Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Truck House Redefines Light Weight and Capable Expedition Campers

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Truck House Redefines Light Weight and Capable Expedition Campers · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: host Scott Brady, and I'm joined today by my co
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: host Matt Scott and also Dave Heretin and Matt from Truckhouse.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: So we had the unique opportunity to sit down with
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: two incredible engineers, one being Dave Hereton that is the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: CEO and lead engineer of American Expedition Vehicles, and then
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: of course Matt from Truckhouse, who has himself and a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: team of engineers that are making one of the lightest,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: most capable expedition vehicle campers on the market. So we
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: go into a lot of information around why a lightweight
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: camper is important, how they achieve that feat. We also
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: talk about some of the technology that allows that to happen.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: We dig deep into why the full size really works,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: why they move from a Toyota Tacoma to a full size,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: get a little bit of history on on Matt's early
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: life in a shipyard where we learned a lot about
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the importance of reliability and longevity. But this is a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: really great conversation and again this is not any paid content.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: We receive no compensation from truck House. We just believe
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that this is a very unique and relevant new product
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: on the market.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: So we're talking about the Truckhouse BCR with Dave from
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: AEV and Matt from truck House.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I think we should start off by letting the audience
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: know what BCR stands for.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's you know, it's an eas drigg got
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: you gotta buy it to find, you.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Know, the one for public consumption, the one, the one
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: for public consumption.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: It's a funny story, honestly that you know. We started
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: with that Toyota. Yeah, and we call that the BCT.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: And I'm sure you guys are aware, but naming things
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: is incredibly hard. Naming a company, naming a product, it's
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: all hard. Yeah, it's so hard. But when we were
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: building that first prototype Toyota camper, kind of in stealth mode,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: no one knew about it. Nico walked out of the
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: shop one day and walked into the shop and I
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: just put the long travel kit on and threw the
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: thirty fives on and he looks at it and goes, dude,
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: that is a beefcake taco. And I said, man, you
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: just described the truck with three weird foods.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: And it stuck.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: And so we kept calling it the beefcake Taco and
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: then we're like, when we came to name the product,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: BCT stood out and yeah, you had you had you
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: had a great like backcountry trail.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: You had a back country Toyota.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Which is really funny, but it like worked out really well.
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: It did.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It's hilarious and it also worked out.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: And then moving into the RAM, you know, BCI kind
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: of transitioned to backcountry RAM. Internally, we say beefcake rito,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: which is like a taco.
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: It's a burrito.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: It's a little bit more of a Brita than talked
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: to me for like an hour during breakfast about CNC
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: machining foam and he didn't even tell me that like
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: actually entertaining story.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: That's why I remembered it, like these are the little
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: easter eggs that I remember the podcasts.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: So the Truckhouse BCR, if you're not familiar with it,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: it is kind of a new generation of expedition vehicle.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: It is built with a carbon fiber monocoqu chassis on
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: a Prospector XL truck.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: It's it's really really cool. I mean well, I mean
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the thing about it is it's really really light, so
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: there's a. I mean, we'll talk a little bit more
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: about impressions later, but there are a few things that
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: make this camp or world class, which is why we
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: have these guys on the podcast today. I mean, many
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of you have heard Dave and Us talk in years
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: past on mini podcasts, but like to have someone like
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Dave and Av involved with developing the chassis and getting
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: this thing, you know, ready to mount an incredible camp
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: or two. And then Matt, all of your experience building
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: expedition class boats where people are literally relying on your
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: work to note somewhere out in the middle of the ocean,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: it brings. It's this interesting confluence of skills but also
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a real need in the market. You know, the trucks,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the expedition trucks have gotten heavier and heavier and as
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a result, less capable and less safe. We all need
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: to remember that twenty thousand pounds going down the road
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: needs to be stopped and it needs to be turned.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Ye.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: So and if you do either one of those things quickly,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: like under duress, which unfortunately happens in life, like stuff
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: runs out in front of you like children or goats
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And if you need to stop and turn
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it the same time in most of these expedition campers,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you'll miss whatever you're trying to avoid hitting, but
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: there's a good chance that the things can end up
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: on its lid.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: So yeah, no, absolutely, I mean that's a huge part
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: of our design. And you know, Dave's really helped hammer
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: that home about how important vehicle dynamics are. And you know,
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: Dave and Aev are some of the best in at
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: understanding how important that stuff is.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So it's been well and maybe Matt, maybe we take
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: just a minute before we dig a little deeper and
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: just kind of make that be something that the audience
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: sits with throughout the conversation. Is yesterday you guys were
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: describing what you were doing to validate a basically a
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: slalom or an emergency lane change. Dave, why don't you
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: talk about what that test is, why you do it,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: because you do it with all of your vehicles, so
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: like even a prospector on forty forty's needs to achieve
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: this same outcome, So maybe talk about why that exists.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: You know, what are the scenarios that people encounter that
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: they need to do that, and why is this vehicle
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: able to do an emergency lane change and keep the
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: driver in control.
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: Sure sure, I guess that kind of goes back to
• 5:49
  Speaker 5: starting with you know, we do suspension development. We do
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: a lot of quote unquote lift kits, but most of
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: our lift kits are more of a reengineering of the
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: factory suspension in order to get the tire on it,
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: just a taller spring and a you know, fancy shock.
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of thought that goes into it, and
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: before you go to market, there's a lot of testing
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: that should be done, and you know, most of that
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: realized around stability control, but and you know, safety handling,
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: making sure it doesn't oversteer or understeer, or make sure
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: to understeers properly for a road car. Those are the
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: kinds of things that, yeah, we like to make sure
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: they all exist after the vehicle's been modified. And so
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: we're in this awesome position, you know, after almost thirty
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: years of being able to kind of ground up these things,
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: so you know, we can start I mean literally when
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: we lay everything out on paper, like in the case
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: of this truck. You know, we had a clean sheet
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: design on the RAM and on the cab chassis and
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: even going into the camper. Right, we knew from day
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: one where we needed to end up, so we were
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: able to engineer all that stuff in order to get
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: this really cohesive package. And yeah, there there is stability
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: control testing. I think one of the first times these
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: guys got the camper on the first thing we did,
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: and I think they were all kind of surprises.
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: We went out to a back road and kind of
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: set up an informal sixty foot SLA or sixty mile
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: an hour slow sure, and you know, going down.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: The video is crazy because I mean, you're hustling that
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: thing when you are like working it to get it
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: It's it's violent when you're in the car. I've done
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: those before, and it's violent inside.
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: It's way faster than you think and way harder than
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: you think. And these guys were like, you know, dang,
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: we just built this thing, what are you doing.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like literally the one of one.
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: One of them, and yeah, and I'm out there and
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: I have quite a bit of experience doing that stuff.
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: So yeah, they were surprised. But it's the kind of
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: stuff that's really important. Now, we haven't done the stability
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: control test yet with this thing, because they're still dealing
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: with all the weights, but we will and we'll do
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: some standardized testing just to make sure that you know,
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: we're giving the customer a solid, you know, safe product.
• 7:54
  Speaker 5: And that's the kind of thing that there's nobody else
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: in the industry. There's I'm sure there's no other campers
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: for sure that have gone through any kind of testing
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: like that. But it's the kind of stuff that we
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: will do and you know, we can tune it and
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: dial it in right, and we're still doing a lot
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: of tuning. You know, we were out with these guys
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: doing some integration tests, so integrating you know, their Campra
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: to our chassis. We're out in Moab, and you know,
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: we've learned a lot. I mean, it's great, but there's
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: always a little bit of room for you know, even
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: more improvement.
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's what's always made av special is that
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: things are continuously improving.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: It's just such like a match made in heaven.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: So you know, some people may not know, you know,
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: there was.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: This the Tacoma, the BCT that was before that, and
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: like everybody loved the Camper, I mean it was and
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: certainly the concept, Yeah.
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: The concept was so cool.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're kind of going for like the sun
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Raider kind of vibe. You're trying to kind of bring
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: that back, and you know, like maybe it was the
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: wrong chassis, but I get where you were going with it,
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: and you were only you're saying last night, it was
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: only like eight thousand pounds.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: That shocked me.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: I thought it would have more than that.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that that really shocked me was that it came
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: in a Yet.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: I remember talking to so many people because I geek
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: out on these kinds of campers and expedition trucks. It
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: was like, wow, like the quality, the fit and finish,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Like the thoughtfulness of that camper is absolutely insane. How
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: great would it be if it was on an AV truck?
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: And that was always like the dreaming. So many people
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: were talking about that and then here we are. Now
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: you guys have linked up and this is actually happening.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a really cool vehicle. So like, you know, like,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: how did that all come along?
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, wee we're stoked to be here because working
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: with AAV has been absolutely game changing for us. You know,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: it's helped push my team's engineering probably ten years in
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: the span of one year. So it's been unbelievable.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Talk about rapid prototyping.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, what an experience. It's like we you know,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: we stepped into the real world of automotive engineering, and
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: you know, Dave would be like, you want to see
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: how they really do it, and let you know, he
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: cracked the door open and let us peak inside. And
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: my whole team is a bunch of sponges. We absorbed
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: that and implement it. But yeah, kind of how it
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: came about is, you know, with those toyotas, we were
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: doing so much of vehicle modification, you know, full back
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: half of chassis on a brand new truck.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: It had a different axle, full custom axles.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: We were fabricating full long travel, big breaks, supercharger, you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: big rear brakes, and you know, I came in, came
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: into the office one one evening after working on you know,
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: stripping paint to cut a brand new chassis down and
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: fabricate it, which is pretty counterintuitive. You start with a
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: brand new, perfectly clean truck and the first thing you
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: do is start grinding paint. Yeah, pretty strange. You know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: walking to the office and sitting there talking to Nico,
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: who's my co founder, and coo and and we're like, Wow,
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: wouldn't it be nice if someone just built the truck
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: for us?
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: Sure?
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: He goes, yeah, man, that would be pretty sweet.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: I was like, like you said, it just wasn't scalable.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Too many hours, you know, four or five hundred hours
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: in truck modification. It's a lot of work, and you know,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of responsibility that truck has takes on and
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: a lot of parts we had to design and fabricate,
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: and you know, it was very much aftermarket. It wasn't
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: to the AEV you know, OEM quality.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Obviously you were doing the best you could. We did good.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: I mean, we're good fabricators.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: It's got to be so hard to like have all
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: of those components work together cohesively, right, you know you've
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: got to like, did you look a diamond axle on
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: the back and total chaos on the front, Like they're
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: all good components on their own. But then you start like,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: you know, you're fixing this, to fix this, to fix this,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: to fix this.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: I mean it took me, I mean not weeks, you know, continuously,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: but it took me weeks to figure out how to
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: tell the Toyota computer that we had a rear axle
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: in it, like once you unplug your axle and unplug
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: your locker, like it knows everything. So I had to
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: do a lot of testing and playing with resistors and
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: getting that to all work. And you know, have locker
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: lights come on with the RB And.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Did you lengthen the wheelbase?
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is an interesting question that I just
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: thought of. How how close are the dimensions between your
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: wide track Tacoma that has a lengthened wheelbase and where
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the RAM is today?
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: I want to say the Toyota was about eighty four
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: inches wide, Okay, maybe eighty three outside of tired outside
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: of tire, and the Prospector excels eighty eight. So yeah,
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: and then and then wheelbase don't quote me, but it's
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: within it's single digit inches.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: So it's it's like, but.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: But what a great choice though. I mean, like when
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I when I looked at the Tacoma that you guys
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: built early on, I was like, this thing is it
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: looks so good? And I just knew, like it's like
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you just can't. You can't put that much weight on
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: it from a liability standpoint. That was always my fear
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: for you guys. So to be able to go into
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: something with what do you think dave three hundred percent
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: more headroom probably maybe more.
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: Plenty, yeah, plenty of headroom and just a well engineered truck.
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: And really what Matt was saying, those guys are putting
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: hundreds of hours of work into a chassis. They don't
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: have the resources to really go through dynamic testing, you know,
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: shock tuning. I mean, they can do what they can do,
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: but you know, it's just one of those things where
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: when you start to realize what it really takes to
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: get a WEE quality ride and handling characteristics, it's not
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: just like changing valves in the shocks, and you know,
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: it's it's the fundamental suspension. It's the fundamentals that really matter.
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: The shocks are just like icing on the cake.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you talk a lot about that. Yeah, if
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the if the selling point of the suspension that you're
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: buying is the remote reservoir two and a half inch
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: body super fancy coding shock, you're probably buying the wrong suspension.
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: It's the jewelry, right yeah, jewelry for the people who
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: really don't understand it's a marketing tactic. It's you know
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: that the truck should have fundamentally good handling, you know,
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: you know, I mean we do a lot of our
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: initial testing with no shocks, just all of our frequency tuning,
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: the testing, you know, the initial stuff in the shop.
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, there's no shocks and we're you know,
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: kind of yeah shocks, bumped up swave bars, that stuff.
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: It's really getting the geometry right first. Yeah, you know,
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: But getting back to these guys, you know, giving them
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: a ram chassis to put their ultra lightweight camper on.
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: I mean, these things, you know, it's made like a
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: Gulf string jet. It's just it's awesome for that and
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: then the way they mold it and being able to
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: also incorporate aerodynamics and like all the advantages that have
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: really never been done in the camper industry. Yeah, it's
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: nothing I'm aware of. It was kind of this really
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: cool opportunity for us to you know, help them and
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: also you know, secretly, right, I not secretly, We've talked
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: about it plenty, but I wanted to for yourself them
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: and you know, end up with a really good product
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: that's pretty awesome. It's I didn't feel like it had
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: ever been done really well, like just from the ground,
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: you know, like you were saying, Mat, it's like a
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: lot of fixes on fixes on fixes. Yeah, and it's
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: just never that truly like professional engineered. It's always kind
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: of like there's really good almost like hobbyist level, but
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: not like really professional.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting even things like the number of campers
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: that we see that have a three point mounting system,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: like and that would be entirely appropriate for a unimogue
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: where that has so much its majority of its articulation
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: is in chassis flex but with in the case of
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the RAM, and this is something that I learned from you, Dave,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: is like there are these incredible resources in the builder's
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: guides from the manufacturer where they tell you exactly how
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: to mount a box to the back of this thing.
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: They do pretty much and yeah, and some of that
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: has to be taken with a grain of salt because
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: they're typically not high articulation, you know, crazy events all day,
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: you know, they're they're more engineer for the streets. So
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: there's but it's a really good guideline. But the way
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: the RAM chassis is connected, or the way the suspension's done,
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: the way the chassis made it, it's not a UNAMUG,
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: it doesn't doesn't flex the same as a unimog. The
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: unimog's relatively short. Generally, they are quite ab over, they're
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: they're pretty even flex from you know, the front of
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: the frame to the back of the frame. The RAM doesn't.
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, the RAM has this really kind of weird
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: and I'll say RAM, but I'll say any pickup truck
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: with like leaf springs, like it's really not flexing in
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: between the leaf springs much, and it's not flexing behind
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: the leaf springs much. It's really flexing in front of
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: the leaf springs to the back of the cap. You
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: get a lot of twist right there. And so you
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: have this like non proportional, non linear twist going on
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: where unamug is. You know, it's just easier to deal with,
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: and it's shorter generally, so you don't have.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Your mounding speeds are much shorter, and the power is
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: much everything about it different significantly different.
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but you're not trying to grab the camper on
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: either end on a really long truck.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And then another thing that I noticed is a lot
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: of camper manufacture will change the suspension. They'll get rid
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of the leaf spring, which the rear part of a
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: leaf is there for a reason. It helps to support
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the chassis and the load. So when you remove, yeah,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: it spreads the load out across two points as opposed
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to and also the leverage that goes aft of that point.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I would think that's why you see a lot of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: gladiators with campers that fail in the frame, you know,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: where they you know, they get into some big event,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: some big g out or something happens and there's a
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: huge there's a weighty camper in the back and it
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: bends the frame.
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: The leaf springs have a big advantage because they do
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: spread the load out to four points that are you know,
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: spread apart by six seven feet. Yeah, and that's a
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: huge advantage actually when you look at the dynamics and
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: the fatigue on a frame, whereas if you just have
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: let's say a coil spring or an air spring or whatever,
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: you know, and it's just driving right up into the
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: frame directly from the axle. Yeah, and you're especially if
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: you combine that with mounting the camper on either end
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: of the frame and now right in the middle of
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: that beam, you put all the load right in one place, right,
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: you end up with some really interesting dynamic challenges, we'll say.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And usually even the shocks are pretty close to the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: mounting point of the spring, so like it's all fairly
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: concentrated at that one.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: They are, and if it's designed right, those loads and
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: the shocks should be relatively low in terms of beaming.
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: But you know, if you're like you're essentially grabbing the
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: you know, a beam on either end with the camper
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: and then you're right in the middle, you're pushing up
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: with the spring loads all the time, Sure you're going
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: to have some beaming in the frame and you're going
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: to have a bunch of problems. And also, you know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: when you know, like Matt and I talked early on,
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: it was kind of trying to decide how we're going
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: to configure this thing, you know, what was the best
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: for them, and I think to their surprise, I suggested
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: leaf springs, and you know, that's not what the camper
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: industry is typically doing. But when we start talking about
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: failure modes, you know, being in the Arctic, being out
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: in the middle of nowhere, you know, you can't a failure.
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: And it was just the strongest, simplest and ironically best handling.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was actually something that I thought was a
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: little sus I mean, like, you know, I've got a
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: different camper, I've got an earth rower, it's got air suspension,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: and you know, there's this idea that because it's modified
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: from the factory, it's therefore better.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: And I was like really surprised with how well the
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: leaf springs rode.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Like I thought it was going to be jarring,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: you know, because you think, like you think of air.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: You know, you can you can adjust the you know,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: the the height whatever that it's somehow softer.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: But it like it's well, it's yeah, you have to
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: really think how much design, engineering and R and D
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: really goes into those leaf springs in front coils from RAM.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: To have a small company that builds air bags or
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: builds hydraulic suspension, you know, to think that they have
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: more knowledge and experience than the os at RAM is
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: is pretty wild. And then you know, to Dave's point,
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: it's all the all the pickups, cab chassis want you
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: to load the frame evenly.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: That's it's designed. That's why the frame rails are flying.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're really like the first company that I
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: have seen that has come along where you know, you're
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: actually innovating beyond what the industry is currently doing. Like
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: you know, this isn't to like poo pooh on the
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: three point mounting system, but like that is like that's
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: premium in the space still, you know, like that's that's
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: what the customer recognizes as being the solution.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: That's what they have been told those cases.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: In most cases it works, right, but it really takes
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: that kind of partnership that you guys have, you know,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: and bringing av in to take that to the next
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: level because these are you know, the thing one of
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the things that stood out from our conversations is that
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: you know, there's camper companies and then there's you know,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: vehicle companies, right, and like the camper companies are generally
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: not you know, they're just real Lion and other suppliers
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: or Hodgepodge of suppliers or whatever. Like it hasn't really
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: been like holistically integrated before. And that's what like really
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: stands out to me on on on the truck house.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, with Dave's Dave's recommendation was to
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: do you know, what we call a rail on rail
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: system so that the camper is evenly loading the chassis
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: that has its own unique design challenges. I was instantly
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: against it because it's actually hard. You see them on
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: the Big Man expedition vehicles they do a lot of
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: rail and rail they have to build a giant steel
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: subframe that sits on the chassis, that raises the center
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: of gravity. That adds a lot of weight, and we
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: didn't want to add weight. We didn't want to add height.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: And then they're notoriously loud because you usually have bang around.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: They bang around because they usually have some type of
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: hard plastic or steal to steal on steel. They're really
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: loud and clunky, and they actually, you know, have the
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: ability to still put torsional forces into the frame if
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: it's rigid mounted in the rear. So actually, I said,
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: I don't think you're right, Dave. That sounds really challenging.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: I don't think we're gonna be able to hit you know,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: the weight numbers we want. And like many things Dave's
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: told me, I thought about it, and our team thought
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: about it, and you know, a couple of weeks later,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I call him, I go, I think you're right. I
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: think we can't build a steel frame. I think we
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: need to build a basically integrated carbon subframe. We can't
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: build an eight hundred pounds steel structure that's four to
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: six inches tall and still hit the design requirements we're
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: trying to accomplish.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you took advantage of the carbon. Yeah, strength of
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the carbon.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: We we build our own boxes in house, and so
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: we can add any type of carbon, any amount of carbon,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: different weaves, different you know, weaves, structures, reinforcements in different
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: areas to accomplish what we're trying to do. So our
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: you know, our floor has an extra two hundred pounds
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: of dry raw carbon in it, which is you know,
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: supplementing that eight hundred pounds steel frame. And then you know,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: to deal with the noise, we do we cast our
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: own pall yearthane isolators.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: It's the full length of the frame.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: It's pretty How does one cast your own poly euthane isolator?
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Like you have a do you have a little.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: A tool we built, We built our own tool. Yeah,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: and then an.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Injection molding machine.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: That it's a it's like a it's a poor cast
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: process with process and the different tools, and that's cool.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: It really makes it, you know, makes a huge difference
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: and ends up for you know what RAM wants evenly loaded,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: but also allows the you know, the twelve or so
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: degrees of twist we see from the chassis to be Yeah.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I will say though, just in the in the in
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the effort of being as unbiased as we can be,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: despite how much we like this truck, the advantage of
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: those air suspensions are self leveling. Oh so, and that's
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the reason why, that's the reason why companies put them on.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: And I've had scenarios like with earth roamers, like in
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: you know, Nicaragua, where we're like bottoming the thing out
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: to fit underneath you know, a wire going over the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: road or whatever. So they do have they do have
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: their place. I just wonder, like I think that they
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: there are certainly some convenient like it's a big convenience boost,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: But I think if I'm trying to drive truly remote
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: or around the world, I would just bring along some
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: blocks that I could level the truck with or be
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a little more mindful.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think I personally think that you know,
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: saying that their ride is for self leveling is just
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: part of a marketing tactic. Yes, it does have that
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: as a key benefit, but it's also needed because those
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: vehicles are so heavy they need to do something because
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: the factory leaf spring set up isn't necessarily happy underneath
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: that vehicle.
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: So you can spin it by saying, oh, but now
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: it's self.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Levels and it's not to say that it's.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Not reliable, like people have them every day.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I have to level their trust on my on my
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: earth rummer and that system.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: The Kelderman is pretty really has.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Not had any faults for me, you know.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: But you do. It's like.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: It's it's like this failure mode of the of the
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: truck house that is so appealing because there are there
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: are so few things that can fail. It is inherently simpler.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: There's definitely places where I go and I'm like, oh, man,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: if I you know, I carry a spare air bag,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: I carry a spare air compressor. I carry spare air fittings,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: spare caps that have like little shrader valves, so I could,
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: you know, if if the if the main compressor went out, I.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: Could get myself home.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: But I have to think of these things, right, And
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I think you know, we were talking a lot about
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: kind of your background in the marine industry, growing up
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: in that with your dad owning like a boat yard
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: in Sasolito. Like, you know, the thing that stuck out is,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: you know, when you learned how to do wiring, when
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: your dad taught you how to do that, the thing
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: that he kind of said to you is you have
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: to do it right because if this catches on fire,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: like there's now a boat on fire twenty miles off
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: off shore or.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Two or two thousand miles.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like people people like there's a high chance that
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: they would die, you know, And it's kind of interesting.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: You know, I'd love to talk about like your background
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: on you know, like in the marine space, because there
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: are a lot of similarities between these expedition campers and
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: the marine world. Like you know, at breakfast we're talking.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: You know, there's bad boats and there's really good boats.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: There's guys that are doing things the way that you
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: are in the marine space too, and then there's guys
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: that are you know, you know, Jacob Rental Class C
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Cruise America quality.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean, those things serve their purpose, right, Yeah,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: You're just not going to take them over El Camino
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: del Diablo or yeah, yeah, well you could try.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's a you know, super fortunate that my
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: dad runs a little, a little small shipyard in Saslito,
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: and grew up working there and summers through high school
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: and college and got kind of an experience in every
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: aspect of the yard. You know, I started my first
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: summer there standing bottoms and got to work with, you know,
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: each kind of crew each summer. So I learned woodworking,
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: metal working, paint wiring, fiberglass work, and you know, some
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: of the some of the highend yachts you go into
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: are are so inspiring. You walk in and it's so
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: craftsmanship driven, it's so beautiful. I was instantly inspired by those.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: And you go into a white box RV and it's
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: pretty underwhelming, but it all has that mindset of intention
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: and you know, thought of it being out in open
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: ocean and how dangerous it can become if something isn't
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: well thought out or doesn't have some redundancies. And you know,
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: that whole world kind of tied right in with Dave.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Dave's always thinking about failure modes, always thinking about if
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: this breaks, or when this breaks, what is going to happen?
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: How is the customer going to handle that? And so
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: there's some obvious synergies there and you know, Dave's biggest
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: fear on Earth is corrosion, and that's pretty pretty common
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: in the marine industry as well, so we had a
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: lot to bond over just from my background.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: One of the things you mentioned yesterday that I thought
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: was really cool is that you intend to have most
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: of the interior you know, layout, structure shape as part
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: of a mold as well. And I have seen that
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: be very successful in other campers, so like Earth Cruiser,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: who doesn't sell campers in the US anymore, but they
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: did that. They molded the just like on my Catalina,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: like my all of them, like my my galley and
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the bathroom, and it's all molded into and none of
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: that stuff ever gives me any trouble. It never, there
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: is nothing to rattle.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: It's inherently simpler. And then you're adding, you're adding to
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: a structure.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, And is that part of what gives
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the camper its structure? Is that interior?
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: It certainly adds to it. Yeah, it's not necessary.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: And is that carbon as well? It's fiberglass, I would think, so, Yeah,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I was gonna just ask about that.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it could be you can you can add
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: carbon where fiberglass is pretty interchangeably.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: It's a you know, it's well just cost yeah, costs exactly.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: But you know what we do unique in the molded
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: cabinet space is it's a cord vacuum infused cabinet, so
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: it's not a chopper gun hand laid fiberglass part. It's
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: actually foam cord and infused, so it does act as
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: structural ribbing or bulkheads to the shell itself. But because
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: the shell is you know, nominal thickness of two inch
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: carbon infused it, it really doesn't need any additional strength.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: But really the benefit there is we're saving a bunch
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: of weight and then we're not just screwing cabinets to
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: the wall that are going to eventually vibrate loose when
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: you're really using these vehicles on washboard roads, right, it's
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: actually structurally bonded into the carbon shell itself. So you
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: grab the galley and you pull, you shake the whole vehicle.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: It's never going to come off. And we have you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: since you guys have been in the pre production model
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: with us, you know, we we have finished those molds,
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: we built that tool in in house, we have built
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: the parts for production it cuts down on so many
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: pieces of cabinetry. You know, the truck you're in was
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: a fiberglass interior. It was just hand built.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: Sure, you know, now that we have it molded, we're
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: able to, you know, increase production.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: The campers great, Like it's it's it's it's like lazy.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: Cool, Like you know, you were describing to me.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Kind of like the concept of like the carbon monocoque
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: and how that works and like all it's different, like
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: the different weaves that you're using. I mean it is
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: like this is complex stuff.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. I mean we could we could have.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Like it's like to me, I'm looking at it and
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, like, this is the stuff that you know,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: you see in race cars, you know, I mean it's
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: it's crazy.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we could have a three hour podcast
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: on just the shell itself. Yeah, there's so many, so
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: many hours of thoughts, so many hours.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: You said two hundred hours, so so you know, maybe
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: explain to us like it's it's a carbon monocoque and
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: then it's it's sandwiched with foam in the middle. I mean,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: you were saying that there's two hundred hours of c
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: NC time just on the foam, like I know, like
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: from my camper, they kind of you know, it has
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: some buls of core to it and then it has
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: some insulation. But they're just doing that on like the
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: flat surfaces right where. I mean, you're showing me parts
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: today where you know, like on the the high pressure
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: like the hyper foils that you guys have that reduce
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: that frontal area of the camper. We'll talk about that
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: more with kind of the driving impressions. But I mean
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: even that itself has a like a foam.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: Core to it.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's this crazy complex like there's
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: no there's no like flat line on this camera whole thing.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Look at it, and it is it is insanely detailed complex.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: And then you know, I would love to know or
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: the listeners I'm sure would love to know more about
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: kind of that that that just the process of how
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: that's made, because it's it's completely different.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and why is it so I mean, help people
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: understand why it's so expensive too, like people, I don't
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: think people know how much carbon costs.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know, going from the BCT
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: to this ram BCR, we really hiden our level of
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: automotive surfacing with help from Dave. You know, really want
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: this thing to look intentional. There's no flat panels on
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: any oe vehicle. I can't say that as well anymore
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: because the cyber truck. But besides that, there's no flat surfaces.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: And they're not just developed in simple you know, general
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: CAD modeling software. It's actually automotive surfacing software. And so
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: there's thousands of hours in just the surface exterior surface
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: design of that shell before molds are even you know,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: designed off of that surface and built.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: But you know, it just makes everything look once you
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: really spend time looking at this PCR and it's and
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: it was so it was so cool, Like we had
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: it in my garage last night and normally my earth
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Roamer was parked in there.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: And it was much smaller. Yeah, you could definitely see
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: a different.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Crack of beer and it's just like for me, that
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: was like literally my home environment. So you start to
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: notice all these different details. We're like, I'm not saying
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: that the earth Roamer is bad looking. I mean, I
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: love my truck, but you know it's flat panel, you know,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: rounded rounded surface into flat panel into rounded surface, like
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: it's it's it's not.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's still better.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Than ninety nine percent of what it's what is out there,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: but this is so complex and it's hard. Like I
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: really encourage people if you're looking at this stuff, like
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: you've got to look at this thing because it's seeing
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: it in person is actually I mean, it's like it's
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: like the first time you saw a supercar with like
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: arrow on it right and then you know you then
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: you then you look to your left and there was
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: like a like a Mustang fox body right like everything
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, hey, fox bodies are kind of cool, but
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: like everything now to me like starts looking like a
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: fox body, like it's very basic, and then you have
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: like an Aston Martin Valkyrine next to it, and you know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: like there's there's actual like aerodynamic consideration that has gone
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: into this. Like Dave, you're explaining it at Breakfast, how
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: you know, like with these these high pressure foils, how
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: it reduces the there's a word you're using where like
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: it kind of cavitates and then shifts to the side,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: and as you're describing to me, like, well, that's what
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I feel when the car is kind of you know,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: the camper is moving side to side, like it's kind
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: of you know, almost getting like turbulence.
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: That's exactly. Yeah, it's turbulence down the side of the vehicle.
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: You get it high pressure building up in front, and
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: then it tends to spill off one side and then
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: it builds up and spills off the other side. It
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: kind of gets into a beat.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's I was explaining that. It's like if you
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: put the rear window down on your truck, you'll hear
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: that beat off the mirrors, the turbulence.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Coming off the mirror.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it sounds like a hueie.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: And that that actually is a huge deal. When you
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: drive the truck, you can feel it. Yeah, I mean
• 34:22
  Speaker 5: it just doesn't feel like I mean, like you know,
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: if you put a Wrangler with a rooftop ten on it,
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: it feels like a parachute. This thing you did not
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: feel right off the gas and it just coast down
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: like it just doesn't drive like as a camper on it.
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: And it's it's subtle. And same with all the curvature.
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: You know, it's all subtle, but it's really when you
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: start looking at it, it's really defined.
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we you.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Know, we had an interesting experience. When we unveiled our
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: regular cap silver truck at the Arizona Expo last year,
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: people kept coming up and going, it's beautiful, it's beautiful,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: and they kept saying beautiful, and I had never experienced that. Yes,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: our our Toyota was you know, well designed, that was
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: a good looking rig, but people like, wow, that's bad ass. Yeah,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: it looks like you guys did a really nice job.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: The word that just kept coming was beautiful. And I
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: think it's I think that's really unique in this space.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of you know, truck houses ethos is
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: we want to build something that is beautiful, but the
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: design and engineering has to go hand in hand. So
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: we're not just designing it to look good, like it's
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: engineered as well as designed the whole way through. And
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: it's pretty apparent, I mean when you start.
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: So it's so different.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Like remember last night, we're talking like, you know, everybody
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: thinks they could just they could land a plane if
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: they had to.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: It's like everybody thinks they could design a camper. I
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of people that do you know
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: they do the foam core panels with the extrusions and stuff,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and that I mean it works like it's fine, but
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: like you you walk up to this and you're like,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: I could not land that plane, like I could, I
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: could not design that, like I mean, it is not
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: only does it match the styling of the truck, and
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: like I mean, I think that like the bumper that's
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: on these trucks is like like the sexiest aftermarket like
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: bumper you could get, and like that like level of
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: quality and like like vibe that I get of geeking
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: out on, like the AEV parts, like that kind of
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: translates into the camper and it's just better, you know.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I mean it in the way that like the AEV
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: bumper and the ram, like you look at that and
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: then you look at other stuff that is like cardboard
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: data design, like it's it's a dude fabing up plate
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: steel and they're doing they're doing their best.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: You're doing their best, right, but it's like it it
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: is like that level of of of of I mean,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: it's just that next level, and I think that that's
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: really cool.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, we certainly have drank the AUV kool aid,
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: I mean hang out and drinking it for years, hanging
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: out with Day and we've really tried to adopt their
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: philosophies and I mean he can speak to it better
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: than myself. But surfacing is one of the most complex
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: forms of design. Mechanical design is challenging and has its own,
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: you know, inherent challenges. But to truly automotive surface something
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: is a unique scale. Well it's not just chamfers and
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: radius is it's I mean, you can speak to it
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: more than I can.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: Dave.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it was kind of fun. I mean, it is
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: a super fun project, right because these guys trusted us to,
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: you know, take their ideas. They gave us. We need
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: these dimensions, this is what we're thinking. You know. They
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: gave us a surface and you know, and we're like, okay,
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: well let us clean it up, you know, and we.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: Said clean it up.
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: But we we did some pretty major changes, and then
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: some of it was pretty uncomfortable for me, you know,
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: he like to you know, to their credit, they always
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: come back. They'll they'll go they'll say no, and then
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: they'll go back and think about it and then normally
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: come back and be like, Okay, we like that idea.
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: And so, like getting rid of the front windows was
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: a big thing. Like expedition campers, if you had Ai
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: design you and expedition camper is gonna have two windows
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: on the front. Yeah, and I hate that because I'm like,
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: that is a huge problem for me. Like in Alaska,
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: you're right, driving on.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: The stone just takes one stone. I've got a good
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: story about just takes one stone. So, you know, and
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: I'll get into why. You know some of Dave's like
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: he said, we provided them a surf and Dave was like, hey,
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: let us clean it up, let us bring it to
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: that oie level. You know, we do some surfacing in house,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: but Dave does real surfacing in house. So obviously, you know,
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: we dropped our egos immediately and said, yes, we would
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: love some help. That sounds amazing. But the front windows
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: story is funny because we had we had the camper,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: you know, really close to being being finished before Dave's
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: guys helped us smooth it out and make it a
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: bit more beautiful, and we had front windows designed in
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: it like our previous model. Dave calls me and goes,
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: we got to get rid of the front windows and
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: I go no, and he goes, no, we need to
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: They're gonna break. And I'm all, dude, I have eight
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: trucks on the road right now, you know, two two
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousand miles amongst them cumulatively, no window
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: has broken like I like them.
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: It makes the bed feel bigger. We're keeping it, you know.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: And Dave goes, they're going to break and that means
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: the front surface of the vehicle has to be flat
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: for the windows to fit. And I go, yep, that's
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: part of the you know, that's a design constraint. Man,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: We're married to it. He goes, all right, well think
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: about it. Hung up with Dave. Thirty minutes later, I
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: get a phone call from a customer who's here in
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: Arizona on a road trip.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: Rock had broken front window.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: They was like, around, I'm not even making that up.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: It was literally pumps.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: It was literally literally the same day. And then I,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: you know, I you know, triaged that with the customer
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: and realized like that that failure mode is a trip ender.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Say you have a trip plan with your family to
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: go up to Alaska and you make it to Oregon
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: and break a window. Yeah, those windows the glass comes
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: from the Netherlands.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: Like you're turning around, Did I.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Tell you about the time and Hider I had a
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: window blow off of my truck. I was I was
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: in I was in panic, right, I mean like the
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: window was gone, like not broken, gone. The bugs were
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: so bad it flew off and like we stopped by
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: to the side of the road to take a piss
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: or something, and then I'm like pean and the tire
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: and I look up and oh my god, the window's gone,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: And this is the worst bugs I've ever experienced in
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: my life. And it was sitting on the side of
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: the road in a bed of grass, perfectly undamaged. What yeah,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: and just outside of Stuart, BC. When you're going to hide,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: that was a wind. Like I get the thing with
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: the windows, but those windows upfront are actually a pain
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: in the ass when you spend time with them because
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: you sleep north south in the vehicle, right, and then
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: like they are nice for bringing air kind.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: Of over you.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: You turn the fieldside and then it brings, you know, air.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: But the thing is is that you then your pillows
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: then sit up against it, right, So not only do
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: you have like this kind of surface that's that is
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: you know, there's not a lot of transfer thermally, but
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: it is colder. But imagine having your screen there and
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: then your your your pillow pushes the screen outa bugs
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: get in, stuff gets in, like they're actually always blocked.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like, and they catch a lot of bugs going
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: down the road.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: And yeah, you know, Dave.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: When Dave was originally saying we got to get rid
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: of him, you know, he was really leaning on on
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: failure mode, and that obviously was realized thirty minutes after
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: I hung up with him. Yeah, but I know in
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: the back of his mind the whole time he was saying,
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: we can look different, we can add curvature, we can
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: be aerodynamic if we get rid of this flat front end.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: And you know, when I called him back, this was
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: probably the fastest time I had ever said no, Dave
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: and then called him right back. Usually it takes me
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: about two weeks to you know, do some mental gymnastics
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: and get my team involved and realize what Dave's trying
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: to get across. You know, Dave likes to tell us
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: give us advice without tell us the whole story. It's
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: almost like a little test. I think, I don't know
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: if I don't know if he'll admit it, but he's like,
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: I wonder if these guys are But you're enough to
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: figure out what I really mean.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Difference between teaching someone to fish and giving them a fish, right,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So it's a huge difference. Oh so there's got to
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: be something though that you told Dave f no, and
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: you still say f no. There's got to be something
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: you haven't changed.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, he said, swing out tire carriers are the
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: hardest thing to design. Yeah, And I said, I want
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: a tailgate for our gearbox. The tire has to move,
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: and he said, it's it's one of the hardest things
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: we've ever designed at AEV. The Wrangler swing out, which
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: is a phenomenal design. It has he can talk more
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: about it than me. But it's got some you know,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: cam action. It pulls really tight and you know a
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: lot of swingouts have one pivot point down low.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: The tire is heavy, it's got a lot of leverage.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: It's always sam rattling like you going on corrugations and
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: that it's just it's just movie.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: And as Dave says, if it moves, it will break.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: It's not if it's just when. It might be fifty
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: thousand miles, might be twenty thousand miles, might be one
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand miles. But even if you lay a beautiful weld.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: It's it's going to eventually break.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Someone's going to pay for it when it goes through
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: the school bus window.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. No, yeah, exactly.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: And so I said, no, Dave, we're having a swing out.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: And he said, well, you better be really intentional about
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: the design. And you know, we said we're going to
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: move to two pivots. We're going to mount it to
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: the carbon fiber box since we have you know, the
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: ability to add reinforcement and hard points, and you know,
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: he said, that's a good idea, and he let us
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: get down the path a bit and then we you know,
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: use him as an advisor and saw what he thought,
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: and he helped us come up with the wrist plate design.
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: In the middle.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: It's got big forged chromally him joint so it's stainless
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: steel uniballs and Paul yer thing caps that you can
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: preload and it's got stainless steel plates that de tense
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: so it stops and doesn't swing out. And thought that
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: all we designed and designed, and you know, got some
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: of Dave's input and he kind of finally was like, wow,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: like I signed off on this. You guys should build
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: it and see if it works. And we built it
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: and it's the best swing out design I've ever seen
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: in my life. I mean, what do you think, Dave.
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's perfect for the camper. Yeah, it really shits
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: the bill and it's it was a challenge, you know,
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: none of it had been done before. It wasn't the
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: easy way to do things. But that was one thing. Yeah,
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: the rear door. I was trying to encourage Matt, like, hey,
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: the rear door is really going to cause a lot
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: of problems, you know. And they were in a rush too,
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: so it was kind of like trying to weigh them
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: getting into their molds schedule at the time and doing
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: all this stuff. But you know, that was one thing. Yeah,
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: I mean it's pretty. It was pretty back and forth
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: on a lot of stuff. But like the front windows,
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: you know, that's.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Got to be fun for you.
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I mean I get even the pushback the other direction
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: of like makes you think about it, like oh maybe
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe Yeah.
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: I mean they had good reasons, yeah, and it was like, okay,
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: that's a solid reason. As long as you can answer
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: a question. Yeah, if you if if somebody, if I
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: asked somebody a question, as long as they can answer it,
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: with a good answer, then you know, that's generally good
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: enough for me.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Sure, you know, if.
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: It's like, oh well, we just thought it looked cool,
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: that's the wrong answer, right.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: I don't think we've ever ever done anything like that.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: I think we've I think that's why Dave, you know,
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: enjoys helping us and working with us, as my whole
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: team is intentional. There's thought behind every decision, and there's
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: lots of whiteboards and lots of pros and cons lists.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Well, i'll tell you what. I've known Dave for almost
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: twenty years now, in fact, it is almost exactly twenty years,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: and I have in all of that time, I've never
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: had him say, you know what, these guys are really sharp,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: like about anyone else ever. And he said that about
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you guys on pretty early on in the process. We
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: were just chatting about you guys and what you were doing,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: and he's like, these guys are really and they really are.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: They're working hard, they're trying, they're really good, really sharp.
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: I was like, whoa, Yeah, it was pretty apparent with
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: their Toyota camper. Yeahir solid, Yeah, you know they were
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: doing something. It's funny you say that, Like we have
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: known each other a long time. We've been on a
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: lot of trips, yep. And you know, my whole ethos
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: is like, you know, try not to bring a toolkit, right, Like,
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: if you design it right, you don't really need to
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: And we never have how many times have we broken
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: out a wrench?
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: Never?
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: Never? Right? And that's you know, that's what I was
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: trying to, you know, work with these guys and like
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: get them into that. You know, yeah, you might give
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: up some marketing prowess, yeah, you know in terms of
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: like going simple, but simple is better. Thinking about those windows,
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: Like if your side window broke out, okay, you can
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: fix that with some cardboard and plastic bags. That's But
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: if you put a front one out, you know, it's
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: a problem, especially in bugs in snow and ice, you
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: know where I mean, if you're bedding, it could be
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: a real annoyance. You know, at best it's an annoyance
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: and at worst it's a real problem.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: Sure, and then you know, once we remove those front
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: windows and we're able to add that beautiful sweeping curve
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: in the front and those hyperfoils which stand for high
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: pressure reduction airfoils, which are you know, patent pending it
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: kind of just elevated the rest of the build as well.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: We could add more curvature in other places and make
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: it kind of blend and be beautiful.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: And that's the drives so good. I mean, that was
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: you know, yeah.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: What were some of your like, what's your top three
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: impressions of driving it? Do you have a lot of time?
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: And in other campers.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: You know, it just really drives like a pickup, So yeah.
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: You forget the campers.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to bag on what I I mean.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: I like, I've an Earth Roamer. I love my Earth Romer.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: There's there's some things that I like. I love this
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: space and the size of it. But you know, before
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: I even get into the like the driving dynamics of it,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: you know, the whole ethos of this car, like where
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: to me where it's innovative as in generality, is that
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: it's light. Right, So the worst thing about all of
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: these trucks are the tires. Like a man like, it's
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: hard to I mean, I guess I did put into
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: words in a recent story how bad these tires are.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: You know, they're they're pretty durable on on on when
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: you're off road. These Continental MPT tires are basically the
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: only option. There's a Michelin, you know, there's a Turkish company,
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: there's a good Year, but the Continental.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: MPT is pretty much of the option.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: And they look great.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: They look great, but they're like unless you go to
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: a tire that's like the forty three or forty four
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: inch tall tire, they're limited to sixty eight mile an hour. Yeah,
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: that sucks, man. Like like where we were driving yesterday.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: You know, we were in Phoenix. We were at Auto
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Club for their bagels and bullshit, and then we drove
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: up to Prescott and I drive that road all the time.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: I've driven it, you know, I've had two prospectors. I've
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: driven it in both of those trucks. I drive it
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: in sports. I mean, we took a nine to eleven
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: down it. Like I've driven all kinds of stuff down
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: this road.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: I know it.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: And I was able to drive the truck house and
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: the way that I would have driven like a prospector
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: on it, like, and it was it was just great
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: because it's so light because you're on regular tires. You're
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: on an F rated BF Goodrich HD tire and that
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: is actually the game changer, right, Like the more you
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: add to these vehicles, the more complexity, the more weight
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: you add, it just it puts you outside of.
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: The window of a normal tire.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I know, like a normal driving I'm saying
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: a forty is like a normal, normal tire. But like
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: you can get this tire from any BF Goodrich dealer,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: right like a Continental MPTE.
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: You're like, you're ordering it from.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Some commercial tire something then get it mounted. They may
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: have the problem that that's the crazy thing.
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: I mean.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: I had to remove the inner beadlocks on my Hutchinson
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: wheels because they just end up kind of distorting from
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: heat over time and then you cannot balance these things.
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: So like it was the like there's so many.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Pain points I think that have been removed with the truckhouse,
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: and that was what was so impressive to me. Like
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: it is like, truthfully, the earth Romer has been the
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: most It's the vehicle I've owned the longest in my life.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: It's the vehicle I've taken the most places.
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: But this is the only thing that actually has me
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: like huh, Like maybe the earth Roamer was the best option.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it is anymore. And it's hard
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: once you realize that there's this kind of meteoric shift
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: in concept, like it's a little bit smaller, but but
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: I can take it more places. I mean, like you
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: guys took it on like Hell's Revenge and poisoned Spider like.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: That's it's legit, like insane. I mean I took the
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Quartermaster with a scout on Hell's Revenge and I was like, eh, but.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: Like but like with the weight of of like the
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: earth romer, like I've literally gone down stuff where I
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: have I have sank into the ground. Oh yeah, Like
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: I was so thankful to have two inches. I mean
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: I blew my rear with it. Was it was the
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: mantle of the earth that actually like it just it
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: just like it's because it's twenty thousand pounds, Like it's
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: harder to accelerate twenty thousand pounds, it's harder to stop
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: twenty thousand pounds. Putting twenty thousand pounds through a turn
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: is so much harder. Where with the truck house it
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: was so easy, Like you know, nearly anyone could drive
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: We're talking about this on the way and like nearly
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: anyone could drive a truck house where I like even
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: even friends of mine that I know can drive, I
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: do not let them drive the earth Roamer, like because
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: I'm you know, going up, going up the grade from Phoenix,
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: I am limited by temperatures on that vehicle, right, I
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: don't like it. Tire well, tighter temperature, I mean.
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: These engine temp.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just on engine oil and engine coolant temperature.
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: I mean I've even done like a different grill to
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: have more airflow. I've done like a bulletproof diesel oil cooler.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: I've done the lights off, bigger oil pan. I've taken
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: the lights off, and you know, I was kind of
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: with Dave in the car. I'm like, this is when
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: I have to start managing temperatures. And I'm twenty percent
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: through the climb, and then from there, you know, as
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: soon as that fan kicks on in the Ford six seven,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: which it basically has to run, I mean it's something
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: like it uses forty horsepower to operate this fan. So
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: then you're like you're actually just getting slower and slower
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: and slower and slower, to the point where like I
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: end up just going forty five mile an hour up
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: this hill. I was, I mean, like there was track
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: and that's forty five mile an hour and you're like
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: you're hoping that you have a clean run. You're just
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: gonna park behind a semi and you just kind of go.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: You cannot pass that truck because you don't have like
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: the because I'd call it the thermal capacity to I
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: mean maybe that that the truck has the power to
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: go faster, but it it's just it's too hot.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: I already blew an engine once. I'm not doing it again.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: I'm very conservative with it. And I mean I was
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: doing eighty five in the truck house.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Like, and a lot of it was you had one
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: hand on the wheel, you relax, we're chat we're chatting.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Your shoulders were relaxed, you were you're yet breathe, you know,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: even breathing. Like I always know when people are getting
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: or when the vehicle is feeling unsafe. Both hands are
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: on the wheels, their their grip increases, their shoulders start
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: to tints, their traps start to pull up. They stop
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: talking or they didn't or they're not talking much. And
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: none of that was happening with you. So yeah, I mean,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and you're a good driver to begin with, but I still,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: like I.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: Know how to drive these vehicles and it was so easy,
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: you know, putting it like I think it was two
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: hundred and twelve was maybe the max cool attempt that
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: we hit. I mean the truck didn't really give a shit.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: I mean that is that right? You know, this isn't
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: to be fair.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: My truck is a twenty eleven, but that engine and
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: drive line and suspension was the same until twenty twenty.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I mean the suspension's the same as well. And that's
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: the other thing, is the suspension on the truck house.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: Yes it's simpler. No, it does not have leveling, but
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: the you spend a lot of time on the road
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: getting to where you're going to camp. Right, Like for me,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: the trade off of carrying some leveling blocks is like
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: like five thousand percent worth it for just being able
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: to drive a normal car. Like you know, like Laura
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: will drive the earth Roamer. She's a good driver or
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: she has a lot of experience. She did a lot
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: of the driving on the Dempster Highway and everything. She's
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: crossed the Simpson Desert, no disrespect, but she she doesn't
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: really feel comfortable. I know that she would. She would
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: take this truck out on her own with her friends.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: You know, she would not take the earth thrown around
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: on her own.
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: Like I'll say, you know, through this whole cooperation with
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: the truckhouse guys, it's the best thing we've had is
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: Matt and I were able to look at this calculus
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: equation right where we're solving, coming up with the ultimate
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: or the optimal solution. Right, So that was what wheelbase,
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: what chassis, which engine? How were we going to drive it?
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: You know, in the Western US if you can't do
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: eighty five, I mean, drives get really.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Long, sucks, dude, mileage.
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: Aerodynamics, fuel range, you know, failure modes. We were able
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: to take, like you know, probably one hundred variables and
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: solve for the optimal solution. And that's why it's on
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: the wheelbase.
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: It is.
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: It's it's why it is a little smaller. It's because
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: that's actually turns out that's as big as you can
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: go and still be optimal in dooth trails like poisoned Spider? Yeah,
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: I mean, do I expect any of MAT's customers go
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: out and do poisoned Spider? Probably not. I mean it's
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: gotten really chewed up lately, you know, I mean, Hell's
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: Revenge is not that hard. But on a you know,
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: a camper is campage, it's pretty legit. Yeah, for sure, expect.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: Small, Like I mean, it's what do we say, it's
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: probably three or four feet shorter than my roamer in
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: the garage.
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: I don't it's about five yeah.
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and you guys have you know, much narrower your
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: truck has that garage. So I'd like to get a
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: measurement from the bed to the back of the living space.
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: I don't think it's that much different.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: It just doesn't.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't feel that different because the there's
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: the dinad on the back with these huge windows, and
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: you know, for for my camper and a lot of campers,
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: there's storage back there, so it feels a little more
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: closed off. I mean again, like, I love my camper,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not ragging on it.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: But this does.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: The theme is that it does more with less, and
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: what it is is.
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: All higher quality.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: Like you're walking me through the fact that the camper
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: can come off in about forty minutes, Like that's crazy.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Like Matt showed me the all the plugs that are
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: on the back of it that I mean, in thirty seconds,
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: you can disconnect all the electronics.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was interesting too when you talked about how
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: it charges the batteries, so that the RAM has two
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: alternators and you guys have a forty eight volt alternator
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: that charges the camper batteries while you're driving. So it
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: was really interesting to me that you're not touching any
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: of the factory truck systems, which again comes back to reliability.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: You're not tapping into the coolant of the truck, for egu.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Like, that's why my freaking motor blew up, because like
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, they spect a good hose, was a continental hose.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: It was just old and it got hot and it
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: blew up. And that thirty thousand dollars.
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: That likes a choice that we had to talk about,
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: and that's part of that optimist is what are you
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: willing to give up for the ultimate and reliability and
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: simplicity and actually, if you're going to use it, actually
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: use it, not just go to Skieria parking lots. You know,
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: this is what we feel is the kind of the optimals.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: And it's so helpful for us to have Dave's thirty
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: years of experience because while we were penciling out which
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: we do to every single option in this, you know,
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: as Dave says, calculus equation, it's do we hook up
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: the hydronic heating system to the factory coolant. And I'm
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: so fortunate that I can call Dave and say, have
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: you ever had a cold start issue? Do we need
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: to do this? And Dave goes, Nope, I've had the
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: trucks and negative power.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just plug the block heater into the camper. Yeah,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I mean there's so much power in that truck.
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: And you know, Dave says, no, I've never had a problem.
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: You know, the problem if we do hook the hydronic
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: heat system up is it's longer coolant runs. We're messing with,
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: you know, factory cooling system. It's like, maybe keep the
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: RAM the RAM and keep the camper the camper, and
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: if the RAM needs to be serviced, it's way easier
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: for Ram. They're not looking at us saying we cause
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: a problem. It's just more serviceable, more reliable, and the
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: ultimate goals for people to.
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: Get to go camping.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: A lot of these big, you know, vehicles are in
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: the shop a lot. They're getting worked on, they have problems.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: The dealer won't touch them because they're so heavily modified.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: And or they're just too heavy for their lifts and just.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Finding a lift for it, like finding somebody that surfaces
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: the goddamn tires. Like I'm passionate about these tires, Like
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: it is the worst part of ownership, Like like why
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: would I consider a truck house because I don't have
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: to deal with those tires. Like I'm getting heated, I'm
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: getting angry.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Because like should we talk about the Bronco.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's it's like me with the Bronco, Like
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: they look cool and and everything, but like I mean,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: you know, you have like a two hundred plus pound
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: wheel and tire, like.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Well they're military wheels and their military tires they're designed
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: for a different use.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: But sure all of that stuff adds up. It's like, well,
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: if you want more space, and you want the wine rack,
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: and you want the air suspension, and you want the
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: you know, the tileplashing out, I mean all these things
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: that are actually like really nice about the earth rumer
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: and trucks that are like that, but then you get
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: pushed into those tires and I can't like, like if
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: anybody just listens to one thing, it's that like it's
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: light so you can use a more appropriate tire that
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: is just more realistic.
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we're right at thirteen thousand pounds for.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: The so that's seven thousand pounds less than your earth
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: rom were probably yeah, six or seven thousand pounds, I'd say.
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: But and one of those, you know, going back to
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: that calculus equation was, Hey, you know we developed this
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: BEF good Rich tire with BF good Rich for the
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: prospect Or EXL. It's a load range f you know,
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: what do we need to do to run this tire?
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: And that was you know, that was one of those
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: fundamental things right off the bat, was Hey, let's try
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: and keep this a normal tire for normal people.
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's a hard thing to do.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's we have done so much engineering and we
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: manufacture all the shells in house, and that's not an
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: easy shell to build, you know, going back to.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: This, because it's easy to overload the rear tires.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: Oh goodness, yeah, super easy, especially you know you're converting
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: you know to super single that's right. You know, if
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: you go back to that thing where hey, ask me
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: a question and I'll give you an answer on every
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: single thing, and you say, why is it narrower than
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: the you know, than the competition. You know, normal campers
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: are pretty much the road legal limit eight.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: Foot five, that's right.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, ours is narrower, and and the reason is, you know,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: it comes down to wheel offset and axle durability. There's
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: a there's a thousand reasons why.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: Being able to park in a normal parking spot being
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: able to fit on a trail.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like when you go to the fifty chassis with like.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: The bigger bridges.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about it, and there's just there's a
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: lot that comes into play. I mean, I guess to
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: kind of wrap up the driving impressions section. Yesterday when
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: I had the chance to drive the vehicle, my initial
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: impression was, I don't feel you can hear a little
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: bit from the camper, but I don't feel the camper
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: on the truck drives like a PXL. It accelerates properly,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: it stops properly, it turns properly. So I think that
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: safety and driver confidence is going to be in a
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: whole nother class than most of the other campers on
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: the market. And it's also what drives a lot of
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: people to something like a Sprinter because they drive like
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: a car. They drive they give people a lot of
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: confidence going down the road as long as you don't
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: overmodify them. So vans like the sprinters have become incredibly
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: popular for that reason because people get behind the wheel
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, yeah, I feel like I could
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: drive across the country in this thing. So this is
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: the first like proper around the world expedition camper that
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: I have driven that I think meets that objective where
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: the average driver will feel comfortable and confident, they'll have
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: like low driver fatigue, they can switch back and forth
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: with their partner. Everybody feels like they can participate and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: they don't feel like the kind of on the hairy
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: edge some of those campers. Once you get them going fast,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: like most of them, if you run them around sixty
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: sixty five, you can kind of do that all day long.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: But you just don't get anywhere in the US at
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: that speed.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: And that's the key in the US, right, So we
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: talked about it before. The US is unique and it's
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: one of the few places in the world, maybe honestly
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: one of the only places in the world where you
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: can drive at eighty eighty five miles an hour for
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: hours on end.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the only place I can think because they
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: won't let you do that. In Australia it's illegal.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah. And in Canada, you know you're at sixty two.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: You know, Mexico you're around sixty. I mean almost everywhere
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: in the world you're really about sixty and and then
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: you get into the you know, the mileage of this
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 5: thing and the range. If you keep this thing at
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: sixty sixty two, you're gonna be in the sixteen mile
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: and out or mile per gallon range.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: And we see two gallons of fuel and didn't calculate that.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: Fel calculated that around twelve thirteen hundred miles of range.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I would say even you know, in the US,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: you're gonna have a thousand mile range, even a high
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: speed yeah, which was you know, we've talked about that too.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: That's critical and just just safety, right, just like you know,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: maybe it's safety, maybe it's vehicle safety in a way
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: like oh this, you know, if you don't have to
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: get gas where you might not want to write that
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: this place doesn't look like they've changed your diesel fuel
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: a long time, or their filters I'm going to skip agore.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: It's really expensive or whatever.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: But also or you're just trying to get out of town.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, like just a couple months ago in Florida,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: like people were people could not get out of Florida point.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: The gas stations were out of fuel. The lines were
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: too long. Like you could drive that thing like all
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: the way to Colorado and bat and I.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 5: Drove it from Reno to here without you know, without
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 5: getting fuels.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: And like not to go on the prepper thing, but
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: like that was a recent event that occurred where people
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: couldn't leave, like.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: We could like we could have a wildfire.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, Like where I'm at, where your dad's at,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: way parents are at, and.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: It's literally happened.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it has. You got to get out in the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: last ten years, it's happened.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd say. You know, we talked about it's critical
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: to have a six hundred mile range, and you know
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: they have a yeah, a.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Thousand kilometers is our minimum standard.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: I think that translates about the same.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Six yeah, six hundred.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 5: Miles, you know, but to have a minimum one thousand
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: mile range in these.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Tras, Yeah, that's amazing.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: It's just it's just one of those things. It's like
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: really really comfortable and yeah, you know this whole thing.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: It's we're trying to make this so that you're not
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 5: a slave to your vehicle, where I think like a
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: class a motor home. You know, any boat over thirty feet,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: you know, you tend to bow to it right, it
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: owns you, and it becomes less fun and less you know,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: it's just like you're not spending as much time with
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: your family. You're worried more about tires or whatever it
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: might be. You know, whatever could happen that does happen.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: You know, we're trying to take this thing and make
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: it as reliable as possible.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: And what was interesting for me is that you guys,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: you guys solve the most difficult problem in this space,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: which is weight. So by solving that most difficult problem,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: and this is the one that hasn't been solved properly.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: By solving the most difficult problem, by coming back to
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: first principles and solving that, it actually made everything else better.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: It made everything else easier, and as a result, it
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: makes the customer experience that much better. But like, I mean,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: congrats to you guys for like spending years solving the
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: most difficult problem, which is how do we get regular tires?
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: How do we get an expedition camper that can do
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: Hell's Revenge, can comfortably sleep two people, could drive around
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: the world, and it weighs as much as a sportsmobile.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: It's thirteen thousand pounds. That's insane.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not much different if you had a prospector
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 5: with a sliding camper, flapped sliding campers. It's real similar.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 5: And you know we're that's talking about the four door
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 5: the two door one. I mean, if you think about this,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: if you really want to do some one road, we
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: built the two door one with these guys, and it's
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: the wheelbase is not much. One of the gladiators want
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: the campers the same size. I mean, it's literally our
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: trade beed prospector. Yeah, it's got the same size you know,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: it's the same size camper. Sure, I mean, and it's
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: it's under thirteen it's like twelve five with a short wheelbase.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's that's really fuel that you're measuring all
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: that too.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think you guys have seen some of
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: the photos of blasting balkers deserts.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: And they're they're dual rear wheel trucks that have a
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: fourteen thousand, five hundred pound gvw R.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and we reduce that down because of the tires.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 5: You know, they can't quite handle that on the rear axle.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: They're about call it four thousand pounds per tire, and
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: so the rear axles, Uh, we're trying to give you
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: enough that you can tow ten thousand pounds with an
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: eight thousand pound load. But you know, like we've discussed.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: You, that's what an eight one hundred pound tongue weight
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty pound tongue weight.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thousand thousand pounds.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: You know what it kind of like feels to me
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: is that do you remember remember like when we went
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: from TJ Wrangler to JK Wrangler and that was like revolutionary,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Like it just.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: Changed the game.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: Like there's definitely like other brands that have had evolutions
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: of their product and they do get better. But this
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: is like, to me, in the exhibition vehicle space a revolution,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: Like I'm dealing with a little bit less space, but
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: the interior is great. Like that's the number one question
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: that I've kind of been getting. It's like, Oh, it's
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: the interior done. That's the one with the interior. Like
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: these people are messaging like, yeah, the interior is good.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Like the interior is like completely livable. I mean I
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: kind of had this opinion that it would be like spartan,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: but it's you know, it's not, but it's it's it's
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: luxurious in like it's selection of materials and its design.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: It's very thoughtfully laid out.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is truly like a revolution. It is
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: all made possible by like that carbon Monocoq camper. Like
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: you if you try to do it fiberglass up, you're
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: over your weight on the tire and that now you're
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: an empts. And if you're on empts, well then you
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: know you kind of have to go to like what
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: the forty five or fifty five hundred, and then you
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: might as well make it a little bit bigger or.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: This or that or whatever.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: But weight gets more weights.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: It's just slippery slope. Like slippery slope.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 5: It's a sweet spice, that optimal solution.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's worth noting. You know, the
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: getting it lightweight is one thing. But there are a
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: lot of you know, campers RVs that you know, praise
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: ultra light all over the side. This isn't ultra light
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: and ultra flimsy. I mean, this is unbelievably well engineered.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: So we're not just cutting. We're not cutting if you
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: built like a brick house, we're not cutting features, We're
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: not cutting systems, like not cutting battery.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: It is engineering problems that you had to overcome.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: And it's all engineering and the manufacturing problems of building
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: a shell that's that curvaceous with a nominally thick folly
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: cord two inch carbon fiber block that's vacuum in fused
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: that we do in house is unbelievable. How much time,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: you know, my my team of engineers has had to
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: put in to be able to develop those parts.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: They're they're huge. It's a huge carbon fiber part.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I pitch you the carbon fiber alone
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: is like tens of thousands of dollars per camper.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: It's a lot.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: I think, how many how many just the materials.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: Think how many bicycle frames you could build with that
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: much carbon fiber and then go price, go price of
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: the carbon fiber bicycle frame.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: And we don't.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: And you know, there's there's I think composits is a
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: buzzword in the industry right now. You know, the simplest
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: definition of a composite is too dissimilar materials bonded together.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: You get a concrete cinder block and a piece of
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: plywood and some grilla glue and you have a composite.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: So not all composites are made the same. They're not
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: all equal. There's different levels of resins, different levels of reinforcements,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: which are the fabrics. There's tons of different levels of
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: foam core. And you know a truck house, we don't
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: cut a single corner it is. It's all epoxy, it's
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: all foam from Sweden.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: It's it's expanded underwater.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: So it's consistent, consistent density.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and sweet and sweeten yeah.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: And then it's not you know, you'll see a lot
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: of panel boxes being made out of FRP that it's
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: just a pre made FRP sheet laminated or vacuum pressed
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: to a foam core by us, you know, being in
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: full control of the laminate schedule we call it, which
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: is like where and what carbon and core goes in
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: each location of the mold. We're able to add carbon,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: like we were saying in the floor for the sub floor,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: We're able to add unidirectional carbon to support the candilevered
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: cab over I mean, it's not just a blanket built
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: carbon box. It's very intentional.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: There's we got to make sure that we're handling the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: dynamic loads and the candile livered loads and find that
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: balance between strength and weight.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: And it's taken a lot of what an excite what
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: an exciting time, man. So when do you guys think
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: you're going to have your first production delivery? Approximately?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll be early March. Yeah, so they're they're already,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: I mean.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: And you've got a bunch of trucks already on pre order.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: So yeah, there's going to be a backlog on that,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: which is normal. I think it's healthy for you guys
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: as a business to have a little bit of a backlog.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: It's going to be exciting to start to see them
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: running around, yeah, and getting you know, getting people's feedback
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: on it.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: And I don't and I don't think the price is terrible.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, like it's it's it's I mean compared to
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: you always have to check yourself and be like, yeah,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: it's a half a million bucks, you know, like that's
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of like that's a house, that's a lot
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: of money. But you know, we were kind of talking
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: like where can where you can. This is something that
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: you can park anywhere. You can't buy a you know,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: a cabin and near a ski resort for half a
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: million bucks, but four eighty.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: Five starting price. And that's with a gas cab chassis engine.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: Now, like if I was just going to be in
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: North America Canada, I would probably want the diesel. But
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: for like you know, I was, We always love to
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: bring it back to international travel. Gas is a better
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: solution for currently, like in a couple of years, maybe
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: we'll have you know, you know, wider proliferation of ultra
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: low sulfur diesel.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: Go to Bolivia, you cannot get it. Yeah, you cannot
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: get in it. And there's there's more countries on the
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Pan American Highway that do not have ultra low sulfur
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: diesel than have it. So the gas engines, Like, it's
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: cool that that is an option because again with the
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: larger trucks, they have to have the diesel, like they
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: cannot move the weight without it. So again you just
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: have more options. I think that that's really cool. Although
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: you have a twelve hundred mile range, so like if
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: you go even even in Bolivia, if you can get
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: into the main city, you're going to find ultra low
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: sulfur diesel because they want to go.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: Another thing that you have to think about.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you do have to plan.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: For auys of the last few years Mexico, that was
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: always a big concern Mexico, but now you everywhere, you know,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 5: so for most people Mexico, Canada, US, I would definitely
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 5: highly recommend the diesel. Yeah, it's just awesome. Yeah, you know,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 5: it's just amazing. But the gas engine will move it,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 5: and it'll move it just fine. And if you're only
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 5: if you are going in the countries where the speed
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 5: limits you know, sixty two to sixty five, you're never
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 5: going over seventy. It's not a problem. It's not a
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 5: problem in the US.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: It's just it just depends on where you want to go.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know it speaks to how great this
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: collaboration is.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: Is Dave's got.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: All that figured out with the RAM and it's the
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: same engineering on our front. So you're gonna get the
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: same product from truckhouse. It's just you're gonna put you're
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: not gonna put the green handle in the fuel tank.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the simple fact of it. It's gonna
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: work just like an AEV product, and all the engineering
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: of the integration from Truckhouses the same.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: So I built mine out online and it was about
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: five twenty five. I added a couple options so you
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: can add additional solar comes with four hundred watts of solder.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Would just say I built mine out. I heard that,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oops, and on that bumbshell.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: I did the extra so I did the starlink. I
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: did the heated floors because heated floors.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like we're talking like you have a sensitive you know,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: has a sensitive dad. Were we were joking ex Overlin
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: is doing like a winter camp out in February, and
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: how great it would be to show up in like
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: robes and slippers, everybody's smoking jackets have eighteen degrees or
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: something that, Uh, that'll be fun. But you know, guys,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to be
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: on this podcast today. For everyone that's listening, it's really
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: important to note that we do not have any financial
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: agreement with Truckhouse. They're not an advertiser. This is not
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: sponsored content. This is just a product that we well,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: there are two people that we believe in, so there
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: certainly we have some live Yeah, we have bias there
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: that should be disclosed. But it's a really important new
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: product that reflects a lot of development in the industry.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: I think it will help other companies be better too.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: I think it will lift all ships and these kinds
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: of of significant changes in engineering and performance. It does
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: help the entire industry do better. So that's why we
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: felt it was really important to talk about this stuff today.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: And the fact that it's it's here is pretty amazing.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: So like, it's a lot of work excited about it.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're genuinely excited about it.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: So yeah, and we you know, thanks for driving it,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: thanks for having.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Us out totally. That's just Yeah, we're gonna go wheel
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: it now.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: Going to say that's just that's just a tip of
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: the iceberg. Let's get you guys out camping in it,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: wheeling it awesome. That's a you know, pre production model.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: That's the worst one we're ever going to build. Yeah,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: and it's it's pretty good.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: It's pretty good. It's pretty good, and it's.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: Only going to get better. So yeah, thanks for having us.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we appreciate you all for listening, and we'll
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: talk to you next time.