Human-centered automotive storytelling
The people behind the work deserve to be seen.
Keith E. Smith is the creator of From Bay Floors to Backroads, an independent documentary series exploring the people, challenges, and possibilities within automotive fixed operations.
Real people. Real challenges. Real possibilities.
We can’t be what we don’t see.
Possibility becomes believable when it has a face.
The automotive industry has plenty of conversations about technician shortages, recruitment, retention, culture, and leadership. What it needs are more honest human stories that show the challenges without losing sight of incredible possibilities that exist.
From Bay Floors to Backroads goes beyond statistics and into the lives of the people doing the work. It isn’t a promotional campaign. It’s an independent effort to make the people, choices, and possibilities within fixed operations visible.
The film behind the mission
We Can’t Be What We Don’t See
In this three minute film, Keith explains why these stories matter and why simply talking about the industry’s problems is not enough.
From Bay Floors to Backroads
The stories so far
Episode 01
Filmed inside a Ford dealership and the Bluegrass Community & Technical College in Kentucky, this story brings together technicians, educators, service advisors, dealership leadership, and industry voices to shine a light on the people behind the tools.Watch the film ↗
Episode 02
The Builders
Jim Eisenberger steps away from an 18-year dealership career to build a real solution for current and future technicians. Filmed in Ohio.Watch the film ↗
Episode 03
The power of one opportunity
Ed Roberts’ story is proof of what can happen when someone gives you an opportunity and you choose to make everything you can of it. Filmed in Florida.Watch the film ↗What this is
Not biography. Not promotion. Human stories inside an industry.
From Bay Floors to Backroads closes the distance between the bay floor and industry leadership by making the people, pressures, and possibilities on both sides more visible.
About Keith
I grew up in the service bays of a Ford dealership.
My father spent 28 years as a Ford technician. I became a Ford technician myself and spent 20 years in a dealership. I know the work, pressure, and the people behind the statistics because I lived it.
Writing, coaching, and more than seven years living on the road have taught me to see that world from another angle. From Bay Floors to Backroads brings those chapters together: automotive experience, human curiosity, and the belief that stories can help people recognize possibility.
The road ahead
The films are the center. The conversation keeps growing.
Around these stories are larger questions about culture, leadership, technician development, retention, dignity, and what becomes possible when people can see a future for themselves.
Straight Up Living is the home for that unfolding work. A place where the road, the shop floor, and human stories meet.
Writer. Author. Coach.
Every medium begins with the same thing: paying attention.
Keith is the author of nine books and has spent more than eleven years writing and ghostwriting for others. His essays and field notes continue on Substack in Letters From the Deep End.
Keep following the road
See the next story as it unfolds.
Follow the films, writing, and the ongoing journey. Or reach out with a thoughtful question.