The Heavy Equipment Podcast
Whether we're exploring the latest in equipment technology, talking about the trends that propel the industry forward, or uncovering stories about the dedicated individuals who keep the dirt moving, and wheels of America turning, this is where the roar of the engines and the pulse of progress come together. It is sublime. It is surreal. It's the Heavy Equipment Podcast ... with Mike and Jo!
The Heavy Equipment Podcast
HEP-isode 31 | Hyundai HD, Hot Lips, and Hydraulic Hammers
Hyundai HD is stepping up to fill a massive hole in the market with the debut of their first independently built track dozer, the HD 100, which uses advanced data aggregation to product reliability and robust customer support. Next, the HEP-cats cover NPK's infinitely rebuildable hammers and their new sponsor, Radio Shack! All this and more on this exciting thirty-first HEP-isode!
Welcome back to another exciting season two episode of the Heavy Equipment Podcasts. We're going to go right into it today. I am impressed with what Hyundai is doing in the heavy equipment space. Man, koreans are coming for this space hard, in the same way that they came after the automotive market in the 90s. They're putting billions and billions of dollars into this and, man, I think if you're not taking Hyundai seriously right now, you're in big trouble.
Speaker 2:Well, it woke me up. I was back in Korea on furlough.
Speaker 1:You're sitting over there looking for Al and Alda talking about they creamed the corn. Took a whole year to grow this.
Speaker 2:Hot lips hooligan over there, yeah, but no, here's the thing. Yeah, hyundai's really just. I mean, they've realized there's a space in this market. We need it right. Hitachi's breaking away from john deere. They're severing a partnership from decades. Hyundai's realizing there's a space available for them where their space is going through the moon. All of this is going to equate into more jobs, better stock values and, ultimately, better product.
Speaker 1:Well and that's a good point, because you're talking about better jobs they are building these in the US. That's my point.
Speaker 2:That's my point. It's going to end up with more jobs and then the other thing it's going to end up with is it's going to. People are like, wow, there's too many dealers, there's too many OEMs in North America. There is not. If you look at the rest of the global population of OEMs, north America is one of the lowest in quantity because we shut most people out and to a point that they have to partner with North American brands, as it is, to get their products in here, and you used to see a lot of that partnering going on. So Hyundai now Hyundai construction equipment used to be a very small segment of their business platform. It was part of, you know, they had the ship building going on and they had the container stuff and they had trailers. Hyundai trailers are huge. People don't realize that when you drive down the road and Hyundai's got the trailers. It's massive. So they have a huge following for their corporation globally, but in North America they're gaining ground and there's a total segment for them and they need to be there for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's worth pointing out that I think a lot of the same people that 20, 30 years ago were saying, oh, I would never drive a Hyundai. I've never heard of that. You know, stuff like that it's just a rip off of other stuff. Those people have probably owned one or two Hyundais by now, or at least have people that they know that own them. They understand that the cars are good quality.
Speaker 1:You know, I had a buddy of mine that has been a Tesla guy from day one. He had a Model S. He actually had in Europe and Poland. He actually had a taxi fleet that was all Tesla. So I mean he's had several of these things and he was recently, quote unquote, stuck renting a Hyundai EV, a Hyundai Ioniq 6. And he's like floored by how good they are. So I can only imagine that the kind of quality that they're putting into that product is leaking over into this because, to your point, they are a massive conglomerate. They build giant ship engines, they build like container ship motors. They're building containers, container trailers. They've got, you know, huge equipment handlers, a huge equipment handling business, over in. Most people have no idea.
Speaker 2:Most people have no idea how much of the industry they actually influence globally. They don't? I mean, if you want to know, go on their website, go on Hyundai.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not the automotive website, the corporate website.
Speaker 2:No, the actual parent company website, the Hyundai website. Globally they're huge. I was floored Years ago when I started looking into Hyundai. I had a case representative. They left case construction equipment and went to Hyundai because it was such a massive company and he said he goes, I couldn't believe we would get on these global meetings. And it was just he goes. I couldn't believe, you know, we would get on these global meetings. And it was just. You know, department heads, huge quantities of people that work at these companies on management level, let alone all the workers. I mean I would like to know what their tally is on North American workers where they see themselves in two to three years because they employ an enormous amount of people globally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they employ, as of 2021, 290,000 people and had $318 billion in assets, and that's only grown since then. So that is just bananas. It looks like they're trying to add 75,000 new jobs in North and South America. The current tally is 313 employees in 486 offices in 42 countries. That's a lot of people, dude.
Speaker 2:The other thing is okay for people that don't know the numbers. How does that compare to Amazon?
Speaker 1:Amazon in North America, right Well, globally.
Speaker 2:That's my point. Point people talk about amazon and amazon's this giant thing, but globally hyundai is huge, amazon's twice as big. I know, but that's my point is amazon and that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because like that's my point people don't realize that when you compare it to amazon as this global force of e-commerce. And and then here's Hyundai, this silent under the radar person who people know. If you're in the ship markets, like, well, you know, we get ships from Hyundai. If you're in the trailer market, you know and you think you're the hunt family and you're buying all these trailers from Hyundai. The point is is, globally they're massive and I like talking about that stuff because we get pigeonholed in this country into a little mailboxes is what I'm going to call it these little mailboxes of information that we have about vendors where globally they're huge and people that we think are huge in North America are not globally.
Speaker 1:There's a lot more out there than North America and I think it's really worth pointing out that, even though North America will call that NAFTA trade zone Mexico, us and Canada that's the third biggest market out there, right? You've got China on its own, southeast Asia, then us and then you've got like Europe and Oceania and all that. There's quite a lag there. And to your point about partnering with other brands historically speaking, if you wanted to do business in China as an American company you're GM, you want to sell Buicks in China you had to come in and partner with a domestic. And the criticism that Americans and people who are aware of international trade point at China saying well, look at how difficult they are, look at how difficult they're making it to do business in that country.
Speaker 1:Americans do the same thing.
Speaker 1:We have a very protectionist policy. That's the reason you go to all these countries and they have these cool vehicles like the Toyota Hilux and small pickup trucks, because we have something called the chicken tax that makes it prohibitively expensive for European or Japanese automakers to bring small trucks to the US. And now we're starting to see similar tariffs on Chinese vehicles. If you go to China right now, it's amazing how far ahead they are because you can get for $15,000 or $20,000 an electric vehicle that is as nice or nicer than anything you would buy from Tesla or from Ford or from VW in the US today. And sure, they have much lower salaries lower salaries, much lower pay but at the end of the day, that product is there, that product exists and it's not allowed to be sold in the united states because we have policies that protect our american companies. Speaking to all of that and Hyundai's expertise and Hyundai's massive footprint in global industry, I was surprised to learn that they'd never built a bulldozer on their own until a track dozer, until this week.
Speaker 2:It was always a partnered effort.
Speaker 1:Always HD Construction, so Hyundai Construction Equipment is actually called HD Hyundai, their first ever HD 100 dozer. It's a 10-ton class machine powered by 115 horsepower four-cylinder Hyundai engine that meets tier four final emission standards. This is their first ever track dozer. They're showing it off at just about every show you can get to and it seems to have all the features right, which is what you'd expect from a massive global conglomerate. With their first ever product, they're going to make this a class leading object to try to get new business and new customers in.
Speaker 2:First of all, dozers have been, you know, beat to death in this country and then globally by a million different people that have built a track type machine or a wheeled type dozer or anything else. So Hyundai has got a really good platform to go back and look on, and I don't want to say copying, but it's not what they're going to do. What they're doing is they're just learning from everything that's been done and they've been partnered in this before with their Hyundai dealers. At this day and age, what we need out of a bulldozer has been beat to death and any OEM that can provide that and can provide a machine that has solid, uptime, good dealer support. So when you do have an issue with it which will happen they can take care of it. It will be successful. That's all you need. It needs to run and when it doesn't run, it needs to be fixed. There's two parts to that. There's a lot more behind the scenes for that.
Speaker 1:That's very simplified, but Hyundai can do it because they already do it now with everything else they have going on Well, and I think the other thing that they've done and they've done a really great job with this in the automotive space and also in the trailer space is their warranty has always been second to none Maybe not always, but certainly since the 90s I mean, geez, look at their automotive history.
Speaker 2:I mean they came out with the 10-year 100,000 mile warranty and I mean I don't care who you were, but people were buying those cars because they couldn't believe the warranty.
Speaker 1:They stuck on them yeah, and people thought the warranty was going to bankrupt them and it just only made them stronger, only made them strong.
Speaker 2:And the trailer market was the same way. Their trailer warranties were enormous and people were like I don, I don't they. Just the dealer said bring it back and they're working on it. Yeah, because they understood it doesn't do you any good, sitting alongside the road or broke down at a dealership waiting on some part, and I could be wrong on this and we could get stats on it but they manufacture most of the components on their trailers and their shipbuilding.
Speaker 1:It's almost all theirs, it's all theirs. They are what they call vertically integrated. They make their own steel. They're not even buying steel from someone else. That's my point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're doing it across the globe and they're putting it out there.
Speaker 2:So what that does is, in this day and age we talked about this in the last episode as you have technology available and you are using technology now, you can aggregate data at an alarming rate and if you own the processes of what you make something out of, you can make changes subtly and systemically across your organization to make sure that you continue to provide a good product.
Speaker 2:We have to have that today, because the very first time somebody's broke down in a shipping lane with a Hyundai ship or takes out a bridge, it's all over the internet. And the worst part would be is if they found out it was because of some massive failure that they knew about and that they couldn't do anything about. So the internet shrinks the world up to a point where their new dozer that's coming out, or a ship or a trailer on the road everybody, within days, will hear what people want them to hear. Yeah, and they need to have that solidarity to be able to say here's a good product and we're taking care of it. Anything that comes up, we have a warranty for it and we'll take care of it.
Speaker 1:I think it's worth pointing out that the internet also brings out those unintended consequences that the engineers never planned for.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally, they're like. We didn't even think that was even possible. I mean, the guy had an arc flash inside of our trailer and achieve 35,000 Kelvin. We didn't even test for that yet. I mean, with their lab coats on spoken cigars going, it held up pretty good. We only peeled the vinyl right off the side of the house, but that was about it.
Speaker 1:Turbo and cabulator. That's the guy I picture, except he's Korean Turbo and cabulator.
Speaker 2:That's the guy I picture except he's Korean Turbo and cabulator. North Americans do it to themselves anyways, don't worry about it, oh my God.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to lead into that with the Cybertruck. I don't know if you saw this on Twitter, but apparently raccoons keep trying to break into them because they can't tell the difference between a Cybertruck and a dumpster.
Speaker 2:I think it's a dumpster.
Speaker 2:I think it's a dumpster, let me tell you something when Elon built that truck and he didn't design it solely. It's not always his fault. Everything that we like to pin on him is not solely his fault. It's his team's fault. Now let me tell you, when you park one of those and you spend the time to parallel park it because it helps you do that, and you get it put where it needs to be and you leave it there overnight and you're going to your favorite concert and then you go to the casino or wherever else you spend your time, it's clearly you got money to blow because you bought a Tesla cyber truck. Then come back to reality and you come out and then there's 20 raccoons all over that thing going. They're trying to figure out how to get in it because they believe there's food in there, because you built a rolling dumpster, my friend.
Speaker 1:It's the one. Just put some Gro stickers on it, you'll be all set. But I'm gonna walk that back because you know you made the comment and I've heard this comment from a lot of people like, well, you've obviously got money to burn because you got a cyber truck. You know what I mean. Have you priced you're?
Speaker 2:actually not that expensive. They're not that bad. Like have you priced an hd like a like a GMC?
Speaker 1:3500 crew cab 90 grand 100?.
Speaker 2:I just saw a Ford with the King Ranch Edition 350 crew cab short bed, not the eight-foot bed, six-and-a-half-foot bed, so maybe the standard bed they're calling it today Because beds have shortened over the years. Yeah, it's the decline of america. 98 500 sticker price on that thing you used to be able to in 1995. Okay, my family bought an international semi truck. Now grant international is not you know peter, bill or kenworth or some crazy sticker price on there, but a nice truck that was had chrome and aluminum wheels and all these things on it and was set up to go over the road for 99.8. Now granted people are like yeah, that was 29 years ago, but think about that no, but think about that.
Speaker 1:But that's not, that's not a legitimate comment. Because in in 2000 and let's say, 2007, 2008, right at the height of that economic downturn, I bought and you know the truck you've been in this truck. I bought a ram 1500 wt v6, six-speed manual, vinyl leather. I bought that truck for $11,000. Exactly that truck today is 50 grand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked about this before. I mean, gmc puts out a really good product. The GMC Pro half ton it's 40 something grand Standard cab eight foot bed. The three quarter ton GMC Pro standard cab eight foot bed with a decent engine and Allison transmission $51,000. That's it and that's okay. I mean, but that's where we're at today.
Speaker 1:I'm going to challenge that. That's not okay when you have it used to be I don't mean it's okay from a pricing point.
Speaker 2:I mean it's okay that everybody has the same pricing.
Speaker 1:It's okay that everybody has the same pricing. I'm so. Everybody has the same price, or ram or ford, do not, they're not that far apart. No, but let's talk about this because it used to be that if you were a young guy and you needed a truck for work, you could buy a relatively new truck, standard cab, nothing fancy and have something that you could hose it on. You know, after a whole long week of working. You could hose it off Friday and have something decent to go out with on Saturday night and it would be a good looking, sharp vehicle. And you could do that on a working man's blue collar salary, especially as a young kid. You could do that. We talked about that before. On another, episode.
Speaker 2:You can't do that anymore. Can't go buy a half ton and take your girlfriend out for a night out. Can't do it.
Speaker 1:No, when the average price of a new vehicle and let's talk about a generation ago go back 30 years. In 1994, the average price of a new truck was about half of your annual salary, because I used to sell trucks. I was selling trucks in 97. I was working at the Dodge store and we were selling Ram trucks and I would take people's credit apps and it would be. I make 30 grand a year. I'm buying a new Dakota for 15 grand and it was no problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now somehow we've achieved one-to-one ratio on anything that's got option packages on it.
Speaker 1:We've achieved a one-to-one ratio where it used to be six months of a full-time job would buy you a truck. Ratio where it used to be, six months of a full-time job would buy you a truck. Now it's a full year of full-time work to pay for a truck and a house used to be a house, used to be two or three years salary and now it's seven or eight years salary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this country is has to slow down with this. Other parts of the world have collapsed over crap like this. We're not any different. We're not any different.
Speaker 1:We're not any different and I believe that when you sit there and you say, if you look at what a pickup truck used to be, and the average pickup truck was an eight foot or, I'm sorry, a six foot bed, regular cab with a manual transmission and a six cylinder, and now the average pickup is a crew cab with power windows and locks, leather, six foot bed and a V8 with an automatic transmission, all wheel drive, like something's gone sideways and it's not sustainable and either salary's got to come up, price has got to come down, or both. And again I'm always going to fall on the side of labor, I'm always going to fall on the side of the working man. There is no reason that the CEO of Ford needs to make $30 million when the people who are making the vehicles that make that kind of salary possible have to scrimp and save to get groceries at Walmart. That is offensive. So why don't we get one of those hydraulic hammers you just picked up and go hammer some executives into the ground?
Speaker 2:Well, we need to do that and I'm going to tell you, NPK builds a product capable of doing it. They're large hammer out there. Actually, they build in North America there. They have a office here in Ohio and it's not the reason I picked them. It's one of the few that are left in the country, Cause we there's a ton of hammers that are built overseas in Europe. That's actually where some of it originated from, in the hydraulic hammer realm.
Speaker 2:But NPK, Japanese company that has a North American office. They do fabrication in the United States. They put people to work in the United States. They have a rebuild center over there. They have one of the most rebuildable hammers on the market today, where everybody has shifted away from this.
Speaker 2:They have built a product that has replaceable sleeves. You can have a firing mechanism which takes the charge when the piston goes up into the hammer and cocks it like a gun and releases the hydraulic pressure to throw the bit downward. All of that is all engineered, co-engineered between North America and Japan so that globally they can sustain a product that they want to send out. But beyond that, they understand their marketplace and they understand how to build something that is so simple to work on and so simple to repair in the field. It's scary. I mean, you talk about uptime. They have a massive product and the other thing too is a lot of people don't realize that they have huge hammers. They have a 25 000 pound I'm rounding up, depending on what hammer top hat kit you have on your hammer and host situation but 25 000 pound hammer that goes on a 240 000 pound class excavator and they have everything from that down to a mini excavator.
Speaker 1:So well, I think it's funny that you mentioned that they have that, that this the market is primarily driven in europe because it started out that way yeah, I think there's a lot more, and I'm going to use a term that I made up, so I hope it's accurate.
Speaker 1:There seems to be a lot more precision demolition there, because they have no, they have no space. They have no space, they have no space. So they will go in and they'll rip down a two-story brownstone or whatever and put up a four-story one, and they'll do it with buildings that are separated from each other by less than six feet, and they'll do it without damaging or otherwise scuffing up the other buildings. Right, you're starting to see that as America as a country matures and our cities mature and we have an increased demand for urban housing and walkable cities and things like that, you're seeing more and more of that here. Is that the kind of? But you guys don't do that kind of work, that much, do you?
Speaker 2:No, we do, we do very. The company that I work for we do very precision demolition inside of plants and facilities. That is very dangerous, depending on what we're doing. We're removal of foundations to put new foundations in, removal of floor sections within an environment that's turned off for the time that we're there. We do a lot of very finite work like that, very similar close quarters to what you'd see in Europe, where, yes, you could go into a large machine and blow through it, but because of where we're working, it's more handwork, it's more smaller machines taking their time and you have no room for error too, because if you put all this effort in there and then it messes up the plant, you know, then you have an issue with that. That's very similar to Europe as well, because we in Europe we have a problem over there in the industry where they have a one lane road, one lane alleyway that they're trying to, you know, dig up, put a pipe in the ground, put it back together and they don't have room for a lot of stuff, and and then also they're tying up an alleyway which is the only way to get from wherever you're going and try to access whatever's on that alley, because it's a road.
Speaker 2:So hydraulic hammers came about because, for a long time, everything was pneumatic and then you had to have an air compressor and all the lines and all that stuff Rammer, who's over in Germany, they build a really good product as well, and then they've partnered up with OEMs, and NPK, though, has stayed the course, where they have stayed on their own in a sense, where, yes, they partner with dealership groups and, yes, they work with OEMs, but they have a cool segment where they're like look, we're not going to let people rebrand our hammer, we're not going to do this thing. Where Caterpillar buys it and they call it a cat hammer, or John Deere buys it and they call it a deer hammer, it's an MPK hammer. It's bright orange. Here it is, and the rebuildable part of this and anybody that wants to inquire about this you can reach out to MPK North America. You can reach out to MPK wherever they are in the world and you can look at this, and they will explain to you how that hammer is infinitely rebuildable, as long as you do not damage the parent bodies that hold the sleeves and the ceiling surfaces and all that.
Speaker 2:But because it's all replaceable parts, so you replace a bushing or a sleeve for where your wear item is. And people have gotten away from that in parts of the industry, or they or their repair practices to sleeve the hammer. They do it up front and say, look, if you buy this hammer from us, the body's going to be fine until you wear it out. And the main body of the hammer power cell, which houses the transition from hydraulic slash gas to an actual momentum force driving into the concrete, that's rebuildable by that nature because they've just went in and put all the wear items in it. So anybody that hasn't checked them out or is looking at hammers, they need to go check them out and I just recently went through a whole course with them on where they're at today and it was impressive. I've bought hammers from everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's cool because we talked in another episode about having that partnership between the OEMs and the dealers and ultimately down to the customer and how in recent years they've just made it harder and harder to get that information to keep things repaired, because they want you you know, if Neil was on he'd start talking about planned obsolescence they want you to just go out and buy that new thing and lease that new one and just keep you in that constant loop of making payments, this idea of building a serviceable product that can be repaired and used year after year.
Speaker 2:It's from days far gone, days gone by.
Speaker 1:We don't have that anymore.
Speaker 2:The toaster that you bought in the fifties you could repair. There were manuals on how to repair. You know, electric knives and toasters and small toaster ovens before the microwave toasters and small toaster ovens before the microwave.
Speaker 1:You know, they told people how to build stuff.
Speaker 2:Nowadays, speaking of microwaves, I was so sad when I was in your house the other day and in your at your pop's house the other day, and the microwave was gone well, they had had that thing since the beginning of microwaves, and then you would talk about something that that they had a uranium core in it well, when we removed it from the countertop, we had noticed that it burnt a hole, the earth underneath of it.
Speaker 1:So I think after many things that the monster comes out of that was behind your old man's microwave when the remediation company was using lead-filled concrete to back up the hole.
Speaker 2:I'm sure we're. I'm sure we're. We were just safe after everything was done there in fairness.
Speaker 1:That's why you're like this. That's correct. That was a piece man. I had a flip down door. You had to flip the door down I remember I used to and it would close. It would be like chunk.
Speaker 2:You were encapsulating the uranium inside of the core and then, when the rods moved and it cooked your food and then brought the rods back in their lead cells, everything was fine, yeah it.
Speaker 1:Just it wouldn't even open a fan. It would just like a hatch would open and expose your food to the you know inanimate carbon rod Radar. Close it, yeah.
Speaker 2:And the other thing too, was when we thought we got hurt. My mom put our hand in there and she'd make sure we didn't break a bone. Honey, stand in front of the microwave. It's all good, looks fine it ain't broke, he's good.
Speaker 1:You turn around, it's like that, like in the simpsons, where he sits in front of the tv and the shadow is burned into the wall. You turn around, it's like cool diagram diagram your body.
Speaker 2:That's how. That's how they measured our growth when we were kids. I was gonna say that's how, instead of standing you up next to the post.
Speaker 1:Standing in front of the microwave sears the shadow into the wall. He's getting tall. Look how big.
Speaker 2:We tried to paint over that, that uh mark on the wall for a long time and no, nothing sticks right through.
Speaker 1:It's like that haunted handprint, that alcatraz, where the guy puts his hand on the wall and says I'm innocent and then just keeps coming back, no matter how many times they paint it.
Speaker 2:That's great maybe they had those microwaves as well. There they were cooking food. Back then they had some of the first ones prototypes from the government, cooking ramen man I'm so glad.
Speaker 1:Every once in a while I'm sad that we don't have sponsors, because I want money and I'll say anything for money, and I don't even care because my ethics are for sale we picked up a sponsor this week.
Speaker 2:What are you talking about radio shack? They got us on board.
Speaker 4:Everyone needs answers. Sometimes we are the place America goes For service to please for expert advice. There is one answer everyone knows Everything. They're looking for so much more than just a store the best in America Radio Shack. Nobody compares to Radio Shack and they people trust Products. They know A service to count on. There's one place to go the best in America.
Speaker 1:Radio Shack. But could you imagine if NPK was the sponsor of this? And they're like yes, they're talking about the stuff, they're talking about microwaves.
Speaker 2:What the there's gonna be that going on. I'm telling you because somebody's gonna be going. We got mentioned on a podcast, the heavy equipment podcast. Let's look at how original this is. It's called the heavy equipment podcast. They're talking about us. Then they read through the script and they're like microwaves. We don't put microwaves. We gotta listen to this. That's how you get listeners.
Speaker 1:That's how you get listeners and I think we've peaked for that. We were going to talk about pit ohio. We're going to talk about your fleet audit and your ocean sanity. I think we'll we'll save that for the next one well, real quick and lead into next one.
Speaker 2:We're going to be talking about Pitt Ohio and their sustainable operations that are soon to be second to none I mean, there's very few companies out there that are doing what they're going to be doing and we're going to talk about fleet auditing practices in the next one, which is a good point.
Speaker 1:I think we should just make that the whole show, we should just make it a whole Pitt Ohio fleet on an episode.
Speaker 2:Well, cause they go hand in hand. And then and that's why I was saying it like that, because, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:All right, so tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast, including Pitt Ohio fleet audit and Mike's third leg. Yes, and now a word from Jason Sanborn.
Speaker 3:Who says Jason Sanborn's a heftier coffee? Gail Cogdell and Mrs Gail Cogdell. John Mackey and Mrs John Mackey so much heftier it's the official NFL training table coffee. Is that the long crap we used to have? That's the long crap we used to have.
Speaker 1:Let's go my coffee.
Speaker 3:Back to the inside, All right. Well, I'm going to read you a block. Start your husband off.
