GM’s Model Margins, Toyota’s Caution, and Grit from Fast Food

Paul J Daly  0:10  
Good morning. It is Thursday. We have such a funny quip about Thursday, the day motivation forgot it's October. I'll tell you, we're talking about GMs, model margins, Toyota still being cautious, and why business leaders love to talk about their time in the fast food industry. I thought this would be a good one. There's a lot of time like that.

Kyle Mountsier  0:34  
I like that. There's a lot of I'm gonna you know, I like the fast food thing. We'll give a little context to that. But wait, Thursday, the day that motivation for, yeah, what is absolutely true?

Paul J Daly  0:45  
All that. Can we pull up the morning email? If you don't know we we produce a beautiful morning email every single day, except Sunday, in your inbox and today, the headline reads, Thursday, the day. Motivation forgot, but that's okay, where motivation, inspiration and drive stop discipline picks up. And we know this industry has more discipline than a fifth grade karate class. If that's not an opener to an email, that'll make Kyle. I don't what I know. When I read that this

Kyle Mountsier  1:14  
morning, I was like, That's so true. Because, like, everybody's like, Mondays, get after it Wednesday, hump day, all all the way to Tuesday. You're almost Wednesday, Friday. It's the weekend. Thursday. It's like, it's gonna be rough. No

Paul J Daly  1:29  
one's no one's talking about it, talking about it's almost Friday.

Kyle Mountsier  1:33  
I

Paul J Daly  1:34  
know. I know. So if you don't get the email, go to asotu.com just sign up for the free email. It's going to make you smile every single morning. And you'll leave smarter about the industry. Find somebody else to connect with. It'll be great. It'll be great. We promise or or we will give you all of your money back, all the money that you spent. A couple other things coming around in the ecosystem ASOTU con 2025, we're talking about it now, even though it's in May, because we want to make sure you circle the calendars as you get through the holidays, you know how fast the calendar fills up. So we want you to circle the week after Mother's Day, so at least you get the dates. It's the 13th through the 15th, just south of Baltimore. Uh, same place. We've had it many years. We have a lot of great stuff planned. Just go to ASOTU con com, sign up. You can be the first to know you get the biggest ticket discounts when we release. And you'll be the first to know the announcement, which is always cool, yep, yep. One other thing, in just a couple weeks, when are we releasing the sucker? Put the graphic up Jordan, more than cars, the Docu series that we've dreamt up and filmed. Well, season one, we filmed. There we go. We did, yeah, we did film it. And actually we edited this one too. So talking about the good things that happen inside real car dealerships, telling the truth. Episode Four is going to drop. What? What's the date? November? What? November 13. Okay, so we got a month out there is a LinkedIn event, but just keep marking on your calendar. We love it when people are there for the live stream premiere, you'll be able to see it on YouTube and stuff afterwards. Actually, did we talk about the thing? No, we didn't talk about, can't talk, can't talk about a pretty big announcement about when the car is coming up, but you want to see it, you want to be like, I knew it when. And we'll talk about that. All right, that's a lot of things. That's

Kyle Mountsier  3:13  
a lot of things. Hey

Paul J Daly  3:14  
to our friends who are in the Florida area, specifically in hurricane affected areas. We are thinking about you paying close, close attention to what's going on. If there is something we can help with, if you know an initiative that's happening for and through a dealership, for community or for a dealership, let us know so we can help raise awareness of this. Please, please. Crew, C, R, E, w@asotu.com, you. And we have one of, one of our ASOTU crew, live lives in Tampa. They sought higher ground. We haven't heard from the yet, but I did hear as like, I woke up. I'm checking on things like, right away, right the Tampa, Tampa officials are saying, like, we did not get the storm surge, catastrophic storm surge, that they were, yeah, no, they said, Actually, it was about the same as Hurricane Helene, yep. So

Kyle Mountsier  4:04  
thankfully, it dropped to a cat three and down from the five that it was like Tuesday afternoon. So it hit land a little less, a little less hard. And yeah, so,

Unknown Speaker  4:16  
you know,

Kyle Mountsier  4:17  
I'm sure there's still some aftermath. There's more millions people that don't have power right now. So that's, you know, a hustle that they're trying to get to. It, I think, is leaving Florida as of a couple hours ago, off the east coast. So hopefully the worst is behind us, and people can start figuring out how to get back to a little bit of normal. Yes,

Paul J Daly  4:36  
yes, yes. Oh, man, everybody's giving the attention to this one. So I think that the biggest, you know, I'm just searching for headlines, and the fact that there was a lack of major headlines, I was like, Ah, I think we probably did good. But the, the most stark image I saw was the roof of Tropicana Field torn to shreds. Did you see that? Was it really? Oh, yeah, I didn't see that. All that's left are, like, in. Looks like, you know, if you had, like, a wedding tent that got torn to shrugs, so you see the frame there, but all the stuff, yeah, you'd see inside. So that's that

Kyle Mountsier  5:08  
stinks. You know that that roof is, like, basically paper.

Paul J Daly  5:13  
I know, crazy, crazy. Well, this is so they can easily replace it, I guess. All right, we're talking about some Automotive News. Amidst the focus on EVs, GM has found profit more profitability by simplifying its gasoline models, improving margins even on entry level vehicles. They're talking about now the Chevy tracks, the Buick and Vista now yield mid to high single digit margins with the 2024 tracks saw a 20% increase in profitability over the previous model. Basically, there are fewer configurations and now more cost reductions driving the gains they're projecting. GM is projecting a 4% earnings boost for the for the equinox and the GMC Terrain, right, the sister vehicle and President Mark Bruce saying we're now profitable in all the entry level segments. So when everyone's talking about EVs and profitability, they're like, hey, this has actually helped us make gasoline much more efficient profitable. Well, you

Kyle Mountsier  6:11  
kind of have to, you know, because somebody's got to pay the EV bill, right? The EV bill, right? I still, you know, one of the things that some of these newer EVs and newer vehicles have been doing so well, and even some of like the smaller brands, your Subaru, your Mazda, things like that, they've reduced the number of configurations that you can get in a vehicle. And that has to streamline so much you think about manufacturing. You think about the pre or the ordering process of parts, the storage of the different things. Getting it wrong, what gets installed, how the production line, like, why that's not a greater consideration across you know, it's like, we want to be all things to all people. But you know, if consumers are are clear in the fact that they're like, Give me six iPhones, I will figure out which one I want. Right? It

Paul J Daly  7:00  
it is if you try to buy, like, a used, I don't know, Silverado, no, I used suburban, trying to figure out what's actually on that vehicle. Got a L

Kyle Mountsier  7:09  
T, L T, 1l, S, L S, super package with the crew, nada.

Paul J Daly  7:14  
Then you add 17 packages. This comes with that that deletes this. This is this. Yeah, it's a mess. I can't imagine people don't want it anymore. Maybe people wanted it. Don't

Kyle Mountsier  7:23  
give them the mess. People don't give them the mess. Let's

Paul J Daly  7:26  
keep it clean. Let's keep it clean. Speaking of keeping it clean, kudos. Feel like it's been too long since we've talked about a Kyle Toyota. Let me just say this guy, Toyota, Chairman, Kyle Toyota, is cautioning against the full transition to EVs. No surprise there, stating now it could lead to major job losses for those working on engine related technologies. Five and a half million people work in Japan's auto industry, and Chairman Akio Toyota, is highlighting the risk for long time engine related workers. He's championing a what he says, quote, a multi pathway to zero emissions, including hybrids and hydrogen. He's saying EVs may only account for 30% of the global market. Is his, his kind of, like, guess says, quote, If EVs become the only choice those people job, people's jobs would be lost. So first time we're hearing him talk about jobs, but he's always been, like, singing this song about, Well,

Kyle Mountsier  8:18  
it's interesting. He's like, he's like, I'm gonna hit you from every single angle, trying to figure out how to make this a more like, put a better potential solution on, ensuring that we have multiple ways to kind of migrate to the next path on, on engine technology, or, I guess, drive training technology. But, you know, the job losses thing kind of interesting. That's not something you would typically hear from a non unionized company, right? You know, yeah. So I just

Paul J Daly  8:50  
it's good to hear from again, it feels like, Yeah. Feels like grandpa's back,

Kyle Mountsier  8:54  
yeah. And we kind of agree, you know, little like we've usually

Paul J Daly  8:58  
agree, and we pretty much never bet against Toyota, ever. I'm gonna get a call back to the first story here. Our friend Cody Jones live packet chives in he says, I pack it can help with that very story about trying to figure out what packages are on what vehicles. And he's right. They have a great product that he's saying he is. You're on the site, you see the car, you click on the little i packet integration, and then you see all the listings and things. I mean, this isn't, this isn't necessarily a sponsored episode or post, but you know when you're right, when you're right, you're right. You know the best vendors solve a real problem. And we just went on like a couple of old ladies about a problem.

Unknown Speaker  9:39  
There's no good

Paul J Daly  9:42  
transition. Speaking of business executives,

you know, it you really tie that together. It's just perfection. It's just sublime. Uh, looks like there's a key and peel skit in here. There. Absolutely is yes, opening of the soda con Kyle and I, the curtain rises. We're on rocking chair.

Unknown Speaker  10:05  
We're like, you know, doing our walkers forward,

Paul J Daly  10:08  
knitting like that, just knitting, complaining about vehicle features. Let it be so

Kyle Mountsier  10:14  
your turn. Hey, many successful professionals are crediting their early fast food jobs for shaping their work ethic and customer service skills leaving a lasting impact on their careers. Professionals are feeling like these early jobs obviously leave a mark shaping leadership skills. Michael Erickson, Director at a PR firm in Georgia, recalled the time at his time at McDonald's as formative to his success, and shared that hard work and customer service skills left an important mark on his professional journey. I'm similar in this. I talk a lot about the time that I like served. I never did the fast food side of things, but I think that people in auto that I meet that have done some type of food service like you can see the unique level of care understanding that they have. And there's actually a lot of people that come from food service,

Paul J Daly  11:06  
hospitality is such a great feed into the auto industry. I just, you know, there is an element. I did work in fast food. I worked in Burger King for a year, and then I worked at Denny's as a busboy. And like, kind of like that real. But I think that the way, the reason they talk about it, and all I can think about, and I'm sorry if everyone feels this is political, they're not. They're gonna think it's funny. But when you started reading the story, I wanted to like Kyle, I grew up in a middle class family. That's all you can think of. Like, this is the executives version of I grew up in a middle class family, right? And that's pretty much what it is, I think sometimes, right? Like, depending on how far they're removed from it, however, I think in evidence of when people are in leadership, especially executive leadership, or high level leadership, and they've gone through all the hard things that it takes to get there, it's definitely easy. And I had this perception as a young man, right? Like, it must be nice, right? Like, you don't understand. And so I think, like, the desire to bring this up is to, like, talk about, like, No, I actually know what it is to work hard. And people think, like, sometimes executive work isn't hard work. It's a different kind of stress. It's a different kind of labor. So yeah, and I here's what I love about this. In the auto industry, the majority, I mean, vast majority of people in management, leadership, even ownership, have done the dirty jobs. Yep, and, and that's

Kyle Mountsier  12:30  
how many times do you hear of like started as a detailer?

Paul J Daly  12:34  
Oh my gosh, all the dang time. All the time. You know, I didn't know this a lot Porter till, like, a year ago, and I'd known him for a while, but Patrick a bad general manager of beaver Toyota. I didn't know that he came into the industry through like he was a detailer. Detailer. Like, not like I washed cars for a summer. It's like, no no. Like,

Kyle Mountsier  12:52  
the deep detailing,

Paul J Daly  12:53  
yeah, that's why. I mean, I love that. You

Kyle Mountsier  12:56  
look good. I love you. Ever been to Beaver Toyota and see those cars?

Paul J Daly  12:59  
You can tell, you, oh no, you check out that reconditioning operation, and that is just a sight to behold. Makes them seem happy smelling, oh good. Now we're leaving the show, and I smell detailing chemicals, which is my favorite place to be. Listen, we grew up in middle class families. Hey, this show, go out there. Have a great Thursday, everybody.

Kyle Mountsier  13:20  
Oh boy, these cars, though,

many options I

Unknown Speaker  13:35  
had to leave, all the left.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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