View From The Trenches

One item that many young installers do not think about is the term: longevity. Trust me pups, it is never too early to think about staying healthy.

If one was to gather together a group of technicians who broke through the 45-year-old mark and have at least 20 years in the trade, what common physical threads would one find? I would bet that the majority of we “old mutts” would and could reel off a number of ailments or physical limitations that have crept up on us over time. Many of us have helped orthopedic surgeons pay for their children’s college tuition or at least their country club dues. Chiropractors call us by our first names and all too many of us qualify for volume discounts when it comes to anti-inflammation prescriptions.

The most ignorant statement I hear coming from the younger generation is, “it won’t happen to me since I will only install for a few years.” I probably said that thirty years ago too and I would bet so did many of my fellow “geezers”. One never should say the word “never” simply because situations change.

How can anybody protect themselves from the war wounds that can be inflicted by our trade? First of all, I firmly believe that we all have to stay in shape. Our work is physical and demanding. In order to stay on top, we should be working out and maintaining our bodies. While one does not have to attain Mr. Universe status in bodybuilding, I would submit that weight training could be indispensable in helping many of us survive the rigors of our work.

My bane has been my lower back. I’m 6’2” and have a long torso and not overly long legs for my height. If I don’t keep my abs strong and my legs in shape, I can suffer injury and have done so in the past. Stepping on and off vehicles over time isn’t a healthy activity and neither is setting windshields solo over many years.

How about hands and fingers? Any of you lifers feel like you can out-play Eric Clapton on a guitar these days? Perhaps I should re-frame the question to merely ask if any auto glass tech’s out-pick Slow Hand. Playing Rock Band does not count. Whether one uses a cable knife or wields an Express, those ten little digits that help us hold our tools and our glass take a daily beating. Over a period of a few decades, one can impart a substantial amount of unintended abuse on our hands and fingers and all too often that damage has a permanent impact, gloves or no gloves. My friend Larry Carlson of Austin Auto Glass opines that doing door glass is harder on our hands than windshields can be. It’s this humble technician’s opinion that much of what we do is notoriously hard on too many body parts.

As we age, some suffer neck compression injuries from years of the non-intelligent use of one’s head. Shoulder issues arise from lifting and pulling. Legs and knees somehow lose the capacity over time to remain strong and supportive.

As a self employed independent, I’m lucky I am not in the high production rat race for a paycheck. I know my limitations and one of them is not running a break-neck speed trying to install high numbers of mobile auto glass anymore. I’ve played that game in my younger years and I truly regret the impact it had on me.

Production pay plans come at a personal high cost over time. Yes, there is an economic benefit, but that carrot is being dangled in front of you by a stick which will be used against you over time on your back, neck, hands, etc. My personal observation is that most techs can take that hectic pace for about a decade until one starts to burn out or, worse yet, break down. Then what are one’s options? Quit to start up your own glass business and join the other thousands who also came to that same crossroad? One has to take care of oneself. That is cardinal rule #1. Make sure to hit the gym and stay in shape. What about eating right? Too many cheeseburgers, sodas and beer take a real toll on one’s heart, waistline and endocrine system. I know of one installer who was found dead from a heart attack by his truck at the back of a dealership. That’s not the way I want to go. The last thing you want to have is cardiac problems or diabetes. If one is running around trying to install that last windshield after 10 or 11 hrs of work, it becomes very hard to focus on the long-term effects of what one is doing to oneself. Those long days make it very hard to have the time to do the things that can improve your chances for longevity.

Consider the fact that few people really care about your own health. If you miss a month due to a shoulder injury, will one’s job or business still be there? Then consider what would happen if you suffered a heart attack? If you have spinal fusion surgery, will your employer want to chance taking you back? If you are an employee, very often you are just another asset that can be deployed or detached. Being self-employed is hardly any better. I just partially tore a hamstring just by stretching and the reality is, I can’t take time off to get it to heal faster. My mailbox hasn’t overflowed with get-well cards from my competition or my clients.

The other important tenet is simply trying to use the right tool for the job. The industry is filled with implements that can save wear and tear on our bodies. To me, it seems like a reasonable policy for every technician to acquire devices on their own that can save their hides. That means things like an Express or Extractor for removals. The price of a Lil Buddy or something similar may very well pay for itself instead of chiropractor bills.

One last thing that few people seem to forget is the long-term exposure to various carcinogens that we come in contact with. Nitrile gloves are used for a reason and it’s not just due to frit contamination. Urethanes, cleaners, and primers all contain chemicals that have a history of causing cancer or liver damage. Since many of these chemicals have only been used since the late 70’s and early 80’s we are just becoming aware of these unseen dangers. Some people are convinced that the vapors that are released from cured urethane being cut out aren’t healthy either. I’ve heard of studies that have refuted such thoughts, but in short too little is known about much of the long-term exposure to the various chemicals we come in contact with on a daily basis.

Good health is important. You have to live with yourself the rest of your life so that reason alone should dictate how good of a job you want to do in taking care of yourself. The life as a glass technician is not an easy one. Don’t make it any harder than it is. My mom was right. I should have become a doctor specializing in auto glass-related illnesses and injuries. I’d be able to afford playing golf at a country club right now if I had. Perhaps I wouldn’t be limping either.

One very sad symptom of the recession in our industry is the constant whittling of costs by the owners in order to survive. That is an understandable process in of itself. What is being lost in this quest to increase profits or merely to stay afloat is the decline in quality and the increase of liability by the use of products and materials that are less expensive but are inherently inferior.

Take urethanes, for instance. First of all, you have a choice of brand name over generic or house brands. Secondly, the price of the product oftentimes is reflective of the safe drive-away time (the shorter the SDAT, the higher the price). How are we choosing products these days?

From what I hear and see, owners are as varied about their buying and use of urethanes as they are about pricing their glass products. It actually mirrors the industry’s extreme diversity. Some shops buy only on reputation and experience, while others make purchasing decisions based on price alone. That may speak volumes about the basic philosophy of the shop.

First of all, trying to “out-cheap” the competition is a very shortsighted and perhaps dangerous game to play. I have heard arguments from owners across the country that the choice of urethanes they use sometimes is predicated by the customer of the moment. They will use a premium short SDAT urethane for “live” in-shop or mobile customers and a cheap, longer curing one for commercial customers like used car lots, rental companies or body shops. It’s a very dangerous assumption that those latter vehicles will stay still long enough once a technician drives off the property.

Who are we trying to kid? Why are shop owners putting their liability on the line just to save a few bucks? Everyday I see what I consider unprofessional (aka “hack”) shops use cheap urethanes with SDATs of more than six hours that are runnier than an Oprah Winfrey cry-fest. Why are allegedly high-end shops trying to compete on price by getting into the same muddy pond as these bottom feeders by using similar products? This is the type of attitude that is helping to diminish our collective reputations.

Personally I don’t like having even two different types of urethane in my possession. I feel very comfortable in choosing one brand with one low SDAT and staying with that adhesive. I figure what I lose in material costs I will save one day in liability lawsuits or comebacks.

I have some exposure to demolition and aviation and what is paramount in both activities is the strict adherence to procedure. Basically you do the same thing every time to avoid mistakes, since “boo-boos” in those two endeavors tend to be permanent. In short, being anal helps. That trait also is a positive in the auto glass trade as well. For example, when rushed, a tech can use the wrong primer or none at all. If a company’s labeling is the same for all types of urethanes, mix-ups can and do happen. Keeping with one kind of adhesive (preferably a high-quality urethane) for all jobs just makes sense to me.

The other issue is selectively choosing what customer gets what type of quality job. That has been a concept that is embedded into this industry. If a commercial fleet customer wants cheap, or in fact any customer, he gets cheap. From the largest corporate shop to the ubiquitous single man mobile, it seems too many owners, managers and technicians have a very cavalier attitude about the materials they use for their installs.

To me, that is almost paramount to malpractice. Would any sane person want their doctor to treat them in healing one’s ailment the same way many installers hack up a used car? I personally don’t buy the argument that prescribing generic drugs is the same as using aftermarket glass or non-viscous high SDAT urethane. Casualty or health insurers are pressuring every claiming client away from any branded products these days. Some contacts I have in the pharmaceutical industry share the very same attitude about generic drugs as many of us feel about aftermarket materials available to our industry. That basically and all too often they are simply inferior products.

If you look at our largest corporate installer, they generally use a high-end urethane. I would assume based on the premise that its application logically (if properly applied) should diminish their chances for failures and comebacks. They can buy in such huge quantities; the higher initial cost is offset by volume. Why wouldn’t any shop owner consider spending $1.00-$5.00 more on materials if it would save him from re-dos or possibly a lawsuit (if, of course, the job could be traced back to the installing shop.)

Should the use of urethanes be regulated? Should all urethanes on the market be mandated to have a minimum SDAT of let’s say, three hours? That regulation would provide some protection to consumers while leveling the playing field a little bit for pricing purposes. It would be considered a pipe dream (and perhaps an illegal act as well) for urethane manufacturers to get together and agree to cease production of high SDAT adhesives.

This writer is not trying to suggest violating the Sherman Act. What he would like to see is some method, some act of sanity on the part of this industry that we as a group can actively take a high road toward quality. We have to stop this rampant search for the cheapest product available for install. We are simply sowing the seeds of our own destruction. Someone has to understand and grasp the concept of “garbage in means garbage out”. The AGR industry has already “accepted” the declining quality of the parts that are made available to us in the aftermarket. Are we going to continue that trend by demanding and shopping for cheaper adhesives to install those parts with?

I can vouch for this. This trend toward cheap has helped me. In this weak economy, I have never seen as many poorly adhered windshields this rainy winter that I’ve had to pull out and redo. While that has certainly helped my bottom line, it has done nothing to affirm my faith in the direction this industry is heading.

There is no doubt that being an owner in the auto glass industry during these trying times presents challenges. However, oftentimes it is the nature of these demands that are the ingredients for an Olympic stature ulcer or nervous breakdown. They can pop out of nowhere and strike at anytime. Far too many of these stresses come from unnecessary sources.

Last week I got a call from a past client who happens to be the brother of one of my friends. I had installed his a sidelite on his Toyota Highlander nearly a year ago and his call concerned the fact his sidelite had “come off its track.” With a big rainstorm forecasted for the next day, I was forced to push him to the front of my line of appointments. The Murphy’s Law of Auto Glass was in effect. He lives 40 miles away in a rather remote area of my home county, so taking care of the problem was not something that was convenient. Since the Highlander glass has bonded hardware, on a hunch I swung by and picked up a new part for his door. Sure enough, when I got there, the problem was in the bonded tabs. Both had broken so I replaced the unit.

When I returned the failed part for credit, the warehouse manager informed me that this hardware fracture was an “old problem.” It seemed that the manufacturer had used an outside vendor to provide the bonded hardware and for some certain tempered part numbers, that plastic was inferior and had a history of failure. The manager mentioned that they had destroyed several dozen assemblies months earlier after the problem became identified and the vendor changed.

What chapped my hide was that I never really knew about this situation. How many tempered parts do I have on that manufacturer’s list, which I installed, that are sitting out there as time bombs waiting to implode? A more profound question to ask is this: How many do the rest of you have? This was not a situation like the Auto Tempered Inc. recall of a defective tempering process. This issue just concerned overall quality and not safety, which would be subject to a legal DOT recall. What also is of concern is that the unsuspecting consumer or the installing shop (if it can be found) suffers some sort of economic loss if or when the unrecalled part fails. I received credit, but not for my labor or fuel. Would a customer have to repay for a whole sidelite if the part broke past its warranty, if there was one?

In the past two weeks, I have worked on four vehicles that have sustained water leaks due to substantial adhesion failure in their previous windshield replacements. The last one (which I fixed on March 2) actually fell out after I gave it a hard slap from the inside. It may certainly be due to installer negligence of not applying a primer, or it may be glass or material contamination. I’m certainly not a qualified chemist, so the true root cause remains a mystery. However, if this were not a tech-created situation, how would we, the retailer, really know or ever find out? There was a situation a few years ago when there was a primerless urethane that appeared to have a release problem. There was never an industry-wide recall or even an official whisper of a fault with this brand of urethane. In that case, I paid a high financial price in fixing comebacks. Due to the manufacturer’s stonewalling, all it lost was my respect and a 20-year customer.

The most perplexing and frustrating issue is the overall low level of quality that exists throughout the supply chain in this industry. A one percent failure rate may be tolerable, but I surmise we are well over ten (and perhaps as much as 20 percent if you count every existing manufacturing defect). Distortions, mis-fits, bad hardware and hardware bonded poorly or in the wrong place are just a few common issues. Mirror brackets just seem not to stay on anymore. You would think if a bracket kept falling off and taking a bit of the windshield with it, a company just might re-formulate its bonding agent after a year or two, obviously not with one in-house label. I keep hearing the Sigma Six designation when it comes to glass manufacturing standards. Sorry to say, that term has become an oxymoron when it comes to this industry.

When is this going to end? Or is it? The severe recession has caused many in our industry to recede into a survival mindset. Cost-cutting becomes a daily mantra and quality suffers for it. Why buy a Carlite for a Ford pick-up when you can buy an alphabet brand for less? Why install a rain gutter moulding when you have a roll of overlap to finish up? Everyone concentrates on the bottom line and far too many are demanding less about how we get there. The result is simply a message that is being transmitted both to our customers and back to our suppliers. If we do not make demands for quality, rest assured little will be done to improve the status quo. The mindset of too many suppliers is similar to what we ourselves feel; cut costs to offset declines in sales or increases in expenses. That ignominious “quality fade” for some products has become practically a bleaching.

These sad facts underscore a very large need that too many large players in this industry want to ignore: the ability to track parts and materials to protect our clients and ourselves. This attitude may be due to the theory of mass ignorance: If no one knows or can remember who has installed a defective part or used defective materials (or in most cases just installed it unprofessionally) neither blame nor liability cannot be assessed. Many smart shops already document adhesive lot numbers on their invoices, yet there is no national mechanism in place that can trace glass parts or who installed them. The next real question that would provide a very revealing answer to this integrity of this industry is this: If a serious problem were revealed that involved public safety, such as adhesive failure or frit contamination, how many businesses would or could actively contact their customers to rectify a potentially hazardous or even lethal condition? I would surmise that the majority of the 15,000 establishments would just whistle as they walked past this economic graveyard. That supposition alone underscores the sad state of dishonesty that permeates this industry.

Nobody likes to be blindsided. As a retailer, I have the same attitude every customer has; I expect what we buy to have value and performance. Glass hardware or mirror brackets should stay adhered for years (if not for the length of the vehicle’s life). Our customers depend on us to provide them with parts that should work as expected.

As an industry, we have been placing a far greater premium on price rather on quality. Admittedly, we have had to in many cases. Insurers want to limit their losses and the American consumer generally believes that all glass and installs are the same, an inaccurate premise that many from within promote. From retailer to customer, value (like beauty) lies solely with the beholder and, if we continue to market ourselves based only on price or speed, there will be a far greater price to pay later on. The question then becomes: Can we afford it?