Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Alrighty, folks, welcome back to the drone on show. Today we have Johnny Staples. I feel like you're way, way beyond me on experience. You've been spray doing spray drone stuff. And not just spray drones, but spraying, applicating, doing all kinds of unique stuff. Excited to dive in just to hear some wisdom.
Dennis is not on today, so we always look at him because he's old. But we've been given a hard time since we've heard. But we've been talking to young guys. So how'd you get into this necessity? Yeah. Just needing to get it done, huh.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Growing up on a farm, we had a tobacco farm, row crop farm. And I guess what always drove me somewhat was a better way. There was a better way to do than what we were doing.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: But what about a new way?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Yeah, a new way.
I like it. I like it. So, you know, just from I guess the love of herbicides, anything was better than the hoe. So we used to have to hoe our tobacco.
And it was, it was a process where it was over and over and over.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: So you for really like actually like had.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Through the tobacco rows.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: How many acres we couldn't handle.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: It was just like my small family farm. We only had 30 acres of tobacco.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Okay. But that would take a while to summer.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: It's a summer undertaker.
Wow. It was good.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Tobacco is like a high cash crop.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: It's intensive, but.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: So at the time it was, I guess, the king cash crop.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: There was a better way. Had to be a better way.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: And so I really got intrigued by herbicides. And our neighbors seem to always have less weeds than us. They always had better looking crops, but they had better equipment.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: So I learned a lot by just being a student of life.
And that kind of drove me into college. I wanted a better way, got to Clemson and really just fell in love with the science behind the do.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: And Clemson is in Clemson University, South Carolina, right?
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yes, it is the University of South Carolina.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: There's another one there, but they don't count.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: I like it. Cool.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: So they're just.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: And you're from South Carolina?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So we're from down on the coastal Piedmont, really the PD region of our where the tobacco belt was. And I had the opportunity to work with the Clemson extension as part of my master's on weed control and tobacco.
And that just kind of drives looking for innovation. And by doing so I was able to help get a certain product on the market for farmers that really targeted two things that I hated most nutsedge and morning glory. So nut sage was early on a weed problem. And later on in harvest time, morning glory, which is obviously still a problem today.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: So one herbicide that we found would do both, and we got it to the market for the farmer. So I felt really accomplished, like you.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: You engineered it.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: I did not engineer it. So it was already on the market. It was. It was in the market in soybeans. It's authority broadleaf. Back in the day, FMC made it. I'm telling my age some, but we got it crossed over into tobacco.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: I wanted you on. You got wisdom.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: No, man.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah, this is money.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: And got it to the farmers, and then it was a problem.
So up until that point, everything that tobacco farmer used was a liquid.
Authority broadleaf came as a little granule. Ounces are ounces, right? No, you know, it's a specific gravity when you're measuring a dry. So we went through some real hurdles the first year with crop injury. Never saw it in research, but when we put it in the hands of the farmers, we had a lot of crop injury. What?
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Why?
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Why?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: They were measuring liquid, using liquid measuring cups to measure a dry flowable.
So ounces is ounces, but they're not ounces based off bulk density and specific gravity. So through some changes, FMC reformulated as a liquid. So now ounces is still ounces.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: That way the farmer wasn't screwing up
[00:03:55] Speaker B: his own crop 25 years ago. That was the first.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: So they thought it's EAS easier to put it in a liquid than it is to educate the farmer on. Just measure it out with the proper cup or.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's one more tip, I guess when you took those little extruded pellets and rode them around in a pickup for half a summer, they become more beat up, more powdery. Yeah. So when you measure that, when you measure that up to the 4 ounce, you got another problem. So even though, hey, man, I did everything right, I used that stupid little cup you gave me, and I still got crop problems.
So cut all that out, put it in liquid form.
And that really just has been that way ever since.
Kind of sealed the deal. Yeah. Enjoyed that a lot.
Presented these findings at the Southern Weed Science Society meetings. And while I was there one winter, I got asked by Dr. Harold Walker at Auburn if I'd want to be interested in continue my education.
And I took him up on it. So I went from Clemson to Auburn and finished my PhD there.
It took a little turn or a wrinkle where I Got out of row crops and into turf. He kind of coached me into that. And one of the best decisions I made just kind of opened the horizons of, you know, I came from a row crop world. I studied row crops, and he gave me an opportunity to work in turf, which is a whole different ballgame. Broader.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Okay. When you say turf, because that. That can be so much more than turf to me. I'm thinking somebody's yard. What would all turf involve?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: So most people would think exactly like you either. Golf course.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Little.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Little grass.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah, little grass. So we specialize at Nexus more in industrial turf.
So we can really break it out into maybe four levels.
Sports turf, where all your games are played.
Home loans, residential, your front yards.
Industrial turf, more like your airports.
Kind of rough. It's turf, but it's not fine turf. Just rough turf on the. More on the industrial side, like around all your buildings. Like, not out on the front lawn, but how about the back 40? It's grass. You want to keep the dust down. But all of that was in consideration. But I couldn't really leave my row crop background. Yeah. So we sent out some surveys from Auburn. What was the worst weed the sod farmers had? So I felt all kind of cocky, like, I just. I just. I just hammered this tobacco problem, you know, how hard can this be? What are y' all been doing your whole life?
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: And we got the surveys back, and the most difficult to control weed turned out to be Virginia buttonweed. So I just dove right on that. So I'm gonna find a way. And, yeah, a lot of people had put in a lot of research way before me and had gotten it to a certain point.
But my row crop days paid off.
So we did some analysis, and Dr. Walker said, well, what do you think? I said, well, I would cheat.
I said I would use this product in corn because I think it's showing the most promise. And remember, we had just pulled one out of soybeans to go in tobacco, so, yeah, I didn't mind skipping labels. It was working. We're research people. What, illegal?
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Oddly enough, man, it just worked out that was our best treatment. So we were able to kind of get some labels changed and get it into the sod farmer's hand. So I felt like I helped a grower again, a producer.
It filtered down into your fine turf ball fields, and today you can get a label for any kind of turf. But it was really targeted as sod farmers.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: I wanted to their worst weed was the most important to me.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And I just kind of stuck to my roots and made it through.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: You started a spray business. Not necessarily drones right off the rip.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Not at all.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: So you started a spray business. You're out there as a service business, right?
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: You. You figured out the chemical that worked, but then you started your own company to help the farmers control it, or really?
[00:07:56] Speaker B: I felt like that. While I was at Auburn, I met another young man and his father owned a vegetation management business.
Okay. And that was intriguing to me, and I went there and worked. 2014, I started my own business.
I still felt like there was a need in the marketplace where there was a void.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: So if you're a farmer, you've got the local extension agent, you got sales reps, fertilizer people, seed people, they're all calling on you, telling you what the newest, latest, greatest things are helping you along the way. If you are a Kansas City power co op, nobody's calling on you, you got a big vegetation problem, but you're not up to snuff on the latest, greatest tools of how to do it.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: That's interesting you're bringing this up because I never thought about it.
Okay, keep going. Like you're thinking about that now. I'm like, geez. Ow.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: So there's a void there. So I'm like, if I've got all this education, I'm not really wanting to go sit on it. How can I help people? And that's where Nexus was born. So Nexus just means a critical point.
So if I can bring science to a critical point where these people need it but don't even know they need it. Yeah. Can we have a business model?
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: And that was a void there. There's no extension agents going to call on the co ops, the railroad people, the airports.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Dude, this is so good. It's like I never even thought about that. They're all going after that farmer.
How was it again that you. You've seen that? It's because of your research on figuring out how to build the chemical.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Not really the chemistry, just working through the company where I went straight out of college.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: They had a vegetation management business that did utility right away, roadside. So that opened up a whole new window to me. And when you start looking at it, there was no specific guidelines. You know, like we have a crop magazine or a crop brochure from almost every state, every extension service. If you want to control weeds in your alfalfa, there's a guide.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: I want to control weeds in my substation Good luck, you know, so there's not a.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: There's nobody there to tell you how to do it.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: There's not a publication to.
Oh, well, here, just get this textbook from Texas A and M or whomever. Any land. You know, every state's got a land grant university.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Dude, I didn't think of that.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: I wanted to educate those people and I turned them into customers.
Now there's lots of other businesses like ours and, you know, it's a competitive world, but that was the original.
Can I take what I know about science and really bring it into a realm of.
It's not uncharted because they were doing stuff. There was just most of the time when we called on those customers, there's a better way to do it. Okay, so we brought some tools, innovative little things, and that's exactly what led us to the drones.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk about the tools that you brought prior to the drones.
What, just a backpack sprayer or did it take more than that?
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think we got five basic real tools in our. In our toolbox. Okay, so let's start with a backpack. Yeah, any successful vegetation business better have a backpack. There's going to be certain areas you just can't get to walk your butt over there and spray it.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: That's just good.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Don't be lazy. Just go do it.
So, backpack. When we left the backpack, we were doing industrial turf. So I had to come up with a way to spray it.
We couldn't go to John Deere and get one of their little golf course prayers because it's way too small.
A lot of areas we were doing for a big tractor was way too big.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: The tractor was way too big.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Way too big. The area was too small. So the tractor, like with a big 80 foot boom. Yeah, too big. Too big. A little sprayer that goes on the golf course. Too small.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: So we developed an ATV spray system and we found some tanks that were saddle made, kind of looks kind of custom. And we brought that home and put our own spray rig together of how it should look, what it should do, and over the years just perfected it. Okay, so we can take these four wheelers. And now they look like full blown spray equipment, but they handle rough terrain, boggy terrain, not your normal ball field or home loan.
And we just kind of made a niche there. So four wheelers had to have those.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Is that something you mass produce or.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: No, sir. Never sold one in my life.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I like to call them our little bumblebees. They just you see them out and about. They're just darting everywhere.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: It's cool.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: So you can take eight of them. So it's like a swarm of drones. And this is why it's so I'm getting to that point.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Is a guy driving each one or is it automated?
[00:12:20] Speaker B: No, no, no. It's just a regular. It starts out as a Honda 680 four wheeler. That's the biggest four wheeler Honda makes. And we just did that. Not to be like, look at us. It's Honda. I gotta have something that's gonna hold 40 gallons of water. And it's strapped on top of it. So immediately when you put water on, it's not an ATV anymore. It is a spray machine. It's dangerous, it's top heavy. It's different. But we've got a tractor with 80 foot booms on it.
And it's great for a big airfield. Yeah, just go after it.
But you can take six of these four wheelers, eight of these four wheelers, and it'll do the same production as that tractor in a day.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: But when that tractor pulls up to something, he's got to work around. He's kind of screwed. He's got to fold a boom in, not tear something up. But when these little four wheelers are coming through there kind of in just like in a big pair, you just get to this point and this one slows down. He just whips around it. So at any time they can be contiguous and cover 80ft or they can bust up and all do their little thing and just.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: That's like, like kind of like an accordion. You know an accordion goes back and forth and moves and everything. That's how our. That's how we like to work them. Always together.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: So. So how do you know where the spray is going of each machine that you get overlap or.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: That's always tough. We got foamers on each one. Okay. And it's like spreading with old push spreader. If you make sure you're going halfway back to your last track, you're good. Even when the wind's blowing, if you halfway back to your last track, you're good.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Not the most precise situation to be in UTVs would be our next thing and hand hoses. So just pull the big hose reel off and spray bare ground. Turn the rocks blue. Use dye everywhere.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Okay. I was gonna say. Yeah.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: And that's what led us into drones. So we did a lot of this bare ground work.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Can I kind of ask you a question before we go into drones? You have been Working with chemical for a long time. And it sounds like you're. You're kind of close to the chemical when you're spraying it. And either from a hose or on your ATV every day. Are you worried about the chemical for your health?
[00:14:28] Speaker B: So I could say that very, I guess nonchalantly, like, no, I'm not worried about it.
Take the road that you're gonna die from something.
But the science behind it says it's safe.
So the chemicals that we're touching target certain processes in a plant that humans don't have.
So if they're in inhibiting the chlorophyll production system. Guess what? I'm good.
I don't have a chlorophyll production system.
So if we're doing mitotic inhibitors. I don't produce roots and I don't produce shoots.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: And dude, I like those words. See, that's that knowledge you're talking. These words I've never heard. I'm an ex Amish boy. What does that.
When he said I want them to know. Maybe they don't know the chlorophyll.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: What? What does that. Every plant has to produce chlorophylls so it can capture sunlight. Okay, so you don't do that, right?
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: You don't do that, do you?
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Not that I know of.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Not that.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Maybe the Incredible Hulk does. He's green, you know. I don't know.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk on that because I want to learn about this. So you spray something on this plant that needs chlorophyll.
Does it shade it from the chlorophyll
[00:15:38] Speaker B: or it inhibits the chlorophyll from forming.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Wow, that's cool.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: So. And they actually are called bleachers. We really don't use a lot of those. But it turns to plant white commands oral. Maybe there's a couple more. Now help me out with the turf one.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: I remember spraying aim. And I, I, I lose track. I can't.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: That's so cool though.
That's why I wanted to know. It's like, dude, you literally put something on because you know the would it be anatomy of the plant is that
[00:16:05] Speaker B: that could be fair. But it's more about the mode of action of the herbicide mode. So understand the botany of the plant.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: And that's some of the science. When I say we stand on the science, I mean that this stand on the science. So there's certain times we're not going to spray. There are certain people that want us to spray certain Things.
We're just not going to do it so the science doesn't marry up.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Okay, so that is so cool.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: It's hard for me to sit in some lecture halls and hear people talk about how they do things and just like kind of cringe of, we don't calibrate, we just let it go. Or, man, it's so critical to put out the right rate. But I'm great. I'm thankful that you brought that up. Of, am I scared of the chemical? I don't want it on me every day.
That's not our intent.
We don't go out and use it for hand lotion or hair soap. But does it get on you? It will. Even with the best ppe.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: And you guys are mostly spraying herbicide.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Mostly herbicide.
It's going to get on you. You're going to breathe some. You're. I mean, it really tails on you when you put that blue dye in it. It's everywhere.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, this is good because when a farmer asked me to go spray glyphosate, from what I've heard on the news, like, everybody's suing glyphosate because it causes cancer. I'm like, not that. I mean, I used to never think about it, that it gets on me. How do you feel about getting glyphosate on you?
[00:17:29] Speaker B: I don't feel any way at all. It's.
The glyphosate molecule itself is relatively safe. It's never been proven to cause cancer. That's some of that California thinking.
I mean, let's just call it what it is.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: I like it.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: You think about what state the lawsuits were in. Think about where they were settled and it was a class action deal.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: But what were you gonna.
[00:17:51] Speaker C: I was about to say, I mean, I like to think round oats, probably one of the most researched chemicals on the market.
It's still being sold. It really can't be that harmful. I guess I'm kind of taking that row as, you know, we're all going to die from something.
But at the end of the day, you know, those labels, everything, it all exists for a reason. It is the law. If you follow the label, you'll be fine.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: And you know the label deal, cwd. Caution, Warning, Danger. And we like to stay on the caution side of our herbicide. So there's some warnings and there's some skull and crossbone stuff and paraquat's one of them. We don't spray paraquat. I just, you know, for my safety. The safety of my men, we just
[00:18:26] Speaker A: stay away from it. That's valuable. But you don't have a problem with the product. You just.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: The paraquat in itself, I think is very safe.
When it's ingested. It only takes a teaspoon to kill you.
So what? A teaspoon.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: So that's one of the products we just stay away from. The next little scary thing about paraquat is, to my knowledge, there's no antidote for it. So if you were to get.
If you were to get poisoned by it, you just kind of.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: You're done.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: You could be done. Certain things like that. We don't. We don't dabble in too much.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: But dude, this is money. Like for people that want to learn about herbicide, like for myself, like, you know, I don't know this stuff. This is just. This is golden. I would say that if you're going to do herbicide like you guys do herbicide, if somebody's listening to this, I would take the advice of somebody that's already been through it.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Well, I guess. I guess I just. As a kid, it didn't take much to intrigue me.
I saw a few demos from our county extension agent. I was just amazed. He had everybody's familiar with a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood. And he came out to our farm one day and we were talking about how to calibrate your stuff and how crucial it was. He was doing a grower meeting.
One drop of the product then was called Prow. It's pendimethalin. It's the old yellow herbicide. You know, it was discovered by accident anyway. Oh yeah, it was a dinitroaniline. They were dyeing T shirts with it. And they found out out behind the plant where they were pouring the stuff. When they were through with it, no weeds grew.
So it was. So now we got a herbicide out of them.
But one drop of that would treat the area as big as a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: So it was like, wow. But you say wow. But that's nothing because that's when you're using 24 to 48 ounces an acre. So now you think about the stuff we use in these days. It's an ounce an acre.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: So now ask me your question. Am I scared it's gonna hurt me, man, I can't even find it. So it is so diluted in the environment.
Pick a product that we use at ounces an acre, Lots of them ounces where it used to be quarts and Gallons an acre. So as it's advanced. Yeah, I'm not. I'm just. I could be totally wrong. I may. I may not wake up tomorrow dead.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: But we don't know.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: We don't know. So I can't live in fear.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: That is so valid. It's like.
It's like, so diluted. And the chemical companies have gotten better at formulation. Formulation. Yeah.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Now we still. We still do our due diligence not to get it on us. You know, our mixers are loaders, so we're gonna follow the label. We're gonna wear our gloves and our glasses and long sleeves and long, long pants.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: So did you ever see me pouring stuff into the. The mix tank? Do you think I should wear more than I do?
[00:21:03] Speaker B: I think the label's the law.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: I like it.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Don't, don't. Don't come femming what we do on.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: No, that's good. I like it.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: I guess I set a bad example sometimes for our crews because, you know, when the hose.
Let's just be real. When the hose busts, I'm not gonna be the guy that says, just let it spew until I get all ppped up. And, you know, the first thing I'm do is stop it. Now I may yell at one of them, hey, get me this or get me that.
So which is more harmful? Get some on you. You're gonna go wash it off or just let it pour in the environment, it's just.
Just stop the leak. That's what. That's what we're trained to do.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's good.
[00:21:44] Speaker C: So contain control.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: There you go.
Too bad people aren't that easy. Right?
[00:21:53] Speaker A: So you start this business, it starts going, well, obviously you sounds like you got quite a bit of four wheelers now, so. Because the work kept flowing in, at what point were you. Did the drones get good enough or when were you. Yeah, let me start with that. When were you introduced to a spray drone?
[00:22:10] Speaker B: 2017.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: 2017. What was that spray drone at that time?
[00:22:15] Speaker B: It was a DJI1S.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: 1S. Okay.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: No camera.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: No camera.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Just spray button.
No autonomous function.
Nobody to speak English to help me.
Wow. So me and my son get it out in his hay field, and I'm
[00:22:34] Speaker A: struggling to figure out, how did you acquire it?
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Lord have mercy.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Like, did you find it on the Internet somewhere and ordered it from China?
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Yes. No, not from China. I actually bought it from a American company, rmus, somewhere in Utah maybe. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: There's an RMUS out there.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Rmus.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: And there's now an rm US Canada.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Okay. So that's where my very first drone come from.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: And I bought the whole hook and sinker. Like, if I was going to get in, I want to do it right. So I bought the relay station the extent I bought. Just, hey, we never used that thing.
Not one time.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: The relay or the.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: The drone, the antenna, the big stick. Yeah, never used it.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: So. So. But somewhere along the line, you seen it on TV or at a farm demo or, like, how do you figure out that there's this radio?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Just Google it.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: So I had. I had an issue that we couldn't safely, by their standards, apply the herbicide.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Oh, I'd like to hear about that.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: And it was on a hydro dam. I got called in as the expert, which I found out I was not at all of how to control these weeds. I'm like, man, if you got a weed, I can kill it.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: So how do you know you weren't the expert?
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Well, when I got there, he's like, how are you going to do that? And I said, I don't know. So I knew immediately I wasn't expert.
I don't know.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Because he said, I don't know.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like, well, how are y' all doing it? Before? He's like, well, back in the 40s, we would just set it on fire. Yeah, that could work, but now we can't. Blah, blah, blah. They said, you know, we have.
They gave us all kind of examples of what they've done. A water gun with just herbicide in it. Trying to target these plants growing out of this concrete wall.
One of the guys told us that they just took a little cooler full of balloons out there. Water balloons. And bust the herbicide on.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Nuh.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: No way. Okay.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: So was this like a, like, wall?
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you can imagine a big hydro dam. So it holds back a lake or water? Yeah.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Like a concrete dam.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's concrete.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: You couldn't walk on it?
[00:24:39] Speaker B: No, no, no. It's pretty much straight.
[00:24:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: You couldn't walk up it.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: And. And the weeds always grow, like, underneath the portals. Anywhere there's water and sediment coming out of the lake. And there's still a problem because sometimes they grow in the water as it's kind of leaking out. Or he's like, we need some way to do this safe. Yeah, that's a problem, you know? So I said, if I get a tool, can you guarantee me some work just so I can pay for my tool?
[00:25:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: And so he. We had a handshake Agreement. Hey, you get me something that can do this, then, yes, you got some work. So nobody else had ever told me that, you know, nobody else ever said, hey, did you go build a bunch of fours? We'll give you some work. It was just like, if I build it, can I find it?
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: So I'm like, this just feels pretty good. So I ordered stuff, got it in that winter. It's like this time of year. Got out in this field and just tried to figure it out and got a phone call, said, hey, man, you can't run no DJI drones on our system.
So after I got it, like, all done.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: And that was back in 2014.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: No, this is going to be 28. It was 2017 when I applied for my 137. In 2018, when we actually got the certificate. Okay. February 22nd, I think, of 2018.
Nobody knew anything about it. Nobody knew anything.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: So it was still the Wild West.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: I submitted it, and I just put a lot of late nights, man. I was like, you know, I don't have a lawyer. I don't have all these things. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to stay up at night and I'm going to write this proposal to the government.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Say, hey, I want to use a drone. And I found some stuff on the Internet, you know, way before gtp, you know, is.
I think it was the drone seed company out west.
They had. They had submitted to the government to use a drone for spraying. And I pretty much just like, retyped all their stuff. They had all kind of fancy lawyers on it.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: I was like, sure, they know what he's talking about. So I was like, I can put that language in my form, and. Yeah, and somehow it works. But 18 months later, I heard back. You know, it was like, you're going.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: It took 18 months for the government to get back to you, and you
[00:26:35] Speaker B: couldn't track it, so it wasn't like you submitted it. So. Hey, Mike, will you check on that for me? Okay. I ended up being pretty impatient. And I'd call all the time. I was just calling, call. And I finally found a guy up there to work with me, and he's like, I'm gonna help you with this. I'm like, really? He disappeared.
Typical government people. I did. I just got a letter in the mail and a call from my FIS DOE that said, hey, your exemption will be granted. Now we've got to come make sure you know how to fly.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Oh, my.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: I'm, like, all nervous you know, I was like, I don't know what kind of questions. I've already been through all this with oral exams. And so you got a government bureau coming to your place.
Who knows what we've done wrong so far, you know?
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: I remember it being one cold, rainy February day. They showed up and went through my.
Had to have a safety manual, what I was going to do in case of a loss, link. Just all the things that seem so common now. So, oh, yeah, we know what to do. So I had to, like, make all this stuff up and get them in a book. And I did it, and now it's time to fly.
Well, it's raining, and I'm like, they drove for, like, two hours.
I really want my certificate, so how am I gonna pull this off?
And cold. They were kind of bundled up, almost like the day when we went to your place. It's kind of that drizzly overcast. And I was like, you know what? They want to see me fly in a figure eight. And they had a whole list of things he showed me. He's like, can you do these maneuvers? And I'm like, man, I ain't never flown this thing in a figure eight.
I said, here's what we're gonna do.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: No way.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: So I took it outside real quick and I launched it off. And I had a pond behind our little chemical shed. I just flew it out there in the pond, went from side to side a few times, and come back and landed it down. They wanted to see it spray, so I just sprayed water. He's like, that's good enough for me. He said, if you trust yourself good enough to fly it out over the water. He said, we're good. I was like, well, dang, I should have done that story.
So that was the end of my pilot exam. It kind of went from there, huh?
Got banned. So after we. After I got this stuff, then put it back in the box because we can't use it.
So I was really depressed because now I spent my money. Yeah, we got it here. Everything's fine and dandy. And then Kapoosh.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: So you call back to the power company and say, hey, man, we had a deal.
He said, my hands are tied. You know? He said, we got DJI drones, too, used for inspection. He said, they're all in a hangar. I said, why? He said, because they're banned. Like, we can't fly them on our property. And I'm like, so now what we gonna do? He said, buddy, I don't know. I don't know. I said, well, who's telling you it's banned? I want to start talking to that person.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: And that's when it was a counterintelligence issue. And anyway, I guess a year or so rocked by, and I got the same call, just kind of out the blue and said, hey, guess what, man? You'll be cleared to use that drone as long as you don't have a camera. I was like, a camera, saying, you got a camera?
So anyway, that's how we started using the drone. So it was out of necessity for a problem that we couldn't fix.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: And then a lot of people were after. They'd see us work. They're like, we're gonna do that ourselves.
So they were gonna get drones. And then they started figuring out how much red tape was behind it. And at that time, it was a lot. So it kind of buffered them. It kind of kept them out a little bit. Time just kept, I guess, kind of passing by each year, and we'd get better and better with it. And there was a few more incidents where it wasn't on the dam holding the water back, but on the edges of them, like where the big rocks are. Yeah. There are some crews working, and really the easiest way to do it was to bring a hand line down, and you just spray, and you get four or five people, and you just flip the hose, spray some more, and just keep flipping the hose. And a rock came loose from the upper. Guys rolled down and, like, hit some guy lower down than that guy, and they just kind of put into it. So HS&E human safety come in, and you've done this way for ever. How many years it's been there, But y' all got to find a better way. And I was over there in the background just like, me, me, me, me, me. I got. I got the answer. I got the answer. So they put us in some situations where it was tight, you know, so we weren't flying in open fields or nothing. The way that drone was probably designed.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: I was going to say you were putting that sucker in some sketchy magnetic variation.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Is real?
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so the first job, you were going to spray this concrete wall. I'd like to know how that went.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: It went. It went fine.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: So how do you spray a concrete wall if it comes out of the bottom of the drum?
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Well, yeah, we had to modify it.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: So it's craziest thing you've ever seen.
I got some videos, but it. I don't even know how to explain it. It's Very, very sophisticated.
So we had to like disconnect the nozzles because they're straight down, as you mentioned.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: And we do have to shoot it over there. Now how are we going to do that? So I'm just like riding down the road and we're doing other work all this time. So it wasn't just like, figure out this drone thing.
And I was coming home one day and it just hit me. I was like, I got an idea. Go to bass pro shops. That night, I got me a 13 foot brim buster, like fiberglass extendable fishing pole.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Took the last piece out. And I kept taking pieces out though, until it would fit one of those spray nozzles perfect. And I run a hose up in it.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: No way.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Zip tied that bad boy the frame. So now when I hit the trigger, it go down that hose and I could shoot you in the eye.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: That is impressive.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Got it. So we took this thing to the first hydro dam. We had us something, you know, I could do exactly what I told him I could do. We took it to the second hydro dam and I kind of messed up. So we. We lost.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Tell me what that means.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: You got by this time the 1s was gone. Oh, it went sara nara. That's another story.
What happened to it, man? Oh, this is embarrassing.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: It's all right. It's happening to all of us. It's embarrassing when Jay hangs one in the power line. Or no, yours roll off. You hung it in the power line. Yeah. So I just hit it.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Let's talk about a power line. So we were working.
We were working just outside of a nuclear facility. And I got a lot of clearances to be there. So the guys are walking around up here on the top of this big dam with their AR15s, and I'm gonna make it all secure for them, you know, I mean, they knew we were there. We knew they were there. But it didn't make it uncomfortable for me because they're looking at me through glass, you know, and I.
So we got in the boat, went out to this island, and I decided to launch the drone from the dam to fly away from them. You know, I don't want to be no threat to these guys. I want them to know that, hey, that threat's leaving.
And we had radio. So as we come out on the boat, I dropped a spotter man off on the far end of this island, which is not very far. Thousand feet most tops. Thousand feet. I don't know if it's a thousand feet. It's Called a thousand feet. Yeah. And he's got a radio.
So we get to the other end. We pop us up a table like this. We set the little one s up on there, fill it up with herbicide. And what we're doing is spraying a.
Like a line of sight that they survey down so things won't grow up in it. So they couldn't. They didn't have no way to really get out there and cut it. So they had cut it a couple years before. Now it regrowth's happening, so we just wanted to blow it.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Was it a line of sight so they can be more secure or what?
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Line of sight so they can survey. So they got monuments set up all over these places. They survey twice a year to see if it moves. So any kind of geographical earth movement. I see, they can detect it early.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: So I launched it. So my heart. I mean, I always get nervous flying this thing because it's at this time. They're pretty unpredictable.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Not ever lost link. But like, sometimes you tell to do something and it just wouldn't. Or it would be, like, delayed. Oh, no, never. And I never had one just fly off into the wild blue yonder.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Surely not this time.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: No. I'm flying it down there. And I had. I had a spotter with me, and I had another guy on the other end island. We all got ready, so I got mine in my pocket, man. We all safetied up, vests, hard hats doing our thing. And I was like, I've got to be past this island. And you could see the big power lines on the other end. So I kept flying, kept spraying. I've got to be past my. I've got to be over the water
[00:34:35] Speaker A: because you don't have FPV nothing. Yeah.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: The guy I had on the end of the island never made a transmission.
So finally I just stopped spraying. I was like, I just let the drone. You know how they sweep up and they stop?
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Well, when that joker stopped, it's got little bushing on the front. And when it did, it was like right up under the power wire.
And I saw the wire move. And I'm like, I think I'm. I'm screwed.
So we call it. We calling Randy on the radio. Like, man, why didn't you tell me? I put you down there for a reason. He's like, I've been trying to call y'. All.
I said my radio hadn't went off. It seems to work fine when I'm talking in it. Maybe we had a man malfunction but now we got a big problem, because everybody's watching, right? And I got the drone stuck in there in a big 540k. Wait, wait.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: It was, like flying, but you.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: So when it settled, it hooked that wire. You'd have to. You'd have to, like, know how the dampers were on that first frame. So it's not like the T50. They just stuck straight out.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: And it had a little ball of foam on each end to land it on.
[00:35:34] Speaker C: It's pretty much like a hook. Like, when it hooked into it, it hooks into it.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: So I couldn't see this thing's at the other end. So I'm like, if I let it down a little bit and back up. As I was wiggling this whole wire, my little battery. My little battery alarm was going. All was like, you know, low power, Low power.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Those are the things that I would, like, wake up from sleep and like, oh, yeah.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: So I was like, well, crap, what can happen? I got to get loose from this wire. So I, like, elevate. I just pick it up and just let it drop. So I had those wires dancing, but it never messed up. You know, the drone's still fine. So I do it now. I was like, well, next time I do that, I'm just going to, like, shoot and back up. So I had a plan.
I did that. I got the drone free. So I'm like, man, I got to get home. So my. My nerves are shot.
And I made a fatal mistake. Oh, return to home.
[00:36:26] Speaker C: Oh, no.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: It goes up 70ft. So I was probably at 50. I'm hung in the bottom wire. So it goes 70, and when it goes across those top two, it collects, like, the front blades off.
So you hear that fatal noise, and like, oh, crap, now what? So everybody's watching. This thing just inverts and goes right into the Catawba River.
That was. Yeah, so that was one S is gone.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: You never went try and get it.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, we did. Oh, you did. This is. It's gone, man.
But we got the lid off the spray tank.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: No, I'm saying you went into the river to get it, or it was gone. Yeah, that's what I meant.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Like, never.
It's a nice fish habitat.
[00:37:14] Speaker C: Never touch. Return home.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: But that's the second time return to home bit me with that drone. So the first time I rebuilt it, we were down doing some fragmites on the coast, and I'm like, that thing's too far out there. I don't know what it's doing. I don't know why it went back to the other end of this impoundment. I wanted to come here.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: So I'm like, home again. I keep forgetting about the feedback FPV camera. You didn't have it?
[00:37:35] Speaker B: No. So, I mean, it was just a little dot.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: And we were cheating, you know. I had a man beside me with binoculars. I was like, look, man, which way is it going?
He said, it's going toward the river. I said, well, let's see what happens. So I said, I'm just going to tell it to come home. Well, it came home, but there was like a little group of cypress trees between me and the drone. It came home. It came where it was right to where it left from, and it just.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: But after it went in the river, we never got it back. So that was. That was game over for a little 1s.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: How many gallon tank was that?
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Two and a half.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Two and a half. Oh, man.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: That kind of stayed at two and a half for a while. Yeah. So the 1s got over with that day.
We replaced it with a 1p 1p. And guess what the piece did for, I guess, picture because it had a camera on it when it came.
You couldn't trust the thing, though. If you couldn't see the blade spinning in the camera, you better quit because the camera's quit. So that's froze. Yeah, yeah, it freeze like 10ft off the track.
And I tell them, boys, there's like, just use the camera. And I'm like, we're going to act just like this thing don't have a camera because it's so unreliable.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: We ended up taking our same little rig and putting on that drone. So west of us came back to work with me. And I had launched one out of a boat before.
Like, no problem.
Just no problem. So we got a little landing zone in the boat. I got ready to take off, and it's like, it won't take off.
Compass era.
So I said, the boat's floating around. We got to tie this thing up good and tight.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Won't take off. Won't take off. So unplug the battery, let it kind of reset its compass, do the little calibration. So this time it like takes off. I'm like, oh, yeah, we got it, boys.
The whole rest of the time we've done this job, we're always up on the dam, like, working below you. So this time I wanted to be down in the boat. I felt like I had a better perspective.
That joker took off. I flew it into the first portal, did my little spraying with my hose, backed it out, moved down going into the second portal, and it just goes full tilt forward.
I was like, well, that was fun.
It almost looked like one of those Mike Yoder videos. Well, that just happened.
But we wasn't crashing them just for fun. This was like, this is all we got.
So then I was like, what are we going to do? Because that guy's going to be coming looking for us. Are we finished? And we, like, get all the pieces just floating up, you know?
And we had a box on the boat that we were launching out of. So we just put everything in the box. So we had the drone back. It was just kind of broke up, stuffed it in the box. He was like, phone's ringing. He's like, is everything all right down there? I said, oh, yeah. We got it all under control. I said, we're going to head on back to the hill, and we gonna start this a different way.
So he never did question us too much. He was like, is everything okay? I was like, yeah, we just gonna. Look, man. The little rig we had just didn't work out.
So that was another P gone. So it took us a while to figure out, so why did that thing just go stupid? It wasn't a lost link, I guess. I don't know how far it would have went, but the dam caught it. So the next time we started flying, another piece of. We figured out that that compass was in the leg. And if I had the leg close to the dam coming down, the interference from all the metal in the concrete screwed that compass up. So even though we were doing it manual, like, you're telling it to go, and it's thinking, and it would always give you an indication it would, like. It would do something like, real darty. Yeah, buddy. You better climb. Just climb. Forget any just. And I really taught TG that early on not to trust it. If it ever starts jerking or kind of, I call it glitching with the motors. Yeah, you better climb away.
[00:41:12] Speaker C: Up and away.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Yeah, get up and get away from everybody. So they've got better and better. I mean, every year. So the 1P went away, and the T10s came, and I was like, that was a game changer, man.
It's like, wow, what a platform. And then it wasn't. They didn't stay around long before. There was a T16 and a T20. And we skipped both of those. I did have a T20. Yeah. We put water in it. Man, I hated that thing.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: It Killed a battery just like that. And take 35 minutes to charge. And I'm like, put that up. So we didn't even. So we skipped those models.
T30 came. We skipped that because we were happy with our little tens. You know, we were doing the kind of work we needed with the 10. We didn't do much ag work. We didn't do any ag work. 40 came out and I was real tempted. I was like, man, that's about the time when you came on the scene. Yeah. I was like, these 40s are so advanced. And I just waited. I just waited. And then I guess we broke down and got a 50 and started to get more into.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: How has it changed your business? Like, have you been able to add in new projects or is it just another tool just like the ones that you have in your belt already?
[00:42:19] Speaker B: Both. I think it's opened up a whole new portfolio of customers. So the people we were not working for before, I would.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: You guys ever take. Instead of taking eight four wheelers out, you guys take a couple drones out and do it that way now or not really?
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Yes and no.
Yes, it would be in theory. A lot of places where we run these ATVs are beside interstates or beside highways where it just wouldn't be feasible to run a drone just because the laws. But, you know, enough people look at us on the four wheelers and get distracted. There's enough people already distracted with these little phones. 100.
It's dangerous for us to be out there anyway.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: Me, sorry I put my hand up Johnny. I was distracted. Oh, you don't see him on the phone and flying drones or anything?
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Maybe I don't see anything.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: I wasn't flying that day.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: Yeah, he was. He was spotted.
So yeah, definitely opens up. I didn't want to go into the forestry market. I felt like there were people already diving in the forestry market with drones and terror stories. Stags can't see them crashing drones. So the last thing I want to do is crash another drone. That's all we had, you know, So I didn't have like investor money. I didn't have a group of money. It was just what we could sweat out what we had.
I got drug in that market and now we enjoy it. But it's. It's not like we went pursuing it. So we kind of got pursuing the timber market.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: You're in the. So they come in, they cut the trees and you come in and burn down.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Do a site prep. Burn down. And then we do some release. I'd rather do release work.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:43:56] Speaker B: 4.
It all depends on how soon. But you could do it as soon as one year after planting.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: But what is it?
[00:44:03] Speaker B: So you want to kill all the competition except the pine trees.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: And it's chemically. So that kind of plays into my wheelhouse that we can chemically do this where we kind of nuke everything but the pines. And it gives them an advantage.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: How does that work?
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Just molecule and mode of action. So a pine tree is a modified grass.
Okay. So you can take broad leaves out of corn pretty easy. So just imagine just the pine trees. A modified grass species.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: It works out. It kind of works that way.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Huh.
How many acres of forest land do you spray now?
[00:44:35] Speaker B: Man. I'd say I think last year TG
[00:44:39] Speaker C: helped me out.500 to 1000 somewhere in that range.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: Oh. We did more than that for one customer? No.
[00:44:46] Speaker C: Okay. So it's over a thousand.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
Not. Not nothing. What? An ag.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: Personal.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: But 2000 acres.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: But strictly forest. Is it flat forest or is it mountainous forest?
[00:44:58] Speaker B: It depends on where we are. So we work from Texas up to Pennsylvania.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: So we. I mean. So the geography is every state. Every state's got a hill in it. I don't care what nobody tells you. I always in my mind as a child I thought Arkansas was flat. Ducks water. They. Some mountains in Arkansas.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Ozarks.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: Well. Yeah. So I didn't. I didn't. Hey. I'm just from South Carolina. I ain't never been far.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: I watch where the red fern grows.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I should have paid attention.
So. Yeah. Our terrain is just diverse no matter where you go.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: How do you have a business that goes from Texas to Pennsylvania? Do you have a family? Are you traveling a lot? How's that work?
[00:45:37] Speaker B: So we do have a family. I married a very strong woman and she's always taking care of things at home that allow us to travel. That's awesome. These boys have traveled with me. We just travel a lot.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: We try to be home on the weekends. It doesn't work when we're in Texas. So we plan that work and work that plan. So generally when we go to Texas, we got to stay out two weekends to get that job done. Then we kind of migrate home.
A lot of time on the highway.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: Is there just not enough work in your area for what you guys do?
[00:46:06] Speaker B: There's not. I say there's not. Maybe if we could spray every ag field or. You know, there's probably some ways I could restructure our business to be Maybe more around home. But for the utility market, there's only so many companies in our county, in our state. And then you bleed over into like North Carolina, Georgia, and people.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: I mean, you guys do any right away stuff?
[00:46:28] Speaker B: We do. The Lord's just been good to us where, hey, who did you work? And I guess they tell them us. And my phone rings, you know, so.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Cause it marketing for that work, it's not like you're going to run some Facebook ads and find those people that's like that. That's hard work to find.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: And they're. And they're just good people. The customers that we've had, we've never ever, knock on wood, something could happen tomorrow. I've never lost a customer over quality or a bad application. I've lost some customer over budget constraints or change of job. So maybe you're working with this one guy and he's your guy. He's your guy. And then he's gone. But the next guy comes in, is not interested in what you do.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: And we've lost them. Most of the time. They come back. But we've had some shifts in customers. I don't, you know, the Bible teaches us not to be too proud. So that's one of those things I struggle with. I'm just, I was kind of proud of not losing customers to quality. And I stress that a lot. Just calibration. Think about the end result. One of our things in our safety meeting is put your name on it, you know, so if you're proud of what you did, you want to ride by there with your family and say, hey, we sprayed that. I sprayed that.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: You know, you don't want to be that guy on the, the new news Internet that's got pictures of the fields all streaked up. He's like, yeah, we sprayed that. Oh, God. So that's good calibration, swath width. We really don't trust nothing that's in those pamphlets on the drone.
Absolutely nothing. I learned a lot from you. When we went to your demo. Actually, you gave me a game changer. We were still stopping the T50 to put the points down.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: Just because the T10, you don't have an option.
[00:48:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: So what do we think? Well, we got a bigger drone.
Same process.
Stop, point, stop, point. And man, it's just taking forever. You kill so many batteries doing a bigger field.
When I went up there to your demo, you were like, beep, beep, beep, beep. And you had it up on that big screen in your shop.
He's not even stopping. So I walked straight over there to Jay, and I was like, okay, do what you're doing, but when you're done, you got to show me that. And I took my little phone out and videoed what you told me. I sent it straight to tg. I said, man, this is worth my whole trip to Ohio. This is a game changer. And it's just those little things.
[00:48:38] Speaker A: I think we got that from a guy from Brazil or something. Y. Y.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: But it's just a little thing. It's just like. It's not in the real manual.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: No.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: You know, you don't
[00:48:47] Speaker A: to do it that way.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: But people figure it out. Yeah.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Well, I mean, hey, thank you.
[00:48:51] Speaker C: I was about to say. Let me just go ahead and say thank you to both of y'.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: All.
[00:48:55] Speaker C: Between, you know, him sending me videos and me seeing it on Tick Tock or whatever, I mean, a lot of what I know today with the drones, some came from experience. Some came from just watching the videos. Like, okay, I want to try to implement.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:05] Speaker C: And I mean, it's just. It's crazy.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I.
[00:49:09] Speaker C: That one thing, it was wild.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: I've. I've Learned off of YouTube and tick tock, stuff like that one that he's talking about, that was. That was a DM from a guy from Brazil. He's like, hey, Mike, try it this way. And that's when we started doing that one. Now we do the. Mostly M plus where we're actually spraying, and then we save the field because now we don't have to drop points while we're flying around the field. Do you guys do that?
[00:49:32] Speaker C: I just learned that yesterday from another guy here, and I was like, I had no idea you can do that. Because on the T10s, that M Plus was a feature. But on the T10s, you know, I was kind of basing the T50 off of that because it's all the same T platform. Right. And the M plus, it locks your heading, so you cannot turn it. When your headings locked, you're going that direction. So I was like, I don't want to use M Plus on the T50. It's just going to lock me up.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: No, no, no.
[00:49:57] Speaker C: And I just learned this weekend that
[00:49:59] Speaker A: you can lock your heading. It allows. You don't have to, but you don't have to.
Since we're talking about M plus, there was another young fellow I was talking to. He did not realize that. So let's say he sprang and he runs out back here. He didn't realize that he can return to home like auto, and then return back to Breakpoint as well. T50, I don't know if you can push return to Breakpoint, but like, the T100 and T60X, when you're spraying and you get empty, it'll go back to the trailer, and then you can tell it to go back where it left off. It'll come down, and then you resume, and then you go forward manually.
Yeah.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: So, Yeah, I didn't know that. So it's autonomous back to the trailer. Yeah, per se. And then when you get out there, you back in manual mode.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: That's kind of cool. So it's kind of reverse to what we normally do.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. But so we.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: We do something a little different than y'.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: All.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: When the drone runs out, I highly encourage these boys, like, with their paychecks, to fly the drone back to the trailer.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Manual.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:50:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Land it Manual.
Just. We don't. When you take it off, we do the same thing.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: We land it manually. Yep. So we'll.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: We'll.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: I like to show people it'll return back to home, but I actually don't let it land.
[00:51:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Auto. Because it might be.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: It's a little off.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Yeah. It might be 2ft, 3ft. I don't.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: And with two T50s on top of that trailer. Great trailer, by the way. We made very few adjustments to it, but we just had to do what we do.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
Great setup.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: How. How did you find new ag.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: Tick tock?
[00:51:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: For real? I know. I'm an old tick tocker. Somebody said.
I just. I just do stuff like that. I just, you know, every once in a while, you should Google your own name.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know.
I don't know what would show up. If you put Mike Yoder in, you should do it.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: I was just googling spray drones, and it might have been something. Something you posted. I'm like, you know, I like this guy. You were doing some demos, and I just. Maybe I followed it, so it kind of kept showing up, and I'm like, this deer recovery thing is pretty cool. And we got a little thermal drone. We picked the wrong one, of course, but.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: Baby drone.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a 3T. Yeah, 3T.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: I call it a baby drone. Don't be offended.
[00:52:11] Speaker C: I know. No, I don't think it was the wrong one. It was just. I feel like it was a good one at the time. And then, you know, as time has gone on now, you just get better and better.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: Yeah. But I Couldn't pull nobody, like, on a snow tube like these guys were doing.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: That was a Ford. No.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: We won't talk about it.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
But anyway, the logging situation you had going on, I liked that.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: I was like, that's pretty sweet.
[00:52:35] Speaker B: So I could learn from this guy.
How do I get to meet him? So that's why I started really focusing on. Then I saw your trailer, saw your truck. And the craziest thing about it is you had a GMC truck and that was like our brand.
So everybody else around us runs Fords or white trucks. We run silver trucks. Cuz I want to be a platinum company. I want to be a different above. Every contractor pulls up at one of these job sites with a white pickup.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: So I was like, man, he could. I, I, I can like this guy.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: Appreciate it.
[00:53:05] Speaker B: Didn't think I could ever afford one. And then Ryan finally twisted my arm good enough on the phone. He's like, man, this is a good deal. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I still wasn't convinced. So I went up there to your demo day, and I was like, ryan, look, the one thing that's going to give us a problem is we live in a hotel and you have no way to store these drones. I see y'. All. And you were testifying that, you know, we drive down the interstate, we can go three hours, we strap them down, they sit right there. Oh, by the way, you can't do that at South Carolina. There's just too many trees, limbs. Oh, my Lord. So we beat that trailer up pretty bad. And we're trying not to.
[00:53:38] Speaker A: Did you see the new one? Show them the 22nd. Give me 10 minutes.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So that was. So we spent, I guess, one day this past summer, a friend of mine we go to church with, he's like, I think I'm really. I want you to come show me that drone on my pasture. I was like, yeah, I'll be glad to. He's like, what you going to charge?
So we told him. He's like, man, that's kind of steep. I was like, yeah, well, buddy. He agreed to pay it, but he got his money out of us. We had to saw our way in and get the trailer down this little road.
So I get up in the bucket of his tractor with the chainsaw and we just.
[00:54:11] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:54:11] Speaker B: So we finally got in there, got him, got his job done. But that's just kind of what we do, man. I've seen y' all do something similar. You can't get in there you got two choices. Either tell the man.
I don't know how you say this.
Hey, we can't do your job because we're just a bunch of wusses.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: No, we figure it out.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Exactly. So we do whatever it takes. So I asked Joey, I said, hey man, you got his chainsaw?
Oh, that's sleep. Yes, sir. Did you see and the light watch
[00:54:38] Speaker A: the railing is a railing. Yeah, I did. Yeah.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: We've been thinking about a way to
[00:54:44] Speaker A: do it just one hand. So we're basically we're showing them the new 26 new way trailer where we now have folding railing and also the folding folding pilot protection wall. It's. It's highly requested for situations like what you're saying you want to get through
[00:55:02] Speaker B: something that trees, especially in the forestry world.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: And it's a one motion thing.
Putting the railing up is literally one motion. Boom. It's on all the way up.
[00:55:10] Speaker C: Like that's awesome.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's nice.
[00:55:12] Speaker B: You like it?
[00:55:13] Speaker A: Love it. Yeah. So it can bolt two years. You can just take off the one that you have and threw. Throw on a new one. But what, what through throughout these years, what has made you stick with DJI and not some other brand?
[00:55:27] Speaker C: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: But we tried others.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Oh you did?
[00:55:32] Speaker B: And not not like trying to find a new girlfriend. Just we had dji. So once you kind of learn the platform, you like it?
[00:55:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: I guess I talked to a few more people that was kind of filling out the world.
Number one for me was price.
So I looked at some other drones by some other people. I don't even know if they're still in the market now. But I could get like the One P for $15,000 and same comparable drone from this company was like 60. Wow. But they were telling me about how much better it was and I'm like really?
So went to a demo or talked to a more and I'm like, you really think that's better? I can't. Can't buy into how that's better. So we didn't buy it.
Ended up down the road.
Kind of got our hand forced by a couple of customers needing a drone that was not dji.
So we had to buy something and we did. And it is something.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: It might start with an H.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: Heck of a drone. That's what you say. Heck of a drone.
And you know what the crazy thing is? I've never got it to spray any pests. Side.
[00:56:43] Speaker A: What? Like it won't work.
[00:56:46] Speaker B: It's like maybe it Works at the office, and we spray water with it, and we think we got it all figured out. You go up to the mountains, and you get in front of your customer,
[00:56:55] Speaker A: and it's like, doesn't it feel like you? I mean, oh, dude, this heck of
[00:57:00] Speaker B: a drone's not working.
[00:57:01] Speaker A: When I could not get the XAG to take off in front of the customer, you feel like the biggest goober.
[00:57:07] Speaker C: It's a gut shot.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Like, here, let me show you this cool tech.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: Oh, and they got all the whole offices out there.
[00:57:14] Speaker A: Never mind. One second. Let me unplug this.
[00:57:17] Speaker B: So I look at TT and I'm like. I was like, I thought you had it flying at home, man. He's like, I did.
[00:57:24] Speaker C: You watched me.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: I was like, well, I'm just gonna be real quiet. You explained all these people what's going on? Because, you know, you told me it
[00:57:29] Speaker A: was working, so it's a funny. Like, was it yesterday? We had a guy on here, he was like, Mike asked him what's the biggest difference from this room to that one? He's like, it works like one model to the next. He's like, it works.
[00:57:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I would say that every time that we have changed models, there's been a significant betterment of the platform.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:51] Speaker B: So from the One S with no camera to the One P to the T10. Now, we did skip those 20s like I mentioned, but I think that was kind of like a.
I don't even think they produced them very long. Yeah, they were straight to the 30.
Then, like, the 30 kind of leveled out for maybe a whole growing season. That was the drone. Then the 40 came. It was the game changer with atomizers. Yeah. So I. I just think that I stuck with DJI because of maybe just lack of knowledge. You know, I'm not a very smart, smart person, so I found something I knew how to do, and it was working. It was economical, made sense.
[00:58:24] Speaker A: And so. So as it sets right now with just the situation with DJI in the States, you don't plan on switching.
[00:58:33] Speaker B: I don't.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: There you go. Mic drop. Let's. Let's end her with that.
Thanks so much for coming on, Sharon. Dude, I wish I could just take just a little bit of your chemical knowledge and put it in my brain, because you are up there.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: No, don't say that. Just a lot of mistakes.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: Well, hey, but that's how we learn, right?
But no, I appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: I appreciate you having me. It's. You know, you get to hang out with a celebrity like this, it's not every day.
Yeah, Jason Jay's a heck of a guy, right?
[00:59:08] Speaker A: All righty. Thanks, guys, for tuning in. We'll catch you guys next week.
