welcome to talk and tires the podcast that delves deep into the world of tires join us as we explore everything from the science behind the manufacturing to the latest Innovations in the tire recycling our aim is to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of tires including how they work how to maintain them and how to dispose of them responsibly whether you’re a seasoned mechanic curious car Enthusiast or an avid recycler talking tires is the perfect podcast for anyone who wants to learn about the essential component of the modern vehicle and heavy equipment so buckle up and join us for an informative and engaging journey into the world of tires okay welcome to another episode of talking tires I’m your host Craig Hunter president of Tire reclaim and I’ve got with me Brandon Mitchell the national sales manager for setco tires and also the owner of setco tires Buck Hill we’re really excited to have you guys thanks for being here and um basically talking tires is about tires and Technology what’s coming down the pike and this is our first opportunity we’ve had um multiple guests from uh tire sales passengers semi and loader

tires and we’ve had uh crumb rubber facility uh companies and owners come in and talk this is our first opportunity to have a full-blown manufacturer of tires and solid tires which solid tires is not something I have a lot of knowledge on myself so I’m super excited to learn more about that learn more about you guys and your company so um let’s go ahead and get started so welcome and why don’t you tell us a little bit about setco yeah you bet thanks for having us Craig um so setco we are a manufacturer of solid rubber tires also rubber cutting edges uh the only solid rubber tire made in the United States we’re actually here in our warehouse in Idabel Oklahoma um Buck here I can tell you a little bit more about the history of setco but we’ve been around since 1988 and happy to be here awesome so I’m a third generation guy my granddad started in the 30s uh retreading repairing uh you know a model tires 616s there’s a great picture in my office of my granddad standing very proudly in front of a bunch of presses uh my

dad grew up in the business uh went out to California taught school a few years and came back to it and uh about the year I was born probably around 64. it’s really the only business I’ve I’ve ever known even even when I went to uh College I I worked for Goodyear so you know tires is about it for me right yeah I did I was able to find an article um it’s a few years old but you know congratulations it obviously the business is a booming success if you have news Park newspaper articles that I can look up and learn a little bit more about the successes and and the the business there in Idabel Oklahoma which you’ve stayed local and uh tell us a little bit about your town and and your your place there this podcast is really it’s about you guys and your company as well as the the products that you put out so you know how tell me about that you have a lot of key people there I’m sure that you’re proud of and and your manufacturing is it could not run without a hitch without some

good people around you what’s somewhat challenging being is remotely located as we are you look us up and we’re about two hour miles from Tulsa 200 miles from Little Rock to probably about 185 miles from the DFW airport so it’s a little bit tough to draw Talon in here and uh that’s as we continue to grow and the quality of of our our manufacturing people become greater and greater that becomes more and more of the problem the one thing however is this is the the first mountains that you get to out of DFW so we actually have uh probably about 44 000 visitors a weekend here when I was a kid you know you go up the lake anytime uh which is only about 25 miles from here beautiful get a boat slip you can’t do that anymore the place has been overran with uh basically Texans and it all started about 9 11. they realized that Oklahoma had very cheap uh property taxes and the interest rates are low we’ve got about 3 300 luxury homes up here that rent you know the average value is north of a million dollars 20 years

ago that the highest priced house that had ever sold in the county and the County’s bigger than Rhode Island it’s about 60 wide 90 long the highest priced house that had ever sold in our County 20 years ago about 385 thousand dollars homes are selling now for well over a million dollars it’s also put a a crush on our crunch on general labor general labor here has become harder and harder to find but uh my my dad was a a very uh straightforward guy and he basically said if we if if we can’t afford to have insurance for our people we can’t afford to have benefits we don’t need to be in business and I can tell you all the way back and my memory goes back you know to the early 80s when I came back and involved myself we’ve always had had a uh you know 401ks uh health insurance so on and so forth my dad just was basically it’s just our responsibility and and if we can’t put enough margin in there to have that we don’t need to be in the business yeah you’re tracking right where I was

thinking is I’d love to have our listeners know a little bit more like what are some of the things you do to get some of that Talent are you doing um job fairs in your in your area and things like that or you know like everywhere else the the pay scale has continued to increase the nice thing about that with that pay scale increasing you also get there there’s a Delta there to where you get a higher quality hand and we get a higher quality better hands and we we’re automating you know we spend a lot of money each and every year on on capex projects uh this year alone I think we had three major capex projects one of them was a new robotic welding cell because the cell we have now that has three robots welding uh and and picking uh you know is uh we look back it was 07. they came into my office one day and had a 35 000 RPO to sign and I said what’s this for you know explain this to me and uh they said Wilkesboro wiring harness for the welding robots and I said

we’re not having any problem with them why are we spending this money and they said that’s why we want to spend the money because it runs 20 hours a day you know so let’s see one of the capex projects this year was the welding sale another one was uh uh what are you looking at do you have a white board there you’re pointing in it oh it’s just it’s just our manufacturing facilities right across the street oh you can see it yeah yeah awesome so yeah our site now I think it was about 170 Acres we actually just sold 120 000 square foot building last week so I think we’re down to about a half million square feet under roof and about a hundred and forty five acres so it’s kind of a spread out Place uh when I started here when I was 14 years old um my dad borrowed a D6 Dozier that had a pony motor on it brought me out here and showed me how to start the pony motor and then start the big motor we had five acres and we had no buildings over the years this was

an industrial park and as businesses ebbed and flowed and came and went we simply have bought everything we could possibly buy so uh it’s it’s a great way for an American manufacturer to be able to stay in business this building right here we’re sitting it’s 40 000 square feet it was part of 42 Acres that we bought in 09 for 175 thousand dollars so I mean we couldn’t do the dirt work for the building so we made some very good buys on uh uh some very large industrial property which keeps our costs down because although our wages are probably much greater than what our competitors have to pay in Southeast Asia uh our productivity is tremendous so I think the other capex that we did was a new uh plasma torch plasma torch we’ve had was about I don’t know 15 20 years old what we want to do is have the the reliability of the equipment so we’re always investing this company is my favorite investment that I have and uh I I give my heart soul and my wallet to it well wasn’t that you that was quoted as this it’s like

your erector set and you don’t have to wait around for a building or for a big meeting you just go out and do it right and we’ve innovated a lot and to be a great innovator you have to have a great tolerance for failure and we have have had a lot of failures we can but what we’re very good is we’re very precise my dad was a pilot my granddad was a pilot my son was a pilot Brandon’s about to be a pilot you know I’ve got 40 Years of flying and ten thousand hours I think you have when you when you fly you have to be precise a lot of that lends itself quite well to being a businessman a good pilot is a good businessman a good businessman is a good pilot some people say you know a businessman shouldn’t be flying no he’s got to be able to put that to the side get in the cockpit and and that’s that’s what priority are my point to that matter is we document those failures and and we analyze them backwards like a plane crash and we look at them in pieces

what did we do good what did we not do good what did we learn I mean if nothing else you just have an absolute catastrophe and everything fails what did we learn out of that and that’s what we have steadily built on top of each other slowly and surely and and and and and and so when we go into a customer and we can look and tell him how much the tire can can handle as far as load speed uh we can tell them in what ambient temperature we can tell them the deflection we can tell them a lot a lot of the people because this is this is kind of a low-end industry and and you get a lot of somewhat uh people that might not be as precise as we are or or as um is concerned or dedicated to it as we are you get people that were selling trailer houses last year and they’re selling cars next year our our whole life and in fact I’m I’m sitting here looking at a guy walking up here to me uh Larry Sergeant Larry came to us right out of college

he’s a few years younger than me he’s dedicated his life uh between the three of us are probably not three people in the world that know more about large off-road solid tires and how to make them work and get them out there working correctly the first time we make the mistakes here we don’t put mistakes out in the field and uh you know and part of that is our is our long-term relationship with the uh uh Gerdau plant in Midlothian which was Chaparral Steel one of the largest plants in the world the most abusive they can tear up an anvil with a feather that’s what my dad’s used to tell me you know and I mean they’re you know less than 200 miles from here they’re a 20-minute flight for us we all we all we lean on them quite heavily for r d and we have learned a lot from them because they’re Texans because they do things to the absolute Max you know and uh they stretch us and that stretching makes us better so we never look at it and I mean you can go back to it

biblically in fact and look at it in Bible you’ll be thankful for your problems because your problems is what it’s what allows you to to see an innovation it’s exactly the same way my dad came up with this whole ideal and we can go back to the aviation and the problems he left Houston one night put the flaps down couldn’t get the flaps up landed in Lufkin and took a piece of paper out and Drew on a napkin a piece of paper came home and visited with me about it 89 I think we built our first Tire gerdell which was Chaparral at that time was our first first and favorite uh account that we we just we we really love them and uh you can’t imagine how an abusive place it is yeah yeah so what did he draw on the napkin he basically just drew the first design of of our tires out and that was an expanded Rim so that the rim was bigger and and you bonded the rubber to it right down the street here 40 miles is uh is a Red River uh Army Depot they they redo all

the bogey wheels for the the tank tracks he went down there and got with an engineer and uh you know hired him come up on Fridays he worked with us on on quality and uh and and procedures on how to do it and uh from that we become ISO that we’ve been ISO probably I don’t know 15 years or more uh some people looked at it as a hassle uh I look at it as an owner as as uh checks and balances go back to the flying again I mean Lindbergh was all about checklists and that’s what ISO has done for us it’s made us accountable and uh it’s it’s made it to where I mean it I I think in our promotional video I said when was the last time you heard of a Citgo Tire failing literally we put tens of thousands hundreds thousands of tires out a year four or five tires you know maybe that wasn’t even our fault but we’re going to take care of it anyway you know right probably wasn’t honestly the quality is is unbelievable right and that’s what we strive for well it makes sense

you’re you’re you know correlation to Flying you want everything perfect right I mean I just got back from vacation and my entire family sitting with me and we got back and my dad said praise the Lord when I saw him I was like what’s the matter dad and he’s like well you had everything I love in that airplane you know and anything goes wrong that’s that’s terrible you know it all happens all at once I lose everybody and I’m like oh Dad we’re here but it makes perfect sense and I I do like that correlation prior to 9 11 um the only other mode of transportation that was safer than the airlines is the elevator but if you got on a plane every year this prior to 9 11 35 000 years you have to get on a plane before you you would you would statistically be in a plane crash and I’m talking about on airlines wow you know so it’s a very very safe it’s a very mature it’s a very by the book uh you know they they have ATP uh uh standards uh Airline Transportation standards uh and type ratings

I’ve got a couple of top ratings in a jet I know it’s held a study for and I hate it when I’m doing it but I’m very proud afterwards and when I get into some weather I’ve got the tools to to fight my way out of it let’s see okay yep here’s what we’re gonna do and we and and we get a plan and we go so I like the analysis of the the crash as well you know like we all of us have pitfalls and failures and things that we can learn from right and uh we we invest money and maybe it doesn’t pan out the best way and we end up you know retooling or pivoting and going a different direction um what are some of the things that you’ve seen recently I mean I hate doing this but I do it every time post covid um did you guys everything run through okay through covid did you um did your Workforce I mean uh disappear on you or did they come back or oh no I mean our Workforce State stayed with us and we we were you know there’s there’s

different people than in covet and uh for us we have a great plant manager he came from a Fortune 500 company he brought such an incredible culture to this this infant uh business in some ways even though you know we’ve been doing this for you know 35 plus years but he brought such and and his saying is when he put some bookends on it you know and without becoming uh arguing religion or politics or anything I actually believed what you know uh fauci was saying and we abided by to the best of our ability and and we tried to State ourselves and everything else what kova did for us and it’s the first thing that our our tremendous plant manager told me when he walked in the door probably two or three years ago and uh he uh said we’ve got to get rid of the hard labor anything that you break your sweat on anything that’s a strained we have to identify we have to eliminate it we have to figure out how to automate it streamline it and get rid of the labor when that happened when covet happened and I I

must tell you that’s probably without a doubt the most terrified I’d ever been because I could actually see the whole company getting coveted at one time I could I could envision that um how it could spread so so rapidly and you know I I’m a voracious uh I wish I could say reader I’m not I’m but I am I am married my first favorite wife uh uh librarian by trade and she she can read a book that said you can’t ask you anything about it but I like to watch a lot of uh like History Channel and stuff the AIDS epidemic they couldn’t understand the AIDS epidemic because they were looking at something that was so incredible it went back to a male Steward that was uh uh working for uh South African airlines and so you know he’s in joburg one night he’s in New York next night he’s in Sydney and all of a sudden within six weeks AIDS had exploded all over the world and it came back to this one guy you know I could I started thinking about that in fact I wrote letters about it uh I was

heavily involved in YPO at the time young president’s organization I used their great minds we put a strategy together but we for the most part followed the government guidelines because we’ve got just under 200 people here and it doesn’t take long to do the calculations to think about the Hub and spoke you know if I interact with this guy or that guy but back to it covered was wonderful for us it it I spent 12 hours a day on the floor I probably lost 20 20 pounds of the 50 I need to lose plus uh my knees didn’t like it as well but at that point we made some major changes in our operation directly due to covet that we are reaping the benefits of today so I mean a tire like this a 20.5 sitting behind us weighs 2 000 pounds two thousand pounds we’ll build that tire and four minutes now off the Builder and gone I’ll I’ll build you know four of those an hour one with one guy we’re so much more productive than we ever were before and so the automation the automation that was birthed from this

conversation with your plant manager it’s yeah we’re seeing more and more of that too I you know I visited the manufacturer of our crumb rubber facility plant um and they we’re adding equipment sounds a lot like yours they had capex for different projects over the next three or four years that I think each one of them had some sort of robot or automation involved in it just to clarify you’ve got from a factory so we are coming online in October um September October we’re buying a Joe Mar out of Middlebury Indiana Indiana um none better than those guys yeah they are the best thank you for saying that Lavon and and and Lamar are the greatest people and and they’re they’re the only people I’ve ever met that’s quite as crazy as I am at at their their at how um uh uh integrated that they are they’re fully integrated just like we are they’ve got the trucks they’ve got the processing and they make they make their equipment and when it breaks even if they sold somebody they’re very much like us they apologize we’ve got another one on the way we’re not

sure in fact I’ve been trying to buy a four shaft uh Shredder from them for about two or three years and they’re not just quite ready to to uh to to uh to share it with us we want to grind some of our one inch stuff down to like quarter inch and I went and looked up in Pennsylvania at a couple of them running a couple of the Raptors and uh I’ve been to their place up in Indiana I gotta tell you they’re just fantastic people yeah isn’t it great I I’m I’m telling you they’ve got four big shredders running down there at at the cement plant down in Midlothian that grind the tires you know so they bring tires in there and grind them and then they’re using them as a as a hog fuel I guess for for the cement but there’s nobody else I’ve ever met in this industry that is more grounded and straightforward than those guys are and that’s amazing to hear you say that because that’s actually a connection that did that wasn’t brought about for this meeting um so I got Brandon’s number from Brett Eckhart the

owner of United Metals Recycling which is our parent company to tie a reclaim and we uh have visited Tom Parker out of All American Tires in Dallas Fort Worth All-American tire recycling he told us there’s none better than the Raptor and the Lavon and Lamar and those guys so we jumped on a plane we went to his facility in Texas toured that went to another facility in Oklahoma toward that then we went up to Indiana and toured those nine machines running at Encore um or Intec which is lavon’s company so it’s it’s a really nice you know full loop Circle to come back and have you a guest on our podcast is confirming what we saw what we witnessed which is a true American company much like yourself out there hitting it hard and and taking care of their customers on a day-to-day business and we I mean the shop was perfect that’s the automation I was just referencing you know they have a lot of robots they’re using and doing more and more every day so um yeah that’s pretty cool that that’s all come another guy that I went

to to visit uh is Troy Hess up at can you pronounce that on Tango Enterprises tire recycling they’re out in the middle of a Pennsylvania Liverpool Pennsylvania he was very gracious with me and so and let me look at a couple of these Raptors running and that was about it and I mean he has I think he’s very innovative it looks like something out of one of those Mel Gibson movies you know going to see him he’s got he’s got conveyors that are running you know five six hundred feet out there I mean he might be the the best guy I’ve ever seen as far as a as a processor and he’s very he he guards it very closely and I don’t blame him he’s What’s that name can you spell that company name tango is I believe it’s how you pronounce it yeah they’re up in uh Pennsylvania Troy Hess that man might actually be as knowledgeable of a feller that I’ve ever talked to when he starts talking about you’ve got to be able to do the airflow and and and you know things that that he shares with us as far

as shredding stuff you know that water is a is a lubricator he’s just I was highly impressed with that that’s a that’s the funnest thing about my job I get to go see some real a players and some of that rubs off on me and inspires me and even though now you know let’s see I turned 59 at the end of the year I’ve got a bunch of friends I was talking to a girl that uh uh graduated with high school she’s a dentist she said well I’m just working two days a week and everything and I’m like I just got making sense to me I want to work like crazy because there’s not that much left in me you know I mean you know 10 years from now am I still gonna be doing this well if I can get my health in a little better shape maybe you know it’s like a good friend that was a number six at Southwest he said yeah I think we’re gonna hang it up you know I said well you got another six months he said yeah but you know I’m not gonna make you

more and everything I said dude you’re crazy I said seven months from now you’re gonna be wishing he was in a 737 coming out of LaGuardia you know with with all the all the DS on and saying yeah you know you’ll miss it in other words I mean I’m going to retire like Paul Smith over Joseph’s over at Joseph Smith uh his victory soccer over in DC I love Paul and that whole bunch there he said I’m gonna retire 24 hours after they close the coffin on me and I’m gonna be the same way well I want to be here as long as I can be a uh advocate for these guys I can’t I I’m overwhelmed with the the uh the use that we’re able to pull in and the and and how excited they are about this this is the greatest gift you could ever imagine you know um it’s just unbelievable you know uh we’re right here on the Red River Texas is just right there uh we’ve got a ranch in Texas high fence place you know one of our good friends in fact I noticed last night he would

have turned 100 what was Carol Shelby Carol Carol Shelby I probably became close friends with him in his late 80s he was so unbelievable full of of uh optimism and and was going to do this and we’re going to do this and and so on and so forth he just was a real character that’s what that’s the guy I want to be I want to be the cheerleader when I’m 89 years old and saying I like that guys I think that’s going to work or have you considered what’s going to happen here you know I never want to be a naysayer and and this company is it’s like owning a ranch in a lot of ways it’s it’s mine for this time but this company we’re designing it to well out with me and uh the people that are that are here and and the people that were putting in place were putting in place for a long run you know and uh well and I’ve heard the the future is in your mindset and there’s some things that you’re doing with sustainability now um that you’re you’re getting into some recycling yourselves and

obviously if you know Joe Maher and you know uh the Raptor then you know that we’ll be recycling 100 of our tires very soon as well and uh what’s going on in that realm for you guys I think we’re particularly blessed and and maybe somebody else is but um you know it’s like I look at my wife you know at a distance or something I almost had to pinch myself how do I get to marry such a wonderful person I wouldn’t be near the I wouldn’t be half the man I am without her you know I think about how blessed we are we have basically our tires are made mostly out of one compound and so it’s recyclable I’m looking at a freight truck just backed up here in the Old Dominion truck it’s got some super single what excellence 455 you know 70 or 0.25 there’s 20 different compounds in that it’s hard there’s a bead compound there’s a sidewall compound there’s a casing compound there’s inner tread and all this you’ve got so many think different things working here it’s like a gumbo of a of uh compounds there most of

them are not made for wear and when the tires worn out most of the wear compound is gone you know it’s evaporated into the ozone I understand uh we’re so much more blessed than that and and we’ve always built a pure high quality tire and we have a lot of competitors that build a lot of uh tires with a lot of fillers in them those are not recyclable um that’s something that goes to the cement plan our tire from the very top to the very bottom is the same is the same compounds and it’s always been a little more costly to make it that way but now we’re sitting here looking at you know we got 50 million pounds of rubber setting here that we’re sitting here grinding we’ve got one of we’ve got ssi’s largest Shredder that that they make sitting there breaking them down we break them down uh with uh excavators and and uh we get them into manageable sizes and we bring it down to about a a 40 mass or or smaller so and we’re doing that cryogenically because all of our compounds are 100 natural rubber so uh

if you’re going to get in in the in the crumb business you know you’re either gonna be ambient or or you’re going to be uh cryogenic from from the two two angles I know of the police if you know something different I’m all here no no no ambient is where we’re at yeah the problem is you know the Amy is going to get you down to about 10 or 15 maybe 20 25 and if you put in a a cracker meal and you know you’ll get on down a little further the we’ve always been told by everybody I’ve ever spoken to that you can’t expect to get this this 100 natural rubber down lower if we can get it low enough we can get it into the into the product so let’s just take a small Tire a bobcat Tire it’s if the if the optimum weights 200 pounds we can actually make that tire 202 pounds with the same party line and everything else we can make a denser product and it’s the exact same compound we did this in an effort to compete against some of our more low-cost competitors but

it’s come back to be the most unbelievable thing we can ever imagine because we have a very incredible uh tracking program that we can track we can track those truck tires we can track the tires on this Kubota I’m looking at this golf guard here who can track anything but we use it for our specific needs it’s a it’s a system that was designed and built by us Brandon joined us a few years ago coming from a GCR which is the brick Zone Firestone company they had tritstat we’re taking the best of the best of the best and taking it even further we’ve actually found out that this recycled product is lasting longer than the original now if I go in here and just get truck tires with the bead package and and and and you know the beef compound and everything else I don’t think I could expect that same results right but because we’re using a closed-loop recycling program we’re killing it with it so our tire is now 100 recyclable the entire wheel tire everything it’s the only one that we’re aware of that’s 100 recycled in the world ever

that that we know of right on a somewhat large scale basis well and the components you’re talking about and that comparison to you have you know one versus multiple it makes perfect sense right you would be the most set up to be able to do a 100 recycled product which that is um the closed loop you mentioned that’s these are all keywords right everybody likes to throw around sustainability to me sustainability is exactly what you just said you found out it’s going to last longer and I’ll bet there’s some probably some pretty good cost savings involved too in some of the areas maybe one day we’ll get to see that it you know the entry cost into this into this stuff is state yeah you know yeah and there’s been some learning Curves in that and uh you know you buy a lot of nitrogen you buy a lot of hammers and uh the problem is with ours it seems like we never can break it down far enough to where we can pull the metal out of it we do a lot of damage whereas if you had you know if you were

just recycling Factory waste you wouldn’t expect that right but if you know much about our products and the places we run I mean we’re running Shredder so you’re gonna get the get the valve out of a 58 Chevy you know you’re going to get spring out of a you know 2023 Dodge that got ran over you know you’re gonna we get a a whole ton of it and the non-ferrous is is challenging for us as anything to remove out of the scrap because we our our uh eddy current system does not fully do a good job there and imagine it’s just a challenge right well what I like to look at too sometimes in this in in what I was referencing as well is opportunity cost so what would be the alternative to recycling and reusing those products is it you know landfill is it you know just getting rid of it some other way cement Kiln so you know the cost and effect of all of that as well it’s landfill or are are going to the to the cement kills you know basically what it is and the btu value is

extremely high we’ve never actually been involved in in selling any of the product at this time we are going to have to get there as we as we have competitors tires to dispose of as well uh understand that’s that’s a whole nother little Syndicate unto itself the one person that sells it you gotta sign in your life well he wouldn’t understand I don’t know much about that but I’m curious yeah but uh we actually are developing we’ve got a new 40 000 square foot building um over here about I don’t know probably about a mile across the campus here and um in fact we just polished the floors we brought it up to about a 400 so I could be walking to Home Depot you see that shine we just stuck our head in there I did that because over you know start from the 30s that’s seven over nine nine decades we’ve had a handful of fires in my family and I can’t remember any one of them that was ever Pleasant or good you know uh so a great guy um that does some work with me said if you remove the

fuel you remove the hazard makes sense so it it’s just like when we when we go to Crane school you know uh the first thing you know and we have a great we have a great team here uh probably the greatest I could ever imagine uh of our journeyman and and one particular guy in there is Gary Branson uh my plant manager before used to have a bit of history and rigging or something like that Gary would come to me I hope that’s not too public but he would say hey Bud don’t you and Wayne need to go down down to uh middle oath theater and don’t don’t need to go to Houston or somewhere in other words take the plant manager get him out of here and let us do it so basically the team basically gets together everybody kind of has to have a thumbs up that we’re ready to to to make the pick and that’s kind of the mentality that we that we like to go with here fantastic well we’re running out of time guys I’m just wondering if is there anything else you wanted to talk about any

plugs for anybody you’ve got some names you dropped there I’m I’m sure those are some super key people I know um Brandon didn’t get to talk to us a whole lot but he warned me of that that once Buck got into the room Brandon ought to talk about our TMS because he’s really taking it over and ran with it I mean he’s done a fantastic job with it yeah just just quickly Craig our our tire tracking software is called Seco TMS um it’s very Innovative um it’s all done in-house we we have our own programmers that work on that and uh it’s the premier tire tracking software in the industry we if our customers will follow that and and it really takes five measurements throughout the life of a tire so if you take a loader Tire in in a shredder say he gets ten thousand hours if you’ll follow those those cues of how to rotate the tires you will cut your tire across 20 percent how does that benefit us I’d like my customers to get the greatest value they possibly can so what I don’t want to do is see

it is see a set of tires come in and two of them on on the wheel and two of them got a ton of rubber that they didn’t get to wear out I want them to waste nothing but the cluck as as uh Beau Pilgrim you say I don’t want to lose anything but the pluck of the chicken you know I want them to get all their money’s worth and we can help them do that and we can help keep their their drivetrain within uh ASC ASC specs uh American Society of Engineers specs it it’ll save on uh planetaries Transmissions things of that nature absolutely I told you I’m passionate about tires I’m telling you you could ask me that or about my grandkids or something like that I can go on for days I I would like I would like to know what was your wife’s name Natalie my first and favorite yeah so that’s the one that I like to bring that name up first and foremost you’d already given her plugs but I am pretty sure if you’re anything like me nothing I wouldn’t be here without a great woman in

my life I can remember being over in Perth Australia about as far are are in joburg in the mines or something you know and thinking to myself I don’t have to worry about my family I don’t have to worry about my kids you know she’s got the home fire going yeah and and at the same time you know she had had to worry about much herself uh having dinner ready at a reasonable time yeah and Brandon you’ve got Kirby there at home right that’s right Kirby’s same thing uh taking care of my two kids Whitley and Walker and uh yeah can’t can’t do any of this without her yeah and buck you’ve got uh you got family there at the plant right you well the unfortunate thing is I mean we lost our son about seven years ago on our Ranch in an airplane crash oh no 24 years old just graduated college oh so sorry about a year after that uh you know my desire for this company to well outlive me is is beyond your imagination I don’t you know we get I could easily sell it out and do something else

but I mean that seven years I wouldn’t have survived very well without him so I will walk to this company myself just to have the sanity to have something to do to go to work and everything else since then you know my son-in-law was a Dodge dealer out in West Texas uh Hamilton um Texas and you know I just pulled p l I said here’s what we do that’s Mitchell right yeah and and and his dad owns you know all the the major dealerships he owns from Cadillac you know all all the uh yes dealerships it’s a big organization that his dad has his dad literally came from nothing I mean his dad really didn’t grow up with uh sure enough Dad it’s an admirable thing that uh Chaz bear has done in his lifetime uh but you know like any Father and Son you can have a little bit of a of a rub or something and I know my daughter was happier to be back here we were happy to happier have her home Mitchell came in and joined us and you know God forbid something was happened to my

my daughter and my son-in-laws I wouldn’t want to keep Mitchell you know he’s just he Rings a lot he’s very mild and he brings a lot to the to the company you know Brandon is your daughter’s name yep Brandon I’m I’m very I’m a very direct person I mean sometimes that can be offensive to people but at least you know what I’m thinking when I leave but I’m working on that I’m you know my my toolbox started out very very thin this great manager that we hired uh Tony Cochran I’m telling you they can get more out of people Charming than I ever could hollering at him you know right yeah well we’re all learning it’s it’s basically a big lesson of life it is yeah uh I wish I had this perspective when I was you know 20. 25 or something you know no uh Don’t Look Back yeah it’s all forward from here well guys I sure appreciate your time I’m gonna go ahead and close it up on that it’s really nice to to meet you Buck and uh again I can’t I can’t wait till you get the

Raptors in yeah yeah so I don’t know if y’all been to Idaho I’ve been to Oklahoma and Texas a lot I’ve got family all over that area um but as much as I’d like to come see you I’d love for you guys to come and see us as well up here in Idaho is it northern Idaho no we’re uh we’re Southwest Central and Eastern Idaho yeah we basically run all along the bottom of the state so Boise would be the major city Twin Falls and Pocatello um but anyway we’re we’re here and we’re we’re gonna start putting that all together I’ve actually got two men um in Texas right now looking at dust collection systems as well you know comparison all the whole system for our friends at all American tire recycling and we’ve got guys over there studying the plant right now I’ll tell you the other one who’s uh the scrap metal business but up in in British Columbia which back Alberta there’s a great family up in Alberta that has one of the neatest um Glenn Cohen Alberta environmental Rubber products you want to talk about a slick operation they take

it from truck tires basically is what they’re doing and uh they grind them down and get them down in into powder and uh he’s got two dual lines running so in case one breaks down you know yes two of everything so he’s going through the primary shredders and he’s going through uh grinder some sort of a grinder and then he goes on down and he he ends up with some cracker meals and that just keeps getting rotated and he told me the trick on the cracker meal you know because I had a Cracker Barrel we kind of tried it a little bit we weren’t as successful he’s got some of those made down there in Sarasota Florida and you know it’s got two different gearboxes on it one of the one of them’s running 19 to one you know so he’s really doing something but out of all the places I’ve ever been it’s huge you ought to look this place up and and Glenn is a fantastic guy to deal with uh yes but but their main business I believe was scrap and they got into the tire recycling business because I think

the uh Alberta Government kind of said we’re going to do this are you interested and I’m telling you it he had a neat rule too or his main guy cut it in half every time every process after you go through the primary cut it in half again if it’s four inch cut into two it’s two cut it to one if it’s one cut it’s a half an inch and just keep going down it’s not rocket science it’s keep breaking that thing down any darn way that you possibly can to get it down to the desired product you know we’re getting it down into dust we’re getting it down to tapping powder yeah that’s where we’re headed we got cracker meal on order and we’ll be you know producing the well whatever the highest bidder is to be honest so well that’s what we’ll produce but we can go all the way down to the you know 32.99 or we can come up to 10 20 you know we have the ability to do all black rubber um but I don’t want to get off into a a deep networking conversation well I’ll let

we’ll wrap up this podcast so maybe we jump on another call together sure I’m I’m curious who you bought the uh the uh cracker meal from it’s all Jomar oh it’s all Joe Moore okay yep it’ll be all one complete unit Lamar must love you more because I tried to send a couple rolls up to him he said no no no we got the right track I guess we met the right guys at the right time yeah you’re probably spending a lot more with him than I do though oh I don’t know about that but you know what’s great about those guys is they share all their technology they’re wide open and and when he comes here I’ll let him look at anything he wants to yeah I’m seeing that I’m seeing that more and more that Tom at all American and David Riley in Oklahoma and I mean everybody Lavon and Lamar they’ve all just wide open uh all or anything anything honestly anything we need and tell us the best hotel while we’re visiting I mean it’s just been fantastic but um all right anything else gentlemen no thank God bless you

thanks for being on and uh enjoy that nice weather in Oklahoma and we’ll talk to you soon alrighty thank you thank you