Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey guys, welcome back to the drone on show. It's Mike. Today we are going to sit down with Hayden, a young 20 year old entrepreneur from Ohio. He started his spray drone business as a freshman in high school. I tell you what, this guy is on the road to be probably one of the largest applicators if he chooses to do so. He comes from a seventh generation family farm. He has some interesting stories to share. Let's jump right into the episode with Hayden from Ohio.
Guys, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: My name is Hayden Crumb and we're based out of south central Ohio and I'm the co owner of Midwest Air.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Okay, so you're, to me you look very young.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: How old are you? Yes, I am 20 years old.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: 20 years old.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And I've, we started this company in 2021. I was a freshman in high school.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The first year we started with the old DJI T. 20s just application. So to kind of give a little bit of a background. I come from the seventh generation on our family farm. It's been owned and operated for 200 years by our family. And how many acres? So about 5,000 acres. Wow.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's sweet. So one family like multiple people taking care of 5,000 acres.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: So it's not. No, no, no. And so it's not been for. It hasn't been 5,000 acres for that long. The growth that, A lot, a lot of that growth has came in the last 20 years. But our home farm is 200 years old.
It's been our, in our family but we've been, we're seven. I'm a seventh generation farmer.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Wow. So you, you like actually drive tractors?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Oh, every day. Yeah. As soon as I get back that's what, that's what my job is.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: That is cool.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Exactly. Oh yeah.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: So I, I didn't grow up. Well, I, I grew up on a farm but it wasn't like, like farming plants or whatever.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: We would have milk cows but then my dad and grandpa, they had to go get jobs because it wasn't enough money.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: So I like farming. I would love to farm myself, like drive a tractor. So I never do it. But I'm excited to hear that you're a young guy and you're able to be out there driving tractors.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I was first thrown in a skid steer when I was 10 years old just going at it.
I'm just a good old fashioned American farm boy and that's just my thing and that's kind of how we started.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: So let's go back. So you're really young and you're into spray drones.
What was the first spray drone you got again?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: The Agris T20. The old Agris T20. Not the T20 P. The old.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So how many years ago of that been.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: That was, that was in 2021. So that was four years ago.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: And four years ago you would have been 16 years old.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Yes. As soon as you could get your 107.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: The amount of the minimum age. As soon as I was able to get it, I got it.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: So you had to know about drones prior to that or not really.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Really. I had known about drones. I'd seen the small ones. And so the way, the way this whole company started is so to give you a little bit more of a background, we have a ag retail business.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: So we sell, fertilize, seed, chemicals, all these different things. And we have a ground sprayer business as well. We spray about 100, we spread cover about a hundred thousand acres across southern Ohio.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: You go.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: So. Yeah, and Camden and I are one of the main applicators. We're running John Deere spray rigs in the summertime, you know, kind of in between. And we had always hired out helicopter acres for years. For years.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: And about a week, one year, a week before they showed up. And you, you understand, you know, you're an applicator. You understand how important the timing is for this type of the fungic.
So a week before, we had hired out all of our customers and they, they basically put their faith in, in us as a business. Hey, I want my acre sprayed. You take care of it. So we hired out, we did them send them.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Would you have been scouting their crops as well to know when that time is?
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah, we help scratch, we help scout them out. We, we rely on some of the farmers we know. We kind of get an idea which farmers. Yeah, we, we kind of know. Some farmers have a better understanding of when some guys are. They don't really know. So we have to kind of look at it and that's fine.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm going to slow you down. A hundred acres is a ton of acres. For people that are listening, like that's, that's, it's a bunch. It's unbelievable how much, how many acres that is. How do you keep it organized?
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Oh, wow. So it's, it can get hectic.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: So do you have a team of people?
[00:04:12] Speaker B: So my dad is kind of the manager of the ground application business and that and we have a team of people, but we're also a lot of the family. So we have about 10 family members who are very active and have all leadership roles. I have a first cousin who, she's behind the scenes, she's on the chemical side. She takes care of shipping, receiving. She takes care of a lot of the sales and the bookkeeping taxes. My grandma and grandpa, they're still kind of active in the business owning the retail business.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: So the chemical side of your family business, would that be private or would it be like a nutrient ag? I don't know how nutrient ag is.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: It is, it's a private company. And okay, we're kind of a competitor, a big competitor with nutrient because there's not very many co ops in, in our area.
It's kind of a really small area, but that's kind of the similar. But we're not like a customer owned, like a co op. But it's privately owned. My grandpa is the owner of it.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: That is.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: And yeah, it's.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: So I'm thinking back to the organizing thing. A team of people is taking care of. So your dad does the drives to take care of the ground stuff and then you come in to take care of the aerial.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: So. Yeah, yeah. Then the aerial, dad always calls it the spoke to the hub. So the hub is the ag retail. And then everybody's got their own little businesses that all contribute and ag retail contributes backs. But that's me and my brother's business is the drones. That's ours, nobody else.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Okay, so who was responsible for the aerial prior to drones? Was it still you?
[00:05:42] Speaker B: It was. So it was my dad. And like I said, I was, I was a freshman in high school at the time. So you know, I was still in school doing all that stuff and. But anyway, what I was getting back to is a week before they came, they canceled and deemed our area too dangerous to fly.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So they just, they just, they said there's too many hills, too many power lines. The helicopter company just canceled.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: I hear that so often.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Like in co ops, like just even the local co ops that I work with. It's like, Mike, if you tell me that you're going to be here, like that's probably the most viable thing.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: To us.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Because you actually do what you're going to say.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Because huge. They were, you know, used to that what you just explained to me.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: And I think of, I think of it from a business standpoint. How could those aerial businesses do that and still be in business? Because say there's any other business, let's say you're a carpet cleaner and you say that you're going to come on this day and everything's planned, you move your furniture, get it ready to get cleaned and then you just don't come like.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: I'm not going to call that company again to clean my carpet. But aerial application, helicopter, airplane, they were able to survive.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Yeah, here's the thing. No, there was no, you know, four or five years ago, there was no competitors to keep these guys in check there. I mean these guys just had a stronghold on, on the opportunity. And in Ohio, there's the H2Ohio program where they have all these cover crop acres. And these airplane guys, they, they take over, they get all these acres and it's like a million acres, a bunch of COVID crop acres. And they, they just. And I've seen the evidence of where they'll go through in a 10 acre field. I've seen these maps, they kind of doctor these maps. It's a little bit weird. But like I've seen them do like just one pass through a 10 acre field when there's like a lot of the program. Yeah. They can kind of change things around. And we knew like there no way you can get 10 acres in one swipe.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So for the listeners that are just getting new into this, the H2 program.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: What, what is the H2Ohio program is a, it's an Ohio program from Governor DeWine. It's all about giving back to the farmers.
So they pay farmers a set amount of money. So for example, they may send them, hey, here's $50 an acre. You have to get your, your. They have a set of guidelines. So they say, all right, you have to have your cover crops planted by September 15th.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: And a lot of times in September that, you know, your corn still up, you can't basically have to do it aerially.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: So a lot of times they just hire, you know, helicopter guys, somebody that can do it fast.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: And we've kind of dipped our toes.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Okay. So that, because of that program there's going to be a lot of acres that are eligible. And farmers want to do cover crops to help their soil.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: And erosion or whatever it might be. And so they're like, I want to get in on this program.
So. So a what, like a big aerial company gets this contract is one contract or is it this farmer is allowed to choose his own.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: It's a lot of times it's just big contracts. Send it out to big contracts.
We had gotten one of the contracts and done a little bit with them, but there was just one thing just kind of happened. One thing led to another, and they tried to get on the regulation side, and they were, like, really, really trying to. Well, we. We kind of pressured the helicopter guys a little bit, and they. They just blew up. They were really mad and they just sent. Everybody tried to go after us, which was. Yeah, it was. It was kind of interesting. But, yeah, the whole program is all about fertilizer contamination. So in the Lake Erie basin, okay, they had a lot of fertilizer runoff, a lot of phosphorus, a lot of nitrogen running off, and they created algal blooms in Lake Erie. That's why this whole program started. So, yeah, that's kind of.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: So then that's why they're like, okay. So then they signed up kind of northwest Ohio, the Lake Erie watershed. And they say all these guys, all these farmers have bare fields in the fall and wintertime. You need to have something green on there. And. Yeah, and if you can get planted earlier, you can get something like a legume that fixates its own nitrogen. You can add nitrogen to the soil, which is really big. And that with you.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: You know what, I'm just impressed. You're 20 years old and you know all this information. This is great for the listeners that don't know. And so you're sharing all this information. Sometimes, like, I share stuff that I know, and I'm like, well, everybody knows that but you sharing. I mean, you're teaching me right now. I. This is. I really appreciate it.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, absolutely. So, you know, legume fixates its own nitrogen, brings nitrogen out of the air. And as corn. Corn doesn't fixate its own nitrogen. And the farmers spend lots and lots of money on putting nitrogen on the field. But if we can put a cover crop on early and put it on before the farmers even harvest their field, because, guys, when they're harvesting, they don't want to have to worry about spreading the COVID crops or doing. They're just fixate on farm, and they want to. They want to get their crops in, get it in the bins. They don't, you know, they don't care about nothing else at that time. So we, you know, a lot of times we can help come in. We'll spray some of those specialty types of COVID crops. And one of the big things about legumes is that they win or kill. That's the biggest thing about getting it on early. So if we get it on too late, after the Harvest is done. A lot of times there's that early frost in November and it just kills it right off. And then it's essentially a waste of money.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Wow, okay, so we're gonna back this thing up because we got sidetracked. No, I like it though. I am totally cool with that. So 16 years old, you get your pilot's license because you're like, I'm gonna get into spray drones.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: How did you come across spray drones or.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: So Dad's just kind of. He's a very visionary type person. He's very progressive. He likes to do the latest and greatest and coolest thing. That's awesome. And so he's like, hey, what about a drone or something smaller? You know? So we looked into it. We go through, we start calling all these different companies, seeing there was. And at the time there was no other, no other options than dji. It was just dji. And we're trying to find there was like one or two distributors. And we said we finally find somebody that we started with somebody that we liked. And that's, that's just kind of how we started.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Just for your own application.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: And we start. So we started with our first. We tested on our own fields. And this is a. This. I'll tell you a little funny story. So the chemical company, the very first time we were flying out, the chemical company is out. Is out. They're helping us do testing with different adjuvants or whatever. They're really good. They help support us. So them, my dad are out in the field. We're idiots. We're taking this thing off and we didn't realize the T20 didn't have like a radar system above it. So we took off underneath the power line. Yeah, yeah, you didn't. And it, and it shredded one of the like strands in the wire. Broke it. The drone flies and it didn't. It didn't touch it at all. The drone flies completely normal. It goes. Sprays its thing and comes back. And me and can are just wide eyed like, dad has no idea what just happened. We just spent $20,000 on his road and we just crashed the first flight. And we bring it back. There's a chip in the propeller.
These things were brutes. These, the little tiny, just stocky propellers. No. Oh, we got so lucky. Yeah. It was just a funny little story there. And if we just. Fine, we put a new propeller on it after a while. But. Yeah.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: So. So that test that you did. Yeah, those early tests, you started seeing.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Results that immediately it was and dad's biggest thing was, so why does this thing not have a fixed boom? It has nozzles underneath the, the propellers. And so we were trying, he was, you know, more thinking, okay, the helicopter has a fixed boom, the airplane has a fixed boom. Why does this have. How can this thing get a good pattern? What's going on? And immediately you see this thing take off, you see it start to spray, and you have that two turbine hurricane vortex like patterns. And it just sets down and looks beautiful. And then we start to realize the, you know, the science that's went into it. The actual drone helps create the swath itself. Since it's flying slow enough, you can actually, it has some type of influence. Whereas airplane, helicopter guys, they're flying hundreds of miles an hour.
There is no downforce. And if it is, it's causing disruptions. It doesn't cause evenness.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah, correct.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: So we, in our first early testing and we actually did the, you know, the water sensitive paper, did the spray cards, and we actually found out that the drones have about a 7 to 8% coverage on the spray cards and the ground sprayers at 15 gallons, which is almost seven times what the drones were, were about 9 to 10% coverage. And the airplane helicopters were 2 to 3 on corn. This, this. Yeah, this was on. This was on corn. Yeah. And it was covered all the way through. All the way. So we had double the coverage as the airplane helicopters with the drone. And we were closer to the actual ground sprayers than we were closer to the aerial, to the airplane. Guys, with a drone, just because of that downforce, it pushes, pushes the product down in all the way through each layers. And we had, once we found this out and compared it to some of the other cars we had from the other guys, we thought, man, we, we really have something. This is not only is it cheaper, you know, you know all the things, but it creates even a better quality.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. Like when you flying like a Mavic or something behind a T50, that's. Oh, yeah, you can't. People think that it's shoving it down. If you're going full speed at 32.8, it's not shoving it down, it's floating down. But, but if you look behind the drone, say 30ft, the corn is moving.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: And so that droplet is going inside the canopy and getting on areas that it normally wouldn't if it's not moving.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: So the, the, the actual application of getting it into the canopy is much better. Oh, yeah. That way.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Okay. So I'm gonna bring something up and I'm gonna show you a picture because I, I have done thousands of acres and I've never had a problem. But this, this farm here, this co op we were working for, talk this farmer into doing fungicide. And normally he would not do fungicide application because he thinks it doesn't work. But I got these on the corn. He sent me these later. And I'm like, guys, I was there, I was spraying it, and I know I was laying down the product properly, was getting down in there. So right now we're looking at a picture of corn that it's, it's. The corn has now died. It's. It's turned brown, but there's areas that are darker brown and then there's lighter brown. And I looked at this photo and I'm telling the farmer that I still covered every inch of this corn. But I believe, and I'd like to hear from you what you think this photo is. So I believe that I covered every inch of that with fungicide. But the lighter streaks were overlap of. Say I had a 34 foot swath and I was doing 32 foot Ralph spacing the foot that landed on this side and the foot on the other side. So the lighter corn would have got more product which would have died slower than the darker coil. Yeah. What do you see?
[00:16:01] Speaker B: So, yeah, I think that is also a case. I think that's a big thing. I think another thing could possibly be adjuvants. So sometimes the adjuvants can also kind of affect the swath quality and the swath width. We've seen that certain adjuvants we saw that would really suck. The. Suck the swath width down or even certain adjuvants could spread it out. So it all depends on the types, how heavy it is or how light it is. Those oily type adjuvants, they kind of create more of a standard pattern or even kind of spread it out or like a guar type of adjuvant that has these polymers that help create heavier droplets. They have a tendency to shorten swaths down. And so I've seen that happen a lot.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: So how would you as a pilot, you're out there visually be able to see that? Like, because when I was looking at the drone flying, I'm looking at it, I'm like, well, it's definitely being past the propellers and we're like at 11, 5, you know, on the 11 foot, 5 inches on the propellers and about 3, 4 here and 3, 4 there.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: That's how I'm.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It can be very tough because a lot of those droplets are very, are even not visual to the eye because they're so. Some of them are so small. So it can be, it can be really tough to see.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: So when a farmer calls me with that situation and he's upset because it looks like it streaked, what should I tell.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a, various things. I mean, you know, a lot of times it's good if we can get to somebody that, and try and explain that this is new technology. There's a very new studies. A lot of these chemical labels are not, they're labeled for airplanes and helicopters. They're not suited for drones. So there's a lot of, a lot of new and up and coming testing.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: But like I said, so every situation is different. I'm going to tell you this now. The same farmer, same corn.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: That I'm aware of. We sprayed the same day with the same chemical. Nothing. Yeah, it's.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: There's so many factors. It could be like a wind or, or weather, you know, maybe a little bit of humidity in the air. And sometimes it does have enough, you know, a big enough droplets to penetrate through. So in the hot day, you get a lot of humidity, especially if you're close. I don't know exactly where it was at, but if it's close to a creek or close to a body of water, there's humidity in the air and sometimes that those spray droplets actually have a tendency to kind of bind with that humidity and sometimes it can cause a little bit of inconsistencies. And that's very new because our droplets are so small. And you know, Talking about that, 2 to 300 microns is very small compared to what we're doing. What we're used to seeing the ground sprayers at 10, 15 gallon per acre.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: So. And even the airplanes, those guys have hydraulic nozzles, even bigger droplet size in most cases. They know a lot of times those pilots, they switch nozzles and we even have to do that on the ground sprayers.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: We get a hot humid day, we can, on the John Deere sprayers, we got 120 foot booms. It's, it's no fun to do because you get chemical, but you just switch them. You can, it's on like a, like.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: There'S four different easy clock.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. You just grab it, switch it. Okay. So I know it's, you know, 90 degrees, there's a high humidity. We're gonna switch. So we're gonna switch to the heavier, heavier, coarser droplet size, or I'm. I'm in a flat field. I don't know. I can get, you know, go 15 miles an hour. I'm gonna go with a finer or a different style nozzle flow. There's a lot of different things that a lot of people don't exactly know in the application business, but there's a lot of instances that happen like that. And I think it's important because we don't talk about those enough.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's like, so when he sends it to me, it's like, I'm not here just to take your money.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: No.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: I want to do the best application exactly possible for sure. So please do send me what you have so I can learn how to do it better. That's what I want to do, dude. That's cool. So you guys, you started doing these testing.
You've seen that the drones are working better. Do you buy a bunch of drones now and start your own fleets?
[00:19:38] Speaker B: So I mean, this. We're still trying to figure out if this is a viable business. We're doing the financial side of things.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: We're talking back. We're kind of talking back.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah, we're back in history here, 20, 21.
But we had a lot of issues starting out. We had tremendous, tremendous failures.
It was.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Give me a. Give me one.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: So, for example, and this is a funny story, so when we first started, we had no training, no nothing at all. There was no, you know, websites, stuff like that we do now. There was none of this. So we started out, we had no idea that when this drone gets to 10% battery at the time that drone lands wherever it's at, you know, it doesn't care. It doesn't care. It doesn't care. We had no idea that this, this. So we were pushing it, trying to push the limits, and we're going through. Next thing you know, we hit this 10, and we're like pushing it way too far. We get to 10% battery, and this thing's on its way home, coming in full speed, and it. And it just loses all control. And this thing comes in like a rocket, bounces off the trailer and hits my hand. You can see the scar right here. And luckily hit the trailer first. But, yeah, it bounces off, hits my hand. And we had no idea because it doesn't. Didn't do a soft landing like the. The T40s and 30s do now. Yeah, yeah, it did just a shut systems off and just came like a rocket. Yeah, it was the ski one and cannons diving. You know, he thought it was a, you know, it's, it was crazy. Oh my God. Yeah, Yeah. I mean we're. Yeah, we were such. It was so new.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Yeah. The equipment has gotten much better. Exactly. Since then. But we're still kind of in early stages.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: We're still.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. This, this is a, this is, this industry is in its infancy for sure.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: 100%. And yeah, just, just a scenario after that. And then after that we had a very close, A very close conversation just talking about, man, is this worth, you know, the safety factor? Just, yo, is this worth it? Should we continue on? We pushed through.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: You never had a drone at that percentage. So you didn't know what would.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Exactly. So we were learning. Yeah, exactly. And then we had.
I don't know how familiar, but they had screw on locks, arm locks. So they essentially was just. And nothing has, has that anymore. But they were screw in arm locks. They just threaded on.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: To hold their arms out. And it didn't have any sensors. No sensors. And we had, sometimes we had a guy who didn't know what they were doing. And if we didn't check it all the way, sometimes it could kind of. Even the, the amount of torque that happens on those arms could kind of loosen those arm locks. And we've had them, we had them come off a few times.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: So I see. Yeah, there were some failures. Like that's like when I went out and I started applicating myself just learning the system. You're gonna go through a learning curve. There's going to be some things that go wrong that you don't want to, but then it helps you get better.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: I had to make you guys better applicants.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, and even just from a dealer standpoint, we wanted to make sure our customers, you know, we could help them and arm them with the tools to make sure that those types of mistakes never happen. We, we let them know, hey, at 5% battery, that drone's going down. No matter. You get that, get out of the way, you know, those sorts of things. Then some of those mistakes that we can teach pass on to other people.
That way they don't have to make those same things. Like for example, I think we talked about it when I met you at Farm Science Review, like the bringing sticks together and down in at the time they had that setting toward the drone that's like a safety feature just automatically shuts off.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: I may or may not have done that while it's flying.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Have you ever done it?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: I've not done it, but I've had a customer do it. And it was weird because I told him, I said, this is a safety feature that whenever you do that, it shuts everything off. Don't do it. And he's like. Like, I thought it was an override button. Emergency braked. And he did it. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: So we had since changed that because.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Since changed that. Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: And I was like, guys, like, not only. Yes, I. We need to have an emergency shutdown procedure, but it doesn't make sense that it's the exact same thing as takeoff.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yes, take exactly. So if you're grabbing. If you grab a second controller, things are going. Heat of the day, generator's going. It happened. Yeah.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Dude. There's a lot on your mind.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: If you take phone calls, exhausted.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Yep. There's so many. So you guys are. How many drones do you buy to start your own fleet?
[00:23:49] Speaker B: So, yeah, so we started out with two.
We had started out with one early in the season, which will do. The wheat fund aside. And this is kind of a funny story. We, like I said this here's another growing pain we didn't know we had because of the charge at the time. Had four ports.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: We thought, man.
And they told us, okay, one charger and three batteries. That should keep you going. Well, we didn't realize. We thought the charger would charge four at a time.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Not the case.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: No way. It charges one, you know, one at a time. And we had a generator that was not big enough. Went out for our first custom job, and it took forever. I was able to charge. It took absolutely. It took four days to do 100 acre field.
I'm telling you, we were such. We were such idiots. We had no. There was just nothing. It was a desert. Nobody knew anything.
And came full circle this past year. We came and did that field in and out. We were in 45 minutes, 100 acre field.
And it was just like. It was just a moment that. Because we were. I'm sitting in this field, I went to like 12 hours a day. We came all the way to sunset, you know, waiting for these batteries to charge up because we had to. We had a customer that's already. We didn't have a choice. So we waited that long, and we just. We just had to go for it.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: That customer was like, this is never going to work.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Luckily, he was. We knew this guy. He was a very understanding, very progressive farmer. And he's like, hey, this is awesome. I love the quality application, but this four days is not going to cut it. Yeah, yeah.
Just unreal. But yeah, after that, then we went to the T30s. Started with two T20s. And then the second year we got two T40s. You know, we kind of figured out this is starting to go. And then. Then we.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: So when you had T40s, how many acres did you do that year?
[00:25:25] Speaker B: The first year we had the T40s, we. We did about 10,000 acres, which was. Which was really good for us. Yeah, we ran just a pair. A pair of T40s. And that. That was. That was really good for us. And. And those were. Oh, man, those were the cat's pajamas. At that time, those drones were. Yeah, we loved the atomizer nozzles versus the T 30s, having all those individual nozzles plugged up all the time. So that was really big for us. And we were trying to. We didn't really know what those nozzles were. We were trying to learn and all those different things to try and figure out the capabilities. We tested with the. The different droplet sizes and all those different things. And, yeah, that was a big thing for us.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: So you were using DJI drones. When did you decide you want to use an XAG drone?
[00:26:07] Speaker B: There was the drone conference this time last year.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: So we had talked to Arthur. That was just kind of. We were figuring it out, you know, wanted to see. We had heard about the. The P100, and we thought, man, a fixed drone with no foldable arms, that's not gonna work. No way, no how. Then they had. They just showcased the P100 Pro, a 13 gallon tank. So we had a little bit more capacity, a little bit faster, and that. That meant something to us. So a little bit more efficiency. And then we went out to the demo site last year, saw the things in action, and we saw the terrain. Following the T40s, they had some challenges with the terrain radars.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Oh, dude.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: And the T fift fix that. Exactly.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: But the.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: But then we saw that P100 contour, and it was. And it was going 10 miles an hour faster. We thought, wow, we got it. We got to see that. This. And we had.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Because a lot of the stuff you were spraying at the time was pretty gnarly stuff.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we had some really. We had some pretty hilly stuff. So our ground right in the middle, we're on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. So right here, right in our home farm, it's really, really hilly. We go about 30 minutes east. It's mountainous, super steep, deep, very rough fields. And then we go about like an hour northwest. It's dead flat. Checkerboards.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: So we like to spray in the northwest because that's where, you know, this makes things a lot easier. But we have to take care of our home farm always, essentially. And so we get there. And the P1 hundreds were really good at contouring the land. And another thing that we really appreciated is if you've ever noticed the DJI's, if they. If the hill's too much to Contour, especially the 40s, they just emergency braked.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: With the P1 hundreds, it didn't ever do that. It would just stop, raise up on its own and continue going. There was no manual input. It was all autonomous.
That was kind of.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: When. When would it. When would a XAG ever break then?
[00:27:49] Speaker B: So if it was way too much, like out of the question. If it was a really bad, like. And it was a bit bad mapping error or something. Okay, then. And it's like, hey, I. I can't figure it. Figure my way out. And that was. We've had to happen too. And just did a soft landing in the field. We had to go take batteries out to it, which is never any fun. But that was a kind of a mapping thing. Was just way too complicated for it to come out.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: So are you mapping all your fields prior to going, or you just building them on your phone or on the controller?
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Most of the time, if we know what the fields are, we can do it the night before on your phone. But a lot of times we don't know what the. What field. The farmer's like, come follow me in my S10 pickup truck. Here we go. And that's fine. We can. And then we. Then we map it out. The field.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Are you doing orthomosaic or you're saying just create a boundary.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: So we. We use the satellite a lot of times and then we typically have a simple little scout drone just to see the power lines. The power lines are a big thing. So with. And that's one of the reasons we like to kind of do some mapping on site or at least double check if we already have a map.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: So we want to go and find any obstacles, unknown things. A lot of times power lines will cut the corner of a field off and there's no poles.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Don't ask me how I found that out exactly.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Trust me, we've had the same thing. Same. The power lines will cut a corner of the field off, but there's no Poles, dude.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: I was right by it. And I looked down to look at the corner, did not see the line. I see the pole. I was like, oh, the pole goes down and, and then has a drop that goes in. No, they cut over the corner.
My drone may or may not have been hanging on that line.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. Oh, trust me, I got plenty of. Stack of, plenty of stories from customers and, and personal stuff. But yeah, those ones. So we take like to take a scout drone or something and just to kind of look around, especially if there's some parts we can't really see in depth because you know, you get to some bigger fields, 100 acre, 150 acre, you can't really see the, the edges in the corner very well or in depth. Find a tiny little phone line, power line, whatever. So that's kind of the way we do it. It works out well for us.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Have you ever tried flying the T40 or T50 around the boundary and having a hotkey and building a boundary as, as you're flying the drone?
[00:29:53] Speaker B: So if we do get to a tough feel, we do that. We haven't done it as much just because we were like, eh. And I, I know a lot of guys is really popular and I don't, you know, it doesn't matter to me anyway. But I just figured ah, you know, if we have to use a battery and fly it, we thought it would take a little bit extra time.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: And, and maybe we should. We do.
If we know we're going to have some issues in the field, we're like, hey, we definitely got to do it. But I appreciate the accuracy. The accuracy is great because you always know exactly where the drone can and can't go. The map, the map is hyper accurate. I love it. But we just kind of worried maybe it takes a battery or two in some of the bigger fields. We thought maybe it takes a little bit of time. But sometimes it's just a matter of preference. Some guys like certain things. Some guys. And that's, that's all well and good, you know, no worries there.
But yeah, that's one especially pen pivots. That's a big one.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: If there's a pivot in the field, the satellite's not picking that up.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: No.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: And you just can't walk it just. Yeah, yeah, you can either, you know, but I love the DJI feature where you can just raise up over top of it or you can map it out with the drone as an obstacle because the pivot's always on the move.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: So you got a Season of XAG drones under your belt now.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: So you've been running DJI and now you've run xag.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: So we run both.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: So last year we ran three crews. It was two crews of T40s and then a crew of P100 pros.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: And who was more effective, efficient.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: It was. We saw actually on average about 100, 250 acres a day increased with the P100 pros.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, just in same type of terrain, same type of.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Yeah, we, we towed them in the same, same side by side field and we tested them out. And truthfully there was a lot of times we did the P100 Pro in the worst terrain just because of the hills and.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, that's impressive because when I had a P100 it was an absolute miserable experience. But you know, everything is so much further advanced.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Than it was before. So like XAG wanted to talk to me and have an interview and I was like, with the experience I had back when your equipment was. When I had it, it wouldn't be fair for me to talk about your equipment now because it's not revel for sure. It doesn't even matter. But I, I really love the hardware. Yeah, it's, it's very heavy built, but for an overall like out of box experience, if somebody's getting started, it's hard to beat dji in my opinion.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: You're, you're exactly right. I. You're exactly right. And that just essentially as a dealer, we have to, we put that burden on ourselves. We set them up for the guys. But yeah, a dji, it can have this thing updated, ready to go, ready to fly within 30 minutes to an hour.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: XAG, not the case.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: So did you have any problem keeping up with your battery chargers for the xag?
[00:32:21] Speaker B: So what they recommended, and we kind of knew to start with, they recommended two chargers and eight batteries. And we thought, why we just have a bunch of extra batteries sitting around. So we thought, okay, well maybe we can swap two batteries out for two chargers. That way two pairs of batteries are on two pairs of chargers and one's in the drone at all times. And then if we run two together, we've got plenty of extra batteries if something goes down. And that worked out a lot better.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: So to explain to the listeners, the XAG drone runs two batteries as a pair in the drone. And so you were running a charger per battery, is that right?
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Yes, yes. So they, we try and make for simplicity, we try and call it pairs. So essentially we ran two Pairs of chargers which would be four chargers total. And then we ran six total batteries which would be three pairs. So one's in the drone at all times and then two are in the battery boxes. Cooling and charging. Because if we had eight batteries and two chargers, there's only one cool tank because they have those, those dunk water tanks.
So the other batteries just sitting out in the sun or sitting out and they can't be cooling or anything like that. So we're like, yeah, let's just get an extra water tank and an extra pair of chargers and that way they can be cooling and they can be charging as well. It just seemed, seemed to make a little bit more sense to us. Ye and that worked out way better for us. But we knew yeah, that's just, that wasn't going to, wasn't going to be quite as efficient with what the recommendation was.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: But cool. So your applicators, you're using these drones to actually spray for your customers. At what point were you like let's become a dealer and sell these to custom app guys or even farmers. What made you guys?
[00:33:53] Speaker B: So in the T30 day back in history history lesson back in the T30 days we had just did some demos for some guys trying to build the application business. And we had known we have, we' pretty fortunate to have a couple big farmers. They're pretty loyal to us. We know if all else fails and everybody asked me questions, so what if you're selling to your competition? You know what I said if we can do our own farm and we can take care of our two other big customers, that's plenty enough acres for it to keep us busy and we can sell drones to the rest. So that's kind of where our idea started and it never did happen that way. We still, we grew, flourished into the custom app business but then the sales also continued as well. And it was mainly guys that still a lot of guys that were just want to take care of things in house. It was farmers who wanted, who had a bad experience with a disease and they wanted to take care of things themselves. It was a price point that they could afford, they could justify. There's a good tax write off for them and the licensing, there's a lot of steps to it. We help them and all those points and we can make it as easy as possible. And it's nowhere near some of the stuff that they have to go through for the airplane, helicopter stuff. And so it made a lot of sense for a lot of guys. And fortunately we have some pretty good Farmers who took right to it. And that was kind of the turning point when we, we had did some shows and guys like, can I get one? And we were like, yeah, well, let me look into that.
Yeah.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: So that's. You kind of stumble into.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: That's cool.
So but you're still a custom app guy. How many teams do you plan on running this?
[00:35:22] Speaker B: So this season we're looking at four. Four teams this year.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: So four trailer setups.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Four trailer setups.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: What type of trailer do you guys run? Do you have like a flight deck trailer of some kind?
[00:35:31] Speaker B: So we have mixture of all.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: We have an enclosed trailer, we have a hybrid trailer. And then we have an open deck trailer as well. With the P150s coming out, they have to have a lot more room to land.
So just a simple straight deck over the trailer wasn't going to be enough room for us because these drones are really big. They have five foot propellers. So we needed to have something that could have fold outside. So that's, that's kind of the route we're going there. Okay. But we have just hybrid of all. I know it's kind of all mix and match. It's sometimes it's some of the old equipment that we're retrofitting into and updating it as we go. But there's. We have a separate talk about all the benefits of each one. But there's. There's good and bad to every single one. And, and I'm a firm believer that it really depends on your terrain and your style and preferences on the type of trailer setup that you want. And there's a lot of good things about every single trailer that I can take that we can take back.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: So how many acres do you plan on covering?
[00:36:27] Speaker B: That's a great question.
I would love to see in the 25 to 30,000 range. That would be a great. We would feel really, really successful. But we're in south central Ohio. We had a lot of listeners who may not be familiar. Familiar with. But we had a really bad drought. Very, very bad last season.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: So a lot of guys are coming off a financial struggle and we. And last year we had a lot of, A lot of issues trying to find. Yeah. A lot of backhouse. A lot of guys pulling the plug and saying, hey, it's too dry and there's no point. This late season fungicide application is not going to do me any good with no. With no rain. So that's, that's kind of where we were. And we rallied we were able. We had to travel all over the state and. And we didn't even get into.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Everybody was looking for work.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Even the airpl. Oh yeah. Like some of the airplane guys were calling the local co op that we were doing work for and he said I haven't spoke to them in like seven to eight years. And they were calling them to you're good for work. I was like, geez, it's. It's just one of those years. But yeah, it's. It's agricultural. It could happen. But for the most part there's always some type of work out for sure. Yeah. So a young guy or an older guy is wanting to get into this. What would you tell.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Just start. A lot of guys are worried about, okay, every year there's a new drone coming out. When am I gonna. I said you have to just go for it. You know, it's like you're just gonna have to get on. Get on the ship. Because it's not like I don't expect it to just the P150 is that or the whatever is it. You know, there's always going to be. You know, that's just kind of the route that we tell our guys. Sometimes it can be a little bit of a daunting task for the licensing and all that stuff. Stuff. And a lot of guys are worried about that.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: But if you are working with a team, it's. It's really a team that understands what they're doing. It. It makes it really.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: So yeah, I'm sure you guys offer it with your company, but at new way we also help them through that process.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: So a guy asks you, is the market flooded? Would you say the market is flooded?
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Absolutely not. I would say a good guesstimation. We're like 5 to 10%.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: It seems like because we see all the social media. We see it or we see a neighbor because these things are so flash and so cool and interesting. But you have no idea how many acres these helicopter and airplane guys are coming or do. Yeah, still doing.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: And they still can't cover it all.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: And they still can't cover it all.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: And then you brought up a million acres just of COVID crop in Ohio.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Like think about how many drones that would take to spread exactly over a million acres.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. I'm like, there's.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Dude, it's not even nuts. Like. Right, right. And what that I will probably have to be spread in a month or two.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: So you could do the numbers for somebody that's listen do the numbers if there's a million acres, not that every acre is going to get covered by a drone. Right. But if it would, how many drones would that take?
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then here's the thing, here's another thing to think about. So requirements that program. So it has to be done by September 15th. If it goes past and goes to October 15th, you have to increase the rate by £15 or like a 10%. Then there's another thing to think about. So the later you go if you can't get it of kind covered, then you have to increase the rate again just because the later date you have to put more on for more success rate of growth. So yeah, there's a lot of seed to be moved that gets moved and there's a lot of acres that get covered aerially.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: I feel like the industry I'm working on something I'm hoping it, it should do pretty well.
Hasn't figured out efficient way to do drone seeding, dry spreading and anything dry efficiently with drones. Do you feel that way?
[00:40:00] Speaker B: I think that's very untapped for sure. There's, there's a couple things. We've got a couple things in the hopper that, that really exciting. We have a couple different setups that, that make it really nice. I don't think there's like here is X is the answer. But there's a lot of spray trailers out there. But I think a cover crop trailer, there's not very many but a lot of guys just don't. They're like okay, the COVID crop there's not, some areas are not very big for it. So it can be kind of a niche type of, of mark market. But we're at it's, it's a very big thing especially with all these government Cargill and ADM roll out these carbon credit programs. That's a lot of good things for, for guys that are wanting to get in contact with those guys. They, they, they pay at least 15 to $20 an acre just for the farmers to spread cover crop. And yeah, there's, there's a lot of money out there for this stuff. It's just, it's unreal and people don't realize it because. And a lot of some guys that are farmers and they get to that time, they sometimes are like I don't, I don't really want to mess with it because I want to get ready for harvesting, haul off any last grain, clear the grain bins, those sorts of things. But the custom app guys that they want to pick up some of those, the late fall or early fall types.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Is that something? If a custom app guide knows how to help a farmer to get those funds, is that something?
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: That's what, that's what we do for our farmers.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: So you help them understand the program. Hey, it's easy. I can help you apply. Because he's busy. Right. He's wrapping up harvest.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: We do the same. Yeah, we do the same thing. We help. That's what we've been working on currently because it takes a little while to get that started. But because it's a government program, so there's a lot of steps and to go through. But yeah, we help. Help guys. Help guys out. Get the, get enrolled and yeah, dude.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Guys, like, if you're listening, like he's 20 years old, you're 20 years old and you're into this, like, this is impressive. Like the knowledge that you have, you're teaching me things. And I'm sure, sure that whoever's listening, that they're learning something, get into it. Absolutely. You're not going to like, sit on the couch and learn this how. What it takes to do a drone spray business. Unless you get into it now. We'll tell them. And I would like to hear from you. Is being a drone spray pilot easy work, easy money?
[00:42:09] Speaker B: No, it is. Especially new. It is. There's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of curves. There's some, there's a lot of issues. I don't want it to make it to be this fairy tale land that, you know, this is gravy. It's not, not cab work. I've done the cab work. It's. It's not, you know, quite as nice as that.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: But somebody has a little bit of a go getter attitude.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: And is willing to work, willing to put in some hours.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: You can make a lot of money in the industry.
[00:42:36] Speaker A: You go. That's what I'm saying.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: But if somebody's not willing to stay in the heat and fight and learn, you know, there's no, there's no point in getting into it because there's challenges. A new industry, you have to understand that there's. But somebody that, like, exactly like you said, somebody that's willing to do in the work, somebody that's willing to keep an open mind and, and ready to go for it. This is a great business for young people to get into it and start into it.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: Dude. And I could, I could not have said it any better myself. It's like, you know, I've been doing a little bit of marketing here and there. And I say, you know how many acres I done in 24 days and the money I made? And they're like, that's a lie. No, it's not a lie. I did. But you want to see the work that went into it. It's hard work.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: For sure. It is.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: But it can be done. Yeah. And I like to let people know right up front, if you're gonna do this and you actually wanna make it big, expect to work hard, expect to work along. Things will get easier.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Things, you get more time. But in the beginning, it's going to feel like a fire hose.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: You're just taking it. Oh, for sure.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Yeah. In our first years, we had mixed little tiny kitchen cups and we mixed. Cause they had little five gallon tanks. And then you swap tanks instead of actually refilling tanks. So we never had a mixing setup. We had a of ton full of fresh water and we mixed all this little stuff in little kitchen cups, shake it up hand style. And oh my gosh, I couldn't tell you how many ground guys we ran through. And even us, because you got the exposure. You're covered in insects, it eats you alive.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Oh, but the things you learn.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: And then now we've got setups where we don't touch chemicals. We press three buttons and you have a batch mixed in 30 seconds. And me and Camden, me and my brother, we always laugh like, man, where we came from is just unreal.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: I'm going to share sometime some of the experiences I went through as I was in my first season covering 11,000 acres. Dude, it was, it was not some of the things.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: But yeah.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: Is there anything else you'd like to share?
[00:44:34] Speaker B: We talked about the youth and how they can get into it. But I have another funny story about somebody. Some of the older generations, like, this is too new. So just about two weeks ago, two farm, two brothers and had a generational farm, really big farm operation.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: How old are these?
[00:44:48] Speaker B: They were 72 and 75 years old.
And they had tar spot. This is really bad disease on corn that happens. And it had on every single one of his acres. And that next year. And he's the type of guy, like I say, he's one that wants to do everything in house. He bought a drone from us. And this guy, he's like, well, I have one app on my phone and I thought, one app on your phone? The phone comes with like 10 apps. There's no way. And I, and I look and he's like, here, you gonna have to put the DJI Smart Farm app on my phone. Phone. I put. And I'm helping this guy all the ways because I want to get this guy going and help him with the licensing and. And I get on this phone. Fox 19 weather app.
True old farm, old fashioned farmer fashion. But this guy, these guys take to the drone like nothing. No, exact. Cool. Yeah, it's one of the coolest. I love to tell the story.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, people think they're super difficult. They're actually not the dji or they're like scared of flying it. It's like, you don't actually have to fly it.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: No.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: You just tell it what to do and it'll do what you tell.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And they. And these guys take to it like nothing. It's so user friendly anymore.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: There you go. Like, if they're less than they're old, they're thinking. No, I. Access is for the young generation. It's not for just the young generation. If you're willing to learn, you can pick it up.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: You're exactly right, dude. Yep.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: So good, dude. Thanks so much for sharing the stories coming on and sharing your knowledge.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: Yeah, no, dude, absolutely.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: I. I really appreciate it.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Yep, no problem.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Maybe we'll do it again.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: Heck yeah.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: Appreciate it.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: Nice.
