You Don’t Fix Trucks Anymore: Or, How to Run a Repair Business

Nobody really teaches you how to run a repair shop.

Owners tend to learn by doing, and it tends to look like this: a talented technician realizes they want to do their own thing. They leave their existing workplace and start a new one, sometimes as a single tech in a truck, sometimes opening a brick-and-mortar location with employees. From there, they end up getting a lot of stuff thrown at them: taxes! Hiring employees! Managing people! Dealing with customers! And all manner of other evils.

It can take a long time to learn this stuff. Unless you have a business mentor, it turns out to be a lot of trial and error. 

If only a shop owner had a way to learn all that now.

Get this: they do! Peter Cooper realized shop owners needed some help. That’s why he started his business, Ascend Consulting: to help shops actually implement systems and turn profits. He and Suz Baldwin also co-wrote an entire book on the subject: You Don’t Fix Trucks Anymore: A Guide to Running Your Heavy-Duty Shop Like a Business. 

He brings firsthand experience to this topic — he’s a master technician and former shop owner who now works with repair businesses of all sizes. Over the course of several years, he realized he was giving some variation of the same advice. “Set up KPIs,” he’d tell them. “Manage systems, not people.”

Peter realized that shops of every size kept running into the same problems, and the advice he gave one owner could help hundreds more. “I tried to find a book to recommend to people and one didn’t exist,” Peter said. “So I did what I do — solve problems.” 

It is an excellent book, and we’re not just saying that because Fullbay partnered with him on the process. 

“Teaming up to create this book was a no-brainer,” Fullbay’s VP of Marketing Aaron Treguboff said, “and a way for us to help the industry we all love so much. 

You Don’t Fix Trucks Anymore 

The #1 lesson all shop owners need to learn is this: You don’t fix trucks anymore.

Louder for the folks in back! 

YOU DON’T FIX TRUCKS ANYMORE!

Running a successful shop requires shrugging off the technician’s “I’ll fix this” mindset. This is, understandably, extremely difficult to do; after all, the tech mindset is what got the shop owner this far in the first place! But it’s also what ends up holding a shop back.

Peter believes very firmly that shifting out of the tech mindset and changing your identity is crucial to running a profitable shop. He even gave a presentation about it at Diesel Connect 2026, which you can watch here.

But stepping away from the wrench is only the beginning. The real challenge is learning what to do instead: lead people, understand the numbers, and build a business that doesn’t depend on you personally solving every problem.

Work On The Business, Not In It 

Odds are you’ve heard the phrase in that header before. But do you know what it means?

For a repair shop owner, it means you are not the one doing the wrenching. You are, instead, the one drumming up more work and ensuring the whole machine is running smoothly.

What goes into working on the business? Stuff like:

• Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that show where your shop is making money, losing money, or getting stuck. 
• Build pricing systems (including parts matrices) that protect your margins instead of leaving profit to chance.
• Hire technicians and service advisors based on the traits each role actually requires.
• Create repeatable processes so employees know what good work looks like and customers receive a consistent experience.
• Delegate responsibility without losing visibility or control.
• Build a healthy shop culture that makes employees want to stick around.
• Recognize fraud, theft, and other threats before they do serious damage.
• Make decisions from real numbers instead of instinct or habit (or whatever emergency happens to be yelling the loudest).

You Don’t Fix Trucks Anymore teaches readers all of that and a lot more. It helps shop owners replace constant firefighting with clear expectations and systems. It also gives them a better understanding of how their business actually works. 

(It’s pretty much like having a portable version of Peter Cooper with you at all times, which frankly would probably help a lot of shops run better.)

If you’d like an idea of what this book can show you, we’ve packaged the chapter about fraud as its very own ebook (download it here). In it, you’ll learn about the different kinds of fraud, what the stats look like, and what steps you can take to guard your employees and your business. We encourage you to download it even if your shop is doing extremely well and you aren’t sold on the full book. Fraud can hit businesses of any size, and knowing what to watch out for can help protect your revenue, your employees, and your customers. 

Where Can I Buy This Book?

You can get You Don’t Fix Trucks Anymore from the place where all excellent literature resides: Yes, folks, it’s available on Amazon in both paperback and e-book format, so you can read it on your phone or tablet if you want. 

The skills of a technician are nothing to sneeze at. They’re what got you here. But running a successful business requires an entirely different skill set, one that, sadly, doesn’t get taught in most schools and can be hard to come by. Peter’s book can help you cut out years of otherwise painful lessons.

Put the wrench aside, mate. You don’t fix trucks anymore.

You build the shop that does.