Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Alrighty, guys, welcome back to Drone on Show. We have a good one for you guys today. Some more custom applicators and we'll get into the details of what all it is that you do. I'm Mike.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: I'm Dave.
[00:00:11] Speaker C: I'm Jared.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: And I'm Dennis.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: And we're here at the Spray Drone end user conference. And you walked up and said that you'd be willing to join us on the podcast. So I would love to hear.
How did you get into the industry?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Sure. So in 1999, that's how I started. We got into the custom application business.
I was a potato onion grower, besides having cattle and took a pretty big hit. Had to come up with some other different ways to make money in.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: What state was this?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: This is in eastern Oregon. Okay. We gotta always say eastern Oregon because there's a big difference between eastern Oregon and western Oregon.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Politically wise or.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, politically. You know, you see a picture of Oregon, you see all these trees and beautiful streams in Oregon, most of it just sagebrush and rattlesnakes. All right, so it's the western side or eastern side of Oregon has virtually no trees. And the trees that we do have are cedar, or we call them juniper. We get rid of them.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: You know, because they're not.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: So they're not good for anything.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Well, firewood. Firewood. They drink. They drink a lot.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: We need firewood for those, you know, campfires.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah. We're interested in, you know, three inches of snow and shuts down Kansas City.
We. We would. It would. That's an anomaly for us. We don't understand that kind of stuff because our. Our mountains get feet, not inches, where you live. Yeah, where we live. Exactly. So it's a lot different than what western Oregon is, not only politically, but geographically.
So we always make sure we tell everybody we're from eastern Oregon right on the Idaho border.
And our.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: You have mountain views where you're at?
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Within. I. I'm a snowmobiler, so within an hour I can be. Well, not this year. We're looking at only about 40 to 50 inches. Is all in the mountains right now. We've had a.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: That's it. Just 40 or 50 inches, you know,
[00:02:01] Speaker B: so last year we were snowballing in 7 and 8ft at some point in time. But this year, no, we're not. We don't have that luxury this year. But anyway, so it's mountainous. Right. We. We don't get up and look out the window and see 25 or 30 or 4. I know why people Left this country on Oregon Trail. They got tired of seeing their neighbors that were 30 miles away. You know, they had to go someplace.
I can't believe how flat it is. But anyway, we got into that. I took a pretty bad hit. So we got into customer application, primarily government contracts.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: We do a lot of ag, but our specialty has been rangeland, which most of our country consists of rangeland. All the farm ground is pocketed around water.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: You can't. There's no such thing as dry land in our country. And you get further north into Washington. Yeah, you get into that Palouse country. But where we're at, there's no dry land. It's all irrigated. So there's a lot of open range land. Sagebrush, open range land.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Would that mean that's where, like, cattle run?
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Correct, exactly, exactly. And that's primary. The cattle industry in our county, I realize our county is bigger than the state of Rhode island, so that's just the county. Right. So our county cattle and calves is probably our primary year after year. Sometimes onions make more money, but they're more of a specialty thing. But year after year after year, our industry in eastern Oregon is primarily cattle calf operations. Okay. So that's what they run on.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: So we're going to go back. So you were, in 1999, you said you were custom application applicator with ground rigs.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: With ground rigs, right. Mostly a lot of noxious weed stuff with just four wheelers and pickups and
[00:03:41] Speaker A: that kind of thing.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Okay, okay.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: And so like hand wand stuff.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot. So nozz.
Well, because you're going through brush, you don't want to have booms out there because they catch the brush.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Okay. On the side of the. Of the side of the pickup, the side of the four wheeler, we have nozzles that shoot out, oh, 12, 15ft, and now they make them up to 30, but not normally.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: So it'd be kind of like a rainbow.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Exactly. Very similar. Very similar. Kind of like, you know, not like an end gun on a pivot, by no means, but more like a. Just steady stream. And ideally, the good ones, the new ones have a consistent pattern. So the old ones used to more on the end than in the middle, but that's a whole other issue.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: So we started doing that. And then in 2017, I looked at the drone industry and say, you know, there's going to be. That's a long time ago for the drone industry. I looked at it and said, it's going to be something that's Going to come up. Yeah. We did our research. We decided to go with a company. I'm wearing an XAG T shirt, but I'm not. It's all good. They. They let you have one of these shirts if you buy enough of them.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: So.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: But you paid about 80,000 for the shirt.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: I wish was only that much.
But our first drones were. What is that little one called?
[00:04:56] Speaker C: So we had a TTA M8A Pro.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Five gallons on it, tjet nozzles and a six foot boom.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: And that's xag or.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: No, it was TTA was the company that they had a TTA American, TTA China. Obviously we got them through HSE back.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: And that's what we originally started with back in 2017. And mostly we did some rangeland work with it. Again, it was T jet nozzles and a boom. It wasn't very.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Okay, so the listener, he might be new, you know, and he knows nothing. What's a T jet nozzle?
[00:05:27] Speaker C: A T jet nozzle. So basically, on the end of all your. Your spray booms, that kind of stuff, your T jet nozzles have different size orifices.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: They usually come out in a cone or a flat fan. When you have multiple on a boom, they're just meant to do, you know, being only so high off the ground where if I'm flying with a drone, I'm 10:15. Rangeland stuff, we're a lot higher. To compensate for terrain, you're not getting a lot of prop wash because they're really small. So your droplet sizes weren't great.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:55] Speaker C: But you could change out your T jet nozzles to different size orifices to help increase that.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: So back then, a lot more work went into adjusting your droplet if you were flying and you're like, geez, I'm getting drift compared to what we have now with the atomizers. We can just do that.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: You didn't have the option to adjust your droplet. If you did, you had to change everything.
That wasn't. That wasn't an option back then. You know what a backpack is, right? And the nozzle you have on, that's a tjet nozzle into your backpack. So the first drone we had was nothing more than a backpack with wings, you know, or props. That's all it was pretty rude, pretty crude. Did it work?
Not really.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Not really. Okay, like the drone didn't work or the.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: So no, the drone actually was phenomenal. In fact, we still use it today. Oh, and this is a drone from almost 10 years ago. But we use it mostly on the seed spreader portion of it. Not the always. We don't use the sprayer portion anymore. The seed hopper on it we actually use for larva siding for mosquito control. We spread granule, biological granules, which is bacteria, out into swamps and sloughs. And that eats mosquito larvae when it hatches. Right. Mosquito larvae eats it and then dies. And so that's what keeps mosquito abatement. So we still. It's a quick, easy drone to pop up in the air and manually fly around to build out your. Your polygons for some of their larger areas is very simple.
And so we actually still use that today. It was an octocopter. Props are only about 12 inches long.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: On it.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: And smallish drone.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Smallish drone, absolutely. So, I mean, you didn't get it wet. You can't hose it off like the new ones. You can look inside and see the motherbo board.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Oh, geez.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: So.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: So that's good. You're sharing that. That drone is 10 years old or older.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: 10 years old, yes.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: So it's like, guys are asking us all the time, well, how long is this equipment going to last? It's like, honestly, I have a T40, it's still working, but it's only, what is it, four years old?
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: It's like, who knows? It might last like you're saying 10 years.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Yeah, but our problem's not going to be how long the drone lasts.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: We're.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: We're down to what, two batteries left?
And you can't get batteries either. So that's. There are.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: It's got that point, you know, it's a good point.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: You're bringing parts for it. Even though the drone hardware itself may be lasting that long, but you don't have the. The support system to keep it going.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Because I didn't think nobody else want.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: I mean, that company, I mean, it's morphed into other stuff. Obviously, we were working with HSE at that time. We work with Raptor now and others, but primarily were a Raptor dealer. You know, they went to XAG and then of course, they took on Vector and now Cirrus Air. And so we've also updated, even though we still have that one and it still has its place.
We keep telling everybody, you know, we talk about the Cirrus Air as a great big huge beast of a machine. There's still a need for smaller drones. There's still guys who got 5 or 10 or 15 acres or in Our case, they got a patch of noxious weeds on a hillside somewhere they don't need. First of all, they can't pick that thing up, move around by themselves. They need something they can throw in the back of their pickup, go, spray, come back.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: So I feel that's why DJI is making so many different sizes, because, you know, they just released the T55 and the T1 hundreds in China. It's like, well, wait, I thought we moved on from the T50 series. Well, no, it's. They're still building drones for different sizes, correct? Yeah.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: And. And rightfully so. Yeah. You know, it's back to the chemical thing. We know in a minor crop industry and in rangeland that our chemicals are limited because most chemical companies look at where are all the. Where's all the chemical going out? It's going into corn and soybeans in the mid. In the breadbasket of America. So they design their chemicals where all the money is, right? And then those of us who are minor crops thinking, oh, man, you, you know, we could use it. We need this particular bug or this particular fungus or whatever it is sprayed and it's not labeled to do that crop because they spent all their money labeling here. So we had the same thing with drones. The drone industry looks, oh, man, there's tens of thousands or 20,000 or 30,000 acres per guy out here spraying. He needs to cover all this ground quickly. Well, that kind of. So they say we're going to build a drone for that. Well, they forget about those of us who are ones are still doing things that, you know, our average row crop field is 28, 30 acres.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: You know, and so we still do
[00:10:21] Speaker C: 30, 40,000 acres a year, but it's those 25, 30, 40 acre plots at a time.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Now when you get into rangeland, now you're holding, it's a whole different story. Rangeland will be thousands of acres in one spot. We do a lot of after firework and after, you know, we don't have. I tell, we don't have hurricanes or tornadoes. We don't have crocodiles. But we have fire in the west, right? And so you have a fire and it devastates everything.
We come back in. Primarily, right now, a big thing is sage grouse habitat. Endangered species are keeping it off the endangered species list. So some of our money comes from that habitat restoration.
Some of it comes from after fire, where invasive annual grasses. And, you know, when you have a fire, the one we just finished, well, we haven't even finished it. We still got Some stuff to do on it. It's an ongoing thing. Was 130,000 acre fire.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: So out of 130,000 rolled or like a wildfire.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: That's a wildfire. These are all wildfires that I'm talking about and you have controlled ones. But most of the wildfires in the west are uncontrolled. They're. This one was man caused. Most of them are usually they are, you know, lightning dry lightning. Cause, you know, and one strike of lightning and then a wind blowing it and there's nothing for, you know, 70 or 80 miles before you come to a, a river or a highway or a pasture or whatever else. So it's, it has nothing to stop it.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And it just keeps going.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: It just keeps going. So. And they do a pretty good job of stopping it. You know, we. But if it's wind driven and it's, and it's got flame length of, you know, 25 or 30 foot high, you're not stopping it until you come to some.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: That's why it's called a wildfire,
[00:11:59] Speaker B: you know. And there's a whole industry based around that. Right. So we go in after fires, invasive annual grasses, because we want perennials to come back, want good grass to come back. We want the shrub habitat to be right. You know, so it's somewhat tried to be managed at that point in time. So we'll spray thousands of acres of rangeland after fires or even to prevent fires also. That's obviously instead of having an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff, let's put a fence at the top.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Right?
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So we try to spray some of these invasive annual grasses that are really prone to fire ahead of time and get. Because there are certain grasses don't burn as well as others.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: And so there's a lot of money, a lot of time spent on that.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Is that federally funded or is that mostly private individuals paying for that type of application?
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Most of it's federally fund funded, the vast majority of it. Right now this is a biggie for us. You know, the government does not want non ndaa.
You know, and now there's some guys getting away with it. We're not sure how because we've been government contractors since that 99. I don't know how they're getting away with it.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Okay, so most of your guys work is government work.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: The vast majority of acre wise is government work. Yes.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Okay, that sounds challenging because what you're bringing up for the listener is like most of our drones come from China and if it's Federally funded. You can't use a Chinese drone that isn't a blue drone on those projects.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Correct. Very true.
So a lot of private stuff, because if you, if you have a ranch and you got, you know, say Your ranch is 30,000 acres and 15,000 needs to be sprayed, most ranchers can't afford that on their own. So they'll get government assistance.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: So now you got the thing. Okay. If it's government assisted, can it be sprayed using drones though? It's on private. So you got that whole industry there. Most of the time we're okay. The government hasn't gone to the point where they say, no, you can't do that if you're taking our money. If it's going on private, we can spray it. And that's where.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Okay, so you bring that up. I sold a drone to a guy in, I think it was New Mexico. And he was doing some type of government funded program, but because it was on his own land, he was able to buy a DJI drone and then he was going to do the project that the government was funding rather than giving it to a contractor.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: I was like, that's fine. Exactly. And that happens to us most ranchers.
And we just had this discussion with the Boise State, that group that was trying to. How do you sell to ranchers?
You know, how do you sell your ag product to ranchers?
Most ranchers, those guys are busy. They don't have time to come in after, especially after a fire. They got fences to rebuild. They got to put their cattle in different spots. They don't have time to come in and spray. So they hire us to do it. We do sell drones because we're dealers. We do sell drones to some of those guys that intend to do it on their own. I don't think the, the vast majority of them do it that way, though. Most of them are.
They'll hire us to do it. Okay. Because it's the timing of it's got to be done quick and we'll just come in with however many drones we're going to use on their particular job and just come in and wipe it out and get it done.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: So when you were starting, you, you got, you know, the drone you were just talking about 10 years old, it didn't work that well. You said. Yeah, as far as the application, the
[00:15:18] Speaker C: application part, the seeding part on it, that we did, because that's something else we do after the fires will reseed different grasses, perennials, after the fires as well.
So some areas they'll just spray for the annual grass in some areas. Depends on what you spray, whether you can seed the next year or you seed that year and see what more natives come back. So we'll spray things like. Or see things like Crest wheat. That old drone back in the day was great. Had a, you know, hopper on it. It seated just fine.
We had to solder out a different auger size onto it, you know, to. To do those poundage. About 20 acres or 20 pounds. The acre where we're on larva sighting, I'm doing like, something like eight.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: You just change augers out there, not like now where you change out screw feeders. Yep, Yep. We used it for that. Did quite a bit. It still flew. I think max speed was 14 mile an hour.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:03] Speaker C: You know, we're. We're. Now we're. We're flying 40, pumping out 20 pounds to the acre with no problems.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: So from that drone. What?
[00:16:10] Speaker C: So from that drone, we went and had a. We had a T30 for a little bit that. That we were working with.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: DJI system.
[00:16:15] Speaker C: DJI system.
And then we were looking into these xags that came out, and we liked the application of a P100. Issues with yours. We had issues with ours, but that sucker is still flying.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:16:29] Speaker C: And it's been crashed a couple times, as any drone pilot knows. You crash.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: We've clipped mountain sides and stuff with it a few times, but I've been able to build it back up, repair it, and fly it again.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: We call her ladybug.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: And so she still.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: The biggest problem I had with it was it. It would work good one day and then it wouldn't work the next day. And it was just hard to stay consistent.
[00:16:50] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: With looking professional.
It was, yeah, you don't want to
[00:16:54] Speaker B: show up a customer. And not exactly.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: It was just. It's just so embarrassing when you're next to the customer and he's like, well, what's going on? I was like, I don't know. It just won't fly. And so, you know, I. I tried it. I think, dude, I love their hardware. Like, I think xhe has really good hardware. It was just the user interface that I didn't. It didn't chime with me, but. So you graduated into bigger drones as.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: Yeah, we did. We did a P100 back in 21 and then ran that until 23, and we got a P100 Pro and we've just upgraded everything. We did not get a 150 ourselves, mainly because I spent a lot of time working on P150s for customers.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: And we. We were still running our 100 and our 100 Pro and it was getting the acres.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: So like that we are upgrading to a 150 max though ourselves.
Mainly because I'm retiring the old TTA we called Kraken. It looks like sin.
So it's been. I've modified it a few times and so we're kind of retiring that one and going to move our P100 into doing our larva sighting, which is what the TTA has been doing mostly on its own.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: So just spreading the larva granule hopper on it. And we'll use our Pro and our 150Max for most of our applications.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Nice. So did you guys from the T30, you're now, you know, at the P150 max. That's what you're going to have. Did you give DJI another chance at all in the middle there?
[00:18:20] Speaker B: No, we didn't because we have a.
My farm Borders a Aqua Spray.
Okay. Dealers farm. Okay. He was dealing at the time. Agrispray was dealing.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Just to keep civility within our industry and our neighborhood.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Because you wouldn't have been able.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Allowed. Well, we would have had to buy from him.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: And so you would have been like a sub dealer.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Well, yeah, maybe. Perhaps something like that.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: But at the time, who we were dealers with was Raptor HSC. They were still dealing DJI's as well. And so was our neighbor at the time, before they switched to E. Okay. So we didn't want to deal, so we just stuck with the other products. We didn't deal with DJI's. Yeah.
Literally our neighbor, we see his house from our house, you know.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: Kind of thing. So now obviously both Companies don't have DJI's anymore. No. We haven't given them a shot. Again, there's some reasons we.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: We really like the spraying that the platform of XAG does. Okay. When it comes to the quality of the spray itself or the quality of the application. Yeah. You talking about there's glitches here and there. 150 was a huge example of that. Connectiv. Connectivity issues were big. Right. Most of those connected. Well, the vast majority of those connectivity issues are to have been taken care of. But with the quality of spray was phenomenal. Okay. We just. Yeah.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: And if it works, then why fix it?
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Especially when we knew what we were doing.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: I would imagine there's very few people within the United States that know Xags as well as he does. We've rebuilt Them, not just ours, other customers. You know, we rebuilt them from ground up. There's not very many errors that we haven't seen. You know, the Facebook warriors out there, you know, what is this problem? You know, and they get on there and there's Facebook.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Okay, so there might be some help you can get through Facebook, but I just feel like it's just a cesspool of drama.
[00:20:16] Speaker C: Well, I just say failure is louder than success.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: So you hear all the problems, but. Okay, you got 30 people complaining about this. How many of those drones have been sold in the US Those guys aren't on there telling them why did. They're just out there doing work.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: You know, we don't have time to go there and say how good it's.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: How much difference in traffic is there between spray season and non spray season on, you know, big. When they're actually. When these guys are actually out there working. You don't hardly hear anything from Susan. They're done working. Oh, man. They're all over, right?
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Yeah. We have a social online presence. You know, we have bear, and we Instagram and Facebook and Websites and all that, which, you know, I'm kind of old school. You can see by this white in my beard. But I understand that Dennis, he's probably older than you.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: I'm loving this.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: It's like one of the first times
[00:21:06] Speaker C: where I've got guys that are older than me.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: And the entire show, it's like everybody, when I walk around here, I see people. You know, it's like. Like today. You were very honest and very upfront. I. And I, you know, based on your videos, I was expecting some kind of hype going on, basically. Right. Because you do just a great job of social media.
Right. But your answers that were direct to that one guy that asked you questions about the chemical, I had to ask somebody. Oh, man alive. You know, I'm. Like I said, I've been in the custom spray business in 1999. I'm the guy they ask. Right. I'm not an agronomist, but I've been doing it a long, long time.
We burnt some, for instance, just to kind of side note, we burnt some onions here a while back. It's been two or three years ago because everybody was used to ground rigs
[00:21:53] Speaker A: that put on for the listener. Burnt, meaning you sprayed something and then the onions d. Well, didn't die, but they turned brown.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Okay. Or the tips of them turn brown right between heat and oil, because we were putting on three gallons of the acre. Well, two and a quarter of that was chemical.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Primarily oil based chemicals. Well get 105 degrees. That oil on the plant just, you know, it's just like frying a. Frying an onion. Right. I mean it's the tops, but it burns the tips.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: Just a disclaimer. We weren't spraying in 105 degrees.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: No, no, later that day, staying on there, trying to kill the bugs. That's why you put all that stuff on there, you know, let the bug find the chemical or the chemical find a bug. And drones are really efficient about covering the entirety of the plant where that's why people are doing 20, 30 gallons with ground brace rigs. Because they had to have that much out there to have it drift down into the neck of the onion in this case. So drones would force it down there. The prop wash gets it into that plant. So it was being highly efficient, but in this case it became too efficient. Well, nobody had done this before. Nobody had sprayed three gallons of acre with a drone or with anything. You know, and so we had no idea that we would burn. You know, we're also now we got strips through the field, especially where the onion was already stressed from lack of water or whatever the case may be. So that's just one example. So those kind of things we've learned the hard way.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: So what did you learn there? Because I'm thinking, why weren't you able to spray 3 gallons?
[00:23:28] Speaker C: So part of, part of it was the. There was a number of different stickers, adjuvants added to this, which is what the agronomists would have normally done on a ground rig. Well, we learned I don't need all that oil based sticker to cover the plant.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: You know why, why don't we need that?
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Because the effectiveness of the drone covering the plant and penetrating all the canopy and stuff like that was so much more than a ground rig. It didn't require those stickers.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:56] Speaker C: Those activists.
So essentially what we talking with agronomists, because we did, you know, lots of. Just to give you an idea, A third of the nation's onions come out of the valley we live in. What they're. They're in the Idaho, Idaho, Oregon border. They're out of Idaho, out of Boise.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: This weekend. On Saturday we're going to Lyons, Georgia to do onions down there.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Sure, sure. And, and this time of year we don't grow onion because the grounds like this from being froze. So our competition is Georgia based on when Georgia, when theirs come off before ours is when we can start selling.
So yeah, but they are a small window when we're not in.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Nice, nice.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: So yeah, it's, it's east Oregon, Idaho is huge in onions. We think Idaho potatoes, but when it comes to onions, it's east Oregon, Idaho is huge potatoes, nice onions. So, so what we were talking about, back to the onion deal, the Agranos themselves did not understand this because they had not worked with drones. They were used to. This is what we threw out when we did application. Some of the training is not only with us, but it's with the agronomists for the crop salesmen or the crop, you know, the chemical dealers.
There's a host of different ones in the Midwest. You got, you know, there's a host of different ones in the Midwest. You know, one farmer's got four options probably, and he's been, he's been going with the same guy for however many years is why he does it.
You know, the loyalty, loyalty in the ag community is huge. And the drone industry needs to learn that also because you want to start selling to farmers. Don't sell me on social media. Show up with support. Show up with a face to face guy that says, when I got a problem, I got somebody to call, I got someplace to go.
That's what's going to sell your equipment most. Yeah, well, your equipment or service or both. In both cases, you know, we have, you know, you look at all the commercial applicators now. I think that eventually the commercial applicator guys will be less and less and individual farmers will be more and more.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we just, we just talked about this on another podcast. It's like right now, you know, it's 60, 40, 60% customer applicators probably, and the other 40 is selling to farmers. But at some point it's going to flip.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: Correct. Absolutely correct. In our case, it's probably bigger than that. It's probably, you know, there's half a dozen of us that do custom application and very few individual farmers. Very few. Okay, but that, that's going to flip too. Well, that's, we're basing a business on that. We're basing, we're selling drones.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Thinking that that's going to happen. That's another reason why I'm saying, you know, I won't mention names, but some of these great big, huge drones, you know, you talk about prop Wash, you know, some of the smaller crops, they're, it's small enough to make them lay down.
We got, you know, and so you thought, oh, we got to Fly higher. Well, you start flying higher as a commercial applicator, a guy who's been in the business, the higher you go, the more exposure you have to drift. Yeah. You know, you don't want to be going 30ft. So somewhere along the line, we. We gotta be applicators, too. That's a huge issue of mine. When it comes to selling drones, you need to be an applicator first.
Being a drone pilot, I mean, we can take YouTube videos all day long.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: But out there in the field, like,
[00:27:06] Speaker A: actually physically seeing how it works, you
[00:27:10] Speaker B: know, do you want. Do you need a bank on the end? Because you turn around and it spends too much time pushing that crop down. Do. There's a host of different things. As an applicator, you have to. I'm sorry, there's no book that's going to tell you how to do that. No. You know, you need to learn that. And we got a lot of guys trying to get in the business and. Great. I'm glad to see it. Well, kind of glad to see it because it takes acres away from me. You know, that's one reason why we sell now.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Because I see the handwriting on a roll.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Some of this stuff, we just got to be as honest as we. I mean, everybody needs to be honest. Let's. All of us that are at this show.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: We're here trying to sell stuff.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Or learn stuff so we can sell better.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Like either equipment or your service or whatever it is. And that's just the way it is. I'm.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: I'm talking to you on a podcast that you have, because I know that it's going to get me out there.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: I mean, I might as well be honest. Right. Why else would I be here talking to you? Yeah. You're a great guy. I guess.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: But, you know, at least he's honest.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: The industry really needs to. If we don't police ourselves, a regulation is going to. And a pendulum always swings the wrong direction one way. Okay, okay.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: So regulations. You brought it up. Now we're going to talk about it. Don't you feel that regulations is also hindering some of this innovation?
[00:28:25] Speaker B: Oh, no doubt, no doubt.
Yeah, for sure. It's like the guy from XAG yesterday talking about. He said, well, the race of ships between United States and China right now is muddy at best. That was the Chinese guy from XAG yesterday, and that's putting it mildly. Right. We got a couple of different options. Either we need repair that relationship, or we got to just say, okay, the United States, you Gotta, you gotta pony up. If you're not gonna let us use Chinese technology, then you gotta pony up because right now the machines that I see coming out of the United States do not match the ones coming out of China.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Yeah, and who's gonna suffer from that at the. In the end?
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Well, the guy purchasing a drone's going to.
[00:29:05] Speaker C: If we don't.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: If the farmer.
[00:29:08] Speaker C: No, you're right.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: No, you're right.
You know, whether it's a custom applicator or the farmer, that's who's going to hurt in the end. So our regulations, you know, what are they trying to do? Are they trying to appease somebody's military, you know, or, or our relationship with China? Or are they trying to appease an American farmer? And you know, you don't see. I don't see. I've been, I've been part of Farm Bureau for years and years. I served on our state board. I don't see the.
And maybe it's because of politically hot item. I don't see the Farm Bureaus of this world advocating for the drone industry yet. I think they will, but I don't see them doing that yet. Yeah, maybe pockets here and there and they've probably brought it up. But day after day after day on the Hill trying to get things done for the American farmer in the drone industry. I don't see it happening. Maybe I'm ignorant to it, but I kind of doubt it.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: So, so what about even just on the regulation side of things with how fast the drone can fly and following your 44807 exemption, all the things that you're supposed to follow would put you on. You can only fly that drone basically out in the middle of nowhere.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: True.
[00:30:18] Speaker C: Right. The things like your, your buffer.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: And not, not because. Not your applicating buffer, your flight buffer. 500ft. I'm sorry, 500ft, you're halfway in the middle of the field, you know, so you're not getting the ends done. Regulations like that really hurt the industry.
There are things that say, like with the new ruling where, you know, no foreign. Foreign drones kind of like it. Only because I want, I don't like a new drone every year.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:47] Speaker C: I want support for the drones that are out there. They're doing the job.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: Kind of thing. And then that's also going to, I hope, breed more, you know, country America based innovation.
Now you kind of. You got a window. Okay. No, there's not gonna be anything new for the next.
Now let's, let's get something out But I like to see a little bit more support for the machines that are already out there.
So that, I mean it's kind of a catch 22 I sell, but I also, you know, spray. So I want my drone, I want my old P100 Pro to have serve, you know, be able to get my parts and get my updates and, and that kind of stuff without having to jump to the next technology where they left it behind. The old one behind.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: You know, so, so there, there is that. But yeah, you're right, there's, there's regulations on things like the porter for eight. I mean your fortiful 807 says you don't have to wear a harness while flying. I'm sorry, let's take the harness.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: What are you, what are you referring to?
[00:31:35] Speaker C: So to be able to fly unmanned you got to have these exemptions that take you away from manned aircrafts. These Exemptions on your 44807 are telling you, okay, you can don't have to have these safety features that you would have in a manned. Essentially. They're not catering it to a drone.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:52] Speaker C: They're catering it away from a manned aircraft.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:55] Speaker C: Where it's like, guys, let's build our own system for drones. They're here, they're not going anywhere. Let's stop worrying about a 108 for just carrier things. We got these drones, you know, that are doing, you know, all kinds of applications.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: So one thing for me that really is just, it pisses me off is heavy lift. I, I feel like these drones can do a lot of things if there be specific rules on heavy lift. Right now I don't know if you guys dug into it to fly things around the mountains, but these things be vital, but they don't even know what it is that you need.
[00:32:31] Speaker C: We have a customer who does Christmas tree farms and they, and they plant forests after logging things like that. And they've been using helicopters for years to haul 100 pound bags of seedlings out to the guys who are planting on the mountainside.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Helicopters.
[00:32:47] Speaker C: Helicopters for £100, where that we've been talking with them for a year trying to get him all the proper things that they need to use a drone. Yeah, I mean 100 pounds, every drone's gonna carry 100 pounds.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: And then like when they harvest Christmas tree boughs and for wreaths and that kind of stuff, they put them in 110 pound bales and they use a helicopter to fly them up out of the mountain to the roadsides where the trucks Are at. Well, that's what we're trying to get them with drones to do. Where is that classified?
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:13] Speaker C: In your 44807 I carry.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Listen that the FAA, you know, they like talking to me because they liked and subscribed to the YouTube channel.
They tell us that's not agricultural.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: What.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: What the same hell is it then?
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Well, exactly. I mean all the rest of the industry says is ag. You know, how come the FAA doesn't. Right. You know, it's it. And the faa, God bless them, it got dumped in their lap. Right. They had no. They had no idea they were going to get this wave after wave coming at them. It's like taking months to get your.
You know, there's just not enough of them to handle it.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: It is wild.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: Give an idea of their lack of knowledge on it. So when we got our. When we got our 44807, it was back when you had to go through the actual practice.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:01] Speaker C: To do everything. It wasn't just straight. So when I finally had to get. They came out and had to inspect you to actually sign off on your 137 certificate. Instead of having one guy from local Fisdal office. We had every employee from the Fisdo office that covers pretty much all of central to southern Idaho. I had seven. No eight people come out to our farm from my 137 because nobody has seen a drone. We were one of the first in the northwest to get a 137. So back in 2018 when they finally came, and it took forever for that process.
So when they finally came out to do the inspection on our drone on that old tta, I had their chief of maintenance operations ask me how often I changed the oil in the rotors. What about your expression? And I started laughing.
And he says to me, he goes, I'm being serious. And I go as often as manufacturer warranted. And he kind of gave me this puzzle look and I was like, dude, that's copper wire and magnets. If I got oil in it, I got a problem.
They had no idea what they were looking at.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: They.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: They still have no idea. They showed up to inspections.
[00:35:01] Speaker C: We get ramp checked often.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah. You talk about regulations though. And. And to side note, we know. And I'm glad we're not mandatory reporters because we sell a lot of drones. We sell a lot that these guys know. They don't have a license one. Not even a chemical application for aerial do they have.
Guys, you're gonna get us all in trouble. You're gonna make it so they're going, oh, every time you buy a drone, you got to do this, this, this. If you don't just pony up and do what's correct now. So there are some regulations that are in effect that we really need to do. And from. Especially from a chemical application point of stuff, you know, or as FAA calls it, economic poisons, which is a terrible, terrible political nightmare, you know, to call them economic poisons.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Do you guys do any heavy lift stuff?
[00:35:55] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. Well, not that we don't want. It's just not. We really haven't ever got. I mean, first of all, there's not the support from the drone industry for that, as we talked about. Just everybody makes one a little bit, but. But it's kind of. They make one just for the side. Right. It's not much technology going into them. I don't think we have a neighbor that built one. This guy is a. He's a genius. I wish I could figure out some way to put him on my payroll because, you know, he designed one and made one himself. He'd been hauling sprinkler pipe. You know what handlines are. By any chance. He's been hauling sprinkler pipe out of the field with his drone. Instead of having guys go in there thinking, well, and he designed.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: He built a drone.
[00:36:36] Speaker C: No, he. He took a 150 regulation. I'm not gonna say his name. So he didn't get in trouble. He took a 150 platform for the spreader, took the spreader off of it, used the framework, and then built a winch system underneath it to have. Essentially, XAG does make a Revo sling for that very thing. But you talk about it's not popular to have those kind of stuff. You can't hardly buy it. You couldn't buy it for the 150. Nobody got him in, so he built it himself and. But he was also able to wire in the retractable winch system into it.
That's where he uses intelligence that he's able to actually.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: But like the fly car 100. I'll have some here shortly. Like, that's actually specifically built.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: Correct, Correct.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: But the challenge is the regulations right now are hindering that innovation.
And we have been working on it for years already.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: And actually, that's like with our Christmas tree customer, like that. I mean, that's. Yeah, they're going to spray stuff with the drone too. But the carrying capacity or carrying system is what they want. Want. But they also.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: And because it is, it's even More minor than drone use. Nobody's really, from a regulation standpoint, nobody's really looking at it realistically, right. Saying, well, this is not, you know, we're not delivering Amazon packages in downtown whatever.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: You know, we're not exactly.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: So you can't. The. Unfortunately, the government paints with a very, very wide paintbrush. Right. And so like the 108. All right. So they threw everybody in there that they. That wasn't already covered under something else. Yeah, well, don't paint with such a white paintbrush, you know, because we don't.
There's no comparison between what you're lumping us in and that's your regulation problems is, well, we got to take these guys. So we're just going to add this onto it. Also because they're using carriers.
I mean, yeah, I'm using a carrier only because you want to call it that. We can call it something else and maybe not lump me in.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: So, yeah. So the regulations, like I said, what's going to happen and what, what is happening is if we don't start advertising the word advertising, probably not.
[00:38:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: If we don't start educating the people who make the regulations on what drones do and do not do, especially ag drones do and don't do, we're just going to get lumped in and keep having regulation. So, you know, that that's why I
[00:38:50] Speaker A: was pushing so hard when, you know, propose 108 came out that you can leave a comment like us US Agricultural pilots need to leave comments. I don't know if you left a comment, but we need to tell them because it's like they won't know. No, they literally. So I wrote out, you know, how we use them. We go, you know, back here to the trees and it'd be really nice if we can go around and still manually fly it. Not just in an auto mission, that type of stuff. Just so they understand. Oh, geez. I never even knew that that's what they use for.
[00:39:21] Speaker C: Yeah. When we do our rangeland stuff and habitat restoration stuff, stuff we will do field days for things like NRCS's, that kind of stuff will come out and people are just blown away the, the effectiveness of this drone. But now it's going over the mountain side. Oh no, you can't see it no more. It's like, well, drone's going to keep doing what it knows to be doing. I've already been over there, I know what's over there. I mapped it out kind of stuff. And. And it comes back. Well, that's beyond Visual line of sight.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:47] Speaker C: It got on my way. Luckily, I have that on my 130 or my 4407.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: But.
[00:39:51] Speaker C: But it's.
It's gonna do that.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: And.
[00:39:53] Speaker C: And we got to be able to understand.
Yes. Okay. Let me be able to go beyond visual line of sight with my drummers only there briefly. It knows what it's doing.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:40:01] Speaker C: 100 kind of thing. And.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: And what's it gonna hit over there? You've already seen that there's nothing that wildfire came through.
[00:40:07] Speaker C: There ain't nothing there.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we right now are our way of visualizing or. Yeah, I say it.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Our.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Our visual line of sight is. We are visualizing it in our brain what it looks like.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Like. True.
[00:40:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Well, we've actually already seen it. It's already on a program. It's already all built in. The drone's going to go do exactly what we told it to do. It's not. It's not. It's not going beyond what we're. It's not taking over us.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: So I've heard an FAA inspector showed up and he thought that these drones, like, if you take it off and you don't. Like, he. He just basically thought that when you start flying forward, if. If you don't stop it, it'll just keep going. Oh, it's just. They don't understand.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: No, they don't understand. Yeah.
[00:40:53] Speaker C: There was such a bad back in the day when the old camera drones used to have their flyaways. Yeah.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Kind of stuff.
[00:40:58] Speaker C: Guys, your AG drones don't do that.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:00] Speaker C: Your camera drones don't even do that anymore. Yeah.
[00:41:02] Speaker B: First of all, our batteries won't let us go very far.
[00:41:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: I tell everybody, if you want to become rich and famous, make a battery that'll last. Right. We all spend thousands and thousands of dollars on batteries for these drones.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: That's a valid point.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: It won't make it that far.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: It won't make it very far. You're not going to cause much damage because it's going to go out there and die.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Well, out where you guys are at, I guess you could fly that sucker for an hour and not get to town.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: So from an AG standpoint, let's say, you know, get your AG pilot's license and I hear a lot. Well, I'm just flying on my own land. I'm sorry, but FAA says if it's one inch above your grass or your crop, it's now in their control. It's not your property no more. Get your AG Pilot license if it requires you to have certain aspects of, from an ag industry. You know, like we deal with Oregon and I primarily we deal with other states too. But Oregon is, if you know anything about Oregon politics, they're further left than Idaho is, let's put it that way. So in order to spray, it requires multiple licenses, whether you're on ground or air, but air requires a separate one. In Idaho you get your ag pilot license, you can spray virtually everything. So it's, it, there's no, there's a difference. But get the licenses required for the state that you're in. And then FAA requires multiple licenses and exemptions or not really licenses, but certifications, certifications. Get all that, do what you're supposed to do and then don't buy.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: It's my own land, why should I have to?
[00:42:40] Speaker B: Well, because if, first of all, because it's the rules. Right. And second of all because if you don't, pretty soon the industry is going to say, well, he's doing it over here. Why can't I do it over here? It's like right now there's people out spraying government ground. They go, well, somebody said I could do it, so I just go and do it. Yeah, well.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: And honestly it's actually not that difficult to get all those things. I understand there's a lot of paperwork, but at New way we've, we've seen this hurdle. Right. It's like, well, I, I don't want to go through it. And I was like, team, we need to come up with a plan of how to help these farmers. Like hold their hand.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: Right?
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:43:20] Speaker C: And so yeah, we for many years have actually taught the laws of safety or something called rules and regs class at the community college. Do a, do a two day session.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: And we help them. Usually we do right away. Occasionally depends on who shows up. We'll maybe do an ag herbicide category.
So you get your laws of safety and you get your category in Oregon.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: And of course Idaho is reciprocal for a lot of organs where we're right on the border. Guys will come to class, take the test in Oregon. So when we do, we offer this kind of same service to people we sell their drones to. They need to get licensed with that. I mean I'll, we'll teach them a class on it if they want. Or I'll help them find all the right material to take. We kind of joke. My pesticide license has categories on it and it has, you know, the code for the categories. Then it goes dot, dot, dot. Because usually He, Someone asks him, are you guys licensed to do this? He says yes. And he turns to me and goes, go get licensed, you kind of thing. So I have so many categories, so many tests.
And so, hey, I've taken all these tests, I do all the credits. I'll, we'll help teach the guy. And that's what we need to do as, as drone dealers and applicators is, hey, we're gonna sell to somebody, say,
[00:44:25] Speaker B: hey, okay, encourage them, encourage them, get
[00:44:27] Speaker C: yourself, get your license. Again, we're not mandatory reporters. You're going to do it yourself. Myself, I ain't gonna scream, you know about it, But I would prefer that you get yourself licensed.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: So what I've heard two or three times locally is, okay, I'm just gonna fly my own. Well, the next thing I know, I see him flying on the neighbors.
Well, that's not your own because I know who owns that piece of property. And you're commercial flying for him. Well, he needed help, you know, so
[00:44:51] Speaker A: it sounds like this is kind of an issue maybe in your area, a little bit of a frustration.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: It is a frustration in us, but it's. And I don't, I probably wouldn't have sprayed that neighbor anyway. Right. Because he might have went someplace else. That's not the issue. It's not that you're taking business away from me. The issue is because you're not doing it by rules because you decided you wanted out and spray a neighbors when you really weren't licensed to do so. What is the government going to do? What kind of regulation are they going to put on me in order for me to do it legally? That's what I'm worried about. That's when I say we need to police ourselves because if we don't, somebody's going to, somebody online is going to, you know, it's like saying, you know, on WD40, do not drink. Well, that's because somebody probably drank it somewhere along the line, right. So I don't know who, but somebody did. Well, it's going to be. The same thing is going to happen. Some accident is going to happen. Somebody's going to go out there and kill a crop and they're going to sue. And no licenses or no insurance, on and on. They're going to say, oh, in order to have this, you got to have this amount of insurance or whatever it may be. They're gonna, they're gonna police us. And that's what I'm worried about.
You know, I just been at it for so long and seen so many regulations come and most of the time was because somebody tried to do something they shouldn't have been doing.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: And now they're put a license or a regulation on us.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: All right, So I want to take this in a different direction. If a guy or gal is wanting to get into this business, oftentimes they ask me, mike, is it too late? Like there's, there's too many guys in it.
What would you tell them?
[00:46:27] Speaker B: No, it's not too late. So I'm kind of an old man, right? No, I am an old man. No kindness about it. So I guess that's a relative term. Right.
So I told my.
We've been in the drone industry since 2017. Nobody else around. Three years ago. 23. Yeah, 23. It exploded in our area. New guy came in, he sold drones to everybody. They were everywhere. Right.
And we got frustrated because now some of the customers we have, they didn't buy a drone from us or they bought from somebody else. Now we're not spraying for them. They're spraying on their own. Okay. And we get frustrated. And I told, told my guys, just wait, just wait. I've been at, in the custom spray business since 1999. I've seen this come and go numerous times. And history always repeats itself.
Used to be when it come to four wheeler Knox wheat spraying, I was the only one on the government and then everybody else popped up and everybody think, I'm going to get rich quick off of this deal. I'm going to go out here, I'm going to make money and I'm going to. Fantastic. And so the drone industry did that in 23.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:35] Speaker B: We got all these guys popping up and there's still room for lots of those guys. But if you are, if you know your stuff, if you have a relationship with your people, don't just, you know and learn. If you stay consistent and spray what you're supposed to spray and follow the rules and do the right chemical applications. When somebody says, hey, you know, this needs to be 5 gallons the acre, and you say, no, we can do it with three. They go, no, I want five. Don't go out there and do it at two. Go out and do what the customer asks you to do, even though it may cost you. Right. Do what you're supposed to do. Be integrity about it. And pretty soon you'll be the one on top. Yeah, you'll be the guy. The rest of them will be gone. Now the problem is how do I afford that while all those guys are still around? Right. But Just stay at it. So if you want to be, if you want to get into the drone industry, great. There's lots of room for us. Fantastic. I'll sell you as many drones you want to buy. Right. And I'll help you and I'll train you and I'll do all that kind of stuff. Knowing that probably, you know, unless you are really, really good or unless you're the individual farmer spraying his own stuff. Stuff probably, if you're not any good, I won't have to worry about you.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: Because it just comes and goes.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: And you jump on a bandwagon, but you don't have the intent, the intensity, the integrity or the intensity, the fortitude to stay with it. Yeah. Because what do you do when. How do you afford to pay for this? When it's February.
[00:48:58] Speaker A: Yeah, right, exactly.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: And you're not spraying, dude.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: And for people that get in it, that think it's going to be easy, this is the last thing that is easy.
Like if everything is going well, maybe you can, you know, chill for a little bit, but in two seconds it could be complete chaos. You're trying to get your drones out of a situation and you're swapping your batteries, it's hotter. And all get out out there. It's actually decently hard work.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:24] Speaker C: We used to talk about back when we first started flying, you know, in 2017, for two hours and I'd be done because I'm sitting here flying, I'm stressed out. I'm watching this $80,000 machine in the air there trying to do a job and I'm sweating. I'm in a nervous sweat. I can only fly for two hours and I'd have to stop and go take a break because it was nerve wracking. Now technology has gotten a little bit better and I've got more comfortable.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:47] Speaker C: Take five minute naps while I was out there flying, you know, But I don't do that.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: No, I don't want to hear that. Delete that part.
[00:49:55] Speaker A: But it's, it's.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: You kept at it. You, you, you know, you stuck with it. Talking about new guys coming into the industry.
There is room. We talked about. Our areas boomed with drones for a while. This last year we had, when we had a big nationwide company, won't get names, that had hired up a bunch of pilots and they were applicating. That's where part of the boom was. Well, they all went out of business and only maybe half of those guys continued on as applicators.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: And half of them, by the End of the year were gone.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: Exactly. You know, and so. And so. Well, now the market's ripe for new applicators to come in because the old ones are gone.
Partly they went out because they weren't doing a good job.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:31] Speaker C: Didn't get the training they needed to understand what they were applicating.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm going to ask you a question and then the first thought that comes to your mind, I'd be, I'd like to hear what that was. In the last season, in 2025, the 25 season, what was one of the most challenging things you guys faced?
[00:50:49] Speaker C: I would say the farmer perception of what the drone could do.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:57] Speaker C: Basically where we had a lot of applicators do terrible jobs, the farmers were like, well, I had this guy out there doing it and it did, it did a bad job. And we're like, well, I know we could do an even better job because I've done it already over here. So the farmer's perception of what the drone could actually do because of poor applicators is what, something we saw acres go down on.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:51:23] Speaker C: And so that was kind of our challenge is to bring back up the good name of what the drone can do.
[00:51:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: I think my thing would be the most challenging portion is in applying where do I go next? What do I do?
25 brought a lot of problems.
Whether you're an XAG flyer, whether you're a DJI guy, of course, in November, or, excuse me, December 23rd. It didn't get any better. Better. Right. So 25 was frustrating in what do I do with the hardware that I have?
The 150 had issues at the beginning. EA visions. 100 had problems at the beginning. You couldn't get a good DJI without smuggling in. Might as well be frank. They were smuggled in if you got one right. Because they were being stopped at the border. They had to come in some other way that wasn't Chinese writing on the box. The biggest challenge at that, I think in 25 was determining which direction we need as a business owner, which direction I needed to go. Not so much the actual application. Those guys were doing a bang up job. Which direction do I need to jump as a, as a business owner of the, you know, not so much the applicator side of things.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And I, I would say which direction. And we still don't have a clear direction.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: Oh heavens. It's like, you know, geez, I tell Everybody in the 19, early 1900s, from 1900 to 1930 or so, there was like 300 US carmakers right? Now, they may have been getting all their parts from two or three different people, but everybody. Sears made a car. John Deere made a car. There was, look it up, there was all kinds of people. Montgomery Ward made a car. You know, Sears, everybody made a car, right?
So right now we got all these young people out there. Which one of them is going to be the gm, Ford and Dodge that we need to be on that, you know? Or when I say five, if you want to count, tow it and Kia, they got a presence in within the United States. But which one of these drone. I mean, they're all listed here. They're all here today, right? Which one of these is going to be the GM or Ford of this world? Yeah, those. Because that's what we need to be attached to, right? We can't be attached to the case car, you know, I mean, the case car. Would they make three of them or something like that, you know, I mean, or three models, maybe not three cars, but you don't want to be the guy that's selling John Deere cars. You don't want to be the guy selling John Deere tractors, but not John Deere cars, right? And so as a business owner, as a guy who's thinking, okay, my, my sons and my grandsons or granddaughters in some case, what kind of legacy am I leaving them in the drone industry, you know, am I going to leave them a John Deere car, you know, that's going to sit in a museum someplace? Or are they going to be driving Ford?
You know, And I'm not advocating any one model or another. I have no power Wagon, so, you know, that's what I drive. Only because I thought they looked cool, right?
So anyway, so as a owner and as a distributor of a business guy, not only am I worried about the application stuff, but I'm interested in what is the drone industry growing? Which one of these guys, do I need to hang on to their shirt tails and go, or do I need to build my own Own? Yeah, right. Yeah. Which I am not smart enough to do.
[00:54:33] Speaker A: So, I mean, I, I seen the aluminum welded one over here, and I'm just thinking, man, I, I just feel bad for us that we're. That's where we're at right now. It's. But hey, you know, it sounds like our government wants us to manufacture here, right?
[00:54:48] Speaker C: I'm glad.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: I really am. You know, I wish they would say manufacture here. We're going to phase away instead of making a, you know, line in the sand. Yeah. Well, I guess there's a line of sand. We deal with it and go on, right?
It hurt us all. It really did.
It's going to be. We look at it now thinking, oh, it's going to hurt us, but come mid season, it's going to hurt us when we can't get the parts that we need. Everybody talking right now, the last two guys talked about. Even you talked about all the parts that we have. And there's a reason why you got all those parts, because we went through that before when you couldn't get them right. I'm afraid because of regulation of December 23rd, that that's coming again, you know, and that's why I think guys like you are buying them ahead of time.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: I'm buying a lot because I know what the demand is like. So if you sell, you know, across the country, thousands of drones, at some point, those drones are going to go down. And so we need to have parts because every year we have seen it. Now, at a certain time of the year when everybody's spraying, there's just a vacuum of, you know, people that need parts, parts. And so nobody's held enough parts to start with.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: No, no, we have the same problem, you know, because somebody will call you and say. Because they're. They never call you after they finish a job. And they go, I think we want this part for the next time. No, they're in the middle of the job and it went down, and I need a part now. Because, you know, there's an old saying that, you know, this young guy watched an older guy growing onions at the end of the year. Every year, the old guy's onions were better than the new guy. So the new kid said, all right, I'm going to go out and out. I'm gonna do the exact same thing. So the old farmer went out, sprayed his onions. Next day, young kid went out, sprayed his onions, followed him all year long. At the end of the year, his onions weren't as good as the old guy. And he said, why? What happened? I did everything you did. He goes, one day late, you know, and it's the same thing with the drone industry. I don't want. When I'm out there spraying, I don't have another day to do it. Yeah, I have today to do it. There's a storm coming. Or in our case, you know, like fungicides. The storm just passed. You got to get them on right away. I mean, and drones are. Because it worked fantastic. Because you can't get into the field after that storm came through.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Right. And that, that's probably why farmers will have their own because. Right. Scheduling.
[00:57:02] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:57:02] Speaker B: You're exactly right. Exactly right. And that's, you know, but because of that, the farmer wants to know that he's going to get support too.
[00:57:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep.
[00:57:10] Speaker B: And that means parts, that means repairing, that means training, that means, hey, if it means going to him and saying, hey, this is the regulations that you need to be following. Okay. Because he's not paying attention. He's worried about that CR coming back out of the ground. He doesn't have time. We need to support him on that. We really do. If we want to be. If we want to be in the industry. And we want the industry to be, you know, the John Deere's of this world who, forget about the whole political Mexico mess. But the. One of the reasons why somebody asked me today, what tractors do you have? Well, you know, I have the tractor of the dealership that serves me the best.
Whether I'm in. If I'm in Indiana, I'm running red here, 100 miles down the road, they're doing nothing but green. Why is there. Is the tractors produced down there better than the tractors produced over here? No, it's because that dealership is better. All right. Because most of us are not so diabolically married to one of the other.
[00:58:07] Speaker A: Yeah. We just need good service.
[00:58:08] Speaker B: Right. You know, in my company we have, we don't have very many Chevys, but we have Fords and Dodges. All right, why, why do I have Fords and Dodges? Because this company that I buy from service me on that particular deal. Right.
[00:58:21] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: It's not because I'm married to one or the other. They all got pros and cons. And the same way with the drone industry, they all have pros and cons. You know, you're talking about flying a T100. You know, there are some things about a T or not a T1, but a DJI. There are some things about DJI that are far superior to everybody else. We like Xags because we think the XAG actually does a better job of spraying. Does it have problems with connectivity? Does it have problems with some of the software? Yes, it does. Right. So it's all dependent on what you do, but in the long run, it's who's servicing me.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: Yep, 100%, you know, who.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: Whom. That's why you asked me how come I never went back to gi. It's because we were working with HSE or Raptor at the time and they Were treating us good. We could get. Sell those drones. They were doing a good job for us, you know. And we call Simon up and at h. At raptor and say Jared go hey, this is something I have. You know, Simon.
[00:59:10] Speaker C: That's interesting.
[00:59:11] Speaker B: That's what he always said. Because usually when we call him was something that he hadn't come across yet. Right. And so it's all about relationships 100%. And we have to have that.
[00:59:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you guys run trailers out there?
[00:59:23] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. Y. Now that's a beautiful looking trailer right there. But that is not feasible for us. I mean that's a good looking.
[00:59:30] Speaker A: You're pointing across the. The aisle. There's a trailer sitting over there. That. Yeah. So.
[00:59:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:59:35] Speaker C: So. Yeah, no, we. Well, we've looked into your guys trail stuff.
The double decker trailers in our country just aren't. Not that so much. Feasible, but not practical.
[00:59:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:59:48] Speaker C: Mostly because. Well, one we're with tight. I mean it's about 25 to 30 acre fields. You got a barely a ditch bank that a truck pickup can go down. I can't take a goose neck trailer down.
[00:59:58] Speaker B: That's 30 foot long.
[00:59:59] Speaker A: That's 30 foot long running pickup truck.
[01:00:02] Speaker C: So we actually have a 14 foot foot. Our main trailer is just a 14 foot trailer that we have about a 300 gallon tank on it with a 55 gallon conical.
[01:00:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:00:14] Speaker C: That's it. We take off on the ground. It's a bit dusty when we do that. That's why you hop in the pickup when you. When you launch, you know. But are we. Or take enough water, hose down the ground kind of thing?
[01:00:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:00:24] Speaker C: So we take off on the ground. Those small trailers we do have for our rangeland stuff, we do have pickups with flatbeds that again, we take off on the ground around our setups. I, my. My brother standing over there, he screenshots all your guys's trailers and he loves them. He wants to go with this so bad.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: I'm excited to.
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah. To talk to him.
[01:00:43] Speaker A: No, I'm excited to show you guys what we've been working on for a long time.
[01:00:47] Speaker B: It's all about accessibility. Yeah. It's not a feasibility over accessibility. Right.
[01:00:51] Speaker A: Telling you, Dennis, it's gonna be crazy.
[01:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah. It's nice to land on top. It's nice to do all that, which would be great. And we may end up having one of those again someday. But right now the feasibility is that's not really what we need.
[01:01:02] Speaker A: Need. Yeah.
[01:01:02] Speaker B: Right. That's just not our note for us.
[01:01:05] Speaker C: You'd be doing a 20, 24 foot trailer with a fold out area in the back. I can land my drone on the back end. All right, we can talk. We. We have something they. These guys.
[01:01:14] Speaker A: Jay has been coming up with that
[01:01:16] Speaker C: you guys are gonna like.
[01:01:17] Speaker B: Good, good.
When are you.
[01:01:19] Speaker A: When are you showing that to the world? We don't know. I mean, we've done so much.
We just have done so much engineering.
Like true engineering, not like just freaking like weld it together. Like, we started that way and then figured out, like, we. We have to engineer every single part of it. So I'm excited.
[01:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And to be honest with you, it's great because we have, you know, we got sketches all over the place and. And it's kind of like building a house. All right. My house burned down in 2019. And everybody knows that when you build a house, as soon as you're done, you're, man, I wish I didn't know. It's the same thing with a trailer. You do all this thinking, go, oh, man, we should have like, moving the battery boxes, right? Oh, we should have done this. We should have done that. That. You're never going to build the right perfect one the first time around.
[01:02:02] Speaker A: 100%. Guys, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge. A lot of knowledge.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: Honor. Thank you.
[01:02:09] Speaker A: I feel like we could be here for another hour and we wouldn't get done, but that's right, Abely. I appreciate you guys sharing. There you go, guys. Another episode on the Drone on show. We'll catch you guys next week.
