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Rob:
Welcome to our podcast all about the car brought to you by Schierl Tire and Service. I'm your host Rob Hoffman, an auto service specialist with over 46 years of industry experience. A regular guest on the ride with me today is Bill Schierl, a guy that logs a lot of well-educated and safe Wisconsin miles and always has a lot of great questions. Welcome back Bill.
Bill:
Thanks Rob. Thanks for the call out too.
We also have a very special guest with us today in the studio. Chuck Scott of Life on the Road, a driver's education mentor and owner. Welcome Chuck and thanks for joining us.
Chuck:
Glad to be here today. Thanks for giving me a call.
Good to have you here with us. With today's highly successful driver's education process, our educators like Chuck can tailor fit an education path to send off every new driver on the road to safe vehicle operation, but it hasn't always been this way and it took a little while to reach our destination. It soon became apparent that automobiles were here to stay in the twenties and school districts in the US started providing classes for traffic safety. Then in 1936, a college credit course for the instructors came to be, as with any structured class textbooks came to the scene followed by the Aetna Drive trainer, a small make believe simulator cars that could be set up in a classroom, allowing up to 20 students at the controls at one time. By the late nineties, the school system started to eliminate the driver's ed programs making way for high quality and flexible independent instructors that we have today. And the expert in today's driver's education is in the house. Chuck Scott. Chuck, how long have you done this?
I've been a driver's education instructor for 20 years now, being an owner of a business for the last 16 years.
So safe to say, you know your stuff,
I've been on the road quite a bit.
And you probably have seen it all. We'll get to that but wow. So you are the expert here and it's good to have you.
Thank you.
So what's your background? When was that magic moment when you said, you know what, this is what I want to do?
That moment came 20 over 20 years ago when Stevens Point school district here was asking for more money to get their budget and driver's Ed was something we really didn't have in Portage County, many options. So I decided to start looking at how could I bring this business to this area. I was trained by a gentleman up in Merrill. So for five years he actually liked what I did when he trained me. So he hired me. So I used to drive from my house in Bancroft to Merrill every day to teach kids all day for five years and then I started my own business.
Oh, so really you are a professional driver.
Yes.
Really.
I'm a professional driving instructor.
So you had to take some courses or classes to be an instructor?
Correct.
Okay.
We have to do 40 hours of training by a licensed trainer and then we have to do continuing education every year. We have to have eight hours of continuing education.
Oh, so you've gotta go through it every year?
Yes, we go to conferences and stuff that we have held, meet with the D O T, different organizations and stuff, different curriculums. We cover organ donation, bicycles, people, people from Operation Bootstrap, train safety, we meet all these people at our conferences and stuff and that's part of our continual training.
So this is a little bit different today than it used to be back in let's say in my day as I was being instructed to be a driver.
Oh yes.
Even it's different than my day.
Even your day , oh wait a minute here. .
Yes, there are a lot of new changes and Covid brought along a lot more changes to the DMV and to the process of getting a driver's license now.
Okay. I didn't think about that but yeah, that's some big shift I'm sure in the last couple years.
So what are some of those significant changes? Cuz I think like I think of the simulator and classroom work that I had going through the education and as well as on the road. But obviously we can think of you behind the wheel driving at driving around cars. But what is it about the education that has changed before they participate with you in the car out on the road or how is it all tied together?
Yeah, the classroom now has changed considerably where we do three different options for classroom. We do the traditional all 30 hours cuz they have to do 30 hours in a classroom setting.
So Chuck, you're just back up just a second. Your company does the classroom as well?
Okay. Just wanna make sure. Okay.
Yes. Yep. So we actually have a classroom here in Stevens Point on downtown on Main Street where we do our classroom training. So we do a 30 hour classroom, we do a hybrid or a blended class where the students can do 10 hours in class with us and the other 20 hours they do online at their own pace. Then we have an all 30 hour online class that kids can do at their own pace.
All of these options qualify then?
Correct...
Get you to the same destination.
They all get you 30 hours of classroom training.
Okay, interesting.
Yes. I would say 70% of our students right now do it online either in a blended class or all online. It's just with people's schedules. I think that is And the kids, they know how to use that technology nowadays.
Right.
Where me, I would be going...
me too. Right. So about 30 hours is what they need to accomplish.
Classroom training.
Then with that, they also need to complete six hours behind the wheel training with an instructor and six hours observation, which is where they sit and watch another student drive for an hour.
And hear what we're critiquing them on to help learn
Six hours. Back in the day it felt like I was in that auto a lot more than six hours .
Sitting in the best cars ever.
Right. Yeah. I mean just like driving around, it seemed like we were just waiting for your chance to drive, but I get it.
That's why it seemed like forever.
Right. Exactly.
To get in that driver's seat.
Exactly. You wanna know how, what driver's Zed is get in your car driver around Steven's point for eight hours and have no place to go.
Right. There you go. . Yep. That's a good way to do it.
Tour de Steven's Point.
. Yes. I know every house on every block. , I couldn't get lost in this county if I tried .
. So then that puts us behind the wheel as we were talking. You get out of the classroom, you have to pass that certain segment then?
Well no, not anymore. Now all a student technically has to be, is enrolled in driver's ed and be able to pass the temp test to get their temps so they can take up to a year to do their online and be doing their driving at the same time.
So they get their temp after the classroom?
They can get their temp before they do classroom.
New Speaker:
Oh
They just have to pass the test,
Pass the temps test.
Got it.
And be enrolled in driver's ed. Those are the tools. Law stipulations. So I have a lot of kids that are maybe five units into their 60 units of online and have come down and taken their temp test because now the law changed two years ago where kids can get their temps now at the age of 15 instead of 15 and a half, which was something me and the association I belonged to the Wisconsin Professional Driver School Association. We fought for years to get that changed because we wanted kids to have a year to practice driving. Not six months in Wisconsin as a great place, but your kid could get his temps back then in April, get his license in October and he never drove in the snow. So that really don't make sense in Wisconsin.
Yeah.
Because winter happens every year here.
, Whether we like it or not.
Yeah. Not . So that's kind of how that works. Like I said, a lot of our students are doing it concurrently at the same time. Once they complete their 30 hours of class, all of their six hours behind the wheel, six hours observation, then we enter 'em into Madison's computer system as completed now for when they turned 16, there is no more driver's test for 16 year olds that eliminated, went away with Covid and that's not coming back still in the hands of the legislators. We're still running under a pilot program this spring or fall when the legislators meet again and the budget comes up, then they'll probably get passed into permanent law. But the statistics show those drivers tests were really weren't needed since they quit doing tests. Teenage crash rates haven't even increased one percentage points over the last two years. Now two and a half years according to the latest stats we just got from the D O t
In some regard. It makes sense in my head that one little test that you get so nervous about so many like little things that you can do wrong to fail that. Is that really a demonstration of someone's driving skill for other hours of the day and multiple, multiple, multiple times?
No it wasn't because people get nervous.
And when you're worried about what am I, if I do this, I'll fail. Usually you'll do that.
I've had kids that I would trust and say I'll get in a car, I'll get in a backseat, drive me to Madison. But they failed their first road test cuz it was nerves.
Sure.
They just nerved up.
Yeah, I can see that.
When there was testing over 92% of our students passed on their first test anyway. So really did they need to go take that test?
And now the D O T doesn't have the funds to hire enough people to continue to do testing. It would cost all of us a lot of money to register our vehicles if they had to hire those people back.
Interesting. So that ended well two years ago.
2020.
Yeah. The DMV couldn't catch back up from Covid. They were 24,000 tests behind.
Oh my gosh.
Because when the DMV shut down for covid right, they get three to 4,000 tests every week. They were doing.
Is that the same throughout the nation or that's just at Wisconsin?
Wisconsin. Every state is in control of their own driver's. Education. Michigan, not per example. Actually the driving instructor signs off to give because of license. That's something we they tried to do here and we stopped it cold. I'm never gonna give a kid their license. I will not be able to take that responsibility. The state gives 'em their license and the state can't be sued. So...
Correct. . Yeah,
. Now I'm gonna go a little bit sideways with this next question, but I've always been curious. So most of Wisconsin is rural and I've always heard stories about the farming families where the young kid is driving the tractor down the road. Is there anything legal about that?
It's completely legal.
It's completely legal?
Okay, I see it. You see it and you hear about it all the time.
Yep. Farm kids have exemptions as far as driving farm machinery, down roads. They can actually drive vehicles on roads if it has farm plates on it and they're going from one farm...
Really?
As long as it's safely operated. 12 years old.
No kidding.
There's not a law. There's not an age that they can if they can safely operate. If they can't, well then parents gonna get a ticket if the kid hit something but yes, but it's legal...
It's legal. Interesting
For farmers for rural.
So back to the structured education and process, does a educating new driver have to have a certain amount of time at night and day or.
Correct. The old standard before the waiver program came in was students needed a total of 30 hours practice driving 10 of which had to be at night. Now with kids being able to get their temps at 15 and a year practice, they're required to have 50 hours of practice time behind the wheel with 10 of those being also at night.
Okay. Okay.
And that is just signing off by a parent or...
By parent.
Adult. Is it a parent or any adult?
Parent or guardian.
Who's ever signing off at that kid at the time of signing that saying they did that on that sponsorship has now taken financial responsibility for that person.
But that practice driving does not need to be exactly with that person or does it need to be with that person?
It can be with an aunt or an uncle, older sibling that's had their license for at least two years. A regular license, not a probationary.
And the student must have a note in his pocket from his parent that signed that saying it's okay for little Johnny to drive with Grandpa Bowl.
Then it's legal. We encourage more practice you get the better you're gonna be.
Right 100%.
But mom and dad are taking that financial responsibility. They should know who you're in the car driving with.
Got it. That makes sense. Yep.
So coming back to the instructional part of it, we talked about, well Bill mentioned that those six to eight hours seemed like forever. When you're trying to get to that driver's seat, you're in the backseat of this car. How many students do you have in a car at one time?
Sometimes up to four.
Speaker 1:
Up to four students?
And yourself? Honestly.
And plus us. So we can have one in front and then three in the back if we have seat belts for that many. Some students the parents choose not to have their kid do observation and that is legal. They have to do more behind the wheel time then. Some kids get carsick in the backseat so the parents would rather pay and say Hey,
Oh yeah,
I'll pay...
Oh think about that.
You to do nine lessons instead of six. But every one behind the wheel lesson equals two observation lessons. So we can do three extra behind the wheel lessons with them and that will make that six hours observation up. So we do offer that and we do have a lot of parents that'll take advantage of that. There's a driving school up North Cruisers that is the only course they offer is nine hours driving. No observation.
So this is very flexible and customizable.
Is that a word? Customizable?
It's customized.
Yeah,
, whatever your needs might be. How about that?
We're very flexible though. I mean just you can adapt to pretty much anything it sounds like
It's very convenient to get it done. If they want to get a license nowadays, put your time in, you're gonna get your license. This is what it comes down to and it's parents having to step up and you need to be getting involved.
Really need to be a part of it.
We can see that is one of our drivers at one of our biggest pet peeves when we're sitting waiting for a parent to bring the kid to where their driving lesson and they pull up and the parent's driving and we're just looking going, what's wrong with this picture? ?
Yeah, . What are we thinking here? Yeah.
Yeah. Or kids get in and oh yeah, my mom let me drive here. But we had to go to here and we had to go there. She kept telling me to go faster. It was okay to go five over cuz she was behind. Parents need to actually take their kids practice driving, not running their errands for 'em. Help the kids out. Yep. Keep 'em alive longer.
. So Chuck, when you're in the behind the wheel education mode, I would assume you always sit in the same seat. You're always in the passenger front seat.
Passenger side. We have a brake on every car.
That was my next question. How safe do you feel? ?
Yes. That's called my lifeline .
I've thought over 10,000 kids and I can probably count on one hand how many of them I didn't use it on at one time or another through the process.
You've gotta have that all set up on your side then?
The brake and...
Just brake.
Just the brake. And the vehicle also has to be labeled so people know it's a driver's education vehicle that is all part of the state law.
I always wonder when I'm probably passing you or around you or in an intersection with you and your students in your car, should I be acting differently at all? How should I act around a student driver car?
I guess it should be the way you should drive every day.
Well I'm not sure you'd want that. .
. Yeah. It's kinda annoying when you're sitting at a stop light and you look over and the person next to you's got their phone out and they're at like this on their phone and you're trying to tell the guy next...
Not a good example.
Not to do that. They're looking at some parent doing that and I'm just like, can't tell you what they do. I can't control like we can only control what you do and I can control what I do.
Right. Yeah.
Just remember my philosophy is everybody out here is an idiot and they're all trying to kill me and that's how I drive every day. And I haven't never been in an accident cuz I expect people to make mistakes.
That's a good frame of mind. I mean it's a good way to think about it. Yeah. Look out...
Defensive driving.
Yep. There you go.
Of course.
Expect somebody to run through that stop sign. Expect that kid to run out of the yard in front of you. Make a plan as you get there. It don't happen. I'll start looking again.
What could happen next? It's a scenario running. You just constantly run 'em through your head as you're going. What's getting in my way? What could get in my path?
So how many cars Chuck does on the life on the road? L L C operate or own? How many different vehicles I should say? Because you have a van I believe.
Yes. We have four driver's ed vehicles on the road right now. Couple Nissan Altimas Ford Escape. And then I have a Dodge Caravan also. Dodge Caravan is primarily used. I go around the state helping people who have some kind of a disability to drive, learn, teach 'em how to drive with adaptive controls. So if somebody's, let's say is paralyzed, don't have legs, I can take 'em out my car, take the driver's seat outta my van, put 'em behind the wheel, lock 'em down, start teaching 'em how to drive with hand controls to give that person back their freedom again.
Yeah, absolutely. So you've gotta really set these vehicles up to work the way you need them. Is that you doing this work or do you have a...
Oh no,
No?
I'm not touching a vehicle.
Okay. .
No, no, no, no, no. My van was set up by, it's now Mobility Works. They're a specialty company. It used to be GT Mobility here. Otherwise all my vehicle maintenance is done at a shop. Liability reasons I ain't gonna mess with brakes. And then stuff...
Makes sense.
Happened.
Besides nowadays cars are just too complicated. I have a really great mechanic on that. Yep. I see her every morning, every night she makes me dinner. . My wife's been working for a car dealership for over 25 years so she knows 10 times more about cars than I do. And she's can tell you every wire harness, every labor op for every trim part, whatever. She's been a warranty administrator for years. Service writer, office manager now.
Your life is the perfect storm. You've got it all.
So right honey oil change today. Take the car to work so I don't have to do it. Get it done. Yes. No, I don't work on vehicles. And like I said, with this job liability you just don't wanna put...
Right. Makes sense.
And I just can't afford 'em. Breaking down vehicles down. Downtime cost you money.
So four vehicles and, are you the only instructor?
No, I have four other instructors...
You do?
Work for me.
Yes. One full-time salaried position per person and then three part-time people.
Wow.
That work for me. And we might be putting another one on soon.
Looping that back, just talking about the business side of it and vehicles and maintenance and all that type of thing. Approximately what is the average cost for a student to get their license? The typical overall cost?
Overall our package right now for your behind the wheel classroom, w
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