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Disrupting the Towing Industry with Big D Fabrication · Towing News Now

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome one and all to the American Tone Recovery Institute podcast About.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: All of you remember.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: This is your podcast about both safety, education, positive public relations and networking within the professional and business-minded tone and recovery industry.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm DJ Harrington, your co-host, better known as the co-doctor, and I'm honored, as always each and every week, to have as the other co-host of this episode a 40-year Tone Industry veteran, the founder of American Tone Recovery Institute and a guy well-known throughout the industry, and he's done over 915 hands-on classes that we're going to talk about, the one and only West Wilbur.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: How's that West?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you, dj Again, your two times with your introduction.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I definitely appreciate it Doing good today.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: season's are turning from summer to fall.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: We're starting to feel it here a little bit.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: In the Carolina We've got several schools coming up so we're getting ready for those.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: With that time of year we're several different members of the Institute are getting new trucks so we're working on several big truck packages for several other members.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: We kind of customize the rigging to exactly what they want and they need or what they like.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: All that's had me pretty busy here today.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: So we're doing good here.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Dj, feeling good.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I was going to tell our listeners I was up at Kansas City this weekend and coming back from Kansas City to Georgia, the colors through Tennessee and Kentucky are all turning now.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: So you get the reddish leaves and the autumn leaves.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: They look gorgeous.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: The yellows, the reds, the oranges that's the beautiful part of fall.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And coming back from the West there's the Kentucky and Tennessee.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I bet that was quite a beautiful ride.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was gorgeous.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And going through you know how they bring you through the hills and all your zeds are beautiful colors.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: It was an enjoyable ride.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Oh good, that's good to hear.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: How are you feeling?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling great.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: I got good medication going.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I'm doing just ad bills now, which is excellent no pain pills, and I'm doing fine.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I'm doing good.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Good you walking good.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm walking slow.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: You know, I got my cane with me.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I'm walking slow, but I'm walking and it was good to see a lot of friends and it was nice.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: And this was what kind of event you went to in Kansas City.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: It was an auto recyclers convention for ARA 80th anniversary and the keynote speaker I just told our producer, chuck Kamp, the story, the keynote speaker on Saturday morning at 8.40, the place was packed and he gets up and says I had 32 employees when I met DJ Harrington Today, because of DJ Harrington, I have 108 partners in my business with me and we called team members and he said DJ changed our philosophy.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: He has this can I, constant and never ending improvement attitude.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And here's our training center and here's pictures that had a big word up there.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: It says can I?
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It stands for constant and never ending improvement and it was excellent.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I was in the audience with tears on because this 54-year-old kid did a great job.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: He motivated everybody and it gave me a lot of accolades, which was very tight.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Well, that's good to hear, dj.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Now let's talk for a second.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Can I?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, was the philosophy that the Japanese adopted after World War II, during the rebuilding process and from what I understand it's part of how the Japanese kicked our butts in manufacturing stuff into the 1950s.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: May have my years a little bit wrong.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: But is that?
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: where that can I come from?
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Actually, you know, when I did Toyota, they had it was called Kaizen, and Kaizen is that philosophy.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Kaizen is a little different than I call it tonight because I spelt out constant never.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: That's where the end comes from.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: No constant, never ending improvement.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So it's always improving.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: So it's like people that play golf or something you know you just have to keep improving your game.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And it's us in the towing and recovery industry.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: We should always be thought is how can we improve?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: By going to classes, by listening to podcast, by, you know, attending seminars and going to the classes that you put on.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: It's a constant, never ending improvement Until you get better.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and I adopted it years ago when I first heard about it a couple decades ago, and sometimes it drives my wife mad, but you're either getting I believe maybe I'm wrong about this, but I believe you're either getting better or getting worse.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: In this world, there is no neutral, so you're not getting better if the world is passing by and you're actually going backwards.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I concur with you 110% yes it is, and it's little things Every day west.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: It's the little things of the guy who, you know, spends 20 minutes a day reading and improving your industry, or going out and spending 15 minutes with a key employee of your business to learn a little bit about them, so that at the end of the year when you do a review, you know a little bit about his family and they stay with you when they know you care about them.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: They actually stay with you.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and you know, sometimes when you talk about things like what you just said, dj, people are quick to fall under their mind.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Well, this one time, and you know, everybody's got the story of the great employee that seemed great and then wasn't so great, and they want to focus on that and that's almost making people pay for the taxings of others when you don't let everybody start on a clean slate.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah Well, I believe, west, like you do, you can't please everybody all the time and you have to do your best shot.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Now, everyone's going to react differently, but I give people the benefit of the doubt.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: And have I been taking advantage of once in a while?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm not going to hold it against my efforts to improve another person down the road.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So I keep trying to do my.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: My son in law says I'm too kind, I'm, you know but I am.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I want to die as a kind, caring a guy who wants to see people improve and get better.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: That's the reason why, west, doing a podcast with you I cannot believe how many times I get the Florida to show how people walked over and said, oh, you're the voice that's with West Wilbur, I'm the podcast and I'm like well, it's, a lot of people listen to this podcast, you think about it, and we have a lot of listeners and I thank each and everyone of you for listening.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: But I don't want to digress you.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I know we got to kick this thing off.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: And where's your schedule looking like?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Well, we've got a class coming right up in just a couple of days after the same post, october 28 and 29, will be in Rochester, michigan, just outside of Detroit, working with the Michigan Towing Association up there, bill Byers, byers record services, the host for a two day light and medium duty class.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: And that's Rochester, michigan, october 28 29.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: The following weekend, on Friday, will be a flexia Kansas, the suburb of Kansas City.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Santa Fe tow is hosting the event.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: They're doing a great job.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Classes almost filled up at this point.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: On the third, the Friday, will be there for one day, advanced level A duty.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Saturday, sunday, november 14 and 15 will be there same location Today heavy duty towing, recovery with rotator.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: And then the next weekend, november 11 12, will be in Washington, north Carolina, cross training class with Ron Moore, fire to cross training.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: It's a great class.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: We've got a status display of a wreck Tesla that we're going to have on display there to work with and they have some big trucks for the fire fighters to cut up so we can interact, working together on life saving situations.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: And again, that's November 11 12, washington, north Carolina.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: For more information, folks go to our website.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: The shortcut to the website wwwamtowricom.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to repeat wwwamtowricom, or you just call the office 910-747-9000.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: We got a great interview lined up for today.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: This was another one done live at the Midwest Toe Show, so folks hang around.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So after the break we'll be right back with their interview.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: The folks at Purpose Wrecker are Wrecker specialists.
• 10:21
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• 10:27
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• 10:31
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• 10:39
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• 10:44
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• 10:50
  Speaker 3: For more information, visit them on the web at PurposeWreckercom, or speak to a specialist by calling 636-639-9700.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Celebrating 40 years in the towing industry, that's PurposeWreckercom.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: You have been listening to the American Toeing Recovery Institute podcast with Wes Wilbur and DJ Harrington, and this week we got a special guest because we're at the Midwest Regional Toe Show, so we got a special guest.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: I want you to know we do our best to give you new, informative information.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: That's the reason why it's the number one podcast in the industry.
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: We're available on download at any time.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: We're available on Spotify, itunes, pandora, google Play, stitcher, iheart Media, amazon.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Wherever you get your podcast, we're there.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: So, without further ado, let me turn it on over to Wes Wilbur.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you, dj.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: As promised, we have a very special guest today.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: We have the man himself, daryl from Big D Fabrication, big D Fabrication.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So we had Cody on a couple weeks ago several weeks ago, I guess now by the time this thing airs.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: But we're here at the Midwest Show.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Daryl's here showing the product.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: He got the brand new product out.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: I'll let him talk about that.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: But, daryl, do me a favor, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background before we get into the dollars.
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: I'm Daryl Headinger, owner and originator of Big D's Fabrication, originally started in the towing business back in the 70s and started building our own equipment because we were such a small towing service we couldn't afford all those high dollar homes units so we had to build a lot of our own things and through the years with building our own things, recently the COVID thing hit and we were a little slow and we talked about a dolly for big trucks and we came up with the idea to.
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: I came up with the idea to make the dolly pan, the actual axle for the dolly, without having to put an axle underneath a set of pans or something like that.
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: So I sat down and drew it up on AutoCAD, came up with the pan idea with the end plates, started building.
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: The first one was a 14,000 pound capacity, only limited by the tires, because we didn't find hubs and spindles and rims and tires that could carry a decent amount of weight.
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: When we ran across this rim tire combination with the hubs we were able to come on with the 25,000 pound capacity dolly.
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: After we had that introduced everybody kind of shied away from the 14,000 pound capacity dolly and everybody wanted the 25.
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: Even with buying the 25s.
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: They were looking for something bigger, so we talked about a double pan unit.
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: So we came up with putting a combination together of big truck hubs along with the nine inch wide aluminum rims and a 315 tire to get our capacity up to the 40 or 44,000 pound capacity.
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: Dolly.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, that's a lot of information you just gave there, Darrell.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but that's a lot of information.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Let's go backwards a little bit.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about some of the tow trucks you made, if we could, and then we'll come to the dolly Sure.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: So you made mechanical tow trucks, hydraulic tow trucks.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about that.
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: First one I actually built by myself was a I'm going to call it a Holmes 440 copy that I built in high school looking for a high school project.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: In the welding shop in high school I told them I wanted to build a record boom.
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: While everybody else was building toolboxes and things, and then I built a record boom.
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: The shop teacher told me that I needed a plan before I could start building this.
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: Well, I was taking a drafting class in high school, so that was simple.
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: I drew up the record boom in the drafting class and was able to take it over to the shop class and show him the plan of what I wanted to do to build this Holmes 440 copy.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Right, so did you see?
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Everybody was copying the 440 back then.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the most popular light duty tow truck and it was also the most copied light duty tow truck.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: I believe it holds both honors.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, that's great that you went to a school system that offered both of those skills the drafting and the welding.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: So after you made your first one in high school, was your father already in the garage business?
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: Yes, my grandfather had originally had several gas stations throughout the Green Bay area and he died unexpectedly and my grandmother needed my father to step in and take over running the business and not really sure what they were going to do with it at that point, my father ended up buying the gas station and moved to a couple different gas stations in the Green Bay, wisconsin area and finally got tired of dealing with the big oil companies that were the actual owner of the building and property at that time and we built a building at our current location, worked out of that building from 1976 till 2014, 2015, right in that area.
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: We tore that building down and built what we thought was going to be a huge building at the time, what we outgrew it about four years after we were in that building and we are already looking for addition.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: That's great here.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: So after the 440 knockoff, did you build more tow trucks?
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: Yes, I actually built a steel rollback, several of those three or four of those steel rollbacks.
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: I was not into the aluminum welding so I put together three, four steel rollbacks.
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: Then I built a what I'm going to call a 40 ton hydraulic extendable boom.
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: The base of the boom looks similar to the Home 1701 retrofit that they were putting on the 750 mast and that was the base of the boom had a 10 foot extension coming out.
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: The end of it Steel hydraulic.
• 17:57
  Speaker 5: Later on I built the under reach to put on that same truck, copying a few different points of things.
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: It was in a roller system similar to the NRC.
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: It was only a single stage Reach on it but it gave me a hundred hundred and twenty inches of reach.
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: I don't remember exactly what, but that single stage gave me a decent reach.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: What kind of timeframe are we talking about?
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: That was in the early 80s.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: That was 85 86.
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: I guess it would be middle 80s.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, nobody's splitting that here, yeah, but uh, no, 10 foot of reach was huge back then.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah it was huge.
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that truck is still on the road.
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: We sold that About four years ago and we just seen it came up for sale again that the guy we sold it to is selling it now.
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: So the truck is still on the road with that boom that I built in the early 80s.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So you've always been an innovator, and what not.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: I want to talk to you.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: I want to come back to the dial is, but we got to take quick breaks, so can you hang around till after the break?
• 19:11
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• 20:25
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• 20:34
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• 20:36
  Speaker 4: You have been listening to the american tone recovery institute podcast west willburn, dj herrington and darrell from big d's.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: I want to talk about this, remind all of you and I can't thank you enough for making this the largest Listen to podcast in the industry.
• 20:53
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• 20:56
  Speaker 4: If you'd like to be on the podcast and west willburn you want to reach out to them to be on the podcast, just dial our hotline number 706 409 5603, 706-409-5603, and you too might be on the pike.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: Cast yourself Wes.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: Let me turn it over to you because I know you want to ask Darrell another question.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I have several actually.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: You talked about the no axles, and that's part of how you get that.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Five inches.
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: Five inches of actual lift on it.
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: If you measure the dolly sitting on the ground right now and measure six and a half to the top of the pan, with a little bit of crush in the tires, that brings it down to our five inches of raising it off the ground.
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: Different weights are going to be different heights, so you can't just have a general okay, it's going to raise everything five inches.
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: No, it's going to raise some of them four inches because they're a lot heavier and it's going to have more crush on the tires.
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: So, but then lighter things it'll.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: I was going to say.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: The other side of that is the lighter things.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: You won't get that much crush, so you might be a little bit higher.
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: That's still outstanding.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: That's six inches is still outstanding.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: As I talked about with Cody and you and me chitchat it last night, many, many of us have thought, had this idea.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: The difference was you took action on it and put it.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: You know, did something about it.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: So I think that's awesome.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: The one of the things I don't know that me and Cody talked about and I don't remember for sure.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: I just saw this the other day when I was looking on Facebook.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: You know several different friends of mine use it.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: That I'm you know friends with.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I see what they're doing.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: You know which.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: I do have a lot of friends on Facebook.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: But anyway, the forks you can use your forks in there.
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: Yes, and that we didn't even think about ourselves.
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: That was somebody we had sold a dolly to and he had a empty semi trailer that was just going to the salvage yard used probably for a storage trailer on site someplace and he took the dolly, flipped it upside down, dropped frame forks into those two inch holes that we put in just for water drainage and debris to fall out when it's sitting in the yard, dropped the frame forks in there, put it under the ICC bumper on the semi trailer, towed it to the salvage yard like that.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that that was very slick and I have to deal with the tires at the salvage yard and stuff that's huge.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: So you that, that's the original dolly.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: What's the capacity on?
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: that was a 25,000 pound.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Tell us about the big boy, the new kid on the block.
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: Well, the new big one is our 44,000 pound capacity limited by the tire weight capacity.
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: To begin with we were able to come up with the 11,000 pound capacity, 315 tires, and the double pan allows you to set both sets of tandems in on like a garbage truck or something like that.
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: The garbage trucks in our area have gotten so tall because they're going to whether it's C and G, they'll put their C and G tanks up on top of the garbage compacting part of it.
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: They're raising it up, so those things are running down road at 13 feet tall.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: So your legal limit being 13, 6, you can't raise that a whole lot.
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: We designed this dolly to be able to put those heavy things in your concrete trucks, your garbage compacting things, plus the van semi trailers that could have a wheel axle spindle issue with.
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: You're able to pick them up on the interstate, set the back end of the trailer or the truck into that dolly and get it off the road.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, garbage trucks there's a whole lot of stuff that's 13, 13, 2 nowadays.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: So that's awesome that you've got that in mind.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I think that comes from partly from being a towing operator and using this stuff in the real world.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: The other comment I'd like to make is it's very good that you listen to others and you know take modify from there or whatnot.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: You know, years ago, homes and you know whatever part of how they became so big.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I think you know I'm talking the 50s and 60s.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I wasn't there, of course, but from what I've read, that they were very open to listening to the towing operator.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I think after corporate America bought them out in the 70s with the elevator company oh, I can't remember who bought them out, but anyway, I think a lot of that went away.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: So I think it's excellent that you're listening to the end user and that you guys are still end users yourself, because you are still in the towing business, right.
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: Yes, we are.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: So I think that's wonderful.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: So on the big boy, does that have some of the same features?
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Does it have holes for fork?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Can you flip it?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, tell us about some of that stuff if you don't mind.
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: Yes, it's still got the drain holes that could be used for forks.
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: We've had some people suggest things to possibly set turn the dolly upside down and set a damaged semi trailer on under the kingpin similar to what everybody is using a flat top dolly for and we haven't had a lot of chance to play with it and see what our total heights are to see if that's going to work real good.
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: But we've had other suggestions like taking your typical towing hitch that you're already using for towing a semi trailer on an underreach, being able to take that attachment out of your truck and drop it into the middle of that dolly.
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: So far we haven't made provisions for that, but we see that becoming a system that could easily be used In our unit.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: I guess that whole setup would be tall enough to get to the kingpin, wouldn't it?
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, I was trying to visualize that in my mind at first, that you know you what you would take.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: But that makes a lot of sense doing it that way.
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: It was kind of a hurry thing to get this Big dolly to the show here, actually our medium-sized, the 40,000 pound dolly.
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure if it ever hit the ground from the time we put the hubs and rims and tires on in the shop on the Forklift forks and setting it on the trailer to get it strapped down to get to this show.
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: So it was a pretty fast thing with getting things there.
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: The hubs were Supposed to be here on the Thursday before the show and they didn't show up on Friday.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: Monday rolls around and they hadn't showed up.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: We didn't get the hubs to put on that till Tuesday and we left Wednesday morning to come down here.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I tell you, I've done many toes shows and most of them work on about that schedule, no matter what you do, and we went through kind of the same thing with our new app, so I have total appreciation for that.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: What else can you tell us about the dollars or anything other features and benefits that you think of?
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: We keep finding other features and benefits from the end user.
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: They take the dolly out and they Come up with their own thing.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: Hey, maybe the dolly will do this.
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: And we see that and we're like you're right, that'll do that.
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: That's another point.
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: We can tell other tours about that.
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: Our dolly will do.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: You know, we, every tour, has their own way of doing things, and not that any of them are wrong, it's just a different way.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: And so many times you see somebody else doing it and it's like wow, that's a good idea, I'll start doing that.
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: And that's how we learn and grow and find different, innovative ways of doing things Absolutely.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: And again, I think it's great that you're open-minded, listening to end users and the fact that you guys are end users yourself.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: What's in the future for Big D?
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: I Keep pounding out some dollies for people.
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: There seems to be a pretty good Interest in all three sizes now, so we're going to continue with the three sizes.
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: Somebody did ask me if we ever thought about making a flat top dolly and I didn't totally shy away from it.
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: But I thought so many people in the heavy-duty towing market have access to the suspension boxes out of trailers that we didn't really think it would be a feasible thing for us to Build a flat top dolly when all these other towing services have access to the suspension boxes, things like that.
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: That I don't really see that going anywhere.
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: Making our dolly work as a flat top dolly that I can see, so that it's got more than one purpose.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: And you're right about the towers.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: That a friend of mine, kevin Farley, who owns your dollies yes, we've go.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: We talked about a years ago making them and when I kind of test marketed a little bit we didn't make it.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: But just talk to people, almost everybody talked to you says, yeah, I've got one, I've got the dollies sit back there.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: We're gonna make it, probably this next summer.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: You know, you ask them how long they've had it and they say four years right.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: But that, but anyway, the.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: That is the nature of the beast, of who we're dealing with.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So, but I definitely see that any other things coming up that you can think of or that you plan on doing, Not that I can think of offhand, just making some little improvements.
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: One of the big questions we get from a lot of people is transporting our dollies out to a scene, and We've added a lot of pictures to our Facebook page and our website.
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: We're gonna continue to add the pictures of how they're transported and We've come up with three different ways, or three or four different ways, of transporting them to the scene.
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: So many times you get your heavy-duty operator out there and then they find out they need it and there's not a Another heavy-duty operator at the shop to bring it out.
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: So there's several different ways of a light duty and medium duty, either tow trucks or flatbeds to bring the dolly out to the scene.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: How much does the dolly weigh?
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: our 25,000 pound dolly weighs 1850 pounds.
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: We haven't put our 40,000 pound dolly on a scale yet to see what that weighs, but our 44,000 pound dolly we put a load cell in the cable and lifted that that was 4,200 pounds.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, good, that's one thing I want our listeners to know that they they've not only use these things, but you also worked with the fab shop, so this has been engineered.
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: Yes, the local machine shop we use that produced our spindles Very.
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: They bet around for many, many years and know the different steels and stuff and we kind of go with their recommendations on what they feel is going to be the best steels for the spindles, the side plates, the pans.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I Think that's excellent, because a whole lot of things are just made by blacksmith engineering, you know it bends here, so we put another plate of steel there.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: So that's night.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: One of the things that got me enthusiastic about your product is that it's engineered, and I'm not a.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Anybody's been to a class with me.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: No, sometimes I'm not the biggest fan of engineers, but they do have their place, so that's really good to hear.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Now you guys got a Facebook page and a website, right?
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: Yes, we have a Facebook page and a website.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Tell us about that.
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: Well, the that's how we originally started.
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: This was through the Facebook page.
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: We built the first Dolly to use for ourselves.
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: My son posted pictures, that is friends with a lot of other towing people around the country and Somebody out of Illinois Contacted us and said hey, I really like that Dolly you built.
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: Would you build me one?
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: So we built one for him and he shared some pictures on Facebook and and several other people started contacting us and it just grew from there and this all happened during Covins, so that timing was just almost heaven sent, wasn't it?
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: pretty much.
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: Pretty much that a little bit of slowness during the coldwood thing gave us some time to think about doing something else and Gave us the time to actually put into building something right.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: So Facebook, it's big D fabrication is big D's fabrication about the website.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: What's the website address?
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Website is big D's fabrication Com boy, you make it nice and simple.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: How about a phone number?
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: Phone number is my son's cell phone number 920 639 9 315.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Give it to me one more time, a little slower for listeners at home 920 639, 9, 3, 1, 5.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Well, I can't thank you enough for being here to guest and I appreciate your interest in your heartfelt energy into the industry and I wish you much success as you move forward.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for being a guest today.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Dj, you want to take us home?
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: Buddy, it was an excellent Darrell.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: I hope you give back to the high school that you went to, because they have generated a great person.
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: You did your drafting, you did engineering there, you did shop there, and look what it turned into.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: I think it's excellent and you've been a real asset to the industry.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: So real quick.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Just a side question Are you the high school that you went to?
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: Do you know if it still has welding, or they actually did shy away from some of the shop classes, but I have heard that they are bringing them back.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: The industry has found that not everybody can be a doctor, lawyer and CPA, that there still is a need for the auto mechanics and the electricians and the plumbers and everything else in every industry.
• 35:24
  Speaker 5: That there's got to be the hands on people.
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: Not everybody can have the desk jobs and not everybody wants to do the desk jobs.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: So that's good to hear that they're bringing some of that back.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: I know many parts of the country they're not offering it at all.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: My son is now in college, but in high school they offered a limited shop class and he's not super interested in a career with working with his hands.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: He wants to be a teacher, a school teacher.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: But he took the course and it was very valuable for him, you know.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: So I'm glad to see that that's still going on.
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of things that kids growing up may not even know what they want to do in their future.
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: Having a shop class and things like that in school gives them whether it's a wood shop, a metal fab shop, a small engine shop just giving them that ability to mess around with it.
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: They might find that they'd like to do those things and it could be their career in the future.
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: But until they have a sample of what it's actually going to be, they don't really know.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: I can't agree with that strongly enough.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks for being on today.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Listeners, if you're going to look at the heavy duty dialys, this is the people you need to call.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: They've got the best product out there, in my opinion.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: So, thank you, darrell, appreciate you and good luck as you go forward.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you.