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 33 | Volvo Days, Silent Sites, and Serious Stick Time
We just got back from Volvo Days 2024 in Shippensburg, PA where we witnessed firsthand the silent power and versatility of Volvo CE's newest construction machinery, and found out what makes it perfect for today's evolving urban landscapes. We also lament the lost art of percolated coffee and marvel at the possibilities of an 8x8 Mack-onoline van. All this and more, on today's exciting HEP-isode of the Heavy Equipment Podcast!
Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Heavy Equipment Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Boras, here as ever, with Mike hot, Mike Schweitzer and Mike. We just got back from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did the Volvo Days experience, which is amazing. That was a very good time. Saw a lot of good product out there. One of the things that immediately grabbed my attention when we were walking through the covered area over there was the autonomous trailer that would follow you around and then you can put material in it and it will take off and go put it where you tell it to and come back and find you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the autonomous stuff was really cool and you know we got separated a little bit because there was just way too much for any one person to do at Volvo, a lot of ground to cover. That thing was really cool. It was an autonomous hauler they call it an autonomous haul truck and it had no passenger cab, no place for a driver. It just did its own thing, followed the excavator and then when it was loaded it had like those scales, the onboard scales. When it got to a hundred percent capacity it would beep, beep, beep. 100% capacity, it would beep, beep, beep and it would go and take its load wherever it needed to go and then come back empty for you to refill it again, which I thought was really neat. But it was only one of a couple of different autonomous things that was out there. They had an autonomous roller, a single roller compactor. That was really cool. That was like a big one wheel.
Speaker 2:If they offer that in multiple widths, I could totally see that. Where you could use it in a trench application, could use it in a small sidewalk application. You could use it in an application where you're trying to button up just a soft under footing before you pour some concrete. That's a really good, really good attachment.
Speaker 1:For sure. And then they had the autonomous excavator. They had that inside and they didn't really paint a clear picture of that. They just kind of had a little you know EC-18 electric inside and I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. What's this about? How come it's got you know some weird buttons in there and they're like, yeah, it's totally autonomous. And I was like what.
Speaker 2:They were kind of shy about that. They were all about the, the haul trucks and and some of the autonomous stuff outside. But they were a little shy about that and it makes me wonder if there's going to be another autonomous equipment venue where we're going to be able to go out and take a look at some of this stuff and actually operate it in a controlled area.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's worth noting, right?
Speaker 1:So the whole construction equipment kind of universe revolves around ConExpo, which is every three years. And if you're in this Volvo line, if you're a Volvo dealer, right, or you're in part of Volvo's community, conexpo is like year one, and then they show off the concepts and the really far looking like this is we're raising the bar here. And then Volvo days is like hey, you're getting your first look at the stuff that's going to be in production, going into production, that you're going to be selling next year. And then the third year they bring in all the dealers, all the sales guys, and train them up on the new product. So because of COVID three years ago, we didn't have Volvo days to show off this pre-production stuff. So I think they're a little bit shy in that. I think they were just kind of trying to ease us back into this normalcy, this new, normal idea. And a shout out to Mike Metzger and the guys at Rudd for hanging out with us and showing us a lot of the operations there, because those guys were awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, rudd's a great organization. They span many states and really have a good foothold in mining as well as day-to-day construction and smaller regular construction projects and can support everything from large front shovels all the way down. And I mean Rudd's been around for a very long time. Yeah, mike was a good dude, he was showing us around, he got me on a lot of the new electric gear. He ran some of the electric wheel loaders. He ran a small electric Mini which has its place when you need ultra quiet and you got to get some stuff done and be on your way. That Mini has a total place for that and a lot of municipalities 100% should be looking at that. They should be writing that in a spec. 100% should be looking at that. They should be writing that in a spec because when you got to show up in front of some lady's house or some guy's house and you want to quietly fix something, you can do it with that and make very little noise. And another thing that they have a good offering on, which has been overlooked, I think, by a lot of the contractors, is that the wheeled excavator line that they have is extensive. They've got a small wheeled excavator all the way up to some larger units. Again, every municipality, anybody that is doing any kind of work on any kind of paved surface, should be looking at that. They offer just an array of options and really will kind of tailor it to what you want to do.
Speaker 2:There's not enough people that are selling the wheeled excavators anymore. I mean, they used to be a popular thing. Komatsu, cat Case and John Deere had them, you know, and it's kind of slimmed back. They were hard sale for a while. But I'm telling you that they and then the other thing that they offer we're talking about options. Volo blew me away with the amount of what used to be custom stuff that you would have to have made for your excavator. They offer as bolt-on options and you can order it right from the factory. That's one of the big benefits from Volvo days alone is being able to walk around as an end user, look at stuff and go. I didn't know I could order it this way and they go. Absolutely, you can get it. This is how we sell it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you bring that up. I was really blown away. When we were sitting there. They started off the event with like this 45 minute equipment ballet. You know where they're driving stuff in close quarters and doing maneuvers and things like that. And one of the excavators was an EC two. 30, 30 ton unit right in front of me was equipped with this thing called a steel wrist at the end of it, and the little minute movements that you could do with this steel wrist attachment was really impressive, especially as somebody who is not an end user. I write about this stuff, I look at it in pictures and check it out in videos. To see it do its thing six feet from me was really impressive.
Speaker 2:Oh, steel wrist is a really good product and they have the.
Speaker 2:It's a quick coupling hydraulic fitting mechanism that goes on there too, if anybody's not familiar with it, allows you to not have to get out and break a fitting on an actual hose or use a quick coupler manually. With the fitting I'm talking about for the hydraulic hose, you can just release it and grab your next attachment. I mean, there's maintenance with anything, just like any of that, but that steel wrist allows you 360 degree movement and allows it to oscillate in a weird way where you can. Actually it's just like using your hand, but then it's got a little grapple that comes out of the back of the body. So not only can you dig and grade and all that stuff, grab whatever it is and place it where you want it. I was stacking logs with it, like we're stacking small pieces of wood with it. It's incredible. We really need to get the steel risk guys on the podcast because they they're just scratching what they can and can't do with that thing and the capability of that and the weight capacity of that is phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you get the sense that like they're there showing it off as one of the many options, optional add-ons that you can get for these excavators. But you get the sense that like there is somebody over there at Steel Wrist proper who's a real artist with this thing, who can do some incredible stuff. And they were just scratching the surface.
Speaker 2:Well, I expect to see them at Con Expo coming up too. I mean, it still weighs out, but they ought to have their own space where they are just stacking crazy items with an excavator out there and placing them like big Legos and showing it off. They need to have that out there. I'm sure they will, but that'd be great.
Speaker 1:We need to get like a little local pop band to record a jingle for those guys, if they don't already have one, so we could play a Steel Wrist commercial right now.
Speaker 2:Oh, like an 80s hair band.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect, steel Wrist.
Speaker 3:Like it sounds like a ladder point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or you could also do the light jazz. You could also do like if you, if that calms you, you could have the light jazz jingle playing in the in your volvo cab as you try to stack and move whatever it is that you're trying to do out there.
Speaker 1:That's so good you know what you know what is different?
Speaker 2:you know they want, they want hyped up, they want amped up like guys at the gym. Right, they want to go in there and get pumped. They listen to some of the heaviest rock metal imaginable. And then you got the other guys that are just sitting back in the seat soft music playing.
Speaker 1:They're just in their element you got the real weirdos that are in there listening to harry belafonte, big brass kind of stuff those guys buy other brands you know um I like that idea of a smooth jazz. We should uh work in a chase and sandborn commercial with some smooth jazz chase and sandborn.
Speaker 3:This is the instant coffee that gives you full of beans flavor, because instant chase and sandborn is full of beans.
Speaker 1:Are they even still a company? Like Like, honest question Is Chase and Sanborn still a company? They sell coffee? No, they don't. Where Google it? Yeah, they have a forum online where it says how did you hear about us? And one of the things is the Heavy Equipment Podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey, listen, you got to get up in the morning, you got to get your day going and last night you just got in late. You were out of the job, late because something broke down and your local equipment dealer was out there and they needed a hand. You just get up and you're sore and you're tired and you're still not sure about everything. You walk over to that coffee maker and if that Chase and Sanborn is dripping out of the filter, you know it's going to be a good day and that's all that matters. You fill your cup up thermos, whatever it is the vessel that you contain this with. It's hard to because most people drink it before they ever make it to work. It's that good.
Speaker 1:Have you ever had percolated coffee?
Speaker 2:That is some of the best. That's a lost art.
Speaker 1:That is a lost art. That is a lost art. That is a lost art.
Speaker 2:Damn, mr Coffee. And Mr Coffee, I'm going to go on a rant. Let's do it. Mr Coffee, here's the thing you want to talk about heavy equipment. Let's talk about coffee equipment. If you've ever seen the Bridgeport milling machine at Coffee Makers, it's the one behind the local diner. It's steaming, it's backfiring on you.
Speaker 1:We're not quite sure how it gets the electricity that it needs to heat the coffee up as fast as it does. We don't care.
Speaker 2:But they took away a panel. Yeah, you got to. Basically, if you unplug the thing, you could plug in a Tesla. So they got away from the percolated coffee. And when you were percolating coffee and you had six percolators going and they all had their own little burner. And when you were percolating coffee and you had six percolators going and they all had their own little burner and you let one sit a little bit for the guys that like it burn a little bit more, and you got one that's kind of watered down so it's not percolated as much. That's lost art.
Speaker 1:And Mavis is gone. She's been dead 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, she's built like a burlap bag full of bobcats. She had it all together. These people are gone in the industry.
Speaker 1:She's built like a burlap bag full of bobcats. I know exactly what you're talking about. I could walk you to that woman. She was at the Flying J on I-95 halfway through South Carolina.
Speaker 2:This predates Flying J. This is when they were private. Let's go back to an era in time when a guy come in off the road and there's only enough spots for about 14 trucks or so in the back and it's kind of Millie's truck stop, yeah, you walk in and I don't know it's just. Then you smell percolating coffee and that's it.
Speaker 1:There used to be one of those like real old school I think probably less than 20 trucks would be able to fit there. But it had a diner, it had some showers, it had the phone bank. It was right there off Okeechobee and you know where the Florida Turnpike and I-4 kind of would connect. Right there in the middle of Florida. Nothing but phosphate mines and swamp water, and it was great. I used to stop there all the time because I would uh be driving up well water too. Yeah, they, oh they definitely had well water and it was hard water like you just get belted by it exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I used to hit that would scrape the calcium out of the pots and throw it down to melt the ice exactly you'd take a shower in there, just like rip through your body, oh man that was a great stop.
Speaker 1:I forgot about that. That was, I think, in like 95 96 is kind of when that shut down. But I got to stop there a few times on my way between miami and university of florida because the car didn't have air conditioning 95 degrees in the swamp to sweat and Well, that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:We talk about. Days gone by. I mean anybody that's been around heavy equipment for a long time. I mean, look at the amount of excavator and construction equipment attachment companies that have gone away. A lot of them have been bought up. You've got Caterpillar and Volvo are privately labeled in their own stuff, along with Doosan, and then guys like Workbrow have been out for a long time. Workbrow's coming out. They have been a steady rock. But there's another company in Akron, ohio We've mentioned them before ACS. They build a lot of stuff for the military really good people.
Speaker 2:Some of these companies I'm kind of curious and we need to get them on too, because I'm kind of curious about where they're at in development. What are you developing with an excavator bucket? I mean, it's been played for a long time. But the one thing that hasn't been and where a lot of them are focusing energy and time on is ground engaging tools and we talk about this with bucket teeth and bucket tooth adapters, some of the best stuff out there right now. Workbrow has ESCO has it for the mining and mining and caterpillar has it on their stuff and all you know, all in one tooth of the keeper, self-contained.
Speaker 2:That is a pain point on anything. When you're out there trying to get something done and the tooth's dangling off of there, like you know, like some old guy behind a dumpster and you're and you're, you're just like, please stay on there for the rest of the day so I can be done with this. You already know the bucket shot because the tooth's dangling around on there and you can't put it back on correctly. A new one, what do you have to do here? You got your face.
Speaker 2:Welding it on is what you're faced with, and that just degrades the whole shank. All of this stuff, though, ultimately erodes profitability and ultimately erodes uptime, which is what we're always talking about. Whether it's autonomous, it's electric, whatever, how do you utilize the stuff, but you have to work with it, and steel wrist and these buckets and all that. That is a whole market that really is just dedicated to servicing whatever you're trying to get done, and I think it gets overlooked a lot because we, you know, we talk about the excavators, we talk about the OEMs, the wheel loaders and all that but what's actually doing the work.
Speaker 1:That's what's out front. Yeah, that's the bucket. Well, I think the other thing too is you know, you talked about ACS, you talk about Doosan and obviously Doosan Bobcat being kind of one company there and talk about what's next and what they're developing. And when I was at CES back in January, bobcat had a really interesting they weren't alone, hyundai had this too. They had a little bit.
Speaker 1:It looked a little different, but it's the same idea where they have almost like augmented reality, like a Google glass. So you're sitting in the cab and, even though it's perfectly clear and transparent, that whole front windshield windscreen is a monitor and what they do is they project using cameras and different projections. They project to the cab operator through the bucket so it makes it look like the bucket is invisible. And then Bobcat went a step further. Through their robotics arm, they have a number of sensors that allowed them to see gas lines and electrical lines in the ground where they were digging. So they're not guessing and hoping that the surveyor wrote it down properly. They could actually see almost like a radar in the ground where these cables were.
Speaker 2:We touched on that before.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we're in season two. We touched on a lot of things.
Speaker 2:We're always touching on a lot of things. That that's our problem.
Speaker 1:You gotta, you gotta stop touching that thing. That's gonna be an hr call soon. What?
Speaker 2:right, right. Talk about degradation of uh productivity. Have hr stuff about that next thing you listen.
Speaker 1:I was just preaching all listen. That 22 minute video is sure to deprogram a billion years of evolution. That has you looking at janice in the lunchroom. Listen listen.
Speaker 2:You end up with these, these hr nightmare calls, and they're sitting there and they're like oh, we got to do training on this and oh, we got to get affidavits, we got to sign stuff. Were we not doing it right to begin with?
Speaker 1:Were we not doing it right? No, I'm kidding, probably not.
Speaker 2:No, but seriously, that stuff with Bobcat and being able to identify the utilities underground, that's key. You have to have that. But Bobcat's been trying to release some stuff out for a while and then they get stonewalled a little bit yeah.
Speaker 1:And it was weird. They got stonewalled by their own people, right? Because like, yeah, do sand bobcat. Right, this was a a korean company, do sand that was making similar bobcat equipment and forklifts material handlers in korea and they did some kind of merger acquisition with bobcat years ago. This is not a new thing, but there's always been Doosan Robotics, which is a sensor company, an automation company. They build manufacturing robots and as more autonomy and more technology comes into the equipment space, it seems like a natural progression to merge the robotics company with the equipment company and they announced that they were going to do that in June or July. But there was a huge shareholder revolt among the Bobcat shareholders and they were just basically doing a sell-off and driving the stock price down to prevent this merger and I don't understand why that happened. I mean, you can say, like you know, the Americana super conservative, patriotic investor saying we don't want this to become a Korean company, like that ship has sailed dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't. I don't know what's going on with that either. I mean it. I think we're going to see more and more of that as the years go on. I think we're going to see companies that want to move away from what they're used to and they're going to get pulled back a little bit, and I really think the ones that are going to truly succeed are the ones that forge ahead. Anybody that stays in the same lane the entire time, what happens? They get ran over.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Caterpillar, people pick on them. John Deere, hitachi, volvo, they've all tried stuff. Does it always work? Absolutely not, and they're real quick when you go up and you ask about product. And let me tell you, when you're working for a small company or you're working for a large company but you find this one thing that the OEM makes like a rubber tired excavator and it fits in a segment of your work and you build your work platform around that and then you call up and you're like, hey, we're looking at uh you know three more of these this year.
Speaker 2:They're like oh, I'm sorry we're not able to get those, I can try and find you some used ones. You feel completely let down. But at the same time, that's just a small group of people Now. Granted, maybe it didn't work out, maybe it wasn't what they wanted to do and what they wanted to chase, that's okay. But they tried it, they had it out there and they found customers that wanted it. That has happened decade after decade in this industry Trailer manufacturers I mean, we can talk about Rittenhour and we can talk about Dunan and all these guys.
Speaker 2:Dunan doing is really good. They build very custom trailers and if you want something, so while bashing them, they own everybody, they own a lot of them. And you got trail king and then you got, oh, you know, the other guys. But when it comes to like regular flatbed work that's another thing they have written our over the years has strayed far from what. The traditional aluminum trailer, this is what we build, and they have reinvented themselves multiple times over. And same with Dunin. Dunin is another one. If you want to steal trailer, that's custom. They build it for you. You're not going to find that by a company that's just like no, we only build X. Well, that happened to Kodak too, and look where they're at.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. So let's talk about this for a second, because you're talking about flatbeds, You're talking about, you know, these companies that are like, really, really focused. I was checking out Lion Electric and I know that you know we were supposed to be talking about Volvo days, because that's where we were for three days, but I want to change gears a little bit. So Lion Electric, this is a company that's in the US, made in the USA, electric vehicles, unlike most OEMs and I'm talking about even like GM and Ford and even Tesla that buys batteries from Panasonic and from BYD ID.
Speaker 1:Lion is making its own battery packs. They're making their own batteries. Right, they're very unique in that sense. They just rolled out the first ever fully electric class five flatbed tow truck and I think that's really interesting because if you are in the repo business, you're in the recovery business and you're pulling up to somebody in a you know 4,500 Dodge Ram and you're trying to hook somebody's F-150 that they made payments on and get out of there before they come running out of the house with a shotgun, If you can do that electric, real quiet, without a whole bunch of hydraulics and crazy exhaust, and I think you've got a real market advantage and I know that that's kind of a messed up thing to be talking about, but that's real life.
Speaker 2:That's a real life thing. And then I mean the same thing with okay, look at the Carvana trucks. Right, look at all the other delivery vehicles that can profit from the fact that they are quiet. Have you ever heard an Amazon van pull through your development unless your tires hit the grave, the pound? No, that's it. You don't hear them.
Speaker 1:Not at all yeah, and I think that that's something that I think is being overlooked is this idea, over and over again, that when you have this quiet operation, we're not talking about a one-to-one replacement, we're not saying that everything should be electric and that we should get rid of diesel tomorrow. There are people who say that, but they're not credible people, just like the people who say electric is stupid and it'll never happen. They're not credible people either. It's a new technology, it's a new tool and it's going to have its place and there's going to be areas, there's going to be niches within the environment, within the commercial environment, that electric is going to occupy better than diesel. And I think this kind of asset recovery, repo and towing you know, even residential towing and delivery, I think, is going to be a really big opportunity and I can't wait to see what Mac does with their Mac MD line no the Mac MD with the Jordan back on it and then whether you lift or you got a flatbed, that's.
Speaker 2:that's another thing. But listen, anybody. Yes, it's new technology. 30 years ago, battery powered electric tools were never going to make it. Those don't work. I only use it for an hour and it's dead.
Speaker 2:Listen, look what we're doing. Primarily it's what everybody's going to. Now they want cordless tools. We're going to be in the same boat. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:If you're running a small towing operation, you're not going to have a dozen of those, but you got one in there. You got to go out and go around the corner and go pick something up. Maybe it's not even that. Maybe somebody's car broke down at a school and during the day you want to be able to quietly show up, pick the car up, take it away without raising a bunch of eyebrows and drawing a bunch of attention. It's all about that. It's the same thing as the garbage packers for Mac and it's the same thing. Everybody's saying the same thing. You're not going to leave out of Miami, florida, and drive that thing to Washington state. That's not feasible. But in a metro area where you're trying to get around and come back and forth, that's where it fits. It's the same thing I was saying with the earlier, with the Volvo technology and the electric machines. Every municipality should have one of those. Yeah, need them all. Absolutely not. They can't be your entire fleet, but there is a place for every one of those A hundred percent, you know.
Speaker 1:And the other thing I wanted to talk about was especially with that EW150, which was the wheeled excavator that Volvo had at Volvo days. I didn't get a chance to drive that thing or operate it I was talking to too many people, but that was one I was really interested in because it does have onboard battery. It does have yeah, you read it cool. I mean, did you realize that you can plug that into grid power? So like, literally, you're sitting there on the job site, if you're in an urban area, urban environment where grid power already exists, you can literally just plug that thing in to a 220 thing and, uh, and it just keeps operating without using the batteries, yes, and that's really cool.
Speaker 2:And and here's the other thing too, the other thing I learned at volvo days which I started asking some questions and I, and among some of the other oems and I, was getting some crazy feedback like I don't know, yeah, but DC power.
Speaker 2:So talking to the European engineers which is one of the best things about going to any OEMs multi-day event is you talk right to the people from the factory, right? They were saying that using 48 volt DC power exponentially and I'm talking tenfold shortens your charge time. Now there was another couple of companies there with charging cells I'll call it or charging packs. They had eyelets on the top of them. You can unload them, you could set them down, you could take and place these like you place barrels on a job or like you place job boxes. It's the same kind of principle. And they were like well, if you have the right grid infrastructure which is always key, and we talk about that a lot and that's what the naysayers talk about they're like you can put 48-volt DC to it, convert it and charge this thing in five hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, not only five hours. I mean, if you've got access to you know, like, if you're putting, if you've got access to enough power, you can put 150 kilowatts into some of these things and charge them up in 20 minutes.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no, this sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. What did I just say? The flux capacity stores.
Speaker 2:This sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of when this thing hits 88 miles an hour, you're going to see something. Here's the thing, and I got to talk about this. I had a long conversation with the engineers about this. I've had a long conversation over the years about this, whether it's diesel driven or electric driven, but even more now today. The electric driven equipment exaggerates what I'm going to talk about greatly.
Speaker 2:Your true actual stick time meaning every time you pull the stick and every time you create a function is when you use power. Anybody that tracks actual productivity of a machine and I'm not talking when it's running and I'm not talking about that. It's sitting there idling. You've eliminated all that when you're talking about electric equipment. Now we've gotten we've talked to the case guys, about the case backhoe. This is a prime example, and the same thing with the electric wheel excavator prime example of utilization over power usage. If you have that on a job and I'm going to keep going back to municipalities, because they're not dumb and they have to have a variety of stuff with a limited budget, so think about that yeah, they have trustee elected funding and then they're allowed to buy stuff trustee elected funding and then they're allowed to buy stuff. So they have to make the right choice, because the minute they piss that away they don't get it.
Speaker 2:And the OEMs have all this data. This isn't new. They know that on average, somebody only uses a wheel excavator 3.7 hours in a given workday, and they're only using it 3.7 hours because the rest of the time is spent them getting in and out of the cab, them running, running to break them out in the hole, working with somebody else. That's your true run time, right? So guys are like I can't get 10 hours a day out of that electric machine. Of course not. You're not using it in a mining application. You're using it only when you need it. And when you pull the stick something happens, and that's because it only when you need it. And when you pull the stick, something happens, and that's because it's electric. You don't have all this. You know we've talked about this in other episodes, about this Actual usage. What do you actually use this for? How much do you actually use it? And then let's look at how we can make it have power for that actual day's work.
Speaker 1:Right and they have with their telematics they can actually show all that and that was one of the things that I went into that trailer and we really looked at that and they were talking about average numbers where it's in that three and a half to four hour range on a full day shift.
Speaker 1:So if you've got a vehicle with eight hours of runtime for a charge, you can do back-to-back shifts and plug it in on an eight-hour charge on a 220 volt and have it ready to go the next morning. So it's okay, it's fine and I think honestly it makes more sense to electrify that kind of thing on a job site where you're using that three to four hours of job site time, if that right, versus something like an over-the-road semi or a big electric garbage truck that has to go into these rural areas because you can deliver all that torque, all that power, still be quiet, still meet all the company or municipalities ESG goals and it makes sense to electrify there. I think that arguably makes more sense to electrify construction equipment than it ever has or ever will long haul semi trucks.
Speaker 2:Well, right, and let's, let's look at it like this. So, on average I'm just talking to average, because there are companies out there that beat this on both spectrums on average, you're looking at anywhere between 500 and 800 hours a year on an excavator how many are you talking about engine hours?
Speaker 2:you're talking about stick hours engine hours, and this is what I'm getting at. The engine was on 500 to 800 hours in a year's working year's time. How many working days are in a year? I figure 240, 250. Okay, okay, so if it's 250 and you only turn the hour meter over 500 hours for the year, that's two hours a day. Yeah, if it's 800, you're somewhere in the neighborhood of three to 3.4, something like that, right, yep? Now your actual productivity time when you fire that thing up and you run it is still back in the two hour range on average. Now you got days we're going to utilize it heavily and days that it's just going to sit there. But what I'm saying is we're going to find out, just like we found out with vehicles of the past. Anything that progresses, you start to adapt your planning, your scheduling and your work schedule around what is available. Yeah, so who cares if it only runs eight hours for the day on electric, you're only going to use it four maybe five of the day on electric.
Speaker 2:You're only going to use it four, maybe five, yeah, and realistically probably three. Exactly. Again, you're going to have some. You're going to have a ball-busting job. You got to bring a bunch of guys out there. You got 20 guys standing around. You're gonna you're gonna have some diesel equipment out there that's making hay all day. But then off in the corner are those guys that are trying to drill a hole with a small auger and pour in some sono tube because they need to put a light pole in. Yeah, they're screwing around over there all day with like 20 processes and the one thing they need that mini for is to put an auger hole in the ground well, and that's why I really like this setup.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you saw sunbelt.
Speaker 1:Sunbelt had a trailer mounted battery pack and it was funny because the autonomous haul truck was pulling up to it to plug in right over there by the uh, you know by where they had the dinners and everything else.
Speaker 1:So looking at that piece of equipment makes total sense because you don't need, you know, a 40 kilowatt hour battery. That's going to give you eight or 10 hours of continuous runtime. You just need two or three hours of continuous runtime If you can store that energy in a trailer or quickly move that energy from one machine to another. Like you know the way that the trench compactor was set up to use the weight of the batteries as mass to push down and level that trench, but then gave you that 220 and those 110 connectors to transfer that energy where you need it. And you start looking at the job site not in terms of how many hours of operation, but start looking at it in terms of how many watts of energy, not electricity. How much energy do we need to expend to move those rocks, to move that material, to move that?
Speaker 2:dirt. Yeah, yeah, look at the charging. And then look at the. Look at a capacitive discharge type charging. Right, that thing's plugged into the grid and it's soaking up power while you're working. That's it. You pull up to it and then it's like a lightning bolt went through a rod and it's putting the power back into the machine at an enormous, at a crazy rate. And yeah, I'd like to see if we can. We got to find somebody from Sunbelt and talk to them about this, because not just that, but the fact that you can have mobile charging come and go from a site and it's plugging into the grid. There are times where it's not going to work, but there are times where you've got a power drop. Anyways, you've got line people out there, you've got other electrical things going on and you say, look, I need a tap so I can tap this trailer. So while I'm in here building this new Sheetz, we can keep going here.
Speaker 3:That's it.
Speaker 2:Sheetz has enough power coming into it to charge one of those trailers 24 seven while you're working. So when you do need it, the power is stored in there and it throws it right into the machine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's all it needs to be. It just needs to be something that can take that power from where you got it to the job site where you need it, and get enough energy in there to do the job. We talked a lot about, you know, the turn of the century, the turn of the 20th century, when we were still talking about horsepower in terms of how many horses you had on the job site and then it was. You know, this engine can do as much as four horses, this engine can do as much as 10 horses. Well, now we're getting back to that. We're not talking about hours. We're not talking about, you know, the fuel itself being expendable. We're talking back in terms of the amount of energy, the amount of work that needs to be done. So I'm really excited about it. I think it was a really cool event.
Speaker 2:Um, and you know I'm really disappointed, we didn't get to go see Fallingwater they're only closed on Wednesdays they're only closed on Wednesdays the day that we get off the Beaver exit to take a look at it and we go, wow, we're this close, we're going to run over there. You know what? Shout out to the guy with the cigarette in his ear for letting us know that when he pulled out of the gate and told us hey, it's like when you what is that summer vacation or whatever it's called, where they pull up to wally world and they're closed? Oh yeah, we were almost at that point. So you think we should have held him hostage with a bb gun? I know, I think we should have said hey, we're going in, yeah and then just walked in.
Speaker 1:Well, if we had been in the Mac granite, we could have made that happen. What's he going to do? Stop us with that little eclipse. There's nothing he was going to do.
Speaker 2:What you need, though, is you need the Mac MD with front wheel drive added to it. Do they have that? Well, there's a company out there that adds them on, and let me tell you, the European market has the Unimog. Yeah, we have the MacMD Four-wheel drive, and if you need to get somewhere, it's going to go up and over it.
Speaker 3:Medba, you are going to take the shortcut to the interstate, aren't you? You're here to win, ain't we? If you're going to be a bear be a grizzly.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a good one, yes, man. So apparently you can get the Mac MD as an 8x8. Correct, we got to get one of those. What are we going to do as an 8x8. Correct, we got to get one of those. What are we going to do with an 8x8?
Speaker 2:I don't know I'll put a van body in the back of it, drive it around like a big Econoline van. Those are gone. Those are gone. That's true, mac-a-line.
Speaker 1:Mac-a-no-line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Mac-a-no-line Line of vans. Do you need to throw it in the back and take it somewhere? It shouldn't be. This is what you use.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine just some crazy, severe-duty 8x8 monster with a full van body in the back?
Speaker 2:Let me tell you 2026, you're going to see the A-Team come back yet again with a new Mack-O-Liner.
Speaker 1:Oh, there you go. Hey, remember that time we had a petition going to change the national anthem to the 18 theme song. Let's play that now.
Speaker 3:In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team. I think we're done.
Speaker 2:We've touched all four corners of hell on that one.
Speaker 1:We kept touching things. We got HR on the phone. We got the A-team going, we're done. That's on that one. We kept touching things. We got HR on the phone, we got the A-team going, we're done. That's a good one. That's a good one. I thought that was a good one.
