S3E10: Mastering maintenance with Uptime PM's Justin Trentadue

In today's maintenance masterclass, I chat with Justin Trentadue.

Justin is Vice President of Operations at Coastal Waste and Recycling in Florida, but more related to this special episode, he's also the founder of Uptime PM, an innovative tech solution for vehicle and plant maintenance management.

Justin is a problem solver and is currently solving a problem he has experienced first hand as a scrappy.

In today's episode, we talk about:

👉 Flaws in the current maintenance reporting process
👉 Having a middle person handling the noise
👉 When red flags fall on deaf ears
👉 The value of data
👉 And much more!

Listen to the full episode. Wherever you stream your podcasts.

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WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?

25 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...

I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.

I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don’t produce much metal waste).

I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That’s right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.

Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.

COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/born-scrappy/

Transcript

STU: 0:00

Hi, I'm Stu Kagan and welcome to Born Scrappy, the podcast for scrap metal exporters and traders. Join me in conversation with some of the most experienced traders and operators that have helped shape this incredible industry. In today's maintenance masterclass, I'm chatting with Justin Trentadue. Justin is vice president of operations at Coastal Waste and Recycling in Florida, but more related to this special episode, he's also the founder of Uptime PM. An innovative tech solution for vehicle and plant maintenance management. Justin is a problem solver and is currently solving a problem he experienced first hand. In today's episode, we talk about flaws in the current maintenance reporting process. Having a middle person handling the noise. When red flags fall on deaf ears. The value of data and so much more. So let's jump into this masterclass with Justin. But first. Enjoy.

1:20

Hey Justin, how are you? What's going on, Stu? Good. How are you, man? Yeah, man. I'm, I'm excellent, uh, having a great week. So super positive. Things are going well. How are you? What's going on your side? Nothing, uh, just, uh, navigating the markets, um, you know, trying to keep everything going. It's been fun the last few days, hasn't it? It's been very fun the past few days. Uh, hopefully there's some optimism out there. Um, but only time will tell. Yeah. And, uh, and with India coming back from Diwali, um, that should have a positive effect as well. Some people are talking about some freight rates dropping, so hopefully some, uh, positivity coming, some optimism, uh, on the water, which sounds, uh, which we all need at the moment has been a tough month. Yeah. I mean, we've seen it over the past couple of days, actually. I mean, it's, it's, I think there's some more, I think there's some, Positive pressure right now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Fantastic. It's what we all need. Just let's get into, um, a little bit about what this masterclass is about. So what we're going to be talking about is, you know, every month we do a masterclass, um, where we really try to add value to the listener and it's usually on a specific topic. Um, we believe, um, people will be interested to listen to and to try and get value. So what we're going to be talking about here is, is maintenance. Um, our industry has got massive amounts of capital out there, huge amount of equipment. Um, there's a, you know, most companies have their own maintenance team. Some of them are made up of huge amount of people. Others might just have one guy who, who could be doing work on the equipment, but everybody's focused on maintenance. So give us a bit of a background on how you got into the industry. And I guess what uptime is all about and what brought you to build that. Sure. So, you know, I've been in the scrap industry, the recycling materials industry for nearly 20 years, you know, started off trading, um, opened one of my own yards. You know, started doing some operations type things. And, you know, earlier on in my career, well, I would say about really five or six years ago, you know, I was, I had, uh, two yards and a bunch of employees. And, you know, I just was struggling with trying to keep everything in order, um, you know, maintenance wise, you know, when did I last service the machine who's doing what couldn't hold them accountable. So I, you know, kind of looked for some. some solutions out there, and I couldn't really find anything that really fit really well. Uh, and that's kind of what catapulted me to create Uptime PM. I'm just the dumb scrap guy, so I found someone who's a lot smarter than me who could code and kind of put the code to keyboard, so to speak, uh, and create an all encompassing maintenance management platform, you know, that was very highly customizable. And so, you know, that's what I've done with Uptime PM. It's create a highly customizable, um, not one size fits all, uh, system maintain, you know, not only your, your, your heavy equipment, but your facilities, uh, and you know, any, any on load sort of trucks that you have. Just, yeah, that's, that's, um, that's awesome. And, and, and it's great that you've built technology for our industry, from our industry. Um, lots of people try coming to this industry from the, with the technology background. And they don't necessarily get it right. So, um, I think you having actually been, been in the industry and having spent 20 years, having experienced the pain yourself, um, no doubt you really can talk to this topic. So we'll delve into it, um, and, and try and add some value as we go. And if I might say, I think, you know, what you're doing with buddy, you know, you're a person that's. Been in the industry, saw the pain points and tried to solve a problem. So I think there's a lot of similarities between you and I mean, different sort of things, but we're trying to solve a pain point that exists within the industry, understanding that technology is very powerful to me and can really help us out. Yeah, exactly. And I appreciate that. Obviously you are a user on buddy, so you are selling on buddy. So that, um, it's nice to hear that. Fantastic. Right. Um, let's jump into, uh, the maintenance and programming, you know, maintenance program essentials. Let's understand what, what is really needed out there, um, in a, in a maintenance program. So what are the key components of a successful maintenance program in your opinion? So when, when I look out there at the most successful companies and what they're doing, they really have about five things in common and that's, you know, kind of touch on each of the topics, but I'll name the topics right now and that's training, that's, uh, performing regular inspections, that's communication, data. And living a motto of constant or continuous improvement. So those are sort of the five key areas that all the most successful, um, you know, best in class, I would say companies are doing so, you know, when it comes down to training, um, you know, we have, you mentioned at the beginning, we have, you know, equipment that is certainly hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars. You know, the acquisition cost for the pieces of equipment. So we have our employees that are operating these pieces of equipment, you know, responsible for production. So one of the best things you can do is to not only train these people, how to properly operate them and safely operate them, but how to properly inspect. The equipment, right? How to how to look at it. What are the key things that they should be looking at in terms of maintenance or preventative these daily sort of checks that should be happening on our equipment. And that kind of segues into regular inspections. Making sure that we're inspecting these, these assets. On a daily basis. Um, so we can catch those small problems before they become really big problems. Um, you know, the third thing, which is perhaps one of the most important, is communication. Communicating from the guy or gal that's operating the piece of equipment every day. Making sure that issues are, you know, relayed to maintenance staff and management. And then backwards, making sure that those issues are being addressed. So there's, there's communication on all levels, right? And then we have data. The best companies are using data to make decisions. And, you know, it is a very key component, um, on, you know, what are we doing with our assets? How much are they costing us? So on and so forth. Um, and then the last thing is like to realize that maintenance is not just like a one size fits all. This is our system and this is how we're going to do it. And so we're always going to do it, you know, people who don't change that. Right. And so it is about continuous improvement, you know, trying to remove unnecessary steps or insert steps to make sure all parties are accountable, because at the end of the day, in our business, it's all about You know, it's not a matter of if you're going to go down, it is when you go down, how fast can you get back, right? So it's always about that. Yeah, there's so much gold in that. I mean, I mean, I've, I've lived these experiences for so long. I think. When you join at 18 years old, I mean, the first thing, you know, you see the huge amount of equipment that we have there, you know, whether it's material handlers and like you said earlier, just trucks, the forklifts, whatever it is. I mean, every yard has got some form of equipment. And I guess with the smaller the yards, the more pressure you can get under when you have equipment failures. And they also often don't have the systems in place to make sure that they, you know, have the right preventative maintenance, um, programs that are in place. But I mean, I look back at having 85 yards, 4, 200 people, the amount of equipment we had in that business was, was massive. And I mean, guys were like feeding information with paper and pen, right? I mean, guys were like going into the yard and had to fill out a checklist and, and, I mean, you could never actually hold anybody accountable because so something would go down as like, Oh, when did you check the oil? Did you check the grapple? You know, have you done any of the actual checks that you meant to? And it was easy for them to just say, yeah, of course I do. I do it every morning. But those, the papers and the filing, it never actually happened. So you could never actually deal with it. So I think there's a massive opportunity for what you're doing, um, and what you've built. I think that that's huge. I think for everybody to understand the importance of it. And I think in our industry generally understand the importance of it, but are often very busy and we get busy and it's hard to actually ensure that everybody is doing what they need to. Can you give us any like preventative maintenance? Experience example, where you've seen kind of somebody who didn't do what was needed and the equipment failed or whatever it is, something that, you know, you haven't forgotten. Yeah. I mean, blowing an engine, cause you're not checking oil. Um, you know, when you go back to the pencil and paper method, they, you know, people tend to, well, there's a couple of things, people tend to pencil whip it. Right. They say, I did it, you know, whether that's laziness or they're just not good at their job, uh, or, you know, they're, they're not reporting things anymore because it's fallen on deaf ears, right? The operators reported this 100 times on the piece of paper. There's something wrong, but the paper gets filed somewhere or stays in the cab that communication is lacking. And there's no connection, right? So, yeah, I mean, people have blown motors, uh, blown pumps because they haven't checked the oil levels. Uh, and, you know, there are ways to ensure that you can hold people accountable with technology. Um, you know, and if you don't have that technology, it requires a little bit more work, actually. So I think the time that you spend, which is. Getting a manager or a mechanic's hands on that equipment every day. Right. And that may not always be possible. So it's, you know, how do we, how can you hold the people who are operating it every day accountable? But then again, that is also, you have to hold the maintenance staff and management accountable for following through because I have seen, believe it or not. And we all like to blame the operators for not reporting things, but I can tell you in my experience, Operators have reported things many, many times, and it's just fallen on deaf ears. So that just leads them to say, well, if they don't care, I don't care, and that's no way to run the company. So it's, it's all about. I mean, it's funny because having worked in the maintenance shop, like you're dealing with whatever's making the most noise, whatever the biggest problem is right now, when you have shredders, you're dealing with the shredder, right? Like that's where your focus is. So if somebody walks in and has a smaller issue. Even if it's five days in a row, um, you often just don't deal with it because you've got other things that are way more pressing, although when that goes down, it then becomes super difficult to deal with because you didn't do anything about it, you know, for the, it can also, it can also cost you a lot more money. Good example of this is a lot of our equipment nowadays has this. Tremendous built in safety feature of a backup camera, you know, how many people have been run over by a loader? Unfortunately. Um, you know, so somebody reports a backup camera, right? You decide not to do anything about it. And, and now that that operator's used to looking at that camera every day, not used to looking over his shoulder, Like they used to and you don't fix that and God forbid they run somebody over or they run into your building, right? So now you just cost yourself even more money because you didn't jump on a problem that could have really been solved. Maybe you didn't put the asset down. Maybe you're not in that position, but you know, having the ability to catch these small problems before they become much larger problems for your company is absolutely paramount. I mean, you spoke about it can cost you money, but your example was a perfect example of, it's actually a health and safety issue. Like now your maintenance is having an effect on the safety of your people because the reverse camera isn't actually working, you know, God forbid. You drive into somebody, you, you could lose a lot. Like, I mean, it's that serious. I've, I've gone to many yards in the past and seen forklifts. Um, they see people don't work and it seems so similar. It's like, well, hold on. I'm maintenance team is not here. To fix a seatbelt on a forklift because they're dealing with big, heavy equipment, right? And a lot of the time, well, what do you do? I mean, you're, you're the operator, you go and you say, Hey, my, my seatbelt isn't working. He goes, well, step in line. You're at the back of the queue. Um, it just never gets fixed. So yeah, maintenance is a massive, massive part of what we do and absolutely so vital. It's not just the cost. It's also the safety side of as well, which, which a lot of people don't think about. So that's interesting that you bring up the forklift. Seatbelt issue, which is extremely common, uh, as you've said, but the second that you do have an accident in the yard, maybe, maybe it's not even an accident. Maybe it's a fire. The first thing that OSHA will come into your yard and look at, I've seen it every time there's an accident or a fire. The first thing they look at is let me see your forklift inspection because those forklifts are actually regulated by OSHA as lift trucks. And they want us every time. It's one of the things because they know that a lot of companies don't take it seriously and they don't have those inspections on file. So, you know, having those inspections on file and fixing those problems if they reported can lead to massive penalties. So there's. There's a lot of benefit in having a good maintenance program, whether it's digital or not, to, to have that information on file. Yeah. When that happens, I just hope I'm John Sacco at Sierra because he's focused on, they all look brand new. I'm like, come and inspect my forklifts any day of the week. You can eat a meal on them. He'll have the best time on this forklift looks brand new, but it's seven years old. So, um, yeah, let's hope I look like that one day when I'm big. And, um, let's talk about saving some money though. How can people save money, um, with regards to their maintenance program? Where have you seen opportunities to save money? Well, when you have a good preventative maintenance program, you can plan better. So you can start planning your downtime. So you're not, you're not reactive anymore. You're not waiting for a catastrophic failure. In order, you know, for a big problem, right? To, to, you know, say the cylinder needed to be repacked. You didn't buy the new cylinder. Well, now there's a catastrophic failure. The machine's down. So if, if you can have a good preventative maintenance program, um, maybe even have some parts on the shell, um, you can save a lot of money and a lot of, a lot of downtime. So again, you know, kind of all circles back to. You know, understanding the problems, the small problems with your equipment before they become big, big problems. And, and of course, there's sometimes some infighting between production and maintenance, um, you know, production side is, you got to produce, produce, produce, produce, you know, but there, you have to strike a good balance between production, you know, of course, safety and maintenance. So, you know, trying to become, uh, proactive, um, predictive instead of reactive will save you tons of money. Man, I know that fight all too well. Like, you know, it's, um, It's production versus maintenance. I've said on, you know, majority of the time on the production side, um, you know, answering to executives, being an executive, answering to shareholders and being like, well, this month we're going to put down one of our shredders for the month because it's preventative maintenance, it's never a good month to do it. It's always, you're always striving to hit the targets. You're always trying to do better than the previous month or better than the previous year. But, you know, there's no better time than yesterday to have actually done it. And the second best time is, is today, like you have to get it done, but. There is so much pressure from everywhere else, but I think as soon as you put in context, what the, um, you spoke about catastrophic failures, right? What that can look like immediately, it makes it all feel a little bit better. Um, and go through that little bit of pain, um, for, for a better future or better next few months, however long it's going to be, whatever prevents the work you're doing. Um, Tell me when it comes to data, I mean, George Adams was asked on the stage at the round table about data and how he's using data and how it's so important that, you know, um, granted he, he handed over more to his kids to, um, analyze it and utilize it more, and I think Tyler's kind of, um, the guy running with that for SI, um, but he said he couldn't run a business like his without utilizing data to make decisions. How can. People use data to optimize their operations, um, when it comes to maintenance and, and what they're doing out there. There's a good question. I mean, the very first thing that comes to mind is, you know, How much am I spending on this piece of equipment actually, right? You know, we tend to, uh, you know, work on our equipment, maybe a little bit older, and maybe you don't have a really good system to really know and understand and have visibility into how much you're actually spending on an old piece of equipment. So if I have that information and I'm spending, yeah, let's just call it 10, 000 a month. You know, is it worth it to continue to pour money into this thing, or is it better to get rid of it or use it as a backup and buy a new house? You can also use data and analytics to perhaps redeploy an asset from one facility where it's not being used very much to another facility where it's needed, right? And, and finally. You know, all the, everybody in the yard, all the managers, all the operators, they all want brand new equipment, you know, Oh, we're so busy. We need another, you know, material handling, whatever it is. We need another loader. Well, if you understand and have good visibility into the asset utilization, right, you know how much you're actually using an asset a day. You know, you can say, well, you're only using this actually four hours a day. Well, what do you do on the other four or six hours a day with this asset? Yeah. So, you know, you can make decisions to buy, not to buy, to redeploy assets with, with good data. I mean, it's so, so important and that data is really hard to get. I mean, it's easier now than it was, but I'm thinking when I was, you know, previously doing it in the yards. I mean, I used to have to work out my cost per ton and it's quite easy. You can take your, you know, the cost of goods sold and you can take the purchase price of what you paid for that metal to come in. And you can take your overhead and you can divide it by the total volume and you can do all these different ways. But actually, if you are using a bailer to bail specific aluminum and you know, that thing's costing you a lot of money, you need to allocate those costs, those expensive again, expenses against the product that you're buying. Because like you say, I mean, I know from my previous business in New Zealand, we tracked our maintenance, but we didn't track it per asset. So I would just take at the end of the month and I would say, well, this was the overall cost of maintenance divided by the volume. And that's what my maintenance is per ton. But as soon as you actually go, well, hold on. I mean, I'm, I'm not allocating those costs against material that isn't even needing to be processed. And now I'm not maybe as competitive when I'm buying because I'm saying, well, my overhead is this expense. But if I went and said, Based on that specific commodity, that grade it's costing me this much. Michael, first of all, I either need to drop my buying price. Or I need to sell for more, which isn't so easy, or I actually need to just either buy a new piece of equipment or sort out whatever's happening on the maintenance side, because that data can help you make those decisions. And a lot of people don't realize that a lot of people come in and go, well, this, this is my maintenance cost. It's a great point to use that data can help us solve that issue. It's a very interesting thing you brought up. And the way I like to look at it is to put my assets into cost centers, you know, whether it's a shredding cost center, a downstream cost center, a transportation cost center, ferrous cost center, non ferrous processing, scale, whatever it is, because When you look at your maintenance costs and it's all jumbled into one, one, you know, maintenance, you know, on your, on your PNL, it's sort of hard to distinguish from that without getting the detail. And then again, then it's another question. How do you get to that detail if you don't have things allocated properly? Right? So it's, it's really breaking these assets down into individual cost centers, which really helps you determine your cost per ton on a maintenance basis. Uh, you know, for the, for these different various call centers or, or moving parts around our yard. So, um, that's something that's, that's a very good point that you brought up and something that I think more people should do. So they can narrow down the costs down to individual cost items like the bailer. Right. Um, you know, what are the assets that I have deployed at the bailer? It's not just the bailer. It's, it may be a material handler or, or a skid steer or a loader, whatever you're using to load it. Um, you know, these are the assets that I have around here. And these are, these are, these, all of these have to be included in my bailing costs, not just my bailer. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Um, but then, you know, it becomes tricky as well with your maintenance team, so you can outsource it, which makes it easier to track. But when you have your own team, you actually need them to, to be tracking how much time they're spending on each piece of equipment. And it takes you back to that whole preventative thing. And what did you call it? Oh, I said, uh, pencil whipping. Exactly. Now I feel that. There's an Americanism for it. Thank you. Yeah. I'm going to use that now. So, um, with the pencil whipping, I think it's the same when you ask your maintenance team to say how much time did they allocate to the equipment? Often it's the end of the month. They go, Oh, it was about 10 percent on that and 20 percent on that and, and whatever else. Where that data, if it's accurate, is really helpful because sometimes you, you've also got, you know, two extra people in your maintenance team that have been hired and they're pretty much working on one Baylor all the time. You're not even factoring in that cost. Against that piece of equipment. So really hard to make good decisions without that data. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. It's, it's even harder to do it the manual way. And believe me, people did it for a long time. The manual way it's possible. You've got to be extremely disciplined and have, you know, good written program in place and good training to make sure that those costs get allocated. But with, as you know, with the power of technology, it's All those things, you know, you train on a new software perhaps, or a new system and those, you know, things like time tracking, it happens automatically. Clock in, clock out, right? So, um, a lot of those costs can be captured by the use of technology. So not everybody who, who listens to Bourne Scrappy necessarily, um, has a shredder or has a huge amount of equipment. So what about the smaller yards? You know, the yards that have baler, they've got shears and they've got, um, um, even, I guess, even smaller than that. What about if they've just got a few trucks, you know, how can they implement an effective, Fleet management strategy, um, which isn't super expensive. Yeah. You know, there, there are ways, obviously the first thing I would say is, you know, have a plan, whether it should probably be written, it should probably. Figure out your own company's workflow. this doesn't have to be something in some, software that you have to do, but, you know, write it down, whether it's on a big board, storming with your team, if you're a small team, you know, Hey, who's operating this, what's going to happen, what's this operator's responsibility, does he take a picture with his phone? Does he call his manager? You know, how do we. get a plan in place? So, so it's, it's having that plan, maybe brainstorming about a plan, train your people if you have a, a mechanic on staff or you're the owner operator, you know, and it's tough. I know it is, you know, but, but you, you're gonna hire somebody and put'em on a forklift. Maybe that's a, a new forklift. And forklifts are so expensive nowadays. They're a lot more expensive than they used to be. But even if it's used. Train them on how to inspect it and what to look for before you send them on their way. Um, and then certainly I, even if I'm a small guy, it takes 10 or 15 minutes to inspect that equipment before they jump on it in the morning. Um, you know, there's even just sort of visual walk around things that you can do if you can. Even if you park the equipment in the same spot every day, right? it's looking to see if you see any leaks under that, right? So, so it's, I would say to kind of sum it up is to have a plan to train your people and do at least at minimum inspect your equipment every day, even if it's on the pencil and paper. And make somebody responsible. If you're the owner operator, you wear a lot of hats. It's probably going to be you. So it's one other thing that you're going to have to do, but it will, it'll, even a system like this, We'll save you money in the long run. I think it's fantastic. I think having a plan training and accountability to me is like, that's basics and it doesn't have to cost you anything, right? And that's exactly what we're saying here. It's like, well, you could start tomorrow, document a plan. what does everybody need to do? Does everybody understand their role? Make sure they're trained in it. They understand what they need to do and make sure that there's some form of accountability. So. This person is handling that, that is their job. Um, and if they're not doing it, you can identify, they didn't do it. If you know, if you need to, you can check in whether it's a file that you're keeping or whatever it might be. Um, yeah, I think that's a great, great, um, three step plan or three step strategy to start working on, um, for anybody that's out there, 100%. And I guess we did touch on it as well though, but is there any other examples of a maintenance program? Helping you create a safer work environment. We always try and delve into safety where we can. Um,'cause it's absolutely so key to everything we do. But what, is there any way that you think, you know, other than the seatbelt example or the rear view, um, camera, the rear cameras, any other way that you think safety, um, plays a part or we can be, help, help the environment to help safety, um, in the industry? Well. I think a well maintained facility and a well maintained piece of equipment. This is a generality here, but if you walk into a facility and you see that it's well maintained. You see equipment that's clean and believe me, that's effort. That's that's a lot of effort. If you have to see a clean piece of equipment and a clean facility, generally, those places are safer places. So, so I think that, you know, just by keeping your room clean, making your bed every day, you know, and, and, and again, I know I used to own a small scrapper, so I know how difficult this is, but housekeeping and cleanliness and taking care of these things, you know, keeping things clean, like I tell my kids, make your bed, put your dishes away, pick out the trash. I mean, these little things. Go a long way. Um, you know, so you can start. Managing by walking around, as I've been told in the past, right, visually, if things look out of order, they probably are. So I think, and when it leads to the safety aspect, right, not only these things are the cleaner facilities, the cleaner equipment tend to be safer environments for everything. Yeah, yeah, I actually saw it in your yard as well. Um, totally agree with that. keep a clean yard. You, you have a safe yard, so. Yeah, that's a good one. Um, what about collaboration between the operators and the mechanics? Like how important is that if the mechanics are overseeing it, should they be jumping in, do they need the operators, like how have you seen that work best? From what I've seen is people do it, you know, in a couple of different ways. Some people have, you know, the management or a manager in between, you know, sort of the, the operators and the mechanic. whether it's a yard manager or maintenance manager, you have someone who is, responsible for calling the ball. And I would say that the most successful way is to have somebody who's responsible. They don't have to necessarily be a maintenance expert. They have to have some base knowledge, but somebody who's sort of the quarterback. and whether you're using a maintenance software or you're using, you know, the old pencil and paper Excel spreadsheet, big board method is to having somebody that's calling the ball. That's saying, okay, how do you get from problem reported? Problem solved, right? And it's not, not as easy as, Hey, this is broken, fix it, right? Do you have parts on the shell? is there another pressing issue? how are you going to get to that problem reported problem solved? So, um, the communication between mechanic and operator, yes, it is important. If you have someone in there in the middle, it's probably for me, I've found that that's the best practice, right? Because everybody wants their machine fixed 1st of their issues addressed 1st. And, you know, a manager, whether that's a maintenance manager or the facilities manager, you know, may understand the priorities better so that they can deploy the mechanic. Um, you know, in a lot of cases, it's limited resources, so they can deploy that mechanic. To the proper areas of need. You know, and hopefully if you get better in your maintenance program, hopefully you are becoming more proactive instead of always reacting and putting those fires. Yeah, it's um, that's interesting. Not everybody can hire somebody to slot in between, but that's not exactly what you're saying, right? You saying, um, find somebody within the business. Who can oversee what work is being done, what work is most important is their communication. Is it flowing from one end to the other, probably in the smaller, medium sized businesses, it's the owner operator who, um, is having to make sure that, you know, the, the operators are communicating what the issues are. And the maintenance team is, you know, taking heed that are actually focused on, on dealing with the right thing at the right time. But they're not having to make that decision. Um, so yeah, I would think an operator, but also I think there would be times in bigger companies. Yeah. You say a facilities manager, there might be somebody else slotting in there, right? Yeah. It could be a facilities manager. And I've seen this so many times in the smaller businesses that it's typically a smart woman in the office. we have a lot of very smart women in the industry. yeah, give it to somebody, um, who has the ability to manage it because it is that important as well, that it is being managed. I think, I think the key thing is it doesn't matter who it is, make sure the person has the ability, um, and the bandwidth that they can actually, um, Spend some time doing it because just don't let it fall to the wayside because, um, it's that important. Absolutely. What, what emerging trends are you seeing, um, with regards to technology? Um, and obviously I think it's worth you telling us a little bit about uptime as well, but also what, what just general trends are you seeing with technology that can help us, um, with maintenance in our industry specifically and whether it's come from other industries or what they might be out there, which you hope does come, but what are you seeing? Well, in the specific regards to maintenance, I mean, I think, you know, um, AI is going to be a huge thing across just about everything we can think of So I think, uh, artificial intelligence is, is going to make its way into all of our software, you know, whether it's just searching the web or softwares we use for our scrap purchasing and sales. Um, and certainly on the maintenance side, I think AI, I don't even know exactly what it's going to do or can do, but I'm sure, you know, There will be, some tremendous strides made over the next couple of years with leveraging the power of AI, uh, within, within my software, I'm sure. Um, and I think machine learning, um, you know, learning when machines fail, that's, you know, you have to collect data for a long period of time and find commonalities and failure rates. So you can, you know, go from preventative. You know, reactive to preventative to, you know, prescriptive or predictive maintenance. Right? So understanding when things are going to fail before they're even causing you any problem. So I think those are some of the things that that really excite, excite me about, tackling this problem, uh, vis a vis uptime, uptime PM. And I mean, it's interesting because so much of the technology that's coming out, um, needs data behind it. Like you speak about until you've got a whole lot of data on something, you can't really make better decisions. Um, but it's, it's getting that data. We've got to get it out of, you know, pen and paper and get it into systems so that we can, you And mine that data. Bringing it all together and then making better decisions from it. So, um, yeah, but we need that data. We need some systems that we are putting things in. And you know, that brings us to Uptime PM, um, which is a maintenance program. We've actually talked about through what it is, but the idea, what I was going to say was it's somewhere where you having data starting to go into that in the future, when you want to make better decisions. Well, that's got your data and we can use AI, um, to pull out all the information for it and give you, um, recommendations of what you should do next. Yeah. So, uh, Uptime PM is a completely web based, cloud based maintenance management software platform. You have the web dashboard, which is your command center. This is where all your data gets aggregated. And we have a native mobile app. So, you know, you can actually create infinitely customizable inspections. On any sort of asset that you can think of, um, and now, instead of that pencil, paper, pencil whipping, um, you know, you can now have your, your, your people do their inspections on mobile app, take pictures, enter notes, you know, once problems are reported, emails go out, work order items get aggregated to a list. So you now see this list. Of, you know, your to do list, right from that to do list, you can now create work orders. Those work orders can be assigned to, you know, a mechanic. They can do them digitally on the mobile app. They can also do them on the web app. Um, you know record their time Record your parts that you're putting on there. Um, you know any extraneous costs if you Outsource it to a third party. Not everybody has mechanics you outsource outsource it to a third party You Um, it's capturing that data into, you know, you know, all catch all costs, um, keeping those invoices together. And then once again, like all of that data is centralized. Everything on my material handler, my Hyundai, Cinebog, and material handler, all that data is always there for me. So I also think there's going to be a big benefit in the resale. Right. So having this digital maintenance history for the entire life of an asset, Um, you know, I can now say, Hey, I want to sell this asset. Here's my maintenance history. Here's, here's all the times I've inspected it. Um, and somebody can have sort of a better sense of, uh, you know, that you took care of this piece of equipment and maybe whether you're selling it to an independent party or someone else, you know, they have confidence that. this was taken care of, you know, this is in a digital format that we're not altering. Right. So, yeah, I hadn't even thought of that. Like I know one stage that I think to myself will actually want all the history. For when you do decide to swap it out, somebody will want to buy it, but you'll get a better price. We actually can identify this is the exact history that this piece of equipment has had. Um, yeah, that's really good. I think there's a huge, huge place for that in the industry. Um, I'm going to have to call the short though, because we are running out of time and I think we could have carried on speaking and there was a lot more to get through, but I have one question before we get onto the quick fire, getting to know you questions. Who would you like to hear next on Born Scrappy? going to call out one of my buddies, uh, Sam Bacon, who has a really awesome business up in Atlanta. He's on the scrap side and he has a demolition company. So I think like circling the demolition perspective into this would be really cool. Yeah, cool. Okay, you might have to make an introduction. Don't think I know him, but, uh, sounds awesome. Yeah. Quick fire round. Tell us a little bit about you. What's your favorite TV show or movie? Uh, Reservoir Dogs. Ah, so good. Still one of my favorite songs. Clowns that left me. Jokers to the right, here I am. Anyway, I want to break out of this thing. Stuck in the middle with Stu. Very good, Jess. Look at you go. Alright, favorite place to visit? Bulderum Turkey. Nice. I haven't been to Bulderum. I've spent some time in Istanbul. Yeah. Awesome. Um, favorite book? You know, you're always a product of the most recent book. Uh, AWOL along the Appalachian trail. Awesome book. Okay. Sounds good. AWOL. Did you say? AWOL. That was his trail name. Yeah. Awesome. And lastly, have you got a favorite quote? Be yourself because everybody else has already taken it. Yeah, so good. Love it. Just it's been lots of fun. I think you added great value. Um, it's awesome to hear about what you're doing. I obviously have a passion for it as well, technology in our industry. So just thanks for being on board and scrappy. That was awesome. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Cheers mate.