Freight, Fuel & the Future: Sustainability and Innovation in Trucking | Matt McLelland - Spectruss Speakeasy Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt McLelland (00:00):
I can't be green if I go out of business because
I'm operating assets that havea higher cost than they do a
return.
There's a lot of different waysto make hydrogen, but the most
common way is throughelectrolysis, a process that
requires tremendous amounts ofelectricity.
Sometimes the most passionategreen people are drinking the
Kool-Aid.
My three-day trip I took withone of our drivers.
I wore a t-shirt that saidtrucker, I went with him

(00:21):
everywhere he went.
Slept in the cab.
Ate where he ate didn.

Sam Silvey (00:27):
That said trucker, I went with him everywhere he
went slept in the cab, ate wherehe ate, didn't shower for three
days.
It was a great experience Forthose listening.
I've got Matt McClellan with ustoday.

VP of Sustainability, covenant,
transport and Innovation.
Sustainability and Innovation.

Sam Silvey (00:40):
It's a combo title man.
I should have written that onmy arm or something to remind
myself.
I knew I was going to mess thatup, but thanks for coming on
and chatting with me.
I'm pretty excited to talkabout diving the weeds of
especially the sustainabilityand the tech part and innovation
and trucks.
I was looking up some stuffearlier.
I've got some questions to pickup.

Yeah Well, we had dinner last night and sort
of talked through kind of whattypes of things we could talk
about, and after about what?
Two hours yeah, it's like allright, we're all over the place
and we've talked about a lot ofthings that we could go on about
forever.
So it's funny that we've onlyspent a little bit of time
together over the years, but wehave a lot in common.

Sam Silvey (01:14):
Yeah yeah, the outdoors for sure.

Including a beautiful wife and a beautiful
lady friend of yours.
That's right.
You know we both enjoy thecrazy things that you and I
enjoy.

Sam Silvey (01:22):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's cool, cause youalways got back from the Tetons,
right.

We did.
We went to a wedding lastweekend.
So we spend, I don't know.
I spend, at least collectively,maybe a month a year out there
just um climbing and skiing anddoing a lot of great stuff.

Sam Silvey (01:35):
Yeah, we got a lot to talk about today.
I mean between thesustainability and logistics and
semi-trucks and stuff I cankind of nerd out there.
I want to get your thoughts onlike battery-powered,
hydrogen-powered, automateddriving, that sort of stuff.
You know aerodynamics, then ofcourse outdoors and then
adventures.
Then you've got the whole vanpart too, where you do a lot of
driving in the van.

Yeah, we'll have part two and three maybe at
some point, although there's alot more people interesting than
in Chattanooga for you to talkto.
So, yeah, no, that's great, Ilook forward to it.

Sam Silvey (02:05):
And well, thanks for going on chatting.

So diving into the truck part, how'd you get
into this?
So?
So Covenant Logistics is apublicly traded logistics
company.
I get in trouble sometimes onpodcasts because I say we're a
trucking company but we'reactually full services.
We have warehousing, freightbrokerage, we're sort of this
turnkey solution.
But you know, most of ourheritage is in trucking, so
that's where we came from.
So we have about 2,500 trucksand most large trucking

(02:34):
companies, like us, you have atruck-to-trailer ratio of 3 to 1
, 4 to 1.
So we have, you know, 2,500trucks, about 75,000, 8,000
trailers and you know dieseltrucks going down the road were
long haul transportation.
So we don't really do regionalwork, we go cross country.
So our trucks are all sleepercabs.
Maybe at some point I'll tellyou about my three day trip I

(02:55):
took with one of our drivers,where I wore a t-shirt that said
trucker and went with himeverywhere he went, slept in the
cab, ate where he ate, didn'tshower for three days.
It was a great experience.
But yeah, so I've been thereabout seven years and it's a
great role I really enjoy it.

Sam Silvey (03:09):
So what led you into this?
I mean, do you have like a?
You just curious to startlearning about this, or what?
What sort of like you?

know it's funny, I came to Covenant right during
or right before COVID in 2018.
And, um, the role was somethingvery different and I could go
on a rabbit trail as to what itstarted out being.
It was an innovation role andit had to do a lot with what I
was doing in my prior role atKenco Logistics, which is also
an industry-related playerthat's based here in Chattanooga

(03:36):
, very large.
They're privately held.
Covenant's publicly traded andit really wasn't even a
full-time job.
Initially, it was a part-timejob, which was something that I
had intentionally looked for atthat particular stage in my life
.
Our son was young and we weretrying to sort of balance things
and my wife is fully employed,and so I went to Covenant in
this role, which evolved into afull-time role.

(03:58):
But you know, sam, it'sinteresting because after about
two years, all of a sudden,customers started asking us it
used to be can you get my stuffhere on time?
Can you get it here safely?
Can you get it here cheaply?
That's really all people caredabout.
And then, around 2020,customers started asking like,
well, what about autonomousvehicles, and what about green

(04:19):
freight, and what aboutsustainability, and what about
battery, electric this orhydrogen that?
And they had a lot of questionsabout it and really nobody in
the company knew anything aboutit.
Right, but you need to makesure you have answers to these
questions.
They're like, well, that'sclosest to what matt does.
Let matt look into it.
So, pretty quickly I sort ofbecame the expert in everything
that was going on in in ourindustry related to alternative

(04:42):
fuels and technology andinnovation specifically related
to the truck.
And it was interesting, sam,because I would go on these
sales calls and these are to bigcustomers like Target and
Starbucks and you know brandsthat you and I, you know,
interact with every day and theywould want to know about, you

(05:03):
know, safety, and our safetyperson would talk, and then they
would want to know aboutoperations and the operations
person would talk, and then theywould want they carved out
maybe five minutes onsustainability and I would start
talking and then they wouldstart asking questions in five
minutes.
Sam would turn in to 10 minutesand then they would you know,
our salesperson would startlooking at his watch and say,

(05:24):
okay, we need to go on, and thecustomer would say, no, no, no,
I want to keep talking aboutthis.
15 minutes, 20 minutes, and allof a sudden these became larger
conversations and I can sort ofgo on and tell you lots of
stories about how that wouldalways go.
But ultimately sustainabilityand green delivery freight, or

(05:44):
the potential for green deliveryof freight has become a part of
the way people at Covenant butalso in our industry, you know
have to do business today.

Sam Silvey (05:53):
I mean, it's almost like another feather in their
cap, if you will, when it comesto what they can market right so
they can say that theirproducts are being delivered in
a green way.
I mean not just you all as acompany, but then the people
you're delivering to.
Maybe it was you or someoneelse I was talking to in
industry, but talking you knowhow you can basically pitch this
as, like you're going to have Xamount of products delivered
with this amount of, you know,renewable energy or something

(06:15):
like that, and that could becomesomething that's probably used
within their own company.

Yeah, you know it's funny, there are.
So in the sustainability world,there's what's called
greenwashing, right, which issort of painting a picture that
you're doing a lot but you'redoing it maybe for the wrong
reasons, right, it's not reallyauthentic.
It's just about the marketing.
It's about being able to tellyour customers, like, if you're
a Walmart, like we're going tobe carbon neutral by 2050.

(06:42):
And you know, for Walmart it'sactually legitimate, authentic.
Their leadership believes itfrom the top down.
But there are other customersor companies that may have those
initiatives because it just itpitches well.
Yeah, and I've come across a lotof people that fall into both
buckets.
Fortunately, most peopleauthentically right, if you
exist on earth and you drive ina busy city and you deal with

(07:04):
air quality and trees or lack oftrees, this is something that
we can all agree on.
But some customers are willingto spend a lot more in order to
kind of get there.
Other ones just want to talkabout it.
Others want to do just enoughto check boxes, to suggest to
the world that they're sort ofthoughtful in doing these types

(07:24):
of things, and so, yeah, it'sall across the spectrum.

Sam Silvey (07:28):
But it's a major role in the business though,
because you were talking lastnight about like you're writing
your annual reports yourpublicly traded company and you
have a part of that that youhave to contribute to right.

It's called a Corporate Social Responsibility
Report.
Some companies call them ESGreports right, environmental
Social Governance, socialresponsibility report.
Some companies call them ESGreports right, environmental
social governance.
And you know those are.
You know it's basically people,planet and community.
You know how do we treat ourpeople, you know what are we
doing to benefit the planet andwhat are we doing in the
communities where we live andwork, and so you know we.

(08:00):
An ESG report is a little bitmore specific.
It has data that you collect onyour emissions and things that
there's all kinds of differentstandards and things that you
can sort of report on.
And you know, and you were topublish those in your report.
But the sort of lesser versionof that is a CSR report and it
basically is just aphilosophical approach to what

(08:21):
you're doing in each of thoseareas you highlight specific
projects and initiatives thatyou're working on and that's
what.
That's what I produce everyyear, that's what Covenant
produces every year.

Sam Silvey (08:30):
Yeah, and the part that fascinates me is is, of
course there's like I guess frommy side I see a lot of
companies and you got to workwith you know companies over the
years.
I've seen some of theespecially larger ones where it
gets a little you know,political Not going to dive into
politics, but it gets a littlepolitical on basically they're
using as their own marketingscheme, right, like it makes
them sound cool, like one thingyou just said but on you guys

(08:55):
side as a company, like not onlyis it good for the environment
to be sustainable, but then youhave a whole equation side where
it can cost, cost or save youmoney.
Yeah, Well you're testing thatall the time.

I mean that's very astute.
I'm glad you brought that upbecause it's interesting,
because I can assure you thatsustainability is never
inexpensive, it's never cheapand it's never the same price as
the diesel assets that we'reoperating today.
It's always going to be more,no matter what.
And I have gotten into debateswith people about no, no, no,

(09:23):
this technology it'll pay foritself over time.
And you know it would beinteresting if anybody's
listening.
That's sort of in this world.
Feel free to look me up, loveto sort of debate you on it, not
because I want to be right, butbecause it's just the world
that we live in and trying toconvince our customers that if
you want an electric vehicle,you've got range limitations,
you can't carry as much in thetrailer because the tractor

(09:45):
weighs more and you've got aweight limit on what you can
carry on the road.
The truck itself is moreexpensive, the charging is
limited.
You add all those things up andyou've got freight delivery.
That's three to four times theprice of a regular diesel truck.
So then you have to sort ofbalance your priorities.
Do I want to do electricdelivery of freight in an
electric vehicle and sort ofmeet sustainability goals, but

(10:08):
am I willing to pay this, and soit's always sort of a balance.
You know, for us it's acombination of genuine,
authentic altruism.
Right, we want to do the rightthing.
We know that we drive dieseltrucks.
We know that we contribute towhen we talk about carbon a lot.
There's emissions andparticulate matter and soot and
all kinds of other things thatcome out the tailpipe other than

(10:29):
carbon.
So I like to remind people thatit's not just about CO2.
There's a lot of other reasonsto want to deliver cleaner and
greener.
There's also a regulatorycomponent to it, specifically in
California, where there's a lotof hoops you have to jump
through and I could talk foreverabout what those are like,

(10:50):
because it's very frustrating,and maybe at some point I'll
give you one example of like themost frustrating thing that
California sort of wantscompanies like us to do.
And then there's, of course,what the customer wants and what
they're willing to pay for,most importantly.
So our ability as a publiccompany to set goals related to
the environment is directlyproportional to what customers
are willing to pay for, balancedwith what the government is

(11:12):
requiring us to do.
Because I can't be green if Igo out of business because I'm
operating assets that have ahigher cost than they do a
return Does that make senseAbsolutely.

Sam Silvey (11:24):
And when I say this next statement it's going to
make me sound like someone whodoesn't care about the
environment.
And I really do, because youand I have in common love the
outdoors.
I want nature to be protected.
I mean, it's where I feel themost alive and sing with
whatever we live in you knowworld, the spiritual realm,
whatever you want to call it.
But there's also, I think, alot of people really push, like,
for instance, california, and alot of people that are really

(11:46):
and I'm just generalizing herebig on the green side.
I think maybe they might forgetthat it really affects not just
you all as a company or yourclients, like a Starbucks, but
eventually that price getspassed on to the consumer.
And so it's like how much more?
And especially when youconsider, like Walmart and these
sort of companies that might beselling to the lower you know,
lower, lower bracket incomeindividuals, like, how much more

(12:10):
can they afford?
You know we're already tiedelsewhere.
So there's like this balancingact of yeah, you, of course, I
imagine you all want to win bidswith clients so you can't have
super high prices, but thentarget and all.
Then they don't necessarilywant to raise their prices more,
and there's got to be abalancing act.
Reasonability, oh yeah.

Well, and then there's also and this is an area
where I can get a little bitsort of cynical, but you know, I
run across a lot of peoplesometimes the most passionate
green people that just aredrinking the Kool-Aid, right
Like they are full on globalwarming, and just for the
listener, I'm not throwingglobal warming on the bus or any
of that.
We're not going to go there.

(12:46):
But there are a lot of reasonsto be concerned about these
things, without thinking thatthe apocalyptic side of climate
change is the reason why we'redoing all this.
There are a lot of reasons.
You know that we all need to besort of on the bandwagon.
I don't feel like the left orthe right owns that topic.
I think if you go outside andyou enjoy the outdoors, you know
let's don't mess this up right,and it really has less to do

(13:07):
with is it 1.5 degrees Celsiusor 2 degrees Celsius?
But where I'm going with this isthat you know, a lot of times
you look at a hydrogen truck.
Right?
It's probably one of thecleanest forms of transportation
possible.
Well, in order to get thehydrogen, you have to make it
right, and there's a lot ofdifferent ways to make hydrogen,
but the most common way isthrough electrolysis, which is a

(13:29):
process that requirestremendous amounts of
electricity to extract hydrogenfrom water.
So then the question so youmake all this hydrogen, you put
it in a truck, like, okay, well,how much electricity did it
take to do that?
And how was that electricitygenerated?
Did it come from a coal plant,you know?
Did it come from a natural gasplant?
Because if you basicallyconsumed a lot of energy from a

(13:54):
not clean source to create afuel to push this truck down the
road, what did you reallyaccomplish, you know.
So it's what's called, you know.
There's called tank to wheeland well to wheel, which is kind
of a way to look at sort of thetotal sort of picture of where
you know where the change thatyou're trying to implement is
coming from.

(14:14):
And a lot of times, a lot ofthings we think are green are
not really all that green at all, and that's before you even get
into.
How did that truck get here?
And where did the batterycomponents come from?
And did it come from a countryin another part of the world
where they don't adhere to thesame types of labor standards
that we do here in the US?
And you know, it just becomesreally muddy, really quickly.

Sam Silvey (14:35):
Yeah, yeah, you know , so it's easy for me to.
I love naturally aspirated,turbocharged, supercharged
motors.
You know, like two-stroke dirtbikes.
I love the sound of them, thefeel.
Combustion engines are myfavorites.

Nothing like a two-stroke dirt bike.
And the smell, yeah, yeah.

Sam Silvey (14:52):
But there's also some really, really awesome
elements to electric, like theinstant torque, and it can be
amazing if we could ever figureit out.
But you know, you think aboutCalifornia.
They already have electricalsupply issues as it is.
You know blackouts and stufflike that already happening in
the middle of summer, like howin the world they're trying to
push to all electric by.

(15:12):
I think that initiative justgot turned back, didn't it it?

did so we'll dive into the political side of
this just for a second right.
But I won't cast judgmentanywhere.
But you know California's had alot especially in the previous
administration movement towardselectrification.
Well, this is an estate, as youpointed out, that has rolling
blackouts, that doesn't haveenough power to provide for
their existing needs, right,much less the growth curve that

(15:43):
they want and expect and areregulating.
Up until what you just referredto, which we'll come back to in
a second.
You know it doesn't evenaccount for the type of growth
that comes from theelectrification that they wanted
to come out of that.
Plus, you add on data centers,you know AI, you know and we all
know that.
You know those types ofresources are consuming massive
amounts of electricity.
So you know we're being pushedto use a resource.

(16:05):
I'll give an example.
Right now we have a warehouse ina part of California called the
Inland Empire.
It's near the LA area, it'sthis big giant circle, and we
have operated a warehouse onbehalf of a very large publicly
traded company and during themonth of January, 15, 16 days,
throughout the month we had, youknow, we were without power.

(16:25):
We had to have generatorsbrought in At that facility.
We're trying to implementelectrification of forklifts and
these yard tractors which are,you know, devices that are run
on diesel today that move thingsaround the yard.
Well, we can't get permits tobuild the charging station
because there's not enoughelectricity in that part of the
county to light these things up.

(16:46):
There's not enough capacity.
So you know, we have the trucks,the customers already paid for
those and we have the desire, wealso have the law that's
telling us that we need to do it, but I can't get the charging
stations.
I've got competitor friends atother large public trucking
companies, some much larger thanus, that are sitting on three

(17:09):
$400,000 electric trucks justsitting in a corner of a lot
because they can't get chargingallocated, you know, for the
areas where they need to beinstalled, and so it's really
sort of crazy.
And then you know the currentadministration just rolled back
some of the more sort ofaggressive plans that they

(17:29):
wanted, like you know there was.
I think California can still dothis.
They're trying to still mandateall cars after 2035 have to be
zero emission, which you knowtechnology just isn't there yet,
so that's not going to happen.
But some of the rules that theywere using to force fleets like
ours, to decarbonize, to moveover to some of these

(17:50):
alternative fuel sources.
They rolled those back.
They're just not making themregulated anymore.

Sam Silvey (17:55):
I mean, what are our next options for it?
Because wind is basically aloss.
From what I understand, theonly way that wind have really
made sense was basically proppedup by stimulus.
It was propped up by thegovernment offsetting their
expenses and then, by the timethey do get to a point where
they're maybe producing, towhere it's becoming net positive

(18:17):
, you have to replace them.
And then what do you do withthe giant, huge?
They?

chop them up and they bury them.

Sam Silvey (18:23):
Yeah.

So that's interesting.
Let me talk about that for asecond, because I hope when you
put this podcast togetherthere'll be like those little
links at the bottom and you'relike okay we'll skip past the
rest of this electric stuff andget to the outdoor stuff we need
to, that's a good idea.

Sam Silvey (18:36):
I like that.

So some of the greatest innovations in our
country have been the result ofgovernment investment,
government propping things up.
I mean, I think we've seen thataviation.
You know, a lot of reallypositive things on the consumer
side of things have come fromthe investment they've made in
space side of things have comefrom the investment they've made
in space, you know.
So I think the government hasplayed a really great role in

(19:09):
kickstarting a lot of thingsthat you and I enjoy today.
Right, I am not anti-regulationor anti-EPA, but I am against
anti-cumbersome and unnecessaryregulation, especially when you
look at the way we do thingshere compared to other countries
.
And so unnecessary regulation,especially when you look at the
way we do things here comparedto other countries.

(19:29):
And so you know, I think that alot of the you know investment
that the government has in orderto prop up windmills or I'm
going to say windmills you gotme caught on that now my wife is
Dutch and so I always think ofwindmills, but you know just all
of the wind generation in thecountry.
I mean, a lot of that is onlypossible because it's being

(19:50):
propped up.
You know some of the.
You know the IRA, the IRA billfrom last year, which partially
got rolled back, had allocated$5 billion towards a public
charging infrastructureinfusement, and you know we have
yet to see any of that.
You know any public chargingstations you know created as a
result of that.
So you know, I think there is aplace for government investment

(20:12):
and propping it up.
And we do have sometechnologies that can only exist
.
I mean electrification of carsin the beginning, especially,
you know, when you think aboutTesla and some of these other,
you know there were these $7,500and $10,000 tax credits.
You know, when you think aboutTesla and some of these other,
you know there were these $7,500and $10,000 tax credits which
you know were really the onlyway those things could be made
possible.
Even in my industry, some ofthe early adopters in trucking

(20:34):
essentially got the trucks paidfor through a combination of
grants at the state and federallevel where the truck was
$400,000, but they ended up onlyhaving to pay like $50, 50 or
$60,000 out of pocket after all.
These grants kind of kicked inand, um, yeah, that's.
That's really, you know, theonly way a lot of this stuff
works right now.

Sam Silvey (20:55):
You do have some like small steps.
So you're telling me how tocool device that like attaches
to the actual exhaust pipe onthese and it produces, uh, well,
you, you explain it better,better than I do, but there's a
bunch of cool products that youall are testing, experimenting
with, to kind of like help youease into this electrical part,
potentially whenever thetechnology catches up.
You know, like, imagine,aerodynamics is one of them.

(21:15):
Um, which quick side story, andI want to hear your answer.
Not that I know anything aboutthis, really, but a little bit
of bike racing I did back in theday.
Um, we got in a time back inthe day.
You're still bike racing.
Well, motorcycle back in theday, we got into time trials,
you mean back in the day, you'restill bike racing.
Well, motorcycle racing now,bicycle racing, okay, that's
right.
But on road bikes aerodynamicsis a big part, but especially on
time trials, and I was one daygoing from one race to another

(21:35):
and this was probably back in2006, something like that.
So I don't think they'd reallyadopted all the disc wheels and
the fairings on the on thetrailers yet, maybe some early
adopters.
But I had yet to see one and Iwas on the road a lot for racing
.
I was like, why don't they makedimpled wheels?
Because I've got this carbonfiber dimpled rear wheel it's
like the golf baller dynamics,you know, and skinny tubes of
fairings, and you know we'redoing like wind tunnel testing

(21:56):
that sort of thing.
And then it wasn't.
A few years later I startedseeing disc wheels on the
tractor trailers and fairings.

Somebody was listening to your conversation.

Sam Silvey (22:04):
Right, right, right, but it seems like they're
making small steps like thatthat probably not only save the
company money, but it reducesfuel costs, reduces the
consumption of oil.

Oh yeah, all that is true, but you know, at
the end of the day, you know, abig rig truck gets, you know,
depends on what you're pulling.
I mean, there's a lot ofvariables, but let's just say, 7

(22:34):
to 8 miles a gallon and you canspend a bunch of money on
fairings and wheel covers andall kinds of other things and
maybe you get 8.5 MPG.
Well, that's a year.
One investment that we madeyears ago and I actually really
pushed it hard internally in ourcompany was we installed these

(22:55):
devices called electricauxiliary power units, and what
they were were these batterybanks and air conditioning and
heating system that would beinside the truck.
Because our trucks are sleepercabs, our drivers live in the
trucks while they're on the road, and so you've been to a truck
stop, you know, and at night,and you have a hundred trucks
idling right, you know, and thereason they're idling is because
the driver's sleeping inside,and that's you know.
They've got the air conditionerrunning or the heater running

(23:17):
and they've got their CPAPmachine plugged into the
electrical outlet which isrunning off the inverter, that's
kind of running off the truck.
Well, what this electric APUdoes is it charges up this extra
bank of batteries during theday, using an upgraded
alternator.
And so when it comes time forthe driver to, you know, to go
into what's called its restcycle they can only drive for a

(23:38):
certain number of hours a daythey pull in the truck stop,
park it, turn off the engine andthen, you know, for the next 10
hours, you know, the HVAC,everything runs off this battery
bank.
And so you save about ninetenths of a gallon of diesel per
hour when you're not idling thetruck and over the course of
you know the year, that ends upbeing a lot of fuel savings.

(23:59):
But ultimately does it outweighthe investment that you made in
that asset?
So you know, you always have tolook at things that you're
investing in.
You know and you know what thepayback is.
But I think probably the biggerthing and this is what I run
into a lot, sam, especially withcustomers is that those are all
trinkets, right.
Like, okay, you saved a gallonper hour big deal.

(24:21):
You went from seven to eight,maybe nine MPG Big deal.
Like I want zero emission.
Like that's what I'm lookingfor.
Like I'm not looking forBand-Aids, I'm looking for
full-on, you know, changing this.
Well, those solutions are verydifficult to find.
There's a handful of them outthere.
They're expensive, they allhave, you know, drawbacks.

(24:47):
You know we've talked abouthydrogen Like hydrogen's great.
Have you know drawbacks?
You know we've talked abouthydrogen like hydrogen's great.
But you know where's the fuelthat you're getting.
You know we're testing ahundred percent biodiesel truck
where you know that's almost anear zero emission event, but
there's sort of downsides tothat as well.
So in the world that I live inthere's what's called science
experiments, which comes back tothe question that you just

(25:10):
asked.
I look at a lot of things thatare not quite ready for market,
but they're looking for partnersand looking for advice and
looking for people to test thesethings to see if they actually
pan out.
So the product that you'retalking about is a company
called Remora, so it's apre-revenue company.
What they've done is they'vemade this big giant device that

(25:32):
bolts onto the back of the truck.
I'm just going to sort of glossover things here, but it bolts
onto the back of the truck.
It weighs 6,000 pounds.
It's really expensive.

Sam Silvey (25:40):
I didn't know it was that heavy.
I was imagining somethingsmaller than this.

Oh no it's really big and it bolts onto the
back and it clamps onto theexhaust pipe and all the exhaust
that comes out of the truckruns through the system.
So their system in real timeconverts all the CO2 or not all
the CO2, but about 93, 94% ofthe CO2 into liquidized CO2,
stores it in a tank.
So what's coming out of thetailpipe?

(26:07):
No CO2 and very littleparticulate matter, very little
soot, very little NOx.
So what's coming out of thetailpipe?
I wouldn't, you know, breatheit, but it's a lot safer than
what was coming out before.
But the important thing is thecarbon.
Right, the carbon is almostcompletely removed, stores it in
a tank and then, when they goto refuel, the idea is that
there'll be offloading tanks andyou can, you know, kind of take
it out of the truck and thetruck goes back on the road.

(26:27):
Well, eventually these largertanks get filled and then part
of the revenue model is you sellthis liquefied CO2 to concrete
and steel manufacturers becauseit's a raw material in the
creation of those products.
So here you have direct carboncapture on a truck.
That's basically turning adiesel asset into a zero

(26:47):
emission vehicle.
Right, that's great, but it'sexpensive, it weighs a lot, and
whatever weight that you add tothe truck is cargo that you have
to remove from the trailerbecause you can only have 80,000
pounds on the road.
So it's kind of like everythingin life, right, there's a lot
of benefits, but there's somedrawbacks too.

Sam Silvey (27:08):
Do you know what that cost is?
On that, any idea?

Yeah, early stage.
You know it's about $150,000.
But the company is actuallysort, um, in parallel with
trucking, they're developing oneof these that goes on a rail
car, right for a diesellocomotive, and, um, that's
actually going to be a morepractical application for them.
Initially because, um, withrail cars you don't have to

(27:32):
worry about weight because youknow they don't really have the
same kind of weight restrictionsthat you do in the us.
Plus you, you can add thesegiant tanks, or just add another
car with a giant tank on it soyou can have carbon collection
all the way from the East Coastto the West Coast without having
to unload it, because that'salso, you know, that kind of
slows you down a little bit.
So I look at a lot ofinteresting things like that and

(27:56):
, yeah, it's super exciting.
Investment, startups, capitalismyou know what makes young guys
like yourself, you know, want tokind of risk everything and try
this new technology and sort ofwork 100 hours a week and try
to invent the next big thing.
Like that's where the next biganswer is going to come from.

(28:16):
I don't think it's going tocome from the big original
equipment manufacturers.
I think it's going to come fromthe big original equipment
manufacturers.
I think it's going to come fromsomebody's garage, from the
result of some academic program.
Yeah, it's super exciting to bea part of the startup community
and watch the ideas that arecoming out of.
I hate to say youth, but theyall tend to be younger.

(28:38):
Most people are younger than meat this point.
I hate to say youth, but theyall tend to be younger.
Most people are younger than meat this point, I guess.

Sam Silvey (28:42):
I mean I guess there is a risk associated, right,
because I mean to develop thatproduct, to get it to market, to
launch it.
I mean it kind of does lenditself to someone younger who
has the time to fail and failand fail again until something
takes, you know, or a bigcompany doing the R&D.

But yeah, sometimes what I come across is,
you know, you'll have like areally smart kid in college and
they sort of have this idea,like I want to invent an
autonomous drone, right, andthey don't really think about
the application for it, but theyjust kind of want to do this.
I actually met a kid that didthis, you know, a couple of
years ago.
But then he starts thinking,huh, well, how can I monetize

(29:20):
this thing?
Because, you know, I've got tofigure out a way to put a
business model around, like, oh,I can do inventory scanning in
a warehouse after hours wherethese things can fly around and
just sort of scan and do things.
And so, you know, I rememberthis one particular kid came to
me and he said this is a problemfor your industry.
I'm like, what makes you saythat?
He's like, well, it just seemslike it would be Like well,

(29:42):
actually we have pretty accurateinventory counting.
But, yes, there is probably aplace for this, but it's
probably not as big of anaddressable market as you think
it is.
So it's what we call solutionsin search of a problem, right,
yeah.

Sam Silvey (29:55):
Makes sense Is.

Yeah, makes sense.
Is there one solution NewYear's are doing?
This really stands out as likea big breakthrough, or one
you're excited that hasn't comeout yet, you know, I think that.
So in the innovation space,right there's, and I wish and I
guess a lot of your listenersare probably just doing this
podcast, so if I had a piece ofpaper I'd draw this out but on
one hand, you have continuousimprovement, right, the
expectation that a company isalways going to get a little bit

(30:25):
better.
Right, starbucks is going tocome up with a more yummy cup of
coffee.
Or Taco Bell is going to comeup with the next variation of a
burrito that's better than theone that we just kind of expect.
That kind of stuff is going tohappen, right.
Okay, on the other end of thespectrum, you have full on
disruption, which is thecomplete change, the way that a

(30:45):
market works.
So examples of that are I knowthis is very trendy, people use
it a lot, but Uber and Lyftdisrupted the taxi industry by
completely coming up withanother model, right, airbnb
completely disrupted the hoteland hospitality business by
allowing people like well, likeyourself, to get into renting

(31:06):
extra rooms in their house.
You know, you could argue thatyou know, like Apple, itunes
completely disrupted the way weconsume music, right.
I mean, nobody buys CDs anymore, we all stream it.
So those are disruption.
And in the middle you havewhat's called, you know, sort of
innovation, right.
That's kind of betweencontinuous improvement and, but

(31:28):
it's not quite disruption.
So it's like the continuingevolution on a scale of one to
ten.
We expect this coffee to getbetter, but innovation is like
one to 10, we expect this coffeeto get better, um, but
innovation is like continuousimprovement on steroids and then
you have full on disruption.
And so if your question is,what's happening on the
disruptive side?
You know, in trucking, I don'treally know, I don't think there

(31:51):
is anything truly disruptivecoming, um, you know, in energy
production, there's small scalenuclear.
That's something that BillGates and his breakthrough
energy are sort of investing alot in energy production.
There's small scale nuclear.
That's something that BillGates and his breakthrough
energy are sort of investing alot in.
There is no flux capacitor outthere on the horizon, you know,
which is interesting because youknow we have this massive need
for energy in this country, inthe world, and you know nuclear

(32:17):
is probably the thing that isthe cleanest, with the most
potential for scale.
But a lot of people don't likenuclear, but it's the best thing
that we have going out there.
So it's easy to make fun of alot of things that we make fun
of, but we forget that we areconsumers that demand more and
more and more of this energysource of electricity, that

(32:39):
demand more and more and more ofthis energy source of
electricity, and so we need tobe a little bit more careful
than Gavin Newsom was when hetried to shut down the Diablo
nuclear power plant down in SanDiego years ago.
Finally, cooler heads prevailed.
They're like where are we goingto get all this energy that's
no longer going to be availableto this plant, that we're going
to mothball?
They realized they couldn't doit, so they invest in what it
took to keep that thing running,and that thing's still running

(33:00):
today.

Sam Silvey (33:00):
So correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand
it, nuclear is one of thecleanest source of energy.

We have right, Well, I mean hydro and wind are
great, but you know those arenot without their sort of
downsides.
You know, here in Chattanoogahopefully your listeners are not
just based in Chattanooga, butfor those of you that are we all
know about the Raccoon MountainPump Station, which is a
brilliant idea of a way.
It's like a giant water battery,right?
Or it's a giant energy batterythat you know, during the

(33:27):
evening, when you know you haveexcess energy in the system
because people are sleeping andthe lights are off and they're
not running all the stuff, youtake that electricity and you
run that giant pump that pullswater out of the Tennessee River
, fills the lake on top ofRaccoon Mountain.
You know about this, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, once it's filled,everybody starts to wake up and

(33:48):
they sort of cap it off andpeople start their day and, as
energy requirements startincreasing, if there's an energy
shortage, then they can just,you know, empty the lake,
reverse, process through thehydroelectric component that is
the pump that filled it in thefirst place, and you can, you
know, generate energy.
In fact, I think TVA isinvesting in a second one of

(34:09):
those facilities.
That thing was built in likethe 60s or the 70s.

Sam Silvey (34:11):
It's pretty wild to go up there.
And you see that reservoir.
I've been in it.
Oh really I want to go in there, fascinating.
I'm convinced there's missilesilos under it.
You don't have to tell me, Iknow.
You probably can't tell me Ihave been in there.

There are not missile silos, but may I tell
you, the technology that's inthere is just amazing and it's
not new.
It's not rocket science, right,yeah, there really isn't.
So, um, it's always.
You always got to be careful tobe you know, not you, but you
know people be too critical whenthey start wanting to throw

(34:44):
some of the things that we dotoday under the bus.
You know it's like sausage, youknow the example, like people
want to eat sausage.
They don't want to know howit's made.
Well, people want to becritical of energy and the ways
we we create energy, but youknow they're not really
interested in where it comesfrom.
Right, right.

Sam Silvey (35:00):
All right, one random question for you.

Oh, let me say one other thing.
So we're talking about whatpeople's motivations are behind
sustainability.
I remember I mean this is agood transition to the outdoor
stuff that you and I both lovebut my son and I have summited
Grand Teton several times, likefour times, three times with him
, four times for me.
But I remember the second timehe and I did it he was maybe 12

(35:23):
years old and we had spent twodays getting to the summit.
So we're on the summit, it's 7o'clock in the morning, I'm with
just some of my best friends,I'm with my son and we're on the
summit and there's's no windand the sky is just perfect, and
it was really kind of emotional.
I sort of fear a littletearjerker coming up right now

(35:45):
as I'm remembering back on this,but when I was standing up
there, all I could think of wasI hope this looks just like this
one day when he brings his sonup here.
And the idea is that you know,that's the whole thing behind
sustainability the ability tomeet your needs today without
infringing on the nextgeneration's ability to meet
theirs.
And it didn't matter aboutDemocrat or Republican or global

(36:09):
warming or climate change, likein that moment.
Everybody can look at what Ilooked at and agree that we need
to do whatever we can to keepthis looking like this,
regardless of the motivationbehind the investments and the
change that we need as a society.
Like we can all agree on thisand the why is really kind of
irrelevant.

(36:30):
Like whether or not I believein climate change or not is
irrelevant, because what I canagree on with somebody that
might be on the complete otherside of my viewpoint is that we
need to protect that and theinvestments that we need to make
to protect that are exactly thesame as the investments we need
to make to mitigate climatechange or whatever it is.

Sam Silvey (36:49):
Does that make sense ?

Yeah, absolutely .

Sam Silvey (36:51):
Yeah, so I love common ground.
Yeah, you know the sausageanalogy no one wants to know
where it comes from, sort ofthing.
Is that what I always think ofwhen people are especially like
with the California I mentioned.
You know, we want to go fullelectric.
It's like, okay, well, wheredoes that typically come from?
It's coal power, you know, andwe look at still a lot of coal.
Yeah, a lot of coal, and that'sone of the most horrendous for

(37:14):
our environment across allenergies that I know of at least
you know better than I would.
And then, of course, the harderwe are as far as countries go.
We're one of the cleanercountries in the world, right?

Yeah, I mean it's funny when you look at.
I mean, china and India arespinning up coal plants every
day.
Yeah, every day.
I mean I've got this graphicthat I found from earlier this
year that showed the number of.
You know, what a lot of peopledon't understand is when Trump
in his first term, when hepulled us out of the Paris
Climate Accord, it wasn'tbecause he was against the
environment, it was because hisproblem was well, if China and

(37:47):
India are not signing on to this, then what's the point?
Because you know those are twoof the worst offenders.
And if they have, no, ifthey're not going to do it, then
we could all spend tons ofmoney meeting the initiatives
that we all sort of agree weneed to make, but in the end of
the day, it's not going tomatter.
You know, sam, it's interesting.
I'm a little bit of a space nerd.
I love SpaceX.

(38:09):
What Elon Musk has done withSpaceX, it's a whole other sort
of thing.
If you haven't read a book onwhat they've done it's and how
they've been able to accomplishwhat they've accomplished, it's
really amazing.
But there's this thing calledthe observer effect, right?
So when astronauts and I'veread about it read a lot of
firsthand accounts of this.
But when astronauts leave Earthand they're looking back

(38:29):
through the window at the planetfor the very first time,
they're sort of overwhelmed bythe fact that and we've all seen
pictures of the Earth you knowblue ball and a big black
background, but until you see itfor the first time and you
can't see political boundaries,you can't see people, you can't
see languages, you can't see anyof the things that make us all

(38:49):
different culturally,religiously, you know from a
patriotism perspective, likewhere we're all from, and you
realize that we're all in thistogether and the earth doesn't
care about the climateinitiatives that the United
States has or that China has.
Like we got to look at thisholistically and so this
observer effect.
You know they return back tothe earth and their perspectives

(39:12):
have just changed significantlyand you know they look at
solving problems from astandpoint that's very different
.
So you know, I think that youknow we got to start doing
something soon, but unless it'ssomething that everyone is
committed to, including Indiaand China, you know it just

(39:33):
doesn't matter.
I'm not saying we should give up.
You know there's some peoplesay, well, we should try, no
matter what.
I'm like, well, matter.
I'm not saying we should giveup.
You know there's some peoplesay, well, we should try, no
matter what I'm like.
Well, sure you know, do I wantto?
You know, make my productstwice as expensive as the same
stuff that's coming out of China?
You know where people are justgoing to buy their stuff anyway
and not buy mine, because I'vegot all these extra costs
associated with these sort ofinitiatives that make my product

(39:55):
more expensive, because I'madhering to all these sort of
environmental laws and emissionlaws and all these types of
things.
So that's sort of somethingthat I think people forget about
when they're, you know, sort ofrattling there.

Sam Silvey (40:07):
Yeah, to me it kind of like are we that arrogant?
We're like we want America andI want America, I want the world
to be beautiful, but they don'treally want to see the
pollution that China like.
Like they want to out of sight,out of mind, right.
Like we want to be completelyclean but we want to be able to
buy anything from China andIndia for, like you said, a
lower cost, while they buildpower plants everywhere and
they've got 1.3 billion peoplein China and using tons of

(40:29):
energy.
So that stuff always, I don'twant to say, makes me crack up,
but I think there's a lot ofthose ideas people haven't taken
consideration.

Yeah, and you know they are.
I don't want to throw Chinacompletely under the bus.
They are making big investments, you know, in doing things
cleaner and greener.
But you know, ironically theymake a lot of the solar panel
materials that we use here inthe United States.
So you know they're notcompletely sort of bad actors,
but they are spinning up coalplants at a rate.
You know, I don't think theUnited States does that anymore.

(41:00):
I think we're kind of focusedon natural gas and LNG and
nuclear and some other types ofthings, but I don't think we're
spinning up new coal plants.
But these countries are becausethey have to.
They just have to.
There's a great book by BillGates, how to Avoid a Climate
Disaster, and he sort of unpacksa lot of this stuff in a way
that is very sort of nonpartisanand interesting.

(41:20):
But you know, if you're livingin Africa, the middle of nowhere
, you got to feed your familyand you got to cut down trees to
make a fire to cook the foodthat if you don't eat you're
going to die, then they don'treally care about the planet and
it's not really.
They're not bad people becausethey're doing that.
But you know, we have to sortof look at this sort of bigger

(41:43):
picture and realize that there'sa lot of people that want to do
it, but they just can't do itbecause they don't have another
choice, which is why I'm a bigfan of innovation and investment
and really trying to figure out.
You know, like with windmillsthose are great, right, clean
energy Do they kill a lot ofbirds?
Absolutely, you know.

(42:03):
Should we outlaw building themin places in America where
there's not a lot of population?
You know, should we outlaw itbecause there's some indigenous
turtle that you know only livesthere?
And we, you know, basically sayyou can't build here because of
that, like I don't know, youcan't build here because of that
, I don't know.
That's a hard question.
Yeah, like I like the turtle,we could relocate them, we could

(42:26):
just not build.
So there's always sort of anupside and a downside.
Yeah, there's like apracticality to it.

Sam Silvey (42:32):
It's got to be considered right.
It has to be practical in somesense.

Yeah, I feel like you know, go back to the
sausage thing.
You know some people just wantto stick their head in the sand.
They're like no green powerright now all the time.
Right, I remember you know youcan buy carbon credits and sort
of absolve your sins throughbuying credits.
There's, you know, some landtrust and sort of philanthropic

(42:59):
things where you can.
You know I've always found itodd.
You can sell, you can.
You can sell the creditsassociated with not chopping
down trees in this particulararea that you might own in a
conservation easement, and acompany can buy those credits
and sort of offset the emissionsthat they're coming up with.
Well, nobody was going to cut.

(43:20):
Maybe nobody was going to cutthose trees down in the first
place.
There's a reason.
It was in a conservationeasement.
So if you weren't going to cutdown the trees in the first
place and you just sold theright for that company to
continue doing what it was doing, then what have you really
accomplished?
Yeah, you know there's.
So there's a lot of you know.

(43:47):
You could say like, well, themoney that the land trust you
know received, they're going touse that to do other great
things.
And there may be some truth tothat, you know.
But at the end of the day, youknow, there are a lot of shell
games that can be played forcompanies to present themselves
as being cleaner than theyreally are, but a lot of people
don't believe in carbon credits.
But that's a whole otherconversation.
Yeah, that is interesting.

Sam Silvey (44:03):
Outdoors, outdoors.
Yeah yeah, that's what was yourfirst outdoor activity you
really got into.
Was it hang gliding?

You know.
So we're both sitting here inChattanooga, Tennessee.
We both love it here, right we?

Sam Silvey (44:15):
live.
It's kept outdoors.
That kept me here singlehandedly.
Yeah, me too.
I mean I looked at other places, been to oregon, I looked at.
I really liked durango,colorado, back back when I was
cycling a lot.
Both those places were awesomefor mountain biking.
But chattanooga was kind ofespecially back then was kind of
untapped.
You know like it was.
I think at that time that waswhen bob cork was mayor and he
was trying to make us theboulder of the, the east, you

(44:36):
know, and boulder of the southand and it definitely started
getting momentum.
And then outside magazinecovered us and made us what two
years in a row top outdoor cityin the country and then it
started getting.
But then when covid hit, it'sbeen like california, new york,
all these other states floodedchattanooga.
So we're talking last nighttrailheads are now covered, you
know like we go to any maincovered.

(44:56):
So it's way different from whatit used to be back in the day.

You know, I made a bumper sticker that said
Boulder, the Chattanooga of theWest Nice, Because everybody
always said that Chattanooga wasthe Boulder of the East.
Yeah yeah, yeah, boulder's, theChatt's one of the prettiest

(45:23):
place I've ever been.
Oh, yeah, it's.
Yeah, I mean, you know it's alifestyle city for my wife and I
.
So, uh, my wife was living inoregon when we first met.
You know, 20 plus years ago.
She was in portland, oregon,and was skiing on the weekends
and, you know, in the winter andbiking and just mountaineering
and climbing, you know, mountainhood.
Um, it rained a lot.
You know, apparently there's alot of suicide in Seattle
Portland just because it's badweather and dark and dingy and

(45:43):
it's depressing.

Sam Silvey (45:45):
I mean, that's what Chattanooga's become.
I don't know how you feel.
It's raining all the time.

It's not as bad as it is in Seattle.
But you know, when I proposedto her, she wanted to move back,
not just because I was here,her family was here, but you
know Chattanooga's a great place, she wanted to live here.
You know we fly, hang glidersand mountain bike and trail run

(46:08):
and you know camp and whitewaterpaddle up at the Ocoee.
You know there's so many thingsto do here and it's.
I really am not surprised thatwe're growing at the rate that
we're growing.
I mean, there's the income tax,free state stuff and you know
there's a lot of things that areappealing about living in a
smaller city, at least what usedto be a smaller city.

(46:28):
But the outdoor stuff, you knowI was just in Jackson Hole and
Jackson Hole is beautiful.
I can't afford to live there.
Medical care is scarce, youneed a plumber and you know
there's one guy or two peopleand you know it's.
They charge tons and tons ofmoney and you know it's just a
very hard place, expensive placeto live, but it sure is

(46:52):
beautiful.
I would, you know, of all theplaces that I could live that
isn't like Telluride or JacksonHole or Victor, Idaho or you
know, some of these whitefishMontana, I love it right here.

Sam Silvey (47:06):
Yeah.

And you mountain bike, road bike, yeah,
motorcycle, obviously yeah,although you talked about that
on your previous podcast withSeth Cathy, which, if you all
haven't listened to that, youshould, because it's fantastic.

Sam Silvey (47:19):
Yeah, it was a great talk.
Yeah, very interestingMotorcycles for sure is a big
part.
It's kind of the current thing.
Rock climbed a lot too, so Istarted mountain biking and rock
climbing right around like 11,12 years old here and canoeing
and kayaking about the same time.
But I never got to your levelof kayaking.
It always upside down in thewater.

The older I get, the less interested I am in
that because there's a lot ofconsequences that come with
fast-moving water.
Did you get?

Sam Silvey (47:41):
into creek boating as well.
No, no, no, I would never dothat.

I would also never do out in the Little River
Canyon, which is way on theback of Lookout.
Yeah, I remember there's thisguy, jesse Teague, who was going
to take me out there.
I know Jesse was telling meabout like okay, this next
section is called the suicidesection.
Like I'm not doing anythingcalled the suicide section,
right, he's like well, it's notthat bad.
There's just this one move thatyou don't want to miss.

(48:04):
I'm like I'm not doing it.
I have a kid, a wife.
It's not worth it to me to go.

Sam Silvey (48:08):
Yeah yeah, that stuff, and that's one of the few
.
Well, there are a handful ofsports like this, like probably
squirrel suiting.
You know that sort of stuff.
But to me, creek boating inparticular is like one sport the
better you get your probabilityof dying increases.
Yeah, because you want to keeppushing it and getting harder
and harder stuff and man it willlike, especially in the creeks
because they change so rapidly.

(48:29):
Um, for a bunch of years mybuddy and I got into creek
running, you know, because thecreeks will drop so much here in
the summertime like one.
We did a lot was Bear Creekdown in Cloudland Canyon.

You're nuts.
There's no way I would do thatyou did that.

Sam Silvey (48:42):
So our first not in a boat, this is on foot, oh, yes
, Okay.
So it's like trail running andwe got to where, like our first
time down Bear Creek.
At the time we parked up on theroad there where it crosses,
you know on what?
is that 157 or whatever it is.
We parked there and run in thefirst time down.
We took a rope because there'sthat big waterfall in the middle
and if it's high enough youcan't down, climb the main line

(49:04):
without a rope, so we'd repel iton the river left.
Long story short, it took usfrom top to bottom like six and
a half, seven hours Well, overthree years time.
We started researching where wewouldn't have to take a rope and
we found a place in this onewaterfall in particular.
It was about this big round andit's 25, 30 feet and we can
land in the soft mud spot and alow water.
It'd only be like four feet ofwater, but we land, knees bent,

(49:26):
smashing in the mud on thebottom.
Be fine.
And we got it down from likesix, seven hours of time down to
where we were racing each otherdown to about.
I think our fastest time waslike 39 minutes.
Wow, holy cow.
And we're now jumping all thewaterfalls and a lot of that.
You know if you've been down it.
It's just like sidewalk almostin the creek in the main part
Not all of it.
There's a lot of big boulderstoo, but you'd have a little bit

(49:47):
of water trickling over and youcould just haul ass down.

It you know and run and jump off these little
punch bowls.
Actually used to be my kid'steacher at Macaulay, dave Levitt
and he um, kayaked Bear Creekregularly and I was like, dude,
you're nuts.
But he's also an insanelytalented paddler.
But you know it's funny becausepeople think that I'm like, oh,
you hang glide, that'sdangerous.
Like well, I mean, I thinkanything you do is dangerous.

(50:11):
Driving down here to meet youis dangerous, you know, I think
life is about career is aboutrisk mitigation.
Life is about career is aboutrisk mitigation.
Yeah, and you know I wouldnever become a cyclist, because
I think that the one variablethat you can't predict is what
the drivers are going to do Withhang gliding or with mountain
biking.
When you're mountain biking,you know if you have an accident

(50:32):
, that's unless you hadequipment failure, it's, you
know, error judgment on yourpart.
Same thing with whitewaterpaddling, with hang gliding.
You know there's nothing reallyabout that that worries me,
because you can see weatherbuilding.
So any potential accidentthat's weather related, it
doesn't just happen, it builds,and so you can identify like

(50:53):
well, I don't like what'shappening over there, I'm going
to come down and land, you know.
So you know launching andlanding are the two most
dangerous parts.
And you just like I've neverbeen to the site, never been to
that landing, um, you know,usually, you know, um, you try
to minimize the number ofvariables when you're flying in
a new spot like new equipment,new site, new people, you want

(51:14):
to try to like never do allthree of those at the same time.
You know.
So you know I've had 25 yearsof safe flying.
You know I've seen someaccidents but I've never been a
part of one.
And you know, I think a lot ofthat has to do with judgment and
days that I didn't fly whenother people did and they turned
out being fine.
But I'm like you know what,maybe I didn't make the right
call, but I'm still here yeah,yeah, it's funny.

Sam Silvey (51:36):
It's not funny, uh, but it's interesting.
You say that I've forgottenabout this, but you know, on um,
I think that's creek road, popecreek road.
I don't know where it changes,but where the hang glider
landing area is, I have all thelittle town homes on it.
Yep, um, I would ride that roadfrequently, my road bike and go
down to trenton george uplookout, and I was riding one
day and they're coming to landand rise.
This guy came in to land and Iwas like side by side and

(51:58):
somehow he mistimed it and justdecked it straight into the
ground and I found out later itkilled him.
Wow, that was a really bizarrefeeling and it didn't seem that
bad.
But he was coming from I don'tknow, probably 50 feet in the
air and he tried to bank onemore corner and just completely
lost it.
I guess too much of whateverthe terminology is for that but
just nosed it right into theground, mistimed it.

Yeah, and in that particular.
So landing fields are ratedwhat's called hang one, two,
three and four, with four beingthe most complex.
Usually they're smaller andthere's maybe a lot of trees
around them.
That field is like a hang onefield, it's a very for an
accident like that to happen wasunnecessary.
It didn't need to happen.
Like with all due respect towhoever it was you saw, you know

(52:41):
, to have a landing fatality inthat field.
It just didn't need to happen.
I watched a fatality in thatfield 23 years ago it was very
new in my, in my flying andthere was a guy doing loops
which hang gliders really aren'trated for that kind of stress.
They tell you don't do loopsand this glider broke apart on

(53:03):
his second loop.
He was, you know, four or fivehundred feet in the air but he
just sort of, you know, plowedright into the ground after his
glider folded up and he died.
And while it was terrible likeI've never done a loop in a
glider because you know there'sa lot of things that you have to
be very careful about Um, evenif you've modified your glider

(53:25):
to handle that kind of stress.
But you know, there's alwaysthe potential that the glider is
going to break apart and that'sjust not worth it to me.
Yeah, you know, I feel likethat about mountain biking,
although, man, I tell you, I dolike watching crazy stuff people
do on youtube.

Sam Silvey (53:45):
Oh man, mountain bikes and motorcycles and that
red bull rampage stuff that is.
You know I raced downhill for alittle while as a junior and
actually one of the guys thatwas a couple years older me at
cal straight.
He's still doing world-classlevel stuff.
I think he's still doing Idon't know I think he won one
recently I don't keep up with ita ton, but it's crazy.
I mean the consequences theyhave throwing backflips off of
like 60 foot drops and it's noteven an exaggeration.
At this point I'm like what inthe hell are they thinking?
That never crossed my mind,Like, and if you ever go see

(54:07):
some of this stuff in person, um, some of the big drops ahead,
like there's no way thatwouldn't.

Yep.

Sam Silvey (54:14):
You know, one thing.

This is interesting.
I was going to get your opinionon this.
I'll tell you, I don't mindsaying this, I don't know who's
listening to this podcast, butyou know I'm 55.
The older you get, you sort ofget a little more.
You know, old man, like slowdown, you crazy kids.
But you know I actually didthat the other day I went out to
get my trash can and somebodywas speeding.

(54:35):
I'm like slow down, like oh mygosh, I just had an old man
moment.
But you know, I've become alittle bit of an outdoor snob.
You know, like I'll go, like wewere just in Jackson Hole for
our wedding and you know, mywife and I want to go on a hike
and one of the most attractiveplaces is a place called Jenny
Lake and there's a great hike,but there's so many people there
.
I'm like I want to go there, Iwant to be around all those

(55:00):
people, right, you know, even onlookout.
You know, at Sunset Rock, youknow there's just a lot of
people there.
I tend to not spend any timethere.
The Little Lake Land Trust,where I'm on the board of
directors great organization.
We preserve land and protect itand, you know, try to do a lot
to sort of throttle the kind ofusage that comes out of our core
property.
But you know, you know, eventhen people criticize us
sometimes because we're not openmore often.

(55:20):
Like, well, we just want to tryto maintain a smoother level of
use of land use and also crowdsand some of that that comes
with it.
But you know, I feel like withthis growth that we've
experienced here in Chattanooga,the outdoor scene has gotten
more crowded.
With that has become somevandalism and trash and you know

(55:41):
just some of the other thingsthat inevitably come with higher
use.
So I don't want to say, gosh, Iwish it was the way it was
before, before anybody liked theoutdoors, because I'm glad that
people are out there andenjoying it, sure, and
appreciating it and hopefullybeing inspired to protect it and
preserve it.
But at the same time, you know,people are people and you know

(56:05):
they're going to do things theyshouldn't and unfortunately I've
started to witness more trashon the trail At Sunset Rock
there's, you know, some spraypainting.
That's happened recently thatreally sort of bothered me.
Yeah, but yeah, I like.
Yeah, so with all the growththat Chattanooga has had, like
what do you think is enough?
Like is that?

(56:25):
You know, it's probably notfair to say like 700,000 people.

Sam Silvey (56:28):
Right, let's cap it at that Right.

You know, or I mean, when I really started
living here, it was like we wereat 250.
Yeah Right for the greaterChattanooga area.
Like we're at 250.
Yeah right for the greaterchattanooga area.

Sam Silvey (56:40):
Now we're at double triple that right, yeah, I can't
even keep up with them.
I think I forgot county numbers.
But city of chatt downtown islike 186, something like that
200, and then when you count thewhole like you know, east
brainerd, everything I thinkwe're getting close to 500 now,
maybe over 500 um, yeah, and ifyou know, tim kelly, our mayor,
was here.

Mayor Chattanooga was here.
It's not my mayor, I live in adifferent zip code, but growth,
you know more people, morecompanies like growth is good
and there's.
You know, condos everywhere.
And you know back when fiveyears ago you didn't have to
have restaurant reservations,you could just show up and get a
table.
And it's not like that anymore.
And you know you go toNeedlove's in the morning and

(57:19):
there's a long line out the doorand you know I don't know.
I mean, you know it'scomplicated because you know the
definition of growth is justnot what my definition of growth
would be.

Sam Silvey (57:33):
Yeah, it's like I don't the tough part with
melting pots.
That's what we've kind ofbecome, you know, because people
from everywhere are coming inand I like for people like you
mentioned to enjoy the outdoors.
This is something I've alwaysbeen a little.
I felt a little guilty wantingit to myself.
You know.
It feels like that's just toovain or arrogant for me to think

(57:53):
I deserve it to myself.
But what really gets on mynerves is when I'm out on a
trail, especially if I'm on amountain bike or dirt bike, and
it's an area that hikers are nowgoing to as well, and they have
headphones on and they're withfriends and they're not talking.
And I'm just going to go outand throw Atlanta under the bus.
Guaranteed they're from Atlanta, they made a short trip to
Chattanooga and they want to tryhiking and they give us evil

(58:15):
glares or say we shouldn't be onthe trails and that just man,
that like for spinning, you know, and I guess this is maybe
where the vain part comes in.
I feel like I've spent so muchof my life on the trails helping
build them.
You know, helping like as a kid.
I remember helping buildinitial mountain bike trails at
Lua Lake, and you know, the listgoes on.
All different trails helpedbuild when Sorba first came to

(58:35):
town, you know.
But at all the different trailshelped build when sorba first
came to town, you know.
And but a certain point I kindof started getting like a little
bit of a chip on my shoulderwhen it feels like always people
are coming here not reallycontributing and then like just
flooding all the outdoors and ifthey're not appreciating it as
well, like people have boomboxes out there.
You know stereos.
I know I sound like the old mannow too, but it's like if
you're gonna be out in naturethere needs to be some respect
to it you.

You know I was trail running.
I popped up out of Sunset Rockbecause it's the easiest way to
get back to my house and there'sthis guy sitting on the bluff,
only you know, 50 people outthere.
He's got his boom box going,yeah, and he's got it going loud
and playing music.
That was I don't know.
Far be it for me to call thingsoffensive, but there were words
and things that probablyweren't, you know, probably for

(59:16):
all the people that were thereand the kids that were there.
But you know like how selfishis that.
But I'll tell you one thingthis kind of restored my faith
in humanity about three monthsago.
You know, because I run on theBluff Trail a lot, which is, you
know for your listeners, belowCovenant.
It's on Lookout Mountain, belowCovenant, kind of below Sunset
Rock.
A lot of climbers and peopleare there and and it's a hiking
trail, it's not a biking trail,there's no horses, it's a hiking

(59:38):
trail and there's the signagethat says that.
And so I'm running around thiscorner, this guy on a bike, on a
mountain bike, almost plowsinto me and I've never seen a
mountain bike on that trail andI jumped off the side of the
trail when there's a bluff sideright.
It sort of falls away if you'renot in the right place.

(01:00:02):
And the guy just said sorry,man.
And he kept writing.
And man, I can't tell you thewords that were going on in my
head, but I was just pissed.
I want to find this guy right,give him peace of my mind.
I was really ticked off, yeah.
And about 10 minutes later hecomes back and says and he holds
up his hand because I think heexpected me to say something

(01:00:24):
he's like hey, man, I'm reallysorry, like I just realized that
I should not be out here on mymountain bike.
I guess I just didn't see thesign.
I'm really sorry, and I was like, okay, like it didn't really
make sense, Like he waslegitimately, authentically
apologetic and it didn't.
Really.
It wasn't a doing thing for meto say, yeah, you know.

(01:00:47):
So I said well, thank you, Iappreciate that You're right and
you're doing the right thing.

Sam Silvey (01:00:54):
Yeah, you know, I calmed right down.

Matt McLelland (01:00:56):
Yeah, probably good you didn't blow a fuse on
the first time.
No, no, no, I'm past that.
But um, yeah, there's so muchto do around here and I, I love
it.
I do feel like chattanooga'sgetting a little crowded, a
little big.
You know, for a business ownerlike yourself, I'm sure that you
know more growth, morecompanies, more potential to
interact and engage withcompanies is probably better for

(01:01:18):
you professionally.
But, man, I just don't want usto turn out like Atlanta or
Asheville or some of these othercities that just started well
but have ended poorly.

I mean Nashville especially.
I mean I feel like Atlanta'salways kind of been Nashville's
a great example.
Nashville, really, andespecially since COVID, because
it became the LA of the East,they all went from you know,
escape.
Covid restrictions came toNashville and since then it's
blown up and of course I'll havea commercial development side
of it.
You know tons of money there,so it does feel like a little

(01:01:49):
bit of a bubble potential.
Um, you know, I drive aroundChattanooga now and you know
from what, from clients andfriends that are in the
development industry and thatsort of thing.
Like it feels like Nashvilleand Atlanta have started kind of
peaking in some area as far aslike big opportunity, big return
possibilities, and now we'reflooding into Chattanooga.
One thing that scares the hellout of me is if they do ever put
that train from atlanta tochattanooga.

(01:02:11):
Oh yeah, I think at this point,with autonomous cars increasing
all that, they'll probably justforego it.
But um, I mean, hell,alpharetta is only atlanta, city
limits are only what?
45 minutes from chattanooga?

at this point it's so close yeah, I mean,
imagine if there's a train on aweekend, hundreds of mountain
bikers say we're going to get onthe train and get dropped off,
because you can actually ridefrom downtown Chattanooga to the
trails on Lookout Mountain orprobably even Raccoon Mountain,
and then all of a sudden there'scongestion where there never

(01:02:44):
was before.
I don't know.
I mean, I've certainly got somepretty strong feelings about it
.
I like it the way it was.
I like it the way it is rightnow.
I hope it doesn't get a lotbigger.
But you know, it seems likeevery time I drive anywhere
around here there's a new condogoing up, and so I fear that's
the direction that we're going.
You know, I just one of myclosest friends just got married

(01:03:05):
I think I've mentioned itearlier in the podcast right
outside Jackson Hole, and soyou've got Jackson Hole, which
is unique because beautifulplace, but there's so much
conserved land that you reallycan't build anything more than
what's already there.
And so, as Jackson Hole hasbecome more aspenized I guess

(01:03:27):
for lack of a better word itused to be a very affordable,
not affordable.
It used to be a relativelyaffordable place to live, and
especially for people that werehardcore outdoors folks.
But now you know, you hadmillion dollar homes and you had
$10 million homes.
Now you have $50 million homesand you know, and a lot of these
people don't even live theremost of the time, and so the

(01:03:49):
prices have gone up and it'sdriven the baristas and the
servers and the school teachersand the nurses and the doctors
now out of town.
They can't afford to live there.
So the next closest town is thislittle hamlet called Victor,
idaho, and Driggs, idaho, twoareas that I spend a lot of time
in, especially in the winter,because I like to back country
ski and there's a lot of itthere.
One of my very close friendshas a home there and I go out to

(01:04:09):
visit him sometimes in winterand we ski together, but the
commute is about 45 minutes, andso over the last five years
there's been this exodus ofpeople moving because they can't
afford to buy a home in Jackson, so they have to buy it in
Victor.
Well, now the prices in Victorare going up, and they're going
up at a rate that you know,unless you're wealthy, you're a

(01:04:30):
school teacher, if you're aplumber, if you were, actually
there are a lot of rich plumbersnow but if you're a nurse or
you know, or in the serviceindustry.
Now you can't live thereanymore.
You got to go a little furtherout.
There's a little town past thatcalled Titonia.
Now you're an hour and 10minutes away from Jackson, and
pretty soon we're starting tosee housing prices go up there

(01:04:52):
as well, and so growth does notcome.
Crested Butte would be anothergreat example of where people
just got priced out of that andhad to move to Gunnison,
telluride.
People can't afford to livethere anymore in the service
industry.
Now they've got to go to Rigbyor some of know little towns
that are close by.
So it's just I feel like it'shappening here.

It's, you know, I think the bigger issue I have
with all of it and you know, thetrailhead parking aside, the
biggest issue is the discrepancybetween the top and the bottom
is getting so large and reallyit's between the middle class
and the upper class.
The discrepancy is massive now.
And you know one example thehouse my mom lives in.

(01:05:33):
Once my parents, they bought ittogether and they're still
married, and my dad, mom, wereinvesting in houses and buying
houses and at one point theywere going to buy a whole street
North Chattanooga this wouldhave been probably early
nineties, like 92, somethinglike that, and the whole street
was going to cost less than$300,000.
We're talking like 15 homes.
So North Chattanooga is a lotof shitholes and the house my
mom lives in is still to thisday.
It's a great little yellowhouse off of Oliver Street, like
the fourth house up on theright from Tremont Street, right

(01:05:56):
there by Fraser Avenue.
Very desirable place to live,very desirable.
And there's multimillion-dollarhomes now.
They paid $14,000 for that homeback in like 1995.
And I remember walking in as akid I was 10 years old then and
fell through the floor and therewas a duplex at the time.
There were two families livingin there and fell through the
floor.
I mean I walked in the kidsroom in the back and there's
holes in the floor.

(01:06:17):
It's very sad, sad, but that'show that was right downtown
chattanooga.
Now there's multi milliondollar homes right behind my
mom's house, beside it'severywhere.
But the problem is, like youknow, my mom's getting close to
I think she'll be 80 this year,next year still works at a law
firm, still in great health,luckily.
But she's a receptionist at alaw firm.
You know she doesn't make bukusof money.

(01:06:38):
Um, she makes a good living,you know.
But now in oliver street, whichis right there by fraser avenue
, property taxes are goingthrough the roof.
In chattanooga we'reexperiencing now in Lookout
Mountain as well.
Like the property tax, I haveto pay for my house and I built
it very affordably back 13 yearsago.
Property tax I'm paying now ismore than I paid for rent 10

(01:06:58):
years ago and that's kind of.
The biggest issue is we'regetting forced out of town, even
if you own property and you'rea local and you live here.
The property taxes from thisdiscrepancy of you know the
problem I have with it.

Of higher net worth individuals are upper
class that see Chattanooga as aresort town, a little getaway
from Atlanta or Nashville, andit's going in that direction and
I hate it and you know you wantto try to maybe fight it, but
then you're perceived as sort ofanti-progress and you know, and
, and, and, inevitably thingslike this just happen.
I can't think of a singleOutside Magazine used to write

(01:07:31):
about this because they wouldget and I've quit my
subscription to Outside Magazineyears ago for a lot of reasons,
but one of the things that theywould always it's become a
little bit more of a well anyway.
But I don't enjoy it anymorelike I used to because of the
way they've sort of reportedstories.
But they would always do thisbest town ever issue, of which

(01:07:53):
Chattanooga was a winner threeyears over the last couple of
decades.
But you know, the minute thatthey bring attention to some
little small beautiful hammocklike Silverton, colorado, then
all of a sudden like OK, now allthe people are going to be here
in five years.
Thanks a lot, outside Magazine.
You just ruined my favoritelittle mountain town and so you

(01:08:14):
know, fortunately, where you andI live.
On Lookout there's limited realestate, right, so there's only
so much density that you canhave, and one of the goals if I
could use your podcast to plugthe Lula Lake Land Trust that
I'm on the board of directors ofis that we buy land on the back
of Lookout, put it in aconservation easement and then
resell it to somebody.

(01:08:35):
So like, for example, we've gota parcel right now that's about
40 acres, so we bought it froma very conservation minded
person.
We bought it for a very, veryfair price.
We'll put a conservationeasement but a five acre
building envelope so thatsomebody can buy it, build a
home on it and um, and then therest of it is in conservation so

(01:08:57):
it can never be developed, andso we want to sort of see the
back of lookout mountain tocontinue to have that level of
protection.
And and you know we'restrategic about where we buy it
we just don't buy anything thatcomes up.
It has to be kind of part of aof.
And you know we're strategicabout where we buy it.
We just don't buy anything thatcomes up.
It has to be kind of part of amethodology that we've created.
And what we've done over theyears is created this corridor

(01:09:23):
where you can actually ride yourmountain bike from the Lula
Lake core property all the wayto Cloudland Canyon on property
that we either conserved or ownand so that was a huge thing for
people like you and me that youknow like to do things here in
the outdoors.
I feel like it was sort of agift to chattanooga lookout
mountain in general specifically.
But yeah, I, conservationeasements sometimes get a bad
rap.
Right, it's a way for wealthypeople to buy and own land and
pay minimal taxes and get atremendous tax benefit.

(01:09:43):
But you know there's also anupside to it where you know
can't be developed, and you knowthere's a huge positive for
that as well.

Yeah, protect wild areas.
And it's beautiful.
I mean the areas around likeRock Creek and all those creeks,
because you have Rock Creekflows right through, I guess a
lot of the property there, atleast the main original property
, yep, but that whole corridorbetween Cloudland Canyon and the
front of Lookout, so it'sdefinitely worth protecting.
To see that turn into a bunchof neighborhoods with, you know,

(01:10:10):
subpar, shitty homes built onit, that would be a tragedy in
my opinion.

You know, yeah, or just a lot of people in
general and you know traffic andyou know not having resources
like sewage and power and thetypes of things that it takes to
sort of have a community.

So that's happening on Signal Mountain right now.
Yeah absolutely Issues withsewer up there.
You know they have a certainlimit now to bathrooms.
If you renovate a home therethey have to approve it.
One of the reasons they'regetting denied is if they have
an addition of a bathroom andit's on sewer, they're having a
real problem up there.
But yet I don't know if you'vebeen up there recently towards

(01:10:45):
the back of Signal.
I mean, it's a buddy-of-towncompany coming in.
I think they're proposing Idon't exactly know how many
homes, but it's going to besomewhere around 1,500 homes,
something like that.
And so you look at the.
You know it's 500 acres, sothere are going to be more than
one on one acre track.
But it's not all developable.
So let's just say it was 500homes.

(01:11:05):
You have Roberts Mill Road,which has the first grade is
what?
27%, 24%, something like that.
Trucks can't go up it when it'swet a lot of times on a
four-wheel drive.
You have the W Road, whichslides quite often, and then you
have the front of Signal, whichalso slides quite often.
Those are kind of your threeoptions and it's.
I don't know if it's the lasttime you've been up Signal
Mountain, but it's a traffic jama lot of times.

It's been a minute since I'm.
Yeah, I try to avoid that forfor reasons like that, you never
know what you're gonna getyourself into.
Yeah, you know, my wife worked.
My wife's a physician here intown and she works out at the
hospital on Gum Barrel Road andso it's probably, as the crow
flies, probably 14, 15 miles,but by the you know road it's
probably just under 19.

(01:11:46):
But depending on the time ofday, the traffic is not.
In the last five years she hasto.
You know, she pulls up thetraffic, you know, on ways
before she comes home every day.
She used to never do that, yeah, so anyway, listen to us, bunch
of angry old men complainingabout the crowds I do think
there is a better way ofhandling things.

I don't exactly know what it is.
Yeah, it's a very complex waybut well, you know, it's
interesting.

So, being in sustainability, I look at the
world very differently.
So there's sustainability.
It's not just about electricvehicles, but it's also about
hate to pick on you, but thatplastic water bottle that you're
drinking out of right now, thatfiji water bottle, and the
water that came from Fiji thesupply chain that it took for
that bottle to get here ispretty nuts.

(01:12:34):
I actually read a big articleon it one time and when you look
at all the ships and the, theydon't put anything on an
airplane, but the ships and thetrucks and everything in order
for that to get here, becausethat bottle actually was bottled
in Fiji, which is one of thethings that they can actually
claim, as opposed to Desani oryou know.
You know Aquafina that soundscute but comes out of the tap
Right, and it's just cleaned up.

(01:12:55):
But you know there's a lot ofdecisions that we make as
consumers.
You know the way that wecommute, the size of the cars
that we buy not being cognizantof.
You know we have to haveeverything right now.
You know Amazon Prime, you know, really got us used to next day
shipping and you know, as asociety, we've just put a lot

(01:13:16):
more burden on the environmentjust by the nature of the lives
that we live now.
You know, at Covenant, you knowwe I tried to outlaw plastic
bottles.
We installed these refillablewater stations everywhere and
that it's filtered cleaner water.
We try to do things to kind ofpush people to use water bottles

(01:13:37):
instead of going to buy wateror bringing in bottles of water.
But there's a lot of things thatwe can do as consumers to
really do a better job atpreserving resources.
But I think other countries,they do a lot more with less and
I think those are lessons thatwe can do a much better job of

(01:13:58):
here.
Not just food, but again, sizeof the car, size of the roads,
the way they've always got aone-up on us on public
transportation, which issomething that you know would be
a much would be great if wecould have figured out a way to
do the trains and things in away that's better over there.
But you know Chattanooga's madea lot of progress with bike

(01:14:19):
lanes and all the Frasier kindof Dude.
Don't even get me started onthat.

Whoever designed that thing is, you know, should
have their degree taken away,the bike lanes in Chattanooga is
not designed by a knowledgeablebiker.
I mean I would never use it, Imean unless I was just piddling
around with Hannah and I on abike on flip-flops.
But back when I was a realcyclist I would never use that.
It would be in the road,because you're not going to be
on a road bike.

(01:14:45):
People are really seriouslycommuting.
But you know, I don't want tobe all negative on everything.

There's a lot of great things about Chattanooga,
I know, and.
But you know, I think asconsumers, there's things that
we could do a lot better to sortof reduce our consumption, to
reduce our impact.
You know there's this, um, youknow, because you know
conservation and being moreintentional about recycling.
Like you know, there's this mywife and I are designing a house

(01:15:10):
right now.
I'm trying to think about a lotof this as it relates to the
size of the house that we buyand materials that we buy, but
right now we're working on thekitchen.
There's this product and forthose of you listening, you've
got to go look this up.
You ever heard of Mill?
No, m-i-l-l.

(01:15:30):
Dot com, alecom, mealcom.
So they make this compostingtrash can where anything that's
organic, you, you put it in thisthing and at night there's this
process that takes place whereit's kind ofa combination of a
grinder and a heating system,but it creates compost like this
dry coffee grain lookingmaterial within 24 hours of
anything that you put in thereand you can use it on your

(01:15:54):
garden.
You're like Matt who has agarden, like fair point.
You can put it in a box andship it back to them and they
pay you for it, oh wow, and thenthey aggregate it all together
and they sell it to people thatactually do have gardens.
So they're trying to play arole in the circular economy,
where you're taking things outof what normally would end up in
a landfill.
You're turning in somethingthat actually has a positive

(01:16:15):
benefit.
You know if you can actuallyuse it for, for composting and,
yes, there's supply chains andshipping back and forth, but
what they do with their processis it creates this really dense,
you know nutrient rich productfrom stuff that otherwise would
have ended up in a landfill.
So we're going to put one ofthese things in our house and
I'm just looking for everythingwe can do to kind of make it

(01:16:37):
more.
I just say sustainable.
But that's, that's what we'retrying to do.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's really cool.

I've checked that out.
Millcom Millcom.

Yeah, I mean, in a marketing company like this,
this is something.
If they decided to engage youguys like you, could take them
to the next level that's right.

Yeah, that's right.
Um, so you got any fun trips,outdoor trips, coming up, oh man
, always.

You know we never talked about the van but
um, so I built out a sprintervan five years ago.
Um, local business guy justinchip gave me a lot of help and
advice.
Um, site seven camper fans alittle shout out to them, you
know, justin, oh yeah, justin'sone of the most talented people
I have ever met with electric,electric and woodworking and

(01:17:21):
welding.
He's like the kind of guy that,um, we all want to be like one
day.
But justin gave me a lot ofadvice and help and, um, I built
this thing myself.
I still use it pretty much thesame way I did when I finished
it years ago.
So I camp a lot in that drive alot out west.
I don't have any big van tripsplanned, but I do take it out to
Wyoming every year.

(01:17:41):
I camp here locally in it a lotBig trips.
One of my really good friendswho just got married, clay
Watson, and another local guy,strib Stribling, a big
outdoorsman as well.
Both of them are incredible flyfishermen.
Great guys, clay and Strib andI are going to climb Middle
Teton.

(01:18:01):
Oh cool, and we're in thebeginning of August, kind of on
a two-day.
We're going to do Middle Tetonand we're going to do two peaks
in two days, with one night inbetween.
We're going to camp on thetrail.
Nice, um, what else?
My wife and I go see my sonover madrid.
He's studying over there forthe summer, oh cool, um.
But yeah, just a lot of hanggliding, a lot of trail running.

(01:18:24):
How about you?
You've got anything planned?

uh, I want to do a road trip into this summer, uh,
after I've got one big racecoming up in august and after
that hopefully, hannah and Itake the trailer and the, the
gsa out in the trailer andtalking about some last night
but hopefully idaho, um, wyomingmontana, maybe colorado, yeah,
like two weeks, and she, youknow, has to work as well.
So, um, maybe fly out, meet meonce I'm out there, save her

(01:18:50):
some of the commute time acrossthe country.
But I have a buddy who justmoved to built a house a little
north of Anchorage, alaska.
So it's on my list.
I want to ride the motorcycle.
So if I have enough time, maybeget out there around Idaho and
then find a place to park thetrailer and hop on the GSA and
ride all the way up to Alaska.

That is going to take a lot longer than you
think it will.

It is a long time it's been on my list to do.
It may not happen this year.
We'll see Work's busy and it'sa long trip just to get to
Canada border, let alone Canadaand Alaska.

I love trips like that.
I get to listen to podcastslike this, long-form podcasts
like Rogan or this one.
In fact, speaking of thispodcast, just listening to one
with you and Genesis great kid,that was fantastic.
I think I already mentioned theone with Seth Cathy that was
great.
I'm really glad you're doingthis.
I mean, there are people inChattanooga and it's a little

(01:19:40):
unstructured, but that's cool aswell.

Yeah, there's a lot of cool people in Chattanooga
that people don't know about.
You know?
Oh yeah, just some of thepeople we met last night.
They're your friends, you know,with the lookout and the
stories they're talking about,there's a lot of great stories
to tell here.

Oh, there's great.
You know this buddy of mine.
It's now defunct.
Luke Schwab had this thingcalled the People of Chattanooga
yeah, and he would.
In fact, at the end of everypodcast he would ask somebody
like, hey, I need you to give methree names you can do it right
now or you can do it later ofpeople that would just really be
absolutely fascinating to be onthe podcast.
And, um, yeah, anyway he.

(01:20:17):
I think he did 20, 30 episodesbut for whatever reason, got
busy and couldn't do it anymore.

But yeah, yeah, I think I was too polarizing
politically for the outdoorcommunity to be invited on that
one.

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, I could see that one.
What did we talk about?
We did talk a lot about a lotof outdoor stuff, but, um, I
think you can find that in theinternet archives people,
chattanooga, that was a good one, okay, um, that's right, cause
you're, like you know, ridingthe dirt bike and yeah, and I
think at some point maybe hefollowed me on Instagram and I
was like I got a feeling I'mgoing to get invited on here.

But I also, like I was watching like people were
going on there, a lot of peopleI knew and used to climb with
and ride with and you know, someof the political fallout here
in the last handful of yearswind up on the different side of
this, you know table, which Idon't like to talk about a ton
now anymore, but there for awhile I was pretty opinionated.
I mean I about lost my businessand everything because of all
of our clients having to shutdown.
So I was pretty volatile thereduring COVID especially.

(01:21:10):
I didn't hear all these peoplepushing these agendas and
everything else without anyconcern for what I felt like was
reality and consequences thateveryday people were having to
deal with.
Lost some friends still to thisday, which is sad.
I don't like that.
I know I fell on the oppositeside of the table from a lot of
those people.

It's funny, I know you don fell on the
opposite side of the table froma lot of those people.
You know it's funny.
I you know.
I know you don't have kids, butmy son is like 18, 19 now and
you know you feel like you haveall this wisdom that you need to
be passing down.
You know, like I'll tell youone thing I failed in doing I
never taught him how to ride amotorcycle.
I always wanted to and I alwaysasked our friend Seth, like can
I bring him out here and teachhim how to ride on one of your
kind of lesser, nice bikes?

(01:21:48):
And he was like, yeah, but Ihave a $20 drop rule.
Like every time you drop it,it's $20.
He says that just goes into thekitty to repair all the damages
that ultimately people do.
So it was fair.
But teach him how to bounce acheckbook and to budget and that
sort of thing.

(01:22:09):
But one of them was you've gotto be careful what you say
publicly.
And now you know you've gotsocial media platforms,
professional, like LinkedIn,which is actually turning to be
more like X.
You know, I've seen, but youknow.
Then you've got X and Facebookand Instagram and you know all
the other ones.
And you know the types ofthings that you say and you know
when you think about you knowtypes of things that you say and

(01:22:30):
you know when you think aboutyou know your future and sort of
is it worth it?
You know, and you know I usedto sort of say a lot of things
in the past that I just choosenot to say anymore.
It doesn't mean I don't feelpassionate about it, but yeah,
it's just not worth.
You know, ruining a friendship,ruining a business relationship
.
And I hate that because some ofmy favorite people, like our
friend Genesis, like we're verydifferent and we're also very
alike.
We talk about anything, and youknow we're not going to get mad

(01:22:54):
at each other at the end of theday, and I feel like these
long-form podcasts are sort of away to sort of unpack that and
also have it, but it's just ayou know.
So I tell him, you know we'rejust not going to.
So I tell him, I tell him youknow we're, we're just not gonna
.
Um, you just better off keepingyour opinions at least, as you

(01:23:14):
know, inside your circle, asclose as you can.

Right, yeah, yeah, it's something that kind of
learned a hard way, but I dosometimes struggle with that
because of, uh, I don't want tobe.
I don't want to feel like I'mbeing forced into being quiet.
You know that's always like.
But there's also there'sconsequences to everything.
It's a pro-con scenario.
You've got to weigh out, likewhat's the pro of it and what's

(01:23:38):
the consequence of it, and doesit make sense?

I know, so, just as one example, we'll dance
around one topic and that's it.
Okay, so it's funny, you know,when you think about the current
administration, and one of thebig things that was on, you know
, in this last election was whathas now become known as the
Maha movement.
Right, make America healthyagain.
So here you've got this thing.
Like who in the world coulddisagree on not having red dye

(01:24:04):
number five in their food?
Yeah, like who could be againstthat?
It doesn't matter as far on oneside or the other.
Like that is something that wecan all get behind.
Yeah, but even that becamepolitical and it really wasn't.
You know, I think Robert Kennedyhas a big passion for this.
You know, there's some peoplethat have some ideas about what
he believes about vaccines, andsomehow that invalidates this

(01:24:25):
whole thing.
Right, but at the end of theday, you know, there are some
things that I don't understandwhy we all just can't get behind
, like the environment, likefood, like a complete overhaul
of the food industry from aregulatory perspective.
You know, I mean, a few yearsago, last year, we were in italy
and, um, I was walking aroundlike why are these people skinny

(01:24:48):
?
Because they're eating pastaand bread.
And you know, we started doinga little bit of a deep dive and
found out that there's onlyreally three or four ingredients
in their bread and over herethere's 18.
And over here, you know, 12 ofthose are illegal in those
countries.
Like, how can that be somethingthat we could disagree about as
a society?
Let's get rid of those 12things from our food.

(01:25:10):
But ultimately it is, andthat's unfortunate.

Yeah, it's a shame that it's so politicized because
there's some great, uh greatpieces of that movement.
You know like there's 600allowed ingredients.
I heard in the UK and inAmerica over 10,000.
Oh, it's nuts.
How is that possible?

I hope I hope we make some progress there.
My wife is a physician and youknow we talk about this all the
time.
She goes down these rabbitholes, sort of looking at this
and how a lot of really greatprogress is stopped by their
perceived polarization with.
Well, I don't like that personthat's got the microphone.
So we're just going to cast,you know, this degree of, of, of

(01:25:51):
of division over anything thatcomes out of their mouth, just
because I don't like the waythey feel about this one
particular thing, even thoughthe rest of the 90% of what
they're saying is something weshould all get behind.
So, anyway, that's as far aswe'll go, but yeah, Well, that's
probably a good place for astop.
Yeah, man, I appreciate it.
It's great to be here.

Yeah, glad you came in and chatted.
I enjoyed learning, especiallyabout the sustainability part.
Yeah, we're already conqueringat least Chattanooga's problems.
You know tackling those for thegreater good of Chattanooga.

And no editing on these things, right.

We had one camera turn off.
We've been having problems withthis one.
I keep bumping this light.
We'll edit that out.
That camera keeps overheating,so I've got to figure that part
out.
We actually had to run,obviously, but we usually just
leave this stuff.
It feels more real.
I don't like it to feelscripted, but the batteries on
these, they tend to overheat.
So we shoot them at 4K.
It allows us to add it a littlefurther and and we can crop in

(01:26:45):
if we need to, but 4K tends tooverheat.
So now those aren't evenbatteries.
We ran this aftermarket thingwhere we're in a wire and it
fills the battery port to try tocut down on heat.

So podcasts available on all platforms.

YouTube on the video , yep YouTube, and then Apple,
spotify and a bunch of otherpodcasts.
It kind of hits the RSS feedand goes out there Yep, good
deal.
But, we'll share all those withyou and put it out there.
Yeah, appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for coming on.
Yeah, man, you can find me onLinkedIn.
That's right, yeah Right.
There's that On Instagram Chadthe Van Chad the Van Chad's the
name of my van.

My son named it.
Matt McClellan and spellL-L-A-N-D.
I always get it messed up wherethe two L's is, or the two C's
yeah, people with two C's.

Or there's this other very wealthy family here
in Chattanooga that has the samelast name but spelled
differently they'reM-A-C-L-E-L-L-A-N.
Oh okay, so yeah, not relatedto them.
Gotcha, yep, so great familythey miss.
All right, all right, thanksman.
Yeah, thanks Matt.
All right, appreciate it.

All Episodes

Freight, Fuel & the Future: Sustainability and Innovation in Trucking | Matt McLelland

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Freight, Fuel & the Future: Sustainability and Innovation in Trucking | Matt McLelland