Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Verie Show is on the air. A couple of
(00:32):
weeks back, I was talking about the joy of when
you write things down, marking them off your list, and
remember the old Franklin Planner trapper keeper. I've always been
a person who enjoys the process, and not only enjoys it.
(00:53):
I need it, I needed, I crave it. But it
also brings me great comfort and joy to bring order
to the world of disorder, to clean things, to wipe
things down, to put them in their place, to fix
things to the extent that I can fix anything that's
not I'm not a very mechanically inclined person at all.
(01:17):
I admire people who are. It's just not my skill.
But I enjoy the idea in a world of chaos
to bringing order to it by reducing to writing things
that I need to do. That happened during the all
sorts of things, and so I had talked about that,
(01:37):
and at the end of every day before I leave out.
In Ramone's world, on his side of the glass, where
there's a lot of technology, there's what's called a board knows,
radio knows. There's what's called a board, and that's where
all the buttons and you know, that's the flight control.
That's I don't know how to do any of that part.
That's that's the technical side of what we do. And
there was an old rule in radio that used z
(02:00):
you would zero out your board at the end of
every shift. And so the idea was you bring the
board back to almost factory settings before you walk out
the doors, you zero out the board. Well, the beauty
was when we got our own studio, which has been
probably ten years ago or so. We didn't have to
share our studio with anybody. So before that, I would
(02:23):
walk in after Pat Gray and I would sit down
in his seat and then the volume would be top
would be you know, it went from one to ten,
and it would be at eleven. Spinal tap in my ear,
and same thing with John Walton, and I'd have to
remember every day when I walked in to turn the
volume to zero and ease it up because I had
(02:44):
a lot of hearing loss as a child, and I
don't want to lose anymore. I saw what happened with Russia.
I can't do what I do if I lose anymore
my hearing anyway, So in my world every day. When
I leave, I've got loads. I print everything out, so
I've got loads of paper, and then I've got a
digital load as well, and I go through every email
(03:06):
and finish those out and delete or delegate everything on
that list and start all over so that I can
walk into a clean desk. And I was talking about
that process and I received an email from a fellow
named Bob Baldwin, and it said I have what I
accomplished last week tracked in Microsoft to do list, and
he said I have to maintain a to do list
(03:28):
every day to track all that needs to be done
and what I've accomplished. I start out the day with
a new list, usually from the list I didn't get
done yesterday. If something gets added because of a call
or an email, I add even that to my to
do list and I mark it off as I do it.
There's a lot of satisfaction in checking things off. I
use the free Microsoft to Do app on my phone
(03:50):
and my PC to track the items. I can always
review everything I have done each day. Well when I
read emails. I also like to see the window dressing,
the the cover to the book. And I looked down
and says Bob Baldwin, President CEO of CNG for America.
(04:11):
CNG like compressed natural gas, the number four America. So
I thought, huh, I know what that is. So I
went over to the website and I see that just
as there is a push for electric vehicles or wind power,
not for cars or solar, there has long been a
(04:31):
push and I've had folks who were who were evangelical
about it, or compressed natural gas, and I see that there.
He's got pictures of gas tanks and their tankers and
the CNG, and so we got to going back and forth,
and I asked him, you know, my next question was
are you making any money on CNG? And so I
(04:52):
went through that and what they do, and it strikes
me as one of those things that could any point
be worth a whole lot of money. But he's been
at this, he's kind of tip of the spear on
this whole process. So I thought it'd be a fun
conversation to have Bob Baldwin. Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Good morning, Michael, How are you good.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
How did you get into compressed natural gas?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's a very good question. I started out as a
Patroy engineer from Montana Tech, and over the years I
got concerned about how much oil were importing from other countries,
and in twenty ten, we were importing about sixty five
percent of our oil. I said, man, this is not
(05:38):
this is not going to make it for us unless
we figure out a way to become energy independent. And
that's when Tea Boom Pickens came out with his Pickens Planet.
Let's convert a bunch of vehicles to natural gas and
move toward energy independence. Well that was before the fracking
boom and natural gas oil for action start taking off,
(06:01):
because at that point we were only producing five million
barrels of oil a day. Right now today we're producing
thirteen million barrels of oil today and we're a net
exporter of oil. So that changed a lot since twenty ten.
But at that point in twenty ten, we were going
down and the amount of oil produced and where my
(06:23):
kids and grandkids are going to be able to get
energy I was very concerned about and so when I
saw the Pickens plan, I said, that looks like a
pretty good answer to me, and so I was supporting it,
but hardly anything was being actually done about it. And
I said, well, I can't gripe about it unless I
put my feet to it. So I started C and
(06:45):
G for America. I went out and bought a car
and got it converted to natural gas. And I said,
if I'm going to ask other people to eat some
dogs food, I better eat some dog food first and
see how it tastes. And so I traveled around the
country and filled up at the very few number of
CG stations at that point and discovered part of the
reason why they're not so popular. They're typically off at
(07:09):
some industrial park or some private fleet or some gas
company location, and you know, no bathrooms, no food or anything.
So we've got to try to change that. And that
was kind of the model I tried to create, was
building CG stations at truck stops that have food and
bathrooms and things for drivers.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
And that was what year that you.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
You you went in ten? Twenty ten is when I
started the company. We built our first station in twenty twelve,
and that was in Brian, Texas.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And did you take on investor money for that?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I did? Yeah, friends and family, Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
What did it cost to build that first station?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
The first station was about one point two million. And
if you're going to fill natural gas Semis, which is
our biggest business. You have to have larger compressors and
it is quite expensive. But the average station that we built,
we built five of them. The average station costs US
(08:12):
about one point five million.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
All right, Hold just in a moment. His website is
CNNG for Compressed natural Gas, the Number four America CNG
four America.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
You are listening to the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Don't know Bandett is gonna walk out in a new moment?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Would you like to.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Maybe Enrique Iglesias to be sitting at the table across
the way? Jeez, I's done, don't you This feels very gay? Yes,
so much of what we do so y gig, but
we shall we shall die by I'm off, doesn't it
(09:10):
has that vibe? I don't think that's how it was intended.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Puma walks in, He's like, what bye, lah, Bylah, I'm
in on this, and then it just takes a really
weird turn, and I thought we were talking about compressed
natural gas.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Boy Baldwin is the CEO and founder of c G
Compressed Natural Gas the number four America dot com. By
the way, we were contacted by the folks at Oracle
a little while back. They heard the interviews we do
with business folks, and I don't know who I was
(09:50):
doing the one that they heard that they loved and
asked if they could sponsor the show and we said absolutely.
So you're reminder if you run an operation that's gotten
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(10:11):
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(10:34):
You bring everything under one suite Finance, Accounting Inventory HR
NetSuite dot com forward slash Barry. So, Bob, let's talk
about the economics of building the first the first pump
you put you called it a station. Is that a
standalone station or is that just a pump at a
(10:54):
location did you have to secure the dirt for that now.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So what we did are model that I came up with,
which has not been a very good model by the way,
is that we would build compressed natural gas stations on
existing truck stops where there's a natural gas pipeline close by.
And finding those was somewhat difficult. But most of the
(11:20):
people that around that time were so excited about natural
gas that said build it will come, and after they
realized they could put their own station in their own heart,
they started doing that, and then we lost a lot
of those customers. But our first station was in Bryan, Texas.
We initially got nine hundred thousand dollars to build it
(11:41):
and turned out that was a little less than what
I needed, and so we ended up getting I think
probably one point one million dollars to finally finish it off.
And then so I got family, friends, people together said
it looks like a good idea, and the first month
I sold one hundred and fifty dollars worth to myself.
(12:03):
Oh well, so, but it took time to find out
that we actually had a station there, and we had
nine fleets that agreed to fuel with us. When we've
before we built that station. That's the reason we decided
to build it in Brian because there was nine fleets
that said, yeah, you build it, we'll we'll get our
vehicles over there.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
But they weren't, and they're actually obligated.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
They were just they were not. They were not. And
that's that's probably partly you know, my fault or my
downfall on part of this was there's no contract there
where where if you build a station at their location,
they're contractually obligated to fill with you.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Hold on, where where were they getting C ANDNG before
your station?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
That they weren't. They were just it was just coming
online as a big deal of that.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So they were willing to invest in converting their trucks
to C ANDNG or buy new CNG trucks correct both
either one?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And does a C ANDNG truck then, did a C
ANDNG truck cost more or less or the same? I'm
assuming more?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, it costs more. It costs more for a semi truck.
It's probably close to sixty thousand dollars more. But the
price difference per gallon was significant a two dollars two
dollars well back yeah, back then, diesel was about four
fifty and we were selling our gas for two dollars,
(13:24):
So it doesn't take too long for a semi to
pay pay off that sixty thousand dollars. If they're doing
a lot of miles.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
And at that time, if you if they if they
fueled up with you, how far could they because they
couldn't do it all in round trips, right right? So
where would they were there other stations, I presume.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, So at the time when I built that station,
there was only fourteen stations in the state of Texas,
and but there was a big push to let's go
ahead and get some stations built, and so there was
quite a few built between two thousand and ten and
twenty sixteen. And then the price of oil dropped like crazing.
We became uncompetitive about that time. But at that point
(14:08):
we were very competitive, I mean our main What happened
to us in Brian which really shot us off, was
we were along the route on Highway six going between
Stephenville and Houston, where milk trucks were going up and
down the road, and they were already converting to natural
gas and they were going to put a station in
(14:30):
Waco to fill their trucks going up and down between
Houston and Stephenville. Well, their station was way late getting built,
and so we got all that volume for six months
and we paid off two thirds of the station in
that first year. But we had forty semi trucks going
twenty four hours a day up and down that road,
which is very economical to do it that way, but
(14:55):
with a bunch of little cars, it's not unless there's
a whole bunch of little cars, because one semi can
take ten times as much fuel as a.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Car, And then what kind of capacity did you have
in your underground storage tank?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So they're not underground. We get gas from the pipeline.
We then compress it into storage, which only gives us
about probably at our most of our stations, it's about
four hundred and fifty gallons equivalent worth of fuel. But
that's only just to start the fuel the filling of
(15:31):
a vehicle off, and then as soon as the flow
rate gets us or the pressure gets to a certain
level in those tanks, then we kick on the compressors,
finish off the vehicle with the pressure, and then we
refill the storage back up again and prepare for the
next vehicle to come in.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
All right, talk to me like, I mean, let's say
sixth grade. How do you compress that natural gas? What
is the process?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Okay? So it's very similar to like your little compressor
that you have for an air gun or something like that.
I suspect you've seen those. They're just much larger. You know.
It compresses it in one stage. Gas goes in at
the pressure of the pipeline and goes in the first
(16:19):
stage and then compresses it down to about half that size,
and then it goes in the next stage and the
next stage, and typically there's three two to four stages typically.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
All right, hold with me for a moment. Bob Baldwin
is his name is c n G number four America
Pop pot. Okay, Daddy Yankee, I'll give you credit. That's
(16:49):
pretty well played.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Man.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
When that song hit, you couldn't go anywhere without that
damn song. And in Houston they had flipped kl O
L to Mega one oh one, which was that they
called the format reggathon, which was a it wasn't quite tropical.
(17:13):
There's a there's a in radio. You have formats. Uh
our format is news talk, but you have a tropical format,
and then you have several that would be uh uh,
then you have a Mexican style. The reggathone was very
(17:33):
popular at the time because and it was really one
of those formats that was that was programmed around these
artists that were popular that they didn't have a format for.
And you've seen that happen in different forms of music,
where the artist is so big the format comes behind
them instead of the other way around. But that station,
(17:54):
at that time, it was the Mexicans in the Morning,
and I loved those guys. I used to go on
there show actually, and they were good friends of mine,
Chico and Rascal. And this was the number one song.
And you know how Top fortys, Top forty stations work.
When a song is hot, you play it until people
are absolutely sick and tired of it. You don't put
any time in between it, and you just keep playing
(18:16):
that damn thing until people can't listen to it again.
So we'd be walking down the hall and they would
rotate which show was playing in the hallway, and it
felt like Gasolina was playing constantly, and I thought I'd
gotten away from it. And we went to Puerto Rico
last Thanksgiving and they don't know, they didn't get the memo,
(18:38):
stop playing the damn song everywhere you'd go, and it's
that beat gets in your head. And the problem is
in a lot of Latin American countries, loud noises, cacophony,
the pollution, the confusion and distortion of music playing loudly
(18:59):
does not bother them. They love it. Everybody's always kind
of in a little bit of a half dance. They
walk in a park dance and you would walk along
in every shop would have a different song play it.
So this song might have mark Antonio Salis, and then
this song might have Enrique Iglesias, and then you have Gosolina,
(19:20):
and then you have another Enrique, and then you have Gasolina,
but at a different point in the song. So the
two Gosolinas were competing. Man, that's a lot of Gosolina.
Bob Baldwin is our guest. He's the founder of c
G Compressed Natural Gas, the number four America dot com. Bob,
where'd we leave it?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
So? I think we were talking about the first initial
station that got built. Yeah, yeah, Kerry Obrian, I just
want to tell you that it looks like everybody's been
listening in America because of the price of natural gas
just jumped up ten percent this morning. So yes. So
after we built that station and the investments were real
(20:05):
happy about their return, of course, let's let's build some more.
And so we started building one in Rosenberg, and then
one in Katie, and then we finished one off in Austin,
and then we have one over by Baytown actually at
the Cove exit as well. So my plan was to
try to cover all the major highways going in and
(20:26):
out of Houston area, primarily so that you could get
fuel on your way out and fuel on your way back,
and so that would cover Houston pretty well. There were
only two stations in Houston when I started, and they
were at clean Energy stations and they were pretty old
at that time and really needed to be renewed.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So yeah, all right, so catch us up. Where is
the market today? Is not kind of painting a bleak
picture here, Bob.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Well, and it is a little bit because the market
for or public stations, I think is kind of different,
difficult because you don't have the volumes that you need
unless you're unless you're associated with a fleet right next
to you. So one of my friendly competitors built a
station for Houston Metro. Well, Metro uses probably a million
(21:21):
gallons of fuel a month, and that I'm sure has
turned out to be very well for them, where ours
was Okay, we're going to build it and see if
they come, and that probably was not a good market.
So now kind of changed my methodology to where we're
looking for small fleets that want to fuel their trucks
(21:41):
right at their yard and if we can make a
public dispenser at that location, and that's great, But the
primary uses of natural gas today are people like UPS
and Amazon. UPS has gone into this in a very
big way. In fact, probably half of the semi trucks
(22:01):
that you see going around Houston are compressed natural gas.
If you look at a UPS truck and there's a
big canister behind the cab, that's a compressed natural gas truck.
And they just put out an investment to buy a
bunch more in twenty twenty three for nineteen billion dollars
worth of trucks. So it's huge with people like UPS.
But I hardly get any business from UPS because they
(22:24):
fill their own trucks at their own locations.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, at that size, that's the model that makes sense. Yeah,
and how much are they doing that? Because it is
an efficient, effective fuel source. And how much of that
is regulatory credits and governmental credits.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Well, I've although I'd love to say that they are
real excited about cleaning up our air, it's really more economics.
And so it's the fact that natural gas is pretty
cheap right now. Natural gas right now is four dollars
and forty cents, and out of that you can eight
(23:06):
you can get eight gasoline gallons of fuel, and then
you've got to get it compressed and put into the
vehicle and maintain all your equipment and pay your labor
and all that stuff. But over a lot of gallons
that you can typically get it into a vehicle for
around a dollar a dollar twenty five per gallon. So
people like ups they do very very well. And then
(23:30):
on top of it, they can get rebates if they're available,
and they can also get renewable credits and make some
money that way as well.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I saw a statistic I made notes on it. I
was reading an article about regulatory credits and how the
rivian which is what all the Amazon trucks are those
blue those cool blue.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Okay, yep.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So a friend of mine, Kevin, owns Fixed out of Houston,
dot Com and they do all the collision repair for
the Rivian trucks in the Greater Houston area. So if
you drive out there, it looks like a Rivian, it
looks like an Amazon dealership. Is all their vehicles there,
because you know, they're always bumping into stuff. And the
Rivian business model is it costs. Their cost of goods
(24:20):
sold to COGS per car last year was ninety nine thousand,
their average selling price was eighty six thousand, so they
were supposed to finally be profitable in twenty twenty four,
but they lose thirteen thousand on every vehicle they make.
But they claimed to be profitable, and the reason was
they get a regulatory credit of twenty one thousand dollars
(24:42):
per vehicle sold, so they book that as a one
hundred and seven thousand dollars sale and making eight thousand
dollars per unit. But they don't make eight thousand dollars
per unit. They lose thirteen And all the regulatory credits
are coming from California, which is why Rivian has worked
the California market so hard. So basically you've got government
(25:05):
saying to this vehicle, this company won't exist if we
don't give them a massive tax break. More with Baldwin
CNNG Compressed Natural Guests Cnngfouramerica dot com.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
You are listening to Michael Barry.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Shall every Senate Democrat who voted forty five out of
the forty seven voted to block the Republican bill to
keep men out of female sports professionally and in the schools.
(25:43):
Ron and Tessa Wright, I think Trump should appoint Loreena
Bobbitt in charge of performing the inspections because she cut
Oh you got okay, and I know you knew. For
those of you who have been following the free Burt movement,
we are having an RCC reunion esque old fashioned meetup
(26:05):
this Thursday at three pm. I'm not announcing the location
because I don't know how many people we're gonna have,
and I need the venue owner to be able to
block off the appropriate amount of space. I don't want
to take more space than we need and hurt his sales.
I don't want to take less space than we need
(26:26):
and somebody with bad breath be all up on Ramon
talking too close because he can't you know, he can't crawfish.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Out of there.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
So that will be Thursday at three PM. If you
are interested in joining, email me with how many people
in your group. I will tell you realistically, it's going
to be mostly dudes. I'm not saying to women you
can't come. I know y'all get very upset about that.
I'm not saying you can't come, But I'm going to
tell you it's mostly going to be a sausage fest
(26:53):
because it's middle of the afternoon and it's a bunch
of dudes. Will Connie Stagner be there, yes? Will Sandy
Peterson be there?
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Are they one of the guys?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (27:02):
So as long as you're comfortable with that, you're welcome
to show up. It's just you need to understand there's
a lot of dudes dipping and a lot of spitting,
and they will be know, ooh, that's gross talk. You
know what I'm saying or wrong. That'll be Thursday at three.
If you want to know where it is, email me
and include the number of people and put yourself as
part of yours.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
So if it's just me or.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
There'll be three of us, means you and two others
so we can give at least a decent rough headcount
to the owner of the venue. Thursday three pm the
Free Bert Movement. There's no ticketing, there's no band. It's
just standing around and drink beer and celebrate the release
of the long held political prisoner Bert Harvey of Bert
(27:46):
Harvey Construction Fame. Bob Baldwin is our guest CNG for
America dot Com. Bob, I gotta tell you, I don't
like when people are trying to sell me kind of
a huss sisty kind of thing to do. But man,
you are the other extreme. I need you to give
me a reason that this thing even.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Dissts, right, Okay, good. So around the world it's very
very popular. It's not as popular here. China has five
million CNG vehicles. I ran as four million, India as
three million. Here we only have about one hundred and
seventy five thousand CNG vehicles right now. But here we
(28:31):
tend to be a little bit spoiled with our gasoline prices, right.
I think you were mentioning before in the previous show
how expensive it is for gasoline in India, and it's
probably equivalent to six or seven dollars a gallon, where
natural gas then is very very competitive and in fact
actually needed because they don't have the refineries like we've got.
So we're very fortunate to have a low priced gasoline
(28:55):
and diesel. So we have to adapt for what the
market can allow us to do. And that's what I'm
moving toward, is trying to do that. So we actually
deliver natural gass to the Fort Bench School District for
sixty C and G buses down there, and we deliver
to another company that has ten semis that we fill
every night, and so that has provided a way for
(29:19):
us to stay economically feasible. And now we're looking at
at trying to find fleets that have you know, probably
ten or more large trucks that want to be filled
every night and stay local. They don't they're not traveling
across the country because that's the model that works for
C and G because the distance that you can go
(29:42):
and the number of stations make it difficult to travel
across the country. So if you can go out during
the day, come back, get your vehicle filled overnight, take
off in the morning, it's full. I used to do
that at my house. I had bought a compressor, put
it at my house, and I'd attach it to my truck.
In the morning, my truck would be full and I'd
drive away and wave at everybody at the gas stations
that I drove by. So the model is more of
(30:05):
a local route fleet that we need to be selling
right now, which is good. That's I mean, that's pretty
much what Amazon is right. They're driving around, staying pretty
local to the Texas Triangle and using a lot of gas.
Same thing with ups set routes every day to come
back home, get filled at home. That's really the model
(30:27):
that works well for compressed natural gas because the tanks
on them don't hold as much energy, They take up
more room and don't hold as much energy to go
as far, so you have to accommodate for that. So
that is where natural gas is going to be a
big deal. And we've got so much natural gas in
our country, and it's one of the few fuels that
(30:48):
we can actually put in a car. You can't put
coal in a car and run it. You can't put
nuclear in it. You can't put wind energy in a car,
except for maybe through electric and I think that's going
to have some problems as we as some of these
electric cars age out. Uh, you can't really run I
don't think an electric school bus very well. They're they're
(31:11):
almost three times as expensive. And the harm to our
grid I think is going to be very difficult because
we don't have enough electricity right now. We're worried to
pout it. So you add all those things up. We
got tons and tons of natural gas, and so we
need to utilize I think, our resources more wisely. And
(31:36):
so let me ask a questions.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
And I am not a technical person, I'm not an engineer,
but I'm also not afraid to ask stupid questions.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And I suspect there.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Are other people who would. So reading on this during
the break, I'm seeing they call them ngv's natural gas vehicles,
and that includes either CNG compressed natural gas liquefy natural gas.
So if a a compressed natural gas is not in
a liquid form.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
What form is it in? If I look at it,
so it's it's like you're it's like you're squishing the air.
So you're taking a cubic foot of gas and squishing
it down to a cubic inch, and all that energy
that's in one standard cubic feet of gas gets pushed
down into a cubic inch and then I and then
(32:25):
I compress another one and put it to a cubic engine,
and I can get into a cubic foot a lot
more gas because I'm I'm compressing it that much. It
is that pliable and compressible.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
So if I were to go underneath one of your
delivery tanks of compressed natural gains and I were to
punch a hole in it, yep, under the bottom, what
would happen?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yep? Well, a bunch of methane would come spewing out now,
and that I got to tell you that's very difficult
to do because these tanks are are.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Very I'm more I'm more focused on animal, mineral, vegetable
it is at that point, would I see it?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
No? No, Well, you probably see gas that is freezing
in the moisture in the air that's freezing as that
gas comes out, and it's freezing like when you're using
a spray can, so but you can't see it. You
can't smell it unless it's odorized, which ours is odorized.
That way, you know you've got a leak, right, So
(33:27):
you can hear it and you can smell it, but
only because it's odorized. But yeah, they can have leaks,
and you have to be, of course cautious about that.
But I can tell you you don't see two. You
don't see any CNG vehicles on the side of the
road burning up. It's very safe, and when the methane
comes out, it's lighter than air, so it goes up
(33:48):
into the air and away from your vehicle. It doesn't
gather beneath the vehicle.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Fascinating to me. Hold on just a moment, Bob Baldwin,
as our guest is. Website is c NG for compressed
natural gas. The number four America e g.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Four Americans
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Verie Show is on the air. A couple of
(00:32):
weeks back, I was talking about the joy of when
you write things down, marking them off your list, and
remember the old Franklin Planner trapper keeper. I've always been
a person who enjoys the process, and not only enjoys it.
(00:53):
I need it, I needed, I crave it. But it
also brings me great comfort and joy to bring order
to the world of disorder, to clean things, to wipe
things down, to put them in their place, to fix
things to the extent that I can fix anything that's
not I'm not a very mechanically inclined person at all.
(01:17):
I admire people who are. It's just not my skill.
But I enjoy the idea in a world of chaos
to bringing order to it by reducing to writing things
that I need to do. That happened during the all
sorts of things, and so I had talked about that,
(01:37):
and at the end of every day before I leave out.
In Ramone's world, on his side of the glass, where
there's a lot of technology, there's what's called a board knows,
radio knows. There's what's called a board, and that's where
all the buttons and you know, that's the flight control.
That's I don't know how to do any of that part.
That's that's the technical side of what we do. And
there was an old rule in radio that used z
(02:00):
you would zero out your board at the end of
every shift. And so the idea was you bring the
board back to almost factory settings before you walk out
the doors, you zero out the board. Well, the beauty
was when we got our own studio, which has been
probably ten years ago or so. We didn't have to
share our studio with anybody. So before that, I would
(02:23):
walk in after Pat Gray and I would sit down
in his seat and then the volume would be top
would be you know, it went from one to ten,
and it would be at eleven. Spinal tap in my ear,
and same thing with John Walton, and I'd have to
remember every day when I walked in to turn the
volume to zero and ease it up because I had
(02:44):
a lot of hearing loss as a child, and I
don't want to lose anymore. I saw what happened with Russia.
I can't do what I do if I lose anymore
my hearing anyway, So in my world every day. When
I leave, I've got loads. I print everything out, so
I've got loads of paper, and then I've got a
digital load as well, and I go through every email
(03:06):
and finish those out and delete or delegate everything on
that list and start all over so that I can
walk into a clean desk. And I was talking about
that process and I received an email from a fellow
named Bob Baldwin, and it said I have what I
accomplished last week tracked in Microsoft to do list, and
he said I have to maintain a to do list
(03:28):
every day to track all that needs to be done
and what I've accomplished. I start out the day with
a new list, usually from the list I didn't get
done yesterday. If something gets added because of a call
or an email, I add even that to my to
do list and I mark it off as I do it.
There's a lot of satisfaction in checking things off. I
use the free Microsoft to Do app on my phone
(03:50):
and my PC to track the items. I can always
review everything I have done each day. Well when I
read emails. I also like to see the window dressing,
the the cover to the book. And I looked down
and says Bob Baldwin, President CEO of CNG for America.
(04:11):
CNG like compressed natural gas, the number four America. So
I thought, huh, I know what that is. So I
went over to the website and I see that just
as there is a push for electric vehicles or wind power,
not for cars or solar, there has long been a
(04:31):
push and I've had folks who were who were evangelical
about it, or compressed natural gas, and I see that there.
He's got pictures of gas tanks and their tankers and
the CNG, and so we got to going back and forth,
and I asked him, you know, my next question was
are you making any money on CNG? And so I
(04:52):
went through that and what they do, and it strikes
me as one of those things that could any point
be worth a whole lot of money. But he's been
at this, he's kind of tip of the spear on
this whole process. So I thought it'd be a fun
conversation to have Bob Baldwin. Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Good morning, Michael, How are you good.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
How did you get into compressed natural gas?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's a very good question. I started out as a
Patroy engineer from Montana Tech, and over the years I
got concerned about how much oil were importing from other countries,
and in twenty ten, we were importing about sixty five
percent of our oil. I said, man, this is not
(05:38):
this is not going to make it for us unless
we figure out a way to become energy independent. And
that's when Tea Boom Pickens came out with his Pickens Planet.
Let's convert a bunch of vehicles to natural gas and
move toward energy independence. Well that was before the fracking
boom and natural gas oil for action start taking off,
(06:01):
because at that point we were only producing five million
barrels of oil a day. Right now today we're producing
thirteen million barrels of oil today and we're a net
exporter of oil. So that changed a lot since twenty ten.
But at that point in twenty ten, we were going
down and the amount of oil produced and where my
(06:23):
kids and grandkids are going to be able to get
energy I was very concerned about and so when I
saw the Pickens plan, I said, that looks like a
pretty good answer to me, and so I was supporting it,
but hardly anything was being actually done about it. And
I said, well, I can't gripe about it unless I
put my feet to it. So I started C and
(06:45):
G for America. I went out and bought a car
and got it converted to natural gas. And I said,
if I'm going to ask other people to eat some
dogs food, I better eat some dog food first and
see how it tastes. And so I traveled around the
country and filled up at the very few number of
CG stations at that point and discovered part of the
reason why they're not so popular. They're typically off at
(07:09):
some industrial park or some private fleet or some gas
company location, and you know, no bathrooms, no food or anything.
So we've got to try to change that. And that
was kind of the model I tried to create, was
building CG stations at truck stops that have food and
bathrooms and things for drivers.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
And that was what year that you.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
You you went in ten? Twenty ten is when I
started the company. We built our first station in twenty twelve,
and that was in Brian, Texas.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And did you take on investor money for that?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I did? Yeah, friends and family, Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
What did it cost to build that first station?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
The first station was about one point two million. And
if you're going to fill natural gas Semis, which is
our biggest business. You have to have larger compressors and
it is quite expensive. But the average station that we built,
we built five of them. The average station costs US
(08:12):
about one point five million.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
All right, Hold just in a moment. His website is
CNNG for Compressed natural Gas, the Number four America CNG
four America.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
You are listening to the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Don't know Bandett is gonna walk out in a new moment?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Would you like to.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Maybe Enrique Iglesias to be sitting at the table across
the way? Jeez, I's done, don't you This feels very gay? Yes,
so much of what we do so y gig, but
we shall we shall die by I'm off, doesn't it
(09:10):
has that vibe? I don't think that's how it was intended.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Puma walks in, He's like, what bye, lah, Bylah, I'm
in on this, and then it just takes a really
weird turn, and I thought we were talking about compressed
natural gas.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Boy Baldwin is the CEO and founder of c G
Compressed Natural Gas the number four America dot com. By
the way, we were contacted by the folks at Oracle
a little while back. They heard the interviews we do
with business folks, and I don't know who I was
(09:50):
doing the one that they heard that they loved and
asked if they could sponsor the show and we said absolutely.
So you're reminder if you run an operation that's gotten
too big for QuickBooks, and you know what that means.
You're trying to be elon going into the pentagon and
figure out where all the money is. You don't have
the manpower or time to wait on them to dig
(10:11):
through it. You're still doing manual work and spreadsheets. You
can't get your data responses, you can't get answers to questions.
You can't close your books at the end of your
fiscal year. Over forty one thousand businesses have upgraded to
net Suite by Oracle. Get your cfo's guide to AI
and Machine Learning at NetSuite dot com forward slash Barry.
(10:34):
You bring everything under one suite Finance, Accounting Inventory HR
NetSuite dot com forward slash Barry. So, Bob, let's talk
about the economics of building the first the first pump
you put you called it a station. Is that a
standalone station or is that just a pump at a
(10:54):
location did you have to secure the dirt for that now.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So what we did are model that I came up with,
which has not been a very good model by the way,
is that we would build compressed natural gas stations on
existing truck stops where there's a natural gas pipeline close by.
And finding those was somewhat difficult. But most of the
(11:20):
people that around that time were so excited about natural
gas that said build it will come, and after they
realized they could put their own station in their own heart,
they started doing that, and then we lost a lot
of those customers. But our first station was in Bryan, Texas.
We initially got nine hundred thousand dollars to build it
(11:41):
and turned out that was a little less than what
I needed, and so we ended up getting I think
probably one point one million dollars to finally finish it off.
And then so I got family, friends, people together said
it looks like a good idea, and the first month
I sold one hundred and fifty dollars worth to myself.
(12:03):
Oh well, so, but it took time to find out
that we actually had a station there, and we had
nine fleets that agreed to fuel with us. When we've
before we built that station. That's the reason we decided
to build it in Brian because there was nine fleets
that said, yeah, you build it, we'll we'll get our
vehicles over there.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
But they weren't, and they're actually obligated.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
They were just they were not. They were not. And
that's that's probably partly you know, my fault or my
downfall on part of this was there's no contract there
where where if you build a station at their location,
they're contractually obligated to fill with you.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Hold on, where where were they getting C ANDNG before
your station?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
That they weren't. They were just it was just coming
online as a big deal of that.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So they were willing to invest in converting their trucks
to C ANDNG or buy new CNG trucks correct both
either one?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And does a C ANDNG truck then, did a C
ANDNG truck cost more or less or the same? I'm
assuming more?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, it costs more. It costs more for a semi truck.
It's probably close to sixty thousand dollars more. But the
price difference per gallon was significant a two dollars two
dollars well back yeah, back then, diesel was about four
fifty and we were selling our gas for two dollars,
(13:24):
So it doesn't take too long for a semi to
pay pay off that sixty thousand dollars. If they're doing
a lot of miles.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
And at that time, if you if they if they
fueled up with you, how far could they because they
couldn't do it all in round trips, right right? So
where would they were there other stations, I presume.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, So at the time when I built that station,
there was only fourteen stations in the state of Texas,
and but there was a big push to let's go
ahead and get some stations built, and so there was
quite a few built between two thousand and ten and
twenty sixteen. And then the price of oil dropped like crazing.
We became uncompetitive about that time. But at that point
(14:08):
we were very competitive, I mean our main What happened
to us in Brian which really shot us off, was
we were along the route on Highway six going between
Stephenville and Houston, where milk trucks were going up and
down the road, and they were already converting to natural
gas and they were going to put a station in
(14:30):
Waco to fill their trucks going up and down between
Houston and Stephenville. Well, their station was way late getting built,
and so we got all that volume for six months
and we paid off two thirds of the station in
that first year. But we had forty semi trucks going
twenty four hours a day up and down that road,
which is very economical to do it that way, but
(14:55):
with a bunch of little cars, it's not unless there's
a whole bunch of little cars, because one semi can
take ten times as much fuel as a.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Car, And then what kind of capacity did you have
in your underground storage tank?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So they're not underground. We get gas from the pipeline.
We then compress it into storage, which only gives us
about probably at our most of our stations, it's about
four hundred and fifty gallons equivalent worth of fuel. But
that's only just to start the fuel the filling of
(15:31):
a vehicle off, and then as soon as the flow
rate gets us or the pressure gets to a certain
level in those tanks, then we kick on the compressors,
finish off the vehicle with the pressure, and then we
refill the storage back up again and prepare for the
next vehicle to come in.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
All right, talk to me like, I mean, let's say
sixth grade. How do you compress that natural gas? What
is the process?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Okay? So it's very similar to like your little compressor
that you have for an air gun or something like that.
I suspect you've seen those. They're just much larger. You know.
It compresses it in one stage. Gas goes in at
the pressure of the pipeline and goes in the first
(16:19):
stage and then compresses it down to about half that size,
and then it goes in the next stage and the
next stage, and typically there's three two to four stages typically.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
All right, hold with me for a moment. Bob Baldwin
is his name is c n G number four America
Pop pot. Okay, Daddy Yankee, I'll give you credit. That's
(16:49):
pretty well played.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Man.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
When that song hit, you couldn't go anywhere without that
damn song. And in Houston they had flipped kl O
L to Mega one oh one, which was that they
called the format reggathon, which was a it wasn't quite tropical.
(17:13):
There's a there's a in radio. You have formats. Uh
our format is news talk, but you have a tropical format,
and then you have several that would be uh uh,
then you have a Mexican style. The reggathone was very
(17:33):
popular at the time because and it was really one
of those formats that was that was programmed around these
artists that were popular that they didn't have a format for.
And you've seen that happen in different forms of music,
where the artist is so big the format comes behind
them instead of the other way around. But that station,
(17:54):
at that time, it was the Mexicans in the Morning,
and I loved those guys. I used to go on
there show actually, and they were good friends of mine,
Chico and Rascal. And this was the number one song.
And you know how Top fortys, Top forty stations work.
When a song is hot, you play it until people
are absolutely sick and tired of it. You don't put
any time in between it, and you just keep playing
(18:16):
that damn thing until people can't listen to it again.
So we'd be walking down the hall and they would
rotate which show was playing in the hallway, and it
felt like Gasolina was playing constantly, and I thought I'd
gotten away from it. And we went to Puerto Rico
last Thanksgiving and they don't know, they didn't get the memo,
(18:38):
stop playing the damn song everywhere you'd go, and it's
that beat gets in your head. And the problem is
in a lot of Latin American countries, loud noises, cacophony,
the pollution, the confusion and distortion of music playing loudly
(18:59):
does not bother them. They love it. Everybody's always kind
of in a little bit of a half dance. They
walk in a park dance and you would walk along
in every shop would have a different song play it.
So this song might have mark Antonio Salis, and then
this song might have Enrique Iglesias, and then you have Gosolina,
(19:20):
and then you have another Enrique, and then you have Gasolina,
but at a different point in the song. So the
two Gosolinas were competing. Man, that's a lot of Gosolina.
Bob Baldwin is our guest. He's the founder of c
G Compressed Natural Gas, the number four America dot com. Bob,
where'd we leave it?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
So? I think we were talking about the first initial
station that got built. Yeah, yeah, Kerry Obrian, I just
want to tell you that it looks like everybody's been
listening in America because of the price of natural gas
just jumped up ten percent this morning. So yes. So
after we built that station and the investments were real
(20:05):
happy about their return, of course, let's let's build some more.
And so we started building one in Rosenberg, and then
one in Katie, and then we finished one off in Austin,
and then we have one over by Baytown actually at
the Cove exit as well. So my plan was to
try to cover all the major highways going in and
(20:26):
out of Houston area, primarily so that you could get
fuel on your way out and fuel on your way back,
and so that would cover Houston pretty well. There were
only two stations in Houston when I started, and they
were at clean Energy stations and they were pretty old
at that time and really needed to be renewed.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So yeah, all right, so catch us up. Where is
the market today? Is not kind of painting a bleak
picture here, Bob.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Well, and it is a little bit because the market
for or public stations, I think is kind of different,
difficult because you don't have the volumes that you need
unless you're unless you're associated with a fleet right next
to you. So one of my friendly competitors built a
station for Houston Metro. Well, Metro uses probably a million
(21:21):
gallons of fuel a month, and that I'm sure has
turned out to be very well for them, where ours
was Okay, we're going to build it and see if
they come, and that probably was not a good market.
So now kind of changed my methodology to where we're
looking for small fleets that want to fuel their trucks
(21:41):
right at their yard and if we can make a
public dispenser at that location, and that's great, But the
primary uses of natural gas today are people like UPS
and Amazon. UPS has gone into this in a very
big way. In fact, probably half of the semi trucks
(22:01):
that you see going around Houston are compressed natural gas.
If you look at a UPS truck and there's a
big canister behind the cab, that's a compressed natural gas truck.
And they just put out an investment to buy a
bunch more in twenty twenty three for nineteen billion dollars
worth of trucks. So it's huge with people like UPS.
But I hardly get any business from UPS because they
(22:24):
fill their own trucks at their own locations.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, at that size, that's the model that makes sense. Yeah,
and how much are they doing that? Because it is
an efficient, effective fuel source. And how much of that
is regulatory credits and governmental credits.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Well, I've although I'd love to say that they are
real excited about cleaning up our air, it's really more economics.
And so it's the fact that natural gas is pretty
cheap right now. Natural gas right now is four dollars
and forty cents, and out of that you can eight
(23:06):
you can get eight gasoline gallons of fuel, and then
you've got to get it compressed and put into the
vehicle and maintain all your equipment and pay your labor
and all that stuff. But over a lot of gallons
that you can typically get it into a vehicle for
around a dollar a dollar twenty five per gallon. So
people like ups they do very very well. And then
(23:30):
on top of it, they can get rebates if they're available,
and they can also get renewable credits and make some
money that way as well.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I saw a statistic I made notes on it. I
was reading an article about regulatory credits and how the
rivian which is what all the Amazon trucks are those
blue those cool blue.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Okay, yep.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So a friend of mine, Kevin, owns Fixed out of Houston,
dot Com and they do all the collision repair for
the Rivian trucks in the Greater Houston area. So if
you drive out there, it looks like a Rivian, it
looks like an Amazon dealership. Is all their vehicles there,
because you know, they're always bumping into stuff. And the
Rivian business model is it costs. Their cost of goods
(24:20):
sold to COGS per car last year was ninety nine thousand,
their average selling price was eighty six thousand, so they
were supposed to finally be profitable in twenty twenty four,
but they lose thirteen thousand on every vehicle they make.
But they claimed to be profitable, and the reason was
they get a regulatory credit of twenty one thousand dollars
(24:42):
per vehicle sold, so they book that as a one
hundred and seven thousand dollars sale and making eight thousand
dollars per unit. But they don't make eight thousand dollars
per unit. They lose thirteen And all the regulatory credits
are coming from California, which is why Rivian has worked
the California market so hard. So basically you've got government
(25:05):
saying to this vehicle, this company won't exist if we
don't give them a massive tax break. More with Baldwin
CNNG Compressed Natural Guests Cnngfouramerica dot com.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
You are listening to Michael Barry.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Shall every Senate Democrat who voted forty five out of
the forty seven voted to block the Republican bill to
keep men out of female sports professionally and in the schools.
(25:43):
Ron and Tessa Wright, I think Trump should appoint Loreena
Bobbitt in charge of performing the inspections because she cut
Oh you got okay, and I know you knew. For
those of you who have been following the free Burt movement,
we are having an RCC reunion esque old fashioned meetup
(26:05):
this Thursday at three pm. I'm not announcing the location
because I don't know how many people we're gonna have,
and I need the venue owner to be able to
block off the appropriate amount of space. I don't want
to take more space than we need and hurt his sales.
I don't want to take less space than we need
(26:26):
and somebody with bad breath be all up on Ramon
talking too close because he can't you know, he can't crawfish.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Out of there.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
So that will be Thursday at three PM. If you
are interested in joining, email me with how many people
in your group. I will tell you realistically, it's going
to be mostly dudes. I'm not saying to women you
can't come. I know y'all get very upset about that.
I'm not saying you can't come, But I'm going to
tell you it's mostly going to be a sausage fest
(26:53):
because it's middle of the afternoon and it's a bunch
of dudes. Will Connie Stagner be there, yes? Will Sandy
Peterson be there?
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Are they one of the guys?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (27:02):
So as long as you're comfortable with that, you're welcome
to show up. It's just you need to understand there's
a lot of dudes dipping and a lot of spitting,
and they will be know, ooh, that's gross talk. You
know what I'm saying or wrong. That'll be Thursday at three.
If you want to know where it is, email me
and include the number of people and put yourself as
part of yours.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
So if it's just me or.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
There'll be three of us, means you and two others
so we can give at least a decent rough headcount
to the owner of the venue. Thursday three pm the
Free Bert Movement. There's no ticketing, there's no band. It's
just standing around and drink beer and celebrate the release
of the long held political prisoner Bert Harvey of Bert
(27:46):
Harvey Construction Fame. Bob Baldwin is our guest CNG for
America dot Com. Bob, I gotta tell you, I don't
like when people are trying to sell me kind of
a huss sisty kind of thing to do. But man,
you are the other extreme. I need you to give
me a reason that this thing even.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Dissts, right, Okay, good. So around the world it's very
very popular. It's not as popular here. China has five
million CNG vehicles. I ran as four million, India as
three million. Here we only have about one hundred and
seventy five thousand CNG vehicles right now. But here we
(28:31):
tend to be a little bit spoiled with our gasoline prices, right.
I think you were mentioning before in the previous show
how expensive it is for gasoline in India, and it's
probably equivalent to six or seven dollars a gallon, where
natural gas then is very very competitive and in fact
actually needed because they don't have the refineries like we've got.
So we're very fortunate to have a low priced gasoline
(28:55):
and diesel. So we have to adapt for what the
market can allow us to do. And that's what I'm
moving toward, is trying to do that. So we actually
deliver natural gass to the Fort Bench School District for
sixty C and G buses down there, and we deliver
to another company that has ten semis that we fill
every night, and so that has provided a way for
(29:19):
us to stay economically feasible. And now we're looking at
at trying to find fleets that have you know, probably
ten or more large trucks that want to be filled
every night and stay local. They don't they're not traveling
across the country because that's the model that works for
C and G because the distance that you can go
(29:42):
and the number of stations make it difficult to travel
across the country. So if you can go out during
the day, come back, get your vehicle filled overnight, take
off in the morning, it's full. I used to do
that at my house. I had bought a compressor, put
it at my house, and I'd attach it to my truck.
In the morning, my truck would be full and I'd
drive away and wave at everybody at the gas stations
that I drove by. So the model is more of
(30:05):
a local route fleet that we need to be selling
right now, which is good. That's I mean, that's pretty
much what Amazon is right. They're driving around, staying pretty
local to the Texas Triangle and using a lot of gas.
Same thing with ups set routes every day to come
back home, get filled at home. That's really the model
(30:27):
that works well for compressed natural gas because the tanks
on them don't hold as much energy, They take up
more room and don't hold as much energy to go
as far, so you have to accommodate for that. So
that is where natural gas is going to be a
big deal. And we've got so much natural gas in
our country, and it's one of the few fuels that
(30:48):
we can actually put in a car. You can't put
coal in a car and run it. You can't put
nuclear in it. You can't put wind energy in a car,
except for maybe through electric and I think that's going
to have some problems as we as some of these
electric cars age out. Uh, you can't really run I
don't think an electric school bus very well. They're they're
(31:11):
almost three times as expensive. And the harm to our
grid I think is going to be very difficult because
we don't have enough electricity right now. We're worried to
pout it. So you add all those things up. We
got tons and tons of natural gas, and so we
need to utilize I think, our resources more wisely. And
(31:36):
so let me ask a questions.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
And I am not a technical person, I'm not an engineer,
but I'm also not afraid to ask stupid questions.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And I suspect there.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Are other people who would. So reading on this during
the break, I'm seeing they call them ngv's natural gas vehicles,
and that includes either CNG compressed natural gas liquefy natural gas.
So if a a compressed natural gas is not in
a liquid form.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
What form is it in? If I look at it,
so it's it's like you're it's like you're squishing the air.
So you're taking a cubic foot of gas and squishing
it down to a cubic inch, and all that energy
that's in one standard cubic feet of gas gets pushed
down into a cubic inch and then I and then
(32:25):
I compress another one and put it to a cubic engine,
and I can get into a cubic foot a lot
more gas because I'm I'm compressing it that much. It
is that pliable and compressible.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
So if I were to go underneath one of your
delivery tanks of compressed natural gains and I were to
punch a hole in it, yep, under the bottom, what
would happen?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yep? Well, a bunch of methane would come spewing out now,
and that I got to tell you that's very difficult
to do because these tanks are are.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Very I'm more I'm more focused on animal, mineral, vegetable
it is at that point, would I see it?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
No? No, Well, you probably see gas that is freezing
in the moisture in the air that's freezing as that
gas comes out, and it's freezing like when you're using
a spray can, so but you can't see it. You
can't smell it unless it's odorized, which ours is odorized.
That way, you know you've got a leak, right, So
(33:27):
you can hear it and you can smell it, but
only because it's odorized. But yeah, they can have leaks,
and you have to be, of course cautious about that.
But I can tell you you don't see two. You
don't see any CNG vehicles on the side of the
road burning up. It's very safe, and when the methane
comes out, it's lighter than air, so it goes up
(33:48):
into the air and away from your vehicle. It doesn't
gather beneath the vehicle.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Fascinating to me. Hold on just a moment, Bob Baldwin,
as our guest is. Website is c NG for compressed
natural gas. The number four America e g.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Four Americans
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