In this HEP-isode, Mike and Jo check out the all-new 663 HP RamCharger hybrid pickup, how an Ohio equipment dealer called Company Wrench is getting it right, the growing cost of headlights, and go full "pew-pew" with frickin' laser beams to clean a bridge. We even get a little musical singing a classic musical diddy by the great Ty Webb. All this and more make this the greatest HEP-isode, yet!
In this HEP-isode, Mike and Jo check out the all-new 663 HP RamCharger hybrid pickup, how an Ohio equipment dealer called Company Wrench is getting it right, the growing cost of headlights, and go full "pew-pew" with frickin' laser beams to clean a bridge. We even get a little musical singing a classic musical diddy by the great Ty Webb. All this and more make this the greatest HEP-isode, yet!
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 surreal. It's the heavy equipment podcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the episode 11 of the heavy equipment podcast. I'm your host, joe Boris, here, as ever, with Mike hot, mike Switzer, mike, we've got a lot to talk about this week. This is a heavy news week.
Speaker 3:Heavy news week. Heavy news week right off the teletype. We're going to jump right in the new Ram.
Speaker 2:The new Ram is a big deal. This week it's the Lantus, the parent company of Chrysler, what used to be Chrysler. They released the all new 2025 Ram 1500 Ram Charger, and this is a really interesting truck. It's not electric in the conventional sense, but it's driven by electric motors and it has a V6 engine the same V6 that the 1500 tradesman has had for years and that runs like a generator to provide electric power for the electric motor, which means this thing just has crazy torque. It's got something like 615 pound feet of torque, zero to 60 and under four and a half seconds for a full size half ton crew.
Speaker 1:That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:This is crazy. And then the real crazy thing about this is you're driving around town. You've got 690 miles of range before you have to put gas in it, and riding around town you can drive up to 100 miles and not use a drop of gas. This is a tremendous truckman.
Speaker 3:It's a move into what we were talking about, which is, you know, gas, electric, and trying to do something that's efficient but practical when you need to put gas in it and can't charge it, or whatever your situation is. Also, there's a lot of fleets that this is going to work out very well for, especially if you're traveling between offices or you've got some distance between job sites. Anybody that's spread out, somebody could do some distance in this thing and potentially cut some fleet costs. It depends on what. I wonder what their entry point is for pricing. Did they release any pricing yet on it?
Speaker 2:They haven't released it, but it looks like it's going to be about a 10 or $12,000 option. But honestly it's a 10 or $12,000 option over the entry level V6. So it's going to come in less money than, like you know, the hot Hemi V8s or the Cummins diesels are going to be, and it still gives you that 14,200 pound tow rating. So it's actually pretty substantial.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, the nice thing about that is that you get enough tow rating if you want to tow some enclosed trailer or something like that with it and put some miles on it. And then interesting price point with that, with it coming in off the entry level. That's always the issue with these truck style days. It's like even the entry level is high. But you know, if you're if you're only 12 grand off the entry level, you get a basic package which I'm sure is going to come with that, then it's a good truck.
Speaker 2:Well, the Ram 1500 tradesman is a little bit weird because it seems to start and I'm not talking about when you go online and it says starting at right, like you go to Ford or Chevy to build a truck and it says starting at. I'm not talking about that, those are all pretty much the same. But when you actually build it out, you can build out a usable everyday truck at Ram for usually about 10 or 15 grand, less than Chevy and Ford, certainly less than Toyota Now with the new Chunder hybrid right. This is really interesting because this is going to give you, if your company has an ESG goal, if they've got a decarbonization goal, exactly give you that ability to meet that goal without compromising on range and without being dependent on you know a charging infrastructure that, depending on where you're at and I know you know you guys, when you're out there putting up wind turbines and whatever else you're doing sometimes there's no infrastructure out there.
Speaker 3:Oh, exactly, yeah, it's funny, we joke about that all the time. Just because you're working for the power company, working in a substation doesn't mean you can plug anything in.
Speaker 2:That's right. You're way out in the boonies and it's like you don't understand. You're running the cable that electricity will one day flow through.
Speaker 3:Right and no, this is. This is kind of definitely has a good place in the market and I think this is a step was going to put them way ahead of everybody else, because I don't. I don't believe GMC or Ford has announced a similar platform for a powertrain yet have they.
Speaker 2:They have not. So now Ford does have a hybrid. Let's be clear on that. Ford has a hybrid, but Ford's solution is effectively it's a V6 EcoBoost. Ford runs through a conventional nine speed transmission, which you know I'm old enough that a nine speed transmission sounds crazy town. But here we are it's conventional in 2023. And they run effectively like a real big alternator that powers a big battery and you can plug that battery in and run as if it was a V8. Like that electric motor will boost the power output of the six. This is totally different. This is a pure electric drive. The gas engine does not connect in any way to the wheels. It's just a generator to produce power for the batteries.
Speaker 3:I can't wait till they come out with a thirty five hundred locomotive. That's what they need right there. If that's going to be the power wagon.
Speaker 2:that's going to be a Cummins diesel cranking out three hundred steady kilowatts of power with about eight hundred pounds of torque. It's going to have a twenty five thousand pound tow rating and they're going to put that thing as a hot thirty five hundred. That's going to be your tow bodies. That's going to be your long haulers. That's going to be a tremendous machine.
Speaker 3:Super smooth, bad ass vehicles, what that's going to be. And this is just a stepping stone to get you there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you see this as someone who's a buyer and I don't, I don't mean to put you on the spot like this, but as someone who buys a lot of fleet vehicles do you look at something like this and go man, this, this has it all over the F, one fifty lightning or the Tesla Cybertruck or whatever? Or do you look at this as like, oh really, just that simple?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, because here's what it does. What this does is this gives you power. It's going to give you an ultra smooth powertrain ride, unlike anything else on the road. Yeah, there's going to be a learning curve with you know, probably maintenance and a few other things with it, and I'm sure you're going to have more dealer involvement than you're used to. But, to be honest, all the new stuff today that's hitting the street, the dealers have to be involved to do anything. So this is just reinforcing that. You need to take it to the dealership when you need to work on and you're going to get the mileage out of it. Your gas mileage is what you're going to benefit from in the long run, and the price point is already there. So, yes, this is. This puts its superior to GMC and Ford and, as a buyer, we we buy all three. What sets all of them apart from each other are a lot of creature comfort, basic stuff. The powertrains have been kind of leveled out recently, so you got until now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, until now, and that's my point, because you got the big VH, you got the smaller economy engines. Gmc is going with the turbo four cylinder. There's some V six product out there with the Ford and the Dodge. One of the biggest issues to be to be bluntly honest that we've had is the fit and finish on the Fords. It's we're not seeing it and we're talking buying a lot of them for a fleet our size. It's amazing what we're seeing when we take it to the dealer because it's got this or that going on with it and it is purely production issues. Really, the powertrain has been fairly good, except for a few things that we've had which have been flukes. But the assembly part of the truck, all those problems that we've had, all stem from poor assembly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they seem to have. I don't want to say that Ford seems to have gone downhill. I don't think that's the case at all. I think that everybody else has caught up and gone past them, where the standards that they put into place when they first started building that super duty back in like 1999 is a 2000 model year, and even though they've kind of kept along with that same basic platform for 20 years 20 years, I think the build quality was revolutionary in the late 90s, early 2000s. I think it's been mostly OK for the 10 or 15 years in the middle there and I think now everybody's just kind of building these better. They just realize that they have to build these trucks to the same, if not a better, standard of sound, insulation, fit and finish build quality. Then then they do the cars and I don't think that Ford has caught that memo yet.
Speaker 3:No, and here's a disappointing thing there is a series and we had bought a bunch of them from 2000 to 2022 where, like under the dash, jim and Ramo have like pieces closed off Ford. It's wide open. Yeah, there's there's sharp edges on the plastic where the other the other manufacturers have seemed to figure out how to get from their supplier the same plastic, but without finished edge on it. It's a lot of stuff like that. And then you go beyond that water leaks, headlight failures and tail light failures. This is stuff that we saw in the early 90s, yeah, and it's like we went full circle.
Speaker 3:Now what I don't like and this is this is something we can talk about before we segue into the next thing but the component cost is going through the roof and actually we're having a hard time with it because good example we had a driver deer jumped out in front of him. What used to be a $3,500 to $4,000 fix is now all of a sudden 7,000 to 8. Yeah, it literally doubled. I just had a long conversation this week with our claims analyst for the insurance company and we were going over all this stuff and her and I were saying that you know, there's got to be a cap $1,500, headlights and stuff like that. They have a place, and they have a place in the consumer market. We still need an affordable headlight for a fleet. We still need affordable tail lights for a fleet that are effective, but they're going to get broke. I think we don't have that right now.
Speaker 2:Well, I think what you're talking about is that the OEMs are looking at the fleets and looking at the commercial buyers as a cash cow. They've kind of figured out that you guys have to buy a full size truck, that you guys have to buy what they put in them. So there is no longer an affordable sealed beam, seven inch circle or eight inch square headlight that you can pop in and out of those things for 20, 30 bucks. They're going to make you buy the HID LED $15, $1600 unit and it's very short-sighted because that's what killed, among other things. That's one of the things that really killed the resale value on the SL Mercedes, the R230 version, because people really love those cars. But as soon as you get a headlight replacement that's $3,500, $4,000, you just go no thanks, I'll trade it in, I'll get what I get for it. Because you're talking about now a 10% hit and especially if you've got this vehicle now five, six years and it's depreciated now you're talking about 10, 15% of the entire value of the car in one headlight.
Speaker 3:Well, and here's what the fleets talk about and I've talked about other people with fleets we're in this weird fluke of a inflation rate, so all of our fleets are worth more money than what we paid for them. You're looking at that and if you're foolish and you're quick-sighted about it, you will say to yourself well, the truck's worth way more than what I paid for it, or worth just as much as what I paid for it, even with miles on it. Who cares if I have to put money in it, you're still spending.
Speaker 2:Right, it's still spending. Do you think that there is a market for somebody to come out with a replacement unit that'll plug into the CAN bus or whatever that has the right weights in there, that you can put a sealed beam light into it and give it the checks through the OBD and whatever else it needs to do and put that out there as a secondary or as an aftermarket solution specifically for fleets? That really honestly, yeah, you want the visibility that the LEDs and the HIDs give you, but you don't need that. You don't need that functionality.
Speaker 3:Let's take it a step further. If I'm a landscaper and I've got seven dump trucks and those dump trucks all come with the HID we're just going to use a headlight as an example. They come with a HID headlight and all that stuff. I'm constantly the guys are hitting stuff with it or somebody bumps into it or whatever.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:Yes, I want to be able to go on Amazon, find an aftermarket solution for that headlight that looks kind of the same, still is bright all that good stuff and I want to put it in there. There is a market for that. Secondly, though, I'm going to say this the OEMs have to come up with. They call these work trucks, they call them the GMC Pro, the Chevy work truck. The tradesmen, they have to find a common ground with this. They're evolving the trucks to a point where, let's put it this way, a GMC 2500 Pro a $50,800. That used to buy you a really nice truck. Now I know trucks are more expensive and that's going to happen over time. Make the truck $45,000 and let's shave some more stuff off of it. That's right. We're going to tear it up. It's going to happen. I don't care how good of a fleet you got, but when you have hundreds of these running down the road, it's going to happen. Well, that's just it.
Speaker 2:You're managing 50, 100, some of these guys. If you're rider trucks or you're a Penske fleet, you're managing maybe 1,000 of these different assets out there on the road. If there's no affordable option, it becomes a big liability. I just dropped here into the chat. This is a couple of years old. This is a Chevy Express GMC Savannah-type van. You can see there that 7x6 sealed beam headlight. This is essentially the same kind of vehicle, the same kind of van that they're running now, but these sealed beam units are no longer available. It's not like they're not DOT approved. It's not like they're not legal for operation.
Speaker 3:No, they're just not available anymore. They're just not available. Look at the C5500 Chevys. We cannot get headlight buckets for those. You cannot get headlight bucket hardware. We have them. We've got a bunch of them. I'm trying to figure out how to convert them. There's all kinds of hacks out there for it and we're doing them. I think it's ridiculous. Again, somebody like Dorman or somebody like that needs to step up and say listen, I'm going to build a solution for that and we're going to make it work.
Speaker 2:That's not the issue.
Speaker 2:It's a software issue we talked about this a little bit with Right to Repair in our last episode Go check that out Episode 10, by the way, we talked a little bit about this. In terms of Right to Repair, the OEMs are making it impossible for you to swap out the headlight buckets and you to swap out the headlight solutions, because there's software and chips built into that HID headlight that are making it so that the ECM is looking for that headlight. If it doesn't find it, it says nope, you can't drive. Now. There's no reason for that. They have it encrypted, locked down, sealed away. There's no functional reason for that, except to control and monopolize the availability of lights.
Speaker 2:They're not to pick on Ford, they're all doing it. Volkswagen is doing it, toyota is doing it, nissan is doing it. They have all moved into this like ultra heavy software mode so that they can control the supply. You must get the Nissan headlamp, you must get the Nissan turn signal. You can't go to Keystone Auto like you used to 20 years ago or 10 years ago even, yeah, and get the aftermarket version. It won't run and that is crazy town.
Speaker 3:No, it is, and I think something's got to go along and write this Toyota is going to come out with something that works. I don't know how or I'm not into that that's not what I do but a group of people smarter than me is going to say we have developed something that's going to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, this idea is no good. But there are conversations happening on the dealer level, on the organizational level, about right to repair and about the exact issues that we're talking about here, and you know, the first thing we're going to all need is a common language. We're going to need that common OBD kind of port for lack of a better word that is going to enable us to communicate with these vehicles in this new generation of cars. So I think that's coming. I think the dealers are on the right track. Obviously, you're going to want to be able to service the vehicles that are being traded in at your store at least do an oil change in a systems check so that you can certify it and put your warranties on it, and I think that's coming. I think we're just a little bit early. 2025. I think it's probably when you're going to start to see some real movement on that. But let's talk a little bit about some more stuff that dealers are doing well.
Speaker 2:Last week we talked about some of these dealers that just don't have the manpower to reach some of the equipment operators, some of the farmers that are out there, especially in remote areas in the central states. But this last week there was some news from Ohio. There was a dealer who went above and beyond. The store is called Company Wrench so they built a three piece 125 foot boom for this Cabelco SK850. And this is really cool because this is not the story of a dealer just saying I'm going to sell you something off the shelf. This is what we do. These guys actually sat down with the customer, figured out what they needed and figured out how to put it together and meet the needs. And this is the kind of outside the box thinking that we were just saying doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 3:Well, I know you're spot on. I have a lot of experience with these high reach excavators. I've bought quite a few and they were always third party outfits. And Company Wrench has been around for a long time. Brad who started the company has been revolutionary in the demolition field and I know those guys actually at my office today dropping off literature on some stuff. And so the thing is is that these, these high reach excavators have always been a you bring us the excavator, we'll do the outfit, we'll get it going.
Speaker 3:Jewel manufacturing, which was owned by Paladin, they did a phenomenal job. That kind of disbanded young builds this. And Company Wrench has been around a long time in the demolition industry. They're an amazing dealer. They know how to support everybody and they really took a market that was for a while kind of taboo. There was guys that specialized in demolition, specialized in supporting demolition, but Company Wrench took it way up and above and there were a lot of contractors that had to self support a lot of things and they said, well, why are you doing this? I'll do it for you and I'll help you. You're still in each your own mechanics, but I'm going to help you do this. And then here you know they're building a high reach machine.
Speaker 3:High reach machines have been used in Europe forever because of the constraints as far as like going up to a building or a smokestack or any brick type you know anything tall they use it for that. There's a multitude of attachments that can go on the end of it all hydraulic hammers and multi processors and everything like that but no Company Wrench gets it and anybody that's in the demolition industry. You might have a local dealer that you like, but they're one of the largest broad reaching dealer groups that really are independent. I mean, they have Cabelco on their side. They've got some other brands like a LaBounty, shears and what the products that they bring to market, but they are by far the most knowledgeable. So this is just a natural thing that they're getting into. And they've got a bunch of clients that are saying look, not only are we getting good service from you, we're getting parts, we're getting all the support. Now they're going to be able to get full solutions from them right off the lot, which is it's very hard to find.
Speaker 3:That. You know you problem with it is is you buy the excavator, you get it shipped to you, then you send it out to the guy who's building you the boom. Maybe he's got most of the boom assembled, but he needs to do the conversion for the high reach takes months. You're making payments on the machine. It's all tied up. It's not making you any money. By the time you get the thing back, you've got all this invested in it. Then you're already behind. Yeah, you can get a Company Wrench. They help you finance it. You get it. You're already put it on a job. You're off and running. That's what's really cool about this.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's you know. It goes back to like when, when I got started in the car business, way back in the 90s, you know, as a Dodge store, and we had a fleet manager there and he would buy utility bodies, tool bodies. He would buy cutaway vans and put the box on it, and he would do that because he knew his area, he knew his customers and he knew what they were going to need. And when the time come to go shopping, yeah, maybe there was a Ford commercial truck dealer, maybe there was a GMC dealer that was going to cut them a deal, but at the end of the day they didn't have it on the line Right. And sometimes you need it now.
Speaker 2:You need it now because your vehicle is in an accident, something happened, you're out of service for whatever reason, waiting on a part. You need a vehicle now and to have that availability there it requires two things. It requires a fleet manager who knows the business and knows his customers that's number one and it requires a dealer who's willing to look beyond that 30 day selling cycle and invest a little bit of money to actually support their area. So it's great to find that when you do find them out there and we'll plug these guys. I don't have a problem with that. We're a sponsor, free show. We don't do any kind of advertising or anything like that except these are good dudes.
Speaker 3:These are good dudes, yeah, good dudes, and you hit the nail on the head when you need something. I have been frustrated in my career more than anything when I get these phone calls and they're from sales managers of dealer groups. And I've talked to quite a few who have called me at middle of the afternoon because they hear that I'm buying a machine from another dealer in another area, and it's almost scripted at this point. But it's very simple.
Speaker 3:This job is going to move on with or without equipment. We need the equipment and renting it isn't always an option. They have it and I need it. So I went to go get it and we're going to touch on this real quick and with something we're going to get into in another, another deal, because it goes into the next thing we're going to talk about. Dealer groups love this effect where they can put their hands around their client base and say, well, that's our client, because their main billing office, their home office, is in our territory. I'm sorry, at the end of the day, it's my money, I'm going to spend it and I'm going to go wherever it is that that's right.
Speaker 3:That's my job A fleet manager for a construction company. Construction company doesn't make money off their fleet. You will dabble in some stuff and you've made some profits here or there by just the right thing at the right time. Our job is to support what makes us the money, which is the work and being out there and doing it. So it goes back to people like company wrench who are trying to do that. They're saying look, we're here, we know you're working, come get the stuff that you need.
Speaker 3:But there's a lot of dealer groups out there that try to pigeonhole their customers and it just doesn't work. And then you get into the Deer Group people. They're pretty flexible. I've always had luck with them. But one of the things that they're really pushing lately, what we're going to talk about, is this technology for grade control. They're working on that, so is Caterpillar, so is Cabelco and so is Kamatsu.
Speaker 3:But these dealer groups when you move these machines between dealer groups, it's seamless. Now you can get them worked on, which is very important. But this new Greek management solutions If you're not, if you think there's a bunch of people that I, that I run into I'm just going to say this to think it's foolish oh, you don't need that, I've got a way that I do it. If you're not getting on board with this, you're going to get left behind. It's already becoming the standard on whatever you're doing. That requires you to know what grade you're at, where you're at on the piece of property and what you're going to put in where that is going to be bedded into, or if you're pouring concrete, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about this a little bit. So, for people who are listening to this, who who are not in the industry because we do have a lot of people who are listening to this that are just like kind of into what we're talking about, or maybe they're over the road guys, or maybe they're truck guys and they're not in this you know demolition, excavation, part of it Can you talk a little bit about what the smart grade system does for people and why it's so essential?
Speaker 3:So the smart grade system in a nutshell is this it allows you, whether you're using a dozer or an excavator or a greater, to put the surface that you're cutting the material off to. If you're putting in a road and you're using a motor grader and you're going down through before they pave and you're striking off the sub base, it will put that to the designed plan and set you. The blade is literally moving up and down as the machine moves up and down and cross over stuff and you've got material in there and you're striking it off. It fills it in its level. It's flat.
Speaker 2:You're not dependent on the operator having that skill set. You're depending on the AI, the autonomous.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you still have the skill set of an operator that understands all right, this isn't going the way it's supposed to. I got to stop and see what's going on. You still have to have the skill set of the operator that says well, you know the basics of it, why don't have enough material here, I'm going to run off, or this cut's going to be too deep, we need to excavate this. I can't do a finished grade here, like there's a lot of like two and three machine job sites where guys get on there and they are. We're going to dig all this out, we have to do this, put this material back, then we're going to grade it off, and the big thing that's coming out and this is this has been coming out for a little while now, but it's becoming more and more refined is the excavator grade control management.
Speaker 3:So you're digging a trench 10, 12 feet deep and you're going to put pipe down. Well, your spec tells you that you have to have so much gravel, stone, whatever fill, which means by deduction, your trench bottom has to be something. If that's whatever minus eight feet, it'll keep you on track as you dig through, right, and then it eliminates having to have a guy down in the trench all day. He comes by and checks, but he can be working on other things, keep checking on you as you go, where in the old days you'd have a guy with a stick. That guy is there with the stick. He's checking for grade. You're digging along as you go. He keeps checking and it's literally pass for pass as you're finishing up. So everybody's got a method of how they get to that, but this just helps speed it up, right?
Speaker 2:Well, the other nice thing about this is, you know, as I understand it and I'm looking through it and trying to read all about this stuff because this is not my world, right, but as I'm looking at this they have a whole section about uploading the site plans 3D site plans uploaded to satellite and that the satellite GPS keeps you on track. So there is no like, well, we're building this eight feet wide and it can be a foot this way or foot that way. No, it's precise like down to like a foot. It seems like Well, less than that.
Speaker 3:So when you're grading you can be down to a tenth of a tenth of a foot Right.
Speaker 2:It's about an inch and a half yeah.
Speaker 3:So the machines have like a iPad, if you will, and they're a larger screen and they can see the drawing of where they're at in relation to the machine, where the machine is on the drawing, and then they can look at what they're supposed to be doing. The other thing that's coming out is is final pass, so there's different terminology for that's what I call it. So you've dug down your trench and you're going to dig that last pass and you're going to contour it to what the plan says for where you are. You hit a button and it does it for you. It literally pulls the bucket in contours, the bottom of the trench. Then you take it from there and pick it up and dump the material wherever it's going to go in a truck or off the side. That's where everything's going. Yeah, and there's a joke that 20 more years from now, you'll set these machines out there and they'll go off on their own and then pretty soon, they start communicating with each other and they just start digging away.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny you mentioned that because I was just about to point out that you know our last guest, ray Gellant. He's got at his PA Volvo test facility. Yep, he's got an autonomous little holler that you get in there with your excavator, you load that thing up, it's got internal scales and when it says, hey, I'm full, I'm at capacity, I'm at payload, it gives you a little beep, beep, beep, I'll be right back. And then it takes its load off, dumps it and comes back to you and puts itself back in that position and it'll follow that excavator along at a certain distance to be loaded up and it does its own thing. So that's coming. I think 20 years is probably pessimistic. I think 2030, 2035, you'll start to see that as a high-end option and especially if you've got guys who are looking to make you know, realistically, if a lot of these unions and Teamsters get their way, these guys are hundred and seventy, hundred and eighty thousand dollars on the books.
Speaker 3:Well, and here's the thing, one of the companies that really pushes very early on they were very early to market with it. They had a ton of I was there on the unveiling was Kamatsu. They really pushed this out first and well, a more refined version of it and they said here, look, come to us, we've got great control solution. You can buy it from the dealer already equipped. Bring it to your site. I demoed some of it. I was at Chattanooga when they when they literally told us we were coming down there to look at some kind of upgrade on on some excavators and some dozers. But they never told us what it was. We thought it was going to be some kind of thing and they literally brought this screen up and said this is what we've built. You're going to go run up today. That's cool.
Speaker 2:It was very cool.
Speaker 3:So they've been out there first. Now, what Kamatsu and Caterpillar have done way ahead of anybody else, they started pushing it to the point where it was actually in the machines embedded. You want to turn it on, turn it on, but we already have the stuff in it. And now you're getting to a point where we just bought a we bought a cat 315 excavator and we're going to buy a cat 325. The stuff's already in it. You pay a subscription fee, they turn on the stuff and you can run with it. Kamatsu's had that already.
Speaker 3:And Deere uses Topcon as well. They use Topcon product for their back end. Caterpillar uses Trimble. They've been partnered with them for a long time. And but I don't know, I don't know how guys do it without it. The old days of stringing out a job literally oh yeah, and laying it out and then telling guys where to dig, and it's really hard to do that anymore and keep the production level that you need to be the competitive, get the precise, accurate, and that's what you're trying to do, so that when you actually get done with your finished product it looks presentable, right? I mean, that's really what it is. It separates a lot of people, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know it's interesting we're talking about all this. It does have a little bit of a sci-fi feel, doesn't it? You got like robots running around Everything's happening with lasers and satellites, I think it might be time for a. It might be time for a Flash Gordon commercial.
Speaker 4:What place can you offer me today? The planet, it's an attack Pathetic Earthlings. Who can save you now? Flash will kill you. Let's all team up and fight him. Prepare for torture. I want him. Stop at nothing. I love you, but we only have 14 hours to save the Earth. Flash Gordon is still alive. Gordon's alive, die, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So Are you like flash Gordon or Buck Rogers?
Speaker 3:Buck Rogers, no Duck Dodgers in the twenty sixth and a half century. No.
Speaker 2:Oh God, they'll sue us immediately. I know, All right, well, we'll just. We'll just get to the lasers real quick. That was my segue to the laser cleaning I know.
Speaker 1:So by the Dodgers.
Speaker 2:I love the disintegrating gun and pulls it, but what do you know it?
Speaker 1:disintegrated. I can flash.
Speaker 2:Oh men, the merciless over there running the excavator. He's swatting at the birdman out of the air with a 125 foot boom arm smack.
Speaker 3:So wait a minute. So what do you got? You got laser cleaning. We're sort of laser cleaning.
Speaker 2:Is this? This is the segue into the laser cleaning. Yeah, no, because I'm no.
Speaker 3:I'm seriously reading this and I'm like what? Laser cleaning for bridges, what? What did you put this on? What does this mean?
Speaker 2:So this is, this is cool. I a couple of years ago they come out with this, a handheld industrial laser, and they use this to clean rust off of stuff, to clean paint off of wood. And you can go online, you can YouTube like laser rust removal, and these guys have these old, rusty pieces of stuff that they pulled out of a junkyard Like they zap it with the laser beam. Because that's my. I'll actually run the sound, I'll find a sample of it. Ok, and it's so cool because it just immediately vaporizes the rust with this high powered laser.
Speaker 1:But it's really work.
Speaker 2:Oh, it works man.
Speaker 3:It is like guys are wondering about this. I was just talking to somebody the other day about a semi truck application for cleaning the frame rails on it after they've been out on the road a few years.
Speaker 2:This is what it's for and it will absolutely do that. The problem is it's stupid expensive. So you can't really run this, as, like a hobby shop, you can't like. You know, if your hobby shop includes a bunch of original Shelby Cobras and two or three Bugattis, I guess you can run it, but you and I cannot run this.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, if we're building big block rolls Royce's like on Canobone run, we're going to need it.
Speaker 2:It's another segue.
Speaker 4:That's the first time we took an order by thought. It's hard to understand you. When I called you, I was doing a hundred and forty miles an hour. That was six lamb burgers for sheesh kebabs, a side order of couscous and two milk. No, how much. Six, seventy five here, my desert blossom, give the chain. Have you ever considered joining a harem? I shall return for you after the race. Get a physical, I shall return, I love.
Speaker 2:But yes, exactly, you're trying to build a big block, rolls Royce, you're definitely going to need this. But this is interesting because these guys, they're using it now in a pilot program in Connecticut to clean the rust off of a bridge, and this is the first time that this has been used in this kind of application. It's outdoors and everything, but it's really, really interesting because without solvents, without putting this stuff into the air, without all kinds of crazy machines, they're just laser blasting this bridge.
Speaker 3:In my head right away when we look at the script. I mean, everybody knows that you have a script behind the scenes, so that's why I was like what am? I reading here but I just did. This is like Ghostbusters. They're going to show up in like some fifties Cadillac hearse and they're going to jump out with their stuff and spray the bridge and slimmers going to be all over it painting it.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what we're going.
Speaker 3:That's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:That's what we're doing. And now, but think about this you don't have to have media. So you're not, you're not using a media blaster, sandblaster, you don't have to transport any of that. Right, it can run off a diesel generator or a battery backup. So if you have, like a, you know, a lipo generator or a best system, you can plug it into that and it'll run and it, you know, collects all of its own residue. So there's not a bunch of stuff in the air, you don't have your respirators and mask. You're not causing environmental mayhem in the neighborhood. This is really critical because if you're doing this kind of thing in the city above schools, you're like I'm in Chicago. There's a whole bunch of overpasses and things like that and underneath them is basketball courts. You got kids playing sports, you've got kids going to school. You don't want them breathing that stuff and there's respirators for the dude that's right there doing it. But the people driving and riding their bike and commuting and living with that, they're breathing all this stuff in. So look at this.
Speaker 3:It says they created about 40 pounds of dry powder waste which is captured by the filter. The lasers filtration system is similar. Instance with the sandblasting would have been 9000 to 12000 pounds of waste. That's right, and that's what. That's what people that don't know, that's what you see with those curtains and everything in the big semi trailers the filtration unit, and then the big semi trailer of the air compressor and the big semi trailer, the media sandblasting unit, and then, okay, imagine being in there. Oh, it's terrible, that's hell on earth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really bad. So this is a great move. I think you know the fact that it was successful and the fact that they were able to do it and prove, prove out that this was a cost effective way of doing it, right, right, if you're looking just at the cost of the laser, you're thinking this is crazy. But if you're looking at the man hours, if you're looking at the the need to really shut down traffic and what that cost is to the community, the millions of hours that are lost trying to shut down an interstate, this is critical, especially as we consider all of the bridges, all of the railroad passes, all the underpasses, all the ports, all of this infrastructure that needs repair in this country right now. It's getting old.
Speaker 3:I'm most given. I mean, think about when all that stuff was put in. You get, you got railroad overpasses that were put in in when Sixties yeah, if that as well, yeah, and that's what I'm saying, as we really dominated the railroad industry and we had gotten rid of steam and we got rid of all that. We're really dominating diesel rail. You know what I'm saying. The trains got longer, everything got heavier. A lot of this stuff got updated. That was 60 years ago.
Speaker 2:Oh, the sixties were 60 years ago I don't like that at all.
Speaker 3:No, I don't either. All right, I was born in the wrong era and I should have been born then I'd be gone now.
Speaker 2:Calm down, george Hamilton. But those of you who are under the age of 50, go Google, george Hamilton. You're going to like what you see. George Hamilton, that's right. So what's the guy from Caddy check?
Speaker 3:Oh, Ronnie.
Speaker 2:Dangerfield. No, the guy that's you.
Speaker 3:Ty Webb.
Speaker 2:I love that you had to think about that for a second. You're like I was in Caddy check. Oh yeah, I was on Ty Webb.
Speaker 3:Yeah, perfection I was born to love you, anyway, so you were born to love me first Ha ha ha ha.
Speaker 1:Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google or wherever you find podcasts.