Podcasts about oem

In this episode of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, your hosts, Sean V. Bradley and LA Williams tackle one of the biggest threats to dealership growth heading into 2026… staff retention and leadership breakdowns! "Losers allow their emotions to dictate their actions, but winners choose which emotion to use to get the desired result." - LA Williams Dealerships are spending more money than ever recruiting, hiring, and onboarding… only to lose good people faster than they can replace them. Sean and LA break down why the old dealership playbook is no longer working, what today's salespeople and BDC professionals actually value, and how leadership habits inside the store are either building loyalty, or pushing talent out the door. "If your best people don't see a future with you, they'll build one somewhere else." - Sean V. Bradley They also explore how modern tools like AI and automation are changing the market, but why technology alone won't fix a culture problem. This episode shines a light on the leadership mistakes that quietly create turnover, the importance of real training beyond basic sales tactics, and what it takes to create a dealership environment where top performers actually want to stay. If you're a dealer, GM, manager, or team leader trying to build a stable, high-performing team in 2026 and beyond… this episode is a must-listen. At NADA? So are WE! Meet the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast Hosts at Booth #3315W and grab a FREE DRINK on us while entering to win some FREE PRIZES!    Key Takeaways: ✅ Evolving Workforce Needs: Understanding modern employees' desire for flexibility, transparency, and a non-toxic workplace is fundamental for dealerships aiming to retain talent. ✅ Leadership and Culture: Effective leadership requires not only management skills but also nurturing a positive culture where people feel recognized and valued. ✅ Career Path Development: Clear career growth opportunities and continuous professional development are crucial in retaining skilled employees. ✅ Pay Plans and Promises: Align compensation strategies with genuine roles and responsibilities to build trust and mitigate employee frustration. ✅ Daily Leadership Practices: Implementing daily coaching, clear communication, and a system of recognition can significantly impact employee satisfaction and dealership success.   About Sean V. Bradley Sean V. Bradley is an accomplished expert in automotive sales training with nearly 30 years of experience in the industry. He is the President of Dealer Synergy, a renowned company that provides comprehensive training, consulting, and marketing solutions to automotive dealers. Sean is also the creator of the Millionaire Car Salesman podcast, where he shares insights on improving sales team performance, leadership issues, and industry trends. About LA Williams Known as "The Blind Master," LA Williams is the Vice President of Dealer Synergy. Despite his visual impairment, LA has excelled in the automotive industry, demonstrating remarkable leadership and communication skills. He is a prolific speaker, trainer, and co-host of the Millionaire Car Salesman podcast, where he brings a unique perspective to the world of automotive sales. Don't miss out on LA's NADA Session on Feb. 5th at 12:30 PM PST in Las Vegas!     Boosting Dealership Performance in 2026: Mastering Employee Retention and Leadership Key Takeaways Employee retention is more about leadership and culture than recruitment. Effective training that encompasses skill, professional, and personal development is crucial. Social proof through online reviews significantly impacts recruitment and retention success. In the rapidly evolving automotive industry of 2026, dealerships are challenged not only to attract but also keep quality workers amidst technological and cultural shifts. As laid bare in a candid discussion from the Millionaire Car Salesman podcast, industry veterans Sean V. Bradley and LA Williams delve into the core problem areas and present innovative strategies for car dealerships. They assert that solving retention issues boils down to fortifying leadership, improving workplace culture, and ensuring clear communication. The Changing Landscape of Recruitment and Retention A New Era of Employee Expectations Today's employees desire more than just financial compensation; they seek transparency, flexibility, and a positive workplace environment. Bradley emphasizes, "Employees value time flexibility and transparency, especially the younger generation. They won't tolerate a toxic culture." As such, dealerships need to adapt their recruitment strategies and workplace conditions to align with these expectations. This means offering not just monetary incentives, but valuing employees' time, ensuring work-life balance, and recognizing individual achievements. This shift reflects broader workplace trends where employees are increasingly unafraid to leave unsatisfactory jobs for better opportunities. Building an All-Inclusive Training Strategy Comprehensive training is the backbone of employee satisfaction and retention. Bradley illustrates the importance of multi-faceted development by saying, "If you're not training them on product knowledge, on the road to the sale, on Internet sales… you're not doing enough." Today's sales landscape demands more than traditional selling skills; it requires proficiency in CRM systems, social media, and AI technologies. By setting a high standard and providing adequate resources and training, dealerships can create an empowered workforce capable of exceeding sales goals. Culture and Leadership: The Heart of Employee Retention Nurturing a Positive Workplace Culture Workplace culture is the invisible force that significantly influences employee retention. Williams and Bradley highlight how recognition and respectful treatment can transform workplace morale. Bradley candidly shares, "Happy employees equal happy customers." When employees feel valued and recognized, their dedication and loyalty grow, which in turn positively influences customer experiences. To foster such a culture, dealerships should focus on team-building and personal development alongside professional growth. Celebrating personal milestones and achievements through social media or team meetings fosters a sense of community and belonging. Providing emotional and practical support not just ensures employee well-being but results in enhanced performance and customer satisfaction. Fixing Leadership Gaps to Drive Success A crucial step in improving employee retention is addressing leadership deficiencies. As Williams asserts, "Top salespeople don't automatically make great leaders… Leadership development is paramount." Promoting based purely on sales success can lead to leadership gaps; instead, focus should be on developing comprehensive management skills amongst promising employees. Managers should embrace roles that include mentorship and coaching, striving for emotional intelligence, and delivering fair criticism in a constructive manner. Regular one-on-ones and feedback sessions should be structured not just for performance reviews, but for mutual growth and progression. Creating clear career paths for every role reflects a transparent approach, ensuring employees see their future potential within the company. Reputation, Social Proof, and Retention The Power of Social Proof Through Online Reputation In today's digital landscape, online reviews extend beyond customer opinions and into employment evaluations. Many dealerships remain unaware of how platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed are crucial in shaping perceptions of potential hires. Bradley stresses the importance of these review sites, stating, "People research your store before they apply." Negative employment reviews can deter top talent from joining a dealership. Proactively managing these reviews can enhance a dealership's appeal, suggesting a focus on reputation management alongside customer service. Positive employment reviews reinforce trust and attract quality candidates, ultimately aiding in achieving retention goals and enhancing overall dealership reputation. Aligning Brand and Employment Messaging The alignment of external brand communication with internal employee experience creates a strong market position and fosters employee loyalty. Bradley champions this by advocating for consistent positive messaging on dealership social media, celebrating employee milestones and achievements. This tactic not only strengthens workforce morale but also attracts potential employees by spotlighting a vibrant, supportive workplace culture. Intertwining these aspects — adopting modern recruitment practices, refining leadership qualities, and enhancing online reputation — sets a solid foundation for enduring success amidst the complexities of 2026. Following the Buick slogan "When better automobiles are built, Buick will build them," progressive dealerships will attract and retain top-tier talent by building better workplaces first. The future belongs to dealerships that not only adapt to change but forge change, beginning within their own ranks.     Resources + Our Proud Sponsors: ➼ The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group: Join the #1 Automotive Sales Mastermind Facebook Group with over 29,000 automotive professionals worldwide. The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group is the go-to community for car salespeople, BDC agents, sales managers, general managers, and dealer principals looking to increase performance, income, and leadership skills. Inside the group, members collaborate daily on automotive sales strategies, lead handling, phone scripts, closing techniques, CRM best practices, dealership leadership, and accountability systems. Learn directly from top automotive trainers, industry mentors, and high-performing sales leaders who are actively winning in today's market. If you're serious about growing your automotive career, increasing car sales, and building long-term success, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today! ➼ Dealer Synergy: Dealer Synergy is the automotive industry's #1 Sales Training, Consulting, and Accountability Firm, with over 20 years of proven dealership success nationwide. We specialize in helping car dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing Sales, Internet, and BDC departments from the ground up. Our expertise includes automotive phone scripts, rebuttals, CRM action plans, lead handling strategies, BDC workflows, Internet sales processes, management training, and accountability systems. Dealer Synergy partners directly with dealership leadership to align people, process, and technology, ensuring consistent results and scalable growth. From independent dealers to large dealer groups and OEM partnerships, Dealer Synergy delivers measurable performance improvements, stronger teams, and sustainable profitability. ➼ Bradley On Demand: Bradley On Demand is the automotive industry's most advanced interactive training, tracking, testing, and certification platform for car dealerships — built to develop top-performing teams across Sales, Internet Sales, BDC, CRM, Phone Skills, Leadership, and Management. In addition to LIVE virtual automotive training classes and a library of 9,000+ on-demand dealership training modules, Bradley On Demand now includes AI Phone Roleplaying and Coaching to help salespeople and BDC agents practice real dealership conversations before they ever get on the phone with customers. This AI-powered roleplay technology strengthens phone scripts, objection handling, appointment setting, lead follow-up, and closing skills, while providing measurable coaching feedback for continuous improvement. Bradley On Demand empowers dealerships to train faster, coach smarter, improve call performance, increase closing ratios, and sell more cars more profitably — all through structured, trackable, modern automotive training.

In this episode of Body Bangin', I sat down with Sean Preston (Managing Attorney at Coverall Law) and shop owner Brian Bernard (Total Care Accident Repair) to discuss how to bulletproof your collision center against liability and insurance bullying.It is a highly regulated industry, and most shop owners don't know what they don't know until they get served a lawsuit. In this conversation, we break down why your current authorization forms are likely leaving you exposed, why insurers are suing shops (and how to stop them), and the exact strategy Brian is using to ensure he gets paid for every procedure he performs.This episode is a masterclass on moving from "reactive" to "proactive" so you can sleep at night knowing your house is in order.What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Operators of aging F-class units face a narrowing window to plan for rotor life extensions as supply chains tighten and demand surges. The late 1990s and early 2000s marked a frenetic period in American power generation. Deregulation opened the floodgates for independent power producers racing to bring quick-build gas turbine plants online. GE's 7FA and 7EA units became go‑to resources for this expansion, with the manufacturer more than tripling its annual heavy‑duty gas turbine production capacity to meet surging demand. Now, a quarter-century later, those turbines are approaching critical end-of-life thresholds—just as an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven surge in electricity demand is pushing them harder than ever. Industry experts warn that operators who fail to plan for rotor life extensions could find themselves in serious trouble. “If you're not thinking two to three years down the road on your rotor, then you're already behind, because that's how long it's going to take to manufacture those wheels,” Jason Wheeler, General Manager of Gas Turbine Rotor Repairs at MD&A, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. A Perfect Storm of Constraints The urgency stems from a confluence of factors that have compressed the window for action. The 7FA fleet, which was deployed en masse during what industry veterans call “the bubble,” is now reaching the hour and cycle limits that the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) established for critical rotor components. At the same time, the power generation sector is experiencing a demand renaissance driven by data center construction and electrification. Dave Fernandes, MD&A's Gas Turbine Program Manager, experienced the original boom firsthand as a GE field engineer specializing in 7F and 9F units from 1996 to 2001. He sees important differences between then and now. “There seems to be a lot more concrete reasons and a much stronger foundation for this current bubble than the previous one that took place two and a half decades ago,” Fernandes said. “There are a lot of things that are all stacking up at the same time that put more of an emphasis on getting out in front of extending the life of your current assets now, probably more than ever.” Supply chains have become particularly challenging. The specialized superalloy forgings required for turbine wheels are produced by a limited number of facilities worldwide, and those forging houses are simultaneously serving aerospace, military, and new power generation equipment markets. “You're going to be competing with those new unit sales across various industries in an attempt to get in line with what is perceived from some angles as higher priorities,” Fernandes explained. “That further complicates the scenario that the customer base is facing when they're trying to extend the rotor life of their existing assets.”

แม้อุตสาหกรรมอาหารเสริมในไทยจะเติบโต แต่ความเชื่อมั่นกลับสวนทาง ผู้บริโภคตั้งคำถามถึงความน่าเชื่อถือและความปลอดภัย วันนี้การตลาดอาหารเสริมในไทยอยู่ในจุดเปลี่ยนผ่าน จากยุคที่ต้องจ้างดาราเป็นพรีเซนเตอร์ สู่เทรนด์ ‘CEO Influencer' ที่เจ้าของผลิตภัณฑ์ต่างพากันเปิดหน้า-ตั้งกล้อง-ไลฟ์ขายด้วยตนเอง The Secret Sauce ชวนสำรวจปรากฏการณ์ที่เคยเกิดขึ้นในวงการอาหารเสริมไทย บทเรียนราคาแพงที่สังคมไทยต้องเรียนรู้และป้องกันไม่ให้เกิดซ้ำ พร้อมทำความรู้จัก CEO Factory ผลิตภัณฑ์เสริมอาหารของคนไทยที่เลือกใช้กลยุทธ์การตลาดแบบ CEO Influencer เอพิโสดนี้ คุยกับยศดานันท์ ทองหนูนุ้ย ประธานกรรมการบริหารและประธานเจ้าหน้าที่วิจัยและนวัตกรรมผลิตภัณฑ์ บริษัท ซีอีโอ แฟคตอรี่ (ไทยแลนด์) จำกัด ผู้เปลี่ยนทิศทางจากโรงงานรับจ้างผลิต (OEM) สู่การปั้น House Brand ลุยตลาดด้วยตนเอง

In electronics manufacturing, defects don't usually announce themselves. They happen in milliseconds, far faster than human perception, and often long before anyone realizes a process has drifted out of control. By the time failures show up in test, inspection, or worse, in the field, the root cause may be buried deep inside machine behavior that no one thought to question.When machines are assumed to be accurate instead of proven to be accurate, and when force is set but not verified, hidden variation creeps in. That variation can translate directly into cracked components, misalignment, latent damage, and long-term reliability risk.My guest today is Michael Sivigny, SMT Productivity & Profit Strategist and owner and General Manager CeTaQ Americas, a company that has spent decades doing what most factories don't, objectively measuring machine performance under real production conditions. Michael's work has repeatedly shown that even well-maintained, recently serviced equipment can operate outside of specification, quietly generating defects at high speed.In this conversation, we'll dig into how accuracy validation and force measurement expose problems traditional troubleshooting misses, why OEM calibration alone is no longer enough for today's miniaturized electronics, and how statistically sound measurement practices improve not only yield and uptime, but long-term product reliability.If you believe reliability starts long before functional test, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.CeTaQ Americashttps://cetaq-americas.commsivigny@cetaq-americas.com

Today I'm joined by George Karolis, President of The Presidio Group. George breaks down the tension between record-high blue sky multiples and the rising cost of capital, offering a rare look at who is buying, who is selling, and why the "big get bigger" trend is accelerating. Visit @ ⁠https://thepresidiogroup.com/v2ud⁠ to download the data discussed in today's episode. This episode is brought to you by: 1. Amazon Autos - Sell vehicles to online shoppers who can now buy or lease at Amazon Autos. Upload your inventory of new, used, and certified pre-owned vehicles to our online marketplace, where purchase-ready customers can browse, purchase online, then pick up at a local dealership. Learn more @ https://sell.amazon.com/programs/autos 2. fullthrottle.ai - fullthrottle.ai® is a next-generation AdTech powerhouse. The Automotive DSP™ is built specifically for the auto industry, combining advanced programmatic targeting, real-time bidding, and analytics tailored to drive dealership and OEM performance. With fullthrottle.ai®, marketers can reach the right car shoppers at the right moment and optimize toward real business outcomes like test drives, leads, or sales. https://www.fullthrottle.ai/ bridges the gap between auto media buying and results-driven marketing. 3. The Presidio Group - The Presidio Group is one of the longest standing investment banks entirely focused on the auto retail sector in the United States and was founded in 1998 with the simple mission to relentlessly put the interests of its clients first. During their careers, the professionals at Presidio have collectively closed more than 300 transactions for over $20.0 billion. The Presidio Group, based in Denver and Atlanta, publishes Presidio Perspectives: A Quarterly Outlook on Auto Retail and M&A Trends, a leading source of information about the automotive retail landscape. Click here to subscribe to our market insights: https://go.thepresidiogroup.com/cdg-x-the-presidio-group-strategic-insights-for-the-road-ahead Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: For dealers: CDG Circles ➤ ⁠⁠⁠https://cdgcircles.com/⁠⁠⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dealership recruiting ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgrecruiting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fix your dealership's social media ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.trynomad.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For industry vendors: Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgpartner.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Topics: 00:12 What does the current M&A market look like? 09:56 How are valuations and buyer behavior playing out? 18:25 How does technology impact dealerships? 22:50 What are vehicle brand-specific challenges currently? 27:21 What is the future outlook of the M&A market? Car Dealership Guy Socials: X ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠x.com/GuyDealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@guydealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠threads.net/@cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Everything else ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In this episode of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, Sean V. Bradley and LA Williams sit down with Kelley Koliopulos for a conversation every dealer should be paying attention to, especially if your sales and service departments feel busy… but the results don't match the effort. "The blind spot that dealers have is that they're still making money… but there's going to be a ceiling there." – Kelley Koliopulos This isn't another "business as usual" discussion. It's a candid look at what's quietly changing inside dealerships right now, and why the stores that adapt will pull further ahead while others fall behind. From fixed operations to BDC structure, the conversation challenges long-held assumptions about how dealerships operate, staff, and retain customers. "Anybody could have a great idea. But what dealers want and need in 2026 and beyond is some continuity." – Sean V. Bradley They explore why retention is becoming the real battleground in automotive, what happens when the right people aren't in the right seats, and how technology like AI can either be a powerful advantage, or a costly distraction, depending on how it's implemented. "AI can't fix or answer every question, so you still need that human element." – Kelley Koliopulos If you've noticed service traffic slipping, customer loyalty weakening, or your BDC struggling to gain traction, this episode will hit close to home. It doesn't just point out the problems dealers are facing… it forces a hard look at why they're happening! This one makes you rethink how your dealership is actually run.   If you're attending NADA 2026, be sure to stop by the Dealer Synergy Booth [#3315W] for Prizes from us and to enter CallSource's Bourbon Dealer Giveaway at: https://callsourceauto.com/giveaways/   Key Takeaways: ✅ People-Centric Solutions: The current dealership climate requires a strong focus on recruiting and retaining quality staff, while also providing them with the tools and training necessary to excel. ✅ Innovative Fixed Operations: Fixed operations now require more strategic approaches in communication and engagement with customers to enhance retention and service conversion rates. ✅ BDC Strategic Integration: Properly setting up and managing a BDC is pivotal for handling leads effectively, driving more traffic to dealerships, and improving overall sales performance. ✅ Leveraging AI and Technology: While AI can improve efficiencies, it cannot yet fully replace human involvement in complex problem-solving scenarios, especially in service departments. ✅ Focus on Customer Retention: Using data-driven methodologies to retain customers through consistent follow-up is crucial, particularly as competition from independent service centers intensifies. About Kelley Koliopulos Kelley Koliopulos is a seasoned automotive industry expert, currently working with Call Source, where she primarily focuses on analytics and improving dealerships' fixed operations. Kelley's impressive career spans roles from F&I to dealership marketing with AMSI, and her vendor-side experience includes positions at Call Source and Call Revu. Her expertise centers around using data to refine processes and enhance efficiencies within the automotive sector.     Unlocking Efficiency: Overcoming Dealership Challenges with BDC Solutions Key Takeaways: High-level dealership operations can benefit significantly from a well-designed Business Development Center (BDC) strategy, optimizing both sales and fixed operations. A combined approach utilizing human resources and AI in service departments can enhance customer retention and satisfaction significantly. Outsourcing BDC services can be a more cost-effective, strategic, and results-oriented decision, delivering superior outcomes compared to traditional in-house setups. Navigating Dealership Dynamics: The Power of a BDC The automotive industry is a space brimming with potential, yet awash in complexity. This is especially evident when examining the intricate operations within a dealership. As Kelley Koliopulos and Sean V. Bradley discuss in their engaging conversation, pulling the right levers - particularly in terms of business development - can make all the difference. As highlighted, a dealership's success lies not just in selling cars but in crafting a seamless, customer-centric experience that persists long after the sale. "For every OEM dealership, there's 12 independents right in their back door," Kelley states, emphasizing the fierce competition that demands dealerships maintain exceptional service levels. The conversation initiates by exploring the fundamental issues within sales and fixed operations, where optimizing human resources and understanding the potency of a BDC play crucial roles. Sean underscores the critical role of a precise BDC framework: "If you are not a BDC architect with real BDC experience, this is not going to be easy." He highlights that the apparent complexity of creating a BDC can be simplified if one has the foresight to leverage external expertise effectively. It's all about recognizing which elements facilitate the operational efficiency and concentrating on those. Enhancing Customer Retention through Strategic Service BDC Implementation Among the many challenges dealerships face, customer retention remains a top concern, especially when analyzing fixed operations. Kelley artfully points out that maintaining service customers is pivotal for long-term success. Despite dealerships increasing their revenue by raising labor rates, she warns, "There's going to be a ceiling there," suggesting dealerships can't rely solely on price hikes for sustained growth. The conversation touches on significant research revelations: client retention decreased from 41% in 2018 to a mere 29% in 2025. This stark statistic signals the pressing need for dealerships to reassess their service strategies. Implementing a robust Service BDC could potentially reverse this trend. By restructuring service departments to better handle inbound and outbound calls efficiently, dealerships can drive transactional growth and enhance customer loyalty. Highlighting the collaborative potential of AI and human effort, Kelley asserts, "AI can't fix or answer every question. You still need that human element." Therefore, an outsourced BDC like Call Source becomes valuable, where the marriage of technology and human interaction meets customer needs, bolstering satisfaction and ensuring service longevity. The Economic Advantage of Outsourcing Your BDC Dealers frequently grapple with whether to manage BDC operations in-house or to look outward for solutions. Sean and Kelley underscore a prevalent misconception: many feel the latter is more costly. Conversely, with a closer look, outsourcing often emerges as the more economical and effective solution. "I think the perception is that it's cheaper to bring it in-house," Kelley notes, but as Sean aptly counters, when factoring in all associated costs, investing in an external BDC can unburden dealerships, reduce costs, and ultimately increase sales. Outsourcing offers none of the egocentric challenges of internal management and training, providing instead immediate expertise and scalability. "Not only do we have the agents that are making all the dials… but once they got a live person, they have a strong road to the appointment process," Sean adds, emphasizing the dynamic advantage offered by Dealer Synergy's proven model. This approach ensures leads are converted efficiently, and potential sales pitfalls due to insufficient follow-up or lack of expertise are circumvented entirely. Embracing a Virtuous Cycle of Learning and Growth The enlightening exchange between Sean V. Bradley and Kelley Koliopulos underscores the essence of thriving in today's competitive dealership landscape: seek clarity, apply strategic foresight, and choose partnerships that propel efficiency. As dealerships navigate an era characterized by digital transformation and shifting consumer expectations, aligning operations with services like those offered by Dealer Synergy and Call Source could serve as a definitive competitive edge. Ultimately, it is the prudent application of an expert-built BDC that enables dealerships to thrive — cultivating not just profitable enterprises, but vibrant, enduring legacies. By focusing on strategic partnerships and adopting a robust BDC framework, dealerships can unlock greater efficiency, higher sales, and improved customer satisfaction — key pillars paving the way for enduring success in the automotive industry.     Resources + Our Proud Sponsors:   ➼ The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group: Join the #1 Automotive Sales Mastermind Facebook Group with over 29,000 automotive professionals worldwide. The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group is the go-to community for car salespeople, BDC agents, sales managers, general managers, and dealer principals looking to increase performance, income, and leadership skills. Inside the group, members collaborate daily on automotive sales strategies, lead handling, phone scripts, closing techniques, CRM best practices, dealership leadership, and accountability systems. Learn directly from top automotive trainers, industry mentors, and high-performing sales leaders who are actively winning in today's market. If you're serious about growing your automotive career, increasing car sales, and building long-term success, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today! ➼ Dealer Synergy: Dealer Synergy is the automotive industry's #1 Sales Training, Consulting, and Accountability Firm, with over 20 years of proven dealership success nationwide. We specialize in helping car dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing Sales, Internet, and BDC departments from the ground up. Our expertise includes automotive phone scripts, rebuttals, CRM action plans, lead handling strategies, BDC workflows, Internet sales processes, management training, and accountability systems. Dealer Synergy partners directly with dealership leadership to align people, process, and technology, ensuring consistent results and scalable growth. From independent dealers to large dealer groups and OEM partnerships, Dealer Synergy delivers measurable performance improvements, stronger teams, and sustainable profitability. ➼ Bradley On Demand: Bradley On Demand is the automotive industry's most advanced interactive training, tracking, testing, and certification platform for car dealerships — built to develop top-performing teams across Sales, Internet Sales, BDC, CRM, Phone Skills, Leadership, and Management. In addition to LIVE virtual automotive training classes and a library of 9,000+ on-demand dealership training modules, Bradley On Demand now includes AI Phone Roleplaying and Coaching to help salespeople and BDC agents practice real dealership conversations before they ever get on the phone with customers. This AI-powered roleplay technology strengthens phone scripts, objection handling, appointment setting, lead follow-up, and closing skills, while providing measurable coaching feedback for continuous improvement. Bradley On Demand empowers dealerships to train faster, coach smarter, improve call performance, increase closing ratios, and sell more cars more profitably — all through structured, trackable, modern automotive training.  

At Trimble Insight 2025 in New Orleans, FreightWaves' Thomas Wasson sits down with Brian Mulshine, Senior Director of Product Management at Trimble, to unpack how AI, integrations, and real-time data are reshaping fleet maintenance. From AI-powered road call agents and automated invoice processing to predictive maintenance, OEM deep-linking, and tire failure trends, this conversation dives into how fleets can reduce downtime, slash administrative work, and keep trucks rolling in a tight freight market. A must-watch for fleet operators, maintenance leaders, and anyone focused on keeping equipment profitable. ⁠Follow the Loaded and Rolling Podcast⁠ ⁠Other FreightWaves Shows⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Angel Hacker has worked in nearly every profit center in powersports; sales floor, fixed ops, GM leadership, OEM (Polaris), Harley marketing + BDC buildout, and now aftermarket sales leadership at SBS Friction (Brembo Group).This episode is a real-world breakdown of what actually moves the needle in dealerships:Why behavior change is harder than fixing processWhy campaigns fail when lead handling isn't alignedHow to build BDC structure that convertsWhat dealers underestimate about OEM programs and inventory pressureWhy aftermarket is a major profitability lever moving forwardHow leaders build teams that support each other across departmentsTactical, honest, and built for dealership operators.Connect with Angel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angel-june-hacker/Email: anha@sbs.dkConnect with Jacob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-b-berry/Sponsor: dealers.motohunt.com

At Trimble Insight 2025 in New Orleans, FreightWaves' Thomas Wasson sits down with Brian Mulshine, Senior Director of Product Management at Trimble, to unpack how AI, integrations, and real-time data are reshaping fleet maintenance. From AI-powered road call agents and automated invoice processing to predictive maintenance, OEM deep-linking, and tire failure trends, this conversation dives into how fleets can reduce downtime, slash administrative work, and keep trucks rolling in a tight freight market. A must-watch for fleet operators, maintenance leaders, and anyone focused on keeping equipment profitable. Follow the Loaded and Rolling Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is your daily driver riding so rough it's basically a vibration massage you didn't ask for? If your struts are creaking and your shocks are screaming “I'm tired, boss,” it's time to save your spine. In this episode of LTS Out of Office, Marcos goes full "suspension geek" to tackle the maintenance on his own family car—a 2018 RAV4—though the lessons here apply whether you're hauling kids in an SUV or tearing up the track in a coupe. Spurred by some unfiltered mechanical "truth bombs" from his father, Marcos navigates the winding road between bone-stock OEM reliability and the seductive allure of high-performance aftermarket upgrades. This isn't just a lecture; it's a deep dive into the engineering tug-of-war between "Safety" and "Swagger," giving you the blueprint to reclaim a smooth ride that handles like a dream whether it's raining, snowing, or 100 degrees out.#carmaintenance #rav4 #performanceupgrades #customcars #LTSnco #automotivepodcast SUPPORT THE PODCAST:

Allen, Joel, and Yolanda discuss Siemens Energy’s decision to keep their wind business despite pressure from hedge funds, with the CEO projecting profitability by 2026. They cover the company’s 21 megawatt offshore turbine now in testing and why it could be a game changer. Plus, Danish startup Quali Drone demonstrates thermal imaging of spinning blades at an offshore wind farm, and Alliant Energy moves forward with a 270 MW wind project in Wisconsin using next-generation Nordex turbines. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts, Alan Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxon, and Yolanda Padron. Welcome to the  Allen Hall: Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxon. Rosemary Burns is climbing the Himalayas this week, and our top story is Semen’s Energy is rejecting the sail of their wind business, which is a very interesting take because obviously Siemens CESA has struggled. Recently due to some quality issues a couple of years ago, and, and back in 2024 to 25, that fiscal year, they lost a little over 1 billion euros. But the CEO of Siemens energy says they’re gonna stick with the business and that they’re getting a lot of pressure, obviously, from hedge funds to do something with that business to, to raise the [00:01:00] valuations of Siemens energy. But, uh, the CEO is saying, uh, that. They’re not gonna spin it off and that would not solve any of the problems. And they’re, they’re going to, uh, remain with the technology, uh, for the time being. And they think right now that Siemens Gomesa will be profitable in 2026. That’s an interesting take, uh, Joel, because we haven’t seen a lot of sales onshore or offshore from Siemens lately.  Joel Saxum: I think they’re crazy to lose. I don’t wanna put this in US dollars ’cause it resonates with my mind more, but 1.36 billion euros is probably what, 1.8 million or 1.8. Billion dollars.  Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s, it’s about that. Yeah.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. So, so it’s compounding issues. We see this with a lot of the OEMs and blade manufacturers and stuff, right? They, they didn’t do any sales of their four x five x platform for like a year while they’re trying to reset the issues they had there. And now we know that they’re in the midst of some blade issues where they’re swapping blades at certain wind farms and those kind of things.[00:02:00] But when they went to basically say, Hey, we’re back in the market, restarting, uh, sales. Yolanda, have you heard from any of your blade network of people buying those turbines?  Yolanda Padron: No, and I think, I mean, we’ve seen with other OEMs when they try to go back into getting more sales, they focus a lot on making their current customers happy, and I’m not sure that I’ve seen that with the, this group. So it’s, it’s just a little bit of lose lose on both sides.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re trying to, if you’re having to go back and basically patch up relationships to make them happy. Uh, that four x five x was quite the flop, uh, I would say, uh, with the issues that it had. So, um, there’s, that’d be a lot of, a lot of, a lot of nice dinners and a lot of hand kissing and, and all kinds of stuff to make those relationships back to what they were. Allen Hall: But at the time, Joel, that turbine fit a specific set of the marketplace, they had basically complete control of that when the four x five [00:03:00] x. Was an option and and early on it did seem to have pretty wide adoption. They were making good progress and then the quality issues popped up. What have we seen since and more recently in terms of. The way that, uh, Siemens Ga Mesa has restructured their business. What have we heard?  Joel Saxum: Well, they, they leaned more and pointed more towards offshore, right? They wanted to be healthy in, they had offshore realm and make sales there. Um, and that portion, because it was a completely different turbine model, that portion went, went along well, but in the meantime, right, they fit that four x five x and when I say four x five x, of course, I mean four megawatt, five megawatt slot, right? And if you look at, uh, the models that are out there for the onshore side of things. That, that’s kind of how they all fit. There was like, you know, GE was in that two x and, and, uh, uh, you know, mid two X range investors had the two point ohs, and there’s more turbine models coming into that space. And in the US when you go above basically 500 foot [00:04:00] above ground level, right? So if your elevation is a thousand, once you hit 1500 for tip height on a turbine, you get into the next category of FAA, uh, airplane problems. So if you’re going to put in a. If you were gonna put in a four x or five x machine and you’re gonna have to deal with those problems anyways, why not put a five and a half, a six, a 6.8, which we’ve been seeing, right? So the GE Cypress at 6.8, um, we’re hearing of um, not necessarily the United States, but envision putting in some seven, uh, plus megawatt machines out there on shore. So I think that people are making the leap past. Two x three x, and they’re saying like, oh, we could do a four x or five x, but if we’re gonna do that, why don’t we just put a six x in? Allen Hall: Well, Siemens has set itself apart now with a 21 megawatt, uh, offshore turbine, which is in trials at the moment. That could be a real game changer, particularly because the amount of offshore wind that’ll happen around Europe. Does that then if you’re looking at the [00:05:00] order book for Siemens, when you saw a 21 Mega Hut turbine, that’s a lot of euros per turbine. Somebody’s projecting within Siemens, uh, that they’re gonna break even in 2026. I think the way that they do that, it has to be some really nice offshore sales. Isn’t that the pathway?  Joel Saxum: Yeah. You look at the megawatt class and what happened there, right? So what was it two years ago? Vestas? Chief said, we are not building anything past the 15 megawatt right now. So they have their, their V 2 36 15 megawatt dark drive model that they’re selling into the market, that they’re kind of like, this is the cap, like we’re working on this one now we’re gonna get this right. Which to be honest with you, that’s an approach that I like. Um, and then you have the ge So in this market, right, the, the big megawatt offshore ones for the Western OEMs, you have the GE 15 megawatt, Hayley IX, and GE. ISS not selling more of those right now. So you have Vestas sitting at 15, GE at 15, but not doing anymore. [00:06:00] And GE was looking at developing an 18, but they have recently said we are not doing the 18 anymore. So now from western OEMs, the only big dog offshore turbine there is, is a 21. And again, if you were now that now this is working out opposite inverse in their favor, if you were going to put a 15 in, it’s not that much of a stretch engineering wise to put a 21 in right When it comes to. The geotechnical investigations and how we need to make the foundations and the shipping and the this and the, that, 15 to 21, not that big of a deal, but 21 makes you that much, uh, more attractive, uh, offshore.  Allen Hall: Sure if fewer cables, fewer mono piles, everything gets a little bit simpler. Maybe that’s where Siemens sees the future. That would, to me, is the only slot where Siemens can really gain ground quickly. Onshore is still gonna be a battle. It always is. Offshore is a little more, uh, difficult space, obviously, just because it’s really [00:07:00] Chinese turbines offshore, big Chinese turbines, 25 plus megawatt is what we’re talking about coming outta China or something. European, 21 megawatt from Siemens.  Joel Saxum: Do the math right? That, uh, if, if you have, if you have won an offshore auction and you need to backfill into a megawatts or gigawatts of. Of demand for every three turbines that you would build at 15 or every four turbines you build at 15, you only need three at 21. Right? And you’re still a little bit above capacity. So the big, one of the big cost drivers we know offshore is cables. You hit it on the head when you’re like, cables, cables, cables, inter array cables are freaking expensive. They’re not only expensive to build and lay, they’re expensive to ensure, they’re expensive to maintain. There’s a lot of things here, so. When you talk about saving costs offshore, if you look at any of those cool models in the startup companies that are optimizing layouts and all these great things, a lot of [00:08:00] them are focusing on reducing cables because that’s a big, huge cost saver. Um, I, I think that’s, I mean, if I was building one and, and had the option right now, that’s where I would stare at offshore. Allen Hall: Does anybody know when that Siemens 21 megawatt machine, which is being evaluated at a test site right now, when that will wrap up testing, is it gonna be in the next couple of months?  Joel Saxum: I think it’s at Estro.  Allen Hall: Yeah, it is, but I don’t remember when it was started. It was sometime during the fall of last year, so it’s probably been operational three, four months at this point. Something like that.  Joel Saxum: If you trust Google, it says full commercial availability towards the end, uh, of 28.  Allen Hall: 28. Do you think that the, uh, that Siemens internally is trying to push that to the left on the schedule, bringing from 2028 back into maybe early 27? Remember, AR seven, uh, for the uk the auction round?[00:09:00] Just happened, and that’s 8.4 gigawatts of offshore wind. You think Siemens is gonna make a big push to get into that, uh, into the water there for, for that auction, which is mostly RWE.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, so the prototype’s been installed for, since April 2nd, 2025. So it’s only been in there in the, and it’s only been flying for eight months. Um, but yeah, I mean, RWE being a big German company, Siemens, ESA being a big German company. Uh, of course you would think they would want to go to the hometown and and get it out there, but will it be ready? I don’t know. I don’t know. I, I personally don’t know. And there’s probably people that are listening right now that do have this information. If this turbine model has been specked in any of the pre-feed documentation or preferred turbine suppliers, I, I don’t know. Um, of course we, I’m sure someone does. It’s listening. Uh, reach out, shoot us at LinkedIn or something like that. Let us know, but. Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, [00:10:00] Yolanda, so, so from a Blades perspective, of course you’re our local, one of our local blade experts here. It’s difficult to work, it’s gonna be difficult to work on these blades. It’s a 276 meter rotor, right? So it’s 135 meter blade. Is it worth it to go to that and install less of them than work on something a little bit smaller?  Yolanda Padron: I think it’s a, it’s a personal preference. I like the idea of having something that’s been done. So if it’s something that I know or something that I, I know someone who’s worked with them, so there’s at least a colleague or something that I, I know that if there’s something off happening with the blade, I can talk to someone about it. Right? We can validate data with each other because love the OEMs, but they’re very, it’s very typical that they’ll say that anything is, you know. Anything is, is not a serial defect and anything is force majeure and wow, this is the first time I’m seeing this in your [00:11:00] blade. Uh, so if it’s a new technology versus old technology, I’d rather have the old one just so I, I at least know what I’m dealing with. Uh, so I guess that answers the question as far as like these new experimental lights, right? As far as. Whether I would rather have less blades to deal with. Yes, I’d rather have less bilities to, to deal with it. They were all, you know, known technologies and one was just larger than the other one.  Joel Saxum: Maybe it boils down to a CapEx question, right? So dollar per megawatt. What’s gonna be the cost of these things be? Because we know right now could, yeah, kudos to Siemens CESA for actually putting this turbine out at atrial, or, I can’t remember if it’s Australia or if it’s Keyside somewhere. We know that the test blades are serial number 0 0 0 1 and zero two. Right. And we also know that when there’s a prototype blade being built, all of the, well, not all, but you know, the majority of the engineers that [00:12:00] have designed it are more than likely gonna be at the factory. Like there’s gonna be heavy control on QA, QEC, like that. Those blades are gonna be built probably the best that you can build them to the design spec, right? They’re not big time serial production, yada, yada, yada. When this thing sits and cooks for a year, two years, and depending on what kind of blade issues we may see out of it, that comes with a caveat, right? And that caveat being that that is basically prototype blade production and it has a lot of QC QA QC methodologies to it. And when we get to the point where now we’re taking that and going to serial blade production. That brings in some difficulties, or not difficulties, but like different qa, qc methodologies, um, and control over the end product. So I like to see that they’re get letting this thing cook. I know GE did that with their, their new quote unquote workhorse, 6.8 cypress or whatever it is. That’s fantastic. Um, but knowing that these are prototype [00:13:00] machines, when we get into serial production. It kind of rears its head, right? You don’t know what issues might pop up. Speaker 5: Australia’s wind farms are growing fast, but are your operations keeping up? Join us February 17th and 18th at Melbourne’s Pullman on the park for Wind energy ONM Australia 2026, where you’ll connect with the experts solving real problems in maintenance asset management and OEM relations. Walk away with practical strategies to cut costs and boost uptime that you can use the moment you’re back on site. Register now at WM a 2020 six.com. Wind Energy o and m Australia is created by wind professionals for wind professionals because this industry needs solutions, not speeches.  Allen Hall: While conventional blade inspections requires shutting down the turbine. And that costs money. Danish Startup, Qualy Drone has demonstrated a different approach [00:14:00] at the. Ruan to Wind Farm in Danish waters. Working with RDBE, stack Craft Total Energies and DTU. The company flew a drone equipped with thermal cameras and artificial intelligence to inspect blades while they were still spinning. Uh, this is a pretty revolutionary concept being put into action right now ’cause I think everybody has talked about. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could keep the turbines running and, and get blade inspections done? Well, it looks like quality drone has done it. Uh, the system identifies surface defects and potential internal damage in real time and without any fiscal contact, of course, and without interrupting power generations. So as the technology is described, the drone just sits there. Steady as the blades rotate around. Uh, the technology comes from the Aquatic GO Project, uh, funded by Denmark’s, EUDP program. RDBE has [00:15:00] confirmed plans to expand use of the technology and quality. Drone says it has commercial solutions ready for the market. Now we have all have questions about this. I think Joel, the first time I heard about this was probably a year and a half ago, two years ago in Amsterdam at one of the Blade conferences. And I said at the time, no way, but they, they do have a, a lot of data that’s available online. I, I’ve downloaded it and it’s being the engineer and looked at some of the videos and images they have produced. They from what is available and what I saw, there’s a couple of turbines at DTU, some smaller turbines. Have you ever been to Rust, Gilda and been to DTU? They have a couple of turbines on site, so what it looked like they were using one of these smaller turbines, megawatt or maybe smaller turbine. Uh, to do this, uh, trial on, but they had thermal movie images and standard, you know, video images from a drone. They were using [00:16:00] DGI and Maverick drones. Uh, pretty standard stuff, but I think the key comes in and the artificial intelligence bit. As you sit there and watch these blades go around, you gotta figure out where you are and what blades you’re looking at and try to splice these images together that I guess, conceptually would work. But there’s a lot of. Hurdles here still, right?  Joel Saxum: Yeah. You have to go, go back from data analysis and data capture and all this stuff just to the basics of the sensor technology. You immediately will run into some sensor problems. Sensor problems being, if you’re trying to capture an image or video with RGB as a turbine is moving. There’s just like you, you want to have bright light, a huge sensor to be able to capture things with super fast shutter speed. And you need a global shutter versus a rolling shutter to avoid some more of that motion blur. So there’s like, you start stepping up big time in the cost of the sensors and you have to have a really good RGB camera. And then you go to thermal. So now thermal to have to capture good [00:17:00]quality thermal images of a wind turbine blade, you need backwards conditions than that. You need cloudy day. You don’t want to have shine sheen bright sunlight because you’re changing the heat signature of the blade. You are getting, uh, reflectance, reflectance messes with thermal imagery, imaging sensors. So the ideal conditions are if you can get out there first thing in the morning when the sun is just coming up, but the sun’s kind of covered by clouds, um, that’s where you want to be. But then you say you take a pic or image and you do this of the front side of the blade, and then you go down to the backside. Now you have different conditions because there’s, it’s been. Shaded there, but the reason that you need to have the turbine in motion to have thermal data make sense is you need the friction, right? So you need a crack to sit there and kind of vibrate amongst itself and create a localized heat signature. Otherwise, the thermal [00:18:00] imagery doesn’t. Give you what you want unless you’re under the perfect conditions. Or you might be able to see, you know, like balsa core versus foam core versus a different resin layup and those kind of things that absorb heat at different rates. So you, you, you really need some specialist specialist knowledge to be able to assess this data as well. Allen Hall: Well, Yolanda, from the asset management side, how much money would you generate by keeping the turbines running versus turning them off for a standard? Drone inspection. What does that cost look like for a, an American wind farm, a hundred turbines, something like that. What is that costing in terms of power? Yolanda Padron: I mean, these turbines are small, right? So it’s not a lot to just turn it off for a second and, and be able to inspect it, right? Especially if you’re getting high quality images. I think my issues, a lot of this, this sounds like a really great project. It’s just. A lot of the current drone [00:19:00] inspections, you have them go through an AI filter, but you still, to be able to get a good quality analysis, you have to get a person to go through it. Right. And I think there’s a lot more people in the industry, and correct me if I’m wrong, that have been trained and can look through an external drone inspection and just look at the images and say, okay, this is what this is Then. People who are trained to look at the thermal imaging pictures and say, okay, this is a crack, or this is, you know, you have lightning damage or this broke right there. Uh, so you’d have to get a lot more specialized people to be able to do that. You can’t just, I mean, I wouldn’t trust AI right now to to be the sole. Thing going through that data. So you also have to get some sort of drone inspection, external drone inspection to be able to, [00:20:00] to quantify what exactly is real and what’s not. And then, you know, Joel, you alluded to it earlier, but you don’t have high quality images right now. Right? Because you have to do the thermal sensing. So if you’re. If you’re, if you don’t have the high quality images that you need to be able to go back, if, if, if you have an issue to send a team or to talk to your OE em or something, you, you’re missing out on a lot of information, so, so I think maybe it would be a good, right now as it stands, it would be a good, it, it’d be complimentary to doing the external drone inspections. I don’t think that they could fully replace them. Now.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think like going to your AI comment like that makes absolute sense because I mean, we’ve been doing external drone inspections for what, since 2016 and Yeah. And, and implementing AI and think about the data sets that, that [00:21:00] AI is trained on and it still makes mistakes regularly and it doesn’t matter, you know, like what provider you use. All of those things need a human in the loop. So think about the, the what exists for the data set of thermal imagery of blades. There isn’t one. And then you still have to have the therm, the human in the loop. And when we talk to like our, our buddy Jeremy Hanks over at C-I-C-N-D-T, when you start getting into NDT specialists, because that’s what this is, is a form of NDT thermal is when you start getting into specialist, specialist, specialist, specialist, they become more expensive, more specialized. It’s harder to do. Like, I just don’t think, and if you do the math on this, it’s like. They did this project for two years and spent 2 million US dollars per year for like 4 million US dollars total. I don’t think that’s the best use of $4 million right now. Wind,  Allen Hall: it’s a drop in the bucket. I think in terms of what the spend is over in Europe to make technologies better. Offshore wind is the first thought because it is expensive to turn off a 15 or 20 megawatt turbine. You don’t want to do that [00:22:00] and be, because there’s fewer turbines when you turn one off, it does matter all of a sudden in, in terms of the grid, uh, stability, you would think so you, you just a loss of revenue too. You don’t want to shut that thing down. But I go, I go back. To what I remember from a year and a half ago, two years ago, about the thermal imaging and, and seeing some things early on. Yeah, it can kind of see inside the blade, which is interesting to me. The one thing I thought was really more valuable was you could actually see turbulence on the blade. You can get a sense of how the blade is performing because you can in certain, uh, aspect angles and certain temp, certain temperature ranges. You can see where friction builds up via turbulence, and you can see where you have problems on the blade. But I, I, I think as we were learning about. Blade problems, aerodynamic problems, your losses are going to be in the realm of a percent, maybe 2%. So do you even care at that point? It, it must just come down then to being able to [00:23:00] keep a 15 megawatt turbine running. Okay, great. Uh, but I still think they’re gonna have some issues with the technology. But back to your point, Joel, the camera has to be either super, uh, sensitive. With high shutter speeds and the, and the right kind of light, because the tiff speeds are so high on a tiff speed on an offshore turbine, what a V 2 36 is like 103 meters per second. That’s about two hundred and twenty two hundred thirty miles per hour. You’re talking about a race car and trying to capture that requires a lot of camera power. I’m interested about what Quality Drone is doing. I went to that website. There’s not a lot of information there yet. Hopefully there will be a lot more because if the technology proves out, if they can actually pull this off where the turbines are running. Uh, I don’t know if to stop ’em. I think they have a lot of customers [00:24:00]offshore immediately, but also onshore. Yeah, onshore. I think it’s, it’s doable  Joel Saxum: just because you can. I’m gonna play devil’s advocate on this one because on the commercial side, because it took forever for us to even get. Like it took 3, 4, 5, 6 years for us to get to the point where you’re having a hundred percent coverage of autonomous drones. And that was only because they only need to shut a turbine down for 20 minutes now. Right. The speed’s up way up. Yeah. And, and now we’re, we’re trying to get internals and a lot of people won’t even do internals. I’ve been to turbines where the hatches haven’t been open on the blades since installation, and they’re 13 years, 14 years old. Right. So trying to get people just to do freaking internals is difficult. And then if they do, they’re like, ah, 10% of the fleet. You know, you have very rare, or you know, a or an identified serial of defect where people actually do internal inspections regularly. Um, and then, so, and, and if you talk about advanced inspection techniques, advanced inspection techniques are great for specific problems. That’s the only thing they’re being [00:25:00] accepted for right now. Like NDT on route bushing pullouts, right? They, that’s the only way that you can really get into those and understand them. So specific specialty inspection techniques are being used in certain ways, but it’s very, very, very limited. Um, and talk to anybody that does NDT around the wind industry and they’ll tell you that. So this to me, being a, another kind of niche inspection technology that I don’t know if it’s has the quality that it is need to. To dismount the incumbent, I guess is what I’m trying to say. Allen Hall: Delamination and bond line failures and blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. C-I-C-N-D-T are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become a. Expensive burdens. Their non-destructive test technology penetrates deep to blade materials to find voids and cracks. Traditional inspections [00:26:00] completely. Miss C-I-C-N-D-T Maps. Every critical defect delivers actionable reports and provides support to get your blades back in service. So visit cic ndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions. After five years of development, Alliant Energy is ready to build one of Wisconsin’s largest wind farms. The Columbia Wind Project in Columbia County would put more than 40 turbines across rural farmland generating about 270 megawatts of power for about 100,000 homes. The price tag is roughly $730 million for the project. The more than 300 landowners have signed lease agreements already, and the company says these are next generation turbines. We’re not sure which ones yet, we’re gonna talk about that, that are taller and larger than older models. Uh, they’ll have to be, [00:27:00] uh, Alliant estimates the project will save customers about $450 million over the 35 years by avoiding volatile fuel costs and. We’ll generate more than $100 million in local tax revenue. Now, Joel, I think everybody in Europe, when I talk to them ask me the the same thing. Is there anything happening onshore in the US for wind? And the answer is yes all the time. Onshore wind may not be as prolific as it was a a year or two ago, but there’s still a lot of new projects, big projects going to happen here. Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you’ve been following the news here with Alliant Energy, and Alliant operates in that kind of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, that upper. Part of the Midwest, if you have watched a or listened to Alliant in the news lately, they recently signed a letter of intent for one gigawatt worth of turbines from Nordex.[00:28:00] And, uh, before the episode here, we’re doing a little digging to try to figure out what they’re gonna do with this wind farm. And if you start doing some math, you see 277 megawatts, only 40 turbines. Well, that means that they’ve gotta be big, right? We’re looking at six plus megawatt turbines here, and I did a little bit deeper digging, um, in the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s paperwork. Uh, the docket for this wind farm explicitly says they will be nordex turbines. So to me, that speaks to an N 1 63 possibly going up. Um, and that goes along too. Earlier in the episode we talked about should you use larger turbines and less of them. I think that that’s a way to appease local landowners. That’s my opinion. I don’t know if that’s the, you know, landman style sales tactic they used publicly, but to only put 40 wind turbines out. Whereas in the past, a 280 megawatt wind farm would’ve been a hundred hundred, [00:29:00]20, 140 turbine farm. I think that’s a lot easier to swallow as a, as a, as a local public. Right. But to what you said, Alan. Yeah, absolutely. When farms are going forward, this one’s gonna be in central Wisconsin, not too far from Wisconsin Dells, if you know where that is and, uh, you know, the, the math works out. Alliant is, uh, a hell of a developer. They’ve been doing a lot of big things for a lot of long, long time, and, uh, they’re moving into Wisconsin here on this one. Allen Hall: What are gonna be some of the challenges, Yolanda being up in Wisconsin because it does get really cold and others. Icing systems that need to be a applied to these blades because of the cold and the snow. As Joel mentioned, there’s always like 4, 5, 6 meters of snow in Wisconsin during January, February. That’s not an easy environment for a blade or or turbine to operate in.  Yolanda Padron: I think they definitely will. Um, I’m. Not as well versed as Rosie as [00:30:00] in the Canadian and colder region icing practices. But I mean, something that’s great for, for people in Wisconsin is, is Canada who has a lot of wind resources and they, I mean, a lot of the things have been tried, tested, and true, right? So it’s not like it’s a, it’s a novel technology in a novel place necessarily because. On the cold side, you have things that have been a lot worse, really close, and you have on the warm side, I mean just in Texas, everything’s a lot warmer than there. Um, I think something that’s really exciting for the landowners and the just in general there. I know sometimes there’s agreements that have, you know, you get a percentage of the earnings depending on like how many. Megawatts are generated on your land or something. So that will be so great for that community to be able [00:31:00] to, I mean, you have bigger turbines on your land, so you have probably a lot more money coming into the community than just to, to alliance. So that’s, that’s a really exciting thing to hear.  Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s discussion, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show For Rosie, Yolanda and Joel, I’m Allen Hall and we’ll see you next time on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

In the second part of this two-part podcast, Dave Luehr of Elite Body Shop Solutions joins the CollisionCast to discuss how a transformational approach to the customer experience can allow you to have customers for life through your unique selling propositions. If you have OEM certifications, we discuss ways you can maximize your ROI at the dealership service lane, plus how to change what you can control over insurer pushback. They're just a few ways independent shops can win in 2026.  See how you stack up against other collision repairers at bodyshopassessment.com, and register for the Positivity Summit Feb. 6 at collisionsummit.com.

Thanks to our Partners, NAPA TRACS, Today's Class, KUKUI, and Pit Crew Loyalty Watch Full Video Episode Saim Raza and Tristen Sweeney, co-founders of Shift Automotive, discuss how their AI-powered software is transforming the vehicle service experience. Their platform automates OEM maintenance recommendations and simplifies shop workflows by integrating manufacturer data into professionally formatted, customer-facing reports. This approach not only improves operational efficiency but also helps service advisors build trust with consumers and increase average repair orders. While the technology is advanced, their core mission is deeply human: to improve communication and support shops as drivers keep their vehicles longer. The conversation ultimately underscores a move toward more consultative relationships and elevated customer service in the independent auto repair industry. Key Topics: The “Blood Test” Approach to Maintenance:How using OEM intervals to identify service gaps allows shops to present data-driven recommendations that extend vehicle life—critical as consumers face rising new-car costs.The “Easy Button” Paradox:Why technology only works when behavior changes, and what it really takes to successfully adopt new tools in your shop.Friendly AI & Buying Back Time:How AI can enhance communication, automate routine tasks, and give service advisors more time for meaningful customer interactions.The Consultative Shop Owner:Why the future belongs to shop owners who act as trusted consultants, building long-term relationships through transparency and problem-solving. Saim Raza, Tristen Sweeney, Shift Automotive Thanks to our Partner, NAPA TRACS NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with onsite training and six days a week of support and local representation. Find NAPA TRACS on the Web at http://napatracs.com/ Thanks to our Partner, Today's Class Optimize training with Today's Class: In just 5 minutes daily, boost knowledge retention and improve team performance. Find Today's Class on the web at https://www.todaysclass.com/ Thanks to our Partner, KUKUI Stop juggling multiple marketing tools. KUKUI's integrated platform delivers 4x better website conversions, automated follow-up, and real-time ROI tracking. Get industry-leading customer support with KUKUI at https://www.kukui.com/ Thanks to our Partner, Pit Crew Loyalty You're probably tired of chasing new customers who never return. We understand. Pit Crew Loyalty ends the one-and-done cycle, turning first visits into lasting, reliable revenue at https://www.pitcrewloyalty.com/ Connect with the Podcast: - Follow on Facebook:

Supersede manufactures structural building products from recycled industrial and agricultural plastic waste, creating drop-in replacements for plywood and OSB. What makes their approach notable isn't the environmental mission - it's the deliberate market sequencing strategy that let them reach the top 10 boat builders globally within months of launch. CEO and Co-Founder Sean Petterson, whose father died on a construction job and who previously built and sold a construction safety equipment company, knew the construction market's reputation for slow adoption would kill them before they could prove their product. So instead of pitching the $12B+ annual US construction market directly, they started with marine applications where regulatory pressure, product toxicity issues, and performance failures created urgent buying windows. In this episode, Sean breaks down how they used trade show metrics to validate product-market fit, why they're absorbing shipping costs to prove regional demand before building plants, and the operational art of scaling manufacturing capacity against pipeline conversion timing. Topics Discussed: Strategic market entry: why marine and RV serve as proving grounds and revenue generators before construction How material properties (waterproof, high density, VOC-free) dictated target application selection The regulatory catalyst: California's formaldehyde ban creating electrolysis problems in boat transoms Trade show execution at IBEX Tampa: converting sustainability pavilion traffic into top 10 builder partnerships Multi-plant expansion strategy: Phoenix for marine, Indiana for RV proximity to Elkhart manufacturing hub The timing challenge: balancing capex on new production lines against uncertain customer adoption curves Using shipping cost absorption as market validation before committing to regional manufacturing Product thickness decisions and the constraint of running 24/7 production on single SKUs Long-term infrastructure goal: lights-out factories in every state to hit 10% US market share GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Map product attributes to urgent pain points, not general market needs: Sean's framework was ruthlessly specific—Supersede's material is waterproof, twice as dense as wood, VOC-free, and has superior fastener retention. Rather than positioning these as generic benefits, they mapped each attribute to acute pain: marine grade plywood costs 3-4x more, leaches formaldehyde and CCAs into water, and California's new regulations were causing electrolysis that corrodes aluminum transoms. This isn't marketing positioning—it's matching physics to procurement urgency. Founders should inventory their product's fundamental characteristics and find markets where each one solves an active crisis. Use expensive distribution as a validation tool before infrastructure investment: Supersede services Florida boat builders from their Phoenix plant despite shipping costs destroying margins. This is intentional—they're paying for market intelligence. Only after customers move from single units to full product lines do they commit manufacturing capex to that region. Sean's calculus: "As long as we have enough comfort in the unit economics to manage shipping costs, we can explore how markets look before sinking too much in." Most founders optimize for margin too early. Supersede optimizes for learning, treating distribution costs as cheaper than building the wrong plant in the wrong location. Create credibility through extreme durability testing, then cascade down: Sean describes pontoon boats with twin 300hp motors hitting 60mph over waves as their "value proposition crucible." This isn't about marine market success—it's about creating an unarguable proof point for every downstream market. When they enter construction, they won't debate whether their product can handle a roof load; they'll show years of data from conditions that make construction look gentle. The insight: win in the most punishing environment first, then every easier application becomes a layup. Most founders do the opposite—start easy, then struggle with credibility when moving upmarket. Sequence markets by sales motion similarity, not revenue size: The marine-to-RV-to-construction path isn't about market size—it's about operational leverage. Sean notes RV has "the same exact process, except they move a little quicker" as marine. Both are concentrated geographies (marine in Florida, RV in Elkhart), both have OEM buyers making high-volume decisions, both value durability and water resistance. This lets them reuse sales playbooks while building revenue. Construction, despite being 10x larger, requires completely different distribution (retail + wholesale), longer approval cycles (two years for major projects), and more diverse buyer personas (contractors, architects, developers, retailers). The sequencing strategy funds the capability build they'll need for construction without the distraction of learning three different GTM motions simultaneously. Treat trade shows as validation metrics, not lead generation: Supersede tracked specific conference-provided data at IBEX: highest searched booth, highest saved, most traffic despite being in the "sustainability pavilion" that attendees typically skip. They didn't just collect business cards—they validated that their value proposition resonated at scale before committing to a multi-plant buildout. Sean converted this signal into partnerships with all top 10 builders by volume within the show cycle. The lesson: use trade shows as market research tools with quantifiable success metrics, not as top-of-funnel activities. If you can't win a trade show in your target segment, you're not ready to scale. Balance production constraints against customer optionality to force prioritization: Supersede faces a counterintuitive challenge—they have demand for multiple product thicknesses but can only run 24/7 production on one thickness per line to maintain efficiency. This forces brutal customer prioritization decisions. As Sean puts it: "Which customer we like better." Rather than viewing this as a problem, recognize it as a focusing mechanism. Resource constraints force you to choose customers who value your core offering most rather than customizing yourself into complexity. Most founders try to serve everyone before proving they can serve anyone exceptionally. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Allen and Joel are joined by Mathieu Cōté from CanREA to preview the upcoming Operators Summit in Toronto. With many Canadian wind projects reaching 17-20 years old, the industry faces critical decisions about extending, repowering, or decommissioning assets. Register now! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Matt, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Well, the theme of this Year’s Operator Summit is coming of age and. There’s a lot of things happening in the renewable side up in Canada. What does that mean for Canadian renewable energy operators right now?  Mathieu Cōté: Well, we came up with coming of age because, um, the fleet in Canada is in a bit of a different space than it is in the States where, uh, right now we’ve got a lot of projects that are on the cusp of coming to their end of initial lifetime. Right. They’re in that. 17 to 20 year range. There’s some that are a little bit past, and so you, as an operator, you gotta be asking yourself, is this the time to extend this project? What do I have to do [00:01:00] if I need to extend? Um, or am I repowering, am I taking things down, putting them up? And I mean, there’s a lot of different variables there. Sometimes it’s just a re topping, sometimes it’s everything down to ground level and go again. Or it’s, maybe it’s a decommissioning and those decisions are on the cusp of being made in the operation space in Canada. So that’s, that’s a super important part of it. But the other side of it, and the reason we liked, uh, coming of age is from the industry perspective itself. We are no longer the new kid on the block, right? We are now a reliable, uh, professional industry that can deliver power when you need it. Uh, so that’s what we’re trying to, to convey with this coming of age. And, and we’ve got some really good speakers who are gonna talk about that, uh, from. The grid operator’s perspective saying, why is it that renewables are one of the first things they reach for now when they realize they need more power? Joel Saxum: I think it’s an interesting space and I think to, to [00:02:00]comment more deeply on that, right? That you guys are in that, you  Mathieu Cōté: know,  Joel Saxum: 2005, six you started installing a  Mathieu Cōté: lot of the, a lot of wind assets. There was a curve of, as it as every year you get more and more. Trickle and then becomes a flood quite quickly. Joel Saxum: Yeah. And, and, and you know, from, from the operation standpoint, we deal with some of the wind farms in Canada. We love working with, uh, the operators up there because they do exude that professionalism. They’re on top of their game. They know they’ve gotta maintain these things. Whereas in the states, we’ve been a little bit nascent sometimes and, oh, we got PTC coming so we don’t have to do these certain things. Little bit more cowboy. Yeah. Yeah. And up in Canada, they’re, they’re, they’ve been doing the right things for a long time. Um, and I think it’s a good, good model to follow, but you’re a hundred percent correct. We’re coming to that time when it’s like decision time to be made here. And I think we, in our, in our uh, kind of off air chat, you had mentioned that, you know, repower in Canada is. Pretty early stages. I  Mathieu Cōté: only know about  Joel Saxum: one,  Mathieu Cōté: to [00:03:00] be honest, and I try and keep track of these things,  Joel Saxum: but that’s coming down the pipeline,  Mathieu Cōté: right? So there’s gonna be more and more of these happening. And I mean, there are a lot of operators that have one foot on either side of the border, so some people have some operational experience on what steps you need to take, but it’s also from the regulatory side, like what is your grid operator gonna insist on? So on and so on. But, uh, so we’ve got some panels to talk about things like, one of my favorites is, uh, how much life is left in your machine? And that’s sort of a deeper dive from an engineering standpoint. Like what math do the engineers do to assess, is this foundation good to go for another 10 years? Is this tower gonna stand up to whatever? Should we replace the blades and all those components? We, we’ve got a foundation expert, uh, someone who does. Digital twin sort of things as well as, um, a panelist from, uh, Nordex, so the OEM sort of perspective as well, and how they assess how much [00:04:00] life is left in a machine. So like that’s the sort of panels that we’re trying to put together that we’re pretty excited about.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think that’s a good one too, because I know Alan and I we’re talking around the industry globally. A lot of it is around CMS. And when we say CMS, we’re not just talking drive train anymore, we’re talking everything you can in the turbine, right? So the, the concept of remaining useful life, r ul, that always comes up, where are we at with this, right? Because from a global perspective in Europe, they have, you know, in Spanish wind farms are all, a lot of ’em are at that 25 year mark. What are we doing here? So you guys are bringing that conversation to the Canadian market at this operator summit in Toronto here in February. It’s, it’s timely, right? Because it’s February and everybody’s getting ready for spring, so you got a little bit of time to come to the conference.  Mathieu Cōté: Well, and that’s one of the things that we actually used to do is show in April and we’ve moved it back after hearing feedback from our, from our audience that April’s almost too late, right? Like, if you’re doing your assessments for your [00:05:00] blades, it where? Where’s your manpower coming up? Coming from in the summertime? Those contracts are already signed. By the time you hit April, February, you’ve still got time. Your RFP might be out so you can meet all the proponents on site at once. It, it just makes a lot more sense for us to do it in February. Allen Hall: Well, there’s a wide range of technology in Canada in regards to wind to energy. That adds to the complexity where a lot of turbines, unlike the United States, are maybe even sub one megawatt, and with new turbines coming online, they’re gonna be in the five, six, maybe even seven megawatt range. That’s a huge dispersed. Industry to try to maintain massive range. Yeah. Right. And I, and, and I think one of the dilemmas about that is trying to find people who understand that tho all those different kinds of machines and the intricacies of each one of them and how to operate them more efficiently, which is where Canada is. Quite honestly. The, the thing [00:06:00] about that and the challenge for Canada Head, and this is why the conference is so important, is. If there’s someone in Canada that has the answer, as Joel and I have talked to a number of Canadian operators, you may not know them. I know it’s a smaller marketplace in general, but unless you’re talking to one another, you probably, uh, don’t realize there’s, there’s help within Canada. And these conferences really highlight that quite a bit. Wanna talk about some of the, sort of the interactions you guys create at the conference?  Mathieu Cōté: Yeah. Oh, well, it’s one of the things that can RIA tries to do is play that connector role, right? Like, we don’t know everything, but like you say, we know someone who knows something and we can put you in touch with all. I know a guy who knows a guy. Um, but we’re, we’re always able to, to, to connect those dots. And I mean, we, we do a lot of, uh. Things like working groups and uh, regional meetings. And, uh, we’ve even got, uh, different summits for different things. Getting a little bit outside of operations, but like we [00:07:00] have an Atlantic operators group that gathers together and has a chat just sometimes, usually there’s a focus topic, but then we have, oh, how do you guys deal with the storm that came through? Or that sort of thing, or what, what do you do for if you need a new blade or has anyone got a good vendor for this thing or that thing? Those sorts of things always happen in the margins. And I mean, the ops summit is the, the best one of those because it’s the entire Canadian industry that gets together. We’ve got folks from bc, we’ve got folks from Atlantic Canada, there’s gonna be people from Quebec, and there’s vendors from all those places as well. Right? So. It’s covering all your bases and it’s the one place that you can talk to everybody and meet everybody in like a 48 hour period.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think that if, you know, just doing a little bit of deep dive into the agenda and the program here, that’s one of the things that you guys are focusing on. Targeted networking. So morning breakfasts, evening receptions, there, you know, structured and informal, uh, opportunities to actually connect with the o and m [00:08:00] community. Um, one of them that you had mentioned was kind of, um. Hands-on demonstrations and, and for me, when, when I see these things, ’cause I’ve seen them kind of slightly not, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do it perfectly well. I’m excited to see what you guys do. But you get, you get a group of people standing around, like you get people kind of standing around. Rubbing elbows going, like, what do you think about that? What is, does this, is this gonna work? And, and those to me are great, great conversations for networking and kind of figuring things out together. The collaboration part.  Mathieu Cōté: Absolutely. Uh, well on those two points, the, the networking has always been a huge part of this show, and we’ve always built into the program. Okay. There’s some stuff on stage, but then there’s a break. And I mean, you can wander around the showroom floor and you can, but you can talk to the other people. And, uh, that’s a big part of this. That’s an important part of this. And then on the, the demonstrations and so on, we used to have what we called, uh, elevator pitches, uh, where, and we’ve done it various different ways where people get five minutes, one slide, you’re on [00:09:00] stage, you say your piece, you give us your elevator pitch, and then you get off and someone else gets up and talks. And we found that, that, and the feedback we got was that that was good because that condensed all of the salesy parts and kept it away from the panels. ’cause the panels, we want them to be informative, not. Selling you something. We want you to learn something. But the sales pitch is, there is some sense of like someone’s trying to sell you a thing. But we’re evolving that a little bit this year where we’re going towards demonstrations. So on the showroom floor, there will be someone who will have a tangible thing, whether it’s here’s the new fireproof coat that we’ve come up with, or here’s how this, uh, sling works, or here’s this piece of kit that fits on your machine that catches bolts when they break, or whatever it is. Here’s how it actually works, and they’ve got it in their hands and they can play with the go until it, uh, really, like you say, gets that light bulb moment that gets you to see how it works. And you can see that ROI [00:10:00] right away going, oh, okay. That if it catches the bolts when they break, then it doesn’t rattle around. And then I’ve gotta spend X amount less time fixing, missed out. Or the other thing, like it’s, it, it’s a, it’s a better way of doing it is, uh, what we feel. And like you say, then you get. Being on the showroom floor, it’s in amongst the booths. So people who are on the showroom floor can just sort of look over their shoulder, see that, okay, I really gotta go check out that guy. Joel Saxum: I like the idea of the format and there’s a couple other things like lessons learned track we talked about a little bit too. But one of the things for me for trade shows is when Alan and I went to ETC in Calgary a few years ago, two years ago I think. Yep. You actually had the. The conversations, the panel conversations, the discussions, the knowledge sharing happening on the showroom floor. I don’t like going to a conference where I have to go in, like I’m talking with some people, but, oh, I gotta run across this thing across over here, a mile away into some back room to listen to someone talk about something. I like, I like being where the information is [00:11:00] happening and sharing, and I can stand off to the side and listen a bit and, and still engage. Um, and you guys are doing some more of that too through the lessons learned track. Um, can you explain that a little bit to us?  Mathieu Cōté: Well, we’ve always had, uh, like a, some split in concurrent sessions and so on. But to your point of not running off to the other end, we’re in a pretty intimate space where we’ve got like a room for lunch and the plenaries, we’ve got a room for the exhibit hall, and then right next to it is any of the, uh, off to the side stuff. It’s all within a one minute walk of, of itself, which is much better. So we’ve got the concurrent, uh, sessions and. This year we split them instead of into two. We split ’em into three though that then we’ve got one for specific to wind. We’ve got one specific to solar and storage. ’cause we are renewable energy, not just wind. And then we’ve got one, uh, that’s a bit of a grab bag and it’s a bit of a different format. So instead of your traditional three [00:12:00] panelists plus a moderator, everyone’s got a slide, everyone’s gotta talk, blah, blah, blah. This thing, it, it’s much more focused. You’ve got one person who’s got a real important thing to say, whether it’s, here’s, uh, lessons learned on how our hub fell off and here’s what we learned from it. Here’s our root cause analysis, or here’s, uh, a much better way of doing, uh, our health and safety program has worked much better for us. Here’s what we gain from it, or whatever happens to be. And then one moderator to ask them some questions, pick apart. So this part, how to, uh, and get a bit of a, a flow there. So, and it’s much shorter. Instead of an hour long, it’s only a half hour. So then you don’t have to sit through two people. You don’t care about to listen to the one person that you do is the intent of these, uh, lessons learned? I,  Joel Saxum: I do really like the concept simply because when I go to an event or like, um, putting something together, I want people to be able to go. Learn something, take it back to their respective [00:13:00] organization, be able to implement it tomorrow. And it sounds like you guys are really moving towards that with the lessons learned, the collaboration and the knowledge sharing.  Mathieu Cōté: That’s, that’s the intent. And that, and that’s really what it is, is I, I’m, I think I’m a smart guy, but I don’t have all the answers. So we’re really trying to shine a light on the people who do, and like, here’s a thing that the industry as a whole should learn about. And give them some time to talk about it. And like you say, then you’ll get some of those conversations in the margins and in in between going, yeah, this guy had this thing to say. We get that sort of dialogue going. That’s, that’s the intent. It’s all about, uh, discussions and learning from each other.  Joel Saxum: To me, it sounds like even, um, for lack of a, maybe a trip to get some poutine and maybe an American, American should go out there and listen to some of the stuff you guys have to say as well. Mathieu Cōté: Honestly, it’s, it’s worth it for, uh, Americans to come by and we do have a significant number, proportion of the, the audience comes from the states as well. Because like you say, it’s, it’s worth it and it’s good information and it’s a good [00:14:00] portion of the thing. And it’s really not that far. And I mean, um, not to put it lightly, we do tend to lean a little heavier on some of the more, uh, Canadian elements like weather. Like we do have a panel this year, um, on the solar side, solar operations and adverse conditions. And that one, um. Because that one came from, uh, I know a guy at, uh, natural Resources Canada, who was part of a working group at the International Energy Agency in their photovoltaic power systems group, where they came up with, uh, a report on operations in all kinds of adverse conditions around the world. So he’s gonna present that report and we’ll have a panel discussion. The other panelists there, we’ve got, um. Ben Power, the CEO of ves, who is the number one installer of solar in the Yukon, right next to Alaska. So they know a lot about adverse conditions and then, uh, polar racking, they’ve got a lot of experience, uh, with that sort of thing too. And they’ve got some data that they’re gonna bring to the [00:15:00] panel as well. So it should be a really good discussion about how do we deal with bad things happening in solar specifically.  Allen Hall: Well, sure. Uh, Canada’s been running assets a lot longer than we have been in the States. In fact, to Joel’s earlier point, we’re repairing. Disassembling putting new stuff up all the time. Canada has been more focused on keeping existing equipment running in some crazy, harsh conditions. The US is moving that way. You wanna know about ice? We could tell you about ice. Exactly. Like how many times has the US run into trouble with icing on wind turbines and we should have been talking to, or her neighbors through the north, but in a lot of cases, yeah. The I, I find that the time I went. I learned a whole bunch about Canadian operations, how to think about some of these problems differently. That was the beauty of a attending a Kria event, and I know there’s gonna be a lot of people attending this event. Who is it for in general? Obviously [00:16:00] it’s for operators, but is there some value here for like asset managers? Some of the engineers, some of the service providers,  Mathieu Cōté: yeah. That our, our core market, if you want, is your site managers and your technical people, but engineers, 100%, they will learn something. Your asset managers will definitely have some value in it, whether it’s learning about the technology or learning about, uh, the, the latest things coming out or even just. Best practices from other folks, right? We’ve also got, uh, more and more we’re getting people from the insurance industry getting involved because some of these, uh, lessons learned and so on, is really valuable to them. And we’re even running, um, if, if people are in insurance, we have a special meeting for insurance. The, the day before where we’ll be having a, a dialogue between the insurance industry and the operators and like, here’s how we deal with this. This is why the prices are that. And, uh, talk about that risk transfer type stuff. There are the odd developer who comes out. Um, but it’s more for the, [00:17:00] like, once it’s in the ground, the technical people, uh, the tooling manufacturers, the service providers, the, all, all of those folks. Joel Saxum: What about ISPs? Oh, a hundred percent. We know quite a few ISPs up in Canada. Every one of them that I’ve talked to is coming. So ev I’ve had the conversations and like I, you know, we’re, we’re doing some other things in February as well around here, and I was, Hey, what are you guys? Oh, we’re all going to the Candry Ops summit. We’re going to the Candry Ops summit, so to Toronto and February. Um, bring your warm jacket. I suppose it could be cold. Yeah, the, the ISPs will be there in, in full force. And so I think that. To me, it’s like the, the, the cousin to the A-C-P-O-M-S. We like OMS in the states because that’s where the real discussions happen around operations and maintenance. Mathieu Cōté: The technical stuff happens. Yeah. And it, I like to say it’s the, the, the younger cousin, if you will, and the maple syrup cousin.  Allen Hall: Well, I do think though, that when we’re at, uh, o, M and S Joel, that [00:18:00] those discussions are a little bit different than what I see up at Kria. Like Kria is a. Community OMS is, yeah, we, we all know one another and maybe it’s just there’s this, a bigger event or more people, but it, I don’t feel the sort of connection I do when I’m at Kria. Like I know the people, I understand what’s going on at Kria. That’s what makes it fun that I get to see people that I, I know once in a while, but at the same time there is a huge, massive amount of. Sharing  Mathieu Cōté: that community that you speak to, that that’s really what we’re trying to, to gather in. And there’s a difference of scale too. I mean, uh, the OMS is like 3000 people and we’re three to 400. So there, there’s a difference there. But that sort of intimacy leads to a fair bit more of that sharing that you’re talking about and like that Oh yeah, there’s that guy. Oh, there’s Derek from Capstone, or there’s Dan from EDF or there, you know, and then you. You run into them and then you, you catch [00:19:00] up on all the latest and, um, what’s going on, how are things going? And so on and so on. And there’s time for all of that in the, in the two day show that we have.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think collaboration in a smaller, like the right size group is, is much easier and flows better. Right? Once you get to that thousand two, three, 4,000, it’s like, yeah, you’re there, you’re seeing the people, but like it’s just not the same.  Mathieu Cōté: Et c is somewhere around 3000 people and it, it, it’s got that heft. It’s a different audience as well. Right? The o and m crowd isn’t there as much. It’s not quite as technical, so it it, it’s a speaking to a different group of people. Allen Hall: Well, Canada is on a growth spurt for renewables. There’s a lot of wind energy  Mathieu Cōté: headed up towards Quebec. There are procurement’s open right now in Quebec, Nova Scotia, new Brunswick. Uh, Ontario, BC and Manitoba  Joel Saxum: Plus, what was it? Fi what was it? Five offshore lease areas off of Nova Scotia.  Mathieu Cōté: Yeah, they’re looking at up to five gigawatts offshore in Nova Scotia. We don’t have [00:20:00] any yet in Nova in, uh, offshore. And there’s some, they need to figure out what the offtake is and where the transmission goes. Uh, but there’s a lot of people working in the background on MA putting that together. So it’s growing. Oh, a hundred percent. It’s growing and across the board, right. And the. Wind or solar or storage or all three. And that, that a lot of the, the procurements these days are starting to move in a direction of, uh, sort of a technology agnostic where they say, we need megawatts. We don’t care how you make them. We just want electricity. Well, electricity, uh, but also electricity capacity. So in the one case we figure wind and solar will do quite well, and in the other we’ll figure the battery storage will do quite well. So no matter what and in the timelines that they’re asking for, we’re looking at if you want it in the next five years, it’s probably gonna be wind and solar because anything else is gonna be a seven plus year timeline to get into the ground. So [00:21:00] there, there’s a lot. There’s a lot coming.  Allen Hall: Well, up to 20% of the energy, electricity in Canada nationally is gonna be generated by renewables in less than 10 years.  Mathieu Cōté: Canada’s split up a lot, remember like, and Quebec is already at 90 plus with their hydro and bc same thing.  Joel Saxum: And I, and I think that that’s something to be, to be shared as well here is from an o and m standpoint. The, the varied geographies of Canada and how spread apart it is, there’s specialized knowledge up there to, to, to, you know, till the cow come home. So it’s a great place to go and learn. I would encourage people, hey, if you’re, if you’re in anywhere around Michigan, the Great Lakes Toronto’s a three hour drive. Go there, do the conference and learn something,  Mathieu Cōté: and hey, we’re right next to the airport. It’s quick flight. Almost anywhere from North America, right? So Toronto’s easy to get in and  Allen Hall: out of, and this is gonna be a great event. The Can Operators Summit. It’s February 11th and 12th at the Delta Hotel by [00:22:00] Marriott, Toronto, right at the airport. So you, you can’t miss it. It’s easy to get in, easy to get out. You’re gonna have a great time. Matt, how do they connect and register for this event?  Mathieu Cōté: We have a registration link that I’m sure we’ll put somewhere. Um, or come to our website, kenia.ca?  Allen Hall: Yeah, just Google Can Operator Summit. That’s what I did. And that takes you right to the registration. Get signed up there. It’s inexpensive in Toronto is a really cool city. February 11th and 12th. At the Delta Hotels by Marriott, right at the airport. The Canary Operator Summer is going to be a lot of fun. Matt, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really enjoyed having you. Well, thanks for having [00:23:00] me.

In this episode of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, Sean V. Bradley sits down with Gina Anguilla of CallSource for a conversation that challenges how most dealerships think about their service department, and the role the Service BDC plays behind the scenes. Not only that, we uncover if you're missing out on thousands of dollars of potential revenue! "Fixed ops should be 65% of the dealership's overall revenue. And if you're doing it the right way, your fixed ops revenue should cover 100% of all of your operational expenses." – Sean V. Bradley This isn't a surface-level discussion about appointments or scripts. It's a deeper look at how service operations, customer communication, and long-term retention quietly determine whether a dealership thrives or struggles. Sean and Gina explore why treating service like a silo is costing dealers more than they realize, and why the smartest operators are starting to rethink the entire ecosystem! "Having a service BDC ensures that there's a managed process for keeping communication timely, efficient, and effective with your guests." – Gina Anguilla From overlooked touchpoints to missed opportunities hiding in plain sight, this episode shines a light on the side of the dealership that truly keeps everything moving. If you've ever wondered why some stores build loyalty effortlessly while others constantly chase new customers, this conversation will make you stop and listen! "We are bringing an ecosystem that drives consistent and predictable service revenue by improving customer retention, communication, and engagement." – Gina Anguilla Because when service works the right way, everything else follows. Tune in… this one might change how you see your dealership. ps. Be sure to register for the CallSource Bourbon Dealer Giveaway at: https://callsourceauto.com/giveaways/   Key Takeaways: ✅ Service BDC Importance: Service departments should be central to a dealership's revenue strategy, facilitating customer convenience and operational efficiency. ✅ Comprehensive Service BDCs: Effective service BDC strategies encompass not only scheduling but also crucial follow-ups, such as post-service customer satisfaction checks and declined services callbacks. ✅ Outsourcing Benefits: Leveraging outsourced BDC solutions, like those offered by CallSource, can alleviate the managerial burden on service teams, enabling dealerships to focus more on results rather than processes. ✅ Customer Retention: Engaging with inactive customers through a structured BDC can significantly increase service retention rates and dealership revenue. ✅ AI and Human Integration: Innovative solutions that combine AI enhancements with human-driven services are revolutionizing the automotive service industry by ensuring consistent customer communication and retention.   About Gina Anguilla Gina Anguilla is a seasoned professional in the automotive industry with a background in communications. She started her career at Dealer Synergy, where she honed her skills in automotive telephony and BDC (Business Development Center) management. Currently, Gina is affiliated with CallSource Automotive, a company renowned for improving service departments through call tracking and management. Her expertise lies in the strategic implementation of outbound and inbound communication processes that enhance customer service and retention in the automotive service sector!   The Critical Role of Service BDC in Optimizing Dealership Performance In the ever-evolving automotive landscape, dealerships must juggle various operational aspects to remain competitive. Among these, the importance of an effective Service Business Development Center (BDC) stands out. Integrating a service BDC addresses multiple dealership challenges, optimizing revenue and enhancing customer satisfaction. This thought leadership article delves into the core aspects of setting up and maintaining a successful service BDC, as highlighted in a recent discussion between Sean V. Bradley and Gina Anguilla. Key Takeaways Efficient service BDCs are pivotal for maintaining dealership revenue and customer satisfaction. Utilizing a specialized service BDC allows dealerships to manage appointment scheduling better and improve CSI scores. Outsourcing the service BDC can alleviate managerial burdens and enhance call handling effectiveness. The Imperative of Service BDC for Dealership Revenue Dealerships have various revenue streams, and fixed operations, including servicing, play a vital role. As Sean V. Bradley points out, "Nada says that fixed ops should be 65% of the dealership's overall revenue." This highlights the monumental contribution that the service department can make to the dealership's financial health. Yet, not all dealerships are equipped with an efficient service BDC to maximize this potential. Bradley argues that a well-structured service BDC can ensure that "more service appointments" get scheduled, aligning them with customer convenience rather than the commission-driven schedules of service writers. Expanding on this, Gina Anguilla notes that service departments are the "bread and butter" of dealerships. By focusing on the customer's needs rather than solely on sales, dealerships can foster an ecosystem that thrives on customer loyalty and repeat business. The repercussions of neglecting a service BDC are far-reaching. Without it, dealerships may struggle to manage operations effectively, thereby compromising customer satisfaction and potential revenue. Emphasizing a holistic approach, Bradley states, "You need to have both sides. You can't be at the gym and just working out your arms." This analogy underscores the need for a balanced focus on both sales and service components. Streamlining Service Scheduling to Enhance Customer Satisfaction A key function of a service BDC is managing service appointments efficiently. The traditional approach often results in service writers scheduling appointments based on their convenience, which is not always customer-centric. Bradley highlights, "A lot of times service writers don't make appointments for service that's the most convenient for the prospect." By employing a service BDC, dealerships can prioritize the customer's convenience, leading to enhanced Customer Service Index (CSI) scores. Anguilla emphasizes, "Having the service, having a BDC or a scheduling department… is the best way to make sure that your customers are serviced, that they're heard." Beyond just ensuring appointments are made, a service BDC facilitates a proactive approach to managing customer needs and dealership goals. By separating responsibilities between inbound scheduling and outbound service reminders, as Anguilla suggests, dealerships can ensure both immediate coordination and long-term customer retention goals are met. Outsourcing: A Strategic Move for Efficient BDC Operations For many dealerships, managing a BDC in-house can become daunting. Recruitment, training, and maintaining staff involve substantial ongoing efforts and financial investment. Outsourcing the BDC emerges as a strategic alternative, as indicated by Bradley and Anguilla. Outsourcing eliminates the need for dealerships to continually manage human resource challenges, allowing them to focus resources on core business activities. Bradley articulates this benefit, noting, "If you're not a service BDC expert, why are you going to fumble through it?" Instead, specialized outsourced BDC services, like those from CallSource, can provide reliable management and expertise. Moreover, outsourcing partners are often equipped with advanced technologies and training programs that in-house teams may lack. Anguilla echoes this sentiment by emphasizing that outsourced services ensure the management of "communication, connection retention" without the dealership bearing the brunt of those tasks. This approach not only improves the efficiency of call handling but also ensures consistent customer communication and service delivery. Building a Future-Ready Service BDC To build a successful service BDC, dealerships should begin by assessing their current service call handling capacities and identifying where improvements can be made. Sean V. Bradley and Gina Anguilla provide a pathway forward, where dealerships embrace a structured approach to both inbound and outbound service communication strategies. Introducing a service BDC begins with focusing on the core — efficient service scheduling. From there, expanding into proactive outbound communications such as service follow-ups and management of declined repairs ensures a comprehensive contact strategy. With these foundational elements, dealerships position themselves to improve customer retention and operational efficiency, driving long-term profitability. Increasingly, dealerships recognize that expert partners, equipped with advanced technology solutions and proven strategies, offer valuable support. By outsourcing service BDC operations, they leverage specialized expertise that enhances both customer experience and dealership revenue. With clear benefits in efficiency, cost, and performance, embracing a service BDC — whether through in-house teams or specialized partners — is an investment in a dealership's future success. In the competitive arena of automotive sales and service, a robust Service BDC model is no longer a luxury; it's a necessity for thriving in today's market.     Resources + Our Proud Sponsors: ➼ The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group: Join the #1 Automotive Sales Mastermind Facebook Group with over 29,000 automotive professionals worldwide. The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group is the go-to community for car salespeople, BDC agents, sales managers, general managers, and dealer principals looking to increase performance, income, and leadership skills. Inside the group, members collaborate daily on automotive sales strategies, lead handling, phone scripts, closing techniques, CRM best practices, dealership leadership, and accountability systems. Learn directly from top automotive trainers, industry mentors, and high-performing sales leaders who are actively winning in today's market. If you're serious about growing your automotive career, increasing car sales, and building long-term success, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today! ➼ Dealer Synergy: Dealer Synergy is the automotive industry's #1 Sales Training, Consulting, and Accountability Firm, with over 20 years of proven dealership success nationwide. We specialize in helping car dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing Sales, Internet, and BDC departments from the ground up. Our expertise includes automotive phone scripts, rebuttals, CRM action plans, lead handling strategies, BDC workflows, Internet sales processes, management training, and accountability systems. Dealer Synergy partners directly with dealership leadership to align people, process, and technology, ensuring consistent results and scalable growth. From independent dealers to large dealer groups and OEM partnerships, Dealer Synergy delivers measurable performance improvements, stronger teams, and sustainable profitability. ➼ Bradley On Demand: Bradley On Demand is the automotive industry's most advanced interactive training, tracking, testing, and certification platform for car dealerships — built to develop top-performing teams across Sales, Internet Sales, BDC, CRM, Phone Skills, Leadership, and Management. In addition to LIVE virtual automotive training classes and a library of 9,000+ on-demand dealership training modules, Bradley On Demand now includes AI Phone Roleplaying and Coaching to help salespeople and BDC agents practice real dealership conversations before they ever get on the phone with customers. This AI-powered roleplay technology strengthens phone scripts, objection handling, appointment setting, lead follow-up, and closing skills, while providing measurable coaching feedback for continuous improvement. Bradley On Demand empowers dealerships to train faster, coach smarter, improve call performance, increase closing ratios, and sell more cars more profitably — all through structured, trackable, modern automotive training.  

No programa de hoje, os professores Renato e Cristiane Cardoso responderam a pergunta da aluna Aline.Namorado reclama que ela é muito friaA aluna contou que ela e o namorado estão pensando em se casar. Aline relatou que as poucas vezes que o casal brigou foi por conta do comportamento dela. Ele diz que ela é muito fria em alguns momentos e que tem algum bloqueio que a impede de mostrar o amor dela por ele.Aline confessou que tem consciência disso, pois não foi criada em um ambiente com muita demonstração de afeto. Ela pediu ajuda, pois não sabe o que fazer para melhorar isso nela.Os professores analisaram a situação e aconselharam a aluna.Aluna está grávida e esposo não dá mais atençãoEm seguida, eles responderam a aluna Caroline, de Manaus, casada há 4 anos e grávida de 8 meses.Caroline disse estar muito cansada do seu relacionamento. A gravidez dela é de risco. E, neste momento, que precisa mais do esposo, ele não está dando atenção para ela. Começou um curso e quando ela tenta conversar, ele não responde. Agora, a aluna está pensando em se separar. Bem-vindos à ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Escola do Amor Responde⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, confrontando os mitos e a desinformação nos relacionamentos. Onde casais e solteiros aprendem o Amor Inteligente. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Renato e Cristiane Cardoso⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, apresentadores da ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Escolado Amor, na Record TV,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ e autores de ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Casamento Blindado e Namoro Blindado⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, tiram dúvidas e respondem perguntas dos alunos. Participe pelo siteEscoladoAmorResponde.com. Ouça todos os podcasts no iTunes: rna.to/EdARiTunes

Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda cover major offshore wind developments on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, Ørsted’s Revolution Wind won a court victory allowing construction to resume after the Trump administration’s suspension. Meanwhile, the UK awarded contracts for 8.4 gigawatts of new offshore capacity in the largest auction in European history, with RWE securing nearly 7 gigawatts. Plus Canada’s Nova Scotia announces ambitious 40 gigawatt offshore wind plans, and the crew discusses the ongoing Denmark-Greenland tensions with the US administration. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts, Alan Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxon and Yolanda Padron. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, along with Yolanda, Joel and Rosie. Boy, a lot of action in the US courts. And as you know, for weeks, American offshore wind has been holding its breath and a lot of people’s jobs are at stake right now. The Trump administration suspended, uh, five major projects on December 22nd, and still they’re still citing national security concerns. Billions of dollars are really in balance here. Construction vessels for most of these. Sites are just doing nothing at the minute, but the courts are stepping in and Sted won a [00:01:00] key victory when the federal judge allowed its revolution wind project off the coast of Rhode Island to resume construction immediately. So everybody’s excited there and it does sound like Osted is trying to finish that project as fast as they can. And Ecuador and Dominion Energy, which are two of the other bigger projects, are fighting similar battles. Ecuador is supposed to hear in the next couple of days as we’re recording. Uh, but the message is pretty clear from developers. They have invested too much to walk away, and if they get an opportunity to wrap these projects up quickly. They are going to do it now. Joel, before the show, we were talking about vineyard wind and vineyard. Wind was on hold, and I think it, it may not even be on hold right now, I have to go back and look. But when they were put on hold, uh, the question was, the turbines that were operating, were they able to continue operating? And the answer initially I thought was no. But it was yes, the, the turbines that were [00:02:00] producing power. We’re allowed to continue to produce powers. What was in the balance were the remaining turbines that were still being installed or, uh, being upgraded. So there’s, there’s a lot going on right now, but it does seem like, and back to your earlier point, Joel, before we start talking and maybe you can discuss this, we, there is an offshore wind farm called Block Island really closely all these other wind farms, and it’s been there for four or five years at this point. No one’s said anything about that wind farm.  Speaker: I think it’s been there, to be honest with you, since like 2016 or 17. It’s been there a long time. Is it that old? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we were talk, when we’ve been talking through and it gets lost in the shuffle and it shouldn’t, because that’s really the first offshore wind farm in the United States. We keep talking about all these big, you know, utility scale massive things, but that is a utility scale wind farm as well. There’s fi, correct me if I’m wrong, Yolanda, is it five turbos or six? It’s five. Their decent sized turbines are sitting on jackets. They’re just, uh, they’re, they’re only a couple miles offshore. They’re not way offshore. But throughout all of these issues that we’ve had, um, with [00:03:00] these injunctions and stopping construction and stopping this and reviewing permits and all these things, block Island has just been spinning, producing power, uh, for the locals there off the coast of Rhode Island. So we. What were our, the question was is, okay, all these other wind farms that are partially constructed, have they been spinning? Are they producing power? And my mind goes to this, um, as a risk reduction effort. I wonder if, uh, the cable, if the cable lay timelines were what they were. Right. So would you now, I guess as a risk reduction effort, and this seems really silly to have to think about this. If you have your offshore substation, was the, was the main export cable connected to some of these like revolution wind where they have the injunction right now? Was that export cable connected and were the inter array cables regularly connected to turbines and them coming online? Do, do, do, do, do. Like, it wasn’t like a COD, we turned the switch and we had to wait for all 62 turbines. Right. So to our [00:04:00] knowledge and, and, uh, please reach out to any of us on LinkedIn or an email or whatever to our knowledge. The turbines that are in production have still have been spinning. It’s the construction activities that have been stopped, but now. Hey, revolution wind is 90% complete and they’re back out and running, uh, on construction activities as of today. Speaker 2: It was in the last 48 hours. So this, this is a good sign because I think as the other wind farms go through the courts, they’re gonna essentially run through this, this same judge I that. Tends to happen because they have done all the research already. So you, you likely get the same outcome for all the other wind farms, although they have to go through the process. You can’t do like a class action, at least that’s doesn’t appear to be in play at the minute. Uh, they’re all gonna have to go through this little bit of a process. But what the judge is saying essentially is the concern from the Department of War, and then the Department of Interior is. [00:05:00] Make believe. I, I don’t wanna frame it. It’s not framed that way, the way it’s written. There’s a lot more legalistic terms about it. But it basically, they’re saying they tried to stop it before they didn’t get the result they wanted. The Trump administration didn’t get the result they wanted. So the Trump administration ramped it up by saying it was something that was classified in, in part of the Department of War. The judge isn’t buying it. So the, the, the early action. I think what we initially talked about this, everybody, I think the early feeling was they’re trying to stop it, but the fact that they’re trying to stop it just because, and just start pulling permits is not gonna stand outta the court. And when they want to come back and do it again, they’re not likely to win. If they would. Kept their ammunition dry and just from the beginning said it’s something classified as something defense related that Trump administration probably would’ve had a better shot at this. But now it just seems like everything’s just gonna lead down the pathway where all these projects get finished. Speaker: Yeah, I think that specific judge probably was listening to the [00:06:00] Uptime podcast last week for his research. Um, listen to, to our opinions that we talked about here, saying that this is kind of all bs. It’s not gonna fly. Uh, but what we’re sitting at here is like Revolution Wind was, had the injunction against it. Uh, empire Wind had an injunction again, but they were awaiting a similar ruling. So hopefully that’s actually supposed to go down today. That’s Wednesday. Uh, this is, so we’re recording this on Wednesday. Um, and then Dominion is, has, is suing as well, and their, uh, hearing is on Friday. In two, two days from now. And I would expect, I mean, it’s the same, same judge, same piece of papers, like it’s going to be the same result. Some numbers to throw at this thing. Now, just so the listeners know the impact of this, uh, dominion for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, they say that their pause in construction is costing them $5 million a day, and that is. That’s a pretty round number. It’s a conservative number to be honest with you. For officer operations, how many vessels and how much stuff is out there? That makes sense. Yep. [00:07:00] 5 million. So $5 million a day. And that’s one of the wind farms. Uh, coastal, Virginia Wind Farm is an $11 billion project. With, uh, it’s like 176 turbines. I think something to that, like it’s, it’s got enough power, it’s gonna have enough production out there to power up, like, uh, like 650,000 homes when it’s done. So there’s five projects suspended right now. I’m continuing with the numbers. Um, well, five, there’s four now. Revolution’s back running, right? So five and there’s four. Uh, four still stopped. And of those five is 28. Billion dollars in combined capital at risk, right? So you can understand why some of these companies are worried, right? They’re this is, this is not peanuts. Um, so you saw a little bump in like Ted stock in the markets when this, this, uh, revolution wind, uh, injunction was stopped. Uh, but. You also see that, uh, Moody’s is a credit [00:08:00] rating. They’ve lowered ORs, Ted’s um, rating from stable to negative, given that political risk.  Speaker 2: Well, if you haven’t been paying attention, wind energy O and m Australia 2026 is happening relatively soon. It’s gonna be February 17th and 18th. It’s gonna be at the Pullman Hotel downtown Melbourne. And we are all looking forward to it. The, the roster and the agenda is, is nearly assembled at this point. Uh, we have a, a couple of last minute speakers, but uh, I’m looking at the agenda and like, wow, if you work in o and m or even are around wind turbines, this is the place to be in February. From my  Speaker: seat. It’s pretty, it’s, it’s, it’s shaping up for pretty fun. My phone has just been inundated with text message and WhatsApp of when are you traveling? What are your dates looking forward to, and I wanna say this right, Rosie. Looking forward to Melvin. Did I get it? Did I do it okay.  Speaker 3: You know how to say it.  Speaker: So, so we’re, we’re really looking forward to, we’ve got a bunch of people traveling from around the [00:09:00] world, uh, to come and share their collective knowledge, uh, and learn from the Australians about how they’re doing things, what the, what the risks are, what the problems are, uh, really looking forward to the environment down there, like we had last year was very. Collaborative, the conversations are flowing. Um, so we’re looking forward to it, uh, in a big way from our seats. Over here,  Speaker 2: we are announcing a lightning workshop, and that workshop will be answering all your lightning questions in regards to your turbines Now. Typically when we do this, it’s about $10,000 per seat, and this will be free as part of WMA 2026. We’re gonna talk about some of the lightning physics, what’s actually happening in the field versus what the OEMs are saying and what the IEC specification indicates. And the big one is force majeure. A lot of operators are paying for damages that are well within the IEC specification, and we’ll explain.[00:10:00] What that is all about and what you can do to save yourself literally millions of dollars. But that is only possible if you go to Woma 2020 six.com and register today because we’re running outta seats. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. But this is a great opportunity to get your lightning questions answered. And Rosemary promised me that we’re gonna talk about Vestus turbines. Siemens turbines. GE Renova turbines. Nordex turbines. So if you have Nordex turbines, Sulan turbines, bring the turbine. Type, we’ll talk about it. We’ll get your questions answered, and the goal is that everybody at at Wilma 2026 is gonna go home and save themselves millions of dollars in 26 and millions of dollars in 27 and all the years after, because this Lightning workshop is going to take care of those really frustrating lightning questions that just don’t get answered. We’re gonna do it right there. Sign up today.  Speaker 3: [00:11:00] You know what, I’m really looking forward to that session and especially ’cause I’ve got a couple of new staff or new-ish staff at, it’s a great way to get them up to speed on lightning. And I think that actually like the majority of people, even if you are struggling with lightning problems every day, I bet that there is a whole bunch that you could learn about the underlying physics of lightning. And there’s not so many places to find that in the world. I have looked, um, for my staff training, where is the course that I can send them to, to understand all about lightning? I know when I started atm, I had a, an intro session, one-on-one with the, you know, chief Lightning guy there. That’s not so easy to come by, and this is the opportunity where you can get that and better because it’s information about every, every OEM and a bit of a better understanding about how it works so that you can, you know, one of the things that I find working with Lightning is a lot of force MA mature claims. And then, um, the OEMs, they try and bamboozle you with this like scientific sounding talk. If you understand better, then you’ll be able to do better in those discussions. [00:12:00] So I would highly recommend attending if you can swing the Monday as well.  Speaker: If you wanna attend now and you’re coming to the events. Reach out to, you can reach out to me directly because what we want to do now is collect, uh, as much information as possible about the specific turbine types of the, that the people in the room are gonna be responsible for. So we can tailor those messages, um, to help you out directly. So feel free to reach out to me, joel.saxo, SAXU m@wglightning.com and uh, we’ll be squared away and ready to roll on Monday. I think that’s Monday the 16th.  Speaker 2: So while American offshore wind fights for survival in the courts, British offshore wind just had its biggest day ever. The United Kingdom awarded contracts for 8.4 gigawatts. That’s right. 8.4 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity, the largest auction in European history. Holy smokes guys. The price came in at about 91 pounds per megawatt hour, and that’s 2024 pounds. [00:13:00] Uh, and that’s roughly 40% cheaper than building a new. Gas plant Energy Secretary Ed Milliband called it a monumental step towards the country’s 2030 clean power goals and that it is, uh, critics say that prices are still higher than previous auctions, and one that the government faces challenges connecting all this new capacity to the grid, and they do, uh, transmission is a limiting factor here, but in terms of where the UK is headed. Putting in gigawatts of offshore wind is going to disconnect them from a lot of need on the gas supply and other energy sources. It’s a massive auction round. This was way above what I remember being, uh. Talked about when we were in Scotland just a couple of weeks ago, Joel.  Speaker: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. You know, when we were, when we were up with the, or E Catapult event, and we talked to a lot of the different organizations of their OWGP and um, you know, the course, the or e Catapult folks and, and, and a [00:14:00] few others, they were really excited about AR seven. They were like, oh, we’re, we’re so excited. It’s gonna come down, it’s gonna be great. I didn’t expect these kind of numbers to come out of this thing. Right? ’cause we know that, um, they’ve got about, uh, the UK currently has about. 16 and a half or so gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, um, with, you know, they got a bunch under construction, it’s like 11 under construction, but their goal is to have 43 gigawatts by 2030. So,  Speaker 2: man.  Speaker: Yeah. And, and when 2030, put this into Conte Con context now. This is one of our first podcasts of the new year. That’s only four years away. Right. It’s soon. And, and to, to be able to do that. So you’re saying they got 16, they go some round numbers. They got 16 now. Pro producing 11 in the pipe, 11 being constructed. So get that to 27. That’s another 16 gigawatts of wind. They want, they that are not under construction today that they want to have completed in the next four years. That is a monumental effort now. We know that there’s some grid grid complications and connection [00:15:00] requirements and things that will slow that down, but just thinking about remove the grid idea, just thinking about the amount of effort to get those kind of large capital projects done in that short of timeline. Kudos to the UK ’cause they’re unlocking a lot of, um, a lot of private investment, a lot of effort to get these things, but they’re literally doing the inverse of what we’re doing in the United States right now.  Speaker 2: There would be about a total of 550, 615 ish megawatt turbines in the water. That does seem doable though. The big question is who’s gonna be providing those turbines? That’s a. Massive order. Whoever the salesperson is involved in that transaction is gonna be very happy. Well, the interesting thing here  Speaker: too is the global context of assets to be able to deliver this. We just got done talking about the troubles at these wind farms in the United States. As soon as these. Wind farms are finished. There’s not more of them coming to construction phase shortly, right? So all of these assets, all these jack up vessels, these installation vessels, these specialized cable lay vessels, they [00:16:00]can, they can fuel up and freaking head right across, back across the Atlantic and start working on these things. If the pre all of the engineering and, and the turbine deliveries are ready to roll the vessels, uh, ’cause that you, that, you know, two years ago that was a problem. We were all. Forecasting. Oh, we have this forecasted problem of a shortage of vessels and assets to be able to do installs. And now with the US kind of, basically, once we’re done with the wind farms, we’re working on offshore, now we’re shutting it down. It frees those back up, right? So the vessels will be there, be ready to roll. You’ll have people coming off of construction projects that know what’s going on, right? That, that know how to, to work these things. So the, the people, the vessels that will be ready to roll it is just, can we get the cables, the mono piles, the turbines and the cells, the blades, all done in time, uh, to make this happen And, and. I know I’m rambling now, but after leaving that or e Catapult event and talking to some of the people, um, that are supporting those [00:17:00] funds over there, uh, being injected from the, uh, the government, I think that they’ve got  Speaker 2: the, the money flowing over there to get it done too. The big winner in the auction round was RWE and they. Almost seven gigawatts. So that was a larger share of the 8.4 gigawatts. RWE obviously has a relationship with Vestus. Is that where this is gonna go? They’re gonna be, uh, installing vestus turbines. And where were those tur turbines? As I was informed by Scottish gentlemen, I won’t name names. Uh, will those turbines be built in the uk? Speaker 3: It’s a lot. It’s a, it’s one of the biggest challenges with, um, the supply chain for wind energy is that it just is so lumpy. So, you know, you get, um, uh. You get huge eight gigawatts all at once and then you have years of, you know, just not much. Not much, not much going on. I mean, for sure they’re not gonna be just building [00:18:00] eight gigawatts worth of, um, wind turbines in the UK in the next couple of years because they would also have to build the capacity to manufacture that and, and then would wanna be building cocks every couple of years for, you know, the next 10 or 20 years. So, yeah, of course they’re gonna be manufacturing. At facilities around the world and, and transporting them. But, um, yeah, I just, I don’t know. It’s one of the things that I just. Constantly shake my head about is like, how come, especially when projects are government supported, when plans are government supported, why, why can’t we do a better job of smoothing things out so that you can have, you know, for example, local manufacturing because everyone knows that they’ve got a secure pipeline. It’s just when the government’s involved, it should be possible.  Speaker 2: At least the UK has been putting forth some. Pretty big numbers to support a local supply chain. When we were over in Scotland, they announced 300 million pounds, and that was just one of several. That’s gonna happen over the next year. There will be a [00:19:00] near a billion pounds be put into the supply chain, which will make a dramatic difference. But I think you’re right. Also, it’s, they’re gonna ramp up and then they, it’s gonna ramp down. They have to find a way to feed the global marketplace at some point, be because the technology and the people are there. It’s a question of. How do you sustain it for a 20, 30 year period? That’s a different question. Speaker 3: I do agree that the UK is doing a better job than probably anybody else. Um, it it’s just that they, the way that they have chosen to organize these auctions and the government support and the planning just means that they have that, that this is the perfect conditions to, you know. Make a smooth rollout and you know, take care of all this. And so I just a bit frustrated that they’re not doing more. But you are right that they’re doing the best probably  Speaker 4: once all of these are in service though, aren’t there quite a bit of aftermarket products that are available in the UK  Speaker: on the service then? I think there’s more.  Speaker 4: Which, I mean, that’s good. A good part of it, right? Speaker: If we’re talking Vestas, so, so let’s just round this [00:20:00] up too. If we’re talking vest’s production for blades in Europe, you have two facilities in Denmark that build V 2 36 blades. You have one facility in Italy that builds V 2 36 blades, Taiwan, but they build them for the APAC market. Of course. Um, Poland had a, has one on hold right now, V 2 36 as well. Well, they just bought that factory from LM up in Poland also. That’s, but I think that’s for onshore term, onshore blades. Oh, yes, sure. And then Scotland has, they have the proposed facility in, in Laith. That there, that’s kind of on hold as well. So if that one’s proposed, I’m sure, hey, if we get a big order, they’ll spin that up quick because they’ll get, I am, I would imagine someone o you know, one of the, one of the funds to spool up a little bit of money, boom, boom, boom. ’cause they’re turning into local jobs. Local supply  Speaker 2: chain does this then create the condition where a lot of wind turbines, like when we were in Scotland, a lot of those wind turbines are. Gonna reach 20 years old, maybe a little bit older here over the next five years where they will [00:21:00] need to be repowered upgraded, whatever’s gonna happen there. If you had internal manufacturing. In country that would, you’d think lower the price to go do that. That will be a big effort just like it is in Spain right now.  Speaker: The trouble there though too, is if you’re using local content in, in the uk, the labor prices are so much  Speaker 2: higher. I’m gonna go back to Rosie’s point about sort of the way energy is sold worldwide. UK has high energy prices, mostly because they are buying energy from other countries and it’s expensive to get it in country. So yes, they can have higher labor prices and still be lower cost compared to the alternatives. It, it’s not the same equation in the US versus uk. It’s, it’s totally different economics, but. If they get enough power generation, which I think the UK will, they’re gonna offload that and they’re already doing it now. So you can send power to France, send power up [00:22:00] north. There’s ways to sell that extra power and help pay for the system you built. That would make a a lot of sense. It’s very similar to what the Saudis have done for. Dang near 80 years, which is fill tankers full of oil and sell it. This is a little bit different that we’re just sending electrons through the water to adjacent European countries. It does seem like a plan. I hope they’re sending ’em through a cable in the water and not just into the water. Well, here’s the thing that was concerning early on. They’re gonna turn it into hydrogen and put it on a ship and send it over to France. Like that didn’t make any sense at all. Uh. Cable’s on the way to do it. Right.  Speaker: And actually, Alan, you and I did have a conversation with someone not too long ago about that triage market and how the project where they put that, that that trans, that HVDC cable next to the tunnel it, and it made and it like paid for itself in a year or something. Was that like, that they didn’t wanna really tell us like, yeah, it paid for itself in a year. Like it was a, the ROI was like on a, like a $500 million [00:23:00]project or something. That’s crazy. Um, but yeah, that’s the same. That’s, that is, I would say part of the big push in the uk there is, uh, then they can triage that power and send it, send it back across. Um, like I think Nord Link is the, the cable between Peterhead and Norway, right? So you have, you have a triage market going across to the Scandinavian countries. You have the triage market going to mainland eu. Um, and in when they have big time wind, they’re gonna be able to do it. So when you have an RWE. Looking at seven gigawatts of, uh, possibility that they just, uh, just procured. Game on. I love it. I think it’s gonna be cool. I’m, I’m happy to see it blow  Speaker 2: up. Canada is getting serious about offshore wind and international developers are paying attention. Q Energy, France and its South Korean partner. Hawa Ocean have submitted applications to develop wind projects off Nova Scotia’s Coast. The province has big ambitions. Premier, Tim Houston wants to license enough. Offshore [00:24:00] wind to produce 40 gigawatts of power far more than Nova Scotia would ever need. Uh, the extra electricity could supply more than a quarter of Canada’s total demand. If all goes according to plan, the first turbines could be spinning by 2035. Now, Joel. Yeah, some of this power will go to Canada, but there’s a huge market in the United States also for this power and the capacity factor up in Nova Scotia offshore is really good. Yeah. It’s uh, it  Speaker: is simply, it’s stellar, right? Uh, that whole No, Nova Scotia, new Brunswick, Newfoundland, that whole e even Maritimes of Canada. The wind, the wind never stops blowing, right? Like I, I go up there every once in a while ’cause my wife is from up there and, uh, it’s miserable sometimes even in the middle of summer. Um, so the, the wind resource is fantastic. The, it, it is a boom or will be a boom for the Canadian market, right? There’re always [00:25:00] that maritime community, they’re always looking for, for, uh, new jobs. New jobs, new jobs. And this is gonna bring them to them. Um, one thing I wanna flag here is when I know this, when this announcement came out. And I reached out to Tim Houston’s office to try to get him on the podcast, and I haven’t gotten a response yet. Nova Scotia. So if someone that’s listening can get ahold of Tim Houston, we’d love to talk to him about the plans for Nova Scotia. Um, but, but we see that just like we see over overseas, the triage market of we’re making power, we can sell it. You know, we balance out the prices, we can sell it to other places. From our seats here we’ve been talking about. The electricity demand on the east coast of the United States for, for years and how it is just climbing, climbing, climbing, especially AI data centers. Virginia is a hub of this, right? They need power and we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, foot for offshore wind, plus also canceling pipelines and like there’s no extra generation going on there except for some solar plants where you can squeeze ’em in down in the Carolinas and whatnot. [00:26:00] There is a massive play here for the Canadians to be able to HVD see some power down to us. Speaker 2: The offshore conditions off the coast of Nova Scotia are pretty rough, and the capacity factor being so high makes me think of some of the Brazilian wind farms where the capacity factor is over 50%. It’s amazing down there, but one of the outcomes of that has been early turbine problems. And I’m wondering if the Nova Scotia market is going to demand a different kind of turbine that is specifically built for those conditions. It’s cold, really cold. It’s really windy. There’s a lot of moisture in the air, right? So the salt is gonna be bad. Uh, and then the sea life too, right? There’s a lot of, uh, sea life off the coast of the Nova Scotia, which everybody’s gonna be concerned about. Obviously, as this gets rolling. How do we think about this? And who’s gonna be the manufacturer of turbines for Canada? Is it gonna be Nordics? Well,  Speaker: let’s start from the ground up there. So from the or ground up, it’s, how about sea [00:27:00] floor up? Let’s start from there. There is a lot of really, really, if you’ve ever worked in the offshore world, the o offshore, maritime Canadian universities that focus on the, on offshore construction, they produce some of the best engineers for those markets, right? So if you go down to Houston, Texas where there’s offshore oil and gas companies and engineering companies everywhere, you run into Canadians from the Maritimes all over the place ’cause they’re really good at what they do. Um, they are developing or they have developed offshore oil and gas platforms. Off of the coast of Newfoundland and up, up in that area. And there’s some crazy stuff you have to compete with, right? So you have icebergs up there. There’s no icebergs in the North Atlantic that like, you know, horn seats, internet cruising through horn C3 with icebergs. So they’ve, they’ve engineered and created foundations and things that can deal with that, those situations up there. But you also have to remember that you’re in the Canadian Shield, which is, um, the Canadian Shield is a geotechnical formation, right? So it’s very rocky. Um, and it’s not [00:28:00] like, uh, the other places where we’re putting fixed bottom wind in where you just pound the piles into the sand. That’s not how it’s going to go, uh, up in Canada there. So there’s some different engineering that’s going to have to take place for the foundations, but like you said, Alan Turbine specific. It blows up there. Right. And we have seen onshore, even in the United States, when you get to areas that have high capacity burning out main bearings, burning out generators prematurely because the capacity factor is so high and those turbines are just churning. Um, I, I don’t know if any of the offshore wind turbine manufacturers are adjusting any designs specifically for any markets. I, I just don’t know that. Um, but they may run into some. Some tough stuff up there, right? You might run into some, some overspeeding main bearings and some maintenance issues, specifically in the wintertime ’cause it is nasty up there. Speaker 2: Well, if you have 40 gigawatts of capacity, you have several thousand turbines, you wanna make sure really [00:29:00] sure that the blade design is right, that the gearbox is right if you have a gearbox, and that everything is essentially over-designed, heated. You can have deicing systems on it, I would assume that would be something you would be thinking about. You do the same thing for the monopoles. The whole assembly’s gotta be, have a, just a different thought process than a turbine. You would stick off the coast of Germany. Still rough conditions at times, but not like Nova Scotia.  Speaker: One, one other thing there to think about too that we haven’t dealt with, um. In such extreme levels is the, the off the coast of No. Nova Scotia is the Bay of Fundee. If you know anything about the Bay of Fundee, it is the highest tide swings in the world. So the tide swings at certain times of the year, can be upwards of 10 meters in a 12 hour period in this area of, of the ocean. And that comes with it. Different time, different types of, um, one of the difficult things for tide swings is it creates subsid currents. [00:30:00] Subsid currents are, are really, really, really bad, nasty. Against rocks and for any kind of cable lay activities and longevity of cable lay scour protection around turbines and stuff like that. So that’s another thing that subsea that we really haven’t spoke about.  Speaker 3: You know, I knew when you say Bay Bay of funding, I’m like, I know that I have heard that place before and it’s when I was researching for. Tidal power videos for Tidal Stream. It’s like the best place to, to generate electricity from. Yeah, from Tidal Stream. So I guess if you are gonna be whacking wind turbines in there anyway, maybe you can share some infrastructure and Yeah. Eca a little bit, a little bit more from your, your project.  Speaker 2: that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas. We’d love to hear from you. Just reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show For Rosie, Yolanda and Joel, I’m Alan Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime [00:36:00] Wind Energy Podcast.

In this episode, Kaylee Felio sits down with Gretchen Seidel of NADA for an energetic, insightful conversation covering everything from personal passion for cars, overcoming industry challenges, building meaningful connections, to the mechanics of successful networking.Kaylee and Gretchen discuss the importance of owning your story, women's leadership, leveraging your circle, and why fixed ops is finally taking center stage in dealerships. Discover how to elevate your career, boost your confidence, and empower the next generation—plus, get an inside look at the Women Driving Vehicle Retail Event at NADA.You'll also get fun stories about classic cars, organizing obsessions, and using Lego builds to encourage the next wave of automotive techs.--------------------------------------------This show is powered by PartsEdge: Your go-to solution for transforming dealership parts inventory into a powerhouse of profitability. Our strategies are proven to amp up parts sales by a whopping 20%, all while cutting down on idle inventory. If you're looking to optimize your parts management, visit

Allen and Joel are joined by Pete Andrews, Managing Director at EchoBolt. They discuss the company’s new BoltWave inspection device, the shift from routine retightening to condition-based monitoring, and how ultrasonic technology helps operators manage blade stud and tower bolt integrity throughout the turbine lifecycle. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Pete Andrews: Pete, welcome to the program. Good to be back. Yeah. See you face to face. Yeah. Yes. This is wonderful. It’s a really great event to catch it with loads of the. UK innovation that are happening in the supply chain. So it’s, yeah, really nice to be here.  Allen Hall: This is really good to meet in person because we have seen a lot of bolt issues in the us, Canada, Australia, yeah. Uh, all around the world and every time bolt problems come up, I say, have you called Pete Andrews and Echo Bolt and gotten the kit to detect bolt issues? And then who’s Pete? Give me Pete’s phone number. Okay, sure. Uh, but now that we’re here in person, a lot has changed since we first talked to you probably two years ago.[00:01:00] You’re a bootstrap company based in the UK that has global presence, and I, I think it’s a good start to explain what the technology is and why Echo Bolt matters so much in today’s world.  Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as you said, we’re a uk, um, SME, there’s a team of 13 of us based here in the uk. Yeah. But we do deliver our services internationally, but really focused on Northern Europe. Yeah. But increasingly we’ve done more in the US and North America, a little bit in Canada. Um, but our big offering really is to help wind turbine operators and owners reduce the need to routinely retire in bulks. So we have a quick and simple inspection technology that people can deploy, find out the status of their bolt connections, and then. Reti them if necessary, but the vast majority of the time we find that they’re static and absolutely fine and can be left [00:02:00] alone. So it’s a real big efficiency boost for wind operators.  Joel Saxum: Well, you’re doing things by prescription now, right? Instead of just blanket cover, we’re gonna do all of this. It’s like, let’s work on the ones that actually need to be worked on. Let’s do the, the work that we actually need to, and instead of lugging, like we’re looking at the kit right here, and I can, you can hold the case in one hand, let alone the tools in a couple of fingers. As opposed to torque tensioning tools that are this big, they weigh a hundred kilos, and those come with all of their own problems. So I know that you guys said you’re, you’re focused here. You do a lot of work, um, in the offshore wind world as well. Yeah. I mean, offshore wind is where you add a zero right? To zeros. Yeah. Everything else is that much more complicated. It costs that much more. It’s you’re transitioning people offshore to the transition pieces. Like there’s so much more HSE risk, dollar risk, all of these different spend things. So. The Echo Bolt systems, these different tools that you have being developed and utilized here first make absolute sense, but now you guys are starting to go to onshore as well.  Pete Andrews: Yeah, that’s right. So I mean, as as you said, that there’s really [00:03:00] three main benefit areas we focus on. The first one is the health and safety of technicians, right? As you said, some of the fasteners used offshore now are up to MA hundred. So a hundred millimeter diameter bolts,  Joel Saxum: four inches for our American friends. Yeah, absolutely.  Pete Andrews: And they probably weigh. 30 kilos plus per bolt. Yeah. Um, so just the physical manual handling of that sort of equipment and the tightening equipment for those bolts is a huge risk for people. If you think 150 bolts lifting or maneuvering, the tooling around on on its own can cause all the problems. So as well as the inherent risk of the hydraulic kit failing. So occasionally we see catastrophic tool failure. Is, which have really high potential severity, you know, sort of tensioner heads ejecting or crush injuries from Tor. So that is really a key focus for our customers, just to [00:04:00] keep their teams safe, but also you have to be the cost effective and the the major cost benefit we allow is that we don’t have to revisit every bolt and every turbine like you’d have to do if you were retyping. So we believe there’s something of the order of a million pounds per installed gigawatt saving. By moving from a routine REIT uh, maintenance strategy to a focused condition based inspection, you significantly reduce the amount of intervention you make and keep your turbines running more and reduce the boots on the ground on the turbine. So three real kind of, um, key. Benefits for people adopting our technology  Allen Hall: because we routinely see tower bolts being reworked or retention depending on who the manufacturer is. And I’m watching this go on. I’m like, why are [00:05:00] we doing this? It seems, or the 10% rule, we’re tighten 10% this year, and they’ll come back and see how it’s going. That’s a little insane, right, because you’re just kind of. Tensioning bolts up to see if one of them has a problem and then you just do more of them and we’re wasting so much time because echo bolts figured this out years ago. You don’t need to do that. You can tell what the tension is in a bolt ultrasonically, which was the original technology, the first gen I’ll call it, uh, that you could tell the length of the bolt. If the length of the bolt is correct within certain parameters, you know that it is tension properly. If it’s shrunk, that probably means it’s not tensioned properly. That’s a huge advantage because you can’t physically see it. And I know I’ve seen technicians go, oh, I could take a hammer and I can tell you which ones are not tensioned properly wrong. Wrong. And I think that’s where equitable comes in because you’re actually applying a a lot of science simply [00:06:00] to a complex problem because the numbers are so big. Pete Andrews: Yeah, I mean that, that, that’s been the real. Driving force between our offering is to simplify it. So ultimately we’re based on a non-destructive testing technique. It’s an ultrasonic thickness checking technique, but when from the non-destructive testing background, it’s crack detection, people have time, they can be, it’s a very precision measurement. People have to be trained in the wind industry. We’re trying to inspect. A thousand, 2000 bolts a day at scale. It’s a completely different, um, ask of the technology and the way the technology has been developed historically has required too much technician expertise, too much configuration and set up time, and hasn’t delivered on the, on the speed that’s needed to be efficient in wind. And that’s where our bolt wave [00:07:00] unit we’ve, that we’ve developed over the last. 18 months, let’s say, where all of our focus has gone to make it as slick and as easy for a client technician to pick up with minimal training. It’s through an iOS interface. Everyone understands it intuitively. Um, it’s a bit like using the camera app on your phone. You know, you’re just hitting measure, measure, measure, measure, measure 10 seconds a bolt as you move the, um, ultrasonic transducer across, and then the data gets moved. Automatically to the cloud, to our bolt platform. And customers can view it in near real time. The engineer in the office can see the inspections happened. They can see if there are any anomalous bolts, and then there can be communication there and then whether an intervention is necessary. So it’s sort of really changed the way our customers think about managing their, um. They’re bolted joints.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think these are, these are the kind of innovations that we love to see, right? Because [00:08:00] we regularly talk about a shortage of technicians, and this isn’t, I was just learning this this week too, like this is not a wind problem. This is a everywhere problem. No matter what industry you’re in. Use are short of technicians. But we’re seeing like a tool like this is developed to be able to scale that workforce as well. Right. You don’t need to be an NDT level three expert to go and do these things. ’cause there’s a very few of those people out there. Right? Right. We know the NDT people, a lot of NDT people, and that’s a hard skillset to come by. Yeah. This can be put in the hands of any technician. Yeah, a quick training course. Just, Hey, this is how you use your iPhone. You can check Instagram, right? Yeah. Okay. You can off figure. Yeah, have fun. See you at lunch. Um, but they can, they can make this happen, right? They can go do these inspections and you’re getting that, that, uh, data collected in the field. Centralized back to an SME that’s looking at it and you don’t have to put that SME in the field and try to scale their ability to go and travel and do all these things. They can be in the office making sure that the, the QA, QC is done correctly. I love it. I think that that’s the way we need to go with a lot of things. [00:09:00]Uh, and you’re making it happen.  Pete Andrews: Yeah. And it’s a real kind of. F change in mindset for us. So originally when we started Ebot, we were using third party hardware. Yeah. Which required a bit of that specialism. Yeah. A bit of care about the setup of the project, getting multiple parameters configured before you got going. And it wasn’t really something we could put in the hands of a customer.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Pete Andrews: Which meant Ebot scale was limited to what our own team could go and do, and regionally as well. You know, so we’re UK based. Probably 60% of our customers are uk, but now we have this Northern Europe offshore wind is obviously on our doorstep, but then increasingly we’ve done more and more in North America, so we’ve probably been to five or six sites now in North America and expect that to be a growth market because we can, we can now ship the devices over there, give some virtual training help. Uh, [00:10:00] people set themselves up and then that opens up that market, you know, so it’s been a real change in strategy for us, but has allowed us to have far more impact than we otherwise would just try to be a pure service.  Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk about the big problem in the states of a minute, which are the root bushing or inserts that are loose in some blades. When you lose that pushing, you also lose the tension on the bolt that can be measured. Is that something you’re getting involved with quite a bit now because of just trying to determine how many bolts are affected and, and where we are on the safety scale of can we run this turbine or not? Is that something that EE bolt’s been looking into? Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So I, I’d say there’s sort of two halves of what we do. There’s the, there’s the bulk wholesale monitoring of. Typically static connections to eliminate this routine retitling where it’s not needed typically, typically. But then we have these edge cases of certain [00:11:00] connections and certain platforms that have known bolt integrity problems, and we are working with clients to really, um, manage those integrity risks. Blade stud is an absolute classic, you know, sort of, I think almost every turbine OEM on some, if not all of their platforms has got. Embedded risk into their blades, pitch bearing connections. Um, so yeah, exactly as you said, our customers are using the technology for two things really. One is to ensure the bolts have been tightened to the preload that was specified or the target window. And quite often we find there is an opportunity to increase the preload and therefore increase the resistance to fatigue failure. So. You know, particularly on older sites where the bolts perhaps not in the condition they were on day one. Well, they definitely won’t be. Um, when people have gone and retti them, they haven’t got back to where they, they should be.[00:12:00] So we can prove that and increase a bit of that resilience, but then also start to look for the segments around the joint where, um, the bolt might start loosening or failures are occurring, and find areas where they can really hone in. And actively manage risk. And that sort of leads to what we’ve decided to do for the next year, particularly with Blade Stud in mind, is evolve this technology. So whilst it’s also measuring the elongation, we will do a defect scan at the same time. So you’ll monitor your blade stu, um, connection and we’re hoping that we can set the device to flag to you there and then. We believe this bulk has got a defect while you’re here, get it changed out before it fails and, and all the knock on problems, um, from there. Joel Saxum: So what you’re just pointing to there is a, is a workflow, right? So to me that is typical [00:13:00] of some of the amazing, innovative companies in the UK that I’ve run into throughout my career. And that is, you’re a group of SMEs, you know, bolted connections. That’s what you do, right? But then you’re like, hey. If there’s a tool, we could make a tool that would make our lives a bit easier, then it’s like, well, we could make the entire industry’s lives a little bit easier as well. So let’s iterate on that. And now you’re able to send these kits around the world to look at these things. Hey, you have a problem with this specific model. We can help you with this because we know the failure mode and we know how to look for it. Let’s do that for you. Also here, you’re doing bolt bulk measurements. We got that for you. But it all kind of flows back to the fact that Echo Bolt is a team. A bolted connection, SMEs that are making tools and being able to also provide consulting if need be. Yeah. Right. Um, to, to an entire industry. And I think that, um, this is my take on it, right? Wind is stop number one. I think you guys are gonna do a fantastic year, but there’s a lot of, uh, opportunity out there in bolted [00:14:00] connections as well. Allen Hall: A tremendous amount blade bolts being broken from defects in the crystalline structure. What appears to be a more. Rapidly developing issue across fleets that I’ve seen. I went to a farm this summer and the number of blade bolts that were there on the table that were broken on the conference room table was And the whiteboard office. Yeah. Yeah. This one,  Joel Saxum: this one.  Allen Hall: Your hard head is not gonna protect you from this one. It’s, it’s, it was this, um, I couldn’t imagine the amount of time they were spending hunting these things down. And of course, the only way they were finding ’em was they were broken. You like to catch ’em before they break because it becomes  Joel Saxum: a safety risk. Just not too long ago we saw an insurance case where there’s an RCA going on and it is pointing at an entire tower came down. Right. And it is pointing at a mid, mid tower section bolted connection. How often do you guys run into those problems? Or are you contacted by insurance companies or anything like that to, to take a peek at those? Pete Andrews: We haven’t done anything directly for insurance [00:15:00]companies, but we have been engaged by. Engineering consultancies that are doing RCA type activities. Okay. Um, things like at the end of defect liability periods mm-hmm. A customer has, has seen, they’ve had a lot of, uh, issues from an OEM, maybe an OE EM has offered a modification or an upgrade, assessing whether that upgrade is actually solved the problem or not. We’ve got involved in, um, but the tower. Issue specifically. It’s actually very rare we find, um, problems with tower connections, but where we do is often where they haven’t achieved good flange flatness, ah, during installation or the bolts have been, let’s say, left out in the elements for a period and lubrication has been, has deteriorated before the bolt’s been installed. So there are cases out there, but what I would say is. [00:16:00] To think about your whole life cycle, so ensure the bolt’s installed correctly and we can help with that with a QA to say, yes, this torque or tightening method has got you to the load that you want. Do some through life monitoring, but often if you install it correctly, it will it’s operational life. You will have very little concern. But then in the UK market, we’re increasingly getting involved again at the end of life, right? Life extension where life extension turbines are 20, 25 years old. How does an operator make a decision to carry on running without replacing all bots? Um, and that’s where increasingly we being asked to use the technologist just to say, actually the joint is fine. The bolts have run in a good, um, operational envelope. Run them on. Don’t replace a hundred percent of them like you might have been recommended to from your, um, yeah. Turbine supplier side. [00:17:00] Allen Hall: So Pete, if someone’s doing a repower where they’re basically putting a new one in the cell on an existing tower, they’re making a lot of assumptions about all the bolts from the ground up that they’re gonna be okay. And I know we’re talking about that. We’re in a lot of installations where. If the turbine has gone through a repowered or two. So now those bolts are 20 years old. Yeah. And trying to get ’em to  Joel Saxum: 30 35. 35  Allen Hall: 40. Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing. By those bolted connections. Are they just like replacing the bolts? Are they hitting ’em with a hammer again? Is that the, yeah,  Pete Andrews: I mean, they might replace ’em, but you’ve got a problem with the foundation bolts. ’cause they’re obviously often anchor bolts set into concrete, so you have to reuse them and. With the projects, both in wind and in process power industry with the chimney stacks to try and ascertain whether foundation bolts that are set into concrete are still suitable for operations. So look for corrosion losses, look for [00:18:00] defects. Um, so yeah, they’re all things that need thinking about before you just make the snap decision to repower. But I think  Joel Saxum: a lot of that, uh, going back to a couple minutes ago, you were talking about at the commissioning phase, making sure that you have proper qa, QC of how these things were installed day one, and then making sure that before commissioning of a turbine, they’re checked. I think that’s really important. We’re starting to see that in the blade world now too, where we’ve been talking about it for a long time, and now when you talk to operators, they’re like, we’re getting inspections done on the blades before they’re hung. Or at the factory before they’re hung. After they’re hung. Like they want a good foundation baseline. Are you seeing that in the bolted connection world too?  Pete Andrews: Yes. Sort of. It’s just emerging for us. What we’ve found is, so most of our customers are in the operational phase ’cause they are the ones feeling the pain. Yeah. Of the routine retitling work. When they do major components, they sometimes engage us to come and say, can you check [00:19:00] before and after the blade was removed? What was it? Before we took it off from a a bolt load perspective, what is it afterwards? Can you then recheck after 500 hours When we retalk it? And what we’ve seen there often is the initial install hasn’t got them to where they needed to be and they’ve had to go and do the break in maintenance or the 500 hour REIT to get the bolts to the right load. So one of the questions that we have is whether. Some of the defects are actually being initiated very early on in that initial running in period and whether if, if actually you’d taken the time at, at the point of assembly to make sure you were correct, whether that avoids some of the knock on integrity concerns. So yeah, it’s interesting area.  Allen Hall: Well, bolts are what hold wind turbines together and you better know you have the right. Tension and [00:20:00] torque on your bolts to get to the lifetime of the wind turbine and to, and to check it once in a while. And I know there’s a lot of operators I can think of right now in the United States that are sort of doing that job somewhat. I I think they have missed out on opportunities to save a lot of money and to call it echo bolt. How do people get ahold of you? Because that’s one thing I run into all the time. Like, Hey, hey, you gotta talk to Ebol, call Ebol. How do they get ahold of you?  Pete Andrews: So the easiest ways are via our website. Which is echo bolt.com. Um, LinkedIn, you’ll find us at Echo Bolt on LinkedIn. Reach out. Our email would be info@cobolt.com. So any of those route and you’ll, uh, reach me and the team and more than happy to speak to you about any of your faulting concerns or problems. We are, uh, yeah, we’re passionate about your problems.  Allen Hall: Pete, thank you so much for being on this podcast. I, it is great to actually see you in person and see the bolt wave technology. It’s really [00:21:00] impressive. So anybody out there that needs bolt tensioning to checking tools, you need to get ahold of Pete at Echo Bolt and get started today. Thank you Pete. Thanks guys. It’s great to be here.

The next phase of Boeing’s 737 Max 10 certification, Alaska Airlines’ purchase of Boeing jets, the effects of sanctions on airlines, the discontinuation of Avelo Airlines’ deportation flights, and the acquisition of Sun Country Airlines by Allegiant. Boeing 737 Max 10, courtesy Boeing. Aviation News Boeing advances 737 Max 10 into next phase of FAA flight testing Boeing's 737 Max 10 has entered the second major phase of FAA flight testing, Type Inspection Authorization (TIA). An outstanding design change for the Max 7 and Max 10 engine anti‑ice system has led to certification delays. The core issue is an engine anti-ice design that can overheat and damage the composite engine inlet structure if left on for too long in non-icing conditions. Regulators consider this an unacceptable hazard. The problem affects all Max variants, but it is being treated as a hard certification gate for the Max 7 and 10. Alaska Airlines to buy more than 100 Boeing jets in carrier's biggest order ever Alaska Airlines is ordering 105 more Boeing 737 Max 10 jets (53 new orders, and 52 exercised options) and exercising options for five 787-10 Dreamliners. This reserves production slots for future airline expansion. Alaska Airlines expects FAA certification of the Max 10 this year, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2027. The new order includes options for 35 more 737 Max 10s. How sanctions turned Iran into a refuge for the world's rarest passenger aircraft A sanctioned country like Iran can't buy new aircraft, engines, or OEM spare parts and components. Keeping the fleet flying, or just keeping a fleet, becomes difficult. Reportedly, more than half of Iran's estimated 330 commercial aircraft are grounded. The Iranian fleet is composed of old airframes and supported by scavenged aircraft, parts, engines, and avionics smuggled into the country. Avelo Airlines to end ICE deportation charters as it cuts commercial flights, jobs The airline says it will stop flying deportation flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a letter to employees, CEO Andrew Levy said, “We moved a portion of our fleet into a government program which promised more financial stability but placed us in the center of a political controversy. The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.” Avelo is returning six of its Boeing 737-700 airplanes (they have 8) to focus on the more efficient 737-800 airplanes (they have 14) and said it will close bases at North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham International Airport and Wilmington International Airport, though it will continue to serve those cities. Avelo closes three crew bases and removes six 737-700s following recapitalisation Avelo chief executive Andrew Levy told FlightGlobal in September that the airline plans to receive its first E195-E2 in early 2027 and for deliveries to continue into 2032. It considers the incoming E-Jets well-suited for smaller, niche markets that major US carriers avoid. Allegiant to buy rival budget airline Sun Country in $1.5 billion cash and stock deal Low-cost leisure airline Allegiant announced it will acquire Sun Country Airlines in a deal that values the stock and cash transaction at approximately $1.5 billion, including $400 million of Sun Country’s net debt. The Allegiant brand would continue, with the two carriers operating separately until obtaining a single operating certificate. See: Sun Country + Allegiant Merger FAQs Mentioned The Aircraft Carrier Midway Is San Diego's Biggest Tourist Attraction, According To Tripadvisor Aviation Masters podcast. Video version: George Braly on Lean-of-Peak, G100UL, Certification Battles, and Why Aviation Myths Die Hard https://youtu.be/0WWmSy4aNng?si=JwbjrL91fUeqD5DT Check out the LEO JetBike – a personal propeller-free eVTOL that anyone can fly LEO Flight The JetBike, courtesy LEO Flight. Hosts this Episode Max Flight, our Main(e) Man Micah, and Brian Coleman.

At Intel, Bruce Schuman remembers walking into a meeting as a controller, proud of a product change his team had worked on “for months.” Then CFO Andy Bryant asked one question—one that reframed the proposal around customer impact. “Nobody had thought about (it),” Schuman tells us, and that question “completely changed the entire conversation,” leading to a “10 times better” outcome.That moment captures why Schuman spent “two decades plus 27 years” at Intel, he tells us. Rotational roles pushed him into new challenges every few years, while leaders modeled what influence and partnership looked like in practice. Intel even had a term for it—“constructive confrontation,” Schuman tells us—encouraging finance leaders to put difficult issues on the table in service of better decisions.When Schuman later moved into CFO roles outside Intel, he carried that mindset with him. FP&A, he says, should not simply “report the score of the game,” but act like “people on the field literally changing the outcome of the game,” Schuman tells us. That expectation shaped how he built finance teams and approached decision-making in smaller, faster-moving organizations.Today, as CFO of Universal Technical Institute, Schuman applies those lessons to a mission-driven business focused on workforce development. UTI works with “about 35 OEM partners” and “about 6000 employer partners,” Schuman tells us, and measures success through “70% graduation rates” and “about 85% placement rates,” Schuman tells us. Growth remains disciplined: “We'll never sacrifice student outcomes,” he tells us, even as the company plans to build “anywhere from two to five campuses a year for the next five years,” Schuman tells us.

No programa de hoje, os professores Renato e Cristiane Cardoso orientaram a aluna Evandra, de 36 anos, sobre uma questão muito peculiar.Pessoas "de áries" dificilmente encontram o amorEla disse que uma vez leu sobre pessoas do signo de áries, que dificilmente elas encontravam o amor verdadeiro. Desde então, não tirou mais isso da cabeça.Hoje, Evandra é divorciada e mora com as duas filhas. Ela não consegue mais acreditar no amor. Os professores esclareceram diversos pontos sobre este assunto e aconselharam a aluna.Namorada o traiu, mas pediu perdãoEm seguida, eles responderam uma pergunta do aluno Manoel. Ele contou que descobriu a traição de sua namorada com outro homem. Ela pediu perdão e alega que o ama. Manoel a ama muito e pediu ajuda sobre o que deve fazer.Bem-vindos à ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Escola do Amor Responde⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, confrontando os mitos e a desinformação nos relacionamentos. Onde casais e solteiros aprendem o Amor Inteligente. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Renato e Cristiane Cardoso⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, apresentadores da ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Escolado Amor, na Record TV,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ e autores de ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Casamento Blindado e Namoro Blindado⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, tiram dúvidas e respondem perguntas dos alunos. Participe pelo siteEscoladoAmorResponde.com. Ouça todos os podcasts no iTunes: rna.to/EdARiTunes

Show Highlights: Has agtech's promise failed despite $45B+ investments? [04:37] The growing demand for clear ROI and field-level justification for agtech. [07:12] Realities and grower beliefs affecting agtech adoption. [08:52] Should agtech follow the rapid-growth trajectories of fintech and pharma? [10:56] Farmer bias towards product vs. paid services. [17:02] Complexity in agtech adoption rates with USDA data. [18:59] Upcoming $20B opportunity in off-patent agrochemicals. [25:15] Forward outlook for agtech for the next 10 years. [33:32] The future of scaling agtech, direct vs. OEM and retail. [37:16] How AI will empower agronomists and anticipatory ag. [42:09] Connect with Aman Anand on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aman-anand-b64359b/. If you are interested in connecting with Joe, go to LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/, or schedule a call at www.moshercg.com.

Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast. Today, Jeppe sits down with Emil Eifrem, founder & CEO of Neo4j, the world's leading graph database and a core infrastructure layer for AI applications used by all 20 of the top US banks, 9 of 10 global pharma giants, and every major automotive OEM.Emil recently announced a $100M global startup program to back founders building the next generation of AI-native products on top of graph technology — from knowledge graphs to hallucination-free LLMs.We delve into why graph thinking matters now, how Neo4j came of age during the Panama Papers investigation, and why Europe is better positioned than people think to compete in the AI platform shift.Here's what's covered:02:00 — The Panama Papers “Coming Out Party”How journalists used Neo4j to uncover 7-layer-deep financial relationships invisible to traditional databases — and why it triggered a wave of global adoption.06:40 — Why Graphs Are the Missing Link for AIKnowledge, meaning, context, and relationships: why LLMs without structured knowledge graphs hallucinate.08:50 — The $100M Startup ProgramWhy Neo4j is returning to its roots to support AI-native founders — and why the packaging for startups had to change.12:00 — What Founders GetFree Aura credits, dedicated graph engineers, joint GTM, and access to the world's largest graph developer community.14:30 — Early Traction: 300+ Startups in WeeksWhy early demand is far ahead of expectations — and the kinds of companies applying.16:10 — Community as a Strategic Moat500+ annual global events, deep developer love, and why skill availability is now a CIO-level buying criterion.19:00 — Building Deep Tech in EuropeWhy Neo4j kept engineering in Europe, how the ecosystem matured, and what today's founders can learn.22:00 — Regulation & CompetitivenessWill Europe overregulate itself out of the AI race? Emil's perspective on models vs infrastructure vs applications.23:40 — The Future of AI InfrastructureWhy every company must rethink its stack — and why the biggest threat is assuming your business will survive without change.

Welcome BACK to the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast; we have completed our Holiday Hiatus and are ready to dominate 2026! In this episode, your hosts LA Williams and Sean V. Bradley pull back the curtain on what's brewing for 2026, and why the next wave of automotive success won't be won by the loudest dealerships, but by the most prepared ones…! "Don't operate out of fear. Don't NOT do something… because you're fearful of what MIGHT or might NOT happen." — Sean V. Bradley They're not just talking about the future of automotive; they're hinting at a few surprises Dealer Synergy is bringing to the table in February at NADA that could change how sales teams train, perform, and sell cars forever! "NADA is our Super Bowl... people literally come from all over the world to learn what we are doing in automotive." — Sean V. Bradley This conversation touches on technology, momentum, and what happens when a dealership stops hoping for better results and starts building a system to produce them on command. If you've been feeling like the industry is shifting faster than most stores can keep up… you'll want to hear what Sean and LA are seeing behind the scenes! Tune in now to get ahead of the game… see you there!   Key Takeaways: ✅ The rollout of Dealer Synergy's new AI-Driven Role-Playing Technology aims to revolutionize training for automotive sales professionals by allowing them to practice in a controlled environment. ✅ Dealer Synergy's outsourced BDC has proven highly successful, extensively increasing sales and offering dealers significant returns on investment. ✅ The importance of attending industry events like NADA to enhance knowledge, build networks, and keep abreast of automotive technologies and trends. ✅ Personalized coaching is emphasized through Bradley on Demand, a platform providing extensive training materials and interactive workshops from industry experts. ✅ Networking and continual learning are key to personal and professional growth in the automotive industry, as habitually exemplified by Dealer Synergy.   About Sean V. Bradley Sean V. Bradley is the President of Dealer Synergy and a leading automotive sales trainer, speaker, and consultant specializing in dealership performance, Internet sales, BDC strategy, and leadership development. As the host of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, Sean helps dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing teams through proven training systems, modern technology, and accountability-based coaching. About LA Williams LA Williams is the Vice President of Dealer Synergy, an automotive sales training and dealership performance expert, and co-host of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast. Known for his high-energy coaching and accountability-driven approach, LA supports dealerships nationwide by strengthening BDC operations, sales team execution, leadership habits, and customer experience through practical training strategies and measurable performance systems.     Harnessing the Power of AI and Networking to Revolutionize Automotive Sales Key Takeaways Strategic Development through AI: The transition to AI-based training empowers sales teams by significantly enhancing their sales tactics through artificial intelligence-driven insights. Industry Networking at NADA: Participating in events like NADA equips automotive professionals with unparalleled opportunities for networking, skill enhancement, and understanding cutting-edge industry innovations. Outsource Solutions Boosting Sales: Implementing outsourced BDCs and strategic partnerships, such as with Call Source, offers dealerships a substantial boost in sales performance and client engagement. The automotive sales landscape is rapidly evolving, and staying ahead requires not just strategic foresight but also an embrace of innovative technologies and networking opportunities. A recent conversation between automotive experts LA Williams and Sean V. Bradley brought these strategies into focus. Delving into themes such as the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) for role-playing, the importance of industry networking at NADA conventions, and leveraging outsourced communication solutions, they underscore critical elements poised to revolutionize sales methodologies. Revolutionizing Sales Through AI Training AI's integration into sales strategies is not just a future trend; it is a current necessity. LA Williams and Sean V. Bradley have designed a groundbreaking artificial intelligence role-playing software, tailored specifically for the automotive industry. This software propels training into the future by offering a variety of simulated interactions sales teams can engage with. "There is no other training company that's doing this," remarked Bradley, highlighting the uniqueness of this approach. By utilizing AI, dealerships ensure that their employees are constantly honing their skills. Bradley emphasizes, "Your people don't have to practice with real customers ever again. They don't have to burn through UPS," pointing out the strategic advantage of risk-free practice. The software meticulously tracks performance metrics—such as words per minute, filler words usage, and talk-listen ratios—ensuring that each interaction is optimized. This level of detail not only prepares the sales force but also reduces errors and enhances customer experience, leading to increased sales performance. The Strategic Importance of NADA Networking The NADA Convention serves as a pivotal gathering for the automotive industry, functioning akin to a "Super Bowl" for car sales professionals. It brings together a multitude of stakeholders, offering robust insights into new practices, services, and technologies that define the industry's future. "Nada is where Success," states LA Williams, encouraging everyone from salespeople to executives to seize the opportunities presented at this convention. Sean Bradley recounts his own transformative experiences at NADA, noting, "The reason why I think I was so successful back then is because I was training," during events like these where knowledge exchange is paramount. As Bradley notes, more significant connections and educational opportunities can lead to profound career development and institutional growth. For emerging and seasoned professionals alike, the exchange of ideas, experiences, and contacts at NADA can lead to new partnerships and strategies that drive dealerships forward. Outsourced Solutions Elevating Dealership Performance Outsourcing remains a strategic staple for dealerships looking to enhance efficiency and focus on core competencies. Dealer Synergy's collaboration with Call Source represents a quintessential example of leveraging outsourcing for optimal performance. This partnership sees Dealer Synergy handle BDC operations while Call Source focuses on the service side—merging strengths to unify dealership operations seamlessly. "Our outsourced BDC is going cray cray," enthuses Bradley, attributing a significant boost in dealership outcomes to this operational strategy. He shares successful instances where dealerships experienced a substantial return on investment (ROI) and increased sales, citing a GMC dealership in Ohio responsible for 20 additional vehicle sales thanks to their BDC efforts. This synergy, Bradley shares, is beneficial as it reduces operational burdens on dealerships, allowing them to focus squarely on enhancing the customer experience. As the conversation highlights, a focus on integrating AI-driven training and exploring robust industry networks and outsourcing solutions allows dealerships to maintain a competitive edge. The seamless transition from in-person networking at industry events like NADA to strategic technological adoption showcases a forward-thinking mindset essential in today's market. With the unveiling of AI role-playing tools, robust BDC solutions, and vibrant networking opportunities, the automotive industry is on the cusp of transformative advances. The emphasis on strategic preparedness, continuous enhancement of sales methodologies, and leveraging comprehensive networking opportunities defines industry leadership and charts a course for sustained success.       Resources + Our Proud Sponsors: ➼ The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group: Join the #1 Automotive Sales Mastermind Facebook Group with over 29,000 automotive professionals worldwide. The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group is the go-to community for car salespeople, BDC agents, sales managers, general managers, and dealer principals looking to increase performance, income, and leadership skills. Inside the group, members collaborate daily on automotive sales strategies, lead handling, phone scripts, closing techniques, CRM best practices, dealership leadership, and accountability systems. Learn directly from top automotive trainers, industry mentors, and high-performing sales leaders who are actively winning in today's market. If you're serious about growing your automotive career, increasing car sales, and building long-term success, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today! ➼ Dealer Synergy: Dealer Synergy is the automotive industry's #1 Sales Training, Consulting, and Accountability Firm, with over 20 years of proven dealership success nationwide. We specialize in helping car dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing Sales, Internet, and BDC departments from the ground up. Our expertise includes automotive phone scripts, rebuttals, CRM action plans, lead handling strategies, BDC workflows, Internet sales processes, management training, and accountability systems. Dealer Synergy partners directly with dealership leadership to align people, process, and technology, ensuring consistent results and scalable growth. From independent dealers to large dealer groups and OEM partnerships, Dealer Synergy delivers measurable performance improvements, stronger teams, and sustainable profitability. ➼ Bradley On Demand: Bradley On Demand is the automotive industry's most advanced interactive training, tracking, testing, and certification platform for car dealerships — built to develop top-performing teams across Sales, Internet Sales, BDC, CRM, Phone Skills, Leadership, and Management. In addition to LIVE virtual automotive training classes and a library of 9,000+ on-demand dealership training modules, Bradley On Demand now includes AI Phone Roleplaying and Coaching to help salespeople and BDC agents practice real dealership conversations before they ever get on the phone with customers. This AI-powered roleplay technology strengthens phone scripts, objection handling, appointment setting, lead follow-up, and closing skills, while providing measurable coaching feedback for continuous improvement. Bradley On Demand empowers dealerships to train faster, coach smarter, improve call performance, increase closing ratios, and sell more cars more profitably — all through structured, trackable, modern automotive training.  

Don Burnette, Founder & CEO, Kodiak joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss taking Kodiak public and why the company's strategy has always been about de-risking autonomy with optionality. As part of their de-risking strategy, Kodiak has deployed an asset-light business model where partners including Atlas Energy Solutions own and operate the trucks, allowing Kodiak to focus on the AI software.During the episode, Grayson and Don discuss the strategic importance of Kodiak's partnership with Bosch to develop a redundant, OEM-agnostic platform that unlocks scale across multiple OEMs. With their partnerships and business model intact, Kodiak is preparing to launch driver-out commercial over-the-road operations in the second half of the year, setting the stage for a broader expansion into physical AI.Episode Chapters0:00 Taking Kodiak Public3:36 Asset-Light Autonomous Trucking Business 12:10 Unstructured Driving 14:31 Kodiak's Platform Agnostic Strategy 21:45 Bosch Partnership 27:47 Preparing for Driver-Out Over-The-Road Operations 34:10 Over-The-Road Business Model25:38 Future of KodiakRecorded on Monday, January 12, 2026--------About The Road to AutonomyThe Road to Autonomy provides market intelligence and strategic advisory services to institutional investors and companies, delivering insights needed to stay ahead of emerging trends in the autonomy economy™. To learn more, say hello (at) roadtoautonomy.com.Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/ae/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

No programa de hoje, os professores Renato e Cristiane Cardoso, inicialmente, apresentaram um trecho de uma palestra da Terapia do Amor, que acontece no Templo de Salomão, todas as quintas-feiras. A palestra falou sobre como sem o reconhecimento dos erros, da parcela de culpa e da contribuição para os problemas do casal, a pessoa não consegue mudar de verdade. Como recomeçar após 19 anos de traiçãoEm seguida, eles responderam a pergunta da aluna Soraia, de 44 anos. Ela contou que está casada há 19 anos e tem 3 filhos. Soraia, então, relatou que, no início, o marido bebia, saia todas as noites e se relacionava até com prostitutas. O relacionamento entre eles não era muito bom, mas ela o perdoou para tentar manter a família. O que acabou não dando muito certo, pois ele a continuou traindo. Hoje, o marido a trai pela internet e aplicativos de conversa. Ela não aguenta mais e pediu ajuda sobre como pode recomeçar a essa altura da vida -- e ainda se sentindo a mais feia de todas as mulheres.Os professores aconselharam a aluna.Bem-vindos à ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Escola do Amor Responde⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, confrontando os mitos e a desinformação nos relacionamentos. Onde casais e solteiros aprendem o Amor Inteligente. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Renato e Cristiane Cardoso⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, apresentadores da ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Escolado Amor, na Record TV,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ e autores de ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Casamento Blindado e Namoro Blindado⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, tiram dúvidas e respondem perguntas dos alunos. Participe pelo siteEscoladoAmorResponde.com. Ouça todos os podcasts no iTunes: rna.to/EdARiTunes

In this podcast episode, I'm joined by Lurch and we discuss the Kraus EZ Shift and the Stealthport Motorcycle Battery and Accessory Port for Harley-Davidson.  These two seemingly small and simple items result in big benefits when installed on your Harley-Davidson motorcycle.  So, strap in and tune in as we talk about how these two items improved our riding enjoyment.  We don't just sell items in our store.  We test and review them.  SUPPORT US AND SHOP IN THE OFFICIAL LAW ABIDING BIKER STORE CHECK OUT OUR HUNDREDS OF FREE HELPFUL VIDEOS ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND SUBSCRIBE! The Kraus EZ‑Shift of M8 and Twin Cam motors is a popular aftermarket shift assist for Harley-Davidson motorcycles designed to improve the feel and ease of gear changes. It works by altering the shift linkage's leverage ratio so that finding neutral — especially from a stop — becomes much easier and more positive, which can reduce clutch wear by allowing riders to drop into neutral quickly and release the clutch instead of dragging it at lights. Made in the USA from high-quality billet aluminum, the device bolts on in just a few minutes and is compatible with both stock and many aftermarket shift levers. Riders report smoother, more confident shifts across all gears, with up to about 20% less effort required compared to stock linkage feel. NEW FREE VIDEO RELEASED: Upgrade Your Motorcycle Helmet with a Quick Release Stainless Steel Helmet Chin Ratchet Strap Polaris Sells Indian Motorcycle?! What's REALLY Going On Behind the Scenes… The Stealthport Motorcycle Battery Charging & Accessory Port and related Stealthport adapters are aftermarket solutions for Harley-Davidson riders who want a clean, factory-style connection point for charging their bike's battery or powering accessories without dealing with the standard dangling SAE pigtail. Instead of fumbling with the loose cable under the bike, a Stealthport install mounts a low-profile port in a convenient location on the frame or bodywork, using existing threaded holes on many Softail, Touring, and other Harley models. Once installed, the port connects to your bike's OEM battery tender lead, giving you a weather-protected, easily accessible charging point that can also be used for heated gear or other 12 V accessories — all while keeping the look tidy and integrated. Installation is typically straightforward and reversible, and multiple mounting options let you choose how hidden or accessible you want the port to be. Sponsor-Ciro 3D CLICK HERE! Innovative products for Harley-Davidson & Goldwing Affordable chrome, lighting, and comfort products Ciro 3D has a passion for design and innovation Sponsor-Butt Buffer CLICK HERE Want to ride longer? Tired of a sore and achy ass? Then fix it with a high-quality Butt Buffer seat cushion? If you appreciate the content we put out and want to make sure it keeps on coming your way then become a Patron too! There are benefits and there is no risk. Thanks to the following bikers for supporting us via a flat donation: Joseph Ellis of Ira Township, Michigan Chuck Spencer of Twentynine Palms, California Richard Gundermann of Cudahy, Wisconsin

Allen and Joel are joined by Nathan Davies from Lloyd Warwick to discuss the world of wind energy insurance. Topics include market cycles, the risks of insuring larger turbines, how critical spares can reduce downtime and costs, why lightning claims often end up with insurers rather than OEMs, and how AI may transform claims data analysis. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Nathan, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. So you are, you’re our link to the insurance world, Nathan, and there’s been so many changes over the past 12, 24 months, uh, not just in the United States but worldwide. Before we get too deep into any one subject, can you just give us a top level like, Hey, this is what’s happening in the insurance world that we need to know. So there’s  Nathan Davies: obviously a lot of scope, a lot of development, um, in the wind world. Um, you know, there’s the race to scale. Um, and from an insurance perspective, I think everybody’s pretty tentative about where that’s going. Um. You know, the, the theory that are we trying to [00:01:00] run before we can walk? Um, what’s gonna happen when these things inevitably go wrong? Uh, and what are the costs gonna be that are associated with that? ’cause, you know, at the moment we are used to, to claims on turbines that are circa five megawatts. But when we start seeing 15 megawatt turbines falling over. Yeah, it’s, it’s not gonna be a good day at the office. So, um, in the insurance world, that’s the big concern. Certainly from a win perspective at least.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think it’s, it’s a valid, uh, I don’t know, valid bad, dream. Valid, valid risk to be worried about. Well, just simply because of like the, the way, uh, so I’ve been following or been a part of the, that side of the industry for a little while here the last five, six years. Um. You’ve seen The insurance world is young in renewables, to be honest with you. Right. Compared to a lot of other places that like say the Lord Lloyd’s market, they’ve been writing insurance for hundreds of years on certain [00:02:00] things that have, like, we kind of know, we know what the risks are. We, and if it develops something new, it’s not crazily new, but renewables and in wind in specific haven’t been around that long. And the early stuff was like, like you said, right? If a one megawatt turbine goes down, like. That sucks. Yeah. For everybody, right? But it’s not the end of the world. We can, we can make this thing happen. You’re talking, you know, you may have a, you know, your million, million and a half dollars here, $2 million here for a complete failure. And then the business interruption costs as a, you know, with a one megawatt producing machine isn’t, again, it’s not awesome, but it’s not like it, uh, it doesn’t break the books. Right. But then when we’re talking 3, 4, 5, 6. Seven megawatts. We just saw Siemens cesa sell the first of their seven megawatt onshore platforms the other day. Um, that is kind of changing the game and heightening the risk and makes things a little bit more worrisome, especially in light of, I mean, as we scaled just the last five, [00:03:00] 10 years, the amount of. Failures that have been happening. So if you look at that and you start expanding it, that, that, that hockey stick starts to grow. Nathan Davies: Yeah, yeah, of course. And you know, we, we all know that these things sort of happen in cycles, right? It’s, you go, I mean, in, in the insurance world, we go through soft markets. We go through hard markets, um, you know, deductibles come up, the, the clauses, the restrictions, all those things get tighter. Claims reduce. Um, and then you get sort of disruptors come into the market and they start bringing in, you know, challenging rates and they start challenging the big players on deductibles and preferential rates and stuff like that. And, and then you get a softening of the market, um, and then you start seeing the claims around up again. But when you twin that with the rate of development that we see in the renewables worlds, it’s, it’s fraught for all sorts of. Weird and wonderful things happening, and most of them are quite expensive.  Joel Saxum: Where in that cycle are we, in [00:04:00] your opinion right now? So we, like when I first came into the market and I started dealing with insurance, it was very, we kept hearing hardening, market hardening, market hardening market. But not too long ago, I heard from someone else that was like, Hey, the market’s actually getting kind of soft right now. What are your thoughts on that? And, and or may, and maybe we let, let’s precursor that there’s a lot of people that are listening right now that don’t know the difference. What is a hard market? What is a soft market? Can you give us that first?  Nathan Davies: When you’re going through a soft market, it’s, it’s a period where they’ve either been, um, a limited volume of claims or the claim values have been quite small. Um, so, you know, everybody gets. It’s almost like becoming complacent with it, right? It’s like, oh, you know, things are going pretty well. We’re having it. It looks like the operators, it looks like the maintainers are, are doing a pretty good job and they know all of the issues that are gonna be working through in the lifetime of these products. So for the next however many years, we can anticipate that things are gonna gonna go pretty well. But as you see those [00:05:00] deductibles come down, you start getting more of the attritional claims, like the smaller values, um, the smaller downtime periods, all that sort of thing, start coming in as claims. And all of a sudden insurers are like, well, hang on a second. All of a sudden we’ve got loads and loads of claims coming in. Um. All of the premium that we were taking as being bled dry by, by these, these attritional claim. Um, and then you get like a big claim coming. You get a major issue come through, whether it’s, you know, a, a serial issue with a gearbox or a generator or a specific blade manufacturer, and all of a sudden the market starts to change. Um, and insurers are like, well, hang on a second. We’ve got a major problem on our hands here. We’re starting to see more of this, this specific piece of technology being rolled out, um, worldwide. Um, we are in for a lot of potential claims on this specific matter in the future, and therefore we need to protect ourselves. And the way that insurers do that is by [00:06:00] increasing or deductibles, um, increasing their premiums, all that sort of thing. So it’s basically that. Uh, raises the threshold at which a claim can be presented and therefore minimizes the, the outlay for insurers. So that’s sort of this, this cycle that we see. Um, I mean, I can’t, I’ve, I’ve only been in loss adjusting for six years, so I can’t say that I’ve seen, you know, um, multiple cycles. I’ve, I’m probably at the end of my first cycle from a hardening to a softening market. Um. But also, again, I’m not in the underwriting side of things. I’m on the claims side of things, so I own, I’m only seeing it when it’s gone wrong. I don’t know about everything else that the insurance market sees.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, the, the softening part, I think as well from a macro perspective, when there’s a softening market, it tends to bring in more capital. Right. You start to see more, more and more companies coming in saying, Hey, I’ve got, [00:07:00] and when I say companies, I mean other capital holders to beat for insurance, right? Like these, the big ones you see, the big Swiss and German guys come in and going, like, I got, I got $500 million I’ll throw into renewables. It seems like to be a good, pretty good bet right now. And then the market starts to change and then they go, uh, oops. Yeah.  Nathan Davies: And that’s it. You know, you’ve got the, the StoreWatch of the renewable insurance market like your G cubes and, and companies like that who’ve been in the game for a very long time. They’ve got a lot of experience. They’ve been burned. Um, they know what they want to touch and what they don’t want to touch. And then you get. Renewables, everybody wants to be involved. It covers their ESG targets. It’s, it’s a good look to move away from, you know, your, your oil and your coal and all the rest of it. So, of course, companies are gonna come into it. Um, and if they’re not experienced.  Allen Hall: They will get banned. How much reliance do operators have at the moment on insurance? Because it does seem like, uh, Joel and I talk [00:08:00]to a lot of operators that insurance is part of their annual revenue. They depend upon getting paid a certain amount, which then opens up the door to how sort of nitpicky I’ll describe it as the claim. They’ll file. Are you seeing more and more of that as, uh, some of the operators are struggling for cash flow, that there are going after more kind of questionable claims? Um, I think it depends on  Nathan Davies: the size of the operator. So you’ve, you’ve obviously got your, your big players, you’ve got your alls and your rws and all of those sort of guys who, the way that they manage their insurance, they’ve probably got, you know, special purpose vehicles. They’ve got, um, sites or clusters of sites that they manage finances independently. They don’t just have the one big or pot. It’s, it’s, it’s managed sort of subdivisions. Um. Those, those guys, we don’t typically tend to see like a big push for a [00:09:00] payment on account partway through a claim. It’s, it’s typically sort of the smaller end of the scale where you might have, um, an operator that manages a handful of smaller, um, assets. The way that we look at it is if you don’t ask, you don’t get, so when we talk to an insured, it’s like. Present your costs, you know, we’ll review them and it’s, it’s better that you present all of your costs and insurers turn around and say, you’re not eligible for this. You know, that that element of it will be adjusted, um, rather than not present something. And it’s like, well, you know, your, your broker then comes further down the line when they say you could have claimed that element of, of the cost. So, um. Typically that’s the approach that we take is, is present everything and we’ll work through and let you know which elements aren’t claimable.  Joel Saxum: When we’re talking insurance policies, there can be, you know, like an operator, an owner of a turbine asset can have them. Then there is construction policies and [00:10:00] there’s the EPC company might have a policy and ISP may have a policy. So, so many policies because at the end of the day, everybody’s trying to protect themselves. Like, we’re trying to protect the bottom line. Tr that’s what insurance us for, that’s why we’re here. Um, but so, so, so, so gimme a couple things. Like in your opinion as, let’s look, well, I wanna stay in the operator camp right now, say, during a non non-commission policy, a actual operating policy, wind farm is in the ground, we’re moving along. What are some of the things that, from an, from a loss adjuster’s perspective, that a operator should be doing to protect themselves? I mean, besides. Signing an insurance contract. Yes. But is it, is it good record keeping? Is it having spares on site? Is it, what does that look like from your perspective when you walk into something,  Nathan Davies: if you were to take the insurer’s dream operator, that would be somebody who, and you, you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head with a lot of those points, Joel, the, the. The golden [00:11:00] operator would have like a stash of critical spares because the last thing they want to be relying on is, um, an OEM who, you know, they, they’ve, they’ve stopped manufacturing that bit of kit three years ago. They now want to sell you the latest and greatest. It’s 18 months lead time or something like that. Oh yeah, absolutely. And so you are now having to look at potentially refurbishment through. Whether that’s through sort of approved, um, processes or not. Um, you might be looking at, um, sort of, um, aftermarket providers. You know, there, there’s, as soon as you are looking at an aged asset, you are, you are in a really complicated position in terms of your repairability. Um, because, you know, a as we know, you get to sort of that three, five year period after you’ve purchased the product, you’re in real jeopardy of whether or not it’s gonna be. Gonna have that continued support from the original equipment manufacturer. So [00:12:00] critical spares is a really good thing to, it’s, it’s just obviously a really good thing to have. Um, and how you can manage that as well is if you have, um, a customer of sites that are all using the, the same equipment, you could sort of share that between you. There, there could be. Um, so we, we’ve sinned that where, um. An umbrella company has multiple sites, multiple SPVs. Um, they were all constructed at the same sort of time. They’ve got the same transformers, you know, the same switchgear, same infrastructure, and they hold a set of spares that cover these, all these sites. ’cause the last thing you want to do is buy a load of individual components for one site. You are then paying to maintain them, to store them to, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of costs that come with. Along with that, that you, you don’t wanna be covering. If that’s just for the one site and it’s the [00:13:00] eventualities, that may never happen. So if you’ve got multiple sites and you can spread those costs, all of a sudden it’s a lot more, um. Could  Joel Saxum: you see a reality where insurers did that? Right? Where like a, like a, like a consortium of insurance companies gets together and buys, uh, half a dozen sets of blades and generators and stuff that they know are failures that come up, or they have a pool to pull from themselves to, to avoid these massive bi claims. Nathan Davies: Yeah. I mean maybe there’s, maybe there’s the potential for a renewables pool. I mean, it’s always. Complicated. As soon as you start trying to bring sort of multiple companies together with an agreement of that sort of scale, it’s gonna be challenging. But, um, I mean, yeah, in an ideal world, that would be be a great place to be. Um, so critical spares is, that’s, that’s a key thing we, we have seen. So we, we’ve got, um, one account that we work with that they’ve actually got a warehouse full of critical spares. [00:14:00] So they, they have a lot of, um, older turbine models, um, sort of typically, um, 2015 through to, well, yeah, from about 2012 to 2015. Um, these sites were commissioned so they knew there was a, a finite lifetime, uh, replacement blades, generators, gear, boxes, what have you, and it’s like we’ve. A huge number of assets. So what we should do is retain certainly a number of gearboxes and generators that you, we can utilize across, um, the fleet. And obviously they then keep a rolling stock of refurbishment and repairs on those. But they, they basically included in their, their premium spreadsheet, they’ve got all of their individual sites. Then they’ve got a warehouse that is full of all their spares, and that is an inuring asset, is their warehouse full of critical spares. Joel Saxum: So what  Nathan Davies: happens to  Joel Saxum: that  Nathan Davies: person then? Does  Joel Saxum: their premiums go [00:15:00] down? Because they have those spares, they’ve got really low deductibles on their bi. So there’s a business case for it probably, right? Like if you’re sitting there, if you’re, if you’re, you’re an accountant, you can figure that out and say like, if we hold these spares for this fleet, like if you’re, if you’re a fleet, if you have a homogenous fleet, say you’ve got a thousand turbines that are basically all the same model. W you should have centrally located amongst those wind farms, a couple of blade sets, a couple of generators, couple of pitch bearings, couple of this, couple of that. And you can use them operationally if you need to, but it’s there as spares, uh, for insurance cases. ’cause you’ll be able to re reduce your insurance premiums or your insurance deductibles. Allen Hall: That’s remarkable. I don’t know a lot of operators in, at least in the United States that have done that, I’m thinking more of like Australia where it’s hard to get. Parts, uh, you, you probably do have a little bit of a warehouse situation. That’s really interesting because I, I know a lot of operators are thinking about trying to reduce their premiums and simple things like that would, I would imagine it make a huge difference [00:16:00] in what they’re paying each year and that that’s a smart move. I, I wanna ask about the IEC and the role of certification in premiums. What does it mean and how do you look at it as an industry? Uh, one of the things that’s happening right now is there’s a number of, I think some of the major IEC documents in, in our world, in the lightning world are going through revision. Does that, how do, how do you assess that risk that the IEC specs or the sort of the gold standard and you have the certification bodies that are using them to show that the turbines are fit for purpose. Is there a reliance upon them? Does, does it help reduce premiums if there’s an I-E-C-I-I, I’m not even sure how the industry, the insurance industry looks at it. Or is it more of how the turbines perform in the first year or two, is how, what’s gonna really gonna drive the premium numbers? I mean, insofar as  Nathan Davies: I eecs, it’s, that’s a really tough question. It’s, it’s [00:17:00]interesting that you ask that. ’cause um, I mean certainly from the lightning perspective, the, the IEC. We look at on that the blades need to withstand a lightning strike of a known value, but even within that, they, within the IEC, there’s an allowance of like 2%, I think, um, for blade strikes that can still cause damage even if they’re within the rate of capacity of the LPS. Um, so in the insurance world, this is a big gray area because each, um, operator has a, a turbine, uh, has a blade failure because of a lightning strike. They’ll then immediately go to the OEM and say, um, you know, we’ve had had a lightning strike, we’ve had a blade failure. Can you come and repair or replace the blade? Sure, no bother. Um, down the line, we have an insurance claim for this repair or replacement. And insurers are like, well, what’s the lightning data? And if that’s within the [00:18:00] LPS standard, it’s like, well, why have. Why is this not covered under warranty? And, you know, you, your OEMs will always turn around and say, force majeure. Um, it’s, it’s that 2%. So the IEC, even though that’s, you know, it’s, it’s best standards, it still has a degree of allowance that, um, the OEMs can slip through and be like, well this, this falls with insurance. And again, I can only speak for what I’ve seen, but that is. We see, I’d say, um, Lloyd Warwick, we probably see 50 plus notifications a year for blade damage from lightning and, um, almost every time if it’s within the capabilities of the LPX, the OEM or say towards majeure and Atlanta with insurers. Allen Hall: Well, is there a force majeure for gearboxes or generators or transformers? [00:19:00] Is, is there a 2% rule for transformers? I don’t, I don’t think so. Maybe there is, but it is, it, it is a little odd, right, that, that there’s so many things that are happening in the insurance world that rely upon the certification of the turbine and the sort of the expected rates of failure. I have not seen an operator go back and say, we have a 3% rate of, of damage of my transformers, so therefore I wanna file a claim. But that, that doesn’t seem to occur nearly as often as on the lightning side where it’s force majeure is used probably daily, worldwide. How do we think about that? How do we, how do we think about the transformer that fails versus the lightning damage? Are they just considered just two separate things and uncontrollable? Is that how the insurance industry looks at it? If we, if we would  Nathan Davies: talk about transformers. So the fact is that we see on those can vary from, you know, it’s, it’s a minor electrical component that that goes, um, [00:20:00] which is relatively easy to pin down. But then at the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got a fire where it’s. You know, with all, all the will in the world, you could go in and investigate, but you’re not gonna find the cause of that fire. Um, you know, the damage is so great that you, you could probably say, well, the ignition point is there because that’s where the most damages occurred and it’s spread out. But, but how is that occurred? The know, and we, we do have that, that happens not frequently, but um. You know, as an engineer, I, I want to get to the bottom of what’s caused things, but, but all too often we come away from a claim where it’s like we don’t know exactly what’s caused it, but we can’t confirm that it’s excluded in the policy and therefore it, it must be covered and, you know, the claim is valid. Um, so in, in terms of causation and the standards and all the rest of it.  Joel Saxum: It goes to an extent. So this is a, this is another [00:21:00] one. So Alan was talking about lightning and blades. Then we talked about transformers a little bit. I wanna talk about gear boxes for just a second, because gearbox usually, um, in, in my, my experience in, in the wind world, claims wise, it’s pretty black and white. Was it, did it, did it fail? This is how it failed. Okay. Blah, blah, blah. Did was maintenance done at blah? So I heard the other day from someone who was talking about, uh, using CMS. On their, on their gener, on their, uh, gearbox, sorry. So it was an operator said, Hey, we should be, and, and a company coming to them saying, well, you should be monitoring CMS. This is all the good things it can do for you operationally. And the operator, the owner of the turbine said, I don’t want it, because if I know there’s something wrong, then I can’t claim it on insurance if it fails. Does that ring  Nathan Davies: true to you? Part of our process would be to look at the data. Um, so we know nine times out of 10 there is condition [00:22:00] monitoring, there is start out there, there, all this stuff. The operator, um, assistance tools, and if we can look at a gearbox vibration trend. Um, along with, you know, bearing temperature, uh, monitoring and all that sort of thing. And if you can see a trend where the vibrations are increasing, the temperatures are increasing, um, and there’s no operator maintain maintenance intervention, then, you know, if, if you, if you’ve received an alarm to say, Hey, there’s something wrong with me, you should probably come and have a look and you’ve done nothing about it, then. It’s,  Joel Saxum: it’s not great. Okay. So, so that, so that it rings, it kind of in a sense, rings true, right? That what that operator was saying, like the way their mind was working at that stage. ’cause this is, this is during, again, like, so we, Alan and I from the uptime network and just who we are, like we know a ton of people, we know [00:23:00] solutions that are being sold and, and this her about this. And I was like, man, that seems like really shortsighted, but there’s a reality to it that kind of makes sense, right? If they don’t have. I, it, it just seems unethical, right? It seems like if I don’t have the budget to fix this and I don’t wanna look at it, so I’m just waiting for it to fail. I don’t want the notifications so then I can claim it on insurance. ’cause I don’t wanna spend the money to go fix it. Like, seems, seems not cool.  Nathan Davies: Yeah. So the, I mean the, the process, the process of the insurance claim, if, if you want to look at it in almost an over simplistic way, um, a claim is notified. Um, to trigger an operational policy, there needs to be proof of damage, right? So in this instance, your gearbox has failed, whether that’s gear, teeth have have been pulled off, you’ve had a major bearing failure, whatever it is. So there’s your damage. So insurers are now [00:24:00] engaged. Um, the rules of the game. It’s now on insurers to prove that whatever has caused that damage is an exclusion. So in this instance, um, you know, that might be wear and tear, gradual deterioration, uh, could be rust. Um, and, and part of that is poor workmanship. Um, so if they have knowingly like. Cover their shut, their eyes covered, their ears just ignored this gearbox slowly crunching its way to, its, its inevitable death. You know, it, it’s not reasonably unforeseen. It’s not an unpredictable event. This was going to happen if you can see that, that trend, um, towards the failure, um, and in that light, it would, in theory be an uninsured event. Um, but [00:25:00] we know that. 90 plus percent of owner operators have, at least on their drive train, they have some sort of condition monitoring, whether that’s, you know, temperature sensors, vibration sensors, uh, noise sensors, you know, all that sort of stuff. We know that it’s there, but what’s really interesting in the claims process is. The first thing that we’ll ask is, where’s your proof of damage? Let’s see your alarm data, your scarda data, all this sort of thing.  Joel Saxum: Does the RFI get responded to?  Nathan Davies: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and it’s like, oh no, we, you know, we don’t have the SCARDA data. And we’ve had instances where a company, a company had turned around and said, oh, we don’t have any SCARDA data for the time of this event. It’s like, oh, that’s interesting. And worked our way through the process. And eventually insurers were like, you know what? We’re, we’re gonna deny this one. We’re not. Things aren’t adding up, we are not happy with it. Um, and all of a sudden out the woodwork, we get scar data, we get the, the insured’s, um, failure report, [00:26:00] which I mean, there was computational flow dynamics. There were, there were like all sorts of weird and wonderful data that had been thrown into the, this failure analysis. And it’s like, well, you’ve done our jobs for us. Why did you not just hand this over at the beginning? We know that this stuff exists, so. Just, just playing, playing dumb itch. It’s just a frustration really.  Allen Hall: It does seem like the operators think of loss adjustment in insurance companies as having a warehouse full of actuaries with mechanical calculators and they’re back there punching numbers in and doing these calculations on. I lost this gearbox from this manufacturer at, at this timeframe, and, and I understand all this data. That’s not how it works, but I do think there’s this, uh, assumption that that. Uh, there’s a in wind energy that because of the scale of it, there’s a lot of, of backend research that’s happening. I, I don’t think that’s true, or, I mean, you can tell me if it’s true or not, [00:27:00] but I don’t think so. But now, in the world of AI where I can start to accumulate large sets of data and I have the ability to process it with just a single person sitting in front of a laptop, is it gonna get a little harder for some of these claims that have Mercury, just really shady histories to get? Approved.  Nathan Davies: I, I think that’s inevitable. You know, whenever we go and speak to an insurer, you know, insurers are always interested, are interested in what’s the latest claims data, what are the trends that we’re seeing, all this sort of thing. So we’ll sit down with them for an hour and a half and we’ll say, oh, this was interesting. This is what went well, this is what didn’t go so well. And then they always sort of grab us just as we’re about to leave and we’ve, we’ve said our goodbyes, and they’re like, so you guys have a. Claims database. Right? Every time. Yep. And it’s like, how’d you feel about, about sharing your data? And it’s, it’s every insurer without failure. They’re like, let’s see your claims [00:28:00] database. Okay. Right. So we can share, we can share some information. Obviously it needs to be sanitized. We don’t want to provide identifying information, all that sort of stuff. You’re looking at thousands and thousands of lines of data. And the big problem that we have with any database like this is, it’s only as good as the data that’s been entered, right? So if, if every claims handler, if every loss adjuster is entering their own data into this database, my interpretation of, of a root cause failure, maybe different to somebody else’s. So what we are gonna start seeing in the next year to three years. Is the application of AI to these databases, to to sort of finesse the poor quality data that’s been entered by multiple, you know, it’s, it’s too many cooks. Spoiled broth. All of these people have entered their own interpretation of data, will start to see AI finesse [00:29:00] that, and all of a sudden the output of it will be. Really, really powerful, much better risk models. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s inevitable in the next two to five years. Um, and I think insurers will, but again, the, we go back to the cyclic thing. So the, the data that we have is the claims that we’ve had over the past however many years, but all the while that the OEMs are manufacturing. New gearboxes, new generators, new blades. We don’t know about the problems that are gonna come out the woodwork. We can tell you about failures that might happen on aged assets, but we can’t tell you about what’s gonna fail in the future. Allen Hall: Well, is there an appetite to do what the automobile world is doing on the automobile insurance? Have basically a plugin to monitor how the driver is doing the State Farm drive safe and [00:30:00] save. Yeah. Your little black box is, is that where eventually this all goes? Is that every turbine’s gonna have a little black box for the insurance company to monitor the asset on some large scale, but then that allows you then to basically to assess properly what the rates should be based on the actual. Data coming from the actual turbines so that you, you can get a better view of what’s happening.  Nathan Davies: I mean, it’s challenging because obviously you can only get so much from, from that monitoring data. So arguably that’s, that’s like the scarda data. But then there’s, there’s the multiple other inputs that we’re looking at. I’d say the vast majority of claims come from some form of human intervention. And how do you record that? Human intervention.  Allen Hall: Right? You, it’s like getting an oil change in your car. If the guy forgets to put the oil plug in. Pretty much you’re, you’re gonna get a mount down the road and engine’s gone. [00:31:00] And that’s, that may be the, that may be ultimately where this all goes. Is that a lot of it’s just human error.  Nathan Davies: Yeah. It’s, you know, we, we can take the, the operating data, you can start to finesse maintenance reports and, and try to plug that into this data stream. But you can guarantee, like you can absolutely bet your bottom dollar, but when there’s an insurance claim and it’s like. That one key document that you need that will answer that question, nobody knows  Allen Hall: where it is. This has been a great discussion and Nathan, we need to have you back on because you provide such great insights as to what’s happening in the insurance world and and the broader wind energy world and. That’s where I like talking to you so much. Nathan, how do people get a hold of you? Can they reach you via LinkedIn?  Nathan Davies: Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. Um, you can also find me, um, on the Lloyd Warwick website. Sounds great.  Allen Hall: Nathan, thank you so much for being on  Nathan Davies: the podcast. Right. Appreciate it. Thank you so much [00:32:00] guys.

In this episode of The Fabricator Podcast, Maxwell Keeler of Electro-Mechanical Integrators (EMI) explains how modern tube plasma cutting systems handle multiple material profiles, enable tab-and-slot construction, and remove much of the math and layout work from the process. He also talks about how, once a niche capability, tube plasma cutting has become a practical entry point for automation in tube fabrication, especially for shops moving beyond manual layout and cutting. The conversation focuses on what these capabilities mean for miscellaneous metals, agricultural, and OEM fabrication, and why tube cutting automation is increasingly helping shops maintain consistency as experienced fabricators retire. Learn more about Lantek, provider of CAM software for CNC programming and nesting. This episode was recorded at FABTECH 2025 in Chicago. Email us at podcast@fmamfg.org with any comments, questions, or suggestions.

Allen, Joel, and Yolanda examine TPI Composites’ Chapter 11 proceedings, including the Oaktree Capital secured debt controversy and Vestas’ acquisition of two Mexican factories. With remaining assets heading to auction in January, they discuss what operators should consider as blade supply uncertainty grows. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum and Yolanda Padron. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy  Allen Hall: Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxum. Rosemary Barnes is on holiday. We’re here to talk about the TPI composites, uh, bankruptcy hearings, and there’s been so much happening there behind the scenes. It’s hard to keep track of, but we’ve done a deep dive and wanted to give everybody at least a highlight of what has happened over the last couple of months. So, uh, if you do own vessels or GE turbines, you understand what the situation is. As we all know, TPI composites, gee, was the world’s largest independent of wind blade manufacturing. Uh, they [00:01:00] were, it, they built blades for renova, Vestas, Nordex. They built blades for almost everybody, uh, names that basically power the global energy transition. And then, uh, if, and a lot of people don’t know this, but back in December of 2023, uh, TPI struck a deal that is drawing some fire. Right now, TPI swapped $436 million in preferred stock for. $393 million in secure debt held by Oak Tree Capital and by August of last year, just a couple of months ago, TPI filed for Chapter 11. Now the Blade Makers assets are being carved up and sold, and two of wind energy’s biggest players are stepping in to keep production running while the bankruptcy plays out. Now, Joel and Yolanda, I, I think the bankruptcy of. TPI sort of came to the industry as a little bit of a shock. Obviously [00:02:00] the, the price had fallen quite a bit. Uh, if you’ve watched the stock price of TPI composites had been dropping for a while and didn’t have a lot of of market value. However, uh, GE and Vestas both have manufacturing facilities basically with uh, TPI composites and, and needs them to produce those blades. So the filing of the bankruptcy, I’m sure was a nervous point for Vestus and GE being really the, the two main ones. Joel Saxum: Well, I think we talked about this a little bit off air. Is it, it shouldn’t just be Vestus and GE nervous about this now. It should be every operator that’s in either in development or still has blades under warranty. Uh, so, and this is a not a US problem, this is a global problem. ’cause TPI is a global company that serves, uh, global industry all over the place, right? We know that a large percentage of their throughput was GE and Vestas, but also Siemens ESAs in there, you name it, right? The, any major operator’s gonna have some blades built [00:03:00] by TPI or op major, OEM. So. There isn’t gonna be much of a, uh, dark corner of the wind industry that this issue doesn’t touch. So I think they, the, one of the issues here is, um, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve heard about some issues going on with TPI, but it was almost like a, ah, they’re not, they’ll, they’ll be okay. They, so, so something will happen. I mean, Yolanda, you had said. What was it that you said ear earlier? Like, uh, the kind of the, the, the feeling about it.  Yolanda Padron: They’ll take care of it. You know, OEMs will take care of it and we’ll be fine.  Joel Saxum: Someone’s gonna support this thing.  Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I, I think teams, you’re, you’re definitely right. Teams really do need to at least think of a, of a plan B or a plan C to have when the dust settles so you’re not scrambling.  Allen Hall: Yeah. And it hasn’t really played out that way. Uh, Vestas has stepped in a little bit and GE has stepped in. Not in terms of acquiring any of the major assets, but I think the first question is what is Oaktree Capital’s, [00:04:00] uh, role in all this? And that is being played out right now in front of the bankruptcy court. Uh, so when you go to bankruptcy, there’s obviously a lot of oversight that happens there, uh, and. When TPI composites entered bankruptcy, the accreditors committee had a bunch of questions about that transaction. Uh, they pointed to a December, 2023 refin refinancing deal with Oaktree and in which creditors were really suspicious of basically saying that TPI was already insolvent in 2023 and Oaktree exchanged equity for secure debt jumping ahead of everybody else in line to get paid. So because they Oaktree has secured debt, they’re first in line to get paid. If, uh, weather Guard was involved selling parts to TPI, which thank goodness we weren’t, we would be unsecured. They wouldn’t have to pay us. So Oaktree would get paid first and everybody else is unsecured, gets paid [00:05:00] later. Uh, that’s okay. I mean, that’s the way they, uh, they structured it. But this has led to a problem, right? So that oak tree. Uh, was supposed to release about $20 million in funding to keep the factories open, and that, that happened just a couple of weeks ago, and Oaktree refused to do it. So the amount of cash flow to keep the factories open was a real issue. TPI was in front of the court saying, we’re in trouble. We’re gonna become insolvent. We don’t have cash flow to keep the doors open. So the blade factories nearly shut down a couple of weeks ago. However, there was a, the settlement, uh, just after that, uh, in regards to Oaktree about when the payouts happen, what Oaktree will receive, and which basically it’s, most of whatever’s gonna happen here. So whatever, uh, TPI decides to sell or can sell, Oaktree is gonna be the recipient of those funds for most of it. I think the  Joel Saxum: difficult thing here for. The [00:06:00] general listener, me included, is understanding that this is a very complicated legal process that’s governed and it’s global, right? So it’s governed in certain court systems in different places. And because there is also the idea of like say in the, in the United States, the SEC Securities Exchanges Commission, that kind of regulates these. Publicly traded companies. There’s a lot of lights and there’s a lot of lawyers and there’s a lot of jargon involved in this thing. And, but basically what what we’re saying is, is the way the process works when you have a, uh, a bankruptcy and insolvency, if a company has debt to certain people, there may be a list of a hundred people. There may be a list of two, doesn’t matter. There’s certain classes of debt, right? And Oaktree has secured debt, which means. If they get paid first, if there’s anything, right? If this bankruptcy goes and, and gets, sell this, sell that, sell this, whatever’s left, goes to the secured debt and then it goes to unsecured debt. And [00:07:00] there’s sometimes there can be different classes of unsecured debt as well. And, but if there’s not, some of it just goes by like date or value or everybody gets a percentage, it just kind of all depends on how it works out in the specific court system that the stuff takes care of. But that person. That is the top. Um, in this case, Oaktree Capital, right? Based out of la but offices all over the world, they got about $200 billion in real estate equity and debt assets or, uh, I guess valuation. I wouldn’t say assets. Um, they are the debtor in possession, so they’re the one that’s kind of like top of the heap. They’re kind of controlling how the. The restructuring and or sale goes alongside the court system.  Allen Hall: And the trouble is, is that when you have unsecured and secured debt, everybody that’s unsecured wants to get paid. So any material supplier that has been for in selling product to TPI over the years [00:08:00] usually has a 30, 60, 90, maybe 120 days of, of after they deliver the product to they get paid. In that timeframe, if bankruptcy happens, all that product that’s sitting on the floor at TPI, you sort of lost it. You know, you can’t get it back and you’re not gonna get paid for it for if, if, if ever, what do you do? And so you start, you know, you start filing claims, but those, those claims most likely will never get paid. Or if they will, they’re going to get pennies on the dollar.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. And I would imagine like, so, you know, when we, when we sit here and say from the weather guard hat, right? We put a. They go to a client, net 15, net 30, we expect to get paid in that amount of time. That’s kind of how our, basically US forwarding credit to someone else. That’s how it works. And if you work within the wind industry, you know that the OEMs, because they are the OEMs, they have a heavier hand. Sometimes they’re net 90, net one 20. Um, once they, once they’re cool with your invoice. So you could see that some of these people that have, [00:09:00] uh, and TPI falls within that OEM category, right? Um, you can see that they more than likely will have had longer, more favorable terms for themselves with some of these sub-suppliers. And the sub-suppliers are, think about TPI blades. It is composites, it is fabric, it’s resins, it’s all of those supply companies. Um, and you know, there may be, uh, some other. Dead in there that you’re not, we’re not sure of. We saw some stuff with some OEMs, maybe they have some exchange agreements you paid up front for some blades or something of that sort. You didn’t get ’em. I don’t know. But there is also, and this is the one that kind of hits home to some of our listeners, um, not only some of our listeners are those supply chain companies that support them, um, but a lot of them are ISPs. Right? So we were just talking to someone who, you know, just a couple weeks ago that had done some inspection work, uh, for, for TPI that. They’re not gonna get paid for it. Um, we have seen on the creditors list of some ISPs that we know they’re not gonna get paid, and those are people out [00:10:00] doing warranty repairs and those kind of things over a course of time. And they may have had a net 30, net 60, net 90 days payment, but I’m sure that stuff is well and long gone. They probably have invoices due for a year now. Uh, but it, this, the, the, this downfall of TPI, what’s going on with them, it affects a lot of people in the wind industry. Um. Be being, having been on the short end once in my career of an unsecured debt, uh, when a, when the client or the, uh, um, purchaser of services, but went into bankruptcy and losing a whole bunch of cash, and there’s nothing you can do about it, um, except for. Be mad and stew over it and learn from your mistakes. Uh, that’s a tough place to be. Speaker 5: Australia’s wind farms are growing fast, but are your operations keeping up? Join us February 17th and 18th at Melbourne’s Poolman on the park for Wind energy o and m Australia [00:11:00] 2026, where you’ll connect with the experts solving real problems in maintenance asset management. And OEM relations. Walk away with practical strategies to cut costs and boost uptime that you can use the moment you’re back on site. Register now at W OM a 2020 six.com. Wind Energy o and m Australia is created by wind professionals for wind professionals because this industry needs solutions, not speeches,  Allen Hall: the problem. With TPI has been keeping the doors open and they went in front of the court and said, we have a liquidity problem. Uh, Vestus bought those two factories, those two LLCs for $10 million each. That was the agreement During that transaction, TPI asked for another $55 million, uh, and it’s in the transcripts. You can go listen to this dental, listen to it, but obviously the vest representatives were. No [00:12:00] way. We’re not doing that. We are in good faith. De decided to buy, uh, these two pieces. So 10 million bucks a, a factory is. Pretty decent price, but they are still in a liquidity challenge. So GE Renova and Vestus, uh, don’t want the Blades manufacturing to stop. They have customers who need blades and so they need these TPI factories to keep running. GE Renova is providing emergency financing. Uh, through what the court calls, uh, Erna, G-E-R-N-A, it’s a liquidity agreement. Uh, they also signed a long lead materials agreement to keep raw materials moving into the plants. Vestas provided cash advances to keep production going at the Mexico facilities also. So for now, everything continues to be running, but essentially GE and Vestas are pro paying for the materials. To keep the production line going and there’s this, there’s on the back end of this TPI is essentially. Gonna charge, um, [00:13:00] GE vest less for the blades when they roll off the line because they advanced some those funds. So, TPI as an organization is still trying to continue to produce blades and trying to honor their commitments as much as they can, but they need cash and the, the place they’re going to go get it or have been getting it from as Vestas in GE Renova. So you  Joel Saxum: one would expect that either Vestas or GE Renova would eventually just say like, we’ve got to buy you. Is that a reality? Because it doesn’t seem like it from the court documents and stuff. It seems like they’re, they’re kind of, they don’t want to get their hands into back or back into, in GEs case, this blade manufacturing, uh, faculties, right? They’re okay right now providing cash for you guys to keep your operation running and providing us with the things we need. But we don’t actually want to take it over. That’s what it feels  Allen Hall: like. Uh, well, Vestus did, right? So Vestus took over two factories in Mexico. GE has not done [00:14:00] that yet, and there’s no indication from the proceedings that I read on all the documents that GE has made any move to do that. Vestus definitely stepped in and wants to keep the two factories running, uh, with the issues with ge, Renova and LM at the minute, and there was a lot of layoffs at LM just before the new year. It’s a question of what GE will do, and it doesn’t seem like as of right now, GE is going to buy factories. Now that being said, uh, TPI composites has deadlines to meet and some auctions to run. Uh, the remaining assets, the non vestus. Portion and the, the Turkish operations, which were sold way earlier, uh, all of the remaining assets go up for bid on January 26th. And if no outside buyer steps in, which is very possible, Oak Tree Capital can use its debt as currency to take ownership of from what is called a credit bid. [00:15:00] From there, uh, the secure lender could convert that debt into equity and, and so basically what happens is Oak Tree Capital. Would be the holder of the company for whatever remains. But you would think that GE Viva, uh, would want to have some piece of this to keep the blade factories running, but there’s no indication of that. No one from GE has said anything. None of the filings indicate that GE wants to go ahead and or ge. Viva wants to go ahead and buy the factories. Nothing like that has happened. So there may be, uh, some more financial transactions at play here, but as of right now, everything that remains for TPI composites is gonna be in the auction block. Someone could walk up and for several million dollars, obviously, uh, acquire it and  Joel Saxum: in theory run it. So, I mean, Alan, you and I talked about this this morning a little bit. We have seen more [00:16:00] layoffs at lm. Right. We saw more people depart and it sounds like that building is basically a ghost town over in Denmark. GE is basically scuttling LM down to nothing, and they will more than likely either sell off whatever LM has or discontinue whatever that business model is, if that’s where they’re going, blade wise, wind wise. At the same time, they’ve also said, we’re not building any more g offshore turbines.  Allen Hall: What are they  Joel Saxum: doing? I don’t see them having the, the, the, the thirst to go scoop up or put any money into TPI, but it’s like a catch 22. ’cause they need them to fulfill the orders and stuff that they have. Right now what we’re staring at is basically oak tree composites. Allen Hall: There’s no chance of that. The oak tree doesn’t know how to run that business. They’re gonna have to hire somebody to go do that. Even if they did, you still got factories in Iowa, a bunch in Mexico, other [00:17:00] places. You have all these assets kind of spread all over the place. It’s not like running an automotive dealership on the corner, you’re, you’re running a major operation with thousands of employees and producing these massively complex blades. There’s only a handful of companies that would be even possible that we could acquire that and run it with any competency at all right now.  Joel Saxum: So does oak tree being, being that oak tree is the debtor in possession and if, if possible with, or if possible, if it, if it rolls this way with the plan toggle, right. Where they would basically, the cell would convert them into equity holdings and they would own it. Are they the gatekeepers to who can bid? Like do they control ge? You can bid vest as you can bid? Or does the court control that?  Allen Hall: The court controls all of that. So it’s all part of the chapter 11 proceedings. Anybody can walk up and put a bid in. And now whether it qualifies or not is, is a good question, but anybody can walk up and, [00:18:00] and make a claim for what remains. There’s, there is a process that will happen there, but who else would it be? Nordex? I don’t think so. Is is Vesta gonna buy more? I don’t think so. So the concern is obviously for TPI, what is it gonna look like going forward? If you have purchased Vestus turbines or GE Renova turbines, are you gonna have the blades that you have purchased in time? Great questions to ask. I think on the other side is if you do own GE Renova or Vestus turbines and they’re made by TPI, where the technical aspects lie, what do you do where, what should you be thinking about if you’re a large operator of some of these turbines? How I should be planning for the future here? What are you thinking about?  Joel Saxum: So let’s divide it into two categories. One of them is turbine blades on order supply chain, supply [00:19:00] chain, and the other one’s being turbine blades already in production or received order.  Yolanda Padron: I’m not sure that we can fully look at them separately though, right? Because if you have them, if, if they’re yours and they’re under a service agreement or something. Eventually you might be in the queue for a replacement that you need, right? That your OEM would be on the hook for.  Joel Saxum: That raises another question there then does. I don’t, ’cause I don’t know this. Maybe you do. Alan does a bankruptcy qualify as a force majeure event?  Allen Hall: Not in terms of like lightning would be, but, but in terms, yeah, sure.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. But can they claim force majeure and be like, uh, out of our control? So now the turbine supply agreements are, you know, basically have to be rewritten. Timelines have to be rewritten. Yolanda, to your point, if we have a blade that we need for production, am I not responsible for LDS anymore because the blade manufacturer went into, uh, bankruptcy?  Yolanda Padron: I think it’d be more of [00:20:00] either Now you’re not just. In the queue for TPI Blades. But you’re in the queue for whatever we can retrofit there, right? That they could put in.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. The alternative is you need a whole set though, right? So if we say like, I need a blade from TPI, or I need an entire set of LM blades, now you’re triple the cost. Who has to pay for that?  Yolanda Padron: I really would hope that it, they wouldn’t go this route, but I think some OEMs would just hit liquidated damages. And stop.  Allen Hall: That’s what I think too. I mean, we’ve seen that happen with some of the OEMs. Is that the, uh, LDS and that’s it. There is nothing going forward. They’re, they’re fine doing that. That’s the only play that they have. I, I am deeply concerned what GE Renova is about to do in the wind business because of their gas turbine and everything else are so profitable. And they just announced that the wind business in 2026 is not likely to make any. Positive cash flow. [00:21:00] It, the, the discussion inside of GE Renova, at least at the sort of the boardroom level, must be really tense because in, in theory, they could buy TPIs assets in the factories and run them, but they just went through essentially a liquidation process with lm. Do they want to run another company, especially when they’re bleeding cash in that particular business? I think the answer GE historically has been no. If we’re not number one or number two, we’re getting the heck outta that business. That was the Jack Welsh of running ge, and anybody that worked for GE knew that loud and clear because they said it all the time. Those same people that grew up in that GE culture are now in the boardroom, and what are they likely to do? They’re likely to follow that advice. Because it’s just what they know. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the school they went to. Are they gonna change their mind and say, A longer term play is wind [00:22:00] and we wanna stay in it and we’re willing to lose a couple hundred million dollars a year for the next couple of years, and now we’re gonna run a Blade Factory with several thousand employees down in Mexico. I just don’t see it. Uh, not that I could be totally wrong about that. Probably am. Uh, today, sitting at the beginning of January of 2026, I don’t think GE Renova wants to be in the blade manufacturing business if they can at all avoid it.  Yolanda Padron: I think it’s important for owners to start thinking a lot more about educating their internal teams on what they can. So if it’s through, if you know people within your OEM that you can trust and that can help you. Learn how to self-service some of your blades. That would be great if it’s through ISPs that you can trust. If it’s a hodgepodge of items. I think it’s really important for owners right now to start building that up because it will take a while. I. And, and the risk [00:23:00] is there.  Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, and if today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us overview. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. And we will catch you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

I walk through Alibaba's new AI agent tool, Accio, and show how it helps you go from “what should I build?” to actual product concepts and supplier options. I demo how it spots rising trends, pulls specific product opportunities (with context like search and sales movement), and even generates early design concepts. Then I test it on a real research task and use that to spin up a “cozy gaming” keyboard concept aimed at Gen-Z women. I close by showing how Accio can vet suppliers and even draft a supplier outreach email so you can start the sourcing process faster. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:55 – Trend Spotting Demo 03:31 – Designing Products Demo 07:04 – Product Opportunity Pain Points Demo 10:10 – Supplier Search Demo 11:06 – Mechanical Keyboard Market Research and Pain Points 16:03 – Cozy Gaming Mechanical Keyboard For Gen Z Women 18:42 – Supplier Vetting + Due Diligence 22:00 – Supplier Outreach Key Points Accio compresses the e-commerce workflow: trends → product ideas → design concepts → supplier shortlists. The real leverage is pairing insights (ratings, negative tags, review pain) with concrete product recommendations. The “agent task” flow feels like a research assistant: it gathers sources, updates a plan, and synthesizes outputs. Accio can move from concept to execution by suggesting suppliers and drafting a structured inquiry email. You still need real diligence: call suppliers, vet claims, and start with small orders. Numbered Section Summaries Accio As An “Unfair Advantage” For E-Commerce I introduce Accio as an AI agent built around e-commerce workflows—idea generation, trend analysis, product concepts, and supplier sourcing. My core point is it reduces the friction that usually keeps me (a software person) from starting e-commerce. Trend Spotting That Goes Beyond Generic Charts Using a baby products example, I show that it's not just search/sales graphs—it surfaces specific product categories and differentiators (like smart features) plus recommendations you can validate elsewhere. Turning Pop Culture Into Product Concepts (With Caveats) I try a “Squid Game” prompt to generate product directions and visuals. I'm clear this isn't a “press button, print money” system, but it gets the creative juices flowing and connects ideas to sourcing. Finding Opportunities By Reading What Customers Hate In the senior dog pet supplies example, Accio highlights product opportunities and connects them to the underlying pain (accessibility, cognitive decline, weak ratings). I emphasize that the edge is insight—knowing why current products underperform. Supplier Discovery Without The Usual Alibaba Overwhelm I run a supplier prompt with constraints (OEM, private label, MOQ, certifications, reviews). The key is Accio structures what's normally chaotic and gives a shortlist you can actually act on. Agent Research: Mechanical Keyboard Pain Points, Ranked I test an agent task to find unmet pain points and cluster them by theme, with “proof” from reviews/forums/Q&A. The point isn't keyboards—it's showing how fast you can go from “trend” to “what to build” using structured research. From Pain Points To A Launchable Niche Concept (Cozy Gaming) I pivot from the research into a niche: mechanical keyboards for Gen Z women aligned with “cozy gaming.” Accio proposes brand directions, a flagship product concept, and early roadmap thinking. Reality Check: Sourcing, Verification, And Outreach I ask for trusted suppliers and get a short list plus technical verification prompts (finish, sound profile, color matching). Accio then drafts a supplier email and shows how the workflow can extend to sending inquiries—while I remind you to vet suppliers carefully and start small. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

Send us a textShow Notes: If you've been paying attention to collision industry news lately, it can feel like every headline is yelling at you to brace for impact.

Send us a textEpisode 359: In this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report, Jamie Irvine speaks with Aaron Rivers, CEO of Emotiv Mobility, and Tim Kelly, the company's lead engineer, about their development of a hybrid power transfer case designed to modernize commercial vehicle electrification. Aaron explains how the idea emerged from recognizing the limitations of all‑electric commercial vehicles—especially in vocational applications where range, idle time, and auxiliary power needs make full electrification impractical. Tim breaks down how the system captures rotational energy from the transfer case to generate usable electric power, improving efficiency, reducing fuel and maintenance costs, and enabling new operational flexibility. The conversation explores engineering challenges, OEM interest, the importance of education in technology adoption, and the broader role commercial vehicles play in supporting society. The episode closes with a look at future enhancements and a call to recognize the critical role commercial vehicle innovation plays in global mobility.Links·         EmotivMobility.comSponsors of this EpisodeThe Hub Corp: Introducing the new standard in wheel-end protection: The Hub Corp's revolutionary XTRACTOR™. The only line of heavy-duty hub caps with a built-in 3-Stage Magnetic Oil Filter that safeguards critical axle components under extreme loads for longer. And with the patent-pending HexThread™ cartridge, the XTRACTOR makes hub oil servicing and inspections faster, easier, and cleaner. The Hub Corp: Challenge The Standard. Visit TheHubCorp.com to learn more and join the waitlist.  Fullbay: Fullbay is built for the heavy-duty world, giving your operation the tools to keep your fleet or independent repair shop running. Features like streamlined scheduling, real-time inventory tracking, technician efficiency insights, and detailed reports are how Fullbay helps shops reduce downtime and keep your vehicles on the road where they belong. Check out Fullbay.com/power to maximize your shop's productivity.GenAlpha: Equip360 by GenAlpha helps manufacturers and distributors grow their parts sales and make life easier for their customers. With real-time insights into inventory, pricing, and order tracking, it keeps customers coming back. Plus, it saves time by automating routine tasks and making repeat purchases simple. Explore Equip360 at GenAlpha.com.Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy Duty Parts Report may receive a commission. Follow the podcast to never miss an episode. If you'd like to work with Jamie Irvine directly, you can schedule a meeting with him today.

Knife designer and artist Paul Munko returns to The Knife Junkie Podcast to discuss his growing body of work, the inspiration behind his most popular designs, and what the future holds for Munko Knife Designs. Paul started his knife-designing career with the 2022 blockbuster hit, the Kizer Comet, an Art Deco-inspired modern gentleman folder. His third production knife, the Mystic, quickly became a fan favorite and Bob's favorite folder of 2023.The Mystic draws inspiration from New England whaling culture and specifically the town of Mystic, Connecticut. When Paul visited Mystic Seaport as a young person, the old harpoon guns on display in this preserved whaling museum captivated him. Those harpoons directly influenced the blade shape and handle design of the knife. The Rex 45 steel develops a beautiful patina over time, adding to the historical aesthetic and making each knife unique to its owner. It remains one of Paul's largest blade designs to date.Paul also discusses his recent collaboration with Kansept on the Quasar, which features a crossbar lock and hole-opening mechanism. This knife launched with eight different configurations, from high-end Timascus scales to budget-friendly G10 versions, even including a unique Glow Fat Carbon option that actually glows in the dark. The variety allowed collectors at different price points to own the design.As a multi-faceted artist who works in graphic design, music, and visual arts through his company Colorful Filth Graphic Design, Paul brings a unique perspective to knife design. He has collaborated with companies like Northern Knives and designer Jonathan Styles while maintaining knife design as a passion project alongside his full-time work.His signature design philosophy involves creating blades that look almost too big for the handle when open, creating a visual impact that sets his work apart.Looking ahead, Paul has clear goals for Munko Knife Designs. Eventually, he wants to launch an OEM project under his own brand, though he is thoughtful about the responsibilities that come with that step. He promises that when he does make that move, it will be something special for the collectors who have supported him from the start. With nine production designs currently on the market, Paul Munko is a designer worth following.Find Paul Munko online at https://www.colorfulfilth.com, on Facebook at https://facebook.com/ColorfulFilth, and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/colorfulfilth and https://www.instagram.com/paulmunko.Listen to the full episode at https://www.theknifejunkie.com/648.Be sure to support The Knife Junkie and get in on the perks of being a patron, including early access to the podcast and exclusive bonus content. Visit https://www.theknifejunkie.com/patreon for details. You can also support The Knife Junkie channel with your next knife purchase. Find our affiliate links at https://theknifejunkie.com/knives.Let us know what you thought about this episode and leave a rating and/or a review. Your feedback is appreciated. You can also email theknifejunkie@gmail.com with any comments, feedback, or suggestions.To watch or listen to past episodes of the podcast, visit https://theknifejunkie.com/listen. And for professional podcast hosting, use our podcast platform of choice: https://theknifejunkie.com/podhost.

In this episode of FreightWaves' The Daily, we map out the critical operational shifts defining the 2026 supply chain landscape, focusing on risk management over pure technology. We examine how generative AI and OEM partnerships are accelerating Waabi's push for point-to-point autonomous trucking to solve the commercial inefficiencies of the "highway trap." Regulatory risks are rising as a massive budget deficit in California threatens to disrupt federal, leading to significant compliance volatility for carriers. An internal audit highlights systemic weaknesses in the state's safety programs that could make roadside inspections and protocols increasingly unpredictable. On the macro front, a robust 4.3% GDP growth rate in Q3 signals a healthier economic foundation driven by strong consumer spending and exports rather than just import fluctuations. This economic shift is prompting industry leaders to stop designing for certainty and start building supply chains for adaptability to better handle market disruptions. We also discuss how this renewed focus on efficiency is setting the stage for a resurgence in large carrier M&A, including the anticipated spin-off of FedEx Freight. Finally, we analyze the urgent need to harden networks against sophisticated criminal rings that are exploiting commercial freight channels to smuggle narcotics and stolen vehicles across borders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shoot us a Text.Have insights into how 2025 went or how 2026 is shaping up?Let us know by sending an email to crew@asotu.com and maybe we'll respond on this show!Episode #1233: Happy New Year! Today we're celebrating by looking back on the biggest themes that dominated the retail auto landscape in 2025, and prognosticating the future by looking at the big things we think the industry will face in 2026.Top 10 Themes of 2025#10 – Gen Z Disrupts Expectations They demand transparency, flexibility, and quick accountability.#9 – Service Became the MVP Fixed ops carried the weight during sales slowdowns.#8 – China Asserts Dominance Chinese automakers scale massively with vertical integration.#7 – Autonomy Advances (Cautiously) Waymo plays it safe; Tesla pushes limits.#6 – AI Did the Mundane (And Everyone Loved It) No revolutions—just reliable lead follow-ups and call answering.#5 – Tech ≠ Efficiency More dashboards didn't fix poor processes.#4 – Used Cars Were the Rock More affordable and practical than new.#3 – Hybrids Became the Compromise Consumers leaned toward electric and gas.#2 – EVs Didn't Die, They Rerouted Slowed demand post-tax incentives forced OEM rethink.#1 – Affordability Dominated Everything Record-high monthly payments scared off buyers.Join Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier every morning for the Automotive State of the Union podcast as they connect the dots across car dealerships, retail trends, emerging tech like AI, and cultural shifts—bringing clarity, speed, and people-first insight to automotive leaders navigating a rapidly changing industry.Get the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/ JOIN the conversation on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asotu/

Allen and Joel are joined by Jeremy Heinks of CICNDT to discuss the critical need for pre-installation blade inspections, especially as safe-harbored blades from years past are rushed into service. They cover advanced NDT technologies including robotic CT scanning, blade bolt inspection for cracking issues, and how operators can extend turbine life beyond the typical 10-year repower cycle. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Jeremy, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. Well, the recent changes in the IRA bill are. Pushing a lot of projects forward very quickly at the moment, and as we’re learning, there’s a number of safe harbor blades sitting in yards and a rush to manufacture blades to get them up and meet the, uh, treasury department’s criteria for, for being started, whatever that means. At the moment, I think we’re gonna see a big question about the quality of the blades, and it seems to me. The cheapest time to quickly [00:01:00] look at your blaze before you start to hang them is while they’re still on the ground. And to get some n DT experience out there to make sure that what you’re hanging is appropriate. Are you starting to see that push quite yet? No, not not at Jeremy Heinks: the level we’d like to see it. Um, as far as getting the inspections in, yeah, we have been seeing the push to get the, get these blades out. Uh, but, uh, the, the, the few that we have been able to get our eyes on aren’t looking good. The quality definitely down. And we’ve just had a customer site come back with some, some findings that were surprising for a brand new blade that hasn’t been the up tower yet and in use. So, um, it is much easier for us to get the, uh, technology and the personnel to a blade that’s on the ground. It’s cheaper, it’s quicker. We can go through many, many more blades, uh, with inspections. Uh, it’s just access is just easier. Always comes down to access. Joel Saxum: That customer that you had there, like what was their [00:02:00]driver? Right? Did they feel the pain at some point in time? Did they, did they have suspicions of something not right? New factory? Like, I don’t know. Why would some, why is someone picking that over someone? Not because like you said, overwhelmingly. The industry doesn’t really do this. You know, even just getting visual inspections of blades on the ground before they get hung is tough sometimes with construction schedules and all these different things, moving parts. So you had someone that actually said, Hey, we want to NDT these blades. What was their driver behind that? Jeremy Heinks: So we, uh, we had done a previous, uh, route of inspections on some older ative of theirs that were, Speaker 5: um, Jeremy Heinks: getting. Kinda along in the tooth, if you will. Uh, so they’ve added some experience. They saw what we could bring to the table as far as results and, and, and information and data on those blades. Uh, and it all turned out to be, um, pretty reliable. So, um, you know, we educated them on, you know, if you have new blades coming in or even use the blades coming in for replacement, that it’s not a bad idea to get at least a, a sample it. And, uh, [00:03:00] basically that’s what they call us in to do. They had some brand new blades come in. For some new turbines they’re putting up. And, uh, they wanted the sampling. We did a sampling and the sample showed that, uh, they have an issue of these, these brand new blades. Joel Saxum: So, okay, so what happens then? Right? Because I’ve been a part of some of these factory audits and stuff, and when you catch these things in the factory, you’re like, Hey, where we got these 30 defects? And then the factory goes back against their form, their form, you know, their forms and they go, okay, material checklist is a, we’ll fix 24 of ’em. The other six are on you or whatever that may be. What happens when you find these things in the field at a construction site right? Then does that kick off a battle between the, the new operator and that OEM or, or what’s the action there? Jeremy Heinks: Yeah, so we’ve been on the OEM side and been through what you just explained, um, multiple times and helped a bunch of the OEMs on that stuff, that stuff. But unfortunately, when you’re in the field and you find the same thing, it’s, it’s a whole different ball game. Um, they typically. We won’t see any of that. We don’t, we won’t be able to [00:04:00] see what the OEM actually does unless we have informa, you know, information or channels that, that are a little bit different, uh, than normal to, uh, get that information. So, um, but yeah, so we, we’ll give this information over to the customer. Uh, they’ll go to their supplier and then that’ll turn into a. To a dance and, uh, where everybody’s trying to pass the buck, basically, right? So, um, unfortunately that’s the way it’s been. We will see how this one turns out. It, it all depends on, on the relationship between that OEM and the customer and the end user. Joel Saxum: So, so this is my, my last question about this and, and then I want to, of course, jump topics we have a lot of talk about here today. But the question being, okay, so say they do repairs. Is it then a good idea to bring you guys back in after those repairs are done to say NDT? Everything looks good here. Um, basically clear to fly. Jeremy Heinks: Yeah. [00:05:00] So, uh, post inspection on repairs is always a good idea. Um, the aviation side is, it’s commonplace to, uh, post in inspect repair. So yeah, definitely, uh, we’d wanna come back. Um, you know, and that’s something we’re working on too in-house as a, uh, working on a new training. Syllabus to where we can give some of the basic NDT tools to, uh, end users so that if a repair company would come in, they would be able to have their technicians do a quick, you know, quick test. Uh, it’s what we used to call like an operator level inspection. And then if they saw some of the stuff we trained ’em to that we could come back and, and bring in a level three or a level two and look at their information and then maybe do a reinspection if they thought they saw something that was bad. Allen Hall 2025: Joel, you and I had discussed a couple of months ago with an operator in the United States and the Midwest that was gonna be building a repowering, a wind farm with turbines, uh, that were a couple of years old. Remember that discussion about what version of [00:06:00] the blade are those? And it was an early version. I was surprised how long those blades had been sitting in the yard, and we said, well, it’s gonna have a B and C problem. You need to get somebody out there to inspect those blades before you hang them. That’s the perfect case for NDT to get out there and look because it wasn’t like every blade had a serial defect. It was just kind of a random thing that was happening. Do you remember that situation? Joel Saxum: Yeah, and it was really interesting too because you know, we’re on like that specific blade. We’re on like version nine of it out in the field right now. But since I think those were like in 20 19, 20 20, they had been safe harbored from they, those blades have the advantage of now having 3, 4, 5, 6 years of. History within the market of all of the issues that pop up. So we were able to tell that operator, Hey, since these things haven’t flown yet, we know it’s this, this, this, and this. You should have NDT come out here and do this. You should do this. This basically preemptive repair, this proactive measure before you fly these [00:07:00] things. Um, and I think what we see right now, Alan, like you said, just to open the episode with IRA bill changes and. And these new legislation coming up, there’s a lot of stuff coming out of Safe Harbor that’s gonna get flown. Allen Hall 2025: Oh, it’s gonna have a huge, uh, amount of blades that have been sitting there for a couple of years. And, but if you, the operator haven’t used those blades or don’t know the service history of those blades, it’s kind of a mystery and you better be calling other operators that are using them. But ultimately, when it gets down to it, before you hang those blades, and I know everybody’s in a rush to hang blades. You better take a look at ’em with NDT, especially if there are known issues with those blades. And the the problem is you can’t just do a walk down, which is what I think a lot of operators are doing right now. Send a technician down to make a look. Make sure the blade’s all in one piece, like I guess that’s where they’re at. Or we’ll walk inside and kick the tires and make sure all the bond lines are there. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and particularly if you know there’s a source of problem on a particular [00:08:00] blade, you can’t see it. It can be buried deep inside. How are you gonna know without having somebody with NDT experience? Joel Saxum: This is the interesting thing too, here with that specific case that that developer will call ’em. They said, I talked with the OEM. They said there’s nothing wrong with these blades. And they like, that was like, they’re like, they’re like, yeah, we checked with them. They said, there’s no issues. I said, you must have been talking to a sales guy because anybody from that engineering team is gonna tell you that. Or maybe they don’t want to, right? They, of course they don’t want to come clean with this, but that’s why we, that’s why we have the, like the uptime network and people that you can talk to and things of these sort out there and experts like Jeremy, right? The C-I-C-N-D-T guys, because they’ve seen the worst of the worst, Jeremy Heinks: right? We typically only get called in when it’s the worst of the worst, but to, uh, toss ’em with more wrinkle. Toss one more wrinkle into the whole storage thing. Uh, we got a project a few years back where the storage site, like, ’cause the blades had been stored for like 15 years, like seven years prior. The storage [00:09:00]site was underwater for like three weeks, like 20 feet. Like it was a massive flood, 20 feet of water or 10 feet of water, whatever it was. So the, it was a lot of water anyway. The bottom two thirds of these blades were. Rotted because of water logs being sitting in the water. And of course over the last seven years they got cleaned up. They looked good ’cause of the rain and everything and it looked bad. So we get out there, we’re scanning laminates and you get like halfway down the blade and it just with the, you know, terrible signal. And so we look back on the history and sure enough there was floods in the area. So those are things you gotta look at too. These blades are coming out of these long-term storage. I mean, how were they stored? How what has gone, what weather has been through that storage area in the last whatever years? Uh, because all that affects these blades when they’re on the ground. I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re fairly secure when they’re up tur up turbine and they’re meant to be in that environment. They’re not really meant to be getting just hit hard with weather when they’re on the ground. ’cause they’re [00:10:00] not sealed up. They’re not, you know, you know, a lot of different things there. Joel Saxum: Another ground issue, and I, I’ve, I’ve heard of this one through my insurance connections and stuff like that, is, um, when blades are on the ground, there’s, this is not an abnormal thing. It happens quite regularly that it shouldn’t, but it does. That heavy, strong winds will come through and can blow the blades over when they’re sitting in their chairs, right at the, or they’ll start, yeah, they’ll start fluttering in ways that they’re not designed to flutter. Right? They’re designed to take the gravity loads and take the force loads the way they are up tower when they’re sitting on the ground, it’s a completely different game. So if they’ve been there, if they’ve experienced an extreme weather event or something of that sort, NDT is the only way you’re gonna figure out if something is really wrong with ’em. Jeremy Heinks: Right. And that rolls into handling as well. So shipping, handling at the plant, handling from, you know, in between. Different movements. Uh, like you said, they, they’re designed to be in an environment that’s hung from a turbine and, uh, get those types of, you know, elements and the winds and everything on. That’s not everything we do to when on [00:11:00] the ground. So Allen Hall 2025: turbines, a lot of times, even at the blades are in storage. They get moved around a good bit. And what we’re finding, talking to operators is that a lot of the damage we’re seeing later on in some of these blades. Was most likely due to transportation. So maybe it was on the ship on the way over, or maybe when they got trucked to the, uh, storage site or they got bumped into. It does seem to be a lot more of that. And the lift points seem to be another area where, you know, you know, I think there’s some, uh, need to be taken a deeper look at. Obviously the root bushings are a problem area for almost everybody at the moment, but also further out on the blade. There seems to be. Uh, repeatable damage areas that you see that you wouldn’t be able to detect until you got the blade spin. And, and then you see these cracks develop. But a lot of that can be sussed out on the ground, especially with knowledgeable people. Jeremy Heinks: Yeah. So that’s just another reason for, you know, pre-installation inspection. Um, you know, a lot [00:12:00] of places you’ve got experts moving these things, you know, experts lifting ’em, whatnot. But when they’re in a, they’re on a ship or they’re in a yard. A lot of times the guys that are professionals at moving them aren’t there. So it’s gonna get moved by somebody and they’re not gonna know exactly what they’re doing, even if they’re trying their best to be, make sure they’re following procedure or whatnot. But, um, you never know who’s moving on, who’s, you know, what, what, what kind of skills or the experience they have. Joel Saxum: So, so that brings me into another question here, Jeremy. Right? We’re talking about skills and tools and these kind of things in the industry. When we say NDT, I would like everybody listening to know that when we say NDT, we’re talking about a wide gamut of technologies, of solutions, of products, of, uh, you know, methodologies for inspection here. NDT is just a broad scheme for non-destructive testing. We wanna see inside of something without cutting it, breaking it, whatever we have to do. [00:13:00]So, can you, can you walk us through the approach that kind of CIC will use? So, hey, customer comes to me, we have this issue. Okay. You guys have, I don’t know, 20, 30, 40, 50 different ways of doing things. Um, but how does that conversation usually start? What does that process look like for an operation? Jeremy Heinks: So it, I mean, it all depends on it’s case by case with what kind of issue they’re looking for. But, uh, we recently had our. Our, our lab opened up in, in Ogden, Utah, where we’ve got, um, a lot of in-house technologies now, like robotic ct, uh, laser ultrasound, um, and then urography, all the normal stuff. We typically throw out these things, but deposit focus, but we’re able to do just about anything. A lot of advanced materials, and of course a lot of that came from us servicing the DOD, the defense and the, the aviation, it’s space side of the house. But now that we have them all in one place. If a wind customer has an, let’s say they have, um, a root issue or they have a bottom line issue, or they’ve got, um, you know, or these, uh, carbon fiber [00:14:00] main spars, you know, you’ve got some new types of defects to out of these. Typically what would happen was you cut into these things to see what’s wrong. And of course, we’ve all seen what cutting composites does it, you know, it can be kind of messy and it can damage a defect that’s existing so you don’t have a good look at it. With these technologies we have in house now, especially with the CT part of it, we can do a inspection. We can see everything of a area that is unmolested, right? So we can, let’s say you find something and you’re scanning, let’s say you are an OEM and you’re doing ultrasonic inspection or thermography, and you find something in house, well, you can cut around that, send it to us, we can scan it and get a 3D image, you know, of the full material thickness. Really break that down without having the damage, the defect. Uh, and this is stuff that hasn’t been really gone into on the wind side yet. We do it on aviation and space all the time, um, for defect characterization. And then, you know, we have a really good picture of what’s going on there. [00:15:00] Uh, we characterize defects that way and we can also come up with better inspection solutions that way. Allen Hall 2025: Well, that’s interesting because I’ve seen it in aviation all the time. I assume they were doing it in wind. You have to have a way to understand what the defects are and when you see one, or especially if you don’t understand what is causing it, you just can’t cross section that you want to take a large section out and then scan it. Understand what is likely the source of that problem that’s not being done. And when, too much at the moment, I think it is, but it’s, Jeremy Heinks: it’s finally getting cheap enough that, uh, it’s. It’s an option, right? So it’s, it’s always been kind of expensive, but the equipment has come, is coming down in cost and we have a very unique system in-house. It’s not typical to your normal CT system. So we use, uh, a robotic system, a cobots, so we can, we do very large, very large parts, uh, and, uh, composites of course are typically lower energy. So [00:16:00] it’s, um, pretty much tailored for that type of part. Where other CT systems may, might be tailored to other, other types of parts. Allen Hall 2025: So then you can actually take some significantly large size pieces. Then what’s the, what’s the biggest size part you can take and, and get some data out of? Jeremy Heinks: I mean, again, comes outta the time and money. Uh, right now our largest piece is probably, um. Probably like a 10 foot by six foot section. Allen Hall 2025: Whoa. Jeremy Heinks: I mean, in theory we could do a, we could do a whole wing in theory, you know, um, which could be a, you know, a decent sized blade even. But, uh, that would require specialized bay, um, and some extra tooling. But, uh, right now in-house, yeah, we could do, uh, fairly large sample. Joel Saxum: The first time I ran into you, uh, Jeremy in the wind industry was probably three, four years ago. I think, and you may not even have known this, but it was on an, it was on an RCA case for an insurance company, and they’re like, we, [00:17:00] we did the, our, our initial, where the team I was with at the time, our initial RFI, Hey, we need this data, this data, this data. And they sent, they sent us this just library of stuff and they were like. Can you use this? What is this? And it was all NDT data from, from the issue that we were inspecting. It was like, this is the most amazing batch of data we have ever received on an RCA. Who are these people? Where did this come from? Um, and I think that, that, that was my first, ’cause, you know, from the oil and gas side, NDT, that’s just regular. You’re doing it all offshore platforms, like you’re always doing NDT. It’s just, it’s just an accepted thing. Uh, you know, and the, the, of course the offshore technicians for NDT, the, the rates are a lot different. Um, and so I was like, okay, yeah, we we’re using nd this is when I first was really getting going and win. I was like, oh, great, we’re using NDT and Win. But since then, it’s still, it’s been. Very specialized use, you know, RCAs or like a special repair or something like that. You just don’t see it very widespread. And, and it’s, it’s frustrating because, you know, from, I guess from my past, like you can see the value of this [00:18:00] tool and you see some tertiary kind of things out there where people are doing little NDT with robotics and this and that, but like, it’s like the industry hasn’t grasped onto it. Like, I don’t know if the engineers just don’t, just don’t know that it’s available or know the value of it or why they’re missing it. Because you go back to the idea of, um. You go to your general practitioner or the doctor and say like, okay, yeah, you got your knee hurts. Okay. Yeah. Shake it around a little bit. Like, okay, we’re gonna, we need to prob maybe do surgery here and before we do that, let’s go get an X-ray or a MRI. So we know exactly what we’re supposed to do. When we get in there, we make it efficient. We make bang, bang, bang, clean cut and all, and we’re done. That’s the same thing as like, uh, to me, a really deep lightning repair. You know what I mean? We hear these war stories all the time of people saying like, oh yeah, they quoted us 20,000. And this team quoted us 50,000, and then the $20,000 team, we gave the project to them, they got in there and it ended up being a hundred thousand. Well, if you would’ve spent 15 grand or 10 grand, or five grand or whatever it may be to get some NDT work done on this thing before [00:19:00] you opened it all up, you might know what you were getting into and be more efficient. Come with the right kit, less standby time, the right technicians on the job, all this stuff, just like your surgery on your knee. I mean, have you seen anybody picking up that idea in the wind industry? Jeremy Heinks: Not as, not as much as I’d like. Um, there’s been a coup, there’s some of the OEMs have tried to automate, tried to bring it in. Um, most of ’em do some inspection. Um, and it really is the plant by plant, depending on what kind of support they have. We all know whenever things are times are tight or, uh, or you need to have the cycle time as the most important thing. You know, quality is the first one to get cut. So, you know, that’s, that makes it a tough. A tough sell in a lot of people’s books ’cause we add cycle time and we add costs, uh, at the manufacturer. Um, but, um, you know, the other thing I’ve seen is, you know, when they do try and implement something where, let’s say some automation where they could do this stuff quickly and, [00:20:00] you know, over the mass produced parts that they have, um, you know, they, they go to an automation company that doesn’t know much about NDT. If they do know about NDT, it’s, it’s not wind. NDT. So. Um, you know, the, they would be better off if they would contact, you know, a company like ours or there’s a few of us out there where all we, like a majority of our work is in the wind industry. Um, there’s a, there’s a couple in Europe, there’s a couple over here. Get those guys in first. It doesn’t have to be us. Um, but get somebody with practical Yeah. You know, experience and that practical part is the most important part, and have them help you with a practical approach. To the inspection with automation. I mean, that’s, there’s simple and easy ways to do this that just haven’t been done yet. Allen Hall 2025: Um, Jeremy Heinks: not gonna say it’s gonna be cheap, but it should be, um, usable. It’s not gonna end up on a shelf. Like I always keep telling everybody, all these systems, just they, I’ve seen millions of dollars spent and it just sits on a shelf [00:21:00] collecting dust. Happens all the time. Um, and that’s in the field as well. Uh, we see a lot of really cool robotics sink coming out. A lot of, uh, drone. Interior drone stuff, exterior, drone stuff, uh, and just looking for a practical approach. You know, these guys, a lot of ’em come at it with, um, really good intentions, but, uh, they don’t have the experience needed to, uh, know what they’re gonna run into when they do these, these types of applications and therefore, kind of missed the mark. Allen Hall 2025: Jeremy, I’ve been to a site recently and noticed up on the whiteboard. Blade bolts were their particular issue. And I saw a couple of the blade bolts sitting in the shop there and they had cracks, big cracks and broken blade bolts. And I thought, man, that’s a huge problem. And the number of turbines that were listed was incredible. It’s not technicians and mechanics are out there all day fixing these blade bolts ’cause there’s so many bolts per blade. You just multiply the numbers like wow, they have a huge [00:22:00] problem. The issue is you can’t really tell which Blade Bolt has a crack in it while it’s installed, unless it falls out, and they were having that problem too. How can you attack that problem from an NDT standpoint? Can you suss out what bolts are likely to fail or, or in the process of failing? Jeremy Heinks: Yeah, so in bolt inspection is isn’t new. Um, it’s gonna, sounds kind of new to the wind industry, but uh, oil and gas aviation. We’ve all done, we’ve been doing bolt inspection on those for quite a long time. So even in, uh, on marine with the, you know, sail sailing vessels with the mask bolts. Uh, so, uh, these are things that we can do ultrasonically, um, you know, whether it’s stalled and look for cracks at different, uh, lengths. Um, of course we need a little bit of information about the bolt itself, the material, um, design length, all that stuff. But, uh, no, we can definitely do a, a, uh, inspection. Whether it installed or not installed on the bolts? Uh, you mean it wouldn’t even be a [00:23:00] bad idea to get the bolts inspected before they get used for installation? You know, that could be done with, uh, a few different methods that are pretty quick. Uh, but, uh, the other thing we’re working on, uh, actively is a monitoring system also where, uh, we’ll be able to attach the sensors to the end of the bolt and, uh, it’ll be able to, uh. Monitor the, the health of the individual bolts over time. Allen Hall 2025: Can you see inclusions, or what is the defect that’s causing these bolts to start to crack? Is it something in the casting of the bolts themselves or the machining? Are they overheating them when they’re getting machined or not tempering them correctly? All the Jeremy Heinks: above. So we can definitely see that, um, you know, on new bolts you’ll, you’ll be able to see if there’s manufacturing defects or if there’s material defects, um, that maybe didn’t get caught during manufacturing. Or, um, you know, receiving inspection. Allen Hall 2025: I have one of these bolts that’s like two and a half feet long you can actually see inside and tell me where that defect lies. ’cause you cannot see it on the outside when they’re all [00:24:00] finished. Jeremy Heinks: Right. Typically we use ultrasound, uh, for, uh, quick inspection on that. Um, I mean, if it’s out of the, the turbine, you know, first year x-ray and make particle, that kind of trend, you know, everything gets your to outta, but the ut seems to be pretty, pretty straightforward on those. We’d even signed the cracks that are in the threads if we had the right, um, bit jangle to the, uh, the beam. Allen Hall 2025: Okay. So if you just received a whole truckload of these bolts, which is sort of the quality that you’re coming in right now, you could ut inspect each one of those before you took ’em up tower and, and spent all the money to install ’em and make sure that the manufacturer actually is delivering a proper product. Are Joel Saxum: they doing that at the factory? Why are they not doing that at the factory? Jeremy Heinks: Because Allen Hall 2025: they’re told they’re Jeremy Heinks: good when they get ’em from a supplier. Allen Hall 2025: That seems like a huge, if I’m the attorney at Blade Bulk Company, China Limited, I would want to make sure that I won’t gonna kill somebody because, ’cause those things are falling out and they’re just gonna [00:25:00] lawn daughter it underneath the turbine. Joel Saxum: And a hard hat’s not gonna save you from a bolt coming down. Allen Hall 2025: Well, you could tell by the number of problems that they were having that they had replaced some of these bolts. The new bolts had also had problems. So as a, a sequence of replacements, at some point you have to stop that process. You have to validate the part. You’re putting in the turbine is correct, right? I mean, when you have to do that Jeremy Heinks: on my side, you, you get what you pay for. And if you’re gonna go for cheap, you should probably spend a little bit to make sure what you’re getting is Allen Hall 2025: somewhat decent. So how, what would that entail to check them in the o and m building and say, you got a hundred bolts show up on site. What are we talking about in terms of time to make sure that at least the, the sanity check is being done before you spend the money to install these bolts? I mean, if we put together something, it could be done a few minutes per bolt. Throw me a, throw me a time and a dollar amount. Are we talking about millions of dollars or thousands of dollars for this? Thousands of dollars [00:26:00] Strong. Jeremy Heinks: We could probably get a system together that would be extremely cheap and effective. So I mean, if there’s, if that’s something that needs to exist in the industry, then we can definitely put together something that we can sell. Allen Hall 2025: I think people don’t realize that that is a thing. They don’t know that that’s possible. You can’t go to Amazon and buy a blade, bolt checker that’s not there. You can buy a lot of things on Joel Saxum: Amazon though. Allen Hall 2025: Let me ask you about the thing. I’ve seen the sort of the unscientific blade bolt check. Where they, have you seen this Jeremy, where they hang the bolt on one end and they tap it in the other and it, and it rings right? It makes this kind of a bell noise and they think they can hear if there’s a defect inside of there. Can you hear if there’s an inclusion or some sort of crystalline defect inside this blade bolt by tapping it? That’s, it’s a resonance test and Jeremy Heinks: I, I think you could definitely tell, you can definitely tell if there’s something going on. I think you would have to have a good control though. So if you, you have to have, you’d have to have one bid [00:27:00] vote. To balance against, I would imagine, and someone with good hearing. Yeah, I, it’s tap testing with anything is always subject to so many things. So it’s, uh, it’s better than, Allen Hall 2025: better than nothing probably. But, uh, how much better than nothing? Is it just slightly better or is it like, well you get, at least you’re getting the worst ones out of the lot. Uh, would it even do that? Unless I had it announced to, to try it, um, I would wanna. Say either way, but you see the little tap hammers, I’ve been on site and seen the little tap hammers sitting on guys’ desks that are the, you know, the, uh, calibrated tap test tool to see for DAS, that is not an easy tool to use. And it’s not even right for all the applications because it only, it’ll see something on the surface, but where, what can’t it see? Jeremy Heinks: So there is a regulated. Way to do tap tests. There’s, [00:28:00]it’s, as you have a certified tap test that you have to have, uh, noise levels and the environment have to be at below a certain amount, your, your guy doing, the person doing the test has to have a hearing check annually, and it has to be at a certain level. Um, the tap hammer has to be, is proportional to the thickness of material you’re looking at. ’cause if you’re looking at some, I mean, it’s only good for so, so thick. Like if you’re looking at. 10 millimeters, 15 millimeters fine. But once you get past 20, you’re gonna use a heavy hammer. And I’ve seen hammers in some plants that were probably causing damage, you know, ’cause they were so heavy, like, and they’re just, it was a piece of rebar with a ball bearing welded on the end of it, and they’re just hammering away. And it was so loud in the bay that even when they got lucky, when it crossed the dry glass area, they didn’t hear it. They just kept on rolling. Joel Saxum: Man, I thought, I thought a tap test was literally like a technician with a, with a, like a one euro coin in their hand or something. Just like ding ding [00:29:00] d ding, ding, ding. Like, that’s my tap test. Like you got a quarter. Jeremy Heinks: I have done a lot of tap tests, but it was like on radars where you had like two layers of carbon fiber and it was super thin and you could really hear, it works sometimes, but you just have, it’s got limitations just like any other method of inspection. So, and if people just. Allen Hall 2025: Don’t abide Jeremy Heinks: by Allen Hall 2025: this. If you have a technician roll into the o and m building, listen to Def Leppard on 11, then you’re probably not picking the right guy to do the tap test because it does take a lot of sensitivity to hear these minor changes. It’s not easy. Or the Lake Green, Ozzy Osborne. Yeah, right. If you see a, an Ozzy sticker on the guy’s pickup truck, probably not the right choice for the uh, tap test expert. The funniest thing ever. Jeremy Heinks: On the aviation side, we’ve gone to so many aviation or space group areas that use tap test and it’s always the oldest guy that has the hardest hearing, that’s doing the test every time, every Allen Hall 2025: time [00:30:00] they pass the most stuff. That’s why production doesn’t slow down. You said it, not me. I wanna expand the scope just for a minute. Uh, there’s gonna be a lot of, a lot of sites right now because of the changes in the IRA bill that are not going to be able to. Uh, get their next round of production tax credits and reapply because they’re gonna miss this window, right? So you have blades that are seven and eight years old, or turbines eight, seven, or eight years old. You’re not gonna be in that window of opportunity pretty much depending on what happens with the treasury rules. That thing is like it’s going to force operators into taking a deeper look at the health status of their turbines, maybe more than they have in the past to know, am I good for another 10 years, or if I do a little bit of preemptive maintenance on my existing fleet, can I get ’em 10 years, maybe 15 years? That’s the look I think that everybody’s trying to evaluate right now, and I think the [00:31:00] key to all of that is to actually have some NDT data. To actually look inside and to see, do I have a blade root issue that’s still early, that it’s gonna pop up at year 12? Do I have a cracking issue that I need to go take a look at? How does that factor into the planning over the next year, 18 months? For me, it was a little eyeopening when we went Jeremy Heinks: down that and visited our friends in Australia, and that’s kind of how they live, right? With their, their wind farms. They, they have to make ’em last. And it was, it was eye-opening and I, I just had a conversation with one last week. One of the people we met down there and they were looking into, uh, main bearings, a pitch bearing, and they’re cracking, right? So these are things that can be inspected with ultrasound or other things, and we can find these cracks internally. Like this is stuff that we don’t get to see much in the US or, or, you know, markets like ours because they get replaced, right? Everything gets just, we have a throwaway attitude when it comes to blades because of, you know, repowering and other things. Um, [00:32:00] where. Places like Australia or like in the islands where we’ve got a customer, that’s not how they look at it. These things have to last 30 years, you know, or longer, you know. So, uh, inspection and preventive maintenance is, is is, uh, the way to look, way to go. It. I mean, again, oil and gas, the stuff they have has to last a long damn time. A lot. You know, they do preventative maintenance. They have repair schedules or replacement schedules, all this stuff. And maybe we gotta start looking at that stuff a little more smartly on our side. Um, and, uh, budget for more inspection on these things that we know will go bad over time. And it’s not necessarily just the blade, but other parts of the turbine as well. You know, we’ve got a a yup. Bearing we’re looking at too. And that’s, that’s a pretty large. Part you have a crack in it, but Joel Saxum: ha bearing. Jeremy Heinks: Yeah. So these are things that didn’t crack. So we’re looking at, uh, with different inspection methods as well. [00:33:00] So, Allen Hall 2025: so do you think the roles of reversing that the Australian European methodology to keep turbines up and running is going to be applied to the states, and how is that going to transfer that knowledge transfer gonna work because it. The staffs in. A lot of us operators are set up for that 10 year period. Like they, they don’t really think about year 11 anymore. They haven’t for a number of years. How do they get spooled up on that and what resources are they going to need to get to year 15 and 20? If I was them, I would be reaching out to Jeremy Heinks: our partners in Australia or Europe and ask those questions. And a lot of these comp, a lot of these large energy companies are not just us. They’re. Multiple, you know, areas of the world that they, they brought in. So they have, they should have the knowledge and the leverage in house. They’re just gonna have to connect those people or, you know, people, people, people like you guys are gonna be able to, you know, bring that knowledge and connect those people. ’cause I mean, you guys are great at connecting people for [00:34:00] sure. Joel Saxum: That’s what we, we try to say that to everybody though, too. Every time we go to, like, Hamburg is next year, right? The, the Hamburg is to me is the best wind show in the world. Hamburgers next year. Wind Europe is coming up. Like if you’re a US operator, if you, if you’re, you name it, one of the big conglomerates that has people on both sides of the pond. Yeah. Connect up internally. Come on. Get your act together. But the other side of it is, is there’s a lot of people here that aren’t, they just don’t know. You know, there’s a lot of operators that are very large here. They don’t have anything else anywhere else. Go to Hamburg, go to Wind Europe, go, go over there, just go to the conference, see the technology, see the innovations, talk to the people, have some conversations because it will be eye-opening and you know, and, and there is another one too that I think is a very important, um, there’s some ISPs that go across the pond, back and forth, and some of these good ISPs have a lot of really good knowledge about what goes on back and forth because there’s a different operating model over there as well. There’s a lot of the. Financial asset owners that [00:35:00] just have the plants and they entrust someone later on in life to manage it for ’em. Where these ISPs have 20 vestas engineers and 20 Siemens engineers and 20 SGRE engineer or you know, all these people there. So there’s, there is a way to get this information back and forth, but you’re a hundred percent correct here in this conversation. I guess the, all the three of us here. We’re staring at, uh, a cliff that we need to figure out how to get wings on before we, we don’t want it to be like the red, the red Bull thing, where every, just into the water. We don’t wanna do that. We wanna fly up the cliff. Jeremy Heinks: But we’ve seen, we’ve seen this too, at some of the, the o and m focused, you know, show or conferences or gatherings. The ISPs aren’t, aren’t brought in ’cause they’re scared. It turns into a sales pitch. Um, but again, I like the one we had in Australia last year. That was great. It was, hey. This isn’t a sales pitch, just tell ’em. I mean, most of us know, I mean, I, I’m gonna be up there speaking. I’m not, I don’t have to do a sales pitch. If I, if what I’m saying is valuable to somebody, they’re gonna come find me, [00:36:00] which is what happened after that. You know, people reach out, you know that they’re gonna be like, oh, that I have that issue. I’m gonna go talk to this guy. You don’t have to do a sales pitch, just say, Hey, this is what we, what we found. These are the things we ran into as we do these things. And just keep it about the, uh, about the, about the problems. That we’re facing? Allen Hall 2025: Well, yeah, that’s gonna be the key for the next couple of years, just because a lot of the engineers and staff on the United States, uh, have not been to a lot of conferences and talk to technical people because they haven’t needed to. It’s more of, Hey, I need to keep the blade running a couple more months and then we’re gonna move on to the next project. We got a Repowering project going on. It’s been in that sort of build mode for a number of years, and that whole. Logistics, uh, internal workflow is going to change where they need to be bringing outside resources in to help them understand what they’re missing or what key components do they have over in Denmark or Germany or France that we don’t have on staff at the minute, and why do [00:37:00] they have it? One of those is going to be NDT and a lot of it, I think just because of the age of the turbines and the. I would say the era in which they were built, it’s gonna lead themselves into more inspection. That’s, I think, an avenue for C-I-C-N-D-T to explore, obviously. But I think the key is to get the engineers and the sort of the maintenance staff out into the world again, and to come to some of these conferences. Like j when Jeremy speaks, you should be there listening because he’s gonna give you all the answers in about 30 minutes of what you need to go do. That’s the key. Right? Jeremy Heinks: Right, right. And I mean, not just myself, but anybody in a position where you’ve got knowledge and experience that would benefit the whole industry, um, you know, certain volunteering, get, get out there and uh, and pass the, you know, pass the word out. You know, it’s like, you know, we had this thing in the NDT industry where. A certain generation of the, the older guys that had all this experience, all our senior level threes, you know, back then it was, you [00:38:00] wanted to hold everything in because that was your key, that was your ticket to getting a payday. Right. But ended up is when those feasible people all retired or, or worse. Um, then though that knowledge got passed down and uh, it was all kept up. And you look at, look at the aviation industry, the fumbles they’ve had lately with quality. And that’s because of that. ’cause they don’t talk to each other, none of that. They, they this year, all these problems they’re having right now in aviation stuff that they took care of in the fifties, right. And they just forgot. So now we get, have a chance to try and not do that in the wind industry. Um, you know, if you’re an expert in something, get out there. And, I mean, it’s tough. Like I don’t like talking in front of big crowds or anything, but. It’s, uh, once you get rolling and people get engaged and with guys like you to help out, you know, it’s, it’s not a bad type. Just set the ball in the tee and let you take a whack at it. But you could be in the difference between somebody having a whole farm, uh, a wind farm, go, go down, or they have a, like we’ve come across people that have had [00:39:00] blades or turbines offline for weeks, if not months, because they have an issue they don’t know they can do anything about. And then they bring us in and like, Hey, we did the inspection. This is repairable. Or we did the inspection. You should just get rid of this blade or, or whatever. It’s just they’ve been paralyzed and that, I don’t think that’s, you know, something that needs to happen Allen Hall 2025: either. Well, they shouldn’t be paralyzed. They should be calling C-I-C-N-D-T or going to the website, cic ndt.com. Get ahold of Jeremy, get ahold of the staff because they have a, a tremendous amount of knowledge about blades, about how to inspect them and how to keep the turbines running. Quickly, yes, it costs a little bit of money, but it’s well worth it when you have these turbines down for months on end, and I’ve seen that this year. It’s insane. They should have called. C-I-C-N-D-T and gotten their turbines back up and running. Jeremy, how can people reach you directly? Can they get ahold of you on LinkedIn? Jeremy Heinks: Yeah, get on uh LinkedIn and just search Jeremy Hikes or you can go to our website, uh, ct.com and [00:40:00] we’ve Allen Hall 2025: got links to uh, get ahold of us there and go to some of the wind conferences because Jeremy’s gonna be there laying down the knowledge on NDT and you won’t want to miss it. So, Jeremy, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We love having you. Thanks for having me.

For the final episode of the year, we wanted to revisit one of our favorite conversations with Mike Anderson. During this discussion, we covered why shops should consider OEM certifications, how to choose the right ones, the steps to get certified, and how to maximize the value of those credentials. If you're looking to strengthen your shop's credibility, improve repair quality, and position yourself for long-term success in an evolving industry, this episode is for you. See you in 2026! Connect with Mike: Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-anderson-1124ba48/ Website: https://collisionadvice.com/ Contact: https://collisionadvice.com/contact/ 

In this comprehensive training session from the symposium, Tony Gonzalez, Training Director at Fieldpiece, delivers an engaging and practical guide to combustion analysis for HVAC technicians. With 25 years of experience at Fieldpiece—from warehouse worker to training director—Tony brings both technical expertise and real-world application to this 50-minute interactive session focused on the company's CAT 85 combustion analyzer. Tony emphasizes that combustion analysis serves four critical purposes: safety, efficiency, equipment specification verification, and liability protection. He makes a compelling business case for investing in combustion analyzers, noting that preventing just two callbacks or one liability lawsuit can pay for the equipment ten times over. The training walks attendees through the complete process, from properly warming up the analyzer in fresh air (allowing sensors to calibrate to ambient oxygen and zero carbon monoxide) to generating professional PDF reports that can be shared with customers or integrated into work order management systems like ServiceTitan. The session provides detailed guidance on interpreting key measurements, including stack temperature, oxygen percentage, carbon monoxide levels, and draft pressure. Using design parameters from the National Comfort Institute, Tony demonstrates how to diagnose issues by comparing actual readings against acceptable ranges for different furnace types (atmospheric, 80% induced fan, and 90+ percent condensing). He walks through practical troubleshooting scenarios, showing how measurements like high oxygen combined with low stack temperature can point to specific problems like low gas pressure that technicians can then verify and correct. Throughout the presentation, Tony emphasizes proper technique and best practices, from creating test ports at least 12 inches above the inducer fan to the importance of plugging test ports after completion. He also highlights innovative features of Fieldpiece's analyzers, including the hydro cycle pump that eliminates traditional water traps, sensor vault technology that extends sensor life to four years, and built-in wireless connectivity allowing technicians to view measurements on their mobile devices through the Job Link app. Topics Covered: Why perform combustion analysis: Safety verification, efficiency optimization, OEM specification compliance, and liability protection Business benefits: Reducing callbacks, improving OEM relationships, enhancing professional image, and protecting against lawsuits Proper startup procedure: Warming up analyzers in fresh air for accurate oxygen and CO sensor calibration Ambient CO testing: Using combustion analyzers vs. dedicated walk-around detectors for carbon monoxide detection in living spaces Test port installation: Proper placement at least 12 inches above inducer fans and away from 90-degree elbows Key measurements explained: Stack temperature, oxygen percentage, CO PPM, CO air-free, draft pressure, and efficiency calculations Equipment type selection: Choosing correct settings for atmospheric, 80% induced fan, or 90+ percent condensing furnaces Diagnostic interpretation: Using National Comfort Institute parameters to identify issues like excess combustion air or low gas pressure Advanced features: Built-in dual port manometer for gas and static pressure, wireless Job Link app connectivity, and hydro cycle pump technology Report generation: Creating professional PDF reports with company branding for customer documentation and CYA protection Maintenance tips: Checking particle filters, understanding sensor vault technology, and the importance of annual calibration Sensor longevity: Four-year sensor life warranty and field-replaceable sensors without sending equipment for service   Have a question that you want us to answer on the podcast? Submit your questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/hvacschool. Purchase your tickets or learn more about the 7th Annual HVACR Training Symposium at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium. Subscribe to our podcast on your iPhone or Android. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Check out our handy calculators here or on the HVAC School Mobile App for Apple and Android.

Some episodes are planned. Others are produced. And then there are episodes like this one—where the setting, the people, and the moment all collide into something memorable. For the 500th episode of MakingChips, the team gathered once again At the Boring Bar for an unfiltered, bourbon-fueled roundtable with leaders from across the manufacturing ecosystem. Recorded live at Roush Yates Manufacturing Solutions during the Top Shops Conference in Charlotte, this special annual episode brings together shop owners, executives, advisors, and industry partners for the kinds of conversations that usually happen after the microphones are turned off. The drinks are poured, the guardrails come down, and the real stories start to flow. What emerges is an honest discussion about what truly separates top-performing shops from the rest. Not hype. Not buzzwords. But culture, systems, communication, and the discipline to do the hard things consistently—especially when cash flow is tight, customers are demanding, and complexity is rising. From benchmarking through the Top Shops survey to navigating OEM power dynamics, cash flow strain, customer communication, and the maturity of manufacturing as an industry, this conversation reflects how far the industry has come—and how far it still needs to go. Along the way, there are laughs, sharp takes, personal stories, and more than a few lessons earned the hard way. This is At the Boring Bar. And for Episode 500, it's exactly where the MakingChips conversation belongs. Segments (0:00) Setting the scene at Roush Yates Manufacturing Solutions during Top Shops (1:47) Introductions from shop leaders, OEMs, advisors, and industry partners (6:14) What actually separates Top Shops from the middle of the pack (10:15) Core values, culture, and leadership maturity (15:57) IMTS, trade shows, and the pressure to bring something new (22:06) Marketing, differentiation, and industry buzzwords (26:00) AI, automation, and separating real value from hype (31:51) Cash flow realities and long payment terms (37:15) OEM power dynamics and positioning as a second source (45:57) Communication as a competitive advantage (55:40) Systems, standards, and operational discipline (1:02:10) Data visibility, professionalism, and rising expectations (1:12:45) Scaling culture, teams, and leadership (1:26:45) Developing people and building trust (1:37:15) Industry maturity and cross-industry learning (1:47:45) Final reflections from At the Boring Bar Resources mentioned on this episode CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA) Top Shops IMTS 2026 Methods Machine Tools Connect With the Guests/Hosts Isaac Burton Jason Davis Nick Goellner Mike Payne Paul Van Metre Jamie Marzilli Leslie Boyd Jon Star Connect With MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

This episode of the FreightWaves Morning Minute breaks down how OTR Solutions partners with SONAR to bring data-driven rate intelligence directly to carriers. The integration empowers fleets to benchmark their performance against market conditions and negotiate with greater confidence. In the M&A sector, the podcast highlights that RPM Freight acquires Dealers Choice Auto Transport to expand its finished vehicle logistics capabilities. This strategic move adds white-glove service for luxury vehicles to RPM's network while opening new OEM opportunities for Dealers Choice. Finally, the briefing examines the legislative landscape as trucking, retail pressure lawmakers to pass anti-theft bill amid a surge in sophisticated cargo theft. Industry leaders argue that a unified federal response is essential to tackle the complex, transnational criminal networks targeting the supply chain today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever wonder why a product that makes your job easier somehow never shows up on store shelves? We tackle that head-on with borates: how 50 ppm boric acid helps tame rising pH in saltwater pools, reduces chlorine and acid use, and even cuts down on algaecide. We walk through where to buy it online, how to test it accurately, and why some retailers avoid stocking it despite clear demand. The bigger takeaway: when you meet customers where they are, you win more than a single sale—you win the relationship.From the pad to the pickup, we get practical about business decisions that compound. Thinking about a new service truck? Mileage and condition beat brand loyalty when your route adds 15–20k miles a year. We share real thresholds for when to buy, what to avoid, and why the smartest investment isn't always the shiniest one on the lot. Then we dive into vac systems with a pro's eye: carts like Riptide and Power Vac deliver speed in heavy debris, while cordless options like the Bottom Feeder trade thrust for zero-cord convenience and rapid deployment. Client optics matter too. A short, visible vacuum pass can transform how customers perceive value, even when the water looks clean. We offer a simple framework: keep “vacuum as needed” in your agreement, default to a quick cordless pass when feasible, and train your team for consistency. Finally, we break down generic versus OEM parts for popular cleaners like the MX6 and MX8—what's worth the savings, what can backfire, and how manufacturer contracts shape what local stores can carry. The goal isn't to pick sides; it's to protect uptime, margins, and trust.• why borates stabilize pH and reduce chemical demand• why many stores don't stock boric acid and how to buy it• how to test for borates with reliable strips• business logic of stocking what customers want• how to pick a service truck by mileage and condition• cordless vs cart vac systems and when each wins• whether to vacuum every visit for better optics• using “vacuum as needed” while showing visible workSend us a textSupport the Pool Guy Podcast Show Sponsors! HASA https://bit.ly/HASAThe Bottom Feeder. Save $100 with Code: DVB100https://store.thebottomfeeder.com/Try Skimmer FREE for 30 days:https://getskimmer.com/poolguy Get UPA Liability Insurance $64 a month! https://forms.gle/F9YoTWNQ8WnvT4QBAPool Guy Coaching: https://bit.ly/40wFE6y

In this episode of GarageCast, Jesse Davis of Legend Boats shares how operating as both an OEM and a retailer shapes smarter pricing, tighter dealer relationships, and a better customer experience. We dig into retail-driven insights, standardized pricing, performance scoreboards, and how Legend is navigating tariffs and market uncertainty—a candid, back-to-basics conversation on what's working in marine retail right now.

Welcome to the Fore Golfers Network/Michigan Golf Live Podcast Ep 507 - Sub70 Golf's Rise: Custom Clubs, DTC Innovation & What Golfers Really Need Sub70 Golf has become one of the most talked-about direct-to-consumer brands in the golf equipment space—and this episode of Fore Golfers Network breaks down exactly why. In this conversation with Host Bill Hobson, Sub70 Golf CEO Jason Hiland shares key insights behind the founding and growth of Sub70 Golf, which launched in 2015 after the successful sale of Diamond Tour Golf. Built on experience, not guesswork, Sub70 entered the market with a clear focus on custom-built golf clubs, authentic branding, and elite-level customer service, all produced in Sycamore, Illinois. Key highlights from the episode include: Why the direct-to-consumer model works in golf when customization and trust are prioritized How Sub70 uses expert interpretation of club specs, not just raw data, to fit golfers properly The difference between what tour professionals demand (trajectory control and a consistent "window") versus what amateur golfers actually need (playability and confidence) How Sub70 initially gained traction through irons and wedges—and why the driver category is now rapidly growing The role of social media, customer feedback, and industry awards in building credibility without traditional OEM marketing How Sub70 has evolved its product lines, branding, and service model since launch The discussion also looks ahead, with plans for future collaboration focused on testing, education, and transparent evaluation of Sub70 equipment—bridging the gap between technical performance and real-world playability. This episode is a must-listen for golfers interested in custom club fitting, equipment innovation, and understanding how modern golf brands are built outside the traditional OEM system. ---------------- Subscribe to the FGN Podcast Watch FGN videos on YouTube Check out our other sports pod: Church Pew Sports TEXT or CALL (989) 272-2383 to share your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions      

Today I'm joined by Marcello Sciarrino, Co-Owner Island Auto Group. We unpack how family-owned dealerships can stand out against national groups, why transparency matters now more than ever, and the biggest fixed ops opportunities in today's market. We also get into service retention, culture, and why Toyota's hybrid strategy is paying off while others chase EVs. This episode is brought to you by: 1. Overfuel - Overfuel is the new technical standard in automotive websites, proven to grow sales by 30%+. Whether you need more revenue or better support, they've got you covered. Visit @ http://overfuel.com and enter code CDG500 to get $500 OFF a new website. 2. CDK Global - Dealers—big news. CDK just leveled up their CRM in a massive way. We're talking next-gen AI baked right into your daily workflow: Automatically following up with internet leads, surfacing buyer insights, and giving you instant AI-generated summaries of every customer interaction—no more digging through notes. And CRM Video is here. Record, send, and track personalized videos to customers—all inside the CRM. Check out the AI enhanced CDK CRM @ https://carguymedia.com/4px5cLv 3. Nomad Content Studio - Most dealers still fumble social—posting dry inventory pics or handing it off without a plan. Meanwhile, the store down the street is racking up millions of views and selling / buying cars using video. That's where Nomad Content Studio comes in. We train your own videographer, direct what to shoot, and handle strategy, to posting, to feedback. Want in with the team behind George Saliba, EV Auto, and top auto groups? Book a call at http://www.trynomad.co⁠ Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: For dealers: CDG Circles ➤ ⁠https://cdgcircles.com/⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dealership recruiting ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgrecruiting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fix your dealership's social media ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.trynomad.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For industry vendors: Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgpartner.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Topics: 00:31 What is the community connection? 02:30 How did Marcello enter auto industry? 03:41 Building a successful auto career how? 06:22 Biggest industry challenge and change? 12:17 Modern work-life balance expectations? 20:40 Key insight on OEM relationships? 26:03 How do brokers impact business? 29:50 Most innovative service department change? 35:38 How to create sales transparency? Car Dealership Guy Socials: X ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠x.com/GuyDealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@guydealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠threads.net/@cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Everything else ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Today I'm joined by Mark Altieri, EVP of Business Development at Zonic Design. We break down why fixed ops is still the most under-leveraged profit center in dealerships—and how communication gaps are quietly eroding customer loyalty. Mark explains how AI is reshaping customer engagement, why half of a dealership's DMS often sits untouched, and what operators can do to immediately improve retention. Clear takeaways, practical frameworks, and fast-changing tech insights make this a must-listen for every dealer. Have questions about how Zonic Design can help your service operations, reach out to Mark directly at mark@zonicdesign.com or find him on linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/maltieri/ This episode is brought to you by: 1. Repair360 - If you're in the used car business, you know wasted time is wasted money. Check out Repair360—the first and only reconditioning software that connects every function in the dealership to tighten recon and help you sell more cars — No more hounding vendors. Goodbye endless texts and hallway chases. Repair 360 connects all the dots. See where every car is and what its recon is costing minute-to-minute in real time. Go to www.repair360.com 2. fullthrottle.ai® - fullthrottle.ai® is a next-generation AdTech powerhouse. The Automotive DSP™ is built specifically for the auto industry, combining advanced programmatic targeting, real-time bidding, and analytics tailored to drive dealership and OEM performance. With fullthrottle.ai®, marketers can reach the right car shoppers at the right moment and optimize toward real business outcomes like test drives, leads, or sales. fullthrottle.ai® bridges the gap between auto media buying and results-driven marketing. Check out http://fullthrottle.ai 3. Zonic Design - 28 years providing direct to dealer fixed operations solutions. Data • Print • Digital • Voice • AI, Removing the noise in pursuit of frictionless customer engagement. Learn more about BDC-Angel at https://zonicdesign.com Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: For dealers: CDG Circles ➤ ⁠https://cdgcircles.com/⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dealership recruiting ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgrecruiting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fix your dealership's social media ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.trynomad.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For industry vendors: Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgpartner.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Topics: 00:06 Why are fixed ops so important? 00:28 What's the first impression in service? 02:38 Biggest challenge and opportunity in fixed ops? 06:10 How to improve dealership communication? 08:24 How can AI help service departments? 21:50 Tailoring communication strategies for different customers? 28:37 Final piece of advice for fixed ops? Car Dealership Guy Socials: X ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠x.com/GuyDealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@guydealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠threads.net/@cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Everything else ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Be sure and join us with our special guest, FDNY veteran Captain Nick Gaudiosi. Cap has had a great career with FDNY and wrote a book titled, A Fireman's Life For Me: My Time in the FDNY 1979-2003. We will be sure to ask him all about it. Captain Gaudiosi Joined the Long Beach Volunteer FD- assigned Eng 2 “Suicide Squad” in 1976, from there he,-Took the FDNY test in Dec of 1977 -May 1978 Graduated from Fordham-Appointed to FDNY in 1979 assigned Eng 45 after Probie School-Sept. 1981 Transferred to Lad 37-1/84 Transferred to Lad 124 -7/88 Promoted to Lt, assigned Bn 49, Div 14-1989-90 UFO in Lad 136-1990 Transferred to Bn 19, Div 7-1991-92 UFO in Lad 38-1993 Assigned Lad 32 -8/94 Promoted to Captain, Div 15-1996 Transferred to Div 3, UFO Eng 16-1996-97 Detailed to the Rock w/Ed Geraghty to change Probie School-Dec.1997 Assigned Lad 7-Sept.1999 Detailed for 6 months to OEM as Ass't. Project Mgr. for Y2K Planning-Aug 2000 Detailed to the Rock as Construction Coordinator to oversee new Fire Academy construction-April 2003 Retired from FDNY-1980-1990 Goaltender on FDNY Hockey Team-1993-2003 Taught Fire Safety Director's class at John Jay-1996-1998 Achieved Master's Degree in Protection Mgmt from John Jay Post FDNY-2003-2006 Fire & Life Safety Consultant-2006-2008 Head of Fire/Life Safety for Lehman Brothers-2008-2014 Head of Fire/Life Safety for Barclays Capital-2014-2022 Head of Fire/Life Safety for Morgan Stanley Going to be another great show. We will get the whole skinny. You don't want to miss this one.Join us at the kitchen table on the BEST FIREFIGHTER PODCAST ON THE INTERNET! You can also Listen to our podcast ...we are on all the players #lovethisjob #GiveBackMoreThanYouTake #Oldschool #Tradition #volunteerfirefighters #FDNY #nationalfallenfirefightersfoundation #fdnyladder7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/gettin-salty-experience-firefighter-podcast--4218265/support.