In this episode of the Heavy Equipment Podcast, Mike and Jo talk about their new company rides, talk about short-circuiting car dealers, and defend the brilliant guys and gals working to make the world a better place. Also: the lifeless corpse of Jimmy Buffet gets flown over Burning Man, Weekend at Bernie's-style!
In this episode of the Heavy Equipment Podcast, Mike and Jo talk about their new company rides, talk about short-circuiting car dealers, and defend the brilliant guys and gals working to make the world a better place. Also: the lifeless corpse of Jimmy Buffet gets flown over Burning Man, Weekend at Bernie's-style!
Whether we're exploring the latest in trucking technology, talking about the trends that propel the industry forward, or uncovering stories about the dedicated individuals who keep the wheels of America turning, this is where the roar of the engines and the pulse of progress come together. It's Sublime, it's Serial, it's the Heavy Equipment Podcast, with Mike and Joe. All right, everyone At the tone the time will be 514.
Speaker 3:I always think I'm going to be the one to do the intro.
Speaker 1:You like wait for me to go.
Speaker 3:Welcome to episode three of the Heavy Equipment Podcast. I'm here, your host, Joe Boris, with Mike Hot, Mike Schweitzer.
Speaker 2:Thank you. How are you doing, buddy? Thank you very much. Now I'm doing good, I drove. Actually, today was a was a good day. We just got some GMC 2500 HDs in, with the new 6.6 liter gas motor in it and the Allison trans, which is just now available.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how do you like that thing that's? Supposed to be the hot setup.
Speaker 2:I do like it. This is the first time I drove it. We've deployed a dozen of them. This is the first one that we got with this engine and trans combo in it. That and I drove it today. I had about a couple hours in it running around and it's nice. It's not squirrely, it shifts very smooth. It's got a firm but but very stern soft but sudden.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to, I was leading into that, Thanks. It's a soft but sudden shift where it's like I'm going to tell you that you were about the shift by just giving you a little nudge right through the seat and then boom you're in the next year and you're just up the highway. That's how it works. I like that it's not ticky sounding with the you know, with the injector. With the injectors yeah.
Speaker 3:Is it because it's better sound insulated, or the injectors are just that much better now?
Speaker 2:I think it's a little bit of both, but I do think it's. The injectors are this much. You know that much better now because we we have other trucks that are with the older engine and they they're not at this quiet but the cabs are very quiet. Gmc's come a long way with that truck. But I mean for a work truck I'm going to tell you this much for a work truck pro coming off the floor, that's a very nice vehicle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they seem like it. I've had an eye on those for a little bit. I kind of miss having a truck. You know, I when I was up in Ohio last with you guys I had the, the Ram 1500 that you know went with the lady when we split up. But that was a nice truck. I missed that thing. And, um, yeah, I really liked the, the GMC, the 2500. I didn't realize you could get the Allison trans with the gas motor. I thought that was diesel only.
Speaker 2:Well, that's new for this model year. So we went and picked up six of them at the dealership and I I was walking past the badging and the guy purposely didn't say anything. He was waiting for me to spot it. I turned and I looked and I said wait a minute, I thought these were all gas. He goes, they are, check it out. You know. It says right on there If you wouldn't know, walking past, you'd think it had a Duramax and it just doesn't have the giant. Uh, you know Duramax badge. It doesn't come with a big belt buckle that says Duramax on it.
Speaker 2:You know oh then why, buy it, it'll get the job done Exactly. We, we don't buy. People ask me this all the time, but it was just at a fleet meeting the other day and they're like, why, why are? Why are you guys not buy diesel? So everything we have is diesel and it's quite simple. You, you wouldn't believe how often somebody fills up their diesel truck with gasoline. Oh yeah, they're on the phone. They got stuff going on. Guys are trying to figure out whether he just gets a chance to break away and run to the gas station to get something to eat or fill up his truck or grab diesel for the job site and he throws gas at it and it's just one of those things that you pull away from the pump. It's already too late.
Speaker 3:If the damage is done.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know it's funny. There was a couple of years back they they still in New Jersey, I believe you. They don't let you pump your own gas, but it was New Jersey and Portland and when they switched over in Oregon to allow you to pump your own gas, that first week there was a whole bunch of people filling up Priuses with diesel because it was the green pump and they were like oh, I take the green gas for my green car.
Speaker 2:You know another big thing. One of the things we run into all the time at work is putting diesel fuel or hydraulic in either or's tank on these skid steers. Oh it's amazing. You get different manufacturers. They put the stuff in different places and as much marking on there as they can put. The caps are even colored. None of that matters when it's covered in mud.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when it's not clean, it don't matter at all, Exactly so you know, I wanted to ask you about this because this is something that come out last year. I want to say, last year at CES of all places was like in January, and Vegas and Bobcat came out with, you know, their little electric loader. And you know, obviously it's electric because there's a CES and it was indoors and that was really interesting because what I thought made that neat was it had no hydraulic in addition to being no diesel, so you didn't have to wait for that to warm up. It was all electric motors all the way through and I'm wondering if that's not like a hidden benefit to that, that you don't have to mess with any of those fluids on the job site.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it would be, because a lot of companies work on job sites that are zero tolerance for that. They have to put containment underneath the machines at night in case there's a spill. They have to have containment there in case there's a spill while they're running them, and that's just getting worse.
Speaker 3:That's just getting. The regulations on that are getting tighter and tighter. In all these municipalities there used to be all kinds of what they would call unincorporated land all through Florida, Texas and everything, and it was kind of. It was a wild time. People were just, you know, like the old popular mechanics deal where they put some gravel in the ground and poured the motor oil right into it and that's just how it was. And all of that is going away. Everybody's got to get their little power play on.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you how bad it used to be, you know in the seventies, and that companies used to dig little fox holes and they would put oily rags and things like that in them and they would have these little fires burning Down the equipment line up as they were changing oil and they would let that burn and then just go out and they'd kick some dirt over it and be done with it Because they felt, well, we burnt the oil off. It's not that bad, you know right.
Speaker 3:Oh, I was a different time and people just didn't know oh.
Speaker 2:No, exactly Nobody knew nobody, you know.
Speaker 3:You know it's funny you say that because I you're bringing back like childhood memories of like driving up in North Carolina, I mean like early, early memories and seeing those little foxholes when they were building them all and I had no idea what that was, and Like I can picture that clear as day and now as an adult on a runway bud.
Speaker 3:That's not a runway. No, it's real. You know it's funny, they do that here. Now I'm in Chicago. When it gets real cold on the railroad lines, on the switch, on the switch gear, they'll light little fires, little gas fires right underneath it. So you're, you know, hanging out of the railroad track freaking on fire that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a technique that's never gonna go away. That's been on the railroad since the switches and the rail was invented. They just start fires. It'll warm up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, since, since they drove the golden spike into the ground, they had those things on fire. Transcontinental Railway.
Speaker 2:So the the other thing, you know what you know what's unique is I get to drive a lot of stuff. So, I drive, you know, the Rams and the GMC's and Fords and we own all those. We only buy like at our company. We only buy Ramford, gmc and a lot of that's because of where we work and some of the affiliations we have.
Speaker 3:But they there's some political Angle to it as well. You're, you've got. You know you're across multiple states. You're dealing with municipalities. You don't want to be sitting there, you know, in the backyard of the Ford country driving around in Toyotas.
Speaker 2:No, and be bluntly honest if we, if we got a job at a Toyota factory and they wanted us to have it, we would. We would get to your this too. We're not. We're not not Going to get something just because we just, like you said, there's. We try to appease everybody, you know. The other good thing is we drive everything. I mean there, it's amazing the little nuances between all the vehicles and on one truck, the, the button that you use to turn the, you know to hang up on a phone calls on one side or the other, and when you drive back and forth and you get settled into something, it's. We've come a long way when. That's what people complain about when they're driving to work, and that's the truth right, you know it's funny.
Speaker 3:You mentioned that in my other life I do a lot of car reviews and automotive reviews and I have today I got, I picked it up. Today I'll be driving this for for a couple days, a couple weeks actually. The Genesis G70, that's the new SUV 100, no, it's, and it's buddy, that's a nice, you know those are nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a new one, you probably know the new, new one 2024.
Speaker 1:Wow, and it is fancy.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's no, it's nice, it's nice, I feel. I feel kind of pimpy in it, but what I really? I got in it immediately and I have my norm. My daily driver is the Volvo, the XC 90. It's got all the button radio controls on the right finger and the cruise control on the left and this is the exact opposite. See what's on talk about, and it's like it takes me a good couple minutes to do it and it's just getting worse and worse. Like that where you know I've got carplay that I use all the time from my iPhone, so it doesn't really matter. All the vehicles are the same to me because I'm using carplay. But I imagine that's starting to get tough because the new Volvo is coming out next year. They're not gonna have carplay. The new Chevy's, gmc's, all what are they doing?
Speaker 3:Chevy, gmc, cadillac, buick they're rolling out their own operating system next year, so the 2025 models will not be carplay compatible. You have to use their system, which I think is gonna be a big mistake. I think that's gonna set a lot of people who have gotten used to their carplay. But Volvo is interesting. They've gotten in bed deep with Google, where they're not supporting it at all, but they'll support Android Auto, which again so bold strategy, cotton. Let's see if it pays off for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, exactly, I mean, it is a bold move. I mean, here's the thing if you use Apple Play, and that's what you're using or carplay I'm sorry, he's using carplay and that's your right.
Speaker 3:Tim Cook will destroy us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Exactly so. If you're using carplay and that's what you're used to and guy gets off of a job site, he gets into his vehicle, hits the dash, plugs his phone in, you know it's almost dead, and then he can't get it to work. Yeah, what's he doing? He's driving down the road fiddling with that.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, and a 8,000 pound four-wheel drive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I'm selling my father here. I'm gonna be like leave well enough alone. Leave well enough alone. We've trained everyone to use carplay. Leave it in the car.
Speaker 3:They can't do that. They can't do it and it's not for the reason that you think they can't do it, because they can't lock down the data. They have to certify that the data that they're sending back and forth when they do these over-the-air updates and everything Doesn't include your medical data doesn't include your credit card data all that because if there's a breach, they're now liable for that right, right.
Speaker 3:So they're trying to lock down that data and, if they have, to make it compatible with all these different systems. Lord knows where the backdoors are and all the hackers can get in through.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, that makes total sense, I mean. So what? What I'm gonna be interested to see is what that screen interface looks like, because this is gonna go into over the road. Some my trucks as well, oh yeah, they're already working on screens, they're working on all kinds of stuff, so you can give your phone up, you can have your truck specific GPS up so you kind of see where you're going, so you don't end up out on the beach or the boardwalk in Jersey, you know, and all these things.
Speaker 3:Driving that thing into Burning man and sitting there stuck for eight days. I have zero sympathy for those guys.
Speaker 2:Oh I know some guy winds up with a. You know I don't love truck stop two miles up the road with towels wrapped around his feet going.
Speaker 3:Drive Volvo. That guy's already there. He's hauling a bunch of JDM.
Speaker 2:You know he's stuck at burning man. He had to walk.
Speaker 3:The cars are still in the in the hall is there?
Speaker 2:They're just there. He's stuck in the trees. You know you get a good show out of that. You get himself all within a light costume. He looked like the electric horseman. You get rescued by Jimmy Buffett. You can fly an end, but sorry, I thought you were dead.
Speaker 3:He is dead. It's corpse. Somebody's flying him in on a drone like weekend at Bernie's style.
Speaker 2:Oh my god.
Speaker 3:It'd be amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, he made the Labor Day weekend show. He did.
Speaker 3:He made the Labor Day weekend show exactly right, finally got that dog out of Hawk to. You know, I Well listen. I'm glad that we're talking about this, this GMC, because, number one, it's a cool thing. I love hearing about this stuff and I'm always jealous. Right, it's always, the grass is always greener. You know, I get to drive Mustangs and Genesis and Mercedes. Had a my box guy dropped off a Mercedes EQ in a my box and I was like let me take that thing around the block and then Wait wait, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 2:So if you got a my box there, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you this right now you got to put on your best white suit jacket and some kind of mauve shirt and make it Miami Vice style.
Speaker 1:Oh, for sure, For sure.
Speaker 2:You know Michigan Avenue, since you're in Chicago and just I can't.
Speaker 3:I can't do that. Dude. Where am I gonna take that thing? I'll be car jacked within the first 40 feet.
Speaker 2:You're talking about where I'm gonna take that thing, just go out. The door just sling your knee up a little bit so it passes your leg ever so slightly, but Reynolds style, bud, you just can't walk right out of there.
Speaker 3:Yes, first of all yes. Can't, I can't, I'm all run that thing. Just sit in the back, have some Uber driver at the front. Are you sure this is okay, just keep going. It'll go 180, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2:When I called you, I was driving 180 miles power, that was Milk, and then that's the end of it.
Speaker 3:He comes back Get a physical. We're so far off the rails, but I'm glad we are, because that's what makes this a good show, right?
Speaker 2:So it's just we're just guys talking about how this goes. We're just guys talking about trucks and stuff.
Speaker 3:So you know you were talking about ordering these gas trucks, the GMC's Ortingham gas. Yeah, when you do this ordering, I always, I'm always fascinated by, like, the retail experience, the dealership experience, right, because it can vary so much. I mean I can go down, you know, to the auto barn where I know those guys, and they're going to treat me a certain way and I'm going to get in and out, however I do, and I go somewhere else where they don't know me, and it's a crap shoot. I mean, they're going to be treated like royalty, because that's how they treat everybody, or they're going to, you know, treat me like some common infidel, like a civilian, a member of the public. Michael, can you believe they treat me that way and they're like Joe Boris is here.
Speaker 2:No, he's not. That's not what Joe looks like. I thought he was six foot Six toes on each foot.
Speaker 3:That's what that means. No, but you know, I think it's a real issue and I always think about this in terms of, like my other lives. Right, the motorcycle dealerships? We're always like five, six years behind the automotive. How are the fleet dealers? How are the commercial truck dealers? How are the ag dealers? Are they like on the ball? Do they have the, the website set up where you can sit down and spec everything out and hit the button to order it? They call you when it's ready, or is it still like? I don't know if this is the right word, but it's still more of an analog experience and not really a digital experience.
Speaker 2:Well, here's what. Here's what the experience is today, and it's funny you bring this up because on Tuesday, right after the holiday here, I don't know if we can timestamp these through our dialogue.
Speaker 3:If it's, every single one of them is timestamped, so it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Okay. So it's funny you bring that up because on Tuesday, right after the holiday, I had a meeting with a dealership group and I was able to talk to the dealership owner through some connections and this was the first time this has ever happened. And I'll put it this way we average one new fleet vehicle a week purchased. Yeah. So in all those vehicles in five years, even through COVID, we still average the same amount. This is the first time this has happened. I talked to the dealer owner. He returns my phone call. We start talking about our process and his process and the very first thing out of his mouth was, he says related to the experience I'm about to have. He says you know what? We're going to set up a meeting and let's start with parts and service because that's the more critical path to our organization and to you. And I thought that was very dynamic because he immediately put the emphasis on what are you going to need after you buy this? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was so smart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I worked in the automotive industry. You have to. Parts and service is the thing that keeps the thing moving. They sell cars, that's what they do. The dealership sells things, but on the backside of the building, the necessary evil back there is fixed ops, and fixed ops is the consistency you can rely on. Right, right, and they make money with it. So he immediately cared about where we were at with it.
Speaker 3:Okay. But that's an ideal customer experience. If I'm calling him from out of state and I'm saying, look, you've got the thing that I want, in the color that I want, in the trim level that I want. I want to figure out how to make a deal. How do we do this? Talking to me about his parts and service department is not the way forward, because I'm going to take that vehicle. I'm going to take it two states away and he's never going to see me again. This is a very different animal where he is entering into a relationship with you and he understands. If he gets this right, this is going to be a ton of business for him.
Speaker 2:So that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 3:Focus on your needs.
Speaker 2:The very next thing that he said was we could talk about buying stuff. He goes, mike, I know you're going to buy vehicles, whether you buy them from me or you buy them from somebody else. I may not have what you're looking for, but, yes, we want to enter into a partnership, we want to make sure we're satisfying your needs as a fleet. And he goes we'll sell you whatever we can, as long as it's right. And that's the second part that really got me, because here's the dealership principle saying I know I'm going to sell you something if it fits what you want, but I'm here to work on it too. So, anyways, that's a very unique buying experience. That just happened Quincellately. We did buy some stuff that day. He had some stuff already already set up that we were going to need.
Speaker 2:It's usually a game of what can I actually get? Yeah, how close does it fit my standard? Right now it's getting better. Vehicles are becoming more and more available. Ordering is starting to open up more and more, which is great. I'm thankful for every vehicle I can find in what we get. We don't look for anything special, but most of the time when I call a dealership, you know this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm trying to get. It breaks them out of their normal repetitive sales process. Right, it's not the seven steps to the sale.
Speaker 3:It is not the oh, what are you going to do? What brought you in? There is a real script to that. And this is kind of an interesting thing because a lot of people who meet me in this dealership world or who know me from the automotive world, a lot of them will think of me as somebody who, like, has it together, knows what they're doing, is a no BS person. And people like you who know me in real life, you understand that I'm like deeply insecure. I don't want to talk to people. I'm more than happy to watch the same episode of Seinfeld 460 times, like leave me alone.
Speaker 3:And what they don't realize is that that sales process that you go through and it's everybody in the dealerships, not just the salespeople, it's the guy behind the desk, it's the guy in finance, it's the girl in the title office, they have their routine, they have their daily skill set down to a science, to the point where I can say to another salesperson where I am in the process I can say, oh yeah, I'm in, I just wrapped up discovery, I got them landed on a vehicle and they're going to go great, and they can walk in based on just that little bit of information and confidently and correctly answer the consumers questions and take them on to the next step of the sale. And you're right when someone comes in and they're talking about I need to buy something, and it's a question of do you have it? And a question of can you get it. And it's not about monthly payments. It's not about will this fit in the garage.
Speaker 2:It's about I lose my team of these.
Speaker 3:They lose their money, it breaks them completely. My first ever sale of anything, and I think I must have been 19 years old. Guy walked into the motorcycles, a motorcycle store. I was at my first Saturday, and he said, oh, can you get these ATV Rangers, whatever it was? And I said, sure, and how many do you want? Just literally is a joke, because I was too stupid to not ask the question. And he said how many do you have? I said I think we have eight, and he bought all eight from me. See, it was my first sale I ever did, and at the end of it he put $200 cash in my pocket. So thanks for helping us out, and that was it. I was just like this.
Speaker 2:Is it right here? Well, so yeah, this, this actually have an. I called a. I called a Mercedes Benz Sprinter store. I had the stock number off their website. I had done the homework. I said I need to speak to the new car manager. I always do that because I try to bypass the sales guys because of the steps to the road to the sale that they want to put me through even though I none of it applies. So the guy wasn't in. He says but I'll send you over to our lead sales guy. I said Do you have a fleet sales guy? They said no. I said Okay, so send me over to him.
Speaker 1:That's a problem right there.
Speaker 2:Right. So this guy gets on the phone and he's you know he's Billy badass. He's like I understand you're looking for the somebody who can help you, you're looking for the new car manager. I said, yeah, I'm calling about stop number xxxx. I need you to send me over a bill of sale on that by the end of the day so we can close this up. Blue his mind. He didn't even know how to respond to you. Know how he's. We know what he said to me next. Can I put you on hold?
Speaker 3:Most of those guys don't even know how to generate a bill of sale. Yes, that's a real problem, especially and I'm glad you both. So I wanted to name drop these guys a good friend of mine, dave Parsons, who I met when he was he was administrating the California clean fuel rewards program Okay, way back in the day and he trained. He was like the official corporate Nissan trainer that would go to the dealerships and train them on new vehicles. Beside met him through the leaf program. But you know all the Nissan's, he is a straight-up trainer, him and Larry Feldman, the Cadillac I've mentioned before. Those two guys get it. Dave Parsons is now with a company called Maritz and they Do this kind of dealer training and one of their big things is empowerment, where you want everybody at the dealership to feel empowered to help the customer and and go through it. And when you're in one of their stores it is a much smoother experience from a customer experience point of view. And you're happy to keep going back in to the point when now if I'm talking to someone I can almost guess if they've been through their training. Because of that level of empowerment. There's that sense of like. I can help you not hang on, let me find someone who can help you.
Speaker 3:We have some of these dealers that are still living in the past where they have the salespeople and the whole job of the salespersons to land somebody on the car and then sit them down and then they go get daddy at the sales desk and the sales manager comes and closes them on a payment and then they take them up from there and they take them back to the finance desk and then the finance guy sits them down and does the whole rigmarole. Then they take them out and set the let's go set your first service appointment. They sit them down with a service advisor yeah, you've got five or six different people and then by the end of it they send a survey. You know, did this guy help you out? And they don't even know who you're talking about. Correct? There's another company out there called a to z automotive and they they have a belief that you should have one contact at the dealership, though not a BDC person, that sets an appointment with somebody else. You call Billy Bob answers the phone. Billy Bob greets you at the door. Billy Bob helps you find a vehicle. Billy Bob works on your payments for you. Billy Bob gets your car Registered, billy Bob sets your first service appointment and if you got a problem, you got an issue, you got a question, you call Billy Bob direct and I gotta tell you that is the experience that fleet managers At good stores have enjoyed for many, many years.
Speaker 3:That's the kind of experience that you can get at like a small motorcycle dealer or ag dealer, equipment dealer, and when you have that at an automotive dealer, it changes the game so much that that's where you get a customer for life. And I'm I'm so glad that these guys are now moving away from that automotive model into the commercial equipment and heavy equipment area, because I think it's gonna get rid of a lot of this. You're gonna have, especially Sprinter stores. You're gonna have People who understand fleet buyers. Toyota's going that way, nissan's going that way with their commercial trucks and I think it's just gonna be better for everybody in the industry especially, you know, guys like you. They're buying this stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, and I'll tell you what it does. It's not futuristic, it's actually going back in time. Yeah, see what time, when, when, when somebody would come in and buy something, I mean. And so buying heavy equipment is the same way. Whenever I have gone into a new place, I haven't worked for many Contractors, but every time I would move to a new one, I would sweep my way through the fleet and I would find out that they've got a rep here and a rep there, and this rep Does that net rep does this because he's somebody's brother-in-law on it. And I go through and buy OEM Single-pointed contact, yeah, and I can't tell you how many problems that straightens out, because when you have the sole guy responsible for the account sitting in front of you Not that you're trying to intimidate him you work through Many problems that are all interconnected in a single conversation.
Speaker 3:Well, it's not you versus them, it's you and them versus the problem Exactly and that's how it has to be.
Speaker 2:And a lot of people don't think that way, so they're automatically thinking well, this guy's trying to work me over for something. Well, no, I just need to know how I'm gonna get this. You're telling me my lead time is 12, you know, 18, 24 months I. That's fine, as long as we understand how we're gonna get from here to deliver those 18 months.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly right, exactly right. You know how are we gonna get from here to there. This is not how I wanted to lead into this, but I think how we're gonna get from here to there. But you and I have talked a couple of times about how, for some of these over-the-road vehicles, how some of these equipment vehicles, the infrastructure is just not there. That thousand watt, 1500 watt charging Doesn't exist yet the way it does for cars and, frankly, right, so much more of it that it's a much more difficult thing to build out. So some of these cases, you know you want something that's more hybrid.
Speaker 3:There's two companies that I want a name drop obviously us hybrid. They're now working on a C&G convergence. So they'll take a semi truck that runs on diesel, convert it to natural gas and Put an electric hybrid motor in the back with a small battery. It's just big enough to hotel the cab when you're over the road. But when they're on these drage sites they're in port of LA, port of Houston, port of Long Beach, that are all zero emission, port of Seattle as well. They can go through there, pick up their container, whatever else they need to do, and Do that on the battery without burning right single bit of fuel and then when they get out on the open road they can take that I-80 90, that's got that natural gas corridor and they can run those goods right up through the Midwest Wherever they need to.
Speaker 3:And I think both of those companies are onto something really sharp. But I think that idea of okay great, we all know we got to go electric, we all know we got to go zero emission. But how do we get from here to there in a way that keeps everything moving, in a way that doesn't gum up the works, in a Way that doesn't just bring the economy to a standstill? And I think these two guys are doing it so smart.
Speaker 2:Well, I think so too. I mean, we keep talking about this and and you're absolutely right, we have to, we have to book those guys to get there, get their point of view on some of it.
Speaker 3:But well, this guy, mike Schweitzer, just refuses to accept them on the calendar. So we got it. We got a lean on him. Well, my people are Anyways your people just figured out the microphone this morning.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, we tell you we recorded some songs here afterwards. That's what's going on. But uh, the he went to Paris.
Speaker 3:Questions that bothered him. So.
Speaker 2:Oh it's a good song. I got my hush puppies on, anyways. So, no, you're, you're right, that's a. What we keep talking about is how are we gonna bridge the gap between when we are today and we're gonna where we gotta be? Yeah, exactly, that is huge and it's not gonna be perfect, it's not gonna be correct, it's not gonna be a hundred percent foolproof. But you know what? When they first put a steam engine out, they were still trying to teach people how to Tie their their horses to wagons and how that would be faster than the train. So, yeah, and I hate going back to that, but that's an example I do use often because, if you think about it, we're in the same point all the time. You got somebody who's looking at what they know. They know this horse is going to move it, right? This guy's telling them no, if you just boil water, the water will take you there. And they're like you're out of your mind.
Speaker 3:Well, there's two parts to it. Number one I think you're right. I think there is that sense of like this is what I know and what you're saying don't sound right. But I think there's a second piece to that, where, if you grow up with something you believe that it is normal, there is, there's a feeling of this is how it always was. And then the second part even if it's subconscious, this is how it was and it was never a problem.
Speaker 3:And I talk about this all the time in Christopher Columbus's journals and journals from the original voyages, from Christopher Columbus, not the first one, 1492, but later, when he went to Florida, the crew were complaining that they couldn't sleep because the boat kept hitting sea turtles.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:There were so many sea turtles knocking against the hull that they couldn't sleep. And you know, a couple of generations later, right, in the grand scheme of things, we're talking about 500 years. We're talking about 10 generations, right? You know generations about 40 years, maybe 12 generations. If there's a sea turtle on the runway, they'll shut down the airport because those things are so rare that they have to, like, preserve that. So there is this sense of you know, we've been using this fuel forever, we've been doing it this way forever. But I mean, you shared with me. This was that original, that freight liner that didn't even have a dual axle in the back.
Speaker 2:No, it was a four wheel drive version A four wheel drive, white freight liner diesel tractor.
Speaker 3:Exactly, that was a, you know, a six wheel vehicle and they're talking about it pulling double tandem trailers.
Speaker 2:Right, with a 220 horsepower Cummins in there, or or a gas engine, if you'd like to go that right.
Speaker 3:Right, so we're talking about power that it has no power, but it got the job done, correct, you know, and that's the other thing that blows my mind I think of my first Mustang, my 85, I'm sorry my 87, because my first one was an 87, then I got the 85 at an 87, fox body, five O Mustang, and I remember when I had that thing, you know my parents being like you're going to kill yourself in that car, it's way too fast for you. It only had 205 horsepower.
Speaker 2:Listen. So in that advertisement I sent you because I'm I'm on, I follow all these pages of vintage trucks. Well, me and Fred, fred and I talk about a lot of this stuff. We post a lot of it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I love vintage ads.
Speaker 2:So it says right here, with a 63 inch insulated space maker cab, oh 63 inches. Yes, but it's insulated. They had to point out the fact that that cab is insulated. Right, because back then it was just a party model that's going to freeze your ass out when you're trying to pass over, you know, through Denver.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you've still got drivers today that complain that their sleeper cab don't have a you know 60 inch TV in it.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's my point. I'm going to get them with the full down chain bunk.
Speaker 3:I don't even think it had that.
Speaker 2:Jesus.
Speaker 3:Oh man.
Speaker 2:That's gum band drive. That's when it's when the duals first came out. They actually ran a rubber band. It was like a big V belt between the first drive axle and the rear drive axle.
Speaker 3:I didn't know that. I got to find that.
Speaker 2:If you look that up. Look that up, so we'll talk about that at another time. But imagine getting stuck on the side of the road going to goddamn gum drive. No, that's crazy.
Speaker 3:I'm 100 miles outside of Pasadena. Yeah, exactly, I can't believe how far we've come. You know we look at that and I'm going to skip this thing about wave. We'll come back to wave another time. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about that, you know. Here's the thing about wave I don't understand and you have to help me with this because in my ignorance I'm not really 100% up to speed with that. I keep thinking it's like a doctor who thing. You stand on that thing and you're going to end up in some other world. That's accurate.
Speaker 3:I think that's right Well. I think if you have a metal plate in your scrotum, that thing will just light you up.
Speaker 2:Hey, listen, you don't go to the MRI table with the metal plate in your scrotum because you're out, you know, working overseas, and somebody took care of you, did I?
Speaker 3:send you that thing about the guy who had the metal free thing that was not metal free. Yes, sir, yeah, it's shot through him like a lightning bolt, killed him. No, he lived, he lived. Oh, yeah, he's suing a lot of people.
Speaker 2:I would be too, because I'd be so embarrassed to have to sue everybody that touched me that day.
Speaker 3:I'd have to sue people that aren't even born yet because they're going to find out about it eventually.
Speaker 2:That lady grabbed my wrist and her nails pinched my skin and I'm suing the male salon of which did it applied those acrylics.
Speaker 3:Listen, man. God bless him. He should sue people. He should sue me. I've gotten so many miles out of that. I feel like I owe him money.
Speaker 2:Easy, now Easy.
Speaker 3:Easy now, all right. So this thing with wave and I always talk about this you know we're talking about the gum drive and things like that and like that's old technology, but in its day it was like the hot new thing, right. To me that's for six months. Well, you know, that's how technology is? It's the relentless march of progress right.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:I love these guys at wave. This is a company. It's run by an outfit called idea nomics and they always you know they always have that's what they do, right. They invest in new ideas and some of them take off and some of them don't. And they bought this about a year and a half ago Like Shark Tank. Like Shark Tank, but, like you know, for stuff that's not on Shark Tank.
Speaker 2:So not the QVC version of Shark Tank. No, this is like heavy equipment. I want to see a TV show built like this. Oh, you got some industrial engineering design. Bring it on down. Let's stand in front of the panel and we're going to record the whole thing. So I think, I think it'd be good, but no, so hang on hang on, hang on I saw I want to run, I know we're on a rent.
Speaker 3:That's what this is. So that's what idea nomics does, right, they do it like Shark Tank. They buy these companies up and they try to make something of them, and what wave does is really smart. So they have these pads in the ground that are just like the wireless charging on your phone. They run down on it, sends a current through, and they do it over a short gap in a controlled space. And they've been doing it with Dredge trucks, school buses, they've got a tram, I believe at Universal Studios in Florida, and it's basically anywhere that you have a repeatable route and you know that where you're going to stop and you're going to stop for a certain number of minutes. So the bus pulls up to the bus stop, parks over the pad, hits the airbrakes, it's door opens and for a minute or two, while people are getting off and on, can we hear this?
Speaker 2:Can we hear this?
Speaker 3:sound again. Yeah, the whole thing. There we go. All right.
Speaker 3:So for the minute or two that people are getting off and on, it's getting just juiced with 150 kilowatts of power, or 350 kilowatts of power is the newest version.
Speaker 3:Ok, so if you were in a car, that would be enough juice. That's like a level seven, you know, tesla supercharger or or Electrify America level seven charger, where it's giving you about 20 miles for every minute that you're sitting. But these bus stops are not 20 miles apart, so you get enough juice at that stop to go to the next stop and then you stop there and then you get enough juice. So the thing is going around and it's constantly getting these little hits of charge all the way through. So in theory, especially if it's a drage thing or if it's a machine like a mine, or if it's a factory type of tram or a shuttle that goes around a campus that has that same route over and over again, with a much smaller battery, using far fewer resources at a lower cost, this thing can run perpetually 24, seven. You never have to pull it out of rotation to plug it into charge it.
Speaker 2:Hmm, that's actually ingenious. It's ingenious, yeah, it's real nice and no, but seriously, like that's, it solves a lot of problems. And here, even if you were charging it at night for eight hours while the thing sat, you're staying ahead of the game all day long. Sure, yeah, why not? Now I did have an interesting thing happen. I was at this fleet council meeting and they were talking about Well, what if there's a power outage? It's always about that and I get I get actually segue into something here. Guys like wave and All these people that are trying to come up with alternative charging methods. When they come out with something really cool, somebody is always first to shoot it down and say what if there's power outage?
Speaker 2:Well okay, first of all, there's a power outage. We're gonna figure it out right, we you know. The grid's gonna reset itself. We're gonna have some power redirected, sure Hope we hope, we hope.
Speaker 3:Can I throw something else at you? Yeah, I know, I don't want to derail you here. No, go ahead people know that gas pumps run an electricity right.
Speaker 2:Exactly. This is what I was just actually getting ready to say this we're all stopping anyways if we have a power outage. You can't get gas, you can't process a transaction of any kind of currency, you can't get anywhere. Your easy pass doesn't work on the turnpikes. You're out there fighting with the what the gate anyways, like Chicago, just blow right through it, right exactly.
Speaker 3:Shoot it on the way through right.
Speaker 2:So my point is is I keep hearing all these these things and I think to myself the same thing you just said. You do have a valid Statements, but your point is not valid because your alternative is still down.
Speaker 3:So the other one that I get all the time is you know well, you think your electric vehicles are gonna save the world. What about all that cobalt mining? You know that's, that stuff's really terrible and it's child labor and this. Now, like you're absolutely right, and For the last hundred years cobalt mines have existed.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 3:They didn't just start because of electric cars. Do you know what they're for? I always get the same blank stare. Well, it's used in the refinement of crude oil to refine it into gasoline and diesel. So I agree with you. I think we should cut back on the cobalt mining, and the way we do that is to use less gas and it's the same thing with coal mining.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing with everything else Exactly. It's got a nasty ugly back story behind it.
Speaker 3:So, but here's the thing, right. Here is the real-life world that we live in. If you are an American and you are a consumer of things, you are buying stuff that is made with child labor. You're buying stuff that is made with slave labor. You are buying your you know, hippie, ultra sustainable cotton grown t-shirts that are made by five-year-olds in Taiwan.
Speaker 3:You know you're eating Hershey chocolate that was grown with slave labor, like this is a tough world and we can make it better, but like we can, and the only thing that anything is Holy and good and pure.
Speaker 2:No, exactly. And so what I'm saying with all this is guys like Wave and In all these other companies that are trying to figure it out, good for them, because they're actually trying to change.
Speaker 3:They're actually trying to make it better and, like you know, the one that I always go back to is like okay? So you know what if all this climate change is fake? What if none of this is real and we end up creating a better world for nothing?
Speaker 2:I Will be walking around like Spock.
Speaker 3:We'll be walking around like Spock, all right. Well, listen, I know we're coming to the end of our time commitment here. I will definitely tag my buddies at Maritz and wave here and we'll see if we can get the wave guys on. They're always a good interview man, because they they come up with stuff. That's really crazy. The last time I talked to them the guy was saying we're talking to a golf course and I was like a golf course and he's like, yeah, those little golf carts just pretty much go up and down the trails. We know exactly where they're gonna sit and stop, they just go around the course. That's actually ingenious. We never have to plug those things in. And here's the real, the real shocker when the power goes out, because these things are a hundred percent charged all the time, you plug all your M and they just right generators Exactly. You know, when we met, neither one of us had hair.
Speaker 2:That's true. Yeah, again, we're going back to Miami Vice. You get the, you get the my buck, and we're gonna go right around.
Speaker 3:I thought we were gonna go to Caddy Shack and talk about more golf. Well, we could. We got to make it all the way to Caddy Shack to and Jackie Mason's character to fit me in there.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, we. I put that horn on my car. My company car has that horn. I blow it all the time. No, you didn't. Yeah, from Rodney Dangerfield, I'll record it for you. Yeah, I can't park my car. Get my bags Put on some weight, we are. I Come wheeling into a gas station or a golf course and people go nuts. Older people do the young, you the younger guys just smirk at it, but they don't even know.
Speaker 3:they don't know what it is, they have no concept.
Speaker 2:They just think it's outrageous, that's, they have no idea what that is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, what was? There was something today I'll edit this out but there was something the other day where I was trying to talk to somebody. I was trying to talk to somebody about back to the future and they were just like I don't get it, like what is that? And I was like it's a movie and I know it's like one of those really old movies, and I and I almost said something. I was like that movie is gonna be 40 years old next year.
Speaker 2:It is, it is, and there's 40 years old.
Speaker 3:If you made that movie today and you went 30 years into the past, you'd be going into 1993, and I'm a billion years old.
Speaker 1:Once upon a time in the land of the dinosaurs, patasaurus to the drive-in and I watched young Martin McFly tried to seduce a mate with his mother.
Speaker 3:And that's a show I think. I don't think we're gonna get, I don't think it's gonna get better than that. We've peaked, we've peaked, we peaked.
Speaker 1:Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on Spotify, apple Podcasts, google or wherever you find podcasts.