The new product reveals are coming hot and heavy in the days after CES, with World of Concrete happening and the new Tier 5 emissions standards coming online driving innovation in ag and construction – but the big news is the all-new Volvo VNL line of Class 8 commercial trucks. Mike and Jo talk it all out, and throw in some suggestions for how to win a new Paccar Kenworth, too!
The new product reveals are coming hot and heavy in the days after CES, with World of Concrete happening and the new Tier 5 emissions standards coming online driving innovation in ag and construction – but the big news is the all-new Volvo VNL line of Class 8 commercial trucks. Mike and Jo talk it all out, and throw in some suggestions for how to win a new Paccar Kenworth, too!
Whether we're exploring the latest in trucking technology, talking about the trends that propel the industry forward, or uncovering stories about the dedicated individuals who keep the wheels of America turning, this is where the roar of the engines and pulse of progress come together. It's sublime, it's surreal. That's the Heavy Equipment Podcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the Heavy Equipment Podcast. I'm your host, joe Boris, here as ever, with Mike Switzer and Mike's on the road today. How are you doing, man?
Speaker 3:I'm doing good, just running from one site to another. I don't have all the you know. I don't have all the studios Staff to annoy me all the whole time when we're recording and yell at me because I go off script. So I think we're all right.
Speaker 2:That's good. It'll be interesting to see whether we stay on script more without the support staff.
Speaker 3:The Late Late Show used to have Biff Henderson right, david Letterman had him. He got off track. I don't even know what the guy's name is outside the booth, but I call him Biff. I think he doesn't like it, so maybe, maybe I'm being set up for failure sometimes. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's some of that for sure. Last week we were just getting back from CES Las Vegas and we're talking about all the great cool technology that's there. One of the things that was there that kind of got lost in the shuffle, do say in Bobcat they unveiled the AT450X. It's an industry first autonomous electric articulating tractor. This is really something for I would say it's a consumer model. It's about the smallest thing that you would get if you had a real farm, but it's probably the biggest thing you would get if you were not an actual farmer. It's like a hobby farm kind of size thing. In the world of computers and photography you'd call it a prosumer model. It's not consumer professional.
Speaker 3:I like that.
Speaker 2:Prosumer.
Speaker 3:You're a prosumer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're a pro at spending money. Exactly what I really like about this thing obviously the electric power. It's great there's so many noise regulations now, especially in these nice neighborhoods up in like Barrington and Naperville in Illinois, you can't really get started on stuff like this. If you're mowing a big yard or anything, you can't get started until 9.10 in the morning. There's going to be a couple of these landscaping companies that are going to buy these. They're going to get started at 7.00 and 8.00 AM. They're going to avoid the heat and they're going to just be fine. I think it's going to be a much better work environment for them early in the morning if they can avoid those noise regulations.
Speaker 2:The other thing I like about this is the remote control. They're calling it autonomous, but basically it's remote control where you can train the machine to like. If you're pulling a mower or something, you can train it on your yard or on your field and just hit repeat and it will go do the exact same path that you taught it to do. I think that's going to be huge.
Speaker 3:I think it's amazing. I mean Bobcat we've talked about Bobcat before. Bobcat is industry leader in innovation. Some people say Caterpillar is, but equally both of them are working on stuff together in their own world. This is a huge thing. I mean to be able to have something that's remote control. It learns. You can train it. The other thing I was looking at this and going over the specs on it earlier today. I immediately thought of golf courses. Yes, I was like you. Put a real mower on this thing, teach it what it needs to do, set it loose. You've already got the boundaries set up for the carts and everything. Give it a good pattern. That's kind of a weird industry too that has a hard time with stuff. So again, I thought that would be a good fit for it. Like you said, the farmer that's out there and he's got some manicured pasture land that he wants to mow down or keep something tidied up, why not let it go out there and do what you needed to do while you're off busy doing something else?
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. The other neat thing about this is you can do a lot more than just mow with it. I mean you can set up precision weeding, you can do spraying, you can just do material transport, like if you've got hay bales that you need to move from one part of the farm to the other. You just put them in, load it up and tell it take this back to the barn. It drives itself back, there's somebody there unloading it and you can have two or three of these things running on a big enough farm to just have them going in continuous operation without the need, most of the time without the need to have a driver in there.
Speaker 3:No, I totally agree. Listen, I feel and I'm going to use this term we are on the cusp of something massive. Yes, part of this is this technology because, to be totally serious and not sarcastic, we need as much of this as we can stand and we can have. There's no reason that at this day and age, we can't get something that we can train and we and it'll learn what we needed to do it. Like you said, spraying and weeding, even if you're trying to do some cultivating where you're trying to tear up some ground and reseed. That's right.
Speaker 3:I think it's awesome and I'm glad they unveiled it at CES. Bobcat had a whole bunch of like whisperings of stuff they were going to drop and we talked about this offline the other day. And CES is turning into its own little equipment show and its own right. Yeah, it used to be Hitachi and they talked about technologies and I would bop up the CES for a week after a week of being at different shows and I would go out there for a single day or two. It was a lot of consumer electronics, obviously that's its name. But now we're getting into this equipment realm where the OEMs are. They're throwing their electric and non-electric and any kind of software out there. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2:This is exactly right and this was really put out there by a group called Agtonomy. Agtonomy is kind of what the name implies. They're trying to develop autonomous agriculture. Their goal is to have a fully autonomous robotic farm happening by 2035. I think they're going to get there. They've got a really great quote in this release from Bobcat. It says by digitally transforming the equipment farmers know and trust, we can help them combat the daily challenges they face, such as labor constraints and the ever increasing demand for sustainable farming practices and specialty crops. That's Tim Bucher. He's the CEO of Agtonomy and I think this it's called the AT450X Definitely check it out. I think this is going to go a long way towards getting those hobby farms, those vineyards, those small organic farms that have such a hard time hiring people. I think this is going to help them really operate and really grow their business. This is great stuff.
Speaker 3:We need to push this technology out there's many people in as many ways as possible, because a lot of people have a lot of misunderstandings about all of it. They don't know how it fits, they don't know where it's going to fit, they're afraid of it, they want to dabble in it. They're not sure and when we need that. So, whether it's CES, world of Concrete, which is currently going on, there's the trucks.
Speaker 2:Oh, World of Concrete's a wild show too. They have wild tech happening out there right now as well. We'll get to that soon enough, but I mean there's a lot of really good stuff coming out of there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know. And then the truck shows coming up. There's a whole bunch of technology and autonomy to be released. I heard at the Indianapolis Truck Show in March. I just started working a day. I haven't even told you this yet I'm going to be going out there. I got to figure that out.
Speaker 2:So we'll do something live on the floor. That would be a good one.
Speaker 3:Why not why not we?
Speaker 1:got to keep the curbs up.
Speaker 2:You know what? They're going to see a student up when we launch heavy equipment video channel, the Hev. That's going to be wild. It only airs after 1 AM for 13 minutes. You got to be on live to catch it, otherwise you just get the scrambled version like the old Playboy channel, you can hear what's going on, but it's just multi-colored bars across your TV. I mean, isn't that better? Wasn't it always better when it was left to the imagination? You couldn't see the C-section stars 100%.
Speaker 3:I remember the old days that you'd have oh, who was his name? Oh, howard Stern. Did they hit a movie? Yeah, so Howard Stern would have these women on there after night and then they'd be on their shoot in Ping Pong Balls across the studio. So I think you do the same thing. It's CES 2025.
Speaker 2:We'll do that off the hood at the Duke Kenworth at the truck show. Hey, she makes it into the fish bowl, you get a free truck.
Speaker 3:She makes it yeah. The guy from Packard's going to be like. I didn't sign up for this.
Speaker 2:She's too good. She's too good. She got three in a row. Our dog broke out.
Speaker 3:Take her home.
Speaker 2:We didn't the longest time. In Packard Kenworth, they announced today that they have an OEM level agreement with Wave Charging. That's our buddy that was on the show with the wireless charging Congrats.
Speaker 3:So they are now the first Well, their product makes too much sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 3:The government's going to buy them and they're all going to move away. That's what's going to happen Just here.
Speaker 2:We're just going to have wireless charging on military bases. Nobody else is going to have it.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:But that's a big move because now I mean, if Kenworth really wanted to, they could come out right now and say, look, we're the only truck manufacturer, the only heavy truck manufacturer, that you can get full warranty and wireless charging right now, and nobody else has that. So I mean, even if you buy the stuff and put it on, now, you're dealing with aftermarket installation, dealer installed options, this, that and the other. This is fully OEM supported. It's supported by not only Packard and Kenworth but also by Dana, which is Dana. Obviously Dana Axels is the supplier there. So everybody's on board with this. They're all high-fiving each other, and good for them, man. I think it's a solid product and it's good for them to have it.
Speaker 3:So you know, down in Australia they're looking at this. They got the welder all charged up and ready to rock. They're getting ready to plug it right into the truck and then the guy from Wave is like no, you don't need that, it's wireless. The guy, how the hell does it get in there?
Speaker 2:What are you doing Magnet? What are the? What are the jug of the loaves Magnets?
Speaker 3:Oh God, yes, it's funny, though the drive Packard products.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there are, will make them the official cover photo of this this week's episode as we go on the quest to discover the fifth loco.
Speaker 3:I remember the jeans Geez. I had three people in those. They were walking around.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, somebody else who likes the wired stuff and gets into some pretty wild stuff is the Swedes and Volvo. Yeah, volvo has been going nuts. This week they got two new compact excavators. These are diesel excavators, pretty conventional stuff, but obviously you know increased operator comfort, better filtration, better fuel efficiency, better stability, the things are on, you know, a little bit different shocks and obviously better software and operating software. And you know this is supposed to be a revolutionary thing. It's a new product, it's a complete update of their existing line.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I saw, you know three and a half ton and a four ton offering, which in the mini a lot of people are like what, what does that mean? And you know three and a half ton, four ton, does that make a big difference? Each one has its own place in the marketplace. And you know the 10% more fuel efficiency that they're touting. That by itself, for a single landscaper that may not make one bit of difference, but in a large fleet, somebody that's got 100 of these rolling around, or if you're a oil and gas installation company, oh yeah, it makes a huge difference. I mean, some of those guys have 7500 minis in their fleet. So you take 10% and knock it right off their budget, you have something there.
Speaker 3:And when dear Hitachi was importing, when they were partnered and they were importing the minis, there were a couple large oil and gas installation companies that were switching to them because of their fuel efficiency at the time and maintenance costs were reduced. But probably Volvo in North America has always been, depending on where you're at. For the heavy equipment side it's been touched and go based on, you know, dealer support, dealer items, just like anything.
Speaker 3:Caterpillar is strong in one area. They're not Deer. Same thing. Case case is a huge following in pockets of the United States because of the dealers. The dealers make it. So if you had a good dealer you can go out there and try one of these. You need to because they have a lot of good features on them and all the way up into their large heavy equipment and then some of their demolition equipment that uses a Volvo base they do a great job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree fully. You know we've had Ray on the show as well, dr Ray Gellant, who runs Volvo construction equipment here in the US. One thing that, because we're talking about 10% better fuel efficiency, that's 10% better fuel efficiency while the engine is running. But this has a new feature that's probably really familiar to people if they've got a kind of a premium vehicle certainly if they got a Volvo vehicle but it's probably new to the construction world and this means that their fuel savings actually gonna be quite a bit more than 10%. They have auto shut off.
Speaker 2:So that means if you get out of the vehicle, there's not a need for power, the engine shuts itself off. So, if you like, let go of the controls, you stop what you're doing, you lean over to talk to somebody, you're off throttle, it's not gonna run the engine, and then when you get back to what you're doing, it just cranks over again, just like a car. You pull up to a red light, the engine dies. Red light turns green. You take your foot off the brake, the engine cranks itself back up and starts going again. And this is kind of the first time that it's been used on a small piece of equipment like that. I'm not small, but a compact equipment like this. It's gonna be something that's gonna take some getting used to and it looks like it's easy to defeat. You can just flip up basically press a button and turn it off for guys that don't like it, but once you get used to it I think it's really gonna save a lot of it, because how much fuel is spent just idling.
Speaker 3:So I can tell you that most fleets and listen, I talk to a lot of fleet managers and most fleets, a lot of them try to be within 10% at idle time and it never happens. A lot of fleets run in that 20 to 30% realm, that's it. And there's a bunch of fleets that run in the 30 to 50 realm because of the type of work they're doing. Compact equipment is some of the worst Telehandlers, material handling stuff in what we call support equipment. It gets fired up, it's running, it's sitting there. There may be a guy with it but he may have to jump out of it and give a hand at sitting over there idling. I know a lot of the utility crews that would do water taps. When you're trying to tap a water line or fix a broken water tap, the guy's running. He doesn't shut it off, he jumps down, he gets down in the hole. He's trying to help the guy with the tap because he's got water blown all over. They get the thing sealed up, he gets back on the machine and keeps working. They never get shut off. Their productivity rate is only about 50 percent of their actual runtime. What happens then is the fleet managers look at that and go well, the hour meter said it ran eight hours. You got it down there for five. But that project code, phase code, whatever you want to call it we're charging that for eight. Yeah, so internally you've got a bunch of wasted costs. If you're in a service oriented business and you're billing clients based off of time and material and machines ran, you've got some excess billing involved and anything you know.
Speaker 3:For a long time the argument between auto shutdown was safety hey, I got a guy doing something. This thing shuts off because I'm sitting there for five minutes, which is extreme. But that would be the argument we would get. We would demo stuff like this. What do I do? The fact that they have streamlined that, just like a vehicle, you stop up, stop light, it shuts off. We all know somebody that still to this day, turns that off. But those numbers are dwindling year, season after season, year after year. So where people are just like, oh yeah, it does everything it's supposed to and I don't worry about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what we have to get to with the equipment. That's what we need to be.
Speaker 2:We will. And I think, as people come to understand it like, I remember having a conversation with a guy and I said why do you turn that off? Like I have a Volvo XC90, which is kind of a premium SUV. Right, it's an expensive car, it's a nice car Guy was sitting in it with me. He goes oh, I hate that. And hit the button and I'm like first of all, don't hit the button in my car. But that's a different question. And I said why? Why don't you like that?
Speaker 2:And he's like well, it's just burning up your starter. And I was like, well, no, it's not. He's like what do you mean? It's not burning up your starter. And I was like no, it doesn't work that way. It like stops it just like one degree or two degrees past top dead center with a charge of fuel in there and it's good for X amount of time. And it's going to hit it with that spark plug and it's just that that's just going to carry it over and it's going to rev over. It doesn't even run the starter. And he was like it does what now? And I explained it to him again and he was like that's really cool.
Speaker 2:I thought it was like burning up my starter. I was going to have to replace my starter. Like no man like this is this? We're way beyond the old. You know Cadillac or Buick, you know eight, four, six deal. We're like into some real smart technology now. So it's good to see that and I think you know what you said was exactly right. There's going to be guys who turn it off and every year there's going to be fewer and fewer of those because they're just going to get used to it.
Speaker 3:You brought up a very good point with that eight, four, six deal and some of the other platforms that took that technology, but I think that the OEMs are doing a disservice to the purchasing base by not explaining how some of this works.
Speaker 2:No, you can't do that. We have a country that does not understand how a four cycle engine works. The average consumer in this country has no conception of how anything in their automobile works. It's not like it was back in our day where you had drivers, ed, and they taught you about. You know, suck squeeze bang all that.
Speaker 2:None of that exists. Think of the nightmare that Nissan had rolling out CVTs in this country and it was 100 percent based on people not understanding what was happening, and it was so bad. It was so bad, michael, that when Honda in 2014, when they announced their CVT, they put fake stops in it where it would just stop doing its CVT thing for a couple of seconds so that it would feel like it was shifting gears, because otherwise the Americans would complain. It don't do that in Europe, it doesn't do that in Japan, because those are just educate their consumers. But we can't educate the consumers on that level If you started explaining to them how auto stops start work, if you started explaining to them. I mean, we're now 30 years into V tech and I know guys who are car guys who couldn't tell you how V tech works.
Speaker 3:No, they believe it's some some way that the oil pressure holds the valve open instead of like. But anyways, that's actually a good point. I didn't think about it that way. And the other thing that you know, we always seem to run into the whole four cycle thing and the CVT thing is spot on, because I remember the Honda experience and guys yelling that they have a belt in their transmission and it's going to break and there's no way to change it. And then you're like what are you talking about? You know what I'm saying, like I do. You could have the same thing going on in the heavy equipment, you know, whether it's compact or large. By educating them, you could inadvertently scare them off. I suit your saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could make it worse. You know it's like if you started talking about so I'll give you a good example. In this press release, volvo is talking about how they've optimized the hydraulics to use fewer parts and therefore have fewer failures. Because most failures in a hydraulic system happen at couplings right. They happen where one piece connects to another. It's not so much like in the middle of the line. It doesn't really work that way. It happens at the couple.
Speaker 2:So if you can remove three or four components, for every component you remove, you remove two couplings right, because there's inflow and outflow. So every component you take out, you're removing two failure points. So if they can take six or seven components out of that system, they can eliminate 15 failure points, kind of right off the bat. So they've done that. But if you start explaining to a lot of people hey, we've been able to integrate this component with this component, so that now there's only two things the first thing they're some of these guys are going to say is oh well, now if it breaks, I got to replace them both instead of just one, and it's like yeah, but that's not what fails, dude.
Speaker 3:No, and I think a lot of people don't understand. Well, first of all, OK, we're not all engineers, so thank God for that. We're getting into an era of operators and construction people. It happened before with the skid steers, but it happened very quietly. A lot of technology was introduced into skid steers. A lot of things were rolled out quickly. You have to get to a point where the operator just accepts the training and what the machine is going to do and you need to have people that the older generations and the guys that were forced to work on what they ran, so that it made it throughout the day, depending on what you were doing. There's a lot to that. I think now you're in a totally different era. Vehicles vehicles went through this. What 30, 40 years ago you know? 40 years ago you were working on your stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you had a car, I mean, and you could see it in the owner's manuals. The owner's manual used to be, you know, full of how to change spark plugs and what kind of spark plugs to buy. And now you don't have an owner's manual anymore. You have like an operator manual that teaches you how to operate the radio. And part of that is because the vehicles are better now. They're just built better, they don't require as much maintenance. Used to be that if you didn't change the oil every 3,000 miles, you'd have a real problem after a couple of years. Now, 10,000 miles, if that, you know. That should be fine. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:The only thing left anymore that has a technical guide on it is the heavy equipment. Heavy equipment has grease points. They have service points. They talk about how to prepare for transport when you get into, like great example, the Mac Volvo operators manual for a new semi truck. It's a phone book, yeah, but it tells you everything you can do to set up the dash the way you want it. Over speed alerts, this, that whatever Dude does, everybody read that. No, but the ones that are savvy do, and that truck works for them at the end of the day, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know you made a really good point. You've got to have a generation of operators that just accepts the training and just kind of goes, ok, that's how you do it, and then they will adapt the truck or the vehicle to do what they need it to do. A lot of the older guys and I'm including myself in this they don't really do that. They try to adapt the vehicle to do what their old vehicle did 100% sense.
Speaker 3:It's not a Swiss Army knife. It's built for a purpose. I think that's always the big misconception too. You know the next thing we're going to talk about, that that purpose it's specifically built for what it does Exactly Right.
Speaker 2:So what? What Mike's alluding to here? This is the new. Again a new thing from Volvo. This is an electric materials handler. This is their first electric material handler. It's called the EW 240.
Speaker 2:This is a really neat thing. It kind of exists to do really repetitive tasks and kind of exists to not move around a whole lot. And so, instead of being electric in what has become the conventional sense of it, has a battery and, you know, alternator and all this other stuff. They just plug it into the grid. Yep. So I mean, there's a cab, it's a big cable, it's a big DC cable that runs out of this thing, but they just plug it into the grid and you know they can keep this thing running 24 hours a day. And whether it's loading up, you know, scrap iron into a haul truck, or whether it's pulling up, you know, rocks and stones from a quarry or a mining rig, or or it's just, you know, picking up containers and moving them around a yard, it doesn't have to move around too much to do what it needs to do. So being able to plug it into the wall, basically, I think that makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 3:And here's the other thing. So Centabogon years ago, they came out with an electric material handler, freaked everybody out. It was like no, you hardware this in to your service. This is the power you need. You don't need to worry about diesel fuel. Grease it like a normal machine. It's going to be great. Those that are in the South say grease, grease.
Speaker 2:But I digress Grease lightning.
Speaker 3:Why is grease lightning Grease lightning?
Speaker 1:So, and then to take it a step further, centabogon, and I think there was another manufacturer around the same time, fuchs, I think it was.
Speaker 3:They had a pedestal machine. That's a truly dedicated piece. It doesn't even move around but does the same thing. It just handles material with an operator in it and all it does is sort and categorize and throw it in the shredder based on what it is. It just feeds that. So when you have a material handler on wheels and you're trying to traverse the whole site and separate things and move materials around, you know that are getting dropped off. Electric is kind of a weird option, but not really when all the guys doing is just trying to reposition to help unload a truck or you know, or put it on a conveyor belt or anything like that. Yeah, I look forward. I hope Volvo continues with this. I hope they get into some pedestal mounts or something like that. The industry needs solid players in this. Centabogon is a solid player. Volvo is in there, exodus, which is bought by Caterpillar.
Speaker 2:Caterpillar has their own, you know, just like any market.
Speaker 3:I'm for anybody that's going to build a solid product and throws another hat in the ring Anytime a purchasing guy's got to go out and get a quote on something. Yeah, so it was Fuchs. I'm almost positive it was Fuchs. They still make a stationary pylon on pedestal mount pylon mount material handler like this. There's just a little bit different just in terms of the shape and the way it looks.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit different, but it's very simple. It's got, you know, a. It's got like almost a 40 ton operating weight rating. It's got 132 kilowatt electric motor.
Speaker 2:I think the real difference here is that theirs have kind of always been electric, so they can't beat that drum, they can't put it in the engine, they can't put it in the engine.
Speaker 2:They can't put it in the engine, they can't put it in the engine. I think the real difference here is that theirs have kind of always been electric, so they can't beat that drum. They can't pound that sustainability drum in the same way that Volvo is doing and that Caterpillar is doing and that Kamatsu is doing. So they're saying look, we've got an electric option now. Look how cool we are, we're saving the planet, we're cutting back diesel emissions, we're making it so that you don't have to worry about fuel costs while you're, you know, or worry less about fuel costs while you're pricing out this job. And for these guys that have been doing electric for a really long time, they don't really have the ability to go pound that drum as a new thing. But you know, we'll do that for them. Well, we'll tell them they've been doing a great job all this time and you know we're glad to have more players in it, but just shows that they had a good idea all along.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Fuchs Fuchs is another one, you know, when they were bought by Terax and Terax brought them into their family of companies. That's a major player. They created and invented quite a bit. Terax is a you know, everybody knows Terax for their huge ability to buy up companies. They take them, they refine them a little bit, sometimes they go back out on their own, but Terax has always been that way in the industry. Yeah, and you know, fuchs was always a great player. Yet Fuchs has sent a bow gun Volos getting into it. This is great, great stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good for everybody. It's good for the industry. I don't want to spend too much time on this because there's really really big news from Volvo that we haven't talked about yet. But Volvo has completely redesigned their VNL the new, all new VNL line. They launched that this week. They've got six cab configurations. They've got four exterior and interior trim levels. They have completely redesigned this thing and, you know, for the first time since 2007. So we're talking now about 15 plus.
Speaker 3:I think it's long overdue. I can't believe it's been that long.
Speaker 2:I mean, it just goes to show how much further ahead of the industry the last VNL was when it came out in 2007. It had, you know, it had a lot of features like ADAS and city safety and, you know, automatic braking and lane keeping and adaptive cruise control that no other truck had back in 2007. That are now still premium features, but not totally revolutionary. So now they've got a much more revolutionary system. They've got a 24 volt electrical infrastructure throughout the truck instead of a 12 volt, which is going to make it easier to power things like autonomous, like cameras, like communication, internet of Things, connectivity.
Speaker 2:They're going to do a, you know, a fuel cell. They're going to do a battery electric. They're going to do a hydrogen diesel flex fuel, similar to like what Cummins has had. They're really really going nuts with this thing. And what's what's really? I think the most exciting to this is that on the diesel side as well as, you know, the CNG side, you've got that I shift transmission, which nobody ever complained about at least, not that I've ever heard no and now they're getting 30% faster shift speeds up to 1,950 pound feet of torque.
Speaker 3:Well, here's the thing Remember when that was at the VNL 860? And that was when that was launched, and that's what we're talking about in the. You know, just before 2010, 2007 ish, they had the square nose on it, stuff like that. That truck was revolutionary for its time. Yes, and that's why I'm saying I'm blowing it away that it's been that long for them to redesign it.
Speaker 3:But they left off. Forget that they. They made a ton of improvements over 15 years to the older VNL model and between the iDrive and the, the Volvo engine technology, you know, they redesigned about 90% of it. They carried about 10% of the things over from the last era of the VNL because they had refined them moving into this stage and I one thing I really like about this they didn't.
Speaker 2:It's not 10% of the 2007 trucks, it's 10% of the optimized updated VN. Exactly right Go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yes, and one thing that I like and I think that it's very important some of the trucking guys get frustrated because they can't just go in, grab what they would call the builder's book and absolutely customize a truck exactly the way that they want it. Right, yeah, but Volvo basically said here here's four different versions of this truck, from a day cab to a full on over the road walking high rise sleeper. But you can still customize a lot of things with it. A couple of nights ago I went through and I built a truck on their website a couple of different ways and I was still impressed at the amount of stuff you could do. You could still go through and select certain features. They still had a pretty good color palette. There's a bunch of trucking companies that are getting away from that. They're shrinking their colors. I think that's a very good thing, because, as we and one of the other things that Volvo talks about is is part of the redesign reason it was they got to a point where they needed to gain arrow efficiency and to get the arrow efficiency out of it. They had to basically throw the existing VNL aside and say listen, we know what. We got there. What do we got to do to get beyond that, and I think you're going to see that with everybody. We you know CES Peter bill had their truck of the future on there. That's a huge thing, you know.
Speaker 3:I say that a lot about a lot of these products, but we're in an era right now Look at what we talk about episode after episode. We talk about constantly people dropping new products. People are always dropping new products. We got major changes, yeah, and I think we're in this cool era where we're transitioning. We're transitioning to electric, we're transitioning down the road, we're positioning ourselves into hydrogen. We are still going to have diesel capability, unlike any other right now, and every time a manufacturer like Volvo does a redesign and drops one of their trucks, we need to pay attention to it. That's why I sat down and I built a couple off their website. It shows you where they're going to go, because what they're releasing now is really a stepping stone to where we're going to be. Every model change is kind of like that, but I think right now they're more profound than ever, yeah, and I think you're making some bigger leaps than you ever had.
Speaker 3:I mean, look at Peterbilt. Peterbilt had the 379 for how many years. The cab had some tweaks and stuff to it, but that looked like a classic truck. When Peterbilt released the 589, everybody completely lost it because they had a one-piece raked windshield art to fit the driver. It still looks like a classic truck, but not. The windshield goes up a little bit higher. Everybody was like, oh my God, this is the worst thing ever. And the last 379 build slot I heard was sold for something like over half a million dollars because basically people were taking bids for it.
Speaker 3:Ok, get back to the VNL. These trucks coming out now are way more advanced and we have to be willing just to accept it and understand that that truck is going to help you. I go back to all the times that our older drivers get into the newer stuff and they go. I didn't think I was going to like that and it always starts out the same way. I didn't think I was going to like that, but that truck does this, this and this that my old truck would never do.
Speaker 3:The other thing I'm going to tell you if you've ever been on a hill, you ever pulled Jellico, you've ever been on 68 going east, 30% faster shifts on top of a shift. That's faster than you'll ever make manually, and I know there's a lot of drivers out there that say I can outshift that auto shifting manual. You can, first of all. Second of all, the gain 30% on top of an already lightning fast speed by coupling your transmission shift with the powertrain that you're using to provide. Yeah, that is incredible. You're talking lightning fast power changes on something that's grossing 80,000 or more. That takes a lot of work. That's what I'm getting at with that. It does a lot of work.
Speaker 2:There's another aspect, another neat trick that this VNL does. This new generation VNL does that. You might not have caught because you're not doing a lot of over the road stuff, but they have what's called the integrated Volvo parking cooler. This is a climate control feature that will heat or cool the cab. It uses the 24 volt battery system and it'll allow the driver of the truck, even if it's a diesel, to hotel in the truck without idling. So you can have your climate control, your air conditioning, your heat in the truck without idling. So if you're parked in an area where idling is prohibited or you just don't want to be idling and sitting there with that noise in those fumes, this is something that's going to enable the driver to still be comfortable, still enjoy their evenings, still sleep comfortably, without idling the truck and burning more fuel. Personally, I think that's a huge upgrade and something that a lot of guys are going to really appreciate once they get inside of it.
Speaker 3:I did see that a couple of months ago when I was looking at that and I started diving into the technology behind that. It's crazy to think because I would say what? 20 years ago you had the small twin cylinder engines that appeared on every over the road truck. That would allow them to heat and cool the truck without the engine running. Remember those kids in their store? After today they're being upfitted on everything possible and they work.
Speaker 3:At first everybody was like I don't know, I just let the truck run, I don't need all that extra stuff.
Speaker 3:Well, when I was a kid and whether we were doing something with our race car stuff and pulled into a truck stop late, or even when we had our own semi trucks, when you parked the truck and walked up to the truck stop to go in and do whatever you were going to do, just the overwhelming rattle and the parking lot was crazy.
Speaker 3:There's jokes from the older old timers that then thought that that was quiet because they would tell you how in the early 80s and late 70s the louder Detroit diesels of the era and all that stuff would be in their idling. And then God forbid somebody hits an air starter in the middle of the morning and wakes up, 17 people Think about how far we've come with that. And now we're talking about something that's going to make zero noise because the thing is going to work off of a battery reserve 24 volt which gives it much longer runtime than a 12 volt. It's the same principle as running 240 versus 120. And I don't know, I just I can't get over that. You're in an era now where you're like no, I trucked, saturn, did everything I needed to do while I took my 10 hour break, and then make a noise at all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's running and other things like that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and I think that that's where it's going and I think you're going to have a couple of nights of these guys, especially when we start getting into the hydrogen and into the electric, when they pull into the stop and they plug into that 500 kilowatt charging or they pull over their wireless charging pad and start charging up, where they're going to really notice the difference and somebody's going to pull in and one of these old pizzas or something like that and they're going to be, you know or not, even that. I mean, let's just keep it all Volvo.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to come in with a previous generation diesel Volvo and they're going to keep everybody awake and everybody's going to look at them side eye until until that bright, you know, white orb appears and Terminator walks away and part of the trucks melted off, and then the guy sleeping next to the truck on the outside. Actually, if you saw that bright light, what the hell? God damn son.
Speaker 1:What is it?
Speaker 2:I need your clothes and your motorcycle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, close your boots and your motorcycle, oh.
Speaker 2:Man well, that's great stuff. I think we've touched on the Volvo thing. Let's close off the show here with Hitachi. Hitachi has unveiled six new Z axis, seven excavators and a new magic wand.
Speaker 3:I got enough. I can't say anything about the magic one.
Speaker 2:Let's just talk about the excavators.
Speaker 3:You know let's go back to the zaxis lineup. So let's talk about the last time Hitachi dropped. How many, how many miles? We're telling seven, seven, six, six models.
Speaker 2:There's sixes, but they're dash sevens, the zax is the models of the dash seven.
Speaker 3:I'll get that all mixed up by the time we get them talking. Next thing oh, the touchy people are gonna say I didn't know, we released 12. But anyways they. The last time they dropped that much, I gotta believe, was somewhere around interim tier four, when they were when they were partnered with deer, and all of a sudden they dropped the G series. And when deer dropped the G series and they dropped the zaxis dash, I want to say five Can't remember which one it was, but it's interim tier four and then you had two for a final right after that. That's when they had a full model release like that sweet, it's all the way through right. I'm very curious to see how this plays out, and touchy has talked about tier five technology for years.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I was getting is. This is all their tea, this is all of their zaxis lineup, but now with some upgraded control systems, some better, you know aerial what they call peripheral vision camera, so it's like that 360 degree Parking camera that you've gotten your cars have got a couple of new connectivity things, but this is really all about tier five.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and tier five to a lot of people are like, oh my god, really like we just got tier four, we didn't get, just get tier four. Tier four has been out for a very long time.
Speaker 2:Tier five is that for emissions 2008? I was thinking of 15, it looks like 2008. Yes, whoa.
Speaker 3:Well, 2008 was interim tier four. Yeah, because tier four was just a little bit too aggressive. They're having a hard time. So they got lobbied, they worked with interim tier four, then they went to tier four and I want to say there was a lot of tier four technology dropped in the 2005 is be. Would it be 2015?
Speaker 2:2015 knows when you had to be on tier four.
Speaker 3:That's when a lot of the manufacturers all were like, hey, we're dropping tier four. It was the last time you've seen a major update like this and I I think that a lot of the manufacturers they're gonna be scratching their heads about tier five. Same thing is tier four some of a running from it, some of her hit and a header on.
Speaker 3:Hitachi has always been out front Working on technology with the powertrain and, if I remember right and if I was reading the article on this, I think a lot of this is still a suzu powered. The suzu has been out front of the Emissions technology. Yeah, since, since the beginning, they were like you need us to make this thing. All right, we're gonna work on it a little bit more. Here you go.
Speaker 2:No, and I think that that's what you're starting to see is the global brands and not that caterpillars not a global brand. Obviously, caterpillar operates the world?
Speaker 3:No, but there are a lot of brands that drop the same product across the globe. Languages in it.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and Hitachi is one of those companies and I think those global guys Because China, because Europe is already in tier five or already in starting to implement tier five. This is where their major market is. You know, you look at Singapore and things like that. So these companies that are doing business there already have tier five figured out and they're just rolling it out now and you know we're gonna be. I'm worried and I'm gonna say this this is not a political show and I'm not Suggesting that one candidate is better than the other. I'm. You know, that's not what this is meant to say. What I'm gonna say is that I'm concerned that whoever gets elected next, whoever is running this country two years from now, if they don't pay attention, if they listen to their lobbyists and they listen to these corn huskers out here in the middle of fly over nowhere and Allow themselves to be lobbied out of tier five and allow themselves to be lobbied out of electric vehicles and Hydrogenization and all this, we are going to fall way behind as an industrial nation.
Speaker 3:We talked about that I don't know if it's two episodes or three episodes ago One four-year administration change could put us back and I don't think I'm exaggerating at all 20 years. I think that's right, because the other thing that's going to happen the US doesn't lead the way on this. First of all, we are a very close second in a lot of ways on Emissions technology and emissions mandates. You're up in the UK, everybody knows, pushes this, leads the way, makes it work, and Then the US will be able to pick up from that. And the only thing that I think is going to be slightly different and might skew my 20-year projection if we falter for four years is that the OEMs looking at it from a global basis are going to say, no, we're building in any ways and it's coming. And I think.
Speaker 3:I think you're gonna see a lot of that. You already see it with the trucks. The trucks already are set up in such a way where there's some fine-tuning and some tweaks that are done for North America. Other than that, no, you know, you're getting the same truck and a lot of cases.
Speaker 2:If you look Historically, you look at the last 40 years, and you say, yes, I think Europe is leading the way. But if you remember how bad the air pollution was in China in 2014, 2015, where they had billboards of blue skies to remind everybody what the world used to look like before all of their heavy industrialization, they have really clamped down on that, and the way that they have just 180 degree turnaround on that is really shocking. And I saw something the other day that you know General Motors is selling more cars in China than they are in the United States, and a lot of people, a lot of people are always carrying that China Bandwagon and it comes from Beijing right for the Olympics.
Speaker 3:Yes, and that really that really like open that up to everybody's eyes saying wait a minute, how are they doing this? People walking around with masks? They had to shut down work and production for I don't remember the days Prior to the Olympics to let the air clean up. Let's not forget that the United States was not far away from that, you know, when we were going through our industrial age and our industrial revolution in this country.
Speaker 2:Oh, in the 70s, there in the set, michael in yes, smog and LA was so bad. They had days that they said don't go outside where you live, where you are right now in Cleveland, the GD River caught on fire. Michael yes, hi, over there was on fire. Do you know how bad Pollution has to be for the water to be on fire? And this is the problem. That happens, and this happens with every issue with every, whether your left, wing, right wing, it don't matter.
Speaker 2:This happens with everybody. This is part of the human condition. You have a problem, you then take action to solve the problem, then the problem gets solved, then you forget you had a problem, you stop doing the thing to fix the problem and then you have a problem again. We are now currently in the United States. We are at the phase where we have forgotten that there was the problem and we are now dialing back the regulations and we're threatening now, rather, to dial back the regulations and the clean air acts and the EPA protections that cleaned this all up for us.
Speaker 2:But guys that are our age, who lived with that, who saw the smog, who know about the river burning on fire, we don't want it to go back to that, but I'm, I'm concerned. I'm concerned that there's too much money in the United States and there's not enough memory to stop this from going back. And I don't care who's in power, I don't care if it's a Republican or Democrat, I'd like to be able to breathe the air and drink the water. That's it. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think. No, what you're saying is very sound and and it doesn't matter which side of the aisle both, both sides you could, if some chance we had a.
Speaker 3:Republican or Democrat president and at a Republican or Democrat president from opposite sides, the. If the lobbyists get their way and they politically work the machine to roll the clock back, there is a segment of the American public that are going to say, yeah, that's perfect. Look at what we're doing. We're America, we do what we want. Yeah, 20 years from now, we were stupid, that's right. And again, we don't get into politics. On which side? That's just the way we are socially Okay. Well, that's just humanity. You know, you have to be able to breathe the air, drink the water and eat the fish, or else it doesn't matter what you're doing Because you're dead. That's right.
Speaker 2:And we know we, we talk about this as an industry. Okay, implementing something, and in six months it's forgotten about. You implement a new form and in six months your office can't figure out which form to use because who knows why, everybody went brain dead and they don't know what to do.
Speaker 3:You implement a safety procedure. One season later everybody cannot remember, because we all have chronic amnesia and no one remembers that they have to have a specific thing when they go to work, for you know US Steel which is just bought by Nipon.
Speaker 3:They don't remember any of this, right? Okay, that is a social form. That is us as a. We completely lose touch with stuff over and over and over again. Yeah, it's the condition that's. Yeah, that's what I was looking for. It's the human condition. We can't let it happen, we can't let it halt progress, because I believe and I've read a number of articles where if you let the natural progression of halt or you stop technology.
Speaker 3:People want to talk about inflation. Let's talk about what it might take to stop when we realize there's a problem after the fact. That's exactly right, and we'll close it out with this. You know, hit single from the human league.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right and we'll close it out with this. You know hit single from the human league.
Speaker 1:Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google or wherever you find podcasts.