IronCast: Ep. 11 | Eric Jumper - From Dirt to Drones

Eric Jumper’s drive to document the construction world runs far deeper than posting videos. His work connects with veterans who’ve spent 30+ years in the dirt and, at the same time, pulls younger generations toward a trade they might’ve never considered. He’s not chasing influence, he’s chasing understanding. 

Don’t call him an influencer; call him a foamer, an enthusiast, a translator, and a bridge between eras of the industry. 

We sat down with Eric to unpack a rare 360-degree view of construction—field, media, and management—and how that mix points to what’s coming next. Listen to this episode on your way to ConExpo, and you might see Eric walking around Vegas when you're there.

Eric explains why the “labor shortage” might quietly flip to an oversupply at the entry level, and how automation is the reason. When a $30k kit can run a roller all day from a phone and autonomous haul systems are within reach for repetitive sites, the classic ladder of roller to truck to seat time disappears. That shift doesn’t end careers—it demands new ones. We talk concrete skills that make people irreplaceable: GPS and rover proficiency, reading and building 3D models, drone-based topo and production tracking, field troubleshooting, and the judgment you only get by staying present long enough to learn.

We dig into the rise of construction on social media: why billion‑dollar owners now ask for content, how authentic sound and simple edits can teach better than flashy cuts, and where platforms like TikTok go off the rails with unsafe stunts. Eric’s “Tier Zero” love letter to old iron sparks a candid look at reliability versus electronics, manufacturing fragility after COVID, and why moves like Deere’s plan to build excavators from plate in the U.S. could tighten supply chains and support faster parts and better uptime. On site, the biggest ROI isn’t hype—it’s drones flown daily, models done right, and GPS that eliminates rework. We also challenge whether “blue collar” still fits when cabs are quiet, seats are cooled, and joysticks do the heavy lifting.

In the end: capture moments, build a personal library of knowledge, and invest in kids earlier than high school so the next generation sees building as creative, technical, and worth their time.

If this conversation sharpened how you think about work, tech, and time, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more people in the construction industry can find it.

Transcript

Meet Eric Jumper And The Crew

SPEAKER_04 0:02

Welcome to Ironcast, brought to you by GTE. I'm your host, Jason Gilhooler. In this podcast, we talk all things iron. Whether you're in the dirt, trees, or pavement, it's about real people, their stories, and real conversation. Insight to what's happening in the construction industry and everything in between. Thanks for tuning in. We're gonna get things fired up and ready to go. Now you're on the record. This is legal. It's it's it's for legal measure here. Everything you say can and will be used for this podcast. So um intro music. It's kind of jazzy.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

I like it.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

Got the jazz hands going. Welcome to the Iron Cast. I am really excited about this episode here. We got a full house here in the Ironcast studio. Um, sitting to my immediate right, because people can't see well, they can see we're recording all kinds of things. We got all kinds of cameras here. There's some just laying on the table. But to my immediate right here is the honor what we I call the honorable John Jones. Well, all rise. Uh he's he don't call it a comeback. You did this once before. Yep. Uh, we had you on here a few episodes ago, and uh John is such a great conversation. Thanks for coming in here to be my uh co-host, but sitting uh straight ahead, dead nuts.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Don't make eye contact with me again and say dead nuts. That was bro, that was brutal.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

Top dead center. He's destined, is Eric Jumper. Welcome to the Iron Cast. Happy to be a guest. I'm happy that you are a guest. Um, so um, hey Rachel, you're here.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I'm here. I'm back.

First Jobs, Family Business, And Landfills

SPEAKER_04 1:59

Yeah, you're back. It's good to have you. Um Jamie's back. Jamie Jamie's back. That's my that's our Jamie. And um, so Eric, why don't you give us a little rundown here of how you got started in the construction industry? I want the whole family history, you know, uh when you were born, what hot no, you know, to go. Sure, yeah. I mean lay it on, lay it on us.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

We still want to get to know you. I know where I was born, and that hospital is eventually slated for demolition. So yeah. My theory is that if I if I knock the hospital down that I was born in, that I can't die. I can be Is that how that works? I can no one's done it before. Is that a first? I think it might be. It's gotta be. That would be a first. So maybe that's the key to immortality.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

You are a guy that does things first, that's what I've noticed. So we'd like to hear the background of this. Uh so how'd you get started?

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Um, by force, usually. So I guess the short story is one summer I went to work with my dad just to like play on the job site. I think it was in middle school. Um, and some guy didn't show up for work, so I went and ran the roller because I was the only body available. It was fun, so I was like, I'll do it again tomorrow. And they they paid me via my dad's so they like they gave my dad a per diem. That's how I got paid. There you go. So I was on the books, kind of. Um, anytime somebody from because working on a landfill, anytime somebody came by from the landfill, I was told to tell them that I was eighteen. So every day the inspector would come over and be like, Hey, how's it going? And I would just blurt out, I'm eighteen. He's like, I didn't ask. Um my goodness.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

How old were you?

SPEAKER_03 3:36

Uh I was 14. Okay, this is not 18.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

Okay, the this is on the record.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

This is yeah. Yeah. Get a letter in the middle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

It's past limitation.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

That's okay. That landfill will be closed soon. It's all right. It's all right. I don't need their business anymore.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

So you s so you came into this industry rolling?

SPEAKER_03 3:52

Yep. And you know, I I had been around it most of my early childhood. There's a picture of me on my on my dad's lap in the seat of a 992 um out in Lockhaven.

SPEAKER_05 4:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Which that machine is still in use, trying to actively buy that machine. That's right. Yeah. Yep. Nice. I don't know what I'm gonna do with a 992, but nine ninety-two in my backyard.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Just have it.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

Yep. I think you could use it to uh fix your moat. I could, yeah. I have a moat around my house. So like I have my house is the the driveway and the house are divided by a stream. Do you do you live in a castle? I live in a in more of like um like a cabin kind of thing. Cabin in the woods. Cabin in the woods with a moat. With no cell service. That's good. Yeah. Do you like that? I don't. Starlink's expensive. Is it? Yes. Yes. Very expensive.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Elon, if you're listening.

SPEAKER_03 4:45

Those deals that you see are not true.

SPEAKER_04 4:47

They're not true. It is$200 a month. Well, I'm paying through over$300 for Xfinity.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Oh well, I guess I'm not doing that bad then.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

No, I think you're doing pretty good. And then you got your streaming services. Yeah. But we're good, we're getting the way.

SPEAKER_03 4:59

But it's cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Um, so yeah, I did uh we had like a family business for a while. We did landscaping and we did like all kinds of random excavation projects. I so I I grew up in Northeast PA, and the thing about Northeast PA is like if you're not like connected with people, it's hard to start a business there.

SPEAKER_05 5:22

Yeah.

Ski Resorts To South Carolina Job Sites

SPEAKER_03 5:23

I won't get in too much into detail on all that, but it's it's a very difficult place to start a business in that trade. Um so I struggled a lot and I got into like public bidding. So like when I was 18, I figured out like somehow we ended up getting like a pretty decent sized bonding aggregate, so like I could go after a lot of work, um, which was odd at the time. Um, but I figured that out, and I was really good at the paperwork and the bidding and all that. So we we did a lot of like weird jobs for DCNR and DEP. We did some just some oddball stuff. Yeah. Um, but it turns out none of us were really good at running the company at the time, and we all just wanted to be in the field and we were arguing all the time and this and that. Um, so my whole family actually ended up moving to South Carolina. I stayed here for a couple um couple years, worked for mushlets, my first go-around as an operator. In in the background of all of that, for seven seasons I worked at ski resorts across the east coast. Are you a skier? I'm a snowboarder. Okay, but I can ski. So I learned to snowboard first because it's easier to snowboard and then learn to skip, yeah. Um, so I did that mostly like train parks. I did a lot of train park building. That's fun. Worked at a bunch of different mountains, did a lot of cool stuff. Yeah. I did um I did an X Games build. Did you really in Aspen? Yep. Nice awesome. So I did a lot of cool stuff. Let's see. And then so then I moved to South Carolina 2018. And then worked for a bunch of different companies. That was where in South Carolina? Uh Charleston.

SPEAKER_04 7:01

Charleston.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Yep. So then for for three years I I worked for a bunch of different outfits. That was probably the best thing I could have done because I I got such a unique perspective of a different part of the same industry. Yeah. So it is a completely different world down there. You do think.

SPEAKER_04 7:20

Do you think that line is where the world changes?

SPEAKER_03 7:25

I think there are there are several lines, but the the primary line culturally is probably a little further south than where we're sitting right now, to be honest.

SPEAKER_04 7:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

The line creeps up a little more every day. And that line is based off of pay rate and skill level.

SPEAKER_05 7:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:45

So with with this whole Mason Dixon line, what what's that?

SPEAKER_03 7:50

It's it's pretty it's probably it's probably right right about there. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

That's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

But yeah, I mean it was it was tough. Like they don't really like I just don't care down there a lot. Yeah. Like my first day I was like where I came from uh up north, like you scratch a counterweight on an excavator, you're fired. Like that's it.

SPEAKER_05 8:11

That's no no.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

You go down there and they're like every one of them is all the counterweights are brown just from dragging them in the mud all day. And it's a skill level, but then it's also like an environmental thing because you're constantly sinking in the mud.

SPEAKER_05 8:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

Like you don't bench load in in in the south. No. On in the low country at least. Um, if you get on top of a pile with an excavator, you're gonna be in the pile after a couple swings. Right. Like it's just a totally different material. So then like learning how to manage it's one of those things where like if you can be good in the low country as an operator, you can go anywhere and be really good. You can you learn a lot about like mud and especially like so I did a lot of utility work down there. So we're doing the company I worked for had a bunch of VAC trucks, they had 27 VAC trucks. Um I spent two years working at it at the biggest data center at the time in the country. Yeah. Um, and that was all like existing infrastructure. So we're doing all these crazy utilities and fiber duct banks and all that stuff in that data center. Um, so I learned a lot of stuff in a very short period of time. I learned about logging, I learned about um unique demolition, um, dredging, the beach reclamation stuff, yeah, like all kinds of things. Again, in the background of all that, I was taking pictures and learning that side of things because I was always good at social media. So that was when I found BuildWit. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. This guy's getting paid to just like go see cool stuff. Yep. Uh kind of talked to him a little bit online and he was kind of noticing the stuff I was posting. And for maybe like two years, I was like, hey, just give me a job. He's like, no, I'm not ready yet. So then I bullied him for two years until he gave me a job online. Um, and then the the pieces finally lined up. I was getting sick of where I was, and I was like, you know what? It's time for something different.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

What year was this?

SPEAKER_03 10:00

This was this was 2020. Okay. Yeah, September of 2020 was my first my first day at Buildwit.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

So you're into COVID. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 10:10

Yeah, so the world changed.

Mud, Utilities, And Data Centers

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Yes, 100%. Yeah. Well, so it was cool being down there because the the South Carolina was like almost unaffected. We never stopped dining inside or anything like that. Right, yeah. So um now the job site that I was on because I was working on a Google job, like we had we had masks before anybody even thought masks were a thing. Like we had masks in March. Wow. Which was crazy.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

You were masked up in March. Yep. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

In a machine with the with the glass closed around me. Yeah, pressurized cab. Yep. If you didn't have a mask on, you were getting a write-up. Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. Um, but yeah, so we were deep in COVID. Started working there, just as like a photographer, um, which is kind of cool. Um, and then in uh amongst all that travel, you were going to places that were really heavy into COVID restrictions. So like, man, the air travel, all that stuff. Like it was a nightmare. It was nuts for the first two years of of that.

SPEAKER_04 11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

Um I hated that part of it. I probably had seven different job titles by the time we were done because that comp that company was constantly changing. But I had fun. Uh, it was stressful. We had a lot of it was a lot of growing pains. But I did that until 2023. I moved back up here. My wife was living here. It was easier for me to move back up here than have to break her lease and move south. So I was like, whatever, it's fine. I I kind of like it here. I wish we could move back down south every day, but financially it just makes more sense to be here.

SPEAKER_05 11:39

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

The pay rates are so much lower. I I could never, you know, anything that I do, I could never financially make what I make here down there. Correct. Yeah. It's never possible. I took I took a$7 an hour pay cut to go be an operator in South Carolina. Wow. So then what's what did I do after that? Got married, we had a kid. I quit Buildwit. Um, started my own company, did my own media thing for a while. Yeah. Did that for a year. Having a kid made the travel part of it really hard. I was on the road every single week in a new state doing a new thing. Wasn't getting paid by some of my customers. And I was like, okay, this is super stressful, not having fun, not seeing you know my family enough.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

When did you realize though, when you after you had your kid and you were you're out there traveling, you're doing your thing? When when did you realize like when did it sink in like like man, this is tough?

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Probably, I don't know, every all all of it was tough. Yeah. But probably like the last couple weeks that I did it full time, it was like, okay, yeah, this is I'm missing a lot of stuff here. Yeah. So it just made sense to it was a really tough thing to like let go of because it was like you built yourself into this, into this really unique career, and you're getting to see all this stuff, and then to like just say, All right, I'm done with this. It was it was really like a a tough thing for me to like not want to do anymore, but it was just getting exhausting, and you know, looking back on it, I still wish I could go and do that every day. But um the problem I had, and one of the main reasons why I went on to my next thing was I really missed building stuff. I don't I have not run into anybody else that has had the same experience as I have. I can probably see it if like maybe somebody left the trades to do like sales, or that would probably be the only other like um like trade-off. Sure. But um I miss building stuff. Like I was getting to see all these cool projects and all these meet all these, you know, really good people and see all these unique machines, and all I was doing was just documenting.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

Really, it's all that's all it is. Like you're just you're you're capturing like I was I had a lot of good relationships with a lot of good companies, and I had a lot of long-term relationships with companies and crews visiting them so often, but at the end of the day, you're you're like not part of the team, you're just sort of there as a fly on the wall, yeah. And as a one-man guy, a one-man band, like it just it wasn't super fun to be like not on a team. Yeah. And everybody's like, Oh, it's such a cool job, I wish I could do what you're doing. I'm like, yeah, but like I also want to, you know, do what you're doing. Right. So I missed that, and it was like a weird conflict that I always had.

SPEAKER_04 14:26

Um that's why they say you can't have your cake and eat it.

From Operating To BuildWit And Media

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Exactly. That's a hundred percent. And I didn't want to just like quit and go be an operator, so I was trying to find like, I don't know, something that fit my level of ADHD and want to to do a lot of different things while not being confined to doing like just one you know, machine or whatever. So I looked at like starting my own business or doing all this other stuff. Um, ended up getting tied up with a landscape rope up in the Poconos. He wanted to start a construction company. Did that for almost a year, absolute debacle. Um I kind of like sold myself short going to a smaller company because I wasn't confident that like I could, you know, jump back into things. I was like, well, maybe I'll start small and then like the risk to reward will be a little better, and yeah, yada yada. So I learned very quickly that skills don't really diminish over time that you've acquired. So I dealt with that for a year, and then Steven from Mushlitz had been trying to hire me back basically since the day I left in um 2018.

SPEAKER_04 15:30

Which were you were an operator?

SPEAKER_03 15:32

So I was an operator. Yep. And he's he's made me two offers over the over the you know the last couple years. Um and every time the offer changes to a completely different job, um, just because I'm you know moving through my career. What's interesting about where I am now is it is basically impossible for me to have been put in the position that I'm in had I stayed at one company for the entirety of my career. So I feel like I'm gonna go down a bunch of different rabbit holes with this. A lot of young guys get stuck in the mentality of I'm just gonna find a job and I'm gonna stay there forever. Which is great. I'm not knocking people for doing that. I like hiring people because I do the hiring. I like hiring people with the intention that hey, we're gonna you're gonna be here forever. However, some people with certain skill levels need to go to experience more in order for them to unlock more knowledge that they don't know that they can acquire yet. I agree with that. That's cool. And I hate the fact that my resume looks like a jumbled mess and it looks like I can't hold a job very long, and there's reasons that I wasn't at most of those shops very long. Um but man, the where I am now versus where I could have been if I'd stayed somewhere, completely different. I would never be in the position I'm in had I not gained all this knowledge and talked to all these people. Buildwit and the skills that I was able to acquire there were such an instrumental part of my career. Because not only did I get to travel and photograph and video and talk to people, but with my pre-existing knowledge of the industry and my work experience, I was able to look at it through the lens, but then also like as I'm processing what I'm looking at, it's like, hey, why are you guys doing this? Oh, we're doing this because of this. It's like, oh, I would have never thought to do it like that. You guys do it completely different over here.

SPEAKER_05 17:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

So you're learning all these things and you're like putting different pieces together and you're learning you're learning the backgrounds of different companies and how they got started and how they've evolved and their you know their processes and how they're successful, or you know, where they could trim fat or where they where they don't have enough people, or where they think that they could do better if they had this one thing, or you know, how they're doing it completely different and they're doing it way better, and they don't even realize it. And you can take all that information and just create this insane library in your head of like, okay, I've got it now. Social media is also a huge part of that too, because like I talk to people that I would have never been able to before without that. So I at at my fingertips at any given moment, I have an insane like knowledge base to pull from, not only from my own head, but just from people that I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:28

There's that saying that out there that it's not what you know, it's who you know. Yes. Um, and I think that's a that's an interesting thing in the construction industry because uh there it's just so robust. The industry is so large, sure, but it's also completely small. Yeah, like it's it's small. Like I had it at an episode with you, John, and you're like, oh hey, I know Eric Jumper. I'm like, that's cool. Yeah, you're a cool guy. What do you got? You know, it's the same thing. And now we're connected, um, and we're here talking about all the great things. Um, but I think it's interesting about the social media in the construction industry, and I know it's a big part um of what you do. I want to talk more so about the rise um of social media in the construction industry. Because this this industry was traditionally, I would say, what uh offline. Yes. And um, there's a lot more visuals out there. We're seeing more of what this industry is about because of guys like you, John, what you do, Rachel. You're you're always putting stuff out there.

Travel Burnout, Fatherhood, And Career Reset

SPEAKER_03 19:37

The shift was very quick. When I was at BuildBit early on, it was tough for us to um do some of the things that we're doing, either because of reservations from the owners we're working for, security from clients that we were working for, safety is a big one. Everybody was huge on like everything had to be reviewed by their own safety people. It was tough for us to get into places because they didn't like cameras. So it was like tough to show off the industry. Like I was constantly fighting to, you know, document cool stuff and cool people. Um, I would say maybe like 2023 was when I realized like, man, everybody's on board with this all of a sudden. Because I was talking to essentially billionaires, owners of companies, and they're like, Yeah, I saw this like video you did for Blair, can you do that for us? And I was like, Yeah, no, we can do that for sure. Yeah, yeah. So like all these, you think all these like super wealthy, influential people that you have a lot of respect for, you don't think they like see the stupid stuff you post? And it's like, yeah, I was on TikTok today. And it's like, why? Why are you on TikTok? Why are you on TikTok? Um, but yeah, I mean, everybody's like the whole world is connected at this point. It's like not even like nobody's isolated from that. Um and I think like what brings people together is like their ability to interact with and see how everybody else is doing things, like we just talked about. But I think it's been good for the industry. Um obviously, you know, we're always hiring, but I just had this conversation last year where the whole reason like for build with its existence originally was to bring people into an industry that was going down the wrong path with people. And it was it was you know the the industry average age is still really high, it's like 40 or 50, which is crazy. Um, not that 40 or 50 is old. Thank you. But throwing darts already. However, um, it's it's not good for an industry that's so labor intensive to have such a high age range in labor. In order to get younger people more interested, you know, social media came about and all this stuff, and we were, you know, making the industry pop. Personally I don't think that we have a shortage anymore. Okay. I'm interested. And I don't I think the reason that people are st obviously everybody is still in a hiring craze. There's gonna be a lot of people that disagree with me. And I think that people that disagree with me might just need to change how they're doing things, like pay rate, things like that. Okay. Because like I could hire maybe ten people tomorrow for very critical positions that are hard to find. Okay. But like entry-level operators, laborers, um, even like medium level, you know, field employees, foremen, I've got a stack of like 150 resumes at any given time. Yeah, wow. So people are interested, people want to get into it. I just don't think the analytics have caught up yet.

SPEAKER_04 22:47

I see.

SPEAKER_03 22:47

And I think in a couple years we're gonna have an oversaturation because so many people are seeing like, man, I could quit my office shop and go run a dozer. And they're, you know, we're touting it as like, yeah, like almost anybody can come do this and do it well with training, as long as the companies are willing to train those people.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

But do you think the demand It's probably the first time I've said this on record, so somebody's probably gonna think I'm an idiot, but no, I I know I'm I this it's uh that's why I said I'm very interested in this because do you think at that point though the demand will be higher to account for the saturation? We're gonna need more No, I think it's actually gonna get worse.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

You think I think the oversaturation is gonna get worse because of technology. Okay. Yeah. So like, you know, I'll be honest, we're looking into like AI for equipment right now. The only reason we haven't implemented it is because it's not available for our fleet.

SPEAKER_05 23:33

Yeah. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 23:34

Like I could easily go automate ten of our trucks right now because we're a perfect candidate for automating equipment. Some of the stuff we do is very like it's almost like mining. It's like very continuous. Um, and it's out there, like the tech is there.

SPEAKER_05 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

Um a year ago it was not there. Right now it's it's available and it's affordable and it's useful.

SPEAKER_04 23:56

John, tell me a little bit about automation in in the John Deere world.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

It's on the radar. Uh Deere is taking a lot of tech from the farm, the ag side. So the tractors, even the farm's been doing it for years. Yeah. So and now we're we have the same systems that like a 9R tractor have in our trucks. Yes. Um, so they're implementing that, they're working with AI. Sure. Um, and even down to, and I don't know anything about Ag side, sure, but the spray technology, I don't know if you've been seeing that from Deer at all. It's crazy. That they can spray a flower that's a weed or the actual product that they're trying to produce, and they're saving millions on at like 20 miles an hour. Yeah, like that's crazy. So what why can't we just run a truck in a circle, stop at one point and dump at the other? 100%. So they are implementing it. Deer is on board with that right now. If you ask me to sell it to you today, I'd I just I just I don't know how to do it. But it's out there. Um, and so the competition half it too. Yeah. Um, it's a race to who's gonna produce the best one at the best price. 100%. Uh, because obviously that technology is is is expensive. Yep.

Why Job Hopping Built A Better Skillset

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Yeah, I can I can go to Blue Light right now, which is an AI company, and for like thirty thousand dollars, I can buy a kit that will bolt onto a roller of a certain brand and automate that machine from my phone. And it'll run all day, it won't take breaks, it'll roll a perfect pattern. No smoke breaks, no smoke breaks, no smoking in the machine.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Um and that's it. You can control it from the from the dozer operator's perspective. You can you can have one guy controlling a whole fleet. It's nuts. Now, what happens? So, like for us, your entry level position, the bottom of the barrel, the person with the least experience is gonna go in the roller. What happens when you take that position away? And then their next step up from that is truck driver. What happens when you take that away? I don't know, the next five years are gonna be really interesting for people. Um I've been telling people for like the last year or so, like you need to, if you want to survive, you need to start diversifying your skills and learning as much as possible because you're going to get left behind. Yeah. And it's scary to think about that, but it's true. Like, if you're not actively trying to, you know, it sucks for the guys that are like just starting now. If you're not trying to actively get in front of technology and make yourself irreplaceable, you're it's gonna be bad. And I think a lot of people are like getting distracted by, ooh, AI, I can make a cool picture of myself. And it's like that's that thing's gonna take your job. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Now, do you think the entry level so I feel like Sarah Connor, but like this this is the like it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah. And if you're taking away that entry level jobs, two of them, you know, could happen today. Yes. Do you think LCT like a school like LCTI, tech school, is gonna get a better option so then you get an experienced operator? And those kids that are coming out of those schools, I I say the experience because like I think experience is learned in the dirt. Sure. Um, you know, there's only so much you could teach in a classroom. Yep. And they do run equipment, but that's gonna be a mandatory step, so then you could jump into a dozer or an excavator.

SPEAKER_03 27:16

The problem with schooling, and uh it's kind of like a double-edged sword because like we're trying to work with a couple of schools right now to get like programs going with them. Almost like a like I I have a kid right now who wants to come into the shop as like a paid um employee, but then like it his service there goes towards his credits. It's like a school thing.

SPEAKER_04 27:36

I think we had somebody here do it was a great program.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Yeah. So like I want to do more on that. The problem with the schools is there's so much this is like every school. Yeah, not just it's not a trade school, but the there's such a delay in curriculum.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 27:53

It'll be ten years before these trade schools are teaching us about technology. Yeah. Because they're just they're trying to figure things out at such a slow pace with so many pieces of red tape and obstacles in front of them. Like learning learning at an at an academic level corporately is slow and oftentimes not up to date.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

And I think too, like the image, at least when I was in high school and had the chance to go to like a tech school, you know, there's a certain group of kids that went to that school. Sure. And it pushed me away, you know, from wanting to go if I want to go into that field. Um, just because I don't want to be tied in with that. And I think that's something else that they need to help clean up and get a better path to what you exactly want to do, not just the skip out on class. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:36

See, that's where I think the OAC boards and stuff like that at these career techs. I I've sat on one at Burke's career tech. Um and you know, it I think that's where the industry can be best impacted working with the instructors, working with the curriculum that they're doing. But no, I agree with you. You're you're right, they've always been behind. I I was a votecher or career tech. But no, these are these are all great things. But Eric, let's kind of jump back here a little bit, if you don't mind. Um, because uh we want to talk a lot about the media that you put out there, sure. Uh, but we want to talk about all other things too. But there's something though, I've seen your I've seen your work out there. There's uh there's a signature content that you have that you create. Um how do you capture that? Creating that signature content that has drawn so many people.

The Rise Of Construction Social Media

SPEAKER_03 29:25

Um I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet. People say that all the time, they're like, ah, like your style. Like, I don't know. It's it's a little different, I guess, but I I haven't I just kind of do I kind of do whatever I think looks the best. Now, obviously, I figured out what machines I've done it enough that I know the best perspective and the best angle of any machine. Or I don't know, how how to capture a job site correctly. Like that's a big part of it, is like understanding what's what's interesting is like I put the card before the horse on media and and and you know photography because I never knew how a camera works. I still don't know how a camera works. I I I know the parameters that I need to stay in. I have a general understanding of photography, and I have enough information to get the job done. Besides that, I don't care about the science. I don't I anytime somebody like tries to get into like an argument about what camera's better, I'm like, whatever one does the job the best is the one I'm most interested in.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

And what you know is all self-taught, more or less, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:43

Um, you know, I learned a lot from BuildWit, but because I that was you know a pinnacle for me like media-wise, because I was the only idiot there. Everybody else was like super duper media savvy, intelligent. Like I learned a lot of my video editing skills from those guys.

SPEAKER_04 30:59

Okay. Um, stuff to be a sponge.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Exactly. Yeah. So um I learned I learned a ton from those guys, but um I just recently like learned a lot of I see recently, but like two years ago, I like really learned like photography basics, like leading lines, okay, like proper exposure, things like that. And it's like half the stuff I've been doing the whole time is wrong, but it works. So um in art, there's really no like art's obviously subjective, so like it could be a disastrous piece of content on paper, but if people think it looks cool, then it looks cool. Yeah, that's great. So, like what's funny is so I posted a video yesterday. The the content that I was shooting, because I was talking on the phone while I was doing it with like while while I was flying the drone, there's a lot of like sharp movements in my footage because I was bouncing the camera around like I was able to take those otherwise mistakes and you know make transitions out of them because of the way that the camera moves, things like that. So um I don't know. I like a lot of a lot of what my style is is like overcoming my inabilities in like generating the content.

SPEAKER_04 32:20

So yeah, it's authentic.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:23

And I think that's what draws people. Yeah. Me personally, that's what I that's what draws me to your work.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Yeah. And I try not to make it like over I don't like to over-edit things. I don't like to, you know, put these crazy transitions and like there's a lot, like there's I call it the car edit video style where it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I don't like doing that. Like, because my audience likes to see the equipment too. Yeah. But they also like, you know, a unique perspective on it. Like they don't want to just see I I say this, but you know, some of my most popular videos are just like my iPhone standing like this for like 10 minutes, like just holding my phone. It's like one still video of a machine. But you know, people want to see it moving. It's like so I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

You posted a video the other day and it was so simple, and it was probably shot from the cab of your truck with the dozer operators backing across frame. Yes. And you added the song of like and you brought the volume up as you was passing by. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah, and it's so simple.

SPEAKER_04 33:19

Yeah. Yeah. It's creative, yeah, and it's authentic. And I love that. So, how can companies leverage social media authentically?

SPEAKER_03 33:31

So if you asked me that question five years ago, I would say just start existing online. Like just put yourself out there as you know, you if just existing online five years ago, you were already ahead of everybody. Now we have companies just starting to get online. There's a there's only a few left. If you're not online by now, you've missed the boat. It's gone. Um, the problem with that is like okay, now the the bare minimum is being online and like posting just generic content about your company.

SPEAKER_05 34:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

In order to get in front of somebody, you've got to go crazy. Yeah. You have got to come up with you've got to have a really creative person on staff to like just get out in front of contractors and like some level of like understanding of the industry, but then also an understanding of like media marketing. So, how do you go crazy? I I just make the dumbest stuff you can possibly think of.

SPEAKER_04 34:34

I love it.

Talent Pipeline: Shortage Or Oversupply

SPEAKER_03 34:35

And it's mostly just like I wish I would have done it more years ago, but I was always so like protective of the image of myself, and then I realized the image of myself is just being an idiot. Um people like that. And people like that. Yeah, you know, sex sells. So um I'm just I just whatever comes to my head like the train video the other day. Like I posted I was a Snapchat at first. I sent a Snapchat to my buddies like, look at this stupid guy with his his caboose in his backyard. And I was like, Huh, people might actually like that, and it's got a half a million views. So I was like, whatever you think it's dumb, it's probably content.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Hey caboose guy, we love you. Don't take a few.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

I like caboose guy.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Yeah. Now, do you follow like uh I'm sure you know Casey Neistat is on YouTube. Yeah. Like, and he was doing a vlog every single day. Like, do you follow that?

SPEAKER_03 35:24

Like, that was a huge inspiration for like me wanting to do yeah. Okay, his his that was when I found him. Um, and his his daily vlogs back in like man, what was like 2016, 2017?

SPEAKER_02 35:35

I think I watched him for like 10 years.

SPEAKER_03 35:37

That was that was like my my catalyst in like man, like this is cool. Yeah, and he's living an above average life, but like this is proof that you can like even living just regularly, like you can make cool content, but then like you take back the layers of like how long it took to do all of that.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

So like I always looked at that, I was like, oh man, this is so cool. Like, I don't I wish I could, you know, edit like that one day. Because editing one of his vlogs would have taken me a month at that time.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:09

But like And he's doing it 24 hours, exactly, or less. Yeah. Um, and you know, I'm kind of the same way now. We're like um one of my operators said the other day, he's like I had f I had the drone was flying at seven. Um, I was flying around the guys, and then at eight a video was up, and they were on break, and he texted me, he's like, How did you do that? Yeah. I'm like, I just know where things are and I'm making the video in my head as I'm going.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

And you're not shooting extra footage. You already know the footage you want.

SPEAKER_03 36:41

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

Yes, you're not editing too much.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

I've I've that was probably the thing I used to be the most terrible at was overshooting. Overshooting. Yeah. Um, especially photo. So when I used to do contract shoots just for photo, I would end a day with like four thousand photos. Wow. And I would I would edit, I would deliver less than two hundred.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

So it's like that's staggering. Yeah. I have a camera with over a million shutter clicks. Really? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

Still gone?

SPEAKER_03 37:12

Still gone, but I don't I don't really use it anymore. Yeah. It's an R3.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

And I think, and I'm nowhere near, you know, your level of marketing, but me just doing my little side thing with work. I undershoot everything. And then I when I get back to like an edit table, I'll just do that.

SPEAKER_03 37:24

And I've done that before too.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

I don't have anything.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Yeah. And now then you know that was a you know, everything's a lesson. Everything you do is a lesson. And that was a critical lesson too. It's like I need okay, I shot too much, and then I tried to shoot, not enough. Now I kind of have the middle ground.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

You have a sweet spot, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:38

And I again, Joe, how about you?

SPEAKER_00 37:42

I think the last time I took 4,000 photos was at a wedding.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

Yeah, that's you can you can yeah. Are you an overshooter or an undershooter?

SPEAKER_00 37:49

I used to be an overshooter, especially in the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 37:54

I've never shot a wedding.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Don't I wouldn't recommend it?

SPEAKER_03 37:57

I don't want to shoot a wedding.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

It's a lot of work, it's a lot of editing.

SPEAKER_03 38:00

It would have to be a really unique wedding for me to want to shoot it. I just think that's a good one. Yeah, with some jokes in the background, some going on. Yeah. Yeah. The problem with the wedding. Okay. So probably some of the scariest conversations I've had were um losing media from a shoot. So like I'm going to do that. Has that ever happened to you before? I've had that happen probably a dozen times now.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

How so like how did you lose the media?

SPEAKER_03 38:20

Uh it's all kinds of different ways. Um, it actually happened to me two weeks ago. I had I spent a whole day with the drone. I I charged the battery. I probably charged the battery six times on the drone that day, or the batteries on the drone. Like that that thing was in the air for six hours, seven hours, just shooting time lapses whole day. And the card failed when I put it in the computer.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

The card and I'm assuming you you you format and all of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Yep. So that something happened when I plugged the card into the computer and it corrupted the card.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

That happened with my external hard drive about four months ago when I almost cried. Yeah. It was bad. All of my original all of the podcast stuff was on there.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

No kidding. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Yeah. But Seagate, props to them. They got everything back. Really? They recovered it. They got everything back.

SPEAKER_03 39:05

Yeah, those recovery services are lifesaver. Um, I've dropped hard drives and lost content. Um, I've accidentally deleted photos, done that a couple times. But I can't imagine the stress of taking photos at a wedding.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

It's it's not too strong.

Automation Arrives: AI Trucks And Rollers

SPEAKER_03 39:18

For that reason, because I could never imagine. Because like the thing with what I do is 99% of the time I can recreate that almost the next day.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

They're probably gonna be working tomorrow. Yeah. I could just go back. They're not gonna get married again tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

See, the trick with wedding photography is just having a second photographer, having an association.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

The backup.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Yeah, have a backup and have two cameras.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

Yeah, new cameras, they have two slots now, right? Yeah, mine, yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Yeah. So they'll backup as you're shooting, yeah, which is pretty nice.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Yep. So what about so is the majority of your content drone footage, photography? Like what percentage would you say is each?

SPEAKER_03 39:54

I'd say it's more drone now. Just for sake of for ease. Yeah. It's it's a huge difference when I am able to get on the ground with my camera. It's I do a lot with sound. So like I like having sound mixed in throughout the video. I think that's I guess that's part of the the you know, the style that I've kind of created over the years is like that was one of the very first things I ever learned how to do. Was like I had the drone and I wanted the sound of the machine working. And this was before I even had like a camera with a good microphone on it. I would go to YouTube and I would I would find similar um sounding machines, and I would rip the audio off of those YouTube clips, and I would I would mash them together, and I would like I would spend hours like sound engineering a video. Really? Yeah. That's for my like thousand followers at the time. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

So you said you started out with how many followers?

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Like how quickly did your audience build that's that's changed a lot over the years. Um so um one to ten was really hard. 1,000 to 10,000 was hard. I don't remember a lot about like 10 to 75 or 100.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Is this organic growth too?

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Or I've never paid for anything once. I've I've meta has never taken a dime from me. That's awesome. Meta's given me money, but they're never taken anything from me. Yeah. They don't pay very well for money. I'm wondering. I do not make hardly any money.

SPEAKER_04 41:20

Well, how many view how many do you have now? Followers?

SPEAKER_03 41:24

Like four or eighty. Four hundred and eighty. Yeah. Yep. Now a lot of that is uh there's like a lot of bots, there's like like debt accounts. Um, there's a lot of like, I don't know, a lot of guys from like third world countries and things like that that don't have any idea like what I'm what I even have no clue what they're following.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah, they want to come here and work for you, they're always gone.

SPEAKER_03 41:49

There's a lot of those guys. I get a couple of them a day.

SPEAKER_04 41:51

Like or the or the prince needs some yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

Um yeah, uh growth is weird. It's it comes in like spurts. I would say like when I stopped traveling to maybe like when I came back to work here, that was like the worst thing for my platform because I wasn't posting hardly at all. The stuff that I was posting was stupid, like it wasn't it was just like whatever I was doing at work. Yeah. Um but then like I probably lost like 40,000 followers just from not posting. Wow, yeah, wow. So it's taken me a while to like jumpstart. What's the timeline on that on the 40,000?

SPEAKER_04 42:28

Um 40,000 loss.

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Uh that would have been like December of 2024 to September of last year of 25. Wow. Yeah. There was no growth for the whole year. It was a loss. Until well, until I came back, obviously.

SPEAKER_04 42:49

So how does how does how do how do platforms like Instagram and and TikTok um how are they how do you think that they're reshaping the construction industry?

SPEAKER_03 43:00

Uh I think TikTok is is actually doing a lot of damage. Oh. Yes. Okay. Um I think it's a it's a it's a different space over there. TikTok seems to breed a lot of nonsense. Um like rage bait? Not even rage bait, it's just like guys do a lot of dumb stuff over there. Okay. Um there's a lot of like I don't like being the safety guy, but there's a lot of unsafe stuff that happens over there. Um TikTok really makes the blue collar world look like a bunch of idiots. I I remember I don't think it's I don't think it's beneficial at all.

SPEAKER_04 43:31

I I think I remember a video I watched. Um I remember the video that came out, and then everybody and their brother and mother and sister and cousin were doing this. Wait, let me uh can I guess what video you're talking about? Wait. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Are you talking about the loader flying video?

Schools, Training, And Tech Lag

SPEAKER_04 43:46

No. Okay. No, this this this was one where the guy there's a guy on a piece of equipment, and then the other guy that's holding the camera is like, Who's a big boy? Oh, yeah, that's a good one too. Yeah. It's good. It's good. Then I'm then I'm starting to get um customers. Yeah. Sending me videos like there's uh one of the townships, the guy was on a paver and he's and then the their guys you know recreating this and it's just flooding the world. But I mean I think it's funny.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

There's okay, so stuff like that's fine, but there's a lot of like you know, carnage, like stuff getting destroyed, guys doing dumb stuff, yeah. Like a lot of train wrecks, like a lot of cowboy stuff. Yeah, and it's like I don't know. The problem is it's too easy now. Running equipment's too easy. I don't think here's it, here's a hot take. Blue collar or uh operating heavy equipment. I don't know if it qualifies as being blue-collar anymore. Wow. I don't think it does. Thought-provoking state. Think about it. I am that you guys sell equipment with air-conditioned seats now. That's a nice feature. Like it's a little smaller. It is. You know who else has that? You know who doesn't have that? People in the office.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

My GM doesn't have it.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

No. So I don't know. I it's too easy. Okay. It's not what it was even 20 years ago. The creature comforts. I think the creature the creature comforts and just like the cateringness of you know employers and and job sites to operators. I don't know. They don't have to fuel their own equipment anymore. No, they don't have to grease it anymore if they have an auto greaser. Yeah. They don't have to do their own man, they just show up and pull joysticks. I say that as a heavy equipment operator and trainer. I don't think it's blue collar. And a lot of people agree with me that I've talked about those with.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Well, I I I we've talked a lot about this in our little chat a few weeks back here. Because I I would love to talk about Tier Zero. Sure. Um I was really excited about this. And um why don't you tell us a little bit about what tier zero is and and how it all started and where you're at now with it?

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Sure. So so that kind of started as a joke. Um, so I used to post a lot of like old equipment that I would see. I just like I like cool equipment. I'm like an enthusiast. Um so tier zero is a play on words of like, you know, you've got tier three, you have tier four, tier four final, now we have tier five. Um tier zero is anything with you know no emissions, no rolling exhaust controls, yeah. Just you know, pumping black smoke out. Um, unrestricted diesel power. Um I'd always wanted to start like a brand. And like 2021, I was like, I'm gonna start a brand. I just could not for life of me figure out like I had a bunch of a design ideas and things like that. Could never figure out a name for the company. I always came up with the dumbest stuff. And then one day, um we were like on a plane and we were talking about like old equipment. One of my coworkers was like, Yeah, it's a cool like tier zero thing. I was like, tier zero thing, huh? Interesting. And then I could not stop thinking of that. That was one of the most interesting experiences I've had in life so far. Because that was like the one time I've been like completely like in the weeds on one thing for days until I like put it on. You really roll that around, yes, and then um turned that into a brand, started a store, started selling some designs, kind of became an anti-brand. I had a lot of fun with it. We were selling like t-shirts and stickers, and I I made some signs, like roads, like joke road signs, like out of real road signs. Um sold all kinds of different stuff. Put it on pause because I was just uh the the whole family thing, like I was running the whole thing in my garage. Was I was we were you know getting the material, um, packaging everything, placing all over like all that was me in my garage. Um that's tough. So that was hard, especially for something that like at one point, like it was a six-figure company. And you know, the problem with with stuff like that is like it's a lot of just turning money over.

unknown 48:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:11

So it's like I wasn't exactly like getting rich out of it.

SPEAKER_05 48:13

No.

Capturing “Signature” Content And Style

SPEAKER_03 48:14

It has a lot of potential, and I I really want to, you know, get back into it. It's just been like I don't know. I even had the intention, like I was dead set on getting it back going by the end of January. It's the middle of February. I'm just so busy. You know what I mean? Like I've gotta keep prioritizing what I'm doing and like and you have to be a dad and have to be a dad. Um husband, yeah. Yeah. So it's like, what am I gonna do? Go out to the garage at like eight o'clock at night and pack orders. If I lived not in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, it'd probably be different because I, you know, I've always wanted to hire somebody because that's something I could totally hire somebody to help me. Kind of tough to find somebody locally. I've I've struggled with that for like two years now. So you could trust. Yes, exactly. That's the other thing. That's a big thing. It's a I've always like prided myself in the quality of like how we, you know, do things and like even around just shipping orders out. Right. It's very important. It's your baby. Yeah. And I think people in this industry take it very seriously. Like they've never had a thing like that before, you know what I mean? Yeah. And for them to be able to like order something and like get it two days later was like kind of a big deal.

SPEAKER_04 49:15

So, what's your perspective on modern machinery versus old school?

SPEAKER_03 49:22

Um, I I I mean, time like even tells the tale now. Like we still have old equipment that's outlasting new stuff for the most part. I think technology and manufacturing like have kind of gone like this. You're making the X or crossing the other way. One of these one's one's going up, one's going down. I don't know why I can't figure it out right now. But um Yeah, I think I think technology is kind of like almost hindered equipment in a way. To me, some of this technology that we're getting is like buying a car from 2008. Like a lot of the technology doesn't work anymore. Yeah. So what's it gonna look like, you know, in a couple years where it's like if I go buy a dozer from nineteen ninety-five, still runs like a dozer. Yep. Still does all the things I need it to do. It's built well. Not saying, you know, stuff isn't built well, but I think if you if you stacked up the lifespan of a machine that was built in nineteen eighty and to when it was completely taken out of service, like junked, to a machine that's built today, I think those two lifespans are gonna be very different. But we won't know. And you maybe I could be completely wrong.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Do you think that's not that's not just subject to the construction industry?

SPEAKER_03 50:46

Oh, that's everything. It's everything. I might be getting fat, but I also think it's manufacturing. But I've been going through a pair of pants every other week. Just like tearing pants, shirts, hats, like everything. Everything we tell it.

SPEAKER_04 51:00

I want to tell a dad joke right now so bad.

SPEAKER_03 51:02

I wish you wouldn't, because it's gonna be at my expense. Um I'll let it get this is an iPhone 12. I recently switched back to this phone because my iPhone 15 is a hunk. Yeah. It is an absolute hunk. It is a paperweight right now.

SPEAKER_04 51:19

Why do you think that like why do you why do you think things like that happen?

SPEAKER_03 51:22

I just think uh something happened during COVID where everything just went downhill with manufacturing.

SPEAKER_02 51:28

Like, it's weird. Didn't Apple get sued for built-in failure devices in their iPhones today.

SPEAKER_03 51:35

Yeah, there's like um there's a something else going around too now with um there's like a class action open. I might get like five bucks out of it.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

Oh, I think I've seen it.

SPEAKER_03 51:44

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah. I could use that right now. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Yeah. Is that pre-tax five dollars? Yeah, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 51:52

Yeah, it'd be a 385. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm really into demolition. I've got, you know, a really good pulse on on demo and all that stuff. Um, I did I did a short stint at um an industrial demolition firm, a nationwide demolition demolition firm. And it what's interesting about that is yes, there's always gonna be stuff to demolish and wreck and and dismantle. Right. From an industrial standpoint, from a from a plant standpoint, so I get a newsletter every month from um I kind of like a lead generator for just for demolition. Yeah. And he makes a section in his newsletter specifically for plant closings. So power plants, manufacturing facilities, pharmaceutical, you know, industrial, whatever. And one day I I I feel like that list is not gonna have everything on it because we're gonna run out of stuff to demolish. You think it's spiked right now? I think it's I think it's spiked a couple years ago. And are we on the tail end of it? I think we're on a consistent downfall, but I feel like manufacturing demolition spiked a while ago.

Growth, Platforms, And TikTok’s Pitfalls

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Now let me ask you this. So I live in Lehigh Valley. Sure. Um, and you know, it was a steel city of America for years, and they have all this infrastructure built up around that. Yes. And that's all a hundred plus years old. Yes. Like I see that, and I see like to me, I think demolition is gonna be the next big contractor in Lehigh Valley. You know, there's the warehouses that are going up all these paths, but we're running out of space in the inner city.

SPEAKER_03 53:30

100%.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

So I feel like that's gonna be a good industry, maybe for a decade, it could be five years. I don't know. Yeah, but is that some is that false to believe or no?

SPEAKER_03 53:38

I don't think so. So like like demolition to make space, definitely on the table. Okay. I think demolition, if you're if like a lot of these companies that specialize in like manufacturing and plant demolition, I think are going to continue to struggle just based on the fact that they're working themselves out of a job. Yeah. And it's not their own fault, it's just like it's the way it works. Yeah. And, you know, something else that people, you know, don't think about a lot is companies have a lifespan. Like some companies, like John Deere, obviously, are generational companies that will likely never ever go out of business. But then like construction companies typically had a lifespan. So like um a good example of this is is after World War II, everybody came home, nobody had anything to do. So the government allocated a bunch of money to infrastructure. That's when we got our highway systems, that's when we got, you know, we started finishing our road, our road networks. And out of that started a ton of companies that made hundreds of millions of dollars and are no longer around because once that, you know, ship had sailed, once the country was built to, you know, to a certain degree, once the infrastructure was in place for us to move forward, those companies just said, All right, we're selling all the equipment off. That's it. Yeah. There was a company called Durkin Construction. They were based out of like Northeast PA Lehigh Valley area. They were huge. Okay. They had 657s, they had big scrapers and big dirt work. And, you know, in the 2000s, they they saw the writing on the wall, like, okay, that we're like we made our money, we peaked, and it's hold everything off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:22

Um, it's super interesting. And you know, I've I think the highways came out right after World War II. So it's I never heard that take on it, but it makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 55:31

Sure. Like it's not it's not the game, it's not the playbook for companies, but like it's definitely like something to think about. We're like, it's a business.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_03 55:40

You know, it's not just like something that we're supposed to do. Like you don't have to go out and you know, you're there to make money. Yeah, I think that's that's something that people forget about a lot. It's like, oh yeah, I'm just like an equipment operator. It's like, yes, but you're also a tool to help the company make but like money. Like you have to be successful in this industry in any aspect, whether you're an employee, an owner, project manager, operator, whatever, like moving yourself through your career goes a lot quicker when you can figure out that you're there, you know, to make money. Absolutely. Revenue generating. You're a revenue generator. Yeah. It is fun and it's a cool job at the end of the day, but like it's all business. It's all business. Heavy equipment is a tool to do a job or a task faster.

SPEAKER_05 56:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Otherwise, you'd be there with a shovel and a horse.

SPEAKER_05 56:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

So how does And the guy with the shovel and the horse showed up because he saw an opportunity to make money?

SPEAKER_05 56:32

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 56:34

And then he found an excavator.

SPEAKER_04 56:36

So how is the technology what's like how is it playing a role in being game changers for our c for company?

SPEAKER_03 56:41

Well, so like you know, getting back to that, like the horse and the shovel is technology. Because before that we had our hands. Yes. So the you know, the horse and the buggy and the cart and the shovel and the pickaxe, that's technology. Excavator by itself was technology at one point. Like it's if if a if a prehistoric being came to us from the past and saw what we're doing now, that's technology to them. To us, it's just equipment. But technology now is us progressing through finding better and faster ways to do things.

SPEAKER_05 57:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

Great example. We use drones to survey our jobs. Ten years ago, you had to manually topo the job with a rover. Before that, we didn't have rovers. You were manually quantifying the job with a surveyor. So at that time, like before we had GPS, you might be able to topo a job, like let's say we have a million-yard project, we have to move a million yards to get this job done. They might topo that job a handful of times through the project to see how much material they're moving.

SPEAKER_02 57:50

And how long does that take to do it?

Is Heavy Equipment Still Blue Collar

SPEAKER_03 57:51

It's it takes a ton of time because you're, you know, having to you know plot and map all these elevations. Yeah, you have to set your reference point. There's so much involved. And then we get the GPS, and it was just the guy out there, you know, stabbing the ground with his pole. Now we have drones and they're automated. Our drone guy, he sets the drone up, he sets his targets up. In less than a half hour, he can fly a whole project. The next day we'll have a 3D rendering of the job. It'll show us what we've moved to date, how much we have left to move, it'll map out the different sectors, it'll give us the proper cut fill map.

SPEAKER_05 58:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:30

We do that every single day. I know every other day on a job how much material we're moving. I can show you for my phone right now. Wow. I can show you how much m material we've moved between yesterday and today.

SPEAKER_05 58:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 58:45

And I it's a critical piece of our company because we actually just crashed it the other day because it flew into a tree that we lowered the ceiling, it was a whole thing. Um, but we're manually topoing jobs today because we're waiting on the rental drone. Right. So it's like you don't realize what you have until you don't have it. Yeah. GPS is the same way. Like, I some of the stuff that we do, I don't know how we would do it without GPS because it's just not possible at this point.

SPEAKER_04 59:10

So what would you say to, and I know we have some customers out there of ours, what would you say to them that have not dived into the world of GPS?

SPEAKER_03 59:20

You don't know what you're missing. Again, it's the dollars thing. Like, yeah, you don't know what you're missing until you until you don't have it, or if you you've not experienced it. So like the landscape contractor I was working for last year, one of the first investments I made because we were doing public parks projects and you know facility renovations, things like that. And the thing about parks is there's so many crazy unique angles, and there's so many different things involved in a park. Well, historically, they've just like put a couple stakes in the ground and had a reference and they built it close enough. I bought a Top Con rover, and we built models of these parks. Some of them were like 2,000, 3,000 square feet, like they were not very big. Yeah, but they had all these features and rocks. I was able to to use the rover to put plants in the ground. Like down to, you know, I could if I had the the CAD file for the playground equipment itself, you could plot every single hole where the playground has to go. Wow. Like it and the time that that shaved off of doing that, it's just like it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:29

Um, and I think a lot of guys are stuck in this mentality of, oh, you know, all these kids and their GPS and yada yada, they could never do it without GPS. That is a hundred percent true. Do you know why? We don't put stakes in the ground anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:42

If the GPS goes out on one of our jobs right now and we're at finished grade or getting close to finished grade, they can't do anything. No. Because there's no stakes. There's no we don't have reference. Like the whole way of doing it. The point of construction is you know having reference to what you want to build. If you don't have that, if you take the reference out of that equation, because putting reference in, putting stakes in is a cost, and having the GPS eliminates that cost, when the GPS goes down temporarily, you're kind of at a standstill.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

It's kind of like if they ran out of stakes. Exactly. Exactly. But the risk, the risk to reward is monumental. I can count on one hand how many times we've lost total GPS signal. It goes out in machines all the time individually, because that's just an equipment error.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:30

But total signal loss on a whole job is uh almost uncommon these days.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

It's not like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when you you only had GPS at a certain time of day because of the constellations and the satellites were in a weird place. There's so much space junk up there right now. I have GPS most of the day and it's consistent.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

You know, Mushlitz has a lot of long-tenured employees, you know, up dozer operators specifically here. Um, some companies don't want to implement it because of the price tag.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:59

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:59

How is the operator take rate when you go to that guy that's been running machine for 30 years for you guys and you're saying, hey, we're gonna get you a new dozer, it's gonna have a full 3D GPS system in it? Obviously they have to take it, you know, they're gonna have to operate it no matter what, but are they a sept like okay?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:16

Like all of our best guys are like our older guys for GPS too. Really? Yeah. Yeah, they've they've taken to it very well. I don't have I have no one at the company that says, No, I don't want that.

Tier Zero: Building A Brand Around Old Iron

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

Yeah. Yeah. Because it makes their job easier. Yes. Um and how is their troubleshoot education? Are they troubleshooting field or or do you have somebody in house doing it?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:34

Usually we have like a common set of problems that we deal with on these machines. Yeah. And the guys, so like we have a unique culture where we have names on the machines. Like the guy's name is on the side of the machines. Like they're in the machine every single day. They take pride in it. Yes. Yeah. And because of that, what that one of the critical things about that is that guy knows that machine better than anybody else. Okay. So typically, most like issues, failures, problems um are consistent in nature, or they come up a lot. Not a lot, but like when they come up, it's usually a similar problem to the last problem. They're able to troubleshoot that pretty quickly. So they can just call our fleet manager and be like, hey, this same thing's happening again. I don't know if you want to come out and fix it today or if you could do it tomorrow, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:18

Um, yeah. No, it's it's it's really not as bad as people think.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:22

Okay. Yeah. So how are how are contractors adapting to this more digital, transparent world?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:30

Some of them are doing pretty well. Um some of them are tough. Some of them are having a hard time, like, you know, just keeping up. Yeah. Um, it is kind of scary. Like you um I had this thought the other day of like, okay, I need to do a better job of keeping up with like society as a whole. Right. I had that realization um when six seven became a thing. I'm sorry, what what? Exactly. Exactly. So six seven six seven. When that first started happening, I was like, that's what I said when I heard that. That was the that was basically the sound of the theme. Yeah. Yeah. Um when that started happening, I was like, what is this? What are you guys talking about? I realized that I was a little out of touch with with the young ones. I didn't know what's going on. Um and I realized that I I never want to like be in a position where I'm not keeping up with that's kind of like a an exaggerated example, but like not keeping up with society or technology as a whole. Yeah. Like my you know, my grandparents were always really bad at technology. Like my grandma before she passed would have 10 different Facebook accounts because they would all get hacked and she would make a new one because she would keep clicking on the same scam. I don't I don't want to be in that position. Yeah. Like I don't want to be in an old age where like I'm, you know, and I think it's just gonna keep getting harder and harder and harder because of AI and deep fakes and all that stuff. But like, I don't know. I I I think a lot of people have trust issues with technology because of that stuff. Yeah, I think that's like why some people don't want to move, you know, their business forward with technology. Yep. Because they don't, it's not proven enough to them yet that it's that it makes sense. Um but I don't know, it's again, it's all risk, it's all potential reward.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:29

I think with with um technology and and you know, like grandma, um it's kind of like Murphy's Law. Yeah. Do you know you do you know what Murphy's Law is? Sure. Yeah. Well, have you ever whole heard of uh Cole's law? No. It's uh thinly sliced cabbage and mayonnaise. Okay. That was that was a dad joke. He got it in the city. You got me good with that one. But what actually make and this is a question uh I'm going off on a tangent here, I'm sorry, but I I wanted to ask you, you know, what What actually makes a like a regular joke? When does that turn into a dad joke? I think it's the simplicity of it. It's actually when it becomes apparent.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

I thought we agreed to take that button away from him.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:21

She gave it back. Okay. So that actually that worked really well to prove my point. It becomes a dad joke when the whole room responds in that nature. Good point. Good point. It's funny.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:36

Eric, I think you should write a book if you haven't already.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:39

Um, I do really want to make a kid's book. Again, something I I don't know. Really?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:43

Yeah. So um I was actually I was writing a book on reverse psychology. When it gets published, please don't buy it. Is he is this a joke? I can't tell.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:56

I'm concerned we're gonna fall for something again.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:58

That that was the punchline.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:59

Oh, wait, don't buy it.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:01

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:02

It's reverse psychology.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

Yep.

unknown 1:07:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:04

I get nervous when I talk to Jason because I don't know if it's a joke or if it's reality.

Old Vs New Machines And Manufacturing

SPEAKER_00 1:07:09

You should have heard his story about he was in the lunchroom the other day talking to Tom, and he's like, Yeah, I'm driving down whatever road, and there was a dog with two tails. I'm seriously. And he's going on this tangent, and Tom was waiting, looking at him. He's like, Is this a joke? Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:22

No, there's seriously a dog with two tails. It wasn't like his leg or no. It would have been like a fourth, fifth leg. No, it was like a little side.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:31

He said he had a side tail.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:32

He had a side tail. This is this is this is the boy. I followed this dog. I follow I followed this dog. It was like right after the snow, so like you were kind of sequestered to the road. You the dog couldn't get off the road. And it just kept going straight down this straight road. And I'm there, you know, five miles an hour or whatever. This dog's trotting, and I'm getting close to the dog thinking, like, all right, maybe I can kind of just shove him off to the side a little, not like hitting him with the cart or the truck, but just kind of like get him off to the side a little bit, and I'll just every time he goes, maybe all of a sudden that's when I saw it, like out of its hip, there was like a third, there's like another tail. Interesting. So I had the center tail that could straight out just kind of and then it had this little side hustle coming out of its right buttocks. Huh. Must be one of those Amish dogs.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:27

Do you guys drug test your employees? Was that do you drug test your employees at all? Yeah. I really saw.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:36

I gotta say, going back to, you know, you call me the honoree John Jones, and it was the judge too last time.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:43

So after I left that podcast, uh, because voting is the first week of November. Sure. And I don't know why I do this, but anytime that there's an open spot for a ballot, I always write my name. And I this is not a interesting thing. Yeah. And uh I got a letter in the mail two weeks after, and they said, Hey, you've tied with somebody else in your district. You're kidding. For judge, um judge of election. You're gonna go to a pretty much a bingo ball drawing style. So they pick the lowest number whoever wins. There are seven people I I tied with, and I'm like, no way, I'm not gonna win this. And I don't want to win it.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:17

Whoa. And uh there was there was no so everybody wrote themselves.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:21

Yeah, there's seven other idiots like me who wrote my name. That's funny. And I watched it on YouTube Live. You could have gone in person, but obviously, like I don't if anybody went to that, you mustn't have a job. But yeah, anyway, they I'm like the third or fourth person in line to get my number, John. And the first person was like, I think it was like 20. I'm like, okay, all right. And it went up to a hundred. Yeah. And the next person was six. I'm like, they won. Thank God. I don't I don't want this. My lucky number five hits.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:49

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

And I and I won. You're the judge of elections. They sent me a letter, they sent me this nice plaque in the mail with my name. I already put it in my wall in my office. You do. But it said, Do you accept or decline? I declined it. No, because what today, like if something happens with the election, I want nothing to do with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:06

Yeah, you could have rigged it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:08

I know, but there's not enough money.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:09

We could have taken over the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:10

Brent and Palmer PA.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:12

Yeah. The honorable John Jones. Yes. They did a they did a coup out of the Poconos.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:18

They did.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:18

Yeah, so we could totally take over the world from Palmer. I didn't think about that. Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:22

Put Palmer on the map.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:23

Oh, I missed opportunity for corruption.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:25

So that is uh I've been waiting to tell you guys that. That's funny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:29

That's super funny. I'm dying to become the mayor of Tomaqua.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:32

Is that a hard or easy task?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:35

I I didn't even know it was available until we found we got a new mayor last fall. And I was like, wait, we can do that?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:44

How does one become a mayor of, let's say, Tamaqua or any other town?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:48

I I guess you just have to take initiative. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:53

Okay. You're the guy to do it, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:55

I might be. I might have to try it out.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:56

I would vote for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:57

I don't live in Tamaqua, but yeah, I could probably I could probably come up with some votes. Yeah. Even though I don't really talk to anybody in town. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:05

I get it. Does anybody in Tamaqua recognize you? From not from just knowing you and your family, but from social media.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:12

No, that almost never happens. No one in Tamakwa recognizes me.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:16

Well that's probably nice though.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:17

On site.

unknown 1:11:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:19

I got like a lot of operators. But I feel like you know you're doing the con expo, people gotta be running up to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:25

Uh I guess the last one, yeah. I was I was I was talking to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:28

I just watched that one the other day.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:30

The vlog?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:32

Oh yeah. That was a stupid one.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:33

Yeah, the scooter and the cone. That was a really dumb one. Yeah. It was like three o'clock in the morning, and I was uh changing my baby's diaper and I couldn't go out to bed, so I'm like, well, I'll just throw this on.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:44

I'm probably not gonna do the scooter again. I don't need to do the scooter again. This is the first time I've gone to Con Expo not to work.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:50

That's nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:51

And I'm not there the whole time. I was here for nine days last time. Nine or ten days. You're going for like three, right? Yeah. This this will be four. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, leave Saturday afternoon.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:01

Okay. So speaking of Con Expo. Yeah. Um let's look ahead. The future of the construction industry. Sure. Um, what are some of your predictions, Eric? For equipment, for technology, for workforce. I mean, um, unless there's something.

Demolition Cycles And Market Shifts

SPEAKER_03 1:12:18

Yeah, unless there's something that I don't know about, I feel like it's gonna be kind of disappointing. To be honest. So decline. Not necessarily a decline. Well, okay, so I think any change or improvement will be better than the last one because like the deer booth was really cool of the last one. That was the biggest like change, I think. Because that whole area that you guys were in was new. Yeah. Um, and that booth was new. But most because okay, because of 2020 Con Expo, that that one was kind of a fiasco because they had to shut it down. Yep. Yeah. So most of the booths from 23 were the same as 2020.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:05

Gotcha, and it rewashed it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:06

And it was a lot of the same equipment being re-released for some reason. Yeah. Case did a lot of that. Case was like, hey, check out these things we had three years ago that we haven't brought to market yet. I was like, okay, this is odd. But there was a lot of that. Uh cat did the same thing. Um, so unless there's like some game-changing equipment that I am not privy to, I don't know. I feel like it's just gonna be the same as 23. I a lot of technology.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:35

I think the and no fault to you, but you're so caught up with trends and news with equipment. Sure. You know, and we chatted about this through text, but like, you know, deers not I don't even want to say inveiling because the public knows about the Gen C excavators.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:48

Yes, and they've been talking about them for two years now almost, it feels I saw I saw the first E210 or E200, whatever it was, whatever the first one was in North America. I saw it in January of 2021 in Salt Lake City. Now, and I think the issue was And that one was still a Chinese one.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:08

Yeah, which Australia uses today. Yes. So, and that's the same design that we're bringing here. Um, obviously hopefully better tech.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:17

Um, but I think it's years like first, like here's to the public. Sure. This is and we're getting them this August. Yeah. We'll have them.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:23

Yeah. And I and I just have to chime in here because our last episode, I am coming in for redemption. Okay. And you know what I'm talking about. I do.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:32

I know where you're going.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:33

The John Deere Excavator is the first.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:36

Will be. Will be.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:38

Will be the first.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:39

Will be. In the future.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:41

Built from plate, made in America.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:44

Yeah. Excavator. And I just watched their uh Kernersville where.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:51

No, that's the wrong one.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:53

No, that's not wrong. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:55

I need my redemption.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:56

You're making my job a lot harder.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:58

There's redemption. Nice. That was a touchy subject that you touched on last time.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:04

I I know. I was I was, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:06

Jay made the claim that uh deer was the only American.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:11

They from uh I mean we came up with the term, it was plate up. Okay. What's a plate up? I know, I asked the same question. It means like built from plate steel. Excavator.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:22

Cat doesn't do that? Cat doesn't I thought they made stuff in Victoria. Victoria. No, well, Victoria, Texas. They make excavators too. Because the uh the I thought the 349s were made in Victoria. The 352s.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:37

But uh don't they produce a lot of their stuff in Japan?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

So there like there's a big mix of stuff. So they have stuff in Japan. We do the same. They have stuff in China.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:47

And then they make some stuff in Victoria, Texas. Jamie, look that up.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:51

Jamie, pull up, pull up that Victoria email we got from corporate. Um now I know Deer is pushing because um That is an interesting claim, and I I think you might be right. 70, I think it was 70 million or billion. I don't want to get my billions mixed up here, but uh this year Deer's putting into that current store location down in North Carolina. Well so and that was the whole part of that BABA, which I'm sure you're hearing a lot now with jobs.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:16

Is build America buy America. Yep. Um and I don't think people understand, like in not, you know, I'm on both sides of this, but it sounds great on paper, yeah, but it's gonna get a whole lot expense more expensive doing this. And it that's gonna trickle down to the consumer.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:31

So here I'll read I'll read some bullet points to you. This is on the John Deere factory. So this is breaking John Deere to build America's first all American excavator factory. So it says 70 million excavator factory in Kernersville, North Carolina, new distribution center in Hebron. I don't know if that's how you say Indiana. 300 plus new American manufacturing jobs, part of a$20 billion 10-year US manufacturing commitment.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:01

That's wild. I can't believe nobody's been making so they're just assembling then. So like Kamatsu makes them in Tennessee, but they must just be assembling them then if that's the case.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:10

Yeah. I think we were doing that for years too. We were touching. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:14

Yeah. Yeah. I was I was up at uh we were just talking about this um, you know, you're talking about the the 2154 road builders, and I was just up not too long ago in uh Langley, uh, which is near Vancouver. Vancouver. A. A. I can do this, so I'm half Canadian. I don't know if you knew that. I did not. Maybe I did. My dad was a Canadian. Yeah, yeah. But um, yeah, I was up there with my own people.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:38

You start blending in.

Tech That Pays: Drones, GPS, And Models

SPEAKER_04 1:17:39

I started blending in. I wasn't I thought like you know, but um but yeah, that that's mostly an assembly. Like the stuff comes there, yeah, they put everything together, and it's a fantastic factory. Yeah, it's it's a neat tour. So if you guys ever want to go up there and see that, it's something to see. The guy that uh walks you around, his name is Jarvis, and he knows everything. It's like Iron Man. Wow. It was awesome. It's pretty cool. Interesting, pretty cool uh experience. But um but yeah, I think that's an interesting yeah, that's pretty neat.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:09

Yeah, it's the shorter supply chains, faster parts availability, and equipment built closer to where it operates.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:15

There you go. That's pretty neat. I have claimed redemption. That's good. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:19

And they announced it along with President Trump.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:21

Oh, yeah. Jarvis was actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:23

Which I don't know how I missed that. Yeah, I think I saw an article on LinkedIn and then I forwarded it to you. I was like, ooh, all right. Maybe you were right. You were well, you said currently, so technically you were wrong. That's a technicality. I'll take the technicality. Technically you were, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:37

It was yeah, we had to claim redemption. We got it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:39

Once this factory's up and running, then that's because Jay texts Trump.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:42

Trump was like, hey, I mean the first one, I'm gonna let you know, you can air it out on the iron cast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:48

Yeah, you can you can unveil that. Yeah, there you go. Eric, what are your predictions for equipment technology out there in the workforce?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:56

What what do you see coming down the line? I think the attachment world is gonna get more diverse. I kind of I feel like every day I see a new like crazy attachment or something. Yeah. I don't know how much better we can move dirt than we do now.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:09

You think we're plateauing?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:10

I think we are. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like So you think automation is that next Okay, so look at it this way. From the inception of what we know as the modern excavator, when was the last time it really changed? Other than so, if you if you break it down to the simplicity of like engine pump tracks, curved boom, stick bucket, cab, yeah, rotating house. How long has that concept been on market without a serious change in design, other than modern modernization of the platform?

SPEAKER_04 1:19:48

I was gonna say the compact line, it the compact line was probably the biggest crazy. You got all kinds of side booms and swingers and all that stuff, and and obviously putting them on tires instead of tracks. Um, you know, there there's innovations, you know, moving the tracks out for the big machines, narrowing them up.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:07

Yeah, yeah. But realistically, like the the concept of the bucket going down in the dirt and pulling the material towards the excavator.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:14

So you you're I don't know if that's changed in the last 60 years. So you're saying like could there be another way?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:21

There could be. So what's the fastest way to move material from point A to point B? What do you think it is? Because there's there's two right answers. Both of them depend on the situation. Truck? Scraper.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:33

Scraper.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:34

Scraper's one of them. Yep, I would say scraper. What do you think the fastest way to move material is?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:40

From point A to On a standard job.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:43

No, just in general.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:44

Just in general?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:45

Excavator, all truck.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:47

Continuous miner. Oh. Surface miner. So the more the more pieces you take out of the puzzle, the faster the the dirt moves. The less you touch it, the faster the dirt moves. The problem is the less you want to or the the the more you try to take pieces out of the puzzle, the more expensive that one piece of the puzzle gets, and the bigger that piece of the puzzle gets. So that's why like continuous miners are very expensive because they're like there's a lot of moving parts. Yes. Yeah. So you've got there's two versions of like the continuous miner idea. You've got the rotating bucket wheel machine, which you see a lot of overseas. We don't really have many anymore. There's one that I know of in North America. It's the size of maybe like a 390. It's in South Carolina.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:31

Has its own conveyor network around the mine. It just goes back and forth all day. Really cool machine. It's actually probably closer to the size of like a PC 2000 now that I'm thinking about it. It's a pretty big machine.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:42

Um, but it's the only one I know of in North America. Um, or you have a surface miner, which is like a wort gen machine where it's kind of like a milling machine, but for loading trucks.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:55

Yep. That's also a pretty good way. But scraper is also like probably the fastest way I've seen dirt move. Let me change that. The fastest way I have ever to date seen the topography change before my very eyes, other than exploding the material with dynamite and blasting, was with a fleet of 631 Gs being pushed by D10s. Like single engine scrapers getting pushed by a big dozer. Over the course of like an hour, you can literally see the earth change in front of you.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:30

Yeah. So and how many pans are you running now?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:33

Um, almost none. So we've got we have quad rubber track quad tracks with um pole scrapers, and they only get used for topsoil removal. Yeah. Yes. Right. We used to have um dual engine push pulls, and then they got rid of those because it's just even in the Lehigh Valley, it's it's a tough machine to keep busy effectively, and it's expensive.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:56

And that was one of the interesting things I saw coming down from, you know, I grew up in Scran. Yep. Rocky soil. Yep. And then down to Lehigh, how that changed. Oh, yeah. I'd never seen a pan in my life.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:06

Yeah.

Operator Adoption And Troubleshooting

SPEAKER_02 1:23:06

And then you come down 30 miles south, and you know, people are running pans.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:10

And the cost per yard is about the same, too, which is nuts. Like, really? Yeah. Okay. The markets aren't drastically different. Like, I mean, down here it's a little, it's a little cheaper, but like up north it's still kind of cheap. They do things really cheap up there. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:23

So what what do you hope to see? Now you are here at the Ironcast studio, which is in our Lebanon location. You're at a John Deere dealer. So you're you're talking to the dealer. Um, what do you hope to see from equipment manufacturers in the next decade?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:40

I don't know. Maybe like more emphasis more emphasis on like specialized equipment. Um, I think John Deere does a pretty good job of that. John Deere, I think, is like probably the most well-rounded brand. Like you can't um they're not paying me to say this, by the way. We have to say, where's the checkbook? We have we have one John Deere machine and we bought it in 2006. Come on, John. It's a 544J. We're working on it. It's our yard machine. It's actually a non-billable asset right now. Yeah, that's the best one. And it's a J, man. That thing's a beast. Yeah, that thing's a tank. John Deere, I think, now is the most well-rended brand. I don't think there's another brand that you can buy everything from, other than the other one. From the fruity to the tooty. Yes. Especially with like the whole acquisition of Origin. Now that I'm now thinking about it, with that brand, I don't think the other manufacturer can sell a surface miner.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:46

No. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:47

But you guys can't sell a drag line. They can sell a drag line if they wanted to. That's fair. Yeah, we'll allow that. So I I think, you know, for the common man, for the for the the average earth-moving company, like you can buy about everything from John Deere. So I think that's critical.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:03

And I think that's why Dearbot working. For sure. 100%. They want to be the one-stop shop. And you know, we have stuff that they don't have and they have stuff we don't have.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:11

I think the forestry line is more diverse. Yeah. You guys still do all your forestry stuff in-house. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:17

And now we're stepping into the world of uh material handling.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:20

Material handling is is big. Yeah. You guys don't do a ton with demo, but I do still see a ton of deer machines on demo sites. Oh yeah. Quite a number of yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:29

And we're getting a lot of help from Brandt on that too. So we're again all that stuff's coming from Canada.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:34

Sure. Yeah.

unknown 1:25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:36

It's not just on the equipment either. Um, what I've noticed, I I came into the industry late um uh 2013 is when I popped in here, came from the Power Sports into the construction industry. And I won't and I haven't looked back. It's it's almost like when I I got a neck brace years back. Years ago. I have got a neck brace and I haven't looked back since. Oh, that was a joke. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that's the last one. Yeah, yeah. They're gone. They're gone.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:09

No, it's funny. It's like you can't you catch you off guard. It's like, oh yeah, I like to keep you on your toe.

Keeping Up With Culture And Deepfakes

SPEAKER_04 1:26:14

Yeah. But um, but what I what I noticed, um, not even just on the equipment end, it's it's a big repertoire and it's continually re you know growing and growing. Um new models uh coming out, different size machines that we didn't have before. I remember when the 1050, you know, we had the 1050, but it it was a LeBaire, John Deere kind of thing. Uh and and it did its purpose, but you know, now we got a 1050, like we got a front runner, yeah. Um, you know, re reshaping the 850, a lot of a lot of changes that I've seen. Um, but the thing that I noticed too is like Deere is huge on like here is a whole portfolio in the aftermarket world. When I say aftermarket, I mean like here are some vendor direct quality, like this has the stamp, you know, stamp of John Deere approval. Sure. Like this is our this is our paint, it's made by so and so, and it works great. Yeah, this is you know, it's it's even on the support end, um they've got their brand, yeah, you know, utilizing AI, which is huge, a huge empire. Sure. Um for the aftermarket world, like a one-stop shop. Yeah, sorry, I can vamp on that stuff all day. But um let's let's kind of I I Eric, I could talk to you for like a solid day. Just I talk to myself a lot too. Yeah, I yeah, you drive around a lot too. Yeah, so you get it. Yeah, that's cool. Do you consider yourself an influencer?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:49

I used to not. Um I probably am now. Well, define an influencer. Do you like that term? No, it's disgusting. Okay. I'm sorry, it makes me absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:00

That's why well that's why I wanted to bring it up. Like 'cause to me, I think everybody that's in this in this studio right now is in is influencing the construction industry.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:09

And that's what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:11

Yeah. Influence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:13

And I have a problem. When I hear somebody self-proclaim them to be an influencer, I immediately like don't like them. Yes. I don't know if you feel the same way, but 100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:22

I I have a thing that I'm going to. This will probably air after when are you going to air this?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:26

Like probably within the week.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:28

Yeah. Oh, I can't talk about it then. I'll talk about it a little bit. But I'm going to this thing where I'm going to a coal mine. Um it's a whole that's a whole deal. There's gonna be like a congressman there and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:37

But um just keep it, keep it broad. It's all good.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:40

That's uh um they put me on the there were we were going through like the the call, the the like the the pre um yeah, there's a term for it. We were going through the call and they they had the list of all the people that were gonna be in attendance. And it was all these people in like suit and ties, and I was like this only idiot, like with a hard hat on and the in my head shot. And they put me as they didn't put my job title, they didn't put like my company, they just put heavy equipment influencer, and I stopped the whole production. I was like, wait, gotta change this document. Please don't call me an influencer, and they're like, Oh, well that's what you are. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Just put like janitor or something, anything but what you've done, I would really appreciate. What's the difference between an influencer and just someone who has a I would call myself more of an enthusiast.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:30

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:30

Nice. Now we joke because are you familiar with railroad culture at all? Yeah. You ever hear about a foamer? I haven't heard of that. Okay, so a foamer, a foamer is a railroad enthusiast who has never like worked in rail or the industry, and they they're like taking photos and videos of trains as they drive by, as they roll by. I've seen these. So they they're called foamers, and they're foaming at the mouth when they see a train go by. That's how they go. Okay. So I'm more of a foamer. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:06

For that you're foaming at the mouth for heavy equipment.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:09

For heavy equipment. Yes. Should they at this construction foamer? Yeah. Yes. There you go. Dirt foamer, I think you should be called. That's what they should put on your bag. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:18

A lot of guys, a lot of guys hate it because it's almost like a derogatory term, but I think it's funny. Is that what you want in your tombstone? Yeah.

unknown 1:30:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:26

He was a great man.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:27

My tombstone. I'm determined my tombstone is going to be a counterweight. I had the idea the other day because we're taking our 374 apart. And it was just sitting on the ground. And uh how my brain works is so I was like, this is all in 30 seconds. So I at first I thought, wow, that could be like a house. And I was like, oh, what if it fell on me? I would die. Oh, it could be my tombstone. You just bury me where it wherever it lands. So yeah. I don't know like it. I don't know what the size max is for a headstone at the graveyard, but I'll have to probably buy like four or five plots to get the right size. You will.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:05

Well, I think there's already a problem with your theory on this because you're not gonna die because you're tearing down your hospital.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:10

That's true. Also, if I do die, if that theory doesn't pan out, yeah, no one's ever gonna do that. I could leave I could leave money to do it, and I could leave a will. I'd have to go and do it right now ahead of time for it to actually because no one's ever gonna do that. Now are you gonna option it? My daddy's not gonna know.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:27

Are you gonna option for like the counterweight takeoff tool? Maybe. Okay. Or straight bolt on.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:33

Um I don't know, yeah. It depends what size I end up with.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:35

Okay. Yeah, really.

Made-In-America Excavators And Supply Chains

SPEAKER_03 1:31:36

That's how crazy you want to get with it. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So we'll see. Uh you asked how heavy equipment um influences how people how media influences heavy equipment.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:45

Yeah, the role of these create like you're a creator, you're you're influencing um you're a foamer. Uh we'll just we're gonna call it what it is. You're a foamer. How is that influencing and shaping the industry?

SPEAKER_03 1:31:56

For better or worse. Um, you run into a lot of people who are like, oh yeah, I don't say a lot of people. I've probably run into maybe five or six people who have like gotten into the construction industry because of like directly because of what I have posted. That's very rare. Okay. For me to encounter. It happens, but for me to encounter them at least, that's rare. Like, I've never I haven't had a conversation like that in a while. Yeah, but I do get a lot of like, oh, it's so stupid, like it's just moving dirt and like guys like that. So I encounter a lot of that. Um, but I think it it it does have a positive impact on the industry because realistically, how many other industries do you know of aside from maybe like cooking or cars or flight where you can document something every day and make content out of it. And it's new, and it's new, yeah, and it's new, and it's something that most people don't really get to see. Yeah, like construction media is its own thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:02

Thinking like emergency room, that would be pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:05

I don't want to see that. No, I don't think you can. I've been there enough. I I don't need to see that exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:10

Um there's enough soap operas about that too.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:12

Yeah, yeah, there's really like it is there's a lot of players in the media game now. Yeah. I feel like there's a new one every day. It's still a relatively untapped industry as far as entertainment value goes. Gold Rush is like our biggest thing, and that's terrible. That's why I want to make a book. So you said about the book before, I'm dead serious about the book. I don't have time to make a book. But this goes back to something we talked about before too, with like getting involved in schools. I have had this theory for a few years, um, and this is why like I I take it so seriously with like my own kid now. It's like I even she's a girl, girls aren't supposed to like construction, but like I try to put that in front of her as much as possible, even as a two-year-old, because I am under the impression, just because of my own background and my experience with others in life, starting to go to schools. If you're if you if your intention is to garnish um support for the industry and uh interest in the industry, if you're trying to do that at the high school, middle school level, it's too late. Yeah, you've missed the boat. You missed it. You should be there uh when they're taking their first steps and and reading books as a toddler. Like that is when the grain of construction is instilled into the young mind. Yeah, you you need to indoctrinate them into construction, you need to hit them with the propaganda of cons. And I think part of the reason why it doesn't work like construction is like not taken seriously, is because the literature isn't serious.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:01

I hate construction kids' books, they're so bad. Yeah, what about Paw Patrol? Paw Patrol is honestly probably the best one, it's the most realistic, which is unfortunate because they're dogs that save the town every day. And they have plot holes in all their episodes. Exactly. Paw Patrol plot holes.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:19

Um yeah, so and it's interesting too that you say that. Um, you know, I grew up where they pushed college so much going through school. Yeah, and I think we're starting to see a turn on that, which is great, you know, for the trades. Um, but I I find it interesting that you're saying that it's gonna get overpopulated. Yeah. Um, which I never thought about, but it's probably is true.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:41

Yep. Yeah, especially as technology keeps moving forward and and people continue to generate an interest for a more a more impactful career.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:53

Like I run into it every day where like people just don't they want it, they don't want to work at a a job of nothingness.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:00

They want something tangible, they want something that they can, you know, build. And they can go do that without going into debt, without having to go through schooling. Like you can do it right now. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:13

And would you say that you're you know, everybody the old saying was like work's not supposed to be fun. I think you found what you find fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:22

Yeah. I mean, every job has its days, it's a job. Like it's gonna there's gonna be bad days, but you know, I do enjoy what I do. Yeah. Like I get to do like it. Yeah, I get to do a different thing every day.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:33

Yeah. Yeah. Well you you kind of made your own.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:35

And even yes, and my job is even very different than any other job ever. But um you know, that's not to say that if I had to pick one part of my job to do every day, I could do that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Nice. Like I could I could definitely stick with, you know, one thing, whether it's running equipment, training people, the marketing side of things, um, estimating. Like I like all those things enough that the reason I do them is if I had to stick with one thing, I could probably do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:02

And feel fulfilled. The problem is I can't stick with one thing because my mind goes in so many different directions. And at the end of the day, like, my whole thing is even though I don't own the company, I treat the company as if it's my own. And I'm trying to, you know, anything that I do, I'm trying to build the whole idea of what I'm doing up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:22

Right.

Are We Plateauing In Moving Dirt

SPEAKER_03 1:37:23

Um, so like that's why I've I've attached myself so heavily to like the clearing and demolition side of our company because it's got so much untapped potential. And like, that's something that's a market that I feel like we can tackle really well with our fleet and our skill set and all that stuff. So like I think about it constantly all day long. Like, I'm always thinking about a faster way to do things, or like, you know, how can we go after this customer? Like, how can I get in front of these people? How can we do things better, faster than the next guy? It's awesome. In every aspect of what we do. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:57

All right, Eric, here it is. Culminate everything. Let's let's boil this all down. Um, you have an audience in front of you here. You know, you're influencing non-construction in we all are, but you are a foamer. He's foaming. He's foaming. Yeah, you are foaming and foaming.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:16

We'll we'll leave with with this. So the the the other day, I I said to myself, I wish I would have spent more time in some certain moments. Okay. There's parts of my life that I feel like I was rushing through. So when I was an operator, for example, I've been in an operator spot at a lot of really unique places and a lot of really unique situations working for different companies, doing crazy stuff. And I've always been in those situations in a mindset of like, okay, I just want to go home. I want to go do the next thing, I want to be a foreman, I want to, you know, do a different task. And I wish I would have spent more time in those moments just being there because there's nothing I can do to make that go faster or get to the next thing faster.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:07

And had I spent more time actually like being in that moment and learning what was going on around me and like sponging some of that stuff in, I just wish I had more of that information available to me for what I'm doing now. Like it was always something I was like, I'm never gonna need to do this, I'm never gonna have to learn this. You're already there. Just absorb it. The same thing, like you can apply that to anything in your life. Oh, yeah. Like I I've been trying to get off my phone more. I've got too much screen time. Yeah, I'm just trying to be more in moments because time is not available for sale. We're spending it every day. So I'm trying to just be there in those moments of time sponging. So for whoever needs to hear that, do that more today.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:51

I think that's that's a valuable lesson. Time is the one thing you can never get back.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:57

Yeah. And if you're there spending the time, you've already bought the ticket for the movie, might as well watch the whole thing. Don't walk out of the theater.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:04

So, how do you and would you say that's what you're kind of doing with your content?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:09

You're capturing the moment. More or less. Yeah, so I've gotten a lot better at just like taking photos of things. So, okay, a lot of the things I wish I could see more of of my past via photo, I don't have access to because I always used to think that there's this time period from like when I was working for my like with my family company to when I started to doing it professionally. I always thought that like I had to take photos and videos with a professional camera. I never really use my phone camera a lot. So like most of the photos I have from like that time era are minimal. And now I I that that's the stuff I will overshoot. Like stuff I want to remember or think about.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:49

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:50

Good example is that that road builder we're talking about. Yeah. So like we were like looking at that um that other brand of road builder, and I was trying to explain it because that's something I run into a lot too, where like I've got too much knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:07

And I spend a lot of time catching people up to where I am on my thought process. Yeah. So the road builder is a great example of that. So like, need to get a road builder, need to get a roadabet grapple, need to get something set up for a certain task. I was trying to explain to a coworker of mine, like, hey, we need this thing. And it's like, well, that's just a regular excavator. Like, it's not though, it's a different thing altogether.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:27

And I realized I was like, I can just show you this because I've seen six of them, and I can remember in exactly my head where I've seen them, and I can go back to every photo I built on the way here. I went through my photos and I made a specific album of a specific machine with a specific grapple based on photos I've taken from my own library just on my phone. And I was able to present that to you know the person I was trying to explain it to, and they're like, Oh, yeah, no, we need that. Like, yeah, I know. Well, I've seen this so many times, and I know how it works. So it's like being able to capture media, like you've said, like it's a tool. It's a lie, like it's a library, it's a knowledge library. It might be like a moments library to some people, but like it's also for me, it's like how I'm capturing what I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:13

Well, pictures in words. Yes. You can put so much in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:17

In this case, a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Scrapers, Miners, And Speed To Move Earth

SPEAKER_04 1:42:19

That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:22

So great ending thought. Eric, where can listeners find you? At home.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:26

At work, in my car. Planet Earth. Yes. Um, Instagram. You're on all the things. Yeah. There's some imposters out there, so make sure you find the right one. Yeah. Um, but it's usually just my name. Yeah. And your picture with the red hard hat. Yep. No, I don't have a red one yet. Uh I gotta I still have my old brown one.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:50

Is it brown?

SPEAKER_03 1:42:51

Yeah, they want me to have a white one. I was like, I don't really want a white one. I don't want a red one either. I like my brown one. Keep the brown. Yeah. I have a black one now that um this company sent to me. This was like I said I wasn't an influencer, but I think I am now because that was the first like deal I've taken was taking a free hard hat from this company. And I haven't really promoted it. And I told him straight up, I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna like this, and if I don't like it, I'm not gonna promote it. And I didn't really like it, so I haven't been promoting it. Yeah. So I might send it back. Well, we we got you a mug. You give me a mug so that I am an influencer.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:23

And a hard hat sticker.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:25

And a sticker. You're gonna get a sticker. I've sold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:29

Maybe you can put it on that one that they sent you. Perfect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:32

I don't have any stickers in there yet. Yeah. So yeah. Really, what the reason we're giving that because and and what I want to close here with is I just want to say thank you for all that you do. Um obviously for your time. Sure. You know, time at times that thing we don't get back. Absolutely. And I've I think we've all sat here today, and and if you're out there listening, um, we we got to just sit in the moment here with you, pick your brain, sure, hear your thoughts, and uh and uh just go go kind of down the the road of what makes Eric Jumper who he is. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:04

Um Yeah, I've done one of these in a while, so it's nice to again it's it's tracking moments, so yeah, be able to put my thoughts out there and there's so much more too I want to talk about.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:13

So hey, maybe down the road here and yeah, absolutely. You know, we'll get you back on here or if I need a little help with co-hosting or something. Uh 100%. We'd love to get your insight again and and just keep unpacking that awesome brain of yours and all the things. So thanks again for being on the Ironcast. Yeah, no problem. And with that, you want to do it?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:33

Hit the button.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:34

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:34

What Ironcast is out. Ironcast is out. I wasn't that how do you want how do you want it?

SPEAKER_03 1:44:42

Do you want it again? Let's Eric do it. Eric, you got and with that, Ironcast is out.