The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
Transforming the Trucking Industry: Hyfield Trucking's Impact on APU Technology
What happens when the original crew of Patrick, Chilly, Buttermilk, Eric, and Jerry come together for a night filled with laughter and reminiscing? Imagine Buttermilk and Chilly brimming with excitement about meeting their new grandson in Oregon, even as he faces the bittersweet nature of farewells. Join us for a series of amusing and tense travel tales, including a particularly unforgettable landing attempt in Salt Lake City. With the spontaneity of our conversations, expect unexpected text message interruptions and plenty of chuckles as we navigate through the week's antics and adventures.
Switching lanes, we dive into the chaotic yet fascinating world of trucking. From the bumpy parking lot at a Pilot fuel station to the intricacies of fleet maintenance and truck swaps, we paint a vivid picture of the teamwork required to manage a fleet. We explore the latest innovations from Freightliner and Volvo, such as auto-defogging headlights and the curious removal of traditional air brake controls, with a humorous tale of trucks being parachuted from military cargo planes. These tales give a glimpse into the dynamic environment of truck maintenance and the ever-evolving trucking technology.
Ever wondered how auxiliary power units (APUs) and generators play a crucial role in trucking? We discuss their advantages in reducing fuel consumption and managing emissions, especially during extreme weather conditions. Our journey through truck APUs reveals real-life challenges with power management and highlights the transition from Comfort Pro to Dynasys systems. With insights into future possibilities like fully electric APUs inspired by the RV industry, we look forward to a future filled with more reliable and cost-effective trucking solutions. Join us for a rollercoaster of stories, laughter, and intriguing trucking insights in this episode.
Email us: theouterbeltpodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.hyfieldtrucking.com
Interested in joining our team? Email us at info.hysg@gmail.com we have open trucks! You must be part of a team. No solo drivers.
Call us at 1-833-493-4353 Option 1
Facebook: The Outer Belt Podcast
Instagram: The_OuterBelt
We ready to do this, ready, ready, pretty.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 3:Hey everybody, welcome to the Outer Belt. I'm Patrick and you're one of my friends, tilly.
Speaker 4:Buttermilk Eric and Jerry.
Speaker 3:And we're back, the OG crew just hanging out tonight. We're actually doing it, just hanging out tonight. We're actually doing it a little weird. Tonight we're doing a week early Spoiler alert. I know we're not supposed to tell the audience that, but we are, because when you're listening to this right now.
Speaker 1:Buttermilk, you are in Oregon. Nope, I'm in Oregon.
Speaker 2:Same thing right. It won't be gone. It'll still be there, Unless there's an earthquake and it falls off the coast.
Speaker 1:Are you taking the trail? No, I don't want dysenteria, I have a baby to hold.
Speaker 3:I have a new grandson to hold so I do not want dysenteria.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, so these come out on Saturday. It'll be my last Saturday there. Oh, you'll actually be kind of saying goodbye, won't you? It'll be some bittersweet goodbyes, yep, maybe a birthday party to attend. I know I was invited to a girlfriend we share October month. Sadly she's a Scorpio, not a Libra. We won't hold that against her. We could, but anyway, I was invited and I don't know if she's doing it this my last Saturday there, but yeah, yeah. And I don't know if she's doing it my last Saturday there, but yeah, yeah. I don't know really what my weekends look like. I'm at the I wouldn't say mercy of my children with the baby, but what their needs are is what I'm there for.
Speaker 3:So what you're really trying to say is that you're at the mercy of your children and grandchildren and based on their needs.
Speaker 1:Because I won't have been staying at their house. As far as I know, I'm staying with my bestie, but I don't know It'll be my last Saturday, so that's why we're recording early. But I am so excited I fly out tomorrow, which I know most people are listening to this on a different day, so I would have flown out on Friday, october 18th.
Speaker 3:Gotcha. Yes, how was the flight?
Speaker 1:Well, I upgraded my seat, so let's hope it's good.
Speaker 3:Ooh.
Speaker 1:I don't know, but it is an early flight.
Speaker 3:But there's no good way to get out to the West Coast except for early flights, isn't there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we go back to Salt Lake City. Or I go back to Salt Lake City or I go back to Salt Lake City. I like Salt Lake, it was beautiful.
Speaker 3:That actually was a fun airport. I mean, I didn't really care for the fact that we couldn't land and had to do that twice. It was fun. Oh, you weren't with us, were you? That was just Vince and Eric and I. Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, I stayed last time for the baby shower.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah they tried to have us land on a runway that had an airplane on it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that won't work.
Speaker 3:No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:It would. We could certainly land on that runway, correct? If we wanted to be in a bunch of pieces, parts, parts. Yeah, yeah, you mean the airplane can't do thing to go off to the side.
Speaker 4:The runways aren't wide enough.
Speaker 2:unfortunately, that's the problem. You would think they'd do that for safety right, make them wider. But no, they won't.
Speaker 3:No, they just pay like 20 people to sit in a tower and monitor everything.
Speaker 1:Somebody didn't have enough coffee that morning, or something.
Speaker 3:Clearly it was exciting because we were like coming in and Could you see it? I don't know how many airplanes you've been in where you can see forward.
Speaker 1:Ironically, we've been in one. Did the pilot come on and make something cheeky about it, or what?
Speaker 3:Well, so yes but not right away. He did, I mean obviously at the point because we were coming in and it, I guess, he realized like this plane's not moving out of our way, and so I mean, you just see both, you know, at the window, you see like the trees are really close, like we are really about to land, and then we took off or whatever, and got out of the way, and so they had to do all their maneuvers right because that wasn't planned. So they're to do all the maneuvers right because that wasn't planned. So they're immediately talking back and forth with their traffic control, trying to get centered up and all and get back in rotation without hitting one of the other planes coming into land or taking off. Even so, it was a little moment of like not sure what's happening. Someone even said like oh you know, salt Lake City has terrible winds sometimes, so this can happen, kind of thing. And I'm thinking to myself it didn't feel windy, we felt pretty stabilized coming in.
Speaker 3:It felt good, like I don't know what they mean by that. And then, probably 15 minutes after we did the go around, the pilot came on in the announcement and said sorry folks, there was an airplane on the runway and couldn't land it.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't have been good. No, you're welcome. Yes, it was a very appropriate thing for them to do. I think people don't know too. When we do back-to-back recordings in a week, sometimes I feel it's hard to dig deep for content. Granted, we're still sharing your story, wow.
Speaker 3:No, what's really hard for content is when Jimmy and Don are texting me and Vince mid-conversation. It's super distracting. Part of tracking, I agree.
Speaker 1:Always on for those maintenance guys, always on, always on. So, Jerry, how's it been your week since I haven't seen you two days ago?
Speaker 4:Good Doing, really really good. Has it been busy? Yeah, always busy.
Speaker 3:I like the shirt. It's Chiquita right, not Car. The shirt it's Chiquita right, not Carhartt it's Chiquita, it's.
Speaker 2:Carhartt, I had a funny from the day after recording last week. A funny, a funny. You know we talked about Pilot and the one here in Columbus, how the parking lot is just ridiculous, it's bumpy and it's just torn up. It's horrible. So the very next morning I was taking a truck over to fuel. And what are they doing but carving up the parking lot to repair it?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I guess they heard our podcast Early. I think Jerry leaked it. I think Jerry did leak it. Yeah yeah, Jerry did leak it. I think what Jerry was trying to do was get that sponsorship money from them.
Speaker 3:That sweet pilot money we talked about this.
Speaker 2:You guys are not doing so great, I'm going to let you know ahead of time. This is the things I can do for you. Maybe send a little sweet pilot money our way. And then he actually edited it in post-production out of the last one, so now that it's yeah, but he also has to edit out how much he hates their coffee, because when they hear that they're going to not sponsor. No, that's actually the clip he sent them. He sent that clip. We're going to air this.
Speaker 3:And then he said something about your parking lot's uneven, so no, I actually went to that pilot today and I saw those big squares, so they didn't do the whole parking lot, no, not the whole, thing, but there's like these massively big squares of just freshly poured asphalt and it's nice. Is it better? Oh?
Speaker 2:night and day, do they? Fix that big bump right when you enter the driveway. Ooh, because you go in the driveway and you immediately go up the driveway and you go bloop, bloop.
Speaker 3:Possibly.
Speaker 2:Let's hope. I saw it had paint lines around it, so I'm hoping they take care of that.
Speaker 3:I hope so as well. I don't remember it being too crazy. I will say we were talking about that because we were talking about the mudflaps, yes. So I had to take one of our brand new trucks out to Trailer shop. Trailer shop, trailer shop, it has those things. And so I'm driving around and turn to get on the interstate and hit a bump and all that stuff. So I got on the interstate and I'm headed out there and there's a certain section of road where it's like Got a dip in it Got a dip in it.
Speaker 3:Pretty ruddy and I'm in the low part of the dip of the rut, but that means the side of the mud flap is actually rubbing against the concrete as I'm going.
Speaker 1:You just filed those bad boys right down for the team going in there.
Speaker 3:At one point I looked out my mirror on the passenger side, as you should do periodically, while you're driving and I just see smoke billowing out and I'm like is my truck on fire on the passenger side, as you should do periodically while you're driving? And I just see smoke billowing out and I'm like is my truck on fire.
Speaker 1:And then it occurred to me I'm like, oh, it's that rubber it has.
Speaker 3:Just that would be scary, it's just burned off and I was like, oh, that's yeah, it was a little nerve wracking. So I got out of the rut and it went away. But it was a little like, ooh, okay, no, dissolve, that's filing it down quick. It was filing it down quick 65 miles an hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gonna cause some smoke.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's been fun. I've actually been working out in the yard the past few days, working out with you and Eric.
Speaker 2:It's been appreciated.
Speaker 1:Eric.
Speaker 2:Bender Been in the weeds the last few days.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes, we've been doing a lot of swaps as well, so we're getting people like maybe you come in and you don't get the ideal truck that you wanted. So we have side-by-side trucks, we have single bed trucks, we have trucks with bathrooms that we reward excelling teams in. We've pretty much had all of that happen. We've had bathrooms come available. We've had even more than that We've had teams moving into bathroom trucks. We've had teams moving out of side-by-sides into same household.
Speaker 1:And a side-by-side is two twin beds. Two twin beds yes, and a same household is one full-size bed.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 1:For those of you that are new to the channel and listening yes, and so we sometimes call the side-by-sides a dorm-style bed.
Speaker 3:So it is literally like there's a bed on the driver's side wall, a bed on the passenger's side wall and between them is a closet or refrigerator, depending on the model. We've had teams move into the side-by-side model. We've had a team we're about to we worked on their truck today, about to do a lease purchase with us on a truck, so we're getting that truck prepared. We've just been literally doing like everything we can do. We don't have a tractor in the yard.
Speaker 1:We don't have a tractor in the yard. We don't have a tractor in the yard. That's what we couldn't do. We don't have a tractor in Columbus. Knock on wood. That's a good thing.
Speaker 3:It's a good thing. It's just been crazy. Just the pure quantity of trucks that move around. What's really funny? I was talking to one of our teams who I know you listen to podcasts. You're going to be laughing because you know that I'm talking about you.
Speaker 3:They were in the yard today and they were talking about all the trucks and there's so much motion. And they were over at one of our shops and there's so many trucks there, all these Panther and FedEx trucks. They're like is something going on? Why is all these trucks? And I'm like the math wasn't adding up to me. So I get over to that shop today because I actually had to do a swap, take one truck out there, pick one up and bring it back. And I get out there and there's three FedEx trucks and four Panther trucks that aren't ours.
Speaker 4:And I'm like oh that's hysterical.
Speaker 3:So if you don't know any better, this does look like all of our trucks. I was like, oh, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:They do a lot of work on expediters there.
Speaker 3:They do, they really do they really do I think word got out. I was about to say I think the word got out that they were really really good yeah which is good for them.
Speaker 3:I mean like it's they used to. Years ago they were like the place to get a lot of generator and special stuff done for all these expediters. And then the salespeople up at FIDA Freightliner changed hands. They lost one of their main sales guys. Another one came in. That guy didn't work out very long. Another one came in. That guy ended up moving within the company to another section. Then we got another guy in and now we have a new guy in. There's been a lot of turnover, not necessarily turnover as in quitting, but just shuffling.
Speaker 3:Finally have someone that's been here for a couple years now and I think he's going to stick. Because of all that, when you take over this division they were kind of making the contacts they already had with other shops or whatever, and so some of that kind of got watered down and you do start to see all over Columbus now all different shops. You see expediters. It's not necessarily centralized in only a couple shops.
Speaker 4:There's a bunch of them.
Speaker 3:But now I think word is getting back. Other people are finding out like hey, there are these other options that are really solid.
Speaker 1:Solid being the word, yeah.
Speaker 3:So they're getting that. It's just funny that it's like people are thinking like oh, those are Eiffel trucks and they're really not Some of them. I wish they were Some of them.
Speaker 2:Others you go yeah, oh yeah, there's some of them that I'm like yeah.
Speaker 3:So last week we were talking about building those trucks and how every time we'd get something down, it would be solid. We'd be very happy with it. Something would change. Sure, and Freightliner was guilty most of the time.
Speaker 3:They would change the style of the cab or how long the nose is or something. Well, we talked about it last week that we were nervous about the upcoming changes that were in play for Freightliner, and the article you sent me today, it dropped, finally, it dropped, finally. Yes, it did. Yes, yes, it did. I thought it was strange. They dropped it from a military cargo plane with a parachute.
Speaker 2:That was very strange, but it landed perfectly.
Speaker 3:Well, it did land perfectly and it was kind of cool.
Speaker 2:The only way it could have been better is if Elon Musk had reached out and grabbed it with those fancy arms he grabs a rocket swing and set it gently on the ground. He's a competitor.
Speaker 3:He would have grabbed it and thrown it on the ground and squished it, it just set it down.
Speaker 2:Like here you go, Recycling it for you.
Speaker 1:Was that your?
Speaker 3:prototype. Oh sorry, yeah, so no, they rolled it out. I got to say, if I'm being so bold, it's a good-looking truck.
Speaker 2:It is a good-looking truck. It truly is a good-looking truck.
Speaker 3:Volvo's new one they dropped, which we kind of skipped over, didn't really talk about because it happened in the off season. It did. It is funky. It's kind of weird. It's not my favorite truck in the world. This is the Volvo. This is the Cascadia Exactly, yeah it just they just really took the Cascadia and not a huge change?
Speaker 2:Not a huge change, really no.
Speaker 3:I would say subtle right.
Speaker 2:Very subtle yeah. That's S-U-B-T-L-E for those of you who don't speak. Patrick and Vince.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they changed the hood, they changed the headlights, they changed the front bumper. When I say they changed the hood, not much.
Speaker 2:No, not much at all.
Speaker 3:Basically, they have these new headlights on it and they're kind of more rounded off. They're nowhere near as big as they used to be.
Speaker 4:They caught on the new 45. Yes, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3:They shoot 45 degrees down and straight out, and so it's completely eliminated the need for fog lights, because they're LEDs, they're able to really focus all that stuff in. Jerry, what did you say that you liked about the headlights? There was something.
Speaker 4:They have auto defogging Because with LEDs they don't get hot enough to melt snow and ice and these heat up and defog and all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, yep, very cool stuff. It just looks slick. The bumper looks really cool and I'm just wondering how much of a pain it's going to be to replace when a deer hits it.
Speaker 2:It can't be as much of a pain as replacing the Western Star bumpers. Well, it could be, because the problem with Western star bumpers is you can't get them, so I'd imagine we probably won't be able to get these either for a long time. But we won't see these trucks for how long? They work a couple years by the time they actually get in the previous backlog of chassis is built by the custom sleeper builders and then they start getting the new chassis. So a couple years.
Speaker 3:I'd guess yeah, well, so these will drop mid-2025. That means they're going to start making them in mid-2025.
Speaker 3:Right, freightliner is Freightliner, so that's almost a year from now. And then let's say we got one of the first VINs which we're not going to because they're going to sprinkle them around. Prime's going to get a few, Swift's going to get a few, they're going to sprinkle the love around with all their big carriers and all their big customers and then they'll start letting us regular people get them. And when they do that, like you were just saying it, then has to go to the upfitter or for the sleeper company for us.
Speaker 3:So it's Bolt or ARI, and then from there it's going to gori, um. And then it's from there it's going to go to the body shop get a body put on it, um. Then it's going to go get, uh, either the reefer done to it or the generator added or whatever, and so, by the time we see it, you're talking early 2026 at the earliest.
Speaker 2:Even the upfitter they have to go through and make sure everything works properly. Yes, because there's going to be wiring changes and that type of thing that's going to have to work out Absolutely. They're not going to get one in and just ship it out.
Speaker 1:Still compatible with your current build.
Speaker 3:So I don't know this particular article about. It doesn't give the details on what they are doing as far as the bumper-to-back cab measurements, which really makes a huge difference. It is a minor upgrade basically. From what I can tell, it is aesthetics mostly. There's some cool technology things they're doing like the headlights, also with the collision avoidance system is getting four more close sensors.
Speaker 3:So they're able to get a little more geometric with that, which I know people are like oh gosh, that system. Well, the more sensors, the more they dial that in, the less you have the false emergencies and stuff.
Speaker 2:There is something cool that Buttermilk would have loved when she was on the truck.
Speaker 3:Autopilot, autopilot.
Speaker 2:Autopilot would have been great for her, because she drove nights and she could take a nap while the truck was driving. Just kidding. Just kidding the push and pull air brake controls are gone.
Speaker 3:This is cool.
Speaker 2:It's now a toggle switch.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So she would pull that thing and her hand would hurt for days. So now it's just a toggle switch for your air brake.
Speaker 1:I feel like it would pop out and bruise the palm or something Like I always did it.
Speaker 3:I can tell you right now my right hand hurts because today I've done a lot of driving and moving trucks so I've hit that parking brake and pulled it out probably 20 times today.
Speaker 4:I have a triangular-shaped callus on my hand from pushing that brake in and the other side of that, too, going electronic is, they said they removed the airlines and the dash to that, so now you don't have that loud pshh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did see that.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:I dig it. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people like me going all right, but now you've got a valve that's electrically actuated and a button that can fail.
Speaker 4:You've added more complexity and yada yada.
Speaker 3:So I'm hoping that this is a pretty reliable.
Speaker 2:I think it's going to be like anything, where it has to be tested a bunch of times, yeah, and then when Swift and Knight and all those guys get their hands on them, they'll test them a lot more. By the time it gets down to us, hopefully, all the bugs will be worked out.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Fingers crossed. We run electric switches in our dash for our lift axles. Some of our trucks have lift axles Sure. And those you hit that and that really doesn't fail and those.
Speaker 2:you can hit that and that really doesn't fail. No, because that's just two wires and it's going to a relay to activate the lift axle.
Speaker 3:Those usually work pretty fine. So I'm assuming if it's kind of a similar thing it should be. The same Should be. We do have lift axle issues, but that's not one of them. Yeah, I think it's cool, Very cool. It looks nice. It's funny that they actually took the picture of the red stop sign for the trailer brakes of the yellow one.
Speaker 2:It's still the picture on the switch.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's still a picture on the switch and it's a big switch, it's not a little bitty one. Is it going to have a safety mechanism so if you're running and you hit that, it won't engage?
Speaker 2:It's going to have to. It doesn't mention that here, but it's going to have to. Yeah, it'd be too easy to reach over there to try and grab the utility lights or something and hit the wrong switch.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it's going to have to. I think that's cool.
Speaker 1:So if your RPMs or MPHs are certain.
Speaker 3:It won't let you.
Speaker 1:It won't let you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it won't let you. It won't let you.
Speaker 2:Probably require the brake to be applied and the truck to be stopped before it'll work, oh, that's a good one. That'd be my thinking. And if they haven't thought of that, that one's a freeway trade liner.
Speaker 3:Detroit Trucks North America yeah, they didn't show any dash or anything.
Speaker 4:You think they're going to go all digital? I don't. Well, they're going to go all digital? I don't. I know they had digital.
Speaker 3:As far as the digital screens.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like go all digital. You know not just the little center piece.
Speaker 2:No more analog speedometer.
Speaker 3:Okay, so they already have that. So if you can imagine your gauge cluster, but is it standard?
Speaker 3:No. So your tachometer and your fuel and your all that stuff that is already can get that. Um, peterbilt has it. I think volvo has it too. Uh, all of them have it as an option. I will say this peterbilt and kenworth recalled like 150 000 trucks because that screen was messed up. You know it's, it's more to go wrong than an analog gauge and it adds cost to the truck. I I know a lot of mega fleets aren't using it, but but some are. We have not gone to that option because it's new and I want it to be tested. I have not heard about freightliner having a recall on those yet, so maybe they're getting from a different source, but it's definitely something where we have taken the stance of like, let's see what happens first and then we'll go that direction. Probably around the time they make it standard Because at some point it is more cost effective just to have every truck with the same thing.
Speaker 4:That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3:And they do have their little infotainment center as well. We have not added that either, uh, but that's more of a utilitarian we use that space for our data loggers and tcu controllers. So that's just real estate. We need certain amount of space on the dash and can't give it up. It'll be interesting to see what, what, where they go with this and and um, it is only a 1.9% increase in fuel economy. That new Volvo, they say, is a 10% increase in fuel economy.
Speaker 3:I'd be curious to see what that looks like side by side. So was the Cascadia already so fuel efficient that it only had a little bit to go Right and the Volvo needed a lot to go? Or is it like? No, the Volvo is quite a bit more fuel efficient than the. Cascadia. I'm curious to see how that goes and there's some big fleets that run both trucks. I'm sure we'll get that data.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm excited to start seeing these things roll out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fun stuff to watch.
Speaker 3:It'll love seeing that technology get better and smarter. They introduced the second evolution of the side item, detecting monitor, which I think is great, because we had six trucks, I want to say with it.
Speaker 4:I had one.
Speaker 3:They did not have that dialed in Great, so we quit buying it because it was just too much of a disturbance. But I am glad to see they have a new update of it out now.
Speaker 4:They now have it on the driver's side too, do they? Yeah, that's cool, that's part of it.
Speaker 3:I know like when the Bendix came out, which was terrible they had options for both sides or just one. But the Volvo we had in the Cascadia is we had. They only had the passenger side. Yeah, I'll be anxious to see these on the road. They look really nice. It doesn't indicate any option, any changes, transmission-wise, suspension-wise, that all kind of looks the same.
Speaker 1:So really more electronical, get gizmos and gadgets.
Speaker 3:Absolutely gizmos and gadgets and just making that front a little more aerodynamic. Yeah, so we talked the other day about how the making of Highfield and the different things we've done and our timeline and all that stuff, and we've talked about how we got started. We've talked about how we changed the industry a little bit on some of the trucks when it comes to the bathrooms in the trucks. I alluded to some mistakes in learning.
Speaker 4:we've had over the years.
Speaker 3:So I thought I'd share those with y'all.
Speaker 3:Today we're going to talk about. Well, let me reset that up. It's not that I'm going to share the mistakes we made although there are some in this segment but this is going to be some evolutions that we've had and we're going to talk mostly from an APU generator perspective. So I want to talk about the APUs and generators, and an APU is an auxiliary power unit. They are usually on the frame rail of a truck. They're usually a black steel box or diamond plate or something like that is what they typically are, and they may be like Carrier or Comfort Pro or Dynasys or Go Power or Green Power or Thermo King has the Tri-Pak Like. There's lots of them out there and what they are for is when you're at a truck stop or at a ship or something and you are sitting there in the cab, you can have air conditioning and you can have electricity you know the little creature comforts or heat, without having to operate the engine so the main engine of the truck.
Speaker 3:If you remember, back in the olden days, people would just leave their trucks running, idling forever. Right, fuel was dirt cheap and there were no emissions control systems or anything on the truck, so you could just idle forever and a diesel engine can just idle forever. The engine itself really can do that. It doesn't mind it. The problem is diesel got real expensive and so when diesel got real expensive, people started looking for ways to save money and they realized a small investment in a other power source besides the engine was actually that that sipped fuel was better to run. So an engine idling at high idle will probably set you back like 1 to 1.2 gallons per hour. An APU has a very tiny little baby diesel engine in it and they're sipping about a quarter a gallon an hour.
Speaker 3:So it's considerably less fuel. Also, with the emission stuff that's arisenisen, that engine has to run hot for the emission systems to work properly. So when they're going down the road and you're pulling a big load and they're working, they're running hot. When you are, um, you know, at a construction site and a cement mixer or a dump truck is running that cement mixer or it's lifting that dump truck up and down, it's got to generate lots of power to make that happen, uh, for its power takeoff and it keeps that engine hot. When you're sitting idle, even at high idle, it's not producing a lot of heat because it's barely working. Your air conditioner, compressor and your alternator takes very little power to work, um, so it's, it's using a bunch of diesel which it's then throwing into the emission system. It's not getting hot enough to clean that off, and so what has to happen is these forced regenerations have to happen. So after doing that for so long we've all been there and I think in this group of people I'm talking are with where you've idled your truck, you get that that little dreaded light and you have to force regen, which means you press a button. Your engine idles up really high. A lot of times your engine fan will kick on too because of what it's doing. It's shooting, depending on the system. Some shoot diesel and actually catch it on fire and burn out the emission stuff, and that just uses even more fuel, and it's really not good. An in motion while the truck is running. Your truck will automatically regenerate itself without having to do all that, and it's a much more efficient and better use of that technology. Forcing it, you don't get a great region, and what happens is you end up burning up those sensors, you end up having a lot of issues with the filters, and so it's just best not to idle your truck. It's really really something that's terrible to do these days because of the high fuel prices and the emission stuff that's on the truck.
Speaker 3:So these APUs are usually like little two and three cylinder diesel engines little, tiny, tiny things. They do them a couple different ways. So when you look at something like a TriPak from Thermo King and I think Green Power does the same thing, and there's a few others that do they have that little diesel and there's a few others that do they have that little diesel. Its belt runs a compressor for an air conditioner, just like your car would have and it runs an alternator, just like your car would have to recharge your batteries, and so a lot of people will take that. They'll put a power inverter on the truck, which is those things that'll take 12 volts and make it a regular 110 outlet. I mean you can see them as small as one of them will fit in your cigarette lighter All the way to at a truck stop. You look at them.
Speaker 3:They almost look like those old-school amplifiers from back in the day With the cooling fans on them, cooling fans on them, and everything and then you can run like a microwave and a tv and all that stuff off of them, and so those apus are just constantly charging the batteries. Keep the batteries charged and that's how you get your electricity. It's a way to do it, uh, and it works decent. Then that compressor has an evaporator condenser and it actually blows cold air inside your, your room and and everything. It works. Nice for factory sleeper trucks, not too big. The acs are all sized to be able to cool down your typical factory sleeper truck. They produce enough electricity because all you can really do in those things is a microwave or a television or maybe one of those little bitty coffee pots, um laptop, that kind of thing, but not a whole lot more. For us. We run the bigger sleepers and so now we have water heaters, we have rooftop air conditioners.
Speaker 1:We have obviously televisions, the cooktop.
Speaker 3:Cooktop ovens, induction cooktop ovens. Our microwaves are also convection ovens so we have a much higher demand on the electrical load. So the ones we use same little three-cylinder diesel engine and they hook up to a 6,000-watt generator. There is no compressor on ours, there's no alternator on them. Some have an alternator but most don't. They produce 6,000 watts of 110 out power, just like a regular generator would do right. So from there we also have some that are not APUs that make that 6,000 watts.
Speaker 3:We have the generator models which are just actual generators, like Onans, like you'd find on an RV. They produce 8,000 watts of 110 power. So we take those, we put them in the truck. We actually do the opposite. We take that 110 power and we make a battery charger to keep our batteries charged. So we're taking 110 and turning it, 12 volt keeps batteries charged, lots of power. We can run a rooftop, we can run our microwave, we can run our cooktop. Not all at the same time necessarily, like if you are cooking something in your oven, in your microwave oven, and you've got something on the cooktop and you've got your hot water heater going and your rooftop AC. Well, there's just not enough electricity for all of that all at once, but you can do like most of that.
Speaker 1:That's nice. To call that the Macarena A little bit right, You've got to plan a meal accordingly. Call that the Macarena A little bit right, You've got to plan a meal accordingly. You really do.
Speaker 3:In the water heater. It's one thing that catches most people off, because they're not thinking about the fact they've got a 1,500 or 1,800 watt draw that they may not even need. If you're not using hot water, that time turn it off.
Speaker 2:That's funny. You say that because we had a truck where we had an issue with that. We had to get it really cold inside. If it was hot outside, get the AC really cold, turn the AC off. Run the microwave or run the cooktop.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I never thought about the water heater causing that issue.
Speaker 1:You were today years old.
Speaker 3:I was today years old when I did that. Well, the next time y'all go out yeah, Usually.
Speaker 1:Laredo, I plan meals differently to where we wouldn't have to kick the AC, like he was saying. Get it cold, turn it off so you could run something else. I finally figured out more things like meats and cheese and charcuterie board or sandwiches or something different like that, because the truck we were in at the time out of the three just couldn't sustain cooking with the air conditioner when it's 110 degrees outside too.
Speaker 3:It's not like you can't turn the AC off for two hours to cook, and that included the Instapot.
Speaker 1:So even the Instapot plugged in drew enough electricity that the air conditioner would just trip the breaker every time. Water heater Never thought about that, yep, so you all out, trip the breaker every time.
Speaker 3:Water heater.
Speaker 1:Never thought about that.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:So you all out there listen to that Water heater.
Speaker 3:Yep, sometimes you've got to kill it with the breaker. Sometimes some of the trucks have just a switch. So then we do the 8,000-watt ones for the well as an experiment with, I should say, with some of the shower trucks Not all but some. So that's with some of the shower trucks, not all but some. That's kind of how we've built that.
Speaker 3:What happened was when we got in the business. We bought a factory sleeper truck. That truck had a tri-pack on it. We rebuilt that thing Literally. I think the diesel engine block was original. We know, uh, literally everything all the belts, all the pulleys, all the alternators, like the compressor, uh, the condenser coil, the, the evaporator, like everything. But I mean we got like 30 or 40 000 hours out of it, which is a long time um, and that diesel engine still ran just fine.
Speaker 3:It was just everything else about it that we had to replace and it was really reliable. It would keep that truck ice cold in the dead of winter. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:That sounds like your speed. Yeah, exactly, ice cold in the dead of winter. That sounds about your speed.
Speaker 3:So I kid you, not in that truck, because you're right, you could get it cryogenic levels. We actually bought it used and it was a cheap spec. They actually didn't do the winter package. So these trucks can get a winter package which basically means they have insulation in them. On a factory sleeper truck. They didn't buy that, so this truck had no insulation, it was just a vinyl wall, a space and the aluminum from the outside, so in the middle of winter. If it was a bright, sunny day, it'd be 100 degrees inside that sleeper.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 3:Because there's no insulation. The sun beating down on it, would just bake it.
Speaker 1:I never thought about that Now, if there was no sun, it'd be freezing.
Speaker 3:You know what I?
Speaker 1:mean.
Speaker 3:Right, so I would. Commonly, if we're sitting somewhere, we'd run the AC. Commonly, if we're sitting somewhere, we'd run the AC In winter, in middle of winter, and we actually had a time where the AC quit working and we're like crap, what happened? When we got a little further south, we had time on a load. We popped into a Thermo King. The guy showed me we had a piece of ice that got stuck on the fan and so when the fan went to go turn, it couldn't and it popped the fuse. And so when the fan went to go turn, it couldn't and it popped the fuse. And so the guy showed me like here's how to change fuse out. Didn't charge anything. He was the nicest guy in the world. Yeah, in the middle of winter we ran that thing because it was a poorly designed situation, but it was dependable.
Speaker 3:It rained really really well In the middle of summer in Laredo. It would still stay cold. It was a really good system. But again in laredo it would still stay cold. It was, it was, it was. It was a really good system. But again for the bigger sleepers it just didn't work. The first custom sleeper truck we bought, again used, had a power tech generator on it and that thing was a tank. It did not auto turn on to save your battery so you had to constantly monitor your battery, but when you did need it it always ran. It was always dependable. It was a great generator. And come to find out, when we started building our own trucks they weren't making them anymore. So we were like, well, that figures, you had a PowerTech, didn't you at one point, yes, how was yours? Or do you remember?
Speaker 4:It ran great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yep, quiet Never had any issues, it was just a really well-built generator. So we actually so we couldn't get those. So that new truck we ordered, we got the Onan, which was the equivalent of it, quiet generator, real power, all this stuff you remember from previous episodes. That thing got delayed, that truck got delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed. So we ended up buying a couple used trucks to kind of fill in the gap.
Speaker 3:And the first one we bought had a Comfort Pro on it. Now, I had heard horrible stories about Carrier Comfort Pros and I didn't know anything about them. I'd never experienced them. But I'm like, it's on the truck, we'll run it. If it doesn't work, I'll swap it out for an Onan, but let's just see how it does. It was such a reliable generator. I was stunned at how well it did, producing that 6,000 watts power. Again, if you're doing everything, you've got to balance a little bit, but still it would really take a beating and do quite a bit. We also bought another truck that had an Onan on it. So at this point we've got a TriPak, a Powertech, two Onans and this Comfort Pro, which is a wild assortment.
Speaker 3:Tripak won't work for the next truck because, again, custom sleeper, it's too big. The truck we were building was that M2 dry van and we didn't want to put an on it. Um, because we're trying to keep the cost down and I we'd had such good success with the comfort problem like let's try it again. And so we built with that tripod with that comfort pro on it and it worked great and I'm like, oh, another thing about them is the Comfort Pros would go 1,000 hours for an oil change and Onan. I think the book says 150 hours. We ran ours for 500. The book says 150.
Speaker 4:We would do 500.
Speaker 3:But that was iffy. If you ran it for 1,000, you would kill your motor. Like they're not. They're super finicky that way. So that was another nice thing about having the comfort pro. But when we started building our bathroom trucks, we're like, hey, these are nice big reward trucks, let's go ahead and put those onions back on them. So we started adding those onions back on and we did four or five, six of them, something like that.
Speaker 3:And then we found once these generators, these onans expensive generators, started getting two, three, four thousand hours on them. They started breaking down left and right and we were like you gotta be kidding me. So, okay, it is what it is, get to the shop, get it fixed, because the onans are primarily marketed as an RV generator. When you go to a Cummins dealership who Cummins owns Onan, they think of you as an RV customer and so they will very much do the all. Right. Well, you know, leave your vehicle here with us, and then you know, four or five, six weeks, we'll get it back to you and it's like, well, that's not an option, it's a. This is a working truck, right? So we found several cummins dealerships across the nation that were good and would acknowledge we're a truck and would work us in and get us back out, but that was few and far between. I mean, you had own ends. Did you ever run into that?
Speaker 4:we did, uh, and you were right, there was one place in particular um sacramento there's a Cummins the best, yes, the absolute best by far. Loved their facilities. They had shore power on the back of their lot. They would let us come in and stay overnight and plug in and free of charge, and I mean they were great. So anytime we had onan issues we would pray to break down in that area.
Speaker 3:Well, if you could just find a lot of Reno, it's just right there across the mountain yeah, absolutely. So, but that stinks, right, it does To have to send all your trucks to California to get their generator fixed.
Speaker 1:Has it gotten better.
Speaker 3:No, just a quick no. So we were probably. How many trucks were we in, I don't know. Let's call it eight own-ins in that. We just said we're going to go back to Comfort Pro and that's just how it's going to be from now on. So we built a large number of trucks with Comfort Pros and Carrier did something that was kind of strange. All these Comfort Pros were built in America, proudly built in America, yada, yada, yada. And they moved their factory to Canada and we're like okay, I mean, chrysler and Ford built a lot of their vehicles in Canada, so I wish it stayed American, but it is what it is right.
Speaker 2:What's your choice at this point? There is no choice.
Speaker 3:And when they made that move, those APUs started coming out with issues, lots of problems, lots of issues and we were like, oh man, you've got to be kidding me, so what do you do? We didn't want to go back to the own ends because you couldn't get them serviced, you couldn't get them worked on, so we just dealt with them for a while. And so we're like, we just dealt with them for a while and Eric and I were invited to go down with a few people from FedEx to the Great America Truck Show in Dallas and we were there repping our brand but also FedEx Kenyon kind of at the same time, and we had a pretty good trip. We were walking around the truck show and there was this group of people from dynasys.
Speaker 3:Now, I remember dynasys. They made a decent product but they used these like, uh, perkins and caterpillar they're I mean, everybody knows caterpillar, but perkins is another one. They made small diesel engines and, uh, those were 200 to 500 hour oil change intervals and so I never understood by the use those versus a kubota, which is a thousand hours. We went over there and I told them, like you know, I like your product.
Speaker 3:I just wish you use these engines and we'd be interested in buying some from you, and they're like we do and I was like what're like yeah, we started building with Kubota like a couple of years ago and I was like really, and so I sat down and talked with them. They had a 6,000 watt. Basically it was like a comfort pro killer in their minds. It was the same specs as what they did, only better, and I was like this is great, this might be an option for us. I said you know, what I really love is an 8 000 water, because our bigger trucks with the bathrooms and the hot, bigger hot water I mean you're talking 10 gallon hot water heaters at this point and all the stuff.
Speaker 3:I'm like I really like something that's a thousand hour interval, that extra power, something simple, simple to run. Uh, not a belt driven, I want a direct drive, apu that bolts on the side of a truck. I don't want to spend a $1,000 or $2,000 on a fancy case, to put it in. I want to make it super serviceable. We worked back and forth for a long time. Actually, they bespoke build us this generator.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:It was such a good thing. They put it on the market as just a product they sell. Now it's no longer bespoke, they just make it. We were really happy and we actually talked to one of our dealers here in uh columbus. They talked to the people from uh dynasties and um opened up them as a dealership and they started putting them on for us and I was so happy. We had this beastly 8 000 watt strongwatt strong generator. Did you have one?
Speaker 4:I did.
Speaker 3:Really. I mean some teething issues at first, yeah, but they dialed it in Really strong, really good generator. Then their little 6,000-watt generator which was the Comfort Pro killer. That thing was quiet. It's considerably quieter than a Comfort Pro. It was super sleek, looked really nice. They made the outside case out of powder-coated aluminum, not powder-coated steel, which Carrier did, which means no rust.
Speaker 3:You know, they just end up looking really nice after a few years. So we were very happy with them and we own quite a number of them, quite a few, yeah, and in the meantime we did get a few trucks with Comfort Pros on them still, and all those teething issues from Canada are all gone, you know. They're now making a reliable product again, sure. So we were happy with that as well, and so we kind of were taking both. I got to say, four or five thousand hours in we are finding out that this might have been one of those things I'm not as happy with. On the Dynastis yeah, so we have. This is one of those where, like it's a good product, it is quiet. I think their controller is trying to do too much. Like it's a really cool led, led screen, lcd lcd screen it's very nice, it's slick.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of information there. I would say too much information. It confuses the drivers as to like do I need to oil change or what? Because it's it's. It's selling way too much information because it's an intelligent controller that's always on. After so many hours of being on and we're talking, talking, days after days of being on, it'll lock up and you literally have to, like old-school computer, unplug it and replug it back in.
Speaker 1:Oh, and so Control-Alt-Delete, huh.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly. So it's like I thought we had an amazing setup and then have you brought it to their attention?
Speaker 1:We?
Speaker 3:have and they've done some software updates and they have worked with us Okay and things have gotten better. The other thing is we kind of have another situation, like the Cummins thing, where this is not a situation, where the RV side of it makes us they think we're a different customer than we are Right. This is just one of the downsides of working with a smaller company, is there just are fewer shops.
Speaker 1:Mechanics.
Speaker 3:Mechanics to work with. I think Don and Jimmy have identified several across the country, considerably more than the Onans, considerably more than Cummins shops to work with. But it's just tricky. It's not like Carrier, where there's literally every city in America has a Carrier dealership Sure sure. We've actually on our latest round of trucks, the Panther trucks I talked about a few weeks ago that we're taking delivery of. We did swing back to Carrier because they have come out with a new generator to replace the Comfort Pro called the Aspen, extremely similar to what they're already building.
Speaker 3:From a mechanical side it's the same diesel engine, same generator. That kind of stuff hasn't changed. The controller is new, but it's not a big fancy. You've had more experience than I have. It's not a big fancy panel like the Dynasys. Has experience with than I have. It's not a big fancy panel like the dynasties right, it's, it's actually more of a it's more of a simple right. It is um simple panel. The shell of it is no longer that steel that rust.
Speaker 3:It's actually like a composite I would say plastic. It's a fancy plastic. It's not just plastic plastic, it's. It's a durable, rubbery plastic. Um, so that means no more rust, no more ugly looking components, easy to replace if it ever gets cracked, kind of thing. So I'm excited to see what they're doing um with that and um going forward. We did buy a few onions I think we have seven of them now oh, to run our tractor fleet, yep. And we are finding out that that absolutely has not been resolved and we are still having issues with Cummins dealerships. So we currently have a spare Onan generator and we'll be using that to swap out when one breaks down and get it fixed, and then it's just constantly have one extra spare generator. It's ridiculous, it's the stupidest thing in the world, but you know we have to make up for their downfall.
Speaker 1:So you can't explain what you are and they don't go.
Speaker 2:oh, they just don't function that way internally, they don't care. Yeah, that's interesting, it's funny. They just don't function that way internally.
Speaker 1:They don't care. That's interesting, it's funny.
Speaker 2:I got a phone call today from one of our tractor teams who was temporarily in a straight truck. And so in the tractor they have the Onan, yes, in the straight truck they have the Comfort Pro. And he called and he said what menu do I need to get into to find the hours on this APU? And I said well, do me a favor, go back to the, the main screen, because it's okay. I said look in the top left hand corner. Yeah, he looked. He goes. Are you kidding me? Yeah, because on the main screen of the comfort pro in the top left hand corner is where you find your hours, where both the onan and the xyasys. You have to go deep into menus to find those hours. And he looked right at it and he thought I had to go into a menu to find it. So the Comfort Pros are much simpler. They have more buttons on the front than a Dynasys, but those buttons generally are single use versus navigating through menus.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it was a funny phone call to me.
Speaker 1:We only have the one right.
Speaker 2:We always have comfort pros for all three Three trucks.
Speaker 3:Super simple. We are by far majority comfort pros. We are, we probably have 80 comfort pros in the fleet.
Speaker 1:Do we have Aspens already on some trucks?
Speaker 3:One One.
Speaker 1:And you've fiddled with it, vincent, a little bit, yes.
Speaker 2:A little bit. I actually took that truck to the carrier dealer not far from us and had them walk me through some stuff, but we learned things about that controller that is completely different than the Com pro. Yeah, so it's, it's interesting, it's a learning curve yeah, yeah, well, what I like about it?
Speaker 3:so the own in tells you nothing. Eventually you have to go through in like see how many hours you have. It's very dumb. When you turn your truck off, you actually have to go and tell it to check Literally press a button for it to.
Speaker 4:Two buttons.
Speaker 2:You have to press two buttons.
Speaker 3:You have to press a button and then confirm it with an enter button for it to watch your battery. So if you forget to do that, oh to watch your battery.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you just got home. You're going to be home for a week. You need that thing to kick on and off while you're at home to keep your battery charged. You get home, you're unloading the groceries out of the truck into the house, you're getting ready to hang out and you forget to just press that stupid button. Come back to a dead truck. It's a $200 service call. That's frustrating with them.
Speaker 1:Where's the Dynasys and the Comfort Pro? Just automatically.
Speaker 3:Correct, and the Dynasys. So the Comfort Pro has the hours in there, but that's all it has. It won't tell you when you need a service. The Dynasys actually keeps track of your oil changes. So when you do an oil change it'll tell you, hey, in 1,000 hours. As long as you reset it, as long as you reset it, It'll actually count down and it throws a little alert up. As long as you reset it.
Speaker 2:As long as you reset it, It'll actually count down and it throws a little alert up. Hey, you need to get the service due, Right.
Speaker 3:So, that's a really nice feature.
Speaker 4:But again it takes you resetting it, but I mean like most cars these days, do the same thing with their oil change. You've got to reset it there.
Speaker 3:But it's just remembering to go and hit that reset. So they all do something kind of neat. I really like about the comfort the new aspens, I should say, is a lot of the programming is done behind the scenes on a computer. You have to actually plug into it and your computer tells it what to do. Battery monitor, for example I don't think anybody intentionally turns it off, but it is easy to accidentally turn it off on the Comfort Pro With the new Aspen. Once we set it you won't be able to turn it off. It will kick on and it will get better.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 3:Yes. So there's little things like that that are actually kind of sweet that I'm looking forward to working with on the Aspen and again learning it a little better. So you know, are we going to keep buying Dynasties? Probably, but we're definitely going to try the Aspens out and get a good feel for those yeah. It's trucking. All trucks break down. The good thing about having a lot of anything is you know when they break down, how they break down, where you can get them fixed that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:You start seeing those patterns.
Speaker 3:You see those patterns and you get really good at fixing them.
Speaker 1:How long has Aspen been on the market?
Speaker 3:Weeks.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are there others already currently using it, beta testing it? I mean, I don't know what the words are. We?
Speaker 2:might be the first expediters using it, we might be, but there are definitely some on tractors, I recall their carrier dealer talking about the Aspen six months or so ago. Yeah, but they were concerned that there wasn't a generator-only option at that point Because it was full APU with their comfort control unit or ccu, with heating and air conditioning coming off the the apu, and we don't use that on the ap right so this is kind of yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:It's a relatively new uh model of the aspen nice, yeah, yeah, and even unlike the the power only version of the carriers, the comfort pros the comfort pros, um, that's a relatively new product.
Speaker 3:so the old school ones part of why I said I was dreading it buying them because, um, I'd heard bad things they actually were a full comfort pro and whenever they installed them they actually the company that was doing it invented not Comfort Pro, but the actual company installing them invented a I'm going to call it defeat switch to be able to not install the CCU and only use it as a generator. So they were basically engineering these things after they were already built to do this and through installing enough of those Carrier said now what are y'all doing?
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:Carrier said well, we can just sell that to you. And so that's how the generator-only version of the Carrier even came to exist. Was this one company in Columbus already doing these conversions? And then, once Carrier started doing it themselves, way more reliable, way more solid, that's how that came to be. But same thing with dynastas.
Speaker 3:Dynastas did not have a um, a generator, only standalone unit. It was when we talked to them and kind of explained what we were doing that they just immediately, from day one, said yeah, we can go in there, it's for them, it's a software update thing. Right, they can just go in there and tell the software you're not going to have a ccu. Which is a ccu is a climate controlled unit, it's a software update thing. They can just go in there and tell the software you're not going to have a CCU. A CCU is a climate-controlled unit, so it's your AC and heat. So the display controller knows you don't have that. So it's not going to freak out Because, like any of these things, if it thinks you have it and it can't see it, it just shuts the whole system down.
Speaker 1:Makes sense.
Speaker 3:So you don't want it to think it has one, right? Yeah, it's been a very interesting thing. So they did get the Aspen obviously figured out, because we do already have those. But even with the Aspens, like this first round of trucks we're getting right now, not all of them have it. No, a couple of them are.
Speaker 4:Comfort.
Speaker 3:Pros because the switch just didn't happen in time for us to get them installed. So we actually have some of the older comfort pro models Now they're brand new units.
Speaker 2:Brand new, yeah, but they're older technology.
Speaker 3:Older technology. And then some are the Aspen. And it's funny because I was just over at Fighter Freightliner the other day and I was showing a truck to a team that they're going to be getting and I was like, oh look, it's a comfort pro.
Speaker 4:I was like oh look, it's a Comfort Pro.
Speaker 3:I'm like oh, so we have trucks we haven't even bought yet that have the older technology than what we've already bought. So it's interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, fun, how that works, my truck with the new one that you got us. When we were out we had the Dynasys 8K and I remember going the first time we had service on it. We went to our place here in Columbus and he told me he was like wow. And I said what?
Speaker 1:And he goes your serial number is 0003. Yes, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that kind of stuff that's fun. I mean, you know, to be a part of that creative process. And what's really fun is the engineer over at Dynasys. His name is Patrick.
Speaker 1:Oh, so it's like Patrick Square.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so all the emails are like Patrick to Patrick, from Patrick to Patrick, but being able to work with them and figuring little things out like the first round of design. We never built it round of design. We never built it, actually had the generator and the engine backwards of how it is now, and the reason that it is the way it is now versus what it was, is it was just me writing back going hey, I see, it looks like the oil filter on this unit is facing the frame rail. Is that gonna be hard to get to when they're servicing it? Yeah, and they were like, yes, it will and they revised it and flipped it around.
Speaker 3:So now it's when you take the cover off, it's easy to get to all that stuff wow, they put the fuel filter in an easy, accessible way. They put the air filter in an easily accessible area.
Speaker 1:So our company, our vendors, our shops are saying thank you.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have a question for you, though, about the engineer over at Dynasys. Did you call him Pat I?
Speaker 3:did not. I was curious, have you?
Speaker 1:visited or toured their facility.
Speaker 3:I have not. They're out of. I want to say Nebraska or Idaho or something.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think it would be fun.
Speaker 3:That's a bit of a drive, a little bit Cold, it's cold, it's 24-7 cold. I will say what's really cool is they do these generators for trucks and they also do these generators, apus, power units, for those massive cranes that are building skyscrapers.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Big tower, cranes, skyscrapers, oh yeah, and yeah, and they use them for, like, massive mining backhoes and not backhoes front loaders and these huge dump trucks and stuff. So their equipment is being used all over the place. That's cool. It's uh. It's not just a trucking deal. They've actually found a way to like, really um, spread their stuff around in a really cool way.
Speaker 3:They have a fully electric option out too. It's a battery powered kind of unit. You have to use a CCU for that. Because of the battery it doesn't work for us. Again, it's not sized for a big sleeper.
Speaker 3:It's a product we don't use, but it is a really uh thing. They have right. Um, thermo king has one out as well. So, um, I think that I think in the future we're going to see a lot of those come along. Um, I've been watching on the rv world so, like you know, a lot of times the rv world gets something before we will. The rv world.
Speaker 3:They're doing these lithium setups from the oEM, so from the manufacturer, not like someone's got an RV and they're retrofitting it to do this. From the manufacturer, where they're putting these lithium battery kits in that are strong enough to run an air conditioner. These are big, serious battery kits and they have worked with Ford or whoever who's making the chassis, or Mercedes, where it monitors the battery and it'll turn the RV's engine on, charge the battery. They put these huge alternators on them. It turns the engine on, does a high-speed idle with this big alternator on it, charges the battery system up quickly, turns the engine off and then you've got hours of air-conditioned like power for air-conditioning and everything, plus, obviously, when it's charging, you still can use all that stuff as well, they did a test on one.
Speaker 3:It was a class B van camper, so it's bigger than any sleeper we have. You know, this is a 20 van camper, so it's bigger than any sleeper we have. This is a 20-foot camper and we have, I think, 12-foots our biggest sleeper. So this is a lot bigger than what we normally have. And they ran that thing, they brought it to a festival. They checked the hour meter on the van before they left and they kept the inside of the RV. The rv set to like 72 or 73 degrees left and came back over 12 hours later it was still the same temperature and the engine had not kicked on.
Speaker 3:wow, so like yeah, it's wow now. The batteries were just about dead, the engine was about to kick on, you know like still 12 hours.
Speaker 3:It's still a crazy amount of time, and then it only charged. It's like an hour of runtime for another 12 hours of use. So I think that technology has come into trucks. I really do. It's just not here yet, because you have to get both the APU and the truck manufacturer on the same side. Right now they're bolt-on products that are separate. But once that thing happens, I think it'd be really cool to see what happens then. Because I'll tell you this, apus by far are the number one things that break down our trucks by far. Yes, they are, yes, they are. And so getting that to a point where we don't have to use that little diesel engine anymore, I can't wait. Wow. Now I will say too that system I just talked about with the RV. It's about $30,000.
Speaker 4:So it's not cheap.
Speaker 3:It's not cheap. An APU is $10,000. So it's three times the price. But you know, like everything with maturity, the price drops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the price will come down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's going to be exciting when that actually comes.
Speaker 1:There's a pretty cool story about APUs. I didn't know at all. I feel like I do now. Well, I know most of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, you lived most of it right. You saw some of that stuff happen In the Dynastus you only ever got to experience. But there were other Dynastuses that were right alongside your trucks because y'all were there in that stage where we were buying Comfort Pros and Dynastuses and all.
Speaker 1:That truck. We talked about it on the last episode where the battery died in the fuel island.
Speaker 3:Yes indeed.
Speaker 1:And we again last episode. But anyway, he's like go try the start in the APU when I fire this battery up. That's right, and I go back there and I'm like I don't know how to turn this one on, is it?
Speaker 3:push up and hold and you have to hold until it fires.
Speaker 1:I'm like it was an Onan and.
Speaker 2:I'm just not familiar with it, even working in the yard for the first year I don't think I ever we didn't have an Onan in the yard until we got that first tractor. We had trucks in the fleet that had Onans, but not many. A couple of them left, but we didn't have an Onan in the yard until we got that first tractor and by that time you were already in recruiting.
Speaker 1:So I'm in there trying to figure out how to start up an APU.
Speaker 3:It's not just you Our good friend Vince Chili I believe he goes by- I do I remember him calling me the first time?
Speaker 1:He ever got in the tractor and was like I pressed the on button and nothing happened. Nothing happened and I was like, oh, what is it?
Speaker 3:And you're like an Onan. I'm like, oh, it's a press and hold.
Speaker 1:He's like press and hold. You have to hold for a long time.
Speaker 4:You have to hold for a long time.
Speaker 3:And they lose their prime way faster than these other APUs do. So you will actually find yourself having to press the power off button and hold which is the prime, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Why do we like these generators again? We don't Dead quiet. That's why we like them Dead quiet, but even when I drove. So I had a power tech and I drove. I never drove a truck with an own hand but power techs were not dead quiet but darn close. I didn't like it because with a Comfort Pro running it's louder, it's consistent, it kind of drowns out the noise of a truck stop.
Speaker 3:It does Because a truck stop's not a quiet place, An Onan being dead quiet at a truck stop. You hear every break, every time someone hits their electronic parking brake, every time someone hits their electronic parking break every time the reefer. Next door, the guy's air dryer that goes off every 12 seconds. You hear all that, and so to me that's annoying. I would rather have this constant, steady sound of a Comfort Pro. Just ooh, it just drowns everything out.
Speaker 1:I was in the yard this week doing some minor touch-up cleaning and I was on an upper bunk and there wasn't very much room and I'm like I had finished cleaning it all and I'm like my back is killing me. So I laid down on that upper bunk for just a few moments, just to kind of stretch out, because it was kind of cramped.
Speaker 3:You were literally lying down on the job.
Speaker 2:I was literally lying down on the job.
Speaker 1:And the vibration of that generator. I don't know.
Speaker 3:There's something about it, you're ready to close your eyes and call it a day.
Speaker 1:I was and all I was doing was just trying to stretch the back out before I hopped down off that upper bunk, but I'm out before I hop down off that upper bunk but I'm like, wow, I I mean we've been off the road for two years almost two and a half years and I'm like there's still something about that. That generator, just that, that lull, I don't know. Is that meaning you have trucking in your blood?
Speaker 3:I'm not sure what it is I think it's just, I think it's a frequency it's 1800 rpm, oh, uh. So the carriers are constant speed. So no matter if they have no load or if they have the heaviest load, they're always going to maintain 1,800 RPM, which is why you don't hear them like like up or down or anything. It's constantly that same speed and it does something to our internal clock.
Speaker 1:It does.
Speaker 3:I think you know we work on 60 seconds in a minute, 60 cycles. Our electricity is 60 cycles, 60 hertz, like I think we've all been programmed so much to either 60 cycles or 24 frames, which is what our eyes like, that 1800 is divisible with both of those and it's like it just soothes us.
Speaker 1:It soothes, it, was very soothing. Can we hook one up and maybe run it out? Our neighbors will love us for it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, they'll love it.
Speaker 1:Can we hook one up, make the bed, do a little.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll work on that while you're gone last week.
Speaker 3:Okay, oh, that's awesome, and it's just not the sound.
Speaker 1:It's that again, that slight little.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's vibration. Yeah, yeah, maybe it does center a person.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's what I miss, I don't know Could be.
Speaker 2:I was reading the Onan manual last week so I was trying to figure something out with it, and the Onans have some great features for RV camping. You know they have a quiet time feature where you set your quiet time hours and two hours ahead of quiet time it will monitor where your battery's at and if it thinks you need battery overnight it will kick on to charge the battery, so it won't come on overnight. There's some really cool features on the Onan that just don't apply to us, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, and the reason the Onans are so quiet is they're National Park compliant. Every Onan made is National Park compliant, so National Park says no more than 50 or 60 decibels at 50 feet away or something like that.
Speaker 3:So it's very, very strict and they do have the quiet time hours because there's a lot of places that do have a hard. You cannot run your generator at night, you know in all fairness. So most RVs and all of our Bolt sleepers use a Magnum RV controller, which has a little thing on there AGS. Have you seen the button for AGS? It's one of the several little small ones, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:You've probably seen it and just didn't know what it was for, because we don't use it.
Speaker 3:AGS is auto generator start. So with the Magnum inverter you can actually tell your inverter to control your generator. Interesting, nobody does that on the straight trucks or on the tractors, but that's a feature. That's there. Now, how that works, how they talk to each other, do we need to buy a module?
Speaker 4:I don't know any of that stuff.
Speaker 3:But that's what most RVs have, so most RVs aren't using their Onan to auto on or whatever.
Speaker 1:They're using their inverter to do it. Do you remember dry camping in Castaic? It was dry camping Castaic. We decided to little lake right outside of the pilot there in Castaic, northern California.
Speaker 2:Southern California, north of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1:Right at the base, kind of coming over the hill of the grapevine. You come down the other side before you, north of Los Angeles, right at the base, kind of coming over the hill of the Grapevine, you kind of on the other side before you go into Los Angeles and parking Anyways. So we went camping at a lake and it was dry camping.
Speaker 3:That was Castaic, right? Yes, y'all did dry camping there, didn't you? It was called Castaic Lake. Is that the one that's outside of LA?
Speaker 1:Just north, yes, just north. Quiet hours. So we ran that generator all the way up until you had quiet and then we opened up the windows. It was a little on a cooler breeze and I prayed that it didn't start up.
Speaker 3:To charge batteries. To charge batteries.
Speaker 1:Before quiet hours ended. We didn't make it.
Speaker 3:We didn't make it. Did you jump up immediately?
Speaker 1:like no, yeah, I don't make it. Did you jump up?
Speaker 2:immediately like no, yeah, I don't remember what we did.
Speaker 1:I really don't remember, but I was mortified. I'm like they're going to kick us out at 4 am.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is one thing. That's one thing I actually like about the Comfort Pros. That frustrates me with the Dynasties. So Dynasties, if you're listening, make a note. So the thing I like about the comfort pros is that it will try to fire up no matter what. Yeah, if you have four volts, it'll give it a shot, yeah, the dynasties.
Speaker 3:If it sees like 11.9, I don't know what it really is. It's probably not that low or not that high, but it's like nope, not even. Not even to give it a shot, not even to try it. Your battery's too low. Oh, that makes me so mad, because you know, but it's like nope, not even going to give it a shot, not even going to try it.
Speaker 3:Your battery's too low. Oh, that makes me so mad, because you know what? It's a tiny little engine. 10 volts will fire it up. It won't fire your truck up but it'll fire that little thing up, but the dinosaurs won't even give it a shot. Oh, it makes me so mad. I wish they would take that program out, that program out, Like give it a shot.
Speaker 1:Vince I'd say flew across the room, but all of a foot and a half to the panel but boy when that thing first started doing the chugga-chugga-chugga to start on up, he flew across.
Speaker 3:Were you in the lodge, or were you in the chalet, or were you in Bagheera it?
Speaker 1:was Bagheera.
Speaker 3:The very first one. Them two. So you mean he like reached over Pretty much, pretty much, probably, yeah, probably, but boy, we both were sound asleep Again.
Speaker 1:We had the windows open, so there was this nice cool breeze. You probably heard that, yeah, and that thing first started to it was Yep.
Speaker 2:And we were only a month in, literally, oh wow. Maybe even less than a month in because we got home earlier than we planned, but yeah, we were literally a summer thing.
Speaker 1:But there were tent campers right next to us.
Speaker 3:Again, it was dry camping, so they woke up too, because if it was quiet outside you could hear it in a truck.
Speaker 1:The people across the lake probably heard us.
Speaker 2:The people in the tents were like and what can you do except say back to them so there it is, that's how they f***ed us. And it's funny because two days later we picked up a battery from Cummins in the Los Angeles area. Yeah, we talked about Cummins, a huge battery from them, and it was a box it may have been multiple batteries. Took it up to an electric motorcycle manufacturer in Southern Oregon. And that's the load that got us home for Dalton and Anna's wedding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, wow, that's cool. Wait, that doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry Y'all were. I thought Dalton and Anna were married before y'all came on board.
Speaker 2:No, they were married a month after. So we came on board on July 1st, yeah, and their wedding was early August.
Speaker 1:And I had to either do no bridal party and a wedding, or go to your girl's bridal shower and no wedding. Vice versa, one or the other.
Speaker 3:Oh, you got to go to the wedding. Go to the wedding.
Speaker 1:Because they knew we were starting right away and we knew the 21 days, or 75% of a month, and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3:Did you have thoughts of, okay, we're going to have to deadhead, yes, or was there any thought of flying, or no? Blah, blah, blah. Did you have thoughts?
Speaker 1:of okay, we're going to have to deadhead. Yes, oh yes, there was no option?
Speaker 3:Or was there any thought of flying or no At that point?
Speaker 1:it was just there was All the options were on the. I think I'm still sounding a little weird. All the options were out there they were, and then, when we first started, we made sure we let staff know that August is non-negotiable.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Not that that matters, but just knowing wherever we're at. This is how we got to get home. Well, I think that's fine. Because we had just barely started.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's fine. I know a lot of people are like oh, you know, we have something right away and we feel bad about saying it or whatever. But tell us, because we get, that your life didn't start six months ago saying I'm going to be driving a truck.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Like sometimes it does, but usually not yeah. So I have started jobs before where they've been like is there anything we need to know? And it's like yes, I have these hard dates that I can't work. After that, I will schedule everything around Sure.
Speaker 4:A new job. A new job.
Speaker 3:But I've already got these things set in stone. I can around, sure. Well, y'all need me too, but I've already got these things set in stone. I can't do anything about it. When we first started, we had a trip to mexico with some family members. Uh planned, and we told um, our fleet owner about that that we were going to drive for. And uh boy, at day seven we got a phone call. Why y'all not back in the truck ready to go? And it's like no, I literally told you, going into this these days.
Speaker 4:I would be in.
Speaker 3:Mexico, like I understand it, doesn't meet your policy. The exception was made when I told you about it before you ever sent me a contract, so I have no issue with those. It happens We've got lots of teams that come on board and they've got oh, I've got a family cruise booked on these days or I've got this, whatever.
Speaker 1:And a cruise. You probably booked that well in advance, Well in advance and they're expensive.
Speaker 3:They're a lot of money, so it's like, no, we get that.
Speaker 2:Speaking of cruises, I booked a cruise today for Sunday, so I'll be here next week.
Speaker 3:No. I just booked it today, you told me that you were going on a cruise on Sunday. I thought you meant like Sunday to like only on Sunday, like I thought you were doing. I thought you were going to Cincinnati and getting on the Ohio River.
Speaker 2:Right To go up and down.
Speaker 1:I don't even do a motorcycle cruise.
Speaker 2:I've decided to go ahead and take the whole week. Even though I'm taking the whole week.
Speaker 3:Well, you got to have travel time, right, yeah, travel time.
Speaker 2:I got to recover. You got to have recovery time. Laundry day Exactly.
Speaker 3:Grocery shopping day Right, exactly, Exactly Well you'll have so much company, being that Buttermilk's in Oregon. He's a bachelor, I'm a bachelor for a week.
Speaker 2:It's been a fun week being a bachelor?
Speaker 3:Not really, I bet it has. I thought we did those motorcycles.
Speaker 2:That's going to be fun.
Speaker 3:That was fun, that was a good time, that was a good time I loved that Well.
Speaker 1:thanks for sharing about the generators or APUs or auxiliary power units.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know I mean some of the stuff's boring. I apologize for that.
Speaker 2:I hope that we somehow Some of us find that interesting. Others will just fast forward to Jerry telling us what we missed.
Speaker 1:Jerry, if you want to learn how to push the button. If you want to learn how to push the button.
Speaker 3:You are not allowed to cut any of that out. You have this right here. It's all you, buddy.
Speaker 1:If you want to learn how to push the button on the APU.
Speaker 3:He had an eyes-open nap going on.
Speaker 1:If you want to learn how to push the button on the APU call 833 Highfield, there we go.
Speaker 2:You can also email us at 833.
Speaker 3:No what.
Speaker 4:TheAderbellPodcast at gmailcom. That's the one. Make sure you hit the thumbs up button. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. We have a lot of people that watch the show and listen and have not subscribed. So it not subscribed. So, uh, it helps us out. What if you didn't like the show? Um, I would prefer you to still hit that thumbs up button, and you know what?
Speaker 2:go ahead and hit it twice, yeah hit the subscribe button too, because we might get better or we might not.
Speaker 3:So anyways, uh, any button you hit, interact with us in the comments. We'd love to hear what you have to say, you can find us on podcast too. Yeah, you can find us on podcast Anywhere. There's a podcast out there YouTube, Apple Podcasts, the other ones that I'm not aware of. You're all welcome. We see your comments, we see your messages. We read your emails. We know where you live.
Speaker 4:Speaking of which I think it was. I may be wrong, so don't quote me, but I think it was Stephanie Hampton.
Speaker 1:It was.
Speaker 4:She said congratulations on being a new grandma.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you, I saw that. Yes, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:And if you are dropping us a cat emoji, we see you and thank you. I know who you are. So no, we are. I don't know. We're all a bunch of tired people today. Some days were really funny. Some days we have like this episode, but we wanted to get this in here so we didn't miss out on buttermilk. I know it's already happened, but I'm very excited you get to see your little grandbaby.
Speaker 1:Next week you're going to have some photos to drop in Cool Grandma sn.
Speaker 3:I have some photos to drop in Cool Grandma Snuggles. It's very exciting Like this one right here.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:That one is a little inappropriate A little bit. Oh, I could get him one. Huh, I get all this post-production and production.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll get one in there.
Speaker 3:This one's my favorite. I don't understand why you put a smiley face over his face.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. Is that just like privacy.
Speaker 2:Privacy Privacy. I get that, celebrity babies and all, yeah, no, I get that, I get that.
Speaker 3:You'd hate to have your stalkers like drive the Oregon Trail to try to find you know.
Speaker 2:No, maybe they drive the Oregon Trail to try and find her and they get dysentery. They'll make it.
Speaker 3:It's been a lot of fun. Thank you all, everybody hanging out with us. Thank you for watching us. We hope we got you a few miles down the interstate or at least a little laugh before bed. Until next time, stay safe and make good decisions.
Speaker 4:Don't leave money on the table and keep those wheels a-turning.
Speaker 1:Good night, bye.
Speaker 4:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye, we'll see you next time.