HEP-isode 6 has news from MOVE America in Austin and Utility Expo in Louisville, a look into what Mike and Jo think the UAW strike is really all about, JLG breaking away from Caterpillar, and how upfitters like Knapheide are rising to the challenge of uncooperative OEMs. Also: the people of Lake Placid don't think Mike is funny!
HEP-isode 6 has news from MOVE America in Austin and Utility Expo in Louisville, a look into what Mike and Jo think the UAW strike is really all about, JLG breaking away from Caterpillar, and how upfitters like Knapheide are rising to the challenge of uncooperative OEMs. Also: the people of Lake Placid don't think Mike is funny!
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 pulse of progress come together. It's sublime, it's surreal. That's the heavy equipment podcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 2:Episode six when did we leave off? If that don't sound sexy, I don't know what does. That's right. So remember, we're really emphasizing that episode from now on. That's thanks to Dan Klastnik. I don't think I'm saying that right. That's how you say that, right, dan Dan?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, no, I thought his last name was yeah, it's classical.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of season case and subscriber count goes from two to one. But no, it was. You know we didn't do a show. Last week, we were on the road. Last week was a big week in the industry, right, because it was the utility expo out in Louisville, which is a great town. I was in Austin, texas, another great town, for Move America. That was a great show. There's 10 stages, there's all kinds of content and educational stuff. I was in all kinds of webinars and the number one thing that everybody was talking about was fleet management. Not just fleet management in the conventional sense of how to cost things out and manage expenses and stuff, but a lot of these legacy systems that companies have been using for years. They just kind of have one field that you type in your fuel cost and they can't handle all these different types of fuels and tracking for the credits and the tax credits that you can get on all this stuff and it really does seem to be creating an opening for some new applications and new entrance into the market.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that there's always been a place for that, because for the longest period of time, fleet management software it was a fancy way of filling out a spreadsheet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was the joke was that you know the average company right now because it was something like 90 percent of all vehicle fleets, or 10 vehicles or less in this country, and most of that is an Excel spreadsheet that exists on one dude's laptop, and if he goes home one day and decides not to come back, they got nothing.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right. What did we buy? What's capitalized? I don't know, dan had it.
Speaker 2:What? Yeah, dan, what is capitalization? But I mean that's really true, though. I mean there, and there's even some big companies that maybe they're a little bit better now, maybe they've got everything saved to the cloud, but they're still running their whole company based on Excel spreadsheets and pivot tables.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I mean many companies that I talked to and we always, you know, bs back and forth about what are we doing and how do we track this or how do we account for that. Everybody's got a different theory based on their you know accounting practices. But yes, it's funny, at the end of the day, people are very proud of their Excel knowledge and then remember, was it Microsoft Access where you could download a bunch of data and pull that out, you know, and it would do some advanced algorithms. But at the end of the day, everybody now is talking about how they store this stuff and it's like, well, we use Microsoft 360. And you're like, oh, once every two, three years, there's a panic phone call made. Some IT guys got to get out of bed and find some pivot table that got lost somewhere, but it's like six weeks old. Yeah, what are we doing? What are we doing? We're talking about electric trucks, hydrogen vehicles, autonomous stuff, but what? We're tracking it on a spreadsheet.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, yeah Well, and that's that's where I think there's some opportunities there to do some different stuff. But you know, we're not going to solve that particular problem here today. Over there at Utility Expo, there was a couple of big announcements, the two big ones that were the cross. My train of thought was Nicola, we've talked about them before. They've officially begun production of their hydrogen semi trucks. And then there's these things, these updated vacuum excavators. Tell me about that. It seems like an. I would have called that an extractor, not an excavator. But what do I know?
Speaker 3:Well, hydro, hydro excavation has been around for a long time and they used to. You know it had to be truck mounted and Vermeer basically was like here we're going to build you a trailer mounted one and if you need to excavate around a utility line fiber optic, something that's very sensitive you can pull that out of the ground safely, get around it without having to worry about. You know, some excavator and an operator that's had too many the night before and shuts down a hospital. You know this. That's what makes this school is very portable. You can wiggle it in somewhere that you know you couldn't get a giant truck in before. Now the Vermeer Vermeer has always had. They have a huge product line.
Speaker 3:I think they get overlooked all the time because Vermeer very much innovative all the time about what they're, what they're doing, but they're very specialized. They're not a caterpillar, they're not a Kamatsu. They don't try to reinvent the wheel, they bring up their own product. This is, this is another great offering to the table. I was glad that. I was glad that they brought that out. That's something that they've been talking about, and then I don't know how much they've actually put out there yet.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean it seems like a good product. The other thing that they brought out was their VXT 600 vacuum truck. They redesigned that to get more efficiency out of the motor, but the thing looks beefy Like I. It's just a part of the industry that I'm not familiar with at all because, frankly, it would lose, you know if, if we ever did extreme construction battle equipment gladiators this would not be.
Speaker 3:yeah, this would lose right away. It'd be tipped over, sucking dirt and a side side lines, you know, living off of its own hydraulic fluid. But no, yeah, again, you know, this is a cool product and that's what I mean, that the truck is what I was talking about as a counterpart. I mean, the truck is massive, it's bulky and it has a place. This is super versatile and we like versatility. It's good.
Speaker 2:Do you have stuff like this in your fleet or you rent these?
Speaker 3:when you need them. We we don't even rent them, we hire out services to do it, because it takes skill, it's, it takes some finesse. I mean there are a lot of companies that break into doing it. There's a learning, there's a learning curve with it. You know again, it's not cheap, but it's cheaper than hitting a fiber optic line. So hire the people that know what they're doing and then they keep you out of trouble every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely a good way to go forward on this. Now, you know, as we look at that, you know you mentioned Caterpillar a few times here. Talk a little bit about what's happening there in terms of the telehandler deal that they have coming to an end.
Speaker 3:So JLG has been building a segment of their product fleet for quite a while. They're telehandler market and JLG I mean everybody knows in the industry that uses that stuff that's around it JLG has been. You know they're booked up, they between the rental houses buying up their product. We recently had some orders with CAT for the the JLG source telehandlers. They're pushed way back.
Speaker 3:I was talking to some other people the other day and nationwide there's a lot of people that are waiting on them and the rumbling out there is that JLG, you know they're at a point where they're saturated and they're going to have to Caterpillar is going to have to source their own telehandler, make their own. Yeah, I was actually talking to the Caterpillar reps the other day. I'd like love to do a field follow on one of those people that aren't familiar with that. Field follow means Caterpillar brings you a product that's not a hundred percent. You run it, you put it through its paces, you run a bunch of different stuff with it and they Extract that off of it all day long, however that may be, and then they take it back. Express some interest in that because I think the dealerships are saying you could have a 16 to 19 month lag between models which people that are in the middle of their cycle are trying to move stuff around. That's that's a long time. It's gonna disrupt some fleets for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting because I couldn't find any articles or any like official online forum anything talking about JLG stepping away from Caterpillar. But what I did find was and this is on crane hotline it's an article from 2005, you know, back when we're all still excited about the new GTR we were just talking about, and there was a 20 year strategic alliance where JLG was going to manufacture these telehandlers and sell them under the Caterpillar brand through Caterpillar exclusive. But that's coming to an end and I think that that's Real close to what we're talking about. It's real close to what we're talking about because if you go from here on out and you go out to that, 16, 17 months, that's it. It's over Yep. So I would not be surprised if you just couldn't couldn't even place orders anymore. So what do you do at that point?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that you have a couple options. You go to a JLG dealer and you buy it from them, or you follow Caterpillar's lead. You kind of figure out where they're going with it. Caterpillar is not new to the telehandler market. Th models they manufactured on their own. They, they ran those. They had a hell of a run. But again you know with strategic alliances that Caterpillar was doing in the early 2000s. They said why are we reinventing the wheel? These people make the product. Yeah we need it they still have the manufacturing Capacity yeah.
Speaker 3:So they have that there and and the rumor is now this is Substantiated, maybe we could get somebody to comment on it. But the rumor is somewhere down south they're gonna put together a plant or Repurpose a line and they're gonna start making their own telehandler. So we're kind of interested to see how that happens. I'm really interested to see the product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was. There's a Decatur factory that's coming online. They're putting up their first new building in 25 years at the Decatur cat facility and it's it's a big deal for them down there, but they haven't really talked about what they're gonna put in there. It's a hundred and eighty thousand square foot expansion to that facility, so Maybe it's telehandlers. Michael, I do believe we've cracked this.
Speaker 3:Well, Colombo, you've done it again one more thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just just one more thing. One more thing.
Speaker 3:When you know the phone to box to buy your part. You'd said that they had it out of out of stock, but yet they had received the shipment yesterday and it was on your shelf down to cut the commercial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly what was the other one that I liked?
Speaker 3:I like Quincy MD, oh yeah she was 95 years old and fell off the boat.
Speaker 1:Did she follow?
Speaker 2:my favorite one, my favorite Quincy MD was when the kids were at the baseball stadium and they were all dying. They were trying to figure out if it was a terrorist attack, but it turned out to just be botulism. Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:That's a good one because now, every time I see a bent can in the supermarket I just go Bottleism listen, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna plug Quincy here a little bit, because that man had it going on.
Speaker 3:He had the white sea is on underrated program. And underrated he was and the character had it going on. He had the white flowing pants, he lived on a boat, he was shagging all these middle-aged women that have left their, their ex-husbands.
Speaker 2:I mean, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. That's not really, that's not really disclosed.
Speaker 3:Well, they were doing it and so that was disclosed.
Speaker 1:Yes, so.
Speaker 3:My point is is you know? Oh, they may or may or may not have been divorced. See, yeah, that's, that's a good point. We we don't know the inner workings of the social experiment that Quincy had going on that boat.
Speaker 2:Quincy was getting weird on there man Medical instruments put to use medical?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was he's.
Speaker 2:This guy's got a whole new use for the spurving. What's gonna be funny is put your feet up in the stirrups man.
Speaker 3:New, new listeners 18 and 19. When you don't know what we're talking about with Quincy, just go right on to YouTube, put in Quincy, dm or Quincy.
Speaker 2:It's Quincy, I'm E.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm E metal examiner yeah yeah, medical examiner, that's right. Yeah, yeah, not metal examiner, medical Sorry, just put that in there and you'll see a whole string of stuff You've you've never seen before, and if you're lucky, it'll loop you into emergency, which is a whole other series.
Speaker 2:So you need to be careful with that though, because you might see grandma coming off that boat in her heyday.
Speaker 3:She was 45. She had no where she was going, but she was going on that boat.
Speaker 2:All right, let's go. She was gonna peak. She was sitting there saying things like how come men?
Speaker 1:peak at 19, but women peak at 42. We've um man what was next on the script?
Speaker 3:Well, you a w. So the UAW thing is is is heating? Yes, I can, we're got Quincy, quincy me, we got all kinds of.
Speaker 4:Admin, it's a UAW medical office supplies, let's do it.
Speaker 3:This is another group that we'd like I'd like to get on here because I'm being serious about this. The UAW has been trying for a long time. They had a bunch of stagnant rate increases. They had a bunch of stagnant benefits that weren't moving anywhere. I know people there in the UAW we all do. Anybody that's listening on here, I'm sure, as an aunt and uncle work for Ford, gm, whoever. But a Lot of people don't realize the UAW is in heavy equipment plants too. Right, the UAW is in, you know, heavy truck commercial building. They branch out a lot of more things than you know Ford and GM, which a lot of people just assume is what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like the teamsters, like the stewardess on your airplanes. Teamster.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll, we'll segment away from the teamsters anyways. So the no, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:But the uh no, but you gotta be careful what we say about those guys. They're going to put you in the ground like Jimmy Hoffa.
Speaker 3:That was not substantiated. So the the uh, the point to all this says is that the UAW is far more reaching than anybody realizes. So think about that membership power, which is the true basis of having a union. And all they're wanting is to get themselves back up to where they would be. I think this is what's the misconception.
Speaker 3:Okay, whether you're for unions or you're not, union busting is something as simple as skewing the truth and throwing it out there to the media and saying they're after 40%. No one's getting 40% price increases. Inflation can't drive 40%. The market can't handle 40%. Okay, the profit, cash at the end of the day, that the automakers and people are making today, and they're using inflation to drive their profit up. We all've seen it. This is not shocking.
Speaker 3:They've been talking about it on Bloomberg and everybody else. Stocks are going up and down, like they normally do, but the profitability is there. All they're saying is hey, we're throwing a number out there. Yes, we're going on strike If we can't come up with something reasonable. Give us something reasonable and we're going to work. That's all they're saying. That's what they're saying, and I don't you know whether you, you know ethical or anything like that you want to talk about with the UAW. The point is is that they're not asking for anything out of line. If you really were to pull the wage sheets and they're on the internet, people can go on there and look there are certain UAW jobs that if we have a, I would say, three more escalations in the common day workplace rate, they would be right in line with somebody that would go on go into work as a seasoned employee at target oh, 100% and nothing against the target people. My point is that they're not looking for anything crazy.
Speaker 2:No, and here's the other thing that's crazy. That 40% number keeps getting thrown around, but the reality is, if you look at the C-suite executives at Ford and GM, they've had a 40% rate hike since 2019. And they're doing that off the back of record profits. Now, there's plenty of automakers that have non-union plants and that work with non-union suppliers, and we care about them. Also, this is not a pro-union rant, correct. What I'm going to say is very simple and it should resonate with everyone who's ever had a business or had a business partner or tried to do something on their own. And it's this very simple concept If you make record profits, you should pay your team record wages, correct.
Speaker 3:And if you don't think that there's a one-to-one correlation there, you're not the kind of person I want to do business with that's right and I think, the automakers and, I think, the heavy equipment industries. I don't think that they're ignoring the fact that they have to share the wealth, so to speak, and they have to share the wealth with their non-union partners as well. But they need to come do an agreement, because what's going to happen is, just as manufacturing started to gain momentum and we've got ETAs on verified orders coming down to a manageable level again, here is another hiccup. They're using it. They're using it to sit there and say, okay, well, the UAW has done it again, we finally got the place on track and now they're going on strike. And then the UAW is saying hey, if you want to keep moving and you want to keep making these record profits, you want to keep paying your $1.5 million quarterly bonuses out in cash or stock options. Pay our people some extra money and they will come in and work all the hours you want them to work. We talked about this early on.
Speaker 3:Getting workers is hard to find. Getting people that want to show up in a response with passing drug tests, as medical marijuana and recreational marijuana goes across the country, it's creating a whole other issue. Can someone pass a drug test on a regular basis. Can we do this? Can we do that? Again, nothing against anybody that uses recreational anything. The point being it's narrowing down our workforce.
Speaker 3:Who's making up for that? You're talking about a guy who goes to Ford, goes to Mac, goes to Caterpillar. They go there every day. The deer guys are out and Iowa has been down to that plant. They're the same way. Hey, we're going to need like 50 people to work 16 hours the next three weeks. Let's see who we can get rounded up. They do it. They do it for two reasons right, paid they're going to get paid by the hour. They're getting overtime. On top of that, there is a sense of like we're here and we need to keep this moving. There's a very big pride effort that gets pushed at that moment. I was in a plant not too long ago when they were talking about this. That's what made me think of it today. I was like they got to get this sorted out. We're all making money crippled.
Speaker 2:I actually have a conspiracy theory on this. Let me know if you're ready. You got the tin hat on. Come down to the fourth stall on the left at the Flying J here inside of beautiful South Bend, indiana, so listen.
Speaker 3:You get out of the fourth stall, you kick the door open, you hand you a foil hat and you move on. Pay him a dollar, that's it.
Speaker 2:Foil hat, manila envelope Don't open the envelope to your back in the truck. October 1st, for the first time in almost three years over three years actually we now have student loan payments coming out of people's paycheck Correct and there's a whole lot of people who forgot how to make ends meet while they were paying those bills. Maybe they're doing a little bit better than they were, hopefully. Maybe they're not. Maybe the industry they were in pre-pandemic never really came back and now they have to struggle with that. And I think there's a whole lot of people who, when they didn't have to make those four, five, eight $900 a month student loan payments, went out and bought new cars and went out and bought new TVs and didn't put that money away into savings and didn't pay down their loans so that they wouldn't have to pay interest. And I think that everybody kind of knows that that's going to put a damper on things. Everybody knows that that's going to put a hit on auto sales, that's going to put a hit on TV sales, that's going to put a hit on Xbox games, that's going to put a hit on trips to Dollywood. Basically, anything that you don't need, that is not necessary and mandated, that's going to get sucked up by this. And I have two problems with that. Number one it's not like this is going into the economy in some way. It's not like we're saying, okay, everybody's got to pay their student loans, and then the people who work at the banks, it's not going to. That's not what's happening Now. Everybody has to pay their student loans and it's money going from 40 million Americans to like six guys, which that's a problem. But we're not here to talk socialism or any of that other BS here. We're just saying like that's a whole lot of money coming out of the economy and effectively going away. Right, so that's one. And now you pair that with the UAW strike, because someone at UAW, or at least someone at the automakers, is saying we don't want to pay these UAW guys because we know the good times are about to come to a standstill because of the student loan thing. But now we get to blame it on somebody else. That's correct. So I kind of see the two things being very related and I understand that.
Speaker 2:Ford, gm, stellantis, these companies exist primarily as banking companies. Ford doesn't exist without Ford Motor Credit, just like GM doesn't really exist with the ally. Even though they're kind of separate. They're still very much intertwined and I think there's a credit crunch coming. I think you can see the last month there were more $1,000 monthly car payments than ever before. The average new monthly payment in the US is something like $760 a month for a new vehicle. It's insane. It's insane. And now you're dumping student loan payments on top of that after three years of not having to do it. I think that's really going to hurt some people. It's going to hurt some businesses, but one thing it won't hurt is sales of the new 1971 Sears Craftsman lawnmower.
Speaker 4:Now this is a conventional power mower carburetor. It's got high speed jets, low speed jets, needle vials, all kinds of things that can get out of adjustment and cause you starting problems. Now these are the new Craftsman Eager mowers from Sears, powered by the exclusive Eager 1 engine. They don't have one of these, a conventional carburetor. The Eager 1 has a totally new collaboration system with no high speed jets, no low speed jets, no needle valves, nothing to get out of adjustment, nothing to cause starting problems. Add to that lightweight magnesium housing, control levers, extra large wheels and you'll have easier starting, easier operating for a long, long time. Craftsman mowers, and only Craftsman mowers, are powered by the exclusive Eager 1 engine. Eager mowers sold only at Sears. They start, cut grass and last.
Speaker 3:This is great.
Speaker 2:I think that's a great segue. That's perfect.
Speaker 3:The 1971 Sears Craftsman lawnmower. Let me tell you about one of those. I had one and I had a real mower version of that as well. It's a bad son of a bitch, but don't be standing behind it when it runs over the dog, because you know it, Let me tell you they're all way back on you, buddy, and it's minced.
Speaker 2:We had. It wasn't a, it wasn't a 71, but we had right when they changed over from the Eager motors to the Eager 1, to the Eagle 1. Right, a lot of people don't remember when that switch happened, but in the 90s. I don't understand why. But there is this weird gardening trend and, like Margaret's dad does it too and my uncle, eric was doing it he would take, like when you had seashells or whatever, he would take that and throw that in the flower gardens, like you throw that in the garden to fertilize and you would go over these things with with the lawnmower and it would like whip out the side at 160 miles an hour. You get this like spinning death blade oyster shell come out like a ninja turtle, go a half inch into the wooden fence.
Speaker 3:You're like, oh, you're doing the same thing, I should stuff right there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And there's no safety goggles, there's no headphones. You're nine years old, pushing a lawnmower in the summer heat, squinting stuff, just pelting you in the face and guards on just waiting.
Speaker 3:You know, get beat up by the lawnmower.
Speaker 2:Oh, I would get twigs. I would get rocks pelting me in the legs. I have scars from that.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean we all grew up doing a lot. I mean, we had a gravely growing up, which is the same thing. It's a two wheel power horse of death and when you just walk behind it with the cap with the two handlebars, beat in your rib cage up. Yeah, you know exactly. It's like a pinball stuck inside between the two posts in the back and it won't release. There's the gravely. Was keeping score? I sure as hell wasn't, so you know well.
Speaker 2:I got a free play all the time. Let me tell you the gravely one you get to try to find a gravely commercial for the next time. That's great.
Speaker 3:They're out there from the Stutter Baker people. They knew what they were doing.
Speaker 2:They knew how to mark it, that.
Speaker 3:thing.
Speaker 2:At some point one time. Eventually, we're going to stay on script, but it won't be today, because today we're going to talk about utility beds.
Speaker 3:You know that's a. That's a very cool thing. We buy a ton of utility beds. We buy I'm going to plug them a little bit, but only because it's who we use and just people reference in what we're talking about. We use the Napa hide steel utility bed with the toolboxes on the side. There are plenty of companies out there that make good products Sunweld IMT, which is Iowa, molden Tool, summit bodies they built the big record bodies. Jair Dan builds a big record, so anyways, but we buy a lot of this stuff. I mean, I'm talking we probably buy a hundred of those a year. And you know what's one other thing we were talking about.
Speaker 3:This goes back to last segment, but the pricing keeps going up on these and everybody's on the price battle, so it all goes back to your outfit cost. And we just had some new GMC's put with, those put on them again and the Ram 2500. I just I just drove one of the new ones and one of the things that I'm noticing on some of the new trucks when you put a utility bed on them, you would think that they they would have a better access to the factory and what happens is the factory is constantly changing the truck. They're changing how you plug the wiring in. Yeah, they're changing how you mount it. It's frustrating because you could have 12, 14 trucks tied up in an upfitter and they're like hey, I can't get this connector. Ford told me no, or GM told me no, or Dodge told me no, it's no. It's no one brand's issue. This is everybody Sure.
Speaker 3:Now you're talking about like truck caps, or you're talking about like some, some dump bodies or steel beds and not the dump body, but the actual toolbox beds that go in there that you see on the construction trucks. We buy a ton of those things and all the accessories to go on them and even though the manufacturers are, the upfitters are trying to keep it down, if you really want to find good quality stuff, you still got to pay for it in relationship to the truck costs. Truck costs keep going up. I you know, and I drove this Ram, and what was surprising me to the Ram is so I was at the 2009 Ram reveal, right, which is still the current platform. It's on. Yeah, when are they going to change that? Why would? Because, well, that well, I had a question. That's what was my question. It's like, well, what would you want to? Or are you going to ride this baby on out into the sunset for up 20 year refresh? Because they're on year 14 now?
Speaker 2:I mean, here's the thing, right, pickup trucks, especially work trucks, are some of the most profitable vehicles that an OEM can make. The only thing more profitable than a Ford F series pickup is like a Lincoln navigator that is effectively mechanically an F series pickup with a luxury body that they can charge a brand premium on right. So like, okay, your Escalade versus the Tahoe, but even the Tahoe is way more profitable than the Silverado. It's built on right, right and there's not a huge push for changes under the skin. If you remember, the really iconic changeover was like that 1994 Dodge Ram that went from like the old school bulldog head to like that almost Kenworth slant nose, you know semi truck body that really truthfully saved Chrysler a second time after the Leia Coca loans and everything else, because it nobody had that.
Speaker 2:Nobody had that and it was like if you look at the 92 to 96 F 150 or that same era 1500 Silverado, they were great trucks but they didn't have that big truck vibe. They're very small compared to trucks today. I mean, we talk about, you know, the full size F 150 versus, like the little tiny compact Ford Maverick. Ford Maverick is two inches longer than a 1992 to 96 F 150. Yeah, so that's how much these vehicles have grown and what our understanding of small truck versus big truck is. And it all started from that 94 Ram. But even that 94 Ram was still based on that 1976 chassis that was the little red truck and it wasn't even then, until what 2009, that they changed it, you know, that's like.
Speaker 3:I saw the GMC Canyon. Yes, I was. I was looking at one of the 84 package came out and that's pretty exciting and somebody was standing there and they're like, yeah, it's like. You know, it's like the like the old Ranger. And I'm like this is bigger than an old Ranger, this is bigger than an old Silverado. Yes, there was a time when the Silverado short bed, step side type truck of its era and the hate, you know, in the heartbeat of America era.
Speaker 1:The heartbeat of America is today, it's Chevrolet.
Speaker 3:Beretta, that was good, that was real good.
Speaker 2:That V six Beretta was a machine baby.
Speaker 3:That was an alumina, All the luminous.
Speaker 2:Z 34 Euro Euro trash Anyways.
Speaker 3:so the the point is is that that truck was was it's. It's bigger than those. They're taller, they're longer One of the big feedback points that we get on our fleet I just was talking to a guy today about it with our fleet and these are guys that you know they're driving 5050 to 55000 miles on average a year. They love the behind the seat space and a ram and a GMC. They're like you can. You can seriously pack some rain gear back there, extra boots, all these things they're like. You cannot do that in every truck.
Speaker 2:That's true, that's true, and you know, as more and more people really use these things in that way and put miles on the trucks like that having more size, because what you're really eliminating in some cases, what used to be a van body. You know, if you go back 2030 years, everybody was doing this with van bodies and the GMC the G vans with the, with the body on the back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:So you're now you have to have that front half of the front half of the van but the back half of a truck that you can put this body on. You know you made a really good point. I want to go back to this, with the upfitters having problems with getting connectors and things like that. The OEMs are really. They're trying to maximize profitability and they're changing the way they build and paint and manufacture vehicles almost model year to model year. But if you look at a company like Tesla, they are making changes to the assembly line process almost week by week. So when you have a Tesla and you're trying to buy a part, you have to sometimes call it in and figure out okay, what was the build date on this one? Because after this other date we're using a different coolant bottle or a different windshield, wiper, motor or whatever else to constantly cut down costs.
Speaker 2:And as that kind of mentality trickles into the OEMs who are looking at Tesla and saying, man, I want a trillion dollar valuation, I want $700 stock prices, right, because they don't. They don't actually care about the environment. Let's get one thing very clear Ford, general Motors, shell Oil, british Petroleum they don't care about the planet. They're not switching to electric vehicles because they're trying to save the earth. They're switching to electric vehicles because they look at Tesla stock prices and they go oh, my job is to build value for the shareholders and that means I got to do what Tesla is doing. So that's all this is. This is a very cynical take, but that's reality of life.
Speaker 2:Right, as they start to do that these truck body manufacturers and especially these RV people because the RV companies are another group that are buying full size and medium duty trucks to turn into C vans or to turn into motorhome chassis, and they have to get all this stuff to play nice and communicate as well they're going to start having a real problem and they're going to get clamped down on, and I don't know what the answer is going to be. I suspect it'll go one of two ways. You're either going to have a tighter integration with some of these OEMs, kind of picking some winners. They're going to pick some winners in the upfitting space. They're maybe nap, hide and say you know you're the winner and you're going to get access to all the can data and encryption and everything else for these electric trucks that are coming out.
Speaker 3:Or they're going to have to.
Speaker 2:Well, or they're going to get into the business themselves and these upfitters are going to be left to either just kind of sink or swim mostly sink or somebody's going to come up with a universal control system. So when you plug this thing into the back of a truck, it's got its own brain and its own operation and it'll turn on its own brake signals and everything else, because there's not going to be an in between.
Speaker 3:No, and you know what? You hit a very good point the OEMs. You know, one of the biggest hangups for a fleet is this I finally got my truck. I got to run it over the upfitter. Yeah, the upfitter is just like I've got. I got your bed here. I'm going to put it on.
Speaker 3:If we could somehow integrate that, that would be amazing, because here I am an end user, right, and in my guys that run this stuff, we don't care, as long as it keeps the water out, it holds up, it gets the guys from A to B and it's a real truck. That's all we're looking for. All this other drama about Napa, hyde, sunwell, summit I'm talking about it because it's affecting me, but at the end of the day, it's affecting me and that's really the only reason I care, right? So and I say that from the point of view of an end user I value my partnerships with all of our upfitters and everything like that, but my point to all this is a smart OEM, an innovative OEM, if you're listening to us, we could come up with a streamlined solution where the truck got built without a bed and all the unnecessary stuff which then we just throw out or send to an auction and get the bed put on it at your facility.
Speaker 3:Now this is going back to the heydays of the vans and the buses, when the Econoline van ruled the earth and the Econoline vans were built, purpose built and upfitted right at Ford. Remember this. This happened, we did this. The other OEMs need to have this kind of stuff. We need utility type vehicles coming right off the line.
Speaker 2:I think that's right. I remember down in Florida there used to be Mark III. Mark III used to do all the conversion vans. If you remember that was a hot thing for you know all through the 70s and 80s the conversion vans and when Ford started doing some of the stuff themselves it totally killed Mark III.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and actually if you look in Ohio, the Lorraine Ohio Ford plant, they built the Econoline van there and did the outfit assemblies right in that plant. They went out pre-built on the Ford line and went back in the building and they upfitted them right there and put them out on rail.
Speaker 2:I wonder how it's funny because, like you know, there's nothing new under the sun, right? What goes around, comes around all those good things. It's just what cycle? How long it's? What cycle are we in? And we might be getting back to that cycle where, instead of buying a cutaway and sending it out, you're gonna have it upfit right there on site and you're gonna design these things there. The other thing I was thinking of was when you put this on. There is not a need for the kind of lightning fast can connections that you have from like, let's say, an anti-lock braking system to a body like this. You could almost Bluetooth connect it to the hotspot or to the vehicle.
Speaker 3:Very, much so.
Speaker 2:And just have. Basically, you hit the brakes, it sends a signal to the brake light and it turns on the brake lights. Because, really, what is? Needed here all you need is power in most of these cases, and you can get that fairly easily.
Speaker 3:I would think Well, if you just had a power port on the back of any cutaway or any cab chassis model, and Bluetooth controlled the bed that's it. And just said hey, brake light left turn, right turn, stop all that, that's all you need.
Speaker 1:Because that's all you're using it for.
Speaker 2:It's everything else's hard wire to the battery anyways. Yeah, even if you were doing a dump body, you don't need to have hard connections and hard wires Now you could do that through your phone from outside.
Speaker 3:Well, a good example of that if you look at the Landall trailers, they have a remote. That remote controls the trailer axles, moves them up and down, runs the hydraulics, the truck's pumping oil to the trailer, but you're not physically over there grabbing the knob and moving it. You're out looking at what you're doing, and you could do the same thing with the utility body. It's a segment of the marketplace that I think needs a tune up, because, for what it costs, to be bluntly honest, I think the industry's pretty far behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's right. And I wonder also, man, we're really solving some world problems here.
Speaker 3:This is great. This is like back room bar room get your knuck and dot box. I love this idea of doing this remote.
Speaker 2:You just get a power outlet. And this is going to be interesting too, because as we switch over to these 400 volt and 800 volt electric systems, like what you have in the new Silverado, the new Ram 1500 BEV they're all 400 volt systems you can't build these trailers for 12 volt anymore. However, comma, it's easy enough to put a 12 volt battery on there and have that charged through the system through an inverter. So I think this is the way. The other thing is, with steel prices being as crazy as they are, I wonder if a composite bed makes some sense.
Speaker 3:I think a reinforced composite bed would be great, you know, having like a composite door system and maybe an outer shell with like an aluminum interior structure and maybe a steel sub structure, something like that. I mean, look at what we've done with the aluminum truck bodies, look at what we've done over the years with all of the aluminum bonded components that are out there. Now it would not be hard to build a unicab utility truck that comes right off the assembly line GM Ford, dodge, whatever you want to do and say here's your exterior doors. Do you want it enclosed? Do you want not it enclosed? Get the options tidied up. The gas companies, the power companies, they'd eat that up because they're out there spending a lot of money. Trucks are sitting, they're getting upfitted. Yeah, it's just a weird process today.
Speaker 2:You could even do a modular where you could build that as a unit body and then have two or three different modules you could drop in the back, so one would be a tool bed, one would be like a dump bed. It's. This is all interesting stuff. However, I like the new rampage.
Speaker 3:Rampage is nice, that's, that's cool, that's a little truck.
Speaker 2:Again, little is a contextual thing because they're they're getting big, but you drive all this stuff and you get all these things you know throughout the fleet. I know you guys went through a period where you were buying a ton of Jeep gladiators for people. Do you think the, the rampage and the Ford Maverick or something that your guys are going to start driving you know, even if it's just for the fuel economy, or is that I can tell you?
Speaker 3:I can tell you that you're spot on. I mean, we we've moved into the gladiator market when you couldn't get pickup trucks and we realized you know one of the things, when we sat down and discussed it was all right, we have all these pickup trucks running around. Well, do we really need the capacity or we just need a bed we realized we just need a bed, ok. Well then the gladiator kind of came out. It was cool, we take it off road and get to where we're going. So we started running that. People liked it or they didn't. You know, it's one thing or the other. It's a Jeep. They are what they are. Jeep also has one of the best resale values in the market. So for fleet owners we're like listen, it's going to be worth more at the end of the day than anything we've ever bought. Yeah, then that led us to OK, an average came out. The rampage is coming out.
Speaker 3:The canyon has been out the canyon. There was a point where GM kind of goofed on the canyon pricing. The canyon was expensive and everybody looked at that and went well, I can get a GMC 1500. I think they were calling. They might have still been calling it a pro back then, I'm not sure, but you looked at that and you went I don't see any value here Right now, when a now when a GMC 15 or 2500 pro is, you know, in the 50,000 range.
Speaker 2:Yeah, starts at 50,000.
Speaker 3:Yes, and then you're looking at the GMC, you know canyon, and you're going oh, now we got a price gap here.
Speaker 2:This is good. I will tell you this though the GMC Canyon, the elevation which is their base, trim and it's not a commercial package. This is their right there. We'll call it a civilian package. It's a good for an office guy.
Speaker 2:Good for 38,000 dollars is the starting price and that sounds insane. Until you go over to Chevy Silverado. Try to spec out a Silverado 1500. Try to spec it out for 50. Exactly, you can't do it. And this is the thing that I think blows people's minds is we are now. You know, a pickup truck was always a great option. You know, as I was a kid growing up, a pickup truck was a reliable, dependable sort of cool vehicle that you could get, that didn't have a luxury price tag you can get a pickup truck for so you get F 150 or a Ranger for a lot less than you can get a Mustang. But now I don't know what happened to the pickup truck market in North America, but, like now, it's a real luxury type thing where I look at a pickup truck now and I don't think, oh, this guy is like, you know, some kind of blue collar hero. I look at this guy and I'm like what was this guy? A stockbroker? Is he an accountant, what's?
Speaker 3:going on here. Yeah, you're totally right, you used to be. You look at a guy and he's got a. He's got a Ram 3500, duly OK. Well, he's using that for something, he's totally.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:But now you got these guys running around. I just saw in Lake Placid last week and I was up there and these guys have. You see Betty White in the alligator yeah, come and get it.
Speaker 3:You know, I really pissed some people off when I'll tell you a quick segue. Ok, we'll get back to what I was saying. We're staying there in the lobby of the hotel, you know, and they're like, oh, look out, look out your window, here You're going to see a view of Lake Placid and all that. And I was like, yeah, I said, how's the Gator population this year? They looked at me and they were like go away. We've heard that too many times. You're not the first, you know. And if somebody saw me standing out there with a piece of bread, and they were like no, no.
Speaker 2:What are you doing? We can't have this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, anyway. So I'm standing there and literally these three trucks pull in side by side and their GMC 2500 ATFORs dudes that are all on vacation pile out of them the girlfriends, wives, whatever. They're all getting their stuff out of them. And I thought the same thing you did. I was like, what do these guys do? Yeah, here's three brand new ATFORs. We know what they cost, that's right. I was standing there and kind of in a little bit of it on, I'm like, wow, there's a lot of money sitting over there and a lot of people don't realize that too. You know, if you're if again, this isn't like one's better than the other If you're driving a minivan, or that's your life, or you you're the Pacific family that's got the crisis, or Pacifica, and you see these trucks go by, If you never look at it or you never go to shop for one, a lot of people don't even have any clue what that costs. Yeah, look at the Toyotas and what in what they've gone to.
Speaker 2:No that used to be that used to be an affordable midsize pickup truck Right and for a lot of people, that T100, that Tundra, the first gen, the Dodge Dakota midsize, that really that was what you need.
Speaker 3:So the right tool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was the right tool for the right job, and now this idea is. Now we're getting really into the weeds. This idea of using the right tool for the right job is completely lost on. Like the millennials and the Genesies and everything, they will buy a sledgehammer and they will use that for everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're definitely going to talk about this on the next episode. We got a couple of things that are coming up on that, but I think in the, I think we're going to talk about the right tool for the right job. It's something we're we're missing and we get wrapped up into what we want versus what we need Exactly right. And if you want a new deal on a 1985 Toyota, let's go down to Statler Toyota. They're in stock.
Speaker 2:What was the one that you had earlier? The? The make out like a bandit at Glotney Chevrolet.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that was. That was Neil. Yeah, you know, Neil was behind the scenes of people that don't know who Neil is. He'll be surfacing soon.
Speaker 2:Well, he had that great story from the last union strike that was the Teamsters Union Strike, with the truck drivers. Dude was hauling a load of dynamite and a sniper shot the truck and I left a hole in the earth. Left a hole in the earth and they couldn't even find a body. The only thing they found was the engine block and part of the flywheel. A mile and a half away, Everything else was vaporized.
Speaker 3:So the funny thing about that story is there's a there's a hidden theory that that was a lot of that was staged. Well, yes, a guy was driving the truck and, yes, a guy, like as far as everybody believes, perished in that explosion. Yeah, but there is a theory that, yes, the truck got shot. Obviously it left a hole in the earth, but it was all planned. So think about that when we're talking about powers of union and the power of the mind, because that there's a guy that got in this truck and said you know, we're going to prove a point and the sniper shot him from the hillside and you know it was. It was incredible and that was a whole weird era of trucking that I hope we never get back to, even though I think we're going to have a trucking revolution come up, as the best way to put it, as transportation needs change and the mode of transportation changes. But back then it was literally people fighting for their livelihoods.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well you're going to start to see that again now, because we have an economy that is built on get me what I want and give it to me now. And the only way that's going to keep moving in this country is through the truckers and the trucks, and we don't have enough truckers and we have too many trucks. It's going to be a real problem, but we'll cover that on the next episode and I think we should bring on the Zamboni guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so too. I think we're ready, they were ready, we're ready for the Zamboni.
Speaker 1:Peace Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google or wherever you find podcasts.