March 22, 2024 • 44 mins
This latest HEP-isode marks the debut of the new "Space Cowboy" opening segment, a visit to Work Truck Week with the new electric Kia commercial van, Caterpillar's $700 million investment in a new engine plant, and a new electric scissor lift from JCB. All that, and a little bit of Reaganomics to close out your busy week.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the latest episode of the heavy
equipment podcast.
I'm your host, joe Boris, hereas ever, with Mike hot, mike
Switzer on the new old iMac.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
To rebuild at the rebuild center.
The reman we got her back.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's a reman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
No, I pulled this thing out of the closet.
I'm like I gotta have somethingbetter.
No, this.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
It sounds good, though I think it's going to.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
They don't like it in the booth.
They don't like this.
They say I'm distracted enoughas it is, or they can't see you
behind it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
They feel like you're hiding.
That's the problem.
That's the problem.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
All I hear is tapping on the glass.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, you keep drinking those Monaco vodka,
tequila things.
They want you drinking water.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let me tell you something about Monaco.
We're going to plug them for asecond.
That's the best drink in a canyou'll ever find.
It's available at any gasstation.
That's worth anything.
If they don't have Monaco,don't get gas there.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Keep on driving.
Well, speaking of driving, youwere all over this last week.
You were in Detroit, you werein Michigan, you drove down to
Indianapolis for their worktruck week.
You've just been all over.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, I was in Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis
, Columbus, Akron.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, big circle.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Now what we did.
I had to go up to Detroit for acouple of meetings.
There's a good vendor up thereof mine People in the heavy
equipment world that don't knowwho they are.
Midland tool and supply alsosuperior.
They do tool sales forindustrial tooling rentals.
They have a full rental fleet.
They work on a lot of our stuff.
So I was up there with meetingswith them and then Indianapolis
(01:37):
for the NTEA Work Truck Week.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
That's the one.
Work Truck Week was interesting, right?
So there's a couple of storiesthat come out of there.
Green Power announced a newboxed truck body.
The freight liner has a lessexpensive electric version now
of their their glider chassiswith some cheaper batteries in
there.
Morgan truck body showed offsome lightweight aluminum and
composite stuff that they say isall super aerodynamic.
(02:04):
I'll talk about it for a second.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So the biggest, one of the biggest issues we are
going on right now with thetruck body market is the weight.
So composite and plastic truckbodies are the way of the future
.
We're going to have to keepgoing there.
The aluminum stuff works.
It's a little bit clunky andsome of the hardware doesn't
last as long, but the compositestuff seems to be holding up and
that that was a really goodbooth.
(02:27):
They had a lot of good productout there and if you combine
that with a Mac MD stuff youcould build yourself a serious
service truck and have apedestal on the back for the
mobile crane.
That'd be a serious truck.
That's actually we're lookingat building one here next, next
year or the year after.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
That's going to be really cool.
I don't know.
I feel like I can't get excitedabout it, though it's not that
it's not a great concept.
It's like my first job in theindustry way back in 1997.
I feel like we were talkingabout composite commercial truck
bodies to do well, they wentthrough a big learning curve
(03:06):
right.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So they had.
You know, a long time ago youhad cold issues, they had
problems with cracking, they hadfatigue in the heat.
When you had them in theSouthwest, they didn't hold up
very well.
They became brittle.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
No, they delaminate under the UV light.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And then now the Southwest is even hotter because
all the solar farming which iscreating vicious heat winds.
That's actually a biggerproblem now, depending on where
you're at out there, but theyhave done a lot of chemical
makeup with those two to combatthat.
I think it's going to come along way.
We still got a little bit to go, I think.
No matter what you do, you'regoing to do, you polymer is
going to become brittle at somepoint and it's going to break
(03:44):
down.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, and it does seem like they've made enough
progress where they're using,like, an aluminum frame with
composite panels, so thecomposites aren't necessarily
structural, which, yeah, it'snot the way that we were trying
to do it back then.
Yeah, it does seem like aninteresting thing.
And then, obviously, kia wasthere for the first time.
They have their new modularlittle delivery van concept,
(04:08):
their PBV concept.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, I saw that I walked by that thing.
It's like for anybody that'sdoing package type deliveries or
running around their careerservices.
There is nothing else right nowon the market that is compact,
shorter, wheelbase.
You can parallel park thatthing anywhere or, if you want
to really trick somebody out, Ithink it's maneuverable enough
that if you had a one and a halfparallel parking spaces, you
(04:32):
can wiggle it right in therewithout having to back up, freak
everybody out to think you'resome kind of Jedi.
You just slid it in theirsideways.
I think that's a really goodride.
And fleets that do a lot ofparts running or organ transport
companies, anybody that doesany medical device work that's
lightweight.
If those fleet guys aren'tlooking at that, they need to be
introduced to it and I thinkKia is starting to get
(04:54):
aggressive on the marketing withit, which they need to do.
It's going to amp up theawareness of it, but they really
need to get out there and maybehit up some of the fleets with
it.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, they were at CES, they were at WorkTruck Week
.
They're going to have a bigpresence of the ACT show in Las
Vegas, the Advanced CleanTrucking, and they're really
what is that that's in May.
The current plan is that we'regoing to be there.
We're going to kind of finalizesome details.
But I'm really surprised thatKia is pushing this so hard,
(05:24):
because this is a company thathas no background in trucking.
They have no background in bigcommercial vans.
They don't even have a compacttruck like Nissan, at least to
have the Nissan hard body whenthey come out with their big
vans.
So this is something that ifyou're GM and you've got that
Sierra 2500 van, if you'reNissan and you're still trying
to plug away with thatmonstrosity you've got, and
(05:45):
you're Ford and you've got yourgiant Transit van.
This seems like a smallermarket that has been overlooked
for a number of years.
I mean, Ford had the TransitConnect for a while, Ram had
that little.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It was a Ram van, but they built it off the caravan
chassis and then they blockedoff the windows.
Those were actually really goodbecause they used a bulletproof
caravan platform that everyfamily in America had and they
made it through the snow withthem.
So those actually were reallygood vehicles.
But I think they're done withthat right.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, they haven't made those in years.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
They have this new one now yeah, the ProMaster,
which is like a fiat Right rightand a lot of that's the
Stilanus underpinnings and stuffcoming over from Europe and we
were talking about Stilanus.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's fine, but it's not the
same thing it's.
You know, especially if you'relooking at it from the point of
view of somebody who lives in asuburban neighborhood.
You know you don't want to parkyour work truck in front of the
house just for aesthetics,right, when you had that caravan
, commercial version, you couldpull that in front of your house
(06:53):
and anybody just doing a quickglance it would just look like
you had a minivan parked infront of your house where now,
because you're kind of subjectedto this work truck, you know,
for lack of a better word, let'ssay the work truck aesthetic
it's really hard to leave that,you know, to leave work at work
and enjoy your weekend whenevery time you look up from the
barbecue you're looking at yourwork van.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
You know we have that.
That's an industry issue withpeople who work in the trades,
where you live somewhere now andH O A's are okay.
30 years ago H O A's were kindof an elitist thing, depending
on where you're working.
Now H O A's are more common andthey have bylaws and a lot more
people are like I can't parkthat in my development, I can't
(07:38):
put it there, and you knowthat's a big issue.
We have that happen in a lot offleets.
I've had that happen inmultiple companies where we have
to make accommodations forpeople because they can't park
their vehicle in front of theirhouse.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So yeah, and that's only going to become more and
more common as you start to getnot only more HOAs, but as the
cost and the price of theseneighborhoods goes up and up,
People are going to start sayingI didn't spend $300,000 to look
out my window and see a workvan and it's like listen, lady,
(08:13):
I don't know how you think thishouse got here, but it was
because trades people built it.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well, you know, okay, the van's got a bad reputation
when Harry and Marv from HomeAlone started creeping around
neighborhoods as the wet banditsand people became weary of them
a long time ago, so we grew upwith that as kids going.
There must be somebody outthere who's going to steal all
of our crap, right?
If there was a legislation outthere if there was a legislation
(08:39):
out there to ban that kind ofthinking for the work of man's
benefit, I would be all over it,and I think the teamsters
should be rallying for thatright now.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Free the HOAs is what the signs should say.
I don't hate that idea and Ithink honestly, if you could get
some of the teamsters motivatedin there, that would be
phenomenal, because everybody inthere at least in the HOAs
around here everybody is likeyou know and again, not to make
this politics, because it's nota political show but everybody
(09:10):
in there is this, like you know,pseudo liberal, kind of snotty,
central conservative kind ofattitude of well, I work hard, I
shouldn't have to look at that.
Or, you know, we don't want tohave certain kind of people in
our neighborhood like I don'tknow what that means, but what I
do know is there's a lot ofhardworking people out there who
(09:31):
get into the trades to make agood income, who work hard,
sometimes 10, 12, 14 hour daysto keep everything moving and
keep everything operatingproperly, and those people do
that so they can provide a homefor themselves and their family,
and they should be able to buya home and live there and work
there as well, I believe thosepeople complaining that they
(09:51):
don't want to look out thewindow at a plumbering van or at
a work van.
As soon as the heater goes outand a negative 20 degree night
on a Sunday evening, they'regoing to go knock on that guy's
door.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I agree and balls.
It stalled there for a second.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It's like the light turns green and just.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Exactly what happened .
That's like Apollo 13, wherethey're like it's done that two
times already and then it startsto bat back up and takes off
with the light.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Biff just figured out .
We're not drinking water, no soHashtag professionalism, let's
go the teamsters need to beinvolved in this.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
They need to be down there looking at all these vans.
They need to be looking at thekey of them.
They need to be looking at howthey can organize some of these
fleets.
Everybody knows I'm pro unionand there's a place for the
union and again, not political.
But as some of these deliverycompanies get larger and larger
and larger, then they're notorganized.
You're going to see moremanipulation of the work fleet,
(11:06):
more manipulation of theworkforce and it's going to go
down an ugly road, because we'realready seeing, with people
that do deliveries, I don't carewho you are, what product
you're selling, but yourdelivery guys are most likely
third party.
If you're in any kind of a bigdelivery circuit and if you're
going to go down the road ofdriving a Kia and running around
metropolitan New York orChicago or LA or San Francisco,
(11:31):
the teamsters should be all overthat, because that is a good
way to have a rate develop forthose drivers, protect them and
give them benefits as more andmore people become citizens and
then they start driving.
This is the same phenomenonthat happened with the taxi cab
industry prior to Uber, prior toUber.
(11:54):
Yet all these people for years.
You're going back into the 50sand 40s that came over to this
country, became citizens, becametaxi cab drivers, made a hell
of a living for themselves andkept getting cabs.
You're doing the same thing.
America cycles itself all thetime.
We're cycling ourselves backinto this thing where these
(12:14):
delivery guys people that aredriving these things are going
to end up in a situation wherethey're being manipulated by the
larger carriers.
That's what I'm getting at.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
That's absolutely right.
Again, I don't think it matterswho you are.
You've read about the problemsthat the UPS drivers and the
Amazon drivers have and you cansit there and point and say well
, they've got a new wage packageand they've got all these great
benefits now that they didn'thave two years ago, but at the
same time, they still don't getthe bathroom breaks.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
You've got stories about Amazon drivers penalized
for taking a backpick Becausethey had to stop for too long,
that's right, and they weredelaying the route.
The UPS guys are unionized andthey did afford a new wage pack
and they did figure it out.
Everybody said it was going tobreak UPS and UPS was going to
go under because of it.
And they didn't.
(13:05):
They got stronger.
The second part of that isthere has been some slanderous
propaganda thrown out there andeverybody's seen it where
they're saying oh, ups driversare going to make $170,000 a
year.
It is entirely not true andwhile there is some mystical
route, probably at the NorthPole, that delivers all the
wrapping paper for Santa andthat man will make $170,000 a
(13:29):
year and eat all the cookiesthat he wants, it's not the
day-to-day driver that dropsyour shit off your door.
And that's what I'm saying.
That's a big time.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Even if it was, let's pretend that it was.
Let's say that you got a job asa UPS driver and you were
making $170,000 a year.
Number one, that does not makeyou rich.
Let's talk about this for asecond.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
No, this is right.
Socio-economics.
This is what we got.
This is socio-economics.
This is heavy stuff.
The first episode.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
That's where we go.
Go back to the first episode.
We talk about socioeconomics,we talk about the economies of
trucking, we talk about thehealthcare that these guys,
these operators, have to gothrough.
But this is real talk.
In the 90s, when you and mewere growing up, and you and I
were probably teenagers in the90s, a middle-class family could
pay the bills, had maybe a fiveor six-year-old car and was
(14:23):
able to send 2.5 kids to a solidfour-year school, and maybe
once a year you did a road tripvacation.
Once every five years youhopped on an airplane.
That was a middle-class familyIn 2024,.
You just described a $400,000 ayear lifestyle.
That's right.
So the reality is that, no,they won't get 170K a year and
(14:46):
there's been a lot of slanderousstuff about it.
But the slanderous stuff hasnothing to do with whether or
not people deserve thatlifestyle.
It's look what that guy'sgetting.
Aren't you mad that he'sgetting something you're not
getting?
We should all celebrate thevictories of the working man,
the working woman, whether it'sus or someone else, because when
(15:06):
they get stronger, we getstronger.
When we get stronger, they getstronger.
It is not a zero-sum game.
When you've got individuals outthere making $200 billion.
It is not a zero-sum game.
Elon's life is not gonna changebecause he went from 220
billion to 54 billion.
But you take that 150 billionand distribute it to all the
(15:28):
workers at Tesla, all thedelivery drivers at Amazon,
that's gonna make a hugedifference.
It's gonna make Americastronger and better and, I'm
sorry, I still don't thinkthat's politics.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I think that's righteous.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
It's a simple, simple statement If you're making
record profits, you should bewriting record paychecks.
That's it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, let's look at this when Ronald Reagan was in
office.
Oh fudge, the trickle-downeconomics plan that he proposed.
While in theory was a genius,it was misguided and manipulated
right in front of him.
The trickle-down economicsidealism was exactly what you
(16:11):
said.
Let the companies make money,make it advantageous for them,
to give it to the workers, giveit to the factories and give it
to their infrastructure, andthen that will trickle down yet
again for more profitability,for not only the companies that
are building this stuff for thelarge corporations, but the
people that are doing all of it,including the people working on
(16:31):
the floor.
He was saying that, listen,this is a way of economic life
that could propel the country tobecome a stronger, unified
workforce under the umbrella ofthe corporations.
That is exactly what you'retalking about.
And yes, there's a balance.
(16:51):
You can't have a guy makingsome you know, $100 trillion a
year and all of his workers aremaking $100 a week.
That's it.
That doesn't work.
And if you have the rightbalances in place it starts to
trickle down and then peoplemake more money.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
But then people talk about inflation.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
They're like oh, but inflation is gonna go crazy.
Inflation does go up.
There is a statute of how tocontrol that, which we've been
doing since the economic crashin the 20s Got out of that.
We got out of the depressionand we realized that we have to
have that every year.
You have to create a steppingstone, you have to allow some
(17:32):
inflation, you have to allowcertain number of people to make
more money, certain people tocome in after that and make a
little bit more money, and thateventually this thing will grow.
That was the only way we gotout of the depression, because
otherwise we were gonna beeating whatever we could grow
and steal and the country wasgonna turn into a wasteland.
And they knew that that goesway back.
(17:54):
We're not far from 100 yearsfrom the crash.
And all of this stuff that wetalk about work trucks, work
truck week, electric chargingwith Volvo, because they're
coming out with that, thatmobile electric charging that is
a huge thing.
That is gonna solve a lot ofproblems.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I think it's gonna solve a lot of problems.
Let's wrap up thissocioeconomic thing, because I
think we're onto something hereand I don't think a mobile
charger is gonna fix it.
But that said, you'reabsolutely right.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
To the corrected way of life.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You're absolutely right, and the problem was not
the rules of the game.
The rules of the game in termsof what got us out of the
depression moving off the goldstandard, going into a fiat
currency, initiating inflation,promoting market growth all of
those things work.
The problem is that there arepeople who are taking advantage
(18:48):
of that system, who are skirtingthe rulebook, and they're using
the wealth and power that theyget in order to maintain an
unfair playing advantage.
And all we're saying we're notsaying that stuff is wrong.
We're not saying we wanna getaway from capitalism.
We're not saying fuckingsocialists are anything stupid
like that.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
No, we're saying the opposite.
We want more capitalism and wewant it to be more the ability
for the people to make moremoney for the harder they work
and the more they're involved.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
That's what we're saying.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
That's exactly right, you're gonna go run a dozer
every day and you're gonna go beon a job site.
We want the ability to makemore money every day.
The only way you can make moremoney every day and every year
and every contract cycle is foryour company to make more money.
The only way they're gonna makemore money is through more
infrastructure, and that's howwe sell heavy equipment, that's
how we use it and that's why webuy trucks.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, brother, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, and he'll say
yeah, yeah, hallelujah, amen.
Speaking of buying trucks, thenew MacMD Electric is finally
reaching the hands of fleetsthose of you that ordered this
(19:58):
thing about 12 months ago whenit first got displayed.
You're probably getting some ofthe first ones now on the
delivery sheets.
But for those fleets thataren't quite sure whether or not
an electric truck is gonna workfor them, they know electric is
coming, they know electric isabout to happen, they know that
the price is coming down becauseof the trickle down stuff that
we've just been talking about.
But you're still not sure ifit's gonna work out for you and
(20:19):
you wanna put it to the test.
But you also don't have thathigh-speed charging.
You don't have thatinfrastructure built into your
depot, built into your job site.
Mac now has a mole chargingsystem.
It's on the back of a MacMD.
You can roll it out to your jobsite or you can roll it out to
your depot where you park yourvehicles at night and use it as
(20:39):
a charger.
And test drive these electricMD electrics and give those a
try for a couple of weeks, seehow they fit into your life, see
how they fit into youroperations before you commit the
time, money, energy andresources to installing that
stuff in.
Now and I wanna talk about thatbecause there's a lot of people
(21:01):
who point to it and say, look,there's so many EV incentives
from the government.
There's up to $75,000 just fromthe utility company.
Here in Chicago, comed is doingan EV rebate $75,000 per
vehicle, up to $50,000 toinstall high-speed charging and
make your job site ready forelectric.
And that's on top of thefederal incentives, which can go
(21:23):
up to $50,000.
On top of the state incentivesyou can stack all of these
rebates.
So people are saying, well, whywouldn't you just buy it?
It's basically free.
That's not true, because thetime it takes to tear up the
concrete, to run that conduit,to run that electrification,
that is disruptive.
And what you're really lookingat there is not somebody buying
(21:43):
an electric vehicle for acompany you're paying to put in
this electric.
What you're really seeing iscompensation for the downtime
that it's gonna take to installthis stuff.
So at the end of it you kind ofbreak even.
Well, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
So, mac, is that is so forward thinking on Mac Volvo
to have a vehicle that's gonnacome out and go?
Look, I know you're worriedabout this.
Let's get all of that off theplate and you tell me if the
truck is worth your time.
That's it.
That is one of the mostaggressive marketing news I've
ever seen.
I've been in this industry forquite a long time and I've been
(22:16):
around it most of my life andI'm gonna tell you there wasn't
anybody else out there when wewent from regular non-emissions
trucks to emissions trucks.
We went from non-deaf to deaf.
There wasn't any campaign outthere where they were like look,
I'm gonna bring you a deaftruck, we're gonna bring you
this, we're gonna set you upwith a mobile deaf pump and
(22:38):
you're gonna see how easy thisworks.
Now, how many years later, arewe Deaf is not even the thing
you poured in there.
You're all done.
Now he agrees worried aboutelectric.
I gotta give them a lot ofcredit, because anybody that's
worried about electric needs.
They need this and the carmanufacturers this is something
that Tesla and the other guysshould be doing.
When you got a fleet and youhave a fleet of mainly pickup
(23:01):
trucks or EV type cars andyou're trying to break that in.
It's a small mom and popinsurance agency that's got six
vehicles and they're trying tofigure out how to get around.
Bring something over there tolet them charge them, let them
see how good they are and letthem see how they run around and
then they'll worry about theinfrastructure and how they're
gonna get the money for it,because the honest to God truth
(23:22):
is the rebates that you're gonnaget you're gonna use to put the
infrastructure in.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
So this stuff isn't free.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
But the disruptive part of your business is a big
part of that huge part of that.
I have prolonged having EVvehicles at our offices for a
little while because we are notready to fight that off.
But that doesn't mean it'swrong.
I got people every day askingme in the fleet saying, hey, why
can't I get a gas, hybrid,electric, why can't I get a
(23:51):
fully electric car?
I'm the guy buying it and I'mtrying to tell him look, we're
putting a plan together so thatover the next two, three years
we could put charging at theoffices.
They don't wanna hear it, theywant it.
Now I got people going listen,I already have an electric car
at home.
I wanna plug this thing in too.
I don't want all this gas stuff.
I don't wanna deal with gascards and I don't wanna have my
(24:13):
gas card not working at 11o'clock at night because
somebody tried to rip my numberoff at the pump.
That's a huge problem when wetravel a lot.
So these corporate gas cardsthat our companies have when
anybody tries to skim thatnumber in a pump glitches or
anything like that, the creditcard companies turn the card off
and then you're stuck.
Yeah, and listen, I don't blameanybody for calling me at 10
(24:37):
o'clock at night going, hey, I'mputting gas on my car, I'll
expense it.
But the guy that calls me thatsays hey, I'm driving a, I'm
driving a Mac Granite, andlisten, I ain't showing this up
on my credit card.
So let's figure out what we'redoing.
I don't blame that guy one bit.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I gotta figure out how to gethis gas card turned back on in
the middle of the night.
That's okay, and I think thatthe infrastructure part of this
(25:01):
is gonna come.
But this is such a huge bridgegap for them it's gonna put them
way ahead of everybody else.
And then, listen, if you're Kiaand you're working on, or
you're working on anybody else,it's got an electric version of
a truck and you know Mac's outthere with their MD battery
truck.
Call them and talk to the Macdealer and say, hey, how do I
(25:22):
join in with you on this?
Because I know what you'reselling and I'm selling the
other thing that you don't sell.
And let's talk about thatelectrically and figure out how
we can charge off each other.
There's a lot of partnershipsto be had there.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
There's a lot of partnerships there.
We definitely need to talkabout that, you know.
And it is interesting becausefor as many people who are
saying I'll never buy electric,I'm never gonna have an electric
vehicle, that's okay, nobody'sforcing you.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
For the people, that do want it.
Nobody's forcing anybody.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
No, and for the people that do want it and do
want to take advantage of someof the things and some of the
features, I love the idea ofplugging into your car and then
the car handles all the protocol, handles all the payment.
It's done.
You don't have to swipe yourcard, you don't have to get your
pin skimmed by one of thosecard skimmers.
That's on all these differentshell stations and everything
(26:10):
Not to pick on shell, but that'sthe one by my house that
everybody got ripped off at.
You know, it happened to myfather-in-law.
He got his credit card rippedoff there and he didn't figure
it out until he got home and hesaw all these plane tickets
purchased on his card and I waslike, dude, what are you doing?
I said, oh, all I did was goget gas.
You know, all you did was goget gas.
Dude, everywhere you swipe yourcard, somebody's trying to get
(26:32):
a piece out of you and it'srough.
But the good news is and thisis a great segue into this one
we're gonna love this.
No matter how enthusiastic youare about electric, you have to
admit if you understand what'sgoing on, you understand energy
and physics that there are somejobs where electric and battery
electric specifically justdoesn't make sense.
The energy density isn't there.
(26:53):
The weight of the batteryrequired to do the kilowatts and
kilowatts and kilowatts of work, of moving the dirt and moving
the concrete and grading theroads, is so high that the
weight of the battery, theweight of machine, would sink it
into the road itself, not evensink it into the mud, you'll
sink it into the concrete.
So you know, we do have to talka little bit about that.
(27:16):
There is still a place forinternal combustion, whether
it's hydrogen, whether it'sdiesel, whether it's bio and
Caterpillar.
They are spending $725 millionto update and upgrade their big
engine shop in Indiana, and Ithink that is a solid, very
clear message that they intendto be the leaders in combustion
(27:37):
going out the next 10, 20 years.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Well, we've talked about Cummins with Helm, right,
we've been talking about that.
Caterpillar is always, in theindustry, been the one who kind
of sits there and goes, we'renot gonna be.
They're not always the first tothrow out their car, right,
they're not always the first tothrow out the marketing.
But what they do?
They get their stuff situatedto get their infrastructure
figured out, and then they do alaunch, like they just did, and
(28:02):
say we're gonna put $750 millionin their engine plan.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We're gonna do it here in the United.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
States.
We're going to ramp up ourefficiency on diesel because
this is all the segue tohydrogen.
Yeah, can't forget that.
Everybody knows the multi fuelis the way of the future.
They get this off the ground.
Caterpillar is doing that.
I mean, john Deere is doingthat as well, but Caterpillar.
They have made significantInfrastructure investments in
(28:28):
the United States.
They got the many excavatorplant, the skid steer plant down
south.
They've always had theexcavator plants down in the
Mid-South.
They have in Indiana in theMidwest, the engine plants, the
truck plants, the wheel litterplants.
They want to provide stuff forthis country.
They want to build it here asmuch as they can and they need
that.
I'm trying actually to reach out, see if I can get it toward the
(28:50):
engine plant over there.
I was at that engine plant longago, probably 10 plus years ago
, and then back then it wasstate-of-the-art and that plant
was amazing.
So I can only imagine what it'sgoing to be like after they put
750 million dollars into it.
That's a huge number.
Yeah, when you tell yourshareholders that you're gonna
put 750 million dollars in onefacility in one state, think
(29:13):
about what that's gonna do forinfrastructure and what they're
gonna do for everything else,right down to the machining
centers they are gonna end upupgrading for, so that you're
gonna see a lot of you know whatwe talked about earlier.
Which is why I talked aboutthat earlier in that episode,
because Joe thinks I fly off therails and everybody's yelling
at me from the control boothbanging on the glass and they're
going home.
This is all part of the trickledown of all this.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That's why I got quiet.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
They fool about who knows what they're doing over
there.
There's nobody over there.
I get a little pop-up sign thatsays, fine, you take it when do
you go, my lovely?
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Where do you go?
I want to know, my lovely, Iwant to know where do you go?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Hey, listen it's rural.
For them to go?
Knows their feed the cat orsomething.
This acute cat will put hispicture, probably some kind of
weird affair going on over therebehind the glass, but that's
for another episode live fromthe grow house.
But that's a trickle downeffect that we talked about with
(30:33):
all that's gonna be huge, it'sgonna be huge and caterpillar
has always been one of thosecompanies that did it right.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I know that they've had some run-ins with the Union,
but they've always seemed toresolve them without getting
super ugly.
And I think that's also true,you know, because caterpillars a
global company.
I think that's true inAustralia just as much as it's
true in the US and true inEurope.
They are really out there.
And the multi fuel thing ishuge, because if you look at
what fiat commercial power isdoing, if you look at what Balvo
(31:04):
Penta is doing, if you look atwhat John Deere is doing with
their combustion engines,everybody's kind of trying to
figure out how to run not onlymulti fuel but also blended fuel
mixes where it's 80% diesel,20% hydrogen.
The new thing is now methane.
I love this idea.
Actually, the the case guybrought this up and I've been
doing some research on thiswhere the dairy farmers are able
(31:26):
to capture the manure, get themethane that's coming off of it,
hide, you know, electrolyzethat using solar panels on the
barn, turn that into fuel grademethanol and Run their tractors
off of their manure.
And in many cases these largefarmers they're able to
effectively package that, put itinto a a you know a large
(31:50):
canister and sell that methanolback to the power companies or
back to other farms that canmake use of that as a fuel and
man, if you want to talk aboutsomething that's you know and
everybody knows who knows me.
You know I'm a little bit of atree hugger, a little
environmentalist I I stronglybelieve that we need to preserve
our national parks in ourforest.
I grew up in Florida.
(32:10):
The Everglades are a big dealto me.
Being close to nature, seeingthose animals and being able to
go out into the woods and intothe wild has always been a huge
part of my whole deal.
And when I look at that, evenif you compare that to electric,
this is such a perfect closedsystem.
It addresses all of theenvironmental concerns of big
(32:30):
farms.
It makes it easier for thefarmer to get fuel and be
self-reliant, takes everybodyoff the grid.
I mean, if you're the type ofperson who says I don't want to
go electric because I don't wantthe government to be able to
shut off my power, yeah, numberone you've forgotten that solar
panels exist, but we're gonnalet you forget that.
This is such a great way to dothat in a way that is
sustainable.
It doesn't make you dependenton foreign oil.
(32:53):
It doesn't make you dependenton battery tech from China.
You can just harvest what comesout of the cows naturally and
I'm not talking about the milkand Run your tractor on it, run
your truck on it.
That is so dairy.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
You know their industry has been been really
torn up in the United States andit's been, continues to be, and
that's that's why the dairyfarmers and CNH talk about that,
because they've been able to.
You know you have big Glomeratedairy farms today.
You know we can make simulatedmilk and we can do all that make
it not come from a cow.
(33:29):
But there's no question and noquestion.
The milk coming from a cow, youknow we still need it.
We have to get it.
It's no different than raisinga crop and we have to have crops
so farmers are able to capturethat and help get a return on it
.
They've always been craftybecause they don't have a lot of
margin to work with.
Right time.
(33:50):
You, you feed the cow, you milkit, you pay all the milk money
for the infrastructure and theupkeep that you need in the
milkhouse.
Then you turn around, you paythe dairy all the money that you
need to pay them or theyactually.
What they do is they just takeit what the milks were, because
they're paying you by thehundred weight.
By the time you skim all thatdown, you have enough money for
(34:10):
next week.
You, yeah, and I grew up arounda lot of dairy farmers.
I worked on dairy farms for awhile and a lot of people
overlooked that.
And any of this technology helpsdairy farmers out and I don't
blame them for not wanting to goelectric.
If you look at a lot of thedairy farming, a lot of it is
electric, based from thecleaning mechanisms that clean
(34:31):
the barns to the pump housesthat pump the waste and manure
and water and all that back outto the holding pods, the
stirring tanks and all thatstuff that they have.
All of that is electric already.
So they're already utilizingall that.
And the misleading problem.
And if you're working at anenergy providing company, they
(34:53):
have to start educating thepublic on hydrogen.
They have to do it now so thatwhen we're ready to start using
it in the future, people are notafraid of it, Because in these
industry round table meetingsI'm in and in this industry
segments that I get pulled intoand all these conference calls,
everybody uses the same termbomb.
It is not a hydrogen bomb.
(35:13):
It is not going to level yourfacility.
It is not gonna put a hole inthe earth if it gets in an
accident.
We have to do the education toget away from this.
This is a big part of the heavyequipment industry that has
always been overlooked.
Yeah, Education on the productand what we're using to fuel it
(35:34):
has to be happening.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, and I think that you've said it exactly
right.
You know there was back in 2000, I wanna say 2009, 2010,.
There was a hydrogen Fordfusion.
They took it out to Bonneville.
This was a NASCAR body, Fordfusion, and it said fusion and
hydrogen on the car.
This was not a hydrogen fusion,nuclear car.
(35:57):
And just about every article Iread about the car, every
comment on it, back in the earlydays of the internet, when
people still had forums, everycomment was oh, it's nuclear
powered.
Oh, it's got a fusion reactor.
Oh, what happens if you crashthat thing?
It'll take up the whole cityand it is shocking to me how
(36:17):
much that mentality is still outthere.
But instead of that and gettingdepressed about the insanity
and ignorance of our fellowhumans, we're gonna play a clip
from the Scissor Sisters.
When I wake up in the morningwith my head like what you done.
This isn't the way to life.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
But I don't need another one.
You like good love and care andI'm in with him counts.
So I call my fears so lonelywhen you're up getting down, so
I'll get along when I can hearthat dance of song.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I'm gonna be the one who gets it right.
Okay, we're back.
You're gonna talk about asmooth segue.
That's how you segue, baby.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
That was good.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Listen, you're John Oliver.
You're putting together a $25million show.
That's how you do it, baby.
That's right.
Yeah, so that's our good segueinto the new JCB Electric Drive.
Scissor Lift, the 1932 there.
Have you seen this?
This is actually a really coolthing.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Those are cool.
Those are cool lifts and I havenot rented any yet, but I did
ask about them and I mean,obviously they're new but yeah
they're.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, well, for those of you who are paying attention
to this market, obviouslyscissor lifts are a little bit
different than what we normallytalk about, but they're
important on job sites.
They're important on logistics,especially in urban
environments.
You see them in Chicago all thetime because there's not a ton
of room on the sidewalk for bigcranes or anything.
This is really cool, becauseJCB has had this Electric Drive
(38:01):
1932 unit for a couple of yearsnow and they've upgraded it.
And what they've done isthey've said look, we're getting
enough work out of this, we'regetting enough hours of
operation out of the existingbattery.
So now we have a new batterythat's less weight, that's
lighter, that's more energydense.
And they didn't put in morebattery and say now you have two
(38:23):
days of operation with this.
They made it smaller andlighter.
So now it comes in at 3,500pounds.
Why is that important?
That's important because at3,500 pounds you can transport
this thing inside of a Forde-transit van or of a Ram Pro
Master that has a 3,550 payloadcapacity, so you can pull this
(38:45):
thing into the back along withyour bag of tools and whatever
attachments you need and justdrive it out to the job site,
whereas before you had to have atrailer, you had to have a
vehicle rated to tow 5,000 pluspounds and you had to get this
thing to the job site.
This makes it much moretransportable, much easier to
move around, a much moreappetizing purchase for a
(39:10):
attractive young fleet managerlike yourself.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And not only that.
If you're done doing itsingular, you could put 10 of
them on a landall trailer anddrop them off and be under the
80,000 weight limit.
That is also a big thing.
Mobilization costs are huge inthe industry, and the more stuff
you can jam on the trailer thebetter off you are, and if you
can call up United Sunbelt orwhoever.
(39:33):
and they're like how many clipsdo you need?
You're like I need 50.
And they're trying to figureout how to get all these
packages on the trailers and cutdown how many trailers you've
got, You've cut down on energycosts, you've cut down on
transportation trips and howmany $100 chargers you're gonna
get off of them.
And then you talked abouthandling you.
You got less handling time foreverything.
(39:54):
So, yeah, beyond the idea of itbeing lighter.
You're just smaller.
It's more efficient.
In general, we keep it atweight right?
We gotta move weight at the endof the day.
Moving weight at the end of theday is our biggest struggle.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
And you're right, it doesn't matter if it's pounds of
dirt, pounds of battery, poundsof gas.
It just pounds, it doesn'tmatter.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
That battery could have been doubled in size and
said hey look, we got thisscissor left, you don't have to
charge it and if you keep thething turned off, you use it all
week.
No, they were like no, we needto do what's right.
We need to make this thinglighter and more mobile, and we
need more of that.
We can get power out of things,and there are places for weight
okay when bulldozers andtractive type power units need
(40:38):
weight.
Other than that, you don't.
You need to be as efficient aspossible and counterbalance it
as much as you need to to offsetwhat you're trying to do.
We've been doing it in theindustry for years.
It happens right in front of us.
So the thing that you know whenyou touch on this before too, is
that battery technology itkeeps shrinking, right.
(41:00):
So like the cost goes down andthen you come out with a new
battery and it's a little bitmore expensive, but then it goes
back down.
The cost of technology keepsdropping and the size of what
you need for battery power keepsdropping.
A lot of people still look ateverything as lead acid
batteries.
They're like oh my god, youknow, I don't know how we're
gonna get that.
That's not the case anymore.
(41:20):
We have a lot of technologywith that and people forget that
.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Well, and it's funny because you can see the anti-EV
Emotion right Now the big thingis oh well, you know, you're
getting rare earth elements andit's all coming out of China
with slave labor and the lithiummines.
And it's like, well, the newFord Mustang doesn't even use
lithium ion batteries, it usesiron phosphate.
(41:44):
It's like, well, iron phosphate, what's that?
Well, it comes out of scrapmetal and sand in northern
Florida that nobody wants.
It's been worthless for athousand years and now, all of a
sudden, the phosphate mines arethere is a guy down there.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
when all this started and the phosphate mines started
becoming big business, therewas a guy shaking his cane at
his kids telling you I knew it,I told you and.
I told you, we were gonna comeout on top.
You're laughing.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I can drive.
Yeah, it's exactly whathappened.
I can drive you to the trainrail in Florida and show you
where it's happening.
And it's like right outside ofLake Okeechobee.
They're moving rail cars worthof phosphate every day and it's
absolutely shocking because 25years ago that was worthless
sand.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yes, yes, it tears the equipment up bad.
Nobody likes any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Well, you're gonna like listen when the $20,000
electric car comes out that goes300 miles and recharges in 12
minutes.
You're gonna love that stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yep, that's what's coming next.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
All right.
Well, I think we're done forthe day.
Young Michael, we're gonna comeback next week.
We're going to talk about JohnDeere's new bulldozers and
whatever other nonsensical stuffis going to happen, and I think
, as we round out the show inhonor of our new intro and our
new opening segment, we'll playa little Space Cowboy.
How has the pompadism love overthere?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Oh, my God.
Welcome back to the latest episode of the heavy
equipment podcast.
I'm your host, joe Boris, hereas ever, with Mike hot, mike
Switzer on the new old iMac.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
To rebuild at the rebuild center.
The reman we got her back.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's a reman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
No, I pulled this thing out of the closet.
I'm like I gotta have somethingbetter.
No, this.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
It sounds good, though I think it's going to.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
They don't like it in the booth.
They don't like this.
They say I'm distracted enoughas it is, or they can't see you
behind it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
They feel like you're hiding.
That's the problem.
That's the problem.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
All I hear is tapping on the glass.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, you keep drinking those Monaco vodka,
tequila things.
They want you drinking water.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let me tell you something about Monaco.
We're going to plug them for asecond.
That's the best drink in a canyou'll ever find.
It's available at any gasstation.
That's worth anything.
If they don't have Monaco,don't get gas there.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Keep on driving.
Well, speaking of driving, youwere all over this last week.
You were in Detroit, you werein Michigan, you drove down to
Indianapolis for their worktruck week.
You've just been all over.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, I was in Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis
, Columbus, Akron.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, big circle.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Now what we did.
I had to go up to Detroit for acouple of meetings.
There's a good vendor up thereof mine People in the heavy
equipment world that don't knowwho they are.
Midland tool and supply alsosuperior.
They do tool sales forindustrial tooling rentals.
They have a full rental fleet.
They work on a lot of our stuff.
So I was up there with meetingswith them and then Indianapolis
(01:37):
for the NTEA Work Truck Week.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
That's the one.
Work Truck Week was interesting, right?
So there's a couple of storiesthat come out of there.
Green Power announced a newboxed truck body.
The freight liner has a lessexpensive electric version now
of their their glider chassiswith some cheaper batteries in
there.
Morgan truck body showed offsome lightweight aluminum and
composite stuff that they say isall super aerodynamic.
(02:04):
I'll talk about it for a second.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So the biggest, one of the biggest issues we are
going on right now with thetruck body market is the weight.
So composite and plastic truckbodies are the way of the future
.
We're going to have to keepgoing there.
The aluminum stuff works.
It's a little bit clunky andsome of the hardware doesn't
last as long, but the compositestuff seems to be holding up and
that that was a really goodbooth.
(02:27):
They had a lot of good productout there and if you combine
that with a Mac MD stuff youcould build yourself a serious
service truck and have apedestal on the back for the
mobile crane.
That'd be a serious truck.
That's actually we're lookingat building one here next, next
year or the year after.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
That's going to be really cool.
I don't know.
I feel like I can't get excitedabout it, though it's not that
it's not a great concept.
It's like my first job in theindustry way back in 1997.
I feel like we were talkingabout composite commercial truck
bodies to do well, they wentthrough a big learning curve
(03:06):
right.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So they had.
You know, a long time ago youhad cold issues, they had
problems with cracking, they hadfatigue in the heat.
When you had them in theSouthwest, they didn't hold up
very well.
They became brittle.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
No, they delaminate under the UV light.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And then now the Southwest is even hotter because
all the solar farming which iscreating vicious heat winds.
That's actually a biggerproblem now, depending on where
you're at out there, but theyhave done a lot of chemical
makeup with those two to combatthat.
I think it's going to come along way.
We still got a little bit to go, I think.
No matter what you do, you'regoing to do, you polymer is
going to become brittle at somepoint and it's going to break
(03:44):
down.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, and it does seem like they've made enough
progress where they're using,like, an aluminum frame with
composite panels, so thecomposites aren't necessarily
structural, which, yeah, it'snot the way that we were trying
to do it back then.
Yeah, it does seem like aninteresting thing.
And then, obviously, kia wasthere for the first time.
They have their new modularlittle delivery van concept,
(04:08):
their PBV concept.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, I saw that I walked by that thing.
It's like for anybody that'sdoing package type deliveries or
running around their careerservices.
There is nothing else right nowon the market that is compact,
shorter, wheelbase.
You can parallel park thatthing anywhere or, if you want
to really trick somebody out, Ithink it's maneuverable enough
that if you had a one and a halfparallel parking spaces, you
(04:32):
can wiggle it right in therewithout having to back up, freak
everybody out to think you'resome kind of Jedi.
You just slid it in theirsideways.
I think that's a really goodride.
And fleets that do a lot ofparts running or organ transport
companies, anybody that doesany medical device work that's
lightweight.
If those fleet guys aren'tlooking at that, they need to be
introduced to it and I thinkKia is starting to get
(04:54):
aggressive on the marketing withit, which they need to do.
It's going to amp up theawareness of it, but they really
need to get out there and maybehit up some of the fleets with
it.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, they were at CES, they were at WorkTruck Week
.
They're going to have a bigpresence of the ACT show in Las
Vegas, the Advanced CleanTrucking, and they're really
what is that that's in May.
The current plan is that we'regoing to be there.
We're going to kind of finalizesome details.
But I'm really surprised thatKia is pushing this so hard,
(05:24):
because this is a company thathas no background in trucking.
They have no background in bigcommercial vans.
They don't even have a compacttruck like Nissan, at least to
have the Nissan hard body whenthey come out with their big
vans.
So this is something that ifyou're GM and you've got that
Sierra 2500 van, if you'reNissan and you're still trying
to plug away with thatmonstrosity you've got, and
(05:45):
you're Ford and you've got yourgiant Transit van.
This seems like a smallermarket that has been overlooked
for a number of years.
I mean, Ford had the TransitConnect for a while, Ram had
that little.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It was a Ram van, but they built it off the caravan
chassis and then they blockedoff the windows.
Those were actually really goodbecause they used a bulletproof
caravan platform that everyfamily in America had and they
made it through the snow withthem.
So those actually were reallygood vehicles.
But I think they're done withthat right.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, they haven't made those in years.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
They have this new one now yeah, the ProMaster,
which is like a fiat Right rightand a lot of that's the
Stilanus underpinnings and stuffcoming over from Europe and we
were talking about Stilanus.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's fine, but it's not the
same thing it's.
You know, especially if you'relooking at it from the point of
view of somebody who lives in asuburban neighborhood.
You know you don't want to parkyour work truck in front of the
house just for aesthetics,right, when you had that caravan
, commercial version, you couldpull that in front of your house
(06:53):
and anybody just doing a quickglance it would just look like
you had a minivan parked infront of your house where now,
because you're kind of subjectedto this work truck, you know,
for lack of a better word, let'ssay the work truck aesthetic
it's really hard to leave that,you know, to leave work at work
and enjoy your weekend whenevery time you look up from the
barbecue you're looking at yourwork van.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
You know we have that.
That's an industry issue withpeople who work in the trades,
where you live somewhere now andH O A's are okay.
30 years ago H O A's were kindof an elitist thing, depending
on where you're working.
Now H O A's are more common andthey have bylaws and a lot more
people are like I can't parkthat in my development, I can't
(07:38):
put it there, and you knowthat's a big issue.
We have that happen in a lot offleets.
I've had that happen inmultiple companies where we have
to make accommodations forpeople because they can't park
their vehicle in front of theirhouse.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So yeah, and that's only going to become more and
more common as you start to getnot only more HOAs, but as the
cost and the price of theseneighborhoods goes up and up,
People are going to start sayingI didn't spend $300,000 to look
out my window and see a workvan and it's like listen, lady,
(08:13):
I don't know how you think thishouse got here, but it was
because trades people built it.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well, you know, okay, the van's got a bad reputation
when Harry and Marv from HomeAlone started creeping around
neighborhoods as the wet banditsand people became weary of them
a long time ago, so we grew upwith that as kids going.
There must be somebody outthere who's going to steal all
of our crap, right?
If there was a legislation outthere if there was a legislation
(08:39):
out there to ban that kind ofthinking for the work of man's
benefit, I would be all over it,and I think the teamsters
should be rallying for thatright now.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Free the HOAs is what the signs should say.
I don't hate that idea and Ithink honestly, if you could get
some of the teamsters motivatedin there, that would be
phenomenal, because everybody inthere at least in the HOAs
around here everybody is likeyou know and again, not to make
this politics, because it's nota political show but everybody
(09:10):
in there is this, like you know,pseudo liberal, kind of snotty,
central conservative kind ofattitude of well, I work hard, I
shouldn't have to look at that.
Or, you know, we don't want tohave certain kind of people in
our neighborhood like I don'tknow what that means, but what I
do know is there's a lot ofhardworking people out there who
(09:31):
get into the trades to make agood income, who work hard,
sometimes 10, 12, 14 hour daysto keep everything moving and
keep everything operatingproperly, and those people do
that so they can provide a homefor themselves and their family,
and they should be able to buya home and live there and work
there as well, I believe thosepeople complaining that they
(09:51):
don't want to look out thewindow at a plumbering van or at
a work van.
As soon as the heater goes outand a negative 20 degree night
on a Sunday evening, they'regoing to go knock on that guy's
door.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I agree and balls.
It stalled there for a second.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It's like the light turns green and just.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Exactly what happened .
That's like Apollo 13, wherethey're like it's done that two
times already and then it startsto bat back up and takes off
with the light.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Biff just figured out .
We're not drinking water, no soHashtag professionalism, let's
go the teamsters need to beinvolved in this.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
They need to be down there looking at all these vans.
They need to be looking at thekey of them.
They need to be looking at howthey can organize some of these
fleets.
Everybody knows I'm pro unionand there's a place for the
union and again, not political.
But as some of these deliverycompanies get larger and larger
and larger, then they're notorganized.
You're going to see moremanipulation of the work fleet,
(11:06):
more manipulation of theworkforce and it's going to go
down an ugly road, because we'realready seeing, with people
that do deliveries, I don't carewho you are, what product
you're selling, but yourdelivery guys are most likely
third party.
If you're in any kind of a bigdelivery circuit and if you're
going to go down the road ofdriving a Kia and running around
metropolitan New York orChicago or LA or San Francisco,
(11:31):
the teamsters should be all overthat, because that is a good
way to have a rate develop forthose drivers, protect them and
give them benefits as more andmore people become citizens and
then they start driving.
This is the same phenomenonthat happened with the taxi cab
industry prior to Uber, prior toUber.
(11:54):
Yet all these people for years.
You're going back into the 50sand 40s that came over to this
country, became citizens, becametaxi cab drivers, made a hell
of a living for themselves andkept getting cabs.
You're doing the same thing.
America cycles itself all thetime.
We're cycling ourselves backinto this thing where these
(12:14):
delivery guys people that aredriving these things are going
to end up in a situation wherethey're being manipulated by the
larger carriers.
That's what I'm getting at.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
That's absolutely right.
Again, I don't think it matterswho you are.
You've read about the problemsthat the UPS drivers and the
Amazon drivers have and you cansit there and point and say well
, they've got a new wage packageand they've got all these great
benefits now that they didn'thave two years ago, but at the
same time, they still don't getthe bathroom breaks.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
You've got stories about Amazon drivers penalized
for taking a backpick Becausethey had to stop for too long,
that's right, and they weredelaying the route.
The UPS guys are unionized andthey did afford a new wage pack
and they did figure it out.
Everybody said it was going tobreak UPS and UPS was going to
go under because of it.
And they didn't.
(13:05):
They got stronger.
The second part of that isthere has been some slanderous
propaganda thrown out there andeverybody's seen it where
they're saying oh, ups driversare going to make $170,000 a
year.
It is entirely not true andwhile there is some mystical
route, probably at the NorthPole, that delivers all the
wrapping paper for Santa andthat man will make $170,000 a
(13:29):
year and eat all the cookiesthat he wants, it's not the
day-to-day driver that dropsyour shit off your door.
And that's what I'm saying.
That's a big time.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Even if it was, let's pretend that it was.
Let's say that you got a job asa UPS driver and you were
making $170,000 a year.
Number one, that does not makeyou rich.
Let's talk about this for asecond.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
No, this is right.
Socio-economics.
This is what we got.
This is socio-economics.
This is heavy stuff.
The first episode.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
That's where we go.
Go back to the first episode.
We talk about socioeconomics,we talk about the economies of
trucking, we talk about thehealthcare that these guys,
these operators, have to gothrough.
But this is real talk.
In the 90s, when you and mewere growing up, and you and I
were probably teenagers in the90s, a middle-class family could
pay the bills, had maybe a fiveor six-year-old car and was
(14:23):
able to send 2.5 kids to a solidfour-year school, and maybe
once a year you did a road tripvacation.
Once every five years youhopped on an airplane.
That was a middle-class familyIn 2024,.
You just described a $400,000 ayear lifestyle.
That's right.
So the reality is that, no,they won't get 170K a year and
(14:46):
there's been a lot of slanderousstuff about it.
But the slanderous stuff hasnothing to do with whether or
not people deserve thatlifestyle.
It's look what that guy'sgetting.
Aren't you mad that he'sgetting something you're not
getting?
We should all celebrate thevictories of the working man,
the working woman, whether it'sus or someone else, because when
(15:06):
they get stronger, we getstronger.
When we get stronger, they getstronger.
It is not a zero-sum game.
When you've got individuals outthere making $200 billion.
It is not a zero-sum game.
Elon's life is not gonna changebecause he went from 220
billion to 54 billion.
But you take that 150 billionand distribute it to all the
(15:28):
workers at Tesla, all thedelivery drivers at Amazon,
that's gonna make a hugedifference.
It's gonna make Americastronger and better and, I'm
sorry, I still don't thinkthat's politics.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I think that's righteous.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
It's a simple, simple statement If you're making
record profits, you should bewriting record paychecks.
That's it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, let's look at this when Ronald Reagan was in
office.
Oh fudge, the trickle-downeconomics plan that he proposed.
While in theory was a genius,it was misguided and manipulated
right in front of him.
The trickle-down economicsidealism was exactly what you
(16:11):
said.
Let the companies make money,make it advantageous for them,
to give it to the workers, giveit to the factories and give it
to their infrastructure, andthen that will trickle down yet
again for more profitability,for not only the companies that
are building this stuff for thelarge corporations, but the
people that are doing all of it,including the people working on
(16:31):
the floor.
He was saying that, listen,this is a way of economic life
that could propel the country tobecome a stronger, unified
workforce under the umbrella ofthe corporations.
That is exactly what you'retalking about.
And yes, there's a balance.
(16:51):
You can't have a guy makingsome you know, $100 trillion a
year and all of his workers aremaking $100 a week.
That's it.
That doesn't work.
And if you have the rightbalances in place it starts to
trickle down and then peoplemake more money.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
But then people talk about inflation.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
They're like oh, but inflation is gonna go crazy.
Inflation does go up.
There is a statute of how tocontrol that, which we've been
doing since the economic crashin the 20s Got out of that.
We got out of the depressionand we realized that we have to
have that every year.
You have to create a steppingstone, you have to allow some
(17:32):
inflation, you have to allowcertain number of people to make
more money, certain people tocome in after that and make a
little bit more money, and thateventually this thing will grow.
That was the only way we gotout of the depression, because
otherwise we were gonna beeating whatever we could grow
and steal and the country wasgonna turn into a wasteland.
And they knew that that goesway back.
(17:54):
We're not far from 100 yearsfrom the crash.
And all of this stuff that wetalk about work trucks, work
truck week, electric chargingwith Volvo, because they're
coming out with that, thatmobile electric charging that is
a huge thing.
That is gonna solve a lot ofproblems.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I think it's gonna solve a lot of problems.
Let's wrap up thissocioeconomic thing, because I
think we're onto something hereand I don't think a mobile
charger is gonna fix it.
But that said, you'reabsolutely right.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
To the corrected way of life.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You're absolutely right, and the problem was not
the rules of the game.
The rules of the game in termsof what got us out of the
depression moving off the goldstandard, going into a fiat
currency, initiating inflation,promoting market growth all of
those things work.
The problem is that there arepeople who are taking advantage
(18:48):
of that system, who are skirtingthe rulebook, and they're using
the wealth and power that theyget in order to maintain an
unfair playing advantage.
And all we're saying we're notsaying that stuff is wrong.
We're not saying we wanna getaway from capitalism.
We're not saying fuckingsocialists are anything stupid
like that.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
No, we're saying the opposite.
We want more capitalism and wewant it to be more the ability
for the people to make moremoney for the harder they work
and the more they're involved.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
That's what we're saying.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
That's exactly right, you're gonna go run a dozer
every day and you're gonna go beon a job site.
We want the ability to makemore money every day.
The only way you can make moremoney every day and every year
and every contract cycle is foryour company to make more money.
The only way they're gonna makemore money is through more
infrastructure, and that's howwe sell heavy equipment, that's
how we use it and that's why webuy trucks.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, brother, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, and he'll say
yeah, yeah, hallelujah, amen.
Speaking of buying trucks, thenew MacMD Electric is finally
reaching the hands of fleetsthose of you that ordered this
(19:58):
thing about 12 months ago whenit first got displayed.
You're probably getting some ofthe first ones now on the
delivery sheets.
But for those fleets thataren't quite sure whether or not
an electric truck is gonna workfor them, they know electric is
coming, they know electric isabout to happen, they know that
the price is coming down becauseof the trickle down stuff that
we've just been talking about.
But you're still not sure ifit's gonna work out for you and
(20:19):
you wanna put it to the test.
But you also don't have thathigh-speed charging.
You don't have thatinfrastructure built into your
depot, built into your job site.
Mac now has a mole chargingsystem.
It's on the back of a MacMD.
You can roll it out to your jobsite or you can roll it out to
your depot where you park yourvehicles at night and use it as
(20:39):
a charger.
And test drive these electricMD electrics and give those a
try for a couple of weeks, seehow they fit into your life, see
how they fit into youroperations before you commit the
time, money, energy andresources to installing that
stuff in.
Now and I wanna talk about thatbecause there's a lot of people
(21:01):
who point to it and say, look,there's so many EV incentives
from the government.
There's up to $75,000 just fromthe utility company.
Here in Chicago, comed is doingan EV rebate $75,000 per
vehicle, up to $50,000 toinstall high-speed charging and
make your job site ready forelectric.
And that's on top of thefederal incentives, which can go
(21:23):
up to $50,000.
On top of the state incentivesyou can stack all of these
rebates.
So people are saying, well, whywouldn't you just buy it?
It's basically free.
That's not true, because thetime it takes to tear up the
concrete, to run that conduit,to run that electrification,
that is disruptive.
And what you're really lookingat there is not somebody buying
(21:43):
an electric vehicle for acompany you're paying to put in
this electric.
What you're really seeing iscompensation for the downtime
that it's gonna take to installthis stuff.
So at the end of it you kind ofbreak even.
Well, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
So, mac, is that is so forward thinking on Mac Volvo
to have a vehicle that's gonnacome out and go?
Look, I know you're worriedabout this.
Let's get all of that off theplate and you tell me if the
truck is worth your time.
That's it.
That is one of the mostaggressive marketing news I've
ever seen.
I've been in this industry forquite a long time and I've been
(22:16):
around it most of my life andI'm gonna tell you there wasn't
anybody else out there when wewent from regular non-emissions
trucks to emissions trucks.
We went from non-deaf to deaf.
There wasn't any campaign outthere where they were like look,
I'm gonna bring you a deaftruck, we're gonna bring you
this, we're gonna set you upwith a mobile deaf pump and
(22:38):
you're gonna see how easy thisworks.
Now, how many years later, arewe Deaf is not even the thing
you poured in there.
You're all done.
Now he agrees worried aboutelectric.
I gotta give them a lot ofcredit, because anybody that's
worried about electric needs.
They need this and the carmanufacturers this is something
that Tesla and the other guysshould be doing.
When you got a fleet and youhave a fleet of mainly pickup
(23:01):
trucks or EV type cars andyou're trying to break that in.
It's a small mom and popinsurance agency that's got six
vehicles and they're trying tofigure out how to get around.
Bring something over there tolet them charge them, let them
see how good they are and letthem see how they run around and
then they'll worry about theinfrastructure and how they're
gonna get the money for it,because the honest to God truth
(23:22):
is the rebates that you're gonnaget you're gonna use to put the
infrastructure in.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
So this stuff isn't free.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
But the disruptive part of your business is a big
part of that huge part of that.
I have prolonged having EVvehicles at our offices for a
little while because we are notready to fight that off.
But that doesn't mean it'swrong.
I got people every day askingme in the fleet saying, hey, why
can't I get a gas, hybrid,electric, why can't I get a
(23:51):
fully electric car?
I'm the guy buying it and I'mtrying to tell him look, we're
putting a plan together so thatover the next two, three years
we could put charging at theoffices.
They don't wanna hear it, theywant it.
Now I got people going listen,I already have an electric car
at home.
I wanna plug this thing in too.
I don't want all this gas stuff.
I don't wanna deal with gascards and I don't wanna have my
(24:13):
gas card not working at 11o'clock at night because
somebody tried to rip my numberoff at the pump.
That's a huge problem when wetravel a lot.
So these corporate gas cardsthat our companies have when
anybody tries to skim thatnumber in a pump glitches or
anything like that, the creditcard companies turn the card off
and then you're stuck.
Yeah, and listen, I don't blameanybody for calling me at 10
(24:37):
o'clock at night going, hey, I'mputting gas on my car, I'll
expense it.
But the guy that calls me thatsays hey, I'm driving a, I'm
driving a Mac Granite, andlisten, I ain't showing this up
on my credit card.
So let's figure out what we'redoing.
I don't blame that guy one bit.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I gotta figure out how to gethis gas card turned back on in
the middle of the night.
That's okay, and I think thatthe infrastructure part of this
(25:01):
is gonna come.
But this is such a huge bridgegap for them it's gonna put them
way ahead of everybody else.
And then, listen, if you're Kiaand you're working on, or
you're working on anybody else,it's got an electric version of
a truck and you know Mac's outthere with their MD battery
truck.
Call them and talk to the Macdealer and say, hey, how do I
(25:22):
join in with you on this?
Because I know what you'reselling and I'm selling the
other thing that you don't sell.
And let's talk about thatelectrically and figure out how
we can charge off each other.
There's a lot of partnershipsto be had there.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
There's a lot of partnerships there.
We definitely need to talkabout that, you know.
And it is interesting becausefor as many people who are
saying I'll never buy electric,I'm never gonna have an electric
vehicle, that's okay, nobody'sforcing you.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
For the people, that do want it.
Nobody's forcing anybody.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
No, and for the people that do want it and do
want to take advantage of someof the things and some of the
features, I love the idea ofplugging into your car and then
the car handles all the protocol, handles all the payment.
It's done.
You don't have to swipe yourcard, you don't have to get your
pin skimmed by one of thosecard skimmers.
That's on all these differentshell stations and everything
(26:10):
Not to pick on shell, but that'sthe one by my house that
everybody got ripped off at.
You know, it happened to myfather-in-law.
He got his credit card rippedoff there and he didn't figure
it out until he got home and hesaw all these plane tickets
purchased on his card and I waslike, dude, what are you doing?
I said, oh, all I did was goget gas.
You know, all you did was goget gas.
Dude, everywhere you swipe yourcard, somebody's trying to get
(26:32):
a piece out of you and it'srough.
But the good news is and thisis a great segue into this one
we're gonna love this.
No matter how enthusiastic youare about electric, you have to
admit if you understand what'sgoing on, you understand energy
and physics that there are somejobs where electric and battery
electric specifically justdoesn't make sense.
The energy density isn't there.
(26:53):
The weight of the batteryrequired to do the kilowatts and
kilowatts and kilowatts of work, of moving the dirt and moving
the concrete and grading theroads, is so high that the
weight of the battery, theweight of machine, would sink it
into the road itself, not evensink it into the mud, you'll
sink it into the concrete.
So you know, we do have to talka little bit about that.
(27:16):
There is still a place forinternal combustion, whether
it's hydrogen, whether it'sdiesel, whether it's bio and
Caterpillar.
They are spending $725 millionto update and upgrade their big
engine shop in Indiana, and Ithink that is a solid, very
clear message that they intendto be the leaders in combustion
(27:37):
going out the next 10, 20 years.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Well, we've talked about Cummins with Helm, right,
we've been talking about that.
Caterpillar is always, in theindustry, been the one who kind
of sits there and goes, we'renot gonna be.
They're not always the first tothrow out their car, right,
they're not always the first tothrow out the marketing.
But what they do?
They get their stuff situatedto get their infrastructure
figured out, and then they do alaunch, like they just did, and
(28:02):
say we're gonna put $750 millionin their engine plan.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We're gonna do it here in the United.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
States.
We're going to ramp up ourefficiency on diesel because
this is all the segue tohydrogen.
Yeah, can't forget that.
Everybody knows the multi fuelis the way of the future.
They get this off the ground.
Caterpillar is doing that.
I mean, john Deere is doingthat as well, but Caterpillar.
They have made significantInfrastructure investments in
(28:28):
the United States.
They got the many excavatorplant, the skid steer plant down
south.
They've always had theexcavator plants down in the
Mid-South.
They have in Indiana in theMidwest, the engine plants, the
truck plants, the wheel litterplants.
They want to provide stuff forthis country.
They want to build it here asmuch as they can and they need
that.
I'm trying actually to reach out, see if I can get it toward the
(28:50):
engine plant over there.
I was at that engine plant longago, probably 10 plus years ago
, and then back then it wasstate-of-the-art and that plant
was amazing.
So I can only imagine what it'sgoing to be like after they put
750 million dollars into it.
That's a huge number.
Yeah, when you tell yourshareholders that you're gonna
put 750 million dollars in onefacility in one state, think
(29:13):
about what that's gonna do forinfrastructure and what they're
gonna do for everything else,right down to the machining
centers they are gonna end upupgrading for, so that you're
gonna see a lot of you know whatwe talked about earlier.
Which is why I talked aboutthat earlier in that episode,
because Joe thinks I fly off therails and everybody's yelling
at me from the control boothbanging on the glass and they're
going home.
This is all part of the trickledown of all this.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That's why I got quiet.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
They fool about who knows what they're doing over
there.
There's nobody over there.
I get a little pop-up sign thatsays, fine, you take it when do
you go, my lovely?
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Where do you go?
I want to know, my lovely, Iwant to know where do you go?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Hey, listen it's rural.
For them to go?
Knows their feed the cat orsomething.
This acute cat will put hispicture, probably some kind of
weird affair going on over therebehind the glass, but that's
for another episode live fromthe grow house.
But that's a trickle downeffect that we talked about with
(30:33):
all that's gonna be huge, it'sgonna be huge and caterpillar
has always been one of thosecompanies that did it right.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I know that they've had some run-ins with the Union,
but they've always seemed toresolve them without getting
super ugly.
And I think that's also true,you know, because caterpillars a
global company.
I think that's true inAustralia just as much as it's
true in the US and true inEurope.
They are really out there.
And the multi fuel thing ishuge, because if you look at
what fiat commercial power isdoing, if you look at what Balvo
(31:04):
Penta is doing, if you look atwhat John Deere is doing with
their combustion engines,everybody's kind of trying to
figure out how to run not onlymulti fuel but also blended fuel
mixes where it's 80% diesel,20% hydrogen.
The new thing is now methane.
I love this idea.
Actually, the the case guybrought this up and I've been
doing some research on thiswhere the dairy farmers are able
(31:26):
to capture the manure, get themethane that's coming off of it,
hide, you know, electrolyzethat using solar panels on the
barn, turn that into fuel grademethanol and Run their tractors
off of their manure.
And in many cases these largefarmers they're able to
effectively package that, put itinto a a you know a large
(31:50):
canister and sell that methanolback to the power companies or
back to other farms that canmake use of that as a fuel and
man, if you want to talk aboutsomething that's you know and
everybody knows who knows me.
You know I'm a little bit of atree hugger, a little
environmentalist I I stronglybelieve that we need to preserve
our national parks in ourforest.
I grew up in Florida.
(32:10):
The Everglades are a big dealto me.
Being close to nature, seeingthose animals and being able to
go out into the woods and intothe wild has always been a huge
part of my whole deal.
And when I look at that, evenif you compare that to electric,
this is such a perfect closedsystem.
It addresses all of theenvironmental concerns of big
(32:30):
farms.
It makes it easier for thefarmer to get fuel and be
self-reliant, takes everybodyoff the grid.
I mean, if you're the type ofperson who says I don't want to
go electric because I don't wantthe government to be able to
shut off my power, yeah, numberone you've forgotten that solar
panels exist, but we're gonnalet you forget that.
This is such a great way to dothat in a way that is
sustainable.
It doesn't make you dependenton foreign oil.
(32:53):
It doesn't make you dependenton battery tech from China.
You can just harvest what comesout of the cows naturally and
I'm not talking about the milkand Run your tractor on it, run
your truck on it.
That is so dairy.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
You know their industry has been been really
torn up in the United States andit's been, continues to be, and
that's that's why the dairyfarmers and CNH talk about that,
because they've been able to.
You know you have big Glomeratedairy farms today.
You know we can make simulatedmilk and we can do all that make
it not come from a cow.
(33:29):
But there's no question and noquestion.
The milk coming from a cow, youknow we still need it.
We have to get it.
It's no different than raisinga crop and we have to have crops
so farmers are able to capturethat and help get a return on it
.
They've always been craftybecause they don't have a lot of
margin to work with.
Right time.
(33:50):
You, you feed the cow, you milkit, you pay all the milk money
for the infrastructure and theupkeep that you need in the
milkhouse.
Then you turn around, you paythe dairy all the money that you
need to pay them or theyactually.
What they do is they just takeit what the milks were, because
they're paying you by thehundred weight.
By the time you skim all thatdown, you have enough money for
(34:10):
next week.
You, yeah, and I grew up arounda lot of dairy farmers.
I worked on dairy farms for awhile and a lot of people
overlooked that.
And any of this technology helpsdairy farmers out and I don't
blame them for not wanting to goelectric.
If you look at a lot of thedairy farming, a lot of it is
electric, based from thecleaning mechanisms that clean
(34:31):
the barns to the pump housesthat pump the waste and manure
and water and all that back outto the holding pods, the
stirring tanks and all thatstuff that they have.
All of that is electric already.
So they're already utilizingall that.
And the misleading problem.
And if you're working at anenergy providing company, they
(34:53):
have to start educating thepublic on hydrogen.
They have to do it now so thatwhen we're ready to start using
it in the future, people are notafraid of it, Because in these
industry round table meetingsI'm in and in this industry
segments that I get pulled intoand all these conference calls,
everybody uses the same termbomb.
It is not a hydrogen bomb.
(35:13):
It is not going to level yourfacility.
It is not gonna put a hole inthe earth if it gets in an
accident.
We have to do the education toget away from this.
This is a big part of the heavyequipment industry that has
always been overlooked.
Yeah, Education on the productand what we're using to fuel it
(35:34):
has to be happening.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, and I think that you've said it exactly
right.
You know there was back in 2000, I wanna say 2009, 2010,.
There was a hydrogen Fordfusion.
They took it out to Bonneville.
This was a NASCAR body, Fordfusion, and it said fusion and
hydrogen on the car.
This was not a hydrogen fusion,nuclear car.
(35:57):
And just about every article Iread about the car, every
comment on it, back in the earlydays of the internet, when
people still had forums, everycomment was oh, it's nuclear
powered.
Oh, it's got a fusion reactor.
Oh, what happens if you crashthat thing?
It'll take up the whole cityand it is shocking to me how
(36:17):
much that mentality is still outthere.
But instead of that and gettingdepressed about the insanity
and ignorance of our fellowhumans, we're gonna play a clip
from the Scissor Sisters.
When I wake up in the morningwith my head like what you done.
This isn't the way to life.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
But I don't need another one.
You like good love and care andI'm in with him counts.
So I call my fears so lonelywhen you're up getting down, so
I'll get along when I can hearthat dance of song.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I'm gonna be the one who gets it right.
Okay, we're back.
You're gonna talk about asmooth segue.
That's how you segue, baby.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
That was good.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Listen, you're John Oliver.
You're putting together a $25million show.
That's how you do it, baby.
That's right.
Yeah, so that's our good segueinto the new JCB Electric Drive.
Scissor Lift, the 1932 there.
Have you seen this?
This is actually a really coolthing.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Those are cool.
Those are cool lifts and I havenot rented any yet, but I did
ask about them and I mean,obviously they're new but yeah
they're.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, well, for those of you who are paying attention
to this market, obviouslyscissor lifts are a little bit
different than what we normallytalk about, but they're
important on job sites.
They're important on logistics,especially in urban
environments.
You see them in Chicago all thetime because there's not a ton
of room on the sidewalk for bigcranes or anything.
This is really cool, becauseJCB has had this Electric Drive
(38:01):
1932 unit for a couple of yearsnow and they've upgraded it.
And what they've done isthey've said look, we're getting
enough work out of this, we'regetting enough hours of
operation out of the existingbattery.
So now we have a new batterythat's less weight, that's
lighter, that's more energydense.
And they didn't put in morebattery and say now you have two
(38:23):
days of operation with this.
They made it smaller andlighter.
So now it comes in at 3,500pounds.
Why is that important?
That's important because at3,500 pounds you can transport
this thing inside of a Forde-transit van or of a Ram Pro
Master that has a 3,550 payloadcapacity, so you can pull this
(38:45):
thing into the back along withyour bag of tools and whatever
attachments you need and justdrive it out to the job site,
whereas before you had to have atrailer, you had to have a
vehicle rated to tow 5,000 pluspounds and you had to get this
thing to the job site.
This makes it much moretransportable, much easier to
move around, a much moreappetizing purchase for a
(39:10):
attractive young fleet managerlike yourself.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And not only that.
If you're done doing itsingular, you could put 10 of
them on a landall trailer anddrop them off and be under the
80,000 weight limit.
That is also a big thing.
Mobilization costs are huge inthe industry, and the more stuff
you can jam on the trailer thebetter off you are, and if you
can call up United Sunbelt orwhoever.
(39:33):
and they're like how many clipsdo you need?
You're like I need 50.
And they're trying to figureout how to get all these
packages on the trailers and cutdown how many trailers you've
got, You've cut down on energycosts, you've cut down on
transportation trips and howmany $100 chargers you're gonna
get off of them.
And then you talked abouthandling you.
You got less handling time foreverything.
(39:54):
So, yeah, beyond the idea of itbeing lighter.
You're just smaller.
It's more efficient.
In general, we keep it atweight right?
We gotta move weight at the endof the day.
Moving weight at the end of theday is our biggest struggle.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
And you're right, it doesn't matter if it's pounds of
dirt, pounds of battery, poundsof gas.
It just pounds, it doesn'tmatter.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
That battery could have been doubled in size and
said hey look, we got thisscissor left, you don't have to
charge it and if you keep thething turned off, you use it all
week.
No, they were like no, we needto do what's right.
We need to make this thinglighter and more mobile, and we
need more of that.
We can get power out of things,and there are places for weight
okay when bulldozers andtractive type power units need
(40:38):
weight.
Other than that, you don't.
You need to be as efficient aspossible and counterbalance it
as much as you need to to offsetwhat you're trying to do.
We've been doing it in theindustry for years.
It happens right in front of us.
So the thing that you know whenyou touch on this before too, is
that battery technology itkeeps shrinking, right.
(41:00):
So like the cost goes down andthen you come out with a new
battery and it's a little bitmore expensive, but then it goes
back down.
The cost of technology keepsdropping and the size of what
you need for battery power keepsdropping.
A lot of people still look ateverything as lead acid
batteries.
They're like oh my god, youknow, I don't know how we're
gonna get that.
That's not the case anymore.
(41:20):
We have a lot of technologywith that and people forget that
.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Well, and it's funny because you can see the anti-EV
Emotion right Now the big thingis oh well, you know, you're
getting rare earth elements andit's all coming out of China
with slave labor and the lithiummines.
And it's like, well, the newFord Mustang doesn't even use
lithium ion batteries, it usesiron phosphate.
(41:44):
It's like, well, iron phosphate, what's that?
Well, it comes out of scrapmetal and sand in northern
Florida that nobody wants.
It's been worthless for athousand years and now, all of a
sudden, the phosphate mines arethere is a guy down there.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
when all this started and the phosphate mines started
becoming big business, therewas a guy shaking his cane at
his kids telling you I knew it,I told you and.
I told you, we were gonna comeout on top.
You're laughing.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I can drive.
Yeah, it's exactly whathappened.
I can drive you to the trainrail in Florida and show you
where it's happening.
And it's like right outside ofLake Okeechobee.
They're moving rail cars worthof phosphate every day and it's
absolutely shocking because 25years ago that was worthless
sand.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yes, yes, it tears the equipment up bad.
Nobody likes any of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Well, you're gonna like listen when the $20,000
electric car comes out that goes300 miles and recharges in 12
minutes.
You're gonna love that stuff.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yep, that's what's coming next.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
All right.
Well, I think we're done forthe day.
Young Michael, we're gonna comeback next week.
We're going to talk about JohnDeere's new bulldozers and
whatever other nonsensical stuffis going to happen, and I think
, as we round out the show inhonor of our new intro and our
new opening segment, we'll playa little Space Cowboy.
How has the pompadism love overthere?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Oh, my God.
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