141: All About APUs

This week on the Oakley Podcast, Jeremy Kellett chats with Ricky Duncan, Sales Rep at Thermo King. During the episode, Ricky and Jeremy talk about all things APUs. The pair talk about why APUs exist, the differences between different makes and models, why it’s important for owner-operators to consider an APU, and more.

Key topics in today’s conversation include:

  • Oakley Update: Great customer feedback and a shoutout to an owner-operator (2:48)
  • Ricky’s history working in trucking and with APUs (5:18)
  • What is an APU and why has it become important? (6:39)
  • The necessity for APUs for today’s driver (12:01)
  • Different kinds of APUs and the pros and cons for each (13:16)
  • Servicing an APU and warranty information (22:04)
  • What’s the future of APUs? (27:01)
  • What are weight specs and requirements for APUs (33:37)
  • Final thoughts (37:32)

Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.

Transcription

Ricky Duncan  00:00

If you idle a truck, you’re burning a gallon to sometimes 1.2 gallon per hour. Man sleeping eight hours, you know, here we go. We’re burning eight to 10 gallons a night and all of a sudden we’re not at $2 dollar a gallon we’re at $4 fuel. So our cost everything we had factored into this truck times 10 times whatever and however big our company is, our number just went off the charts. And these things burn, three-tenths, three-tenths of a gallon per hour.

Jeremy Kellett  00:44

Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. There’s Jeremy kellett director of recruiting here at Oakley trucking and I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. Appreciate everybody checking us out on YouTube and checking us out on whatever platform you listen to us but we appreciate you staying with us every week. This week we’re going to talk AP US I’ve had a couple of requests from some listeners that says hey why don’t you do an episode on AP US and learn a little bit about him and so we did a little research I found a expert Ricky Dokken with our McCain’s gonna sit down here and visit with us and we’re going to talk strictly AP US we’re going to learn a little bit like Forest what they are maybe a little history of why they got so popular when they did and then the differences in them you know you got you got diesel powered you’ve got battery powered we’re gonna talk a little maybe even warranty and where you can get them serviced that kind of stuff get a little farther in detail with Ricky Duncan here in just a few minutes. But first let’s do an Oakley update sponsored by Arrow Truck Sales. Arrow Truck Sales has been in business for over 60 years and a longtime partner of Oakley trucking and the Oakley podcast. Tre Visor and Keith Wilson do a great job at putting you in the right truck to fit your needs and our needs here at Oakley. They carry all makes and models to choose from with on site financing through transport funding. So whether you’re a seasoned owner operator or a first time buyer, be sure to contact Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales at 573-216-6047 and tell him you heard it on the Oakley podcast. Okay, so the update for today actually is two real simple ones I wanted to do. I wanted to do this one because I got an email about a good service. And I’ll just read this email and just took a call from Pine Street salvage scale in Abilene, Texas. As you guys know where that said, I’m sure we’ve been going there for years. And this person says he said he loves when our guys come in. They’re always professional and nice. He wished that all drivers were like ours. He said he just wanted to call and say thanks because it seems like all you hear is negative feedback. But our guys are worth the praise for being so positive. So good stuff right there. He didn’t tell me a specific driver. But it just goes to you guys in general that you take care of us out there at Oakley with our customers and you know how important customer service is here. And we appreciate it. The other thing on the Oakley update I like to recognize sometimes an owner operator has been with us a little while and this guy. He’s kind of flies, you know, not only flies under the radar, but you just don’t. You don’t hear him Oh Nene badly. So for sure, but he’s just a super guy that has been here 10 years. His name is Craig Miller. He’s out of Cleveland, Tennessee. He’s only in the dunk division. He’s got a 2022 Kw double w 900. And he just, you know, is consistent and does the job for us. I asked him, I asked dispatch and operations what they thought about him because they deal with him every day. And they said they got it right here. Always This is from the dispatcher always has a great positive attitude willing to do anything we need him to do and help out have had compliments on him from customers over the past year and how much they enjoy having him. So, man, that’s the kind of stuff we want here. Greg Miller, we want you to know we appreciate you at Oakley trucking and thanks for representing us well. Alright, let’s get down to talking AP US with Ricky duck. Ricky Duncan. What’s going on Ricky? Good morning. How are you doing? I’m doing well. Thanks for appreciating you for coming over and doing this. You know, this is this good stuff. I know he’s talking a little bit earlier about you know, don’t do a lot of pod Yes, and I hate listening stuff. But this is something that I try to get good information out to our own rock writers. And I think, you know, AP use is always a huge deal. Just, it’s been a big topic, since, like you were saying, Obama went to $4 gallon when he was in office here all sudden ipus fired up. So give us a little bit of background on your history with AP US. And in the trucking business, if you would

Ricky Duncan  05:25

The trucking business started in the early 90s, I got my start with Great Dane and got a couple years there. And then I went to work for MHC and was fortunate to do nearly 24 years with those guys. And the last 16 of that, I guess, was with their carrier division. And then left, they just read it six, maybe seven years ago, come over to the summer kingside. And it’s been mostly refrigeration for me for the better part since 2000. And you worked with the location here and your local dealer here tri state or McCain. So you’ve dealt with us for a long time watching them come in. I’m just guessing roughly, Oh, 506. Somewhere in that I watched it coming in. And that’s probably when we started. You know, really thinking about it, started seeing truck problems. We didn’t know where truck problems back then were Island problems we started experiencing. And then of course, we were also going through a spell of fuel going up. How do we fight this? How did we not know all that in the early 2000s? So no.

Jeremy Kellett  06:31

So let’s start out there because somebody’s outside listening in that we’ve already said AP US a couple times. But he is an APU.

Ricky Duncan  06:42

APU is an auxiliary power unit. So what that’ll do is it’ll allow you to run heat or air and stay comfortable in a truck without idling the truck. So, you know, the two main ones are carrying thermal kings, obviously, but there’s been some others, you know, around and that became important when two things right? When fuel went Hmm, that was first. And then when they started putting these days on? That’s exactly it. That’s exactly right. When they started improving these engines to drive the emissions to where they are today is where this thing really started to snowball because it was bad to idle the truck. And it was crazy. It was bad. Think about, you know where we come from? If you look back in the 70s and the 80s. I mean, black smoke row and where we’re at today. Yeah, I mean, it’s invisible. Yeah, it’s invisible. You don’t see trailers blacked out on the front or trucks with the you know, see that anymore. But to get there, they had to make a lot of changes to truck engines, which in turn, made things a lot more sensitive. You know, used to, for instance, a truck could, you know, something can fail, sensor go out, check engine light, come on, hey, I need to get to the next exit. The next whatever I need to get home. Nowadays, and you probably know this. I mean, nowadays stuff goes out and trucks go down. I mean, we’re calling a tow truck, right do so we’re unable to limp on to get it to where it has

Jeremy Kellett  08:20

changed that, you know, by having that because I remember some of it was coming out and they were talking about how it was bad for trucks island. They don’t you know, with his new emissions, they put on the F and stuff. They’re not supposed to idle much. And I’m thinking now who in their right mind would not make it bad, something bad on a truck for it to be bad to add on because I have to idle. Thanks. Thanks. So that was like me posing, but AP US took off. Yeah. And the demand hit. Yep. And so what was happening on your end at

Ricky Duncan  08:54

that, on our end, we were learning right along with everybody else. But we knew we had a product. I think APU in general, we knew we had something that could run the air. And the driver could sleep. Well, we could run the heat, and the driver could sleep. So and you know back to what we were getting, I’d say right there. Fuel creeping up. So you added a truck, you’re burning a gallon or two, sometimes 1.2 gallons per hour. Man sleeping eight hours. You know, here we go. We’re burning eight to 10 gallons a night. And all of a sudden we’re not at $2 dollar to get our fueling Well, we’re at $4 fuel. So our cost everything we had factored into this truck times 10 times whatever our company is. Our number just went off the charts. I mean, it just went off the charts and these things barn. Three tenths is about what the two big ones are at right and about three to three tenths of a gallon per hour per hour.

Jeremy Kellett  09:55

That’s right. So ma’am, what kind of saving exactly do I mean Exactly? That’s a big savings and man, I guess you guys corsets your selling point. So big, we sold on fuel

Ricky Duncan  10:07

for up till Gosh, six, eight years ago maybe I don’t know the exact time, we sold on fuel for a long time. But changes that have come with emissions and carb, which is California Air Resource Board changes that have come through all that. And what they’ve done with these engines have forced us to know it has to be more driven. Hey, we cannot Elektra, that five minutes of idle time. And this thing looks like a pinball machine going off all the bells and whistles and colds and everything just going off everywhere. Now I can’t drive it to my local dealer and get it fixed. So, you know, today’s truck, it has the DPS for the region that you know, and it’s monitoring all of that, and you let that get out of whack. And in today’s world, we’ve just come out of COVID. So we can’t get half the parts that we need to fix stuff anymore. We’re really hurting our manpower at all of our locations. Really, you brought me on your trip? You know, two weeks, three weeks, four, maybe I’ll do my best. There’s no longer buy one. First thing, yeah, pull it right in there. My guy might not be here today. I mean, I have a guy here, period. I mean, I haven’t worked here anymore. So COVID brought a lot of challenges with our workforce, right? When we’ve got to find a way. So the APU now is forced to get even better. Our guys, you know, we got to do better with the APU, and to try to help the guys avoid some of the things that we’re seeing for the first time out of a truck. You know,

Jeremy Kellett  11:57

right? Because now, I mean, when people buy a truck, I’m assuming that’s one of the first things they want to get done is APU put on it? For sure. So they limit their engine wear and tear and they limit fuel consumption. And it’s just a tool. I mean, it’s just another necessity now like,

Ricky Duncan  12:20

If I get driver retention, like you wouldn’t believe it dramatically for company trucks, probably as driver retention now may be new would, it would shock you to know how many drivers are looking at that when they’re looking at a job. They got to know because today’s driver and you know, it’s funny today’s driver, we go from your hardcore truck drivers from back in the day, outlaw Trucking, we used to call it now it’s it’s, we call it hotel load now, almost a camping deal, you know, that we want to we want to plug everything up, run everything, roll the awning out and build a little camp, right? I mean, that’s what it seems like. And to be able to do all of that, you’re not going to get plugins everywhere like that where you go. So unable to do that the APU is going to have to hold up and provide that. So

Jeremy Kellett  13:14

Let’s talk about the different kinds of GPUs we have out there. Ricky would give us some education on what may be the pros and cons of each

Ricky Duncan  13:23

diesel electric is the two that we’re currently using. That’s what and really, diesel is your mainstay for all the good reasons why, you know, what are they, I mean, we’ve got to put fuel in it, run it, that’s what we know, in this country. We’re kind of, you know, we’re going down this road of electricity, no doubt, we’re moving toward it. And we have a lot of things. But there’s so many unknowns, I mean, I’ve got drivers that want to sleep four to six hours. Heck, they can do that on the ground outside, but zoom guys, if they frequently, then you got guys who are not asleep eight, then they’re going to sit eight, you got some guys that are going to do 16 hours at a time. In some cases, better technology is still trying to get there. You know, we’re trying to get eight to 10 hours out of the battery so he can sleep. What we’re trying to do, maybe let him plug his phone and maybe the microwave work. We cook a little breakfast and one just whatever dolly is, but if his job requires him to sleep and then go sit somewhere and wait, guess what? Batteries might put us at a display not last, it will last not currently not in today’s world where we got it. Now we’ve got lithium coming. We’ve got examples for sure where we do more truck starts for less time. You know, just just but that’s an up and down. You know, so in the constant starting of the truck, is that going to create something down the line We’re gonna run into something there. maintenance issues, maintenance apps rockstars. Anything, okay, so, battery is the way, as far as the noise factor, you don’t have it. Definitely the fuel factor, we’re not burning it. So it’s the way to do it. We just got to keep, we got to stay at it, and figure out the best way to do that. There’s pretty good progress right now I think battery technology could probably speak to, I wished I had some numbers to show you the first initials being two to three to four hours, batteries are dead. And I’ll see and some guys report numbers upwards of 14 hours. I mean, and then now you’re starting to couple solar panels with plugging in a little bit more rat toward the tail end so that I get my last little bit of what I need out of my break. And

Jeremy Kellett  15:58

but y’all do that. I mean, as far as I had a solar panel we do we offer

Ricky Duncan  16:02

solar panels. In fact, most of our quotes, we generally like to quote this thing complete with a solar panel. And then if the customer says, Hey, I’ve already got a heater or an inverter, and I don’t want that solar, then we take it back out. And we want him to know up front. You know, we’d like for you to run the whole package. Because that does nothing but help us with our reason. You know, when I won’t say it’s a guinea pig type deal. We’ve got it out there. And it’s doing well. Where do we mount it? So we’re putting solar panels mounted on the top of the truck. Okay, thanks. So to zone a big four by two and a half on curse. So are you putting on

Jeremy Kellett  16:44

more diesels than your electric death battery,

Ricky Duncan  16:48

definitely more diesels they’ve currently I’ve got some customers coming. I’ve got a few customers that are running our products and have run them under test circumstances for us and had some great return on it. I’ve got some orders going this year that we’re going to get some of our national storage installed. So we’ve got a little bit of feedback. But TK as a company, a big company, they’ve got, you know, some great success stories. They really do. And you have to feed on that. Like I said, a guy that’s just trucking. This is a go getter. He’s pushed it right to his truck. And he might sleep you know, he’s doing it by the books, but it’s versus the guy who has to sit and wait. There’s a big difference. It’s huge. Yeah, you’re all field guys. You know? I mean, they’re gonna have to do diesel. They have to sit and wait. Yeah. But now think about this. Traffic jams. Whether we’ll get five or 10 days a year where traffic is locked up, and he can’t go anywhere. And he pulled him off the side of the road. Here we go. Yeah. Were we ready? Were we ready for 1718 hours of Blizzard there? We weren’t expecting and my guys sitting on the side of the road with no, we’re gonna start that trip. We’re gonna offset and here we go with our idle issues that we just talked about.

Jeremy Kellett  18:05

I think that’s definitely there. There’s no doubt they’re a necessity. The days to be on a truck? Are they certain? Let’s talk a little more specifically. Are there certain trucks that you can’t put them on? Or are there problems? Are

Ricky Duncan  18:17

you hey, my knowledge does not come on. Now, in the past? Where do they normally go? They normally mount on the passenger side, just behind the cab. And in the past, you know, wheelbase was an issue. And you know, that’s a hard lesson you learn . Hey, man, yeah, I’ll get the whole thing done, bring it to me and get enough space and get 2525 answers and I need you to know a little bit more than that. So truck manufacturers have. Now they make sure they not only make sure the truck manufacturers, they start pre plumbed in a truck. So that makes our install just a little bit. I was wondering how we were talking about that for you to get here, man. Another guy was saying I wonder if they have it where they just plug it in? I mean the mountain then plugs it in, what does that look like the manufacturer is ready no matter what they go with? Whether going down their assembly line if it gets theirs, or if the customer has already said no, I’m getting the other one. And so it’s ready. But they’ve just kind of pre plumbed a little bit and got it in your head in the game. Well, and I was thinking about that. If you mounted it on the side, then what does it actually plug into the truck, so we had to run lines? Yeah, we’ll run lines just up under the cab, and we’ll cut into the base of the cab. Yep. Now that particular setup is right there. So we’ll tie into that truck engine. We can do that one of two ways. We had a series a few years back where some trade cycles were very short. And some guys we’re pulling ipus off and adding them to their new trucks. So they got away from plummeting into the truck engine. They wanted a closed loop. Don’t leave a scar. Oh my Truck because I’m trading it back in a couple of years. So they go in a closed loop. Well, again, let’s get to some cold weather, you know, the default settings on my unit, and I believe on the other unit as well is like 32 degrees, we’ll start up, and we’ll run and we’re circulating water and we’re charging batteries. In a cold scenario, those are automatic default settings are units that can be, you know, can be hooked to the engine, we’re sorry, the engine, that’s the way I want to sell it is to the engines because I don’t want the guy calling me when he hit that Blizzard up in Chicago, something like that. And we got a problem. And he’s got a closed loop system and

Jeremy Kellett  20:38

see what you’re saying. Some of them there’s well hook to the engine at run, there

Ricky Duncan  20:42

are a lot of battery voltage, people will tell you to start up this voltage or that voltage, a lot of those. I wouldn’t tinker with down in the 10 Something voltage at all really don’t. You know how many elves there are? But some guys want to push that to the max. I mean, we got a factory default setting and I believe it’s 11 Eight, I need to check that number and see but either way dead batteries and CO whether those things are set up to start, and that actually helps the truck. That will help.

Jeremy Kellett  21:13

Good stuff right there.

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Jeremy Kellett  22:03

Okay, now that we’ve got these things installed, or getting them installed, what is it? Let’s talk a little bit about servicing these units and how easy they are to take care of and what is your warranty? What’s a typical warranty on AP

Ricky Duncan  22:20

services about 2000 Our animals. And I was to take some people for about a year. Okay, some a little less, some a little more. So I wouldn’t see a problem with changing everything twice a year. If that’s what it had me said. I mean, I’m just old school. That would be the not me. So but you know, twice a year. And that’s not something lazy people can do. McCann not mechanically inclined? Yes, he can. Yeah, you’d like to have it. If you’d like to have it checked over and once over, Hey, make sure I’m beating up down the road, has anything come loose? Because we are running lines from there? You know, we’re bundling it up and trying to trace it up through the truck and through the frame and up through the cab. So let’s make sure I’m still all good. What are some of the common things you see at an annual service? You see, I mean rust, obviously, you see, but we see from time to time we see some installed plumbing, that it gets bundled together, but then it doesn’t get bundled away from the frame. So it’ll sit right there on the lip of the phone. And rad. We know that’s not gonna work. Yeah, we see, there’s just ways that you need to make sure that soccer is run correctly, the less you can put unneeded bands in hoses and things like that, you know, let’s make it clean away from anything if it doesn’t have to, we can’t run it through, do all the hard work and run it up through the cable and then let it lean against the whole we couldn’t care without any security of any kind like that. Those are things that we’ve seen, you know, so we gotta make sure we have to make sure.

Jeremy Kellett  24:06

So what kind of old is it?

Ricky Duncan  24:09

It’s just the standard 30 way? Yeah.

Jeremy Kellett  24:13

So does, it produces your heat and air so you can control it, you put controls, I’m assuming it’s got a lot of

Ricky Duncan  24:21

that law, one of the big changes of the OEMs is they now have their controller. And so minsum times when we have found where nothing was wrong with our unit and nothing was wrong with the controller, they just wouldn’t talk to each IP address and would be like, hey, it’s not working. You know, when we isolate one or the other and get both to work, but they wouldn’t talk so I’m not sure that the kinks are worked out all but yeah, it’s got its own controller, the thermal king. The thing that I like about the Thermal King is that the heater is separate. It’s a separate Espar heater. So totally I’m not borrowing any energy right from the other side of it AC is AC, he is heat. And of course, we installed an inverter. Okay, a 2000 watt pure sine inverter. And I think one of the first pure sounds we put in was one a year guys, we moved away from the 1800 Watt modified, we moved to the 2000 watt pure. Okay, so but just the little changes, you know, and we got Gen threes coming, you know, we’re getting ready for meetings this whole spring, we’re gonna look at the Gen three because we’re, it’s going to have to have a DPF these laws and things that are changing in this country. Oh, they don’t know, do they? You know, they don’t have a DPF on gin, gin, three will have it. I believe it’ll be an option if I hadn’t had the meetings coming up in May. So I’ll find out so will they have to start putting their fluid in? No, I don’t think they’ll have to die. But you’ll have to have the filter. One, it’s a bunch of crap. It just continues. Well, I

Jeremy Kellett  26:00

mean, but how do you get away from I don’t know how you get away from surprise, it’s this long, I was talking with

Ricky Duncan  26:05

my brother and all the other day, and he was talking about some of the little things that we do in the truck. And here in our console that is beneficial. You know, not all of it really but some of the things you need to go to some events you need to you need to be involved with, because there’s things you’ll pick up on that you normally wouldn’t get. Mainly, what’s next, and all this we’re dealing with these laws and things like that good stuff, talking to Ricky

Jeremy Kellett  26:31

Duncan with thermal king here, we’re talking ipus. And, you know, a little more detail on that, you know,

Ricky Duncan  26:37

it’s always great to find out good topics,

Jeremy Kellett  26:43

You know, coming up with good topics, especially something that involves our truck drivers and APU, is very important to our owner operators and to all owner operators out there, I think. And even company drivers like he mentioned before that they use it. I mean, it’s a recruiting tool retention tool to have APU on it. So I mean, it’s just, it’s something that doesn’t sound like it’s gonna go away, which was one of the next questions was a future Viper use that I had down here to see. And I mean, it sounds like they just keep evolving, whether it’s battery life, their steering, more tubes, and then if the diesel engines might have to have the DPF filter down the road, I mean, you know, you see AP US ever going away.

Ricky Duncan  27:28

I don’t I mean aren’t trucks though putting, trying to put that in the truck when they are, there’s one of my most recent surveys I did, I had to do a top 25 for my business, and my top 25 customers that I have locally here will roof near 5000 trucks just in my top 25. Now don’t do business with all of them. I wish I did. But my top 20 fives have about 5000 trucks. That’s an alarming number to think about, you know, majority of those got theirs come with the truck from the factory. Many different reasons why the trucks are set up. So that thing just flawlessly worked with the truck. So but is it capacity wise, I think we look at performance wise is what we’re trying to drive are we’re trying to see, you know, do we produce more BTUs? And do we have more capacity, things like that. We’re just trying to, do we want more comfort at a higher level? You know, the best we can? It’s what we’re striving to do. Well.

Jeremy Kellett  28:37

I mean, that’s something you think about whether it’s, you know, what they can have in the trucks I mean, because they’re not doing diesel. Once in when they manufacture a truck or they mean are they I’m assuming they’re all binary,

Ricky Duncan  28:50

We have a deal with us personally, we have a deal with the Freightliner factory with Kenworth factory, if you want our product separate from what they do, we can put it on at the factory, oh really can go down the line and be ready just the same as you get your trucks now. So that’s a huge plus something we didn’t have in the past. And that’s a lot of the decision. It really is, you know, you bring it home, you guys are very familiar with bringing it home and then we have to put PTO pumps in this and we have to schedule days to get the truck ready. They want it ain’t going if we got to do everything. So we’re getting more and more when we work with these manufacturers as it goes down the line, we get that equipment put on there and get immediate and ready to go. That’s something like you know, that’s that’s, you know, us just us asking about DC where do you see the future? This number crunching that we continue to do with these emissions? It’s scary. And not to jump over on the other side. But on the refrigeration side. There’s some language already spoken in 2728 I think maybe 27 About so TL which is stationary operation time limit. It’s already out there. If they’re already pushing for it, if it’s not rolling, it has been blown up. I mean, they’ve got dates out there. 2035, I believe, is a great date for him. We got, and none of us are looking that far down the line. We’re just trying to run some freight today. We’re just trying to get some freight moved today. We’re not looking that far down line, either, but I know you can’t plug this whole world up. You cannot do that. I don’t find no, it’s not the way things are now. No, and

Jeremy Kellett  30:33

that probably won’t happen in our lifetime. Because I know we go electric, I’m sure unless I just take it away and I can’t get to it. That’s gonna be the part that scares you the most about the guys that you see rolling in a row down the road that’s got a generator on a bag with a tank of gas hanging out the side. I’m here not to bash those guys. They’re like me trying to find the cheapest way to do things when you’re talking. An APU cost roughly gives me a rough call. So roughly 13 roughly $13,000 units compared to about a $2,500 generator and trying to piece it together. And it may sound good but I got the feeling that there’s a lot of problems with having a guy bring me Van Hollen flowers. And the generator was sitting in the back of the van, a little 2000 Watt Honda and I’m looking at it I’m going he ran it in as like, man. Is

Ricky Duncan  31:31

Is there any exhaust plumbing here at all? Oh, it didn’t hurt. Oh, no. People will do just about anything they can surely. But you know, my brother in law, Steve McNeil, we talked about earlier, we were talking this week. And I can remember him telling me seven or eight years ago. He said, it’s costing me $1,000 A day when the truck doesn’t roll. You know, he said the same thing eight years ago, it was 1000. He goes I don’t care where you get it, how you get it won’t get him. But the truck can’t see it. You could see it in his eyes. And we talked this week. That was seven years ago, almost seven years ago. The number I asked him that same question this week is now 1500. So think about that. For whatever reason. parts on backorder ain’t got nobody can fix it, work on whatever it is every day. Think about trying to do your business plan. Around $1,500 of lost revenue every day, it doesn’t really matter. I can remember back way back from now. Dallas is just I remember him telling me he would plan a business plan one to two trucks per week down. And I remember him telling me later on that number had grown to 10 to 12. Trucks down he had to schedule it that way, in order to make a business plan come out. I’m going, Man, when we’re scheduling the downtime, or expecting the downtime, wait, something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Let’s load the truck. Let’s go haul the freight. We just that’s not real anymore. No, that’s not real. But downtime is certainly real. It is real. And it’s gonna happen.

Jeremy Kellett  33:13

Now, I mean, the trucks are forced to have downtime. So you have to have something efficient to be able to keep them warm, keep them cold, and do the things you need to be done. So they have all the amenities possible. You know, they’re in that truck, they live in that trailer, they

Ricky Duncan  33:28

I live in a truck. So they take that 34 hour break and they get back into their 34 hours. And the milk better still be okay in the refrigerator a

Jeremy Kellett  33:36

good point. Yep. What are these? Here before we close this thing out? I was thinking about the weight of these trips. These AP US had always heard they’re like 400 pounds or 50 Is that bad route 450

Ricky Duncan  33:49

I believe there’s some little deal on you’re not really sure about this but I’ve seen something on your taxes. There’s not more than one line that you put that on there saying hey, I’ve got this extra weight because something to do with

Jeremy Kellett  34:01

that. Well, you know, there are places where we keep a map and bring it in here in states that will supposedly give you 400-450 pounds. If he wrote though they’re a little bit heavy, but not every state does it and I know its weight is important with a lot of people especially since Oakley you know, we’re getting up there and these trucks seem to be getting Haven. But yeah, there’s a 400 pound exemption by law. And I think this is up to date. We’ll put this up there and see where they give you an exempt 400 pounds exemption. So some of them do, some of them don’t. Arkansas 550 pound exemption by enforcement policy. So that’s certainly one I see on this list for 550 Panics interest and 400. Now there’s a couple from Colorado , Connecticut. Yeah, some 400. So I mean it and whether that actually works? I don’t know. You know how that is guys, you had to get the right, D O T officer to let you get by? I don’t know. But I’m sure our guys can try it. And we can do so. But anyway, good information on AP US. I really think we dialed some stuff down. Do you have anything you want to add? That was

Ricky Duncan  35:34

on your list? It’s our job to detail. Yeah. So that was getting ready to say, on our, you know, on our trucks as emissions go, that continuing to do this number here with these emissions, they’re, they’re squeezing that. And more they do that. And the more they try to get higher, they squeeze it, Ricky, I mean, just more regulation. Nox in particular, is what you’ll hear the most particulate matter. And so somebody from old school is going to look at it like the OSI referred to early in the early one, we sit down talk black smoke all over the front of that trailer, that’s great big balls. That ain’t gonna pass through much and nothing. Now we’re down to little bitty particles that you breathe in, and you don’t even realize it’s gotten. It’s gotten down to, which is more harmful to us, as humans. Does. Anybody know? Yeah, I mean, there’s that conversation and it goes a whole different way and I’m not involved with that one. I just, I see those slides. And I think, you know, there’s something to that. And there’s a conversation for somebody to have right there. Sure. So are we really, truly trying to do the best for the population? Or are we? Or is all this driven by something else? Is there an agenda that’s being driven? Because like I said, old school guys like me, and the way I was raised, let’s just load it, load the wagon, so to speak. Let’s just load the wagon, haul the freight. And we’ll figure the rest of this out. I love hearing those old stories about my father in law, David McNeil. They said he’d leave and go out west and he’d be gone. He was just trucking. A lot of guys did that. Oh, yeah. A lot of guys did that. So yeah, say those were the good old days.

Jeremy Kellett  37:20

That’s what they say. They say, we’re gonna say that too. You know, yes. Our good old days, I’m already telling it to my boys. In the good old days might not even been that long,

Ricky Duncan  37:29

we could short learn, we get your learning. Oh, man.

Jeremy Kellett  37:33

Well, good stuff. I really appreciate you coming on and talking ipus with us? You know, it’s, it’s something that these days is a necessity, almost. If you want to benefit financially, for sure if you’re an independent contractor, because that’s kind of you know, with it, what we have is 850 independent contractors. And I don’t know, we were talking this morning, I don’t know how many of them have AP US. But I’m always hearing that talk of them wanting to get an APU on the truck if they don’t have it. And I can’t see why you wouldn’t. Yeah, I mean, it looks to me like, you know, you’re gonna make what you say, make your money back, it’s gonna pay for itself?

Ricky Duncan  38:14

No, you’re talking about independence with a dream. They’re trying to make something happen here, they’re going to buy a truck, and they’re gonna do what they’re going to, they need a return on an investment. They need to spend some money to make a lip. You know, what’s an investment and like I said earlier, this thing took 10 years to pay for so we’d have a whole different deal. But when we’re talking 10 to 12 months, back way back because of me now that fluctuates with fuel or now the sensors are gone and they don’t have it and it’s on backorder forever. I can’t get it. I mean, look at the money last. Yeah, definitely. So

Jeremy Kellett  38:56

yeah, so it’s, uh, you know, it’s something that I know a lot of our owner operators want and a lot of them have it. Yes, we’ve done a ton for y’all. We were gonna say I mean, we have done a ton not that we you know, we’ve we haven’t had a I guess we’ve had a relationship but not really talked a lot. I mean, I think our guys go over there and usually we don’t really refer. I mean, Thermo King, we kind of leave it up to the owner operator to get whatever you want. Just, you know, we don’t get

Ricky Duncan  39:25

blessed in this market. I am because everybody in town, you know, we’re dealing with all the little local things. And it’s just word of mouth.

Jeremy Kellett  39:35

So if anybody gives us some information if we got owner operators out there wanting to come talk to you. Come see you. Where are you located where they need to do

Ricky Duncan  39:45

trustee tarmacking loaded right here and located right here. 10 600 Maybelline road right here in North Little Rock 40 on i 40. Right here Galloway. And then our family has three other dealerships. We have Russellville, which you can see from the freeway. And then we have Memphis in Nashville. So it’s 40 for the family of tri state. So well, they need to just call, they told me anytime they need to call them or they get ahold of my cell phone. I know my business card stays right down here on this board at the shop. And I get a lot of referrals from everybody here. Your geometry you’re

Jeremy Kellett  40:19

in the driver’s license to Wilson, he put his info up on the screen here on YouTube. So give me a call. Well, good man, I gave you a call and and what can you do for just a get them scheduled and how long you think it would take normally takes two

Ricky Duncan  40:32

Days for an install just a normal install takes about two days. There are times we have an install crew now floating in between all four shores. That’s how busy we’ve been for the last five years. In a case like that, we knock it down to just a day and that’s a lucky deal for us. But two days, in a lot of times your guys have got when they’re coming on board with you. They got other stuff they’re trying to schedule to get everything ready for the truck anyway. And I’m like, Hey, squeeze me in the middle of that. Let me get today man could only run so.

Jeremy Kellett  41:00

Well. Good. We all check out. Ricky Duncan at Thermo King here and North Little Rock out there at the Galloway exit, give him a call and see what’s going on and give us some feedback to you know, if you’ve done business out there. I’ll be honest with you, we haven’t you know, we haven’t pushed AP US or anything like that, we just don’t didn’t know a whole lot about him. I mean, you know, you know the basics. But I like this has helped you out here for not only me to learn but all of our listeners to learn from Ricky and I really thank you for coming over and aligning some stuff.

Ricky Duncan  41:30

Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate you being back here every once in a while. Look forward to looking for as it changes come we’ll drop more.

Jeremy Kellett  41:38

Yeah. Hey, thanks, everybody for listening to the Oakley podcast. I mean, once again, we appreciate you guys. Be sure to subscribe. Subscribe, comment like us, check us out on YouTube. And check out our previous episodes. I have had some really good episodes before this means this is 141. I don’t remember but, I mean, this is we’ve got more coming down the road so that’s going to be good for you. So be sure and check us out. At Oakley podcast. We appreciate y’all listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Oakley podcast: trucking, business, and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show on the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience, so if you’ve got a question, comment, or just want to say hello, head over to our website, theoakleypodcast.com, and click the “leave a comment” button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.