Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Alrighty, guys, welcome back to another drone on show. I'm Mike.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: I'm Zane Carter with Nutri Drones.
[00:00:06] Speaker C: Bernard Martins from Mexico. Chihuahua.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Sweet. It's. It's gonna be an interesting podcast. I just know because we got three applicators, One from Mexico, one from Iowa, and one from Ohio. Let's just get right into it. I'll start with you. How did you get into spray drones?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, it's funny you just said you're from Ohio. I was actually born in Ohio. I wish I could say I was born and raised in Iowa, but I lived in Ohio for a whole two weeks of my life.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Okay, so I don't remember.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: I don't remember any of it. Yeah, no, we. Yeah, we just actually met briefly here at the conference and I kind of mentioned, you know, I was working at Wells Fargo and then somehow ended up in Fargo working at Wells Fargo.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: I.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: It's like, yeah, how was I.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: Can you lend us money?
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Oh, I wasn't, I wasn't that important there, so.
But no, yeah, I was working at Wells Fargo. Got laid off there. I always say fired because I think it's funnier, but no, laid off. You know how that company, they lay off hundreds of people at a time? I was just one of them. And so I was looking for a job and had a friend who said, hey, I've got a couple guys who are starting a drone business and they're, they're doing spray drones. What do you know about spray drones? Said absolutely nothing. What? That sounds awesome though. What? What? How can I do that? So I was a pilot my first year for a company and flew. We flew T30s and T40s and covered
[00:01:32] Speaker A: a bunch of acres.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I, I did. I think somewhere between 2,000 to 2,500 acres myself is what I flew for the company.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: So, yeah, that was awesome. I'm not sure what their total numbers were, what they did, but they had three T40s and a T30, so they, they covered some acres.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: That was my start in the business and I wanted to.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: So. So did you.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Go ahead.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Did you know about Chemical at all or are you just.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: So my background in farming is. So my dad actually, he sprayed with ground rigs for a while, so he worked at co ops and there's a couple other companies that he worked with just spraying with a ground rig. He eventually got into, like, the office side of things, so I saw that side a little bit. Didn't know a lot about the chemicals, you know, name association. I could, you know, Associate what was going on? Yeah, and my wife, her family farms, so her uncle farms. And so I got to see that from the outside, so knew a little bit about that stuff. But chemicals, like the in depth stuff, I had to dive into it.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, Interesting. How did you get into spray drones?
[00:02:38] Speaker C: I guess we all have our own story to tell, right? So, yeah, I was always being this one guy and being searching on YouTube, okay, Facebook. I saw DJI posts and guys out of the States posted stuff about spraying. So I worked out on the farm for a guy who kind of handed me. Handed the entire farm to me. He farmed about 200 hectares, so that comes out roughly to be 450 acres. Something like. I was most of the time by myself in willing to explore the drone.
So I told him one day, hey, what do you think? My boss, right? In that case, his name was Corney. I asked him and I was like, do you think this thing could work out on the farm? I was like. I showed him a video. Back then, the T20 was new, so it was a small drone.
And he was like, dude, you think we have time for that? Well, we don't. Because me doing all of the work in the farm, it was too much. I kept thinking about it, and all of a sudden he came up with this one idea and he was like, you know what? You know, still think about buying a drone? I was like, definitely, but I don't want to let you down. And me going into the drone, because he was a pastor, he had to deal with a whole lot of people at church, and that's why he was normally not around.
And he was like, you know what? One of my sister's husband, however you want to call that. So yeah, they would come and work out on the farm. So it was.
He was a teacher, and while school was out, he was going to help us out on the farm. If you want to do the drone business, I want to give you a shot.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: So the next question that he asked me, do you have money? Like, I just. I was like, hey, he can lend us money, right? Yep. So. And no, I don't have the money, but I believe the drone can pay itself off pretty quickly. Like what I've made of math. And I did a calculation and I was like, I think it can pay itself pretty quick.
So he was like, you know what? I'm going to do the money, you be the pilot, and let's team up.
When you go out and spray people's field and just do customs, you can do ours. Our 200 hectares. You make money and we both make money.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: So we go 50. 50. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:37] Speaker C: That's how I started back in 2021. So the 2nd of June, that was the first day I applicated in Chihuahua, Mexico. Daytime, I was out on the farm doing the thing, driving tractor, cultivating, irrigating, fertilizing, whatever came up. So do I knew chemicals by then? Definitely, because I worked the entire life of my farm on this farm, doing all the tractor spraying applications as well. The chemical section was a big. Wasn't a big deal for me. And so, you know, the drone runs as a champ during nighttime just as fine as during your day.
So daytime on the farm, nighttime, out with a drone, custom applicator. By the time we got the frost kicking in at November, mid of November, so that's when everything dries off and leaves start falling off. Well, you will not spray anymore. So by that time, I had covered 8,000 acres.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:24] Speaker C: Just spraying nighttime with the T20. With a T20. Oh, wow. Yes.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: I had a small pickup truck, everything loaded up in the back. And by the. What was it? I guess I sprayed for about two months. Then I got me a small trailer, just mounted a tote on it for clean water. I got me two mixing things while the drone was spray in one tank. I already prepared the chemicals into the second one and blended it manually and put it back aside. By the time the drone got back, I swapped battery swap tank and sent it back up. I was behind division of sight all the time. I never looked at the drone. It did 2,3200 hectares comes out, I guess 7900 acres.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: So that's what I did in those. In those five, six months.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: And believe it or not, season.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Paid itself off.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And that was the T20.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: That was a T20.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: No way. Because I just had a guy on the podcast not long ago that said that he didn't want anything to do with the T20 because the battery would die so fast.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: Oh, no.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Do you know anything about the T20?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Not a lot, no. I mean, I know of the T20. I know a couple guys that have run it, but they're like, like, I know a guy ran it last year and he's like, yeah, no, I got to get something different. So, yeah, that's. Yeah, that's awesome.
Cover that many acres.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: I would like to buy that drone back. I know who has it. The guy I sold it to, he still has It And I offered him a trade. You know, I have a used T40. I want that T20 back because that was the start of my business.
So what was the deal? By the end of December in 2021, I also got the dealership for the drones. Right. But the applicator section started my business.
And I always say, like, if you know a John deere tractor, those 4,020s, what is it? 4,020s, 2,040s. Whatever it is, those old fashioned ones, they never break down, right? The T20 is one of those.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:20] Speaker C: 3200 hectares. I did not replace a pump. Not a single prop. Nothing at all.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: The only thing that I had to replace was the front orange cover that covers the pumps and the avionics and stuff like that.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:34] Speaker C: That fell off due to vibration and flying as many acres.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Dude, tell me, was your drone experience that nice?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: No, no. Where near as nice as that.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: If I went the 40s, right?
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So I had, I started my first year. I did. I got two T40s and flew. I did just about 11,000 acres. That's still ripping. So we were moving. But it would. It seemed like, I mean, there's emotional moments in the spray season when you've got all this investment and then all of a sudden drone crashes. So like, like I had a motor failure.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: So drones coming back. It's got like it had 8 gallons in it because we had just filled it up. We're doing half mile runs. So you need just about, you know, seven gallons to go down and back with two gallons.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: I don't know this like. So you guys out here call them
[00:08:23] Speaker B: half sections or I always say half mile runs.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So like, I don't even know what that means.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: You'll have fields that are like a half mile long and then a mile three. Quarter mile long is. You can do it with a T40, but you're, you're pushing it. It's. You gotta. You barely make it back. There's a little tiny bit at the end.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Sorry. Okay. So.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: But yeah, so we were out there spraying. So it went out with the full tank and it like gave an error and started coming back to us. Luckily it wasn't right over my homemade trailer that I have. It was over the side of it and all of a sudden just splatted. Just the motors didn't stop turning, but it just, it went down and the motors were turning on the ground. Almost. Almost like the idle, huh? And so, yeah, that was, that was bad.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Smash the landing gear.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Smash the landing gear. That was a pretty hefty repair. But then the next day I was out spraying. So that drone was still getting repaired. Took it to the shop.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Yeah, getting repaired.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: I'm out spraying. The next day I did 300 acres by myself with one T40.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: That's pretty impressive.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Had 30 acres left on the day. Would have finished, but I was doing one little nine acre field next to a house.
Flew over the power lines, and I'm watching the drone. My mistake was I was looking at the drone and not the controller to see where the drone was on the map.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Started bringing it down. I put it on top of the power line. So in two days I crashed both my drones. I wish someone was there to see me on top of my trailer in that instance where I'm just. Oh, I was upset. So yeah, no, that would be wonderful if I could have a T20 that didn't break down. Ever.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: Never, never. That's. That was my mistake as well. With the T30. I judged the distance with seeing it with my eyes. Yeah, you cannot accurately see it. I crashed into a cable with a T30. My T20. I never crashed it. But the T30 that I ran then. 2022. Yeah, we did actually double the hectares that next year. We had 7. 7,600 with a T30.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Oh, okay. What type of fields are you spraying down there in Mexico?
[00:10:17] Speaker C: 100 meters by 100 meters. That's 100 hectares, 1 km.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: So is it square or it's circles, always squares.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: Okay, we got both.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: People are irrigating with pivots and other ones that have. They just flow the water along it or they actually have drip irrigation.
So the, the fields are 100 hectares big. It's 250 acres at one field. Right, so.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: So you guys have power lines through your fields as well, just as the
[00:10:41] Speaker C: image that you have in the back. Power lines at the end of the field. Yeah, always.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: So it seems if you fly a drone, if you're spray drone pilot, you fly it long enough. Those doggone power lines.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. You'll find one is the biggest enemy. That's the biggest enemy of the drone.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: I think that's why all the manufacturers went away from warranty and power lines, because at one point they had warrantied power line drones. But yeah, no good. So when you put your drone on top of that power line. What. What happened?
[00:11:13] Speaker B: It was on top. So it's. You had the three wires across the. The top and it essentially landed on top. And I Was I saw it, and I tried to push the stick up, give it some altitude to get out, and it was kind of stuck spinning in there until finally it detached itself. But it didn't go up. It went backwards. So it landed in the ground, straight up and down like this, like propellers in the dirt. And I was so mad, I just. I. I picked it up and hucked it in the back of the truck and head back off to the. To the repair shop.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: But you got lucky.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Did you take photos?
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I have photos that if you. Yeah, I'll send that to you.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: You got lucky.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: Didn't get stuck up there. Oh, I know, because you could have called somebody out there to get it off.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: The bad thing was this was right in front of my uncle's house.
So I called my uncle. After I'd calmed down, I called him. I said, hey, do you still have power? He's like. Cause the line looked fine. There was no damage. So I said, you still have power? Goes, yeah. Why? It's like, I got 30 acres left to do for your field here. I got to go to the shop, though. I just crashed the drone. He's like, that's a test strip. Go get your stuff fixed.
Thank God.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Hey, test strip. Were you able to see?
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah, he was really impressed with.
Because he. He puts fungicide on.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: But that test that. It was really great. So he works with pioneer. He plants pioneer. So the pioneer rep came out, and he was taking images as the crop was, like, dying off, you know, and getting brown. So you could. He can go back through his app, and you can see the corn that stays healthier longer.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: And it's. It's a stark difference. So he was like, yeah, it's not that I wasn't sold on fungicide before, but now I'm really sold.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: So are you guys spraying fungicide down there?
[00:13:01] Speaker C: All the time.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: All the time. Yeah.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: What majority of your acres were. Was fungicide.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: It's mixed.
I did herbicide, I did fungicide, insecticides, all of it. Right. So, yeah, mainly I try to avoid herbicide today. Why? Because, well, know the drifting. Right. And since we don't have no brush field at the end of the field, like, there's no trees, there's no nothing. It's just plain, plain, plain from one field to another. If you get drift, it's.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: It's you.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: You run cautions that you. You. You don't want to trouble with the neighbors and stuff like that.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Because their crops right up against it today.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: What Kind of crops are you guys spraying?
[00:13:35] Speaker C: Everything.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Everything.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: So same as us. We can plant everything on there. It's, it's, it's from wheat, cereal, corn, sorghum, cotton, onions, a whole lot of onions today a day. And also people plant a whole lot of peppers. Start planting peanut. Just last year they planted peanuts. Yeah. So it's, it's kind of like they're looking for their way and how they want to do it. Right. So. And see what.
Last year cotton were so, so cheap, so they want to start something new. But yeah, we basically spray everything.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: The biggest thing we have a challenge with here in the States is regulations.
What type of regulations are you dealing with down there?
[00:14:13] Speaker C: I'm not sure if I should say this, but we don't have any regulations. So I've heard that you buy the drone, you go out there like none.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: You don't need a commercial applicator's license.
[00:14:23] Speaker C: Nothing. We don't need no commercial applicator license.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: What about on the drone side? Do you have to still register?
[00:14:28] Speaker C: No, you don't register the drone. Really? Yeah. Look, there's just one system.
They would want you to come out and register and at least get their pilot license. Right. So I'm not sure, not familiar what the cost is over here. But if you want to go commercially, maybe for the egg section, they don't really have some. But for enterprise series, you could go and register yourself and get your pilot license. But it cost about $10,000 and a renewal is about two years and you got to pay another 5,000 grand.
And it's insane. Nobody's going to do it. Yeah, nobody's going to get and pay that amount of money.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:04] Speaker C: So the drone comes out obviously being a little bit cheaper over in Mexico than it is in the States. But by the time you get your, your license and everything, well, you come out spending the same amount of money. And so far, none of my customers ever had ran into an issue not being licensed or anything.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Yeah, because the authorities aren't really out there looking for.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: They're not there. And like I live on an, on a town.
The complete area is at 18,000 hectares, so that's a whole lot of acres. Nobody's there. We don't got no police right there checking on us. And fields are big. We're just free to ride. And if you rack your drone and take it down, however it is and bring it in, I'll fix it for you.
So I have a question about your drone. How many components were scorched out on it? How many motors? ESCs and stuff like that?
[00:15:50] Speaker B: I couldn't tell you the number. Well, on the power line, one, I think we replaced three. Either three or four motors.
We replaced every single board in the drone because it arced so it fried the drone. So when you do that, the other bad thing is now you have to re. Register it because it's a new avionics board. That was a huge. I mean, that was a big, like, problem. Oopsies.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah. First year, the regulation side here in the States, how do you go through that process?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: I. I did know a little bit of that process, so I was able to do a lot of it myself. But yeah, just went through a company and. And had them essentially. You know, you can pay. I'm sure you guys have a program where you can. You can pay. And.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I wasn't sure if you tried figuring out on your own, because when I first started, I was like, oh, I can figure this out. You're called the physio. Started down this flipping road where I was doing it, like, trying to figure it out for a month and a half. I was like, yeah, the heck with this. And then.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: And I. I was a good spot since I started as a. Just a pilot first.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: You know, that's simpler. So you need your 107, your 11F. In Iowa, it's called the 11F. That's your. Your pesticide side and then your. What else? You need medical.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: So class three.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's a lot simpler.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: How old are you?
[00:17:08] Speaker B: I'm 26. I think it's 20. 20. 20, 26. I'll be 27 soon. So. Yeah.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: The biggest thing about having a spray drone business is the work it takes and the late hours, especially you deal
[00:17:21] Speaker B: with that, especially with a family.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: And you married?
[00:17:24] Speaker B: I'm married. We had our. Our first child here just this past year. So 2025.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: How'd that go?
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Oh, pick. Good timing. He was born in June. Oh, you did what?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I did, dude.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: My son was born July 7th.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: The fungi seeds.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: I think I heard that recently in a video that you guys made talking. I was like, I can relate. Yeah.
So, yeah. No, born June 6th. So I had almost a month because July 1st we started spraying.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: So a little early. Got some early stuff going and started spraying. And then July to God, it went late this year. We went a little bit later for fungicide. But yeah, it's tough to manage that.
Basically, it's just communicating with your family. Communicating with my wife and just saying, you know, we know that this is going to be a hard time. We know I'm going to be gone long hours. There's going to be times I'm sleeping in the truck and I don't come home. So it's, yeah, it's that hard work and just knowing what it's going to produce on the, on the back end. Because, I mean, you look at the economics of a drone business, it's, it's crazy what it can produce and you know, you're talking about the amount of acres you've covered and, you know, I'm just, I'm thinking about what I've done and just as a, we're all seem young here, you know, I guess young guys.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: And it's good. I'm going to add into that. It's like if, if you have a family of your wife, you, you want to talk it out. So there is, so she knows what's coming.
And if you're on the same page and it's three weeks and you haven't been at home for, you know, that long, it's like, so you're on the same page. So you can keep moving forward because it's like you're out there, dude. I've been in that position. It's like I'm sleeping on, in the truck or on the trailer or I never slept on the trailer.
[00:19:14] Speaker C: I, I, I believe you. Probably I've thought about, let's bring a
[00:19:16] Speaker B: hammock and set up a hammock up there or something. That'd be great.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah. How, how do you deal with it down there?
[00:19:22] Speaker C: You know, I, in the first place, I did not buy the drone until my wife said, I think you actually should go for it.
Like, I was dreaming about it right then all of a sudden I came home and I was like, you know what? Trash the whole thing. I'm done. I don't want to do this. And she was like, are you sure? Think about it. And we overthought it a little bit. And I was like, you know, it's a whole lot of work I had back then. I was 25.
So, yeah, definitely, we made sure. Okay, you're gonna have to be late hours and maybe an entire night. Especially the first year was difficult. 3200 hectares and being employed during the day for the grower, for the farmer, and nighttime being out there with the customer. So that was hard. So today, if I think back, I don't even know how I did it. I would not be able to do the same thing today. Now I'm 30, so I don't know where all that energy came from today. All of a sudden I feel like I cannot get enough sleep. I need to sleep more. I don't know if that's a consequence from that, but anyways, yeah, I also
[00:20:24] Speaker A: feel like when we're spraying when it's running season, there is some adrenaline that it's just like you just want to
[00:20:32] Speaker B: keep what I. I don't know if it's adrenaline or just pure stress is. I feel like what it is too. I don't think it's stress when, when I get home at 11 o' clock at night and now I gotta, you know, maybe I gotta clean stuff out, charge the controllers, get everything ready for the next day. Cuz I'm the business owner, I gotta take care of my employees now. I'm finally in bed by midnight and my alarm set for 4am you lay down, you're like, I gotta get up.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: Two more minutes and I'm gone.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: But then, yeah, then it, then it goes off and you're like, that's how I am. I'm like, okay, I gotta get up. I got all these things to do.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: So I feel like that's part of it too.
[00:21:04] Speaker C: Yeah, it actually for me it's. I would say it's not. Definitely not stress. I enjoy and it's a stress reliever for me being out there in the field and I forget about getting sleepy and for example, I deal the entire day with customers attending them, warranties and all of that. So when I get the chance to be out on the field at midnight.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: You're referring to more now that you've established that.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah, you've established your business. Exactly. Sell drones in Mexico and you're taking care of your customers. Yeah, dude, I'm the same way. Right.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: I can just turn off and turn actually airplane mode on and be out on the field and just look at that unit doing its job.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: That's quite where you're at.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: No, no, I'm thinking like, okay, now I want to do more custom mapping.
Okay. Maybe I'm going down the wrong path here, but. No, I think that's where I want to go is. Yeah, increase custom app and yeah, you got to put systems in place and then you fix that problem.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: So did you, did you do night spraying at all?
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I did night spraying.
Not a lot because typically what would happen is, you know what we would do is we just finish whatever field we're at. If I'm at a field, it's getting Sunset, we're going to take advantage of all the daylight we can, and we're going to finish that field and if it's dark. But when we did spray into the night, what I noticed is the next day we sucked. That's when we had problems. We crashed. We forget to do something, you know?
[00:22:27] Speaker A: So I was like, why do you think that is?
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Just sleep deprivation. We're just. We're too. Yeah, maybe you just operate differently. You're like, no, I. And you know, you're. You're pushing hard. And I'm always cognizant of, you know, I've got my pilots. And yes, they know that we're working long hours and long days, but I got to know kind of where that breaking point is.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
And we tell guys now the drones with all the sensors and stuff, yeah, there's some mechanical failures at times that can happen, but I think most of the drones are crashed due to pilot
[00:23:02] Speaker B: complacency or being fatigued 95% of the time.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say they've gotten that good.
You guys do a lot of night spraying down there though?
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Most of them. Most of it is night spray. Why? Because during the day we have such high temperatures. No customer wants you to be out in the field during the day. Well, if it's after 4 or 5 in the evening or 6, after 6, you're good to go, right? During the hot hours during the day, from 10am till 4pm, it's too hot. In the plain summer, most of it's all being done nighttime. So that's the biggest issue. If I could be out there spraying during the day, I'll enjoy it even more.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Why would you enjoy it even more? Maybe getting absolutely cooked the way it sounds.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: Oh, no, you can protect yourself. Like, obviously just wear something, dude. But anyways, you can sleep at night.
I'm like, you know what? There's just one thing that you will never recover in life is an hour loss of sleep. You will never recover. That.
That's what I've been told. So it's what I believe in. I need to sleep a whole lot today, a day, so.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Oh, that's funny. So for me, like, I wish. I wish I function with no sleep because I'm like, imagine what you could get done 100%.
[00:24:13] Speaker C: You know what? That when I was a young boy, back then about maybe 10, I. I was always like, my mom wanted me to go to sleep and I was like, no, that's like, I'm dead. I don't know. Nothing I want to be active. I need to be out there. I want to meet the adventures, everything. That's kind of how I am today to be. My boys are the same way. They never want to sleep. Never.
So I see some of me or a whole lot of me in them, but I somehow feel after so many hours during. During the night time, I start.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Kicking a little bit back because it's too much. I. I grade too soon, you know? Yeah, yeah, I agree.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Too soon. How old are you?
[00:24:49] Speaker C: 30.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: 30. So you're 30 and you're 24?
[00:24:52] Speaker B: 26.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: 26.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: And your baby is now.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: He's seven months. Seven months old.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Seven months.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Yep. Yep.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: What's the baby's name?
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Wes.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Wes.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. Abby and Wes. Abby's my wife and.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Living on the. We. We just bought an acreage. So that's the other. That's the funny part of the story. I started my drone business.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: So you bought an acreage?
[00:25:11] Speaker B: We bought an acreage.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Like, so just farmhouse and that's cool.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Have you ever heard it called that, bought an acreage?
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. What do you call it?
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Bought a. I don't know, a house.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: A house. Okay. Well, when you say like bought an acreage, it just means like you're out on farmland.
[00:25:27] Speaker C: You bought some land, right?
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So we just saw it's a four acre spot. I've got a shop now for the drone stuff. So I guess like starting the drone business, we lived in.
First we lived in that we were renting a house. And then the second year I was living at a townhouse. So I, at one point I contracted some guys to come work with me and spray some acres. We had three drone rigs lined up on the street. My neighbors probably were like, what is going on here?
[00:25:54] Speaker A: That is cool. So how fast is your company growing as far as custom app? Would you say you're getting acres year after year?
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's like this past year I expected to do more, you know, so I went from two T40s to three T40s, thinking I'd do, you know, 15,000 plus acres. Well, I did 13,000 acres just because we really only ran two drones most of the season because one was down, was getting fixed, you know, something else was happening, so the repairs and stuff. And I think I probably just pushed
[00:26:26] Speaker A: the 40s too far, I was going to say. What. What was causing these issues, do you think?
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Yeah, just the pump started going out.
Yeah. Pumps, esc.
The esc motors for the atomizers.
So Kind of more little minuscule things, but stuff that it was enough where, okay, now I got to go chase down parts because I didn't stock parts. I wasn't at that point yet in my business where I could say, all right, let me spend this amount of money up front to stock parts. So chasing down parts, getting parts. And I essentially fixed most of it myself this year. So it was simple stuff like that. But there goes half your day.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that. My follow up question is if your drones wouldn't have been giving you issues, you would have had more acres to get.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Okay. Our.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Our. Yeah. I probably turned down at least.
At least 4,000 acres that I had to say no to.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Which is. That's hard. And looking back, it's like I should have said yes and maybe taken like a. A prepayment audit or something and went. Bought another drone.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah. But.
Oh, man.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, it's fine though. Like, I was able to, you know, buy the house and it wouldn't be able to do that and be in that position without the company and the business.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: So I was just going to ask you, do you.
Do you think it was because of your business that you were able to buy your house?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. There's no way I would have. Awesome. Yeah.
We found the place and I'm like, I'm crunching the numbers. I'm like, we can actually do this. Like, wow, that's crazy.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: So I believe that you, as company grew last year, two years, you were like, maybe doing a little bit of math. And hey, you know what? We can definitely cover this and we need it.
You need an acreage, as you call it, being out there on the street park with what, how many? Three rigs.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah, we had three rigs out there at one point. That was.
[00:28:10] Speaker C: That's not the right spot to be in that situation.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: I'd leave my 40s just strapped on the top deck. So I'm like, hopefully no one goes up there, messes with these things.
We're in Iowa. People are typically pretty.
Pretty good.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: But isn't Iowa known for a lot of drugs? Like in some areas?
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
Now where we're at. No, no, no.
[00:28:33] Speaker C: That's.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: There's.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: No, there's definitely some areas that are known for that. For sure.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:38] Speaker C: Because yeah, every state has those areas, right? Yeah, almost every state. So, yeah, let's not talk about Mexico, I guess nothing about that there.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: So.
[00:28:49] Speaker C: And we can dig in five hours and they won't stop doing that.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: So. Yeah, down. Down in Mexico. Are you running teams down there for custom application?
[00:28:59] Speaker C: No. You know what, that's the hardest part for me with the farmers, local farmers, they kind of gain the trust in me.
So as soon as they, they realize, you know what, Bernard is going to send somebody else out there to do the custom spray, they're like, are you going to be there? Oh, will you be around? Will you make sure nothing is messing up or going wrong? So that's kind of the other thing. I'm like, I enjoy doing custom applicating. That's definitely. I have a passion for that. But I feel like handling the business and doing custom applicating and all of that and losing sleep and being. I get grumpy all of a sudden when I'm too tired and I needed sleep. So I guess we all have that. And you said you wrecked drones the other day.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: So something similar, it happens all of a sudden. Right. So you can't prevent it if you're over retired.
So that's why I'm like, you know what, I better let go. As soon as they know nobody's doing it, somebody else is going to come up, hey, Bernard, can I buy a drone off you? I want to do it in this area because nobody else is going to do it. I got neighbors around within 10 miles or so, they got drones that they can call them up and come out to do that. But the people are quite difficult to get them to trust you. And since they knew me since I was a six year old fella, that's an entire the community. We all know each other.
And all those 18,000 hectares, I know almost every field, who's the owner of it, and we have something all of a sudden in common. Right. So we know each other from a long time. That is the thing. So I would like to be out with them because why? Appreciation for the trust that they put in me and for all of those acres that they've been giving me and I've been able to grow.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: But you're not scaling your acreage that you're wanting to do. You kind of found peak as far as how many acres you look.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: Last year I just had a handful of customers that I fully attended for every application that they needed to be done aerially.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:53] Speaker C: And another five customers that maybe called me just two or three times. What I did not announce a single acre that or a single time that I wanted to go out there and do custom spray. Why?
Because me selling the drones and other people knowing I got maybe a little bit of contacts and everybody has my contacts so they might hire me because I'm the pioneer in the drone section right there in Chihuahua.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:15] Speaker C: So they kind of know I got the experiences and I don't posted anything just for people that call me up. I went out there and did it. So I had 4600 hectares done yet without posting anything less season.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: How many acres is that?
That sounds like a bunch. That's. When you say Chihuahua, it makes me think of a, a little puppy. Is it spelled just like that?
[00:31:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Is it really?
[00:31:41] Speaker C: It's the same Chihuahua and the chihuahua puppies like that.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Is that like a thing in your guys township there?
[00:31:48] Speaker A: There's a little chihuahua running around.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: No, everybody has those almost right there.
Crazy dogs. Yeah.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Oh, that's funny.
[00:31:55] Speaker C: That's 11,000 acres.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Wow, that's impressive. With how many drones?
[00:31:59] Speaker C: Okay. I started off with a T40.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:02] Speaker C: And then I, since I had a 30 foot gooseneck double deck, I added a T50 on top of it.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: Okay. So.
[00:32:07] Speaker C: So I had those for a While until the T100 came out in August. I pushed both of both of them off and put the T100 on top.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: One or two?
[00:32:15] Speaker C: Just one.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: One.
[00:32:16] Speaker C: Just one.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: So that's what I thought. I wanted to test it out and I only used it with two batteries and a C12000 charger.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: So wait, you have three phase generators or do you have the 14,000 generator?
[00:32:25] Speaker C: I got three phase generators.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: 440.
[00:32:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: Like because here in the states it's hard to.
[00:32:32] Speaker C: I mean I bought the generator in the states.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Oh you did?
[00:32:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: What generator are you using?
[00:32:37] Speaker C: I was using the. I got a picture of it. It's a. The motor is an it turbocharged four cylinder motor. It was a 36 kilowatt.
Yeah. So I, I have the option single phase three phase 220 and three phase 440.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: So the 12,000 takes 440. 440. Yeah.
[00:32:55] Speaker C: And I just switched the generator instantly from one minute to another. I had it. What? Yeah, it works. Awesome.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: That sounds cost though.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Simple.
[00:33:02] Speaker C: The generator? Yeah. Okay. I want and bought one off auction time with 30,000 hours on it. You don't want it here. They sold it and I got it for three and a half thousand dollars. Till the time I had it in Mexico. It ran like a champ. I changed the oil in it and poured some diesel in, went and did my 250 hours that it was running the entire season just fine. So it had 30,000 hours on it already. And I use it for the Entire season with no issues. I only change the oil in it.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Yeah. What, what type of charging solution are you running?
[00:33:34] Speaker B: I ran the, the 12,000 ie. So I ran the DJI generators. I started with cheap Champion generators. I thought they were going to be fine, but I blew up three of them. And I was like, yeah, no, I'm just, I gotta, I gotta fix this problem. So I just went with the DJI ones.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Did you have any issues with the 12,000?
[00:33:55] Speaker B: No issues, you said. I'm smiling and laughing because my pilots called me and they had an issue with one. But I went out there, plugged a battery in and it was fine. So I still to this day don't know what happened. I don't know if it was. Maybe it was too hot. The heat of the day, something was happening. But by the time I got there, it was running fine again.
[00:34:15] Speaker C: You're the owner of, the owner of the business, right? Yeah, that's what always happens back in life. Hey, this is, this isn't working. By the time I get there, I just do everything as they probably did it.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Right?
[00:34:25] Speaker C: Works just fine.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So other than that. Yeah, I ran out of oil once in the, in the 12,000 and I was like.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: And then it just slows down.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: It stopped. It wouldn't turn on. I was, I was, I was, I was like, why will this not turn on? And I was like, oh, I haven't thought to put oil in it. And we're almost done with the season.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: And I was like, you're doing what I'm doing.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: I tell people. People don't do that.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I got smart this year. I was like, yeah, I need, I had oil in all the trucks and.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Yeah, so the 12,000 didn't give you issues? You know, there's some drama stuff online often times about, you know, these worthless DJI generators. 12,000 did have some issues. There's no doubt.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: I don't know, I'm maybe heard of like one person who's like, had a problem with it. But you know, obviously there's stuff online. Of course you know people, so I don't know, maybe it's just. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I, I ran fine with them.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: I, I just haven't wanted to switch to a big diesel generator because it's, it's heavy.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: Yeah, heavy.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: The new way trailer, how I got it loaded out, I'm like dialed in with my weight.
If I throw a bigger generator on
[00:35:29] Speaker C: there to switch thing back and forth.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Obviously Cost wise, obviously you got yours for cheap.
[00:35:35] Speaker C: I got it cheap. You, you pay out what, 10, $15,000 if you buy a new one or, or 20, 25,000. Okay.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: Yeah, they can get expensive real quick.
[00:35:44] Speaker C: I don't, I was like, you know what? So I almost got a big diesel generator. It was obviously a big time used already, but for the almost the same amount of money than the DJI generator cost.
I don't like the gasoline generator. I like it to go out and do demos to my customers. Why? Because it's compact, small. I put it all on the truck and I'm gone. But if I want to do 12 hours straight applicating, then I, all of a sudden I'm like, hey, this is a whole lot of noise.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: I would like to 100%. I'm the same way, I'm the same way.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: I'm trying to get rid of mine and, and switch to a diesel. But it's just. Yeah, we're going to get to a problem. As drones get bigger and bigger where power is your kind of bottlenecks.
[00:36:26] Speaker C: Sooner or later diesels will be normal. Everybody will run those. I believe so. Because the gas.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Do you think?
[00:36:34] Speaker B: I think we're all going to get to a point. We all got to run semis or something.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Yeah, something crazy. But like I'm thinking they could make a diesel that is not so big and have it. Yeah, exactly. Like we're running these gasoline generators and they're just three phase right off the shaft of the motor. Like we can do this on a smaller Kubota, say, you know, 30 horse.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I believe so. I believe so. The, the one that I had was 65 horse.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's like nobody's produced them because maybe there wasn't a market for it.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I feel like, you know, the drone industry is exploding. It's huge right to us. But maybe from the outside, you know, maybe that diesel manufacturer whose their generators are going to guys who are buying them and putting them as backups for hog confinements.
A whole lot more hog confinements than drone applicators.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: So 100%.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: There's probably just not the market yet. But now someone's got to figure it out at some point.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: What are your thoughts on using big battery packs? Have you seen this yet?
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I talked to one of the guys around the show here. Talked to him a little bit about it. I don't know enough about it. It sounds like a great idea. Sounds like they're expensive. Maybe like 20. Yeah, $23,000 or something like that to add on to a diesel generator. Well, see, the idea makes sense, though.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I wouldn't run it like that. So I'm. I'm looking at doing something. Of course, they have to come from China to be cost effective, but having big battery packs and then having like a quiet Honda inverted generator.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Just in the background. Slowly trickle charging the big battery pack.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: How long do those battery packs last?
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Nobody truly knows. I. I've heard that one pack is supposed to charge.
Was it t. 100 batteries? Like 15 times.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: Which is not that much. But if you do two batteries, you know, if you're trickle charging. Yeah.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: You could. Yeah. And this might not happen, but maybe you lay out your deck with solars and all kinds of stuff, you might just as well be fully loaded all day long.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Because solar almost charges faster sometimes.
Yeah. Because it'd be high.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: High voltage.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: I think we're point.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: I think we're probably a ways out on that, I think.
[00:38:47] Speaker C: For sure.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:38:48] Speaker C: Probably.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Probably a little ways out until that's solved.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: You're saying like solar.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: No, not solar. Just those battery packs.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: Yeah. The battery packs are just so expensive. It's like. Doug on. You're telling me I'd have to pay basically what it costs for a Tesla battery pack? Because when you change a Tesla battery, it's about 20 grand.
[00:39:06] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. It's buying another drone. Almost. Or half of it, for sure.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: 100%. So, yeah. I just don't know. I've been approached by a company from Germany, I think, and they were totally convinced. Like, they can power me all day long with battery packs, but really, what's that going to weigh too?
[00:39:22] Speaker C: It's going to be heavy as well.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Heavy, yeah.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:25] Speaker C: But it'd be fun, though, having absolute no noise. Just being out there in the field.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Like just hearing the noise of the drone taking off and coming back. That would be. I don't know if you guys ever do this, but at the end of the day, sometimes I'll. I know I'm going on my last flight. I'll flip the generators off and you just hear the drone humming out there.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
It is kind of sad, right?
[00:39:45] Speaker C: We're.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: We're high tech using this equipment that's all battery, but yet our operation is loud.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: It just doesn't matter. Even a diesel is much quieter than a gasoline. But it is kind of a shame that we can't do what you're saying.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: I know. How great would that be? Just that'd be good.
[00:40:05] Speaker C: So I believe in. And we're heading that way.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So.
[00:40:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Why? Because I've seen. I'm not sure what is it just a prototype or something? I believe so. But I've seen supposedly a plane being equipped with solar and flies the entire day as long as you got sunshine. So I'd say if a plane can fly, then definitely we can decked it out with solars and charge our batteries as well. All day long.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: We should drone, you think?
[00:40:28] Speaker C: I think so. If the plane flies all day long
[00:40:31] Speaker B: with solar directly on the drone.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: No, not directly on the drone. I'm like charging on the deck.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Unlimited flight time. Just put it on the drone battery.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: But that's a good idea. I put solar all over the trailer.
[00:40:45] Speaker C: The entire trailer. You maybe make some flaps on it or whatever. Make it wider.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:50] Speaker C: I'm pretty sure you can put enough power if sun is bright enough.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Then there'll be those days that it's overcast now.
[00:40:57] Speaker C: What's the point?
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:01] Speaker C: So if you just want to pay the bills.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:03] Speaker C: You will always sleep at night, that's for sure.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. True.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: I guess this is. I'm going to have to invent that.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: No, no, I like running at night. I, I've. I've.
[00:41:12] Speaker C: You got to have two rigs.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: I like it because there's not as many people out. I can always.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I do like it. I just. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I will do more of it.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: It would have been hard with the T50s because the T60X and the T100 now have that low light camera. It's insane.
It's totally helped me from not smacking a power line. Exactly. I can almost see power lines better at night than I can. Oh, really? Oh, for sure.
[00:41:39] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. With the black and white.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So you were running that night with this. What were you, the T100?
[00:41:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:47] Speaker A: Did the T60 ever come to Mexico?
[00:41:48] Speaker C: No, no, we just got T70P. Okay, so it's a. The T100 holds 100 liters and the T70 has 70, I guess. What is it then? It's about 18. No, it's not 18.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: 19 gallon?
[00:42:00] Speaker A: 70. 70 liters? Yeah.
[00:42:02] Speaker C: Let me convert it real quick, but yeah.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: What have you been flying the 70 much?
[00:42:06] Speaker C: 18 and a half. I've never flown it. I just sold a couple of times and trained the guys, but I've never used it.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:12] Speaker C: But it is pretty efficient on the. On the side. Like since it uses the T100 battery, it lasts Quite longer. Like you have at least one and a half minute longer flight time with a T70 than you have with a T100. Why? Because it runs off the T100 battery.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: So.
[00:42:28] Speaker C: And it only has four rotors. Four motors.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:31] Speaker C: So T100 has eight motors, which I like. At the same.
Most of my customers, they will buy the T100 even though it's what is about $7,000 more expensive than the T70. T70 can put almost the same acres in an hour as a T100 can.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:42:48] Speaker C: But the.
They want the dual motors.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Why?
[00:42:51] Speaker C: Because we saw a whole lot of T40s and 50s. All of a sudden the motor gets ducks. Why? Because the bearing wears out. Stuff like that. They don't take cautions in time. So if they would bring it in for maintenance and we would maybe clean it out or replace the bearing. So that's, that's another thing. Right. So we've done it a whole lot.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: And so they want those, those eight motors. That way the. If one does fail.
[00:43:12] Speaker C: Yeah. It's not gonna smack.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Did you any one of you have a motor go out? But the drone continued to fly while in flight?
[00:43:21] Speaker B: No, cuz mine splatted on the ground.
I got unlucky.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Yeah. But your situation sounds like it was more than just like one motor.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: It must have been. I. I don't know it. I still don't know the answer to it. Never will.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: But yeah. Did you ever have one flying around?
[00:43:37] Speaker C: Not me personally. I have a C cousin who bought a T50 off me and he had that thing. He did not even notice that a motor had just got tightened up in plane flight. I guess his remote had notified him, but he was not close enough to hear it. So by the time the drone gets back and lands. Oh my goodness. He's like, one motor is not running. So he called me instantly. He was like, hey, something's wrong. It's just tight. I can't. Can't rotate it so well, the bearing was out, so we had to replace the motor just for instantly. Keep going.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: I would say the T60X this year. The motor was unbelievably reliable. Like, I don't know of any.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Have you heard of any failures?
[00:44:19] Speaker A: No, no. I mean, a lot of squeaking. Like we heard a lot of squeaking, but no motor failures that I'm aware of. Going from the T40 to T50 a lot less issues, but going from the
[00:44:31] Speaker C: 50 to 60 even less. Right?
[00:44:33] Speaker A: Even less.
[00:44:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Like it was crazy how little and issues we had.
[00:44:39] Speaker C: I'M not sure how much you have seen, but I guess our upcoming T1 hundreds comes with just single motors. So I believe in the near future we will not offer those dual. Dual motors anymore.
DJI is switching to just for four hours as what I'm seeing.
So no more capacity, I guess for the next drone. But yeah, who knows?
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Yeah. They're getting so doggone big.
[00:45:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:05] Speaker C: I'm like think we're getting to a point that if they build them bigger in capacity, we need a drone to act somehow differently at the end of the field to. To make its U turn and do why? Because the crop is going oh, the T100. If I wanted to spray beans and peppers and stuff like that, I had to kick it up 20 foot high.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:45:27] Speaker C: Because if not at the end of the field, it was. It was going to make it U turn and those crops were just lay
[00:45:32] Speaker B: down because there were so much downwash.
[00:45:35] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Run it enough yet to see that.
[00:45:39] Speaker C: But you might not have as difficult like easy going down crop. That's what I have back back in Mexico. But not sure what you mostly spray out there. Corn is not that easy. Especially well corn. Yeah. It breaks down in the very morning when the plants are freshly. And. And got I guess chilled all night long and. And whatever. Yeah, well, they break down as well. It even happened on the T30, huh? Yeah. But T100 is definitely so, so hard with the turbulences underneath. So I'm like, you know what I would like, dji, you have the low speed accent, like you can turn that feature on and the drone, as soon as it stops slowing down, it will go up. Right. So have you ever used that function? No.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:46:19] Speaker C: I just talked to a friend yesterday and he didn't know about that feature as well. I always, you know that feature.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That's the solution. You see this on all the Facebook groups. People talk about Greensnap and essentially what we're talking about here. And yeah, that's everyone's solution to that is. Yeah. The low ascend speed.
[00:46:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: So that's the brief answer to it. But it's still.
[00:46:38] Speaker C: It does help.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's still. Yeah, it's still gonna.
[00:46:42] Speaker C: It helps, but it's not enough.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:43] Speaker C: So what I'm saying is like I would like the drone to elevate itself a little bit like maybe 6 foot or 8 foot.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: Oh. Before it makes it.
[00:46:51] Speaker C: Before it starts stopping and slowing down and maybe leave a row and just flip over to the second one and yeah. It's a different flight Pattern then what
[00:47:01] Speaker B: you could do is just do a boundary pat and that's a good idea. So it doesn't even need to spray that area.
[00:47:06] Speaker C: Not just a single one. Maybe you could like for now you got, you have that option. It's gonna fly around the boundary once we need three, three chimes for the drone so that it can stop and just lift itself up and go high.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Dude, I'm thinking about if we think the T100 has an issue. What about Black Betty?
40 gallons.
[00:47:27] Speaker C: I'm worried about those things.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: That drone sounds like a helicopter. Yep. I guarantee you it's going to smash.
[00:47:33] Speaker C: Oh yes it is.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: Drones are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger and I guess as we.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: But can we keep getting bigger?
[00:47:39] Speaker B: It's a good question. I've always said once we hit like that 20 gallon mark that's almost like the sweet spot of drones. I talk to other, other applicators and they're kind of on that same boat because one, as you get bigger the other problem becomes power and water.
[00:47:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: How are you going to hold enough water? That's why I said we're all going to have to have semis because how are you going to have a hold enough water to spray a full day if you're you know, going through that much?
[00:48:03] Speaker A: Surely guys will just use tender trucks because come on.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what you'll have to go to.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: So it's too big.
[00:48:09] Speaker C: But there's this one drone I know, my brother in law, he lives in Saskatchewan, Canada. They got this one drone, they power it with three batteries and it holds almost 200 liters of, of water. So I was like dude, a drone. Yeah.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: Holds 200. How much, how many gallons that meters?
[00:48:27] Speaker A: That would be like 50 gallons. Yeah.
[00:48:28] Speaker C: 50 gallons. Closer to 50. So I was like I wonder if Canova is not going to sleep after turns at the end of the field
[00:48:38] Speaker B: or
[00:48:41] Speaker C: let's see, let's see what he's
[00:48:42] Speaker A: going to buy, right?
[00:48:43] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. Anyways, I'm curious about that drone. Like he wants to buy it. I guess he was going to receive it in April maybe or so wants to start his, start his business over in, in Saskatchewan and he wanted, he wanted to go for that one.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: He can't even spray pesticides up there legally.
[00:48:59] Speaker C: I know, right?
[00:49:00] Speaker A: Nobody.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Well, who follows. I was, yeah, I was talking to someone about that here from Canada and is there some big thing going on there? Apparently.
[00:49:08] Speaker C: Are they going out and checking on the farmers during night time? If not. Well you just.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Hey, you don't have to tell me to bend the rules.
[00:49:17] Speaker C: They'll make up their own.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:49:19] Speaker B: They'll figure it out.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: Yeah, they're nice.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: They're nice in Canada.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: Right? So that's what I hear it should be.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Should be. All right.
I was talking about, like, you know, the future of. Of drones. What do you think it's going to be?
Farmers getting into drone spraying, or do you think custom app is going to get scaled bigger?
[00:49:36] Speaker A: No, definitely. Farmers.
[00:49:37] Speaker C: Farmers. Yeah.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: 100.
So, I mean, not for a while. Not for a long while, but we will tip you.
[00:49:45] Speaker C: How many years do you give it? Approximately five, I believe.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: Five, I guess. Yeah. Why. Why farmers? Why do you. Why do you think the farmers.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: Okay, right now they think is tech. Oh, I. I don't want to do that. I. I don't want to learn how to do it. But, you know, later, at some point, they're like, oh, you know, I'll give it a shot. Because their corn has been sprayed so much by you or you or by myself, and they're like, well, I could use one.
That way I can spray whenever I want.
I could walk out to my corn and be like, I'd like to spray it today. Or it's a good day to spray it. Yeah. 100. They'll get to the point where they're like, okay, and they just have to pull it out of their barn. They don't have to have the whole flipping flashy trailer set up. Some farmers will. Right. Of course, they're huge in their. Their farm fields are a long way away. There's going to be these farmers that have, you know, smaller acreage, and they're going to start it where it's like, oh, pull it out, fly over there, get my hundred acres done, comes back, and then he's going to talk to the next guy. Yeah, I got myself a drone. It's actually pretty nice because I can go spray whenever I want, I think. So what do you think?
[00:50:52] Speaker B: I think it's a yes. That's true in some cases. I think it has to be the right scenario, though. From what I've seen, it's the farmers want to do that yet they don't want to pay the custom applicator anymore.
But they also don't want to sit out in the sun in July.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: They don't even have time at times.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
So a lot of times you got a son or nephew that can take on, that can spray. Young guy who wants to go out and spray the acres. Inevitably what happens is a young guy goes out Sprays the acres and goes, oh, I can spray a lot more acres. And then they start doing custom app. So that's what I've seen anyway. That's what I think. Now, will it get to that point where maybe it's easier, maybe it's simpler to, you know, take two hours out of the day, go out, farmer can spray his field no problem and be back in the house, you know that maybe that's, maybe that's when it gets to that point.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: What, what if they make, you know, solid state batteries or they allow us to fly hydrogen powered drones here like they do in China, and the farmer can fill it up at his barn and he can fly a mile to two miles away, drop into the field, spray the whole thing without ever sketching about running out battery. And it comes back and he just fills it again. And you know, he's out there working something else. Because bbls at that point will be, you know, you can fly beyond line of sight, he doesn't have to see it, and his drone is just going back and forth and he has a guy filling it up.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that would.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: That be crazy.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: That would be great. I think that's the problem with the farmer getting into the drone, which I think there needs to be more ease of use sometimes. But then again, I know plenty of farmers that have drones too.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: You do?
[00:52:32] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Has that affected your business?
[00:52:34] Speaker B: No, no, no. Like I said, I turned down 4,000 acres last year.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. There's so many acres.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Especially in Iowa. I feel like I'm in the perfect state.
[00:52:44] Speaker A: Okay, so question for you. Is it too late for a young entrepreneur that wants to get into the spray drum business?
[00:52:49] Speaker B: No, absolutely not.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Why not?
[00:52:51] Speaker B: Not too late. There's just so many. So where I live, I can think of at least four to five spray businesses besides myself that surround me within a 30 to 35 mile radius.
[00:53:06] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: And we're all covering somewhere between 10 to 20,000 acres.
[00:53:11] Speaker A: That is impressive.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: I mean. Yeah. So that's where. And. And we're not even touching everything. We're nowhere near touching all the acres.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: Oh my gosh. And you still have airplanes? Like.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: Yeah, still have planes? I think so. Like last year it was so wet, we got a lot of calls, sprayed for a lot of ground rig guys as well. On top of that, there were guys calling me, asking me to come spray. Couldn't do it. They're like, okay, I'll call the plane in. So that was their second option.
[00:53:37] Speaker C: Oh, plane was second option.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:40] Speaker C: Well, that's good.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And almost every guy I've talked to when I'm meeting with a new customer, they're. They'll say, yeah, I'd much rather have you guys come out and do it. Not to say the planes are bad. I think they do what they can do. They do their performance well. But the farmer knows either that's getting oversprayed on my neighbor's field, or they're. They're pulling up, they're missing this area, this timber field. I'd really like to get that sprayed. I know there's more acres, more bushels I can get out of those acres.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: Yeah. What are you seeing in Mexico? Are you selling mostly to entrepreneurs or farmers?
[00:54:09] Speaker C: I assume it's like 50, 50, maybe 40, 40, 60, 60 would buy for their own use. And 40, you go out there and start their own business. Right. So it's so far off now, but it feels like, okay, more and more farmers, like just as you mentioned, are starting to do a little bit of math and they're like, hey, how long does a drone have warranty? I'm like a year. Okay.
I believe for the acres that I'm doing, and if I hire somebody to do it, I pay about half the drone. I only have to use it for two seasons and I'm done. It already paid itself. Like, that's what they do back there. And it's like laboring is maybe a little bit easier to get there if somebody operates for you, because we're not so much.
There's more people. Right. So you can get somebody to fly your drone. But I was thinking about this other question that you had, like, are people are going to start buying like the farmer, their drones? And I believe so. Why? Because if they have somebody to operate it, the farmer cannot do it all by himself. Right. But as future and new things and it's developing itself, Technology is developing itself. And they can maybe spend less hours on a tractor, but the same guys on the farm maybe could run the drone. Right. So it's just this one thing. And the other thing that I believe we just saw yesterday in the evening that somebody announced just a hot swapping thing tank of the drone and the drone will continue going. That is something that I heard of a company that I know is Building Great Drones 2 years ago already that not sure if you know how familiar you are with a DJI duck.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:43] Speaker C: So they just talked about something similar to a DJI dock. They were like, you know what? Yeah, we're working on something that works like the dock. So we want to know your opinion as a dealer in your region. What do you think? So what do you. What do we need to look out for? So they're pushing. I know. And it's pretty soon to come. I believe so within the next five years for sure. A duck where the drone is going to come. I believe what you're going to do is you're going to grab your phone, you will have your parameters of their feel right there and set it. Okay. Well the wind looks good at 2am in the morning.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: You just pull up, you just pull
[00:56:16] Speaker C: up with the trailer. As a duck, have it all on the trailer and you set it up. Here's the mixture. Whatever. I want it to be filled as much as whatever it is per acre, like gallons per acre.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: And the drone will dock station where you could.
[00:56:29] Speaker C: The drone will do it itself. So yeah, that's what I think. We're gonna see that within five years, guaranteed. I believe so.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: That's crazy. That's crazy.
[00:56:36] Speaker C: I'm not gonna make it, but I heard it.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: That would be awesome.
[00:56:39] Speaker A: Dude, what if it's just you? Then you just pull the trailer out, right?
[00:56:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: You're still custom map.
[00:56:45] Speaker C: Yeah. You go out and do a pre flight map, pull it up, push the map into the drone system and it knows with RTK where are the cables and you know it's not gonna wreck itself.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
Make our jobs a little bit easier.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: I guess so.
[00:56:59] Speaker C: And you won't be in touch with the chemicals? Man.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: I had a guy on, on the podcast about chemicals and he's been in it for years already.
[00:57:08] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:57:10] Speaker A: Certain chemicals he tries to stay away but he's not scared about the chemicals.
[00:57:14] Speaker C: At some point I'm not so much either because I went out there and took a couple of exams to see if I was already infected. Like if I might got some chemicals already into my blood.
So it looked fine. We're all good. I've been dealing a whole lot with chemicals and I've been told the same thing. If you take cautions, you protect yourself and you're good. A person dealing with chemicals and dealing it the right way has a stronger immune system against flus and stuff like all of that. Right.
That's what I've been hearing.
[00:57:46] Speaker A: I don't know about that.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: I always just joke and say I'm not gonna get any funguses.
[00:57:53] Speaker C: And I think you have a reason on it because your body is constantly activ pushing against something like it's fighting against something. So.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool.
[00:58:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: Well guys, I had fun chatting with you guys.
I think we'll just have to sit back and see what happens in the next three to five years. Of course, there's a little bit of issues in. In the States, it's.
[00:58:16] Speaker C: It won't take us down. Yeah, it won't take us down. We'll just keep on doing what we're doing. Hand in there. At some point we'll grow again.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: Difficult now, but thanks for being on, guys.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: Thanks for having us.
[00:58:28] Speaker C: All right, I'm here.
[00:58:29] Speaker A: Alrighty, guys, that's all we got for you today. Make sure to subscribe to the channel, hit that thumbs up and we'll catch you guys next week.
