Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey folks, welcome back to the drone on show. It's Mike. Today we have another episode where I was on the road at the drone convention and I sat down with lots of different applicators at that show, just having casual conversations with them on how they got started and where they're at now. And so today is another one of those episodes where I'm on the road and having a conversation with another spray drone business. Let's get into it.
Alrighty. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we have James Harris. Would you tell us a little bit, where are you from, what you do?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: From Heflin, Alabama. Co owner of Southern Crop Services and Yellowhammer Drones. So we have a custom application business based out of Hartford, Alabama.
My co owner, Tyler McClaney down there, been running that for going on three years now on the drone side, but it's been a custom application business since 2016.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Okay, so not necessarily just drones.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Not just drones, but it was already set up as a custom application business.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: How old a fella are you?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: I am 35.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Okay. So about my age. Pretty, pretty young. It. It seems like this industry, a lot of young folks, there's some older folks adopting the technology.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: I've spoke to guys on the podcast that have sold drones to guys that have 70 years old that are still adopting to technology. That's cool. I was told that you. You sprayed last year. 80,000 acres.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: With drones.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, last year was with drones and with one ground rig and a side by side. And I say ground r outfitted a. You ever seen it? Heard of a Sherpa? You know like the amphibious trucks with the big, big tires on it?
[00:01:35] Speaker A: No, I never, never heard of it. But I can imagine what that looks like. It's kind of like a swamp bucky that you go shoot hogs off of it.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Right. But we did. It was called a fat truck is the name of it. But a lot of people, you know, referred to as Sherpa or what. But we actually outfitted that with tremble GPS and spray system on the back to do right away work with. Oh. So yeah, that was. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: So right away.
Power lines.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: And gas lines.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: And gas lines, yeah.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Could that work not have been done by drones?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: If you're not fighting the beyond visual line of sight problem.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: And just that thing is kind of unstoppable, man.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Carried it through anything and it will actually float with the weight in the back.
So it's. It's impressive, man. How. Yeah.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: How does it flow? Is it like a boat or what?
[00:02:24] Speaker B: No, it's the. The tires are like. I don't want to get it wrong, but I think they're like 60 inches tall and they only carry like 5 psi in them.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: So. And they're just big paddle tires.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: That is cool.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: So yeah, it has its own custom trailer where it has to like sit on blocks underneath it because you can't strap it down because you couldn't ever get the straps tight.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: It's just like a big old balloon.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: So how many. How many those 80,000 acres would have that part of it done?
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Oh, man.
No, probably well over 70 of that.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: 70% of those acres.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: No, like 70,000 of those acres.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: 70,000 of those acres were done with that buggy.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: With. No, with a drone.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Oh, with drone.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Okay, let's get into 70,000 acres with drones. How many drones?
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Up to seven or eight at a time.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: That's efficient.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: So back up a little. So I said that, you know, this company had already been established before we got into it with drones.
So we work on some really big contracts in central Florida. And our guys are actually there now. Tyler and the rest of the guys are actually on that contract now. And I think you told Ryan earlier he's actually help us out a little bit on this contract. But essentially we got 34,000 acres that we got to do over the next month. And that's all pasture, broadleaf control. With drones, you go.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah, dude. Could it be done with anything else other than drones or. Not really.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: So we started how. How the drone thing come about was my buddy Tyler, my business partner now had that contract and was spraying it with ground rigs.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: So have you ever heard of a terra gator?
[00:04:01] Speaker A: No.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: So it's a big three wheeled like boom sprayer, huge tires on the front of it.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: So started out with that, realized that the terrain was just too rugged to do it. Yeah, it's just native land. So you just beat the hell out of equipment and then ended up getting a couple John Deere sprayers. You know, 120 foot boom sprayers. And he got. Tyler got in touch with me a few years ago, was like, hey man, let's look at drones. Me and him. Go back. We were. We were college buddies, went to flight school together.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: I was. I was about to ask.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah, so we were buddies back in Auburn. We went to flight school together.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: So that's what my plan.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: So let's pick that up since we're in there. Flight school together.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: You're not just a drone pilot. You're a lot more than.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: No, I come from a aviation background, so I was a corporate pilot out of college. I'm a cfi.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: How long did you do the corporate thing?
[00:04:50] Speaker B: I did it for about three years.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Okay. Did you like that?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: I loved it. That was actually. I got my dream job right out of college.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: So I was flying an Aerostar out of Tennessee.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Just a multi. Multi engine.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Just pretty fast.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It's one of the fastest pistons made. Like it was a bullet, man.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Had a little bit of time in a Pilatus PC12.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Oh, dude, that's my dream plane.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Can we. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Can we just slide a T50 in the back and take the whole crew and here we go.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Exactly. Did that. A lot of flight instructing. So I. I lost.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: You look pretty young to have done all this, man.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: I was really, really blessed with some opportunities.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: How old are you?
[00:05:27] Speaker B: I'm 35.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Oh, so you're my age.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was really. I. I actually started.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Did I ask you that question already?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: You did.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: I've been talking so many.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: It's all good, man.
But you're like this dude.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Can't remember.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: No, it. I actually started flying when I was 13 years old, dude. Yeah. So I soloed on my 16th birthday.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Come on.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So aviation, what did you fly? It is a 172.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: I mean, how many people can say that they were flying it?
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I don't. I think I cherish it a little bit more now than I did then. You know, it's just something I really like doing.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: You know, you bring that up and, you know, this podcast doesn't just have to be about drones. It's about how you know who we are and how we got started. Because you bring that up. Like, you didn't. Maybe you didn't. Did you appreciate it, like, say, if you grew up? Because I'm a pilot as well and I have my daughter next to me and we're flying. Right. We're just ripping through the air. She's sleeping. It's like she doesn't even know that this isn't common. Like, this isn't. It's normal to her, but not to most people.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: No, it's not. And here's the thing, too, is no one in my family has aviation background. Don't ask me where I got the bug from. I have no idea.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. No idea where I got the boat from.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: How did you start flying then? If your family Wasn't flying again.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: It's just something I've always had a passion for. Like, I've always liked airport.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Did you just go to the airport and find.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so my, I got it for my birthday present on my 13th birthday. My, my parents got me like one of those, you know, discover flights or, or whatever, and I just wouldn't let it go.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: That is cool.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: And so they were like, okay, we'll just, you know, start lessons. So I actually did my private spread out over like three years to get it done. But, but yeah, I just. That aviation's just always kind of been my thing.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: That is so cool.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Okay, so you've been in aviation, you were corporate pilot?
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: You. You met your business partner? Yeah, in college.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: In college, that's right. Yep. And he, he just kind of gave me the opportunity, honestly, because he, he has the agriculture background. Okay. He, he was a row crop farmer before he went to, to school at Auburn. And he was actually going to be a pilot to pay for his farming because he loved farming so much. That was kind of his deal. And I was lucky enough that he, he wanted me to come along this ride with him. Right. So he called me one day and said, hey man, have you looked into ag drones? And I'm like, I've not really, you know, I said, what do you got? And we were actually on a fishing trip in Louisiana when he brought this up to me and he said, let's go to Auburn and look at it. We're gonna. There's a demo going on up there. I said, okay, let's go check it out.
And went and looked at it. And a month later we ordered our first two T40s.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: And then a month after that, we bought two T30s.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Come on.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: And we haven't looked back.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Okay, so, okay, so you're just getting into doing drone spraying.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Don't know much about it.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Learning yourself, teaching yourself.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Well, there was no one to learn from. Correct. Like it, it was completely new.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: New.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: New.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you even know how to like get started? Like trailer setup, truck set up, what?
[00:08:35] Speaker B: So this is where again, I didn't have agriculture background, so I leaned on Tyler a lot for now. I did have the aviation background, so I was in charge of like, you know, the licensing and trying to get that stuff rolling and figuring out what we needed for a 137.
And this is still when to get our 137. We had checkrides. So like the Fizz Doe was showing up and doing this stuff. Instead of just giving it to you. Right? Yeah, but so we kind of divided and conquered on that, and we went through and just built our first rig. We actually went a little bit viral on Internet with the first rig that we built.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: It's that big black Unimog that's got four drones sitting on top of it with like the.
Yeah, it's pretty. I'll show you a picture on our Facebook. But we built that and built it off of a.
A spray tank off the back of a John Deere sprayer and put that in the center of the trailer, and then we put this big 60 kilowatt generator on the back and so.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: So you're getting into drones, but you had the contracts already.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Exactly, yeah. Had that contract.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: How to do it better or more efficiently?
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Well, you know, I went back to how that land was so native and everything, and it just beat the equipment to crap. So Tyler, in his mind, was going, I got to find something to cover this.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: That maybe will work. Well. What better than to fly it? Right.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: So that's when the drone idea come about. It's like, let's go figure this out.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: So the first. That next year this would have been in 2022, I think, is when we first tried it. Right. So we go down there with two ground rigs, and then I go down with our big black Unimog built with four drones and tackle it. And that was our first trick to try to figure the drone thing out.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: And how'd it go? Did things go good or south or not? The grid crashes.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: A lot of lessons.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Right.
It went really good. Like, I had some really good days doing was figuring out, can we fly to. Can we not fly to? You know, you're still in that gray area. We don't even know what swarming is at this time. Like trying to. Trying to stay legal, you know, but it went really well. Figured out how to get really efficient flying those drones, you know, and figuring out their nuances and all that kind stuff. And did any drone school? Absolutely. We have wrecked them every which way you think you can, man.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: But. But every time that happens, you learn something that. Why you got in that position. Just like when we go through flight school.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Like, they put us in a, you know, an. In an awkward position in the airplane. Yep. And it's like, figure it out.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: If you don't do that, how are you ever going to know?
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: So. But yeah, everything was a hard lesson.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: And we just, you know, just Picked herself up and winning again. And when we got out of that. We finally got out of that contract, I. Because it just kind of took forever to get it done because we did want to do some stuff with drones and it brought more opportunity on that contract to do different things. They reached out to us and said, hey, can you help with aquatics? Hey, can you help do some of this wildlife rehabilitation and stuff like that?
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Would this be like a state?
[00:11:41] Speaker B: No, this was a private. Yes, private. Yeah. Yeah. So this, this ranch has 500,000 acres. 450. 500,000 acres.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: And that was because your business partner just knew the right people.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Yep. Just had it locked that contract up. Had some really good relationships. And it's still going. We're actually spraying on that contract right now.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Right now, as we're talking. As we're talking at Alabama. Wow, that's. That's impressive.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Working on it right now.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Oh, God. And how many drones are there right now?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: There's six in the air right now.
Yeah.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: What are, what, what are your guys's average days acres covered?
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: I know. Some is high, some are low. Let's just. Let's just say that things are going good.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: So they've sprayed the last four days, and we've ranged from 400 to like 780 acres.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Okay, so are you guys flying that slower than what a row crop would be flown at like 32ft per second?
[00:12:38] Speaker B: No, we're wide open. Letting it roll. So we're.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: For me, like, I'm thinking of that amount of acres with six drones in the air.
To me, I would think we should be a little higher.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: You think so? But here's the logistics is the problem, and getting around all that ranch is the problem.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Again, going back to the real native thing, right? It's. This ranch is 60 miles north to south as a bird flies.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: So I've literally access roads to everything.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: No, no. So you're driving through these pastures that may be a 3,400acre pasture. It'll take you an hour to drive across it.
Wow.
So it's not. It's. It's a. It's a logistical problem. And that's why we tore up all the tractors and the spray boots and all that kind of stuff. All that weight out there, just getting thrown whacking even. You know, this is a cattle ranch, so no tractors work on it. Some of them do, but all the work's done still on horseback.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: What?
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: This is cool.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's the largest cattle herd in the United States is in Central Florida. And a lot of people don't know that.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah. That's valuable information. Thanks for sharing that.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yes, there's 30 something thousand head of Catt One Ranch.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: No way.
Okay, so that's your biggest challenge, is navigating the ranch, good locations to set up properly.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And see every, like, the ranch is broken up into, like, units, and then there's pastures inside those units. Right. Well, we're not just spraying everything as we're going along. They're picking and choosing which ones to spray. So you may spray a field, you know, over here in this corner, and then it may. You get done here. Well, it may take you an hour and a half to drive to the next field over here to spray. Okay, so your, your efficiency is just all over the place now.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Sometimes it should be hard to quote. I mean, can you even quote that, man?
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Honestly, we do it per acre. Yeah, but it's just, you know, you make it work because you got to get it done in such a small amount of time. And the money's worth it because they throw so many acres at you. Yeah, but you got to do a good job. You can't just, you know, can't just let it go, dog.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: So, dude, I, I didn't even know that there's somebody that has 500,000 acres and is still running cattle on it. And you need to be a cowboy to navigate it.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's nuts.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: It's nuts. How crazy is this? You got to be a cowboy to navigate it. But there's drones spraying it. So it's.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: You have the most primitive and you have the most advanced technology in agriculture going on at the same time. And look, you know, when they're pushing these cattle and stuff that we have to shut down, so you'll see them pushing cattle or whatnot. And then we'll just have to land the drone and everything. So they just may be pushing these cattle right past our drone and everything.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. But like, think about, like, if a helicopter or airplane is spraying that it has to spook the cattle, right?
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, even the drones do okay.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: The drones.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Well, some of them, you know, sit up and kind of just look at you, like, you know, whatever. But.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Yeah, but just from a noise standpoint, I was thinking that an airplane or helicopter would scare more than a drone.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Would, but yeah, it's probably. Well, you got to think that drones only, you know, 10, 15 foot head.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: So. Yeah, but yeah, man, it's. It's pretty wild. You'll sit out there for days and not see a single human.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Do they camp out there or. No, like the guys that are working the work and.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: No, they'll go back. They live on ranch. Most of them that they have their own housing and everything out there. So last year I actually pulled a camper and parked out in the middle of one of the pastures and found there was old campsite that actually had power still run to it. So we went and wired up a 50amp plug and went out there and put a plug in and I pulled a fifth wheel out in the middle of this pasture and just stayed in the middle of a pasture last year.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: And stayed there for like a month and a half.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: That's cool. So oftentimes on these podcasts I talk about it's a grind. Like, if somebody thinks that they're going to be a drone spray pilot, it's just going to be blue skies and roses. Don't be fooled.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: This is. It's hard work. It can be rewarding, it can be fun, but it's also hard.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it was hard. So the first year when we first did that, so it was kind of me and Tyler were trying to figure it out. Right. And you. You burn through some guys, you know, traveling and doing all that. I ended up staying gone away from the house like seven months that first year. Seven, eight months the first year.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: That's putting it in.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: And it was tough. And I've got two small kids at home, too, so that was, you know, a different learning experience for me. But it's a grind, man. Waking up every day spraying seven days a week, not saying no to anybody. You're trying to get a new business going. You're trying to learn these drones. Like, you just got to wake up and do it.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: So your guys's drone company or drone application spread fast because contracts were already in place and you were willing to travel.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Well, that. And that was the one contract that we knew we had. So we like, had a base. Yeah. So let's go get this done. Make sure it works. But then it never stopped.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: The phone never stopped ringing when we got up. And I'm not complaining.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: You know, if we just kind of hit it right. And that first year, we actually sprayed more than we did last year.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: We broke a hundred thousand video.
It was nuts.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: But yeah, it was wild. It was wild. And we sprayed from, you know, central Florida all the way up to Tennessee.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: That is cool. Dog on. Good for you guys. So you went to school to fly jets? Probably that's what you wanted to do, right? What, do you regret not being able to fly jets or.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: No, I'm not going to say that's not where my passion still is, but I was able to feed that a little bit through this.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Like, you know, I still get to stay, you know, in the aviation game and learn this and I've really grown to enjoy this part of it. I really have.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: That's cool.
Do you see your guys's drone company? Would you ever acquire a airplane to help with the acres?
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Oh, well, we've actually talked about that. We actually looked at it and I say looked at. We briefly talked about, you know, adding a helicopter to it. At some point we actually had a local crop dusting outfit come to us and ask if we wanted to buy it. Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: But then, then you did the numbers. You were like, I'll just add drones to it.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. No, yeah. You can't make the numbers make sense. Yeah. You know a million dollar air tractor. No, man. You know how many drones I can buy with that?
I'm good.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: And now they just drop the price.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Exactly. And, and I'm the only one that can fly it, so I'm not doing that.
So.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Yeah, but it, it is crazy when you do the numbers. It's like the guys want to compare one drone run airplane. No, that's not how it works. But take the dollars.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Whatever dollars it takes you to buy a two million dollar airplane now, how many drones can you buy? I know it's going to take more personnel. Right. To fly those drones. But still, overall cost of operating, you start doing the numbers. Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: It's stupid.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: You can get. The numbers get crazy really fast when you start adding aviation in it.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: It's pretty wild, man.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you think that airplanes and helicopters will be obsolete?
[00:19:38] Speaker B: No.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: At some point?
[00:19:39] Speaker B: No, No, I don't think so.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: I honestly think the drones are getting to a size now where they're not going to get much bigger. We might agree with that. We might see 100 liter, which I think we, you know, is going to happen. But if they keep getting bigger, we're.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Getting away from why I could not agree.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: And yeah, I think what's going to happen is you're going to get, you know, hybrid stuff showing up.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Which I've, I've looked into that. That kind of blew my mind to how that really works. Right. How hybrid motors work with drones. Yep. Battery, batteries are obviously going to get better.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: But if you get away from the size like the pika. I, I cannot wrap my head around the pika and why that is justifiable. Right?
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: That's still a million dollars that you got to go spend to do this.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: And when I went and saw it, you still had to follow it around in a van for a visual observer.
So I'm gonna follow my Cessna 150 around in a car.
I can't make that make sense.
Yeah, but, but yeah, I don't, I don't see them getting much bigger. I see the capabilities getting better. But the size and being able to put in the back of a truck.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: It feels like we're, we're really close to being at max because now you can't even really pick them up by with one dude. Like you have to have multiple guys.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: So here's. I'll throw out my tinfoil hat. Like, like this is what I think it's going to turn into, right?
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I think they're going to turn into kind of like irrigation systems. So what it's going to be is you're going to have this dock station on your farm at the end of a pivot with a tank, and this drone is going to come back and you're going to program it to whatever you want to fly on your farm and it's just going to pick itself up, go into that, fly to it, fly to that field, apply in that field, come back and land on that dock station.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: So you're going to have like a half mile area that this drone is.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Going to cover and it just kind of stays there.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: And it just stays there and does its house. Yep.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: So you're, you're thinking that all farmers will own their own equipment. You think, you think so?
[00:21:33] Speaker B: I do.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Okay. I, I slightly think it'll be different than that just because farmers are too busy already to deal with it. What, what if it equipment fails or this or that?
[00:21:43] Speaker B: Well that's true. There's always going to be redundancies.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: And that things. But in large row crop operations, I think autonomy, when the autonomy really hits, you're gonna see the size of equipment shrink.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Dude, now that you bring that up, that maybe that's why DJI is doing so much research on like the dock system. Have you seen that the DOC 3 where like an Enterprise drone.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Oh yeah. It actually will land at, at speed.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Like I, I've seen that too now.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Like that you might be onto something.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: And that's just me. What I think is gonna happen.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Well, you know, we're recording this now, in 20, 25 and 10 years from now, we might be listening to this. Be like, yeah, I did say that.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: But. But I even see just farming in general, like the size of tractors are going to shrink and you're going to have. Okay, you spend a 800,000 to a million dollars on a. On a big tractor right now with some implements, right?
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Yep. Yep.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Well, what if everybody just goes and puts a, you know, a 60, 80 horsepower tractor on a ground. On a piece of ground with all the implements and you put auto steer on it and you just have tractors running in every field.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Huh.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: You replace that million dollars with one tractor with eight tractors, and now you just got a guy running around with diesel and hydraulic fuel and our hydraulic oil and just making sure everything's running and everything's getting planted and taken care of at the same time.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Dude, I think you're onto something.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: That's just where I see it going.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Huh. That's crazy.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: And I think some of the other guys see it too. You see everybody selling these auto steers and everything coming around.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Interesting. Do you think that it's too late to get into this custom drone app business?
[00:23:21] Speaker B: I think it's shrinking.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: And I think you're going to have to have contracts to survive.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: It's. They're going to turn into lawnmowers.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: So landscaping. Right. I've got a little bit of landscaping background with my family.
You. Everybody can go out and buy a lawnmower and. And cut somebody's grass.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Well, there's so much stuff that you can spray with a drone that's going to turn into that, like in every. And everybody's going to start slashing prices are going to beat each other's throats. Yeah. You know, your Fly by Night guys are going to come in and just wreck the market on price. Not saying they're doing a bad job or anything like that, but just the price is going to get driven down to a certain extent where I. I'm not going to get into it.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: How. How long do you think it'll be till that. That gets here?
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Five years?
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: It's. It's like.
I agree with that. If we can keep up with. If supply can keep up with the demand. Because right now it feels like it doesn't matter how many drones you import right now.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: There's not enough of them.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: No. That's right.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: It's always like you need more and more and more.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you get that announcement that TGI Made today and just throw a wrench into everything, I guess.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: So what drones do you guys run?
[00:24:32] Speaker B: So we DJI right now we're adding some XAGP 150s in this year. So. Anxious to put those out there.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: And see how they run.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: So how many drones do you see having in your fleet?
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Well, if you add the ones that are coming now, this is not going to be flying at one time, but we're going to have right at 12 agriculture drones that we're gonna have access to.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: And then of course, we got the Mavics and, and stuff like that that we do mapping with. And.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: But so when you go out and you do these pastures, ground acres, are those already mapped with like a Mavic 3e where they're orthomosaic stitched together?
[00:25:08] Speaker B: So last year when we first started, we didn't map anything. And we learned quickly that we got to figure out something. Right. Going off those old maps that come on your remote already. Last year we started mapping some and towards the end of the year, everything was getting mapped before we went and sprayed.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: This year, to start this contract, we went down there for two weeks and mapped everything.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: On that big contract.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: So do you think you guys could save yourselves time by just flying the drone around the boundary of whatever you're about to spray and just seeing the obstacles like. So the way we do it is we'll fly around the, the edge, create the boundary. So now we see what's in there, and if there's a tree over here, we go fly around it and then we create that as an obstacle rather than actually going to take photos, stitch them together and then building it. Have you guys tried that?
[00:25:56] Speaker B: So, yes, but it's. We find it's more efficient just to have updated imagery. We go in there and we'll build the boundary actually and not put the obstacles in it. We'll just build the boundary and updated imagery and upload that. And then our pilots, when they get on scene, if they need to add in obstacles, they will. Because we've also figured out too that it's sometimes it's more efficient to fly the field and not mark the boundaries and just fly your break points.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Explain.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: So, you know, on a DJI system, you know, you, you come up to something and it'll see an obstacle and then you have different start points. Your break point one, your break point two, or whatever. Well, it is quicker to actually just take over that drone, fly it around that obstacle, and then continue on this way.
So we're getting a lot more efficient just doing it that way Than actually marking that obstacle out and flying. Yeah.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: That is interesting.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So it puts more stress on the pilot. I won't say, because you do got to pay it. You must be paying attention anyway.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: But it is more efficient to just fly that and fly that hand. Fly that manually, fly that around that obstacle, and then continue on his path.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Dude, that's cool.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Now, when you get in there and you obviously. You see a tree head or something that you don't want to fly around, Build obstacle on that.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: But when it's just, you know, I call them toothpicks. When you just got toothpicks to trees just scattered around. Just fly it.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So are. You're in flat land. So the drone's not necessarily trying to avoid.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: You're. It's brake pointing.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: And then pilot grabs it, slides it around.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: Have you tried doing auto obstacle avoidance where it just goes around it?
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah. It just slows it down too much because it slows it down to, like, 23 foot a second. It won't fly at 32.8.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What if you put it in mountain mode? Would it just go up over it or hill mode?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Not in that. Because we don't want to spray the trees there.
So they try to keep all the shade they can on those farms for the cattle Just because it gets so hot and everything. So that's good. Yeah.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: What else did you learn through this? That that would be some gold nuggets for guys that are maybe doing something similar where they're doing a lot of pasture work, and they're like, how can I get more efficient?
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Because you just tell me, like, creating that Break point. I get that now.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: That you. Because say you have to build or you don't even see it. Right. And you forget it. Rather than, like, spending the time and trying to do it on your controller. Just sending it out there. Break point. Okay. Grab it. Boom. Boom. Slide around, Continue on.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: Never even thought about it because I. I don't do much of that work.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: I'd like to.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: And actually, you get more coverage and what I say. But that is because you're. You don't know how big you made that bound. Or that obstacle when you made that. Yeah, that's right. So you actually get closer to the tree and you actually get better.
Yeah.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: And that's not gonna work for everybody, right? Yeah, that just works for. For what we Got going on down there.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: But I'll tell you what, flying like that will definitely make you a better drone pilot and make your.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Oh yeah. It gets your situational awareness.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Situational awareness up. But it gets your.
What am I trying to say? Like confidence level way up for you to try different jobs.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Aquatics was something that we felt comfortable getting into after we figured out how to really fly these drones.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Tell me about aquatics. Never. I've never sprayed aquatics. I know that the drones are capable of spraying stuff over water, but how's it different than say row crop?
[00:29:21] Speaker B: So the chemical side is wild.
And I, I'm not going to sit on here and talk like I'm a master in chemical. Tyler is a freaking chemist when it comes to this. But when he, we started getting to aquatics, he was like, you know, what he thought would work, wouldn't work. So it was a completely different learning.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Okay, deal.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: And you can't, you know, you can't go into a pond that's just covered up with lily pads and spray everything. You deoxygenize the water and you kill all the fish in it. So an aquatic job may be like a three, four, five time application.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: A year.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Just depending on the size of it. But we did stuff, we did stuff in Florida too, where we had to.
We went and bought a. Just kind of like a. A platform boat and stripped everything off and put a mixing station with some IBC totes on it and pulled it out into the reservoir with some. With our other boats.
Threw out some plywood and, and flew cypress heads. Flew lily pads. We did everything out there from off a. A platform boat.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: That's crazy. So what made you want to go out in the water rather than doing it from main.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: You couldn't get it to it from the land. It was too far. It was too far. Yeah. So we had to do it from water.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk about that. Why would somebody care that there's something growing that far away from mainland? Like what are you controlling?
[00:30:40] Speaker B: That they were just controlling vegetation in this lake. That, that was a prime place. They like leased out. That's right.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: That. Oh, that's interesting.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: It's like a 300 acre, 400 acre reservoir. It's huge.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: It's crazy. Never even thought about that. Like if you have a prime fishing.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Lady and that's the stuff that come out that we wouldn't looking for either.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: It was just phone calls.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: It was like, hey, can you do this? And we said, we said, sure.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: I'd be really curious why, like, how'd that guy find out that you guys do drone applications?
It's just a friend at talking.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Everything was word of mouth that. With us, we had a little bit on social media, but everything else was just word of mouth.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: That is cool.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: It was wild, man. It still is wild.
It's crazy.
And. And then you get into the whole, you know, hey, where can I buy one of these drones? Hey. Well, then we started capitalizing on what we learned and selling, and that's where Yellowhammer comes from.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: That's why we created Yellow Hammer Jones.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: It seems like, because we're so early in this. Like, same thing with me. Right?
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: I was just flying it as an applicator.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Gain the experience and people want drones. It's like, well, I've gained the experience. I can probably sell you a drone. Yeah, Same thing.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: At some point, it's probably not going to be like that because everybody's going to be or have a drone and not everybody can sell them. But it is pretty interesting that a lot of guys that you would talk to here that have been applying now for a few years have also started selling them.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Yeah, well, they. I mean, let's. Margins are pretty good when you sell one. Yeah. So that was a big draw.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: They're still decent. But can you imagine what they were.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: When they first started out? Oh, man.
I know how much I spent.
Right. But, yeah. Yeah. No, and, you know, props to agri spray on that model.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: You know.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: I mean, that. That. That's. Why not.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Why not put it out there and sell it, you know, Make a hit.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. I was. I talked to Taylor on the podcast before, and it's like, yeah, let's capitalize.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: That's it. Welcome to. Welcome to America Capitalism.
But yeah. And I'll tell you another thing that's been interesting. Navigating is the training part of it.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, let's get into that. So you're a cfi, so certified.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: That's right. We talked a little bit about this over there. Like, I've had. I've had talks with the fisto.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So let the listener know they might not know anything about how this process works. So I want to fly a drone that's over £55.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: How do I do it?
[00:33:08] Speaker B: So well, right now there's not really a test that you take with that other than your Part 1 of 7 to get your commercial license. Right. Your drone license, but everything else is under exemptions. So you're.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: And that means you have to petition the faa. You have to basically say, fill out all this paperwork, you get on your knees and then you go, faa, please allow me to fly a drone.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and wait on them to give them your, their blessing for you to go fly your drone that you've already had to buy. Yep, yep.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Because you have to get the N number for it and for it.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Because the new process, now, I don't know when you guys did it. You need a drone that's registered and you need your chief operating before they'll ever do the 44 8.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: You used to be able to get the 44807 prior to. Yeah, all that stuff.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Now they make you spend the money up front and then wait.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: And they don't love government bureaucracy for that. Right, they don't, they won't tell you how long you have to wait.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Okay, so in the exemption that you receive from the fa, they say you can only, what, provide training to, to.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Your people, to, to your pilots. Like me as the CSO of the company, I can train my guys, I can give sign offs for that are visual observers or their pilots or nighttime or now single drone operation or swarming and novio flights. So I can train all my guys legally and sign them off. But anybody outside of your realm, you can't touch that. But how do you get experience doing that?
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: So my argument to the faa, well, let me back up. I actually got to help teach a class at Auburn with agriculture drones. And before I did this, we were going to fly drones. I was going to show everybody, you know, a demo and do all this. Well, I called the FISDO and was like, all right, look, here's what's going on. So I'm going to have 25 people that are not covered under my paperwork flying in this class. I just want to make sure that we're on the up and up, up.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: And he said, well, you know, first, do you have your 137? Do you have your 44, 807, all this? I said, yeah, I've got all that.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: All of it.
[00:35:04] Speaker B: And I'm a cfi.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: And he was like, oh, okay, CFI for drones.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: No, so flight instructor for. On the fixed wing side. Right. And he, I was like, can I, can I teach this class?
And he said, well, if you have all that license, you'd have to sign everybody off. I said, well, I'm not going to sign everybody off. Yeah, to be a pilot. Right. I'M just teaching them, showing them how it works. Exactly. And my example was I said, look, I'm a cfi. I went to Alaska and flu and I got my seaplane ready.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: I said, had to be fun.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: That was cool. I went up there with another friend and we stayed up there for a little bit and got it.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: I want to go fly, but I feel like, tell me if I'm wrong. You know, I'm east up in high. I've. I've never flown around mountains. I should probably get training when I get up there.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah, do that. Yeah, don't go up there and just say it's going to be fun and go off. Don't do that.
But anyway, going back to the example is, you know, I've got, you know, five, six, seven hours in a seaplane now, and I'm a rated seaplane pilot.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: But as soon as I got my flight service certificate, technically I can teach.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: That with five hours.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Right. And I'm like. So I took that same logic and I started talking physical. I said, look, since I'm a flight instructor and this license or this certificate is under me and it says that I can teach these things under me, well, why can't I teach this class? He was like, oh, you're okay. You have your license, you got everything. I said, can I get that in writing? No, man, you're good. He said, just, if anybody calls, I'll make sure that you're covered.
So I was looking for a golden ticket. Yeah, yeah. And they, and they never sent it.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: But they at least are aware of that class.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a problem in the industry right now. I, and I've had this conversation with the FAA because they call me on it when, when they've seen training on our website. They're like, you can't provide training. I was like, guys, you're the faa. What's your goal? Safety. Right? That's what you are claiming that you're about? That's right, safety. What is safer? Me giving John that has never flown this 75 pound heavier drone and say, John, good luck. I hope you don't hit anybody. Or me standing next to him, or me on the controller showing him all the things and I hand him if he gets in a situation.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Well, here's how backwards it is. The cso like me under my company, probably you under yours, is we have to train ourselves how. What, you sign off yourself under your company. How backwards is that? Yeah, it's because there's not another rating in aviation that's like that you self certify everything.
No, but you self certify yourself.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: It's like they have to feel a little.
I don't want to call them dumb, but like you.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: No, but they. Why not leverage the guys that have experience?
[00:37:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Why not leverage that?
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And if. And if it's even that. That's what I was saying. Like if you have to hold a CFI fixed fixed wing rating to be an instructor, then for a drone, then those people would go get it. And we can then train under the book.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: They don't even tell you if you can't do. They say it doesn't work.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know what they're gonna do.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: And they also don't even tell us if they are trying to make it work or working on something. Right. They talk about part 108, but they've been talking about part 108 for how many years?
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Like it could literally be 5, 5, 10 years till it ever gets here.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah. The speed of government is slower than a snail. So it's gonna be interesting, man. We. We forget. We forget how. How new we still are. Yeah.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Even though we have lived, breathed and ate this and sweated and, you know, everything else for the past three, four years doing this, we're still in just the infancy.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Yes, I couldn't agree more.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: You know, I told myself, and I still believe that I travel all over the place. Right. And I told myself the first time that I'm driving down the road and I see a drone spraying that is not associated with me, I'm going to stop and talk to him.
And in four years, that has not happened.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: You've not. No way.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: No way.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: I've had it happen a couple times, but it's, It's. We're in a hot area doing corn fungicide. And there's other guys.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: I have never seen a drone flying that was not at a demo or something, but actually working in a field.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: That I was not associated with.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: So.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: See, and that still tells me how new that is.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Well, that and how big the industry is.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: There's just so much. There's so many acres out there, and.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: People think, I'm gonna get this and go spray fungicide on corn.
No, there's. There's some 10 million other doors that you can go down.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: 95 of our business at Southern Crop is herbicide work.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: That's cool. That. I'm glad you brought that up. It says it's like I. That's what I was Thinking is just corn because that's kind of our bigger, you know, bigger crop up there. But if a guy is willing to travel or if you want to do pasture ground work or you want to do some early spring burn down, it's available.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: You're going to need to learn how to do it. It's.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: We spray 11 months out of the year down south. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah. 10, 11 months out of the year, we're spraying.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Oh, dude. Yeah, that's crazy. Up. Up north, I call it good if we work 60 days.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: That's wild. But.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: But we do pretty well.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: In those. Yeah.
If A guy invests $130,000 and everything goes good. Right. You say contracts, I say acres. Have the acres.
You can get that paid down in probably 45 to 50 days, I think. So.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Yeah. If, man, me and Tyler talked about this a lot. Like, what if we wouldn't have just grown and just kind of said to ourselves and was like just sitting. Our hometown, this raid, probably been a lot less headache than what we did and probably made now. It's, you know, it's going really good now. But first, starting out, you know, maybe it would have been better just to sit down with the one drone and go out and fly for your neighbors.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: And do you guys do any local work?
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: And so where would home be for the spray businesses?
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Hartford, Alabama.
[00:41:07] Speaker A: Hartford. So how.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: How.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: How many of those acres. 90,000, 80,000 that you guys did last year would have been in, you know, kind of around your home area?
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Oh, shoot, man.
Oh, probably 20,000 of it.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Okay, so you traveled a lot.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Yeah, we travel a lot. And, And I will say this are the amount of acres I don't want to just put out there. It's like, oh, yeah, 100,000. That is shrinking. And it's not shrinking because we're losing business. It's shrinking because we're getting more quality work. Like, what I mean by that is this contract work is a little bit more profitable. We're not having to go out and chase everything. We're kind of sucking that in a little bit and figuring out different segments to spray in that you're getting a little bit better, better return on other than just, you know, row crop.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a guy that I talked to here, he.
He was. He'd rather not share on a podcast all the specialty work that he does.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: But holy smokes, he is making bank.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, there's plenty of opportunities out there.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Special work that drones are used for, say, for power Lines.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Like, he showed me some stuff of how he's doing it. I didn't even know that's a thing.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Dang.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: Like, I'm like, oh, my gosh. Yeah. So think outside the box if somebody's thinking about getting a spray drone.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: A spray drone is, in my opinion, one of the most versatile piece of farm equipment there is.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. Yep.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: It's not a single use piece of equipment.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: No. You can use it for so many other. Do you guys do any, like, cover crop or seed or fertilize?
[00:42:34] Speaker B: The only thing we've ever done, we. We fertilized some lotus ponds one time, and that was. That was about it.
Fed a few doves, put quotes there, you know, but. But not a lot on the dry side at all.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: That's crazy. So before we go here, what would you tell a guy that wants to get into it?
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Do it now. Yeah, I. I think it's still. It's still ripe to. To get into it now. And don't be scared to just pursue everything out there.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: Is it easy money?
[00:43:09] Speaker B: It's not as easy as people think it is.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: I will say that. You. You have to wake up, you have to go spray. It is hot, it's. It's windy, it's dirty. You're messing with chemical every day. Like, it is not. It's not going out there and just flying a drone. Flying the drone is the least part of this business, the least amount of it. Right.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: And here's the thing that I had to learn to get into agriculture because I didn't have agriculture background.
Agriculture does not wait on birthdays. It does not wait on weather. It does not wait on things you have going on. When it's time to put something out, it's time to put it out.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: So when it's time to go to work, you got to do it. That could be a Sunday. That could be, you know, your kid's birthday. That could be a holiday.
When. When crops need something. Your custom applicator is one of the few people that farmers let touch, let. Let on their property and mess with their way of living.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: I mean, very, very few. How many other people do the farmers let come on and mess with their stuff?
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Good point.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Custom applicator, is it?
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: And we're probably some of the most detrimental to that because we could kill everything.
So they're putting a lot of trust in us. And when they need something, they need it when it's needed.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: You know, there's no. You got to go do it. It's go time, dude.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: And that was, that was a hard lesson to learn on me. Tyler kind of guided me through that because he grew up in the. He was a real crop and all that. I didn't have that.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: And that was, that was an awakening for me to realize how these guys work. As a farmer like you, you've got to be out there. And when they need it, they need it now.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: You know, it's not a hurry. It kind of is a hurry up and wait. But you got to be ready to press the go.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: But yeah, when it's ready, it's, it's. Yeah.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: So don't look at it like you're just going out and fly a drone. If you're going to get into this, be ready to work. Because it's not just as easy as going out there and doing it. And spend the time to learn what is efficient.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Make. Don't go anything over, you know, half cocked. Like, make sure you got a good generator. Make sure you have more than you need when it comes to your equipment. Stuff like that. Like, don't just go with the bare minimum on things.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: Like if you try to cheap out, it will cost you more money.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: In the end.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: If something says like generator size. Right. If you need a 9,000 watt generator, don't go buy a 9,000 watt generator. Go buy 12.
Please.
Would you would.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: Okay. Now that you brought it up. Generator. I love the DJI generator because the, the weight to power ratio that that generator produces. There's no other generator that has a weight to power ratio. Is that. What do you guys run?
[00:45:48] Speaker B: So we. We don't run the DJI generators. All of our rigs are built on the back of one ton or three quarter ton trucks. So kind of like truck skid type stuff. So we run. We've got a 15kW diesel that's on one of them.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: North Star generators are really nice. And then the good old trusty harbor freights that you can go out and you buy the warranty on it and trade them out every year.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
But what have you tried the DJI generator?
[00:46:14] Speaker B: We have, but we tried to simplify it where there's only one thing on that truck that's burning fuel.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: So like our pumps, everything's electric. Everything beyond that.
[00:46:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And you couldn't do that with the Jeep.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: And just the space that it takes up, it's A one use, single use generator. But. But again, they nothing will charge a battery like one either.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:36] Speaker B: You know, so you're.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: You're running all your pumps are electric pumps and stuff?
[00:46:40] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Okay, that's cool. Nice. So you. You have one diesel setup. Why not more diesel setups? Too heavy or.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: No, that is kind of what we had laying around to finish building out what we. What worked for us. So we took that.
That diesel off of a trailer setup that we had. Okay. And put it on the back of a truck.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: So we started out with one big trailer, and then the next year we went to a couple smaller trailers and a big trailer. And then this year we're running all trucks.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Because the type of work you're doing, you're trying just.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: We look at it like ants.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: So we got a big mixing station, you know, our tender. And then everybody fills up that morning and then just goes.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: And it's spread out and goes and tackles everything.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: Dude, I'd love to come see your operation sometime.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: It's pretty wild, man. It's pretty cool. We had. We had some. Some apparatuses built on first started going on. It was. It was pretty wild.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: That's cool. All righty. Well, I really appreciate your time podcast and sharing your knowledge. It means a lot. Yeah. All righty, guys, that's all we got for today on this podcast. We'll catch you guys on the next one.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
