Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Dave Harriton on Payload, Performance, and the New Class of OEM Overland Vehicles

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Dave Harriton on Payload, Performance, and the New Class of OEM Overland Vehicles · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Drill podcast. I'm your
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: host Scott Brady, and for this week's episode, I'm joined
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: by my co host Matt Scott and we have a
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: special interview today with Dave Hereton of AEV. Now, Dave
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: is the CEO, he's the founder of AEV, and we
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: had the rare opportunity to sit down with Dave and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: talk about some really important subjects, which includes payload. It
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: includes OEM, these new OEM vehicle capabilities that we're seeing
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: coming out. We talk a lot about mid size versus
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: full size. Dave is really the Einstein of overlanding. He
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: has really developed a lot of the types of products
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and levels of aftermarket production quality. So we really have
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: a rare opportunity to talk with him about how he
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: integrates with the OEMs, the lessons that he's learned from
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: working with the OEMs, and how to make premium quality
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: aftermarket components for overland travel. But we really do the
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: deep dive on payload, and we talk about a lot
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: of other really important subjects. So please enjoy our conversation
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: with Dave Hereton and a special thanks to kuat Racks
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: for their support of this week's podcast, their new Ibex
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: has landed. It's actually overlanded. This groundbreaking bedrack is effortlessly
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: handling substantial loads both on and off the grid. Constructed
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: from lightweight yet durable aluminum, it boasts a ballistic black
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: powder coat made for all the nature you can throw
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: at it. It's available in six different frame sizes to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: accommodate most truck models, and it's equipped with telescoping crossbars,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: numerous t channels, and a versatile full and half height configuration.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Right out of the box. This is the Ibex from Kuat.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: It is engineered for adventure. For more details, please visit
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: kuat dot com. Kuat because you will absolutely love this bedrack.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So Dave, thanks so much for being back on the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: podcast with us. For those that are listening, Dave Hereton,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: we recorded a podcast kind of about his career and
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: life and a lot of his learnings around overlanding and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: his vehicles. We recorded that maybe about a year and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: a half ago or so, but we are grateful to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: have you back on here because we're going to dig deep.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: We're going to dive deep into some technical topics that
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I think people will find really interesting. We talk a
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: lot about payload on this podcast and now horse on it. Yeah,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: but now now you're going to actually understand the engineering
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: behind payload and some of the factors that come into
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the decision about what vehicle you buy and what vehicle
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: it may or what payload it may have from the factory. So, Dave,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: thanks for being on the podcast.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, I'm surprised it's taking that this long to get
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: back to here.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Well let's well, let's first talk about how did you
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: get of the podcast today, because this is fascinating.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I flew my Husky and from Las Vegas to
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: that this morning.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's kind of like a flying.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Jeep, Yeah, flying KTM or a flying jeep. So and
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: what's the size tires that it has on it?
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: It's got twenty nines right now. I'm probably upgrade to
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: thirty ones here next next set.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: So this is the kind of this is a tail
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: dragger and if you were describing it earlier, it's based
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: on like a nineteen forties design of an aircraft. And
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: what inspired you to to decide to start flying?
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: You know, it's always been something that's interested me and
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: you know, since I was a kid. But like everybody
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: time and money right, and they never seem to coincide.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: And then I had a buddy who had actually my
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: plane and he had been taking me for some you know,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: backseat rides around Montana and I was like pretty blown away.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: And then at one point he was like, Hey, I'm
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: going to buy a new one. Do you want this one?
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: And I was like, yep, and even think about it,
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: I'll take it. And so then I had a real
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: motivation to, you know, go put the effort and work
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: into getting a license.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: It was it was a lot of work.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of work to fly tail dragger.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: It's a perishable skill and it does require some specialized training.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: And and then you know, flying in the mountains require
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: specialized training.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: I think, yeah, the last time you were here, you
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: were just finishing up your pilot. Yeah.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yep.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: So now you know, six hundred hours later, which is
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: a lot in you know, two.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Years, while you're trying to work full time. I do
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: work and design, you know, OEM level quality products. Yeah.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I think there was a couple of times you and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I were texting. I don't know what time in the morning,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: it was probably around one in the morning, and you
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: were you had flown for four hours that day and
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: then you then you were shifting into Michigan time, you know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: because you had to work from like three in the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: morning until until whenever. Crazy.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: My day normally starts at thirty with some of the
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: East Coast meetings and yeah, you know, but I go
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: to bed pretty early. So yeah, yeah, it's a lot
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: of work, but it's still worth it, you know, because
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: I have explored so much on you know, dual sport, bikes,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: dirt bikes, jeeps, trucks, snow andbills. You know, I've explored rafting,
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: kayaking that.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Now when I.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: Fly, I can generally put everything below me together and uh,
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: you know, I I've focused, you know, I've just I've
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: been in so many places in this country. It's pretty
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: fun to put it all together, at least in the
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Western US.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: And you were talking. In fact, one of your Instagram
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: posts I thought was really cool because it showed your
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: plane and here's a Nemo tent and you just brought
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: your camping gear with you landed and camped out for
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the night.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I always keep my my you know, a pretty comfortable
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: you know, quote unquote survival kid. Yeah, and uh yeah,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: the guys from ex Overland.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: We're out in the desert and I fill out there. Yeah.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: I spent the night with them and camped around the fire.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: And that was pretty nice because they had obviously they
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: had an ivy prospector with a flour real camper and
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: they had all they had food. Beer, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: I had a beer.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Well. And it's interesting, Dave, because you you were involved
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: in very early on, even before the fool drive stuff
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: with whitewater kayaking, and then you moved into the jeeps
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and you've moved into full size and you've gotten involved,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: you know, a personal passion in sports cars and now aircraft. Aircraft.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like that that's because it helps you
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: in the creative process.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Not only in the yeah, totally, but not only in
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: the creative process, but it also you know, I mean
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: it helps me mentally having something outside of work to
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: focus on, but it also really like you, you learned
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: so many things and other facets that you can bring
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: back into work. You know, whether it's flying and how
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: how people do certain things. You know how airplanes are,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: you know whether it's maintained or you know, I mean
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: you could say everything from like a simple example be
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: safety wired or something all the way up to you know,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: communication skills or packing light, you know, dealing with payload
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: things like that. I mean really or you know, same
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: on a motorcycle, right, I mean you've ridden all over.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: I mean it makes a big difference whether you're light
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: or heavy. Yeah, and so you know, I mean that
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: waits one thing, but there's so many things where it
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: just adds to your quiver, you know, when you have
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: all these experiences that you can add to your quiver
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: to make truly unique solutions.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I would think that there's times when you're flying
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: because it's not like you're on Instagram when you're flying
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: a plane, so you probably you probably are able to
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: let your creative mind wander a bit.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Actually I don't.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I mean then, like when I'm flying, I'm tending, you know,
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: I just want to survive, right, I'm like focused, okay,
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: focused okay, which is the kind of the me.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I've never been a pilot, so that's interesting to know.
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  Speaker 1: You there's not downtime.
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  Speaker 4: The focus can be brick.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: In other types of flying, there is you know a
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: lot of like if you're in a corporate jet, I mean, honestly,
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: you get up and you you know, you've you've already
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: done so much work on the ground and you you've
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: already entered it into the plane and now you're just
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: managing systems and managing air traffic control and just kind
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: of waiting for your number to be said, and then
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: you know, doing whatever they tell you to do, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: it it and you could wander for sure, you know,
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: unless there's emergency. When you're flying these bush planes, it's
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: a completely different thing where you're focused. You're pretty much
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: focused all the time on like you know, because you're
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: not normally going from place to place. I mean you do,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: but a lot of times you're like, well, I'm going
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: to go from place to place, but I'm gonna land
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: six times in the middle somewhere, and so you're kind
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: of just focused on that. But like I said, for me,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: it's a it's a mental distraction that it really requires
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: focus and it almost trains me to be able to focus.
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  Speaker 3: So when I do sit down on my computer, I
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: can focus on something.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting. So it's actually fine too. It helps
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: you fine tune your ability to focus on your work. Yeah,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that's interesting. So you wanted to talk a little bit
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: about payload. So the one example that you brought up
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: that I think is worth diving into is that within
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the mid size truck market, one of the challenges has
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: always been payload. But now we're seeing vehicles like the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: new GMC Canyon or the Colorado from Chevrolet, and they're
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: available in an AEV Bison variant where they have thirty
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: five inch tall tires, steel bumpers, you can even get
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: some of them with a Winch boron steel skid plates.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: They come with a lot of the things that people
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: would normally install from the aftermarket, and so if you
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: were to simply look at the payload number on the door,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it's a little misleading because you would have to if
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: you bought, like, let's say, a Stock Ranger and you
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: wanted to add all of those things. The Ranger, yes,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: may have a sixteen hundred pound payload, or a seventeen
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: hundred pound payload, but by the time you add steel
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: bumpers and winches and everything else.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, particularly the products that you're adding in the aftermarket
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: just really aren't considered much for weight. I always feel like,
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: you know, I mean, it's more cardboard aided design a
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: lot of times, not that some of those products aren't
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: tough for durable, but you know they're not they're not.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: They're not optimized for weight. But I think, you know,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: I think what you're getting at is, if you're going
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: to compare let's say, the bison to something else, you
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: do need to say, you know, you're only going to
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: compare it if you were going to add those things.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Otherwise you wouldn't be looking at the bis, and you'd
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: be looking at maybe ZR two or a high Country
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: or something.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, if you're looking at you know, even
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: a Ranger Raptor or something like that TRD pro, you
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: know that's really more compared to the the stock v
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: R two or the high Country And yeah, yeah, it
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: is one of those things where payload is. It's just
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: a funny thing. So you really have to commarre apples
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: to apples, because if you're looking at the bison, that
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: means you're planning on adding all those things. And if
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: you're going to add all those things to either you know,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: any of those other trucks, you have to start subtracting
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: all that weight up sure, and and so you know,
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: if you really look apples to apples, the bison is
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: actually pretty good in terms of payload. And but one
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: of the things I think is worth mentioning is just
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: kind of like, where does this payload number come from?
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: You know, because it's a bit nebulous. Really, it's not
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: a there's very few tests on the oe side that
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: are required by the government that sets payload. There are
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: some that factor into it, but it's it's really this
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: big kind of nebulous number that a lot of a
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: lot of it's the oeys kind of responsible for making
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: up what they feel comfortable with, because at the end
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: of the day, they're the ones that are kind of
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: responsible for you know, safety and you know, their own
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: warranty and things like that. So you know, again, when
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: you're comparing one manufacturer to another, one might be more
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: conservative than another, right, and so generally the larger companies
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: are more conservative than the smaller companies. And also it
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: just kind of depends on what they feel comfortable with.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: And there's there's a lot of factors. I mean, you know,
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: you could be looking at cooling, you know, engine power, breaking,
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: breaking and so breaking does have some tests. Stability control
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: has some tests that you know you need to pass
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: at a gross vehicle weight right. So there's some things
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: that are kind of you know, like standardized, but even
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: even within those, there's a lot of again kind of
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: gray area, right. So it's a really hard number to
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: compare apples to apples. And you might look at something
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: and be like, well, this truck has like literally the
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: exact same axle as the competitor truck, yet the GROS
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: vehicle weight rating is lower, and you're like, well, why
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: is that?
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: And a lot of people think it's like axle related
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: or frame related, but there's more to it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: No, there, Yeah, they're absolutely axles frame. I mean those
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: are just being size, yeah, bearing size, but I mean
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: like the Chevy and the Ram have essentially the same
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: we're axle, yet they have different numbers, right, And so
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: you start looking at that and it's it's a really
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: hard thing to compare apples to apples. But at the
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: end of the day, it comes down to what does
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: that manufacturer feel comfortable with, you know, pass all the
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: government tests and their internal tests. And quite often the
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: manufacturers have their internal tests are stricter like when it
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: comes to crash, when it comes to breaking requirements, there's
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: like a government required test, but almost all the manufacturers
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: tend to try and beat that, and they have like
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: their own internal ratings, and you know, so a lot
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: of manufacturers aim to be you know, like whatever you
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: could call it, like five stars, even though maybe it's
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: only three to pass the government test. A lot of
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: manufacturers their internal tests are higher. But then if they
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: get to something where they're like, well we need a
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: little more here, then they can you know, basically they
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: can go their leadership and start say hey, we want
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: to do this and we want to reduce this down
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: to a four star rating. It's still better than the
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: government requirement, but you know maybe in consumer reports we
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: won't get as good as a score here. So then
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: it gets you know, it's almost gets into marketing talks.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of there's a lot of give and take,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: and those marketing numbers are really critical because unfortunately, especially
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: with journalists, you know, they're they're they're handed a sheet
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: of paper and they're looking at numbers, you know, and
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: I always think it's funny, like a proch angle, you
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: have twenty four point one, Well, you know, maybe this
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: truck beats it by twenty four point two, right, and
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: like you guys know, like is a consumer. Is that
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: ever going to affect the consumer?
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Never?
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not. But all of a sudden, it ranks this
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: truck higher than this truck.
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: So it's a lot of journalists that rewrite press releases.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean that's true. But even even the
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: marketing teams at the companies, right, they have to have
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: these numbers. Yeah, and whether it you know, it's like,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you put a winch on almost any
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: truck and jeeps are excluded because of how they're mounted.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: But like let's say a typical truck like a Toyota,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: a Chevy Bison, you know, a Chevy mid size truck,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: a full size truck. You know, whether it's one of
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: our bumpers or an aftermarket bumper, you're almost always reducing
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: the approach angle. Yeah, just because you have to fit
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: a winch in there and it has stick out so far,
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: and you know, it's just kind of a fact. Now,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: does that make the truck a worse offt road? Yeah,
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: well no, because you're generally putting a better bumper on
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: in a system, and you know, you've got a winch
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: on the front, so it actually makes it better. But
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: does the consumer care that they're approach one from twenty
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: four point one to you know, a slightly less number, sure,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: and does it really affect the consumer though it doesn't.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: One thing I also found interesting because I have talked
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: with a bunch of engineers at the various OEMs about
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: payload because it's something that we feel is important. And
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: what one of them shared with me is that they
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: will test just like a standard vehicle. So they'll say,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: like maybe they're mid grade. They do all of these tests,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: and then if there's anything that's above the mid grade,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: all they do is just take what the thing the
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: extra accessories weigh, and they just reduce it off that
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: number to lower their expenses, Whereas I suspect, like, especially
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: with the fact that a Bison is wide and there's
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: additional considerations around the multimatic suspension, the jounces all of
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: those things that would help it handle payload better. Maybe
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if GM does this, but it
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: seems like a lot of them they'll just take whatever
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the accessories way and they just remove it from that
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: baseline number.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so again I can talk about past programs.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: So like the original Bison, we actually were able to
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: retest and rerate it at the same number as that
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: generic vehicle, even though it did have more weight. I
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: think we were about two hundred punds heavier. Sure, but
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: we reran the tests and everything worked out okay, and
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: you're right. So that's another example of like apples to apples, right,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you look on paper, a Dodge rams
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: or not a DoD I'm still call it Dodge, but
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: a ram single cab, a long box diesel is rated
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: for way more than a long wheelbase dually. Yeah, right,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: and so you're kind of like, which one would you
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: rather toe with? You know, of course you'd much rather
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: tee with the dually and have some redundency there, but
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: it's not rated as high as the single cab, you know,
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: shorter wheelbase.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Truck, because single cabs are awesome.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: Single cabs are awesome. But you know, again looking at
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: the numbers, like what do you want to tell? And
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: it also depends a lot on what you're towing, you know, boats,
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Boats are totally different than excavators, for say, you know,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: because of where the weight is. But but payload is
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: just one of those things where it's a really it's
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: it's not as clear cut number, you know, and you
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: kind of look at like the trucks in other markets
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: where the speeds aren't as great, you know, basically rest
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: of the world. Right, you can have a little tiny
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: truck that's capable of carrying a ton of payload, Yeah,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: a literal ton of payload. And it's a little tiny
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: truck with a little tiny like almost golf cart axles,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: And you're like, how does that work? Well, it's because
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: you know, they feel comfortable with it at thirty five
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: miles an hour, right, you know, it's a lot different
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: than here in the States, where you can tow and
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: you can tell high speeds for long distances.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you go through Utah toeing it trailer, you
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: can be doing eighty miles an hour.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, to the point where you know the trailer tires,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: you know, almost no trailer tires can handle that in
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: the heat. And these trucks are so powerful nowadays they
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: don't notice it. You literally can till you know, eighteen
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: twenty pounds eighty five miles an hour in way exceed
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: the trailer tire over almost all trailer tires.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Well, so in your mind, what are when you look
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: at the at the payload lick. Let's take a mid size.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: For example, what should people be mindful of around payload
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: is are do you care more about where the load
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: is placed? Or are you are there things that make
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: you less concerned around payload? How do you look at it?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: In general?
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Like, there's a good rule of thumb that if you're
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: at eighty percent of the payload capacity or the gross
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: vehicle weight, if you're at eighty percent, the vehicle is
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: generally going to perform.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Now if you took you know, all that weight and
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: put it way up high, that's not going to perform
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: that well. Yeah, right, So I mean there's common sets,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: right if you keep the weight down low and keep
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: it in the center and try and you know, I
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: always recommend people put their truck on a scale and
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: really see because there's a lot of seven thousand pound
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: wranglers around, right, I mean just way over you know,
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: and you know, I mean I can't recommend it.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: But they work fine.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: They don't drive particularly awesome, but they you know, they
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: work and they're probably safe to drive. But you don't know,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: but especially when you're exceeding it by that much, I mean,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: it can really it can really have dramatic results. So
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: you know, on the wranglers and the smaller trucks, it's
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: really easy to exceed gross vehicle weight payload. I mean,
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: because they are relatively low, they don't have a lot
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: of overhead. When you get into the heavier trucks, you
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: have a lot of overhead, and sometimes that's a problem
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: because you can get i mean crazy amounts of weight,
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: Matt you know, you know, you can get absolutely crazy
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: amounts of weight and again, but that eighty percent will
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: still kind of train well.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: If you can be at eighty percent or under of
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: what the truck's rated at, you're gonna have a pretty
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: good performing machine.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So maybe that's more of it is trying to
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: strike the balance between safety, technical terrain, performance, economy, longevity
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: of the platform. When you start really really pushing it,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that's when you see the bent frames and you see
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the yeah, you know, I mean it's pretty shocking recently,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: what I mean, there's some heavy vehicles out there.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: We were talking about the earth Rummer stuff, and they're
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: at nineteen five chassis and the dirty little secret on
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: those is you now have to pretty much replace the
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: wheel bearings every thirty thousand miles because guys are spinning
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: bearings and axles and having big issues and having to
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: upgrade frames because there's a lot of frames that are
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: cracking and they're not following that kind of eighty twenty no.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: And that goes for almost that whole side of the industry.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: And I wouldn't pick on earth Romer in particular, but
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: you know, all of those trucks tend to be you know,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of things that people don't look at.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: And you know, if you want to talk heavy duty
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: trucks that all the manufacturers give you guidance on the
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: cab chassis, how you're supposed to mount something, how you're
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: supposed to avoid stress risers, which is a local life
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: spot in the frame that would really like maybe you
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: have a mount on the frame, and you see this
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: a lot with the like a lot of those bent
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: frame trucks that you see, you know, that's right where
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: they're camper tied in and so they're picking on that
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: point all the time and they're working it. And those
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: cab chassis trucks they have hardened, hardened steel frames, so
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: it's a bit different than you know, it's totally different
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: than a pickup truck. Right, That's another thing people don't
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: realize cab chassis trucks they basically share the same cab,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: but you know, it's a different motor. Like you don't
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: think the motors, like a Cummins motor is different, but
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: it's different in the there's actually different hard parts in
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: the motor. The suspension is different, the axles are different.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: You know, the frames are different. I mean the cab
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: is the same and that's about it.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot of times the frames are just
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: straight right out the cab.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: Yeh, they're straight in their CEA channel and but they're hardened,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: you know, so you don't want to weld on them,
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: and you want to really, you know, adhere to those rules.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: But the problem is those rules are designed for box trucks.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: They're designed for utility trucks. They're designed for rollbacks, and
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: so when you get into like an off road camper situation,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: then you're kind of playing in gray area, right, and
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: so a lot of these companies have tried to, you know,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: resolve that, but you're right at the big dirty secret
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: is a lot of these tructure if you look at
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: them and you talk to the you know, even the journalists,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: they don't really understand quite often that just because the
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: truck had a nineteen to five payload or I'm sorry,
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: nineteen five gross vehicle Wait, you know, they got it
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: and before they even put their camper on, they put
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: forty inch tires on it. Forty one inch tires, you know,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: heavy military tires, a lot.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Of them, heavy rules.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so all that should be reducing the payload capacity
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: to one.
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: Hundred and thirty pounds of rotating the mass.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they drive, you know, and those wheels drive
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: surprisingly well. Right, We just started offering a fifty five
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: hundred and we do offer those tires. It's shocking how
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: well they actually drive. But you know, again, as like
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: a rule of thumb, if you're going to go from
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: a thirty four inch tire to a forty inch tire,
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: what is that? You know, it's somewhere in the eighty percent.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: You should be reducing your payload right there by about
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: eighty percent. So you know, guess what number that falls
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: in line with? Yeah, you know, and so again, if
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: you can be at eighty percent of the gross vehicle
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: weight once you put those tires on, now you're kind
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: of at your limit, but it's still going to perform.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Well, Yeah, it's pretty amazing how that pareto principle applies
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: to everything including payload. Yeah, I mean eighty year roll.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Again, it's it's a it's a rule of thumb. But
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: I would say if you're gonna you know, if you
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: take your tire size and divide those two number two
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: numbers and you know, get your percentage, that's about what
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: you should be reducing the gross vehicle weight rating.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: So the aftermarket, you know, they've got this. They buy
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: this truck, it's got nineteen five I'm the sticker. They
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: put forty one inch tires on it. And even if
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: they're not selling a truck, or they're that selling a
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: camp or something, just selling a truck or whatever it
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: might be for utility, they still are advertising nineteen to
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: five and it's not right. It shouldn't be and that's
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: something the aftermarket doesn't really, you know, it's kind of
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: like a gray area where they are, you know, they don't.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: They'll let you think that it still has a nineteen
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: five GVW when really it should be reduced. Like the
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: if the OEM was putting forty one inch tires on it,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: they would be reducing that GROSSPEK weight because of you know,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: whether it's the leverage on the axles, you know, and
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of times they do have a more offset
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: wheel which you know stretches with wielderings, but the axle
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: diameter itself, the drive shaft diameters, I mean, you know,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: all the way into the transmission, all those gears, I mean,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: everything is that's a lot about a leverage. So you really,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: you know, they were never tested for forty one inch tires.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: I mean it's basically like having a huge trailer on
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: all the time. Just just put the tires on. The
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: rolling resistance yeah, yeah, and just all the added leverage
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: is the big one.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And I think that that makes it even more interesting
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: around like the Bison, for example, the fact that this
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: mid sized truck is coming from the factory with a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: thirty five inch tall tire and it still is close
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: enough to one thousand pounds of payload if I remember,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: it's a ride around one thousand pounds of payload. So
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the fact that it should be reduced a lot and
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the fact that they can keep it as high as
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: they are from the OEM is pretty interesting.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: And again I can't talk current stuff, but like on
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: the pass program. The passpis in the original Bison, You know,
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: we wanted to do larger tires, right, I mean everybody's
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: sing like, oh, you should have put larger tires on it. Well,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: there's reasons we couldn't, yeah, right. And then on the
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: second gen we did get that thirty five inch tire
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: on there because we were able to do things downstream
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: and early on to enable those. But one of the
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: things that you kind of think about was, like, I
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: remember a specific conversation where it was like, the transfer
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: case chain didn't have enough to our capacity for the
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: thirty five inches tire, and so we would have had
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: to make the chain wider, which would have meant a
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: new transfer case. And then then you start getting into
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: these conversations where it's like, Okay, you know how much
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: does it cost to retool a transfer case? You know
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: it's not cheap, I can tell you that, right, And
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: then it comes down to, well, how many of these
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: trucks are we building, what do we think our failure
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: rate is? How many does that translate into on the
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: warranty side, you know, do we just let them go?
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: And and you know those six hundred people end up
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: we end up replacing their transfer case God right, Yeah,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: I mean you get into conversations like that where it's
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: like you could do this, but you know, at the
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: end of the day, GM said, no, you know, we don't.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: We don't want the headache. We're just gonna you know,
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: there's and there were other reasons right why we couldn't
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: put a bigger tire on.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting behind closed doors, it's like, what
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: is that limiting factor? And it may not always be
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: what you think it is.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but never even considered something I'm going to say
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: as trivial as that.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you wouldn't think like the transfer case chain,
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Like who's ever broken the transfer case chain?
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: You know? I never have.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: No, that's something that could be alleviated from from regearing
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: because there's there's so much kind of at least on
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: the enthusiast side of thought that once you regear your
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: axles for the appropriate size tire, it kind of keeps
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: things all in line.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah it doesn't. It doesn't, right, It keeps the engine
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: in its power band. It does help with some gear strength,
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: but not always because as you get you know, a
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: lower gear, you generally get a smaller pinion. You know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: you get smaller size on one side and the same
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: goes you know, it goes all the way upstream, right,
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: So it's never you know, and you know it could
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: be cooling, right, it could be the cooling issues. But
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: you do get into those conversations where it's, Okay, what
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: is this going to be and what's it going to
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: mean for warranty and what's you know, are we going
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: to actually, you know, we can't strand a customer, right,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: That's that's a no go. You know, can the truck
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: handle more weight? Yeah, it could, but it kind of depends.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: And when we're engineering it, we have to say with
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: kind of pick a common denominator and say, well, you know,
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: the person's going to have six hundred pounds, it's going
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: to be twenty four inches off the floor.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: So when we do our stability control testing, like in
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: a wrangler, you know, I remember like doing the Gladiator
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: and I think it was six hundred pounds and it
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: was twenty four inches off the bed of the of
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: the floor of the bed, right. So there's like these
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: specific numbers, but you know, does that mean it's going
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: to work when somebody puts a you know, a camper
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: in and it's got a very higher center of gravity
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: and they put the roof high on the roof or
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: whatever it might ye, Right, So we're trying to kind
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: of figure out worst case scenario, but not an extreme
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: I mean we can't figure out I mean, there's people
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: who are going to do crazy things all the time
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: and we can't plan for that.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but we can.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: You can do your best, and so we try and
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: do really you know, realistic worst case scenarios right for
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: most consumers. And because again, like the name of the
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: game is, you never want to strand somebody, you know.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: And cars for the most part these days, you know,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: they might have glitches, they might do this, they might
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: do that.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: But it's pretty rare that they strand anybody.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I've never been stranded. Well, that's true. I broke an
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: axle once and I had to sleep in my truck
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: before I hiked out one time in snow. But but
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: you know that was my fault too, I was I
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: deserved it. I've never had a truck really stop running
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: on me or do anything.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I haven't. I haven't either. I mean, like,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: which is crazy. You think about all the miles we
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: do I've never old stuff like vapor lock. But yeah,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: but then yeah, it cools down and you restarted or whatever.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And a special thanks to three Outdoors for their support
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of this week's podcast. The World is Messy. That's the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: price every outdoorsman pays for adventure. So when we need
• 29:45
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• 29:47
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• 29:54
  Speaker 1: it down to our own frontier. You know, the smells, sweat, smoke,
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• 30:02
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• 30:06
  Speaker 1: eliminates bacteria and odors on gear or in your home
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and in your vehicles. Our trucker bags allow you to pack, store,
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  Speaker 1: and carry your gear, cleaning it the entire time. Our
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• 30:23
  Speaker 1: It's the highest tech brought to the outdoor experience. Keep
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: your gear fresh from one frontier to another. Thanks so
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: three Outdoors, And I guess that makes it even more
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: impressive to see a mid sized truck with thirty five's
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: because what the decisions and that and how strong the
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: base platform must be just to be able to do that.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, But you know, I mean it's funny too. There's
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: there's an issue like with the the Colorado, you know,
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: going back to frame strength and stress risers and you know,
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: point loading. The race truck had, you know, had a
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: really nice cage built in it, and they literally bent
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: the frame right where the you know, but if you
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: look as right where the you know, you kind of
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: have in hindsight, it was obvious, and you know early
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: on it's like looks great, and then you get it
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: to stuff right and then you repeat it. And I
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: mean that truck still finished the race even with a
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: bent frame. But you know, it's same thing with these
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: big campers. You know, these like you see these massive
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: slide in campers. Forget some of the name.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Brands, Yeah, like a like a Lance or something like.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Five thousand pounds, you know what I mean. They're way
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: over at GVW of a thirty five hundred truck. You uh,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: you know when they the way they tie them to
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: the frame and the way they rock, and especially you
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: get those frames beaming going down the road and then
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: you put a motorcycle on the back or something and
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: it's beaming even more and it just keeps flexing right
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: in one specific point. So if you you know, it's
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: kind of interesting. If you ever look online, you can
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: go I'm sure Ford has it, I know Ram and
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Chevy new but you can go what you call the
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: bodybuilder's guide, and you can see actually how to mount
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: to a frame. And so a lot of them will
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: have a wood or plastic like a piece in between
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: the body that you're putting on in the frame, and
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: at the end they'll taper it. And so they taper
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: it so that as that frame twist, it's never stressing
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: one spot. If they just took that wood or plastic
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: isolator and just cut it straight off, it would put
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: all the load right in that one point and so
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: eventually it would crack in the web. So there is
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: a lot of engineering available online that the factories have
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: already done. And I see it, you know, in the
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: Indu side, in the telephone equipment bodies, rollbacks. I see
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: that stuff being adhered to. When I get into our industry,
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: in the overland industry, I don't see it. I see
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of like people's take like the Mercedes three
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: point frames and they think oh this, you know, this
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: works on the Mercedes. This should work on a Ford
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: or a Ram or Chevy, and it doesn't. Right, The
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: frames are completely different. The way they flex is gompletely different.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: The stress risers are completely different. So you know, what
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: works on a military truck is putting a lot of
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: stress because you know, if you have three points, if
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: you look at it from the side, really only have two,
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: and your whole campers held on two points. And it
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: puts a lot of load in the specific places. And
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: then so I do see a lot of companies chasing
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: frame problems.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: Well, how long any like oversight on this kind of stuff.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, no, the r V industry has some right,
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: there's like r V I aye, which is maybe just
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: means it's you.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Know, they're just keeping it from the wood blowing up.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, propimal stuff, but there's it's still so early. Yeah,
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: and you know, and people are spending a lot of
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: money on these things.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: They spend a lot of money on there's you know,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: there will be some buyers remorse, right, A lot of
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: people aren't going to say like, oh, that was a
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: bad decision. Yeah, you know, I do have a lot
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: of problems. You know, this this broke that broke.
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: A lot of people just won't say that they have problems.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Because they're confirm it's confirmation bias. They want to they
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: want to make sure that that there that their big
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: purchase still looks good.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Human nature of course.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: Like the big expedition stuff, we're finally starting to see
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: more of, like the international chassiss, Like what Spencer is
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: doing with a lot of things with plus Mobile. It's
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: kind of the right direction, you know.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know he's one that he's got a
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: really nice subframe. You know, there are some there are
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: some things changing. You know, Spencer's got a nice subframe.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: I've seen what the guys at Truckhouse are doing. Yeah,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: super nice.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: And you're kind of involved in the Truckhouse on like
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: a consultant design level. Yeah, we're just enthusiastic about it both.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, those guys when I saw what they did, you know,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: not so much with the toilet because I was like,
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: how is that going to happen?
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: Everybody wanted what they built on the Toyota.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Yep, it was a good idea.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: It was a good on a full sized chassis.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Well, even the.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: Toileta I thought it was a good idea in high
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: like if you're just looking on paper, it was a
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: good idea because that space wasn't taken right. The smaller
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: I can park it in a park, not at eighty
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: four or one hundred and eleven inch cab chassis. I
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: mean it's it's small.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: The old sun Raider that everybody wanted.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: Which is how they got going yet. But when I
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: saw the quality of the camper they were building, with
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: the carbon and the phone core and the way they
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: were doing it, I was, I'll tell you, I haven't
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: been impressed, you know, our industry was. You know, I
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: haven't been that impressed with anybody really in almost my
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: whole career. I mean, they really know what they're doing
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: with the composite end of it.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: So and they're so passionate about it. Yeah, anytime I've
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: ever talked to them, those guys are great.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Yep, they are.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: And so what we did with them is they decide, Okay,
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: we're going to use your chassis. Because I approached them,
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: I say, you know, this camp is awesome, but you
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: should consider a higher chassis. And they were like, it
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: wasn't a hard cell, right. They kind of knew after
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: do it the hard way right, And so so then
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: it got into well, you know, maybe some consulting on
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: how to mount it, and then also how to we
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: did a lot of the extra styling.
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it has those like aerofoils.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yea to reduce the buffeting none sides, and just
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: some strength and a lot of crown. It's a really
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: sophisticated surface.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: It.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: You know, you might look at it and say, oh,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: it's you know, it looks like another camper, but when
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: I'm sure when you see it in person, you're gonna
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: see all the crown and the tumble home and and
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: it's a really sophisticated surface done by automotive designers.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Sure, And so it's it's different than what's in the industry.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: It's subtle, but it's different and.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: And still looks good.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: And the way they build it, you know, they're they're
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: actually machining both like five access machining the CNC cores
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: or five access CNC machining the core. Right, So the
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: core it's a two inch thick like really highly specialized
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: foam core that they're you know, they're packing it between
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: two layers of carbon and it's it ends up being
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: like a giant yety cooler. But I mean there's nobody
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: who would see NC machine all the phone.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: They're kind of a high end marine background, right, Yeah.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so they're they're doing some interesting things over there,
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: and I've seen some of the the early early parts
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: and it's it's kind of mind blowing.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: And it looks it looks like a launch date on that.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've talked to him a couple of times. I've
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: talked to him a couple of times, but it Yeah,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: that's that's a hard job. It's gonna it's gonna take
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: twice as long and cost twice as much.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: It will.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: But I think with those guys having to form is
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: it's you know, the quality of that shell is is unmatched.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, you have somebody like Spencer and the Bliss Mobile,
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: which I think are unbelievable.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: Different concept, but it's that concept is, yeah, you have
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: the asset that you can then make to another truck
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: when it works.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: It's totally different. Yeah, it's totally different. And these guys
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: are going you know, I think Spencer's smallest is with
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: the eighty four inch. Yeah, these guys are focusing on
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: two things. One that's interesting. It's a thirty five hundred
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: because they can do the weight and it's a sixty
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: inch cabed axle, so it's it's basically a two door.
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: Long bed really four door long and maneuverable with that.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's normal truck.
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: No no, no, it doesn't have the hight here, it doesn't.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: Know, So that's the disadvantage of thirty five hundred doesn't
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: have the high to your axle, but it does have
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: the ability put locking difts in, and they'll be able
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: to do a fifty five hundred, which does have the hightier,
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: but then you can't do the locking difts, so it's
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: kind of a it's a trade off. Yeah, but I
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: think you know, and we're doing those fifty five hundred
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: chassis now for both those guys.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: And anybody just buy those and.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: Yep, yep, yeah, And that's that's a whole other conversation
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: now that came about. But and that's a that's an
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: interesting one too. But it's really interesting on the thirty
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: five hundred because their their camper is so lightweight that
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: they're at that eighty percent rule even with just a
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: thirty five hundred.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Wow, and how much water are they gonna have on board.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I think you know it's like forty gallons,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: it's not. It's not like full earth Romer numbers, but
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: it's it's I think.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: It's they're paying attention to Wait, they.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: Could definitely take that a lot more places. You talk
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: about that beaming thing, which is a term that I
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: learned from you, Scott, which you learned from Dave.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: That's where I learned it from.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: Like you feel that on these large trucks.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: H Yeah, and it's physics right there.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: Well, it's that, it's that What is this like weird
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: like wave going through my chassis? Yep, you know it's
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: a big limiting factor where you can take the thing.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Which leads me to a question. We're seeing more trucks
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: coming out with rear coil sprung solid axe suspensions. So
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: the aft component of that frame is now no longer
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: supported by a rear shackle and a leaf sprung leaf spring.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: So one of the advantages of the leaf spring is
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: it is putting the weight onto those two points. What
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: what are your thoughts around the coil sprung rear suspensions.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's a good thing? Have they figured
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: out how to make the frame strong enough.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So you know that's that's a really interesting thing.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Like if you take and I know, you know, I
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: know Towyto has a coil spring now, but like's just
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: say RAM because I know that better. But the RAM
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: frame on a let's say, a twenty five hundred pickup
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: is so much stiffer than like a thirty five hundred
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: cab chassis. Like a thirty five hundred cab chassis will
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: twist like you won't believe, got it? I mean, so
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: mounting to it for off road you can really be
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: a challenge. On the other hand, you have this really
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: stiff suspension or can be stiff to handle a lot
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: of load, but you can still get a good articulation, right,
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: whereas a twenty five hundred that frame is just like
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: monumentally stiffer than a cab chassis. So you could like
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: rigid mount it camper onto a twenty five hundred, you know,
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: like Clay's got one, right, He's got his flatbed and
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: then a four whalal camper and you know, you use
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: it and there's no issues. And that's because granted his
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: is the thirty five hundred with air, but even the
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: thirty five hundred pickup frame is monumentally stiffer than a
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: cab chassis frame, and so you don't get a lot
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: of the beaming and that has to do with wheelbase too,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: a lot of that. But but you know, you it
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: just it puts a lot more load into the suspension
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: and takes it away from the frame. But you're right,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: it only puts it in the one point. Yeah, And
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: so I mean, take a look at a RAM twenty
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: five hundred frame. It's really stout, I mean unbelievably stout,
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: and it's engineered for it, and they were able to
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: do some really unique things with geometry on that to
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: make it stable, even though the springs are relatively narrow. Yeah,
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: that truck works well, and I'm assuming.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: I'm impressed by it. We had a rebel with the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: rear locker and the coil sprung rear. Yeah, the twenty
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: five hundred just a couple of weeks ago, and I
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: got it fully articulated where wheels were off the ground
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: and the gaps, the bed gap to the body. You
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: couldn't tell that. It was pretty almost almost imperceptible, which
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: normally full sized trucks, like if you look at a
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: tremor or whatever for there's a lot of flex.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yep.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: So with leaf springs, there's a lot of tricks that
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: you can do. And yeah, you're taking a lot of
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: it up with a spring in a stiffer frame. Yeah,
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: I'm guessing that Toyota is probably similar. Yeah, you know,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: we've talked about a lot with other trucks.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: One of the big or Gladiator Gladiators I worry about.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I just worry about you see these a lot of
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: big campers on Gladiators because they have a seventeen hundred
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: pound payload in certain configurations, that's got to be a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: lot of weight.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: So and some of that's geometry, right, So Gladiator basically
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: shares a lot of the rear suspension of the fifteen
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: hundred ram. In fact, all the actual components are carryover,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: but geometry is a little bit different. But they you know,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: they were smart when they did the Gladiator. They didn't
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: just take the wrangler suspension put it back there. They
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: re engineered the whole rear suspension so it can handle
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: some weight. And I don't have a lot of experience
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: with Gladiator with a lot of weight because I've never
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: built one up for myself, So I don't know, but
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: I imagine they were pretty decent.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was always something I worry about.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: I mean I had one. The only funky thing with
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: the gladiator doing a kind of a camper build is
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: that the front of the bed was attached with like
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: hydraulic mounts. So the like the I think.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: It's the back of the cabs, is.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: It the back of the cab the cab either way,
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: it would flex so much. The chassis wasn't flexing. It
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: was actually the camper itself would move so much. I
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: had maybe two or three inches of clearance maybe more
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: between the roof and the eighty summit. And if you
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: like sent it over something, it would smell Like the
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: first time it smacked, I was like what in the hay?
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Interesting?
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: And if you go back to that Bodybuilder's guide, and
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: granted there's not one for a gladiator, but all those
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: dimensions are in the Bodybuilder Guide, So you know there
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: should be a three inch gap between the back of
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: the cab and a camper. You know, same on the
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: roof they have a lot of those dementis. Are you
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: know there's there's got to be eight inches. I think
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: it's eight and a half on a ram, you know,
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: from the top of the tire to the to the
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: top of whatever's above it, right, And I see a
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: lot of flatbeds that aren't even close to that. But
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: it's interesting there are there's so much free information out
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: there that that can be you know, adhered to, or
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: like how to cut the back of the cab out right,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: and you don't see hardly anybody in our industry. I
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: don't think it's ever read that because you know, it
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: clearly states how you're supposed to do it, and I
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: rarely see it done. You know, like they have those
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: specs for ambulances and things like that. But there's a
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: there's a wealth of resource on the internet with those
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: bodybuilder guides that you know, people should try to adhere to.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: And you've really helped me look at the full size
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: domestic pickups very different. I mean when you talk to
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: just even a few years ago, we were having a
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: conversation about like the headroom that they build into those
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: trucks for handling heat and towing and people that are
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: going to overload them and pay I mean it, it
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: definitely changed my view on how durable those trucks are
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: and then of course when we were able to drive
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: them up to Tuck Tyuk Tuck and just you know,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: traveling in them, I'm like, this is I mean, it
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: changed my view on full size for sure.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're pretty comfortable.
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: Well, they're not that much bigger, particularly like the ram stuff.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Even with the quad cab and the short bed, they're
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: only a couple inches bigger than like a Gladiator. Yeah,
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: that was that was what killed my Gladiator for me.
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: As I went to the dealer for service or something
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: and I parked next to a twenty five hundred and
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: I kind of did a double take. As I walked back,
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: I'm like, huh, they were basically the same size.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's true, especially if you look at footprint,
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: you know, the silhouette footprint. Yeah, the difference is because
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: the Gladiator and jeeps inherently, you know, they have the
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: tire sticking out, the wheel stick out, So yes, they
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: are the same, you know, quote unquote or I'll just
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: say it approximately. With the difference is the body so
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: much error. So when you do get them in off
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: road situations, just inherently there's so much better than you know,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: a mid size or a full size because they're they're
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: tucked in right.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: And that's what that's what I like about it. I mean,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: as I'm trying to decide what is the next vehicle
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: that I want to build, I'm stuck between like wanting
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: to go with the Gladiator because of the capability.
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: You end up using it when you when when you
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: when you commit to like the camper route within.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Radiator, I don't know when I took that. It took
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: that at four and Hell's Revenge like I wanted. I
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: want to do that stuff. I like pushing, pushing the platforms.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: I enjoy it.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Truck knows it, you know you can.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: I mean I've taken full sized trucks in all kinds
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: of spots and you know, you just have to learn
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: to like use the whole trail, you know, and they
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: they generally will go and they'll generally go, you know,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: unless there's some big hard rock stopping it from fitting.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: It's gonna get.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like you have to learn to use
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: every into the trail and so that can you know,
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: that can get to be a challenge and the you know,
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: what I find is that the biggest challenge with campers
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: is the height. Yeah, you know, to me, like even
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: in my little jeep camper, the outposts, it's always like
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: the height is the really the only things that's ever
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: like turn.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: And you've even you even had angles on the side
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: so you can make it a little more.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: And like we did the styling for the truckhouse, we
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: actually did a rub rail so you can lean it
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: over in the trees or rocks to an easily repairable
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: you know, it's it makes a steel rail, but repairable
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: in terms of like touch up paint, sure, but it's
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: set up with rubrails so you can tip it into
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: stuff and not really worry about it.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: That was pretty crazy, that stuff I would rub that
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: scout up against like it was a shocking how well
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: it held up to that. It definitely it reframed my
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: understanding of the just how appropriate full sized trucks are.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: And also so most of the agencies, the BLM and
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: the four Service, they all drive full sized trucks around
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: on those trails.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: And that's that's true from here to South America, right,
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: and all the governments are using half ton of full
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: sized trucks, you know, from here all the way to
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: South America. So you generally find that most most places
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: unless you're really trying to do like moapp type trails. Right,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: for the most part, you know, you can do eighty
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: five ninety percent of any trail with a full sized truck.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: It's just you have to learn how to drive it.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: And then there are disadvantages, but you know, for most people,
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: the advantages of having that added headroom of capability and
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: just the general comfort. Like when you do get on
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: the highway and you want to go someplace.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: It's pretty shocking how comfortable they are.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you set the crews at eighty and you've got
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: one thousand pounds feet torque in all these new trucks.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's pretty mind blowing how easy it is.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: And frankly, you know on a lot of these, you know,
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: like I know, the guys a truck house when they
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: were dealing with their weight numbers. If you'd really look
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: at their weight, I mean, you can still tow Mastercraft
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: or something, and you can still tow toys and still
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: have a capability because their weight is so low, yeah,
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: which is pretty awesome, you know. And the truck's not
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: even those.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: There, and now you're not looking just at ram and
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: tremor from forward but now GMC and Chevrolet has their
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: HDS with a rear locker. You know, they've gotten rid
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: of that G eighty and some of the specs, which
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: is a really I think having a driver selectable locker
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: is a key thing. But then you've also got the
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: only heavy duty truck with independent front suspension, and they
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: nailed it with having the multimatic suspension with independent on
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: a truck with I mean the one that I was driving,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: which had all of your stuff on it, like all
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the metal bumpers, thirty fives and everything else. It's still
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: at a twenty six hundred pund payload and it had
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: all of the stuff on it.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: Eighteen pounds. So what interesting to me was because like
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: a tremor for example, is it's very capable. I like
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: the look of the Ford, but it is abusive on
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the trail when it's not heavily loaded. So even if
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: you were to put like a standard camper in the back,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: it's it's an abusive ride quality. The rams a little
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: bit better in stock form I'm talking about stock vehicles. Yeah,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: but that the thirty five inch tall tires with the
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: multimatic and the independent front like the it was actually
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: fun to wheel the GMC.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think, you know, I think with the
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: thirty five. Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I think the tire pressures, like max tire pressure that
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: I think is like sixty yeah high or something like that.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: So you know, if you're not loaded, you can you know,
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: you can run it less. And I mean so when
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: you get these bigger tires on and you can run
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: lower pressures, they instantly become less abusive. Then you combine
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: that with a multimatic shock and a little bit of
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: weight in the back and they're pretty comfortable. And yeah,
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: that independent suspension definitely has some advantages, you know. And
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: that's something like people always ask me which is better,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: which will I like more, And it's like or they're
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: all good trucks, Yeah, every single one of them. Amazing
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: truck and they all have good things and there's so
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: few bad things. You just kind of have to pick
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: which one you like, which one works for your mission better.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and also just acknowledging that you'll hear people complain
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: that like a tremor doesn't come with a front locker,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: and it's like it's a thousand foot pounds of torque.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Some some buyers twelve hundred, now I thinkeah, yeah, some
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: buyer is going to get onto the trail. They're going
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: to go full lock to the left and they're going
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: to lock that front diff and like it is going
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: to explode no matter how big the diff is. So
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that's why they don't do that.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: They don't put them.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: And that's why, you know, I mean besides sales, you know,
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: that's a big advantage of having automatic transmissions is they
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: can reduce that.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: Right, So just because a truck says it has a
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: thousand or twelve hundred, you know, it doesn't mean you
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: get it.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: You know, so if you can it adjust even even
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: if you're in four low and does it know the
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: main shaft angle of the steering wheel, does it?
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: They know everything?
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Oh so they could even back it off there.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: They know how much your passenger ways.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, they their sensors for every little thing in
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: that truck and they're going around on that can bus,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: you know, hundreds of thousands of messages, you know, within
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: you know seconds, They know everything at every time. So yeah,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: they can they can definitely do things. You know, they could.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know if they do, because I haven't you know,
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I don't know that particular software, but they can absolutely
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: manage the torque in a number of situations. You know,
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: if you're in four low for high, what temperatures are
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: you know, horsepower equals heat, right btu's or one of
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: the same. So they can definitely do all that stuff.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they're gonna, they're gonna. They can reduce
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: torque on so many different things, and and so it
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: is an advantage for them to have these automatic transmissions
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: because they can start you out in second for instance. Yeah,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: they can do any number of things like the.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: Rates to throttle on a lot of the full sized trucks,
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: and like first gear.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you know, because otherwise
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: you just smoke those tires, just absolutely.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: Just the wide emissions with the eat speeds or ten speeds,
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: the first gear is generally pretty low.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: It was interesting because I had that, like the Stock
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: twenty five hundred, and then I had the twenty five
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: hundred Prospector Excel immediately after it, and you know that
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: right turn that we have to make. Okay, there's always
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: gravel there. Oh yeah, I could not get the stock
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: twenty five hundred hook up at all, like it would
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: just sit there and spin. I had to be I
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: had to have so much room to get going every time.
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: And the prospector, I think just maybe a little bit
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: a little bit bigger tires at the time, you couldn't
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: regear them just hooked up and I could.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: I could go well, and you have a bigger footprint.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, softer, you know, lower pressure, I mean that stuff,
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: you know, it all makes differences.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: One of the things I see with RAM guys all
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: the time is they'll put a light bar. There's this
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: perfect hole in the front bumper and in anything thirteen
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: or newer, they move the intercooler down there, and that
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: is your inner cooler air, you know. And on the
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: on the twelve and earlier trucks, you could put a
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: light bar in this perfect hole in the bumper and
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: it looks really cool, and it's it's all curved and
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: it looks really ideal. But I still see it today,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: you know, on anything thirteen and newer, you're basically just
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: reducing your horse power drastically. Yeah, right, And so people
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: don't understand that, and and it doesn't really set a
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: warning unless it's really really bad. It doesn't set a warning,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: but it just starts degrading power. So then of course,
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: you know, these same guys will go and they like,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: this thing needs more power or whatever. Yeah, and some
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: of you know, the bank stuff is really good. You know,
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: they do some real engineering, but a lot of the
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: stuff is you know, it'll take away certain safeties and
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: you know, then it's just it's then they start unraveling
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: this weather, right, taking that thread and unraveling it, and
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: so it's one thing after another, and all of a sudden,
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: you know, they're wondering why their number six cylinder went out.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Well, And that's a perfect segue into one of the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: things that we wanted to talk about, which is the
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: advantage of buying an OEM. You know, high performance model
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: is because all of that stuff is taken into consideration.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: You know that in the ways that you can talk
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: about it, like help the listener understand what is the
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: advantage of buying a high performance package from an OEM
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: as opposed to just building it yourself. What are some
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: of the I mean, what are some of the disadvantages too?
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: Maybe let's see.
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: Disadvantages on the surface would be cost because you're having
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: to buy it all at once, and and it can
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: definitely seem expensive, right because I think you know, all
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: of us as humans, we kid ourselves on what something
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: actually costs when we are modifying it and chasing down
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: this and that and the other thing, and you know,
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: and a lot of it, we conveniently forget about a
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: lot of those costs. We conveniently forget about. So in
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: terms of disadvantages, I would say that's that's the number
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: one thing. And then you know, as a number two,
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: it's like maybe you have a special mission that's different,
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Maybe you want to do something different, you know, because
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: as like as an aftermark company, when we're working with
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: the OEM, we are aiming for, you know, the ninety
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: nine percent distribution, we don't have the ends right of that.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: You know, we have a standard deviation R. We don't
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: have the ends of that. So you know, there are
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: customers that what we build may not work for them.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, and so highly specialized scenarios.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: Yeeah, highly specialized or you know in some of its opinion, right,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: I mean keep in mind our ads typical customer, like
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: let's say with a wrangler is somebody who's already tried
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: to build three wranglers at least, you know, it's three.
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: And at this point they're like, I just want to
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: I don't want to, I don't want to play with it.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: I want it to work, and I just.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: I don't want to turn wrenches. I just wanted to.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: Are you're.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Exactly yeah, true and so and that's you know, and
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: that's that's our typical customer. Sure they've they've been there,
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: done that. Now they just want to like use the car,
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: because there's there's a hobby in itself of modifying the
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: car and seeing what works and what doesn't, and then.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Which could be fun in and of itself.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: And then and then there's also you know, I want
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: something with all the factory engineering that just.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Works and a warranty, and for a lot of a
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: lot of people that they can get a lower interest
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: rate on the total vehicle as opposed to what they
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: would pay for their credit card bill if they were
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: buying winches and bumpers and stuff.
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: I think there's also, just as somebody who's learned this
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: the hard way, there's also the time cost. I think
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: of of Mike Laudiator, for example, was all a the outfitted.
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: But I had to deal with all of that and
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: if I up what I spent at the local four
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: wheel drive shop at you know, depending where you are
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: in the country, that's between one hundred and twenty five
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: to two hundred dollars an hour for that labor cost
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: and then your time and effort at having to pick
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: this thing up. And it was a fun project. Yeah,
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: but just I mean maybe it's a from a place
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: of privilege, but just being able to write the check
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: and being done with it. I was able to enjoy
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: that vehicle from day one versus having to have this
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: build process.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: Over you when you had the prospector you were just
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: able to enjoy were able to enjoy it and it
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: was done.
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I would say it's so it's easier to
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: talk about the advantages because the advantages to a consumer
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: is you get an amount of engineering, Like when we
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: do something with THEE it even surpasses like what we
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: would normally do as AEV because we have all these
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: internal what all call customers within GM or GEP or Chrysler,
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: you know whatever. We have these internal customers that we
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: have to answer to, right, so you have to you know,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: like these aftermarket bumpers that you may go buy. They
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: definitely haven't been through crash. They definitely haven't been through
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: cooling testing. You know, they definitely haven't been through modal
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: which is like the frequency that it resonates at and
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: can cause major problems with you know, frame cracking and
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: just performance in general. They definitely haven't been through corrosion testing.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: You know, all these things, you know, sensors, I mean,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: especially it's getting more and more as you know, as
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: we go on in the future with all this autonomous
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: driving and the sensor packs required. I mean, you may
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: have three sensor three radars, you'll have six ultrasonic sensors,
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: you may have you know, three cameras up front. I mean,
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: this is just like average stuff. The average sensor pack
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: is is getting pretty extreme. And then you're trying to
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: you know, guess what those sensors want to be right
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: where your winches, right where toil hooks are, and.
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: So many people are just like, oh, I don't care
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: about that stuff, but it's actually really nice to have.
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: Well there's more than just the active cruise control that
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: people think it is as well.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, also as a as a consumer,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: I mean you could be held liable, like would do
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: this autonomous driving if you go and modify it and
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: it's not up to up to standards. You know, rear
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: park sensors. Do they work in aftermarket powers?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: They do. Have they been tested? You know?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: Do they really meet the criteria? No, they just don't
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: set a code and that work. That's yeah, you know
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: mostly Eff Mark says, okay, well that's that works. Yeah,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: it doesn't really meet the actual like government stated criteria,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: which there is. You know, we're always we're always having
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: to deal with that, you know, I mean block heater plugs.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: I mean there's there's.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: There's block heater plug that's on that twenty HD so
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: cool and has its own little it's a little portant
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: flap and everything that.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Isn't the wind controller.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: No, it's a block heater plug. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: it's interesting you know that even those you end up
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: gets getting a lot more engineering. You know, there's some
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: stuff that doesn't matter. Yeah in certain certain ways, like
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: where that does that block heater go?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: That does matter for our internal customers, you know, for
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: the guys putting it on guys and gals should say,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: putting it on on the plant. You know, whether that
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: thing comes in on the bumper, whether it doesn't. You know,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: can somebody install it. The ergonomics, you know, are they
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: going to get carpal tunnel? Like we have to design
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: around that stuff. And that doesn't really matter for an
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: end consumer necessarily, But there is a lot of stuff
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: that does matter for the end consumer, like weight, like modal,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: like cooling, corrosion.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Especially corrosion.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, corrosion is a big one.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, we provide we have to provide a I
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: guess it's like the equivalent of a fifteen year corrosion warranty.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: So you know, all that stuff has to go in
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: and get tested. You know, it gets tested with gravel
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: and for creep and there's all kinds of testing that
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: you know, the aftermarket couldn't afford to do. Yeah, crash
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: testing is a good one. I mean, you know, I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: think it's like, and this is going back a number
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: of years, but the last time I saw the numbers,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: it was like a million dollars to set up one test.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: There's eleven tests required, you know, to meet compliance, and
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: you do that first, and that's like the small portion
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: of the costwise, I mean because we're doing it all
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: in the computer simulated first. And again I can't talk
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: about current stuff, but on the old stuff, I mean,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: we could see, you know, like where unbelted we have
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: to test for an unbelted passenger, right, so you think
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: about that. It's state law that you have to wear
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: your seatbelt, but we still have to test for unbelted passengers.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: And we had an issue where like the sun visor,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: the bumper was going down on an impact because of
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: how it was mounted, and the truck was going up
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: no vice versa. I'm sorry, the bumper went up and
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: the truck went down, and the unbelted passenger was hitting
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: the sun visor and it would put load into the neck.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: And so we had to like readjust how the bumper
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: was mounted, so the bumper would go the other direction,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: the bumper would go down and the truck would go
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: up and clear the guy's head. I mean, so there's
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: stuff like that.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: That you never consider.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: And yeah, you never.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: Consider it, but there's a lot to it, you know,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: And there's there's really a lot. And I gotta give
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of the companies that are trying
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: to do this, the OEMs a lot of credit because
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: to do, especially like a front bumper takes a lot
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: I mean a lot of extra work. And there's and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: it's not just like you know, AEV doesn't just show
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: up with this bumper design and give it to GM
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: or GP or whoever and say, you know, here you go.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: I mean there's.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: Thousands of people on on the OE side who are
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: putting a lot of effort engineering and feedback and saying
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: this works with our truck, this doesn't, And and it's
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: like it's a lot of there's i mean, give credit
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: where credits due.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: These oees are really going out of their way.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: It would be so easy say no, I mean you
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: talk eleven million dollars in testing for a bumper with
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: these eleven.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Tests, yeah, or you end up with a size truck
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: without to hooks on the front because it was probably
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: just easier.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of times it is.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: And so so there's a lot of people who are
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: putting a lot of effort into this stuff for the consumer, right,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: the consumers want it really benefits. I mean, yes, these
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: companies are all in competition with each other, they're own
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: competition for these consumers. So at the end of the day,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: though the consumers. I mean, just look at the Rubicon.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: What a you know, boon it's been for the on
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: the consumer side that you should buy, you know, a
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: vehicle like this or the new Bison. I mean, you know,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: speaking like the new stuff. If you look at the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: new mid size Colorado Bison or GMC Canyon, I mean
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: that thing's nuts. I mean it's got everything you could
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: have ever asked for.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, you and I would have thought we
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: like died and went to heaven to get a thirty
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: five inch stock thirty fives winch front and rear lockers.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: Like multimatic multi multimatic bump stops. I mean, that's basically
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: the stops for the big game changer. For me, it's
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: essentially the same suspension. Chad Hall's team has been racing
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: for a couple of years, right, and that truck has
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: finished every Best in Desert series. I mean that's pretty impressive.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: And you can go buy as factory lift. It's got
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: bumpers front and rear with steel and you know corners
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: and all the boron steel skid plates. Yeah, and those
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: those skid plates. Honestly, the boron steel is the best
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: material for making skid plates.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Out of it's it's impressive how thin it is for
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: how strong it is.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've been wanting to figure out how I
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: can afford to make them for the you know, for
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: dirt bikes because or could you imagine Juel sport bikes.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: It slides so well over the rocks. It's so hard.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: You know, it's a press hard and steel, so it's
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: really hard. So when you when you slide on it, it
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: doesn't slide like aluminium or plastic.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I mean where it hangs up.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I would say, because those things
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: will gouch, right, and it's like their second maybe would right.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: It's like a terrible material and it steals too heavy, right,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: but the boron steel, it's really.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: I remember at your at your facility in Michigan, you
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: guys have like Chad Hall's different. I mean there is
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: not not an ounce of paint left on this thing, right,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: but there's I remember like there was only a couple
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: very light gouges, probably from hitting something monstrous.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: Well, when you think about he goes after the trophy trucks,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: after the trucks with forties. You know those trucks are
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: forty two's now, right, he's got thirty five and he's
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: dragging that thing and I think that was two seasons
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: if I'm not mistaken.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we got that back just to show we clear
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: coded it right.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: To show it's awesome.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's it's amazing. Yeah, that's it was literally
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: drug for hundreds of miles of the desert.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing I wanted to ask you, because I
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: think it's it's it's interesting, is on your bumpers you use,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: if I'm getting this correct, their iron nodular iron recovery
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: points thumb. Yeah, now what and it looks like it's
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: a it's a whole separate part of the bumper, And
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: why do you go with those? And it looks like
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the even function as a skid a little bit? What
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: are some of the advantage of that kind of a
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: recovery part point the.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: And it's not all our nodular iron that looked like
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: they may be. Like for instance, the first generation Colorado
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: rear bumper was actually aluminum. Half ton ram was aluminum,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: but it was a cast aluminum. It was a very
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: strong alloy, and we did those for weight right, but
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: with but in general with a casting just the material
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: properties end up being very stiff, and so it ends
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: up the way when we bound it to a bumper,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: it ends up spreading the load in such a way
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: that it can spread the load more effectively than if
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: we just went with like uh, you know plate had
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: some plate steel in there. Yeah, and then there's the advantage,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: you know, it ends up looking.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Cool the original.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Like when we first did them on the ram, it
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: was really to get that load spread out and and
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: it just works, you know, and we're doing more and
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: more casting the problem castings that can be really heavy,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: so you know, today we're doing a lot of what's
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: called topology optimization, so we can really place the material
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: where we need to be, but end up with a
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: really rigid part.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: So if you think about like a winch mount, for instance,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: if it's made out of plate steel, it could yield
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: just like on one frame rail, right if you're just
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: pulling on one toe hook on the side of a
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: winch moult. But when it's a casting, it's so rigid
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: that it'll start pulling on the other side too, and
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: so we can really spread the load through. You know,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: even if it's a really asymmetrical pool, we can spread
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: the load through both frame rails. And that's kind of
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: one of the big problems with a lot of these
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: trucks is especially for us coming in on something that
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: you know, the truck already exists, right, So we're trying
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: to make a frame rail that was never designed It
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: was designed to be pushed on, you know, or designed
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: to hold a load from top, but it really was
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: never designed to be pulled on. And so that can
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: be a real struggles how to get these load paths
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: through the frame rails. And and that's another good thing
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: just knowing what I know now a lot of the
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: aftermarket doesn't necessarily get it right. Yeah, right when you
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: like I can look at almost you know, I can
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: look at most bumpers and be like I can know
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: what problems we had with the actual structural data and
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: and know like ninety percent of these things you know,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: aren't gonna they would never pass either, you know, they'd
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: never pass because we had to go back and do things.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: And you know, getting back to that modal.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: You know you've been like you've had the experience of
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: getting just the right speed and frequency on a washboard
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: and the whole truck lights up. Well, like if you
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: watch that on slow motion camera. I mean, the whole
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: truck would look like a noodle and you'd see these
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: things that are amazingly stiff, and all of a sudden
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: it'll start flexing and you can start you know, hitting
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: bumpers to headlights, you know, whatever it may be, where
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: you can you know, start doing frame damage because this bumper,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: which may may weigh one hundred pounds or even more,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: when you have a winch in it, and if you
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: get it to light up at the same frequency as
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: a frame, you get a major issues. And so like
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: that's part of the Like, that's that's a good example
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: of testing that. You know, sometimes we have to make
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: our bumpers lustif now we have to make a siffer.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we just have to get him out of the
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: range of what the frame would be or what the
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: truck would ever see frame and suspension, and so we
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: do a lot of stuff like that that.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've talked about frequency tuning before, like even in suspension.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: Generally in suspension, yeah, we do a lot of frequency tuning.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: But most most aftermarket suspension companies don't do that. I
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: didn't even know about frequency tuning until I talk to
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: gym friends and he's like, well, let me explain how
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: this thing works. And it was like whoa, yeah, unbelievable.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: And that's really easy again in the aftermarket, you know,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: and that's like the reason we don't do springs on
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: a RAM is because there's I think, what did I
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: when it come up with there's forty four front springs
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: on a on a RAM twenty five hundred and eighteen
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: rear springs. And you know, as we all know, those
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: OEMs will not spend a penny more than they have to.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: And yet they've determined that because of all the configurations
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: of truck, there's forty four front springs that required eighteen rears.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: There's millions of dollars of engineering in all those springs.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: They're all set for very specific wheelbases, cab configurations, engine configurations,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: and that's a good thing. Like if you go to
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: the aftermarket and you're looking at your company and you're saying, oh,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: I want you know, I want the suspension, and you know,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: if they only offer you a gas or a diesel
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: spring and maybe one rear spring, you know, there's there's
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: a problem there, right, You're not gonna get the best.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: And again, people have buyers or more so, do they
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: make a decision because they make a decision, and they'll
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: never they'll never admit otherwise, and maybe they don't know,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: maybe they've never driven another truck now, But there's there's
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: very specific reasons why, you know, logically, we choose to
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: do things certain ways.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: Right on jeep.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: We do provide springs because you know, but we have
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: two door and four door and we have gas and
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: diesel for by e. Yeah, we do have those extra springs.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: So if you're you know, if you're after market company,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: is not providing different springs for different jobs, not just
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: different heights or different motor maybe like in the case
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: of a RAM, you know, that's a good indication that
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: the engineering is not really there.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Interesting, man, this has been an awesome conversation. I've I've
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: learned exactly. Yeah, I've learned a lot in this, Dave.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: So what I've always wanted to ask you this, what
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: are maybe one or two things a couple of things
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: that you've learned when you started doing all of this
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: work that you kind of had set in stone, like
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: this is what I believed, and now that you've done
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: all of this with the OEMs, what what have you
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: changed your mind on, Like, what was a big thing
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: that you're like, man, in the beginning, it was all
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: about big tires, and now I realized this, or or
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: what's something that you've really changed your mind on in
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: your in your own time with your own vehicles and
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: maybe not, maybe maybe not, But for me it was
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: full size. For me, it was full sized trucks, Like
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: I always had an aversion to them and I never
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: owned one, and and now they're so good that and
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed it changed my mind on them.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: I think once we started making parts for full sized trucks,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: I think that started making people look at them a
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: little bit more because those parts exist because you know,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day, there are those there's
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: a lot of people who it's a hobby and maybe
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: a full size truck they can justify more than a jeep,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: and and now they can have a hobby. But there's
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: also that just kind of added capability for us. We
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: started out really involved with Jeep and then so many
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: people were like, I want to do this, I want
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: to do this, and it just you know, I think
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: it was that one trip where I was like, I
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: want a camper Jeep and I didn't know how to
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: do it with the weight and at the time, and
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: so I was like, well, I'm just going to build
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: a RAM and toe a jeep. It'll never know it's
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: back there.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: The ram's got a lot of capability because I've been
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: driving rams around with a I don't know if you
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: remember this, by had a fifty seven foot wedge trailer.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: I remember with four jeeps and I was doing what
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: it took, you know, to get the company off the ground.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: And I was towing that thing thirty two thousand pounds
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: going down the road right way over. I mean, never
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: got never had any issues with it, you know, legally
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: or that. And I wouldn't recommend it every time. I
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: literally every time I pull them as well as I
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: wonder if this will be the last time that you
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: get I'm going to see this, because I mean it
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: was terrifying driving that thing. I mean, they m handled
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: it right. I had a you know, ramdually. I put
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: hundreds of thousand miles on two Ram dulys towing that thing.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: But it was always terrifying to me towing that much weight,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: you know, going down the freeway. But I did realize,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: on the other hand, like this truck can handle four
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: jeeps on it, you know, one over the roof and
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: three on the back of the wedge. And you know
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: it never complained, right, I mean I woreped one exhaust
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: manifold because I was as a manual. And you could
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: do that, then, right, it would you would allow you
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: to overpower it. But I just realized how much capability
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: of those trucks had, you know, And again, do not
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: recommend that for anybody.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: But yeah, but again, you were trying to make a
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: go of it, Like like the risks that you've taked,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: I've seen you take.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you have to take As.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: An entrepreneur, you have to go all in.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've always been kind of a high risk,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: high reward guy, but I always try and really apply
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: logic and talk it over and you know, talk out loud,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: and and you know, my partner has a great saying
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: about believing your own bullshit, and so we try not
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: to believe our own bullshit.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't believe your own press.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: Release your own press relief. That's right, That's like number one.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: And so that's that's always kind of really steered us, right,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: and steered us to make decisions that aren't necessarily always
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: favorable to our competition, right, They're generally more conservative in
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: our claims. And that's that's always a frustration for me,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: because you know, there are other companies that will just
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: come out say whatever. And it's because I could sit there,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: this is a good thing about or a funny thing
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: about consumers. And I'll talk about this for a second.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: But one of the things that frustrates me a lot
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: is I can I can walk somebody through all the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: logical decisions. This must be true, this must be true,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: this must be true.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: This is why.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: And I can sit with somebody for three hours and
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: one of my competitors can come in and say, no,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: mine's better. And literally, if a customer wants to believe
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: that one's better or they think that, you know, because
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: I will tell somebody this is not gonna work for you.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: This is not you know, our suspension is not the
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: equivalent of a trophy truck, right, which is not. But
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: it also you know, does goes down the road different.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: But but if I have a competitor come in and
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: be like, oh yeah, you know, we can blast through
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: the Baja a one hundred miles an hour, and that's.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: What the customer wants to believe.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: They will literally believe that even though I can prove
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: in twelve different ways why that's not the case, and
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: why you know, physics doesn't lie and physics doesn't change
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: for one guy versus another. But it's really interesting from
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: a consumer standpoint. You know, there are consumers just if
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: they if they already have their mindset on something, they
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: want to believe it. It's almost not even worth me
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: expending my I mean, it's not worth me spending my
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: time to go through it with those yeah folks, Right,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: they're the ones that'll come back after two more vehicles.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: They'll come back and say, Okay, you know now, I
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: just want to.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: And that's why these conversations matter so important, right, is
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: for us to try to get out as much quality
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: information as we can so people can make their own
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: their own decision. But also recognizing that we're we're in
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: the golden era of overland vehicles. Who would have thought
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: that in twenty twenty three we'd have this many options
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: like GMC's GMC mid sizes with thirty fives and lockers.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: You know, that one's probably the most surprising.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: The most surprising, absolute shocker.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: Or two wranglers when people say, you know, oh, they
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: don't make four world drives like they used to, and
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: like what, they don't make them ride like, they don't
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: make them slow with bad gas miles and no suspension.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: Article right and rust out in ten years. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: they're better than they've ever been. It's unbelievable.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: And I'll tell you, I've been on some testing with
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: some of the GM vehicles and some of the stuff
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: that I've seen done with those things is unbelievable, you know.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: And GM is so conservative they will never show a photo.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: There's photos that exist. I think I've shown you some
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: of them, but I mean what those trucks will do
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: repetitively is just mind blowing. And again, GM's so conservative
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: they won't show a picture of a tire one inch
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: off the ground, right.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I had to go through a lot of permissions
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: because we when we went out to the first drive
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: on that thirty five inch tire truck, the new Canyon,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: they were jumping it off this tabletop jump yep, And
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like, we got a show it and they're like,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: well yeah, back and forth and back, and finally they're like, yeah,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: you can you can show it.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: And whatever, you know, whatever height they were jumping, I've
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: probably seen it five higher.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's just like it was awesome.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: You would never do with a you know, not a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: built race truck, but I've seen them do it in
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: the you know, granted, in the right conditions.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: And professional drivers and everything.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: Drivers and doing it safely. But it's just it's mind
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: boggling that you can take a vehicle that you can
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: go by right now and do what I've seen them do,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: you know, or even in terms of rock crawling, because
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: you know, it's different, like independent suspension. It's it's for me,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: it's really weird because I'm so used to solid actual trucks. Sure,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: but what I've you know, and I'm not as comfortable
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: driving a independent suspension in serious rocks. But they, you know,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: they will do it, and and they will. There's different lines,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: so I'm having to retrain myself now that i'm driving,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: now that I'm driving Chevy. But it's kind of it's fun,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: but it's just it is amazing what they'll do and
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: what people, you know, compared to what people's perception is.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: And like that HD, the new Chevys and GMC HD
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: is a comfortable truck that Willie.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how capable it
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: was impressive. We took it on our hardest test loop
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: and it was nothing.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: Nothing, yeah, nothing, yeah, And so we're working on a
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: kit for thirty seven's on that thing, which sweet that'll
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: be you know, that'll be really cool, Like it's cool
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: on thirty five. It's gonna be really to me, you know,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: like what I do. It's gonna be really nice with that.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: I like that truck Hunt thirty five. It's like having
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: had the PXL before. It's a little big for for like.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah usel PXL.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: It's a little big where where I look at like
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: this this twenty five hundred HD and I'm like that
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 4: is that is the just right?
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: And it's like a luxury car on the insight it's
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: shockingly comfortable. It's super comfortable.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: They are yeah.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, Dave, I got one more question for you
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: if you were if you had to pick, and if
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: you don't want to answer, we can cut this out later.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: If you had to pick between uh gmc av regular
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: cab tray bed or a RAM regular cab tray bed,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: which when.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: We Jack I don't know how you pick on that one,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: you know, and you've had them both. Well, I have
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: to be fair. We didn't you know that the GMC
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: we built for Sema, it's amazing. I've only driven it
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: short distances. You know, it's still a show truck. Sure,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: that thing does look so good. Its yeah, and you've
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: seen it in person, right, Yeah, it's just like And
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: to think about a forty inch tire on a GMC
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: like because to me, my brain's still like ten years
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: ago when I thought GMC was like this old man
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: chrome shiny, I didn't even know. Yeah, I don't really
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: like to me, GMC never hit my radar. And then
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: to see that company and the amount of effort their marketing.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: Take, it's so serious.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: They are, their marketing team and their engineering team, they
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: care about it.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's really interesting to see and they you know,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: they work with us on that build. And you know,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: I don't even know if if they really knew. You know,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: they don't know what's cool necessarily, right, They're depending a
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: lot on us to show them what the guys in
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: the over landing field will think is cool. Right, because
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of the marketing folks that they
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: just know what they see, which isn't necessarily cutting edge.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: It's it's like the you know, the classic rack in
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: the back with some Mac tracks and uh and you
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: know the basic you know, the starter kit, right, and
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: so it's pretty interesting to see, you know, they let
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: us go really far with that one on a you know,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: on a GMC is their baby, right and they're they
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: know the Ganali, I mean, they know what makes them money,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: and so they're really trusting us a lot to do
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: to do stuff like that. And I know it was
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: really well received, which is cool. And I think you
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: know now they're they you know, they pick up quick,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: and so it's it's pretty cool to see, you know,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: and I don't know if we'll ever do something like
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: that for production, but it is pretty exciting and it
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: really did well, Like in terms of the engineering that
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: that vehicle went together really fast, really easy. You know,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: there's no suspension changes on that. So that's a stock
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: what we call ZRX, but that's Z two or eighty
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: four X. That's the stock you know, quote unquote lifted suspension,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: no modifications, and we were able to put fortys on
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: with that with just the flair and some some internal
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: rework of the body.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so cool. All right, so we got the non
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: answer on M versus. It's okay, it's okay. I totally
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: get it totally because they're both. They are different, and
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: they're very cool.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: It's really I mean, and again I don't work with
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: Ford at all, but all these trucks are really good.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: But I think I think right now, I would say
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: Chevy and GMC are really putting the most effort into
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: this market.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they care about it.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: And I think they're going to get rewarded for it,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: and and and they're they're doing a good job by
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: not assuming that they're necessarily the experts in this field. Right,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: So they came, you know, I guess not to like
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: toot my own horn, but they came to get the
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: good you know, they were smart enough to get the
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: good advice and try to be on the leading edge
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: of the curve, not like not just falling along. By
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: putting you know, the requirement the quote unquote starter kit
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: on like a you know, a snorkel and a rack.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: Sure it's not cheesy stuff, you know, it's a real deal, right,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: it can really work for It worked for folks, and
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 4: I kind of get what you're saying. Where GM kind
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: of came from is in a way I expected them
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: to do some cheesy stuff.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: And they and they didn't.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: They didn't.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: They crushed it.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like most improved brand for what we.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: Do out of nowhere, Like in a matter of well, I.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: Don't think anybody has made such a huge like leap forward,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: like I daddy drove forwards. So like I've never been
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: a GM guy, right, And I'm like when the twenty
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 4: five was here, I'm like.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Yep, yeah that's what I thought. Yeah, I mean think
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: about it. The eighty four didn't start until twenty nineteen.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is that is.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Like a blip in automotive history. Like it's a heartbeat,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: one heartbeat, and we're already got eighty four x aev bison,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: you know, insanity.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: So a lot of that goes back to the you know,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: the original Colorado is a group of you know, kind
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: of like the root of rights, a small group of
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: enthusiast engineers kind of started to put it together. Gradually
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: more and more people latched on until now they're like,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: wait a second, this is that was really good. Now
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: we can let's spread this out let's let's let's make
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: days all, you know, let's make let's there's a whole
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: market that we're not hitting. And so for them is
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: good and they're paying attention, and you know, and there's
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: other manufacturers that are paying attention to what they're doing.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 4: That's that's the cool thing, is like, what will the
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 4: responses be?
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and there's always a lag because unfortunately, even
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: though manufacturers may want to respond.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: Right away, yeah, it takes time.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: They can't always do that. Your chassis may not be
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: set up for it. You know, if you look at
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: the new Colorado, they actually move the wheel forward three
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: inches and that was a big part of that was
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: to enable the thirty fives. And you can't just move
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: a wheel forward three inches, right, It takes a while. Yeah,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: it takes a lot of money and a lot of investment,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: a lot of time and people's willingness to do the
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: extra work. And so that's one thing I'll say about GM.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, everybody there is really you don't really get like, oh,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: that's not my job.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: Or you know, I've never heard of this.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they're really they really care about it. Yes, Yeah,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: there's a lot.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: Of genuinely care about overlanding, and a lot of them
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: are overlanders, are excited about doing it exactly.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it's really it's fun to see and
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: it is fun to see what the response will be
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: because I think those trucks are really you know, I
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: mean they're they're good, and they're just everything's getting better
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: and better.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Well, and David, it's been fun to see you and
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: your company be so successful and do such good work.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, twenty years we've known each other almost, so
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: it's just been really awesome to see you and your
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: team just crush it.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: So yeah, and we do have a good team.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes that for sure.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a good team. And it's it's it
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: is it's complex work. You know, you're trying to remember
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: every little detail and I've got I mean, the team
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: we have now is awesome and we're adding to it
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: all the time.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: But it's yeah, I can't wait to see what you
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: do next.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: Well, well we'll get you back on the podcast when
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: the next surprise from from AEV drops. So yeah, yeah,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: awesome man. Well, Dave, thanks so much for being on
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: the podcast. We'll talk and we'll talk to you all
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: next time,