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What are y’all doing this week? Uh, finalizing real, grinding, charging, irrigation air, verifying greens. A lot of stuff. A lot of stuff going on, but yeah, it don’t sound like much, just another day. Yeah. No, I’m training, training a new mechanic. I’ve got, I’ve got a lot going on. Awesome. Just, uh, somebody to help in the shop. Uh, he’s the, em that, uh, took over the new course that we’re building in the network, so. Okay. Where, and he’s, he’s coming from, uh, it’s in, uh, central Nebraska Gray Bowl that David McClay kid is designing. Okay, cool. But he’s, he’s used to a single blade real grinder, and I’m teaching him the ways of the newer Foley, so. Gotcha. Well that’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Chris Turk, what’s happening, Chris? Maybe he wants to talk, maybe he doesn’t. No, he gone. He’s gone. Um, how’d you enjoy a show? I loved it. I thought there was a lot of really good education this year, and the networking loan was, uh, second to none. It was, it was a really good opportunity. Yeah. I thought it was, it was awesome. It was so much fun. So many people. That was a lot of good people. I was, yeah. I was glad to see Chris finally got to go after, after last year. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. No, that was awesome. Yeah, and I talked to, uh, Christopher Fogg the other day and, uh, he was talking about how great the whole experience was really, really good for them. And a lot of stuff I didn’t know. Like they get to take all the tests and it’s paid for em. C p Yeah, I was just talking to Jordan off about that yesterday. I didn’t know that either. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Cause he was one of those too, right? Yep. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Was that the first time he had been at show? Uh, you know, I’m not sure. He is been in the industry quite a long, bit longer than I have, but that’s, uh, first time as, uh, was, uh, uh, Mels for sure. But yeah, I don’t know if that’s his first time at the show. Gotcha. wanna say I asked him, but I don’t remember what he said so. Well, you probably only talked to, talked to two or three people throughout the week, so Yeah, it was pretty easy to keep track of everybody when you only talked to one or two. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t know if I was coming or going for, uh, The whole week for the most part. I knew that I felt rude, you know, cuz I was trying to get around to all the places I wanted to get to on the show floor. And I’d run into somebody and Hey, how you doing? How you been, you know, all that stuff. And then next thing you know, all like, I gotta go, gotta go hit this. Yeah. Well spot. You’re an international celebrity now, so your time is, is valuable and short. Well, I guess, uh, I don’t know. I mean it’s, it is a good problem to have. I’m not complaining at all. Yeah, sure. It’s, it is definitely fun. It’s been, uh, so rewarding. Yeah. And uh, yeah, I got some good guests coming up that I’ve recently interviewed for the podcast. So excited about that and try to line up a few more. And then I was just actually looking at my list while we were talking about that cuz uh, uh, Jordan said that he was interested and. I have not put him on my list yet, so I gotta You definitely should. He’s a, he’s a smart guy. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you could tell he’s, he’s definitely, uh, smart. Anybody else that, uh, is in the group here, if you want to, uh, speak, I think down at the, it’s like the bottom left. I believe you can, uh, request to be a speaker and, uh, we’ll just talk to whoever wants to talk and hear what all’s going on in your life. I don’t have anything, uh, laid out here. Just, uh, mainly doing this for Seth Shelton. That’s not here yet, but, uh, I talked to him, uh, this morning and he said he had a really, really busy day, but he hoped to join us. Well, hi guys. I took that back. What are you taking back? No, I’m just back on the line just because I hit the wrong button earlier and you guys said hello to me and I hit the wrong button and my mic was off, and I’m still figuring out how to do Twitter. That’s okay. Uh, we’re, we’re all still learning every day. I know. I think it’ll be an ongoing thing for me. Yeah. I think it is ongoing for, for all of us. Probably not, not just Twitter, but anything in life. Yeah. Um, what, what do y’all think about, and the people that, uh, are not speaking yet, but, uh, for all of you, what do you think about doing this? I don’t know. What are we on the, we’re on 1, 2, 3, third Tuesday of the month. Um, I put it out in the WhatsApp group and was, uh, Thinking about just doing a, a dedicated, that way we can kinda plan for it and hopefully get a little bit more engagement, if you will, for doing one of these spaces. Oh, I think, yeah, I think it’s great. It’s good. Yeah. Tuesday is a pretty good day too for a lot of people. Not everybody I’m sure, but I mean, outside of having tournaments and having to be at work late, I think it should work for most people, but Okay. I only speak for myself, so, well, any, anybody else just, uh, hop on in here. Well, what time is it over on the east coast for you guys? 7:00 PM for. Yeah, because I think it’s like four o’clock for the guys on the West Coast, isn’t it? Yes. So I don’t, I don’t know about timing issues for them, but we’re not worried about West Coast guys. No, I’m kidding. Oh, it’s horrible. Oh, it’s, it’s all over Tre. Yeah. Okay. I know. Well, no, not, not me, but East Coast man, we’re, we’re all on the East coast me and was horrible. Me and J Dots on the East coast. Anyway. I don’t, uh, Kevin? Yeah, Kevin, I don’t know. Oh, Kevin do East too. Yeah, he’s, he’s, uh, Eastern time. Um, so it’s Taylor. Yep. Taylor’s Eastern. And then I guess, what is Michigan? Is it east? I think it’s central. Isn’t. I can’t, I don’t know where the line is. I can’t remember. I’ve been up there, but I didn’t remember if the time changed or not. I wanna say I’m pretty sure it’s eastern time. Michigan is, and then when you get to Wisconsin, it’s central time. So maybe, uh, Ben will, Ben can set us straight. Is it eastern? It’s eastern. It’s eastern time. Okay. That’s what I was thinking, but I couldn’t remember for sure. Yeah, I had, couldn’t grab the phone. I’m doing dishes right now. I couldn’t grab the phone quick enough. So what, what, what are you cooking, uh, the boys and your wife for dinner? Uh, porking on the Traeger and, uh, a broccoli. Awesome. Very cool. Actually, I, I had it all. I, I made it in. Uh, my oldest had swim, so I put it all on the on, put it on the, or on the Traeger for her and took the timer and she did the rest. So. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. If y’all don’t know, Ben does most of the cooking in his household and his wife definitely wears the pants. No, that is true. No, I’m kidding. I’m just kidding. I’ll just give you a hard time about, uh, it is kinda true though. Well, I, I will give, I’ll give you, I’ll tell y’all a story. Um, and this might not be the most appropriate story, but, uh, this guy, he was actually a mechanic at a golf course, and when I was working for Jerry Peyton, I was traveling around, um, his name was Barney and he was pri, he was in his seventies, I guess. And he tells me this story. He went out with. Another couple, him and his wife went with another couple to dinner, whatever, and his buddy says, hi, uh, what are you doing Saturday? You want to do, you know, whatever it was, go play golf, or whatever it was. And he said, I need to check with my wife. And the guy says, I thought you wore the pants in the relationship. And Barney says, oh, I wear the pants. She wears the panties. So I don’t know, I just thought it was really funny. Maybe an inappropriate joke for a Twitter space, but I got a good laugh out of it. No, I totally know that. And I always check before I do anything. That’s right. Oh, I don’t, Kevin keeps asking to speak. I keep approving him and he keeps going away. Anyway, see, it’s going across the international border. That screws us all up. Yeah, that’s, that’s probably probably what it is. Um, oh, Kayla. Kayla’s wanting in here. Nope, she’s gone too. I don’t know if it’s something on my end or what’s happening here, but anyway. So John, tell us, uh, what’s going on in Pennsylvania? Uh, I’ve been sick for like a week and a half and I think we’re tomorrow greens. Are you gonna be back at work? I’ve been at work, uh, I took off, uh, last Tuesday and Wednesday and I’ve been fighting through, it’s like, I don’t even know what it is. I mean, it felt like flu-like symptoms at first. Mm-hmm. It’s definitely, definitely not covid. But, uh, if he’s coming through, like, I guess whatever, passing around to everybody right now, I guess. Cuz our summer quote unquote summer help had it, and then I got it and then one of our other guys has it. I’m like, this is great. Oh yeah, no, terrible. Yeah. Well, I hate, I hate you’re under the weather. You definitely sound really c clogged up right now. Oh yeah. It, it, the mornings are worse, but what, just getting ready for verification tomorrow. Like I said, uh, had to weld up a hole in our, uh, core Harvester shoe, so that was fun times. I, I, hopefully I have the best news ever for me. Um, it’s not gonna help anybody else out, but, um, I should find out this week if the board approves it and we’re gonna buy one of those core sweepers by Oh yeah, HAA, whoever it is. Um, Barness has one too. We priced out both of’em, but we were gonna go with the blue one. Um, and is that the one, go ahead. Is that the one out of Texas or whatever? Yes. Yep. They are. Out of Texas Pro something or something like that? Uh, yeah. It’s the same identical. It’s like identical to, yeah. Uh, pure Turf Pro, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The name of the company and it’s, I think it’s Hot Suda is uh, yeah, the brand that Japanese, the Japanese company in the rear end. Yep. And I think How much, uh, go ahead. How much plugs does that hold? Do you know? That, I don’t know, but it moves really fast and well, and I, when I was talking to the guy, he said that three hoppers would fill a gator bed. So that’s, you know, it don’t hold that much. Yeah. But, I told my director of agronomy I was, uh, having a beer when I loaded the core harvesters on the scrap metal pile. Or if anybody wants them, this one, I’ll, I’ll drive down to pick them up. Hopefully I’ll have a replacement soon. I don’t, we may not even get a demo. We just might order one or two. What, what are you gonna uh, probably the barass version. Okay. That’s what, uh, I think we’re gonna go with. And when I was talking to him, I guess there’s like a pressure switch on the side. I let you know when it’s full and you can either stop or keep going. Oh, okay. So they, yeah. Uh, cuz uh, I assume the other one’s identical. Because they had like two little jack stands underneath it. I don’t know if you looked at the one out at the show. Yeah. Yeah. Like what, what are, what are those for? They’re like osha because if, if it’s full and you lift it up to dump it and you’re not perfectly level, they said it will tip backwards without those in there. But as like, as long as it’s level, he’s like, you don’t have to, you know, and you don’t try to stuff it completely full. It won’t flip back. It’s back. Okay. So it’s like a wheely bar? Pretty much. It looks like two like, um, Jack legs on like, you know, like a trailer. Okay. I’m like, I was like, what are those for? Cause I’m like sitting there, like in my mind I’m looking at, I’m like, what? This makes no sense. Even though this hoppers above my head not thinking like, you know. Yeah, it’s full cores. It might be a little, uh, topheavy at that point. Oh yeah, for sure. But he said as long as it’s not like super full, um, and it’s actually like level and not that gun heading downhill, you really don’t have a problem with it. But, Mm-hmm. Because I, I asked a bunch of questions about it cuz I’m ready to get rid of my core harvest there. Yeah. I don’t, well, so I have two of those and it takes two to keep one running half the time. I mean, they’re ridiculous. And every year I go through’em, you know, beforehand, you know, new chains, new sprockets, and something just always breaks. I don’t, it’s just Oh yeah. A nightmare. Yeah. It’s, you could fix everything on it. It’s something will break it. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know. And that’s been my experience since 1996. It’s how old this thing is and we just keep, uh, rebuilding it. Well the reason I was welding up my shoe, cuz I had a hole in it, obviously, but I have one on order, but they told me it’s coming from England, so. Oh wow. That’s nice. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, oh, I might as well just weld this up that a, because. Even if it shows up tomorrow, we’re gonna be pulling, you know, picking cores. So, well, that’s what I don’t understand. If Jacobson really wanted to be a big player, why did they move to the uk? I don’t, I I don’t, I don’t understand. I don’t, did they, I, I don’t know. Did they get bought out again or sellout to somebody? I, I, that’s, yeah, I don’t, not that I know of. Um, yeah, I, I don’t know what, what changed hands, why they decided to go over there. Uh, to me it’s like, I don’t understand why you would move like all your parts, cuz like they had to have parts in the states, you know, down where were they? Were they right there in Georgia or North Carolina? Well, they were in North Carolina. Yeah. And then they moved to Georgia and then they moved to Wick or wherever it is in the uk. Yeah, because like for a while there I was getting parts outta the south and then now they’re telling me they’re coming out of. Hang on. I’m like, really? It’s kind of weird, but whatever. When, I mean, from my experience, that’s been their downfall is their parts availability. Going back to when I got in the industry in the mid nineties, it’s always been a struggle. It always seems like, even, like I said, back when we had mostly Jacobson, like obviously like your common thing is they would have, but like if you need something that was like an oddball, it was like, good luck. That’s why I have, well, I had six, like six L 3,400 s at one time, just to keep two going, right? Yeah. No, it’s, it’s crazy. But, but they also, they’re also like 90 eights, 99, so I mean, they’re not, they weren’t in the greatest shape when I got ahold of’em and I’m just trying to keep’em going no till I get new fairway units, which could be. 24, 25? I don’t know yet. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know either. And to Kayla and Kevin, I keep approving you to speak and then it drops you out. So I don’t really know what’s going on here. Yeah. I don’t know. Are they on their phones or if they’re on like, uh, computer? Cause I don’t know. I don’t know if the computer will watch a request or not. Well, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, if you can even, I think can listen, you can listen now on a computer. I, I think you can listen on a computer. Okay. I don’t think you can, uh, join in. I don’t, but I don’t know if it’ll actually let you ask or not. I don’t know. Well, I wonder if there’s actually a certain amount of people who can actually speak at one time. Well, yeah, there is the limiter. No, there’s, uh, six open spots to speak. So I guess a total of 10 speakers can be in here. And then I thought we’ve had more before. Yeah. And we’ve, uh, then, then there’s two open spots for co-host if, if we need’em. But yeah, I don’t know if it’s a Android thing. I’m actually using a tablet so I can record this to, it could be a Twitter thing too. Cause it’s, it’s been a little goofy lately. Yeah. Who wants to talk about how messed up Twitter is? My following is like, trying to follow like, or just like go through my feed through Following now is like, I miss so much stuff. It’s so weird. Yeah. I have to go like that for you. Or like, even like the real turf text or like, uh, awas like list. Mm-hmm. Just to see like, stuff that’s happening. I’m like, it’s, I don’t understand how the people I follow, I can’t see their stuff on my like feed. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t understand that either. I’ve been finding that when I’m scrolling through stuff it’ll skip and it’ll go back to the beginning of where I started earlier in the evening and it’s like, I don’t know what’s going on with it. So just more thumb swiping. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, definitely Elon. Thanks buddy for nothing. He must have fi he must have fired the person in charge of that. I don’t know. Yep. I guess so. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. So any, anybody? So I got Ben, John, Chris and Brian. Anybody getting new equipment this year? Hopefully. Um, my Sam Pro was supposed to be at the distributor the 21st of February. Uh, I still haven’t heard of it hit there yet, and my heavy duty workman, I think might be there with the top dresser, but no high flow kit, so it’s kind of useless. And then sprayer’s coming sometime. Yeah. Still. I don’t know what else is showing up this year, but hopefully something, well, I’m still, yeah, I’m in the process of our unit and that one is still two years behind. So in the time that we’ve been waiting, we’ve ordered a skid steer. We got that last year and then this year, because we’re still on hold for that, we’re getting a new tractor. So yeah, we’re just shuffling things along as we need’em because we’re on Landis thing. And uh, the latest cutting piece of equipment we’re getting is a used, uh, 31 50 in a zero turn sand machine. So, you know, we’re still adding to the inventory, but we’re not getting what we wanted. Mm-hmm. I got a couple holler pros coming in. Um, should be in the next, next week, I think. Um, but actually we didn’t order those until like, December, not even December of this year, December it actually might have been been January. We, uh, we pulled some strings and got those, but nothing else we’ll be here. And I got, we finally just put an order in for like, finally did it and just put order in thing for everything. Ownership’s knows that supply chain and all that stuff. So we bought, put order in for a fairway unit, triplex, bunker ache, uh, sprayer workman. Um, we did buy a used, everything else we’re getting used. So you, we got a used fairway unit coming used, uh, bought a used triplex, but it’s the last time I bought a used triplex. Within a a year I put almost 80% of the cost of the machine into the machine just because it, that’s what you get. Mm-hmm. And nowadays it’s like, oh, we found you a triplex. It’s in Florida. It’s like, okay, well I can’t really afford to dry, or we found couple of pieces. And when we were doing the grow in that we’re like in Kentucky, so it’s like an eight hour drive. So it’s just close enough to drive and then you get there and you’re like, I don’t want to turn around and not be empty handed. So it’s like you kinda got you strongholded, right? Yeah. True. But it sounds like everything else, they’re projections are 2020, you know, will be next fall. So this is the last season of having to deal with all that, all this stuff. Everything else by that should be pretty well replaced. And then, but good thing is, is we have a, we have a, we do a really good job of our projection projected replacement. So kind of like our history is, we were a a, a failing golf course and then basically the owner switched ownerships. Jack Nicholas came in, redesigned it, we did complete soup to nuts renovation, but we did the grow in with pretty much everything that was left from the old course. So, so I, I, I got everything from, I got newer trip, a newer triplex with 400 hours on it, and then I got a triplex with 6,000 hours on it. So it’s kinda like, so we got a good spreadsheet in our guys, our, our, they know it. And then when they say, Hey, why is this triplex costing us, you know, why does it cost us$10,000 in the last two years? It’s like, well, here you go. Remember when we said we were gonna buy noon and you didn’t wanna do that? Like, oh, okay. And they’re really good at like saying, yeah, yeah, we screwed up there. But, so at the end of the day it’s, it’s frustrating, but it’s, at least everybody knows everybody’s on the same page. Good. Yeah. It’s where, where are you getting that stuff from? The used stuff? Just wherever or, yeah, so, right. So there is a guy that does in Michigan, Uh, Michigan turf Equipment. Basically, it’s like a lot of these used guys is they just buy off lease stuff. And then so, um, he’s been, some of the stuff we bought from him has been pretty, pretty decent. Um, but other than that, I’ve been, uh, I found some, some I bought a goose and vac from some farmer that had bought at an auction, didn’t know what he was getting. That was in like, Kentucky. Uh, I bought a used, uh, 50 40 Tribe or, uh, um, San Pro from a guy that installs ball fields in southern Indiana. Um, what else? We get some other stuff that we’ve gotten, um, that we’ve gotten used. Um, what else? I’m trying to think. There’s, um, you know, some through our, our, our Toro dealer where like he’s taken some trade-in stuffs and, you know, things like that. Okay, cool. Yeah, I know we got, uh, some people around here and then all our, uh, distributors also selling you stuff too. I think it’s, it is a good market for you stuff For sure. I just got in two Sasco rollers that we ordered 1st of December, and they told me 12 months and they come in the other day. So that was pretty exciting. It’s always a nice amount. You must, you must have got one of mine. I’m waiting on a couple of’em. Are you? Yeah, we ordered in like July on an entirely new package and John Deere quoted us like nine months, uh, Levi time, and they’re pretty close to that. I mean, we’ve, we’ve got everything. Pretty much, uh, everything’s at Deere at least. They just haven’t delivered everything yet, so they’re pretty close on their timelines. But we also ordered 2 3500 side winders, and we won’t see them for at least a year or a year and a half. Yeah. That’s crazy. I dunno, the guy I worked for, yeah, he, he was like, I, I ain’t buying it. If you can’t have it here, you know, in a year I’m not buying it. Yeah. And it’s not, it’s, I don’t know, it’s, everybody wants to point fingers, but I think ultimately it comes down to distributing and availability of certain components. Unfortunately. But, well, I know a lot of it is components, but I know especially our Toro distributor down here, they don’t stock anything. Like, they won’t buy inventory where, like Westco and Florida, I’ve heard good things about them and they will buy inventory to, to have it on hand. I mean, that’s probably smart right now because I think John Deere’s really looking good right now simply because of the availability. So, Maybe that’s a good thing for them if they have the money that they can back buy and stuff and keeping it on hand. Yeah. Well I heard a lot of guys, a lot of the dealers won’t let you. They weren’t so, like, they weren’t let’em get inventory, so they would only let you order what they had invoices for. So like, they had, they had to have like even John Deere, our, it’s what both actually our dealers, our John Deere dealer and our Toro dealer said that they have, before they can put an order in, they have to have somebody’s name on it, which I guess you could, they could technically put anybody any course name on it and they can still refuse, you know, refuse delivery or whatever. But that’s what I was told, that they, they wouldn’t let you and you can only order what you’ve ordered in the past. So let’s say if you, you do 40 million in sales, You can only order 40 million in parts or in, in, in equipment. So like, even if you were to sell 50 million, they weren’t letting them go over that. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, I, I believe Toro was doing allocations for their dealers this past year. So they had like allocated X amount of pieces of equipment, like, uh, you know, trifles fairway units, you know, workman’s whatever. Um, I, it, that’s, that’s what I heard. And I guess it went off of which your past sales were so, like a smaller distributor had less than a bigger distributor. It, it just, it was real weird. Mm-hmm. And I think, I think it was kind of a, a way for them to like slow down production in a way. Not, or production, but slow down sales to. Bringing production back up. But I know they’re doing a lot of batch builds and it’s all crazy cuz like, I guess the 1200 mower pull behind right now, you can’t even order one. Um, there’s a few more pieces of equipment. I, they’re not even like, I think the vax, the old, the big vacs, I don’t even think you can order one right now. Um, they’re not making them, uh, PR pieces I guess, but yeah, cuz some of that stuff I think is special run type stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They just kind of, it, they kind of wanna eliminate those coming into like, the production line for right now to get other stuff built, I guess. I mean, I don’t know. It’s crazy. I, you know, is it, is it a labor shortage? It’s part shortage, is it? Yeah. Yeah. We’ll never get the, the true answer, but I think, I think they’ve probably, I mean, I know. My distributors probably sold more or had more, you know, sales invoices in the past two years than they ever have. And it’s like everyone wants to buy cuz the boom happened. Mm-hmm. And everyone needs equipment. Everyone wants equipment, everybody has this money and it’s like, you, you just can’t, can’t deliver with the way it is. Hopefully it gets better. I don’t think it would ever be back to like six weeks, but it would be nice. Yeah, no, it definitely, definitely would be nice. Hopefully it gets back to some kind of normal, and I doubt seriously the, the price drops on any of this stuff and I can’t believe how much it’s increased over the last, I mean, year or two for sure. I mean, it’s nuts how much, uh, price of equipment is, and everything I’m hearing is 30% markup from last year. And same thing on parts. Yeah, actually keeping a track of what’s going on. I’m actually gonna be tracking it the whole year and seeing what pricing starts out at the beginning of the year, and then seeing what had happens at the end of the year because it’s ridiculous. Anything that I’ve been looking at is like, what? I think a bed knife was 50 bucks now up in my range, it’s 250, so. Oh, wow. Yeah. That’s nuts. Yeah, so I’m, I’m tracking, I’m paying attention to it now because it’s scary. Is that for the, the Torah Edge Max? Yeah, the Edge max. Edge Max, yeah. We went with the Edge Max with them. We switched’em all over from the regular plates. Actually, I’ve found that I’m having really nice longevity with the Edge with it. I haven’t had any breaks on it, go through the torquing sequence on it, and then everything’s been fine for me. Yeah, I think it boils down to, uh, I mean, at least my experience is debris on the course. Like I can run’em on greens, but I can’t run’em on ts enough. Yeah, ts are, tees are bad for me. We’re actually running’em on ts as well, and we haven’t had a problem. I know that we do verti cut on them, I think twice a year. So every three monthsish I suppose. But, um, yeah, we’re, we’re not finding too many broken blades. I haven’t come across, I, I don’t even think I’ve actually had one in five years that are being at the course. Oh, that’s, yeah. Well, you will tomorrow. Well, I’ve got another month before the snow disappears here, guys. Uh, well, that’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that in the WhatsApp group. How many feet you still got on the ground there? Uh, we got about 20 inches. Yeah. We’ve got drifts in some areas that are like over four feet, so yeah, it, it’s ridiculous. That’s crazy. I do want to get back up there. That’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Anytime. Uh, who is, where is it? Um, I think Shane Pork pork knee is coming up, uh, in June. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. From Colbert Hills. He wants to come up and Awesome. And me and his wife were always saying they wanted to go to B so yeah. They’re gonna try to get up here this summer, so. Yeah. It’s, it’ll be a great adventure. Yeah. It, it’s beautiful up there for sure. Anytime Trent, I try to get you, get you on for another speaking engagement. Yeah. Yeah. I’d love to Kyle. That’s right. Line me up and I’ll be there for sure. Yeah. Good stuff. I seen, uh, big shooter join us. What’s happening there he is. What’s Kayla? Yeah. So I’ll apologize again to Kayla and Kevin. They’re both asked to speak. I approve you to speak and then it drops you off. So I don’t know what’s happening. Twitter’s broke. Yeah. Kevin doesn’t, Kevin doesn’t need a speaker. Well, yeah, he’s gonna be, uh, sending you all kind of side messages anyway. I know how y’all do. I made it. I just got home from work. Yeah. Well, so tell us about it. It was a, a double spray pulling covers. What all you had going on? 36 hole cover spray, green spray. Huh? Crazy. Our guys, our guys are savages. We have the best crew in the. I’ll put that out there. Yeah, no, I easy. I would believe it. I would believe it though. That’s pretty strong. Yep. They killed it today. We all, we all killed it. I’ll, uh, I’ll send my new assistant up there in, uh, November whenever we were talking about. I, I really wanna do that. It seems interesting. Yeah, he might, uh, he might just stay. I got a house for him. Dude, that would be awesome for him. Good opportunity. As long as you switch me or get me somebody in return. It seems like such a different world for you guys down there from what I got up here. It’s still amazing what you guys get to deal with. No, I’m definitely, uh, game for, for that. Um, and I should have somebody that might want to go somewhere this winter, so definitely, uh, October-ish. We’ll start talking about it and see if we can. Make something happen. Cause I think that’s a great idea. I think in the fall when like interns and our HTB guys leave, we got a, we got a lot of, a lot of room, um, for people to come kind of work and swap with us. So I think it’d be a cool opportunity. Yeah. Hell, I might come up there for, for a couple weeks work. I definitely work with the big shooter and he can show me how to grind on that orange machine. Show him that Sandy, you guys use religious, religious, no relief. That’s, uh, he right after I’m gonna convert you somehow. So they ain’t gonna happen. That ain’t gonna happen. HESIs? Nope. Yep. Turning and burning. When assistant, when you, when you switch assistants, he’ll come back. I’m wanna start relief and he’ll be in. Well, yeah, that’s what I was telling Seth the other day. I’m gonna teach somebody how to relief if he sends me a guy down here who’s gonna be in trouble. Hey, Seth, do you remember the last time I sent you guy sent you an assistant? Yeah. He, he, he, yeah. Yeah. He told me you taught him everything. Luckily he didn’t cut a finger off. Yeah, he, he lasted about eight days of working. And, uh, and I, I told him, uh, that he had to go, but he did try to get his mommy. He, he called his mom to see if his mom could talk me out of it. That’s good. Get, get mom to call in for him. I love it. This, this was no joke. He’d worked for me for eight days, said that he was a mechanic working automotive. And so I, I went through him with, I said, all right, we’re gonna start with the basics. I said, all I need to do is take the bed nights out of. Uh, these cutting units on the QA five Rio, there’s four bolts on the first cutting unit that I let him do by himself. Each bolt, he couldn’t get off. He said it was too tight, and I says, you’re going the wrong way. He’s like, he’s like, whoa, these No, no, those are regular bolts. You just have to take. He’d go to the next bowl. I can’t get this one off. You’re going the wrong way. You’re tightening them. Yeah. Then they said, all right, let’s, let’s graduate to greasing. Well, then he started greasing, couldn’t do that, and then pretty much the last day or two, he just swept the floor. Wow. And he honestly wasn’t that good at that. Uh, that’s good stuff. Yeah. He, that’s what we, that’s what we deal with. He even managed to flip the toolbox over on himself. Oh, okay. I gotta hear this story. How do you flip the toolbox over on yourself? So, I’m, I’m out on the, out out on the golf course. And he’s with me. And I said, Hey. I said, run back to the shop and get me a punch. And he’s like, all right. And then he stops and he turns around and he comes and he goes, Hey, what’s a punch? And I knew I, so anyways, so then I explained to him what a punch is. He runs, goes back and he gets me, uh, like a wood chisel. And so I tell him exactly what, show him pictures. He goes back, well, then he is gone for like 30 minutes. And I’m like, what is going on? So I’ve, I’m fed up and I go back to the, I go back to the, the shop and he is, The, in my shop, the toolbox is flipped over on its sides, tools scattered everywhere. And I’m like, what is going on? And this kid had a story for everything. He’s like, well, I was trying to hurry because you, I could see that you were upset with me. So what I did is I pulled the drawer out and I, I flustered and I dropped. He goes, and the, the, uh, the tool, a bunch of tools fell behind the toolbox. So I moved the toolbox and I knew right where I was going. I’m like, and you didn’t lock the toolbox drawers. So he, he decided to move the toolbox and all the drawers decided to come out and then flipped over on him. Wow. So he stuck there half, and then he was yelling for guys, and the guys helped him lift it, get it back upright, but all the drawers were messed up. And he had a family emergency. That he had to leave and the, and then that was the, the family, the, the last straw because he had already left one family emergency, and that was because his girlfriend couldn’t get the dog back in the house. The second family emergency was his girlfriend’s dad said that he was going to kill him, so he left work because he was trying to sacrifice himself. So that way his, her girlfriend’s dad didn’t come and shoot everybody, or it was like the most ridiculous story. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know. So he, he didn’t happen to be from Pittsburgh, wasn’t he? It was, it was so absurd. And, and it was, it was funny when Oakland Hills, they called me and, and I was like, uh, no comment. No comment. And then they’re, they’re like, We’re really hurt there at the time. You know, we really need staff. And I’m like, whatever. I said, if you hire him, I says, against my recommendation, please do not put him in the shop with Chris and Seth. Just please do not do that. And then like three days later, Seth texted me and goes, what did you do to this kid? It’s good stuff. I dunno how you can beat reality from a story like that. That’s just way too creative. He was, uh, checking height from the center of the, the roller instead of the edges. And he said, uh, that’s how Ben taught him how to check height. That’s good stuff. I, I didn’t believe him, but, you know. Yeah, I, you never know with Ben. That’s right. You never know. It could, could have happened. That’s funny. Oh, That’s a good thing. I, my mic off, I was laughing out loud. That was good stuff. Yeah, no, that’s really good. We do appreciate the apprenticeship program where we get to work with a bunch of these young guys and see whether or not they’re the right material because holy geez, you can get killed by some toolboxes. I’ve seen guys flip toolboxes and stuff like that in the past and the weight of some of these things. Mine would kill someone if it fell over on them. Oh yeah, for sure. The the real, the the bad thing is, is, is like I’ve got more on it. This guy literally tried to, tried to work it like a bunch of other golf courses after got fired from one and then after like, cuz obviously the, like we’re, Detroit area was a, is pretty tight knit and they call around and then he applied, he reapplied to work inside our clubhouse. Like this is three months later. After he got fired, re reapplied that same year and then said he had worked at Walnut Creek for three months. Like, wait, that doesn’t even like add up on like, it was red. Like it was, you can’t even make this up. It was that, it was that bad. Crazy. Yeah. We got a guy we let go probably two years ago and he’s worked at a couple other golf courses, um, one being East Lake and he was there during the tournament and I went down to volunteer and run into him. And uh, I asked Ralph, I was like, how he’s, how’s he working out? And he said, I don’t know why we didn’t call y’all and asked about him before we hired him. Um, he said he’s gone right after the tournament. And uh, so anyway, every job we post on Indeed this year, he’s applied for, it doesn’t matter what it is. Um, just hilarious. I don’t know. He’s really trying to get back in the door, but he burnt his bridges. Hey, Trent, I’m gonna hop off and I’m gonna see whether or not, uh, Kayla or Kevin wanna hop in to be a speaker. I’m gonna see whether or not that’ll work. So I’m gonna disappear and come back in as a listener. Well, that’s fine, but I keep approving them and it keeps kicking’em out, and I don’t know why. It’s probably a, uh, s i p they’re, they’re banned from themselves. Oh, it’s the blue Kool-Aid. I see Taylor, Kevin, and Taylor probably can’t talk. Yep. Yeah, it’s probably that blue check mark too. Yep. I think you’re on to something, Seth. That’s what I said. That’s why they call him big shooter Seth. He’s a wise man. Let’s see. Oh, Taylor’s gonna try. Let’s see if it works for Taylor Uhoh. Taylor’s in. Nope. Whoop. Oh, there he is. Oh, I think, I think there’s one s I P guy who could talk. Oh dang. All right. No. Oh, it’s just Kevin. It’s just Kevin. Well, I was gonna say tey out of all of the s i p people, I’m glad you got in to be able to talk to us over the other ones. Yeah. Mike’s a bit busy right now. Yeah, he’s got the, he’s got the diaper dandy going. No, he’s not, he’s not busy. Uh, no, he’s just, he’s got it made. He’s just sitting around. He’s probably just enjoying it instead of running all over the countryside. Yeah, he can’t be busy. The kid put stays right where you put it. You put it down and then you come back and it’s still right there. That’s cuz he is wrapping it up and swaddling it. And we should call rest bed. It should be Emma. We gotta get to know her too. Sure. Be on Twitter. That’s true. Yeah. She’ll probably have a, a Twitter with as many followers as Dwayne, I’m sure. Well, anybody else want to talk? Orlando? Join Taylor’s in here now. What’s up fellas? Us? This is more just to get, uh, Kevin more upset. Oh, I, but yeah, I, I, I kind of assume that Taylor, I know you, you’re an instigator and I love it. It’s good stuff. Hey, Trent. It’s a pretty, uh, pretty good group tonight. Yeah, yeah. A few people in here. Yep. And, uh, yeah, before you got in, I, uh, what we were talking about is the third Tuesday of the month, we’ll just have shop talk and 7:00 PM if that works for most everybody. And Chris was trying to worry about the people on the West coast, but they don’t really involve themselves. So they’re, they’re in their own world over there. We don’t care about the west coast hippies. Yeah. So, so, so if you’re east of the mountains, you’re okay then. Yeah, you’re good. You’re good Chris, cuz you’re east of the mountains. All right. Yeah. East of the Rockies. Bringing on in Now, are you actually gonna be reducing the amount of, uh, podcasts you’re gonna be putting out? Well, I think already you do way too many. It’s crazy for you. Well, no, I’ve already reduced the amount we started last summer going to every other week, and I’m gonna continue that for now every other week. Okay. Unless something happens or whatever. But yeah, the once a week has, yeah. Too much. Too much time out there. Yeah. And I did have a editing producer that was helping me, and I don’t now and haven’t since last summer. So it’s all on me. And, uh, I’ll be honest, I don’t like doing it that much. It’s a lot of work. I’ve seen some production stuff going on in TV as well as radio and stuff, and it’s just crazy. And I knew that you were doing it one at a time and you were doing one a week. It’s like, that’s a load. You need to be burning through all your, all the target audience and get everyone else on there. So yeah, we gotta keep you growing and give you a little less work. Yeah, yeah. No, I’m, I’m happy ev you know, every other week that works out pretty good and it gives me two weeks to get a episode together and, I’ve, you know, I pulled some of those all nighters where on Sunday night and I was, you know, staying up till midnight trying to crank out an episode for that week. And, um, so I, I’ve learned from a lot of mistakes. So definitely some growing pains, but it’s been fun and definitely worth it for sure. So I appreciate all of y’all for, uh, being involved and, uh, helping me out. And one day we’re gonna get Seth on the podcast. He doesn’t know it, but next time I’m in Mission, you meet on it? No, I think he, he’s using, uh, the, uh, CTS one. Is his, his appearance on the show? No, that, that does not count. Cts only Cts only CTS only, okay. For one week a year. Yeah. Um, but he wasn’t even on for 10 minutes, was he? Probably not. Something like that. It was definitely not a full episode. I, I didn’t wanna, I didn’t wanna hug the mic. Yeah. There’s lots of people there to see Trent, so I had to get off the mic so they could talk to Trent. Yeah, right, right. Because they couldn’t have talked to me any other time. Yeah, I got you. Why do you think Trump was so busy? Because they were trying to find Seth and they knew that Seth would be a red tread somewhere. I don’t, Seth is one that disappears a lot. I don’t know what all you do at show and different places, but you’re a Wonderer. I’m, I’m a busy guy, man. You, you are a busy guy. That’s all I, that’s all I can say because just like a mti, every time I’d turn around I was like, where the hell’s Seth go? He’s standing right here. And then, then I hear, oh, for the sunlight. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. Well, good luck finding the sunlight in Michigan in the wintertime. Wow. I hate it, man. I think it’s one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been. Especially that casino. All the zombies coming in and outta there. Hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was definitely the most depressing place on earth. Yeah. Gambling off Michigan, gambling off there, gambling all their money off. Yep. Life inheritance. It was, um, it was on record this year that it was the darkest winter in Ontario. This, this past year. Wow. Okay. It’ll be nice to get, uh, we’ve had some nice sunny days last week, so the doors have been open. Nice. Well, and you were in Florida for a week. You got some sun down there. You can’t complain too much. No, no. Not too much. But it was pretty cold when I got back. So one thing I, I would like to talk about, I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve got, I, you know, we kind of covered a little bit earlier before Seth got in here, I think, but like how, you know, with parts costs and equipment costs going up, what are your guys’ opinions on? How do you, what ways can you save, you know, in terms of, um, education on equipment or how do you keep’em from breaking stuff or how do you, how do you make your bed nices last a little longer? You know, things like that. I might do like a survey in the WhatsApp group just to generate some responses. I’ve got a meeting coming up for the Mgc s a and I would, I wanna speak about, I’m actually trying to get hard quantitative measurements off of the bed knife on it, like the height of the, the edge. Um, instead of just going on an opinion-based idea, which it was before, it’s like, no, there’s specifications that Toro puts out that this bed knife is still in service and yes, you could still use it. Uh, I’m also switching to synthetic oils, um, just so I can get a bit more life out of them as well. Instead of going down just a, a conventional oil and for training, I’m just trying to get people to realize that this is a very expensive piece of equipment and please respect it because for me, if you have lack of respect for the equipment, they’re just gonna abuse it. So I’ve been taking, who was it? Was it Skip? Who put the price tag on the vehicle and says, yeah, this is a$90,000 mower. Guys, don’t wreck it. So that’s the one thing that I’m pushing forward. Just try to get them to respect the equipment so it’s not in the shop all the time. Yeah, that’s, uh, definitely some good ideas. And I do think, you know, training goes a long way, and I know we, not training like we need to be at my place, but, uh, I think the people that do have better training programs in place do have less operator air type failures. It’s just tough for me. We, we still got that one guy who’s out there who just doesn’t give a rat. But, but yeah, everyone’s got one, but he’s still around so he, the next It’s tough. And like, I’m sorry, John. Yeah. Literally like, They could destroy a brand new piece of equipment and there’s nothing gonna happen to’em. And like, at least the golf course guys now, like we have a pretty decent crew, finally, they respect it and they know, like the, the work I put in to like, you know, we’re all there to make the best course we can, you know, a, a municipality, you know, we’re here for the people. So at least that end of it is getting better. But like the parks and stuff, ugh. It, it’s constant. Like I had a guy come in yesterday with a, uh, steel backpack blower. Hey John, uh, yeah, this handle’s broke. Like, what happened? Uh, I tripped over it. Like, what are you, like, what are you doing? What are you doing to trip over the handle of a backpack blower? Like, I don’t understand like how that possibly could happen. Like if you told me like, Hey, hey, fell outta something. Okay. But like you tripped over it. Like treat it like it’s your own, but they, they just don’t care. It’s, it gets very frustrating when, like, I have a three year old tractor and every light on the front of it’s gone, the roof’s ripped off of it. I’m like, you know, the, we don’t just replace these every three years, like, you know, we, we try to get like 10, 15 years out of a tractor, but it, it’s tough when they just destroy’em. I mean, like, I think that the turn signals are the front of it. We’re like 200 something dollars. I’m, I’m not putting’em on like drive’em around. The cops ain’t gonna pull out, or it’s, it’s our old police. But it’s like, it’s crazy. And like I said, it gets frustrating. But the police, the golf course is kind of coming around somewhat. I got a few people still I gotta deal with, but they, uh, it’s more I have, I have to be out there and. You know, coaching them when they do stuff like they shouldn’t do, like drive my grease mowers up a straight up a hill. Like, like, what are you doing? Don’t do that. Yeah. That’s, that’s so like I’ve been working on more too is, uh, being out on the course and trying to coach a little bit. Yeah. Because it’s tough, you know, when it comes in, it’s broke and like, I can think of what it did, at least if I’m out there and see what they’re doing, I kind of like, you know, try to prevent it because like, there’s no reason I should be popping, like steering heads off of a brand new triplex. Like, I understand once they get worn and stuff, like, you know, it happens, like, you know, you can’t, you can’t stop it from like bending the aluminum on it, but when they’re brand new, I’m like, how, how, how’s this happen? It’s now, it’s not, it’s not a def defect in the equipment per se. Like yeah, the, the aluminum stuff in steel. But like when it only had like a hundred hours on it, I shouldn’t have to do this. Right? Yep. Like I, I, I like, part of my real checks now is checking all, like all the ball joints on my trifles. So like, I, I can kind of prevent it from happening, but trying to stop it from happening all together is another story I’m trying to work on. When I’ve watched’em do it, I’m like driving straight down a hill into like, you know, a flat. I’m like, no, don’t do that. You know? Mm-hmm. When you come off and come on a green, like go, it’s like the, the most level of part there is not the steepest, but like I said, we had the seven green on our, uh, nine side. There’s a, I, I assume it’s all well from back when they, you know, we didn’t have like irrigation, so it’s like a concrete concreted around it with like a, a metal grate on top. And like they used to slide off the collar and like slam into it. I’m like, Hey guys, like, let’s not cut that part of the collar anymore. Okay? Mm-hmm. Especially when it’s wet. Cuz like, it was like just every day they’re slamming into it. I’m like, okay, you did this yesterday. Like, you think you should think about like, not going there, but it’s tough. And like the, the only good thing for me, like cost wise, like, yeah, I see the cost going up and like, I hate to spend it, but like, they pretty much, like, they, they’ll pay it, you know, and it’s, it’s not good, but they want it fixed, so we pay the price. Well, don’t. What about you Seth? What are you doing to save money on your budget? Cash. Y’all, y’all are just print, y’all just print more. Well, I mean, we don’t, we operate the same as we always have though. Whether it costs more or, or less. I mean, we, yeah, I, I, I don’t know how to answer that to be honest with you. Does would talk about budget’s not in their vocabulary because I’m, I’m, when I talk to my operators and I say, yeah, I’m spending this amount of money on all your repairs and yeah, we’ve broken our, what,$70,000 maintenance budget. It’s just like, really? We spend that much? And it’s like, yeah, that’s what you guys are breaking. That’s what we’re going through. So, well, if they’re aware of it, they may pay attention to it a bit more. That’s the only point that I’m trying, I, I will say this, Trent, like I have done a lot of early order stuff in the last two years. Um, mostly for, for the availability more than anything. I mean, like Revels runs a great deal that if you order over$1,500 worth of stuff in January, they give you 10% off and free shipping. So, you know, if I’m thinking ahead for bed knives and, bed knives, screws, bed knives, mostly that kind of stuff, like the stuff I know I’m gonna use throughout the year, I’m gonna order it all in January, so I get one 10% off. Two, I’m gonna order it at the beginning of the year before there’s any sort of, um, price increase. So, and then, I mean, every, everything else is kind of standard as usuals. We go through the year. If we need something, we get it. But I mean, I would say the, the biggest thing is I, I am saving money by buying all my midnights up front in January and not having to worry about. If they’re gonna be available in June or July if I’m ordering’em. So that’s, it’s a big plus for, for us. Well, and you probably save on freight too in the long run. Oh yeah, a hundred percent. When you get a, yeah, I mean, when they’re shipping you bed knives on a pallet, you’re definitely saving them freight because you’re buying it online and then free shipping, so. Mm-hmm. And it’s, it’s crazy. A a, a lot of the mechanics I’ve talked to in the metro area, I mean, they don’t even, I mean, this goes for Everybo. I don’t know if every Deere dealership does it. I don’t know if Greenville slash Beard does it down there, or if you order online it’s free shipping. But Rebels and I, I tell everybody that has Deere up here. I mean, like, are you ordering from online or are you calling the part in And the majority of’em are calling the part in, and, you know, I, I let’em know like, Hey, you should probably, uh, sign up and do it online cuz it’s, it’s free shipping. I mean, you save a lot of money doing it that way. Yeah, I can’t speak for beard. I hadn’t found out. I know they usually have a winter parts order like you’re saving or saying. So if you spend over a certain amount, you save 10%. And then I know Jerry Pay with Toro, if you do a winter parts order over$3,000, which ain’t hard to do. Um, I mean that’s pennies now really. But, uh, if you do that, then you get free shipping on Tuesdays, on orders over whatever, 200 bucks, which, that’s three four bed knives. Now how far are, are we, are you guys from manufacturer supply? Because I’ve got everything within the city that I’m in. Yeah. All my stuff. Uh, Well, it depends. So Toro comes out of Pensacola and John Deere usually comes outta one of John Deere’s warehouses in um, Georgia. But if I order a Toro part that has to come from Toro, that’s coming from Minnesota. So it takes a minute to get here. Plus my Toro distributor charges me 20% if I want it shipped direct from Toro. That’s bs. That’s brutal. Yeah, total BS especially I tell you’re not paying it. Well, yeah, but especially like if I’m ordering a reel, you know, you should have a reel in stock. But if they don’t and I’ve went ahead, you know, cuz soon as they set up this program, I called and said I don’t care. I gotta have the part. I can’t wait two weeks cuz. If I order a part and it comes from Toro and then it has to get shipped to Pensacola, Florida then shipped to me. They only do their stock orders on Monday. So if I order Tuesday, you know, I’m almost 14 days before I’m getting the part, which is ridiculous. Um, so I told him to ship direct from Toro and I didn’t care about the 20%, but I mean, it is ridiculous. And they say they do that because Toro charges that fee of them. Well, Toro Toro might also say that it, it, the, the part might be a different price once you get it because they can’t guarantee anything, any price. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know what’s going on. My turf, my turf is, they had the, uh, option where you were able to update the pricing on it at the local dealership, and that one disappeared for a little bit and I called. The parts manager and he says, yeah, they were having a little bit of a, something weird going on, but it’s finally back. So I don’t know whether or not Toro is selling wholesale to the distributor or to the dealer, and then we are getting whatever our pricing is on it. But, uh, yeah, it’s expensive and frustrating rating. I’m, I’m sure that every dealer gets a different price depending on the volume that they purchase as well. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think even the customers are getting different prices on the volume we purchase. Uh, I, I would hope so, but I don’t know, like, at least my distributor, because I know, like I’m pretty sure I put my. My, my Toro rep through college. Oh. Just from the, uh, the stuff we’ve bought, like I know we’re, we’re on like parts. We are probably one of their highest, uh, purchasers of parts for the, their, our distributor. Um, I don’t know. I know, I know buying equipment wise, I probably can buy equipment cheaper than a lot of places because of, uh, government contracts. Like, I know, I, I, I, I don’t know offhand. I think it’s like 25% lower than most places. Mm-hmm. So like if I ask for like a quote, like he usually has to go in and find, uh, like on equipment, like what our price would actually be cuz like what. You know, list is, or whatever, you know, Joe Blow or whatever package deal. Like, we don’t, we don’t get a discount for buy. If we buy a million dollars worth of equipment, we don’t get a discount on it because of our, already our, our costars um, government contracts. So on that end, we’re, you know, we kind of like, so like say a hundred thousand dollars piece of equipment is$75,000 for us. And so obviously they’re, I don’t know what the, the markup is on equipment, but there has to be a lot of markup. They’re making a lot of money all across the line. But, uh, I know for parts, like I said, I know if I go through my Touro distributor for parts on vent trax, I can get it cheaper at, uh, like a different vent. Trax, Steeler down the road. It’s kind of weird. And I’ve told them, I’m like, listen, you know, I know we buy a lot of stuff off of you. Like I and you, I’d rather buy it off of you. But I mean, we’re talking$50 on a starter. I’m gonna go to the other place cuz you know, I’m trying, even though they’ll buy whatever, I try to still save some money. It’s like kind of hard to give you the$50, you know, it adds up over like however many f TrackX I have in my fleet. Oh yeah. Yep. It’s, you know, like I said, I mean they definitely Toro you can’t go anywhere else really. I mean other like small, smaller stuff I can get from like a different, uh, the whatever your landscape type dealers, but it’s just easier to go through my distributor for, you know, one place. Well, yeah, and that’s another thing that I’ve noticed. So like talking about Deere, if I can get the part from an ag dealer, I can get it a whole lot cheaper than I pay through the golf and turf dealer, you know? Yeah. And that don’t make sense. I, I think we’re just getting robbed. Well, I can still remember, like, oh, like when I first started, like 10 years ago, whenever we were buying our deer golf parts off of like, some, it was like a hole in the wall. John Deere like it, they were like a small equipment place and I was buying reels, rollers, everything. Huh. Then, uh, yeah. Then Deere I guess did the whole, like, I, it is kind of like when they restructured to where like an ag dealer couldn’t have like the golf side of stuff. Mm-hmm. And when they had, again, specific golf dealers is when they kind of stopped that, where I couldn’t even buy it off of them anymore. But like, I know the prices were way better through that little like, hole in the wall. Yeah. Small engine equipment place than it was going through John Deere itself. And like, it was weird. But I mean, I, I, I don’t know, I know there’s a lot of markup on all that stuff and everybody gotta make money, but man, I don’t, I I don’t even know like what, like, say like 59, 10 now is like$200,000. Like, I don’t even wanna know what the actual, like what Touro makes off it. What, like, you know, the, the distributor makes off of it. It’s gotta be, I mean, obviously it keeps’em in business, but the, I think the markup on equipment’s a lot more than a car, just from my experience. Yeah, I would think so. I mean, I, I don’t know, but I, I would think so. Mean not doing the volume obviously is the cars. Right. Well, and I don’t think it’s right that if I want a piece of Toro equipment, I have to use Jerry Pate. If I want a piece of John Deere equipment, I gotta use beard equipment. Um, you know, that just. If I wanted to buy a new Chevy truck, I can go anywhere in the country and buy a new truck. Yeah. Why’d I have to use one distributor? It’s, it’s tough for you guys, like, you know, who have like, the huge distributors? Cause like, my distributors like tiny, really? I mean, there’s like pretty much Western Pennsylvania, a little bit of Ohio, I think a little bit of West Virginia. So like, they’re a smaller distributor, which is good because, you know, I know everybody there like, I mean, I can call anybody at that place at any time, you know, and they all know who I am, right? Like, once you get this huge distributorship, like, I mean, I, I worry about it if like, you know, someone comes in and like, whatever, say our guys decide, you know, we’re not gonna do it anymore. They’re gonna sell the, the business. And it goes into like a bigger place that’s like, okay, now you know, you’re not gonna have that person personable, like, Distributorship and like, I mean, I understand it’s a big world now, but like right now, if, if there’s a part I can like, it’s like 30 minutes. If they have it, we can go pick it up, you know? Mm-hmm. Or like, you know, my, my salesman will drop it off or whatever. If not, it’ll ship at ups. It’s like, you know, they’re pretty nice, pretty good. But, like said deer, I haven’t seen a deer guy in a while now that rebels as us. I’ve talked to him about it. Like, listen, no one’s showing up. Like, how am I supposed to even wanna buy anything from you? Mm-hmm. No, but no, it’s, it is a messed up situation. Uh, Taylor or, uh, Orlando, do y’all have anything you wanna, any feedback for, for Brian? I’m curious about, I’m curious as far as, um, the repair cost, how much does that repair cost? Would you attribute? Um, no, just kind of basically what Seth, um, is kind of doing, just getting on with the, uh, a lot of our dealerships as well. Hey, just, just step on Orlando skills, fall, winter, and, uh, parts programs. Um, get the discounts on volume and, and everything like that. And, you know, it, uh, everything like that, you know, everybody’s kind of doing the similar, similar ideas. We’re trying to stretch service intervals, um, to their max and then everything like that. Luckily, you know, with the snow on the ground, we’re not necessarily putting o hours on, uh, on equipment like some of the southern guys are. Like, it’s kind of nonstop down there. So, um, that gives us a nice re nice reprieve when it comes to, um, how we gauge the age of the equipment, right? Oh yeah, for sure. Yep. Thank you. Taylor, um, or Orlando was trying to ask something. Curious as far as your repair costs, what percentage would you guys attribute your repair costs to not, not just training, but turnover As far as operators? I don’t, that’s a really good question. And I don’t know. I would say most of the accidents we have that could have been prevented is due to turnover or lack of training. One of the two for sure. Yeah. Cause what I’ve notice is, I know, I know there’s a lot of us here, but, um, we have a good 20 guys that come and go every couple of months. Um, you know, we have about 30, 35 guys that we hire as temp labor, and they’ll just show up one day and. Before you know it, you’re gone. You just hire somebody else to replace’em. Mm-hmm. So it’s, it’s extremely difficult to keep training, especially on the same stuff cuz we keep getting new people all the time and I, I think a lot of my repairs attribute to that. Just the turnover is in It’s crazy. It’s insane. Yeah, no, I, I agree. Yeah. And people are just chasing the dollar and I can’t blame’em I guess, but you know, when you’re leaving a job for 25 cents an hour more, you go down the street or whatever it is and yeah. People just don’t have much loyalty and don’t wanna stick around. Seems like, well, this year, this year it’s gonna be interesting for me because I’ll be able to pay attention to that because for the past, uh, what was it, three years, uh, we had a pretty high turnover rate with Covid and stuff like that. People disappeared after season, but this year we have 20 people who are returning and I’ll be able to sort of monitor exactly how much damage was from inexperience or is it just damage and maintenance because of wear and tear on the machine. So I’m, I know that we’re getting a bunch of regular operators back who have already been trained to know what I do. Who knows that, yeah, if you leave a crappy reel, I’ll drag you underneath it and say, yeah, look at all this mess that I gotta deal through. Mm-hmm. So, uh, hopefully this year I’ll be able to have an answer for that one. Why don’t, another thing I’ve been doing with task tracker, there’s, I set a category up and actually I talked to, uh, Jerry and uh, JP about it too, and they set up the same category is called misuse. So if we make a repair that could have been, you know, operator error could have been prevented. We mark it in the misuse category. So by the end of this year, I should be able to tell you how much money we spent because of misuse. Yeah. So I, I’ve been tracking it for the past couple years and uh, I’m trending 25 to 30% on operator error. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, I would definitely believe it. Anybody else want to chime in on that? I, I really like that Orlando. That’s a good idea. And something I might implement. Cuz 25 to 30% is, that’s a big number. So, um, that to me is, that’s, that could be a big savings on your budget where you could put money elsewhere. So that’s, that’s a really good idea. Yeah, it’s, it’s, you’d be surprised how much money it actually comes out to me. You know, you, I, I have a$200,000 RM budget, so I’m looking at 50 to 60 grand a year on Oopses. Wow. Yeah. That’s crazy, huh? That’s a lot of Whoops. Is, yeah. Well the tree wasn’t there, right? Yeah. Crazy, crazy. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of money. And I know with a lot of software, you can also keep track of what you buy from your dealers. So you can actually see how much pricing gets increased and how often. Yeah. Orlando, do you actually track or do you pay attention to labor hours with that? Or is that just purchasing repair parts? No, I don’t keep track of labor hours, just strictly parts. Wow. That’s all. Yeah. But how many course, just watch, how many holes do you got, Orlando or It’s, it’s, there’s 54 holes. There’s 94 of us total. Okay. Okay. So my number will be a little higher. I’m sure that’s a much bigger course than mine. Yeah, we’re, I mean, we’re talking about like$7 million fleet, so there’s a lot going on every day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Chris. Chris, they’re actually growing grass 365 days a year down there too. Yeah. We don’t stop. You could do that. We don’t stop. You could grow it. You’re routed. Oh yeah. Geez. You don’t have to put it to bed. No, actually we’re in the middle of a renovation. Yeah, I know everybody thinks that it’s dark six months of the year up here, but no, we get sunned too, a little bit. Wow. What all are y’all renovating? Orlando? So we’re all renovating our oldest course, which is our newest course when the property opened up on the Pine course. It’s 24 years old now. Okay. Doing it down to the nuts bolts. It’s uh, it’s planned to be a$15 million renovation. Wow. We’re probably, probably at closer to 16 right now. We just started. Wow. That’s crazy. And so we’re not growing any grass on there. Yeah, I suppose not. We still got the other, yeah, we still got the other two courses with our tournaments and championships and we managed to fit in 13, 14 shotguns a week with two courses. Yeah. That’s crazy. Yeah, there’s a lot of what going on and, you know, training is is tough with, with everything going on and all the people running around and the labor that we have. Well, like you said, with the turnover too, you train a guy and he is only there for three days and then there’s somebody else coming in. I mean, in three days is an exaggeration, but even, you know, two months and then you get a whole new 10 guys come in and it’s like, mom, we gotta do it all over again. Yeah, yeah. You know, you can only talk about, you know, where, where, where all your, your fire extinguishers are so much, you know? Right. Yeah. No, that’s gotta get old. Yeah, for sure. It, it gets tough and it’s just, you gotta deal with it. And like they were mentioning, you know, you gotta try to be out there and make yourself as available as possible and try to do the best you can in training. Mm-hmm. and a lot of times you have language barriers. You know, we get guys from all over the Caribbean and, uh, it’s tough. Some of’em, we get, a lot of people, believe it or not, are illiterate. Oh yeah. Yep. True. And it’s, it, it shocks me to this day, but they’re, they’re, they’re out there, a lot of them. And, you know, you can, you just, you know, read over this and look at you like you’re crazy. Mm-hmm. Like, you need any Spanish. She’s like, oh, I, I can’t read. And it’s like, oh damn. So you just gotta stay on it and just keep going over it. And it gets super repetitive, but there’s really no other way. I remember we had a guy on our crew, a Latino guy, and I don’t, he was old too, probably like in close to 70 or something. And uh, he was trying to tell me something in Spanish and one of the other guys, I was like, what is he saying? And they’re like, I don’t know what he saying. So he wasn’t speaking kinda English or he wouldn’t speak in Spanish. He had his own language. He was trying to communicate with us crazy. Yeah. We get a lot of like Guatemala’s that they speak a different dialect, you know? Mm-hmm. Trying to explain things to them is, it gets very frustrating at times. Yeah, I bet. I bet. But, but you know, gotta do whatever it is and figure it out and onto to the next one. Yep. That’s right. That’s right. Anybody got anything else? I’m about ready to wrap this up myself. Wow. Silence. No thank, thank you guys for that information that I asked for. Um, it’ll definitely be useful in that meeting. I have a few weeks and Trent, I’ll be getting a hold of you soon too about, uh, this fall that we talked about. Oh yeah, yeah. Yep, for sure. Yeah. And, uh, get a hold of Seth too, because we’re both coming together for, uh, harvest. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That’s coming too. Yeah, that’s right. We got good. I’ll I’ll put you in the track and let you turn you loose. Yeah. All right. Well see you guys. All right, sdm, take it easy. Thank. Thank you everybody. Good night. Really enjoyed it, sdm. All right. Was a good time. All right, man. Yep. We’ll see y’all.

 

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