The Heavy Equipment Podcast
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The Heavy Equipment Podcast
HEP-isode 24 | Volvo's Head of Technology, Material Handlers, and Mothman
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This week, the guys are joined by Mats Sköldberg, head of technology for Volvo Construction Equipment, to chat about their all-new, battery-free EW240 Electric material handler. Then, they explore whether or not a sinister triumvirate of forces – the Mothman, the Jersey Devil, and a pack of WWII-era German Gremlins – could have been involved in the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse, and what that deadly disaster means for American shipping. All this, and a little bit of Airwolf, makes this a HEP-isode for the ages!
Heavy Equipment Podcast
Speaker 1Welcome back to another episode of the Heavy Equipment Podcast. I'm Joe Boris coming to you live from Mike Schweitzer's office.
Speaker 2That's correct. We're doing all right. We're doing good.
Speaker 1It's been a while.
Speaker 2It has been a little bit. We've all been caught up with some stuff and everybody's been getting sick. It's been going around.
Speaker 1It's nasty, it's been going around. It's nasty, it's been going around, man. You know, margaret and I last week we were down, just like the kids. I don't even know what they were doing. They were on YouTube. They had the credit cards. They were ordering pizzas and jewelry and Chinese food. Who knows? We don't even care. We'll see the bill when it comes in. Exactly here's the thing.
Speaker 2You know what? I got a question about this, Because here's the thing about this If you're an independent contractor of sorts running your own heavy equipment health insurance, these days it's got to be rough, oh health insurance is brutal, even with a company, so the company. I don't care if you're a union or not. Just yourself managing Just yourself. You're going to have to pay for some stuff.
Speaker 1You know, and that's a real problem when it comes to this independent contractor thing, and a lot of states now are going through different court cases with truck drivers and equipment operators that do own their own equipment about whether or not they need to be considered 1099 or employer protection. We're not going to get into all that because I'm not a labor lawyer, but I will tell you that, as a family guy in his 40s and I got young kids and I got older kids in their teens and early 20s as well it is absolutely brutal. I think probably the single most expensive thing I pay for every month other than the house is medical insurance.
Speaker 2Yep, that's the thing. Like the union guys forget about that. There's a whole thing where you know cause they have health insurance through the union and they have flexible spending accounts and all that stuff. But then, like, let's say you're a contractor, he's got 12 guys. Or you're a small mining operation somewhere, like they have up in Canada. You know they get those small sand mines and stuff. There's not a lot of people that work there. They got a couple of people in the office. Guy owns a place. You got a couple of big machines out there with some operators. He's still got a lot of overhead.
Speaker 1Yeah, and almost all of it's going to be insurance. The difference there, where you start talking about Canada or Mexico or Sweden or something like that, there's a lead in for this. A lot of those countries have some kind of public or social medicine that they don't have to pay into, or rather they do pay into from their taxes, but it's not an additional hit that they have to carry and cover. It's not something that they are, in effect, liable for. So that is something that helps and it does make it easier, which is why you see some of this small scale manufacturing that used to be the bread and butter of the American Midwest moving to those countries, because we just simply don't have that. We have a for-profit medical system and we have companies that are trying to cut corners where they can. What you end up with is $800 a month health insurance bill that you get to pay out every month, and then, if you get sick, you get to pay out some more.
Speaker 2I don't know it's got to be a better way.
Speaker 1There's got to be a better way. If you lived in Sweden, it would be handled. And one guy who does live in Sweden is our guest, Matt Skolberg. Matt is the head of technology at Volvo Construction. Matt, you're coming to us live from Sweden, are you not?
Speaker 3Yes, that's right, that's right.
Evolving Solutions for Electric Machinery
Speaker 1You know we did an article on Electrek it's one of the outlets that I write for about the Volvo EW240 materials handler. This is if you haven't caught that article, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. But what makes this so clever is that it is fully electric but it's not super expensive, and you did that by getting rid of the battery. You plug this directly into the grid energy. Can you talk a little bit about some of the advantages that that gives you and why that decision was made?
Speaker 3Yeah, it's of course. I mean it's several benefits of doing it that way. It's of course I mean it's several benefits of doing it that way. I mean, as you mentioned, the cost of TCO for the customer is a great driver behind it. It's also that if you connect to the grid you don't need to charge. I mean the peak power consumption, so even that out. So if power is available like this at sites, this is a very good solution.
Speaker 1Yeah, and one of the things that I like about this is you mentioned the TCO, the total cost of ownership, for something like this. When you look at a lot of traditional conventional job sites, especially union job sites, you see everybody working from nine to five typically, or eight to four, those kind of hours what we call normal hours in the US. Here in the States we have variable utility rates, so electricity at certain times of day is more expensive to buy at different times of the day. How do you reconcile that? Because one of the big advantages that a battery electric vehicle often puts out there, or at least the marketing puts out there, is you can charge it overnight when electricity and energy we'll call it energy is inexpensive, and then use it during the day when that energy is more cost prohibitive. How are you reconciling that with something that's just pulling grid energy?
Speaker 3I think it will be. I mean, moving forward, different solutions will be needed due to the reasons you mentioned. I mean these look different in different parts of the world. As you say, I mean batteries is a great solution in those cases when you can charge overnight. When electricity is normally cheaper, then there are, of course, depending on what kind of solutions at the specific site. Then if, if you have power available and maybe not to the highest level, In those kind of cases where you have this solution like a grid solution, you can use BESS or power units then so you can charge them overnight and put beside the machine and run it if you don't have the grid available or if it's as you said cheaper, I mean to charge during night, so I think it would be several different solutions.
Speaker 3that gives that flexibility.
Speaker 1Well, and that's a really good point. You know we've talked to your colleague, dr Regalant. We've had him on the show several times now. We're big fans of his and he often talks about stacking different technologies and looking at a job site not necessarily in terms of the work that needs to get done, which is how conventionally a construction fleet Volvo Penta or you look at the best solutions that again also Volvo is developing. Do you see an ecosystem? Do you see a job site where you have grid connected machines, you have hydrogen machines, you have even some diesel machines or gen sets running, and does that kind of blended ecosystem, multi-fuel ecosystem still make sense?
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean it depends on from what perspective then, but I do believe I mean several solutions will exist in parallel and different customers investing or in different regions will use different solutions, and also different applications will be more suitable for hydrogen or diesel, I mean where there are no electricity in place, I mean then, of course, other solutions needs to be found. So I think it's important for us to take the holistic view I mean very customer-centric and understand the different needs in different applications and different regions and then have flexible solutions that can fit in.
Electric and Hydrogen Construction Equipment
Speaker 1Let's talk a little bit more about the machine itself, right? So this is the EW240 electric material handler. When we think of material handlers, I almost always go to container ships, that kind of materials handling and a lot of times you see that they are electric, they're pedestal mounted, they're stationary. This is a mobile material handler. It can be driven around a job site. What kind of work is this really doing? Because it's not quite big enough to unload a container ship. So what kind of work is this machine doing that makes that mobility such a critical component of its design?
Speaker 3of its design. Normally it's in scrap yards or material handling. In that regard, I mean, it can be different kind of material moved, of course, but scrap yards is a good example where this is very often used.
Speaker 1Right, you need to move in between. Maybe, if it's a vehicle scrap yard, you need to move in between vehicles or in between different kinds of piles, separate the rubber and the metal and the glass and all that kind of thing. That makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1Now in your role as the head of technology for Volvo Construction Equipment and I'm being very careful not to say Volvo CE, ray, that's for you. I know he's going to hear this one, so not saying Volvo CE, I'm being good. You've obviously worked on this vehicle. What are some of the other construction equipment that you've worked on, and can you give us any insight into how you make the determination for what size battery pack you're going to put in it, or whether a battery is even the appropriate fuel source? Right, because we're talking about electricity as a fuel and that's not always the appropriate fuel source.
Speaker 3No, and as you say I mean of course Volvo Construction Equipment are very much into articulated haulers, excavators in all different sizes and applications and wheel loaders, also road or compaction.
Speaker 1I don't mean to cut you off, but you guys are really proud of that hydrogen articulated loader. I see wonderful photography of that drone photos. They've done that thing up like it's Brad Pitt at a photo shoot.
Speaker 3Yeah, no, no, it's good. I mean trying out. That's more exploring. I mean the articulated hauler with the fuel cell. So we do believe in hydrogen is one area, both fuel cells and and hydrogen combustion engines. So we are exploring both. And then also we of course battery. Electric is is the one that we focus a lot on, especially on on vehicles with wheels, because they can easily move to the charging station and then, depending on the size of the vehicles, there will also make different amounts of sense. How much does it really fit with batteries? It becomes too many maybe in the large machines. But to your question how does that determine how much battery and so on? Then it's very much related to the customer needs and their application, and I think it might be different also. So you can maybe choose how much battery you should have and, as you mentioned before, I mean in combination with power units and so on, you can play this out and go customer-centric on this.
Speaker 1Yeah. So when you say going customer-centric on this, you are suggesting that one fuel or one vehicle type is appropriate for one customer based on the work they do, and perhaps not for another. Maybe not based on the work they do and perhaps not for another. Maybe not based on the work they do, maybe based on the location, if they're way out in the middle of nowhere. One thing that we talk about fairly often on the show is that just because you work for the power company and both Michael and I have done work for different utility companies just because you worked for the power company doesn't mean there's power at the job site. In many cases, you are bringing power to the job site, so something like this, as cool as it is, would be totally useless there because it's, you know, like we said, grid connected.
Speaker 3Yes, and there I think it's also important I mean in the ecosystem that we have to cooperate with partners and so on to provide a solution for the customers and of course that needs to be quite local. But I think it's important that we have those kind of solutions available so we, in a flexible way, can help our customers in this transformation. To help our customers in this transformation, because if not providing the whole solution, it will be a hurdle in the implementation. It's not enough with just the machine. It needs to come with a solution, so to speak.
Speaker 1Right, it's not just about selling them a machine. It's about selling them the ability to complete the job at hand and giving them that capability to do what they need to do, whether it's something like the DD25 or the ERC25 electric, and I'll bring that up here. I'm dropping some names and numbers here. The DD25 is a roller, the ECR25 is essentially a mini excavator, and it's funny because every once in a while I will go to VolvoCEcom and I will look at the United States section and looked at the electric machines that are available, and I remember when it was one machine and then two machines, and now we have six machines and soon the material handler, I believe, will be added there, and then the articulated loader. Is there a goal? Is it a stated goal to say that we want to have an electric or hydrogen version of every machine in the next you know x how many years, or is it just something that's naturally evolving as the uh, essentially as the work and as the customers come to you, of course?
Speaker 3in the end I mean mobile, of course. In the end I mean Volvo. Construction Equipment is committed to the science-based target. So I mean we should be net zero by 2040.
Speaker 1So of course, by that time… 2040 is aggressive because the EU is 2050.
Speaker 3So you're ahead of them, yeah, and the reason is because the life of the machines should be 10 years, so we're not putting our customers in trouble.
Speaker 3We put this aggressive target on ourselves. But of course, the journey there up to 2040 will be for different sizes and also both from a technology point of view, of course, what makes sense, so to speak, with the technology available, sizes, and also both from a technology point of view, of course, what is what makes sense, so to speak to with the technology available. But it's also important to do it from a segment point of view where we see that this is moving first, but also in those segments having a range of machines, so to speak. So we have a, we have the loader and a hauler, so the customer can do their complete operation, or an excavator and a hauler and so on so they can do their complete site CO2 neutral. So we do it by size of machines also, so they fit each other, I mean regarding number of posts and so on. So it will definitely come more in steps, then, and we're working hard on that, for sure.
Speaker 1That's great stuff. Now, I know that you cannot tell us too much about future products, but I also know, just from the conversations that I have with everybody, that there is always something on the horizon, there's always something in the pipeline, especially with your collaboration with the rest of the Volvo group. Right, are you seeing a greater emphasis to make some of the battery technology, some of the controller components, charging technology, universal across the Volvo group, or is there still a sense of you know, volvo trucks is kind of doing their own thing, construction is doing its own thing? For those of you listening who don't know this Volvo cars and Volvo construction, volvo trucks, volvo Penta don't know this.
Speaker 1Volvo cars and Volvo construction, volvo trucks, volvo Penta they are very friendly, there's a common origin story, but they are not the same company. Volvo cars is owned by the Chinese conglomerate Geely. Geely is an investor in Volvo group, but they are not running it. It is not a Chinese company, it's a totally different animal. Now, that said, because of that special relationship between Volvo Group and Volvo Cars, is there any technology transfer happening there that is going to influence future construction equipment design, or is it still kind of its own thing in terms of the technology?
Speaker 3We cooperate a lot, of course, within the Volvo Group, which is not the cars, but with the trucks and buses and Volvo Penta, of course. Where it fits, we use the same solutions and, as you say, it fits very well. Some of the sizes of chargers are also related to the development of components like batteries and so on. We cooperate closely. So there, of course, it's good for the group and it's also good for Volvo CE that we can leverage this.
Speaker 1I'm going to tag this timestamp in the show so that I can say see, he said it, not me. That's always the notes. Don't say Volvo CE, say construction equipment. Okay, matt said it, so I can't get in trouble anymore. All right, I know we're coming to the end of our time commitment here. You've been a very good sport, not only in the scheduling, but also in just being here and talking about products with very little guidance from me, so I appreciate you. Thank you so much. What are some questions that you would wish I had asked that you maybe have a really good answer for.
Speaker 3I think what we also should remember in this it's not only about the energy source and so on, it's about the whole system as well. I mean, in North America, we have hand over the first fossil-free steel articulated hauler, for example, so it's also important in the whole transformation. Yeah well, let's talk about that for a second.
Speaker 1So it's a fossil-free steel hauler. What you're saying there is not that the vehicle itself is fossil-free, right, Because we have electric vehicles out there. You're saying that the actual steel that the hauler is made out of is fossil-free, is significantly reduced carbon impact than you would get out of conventional steel, because that's something that opponents of electrification will often point to and say but there's so much carbon investment in the manufacture of these battery electric vehicles that they're not as clean as you think they are. Well, now, in this case, we've got a fossil-free steel that is in a holler at this point but is now something that will eventually roll out to other products. That's going to dramatically improve the carbon footprint of buying one of these new vehicles.
Speaker 3Exactly, and that, I think, is super important in this. And then I mean it's early stages. I mean companies are investing in fossil-free steel development, production and so on, and we want to cooperate with them. And it's the same with other suppliers. I mean, when they come up with something innovating and new that will reduce it, we explore and are willing to try, because it's important that we bring the whole value chain, so to speak, and we do our part in this.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a fantastic point. As you were speaking, I reached out to Daisy. That's Daisy Gestico. She's part of the PR team that helped us make this connection today and hopefully will be the first of many times that we have you on the show and I just asked her for more information on that.
Speaker 1Fossil-free steel, because we will definitely want to talk about that. There's some other technology now with reduced carbon concrete and asphalt that we're exploring, especially as we roll out some different infrastructure projects throughout the Midwest. So, fossil-free steel, fossil-free concrete this is all going to be a very exciting time as we race to decarbonization, just because we have to right, because of tier five and ESG goals and emissions and again, this is an American show, so there's always this anti-science crowd that doesn't quite get it or believes it's all a scam, right. But regardless of what you think of it and what you think of decarbonization, the fact remains that that is what's happening. The technology is driving us in that direction and if we don't get on top of it here, we're just going to get left behind. So this is what's coming and it's exciting to see all the new technology and stuff that's coming in that sense. So again, matt, thank you so much for being on the show again.
Speaker 3Hopefully it's the first of many appearances, oh I think it's fine, that's good, it was good, great and it's good, I think, thanks a lot.
Speaker 2That's hot, yes it is.
Speaker 1I love when the Volvo guys come on the show. Man, they're really good sports. They've got a ton of stuff going on, whether it's through Penta or through construction, volvo trucks that just came out, the new VNL a couple of months back, and the fact that they're willing to come on a little show like this and talk about some heavy stuff with us. I always liked that. It's awesome.
Speaker 2We got them and C&H and we've had some of the other companies come on, but you know it would be kind of we got to get some guys from, from some of the other manufacturers on there too. It'd be nice to get them all to face off on a panel episode. Caterpillar, john Deere and Volvo.
Speaker 1Do it like the old McLaughlin report.
Speaker 2Yeah, Issue number 42. What are you doing about your forest fire situation?
Speaker 1They're like what are you talking about? What is happening on a scale of one to ten, zero being a certain impossibility and ten being complete metaphysical certitude?
Speaker 2I was not prepped for these questions get prepped now. We could have mothman on the show okay all right we gotta get him on here because I'm telling you right now, mothman, the Jersey Devil and the Gremlins, that's the problem with the bridge, because you got Mothman dropping the Gremlins right down in there and the Jersey Devil, he was down in the engineering room. He's been tampering with stuff you can't tell for a half hour. They saw the thing come up with no steering and they still took the bridge out.
Speaker 1All right, let's slow down a little bit. All right, let's be clear. We don't want to make light of the fact that the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed. That happened last week.
Speaker 2No, no, no, as we record, we're not making fun of that.
Speaker 1There is something behind the scenes there.
Speaker 2We're going to talk about all the conspiracy theorists out there. That guy that can jump 16 feet in the air on a single bound, that ain't superman. The jersey devil, my friend. When he when he clears a, when he clears a shipping container and they've seen him they were throwing morse code out there. They were waving the flags, doing flag signals, talking about the devil. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, all right, yeah, look, see, we got another report, okay serious question Is Morse code the same in English as it is in German?
Speaker 2Well no, they're the Enigma machine, you idiot.
Speaker 1Well, yeah, but like Mothman's not sending Enigma codes to the German gremlins on the tanker that shut off the lights. Well, or is he, what's that bald, guy's name on x-men the doctor, oh uh, the doctor x.
Speaker 2Yeah, professor, professor x professor x okay, the car. I think mothman sends his stuff to professor x in german. He interprets it intuitively. He doesn't even need a machine, he just sends it out. He looks over at the thing and just starts sending it.
Speaker 1Do you think this show would be more successful if it was 75% Mothman conspiracies here? We'll phrase this in the form of a McLaughlin group question Do you believe that the Mothman could support an entire weekly podcast that?
Speaker 2the Mothman could support an entire weekly podcast. Well, you know, I think that once we conclude some more data resolution and auditing techniques, we might be able to in fact review what we may be able to find as an audience that could once possibly, may likely be interested wrong the answer is mermaids.
Speaker 1That would be a show we could have like, uh, fictional panelists, and they're all like different cryptids, so you'd have big like when a swift driver ends up on the beach.
Speaker 2There's a problem right there. The guy's out there with a flag going. Turn this way gold awaits.
Speaker 1You? Do you remember like I want to say like 0708, when you first started getting a ton of gps in these cars and they would still be updated with like a cd and people would like the? The road wouldn't exist, the gps would tell them to drive into a lake and people would just do it.
Speaker 2They would just go right back to the future with lion estates. They're standing out there looking at a bare road and they go. This must be it.
Speaker 1That's it exactly, exactly it. You know you say, like, how does that happen? But then you look at these cats driving these teslas and they've got it on autopilot. They're not even looking at the windshield, man, they're looking at the dashboard, they're looking at their phone and it just plows into a you know parked ambulance or a fire truck or something.
Speaker 1Actually it wasn't part of the things we were going to talk about, but you know, tesla had a big court case this week that was coming up. That was a wrongful death suit because of that autopilot and literally hours, like two hours before that was supposed to go to court, they settled out of court for some undisclosed but surely ungodly amount of money. Now, if that court case had gone through and Tesla had been found liable, that would have dramatically changed the landscape of the trucking industry and the shipping industry in this country, because right now the big push from manufacturers is to put autonomous on the road and if, all of a sudden, you could point the finger at the manufacturer and say you're liable for an accident that happens with your autonomous vehicle, that's going to change the landscape.
Speaker 2Hey, listen, I think anything that you elect inside of a vehicle, you're automatically at fault the minute you elect it. If you don't elect to put your seatbelt on and you come through the windshield, you've elected to not do that windshield. You've elected to not do that. If you elect to turn on your auto driving capability on whatever it is and I don't care if it's an f-18 fighter jet that you bought in surplus from syria you're liable for whatever that thing's about to do you get that on alibabacom.
Speaker 1let me tell you something.
Speaker 2If you go shoot something up with your government surplus fighter jet and it was on autopilot you're in trouble. Airwolf's gonna come and knock your ass right out of the sky. Oh, let's play the song there we go, dude.
Speaker 1I knew a guy in the early days of ebay this is a true story he bought a nike hercules missile like they had no warhead, but it was an actual nike hercules missile. Like they had no warhead, but it was an actual Nike Hercules missile. Wow, and I was like I can't believe that you're allowed to have that. He goes, it doesn't have a warhead, it wouldn't do anything. I'm like it's the size of a bus and it goes 6,000 miles an hour. I promise you it will do something.
Speaker 2When you're out there with the acetylene torch and knock that thing into gear, problems are going to come you will be liable you will be liable.
Speaker 1Let's go back to that point I will be in trouble. No, no no he'll still settle out of court the nike corporation oh, that's I never. That never occurred to me. I never made that connection.
Speaker 2We're gonna get a letter from nike that says we're not affiliated with uh, we're not affiliated with the uh mothman.
Speaker 1Here's a free pair of Reeboks. Keep my name out of your whore mouth.
Speaker 2No, but you know in all honesty, I got, I got passed the other day by a self-driving Tesla and, uh, it didn't like the way that I crowded it when it went by and it didn't like the way that I crowded it when it went by. Believe me, it was curt when it cut me off it might be an anti-semite okay, we're not at the semis. It interpreted my vehicle as a semi I get it as an anti-semi. It was like hey, back off, and it cut me off hardcore the guys asleep inside the car.
Speaker 1I can't even fault him for it so, just for the record, we're not accusing elon of being an anti-semite, anti-semi of the car. The car doesn't like the semis, it's like hey that'll be the headline, episode 24 is elon an anti-semi?
Speaker 2we find out well, no he's building a semi of the future. He is. He wants them. Let me hold on his cars that are roaming around with all the great technology that's in them. When you crowd it by something three times its size, it's like hey, I don't like you I know I can see you coming on all nine cameras.
Speaker 1Don't make me crash into you and explode. It'll take three days to put the fire out.
Speaker 2You know the car is thinking to itself. I ain't got a dime in this and I'll end us all right now.
Speaker 1I used to drive that way when I had a $500 Corolla.
Speaker 2What was the red car that you had?
Speaker 1Oh, the red dragon, that was the Infinity. That was a nice car. Yes, that was a good car. That was a good car. Yeah, our buddy, our mutual friend Ethan, bought that car from me. That car caused like three divorces in a row.
Speaker 2That car should have caused three divorces.
Speaker 1Well, no, that's how I got. I got the car from someone who was getting divorced. I was living with my longtime girlfriend at the time. That went sideways. The car had to go bye bye and as soon as Ethan got it, within like three months months, him and what's her name, were getting divorced.
Speaker 2Cars cursed man. We tell you cars, cars, come on with a life of their own. We had christine, we had christine and I'm gonna tell you right now, when that guy was christine what about Old Blue?
Speaker 2Oh yeah, I still think that the Tesla self-driving idea came from that movie, christine, because you know the guy sitting outside of his diamond mine watching everybody haul the gems out of the sand and he goes. I'm watching this movie and I have an idea Sell everything we have and I need cash now. When he got his cash now he, and then he got a whole jg wentworth and he says I want my annuity right now you know, I I think he's not old enough for that.
Speaker 1I think we're lunatics. I think he's a maximum overdraft elon, he's like 100 years old.
Speaker 2He's half fake.
Speaker 1No well he's two-thirds of him is under he's partially robot from the waist down.
Speaker 2Well cause, if you watch interview to interview, he speaks like he's from Pittsburgh, north America and South America all at the same time. I think that's just being South African right. He keeps getting hot.
Speaker 1You think if there's a mouse in the house, he says there's a moose in the hoose.
Speaker 2Well, let me tell you a Bodie Equipment out of Saskatoon. They ain't fooling around, we're going to plug Bodie. Now I am. I am Saskatoon, Canada. Let me tell you Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, they do, that's right.
Infrastructure Funding and National Concern
Speaker 2They're out of moose jaw. They're called South Country Equipment. They ain't dealing with Elon's elon's crap. You know talking about no moose in the hoose they're drinking molson behind the parts counter. You need a belt. Come on down, we are so far off topic. This is going to be the material handler episode record from the office and not the booth, because I know when biff hears this he's going to come find me and just beat my head with the refrigerator his skull is going to collapse.
Speaker 1It's like you guys need to get back on track. We need to start recording at the same time every week. I would oh dude, if we did this live, we would have to set up the glass so that he could stand behind it pound on it.
Speaker 2Oh, you know what we would do. We just put a window up with two handles on. He can move it. So it's in front of him and just beat on it all day while we're recording, while he's standing right in front of us. That's what we need to do we'll do that on site.
Speaker 1No, you know we were laughing this morning. We were talking about we started the show almost a year ago. We're getting close to a year, getting close to a year. If you had told me a year ago we would have four actual people working on this and we were getting an intern, I would have laughed in your face.
Speaker 2I would have said and if we get past six episodes I'll be amazed now help me, throw this big ball oil out the window and let's solve the world's energy problems what is the seinfeld where he's got the garbage bag of oil? It's a ball it's a rubber ball from play. Now it's for a rubber bladder for the exxon valdez. That's exactly. It was ahead of its time.
Speaker 1Oh, we need that now. That's perfect. We could save the world yeah, that's a lot more bigger problems than that well, and if we had bigger problems than that, we'd be able to move them with this 300 ton lebe hair crane.
Speaker 2That's an awesome piece of equipment because they got the thing in the Netherlands. It's electric, right? Yeah, there's a generator pack and stuff like that goes with it. You're going to see a lot more of this stuff, because when you set up a crane whether it's a thousand ton crane, 1100 ton crane or the 2000 ton monstrosities that have their own, you know, sand counterweights and stuff like that they don't move all that much, right? I mean, they're there, you can move them, they're mobile, but you don't move them that much. And I think you're going to see a lot more of that become more and more electric with its own self-sufficient generating capacity, because that, if anything, makes the most sense yeah, one of the things that they don't go into here too much um in the article, because the guy who wrote it's an idiot.
Speaker 1Instead of using a lot of the hydraulic actuators that it uses to move this, uh, handling arm and these boom arms, it's using electric servos which can be like super, super precisely controlled. They're not going to respond differently to hot or cold weather, which is mission critical on some of these things that are really precise.
Speaker 1And I think honestly, this ties back to the bridge thing, because this is something that's in operation in a large European port Liebherr's putting these things at other ports and they're mainly being used to take containers off a ship, put them onto rail, put them onto trucks, and this kind of thing is really important because we got a lot of fun out of the Mothman thing, which is real, but that is a huge disruption to everything moving in North America right now. If you're a car dealer, right now, you are not getting parts because that port is closed. If you are expecting cars to come in from Europe, you're a Volkswagen dealer, a Volvo dealer, a Ford dealer because those transit fans come in from Turkey, none of you are getting your vehicles. Right now. They're being rerouted to Texas, rerouted to Florida. All the drivers that would have done those deliveries are being rerouted as well. It's a huge, huge impact.
Speaker 1And to have a massive machine like this, which really two, three generations ago wouldn't have even been possible to have a machine like this capable of moving 24, 2,500 containers in a day, that's the kind of thing that's going to help us get back on track when the next disaster happens, because this ain't going to be the last one. We've got a crumbling infrastructure, we've got a lower and lower standard for the operators that we hire to pilot these ships, and these ships are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I can't imagine that there's not somebody right now looking at this as a national security thing, going oh, apparently we can disrupt the entire country with a boat. We don't need an airplane anymore.
Speaker 2Now I had heard a couple days back there was another boat that got pushed off by some tugboats that intercepted it.
Speaker 1Oh, I saw that, but I didn't get too much information.
Speaker 2I didn't either. It wasn't too much concern confirmed and I think that they're trying to watch national concern about it. But you're spot on, and that everybody knows that the national infrastructure is what it is. The national infrastructure needs some work. You can't have the amount of infrastructure that we have and not have work for it and not work on it. I should say but, but you also have to have funding, because and I really want to get somebody on the show that can talk to us about funding because even on a state level or a federal level, you need a enormous amount of funding to handle infrastructure problems like we're having.
Speaker 3Yeah, look at all the bridges in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2They did like fourteen hundred bridges in Pennsylvania. It could be anything from a culvert going over top of a small you know waterway to a massive bridge project. This is 10 years ago. Yeah, they've created all kinds of bridge inspection equipment where you can get in the bucket, go underneath the bridge, walk your way down through there, look at it, inspect it, do all that stuff. There's all kinds of huge crane equipment that has been built like this, this 300-tonner. There's 1,100-ton cranes, 1,100-ton eight-track cranes that were re-engineered, repurposed and built so that they could go out and help lift some of these bridge sections into place with the crane. We have all kinds of infrastructure that is being produced to fix our infrastructure to fix our infrastructure.
Speaker 1Yeah, we have all kinds of equipment being produced to fix the infrastructure and then we don't have the budget to go out and fix the infrastructure. And it is really baffling. And this Baltimore thing, this is going to be probably the first one of these that we remember as a generational thing, but it's not going to be the last one. And again, I don't want to get into a lot of the dynamics of this, but when you talk about America in the 1950s and 60s building the highways, building all these bridges- it was 70 years ago.
Investing in Infrastructure for Efficiency
Speaker 1Well, not only that, it was 70 years ago and it happened because we had a 90% corporate tax rate to fund these projects and a lot of these companies understood that if you wanted to do business across the country and across the globe, you needed roads, you needed bridges, you needed this stuff to function. And somewhere along the line we lost our way. And I'm not saying that we need more taxation, I'm not saying that we need to go back to these higher tax credits, but I'm saying that these projects were funded by a generation that understood they were a part of something bigger than what they had. And I think we have a generation now, not just guys in their forties and fifties and twenties and thirties, but even guys in their fifties and sixties who weren't around or who were young cats when all this stuff was being built, and they've taken it for granted.
Speaker 1No, no, cats understood. The hep cats, the listeners of this show, the hep cats and kittens out there understand that you need to have a complete system. They understand that you need people working, you need infrastructure, you need machinery. Our listeners get it. It's the people that are not listening to this show that I'm worried about, because those people have no idea what's going on and they vote yes, and then here's.
Speaker 2Here's the even scarier part. There is a ton of people that are helping write legislation, influence legislation, and I'm not talking through.
Speaker 1You know all kinds of it's on both sides. We're not, we're not talking one side or the other. No, and I'm saying I'm not talking through you know all kinds of no, it's on both sides.
Speaker 2We're not talking one side or the other. No, I'm not talking about dark money or any of this crap. I'm saying people who legitimately work for elected officials who don't know how any of this works. If you wanted to go back to the basic, simplistic way of thinking of why we have to continuously invest in an infrastructure, go back to the original reason. Eisenhower said we need interstates in this country. Interstates.
Speaker 2Yeah, interstate Not interstate, interstates, right or security. If we have to mobilize from one part to another, we have to be able to do that and not go. I don't think we can haul the tanks over there. That bridge might not hold it, hold it well, I mean let's go back to the original purpose of.
Speaker 1That was not ever meant for people to hop on the road and go from point correct.
Speaker 2It was for freight and military transport and I still think you want to talk about heavy equipment and I I got a comment the other day is the gears will talk about stuff heavy enough, okay. Well, you want to talk about something? The two mile trains. Okay, get the two mile trains. Put commuter trains out there again. Commuter monorail.
Speaker 2Get the traffic off some of the highways, give it a relief or dedicated freight lanes, dedicated military lanes, if need be, that can be used for freight, like you're saying, the original intention and have commuter lanes and separate them and enforce it, you get some good mw that hops over and wants to pass 16 people in the hov lane, like we have.
Freight Lanes and Infrastructure Collaboration
Speaker 1We have an hov lane, we have a green car lane, we have all this random nonsense. What we actually need is a freight lane to get the big trucks moving through, because right now you have like angry soccer moms and their minivans trying to push around these poor semi drivers and they're holding up commerce. They're holding up business, they're holding up trade so that they can have road rage and show up on TikTok and YouTube.
Speaker 2That's right and they have to enforce it. You know, one of the best enforced HOV systems I've ever seen is down in DC, and I saw I'm not familiar with it.
Speaker 1Tell me about it Well.
Speaker 2So I was in a HOV lane down through the DC area and, uh, and and we, we, we worked down there. So we go through there and you know, we get guys that get tickets over there and they enforce it with cameras. I got a ticket years ago down there. I had a John Wayne poster in the passenger seat. I thought I was going to make it through. They were like no way, the big Duke ain't riding in that.
Speaker 1That's it.
Speaker 2Put a sign up that says under video, surveillance will be enforced. You got a car in the freight lanes. Do it. We'll talk about something that's going to make money for contractors. Tell everybody. You got to put three lanes of of freight commerce road together in between the roads that we already use to haul cars around. You want to talk about backing a bill. You have everybody lined up outside the door going. Where do I vote?
Speaker 1that's exactly right, and I'd love to see that, because I think that that's kind of the thing that gets lost is, we need to figure out what's going to actually make this country stronger, more resilient, more of handling whether it's an extreme weather event, whether it's a bomb getting dropped in Wisconsin, whatever it is things are going to happen.
Speaker 1Things are going to happen and this isn't paranoia. This is just a long enough timeline. Stuff happens. There's a tornado. That comes to our last episode. We were talking to the TSR storm guys. They need to be able to mobilize. When there's a blizzard, when there is an earthquake, they need to be able to mobilize and get the equipment where it needs to be to preserve human life, and we need to have that kind of attitude. And it's not about hey, I'm 14 minutes late to get to the movie theater or whatever it is. Pick up my Tinder date at the bar, you get off the road. We're trying to have a civilization here.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean we just moved to crane this week from Cincinnati, Ohio, down to Arkansas and the amount of road construction and the amount of detours we had to go through to get through our permit route to get from Ohio down to Arkansas was enormous. It's all part of it and anything we do to help streamline that is going to reduce that kind of traffic. It's going to reduce the intermingling of what we have going on with the, with the guys that are just trying to get from one exit to another in their car, just trying to go home.
Speaker 1Yeah, just trying to go home.
Speaker 2If you you separated the two, it'd be a massive win for the traffic issue that we have in this country that's right, all right.
Speaker 1Well, I think that's uh more than far enough today, do you think?
Speaker 2dare I try?
Speaker 1wait, wait question are mothman, the, the Mermaids and the German Gremlins engaged in a trade union, and if so, is it the cryptid local 142?
Speaker 2Oh my God, Could you imagine that contract negotiation? The Gremlin leans over and goes we want chicken after midnight.
Speaker 1Mothman no chicken after midnight. God, we're not doing that again. Turn on all the lights, all the lights must be on.
Speaker 2We tell you there wouldn't be any microwaves in that, uh, that union hall. Let me tell you, right there.
