This is it, kids — the absolute PINNACLE of HEP-isodes, and the boys are getting right into it with a deep dive into the greatness of the new Mack MD line, the Illinois lawsuit against John Deere and owners' Right to Repair, and we explore the many ways to establish neighborhood dominance with the new Gravely Axis. Also: Goofy Gophers and a cross-dressing Rabbit. It don't get any better than this!
This is it, kids — the absolute PINNACLE of HEP-isodes, and the boys are getting right into it with a deep dive into the greatness of the new Mack MD line, the Illinois lawsuit against John Deere and owners' Right to Repair, and we explore the many ways to establish neighborhood dominance with the new Gravely Axis. Also: Goofy Gophers and a cross-dressing Rabbit. It don't get any better than this!
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. It's the heavy equipment podcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to episode 10. And, nicole, this is it. This is going to be the high point, this is the high watermark against which all other episodes will be judged, and I think this is going to be a good one, because we actually have quite a bit of news to go through, and the one that kind of has my attention. I was cruising the LinkedIn, as one does, saw a gentleman tag you in there saying this is the most expensive Mac MD I have ever sold.
Speaker 2:Actually it was on Mac. Oh, was it.
Speaker 4:No, it was a Mac granite and we grant it. We had actually ordered it in January of 2022, came in March of 2023, then they had some hangups with it and we just took delivery of it. Last week Came from the Upfit Center with Airlift Axel from Mac's Upfit Center right now on town. When I went to the dealer they dressed it out with all kinds of stainless steel stuff that we told me wanted on it and it's actually being ceramic coated right now.
Speaker 3:Oh you still haven't even put it on the road yet. No, we don't put them on the road till they're right, geez man that guy seemed real excited about that. I think you paid for his trip to.
Speaker 4:Aruba. It's actually a she Andrea. Andrea sells us all of them. So she sold us our first Mac in a long time, which was an anthem. Then she sold us the granite, and then we ordered another anthem, which is coming.
Speaker 3:Now, but those are big class eight trucks. That's a full size semi-deal. But you know and this is not on the script, so we've made it almost a full 60 seconds before we deviated completely from the original plan. I want to talk about this that if you look back I mean not even that many years, if you look back more than five years there was almost no Mac medium duties. But now, everywhere you look there's somebody's picking up or posting about a new medium duty Mac truck and that seems to be. You know, I saw somebody else talk about the macification of the medium duty market. You're someone who buys a ton of these things. You're always in this, in this space. You're buying and selling and moving and flipping trucks. Are you seeing that that they're kind of they kind of have the product that everybody wants, or is it just they got something new and everybody wants the hot new thing?
Speaker 4:No, here's the deal. So Ken Worth and Peter are built. They have the Packard, you know, engine with the Packard drive train and you can modify that and they have. They have a very good product. International and Freightliner, you know, they have the same thing they've been putting out for a long time. And in Western Star, you know, they have a great medium duty deal.
Speaker 4:But here's the difference, Mac, when they built the MD this is coming straight from an owner of a dealership group and we were doing a walk around with this truck and he told me he says you can go on here and partner for part number. It's the same thing on the Class 8 truck. Really, they literally build a Class 8 truck, single axle or you get a tandem if you want a customer for it, but they literally do that. And then they downgrade the GVW to make it a medium duty. They did this for a couple reasons.
Speaker 4:One, they're simplifying the part stream. It's the same stuff, the same reliable, dependable Mac driveline that's in there. You have a Cummins engine in the front of it. They do not have a Mac motor in them yet, but that's coming, that option will be out there. And then the rest of the truck is just literally part for part the cab and everything. The hood's different, but yet they're using like a slightly different anthem headlight. There's a lot of things that are the same and that's why everybody wants it, Because when you go and walk around the truck it's a big truck, it's a Class 8, but it's just in a lighter duty category, but it is a heavy duty truck. So one would say that it's going to last quite a while.
Speaker 3:Well, and you think it's going to be a continuous market advantage. Do you think other companies are going to look at that and go? This might be the way to do it.
Speaker 4:I think so and I think that Kenworth has done some of that in the past. The issue with them has been I hate to say it like this they're like purchasing people and purchasing agents and purchasing directors. They look at some of this stuff from a different light. So like we're gonna use the Ford, for example. So, ford, you can buy a Ford F 750, you can buy a Ford F 650, you can buy a Ford F 550 and get it all jacked up and put a different GVW under it. Purchasing directors buy stuff that is cheapened up. Mac doesn't give you that option. Mac is like if you want this MD, this is what you're getting right. We're gonna competitively price it so it goes out to all the governmental bids and it meets all the standards and criteria. We're gonna put a power trainer that we know works. They partner with Cummins on it the transmission, drive chain and everything is all proven components and they just said here it is. We're not messing around. If you want this, here you go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that seems really solid and I think that partnership with Cummins on the diesels seems to be the way that people are going. As you start to see more companies like you see Toyota, hino they're focusing now more on the hydrogen stuff and they're putting their R&D money there. Volvo Group has already said that they're not developing any new diesels or any new internal combustion. They're gonna be partnering with other companies to do that. This seems to be kind of the way it's going.
Speaker 3:We've always talked very positively about Cummins and their product. Here we're now really talking about the Mac MD, which, again, is not what we started with, but there does seem to be a push into that market. I don't know if it's because of whatever happened. We're still trying to meet pen up demand from 2020 and 2021, with Mitsubishi Fuso going away and some other stuff happening there. But yeah, it's really interesting to see. And, as somebody who has a finger on this kind of thing and who's buying these, do you think that it's a market advantage over what the international has? The last medium duty that I ever spent any real time in back when we were towing the Teton motorhomes out of Florida was the International 4900, and this was 20 years ago right, yeah, the 4900 from back then today is totally different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100% 100%.
Speaker 4:And even that Max-Force engine and stuff like that that they've had out there and I know there's all kinds of variations of that that have been evolved they really took a hit in the market because they had some powertrain issues that they worked through. They made good on all of it. But you know how this works with this industry. You could have 100 trucks out of a thousand in one model year have an issue. They correct it, they fix it and that never comes up again. But everybody's always gonna talk about those 100 Max-Force engines that let them down. And my township bought a plow truck and, man, we ripped that thing around a tree multiple times but that engine let us down because we never changed the oil. So that's legitimate.
Speaker 3:because it's one thing when, like, you buy a Mustang or a Challenger or something, it's your second car and it's a toy and that's got an issue Like early on they had issues with the axles you guys took them out to the drag strip and they would hook up and snap that axle and you can complain all you want about that. But at the end of the day that's a toy. When one of these breaks down, it's your livelihood. And sometimes when it's a plow truck or when it's a bus chassis or something else, it's not just your livelihood, it's the livelihood of everybody in your town that depends on you. That's right. So it's not like you can just kind of brush that under the rug and say, well, you know it was a hundred out of a thousand, but for that guy that was let down, for those 20 people that didn't make it to work on time that day, that's a real problem.
Speaker 4:It's totally a problem, and one of the issues that were faced within this industry is you rarely get a second chance and I hate that because you almost have to re -release a truck to get it back Right. Let's look at Chevrolet and Chevrolet partner with International on that. That whole adventure, that was a whole rerun. So Chevrolet's medium duty International, they put together the truck chassis, gm's put together the powertrain. That has a lot going for it. There's a lot of guys that have those parts availability became an issue, right, just as they're launching that truck and they're sending it out the door. We have a bunch of issues that lead to supply chain problems, just like everybody had. What happens? It gets a bad rap, at least in our region, while you can't support it, right, well, now that's not maybe not the issue, you know, and I would like to talk to somebody from GM about that, because there's a lot of guys that are afraid of those trucks, but I don't think there's anything wrong with them, you know, I think everything's got its place and let's okay, let's talk about that. We talk about this multiple times right tool for the right job.
Speaker 4:The Mac MD doesn't do everything for everybody, neither does the International. If you're a good fleet purchaser and you're a good fleet user, you will try to place the right OEM with the right job. We, you know we could buy long nose 589. Peter builds the brand new ones. I can have them all lined up. I could put double rails and stuff in them.
Speaker 4:That doesn't work for what we do. We need setback axles, we need a few other things. Again, you got to know what you're buying for and you know our purchasing director has a very good line and it holds true to everything and he always says it. It says a man's got to know his limitations. You have to know. You have to know what your limitations are for what you're trying to do. That will steer you what you're limitless with. Bigger isn't always better. The smallest thing doesn't always get you around the cops. There's no magic being that they get you to skirt through all the laws. It doesn't work that way. So you gotta find the right thing. The Mac MD fits so many pegs right now because I believe that the industry left the hole open and Mac was smart enough to say hey, if we do this, we're not gonna sell, we're not gonna put everybody out of business, but we're gonna sell a hell of a lot of these, and that's what they're doing.
Speaker 3:That's exactly what they're doing. You know it's funny, I had forgotten about those international, what they call light duty international. But it's basically a 4,500, 5,500, 6,500 series. You know what used to be called the Chevy Top Kick, but it's got some international branding there, little bit different spec to the Chevy and Ford, but that's a mean looking truck.
Speaker 4:I mean that looks pretty nice and it's got a lot of room. The cab is. The cab is bad ass.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is exactly the kind of stupid thing. I would try to put a regular pickup bed on and try to convince Margaret. As a pickup truck, try to drive this thing around Chicago.
Speaker 4:Well, guys are doing it. They're putting the pickup beds on them and driving them around.
Speaker 3:I have just seen that. That's awesome.
Speaker 4:I just saw one the other day. It's like the Fords, remember the, you have 650s and the guys would put the pickup beds behind it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, well, that's the international that we had. It was an international with a pickup bed on it, because we were zoned that we couldn't have commercial trucks, but it had a pickup bed, so it wasn't a commercial truck. The international 4900 out there.
Speaker 4:Exactly, that was a great truck, those were good trucks, the original 4900s. There isn't a person on the planet that the DT 466 engine. Listen, they refined that motor over thousands of school buses that ran all over the country.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in all weather, all climate, all humidity.
Speaker 4:Didn't matter. Did it have a ton of horsepower? No, it didn't need it. It was perfectly sized for what they were trying to do.
Speaker 3:Well, and that's the right tool for the right job. And the other thing too is, you know, not for nothing, with the this is a good word with the ubiquity of that vehicle, that international truck out there, everybody learned how to work on it so you could have a tech from just about anywhere, they could pick up and move and they immediately could get to work somewhere, because they knew that that truck was going to be in some municipal fleet or some commercial fleet out there. But you know, that's kind of a good segue to skip ahead a little bit to this right to repair deal. And yeah, this is becoming a really big deal for those of you listening who aren't familiar with this right to repair. As I understand, it basically says that the manufacturers and it's not just automotive manufacturers or equipment manufacturers or AG or anything, it's everything from your iPhone all the way on up to a locomotive that if you manufacture this thing you have to make available the tools and the literature for other people who are not you to be able to repair it, so that you cannot hold your customers captive.
Speaker 3:And you know it's funny to bring this up because we heap praise upon John Deere over and over again how they're advancing the technology, how they're the leaders and autonomous, how nobody in the industry is as far along with some of this tech stuff as they are. And I'm a John Deere customer, you're a Deere customer. I've got two Gators now that are, you know, the four by sixes that I love, but they're one of the companies that's really pushing back on this, saying no, no, no, you have to bring it back to us to work on.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a couple things to this that make it interesting. Some guys brought this to light because there were a lot of farmers that were just. You know, either it was a lease turn or whatever warranty scenario that they have. They were like I don't care, have the dealer come out and fix it. Oh, I know it doesn't work.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 4:But then there was the family that actually started some of this. That was like, look, my younger son, my younger generations, they can do this, train them. Then you have you know Case and that saying, well, look, we can do that, but we don't want to mess this up for you. And we know you're going to go in and you're going to harvest this, or you're going to plant. You get one shot at this, or you got to till it under and try and start over quickly, which really isn't a good option for anybody. Nobody has the money to just till it under, Not even these organic guys that think that they can just, you know, grow half stuff, whatever.
Speaker 3:Anyways, we're gonna keep moving the point is you don't want to pick on the organic farmers of America?
Speaker 4:No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. So the point is is that they really need to figure out what they want to do, and this whole lawsuit and everything going on is going to bring a bunch of people to the table that otherwise wouldn't. And I think, at the end of the day, they just have to figure out a good compromise like, hey, we'll come out and we'll work with you on some of the stuff that we should be doing, but we're going to also train you on everything else. That is Realistically what you could do, or should do, every other day of the week when you're trying to farm.
Speaker 4:Yeah part of this comes from. It's the distance that some of these people are from the dealership groups Right in front of my lives out in Kansas, and he was like, let's say you call Monday, they're like we can get to you Wednesday next week, right, I mean, they're busy, but it's drive time. They spend more time driving to a place to fix it than they do actually doing the repairs. Now, part of that I blame on the dealership groups and the OEMs, because we've battled this in all kinds of industries. Where you have remote Mechanics working in an area, there is some overlap. If they've got a drive, they drive, but if you're that busy and you're talking about week lead times, two week lead times, three week lead times based on distance alone, get some people get some people exactly right sell some PM packages.
Speaker 4:Go out there and do the the tried and true basics of dealership 101, which is like listen, go out there, tell these people we're gonna come out, we're gonna work on it, we're gonna come out and do a few things, we're gonna keep them up and running. They would welcome that. This is all stemming from the fact they feel alone. Yeah if they didn't feel that way, they wouldn't be trying to sue them, so they could actually work on it themselves.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a really good point. There's there's a couple of comments that I want to have there. One of them is that this is a tech thing, right, that people, especially in tech they are so defensive of their code. You see this all the time. You know, you and I met doing drag racing stuff and, and you know, performance tuning stuff and we were getting in there. At that time we had standalone ECUs from pro EFI, you know, and that eventually morphed and became into cyvex, where you have a true standalone that can manage all the can buses and everything else that doesn't really exist yet in this ag market. But that's where, if this becomes a big enough problem and it starts to hamper enough of these big corporate farms or Corporate operations, somebody's gonna throw out a tender for a standalone ECU that is gonna be open source, that you can plug and play into these things and get them running so that you can not only service them yourself but have some visibility into what's going on.
Speaker 3:Because part of this lawsuit now and this is the plaintiffs were asking John Deere just for the diagnostic error codes, like we understand something's wrong. Just give us the dyad codes, give us the the, the error codes, so that we can at least try to do something here, and Part of it is that part of it is this Overzealous idea of these companies that somebody's gonna steal my code, nobody's gonna steal your code because it's not gonna work on their tractor. That's not how this works. So that's part of it, and I think the other part of it is exactly what you said. You need to get more people.
Speaker 3:There is, especially in companies that get to a certain size, there is a real sense of fresher from the top down to Squeeze every last dollar and every last percentage point of efficiency. And there's someone sitting there in the back Office, some little accountant guy, saying well, we can add two more people at a hundred and twenty thousand a year, at a cost of a 160,000 a year, and that's gonna net us back a hundred and forty five thousand dollars in service revenue. So that's less. So we're not gonna do it and they don't understand the future damage that that's doing to their brand, and they're about to figure that out.
Speaker 4:That's what I meant it's. We're gonna be very interesting to see how they compromise and how everybody comes at a table and they come up on an agreement because, listen, lead times on a combine, lean times on planning equipment it's out there a little bit still, I mean. I mean, people have combines there, they're sitting on lots and and if you don't have the people, all the warranty in the world doesn't save you Right. You can't support it.
Speaker 3:You know it's the basics of everything support what you sell support what you sell and if you can't Make it so that your customers can find support elsewhere. You know I can't tell you how I would feel. You know, one of these farmers in this lawsuit says that he's losing $80,000 a day in crop revenue while he's waiting for somebody to come out and repair his tractor. That they won't even give him the diagnostic codes for now. Imagine if they said listen, we can't get someone out to you, but we understand this is costing you money. Here's the dyad code. This is what we think is wrong. Is there a mechanic on site? We can walk through some of this.
Speaker 4:Yes, and a lot of these.
Speaker 3:That's all it takes capable, even if you don't, even if you had nobody who could fix it, even if you failed to fix it. Just the fact that someone tried to help you, that you could have, yeah, that kind of connection with your dealer, that you could take that opportunity to build rapport and start saying, you know, at the end of it you go, man, you know what, we've tried everything here and ultimately it is gonna have to be another couple days. I'm really sorry. Do you feel like we've done everything we can? Yeah, you know, we did everything reasonable. Look, you know, maybe next time you're buying cycles through, instead of trading this one in, maybe you get another one. You keep this one as a backup. You try to come up with a way to get some kind of positive for the business out of it, and that's. That's probably not feasible for something like a big combine harvester, but, you know, for something like a tractor where you probably have three or four, yeah, maybe put a fifth one in rotation, and no, I agree.
Speaker 4:And there are so many ways that you could support a scenario just like that without having to have a guy there. It and I think it comes down to that too we're losing people that know how to think like that. Yeah, dynamic thinking in the moment. Okay, what am I doing? Who's there? Who am I talking to? And I'm not being disrespectful, but if you're talking to the 80 year old primary of the farm right, the principal and he's trying to convey a problem, that's different than you're talking to the other guy, who's 20 years old, who's like? Listen, I'm, I'm deep into the screen here and I'm trying to figure this out and I cannot get this to work, right, my point being you have to understand and know to ask questions. Hey, if you're talking to the guy that's older, you got to feel him out real quick. Does he understand what he's looking at? Does he understand what technology he's touching? He might 100% we don't know. If you don't have people that can't ask those questions, you can't support it.
Speaker 3:It's all part of support, and this goes back to something that we've talked about in different ways. We've circled this same concept, but it's that it's hard to find people who can do the job and the job of sales. The job of support is a relationship job, and when you've got people who are feeling pressure From the people above them to perform and produce and squeeze every last nickel and you've got people who are frustrated on the other end and you are not empowered to help them, it becomes a really tough job to do. And if it's a tough job to do, people won't want to do it. And if people don't want to do it, that means you're not even getting the customer service help. You're not even getting lip service. You're getting it.
Speaker 4:We'll get to you when we get to you right, and that's no good, you know, on the flip side of this there is a saying just guys are like just give it to me straight. So I know where we stand, but there's a point where you're it's too straight. It's you're sitting there going, listen guy, you got three weeks and then the guy on the other end of that phone literally drops his, drops his drink and goes that's it.
Speaker 3:That's it. I said give it to me straight. But I'm going to go into the back room and see how my block tastes today, Because three weeks is a long time.
Speaker 4:Listen, there's another honest to God true story. When I was selling equipment, I was at this farmer's place and they had bought some skid steers and stuff off me and some attachments and I happened to be over there. They're running around like crazy, they got over in kits out and they're draining oils and I'm like what happened? Well, this guy had stopped in and switched them over to their equivalent oil. Oh, oh, oh oh oh no.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, and they the first. They started running it and they got a. You know, they got a few days on it. Next thing, you know, they got leaks. They got leaks and they got leaks. They call the guy. No way that could that be happening. The grandson's running around. No way is this oil causing all these leaks. And the grandfather stoically stands out there, the door is open, he's looking out over this field and he says well, here's what I do know. None of this happened. Before we changed the oil. We always used OEM oil. Now we changed and I have all these problems. I have no way of getting this figured out today. Go to the dealership and get OEM oil.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 4:They changed it. Everything went back to normal. Who knows what's in that oil, who cares? But the amount of turmoil that it caused, the amount of downtime that it brought it wasn't worth it.
Speaker 3:No besides, you're supposed to use Rotella tea for everything.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right, and so no, it is good oil, but that's my point. Well, there's a guy who owns a trucking company down the street from my office and that's his deal. He puts Rotella tea, 1540 and everything, as he should. Yes, yes, 020. They don't know what they're talking about. 1540 goes in it. I swear. The other day what do you put?
Speaker 3:What do you put in them? Race motors. I know it's something crazy.
Speaker 4:So we do a mixture of stuff now. But we use Rotella, we use Penn's oil 1030. We use Rotella and then we use Brad Penn. You can use Brad Penn straight 40 if you want, 20, 50, whatever. That works really well too.
Speaker 3:But that's a big oil for a race motor. Most guys would tell you that you want a low weight oil like a foul pens on what you're beating it with. Like if you got boosted and all that you know.
Speaker 4:then you got to have something you and I have got the same lecture on oil from the same guy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so trust me, I know the story.
Speaker 4:So this guy owns a striking company. He buys this car and his car calls for zero, 20. 500 miles in. Better change the oil early. There could be all kinds of contaminants in there from when they built it. Sure, okay, what's?
Speaker 4:he poor in it 15W 40 and I don't care what brand it is. That's wrong. You could go down to Costco or anybody else and get whoever's brand. X brand, 1540 and a zero 20 engine is not right. He's driving this thing for weeks. Next thing you know it's clanking and chattering and making all this weird noise. He comes pulling in with. It Sounds like it's got a rod coming out of it. Do you hear how loud these injectors are? I can't believe they would produce something like this. Oh, of course.
Speaker 3:It can't possibly be the ridiculous nonsense that he pulled.
Speaker 1:It's got to be, a manufacturing defect yeah.
Speaker 4:One guy that works for us, who knows him real well, says hey, did you change the wellness? Sure, did 500 miles in. I put that good oil in it. We already knew what that meant. She's done, she gone, he's done.
Speaker 3:You might as well fill up that diesel with Windex and try to run on that. Well, yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 4:So think about this. So take that same mentality and then not have enough people to support your million dollar farming equipment and then leave them to their own devices because you don't even have phone support that can walk them through a problem, yeah, you're going to have the same kind of things going on and they're going to hate your brand until the day they die. You know what?
Speaker 3:man. Like, we have these conversations and I'm on the Auto Hub show on Monday mornings. That's the Auto Hub show with Ian and Jeff. That's a good show, man.
Speaker 1:We got a lot of NAD people, a lot of car dealers on there. I know a lot on there.
Speaker 3:I get on these shows and I always think, like man, I got to get back into the dealer world because all I would have to do is just treat everybody like a human being and I would clean up again like I used to before all this COVID and everything happened and I went home and, like people, seem to have forgotten. And this is. You know, we talk about your old man a lot. This is something he said to me a hundred times and he's absolutely right. You got two ears and one mouth. Ask the question, listen and then try to come up with a solution before you say anything. That's right and that's a lost art man. Everybody wants to be heard, everybody wants to say their two cents, everybody's in love with the sound of their own voice and you know, especially guys who have a podcast are four. Yeah, no, let me tell you this is us.
Speaker 4:We're on our soapbox every week Pranting, every Wednesday Pranting every Wednesday. Pranting every week.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, at least we're on script today. We continue to talk about things that are important.
Speaker 4:Let's talk about gravely's axis. Oh, this thing is just so cool. Let me tell you something. The Studer Baker Corporation, when they bought gravely way back in the day, and they had the two wheel drive convertible commercial model which I grew up running and, believe me, I'm not that old, so it was. It was old when I started. Okay, that's right. That two stick wielding power of death taught you how to respect what you're about to do and it created an issue for your brain's conundrum. Wielding power. It said if I do this and I move this lever, will this kill me? They've once again created another product that does the same thing. It has many uses. It's incredible. You could use it to just absolutely satisfy anything you wanted to do, but there's a certain element to it that I just can't stand to look at and go. This weeds out stupid people.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, no, there's a lot of people going to die on this thing and it's going to make the world a better place.
Speaker 4:We're getting a letter.
Speaker 3:No, I get a letter. You know what I don't think. So I think the people at gravely, the good people at gravely, they understand that they've been put on this earth to act as a little bit of chlorine. They're going to put a little chlorine in the gene pool by enabling some idiot to strap a 48 inch spinning blade to a rotary mill and then walk behind it. Damn right Damn right.
Speaker 2:Look at this thing.
Speaker 4:This is the gas powered Swiss Army knife in the form of a stand on compact utility loader. And here's the thing. They got good power training it. They got Kohler. They didn't reinvent the wheel with that, you know, way back in the day they used Indian power because they knew that that was responsible. And then they got Kubota diesel horsepower on the bigger ones. You know, I don't know who owns, gravely now, if it's Aries, if they're the ones that own the compact utility line, or if this is air, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:See, they did a good thing by buying that. Now in their own marketing they have a picture of this guy standing behind a dump truck getting ready to scrape something out of it. It's got tracks. A little idler deal going on there.
Speaker 3:Well, the tracks are cool. I think they're awesome. Well, especially for something this small, like, if you're going to kill yourself with a piece of rented equipment, you want it to at least have tank treads on it. Oh, look at this.
Speaker 4:It's, it's well OK, weighs 2,525 pounds before you get on it. So the more you weigh, the more you're going to pick up Well that's right. Secondly, it runs three and a half miles an hour. It's got a tipping capacity of 1397, which we're going to throw out the window because anybody with a case of beer can glag onto this thing. We're going to build a platform and we're going to leverage ourselves back seven feet, so when we get catapulted, we're going to end up in the neighbor's yard.
Speaker 3:This is such a great little device Right, it is amazing. I look at this and I I know this is wrong, but I want this to clear snow. Just go up and down the neighborhood. As you are fully aware, I live in like Oak Park, illinois, which is like the most suburban I was going to say so very good you got it.
Speaker 3:When you think of, like, where cool guys go to die after they get married and have kids, this is exactly where it is. But this is where, like, you have the rival dads and they all talk about you know, one of you is grilling at the block party and the other ones are leaning over like, yeah, you're going to flip that again. Or you know, like everybody's got a comment about everything you're doing. I can't wait for the first big, heavy snow and I roll out the gravely and I go out there on tank treads and clear the entire sidewalk for the entire block and just pick it all up and dump it right in front of the one guy that has a driveway and a snowblower.
Speaker 4:Let him figure out what to do with this snowblower. There's nothing wrong with rolling up in front of everybody going, oh don't worry, I have it, I've got this, and then head down the street has been criticizing your grilling technique all month, ends up with a six foot snow drift in front of his door.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. What's?
Speaker 2:wrong with that?
Speaker 3:Listen, he wants to comment on my shoveling technique. Let's give him some practice.
Speaker 4:Hey, he looks side out at my wife too many times as 12 feet bud.
Speaker 3:No, that's just what they do, man. She runs this block with an iron fist. They fear her. The mom's group on the Facebook that she's an admin of man. She gives the business a bad review. They're showing up at her house to wash her car and drop off some free food.
Speaker 4:They do not want that I should have dressed her up like Jane from and Halloween Big stick. Tarzan walked down the street ready to wrangle or wrangle anything that ran out in front of her.
Speaker 3:We're talking about, halloween is the one day of the year she gets to put on the pointy hat and not walk around in costume.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, you're not even laughing at that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, at least she's got a good man that buys her the three engine broomstick. So listen.
Speaker 3:One of the great things about the gravely is the old rotary ones. You could add all kinds of weird attachments to it Other than other than the bucket. What kind of attachments you think we could get on this thing?
Speaker 4:Well, it depends on what kind of hydraulic deal, but I'm sure they have some kind of mower with a hydraulic auxiliary we could put on the front of that. Surely you could use it to tip that up sideways and trim your bushes. And then the mower, yeah, right across the top flat. And then we get a hold of the guys from Trimble, we put a laser plane system on it and just dead flat, even even with the ground.
Speaker 4:And then and then the other thing you know you can put on as a rototiller. I'm sure we could do that, just telling them just grind up the mulch and everything right into the flower beds. That'd be good.
Speaker 3:One thing to do together? Oh yeah.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, just it's biomass, just turn it into a slurry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, where's the dog I? She's out here somewhere. I don't know. She got a little too close to what we're doing. She's in a better place now. We're going to have incredible plants this year, incredible flowers.
Speaker 4:One thing that would be good for this is a grapple book and, being serious, yeah, to be able to grab stuff and walk around with it.
Speaker 4:And then the other thing I think, if you got creative this is my just off the cusp, because you asked me and I'm thinking of stuff on the fly here A hydraulic powered leaf. I'm all about these leaves because they're everywhere right now Right Leaf shredding vacuum with a bagging system behind you, and then they take the bags and you run up through the blower and then you burn the propane from the propane tank mounted over the hood and then you basically burn all your leaves off after you shredded them and then you just you know you have heat, whatever, I don't hate that idea off the street.
Speaker 3:I don't care. Yeah, I don't hate that idea. This is all great stuff. You know what we need for this now? We need a classic, gravely commercial.
Speaker 4:I don't know you can find it. Maybe you could find one for the Suda Baker people.
Speaker 2:Also from Suda Baker. When the gravely tractor is your power partner, you get the tough jobs done fast. Gravely powers, 30 quickly interchangeable attachments, a tool for every job, every season. All gear drive and unique lugging power gets the work done fast, whether it's plowing, cultivating, mowing or moving snow. Enjoy the satisfaction of owning the best. See for yourself at your gravely sales and service dealer. Suda Baker. Quality maker of quality products for 109 years.
Speaker 3:Everybody under 50 is going. What kind of Baker? Is that? A muffin? Yeah, I'll take a blueberry Suda Baker, please.
Speaker 4:Suda Baker, tell the jailer. I know it, you know. And the other thing you can do, joe, is when you're out there running up the garden and everything else and shaking trees and knocking over your favorite neighbor's problem, you could shake free a bunch of little squirrels or friends or anything like that, or some chipmunks. You got to watch. They're going to be out running all over, they're going to chase you down. You say chipmunks.
Speaker 3:The other one that I like is the gophers. Remember the loony tunes, the goofy gophers? Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly, Indubitably. Listen, listen those. Those two were so polite to each other and yet live together. I think they were gay and I think that's why it was short. There's no way.
Speaker 3:Oh, so you're saying the reason it got it got booted off was because they were gay and people didn't like that. They weren't ready for it.
Speaker 4:I think so because there was some line blurring back then in you can you can go on all kinds of threads and people talk about how the, the gay innuendos throughout the forties, fifties and sixties on stuff. Mainly in the fifties when media and everything was tightly lived, it was very boring. People would just come out of. You know we had Korea and everything and that was a whole deal and people that had come home from World War Two were getting older. But the sassy gays Through quite a bit of stuff out there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and there's threads upon threads of this. Anybody can go on there and Google hidden gay innuendos from the fifties. Let me tell you something when you have a, when you have a public service announcement, that celery is the toothbrush of the colon and there's a guy holding a toothbrush cleaning out somebody's rectum, google it right now. Joe, put it in there. Vintage celery ad. Put it in there. I'm telling you that that is right right up the alley of the goofy gophers. It's right up something for sure. They were into S&M and all kinds of stuff before that ever happened. They were super sweet on the street, dirty inside the log.
Speaker 2:I think we should start storing our nuts before the first snowfall. Oh, that's a capital suggestion, simply capital.
Speaker 3:But you know it's funny. You say that because I love this. What's the one where he's going to kill the rabbit? So they do the whole opera.
Speaker 4:We're fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, and Bugs Bunny dressed up as Brunhilda and they do that. So talking about oh yeah.
Speaker 4:They're worried about drag story time with kids. We're not going to get into this whole thing, but the point is, we're already in it.
Speaker 1:We got my weirdo.
Speaker 4:It's happening the point is yes, there are lines that are crossed, yes, there are things that are that are problematic and you shouldn't do in front of children, but since the forties there has been hidden in you windows and everything.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, no, if Bugs Bunny didn't make you gay, I don't know what's going to do it.
Speaker 4:We'll just leave it as always, dressing up in a new costume of the week. My brother's the same way.
Speaker 3:Well, we'll wrap this up with the my favorite tweet from the National Park Service that actually inspired all of this. Sassy's Truck Stop has a real skanky looking beaver mascot. Which man? There's some minuendo there. That's a skanky beaver mascot. And the National Park Service that's NATL Park SRVC. They tweeted and this is my favorite tweet of the day you better not be a cunty truck stop beaver mascot when I get there and I don't.
Speaker 4:God, you can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's going to get any better. Tune in next week for more heavy equipment.
Speaker 1:Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google or wherever you find podcasts.