Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, guys, welcome back to another drone on show podcast. Still on the road out here by the convention. We have another cool guest. We're gonna get into it. I'm Mike.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I'm Kaden Wilburn.
[00:00:13] Speaker C: And I'm Dennis.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: And we're just going to jump into it. How long have you been in the drone industry?
[00:00:18] Speaker B: So this upcoming season will be my third season.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Nice. How many acres in total do you think you've covered?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Probably in that, like, 15, 000 range, dude.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Killing it.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: So, yeah, I'm just. I'm just a small outfit.
It started.
Well, my drone operation started as a way, like, for me to come back to our family farm. We farm 1200 acres, and we've got just over 2400 hogs. And my dad sells seed, so the farms already got my dad, my grandpa, and our hired guy. I was coming home from college looking for a way in, and, you know, there's already these many mouths to feed, and. And I'm like, well, I got to kind of figure out something on my own. And then stumbled into this.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Thankfully.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: And where. Where's home to you?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Lonia, Missouri. So we're here in Kansas City. It's about three and a half hours northeast of here, kind of like an hour north of Columbia.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: When do you recall when you were first introduced to a spray drone?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: I was probably first introduced to a spray drone, and probably middle of the summer of 24.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: I seen them at the end of the summer. That's 40s were, like, the big thing at that time.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: T. 40s.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: T. 40s, yeah. Coming. Guys. Guys that I knew had drones, had 30s, had transitioned to 40s, and that was kind of like the big push in my area was when that happened.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Okay. You look pretty young.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: 25.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Okay. Yep. Dennis, sorry, I gotta. Gotta bring you back in here.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: I'm always the old guy, it seems. It's ridiculous. And I'm 42, and I'm like the old guy, so.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's good.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Somebody's got to be the old guy.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: I mean, 42 is not that old.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Right, But.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: And it seems like it around here because there's so many young guys.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: It's crazy. Like, thinking back on it now, the kids that I know in it, they're all three years younger than me, so they were in high school, doing it crazy.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Like, that's what I. When I talk to young guys in here that are 20 years old or 19, I just had a guy walk up, he's 19, and he's already in the Industry. It's like that guy's got such a leg up on the next people like, you know, five years from now, he's so young, he's going to learn all this stuff. It's like, yeah, if you're young, get started. That's what I would tell people.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: They must have a friend at the bank that really has faith in them. You know, True. To get going in this because I don't like when I went to go get my loan and to get started in it, like, thankfully, like my family and like I had to put my dad down as like, you know, a person.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Co signer.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Co signer. Yeah, exactly. But like a kid in high school. I mean, there's no way they would have enough capital or, you know, true. To get into this. So I don't know how probably family. Kids that young. Yeah. I mean, maybe their families purchasing stuff for them instead of like them initially purchasing.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Maybe they bought bitcoin when they were five.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
One smart kid. I guess a lot smarter than me.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: So you started with the 40s? Are you still running 40s at all or.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: I had two 40s. I sold them upgraded to 250s last year. So I ran them a full season.
And now I'm here trying to convince myself that I need the T100. I mean, I'm very convinced that I need it. It's just at the point trying to figure out the money and work it. I'll work on that side of the business. Because you still have to. There still has to be a margin.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Well, yeah, we also just figured out here a little bit ago because you had asked me at lunch about running to C10000s and according to our calculations and the fuels that we're running, we're like, it's gonna prolong your operation, but you're still gonna run out of juice. And according to a young fellow that walked up, he was running 2C10000s with a T6EX and never ran out of battery. But you guys and the stuff that you're spraying is flat and straight.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: It's about as ideal as it could be. Yeah, we're very, very fortunate in my neck of the woods. And like this kid has definitely a lot better running than I would even have access to. But like the majority of my fields are probably like an 80 acre square or, you know, pretty flat and square.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: So how long would that run be, do you know?
Approximately?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: My typical run is like three, 500ft.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: So that's three quarter mile.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: I run almost everything's Half is quarter mile down, quarter mile back, or half mile down, half mile back.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: That is so cool.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: If I showed you my form, you would be like, please do.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Look at, look at my miserable smart farm. Like we're whipping our phones out. We're like techie here. You want to see my smart farm?
[00:04:48] Speaker B: It's like I'm, I'm about as spoiled as it get. We, we have 1200 acres at least.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: You're just honest.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: I basically woke up and, you know, our farm was just like perfect. We farm 1200 acres and the farthest I have to go to our smallest field is maybe three miles.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Jeez.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Good for you, dude. Yeah, good for you.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: So I, I gotta touch the highway just to go across it. We've got gravel roads or field roads to every.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: No service in here.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Well, my data is not pulling up, but that's the type of stuff.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: See that Beautiful Seven acres, four acres. But hey, they're right beside each other. We got a big 15 acre over here.
Hey, we got another 21. 21.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: I mean that's not, that's not bad flying either.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm trying, but our runs aren't long.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: You know what you don't see in this picture is how freaking hilly it is.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: So yeah, we're. We're as flat as can be. I mean, we put 160 acres of tile down the. Over the last couple years to work on drainage just because there's nowhere for water to go.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Huh.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: I'm even just trying to get on. So here, like that. This from here to that. Gravel roads, our farm.
And then this is our farm. See, this is like that. This side right here is 244 acres. And then that's probably 60 acres. Wow. And then we farm.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: Look at all that.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: All of this.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Sorry, we're looking at his phone right now.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: So. Yeah, our farms here, that red dot, basically.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Nice squares. That's what he's showing us.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: And that's like the equivalent of most.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Huh. So on average, if you have the acres lined up, how much can you spray in a day with two T50s.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Two T50s. The.
Well, I'll go at it this way. The best running we had, we sprayed 2500 acres in one week with two T50s.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Seven day week or five day.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: That was probably six days and that was, you know, all. All over, wherever. Yeah, yeah, I sprayed. We sprayed a day with two T50s that I sprayed like 540 acres and like nine fields. And then we, we had A day where we sprayed 18 fields and probably equivalent to like what you guys spray a lot. 18 fields at 11 different locations. And the field average was 15 acres. So that was 185 day acre day, you know, just. And now it's between three towns.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that can get miserable.
So when you started this business, did you have like a business plan going into this? Like, this is my, my goal. I'm going to try to hit this many acres in a season. I'm going to have a trailer. Like walk me through that. I'd be curious and know what you
[00:07:27] Speaker B: were thinking when you were so getting into it. I really like, trailer wise, I really didn't know what I want.
I got lucky and I found a guy who built trailers on Facebook Marketplace just by random. He's located in Winfield, Iowa. And I got to talking to him and he had been an applicator for two years at that time. And he's like, if you want to run two drones, you probably need to go to a double decker size trailer and kind of be like this size. And I was like, okay, that's what we're going to do.
Just, I got a really good vibe from that guy. And I was like, I really, you know, kind of believing in what he's saying. And that was kind of before the jump of double deck trailers.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: So like there was already insight of people like wanting that. So I was like, okay, we'll go that way. And then to get in it, it was really just we were going to spray for our farm and then whatever I sprayed for the neighbors or whoever, you know, that was just help cover the cost of, of doing it.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: And I had a goal of like 6,000 acres the first year because we didn't really know what I was getting into. I mean the first day we brought lawn chairs, I thought we could sit in between, in between flights, you know, just not really knowing what was going on.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: And then from there, I mean we hit that goal. And then this year I had a goal of 10,000 acres and then 10 or 12 and I had 11 on the books. But we ended up doing just short of eight and a half thousand.
Wow.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: But that's still impressive. Like it. I wonder how much, how many more you would have got done with the T60 just flying faster or was it not? Was that not your issue?
[00:08:56] Speaker B: I mean, I, we, we could always fly faster, I think.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: I didn't have any trouble. We didn't wait on batteries ever.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
Huh. And anywhere running T50s and T50s and
[00:09:09] Speaker B: T40s, I never waited on a battery.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: C10000s or I have three 8000s. Three. A thousand. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So maybe it is, maybe it makes sense what these guys, you know, how they're calculating their charger systems.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: I don't know. I never had to wait on, on any batteries either. With, with two of the 10,000.
For two drones. Yeah. For 250s.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Or you're saying two chargers to one drone?
[00:09:34] Speaker B: No, no, no.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: No, a drone per generator.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:38] Speaker C: 10,000. What?
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Generator?
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: So if you would easily have the financing available, would you even hesitate to get a T100?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: No, not at all.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Yeah. So financing is the big finance.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Like so like me, it's. It's me and then like I hire a couple younger kids to help me. So like there's no like in my eyes for my business. There's no like big scaling.
[00:10:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: Because there's only one of me. I can't, I don't want to send 20 some year old kids out with, you know. All right, whatever amount of money you want to assign to it.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: A rig, however big we can get on one scale is kind of like what I'm thinking.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: But, but adding a T100 and keeping T50s kind of back up and having somebody else at least maybe run on the T50 off of the trailer, maybe doing one.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: It's been, it's been a thought. Me and my dad talk about it a lot. I. It's kind of my thing, but he's in with a partner. I'm for our company, C and J Spray Jones. C's for Kaden and J's for Jay. My dad.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: I like make the decision, but then I gotta ask him for approval kind of deal, you know.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: He's kind of like my insight on it, you know.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Is this a good decision, like going forward, is this a good financial decision? And I really thankful that I have, you know, someone who, who is like that. But no, we've talked a lot the last two weeks about flying one 150. The only problem I see with that is is I've got all the batteries and stuff for a 50, then I got all the batteries and stuff for a T100.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: I know.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: And I like this was a question I had for you earlier. We're kind of getting off topic of your question. But like If I buy two T1 hundreds, I'm buying the lift system to haul a T100 out of corn.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: 100 what, this guy?
[00:11:21] Speaker B: So, yeah, that might be marketing Thing for you. If the video comes out in a couple weeks, go at it. But if I have a 50 and 100 and the 100 goes down, I can't use the lift system for. To, you know, for like my 50 to pick it up out of the corn. I surely the 50 would be able to pick it up without payload and battery and stuff. Oh, yeah. But, gosh, it sure be so much easier just, you know, unclip it and then put the.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Grapple base on it. So that's kind of.
[00:11:47] Speaker C: That lift kit is nice, that lift kit.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah. It's definitely worth the fifteen hundred dollars or whatever it's going to be.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: I. I don't recall exactly what it is. It is nice. You know, xhe came up with that design where you just unbuckle your airframe and move it to another chassis. I call them chassis.
Just taking the T100 and throwing it on your spreader kit or your lift kit. It's going to make it really, really nice. Yeah.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Oh, it's. It's like. It almost makes me mad to see what's available now versus a few years ago when we were getting started. Like, can you imagine if you would have been able to get started with a couple of these T1 hundreds and have it.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: If I would have known this was coming out, there might be one thing on my trailer that I would have kept. Everything else would have been, you know, completely different. I would have. I don't know how you guys feel, but I didn't think this was going to scale this fast. Like, getting in it, I. I had full anticipation of running my 40s to like 15,000 acres. Both of them.
[00:12:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: And now here we are. Every year a new drone comes out, and you sit here and ask yourself, is it worth it? And I mean, just. You just do the eye test. It's obviously worth it. All the specs and so much are just that much more advanced.
And I mean, you know, if you go from a 50 to this, you're obviously twice as big, twice the capacity, and you get to fly so much faster.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: So I think the hundred is going to be the best for a while.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:07] Speaker C: Because of the. The FCC rules and stuff like that. It's just probably going to take. But what do I know? But, like, what does anybody know? Right?
But I have a feeling that maybe, you know, if we would have upgraded or if we would have started, if somebody's just getting started and he's buying a couple T1 hundreds to get started with and the next big upgrade in a drone is not going to be until three years from now. I mean, that's actually beneficial to the guy just getting started in a sense, because his competition isn't going to get a better drone than him right away.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: So it might actually help a new guy just getting started now with the. With the T1 hundreds.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: But because he can't upgrade, you're saying because they can't bring the.
[00:13:50] Speaker C: Well, right. It's. It's like you feel like you almost have to because, well, one, you like the efficiency and stuff, but the other thing is if you're doing it as an applicator, you're getting behind your competition. If you don't and all of a sudden they're going to be able to be 3 bucks an acre cheaper than you just because they can run so much more efficient. Well, they're going to lose work.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:14:10] Speaker C: So. So there's always that calculation of like, you got to figure that stuff in if you're looking to potentially upgrade. It's not just the price of the drone, it's also that competitive or keeping that competitive edge. That's something that you definitely have to factor in when you're looking to upgrade. But if you don't have to do that to stay competitive over the next couple years, if we don't get upgrades, it might actually be beneficial to the new applicator just getting rolled.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I mean, the way I've kind of went to seeing it like the last couple weeks is if you're going to stay in it application wise, you're really not in any kind of like different stance than a dealer that you need to keep promoting the newest. You know, you got to keep up with the newest and best technology.
[00:14:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Because like, if you're like now, I don't know, like, how entertaining. You know, like if you had a T40 guy or a T100 guy. If you're just a producer and you don't know anything about anything, but this guy tells you he can get sprayed faster than this guy. I mean, that's what matters.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Producer. I mean, my. In my area.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Okay. Is just getting it done.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Yeah, getting it done fast. Fungicide wise for fungicide.
So much timing, farmers.
[00:15:20] Speaker C: Yeah, timing.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Everybody wants fungicide down yesterday.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: 100.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: So, like when I get calls for people booking, you could go like two hours with no calls, and then in the next 15 minutes you could book like 3,000 acres.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Yep, 100%.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: So being that much faster and just getting over acres that much faster, it's
[00:15:37] Speaker A: just what type of generator did you say you're running?
[00:15:40] Speaker B: I have two Westinghouse. They're the 20,000 running, but 28,000 peak.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: And they're gas with that.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: A V twin on it.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: So you have two of those.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: I got two of them.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Because it's 20,000 running. So I have three 8,000 chargers. So I got two 8,000 chargers on one for 16 on this side, and then I have 8,000 charger on this side with all the rest of my electric.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: I think I plugged it in. I just don't remember. Can one 28,000 Weston house run two C 10,000s?
[00:16:11] Speaker C: I think they can that.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: I don't know. Because it's 28 peak. Yeah, but it's 20 running and you're going to be pull. I mean, it's going to be really.
Technically. Technically, it should probably. They probably have it rated higher than 20 running. They just advertised 20 running, but I don't know. That's a question I have going. You know, going forward. That's something I'm thinking about, like, going to. That is. I'm going to probably. I probably. It'd be smarter for me to go like a big diesel generator.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So you're going to be asking a lot from it.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: From that one.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Say it's exactly 20. Right. If you plug two C10000s, it might be 9800 or whatever, but you might be pushing it and it might do it for a little bit.
[00:16:52] Speaker C: But then, yeah, I do have a 15,000 Westinghouse to where I'll run one 10,000 charger on. And I mean, it barely. You barely even hear the noise barking down on the generator. Like, the generator does not seem to be working hard. Yeah, 15,000 on that. So.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: But if you plug two. Oh, yeah.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: But I'm. So that would be the quote. I think that thing's got to close to 12,000 running. But would you be better off just getting like 2:15,000 and do one generator?
[00:17:24] Speaker A: I probably would. Because then you have redundancy and you
[00:17:26] Speaker C: have redundancy and you're not working those engines very hard. Yeah, it's got a V twin engine, but.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: But you're gonna need more than that 15,000watt because it's like we talked about at lunch. You probably need 2 tens per 100.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: But. But you know what?
[00:17:44] Speaker B: On your generator, what would fix the
[00:17:46] Speaker A: whole thing is it's just two DJI generators. I. Yeah. It's probably just too much money.
[00:17:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: If you'd run two DJI generators. I mean.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: But does that. Does that have any more like extra power to run like the rest of the stuff on my trailer?
[00:18:00] Speaker A: No, that's.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: What. I don't know.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Because it's a 120 like a normal 120 plug.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: Yeah. What are you talking about? When you say the rest of the stuff? What are you running? What else?
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Electric pumps.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: And so you're. You're using an electric pump to like fill your throat. Okay.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: I think that pump that you're running would draw too much and then it would kick off and send the power to the battery rather than to your pumps. I think you.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: You'd have to look how much the pump actually takes.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: We.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: We did that quite a bit. Ran other stuff off of the DJI generator, like fans and just charging our remote batteries.
Not a pump. But one thing that I tried to do is charge our big battery pack like that and that thing just sucks it like if you charge it. And that would super.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: At supercharged. Supercharged. That is 1500 max watts that it will pull.
[00:18:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: But I need to look on the DJI generator and see if you plug it in, what is max watt?
[00:18:58] Speaker C: It would kick it off if we would do max quite on that.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: I just don't know much about like the DJI generator. Like the guys running in my area just. Nobody really runs one. I mean. Yeah, a lot of guys just bought a cheap Westinghouse or, you know, have already invested in a giant diesel.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Yeah, you're really not. I mean, by the time you pay for the charger and the generator, it's not really much of a difference.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: It truly isn't. It's running. You can run the pumps off of the DJI generator because you got to buy a C10000 and then you have to buy a generator or why not
[00:19:31] Speaker C: just run a little 2000 watt Honda generator for your pump?
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Like a separate. Yeah, like, I mean that, that's a run forever.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: And they. Those little inverter generators hardly take any fuel and it's not pumping. So might.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: That. That is. That is an idea too. I just. The way I'm. The way I have been thinking about it so far is just one giant generator.
[00:19:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Because like if, if you step away from the DJI generator, I feel like I would be better off buying a generator big enough for the next drone.
[00:20:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Kind of is kind of the way I'm. I'm kind of. I'm. I'm thinking like three or four years down the road. The scale I need to be then, because the scale I had coming in it in. In it three years ago for 40s is nowhere close to the scale, you know, we could be now.
[00:20:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: It's kind of my thinking.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: I wonder if the batteries can keep getting bigger, though. Like, those suckers are going to be so heavy. I think they're going to split them just like XCG has. Right? Two batteries. Yeah. Instead of being one big battery, it's going to be two smaller ones. And the chargers are smaller.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Does that make sense? I think that's where we're going.
[00:20:40] Speaker C: I could be wrong, but I think so. They got two in that helio over there.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: If we keep going bigger on batteries. That's why our generators are getting so ginormous. Yeah, they're just so ginormous. But where we should go is DC to dc. We've talked about it on the podcast before. Is like big battery packs and that dog on trailer thing that they were showing this morning.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: Yeah, it's got potential.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: It's an interesting concept. Will it work?
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Autonomous switching? I don't know how that works, but the rest of it.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now you got a trailer that can explode if you're in an accident.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: You know, that. That was kind of a topic like my dad has is like, why doesn't the, you know, a drone have like a little Honda motor, You know, where it could just run for hours and hours and hours. And then like, the more we kind of talked about it, somebody was like, well, if it crashes, it's probably just gonna blow up on it.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The whole thing is gone.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Yeah. But I don't think that's the issue.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: I mean, like, that would be like. I think that would be like the most efficient thing.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: But that thing doesn't generate enough power.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: It doesn't.
[00:21:45] Speaker C: The problem like to. To.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: I mean, look at the generators. Like, look how big the generators need to be.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Just to produce enough power.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Yeah. So those electric. And you got to have electric motors. So they got that one little drone over here that they're doing kind of a hybrid. But that motor charges the batteries that power the motors. Because you got to have electric motors to. To be able to react and respond well enough or quick enough to be able to fly. The way these drones fly. Motor is just simply charging the battery, not actually running the motors. The. The props the way a helicopter would be. The problem is you get a lot of weight the bigger your motor gets. And who knows, maybe.
Maybe they will figure it out. I mean, they're flying that one. I think that they're they're hooking that up with. Mike is not sold on that.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: No, I'm not.
[00:22:35] Speaker C: I'm not.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Because I'm not. Because they've tried it in China. Like they have tried hybrid agricultural spray drones, and there's a reason that they haven't been mass produced and brought to the market there. There's something that happens somewhere along the line that it just doesn't make sense to have a hybrid. I think we just got to keep improving the battery technology, like solid state batteries. Like, we've come so far actually of how much power can be packed into a small battery. We've come a long way. And I think if people are continuing to engineer the batteries, that's what's going to take us to the next level.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's like the conversation we had earlier when we were all sitting down, like, what's the skate like?
You roughly doubled from like a T40 to this to T100.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: So can we double again?
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: You know, like, I don't.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: Are we gonna have a 50 gallon tank?
[00:23:29] Speaker B: I don't, I don't know what the. I don't know what the limitation. Like.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: No, no. We're talking just batteries.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Yeah. But yeah, right.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Like, how cool would it be that the battery is so big that you can literally do two or three loads.
[00:23:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Without, you know, going below 30.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: I mean, I, I eventually see, like, there'll be a market like they have down here where there's going to be.
Everyone's going to be running multiple batteries, you know, like two or three at maybe at one time.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Like, kind of like the flag, you know.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:23:59] Speaker C: The fly cart.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, I'll just say it here because I don't think the model will get here, but DJI is already was talking to me about the T200 and running two batteries. It's like.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: I mean, I'll give you my opinion, but it's like, where are you putting the batteries? Let's start with that. Because when you start pulling batteries from one side to the other side of the drone with how big they are. No, that's going to take too much time.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: Not if you have two workers helping you.
Maybe even have two hoses to fill the thing from both sides. You got to think bigger, Mike. You just hire more minions to run back and forth.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: I'm going to shift the focus on here because I wanted to get on here and talk to you about like the M30T and like the relay system that you guys have.
Like the, the Mounting bracket on it.
That was just something like when I got started, because I was going so far and just because we have so much cell signal in my area that, like, being able to put the relay on the M30T and let it go out so far just to cover more ground was like such a game changer for my business.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: So I. I don't know what it took for you guys to get there, but, like, to get the bracket and everything and how you figured that out, but that was. That was awesome.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So the way I figured it out is I was having the same issues. You were like, how can I extend this? And the relays were available, but I don't want to walk out to the field and put it on a pole and then go back to the trailer and then fly it off. And I was flying the 30 T's doing deer recovery stuff. And I was like, that. That thing will totally pick that up. I just got to figure out how to mount it. And then I just zip tied it to the top originally to start running because we were literally in spray season, and it just zip tied it. Every time I needed to take it off to charge it. I had to clip all the zip ties and then do new zip ties. And then once the season was over, we just looked at the bracket.
I think that was the gl.
I forget what light that was, but Basically we built 360, isn't it? Well, it's now the T60, but originally I had a different light and I just built it for that bracket and. Yeah, produce it. Do you fly two relays or just one?
[00:26:07] Speaker B: I do both. Most of the time, I just do one. Because we only need it for one drone.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: And because the flight time for only one relay on there is just so much better.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Like, I even did some, like, at home testing on that too, for our rig. And I was like, this is the day I got the relay and we put it in the air and started doing the math. I'm like, oh, this, you know, this is going to be so much better.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Oh, 100.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Because I did the pole thing, you know.
Oh. Just like a pole base that I'd carry in that and my pole and my relay trek out so far and shimmy the pole up, you know, set it all down and then come back and take it off. But that's just such an easy drone to operate, too.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, the 30.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, because you don't have to turn both batteries off. You can pop this one off, slide it in, pop that one Off. Slide it in.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: What. What else do you do with your 30T?
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Nothing.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: You don't do deer recovery down here?
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I. I don't personally. There's a big company that's like 10 minutes down the road for me that hires like eight guys.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: I mean, I could if I really
[00:27:04] Speaker A: want a tree 30t just to fly
[00:27:07] Speaker B: your drone around relay.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: You could have got a 30 and that could have been a little cheaper.
Yeah.
Where'd you buy your 30T from?
[00:27:17] Speaker B: From the. My local dealer who I got dress from. He found a deal on it. It was pretty cheap, so.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Nice. Oh, well, then maybe you didn't.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the thermal is nice to play around with, but I mean, I don't really use. I talked about using it for, like, deer recovery and stuff, but I. I'm not a big hunter guy, so, like, it's not like a big passion of mine.
[00:27:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Do you guys have deer on your farm?
Does somebody hunt your farm? Yeah. Okay, interesting.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: We don't have very much.
Maybe two acres on 1200 acres. That's trees, so there's not like a lot of deer hunting.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Interesting. What.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: What.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: What all do you spray?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: So I mainly do fungicide, and then I do a lot of aquatic stuff.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Okay. Aquatics on private ponds or public lakes
[00:28:02] Speaker B: or a lot of private ground irrigation lakes.
I do a lot of, like, work with the local fisheries. There's two local fisheries on both sides of me, and I do a lot of stuff, like their stock ponds and stuff.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: What. What would you be spraying for? Aquatics. For guys that are watching or listening.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Oh, we do a lot of lily pad and, like, cattail work. I mean, that's mainly most of it. I've done a lot of, like, we've worked on submerged weeds this last summer. So, like, I did like, some coontail and some southern naiad.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Okay. So let's. Let's talk about that. The granule application.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Liquid.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: Liquid what?
[00:28:38] Speaker C: Yeah, just drop it into the water and it'll.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Southern nyad. It was a pond at this guy's house.
And I mean, like, basically, like, little. Their own, like, private beach.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: So they had. They had like, barbecue area. I mean, it was all nice. And they had this big pond fountain out in the middle.
I contacted, like, a University of Missouri extension and, like, worked with a whole bunch of people there. And then I got a hold of Sea Pro, if you know who that is. They do a lot of. It's just aquatic chemicals.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: And they're like, well, if it's this, you need to do that. And then like that guy needs some sort of like circulation in the water. They're like if he has a pond fountain or whatever, that'd be perfect. So yeah, I mean you just broadcast. So for all aquatic applications, you need to do at least under half of the pond, you know, so you don't kill all the aeration from the vegetation under or above. We sprayed half the pond. I came back in two weeks, sprayed the other half of the pond and I've got the pictures to show you guys like the before.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Oh yeah, it's. Yeah, it worked well. Sweet.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: It works just about as good as spraying lily pads.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That lily pad job that I did, it was like, it smoked them and then they came right back.
So we got, we got to get down into the roots better.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: Well, that's a different deal too.
Tell me more spraying lily pads. So for the lily pads, you have the pad that's half in, half out of the water. Okay. Then you have the stem of whatever's coming out, which was on the bulb. And then you have the ones that are all the way up and the bulbs completely out and it's above the water.
So on that first application you only killed the stuff above. You only killed the pad floating in that bulb. You didn't kill any of that stuff.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: So like the guys that I work with, we're on like a three year old like cycle of like where stuff's completely changed and I got pictures to show you of that too.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: It's really so. So.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: And you just need.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: The tribune that I was using is not systemic or what? Like shouldn't it have gone into the root system and killed it?
[00:30:41] Speaker B: I don't know about that. I just use cheap aquatic Roundup.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: So for lily pads though, multiple, multiple
[00:30:51] Speaker C: applications then or like how many, how many applications of the roundup for lily pads before you're like they're, they're done.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: I mean just depends on the guy. Like some like this. For this upcoming season, I'm going to try to hit all of my aquatic acres I sprayed probably around a little over 100 acres of water.
[00:31:09] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: And for the guys that have lily pads, I'm going to try to hit them right after we get done planting because we farm and I do other stuff too. So I'm right after we come done planting and the first growth of all the stuff shooting out of the water, no lily pads on the water, just stuff coming out, I'm going to try to kill all it. Cuz that's the seed Base for the next summer. That's not this summer.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: It's next summer. Okay. But yeah, like that's good.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: The lily pad roots are all like grass.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: You guys are listening to some absolute bangers right now. You're dropping some very valuable information.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: I. This is the part of my business I'm trying to scale because like in my area I just spray so much fungicide. But that's only one chunk of the year.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: And I'm trying to do this and I'm working on a deal to get in on like some solar farm makers too.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: Nice. But yeah, aquatics are tough. Dennis dealt with some aquatic stuff. Did yours end up like going away permanently?
[00:32:00] Speaker C: We'll find out in the spring.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:01] Speaker C: But yeah look pretty dead in the fall. But I was dealing with spatter dot.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker C: I don't know. You're familiar with that.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: I kind of stuff. I kind of dodged your question though. But most guys just want one application the whole year. So like in that instance, I try to come in like right at the tail end of fungicide.
[00:32:19] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Because that's when the most plant growth is out. With the aquatic roundup I use, if it touches it, that plant's not coming back next summer.
[00:32:27] Speaker C: But. But would they have seeded already to where you might get new growth from?
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Possibly. I try to get before the bulb has already broken open.
[00:32:35] Speaker C: Okay. So it might.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So did you.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: But essentially, like the way I see it is, is I'm trying to cut your pond. The growth in the lily pad. Like invasive growth. And at least a fourth or a third every.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Every tree I see. Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Because.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah, like, and treat it over time.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: And like the parameters I use for this, we fly like 12 foot high on 3 gallons, which with a pretty high rate of aquatic glyphosate. Just because it's cheap and that's what the label says. Yeah. I put it on the high end just to smoke it. Yeah. And then I mean we're only running like 20 on speed and like 20 foot swath, so we're really pushing it down in there. It's just that you have, you have those lily pads in the water and when you fly over it, you know, you shake you what? Even if you touched it, that chemical is gone, you know, because it wasn't actually absorbed in that lily pad. Because you're rolling it through all the water.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Uh huh. Yeah. That's what we were sure. Like, so. So the first you want to kill that.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: That lily pad next summer when it's
[00:33:32] Speaker C: out of the water, wait till it Comes up. Yeah, but do all lily pads do that?
Like, are there different types of lily pads going to.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: It just, it depends. I mean like there is. I don't know the technical term for this, but some of them have like the big cupped like sides and then some of them are just like flat plates.
[00:33:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: So that, that pond that you're referring to, or I assume you're referring to the video that I posted, I think what happened is what you were saying earlier. There were some beneath the water and the ones that were on top, they died. And then.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Well, you even have the shading from the stuff above the water too. Like the stuff above the water is blocking the lily pads on the water.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: But it was all in the water.
[00:34:18] Speaker C: His were flat.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: I couldn't remember if there's like the plants.
[00:34:24] Speaker C: It was pretty, pretty much laying on
[00:34:26] Speaker A: top of the water. It was laying on top.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: I've got a good picture on my phone that I can show you when we get done. Yeah, it's a 15 acre lake that I sprayed half of it on one shot and then had I came back to do the second application and the left side's just completely torched.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: Huh. I was looking at a granular application where it actually sinks to the bottom and lays on the roots of the lily pads. And supposedly they absorb it through there as well.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: Yeah, it's like like a 2,4D product. I think it works well.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: It's just super expensive.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: The worst part about aquatic stuff is so the stuff I'm spraying is mainly like irrigation lakes and stuff. So I've got a 400 acre field that feeds this, you know, so I've got anhydrous fertilizer. All that stuff's running off to feed the growth of these ponds.
So like for my, for my customers, it's really frustrating because like they've done numerous stuff before, but I mean, you knocked it back and then if you didn't treat it the next year, you're back to where you start.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Right back.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Then the above the below water invasive weaves are crazy. Like, especially in like that kind of setting.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: You can only do so much to knock them back.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: And most people are doing this just to have a nice, pretty looking pond, right?
[00:35:42] Speaker B: Or no, I mean for the irrigation lakes, those guys are doing it to keep, to maximize the amount of water. And they're like, see how the plants don't take up as much room, but they're keeping the water clean and keeping stuff out of the giant pump that runs.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah. Because some of that growth could get sucked into the pump. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. For the pond that I was treating, it was just for looks.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Just for. Yeah, I do a lot of just for looks too. But like the fishery stuff, they're doing that just to keep the ponds from getting overtaken. I do a lot of ponds that guys are like, go kill it. We don't care about the fish because if you don't spray it, there's not going to be fish next summer.
[00:36:22] Speaker C: So probably like a glyphosate that.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: That wouldn't kill them. No. But spraying the whole pond at one time.
[00:36:28] Speaker C: Oh yeah, that kills.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that kills the hosing place. And guys are more. We're a lot of guys are more worried about the overall state of their pond because you can always go back and restock it with fish.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: But if it's completely overtaken with invasive weeds.
[00:36:43] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: I, the lady did not care about the fish and then it was a much bigger fish kill off than she thought and she. Then she was a little more easy but she is so sick of him that it's like, get them out of here. Yeah. Aquatics. We don't talk to many guys that, you know, do a lot of aquatics. I think it's partially because it's new. Right. Like there's not a lot of drones doing aquatic stuff.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: But obviously it's a very hard thing to watch too. Like to watch it fly. Watch your drone fly over the water. You know, for big.
I mean I don't know how big the lake you did, but like when I go, majority of my lakes are like probably 8 to 15 acres.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Oh wow. So yeah, I think this was a three acre.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: It's out there over the, you know, watching it go way that way.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: I did swamp lands, like 8,000 acre areas.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:33] Speaker C: But I like if my drone goes down, I think I'm just going to leave it.
I mean it would suck so bad.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: I don't.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: Not just water.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: It's like what do you get out of even doing that? Like cleaning the swamp.
[00:37:45] Speaker C: Oh, it's invasive species that.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: This state.
[00:37:48] Speaker C: That state.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: It's all state stuff. I was going to say like, for like a personal person. I don't know what the advantage of that.
[00:37:53] Speaker C: No, not, not in swamplands. All this big swampland stuff that I've done was first aid stuff.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:00] Speaker C: And yeah, just invasive species that are taking over the swamp lands and all the, the native habitat that the birds and stuff like so.
But yeah, that's stressful spraying because you got dead trees.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Dead trees. Oh My gosh. Yeah.
[00:38:16] Speaker C: I'll give you a heart attack.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: I sprayed a job this summer, and I knew the pond that the guy was talking about. Like, I had been by there and never really, like, studied or, you know, stared at it, and he's like, oh, there's about six trees out there. I got there and I counted over 40 and I.
And where do you think all the lily pads were? Or 90% of the lily pads were? And I was around the tree. Oh, my God. Gosh.
Because I don't do very much manual flying for fungicide just because I don't need to, because it's so open. But, you know, you get to doing this in between all them trees and the radar things just screaming and you're like, all right, whatever. I don't get. It's just gonna have to. It's just gonna have to be what is what it is.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: What do you think if. If you were to start a new, you know, from the beginning, you. You haven't. Let's say you never started a spray drum business. What do you think would be the number one challenge for new guys to get started legal?
[00:39:10] Speaker B: I'd say that's regulation. Challenge regulation stuff. I mean, just getting everything figured out. Like your commercial applicators license, all those licensing you have to have for the state.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Yeah, good thing we make that much easier.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: That's all one thing, you know, and then you have, okay, I bought this drone and I don't know nothing about what I need to do to do. There's. Because it needs end number. It needs all your exemptions, you know, and you got. I mean, that. That whole side of it so much. Just because it takes so long.
[00:39:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: I mean, just let's.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: Let me just. I dealt with the same stuff and Mike gave me some tips, but the way that they've got it set up now make it a million times easier. Like literally do so much of it for you. And it's nothing like literally.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Their.
[00:40:00] Speaker C: Their program they have right now for regulations is just fantastic.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: I mean, stuff like that. I mean, that wasn't really a big thing when I got in it.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: We haven't really made it public yet, but like, we now have something that will. You can legally be flying from the FAA's perspective, legally, your brand new drone in 10 days or less. Now you have to go get your commercial.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Yeah. You know.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: But all the stuff on your end. But if I could come to you and say, hey, Mike, I want to buy two T1 hundreds and you hand it to me with N numbers and everything. If there was a way to, to do all that, you know, just boom, here it is. I'll, you know, transfer the N number to you.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: Sweet. Yeah, we got that done. All in.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: That's, that's.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: If you go to the FA right now, you'll see how many T1 hundreds
[00:40:45] Speaker B: are registered for new.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: I think other than that for like a new guy, I feel like if you want to be in this, you got to be fully committed to it.
[00:40:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: There's no like, I mean half doing this.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:01] Speaker C: Unless somebody has another job and, and they're like, you know what, on the weekends and evenings I'm going to spray a little bit here and there. Obviously somebody can do that. But if somebody wants to make a living doing it. Yeah. Then go all out like you, you don't want to do.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: So counter dentist. Do you think a guy could do it on the side? He's saying you can do. You think you.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: I do it on the side.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Okay. So you could do it on the side. And weekends.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: Not necessarily like I do it on the side for the summer.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: After we get done planning until we got a harvest, I'm. I'm free range, you know, I do kind of whatever and then like throughout the year, you know, I can do a little bit of stuff.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: So what else do you do then? If this, if this spray drone business is kind of on the side and it sounds like you're doing really well, you did 8,000 acres this year.
That doesn't sound like a side gig.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we farm. We got 1200 acres.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: And we got.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: So you're farming?
[00:41:54] Speaker B: Yeah, we farm. We got livestock, we sell seed.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Basically my dad keeps me busy.
He has no trouble.
People around our area joke just because we got like two miles of gravel like is what we call it. And spraying around there is a full time job.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: Huh. So are you spraying it with a backpack?
[00:42:18] Speaker B: Like we've got a probably 150 gallon tank that goes in the back of side by side.
[00:42:25] Speaker A: Is that not something you could do with your drone manual? Plus it is.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: I mean we. All the grain bins and the hog houses and buildings and stuff. I gotta go around. So I mean I could but.
[00:42:35] Speaker C: And it's not like you're running over crop.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: No, no. It's just, it's. That's just spraying our driveway.
[00:42:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: I'm telling you. I'm telling you guys.
I'm not a big guy, like big outfit guy, you know, but like you need to come my way like on your way home.
Like you need to stop my way and see just what, what it looks like out there.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: No, I just gotta put a, a new way location out there. That's what I gotta do.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: That would be nice.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Have you bought from us before?
[00:43:05] Speaker B: I bought my relay bracket from you guys.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Okay, so you don't have any other experience with the new AG team other than that?
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Okay, I've talked to Ryan on your guys sale team a lot.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: What were you wanting to buy?
[00:43:18] Speaker B: I talked to him when I wanted to buy my M30T. I talked to him a lot about that and the relay and like literally your guys's whole deer thermal kit between like the case with the screen, the drone, the relay bracket, all, you know, all that kind of stuff.
I price a lot of equipment from you guys. You're just farther from, from me.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Just then where I currently go.
[00:43:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:41] Speaker A: If one would be in Missouri, would you be more apt to buy from New Way or. Not necessarily.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's not price, it's the closeness. Yeah. Okay. Dennis, you want to go to Missouri?
[00:43:54] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know how big of like a dealer network you have.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Well, well, here's the thing.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Who I buy from now, my dealer, he lives 45 minutes away. And then I drive an hour and a half away to the big headquarters.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Orders. Okay. We have literally sold everything out of our Ohio location. Yeah. Everything that somebody bought from New Way AG literally came from my warehouse. It's pretty crazy.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: So you guys have been in for like three years?
[00:44:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: So where are you going to be in three years from now?
[00:44:22] Speaker A: New Way specifically. Yeah.
[00:44:25] Speaker B: What do you envision, you know, if this keeps up? I mean, what's, what's the, you know,
[00:44:30] Speaker A: I think that New Way AG will be one of the largest distributors with the biggest network. There's a possibility that New A has New Way retail stores that if you go just like a John Deere, like if you go to a John Deere dealer, you get John Deere experience.
That's probably where we're headed. I don't know if we can actually get there in three years, but I want that experience.
Basically when guys come into Ohio, they're like, man, I wish you'd be closer because just how you handle my service. I bring my drone and you get it done. And I got text messages as the process was going on getting my drone fixed. They'd be more than willing to drive two hours rather than eight hours to my location. So I would love to make an experience throughout the country that is the same. We tend to when we buy something like, like same.
Wanting something same. So if you go into Walmart, they're all the same. You know, groceries are one side something on the other side. I'd like to set that up. I don't know that we'll get there in three years. But the biggest challenge is obviously just supply.
Yeah, yeah. You can't scale anything if you don't have supply. It'd be dumb to put a location in Missouri if I don't even have enough supply in Ohio to keep up with that. So if I go to Missouri, you know, I'm in the heart of it. I might, you know, suck guys from Texas because they want a new way experience.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: I didn't know what your thoughts, you know, like if you had a dream, you know, like long term for that. Are you worried about the more you branch, like the harder it'll be like on your company.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: Oh, 100. Yeah. Oh, always. So it's culture. Right. So every time you branch out is can you keep the culture?
Because if you come, if you would come to new way, there's a culture there. And so for me the challenge would be if I go to Missouri, how do I take the culture that I have in Ohio and have it in Missouri?
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I feel like the bigger and bigger you get, like the more you would have to, but the more you lose that. And like for some companies, I think, you know, being just one unit at one place like benefits them, but it's all about like the scale of your operation.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: Like for my operations, it's easier for us to stay small. One trailer like that.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: And then there's guys, you know, that run different fleets, guys running one drone this way, run drone that way.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: So you don't, you don't want to scale your company as far as multiple drone pilots operating under your own company.
You're just not sure.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: Different rigs. Yeah, I don't know. Not really. Some guys say, I mean the only, the only way I would do that is so like right now my sister works for me. So she talks about, you know, like she likes flying and stuff. And so she's mentioned like making maybe building like a rig for her. I really don't, I don't know if I want to deal with the liability of that.
[00:47:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: And like the scheduling of that because like if it was my full time thing. Yeah, sure.
[00:47:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: But you know, yeah.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Some guys say stay small, keep it all. I don't know, I've never.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: I feel if I. If I scale that much, I feel like we have. We'd have, you know, you just have to cover that much more to pay the bills.
And I feel comfortable now knowing that I haven't hit my max acres yet, you know? You know?
[00:47:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: So I think staying where I am and like, reaching for my goal instead of, like, trying to jump would be better.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: But I don't know. It's all personal preference. You know, we talked about. We talked about that for probably 20 minutes earlier.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: Yeah. As we close this podcast, what. What would be some type of word of wisdom that you would give to a potential new operator, somebody that wants to buy a spray drone?
[00:48:18] Speaker B: I'd probably tell them to be patient tomorrow the. Whatever could be announced, you know, so you need to be patient and, like, do your due diligence of, like, what's out there right now and like, what. What's gonna come out instead of, like, just going full bore and jumping in on even. Even, like used equipment or new equipment maybe.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: So, so patient.
So what if they bought a, you know, a T100 and then tomorrow T150 comes out?
[00:48:49] Speaker B: I. I still think they'd be okay, but I think they need to, like, realize what they're getting into, like, how much work this is. I don't think very many people realize that we're out on the trailer for like 18 hours a day.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it's good. Tell them it's not easy. I try to tell people, for the
[00:49:04] Speaker B: guys that are interested in this, just heads up, you're gonna sit on your trailer and sweat like 15 pounds of
[00:49:10] Speaker A: sweat off every summer.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: If. I mean, if you really want to get it done for fungicide season when you can really put the hammer down and do a whole bunch of acres, you're just gonna sit out there.
You're not gonna put up a fan because you don't have enough power. You know, you don't want to stretch your generator out to put up a fan.
[00:49:25] Speaker A: If the new way trailer would have an enclosed system that has an air conditioner, is. Would that be practical for.
Just think about the operations that you have, like the trailer over there. Is that practical?
[00:49:39] Speaker B: Possibly. I would. I would be entertained in that. I. I have thought of that style a lot. Getting rid of from my one long flight deck to two landing zones.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Okay, I'm not talking about that.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: I know, but you're talking about the enclosed room. And it'd probably be up on the front where your command center is now. Yeah, I Would be probably interested in it. And that kind of goes back to, like, the very beginning where we talked about. We're trying to figure out how to afford to do everything, you know, because this. This industry is just, like, you know, peeled off, taken off way faster than I would imagine. That wasn't a thought. Two summers ago.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Yeah. 100. Yeah. Yeah. We just needed to get trailers, trucks, whatever it was at.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: Two years ago, I thought my double deck trailer was overkill. And half the people told me that I was getting in it, told me it was. And now everybody you know that does. If you say you're a fungicide pilot, you have a double deck trailer.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So 100%. If you check out the new a trailer, what. What's one of the first things that you would change on it or add to it?
[00:50:44] Speaker B: I don't know what I'd add to your trailer, but I know what I would add from your trailer to my trailer.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:49] Speaker B: The box on the back.
[00:50:51] Speaker A: Drone security box.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: The drone security box.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: Okay. So you. You like that idea?
[00:50:55] Speaker B: I very much like that idea.
[00:50:57] Speaker A: Sweet.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Because my trailer is all out in the open, you know, drones right up on the trap, the top, which I don't have any problem with that. But, like, if I came to somewhere where I needed to park it overnight, put them in that box, you know, put them on the nice rolly trays and locking it. Putting that away would be nice to change something on there. You took the batteries out of the floor. That would have been. Probably been my thing.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: I'm just a bigger guy. I really don't care to be bending that far down for.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Dennis had to tell me to finally do that.
[00:51:23] Speaker C: I complained about it quite a bit, but it wasn't good.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: I think the thought was good, but I think it would have been better off at the front of the trailer on the. This side of your command center, then out in the middle. Like, I was worried about when I first seen it. I was worried about stepping in it.
[00:51:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. And it was. It was a little bit. You had to watch that for sure. And. But when you put it up front, there was no need to put it into the floor, and it actually made
[00:51:49] Speaker A: it easier to put it up front.
[00:51:51] Speaker C: And the big thing was my. The first year, I had a guy that was just filling tanks and swapping batteries, but he'd go back there with a new battery, pull the old one out, fill it, and then he would want to go and stick that battery into the charger before coming back, which just added more time. So he Was literally carrying his empty battery back so I could take off and get out of there. Then he carry it back again, drop it in. And then the other big thing was always wanting to check where are the batteries. And as soon as one's full, be swapping the batteries in the charging system. And so it was so much better to have it up.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: I've got, I've got my one thing I would change.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: And maybe this isn't something that everyone wants, but it's something that works good for me.
Your command center is just open. You know, there's nothing in there.
So on my trailer, my command system is probably twice as long because I have my chargers inside the command system. And then I have just like a cheap tool storage box, like just a plastic one from like any Farm Depot store that I put my whole controllers in the case and like random stuff that we need on top of the trailer in there and then it doubles as a seat.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: So we have that as an option, but it doesn't. Come on everyone. Yeah. Yep. So we built a custom tool box. So in the bottom you can put whatever you want, batteries. But then the lid folds open and you can store, you know, your controllers in there. I just haven't like made videos about it and it's not on like the main pictures.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I haven't seen that on.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: So basically it sets right next to the rail and most of the time I'll just set my controllers right there. But we also have the super clamp where we clamp them to the railing.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: That's. That's something I, I'm gonna invest in this summer.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: So you know what, you know what that makes me want to do when you tell me what, what you would want on the new way trailer is? Tell me Dog on. My advertising is sucking. Like I, I need to make more videos specifically talking about that so people know about it. Cuz you just asked me about it and you don't even know that we have it. And I do have it, so thanks for that. That's. It's.
[00:53:55] Speaker B: It might be something that you just need to put on your trailer too. That's in the videos.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Maybe you don't.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: Oh it is.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
I wonder why they don't notice it. He's talking about the, the toolbox on top.
He wasn't aware that we have that. And so it's in the videos. I just don't, I don't brag on it. I talk about it.
[00:54:13] Speaker B: I don't talk about toolbox on. You're talking like the Toolbox, like on the rail.
[00:54:18] Speaker A: It's up top in the flight area.
[00:54:19] Speaker C: It's not in these pictures.
Yeah, I have the same thing on mine. I have toolboxes up top that probably won't ever.
[00:54:25] Speaker B: Time to show us if it was on there.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: No, no. But, yeah, we have it. I just got to do better.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: It's so nice for me that that box just doubles as somewhere to sit. Because, like, like I said when I got in it, I thought we were going to take a lawn chair and put. Because I had room to put a lawn chair in between all my chargers and the cooling stations and stuff. And then, you know, you figure out how much you're actually moving, and you're like, okay, this lawn chair is just in the way. And you can only. You can only lean on the rail, the handrail for so long.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: So long. Yeah, you know, I had.
[00:54:53] Speaker C: I had a cooler up there that. That.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we do that. We do that too.
But the way our trailers run is I got two kids flying, and then I'm overseeing it all.
So most they're younger kids, so they both like to sit down. So we need looking at a seat for three people, which most people don't need that.
[00:55:11] Speaker C: But that's one thing that you always said with the new wave, because I'd always have these brilliant suggestions of what you would do, and you're like, yeah, we could just keep going and going, but people can customize it on it on their own.
[00:55:24] Speaker A: That was. That was ultimately what I wanted. I wanted a good platform of a trailer that if you want add ons, it's easy for guys that do add
[00:55:34] Speaker B: ons, and I think you guys have established that, and I think your promotion works for that too. You know, you can get Mike's loadout, the decked out one, or you can just buy the trailer and then go, you know, go from there.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: So, yeah.
Price point.
What do you think of the price point?
[00:55:50] Speaker B: What do I think it is or what do I know it is?
[00:55:52] Speaker A: No, no. What? Like, is the price point okay for the trailer without the load or.
[00:55:57] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: I mean, so that's kind of going.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: Guys. I mean, the way I see it is it's all farm equipment. So you have an investment in it, and you hope to get so much out of your, you know, initial investment. You make. You hope to make so much out of your initial investment, and then on the tail end, you hope to sell it for so much.
[00:56:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: So I think it's fine.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: Sweet.
[00:56:15] Speaker C: Keep an eye on the new weight trailer because I do have some things I will make him do, so.
[00:56:21] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:56:22] Speaker C: Yeah, they're awesome.
[00:56:28] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: But no, I appreciate you guys being so nice.
[00:56:31] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:56:31] Speaker B: I know I wanted to stop by and talk to you about the relays and stuff, and this was cool.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: I appreciate it. All right, guys, that's all we got for you today. Make sure to tune in next week. We'll see you guys.
