Diversify or Die: The Oil Change Playbook That Pays

Tyreese: Look, I want to start this one with something that came out of Las Vegas this week, because it tells you exactly where this industry is headed, whether you run a shop with ten bays or you run one van like me.

On Tuesday, National Oil and Lube News reported on the State of the Industry session at iFLEX at AAPEX, and the headline finding is this: the quick lube business is not just the oil change business anymore. The session was built around the twenty twenty-six NOLN Operator Survey, and thirty-four percent of the operators who responded said they also have car washes. Jason Lyon, the immediate past president of the Preventative Automotive Maintenance Association, put it even plainer. He said almost half of their members are not simply quick lube anymore. That is why the association changed its name a few years back, from the Automotive Oil Change Association to the Preventative Automotive Maintenance Association. The name had to catch up with what members were already doing.

Now, here is the thing. I did not need a survey to tell me operators are branching out. I see it every week on the road. A customer asks, while I am already under the hood, can you do my wipers, can you swap my cabin filter, can you look at this tire that keeps losing air. The question is not whether you diversify. The question is whether you do it on purpose, with math behind it, or whether you drift into it, saying yes to everything, and wake up running a business you do not recognize.

Because there is a second half to that same report, and it is the part that should make every operator sit up. Lyon said maintaining oil supply is the top challenge facing quick lube operators right now. And he described something he said he has never seen before in his career: unbranded oil now costs as much as branded oil, sometimes more. Everybody is going up, he said, just some further than others.

Let me explain why that matters. A lot of the big manufacturers make their own base stock. They use what they need for their own branded oil, and they sell the rest on a secondary spot market. That is where a lot of smaller, unbranded blenders buy. When the big manufacturers' own supply gets tight, they raise the spot-market price, and the unbranded guys get squeezed first. So the cheap alternative that used to protect your margin is not cheap anymore. If your whole business is one service, and its main ingredient just got more expensive with no cheaper substitute, you have nowhere to hide. That is the real story behind the diversification numbers. It is not operators getting bored. It is operators looking for a second leg to stand on.

So today I want to go deep on the playbook, the way I actually think about it from the truck. Not the trade show version. The version that works when you have one van, a route full of customers, and a reputation to protect.

First, the rule that keeps you honest. Lyon mentioned he was raised in what he called the Larry Dahl school of thought, and I love this, because it is the exact tension in this whole conversation. Less is more. Be very effective at the eight or ten things you do, instead of trying to be everything to everybody and letting people down all over the place. That is the guardrail. Diversification does not mean doing everything. It means doing one more thing, really well, for people who already trust you.

Here is how I would run it, step by step, if I were sitting across the table from you with coffee.

Step one, stop guessing what to add. For the next two weeks, write down every single thing a customer asks you for that you do not officially sell yet. Not what you think they want. What they actually say, in their words, while you are standing in their driveway or they are standing in your bay. Wipers, cabin air filters, tire rotations, a battery test, a walk-around check on a fleet truck. At the end of two weeks, you will not have a brainstorm list. You will have a tally, and the winner will be obvious. The service at the top of that list is your diversification candidate, because demand is already proven and you did not spend a dollar on advertising to create it.

Step two, run it through the mobile test, or the shop version of the same test. Does it ride on the same truck, the same route, and the same visit? Does it need equipment you already own, or close to it? Does it fit inside the time you are already there, without blowing up your schedule? And here is the one people skip: does your insurance actually cover it, and are you trained to do it right? If a service fails any of those, it is not your next service. It is a future business, and future businesses eat present businesses alive.

Step three, and this is where most operators get sloppy, price it with real margin after today's oil cost, not last year's oil cost. Let me walk you through the math the way I do it, with round example numbers so you can follow along. Say your base oil change runs about one hundred twenty-nine dollars. If your oil, filter, and supplies on that job now cost you forty-five dollars, and your drive time and labor and disposal run you another thirty-five, you have about forty-nine dollars left before overhead. That is fine, until oil jumps again and that forty-five becomes fifty-five, and suddenly you are working just as hard for ten dollars less a job, multiplied across every stop on your route. That is the squeeze Lyon is describing, and it is why a second service matters so much.

Now take the add-on. Say you add a cabin air filter service. The part costs you fifteen dollars. It takes you ten minutes, while you are already there, so your extra labor and travel cost is close to zero, because you are already standing in the driveway. If you price that filter job at forty-nine dollars, you keep roughly thirty-four dollars of margin on ten minutes of work, with no extra drive, no extra booking, no extra customer to find. That is the whole game. The add-on does not have to be big. It has to be high-margin, low-friction, and attached to a visit you already paid to make.

Now compare that to the wrong kind of diversification. Say you add full tire service. Now you need a tire machine, inventory in five sizes, a tech trained to do it safely, a disposal plan, and a whole new insurance conversation. You might make good money on tires someday. But you just bought yourself a second business before your first business was bulletproof. Same with building a car wash because thirty-four percent of surveyed operators have one. A car wash is real estate and plumbing and permits, not a checkbox on a booking form. The survey tells you where the industry is going. It does not tell you to copy the biggest capital project on the list.

Step four, put the new service on the booking form, with a price next to it, before you announce anything. I see operators do this backwards all the time. They tell customers, oh yeah, we do that too, and then they fumble the price on the spot, or discount it on the fly, or the tech forgets to mention it entirely. A service that is not on the form does not exist. A service with a checkbox and a price is a real product. The customer can say yes without a sales pitch, and your tech can offer it with one honest sentence: while I am here, I can swap that filter for forty-nine dollars, want me to take care of it. No pressure, no upsell theater.

Step five, and this is the fleet version. When I am talking to a fleet manager, I am not selling one oil change. I am selling a route stop that keeps their trucks rolling. A simple walk-around check, lights, tires, fluid levels, belts you can see, bundled into the visit and written into the agreement, turns a commodity oil change into a maintenance relationship. The fleet manager gets fewer surprises, you get a contracted reason to be on their lot every month, and that relationship is worth more than any single ticket. The big chains chase the same fleet work with scale. You beat them with a tech who knows their trucks by name, not by ticket number.

Now, there was a second session at iFLEX this week that fits right into this, and I want to bring it in because it answers the question diversification alone cannot answer. On Wednesday, National Oil and Lube News reported on Ed Howie, founder of a firm called Lifelong Customers, who spoke at iFLEX about retention. His point was blunt: the win for a customer is bigger than saving three dollars on an oil change. The win is reliability. The customer knowing they will get high-quality, fast, friendly service that meets their needs, every single time. He said, and I am paraphrasing him here, that if everyone does not understand what winning looks like, for the business, for the customer, and for themselves, you cannot get alignment, and without alignment you cannot get speed. His word for doing it right was winning others over and over, well orchestrated, well operationalized, and well optimized.

Here is why that matters for your diversification play. A new service that confuses your team or disappoints a customer does not grow your business. It shrinks trust, and trust is the one thing a small operator has that a chain cannot buy in bulk. So when you add your one service, do the unglamorous work Howie is talking about. Tell your tech exactly what to say, what winning looks like on that visit, and what to do when something goes wrong. Write it down, one page. If your tech has to guess, your customer has to hope, and hope is not a retention strategy.

So let me land this where it matters, independents versus the big chains. The chains will diversify with capital. They will buy car washes, add bays, and roll out tire programs across hundreds of stores, with money you should not try to match dollar for dollar. Your advantage is different. You are already in the driveway. You already have the relationship. Add one service this week, priced right, offered cleanly, delivered consistently, and your customer feels it as convenience, not a corporation expanding. That is how independents win this cycle. Not by becoming a smaller version of a chain, but a more trusted version of a neighbor.

And here is your takeaway, the one thing to do this week. Before your first job tomorrow, look at your own tally, or start one today, and pick the one service your customers already keep asking for. Price it after today's oil cost, not last year's. Put it on your booking form with a checkbox and a price. Then offer it, plainly, on your next ten visits, and count how many people say yes. That number will tell you more about your next year than any trade show floor ever will.

That is the show. Diversify on purpose, protect your margin, and take care of the customers you already have, because they are the ones who will carry you through whatever oil costs next. Go run your numbers, and I will see you at the next one.