February 29, 2024 • 44 mins
In this HEP-isode, we sit down with Marc Kermisch, CIO of CNH Industrial, to talk about how Case Construction is approaching automation and helping farmers become their own source of futuristic fuel. Case' project Zeus and New Holland's electric tractor concepts win design awards, the boys discuss a massive PACCAR recall, China's marketing challenges, and Jo makes a startling confession that could tear the show apart. All this and more, on The Heavy Equipment Podcast.
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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 Serial.
That's the Heavy EquipmentPodcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Welcome back to another episode of the Heavy
Equipment Podcast, this one'snumber 21.
And we've got special gueststoday.
Before we get to that specialguest, I got to tell you a story
about what imaginative way thatone young lady who used to host
University of Miami Collegeradio station, one way, she put
(01:01):
her microphone to use one brightsummer night that young Joe
Boris was a part of, and laterthat night he became a man.
How you doing, michael?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm telling a story.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I'm telling a story here.
I don't listen.
I don't know if she just pushedthat thing into a tub of
macaroni and cheese, but mylittle imagination ran wild with
that, so I got some use out ofit Listen.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I have seen operators get worked up over heavy
breathing over a microphone.
I could only imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So tell me, what are you wearing?
Right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Like a car heart jacket, some heavy workman's
jeans and some tennis shoeswhich I shouldn't be wearing on
a job site because they're notwork ready, and of course I'm
alluding to young Michael'snational safety tour.
You're coming back now fromPennsylvania, right?
How's that going for you,that's?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
doing good.
We're coming back fromPittsburgh on my way to the
Cleveland airport and thentaking off.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
So all that's right back to the tone of 500.
You're going down there withthe Union rental guys, right?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, united is.
They're going to be down thereand then I'm going to meet up
with those guys and there'sactually a couple other people
down there that I'm finding out,so it'll be busy.
We're going to run into a bunchof people and then in
Indianapolis on March 6th.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Oh, that's work truck week.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, I'm going to be out there for that in a cab
meeting with one of our vendors,so that'll be fun too.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I'll be out with Mike as well, so you'll get to meet
some of the heavy equipmentpodcast guys, if that's
something you want to do, andwhether it is or isn't coming up
next.
We've got a guest on the showtoday.
This is Mark Kermish and he isthe CIO of CNH.
Obviously, cnh stands for CaseNew Holland and that's correct.
(02:53):
Now, obviously, you guys havebeen in the news quite a bit
recently, not only with theelectrification stuff, but also
with the automation stuff, andwhat we've seen mostly in
automation has been on thefarming side of that and I think
we've talked about that quite abit on this show, whether it's
vertical farming or autonomousfarming.
Can you talk about casesrolling that as well as New
(03:16):
Holland and kind of how you guysare approaching that autonomous
sector?
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
First and foremost, autonomousstarts with automation.
So you need to really automateaspects of your machine.
Then from there you start towork on how you take the
operator out of the cab andcreate that autonomy capability.
I'd say, when you think aboutit in context to construction, a
lot of it's going to be aroundblade control or bucket control.
(03:43):
So if you think about a dozer,the best thing I could say is
when I first got intoconstruction, I got into the
dozer and I had waves going upand down the road.
I couldn't control that blade atall.
I was going up and then I wasgoing down.
I couldn't figure out how tocreate a smooth road to save my
life.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, well, but that's really interesting too,
right, because you do have aconstruction background.
I didn't even get into that,but the assumption is that
anybody who's at the C-suite orat the C-level of these
companies, they're all MBAs,they're all pencil pushers,
they've been working onspreadsheets, they're not
working in the dozers, they'renot working in the excavators,
and your background really doesinclude a lot of real world
(04:25):
experience.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
You're right, it does it's.
You know, if somebody ever asksyou what happens to English
majors like I, am that guy,because I'm a philosophy major.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I know what to do.
What's the?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
joke.
If you want to, if you want toget the philosophy major to
leave your house, just pay foryour pizza.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I have to admit, philosophy was one of my
favorite classes in college.
Maybe that's why I became anEnglish major.
But you know, yeah, mybackground is pretty rich and
diverse and I've worked in andout of AG and construction
throughout and I've had thechance to operate our vehicles
in different conditions and, asI was saying, you know, until I
(05:06):
hit the GPS button and the bladecontrol.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
Button.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
I was the worst bulldozer operator you could
ever imagine and all of a suddenI became the best with a single
click of a button and that'sthe magic of machine automation
right, when all of a suddenyou've got GPS points on both
sides of your blade.
It's got essentially a sixaccess control capability and
now I just become the safetymechanism of pushing the gas for
(05:29):
the break as the dozer is doingall the work, Then being able
to take that and build thesafety components for autonomy,
object detection, 360 degreeawareness, alert management, off
board capabilities.
So the construction operatorcan have it in the phone right
(05:51):
and they can pull their mobileapp out and start and stop a
mission.
Super complex capabilities toadd on top of automation.
But that's ultimately where alot of your construction and
agricultural is starting to go,and part due to lack of skilled
operators or folks that want togo into the trades or farming.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Well, and that's really a good point, because,
you know, I saw some statisticand this was now a couple of
years ago and I don't know howaccurate it was and they said
that the average age of a farmprinciple in the US was 68 years
old and it was progressivelygetting older.
Now, if you've got a scenariowhere the average age is 68,
(06:31):
there's a bunch of guys in therethat are in their 40s and 50s.
I'm sure there may be second orthird generation farmers, but
you've probably got some guys inthere that are 75, 76 years old
that are just hanging onbecause they don't really have
anybody to leave it to.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
You're right, I think you know farming in particular
is definitely going through asea change and it's challenging.
It's tough to get folks to livein rural America and it's tough
to, you know, get somebody totake on a job.
That's just hard work, right.
And you have all the aspects ofweather that you can't control,
(07:05):
commodity prices you can'tcontrol, and you know the
complexity of a farm operationthese days.
You know is tough and you knowmaking a good living, you know
requiring a lot of blood, sweatand tears and I think partially
that's where you know the pushtowards automation and the push
towards autonomy comes in to berelevant to the farmer.
(07:25):
You know, and starting in the80s, you started to have
guidance right, which the bestway to describe that is it's
like the cruise control of thetractor right.
And then you started to, youknow, put in steering, you
controls there and you havecenter-meter level accuracy and
then you start to automate thetractor and the implement and
(07:46):
now you've got a vehicle thatyou can have a unskilled
operator in be able to do a veryskilled job and a farmer or the
principal of the farm hasconfidence in what's happening.
And that automation getscomplicated because you're
running a 20 or 30-year-oldplanter behind your tractor.
You're trying to do it as fastas possible in a very short
(08:06):
planting season and if you havefive or six or 10,000 acres, you
may have 10 tractors running atone time, and finding you know
10 guys that have been plantingtheir whole lives is not easy.
And that's really whereautomation comes in.
And then unfortunately, like youcalled out, even finding that
labor to come in and just drivethe automated vehicles getting
(08:28):
tough.
And that's how economy startsto enter into the picture, where
now maybe you know, you canhave five or six vehicles
running with just one operatorcontrolling it from the kitchen
table on the farm.
But, to your point, farms arenot only.
You know the average age of theprincipal I think I've heard
between 57 and 68, like you said, the average size of the farm
(08:49):
has grown to just under 500acres, which really is just a
reflection of consolidation andit's not a common debt farming
operations that are upwards of100,000 acres in the US and
hundreds of thousands of acresin places like Brazil or
Australia.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, and when you do run into that, you know, is
that a greater challenge forautonomy or does it almost make
it easier, because you have moreroom to kind of operate in, and
if your margin of error is fiveor six percent, it don't really
matter.
You got another 50,000 acres tomake that up in.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
A farmer will never give me a margin of error.
Let's be clear.
All right, they want 100% ofthat yield all the time.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Well, but now hang on , let's talk about them for a
second, because you know you'reseeing this with autonomous cars
and we're seeing this with youknow, like crews and Waymo and
all that stuff, where you knowthey may have, however many you
know, tens of thousands of milesof error, free driving and then
they have an error and somebodyyou know unfortunately gets
hurt or maybe there's anaccident.
(09:51):
You know we expect theautomation, and I say we, we as
humans expect other humans tomake mistakes, right, but we
demand that the automation isperfect.
How do you guys deal with that?
Because even though you're notdealing with cross traffic or
flashing lights and signs andthings like that it's a
(10:13):
different problem than on-roadautomation there is still a
significant challenge toautomating across what is
effectively wild land, with youknow who knows what's under the
surface and trying to navigatein and out of rows and you miss
it by a foot.
You've just destroyed a wholecorn crop, right?
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Yeah, and I would say you know maybe a couple of
things you know, depending onthe farm operation that they're
doing will depend on the amountof variance we get.
So if you don't till it, youjust turn dirt over, right.
It doesn't matter if I have,you know, overlaps in my lines
or anything like that, verydifferent than planting right.
You need to be extremelyaccurate and I can't run over
(10:53):
what I just planted and youdon't want to skip a part of
your dirt and miss a plantingopportunity.
Harvesting is an area where Ihave more variability because I
can almost rerun a path and pickup the corn or the grain or the
bee spraying or crop protectionwhere you're fertilizing or
you're applying herbicide,pesticide when your crop is
(11:15):
growing.
You don't want to run overanything.
So there's super, super lowtolerance for any variability
and that's where the combinationof satellites where you can get
centimeter level accuracy, pathplanning and path recording so
you know exactly where you ranthroughout the season, all help
us drive that variability down.
But to your point, you know thecomplexities of you know
(11:40):
autonomy are just as high, soI'm not worrying about you know
a dog running across the streetper se, or a kid stepping out
into the road.
But when you've got a you knoweight ton machine running
through a farm, so to speak, andall of a sudden that tillage,
that tillage machine getsclogged and the last thing you
want to do is damage a milliondollars, sell, you know.
(12:02):
Or if I'm about spraying, youknow, the last thing you want to
do is over-reply chemical.
And so what we're doing iswe're creating a huge sensor
network across the whole machine, both the vehicle and the
implement if it has one thatit's pulling, you know.
So we can communicate veryclearly with the farmer what's
going on and they can log in andthey can actually see the
(12:23):
display and make adjustments onthe fly while that vehicle is
moving.
Our goal is, you know, we wantto have the least amount of
false positives, you know, peracre, and so you know, you think
, maybe one false positive of anobject per thousand acres where
the vehicle just stops and sayshey, farmer, I think there's
something here.
Please come check it out andverify if I can move or not move
(12:46):
.
Construction is a little bitdifferent because construction
environments are so much moredynamic or it's not a common for
an operation construction, youknow workforce to walk around
the vehicle as it's operating,and so in that case it's trying
to create a safety zone aroundthe vehicle where, if the
operator is about to swing theboom of an excavator, it knows
(13:09):
exactly how to change itsalgorithm and ensure nobody's
around it, where, if it'sdigging in one way and somebody
walks behind it and there's norisk to that person, they can
still operate.
And so those are the interestingfactors.
And so you know, when I getasked like gosh, mark, can you
just create this app in like acouple weeks, you're like oh
wait a second.
No Right, I was just in thefield this past week getting an
(13:32):
overview and doing a deep diveon our autonomous tillage and AG
, and one of the tools we builtis it puts on a computer screen
all in the obstacle that'sdetecting, and you know it's
super sunny and Sioux Falls inthe wintertime and you know you
have undulation on the groundthat we're doing our tillage
tests on and you have wonkyshadows that come out and like
(13:54):
we had a shadow that kind oflooked like a person and all of
a sudden the tractor stops andit's like, okay, now I got to
figure out how do I program thetractor to dilinate between a
real human and a shadow, andthat gets to be a really
interesting problem to solve.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah, for sure, because you're doing that with
cameras, right, you're not using, like lead R radar?
Speaker 4 (14:13):
It's an and not an or .
So, yes, I've got eight camerasaround the vehicle and I'm
using radar at this point intime, and you put the two
together to get the you know,the ultimate safe environment.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
All right, cool.
Yeah, I want to talk a littlebit.
You guys have been winning acouple of different design
awards.
Here you got Project Zeus wonthe prestigious good design
award, and I believe there wasalso a different award that you
guys got for the IH Electric.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
It's.
I'll talk about the electricvehicle first.
Okay, you know it's one of thethings I think we're super proud
about.
So you know, for both of ourproducts on brands between New
Holland and case IH, we built a75 horsepower equivalent utility
electric tractor.
This is a tractor that can havea front loader bucket on it.
It has the ability to have someautonomous features and so for
(15:10):
us in particular, it's got theability, what we call follow me
mode, and so I, as the operator,can get out of the cab, walk in
front of the tractor and thetractor will follow that,
operating wherever you want togo.
So if you're speeding up,you're slowing down, you're
turning left, you're turningright, that tractor just
followed you and the use case.
I don't see this for ranching.
So as you go through ranchesand you got to go through these
(15:32):
fence posts all the time, right,you get out and open fence, you
move the vehicle on and on.
Now you can get out, open thefence, walk forward.
The vehicle comes through,close the fence and then hop
back in and continue your work.
But you're talking a four hourcontinuous runtime which allows
you to work a half a day.
It's got a fast charger built inso you can plug it back in to a
(15:56):
240 volt plug and have an 80%charger within an hour and then
go out and get another threehours of work done, and so you
get almost a full day ofoperation.
What's interesting is thatwe've seen in the patterns,
though is rarely you runcontinuously so on a single
charge you can probably get upto six hours if you're starting
and stopping throughout the day,which that effectively, with
(16:19):
that fast charging capability,we believe you can get more than
a full day's worth of work inwith that vehicle.
It's a pretty fun applicationof electrification because it
allows for, you know, obviouslyzero emissions, it allows for
zero noise, but more importantly, in the farm application here
and in projects used on theconstruction side, it's the
(16:41):
torque, and the torque to theground that you get, which is
instantaneous, unlike what yousee with traditional combustion
engines.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Right, there's no lag right, right, and there's no
building up the RPM or anything,and I think also you know what
we've seen.
We've got a couple of friends ofours that have gotten into
organic farming and have youknow they're trying their hand
at growing grapes and doing thevineyard thing and getting into
wine production and things likethat and they seem very
(17:10):
interested in electric becausethey don't want the diesel
particulates and the emissionsto get on the grapes and get on
the organic crops that they thenwould have to clean and spray
and everything else.
Are you seeing some of thatinterest from those markets or
who do you really see drivingthe development of like the
electric farm all?
Or you know the new Holland T4?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, so there's I'd say there's three
drivers.
It was orchard.
Vineyards are absolutely on thetop of the list.
You have a high value cropright that has a premium price
point and a very discerningcustomer, because you're going
farm to table.
in that regard, You're not it'snot like wheat which is going
into an ingredient, so to speak,right, and they can sell their
(17:53):
product based off of thesustainability practices on the
farm and manage pricing in thatmanner.
The second is municipalities.
So, as municipalities aretrying to drive towards green
energy, the electric tractor inthat case, is often being used
in landscaping, mowing of commonareas in a city, you know, like
(18:15):
work around city hall orconstruction.
And then the third would bedairy farmers, where you're
often bringing that vehicle in abarn and pushing feed up for
the cows to eat, and the lastthing you want, as a farmer or
the cow, is to have all thisexhaust sitting inside of an
inside barn.
And so those are examples wherewe see the farmers leaning in,
(18:35):
either because of thesustainability, the noise or the
pollution.
On the construction side, youknow it's primarily around work
and noise, and so there's allkinds of city ordinances coming
out now that are essentiallybanning noise from certain hours
, which, as a citizen, youunderstand it's like the last
(18:56):
thing I want to be.
You know has woken up at 6am,but when you've got a vehicle
that doesn't make any noise,it's a heck of a lot easier to
get around that.
And then the indoorapplications for construction.
Right, thinking about breakingup a foundation or operators in
a distribution center, you know,or as you close the building
and you're still doing work onthe ground, you know not having
(19:16):
any of that pollution cominginto the air is just safer and
cleaner environments operated.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yeah, all of that sounds right.
You know we talk a lot aboutthe noise ordinances and people
want to live in, you know, newbuildings.
They want to have all theamenities, they want to have
bright, clean Construction andyou know even where they want to
put in bike lanes and thingslike that.
You've got this constant demandfor new housing, new
infrastructure, more and more,but they don't want to hear it,
(19:45):
they don't want to smell it,they don't want to understand
any part of what goes intomaking that happen.
They want to close their eyesone day, wake up the next
morning and have a brand new,shiny building there.
And it is just shocking how farwe've come from understanding
what needs to go into buildingout the infrastructure of a city
.
When you start layering thatwith no drip job sites, with you
(20:08):
know noise ordinances andthings like that, it's just
shocking.
You know you may not be able tokind of tell us this next part
of where do you see the next bigapplication of what there it's
electrification or automation?
Where do you see, for CNH, thiskind of technology really
coming into the mainstream?
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Yeah.
So I would say constructioncontinues to lead the way for
electrification.
And there's there's a couplereasons for, and you just you
just hit upon one of the biggest, which is noise, noise
ordinances.
But it's also a fixed area ofoperation.
So for your mini excavators,you compact wheel loaders, your
tractor loader back hose, yourcompact track loaders, those all
(20:51):
tend to operate a reallyconfine, relatively confined
area where there's high poweravailable for charging, you know
, versus a combine which needsto run 18 hours a day over
10,000 Acres and you can't get abattery big enough without
having it sink in the mud,operate right.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Right.
Well, and that's a that's areally good point.
You know, in some of thoseapplications, a lot of the the
case for Hydrogen as a zeroemission fuel or the case for,
you know, diesel hydrogen blendto run a conventional combustion
engine but with a blend ofdiesel and hydrogen to really
cut back on those emissions.
You're starting to see some ofthat, especially for that reason
(21:32):
where the kilowatts of energythat need to go into the work
that needs to be done in 24hours in a day, it is not
feasible with the current energydensity of the batteries that
are out there.
So what is CNH, whether it'sthe case, or New Holland?
What is it that you guys aredoing to kind of, you know, meet
(21:52):
those tier five emissions thatare coming in, kind of meet that
green Kind of mandate that'scoming down, whether it's from
politicians or customers?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Yeah, I think it's a great, great question and you
know we are very much behind thebiofuel movement, be it ethanol
or methane or some blend ofHydrogen.
You know we want to make surethat our engines, you know, can
operate any of thoseenvironments.
And you're 100% right, we dobelieve that biofuel is what's
(22:21):
going to drive the heavierproduct, the heavier loads, for
quite some time to come.
It's cheap, it's gettingcheaper.
We're still a little bitlimited on distribution and the
technology is readily available,and so one way we're helping
this with production anddistribution is we have a
(22:42):
partner called Benamin.
Benamin was a UK based company.
They created a unique Process toessentially cap a slurry pit on
a dairy farm and take themethane, get gas that comes off
that slurry pit Converted intoeither liquid, work compressed
natural gas, and then that couldbe funneled right back into our
(23:03):
T7 or magnet tractors and andnow as a dairy farm where you're
your own fuel producer, so allof a sudden your costs go way
down.
We're seeing that they'rethey're producing excess fuel,
they can sell back into themarket, and so Benamin will come
, pick that up from the farm andredistribute and pay that
farmer for that fuel and at thesame time they're creating a
(23:26):
easier to Spread manure so theystill have the fertilizer
benefits of the manure thatthat's in that slurry pit all
the way to the point.
With our engine partner Fiatpower train, we have
Methane-based generators so afarmer could go 100% off the
grid in that regard and you know.
So now it's really scaling thatoperation and starting to
(23:47):
expand it and you've probablyseen Methane is a big component.
You know around landfills andothers that are happening here
in the US and dump trucks andGarbage trucks are starting to
run on it and so as thatdistribution expands, you know
we would expect, you know, highhorsepower tractors, combines,
high horsepower products, likethe dozer that's got to go over
(24:08):
distance, or a road grader to beable to start to operate off of
the biofuels.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I'd love for you to send mesome more information on that,
maybe once we wrap up here andyou know, I realize we're coming
to the end of our timecommitment.
I just want to thank you again,mark, for being a part of the
show.
You know you mentioned a couplethings about how you'd listen
to some previous episodes.
I hope you listen to this oneand enjoy it and, you know, I
guess before you sign off, canyou let us know people listening
(24:36):
how they can follow along withwhat you're doing and learn more
about C&H and case in NewHolland.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
You got a place to go with cnhcom and if a lot of
content on our corporate websiteand from there they can link
over to case IH New Holland orcase construction.
And I really appreciate yourtime today, joe, it's great
talking to you.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah Well, mike, you, that was your first job, wasn't
it a case dealer?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, my first construction job.
I worked for a rather large C&Hdealer.
We sold the case to Holland,the Belco, and we were spread
out over, I think, four statesnice.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
All right, we're coming back.
That was a good one wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
It was good.
They know what they're doing.
They make good stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
They do make good stuff, and I think that the
thing that I really like aboutthat company You're kidding.
You're kidding they don't makegood stuff.
Of course they make good stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Now I was being sarcastic and I but no, c&h is a
good company, they've been.
The thing is is people won'trealize how long C&H has been
around.
I mean going back to, I meancase, going back to the steam
powered tractors and stuff likethat.
You know, early days of farming.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
I was gonna say the farm all first come out, what
like 1908 or something.
I make that up, but I don'tthink I'm being that crazy.
Actually I'll Google it.
So 24 they released the firstfarm.
All you can still go buy a casefarm all right now, yeah.
So yeah, they've been around.
They're coming up 99 years.
(26:07):
So they're coming up on their100th year anniversary.
So that's pretty exciting there.
But you know, it's funny,there's a lot of the old brands
that are doing really well.
You know we talk about Farm AllGravely just celebrated in 107
years.
We talked about that a coupleof episodes back.
But if you look at companieslike Mac, mac is just pouring
money into their new RoanokeVirginia facility.
(26:28):
They're just expanding that MDline so they can put more of
those Mac MDs on the road.
Yeah, deer is pouring a wholebunch of money into North
Carolina.
They're doing their electricline up there that they're
adding 50 jobs, $3.3 million oftax revenue, 115,000 square foot
facility that's going to beable to produce two gigawatt
(26:50):
hours of batteries specificallyfor agriculture.
And I don't know if you wouldcall golf courses agriculture,
but this is something thatthey've been really announcing
recently.
Is you know, to do these golfcourses and do a lot of urban
landscaping, that kind oftractor work, where there are
now so many noise regulationsthat you really can't get the
(27:12):
job done at a reasonable timewithout something that's quiet
and that's where this electricstuff really comes into play is
you can get this job donequietly?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Well, it'd be nice if you, if you were maintaining a
golf course or a country club oranything like that and you
needed to, just because of youknow the way that the tee times
were scheduled and you needed tobe able to get something in
there and maybe mow or maintainsome stuff late at night or
later in the day to break it upor early in the morning.
That'd be awesome to be able todo that without, you know,
(27:43):
annoying all the people thathave bought homes around the
fairways or, you know, we'realso out there trying to get
their day going before the noiseordinance kick in.
So I think that that is goingto be a huge market for
electrification.
I also think you're going tosee, just as you saw propane
take over a lot of thecommercial mowers you're going
(28:04):
to see a lot of the battery packstuff.
Actually, I'm surprised.
I'm looking forward to seeingwhat Milwaukee offers, as they
release some stuff and I don'tknow for a fact that they're.
I've just heard rumblings thatthey may be working on turf
stuff.
That would be interesting aswell to watch them come out with
like smaller mowers or maybeyou know they've already got
(28:26):
trimmers and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
But to see what else they have for cutting equipment.
Well, it's funny because there'sother companies that are out
there.
You know there's one calledGreenworks.
It's been doing outdoor powerequipment.
They've been doing like edgersand trimmers and weed whippers
and stuff like that, but they'reelectric power.
Then they recently come outwith chainsaws.
They recently come out with asnowblower.
Now they've got an electricriding mower.
(28:48):
It's like an 80 volt ridingmower.
It's not anything big but you'dcertainly use it if you had a
decent sized yard.
And it's funny to see thesemanufacturers that have big
names in the industry andthey're going smaller and kind
of trying to get into that niche.
And then the smaller companiesthat are going the other
direction, right Like they'retrying to grow into that niche.
(29:09):
So it'll be interesting to seewho ends up where.
But yeah, I think I think it'sa great idea.
And you know and I mentionedthis talking to the guy from
Case that comes back to thisidea that everybody wants to
have their cake and eat it too.
They want the clean, manicuredlawns but they don't want to
hear the lawn mower going off inSaturday morning or whatever.
And it just can't happen.
(29:32):
Some things got to give.
Most of the suburbia is likethat.
Most of everything is like thatyou get into Chicago, you get
in New York.
People want new gyms, they wantamenities, they want new
grocery stores, but they don'twant to have any kind of
construction.
They don't want to have to walkunderneath scaffolding, they
just want to go to bed one day,wake up the next morning and
have a whole new utopianexistence.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
One day, when the replicator comes out and we're
able to replicate and go to theholodeck, then we'll have that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
And we won't have nothing.
Dude the day, they something400 pound shrub idiot drinking
Mountain Dews and eating TacoBell all day.
You'd pop into the holodeck andmake out with, you know,
angelina Jolie or whoever's hotin 2024.
It's over.
He's not going to get up and goto work unless he's got to.
You know, whip up some holodeckcredits.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I don't think he's going to go to work.
We need a balancing act.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
If that ever happens, you're going to have to have
Well, I think the rule is goingto be you're going to have to
put in 40 hours of work a weekto get four hours on the
holodeck.
So for every 10 hours of work,you get an hour on the holodeck.
That's the only way it's goingto happen.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Otherwise, when that guy does go to work, whatever
he's helping build, they'regoing to have to recall back.
That's what's going to have tohappen.
They're going to be like whoput this together?
I don't know, but the holodeckJoe was on the line last night.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
They hit the all stop button.
Phipps, look at you cards going.
That's not what recall means.
But while we're on the subject,yeah, packard had to recall
47,000 trucks due to an issuethat could result in a total of
loss of steering control.
(31:16):
That's a 47,200 Nate model year24 and 25 Kenworth T2, 80s, 380
, 486, 80, 880s, l, 770s, w 190models and the model year 24
Peterbilt 380, 9s.
The last of those are allgetting recalled 520, 535, all
the way down the line.
So that is a lot of trucks, man, and I got to tell you that's a
(31:40):
lot of two.
That's a lot of trucks.
But it's scary too, becausewhen you talk about Ford doing a
recall and they read in thepaper, you know all they had to
recall 110,000 vehicles to getthat airbag replaced.
Right, that was a couple ofyears ago.
I mean, all the car companieswere replacing the airbags that
they were getting from this onesupplier.
There is a system in place forFord's.
(32:02):
You know, 3,500 dealers to eachone of them.
Take two or three of those aday and over the course of a
very short couple of weeks getthat done.
There are not 3,500 Packarddealers and certainly they don't
know they're not all sittingthere with 47,000 new steering
racks and knuckle assemblies toput in there.
This is going to put thesetrucks on the sidelines for a
(32:25):
while.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
It's.
You know the knuckle thatthey're replacing on the Packard
stuff and then you know.
Then you get the internationalrecall where they're going
through that.
I'm glad that they're goingthrough this, I'm glad that
they're not, that they have to,but I'm glad that they have the
things in place that even in thecommercial class, eight
industry, medium duty, they heypark these things, do not sell
(32:48):
them or bring them back in.
We got to get this fixed.
A lot of this stuff it getsoverlooked.
Everybody wants to talk aboutGM and how Honda and those guys
have recalls or the infamous.
What was it?
The Toyota one with the fourmaps?
Is that?
Who that?
Speaker 3 (33:02):
was yeah, what Mike's referring to is when the Prius,
the second generation Prius,come out.
I think it was like oh 607.
There was a guy who said hisaccelerator got stuck and the
car was just going nuts and hewas driving a hundred and some
miles an hour down the freewayand he was waving his arms out
the window that he couldn't stopand everyone was like, oh yeah,
(33:23):
these hybrids, man, there'scomputers are taking over the
cars who never get there.
And it turned out he had hisfloor mat stuffed on top of the
gas pedal and so they had to doa massive recall and they
actually redesigned to the floormats.
It would latch into place andgo over and cover the gas pedal.
Because it was happening,people were just rear-ending
(33:44):
each other in these Priuses.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, and I don't know how many documented cases
there were at the end of the dayof that.
But we always listen to that.
But a lot of times the mediumduty and the heavy equipment
stuff gets overlooked.
They call it a recall on theon-road stuff, they call it a
pit on the heavy equipment.
It's a product improvementprogram, so nobody talks about
that.
It kind of gets glossed over iswhat I'm getting at.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But that's what we're here for.
We're here to talk about allthis stuff because this is the
heavy equipment podcast, darn it.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
This is what we do.
This is what we do.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
You know, it is a show about nothing, but it's a
show about nothing that isparticular about something.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
We haven't.
Yeah, we're very particularabout what we talk about.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, this is heavy stuff, but I'm strong strong
enough to carry him.
He ain't heavy.
(35:01):
I don't even remember whatwe're talking about.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
We were talking about the recalls and the fact that
they get glossed over, becauseit's heavy equipment and really,
if it wasn't for us, a lot ofpeople wouldn't talk about it.
There's news articles out thereabout it, but we're really the
ones shedding the light on it,doing it live.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
We're doing something out of there, right?
It's interesting too, becausedifferent companies handle
recalls in a very different way.
Right?
Tesla doesn't even want you tocall them recalls, right?
They want to do everything overthe air.
They want to basically emailyou an update and hope for the
best that's going to fix it.
Ford wants you to come in.
They'll do some over-the-airstuff, but Ford wants you to
come into the dealer.
(35:48):
It's going to be interesting tosee as these new manufacturers
come online, because it doesn'tthink we don't talk about much
is that we've got Rivian.
That's a new manufacturerthat's come out in the last two
years.
Scout is coming back.
Scout is going to come backwith SUVs and pickups.
Volvo, their parent company,Geely, has a new truck brand
called Radar.
(36:08):
They're manufacturing out ofMexico DYD, which is that's a
Chinese company that Warm Buffethas heavily invested in.
They've been making literallymillions of vehicles.
They've been making cars inChina and Europe now for decades
and they are opening a plantnow in Mexico.
They already have amanufacturing facility in
California where they do busesand heavy equipment chassis and
(36:31):
things like that.
As all of these brands kind ofcome into the market, they're
going to have to start to thinkabout how they're going to
handle not only Pips and Recalls, but how are they going to
handle quality control for aNorth American audience that for
the last 30, 40 years hasreally had very few companies
come into it?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, I mean, people are coming out.
They get new companies, newpartnerships.
How are they going to handlethis?
Even right down the marketing,the marketing on a Tesla was
different.
That was a new model of how tocapture buyers Right.
It's going to be interesting tosee how that happens.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
No, I think that's a really good point, that the
marketing is going to beinteresting too, because, just
like in the 70s and the 60s and70s, you had a lot of people
that were at that time in theirlives turning 40 and getting
into that middle age wherethey're buying a big car and
it's time for them to buy afamily stand to drive around in,
and Toyota and Honda was cominginto the market.
(37:32):
And those guys that were intheir 40s at that time that's
that prime car buying age theyremembered fighting Japan in a
world war 20 years prior.
You know what I mean.
Like these guys are.
Like I was in Japan.
I was just fighting these guysand you got to imagine the same
thing was happening to theKorean War veterans when Hyundai
(37:52):
came out in the 80s and theywere like what are you talking
about?
When I was a kid I was fightingover there.
And now we've got a lot ofanimosity and a lot of cultural
animosity, even though there wasnever a conflict between the US
and China.
There is this sense of peoplethat the Chinese manufacturers
and the Made in China movementthat the corporations did really
(38:13):
destroyed Main Street USA andthat kind of way of life that
people had for generations.
And so there's there's a lot of, I would say, cultural anger
against China.
So, as all of these Chinesebrands and Indian brands start
coming into the US you knowyou've got companies like
Mahindra and things like thatthat are bringing tractors and
(38:34):
trucks into the US I thinkthey've got an uphill battle
that they're not reallyanticipating because I don't
think they understand that thereis that cultural anger there,
that patriotism there that says,like we're supposed to be
against you guys.
Whether or not that's true,that's the feeling.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
No, you're right.
Yeah, whether or not it's true,it's still out there, it's
still deceiving.
You're going to see people flyaway from stuff and it's going
to take a little bit of trialand error to have an OEM get
somebody to say hey, you know, Iwent to the dealership.
They were pretty cool overthere.
I like what I looked at, I likewhat I ran, I'm going to buy it
(39:15):
.
Yeah, it's going to take thatone on one experience over and
over again to when these kind ofbuyers over, because you're
absolutely right, we have beenvery much old.
You don't buy Chinese.
It's like my daddy quates itway back in the day when he was
younger and it was like well,there's the problem.
(39:37):
This was made in Japan.
That exact line was used inBack to the Future.
Michael Fox says what's one ofthe best stuff made in Japan?
Right, yeah, we're globalizinga lot of our market and we just
I don't know they're going tohave to be careful how they go
about it.
They do it right, it's going tobe success.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Well, but here's the thing how many guys are sitting
there going?
You know, all this junk is madein China and they're typing it
on a Made in China MacBook oriPhone, right?
So there's a little bit ofhypocrisy there and I think it
is going to take some time tounderstand that.
I think it is going to takesome time to figure out how to
market to it.
I think the ones that are goingto be the most successful are
(40:20):
the ones that are going to showup to these, you know, like Con
Expo and Work Truck Week andWorld of Concrete, and let
people get behind the wheel orget into the cab and feel the
levers and do the thing andreally see for themselves that
this is a quality product.
Because I got to tell youhonestly, I was at CES a couple
of weeks ago and they had a BYD,which is an electric Chinese
(40:42):
car, and the only question thatanybody asked was do you think
this is ready to take on Tesla?
And I got to tell youeverything I saw from the paint
to the headlights, to thescreens inside, to the way that
the seat felt on a lower backEverything told me that that was
a better vehicle than the Tesla, and they were doing it for
right about the same price too.
So I think China is coming in,and I think if we're going to
(41:05):
pretend that they're not, it'sjust going to hold us back.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, we're going to.
We're going to see a fairamount of new vehicles come out,
new product, new tractors, allof that, yeah.
So we're really going to shakeup quite a bit of things.
And going back to the recallthing, how they handle the
recalls.
Nothing is perfect, it's stillmanufactured.
How they handle that, what theydo with it, that's going to
(41:29):
make or break them, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah, I agree 100%.
So you know it's funny.
I don't I hesitate to talkabout this because I feel like
you and I get along.
We operate on the samewavelength.
We've known each other for many, many years.
We've never really had anargument that has devolved into
anything nasty, and I knowyou're a Milwaukee guy, but I
(41:54):
have to confess that I might bea Ryobi household.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
No for the household.
For the household.
Ryobi is amazing.
That's so patronizing.
For a lot ofconstruction-related solutions
yeah, for a lot of constructionsolutions it is not.
I mean, it's a good product.
We've done hours for hourstesting on product and if you're
going to use it at home, ryobiis awesome.
If you're going to use itaround the farm, you're going to
(42:19):
use it around other areas, ithas its place.
It does a very good job.
If you're going to just beat itconstantly, no, it just doesn't
last.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah, no, I've honestly heard that before and
you know Milwaukee makes atremendous amount of really
heavy duty quality hand toolsand battery tools.
You know we talked about that alittle bit in our last episode
when we talked to the Mo guysand over here at World of
Concrete in Vegas, dewalt,milwaukee, Tool, bosch they all
(42:51):
had battery powered tools.
Like you know, they're talkingabout real high end stuff that
you're going to use day in andday out on a job site and I have
to admit you know the Ryobistuff that I'm into just wasn't
mentioned in there.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Well, if you want to comment on that We've done
product testing on that and wehave things that we've used for
solutions we themselves willtell you yeah, we're not in that
market space but that's okaybecause the market space needs
Ryobi, dewalt, milwaukee.
They need the off brands, theUS generals that come from
(43:25):
Harbor Free.
We need all that.
We need that, without question.
Everybody has their place inthe pie.
No one's going to cover it fromone end to the other Right Not
at all.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Well, I think that's good stuff.
Maybe we'll wrap this up withsome big trouble in little China
, since we closed it out.
Talking about Chinese market,china is here.
China is here.
China is here.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
Listen to the old pork job express and take his
advice.
On a dark and stormy night, allright, when some wild-eyed,
eight foot tall maniac grabsyour neck, taps the back of your
favorite head up against a barroom wall and he looks at
Cripton in the eye and he asksyou if you've paid your dues.
Or you just stare that bigsucker right back in the eye and
you remember what old JackBurton always says at a time
like that have you paid yourdues, jack?
(44:11):
Yes, sir, the check is in themail.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on
Spotify, apple Podcasts, googlewherever 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 Serial.
That's the Heavy EquipmentPodcast with Mike and Joe.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Welcome back to another episode of the Heavy
Equipment Podcast, this one'snumber 21.
And we've got special gueststoday.
Before we get to that specialguest, I got to tell you a story
about what imaginative way thatone young lady who used to host
University of Miami Collegeradio station, one way, she put
(01:01):
her microphone to use one brightsummer night that young Joe
Boris was a part of, and laterthat night he became a man.
How you doing, michael?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm telling a story.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I'm telling a story here.
I don't listen.
I don't know if she just pushedthat thing into a tub of
macaroni and cheese, but mylittle imagination ran wild with
that, so I got some use out ofit Listen.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I have seen operators get worked up over heavy
breathing over a microphone.
I could only imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So tell me, what are you wearing?
Right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Like a car heart jacket, some heavy workman's
jeans and some tennis shoeswhich I shouldn't be wearing on
a job site because they're notwork ready, and of course I'm
alluding to young Michael'snational safety tour.
You're coming back now fromPennsylvania, right?
How's that going for you,that's?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
doing good.
We're coming back fromPittsburgh on my way to the
Cleveland airport and thentaking off.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
So all that's right back to the tone of 500.
You're going down there withthe Union rental guys, right?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, united is.
They're going to be down thereand then I'm going to meet up
with those guys and there'sactually a couple other people
down there that I'm finding out,so it'll be busy.
We're going to run into a bunchof people and then in
Indianapolis on March 6th.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Oh, that's work truck week.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, I'm going to be out there for that in a cab
meeting with one of our vendors,so that'll be fun too.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I'll be out with Mike as well, so you'll get to meet
some of the heavy equipmentpodcast guys, if that's
something you want to do, andwhether it is or isn't coming up
next.
We've got a guest on the showtoday.
This is Mark Kermish and he isthe CIO of CNH.
Obviously, cnh stands for CaseNew Holland and that's correct.
(02:53):
Now, obviously, you guys havebeen in the news quite a bit
recently, not only with theelectrification stuff, but also
with the automation stuff, andwhat we've seen mostly in
automation has been on thefarming side of that and I think
we've talked about that quite abit on this show, whether it's
vertical farming or autonomousfarming.
Can you talk about casesrolling that as well as New
(03:16):
Holland and kind of how you guysare approaching that autonomous
sector?
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
First and foremost, autonomousstarts with automation.
So you need to really automateaspects of your machine.
Then from there you start towork on how you take the
operator out of the cab andcreate that autonomy capability.
I'd say, when you think aboutit in context to construction, a
lot of it's going to be aroundblade control or bucket control.
(03:43):
So if you think about a dozer,the best thing I could say is
when I first got intoconstruction, I got into the
dozer and I had waves going upand down the road.
I couldn't control that blade atall.
I was going up and then I wasgoing down.
I couldn't figure out how tocreate a smooth road to save my
life.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, well, but that's really interesting too,
right, because you do have aconstruction background.
I didn't even get into that,but the assumption is that
anybody who's at the C-suite orat the C-level of these
companies, they're all MBAs,they're all pencil pushers,
they've been working onspreadsheets, they're not
working in the dozers, they'renot working in the excavators,
and your background really doesinclude a lot of real world
(04:25):
experience.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
You're right, it does it's.
You know, if somebody ever asksyou what happens to English
majors like I, am that guy,because I'm a philosophy major.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I know what to do.
What's the?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
joke.
If you want to, if you want toget the philosophy major to
leave your house, just pay foryour pizza.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I have to admit, philosophy was one of my
favorite classes in college.
Maybe that's why I became anEnglish major.
But you know, yeah, mybackground is pretty rich and
diverse and I've worked in andout of AG and construction
throughout and I've had thechance to operate our vehicles
in different conditions and, asI was saying, you know, until I
(05:06):
hit the GPS button and the bladecontrol.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
Button.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
I was the worst bulldozer operator you could
ever imagine and all of a suddenI became the best with a single
click of a button and that'sthe magic of machine automation
right, when all of a suddenyou've got GPS points on both
sides of your blade.
It's got essentially a sixaccess control capability and
now I just become the safetymechanism of pushing the gas for
(05:29):
the break as the dozer is doingall the work, Then being able
to take that and build thesafety components for autonomy,
object detection, 360 degreeawareness, alert management, off
board capabilities.
So the construction operatorcan have it in the phone right
(05:51):
and they can pull their mobileapp out and start and stop a
mission.
Super complex capabilities toadd on top of automation.
But that's ultimately where alot of your construction and
agricultural is starting to go,and part due to lack of skilled
operators or folks that want togo into the trades or farming.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Well, and that's really a good point, because,
you know, I saw some statisticand this was now a couple of
years ago and I don't know howaccurate it was and they said
that the average age of a farmprinciple in the US was 68 years
old and it was progressivelygetting older.
Now, if you've got a scenariowhere the average age is 68,
(06:31):
there's a bunch of guys in therethat are in their 40s and 50s.
I'm sure there may be second orthird generation farmers, but
you've probably got some guys inthere that are 75, 76 years old
that are just hanging onbecause they don't really have
anybody to leave it to.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
You're right, I think you know farming in particular
is definitely going through asea change and it's challenging.
It's tough to get folks to livein rural America and it's tough
to, you know, get somebody totake on a job.
That's just hard work, right.
And you have all the aspects ofweather that you can't control,
(07:05):
commodity prices you can'tcontrol, and you know the
complexity of a farm operationthese days.
You know is tough and you knowmaking a good living, you know
requiring a lot of blood, sweatand tears and I think partially
that's where you know the pushtowards automation and the push
towards autonomy comes in to berelevant to the farmer.
(07:25):
You know, and starting in the80s, you started to have
guidance right, which the bestway to describe that is it's
like the cruise control of thetractor right.
And then you started to, youknow, put in steering, you
controls there and you havecenter-meter level accuracy and
then you start to automate thetractor and the implement and
(07:46):
now you've got a vehicle thatyou can have a unskilled
operator in be able to do a veryskilled job and a farmer or the
principal of the farm hasconfidence in what's happening.
And that automation getscomplicated because you're
running a 20 or 30-year-oldplanter behind your tractor.
You're trying to do it as fastas possible in a very short
(08:06):
planting season and if you havefive or six or 10,000 acres, you
may have 10 tractors running atone time, and finding you know
10 guys that have been plantingtheir whole lives is not easy.
And that's really whereautomation comes in.
And then unfortunately, like youcalled out, even finding that
labor to come in and just drivethe automated vehicles getting
(08:28):
tough.
And that's how economy startsto enter into the picture, where
now maybe you know, you canhave five or six vehicles
running with just one operatorcontrolling it from the kitchen
table on the farm.
But, to your point, farms arenot only.
You know the average age of theprincipal I think I've heard
between 57 and 68, like you said, the average size of the farm
(08:49):
has grown to just under 500acres, which really is just a
reflection of consolidation andit's not a common debt farming
operations that are upwards of100,000 acres in the US and
hundreds of thousands of acresin places like Brazil or
Australia.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, and when you do run into that, you know, is
that a greater challenge forautonomy or does it almost make
it easier, because you have moreroom to kind of operate in, and
if your margin of error is fiveor six percent, it don't really
matter.
You got another 50,000 acres tomake that up in.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
A farmer will never give me a margin of error.
Let's be clear.
All right, they want 100% ofthat yield all the time.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Well, but now hang on , let's talk about them for a
second, because you know you'reseeing this with autonomous cars
and we're seeing this with youknow, like crews and Waymo and
all that stuff, where you knowthey may have, however many you
know, tens of thousands of milesof error, free driving and then
they have an error and somebodyyou know unfortunately gets
hurt or maybe there's anaccident.
(09:51):
You know we expect theautomation, and I say we, we as
humans expect other humans tomake mistakes, right, but we
demand that the automation isperfect.
How do you guys deal with that?
Because even though you're notdealing with cross traffic or
flashing lights and signs andthings like that it's a
(10:13):
different problem than on-roadautomation there is still a
significant challenge toautomating across what is
effectively wild land, with youknow who knows what's under the
surface and trying to navigatein and out of rows and you miss
it by a foot.
You've just destroyed a wholecorn crop, right?
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Yeah, and I would say you know maybe a couple of
things you know, depending onthe farm operation that they're
doing will depend on the amountof variance we get.
So if you don't till it, youjust turn dirt over, right.
It doesn't matter if I have,you know, overlaps in my lines
or anything like that, verydifferent than planting right.
You need to be extremelyaccurate and I can't run over
(10:53):
what I just planted and youdon't want to skip a part of
your dirt and miss a plantingopportunity.
Harvesting is an area where Ihave more variability because I
can almost rerun a path and pickup the corn or the grain or the
bee spraying or crop protectionwhere you're fertilizing or
you're applying herbicide,pesticide when your crop is
(11:15):
growing.
You don't want to run overanything.
So there's super, super lowtolerance for any variability
and that's where the combinationof satellites where you can get
centimeter level accuracy, pathplanning and path recording so
you know exactly where you ranthroughout the season, all help
us drive that variability down.
But to your point, you know thecomplexities of you know
(11:40):
autonomy are just as high, soI'm not worrying about you know
a dog running across the streetper se, or a kid stepping out
into the road.
But when you've got a you knoweight ton machine running
through a farm, so to speak, andall of a sudden that tillage,
that tillage machine getsclogged and the last thing you
want to do is damage a milliondollars, sell, you know.
(12:02):
Or if I'm about spraying, youknow, the last thing you want to
do is over-reply chemical.
And so what we're doing iswe're creating a huge sensor
network across the whole machine, both the vehicle and the
implement if it has one thatit's pulling, you know.
So we can communicate veryclearly with the farmer what's
going on and they can log in andthey can actually see the
(12:23):
display and make adjustments onthe fly while that vehicle is
moving.
Our goal is, you know, we wantto have the least amount of
false positives, you know, peracre, and so you know, you think
, maybe one false positive of anobject per thousand acres where
the vehicle just stops and sayshey, farmer, I think there's
something here.
Please come check it out andverify if I can move or not move
(12:46):
.
Construction is a little bitdifferent because construction
environments are so much moredynamic or it's not a common for
an operation construction, youknow workforce to walk around
the vehicle as it's operating,and so in that case it's trying
to create a safety zone aroundthe vehicle where, if the
operator is about to swing theboom of an excavator, it knows
(13:09):
exactly how to change itsalgorithm and ensure nobody's
around it, where, if it'sdigging in one way and somebody
walks behind it and there's norisk to that person, they can
still operate.
And so those are the interestingfactors.
And so you know, when I getasked like gosh, mark, can you
just create this app in like acouple weeks, you're like oh
wait a second.
No Right, I was just in thefield this past week getting an
(13:32):
overview and doing a deep diveon our autonomous tillage and AG
, and one of the tools we builtis it puts on a computer screen
all in the obstacle that'sdetecting, and you know it's
super sunny and Sioux Falls inthe wintertime and you know you
have undulation on the groundthat we're doing our tillage
tests on and you have wonkyshadows that come out and like
(13:54):
we had a shadow that kind oflooked like a person and all of
a sudden the tractor stops andit's like, okay, now I got to
figure out how do I program thetractor to dilinate between a
real human and a shadow, andthat gets to be a really
interesting problem to solve.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah, for sure, because you're doing that with
cameras, right, you're not using, like lead R radar?
Speaker 4 (14:13):
It's an and not an or .
So, yes, I've got eight camerasaround the vehicle and I'm
using radar at this point intime, and you put the two
together to get the you know,the ultimate safe environment.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
All right, cool.
Yeah, I want to talk a littlebit.
You guys have been winning acouple of different design
awards.
Here you got Project Zeus wonthe prestigious good design
award, and I believe there wasalso a different award that you
guys got for the IH Electric.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
It's.
I'll talk about the electricvehicle first.
Okay, you know it's one of thethings I think we're super proud
about.
So you know, for both of ourproducts on brands between New
Holland and case IH, we built a75 horsepower equivalent utility
electric tractor.
This is a tractor that can havea front loader bucket on it.
It has the ability to have someautonomous features and so for
(15:10):
us in particular, it's got theability, what we call follow me
mode, and so I, as the operator,can get out of the cab, walk in
front of the tractor and thetractor will follow that,
operating wherever you want togo.
So if you're speeding up,you're slowing down, you're
turning left, you're turningright, that tractor just
followed you and the use case.
I don't see this for ranching.
So as you go through ranchesand you got to go through these
(15:32):
fence posts all the time, right,you get out and open fence, you
move the vehicle on and on.
Now you can get out, open thefence, walk forward.
The vehicle comes through,close the fence and then hop
back in and continue your work.
But you're talking a four hourcontinuous runtime which allows
you to work a half a day.
It's got a fast charger built inso you can plug it back in to a
(15:56):
240 volt plug and have an 80%charger within an hour and then
go out and get another threehours of work done, and so you
get almost a full day ofoperation.
What's interesting is thatwe've seen in the patterns,
though is rarely you runcontinuously so on a single
charge you can probably get upto six hours if you're starting
and stopping throughout the day,which that effectively, with
(16:19):
that fast charging capability,we believe you can get more than
a full day's worth of work inwith that vehicle.
It's a pretty fun applicationof electrification because it
allows for, you know, obviouslyzero emissions, it allows for
zero noise, but more importantly, in the farm application here
and in projects used on theconstruction side, it's the
(16:41):
torque, and the torque to theground that you get, which is
instantaneous, unlike what yousee with traditional combustion
engines.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Right, there's no lag right, right, and there's no
building up the RPM or anything,and I think also you know what
we've seen.
We've got a couple of friends ofours that have gotten into
organic farming and have youknow they're trying their hand
at growing grapes and doing thevineyard thing and getting into
wine production and things likethat and they seem very
(17:10):
interested in electric becausethey don't want the diesel
particulates and the emissionsto get on the grapes and get on
the organic crops that they thenwould have to clean and spray
and everything else.
Are you seeing some of thatinterest from those markets or
who do you really see drivingthe development of like the
electric farm all?
Or you know the new Holland T4?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, so there's I'd say there's three
drivers.
It was orchard.
Vineyards are absolutely on thetop of the list.
You have a high value cropright that has a premium price
point and a very discerningcustomer, because you're going
farm to table.
in that regard, You're not it'snot like wheat which is going
into an ingredient, so to speak,right, and they can sell their
(17:53):
product based off of thesustainability practices on the
farm and manage pricing in thatmanner.
The second is municipalities.
So, as municipalities aretrying to drive towards green
energy, the electric tractor inthat case, is often being used
in landscaping, mowing of commonareas in a city, you know, like
(18:15):
work around city hall orconstruction.
And then the third would bedairy farmers, where you're
often bringing that vehicle in abarn and pushing feed up for
the cows to eat, and the lastthing you want, as a farmer or
the cow, is to have all thisexhaust sitting inside of an
inside barn.
And so those are examples wherewe see the farmers leaning in,
(18:35):
either because of thesustainability, the noise or the
pollution.
On the construction side, youknow it's primarily around work
and noise, and so there's allkinds of city ordinances coming
out now that are essentiallybanning noise from certain hours
, which, as a citizen, youunderstand it's like the last
(18:56):
thing I want to be.
You know has woken up at 6am,but when you've got a vehicle
that doesn't make any noise,it's a heck of a lot easier to
get around that.
And then the indoorapplications for construction.
Right, thinking about breakingup a foundation or operators in
a distribution center, you know,or as you close the building
and you're still doing work onthe ground, you know not having
(19:16):
any of that pollution cominginto the air is just safer and
cleaner environments operated.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yeah, all of that sounds right.
You know we talk a lot aboutthe noise ordinances and people
want to live in, you know, newbuildings.
They want to have all theamenities, they want to have
bright, clean Construction andyou know even where they want to
put in bike lanes and thingslike that.
You've got this constant demandfor new housing, new
infrastructure, more and more,but they don't want to hear it,
(19:45):
they don't want to smell it,they don't want to understand
any part of what goes intomaking that happen.
They want to close their eyesone day, wake up the next
morning and have a brand new,shiny building there.
And it is just shocking how farwe've come from understanding
what needs to go into buildingout the infrastructure of a city
.
When you start layering thatwith no drip job sites, with you
(20:08):
know noise ordinances andthings like that, it's just
shocking.
You know you may not be able tokind of tell us this next part
of where do you see the next bigapplication of what there it's
electrification or automation?
Where do you see, for CNH, thiskind of technology really
coming into the mainstream?
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Yeah.
So I would say constructioncontinues to lead the way for
electrification.
And there's there's a couplereasons for, and you just you
just hit upon one of the biggest, which is noise, noise
ordinances.
But it's also a fixed area ofoperation.
So for your mini excavators,you compact wheel loaders, your
tractor loader back hose, yourcompact track loaders, those all
(20:51):
tend to operate a reallyconfine, relatively confined
area where there's high poweravailable for charging, you know
, versus a combine which needsto run 18 hours a day over
10,000 Acres and you can't get abattery big enough without
having it sink in the mud,operate right.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Right.
Well, and that's a that's areally good point.
You know, in some of thoseapplications, a lot of the the
case for Hydrogen as a zeroemission fuel or the case for,
you know, diesel hydrogen blendto run a conventional combustion
engine but with a blend ofdiesel and hydrogen to really
cut back on those emissions.
You're starting to see some ofthat, especially for that reason
(21:32):
where the kilowatts of energythat need to go into the work
that needs to be done in 24hours in a day, it is not
feasible with the current energydensity of the batteries that
are out there.
So what is CNH, whether it'sthe case, or New Holland?
What is it that you guys aredoing to kind of, you know, meet
(21:52):
those tier five emissions thatare coming in, kind of meet that
green Kind of mandate that'scoming down, whether it's from
politicians or customers?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Yeah, I think it's a great, great question and you
know we are very much behind thebiofuel movement, be it ethanol
or methane or some blend ofHydrogen.
You know we want to make surethat our engines, you know, can
operate any of thoseenvironments.
And you're 100% right, we dobelieve that biofuel is what's
(22:21):
going to drive the heavierproduct, the heavier loads, for
quite some time to come.
It's cheap, it's gettingcheaper.
We're still a little bitlimited on distribution and the
technology is readily available,and so one way we're helping
this with production anddistribution is we have a
(22:42):
partner called Benamin.
Benamin was a UK based company.
They created a unique Process toessentially cap a slurry pit on
a dairy farm and take themethane, get gas that comes off
that slurry pit Converted intoeither liquid, work compressed
natural gas, and then that couldbe funneled right back into our
(23:03):
T7 or magnet tractors and andnow as a dairy farm where you're
your own fuel producer, so allof a sudden your costs go way
down.
We're seeing that they'rethey're producing excess fuel,
they can sell back into themarket, and so Benamin will come
, pick that up from the farm andredistribute and pay that
farmer for that fuel and at thesame time they're creating a
(23:26):
easier to Spread manure so theystill have the fertilizer
benefits of the manure thatthat's in that slurry pit all
the way to the point.
With our engine partner Fiatpower train, we have
Methane-based generators so afarmer could go 100% off the
grid in that regard and you know.
So now it's really scaling thatoperation and starting to
(23:47):
expand it and you've probablyseen Methane is a big component.
You know around landfills andothers that are happening here
in the US and dump trucks andGarbage trucks are starting to
run on it and so as thatdistribution expands, you know
we would expect, you know, highhorsepower tractors, combines,
high horsepower products, likethe dozer that's got to go over
(24:08):
distance, or a road grader to beable to start to operate off of
the biofuels.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I'd love for you to send mesome more information on that,
maybe once we wrap up here andyou know, I realize we're coming
to the end of our timecommitment.
I just want to thank you again,mark, for being a part of the
show.
You know you mentioned a couplethings about how you'd listen
to some previous episodes.
I hope you listen to this oneand enjoy it and, you know, I
guess before you sign off, canyou let us know people listening
(24:36):
how they can follow along withwhat you're doing and learn more
about C&H and case in NewHolland.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
You got a place to go with cnhcom and if a lot of
content on our corporate websiteand from there they can link
over to case IH New Holland orcase construction.
And I really appreciate yourtime today, joe, it's great
talking to you.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah Well, mike, you, that was your first job, wasn't
it a case dealer?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, my first construction job.
I worked for a rather large C&Hdealer.
We sold the case to Holland,the Belco, and we were spread
out over, I think, four statesnice.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
All right, we're coming back.
That was a good one wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
It was good.
They know what they're doing.
They make good stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
They do make good stuff, and I think that the
thing that I really like aboutthat company You're kidding.
You're kidding they don't makegood stuff.
Of course they make good stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Now I was being sarcastic and I but no, c&h is a
good company, they've been.
The thing is is people won'trealize how long C&H has been
around.
I mean going back to, I meancase, going back to the steam
powered tractors and stuff likethat.
You know, early days of farming.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
I was gonna say the farm all first come out, what
like 1908 or something.
I make that up, but I don'tthink I'm being that crazy.
Actually I'll Google it.
So 24 they released the firstfarm.
All you can still go buy a casefarm all right now, yeah.
So yeah, they've been around.
They're coming up 99 years.
(26:07):
So they're coming up on their100th year anniversary.
So that's pretty exciting there.
But you know, it's funny,there's a lot of the old brands
that are doing really well.
You know we talk about Farm AllGravely just celebrated in 107
years.
We talked about that a coupleof episodes back.
But if you look at companieslike Mac, mac is just pouring
money into their new RoanokeVirginia facility.
(26:28):
They're just expanding that MDline so they can put more of
those Mac MDs on the road.
Yeah, deer is pouring a wholebunch of money into North
Carolina.
They're doing their electricline up there that they're
adding 50 jobs, $3.3 million oftax revenue, 115,000 square foot
facility that's going to beable to produce two gigawatt
(26:50):
hours of batteries specificallyfor agriculture.
And I don't know if you wouldcall golf courses agriculture,
but this is something thatthey've been really announcing
recently.
Is you know, to do these golfcourses and do a lot of urban
landscaping, that kind oftractor work, where there are
now so many noise regulationsthat you really can't get the
(27:12):
job done at a reasonable timewithout something that's quiet
and that's where this electricstuff really comes into play is
you can get this job donequietly?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Well, it'd be nice if you, if you were maintaining a
golf course or a country club oranything like that and you
needed to, just because of youknow the way that the tee times
were scheduled and you needed tobe able to get something in
there and maybe mow or maintainsome stuff late at night or
later in the day to break it upor early in the morning.
That'd be awesome to be able todo that without, you know,
(27:43):
annoying all the people thathave bought homes around the
fairways or, you know, we'realso out there trying to get
their day going before the noiseordinance kick in.
So I think that that is goingto be a huge market for
electrification.
I also think you're going tosee, just as you saw propane
take over a lot of thecommercial mowers you're going
(28:04):
to see a lot of the battery packstuff.
Actually, I'm surprised.
I'm looking forward to seeingwhat Milwaukee offers, as they
release some stuff and I don'tknow for a fact that they're.
I've just heard rumblings thatthey may be working on turf
stuff.
That would be interesting aswell to watch them come out with
like smaller mowers or maybeyou know they've already got
(28:26):
trimmers and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
But to see what else they have for cutting equipment.
Well, it's funny because there'sother companies that are out
there.
You know there's one calledGreenworks.
It's been doing outdoor powerequipment.
They've been doing like edgersand trimmers and weed whippers
and stuff like that, but they'reelectric power.
Then they recently come outwith chainsaws.
They recently come out with asnowblower.
Now they've got an electricriding mower.
(28:48):
It's like an 80 volt ridingmower.
It's not anything big but you'dcertainly use it if you had a
decent sized yard.
And it's funny to see thesemanufacturers that have big
names in the industry andthey're going smaller and kind
of trying to get into that niche.
And then the smaller companiesthat are going the other
direction, right Like they'retrying to grow into that niche.
(29:09):
So it'll be interesting to seewho ends up where.
But yeah, I think I think it'sa great idea.
And you know and I mentionedthis talking to the guy from
Case that comes back to thisidea that everybody wants to
have their cake and eat it too.
They want the clean, manicuredlawns but they don't want to
hear the lawn mower going off inSaturday morning or whatever.
And it just can't happen.
(29:32):
Some things got to give.
Most of the suburbia is likethat.
Most of everything is like thatyou get into Chicago, you get
in New York.
People want new gyms, they wantamenities, they want new
grocery stores, but they don'twant to have any kind of
construction.
They don't want to have to walkunderneath scaffolding, they
just want to go to bed one day,wake up the next morning and
have a whole new utopianexistence.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
One day, when the replicator comes out and we're
able to replicate and go to theholodeck, then we'll have that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
And we won't have nothing.
Dude the day, they something400 pound shrub idiot drinking
Mountain Dews and eating TacoBell all day.
You'd pop into the holodeck andmake out with, you know,
angelina Jolie or whoever's hotin 2024.
It's over.
He's not going to get up and goto work unless he's got to.
You know, whip up some holodeckcredits.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I don't think he's going to go to work.
We need a balancing act.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
If that ever happens, you're going to have to have
Well, I think the rule is goingto be you're going to have to
put in 40 hours of work a weekto get four hours on the
holodeck.
So for every 10 hours of work,you get an hour on the holodeck.
That's the only way it's goingto happen.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Otherwise, when that guy does go to work, whatever
he's helping build, they'regoing to have to recall back.
That's what's going to have tohappen.
They're going to be like whoput this together?
I don't know, but the holodeckJoe was on the line last night.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
They hit the all stop button.
Phipps, look at you cards going.
That's not what recall means.
But while we're on the subject,yeah, packard had to recall
47,000 trucks due to an issuethat could result in a total of
loss of steering control.
(31:16):
That's a 47,200 Nate model year24 and 25 Kenworth T2, 80s, 380
, 486, 80, 880s, l, 770s, w 190models and the model year 24
Peterbilt 380, 9s.
The last of those are allgetting recalled 520, 535, all
the way down the line.
So that is a lot of trucks, man, and I got to tell you that's a
(31:40):
lot of two.
That's a lot of trucks.
But it's scary too, becausewhen you talk about Ford doing a
recall and they read in thepaper, you know all they had to
recall 110,000 vehicles to getthat airbag replaced.
Right, that was a couple ofyears ago.
I mean, all the car companieswere replacing the airbags that
they were getting from this onesupplier.
There is a system in place forFord's.
(32:02):
You know, 3,500 dealers to eachone of them.
Take two or three of those aday and over the course of a
very short couple of weeks getthat done.
There are not 3,500 Packarddealers and certainly they don't
know they're not all sittingthere with 47,000 new steering
racks and knuckle assemblies toput in there.
This is going to put thesetrucks on the sidelines for a
(32:25):
while.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
It's.
You know the knuckle thatthey're replacing on the Packard
stuff and then you know.
Then you get the internationalrecall where they're going
through that.
I'm glad that they're goingthrough this, I'm glad that
they're not, that they have to,but I'm glad that they have the
things in place that even in thecommercial class, eight
industry, medium duty, they heypark these things, do not sell
(32:48):
them or bring them back in.
We got to get this fixed.
A lot of this stuff it getsoverlooked.
Everybody wants to talk aboutGM and how Honda and those guys
have recalls or the infamous.
What was it?
The Toyota one with the fourmaps?
Is that?
Who that?
Speaker 3 (33:02):
was yeah, what Mike's referring to is when the Prius,
the second generation Prius,come out.
I think it was like oh 607.
There was a guy who said hisaccelerator got stuck and the
car was just going nuts and hewas driving a hundred and some
miles an hour down the freewayand he was waving his arms out
the window that he couldn't stopand everyone was like, oh yeah,
(33:23):
these hybrids, man, there'scomputers are taking over the
cars who never get there.
And it turned out he had hisfloor mat stuffed on top of the
gas pedal and so they had to doa massive recall and they
actually redesigned to the floormats.
It would latch into place andgo over and cover the gas pedal.
Because it was happening,people were just rear-ending
(33:44):
each other in these Priuses.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, and I don't know how many documented cases
there were at the end of the dayof that.
But we always listen to that.
But a lot of times the mediumduty and the heavy equipment
stuff gets overlooked.
They call it a recall on theon-road stuff, they call it a
pit on the heavy equipment.
It's a product improvementprogram, so nobody talks about
that.
It kind of gets glossed over iswhat I'm getting at.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But that's what we're here for.
We're here to talk about allthis stuff because this is the
heavy equipment podcast, darn it.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
This is what we do.
This is what we do.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
You know, it is a show about nothing, but it's a
show about nothing that isparticular about something.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
We haven't.
Yeah, we're very particularabout what we talk about.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, this is heavy stuff, but I'm strong strong
enough to carry him.
He ain't heavy.
(35:01):
I don't even remember whatwe're talking about.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
We were talking about the recalls and the fact that
they get glossed over, becauseit's heavy equipment and really,
if it wasn't for us, a lot ofpeople wouldn't talk about it.
There's news articles out thereabout it, but we're really the
ones shedding the light on it,doing it live.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
We're doing something out of there, right?
It's interesting too, becausedifferent companies handle
recalls in a very different way.
Right?
Tesla doesn't even want you tocall them recalls, right?
They want to do everything overthe air.
They want to basically emailyou an update and hope for the
best that's going to fix it.
Ford wants you to come in.
They'll do some over-the-airstuff, but Ford wants you to
come into the dealer.
(35:48):
It's going to be interesting tosee as these new manufacturers
come online, because it doesn'tthink we don't talk about much
is that we've got Rivian.
That's a new manufacturerthat's come out in the last two
years.
Scout is coming back.
Scout is going to come backwith SUVs and pickups.
Volvo, their parent company,Geely, has a new truck brand
called Radar.
(36:08):
They're manufacturing out ofMexico DYD, which is that's a
Chinese company that Warm Buffethas heavily invested in.
They've been making literallymillions of vehicles.
They've been making cars inChina and Europe now for decades
and they are opening a plantnow in Mexico.
They already have amanufacturing facility in
California where they do busesand heavy equipment chassis and
(36:31):
things like that.
As all of these brands kind ofcome into the market, they're
going to have to start to thinkabout how they're going to
handle not only Pips and Recalls, but how are they going to
handle quality control for aNorth American audience that for
the last 30, 40 years hasreally had very few companies
come into it?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, I mean, people are coming out.
They get new companies, newpartnerships.
How are they going to handlethis?
Even right down the marketing,the marketing on a Tesla was
different.
That was a new model of how tocapture buyers Right.
It's going to be interesting tosee how that happens.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
No, I think that's a really good point, that the
marketing is going to beinteresting too, because, just
like in the 70s and the 60s and70s, you had a lot of people
that were at that time in theirlives turning 40 and getting
into that middle age wherethey're buying a big car and
it's time for them to buy afamily stand to drive around in,
and Toyota and Honda was cominginto the market.
(37:32):
And those guys that were intheir 40s at that time that's
that prime car buying age theyremembered fighting Japan in a
world war 20 years prior.
You know what I mean.
Like these guys are.
Like I was in Japan.
I was just fighting these guysand you got to imagine the same
thing was happening to theKorean War veterans when Hyundai
(37:52):
came out in the 80s and theywere like what are you talking
about?
When I was a kid I was fightingover there.
And now we've got a lot ofanimosity and a lot of cultural
animosity, even though there wasnever a conflict between the US
and China.
There is this sense of peoplethat the Chinese manufacturers
and the Made in China movementthat the corporations did really
(38:13):
destroyed Main Street USA andthat kind of way of life that
people had for generations.
And so there's there's a lot of, I would say, cultural anger
against China.
So, as all of these Chinesebrands and Indian brands start
coming into the US you knowyou've got companies like
Mahindra and things like thatthat are bringing tractors and
(38:34):
trucks into the US I thinkthey've got an uphill battle
that they're not reallyanticipating because I don't
think they understand that thereis that cultural anger there,
that patriotism there that says,like we're supposed to be
against you guys.
Whether or not that's true,that's the feeling.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
No, you're right.
Yeah, whether or not it's true,it's still out there, it's
still deceiving.
You're going to see people flyaway from stuff and it's going
to take a little bit of trialand error to have an OEM get
somebody to say hey, you know, Iwent to the dealership.
They were pretty cool overthere.
I like what I looked at, I likewhat I ran, I'm going to buy it
(39:15):
.
Yeah, it's going to take thatone on one experience over and
over again to when these kind ofbuyers over, because you're
absolutely right, we have beenvery much old.
You don't buy Chinese.
It's like my daddy quates itway back in the day when he was
younger and it was like well,there's the problem.
(39:37):
This was made in Japan.
That exact line was used inBack to the Future.
Michael Fox says what's one ofthe best stuff made in Japan?
Right, yeah, we're globalizinga lot of our market and we just
I don't know they're going tohave to be careful how they go
about it.
They do it right, it's going tobe success.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Well, but here's the thing how many guys are sitting
there going?
You know, all this junk is madein China and they're typing it
on a Made in China MacBook oriPhone, right?
So there's a little bit ofhypocrisy there and I think it
is going to take some time tounderstand that.
I think it is going to takesome time to figure out how to
market to it.
I think the ones that are goingto be the most successful are
(40:20):
the ones that are going to showup to these, you know, like Con
Expo and Work Truck Week andWorld of Concrete, and let
people get behind the wheel orget into the cab and feel the
levers and do the thing andreally see for themselves that
this is a quality product.
Because I got to tell youhonestly, I was at CES a couple
of weeks ago and they had a BYD,which is an electric Chinese
(40:42):
car, and the only question thatanybody asked was do you think
this is ready to take on Tesla?
And I got to tell youeverything I saw from the paint
to the headlights, to thescreens inside, to the way that
the seat felt on a lower backEverything told me that that was
a better vehicle than the Tesla, and they were doing it for
right about the same price too.
So I think China is coming in,and I think if we're going to
(41:05):
pretend that they're not, it'sjust going to hold us back.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, we're going to.
We're going to see a fairamount of new vehicles come out,
new product, new tractors, allof that, yeah.
So we're really going to shakeup quite a bit of things.
And going back to the recallthing, how they handle the
recalls.
Nothing is perfect, it's stillmanufactured.
How they handle that, what theydo with it, that's going to
(41:29):
make or break them, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah, I agree 100%.
So you know it's funny.
I don't I hesitate to talkabout this because I feel like
you and I get along.
We operate on the samewavelength.
We've known each other for many, many years.
We've never really had anargument that has devolved into
anything nasty, and I knowyou're a Milwaukee guy, but I
(41:54):
have to confess that I might bea Ryobi household.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
No for the household.
For the household.
Ryobi is amazing.
That's so patronizing.
For a lot ofconstruction-related solutions
yeah, for a lot of constructionsolutions it is not.
I mean, it's a good product.
We've done hours for hourstesting on product and if you're
going to use it at home, ryobiis awesome.
If you're going to use itaround the farm, you're going to
(42:19):
use it around other areas, ithas its place.
It does a very good job.
If you're going to just beat itconstantly, no, it just doesn't
last.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah, no, I've honestly heard that before and
you know Milwaukee makes atremendous amount of really
heavy duty quality hand toolsand battery tools.
You know we talked about that alittle bit in our last episode
when we talked to the Mo guysand over here at World of
Concrete in Vegas, dewalt,milwaukee, Tool, bosch they all
(42:51):
had battery powered tools.
Like you know, they're talkingabout real high end stuff that
you're going to use day in andday out on a job site and I have
to admit you know the Ryobistuff that I'm into just wasn't
mentioned in there.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Well, if you want to comment on that We've done
product testing on that and wehave things that we've used for
solutions we themselves willtell you yeah, we're not in that
market space but that's okaybecause the market space needs
Ryobi, dewalt, milwaukee.
They need the off brands, theUS generals that come from
(43:25):
Harbor Free.
We need all that.
We need that, without question.
Everybody has their place inthe pie.
No one's going to cover it fromone end to the other Right Not
at all.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Well, I think that's good stuff.
Maybe we'll wrap this up withsome big trouble in little China
, since we closed it out.
Talking about Chinese market,china is here.
China is here.
China is here.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
Listen to the old pork job express and take his
advice.
On a dark and stormy night, allright, when some wild-eyed,
eight foot tall maniac grabsyour neck, taps the back of your
favorite head up against a barroom wall and he looks at
Cripton in the eye and he asksyou if you've paid your dues.
Or you just stare that bigsucker right back in the eye and
you remember what old JackBurton always says at a time
like that have you paid yourdues, jack?
(44:11):
Yes, sir, the check is in themail.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Tune in next week for more heavy equipment podcast on
Spotify, apple Podcasts, googlewherever you find podcasts.
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