January 31, 2024 • 38 mins
In this exciting, first-ever 19th HEP-isode, we invite you to come along, on an enthralling voyage through the dynamic realm of trucking and construction technology, where Mike and Jo talk about the new JLG mini-dumper, explore the revolutionary new Revoy EV trailer that converts diesel semi trucks to hybrids in minutes, and dissect the meaning behind all those WARN letters the UAW guys are getting from Ford. All this and Marissa Tomei, on the Summer of George!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Whether we're exploring the latest in trucking
technology, talking about thetrends that propel the industry
forward, or uncovering storiesabout the dedicated individuals
who keep the wheels of Americaturning, this is where the roar
of the engines and pulse ofprogress come together.
It's sublime, it's surreal.
That's the Heavy EquipmentPodcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to episode 19 .
I'm your host.
Joe Boris, here is Ever withMike Switzer out on the open
road, and we've got some goodtales from the road there today,
mike, how you doing.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, we're doing good.
I got Beth with me in the cartoday.
He's holding two cards up infront of the passenger window,
but we'll make it.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We're all right, I'm going to seize the wheel when
you start articulating with yourhands?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
He isn't like driving with knees.
I can tell you that.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
No well, you can just hit the cruise control, walk
into the back of the cab thereand have a sandwich right, it's
basically autopilot.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That's correct.
We're heading our way back upfrom West Virginia up into
Cleveland.
So we're working our way back,but we have a bunch of stuff to
talk about.
Today we go through some ofthese articles.
I mean a lot of good stuffcracking here.
I think this next quarter isgoing to be busy.
There's a lot of stuff comingout.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
We're moving into tier five.
We've got a lot of new productcoming out just in terms of not
just regulation but in terms oftechnology.
Right, because we're at a placenow where we've got some true
autonomy, some true remotecontrol ability, where guys can
kind of program a route intothese things and depend on it to
(01:46):
do the job.
But there's still a place forstuff that an operator gets into
, hops into and drives around.
And we'll start today withsomething that came out of World
of Concrete last week.
This is a track mini-dumperfrom JLG.
I'm not real familiar withthese.
It's about the size of aside-by-side UTV, like a
Kawasaki Mugul or my JohnDeGator, and this is a cool
(02:10):
little thing.
I would love to take one ofthese up down the hobby farm and
just take it out on the trails,but I'm sure there's a much
more practical use for it.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, there's a ton of uses for it.
I mean, there are farmers thathave them.
The power buggy's been aroundfor a long time Whitman Whitman
however you want to say it, theyhad it, and then JLG's got one
that articulates.
There's a few other brands.
They're versatile.
I mean, we use them every day.
We have them on jobs.
We use them for all kinds ofsmall work that we're doing,
whether we're pouring materialinto a corner or trying to just
(02:39):
shuttle concrete back into anarea where you can't get a shoot
or a pump truck into, or justmake sense to run some over
there.
The other thing we use them alot for is demobing of demo
debris.
If you're down in there andyou're trying to trench some
stuff out of a factory or dig ahole in somewhere small, put all
your stuff in there, run itoutside and get rid of it.
No, there's these the JLG has.
(03:00):
There's electric ones.
A lot of guys overlook thembecause it's like I don't know
what I could put in that, butonce you see a couple of them
running on a job, they actuallysurprise you very much.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, they're cool looking little things and, like
I said, I haven't really beenfamiliar with these, but JLG had
a couple of new launches.
They've got the 670 SJ.
It looks like they can get aforklift loader on it.
It's like a, basically atracked pallet jack.
That's a cool looking littlevehicle.
So again, we're going to startseeing more and more cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well, jlg.
Jlg is a very innovativecompany.
They've bought up over theyears you know, great All and
SkyTrack and those companies.
They constantly evolve theirproduct, they're always working
on it.
They're sold out.
I mean, I heard a rumor thatthey're sold out all the way
through 2025 production.
A lot of the rental houses havebought up all their production.
We did an article about this afew episodes ago where we're
(03:52):
talking about Caterpillar.
There's a rumor thatCaterpillar was going to move,
maybe away from JLG, because JLGcouldn't fulfill their orders
for the telehandlers that theypartnered with and that was kind
of coming to an end.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So yeah, I think there was a time where JLG had
to partner with some otherpeople because the brand itself
wasn't that well known, butthey've been around long enough
now They've been doing not justthe telehandlers, where they've
just become well known enoughthat people are buying them and
they don't have any problemsselling them at all.
This article kind of touches onthat when they talk about the
(04:26):
demand and the waitlist.
They're coming out with newproduct.
People are still ordering theold product.
It's not like it's slowing downand they had to come up with
something to save the line.
They're innovating to beinnovative.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Absolutely.
They're on a march toconstantly evolve the product
that they already have, and thatis a very rare thing today.
They're not trying to come upwith gimmicks, not trying to
come up with, like you said,ways to sell things.
It's sold, so how do we make itbetter?
It's sold.
You've got to give them a lotof credit for that.
There's a lot of companies outthere trying to figure out how
(04:58):
to do it cheaper with less.
We always joke about it valueengineering JLG's out there.
They're trying to figure outhow to do it right and make it
better.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
We don't have enough of that in the industry 100% and
there's a lot of people who areinnovating right now in that
space and they're trying to getsome more autonomous job sites,
construction sites.
We talked earlier today withsome of the guys from Mogue
Construction.
They're going to be on the shownext week.
They've got some reallyinteresting concepts on how to
electrify, modernize and reallyoptimize a job site Not
(05:30):
necessarily for electric, butjust in terms of energy, and how
to start thinking of job sites,whether they're powered by
diesel, powered by Nat gas,powered by hydrogen, to try to
get job sites to start lookingat things in terms of energy
spent and better use of theenergy that they're using.
It's a whole lot of, like yousaid, it's not value engineering
(05:53):
, but it's engineering a bettervehicle that's going to return a
better value.
It's a totally different way oflooking at it.
And another company that iskind of looking at the market
the way it is and coming up witha totally different solution is
Revoi EV.
I don't know if you've seen this.
These guys are building kind ofan intermediate trailer.
What do I mean by that?
It looks kind of like a fifthwheel trailer.
(06:15):
You back your semi truck intoit conventional diesel you hook
it up to the fifth wheel andthen it's got its own fifth
wheel behind it that you hookyour trailer to, and this thing
carries all the batteries.
It has a Dana, you know E-axledrive axle and it basically is
like a helper motor, like apusher motor, and it uses that
high torque at low RPMefficiency of an electric motor
(06:38):
to get that load moving.
And they're saying that it cutsthe emissions and cuts the fuel
use of a semi truck that hasone of these things in half.
So if you're getting sevenmiles per gallon, it's going to
double your fuel economy on afull-size rig carrying your
maximum GVWR and I think that'sreally, really impressive.
(06:59):
That's a different way oflooking at this.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know what that reminds me of is I was at two
factories, I've been on twofactory tours, and they have in
their possession the poweredtrailers which would load a
truck so they could do loadtesting and artificially load
the truck down like it waspulling against the force.
So it reminds me of that, butit's in reverse, right?
So they're trying to power itand add some power and then they
(07:24):
get the battery aspect to it.
I'm curious about and obviouslythey've done the research on it
and I did a bunch of researchon this One of our drivers took
a picture of one of these.
They saw it and he goes I don'tknow what this is, but this has
got to do with something withelectric.
And I'm like, well, let me lookit up.
And then, sure enough, it did.
(07:46):
It's really like you said, it'sa really new take on this.
It's like, hey, you got aregular truck.
Great, put this between thetruck and your trailer, we're
gonna help you get a little bitbetter mileage and, like you
said, in some cases twice asgood.
Yeah Well, how can you arguewith that?
And you're not doing anythingother than coupling it up.
And then there's a little bitof an interface, but I don't
(08:06):
know.
I think it's a great solutionto fleets that are like, hey, I
just need something to give mebuy for a little while.
I don't wanna revamp a truck orreplace it.
It's just another great option.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah Well, I like this thing too because it drives
itself right.
So it's using cameras, it'susing a little bit of autonomous
to hook itself into the truck.
When you pull into a depotbecause these things have depots
every you know they're planningon doing them every 250 miles
between Texas and Arkansas theywill essentially deconnect from
the trailer, deconnect from yourtruck, go back and charge, and
(08:38):
then another one that's fullycharged will come back in and
reconnect so that you can youjust kind of keep on going down
the road and use as muchelectric power as you can.
Otherwise it kind of turns itinto a big Prius, where you do
get better fuel economy, you getthat regen braking, but you're
still running on diesel power.
I think it's really interesting.
I really like this idea.
(08:58):
I think the concept is great,but I do think it has a fatal
flaw, because all of thesebatteries and all of this
electric drive motor isincredibly, incredibly heavy.
And you want to talk about theweight of a electric Volvo VNR
you know VNR semi at.
You know 20,000 pounds, this is22,000 pounds, this is two Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
so you took a tractor that weighs, you know, 18,
let's say, or 20, you add 22 toyou got 40, then you have your
trailer.
Your payload capacity in thetrailer is down under 30,000.
Oh, less than that If you'vegot an 80,000 pound GBWR.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
you don't have a special permit, you're way below
.
So this is where I think it'san issue.
Right In hybrid cars like aPrius or anything like that,
they have the same problem,where you can get away with a
smaller gas engine, you can getaway with a smaller battery pack
, but at the end of the day youstill have two complicated
systems instead of onecomplicated system and that mass
(10:04):
builds up.
You know, I talked about this.
The guy's named the CEO of thiscompany, his guy named Ian Russ
.
I talked to him.
I was able to talk to him andinterview him a little bit for
this article that I wrote it'son electricco, if you want to
check that out, and he's got areally good comment.
He says that this really onlymakes sense where drivers are
(10:25):
carrying high value loads andthey're cubing out before
they're weighing out.
What that basically means isthey're running out of physical
space in the container, butthey're not necessarily running
out of weight within that 80,000pounds.
So if you're, you know,shuttling groceries or you're
moving clothing that's not superheavy or dense, this might make
(10:46):
a ton of sense because you'renever gonna get anywhere near
that 80,000 pounds anyway, soyou can take advantage of those
fuel savings and they're notgoing to be offset too badly by,
you know, the lost payload.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Another thing that this reminds me of is when
you're trucking out west and youget on some of these just
grinding hills and then Marylandhas a couple 688 is the same
way where you just keep pullingand pulling and pulling and that
keeps pulling the truck down.
You had one of these thathelped you get up the hill and
actually maintain some roadspeed.
(11:21):
Could be a good safety factorIf you've ever been in a SUV and
you're barreling down the road65, 85, whatever you're doing
and you come up on a truck doing19 miles an hour pulling a hill
with the four ways.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, that's a big problem.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's kind of unnerving, cause you're like,
wow, that's incredibly muchslower than what I'm doing.
You know, and you have thisbehemoth that's just trying to
make it up to the next hill.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Well, there's another safety angle to this too,
because we're talking aboutgoing up the hill.
Anytime you have a big speeddifference, it doesn't matter
whether you're, you know,talking about 80 miles an hour
to 40 miles an hour, 120 to 80,whenever you have a big speed
differential, that's when youthings get really unsafe and
reaction times start to fall off.
But we're talking about goinguphill and using it as a safety
(12:09):
factor.
Uphill, think about downhill,where you can use the
regenerative braking of the EVtrailer, which doesn't use pads,
doesn't use rotors, doesn'tbuild up that crazy heat.
You're effectively enginebraking the electric motor,
you're charging the batterywithout burning up your pads and
your drums.
There's a safety feature up thehill and down the hill because
(12:33):
of this thing.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah, I mean you beat me to it.
I mean we always talk aboutthis when we're hauling heavy.
It's like going down the hillis just as dangerous and guys
are like, well, once you getover the top of the hill, well,
that's all right, now you'regoing down the other hill.
You can make up time, now youcan.
Sometimes we're going down thebackside of these hills doing 20
, 25 miles an hour Because ifyou get this thing away from you
(12:55):
, you won't stop it.
That's right.
So you're spot on with that.
With the three axles that it'sgot, you got six sets of brakes.
Like you said, it'sregenerative.
It's a totally different typeof braking than what you're used
to, because you don't have aheat factor.
You don't have.
You know, while my brakes aregoing out or they're fading off,
(13:16):
you know it's gonna be there tohelp you with all that.
So I think it's a valid point.
I think we need to take a lookat some of this stuff and how we
can use it.
The heavy haul industry foryears has had pusher engines in
the back of the trailers, pushertrucks Not again, not for only
pushing but for also breakingand stopping.
Maybe we could.
(13:37):
That has a place with this,where you could put a bunch of
EV type assist units.
You know, this is like.
This is like the days of the inthe fifties, of the locomotives
that had the AB units for thediesel electric locomotives.
You had an A unit where theoperator was at the engineer,
and then you had two or three Bunits behind him.
(13:57):
There was nobody back there.
They're just there.
That's right.
There you go.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I really liked that angle on this and I'm wondering.
The only thing that I'mwondering here is because I'm
full angles, Joe Full angles.
You are fearful of something.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
He's going off in the pasture seat because I'm
getting off target, so sorry,panicking.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
He's like you're talking over each other.
We talked about this.
I'm mad.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I imagine if we were in the car together, you and I,
nothing would get said Juststart, we'd already be fighting.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We'd be swinging on each other, going down, going
downhill, pulling 60,000 pounds,just like fine destination.
The trees are going everywhere,the logging truck and
everybody's dead.
We don't even notice.
We're recording.
No, but listen, we live in anera of container shipping,
(14:54):
containerized shipping.
Everything's in a container.
I don't understand why thisdoesn't get built into the
trailer so that at the portyou're dropping your container
onto a motorized, electrifiedtrailer that can then get itself
to the truck hook up and youguys drive down the road and it
uses regenerative braking on thedownhill and it uses its
(15:16):
battery assist up the hill andit can kind of handle its own
braking and do its own thing.
I think that that makes moresense than this, because then
you're doing it in the samefootprint, you don't have an
additional two points ofarticulation and one would hope
it would weigh less than 22,000pounds.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I mean, I don't know how it couldn't, because you're
packaging that into the trailerthat already has the axles.
The framework, thesuperstructure is already there.
But you're packaging it in andyou're dead on, because in the
container port world, if you'retrying to move things and you're
trying to get things going,anything is going to help you.
Some of those containers areactually really heavy.
(15:59):
People don't realize how muchweight's in them and because
they came over on a ship andthen they get a permit and then
they on to where they have to go, I think that's a great idea
and we need to be talking tosomebody about this Once again
the episode is up with a greatidea.
We need a patent lawyer.
We're going to get it in thehouse legal next, they're going
(16:20):
to sit in the booth with us andmake notes.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Biff, make some calls .
We need an attorney.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
He's just nodding.
He can't even believe that thisis happening right now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
There's got to be a good movie clip of like somebody
get me an attorney or something.
My cousin Vinny will findsomething.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Oh yes, there you go.
I'm here for the two youths.
The two youths.
To what?
To what?
Oh, what was that word?
Uh, what word.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
To what?
What Did you say?
Youths?
Yeah two youths.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
What is a youth?
Oh, excuse me, your Honor.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Two youths.
What is a youth?
There you go.
You know the kids, the kids,the children.
Two youths.
That's the one where the entireworld fell in love with Marisa
Tomei, because she knew what alimited slip differential was,
that's how low the bottle was inthe nineties.
(17:21):
If you were a woman and you hadperky breasts and you knew what
a limited slip differential was, the entire world would fall in
love with you.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
You were getting late .
You were getting late.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, you were.
She got on Seinfeld with that,that was her whole career.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, george, went off about this, you were friends
with Marisa Tomei.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
That's right.
That's such incredible.
My cousin Vinny.
I loved her.
She was fantastic.
Yeah, I know you were going tofix me up with her.
Yeah, she's just been sittinghome, Marisa Tomei's sitting
home.
Elaine, why don't you tell methat Katie was friends with
Marisa Tomei?
Oh, I don't know what I wasthinking.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
This is already one of the off time classic episodes
.
Oh Lordy, I don't know where togo with this.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
We have to recognize this.
We're on 19.
I don't know why, but I thoughtwe were on 190.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
We just didn't record the first hundred and 16.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
We must not have.
Then when somebody gets thosethings out of the vault, we're
all going to get busted.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Those are all on reel to reel at Neil's house,
running on the back of some oldpunch drive computer system.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That crazy SOB.
That would be him and he'd besplicing and cutting the tape
back and forth and replaying ittill he got it just right, and
he'd be like that's solid goldand he would just set it on the
shelf.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Solid gold.
It's all taped together.
He's got like the monocle, that, that one magnifying glass that
they used to tape the filmtogether, yep.
Then at the end he runs itthrough backwards.
It plays Gallagher and he'slike, hmm, that was the old
thing, that if you played therecord backwards.
(19:09):
If you played the recordbackwards, you could hear Satan.
That was like the big panic inthe 80s was like oh, the devil
is in Ozzy Osbourne's music.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Oh yeah, the 80s and the late 70s.
You know you put it on thereand you're like who the the
Johnny is the devil, who theJohnny is the devil?
The same thing, that's exactlyright.
Imagine putting an ELO recordon backwards.
It sounds like you got crapcoming out of your dishwasher
(19:38):
that is going to suck you downthe drain, cats and dogs living
together Mass hysteria.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Could you imagine you're playing ELO backwards?
You're trying to back up one ofthese things with the Revo EV
hookup on there, so you've gotan extra fifth wheel point of
articulation.
They didn't train you for thatin the CDL school.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
No, I'm not Imagine that she pulled up and you're
nice, shiny Volvo, and back thenit had the crossbar and the
grill hanging all over thewindows and everything.
You got the ELO on there andthen you play that backwards and
it's like die, kill him now.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
You play, you play it backwards, and the Ukrainians
are like I think this is mymother's potato soup recipe.
No, no more salt, More salt.
Well, this has gone off therails.
Speaking of things that are onthe rails, we got some rare good
news about California's highspeed rail project.
Obviously, trains equipment.
(20:37):
We always talk about railroadstuff on here because it doesn't
get any heavier than railroads.
So, California's high speedrail project they've been way
over budget, way behind schedulesince 2008.
But progress actually is beingmade now and it seems like
that's going to go really wellthere.
According to the San FranciscoGate News, they are going to
(20:58):
have, like lazy boy recliners,locking luggage storage systems
there and roaming bar carts thatwill go through the train.
So you know we may not be ontime and we may not be on budget
, but at least we have reclinersand booze.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
If Arnold was still in office, that train would be
running.
Just going to tell you rightnow that man would make sure
he'd be out there lifting railtoday by himself, working with
the guys they would have itinstalled, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I, you know.
I believe that it was funnythat you mentioned that because
Arnold ran as a Republican buthe really wasn't.
But I think if you took theaverage American I'm not talking
left or right politics, I'msaying you took the average
American and you really askedthem what they thought about
issue X, issue Y, issue Z you'regoing to get a very different
(21:53):
answer from an individual personthan you would get from any
politician on either side and Ithink most people would agree
with most other people or atleast find a lot of common
ground with most other people.
So I don't think has anythingto do with right or wrong, they
would understand what they'resaying.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
They may not agree with it, but they would
understand where they're comingfrom.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Exactly.
So, now we're talking now 20years ago almost that he was the
governor.
He was trying to put solarpanels out there in the Mojave
Desert and it couldn't happen.
You know, pgd couldn't make itwork.
Yeah, and he's very famous forsaying if I can't put solar in
the Mojave Desert, what can Iput solar?
And this gets back to thebigger problem of just because
(22:37):
you can produce energy doesn'tmean that you can effectively or
affordably get that energy intothe grid.
And this has been part of thebig problem with getting high
speed rail into California ishigh speed rail is an incredible
demand on DC direct current andit is not easy to get grid
(22:58):
access and high capacitysubstations and everything else
into these areas that peoplewant them to be.
Because the price of the realestate is so high that these
municipalities and these stategovernments that cannot print
their own money, even if they goin with the eminent domain, a
lot of these states can't affordto put those systems in.
It has to be something federalwhere they can print their own
(23:21):
money to come in and say, ok,well, this land here in San
Francisco is three and a halfbajillion dollars.
You know, we're going to gomint a coin for that and here
you go, don't spend that on oneplace.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, yeah, let me tell you you're going to want to
hold on to that one.
So no, I don't know, but thehigh speed rail needs to happen
and you're absolutely right.
There was so much stuff thathas gone wrong with early
electrification, early solar,early high speed rail, and then
you have countries like Chinaand that they just did it.
(23:55):
But here it is A to B.
We need to move our people.
We're doing it and for somereason, the United States, we
trip over ourselves with certainthings and we do it all the
time.
It's just something that we doand we have to break that cycle
and that's that is a big part ofwhat we talk about with
everything that we talk aboutwith heavy equipment,
(24:17):
electrification of the vehicles,semi trucks, anything.
We are our own roadblock.
Yeah, we do it all the time.
Look what we just talked aboutwith the container thing and
being able to have a motor inthere that's electric and work
on it.
That's a great idea, becauseyou need stuff like that and you
know what A lot of people arelike.
That'll never work.
Not all the ideas are gonnawork.
(24:38):
They never did.
We might as well just try them.
You're gonna find some stuffand refine it.
You're gonna go, yeah this isworthwhile.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah well, what you're talking about there is
called survivor bias.
I'm gonna throw this out there.
So, as everybody knows, I havea whole bunch of useless
information rattling around inhere.
Now you're gonna get some of it.
So survivor bias is the ideathat when you look around you at
the ideas that have alreadybeen had and you go, this is
(25:06):
kind of what works, right, thisis how this all works.
What you don't see is the 10,000different variations of toaster
that came into being and failedin the marketplace and were out
Darwin by the Proctor, siluxtwo slot and are no longer
around.
But if you ever get real weirdand you wanna go, look at old
vintage turn of the centurytoasters.
(25:27):
They had charcoal firedtoasters, they had propane
toasters, they had whale oiltoasters, they had electric
toasters that, like, hadconveyor belts in them.
There was all kinds ofdifferent ideas out there until
we kind of solidified on one.
So when you look at early solar, early electrification, early
(25:48):
high speed rail in this country,what you're seeing is all of
these early ideas.
Remember, at the turn of thecentury, a hundred years ago, if
you go back 100 years, therewas 300 American car companies
and those eventually gotwhittled down with the big three
and now it's like the big twoand a half maybe three and a
half if you consider Tesla butwe've gone through this
(26:11):
whittling down process in theseother technologies and these
other markets and now we'redoing it in solar, we're gonna
start doing it in rail and Ithink we are behind other
countries in a lot of ways, notfor any shortcoming, but I think
because we have had it so good.
Like let's talk about China.
China didn't have interstatesand they didn't have a mature
(26:33):
interstate highway system with amobile population that traveled
on it and got in their car andwent across 1600 miles like it
was nothing.
20 years ago there was noChinese auto market or it was a
very limited Chinese auto marketcompared to what you have today
.
So when they said we're gonnabuild high speed rail, they
weren't competing with I-95 orI-10 for traffic.
(26:56):
They weren't competing withspecial interest groups and
lobbyists and powerfulorganizations and job creation
engines that went into keepingthose interstates open and that
were invested in thoseinterstates continuing to be the
status quo.
So in a lot of ways, oursuccess has held us back.
But at the same time, we alsohave a lot of success, and we
(27:17):
have a lot of things that dowork.
So let's not get too crazy withwishing we lived somewhere else
.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah, I mean well, and that's not really what I
meant, but my point to the wholething was-.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Not you just like people.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Right, I know what you're saying.
I know what you're saying.
We, as a nation, we have to notjust be stubborn about things.
We have to promote the maturityof technology, not because
we've always had it or it's theway we did it forever, but
because we know it's right andwe know that it at least is
(27:50):
propelling us forward.
I mean, look at tier four, tierfive back when tier one came
out, tier two, nobody reallythought about it.
Tier three started clampingthings down and that's a
constant thing.
Now it's kind of, hey, that'swhat it is, it's got emissions
on it, we're gonna run it.
We have to get that way withsolar and we have to get that
way with electric.
I think we have to get beyondthe stigma.
(28:12):
We will.
It just takes time.
Yeah, it's not gonna be us.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It's not gonna be us, it's gonna be our kids by the
time they're growing up.
You know it's funny.
I was showing my daughter she'sabout to turn 10 years old.
I was showing her how to pumpgas in the car and she goes why
are you showing me this?
I'm never gonna have a car thatpicks gas.
She's 10 and she's like yeah,I'm never gonna have a gas car,
why are you showing me how to dothis?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Because you never know when you're going to be on
some back desert road after theapocalypse, trying to soak up
gasoline, the precious juice andget away from the wasteland.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
No well, the other thing I showed her how to do is
make moonshine, so she'll justbe running it off the grain
alcohol.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
There you go, exactly .
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Well, let's try to get back on track.
You know what?
Let's not get back on track,let's get again.
Let's have a gansett.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Hi neighbor, have a gansett Narrow gansett lager
beer.
It has straight from the barreltaste, Straight from the barrel
taste.
That's why you'll enjoy sayinghi, neighbor, have a gansett
(29:30):
Narrow, gansett lager beer.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, we're not even smooth on these anymore, we just
go right into it.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
No, we just dive in, just punch.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah, all right.
So we got two last things here.
One of them is real quick.
We've got the Liebherr.
They have their first everelectric compact wheel loader.
That's exactly what it says onthe tin.
Liebherr makes great stuff.
They need a compact wheelloader.
It's something that Volvo has.
They want to stay competitive,especially in the European
market.
It has a lot more noiseregulations, a lot more
(30:02):
emissions regulations than theUS does.
This makes a ton of sense forthem.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Well, liebherr has always done a really good job.
They've had electrification,they have had mining equipment
that's electric based, thatthey've put out.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, they have that big, big mining truck yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
They have that massive mining truck too.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
That's huge, yes.
So yeah, this is a natural stepfor them.
You said it exactly right.
It looks like it's using theconventional hydraulics.
They have not gone the sameroute that Bobcat has done,
where everything is done withelectric actuators.
It makes an apple-to-applecomparison pretty easy.
The thing that they've donehere, it's the L507E.
It's just like their L507.
(30:42):
And all of the options areexactly the same.
So what they've done is they'veeffectively made the electric
drive unit an option on the L507.
So if you've got a fleet,you've got six or seven of these
assets in your inventory.
You know how you like to orderthem.
You know how you like to specthem out.
You can get the same thing thatyou're used to.
That's going to fit all yourimplements.
(31:03):
Your guys already know how todrive them.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
All of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, just get an electric drive.
I think that's so smart.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Exactly.
I mean, they're just takingtheir normal products, making it
electric Once again.
How can you go wrong with that?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Sure, someone will figure out how they can go wrong
with that.
Well, that's very true, someonewill figure it out.
What is it?
I try to keep making thingsidiot-proof and they just keep
making better idiots.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
That's it.
The idiots get stupider.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
That's how it works.
I'm from Jupiter, where theboys are stupider.
We're going to close this out.
You know we're having a goodtime, but there's a lot of
people in the industry right nowwho are not having a good time.
There's something called a warnletter.
That's a worker adjustment andreach training notification.
That's something that goes outto UAW union workers that
(31:57):
basically says look, your job isgoing away.
You have some rights in termsof retraining, you've got some
bump rights and things like that, so they are given a notice.
You know, this is somethingthat if you don't have a union
you've never had a union or beena member of a union you don't
understand the rights that itgives you.
Whether there's this commonjoke or it's not really a joke,
(32:18):
but there's a common thing thatgoes around tick, tock and
Instagram.
Where why should I give mycompany two weeks notice to quit
when they would never give metwo weeks notice to fire me?
Well, when you have a union andyou have a good contract, they
do have to give you notice tofire you, and that's what this
warn letter is.
This one was dated January 25th2024.
So it's just a week ago andit's basically your two weeks
(32:40):
notice that you're going to getfired.
And it's from Detroit chassis.
And I'll read you exactly whatit says, word for word.
It says we have very recentlybeen informed by a key customer,
ford, that customers projectionof their commercial chassis
orders for the upcoming year2024 have decreased 30%.
As a result, the company isforced to lay off the number of
(33:03):
associates attached, effectiveFriday, january 26, 2024.
Holy crap, ford is telling itssuppliers, ford is telling its
upfitting partners we areprojecting a 30%.
A full third of our commercialchassis business is going to go
away in 2024.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I don't know.
This is what bothers me aboutthis whole thing.
I'm not a hundred percent surehow they forecasted that,
because we can't get enoughtrucks as buyers.
So is this a forced slowdown?
Is this a forced way of saying,hey, we're gonna ease back a
little bit and we're gonna kindof keep this shortage running
(33:46):
Because I can tell you as abuyer, we can't get enough
product right now.
It's not there.
Yeah, it's not just for it,it's all of them, and you know
for them to sit there and say,hey, we're gonna have a 30%
reduction in sales.
I don't know how they can evencome up with that.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Well, let's talk about that because there are
real challenges facing theglobal supply line right now.
It's just like when that youknow, ever clear, ever green,
whatever that was ship got stucksideways in the Suez Canal and
everybody had to go aroundAfrica.
We are back in that state wherepeople cannot go through the Red
Sea because of the war andeverything that's going on in
(34:24):
Israel and Iran and everythingelse, and I sure as heck do not
want to get into that politicalnightmare and start talking
about that, but let's just saypolitically neutral, whatever
side you're on, at the end ofthe day you have to acknowledge
that not being able to moveships efficiently through the
Mediterranean, especially whenso many of these components,
(34:46):
these Bosch components, theseFord components, these GM
components are made in Poland,are made in Turkey, the Ford
Transit is made in Turkey All ofa sudden, if that region is
destabilized, they can't getparts out into the world and if
you can't build them, you can'tsell them.
You can't sell what you don'thave.
(35:07):
You can't sell out of an emptycart.
So if you're trying to getsomething sold, if you're trying
to sell a dozen eggs, youbetter have a dozen eggs to sell
, and I think that what this issaying, if we're reading between
the lines, is Ford doesn'tthink that any of this is going
to slow down anytime soon andit's going to really affect
their ability to build product.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
You know what.
That's a very good point.
I'm glad you brought that up.
You can't sell from emptyshelves and if they know the
shelf is going to be bare, wecan't build it.
You know, and that's a goodpoint.
I didn't even think about it,because I'm looking at it from
the part of the buyer, the partof the user, and my frustration
is we can't get them fast enough.
I'm not worried about howthey're going to build them, you
know.
(35:46):
But you're spot on for all thepeople that didn't think about
everything that is going on outthere and the logistics of the
world is slowing down productionand they know it's going to
happen the fact that they'reputting that letter out there,
and if that is correct, theyalready know it's happening and
they know they're going to runout of supply.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, it's done deal.
It's already happening.
You know I saw an article.
I can't find it again, but Isaw an article that said all
this stuff in the Middle East, Alot of retailers, including
Amazon, are really concernedabout it because they think it's
going to impact the 2024Christmas shopping.
So they're already projecting12 months out.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Wow, let's.
You know, maybe Jeff doesn'tneed to buy another world
somewhere.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
That's so fast.
Let's close with this becausewe're coming to the end of what
we do here, so let's close offwith this.
Jeff Bezos, he knows what we'reshopping for.
He knows because Amazon hasthis predictive thing of like
you might also like, so he knowswhat we want.
He could be Santa Claus.
(36:51):
He can afford it.
He can afford to put somethingunder every little Christmas
tree in America, and he probablyknows if we're naughty or nice
based on what the Alexa isrecording.
He knows if you called somebodya mother.
He knows if you've been nice topeople.
He could be Santa Claus.
At this point, he's activelychoosing to not be Santa Claus.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
You know what I never thought about the Alexa
listening in and I'm sorry, buteverything that it's heard is
not just the George Carlinrecord.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Over at your place.
It's like what are they talkingabout over there?
What do you mean?
Owl too hard, what is that?
Sounds like there's 11 guys ina llama over there.
What the fuck is happening overthere?
Speaker 3 (37:34):
All I know is a bus pulled up and Alexa turned
herself off.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Alexa Hurdle was going on over there.
She says you're naughty and shekilled herself Self-destruct in
three, two smoke.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
This comes off the nightstand.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on
Spotify, Apple Podcast, Googleor wherever you find podcasts.
Whether we're exploring the latest in trucking
technology, talking about thetrends that propel the industry
forward, or uncovering storiesabout the dedicated individuals
who keep the wheels of Americaturning, this is where the roar
of the engines and pulse ofprogress come together.
It's sublime, it's surreal.
That's the Heavy EquipmentPodcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to episode 19 .
I'm your host.
Joe Boris, here is Ever withMike Switzer out on the open
road, and we've got some goodtales from the road there today,
mike, how you doing.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, we're doing good.
I got Beth with me in the cartoday.
He's holding two cards up infront of the passenger window,
but we'll make it.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We're all right, I'm going to seize the wheel when
you start articulating with yourhands?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
He isn't like driving with knees.
I can tell you that.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
No well, you can just hit the cruise control, walk
into the back of the cab thereand have a sandwich right, it's
basically autopilot.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
That's correct.
We're heading our way back upfrom West Virginia up into
Cleveland.
So we're working our way back,but we have a bunch of stuff to
talk about.
Today we go through some ofthese articles.
I mean a lot of good stuffcracking here.
I think this next quarter isgoing to be busy.
There's a lot of stuff comingout.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
We're moving into tier five.
We've got a lot of new productcoming out just in terms of not
just regulation but in terms oftechnology.
Right, because we're at a placenow where we've got some true
autonomy, some true remotecontrol ability, where guys can
kind of program a route intothese things and depend on it to
(01:46):
do the job.
But there's still a place forstuff that an operator gets into
, hops into and drives around.
And we'll start today withsomething that came out of World
of Concrete last week.
This is a track mini-dumperfrom JLG.
I'm not real familiar withthese.
It's about the size of aside-by-side UTV, like a
Kawasaki Mugul or my JohnDeGator, and this is a cool
(02:10):
little thing.
I would love to take one ofthese up down the hobby farm and
just take it out on the trails,but I'm sure there's a much
more practical use for it.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, there's a ton of uses for it.
I mean, there are farmers thathave them.
The power buggy's been aroundfor a long time Whitman Whitman
however you want to say it, theyhad it, and then JLG's got one
that articulates.
There's a few other brands.
They're versatile.
I mean, we use them every day.
We have them on jobs.
We use them for all kinds ofsmall work that we're doing,
whether we're pouring materialinto a corner or trying to just
(02:39):
shuttle concrete back into anarea where you can't get a shoot
or a pump truck into, or justmake sense to run some over
there.
The other thing we use them alot for is demobing of demo
debris.
If you're down in there andyou're trying to trench some
stuff out of a factory or dig ahole in somewhere small, put all
your stuff in there, run itoutside and get rid of it.
No, there's these the JLG has.
(03:00):
There's electric ones.
A lot of guys overlook thembecause it's like I don't know
what I could put in that, butonce you see a couple of them
running on a job, they actuallysurprise you very much.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, they're cool looking little things and, like
I said, I haven't really beenfamiliar with these, but JLG had
a couple of new launches.
They've got the 670 SJ.
It looks like they can get aforklift loader on it.
It's like a, basically atracked pallet jack.
That's a cool looking littlevehicle.
So again, we're going to startseeing more and more cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well, jlg.
Jlg is a very innovativecompany.
They've bought up over theyears you know, great All and
SkyTrack and those companies.
They constantly evolve theirproduct, they're always working
on it.
They're sold out.
I mean, I heard a rumor thatthey're sold out all the way
through 2025 production.
A lot of the rental houses havebought up all their production.
We did an article about this afew episodes ago where we're
(03:52):
talking about Caterpillar.
There's a rumor thatCaterpillar was going to move,
maybe away from JLG, because JLGcouldn't fulfill their orders
for the telehandlers that theypartnered with and that was kind
of coming to an end.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So yeah, I think there was a time where JLG had
to partner with some otherpeople because the brand itself
wasn't that well known, butthey've been around long enough
now They've been doing not justthe telehandlers, where they've
just become well known enoughthat people are buying them and
they don't have any problemsselling them at all.
This article kind of touches onthat when they talk about the
(04:26):
demand and the waitlist.
They're coming out with newproduct.
People are still ordering theold product.
It's not like it's slowing downand they had to come up with
something to save the line.
They're innovating to beinnovative.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Absolutely.
They're on a march toconstantly evolve the product
that they already have, and thatis a very rare thing today.
They're not trying to come upwith gimmicks, not trying to
come up with, like you said,ways to sell things.
It's sold, so how do we make itbetter?
It's sold.
You've got to give them a lotof credit for that.
There's a lot of companies outthere trying to figure out how
(04:58):
to do it cheaper with less.
We always joke about it valueengineering JLG's out there.
They're trying to figure outhow to do it right and make it
better.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
We don't have enough of that in the industry 100% and
there's a lot of people who areinnovating right now in that
space and they're trying to getsome more autonomous job sites,
construction sites.
We talked earlier today withsome of the guys from Mogue
Construction.
They're going to be on the shownext week.
They've got some reallyinteresting concepts on how to
electrify, modernize and reallyoptimize a job site Not
(05:30):
necessarily for electric, butjust in terms of energy, and how
to start thinking of job sites,whether they're powered by
diesel, powered by Nat gas,powered by hydrogen, to try to
get job sites to start lookingat things in terms of energy
spent and better use of theenergy that they're using.
It's a whole lot of, like yousaid, it's not value engineering
(05:53):
, but it's engineering a bettervehicle that's going to return a
better value.
It's a totally different way oflooking at it.
And another company that iskind of looking at the market
the way it is and coming up witha totally different solution is
Revoi EV.
I don't know if you've seen this.
These guys are building kind ofan intermediate trailer.
What do I mean by that?
It looks kind of like a fifthwheel trailer.
(06:15):
You back your semi truck intoit conventional diesel you hook
it up to the fifth wheel andthen it's got its own fifth
wheel behind it that you hookyour trailer to, and this thing
carries all the batteries.
It has a Dana, you know E-axledrive axle and it basically is
like a helper motor, like apusher motor, and it uses that
high torque at low RPMefficiency of an electric motor
(06:38):
to get that load moving.
And they're saying that it cutsthe emissions and cuts the fuel
use of a semi truck that hasone of these things in half.
So if you're getting sevenmiles per gallon, it's going to
double your fuel economy on afull-size rig carrying your
maximum GVWR and I think that'sreally, really impressive.
(06:59):
That's a different way oflooking at this.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know what that reminds me of is I was at two
factories, I've been on twofactory tours, and they have in
their possession the poweredtrailers which would load a
truck so they could do loadtesting and artificially load
the truck down like it waspulling against the force.
So it reminds me of that, butit's in reverse, right?
So they're trying to power itand add some power and then they
(07:24):
get the battery aspect to it.
I'm curious about and obviouslythey've done the research on it
and I did a bunch of researchon this One of our drivers took
a picture of one of these.
They saw it and he goes I don'tknow what this is, but this has
got to do with something withelectric.
And I'm like, well, let me lookit up.
And then, sure enough, it did.
(07:46):
It's really like you said, it'sa really new take on this.
It's like, hey, you got aregular truck.
Great, put this between thetruck and your trailer, we're
gonna help you get a little bitbetter mileage and, like you
said, in some cases twice asgood.
Yeah Well, how can you arguewith that?
And you're not doing anythingother than coupling it up.
And then there's a little bitof an interface, but I don't
(08:06):
know.
I think it's a great solutionto fleets that are like, hey, I
just need something to give mebuy for a little while.
I don't wanna revamp a truck orreplace it.
It's just another great option.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah Well, I like this thing too because it drives
itself right.
So it's using cameras, it'susing a little bit of autonomous
to hook itself into the truck.
When you pull into a depotbecause these things have depots
every you know they're planningon doing them every 250 miles
between Texas and Arkansas theywill essentially deconnect from
the trailer, deconnect from yourtruck, go back and charge, and
(08:38):
then another one that's fullycharged will come back in and
reconnect so that you can youjust kind of keep on going down
the road and use as muchelectric power as you can.
Otherwise it kind of turns itinto a big Prius, where you do
get better fuel economy, you getthat regen braking, but you're
still running on diesel power.
I think it's really interesting.
I really like this idea.
(08:58):
I think the concept is great,but I do think it has a fatal
flaw, because all of thesebatteries and all of this
electric drive motor isincredibly, incredibly heavy.
And you want to talk about theweight of a electric Volvo VNR
you know VNR semi at.
You know 20,000 pounds, this is22,000 pounds, this is two Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
so you took a tractor that weighs, you know, 18,
let's say, or 20, you add 22 toyou got 40, then you have your
trailer.
Your payload capacity in thetrailer is down under 30,000.
Oh, less than that If you'vegot an 80,000 pound GBWR.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
you don't have a special permit, you're way below
.
So this is where I think it'san issue.
Right In hybrid cars like aPrius or anything like that,
they have the same problem,where you can get away with a
smaller gas engine, you can getaway with a smaller battery pack
, but at the end of the day youstill have two complicated
systems instead of onecomplicated system and that mass
(10:04):
builds up.
You know, I talked about this.
The guy's named the CEO of thiscompany, his guy named Ian Russ
.
I talked to him.
I was able to talk to him andinterview him a little bit for
this article that I wrote it'son electricco, if you want to
check that out, and he's got areally good comment.
He says that this really onlymakes sense where drivers are
(10:25):
carrying high value loads andthey're cubing out before
they're weighing out.
What that basically means isthey're running out of physical
space in the container, butthey're not necessarily running
out of weight within that 80,000pounds.
So if you're, you know,shuttling groceries or you're
moving clothing that's not superheavy or dense, this might make
(10:46):
a ton of sense because you'renever gonna get anywhere near
that 80,000 pounds anyway, soyou can take advantage of those
fuel savings and they're notgoing to be offset too badly by,
you know, the lost payload.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Another thing that this reminds me of is when
you're trucking out west and youget on some of these just
grinding hills and then Marylandhas a couple 688 is the same
way where you just keep pullingand pulling and pulling and that
keeps pulling the truck down.
You had one of these thathelped you get up the hill and
actually maintain some roadspeed.
(11:21):
Could be a good safety factorIf you've ever been in a SUV and
you're barreling down the road65, 85, whatever you're doing
and you come up on a truck doing19 miles an hour pulling a hill
with the four ways.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, that's a big problem.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's kind of unnerving, cause you're like,
wow, that's incredibly muchslower than what I'm doing.
You know, and you have thisbehemoth that's just trying to
make it up to the next hill.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Well, there's another safety angle to this too,
because we're talking aboutgoing up the hill.
Anytime you have a big speeddifference, it doesn't matter
whether you're, you know,talking about 80 miles an hour
to 40 miles an hour, 120 to 80,whenever you have a big speed
differential, that's when youthings get really unsafe and
reaction times start to fall off.
But we're talking about goinguphill and using it as a safety
(12:09):
factor.
Uphill, think about downhill,where you can use the
regenerative braking of the EVtrailer, which doesn't use pads,
doesn't use rotors, doesn'tbuild up that crazy heat.
You're effectively enginebraking the electric motor,
you're charging the batterywithout burning up your pads and
your drums.
There's a safety feature up thehill and down the hill because
(12:33):
of this thing.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah, I mean you beat me to it.
I mean we always talk aboutthis when we're hauling heavy.
It's like going down the hillis just as dangerous and guys
are like, well, once you getover the top of the hill, well,
that's all right, now you'regoing down the other hill.
You can make up time, now youcan.
Sometimes we're going down thebackside of these hills doing 20
, 25 miles an hour Because ifyou get this thing away from you
(12:55):
, you won't stop it.
That's right.
So you're spot on with that.
With the three axles that it'sgot, you got six sets of brakes.
Like you said, it'sregenerative.
It's a totally different typeof braking than what you're used
to, because you don't have aheat factor.
You don't have.
You know, while my brakes aregoing out or they're fading off,
(13:16):
you know it's gonna be there tohelp you with all that.
So I think it's a valid point.
I think we need to take a lookat some of this stuff and how we
can use it.
The heavy haul industry foryears has had pusher engines in
the back of the trailers, pushertrucks Not again, not for only
pushing but for also breakingand stopping.
Maybe we could.
(13:37):
That has a place with this,where you could put a bunch of
EV type assist units.
You know, this is like.
This is like the days of the inthe fifties, of the locomotives
that had the AB units for thediesel electric locomotives.
You had an A unit where theoperator was at the engineer,
and then you had two or three Bunits behind him.
(13:57):
There was nobody back there.
They're just there.
That's right.
There you go.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I really liked that angle on this and I'm wondering.
The only thing that I'mwondering here is because I'm
full angles, Joe Full angles.
You are fearful of something.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
He's going off in the pasture seat because I'm
getting off target, so sorry,panicking.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
He's like you're talking over each other.
We talked about this.
I'm mad.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I imagine if we were in the car together, you and I,
nothing would get said Juststart, we'd already be fighting.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We'd be swinging on each other, going down, going
downhill, pulling 60,000 pounds,just like fine destination.
The trees are going everywhere,the logging truck and
everybody's dead.
We don't even notice.
We're recording.
No, but listen, we live in anera of container shipping,
(14:54):
containerized shipping.
Everything's in a container.
I don't understand why thisdoesn't get built into the
trailer so that at the portyou're dropping your container
onto a motorized, electrifiedtrailer that can then get itself
to the truck hook up and youguys drive down the road and it
uses regenerative braking on thedownhill and it uses its
(15:16):
battery assist up the hill andit can kind of handle its own
braking and do its own thing.
I think that that makes moresense than this, because then
you're doing it in the samefootprint, you don't have an
additional two points ofarticulation and one would hope
it would weigh less than 22,000pounds.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I mean, I don't know how it couldn't, because you're
packaging that into the trailerthat already has the axles.
The framework, thesuperstructure is already there.
But you're packaging it in andyou're dead on, because in the
container port world, if you'retrying to move things and you're
trying to get things going,anything is going to help you.
Some of those containers areactually really heavy.
(15:59):
People don't realize how muchweight's in them and because
they came over on a ship andthen they get a permit and then
they on to where they have to go, I think that's a great idea
and we need to be talking tosomebody about this Once again
the episode is up with a greatidea.
We need a patent lawyer.
We're going to get it in thehouse legal next, they're going
(16:20):
to sit in the booth with us andmake notes.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Biff, make some calls .
We need an attorney.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
He's just nodding.
He can't even believe that thisis happening right now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
There's got to be a good movie clip of like somebody
get me an attorney or something.
My cousin Vinny will findsomething.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Oh yes, there you go.
I'm here for the two youths.
The two youths.
To what?
To what?
Oh, what was that word?
Uh, what word.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
To what?
What Did you say?
Youths?
Yeah two youths.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
What is a youth?
Oh, excuse me, your Honor.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Two youths.
What is a youth?
There you go.
You know the kids, the kids,the children.
Two youths.
That's the one where the entireworld fell in love with Marisa
Tomei, because she knew what alimited slip differential was,
that's how low the bottle was inthe nineties.
(17:21):
If you were a woman and you hadperky breasts and you knew what
a limited slip differential was, the entire world would fall in
love with you.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
You were getting late .
You were getting late.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, you were.
She got on Seinfeld with that,that was her whole career.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yeah, george, went off about this, you were friends
with Marisa Tomei.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
That's right.
That's such incredible.
My cousin Vinny.
I loved her.
She was fantastic.
Yeah, I know you were going tofix me up with her.
Yeah, she's just been sittinghome, Marisa Tomei's sitting
home.
Elaine, why don't you tell methat Katie was friends with
Marisa Tomei?
Oh, I don't know what I wasthinking.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
This is already one of the off time classic episodes
.
Oh Lordy, I don't know where togo with this.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
We have to recognize this.
We're on 19.
I don't know why, but I thoughtwe were on 190.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
We just didn't record the first hundred and 16.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
We must not have.
Then when somebody gets thosethings out of the vault, we're
all going to get busted.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Those are all on reel to reel at Neil's house,
running on the back of some oldpunch drive computer system.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That crazy SOB.
That would be him and he'd besplicing and cutting the tape
back and forth and replaying ittill he got it just right, and
he'd be like that's solid goldand he would just set it on the
shelf.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Solid gold.
It's all taped together.
He's got like the monocle, that, that one magnifying glass that
they used to tape the filmtogether, yep.
Then at the end he runs itthrough backwards.
It plays Gallagher and he'slike, hmm, that was the old
thing, that if you played therecord backwards.
(19:09):
If you played the recordbackwards, you could hear Satan.
That was like the big panic inthe 80s was like oh, the devil
is in Ozzy Osbourne's music.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Oh yeah, the 80s and the late 70s.
You know you put it on thereand you're like who the the
Johnny is the devil, who theJohnny is the devil?
The same thing, that's exactlyright.
Imagine putting an ELO recordon backwards.
It sounds like you got crapcoming out of your dishwasher
(19:38):
that is going to suck you downthe drain, cats and dogs living
together Mass hysteria.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Could you imagine you're playing ELO backwards?
You're trying to back up one ofthese things with the Revo EV
hookup on there, so you've gotan extra fifth wheel point of
articulation.
They didn't train you for thatin the CDL school.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
No, I'm not Imagine that she pulled up and you're
nice, shiny Volvo, and back thenit had the crossbar and the
grill hanging all over thewindows and everything.
You got the ELO on there andthen you play that backwards and
it's like die, kill him now.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
You play, you play it backwards, and the Ukrainians
are like I think this is mymother's potato soup recipe.
No, no more salt, More salt.
Well, this has gone off therails.
Speaking of things that are onthe rails, we got some rare good
news about California's highspeed rail project.
Obviously, trains equipment.
(20:37):
We always talk about railroadstuff on here because it doesn't
get any heavier than railroads.
So, California's high speedrail project they've been way
over budget, way behind schedulesince 2008.
But progress actually is beingmade now and it seems like
that's going to go really wellthere.
According to the San FranciscoGate News, they are going to
(20:58):
have, like lazy boy recliners,locking luggage storage systems
there and roaming bar carts thatwill go through the train.
So you know we may not be ontime and we may not be on budget
, but at least we have reclinersand booze.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
If Arnold was still in office, that train would be
running.
Just going to tell you rightnow that man would make sure
he'd be out there lifting railtoday by himself, working with
the guys they would have itinstalled, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I, you know.
I believe that it was funnythat you mentioned that because
Arnold ran as a Republican buthe really wasn't.
But I think if you took theaverage American I'm not talking
left or right politics, I'msaying you took the average
American and you really askedthem what they thought about
issue X, issue Y, issue Z you'regoing to get a very different
(21:53):
answer from an individual personthan you would get from any
politician on either side and Ithink most people would agree
with most other people or atleast find a lot of common
ground with most other people.
So I don't think has anythingto do with right or wrong, they
would understand what they'resaying.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
They may not agree with it, but they would
understand where they're comingfrom.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Exactly.
So, now we're talking now 20years ago almost that he was the
governor.
He was trying to put solarpanels out there in the Mojave
Desert and it couldn't happen.
You know, pgd couldn't make itwork.
Yeah, and he's very famous forsaying if I can't put solar in
the Mojave Desert, what can Iput solar?
And this gets back to thebigger problem of just because
(22:37):
you can produce energy doesn'tmean that you can effectively or
affordably get that energy intothe grid.
And this has been part of thebig problem with getting high
speed rail into California ishigh speed rail is an incredible
demand on DC direct current andit is not easy to get grid
(22:58):
access and high capacitysubstations and everything else
into these areas that peoplewant them to be.
Because the price of the realestate is so high that these
municipalities and these stategovernments that cannot print
their own money, even if they goin with the eminent domain, a
lot of these states can't affordto put those systems in.
It has to be something federalwhere they can print their own
(23:21):
money to come in and say, ok,well, this land here in San
Francisco is three and a halfbajillion dollars.
You know, we're going to gomint a coin for that and here
you go, don't spend that on oneplace.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, yeah, let me tell you you're going to want to
hold on to that one.
So no, I don't know, but thehigh speed rail needs to happen
and you're absolutely right.
There was so much stuff thathas gone wrong with early
electrification, early solar,early high speed rail, and then
you have countries like Chinaand that they just did it.
(23:55):
But here it is A to B.
We need to move our people.
We're doing it and for somereason, the United States, we
trip over ourselves with certainthings and we do it all the
time.
It's just something that we doand we have to break that cycle
and that's that is a big part ofwhat we talk about with
everything that we talk aboutwith heavy equipment,
(24:17):
electrification of the vehicles,semi trucks, anything.
We are our own roadblock.
Yeah, we do it all the time.
Look what we just talked aboutwith the container thing and
being able to have a motor inthere that's electric and work
on it.
That's a great idea, becauseyou need stuff like that and you
know what A lot of people arelike.
That'll never work.
Not all the ideas are gonnawork.
(24:38):
They never did.
We might as well just try them.
You're gonna find some stuffand refine it.
You're gonna go, yeah this isworthwhile.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah well, what you're talking about there is
called survivor bias.
I'm gonna throw this out there.
So, as everybody knows, I havea whole bunch of useless
information rattling around inhere.
Now you're gonna get some of it.
So survivor bias is the ideathat when you look around you at
the ideas that have alreadybeen had and you go, this is
(25:06):
kind of what works, right, thisis how this all works.
What you don't see is the 10,000different variations of toaster
that came into being and failedin the marketplace and were out
Darwin by the Proctor, siluxtwo slot and are no longer
around.
But if you ever get real weirdand you wanna go, look at old
vintage turn of the centurytoasters.
(25:27):
They had charcoal firedtoasters, they had propane
toasters, they had whale oiltoasters, they had electric
toasters that, like, hadconveyor belts in them.
There was all kinds ofdifferent ideas out there until
we kind of solidified on one.
So when you look at early solar, early electrification, early
(25:48):
high speed rail in this country,what you're seeing is all of
these early ideas.
Remember, at the turn of thecentury, a hundred years ago, if
you go back 100 years, therewas 300 American car companies
and those eventually gotwhittled down with the big three
and now it's like the big twoand a half maybe three and a
half if you consider Tesla butwe've gone through this
(26:11):
whittling down process in theseother technologies and these
other markets and now we'redoing it in solar, we're gonna
start doing it in rail and Ithink we are behind other
countries in a lot of ways, notfor any shortcoming, but I think
because we have had it so good.
Like let's talk about China.
China didn't have interstatesand they didn't have a mature
(26:33):
interstate highway system with amobile population that traveled
on it and got in their car andwent across 1600 miles like it
was nothing.
20 years ago there was noChinese auto market or it was a
very limited Chinese auto marketcompared to what you have today
.
So when they said we're gonnabuild high speed rail, they
weren't competing with I-95 orI-10 for traffic.
(26:56):
They weren't competing withspecial interest groups and
lobbyists and powerfulorganizations and job creation
engines that went into keepingthose interstates open and that
were invested in thoseinterstates continuing to be the
status quo.
So in a lot of ways, oursuccess has held us back.
But at the same time, we alsohave a lot of success, and we
(27:17):
have a lot of things that dowork.
So let's not get too crazy withwishing we lived somewhere else
.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah, I mean well, and that's not really what I
meant, but my point to the wholething was-.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Not you just like people.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Right, I know what you're saying.
I know what you're saying.
We, as a nation, we have to notjust be stubborn about things.
We have to promote the maturityof technology, not because
we've always had it or it's theway we did it forever, but
because we know it's right andwe know that it at least is
(27:50):
propelling us forward.
I mean, look at tier four, tierfive back when tier one came
out, tier two, nobody reallythought about it.
Tier three started clampingthings down and that's a
constant thing.
Now it's kind of, hey, that'swhat it is, it's got emissions
on it, we're gonna run it.
We have to get that way withsolar and we have to get that
way with electric.
I think we have to get beyondthe stigma.
(28:12):
We will.
It just takes time.
Yeah, it's not gonna be us.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It's not gonna be us, it's gonna be our kids by the
time they're growing up.
You know it's funny.
I was showing my daughter she'sabout to turn 10 years old.
I was showing her how to pumpgas in the car and she goes why
are you showing me this?
I'm never gonna have a car thatpicks gas.
She's 10 and she's like yeah,I'm never gonna have a gas car,
why are you showing me how to dothis?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Because you never know when you're going to be on
some back desert road after theapocalypse, trying to soak up
gasoline, the precious juice andget away from the wasteland.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
No well, the other thing I showed her how to do is
make moonshine, so she'll justbe running it off the grain
alcohol.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
There you go, exactly .
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Well, let's try to get back on track.
You know what?
Let's not get back on track,let's get again.
Let's have a gansett.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Hi neighbor, have a gansett Narrow gansett lager
beer.
It has straight from the barreltaste, Straight from the barrel
taste.
That's why you'll enjoy sayinghi, neighbor, have a gansett
(29:30):
Narrow, gansett lager beer.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, we're not even smooth on these anymore, we just
go right into it.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
No, we just dive in, just punch.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah, all right.
So we got two last things here.
One of them is real quick.
We've got the Liebherr.
They have their first everelectric compact wheel loader.
That's exactly what it says onthe tin.
Liebherr makes great stuff.
They need a compact wheelloader.
It's something that Volvo has.
They want to stay competitive,especially in the European
market.
It has a lot more noiseregulations, a lot more
(30:02):
emissions regulations than theUS does.
This makes a ton of sense forthem.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Well, liebherr has always done a really good job.
They've had electrification,they have had mining equipment
that's electric based, thatthey've put out.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, they have that big, big mining truck yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
They have that massive mining truck too.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
That's huge, yes.
So yeah, this is a natural stepfor them.
You said it exactly right.
It looks like it's using theconventional hydraulics.
They have not gone the sameroute that Bobcat has done,
where everything is done withelectric actuators.
It makes an apple-to-applecomparison pretty easy.
The thing that they've donehere, it's the L507E.
It's just like their L507.
(30:42):
And all of the options areexactly the same.
So what they've done is they'veeffectively made the electric
drive unit an option on the L507.
So if you've got a fleet,you've got six or seven of these
assets in your inventory.
You know how you like to orderthem.
You know how you like to specthem out.
You can get the same thing thatyou're used to.
That's going to fit all yourimplements.
(31:03):
Your guys already know how todrive them.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
All of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, just get an electric drive.
I think that's so smart.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Exactly.
I mean, they're just takingtheir normal products, making it
electric Once again.
How can you go wrong with that?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Sure, someone will figure out how they can go wrong
with that.
Well, that's very true, someonewill figure it out.
What is it?
I try to keep making thingsidiot-proof and they just keep
making better idiots.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
That's it.
The idiots get stupider.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
That's how it works.
I'm from Jupiter, where theboys are stupider.
We're going to close this out.
You know we're having a goodtime, but there's a lot of
people in the industry right nowwho are not having a good time.
There's something called a warnletter.
That's a worker adjustment andreach training notification.
That's something that goes outto UAW union workers that
(31:57):
basically says look, your job isgoing away.
You have some rights in termsof retraining, you've got some
bump rights and things like that, so they are given a notice.
You know, this is somethingthat if you don't have a union
you've never had a union or beena member of a union you don't
understand the rights that itgives you.
Whether there's this commonjoke or it's not really a joke,
(32:18):
but there's a common thing thatgoes around tick, tock and
Instagram.
Where why should I give mycompany two weeks notice to quit
when they would never give metwo weeks notice to fire me?
Well, when you have a union andyou have a good contract, they
do have to give you notice tofire you, and that's what this
warn letter is.
This one was dated January 25th2024.
So it's just a week ago andit's basically your two weeks
(32:40):
notice that you're going to getfired.
And it's from Detroit chassis.
And I'll read you exactly whatit says, word for word.
It says we have very recentlybeen informed by a key customer,
ford, that customers projectionof their commercial chassis
orders for the upcoming year2024 have decreased 30%.
As a result, the company isforced to lay off the number of
(33:03):
associates attached, effectiveFriday, january 26, 2024.
Holy crap, ford is telling itssuppliers, ford is telling its
upfitting partners we areprojecting a 30%.
A full third of our commercialchassis business is going to go
away in 2024.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I don't know.
This is what bothers me aboutthis whole thing.
I'm not a hundred percent surehow they forecasted that,
because we can't get enoughtrucks as buyers.
So is this a forced slowdown?
Is this a forced way of saying,hey, we're gonna ease back a
little bit and we're gonna kindof keep this shortage running
(33:46):
Because I can tell you as abuyer, we can't get enough
product right now.
It's not there.
Yeah, it's not just for it,it's all of them, and you know
for them to sit there and say,hey, we're gonna have a 30%
reduction in sales.
I don't know how they can evencome up with that.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Well, let's talk about that because there are
real challenges facing theglobal supply line right now.
It's just like when that youknow, ever clear, ever green,
whatever that was ship got stucksideways in the Suez Canal and
everybody had to go aroundAfrica.
We are back in that state wherepeople cannot go through the Red
Sea because of the war andeverything that's going on in
(34:24):
Israel and Iran and everythingelse, and I sure as heck do not
want to get into that politicalnightmare and start talking
about that, but let's just saypolitically neutral, whatever
side you're on, at the end ofthe day you have to acknowledge
that not being able to moveships efficiently through the
Mediterranean, especially whenso many of these components,
(34:46):
these Bosch components, theseFord components, these GM
components are made in Poland,are made in Turkey, the Ford
Transit is made in Turkey All ofa sudden, if that region is
destabilized, they can't getparts out into the world and if
you can't build them, you can'tsell them.
You can't sell what you don'thave.
(35:07):
You can't sell out of an emptycart.
So if you're trying to getsomething sold, if you're trying
to sell a dozen eggs, youbetter have a dozen eggs to sell
, and I think that what this issaying, if we're reading between
the lines, is Ford doesn'tthink that any of this is going
to slow down anytime soon andit's going to really affect
their ability to build product.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
You know what.
That's a very good point.
I'm glad you brought that up.
You can't sell from emptyshelves and if they know the
shelf is going to be bare, wecan't build it.
You know, and that's a goodpoint.
I didn't even think about it,because I'm looking at it from
the part of the buyer, the partof the user, and my frustration
is we can't get them fast enough.
I'm not worried about howthey're going to build them, you
know.
(35:46):
But you're spot on for all thepeople that didn't think about
everything that is going on outthere and the logistics of the
world is slowing down productionand they know it's going to
happen the fact that they'reputting that letter out there,
and if that is correct, theyalready know it's happening and
they know they're going to runout of supply.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, it's done deal.
It's already happening.
You know I saw an article.
I can't find it again, but Isaw an article that said all
this stuff in the Middle East, Alot of retailers, including
Amazon, are really concernedabout it because they think it's
going to impact the 2024Christmas shopping.
So they're already projecting12 months out.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Wow, let's.
You know, maybe Jeff doesn'tneed to buy another world
somewhere.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
That's so fast.
Let's close with this becausewe're coming to the end of what
we do here, so let's close offwith this.
Jeff Bezos, he knows what we'reshopping for.
He knows because Amazon hasthis predictive thing of like
you might also like, so he knowswhat we want.
He could be Santa Claus.
(36:51):
He can afford it.
He can afford to put somethingunder every little Christmas
tree in America, and he probablyknows if we're naughty or nice
based on what the Alexa isrecording.
He knows if you called somebodya mother.
He knows if you've been nice topeople.
He could be Santa Claus.
At this point, he's activelychoosing to not be Santa Claus.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
You know what I never thought about the Alexa
listening in and I'm sorry, buteverything that it's heard is
not just the George Carlinrecord.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Over at your place.
It's like what are they talkingabout over there?
What do you mean?
Owl too hard, what is that?
Sounds like there's 11 guys ina llama over there.
What the fuck is happening overthere?
Speaker 3 (37:34):
All I know is a bus pulled up and Alexa turned
herself off.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Alexa Hurdle was going on over there.
She says you're naughty and shekilled herself Self-destruct in
three, two smoke.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
This comes off the nightstand.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on
Spotify, Apple Podcast, Googleor wherever you find podcasts.
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