Prepare to be transported back to a simpler time when two queens on the side of a coffee cup could make your day and spilling scalding hot chocolate on your crotch could ruin your life as Mike and Jo discuss the shortcomings of a Las Vegas landmark, GM's new Ultium-based commercial vehicles, and the Orange EV Husk-e yard hostler with 180,000 lb. GCWR. All this and the same number of blueberries in every muffin on this exciting HEP-isode of The Heavy Equipment Podcast.
Prepare to be transported back to a simpler time when two queens on the side of a coffee cup could make your day and spilling scalding hot chocolate on your crotch could ruin your life as Mike and Jo discuss the shortcomings of a Las Vegas landmark, GM's new Ultium-based commercial vehicles, and the Orange EV Husk-e yard hostler with 180,000 lb. GCWR. All this and the same number of blueberries in every muffin on this exciting HEP-isode of The Heavy Equipment Podcast.
All right, hep cats and kittens. This is going to be a little different, because we've already started talking about this.
Speaker 2:We're way into this.
Speaker 1:So here's all the background that you need to know. If you were a child in the 70s and 80s and you ever took a road trip, you stopped at a rest stop and at that rest stop you could put in a quarter, maybe 50 cents, and you could order vanilla cappuccino, a black coffee, some of the most scalding hot cocoa in the world, and it would come out of the vending machine at 272 degrees ready to burn your crotch off, and it would have some poker cards on there and you could play poker with your buddies who also got their own coffee.
Speaker 2:You beat me to it.
Speaker 1:That's the one. And now the real question, the only question that matters today, folks, should there be one of these vending machines at the Mandalay Bay Starbucks in Las Vegas?
Speaker 2:I say yes. Let me tell you, when you walk down there at four in the morning because you're on East Coast time and you got up because somebody woke you up out of bed with a serious problem, and you handle it. And you walk down there at four in the morning because you're on East Coast time and you got up because somebody woke you up out of bed with a serious problem, and you handle it, and you go down there with your cup. All I got is a Mandalay Bay robe, some slippers and I got my mug. That's it. I'm not talking about my face and I need coffee. I get about one million gold stars from Starbucks. I don't care if it's going to cost me a thousand of them. I need a cup of coffee that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1:There is no reason that in mandalay bay, in a in a world-renowned las vegas hotel, one of the voltaggio brothers taking up residence in their restaurant, that you should not be able to get a cup of coffee at five in the morning. That's absurd. That's a war crime. I think it's against the Geneva Convention.
Speaker 3:From now on, I want you to put an equal amount of blueberries in each muffin. An equal amount of blueberries in each muffin. You know how long that's going to take. I don't care how long it takes. Put an equal amount in each muffin. Do you know how long that's going to take? I don't care how long it takes. Put an equal amount in each muffin.
Speaker 2:And they go. Do you know how long that's going to take? I don't care.
Speaker 2:I don't care Because and I don't want to say it's about lowering your standards they haven't lowered their standards. It's just one of those weird things that when you're three hours apart from their time, you know, let's face it, all us midwesterners we get really tired of the crappy weather because now that our weather's changed a little bit, it's like living in seattle all the time. Sorry for seattle folks, but, um, they know you're about to be blessed with some serious great weather because we just got all your weather. So I'm just telling you right now we.
Speaker 1:That's one of the drawbacks of climate change. You know it's bad for most people, but for some people it's going to work out really well. Oregon, you're welcome oh, can't the canadians? Toronto is going to be a paradise. It's going to be, it's going to be like myrtle beach.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you, the toronto people. They're going to be up there looking out and breaking off pieces of their frozen maple syrup bites and dipping them in their coffee that they got from their Canadian vending machine, because they have great things up north of the border, that's right. And they're going to go. Wow, this is nice. What the hell happened to the frozen tundra we used to live in?
Speaker 1:Oh, I know it's going to be good.
Speaker 2:They got some brutal stuff up there.
Speaker 1:They do. Well, you know, it's funny because we're talking about Las Vegas, we're talking about these Las Vegas hotels. We haven't talked about why the Heavy.
Speaker 2:Equipment.
Speaker 1:Podcast was in Las Vegas last week. Young Michael was on a press tour a little bit of a press junket, if you will at an EV charging summit and he was there as a guest of General Motors and you were checking out the GM Bright Drop that's their new big box van. How'd you like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was out there. I mean, it's seriously, it was a cool work event. You know, we went out there and did that and I looked at the Bright Drop and I looked at the Silverado EV. They had the Hummer and the Vette and all that stuff was all out there too. But another cool thing that they had in addition to that was GM Power. They're doing literally crate motor options. But electric motors, yes, not engines, crate motors.
Speaker 1:Crate motors that you can then drop into your chassis configuration or RV or bus line or whatever else and the guys at lee boy.
Speaker 2:They had their roscoe brooms out there with the electric version oh, that's cool, I didn't know that, yeah, eight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kept this for me for a reason. The uh, eight hour runtime that it has under full load is amazing. And then you plug it in at night, that's. It also had a battery powered electric paver for cities that want to do some paving but don't want to have all all the engine issues. Plug it in, charge it up. Hey, we had to go down here because, you know, mrs johnson, she called because there's water coming up out of the road. You get that fixed. You still got to pave it. This is a better, better solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and I think you know, especially when you look at municipalities and cities and the kind of stuff that they operate, they are really beholden to their constituents, right, like the people that voted you into power. They have their goals, whether they make sense or not, whether it's mathematically feasible or not. You want to stay in power. You got to do what they want, and a lot of those municipalities, especially in California, pacific Northwest, even here in Chicago, they don't want the noise, they don't want the sound of the vibration. You have to go electric just to meet their demands.
Speaker 2:Exactly I mean between the broom, the paver and the brake drop is actually a really good van and at the company that I work for, we're having some internal meetings about it and how it does fit a need right, even at a construction company, which is what brought me out there. I wanted to learn more and I went through some educational modules with them. I wanted to understand how you actually include EV into your fleet for the type of work that we do as an industrial construction company. Right, and we're not alone. I met with several fleet managers out there that I knew from throughout the country and we all had the same question was this is all really cool when you're a consumer, but how do I use this in everyday life for our day-to-day construction needs? And we went over and we looked at. The Ford Lightning was there. The Transit was there in its electric forms.
Speaker 2:The Silverado EV is an amazing truck. I drove it. They have you do an acceleration test and all that. And that accelerates as hard as the Tesla Model Y. That accelerates as hard as the Tesla Model Y and I can tell you because I've been in both. That thing moves. And if you are working, speaking of municipalities, if you are working in a municipality or if there are some elected officials listening to this episode, you need to be seriously taking consideration to the BrightDrop and the Silverado EV work truck. The Silverado EV work truck comes with standard options as a work truck configuration which 20 years ago made it a superstar truck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that made it an ultimate luxury truck. There's a couple of neat things about the Silverado that GM really did right and they really separated themselves from the Lightning and the Cybertruck and all that. It's an 800 volt architecture, battery pack Correct. One of the things that they've done is it's a split system. So what does that mean? That means that you can, through software, turn that 800-volt battery into two 400-volt systems and plug it into two DC fast chargers and get out of there even faster. You can also use it as a charger on the move. So if you've got another vehicle that needs to be charged up whether it's a golf cart or a mini excavator or something you can plug it into the silverado's big bad battery and it'll charge that for you. It's a really slick truck.
Speaker 2:It's got a 240 volt outlet in the back. And I asked him flat out. I said so if I show up on a job site and I'm in a real hard pinch here and I gotta get out my air archer and I'm gonna air arc some bolts off of a cutting edge. They didn't recommend it, but they also didn't say you couldn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that may have more to do with the fact that, like it will, hurt sensitive. It's not sensitive, it'll hurt your range, but it's smart enough to protect itself. You're not going to hurt the truck and it's just really sharp. It's one of those things where you understand what they did, you understand why they've done it. You go, wow, they really did this right. Where I think they screwed up was they gave it that avalanche style pickup bed that's integrated into the body and now you can't put a utility body on it.
Speaker 2:Well, there were several concerns about that and that shark fin deal that they've got on the back the fairing and all that. While it looks cool, you can't, as a municipality, put a composite bed on that thing. Yeah, you can't put a lightweight aluminum bed on it, and I think the reason that they did that they're using the same underpinning against a couple of platforms, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a consumer platform.
Speaker 2:Quote, unquote right, so they took that. Now, one thing that they did do right with that and you can see it when you see the truck in person it's the same with bright drop. They said we're not going to do like what ram did right, ram's got the electric truck. I mean, it's a pickup truck that they've had forever and they put an electric powertrain in it right well, Well, we're trying.
Speaker 2:I need to go look at that and I'm going to go do some comparative testing with that Lightning is very similar. Lightning's an F-150 that they put an electric powertrain in. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Silverado was engineered from the ground up for what its intended use is, Not anymore and not any less. It is meant as a true EV vehicle. If you want to use it, use it. If you don't go get a nice powered pickup truck and they're not bashful about saying that either, they're not jamming it down your throat saying, hey look, you know this is the way it's going to go. No, if you, if this fits your needs, use it. If it doesn't, there's gas lineups across all the brands. Go check them out.
Speaker 1:That's right. And now, honestly we talked about this in one of the early episodes the gas lineup at GM is every bit as powerful and every bit as capable of towing as what people are used to from diesel.
Speaker 2:That's correct. And Bright Drop, that's another thing. That is a composite and aluminum body. It's got in the floor. I talked to the uh, one of the design team members that actually put 1500 miles on their bright drop gm, had him drive it across the country and you know it's. It's the same thing. It's got low center of gravity, the batteries in the floor, underneath the, the rear cargo area. It's between the bulkhead and the front axle, or the rear axle, the front of the rear axle, so it's between the two.
Speaker 2:I drove it around, made laps, they had a whole course set up. It went out on some public streets. Not only does it scoot, it's quiet for a box truck because it's got composite side panels and it has an aluminum frame. It's solid and it's comfortable. Set it up for one pedal driving just like the tesla that you're used to or anything else like that drives around like a golf cart. Yeah, if you're overlooking that vehicle, I think you're doing a disservice, because both of those vehicles seriously have a place in any kind of crew environment where, hey, I got to run to Home Depot and go grab this stuff. Hey, I got to run down and grab some parts from the truck parts place. It's sitting there being charged. Go take it, go pick your stuff up and come back. For either one of those options. They both have great payload capacity. If you get the 600 model right drop you can put a bunk of plywood in the back roughly and you can put a 16 foot long two by four in there. I don't know how you go wrong with that.
Speaker 1:no, I think that's that's going to be a good vehicle and I think you know there's a couple people that were surprised. That's a class two vehicle. It only has like a 3800 pound payload in it, but it goes back to the right tool for the right job. If you're trying to move massive amounts of weight, that's the wrong vehicle for you. That's for moving cargo and moving stuff to and from job sites and I think for that it's going to work really well. Exactly, you know we're talking about using the right tool for the right job. One of the things that I always felt was kind of a prime target for electrification obviously is delivery vans, route vehicles, things like that, like we've been talking about with bright drop. But also I got to say we got to talk about yard dogs and terminal trucks and these guys from orange EV. We got turned on to them a couple of weeks ago we talked to them at the Vegas show.
Speaker 1:This meeting is being recorded good, the zoom meeting robot tells us we're being recorded. I love it. Yeah, our guest today is kurt knightkins from orange ev. If you're not familiar with orange ev, they build the e trevor and the husky yard dogs. This is an electric class 7 and class 8 heavy duty semi. You see them all over the port of Long Beach and some other ports throughout the country and they're going to be kind of all over, I think, soon. You're getting a lot of great press for these things. Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I really appreciate your time and having me on it's a pleasure and an honor. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's exciting for us too, because I think you know there's so many real hardball questions that can be asked about electrification and EVs, about where we get the batteries from and is it really clean, and all that. But I think we want to start off with an easy one. The eTriever has by far the best name in the entire electric vehicle space. I love the logo, I love the little iconography. I think it's great.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thank you, we love it. It makes it a little bit more cheeky. I guess the one thing that's interesting about these vehicles they're not in the public eye. No one drives a yard hosser around the neighborhood or to work one day, because they only go 33 miles an hour or less. And so you know each company has their own name for it, because they're not talking to each other about it.
Speaker 3:So the name is Yard Dog is the name we've kind of settled on, but you have them called Switchers and Mules and Shunts and Thievadors, and there are literally 20 different names to call a yard dog and so, uh, but for us the e-triever, you know, signifies your, and I, I know you've got a, a dog, and anybody who has one knows that they're pretty loyal. They like to fetch and go out and get trailers and bring themark if they can, and, uh, they're always there for you. So we thought that really uh kind of fit with our, our brand and, and so we're pretty excited to call our trucks, you know, the e-triever and the husky yeah, and I I love these two trucks.
Speaker 1:so the e-triever, I think, is the newer of the two models.
Speaker 3:Yes, Well, actually the other way around, the E-Triever we've had, we started out, we called it T-Series originally and then we changed the name to E-Triever when we made a major upgrade back in 2018. And we we did a big upgrade to the really to the electrical architectural of the system and allowed the truck to be much more digital is the way we think of it, and so we have controllers that can look at things like the lights and the light goes out. We know what happens If one of the circuits gets a short or an opening. We can detect that with the controllers, and so there's a major upgrade to do that across the vehicle. But that's when we started the E-Triever.
Speaker 3:We've been selling and delivering electric yard hosters since 2015. The company started in 2012. We delivered our first truck in 2015. We changed from T-Series to the E-Triever in 2018. And then, just this last fall, we introduced the Husky, which we consider to be a stronger, heavier-duty vehicle. That's why we call it Husky. And you know, instead of pulling 80,000 pounds, the Husky can pull 180,000 pounds, and instead of a max speed of 25 miles an hour, it can pull that 180,000 pounds. Speed of 25 miles an hour it can pull, but of that 180,000 pounds, 33, up to 33 miles an hour, and so, uh, it's a, it's definitely a different vehicle, two different market segments, and so we we have two different vehicles.
Speaker 1:So that was a long-winded answer no, that's a great answer, you know, and it's funny because we are the Heavy Equipment Podcast, but I also write for Electrek and, in the past, clean Technica and others, so my focus has always been on electrification and EVs and we get a lot of heat from that. A lot of the operators, a lot of the trucking guys they don't think you're going to find a lot of you know a whole lot of diesel competition out there that's going to do any more than that no, no, and that's what the you know that this made.
Speaker 3:This truck was made. The husky was made specifically for the ports and the rail application. We actually have two versions of it. We have a rail version, a port version, but it's the same powertrain and the same architecture. Well, it's not exactly the same powertrain, they do different things, but the same bases on the two vehicles.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, in the ports they'll pull what's called unbelievably a bomb cart, and the only reason I can imagine that it's called a bomb cart is because you can have a bomb next to it and still stick around, but they call it a bomb cart. There's probably a better, a better reason for it. No one's ever been able to explain it to me. But you can put two containers, two 20 foot containers, onto one trailer effectively, and so these trailers, they pretty much just stay in the port and they move containers from the, the rail or from the ship to, you know, set enough to get to pull over the road, and so to get that ship unloaded as fast as possible, they'll put two containers on the same cart and pull that with a yard hostler, and so that's why you end up pulling 180,000 pounds GCW.
Speaker 1:That's wild. So tell me about this. You guys were one of the early early adopters. I mean, you had vehicles in customer hands four years before Tesla even decided they were going to start talking about a semi. So you guys are really the innovators in this space. In terms of class eight electrification. Uh, you know class seven, class eight electrification. What made you presumably wake up sometime in 2010 or 2011 and say you know, what the world really needs is a giant electric car.
Speaker 3:Yeah, uh, I like the way you put it. Um, you know it was a process, just buyouts, and they said 30% of their management, we would like you to leave, so go find another job. Who wants? Who wants a buyout Right? And I said, well, if I'm ever going to do something my own, here's my chance. And so I've been trying to do electric vehicles ever since then. Some of those, the first thing I did, I completely failed on. So I tried doing an electric Mustang F-150s out of my garage and you know, while I made one, no one ever bought one. So that didn't work so well.
Speaker 3:You were ahead of your time, yeah, well maybe, or I didn't understand the business model very well, probably a more accurate description.
Speaker 3:And then I helped a company doing airport tugs from there create a line of all electric and then lithium ion trucks for airports. And on the way to work one day you know I had when I was doing my Mustang I had made a math model. After I kind of failed there, I made a math model of every vehicle I could think of and could I make it make sense financially. And really there was not much on that list that made sense. There was airport tug, which I wasn't going to take that business with my boss. That wasn't the idea for my employer. There was on the other side of the airport where you shuttle people from the other cars back to the airport and I said that makes a lot of sense. But I had just left Ford and I knew they weren't going to give that market up very quickly. And the day they had an electric van, that powertrain in the van, that business goes away. And I had already done the Mustang. So I realized that's probably not a good one and so I said you know, maybe there's nothing out there.
Speaker 3:And I was driving to work one day and I actually saw yard hostler, uh, and the parking lot and I didn't know what it was. And I drove up to the driver and said, um, tell me what this thing does. And he said to me get off my lot. And I said but just tell me what this truck is and what it's called. And he says a Hossler. Get off my lot. And so I was trespassing. And so I left and started looking on the internet for what a yard Hossler was, and it just all made sense. I was looking on the internet for what a yard house was, and you know, it just all made sense. The heavier your vehicle, the more your payback is the more use, you use the more
Speaker 3:your payback is. And so we get excited when we have customers run 24-7 because we know that their payback is going to be significant right? We've got customers running 24-7 that can pay back in you know a significant right. We've got customers running 24-7 that can pay back in you know a year right the upfront cost versus the diesel. Their payback is in the first year just in fuel and maintenance alone.
Speaker 3:Now if you run two shifts, maybe that's two to three years, and if you run just one shift, maybe that's four to five years, right, it depends on how hard you run, and so we do our best to kind of right-size the vehicle and the charging system to maximize their payback.
Speaker 3:But everyone gets a payback and the trucks run better than the diesels and so that helps too. But just fuel and maintenance alone, repair stuff we pay back very, very quickly. With maintenance alone, uh, you know, repair stuff we pay back very, very quickly, and so that was all kind of understood up front that this would make sense, and so you know, there's also the benefit of there's no range anxiety because you're, you're right there in the lot all the time, right, and so there's also for us we're direct to the customer service, so it's OrangV employees living near their customers with a van with parts in it and either for maintenance if they want to go do maintenance, you have preventive maintenance or if there's a repair, we're right there, we go to them, we get them back up and running.
Speaker 3:These are mission-critical vehicles. Our customers can't have downtime on the diesel side of the world. If they have five diesel trucks running in a given lot that they need, they'll have two, maybe even three extra because those five are down so much that they have to have extra right. Um, our uptime on our trucks is, you know, on average for our fleet right now, it's over 97%, wow. And if you think about the diesel, they're buying 2X for 5. That's not 98% right, that's 75% right. And so it's really a better vehicle. We like to say it's because it's an orange EV vehicle. Others have tried electric and I want to bad mouth anybody but you know others have tried, and they haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker 1:But well, those guys don't come on my show, so we can bad mouth them all we want.
Speaker 3:You send me a list, I'll make sure we'll spend 20 minutes on them. I appreciate everyone who's trying to help us make this transition really uh, you know, ultimately for me, uh, joe, it's, it's.
Speaker 3:I started this because of the mission. I wanted to make a difference, uh, in the environment, uh, that doesn't always necessarily play well, uh, but I'll say this, and I think everyone can get behind this I'm not saying we're not saying do this because it's green. We're saying ORMGV had a responsibility to make the very best truck at the very best financial benefit out there and compete on every level, in every category, and beat the pants off the competition, hopefully in every category. And that's why you're going to go help the environment, because all the things for your business make sense. And so that's how we're looking at it.
Speaker 3:We sell very few vehicles because someone needs an ESG target right. But we sell almost all our vehicles because it runs better, its uptime is better or there's money there for the customer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of kind of new rebate programs and initiatives where local governments have kind of decided that they're going to pick a winner and say we're going to help subsidize and expand electrification. So for a lot of these customers that are eligible for those rebates and incentives, are they seeing a payback faster than a year, or is that included in that?
Speaker 3:No, that payback is with zero incentives that I've talked about so far.
Speaker 3:That's all zero incentives now, uh, just this last year, the ira grant said every anybody who buys one of our trucks and we had to be qualified for this as a qualified manufacturer but, uh, anybody who buys one of our trucks and exercise the 40 000 tax credit from their federal taxes, so that's new um, uh, and that helps, and that wasn't even in the discussion of a, the payback I talked about. So it helps a little bit. Uh, depending on their operations, that might make it. You know, six months earlier, maybe even a year earlier. But uh, depend on on their operations, that might make it, you know, six months earlier, maybe even a year earlier.
Speaker 3:But depending on their operations and what they're doing and what they purchase from us, right, what they buy up front. So there's that there are incentives out there. But over the last three, three years, over 50 percent and sometimes as much as like 65 percent of our sales have been without incentives. So I mean that just tells you like customers are buying because it makes sense, it's not. It's not because, uh, they're getting an incentive right, that's silly.
Speaker 3:Now what we see is it's scary to get into a new technology. You know a person who's deciding this for their company. Right, their job's on the line. Boss, I want you to go buy from this little company who you know started out in the garage with $50,000. We're much bigger than that now. We're a major player in the industry now. But back in 2015, when DHL bought that first truck and put it in Chicago, we were 10 people in the company and they said I'm going to take a risk on this, I'm going to see if this guy's got something. They got an incentive, but they still paid as much as they would have paid for a diesel, even though they got an incentive, and so they were taking a big risk, right? Yeah, if this doesn't work, what are they going to do? Right? They're going to pay another $150 to go get a diesel in here, right?
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 3:So they had to trust us.
Speaker 3:We had to earn their loyalty and you know, I think those incentives help people, help that decision maker, reduce the risk of losing their job if they're wrong, right. So we do our best to make sure they're not wrong and they become heroes. And so, right now, dhl you know, two months ago I don't know if you saw it, joe, but there was a, maybe it's not three months ago they did a press release with us and they indicated they already had 50 trucks in the fleet. That first one, 2015, that they bought and put in Chicago, is still running. And they say that in the press release. And they mentioned that it had 24,000 hours on it at the time.
Speaker 3:You're a truck guy, right? You know what 24,000 hours on it at the time. You're a truck guy, right? You know what 24,000 hours means. It now has 25,000 hours on it. I looked a couple weeks ago and it's over 25,000. You can see that in our telematics very easily. And they also said we're going to buy another 50 this year, in 2024, then 2025, we're going to convert our complete fleet to orange ev electric I saw that that is huge news because I mean, ultimately, there's a couple of ways of building trust.
Speaker 1:Right, there's proving the product, but that's kind of hard to do with one of these unless somebody buys one. But when, when you have someone like DHL, when you have a pedigree like you have coming from Ford, those are big names. And to see DHL say, not only is our first one in operation all these years later, but we're going to go 100% orange EV by the end of 2025, I mean you can't beat that for endorsement.
Speaker 3:You can't, and it indicates a couple of things. They're not waiting until their diesel kind of end of life right, they're going now. And they are not saying I need incentives to do all of these. Right, they're saying I'm going now. They're saying I'm going now. And what I would submit to is if our customers understood everything we understand about our trucks and we've got over 1,000 trucks out there right now running every day their best financial and operational decision both best financial and operational decision is to park their diesel.
Speaker 3:Buy our trucks. Even if they don't sell the diesels, they're still ahead. A customer who buys all our trucks, who's running two shifts you know hard two shifts comes out close to a million dollars ahead. Now it's more inifornia, it's a little less than the rest of the country because the fuel costs are different. Right depends on maintenance costs and stuff. Obviously, whether they do that work in internally and they have their own maintenance team or they or they farm that out to a third party, right, those things are big factors in in how much it costs them. But we see over a million dollars on a 10-year life of the truck and that first truck in Chicago was eight and a half years. All our trucks are still in the first battery pack.
Speaker 3:We've never replaced the battery pack.
Speaker 1:It's funny. That was exactly. My next question was going to be about the batteries, because you will see articles, and the websites that I contribute to are guilty of this as well. When you're seeing an article, we'll say you know this Tesla has 1.2 million miles on it, but it's on its third or fourth battery pack. Your trucks are on the first battery pack, I assume they've got better than 80% capacity still, and after 24,000 hours of use, that is an astronomical number. I don't even know that there's. I mean, what do you see in terms of diesel for hours of operation 15, 20,000 hours in a diesel? You're doing a major overhaul.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, you know. Typically what we see is three to five years, and maybe it's seven.
Speaker 3:We've seen as little as three. I should say five to seven years typically is what our customers tell us about when they're trying to get rid of their diesels. Right, depending on how hard they run, and we've seen as little as three. I would not call that industry norm by any means, but in this application yard hostels they work harder than any other truck out there. You know, think about what they do. They are backing into a trailer up to 150 times a shift and that interface, when you hit that trailer, that can be up to 25 Gs, right. So you do that 150 times a shift and then you start and stop. You got heavy loads. You are turning all over the place, right. You're scrubbing tires left and right. You are idling a lot because you're hooking up trailers. Every time you hook one up right, and so you idle a lot.
Speaker 3:Idling is hard on ICE engines, right, and so it's a really really hard application. It's a really really hard application and so you know, when you see that you take that and you put an RGB electric into that, it can just completely change someone's basis for how things work.
Speaker 1:Right, you know and it's almost an application that's ideal for electric, because you're low speed where the electric motors are most efficient. You need maximum torque to get them off the line, which is exactly where electric motors kick in at zero RPM. If you have a diesel truck, you have to constantly worry about getting fuel in and out, if not going, and finding fuel. If you run out of it on an electric vehicle, it's right there. You already have port power. You've already got power for those big cranes that are lifting those things. So you're just tapping into that and correct me if I'm wrong, but there's an initiative right now at Port of Long Beach and Port of Houston to build charging into the ground, so these things theoretically never have to stop.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely. You know I'm not as familiar with those programs I know there's work being done. We actually have an inductive system that we've developed for our e-tribor that we're selling Our first vehicles. We expect them to deliver in July of this year. That's awesome. It's not in the ground, you drive up next to it, but you know it, it's inductive and so you never have to plug in. The other thing I realized I missed or I went in a different direction on you about the diesel hours. I didn't ever answer that. So I was saying that diesel is typically five to seven years, but also that first overhaul is probably between 15,000 and 20,000 hours. We've seen them out there that make it to 30,000 hours, but they're definitely end of life at that point in time. Someone's using it as a complete backup. They're not using it from the main truck. We talked about the 25,000 on these trucks. We actually have other trucks at over $27,000 already. You know that's someone who ran faster and harder than DHL did with that first one right.
Speaker 3:We have trucks running 580 hours a month, month after month after month, Just think about how good your uptime has to be to do that right. Yeah, you can't fake that right. You can't fake it. You either are making those numbers or you are not.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. That's 70 shifts a month like full eight hours of operation. That's bananas.
Speaker 3:Well.
Speaker 1:Kurt, you have just been absolutely awesome. I want to be mindful of our time commitment here and not go over as we come to the close of this number one. I hope this is the first appearance of many. You've just got a tremendous product. I know it's going to continue to grow as more people find out about it. Is there a specific question that I didn't ask that you kind of wish I had? That you have a better answer for than anybody else, and I'll give you that. I'll say the floor is yours and then we'll sign off.
Speaker 3:Well, I would say one thing the question everyone has is charging and infrastructure.
Speaker 2:And the.
Speaker 3:Thing that Orange EV has tried to do there is minimize the footprint for the customer, and so what we did was we have, for a couple of reasons, we made a charger that is specific for our truck. We did that originally because there were no chargers. You couldn't buy one when we started. We didn't build our own charger. There wasn't a way to charge our truck, so we had to do it. But when we did it, we said how do we make it so that they have the minimum infrastructure cost possible? And so our charger doesn't need to have infrastructure that allows it to charge at 200 kilowatts, and yet we only use 20. It uses 20, and the grid gives it 20 times 1.2, because you know, the National Electric Code says make sure your wiring stuff is 20% higher than what you need, right and so. But we only need, you know, 22 kilowatts. So we get to a 26 kilowatt unit or feed and we can run 20 hours a day on 22 kilowatts. Now think what that means is. You know how much is 22 kilowatts?
Speaker 3:No one has a sense of that that's about halfway between your dryer and your stove at home, your electric stove, right? So it's not that much right Now if you do 200 kilowatts, which is a lot of the new chargers out there. They want it to work for everything. They put this great big infrastructure bill in and it takes you three years to get the utility to show up at your place to tell you how much it's going to cost you, right, and you can do one truck instead of 10. And you have all these issues right. And so I think one of the big important factors here is how we do infrastructure as a community, and you know, that's one of those things like I can talk. We could have another show on that and I'd be happy to talk about that and kind of hopefully share some ideas about how we can do it all better and allow the grid to extend to a lot more vehicles, uh, with the same grid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's definitely an important conversation I'd love to invite you on, and we'll do a whole conversation about grid stuff with some other utility people. I think that's I. I mean, I'd listen to that. I think that'd be a great show. Kurt, thank you so much for being a part of this. For people who want to find you online, learn more about what you're doing uh, they go rngvscom. Do you have a tiktok where you guys dance on the desk, or? Uh, what? What are some other ways to follow along?
Speaker 3:you know we're in. Yes, you can come to orgvcom. There's lots of information there. We're for sure happy to have someone call us direct. We sell direct, we service direct. So we're very open to inquiries. But then we're also on Facebook. We're on Instagram. I'm not a social media guru.
Speaker 1:You got an intern for that team members.
Speaker 3:I have team members who are, you know we've. You know, while we started humble, you know we've got 350 plus employees now, and so you know we're. We're a big team and thankfully I've got experts on that stuff. Unfortunately, I'm not even versed on it, so I know we're out there, but I think Facebook's a great place to find us.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. Once again, that's Kurt Neitgens from Orange EV. Thanks so much for being a part of the show, kurt, and we'll see you again soon. Thank you those things are so cool, man, and they have this very cool they used to upfit loaders and all kinds of stuff for doing that.
Speaker 1:You know over the years like I've seen a bunch of stuff like that done yeah, but these guys are doing it as an oem from an oem perspective, and they have the best names in the business. They have the e-triever for their yard dog instead of a retriever it's an e-triever. It's got a little dog as retriever. It's an e-triever. It's got a little dog as the logo. So that's cool. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:But anyway you know we're talking about all these trucks. We're talking about all these you know different applications for these electric trucks. We still don't have anybody to drive the things and we always talk about this ongoing labor shortage in the industry. We don't have enough drivers, we don't have enough operators, we don't have enough technicians. Well, now we're starting to see programs come out to effectively get people behind the wheel of these things for free. So this is a free CDL program that they're putting out. In Oregon They've got 325 new truck drivers will receive 100% paid for CDLs as part of a three and a half million dollar federal grant and it's really important here to understand that nationally this is a $500 million grant. So this is going to put a lot of new drivers on the road and, unlike the last 15, 20 years of doing this, the drivers aren't going to have to pay for it.
Speaker 2:Listen, I mean half a billion dollar investment. That's a lot. That's saying something. You know what I mean. I would be curious to see where they're pulling the funding from, but that's a whole rabbit hole we're not going to get into now. We need these programs. Yeah, we can't get enough people that can drive, and everybody knows that we talk about it all the time. Every one of these programs we get is is just profoundly important, and I I just met today with a concrete supplier and he's talking about how it's so hard to get drivers. They got trucks sitting. You know, the guys come and go. You get some transient guys that only want to work when they want to work and they accept that because they don't have enough people. And it doesn't matter. Every time you talk to somebody, they talk about a driver shortage. They can't get people to drive it. I'm hoping that with free driving courses, I think you're going to find that there's some people out there that might be stuck in a situation where they want to get out of.
Speaker 2:maybe they need to transition away from a job they're in now yeah and maybe they can stomach taking some pto and then some time off unpaid, but they also but they can't afford paying the premium of a truck driving school. I think you're gonna find some good people that just they just want to get a different start. There's nothing wrong with that, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:No, and it's noble work too. I mean, it's work that you're going to pay for your family.
Speaker 1:You're going to be able to support a family with it. You're going to be able to do real honest work. And one of the things that I always want to highlight whenever we talk about the trades, whenever we talk about education. I've been accused of being anti-college because of some comments I've made on the show that nothing could be further from the truth. I am pro-education. I just don't think that education begins and ends with Shakespeare or art history or whatever else right.
Speaker 1:Learning how to weld is an education. Understanding how the built world around us works is an education. And unfortunately, if you're trying to get qualified for like FAFSA or federal student loans or anything like that, most banks, most federal programs will not enable you to finance an education in the trades or a commercial driving school like this. It's actually easier for a young cat to go $100,000 or $200,000 into debt to learn underwater basket weaving and art history, european politics from the 19th century than it is to get financing for a truck driving program, a welding program, an apprenticeship. So that's kind of why programs like this are so important and, frankly, why unions are so important, because a lot of the UAW unions, the operator unions, they do have apprenticeship programs that help people get into these trades and get into these kinds of different jobs.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing. All knowledge is learning, and how you obtain that knowledge, whether it's through a degree, through an established school, through somebody that is certified to train you in whatever you're doing, or through some other method of absorbing this knowledge, like a free program, an online course, something like that. All of that is education. Yes, we don't have to label it college, this, that or whatever. College is another vehicle of getting education. Put a college together that trains people in their skilled trade, gives them work, puts them to work as they're an apprentice and and takes them in and out of that and does all that training and and see what you get. Oh, we have those. They're an apprentice and and takes them in and out of that and does all that training and and see what you get? Oh, we have those.
Speaker 2:They're called unions. They train people, they put them to work as apprentices, they put them through a specific skillset and the good locals and I've I've been in the meetings where we've had to do it there are times where you tell people this isn't for you, but I already called the BA over at this union and I'm telling you this is a good fit. So, before you get too far down the rabbit hole with your apprenticeship. Go over there to the mill rights and go over there and do that, and then it's vice versa. Sometimes you get guys who are like this guy's a hell of an operator. I want you to put him through your apprenticeship program because he deserves to be over here. He's not going to work out with what he's doing here. That's what we're talking about. Yeah, we're talking about finding your role and finding how this works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, finding your role is more important than any other thing that we talk about when it comes to education. You've got to find your place, find your knowledge set of what you can absorb and what you can make sense of with your brain. When you do that, you're going to be successful, and that can only be accomplished by what Ambition.
Speaker 1:I know you have to want to and I think that that gets lost so much. And you know I'm struggling with this now. You know it's trying to get the kids, especially the college age kids in my life, to like, really want to take that next step and kind of leap into that career. And it's hard. But I think that what we've really hit upon here is a new marketing angle. We're going to start HEP University. We are going to issue four-year bachelor's degrees in operating, in welding, in all the trades, and we're going to do it in concert with the unions. The unions are going to help it, in concert with the unions. The unions are going to help these kids pay for the education and, because it's a four-year degree, at the end of it they'll be able to take out the federal loans that they need to live on to put a roof over their head and food in their bellies while they're learning their trades. So for those of you interested, be sure to send an email to pepedu.
Speaker 2:I assume that's real and, yeah, someone will be with you shortly if literally tore up a pad behind the screen, threw it in the air and walked off to the bathroom, which I assume is why he carried a stack of magazines in there because he's done listening to us for a good solid hour until we're done here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go. Well, you know biff's done with us and you should be too, so tune in next week for the next exciting episode of the heavy equipment podcast. We didn't even get to murphy tractor. We'll cover them next week. We'll give them a good uh, give them a good half hour wait, let me tell you something about that.
Speaker 2:You guys need to listen in for next week. So we talk about ev and we get. We get basically messed up over it all the time. But if you want to talk about something that actually burns diesel fuel and will remove a entire fairway from a golf course to put that in tangible perspective and relocate it to whatever place on this planet you'd like to put it on, that's what we're talking about in the next episode.
Speaker 1:That's right. And uh, in honor of murphy tractor, we're gonna play the uh spongebob theme song, who lives in a pineapple under the sea absorbent and yellow and porous is he.
Speaker 3:If nautical nonsense be something you wish, SpongeBob SquarePants.
Speaker 1:Then drop on the deck and flop like a fish. Spongebob SquarePants.
Speaker 2:Ready. Spongebob SquarePants. Spongebob SquarePants. Spongebob SquarePants. Spongebob SquarePants.