May 28, 2024 • 40 mins
This exciting HEP-isode is our HEAVIEST yet, as we put the spotlight John Deere's groundbreaking 3812 80T pulled scraper pan, venture back to 1956 and Mack Trucks' Arctic expedition, and explore colossal machines like Ohio's famous Big Muskie. All this and a spectral locomotive blasting across grandma's farm on HEP-isode 27!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
now, I didn't say that checking her core
temperature would be a one-manjob, but that's okay because
there's two of us here.
Welcome back to the nextexciting episode of the heavy
equipment podcast and, uh, ifwe're not canceled yet, we soon
will be.
This is joe boris here, as ever, with mike hot, mike switzer
(00:21):
and um, how's that going overthere?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
we'll be checking the court temperature, all right,
of that scraper tractor pullingthat scraper, if you you know.
Let me tell you something.
We're just going to jump rightinto this because we skipped
over oh, we already just didbecause, because biff henderson
yells at us all the time becausewe're not heavy enough for him.
But let me tell you, john deerehas created a creation.
Is that a thing they did?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
that's how, that's what you do.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
That's what, how creations come to be if you want
to remove a fairway andrelocate it into a giant heap of
what used to be.
That's what you use this for.
You move dirt with it, itscrapes.
You pull it with a tractor thatthey make as well.
The whole thing is made by them, and then I heard that a
(01:08):
company out in Western Ohio justpicked up three of the first
ones that come off the assemblyline.
They move just about more dirtthan anybody.
They've been doing this for along time.
They have tandem scrapers theywere doing the tri scraper for a
while where you have the singlewith the dual behind it, the
dual track, quad track,four-wheel drive.
This new rendition of it,though, is, uh, thoroughly going
(01:31):
to make people more productive,move more material and just,
ultimately, be fun to run.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I think I don't know I mean, they look like a ton of
fun dude right.
So we're talking about the 3812, the 80t pulled scraper pan.
There's a bunch of these, but,as you said, they are updated
and like I can't even imaginewhat you would use this for.
This is like, if you rememberthe old transformers movie,
where the one robot, like theone planet, turns into a big
(01:59):
robot.
This is what you would use toshave that thing.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, here's the mystical work of a scraper.
Okay, All right.
It goes out there and it shavesthe planet off a little bit at
a time, literally from theplanet right, and you're
relocating the planet at anenormous rate, but you do it so
slyly and so exactly that youdon't really think it's doing
(02:23):
anything, until you come backlater in the day to check on the
progress of the job and you gowho the hell moved all that?
And John Deere did it for you.
That's what they're doing withit.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
There you go.
Well, this is going to be agood show.
I know we've definitely beentalking about going heavier and
heavier and heavier as the timegoes on, especially with Biff
constantly pushing andcomplaining.
All you guys talk about iselectric.
Nobody wants to talk aboutelectric.
Well, right now, we've alreadytalked about some pretty heavy
stuff with that.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
38 12 hold on hold on before this podcast, and we
wanted to talk about biff either, but yet somehow he gets
mentioned more than any of ourheadlines, so all right that's
what you get when you're in theroom.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
We got to get him to like get on the mic, though, but
he's he's shy, poor baby he'sshy baby.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You know he speaks broken english, so we're not
really sure speaks ukrainian,pretty good, is that where he's
from?
I don't know he must havepicked it up somewhere.
He must have picked it up duringthat month that we forgot him
at the Flying J Well you know,when Biff came to us in the cab
that he took us to the studio in, I think that we realized right
(03:39):
then and there that there wassomething to be said for his
quality of.
You know, it wasn't of speech,but it was the fact that he
definitely could help us.
The quality of his company isdefinitely worth having.
So, you know, wasn't of speech,but it was the fact that he
definitely could help us.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
The quality of his company is definitely worth
having.
So you know it's funny.
I didn't mean to bring intothis, but I was thinking about
this as we were uh debating thethe inclusion of young biff here
.
Do you know about the 1956 Macktruck Arctic expedition?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
No.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
There is a story more Say more.
So one of the things that we'regoing to talk about that's
actually on the script for todayis this world's largest Mack
truck that is getting restored,and this is something that we're
going to go into some detailabout in a little bit.
But as I was researching this,I realized there's not just one
(04:30):
of these things.
Mack actually built a couple ofthem.
There was 11 of these trucks.
Each one of them has a 28 literV12 Cummins diesel engine and
what they were originally meantto do they hauled three million
pounds of cement and steel intothe Arctic Circle to build, like
(04:50):
Cold War era 1950s B-52 bomberbases up there.
Wait.
So they built two or three ofthese 11, 1956 Bulldog Convoy 11
giant multi-axle Mack trucksthat are just absolutely bananas
(05:12):
.
And there's one being restoredout of a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
There's one being restored right now With the rest
left up there.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Who would leave?
That I have no idea.
I couldn't even tell you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
See, here's the thing about mac trucks and and this
is something if you go backthrough, if you go back through
history and you're looking atmac truck history very carefully
and quietly they built tankengines.
They built the mac v8 tankengines.
They built expedition vehiclesto above the arctic circle that
(05:43):
they have all these things.
They had a three axle off-roadmining truck rigid frame.
That they did.
They had all these like massivemoving trucks that were just
constantly engineered andreworked and built from scratch,
mind you, in allentown,pennsylvania, and shipped to
(06:04):
wherever they needed to be.
Kenworth did the same thing,peterbilt a little bit, but in
all seriousness, mac justquietly kept producing all this
stuff.
Yeah, and a lot of people don'trealize too that in allentown,
if you go through the museum, Imean they were some of the first
to take on noise back in the70s, oh yeah, and they had noise
(06:27):
rooms where they were testingtrucks and this is all ahead of
their time.
So this whole thing about thisexpedition above the Arctic
Circle truck, it's just anotherthing that they get into.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, and they did quite a bit in terms of
experimentation.
I just want to read out somespecs of this thing and you know
, especially as we decided, thatwe're going to do as heavy as
we possibly could today.
So let's get into that.
The bot without the body, sothat just the chassis itself
(07:03):
without the body, is 95 485pounds.
According to the originalliterature from mac, the gvwr is
331 875 pounds, which means ithas a payload capacity on its
(07:25):
own exceeding 100 tons, andthese are imperial that's just
the truck.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
That's just the truck that's not whatever it's not
whatever the it is towing,that's just the truck.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, powered by a v12.
Yeah, detroit diesel V12.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Each cylinder in the V is 149 cubic inches.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Oh yeah, 1900 RPM red line.
Could you imagine that thing,dude?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I can't imagine starting that up there.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
The air coming out of the exhaust hitting you in the
chest.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
if you're standing next to the tailpipe would blow
you over If you needed to shutit off suddenly and you put a
phone book from New York Cityand the intake it would all back
out the exhaust.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's how serious of a vehicle this is.
This is like Jonah and thewhale.
Yeah, it sucks in a goose andshoots out like a perfectly
cooked turkey.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Like one of them old hannah barbara cartoons that
truck is so nasty mean you couldpour boiling water down the
intake and it would pass icecubes out the exhaust.
Yes, that's how wicked thatthing is this thing is so sick
it defies all logic or man-madenonsense that's absolutely true,
(08:50):
so imagine if something likethat was roaming around today
and you get in your uh tesla andyou're riding up the highway
and then you hear this enormousrumble and your car suddenly
thinks that it's being engulfedby an aircraft carrier and
freaks out and pulls itself overto the right and all it was was
that coming up behind you andputting its turn signal on
(09:13):
saying please let me buy let mebuy.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
You say yes, sir, and let it go.
I was like, oh, I didn'trealize the tesla could talk to
the other vehicles, that is, wetalked about this.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
We did.
I got cut off by one and I'mnot going down that rant right
now, because we're talking aboutheavy, heavy equipment so
listen, though, this is probablythe heaviest gbwr for an
on-road vehicle I've heard of.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
The closest thing I know about other than that is a
husky port terminal tractor thatis technically road legal, has
a 35 mile an hour top speed, andthat thing has 180 000 pound
gvwr.
So this is like double that,and those are insane.
Those are the things that youput, like you know, multiple
(10:00):
containers on and they drag themto the rail yard.
So, uh, yeah, man, this is,this is heavy iron.
This is, uh, just about asheavy as it gets.
Uh, however or comma it doesget even heavier, because I
don't know if you saw this videothey have attached the largest
construction claw in northamerica to the largest crane.
(10:23):
It's a thousand ton capacityfloating crane and they're using
it up there in new englandthey're clearing up debris from
the francis scott key bridgecollapse out there in baltimore
and, uh, this is crazy, it's ahuge collaborative project up
there oh, I mean it has to be.
It's just absolutely insane howmuch steel and wreckage and
(10:45):
concrete actually went into thewater.
We don't want to make light ofthat because it was obviously a
tragedy.
But if you are a fan of heavyequipment and you're a fan of go
there and look at it that's it,they're down to the bank.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You can.
You can walk up and you can godown there and park and walk up
and go see the equipment thatthey're using to clean this up.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The core of engineers is using 22 floating cranes all
in, but this one is by far thebiggest.
It can go down 260 feet toclamp onto debris and the jaws
that have four hydraulicindividual Hydraulic individual
clamps can open 29 feet.
This is like the jaws of life.
(11:27):
If you were like a GI Joefigure, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I don't know.
That needs some people to godown.
We actually my brother needs togo down there and report from
the scene.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I think that's what we need to do.
We need to put him on.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
We need to put him on a van and get him down there
and have him report, and we cancut it.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
This is Neil Switzer reporting on the scene.
I don't know.
I think this thing's big, butis it really that big?
That'd be the whole report.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I don't want to see why I came out here.
Yeah, because nothing phaseshim.
You're absolutely right, hecould be nothing, phases he
could be in a.
He could be in a hurricanewhile they're trying to uproot
some part of a foundation of abuilding and he would be like
we're here on site okay nothingthat's it.
He gets back.
It gets back and walks sidewaysdown the road because the
(12:25):
hurricane's trying to blow himover.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Do you remember those videos that come out?
I want to say 2009, 2010, whenthe meteor exploded over russia
and it was like this blindinglight.
And there's this dude driving,he's got an in-car camera and
the meteor comes down and hejust flips his sun visor down
like I had no idea what washappening.
The world is ending.
There's like a nuclear flash inthe sky and he's just like
(12:48):
floop, like that's it.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's the end of the reaction that's your bri was an
ex-MIG fighter pilot because hehas seen it all and he
literally just went.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I'm ready.
I am uninterested.
He didn't even slow down, justSun Visor.
We have to find that video andplay it.
Too bad, this is an audio show.
That'd be a perfect one for theYouTube.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Oh my God, the claw though the thing is with those
grapples and stuff like that andthe demolition equipment.
I mean the tonnage that they'reabout to remove from the water,
cut up and load is enormousfrom that bridge.
Yeah, it's like 50,000, 60,000tons of steel, and it's not
including it doesn't look likethat, but when you realize that
(13:40):
the size of what took it out wasmassive, then you look at it
and go wow, I took for grantedhow that bridge was sized yeah,
but you know we had that thingwhen that um, what was it called
the evergreen that was stucksideways in the suez canal there
were, they had they had thoselittle excavators and they're
digging it free, right, theyweren't that little, that thing
(14:05):
was massive.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, it's a 30 ton excavator and it looks like a
little gnat.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Looks like somebody's trying to dig it out with a
tonka truck there was memeswhere people had spoons on the
end of the stick, you know, andstuff like that, and they were
like scoop it out, yeah it'slike no, I made some of those, I
think actually I think somebodyactually did the research.
It had like a seven yard bucketon it, so think about that
seven yards of material and itlooked like it was doing nothing
(14:31):
yeah, that's insane I wonder ifthey lost any in that dig.
That was my other question.
I wonder if they.
I wonder if they lost any inthat dig.
That was my other question.
I wonder if they.
I wonder if they lost any otherones where they were like julio
dropped it again, bring anotherone in get another one?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
yeah, I don't know, man.
There's some really crazy stuffout there in terms of bigness
and we've talked about a coupleof things like these lee pair
excavators.
We've talked about some ofthese big mining trucks that
they have in the, you know,these open air mines and these
quarries and things, but likethere's 300 plus tons, just
enormous.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And then I mean the, the autonomy on top of that is
is just another level of ourcountry and our and our whole
world is headed towards that.
But I can't even believe thatamount of tonnage being moved on
, just calculations at the endof the day.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, that's it.
And uh, yeah, I don't know Ithink we've said about all we're
going to say on that, otherthan like it's way bigger than
you think it is, and if you'reup there anywhere near
Baltimoretimore, anywhere neardc, go check that out.
It is an incrediblemobilization of really, truly.
So I don't want to get toophilosophical here, but it's an
(15:50):
incredible mobilization.
God damn it.
Don't show me no table.
I'm trying to run a podcasthere.
So what I was about to say,what is that?
It was an incrediblemobilization of human ingenuity
and intelligence, and myfaithful co-host just shot me a
Facebook marketplace listing fora cadaver table.
(16:11):
So Three of them three of them.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
My equipment broker just sent me a picture of this
going.
I think this fits your model.
I don't know what that messagemeans, but that means.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
But I assume we're just going to go after the show
and check that out.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Oh yeah, we're going to wheel those into the Costco
and fill them up like cards.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
What's the whole joke about the necrophiliacs?
On the way home from work, it'slike, hey, let's stop by and
crack open a few cold ones.
It's so bad, that's so bad.
That won't make the edit, Ipromise no.
That's going to be the30-second tagline that we put on
social media.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I mean, have you ever seen the cab, the inside of the
cab of one of these giantshovels?
Right, they're massive, and yousit in this big seat, like on
the Enterprise, and it's allglass around you, your nacho
cheese warmer's behind you andthere's a whole buffet table and
everything back there and allthat stuff because you're there
all day.
Right, yeah, you live there.
(17:13):
Yeah, you live there.
There's pizza ovens andeverything else.
It's incredible the amount ofyou know room that you have in
these.
But when you look at it fromthe outside, because of the mass
of what this thing is on, itlooks small yeah, for sure, but
you know, we know it's not Imean look well, yeah, I mean
(17:33):
look at, uh, the the shovelthere, ohio.
I mean it had its own indooroverhead crane in the engine
room on the shovel.
What, yes, yes, look up theengine room of the Big Muskie.
And then Peabody Coal.
Peabody Coal had the world'slargest shovel for a while there
(17:56):
.
Songs were written about that,about Peabody's Coal Train.
It's hauled it all away.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River wherePyrrha died today?
I'm sorry, my son, but you'retoo late in asking Mr.
Asking mr peabody's cold train.
How did he wait?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
that's insane.
I was not aware that big.
That's heavy out there in ohio.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That's 325 tons in one bite.
Yep, that's insane.
So okay, I'm learning about.
They had to use charges to blowit, to scrap it when they
needed to scrap that thing wow.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So I'm reading.
The story of this is onCaterpillar's own websites is
the story of Big Muskie.
They say that this crane itstood 22 stories high, had a 330
foot twin boom and a 220 yardbucket the size of a 12 car
garage bucket the size of a 12car garage.
(19:24):
When they finally scrapped it,they got 27 million pounds of
metal out of it.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Imagine that guy at the scrapyard the day the truck
started rolling in.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
He didn't have enough cash in the drawer let me tell
you there's some old dude with ashopping cart full of aluminum
cans just shaking his head.
Like I'm stuck behind thesedudes in the line brutal I
didn't even think about it likethat.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
This guy's got a garden, two hefty bags full of
cans and they're like just comeback tomorrow fred it's gonna be
a little while we haven't evensorted the copper yet oh man,
that's something that I don'tthink our kids will ever do.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
The the old you know they go around and get a bunch
of scrap and take it down to therecycling yard no, no, they're
not gonna do that.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Let me tell you the kids see, there was a time when
you could go around and youcould collect that stuff and
then and then you realize thatadd value, you go scrap it and
then you would have just enoughmoney to, like, buy, like a
cheeseburger or something, orsomething cool for your bike,
and then you would utilize thatRight.
So, but there was effort in, orreturning glass bottles back
(20:34):
for the deposit money becausesome, some drunkard down the
street was too lazy to do it ortoo drunk all the time.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, you get a nickel a bottle.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Exactly.
Again, the world always goesback to Seinfeld.
Seinfeld did an episode on thiswhen they were going to
Michigan with the cans and thebottles, because it's a lost
thing.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yes, I think a lot of that whole era that has been
lost really was captured inseinfeld.
It is such a funny show becauseit's this time capsule where
you know.
I've tried to show it to mykids and it doesn't resonate
with them because they grew upwith cell phones, right, and how
many of the problems in thatshow would have been solved
(21:16):
instantaneously by a cell phoneLike the way we've been texting
each other.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
They would have just said Kramer fell.
Okay, done, done, that'd be it,yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Or like hey, I'm at this this person's house, what's
the address?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
here I am, instead of trying to where they get stuck
at that one you know gettinglost at the mall, Getting lost
at the mall garage.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Like there were all these things that happened.
Now I will say this.
I will say this the worldslowed down a lot before cell
phones.
Yes, because the expectationbefore cell phones was he will
get back to me.
I know this guy and he willcall me back.
And if I wait here by thisphone, I'll be within earshot of
(22:05):
it.
He will call me back.
And people did this.
Runners dedicated to getting thephone for executives to go hold
on a second and set the phonedown and go get the guy and have
him come back to talk on thephone to you know, like that was
a whole thing and people don't,you know, I think.
I mean, look at when we talkabout truck stops and stuff, and
(22:27):
I've mentioned this before.
But you know, years ago therewas a phone room and you'd just
be a counter and it was justphones with stools.
You had booths with phones inthem.
I mean, when I was a kid weused to do they call home.
Yeah, you know constructionsites.
There were no phone issues.
There were no ear pods.
Truck drivers weren't drivingwith headphones, that you know.
(22:49):
You stopped to use the phone.
Yeah, songs about this stuff,highways and back roads.
This country sure is beautiful.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
But a byway ain't home.
You might gaze upon some land Ithought I'd never see, but it
feels like someone else's lifeand it don't belong to me.
I'm so tired of being alone Intechnical motels Watching late
(23:47):
night talking shows.
Lately I've felt like aroadshot full of holes, leaving
everything behind me EverywhereI go.
This ain't my bed, what I chose.
(24:08):
I used to be outnumbered, butnow I'm just a ghost.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I'm just a ghost and you know it was just a thing,
and I think today, yeah, well,the technology is life-saving
and we got to have it and ithelps in so many ways, it
hinders in a lot of ways,especially men who would say I'm
not going to carry around thisleash all the time because the
(24:56):
the thinking was it is a verysexist way of thinking.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I'm not in any way endorsing it, I'm just saying
this was the thinking of thetime of the era, right, right,
that.
Well, I don't want my wife tojust call me whenever she wants.
I'm down at the bar with mybuddies, or I'm going golfing or
something I don't want to be.
You know, getting her phonecall telling me to go pick up
milk, or where am I?
Or anything like that.
And that was really thementality.
That was a leash and yeah, now Ithink the other way now it's
(25:24):
the other way, but it's still aleash because, like, I'll give
you an example, as we'rerecording, as we normally record
the middle of the day, butwe're recording today, tonight,
because we, because we're tryingto get ahead, mike's going to
be traveling, I'm going to betraveling, so we want to have
some episodes in the bank, sowe're recording this in the
evening, which is not what weusually do.
I got a text from work while wewere sitting here recording and
(25:46):
sitting down already, and theexpectation is that I'm going to
drop whatever I'm doing, mytime with my family, hop on my
laptop, check out my work, emailand solve a problem.
Number one I'm not going to dothat.
This is not an overtime gig.
I apologize to anyone listening.
That's not what we do here.
So, number one, I'm not going todo that.
(26:06):
But number two, that's theexpectation of everybody.
That's the expectation, whetheryou're working in a mall,
whether you're working atStarbucks, that someone's going
to call you or text you andexpect you to solve a problem on
your own, and your friendsdon't have an obligation to it.
Your friends don't have a rightto it.
(26:35):
Your family don't have a rightto it.
That it's your time hascompletely gone away.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
No you're right and there's.
You know this goes along witheverything heavy that we talked
about already in this podcast.
You also have the soft side ofit, which is, you know, most
people when they get donerunning that heavy equipment
okay, and it's taxing mentally,sometimes physically, sometimes
both.
Yeah, back in the day, when allthat stuff that we talked about
(27:01):
.
You're talking about expeditionto the Arctic circle.
We're talking about a scraperthat can move an enormous amount
of material in a single pass.
We you know.
Then we're talking about thebig musky right, one of the
biggest shovels ever devised byman.
Imagine the crew running thatand when they got done.
There were no cell phones.
Right, there was a phone in it,though, but there were no cell
(27:22):
phones.
But imagine that when they gotdone and there's many studies
about this everybody that workedhad the third place.
Yes, and the third place wasthe VFW, the Eagles, the club
hall, anything like that.
(27:43):
That was not home and was notwork.
It was their social network, itwas any kind of thing like that
, and those have dwindledbecause your social network is
now tied to a phone.
That and those have dwindledbecause your social network is
now tied to a phone.
And when you erode personalinterconnection like that in
person, it just degrades thewhole thing and what it does do
(28:06):
and this is something thatpeople are studying now, because
this has been going on longenough it goes full circle and
it erodes work and home.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, it does, because the lack of boundaries
and the lack of that ability tobe you right, and so what I mean
by that is like at work, I amwork Joe.
At home with my kids and mywife, I'm family Joe that
ability to just joe outside ofthat and just like be me as I am
(28:38):
, on my own, is totally gone andoh, look at, look at most of
the drivers on the road today.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
They've got the, they have the bluetooth headset on,
they're on the phone almostnon-stop.
Okay, you, you know it used tobe.
You would chatter, chatter onthe CB, or you would.
You know, if you were in acompany, if you're in a heavy
piece of equipment on a job, youwould chatter on the company
radio and the foreman wouldchatter on his radio to the guys
(29:04):
that were running equipment andthere'd be some friendly banter
.
And then you know, whensomething happened you would
talk about something serious.
But that's all gone now withcell phones.
And then the worst thing now isyou got the cell phones, you
got the company radio going atthe same time.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
It's just a distraction.
It's a distraction.
I want to get back to this,though, because we talk a lot
about socioeconomic stuff onthis show.
We have since episode one andsomething that you and I have
kind of always bantered aboutand kind of found that common
bond in that it's a commoninterest of ours.
I want to run something past youand get your sense on this.
When we think back to like andlet's call it the glory days of
(29:45):
trucking just to last, just tohave a term to use, right, right
, and we think about those phonebanks and we think about you
know, that local tavern where,that bar, where everybody knows
your name, right, and you go andyou have regulars there and you
have that third place, I thinka lot of that, especially in the
early 70s and into the mid 70sand even into the early 80s a
(30:08):
little bit, was because we had astrong dollar.
The dollar would actually gofar enough.
We had stronger unionrepresentation for a lot of
these blue collar workers andyou could afford to do stuff
like that.
If I decide today, in 2024, andI do well, you do well, we're
(30:29):
comfortable guys On the way homefrom work if I stop to go eat
somewhere and I just want tohave, you know, a couple of bar
snacks and one or two beers, I'mspending 20, 30 bucks at a
cheap place.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
That's right.
And if you bring you bring yoursignificant other and then
maybe you buy a couple of drinksfor somebody that stops by,
that you know.
Next, you know that's a hundredbucks.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
That's it, and it's something that is not
sustainable in the way that itused to be, and I think it's got
a little bit to do withinflation, it's got a little bit
to do with the degradation ofthe dollar, it's got a lot to do
with wages, especially for theworking man, especially for the
manufacturers and the groundlevel people on the front lines
(31:14):
every day in America.
Their wages are not keeping pacewith stock prices, with CEO
rate, with C-level suite rate.
And when I think about stufflike that, I look at these
things and I see there's a newdeal at the Freightliner factory
, there's a new deal at JohnDeere, there's a new deal
happening at Volkswagen at theChattanooga plant we talked
(31:34):
about a couple of days ago.
That does bring me hope that weare going to start to write
some of these wrongs.
Maybe wrong isn't the thing,but, let's say, write some of
these oversights where it wasgetting better for an entire
class of people.
But there was a group ofAmericans and it was the
Americans that were building theroads and building the
infrastructure and building theworld around us.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
They got paid because they they it was warranted
because of what they were doing.
That's it.
And you know, yeah, and ifwe're going to talk about that
here's, here's something I'mgoing to tell you.
There was a nobility to thework that was being done.
It has been eroded by time.
People built the Hoover Dam,people built the highway system,
(32:21):
people built the skyscraperswith hot rivets and cold steel.
Those people were considerednoble men that did the
unthinkable, did the undoable,but they figured out how to do
it and they were paid veryhandsomely for it.
And they weren't paid over andabove, but they were paid quite
a bit for it.
And I can tell you that weeroded that Okay, and it didn't
(32:46):
keep up.
There was a very strong speechby Jimmy Hoffa that he did as
teamster president, and one ofthe taglines in that speech was
they were going to bring theworking man into the middle
class and they were going topromote, they were going to
essentially move the middleclass forward.
Okay, because there was a timewhere people that drove made
(33:11):
less than I mean they were justabove poverty.
Yeah, that's true.
And then the unions.
It doesn't matter what unionyou're in, the unions work
together to get those workersinto the middle class.
Yes, then they gain momentum.
And then they got to the upperend of that.
If you want to get into classwars, they get into the upper
(33:34):
end of the middle class.
And then you had white collarworkers that were joining unions
.
You had guys that were well,you know what, I'll, I'll, I'll
join the operators, I'll jointhe teamsters, I'll join the
mill rights.
And you know what?
I wear a white collar shirtevery day, but you know what?
They have a hell of a pensionand I'll just pay into that.
(33:59):
And then I'm going to unionizea bunch of guys, and then we're
going to do that too.
That started to happen.
Then somehow we slipped, and Ican tell you why.
And if you're going to get intothat whole ordeal, that is a
scary thing, yeah.
It's a scary thing when, whenyou have union working men and
women and they have the countrytied up because they feel that
something is an injustice, thatis a disruption to the entire
(34:20):
way that the whole economiccircle works.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Sure, but we've got a scenario that's not the whole
reason of the union.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
The union is to be fair, to create working
environments, to create wagesthat are competitive, that are
consistent with our economicsurroundings of the time and era
that we're talking about.
And my dad talks about timesback in the 70s and the 60s.
He's like, no, nobody made anexorbitant amount of money, but
(34:48):
he goes.
You know what?
You went and you bought a candybar for a nickel and he said
gas was only so many cents agallon and all those things were
proportionalized back.
So the inflation over time hascreated this constant evolution.
I think that this is this.
You know, we talk about this alot at work.
We talk a lot about this withthe union.
(35:08):
As the unions renegotiate, asthe unions come out with new
contracts locally to my office,they just release all those
contracts in May there is someserious cost of living increases
, unprecedented in thosepackages that are renegotiated
out over so many years.
So a lot of the unions just putout this whole escalation.
(35:29):
They say, okay, over so manyyears you're going to get this,
but they adjust those year toyear.
It's very important that thiskeeps happening.
Yeah, and the working man andwoman cannot slide backwards at
this point, because what you'regoing to have is you already
have people that don't want todo the work.
We already have people thatdon't want to come to work.
You're going to make it worse,You're going to make it worse.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
I spent the morning today at the international
brotherhood of electricalworkers here in illinois and,
first of all, a better god bless, yeah, a better group of guys
and girls you're never going tomeet and they were talking all
about electric.
And, in honor of this beingbiff's special episode, we're
going to save that conversationfor the next one and we're going
to close out with the heaviestthing, I think, that we've
(36:16):
talked about in a while theunion pacific railroad, which
has shaved two days off of itsturnaround time from california,
which is, um, I don't know, thetwo days from la to chicago.
That seems like it's.
That seems like a lot how areyou?
doing.
They're moving, they are.
(36:37):
They're moving a ton andthey're doing all the same
routes.
They're not cutting back anykind of production.
And uh, from city of industryin southern california to global
two in north lake illinois,they're getting there now two
days faster.
So that's 70 mile an houraverage service.
And they're doing it with theirnew engines.
(36:57):
They're saying they're reducinggreenhouse gas emissions by up
to 75%.
That's a tremendousaccomplishment.
This is like the old 1920s whenyou'd hear about this is the
record run from Lake Havasu toNiagara Falls.
You know, it's that kind ofvibe.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
And I think it's cool .
And when you used to leave outof Chicago and you would run out
to LA in a passenger train thatwould eclipse 100 mile an hour.
Back then and you're talkingabout you know you had the
steely-eyed missile menengineers sitting up front with
their jackets on and theirstuff's half unbuttoned and they
(37:35):
got their gloves right on thethrottle and they're leaning
into that thing.
They got all these lives behindthem.
Yeah, they just wanted to getthere thousands everybody was
along for the ride they're.
They're in their vista domelooking at the mountains and
they're like god, I hope we getthere.
So this is the same kind ofthing you're exactly right now.
We're moving freight at thiskind of average speed and then,
(37:56):
on top of that, reducinggreenhouse gases by 75% through
diesel electric.
That's amazing, and therailroads have been the mother
of invention forever.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well, that's just it.
I mean, if you're sitting here,turbine oil, diesel heavy fuels
coal.
They've done it all, They'vedone it all they've done it all
they've done.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Nuclear trains the soviets had nuclear powered
trains back in the 60s easy hey,you know, no, I'm kidding but
no, they did, they did and theywere, they were working with
that the nice thing about thosewas you didn't have to put
lights on them.
They already glowed in the darkand the snow never stuck to the
rail, my friend snow neverstuck to the rail the steely
(38:38):
eyed engineer had six eyes likeblinky the fish from the
simpsons.
But that thing was moving Ithink it was moving when it went
by.
It reminds me of the days whenmy grandmother used to talk
about a specter locomotive thatwould rocket past the farmhouse
little did.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
She know it was a communist plot to destabilize
america's democracy we have toedit that out we're not.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
That's how we're closing it, but that's the way
from union pacific on here,because seriously you're talking
about heavy equipment and youwant to talk about heavy stuff
and their maintenance program.
All their stuff is just nextlevel, next level.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, and they are incredibly efficient the way
they do things.
They're not wasting any time.
They're not wasting any money.
They deserve every penny theymake and probably two or three
more.
They do incredible stuff outthere.
So look, that was it, biff.
I hope you liked it.
We didn't talk about nothingelectric except the tesla that
got crushed underneath the bigmac and, uh, you know, hopefully
(39:42):
it wasn't yours.
now, I didn't say that checking her core
temperature would be a one-manjob, but that's okay because
there's two of us here.
Welcome back to the nextexciting episode of the heavy
equipment podcast and, uh, ifwe're not canceled yet, we soon
will be.
This is joe boris here, as ever, with mike hot, mike switzer
(00:21):
and um, how's that going overthere?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
we'll be checking the court temperature, all right,
of that scraper tractor pullingthat scraper, if you you know.
Let me tell you something.
We're just going to jump rightinto this because we skipped
over oh, we already just didbecause, because biff henderson
yells at us all the time becausewe're not heavy enough for him.
But let me tell you, john deerehas created a creation.
Is that a thing they did?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
that's how, that's what you do.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
That's what, how creations come to be if you want
to remove a fairway andrelocate it into a giant heap of
what used to be.
That's what you use this for.
You move dirt with it, itscrapes.
You pull it with a tractor thatthey make as well.
The whole thing is made by them, and then I heard that a
(01:08):
company out in Western Ohio justpicked up three of the first
ones that come off the assemblyline.
They move just about more dirtthan anybody.
They've been doing this for along time.
They have tandem scrapers theywere doing the tri scraper for a
while where you have the singlewith the dual behind it, the
dual track, quad track,four-wheel drive.
This new rendition of it,though, is, uh, thoroughly going
(01:31):
to make people more productive,move more material and just,
ultimately, be fun to run.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I think I don't know I mean, they look like a ton of
fun dude right.
So we're talking about the 3812, the 80t pulled scraper pan.
There's a bunch of these, but,as you said, they are updated
and like I can't even imaginewhat you would use this for.
This is like, if you rememberthe old transformers movie,
where the one robot, like theone planet, turns into a big
(01:59):
robot.
This is what you would use toshave that thing.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, here's the mystical work of a scraper.
Okay, All right.
It goes out there and it shavesthe planet off a little bit at
a time, literally from theplanet right, and you're
relocating the planet at anenormous rate, but you do it so
slyly and so exactly that youdon't really think it's doing
(02:23):
anything, until you come backlater in the day to check on the
progress of the job and you gowho the hell moved all that?
And John Deere did it for you.
That's what they're doing withit.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
There you go.
Well, this is going to be agood show.
I know we've definitely beentalking about going heavier and
heavier and heavier as the timegoes on, especially with Biff
constantly pushing andcomplaining.
All you guys talk about iselectric.
Nobody wants to talk aboutelectric.
Well, right now, we've alreadytalked about some pretty heavy
stuff with that.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
38 12 hold on hold on before this podcast, and we
wanted to talk about biff either, but yet somehow he gets
mentioned more than any of ourheadlines, so all right that's
what you get when you're in theroom.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
We got to get him to like get on the mic, though, but
he's he's shy, poor baby he'sshy baby.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You know he speaks broken english, so we're not
really sure speaks ukrainian,pretty good, is that where he's
from?
I don't know he must havepicked it up somewhere.
He must have picked it up duringthat month that we forgot him
at the Flying J Well you know,when Biff came to us in the cab
that he took us to the studio in, I think that we realized right
(03:39):
then and there that there wassomething to be said for his
quality of.
You know, it wasn't of speech,but it was the fact that he
definitely could help us.
The quality of his company isdefinitely worth having.
So, you know, wasn't of speech,but it was the fact that he
definitely could help us.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
The quality of his company is definitely worth
having.
So you know it's funny.
I didn't mean to bring intothis, but I was thinking about
this as we were uh debating thethe inclusion of young biff here
.
Do you know about the 1956 Macktruck Arctic expedition?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
No.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
There is a story more Say more.
So one of the things that we'regoing to talk about that's
actually on the script for todayis this world's largest Mack
truck that is getting restored,and this is something that we're
going to go into some detailabout in a little bit.
But as I was researching this,I realized there's not just one
(04:30):
of these things.
Mack actually built a couple ofthem.
There was 11 of these trucks.
Each one of them has a 28 literV12 Cummins diesel engine and
what they were originally meantto do they hauled three million
pounds of cement and steel intothe Arctic Circle to build, like
(04:50):
Cold War era 1950s B-52 bomberbases up there.
Wait.
So they built two or three ofthese 11, 1956 Bulldog Convoy 11
giant multi-axle Mack trucksthat are just absolutely bananas
(05:12):
.
And there's one being restoredout of a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
There's one being restored right now With the rest
left up there.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Who would leave?
That I have no idea.
I couldn't even tell you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
See, here's the thing about mac trucks and and this
is something if you go backthrough, if you go back through
history and you're looking atmac truck history very carefully
and quietly they built tankengines.
They built the mac v8 tankengines.
They built expedition vehiclesto above the arctic circle that
(05:43):
they have all these things.
They had a three axle off-roadmining truck rigid frame.
That they did.
They had all these like massivemoving trucks that were just
constantly engineered andreworked and built from scratch,
mind you, in allentown,pennsylvania, and shipped to
(06:04):
wherever they needed to be.
Kenworth did the same thing,peterbilt a little bit, but in
all seriousness, mac justquietly kept producing all this
stuff.
Yeah, and a lot of people don'trealize too that in allentown,
if you go through the museum, Imean they were some of the first
to take on noise back in the70s, oh yeah, and they had noise
(06:27):
rooms where they were testingtrucks and this is all ahead of
their time.
So this whole thing about thisexpedition above the Arctic
Circle truck, it's just anotherthing that they get into.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, and they did quite a bit in terms of
experimentation.
I just want to read out somespecs of this thing and you know
, especially as we decided, thatwe're going to do as heavy as
we possibly could today.
So let's get into that.
The bot without the body, sothat just the chassis itself
(07:03):
without the body, is 95 485pounds.
According to the originalliterature from mac, the gvwr is
331 875 pounds, which means ithas a payload capacity on its
(07:25):
own exceeding 100 tons, andthese are imperial that's just
the truck.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
That's just the truck that's not whatever it's not
whatever the it is towing,that's just the truck.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, powered by a v12.
Yeah, detroit diesel V12.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Each cylinder in the V is 149 cubic inches.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Oh yeah, 1900 RPM red line.
Could you imagine that thing,dude?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I can't imagine starting that up there.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
The air coming out of the exhaust hitting you in the
chest.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
if you're standing next to the tailpipe would blow
you over If you needed to shutit off suddenly and you put a
phone book from New York Cityand the intake it would all back
out the exhaust.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's how serious of a vehicle this is.
This is like Jonah and thewhale.
Yeah, it sucks in a goose andshoots out like a perfectly
cooked turkey.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Like one of them old hannah barbara cartoons that
truck is so nasty mean you couldpour boiling water down the
intake and it would pass icecubes out the exhaust.
Yes, that's how wicked thatthing is this thing is so sick
it defies all logic or man-madenonsense that's absolutely true,
(08:50):
so imagine if something likethat was roaming around today
and you get in your uh tesla andyou're riding up the highway
and then you hear this enormousrumble and your car suddenly
thinks that it's being engulfedby an aircraft carrier and
freaks out and pulls itself overto the right and all it was was
that coming up behind you andputting its turn signal on
(09:13):
saying please let me buy let mebuy.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
You say yes, sir, and let it go.
I was like, oh, I didn'trealize the tesla could talk to
the other vehicles, that is, wetalked about this.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
We did.
I got cut off by one and I'mnot going down that rant right
now, because we're talking aboutheavy, heavy equipment so
listen, though, this is probablythe heaviest gbwr for an
on-road vehicle I've heard of.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
The closest thing I know about other than that is a
husky port terminal tractor thatis technically road legal, has
a 35 mile an hour top speed, andthat thing has 180 000 pound
gvwr.
So this is like double that,and those are insane.
Those are the things that youput, like you know, multiple
(10:00):
containers on and they drag themto the rail yard.
So, uh, yeah, man, this is,this is heavy iron.
This is, uh, just about asheavy as it gets.
Uh, however or comma it doesget even heavier, because I
don't know if you saw this videothey have attached the largest
construction claw in northamerica to the largest crane.
(10:23):
It's a thousand ton capacityfloating crane and they're using
it up there in new englandthey're clearing up debris from
the francis scott key bridgecollapse out there in baltimore
and, uh, this is crazy, it's ahuge collaborative project up
there oh, I mean it has to be.
It's just absolutely insane howmuch steel and wreckage and
(10:45):
concrete actually went into thewater.
We don't want to make light ofthat because it was obviously a
tragedy.
But if you are a fan of heavyequipment and you're a fan of go
there and look at it that's it,they're down to the bank.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You can.
You can walk up and you can godown there and park and walk up
and go see the equipment thatthey're using to clean this up.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The core of engineers is using 22 floating cranes all
in, but this one is by far thebiggest.
It can go down 260 feet toclamp onto debris and the jaws
that have four hydraulicindividual Hydraulic individual
clamps can open 29 feet.
This is like the jaws of life.
(11:27):
If you were like a GI Joefigure, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I don't know.
That needs some people to godown.
We actually my brother needs togo down there and report from
the scene.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I think that's what we need to do.
We need to put him on.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
We need to put him on a van and get him down there
and have him report, and we cancut it.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
This is Neil Switzer reporting on the scene.
I don't know.
I think this thing's big, butis it really that big?
That'd be the whole report.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I don't want to see why I came out here.
Yeah, because nothing phaseshim.
You're absolutely right, hecould be nothing, phases he
could be in a.
He could be in a hurricanewhile they're trying to uproot
some part of a foundation of abuilding and he would be like
we're here on site okay nothingthat's it.
He gets back.
It gets back and walks sidewaysdown the road because the
(12:25):
hurricane's trying to blow himover.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Do you remember those videos that come out?
I want to say 2009, 2010, whenthe meteor exploded over russia
and it was like this blindinglight.
And there's this dude driving,he's got an in-car camera and
the meteor comes down and hejust flips his sun visor down
like I had no idea what washappening.
The world is ending.
There's like a nuclear flash inthe sky and he's just like
(12:48):
floop, like that's it.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's the end of the reaction that's your bri was an
ex-MIG fighter pilot because hehas seen it all and he
literally just went.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I'm ready.
I am uninterested.
He didn't even slow down, justSun Visor.
We have to find that video andplay it.
Too bad, this is an audio show.
That'd be a perfect one for theYouTube.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Oh my God, the claw though the thing is with those
grapples and stuff like that andthe demolition equipment.
I mean the tonnage that they'reabout to remove from the water,
cut up and load is enormousfrom that bridge.
Yeah, it's like 50,000, 60,000tons of steel, and it's not
including it doesn't look likethat, but when you realize that
(13:40):
the size of what took it out wasmassive, then you look at it
and go wow, I took for grantedhow that bridge was sized yeah,
but you know we had that thingwhen that um, what was it called
the evergreen that was stucksideways in the suez canal there
were, they had they had thoselittle excavators and they're
digging it free, right, theyweren't that little, that thing
(14:05):
was massive.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, it's a 30 ton excavator and it looks like a
little gnat.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Looks like somebody's trying to dig it out with a
tonka truck there was memeswhere people had spoons on the
end of the stick, you know, andstuff like that, and they were
like scoop it out, yeah it'slike no, I made some of those, I
think actually I think somebodyactually did the research.
It had like a seven yard bucketon it, so think about that
seven yards of material and itlooked like it was doing nothing
(14:31):
yeah, that's insane I wonder ifthey lost any in that dig.
That was my other question.
I wonder if they.
I wonder if they lost any inthat dig.
That was my other question.
I wonder if they.
I wonder if they lost any otherones where they were like julio
dropped it again, bring anotherone in get another one?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
yeah, I don't know, man.
There's some really crazy stuffout there in terms of bigness
and we've talked about a coupleof things like these lee pair
excavators.
We've talked about some ofthese big mining trucks that
they have in the, you know,these open air mines and these
quarries and things, but likethere's 300 plus tons, just
enormous.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And then I mean the, the autonomy on top of that is
is just another level of ourcountry and our and our whole
world is headed towards that.
But I can't even believe thatamount of tonnage being moved on
, just calculations at the endof the day.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, that's it.
And uh, yeah, I don't know Ithink we've said about all we're
going to say on that, otherthan like it's way bigger than
you think it is, and if you'reup there anywhere near
Baltimoretimore, anywhere neardc, go check that out.
It is an incrediblemobilization of really, truly.
So I don't want to get toophilosophical here, but it's an
(15:50):
incredible mobilization.
God damn it.
Don't show me no table.
I'm trying to run a podcasthere.
So what I was about to say,what is that?
It was an incrediblemobilization of human ingenuity
and intelligence, and myfaithful co-host just shot me a
Facebook marketplace listing fora cadaver table.
(16:11):
So Three of them three of them.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
My equipment broker just sent me a picture of this
going.
I think this fits your model.
I don't know what that messagemeans, but that means.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
But I assume we're just going to go after the show
and check that out.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Oh yeah, we're going to wheel those into the Costco
and fill them up like cards.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
What's the whole joke about the necrophiliacs?
On the way home from work, it'slike, hey, let's stop by and
crack open a few cold ones.
It's so bad, that's so bad.
That won't make the edit, Ipromise no.
That's going to be the30-second tagline that we put on
social media.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I mean, have you ever seen the cab, the inside of the
cab of one of these giantshovels?
Right, they're massive, and yousit in this big seat, like on
the Enterprise, and it's allglass around you, your nacho
cheese warmer's behind you andthere's a whole buffet table and
everything back there and allthat stuff because you're there
all day.
Right, yeah, you live there.
(17:13):
Yeah, you live there.
There's pizza ovens andeverything else.
It's incredible the amount ofyou know room that you have in
these.
But when you look at it fromthe outside, because of the mass
of what this thing is on, itlooks small yeah, for sure, but
you know, we know it's not Imean look well, yeah, I mean
(17:33):
look at, uh, the the shovelthere, ohio.
I mean it had its own indooroverhead crane in the engine
room on the shovel.
What, yes, yes, look up theengine room of the Big Muskie.
And then Peabody Coal.
Peabody Coal had the world'slargest shovel for a while there
(17:56):
.
Songs were written about that,about Peabody's Coal Train.
It's hauled it all away.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River wherePyrrha died today?
I'm sorry, my son, but you'retoo late in asking Mr.
Asking mr peabody's cold train.
How did he wait?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
that's insane.
I was not aware that big.
That's heavy out there in ohio.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That's 325 tons in one bite.
Yep, that's insane.
So okay, I'm learning about.
They had to use charges to blowit, to scrap it when they
needed to scrap that thing wow.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So I'm reading.
The story of this is onCaterpillar's own websites is
the story of Big Muskie.
They say that this crane itstood 22 stories high, had a 330
foot twin boom and a 220 yardbucket the size of a 12 car
garage bucket the size of a 12car garage.
(19:24):
When they finally scrapped it,they got 27 million pounds of
metal out of it.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Imagine that guy at the scrapyard the day the truck
started rolling in.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
He didn't have enough cash in the drawer let me tell
you there's some old dude with ashopping cart full of aluminum
cans just shaking his head.
Like I'm stuck behind thesedudes in the line brutal I
didn't even think about it likethat.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
This guy's got a garden, two hefty bags full of
cans and they're like just comeback tomorrow fred it's gonna be
a little while we haven't evensorted the copper yet oh man,
that's something that I don'tthink our kids will ever do.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
The the old you know they go around and get a bunch
of scrap and take it down to therecycling yard no, no, they're
not gonna do that.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Let me tell you the kids see, there was a time when
you could go around and youcould collect that stuff and
then and then you realize thatadd value, you go scrap it and
then you would have just enoughmoney to, like, buy, like a
cheeseburger or something, orsomething cool for your bike,
and then you would utilize thatRight.
So, but there was effort in, orreturning glass bottles back
(20:34):
for the deposit money becausesome, some drunkard down the
street was too lazy to do it ortoo drunk all the time.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, you get a nickel a bottle.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Exactly.
Again, the world always goesback to Seinfeld.
Seinfeld did an episode on thiswhen they were going to
Michigan with the cans and thebottles, because it's a lost
thing.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yes, I think a lot of that whole era that has been
lost really was captured inseinfeld.
It is such a funny show becauseit's this time capsule where
you know.
I've tried to show it to mykids and it doesn't resonate
with them because they grew upwith cell phones, right, and how
many of the problems in thatshow would have been solved
(21:16):
instantaneously by a cell phoneLike the way we've been texting
each other.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
They would have just said Kramer fell.
Okay, done, done, that'd be it,yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Or like hey, I'm at this this person's house, what's
the address?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
here I am, instead of trying to where they get stuck
at that one you know gettinglost at the mall, Getting lost
at the mall garage.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Like there were all these things that happened.
Now I will say this.
I will say this the worldslowed down a lot before cell
phones.
Yes, because the expectationbefore cell phones was he will
get back to me.
I know this guy and he willcall me back.
And if I wait here by thisphone, I'll be within earshot of
(22:05):
it.
He will call me back.
And people did this.
Runners dedicated to getting thephone for executives to go hold
on a second and set the phonedown and go get the guy and have
him come back to talk on thephone to you know, like that was
a whole thing and people don't,you know, I think.
I mean, look at when we talkabout truck stops and stuff, and
(22:27):
I've mentioned this before.
But you know, years ago therewas a phone room and you'd just
be a counter and it was justphones with stools.
You had booths with phones inthem.
I mean, when I was a kid weused to do they call home.
Yeah, you know constructionsites.
There were no phone issues.
There were no ear pods.
Truck drivers weren't drivingwith headphones, that you know.
(22:49):
You stopped to use the phone.
Yeah, songs about this stuff,highways and back roads.
This country sure is beautiful.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
But a byway ain't home.
You might gaze upon some land Ithought I'd never see, but it
feels like someone else's lifeand it don't belong to me.
I'm so tired of being alone Intechnical motels Watching late
(23:47):
night talking shows.
Lately I've felt like aroadshot full of holes, leaving
everything behind me EverywhereI go.
This ain't my bed, what I chose.
(24:08):
I used to be outnumbered, butnow I'm just a ghost.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I'm just a ghost and you know it was just a thing,
and I think today, yeah, well,the technology is life-saving
and we got to have it and ithelps in so many ways, it
hinders in a lot of ways,especially men who would say I'm
not going to carry around thisleash all the time because the
(24:56):
the thinking was it is a verysexist way of thinking.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I'm not in any way endorsing it, I'm just saying
this was the thinking of thetime of the era, right, right,
that.
Well, I don't want my wife tojust call me whenever she wants.
I'm down at the bar with mybuddies, or I'm going golfing or
something I don't want to be.
You know, getting her phonecall telling me to go pick up
milk, or where am I?
Or anything like that.
And that was really thementality.
That was a leash and yeah, now Ithink the other way now it's
(25:24):
the other way, but it's still aleash because, like, I'll give
you an example, as we'rerecording, as we normally record
the middle of the day, butwe're recording today, tonight,
because we, because we're tryingto get ahead, mike's going to
be traveling, I'm going to betraveling, so we want to have
some episodes in the bank, sowe're recording this in the
evening, which is not what weusually do.
I got a text from work while wewere sitting here recording and
(25:46):
sitting down already, and theexpectation is that I'm going to
drop whatever I'm doing, mytime with my family, hop on my
laptop, check out my work, emailand solve a problem.
Number one I'm not going to dothat.
This is not an overtime gig.
I apologize to anyone listening.
That's not what we do here.
So, number one, I'm not going todo that.
(26:06):
But number two, that's theexpectation of everybody.
That's the expectation, whetheryou're working in a mall,
whether you're working atStarbucks, that someone's going
to call you or text you andexpect you to solve a problem on
your own, and your friendsdon't have an obligation to it.
Your friends don't have a rightto it.
(26:35):
Your family don't have a rightto it.
That it's your time hascompletely gone away.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
No you're right and there's.
You know this goes along witheverything heavy that we talked
about already in this podcast.
You also have the soft side ofit, which is, you know, most
people when they get donerunning that heavy equipment
okay, and it's taxing mentally,sometimes physically, sometimes
both.
Yeah, back in the day, when allthat stuff that we talked about
(27:01):
.
You're talking about expeditionto the Arctic circle.
We're talking about a scraperthat can move an enormous amount
of material in a single pass.
We you know.
Then we're talking about thebig musky right, one of the
biggest shovels ever devised byman.
Imagine the crew running thatand when they got done.
There were no cell phones.
Right, there was a phone in it,though, but there were no cell
(27:22):
phones.
But imagine that when they gotdone and there's many studies
about this everybody that workedhad the third place.
Yes, and the third place wasthe VFW, the Eagles, the club
hall, anything like that.
(27:43):
That was not home and was notwork.
It was their social network, itwas any kind of thing like that
, and those have dwindledbecause your social network is
now tied to a phone.
That and those have dwindledbecause your social network is
now tied to a phone.
And when you erode personalinterconnection like that in
person, it just degrades thewhole thing and what it does do
(28:06):
and this is something thatpeople are studying now, because
this has been going on longenough it goes full circle and
it erodes work and home.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, it does, because the lack of boundaries
and the lack of that ability tobe you right, and so what I mean
by that is like at work, I amwork Joe.
At home with my kids and mywife, I'm family Joe that
ability to just joe outside ofthat and just like be me as I am
(28:38):
, on my own, is totally gone andoh, look at, look at most of
the drivers on the road today.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
They've got the, they have the bluetooth headset on,
they're on the phone almostnon-stop.
Okay, you, you know it used tobe.
You would chatter, chatter onthe CB, or you would.
You know, if you were in acompany, if you're in a heavy
piece of equipment on a job, youwould chatter on the company
radio and the foreman wouldchatter on his radio to the guys
(29:04):
that were running equipment andthere'd be some friendly banter
.
And then you know, whensomething happened you would
talk about something serious.
But that's all gone now withcell phones.
And then the worst thing now isyou got the cell phones, you
got the company radio going atthe same time.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
It's just a distraction.
It's a distraction.
I want to get back to this,though, because we talk a lot
about socioeconomic stuff onthis show.
We have since episode one andsomething that you and I have
kind of always bantered aboutand kind of found that common
bond in that it's a commoninterest of ours.
I want to run something past youand get your sense on this.
When we think back to like andlet's call it the glory days of
(29:45):
trucking just to last, just tohave a term to use, right, right
, and we think about those phonebanks and we think about you
know, that local tavern where,that bar, where everybody knows
your name, right, and you go andyou have regulars there and you
have that third place, I thinka lot of that, especially in the
early 70s and into the mid 70sand even into the early 80s a
(30:08):
little bit, was because we had astrong dollar.
The dollar would actually gofar enough.
We had stronger unionrepresentation for a lot of
these blue collar workers andyou could afford to do stuff
like that.
If I decide today, in 2024, andI do well, you do well, we're
(30:29):
comfortable guys On the way homefrom work if I stop to go eat
somewhere and I just want tohave, you know, a couple of bar
snacks and one or two beers, I'mspending 20, 30 bucks at a
cheap place.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
That's right.
And if you bring you bring yoursignificant other and then
maybe you buy a couple of drinksfor somebody that stops by,
that you know.
Next, you know that's a hundredbucks.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
That's it, and it's something that is not
sustainable in the way that itused to be, and I think it's got
a little bit to do withinflation, it's got a little bit
to do with the degradation ofthe dollar, it's got a lot to do
with wages, especially for theworking man, especially for the
manufacturers and the groundlevel people on the front lines
(31:14):
every day in America.
Their wages are not keeping pacewith stock prices, with CEO
rate, with C-level suite rate.
And when I think about stufflike that, I look at these
things and I see there's a newdeal at the Freightliner factory
, there's a new deal at JohnDeere, there's a new deal
happening at Volkswagen at theChattanooga plant we talked
(31:34):
about a couple of days ago.
That does bring me hope that weare going to start to write
some of these wrongs.
Maybe wrong isn't the thing,but, let's say, write some of
these oversights where it wasgetting better for an entire
class of people.
But there was a group ofAmericans and it was the
Americans that were building theroads and building the
infrastructure and building theworld around us.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
They got paid because they they it was warranted
because of what they were doing.
That's it.
And you know, yeah, and ifwe're going to talk about that
here's, here's something I'mgoing to tell you.
There was a nobility to thework that was being done.
It has been eroded by time.
People built the Hoover Dam,people built the highway system,
(32:21):
people built the skyscraperswith hot rivets and cold steel.
Those people were considerednoble men that did the
unthinkable, did the undoable,but they figured out how to do
it and they were paid veryhandsomely for it.
And they weren't paid over andabove, but they were paid quite
a bit for it.
And I can tell you that weeroded that Okay, and it didn't
(32:46):
keep up.
There was a very strong speechby Jimmy Hoffa that he did as
teamster president, and one ofthe taglines in that speech was
they were going to bring theworking man into the middle
class and they were going topromote, they were going to
essentially move the middleclass forward.
Okay, because there was a timewhere people that drove made
(33:11):
less than I mean they were justabove poverty.
Yeah, that's true.
And then the unions.
It doesn't matter what unionyou're in, the unions work
together to get those workersinto the middle class.
Yes, then they gain momentum.
And then they got to the upperend of that.
If you want to get into classwars, they get into the upper
(33:34):
end of the middle class.
And then you had white collarworkers that were joining unions
.
You had guys that were well,you know what, I'll, I'll, I'll
join the operators, I'll jointhe teamsters, I'll join the
mill rights.
And you know what?
I wear a white collar shirtevery day, but you know what?
They have a hell of a pensionand I'll just pay into that.
(33:59):
And then I'm going to unionizea bunch of guys, and then we're
going to do that too.
That started to happen.
Then somehow we slipped, and Ican tell you why.
And if you're going to get intothat whole ordeal, that is a
scary thing, yeah.
It's a scary thing when, whenyou have union working men and
women and they have the countrytied up because they feel that
something is an injustice, thatis a disruption to the entire
(34:20):
way that the whole economiccircle works.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Sure, but we've got a scenario that's not the whole
reason of the union.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
The union is to be fair, to create working
environments, to create wagesthat are competitive, that are
consistent with our economicsurroundings of the time and era
that we're talking about.
And my dad talks about timesback in the 70s and the 60s.
He's like, no, nobody made anexorbitant amount of money, but
(34:48):
he goes.
You know what?
You went and you bought a candybar for a nickel and he said
gas was only so many cents agallon and all those things were
proportionalized back.
So the inflation over time hascreated this constant evolution.
I think that this is this.
You know, we talk about this alot at work.
We talk a lot about this withthe union.
(35:08):
As the unions renegotiate, asthe unions come out with new
contracts locally to my office,they just release all those
contracts in May there is someserious cost of living increases
, unprecedented in thosepackages that are renegotiated
out over so many years.
So a lot of the unions just putout this whole escalation.
(35:29):
They say, okay, over so manyyears you're going to get this,
but they adjust those year toyear.
It's very important that thiskeeps happening.
Yeah, and the working man andwoman cannot slide backwards at
this point, because what you'regoing to have is you already
have people that don't want todo the work.
We already have people thatdon't want to come to work.
You're going to make it worse,You're going to make it worse.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
I spent the morning today at the international
brotherhood of electricalworkers here in illinois and,
first of all, a better god bless, yeah, a better group of guys
and girls you're never going tomeet and they were talking all
about electric.
And, in honor of this beingbiff's special episode, we're
going to save that conversationfor the next one and we're going
to close out with the heaviestthing, I think, that we've
(36:16):
talked about in a while theunion pacific railroad, which
has shaved two days off of itsturnaround time from california,
which is, um, I don't know, thetwo days from la to chicago.
That seems like it's.
That seems like a lot how areyou?
doing.
They're moving, they are.
(36:37):
They're moving a ton andthey're doing all the same
routes.
They're not cutting back anykind of production.
And uh, from city of industryin southern california to global
two in north lake illinois,they're getting there now two
days faster.
So that's 70 mile an houraverage service.
And they're doing it with theirnew engines.
(36:57):
They're saying they're reducinggreenhouse gas emissions by up
to 75%.
That's a tremendousaccomplishment.
This is like the old 1920s whenyou'd hear about this is the
record run from Lake Havasu toNiagara Falls.
You know, it's that kind ofvibe.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
And I think it's cool .
And when you used to leave outof Chicago and you would run out
to LA in a passenger train thatwould eclipse 100 mile an hour.
Back then and you're talkingabout you know you had the
steely-eyed missile menengineers sitting up front with
their jackets on and theirstuff's half unbuttoned and they
(37:35):
got their gloves right on thethrottle and they're leaning
into that thing.
They got all these lives behindthem.
Yeah, they just wanted to getthere thousands everybody was
along for the ride they're.
They're in their vista domelooking at the mountains and
they're like god, I hope we getthere.
So this is the same kind ofthing you're exactly right now.
We're moving freight at thiskind of average speed and then,
(37:56):
on top of that, reducinggreenhouse gases by 75% through
diesel electric.
That's amazing, and therailroads have been the mother
of invention forever.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well, that's just it.
I mean, if you're sitting here,turbine oil, diesel heavy fuels
coal.
They've done it all, They'vedone it all they've done it all
they've done.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Nuclear trains the soviets had nuclear powered
trains back in the 60s easy hey,you know, no, I'm kidding but
no, they did, they did and theywere, they were working with
that the nice thing about thosewas you didn't have to put
lights on them.
They already glowed in the darkand the snow never stuck to the
rail, my friend snow neverstuck to the rail the steely
(38:38):
eyed engineer had six eyes likeblinky the fish from the
simpsons.
But that thing was moving Ithink it was moving when it went
by.
It reminds me of the days whenmy grandmother used to talk
about a specter locomotive thatwould rocket past the farmhouse
little did.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
She know it was a communist plot to destabilize
america's democracy we have toedit that out we're not.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
That's how we're closing it, but that's the way
from union pacific on here,because seriously you're talking
about heavy equipment and youwant to talk about heavy stuff
and their maintenance program.
All their stuff is just nextlevel, next level.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, and they are incredibly efficient the way
they do things.
They're not wasting any time.
They're not wasting any money.
They deserve every penny theymake and probably two or three
more.
They do incredible stuff outthere.
So look, that was it, biff.
I hope you liked it.
We didn't talk about nothingelectric except the tesla that
got crushed underneath the bigmac and, uh, you know, hopefully
(39:42):
it wasn't yours.
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