Matt Weitzel: 0:18

We'll see you next time. 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 Xcēd, 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 Xcēd.

Darin Kiefer: 0:56

This is Jon Pfister. I'm Brian Yoder. This is Mathias Mouillenier.

Darin Kiefer: 1:00

This is Willy Martinez and you are listening to GSE Podcast.

Matt Weitzel: 1:05

All right. Well, welcome to the GSE Podcast. I'm Matt Weitzel and I am here with Jerry Crump and Darren Kiefer, and we are here at the Green Cubes headquarters in North America. Is that correct?

Jerry Crump: 1:20

Global. Global headquarters Yep Kokomo Indiana.

Matt Weitzel: 1:23

In Kokomo, indiana, and I was unprepared. Today. I didn't come with a jacket, and now we got flurries. It stopped. It did stop. I don't think that it's. I think it's still going to be pretty cold out there, though, and I probably should have come prepared. Of course, I live in Florida. I came in my golf attire thinking that it would be enough. It's not enough, oh.

Jerry Crump: 1:46

We'll take you to Meyers and get you a car heart.

Matt Weitzel: 1:48

Oh, that would be nice. You know I haven't been to a Meyers in a really long time. Great place. Do you all have those down in Dallas?

Jerry Crump: 1:55

No, no, just the Super Bowl.

Matt Weitzel: 1:58

That's a Midwest thing. I think we got Buc-ee's. I have Buc-ee's. You got a lot of jerky Dude. That place is awesome. It is the best. Have you been to a Buc-ee's before, darren?

Darin Kiefer: 2:07

I have not been to a.

Matt Weitzel: 2:08

Buc-ee's. Oh wow, Nope. Yeah, we're hoping they're going to sponsor the podcast soon. We've been in talks.

Jerry Crump: 2:14

Yeah, we'll just keep saying their name over and over and hope.

Matt Weitzel: 2:20

No, I like it. So yeah, so we're here in Kokomo, indiana. We just got a chance to tour your facility. Really appreciate you taking me through all that Sounds like you all have some amazing technology. We're going to try to dive into that today and kind of get a little bit better of a view of what Green Cubes has to offer. I know you all kind of are big into the material handling space, but, darren, would you mind kind of running me through how Green Cube started, how long you all have been in business and how you got into ground support equipment, batteries.

Darin Kiefer: 2:52

Sure, First of all, thanks for having us, matt, and thanks for coming up and touring our facility. We appreciate you taking the time. So Green Cube started 1986, and that was more power electronics, smaller wall wart power supply, 12-volt supplies, 9-volt supplies, things of this nature. And then we moved into smaller backup systems for cars. It was kind of an auxiliary power for automotive. And then eventually that transpired into swappable, smaller swappable systems, thinking fulfillment carts or medical carts, with the computers systems. And we actually still have that division of our business.

Darin Kiefer: 3:33

It's quite large, mobile. That's where we really got into batteries and understanding batteries, lead acid into lithium. And then that turned into the motive for the bigger, higher power batteries and higher voltage systems. And it wasn't too big of a leap from going from forklift to the GSE space because they're very similar in the way the batteries are designed and the purpose of the battery and the equipment, because the battery is also considered a counterweight or a ballast for traction or lifting loading. So ironically we did some testing early on with GSE equipment, kind of even before motive really, or the material handling aspect of it took off. And then a couple of years after material handling really taking off, we started GSE and that's grown over the last five years substantially, where we've definitely went in. We were quick to market and there was a lot of lessons learned over those five years. But I think we've applied them to our latest GSE line and developed a pretty substantial product in the market space and addresses a lot of the issues end users face.

Matt Weitzel: 4:53

So was material handling using lithium well before GSE.

Jerry Crump: 4:59

Much faster adopter. Yeah, because in GSE we think we're running the equipment all the time but we're not compared to a forklift operation. So the forklifts will run 24-7 in these warehouses and having something that will accept a high rate of charge really is advantageous for those operations, just like it is for GSE, but more so, you know, with the forklifts running the high pace that they run. Yeah.

Matt Weitzel: 5:30

So they were using lead acid obviously as well, right prior to the adoption of lithium. And then did you all ever? Were you all ever into lead acid? Or did you start as a pure lithium battery supplier? It was lithium from the beginning. Okay, yep, all right, Wow, the whole way back in in 86?.

Darin Kiefer: 5:48

Well, no for the motive division. Okay, the motive division.

Matt Weitzel: 5:51

Gotcha Okay, Nice. And then have you always been in Kokomo Indiana or somewhere in Indiana.

Darin Kiefer: 5:58

It, yeah, somewhere in Indiana. It kind of bounced around a little bit before it became what it is now and then ultimately we landed here because of Kokomo is a really good, has a really good base of engineers. There's a lot of, because you have the automotive industry here. Okay, so it's a really good location and it's kind of north central Indiana, so it works well for us.

Matt Weitzel: 6:23

Yeah, I guess you can get trucking fairly easily. Indiana is like a big I mean well for us. Yeah, I guess you can get trucking fairly easily. Indiana is like a big I mean what they call it. You know, it's like we're all those, the roads, the crossroads of America. Yeah, so I mean it's it's easy to get, to get freight in and out of here, so I think that we're in some kind of did I hear this right? A GM or Chevy or somebody was this is like one of their buildings.

Darin Kiefer: 6:44

This right, a GM or Chevy or somebody was. This is like one of their buildings. Yes, this was a GM building, a tooling building.

Matt Weitzel: 6:47

So did GM shut down this facility and then start just selling off the buildings, and they're no longer here or are they still here?

Darin Kiefer: 6:54

So this whole block is GM. Okay, and this building up front and to the back here. Are they still doing any kind of stuff here in the area? This one is shut down in the front completely. But they did open up and retool this facility over here during COVID and they were doing ventilators just out back here. Oh, wow yeah.

Darin Kiefer: 7:13

It's actually a funny story. When our VP of sales, tony Cooper he was GM at the time Looking at this building to rent was when they were standing that up over there and Vice President Pence was visiting the facility and there was, you know, secret Service all around this block and Tony was like I don't think, I'm going to go out back.

Jerry Crump: 7:38

That's hilarious. During COVID, when there was a park shortage, from where our parking lot ends all the way down to the end of the road was stacked full of vehicles waiting for parts. Yeah, there, you know probably a couple hundred Silverados sitting in the parking lot out there during that time.

Darin Kiefer: 7:56

Yeah, so they were trucking them from Fort Wayne, which I'm sure you're familiar with, the GM plant on the south side there and they were storing them here. So GM planned on the south side there and they were storing them here. They were drivable but they were missing like a window controller or smaller level ICs to fully function. So they would stage them here.

Matt Weitzel: 8:12

Yeah, that was during the time where they're missing all these parts, right, yep, and they could just. They would just need one chip or whatever to complete the rest of the car, but they didn't have it Right, there's like a short supply or whatever. So, yeah, that's interesting, all right. So then, jerry, when did you start with Green Cubes?

Jerry Crump: 8:28

Oh, I started with Green Cubes in 21. And took a little hiatus and went over to Wallard for about 19 months and then came back to Green Cubes and it's been great being back.

Matt Weitzel: 8:44

Yeah, so you started in 21. What were you doing prior? I mean, you've had a long, you know historic, very historic run in GSE. Can we say?

Jerry Crump: 8:55

Yeah, it's been a long road since the Marine Corps, you know, started out as a GSE mechanic in the Marines, went to school to get away from GSE of all things and when I got hired by Swissport I was a resource planner for them. And I'm out in San Francisco and I saw a Waller pushback go rolling by on the ramp and oh, I used to work on those. And next thing you know Jerry McCauley's pulling me in his office to talk about getting back into GSE. And then I ended up at JFK and then director of purchasing for Swissport. The Americas Took a little left there, went over to Somerset Capital and then no pun intended but I had a blast at Virgin Galactic setting up you know, their GSE program over there and I mean that was a great run.

Jerry Crump: 9:50

Really cool things happened. There's nothing like taking a break from your work day to go watch a rocket motor kickoff. That is pretty cool, right, yeah, so that was a lot of fun. And then I left there for Posii charge, did the sales, gc sales for posi charge and then from there to here. So yeah, I've had a few moves in the industry but it you know, been doing these green projects and stuff since uh 09 at swissport and it and it's amazing how much has changed since then. Lots of new things and improvements. Still some of the same old problems, but lots of interesting things.

Matt Weitzel: 10:35

Well, it definitely seems like electric GSE is really taking off. Obviously there's a bunch of mandates and then everybody has their ESG goals, so they're they're looking to heavily invest into electric GSE. Batteries is a huge part of that. You know which battery are they going to choose? Infrastructure is a whole different story that we have kind of covered over and over and over on this podcast. But you know, I've never talked to a battery supplier. That's the reason I'm here today, flyer. That's the reason I'm here today. I wanted to start with you guys and kind of talk to you all about you know what makes your batteries different than all the other batteries out in the marketplace today, and just kind of dive into where you think the market is headed, what technology advancements you think that you're going to see within lithium, and then kind of future, you know how do you see it, kind of coming full evolution. So, jerry, what are your thoughts on kind of where we're at now and then what Green Cubes is doing to kind of stay on top of lithium?

Jerry Crump: 11:38

Well, I mean, we're kind of at this weird or what I thought was going to be a weird crossroad, right, with the zero emission ramps starting to put high voltage EV charging infrastructure out there, we thought we would start to see more high voltage changeover. In the GSE industry we build batteries from 24 to 96 volt. So you know, that's not a market that we're in today but it's something we're keeping an eye on. Then, you know, the other day I hear you know somebody's coming back to 80 volts, right. So I think the age old problem is the infrastructure still right is kind of dictating where the technology is going to go or what's going to limit it.

Jerry Crump: 12:23

Just like we were talking earlier during your visit, folks were getting really creative trying to manage the energy. When lead acid was the available technology and now, with lithium characteristics, the 1C discharge and the 1C recharge. And having the ability to flow energy in and out of the battery without damaging it at a high rate really reduces some of that creativity that was needed to make the larger equipment work in this sector. But you know, I think as we go you're maybe going to see a new chemistry or something that comes out down the road, and that's always things we keep our eye on. Or you may see better components with better wear life or something that just increases the uptime of the product that's out there. We're constantly doing continual improvement to our product line based off of what we see in the product, that's in the field, and what we do in the lab.

Matt Weitzel: 13:32

So yeah, and it's interesting, I said that we weren't going to talk about infrastructure, but I think kind of a couple of years ago I was doing an interview and we were kind of talking about high voltage charging and how we thought that, you know, the industry would eventually move towards that, and I think that still may be true, but I definitely think at that point we thought it was going to be sooner than later and after kind of talking to a lot of people, it doesn't seem like we have enough infrastructure as it is right now, let alone to support high voltage. Would you agree with that at this point?

Jerry Crump: 14:06

Yeah, I mean there was a common theme a few weeks ago when we were all up in New York and we participated in the panel up there, and that was the limitation of the electricity that's available at the airports, right? So you've now got airports that are starting to get creative with how to add to their available supply of energy whether that is through some type of solar farm or they're putting microgrids out there or battery backup you know things like that to enhance their ability to then feed the grid more, because you're grid limited in a lot of these applications.

Matt Weitzel: 14:48

and, and maybe that's what's kind of stalling some of the high voltage stuff, because that's just another piece that's eating into that available grid that's available and that is something that I agree with you, because we were both at that, uh, that conference in new york and that we kept hearing that over and over which is basically there's not enough. You know, there's not enough grid to support that at the moment. So I really do think that we're moving further and further away from that instead of closer to it. I think, obviously, eventually we'll get there, but at this moment in time, it definitely seems like, you know, the 80 volt solution, which is what y'all are currently providing. Is that correct? Yes, yeah, it is is what people are going to be moving forward with.

Darin Kiefer: 15:31

So I think there's there's a second aspect, that too, from a people perspective, because your technician level changes at that voltage class too, because you're going from from 80, from, you know you don't need the most specialized technician to work on 80 volt equipment. It's, it's more of a. It is considered high voltage but it's not three 400 where you're talking serious injury to death, you know. So your technician base, which is always, always a problem on the service side, when you think after sales, you know you have to be able to manage the product and keep it up.

Matt Weitzel: 16:10

Yeah, I was just talking to Billy Ash, which I'm sure Jerry knows. He's a service technician for Textron that's been in the business for 35 years 39, something like this some insane amount of years and he was saying the same thing. When he's trying to help people, you know, remote diagnose things. Once he finds out if it's high voltage, he's like, hey, just stop, I'll come and do that Because, to your point, not everybody is specialized in up. I really appreciate that, Jerry. What makes the GreenCubes battery better or different than your competitors time and time again, with the knowledge that we built up on the material handling side?

Jerry Crump: 17:08

working in the cold freezer environment, right? That translates well into working on a cold ramp in Denver or Chicago or Minneapolis, right? Taking that knowledge and then refining it to the application with our customers to make sure that we're delivering a bulletproof solution. One thing that I really like about GreenCube is we are always looking to fine tune the product, and the continuous improvement that I've seen since 21, when I got over here, has been leaps and bounds, and that's all in the positive direction, right?

Jerry Crump: 17:51

Being open with working with other folks in the industry, like the telemetry companies, letting them have our data and not being stingy about that and trying to, you know, shake somebody down for a nickel I think that's a feather in our hat as well, right? So we're seeing more and more of the owners of these large fleets wanting data and making data-driven decisions. Instead of go out there and measure once and then go back and take a snapshot in five years and see if it still works, right, they're wanting to see daily, weekly, hourly what's going on with their fleets and managing that, because, at the end of the day, gse is an expense to the airline that they have to manage, right? Yeah, for sure. I don't know an airline that generates revenue off of GSE.

Matt Weitzel: 18:45

None, I don't think Right Nothing anywhere.

Jerry Crump: 18:47

yeah know an airline that generates revenue off of GSE? None, I don't think. Not that I'm aware. Yeah, you may have a ground handler, make some money spraying de-icing fluid or running fuel trucks, but generally GSE is cost and if you manage your cost you manage your profit margins.

Matt Weitzel: 19:01

So a couple of things. So I brought Javier up here with me, so I flew into Indianapolis and Xcēd has a facility in Indianapolis where he has all of our equipment refurbished and repair and then send out to our customers. And Javier is our operations manager operations director now, sorry, I didn't don't want to leave that out and so I brought him up here with me and I guess that you know he's been talking to you guys for a couple of years and he was saying how much the product has improved just in the last year and a half since, I guess, the last time that he's spoken with you guys, and he was very impressed. So what are some of those improvements that he was so impressed by? If you don't mind me asking, Well, we did a couple things.

Darin Kiefer: 20:12

Well, we did a couple things, actually items. So by doing that then you decrease your downtime because it's much easier to change out components and if you don't have a certified technician at that location, you can actually remove the whole system and ship it in and just put a new one on and get your unit back out in service. So that was a big redesign. We wanted to have a form fit for all of our whole GSE line, so it was a common component across everything, which also gives you ease of your sparing needs as well.

Darin Kiefer: 20:45

And then kind of a bigger project that took on over a year was addressing some of the shortcomings we had in our controller and that was just interfacing with equipment, some of our various algorithms. So we spent, we started that project in 23 and kind of slow rolled them out through 24. Now it's a common product across our whole line going out of the factory. But one of the requirements of that was backwards compatibility. So if you have an existing fleet that you want to upgrade to the latest controller, it's kind of a plug and play solution for them and that addressed, I would say, 99.9% of our issues. The other ones are a little more difficult of the human nature. I can't make a controller that makes a technician plug in or makes an operator plug into a charger, which is one of the biggest issues that everybody faces.

Matt Weitzel: 21:46

Yeah, let's talk about that really quickly. So from my understanding you know you don't want to get lithium below what. What's the threshold like 20 percent, where you start seeing degradation of the battery? Is that correct? Am I wrong about that? It's OK if I'm wrong.

Darin Kiefer: 22:03

Yeah, you can go below that. You actually have a pretty big range with lithium and we control it. We have layered protection.

Matt Weitzel: 22:12

Well, that's where I'm going with this question, or?

Darin Kiefer: 22:14

safe range. So we want to shut down completely and when you hit that level with our solution it requires technician to intervene with the battery to keep it from going lower.

Matt Weitzel: 22:36

So you put in safeguards so that an operator really can't screw up the battery too badly. Is that correct? Exactly yes.

Jerry Crump: 22:42

Yeah, we help our customers protect their asset.

Matt Weitzel: 22:45

Yeah. Right, okay so you don't let it get to dangerous levels.

Jerry Crump: 22:48

Nope, and LFP is the chemistry we use. Other chemistries have other properties, but with LFP that's how we're treating that solution.

Matt Weitzel: 22:59

Okay, and then do you all help customers do things Like I think Javier was talking to you guys about having the unit slow down to the point where an operator really wouldn't want to use it or they can't use it. All they can do is just then, at that point, drive it to go get it charged. Do you all help out with that, or is that more on the customer side?

Jerry Crump: 23:18

So we'll help interface with the controllers that are on the vehicles. You know, based on what the controller has available to it. Yes, we'll help it go into limp mode. We what the controller has available to it, yes, we'll help it go into limp mode. We can send signals that do things. We can, you know, help with the problem of driveways right, so we can allow the battery, if it senses that it's charging, to not discharge, so that it won't. The operator can't just jump on. And next thing you know they look behind them and here's this 20 foot cable chasing them down the ramp like a snake. Setups and things like that, or proc switches on charge doors. You know in the past where we can pull some of that complexity out and do it through software.

Matt Weitzel: 24:15

Okay, and then on the software side, I think you were mentioning how you don't mind providing information to these telematics companies. Is that correct? Like you're pretty, you can work with any telematics provider.

Jerry Crump: 24:30

So I'll let Darren answer that one. He's been involved in a lot of the testing that we've been doing with these folks.

Darin Kiefer: 24:36

Yeah, so we've worked with a couple different companies and we've actually set up a profile with one, but we're very open. We try to make whatever data point we're collecting available on the bus, so you can kind of build out whatever you want. Fortunately for us, we own our controller, is hardware wise, is our design, we manufacture it and so is the software, so we have full flexibility of whatever that need may be. If it's a custom solution, we can look at it and usually we can turn software very, very quickly internally and it makes more sense in this.

Darin Kiefer: 25:16

You know, iot is a huge thing, not only in the professional world but the consumer world. Everybody wants connectivity to every device, so we try to work with as many third-party companies that do it well as we can, because it makes it easier for the end user to go to one location to get all their information, instead of going to a dashboard for the charger, a dashboard for the battery, a dashboard for the equipment and whatever else is within that system and going to all these different. We would rather aggregate that through one dashboard dashboard and they can see the overall view and it makes it easier for the end user to really get what they're looking for in that data, whether that be from a production standpoint or a service standpoint. You can build out these dashboards to support whatever vertical is wanting that data or viewing that data. So we try to keep it as open as possible.

Matt Weitzel: 26:10

That's awesome. Yeah, I've got a big problem. You know where. I can never remember any of my passwords or anything like that. When I go to Pizza Hut you know what I mean and I'm ready to order my pizza and I can't remember my login. That's a problem, you know. Can you imagine having like eight different systems that all your data is on and you got to log into each one of those and see it? I mean, being able to provide a customer with just with all their data so they can put it into the system that they've decided to use is fantastic. That's really great to you guys.

Jerry Crump: 26:39

And it allows them to make that decision for which third party system works best for them, right.

Matt Weitzel: 26:44

Yeah.

Jerry Crump: 26:44

There are really good systems out there, but not everybody's looking for the same thing.

Matt Weitzel: 26:50

Correct yeah, not everybody's going to have the same telematics solution. Correct yeah, some are going to or data management, or whatever.

Jerry Crump: 26:56

Yeah, some are going to want to do it this way and some are going to want to do it another way, and the other part of that, too, is it doesn't get us wrapped up in having to figure out how to transmit that data, which is an issue with the telematics, right? I mean, you just did. You had Matthias on your last podcast, right?

Matt Weitzel: 27:16

I did yeah.

Jerry Crump: 27:17

And you know he talked about how they're putting their own SIM card solution in, because they found that using others' Wi-Fi just wasn't a reliable option for them to do it. So you know, work with those that do it well, as Darren said.

Matt Weitzel: 27:32

Exactly, that's it, exactly. So talk to me about battery temperature and how that can affect, like, the longevity of a lithium battery, and then how your solution really helps. You know, helps provide a consistent temperature and all that kind of stuff.

Jerry Crump: 27:50

GSE is, and I'll let Darren step in any time he wants here, but we don't work in an air-conditioned box.

Matt Weitzel: 27:59

No, we don't. We're not as lucky as the material handling folks right. Well, you know, and even then, I guess Some of those warehouses are pretty brutal. Yeah, oh, that's true.

Jerry Crump: 28:08

But it's interesting because if you go into the bag room, the bag room might be heated right, and then you go outside and it's 20 below, and you know. So we're always working in these varying climates and all of that. But GSE are such long life assets, you never know where that asset's going to end up. It used to be, you know, the newer stuff would kind of start in the harsher environment because you needed more reliability in that equipment and then it would matriculate down to you know, maybe down to Florida or Texas or someplace where it was a little easier to keep up that equipment that was maybe a little more worn than the stuff right off the line. So when we build these GSE batteries, we have to build them to operate whether it's hot out or whether it's cold out, and that swing could be 115 in Phoenix and it could be, you know, 40 below in North Dakota or something right. So I mean it's GSE is. It can be brutal. I mean working the ramp is not always fun.

Jerry Crump: 29:19

So when we there are certain safeties that we put into the battery. Right, because you can't charge a lithium battery when it's the battery. Right, because you can't charge a lithium battery when it's below freezing, right. So we put set points in there so that the customer, even if they plug in and if the cells are too cold, we're helping again protect that asset, right. If the cells get too warm, we will degrade the performance to protect that asset, right. So there are things that we do. Again, it's all around putting safety into our customer's asset so that they get a long life.

Matt Weitzel: 30:22

Right, Yep, he agreed its return. You were saying that you could come down after something comes off of lease maybe it's a six month, one year to kind of check it out. What does service look like from you guys? What would you do if you came down to look at a battery and see how it's been used? Is there anything you can do to recondition the batteries? Like, how does all that work?

Jerry Crump: 30:45

So a lot of what we do through the service team is remote these days Because there's the ability to pull data off.

Jerry Crump: 30:56

We can do through a remote desktop quite a bit of work on the service team.

Jerry Crump: 31:01

We can look at the state of the health, check how the cells are doing, how it's balancing. If there's a customer that has a good charging routine, the battery is going to look different after a period of time than someone that doesn't necessarily have a good charging routine with their battery right. So there are things as you as a leasing company, that we can do to help. There are things as you as a leasing company, that we can do to help. If you do get a battery back, say you know we remote into the battery for you and look at it, we can help you then get that battery condition back to where it really should be If you've got a customer that unfortunately didn't treat it with all the love and care that we would expect a customer to do with something that got on lease Right. So it's just kind of a broad overview. They'll just look at the balance, the love and care that we would expect a customer to do with something that got on lease right.

Darin Kiefer: 31:50

So it's just kind of a broad overview. They'll just look at the balance, they'll look at the wear items, they'll check functions and then, depending on where you're at, how long this is pushed out. If there's been advancements, maybe there's software, maybe there's some tool that you want to upgrade to, so we have all that. We would have that option available at that point too.

Jerry Crump: 32:11

Okay, and I think Darren touched on something earlier and we try to make most of our our improvements backwards compatible. That's important, it really. It is because as we advance the product from things that we learn even through from our other divisions right, and we bring that technology in, if it's backwards compatible, then you know we can offer that upgrade to our customer down the road to make sure that they've got the latest and greatest or as close as we can rev it to. Yeah.

Matt Weitzel: 32:44

Take care of your current customers by providing them the latest and greatest. Yep, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So what does recycling look like? I know we kind of we were kind of talking about that earlier and when I have spoken to other people about battery recycling, it doesn't seem like it's the easiest topic, mostly because we really haven't necessarily even gotten to the point where we've had batteries lithium batteries in GSE to the point where they're at the end of life yet right, or if they are, there's not a massive amount of those. So is that what you all are kind of rubbing up against or bumping up against? Or do you all have a solution for customers that are looking for a recycling program once these batteries have reached end of life?

Jerry Crump: 33:36

you know it's. It's one of those things. We've got a three-hour process which is, you know, reuse, recycle, relife. We have had that as gosh since I've been here.

Darin Kiefer: 33:48

Yeah, it's been since I've been here. Yeah.

Jerry Crump: 33:51

So it is a little more difficult because they want volume on these and, as you just said, we haven't really seen a volume of cells come back, because even if we get to that 3000 cycle're, you're still going to have a portion of that battery that that's usable, right? So yeah, depending on what the application is and and where it is when we take a look at it, when it technically comes to the, the cycle life or whatever that the cell manufacturer says, we may be be able to actually put that right back out there with a little bit of work on the battery and put it right back into use or use it in a secondary life application, right, which is less demanding, and then who knows how much more life that gets us, because we haven't had this technology out there long enough to really get those data points yet, right. But we also are talking with folks for that complete end of life, and how do we get there when it's time, right? So we're not just disposing of cells in an improper way.

Matt Weitzel: 35:07

Yeah, yeah. So if a customer decides they want to get a GreenCube's battery, can they just talk to? Do you all have relationships with the GSE manufacturers to the point where you can just sell the GSE manufacturer the GreenCube's battery to fulfill the customer's want?

Jerry Crump: 35:26

So we do with quite a few and others we've been asked to look at filling those applications right. Electric GSE has been around a very long time you wouldn't think it, but it really has.

Matt Weitzel: 35:41

It has yeah.

Jerry Crump: 35:42

Right. I mean, we've seen so many evolutions and sometimes it just it doesn't make sense for that upgrade to happen, right, so we'll? We'll have a customer come to us with something and I'm like, oh wow, you still have one of those. Yeah, um, and can you build a battery for it?

Matt Weitzel: 35:57

yeah, like an mx4 or something crazy, yeah, something right.

Jerry Crump: 36:03

So you're like, uh, sure, I can build you a battery, but are you going to be able to support the rest of the parts that you need for that thing to keep it going, and does it make sense? Or should you be looking at a new asset, right? And then we see folks that are coming out with retrofit kits right, where they're maybe turning something that's IC into electric now, or they are gutting out the old chassis and putting in new components. So you know there's there's a lot of neat things that go on in GSE that not everybody sees day to day, right day to day, right.

Matt Weitzel: 36:50

Yeah, there is a lot of that going on and it's going to be interesting to see how many people decide to repower the old GSE, because GSE is just a bunch of steel at the end of the day, right, and it can be reused. So, yeah, whether there's a break even there and stuff like that. So it is something that you see and you wonder about. But yeah, I was just kind of curious, if you know, if I ordered manufacturer X product and I was like, hey, I want a green cubes battery in there, how that would work. I imagine that that that you know the manufacturer is going to make it work because you're buying their piece of equipment.

Jerry Crump: 37:21

Yeah, and some have gone through full testing with us and some are still working to get some testing done with them. It really is the choice of the customer a lot of times that drives these things. We do have some manufacturers that we've built specific batteries just for them and we're the only one that truly fits in that form. There is a little bit of that, but a lot of OEMs try to be agnostic on their battery supply if they can.

Matt Weitzel: 37:54

Yeah, for sure. And then I have another question here. So do you all like let's say that I'm a brand new GreenCubes customer Would you all kind of walk me through you know, if I requested it the best way to maintain your battery specifically and do like a class or whatever, so that way I can kind of cascade that down to my team on how to best maintain the battery.

Jerry Crump: 38:18

Yeah, so actually what we do, matt, is we will go out on site. If you know, there's a new site where one of our customers will go out and do on-site training with them. You may have seen it in the tour today there are a bunch of people in our other conference room going through a training class here at the factory, getting factory trained on maintaining the batteries. That's something that we offer as well. The more educated our customer is about the product, the better it is for them and us.

Matt Weitzel: 38:51

Yeah, that's what I would think. Yeah, right, Uh-huh.

Jerry Crump: 38:54

You know even simple things is just understanding that if you let it sit there for three days in the middle of a blizzard it's not going to charge right. And getting that information out to the customer base helps, so that everybody's on the same page. Uptime is there, reliability is there and it just helps everybody involved.

Matt Weitzel: 39:17

Well, no, that's great. I really appreciate you telling me about that. I think it's time for a GSE story, because we haven't done one of those yet and Jerry Crump has the best GSE stories. Darren looks at me like he doesn't know what's going on. He's obviously not a listener to the podcast. So, Darren, this is the GSE podcast, and on the GSE podcast we tell GSE stories, don't we Jerry?

Jerry Crump: 39:40

Yeah.

Matt Weitzel: 39:41

And because you're not like a true, true GSE person. Yet you haven't gotten in the club. Have you gotten your letter? No, oh, so he hasn't gotten his letter yet. He's still a couple of years away. No, I'm not even playing JV ball.

Darin Kiefer: 39:54

I'm like a freshman.

Matt Weitzel: 39:55

Yeah, yeah, you haven't lettered yet, or anything.

Jerry Crump: 39:59

I've dragged him around enough airports, he's getting there.

Matt Weitzel: 40:01

He's getting there right, but he's not there yet. So he doesn't have any GSE stories.

Darin Kiefer: 40:05

So have any GSE stories so Jerry, unfortunately you're on the spot for this one because I have the enthusiasm. Though you do have enthusiasm, I do, All right.

Matt Weitzel: 40:12

And listen. If he's drug you to an airport and you've got a crazy story to tell, then by all means, hop, hop in on on the fun. However, let's hear from Jerry and see what he's, what he's got for us today.

Jerry Crump: 40:25

Gosh, it's hard to tell a GSE story because most of them involve things that we can't talk about on the podcast. I know that's what everybody says yeah.

Matt Weitzel: 40:34

Do you know how many of these I've had to edit out?

Jerry Crump: 40:36

I've actually listened to one. Oh, okay, yeah, I've listened to that one. I was in the room when it got recorded. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the, the, probably the. I never knew what GSC was when I first got assigned it in the Marine Corps it was. It was kind of funny because they give you an, an, an MOS number, and then you got to go look up what that number is Right. So mine was a 6072 and then just said ground support equipment, hydraulic and diesel. What the heck is that right? Yeah, so I walk over to my, my staff sergeant that I was one of my drill instructors, that I knew was in the air wing, and I'm like so, uh, what is ground support equipment? He just starts laughing. Okay, did I say something funny? You know I, this is like right after I could actually start calling him staff sergeant instead of, you know, uh, having him look at me and scream in my face and you know, cause.

Jerry Crump: 41:37

I earned my EGA at this point. But um, he goes. Man, you're, you're the black sheep of the family and I'm like, oh, this, this does not bode well. I've got, you know know, four years nine months to go of being the black sheep of the family. But what? What I really found out about gse was it's such a dynamic group that I think everybody else is just jealous I.

Jerry Crump: 42:01

You know what I think you're right because you know I mean, if you're narrowing or if you're an airframe guy, you're out there, you know you're fixing deposits or you're fixing metal, right that's no fun.

Jerry Crump: 42:11

But you're not working on turbine engines, hydraulic systems, electrical systems and all these different systems, right that we all had to learn. And now we have all this electronic stuff. We have to learn. And so I really I think they were jealous. But now, my first day at JFK, that was memorable. I'm going around to the terminal to see the operation for the first time and I drive my truck around and I watch this guy come out of the back room and do a neutral drop and when the MA-50 came down, the side skirts on the engine came off. He slammed that thing so hard and I'm like, oh, this is knew jfk was going to be rough. When I saw that, yeah, I bet. Yeah, I think that guy was employed for like 20 minutes past that.

Matt Weitzel: 42:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah, gsc is an interesting one. Um, I remember I got my job in gsc and, uh, you know, you got to tell your family and your friends you know, I got this new job and they're like, oh, what are you doing?

Matt Weitzel: 43:12

And I'm like, well, I'm in the ground support. And they just you just get these blank stares. They have no idea what you're talking about. And, even worse than that was. So for about a year and a half I worked at another company, different industry, and we sold borescopes. Okay, now, the reason that I did the B like that is because I would tell people well, you know, I have a history in ground support and borescopes and they'd go ground support, I don't know what that is, and you sold horoscopes. So it was. It was great, you know. I mean, people are like this guy really. You know he knows what's going on here.

Jerry Crump: 43:50

I'm sure you know what a borescope is Did you go by Father Weitzel or something when you were selling your horoscopes? You know it's like Mother Cleo.

Matt Weitzel: 43:58

I do have a. I have a theology degree, so I could maybe be Father.

Jerry Crump: 44:02

You can call me Father, I don't know, I'm going to go that way, okay, yeah.

Jerry Crump: 44:07

But you know, the other thing that I think is really funny is when I started here at Green Cubes, I don't think any of these guys ever looked out the window of the airplane or looked out the window at the gate to see what was moving around. And now I get like pictures as these guys travel the airport. Sometimes I'll get a picture of hey, what's this out there, and cause they're all looking out the window Like I do, right, like I think planes are great, but I'm always staring out to see what everybody's using and how they're doing it.

Matt Weitzel: 44:39

The same here and I swear to God, I bet my friends and family are now on airplanes and they're like nudging the person next to them and they're like you see that stuff out there? I know a guy who does that. Yeah, you know they get all excited. It was like it never existed before. But the moment they know about it, they get all excited about it and it's because they're jealous, just like I'm going to bring it full circle here. I think you're right, it's jealousy. No, that was a great story, I think GSE.

Darin Kiefer: 45:03

The interesting part about GSE to me is probably one of the first ramps that Jerry took me on is GSE has so many facets to it. It's a water truck, or it's a food or pushback or belt loader and then when you get out there not in a plane, on the actual ramp it's like a whole city, Like the things that have to move on in time together to get a plane out of the gate as quickly as they do. It's just, I think it's absolutely incredible. It's. It's really interesting to watch and fascinating to me.

Jerry Crump: 45:38

We used to say there's no air support without ground support.

Matt Weitzel: 45:41

I like that one.

Jerry Crump: 45:43

Yeah.

Matt Weitzel: 45:43

Man, I should like include that into my outro. You know what I mean. Like slip that in, I think that's good, I like that. No air support like include that into my outro. You know what I mean. Like slip that in, I think that's good, I like that. No ears for without grounds for See Jerry's teaching me things. He's still. He's still teaching me.

Jerry Crump: 45:54

Yeah, Well, Matt, I really appreciate the visit today bud.

Matt Weitzel: 46:05

Yeah, yeah, man, we're at 49 minutes. I usually wrap up in 45 to 50, but I do like to ask this question Is there anything I missed? Is there anything that you would really want a potential customer to know about GreenCubes that I have not asked you about today? That you're just like oh, matt, totally, totally missed the mark on this, and I need to. I need to get this out into the atmosphere.

Jerry Crump: 46:21

I think our GSE SafeFlux battery is pretty bulletproof. We're a very flexible solution provider and I think that's one thing that sets us apart from our competition is a lot of people build the same thing and make you fit around them. We'll build something to help you be successful.

Matt Weitzel: 46:44

I like it, darren, any parting last words of wisdom from your end.

Darin Kiefer: 46:48

Maybe one thing I didn't address is the time that we've spent in this world learning and applying those lessons learned is over a decade of experience, and with that we have over 12,000 solutions that are out there in the field running, you know, since pre-2016.

Jerry Crump: 47:09

I heard it was 13,000 as of this week. It's probably 13,000 solutions that are out there in the field running, you know, since pre-2016. I heard it was 13,000 as of this week it's probably 13,000 of a second.

Darin Kiefer: 47:13

I know it's north of 1,200 or 12,000. So you all have the experience for sure. These are big systems too. These aren't like smaller swappable. I'm talking 20 kilowatt hour plus systems. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Weitzel: 47:27

So green cubes, though they're new in, gse, is definitely not new to the battery game.

Darin Kiefer: 47:32

Yeah, we understand power. You know the high power applications.

Matt Weitzel: 47:36

Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you all so much for lunch, for the tour, for sitting down with me today and talking batteries, my favorite topic now.

Jerry Crump: 47:45

Thanks for letting us crack some jokes that you didn't record. Oh wait, you did have the mic off on those.

Matt Weitzel: 47:52

Yeah, I did Okay. Yeah, yeah, no, we're good so well. Thank you all so much. This has been Matt, jerry and Darren for the GSE podcast. Thanks, guys, 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 in 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, bringing 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.