This latest HEP-isode marks the debut of the new "Space Cowboy" opening segment, a visit to Work Truck Week with the new electric Kia commercial van, Caterpillar's $700 million investment in a new engine plant, and a new electric scissor lift from JCB. All that, and a little bit of Reaganomics to close out your busy week.
This latest HEP-isode marks the debut of the new "Space Cowboy" opening segment, a visit to Work Truck Week with the new electric Kia commercial van, Caterpillar's $700 million investment in a new engine plant, and a new electric scissor lift from JCB. All that, and a little bit of Reaganomics to close out your busy week.
Welcome back to the latest episode of the heavy equipment podcast. I'm your host, joe Boris, here as ever, with Mike hot, mike Switzer on the new old iMac.
Speaker 2:To rebuild at the rebuild center. The reman we got her back.
Speaker 1:It's a reman.
Speaker 2:No, I pulled this thing out of the closet. I'm like I gotta have something better. No, this.
Speaker 1:It sounds good, though I think it's going to.
Speaker 2:They don't like it in the booth. They don't like this. They say I'm distracted enough as it is, or they can't see you behind it.
Speaker 1:They feel like you're hiding. That's the problem. That's the problem.
Speaker 2:All I hear is tapping on the glass.
Speaker 1:Well, you keep drinking those Monaco vodka, tequila things. They want you drinking water.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you something about Monaco. We're going to plug them for a second. That's the best drink in a can you'll ever find. It's available at any gas station. That's worth anything. If they don't have Monaco, don't get gas there.
Speaker 1:Keep on driving. Well, speaking of driving, you were all over this last week. You were in Detroit, you were in Michigan, you drove down to Indianapolis for their work truck week. You've just been all over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was in Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus, Akron.
Speaker 1:Yeah, big circle.
Speaker 2:Now what we did. I had to go up to Detroit for a couple of meetings. There's a good vendor up there of mine People in the heavy equipment world that don't know who they are. Midland tool and supply also superior. They do tool sales for industrial tooling rentals. They have a full rental fleet. They work on a lot of our stuff. So I was up there with meetings with them and then Indianapolis for the NTEA Work Truck Week.
Speaker 1:That's the one. Work Truck Week was interesting, right? So there's a couple of stories that come out of there. Green Power announced a new boxed truck body. The freight liner has a less expensive electric version now of their their glider chassis with some cheaper batteries in there. Morgan truck body showed off some lightweight aluminum and composite stuff that they say is all super aerodynamic. I'll talk about it for a second.
Speaker 2:So the biggest, one of the biggest issues we are going on right now with the truck body market is the weight. So composite and plastic truck bodies are the way of the future. We're going to have to keep going there. The aluminum stuff works. It's a little bit clunky and some of the hardware doesn't last as long, but the composite stuff seems to be holding up and that that was a really good booth. They had a lot of good product out there and if you combine that with a Mac MD stuff you could build yourself a serious service truck and have a pedestal on the back for the mobile crane. That'd be a serious truck. That's actually we're looking at building one here next, next year or the year after.
Speaker 1:That's going to be really cool. I don't know. I feel like I can't get excited about it, though it's not that it's not a great concept. It's like my first job in the industry way back in 1997. I feel like we were talking about composite commercial truck bodies to do well, they went through a big learning curve right.
Speaker 2:So they had. You know, a long time ago you had cold issues, they had problems with cracking, they had fatigue in the heat. When you had them in the Southwest, they didn't hold up very well. They became brittle.
Speaker 1:No, they delaminate under the UV light.
Speaker 2:And then now the Southwest is even hotter because all the solar farming which is creating vicious heat winds. That's actually a bigger problem now, depending on where you're at out there, but they have done a lot of chemical makeup with those two to combat that. I think it's going to come a long way. We still got a little bit to go, I think. No matter what you do, you're going to do, you polymer is going to become brittle at some point and it's going to break down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it does seem like they've made enough progress where they're using, like, an aluminum frame with composite panels, so the composites aren't necessarily structural, which, yeah, it's not the way that we were trying to do it back then. Yeah, it does seem like an interesting thing. And then, obviously, kia was there for the first time. They have their new modular little delivery van concept, their PBV concept.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw that I walked by that thing. It's like for anybody that's doing package type deliveries or running around their career services. There is nothing else right now on the market that is compact, shorter, wheelbase. You can parallel park that thing anywhere or, if you want to really trick somebody out, I think it's maneuverable enough that if you had a one and a half parallel parking spaces, you can wiggle it right in there without having to back up, freak everybody out to think you're some kind of Jedi. You just slid it in their sideways. I think that's a really good ride. And fleets that do a lot of parts running or organ transport companies, anybody that does any medical device work that's lightweight. If those fleet guys aren't looking at that, they need to be introduced to it and I think Kia is starting to get aggressive on the marketing with it, which they need to do. It's going to amp up the awareness of it, but they really need to get out there and maybe hit up some of the fleets with it.
Speaker 1:Well, they were at CES, they were at WorkTruck Week. They're going to have a big presence of the ACT show in Las Vegas, the Advanced Clean Trucking, and they're really what is that that's in May.
Speaker 1:The current plan is that we're going to be there. We're going to kind of finalize some details. But I'm really surprised that Kia is pushing this so hard, because this is a company that has no background in trucking. They have no background in big commercial vans. They don't even have a compact truck like Nissan, at least to have the Nissan hard body when they come out with their big vans. So this is something that if you're GM and you've got that Sierra 2500 van, if you're Nissan and you're still trying to plug away with that monstrosity you've got, and you're Ford and you've got your giant Transit van. This seems like a smaller market that has been overlooked for a number of years. I mean, Ford had the Transit Connect for a while, Ram had that little.
Speaker 2:It was a Ram van, but they built it off the caravan chassis and then they blocked off the windows. Those were actually really good because they used a bulletproof caravan platform that every family in America had and they made it through the snow with them. So those actually were really good vehicles. But I think they're done with that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they haven't made those in years.
Speaker 2:They have this new one now yeah, the ProMaster, which is like a fiat Right right and a lot of that's the Stilanus underpinnings and stuff coming over from Europe and we were talking about Stilanus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's fine, but it's not the same thing it's. You know, especially if you're looking at it from the point of view of somebody who lives in a suburban neighborhood. You know you don't want to park your work truck in front of the house just for aesthetics, right, when you had that caravan, commercial version, you could pull that in front of your house and anybody just doing a quick glance it would just look like you had a minivan parked in front of your house where now, because you're kind of subjected to this work truck, you know, for lack of a better word, let's say the work truck aesthetic it's really hard to leave that, you know, to leave work at work and enjoy your weekend when every time you look up from the barbecue you're looking at your work van.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. You know we have that. That's an industry issue with people who work in the trades, where you live somewhere now and H O A's are okay. 30 years ago H O A's were kind of an elitist thing, depending on where you're working. Now H O A's are more common and they have bylaws and a lot more people are like I can't park that in my development, I can't put it there, and you know that's a big issue. We have that happen in a lot of fleets. I've had that happen in multiple companies where we have to make accommodations for people because they can't park their vehicle in front of their house.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and that's only going to become more and more common as you start to get not only more HOAs, but as the cost and the price of these neighborhoods goes up and up, People are going to start saying I didn't spend $300,000 to look out my window and see a work van and it's like listen, lady, I don't know how you think this house got here, but it was because trades people built it.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, okay, the van's got a bad reputation when Harry and Marv from Home Alone started creeping around neighborhoods as the wet bandits and people became weary of them a long time ago, so we grew up with that as kids going. There must be somebody out there who's going to steal all of our crap, right?
Speaker 2:If there was a legislation out there if there was a legislation out there to ban that kind of thinking for the work of man's benefit, I would be all over it, and I think the teamsters should be rallying for that right now.
Speaker 1:Free the HOAs is what the signs should say.
Speaker 1:I don't hate that idea and I think honestly, if you could get some of the teamsters motivated in there, that would be phenomenal, because everybody in there at least in the HOAs around here everybody is like you know and again, not to make this politics, because it's not a political show but everybody in there is this, like you know, pseudo liberal, kind of snotty, central conservative kind of attitude of well, I work hard, I shouldn't have to look at that.
Speaker 1:Or, you know, we don't want to have certain kind of people in our neighborhood like I don't know what that means, but what I do know is there's a lot of hardworking people out there who get into the trades to make a good income, who work hard, sometimes 10, 12, 14 hour days to keep everything moving and keep everything operating properly, and those people do that so they can provide a home for themselves and their family, and they should be able to buy a home and live there and work there as well, I believe those people complaining that they don't want to look out the window at a plumbering van or at a work van.
Speaker 1:As soon as the heater goes out and a negative 20 degree night on a Sunday evening, they're going to go knock on that guy's door.
Speaker 2:I agree and balls. It stalled there for a second.
Speaker 1:It's like the light turns green and just.
Speaker 2:Exactly what happened. That's like Apollo 13, where they're like it's done that two times already and then it starts to bat back up and takes off with the light.
Speaker 1:Biff just figured out. We're not drinking water, no so Hashtag professionalism, let's go the teamsters need to be involved in this.
Speaker 2:They need to be down there looking at all these vans. They need to be looking at the key of them. They need to be looking at how they can organize some of these fleets. Everybody knows I'm pro union and there's a place for the union and again, not political. But as some of these delivery companies get larger and larger and larger, then they're not organized. You're going to see more manipulation of the work fleet, more manipulation of the workforce and it's going to go down an ugly road, because we're already seeing, with people that do deliveries, I don't care who you are, what product you're selling, but your delivery guys are most likely third party.
Speaker 2:If you're in any kind of a big delivery circuit and if you're going to go down the road of driving a Kia and running around metropolitan New York or Chicago or LA or San Francisco, the teamsters should be all over that, because that is a good way to have a rate develop for those drivers, protect them and give them benefits as more and more people become citizens and then they start driving. This is the same phenomenon that happened with the taxi cab industry prior to Uber, prior to Uber. Yet all these people for years. You're going back into the 50s and 40s that came over to this country, became citizens, became taxi cab drivers, made a hell of a living for themselves and kept getting cabs. You're doing the same thing. America cycles itself all the time. We're cycling ourselves back into this thing where these delivery guys people that are driving these things are going to end up in a situation where they're being manipulated by the larger carriers. That's what I'm getting at.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely right. Again, I don't think it matters who you are. You've read about the problems that the UPS drivers and the Amazon drivers have and you can sit there and point and say well, they've got a new wage package and they've got all these great benefits now that they didn't have two years ago, but at the same time, they still don't get the bathroom breaks.
Speaker 2:You've got stories about Amazon drivers penalized for taking a backpick Because they had to stop for too long, that's right, and they were delaying the route. The UPS guys are unionized and they did afford a new wage pack and they did figure it out. Everybody said it was going to break UPS and UPS was going to go under because of it. And they didn't. They got stronger. The second part of that is there has been some slanderous propaganda thrown out there and everybody's seen it where they're saying oh, ups drivers are going to make $170,000 a year. It is entirely not true and while there is some mystical route, probably at the North Pole, that delivers all the wrapping paper for Santa and that man will make $170,000 a year and eat all the cookies that he wants, it's not the day-to-day driver that drops your shit off your door. And that's what I'm saying. That's a big time.
Speaker 1:Even if it was, let's pretend that it was. Let's say that you got a job as a UPS driver and you were making $170,000 a year. Number one, that does not make you rich. Let's talk about this for a second.
Speaker 2:No, this is right. Socio-economics. This is what we got. This is socio-economics. This is heavy stuff. The first episode.
Speaker 1:That's where we go. Go back to the first episode. We talk about socioeconomics, we talk about the economies of trucking, we talk about the healthcare that these guys, these operators, have to go through. But this is real talk. In the 90s, when you and me were growing up, and you and I were probably teenagers in the 90s, a middle-class family could pay the bills, had maybe a five or six-year-old car and was able to send 2.5 kids to a solid four-year school, and maybe once a year you did a road trip vacation. Once every five years you hopped on an airplane. That was a middle-class family In 2024,.
Speaker 1:You just described a $400,000 a year lifestyle. That's right. So the reality is that, no, they won't get 170K a year and there's been a lot of slanderous stuff about it. But the slanderous stuff has nothing to do with whether or not people deserve that lifestyle. It's look what that guy's getting. Aren't you mad that he's getting something you're not getting? We should all celebrate the victories of the working man, the working woman, whether it's us or someone else, because when they get stronger, we get stronger. When we get stronger, they get stronger. It is not a zero-sum game. When you've got individuals out there making $200 billion. It is not a zero-sum game. Elon's life is not gonna change because he went from 220 billion to 54 billion. But you take that 150 billion and distribute it to all the workers at Tesla, all the delivery drivers at Amazon, that's gonna make a huge difference. It's gonna make America stronger and better and, I'm sorry, I still don't think that's politics.
Speaker 2:I think that's righteous.
Speaker 1:It's a simple, simple statement If you're making record profits, you should be writing record paychecks. That's it.
Speaker 2:Well, let's look at this when Ronald Reagan was in office. Oh fudge, the trickle-down economics plan that he proposed. While in theory was a genius, it was misguided and manipulated right in front of him. The trickle-down economics idealism was exactly what you said. Let the companies make money, make it advantageous for them, to give it to the workers, give it to the factories and give it to their infrastructure, and then that will trickle down yet again for more profitability, for not only the companies that are building this stuff for the large corporations, but the people that are doing all of it, including the people working on the floor. He was saying that, listen, this is a way of economic life that could propel the country to become a stronger, unified workforce under the umbrella of the corporations. That is exactly what you're talking about. And yes, there's a balance. You can't have a guy making some you know, $100 trillion a year and all of his workers are making $100 a week. That's it. That doesn't work.
Speaker 2:And if you have the right balances in place it starts to trickle down and then people make more money.
Speaker 1:But then people talk about inflation.
Speaker 2:They're like oh, but inflation is gonna go crazy. Inflation does go up. There is a statute of how to control that, which we've been doing since the economic crash in the 20s Got out of that. We got out of the depression and we realized that we have to have that every year. You have to create a stepping stone, you have to allow some inflation, you have to allow certain number of people to make more money, certain people to come in after that and make a little bit more money, and that eventually this thing will grow. That was the only way we got out of the depression, because otherwise we were gonna be eating whatever we could grow and steal and the country was gonna turn into a wasteland. And they knew that that goes way back. We're not far from 100 years from the crash. And all of this stuff that we talk about work trucks, work truck week, electric charging with Volvo, because they're coming out with that, that mobile electric charging that is a huge thing.
Speaker 2:That is gonna solve a lot of problems.
Speaker 1:I think it's gonna solve a lot of problems. Let's wrap up this socioeconomic thing, because I think we're onto something here and I don't think a mobile charger is gonna fix it. But that said, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:To the corrected way of life.
Speaker 1:You're absolutely right, and the problem was not the rules of the game. The rules of the game in terms of what got us out of the depression moving off the gold standard, going into a fiat currency, initiating inflation, promoting market growth all of those things work. The problem is that there are people who are taking advantage of that system, who are skirting the rulebook, and they're using the wealth and power that they get in order to maintain an unfair playing advantage. And all we're saying we're not saying that stuff is wrong. We're not saying we wanna get away from capitalism. We're not saying fucking socialists are anything stupid like that.
Speaker 2:No, we're saying the opposite. We want more capitalism and we want it to be more the ability for the people to make more money for the harder they work and the more they're involved.
Speaker 1:That's what we're saying.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, you're gonna go run a dozer every day and you're gonna go be on a job site. We want the ability to make more money every day. The only way you can make more money every day and every year and every contract cycle is for your company to make more money. The only way they're gonna make more money is through more infrastructure, and that's how we sell heavy equipment, that's how we use it and that's why we buy trucks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brother, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, and he'll say yeah, yeah, hallelujah, amen. Speaking of buying trucks, the new MacMD Electric is finally reaching the hands of fleets those of you that ordered this thing about 12 months ago when it first got displayed. You're probably getting some of the first ones now on the delivery sheets. But for those fleets that aren't quite sure whether or not an electric truck is gonna work for them, they know electric is coming, they know electric is about to happen, they know that the price is coming down because of the trickle down stuff that we've just been talking about. But you're still not sure if it's gonna work out for you and you wanna put it to the test. But you also don't have that high-speed charging. You don't have that infrastructure built into your depot, built into your job site. Mac now has a mole charging system. It's on the back of a MacMD. You can roll it out to your job site or you can roll it out to your depot where you park your vehicles at night and use it as a charger. And test drive these electric MD electrics and give those a try for a couple of weeks, see how they fit into your life, see how they fit into your operations before you commit the time, money, energy and resources to installing that stuff in.
Speaker 1:Now and I wanna talk about that because there's a lot of people who point to it and say, look, there's so many EV incentives from the government. There's up to $75,000 just from the utility company. Here in Chicago, comed is doing an EV rebate $75,000 per vehicle, up to $50,000 to install high-speed charging and make your job site ready for electric. And that's on top of the federal incentives, which can go up to $50,000. On top of the state incentives you can stack all of these rebates. So people are saying, well, why wouldn't you just buy it? It's basically free. That's not true, because the time it takes to tear up the concrete, to run that conduit, to run that electrification, that is disruptive. And what you're really looking at there is not somebody buying an electric vehicle for a company you're paying to put in this electric. What you're really seeing is compensation for the downtime that it's gonna take to install this stuff. So at the end of it you kind of break even. Well, okay.
Speaker 2:So, mac, is that is so forward thinking on Mac Volvo to have a vehicle that's gonna come out and go? Look, I know you're worried about this. Let's get all of that off the plate and you tell me if the truck is worth your time. That's it. That is one of the most aggressive marketing news I've ever seen. I've been in this industry for quite a long time and I've been around it most of my life and I'm gonna tell you there wasn't anybody else out there when we went from regular non-emissions trucks to emissions trucks. We went from non-deaf to deaf. There wasn't any campaign out there where they were like look, I'm gonna bring you a deaf truck, we're gonna bring you this, we're gonna set you up with a mobile deaf pump and you're gonna see how easy this works. Now, how many years later, are we Deaf is not even the thing you poured in there. You're all done.
Speaker 2:Now he agrees worried about electric. I gotta give them a lot of credit, because anybody that's worried about electric needs. They need this and the car manufacturers this is something that Tesla and the other guys should be doing. When you got a fleet and you have a fleet of mainly pickup trucks or EV type cars and you're trying to break that in. It's a small mom and pop insurance agency that's got six vehicles and they're trying to figure out how to get around. Bring something over there to let them charge them, let them see how good they are and let them see how they run around and then they'll worry about the infrastructure and how they're gonna get the money for it, because the honest to God truth is the rebates that you're gonna get you're gonna use to put the infrastructure in.
Speaker 1:So this stuff isn't free.
Speaker 2:But the disruptive part of your business is a big part of that huge part of that. I have prolonged having EV vehicles at our offices for a little while because we are not ready to fight that off. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. I got people every day asking me in the fleet saying, hey, why can't I get a gas, hybrid, electric, why can't I get a fully electric car? I'm the guy buying it and I'm trying to tell him look, we're putting a plan together so that over the next two, three years we could put charging at the offices. They don't wanna hear it, they want it. Now I got people going listen, I already have an electric car at home. I wanna plug this thing in too. I don't want all this gas stuff. I don't wanna deal with gas cards and I don't wanna have my gas card not working at 11 o'clock at night because somebody tried to rip my number off at the pump. That's a huge problem when we travel a lot.
Speaker 2:So these corporate gas cards that our companies have when anybody tries to skim that number in a pump glitches or anything like that, the credit card companies turn the card off and then you're stuck. Yeah, and listen, I don't blame anybody for calling me at 10 o'clock at night going, hey, I'm putting gas on my car, I'll expense it. But the guy that calls me that says hey, I'm driving a, I'm driving a Mac Granite, and listen, I ain't showing this up on my credit card. So let's figure out what we're doing. I don't blame that guy one bit. There's nothing wrong with that. I gotta figure out how to get his gas card turned back on in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2:That's okay, and I think that the infrastructure part of this is gonna come. But this is such a huge bridge gap for them it's gonna put them way ahead of everybody else. And then, listen, if you're Kia and you're working on, or you're working on anybody else, it's got an electric version of a truck and you know Mac's out there with their MD battery truck. Call them and talk to the Mac dealer and say, hey, how do I join in with you on this? Because I know what you're selling and I'm selling the other thing that you don't sell. And let's talk about that electrically and figure out how we can charge off each other. There's a lot of partnerships to be had there.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of partnerships there. We definitely need to talk about that, you know. And it is interesting because for as many people who are saying I'll never buy electric, I'm never gonna have an electric vehicle, that's okay, nobody's forcing you.
Speaker 2:For the people, that do want it. Nobody's forcing anybody.
Speaker 1:No, and for the people that do want it and do want to take advantage of some of the things and some of the features, I love the idea of plugging into your car and then the car handles all the protocol, handles all the payment. It's done. You don't have to swipe your card, you don't have to get your pin skimmed by one of those card skimmers. That's on all these different shell stations and everything Not to pick on shell, but that's the one by my house that everybody got ripped off at.
Speaker 1:You know, it happened to my father-in-law. He got his credit card ripped off there and he didn't figure it out until he got home and he saw all these plane tickets purchased on his card and I was like, dude, what are you doing? I said, oh, all I did was go get gas. You know, all you did was go get gas. Dude, everywhere you swipe your card, somebody's trying to get a piece out of you and it's rough. But the good news is and this is a great segue into this one we're gonna love this.
Speaker 1:No matter how enthusiastic you are about electric, you have to admit if you understand what's going on, you understand energy and physics that there are some jobs where electric and battery electric specifically just doesn't make sense. The energy density isn't there. The weight of the battery required to do the kilowatts and kilowatts and kilowatts of work, of moving the dirt and moving the concrete and grading the roads, is so high that the weight of the battery, the weight of machine, would sink it into the road itself, not even sink it into the mud, you'll sink it into the concrete. So you know, we do have to talk a little bit about that. There is still a place for internal combustion, whether it's hydrogen, whether it's diesel, whether it's bio and Caterpillar. They are spending $725 million to update and upgrade their big engine shop in Indiana, and I think that is a solid, very clear message that they intend to be the leaders in combustion going out the next 10, 20 years.
Speaker 2:Well, we've talked about Cummins with Helm, right, we've been talking about that. Caterpillar is always, in the industry, been the one who kind of sits there and goes, we're not gonna be. They're not always the first to throw out their car, right, they're not always the first to throw out the marketing. But what they do? They get their stuff situated to get their infrastructure figured out, and then they do a launch, like they just did, and say we're gonna put $750 million in their engine plan.
Speaker 1:We're gonna do it here in the United.
Speaker 2:States. We're going to ramp up our efficiency on diesel because this is all the segue to hydrogen. Yeah, can't forget that. Everybody knows the multi fuel is the way of the future. They get this off the ground. Caterpillar is doing that. I mean, john Deere is doing that as well, but Caterpillar.
Speaker 2:They have made significant Infrastructure investments in the United States. They got the many excavator plant, the skid steer plant down south. They've always had the excavator plants down in the Mid-South. They have in Indiana in the Midwest, the engine plants, the truck plants, the wheel litter plants. They want to provide stuff for this country. They want to build it here as much as they can and they need that.
Speaker 2:I'm trying actually to reach out, see if I can get it toward the engine plant over there. I was at that engine plant long ago, probably 10 plus years ago, and then back then it was state-of-the-art and that plant was amazing. So I can only imagine what it's going to be like after they put 750 million dollars into it. That's a huge number. Yeah, when you tell your shareholders that you're gonna put 750 million dollars in one facility in one state, think about what that's gonna do for infrastructure and what they're gonna do for everything else, right down to the machining centers they are gonna end up upgrading for, so that you're gonna see a lot of you know what we talked about earlier. Which is why I talked about that earlier in that episode, because Joe thinks I fly off the rails and everybody's yelling at me from the control booth banging on the glass and they're going home. This is all part of the trickle down of all this.
Speaker 1:That's why I got quiet.
Speaker 2:They fool about who knows what they're doing over there. There's nobody over there. I get a little pop-up sign that says, fine, you take it when do you go, my lovely?
Speaker 1:Where do you go? I want to know, my lovely, I want to know where do you go?
Speaker 2:Hey, listen it's rural. For them to go? Knows their feed the cat or something. This acute cat will put his picture, probably some kind of weird affair going on over there behind the glass, but that's for another episode live from the grow house. But that's a trickle down effect that we talked about with all that's gonna be huge, it's gonna be huge and caterpillar has always been one of those companies that did it right.
Speaker 1:I know that they've had some run-ins with the Union, but they've always seemed to resolve them without getting super ugly. And I think that's also true, you know, because caterpillars a global company. I think that's true in Australia just as much as it's true in the US and true in Europe. They are really out there. And the multi fuel thing is huge, because if you look at what fiat commercial power is doing, if you look at what Balvo Penta is doing, if you look at what John Deere is doing with their combustion engines, everybody's kind of trying to figure out how to run not only multi fuel but also blended fuel mixes where it's 80% diesel, 20% hydrogen. The new thing is now methane. I love this idea. Actually, the the case guy brought this up and I've been doing some research on this where the dairy farmers are able to capture the manure, get the methane that's coming off of it, hide, you know, electrolyze that using solar panels on the barn, turn that into fuel grade methanol and Run their tractors off of their manure. And in many cases these large farmers they're able to effectively package that, put it into a a you know a large canister and sell that methanol back to the power companies or back to other farms that can make use of that as a fuel and man, if you want to talk about something that's you know and everybody knows who knows me.
Speaker 1:You know I'm a little bit of a tree hugger, a little environmentalist I I strongly believe that we need to preserve our national parks in our forest. I grew up in Florida. The Everglades are a big deal to me. Being close to nature, seeing those animals and being able to go out into the woods and into the wild has always been a huge part of my whole deal. And when I look at that, even if you compare that to electric, this is such a perfect closed system.
Speaker 1:It addresses all of the environmental concerns of big farms. It makes it easier for the farmer to get fuel and be self-reliant, takes everybody off the grid. I mean, if you're the type of person who says I don't want to go electric because I don't want the government to be able to shut off my power, yeah, number one you've forgotten that solar panels exist, but we're gonna let you forget that. This is such a great way to do that in a way that is sustainable. It doesn't make you dependent on foreign oil. It doesn't make you dependent on battery tech from China. You can just harvest what comes out of the cows naturally and I'm not talking about the milk and Run your tractor on it, run your truck on it. That is so dairy.
Speaker 2:You know their industry has been been really torn up in the United States and it's been, continues to be, and that's that's why the dairy farmers and CNH talk about that, because they've been able to. You know you have big Glomerate dairy farms today. You know we can make simulated milk and we can do all that make it not come from a cow.
Speaker 2:But there's no question and no question. The milk coming from a cow, you know we still need it. We have to get it. It's no different than raising a crop and we have to have crops so farmers are able to capture that and help get a return on it. They've always been crafty because they don't have a lot of margin to work with. Right time.
Speaker 2:You, you feed the cow, you milk it, you pay all the milk money for the infrastructure and the upkeep that you need in the milkhouse. Then you turn around, you pay the dairy all the money that you need to pay them or they actually. What they do is they just take it what the milks were, because they're paying you by the hundred weight. By the time you skim all that down, you have enough money for next week. You, yeah, and I grew up around a lot of dairy farmers. I worked on dairy farms for a while and a lot of people overlooked that.
Speaker 2:And any of this technology helps dairy farmers out and I don't blame them for not wanting to go electric. If you look at a lot of the dairy farming, a lot of it is electric, based from the cleaning mechanisms that clean the barns to the pump houses that pump the waste and manure and water and all that back out to the holding pods, the stirring tanks and all that stuff that they have. All of that is electric already. So they're already utilizing all that. And the misleading problem.
Speaker 2:And if you're working at an energy providing company, they have to start educating the public on hydrogen. They have to do it now so that when we're ready to start using it in the future, people are not afraid of it, Because in these industry round table meetings I'm in and in this industry segments that I get pulled into and all these conference calls, everybody uses the same term bomb. It is not a hydrogen bomb. It is not going to level your facility. It is not gonna put a hole in the earth if it gets in an accident. We have to do the education to get away from this. This is a big part of the heavy equipment industry that has always been overlooked. Yeah, Education on the product and what we're using to fuel it has to be happening.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think that you've said it exactly right. You know there was back in 2000, I wanna say 2009, 2010,. There was a hydrogen Ford fusion. They took it out to Bonneville. This was a NASCAR body, Ford fusion, and it said fusion and hydrogen on the car. This was not a hydrogen fusion, nuclear car. And just about every article I read about the car, every comment on it, back in the early days of the internet, when people still had forums, every comment was oh, it's nuclear powered. Oh, it's got a fusion reactor. Oh, what happens if you crash that thing? It'll take up the whole city and it is shocking to me how much that mentality is still out there. But instead of that and getting depressed about the insanity and ignorance of our fellow humans, we're gonna play a clip from the Scissor Sisters. When I wake up in the morning with my head like what you done. This isn't the way to life.
Speaker 2:But I don't need another one. You like good love and care and I'm in with him counts. So I call my fears so lonely when you're up getting down, so I'll get along when I can hear that dance of song.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be the one who gets it right. Okay, we're back. You're gonna talk about a smooth segue. That's how you segue, baby.
Speaker 2:That was good.
Speaker 1:Listen, you're John Oliver. You're putting together a $25 million show. That's how you do it, baby. That's right. Yeah, so that's our good segue into the new JCB Electric Drive. Scissor Lift, the 1932 there. Have you seen this? This is actually a really cool thing.
Speaker 2:Those are cool. Those are cool lifts and I have not rented any yet, but I did ask about them and I mean, obviously they're new but yeah they're.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, for those of you who are paying attention to this market, obviously scissor lifts are a little bit different than what we normally talk about, but they're important on job sites. They're important on logistics, especially in urban environments. You see them in Chicago all the time because there's not a ton of room on the sidewalk for big cranes or anything. This is really cool, because JCB has had this Electric Drive 1932 unit for a couple of years now and they've upgraded it. And what they've done is they've said look, we're getting enough work out of this, we're getting enough hours of operation out of the existing battery. So now we have a new battery that's less weight, that's lighter, that's more energy dense. And they didn't put in more battery and say now you have two days of operation with this. They made it smaller and lighter.
Speaker 1:So now it comes in at 3,500 pounds. Why is that important? That's important because at 3,500 pounds you can transport this thing inside of a Ford e-transit van or of a Ram Pro Master that has a 3,550 payload capacity, so you can pull this thing into the back along with your bag of tools and whatever attachments you need and just drive it out to the job site, whereas before you had to have a trailer, you had to have a vehicle rated to tow 5,000 plus pounds and you had to get this thing to the job site. This makes it much more transportable, much easier to move around, a much more appetizing purchase for a attractive young fleet manager like yourself.
Speaker 2:And not only that. If you're done doing it singular, you could put 10 of them on a landall trailer and drop them off and be under the 80,000 weight limit. That is also a big thing. Mobilization costs are huge in the industry, and the more stuff you can jam on the trailer the better off you are, and if you can call up United Sunbelt or whoever.
Speaker 2:and they're like how many clips do you need? You're like I need 50. And they're trying to figure out how to get all these packages on the trailers and cut down how many trailers you've got, You've cut down on energy costs, you've cut down on transportation trips and how many $100 chargers you're gonna get off of them. And then you talked about handling you. You got less handling time for everything. So, yeah, beyond the idea of it being lighter.
Speaker 2:You're just smaller. It's more efficient. In general, we keep it at weight right? We gotta move weight at the end of the day. Moving weight at the end of the day is our biggest struggle.
Speaker 1:And you're right, it doesn't matter if it's pounds of dirt, pounds of battery, pounds of gas. It just pounds, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:That battery could have been doubled in size and said hey look, we got this scissor left, you don't have to charge it and if you keep the thing turned off, you use it all week. No, they were like no, we need to do what's right. We need to make this thing lighter and more mobile, and we need more of that. We can get power out of things, and there are places for weight okay when bulldozers and tractive type power units need weight. Other than that, you don't. You need to be as efficient as possible and counterbalance it as much as you need to to offset what you're trying to do. We've been doing it in the industry for years. It happens right in front of us.
Speaker 2:So the thing that you know when you touch on this before too, is that battery technology it keeps shrinking, right. So like the cost goes down and then you come out with a new battery and it's a little bit more expensive, but then it goes back down. The cost of technology keeps dropping and the size of what you need for battery power keeps dropping. A lot of people still look at everything as lead acid batteries. They're like oh my god, you know, I don't know how we're gonna get that. That's not the case anymore. We have a lot of technology with that and people forget that.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's funny because you can see the anti-EV Emotion right Now the big thing is oh well, you know, you're getting rare earth elements and it's all coming out of China with slave labor and the lithium mines. And it's like, well, the new Ford Mustang doesn't even use lithium ion batteries, it uses iron phosphate. It's like, well, iron phosphate, what's that? Well, it comes out of scrap metal and sand in northern Florida that nobody wants. It's been worthless for a thousand years and now, all of a sudden, the phosphate mines are there is a guy down there.
Speaker 2:when all this started and the phosphate mines started becoming big business, there was a guy shaking his cane at his kids telling you I knew it, I told you and. I told you, we were gonna come out on top. You're laughing.
Speaker 1:I can drive. Yeah, it's exactly what happened. I can drive you to the train rail in Florida and show you where it's happening. And it's like right outside of Lake Okeechobee. They're moving rail cars worth of phosphate every day and it's absolutely shocking because 25 years ago that was worthless sand.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it tears the equipment up bad. Nobody likes any of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, you're gonna like listen when the $20,000 electric car comes out that goes 300 miles and recharges in 12 minutes. You're gonna love that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's what's coming next.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, I think we're done for the day. Young Michael, we're gonna come back next week. We're going to talk about John Deere's new bulldozers and whatever other nonsensical stuff is going to happen, and I think, as we round out the show in honor of our new intro and our new opening segment, we'll play a little Space Cowboy. How has the pompadism love over there?
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.