7: Jake Longenbach - Western Lehigh and FULL Live Edge™

After a short break to concentrate on the RECORD-SETTING start to the snow plow sales season, Bob and Nick are back with new episodes! Today, Bob and Nick sit down with Jacob Longenbach of Western Lehigh Services in Allentown, PA.

As the first full adopter of Full Live Edge™ (Live Edge on plow wings), Jake is at the forefront of plowing technology in both his services company and Metal Pless dealership. Hear how Jake got his start in snow plowing, how Metal Pless changed his business, and how Full Live Edge then transformed the way he and his operators approach their work.

This fun conversation has it all, from Back Hoes to .... LIVE EDGE ™2.0?

Come see Metal Pless at upcoming trade shows in North America, including CONEXPO 2026 in Las Vegas, NV and remember - Metal Pless™ is always copied, never duplicated!

FROM THIS EPISODE:

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See Jake demonstrate the Stucchi Connector system on a Metal Pless Plow:

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"Everything happens at SIMA!" Learn about the 2026 Snow and Ice Symposium in Cincinnati, OH:

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Contact Metal Pless directly:

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Transcript

Nick Arndt (00:13)
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Born to be a Snowfighter, the Metal Plus podcast, the Metal Plus Family podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Nick Arndt of Metal Plus and along with me today is my co-host, Bob Green. Bob, say hi.

Bob Green (00:28)
Hello everybody.

Nick Arndt (00:30)
Today we have a very important guest in the Metal Plus world. We have Mr. Jake Longenbach of Western Lehigh Services out of Allentown, PA, the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. And we're gonna sit down with Jake, get to know Jake, and hear Jake's story of his ⁓ landscaping company, his Metal Plus sales company, and how he's kinda pushing the industry in a new direction, utilizing the Metal Plus full live edge.

So Jake, welcome and thank you for coming on the podcast today.

Jacob Longenbach (01:03)
Hey, good morning, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for having me.

Nick Arndt (01:07)
All right, Jake, start off Western Lehigh Services in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. Tell us about that area and tell us about your company.

Jacob Longenbach (01:18)
So Western Lehigh was started back in 1990. It's a family-owned business. My father started the business in 90.

was a residential design build landscape company, did a little bit of snow removal in the winter, pretty much just subbed our couple machines out that we had to one of his buddies that did ⁓ full snow removal up until 2015 when ⁓ I came back and started working full time in the business after college. And that's when we started doing the snow removal at a full scale level, the salting, the sidewalks and plowing, not just subbing our machines out and plowing, you know, a couple

hours

a year whenever we got the snow. Unfortunately we don't live in a great snow market. We only get you know 32 to 34 inches of snow a year. Some years are good, some years are not so good. know a memorable snow year that we had was six inches. It was a rough winter, it was a couple winters ago so hopefully this upcoming winter we can make up for that. It's been a couple years now since we've had a good snow season. ⁓

But we're lucky in the area that we live in, have a ton of industrial population is high. So the level of service is very demanding on what our customers and our clientele expect and what we give them. So we get a lot of services out of smaller storms and it allows us to keep going in the winter time and keep everybody busy. So from 2015, when we started doing full service, we ran rubber edge boxes, we were just getting into it.

It took a lot of, you know, a of equipment and whatnot to keep, keep growing and building. And every year we were fighting it and fighting it and fighting it. And it was just a very frustrating operation because it took a lot more time. took a lot more energy. It took a lot more salt to fight the hard pack that we were creating with our rubber edges. And we just couldn't keep up with storms on some of our distribution centers because the trucks were making hard packed as we were trying to clear it and plow it off. um, circle fast forward to 2019 at Simo.

we were sort of looking to revamp our pusher and plow operation and what we use in our equipment. And that's where we started talking and met Bob at Simon 2019 and started talking about our next evolution in our snow business and what we were gonna do from there. And we were hung up on the price. The price of the plow was a big thing for us. It was only...

driven by that because of our snow market that we were in. We didn't have any seasonal accounts. ⁓ We just come off of some not so good seasons, but we knew we had to do something. ⁓ luckily Bob had a customer of his that was in New Mexico, New York, and he had bought in a Max Pro the year prior and it ended up being a little too big for the sites that he was plowing. So.

Talked us into picking that up and you know the rest has been history from there. ⁓ We actually.

Bob Green (04:22)
Yeah,

that was, I think, ⁓ a marriage made in heaven between you and the guy's name is, I still remember it's Justin Harrington. ⁓ because we, he, his issue was his municipality isn't flat. There's nothing flat. can't drive, you know.

Jacob Longenbach (04:28)
Justin, yep.

Bob Green (04:40)
50 yards without having an elevation change. And he was scratching a lot. You know, 1022, brand new cat loader, brand he went all in with his purchase. And he kept everything like it was brand new. I mean, you gotta use blade, but it was a new condition. And I had been down to help him with some operator techniques and he just, as hard as he tried, because he was...

Jacob Longenbach (04:52)
Yup.

Bob Green (05:09)
He had banks in his parking lots, he slopes going in and out. He was gouging. So he went into a Max Pro rubber edge, like one of our very first full rubber live edge Max Pros. And so he bought that going into the winter of 2020 and he said, can you help me sell this? There's a 1022, right? Did you buy it?

Jacob Longenbach (05:29)
Yep, it's 1022, correct.

Bob Green (05:31)
How

can I, can you help me? And so we put the word out and at Saima, you walked up, I think the first person you talked to was Linda and Linda brought you over to me because I had this used plow for sale and that's how you got into your first more price, more price friendly at the time, Max Pro.

Jacob Longenbach (05:37)
correct.

Yep.

Nick Arndt (05:47)
Everything happens. Well, everything

happens at Simon. This comes up almost every single episode is that people people come to Simon Cincinnati 2026. If you haven't gone, please come. Who knows what will happen? You know, it could be a turning point for your for your business. So.

Bob Green (05:51)
Yeah, through all the relationships are made, all the contacts, yeah.

Jacob Longenbach (05:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's...

Bob Green (06:03)
Absolutely.

Jacob Longenbach (06:04)
Yeah,

it's a great place. yeah, so we buy the plow from Justin, a buddy of ours, a buddy of mine. We run up there real quick on a Sunday. We're pulling into New Mexico. And I'm like, how did a guy in this area go and purchase a metal plus and have the volume that you can afford to buy the plow? Because I don't know, the population might be like five people there. It's not very high. it's nice if you want to get away from people.

Bob Green (06:05)
Yeah.

You

it's a it's a cute little town for sure i mean i was leaving i was leaving that town and and there is

there's people on on like amish people outside of town like horse and buggy stuff going on i'm like my god it's this guy and he did everything there and he was so equipped and he'd be like bob i'm try to do this this church with this max from it why it's too big for the church i mean but he was he was equipped

Jacob Longenbach (06:43)
Yup.

Bob Green (06:55)
to the gills in snow removal and everything was immaculate. So yeah, it was a good way to get Western Lehigh into their first max bro for sure.

Jacob Longenbach (06:56)
Yep.

Yeah, so we bought the plow, brought it home. ⁓ My father, still very heavily involved in the business. So that year we had ⁓ finally purchased him a new CAT 926 as well with this plow. So it was going to be like our staple piece and he was going to run it. another almost snowless winter, we only plowed twice that year. ⁓ So the first time we were out with the machine, ⁓ I obviously had to go see how this plow was going to work. And it didn't even take 45 minutes to know that we

we're onto something and we were heading in a different direction with our plowing operation because we knew right off the bat it was going to cut machines out of our fleet and it was going to cut the need for extra labor and time and salt reduction was going to be huge. So fast forward to next year, we picked up more, we became a dealer, we went full in on the whole Metal Plus plow and the Metal Plus family and the rest is history from there. Now, you know,

Now we're running almost 50 plows in our fleet and it's a great thing. It's been huge for our business, it's been huge for our productivity, our efficiency, salt reduction and our salt consumption is severely down. ⁓ We were lucky enough four years ago now, Bob, to run the first full live edge on the United States side. ⁓ And that was another thing. Once we started that, was...

We knew within half hour, 45 minutes of running that plow that we were going in the next direction and on to the next tier of metal plus and how much better the scrape was out of the full live edge and the ease of operation and just how that whole plow has so much more flex in the wings and you don't get ⁓ the plows not as rigid, the wings not as rigid, so they float and they contour so much better and it's just an amazing product, an amazing plow. And since

2021-22 we've we switched our whole fleet over to full live edge ⁓ the only standard wing plows that we have anymore are 813s on our skid steers other than that everything else is full live edge our 1016s are full live edge our backhoes are running full live edge our wheel loaders are all full live edge it's it's been a great great product

Nick Arndt (09:20)
Yep, so full live edge and we had our previous guest Mike Savage of Midwest Machinery is it's another sort of similar situation where you use the first full live edge which were max pros I think 1022s or 1020s I'm not sure what they were then then you're so sold on the full live edge that You're the sales rep that calls on you Steve Sopanek the next season just starts putting in orders for full live edge blades for sizes that Don't really exist yet

Bob Green (09:47)
don't exist.

Jacob Longenbach (09:48)
Yeah, Van Wings,

Nick Arndt (09:49)
So all of sudden, I'm

Jacob Longenbach (09:49)
Van Wings and 1016s.

Nick Arndt (09:52)
looking through the orders and I'm going, that doesn't exist, that doesn't exist, that doesn't exist. I guess we're making it. But yeah, you've pushed into new territory, not just with the Max Pros, which there are now handfuls of them out there from Vancouver all the way to the East Coast, but you've got full live edge 1036 16s. I think you have 1042 18s also.

Jacob Longenbach (09:58)
You

1042

18s, yep, we're running 1042 18s on like a cat 440 backhoe and then, you know, some smaller wheel loaders. ⁓ Yeah, they're just great. We just love them.

Bob Green (10:26)
So, we had a conversation early in your Metal Plus life. ⁓ I think it was a Van Wing that you were having problems with the eight foot wing scratching here and there. And then you transitioned to an eight foot full live edge wing. Tell me what you said after using the Van Wing with the full live edge.

Jacob Longenbach (10:50)
the ease of operating that van wing with the full live edge on the wings was just night and day difference. There's so much more flex and float in the wings that you don't have the contouring issue and trying to make sure that the plow is set perfectly down on the ground to run so you don't get the scraping or the gouging. ⁓

We were doing some bigger distribution centers where we would come out of the docks and the parking lot had an incline coming out of the dock. So as you're back dragging out of the docks, if you have your wings folded back to fit into between the trailers or whatever, the wings are hitting the increase in the parking lot where the parking lot's going up and the plow is still down. So it doesn't have the forgiveness in the wing for it to come up. So you're digging in in your wing. And once we went to that full live edge, have that, the springs in the wing have

that float and that ability to come up so it took care of those issues that we were having. And when you're running you know 40 to 50 part-time seasonal operators you need to be able to give them the tools to be successful and staying in a standard standard live edge with not full live edge on the wings it was just I felt like it was setting them up for failure from the beginning and now there's a there's a huge cost

at a huge add on the cost to having the full live edge on the wings, but I felt that it outweighed and was more beneficial to have it than have the standard wing. ⁓ Not trying to talk down on the standard wing and the standard live edge, it's still a great product and it's still a great plow and I think it has its places and its applications. Just for some of the lots that we were plowing with the contours on what the lots were and how they laid, just the full live edge works a lot better for us.

Nick Arndt (12:37)
So Jake, we don't get to see each other a ton because I'm in the Midwest and you're on the East Coast, but will we see each other? I will. Trust me, I'm busy. I'm busy where we're at. ⁓ Steve. Sorry, Steve.

Jacob Longenbach (12:41)
Well that's because you never come visit.

Bob Green (12:43)
You

Jacob Longenbach (12:46)
It's a tight race with Steve Sopaniak. You if you came to visit me, you might beat him out.

Bob Green (12:49)
Who's?

Jacob Longenbach (12:54)
We

love them, we love them.

Nick Arndt (12:57)
Anyways, my point is when we were chatting at one of the trade shows at Saima, you had said something to me about the full live edge that I never thought about and you're getting to that point with mentioning your operators, which is when you set down a Max Pro at the very beginning of the season and the concrete is dry, it is critical that you run the moldboard 90 degrees flat. There's not a huge learning curve, but there is some learning curve because if you're pitched forward,

Like he's saying on the gouging and the flexing of the full live edge wings, you can gouge with the feet of the abrasion shoe if you're pitched forward or backward. And you said to me, that's the problem when the operators get on site for the first time, especially when the concrete's dry. The full live edge takes that away. So it's a training thing where you could be a little off on the angle of the mold board, but the forgiveness of the floating edges on the wings doesn't care, right? So the operator

Jacob Longenbach (13:56)
Yeah.

Nick Arndt (13:56)
can be incorrect, but he's not damaging the property.

Jacob Longenbach (14:01)
Yeah, what we found is the full live edge and how the wings and the plow has so much more forgiveness. The ease of operation, there's so much more room for, there's a much larger variance there on how the plow is set down on the ground. Now, obviously you wanna still run the plow to 90 degrees the best that you can, ⁓ but you don't have to be as, the plow has a lot more forgiveness in it and you don't have to pick the plow up, set it down.

Adjust your in and out and adjust your slip hitch and then proceed to start plowing. I can come up to a curve full 20 foot wings out, back drag, pick the plow up, turn around, wing in on both wings, set it down and go and adjust the plow as I'm starting to drive because I have that forgiveness in it. Where you don't have as much of that in the standard, ⁓ it just allows that operator to get so much more familiar with the plow at such a faster rate.

because they don't have the ⁓ anxiety that they're not going to be operating it properly. And you'll know when you're running them whether you're running it properly or not listening to the chatter of the springs and the live edge and all that stuff.

Nick Arndt (15:06)
Yeah, and then...

Magical

little chatter that you hear in some of the videos and videos videos So I can't believe we've made it 15 minutes without talking about videos Western Lehigh Their particular metal plus accounts do amazing videos So I'm sure if you're a metal plus fan and you're listening or watching this you've already seen must Western Lehigh's metal plus videos, but you have it a link to it. Shout out to Leslie These are not just really good videos. These are excellent

Bob Green (15:32)
Shout out to Leslie.

Jacob Longenbach (15:34)
Yep, Leslie does a great job for us.

Nick Arndt (15:39)
Videos and they showcase the full live edge a lot, but they just showcase the fleet and and the units you guys run man Just thank you so much for doing those videos because they are they're incredible. So we appreciate that so much.

Jacob Longenbach (15:52)
Yeah, no, of course. Thank you. ⁓

You know, we take a lot of pride in our fleet and the equipment that we run and trying to do the best, you know.

provide the best product for our customers that we can. we're a cat dedicated company. We run pretty much 99 % all cat and our whole fleet is metal plus on our plow side. And it's just been a great combination and it works for us. For me, uptime is everything. Downtime is not a good friend when it's snowing. So our relationships with metal plus and our relationships that we have with Caterpillar and our local Caterpillar dealer has just been top notch and phenomenal.

Bob Green (16:31)
I have a question. Let's go back a little bit because you're one of the rare companies that still runs a backhoe in snow. ⁓ It's more of a, know, I would say it's an old school tool because backhoes are kind of for a landscaper, obsolete in municipalities, it's still in the toolbox. I grew up with the backhoes. ⁓ John and I were just talking about it, John Vanders and I were just talking about it a couple of days ago about the ⁓

Jacob Longenbach (16:38)
Yeah.

Nick Arndt (16:38)
Ooh, backhoes, yes.

Jacob Longenbach (16:45)
obsolete. Yep. Yep.

Bob Green (17:01)
The backhoe was such a great forward pusher. Difficult to turn, we both, we agreed about it. A wing plow on a backhoe works so well. Obviously turning, you gotta lift, gotta use your split brakes a little bit like you would on a tractor, whereas a loader will make the turn, but we both agreed that the backhoe pushes better than a loader pound per pound. But we don't see them anymore, because not many people...

Jacob Longenbach (17:16)
Yep, you gotta know how to drive them.

So.

Bob Green (17:28)
have them in their toolbox anymore but you still go out and buy brand new back hose just for snow?

Jacob Longenbach (17:34)
Yeah, so the backhoe was something that, you know, my first, my plowing days were since, you my father started the company, I've been around it my whole life. ⁓ School would call off and I'd be riding in the backhoe, you know. You know, it was a great thing when the phone rang that we were going plowing. I loved it. It was just, it was in my blood. So backhoe, given the fact that he was a landscaper, it was the most versatile tool before.

Nick Arndt (17:50)
man.

Jacob Longenbach (18:01)
You know, track skid steers and skid steers and mini excavators and whatnot. So everyone had backhoes. ⁓ Yeah, now they're phasing out. They're not as popular tool, but so we were, we were, it was in our blood. had them, we used them. They push great, you know, four wheel drive, two wheel drive. You got the brakes, you can help steer yourself into corners and whatnot. ⁓ Spent a lot of hours in a Ford 555 backhoe with a bucket, just pushing snow and chasing windrows and chasing streamers is like.

countless hours. mean, back in 96 when we got the big blizzard here in PA, I think my dad put like 350 hours on his backhoe that year. was like, it was, yeah, crazy. Fast forward to 2000, 2000, he bought us for skid steer for Christmas when I was 12, I got a cabin, a heater, and we were going plowing. I couldn't reach the pedals, so we zip tied two by fours to the pedals. They were flip pedals and joystick controls. And, you know, I was, I was happy. I was out there making

Nick Arndt (18:53)
Nooo! ⁓ man!

Jacob Longenbach (19:00)
making money and loved it. ⁓ So to see the progression of where we came from to where we're at now, ⁓ it's amazing. A lot of hard work, a lot of dedication, a lot of things have changed. ⁓ we always had backhoes in the company, so of course if it's a tool, it's gonna push snow, we're gonna push snow with it. ⁓ They were great when we had pushers, ⁓ and then we...

bought our first wing plow for them and it elevated that machine to new heights. It actually became sort of efficient with a wing plow on it ⁓ compared to a 12 foot push box on chained on the bucket and the chains are falling off and you turn and the pusher goes one way and the machine goes the other way. And we're like, we bought our first wing plow for the back. It was like, this actually isn't bad. ⁓ And everyone who ran was happy with them. They were great.

Bob Green (19:40)
Yeah, yeah,

Jacob Longenbach (19:52)
Fast forward to COVID, now we're in COVID. Now we can't get loaders, we can't get equipment, we can't get stuff. So I'm not a huge fan on mini loaders like 908s, 906s, that mid range size loader. I think they're overpriced for the efficiency and the productivity that you get out of them compared to a full size loader and a full size plow. So we could pick up backhoes 20 to $30,000 cheaper than a 908 out of our local.

Cat's ⁓ rental fleet with a thousand hours and we're not using them heavy in the summer and they're just as efficient in my opinion as a 908 with a wing plow on them. So we were buying backhoes. ⁓

So we got some backhoes during COVID. Now we're up to four backhoes in our fleet. ⁓ And then we bought two new backhoes just to plow snow because still couldn't get loaders. And I thought that the wheel loaders on a full size were overpriced in like the 2023 year. was just struggling to keep up with production. So we bought two new back, or two new back, or two more backhoes. So yeah, for a fleet of backhoes of five to six, it's a pretty heavy.

Baco Fleet for a snow company, but ⁓ they work. We use them, you know, we use them the rest of the year. They're nice for our commercial landscape crews that they can shuttle trees around on site and they're faster. We can still dig with them. So they're a efficient machine that still gets it done. But once we put a wing plow on them, we were actually were able to get some heavy production out of them.

Nick Arndt (21:28)
This is shocking information. I can hear the gasps from the Midwest United States of a backhoe over a 906 or a 908 or a 244 or a 324. I'm gonna be honest here. I've never sat in a backhoe. I've sold a few plows on the backhoes in Idaho or Washington. No one in Minnesota or Wisconsin or North Dakota or South Dakota pushes with a backhoe. We'll have to make a clip of this.

Jacob Longenbach (21:32)
Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Nick Arndt (21:57)
because of the back-up. People ask me, people ask me and I'm like, I don't know.

Jacob Longenbach (21:59)
there's probably a lot of people that would battle me on that one.

Bob Green (22:02)
Yeah, that...

Nick Arndt (22:02)
I'm like, there's dudes doing it in Pennsylvania and that's about all I can tell people. ⁓

Jacob Longenbach (22:06)
Yeah.

Bob Green (22:06)
I mean, on the municipal

side, I would say most of our backhoe sales, plow-wise, is to municipalities, because they all have one. And the fact that they can use them in the winter, it's a great setup. But I mean, the backhoe with that, the backhoe is a huge counterweight on the back of those things, man. It just gives so much pushing power.

Jacob Longenbach (22:25)
Yeah, it's...

You definitely got to put the right operator in it too because you got the hose sticking out the back so there's an added element of awareness there. I don't want to jinx myself and knock on wood, but we've been pretty fortunate and pretty lucky. We haven't taken out too many ⁓ handicap parking signs and employed corners and light poles with them, so they've been pretty good.

Nick Arndt (22:40)
haha

Bob Green (22:41)
You

One of the funniest, I still remember, was sitting in, during one of those never-ending dumps, you're 30 plus hours in, back in those days, we did have a backhoe that ran full-time on the, he was the one that went around and kept the commercial lots open while the rest of us were back on res. ⁓ And we were in Tim Hortons having a coffee, and his name was Real, comes into the parking lot, he puts his plow down, and it was a JCB 214 with an extended dig boom on it.

It was an older girl and the hydraulics would just slowly release on the backhoe, right? The boom was tied up, but the extended dig kind of slid down. And so the actual bucket's like dragging on the ground and we're all looking at him. Can he feel that? Can he hear the like... my God. I mean, we also had a truck hit an overpass with the dump box up in the air. yeah, all kinds of crazy things

Jacob Longenbach (23:30)
tends to keep down.

He was tired. ⁓

Nick Arndt (23:38)
Yeah, you're worried about life. You're worried about plows scraping. No. man.

Bob Green (23:49)
during snow storms.

Nick Arndt (23:50)
You

run.

Jacob Longenbach (23:51)
if you start pushing ⁓ the amount of hours worked during a snowstorm, starts increasing the likelihood of something is gonna happen, that there's gonna be some repairs after it lightens up and the sun comes out, that's for sure. Just comes with the territory, I guess.

Bob Green (24:04)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Nick Arndt (24:08)
So you run

10 36 16s on the back hose, I believe, right? Yep.

Jacob Longenbach (24:11)
Yep, correct,

Nick Arndt (24:12)
What

the rest of the fleet look like? ⁓ Leslie must have just made a really good video showing the rundown of the entire lineup and it showed from skid steers all the way up to wheel loaders. What models and sizes you're running 8 30 13s on the skid steers, is that correct?

Jacob Longenbach (24:29)
Yep, so we run 83013s on our track machines and our 262s. We have some 250s that we run some standard 83013s on.

And then our backhoes will run the 1016s. We have a 440 backhoe, is a little bit of a bigger frame machine. So we run a 10, 8, or 1042 18 full live edge on that machine. That machine is just a really powerful pushing machine so it can handle that bigger plow. And then most of the like 926 wheel loaders and 930s will run 1048 20s or 22s depending the lot in the size of the

constricted areas that would warrant a smaller wing on the plow. I personally run a 10-20 on my plow and I love the size. It allows me to get into areas that it's hard to believe a wheel loader can get, but with a wing plow and the articulation of the loader, it's amazing where I can go with that plow. And then we have wheel loaders all the way up to 950 size. Our 938s and our 950s are running van wings, whether it's a 10 or a 12 foot moldboard with

8 foot wings, so it would be either a 26 foot plow or a 28 foot plow. All of our loaders for, I would say 95 % of our machines run snow tires. It's amazing what the snow tires can do compared to just regular stock tires. We bought our 950 for a specific location and a specific contract. Came out of the box with standard tires.

those tires didn't even make it 50 hours and we were putting snow tires on because the machine had so much power and could keep pushing but we were losing traction with the tires and as soon as we put the snow tires on the machine became like a ⁓ dozer on wheels. It's amazing what that machine can do with that plow. mean as much snow as you can gather into that box it just keeps pushing and keeps going.

Bob Green (26:23)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Longenbach (26:33)
So we run a bunch of ⁓ them different sizes. ⁓ It just all varies on the machine and where the machine is on site. And it's going to vary on what you're doing with it. Is it wide open? Then you can go with a bigger mold board. ⁓

Bob Green (26:33)
Amazing.

Jacob Longenbach (26:48)
bigger wings, if you're bottlenecked down into some tighter employee parking lot areas and constraints, I'd like the smaller more mole board and the shorter wings to get around. And then are you on one side or you travel into multiple sites? With the 10 foot mole board, it allows us to travel on the roads and get from site to site. The 12 foot mole boards start getting a a little wide on some of our tighter back roads that we got to wheel around on to get from building to building.

Nick Arndt (27:14)
So, sort of to summarize your services

Bob Green (27:15)
And, and, for you.

Nick Arndt (27:18)
I think you're gonna relate a lot to lot of customers out there where you're in a 30 inch or so market, there's high demand accounts, so you're right on the verge of do I go all in, but if I do go all in, I gotta be as efficient as possible, because I can't have extra machines sitting there with payments with inefficient blades. So I like you guys and I like that operation because it's an example of the efficiency or

the demand for low tolerance efficiency right there in that cutoff of is this a huge market or is this a no snow market? I think you guys are a great example of that. Now let's go to the sales operation. So you are so sold on this concept that you started a metal plus dealership. So if you go to the Western Lehigh website, there's two sides. There's the landscaping and the snow services and there's a full metal plus operation.

Jacob Longenbach (27:54)
Yeah.

Nick Arndt (28:13)
Tell us about your sales operation, the team there, and what you offer to folks on the East Coast.

Jacob Longenbach (28:21)
Yeah, so we're a full service dealer for Metal Plus. Our team consists of myself, Leslie, ⁓ Dustin, and Eric. ⁓ Everyone's here to be a team player and help anybody who has any questions or has any lingering concerns about making the jump and switching to Metal Plus or switching to a wing plow. ⁓ We're full service on parts. We stock the parts. We got plows in stock. ⁓

What's nice about our operation is we are out plowing too. our customers that are local to us that have issues during the storm, we have the capabilities and resources in our staff that we can send guys out to troubleshoot on site, on your site. If you have a wiring issue or you have a hose that goes down, we have full service in-house hose making abilities with all the fittings and all the hoses. We can crimp a hose in the middle of a snowstorm, it out to you.

⁓ You have wear parts that go down. Since we have plows in stock, can sort of rob some parts off of plows that we have in our inventory to keep you up and get you back on your feet during a snowstorm so you don't have the downtime for your customers and the operation keeps going. So it's just all come together to be a full service operation that works really well for everything and everybody around us who needs that support during the snowstorms.

Nick Arndt (29:47)
Awesome. Yeah, the team at Western Lehigh definitely has their stuff together and you use that first-hand experience to understand the pain points for other end users in your area. in your snow removal operation, do you work with subs that utilize Metal Plus? have you helped introduce Metal Plus in that way to folks? Like has it been like a natural fit or they're like, no, you're the competition. I gotta use something else.

How does that work?

Jacob Longenbach (30:17)
Now,

I mean, we obviously, we're selling to people who are quote unquote competition, but around us in the Lehigh Valley, there's so much blacktop and there's so much snow removal work that it's hard to really quote unquote say there's competition. ⁓ So we're selling to people that we're plowing with. We are working with customers that.

work for us that we're selling plows to. We have buildings and areas around people that have other buildings that we might plow for them and we're selling plows to them. So it works out that we have a great relationship with a lot of great contractors in the Lehigh Valley that we're helping, supporting and selling plows to.

Bob Green (31:00)
And in your snow removal operation, Jake, you're at the modern age now. You pre-treat with Brian and you have spray systems and all that. In your retail business, are you selling that kind of equipment too as well or do strictly metal plus?

Jacob Longenbach (31:09)
⁓ Yes.

We're just

strictly metal plus. haven't got into selling any liquid equipment or any solding equipment, truck plows or anything like that. It's pretty much strictly ⁓ just metal plus. With that, I should add that we do sell Ice Beyond Magic. We're an Ice Beyond Magic dealer, so liquid deicer. ⁓

the liquid that you can treat your salt with. So we are selling a little bit of that. ⁓ Most of that we use for our own operation, but we do have the capabilities to move, you know, let's be gone magic liquid to customers in the area. ⁓ With the metal plus, one thing that we are have been pushing in the past year or two is trying to get more.

Confident with liquids and using liquids more on the pre treatment side of things and deicing with them on the backside so ⁓ Last year we we definitely sprayed a lot more and did a lot more pre treating with liquids and this year We've made the commitment that we're gonna do try and do even more so we have upped our capacity on liquids and we're gonna really try and hone in on Comparing the metal plus with liquids and trying to get that figured out that we can

really reduce our salt usage and try and go more liquids in in the

Which we found that

Nick Arndt (32:39)
So.

Jacob Longenbach (32:41)
the full live edge plows and the scrape that we get we can we feel pretty confident that we can get there. I know there's a lot of guys in the Midwest that are doing a lot more liquids than guys here on the East Coast given our snow storms you know our our snow is a lot of sleet, freezing rain, mix, messy messy storms so I've

I've been leery of trying to switch completely to liquids, but we're really trying to make that push that we can get a lot more out of liquids than we're currently getting.

Nick Arndt (33:14)
Yeah, sometimes I see on your videos, obviously the ground temps are a lot warmer than the Midwest and you know, the snow looks wet and then the full live edge comes through and scrapes and it's just like 1000 % gone. It's just completely black. I'm like, man must be nice. Like there's no, there's no negative 30 days with hard pack, you know, to get stuck so much. So the life, the full live edge is a, is a dream come true for you guys. Cause the

Jacob Longenbach (33:25)
Yeah, blacktop. Yep.

No.

Nick Arndt (33:40)
feel like the ground temps just must be the perfect scenario for it.

Jacob Longenbach (33:45)
Yeah, you know, sometimes the ground help, the ground temps are helping us and sometimes they're hurting us because, you know, we're not getting as much accumulation or we don't get the accumulation as fast as we'd like or whatever. But ⁓ now it's, we're very fortunate in the area that we're in. Only when it snows. Only when it snows. When it doesn't snow, then I complain.

Nick Arndt (34:01)
So tell me in 19... Yeah.

Bob Green (34:03)
when it snows.

Nick Arndt (34:08)
2019-20 when you first started transitioning the fleet to metal plus and we always throw out the 50 % salt reduction or 50 % savings in salt Well, what were you seeing at the beginning? Was it 50 %? Was it less? Was it more? What's your estimate of what you'd be if you were still with those rubber pushers? That's one thing but what would you be without? leverage

Jacob Longenbach (34:29)
So we always ran a treated salt product. So we always were using less salt traditionally compared to just plain white salt. ⁓ I always thought we were 30 % savings from a white salt to a treated salt. And then as soon as we went to a metal plus compared to our rubber edges, it was significant. ⁓

Was it 40%, was it 50 %? Sometimes, some storms, I think it could have been 60, 70%. All depends on what type of storm it was. In our climate, we're getting a lot of sleet. In our distribution centers, it doesn't take long for that sleet, freezing rain, snow to mix to come straight hard packed. So where you can scrape it off with a metal plus where we couldn't before, your salt savings is huge.

Bob Green (35:18)
You started off when you first started describing your business and your relationship with a metal plus as more efficiency, less capital equipment, less employees, savings. You sounded exactly like we train our salespeople to the spiel, know, to hear it from an actual user. And we hear it a lot about what the benefits are, but you checked off all of them. The only thing you didn't check off was the longevity of the cutting edges, but.

Jacob Longenbach (35:30)
Yeah. ⁓

Nick Arndt (35:31)
You

Bob Green (35:45)
Your plows are also new. ⁓ But yeah, you checked all the boxes. Salt savings, less equipment, less operators, easier, more efficient.

Jacob Longenbach (35:55)
Yep. Yeah. one.

Yeah, one thing about Western Lehigh is, you know, we we are using the plows, ⁓ so we do overturn our plows and keep our fleet pretty new. So we're selling a lot of used units. ⁓ The plow that we originally bought from Justin in New Mexico, we just we kept that plow pretty long because I wanted to see the longevity of the plow and how it held up over, you know, four or five seasons. ⁓

And when we moved that, we moved that last year, we still hadn't replaced a part on that plow since we bought it in 2020. No hoses, no wiring, no cutting edges, like nothing. was originally 100 % original from the day it probably left the factory from the day we sold it.

Bob Green (36:30)
amazing.

and Justin probably had a couple hundred hours on it because he's in a very snow area.

Jacob Longenbach (36:47)
Yeah, I think they got

like 300 inches this season prior from when we bought it. So yeah, he had a couple hours. He probably had as many hours on it as we did in three seasons, unfortunately, for us.

Bob Green (36:53)
Holy smokes.

No, but if you, so there's

a good 600, minimum 600 hours on a plow and original cutting edges, original everything basically. So it speaks volumes to the carbide edges.

Nick Arndt (37:10)
Yeah, like we throw it out there all the time, 1500 hours on the moldboard, 750 on the shoes. And to defend Jake a little bit on his sales topics, sometimes you give people too much information. So when we're talking about the efficiency, the scrap, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you start throwing out the 1500 hours, you almost start sounding like, ⁓ this guy was just, this guy's gonna tell you that the thing could fly, but then I like to do the efficiency.

Bob Green (37:29)
salesman.

Nick Arndt (37:37)
in the scraping and then later on dunk on them with the carbide edges. But you gotta do it in two different parts because if you do too much, it sounds like you're selling it too hard. man, ⁓ I...

Jacob Longenbach (37:49)
Yeah, honestly,

I don't even really think about the maintenance side of them because they just, they get me at the efficiency and the productivity and the salt reduction.

But that is a great topic and a great point. Like when you talk about the maintenance and how long the cutting edges last and how well they hold up, it's a whole different topic of conversation that you could talk for quite some time on. And it's true and it's huge. we were going, when we were pushing rubber edge pushers, I'd spend hours adjusting cutting edges and then we'd push them for a storm and the plow's not making contact in two foot in the center of the moldboard. ⁓

you know, out there in the middle of the snowstorm with a wrench trying to adjust them and the wrenches, the wrenches in back in the back, in a snowbank somewhere, because it's so frustrating when you're trying to adjust them, those cutting edges and whatnot. with the metal plus, and especially the full live edge, you don't have any of that work when that plow shows up. You wire it, you plummet with the two hoses from your valves and that's it. I mean, it's, they are.

Nick Arndt (38:35)
constantly putting on shoes.

Bob Green (38:39)
They went flying. ⁓

Nick Arndt (38:58)
Talking about simplicity, you guys are known for also running the Stoogey connectors. So you guys are a big proponent of the Stoogey connectors. I believe you're a dealer for that. You clamp on and off, away you go. You were telling me one time that there's a reasoning behind that is that some of your accounts, like disconnecting and connecting hoses is considered mechanical work and the operators can't do that for union reasons? Was that in my way off?

Jacob Longenbach (39:04)
Yep, correct.

Yeah, so

we navigated over to Stucci and started using the Stucci multi-face plates for connection and coupling to ⁓ our plows on our backhoes and our loaders. ⁓ On our skid-steers, we don't have a huge issue with the hydraulics building pressure in the sun when the plow is sitting disconnected from the machine. ⁓ So the reason we navigated to the multi-face plates and occurred the cost of those plates and whatnot was because

A lot of our machines are on locations where they have to load salt trucks and they have to plow simultaneously. So someone comes in and wants to get loaded. I don't have a half hour or 45 minutes to be messing with hydraulic lines and trying to get the plow disconnected from the machine. have, I mean, realistically, I probably only have five minutes, but it had to get down that we neck down that time to as fast as we can do it and as easy as we could because let's face it, if it's hard,

and the operator or anybody has to struggle and they've been out there for 10 hours, 12 hours, 18 hours, it's cold, it's snowy, it's blowing, they're either one, they're not gonna wanna do it, or they're gonna complain about it, or they're gonna, and with all that comes issues. So we've navigated over to the multi-face plates that coupler and uncoupler with pressure on the plow side or the machine side, and it just makes the ease of operating, disconnecting from the plow.

so much better. They come with a docking station so the hoses get docked onto the plow side up off the ground so when you set the plow down you don't have to worry about your lines getting pinched. Your wiring is zip tied to your hydraulic line so you're not worried about your wiring dragging on the ground getting crushed or crimped or something that doesn't allow you to hook back up to your machine. It has just made it that much more efficient and easy. You keep them anti-seize through the summer.

The plates come right off the machine side. You hook them up to the plow. I mean, we've had, we're just about through our fleet of going over everything and getting our stuff ready for snow. We have two more machines coming through the shop today. And we've probably about 95 % of machines have been hooked them to the plow that they were assigned to from last year and grease them, clean them and put them on the trailer and ship them. It's been, they just work that much better than push on hydraulic lines. The Stoochie has the twist ons that come factory from like Cat.

They're not bad, but sometimes those get enough pressure on that you can't get them disconnected with your hands. You need wrenches. It's just the stoochie makes a great product as well. We are a dealer too. Yep. So if anybody's on the fence or has questions about stoochies, you can reach out to someone on our team and we can help you out and answer any questions that you have.

Nick Arndt (42:02)
And you guys are a dealer for that, is that correct? Okay.

Yeah, because like you mentioned that the temperatures when the plows sitting there when the temperatures fluctuate pressure builds up so ⁓ You know

Bob Green (42:13)
Cool.

Jacob Longenbach (42:20)
Yep. Our biggest

issue is if the plow is disconnected from the machine sitting in the sun during the day and then we come in at nine, 10 o'clock, the plow and the operator has to hook up to the plow because it was either missed or forgotten or we used it to load salt the night prior to pre-salt or whatever. And then that plow was sitting in the sun all day and there's too much pressure built up in the lines and you can't get the hydraulics on. And now you're calling a mechanic across town to crack some lines. Now you got the hydraulic oil that you're dealing with on some of our sites are very...

Bob Green (42:48)
Mm.

Jacob Longenbach (42:49)
high critical environmental sites. So then you gotta have a spill kit and you gotta collect all that oil and it just keeps it so much cleaner with the plates from Stoogey.

Bob Green (42:59)
It all makes sense.

Yep.

Nick Arndt (43:03)
All right, Jake, as we're wrapping up here, how about a funner question? So as a Metal Plus dealer and as a premium Metal Plus user on the services side, what is a product from Metal Plus you would like to see in the future? What is something that would help you and maybe start a full ⁓ conversation? ⁓ man.

Bob Green (43:21)
Here comes the A13 full live edge.

Jacob Longenbach (43:26)
I'm

pretty sure I got Jimmy talked into an 814 full live edge so we can cross that one right off the right off the right off the lid Yeah Yep, so you could run that on like a 299 Since the wing on that wing would be the same as a 1016. I think he said that they could build those Man, that's a really good question really good question because I feel like

Nick Arndt (43:33)
to put on skid steers? Is that what we're talking about? A heavier skid steer? Okay.

Jacob Longenbach (43:53)
We've got things figured out pretty well that they're pretty efficient. ⁓ That's a really good question. That's a...

Nick Arndt (43:59)
Yeah, you're running small

blades, you're running van wings, you kind of have a lot of the basses covered.

Bob Green (44:04)
There is a question that slipped my mind before I'll bring it back now that you mentioned it, Nick. So Western Lehigh was one of the, they were the first people to get what we call internally the Live Edge 2.0. And we weren't even all aware of it until, until a KIP Expo last year. So 2024, ⁓ I wasn't there. But Nick sent his picture of the Live Edge sections because Western Lehigh provided the plows for the show.

Nick Arndt (44:19)
LiveEdge 2.0, what's that?

No!

Bob Green (44:34)
And Nick's like, what's that? And I look at the picture and like, what's that? So Jimmy ⁓ in his creativity and innovation, always wanting to do a better product was like, wow, we've got this beautiful plow with full live edge. Why don't I throw my new live edge sections on the moldboard? So the two foot section now splits in the middle. your whole plow include, cause the live edge on the wings acts like a snake.

Jacob Longenbach (44:38)
I'm

Bob Green (45:04)
So now your two foot section's not split in the middle. So it's 100 % contour. There's nothing that doesn't float on this plow anymore. I don't know if you noticed the difference between those and the ones you already had that had the regular live edge sections last year or it was just the conditions didn't allow it or.

Jacob Longenbach (45:21)
⁓ I didn't,

I don't think I got to run one of those plows. think some of our other operators on our far Eastern section ran those plows. ⁓ I don't know if I got any feedback to be honest with you on that one, Bob. ⁓ It's like one of those things where we were already like, it's such a great scrape and it's so clean. How can it get any cleaner? ⁓ Definitely some spots on some areas where you can know that that

Bob Green (45:36)
Okay.

Jacob Longenbach (45:50)
split two foot section is going to contour better to a mold or a crown in a parking lot or whatnot. So ⁓ yeah, when I saw it, I'm like, man, he just doesn't stop. He keeps thinking of every little detail.

Bob Green (45:56)
Mm-hmm.

He doesn't, he never stops.

Nick Arndt (46:03)
Live edge. Yeah, so so for

those listening live edge 2.0, like Bob was saying ⁓ Honestly, the live edge scrapes amazing and we found the two foot section is the key people have knocked us off with the one foot section and it just It doesn't work. The math is is wrong, but they're but the way they split it like puzzle pieces So the live edge on the wings is interconnected with puzzle pieces and that's so that edges don't catch When when you're in a more of a V position?

but utilizing that same puzzle piece allows a two-foot section but a little split in the middle. It's an example of we're always pushing the technology forward and the people who are trying to duplicate us are always gonna be behind, like they're always gonna be behind and well, thanks to people like Jake out there utilizing this stuff and pushing us to make newer sizes, newer stuff, when we make a new size, that might lead to a new discovery. So Jake, thanks for

Thanks for pushing Metal Plus to be better. Thanks for being an excellent Metal Plus customer. And if you have anything in closing to say, ⁓ go ahead, but we've loved having you here today.

Jacob Longenbach (47:12)
Yeah, no thanks for having us. Yeah, it's great to be part of the Metal Plus family. I'm always honored to be there and if anybody has any questions or concerns about making the jump or has questions about anything, I'm always available to talk about plowing and snow and Metal Plus and anything. So reach out to us through our website, through ⁓ social media and we can definitely get any questions or concerns answered.

you know, to add you to the family.

Bob Green (47:46)
Thank you, Jacob.

Nick Arndt (47:46)
Awesome, yes.

Again, a plug for the social media, it's incredible. And with that, we're signing off, but this has been another episode of the Born to be a Snowfighter podcast, and we'll see you in the next one. Bye, everybody.

Bob Green (47:58)
Bye everybody.

Jacob Longenbach (47:59)
Alright,

thanks guys, take care.