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The Heavy Equipment Podcast
HEP-isode 40 | $7 Gas, Moon Conspiracies, and John Deere Headsets
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On today's first-ever FORTIETH HEP-isode, $7/gallon gas and diesel is pushing Americans to their breaking point, Caterpillar and Komatsu are in a while different kind of space race, and John Deere's latest VR headsets promise to change the way we think of operator training – and operator deployment – forever.
Setup And Weekend Banter
SPEAKER_04Are we ready back there? Are you good to go? Is this good?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. All right. Welcome back. The latest exciting episode. Joe Boris, Mike, hot Mike Schweitzer on the other end. Mike's always hot. Nice.
SPEAKER_04You know, it's Saturday. You know, tomorrow's Easter, just a timestamp where when we recorded this, but you know, for the FBI and the NSA that's listening, we had to bring our Tim in. You know, it's Saturdays, usually people are off, but part of his contract, I don't know. He's got to deal with it.
High Gas Prices Hit Fleets
SPEAKER_03You know what, man? He's doing fine. He knows he doesn't have to show up if you don't want to. He's got to stop complaining. Speaking of complaining, he was going off on a rant today talking about, oh, I'm going to drive all the way out here from Elyria's gas is five dollars a it's getting crazy.
SPEAKER_04Gas is ridiculous. Gas is ridiculous. I mean, diesel with the pumps 537, 525. Depends on where you're at. I mean, it's ridiculous right now.
SPEAKER_03It's eight dollars in the inland empire as of this morning, uh California. Seven, uh, I think it's not quite eight dollars, like seven seventy-nine or something. That's what it's called. The inland empire. I I know, I know it's all oil fields out there, man.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, eight dollars. I mean, we we have achieved what is that euro? If you get it by the leader, now we're like euro pricing out there.
SPEAKER_03We're like at Euro pricing, which is wild because if you really think about it, America has never had to deal with truly high gas prices. I mean, George Carlin used to do a great bit about this, where you know, he would say, if you if you go to France, they would tell you that they don't have poverty. Everybody has a little tiny dorm fridge and they drive around in a one-liter retinal and they have no TV. And an American would look at that, yeah, American would look at that and go, That's poverty, brother. But uh, you know, all of a sudden you got eight dollar a gallon gas, that seems okay.
SPEAKER_04You know, many people theorize is this is this going to become the new norm eventually, and you know, just steadily it's gonna drop back down and then pick back up, and it's just what it is. You know, nobody's got a crystal ball and nobody can figure that out, but we we have to do things to try and stem the tide, I guess. You know, and and Cummins is working on it, they've got that gasoline six seven with an engine brake on it. You know, that's an that's an amazing motor.
When Electric Starts To Pencil Out
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that X-15 where they've got the flex fuel where you can run diesel or natural gas, it just kind of flips over. That's something I gotta ask the question, though. I know we take a lot of heat from this, but you know I'm a big fan of electric equipment, of battery trucks, that kind of stuff. There has got to be a point, right? What whatever the dollar number is, I'm not here to say, oh, it's at$550 a gallon or six dollar a gallon. Whatever it is, there has got to be some price per gallon number where you look at that or a fleet looks at that and says, We can't go on paying this, we gotta switch over to electric.
SPEAKER_04The fleets are construction equipment fleets, there there is a magical number. I mean, that there's a point where I think the saving grace, though, with a lot of these guys is the price escalations that are built in now for escalating fuel prices, escalating petroleum prices, depending on what they are, because it's not always fuel, but most of it is fuel. They add that money back into their contracts. But the bottom line is there is a breaking point where if you're not able to charge fuel surcharges for on the road, if you're not able to charge fuel surcharges for off the road, it's gonna get there. I mean, we we're just not set up to sustain, let's let's call it 550, and then you go from 550 to six bucks a gallon. Now, if somebody's driving down the road in their semi that they own, and they're trying to scrape up what they can of fuel surcharges and be realistic with their people that they're working for, that's a breaking point. It's gotta be. We're not set up to accommodate six dollars a gallon fuel on the road.
SPEAKER_03I know it. And if you look at municipal fleets, municipal operations, school bus fleets, yeah, these are operations that have a limited budget as it is, and it doesn't matter how high fuel prices go, the school board ain't getting any more money until maybe they file a new tax law, maybe they get additional funds for the following year. I mean, what are these? What are they gonna do, especially out in these rural areas where the school bus has like a 150-mile route every day?
CNG And Methane From Farms
SPEAKER_04Garbage packers, school buses, mail runs, Amazon runs, all these things. They could easily they've already electrified Amazon, they're already working on that. That that's a huge thing unless you got extended range drivers. UPS has proven time and time again that that CNG works in a controlled environment. Yeah, do we got to do that with school buses, we've got to do that with trash packers, we've got to do that with close proximity, I would call vocational equipment. You could do it with cement mixers, and you could do it with all kinds of things like that that have a controlled radius.
SPEAKER_03Well, you also have the ability with like a tube truck to fill that thing up at the depot and take it out to the job site, fill up those machines. And absolutely, if you're a dairy, if you're a big farm and you've got a lot of bio waste, if you are a landfill operation or you're working anywhere near there, you can get a lot of that methane, a lot of that that is otherwise burned off or spent off. You can harvest a lot of that and use that as fuel. There's big farming operations out in Wisconsin that are dairy farms and here in Illinois that are doing that already, and their fuel costs are nothing because they would literally already give this stuff away.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I mean, we lived, think about the history of this country and farming and the gluttony that we enjoyed of just being able to waste stuff and just cast it back to the fields, cast it back to the to the landfills, runoff was never an issue until it became one. We enjoyed a lot of ignorance for a long time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I mean, that's you know, ignorance is bliss. Somebody should say that.
SPEAKER_04They have, but it but this is what I'm saying. You you literally are like, okay, well, now we're gonna need to do something. Sometimes some people could argue we're too late, like we have to do it now, but we could have been working our way into it slowly, and people have tried. There are farms that are selling their methane, there are farms that are selling bio waste, it's not turned into a normal business model for all farms, though. Yeah, because of the history of just never having to do it, and we'll figure it out.
Climate Anxiety And Human Ingenuity
SPEAKER_03We'll figure it out, and I think that this is always something, you know. One thing that I will say is, you know, you see all this doom and gloom stuff, and and there is some truth to it, right? When you sit there and you read about, you know, climate change and weather erosion and storms and crazy record flooding. I mean, you could really go down that rabbit hole, but humans are smart, we're adaptable, we've survived ice ages, we've survived meteor strikes, we have survived all kinds of stuff. Humans will figure it out, and it won't be the way that we think it's gonna be. No matter who, no matter what you think it's gonna be, whether you think it's electric, whether you think it's nuclear, whether you think somebody's gonna figure out fusion or whatever, somebody will figure it out and we'll make our way through. We got to keep an open mind, we got to support the people that are doing new ideas, and we got to try stuff.
Artemis Helium-3 And Lunar Mining
SPEAKER_04Well, we get you know, we start colonizing the moon and we start bringing back new minerals that we can use to extract energy or or create dynamic energy. I think this is gonna change as for people that are going, wow, that's way out there. But what you know, what if you find something on the moon? What if you find something out there that you're like, wow, this reacts to this very well, and then we do this, we don't have radiation that we used to create, and now we have something that creates energy and we can use it to propel ourselves elsewhere.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's funny you say that because one of the big reasons that we're pushing a new generation of lunar flight, like right now, as we speak, the Artemis II is on its way to the moon for the first time in 50 years. That's right. The reason for that, and we we talked about this in one of the season two episodes. If you guys are longtime listeners, you remember Komatsu is building a lunar excavator and a lunar sorting machine because there is a form of helium that exists in low gravity, exists it's very plentiful in moon rocks, that is like necessary for the next generation of quantum computers. And we're going up there to mine that stuff before China, before Russia, and everybody else, so that we can get a handle on it. And that kind of thinking, that kind of idea of like using the things that we have, it's not something that this country has done since they were building the Eisenhower interstate system or building the Hoover Dam. Like, we someone somewhere has woken up and said, We gotta spend some dollars, we got to spend some manpower on this and see what we can do. Because what we've been doing now, what we've been milking for the last 40 years, it's running out of covers, it's running out.
Moon Camo Conspiracy And Cat Lore
SPEAKER_04Well, here's the thing I again komatsu's building that, and we've talked about that, like you said, multiple times. The other, you know what I think is hysterical? We got you know, Space Force, Space Force, Space Force, Space Force, you know, now Caterpillar's got this battleship gray moon camouflage equipment that is coming out, and the moon and the moon, if you want to get into a conspiracy theory, the 100th anniversary battleship gray test, people believe is some sort of way for Caterpillar ingeniously disguising a beta test of the moon camouflage so that they can work with Space Force and transport Caterpillar equipment to the moon. And when they're up there defending this world, Caterpillar is not defending the U.S. Caterpillar is defending the world. Komatsu's in it for their own gain, Caterpillar is here to protect us, and they are sending up equipment and moon camouflage right now. They're working on it. People they released it, everybody loved it. It looks amazing. So think about this. So you're up there in your brand new Caterpillar moon camouflage machine working on your low gravity helium extraction and trying to gain, you know, all this stuff so we've got a better energy power plant. I mean, it's gotta be it would be amazing. Look at the view up there. You you got Gloria Stefan and Suave playing in the background because you're working too hard. You're just trying to make a living, you know, and then you're you know, and you got you got this badass cat machine sitting up there, and right next to you is a a sweet komatsu machine, but it's not gonna be moon camouflage gray.
SPEAKER_03No, the komatsu thing's white.
SPEAKER_04I really white and gray might actually work because then you get that stuck over there. Remember, all the well, they probably are gonna park it next, you know, when it breaks down, they're gonna park it next to all the other lunar rover crap that we left up there in the 60s.
SPEAKER_03That's so I forgot about the lunar rover. That thing's cool.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03John Deere Gator, but like with a little satellite dish.
SPEAKER_04Well, can you imagine the the space mechanics flying up there and they they land, you know, and the the lunar lube rover comes out of the the hole, and then they're like, Where's all this crap parked at, guys? They're like, Yeah, over there about a rover, you know, all the white stuff's komatsu and all the gray stuff is uh caterpillar. Oh shit, I ain't got filters for that thing. I don't know. We're gonna have to come back. Then they load their stuff up and they leave.
SPEAKER_03That's amazing. The next flight's two years from now. We're done.
SPEAKER_04The guys just sit, they're on a paid vacation, equipment's down.
Why Brand Paint Colors Matter
SPEAKER_03But you know the story of that battleship gray caterpillar stuff. That's the centennial. That was the original color when it was the Holt, the CL best tractor company from Holt Manufacturing. I I guess at some point somebody had the idea that we should be able to see this stuff, so they painted it yellow.
SPEAKER_04Well, he probably got tired of tripping over it in the dark. And you know, so it's it's it's gray because it's primer gray with a and the only color on it was where it actually said the full word caterpillar, and it was red back then. But um, yeah, some guy walking through the barn at night and trying to dodge a cow fell over it, and then he was like, Hey, we gotta paint some of this. Alice Chalmers has got it figured out, we gotta do something.
SPEAKER_03What I love about it is like that cat yellow is so ingrained in the company that if you look at this, like you look at the D8, right? The one actually we talked about the D8 the other day because it was the electric drive with the diesel motor. But if you look through that mesh and you look at the engine, it's still yellow, the block is still yellow.
SPEAKER_04Oh, that that'll never go away. Yeah, and in fact, there's a rebuild company out there that's shipped out. I I won't name them, but uh they're they're ingenious, okay. You know, uh but I'm gonna go through the the the love hate of of certain rebranding and and rebuild colors here. We talked about paint before, and I think we're gonna get the the Bell Zone. Is that right?
SPEAKER_03We are definitely getting the Bellzone guys in.
SPEAKER_04Bellzone guys are coming on there, and and uh my I thanks to my brother Neil, he he sent out a whole questionnaire thing for them, and uh we had to give uh Tim a bunch of Xanax because he wasn't sure why my brother was getting involved. But they um, you know, you got Cummins Beige, and people love Cummins Beige, and they were painting their campers Cummins Beige and all this stuff. And you get Caterpillar Yellow, and people paint everything Caterpillar Yellow. You got John Deere Green, you know, they wrote songs about it, you know, Billy Bob, and you know, all these things have their own following, but there's a rebuild company out there that is sending out Cummins signature series rebuild engines from the 90s and early 2000s and Caterpillar Yellow. But people are unwrapping these things and they're furious.
SPEAKER_03I don't even think they got the note.
SPEAKER_04Uh no, there was some letter in the box, actually. There was a there was a thing. I gotta send you this article, but I it was hysterical. This guy literally unwrapped this. He spent uh, you know, like$21,000 on this reman and all this stuff. He's got his truck down and he opens this thing up and it's like, what?
SPEAKER_03Do you imagine popping the hood on like an old school, like proper build Cummins Ram 3500, and it's fucking bright yellow under there? I would lose my mind.
SPEAKER_04No, that would be bad.
SPEAKER_03I can't imagine. I would be furious. So, like, I I don't know what they're thinking, but I mean I and the guy like you have to tell people that that's what's coming.
SPEAKER_04I mean, you unwrap that rapper. I mean, there is I don't know. There's there's gonna be a moment of anti-suicidal watch because you're gonna have to just make sure that the guy who spent all his money's okay. What imagine ordering a wicked 3408 V8 Caterpillar, a 3412 V12 caterpillar that shows up and it's Cummins beige.
SPEAKER_03Imagine it's John Deere Green. Like, what are you doing, man?
SPEAKER_04Some guy get mad, hit that with his pickup truck, and just knock the whole thing over.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, damaging shipping. Imagine you order a billet VR 38 block from whoever's making those now, I guess AMS or whoever's making those from the and that thing shows up with like a hot pink powder coat. Like, what are you doing? Oh, that'd be badass, actually.
SPEAKER_04It's not even Cancer Month. Cancer's around all the time, but we you know, you know what we're talking about. I know, yeah, it's it's it's actually uh say the Tatas, but that doesn't apply when your bright hot pink billet block shows up from whoever made it for you 20 grand later.
SPEAKER_0320,000, and they didn't tell him what color it was gonna be.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I'm I mean, you could get a Cummins block, I'm sure, and you know, and and cancer awareness ta-ta pink.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but that's still not yellow. There's certain to your point, there's certain colors that go with certain brands, like at Harley Davidson. There's that Harley, that grabber orange or hugger orange that goes kind of with the Harley Davidson motif. If you saw an Indian that was in that orange or a Honda that was in that black and orange or that gunmetal gray and orange, it would look weird. Like I think it would upset people.
SPEAKER_04It is no different than Navy, Marine Corps, military green colors, brown, black, you know, green. Those are very specific. Caterpillars got that backhoe right now that uh they did some articles on that are they released for the military, they're doing that, and that's coming, you know, they're sending those out all over. Those are green. There's no mistaking who that thing is for. If you if if some guys woke up in the middle of the night and walked out of their apartment complex and there was a green caterpillar backhoe sitting in the apartment complex parking lot, they'd go, We're going to war.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_04That's why it's here. They're digging.
SPEAKER_03If you were in a coma for the last 40 years, yes, you could wake up, look out your window, and go, that's a cat, that's a John Deere, that's a Kubota. And like to mess with that, to just get whatever paint was off the shelf and send somebody that yellow paint. I I'm upset. I'm like shaking. I'm shook up by how upset that has made me. I and like and that it wasn't even my 20 grand or my motor.
SPEAKER_04Well, we're gonna plug somebody. The only person that's gonna shake any more than that is the uh Wolfman CB shop. They build the best 10-meter striker radios. I just talked to that guy today, and uh, I'm gonna buy a new base station from him. But that that is the only thing that's gonna shake and rattle you harder than having your paint mix matched and sent to you. That's gonna be a problem. Wolfman CB shop. Check them out.
SPEAKER_03Check them out. We'll have a link to that in the show notes. You know, the one last thing I will say, and we can move on while we've got the Belzona guys on. I know our mutual friend over there, and I'll plug these guys because they're good friends of ours over at Murphy Tractor. I am desperate to get that M spec, military spec John Deere Gator for the Wisconsin farm and that in the tan color, you know, with the twels, that earless tire deal. Man, that looks so sick. I haven't even asked how much it costs, I don't care how much it costs.
SPEAKER_04Well, the Murphy Tractor guys, if you need it, they can get it. Those that's a group of individuals that uh that that absolutely will source that thing if they can. And uh not only will you get that, but I think there's a promotion going on. I could be wrong, but I'm gonna I'm just gonna throw it out there that uh if you buy a gator or a UTV type vehicle from him, he will give you a free John Deere vending machine. I could be wrong, but uh I think everybody's in the world should hit him up and ask them about this deal.
SPEAKER_03A John Deere vending machine.
SPEAKER_04Well, they have them, my friend. What comes out of it? John Deere goodness. What else? You get a bolt, the plow bolt for a cutting edge, and then you get a candy bar right next to it. It's A1 and A2. That way you can eat your Snickers and put the bolts back on.
SPEAKER_03That sounds fantastic.
SPEAKER_04They should have them in every shop, uh every John Deere shop in the country should have you guy walks up, scans his phone, hits the little QR code, he gets you know a new bolt for a cutting edge, and he gets a can of John Deere yellow and construction yellow, and then he gets a can of primer, and then there's a Snickers bar at the end, you know, A7, you hit that too. They're all wound up on paint and sugar out there in the parking lot, but everything looks pretty.
SPEAKER_03You know what they say about Snickers? That stuff really satisfies.
SPEAKER_04That it is.
SPEAKER_03I I I had so if if you guys are listening to this and you just casual listeners and you're not in this industry and you you've never worked in like a fab shop or construction shop, let me tell you the insults, the nicknames, the horrific things that we say to each other out of love and affection will blow your mind. And my absolute all-time favorite chirp that some guy said, he looked at another dude and he goes, his name was Tom, and he goes, Tommy, you're the kind of guy that eats the Snickers bar upside down so you can feel the vein on your tongue.
SPEAKER_04That is ingenious.
SPEAKER_03You're already thinking of six guys you're gonna say that to.
SPEAKER_04Oh, there's a whole list now. There's a whole list.
SPEAKER_03We ought to do that one of these days. Just put up a list of all the best nicknames and random pranks and assorted nonsense we've gotten into.
SPEAKER_04We need an auto dialing machine that just calls people and asks them if they're eating their Snickers bar upside down.
SPEAKER_01What happened? Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as why? It's the AT5000 autodialer, my very first patent. Oh, would you listen to the gibberish they've got you saying that's sad and alarming? You were designed to alert school children about snow days and such.
SPEAKER_04You're the autodial 9000, gives the code to the phone and it runs away.
SPEAKER_03He breaks its legs off. You're all mine. It's like misery, but for the robot.
Forty Episodes And Deere VR Training
SPEAKER_04Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_03You know, it's funny we're talking about John Deere. We this this was not the lead-in I was expecting, but we're talking about John Deere. I know, you know, we've done 40 of these now. This is actually our 40th. If you're in the US, it's our 40th episode. If you're in Australia, it's our 50th episode. Because there's obviously 10 episodes in uh season three. But I think that we should mark that a little bit in some way with at least the acknowledgement that it typically goes off the rails within the first 60 seconds.
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean, look, we because we're just two normal guys talking about stuff. We do have a rough idea of content. I mean, Tim's you know holding up a like a linear chart, and it's hard for me to read. I'm 42 years old. I can't read it.
SPEAKER_03He's doing a lot better than Biff was.
SPEAKER_04I think Biff was really mad and ran away and played a bunch of weird sound clips in the background. I mean, he he would start just freaking out and take off, run down to the local store and grab whoever he was enchanted with at the coffee shop.
SPEAKER_03Whatever that dude's name was.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we don't know. No, we don't know.
SPEAKER_03Like, did I weird you out just now? No, sir. You weirded me in. The best hits are always on the cutting room floor. One day in the far off distant future, you will betray me just like Lando Cal Rissian did to Han Solo. And my revenge will be to pull out all these clips that I've edited out and I'll play those live.
SPEAKER_04Hey, if we're living in a floating city, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03All bets are off. Anyway.
SPEAKER_04You know, here's the thing. We do go off the rails, and we, you know, and we're looking at this. But John Deere's got, you know, they're debuting this VR headset for training. And it wasn't the lead-in we were looking for. And but we gotta thank uh Dunkin' Donuts for that for all the caffeine and uh ice banana lattes that they've been throwing at us. I mean, this is actually interesting, and and they've to everybody's talked about this for a long time. Being able to put on a headset, do some remote training, immerse yourself in a VR environment where you believe you know you can operate, and then you actually get to test it. Are you really gonna be able to operate? Are you gonna be able to do what you think you can do? The good thing is, is I think this is gonna humble a bunch of people. And one, people are gonna think, well, this is stupid. So it humbles them on that arena. Two, people are gonna think they're the best operator known to mankind, and then they're gonna get humbled again because this is not gonna do what they think it's gonna do. And I I think this is the future. I also think this is a great vetting ground for those that we are trying to figure out can you actually do it and can you hold your own? If we're gonna vet you, well, you know what, put the headset on and let's see if you can just if you know your way around something, doesn't mean you're not gonna get hired. It just means you know you where your starting point is. And I actually think the operator unions need to be looking at this too, because when we you get a guy in on the apprenticeship, the only shakeout time you have is to be like, well, walk over there and get in that skid steer and let's see if you can, you know, maneuver it. Well, if they hit something or hurt someone, then it's too late. Let them do this and let them shake out. Do they understand anything about what they're doing?
Remote Operation And Operator Shortages
SPEAKER_03I think that's important. I think the other there's a couple other things I want to hit on this. You know, we started off the show talking about six, seven dollar gas, you know, CNN's talking we could go to$200 barrel oil if this war is still going on at the end of May. I'm not saying I believe that. I'm just saying that's what they're saying. If you are running a training operation, you're running a fleet and you're trying to get somebody up to speed on a new machine and you're not getting any kind of productive work done, something like this will save you operating fuel, save you on operating costs, on machine hours. And frankly, you can train several people at once on the same machine, and somebody's gonna have a good feel for you know, a dozer, somebody's gonna have a good feel for an excavator. That might not be the same guy, and you can real quick figure out who knows what. The other thing that's interesting on this, and we've talked about this before deer is a real innovator and leader on remote operation. Every time you go to CES, every time you go to like ACT or Con Expo, there's always somebody handing you an iPad at the deer booth saying, here's a tractor out in the middle of Oklahoma. You're steering it now, you're connected to it by satellite, you're steering it and driving it right now. This is gonna enable people who do not want to be construction workers, young guys just getting out of college, who don't want to be in the construction work, don't want to be out in the field, don't want to get dirty. It's gonna enable them to work and operate not only those machines that are out there, but multiple machines a day. Because in an eight-hour shift, you're probably even if you're sitting there all day on an eight-hour shift, you're probably only doing four hours on a busy day of actual work with an excavator or a dozer. If you're doing two hours a day, you can be on three different job sites going back and forth with what you need to do just by flipping a button. This is gonna revolutionize the industry.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, we've talked about that in the past. I mean, unless you're doing a production earth moving type gig where you literally all day, every minute, you are moving the bucket either back to the material or into the truck. Otherwise, you know, you're providing some kind of a support role or some other functioning role. And it's hard to have that kind of production. We're not talking about that. What I'm talking about is a guy that is working with a crew to help dig up a manhole because they need to replace it and they're working on a street, it's only one. The guy's also trying to split and he's trying to work on another job somewhere else. The crew's got the thing out there, they're doing some laboring, but he's gonna run the equipment quick and then go back and forth. You know, that sounds far-fetched, but it's not.
SPEAKER_03It's that's five years away, and I'm talking about five years away where that'll be normal. We'll be listening to these old episodes going, they used to have one operator per machine or one operator per site, even. Yeah, that guy had to run three or four machines. That's crazy. Yeah, you know, get your 650 P tier guy who's the expert on that machine, and he runs those things all over the country. Get the guy who runs that, you know, the Volvo EC230. He's a super expert in that, knows exactly the ins and outs of that thing, and he's operating four of those globally during his eight-hour shift. As yeah, I mean, that's how it's gonna go. And I think honestly, well, they've been doing the mining thing forever like this. Exactly right.
SPEAKER_04Now we're getting more complex. Now you've got municipalities, now that you have all these things where they don't have the people. If you got multiple problems going on, they don't have the people to drive from one end to the other of their town, township, rural area that's five miles long, it just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and but don't even think of that. I mean, uh obviously municipal fleets are a huge issue, and and that lack of operators is a big deal for municipalities. Think about farms over the last two years, the the number of laborers in farmhands has reduced dramatically. Some of that is labor policy, some of that is people not wanting to come into this country because of all the different reasons, but a lot of that is just these guys are aging out and there's not new young blood coming in to replace them.
SPEAKER_04Well, and if we're gonna keep the AI robots from killing us all, like on Terminator has predicted for years, we have to look at stuff like this where a guy pulls up in a tractor, regardless of what the function is. Let's say he's got three machines, and for whatever reason, he's got one guy, and instead of running running all over, jumping off of one tractor, running over to a skid steer, jumping off of that, running over to an excavator, and then he's trying to go back and forth and fix something, he theoretically could do it from the farm office, yeah, with minimal external help and have somebody on site. So rather than have three people doing it or one guy running all over, which is never gonna get anything done all day, got one guy running all the equipment, and then you get another guy just kind of spotting stuff and helping. And that that is at the most. If you get this thing really figured out, you're gonna be able to see 360 roughly where you are, do your job, and drive it back through the fields and get it back to where you need it to be, especially if you're doing like land clearing or some kind of tree lawn type work where you're trying to get a um a drainage irrigation ditch back open. It it's not impossible.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and for everybody listening to this or everybody who goes and checks this out and goes, Man, that looks really expensive. I don't know if that's gonna make a ton of sense. If you have one guy bouncing in and out of three machines, god forbid he trips and falls or slips on a rainy day, throws pay that bill, pay that bill.
SPEAKER_04That's even if you're your own, you're a farmer and you do your own, get hurt and not be able to work. Now that happen, you know, impacts the farm.
SPEAKER_03You know, it's funny you say that. I I had to do, you know, what do you call it? The the molding at the top of my garage that paint was peeling.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03Like, oh, this is easy. You know, I'm in my mid-40s, I'm a young, agile man. I put a ladder up there, I climbed up there, I was scraping that paint, and I like looked around up there and I was like, you know what? If I fall off this thing right now, if this ladder slips, if anything goes sideways here, my family's got to replace a pretty hefty paycheck. And you get to the point where it's like, I may not want to pay somebody else to come do this because I'm more than capable of doing it, but I can't afford to get hurt. I can't afford that slip and fall. And if I'm a 56-year-old farmer and my kids aren't interested in the business, and I don't know how long I'm gonna have to keep running this thing before you know they make it out of college or I sell it to Vanguard or BlackRock or whoever, I'm looking at that thinking, man, this is a lot cheaper than throwing out my back or really hurting myself out in that field.
SPEAKER_04Well, absolutely it is. I mean, we somebody that that we know has a uh a resale business and they try to do it all themselves. And I was just talking to them the other day, and I said, You need a helper. Yeah, you can't do three things at once. The minute you throw your back out, you are done.
SPEAKER_03You're done, your family's done, the people that depend on you are done.
Race Car Update And Sign-Off
SPEAKER_04And and with the inflation and cost of everything that we're talking about rising every day, the risk is far outweighing the rewards for some of these side projects.
SPEAKER_03How's the race car looking?
SPEAKER_04It's looking good. Got the grill and stuff in it. I got I'm working on that. I'm gonna work on it next weekend. I gotta get back into working on that thing on the weekends, but I've been taking some time and just relaxing. I'm working too hard trying to make a living.
SPEAKER_03That's what we're all doing, man, trying to make a living. All right, you think we'll uh close this one out with Dolly Parton's classic nine to five?
SPEAKER_04There you go.
SPEAKER_00Nine to five has the critic waving on overtime. The comedy end of the season says BBS radio.
