructure because of the infrastructure bill in the US. We also know that consumer spending, with inflation being as high as it is, with debt loads being as high as they are, is probably not going to be as strong as it was in some past years. So, although we may see some small growth, that consumer-driven freight and tonnage may not be there. So at this point, we are recommending to our clients that they are very, very conservative in their numbers and that they do what they can to conserve as much cash as possible in the business so as to give themselves a buffer should there be further decline in overall revenue. So that's what we're seeing industry-wide. Those are the things we're hearing from our clients, what we're seeing at the shows. If you want to, when we post about this on LinkedIn, on social media, make sure you comment and let us know what you're seeing. The more information we have from the market, the better it is and the more accurate the data we can provide you, our listeners and, of course, our clients.

Jamie Irvine: 5:05

Okay, so we're going to take a quick break right now, and after the break we're going to talk about why it's so important for fleets to keep track of parts costs right down to the VMRS level. We'll be right back. Are you deferring maintenance because of filter cost or availability? Or, worse yet, are you trading down to no-name filters to try to save a few bucks? Either way, you're rolling the dice. The good news there's a new premium filter option for fleets Hanks Filtration. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hanks filters will save you.

Jamie Irvine: 5:39

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Jamie Irvine: 6:17

We're back from our break. Before the break, we were talking about the heavy-duty parts sales trends at the manufacturing and distribution level over, let's say, roughly the last nine months and where we might think it will go in the next few months. And now it's time for our featured interview. In this interview, we're going to talk about where the parts cost trends actually are and what that indicates about the future, and we're going to talk about why this information needs to be available to fleets, where to get access to this information and why it's so important to track it right down to the VMRS level.

Jamie Irvine: 6:54

I hope you enjoy this week's interview. My guest today is Dick Hyatt, ceo and President at Decisive. Now, dick has years of experience building, managing and growing early-stage technology companies, including Sage Systems, automation Partners, hayes Ligon, which was sold to ADP Dealer Services, and Amtiva Technology, which was sold to Cisco Systems. Now he has spent over 20 years at Decisive, focused on building a world-class team of industry and technology experts and delivering high-quality, profit-improving products and services for the heavy-duty industry. Dick, welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.

Dick Hyatt: 7:38

Jimmy, thanks for having us. I really look forward to this. I love the work that you're doing, so appreciate the time.

Jamie Irvine: 7:45

Thank you. And you're not alone today we also have another guest. So Nick is the Director of Data Services at Decisive and he's a data analytic leader with 17 years in the financial service industry and six years in the commercial trucking industry, so no stranger to the commercial side of the business At Decisive. His key responsibilities include identifying key insights, driving future efficiencies across the Decisive SRM ecosystem and delivering data products to bring actionable I like that word, actionable information into the hands of decisive customers. Nick, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.

Nick Pittinger: 8:27

Good afternoon, Jamie. Thank you for having me.

Jamie Irvine: 8:29

Gentlemen, before we get started into our discussion today, I thought we could take a moment to give our listeners a little bit of background on Decisive. Some of them may not be familiar with your company, Dick. Could you do that for us?

Dick Hyatt: 8:43

Yeah, jamie, thank you, I appreciate that opportunity and again, thanks for working with us. Yeah, decisive has been in business for over 20 years. As you mentioned, I founded the business, started the business with a lot of help from a number of other folks and we've been growing it over the past couple of decades. We have kind of a special niche. We work closely with truck and trailer and component OEMs. We provide them with a branded service management solution that they then take and deploy across their service networks and fleets.

Dick Hyatt: 9:14

Many people have come in contact with our products under various different brand names from these OEMs and what we do is really connect vital and connected diagnostic data, prognostics and more and more predictive data directly at the point of service to help expedite and improve the quality of repairs. And while the cost of repairs and topics we will talk about today are very important to fleets, reducing downtime, better managing asset maintenance drives asset utilization reduces, as I said, downtime and works towards our ultimate goal, which is zero unplanned downtime for for these very uh, very expensive, very important assets. So, all in all, getting another two to five days per year for asset utilization really helps defray the cost of repairs, getting trucks back on the road and benefits everybody from doing that. So again, thank you for the opportunity. That's what we do and look forward to digging in on the questions.

Jamie Irvine: 10:16

So when I hear that, I think of the thing that I basically hear people say if you boil it all down, it's like help me improve the repair process and then, additionally, help me to improve communication, and I think it's so important. We talked about actionable insights. We talk about usable data. We talk about measurably changing how much downtime we have and being able to measure that by unit. So that is all such an important piece to keeping commercial trucks and trailers on the road and doing the vital work that they do.

Jamie Irvine: 10:49

As we've said many times before, the trucking industry is the backbone of society and it really does, the way I look at it, is it not only does it help us keep the way of life going, but it actually is life-saving. So this work that we do to support the trucking industry is so very important right now. And you know, I think sometimes they're putting a little bit of a positive spin on that when they're saying things are flat because a lot of people are actually down. What do you think are the biggest factors driving our current situation in the trucking industry right now?

Nick Pittinger: 11:34

I definitely agree that your clients and colleagues are correct there.

Nick Pittinger: 11:36

You know we're also seeing combined parts and labor costs staying relatively flat when we look at it year over year and quarter over quarter. Overall, we see this as good news for the fleets and service providers. It may be an indicator that inflationary pressures on parts pricing are easing and supply chains are returning to normal levels, with more new trucks being placed in service. For a little bit of context there, here's a little bit of background on some of the data that we're tracking in that space. We currently report on 96% of total parts and labor costs, 97% of total service activity, from over 300,000 service and maintenance events managed each month on the Decisive SRM platform. Those service operations, we categorize them into 25 different VMRS system codes and we publish and share that information quarterly and for perspective. In our most recent report, the Q4 2023 Decisive Commercial Vehicle Service Analysis Report, we saw a 1.4% drop in combined parts and labor costs, which reversed the upward trend that we had been seeing most recently in Q3 of 2023, where those costs had risen 2.1%.

Jamie Irvine: 12:43

Yeah, that makes sense to me that when you combine those two we're seeing a bit of a drop, because I look at it from the part side of the business and I know what's happening. For the first time in a long time, price files are going out with price reductions. We hadn't seen that in a very long time. But tell me something what's happening on the labor side and why?

Nick Pittinger: 13:03

Well, mainly when we've been looking at the labor costs, we've seen those rise about 4% year over year. But that may sound big but the news isn't actually that bad. That increase is pretty much in line with the current rate of inflation. Again, we saw kind of increases in Q1 and Q3 of 2% and change in both of those quarters, while the labor costs here in this most recent quarter, for Q4, actually decreased by 0.2%.

Dick Hyatt: 13:29

So staying a little bit steady there, I think this is a really important point and an important part of this overall analysis of cost. Clearly we've got an industry-wide challenge for fleets and service providers to hire technicians. That's expected to continue as baby boomers age and fewer workers enter the vocational education programs. The BLS, us Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that diesel service technician employment is projected to grow 4%, 21% to 31, create about 28,000 openings for technicians each year on average. So probably a big takeaway and a bottom line here on cost is that we really need more technicians in this industry and without that that will continue to drive up labor costs.

Jamie Irvine: 14:19

Yeah, it's that old supply and demand thing. I think there's a bit of a silver lining in this next generation. The Wall Street Journal's renamed Gen Z, the tool belt generation. Over a 10-year period, we've seen a 15% decline in college and university enrollment and a 50% increase in enrollment in trade schools enrollment and a 50% increase in enrollment in trade schools, and that's primarily being driven by this Gen Z younger group of people. What I find encouraging about that is hopefully that means more young people will be interested in the trades.

Jamie Irvine: 14:53

The thing that I think, as an industry, we need to do a better job of is now compete with the other trades, right? So the tool belt generation where are they going? Well, they might be going to electricians or plumbers or HVAC and not necessarily filling that diagnostic technician role. And if I remember correctly, on the labor of statistics report, it said that those 28,000 jobs is basically just replacing all the people that are retiring. So if we do have any kind of measurable growth over the next 10 years, that'll be above and beyond the replacement. Is that correct?

Dick Hyatt: 15:26

Yeah, I believe so, and I think the other potential silver lining is that more and more of it's going to be technical skills, not just repairing big items, and so for the generation coming up, I think that will really drive them, and also the tools that are coming into the market to help diagnosis, predictive analytics, prognostics. You'll be able to identify what needs to be done, and I think that group of people coming into the marketplace will very much gravitate towards the technical side, the technical tools that can help them. Let's hope.

Jamie Irvine: 16:01

I agree with that. I totally agree with that. I see a lot of the Gen Z that are in my daughter's age group that I got to know while she was going through high school. She's going to be 20 soon and they're that digital native generation that first completely digital native right, the millennials, they kind of bridge the gap. But these Gen Z kids, they grew up with technology in their hands at a very young age and so when we're trying to get them to join our industry, being able to show them what the job actually will entail and how challenging it is and how really in many ways it's exciting because no two days are the same and you're always, always learning.

Jamie Irvine: 16:38

So, yeah, let's hope that that continues to drive enrollment in our trade programs. I know at the Heavy-Duty Parts Report we just issued our first ever annual scholarship and so we gave out two scholarships to two students at WyoTech, trying to put our money where our mouth is and really encourage young people to join our industry. That's the repair side of the equation. Let's talk about the part side of the equation. Nick, what are the current parts trends right now based on your recent commercial vehicle service analysis quarterly report? Let's go over those one more time.

Nick Pittinger: 17:10

The overall cost decrease we talked about, with this most recent quarter dipping by 1.4%, was mainly driven largely by the parts costs, those dropped by themselves around 2.2% quarter over quarter, and it's a 2.2% drop year over year as well when we look at parts just by themselves and the costs associated with those operations. These quarter over quarter and year over year parts costs decreases are good news for both fleets and service providers. We believe this may be an indicator that, again, I had mentioned earlier. Inflationary pressures on parts pricing are easing supply chains returning to normal and truck getting back into service there, so I think things are running a little bit more smoothly and assets aren't having to come back in as much for some of the service events.

Jamie Irvine: 17:55

Could it also be, though, that we've been been quote unquote going through a freight recession like like volumes are definitely down across the board, and how do you see if there is a little bit of a resurgence of volume? Uh over, let's say, truckload volumes go up in 25. What do you think is going to happen based on the current trends?

Nick Pittinger: 18:16

I would definitely say that you know. Again, trucks are being used. They're coming in for service. New trucks are being introduced to the industry every day, every month.

Nick Pittinger: 18:24

We do see different trends when we look at younger age trucks and what they're coming in for service-wise, when looking at the reports and the data versus some of those older trucks may have more things associated with how do I keep this vehicle on the road.

Nick Pittinger: 18:44

So a lot of the repair events focusing on things like engine repairs, brakes, exhaust stuff to keep things running, while maybe with some of the newer vehicles those aren't as much of the big problems. They aren't coming for those things. They may be coming in for things that are associated with warranty service. Again, when we kind of looked at some of the volumes and stuff in the past, we've seen trends where there's a higher amount of vehicles coming in for kind of cab and body related work. Well, those things are still covered under warranty. People are going to get those dings and dents replaced, while once they're older in service that's less of a concern. We're going to focus more on how do we keep this thing up running on the road and generating kind of value for the fleets and continuing to move that freight tonnage wherever it needs to go.

Jamie Irvine: 19:25

So why is measuring all of this at the VMRS code level so important? And when we answer that question, I want you to think about two people. I want you to think about the salespeople, who maybe don't have as much experience with VMRS codes, or maybe the fleets that are a little bit smaller in size and scope and scale and maybe they haven't integrated this into the way that they manage their parts and service.

Nick Pittinger: 19:50

I think one of the main benefits of being able to measure at that VMRS level is really tied to being able to bring everything to a standard and consistent definition. There's a lot of information, a lot of data that's captured in our platform and entered by a variety of people that can describe certain types of work in their own ways. The whole goal behind VMRS and some of those code key fields is really around how can we turn it into something that's standardized, consistent, where you can actually find more value in the information that's being provided there than maybe some of the freeform text that could be applied to those operations and the work that's happening on those assets? When being able to get it to that standardized definition we're then able to better measure costs at that system level enables us to accurately report on the parts and labor costs. And, to your point, with regards to the part sales folks or even the fleet users, a lot of them. Your point, with regards to the part sales folks or even the fleet users a lot of them need to understand what are the types of work we're doing, what are the things associated with that work and how do we have the right elements in place and being able to have a better understanding of the data there at the VMRS level helps give them more insight into where are they spending the time, what is the type of work they're doing or even for fleets, what are their trucks going in for service for.

Nick Pittinger: 21:04

Are certain things happening more frequently than others? They also have to have those VMRS codes to be able to submit some of that work for warranty purposes. So being able to code things to this VMRS level I think just helps streamline that process across the board for service providers and fleets alike to be able to again have a better understanding of what is happening with my assets. Where am I spending my money? Does that make sense? So, along with the costs that we've talked about, we also kind of track this service level activity through the VMware system codes as well to see like are certain types of activities spiking more than others, even if we just look at the overall volume. And as an interesting fact, you know the five most frequent service activities for Q4 are around power plant, which was around 20%, exhaust at 11%, cabin sheet metal at 11%, brakes at 7% of the volume and lastly cooling at 6%. Those are kind of the big five when it came to operation level volumes in the most recent quarters report.

Jamie Irvine: 22:00

So, once you start categorizing this and you start to gain this information, dick, what should fleets do with all of this information?

Dick Hyatt: 22:09

Yeah, I think it's really important when you're looking at the asset lifecycle and I think Nick certainly touched on this If you can track not only individual costs and trends, and not just trends across the industry relative to parts and labor, but trends specifically on assets, and I think that's really what Nick was alluding to you can start to see trucks get older. Which one should I take out of service? You know, what can I do relative to preventive maintenance so that I can try to minimize some of these costs that are starting to grow significantly? Can I change my service cycles, those types of things? So I think this data provides a real good underpinning to understand where the money is going and I think, ultimately, what can a fleet do about it?

Dick Hyatt: 22:59

That's really the most important thing. Can they trade out an asset? Can they focus on better maintenance to reduce cost, those types of things? So that would be my take. And then, certainly, relative to service providers, that is more about the things that you mentioned earlier communication, workflow, expediting the repair and that will have a big impact on the overall cost of repairs.

Jamie Irvine: 23:26

So you've been doing these reports for some time. What is the biggest surprise that came out of this report that we've been talking about right now?

Dick Hyatt: 23:35

Yeah. So before I go there, let me just add to that last comment. So we're encouraging people to go look and consume these reports. The place they can do that is at decisivemarketplacecom. So these are free reports. They're produced on a quarterly basis. Nick does a great job and so you know I encourage fleets and service providers to go up to the website and consume that information.

Jamie Irvine: 23:58

That's decisivemarketplacecom. We'll put the links in the show notes so that people can get a direct download. Yeah, fantastic.

Dick Hyatt: 24:05

You know. Back to your question, jamie, about the biggest surprise. Probably the biggest surprise is that it looks like there's a consistent trend on the horizon, so really no surprise. So we're certainly hopeful that the parts prices continue to stabilize and potentially come down. Some of the comments you made relative to labor we appreciate you putting scholarships into the marketplace to help that Generally, both in terms of that and truck tonnage. We hopefully that we'll see that stabilize as well. It certainly looks that way. These labor costs and technicians and finding new technicians to bring to the marketplace to help stabilize labor costs is really important going forward. So generally, good news is over the past. You know we've been living in a bit of a nightmare for 36 months and it certainly appears we're on the back end of that and things will stabilize across the board.

Jamie Irvine: 25:03

One day I'll tell you the story of how I started my podcast and then started my consulting business, and three months after I started my consulting business, the whole world shut down and I sat at home for three months going my God, I think I've made a huge mistake. Fortunately, we're coming up to our five-year anniversary on the show and we did survive. Fortunately, we're coming up to our five-year anniversary on the show and we did survive. But yeah, to say that the last few years have been dynamic and really just, we just hadn't seen these kinds of events before. We'd seen sort of some of those things before, but never to the intensity that we have. So we've come a long way and it's good that it is nice to see the trends appearing to stabilize, because maybe we can get back to some sort of normal. So, Dick, if there's one thing you want people to remember from today's conversation, what is that one thing?

Dick Hyatt: 25:54

Yeah, first of all, let me say that Decisive will continue this commitment to produce this report and then to do the analysis. You know, as Nick mentioned, we process a lot of service events on an annual basis in North America across various different brands, so we will continue to produce it. I would say, you know, one thing to take away is that data is important. You know, as has often been said, data is the new oil. As has often been said, data is the new oil Consuming data about trends and about information of the industry, the information we provide, the information others provide. I think that's really important.

Dick Hyatt: 26:34

And then, to carry that theme forward, relative to data, we provide service management portals to our OEM partners.

Dick Hyatt: 26:37

They deploy across their service networks and virtually across the board in North America, deploy across their service networks and virtually across the board in North America. They also make available to fleets a similar portal that connects them in with the service provider. And I would say that being more proactive about service repairs and about consuming data and prognostics to inform really what needs to be done, both from the service provider side and from the fleet side, is a big takeaway for me. And just to be done both from the service provider side and from the fleet side is a big takeaway for me and just to summarize that, being very focused on tracking, so we provide the ability for a fleet to track the service event, track the trends, provide line item approvals, see what's taking place, connecting in electronically and also consuming that data to better inform what needs to be done. It's probably the biggest takeaway and the biggest opportunity over the next couple of years for fleets and, for that matter, OEMs and others in our industry.

Jamie Irvine: 27:34

You've been listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, Jamie Irvin, and we've been speaking with Dick Hyatt, CEO and President, and Nick Pittenger, Director of Data Services at Decisive. If you want to learn more about their company, go to decisivecom. Links are in the show notes. If you want to download your copy of their report, go to decisivemarketplacecom and I will also include that link in the show notes, Dick. Thank you so much for taking some time to come on the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I really appreciate you.

Dick Hyatt: 28:02

Jamie, thanks so much for giving us the opportunity. We love the work you're doing. As I mentioned before, Nick and I both very much appreciate your giving us this opportunity.

Jamie Irvine: 28:15

And Nick, thank you for wading into the details and putting them all together in a report that we can consume and use to help the trucking industry. I appreciate your efforts as well. Thanks, Nick.

Nick Pittinger: 28:22

Not a problem at all. Definitely appreciate the opportunity here and love being able to talk about this stuff and help folks be able to take a lot of you know, more meaningful action on the data that's happening throughout the ecosystem.

Jamie Irvine: 28:33

Well, I hope you enjoyed this interview and I know that I took a lot of really pertinent information from it. I downloaded the report. If you want to get access to the report again, you can go to heavydutypartsreportcom, and if you click on the show notes for this episode on our website, you will get the link to the report and you can download it directly and see the report for yourself. It's time for that's Not Heavy Duty. In this edition of that's Not Heavy Duty, I wanted to specifically talk about an all-too-common scenario that happens at the parts counter. That is extremely frustrating for parts people and is also very difficult for new parts people who don't have a lot of experience. Let me explain what I mean. So it's really important for fleets and repair shops to keep their technicians, their qualified technicians, who are probably overworked. It's important that they spend their time doing what they do best, which is diagnosing and repairing the commercial equipment. Therefore, these fleets and repair shops often will send junior staff or office staff down to their local parts counter and they send them down there to pick up a needed part. When this person who doesn't have a lot of experience and is just really trying to help out comes to the parts counter. They'll often say things like I need an air valve. The parts person will say for what? And at that point there's often crickets. They don't know. They don't know where in the air system this valve is from, they don't know if it's a leveling valve, they don't know if it's a quick release valve, they don't know what kind of valve they need, they don't know whether it's for the truck or the trailer, what the year-make model is, and they don't even have a picture of the thing that they need, the valve that they need. And so if you're an experienced parts person, you can usually ask a few questions or you can get on the phone and phone the mechanic directly and get this information. And in a worst case scenario, you can even go to a catalog and you know from what you've gleaned from the conversation. You can open up the catalog, point to pictures and say is this what you're looking for? Or they can go online and find those images and say is this what you're looking for? And the person can say yes or no.

Jamie Irvine: 30:50

This isn't a very accurate way of identifying parts and it wastes a lot of time for everybody involved. So before you come down to a parts counter. Do what you can to get as much information about what you need as possible. Things like is it for a truck or a trailer? What's the year, make and model? Sometimes that helps, sometimes that doesn't, but it's always good to have that information.

Jamie Irvine: 31:17

When you are looking at something that is system specific, like the air system, the electrical system, the foundation, brakes, the driveline, etc. Make sure you understand what the function of the part is. So if it's a valve and it's a leveling valve for a trailer on the axles, or if it's a leveling valve on the truck on the drive axles, it's important to get that information. Now, if you're a mechanic, you're sending this person down to save time because you're too busy, but this is where the five Ps come into place. Right Proper planning prevents poor performance. So by taking just a minute to give this driver or this junior employee the needed information, to give this driver or this junior employee the needed information, it'll save everybody a lot of time and it is going to greatly increase the odds that you get the right part the first time. That's the heavy duty way. Well, this brings this episode to a conclusion. I hope you enjoyed the episode. We've talked about a lot of things, everything from sales trends to parts costs, to VMRS codes, to how to properly identify a part when sending a junior employee down to your local parts department.

Jamie Irvine: 32:33

I wanted to talk about one thing that is changing in the podcast world. It's not really related to heavy-duty parts, but if you listen on Google Podcasts, this affects you. So if you're an Android device user and you've been listening to the podcast on Google Podcast, google Podcast is rapidly coming to an end. In fact, by the time you actually hear this, it's probably gone. So what do you do? We have a couple options. They've moved the podcast to YouTube and, because we have a video version of our podcast, you can find our podcast now in the podcast section on our YouTube channel. You can also find it on YouTube Music if you then click the podcast and search the Heavy Duty Parts report. So if you're an Android user and you also like to use YouTube, you might as well just go and subscribe to our YouTube channel and then you'll have access to our podcast.

Jamie Irvine: 33:27

I've included a link to our YouTube channel in the show notes of this episode. In addition to that, if you go to heavydutypartsreportcom, there is a banner just under the top part of the website on the homepage, where it has a list of places you can subscribe to the show. And number two is YouTube. Now, if you want to have a podcast app that operates very similarly to the way that Google Podcasts did, you can also go to Pocket Cast. That's the one I use on my phone. I'm an Android user and I really like it. It's very similar in function to Google Podcasts and very easy to set up on your phone. Again, I've included a link there.

Jamie Irvine: 34:10

Now, if you don't want to miss out on any content that we put out, go over to our website, heavydutypartsreportcom and sign up to our weekly email. You get one email a week with all the content and then you can listen to it on any platform you would like. Again, if you follow us and you watch the video version, you can go to our YouTube channel and subscribe there, or you can continue to listen on the podcast player of your choice if you do so, and it gives you the option for a five-star rating and review. That would be really, really appreciated if you gave us that five-star rating and review. That would be really, really appreciated. If you gave us that five-star rating, gave us a great review, I've heard that helps us to expand the reach of the show. Thank you again for listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and as always, I want to conclude this episode by encouraging you to be heavy-duty, by encouraging you to be happy duty.