CCAR:

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and this is the Training Impact Podcast, the show about scaling channel performance. And when you scale, you’re not just multiplying performance, you’re amplifying load. In this podcast, we explore the architectural requirements to scale performance. And that includes learning as infrastructure, certification systems, skill development at scale.

 

governance discipline, KPI and alignment, and the structural stress test that reveals performance weaknesses. So welcome aboard. My guest today is Kate Henmuler. Kate is the president, the COO at the Coordinating Committee for Automotive Repair or CCAR. CCAR is a national safety advocate providing shop safety and hazmat e-learning exclusively for the automotive industry and trade schools. Kate, welcome to the program.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (00:45)

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

 

Jeff Walter (00:47)

So Kate, C-CAR, a lot of folks are not going to be familiar with them, or a lot of ⁓ folks outside the automotive industry, should say, are not going to be. I gave the one sentence, but what is C-CAR and what was your journey to president of C-CAR and COO?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (01:03)

Sure, absolutely. So, CCAR, like you said, our full name is a little bit of a mouthful, so often we just go by CCAR eLearning, since that is what we do. We were founded in 1994, actually, with an EPA grant. Since then, we’ve become fully self-sufficient.

 

In 2005, C-Car was chosen along with our partner still today called Shipmate Inc. by Nahak, which is again a mouthful in our industry as you know, but the North American Automotive Hazardous Materials Action Committee to create.

 

Jeff Walter (01:36)

That’s

 

a mouthful.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (01:39)

Exactly. So we’re

 

commonly known as NEHAC to create an e-learning program specifically for hazardous materials for the auto industry. So that covers your DOT, your Department of Transportation 49 CFR. During that time, there were a lot of

 

explosions on the road because these hazardous material parts weren’t being packaged properly and being handled properly via truck, sea, air, you name it. And we had fatalities and casualties due to that. So we were the first company to be chosen by a symposium in Michigan to create this e-learning program.

 

And it’s served us well. ⁓ I have been with the company for just about 12 years now. I started as a customer service representative, worked my way into manager programs and operations, and I am currently starting my third year as president of the company. ⁓ Thank you so much.

 

Jeff Walter (02:29)

Congratulations. Congratulations. That’s

 

the mail room to C-suite modern day equivalent, right?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (02:37)

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we’re blessed to be a small company. So I learned the inner workings of the company very fast and was able to be fostered in that relationship to get to this level. ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (02:49)

Yeah,

 

so when we talk about hazardous materials and what you guys are focused on, is it the shipment of hazardous materials or is it the hazardous materials that are within the vehicles themselves or both?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (03:03)

It’s a both. So really what we consider is anybody on the back end of a shop really needs to have this training. ⁓ So it starts with the vehicle coming in. Obviously the vehicle is holding those hazardous materials. Common ones include batteries, airbags.

 

Jeff Walter (03:10)

Okay.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (03:18)

some less common seatbelt pretensioners, have little airbags in them in the newer vehicles. So that’s one you have to worry about. And it is anything from handling it. So technicians working on the vehicle, taking that out, putting a new one in the Takata airbag recall happened. It still is happening actually. And from there, it is the shipping of that.

 

package back to either the OE provider, to the manufacturer, to anybody. So you need to make sure you either discharge it correctly, you package it in the right materials, you have the right labels on it, so those third party shippers know how to handle that package as well.

 

Jeff Walter (03:55)

you know, that’s interesting. Cause ⁓ you know, when we were talking earlier and, just, ⁓ you’re reading about C car. Yeah. I just kind of thought of it as the hazardous materials that happened to be in a vehicle. Right. And, know, and, ⁓ and didn’t even dawn on me that like, ⁓ well, in a recall situation or, or, or in a repair situation, you might have to, you have to dispose of it.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (04:23)

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (04:23)

in some

 

situations, or you have to ship it to an OEM or, know, and I’m like, huh. Like, you know, I, I never thought, you you know, like you said airbags and you know, they’re little explosive devices. I’m like, huh, you’re shipping an explosive device. I probably don’t want to just throw in a manila envelope and slap a label on it. Yeah. Probably not a good idea. I hadn’t thought, I hadn’t thought of that. I just thought of it as more the safety of the repair tech.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (04:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (04:53)

the service tech while repairing the vehicle, right? which, yeah, I mean, yeah, that part comes to mind, but then it’s like, oh yeah, you’ve got this thing and it’s, you know, you don’t just throw it in the garbage or, or, or set, send it, you know, FedEx in a plain vanilla envelope, right? That’s it. Huh.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (04:57)

which is absolutely part of it. ⁓

 

Right, without

 

any indication of what it is or what it can do.

 

Jeff Walter (05:14)

Yeah.

 

that being said, so what kind of firms, and it’s an e-learning system, and so you’re a publisher of e-learning courses, and is there a certification associated with CCAR?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (05:27)

Yes, absolutely. we have a, the DOT course is actually we’re structured slightly different. We have a initial course per the DOT rules and regulations. You have to take the course within 90 days of hitting the shop floor.

 

Jeff Walter (05:33)

Mm-hmm.

 

Okay.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (05:41)

It

 

is a full course. is a government course. Ours takes about three hours to start to finish, but you’re more than welcome to start and stop it like most e-learning materials. Upon completion, provided you score 80 % or higher, you are awarded a certificate that is valid for three years. That is an industry standard.

 

Jeff Walter (05:58)

Okay.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (06:01)

And then luckily, a couple of years ago, we became a recertification program. So that one, provided you still have a current certificate and you scored 80 % or higher, you are eligible to take a refresher course, which is about half the time. And again, that certificate is then valid for three years.

 

Jeff Walter (06:21)

Now is that, is that a, it sounds like the initial thing is a regulatory standard, right? If I’m going to go on a shop as part of like an OSHA safety environment, would assume, or some type of OSHA regulation, you know, have to, you know, if I’m going to be a service tech in a shop floor, I have to take this training.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (06:26)

Thanks.

 

Yes, it’s very similar to OSHA. So OSHA standards are a one-year program, but for DOT it is valid for three years. ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (06:43)

Okay.

 

Okay, right. Sorry, but if I’m going to go into if I’m going to be a service tech, an automotive service tech, you know, and I’m going to work in a, you know, upstanding, you know, not, you know, I’m going to work in a proper environment, like, you know, like a dealer, any dealership, right? ⁓ I have to take training about safe handling of hazardous materials within the vehicles. This would be

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (07:00)

Yes. Absolutely.

 

Jeff Walter (07:11)

the type of thing I would take and then I’m certified. And then do I have to keep maintaining my certification or do I have to, is it just a one and done, but I can’t keep doing the certification.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (07:18)

You do,

 

you have to maintain it, which is why a few years ago we created that recertification program, which is the refresher. So provided you’ve taken the training and you haven’t let it lapse, you are eligible to take the shorter course, the refresher version.

 

Jeff Walter (07:26)

Okay.

 

a

 

refresher course. okay. And, ⁓ which especially given everything with EVs, I imagine there’s new content coming down time. So, okay. So first question was, okay, so why, why are folks, you know, who’s, who’s, kind of clients do you have and who’s engaging this? And it’s basically any type of, repair shop, in the, in the vehicle sector.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (07:54)

Yeah,

 

100%. Our main clients right now are the OEs. We do have master accounts with multiple OEs. And then any other individual dealership can contact us for hazardous material training. They tend to be our biggest client because they have someone watching over them, and a big name. But we do also service some independent shops as well.

 

Jeff Walter (08:19)

Okay, so, so, you we would ⁓ make this part of their training program for service tax as just as keeping compliance and making sure that their their their their dealers are ⁓ not only compliant, but also, you know, they’re safe in what they’re doing. But and then I would imagine other chains, you know, like repair chains, like, you know, like a Firestone or a Goodyear. You know, there’s a bunch of other repair, you know,

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (08:36)

Absolutely.

 

Jeff Walter (08:47)

chains that are not OEs, but have lots and lots of locations.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (08:49)

Yeah, I mean, national

 

service providers that deal with hazardous materials. Yeah, or like I said, even your independent shops, some of them utilize us like, I live in a rural area, so there are a lot of independent shops. So it’ll be like Bob’s Automotive. So they do as well. We often

 

Jeff Walter (08:59)

Right.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (09:03)

package our deal saying, you know, this should be part of your onboarding process, especially always. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of turnover in our industry. So if you keep this as an active program, every time you, you, you gain an employee, you put it in there with, with all of the onboarding things you have, the HR, the sexual harassment, all of the other tests you have to take. And like I told you earlier, it’s really a back end shop environment for the course.

 

not only do service techs need to be trained, parts specialists, in the ⁓ picking parts need to be trained, and even pup drivers. So if you have a sister shop, ⁓ say you have a Hyundai dealership and a Ford dealership, for some reason there’s a part that needs to be transferred down the street, that little, you know, F-150 or Toyota Tacoma that you’re driving with parts, you need to be certified as well because something can happen on the road.

 

Jeff Walter (09:53)

Yeah. Well, that’s interesting. Cause that, that, ties back into the whole, it’s not just a matter of shipping it and shipping it properly or disposing of it properly, but also you might be transporting it within a network. ⁓ and so therefore the, transportation of the hazardous materials as well. Huh. Yeah. Like it’s interesting because just, ⁓ it’s not in it. It’s not a sector I’ve been involved in, you know, and, and as you’re, as you’re talking about, it’s like, yeah. And that.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (10:05)

Exactly.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (10:21)

It’s like, yeah,

 

if I’m going to dispose it, yeah, if I got to ship it back to an OE, yeah, if I’m going to take it from point A to point B because I’m part of a multi-unit dealer.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (10:27)

Exactly. they say,

 

right, and most accidents happen, what do they say, within a mile or two of your home. So even if you’re a mile down the road from your sister’s store where you’re trying to get an airbag, that’s your most likely chance of getting in an accident, right? And something fortunate happening.

 

Jeff Walter (10:42)

Right.

 

And so then I would expect, I assume like the transportation means it has to be transported in a certain, depending on the item, depending on the hasms too, it has to be transported in a certain type of container in a certain way to minimize any type of contamination in case of an accident or any negative bad things happen.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (11:03)

Yeah, yeah, and the truck need, I mean, depending again on the product, the placards on the truck itself in case something’s flammable and, you know, fire department has to come on scene or.

 

Jeff Walter (11:11)

Oh yeah, that’s it. Then there we go again. Yeah. Now, now that you’re transferring stuff, you go, yeah. And then you, you, you, the placards, which, you know, as a casual motors, we’re all familiar with is he, I actually, that’s interesting. I never even thought of that. Again, having, you know, that it’s like, oh, you got these placards. I’m going, oh, okay. That’s nice. But it’s like, yes, because that in the case of an accident or something, first responders need to know what they’re walking into because they’re at risk of.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (11:14)

We’re heading over there.

 

you

 

Right? Exhale.

 

Jeff Walter (11:41)

of the hazardous materials as well. like, ⁓ it gets complicated pretty quickly.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (11:43)

Exactly. it does.

 

course. Yeah. Especially with like the fire extinguishers, you know, we have our different extinguishers, A, C, and D, and they all work differently on different fires. So we need to know what, what, what’s in there.

 

Jeff Walter (11:59)

Yeah, now now do you guys also keep track of the incidents like you know or like a count of instance? know there’s some other industry groups in different industries that provide training, but they’re also got like there’s a statistics division or anything.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (12:13)

We don’t have a statistics division. So we are not the, what is the word I’m looking for? We’re not the law, you know, the judgment. We rely mostly on NHTSA for a lot of the statistics out there. They are kind of the gurus for that. No. Highway, North American highway, that’s another long one.

 

Jeff Walter (12:28)

Like that.

 

And who’s next again?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (12:41)

I’d have to look it up for the acronym there.

 

Jeff Walter (12:43)

Is

 

that ⁓ a governmental agency? Is that under DOT? Is that like one of these quasi-governmental organizations? ⁓

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (12:55)

They’re quasi, I believe. They are

 

kind of the gurus though. So they do the highway administration stuff. So you can go on there for recalls for your car. They do the statistics. They do safe driving. Back when cell phones, the smartphones started coming out, they had a big push for distracted driving, things like that.

 

Jeff Walter (13:07)

Okay.

 

Yeah.

 

So I would imagine that because you would, know, when we first started, you had said, you know, because I’m, big into performance, like the, the, the, the impact of training and stuff, brilliant, sophisticated name of the podcast, training impact. Well, when we started, you said, you know, there were, there were a number of series of accidents or, or, and explosions and, you know, lots of bad things happening. And then the coordinating committee came into fruition.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (13:24)

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (13:39)

as an industry group and it’s, love it when industry gets together, you know, and to do things that make the world a better place. It’s, it’s, it’s really cool. Um, and so, uh, I would imagine that, you know, that happened a number of years ago, like you’d said, and that we’ve become safer over time, especially with re with respect to handling hazardous materials. I’m curious with.

 

the advent and the increased popularity of EBS. Have we seen any, you know, reverse of like, would imagine, I’m sorry, let me back it up. I would imagine that, you know, you’ve got this downward trend because we’re getting safer and we’re in the knowledge. And then you introduce a new technology, like let’s say an airbag, right. And, it’s, and when you in, when you increase that at scale, there would be a bump up in incidents that then would start to.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (14:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (14:34)

go down over time if the training is working. Do we see that pattern when things are introduced? Because people are, you try and train, it’s a new variable in the environment that they’re not used to. You know what I mean?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (14:46)

Absolutely. A lot of it’s old technology, like you said.

 

⁓ The newest technologies are the batteries that you kind of leaned into with the EVs and going from ⁓ flooded batteries to lithium ion batteries, which was quite a years ago now. But that was a big change. That was something that was new to our program. We had to implement it and people had to learn it. So you get kind of, we’re all like this in human nature. We get in a routine. We learn something and it’s just kind of second nature, turning off the lights in your house before you leave.

 

Jeff Walter (15:03)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (15:17)

change in technology such as batteries that came out, there was a change in how we had to handle them and return them. With EVs specifically, most of the safety aspect comes from being in the shop. So that’s more of the technicians working on the car at this point, especially if the EV has been in some sort of compromising situation, fender bender.

 

Jeff Walter (15:34)

Okay.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (15:40)

worse than that, know, true collision. The problem with EVs is you can’t always tell immediately how damaged those battery packs are. So it could appear okay, but there’s an internal system happening where they’re failing within the vehicle. And when so many fail, it could be hours, days later when it actually catches fire in the shop. So that’s the problem. It’s thermal runaway is what we call it.

 

Jeff Walter (15:56)

Right.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (16:06)

⁓ But it’s not always visible, and especially in a fender bender, you don’t know. You just think you’re getting your car in, you’re going to the body shop, you’re getting a new bumper, whatever you’re doing. But somehow some chain reaction affected those batteries underneath the vehicle.

 

Jeff Walter (16:19)

⁓ so, so one of the challenges there is you get an offender render something in is happening internal to the bat. was some damage internally to the battery that you’re not aware of. So it’s not just, it’s not just like usually when I think of batteries and or battery safety, I’ve talked to people about that. You think of the, well, you know, it got shorted. you know,

 

piece of metal paneling is now leaning against something it shouldn’t lean again and it’s now grounded the whole car like and now like if you touch it you like you touch the wrong place you get electrocuted ⁓ or like the battery actually cracks open and all those that material is now on the ground on the shop floor or you know but what you’re saying is something else that’s something new is that there can be some internal damage to the battery that is that

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (16:52)

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (17:11)

You can’t see as a tech or, or, or an observer, but that it, but it starts a chain reaction that hours or even days later can, can hit critical mass and start a fire.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (17:15)

apps.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Exactly, exactly. that most of those TV batteries are hidden underneath the panel of the car. So that happens often when depending on how good of a driver you are, sometimes you’ve seen people, you know, go over a speed bump too fast and ground their car. Hit a curb a little too hard. But yeah, you can’t always see it. So it’s internal. It looks OK. There might be a little scratch on it. You think that it’s OK.

 

Jeff Walter (17:40)

I don’t know what you’re talking about,

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (17:51)

And good practice now is actually to leave those vehicles outside of your shop for a certain amount of time before you can begin working on them and monitor their heat before bringing them into the shop, just in case they do have the thermal runaway.

 

Jeff Walter (18:05)

Huh. And the monitoring the heat would be like monitoring the heat of the battery underneath or the panel underneath. It’s like you put a sensor down there and see what it’s registering at.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (18:12)

Yeah, there’s some really cool

 

handheld ones out there now. We don’t create any of these. These are all tools out there. But there’s some very cool handheld ones out there. Or you can do the old tool hookup. Just be careful. ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (18:20)

And the…

 

Yeah.

 

Ah, so, okay. And so, so you guys are evolving, you know, so, okay. So we kind of go back with, so why do clients bring you guys on? It was like, okay, well, if you want to be a decent, if you want to be a good shop and you want to take care of your people and make sure bad things don’t happen. Uh, and that includes not only in the repair, but also, uh, the shipping clerk at the dealership or anybody that’s going be touching these things or anybody that’s going to be transferring it from location A to location B because you’re running parts around.

 

Or, you know, then, then I, you know, I started expanding in my head going, Oh, or you’re, you know, you’re a, a, a parts wholesaler, you know, you’re a WD or else distributor. Right. And now you’re, um, you know, you’re bringing parts to different service centers and whether they’re, you know, within an OE system or independent or national brand, you know, there’s a whole, and those are also a whole chain of, you know, um,

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (19:10)

Great.

 

Jeff Walter (19:22)

you know, independently owned or small groups, know, the warehouse distributors is whole other thing. And again, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting because the more we keep talking about this, more I’m like, oh yeah, we got to talk about the WDs, right? Cause they’re, they’re, they’re doing exactly. Yeah, exactly. You know, cause like, you know, when you started saying the multi units and I was like, oh yeah, you know, you’re running, you know, an airbag from dealer A to dealer B, you know, Hyundai dealer to, uh, to, you know,

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (19:29)

it is.

 

It affects more people in this industry than you think, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (19:51)

Honda dealer because it has the same, you know, similar part or whatever, or two different Honda dealers within the network. and I’m like, okay. But then I, but then as, as we keep talking about, it’s like, yeah, there’s this whole system of warehouse distributors and they’re the wholesalers of parts. And, and it’s also what dealers do. Most people don’t realize it, but you know, the third leg of the dealer business is they’re WD. They sell, they sell OEM parts.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (19:54)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (20:16)

to independent service centers. And so they’re a parts distributor, know, they’re their own little, they’re their own WD. And, and so the transportation is getting it from their warehouse to that independent service guy as well. Huh. I didn’t even think it’s man. It’s amazing when you think about it. Yeah. I like, wow. Yeah. So that’s a, that’s a pretty big ecosystem. That’s.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (20:30)

Exactly.

 

It’s like a network. It’s like one of those family trees.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (20:43)

Yeah. Like, wow. Which gets into the whole, you know, it’s, interesting. mean, again, it’s, it’s not an area I’ve been involved in personally, but it’s, it just always amazes me. And it’s, it’s the focus of what we’re, what we’re trying to do or on try to do the podcast is, know, is, is operating these complex ecosystems, performing at high levels when you have these complex ecosystems. And one of the things I’ve come to realize and it,

 

You know, and I think you guys are right there in what is, you know, training is really that replication infrastructure. It’s, you know, a lot of us think of training. We might sit there and ⁓ it’s, you know, it’s something I got to do because, know, somebody says I got to, whether it’s a company or government regulation, regulatory agency and all that. But it’s, but it’s really the, the tool to replicate, to,

 

to kind of that infrastructure so that it doesn’t, everybody’s doing it the same way. And the only way he could do that is you got to train them. And a lot of people don’t think of it that way. And it’s interesting. I was at a conference last week, the International Franchise Association Conference, and, you know, completely different than, you know, hazmat training, right? Although, you know, they have, you know, different franchises that would be applicable there. But it was, but it was, we were talking about that in terms of training as infrastructure.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (21:45)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (22:09)

Right. It’s the way, you know, cause most of these guys, most of these folks, you know, they want to grow their franchise network. want to be. Create these big networks. And, ⁓ and, and, but yet they have struggled because it’s, have this variability of performance. And it’s like the training is the infrastructure. Training is the thing that does this.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (22:23)

Right.

 

It’s the foundation.

 

need those building blocks on your foundation to have a good product in the long run.

 

Jeff Walter (22:32)

Yeah. And, as we’re talking about what C-CAR does and has that training, and, then, especially if it’s regular, if it’s, your compliance oriented, right. ⁓ yeah, think compliance training gets a bad rap sometimes. but the thing about this particular type of regulatory training, like a lot of other safety training.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (22:43)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (22:55)

is that it actually has measurable impact. And you could see it in the industry. But then when you start talking about it, it’s amazing how it expands the ecosystem, how complex the ecosystem gets. And you want to keep everybody safe out there, right? I mean, at the end of the day.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (23:07)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, absolutely.

 

That’s the point. And that’s, that’s the hardest part about compliance training is, at least I’ve found is explaining to each individual dealer, the impacts that this has, because they haven’t necessarily seen, you know, something blow up. They haven’t necessarily seen, for going to OSHA safety, you know, a lift falling down and injuring a coworker, but it happens out there.

 

So what we’re trying to do is prevent one of these catastrophes from happening in their life. So they don’t necessarily see the big picture because they haven’t seen the problem upfront. But if you go and you look for the stats, you can see that this training over time has made the industry safer. But if you’re not seeing the problem every day, sometimes they get, you why do I have to this training? It hasn’t happened to me yet, you know?

 

Jeff Walter (23:55)

Bye.

 

Well, you

 

know, to a certain degree it’s, it’s actually, you just gave me a thought. It’s interesting. It, know, effective compliance training. Um, and it does get a bad rap, but I, and it has, I think you now, you, just put your finger on the, on the, or hit the nail on the head. I’m looking at, whatever, whatever the right metaphor is. Um, well, well, because if we do it and we do it right.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (24:17)

There you go. You’re on the button. I’m better at this too.

 

Jeff Walter (24:25)

it, it becomes part of the background and we don’t even think about it. And we don’t even think about what it takes to have it like, like indoor plumbing, you know, like how many people think about indoor at this stage in civilization, indoor plumbing, you just assume it. Right. And it’s only one, it’s only one like

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (24:35)

Right. Right.

 

Okay.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (24:53)

A water main breaks and something bad happens or like some type of nastiness gets into the water supply somehow. Um, that all of a sudden you’re like, what do mean? I can’t, you know, brush my teeth whenever I want. like, then you go like, well, for, know, a couple of hundred thousand years during human existence, having access to potable water and actually in a lot of places in the, in the world, access to potable water is, you know, not a given. And, but.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (25:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alright.

 

Right?

 

Jeff Walter (25:23)

And so when you start to do things like, this is the things we have to do to make sure we have safe water and indoor plumbing. you’re like, do you, going back to your point, it’s like, well, I’ve never seen the problem because the problem’s been solved because we’ve done all these things that I don’t even think about anymore. Or I never have because the problem was solved generations ago. And then it’s only in the, it’s only when it falls apart that it comes to life.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (25:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (25:48)

And I think that’s it. And I’m thinking of the compliance training, the safety training. It’s almost like, you know, victim of your own success, right? If you’re successful, the incidents go way, way, way, down. And then people are like, well, why am I doing this and wasting three hours of my people’s time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, that never happens.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (25:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Exactly. Right. Who needs more time?

 

Jeff Walter (26:09)

Well, yeah,

 

that’s interesting. I never thought about it like that. It’s like victim of its own success and because the incidents become so rare that you’re like, why do I need this? And that’s like, well, that’s why the incidents are rare. ⁓ You’ve never seen it in your shop. You’ve never seen it in your shop because we’re doing a good job. ⁓

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (26:19)

Right, you need it because of that.

 

Exactly.

 

sorry.

 

Jeff Walter (26:29)

Well, I was just saying

 

how it’s victim of our own success, right? Like, you you put a program in place. It’s kind of like the synonymous, like as a homeowner, you know, always, if you ever want to do anything like expand your house, you know, put a dormer on or do anything like that, you gotta go through all the building codes. And quite frankly, they’re a pain in the neck. You know, I just want to do this little thing.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (26:34)

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (26:58)

Right. But then I’m always reminded in the back of my head, it’s like, Hey, when a hurricane comes through the United States, you know, bad things happen, but buildings pretty much are intact. When you hear a hurricane go through, you know, a less developed area, devastations, buildings are wiped out and you go, Oh, that’s why there’s those building codes and that.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (27:11)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (27:24)

Uh, inspector who’s just such a pain in the neck. mean, I just want to put a little dormer on the back. I just want to do this. It’s not a big deal. You know, and, and, and anyway, it’s, it’s, but it’s victim of the success. That’s as where I was going with that whole thing. And with, with the safety training, it’s the same thing. It’s victim of success. If you do it well, you don’t have the incidents. If you don’t have the incidents for a generation or so, then the next generation grew up where that never happens. Right. And,

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (27:33)

Yeah.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (27:53)

And therefore you can kind of look at it and go, why do we have to do this? This never happens. And it’s like, well, it never happens because we’re doing it. But yeah, so very cool.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (28:02)

Right, right.

 

Jeff Walter (28:03)

And then we talk about, you know, ever more exotic materials being used. And, you know, and then EVs and batteries and, and the airbags and, and just it’s, you know, as, as we’re, as the industry is trying to do more with less and, and, you know, it just introduces more and more exotic materials.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (28:09)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, I mean, that’s the whole thing. We’re trying to make these cars more safe too, with all the ADOS and the cameras all around the vehicles and the start stop technology and the distance management technology. And that’s just the whole focus, right? Is to keep us safer. But that introduces, like you said, new technology, different batteries, different, what is it now in any given car, there’s what, 12 airbags or more? It’s just when, you know, we were growing up, had the…

 

One of the stairs, now they’re in the sides, now they’re in the seat belts, they’re in the window wells, they’re all over the car. And that’s all, you know, to help us stay safer, which is all a great thing. But it definitely, as new products come out, as new things come out, we have to, we have to mitigate it, right? We have to manage it, which is what we do. We update our training with every new regulation that comes out.

 

Jeff Walter (28:56)

Yeah.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (29:12)

We are constantly checking to make sure that things haven’t changed. He’s a guru. He has so many different hazardous materials, trainings, and certifications. He works very closely with both DOT as well as AIDA, which is the C and AER portion of Hazmat, to make sure that our training is up to date with the most up-to-date product information. We’re checking it at least every three months.

 

Jeff Walter (29:32)

Yeah.

 

So, question, a question. I was just out in Santa Monica and I was really, I was, visiting my daughter and, I was just shocked at all the, what was it? Wago, Waymo, the self-driving vehicles. Is that, is that another turn of the screw on technology from a hazmat, situation? Because they all seem to have, there was like, I think was ZUX and Wago.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (29:46)

yeah, yeah, the self-driving vehicles.

 

Jeff Walter (29:59)

But they all seem to have some like kind of thing like not only they have a million cameras on the car But they but you know, but they had some type of device on the roof and I was And I’m wondering if that’s like another set of batteries exotic materials different thing, you know million different cameras Whatever. Yeah, does that does that play into any of this?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (30:05)

Yeah.

 

That’s really good question. I haven’t thought about that ⁓ as a whole. Again, I live in a rural area. I don’t often see these. I to travel to see them. But I believe, I believe, don’t quote me, that the thing on top is separate from the vehicle. ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (30:28)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, no, it’s separate from it’s like mounted onto the

 

vehicle, right?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (30:39)

that might not fall under automotive, because it is, I believe, a camera or a radar-based.

 

Jeff Walter (30:39)

Yeah.

 

because it’s it’s a, it’s a, ⁓ we

 

use this amounted thing. Okay.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (30:48)

Yeah,

 

and then the vehicle itself should be pretty similar to one you could purchase on the street. So it should be the same hazardous materials on that vehicle. But that’s something to explore. I haven’t thought about that actually.

 

Jeff Walter (30:55)

Yeah, okay. Yeah, was it?

 

Well, especially, I think it’d

 

be interesting because especially there were some modifications to the vehicle. Like they had on the front and rear bumpers on the left and right, kind of spinning cameras down at the street level, which obviously didn’t come. I don’t think they always made that. But it’s interesting.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (31:11)

Right.

 

Sounds aftermarket.

 

Jeff Walter (31:25)

aftermarket and there was a big thing that was like, what

 

you said, like mounted on the roof. But it’d be, you know, it’d be interesting because like if you see if that takes off, then, you know, I could see an OE just saying, okay, I’m going to, well, especially if that takes off, then obviously you can produce cars that don’t have a driver, that don’t have steering wheels, right? You know, because it’s all autonomous. And

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (31:45)

all those bells and Right.

 

Jeff Walter (31:49)

And I could see all that stuff getting included into, and somebody’s going to come up and go, hey, we’re going to take this platform and we’re going to tweak it this way. And it’s going to be more comfortable for, and it’s going to be ideal setup for WayModel or Zuex. So that’s interesting. Interesting stuff. So what do you guys see coming down the line? got e-learning courses right now?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (32:07)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (32:15)

⁓ certification, renewals, what does the future hold for C-CAR?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (32:20)

We do, we do. our main learning platform, as we’ve discussed multiple times, is that long, long form learning. we do have that recurrent course, slightly less, but we’d like to start, some sort of short form learning as well. Right. We, we all, we all take these long courses and we learn all of the things, but then sometimes you forget them within your year or three year period of recertification. I like for our company to start doing,

 

know, five minute toolbox talks with the guys. We started that. part of an OSHA Alliance. That’s going to be one of our new products coming out. Just a refresher, you know, on a Wednesday with your guys in the shop, know, ladder safety. Here’s a little refresher. going to do a five minute toolbox talk. And in regards to the hazmat, I think that would be good as well if we had little mini courses that you could come back to.

 

We do have, we currently offer, if you are part of our subscription, anything downloadable in our LMS. So you can print out the manuals, you can print out the shipping information, you can put your own notes on it.

 

Jeff Walter (33:19)

Okay.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (33:21)

⁓ There’s all that paper. Our industry really likes paper still. You we like those books. So you have access to that. But I think we as a whole of an industry, not only do we need long form training, we do need that short recurrent training to keep it at the top of our

 

Jeff Walter (33:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (33:36)

So AI is still in my mind ⁓ in its infancy, especially for our industry itself. We have a very complicated industry, many different cars, many different parts. Cars have gone from in our generation of,

 

Jeff Walter (33:39)

Yeah.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (33:49)

almost anybody being able to fix things in their driveway to, you now have to have a degree, you know, you need to, you need to go to those schools. You need to, you almost need to be a computer science whiz to fix a car these days. And I think AI will make an appearance. I have seen different things with AI out there with some training. I believe, I believe it’s BMW who, who has, ⁓ their students wear like a headset and they can see the inner workings of the vehicle, which is very cool.

 

Jeff Walter (34:15)

Yeah, I saw that

 

last year. That was pretty cool.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (34:18)

I don’t know how that will translate to hazmat training, specifically for the online. We do have the updated courses. We’re doing more of the integrated learning where there’s, know, drag this, pull this. This is how this package should be put in there and visuals of AI, but not.

 

not as advanced as, you know, the VR on your face. But I could see it getting to that point, at some point.

 

Jeff Walter (34:39)

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things

 

we’ve seen and I’m seeing it increasing. I sort of a little bit a couple of vendors at the IFA last week and one of the things that we packed into our product, but it goes to what you just said is more of the chat bot thing. You’ve got all this great training and you’re putting it all in and then you’re like, now you’re actually doing your job.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (35:00)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (35:07)

And going to the, what do I do? What’s the right shipping container for a, you know, ABC, you know, airbag, you know, or something like that. And, um, which is all in the training and all that material is, is, is really interesting. Like, uh, was talking to this one firm last week, they do operating manuals for franchise awards. Right. So, um, and, uh, and.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (35:20)

Yeah.

 

Mm. Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (35:34)

What, and one of things they were looking at as next step was doing that type of thing. It’s like, well, so that the manuals don’t become, there’s, there’s been the training that has to occur, but they’re just in the manual creation business. Right. And they’re, they were sitting there going like, well, the biggest challenge is, know, how do you find stuff in the manual easily? And they’re, we’re thinking of like that whole, well, if we may, if we had a chat pod that was focused, that was trained on a manual.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (35:54)

you

 

Jeff Walter (35:59)

you know, then people can ask it. What’s the right temperature for this? How do I do this? How many coats of this? Like all the procedural things that you’re trained on. But ⁓ then you need that reference. Almost like using it as a job aid, you know.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (36:07)

Right.

 

Exactly. It’s almost, it’s, what people are doing right now. You know, you’re going to the internet, you’re going to Reddit, you’re going to all these forums and you’re asking people that, that seems the most likely integration for, for a lot of our trainings out there, not just my own. and then it could get more complicated, could get more VR, you know, but we’ll see. It is very cool. I don’t know how to even get with Hazmat, but.

 

Jeff Walter (36:21)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Yeah, well that VR stuff is really cool. Yeah, it’s really, it’s very, very, very, very cool. You know, especially

 

with the meta glasses, the Ray-Ban meta glasses. my gosh. I was at ATMC last year and they were doing something like you said, the BMW where it was, where it was. Yeah. And it was just, you know, where they can do it virtually.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (36:37)

yeah.

 

Yeah, I think that is where I saw it or talked about it.

 

Jeff Walter (36:51)

with the goggle, with the meta headset and they did it all virtually and then they put the meta glasses on as that kind of on-demand chatbot in your ear, but it can see what you’re looking at and that was just crazy.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (36:54)

the headset on. ⁓

 

That’s the other factor with this stuff though. ⁓ As you can imagine, cost, right? Are all these dealerships, independent dealerships, even the OEs, the franchises, can they afford these kinds of products? So we don’t want to get too technological where they can’t, where we price ourself out. You you need to have A, C, and D in order to take our program. Cause some folks just aren’t going to do that and really are.

 

Jeff Walter (37:12)

Yeah.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (37:30)

The main goal is to keep people safe, right? So if it has to be the boring long-form stuff until we can find a way to make all this AI cost-effective, then I’d rather keep people safe, you know?

 

Jeff Walter (37:31)

Right.

 

Well, I mean, to

 

me, it’s not so much the boring. I don’t think it is boring long form, but there’s a lot of information that has to be conveyed and you have to like even when we when we do all that. And it’s interesting. You’re seeing it at lower levels of education. You K12, you know, more academic and all that. That. Just because you can lay your hands on a piece of information easily by doing the search.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (37:56)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (38:04)

you know, like, you know, who was in the war of 1812, right? Any one of us can look that up in two seconds on our phones, but there’s value to having, of knowing that in your head. And I think, you know, one of things interesting, just as an industry in general, learning and development industry in general, you know, I think there’s, what’s the real…

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (38:09)

Right.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (38:26)

I think one of the things we’re, and in academia too, it’s what do you need to know versus what do you need to reference? Right. I mean, cause if you think about it, the only, know, all we’ve really, I mean, not all we’ve really done, but like, okay, we now have an encyclopedia in our hands, right? We have the world’s knowledge in our hands. could put, but, but I have to make decisions and use judgment.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (38:46)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (38:53)

And just because I have all the world’s knowledge sitting at my fingertips doesn’t mean I have access to that when I’m making judgment calls. Like how am going to remove this? I’m like with, especially with hazards, you know, when you talk about hazardous materials, right? It’s like, it’s all judgment call, right? It’s all judgment. Like I’m going to take this, I’m going to take it out like this. I’m going to touch it like this. I’m going to move it like that. I’m going to.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (38:54)

Yes.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

right? What’s the potential?

 

Jeff Walter (39:21)

torque the bolt down like this, I’m going to put it in this type of container. You know, I’m going to put it next to my subway sandwich while I’m as I transport it, right? Like those are all judgment calls you’re making. I think the, you know, I think the interesting thing that we need to almost revisit is to your point about the long form is just because you can access it, even with the AI, you know, and even with the chat bot, just because I can access it.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (39:30)

Right.

 

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (39:46)

What do I need to know so that I can make good judgment at the moment of time? I’ve not, I’ve got, you know, at the moment of time is an accident. And should I touch the vehicle at the moment in time? I take an EV vehicle into the shop to do some repair because it was an offender bread to like, I can’t constantly be going and checking. need to know certain things. And so I think the, I think the long forms, uh, I think it’s going to stay around for a while. There’s just a certain amount of knowledge you need to know.

 

to do certain things.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (40:17)

100%. And

 

a lot of it’s repetition too. you know, like any industry or anybody getting into a job, you have so much you need to learn at the beginning, right? There’s all this information overload. But as you progress through your career, we talked about it, it almost becomes second nature for some of these things. Some things don’t change, you know? Some things do, but I mean…

 

Paint is paint, right? You’re gonna shift it in a certain way. There hasn’t been much of a change in that, right? Except for like lead-based paint in our homes, but yeah, it hasn’t changed much. It was, and we had to relearn it. So those who had been doing things with it, you had to relearn. And everybody coming in, that’s just second nature now. That’s just what they know.

 

Jeff Walter (40:46)

was going to say, once we got rid of lead, but that was a big ⁓ change.

 

Right.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (41:03)

And it’s just gonna be that. I get guys on the phone and they say, you know, this is my sixth time having to take this training. And I’m like, well, good, you know it. Like, you’ve been doing it for the last however many years. There might be one or two new things for you since last time, three years ago, and you’ll bank that knowledge and move forward.

 

Jeff Walter (41:20)

Yeah. So,

 

just circling on that, when, when, when you guys, when you, when they take the training, you said there was an assessment that at the end or something like that.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (41:29)

Yeah, there’s comprehensive assessment. So within ours, it’s ⁓ 10 chapters with little mini quizzes in between based on a big idea. And then at the end, there is a comprehensive exam that they need to pass with a passing score of 80 % or higher.

 

Jeff Walter (41:40)

So when

 

you do the…

 

just going back, when you do the renewal, can you just take the exam or do you have to go through the content?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (41:46)

Yes.

 

So you do have to go through the content. That is a DOT regulation. But that is why we created that recurrent or what we call the refresher course. So provided you still have that certificate and it is still valid and you’ve scored 80%, you are eligible then to take the course that is a third to a half of the time as the original course. You do, you do. And then you get reissued a new certificate valid for three years.

 

Jeff Walter (41:50)

Okay.

 

All right.

 

and do retake the exam as well.

 

Okay, all right, interesting,

 

interesting. All right.

 

Again, it kind of has a bad rap. ⁓ But especially when it comes to certain things, especially safety, when we learn something new, when we’re learning something new, it’s on the right side of our brain, then it goes to the left side, frontal lobe, and then eventually it goes to the back of the left brain. And that’s where it becomes repetitive.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (42:21)

Yeah.

 

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (42:41)

And ⁓ what I never thought about on compliance training, effective compliance training, which you guys have been doing because you’ve seen the decrease of, know, population has doubled and the incidence of hazmat issues has dropped. So, you know, that’s a double plus thing, right? But then it’s the whole, you get used to the environment and you don’t, you know,

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (43:02)

Good news.

 

Jeff Walter (43:08)

The amount of brain energy it takes to really understand why your environment is the way it is, is a tremendous amount of energy. And so we don’t think about it because we’re focused on the new and the novel because that’s the thing that can, you know, that’s where opportunity is. And those are the things that can kill us. The things that are, you know, always there, you know, your brain doesn’t think about.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (43:27)

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (43:33)

And so I never thought about the compliance training, especially when we talk about safety and especially about when it’s been a successful program. And then all of a sudden it’s just become, well, of course there’s no incidents with like, of course that doesn’t happen. I’ve never thought on the clients in terms of like, well, yeah, because we’re doing this. know, of course there’s clean drinkable water coming out of the fountain. Yes, because we have a whole.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (43:52)

Yeah, exactly. ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (43:59)

industry of people that are making sure that the water that gets to your, you know, like it’s just, it’s have. So I appreciate that. Hey, Kate, if somebody wanted to get ahold of you or C-CAR, where would they go? What would they do?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (44:01)

Could I sit here now?

 

Fantastic. I’m glad I could do that.

 

Absolutely. So you can visit our website at any time. That is ccar, c-c-a-r, dash green link dot o-r-g, because we are a learning corporation. Or at any time, give us an email at info at c-c-a-r dash green link dot o-r-g. Or you can call our friendly customer service staff at 847-749-4375. And sometimes you and I answer the phone, so it could be me.

 

Jeff Walter (44:41)

Well, I hear that customer service

 

is a great training program for future leaders. All right. Well, Kate, is there anything else you want to say to the good people out there listening before we wrap it up?

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (44:49)

It is, you know, it’s a stepping stone.

 

Just stay safe and if you need some automotive safety help, call us. Not only do we do the hazmat, but there’s some OSHA safety as well with our Alliance Program Partnership. So feel free to give us a call, ask us questions, or if we can help you out, we’re happy to do it.

 

Jeff Walter (45:10)

All right. ⁓

 

Kate, thank you so much for your time today. I greatly appreciate that.

 

And ⁓ my guest today has been Kate Henmler, the president and CIO of C-CAR, the coordinating committee on automotive repair. Kate, thanks again. Appreciate it. You too. And everybody out there, you have a great day also.

 

Kate Henmueller of CCAR (45:16)

Thank you.

 

That is us. Thank you. You have a great day.