Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, folks, welcome back to the Drone on show. It's Mike. Today we have another episode where I was on the road at the drone convention and I sat down with lots of different applicators at that show, just having casual conversations with them on how they got started and where they're at now. And so today is another one of those episodes where I'm on the road and having a conversation with another spray drone business. Let's get into it.
Welcome back to the Drone on podcast. We are in Alabama at the Drone Spray end user conference is what it's called. And we're just. Just going around and talking to custom applicators. And here to my left, I have.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Yanni Matson, Vortex Advantage Ag.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Sweet. And you're from where?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: We're south of Fort Worth, Texas.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Texas. All right. And how long have you been doing drones?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: So this will be my second spray season. 2025. So I started 2023 is when we formed the LLC and kind of started down the rabbit hole of doing the aerial drone application thing.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: And I first seen you on a YouTube video that went semi viral because you had a sick trailer layout and you're doing pasture ground. Most of it is pasture ground, right?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Can you walk me through? So you got into this drone spray business. What type of experience did you have?
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Zero. So zero. The ag experience I had was coming from a winery background. So I was co founder of a winery out in Napa Valley and had the fortune of working with a lot of viticulturalists in vineyard space. So I did have some very little agricultural experience, but primarily around the vineyard space.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: When I moved to Texas, I really wanted to transition out of the wine business. I had my run with it a Good Close to 14 years.
13 years. And, you know, being a aviation enthusiast and a pilot, I started looking at different things that might be associated with aviation and follow a guy named Trenton Palmer on. On YouTube and he's a. He's a drone pilot as well. That's where he made his money, I understand, in the movie industry. And.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: So I didn't want to do that. And actually stumbled across one of Taylor Moreland's videos on agrispray.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: And that kind of sucked me down the hole.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: So. So you were kind of searching for something. You were watching aviation content, and then YouTube probably just recommended some drone content to you.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: I think that's what happened.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: And, well, drones in general, I thought about maybe lidar or, you know, critical infrastructure inspections or something cool like that. But the ag side of it came up and I just, it was like instantaneous for me. I said, this is going to be something for sure.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: So did you have any other drone experience prior to getting agricultural drone?
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Never flown a drone in my life.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: No way.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Nope. But I, but I was a private inspiration. Private pilot, but no drones whatsoever.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: That's cool because a lot of times when I talk to people, it's like they're scared of the drones, but they don't realize how easy they actually are to fly. They're incredibly easy. Yeah. Yeah. And so to hear like for yourself, you're like, you didn't have any drone experience, but. And you're in. And you're in your 50s.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm 54.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: I mean, I started a couple of years back, but for me, the tech side of it, you know, whether being at a pretty high level in business before this industry, I feel like I had the technical knowledge to figure it out. Right. And you know, the. Originally the DJI platform is what I went with. I've since gone to xag, but you know, the DJI platform is pretty user friendly. I think that's what's made it so popular. You talk about it all the time. Right. On your channel. So to your trailer build question. Yes. That thing, you know, that kind of put vortex on the map. I said, you know What? I got 60 grand into this badass enclosed Alcom Stealth 24 foot trailer and I want to do this. So one day I'm like, I don't care, I'll wear. I think I was wearing flip flops. And my brand, my brand manager guy, the guy who like created the vortex look, feel and brand logo, everything. He, he kind of gave me crap about it. He's like, dude, you can't wear flip flops. And I said, no, that's why I'm wearing flip flops, because I want.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: You know, and I want to. This is my Sunday morning. I'm filming a video.
Anyway, so.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: So you built that trailer off of just what you thought you might need without much experience in the field up to that point.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, just based off watching some of the videos that were out there being presented. It was early and, and I made some big mistakes in the efficiency space as well as ground clearance. I mean, that's, that's why I'm not using that trailer today.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah, dude, that's like our first trailer that didn't think about how important ground clearance is. And then for your application, you're focusing a lot on pasture ground. I can't imagine some of the rugged terrain or access roads that you're trying to get in.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: I had that mainly due to the Wet spring of 2024. I had that trailer stuck three times in the first month in the, in the, in pastures. I had to, I had to disconnect and leave it there overnight.
You know, I'm like, Mr. Johnson, I'll be back tomorrow to get my trailer. How embarrassing is that?
You know, you mind if I borrow your tractor?
But yeah, I quickly realized actually that's what's pivoted me to your guys. The new AAG trailer. I've sold a couple of them. They're, they're great trailers. They're, they're, they're very high ground clearance. That's a good thing about them. I've since really realized that a truck mounted system, not a pickup truck, but a flatbed dually one ton plus maybe a one and a quarter ton is my, my thing.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Because of your access?
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Like getting into the fields.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: It's just gnarly stuff. Sometimes you got to go back in a long way. Right.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: My whole motto is, you know, I'm going to bring a water TR trailer with whatever else I need. Leave that sucker at the front gate, Lock the hubs and disappear in four wheel drive out into the pasture. My rig will cover up to about 200 acres with the water just on the flatbed.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: And I can come back in in five minutes, fill that 400 gallons, back up and be out and hit another 200 acres. So a thousand acre job in my particular situation might be 30 different fields ranging from 20 acres all the way up to 150 acres. So that's kind of.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: So we do a little bit of pasture ground. Not a lot of pasture ground where we're at.
Small, small pasture ground. What's the biggest challenge trying to do pasture acres?
[00:05:55] Speaker B: I would say the, in Texas, the trees like, I mean, you know.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: So you go around every tree.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Well, it depends. So if the customer for, for example, I've got a customer right now that's got 20,000 acres to 10,000 acre ranches. They want to spray for prickly pear, which is cactus that's low lying and is on the ground more than no more than a couple feet off the ground. Well, they want to protect their oaks. So we're going to go around the 30, 40 foot tall oaks. That's kind of a given. But what about all the little smaller trees, the intermittent mesquites and stuff that are poking up anywhere from 10 to 15ft and they're Difficult to map because there's so many of them. I showed you that map earlier that we, that we're talking about. So either you have to fly at a height that's going to for sure clear all the small scrub trees, but go around the big trees, or you got to plan every single tree and the thing looks like a freaking pimp.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Ball machine going through it. Sounds like just prep just to set your drone boundaries could take a while.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: It does, right? Yeah.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Because you're not only just creating the boundary, but the obstacles for those trees that the landowner wants to save.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: That's right. You know, there's different ways you can do this. You can pre map it if you have the luxury of doing so. In, in my case, a lot of times the jobs are farther away from me, three, four, five, six hours away. And that's a, that's a long drive to go scout a field in advance. So for me, I usually will show up.
I'll use the app and use satellite data to map these in a lot of instances. And I'll just make the boundaries around the obstacles a little safer and larger than I would in normal instances if I can. I did use Pix4D fields for the better part of a year and with a multi spectral to go get the, you know, the orthomosaic imagery and get really clear current data on the fields so I can define the obstacles. But I found that that extra step on large field projects just took a lot. It took more time.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Takes a long time. That's exactly why we don't do it.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: It does, it does.
I see you guys also fly around the fields and do your boundaries. I love that. I've tried it. For me it works in some instances and in most it doesn't because it again will take way too long. I'll have to.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: It is surprising how close to accurate that the DJI Google Map image is because I've built up lots of boundaries on my phone and it was surprising how accurate they are now. It's not going to catch a tree that has just fallen in the last four months or something like that. That is why when we're doing row crop on cord, do prefer to fly the boundary to check for power lines and trees that may have fallen in. But yeah, with the map that DJI provides is a Google Maps. That's all it is really.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: For the most part it's up to.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Date and I think the XAG one is as well. It's pretty up to date. I use it.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest Issue is like obviously power lines, you can't see those on the, on the Google map. Do you have power lines in the pasture land?
[00:08:45] Speaker B: We do. They cut across quite a bit. You know, power lines are an issue. What I've, what I've really come to the conclusion, I've had a couple run ins with them. You know, what I've decided is from this point forward, if I don't have at least 15ft of vertical clearance above the drone at its flight height when it's transitioning underlines, then I'm just going to define, I'm going to split the field down, down the power line and give myself a 15, 20 foot buffer on either side and work it safe because it's just not worth it.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's words of wisdom right there.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: It really is.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: If you guys are listening, like that is very important. It's like we tried cutting underneath them before. Sometimes they work next time they break or you might get hung up in one. It's, it's much better just to split it.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: The other big difference in pasture work, Mike, over. You know, the typical row crop midwesterner is like battery management. So you know, you hear people look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them I need a minimum of four DB 1560s for the T50.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: And they're like, you know, sometimes I wish I had five or six batteries. And it's because of the types of fields that we're working in, the amount of maneuvering the drone's having to do.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Around obstacles, it's consuming a lot of energy and not spraying the load off.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Correct. And it's, and it's getting the batteries life down to a much lower point when it comes back. So I'm coming back at 20% which takes longer to get back up to 100. So you need that extra battery or two in the rotation or an additional charger if you have the generator for it.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: What type of generator system are you running?
[00:10:11] Speaker B: We've been running the whole first year we ran gas, you know, just your Westinghouse 28, 000 watt for, for a two drone setup. Which did you run?
[00:10:19] Speaker A: 1. 28000 for two drones?
[00:10:21] Speaker B: For two drones? Yes.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Was that a C8000 charger?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah. The 10 we don't do.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that, that 8000.
It doesn't make sense with 30,000 milliamps.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: No.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: But yeah, that's interesting.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: No, we moving forward, all of the stuff we're doing are going to be, you know, I became a Kubota dealer because I realized on our Vortex rover skid we're getting ready to launch. It's a flatbed skid system that, you know, we, we're going to do one drone operation and it's going to be ground based ops. And the 15, I'm sorry, the 14kW Lowboy Kubota diesel is the generator we're going to run. It's 12K prime, which will be plenty.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: For any like large prime meaning running.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Running in the diesel world, I guess they, they refer to it as prime. So it's 14kW 12k prime. Okay, I'm learning this too.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: I've seen that generator and I was really interested in that generator. Now that you say that, I might have to check it out a little bit more. What's it weigh, do you know?
[00:11:14] Speaker B: It's about £1,000 all in. 900 and something.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: It's a 53 inches pretty heavy unit.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: It is because a unit that we can get right now that's a 14,000, you'll be able to pick it up with two guys pretty easily. Easily.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: That's crazy.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: But it's gasoline, right? Okay. So your, your system's going to be a lot quieter.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Oh my God. You can stand right next to this thing and have a conversation. I mean the mental, you know, being an old dirt bike rider. But I, when I transitioned to street, I asked my good friend, hey, you know, what's a good book to read about like what to do in the street? And they talk about how the sound. How wearing earplugs when you're riding a motorcycle is so important because if you have ten dollar bills at the in mental capacity at the beginning of a ride, the sound itself will degrade your mental capac to like seven or something. Whatever. It's kind of. We're getting off topic, but it's, it's the same with drones.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Listening to that generator all day long in the background, Even with my 200 noise canceling active noise canceling headphones, that Bluetooth to my remote, it still just wears you down. And at the end of the day you're just so much tired.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah. There's definitely times when you're raying when it's a long day, 16 hour day, and all you want to do is shut them off and then stand there for just one second.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Oh, and just not hear nothing.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: So are you using two drones to do your pasture stuff or just mostly one?
[00:12:34] Speaker B: It depends. We. I'll be honest though. One of the guys today at the conference said something about that, about the one or two, the swarming and stuff. You know, Casey, my wife, she's a drone operator as well. She's got her 107. I'll typically plan the fields. We'll be out there together and. And I'll set it up and I'll get, you know, fire one off. She'll fire one off, and then I'll wait three or four minutes, fire mine off. And I try to plan the field so that, you know, they're never crossing paths. They're just kind of working together in harmony. But, you know, I would say the lion share of the time we're flying one at a time. There could be one going at a different field. But, you know, when we can, flying two drones makes sense. But I do believe that efficiency thing, that you're not going to double the efficiency with two drones in most instances in your pasture. In our pasture application, different on row.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Crops, definitely different scenarios. Yeah, sure.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that. That's interesting that you bring that up. Would you say that this is like a semi retirement plan that you did with because you had a successful business, it really didn't need to get into drones, or did you?
[00:13:33] Speaker B: People think I'm nuts, dude.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm trying to figure this out.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: People think I'm nuts. I was partners in, you know, I co founded a brand in Napa. It's a luxury winery brand. We're talking 300 bottles of cab, $300 bottles of cabernet. I've done two wine dinners at Mar a Lago, like, as the guest, you know, of honor, where I fly.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: When you told me that, for some, I'm like, why is this guy. What's this guy doing?
[00:13:53] Speaker B: I traded all that in to slang. Hot loads out in the state of Texas, you know, sweat out there. And that's, you know, But I kind of was over the. The drinking aspect of the job, for one. Yeah, I told you earlier, I had a heart attack in November, which is crazy for my young age. Hereditary thing, but whatever. I'm an athlete, you know, I. I'm over that. I feel really good. But I'm. I am at the stage where I need to make the change in my life. Like you. Your first question you asked me today or when I first saw you, like, are you still spraying? Are you still out in the field? Or whatever. And it's like, because I know that I am more valuable to our company Vortex, working on my business rather than in.
And when I'm not answering the phone, you know, answering questions for guys I've sold equipment to, selling new equipment, procuring more acres to spray. I'm not getting back to those people and they're going on to somebody else. Right. So it's all about being available. I'm doing a marketing presentation on the 26th on Wednesday, how to market your drone business. You should be doing that, that, that, that presentation because you do a great job.
But basically it all falls back to branding and it all falls back to, you know, be available, pick up your phone, you know, and that's been the key to my success.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: So what's, what's long term for your company? Like, is it. Do you want to be like the largest pasture drone sprayer in Texas or.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Man, you hit the nail on the head. I kind of want to be the one stop shop that does not exist right now in the state of Texas. And you know, I'm a big thinker so, you know, it'd be nice if it was multi state. But let's walk before we run. I would love to be the largest and only one stop shop for drones. And I mean sales training, parts, service, custom application, okay, everything. And it's wide open for the taking. I just got to nut up and do it, you know, and if, if I can't nut up and do it, somebody else is gonna.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. You know, and the market is growing so rapidly.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Right now. Would you say. I get the question all the time, Is the market flooded? Would you say the market is flooded right now?
[00:15:51] Speaker B: I get that question almost from everyone I sell a drone to. Am I too late?
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: And two and a half years ago I thought I wished I would have got in it two or three years earlier, but I'm kind of glad I didn't because then I deal with it like the T10s real headaches, the T30s. But. Well, here's what I tell people in Texas and I believe this to be true, genuinely believe it, that we are at least five years away from being saturated with applicators in the state of Texas, if not more. It's like 120 million acres in Texas. Are you kidding me?
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Think about just how many drones that do it take there is. Unbelievable amount.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Well, Mike, I get calls right now. One thing I do a good job of is, you know, search engine optimization and like, like awareness online. You know, I have a very simple website. There's no store, it's just a one, a scrolling website. I think it's visually fairly appealing. But I shot the video on the homepage myself with a Mavic 3, you know, flying away while I'm flying a T50. I did all that, you know, so it could. I'm. I'm due for a pretty big upgrade to add a store and capture that. But I get calls from like five hours away in southwest Texas. And I always ask customers that call me. My cell phone is on my website. Customers that call. How'd you hear about me? Me, I just googled you. And people five hours away from me are googling and I'm still like one of the top, if not the top, aerial applicators that show up. That tells me two things. Either the rest of the field isn't doing their job online, which is probably the case in my. In, you know, my.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Partially. But there's just not that many people yet.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: That true? That's true.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah. There's just not that many people. It would take so many people to cover the acres that need to be covered.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: We're a long way from. We are being saturated, I think. Oh, yeah, 100. Yeah. There's just. I mean, Texas is huge.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: And it's not even started yet. Yeah, I don't think it's.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: It's been, you know, I think I told you earlier, I sold close to 50 drones in 10 months. And for me, I was for a channel of business that I didn't even expect to be involved in.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: I did tell you that there last year.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So, Mike, Mike, full disclosure. This guy called it a year ago at end user conference. He's like, you were there?
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. And he was. He goes, I gotta predict, and this is probably after you assessed me, after talking, you're like, this joker's gonna sell some drones.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: And you're like, you're gonna sell more drones than you are gonna spray acres. You're not gonna be spraying acres.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: I was sweating for you, son. Air conditioned offices, you know.
But you nailed it. I mean, that's. Look, it's, it's. For me, that's the easy part of this job. I feel like I have integrity. I'm honest. I'm not trying to steer somebody into something.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: But you know, what helps you is you've done it.
These tractor dealerships that are wanting to sell drones because it's easy to sell a drone.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: That's not good for the industry because there's a lot to learn.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: And if a guy like yourself has run before.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Dude. Coaching a guy up, he's going to get a lot more coming from Somebody that's actually done it.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Not just little test fields.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Like actually done it. There's just, there's nothing that can replace real world experience that's very valuable.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: And that's a great point. You have, you know, the guys calling you at 10 o' clock at night, you know, and I, I'm, I'm at the point you're probably not. You're probably past this point because you got a lot more business.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: I had to. I mean, right now my phone's ringing.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure it is. You know, that's what I'm saying. Like, at what point do you stop taking calls at 10am Probably, Iowa.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Should we pick up right now?
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Be like, what's up?
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, so see the gear icon in the upper right?
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Click on that. They go second down and sp. You know, and then click on that or whatever.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: So there's that, there's that and yeah. So long term plan. You asked me and I never answered that question. Yeah, I'd liked it, man. In a perfect world, you know, I build this brand up to where it's something super special and you know, five to eight years plan for me was box that up and sell it, you know, to a John Deere or to a Wilbur Ellis or whoever else is buying, you know, because if you make the brand sexy enough and valuable enough, both from the acres, if I can generate. I mean, my first year in this business, I did over 300,000, you know, and I think that's pretty damn good for first year in.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: And now my plan is to try to do double that.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: If that number alone wouldn't encourage somebody to, to invest, you're looking at about 130,000. Yeah. For two drones and a new way trailer. Get yourself a truck.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Dude, that's insane. Good for you.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: It is, but.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: But it's work too. I do not want people to think that this is easy money. Get rich quick. No, because when I heard that you're still spra. Like, dude, it's hard work.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: It is.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Like when I was out there and I was grinding hard for 30 to 45 days straight, doing 16 hour days. You're not going to. You can't do that for that long. But there is money to be made.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Look, I'm old enough to tell the old timers like myself that I'm young at heart, I employ young guys and I'm running circles around these, these guys, like seriously in the field, like it's just a Different. I don't know if it's like we always say the. The World War II era guys were hard as nails. They were. It was like that generation. Right. But I feel like there's that same kind of difference between my generation and the upcoming. You know, I don't want to say everyone's lazy, but it's hard to get the guy that's really working.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: A lot of people just aren't motivated.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Like, they. Yeah. Just aren't. It just takes work.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Like, think about what needs to be done next. Don't wait for me to tell you.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Like, just one of my biggest gripes about people. Right. Think ahead a little bit. Right, right. Yeah.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: So I think that that's a. You know, I definitely am. And to a point where I need to step back and just have. Have hire guys and delegate more. I think I'd be a lot. A lot happier. It is very hard work, and I'm not scared of hard work. In Texas, when it's, you know, creeping up on 100 degrees, you know, there's a lot of chemicals we can't spray because they're very volatile. When it gets above 95.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: A lot of the herbicides, so, like, even mesquite, you know, mesquite, it's August, September, depending on what region of Texas that you're going to apply. That's like kind of southwest. And, you know, when is it not 95 degrees in August in Texas? Like, you have a window like 4am Till, you know, 10am before you get.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Did you do any nights ran down there?
[00:22:04] Speaker B: I haven't, no. I just got my night Novio and Swarm recently.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: So that it took me like eight months to get that as an amendment to my original application or.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Exemption.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah, man. Hey, I appreciate you sharing your journey of drones. And it really. It's still young. It is, right? We're only talking two and a half years.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Since you started and first year you did 300,000. How much did you do the next year?
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Well, no, this year is the second spray season. 24 was my first full season. I started the business in 23. I ramped up. I bought my drones, I started advertising, but I really started spraying. Call it 1-1-24.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: So, yes, I'm very.
I'm very humble. I like, I. I mean, I'm confident, but I'm humble. I'm humble because there's guys that have been doing this for so, you know, five years, six years, you know, and Those are the guys that I, when we come to conferences like this, want to try to glean as much information as I can.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a wealth of knowledge walking around here. It's like if somebody's willing to share, I'm willing to grab something.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Yeah. That's cool.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: You got anything else to harm you? I. I did want to ask you, your first trailer that you made. Made.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Was there air conditioning in that thing?
[00:23:17] Speaker B: There was.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Now would you go ahead.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: If you would do it again, would you. Obviously you wouldn't do the same system.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: No.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: But would you do something similar?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: So I bought that trailer and it had AC in it, so it was a car hauler trailer. So it's a really high end, kind of NASCAR looking car hauler. And that's why it looks so good, branded the way I did it.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: But you know, I didn't use the air conditioning once.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: So I'm not saying all these guys that say, oh, I got my air conditioning area for the batteries and stuff, if you have them in an air conditioned area, it's too inefficient of an operation because it's you. That means you have to open a.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Door to get to them. That's so good. You bring that up.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: You know, it's. It. I'm still perfecting my, my whole efficiency thing. Like my flatbed skid is kind of a, you know, crap show, if you will, like at the back of it. I have. I got to make these baskets to put. Put, whether it's a T50 cooling tower or the XAG cooling towers in so that I'm not having to set it all on the ground. Because guess what? Everything you put on the ground has to go back in the truck before you move. And that's extra minutes and minutes.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Okay. So if I get you folding railings, then the, then the new way trailer would know it won't work for you. Yeah.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: What do you mean folding? No, the. The new way trailer. Actually any trailer for me is tough. So. Yeah, that was one of my. My gripes is the fold building rails.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: And it looks like what you've got coming is great on that front and I think that will make.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: So you were talking about flying off the ground. Why don't you make your truck version fly from the top? That way you don't have to unload and load.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: So coming back to my earlier point about starting to scale my business up and hire people in lieu of me Being the drone operator and Casey, I am not confident that something bad will happen in the future because it's too, in my opinion on a truck system, a standard one ton dually, you know, cabin chassis, flatbed setup. Even with an extended, you know, cantilevered deck above the, above the cab and a safety area. I believe for me, just for me, it's still too close proximity to be landing the drone. I could do it all day long and I have. Okay. On, you know, even on new way trailers, I've done it. You know where I'm landing a drone right up next to the railing, you know, and you know, it's not optimal but, but I would rather have employees I'm employing out in the field landing and taking off. I'll give them a cordless weed whacker. I carry a Makita cordless weed whacker. And I just, I had one of.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Those the first season. Never used, never used, threw it away.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: You just use the drone to fire up the drone and cut it.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Yeah, Yep.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean I, I think mainly.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: So what about like a. What, what if it be an easy protective shield or something that would come in front of him then you're saying it's just too small of an area.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: I just think it's too small.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: And, and especially all of these drones, you have to disable the obstacle avoidance to get it down on that deck. So now you have zero obstacle avoidance and you're trying to land this 12 foot diameter drone. Flying blender. You know, I just think that something. Blender, I haven't heard that something's going to, something eventually is going to happen and I think I don't want that liability on me.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: So I would rather. Now I am going to put an expanded metal upper deck on mine which is for the purposes of observation being up high and also when you're getting ready to transition to your next spot, you're done with 100 acres in front of you, you got to go 300 yards down the road. You bring on that last mission, land it on top, go up the ladder, D, ring it down like you do with the Amish straps.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: You know, I got a better one coming down.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: I got, I use Titan straps, they're really good. But anyway the, and I'm not like sponsored by them, but anyway they, then you got, you, you got the thing tied down, you run down the road and then you know, right when you get to your new spot, roll out your hose, jump up there, untie it, you know, fly down Swap batteries, fill tank, boom, you're right back in business.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Is that a one person operation or is that two?
[00:27:05] Speaker B: It could be either, but yeah, one, I. I'm a big fan of the problem with 1P.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Yeah. One person. You're going up and down. Yeah.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: All the time then.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Well, just flying from the ground, I'm thinking of the debris and the dust and stuff. It's got to get dusty in Texas.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Well, yes, it does. If in certain areas, especially southwest, I.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Got to come up with a good, good system for you that you'll be comfortable landing on your truck. I just feel like that's.
That's the most efficient that a guy's gonna be.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it is. I'm not gonna say being up top ain't, you know, nice. It is.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Well, I'm just saying if we can make it safer.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: I mean, think about it like, at some point you got to be a good enough pilot to. I get what you're saying, like, don't like wanting to land that close. But if it's normally, let's say you're landing and it's 10ft away. If you have to bring it in 5ft, you're going to be super careful. It's like us flying an instrument approach to minimums. Yeah. You don't want to do it all the time, but you can if you need to. Y kind of the same thing. Like, you'd rather land out there with some margins, but if you have to, you can't.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So say the. The rover I'm building has an. It's built for an 11 foot flatbed, so it's 10ft long. Even if you cantilevered over the cab and you got an extra five feet. Four feet, maybe four feet. I'd say, to be fair to get over the cab, maybe five feet. Unless you're putting supports on the front bumpers, taking it way over the hood, which looks stupid. I'm sorry, I gotta be. Gotta look good out there. I ain't driving down looking like some Sanford and Sun looking mobile, you know, even if it were that big. So you're looking at. Call it 15ft. All right, so you need three feet for your pilot area. It was. Is that fair to say?
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Okay, so you got 12ft of landing space. The blades are 12ft, roughly 11ft.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's if you go in the center.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: If you go in the center, land on the outside.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: All right. So you have your legs about a foot off the of off the edge.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And again, I'm not saying it can't. Like I would do it all day. Like all day. I land that sucker all day on a dime, no problem. But I just don't trust the knucklehead that, that is out there doing it for me.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: That's. That's the part.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Hey, that's fair.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: We all have our, our boundaries and I think that's okay.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Yeah. But I wanted to talk through it because, you know, guys might say that about my trailer. Like flying two drones off the top and it's like, well, you got this extra. You don't want to necessarily take off and land right by the pilot protection area. You want to do it a little further away.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: No. 100. So that. They're two different things in my opinion. Like your, your trailer actually has.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Trying to figure out how to get you more efficient. So what about we, you know, the, an extra floor slides out of the bottom that, that. Now we've just made the sucker, you know, 22ft long.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Now are you comfortable or still not comfortable.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: No, that, that would change that. That would change it. Yeah.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: So if you did, I think that's something. Yeah.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Some sort of give us like six months.
Well, here's the thing.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Thing.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: You're to your point. You're right. I've worked off the top of your trailer. I did that 1500 acre prickly pear job with these guys down in southwest Texas. And we used my client who bought your. Your trailer. We, he. I had a different trailer, long story, but we had some plumbing issues on it. He's like, well, why don't you just use the new way trailer? I'm like money perfect. So we ended up using that for the whole job. And I kind of felt bad. I knocked off like 2500 bucks off his bill because it was a hundred thousand dollar job, you know. Wow. And anyway, so it worked really well. I'm not trying to say there's, there's. There's loads of real estate up there to land like. And yes. You only, you know, you, you fly one, wait three minutes, four minutes, fly the second one and then you're just alternating. And if you ever have two that have to come in at the same time, you hover one or, or you land it if you have to on the ground and wait, wait it out. But yeah, it's.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: We'll get that safe.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: We.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: We'll get that truck thing figured out, I'm telling you. And you'll look good.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: All right.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah, you'll look good.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Gotta look good. You gotta make it motorized.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Oh, Nice.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Right on, dude. Hey, this has been really cool getting to know you guys. You know, we hit it off last year, and I'm glad we were able to sit down.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: And, dude, I'm glad you're here. At that heart attack, I'm, like, freaking out.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: It was nuts, man. That was a game. That was a game changer. I'm down 30 pounds, quit drinking. Not that that was the cause. I'm just saying it was low hanging, easy fruit to get rid of.
It's a much healthier lifestyle. I feel great. I don't wake up with hangovers.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Dude. That I. I remember that like. Like when I stopped drinking, I was just like, man, I'm so clear.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Like, I could just think, yeah, you're.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: You're way more productive. I mean, let's face it.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Totally agree. Y.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: That's good. We're. We're enjoying life.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: No, my pleasure, man. Thanks for having me.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Really appreciate it. Okay.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: See you guys. Jason, thank you.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Good seeing you again.
