The Best of 2022

What has two thumbs and isn’t afraid to show off all the cool content we produced in 2022?

(Spoiler alert: It’s us.)

Yes, folks, it’s that time of year, where your usually cheerful marketing teams come crawling out from that strange two-week span between Christmas and New Year where nothing is real and time doesn’t matter.

We’re still trying to work off our eggnog hangovers (okay, I’m trying to work off the eggnog hangover), and what better way to do that than by looking over some of the incredible work we did last year?

And we did a lot.

So here, for your reviewing pleasure, are some of our top blog posts, webinars, and downloads. They’re all free, they’re all pretty awesome, and now they’re all in one place!

FIRST, TWO REALLY IMPORTANT THINGS HAPPENED
The Fullbay family grew in 2022 as we acquired Dieselmatic and welcomed them into the fold. Now we aren’t just helping shops run more efficiently—we can also help them market more efficiently!

We also introduced our Fleet Payments integration, which allows shops to accept fleet cards and fleet checks right within the app. Yes, folks, you’ve got more payment methods to choose from!

WEBINARS
We kicked off 2022 with a great Shop Owners Roundtable that addressed the trends, challenges, and opportunities of the coming year. The Roundtable proved to be a popular feature, even if we didn’t end things with a swordfight (or really have a round table…ours is kind of rectangular), as we also centered one on inflation and shortages and another on employment and retention.

We try to do one or two webinars a quarter, so we won’t include all of them here. But we had a great time recording this one about making your shop successful in 2022, as well as another feature on the always-hot subject of tech retention.

BLOG POSTS
Now, where would we be if we didn’t show off some of our favorite blog posts? We posted a lot in 2022—over 100 times—so we aren’t going to give you a complete list. We will, however, share our favorites:

• What began as an assignment about diesel certifications morphed into a shocking expose and—OK, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but we did learn that certifications aren’t a huge deal in the industry.
• We also learned about some shop owners who, in a time of shortages, have turned to parts hoarding to make sure they can serve their customers.
• As a counterpart to parts hoarding (har, har) we checked out this new fad where customers bring their own parts.
• We explored the strange world of chargebacks and tried to make “Chargeback Aragorn” a thing (results pending).
• Are you a smaller shop struggling to swim in a sea of larger operations? This article is for you.
• If you’re using your inventory as your savings account…you should stop. Our COO Chris O’Brien told us why.
• Good techs may not be hard to find, but they can be hard to keep. We looked into what benefits shops can offer to retain their best people.
• Repairing a semi is only half the battle—ever wonder what goes into repairing a trailer? We learned the ins and outs!
• Speaking of repairing other kinds of equipment, we took a long look at heavy equipment repair (and used heavy metal in the title—our writer is still proud of that).
• Last, but certainly not least, we discussed what goes into promoting a technician into a supervisory role.

We also have two honorable mentions: Our epic trilogy on labor rates was released into one awesome (and free!) ebook, and we put together a handy heavy maintenance equipment checklist.

STATE OF HEAVY-DUTY REPAIR
We also released the second version of the State of Heavy-Duty Repair (better known as SOHDR: Bigger, Badder, and More Numerical). Not sure you’re ready to behold the percentages? We had a great webinar about it, too.

You should definitely check out both if you haven’t already—and brace yourself. We’re working on SOHDR3, codenamed Return of the Heavy-Duty Repair, due out in February of this year.

(Editor’s Note: That is NOT what it is code named. It doesn’t have a code name. Suz has once again hit the coffee too hard.)

WRAPPING UP

Phew! That’s a lot of cool stuff. And there’s even more to come—we’re already hard at work on articles, ebooks, webinars, and other exciting things we’ll be serving up in 2023.

Stay tuned—we can’t wait to show you what we’re gonna do!