Episode 12 - "Daniel The Manual": A Conversation with Daniel Burtis from Unifi

Matthew Weitzel: 0:07

Celebrating 10 years of trailblazing, in ground support Xcēd marks a decade as your leading partner in ground support equipment leasing at the forefront of both short term and long term leasing solutions Xcēd adapts to your unique operational needs. Whether you're ramping up for peak season or planning for long term growth, we provide the right equipment to keep your operations running smoothly. This anniversary we renew our dedication to empowering your ground operations with efficiency and innovation. With you're equipped for success today and prepared for the challenges of tomorrow. Xcēd driving excellence on the ground year after year. Explore more at xcedgse.com. Hello, this is Michael big. This is Josh that. I'm Brian Yoder. This is Justin Brennan. And you're listening to the GSE podcast. All right, welcome to the GSE Podcast. I'm Matt Weitzel. And I'm here with Daniel Bertus. From unify. How's it going, Daniel?

Daniel Burtis: 1:12

Oh, we're doing great. It's great to be down in Florida in the middle of winter rather than Colorado? Yes.

Matthew Weitzel: 1:16

Yeah, we're here at. We're here at JBT headquarters. They were nice enough to let us use their conference room to record this special podcast. You have some stuff on the line that we just went and saw. Yes. I'm sure a lot of that equipment is going out to Canada. Yes. And

Daniel Burtis: 1:34

they're ready for it.

Matthew Weitzel: 1:35

I bet they are. Yeah. So Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

Daniel Burtis: 1:39

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Matthew Weitzel: 1:40

Oh, no, man, this is this is great. This is gonna be a great episode. Very excited about it. So I guess let's start here. So what's your title at unify? And what are your core responsibilities?

Daniel Burtis: 1:51

I'm the senior GSE buyer for procurement. And so everything within our 200 Plus contracts, whether it be new equipment needed for new contracts, leases, replacement, refurbishment, any type of GSE need that we have in any of our stations. I'm the main lead buyer for that equipment.

Matthew Weitzel: 2:12

That's a lot of responsibility.

Daniel Burtis: 2:14

And you were around 10,000 pieces right now. And I think our current count is 211 or 212. Stations. Wow. So it's it's spread out? Yeah.

Matthew Weitzel: 2:24

That's a lot of work. And you're based out in Denver. Yes, yeah, I'm

Daniel Burtis: 2:28

out of Colorado. But our offices, of course, down there in Atlanta, the rest of the procurement teams in Atlanta. I'm the only one that's fully remote.

Matthew Weitzel: 2:34

Okay, so that begs the question. So how did you get into GSE? Like, you know, what's your story? How'd you how'd you get into this messed up industry that we all are in,

Daniel Burtis: 2:44

you must have saw me sitting on my porch after the first week in GSE, with my head, my hands wondering what I've done in my life. We've all had that moment, it's fine. Well, I started out as a mechanic pretty early off, I worked in a Chrysler dealership became an ASE certified technician did a little bit of race car work. And that was, you know, in my early 20s. And from that point forward, I'd always had my hands on something mechanically, whether it was building maintenance, residential, commercial remodeling, something along that line, I've always had that aptitude, and stayed kind of in that sphere of a general utility mechanic, whether it was for production factories, or something along that line, or all the way down to hotel, and I was working in Branson, Missouri, at a hotel and had gotten to know a couple people in Wichita, Kansas. And they were working for DGS at that time, and they desperately needed help with their equipment. And after living in Branson for about a year and a half, I realized that wasn't the right city for me. They had a regional manager, GSE regional manager that showed up one day and called the entire operation and just said, Do any of you people know anybody that might know how to work on this stuff. And so one of my friends that she raised her hand, she said, I think I know somebody that could work on that. And so I came out and interviewed two days later, and two weeks later, I was in which Todd ICT walked into an empty bag room with a pile of tires. And that's where it started around 15 out of 18 motorized pieces down. My gosh. And I had never even seen it before. Yeah, you know, so it was all needing to be transferable at that point. And as soon as they saw a mechanic walk out on the ramp while this is down, that's down. That's up two minutes. I don't even know what I'm looking at. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the first thing we walked up to was like a GPU. And they said, This isn't working. It's okay, great. What is it? Yeah, what is it? What is the function of this thing is a bar and the regional I had it at that time. It did not come from GSE.. He didn't have any mechanical background. So he just said it's a GPU. I said, Well, what's that? So I literally had to go home to work and look on Wikipedia. Oh, GPU, ground power unit. Okay. So it's a diesel motor with a Jenny. I got it. Yeah, yeah, that's where I started in GSE And what year was that? What's Less than 12 years ago, okay. And so I started in Wichita, and then I transferred to Colorado Springs, and became a skilled promoted up skilled mechanic, then skilled TDY mechanic, which put me out with the regional team. And we began to see the condition of the shops and the environmental problems and the training problems. So then I stepped up into a role to do that. And then I stepped up to GSE, regional manager for I think, four and a half years, and then eventually just came over a couple years ago to procurement. Procurement became a very, very good fit by that time. Well,

Matthew Weitzel: 5:32

yeah, I mean, you understand the equipment inside and out. And you can see what equipment works the best and buy it from the best and make sure the fleet is up and running.

Daniel Burtis: 5:40

Well, it's a and I can't get buffaloed on the phone by salespeople either. No, you can't.

Matthew Weitzel: 5:47

No, sir, you can't.

Daniel Burtis: 5:49

What's the great thing is a lot of the people in the industry on the sales side are all people I've dealt with before people have already had relationships with Edie. Or like Javier. Yeah, from xe, we're on a one to one basis back when I was TDY. Oh, really? Yeah, we'd solve it out on the phone, whether it was my station or somebody else's station, or one that I ended up managing? Yeah. And just give Javier a call. Tell them what's going on. So you know, sort out what the issue was. And partly,

Matthew Weitzel: 6:16

that's fantastic. You know? Yeah. So you already know all the players in the industry. You've been around for a really long time, you know, if you folks, you know, if you Yeah. So let's talk to me about unify and talk to me about how you all decide what, what piece is going where is that more of a timing thing? Or is that keeping a fleet standardized for per city thing? So, you know, you'd like to keep only JBT push backs in Charlotte, or it doesn't matter. Like we're starting up Charlotte tomorrow, and I just any pushback I can get how does that how does that work for unified? Like, how do you build that out?

Daniel Burtis: 6:55

Well, it's the answer is yes. That is our goal always is to try to centralize equipment in locations. Okay. We don't want to give a mechanic five different types of bag tractors to work out exactly. Problem is a lot of our equipment that we currently have out there. We inherited 91 stations a while back. So we had to adopt the equipment that was already in there. And so we have we do have quite a mix out there, unfortunately. But we have Andy Alexander in places our Strategy Manager, and he's been in the industry for Yes, long time in over 25 years. Yeah. So Andy and I work very close together. And we do everything we can to approach that centralization of equipment types, okay. So it's not always what we want this type of equipment everywhere. It's in the we really try to focus down to the local, because undoing 10,000 pieces of equipment and give the same in every type of locate. It's just not going to happen at this point. Yeah. But we have to strategize going forward is to put as much of that in place as possible. The other element there is the amount of time I have to get a piece of the contract, which is desperately quick. Yeah. And that affects it a lot. So I'm probably Andy's biggest frustration is because I've got to make the contract and time and he's trying to centralize the fleet, and I try to accommodate him as much as I can. Sometimes I just got to put in when I can get Yeah, for sure.

Matthew Weitzel: 8:21

And then what do you see about like, what do you see what's happening with electrification in the industry? I know that they're obviously large talk about going electric, some say it's 2025. Some say it'll never happen. What are you all seeing it unify? And then what are your plans as far as making sure that your fleet is ready to go electric, when we finally all decide that, that we're there and the infrastructure is there?

Daniel Burtis: 8:45

Well, we actually jumped into that about two years ago, now trying to get ahead of the curve, because the lead times for electric equipment, it's very long right now. And again, Andy, my boss, Evo Yancey, can may have worked pretty hard on that, trying to get that ball rolling, especially in California. Yeah, so we've already implemented quite a bit of electric on the way, and we probably got about 50 pieces that we've already put in. So our plan is to start with the states that are going to require it first. Okay. And there's different Valle programs and different things out there with certain airports that are promoting and supporting individual airports on their efforts. And so we're we're definitely tagged into those San Diego's probably our biggest one, we've have a three phase program out there to where the first year we put in, like 20 pieces of electric. This year, we're going to put in around 15 And then next year, we'll wrap the program up, so we're going to phase in as much as we can. The biggest problem in channels out there is the infrastructure though. A lot of airports aren't ready for it. The technology is there, especially with the batteries. They've made some very large leaps forward. There's been good production and recycling and getting that in place but the problem is the airports. And every airport is its own animal when it comes to how its plumbed how its wired, accommodating what they can't. And so what we really need is types of equipment that can support electric GSE that we can plug into existing systems. Okay, that's it's not a not really a huge gap right now. And there, there are manufacturers that are working on those types of pieces of equipment. And I believe that's probably going to be the big game changer. Very shortly. There's a lot of electric a lot of people are wanting to put it but there's no place to plug it up. To make it simple. Yeah.

Matthew Weitzel: 10:33

So what do you think about these solutions that, you know, kind of seeing them at especially the expo, there's a couple of different solutions out there have a basically battery on wheels? Or, you know, jvt? Has the amp cart? Yes, that has a gin set on it. And you can charge multiple vehicles. Do you see that as being a bridge for the short term?

Daniel Burtis: 10:55

Absolutely. Okay. And a lot of our stations are very small, but most of them have bridges. So these mobile battery carts that you can just plug into bridge power, I think are going to save the day, on our way on our way to where we need to be with the electrical infrastructure. Okay, gotcha. My just my personal opinion. No,

Matthew Weitzel: 11:13

yeah, that's the reason you're on the podcast is for your personal opinion. So yeah, I

Daniel Burtis: 11:17

won't have time to let's put it this way, I won't have time to wait for the airports to figure out when they say that they want electric web and I've got to get it in there. There's generally not enough time to get the infrastructure questions and challenges solved. Exactly. It's, we need this in there in 90 days. And I'm gonna need solutions at the ready for for issues like

Matthew Weitzel: 11:39

that. So the equipment that is like, let's say, moving from San Diego out, because you're bringing in new electric stuff, does that go in and fill in the gaps for other fleets across the nation like that you're trying to, you know, like equipment that's going down or whatever you're replacing? Are you selling off that equipment? Like what are you doing with that equipment?

Daniel Burtis: 12:00

At this point in time? We don't sell off any equipment. It did goes into our refurb. Board does get reutilize? Yeah. Okay, based on condition. Yeah,

Matthew Weitzel: 12:08

that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. We're

Daniel Burtis: 12:09

not giving away a toolbar at this point. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Matthew Weitzel: 12:12

So what do you think about just kind of talking about electric and our let's move into hydrogen like, is that a solution that you see as being some new industry should move towards? Or where's your head at with that? Well,

Daniel Burtis: 12:24

I went and saw a Doosan, forklift, that was hydrogen and its system in Georgia. And I was extremely impressed with it. Just the simplicity of it, that the renewability of it. Again, it's another infrastructure issue. But there, I think the technology is definitely there. And the water that comes out of it that they use for the process of cracking hydrogen is perfect to put right into a floor scrubber, or anything like that, because it's mirrorless. Oh, and so even its byproduct has benefits. I think it would be a fantastic solution. It's funny, you bring that up, because just the other day in a particular city, and he got a phone call about having to go to alternative fuels. Okay. And we're not not LP not CNG. That means flex fuel, or hydrogen pretty much. And I don't know anybody that's putting flex fuel into GSE right now. Yeah. So this might be a perfect opportunity for manufacturers to really explore hydrogen. I think it would be a great renewable resource for GSE.

Matthew Weitzel: 13:30

Yeah, it'd be interesting to see where all that goes. Because yeah, it's not like electric, where right now all the manufacturers have electric equipment. Right? And we're waiting on the infrastructure. Yes, we're waiting on both at the moment and GSE, where we don't have a manufacturer making anything hydrogen and we don't have any infrastructure. So it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting to see who jumps on that train to start creating hydrogen GSE. When there's not in the infrastructure.

Daniel Burtis: 13:57

Yeah, well, at least with electric too. You can get an electric charger pack and wire it into the wall in most airports. Hydrogen, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I know they're working on it. Yeah,

Matthew Weitzel: 14:08

it's gonna be interesting. And then this is a random question, but I'm gonna ask you anyway, because you are in Denver. So Denver, CNG, right. Yes. And they're one of the few airports in the nation that are CNG are they going to stay CNG? Like, where do you see Denver going?

Daniel Burtis: 14:24

It would make a lot more sense to go electric. But the reason Denver's CNG is because of the back belt system that was built underground, okay, between the different terminals and then never worked properly, never got off the ground. So now they have to run tugs in the tunnels underground, which it was never made for down so it's bumper cars down there. It's very tight and, but they have to be able to move their bags to the main terminals. It's pretty far underground. Okay, it wasn't, um, I tried to get this up. They never designed it for tugs to begin with. So if they went electric, it would have to be pretty stout electric because the pole up out of the underground would be very, very taxing. Okay,

Matthew Weitzel: 15:05

that's interesting. Yes, he had to know all that. That's the reason I asked the question. So yeah,

Daniel Burtis: 15:09

and I have spoken with the director out there endeavor a few years back and they are currently in their prospects for, are they gonna electrify the airport? Where are they going to implement, but they're right in the middle of a little large construction right now, too. Okay, so let's get the terminals up. And then we'll make ourselves out. That's kind of where they were with a gotcha.

Matthew Weitzel: 15:31

So what about telematics? Do you all currently utilize telematics on your vehicle fleet,

Daniel Burtis: 15:37

we have a number of our specialized equipment, and we love telematics, okay, especially if it gives like, say, a GSE, regional manager, the ability to go in and look at a piece of equipment and see what's going on with it to assist a local mechanic to be able to add it to a queue for monitoring visibility, anything that's going to tell us what's going on with a piece of equipment is fantastic. Even more so than like the third party tracking software, which we utilize that as well. There's just not a lot of pieces out there that have it. There's not no. And so we'd love it on everything, to be honest. Oh, well, I'm sure you'd like to have it on absolutely everything that's got a motor.

Matthew Weitzel: 16:17

So are you talking about like when you're talking about telematics? And is it just kind of the inherent system that comes from certain manufacturers? So like, I know that TLD JBT, they all kind of have their own telematics that come on the unit, and you can decide to use it or utilize it or not utilize it. So that's where you're currently you are currently utilizing those options when available from the manufacturer? As much as possible. Yeah. But you're not necessarily have like a third party that you are using across the fleet. No, yeah,

Daniel Burtis: 16:49

that's one thing we'd really like to see is some utilization across the manufacturers, for telemetrics.

Matthew Weitzel: 16:54

Exactly. Because, you know, each kind of has their own 100

Daniel Burtis: 16:58

different accounts, when you have 30 pieces of equipment you're trying to monitor. That's

Matthew Weitzel: 17:02

right. Yeah, yeah, we will bring them all together. And you'll see my entire fleet login to 10 different systems to see Yeah, exactly. Yes.

Daniel Burtis: 17:11

So from our perspective and operation perspective, as well, when you're going into exam and scrutinize adapt anything you're doing in your daily work, you're logging into a station. And so we want to see a station at a time. Yeah, and so a system that could promote that, where even if it was third party, but if they can go in to each of our stations, and add that to our equipment, that would also be an option to we do have some third party that we've added for GPS locations and things like that. But it's that, that doesn't get us as far as we want to go with it. You know, and it's on a case by case basis, case by case basis, the best thing would be is if we've already got an account setup, and employee portal with different levels of permissions, yep. And we get a new piece of equipment, and we put it out on the line, we give it a password from the airport and stuff. It's in our system. Gotcha. That's where we need to go with it. Yeah,

Matthew Weitzel: 18:05

I'm doing a telematics series on the podcast this year where I'm an interview, like three different telematics companies. So I'd love to hear everything they got to say right now third party providers, but just to kind of get an idea of what's out there and not showing any kind of favoritism or anything towards the ones I'm trying to interview three or four, just to kind of see what's out there and what everybody has to offer. So that'd be

Daniel Burtis: 18:27

great. Looking forward to that. We're really interested in it. And the cost, additional cost is well worth it to us. Yeah. Because the the downtime that you could save off a piece of critical equipment is enormous. If you can talk to the equipment, find out what why it's sick. Yeah,

Matthew Weitzel: 18:44

no, that makes total sense to me. So what about autonomous? Is that something that that unify is is looking at like what are your thoughts just in general? What are Daniel's thoughts behind? Autonomous

Daniel Burtis: 18:56

they i The marching tugs across the airport? Exactly, yeah. Coming to get all the ramp agents. I think eventually it's gotta go there. Okay. I don't know how challenging that would be to lay track and get it to work and existing airports where there's so much else going on? I think it should, they should beta test that out and try to do an entire airport. Okay, with that, yeah. something new something to where they can build it fresh, and the ground up, kind of, let's see how far we can get without any drivers out on the ramp. With the advances of AI. It's it's kind of like the battery technology. The leaps forward in recent years have just been enormous in the technology. Yeah,

Matthew Weitzel: 19:40

it's pretty crazy.

Daniel Burtis: 19:41

I think the harder challenge would be convincing humans to allow robots to work around them out on a ramp. I think that would be the biggest challenge. I think the technology can do it. Yeah. And make a difference and increased times and increased safety. I think it'd be a good thing. It's just a very Every Live World out on a ramp, and getting people into the mindset that, hey, this is going to help you. This is not kill all humans robots running around trying to steal jobs, that's going to be the difference. Because I think that the mindset out there is there's so many things that are automated in our life are ready. And when they go out onto a ramp to work, that ownership, when a plane comes in to one of our crews, and receipt or dispatch, we own that plane while it's there. And there's a lot of pride involved with that. And I know our crews are very big on that. You might not want to give that away too easy. Yeah, there's ownership there. Yeah.

Matthew Weitzel: 20:42

I understand that

Daniel Burtis: 20:43

more than just a helping hand. It there's there's an ownership issue. Yeah. Yeah,

Matthew Weitzel: 20:47

it's gonna be really interesting. So I have two autonomous companies, solutions, companies that are going to be coming on the podcast this year as well, X Talk to me, and we're going to find out more from them and kind of try to figure out like, you know, how they envision it. But we'll see. I'm really interested to talk to him and kind of see what they think about the technology and where it you know, when it can be utilized. And when we might actually start seeing it. Yeah, you know, full blown on the ramp.

Daniel Burtis: 21:15

The reality is, I don't think we're going to be able to slow down AI implementing into many areas of our lives. Yeah,

Matthew Weitzel: 21:22

that's true.

Daniel Burtis: 21:23

It's on the way the first time I walked into McDonald's, and it was nobody there. I was like, what happened? Yeah. I wanted the large fry. So it's coming. It's coming in. There's a lot of benefits to it. We just don't want to take away from the human effort.

Matthew Weitzel: 21:38

Yeah, great. So you know, I know we talked about electrification, but I guess I'm more curious. Like, when do you think there's a bunch of dates thrown around? Right in the industry? Oh, this will be the day that they'll never be any, you know, internal combustion is dead. And we're moving on to electric. What are your thoughts on that? Like, what are we looking at timeframe wise, you know, you're you're at these airports all the time, you have 200 Something stations, you're seeing the day to day? What legitimately what are we looking at?

Daniel Burtis: 22:05

I think the next five years are going to template that, okay, I don't think it's going to entirely get there. In my honest opinion. I don't think we're going to be able to abandon combustion fuel. Yeah. Altogether. For everything. Yeah, the biggest push is going to be through 2028. Okay, we're, we're doing everything we can unify, to be ahead of the curve, and try to get as much of it in place as possible. 2025 supposed to be a very, very big year to where if you don't have a program, and you don't have phases together, this is your year to get busy. While we're already ahead of that. Yeah, so it sounds like we can adapt into what we've already started. For other vendors and GSE providers and things. They're, I think they're gonna have to be well on the way by the end of next year. Okay.

Matthew Weitzel: 22:53

And then what do you think about high voltage charging?

Daniel Burtis: 22:57

Well, again, it's what is the airport providing? Lot of places you can't do that? Yeah, you can't find three phase in some of these older, smaller airports to save your life. If he can get to 20 off a bridge, you're lucky. Okay? High Voltage charging has its own dangers. There's always safety issues there, there's got to be the human element of concern. Without there will be additional training, a lot of stuff goes down to training. Training is usually what puts people at peace being around high voltage once the once they understand what it is because everybody's got an opinion about it when they walk up to a panel and they see high voltage. Yeah, like, I'm not plugging anything into that. Yeah, exactly. It's like,

Matthew Weitzel: 23:42

back to the future, when you get blown out.

Daniel Burtis: 23:45

Again, it would be something that would have to be supported by good training, the infrastructure in the airport, I'm just not sure where it would play out very well, other than very large stations, like say lax and DIA and stuff like that. I just don't know if it would have much of a relevance. A lot of them. So many of our airports are small. And they've been added to an attitude entry. And if they're kind of at the maximum with, you know, 234 terminals, and trying to run 100 Gates off of a very small setup. That's I don't see how that would play out too much. Yeah, let's there's a lot of, you know, cargo facility and things like that.

Matthew Weitzel: 24:24

So what else do you see going on in the industry that I know you've been traveling this week? Is there anything that you've seen, this just kind of popped out in your head? And just any thoughts you have just that you could share with our audience today?

Daniel Burtis: 24:36

Well, I don't see anything slowing down in the history for this is a third year in a row to where after COVID I thought, okay, everybody's everybody's able to go outside. Now. They're gonna take their trips, everybody's got to do the stuff that they've put off and they realize life's short, and the flights were flooded, and the increase was enormous. And I thought well, okay, so the airports were really rough around the house. Day's getting people to and from and that's all over. Now we're gonna slow down. That was three years ago, we didn't slow down a heck, it just kept going up. So we got to the second year, and the same thing. And I had noticed I flew all the way through COVID. I took like, 172 flights during oh my gosh,

Matthew Weitzel: 25:16

you got lifetime status, they love you. The airlines are like, this guy's still flies

Daniel Burtis: 25:21

just flying constantly, because you know, everything had to scale down so much. But we still had operations to keep running.

Matthew Weitzel: 25:27

Were you ever on a plane? There's only like one person or two people. The

Daniel Burtis: 25:31

lowest one was like 12. Okay. And but it was great. You know, he always had seen

Matthew Weitzel: 25:36

every seats first class, there's only 12 people on the plane, right? Absolutely.

Daniel Burtis: 25:40

But where were we at? Before that?

Matthew Weitzel: 25:42

I'm sorry? i Yeah, no, you're just talking about the industry is growing. And you're talking about, yeah,

Daniel Burtis: 25:48

I keep I keep having this impression in my head over the last three years, we're going to slow down, we're gonna get a chance to catch our breath, and stabilize, it has never slowed down, it's only increasing and increasing and increasing, we get more and more contract opportunities every week. And we've increased our fleet by probably 20%. In the last three years, I have probably around 50 needs right now, as we're sitting here doing this podcast, that I'm not sure where I'm gonna get them from in time. Now, the lead times are very short. Everybody wants to get business rolling right now. And a lot of our customers are wanting either they're coming in New, and they're establishing a presence in an airport. And so they want to start right away. There's not much of the turnover, hey, we have an incumbent, we're going to use you now we do have those bids and stuff out there too. But it's a lot of it's just new business, new business, new business, which is great for us. We we've had just an enormous amount of growth the past few years, but it it's never slowed down. So if somebody wants to be in an industry that looks like it's gonna go the distance after COVID out get into aviation. Yeah, it

Matthew Weitzel: 26:59

does seem like it's, it's, it's busier than ever. I didn't even get a parking spot at MCO anymore. When I tried to fly out of here. It's It's unbelievable. But now in the all the all the flights are fully booked. Yeah, all flights are full. It's insane, man. So you know, I always ask the manufacturers and when they come on the podcast and stuff like that, to kind of tell me about the new equipment and all their innovation and all these different things, since they kind of they're able to give the sales pitch, right. And we do have airlines that listen to this podcast. So you know why? Why would somebody want to choose unify as a ground handler,

Daniel Burtis: 27:36

because it's our commitment to safety. And our commitment to our customers, is I think it's unparalleled. We are the largest airline provider in North America right now. And we have an incredible record for being able to start quickly establish the needs, and our core commitments felt all the way across the company. You know, we have commitment to be an empathetic integrity and having passion about what we do. It's from the ramp to every position we have, it's felt across that there's a lot of support in the company to bring us together. It's it's an extremely large family. That's awesome. And so if you bring it down to the local level, a station, a state's the corporate office, it's felt everywhere. That's a great place to work. And people are very passionate. That's

Matthew Weitzel: 28:26

great. I can tell the passion in your voice. So I appreciate you. You saying we love what we do. We really do. Yeah, no, I believe you. That's awesome, man. And I know a bunch of bunch of guys from unify. And yeah, I've always had great relationships with them and fantastic people. So all right, and then we can't get out of a GSE podcast without asking about a GSE story. I don't know where I came up with this idea. But I feel like everybody's got a great GSE story and we got to hear Daniels. And listen, by the way, you've already kind of told me one. How you got in the industry. That is a crazy story isn't my favorite how I got into the industry stories. So I don't know if you can follow that one up, but we can try.

Daniel Burtis: 29:08

I think I can. Okay. Okay, so it was back in Wichita when I was first brought in. And again, I started with nothing. I didn't have any idea that we had regional support that we had a corporate off nothing. And I had never seen GSE equipment before. And we were coming up on winter. And I had a DI strap and I looked at us what what is this firetruck? What is it? Well, it's down okay, what is it? You know, that's where I started. And it was a man I won't say the manufacturer but it was a three burner di strap. I know which one it was yes, I do. And I got very familiar with it right away as you can imagine. Yeah. You know, it already had 20 years life on it. And so we we met okay. Yeah, and the best thing that happened and so the first winter I did in Wichita, it was just that truck, that truck, that truck, that truck, and that was back when And certain individuals still existed in offices and I was had a lot of phone communication. So I got to know a couple those guys I know, you know, the two names, but I was predominantly by myself. It was me in that truck in the weather, and one of us was going to win.

Matthew Weitzel: 30:15

Yeah, I can't wait to hear how this turns out. Go ahead. And so

Daniel Burtis: 30:19

we got through most of the season. And then one Monday I came in, and it was on the board for me to look at. And number two wasn't firing, okay. And I had already gone through all kinds of kids cells and igniters primary controls just a ton of parts on this already this year. So now I had extra parts on the shelf, I was getting a little more confident about what I was doing, understood how the truck worked systems and how to love it to check things. And I had learned a lot if especially from the manufacturer, it's I mean, my low confidence went out to the truck. And I couldn't figure out why when, when go, Nader was working, the primary control was firing, couldn't get it sorted the fuel pumps, I pulled the pulled the top of the heat exchanger off, and there's about four foot of fuel in it. Okay, so they, they had had one go dead and they just kept the fuel pump on. They just let it run all weekend. Oh, yeah. So that was about four foot of fuel on it. So I found a way to get the fuel out. But as you know, diesel evaporates about a third of the rate of gasoline and it's winter. So if Australia it's gonna take it's not drying out. Yeah, there's only one option at that point, something we'd like to call a controlled burn. Oh,

Matthew Weitzel: 31:34

that's like in the movie industry. Yes.

Daniel Burtis: 31:37

A controlled burn. Okay, keep that in. hyphen, sir. So me in my little confidence that I had developed with this truck that I'll take it out to the Hammerhead on the airport, between banks and I'll do some controlled burns. Yeah, there you go. AD AD I did just that. It got the truck up and running and burned it off. And of course, when you light up a heat exchanger that's been soaked with four foot of fuel. It's a little smoky. It's a little fiery. And I believe that's a little orange. It's a little redhead look like the Batmobile shooting out. Let's put it that lane smooth. That movie. You know, I fired up and and light it. And then I'd go to the back and I let it burn for a little bit. And I just watched it and I had the fire extinguisher there with me. I I was in control of it. I knew what was going on. Yeah. And so I do that when I see it's getting too hot, too much flame yard but shut it off, let it cycle out, blow out a little bit. And then I just kept doing these controlled burns. No other way to dry it out. Because the truck needed to be. Yeah, that planes were waiting to BDI. So we had to figure something out. And one of the trips is I'm coming back to the truck. I'm looking up at the smoke looking at the flames. And I see something out of the corner of my eye. And I turn around and the whole airport is rolling on me. All the emergency vehicles. Drugs. Everybody out there decided to come out and see what in the world I was doing. Yeah, yeah. So that turned into a long weeks.

Matthew Weitzel: 33:08

SWAT Team Concert coming through the windows like that kind of just just

Daniel Burtis: 33:12

about everything. Everybody was out there. And oh my gosh, I got chewed out so bad by so many people that week. But did it work? Of course it worked. Exactly. That's it

Matthew Weitzel: 33:22

CTRL burn.

Daniel Burtis: 33:23

You're talking to Daniel the manual. Daniel

Matthew Weitzel: 33:26

the manual all that is? Well you know, I didn't have a name for the episode. Now we officially do well,

Daniel Burtis: 33:33

that's where it came from. Daniel the main thought he would take a DNA struck out to the Hammerhead by himself and do controlled burns. That's where that came from. Okay,

Matthew Weitzel: 33:41

awesome. Well, now, we know that it's it's I think that's the best story I think I've heard on the podcast so far. So

Daniel Burtis: 33:47

I didn't know if I was gonna have a job by the end of the week have calls with everybody, but

Matthew Weitzel: 33:52

I didn't want to. Yeah. And then you got promoted, you know, it's like, hey, control burns, guys. This is what you got to do to get promoted. It's takes you to the next level takes you to the next level. Daniel, that I can't be the first person that tried that. No, no, no, no, you're just the first person who got caught trying got

Daniel Burtis: 34:08

caught trying it. That's

Matthew Weitzel: 34:12

awesome. What else do you want to talk about?

Daniel Burtis: 34:14

Well, I just we talked about a lot of what's going on in the industry. The thing with production right now is such a big issue. Now I know with Exede we've obviously utilized your services enormously. Yes, this past year, and thanks so much. We appreciate everybody. whoever's listening. It's Lindsay is out there. Hi. We appreciate everybody over there, Javier. And I very much value the relationships I've developed with some of those people over the years. At the end of the day, it's it's it it's relationships for me. Yes, all of the purchasing the procurement, the contracts, the leases, it's all relationship for me. I'm very excited to continue on and to even to do something like this with you and get to see you guys for a little bit in person. What is exciting means future.

Matthew Weitzel: 35:01

What is Xcēd's future? Yes. Well, I mean, you know, you all keep leasing and renting stuff. And we're gonna have a great future. I think that we, we are looking also at electrification. And we also feel like we're on the front end of that as well. We have purchased a lot of electrical equipment over the last few years. And we are looking to be able to have those units available for when, you know, when Daniel does have that 60 Day Startup, Daniel, the manual, sorry, does have that 60? No, I love this one. Yeah, that 60 Day Startup, and except for this time, it's for a station, that's all electric,

Daniel Burtis: 35:43

that'd be fantastic.

Matthew Weitzel: 35:44

You know, we're we're going to have your back on that kind of thing. Because that is going to happen, right? It's not, you know, it's not happening all the time right now, but we want to be on the front end of that. So we are purchasing all of our manufacturers lighter equipment, and we're gonna, we're gonna have a lot of it. And we're also going to have many different types. So, you know, if you're unify, and you've never tried the bat electric from JBT, let's say we're gonna have some of those, and you can try it out in your fleet and rent it, see if you like it, things like that. That way, we're not going to just just have a whole fleet of X, Y, and Z, whatever, you know, manufacturer, right, it's a bunch of different ones. And you can kind of try it out, see what you like, it'd be great

Daniel Burtis: 36:24

as lease option. Exactly. And then you probably already noticed that when we do call for lease options, we're looking for a whole gate set. Yeah, most of the time, or a large chunk of lead on one area or another of it, it's very rare that I just need one piece of if I'm giving you guys cause because I need a lot of pieces and just get get them on time.

Matthew Weitzel: 36:44

Yeah. And then this the other thing, we're trying to get full gate sets for available at the same time, right?

Daniel Burtis: 36:50

Because we're trying to do this and we're trying to put our own gate sets together to have around the ready as well. Yes, it's just nothing slows down long enough. By the time I get together, I've already kind of parted out over six contracts. 100%.

Matthew Weitzel: 37:02

Yeah, so yeah, we're looking at all those different things, we're obviously always looking to grow, we're starting to build out like a rental fleet, nice of like older units that are just ready to be rented rather than going to like a long term lease. So we're really looking at, you know, being having available short term rentals. So that's that way to

Daniel Burtis: 37:20

help a lot of people other than even just, that's that's needs to be an option more and more because of lead types. Yeah.

Matthew Weitzel: 37:26

And so we have a really young fleet, as you know, and we do that, because we do a lot of long term leases. And we want to be able to provide people with newer equipment that that have that manufacturer warranty and stuff like that, that obviously helps helps you guys out, but then you know, there's always going to be those short term things where this tag goes down. Let's use Charlotte again. And you need us to provide you an MA 50. But you don't want to pay for a 2023 ma 50 rental price you want to pay for the 2017 still new still, you know still got the

Daniel Burtis: 37:56

something good. Exactly. Give us a better rate, we only need two to three months. Exactly.

Matthew Weitzel: 38:01

And Javier and his team in Indianapolis do such a fantastic job of they bring in that older equipment, they they make it look pretty and it runs fantastic, and you're not getting problems. So those are the couple things that we're working on as well. We've recently bought a couple 100 telematics units to start putting on to our fleet. And so you'll start seeing that. And you can you can utilize that. So yeah, we're doing a bunch of different things over Xcēd, but we definitely appreciate everything we've done with unify and absolutely,

Daniel Burtis: 38:36

absolutely. That's, that's so critical to as a partner in the our growth and our success. Yeah, to be able to have those options, when you know, you need to put in new equipment into a contract. But you need to get started. Yeah, those those in between options are just absolutely critical. And they've been they've been very key in the success of our growth over the last two years. So thank you to you guys very much.

Matthew Weitzel: 39:01

Yeah, man. And then and then the podcast, right, we're gonna look at we're gonna look at electrification, we're going to look at autonomous, we're going to, we're going to look at telematics, we're going to do a bunch of different interviews with a bunch of different people this year, you're our first customer that we've ever had on and can't tell you how there's been this fantastic interview, and I really appreciate it. And I'm just really excited to get some customers on here this year and talk to you and because you all just have a completely different perspective, especially you with having as many stations as you have and flying across the country, the entire you know, just year after year, even during COVID You see it all and it's your day to day and you live it and so it's great to hear your perspective.

Daniel Burtis: 39:40

I appreciate that. And I've enjoyed all the podcasts so far. Oh, well. That's why when I tell you that the expo I'm like what a lot of buyers perspective. Yes, yes, I

Matthew Weitzel: 39:49

do. Exactly. Yeah, man. Thank you so much, man. So that's all I have for today. Do you have anything else Daniel, are you good?

Daniel Burtis: 39:56

I haven't great. I just really enjoyed my visit down here and it's day We t being able to get a quick tour in was fantastic. Some of the folks down here Yeah, we got to see some of your units online, which was really some of our equipment I liked, which is great to see. Yeah, it is. So a couple of empty spots where you know, this is where your unit,

Matthew Weitzel: 40:14

why aren't those spots being utilized? We need this stuff. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. I mean, we yelled at a couple people, you know, I mean, but they'll get over it.

Daniel Burtis: 40:21

They'll be alright.

Matthew Weitzel: 40:23

Well, thank you so much, Daniel. I really appreciate it. So this has been Matt and Daniel the manual from unify. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the GSE podcast. We hope you found it informative and engaging. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with your colleagues and peers and the ground support equipment community, your support is invaluable to us. We'd appreciate it if you could take a moment to rate and review our podcast. Your feedback not only encourages us, but also helps expand our reach within the GSE community. Keep an eye out for more episodes as we continue to explore the dynamic world of ground operations bring you the latest trends, insights and stories from the industry. Thank you for listening to the GSE podcast until we meet again. stay grounded and keep pushing forward.