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Chaya Milchtein, also known as the Mechanic Shop Femme, is a car whisperer. Having an issue with your brakes? Need to get new tires? Unsure if you need to replace your spark plugs? She’s got you. As an automotive educator, Chaya teaches people how to make sure their cars stay up and running without paying an arm and a leg to shady mechanics. She joins the show to tell X how she can keep her trusted Toyota Sequoia in tip top shape and how we can all take better care of our cars.

This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures, an early-stage global investment firm backing mission-driven entrepreneurs and industry influencers working toward a fair finance system for all. Learn more at flourishventures.com.

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You can find Chaya on Instagram at @mechanicshopfemme, or at her website, mechanicshopfemme.com. Her book, Mechanic Shop Femme’s Guide to Car Ownership, is available wherever books are sold.

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To follow along with a transcript, go to lemonadamedia.com/show/ shortly after the air date.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Speaker 4, X Mayo, Speaker 1, Speaker 5, Speaker 3, Chaya Milchtein, Speaker 2

Speaker 1  00:56

What’s the most screwed over you’ve ever felt by a mechanic?

 

Speaker 2  01:36

Oh, my God, I actually got into a car accident, and he actually did not fix my car properly.

 

Speaker 1  01:42

Do you trust mechanics?

 

Speaker 3  01:43

No, immediately, no, unless they’re my family member, I don’t trust them.

 

Speaker 4  01:49

I have an uncle who is a mechanic, and I bought a car from him, and everything, and I drove the car literally off the lot, and the car stopped in the middle of the road, and it’s my favorite uncle. I love him to death, but yeah, I can’t trust him around cars at all.

 

Speaker 5  02:18

I used to have a beater, like a little beat up old Cami, like, oh, five and, you know, a little bit of money. So I went and bought a Lexus, you know, saying pre owned, certified, you know, I was little financially responsible. So went to the mechanic I had just went three months ago, didn’t pay nothing. And I think up to that point, I had paid, like, what, six or 700 so I was like, I ain’t gonna hit for no bill. And then they hit me for like, $900 and then I was really mad, and I was pretty broke for the rest of the month.

 

X Mayo  02:47

Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio. Tony, we’re gonna get sued. Don’t do me like that. You know, I don’t like talking to lawyers. They make my braids itch. Okay, let’s try that again. Hello and welcome to The Dough from Lemonada Media. I’m your host, X Mayo, and I’m here today to talk to you about cars. Now, personally, I love me a car, okay, which is good because it’s fucking impossible to get anywhere in LA, without one. Imagine my black ass trying to ride a horse to West Hollywood for a $20 ceviche couldn’t be me. That shit would take all day, and then I’d have to feed the horse when I got there. Do you know how hard it is to get horse feed at an LA gas station, but, yo, if I can drive to the ceviche joint, that’s easy, baby. I’ll pick it up on the way to the table. Reader, okay, and I love my car y’all, oh, I got a black Toyota Sequoia, and her name is Keisha. She’s got eight count ’em, eight cup holders, a moon roof, and even one of those spots for your fucking sunglasses up top. She’s perfect, which is why I live in absolute fear of her ever breaking down. I need you, Keisha, don’t you even fucking think of leaving me alone out here anyways, you know how the nightmare goes. One minute you’re driving your high ass friend of Taco Bell for a crunchwrap, the next minute your check engine light comes on, and you’re like, Oh, shit. What is it this time you take it into the mechanic the next day? Would you know what’s gonna cost 100 bucks off top, plus the Ubers to and from and you know that shady ass is gonna tell you that your flux capacitor or whatever is broken, that’ll be $2,000 thank you, ma’am. And there ain’t nothing you can do except pull out the MasterCard. But no longer today, we have an incredible guest with us, the mechanic shopfim herself, Chaya Milchtein, Chaya is an automotive educator. Basically, she functions as an interpreter between mechanics and normal people. She’s here with us this week to help us understand how we can up our whip games and put the change back in our bank accounts. Chaya, welcome to the show.

 

Chaya Milchtein  04:53

Thank you so much for having me.

 

X Mayo  04:55

Yes, I’m so excited to talk to you, because I feel like you are blazing a whole new genre of the internet and education that we desperately need, that I think we as women, as non binary femmes, as just human beings like we just need to know this information. And when I heard this about you, I was like, oh, my an icon. What? Yes, thank you. Because I know that they are Cha, I just, I just let them run the card, and I’m probably, they’re probably charging me $700 more than they should, because I just don’t know. So we’re gonna get into that a little bit later. But first Chaya, we asked all of our guests, what the fuck did they spend their money on this week? So please tell me.

 

Chaya Milchtein  05:39

Oh, this week, I definitely spent money at the Indy 500 we went to Indianapolis with visit Indy, and we went to the melanin in May Festival, which is held the day before the Indy 500 race. And we spent money on a whole bunch of things from small, black owned businesses local to the Indianapolis area, my wife got herself a cowboy hat that looks like a disco wall. We got right? We had a lot of fun.

 

X Mayo  06:09

Oh, my God. Okay, so your wife is truly always ready for Renaissance, like, anytime. Beyonce says, go. Your wife is like, ready.

 

Chaya Milchtein  06:18

I mean, it breaks my heart, but she’s not a Beyonce fan.

 

X Mayo  06:23

You must divorce her, Chaya.

 

Chaya Milchtein  06:28

Listen, the woman likes any music besides country and gospel, and she’s taking me to every single concert you could possibly imagine. Our tastes in music don’t exactly align.

 

X Mayo  06:40

Okay, but you, but you like Miss V? Miss Queen.

 

Chaya Milchtein  06:44

Absolutely.

 

X Mayo  06:45

Okay, love so you were working in an auto shop before the pandemic, and since then, you created what I can only describe as like a queer car empire. Um, so what’s your work like, day to day, and where does most of your money come from.

 

Chaya Milchtein  07:01

So I started mechanic shop them long before I lost my job in the automotive industry. So I actually started mechanic shop them in June of 2017, and then I continued to work full time, usually 50-60, hours a week in the automotive industry and in the collision space. As I continued to run my business, I started it as a blog, and I would teach people about cars that way. I started teaching classes, and then April of 2020, hit, and one of the first thing people stopped doing was driving. All of a sudden, so many people were working right? Everybody was working from home, and they weren’t doing very much driving, and the shops were just empty, and I was working at a major collision shop, and I was pretty highly paid for the position that I was in. So of course, I was one of the first that was laid off. And I had a question for myself, like, okay, what am I going to do next? Like, well, how am I going to make this work, and I decided to sort of go all in on mechanic shop them and build the business to what you see today. You know, I just published a book, mechanic shop, femmes guide to car ownership. I just finished a national book tour focused on promoting this book. Thank you, and I just got back. I’ve spent two months traveling. I’m back now, and I’m ready to jump head first back in and I do, I write for publications about cars. I do social media around cars and so much more. I try to bring my whole self to what my work is.

 

X Mayo  08:36

Yes, and you have a beautiful online presence. I would love to know about your online classes? Absolutely, I selfishly, okay, have you on this podcast, because I need to learn a lot about fucking cars. Okay, can you tell me a story about a time you saved somebody from a really shitty car situation?

 

Chaya Milchtein  08:52

Oh, I talked to a lot of people these days before they’ve been in their shitty car situation, you know, to help them guide them through so that.

 

X Mayo  09:01

Oh, thank God.

 

Chaya Milchtein  09:01

When they get to that moment. But when I worked in the automotive industry, and still to this day, I spend a lot of time talking to folks after their worst nightmare, after their situation. So like, for example, I worked in a shop, and I remember, and this is before I launched mechanic shop them, and I remember this woman bringing in her infinity that she had just purchased from a family member, and she was expecting the car was in pretty good condition, but they were hearing some kind of noise that was making them worried. Keep in mind, this family member told them there was nothing wrong with the car. They sold it to them as if the car was in perfect condition, and they brought the car in, and this car was very, very far from being in perfect condition. This car had major issues with the suspension and the steering system and 1000s of dollars of work to make it safe. It was seriously unsafe in the moment that they brought it into the repair shop, and this situation could have been made so much easier if they had taken their vehicle into a repair shop to get it checked out before they had purchased it. But since they were buying it from a family member, they didn’t feel like that was necessary. This family member was going to tell them the truth, their family after all. And I think the lesson from this is it’s that people are lying to you, although it’s entirely possible that they were, that they were lying.

 

X Mayo  10:26

Absolutely.

 

Chaya Milchtein  10:27

But the lesson here is not everybody knows their car as well as you think they do. In fact, most people don’t know their car. So taking the car in isn’t just to fact check the information that they’ve given you, but to ensure that they’re not missing a lot of problems with the vehicle that they just didn’t think to have looked at because they were already planning to get rid of it.

 

X Mayo  10:48

In your experience, where do most people end up in trouble with cars and money? Is there, like a particular part of the car that folks get fleeced on a lot?

 

Chaya Milchtein  10:56

I think most folks end up with major car problems for a couple of different reasons, not reason number one is they’re not paying attention to their car. They’re turning up their music, they’re driving around, and they’re trying to ignore whatever their car is telling them, either because people told them that this light is just, you know, ridiculous and it doesn’t actually tell you anything about their car, or because they don’t have enough money to fix the problem at the moment, and they turn up the radio, and they drive around, and they try to pretend like whatever’s happening doesn’t happen. Brakes are a great example of this. You’re driving your brakes start squeaking right, and when your brakes are squeaking, you’re like, okay, maybe there’s something wrong. Maybe there’s not usually squeaking doesn’t indicate that there’s something wrong with the brakes. It’s just an indication that there’s excess brake dust, or that the brakes were low quality, or there’s some water between the […]

 

X Mayo  11:58

What, Chaya, they told me I needed new brakes.

 

Chaya Milchtein  12:01

So there’s two different factors. There’s squeaking and then there’s squealing.

 

X Mayo  12:05

Okay.

 

Chaya Milchtein  12:06

Squeaking is something that will happen even sometimes to new cars. Squealing is more of a constant sound when your brake pad wears down. There’s a little clip in the metal that starts to touch the rotor, and it’s there to tell you, hey, alarms up. It’s time to go get your brakes checked and changed. So if you don’t listen to that, maybe because your brakes have been squeaking and you can’t differentiate the difference, or maybe because you’re don’t have enough money to fix it right, you continue to drive your car, and now your brake pads have worn to the point that they start damaging your rotor, and you’re taking a small job and you’re doubling it. Now you need a full set of rotors because you didn’t replace your brakes at the time. They needed to be replaced. And now, let’s say your brakes are grinding and you’re continuing to drive your car, and you’re not doing anything about it, and not only is your vehicle not safe, but you are significantly exacerbating that problem. So I think we spend a lot of time focusing on how mechanics are pulling one over on people, and in quite a few situations they are, but not as much time focusing on teaching people how their cars work and how different elements of their vehicle will end up costing them money if they don’t handle it, and how paying attention to your vehicle should be something that’s part of your regular routine.

 

X Mayo  13:27

After the break while we all need to learn to speak mechanic and some surprising black automotive history.

 

X Mayo  15:59

So Chaya, you briefly touched on my next topic. You mentioned getting scammed by these mechanics, you know, like, you go in there, there’s, like, a white guy is his 67 with his jumpsuit, and he’s like, you know, you want some breakthrough. That’s $1,000 you know. And it’s just kind of like, I know I have a lot going on, the time that it takes to, like, do all these checks and balances, which now, you know, now I know we have mechanic shop femmes guide to car ownership. So I have something now you know that is kind of like in layman’s terms that I can understand. But why do you think the industry is set up that way?

 

Chaya Milchtein  16:32

You have to understand that these spaces thrive on us not knowing. They thrive on intentionally excluding us from these spaces and creating a place where we feel like we cannot make those decisions. We feel like we gotta bring a penis with us so that they can stand up for us, so that they can make those decisions, so that we are respected in those spaces. But I gotta tell you, women make 85% of all car buying decisions in the United States, we hold 1.4 million more driver’s license than men. We have built the automotive industry in a way that most people don’t take into account. At some point we got to decide that we know enough, that we are capable, and that we’re not going to let an industry that was built to exclude us, and by us, I mean everybody, women, queer folks, especially people of color, we’ve got to decide that we are going to hold our own in the space that we are capable and we are confident enough to make those decisions. Women that I see in going into repair shops usually know more about the repair decisions that they’re making than their male counterparts. The husbands are calling their wives and asking them to make these types of decisions, right? Even when it comes to electric cars. For example, Madam CJ Walker, which a lot of folks know for her innovations, the space that she’s created around black hair products. Well, she had a driver’s license at the time, where less than 10% of all women in the United States had a driver’s license. She was an automotive enthusiast and an avid car collector who drove an electric car in the early 1900s.

 

X Mayo  18:16

What ?

 

Chaya Milchtein  18:17

Right?

 

X Mayo  18:17

How much shut your motherfucking ass up. Of course, a black woman did it first, and this motherfucker got us driving in a damn laptop, Chaya, and the shit is blowing up. Oh, wow, Madam CJ did it first. Oh, wow, you better educate, wow.

 

Chaya Milchtein  18:35

She drove a weaverly electric. And if you go to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, they have the electric weaverly that she drove, which was, I thought, really freaking cool women, especially black women like Patrice Banks, wrote a book about cars a few years back. Her book is set up differently than mine, and it focuses on, you know, a different perspective, but she did it. She created a guide for women to talk about cars and to take control of the vehicle that they’re running. All I’m trying to do is to create a safe space where queer folks and women and people of color can find the answers to their questions, so that they can continue buying their vehicles and maintaining them and going into the repair shop.

 

X Mayo  19:22

Right, you know, you know racism is in everything. And you know white supremacy while just just a raggedy bitch, and for you to tell me that it’s in cars, you know, I’m not shocked, but it’s still just like, damn it.

 

Chaya Milchtein  19:37

It’s deeply ingrained into the Foundation of America for sure, oh, and the world at large.

 

X Mayo  19:46

So you put out your book, Chaya mechanic shop, femmes guide to car ownership, which people can get right now, right?

 

Chaya Milchtein  19:52

Absolutely, it’s available wherever books are sold. So you can go to your favorite bookstore, or you can go to the big guys, you know, Amazon, cardsadobebookshop.org.

 

X Mayo  20:01

Oh, my God, I wonder if it’s at the reparations book club out here in South Central. It’s such a beautiful safe space for black and queer folks. So yeah, if you are in LA, please support your local black owned bookstore. And then if it’s not there, absolutely please get it from the big guys, because we have to support guy. We need this to be a New York Times bestseller. So tell me about who the book is for and what you hope people take away from it.

 

Chaya Milchtein  20:27

Sure, so Mechanic Shop, Femmes: Guide to Car Ownership is for the average car owner. It is not for the car enthusiasts. It’s not for the car bro. It’s designed for the regular folks. You’re trying to get your kids to school, you’re trying to get to work, you’re trying to use your car in order to make a living and to get to the next place in your life. I truly believe that having a vehicle in much of the United States is a strong key to getting out of poverty. If you don’t have a car, for example, in Milwaukee, where I live, then you don’t have access to the union jobs that are outside the city, to the manufacturing jobs, to the jobs that are making more money than the retail and customer service that you can find inside of the city. It allows you to get to more jobs so that you could work multiple jobs, and it allows you, more importantly, time to rest. You know, black women has been telling us since the beginning, go time that you have to rest. You have to rest in order for you to be able to do the next thing, in order for you to take that next step, in order for the next big thing in America to happen, like we need to also rest and without a car, you’re spending double, triple, sometimes quadruple, time on public transit that wasn’t designed to actually serve us this public transit makes it so that life is more complicated instead of less complicated. You know, you look at big cities like New York, and even there, if you’re in certain parts of New York City, if you’re in the Bronx, and if you’re in parts of Queens, it can be very hard to use public transit to get to where you’re going.

 

X Mayo  21:56

Oh, and in parts of Brooklyn. I lived in New York for eight years when I was in Jamaica Queens, I had to get $1 cab from 212 in Jamaica. Ave and I’m stuffed in a car with four other people, three of us in the back seat to get to the E train, which is the last stop on Jamaica center to get into the city, oh yeah.

 

Chaya Milchtein  22:16

Like, and these were built to prevent working class people from being able to access them in a way that was sustainable. Because everybody’s like, Oh, don’t use cars. It’s bad for the environment. But can we talk about how, like not being able to survive and feed yourself is bad for the environment, so let’s be real.

 

X Mayo  22:39

Yeah, no, me, same page, girl, I see you know we see each other for sure. All right, y’all time for another quick break when we come back, how to find the mechanic of your dreams.

 

X Mayo  22:51

So let’s say you move to a new city and you need to find a mechanic. What do you look for in order to find somebody who you can trust, who won’t totally fuck you over?

 

Chaya Milchtein  25:17

The first thing you need to do is determine what type of shop best suits your needs. So a lot of people automatically gravitate to taking their vehicle to the dealership. The dealership tends to be more expensive and doesn’t necessarily provide you with better quality repairs or service than an independent repair shop would. So I find that for most people, going to an independent local mechanic shop is going to get them the best repairs for the best price, with the best customer service. Second, you do not want to look for the place that’s the least expensive out there. And I’m not saying that because you necessarily have the money to spend more, but usually when you go and you find the least expensive place to do anything, you end up having to do it twice and sometimes three times, and that ends up costing you more over the long run than going to one quality repair shop. And the next thing I suggest is that you set up an appointment for a basic maintenance service. So for example, you’re going to set it up for an oil change or a pre road trip inspection, or a pre purchase inspection, which we were talking about earlier, to give you a chance to scope it out, to give you a chance to ask questions, bring in your car, have them look at it and see how they communicate with you. If you’re not sure of which shops to go to, I like to look for what the best shops in are in the area by posting on places like really hyper local, Facebook groups next door, WhatsApp places that are good, super hyper local, and not asking people for their nightmare experiences, okay, because that’s just going to make you more frustrated.

 

X Mayo  26:50

And anxious.

 

Chaya Milchtein  26:51

Exactly, ask them what shop they’ve been taking their car to for years. Where do they feel most comfortable and confident? And make an appointment there. And keep in mind the best shops typically are going to have some kind of waiting period. You’re not going to be able to get in the next day, unless you are a regular customer and you have a car emergency, essentially. So make that appointment and do it right now. Don’t wait until you’re in an emergency. Do it right this minute, go in, make that appointment, have that opportunity, and then consider how you feel afterwards. Do you feel like they treated you with respect? Do you feel like they answered your questions to the best of their ability? Do you feel like they were willing to show you what’s wrong with the vehicle when there was a problem? And do you feel like they accepted no after explaining what the problem was, accepted your no and allowed you to walk away without a plague too much pressure, right?

 

X Mayo  27:50

And also, I like to add the number one thing you need to do is buy Chaya’s book before you walk in the shop. Because baby Kai, I’m going to take your book and go to mama County and be like, hold on. Let me go to chapter two, no, Chaya said that that’s incorrect. You trying to take advantage of me. That’s not what the fluid is supposed to do. So put it back and put that top back on, because Chaya said that this is what’s supposed to be happening, okay?

 

Chaya Milchtein  28:18

And be sure to ask if there’s, if there’s a problem that something doesn’t light up, yeah, because there’s always exceptions to the rule, like have an open conversation and see you know where they’re going with it, and if you can resolve the situation in that moment, right?

 

X Mayo  28:31

Absolutely, so tell the people where they can find you, Chaya, on all socials websites, and they already know where they can get your book.

 

Chaya Milchtein  28:39

Absolutely, so my name is Chaya Milchtein. I’m mechanic shop femme on all socials. So you can find me on Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all the places where you can find people on social and then my website, mechanicshopfemme.com my book, Mechanic Shop Femmes Guide To Car Ownership is available anywhere books are sold, and you could pick it up for less than 20 bucks, and it has quite a lot of information, including an entire chapter on how to find a mechanic, two chapters on how to buy a car. I got a whole chapter on electric cars and hybrids. And you know, of course, we cover brakes, tires, maintenance, how to sell your car, how to decide it’s time to let go of your car, emergency situations, emergency kits and everything in between.

 

X Mayo  29:26

Wow, Chaya, you truly are a gem, and you’re one of one. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to you today. I can’t wait to get your book, because I genuinely I go in blind. I found a mechanic that I can trust, but you just never know, like I’m just walking away so informed and also very empowered. I think, you know, information is liberation. So I just want to thank you so much for helping. From my perspective, I’m just thinking about all the single moms. I’m a product of a single mom, and there’s so many women out there. I know so many single moms in my family. In my community that I know could utilize this I can’t just, I’m just imagining the 1000s of dollars that we all probably could have saved had we had this information so.

 

Chaya Milchtein  30:09

Thank you.

 

X Mayo  30:10

For my community to yours. I want to tell you, thank you.

 

Chaya Milchtein  30:12

Thank you, and if you can’t afford it, it’s at your local public library, okay? And if it’s not Apple.

 

X Mayo  30:18

Wow, a queen.

 

Chaya Milchtein  30:20

And they’ll get it for you.

 

X Mayo  30:22

I’m nominating you for a Peabody. Okay, everybody.

 

Chaya Milchtein  30:27

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

 

X Mayo  30:29

Yes, everybody follow Chaya on all the socials and run those numbers up for her book. And like she said, it’s available at your local library. We thank you so much Chaya for joining us on the podcast. I hope you have a good rest of your day.

 

Chaya Milchtein  30:42

Thank you.

 

X Mayo  30:44

Well, there you have it, folks, how to keep yourself from spending $3,000 on your shitty ass Corolla? Take care of her. Yes, that’s the answer. Listen to her, give her what she needs. Okay, no, I’m actually talking about a car, but find a mechanic you can trust to help you out. And for God’s sake, follow Chaya on social media. I know y’all did not get all this damn way listening without learning some shit that’s going to save you money in the future. So help her out. Okay, that’s all for this week, babe, see you next time. Mwah.

 

CREDITS  31:24

There’s more of the Dough with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like blooper reels from our recording sessions. Subscribe now and Apple podcasts. The Dough is a Lemonada original. I’m your host X Mayo. This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures. This series is presented by the Margaret Casey Foundation. Our producers are Claire Jones, Rachel Pilgrim and Tony Williams. Kristen Lepore is our senior producer. Mix and Sound Design by Bobby Woody. Original Music by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Jackie Danziger is our Vice President of narrative content. Executive Producers include me X Mayo, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. You can follow me on IG  @80dollarsandasuitcase and Lemonada @lemonadamedia across all social platforms, follow The Dough wherever you get your podcast or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks so much for listening. See you next week, bye.