Get ready for a very special HEP-isode as we sit down with Volvo Penta's Darren Tasker and try to navigate the road to zero emissions. We also talk about the latest push for overtime pay for truckers by the Teamsters' Union, and ask ourselves why a Republican senator would challenge a 4th generation Teamster to a fistfight on the Senate floor. All this and more on a Black Friday edition of the Heavy Equipment Podcast (be sure to drink your Ovaltine!).
Get ready for a very special HEP-isode as we sit down with Volvo Penta's Darren Tasker and try to navigate the road to zero emissions. We also talk about the latest push for overtime pay for truckers by the Teamsters' Union, and ask ourselves why a Republican senator would challenge a 4th generation Teamster to a fistfight on the Senate floor. All this and more on a Black Friday edition of the Heavy Equipment Podcast (be sure to drink your Ovaltine!).
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. That's the Heavy Equipment Podcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the Heavy Equipment Podcast. I'm your host, joe Boris, here, as ever, with Mike Hot, mike Switzer and you know we have a little bit of a special show today. We have again a rare guest on the show. We don't often have guests on the show. Today we have Darren Tasker of Volvo Penta. We're going to talk in terms of marine engines, boat engines, things like that, but you've recently expanded that. You're now in more industrial applications and specifically recently launched a new best system, which is battery energy storage. Can you talk a little bit about your role at Volvo Penta and what led the company down this path?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is true to say that Volvo Penta is known in the marine market and we have an extremely strong marine business and a successful marine business. And it's a very critical part of Volvo Penta. Since I would say 20 years now, the company has had more focus on growing our non marine business. So we had a segmented approach where we look at the power generation segment, we look at mining, we look at construction equipment where it makes sense for Volvo as a group, we look at on highway applications and we're very much following the same philosophy that we do on the marine side. Volvo Penta, its core, is a component supplier to manufacturers. So we see ourselves as a component supplier to OEMs and that's the same in the marine market, that's the same in the industrial market.
Speaker 2:So you say you see yourselves more as component manufacturers. So that would be the drive unit, the internal combustion side of a, for example, a dredge truck or a harvester or a generator.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. We take the assets developed by the Volvo Group core driveline components developed by the Volvo Group. We have our own R&D Group that takes those core components and modifies and updates the components to be able to sell those components to OEMs. So marine application is an easy example. We take a core Volvo diesel engine, we maranize it and then we sell it to the marine market. On the industrial side we do the same thing. We take a core Volvo engine, we make it suitable for a generator application or a pump set application or a harvester application, as you said, and then we sell it as a component to OEMs.
Speaker 2:And you're doing this in a number of different markets. I think very famously last year there was the fire truck of the future concept that was rolled out. You've also been in agriculture, construction equipment. We have also the heavy equipment podcast. We talk a lot about Volvo power there. So even though, again, you may be most known for marine, these Penta power units really are everywhere. I think that's a fair question.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I think it's probably less well known on the non-marine side, shall we say, but the non-marine side would involve a Penta or a council of about 50% of our business now.
Speaker 2:So it's a truly oh, really, so it's really expanded.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a truly diversified business with two strong segments industrial and marine and that's with a very successful, growing marine segment. So we've seen significant growth on the industrial side, as we call it, over the last 20 years, I would say with Involver Penta, and it's been an important part of the journey.
Speaker 3:Just to move on from that. You spoke a little bit about the fire truck. So we've taken the not just the conventional, shall we say, traditional, reciprocating engine technology from the Volvo Group. We also take the new technologies developed by the Volvo Group and again we make our changes to the components or to the scope of supply and then we offer a. Again we're following the philosophy of being a component supplier to manufacturers. Now, when it comes to the fire truck great example we're providing the new technology components developed by the Volvo Group to manufacturers of equipment such as fire trucks. Terminal tractors is another good example where we're in a business relationship with the terminal tractor manufacturer here in North America. That's been made public. There's been a number of new technology customers that we're adding to our traditional customer base.
Speaker 2:Now, as you expand into the NetZero initiatives and the best, the battery energy storage systems. The last thing that I read you were working with a company called Technogen in order to develop that out. What are you adding to that expertise? How does Volvo Penta play into the best system?
Speaker 3:So, yes, Technogen is a Genset manufacturer in Italy that we have provided components to to build up a best system. The same is the relationship with a company called UIG here in North America. We made a minor investment in UIG and that's information that's public. Again, we are following the same strategy. We're a component supplier to companies that build up complete systems. When it comes to bests, we're offering the Volvo batteries. We believe that the Volvo batteries offer a lot of benefits in a best application. They're heavy duty vehicle batteries. We believe the C rating of the heavy duty vehicle battery allows significantly higher energy density than you would see from batteries that are used for other applications. So as far as the space claim for a certain level of kilowatt hours, we believe we have a good solution. When it comes to offering the heavy duty vehicle batteries into best applications, but again, we are not the supplier of the best equipment. We're the supplier of the components to manufacturers of complete best systems.
Speaker 2:Right. But it's also worth noting that as you enable these other partnerships and you start building that out, we're creating a more common ecosystem of these batteries and of these components. In the same way that I think in the automotive side in the early 90s, as they were developing OBD, a lot of the Bosch electronics became standardized because of that OBD requirement and their leading role there. I think it might be fair to say and correct me if I'm wrong that by working with these other manufacturers and entering into these partnerships you're creating a common language for the kind of decarbonization of backup energy on an industrial scale.
Speaker 3:Yes, I mean. That's clearly. The strategy is to expand the Volvo decarbonization journey beyond what we sell as complete products. Volvo Penta is part of the Volvo group. We are part of the science based target initiative that the Volvo group was committed to and we believe we can actually play a critical role in that journey. The number of batteries that we could deploy in best applications could be a significant contribution to Volvo's journey, not just from a perspective of selling a number of batteries but deploying batteries, but also from the perspective of critical mass, allowing us to be truly competitive across the board in the Volvo group by increasing the number of batteries that we have out there deployed.
Speaker 2:Now let's talk about some use cases. I think everybody immediately goes to data centers and hospitals because those are two industries, two fields that you really can't have downtime. But there's more to it than that. A lot of people are suggesting that we can use large scale best systems, battery energy storage systems, to augment the primary electrical grid and also augment wind and solar capacity. When there's excess solar capacity, instead of curtailing that energy, it can be stored in a battery to be used when there's not as much solar energy. How do you see that playing out in terms of Volvo Penta's goals?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean this is you've kind of hit on the segments that we believe that we have a competitive position in or we can have a competitive position in with these energy dense batteries. This is important when it comes to a lot of those applications and, as you say, data centers. If we can take the load of a data center for a limited period of time with the best system, we know that we're not going to be able to be able to power the data center for days on end, but most power outages are for short periods of time, so there's a very good chance that we can reduce the time that the diesels are running in a data center, be they Volvo diesels or not. That is completely true.
Speaker 2:Well, ideally they'd be Volvo diesels.
Speaker 3:Ideally they would. Yeah, that's where we want to go, you know that. But in a grid application, again, this is where we see our position as the component supplier. I think it's going to be very difficult for manufacturers without a long history and knowledge of how the utility grid works to start to integrate into the grid. I mean, there are, you know, we've learned some critical factors in being, you know, even considered as a supplier into grid applications. The you know, quite frankly, the learning curve is just too long if we want to do it out the gate. We see that integrating with partners that know these segments intimately well is a route that we want to go down. So, the grid segment we've got some test applications in utility based segments. Of course, renewables you know that energy, if it's not deployed immediately, needs to be stored somewhere and managed. There's a lot of different applications. When it comes to the decarbonized agenda for the utility grid, how energy storage can contribute to that, A lot of our readers are EV or battery electric maximalists.
Speaker 2:Right, they believe solar wind stored in batteries, that's it. They will often push back against hydrogen. They'll push back against diesel, biodiesel, natural gas. Do you feel like the technology is there, or that the technology will be there soon, where everything can be battery, electric, or do you think that there's still room for these other fuel sources for the foreseeable future?
Speaker 3:That is actually a great question. We do believe that the current traditional technology certainly has a place today. We're not walking away from our traditional technology. If we need to get the maximum amount of energy in a small space, claim that's reliable with technology that's cost effective, then a diesel engine still has a place. We can have a big storage tank and a generator, for example. We can get a lot of energy from a generator out of a small package and it's reliable and it's cost effective.
Speaker 3:So I think there's a place for diesel or internal combustion engines. That technology will naturally migrate into hydrogen, so Volvo is looking at solutions with hydrogen internal combustion engines. We're also looking at solutions with hydrogen fuel cells. I think that there's not one technology that is gonna be suitable for every application, and the great thing about Volvo is that throughout the group, with our significant volume on the truck side, we have a construction equipment division, we've got a bus division, various different truck bands around the world. We do have the technology within our organization that we can take from or we can develop at Volvo Penta for the different applications.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and it's funny, you mentioned Volvo construction, dr Ray Galant, who runs that ship over.
Speaker 3:I know Ray well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ray's awesome. Ray's done like six of these with us. So we're big fans of Ray and we had been talking about some of the hydrogen fuel cell applications that were being developed and we had not talked about hydrogen combustion. For people who are listening to this, who maybe don't realize that there's more than one way to skin a hydrogen molecule. To stretch that metaphor a little bit, can you kind of explain the difference between a hydrogen combustion versus a fuel cell?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure. So again, the path to hydrogen combustion engines is it takes various different steps as well. So our first step into hydrogen combustion is the dual fuel engine. So we have it's a compression ignition engine where we're injecting a small amount of diesel and then substituting as much of the diesel for hydrogen as we possibly can. We've launched that product with an eight liter engine with a generator manufacturer. The results have been actually better than we thought they were gonna be.
Speaker 3:Testing this unit load factors between, shall we say, 40 and 60, maybe even 35, 65%, we can substitute a very high percentage of diesel for hydrogen. When you get very, very high load factors, then we have to go back to more diesel. But we can substitute over 50% hydrogen for diesel, which, if you stay in that kind of mid-band load factor, it's a very good solution. The next step on the journey will be to take what we learn from the dual fuel applications and develop a full, 100% hydrogen engine which will be an SI engine so it's a different head, but the base engine will be the same and then we develop the hydrogen system as well with the engine. So that's the journey we're on. As I mentioned, we have launched a eight liter dual fuel engine, which is working now. The next step will be to develop a 400% hydrogen internal combustion engine.
Speaker 2:But the dual fuel is significant because even if you're running a blend, even if it's not an 80-20 blend, you can cut about 80% of the emissions of the diesel particulates out of that.
Speaker 3:And again, if you're staying in that mid-load factor range, the substitution rate is actually very, very good. Which a lot of diesel engines or a lot of traditional applications. They may go up to 100% every now and then, but most applications are running in that mid 40 to 60 or 30 to 70% load factor range for the majority of their life.
Speaker 2:Right. Is this calculated? Is the fuel mix calculated in the ECU, or is it something that's like a pre-mix?
Speaker 3:No, it's software developed.
Speaker 2:So, as you're running 90% of the time in that mid-range, it's using the more efficient hydrogen. If there's a peak, if there's a demand peak, it'll crank up and it'll mix in more diesel. You don't have to have somebody go out and fiddle with it.
Speaker 3:It'll do it on its own. No, it's pre-programmed and that's why we've been running the testing cycles to push it to its limits. How much can we substitute? What is the maximum substitution and still get the power of the engine that we need to get out of the engine? That was a great learning, actually, to you know, even better than we thought, that we could substitute a significant amount of hydrogen in that area where the engines are mainly used.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is great stuff. I wasn't aware of this until we started talking about it and I was able to very quickly do some Google search. Looks like it came out towards the end of September. You announced this here, so can you talk about some of the applications that you're putting this in? Is this a?
Speaker 3:No, we started off with power generation. We're gonna move into pump sets and different, but we can put it in a variable speed application too. So that's the next phase of this is to look at a variable speed application. And you know, I also will add that we're looking at variable speed and power generation applications for fuel cells.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's interesting, it's not just one path and, as I said, I don't think there's one solution for one problem. You know, where there's no charging infrastructure or where charging infrastructure is very difficult, we may need to have a fuel cell and batteries on board a machine so that we can get the range you know, with the fuel cell working as a prime power for the machine but also charging up the batteries. And we see it as an efficient solution where the fuel cell can provide, you know, let's say, 60% of the power required by the machine. When you require to go above that, then you need to apply the energy from the batteries. And again, when the energy from the batteries drains down and the fuel cell has got excessive power, then that power is put back into the batteries.
Speaker 2:You may not be able to answer this question, and that's fine if you can't, but I wonder if, because you have this ability to put out let's call it a set number of kilowatts of energy from the dual fuel engine, has there been any thought given to using something like this, not as a drive unit, but as a generator unit on an EV, to build something like a for lack of better terms something like a diesel electric locomotive, but put it into a semi-truck tractor chassis, so it is running with the e-axle, but instead of carrying 15,000 pounds of batteries, it's running this genset.
Speaker 3:I don't think we've thought about that specific application. I think there's probably. You know, we're probably adding too much weight onto the chassis to put a generator on there. Diesel locomotive, I can see that, you know. Certainly diesel electric trains is something that's been deployed for a hundred years. Yeah, you know. So that's a on a class 8 chassis. I think we would just be adding too much weight with putting a generator on board, even if we took out the batteries, because that's the big issue now.
Speaker 2:Right is that you're adding 8,000 pounds of batteries instead of a 2,000 pound motor.
Speaker 3:That's the challenge. And of course, the more batteries you add, the less payload you have on the truck and the less batteries you have, the less range you have. So I mean that's why we see a fuel cell, together with batteries to be a good solution for the haulage truck market. You know, from a Volvo Penta perspective not from a truck side or the CE side, but on the Volvo Penta perspective our customers are experts in their field and how to deploy the energy. You know they come to us and they say you know we need a, we need a solution. To do this. We work with them and we, you know we have our carbon-neutral agenda as well.
Speaker 5:So it's an interesting mix of it keeps it fun, does it Aaron?
Speaker 3:It certainly does.
Speaker 2:Well, melissa, I'm sorry we didn't get to hear as much from you.
Speaker 5:I know you've got some issues it's a total expert.
Speaker 3:No, Melissa, carry on. I'll be quiet now.
Speaker 2:This is great stuff. I was gonna say we're coming to the end of our time commitment here. I want to thank you so much for doing this with us and allowing me this interview, you know for, before we sign off. How can people follow along with what you're doing? How can they learn more about this? Is there a, you know, a Volvo Penta TikTok channel where Darren gets up and dances in the little outfits, or no, I hope not.
Speaker 5:We do have several social media channels. You can, of course, look for us at our website, which is just VolvoPentacom. We are on Facebook at Volvo Penta and also we are on Instagram at Volvo Penta NA, so it looks like Volvo Pantana, so find us there.
Speaker 4:We have all social media.
Speaker 5:That's how I always like to think about it. But yeah, also, we have lots of news coming out regularly. So you look at the news section of our website and it gives you all the updates about what's going on new, new industries, new products, everything like that. So Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, and we should do this again. Did you like that or did that?
Speaker 6:suck, I like that. That was good, that was professional.
Speaker 2:Alright, so thanks again for Darren being on the show and Mike and a lot of stuff going on over there at Volvo. They seem to be doing some good work.
Speaker 6:You know, I was asking about this because, I mean, I am not all knowing. I don't know everything, even though people claim that I say that I do. What is Volvo Penta? What is that? Explain that to people. They're like what's? What's this penthouse like?
Speaker 2:What have we just listened to for the last 25 minutes?
Speaker 6:Pretty much like. I mean, we're not talking about Penthouse Forum, so yes, we are. Yeah, we're going to plug Penthouse. There we are. That's their, their sponsor, and anyways, what's the Penta part? What are we talking about?
Speaker 2:Penta is the power train division, so that's like the engine. So when you think of like, you know a dodge hemi, the hemi is the motor right. So you can take a Volvo Penta which is this energy producing engine and you can put that anywhere. And one of the new things that Volvo has done is they're expanding that Penta name to be power generation. So, however, it is that they get energy, that they generate power to drive a machine, whether it's electric, whether it's hydrogen, whether it's diesel, that's going to fall under this Penta namesake and obviously that comes from that. You know the pent roof head design that they've had going on now for 40-50 years.
Speaker 6:Oh yeah, listen, there were the innovators this there's many machine shops that would get cylinder heads dropped off. They'd go what the hell is this off of? They had a spring retainer device that was so ingenious and encapsulating. It was almost fail-proof and unless you had some kind of mechanical misfortune that created a loud knocking noise that you would surely hear and not care about, so you would just keep driving. It wouldn't fail. But most of the machine shops can't take it apart. It's hysterical and if they've never seen it before, they're in there cutting on it and all kinds of stuff going on.
Speaker 6:I know what they're doing, guys like listen, I just, I just, I just want to do a valve job here. I don't know why you're bringing me this, but no, I know exactly. I know what you're talking about now with some of that. But the Penta parts like MTU, would you know? Mtu is another power generation part of another company I got you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's just the power generating part of Volvo. And it's interesting because we've been talking about horse power for so many decades and now we're starting to talk about kilowatts and kilowatts of power. But it's got to be easier for different markets, right? Because you know we used to work. You know, for those of you who don't know Mike and I first got together and started working together. We were drag racing Porsches and you know, building up Nissan's and things like that, and a lot of the specs would come over from Germany, especially on those, you know, 996 turbo and 997 turbo motors, and everything was in kilowatts, all the dyno curves and everything was in kilowatts. So for them, if you think about that, they're still producing kilowatts. It's just with a reciprocating engine.
Speaker 6:Well, right, it's funny because anybody in the US that reads that it kind of throws them through a loop, you know, and talk about kilowatt, because it's the basis of power in itself, right, yes, so we talk about, you know, pound, feet, foot pound, depending on how you want to talk about it, which way you want to say it and then horse power. They're actually talking about kilowatt power, which is a conversion that I mean most people look at that. They're like more, I didn't realize it was electric. It's like it's not. It's generating the same equivalent power as so many kilowatts. Correct, correct correlation. Same thing with horse power. We, you know, this is the US thing we want to make up everything on our own. You know, we have all these other, all the weird measurement. None of it is on any kind of a decimal curve. We, we mix 12 inches to a foot and then we break that down fractionally to a decimal and then we switch it up back and forth. Don't wonder nobody can get anything right.
Speaker 2:I don't know how many eagles per hectare does this thing burn right?
Speaker 6:there's a guy. There's a guy sitting there with the, with the conversion almond act for the deal in front of the DOT going. It's 0.2 eagles flatness. I think we're okay.
Speaker 2:I think this is a good time, for I can't wait for LeMond this year. We're gonna definitely talk about that oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 6:Well, okay. So looking down at our list of stuff here we're gonna talk about today, so it's just teams to overtime pay. If I'm reading this right, they're working towards getting drivers overtime pay for, for just working overtime they? Well, actually it makes sense because any driver that doesn't drive for a company that gets paid by the hour and you're paid by the mile. It would make sense that you aren't entitled to some kind of additional benefits for, you know, long days and this and that yeah, so let's talk about this.
Speaker 2:So this is a bipartisan bill, it's in Congress, it's being put forward by Mark Decano from California and Jeff Andrew in New Jersey. This is a Republican and Democrats, so it's true, bipartisan sponsorship and it's called the guaranteeing overtime for truckers act. So the argument is that there's language currently in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that exempts truck drivers and equipment operators from receiving overtime compensation. Now there's been a lot of questions about strikes and unions and what kind of labor contracts they have that give them, you know, time and a half or whatever it is, but at the end of the day in most cases drivers don't get that. So this is now a bill that's in Congress is going to change that.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to read here from the actual bill itself, from the introduction quote truckers have been left out of overtime opportunities due to archaic standards, says senator, says congressman tonaco, the impact of truckers on the supply chain to get Americans the goods they rely on, and titles these workers to competitive wages and an industry plagued with high turnover. The most common sense solution is to guarantee overtime pay to drivers. You know, I have to say I don't really know that much about the politics behind this, but it seems to make sense. You've got highly skilled workers. We depend on the work that they do. The entire economy shuts down if they're not on time and doing what they are expected to be doing. We've got a driver shortage already. Why are we not paying these guys overtime now?
Speaker 6:Well, let me put this way. If you know anything about history and the history of trucking and transportation in this country, they were taken advantage of from the very beginning. It started out with percentage based hauling. Okay, percentage based hauling is no better than working in a coal mine and buying from the company store. You are being paid a percentage of the shown value of a cargo that you were moving from one point to another than they broker, right. So they're effectively dictating your pay and your percentage of such pay. That happened a long time ago, and lettuce and produce markets and stuff like that were like well, the only fair thing to do is to tell this guy to. You know he can get a portion of what we make. On the surface it was very fair, but then it turned into this whole thing and it wasn't, and then it moved into other markets. So so here we are. Guys were not getting paid as it was. Guys were getting abused on hours, no downtime pay, no loading pay. They were forced to load and unload the trucks.
Speaker 2:Oh right, when they were just getting paid by the mile.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and there were still there's still places that operate like this. And then what happened was through necessity or need always creates something. This is how the Teamsters were created. The Teamsters go back to the days of teams of mules and horses. That's what. That's what the Teamster means, the guy who's operating all that moving all that. So you get the Teamsters come along and the Teamsters start to organize drivers and they always call it that it's organizing, and then they create collective bargaining. That's what a union does.
Speaker 6:Those are two very powerful tools. You're going to take a mass group of people that believe they're being wrong. They're going to organize together and then they're collectively going to bargain their way into a scenario that makes sense for both sides, because both sides are needed. You can't cripple the company that's hiring you, because that company is essentially paying you that. The same time, the company can't cripple the driver, because we can't enslave them, because if they don't have them, they can't move their goods. So of course, they need overtime pay, and I think this is just a modern version of another thing that we need to do to protect the drivers, drivers that are not in a buy the hour scenario, like I was talking about earlier. Most construction companies pay their drivers by the hour, some do it by an hour slash mileage rate. We have to be fair to them because without it the stuff doesn't get moved. It's that simple. Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 6:And then you end up with and I'm going to say this I mean we don't talk about a lot of politics, but then you end up where you got some guy who wants to fight the Teamster president on the Senate floor. I mean you really want to pick a fight with Sean O'Brien? You know, listen, listen, the Teamsters. We're going to get into the whole mob thing from years past and all the money they loaned out, whatever. They've actually done a lot of good and for a very long time. They actually generated a lot of retirement scenarios that benefited the drivers.
Speaker 6:That gets overshadowed by the whole mob thing where they were loaning money out and actually anybody that really wants to dig into the whole mob loaning of money. They made money on every dollar that they loaned and to this day all those records are publicly available. They made money on all of it. So I don't even want to hear about the fact that we loan money. You loan money to your bum neighbor If you give him 10 and he gives you 15, you made five bucks Right, you helped him out and he helped you out in the end because you were in a position to help him. But you're really going to have a guy named O'Brien. You're going to fight him on the floor. This goes back to the days of the 1700s, when people were whipping each other on the floor because they didn't agree with anyone.
Speaker 2:Forget about that. Oh and on, Forget about that. This guy's a fourth generation Teamster and he's sitting there.
Speaker 6:O'Brien. The IRA guys are going to come in there. These IRA guys are going to fly over and take everybody out. They're like you're messing with somebody. You shouldn't be. I'm not saying that you're going to run by the IRA. I'm saying they will personally take offense to an O'Brien being hit on the Senate floor. We're going to have problems.
Speaker 2:I don't, I don't think, I don't think he'd get hit very often, I think.
Speaker 6:That might get one strike in. I'm going to tell you that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an Oklahoma Republican, Mark Wayne Mullard. He's going to let Mark Wayne I mean here y'all let you have the first hit and then that'll be it. It'll just be beating that guy on the ground.
Speaker 4:Well, Mark Wayne's being killed off.
Speaker 2:This is not a Republican Democrat thing.
Speaker 6:We're not picking sides here this is stupidity thing.
Speaker 2:This is stupidity thing. You don't go up and pick on a fourth generation Teamster named Sean O'Brien and not expect to get beat in front of your mama If.
Speaker 6:Sean was on the show right now. I would tell him he should show up there, take his tie off, walk down the carpet, take your shoes off. Man, be respectful of the carpet, walk down the carpet and wait, because we're going to get out of his chair and actually walk up there, and the Teamsters should be promoting this, because here is somebody putting down the working man and putting down the working class.
Speaker 2:That's exactly a serious problem.
Speaker 6:That's a serious problem in this country.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so, sean's. So it's not his Twitter anymore, now it's his ex. So on Sean's ex. This is the Teamster official Twitter feed has a picture of this guy, mark Wayne, and he says a greedy CEO pretends like he's self-made. In reality he's just a clown and fraud with daddy's money Always has been. Quit the tough guy. Act in these Senate hearings. You know where to find me anytime, cowboy, and then he has a picture.
Speaker 2:Look then he has a picture of the guy standing at the podium in like on, like a step, so that he looks tall. We'll put this in the show notes. This is brutal. No, it's so good.
Speaker 6:Well, here you know what, though I gotta? I gotta say something. I gotta say something. I looked up Sean's ex feed and his his name is at Teamster SOB. This guy rules, this guy rules, he basically. Here's the thing. Don, if you're listening to this, or any of your people are listening to this, we want you on the show. I want to talk to you at 15 minutes is all we need. We 100% support everything you're trying to do. You're doing an awesome job.
Speaker 2:Keep it up and just tell us who you want us to vote for at this point. We'll make it happen. That's right. This is Ohio, we know how to vote.
Speaker 6:Listen, I'm a non-member board member of a union. I sit in on the board for the International Operators Union Union. People take offense to all this, and they should, because anything to degrades protections not unwarranted we're going to. We're going to talk about this for one second. Unions were created to correct problems and they're all on one basis Greed, absolutely Greed caused all of these things to come about. The Teamsters, the Operators Union, all these unions were brought upon by greed, not greed for the union, greed because people were like, listen, we need somebody to sit here for us and collectively bargain for us and help us get raises.
Speaker 2:Well, that's it. And look if you're sitting there going ah, unions suck, they never did anything for me, but you're not working today. Go thank a union. You enjoy your weekends. Go thank a union. You want to take Memorial Day off, labor Day off and sit there and bitch about the unions not doing anything good for you? Yeah, Give me a break. Go thank your union.
Speaker 6:Speaking of unions, we haven't talked about the UAW in a little bit, is that?
Speaker 2:right? Is that completely?
Speaker 6:settled, is it all?
Speaker 2:settled. It seems like it's mostly settled right.
Speaker 6:I mean it's, it's squashed in the media a little bit after the big hubbub and then everybody kind of the Sean Fain is that how you say his last name for the UAW?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Sean Fain reached 10 of the agreement with Ford on October 25th. They followed with GM on the 30th. Stalantis, I think, was the first one to work on a new deal and it seems like they have their contracts, are in the process of ratifying them. If you look at two days ago they reported that they were ratifying it and it looks like the Mack Truck strike the UAW guys that were on strike at Mack Truck. They had a very easy resolution which we kind of expected that I think Mack's always been very good to its people.
Speaker 6:We talked about that. They were way ahead of their time anyways and I think out of loyalty to the overall situation, the UAW for Mack had to step in for a little bit and take a moment and say listen, we have to support the other people. We're not saying we have a problem with Mack or Mack Volvo, but we got to support the rest of our brothers, we are supporting the UAW's mission, which we need to get some people caught up on their overall pay, which had been lacking because of COVID and things like that.
Speaker 2:So it's not even that. It's a hundred percent. It had been lacking, I'll give you that. But I think when you look at the white collar side and you look at the management side, and they've gotten 40 and 50 percent Pay raises in the last four years and they're doing it on the back of the labor force that is Manufacturing the products that they sell and they're not sharing that wealth. That's not fair and again, I I'm not gonna get into this whole political thing. This is a very political episode for us. I'm not gonna get into whose side is what and what's fair treatment or anything like that. I'm just gonna say this if you have ever owned a business or a race team or a football team, whatever, if you have record success, everybody should share in that. If you have record profits, you should pay record pay. That's it. Record profits equals record pay for your team. That's how it should be, and if you have a problem with that, you have a really different sense of right and wrong than what I have and, I think, what most people have.
Speaker 6:Yeah, for sure, for sure. And yeah, you're right, this is a very political episode. But again, we're not picking sides.
Speaker 2:All we're doing and I guess we were a little bit because we're talking about pro union Well, we're not picking sides in terms of right and left, or you know, whatever else we're picking sides in terms of working class people who are busy, who earn what they put on the table, who are working for a living, and that they deserve to partake in the success that comes from the work that they do.
Speaker 6:It's the foundation at everything that we have is based on exactly right, because nothing is given. Everything in this country is very much earned. This country was based on that Right and we have a very rare thing here and I don't think anybody listen to this could could disagree with that. It's rare in so many ways we have to support anybody that is helping everybody. At the end of the day. We talk about drivers. There's driver shortage. That helps everybody to help move things. The operators are moving things, whether union or non-union. This helps stuff gets done right.
Speaker 2:Well, you talk about construction, you talk about all these people. You know the migrants coming in, legal or illegal. They all need a place to stay, they all need hospitals to go to, they all need schools to send their kids to. So do we who live here. We need a bridge that's gonna stay up when we kind of drive across it. Right, we need more rail, we need more lanes, we need more homes for the growing population, and all that stuff needs to get built. And there's a shortage of operators, a Shortage of drivers, and at the same time, you're reading about all this stuff and people can't afford to make ends meet and housing is so expensive. But then you look at Wall Street. They're making record profits. You look at the C-suite and the executives and the shareholders Ford just approved a multi-billion dollar stock buyback. Yeah, it wasn't too long ago they were crying and saying they couldn't afford to pay their workers, but now they can afford a multi-billion dollar stock buyback. Come on, guys, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly at least pretend. At least give it a. Give it six months, like I will buy it in Q2. Let's, let's pretend that we didn't have the money for a little bit. I. Don't know, you know it's not even dry on the union contract. Multi-billion dollar stock buyback.
Speaker 6:I know and that's what's sickening about the whole thing, you know we can talk about this on another episode the Offer more stock to those that work there.
Speaker 2:Oh well, that used to be the way it was done Exactly. I'm not even talking about, you know, tesla or Apple. I mean, if you go back to the days of RJ Reynolds tobacco in Salem, north Carolina, a hundred years ago, that was the town of reluctant millionaires. For a reason because if you worked there, you were given shares of the company. The longer you worked there, the more shares you had. And there were guys that were working, you know, sweeping up shavings on the floor, and they woke up one day and said, well, we've got two hundred thousand dollars in stock options, and this was back when two hundred thousand dollars meant something.
Speaker 6:Well, and when that happened See, here's the other thing a lot of these companies that came around. They had stock options and options were given when people realized that they were worth money. It gave them, the employees, the opportunity to do one of two things use the worth of that to buy more stock or Provide for their families. That's either one of those, at the end of the day, is a good thing. That's those companies. Those companies for right or wrong, regardless of the product they were making, the model was sound. Yes, we are gonna take care of those that help us be who we are. We have to have that. Uew and I came to an agreement. We're also gonna offer you stock if you want to start a payroll deduction and you want to start buying stock within the company and be a member of the company you work for, even though You're you're under a collective bargaining agreement. I don't believe that's against the UAW rules.
Speaker 2:Mmm, we'd have to look into that, because I think that is part of the reason why a lot of Tesla employees are voting against Unionization, because they do get paid in stock. Yes, you know who would know who about this? Sean O'Brien Damn right, let's get his ass on the show. We'll ask him about.
Speaker 6:You need him on here. We're gonna have to. We have to reach out because I'm telling you whoever's running their Twitter. What do you say is a Twitter? You say X.
Speaker 2:I don't say anything. Okay, I ignore all that.
Speaker 6:It's well. Whoever's running their feed does an amazing job. They they tag a ton of people in there and it's there. It's updated regularly. I just started digging through it and you know he's out there. He's out there doing stuff and say with the UAW.
Speaker 2:So I don't know well, let's run an oval team commercial. See if he likes that and we'll try to get him online. Drink your oval team.
Speaker 4:Captain midnight from headquarters. Attention, members of the secret squadron, this is important. Keep yourself in top condition. Remember to do your best. You've got to be at your best because someday you may be called upon to pilot a jet plane across the Continent, even to take the wheel and bring a great ship safely into port, to drive an ambulance to disaster areas, and when the time comes, you've got to be ready for it. That's why I want all secret squadron members to drink oval team every day as I do. Yes, chocolate flavored oval team, either hot or cold, because oval team helps give you the nourishment you need for strength and staying power. When you add oval team to milk, just look at the extra food value you get. It's good and it does you good. So remember that's the secret squadron way. We drink oval team every day chocolate flavored oval team.
Speaker 1:Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on Spotify, apple podcast, google or wherever you find Podcasts.